Christianityworks Official Podcast

No doubt you’ve heard the saying – you can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives. So – what do you do, when the people you’re closest to turn out to be amongst the most difficult to deal with? We’re All Different The first thing we notice when we look around at other people is that we are all different, aren‘t we? In a room of just ten people, even if two people are identical twins, we look around and we are all different. Even identical twins grow up emotionally quite different and they have different finger prints. So those differences are wonderful. That means you can do things that I can’t do and I can do things that you can’t do. But sometimes those differences can really grate on us. You know, Jacqui, my wife, and I are really quite different. We can be lying in bed at night and I’ve got the ceiling fan on and she’s got her electric blanket on. And when we get close to people, those differences, well, you know, they can grate a little bit if we allow them to. My strengths have a flip side to the coin, they have weaknesses underneath, and your strengths - the things that you are particularly good at, well, there’s a flip side to those. The under side of those can sometimes rub other people the wrong way. We all are a bundle (as I like to say) of strengths and weaknesses. Our own blubbering mass, if you like, of really good things we can do and the things where we aren’t so strong, where maybe we fall short. And in the daily grind, in the pressures and the conflict, those different personality types are hard to deal with. The psychologists say there are kind of four personality types - the sanguine, the bubbly, fun loving type - the choleric, the organised, decision maker - the melancholic, the temperamental, creative - and the phlegmatic, the peace loving, kind of ‘hippy’ - and you and I, we’re all kind of a blend of one or two of those, I guess. That’s ok, because people that are at a distance, that’s not so hard to deal with, but let’s look across our families at the moment - our immediate families and our extended families and what we know is, those differences in a family situation - in our homes, in the places we go to rest and relax and recuperate and be recharged - in those places, those differences can be painful and annoying. You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your relatives.| Even husband and wife, as they get to know each other - I mean, of course, we can pick our husbands and wives but once we get to know each others weaknesses, once the relationship develops and the marriage goes on for a few years, it’s easy to get to the point and say, “oh, why did I pick her, or why did I pick him?” Is anyone compatible really? We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We all know we’ve got mistakes, we all know we’ve got rough under-bellies that, you know, don’t quite measure up. We are in the middle of a series called, ‘Dealing with Difficult People’ and today we are going to look at dealing with the difficult people in our families - the people who are closest to us. The Bible says we should love people, the question is: How? How do we love people? It’s not enough to know that we should love difficult people in our families but it’s important to know how to love those difficult people, because how we love them will make a huge difference to our lives and in fact, the lives of all of those people who are close to us. And I guess I talk not only about our family, but people whom we work closely with. The ones that are really close to us are the ones - well, we can hurt them the most and they can hurt us the most. The more important that person is to us, the more they can hurt us because we open ourselves up; we expose ourselves. So I like to start reading in First Peter, which is right towards the end of the New Testament - First Peter chapter 2 beginning at verse 18, right through to chapter 3. You, who are servants, be good servants to your masters, not just to good...

We all have some difficult people in our lives. You do. I do. So how do you deal with them – especially when you’re under fire from the enemy? It’s Easy to Fight Wars I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but dealing with people, sometimes difficult people, is a big part of life, at home, at work, socially. And conflict can take its toll. Sometimes we feel as though we’re under pressure - as though we’re under fire, maybe through circumstances, maybe through what other people are doing - and right in the middle of that difficult space, we still have to deal with those difficult people, under fire. And in one of those perverse twists of life, in a sense there’s meaning in conflict; in a sense there’s meaning and dignity when we sacrifice in the midst of a conflict. Most nations, my own, Australia and in fact, New Zealand, celebrate the sacrifice of their soldiers during war. In Australia it’s called ANZAC Day - the Australia New Zealand Army Corp and increasingly, that celebration is growing. About twenty or thirty years ago people said, “oh it’s all war mongering and it’s all about this and that and it’s going to die and we can’t possibly continue celebrating war. And it’s funny, but we celebrate a day, in ANZAC Day, which is a day of great defeat. It remembers - maybe celebrates is the wrong word - it remembers that eighteen and a half thousand Australian soldiers were wounded or missing and seven and a half thousand were killed. Five thousand New Zealanders wounded and missing, two and a half thousand killed in this Gallipoli campaign in World War One which was such an enormous disaster. And social commentators are saying, “look, the reason that these celebrations, right around the world, the reason that these sorts of days are being remembered, right around the world, where we are looking at our soldiers who were lost in battle, is that - well it’s not about war any more, it used to be about the glorification of war - but today it’s about sacrifice and hope. It’s all about the triumph of the spirit not about the victory in the battle. These sorts of days, where we remember fallen soldiers, say with a voice that grows louder each year that we expect to find something good to happen, that we are still capable of becoming the kind of society that would justify the sacrifice of those who thought we were worth fighting for. In other words, people today are looking back on the sacrifice of the soldiers of their countries and saying, “You know, there’s meaning in that sacrifice, you know there’s humility, there’s giving, there’s something spiritual when these men under fire, were prepared to sacrifice their lives for me.” There’s a large shopping centre near where I live, quite a new one - very ritzy, glitzy, you know - enormous, expensive clothes. And you see people milling around in that shopping centre, day after day, week after week, and that whole shopping centre - mall, shopping thing - is like an icon of our time. Yet as ritzy and glitzy as it is, it doesn’t have meaning and people are looking for meaning and it seems that in celebrations, like ANZAC Day, they’re finding that spiritual flame - that cenotaph, that bugle, that cool morning air, that shrine, that spiritual experience - people are finding meaning in sacrifice. Now you might ask, “why don’t they find that in Jesus? Why don’t they find that in church?" And you look at the public media image of the church, with this denomination fighting that denomination and the systematic cover-up of child abuse and Christians who don’t look any different, actually, from the rest of the world. The salt, at least in its public image, has lost its flavour. The light has stopped shinning when people look at what Christianity is through the media. And let’s face it, we construct much of our reality about life through what we see in the media - it may not be fair, but that’s the perception. So I can’t imagine why they’re not knocking down the doors of our churches searching for...

