A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Most of us want to be safe and comfortable. In fact, some people make that the central purpose of their lives. But you know what I've noticed? Whenever God calls me to do something for Him, my safety and my comfort seem to be the last thing on His mind. Hey, it's great to be with you again on this Friday. Almost the weekend. We've been chatting this week about faith, not in a theoretical sense but in a "rubber hits the road" sense because faith is that thing that we need to get through the things that we, on our own, can't handle. Faith is what we need to move that great big obstacle that's blocking our way, when it's way too big for us to climb over or crash through or get around. Faith is what we need to overcome that one nagging sin in our lives that keeps on coming back to rob us of the joy and the peace that Jesus came to give us. And faith is what we need to go and do the difficult things that God sometimes calls us to do, the inconvenient things, the uncomfortable things, the things we'd just rather not do thank you very much Lord. Well that's the sort of faith we're going to chat about today, uncomfortable faith because no one ever had an impact in this world by playing it safe right? When Jesus calls us into a place to make a difference in someone's life it's so often because that persons life is in a bit of a mess and it's going to hurt us to have to be in that place with that person. When Jesus calls us out of our nice, safe, comfortable existence to go and do something for Him I can guarantee you it's not always going to be convenient and it's not always going to feel comfortable, that requires faith. People sometimes ask me, "Berni why is it that even though I believe in Jesus, I don't know, somehow it doesn't feel real? There's no passion, there's no fire, there's no excitement." And my response is always the same. I ask them two questions. Question one: How much time do you spend quietly each day alone with Jesus with the door closed and your Bible opened? And question two: What are you doing with your faith? How are you living it out? Now question one is really important because, unless we're spending time alone with Jesus each day, growing in a dynamic relationship with Him, well, shazam, shazam, there's not going to be a relationship. But today, I want to take a moment to focus on the second question, what are you doing with your faith? And when I meet someone who has that vague unsettled feeling about their faith, this sense that there should be something more, there should be power, there should be impact, I can almost guarantee you that in effect they're a spiritual couch potato. And by that I mean they're not really living out their faith, they're not getting out there and making a difference in this world, taking risks, putting it all on the line for Jesus and just like someone who spends their whole life sitting on the sofa channel surfing cable TV, drinking sweet soft drinks and eating chips, that person's going to end up feeling lethargic. Well, the Christian who isn't exercising their faith is going to feel precisely the same. You don't believe me? That's exactly what the Bible tells us, James chapter 2, verse 26: For just as the body without the spirit is dead so faith without works is also dead. So as we come to look at faith again today we're going to do that from a different perspective, from the perspective of Abraham. A man who was called out of the comfort of his ancestral home in Ur which is around about where modern day Baghdad is today, have a listen, Hebrews chapter 11 beginning at verse 8: By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance and he set out not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land that he'd been promised as in a foreign land living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. By faith he received the power of procreation even though he was too old and Sarah herself was barren because he considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one person and this one as good as dead descendants were born, as many as the stars of heaven, as innumerable as the grains of sand by the sea shore. Now maybe you remember the story, Abraham is the father of the nation of Israel. He and his wife Sarah were in their mid seventies and childless, a source of great anguish and shame because they equated God's blessing with having lots of children and having your own land to live on. And so what's God's solution? To promise Abraham and Sarah many, many, many descendants if only they'll leave their ancestral home behind and go out on a journey through the wilderness, through all sorts of strange and weird and wonderful places, only God knows where. A familiar story I suppose and yet what we often miss is the context. Let me say that again, by definition God's blessing in that time and in that culture, in fact, you see it over and over and over again in the Old Testament, is that blessing equals: 1. Lots and lots of children 2. Your own land. If you had both of those then you were considered to be blessed by God. The more children you had and the more land you had the more, quite obviously, God was in the business of blessing you. But if you didn't have them then you were considered to be cursed of God, obviously you'd done something wrong, obviously you must have been a bad person. That was the thinking. Now Abraham was a wealthy man, he had lots of flocks of animals which meant he had lots of land. So when God called him out of that onto his journey with a promise of a new land, a promised land and lots of children, do you see what God was asking him to do? God was in fact asking Abraham to give up the one half of the blessing that he already had in the can. The one half of the blessing that he already had which was the land in order to get some new land somewhere he didn't know and also a lot of descendants. And what made this so crazy was that he and his wife, Sarah, were in their seventies. I mean Sarah was way past her child bearing age. Abraham and Sarah had to let go of the bit of the blessing that they had in order to step out in faith in order to receive the next blessing. My friend that is so often how God works. So long as we think our lives are about being comfortable and safe. No risk, no need for faith, no need to rely on God for food or shelter or provision or protection and so long as we make our comfort and our safety the priority, friend our faith is going to be dead. God's main aim isn't to make you and me comfortable, His main aim is to grow our character by making us part of His plan to touch a lost and hurting world with His love. Gods plan isn't that we have some huge superannuation or pension fund so that we can spend our retirement indulging in our senses in food and travel and luxury. His plan is to use us to reach out to our neighbour with His grace and His mercy. And so the solution for the spiritual couch potato, the answer to get rid of that lethargy and bring in a new vigour and anticipation to our faith, it's always the same. The one who would live a vibrant exciting faith, a life where there's power, when the power of God is manifested before their very eyes is the one who goes to God and please Lord show me where you want me to go and what you want me to do, what sacrifices you want me to make, what risks you want me to take so that the name of Jesus would be lifted up in this world? O Lord wherever you call me, whatever it costs me I want to go. Give me the courage, fill me with your Spirit, show me where and how and when I can lose my life for you dear Jesus in order that I might find it. Start praying prayers like that my friend and I guarantee God won't take long to answer you, I guarantee that before you know it you'll be in a place where you see Gods power in your life because frankly without it you'll be in trouble.

Judas Iscariot would have to be one of the most infamous men in all of history. The friend of Jesus who betrayed Him. The man who betrayed the Son of God. Have you ever wondered – what made him do it? What if I told you that the trigger, the straw that broke the camel's back, was a love of money?! All of us have experienced some time in our lives the betrayal of a friend. It's a terrible thing and in fact it is quite possibly the worst thing we could ever experience. When a trust is broken. When there's an infidelity or a betrayal where there should have been faithfulness and trust. Where there's hate where there once was love. Where there's strife where once there was peace. These are the most painful of all pains. The greater the love, the greater the trust that once was, the deeper and darker the betrayal. As I speak these words no doubt your mind turns to a betrayal in your life. Your heart remembers the darkness and the depth of the loss. That's because betrayal was never meant to be. And so when we talk about Jesus betrayal by Judas Iscariot, this man whom Jesus took to be one of His closest disciples, then this is the thing of which we speak. It's not just a story as familiar as it may be, it's a real human and spiritual drama based on betrayal and desertion. And as it turns out Judas wasn't the only one of the disciples who betrayed Jesus. When push came to shove they all fled, they all left Him completely alone in His hour of need. Jesus didn't just die on that cross, he was betrayed and He was deserted by His closest friends. Turns out He suffered in a whole bunch of different ways, in ways that we sometimes gloss over and miss and ignore. Betrayal is something that begins in the heart and that is exactly what happened with Judas Iscariot. Interestingly the thing that seemed to trigger it was money. Have a listen, John chapter 12 beginning at verse 1: Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus whom He'd raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for Him. Martha served and Lazarus was one of those at the table with Him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard and anointed Jesus feet and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume but Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, the one who was about to betray Him said, 'Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?' He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief. He kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it. So there they were just six days before the Passover, less than a week before Jesus was arrested and tried, that money was playing merry hell in Judas' heart. Am I drawing too long a bow here? Well I don't think so particularly when you look at a similar thing that happened also in Bethany just four days later. Matthew chapter 26 beginning at verse 1: When Jesus had finished saying all these things He said to His disciples, 'You know that after two days the Passover is coming and the Son of man will be handed over to be crucified?' Then the Chief Priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the High Priest who was called Caiaphas and they conspired to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill Him. But they said, 'Not during the festival or there may be a riot among the people'. Now while Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper a woman came to Him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it they were angry and they said, 'Why waste this for this ointment could have been sold for a large sum and the money given to the poor'. But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, 'Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world what she had done will be told in remembrance of her.' Then one of the twelve who was called Judas Iscariot went to the Chief Priests and said, 'What will you give me if I betray Him to you?' They paid him thirty pieces of silver and from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray Jesus. So there it was. It was Judas' love of money that caused him to go out after the thirty pieces of silver and sell out the Son of God. It is the sin that triggered the crucifixion of Jesus, the love of money. And it wasn't long before the wheels were set in motion. John chapter 18 beginning at verse 1: After Jesus had spoken these words He went out with His disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden which He and His disciples entered. Now Judas who betrayed Him also knew the place because Jesus often met there with His disciples. So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the Chief Priests and the Pharisee's and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to Him, came forward and asked them, 'Who are you looking for?' They answered, 'Jesus of Nazareth.' Jesus replied, 'I am he.' Judas who betrayed Him was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, 'I am he', they stepped back and they fell to the ground.  Again He asked them, 'Whom are you looking for?' And they said, 'Jesus of Nazareth'. Jesus answered them, 'I told you I am he, so if you are looking for me let these other men go.' So the soldiers, their officer and the Jewish police arrested Jesus and bound Him. And of course Jesus was tried several times and unjustly eventually condemned to death. Judas suffered a lot as a result of this and actually he had a change of heart, we read in Matthew chapter 27 beginning at verse 3: When Judas His betrayer saw that Jesus was condemned he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the Chief Priests and to the elders. He said, 'I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.' But they said, 'What is that to us? See to it yourself.' So throwing down the pieces of silver in the Temple he departed and he went and hanged himself. Do you see how normal, everyday, human sin and frailty were involved in the arrest and the crucifixion of Jesus? How the lure of treasures of this world placed in Judas' heart and fanned by satan himself were at play here. You and I, we're so quick to cut ourselves some slack, to rationalise and justify our own sin and sweep it under the carpet. And yet it was your sin and mine that Jesus went to the cross to pay for. And one of the most common of all sins friend is this love of money. The delight in the riches of this world which rises up and sets itself above God in our hearts and our lives. That's what happened to Judas. He saw all this money being poured out on Jesus by way of these perfumes, he wanted that money, he wanted money and so he went and sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Friend, sin is as insidious as it is dangerous. It is all the sort of sin that God views so gravely that He sent His Son to die for it so that you and I might be forgiven. We can fool ourselves sure but only for so long. At some point we come to the painful realisation that Judas Iscariot came to. That it just ain't worth it. That setting up other gods above the one true God is just about the dumbest thing that you and I could ever do in our lives. And maybe, just maybe right now as we're heading towards Easter you and I have the opportunity to ask ourselves, are we in that position? Is there something in our lives that we're setting up above God? Are we, in anyway shape or form, like Judas? Because no sin is small sin, it starts as a seed, it festers, it grows and before we know it its fully blown sin which leads to death. Judas discovered that, when we do that it has the most dire of consequences. Let me ask you to examine your heart, is there something that you are placing above God because if there is it's time to let it go?