So I wonder – who’s the most difficult person in your life right now? Chances are you can picture their face. Well I’d like to spend some time with you chatting about the number one most difficult person in your life. When People Look at Us Let me ask you a question: when the world looks at the church, what does it see? When people look at the church of Jesus Christ, what is it they see in the media image? Sexual abuse on the news, division amongst denominations, people who mean well demonstrating against this, that and the other! It sees a bunch of people who say one thing and do another. On the one thing we profess God‘s love, on the other, well, the church seems to be saying, in it’s media image, “do this, don’t do that, but by the way, don’t mind the fact that we have systematically covered up sexual abuse of children for decades." There’s a name for that and it’s called ‘hypocrisy’ and the world hates hypocrisy. You and I hate hypocrisy. What do people expect to see when they look at God’s people? What do people expect to see? Tony Campolo is a wonderful man out of the U.S., you may have heard of him. He just a wonderful minister of God’s Word and he often asks young people, when he meets them in universities: “What’s the one thing that you know that Jesus said?” and mostly people say this - mostly people remember that Jesus said: “Love your enemy!” And too often it seems that we as God’s people; as Christians, are kind of telling people how far they have strayed from God. You know, we talk about this social issue, or that social issue, instead of reaching out to people and telling them how close God really is in Jesus Christ. Well that’s the big picture; that’s the macro. What about the micro? What about you and me? When they look at us, what do they see? Do they see, ‘love your enemy’? First John chapter 4 verse 7 says this: Let us love one another for love comes from God ... And when you look at Jesus, when you look at how He dealt with people and what He taught and what He spoke about, the biggest thing for Him was that love-walk; the biggest thing for Him was valuing people and loving them into the Kingdom of God. We got a new revelation of who God is when Jesus arrived and then when you look at the rest of the New Testament, the Epistles that come after the Gospels, the letters that were written amongst the New Testament church when Jesus had risen again, more and more you see that revelation expounded as ‘walk in love’. Love God and love other people. John Grey, the author of that famous book, 'Men Are From Mars and Women are From Venus', makes a very interesting point in that book. He says that very few people ever grow in love. Why is that? Because loving is difficult. The people we love can be difficult sometimes. Forty five percent of marriages - almost half - fail. I wonder of those that are left, how many of them are lousy marriages? We want to love; it’s not enough to want to love, we actually need to know how to love, I really believe that. Let me just say that again. It’s not enough for us to know that we ought to walk in love; we actually need to know how to do that. And so on Christianityworks this week we are starting a series of four messages called Dealing With Difficult People. Because difficult people are all around us, difficult relationships are all around us and our ability to look like Jesus and be like Jesus and love like Jesus, depends on our ability to deal with the difficult people in our lives - those that Jesus referred to as our enemies. Let me ask you, who’s the most difficult person you’ll ever meet? Just close your eyes for a minute and visualise the most difficult person you ever met. I’m sure you can see their face and it stirs up emotions in you. Now open your eyes. If I had a mirror I’d be standing in front of you holding up the mirror and saying, “Here, look at the most difficult person that you will ever meet.” Take a good look, because we look at ourselves for five,...

With Easter done and dusted for another year, it’s kind of easy to forget about the Cross, Christ’s suffering, the resurrection and the empty tomb … and just get on with life. What do all those things have to do with what I have going on in my life now? But that sort of attitude can get us into a lot of trouble. THE RIGHTEOUS MAN DESTROYED It’s funny how we build rituals into our lives that we repeat year after year. There’s Christmas, then New Year’s. For those in the southern hemisphere, that normally means some sort of summer break. Then all too quickly, Easter rolls around, but that happens so quickly that if you blink, you miss it. Although for those in the northern hemisphere, Easter is a sure sign that their summer break is just weeks away. That’ll always give you a bit of a sense of anticipation. Yeah, Easter is a bit of a marker in the calendar, but for many, that’s all it is. It happens and just as quickly as it came. It disappears again. And I think if that’s how we treat Easter, then we do so at our own peril because there are some lessons in Easter, there are some vitally important truths in the Easter story that can sustain us and bless us all year round, particularly if that year is not looking like it’s going to be a particularly good one. I was having coffee with a young man the other day. He’s kind of in his mid-thirties, which may seem young from where I sit somewhere on the other side of fifty, and this young man has it all. He has a successful career as a speaker and an author and a business coach. He earns lots and lots of money, a lot more than me, certainly; and he’s a good-looking guy. Emotionally he has it together; he has everything to live for: A beautiful wife, a happy marriage, the ability to travel all round the world to all sorts of fantastic places, and his wife gets to come with him sometimes. We’re also friends on Facebook, and forever I’m seeing photos of him white-water rafting in Thailand, and popping up in London and New York, and he doesn’t fly at the back of a plane either, I have to tell you. My point is this: If ever there was a guy that you and I would point to and say, ‘Wow! God’s blessed that person’, it would have to be this guy, without a shadow of a doubt. And yet there’s one hurt in his life. He and his wife haven’t been able to have a child yet. They’ve thrown money at the problem; in vitro fertilisation; they’ve prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed and still, nothing. You see, it doesn’t matter who we are; where we live; what our circumstances are. It doesn’t matter how incredibly blessed someone is; there is always something in our lives that isn’t to our liking. There is always something in our lives that we want to be able to change. There is always something in our lives that causes us pain. You and I, we would look at this guy’s life, then look up at God and say, ‘Yes, please, Lord. I’ll have one like that, thanks.’ We keep thinking that if only I could earn a bit more money; if only my husband, or my wife as the case may be, would love me just that little bit more; if only I could find the right job; if only my children would grow out of this difficult stage that they’re in at the moment; if only I could lose a few extra pounds; if only I could afford that little bit of cosmetic surgery; if only, if only, if only … then I would finally be happy. That’s a lie that most people tell themselves most of the time. Of course, if you had a quick look back at the cross for a moment, and saw this Jesus who’d never done a single thing wrong in His life hanging there, nailed to His cross, hands and feet, gasping for air, slowly dying that excruciating death, we’d realise that bad things happen to good people all the time. Suffering happens. God didn’t even spare His own Son from that. And while sometimes we suffer as a result of our own mistakes and stupidity, more often than not, the suffering that hits our lives is completely unfair; no rhyme or reasons. It just...

I guess when we think of Easter we think of it way, way, way in the past and I guess of its consequences way, way, way in the future. The past act of Jesus dying for you and me and the future blessing of a resurrection for us to live eternity with Him. In the past and in the future but what if I told you that Jesus wants to give you a ‘here and now‘ kind of resurrection today, would you believe me? HERE AND NOW RESURRECTION As we chatted last week on the program – Easter is a time for hope. Not a wishy–washy, uncertain hope like: I hope I lose some weight on this diet or I hope the weather fines up tomorrow. No, not that. When the Bible talks about hope, it means a certain hope. The sort of hope that throws a ray of sunshine into your day, because you realise that you have something amazing to look forward to. The hope of the resurrection of the dead. That when you and I die, we will go to be with Jesus in paradise, based only on our faith in Him, not on what we do or don’t do. That’s exactly what Jesus said to the criminal that was strung up on that Cross next to Him on that very first Easter, although of course, it wasn’t called Easter back then. It was the Passover celebration. Have a listen: Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with Jesus. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, then save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him that read, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ One of the criminals who was hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other one rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said to Jesus, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ And Jesus replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ (Luke 23:32-43) Now although that was obviously a terrible, terrible circumstance in which to receive the promise of eternal life with Jesus, I think you’ll agree, there was a sense of immediacy to that promise. That criminal knew that he was about to die – he could feel it, the agonising, the excruciating, long–suffering death by suffocation, which is how you die when you’re nailed to a cross. By the way this was the very first man recorded in Scripture to receive the gift of eternal life based on faith in Jesus. And it happened on the same day within just a few hours of the promise that Jesus made to him. Most of us don’t know how long we have left on this earth. Some who’ve had maybe a bad medical prognosis might have some idea, but most of us don’t. I could live another fifty years, or I could be gone tomorrow. I don’t know and I don’t want to know. But what we do know, what we do see, is the long path ahead. The trials that we’re going through and the trials, which are so much a part of life, that lie ahead. But this resurrection, this new life, doesn’t just begin when we die and go to heaven. It’s meant to begin the very moment we believe in Jesus. In fact, it has begun the very moment you believed in Jesus. It’s as though we’ve died and risen again here and now. Have a listen to this amazing scripture that says exactly that. Romans chapter 6, verses 1 to 4: 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...

By about this time of year any little bit of a break we might have had over Christmas and New Year is but a dim distant memory. We’re back in the grind and we’re looking forward to our next break – awesome! But surely there’s more to life than that. HOPE MATTERS Hope is a beautiful word, four letters, just one syllable, there’s a clear, pure ring to it, isn’t there? HOPE. I don’t know how your year is going so far, what just three months in but for most of us there have been some ups, there have been some downs and underneath it all that constant incessant grind that we all call life, the daily ritual. I know there are some people on the London Tube with their headphones on listening in to this message today. I know that there is a farmer on his harvester listening in on his local radio station in Australia, in the US and in other places. I know that there is a man in Chicago down at the local gym probably tuned in to the podcast as he is most days and I know that there are refugees in camps wondering what the next day will bring, gathered around their radio’s listening to today’s message all over the world, all different circumstances. Some good, some not so good, some downright awful, I know that so here as we head into this Easter time, Berni drops the word ‘hope’, pure, clean, crystal clear hope, what does it mean to you right now given where you’re at, what’s going on in your life? Hope. My year so far has been a bit of a mixed bag, isn’t that always the way? Some great things, a short holiday with my lovely wife in January, awesome and some tough issues to grapple with here too in the ministry called Christianityworks that I’m privileged to lead. But the most constant thing, it’s like a drum beat that never stops, is the daily rhythm of the grind. Up early each morning working on radio programs, dealing with staffing issues and all that comes with running an organisation that produces radio and television programs around the world. And for me, as I participate in this daily grind, punctuated from time to time with some delightful days and some dreadful days. Here’s what this beautiful clear word hope means to me. It means that just around the next corner, just over the next rise there’s something more, something better, something that is really worth looking forward to, much more than my next holiday or next trinket or bauble that this world may have to offer. A solid hope, a certain hope that one day the trials and tribulations of this world will be over and that I’ll get to spend eternity in the presence of Jesus. It doesn’t matter who we are, what sort of life we’re leading, how rich or poor, north or south, east or west, our lives maybe, I believe that we’ve been hand crafted to hope for something in the future, I believe that there’s something innate inside each one of us that no matter how much we may delight in or despise this particular day, there is that something that reaches out to the future looking forward for, well what exactly? Something better, something more, something beyond, something utterly delightful, you know it, don’t you? You often dream of the future, you hope for this and that. The young woman hoping for her prince charming to ride into her life. The middle-aged man hoping for release from the yoke of the mortgage that drives him to work these long hours under so much pressure. The hope of a frail, elderly, lonely woman whose joints are racked with arthritis hoping for deliverance from this world. No matter what stage of life we’re in we’re always hoping for something. The sad thing is that we sometimes, often times, place our hope in things that simply can’t deliver what we’re looking for. I happen to enjoy technology, I like the way smartphones have revolutionised my life, sure. But I look at the hysteria, the overnight queues, the cheering and the waving that accompanies the release of certain brands of smartphones, it seems they always put it on the evening news these days as...

Suffering is not a lot of fun is it. Nobody looks forward to it, and yet, it’s pretty certain that storms will hit our lives. So, when they do, there’s a confidence that God wants you to have in your heart. A confidence, in Him. WITH FRIENDS LIKE THAT Suffering is bad enough, but if while you’re suffering, your so-called friends can’t even stand by you and encourage you and comfort you, well that is just the pits. Worse still when loved ones – a wife or a husband, instead of encouraging you, they take the opportunity to say, ‘I told you so or You’ve only got yourself to blame … well, at that point, you just want to pack it in. This isn’t a game hypotheticals, this is real life. This happens all the time. In fact it seems to be a favourite game that some people love to play. When he’s down, when she’s down, instead of giving them a hand up, let’s kick ‘em where it hurts. I don’t know about you, but I have a pretty good handle on my faults. It turns out that every strength we have, is a double-edged sword. It’s both a strength, and, if we’re not careful, it’s a weakness as well. Say you’re a strong leader type of personality, then you’re great to have around because you can help the rest of us crash through obstacles that we, without you, simply wouldn’t have been able to get through. But at the same time, as a leader, you can be a quite domineering and controlling person. Or lets say you’re one of those great encouragers, who will hang in there with someone for as long as they need, then you’re a fantastic friend to have in a storm. But there’s every chance that you’re not very organised, not an on-time sort of a person – simply through the fact that you’ve been made to hang in there with people for as long as they need you. Yep, every strength is a double-edged sword. It’s both a strength, and a potential weakness. So few people understand that. And as a result, when things aren’t going well for us, they’re quite adept, it would seem, at seeing our faults and pointing them out to us. ‘Well, maybe the reason you’re having this problem in your marriage is because you’re such a strong personality. It must be your fault’. Or … ‘Well, the reason you’re having this problem at work is that you’re just not good at time management. You have to get better at sorting out your priorities and hitting the deadlines you need to hit’. You see how easy it is, to find the fault side of our strength, when people are looking for answers. They think they’re helping us, but they’re only making it worse. I have a friend like that who constantly needs to point out my faults to me, as though somehow he’s an impartial, expert psychotherapist. And when he gets into that mode, I sit there and I think of all his faults – faults that I don’t point out to him – because he’s my friend and he has a whole bunch of strengths as well. I know what you’re thinking – been there, done that, got the t–shirt, you know exactly what I’m talking about. There is a time and a place for friends to point out each other’s faults and weaknesses and limitations in a constructive way. But that time and place is not when they’re suffering, it’s not when the devil is chasing them around the kitchen table with a pick-axe, it’s not when God is leading them through a wilderness experience. Right? Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been spending some time with Job, a righteous man, a good man, whom God chose to test, by letting the devil go after everything he had. His family, his possessions, his health, his reputation – one by one, God allows the devil to strip them away from Job, to see what lies beneath. To see whether Job truly is this great man of faith, or whether he only trusts God while his faith is propped up by all the blessings that God has heaped on his life. And Job, as it turns out, had three friends, just like the ones we’ve been talking about. Their names were Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar. While Job was crying out to God – asking Him why, and praying to...