You discover a lot about someone when you see how they react under pressure. That's when you see the real man or the real woman. And one of the things that Jesus does just before He's to be crucified is that He prays. Question is – who or what does He pray for? Now that's an interesting question, because the answer tells us an awful lot about Jesus. Prayer is something that most of us, well we don't have time for, right? I mean life's busy, we're under pressure and so we're just flat out getting through life. The idea of spending twenty minutes or half an hour or maybe even an hour praying each day, well I guess that's nice, maybe it's good for the minister to pray every day, I mean after all it's what we pay him for but me, I'm just under too much pressure, I don't have time. And you know when we're in a difficult place if we do pray then the things that we're praying fervently about are the things that are putting us under pressure. If it's a financial thing we pray for that. If it's our children we pray for them. Whatever's affecting our little world that's where the focus of our prayer is. Imploring God, make a difference, fix this up. Now there's absolutely nothing wrong with that, we should take our problems and our pressures to God, we should lay them at His feet and ask Him for His help, all good. That's why when Jesus prays just before He's about to be handed over and crucified, that's why this pray completely blows me out of the water. John chapter 17. The theologians call it the "high priestly" prayer. Bit much for me. Here is Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of man, praying to His Father in heaven just before He's about to be nailed to that cross. What do we imagine He's praying about? Who or what is He praying for? I know who I'd be praying for I have to tell you if I were in His shoes. So let's go and have a listen, it's rather a long prayer but it's a beautiful one and it's worth eavesdropping to see who or what He prayed for. Come on, let's have a listen and carefully, who's He actually praying for? After Jesus had spoken these words He looked up to heaven and said, 'Father, the hours come, glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you. Since you have given Him authority over all people to give eternal life to all whom you have given Him. And this is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed. I have made your name known to those whom you gave to me from the beginning from the world. They were yours and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you for the words that you gave to me I have given to them and they have received them and they know in truth that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me. I'm asking you on their behalf, I'm not asking on behalf of the world but on behalf of those whom you gave me because they're yours. All mine are yours and yours are mine and I have been glorified in them. And now I'm no longer in the world but they are in the world and I'm coming to you. Holy Father protect them in your name that you have given me so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost so that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. But now I'm coming to you and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I've given them your word and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world just as I do not belong to the world. I'm not asking you to take them out of the world but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. So they do not belong to the world just as I don't belong to the world. Sanctify them in your truth, your word is truth as you have sent me into the world so I have sent them into the world and for their sakes I sanctify myself so that they also may be sanctified in the truth. I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word that they may be all one. As you Father are in me and I am in you may they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them so that they may be one as we are one. I in them and you in me, they may be completely one so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also whom you have given to me may be with me where I am to see my glory which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father the world doesn't know you but I know you and these know you that you have sent me. I made your name known to them. I will make it known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.' So, a long prayer but who's He praying for? Well for His disciples and not just for His disciples back then but actually for us here and now. Very specifically, did you pick that up? Let's have another look, verse 20: I ask not just on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may also be one. Well we've believed in Jesus through the word of the disciples so Jesus is praying for us quite specifically here. Jesus is praying for you and for me. Friend I love doing what I do. I love being part of bringing the word of God to you and I'm so blessed in the knowledge that from time to time in different people's lives God uses the foolishness I preach to transform them. Truly I've dedicated my life to that BUT I have to be honest here, I am struggling to imagine myself on death row about to be nailed to a cross praying for you instead of me. Do you get my point? Maybe the Spirit of God will fill me in a way where I could do that but I have to be honest here I'm thinking I'd probably be praying about saving my own skin. And yet here Jesus, just before He's about to suffer the most gruesome death, is praying for you and for me. And what's He praying? That God would protect us from the evil one so that you and I could be one just as Jesus and the Father are one. You discover what's in a man's heart when you see how he reacts under pressure. The real man, the real woman comes out when we're under pressure. And here we discover the real Jesus. Jesus is so passionate about you and me, so passionate about making us one with Him and with the Father, so passionate about uniting us in His body the Church as one that He would lay down His life to achieve that passion. Just stop and think about that for a moment, let it sink in. If someone said, "Would the real Jesus please stand up?", well here in John chapter 17 in this beautiful prayer, this is where we discover the real Jesus, the heart of God beating. Glory for Him isn't about being on a throne, being glorified is about being nailed to a cross so that you and I could be part of His glory. Do you see how sad it is when we just breeze through Easter as though it's just another holiday or maybe a religious festival? I've heard the story so many times, I mean I know how it ends but do you see the tragedy of that? Of missing the heart of God, of missing what Jesus is all about in coming to be a man to suffer and to die and to rise again. Because there's a point to it all. That we are invited to a completely new life, a life based on the sacrifice of Jesus that includes being one with God with an intimacy that we could never have imagined. Just in the same way as Jesus and the Father are one. It includes a unity and a fellowship and a family of God's people being one with them. It includes beholding the glory of God for all eternity, being with Jesus where He is forever. That's why Jesus went to the cross. That's why we celebrate Easter. That's why sailing through as though it's just another holiday is such a tragedy.