Way too many Christians are way too timid in their prayer lives. Now, I’m not saying be belligerent and demanding, but let me tell you, if your faith is in Jesus … you have a lot more power in your prayer than you realised. OUR FAITH IN CHRIST Well, welcome to this last program in the four part series that I’ve called, “The Power of Prayer”. Over the last few weeks we’ve been looking at this whole prayer thing – “Bridging the Communication Gap”. You know sometimes we’re so busy, we’re running around we’re running around doing things. We just don’t take the time to spend with God. Then we saw how Jesus taught us to pray, just a humble, simple communication. Not trying to impress God or trying to impress anyone else, just spending time humbly before Him. And then last week we saw what it meant to pray with power. This is so important. Last week on the program we saw time and time again God’s Word teaches us to pray with boldness, not with arrogance, but with a confidence in who God is and who we are in Christ Jesus. When we talk about prayer one of the questions that comes up is, “Well, what can I ask God for? I mean, can I go to God and ask Him for anything? What if I want a flash new car, can I ask Him for that? Or a pay rise, or healing? How come sometimes He answers some peoples prayers for things like that and not others?” We’re going to take a look at that on the program today, because you know something, it’s an important question. On the one hand, absolutely, we should pray with boldness because that’s what God’s word tells us to do. But on the other, in our me-centric world, and we’re all a product of that somehow aren’t we, it’s easy to get things the wrong way around. We put ‘me’ at the centre and then we expect God to dance around to our tune. On the other hand, didn’t Jesus say, “Ask for whatever you wish and it will be given to you. And you haven’t received yet because you haven’t asked. See the dilemma. On the one hand God is God. He’s Sovereign, He’s almighty. His thoughts aren’t our thoughts, His ways aren’t our ways. And yet He teaches over and over again to pray with a faith and a boldness and a perseverance and belief, as Paul puts it in Ephesians Chapter 1, “In the Power that we have”, with a capital ‘P’. Now how do we resolve this dilemma? How do we get it right? What are we missing here in our understanding about this apparent conflict? For me it starts and ends with a deep faith in Jesus. I was just reading this morning in my own devotion time the Gospel of Luke Chapter 6. Grab a Bible if you have one and open it up with me. Chapter 6 verse 17: Jesus went down with the people and stood on a level place. There was a large crowd of His disciples and a great number of people from Judea, from Jerusalem and from the coast of Tyre and Sidon and they had come to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases. Those troubled by evil spirits were cured and the people all tried to touch Him because power was coming from Him and healing them.” See, power was coming from Him. The Greek word for power is ‘dunamis’ we get the word dynamite. We are talking serious power was coming from Jesus and people were getting healed. We have to look at what it says before then. You see it says that they had come to hear him and be healed from all their diseases. That’s verse 18 of chapter 6 of Luke’s gospel. And there’s the key. We need to be open to who Jesus is and what He has to say. Jesus said some outrageous things. Love your enemy for starters. Forgive people. Call God “Dad” which is very radical. He ushered in a power, radical love. He hung around sinners and lepers and prostitutes and healed the lame, the blind on the Sabbath when he shouldn’t have. And criticised the religious establishment for its hypocrisy. This Jesus, this unconventional saviour, that you just can’t easily put it in a box somewhere. We need to be moved by Him. Influenced by Him. These people were open to Him. Listen to it again: A large...

Prayer is not always what we think it is. We expect instant results. But God’s ways aren’t our ways’ His thoughts aren’t our thoughts. Which is why Jesus told some strange parables about prayer. A FRIEND AT MIDNIGHT Today we are continuing on our series called the, “Power of Prayer”. And over the last couple of weeks we’ve been looking at ‘how to pray’ and it’s pretty simple; it’s pretty straightforward. Prayer is a humble, genuine communication with God. It’s not about show, it’s not about impressing other people or impressing God. It’s just coming humbly before Him and communicating – listening to Him and speaking with Him. Just like people communicate, just like a husband and wife communicate – telling it how it is. And, look, if you’ve missed any part of the series so far, you can listen to it again online at our website: www.christianityworks.com. Today we are going to look at more teaching on prayer. The Bible teaches us to pray with persistence and with boldness. Hang on a minute, how does that work? We’ve just been talking about humility – surely I have to bow and scrape and whimper and kow-tow or whatever I have to do? I mean, if God is God and I’m me, praying with boldness kind of seems a bit counter-intuitive? I guess we can get boldness and arrogance all mixed up. On the one hand, if my children come to me with arrogance and ask me for something, well, they’re unlikely to get very far. But if they come in a quiet confidence knowing I’m their dad; knowing that they’re my kids and because of that relationship they can come to me with any need – now there’s a whole different ball-game. Let me say it again. God’s Word, the Bible, teaches us to pray with boldness; with a quiet assurance that God’s our Dad and that based on what Jesus has done for you and me, we can ask Him for anything. Now today we’re going to have a look at three, apparently contrasting passages about bold prayer. And the first one – at first glance – appears as though we have to, well, kind of whimper when we pray. If you’ve got a Bible, grab it. We’re going to open it up at Luke chapter 11 and we are going to look at it from verse 5 – Luke chapter 11 beginning at verse 5 – just after where Jesus teaches His disciples how to pray the Lord’s Prayer. Now have a listen to what He goes on to teach them after He teaches them the Lord’s Prayer. It comes through a parable; a story and this one is definitely worth unpacking. Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend and he goes to him at midnight and says to him, ”Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me and I have nothing to set before him.” Then the one inside answers, “Don’t bother me. The door is already locked; my children are in bed with me – I can’t get up to get you anything.” I tell you, though he won’t get up and give him the bread because he’s a friend, yet because of the man’s boldness he will get up and give him as much as he needs. See at the start of the parable, it kind of looks like we have to grovel. The picture is this: Jesus is saying that prayer looks like this – imagine it’s the middle of the night and you have a visitor and they’ve just arrived and you open the cupboard and there’s not enough to give the guy a sandwich. So you think, “Well, what I’ll do is I’ll go and knock on my neighbour’s door and borrow the proverbial cup of sugar or the loaf of bread.” “But it’s the middle of the night – the neighbour doesn’t want to get up – why would he?” But ultimately, Jesus says the neighbour won’t get up because it’s convenient; he won’t get up because you’re his neighbour; he won’t get up because you’re his friend; he’ll get up because of your boldness and your persistence. And notice this parable is not about borrowing one loaf of bread, it’s says, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread.” In the middle of the night, what’s wrong with two slices? You know, I don’t think, when we come to God with a need, we can...