Back in those few days leading up to that very first Easter, the Disciples were afraid. Petrified in fact. There was a plot afoot to assassinate Jesus. That was bad enough. But were they in the firing line too? Were they going to die too? And into that little mess, Jesus spoke to them about joy and peace. The days leading up to that first Good Friday, which incidentally at the time must have felt anything but good, they were frightening days. Not for Jesus. Of course His impending crucifixion weighed heavily upon Him but He didn't seem to be afraid since He knew where He was going and what He had to do. But His disciples, they were very definitely afraid. Why? Not just because they felt the plot to assassinate Jesus, not just because they were aware of the under currents and the plotting and the scheming and the conniving that was afoot to rob them of this amazing Jesus but because their lives were under threat too. I mean they were His disciples, they were widely recognised as being the inner circle of Rabbi Jesus followers. That's why Peter ended up denying Jesus three times because he feared for his own life. So while on these days leading up to Easter you and I may well be looking forward to a long weekend and a rest and having just a bit extra chocolate that frankly our waistlines and cholesterol levels just don't need, these disciples of Jesus were living in fear. Fear not just of losing Jesus but fear of losing their own lives, fear of their whole belief system collapsing. Everything they'd dedicated their lives to these last three and a half years and fear for their own skin. No, that Friday looked anything but good and it's into this reality, this fearful reality that Jesus speaks these words to His disciples. John chapter 16 beginning at verse 16: 'A little while and you won't see me any longer and again a little while and you will see me.' Then some of His disciples said to one another, 'What does He mean by saying "In a little while you'll see me no longer and again in a while you'll see me, because I'm going away to the Father?"' They said, 'What does He mean by this "a little while"? We do not know what He's talking about.'  Jesus knew they wanted to ask Him so He said to them, 'Are you discussing amongst yourselves what I meant when I said "A little while and you'll no longer see me and again in a little while you'll see me?" Truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn but the world will rejoice and you will have pain but your pain will turn to joy.' When a woman's in labour she has pain because her hour has come but when her child is born she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world. So you have pain now but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you. On that day you'll be asking nothing of me. Very truly I tell you if you ask anything of the Father in my name He will give it to you. Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive so that your joy may be made complete. I've said these things to you in figures of speech but the hour's coming when I'll no longer speak to you in figures but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name and I do not say to you that I'll ask the Father on your behalf for the Father Himself loves you because you have loved me and believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into this world. Again I am leaving the world and going to the Father.' His disciples said, 'Yes now you're speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech. Now we know that you know all things and do not need to have anyone question you. By this we believe that you came from God'. Jesus answered them, 'Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come when you'll be scattered, each one to his home and you will leave me alone yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution but take courage I have conquered the world. Now as I put myself in the shoes of these disciples, this rag tag group of fishermen and tax collectors, uneducated yokels by and large who had fallen for Jesus, I have to say what Jesus just said to us, its frightening and confusing, it just doesn't make sense. For a little while and then I'll be gone and then you'll see me again and then I'll speak plainly instead of in riddles and you're going to suffer pain but your pain will turn to joy. I mean give me a break Jesus, I would have been saying, can you please, please tell me exactly what you mean. So are you saying the forces of darkness that are plotting against you, they're going to win? Is that what you're saying? And if it is so what about all your miracles? What about all the amazing things that you told us and taught us, is this how it's all going to end? Are we just going to be left behind? And how can you come back again from all of that? Do you think in this fearful confusing time, isn't that what you and I would be thinking and wanting to ask Jesus? Why are you promising me pain? Why are you doing this if you're the Messiah? I left everything to follow you and now it's all falling in a screaming heap and what about me? What's going to happen to me? Am I going to die too or do I just go back to the fishing boat and forget the last three and half years of sacrifice? The hour is coming, indeed it has come when you'll be scattered, each one to his home and you will leave me alone. Yet I'm not alone because the Father is with me. Why is He telling me this stuff? Why is He doing this? Jesus? I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. For in this world you will face persecution but take courage for I have overcome the world. Jesus was telling them things just the way they were. And I love that about Him. He's never one to sweep things under the carpet or to coat them in sugar or to hoodwink us with some false reality that we're all floating around like angels on cloud nine. Jesus came to do something tough and brutal. So seriously does God take our sin, yours and mine, so big a deal is it to Him that our sin separates us from Him for all eternity. So great is His love for us and His desire for us to spend from now until the rest of eternity in His presence that He sends us His one and only Son to be brutally nailed to a cross for thee and for me. That's how big a deal my sin and your sin is for God lest we should ever be inclined to think we can just sweep our little sins under the carpet. And He speaks into their fear with words of confidence in His Father and with words of peace. For in this world we will all have tribulation, we will be persecuted, the going will get tough, it will be difficult and fearful and confusing and unpredictable. That word there for persecution, the Greek, is the word Thlipsis which means literally to be put under pressure like grapes in a wine press, to have the juice, the life squeezed out of you. That's what He's talking about. And I know you're going to travel through all of this and I know it isn't going to make sense and I know you're going to be afraid but as you're in this place remember my words because I'm coming back for you. I haven't left you alone. You won't be orphaned. I'm telling you the truth, the way things are, in this world you will be under pressure but take courage, be strong, gird up the loins of your heart for I have overcome the world. Jesus has won. He defeated sin on the cross. He defeated death in the empty tomb and He has said these things and done these things so that in the middle of our fear and our pain and our tribulation we might have peace. Shalom. A complete peace and trust and confidence in Jesus.

Just before He was betrayed, Jesus got down and washed the dirty, smelly feet of His disciples. Have you ever wondered how you'd react if He knocked on your front door tonight and offered to wash your feet? I'm not sure I'd be that keen to let Him do that … but as it turns out, that's exactly what He came to do! An amazing week coming up this week. Not just here on the program but in life generally as we head towards Easter. Here we are on the Monday before that Friday where we celebrate, oh maybe celebrate isn't quite an apt choice of words here, when we remember that Jesus was nailed to that cross. We call it Good Friday but back then it didn't look too good, it didn't feel too good and those days and weeks leading up to that fateful day, a day on which the whole of the history of humanity pivots. They were tense and dangerous days and for the disciples it was quite a frightening time. And so today and over the coming days we're again going to spend some time just travelling alongside the disciples, seeing what they saw, hearing what they heard and hopefully feeling what they felt. Why? Well that's simple. Because I for one am sick of kind of just zooming through Easter as though it's just a long weekend and a religious celebration, a time for some extra chocolate which truly I just don't need. No this Easter thing is huge, I mean it's huge and my hunch is that as we walk beside the disciples, as we're going to do by recounting the Apostle John's account of events through the Gospel, my hunch is that Gods Spirit will touch our hearts with a fresh revelation and what it is that our mighty God was up to. And today we're going to take a look at this thing that Jesus did of washing His disciples feet, what was that all about? John chapter 13 beginning at verse 1: Now before the festival of the Passover Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart from this world and to go to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world He loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Him. And during the supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off His outer robe and tied a towel around Himself. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciple's feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around Him. He came to Simon Peter who said to Him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" And Jesus answered, "You do not know what I'm doing but later you will understand". Peter said to Him, "You'll never wash my feet" and Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share in me". So Simon Peter said to Him, 'Lord, not just my feet but also my hands and my head'. Jesus said to him, 'One who has bathed does not need to wash except for the feet but is entirely clean and you are clean though not all of you', for He knew who was about to betray Him and for this reason He said, 'Not all of you are clean.' After He'd washed their feet and He put His robe back on again and He returned to the table He said to them, 'Do you know what I have done for you? You call me teacher and Lord and you are right for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example that you also should do as I have done to you.  Very truly I tell you servants are not greater than their masters nor are messengers greater than the one who have sent them. If you know these things you are blessed if you do them. I'm not speaking of all of you, I know whom I have chosen but it is to fulfil the Scriptures that "The one who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me." I tell you this now before it occurs so that when it does occur you may believe that I am He. Very truly I tell you whoever receives one whom I send receives me and whoever receives me receives the one who has sent me. So there's Jesus, the Son of God, He washes the feet of His disciples on that night as they celebrated the Passover meal together in the upper room and literally just hours before He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. It was a difficult time, a dangerous time. I suspect the disciples had never celebrated the Passover quite in this way, with this dark cloud of danger and betrayal and fear and death hanging over them. The thing we can so often forget is that they knew there were plots afoot to kill Jesus and they simple couldn't imagine that happening after having seen Him do all the things He'd done. The miracles, the acts of kindness and after having heard all that He had to say, the wisdom and the truth and the love in His words. But that wasn't all, they were afraid for their own lives too. Would they be arrested? Would they be tried and crucified too? So they eat the meal, roast lamb with the bitter herbs and unleavened bread and they drink the wine and then Jesus gives them a foot bath. Now think about this, the Son of God girds up His loins, gets a bowl and a bath and washes their grubby smelly feet. And they were really grubby and smelly. These people had been walking out their on the roads with animal excrement and dust and dirt wearing just sandals. Who knows how long and how dirty their toenails were. I mean let's get real here right? This wasn't some nice clean safe sanitised religious ritual. This was a grubby, dirty, smelly thing that Jesus was doing, washing their feet and He, the Son of the living God. Do you see how low He was prepared to bow? Do you see how humble He was? And He didn't just wash the feet of those disciples who loved Him, He washed the feet of that one disciple, Judas Iscariot, who had already plotted to betray Him and sell Him out to the authorities. Judas the assassin who'd taken thirty pieces of silver for the life of Jesus. Jesus washed his feet too. And Peter had the reaction that I think I would have had. Peter said to Jesus, "You will never wash my feet". In other words, it's just not right. You're the Lord, you're the Messiah, you're the Son of God, what are you doing washing my feet? It's not right. This reaction, it was a reaction against grace so Jesus answered him; Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. So Peter being Peter gets this quickly and dives in boots and all and says, "well Lord, not just my feet but my hands and my head". No Jesus was right, they didn't understand what He was up to but this act of complete servitude, complete humility, complete stepping down off the throne of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and washing their feet was a symbolic act. It was acting out the grace of the cross which was about to come. It was explaining in a way that one day they would understand looking back on it, what the cross was all about. Jesus became a nothing and a nobody. Jesus bowing His life down at our feet in order that we might be saved. And the whole point of grace is that it's not right, it's not just, it's completely wrong, it's completely the wrong way round that Jesus should have to suffer on that cross and to die for my sin and my rebellion and yours. On that cross He died my death, the death that I deserve and yours. Completely unfair, completely the wrong way round and we could protest, we could say that's unjust but no doubt He would answer: Unless I wash you, you have no share with me. Unless we accept what He's done for us, He who knew no sin becoming sin so that we might be completely right with God, unless we accept that and trust in that and believe in that with all that we are then quite simply we will have no share in Jesus.

Anger is an interesting thing – it comes from our sense of justice. Even God gets angry. Problem is, sometimes our sense of justice can be a little distorted. So when we experience anger – what can we do with it? Anger is one of those basic facts of life and in many respects it's a natural reaction to a whole range of situations. Sometimes we think that anger in and of itself is wrong, well that's not so. See, God gets angry so either God is a sinner or anger itself is not a sin. Hmm, makes you think doesn't it? I passionately believe that Jesus Christ came and died for my sins and yours and that He was and is utterly perfect. A perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins. And yet when He went to the temple in Jerusalem and saw that they had turned it into a bizarre He was angry, He made a whip and turned over the tables and drove the traders out of the temple with that whip. Of course God is a loving God but God is also a god of anger and ultimately, of punishment. So is anger right or wrong in our lives and what do we do with that anger? Well, well let's take a look at the anatomy of anger today. Basically it goes something like this: I've been wronged by someone, I therefore feel angry, they owe me some recompense so I'm going to respond in anger to obtain vengeance. That's kind of the cycle and in a sense, anger comes out of our sense of justice. Of course, as we've seen on the program this week we can have quite a distorted sense of justice sometimes. We can be touchy or selfish and throw tantrums and so even though actually sometimes we haven't been wronged, people just fall short of our expectations or, or we're being selfish and we feel wronged and then anger, justice and vengeance take hold in our hearts. Sometimes people do things that are clearly wrong and we're angry, okay how do we respond? The other day on the program we read this passage from the New Testament book of Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 26. It says: Be angry but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't make room for the devil. In other words, sometimes we get angry, God knows that. The question is whether we dwell on it and let it fester over night and tomorrow and the next day and over and over and over and in doing so, whether we make room for the devil to distort our sense of justice and then this root of bitterness takes hold in our lives OR whether, like God, we're "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love." See, anger itself isn't a sin, God is angry with those who turn their backs on Him. You see that over and over and over again throughout the Bible. Let me read you just one example of God's anger, this is about Israel, Gods chosen people and it comes from the book of Judges chapter 2, verse 12: Israel forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt. They followed and they worshipped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook Him and they served Baal and the other gods. In His anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to the raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them just as He had sworn to them. They were in great distress. See, this is God's response to His people forsaking Him but it's a right response. God never gets angry without just cause and this anger of God against Israel comes from God's sense of justice. He had a relationship with Israel, they were His people, He was their God and He said: I'm a jealous God; you will have no other Gods before Me. You will worship me and me alone. And of course Israel turns away from God and does these horrible things and they experience Gods anger and yet the wonder of God is that He's slow to anger and ready to forgive. You know ultimately, when you and I harden our hearts against Him and our ways against Him, like Israel we will experience His anger. So how do we make sense of all of this? God gets angry but we shouldn't? Remember anger has its roots in our sense of justice. That much we get from God because we're made in His image. And of course, as I said, God never gets angry without just cause. The problem is, we can't say the same thing about us. Our justice gyroscope is so often out of balance and then, when we do experience anger we want to wallow in it and work it over and over in our heads and seek revenge and in doing that we make room for the devil. Anger is a natural reaction and in some cases it's the right reaction the problem is, when you or I are the injured party our sense of justice is questionable at best and whacky at worst. So what do we do? How do we handle it when we feel that we've been wronged and we want revenge? We want recompense, we want justice to be done, how do we handle that? Well, God tells us in Romans chapter 12 beginning at verse 17 have a listen, he says: Don't repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what's right in the eyes of everybody. If its possible, as far as it depends on you live at peace with everyone. Don't take revenge my friends but leave room for Gods wrath for it is written, "It is mine to avenge and I will repay," says the Lord. To the contrary: If your enemy is hungry feed him, if he's thirsty give him something to drink. In doing this you will heap burning coals on his head. Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good. In other words leave the "justice" thing to God, leave the satisfaction, the recompense, the vengeance as God puts it, to God because His sense of justice is so much better than ours and in any case who knows what He's up to in that person's life? Only He does. When someone hurts us our initial reaction may well be anger, the same anger that God feels when He sees injustice. The thing that's wrong is for us to repay that evil with another evil, 2 wrongs maketh not a right and God's saying here, "Don't take revenge but leave room for Gods wrath." Leave room for God to act because Gods justice is so much better than ours, instead bless your enemy. If they're hungry feed them, if they're thirsty give them something to drink, show them grace. Now we may never see the justice but then that's why Jesus died for you and me, that was so unjust but on that cross justice meets love and its called grace. Grace has been shown to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on that cross, a grace He now calls us to show to others. Yes, you and I will experience anger from time to time but we're not to repay evil with evil, leave that bit to God. Forgive, forget, live life to the full and bless people, even the people that hurt us, with the grace that God has shown to us. You know something, I don't think that's too bad a plan, what do you think?

It is so easy to go from cool, calm and collected one minute into a temper tantrum the very next. Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde. But God has some really practical advice on how to handle that. When you get a group of people together there seems to be, well, two sorts of people there. First there's the person who talks all the time, never shuts up and the other is the person who almost never says anything in the group. Somehow it seems that not many people seem to get the balance right, the balance between talking and listening and often the people who are really quiet in the group can be quite vocal even aggressive in a one on one situation. Well take for instance when someone provokes us, you know when they do something and you can feel your blood boiling and you go all red in the face, right at that moment it's so easy to spit out something venomous, words we can't take back, words that damage a relationship. Sometimes when we're provoked we can be a bit quick on the draw when it comes to responding. I want to share a story with you, I remember once as a consultant  (I used to run an IT consulting firm with some partners before I became a Christian. Quite a few years ago now) I was being mucked around by a large and important client of a particular ethnic heritage. I was dealing with him for months trying to kick off a project that meant a lot of money for our firm, it was a large global organisation and after months of investing time and effort with the people and with their management they pulled the plug on the project. I remember I was sitting in my office and I received an email from one of our consultants working with me on this particular project, explaining that the client had decided not to go ahead. I just blew my stack, I couldn't believe that they had wasted so much of our time and resources and it wasn't fair and we were losing all this revenue and I tell you, I am not afraid to admit, I had a few choice sentiments that I almost expressed in a reply to that email to my fellow consultant. I even typed this angry venomous email. I was just about to send it and I thought better of it and instead I erased all of that and I sent a fairly benign email. Well, it's just as well because I hit the "reply to all" button on the email, and the email ended up not only with my fellow consultant but also with the client. Gulp! Can you imagine, if my thoughts of anger had been included in this vitriolic angry email, what would have happened? Now you might say, "Berni, why are you sharing this stuff with us?" It's simple because we all go through situations day by day by day that make us angry. People, organisations, circumstances drive us insane and we want to explode. Just the other day I was staying at a place and the houses were fairly close together and it was a little holiday place and a neighbour, a few doors down, had their music on really loud, I mean really loud. Couldn't sit in our lounge room and just talk so I just went down and asked them if they wouldn't mind turning it down. Well, you should have heard what came out of that guy's mouth. Just a simple thing, their music was too loud and obviously they'd never been taught to take other people into account and the vitriol, the words, the venom that came out of his mouth and now he just ignores me and I just asked him to turn it down and I thought, "hang on, you're missing something. You were the guy who was doing the wrong thing!" And you know what I wanted to do? I just wanted to explode at him, I just wanted to tell him what I really thought, I wanted to teach him a lesson, I wanted to teach him some manners. You know the feeling don't you? And then he ignores me, he was the one that did wrong. Now I'm really glad that I went through that experience and as hard as it was, can I tell you? Every fibre of my being wanted to tell this guy what I thought, as hard as that was I didn't say anything because exploding is never a good look, never but this feeling of anger is something we all experience. Some people more than others, some people are like on a hair trigger, anything will set them off, anger and tantrums are an ugly thing. We're talking about anger management on the program this week and there's some really great practical input from Gods word that I want to share with you today. Comes from James in the New Testament chapter 1, verse 19. It says this: My dear brothers take note of this, everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry because a mans anger doesn't bring about the righteous life that God desires. Therefore get rid of all the moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you which can save you. Isn't this really practical, it's special? God's solution to this whole anger thing, 'Be slow to speak and slow to become angry.' Slow down! Every time someone does something that annoys us we don't have to react this instant. We don't have to rip their heads off; we don't have to send an angry email. Maybe this is where the advice comes from "count to ten" you know. Interesting, throughout the Bible nine times you'll find these words or ones very similar: The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger abounding in steadfast love. I'll read it to you again; this comes from Psalm 103, verse 8: The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. What a great concept, firstly He's compassionate and gracious, He's slow to anger. Just hold on for a minute, cut this person some slack, this man who wouldn't turn his music down. If I'm behaving like God I'm going to be slow to anger and the abounding and steadfast love bit, you know what I've decided to do? I've decided to pray for this guy regularly 'cause that's what Jesus says, "Pray for your enemies." And be slow to speak. Just don't say anything, don't defend or assert or criticise or judge or belittle or shout or scream or anything. Don't! Be slow to speak. Now that's not easy, it begins with a change of heart; it begins by deciding that my anger is my problem. It begins by me resigning from the position of "tin pot little god at the centre of the universe". It begins by deciding the world doesn't owe me anything. Being slow to anger and slow to respond and when we do respond, what should we say? I love this, this bit from Proverbs chapter 15, verse 1: A gentle answer turns away wrath but a hard word stirs up anger. You know when someone's done us wrong the last thing we want to do is give them a gently answer, it just so cuts across the grain. We want to get recompense but Gods wisdom is that, 'a gentle answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up even more anger'. This is Gods wisdom and it's really hard, it goes against the grain to bite our lip when someone else does something wrong. It's so hard sometimes to respond in love, I find it hard. Each time becomes a little easier, each time heals a relationship, each time people notice and one day the relationship can be so strong that we have the ability to influence this person who hurt us with the love and the mercy and the grace of God. It's hard to deal with anger but there's a right way and the wrong way. The Lord is compassionate and gracious; slow to anger abounding in steadfast love.