When we go to God to pray, all too often we head in with a shopping list don’t we? “I need this … I need that … oh God please help me with this … oh God please end my pain and suffering … oh God” … but what if I told you that by and large, at least according to Jesus, prayer isn’t all about me. It’s not all about … you. IT’S NOT ABOUT ME This week on the programme we are continuing in our series: “The Power of Prayer”. I don’t think we can really talk about prayer without looking at how Jesus taught His disciples to pray. And of course, that teaching in the Lord’s Prayer has been recorded for us down through the centuries and it’s still available to us, here and now. Now there’s no record of Jesus teaching them how to preach. You’d think, if He was getting all these disciples together and He wanted them to go out and form the church after He was crucified and rose again and ascended into heaven, we’d have some record of Jesus teaching them to preach. But no. The record that we have is of Jesus teaching them to pray. And that makes sense. I mean it was pretty clear that Jesus had the most amazing relationship with His Dad in heaven. Of course, we believe in the Holy Trinity – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three persons. One God for all eternity. But the incarnation was something special. When Jesus became a man, He laid His glory aside. He became one of us. He had to establish a relationship with His Dad in heaven in just the same way as we do. And time and time again, you see Jesus stealing away on His own, to pray. When the crowds were after Him. When the disciples wanted Him. So often, He’d gone off quietly on His own to pray. And obviously He had a really special relationship. In the Lord’s Prayer, He actually teaches us how to pray. Now we are going to look at that in a bit of detail today, so if you’ve got a Bible, grab it. Open it up at Matthew chapter 6. It blows me away – it’s such an awesome place. Jesus teaching on how to pray. There’s got to be some power in that and there is. There’s power in prayer and there are some amazing gems in there that I think if we want a powerful prayer life, we need to unpack the Lord’s Prayer just a little bit. And that’s what we are going to do today. Most people kind of know the words that we call the Lord’s Prayer. You know: Our Father, who art in heaven. Hallowed be Your name, Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our sin as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Those words were actually spoken by Jesus and they are very well known. But what we sometimes miss are the words that He spoke just before that. The teaching that He gave to His disciples that sets the context of prayer. Have a listen to what Jesus actually said – you’ll pick it up in Matthew chapter 6, beginning at verse 5. This is what He said: And when you pray don’t be like the hypocrites – those people love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners and to be seen by everyone. I tell you the truth; they’ve received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Dad who is unseen, because then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you pray, don’t keep on babbling like the pagans. They think they’ll be heard because of their many words. No, don’t be like them because your Father knows what you need even before you ask Him. There are two parts to that – let’s take a look at them. Let’s see exactly what Jesus said and He seems to be talking about, “don’t think about impressing other people; don’t be like the hypocrites – those people love to stand up in the synagogues and on the street corners and to be seen by everyone.” You know something; prayer is not about impressing other people. And it’s not about impressing God. Look, “Don’t keep babbling like the pagans because they think...

Communication between people – I mean real, meaningful communication is becoming harder to come by. Technology lets us be more connected – but somehow we communicate less. With people, and with God… THE COMMUNICATION GAP Now this week on the programme we are starting a new series that I’ve called, “The Power of Prayer” – the power of having a conversation with God – a relationship, an intimate, delightful relationship. But you know, the more technology we seem get in our hands, the more connected we become. Way back when, the postal service was a major innovation, then came telephones and cars and then faxes and mobile phones and emails and these days my daughter communicates with her friends through websites like myspace.com. And the other thing you notice is, the more of this stuff we have available in our lives, the busier we become, the more options we have. So we cram pack our lives full of doing and stuff and stuff and stuff. And the incredible paradox of all this is that the more communication devices we have at our fingertips, the less we communicate. You know the sort of communication that happened when we went camping as kids or sat around a fire and just talked. Somehow we are so busy these days that that sort of comfortable, relationship building, affirming communication seems to have gone out the window, whether it’s with other people or with God. This paradox is real; it’s alive; it affects almost everybody. Somehow, technology and work and all the entertainment options that people have these days, instead of opening us up to other people, closes down. You see teenagers who are wired to their ipods. On the news last night, they were saying here in Australia that one in three adults has an MP3 player. And I proudly thought, ’well, that’s not me’ and then I realised that my mobile phone is also an MP3 player. It’s all so seductive – cable television, internet movies, restaurants, on and on and on and ok, we can’t all afford all of those things all the time, but we all go chasing after some of that stuff and we want more and more and people are working longer and longer. And you know, those leisurely lunches with families and friends on the weekends are replaced with rushing around shopping centers, and buying stuff and trying to get this organised and that organised. I’m as much a victim of this as anyone else. One of the things that I’ve had to do is to deliberately carve out time with people. To deliberately say, ’no, those emails can go unanswered today because I need to spend some time with my wife.’ I have this very good friend, his name is James. Once or twice a week, James and I will catch up for coffee, just to have someone to talk to and some friendship. We need to decide in all this busy-ness, to stop the merry-go-round, get off and smell the roses. And these days it’s a deliberate decision – these days we almost have to go against the flow to get that sort of communication happening. It’s true in my relationship with people and it’s true in my relationship with God. Lots of people know how wonderful it is to pray – regular communication with God – stopping and pausing with Him, just resting there with Him every day. But many of those people are just too busy to do it. You get up, have breakfast, you commute to work, you’re flat-out all day, you come home tired. How do you fit in great family communication, let alone spending some real, wonderful time with God in prayer? Well, that’s a good question. I spoke on this subject a couple of years back at a conference of Christian leaders in the field of media and communications. And I made the point that the most important thing each one of us has to do in our lives, is have a relationship with God. A young lawyer came to Jesus and said to Him, “Jesus, what’s the most important thing to do in life?” and He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul and all your strength. This is the greatest commandment and...

Each person who believes in Jesus has a battle going on inside. Between the desires of the flesh, and the work of the Holy Spirit. Each one. Sometimes we feel as though it’s a battle we’re losing, even though we’ve already won. How can we actually live out that victory? How can we walk in in the Spirit? THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT One of the most encouraging things God has ever said to me in His Word, the Bible, the most powerful thing I think, is that He is not surprised or perturbed or put off His purposes for me, one little bit, because of my sin. I mean, He doesn’t like it; He doesn’t want it to be the norm in my life but it is no surprise to Him. How do I know that? Well, simple. The Apostle Paul writes that very thing in the Book of Romans, beginning at Romans chapter 7, verse 22. Paul says of himself: Look, I delight in the law of God in my innermost self but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who is going to rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin. And this is from a man who wrote almost half the books in the New Testament – Paul the Apostle. And you know what Paul was going through is exactly the same thing that you and I go through. There’s a war going on between our flesh (the original Greek word for ‘flesh’ is ‘carne’, from which we get ‘carnal’ – right?) and the work of the Spirit in us. And that battle can get us so down – it seems some days as though we are never going to win the battle – but Jesus has already won. “Who is going to save this wretch from this body of sin and death?” asks Paul, “Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ our Lord.” And that’s the fantastic news I want to share with you today. Are you ready for it? One of the things I don’t hear much chatter about in Christian circles is this reality of the battle that is raging within us between the flesh and the spirit. And when I finally go to be with the Lord, I want to find Paul and thank him for being so direct and honest and real about this reality in his life. He tells us here in Romans chapter 7, that he knows the right things to do – I mean he even wants to do them – he just can’t seem to do them. That’s the problem. Not that he doesn’t know, not that he doesn’t want to, but that he just can’t. And our mate Paul wasn’t some woos. He was no airy fairy weakling. Paul was tough as nails when he had to be. He was driven, he was focused, he was an achiever, he poured out his life for the Gospel and even he had this very same problem. Can I go on record and say I had this very same problem happening in me? And I know, I know absolutely, that you had the same thing going on in you. That’s why church is never perfect because it’s full of people like you and me – people who are growing and improving and changing but people who are, never the less, a lot like Paul. And his answer to everything is the grace and the power of Jesus Christ. I am going to share with you now what he goes on to say about how to win this battle that rages between the flesh and the spirit because the answer has everything to do with the power of the Holy Spirit in us. Are you ready to settle down and join me for this wonderful passage? Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 1. He comes straight of the back of this problem that he is talking about and says, look: There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from this law of sin and death. Because God has done what the law, weakened by our flesh, simply could not do: by sending Jesus, his Son in the likeness of our sinful flesh to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk, not according to the...