Every now and then – we all throw a temper tantrum. And so often it's over the craziest little things. A hot temper isn't a good look. So – how do you deal with it? How can you conquer it? Now when we're bringing up children we expect them to have temper tantrums. They're never fun of course but a temper tantrum is part of growing up. It's a part of the process of moving from immaturity to maturity, of discovering how to exercise the responsibilities that come with new freedoms and that's why I believe Gods plan is to put children into loving families so that mum and dad who are more mature and who love the child are there to guide the child through that growing process and the love bit helps us to absorb the pain and the inconvenience of the tantrums along the way. It's something that I think none of us really appreciate until we become parents ourselves. Now temper tantrums are par for the course for a child or a teenager but what about an adult, what about a person who is supposed to have matured and learned how to control their emotions? And when you or I have a temper tantrum do we just shrug our shoulders and say, "oh well' or is it something we need to deal with?" We've all been there haven't we? Having our little temper tantrum and 99% of the time they're over silly little things. If we were truly honest with ourselves we'd stand back and say, "well, that was dumb wasn't it? Why did I bite my wife's head off over something small? Why did I snap at my husband because of this tiny little thing?" For me it's the fact that I'm a perfectionist, it's just the way I am, it was the way I was brought up. Our school motto was "Age quod agis" which means "whatever you do, do well" or "if it's worth doing it's worth doing properly". So I always fold and hang the bath towels perfectly, when I'm dusting I pick up things on the shelf and dust under them instead of dusting around them, I'm always on time and normally five minutes early, I always put the milk back exactly the same spot in the fridge not in a different place, the knives in the knife block, each one has to be in its place. When you're a person like that God is going to make absolutely sure that He puts you in a family and into a work place into a Church where there's at least one person who's completely at the opposite end of the spectrum. Someone who's not neat and tidy, someone who's not always on time. It's an absolute dead certainty that God's going to do that. And it doesn't matter what personality type we are He's always going to make sure that we rub up against someone who's different and that is sometimes going to drive us nuts if we let it. That's where so many people have their temper tantrums, right in that place of difference. Instead of standing back and realising those differences we just react like Pavlov's dogs, stimulus: response, stimulus: response, stimulus: response. It's a vicious cycle that leads to anger and temper tantrums. Someone does something that flicks our switch off we go with this temper tantrum. I wonder if you can relate to this. My daughter Melissa works part time on a check-out in a large department store and every time she comes home at least one customer had to have a temper tantrum at the counter over something. Let's get a revelation today; we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people who are going to do imperfect things. At the department store, on the road, at work, at home, at Church, everywhere we go. And we can either have temper tantrums or decide, you know something I actually want to have some peace in my life. I want to enjoy my life and you know something other people's failures are not going to rob me of that peace. Other people falling short of my expectations are not going to rob me of that peace. You know something we want everyone to be just like us, we want everyone to see the world just the way we see the world and it's never going to be like that. There's a wonderful little Proverb, if you want to read it it's in the Old Testament Proverbs chapter 29, verse 22: An angry man stirs up dissention and a hot-tempered one commits many sins. If we have a bit of a temper maybe today's the day we need to admit that and it's time to deal with it. It's time to get things into perspective. You see those little things that we get upset about 99.9% of them just don't matter, really they don't. I need this perhaps even more than you do. Temper tantrums are a sure sign that we need to do some growing up. I tell you something God wants three things for our lives, a deep relationship with Him, the deep joy that comes from that relationship and for that relationship to bear good fruit in our lives, fruit that other people can be blessed through. It's how He works, that's how Gods economy runs and temper tantrums are a sure sign we haven't come to grips with the main currency of that economy, the currency of grace. There's another Proverb, Proverbs chapter 16, verse 32: Better a patient man than a warrior. A man who controls his temper is better than one who takes a city. Isn't that an interesting way of putting it because a warrior, the man who takes the city, is someone who takes things by force through fighting? And Gods saying here a patient person is better than a warrior, patience is better than taking things by force, patience is better than a temper tantrum. When we control our aggression we can be such a great influence for God in the lives of other people because they see something that they want, a peace, a quiet contentment, a joy that replaces the outbursts and that's a beautiful thing; humility, a grace, a sweet fragrance of God Himself. We do, we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people, fact of life, full stop, end of story, never going to change this side of eternity. People are always going to be different to us, people are always going to have weaknesses that rub us the wrong way and we have a choice, either behaving like an immature adolescent and throwing our little temper tantrum or deciding, you know something I'm just not going to go round that mountain anymore. Better a patient man than a warrior. A man who controls his temper is better than one who takes a city. An angry man stirs up dissention and a hot-tempered one commits many sins. I'm not going there anymore. It is time to flip the switch and say, "God I just don't want to go there anymore." Can I tell you? Sometimes it is so hard just to shut up and not say anything. Sometimes we have to bite our lips so hard that they bleed. But when we draw close to God, we let Him change us on the inside as we come to grips with His grace and we do away with the little temper tantrums. Self control and patience are hard things to learn and there's only one way of learning them, the hard way but they're fruits of the Spirit of God that grow in us as we draw close to Him and co-operate with Him and lay down our right to perfection and lay down our right to everything we expect of other people. God wants us to have peace.

Bitterness and anger can become a habit – an attitude that grips our live. It's like a venom that pumps through our veins. Fortunately though, there is an antidote. God made certain of that. Anger is a real problem in this world, it's running at plague proportions and yet it's something you don't hear people talk much about. Psychologists have come up with a term 'the last straw syndrome'; people seem to do outrageously destructive things. The young teenager who shoots up his high school, the road rage that happens around the place, people are flying off the handle all over the place, it's an epidemic. You and I experience anger on a regular basis, both when it grips our hearts and when we're on the receiving end of someone else's anger. Anger, fury, rage, indignation, a desire to lash out, to hurt others, a deep sense that we've been wronged and we have to set it right through revenge. It's the stuff that wars are made of. So what's the antidote? How do we deal with it decisively and end the hurt that anger causes? Well I have to tell you I am an expert in anger management, I'll tell you why. They say once an alcoholic always an alcoholic, people who seem to have overcome it talk about themselves as being recovering alcoholics. In other words it always stays with them but it's something that they keep overcoming every day. Well for me it's the same when it comes to anger. My big Achilles heel, the deep flaw in my character is this anger thing. Berni's a type A achiever type of personality, I set goals, I chase them down, I hit targets, I move on to the next thing, and that's okay, it reflects in everything I do, the way I drive, the way I cook, I'm always planning my time, I'm always being efficient, achieving the best that I can. It's great but it has its down sides. Now no matter what personality type we have each one of us, we expect everyone to be like us. I expect you to be like me and when you drive more slowly than I want you to and when you're not as efficient as I want you to I have a tendency to get angry. When you have my sort of personality you can be brutal about all those other people out there who just don't meet your expectations. It drives me nuts when the car in front of me drives just slowly enough for me to miss the green traffic light up ahead. Unbelievable, how can they do that? I just want to lean on my horn and shake my fist and find some choice words. It's the stuff that road rage is made of. My favourite saying used to be, "it's so hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys." So for the first thirty or forty years of my life I lived in an almost constant state of anger and rage. So when I talk about dealing with anger and finding an antidote to anger I'm not talking this stuff from a text book, I'm talking from a transformed life, a life that continues to be transformed because I'm kind of like that recovering alcoholic, this is going to be a lifelong process in me, a process of rehabilitation that God takes me through because that's how I'm wired. Now I love a passage out of the New Testament of the Bible, the Book of Hebrews, it talks right into this problem and it's the place where I discovered the antidote to this venom. We had a quick look at this yesterday on the program. Have a listen. It comes from Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14: Pursue peace with everyone and holiness because without them you won't get so much as a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble because through it so many will be contaminated. That root of bitterness is what takes hold of our hearts and our lives when we fail to deal with anger. It's like biting into a lemon and sucking out the sour juice, have you ever done that? Just thinking about it makes your eyes water doesn't it? I remember working with a woman and she was a senior manager in government, very competent woman but she had this attitude in life and this look on her face as though just before she walked out of her office she had bitten into a lemon, she was that sort of a person. When a root of bitterness springs up it causes trouble. When you plant a plum seed eventually it's going to take root and produce plums, not apricots or nectarines or apples but plums. When we let goodness take root in our hearts we're going to grow good fruit. When we let bitterness take root in our hearts we're going to grow bitter fruit. The root produces the fruit and that's what causes trouble. It doesn't matter so much what's going on around us, see we can blame everyone and everything and every circumstance but really it matters on what's happening in our hearts, that's what determines the fruit in our lives. Proverbs chapter 15, verse 15 says this: All the days of the poor are hard but a cheerful heart has a continual feast. In other words how we respond to things, how we react to things depends on what's going on in our hearts and if we've allowed a root of bitterness to take hold of our heart, you know when people have hurt us in the past or we've missed out on things and all of a sudden we get this bad attitude, this attitude that's like we've bitten into a lemon and we treat everything in the world as though we've just bitten into a lemon it's going to ruin our lives. But the antidote, the antidote is also a thing of the heart; the antidote is the grace of God. God has every right to be angry with you and me; we both turned our backs on Him. In fact the Bible talks a lot about the anger of God and says, look when you get angry leave it to Him because He knows how to handle it but if we keep living in anger we're going to end up with a root of bitterness. God handles His anger by a thing called grace, the unmerited favour of God. Grace by definition is something we don't deserve. Grace is what happened on the cross when Jesus was crucified. A place where Gods justice, the punishment that we deserve fuses with God's love because He let His Son take the punishment and it turns into this thing called grace. He forgives us by sacrificing His Son to satisfy His sense of justice and anger and that's the good news for us, that's grace, it's the antidote for bitterness and anger. Listen again to that passage out of Hebrews. Make sure that no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. When we live in that grace it takes the bitterness away, it tears it out and heals it because when we come to grips with grace, when we come to grips with how much He's forgiven us and the cost to Him of doing that in His Son it produces a new root, a root of grace and mercy in our hearts and that starts producing a new fruit. God's grace is the only antidote to this bitterness and this anger that I've come across. Instead of changing the fruit, you see sometimes we try and change the outside, because we can't, we need to change the root, we need to experience and drink in the grace of God and let Him produce a new fruit in our lives.

Bitterness is something that we sometimes carry around in our hearts. And so often we don't even realise that this root of bitterness has taken hold in our lives. What is it and what can we do about it? I don't know if you've noticed but when a seed falls to the ground and dies ultimately it sprouts and takes root. And if it was the seed of a plum tree we can be fairly certain that the thing that's growing there is going to one day produce, well not apricots, not apples, not pears, we all know it's going to produce a plum because it's a plum tree that's taken root and in fact it's the root that ultimately produces the fruit. It just one of those basic facts of life that actually we don't have to think much about, the root produces the fruit. And it's a bit like that in our hearts. If our heart takes root in goodness then we'll produce good fruit, in bad things and we'll produce bad fruit, in sweet things then we'll produce sweet fruit, in bitter things and we'll produce bitter fruit. It's just not rocket science is it? This week on the program we're going to take a look at the phenomenon of anger in our society and in our lives. There's a great movie a few years ago called Anger Management. Anger is a real phenomenon in the hearts of so many people, you know how pressure builds up in life and ultimately people explode. We have at home a pressure cooker and we cook things in it and there's a vent and if the steam didn't come out of the vent that pressure cooker would explode and it's the same with us. So many people are out there venting their anger; it's in epidemic proportions. You have road rage and supermarket rage and a call centre rage, in fact this week's program was prompted by a real life experience. At the moment I have a couple of brothers, Greek guys, doing some painting at my old 19th century terrace, just needed a bit of touching up. And they're doing a much bigger job in parallel to ours in one of the wealthiest streets in our country. This place they're painting is a huge five storey mansion, they're using a special paint that costs, wait for it, a thousand dollars a tin – unbelievable and the houses in this street are worth between fifteen and twenty-five million, this is where the mega wealthy live. And lots of people in this fairly narrow street are having building work done and so it's pretty crowded and so even though they've got great views and lots of money and massive mansions there's quite a bit of strife in this place. The painters have been working there now for a few weeks and they were telling me that you wouldn't believe the arguments raging between the neighbours. The house that they're working on belongs to a couple in their seventies and they haven't talked to their neighbours for twenty-five years because a quarter of a century ago they had an argument about some building works. And all the neighbours in this street are fighting with one another. The woman who our painters are working for, they'd done some work a few years before and she was very nice, and now all of a sudden everyone is mean and nasty and horrible. Now you stand back from that and you think that's unbelievable. I mean these people have everything in life, there's nothing they can't have or buy or own really, everything their hearts desire and yet there's a spirit, well a spirit of anger and bitterness and dissention in this place. Makes you wonder what's going on there. These two painters, I've used them before, they are lovely people, they do a brilliant job, they're honest as the day is long. How can this woman be so nasty to them? I'll tell you what's happened, anger and bitterness has taken root in her heart, that's why. You let things get to you and you get angry with people over and over and over again and it's like, it's like bitterness takes root in your heart and the root produces the fruit. God actually talks a lot about anger, you know it's a word that pops up three hundred and seventy-six times in the Bible which makes it one of the leading subjects that God talks about. Anger is something we all have to deal with and it springs up so often out of a root of bitterness. The writer of the Book of Hebrews in the New Testament puts it like this, he says: Pursue peace with everyone and holiness because without them you won't get so much of a glimpse of God. Make sure that no one misses out on God's grace so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble because through it so many will be contaminated. See there it is, the root produces the fruit. Make sure no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. When a root of bitterness takes hold in our hearts it springs up and causes trouble and contaminates everyone around us. We all have a problem with anger some days, we do, some people more than others but the longer we let it go on the more it takes hold of our hearts and our lives and produces bitterness and a bitter root produces bitter fruit. A root isn't something that happens overnight, it's something we cultivate and if we don't want it to keep growing we have to stop feeding it. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 26. He says: Be angry but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't make room for the devil. See he knows, God knows. We all get angry from time to time, it's not a sin. I mean sometimes people do things and it just causes us to get angry because they've wronged us but if we keep it inside, if we let the sun go down on our anger, if we keep it in our hearts and we brood over it and we work it over and over and over in our minds and we plan our revenge, that's when it grows from a root into fruit. The right way of handling it is just to get over it, to forgive and to move on and then we won't be cultivating this root of bitterness which as sure as God made little green apples will produce fruit of bitterness because the root produces the fruit. Now this isn't something we can do on our own, I believe we need an antidote to this venom. It's something that heals and cleanses and just gives us a fresh perspective. Let me just take you back to that earlier quote that we read before from Hebrews chapter 12, verses 14 and 15 where the writer says: Pursue peace with everyone … In fact that's an active thing isn't it? Pursue peace, go out of your way to pursue peace: … and holiness because without them you won't get so much of a glimpse of God. Make sure no one misses out on the grace of God so that no root of bitterness springs up and causes trouble. See the antidote to bitterness that the Apostle Paul is pointing to here is God's grace. What's grace? Grace is Gods unmerited favour. We're going to talk about it a bit on the program tomorrow because it's a really important thing. God's grace is His unmerited favour. He has every right under the sun to be angry with you and me a whole bunch more than He ever is and yet He sent His Son Jesus to die on that cross. The cross is where justice meets love and turns it into grace, God's forgiveness and when we experience that grace that's what acts as the antidote to this root of bitterness. Without it it's inevitable that a root of bitterness will spring up.