One of the things that I’ve noticed is that I don’t have the strength, or the power in my own right to live the life that God wants me to. Have you noticed that too? We try … and we fail. What we need, is power. Power from high. Fortunately that’s exactly what Jesus has in mind. POWER FROM ON HIGH Great to be with you again this week and today we’re continuing in this series of messages called Walking In The Spirit. You know, I often think about this – it’s kind of strange to me how God sets things up. He Himself is Spirit: we can’t actually see Him or touch Him or hear Him here in the physical dimension where you and I live. Now of course at one time in history He stepped into the physical dimension when Jesus came and dwelt among us but that was two thousand years ago. And whilst we can read about who Jesus is, and what He has to say, and what He does, we can’t experience God in the physical dimension in the same way as those people did way back then. So now we have something of a dilemma. God lives in a dimension that is spiritual and you and I, we live in a dimension that’s physical. How do we communicate with God? How do we know not just about Him but how do we know Him? Well fortunately that’s something that God thought about, and to do that He sent us His Holy Spirit, one of the three person of the Godhead – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He sent His Holy Spirit to dwell in us. See, this problem happened the moment Jesus was set to depart from this world, the physical God departing leaving what? Well fortunately leaving behind the Holy Spirit. And this is the promise Jesus made to His Disciples, the ones who were to become the Apostles who would spread His good news throughout the known world. John chapter 14 beginning at verse 15. He said: If you love me you’ll keep my commandments and I’ll ask the Father and He will give you another advocate to be with you forever. This is the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him or knows him but you know him because he abides with you and he will be in you. So Jesus promised to send His Holy Spirit to those who believed in Him with their lives and in fact in those final days and hours before He was crucified it’s something that He promised again and again. That through the Spirit of God the Father and the Son would come to make their home in us. Now you and I, we have a body, we have a soul, our mind, our will, our emotions and deep down we have a spirit and it’s at this level that the Holy Spirit connects with us. So after Jesus was risen again and just before He ascends into heaven and leaves His disciples behind He gives them this instruction, Acts chapter 1 beginning at verse 4. He ordered them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait there for the promise of the Father. This, he said, is what you have heard from me. For John baptised you with water but you will be baptised with the Holy Spirit not many days from now. Now the disciples, as it turned out, thought that was fine but that wasn’t the most important thing on their minds. You see, Jesus was the Messiah, and to a Jew in the first century that meant something like a warrior king, like David of old, to boot out the Romans from occupying the land and to restore the king of Israel. The Disciples, despite three and a half years with Jesus, were more interested in what was going to happen in the physical dimension of their lives rather than the spiritual dimension. Have a listen to the exchange between them and Jesus, between the physical concerns of the disciples and the spiritual priorities of Jesus. Acts chapter 1 beginning at verse 6: So when they’d come together they asked him, ‘Lord is this the time when you will restore the kingdom of Israel?’ And he replied, ‘it’s not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and...

One of the things that we’re promised about Jesus is that when we let Him into our lives – He’ll sort the good from the bad – the wheat from the chaff in each one of us – and then burn the chaff with an unquenchable fire. At first that sounds a bit confronting. And yet when Jesus gets to work cleaning out the muck we have on the inside – talk about setting the captives free! REFINER’S FIRE Hey, it’s great to be with you again on the programme today. Last week, if you were able to join me, you may recall that we are talking about walking in the Spirit and the importance of yielding to God. Lots of people who believe in Jesus want to see the power of God at work in their lives; they want to walk in the Spirit, relying on God’s wisdom and guidance but at the same time, they shun God’s Word, the Bible. “Ah, no, I don’t have time for that. I’ve got a busy life.” They run their own race, doing this and doing that and then they wonder, “So, where’s God in all this?” And friend, it’s only when we yield our lives to God and let Him into every part of our lives, that we start to experience the power of the Holy Spirit. It’s only when we say to God, ‘You know, Lord, everything is on the line for You – there is nothing that I am going to hold back from You,’ that He truly goes to work in our lives. Anything less than that is pride and we know that “He opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” James chapter 4, verse 6. And today on the programme we are going to see what the Holy Spirit gets up to in our lives when we give Him free reign – it’s truly powerful stuff. So I hope you will be able to join me in our time together today, to discover the power that’s available to you through the Spirit of the Living God. When Jesus was about to begin His public ministry in First Century Israel, John the Baptist went ahead of Him to herald Jesus’ arrival. John’s central message was for people to confess their sins, to repent – that is to turn away from their sins and back to God – and to be baptised. Interesting message for God to send ahead of the entrance of His Son! It was about turning away from selfishness and sin and turning back to God and being ready … being ready to accept Jesus into peoples’ lives. And this is what John the Baptist specifically had to say about Jesus because many people were already asking him, “Are you the one? Are you the promised Messiah?” And just before Jesus came to John to be baptised, this is what John said about Jesus. If you have a Bible, grab it, open it at Matthew chapter 3, beginning at verse 11: John said, “I baptise you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptise you with Holy Spirit and fire, his winnowing fork in his hand and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary but the chaff he will burn with an unquenchable fire. Now, this is a powerful description indeed of what Jesus is about in our lives. And I used to read this and understand it in this way: that in clearing out the threshing floor, what Jesus would do is take those who are good and righteous, they were like the grain and they would be gathered up into the granary, but those who weren’t would be cast into the fire. And I think a lot of people understand this passage that way. Until one of my lecturers at Bible College challenged and asked me, “What is the context here, Berni? What is John talking about?” and I answered him, “Well, baptism. He is saying that Jesus will baptise us with Holy Spirit and with fire.” Now, I will talk about this baptism of the Holy Spirit, which causes so much controversy and division in the church, later today. But right now, back to the context: so the fire that Jesus is going to wield will be part of my baptism of the Holy Spirit, from Him. So when He goes on to talk about what that fire will do, He is talking about what it will do in my life and in your life if we so...

So many people wish that they could say they’re living their lives by walking in the Spirit. But that’s not really how their life works at all. In fact God often seems a million miles away. Well, there’s a reason for that – it comes down, as it turns out, to a question of priorities. DECIDING WHAT'S IMPORTANT Today we are kicking off a new series that’s called ‘Walking in the Spirit’. Now that’s a phrase that might get some mixed reactions. Many Christians will have heard it and it speaks of walking along the path of life in the Spirit of God – the Holy Spirit – with the Spirit guiding us, encouraging us, comforting us. But equally, many who fall into that group, who call themselves Christians – as much as they have heard that phrase, ‘Walking in the Spirit’, they really haven’t experienced it in their own lives. It’s like, “Well, other people may well walk in the Spirit and maybe it’s for Mr or Mrs Super-Christian over there but it seems that it’s never going to happen for me”. And to those who perhaps haven’t yet given their lives over to Jesus, it may all sound a little bit weird – ‘Walking in the Spirit’. Really? So, over the next few weeks on the programme, I’m hoping that you and I will be able to spend some time together just unpacking this idea of ‘Walking in the Spirit’, because as I am discovering, day by day in my life, it’s a fantastic way to live life. And life is something we live, breath-by-breath, minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour. Not just on some super-spiritual plane, not kind of riding around on cloud nine with the angels, but down here on the dusty roads of this earth; along the highways and the byways of life; over hill and dale. And the thing that people often find difficult is living out their relationship with God in the reality of their lives. It’s not easy sometimes. This idea of walking in the Spirit might sound wonderful, but how do you actually live your life, day by day, immersed in the Spirit of God – guided by Him, knowing His healing touch and His love in the middle of conflict and strife and busyness and all the stuff we go through in life. I guess it’s that very thing I would like to explore with you over the coming weeks. Interesting, just over the last few weeks in my life, things have been so incredibly busy and so what’s been happening in my walk with the Lord is that, well, my quiet times with Him, instead of being unhurried in the still of the morning, as they usually are, I just haven’t had those times. My times of prayer have been short and fragmented – often because I’m up early, getting ready to speak at a Men’s Breakfast or whatever. And whilst it’s been a season of just a few weeks, here’s what I find. It’s so easy to get caught up in the busyness of doing life, doing things for God, doing this, doing that, and what happens is you lose sight of the God who loves you; the Spirit of God who dwells in you. And I get all caught up in busyness. Do you find that too? My hunch is, most of us do. The sad thing is when that way of life becomes a lifestyle. The sad thing is when people who love Jesus and believe in Him allow themselves to get so busy that they find their time with God is somehow squeezed out of their schedule. And before you know it, God seems like He is a million miles away. Of course, He’s not really, but our fellowship with Him has been interrupted; our relationship with Him becomes fragmented and that’s why it feels as though God is a million miles away. Now the knock on effect of that on our lives, is that we start imagining that all the doing we have to do, all the striving to achieve that we are involved in, that that is the most important thing in life. So we peddle harder and harder and we start to feel exhausted – spiritually, emotionally, physically … And this is a great time for the devil to start attacking us; it is a great time for us to start worrying about things and getting depressed about things. It’s like this downward spiral and many, many a...

Sure. We’re created to be an individual, but not in isolation – in community, and community doesn’t work if it doesn’t accept and love and value the uniqueness of each individual in it. IS YOUR LIFE GOING TO COUNT? Each minute that slips by is one less minute that you and I have to live on this earth. How we spend this precious time has everything to do with the sort of life we’ll have lived when it comes to an end. And so today, we’re chatting about living a life that really counts for something. Now, when we’re young children, most of us don’t think about dying. We pretty much have this mind-set that we’re going to live forever here on this earth, but as time slips by, our own children come and then they go, and before you know it the grey hairs start appearing, and the thing that really surprised me? The body doesn’t work quite as well as it used to. At first I was really surprised and then annoyed, and then a sense of my own mortality crept in. At some point, the stark reality that our life on this earth isn’t infinite becomes real in our consciousness – in our hearts. And that, my friend, is a sobering realisation. Perhaps you’re at that point or maybe way beyond it or perhaps you’re not, but at some point many, most come to the realisation that the end is a lot closer than it used to be. At that point, how will we look back at our lives? Come on, how will you look back at your life? And just as importantly, how will others look back at your life? A life well-lived? A life with impact? A life with purpose? A worthwhile life? Or maybe not so much. I remember being confronted by those questions when I read a book in my mid-thirties called, ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ by Stephen Cody – a business bestseller. One of the habits, the second one in fact, is to begin with the end in mind. In other words, to set your life on a course that gets you to where you actually want to go. He begins that chapter by taking you to a funeral – your funeral, as though you have a chance to listen to what other people will say about you when you’re gone. And the question that he asks the reader (me, as I read it) is this: Will the people say about you the sorts of things that you’d really like them to say, or not? And that right there is an incredibly confronting question because it speaks directly about the gaps, small or large, between the sort of life you’d really like to be living and the one that you’re actually living. Are you really living the sort of life that you’d like to be living? Is it having the results, the impact, the outcomes, that you’d really like it to be having, or not? Because if it’s not, then the only way it’s going to change is if you change. The only way that your report card at the end of the day is going to be different is if the attitudes, the desires, the motivations and ultimately the things that you say and do become different. And with life slipping away with each tick of the clock, my friend, do you really have time to waste? It was that very question that brought me to a complete turning-point in my life at aged 36, because I decided that there was a huge gap between what I wanted my life to add up to at the end of the day, and what it was going to add up to if I kept heading in the direction that I was heading. I was living my life by and large for me, me, and me. And that, as it turns out, is no way to get the results that I was really looking for, because the results that I was looking for from the people who would one day stand up at my funeral were about the positive impact that I’d had on their lives’ journey. Some would call that maybe a mid-life crisis; I don’t know, but at some point we each need to ask ourselves whether our lives are headed in the right direction. So without putting too fine-a point on it, can I ask you quietly, gently, respectfully, is your life headed in the right direction? Jesus once told this story about a man. Luke 12:16: The land of a rich man...

As long as you hold onto that thing from the past, it has a hold over you, and as long as it has a hold over you, you can’t take hold of the blessings that are coming your way. WHO’S IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT? Imagine you’re driving along in your car one day, and you see a car swerving all over the place. Why? Because behind the wheel in the driver’s seat is a gorilla with a crazed look on his face. Would you be shocked? Yeah, me too. Driving a car is a serious business. The moment we get behind that wheel, we’re in control of a lethal weapon. But how often do you actually think about that before you unlock the car-door, hop in, strap your seatbelt on, and turn the key in the ignition? Most of us don’t think about it at all, and to be honest, I’ve been driving now for almost thirty years and until March last year, I didn’t think too much about it either. I’d just hop into my car, turn the key, and off we’d go. I was an aggressive driver because of my personality-type; I want to get where I’m going as quickly as possible. I’d tailgate people; I’d blast the horn; still do now and then; I’d zig in and out of traffic, without really thinking too much about the consequences. But in March last year, everything changed. I attended an advanced driving course. Now somehow in my head I imagined that I’d be learning how to drive faster still – how to zip in and out of the traffic more effectively, but instead, they taught me about the consequences of driving like a lunatic. The morning was spent in the classroom, and the afternoon on the racetrack. By the end of the day, I came to the realisation that for the past…well…thirty years of my life, there’d been a lunatic behind the wheel of my car. Me! A bit like that crazy gorilla I was talking about earlier. It’s not that I’m an overly bad person, per say; it’s not that I was intentionally being a lunatic about my driving – and in any case, my driving wasn’t all that outrageous; plenty of people drive like that – but once I listened to someone who knew what they were talking about, an expert; once I hopped into my car and participated in some controlled tests at what were in fact relatively low speeds, and I discovered the consequences of the way I’d been driving, I was confronted with the reality that my behaviour behind the wheel, unwitting though it may have been, was putting my life at risk; the lives of the people I love most – my family; and the lives of other people on the road. It was a shock, I can tell you, and that shock – being confronted with the deadly consequences of my behaviour – resulted in an instant change in the way I drove my car. In fact, these days, I see people doing what I used to do and immediately I think: ‘How can you do something crazy like that? Ah, yeah, I remember how.’ Now if driving a car is a serious business, living your life is even more of a serious business. What we believe, how we see ourselves, what we think, what we say, what we do, our relationships, our loves, how we cope with adversity, how we cope with success, how we live our lives, that’s a serious business. Steering our lives through all the obstacles and hurdles this world throws up at us from beginning to end. Let me ask you a question: “Who’s in the driver’s seat of your life? Is it a lunatic, or is it someone with a good heart, a wise head, a steady hand?” Let’s say, a bit like going to an advanced driving instructor, you paid a forensic psychologist to review your life – your attitudes; your successes and failures and how you handle them all; the depth and the effectiveness of your relationships; your whole life – what might they find? What sort of a scorecard would you end up with? If someone brought you face to face with the consequences of some of your wrong attitudes towards others – perhaps your own perception of yourself, your foibles and insecurities and all that stuff – how would you go? The sort of life we end up living comes back to who or what is in the driver’s seat....