Have you ever found yourself completely at the end of your tether. You just don't have anything left. You just don't know which way to turn or what to do. It's a desperate place, a confusing place, a fearful place and a place where God is ready and waiting to touch you, bless you and bring you peace. We get a lot of prayer requests at our www.christianityworks.com website from people who are at the end of their tether. I'd like to share one of these with you today, anonymously of course, because my hunch is that there are so many people who are just struggling with this, who are at the end of their tethers. This is the prayer request that we received just recently from a woman. I just had an uncontrollable anger situation between my husband and our teenage son. My husband had come to visit and a heated argument started over our son's attitude to choices of sport, and it resulted in a hard slap across my son's face. Then he left again in one of our cars whilst he'd lost his license for drink driving. I feel so confused and sad and upset and unhappy. When is my husband going to control his anger? When is he going to control his drink? I'm so fed up. When are our three boys going to have a controllable loving father? We've been separated so often now. I know these boys are just so desperately wanting a happy and balanced and controllable family. Will you please pray that I keep falling and picking myself up? I just don't know what's going to happen this year. It's the anniversary of my Dad's passing away, its twelve months ago and it's been so hard. I had an accident from falling off a horse, which left me immobile for the last six months. And with all of these going on, no family, no support, barely any friends, I'm so lonely. I just don't know where I'd be without God. Please pray for us. This woman is at the end of her tether. She's nowhere to turn except God. And things are happening over and over again, like you can never break out, like you know that movie Groundhog Day. You never escape, it'll never change. Here is this man who has a drinking problem and a problem with anger over and over again back together, separated, back together, separated. The boys have arguments … you know, it is so hard when we feel that we have problems that just keep repeating themselves and we can't break out of them. What's life look like at the end of your tether? What are the things that keep going round and round and over and over again – kids or spouse or work or addictions or loneliness or fear or pain? So many people these days suffer from multiple alienations, not just one but two or three at the same time. And it drives them to the edge; it drives them to the end of their tether. The Apostle Peter wrote a wonderful passage in one of his letters. If you have a Bible, you can go and look at it sometime. It's in the book First Peter Chapter 5 verse 7. It's almost right at the end of the Bible, 1 Peter 5:7. He writes this, it's beautiful: Cast all your anxiety on God because he cares for you. Cast all your anxiety on God because he cares for you. Now, I always kind of thought of anxiety as being a twentieth century or a twenty-first century word, you know. It seems to be a symptom of the speed we live life at, the technology, the pressure, the emails, the phone calls, the here and now. I always thought of anxiety like that. But here two thousand years ago, Peter the Apostle talks about anxiety. He talks about being at the end of your tether, about being anxious and threatened and not being able to cope and just not being able to deal with any more. "Stop the world, I want to get off", is what Peter was talking about here two thousand years ago. I'm sure there were angry husbands. I'm sure there were drinking problems. I'm sure there were alienated teenagers. And on top of all that, he was writing at the time to a Church that was being persecuted in a brutal way – Christians were being killed for their faith. And he writes "Cast all your anxiety on Him." Why? "Because He cares for you." My hunch is that when we're anxious – when we're at the end of our tether, when we are dealing with alcoholics and angry people and all these horrible things that happen in our relationships and our lives – the last thing we ever expect is … that God cares for us. He seems to care for successful people. He seems to care for people that are doing well. You look at other people and you think, "Well, God's looking after them. They haven't got a problem in their lives." Of course, the reality is we don't see the problems in their lives most of the time. And we look at our own little dung heap that were scratching around in, we look at our own little lot and we think, "Well, where the heck is God for me?" I actually sent this woman an email just the other day to encourage her and say, I personally will be praying for her husband. Because you know something, the Bible says that the prayer of a righteous man achieves much. I have an enormous faith in God. I believe that as I pray for this man – I don't know where he lives, I don't know what his name is, I don't know what he looks like – but I know that God does. I know that as I sit down in prayer and say, "Father I just pray for this man, and I pray for this relationship", I know God can and will do mighty things. Whether you're at the end of your tether now or whether this is something that you need to store away for the future, I'd ask you to let this simple truth sink in to your soul. When you have no other options; when you have no other place to turn; when you just can't take it anymore; when the past just keeps repeating itself over and over again; when everybody else is turning against you; right at that point … Jesus Christ is standing next to you waiting, supporting, believing, and calling you. Calling you with the words: Come to me all you who are heavily burdened and I will give you rest. I'm lowly and humble of heart and my yoke is light. (Matthew 11:28) Right at the point where you can't take any more, Jesus Christ is in that place with you to take the load off your back. That's His desire. He is a God of the practical. He is a God of grace. He is a God of love. He is a God that will reach each one of us at the lowest point, especially when we feel like God's looking after everyone else except us. If you are at the end of your tether, I'm going to pray for you right now. Father I pray for each person here, right now who for whatever reason, whatever their circumstances, whatever is going on in their space, because of that they are at the end of their tether. Jesus, you are a God who specialises in the end of the tether. You're a God who comes to meet us in those dark places. Put your arms around us to pour your Spirit over us, to comfort us, to bind us up, to heal us, to lift us up, to give us a new life and give us a new hope. Lord we believe that, we believe that you are a God of healing, a God of future, a God of grace. Father, I pray each for person who's at the end of their tether. Lord, I pray that you would pour your goodness and your grace and your peace and your comfort into their hearts right now. Father, I pray that in the name of Jesus, I pray that you would bring people around them, to hold them close, to comfort them, to help them in the healing process. And I pray that right now through the words that we've spoken together today, you would give each person a sense of the wonderful future and destiny that you have planned for them. Father, I pray that in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Poverty is a terrible thing. Physical poverty. Emotional poverty. Spiritual poverty. It eats away at you. Well, what if I told you that God wants to make you rich. No, no – I don't mean a big house, and expensive car and a personal jet. They're just trinkets. No … God has something much better planned for you. As we look around at people that walk past us on the street, what we often see are blank faces with very little emotion, faces that hide what's really going on inside – joy, pain, boldness, fear, wealth, poverty – we just don't know, do you? Now I used to think I knew what poverty was. And then in January 2005, I found myself standing in the middle of a squalored little village, just a few hours drive outside Hyderabad in India. It was all I could do not to weep over the depth of the poverty that screamed at all of my senses. Sometimes a lack of money, financial poverty, strikes. It can strike the wealthy and the not so wealthy, in the developed world and the developing world. So where's God? Today, I'd like to share with you the story of 'Harry', a young man from Zimbabwe and his friend Joseph from South Africa. It's a story of God's blessing amidst poverty. The story begins in the middle of June 2005 at a conference in the UK at Stock-on-Trent. It was the conference of the United Christian Broadcasters, which I attended. There were Christian TV and radio stations from right around the world at this conference. In particular, I wanted to connect with the CEO of a ministry called 'Media Village' in South Africa. These are people who train young folk in television and radio and they seem to be doing some really cool stuff. But she was so busy, she was speaking at most of the conference, we just couldn't seem to connect. The last morning of the conference at breakfast, my wife and I sat down at the table in the dining room and this young, very well dressed African man in his late 20s, by the name of Joseph sat down at our table. We got chatting and it turned out that he was the head of the radio school at the Media Village. As we talked, somehow we just seemed to click and we got excited. And we said, "Let's do something when we get back to Australia and South Africa respectively". So over the next few months our relationship developed. Joseph was promoting our radio programs, this program and the other programs that we produce, to stations right around Africa. It's a great ministry partnership that's developing. But on the 22nd of December 2005, Joseph sent a broadcast email out to a number of people, (me included), telling us that there were nine students who had just completed a three-month course on how to produce radio programs. They'd all done so successfully, but so many of these students were very poor. And without paying their fees, just as with any other institution, they couldn't get their graduation certificate. It's the bit of paper that said well, this is what they have done. It's the reality. They're very poor people and we were talking about US$4000 about AU$5000 for all the students. Most of them had paid some of their fees but you know there was some really poor people there. And in particular, I'd like to share with you now Harry's story. Have a listen to this because when I read Harry's story in Joseph's email, I tell you, it really got to me. He writes this: Dear Friend, It's been a privilege attending the school of radio broadcasting 2005, here at the Media Village in Africa and I just wanted to express my appreciation. I hope this letter finds you in good shape emotionally, and