Every hurt, every pain, every argument, every flash of anger every desire for revenge, the only way to defeat those things is with the steadfast love of the Lord our God. I’M ANGRY With all my heart I believe that you and I are created to live an extraordinary life, but one of the things that robs many people of that sort of life is negative emotions, and today on the program we’re going to chat about three of the most common ones – anger, the desire for revenge and fear. So let’s kick things off. Let me ask you, how much is your anger robbing you of your extraordinary life? Anger is something different to annoyance. We can be annoyed by little things and some people sadly spend a lot of their life in the state of annoyance. It’s something you may have heard me talk about recently on this program. But anger is a much bigger thing. Let’s imagine for a moment that someone says something nasty about you or someone consistently fails to meet your expectations of honesty and loyalty. Or someone speaks lies about you behind your back. There is every chance that those things are going to make you angry right? When is the last time that you were angry? Maybe you’re angry right now? Or it happened earlier today or just yesterday? With the way this world is, it’s probably not that long ago. Can you remember how you felt? It comes on quite quickly doesn’t it? It kind of rises up within you. Sometimes we want to shout or hit out, sometimes we just want to glare the person down, above all things we want recompense an apology and sometimes even revenge. Anger is a complicated emotion. And so often when we experience anger we make stupid decisions; we say something or do something that destroys a relationship or hurts someone, sometimes ourselves and sometimes other people. Ok, back to the last time that you were angry, can you still remember it? Then here is my question. How long were you angry at that particular person? Was it a minute or two before you calmed down? 5- 10 minutes perhaps? A half hour or an hour or all day? Overnight perhaps? A week, two weeks? Are you still angry with that person? I know a people who have been angry with each other for years and literally haven’t spoken to each other for all that time, because somehow they couldn’t let go of anger. The fullest and most horrific conclusion to unbridled anger is of course murder, and murder, Jesus said, begins in our hearts. Anger is something that happens deep down in our hearts and unless we learn to control it we can end up doing some terribly destructive things in life. There are many people whose marriage, whose families, whose careers are laying on the scrap heap right now because they didn’t learn to control anger. I’m sure you probably know one or two people just like that. So, there are two aspects of anger that we’re going to chat about today – how quickly it happens, and how long it takes to get over it. First of all, how quickly. Remember earlier I said that anger can rise up very quickly indeed, especially if that person has already made us angry before; especially if that person has hurt us in some way or has been dishonest in the past. I want to encourage you today to be someone who is slow to anger. This God I mentioned earlier, the one who sent Jesus His Son to pay for my sins and yours, well his Word the Bible says this about God’s anger. Psalms 103 verse 8: The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God gets angry but He’s slow to anger, because he’s abounding in steadfast love. Love is the key. Caring deeply for other people is the key. If we can become servant-hearted then we can show grace and mercy. I happen to believe that there is a God and that you and I are created by him in His image, and so it makes absolute sense that we should be like him, prepared to show mercy. Can I ask you, when you do something stupid, something that with the wisdom of hindsight you knew was wrong, and we all do that...

My Friend, if your life is drifting the buck stops with you and it’s time for you to do something about it; the alternative … well, the alternative is getting to the end of your days here on this earth and looking back at a life-long missed opportunity. WEIGHING UP THE PAST There are so many people walking around on planet earth today whose failures and disappointments of the past are ruining their present and robbing them of their future. Can I ask you a question? Are you one of those people? I remember a time in my life when my past was weighing me down, a time when in fact my past became such a burden, such a huge load, that it was completely unbearable. It was so bad that I came very close to taking my own life. I remember standing on the 8th floor balcony of that hotel seriously considering jumping over the edge. I’ll share with you a little bit later what it was that pulled me back from the brink. We’re kicking off the year with a series of messages which I have called, ‘The Art of Living’ because if we’re going to realise the hopes and the dreams that we have for this New Year we need to spend some time thinking about our lives. Most of us don’t do that. We kind of know the hurts, the things that aren’t working so well. A lot of people brood about the negatives in their lives, but mostly we just think about the symptoms. So today and over the coming weeks we’re going to go a bit deeper than just the symptoms. We’re going to be chatting about exactly how we live our lives and the best place to start is with our past. We each have a past, and as I’ve said there are just so many people for whom their past is ruining their present and robbing them of their future. Now in a very real sense, unless we let go of the past we simply can’t enjoy our lives today. We simply can’t look forward to our future without that sense of hope and anticipation. Let me give you an example. I know a man who has had a very difficult life. He was abused when he was young and for many years people told him that he just wasn’t good enough. Instead of encouraging him the people around him, his work colleagues, even his family, kept telling him what was wrong with him. They focussed on his failures and his faults rather than on the good things about him. Now come on, we’re all something of a mixed bag aren’t we? We each have certain strengths and certain weaknesses and it’s really sad when people just focus on our weaknesses. And that’s exactly what happened to this man. So today he looks at his world through that set of eyes, through a mindset that’s deeply affected by his past. He can’t really enjoy who he is and what he has, and he has rather a lot, when he looks forward to his future he doesn’t have a sense of anticipation, even for tomorrow and the next day let alone for rest of this year and the rest of his life. We can talk about all sorts of wonderful things that this year might hold, but unless we first let go of the hurts and the disappointments of the past then none of that means anything. You’ve probably heard that old saying, “Don’t cry over spilt milk”. Now there’s a reason for this for once the milk is spilt you can’t un-spill it. You can clean up the mess, you can apologies to someone if it hurt them or inconvenienced them, you can even learn the lesson that might stop you from doing it again but you can’t undo it. None of us can change the past and for some people today it’s time to let go of your past. When I was standing on that balcony on the day almost 20 years ago now, it was the past that was pulling me over the edge. Even though I had many successes along the way I’d made some mistakes, some big mistakes and I just didn’t know if I could live with the consequences of those mistakes. It seemed like the present wasn’t worth living; it seemed like the future was bleak and hopeless and when we lose hope, hey what’s the point of living. I know there are some people who are thinking that way today and what makes it even...

When Christmas is done and dusted – what do you do with it? Put it back in the cupboard with the decorations for next year – or let the message of Christian burn on in your heart? Join Berni Dymet, on Christianityworks as he takes a fresh new look at Christmas.