physically, and mostly spiritually. It's been a challenge being at this school, considering that when I came, I was really greatly financially disadvantaged. It took me a huge step of faith to leave Zimbabwe with only the money to get to Johannesburg and I just didn't have enough money to get to Cape Town, (which is twice the distance from Zimbabwe to Johannesburg). God took care of me by His grace and I made it to the Media Village. I was still short with my finances because I was supposed to pay half the fees but I didn't have the money and so a friend blessed me with some money but still it wasn't enough. But praise God because they allowed me to start the school. Because of the production costs, they still needed me to pay the first half. I went through some troubles but thank God He provided the first half but I was still left with the second half of the fees, which I still owe today. But God's grace is still on me because last night I graduated and despite of me coming late, I was awarded the 'Most Improved Student Award' which was such an honour. I still have problems in hand because in January I need to start my internship and I haven't paid my whole fees, so they won't allow me to start. They have given me until Friday to pay the money, or else I will vacate the premises because I can't afford to do that. I still need the money and greatly appreciate your prayers. Have a blessed Christmas! In His service, Harry So we received this email just a couple of days before Christmas. And I tell you, you listen to this man and he left his home with not enough money to get to where God was calling him to go, and he went anyway, and he just believed, and somehow he scraped through. But at the end of the day, he didn't have the money to continue. Enormous faith! And so we were able to respond really quickly, we talked to our US parent 'Back to the Bible' who had some money in a scholarship fund. And we found some money locally, and we got half way to paying for the fees for these nine students that were outstanding. So I sent and email off saying, 'Look, here's half the amount, that's all we could scratch together, I'll pray that you'll get the rest'. And so I sent that email off, and I was trying to write radio programs but somehow God wouldn't let me settle. And I just felt God saying, 'Put this before your brothers in Canada' because of course 'Back to the Bible' the Ministry that we serve is a global Ministry. And so I've flown it by our Canadian Director, a good friend of mine. Five minutes later my PC rings, because we talk across the internet and PC's, and it was Bob, our Canadian Director and his second in charge, Byron. We were chit chatting and they said, 'We'd love to help. We'd love to pay the whole of the remaining amount'. I thought, 'Wow! Here we are, the last working day before Christmas. This is Harry's last day before he has to pull the plug on his dream of being trained in Christian radio and go home back to Zimbabwe where it's very difficult to be a Christian. And God goes from Africa, to Australia, to the US, to Canada, and all the way back again, just for Harry and these eight other students.' For me, I felt like a bystander in the middle of something God was doing. I mean Harry, in the world's eyes, is just some young black kid from Zimbabwe who needs money. But in Gods eyes, Harry, is a great man of faith. Harry stepped out in faith and he took the risk. And listen to me, God never ever forsakes the Harry's of this world, never! I shudder to think what God has got planned for Harry in the next few years. How many lives He will save across Africa through Harry? Let me ask you something … are you poor? Are you needy? Do you know someone who is? When we are poor, when we don't have enough money to make ends meet, when we are struggling financially, as people often are, you know it's almost worse in a wealthy society like Australia, or New Zealand, or the UK, or the US because they're supposed to be the land of opportunity. They're supposed to be the place where you can be well off. When we are struggling financially, and we look and we turn, and we say, 'Father, Father God, I need you. I need your help', He will never ever forsake us, never. It's God's promise, 'You put your faith in me, you look for me, you seek for me, you want me and I will never leave you destitute'. It's so easy when we are struggling financially, when we're in a precarious position, to think, 'God could never come through on this. God would never do this for me'. If you are ever in that position, can I ask you to remember Harry? Can I ask you to remember what God did for that young man who had the guts to follow after the call that the Holy Spirit had put in his heart? God is an awesome God. God will travel around the world ten times to get you the money that you need, if you're struggling. God will never leave us destitute. We need never be afraid of being poor. And maybe if you know somebody who is struggling financially, maybe it's time where God is calling you to be the instrument of God's grace in that person's life. Just a simple thing like helping someone make a car payment can say more about who God is and how much He loves a person than all sermons under the sun. I would encourage you to have the faith to believe. I would encourage you to remember Harry's story in your heart. And have the faith to believe that God can provide for you, and that God will provide for you.

Ever felt sick on the inside. Sometimes it's physical. Other times it's emotional. Sometimes it's spiritual. And sometimes, we really don't know what it is. Well, if healing is what you need, then today's message … is for you. The reality is, that some people aren't well. We all get sick, sometimes it's just a cold, or the flu for a couple of days and we feel miserable, but other times it can be much worse. My Mother, who's seventy-five years old, just had shingles, which is an incredibly painful disorder and a bit dicey at that age. She's out of the woods now and on the mend. I, for one, am a shocking patient. I'm so active and out there doing things, that within about half a day of getting sick, I've had enough. I just want t get back on my feet. Fortunately, I'm a pretty healthy beast so it doesn't happen too often. But when we're sick, it's easy to see the rest of the world getting on with life and we feel like we've been left behind or deserted. At our website www.christianityworks.com, lots of people come and ask for prayer. Often, we have people ask for prayer, either for themselves or for family, or friends in times of sickness. It's a very common reason why people ask for prayer. A couple that just came in this other week; was to continue to pray for someone who was involved in a tragic motorcycle accident (just recently). And to pray for a friend who was in hospital with a critical condition of pneumonia. They asked us to pray for full recovery for him and that Jesus would give him the strength to fight this. It happens you know, people have accidents, and it happens so quickly, a motorcycle, a car. I remember when I was younger, my young two-year old son reached up and caused me to pour boiling water over myself and over him. It was just a normal everyday morning and within a split second, it all changed, and boiling water was all over my face. Sickness can be so unexpected. Everything is going fine, we're just drifting along and then the doctor tells you … you have cancer or your husband has a heart attack. We feel so helpless, so lost. We go into shock and when that sinks in, despair, and anger, and all sorts of different emotions. Or there's the person suffering from chronic pain, arthritis, back pain, all sorts of disorders, or mental disorders – both sufferers and carers. How can a loving God let this happen? Come on, how can God let these sorts of things happen to people? Then we look around at all the other people and think, "Well, we used to be like that. We used to have a normal life-like that until, until this happened." And it hurts so much. People pay a bit of attention to us in the first week or so, and then they just get on with their lives. You even watch a high-profile Christian preacher on television and they're talking about how to succeed and stuff. Or you listen to some joker on the radio and you think, "Well, it's okay for you, God's with you but what about me? I'm sick?" Got the picture? My hunch is … this is pressing a few buttons out there. God seems to be doing stuff everywhere else, except right here where I need him at the moment. That's how we tend to feel so often when we feel sick. Have you ever felt that? Have you ever had this sense of abandonment and, "Well, what's going on in my life? How long is this going to last? How long is it going to hurt? How long am I going to be disabled?" Imagine what it must be like to be perfectly healthy and fit one minute and a quadriplegic the next, for the rest of your life? That would take an enormous amount of adjustment – take an enormous amount of courage. So, whether we have a serious disease or whether we have the cold, or flu, or feel miserable, sometimes we get this sense we have been left alone and deserted. I'd like to shine just a little bit of light into that, with a very simple statement "Jesus, Jesus specialises in sick people". It's not the "hoi faloitin" preachers He hung around with; it wasn't the wealthy businessmen. When they accused him of hanging out with the flotsam and jetsam of society, you know what He said? He said, "Look, the physician came to heal the sick people not the ones who are already well". Jesus specialised, specialised in sick people. You know how we get this funny thing when we're sick and we're crook, and we're lying on the couch or the bed, and we're thinking "Jesus can't possibly be here with me. He must be with that fancy preacher out there, or He must be with that wealthy Christian business person out there. That's where Jesus is, He's not with me." Exactly the opposite is true, exactly! You read just one of the four historical accounts of the life of Jesus Christ, the first four books of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Just pick one. Mark's the shortest one, it's a two to two and a half hour read and have at look at who Jesus spent his time with. And it wasn't the people that we expected Him to spend His time with. It was the sick people – the ones in the lonely place, in the nursing home, and the hospital, and the bedroom, and the lounge room – so alone. When we're sick Jesus chooses to be with us in that place. Now, we can know that in our heads. We can hear some guy say that on the radio, we can hear that, read that, write that a million times. But all of a sudden we get sick (when the doctor tells us we have skin cancer, when the doctor says you've got five times the risk of having a heart attack because of your blood disorder), all of a sudden when the reality of sickness hits us – the reality of who Jesus is and who He wants to spend His time with, and His compassion, His grace, and His desire to bless us in the middle of sickness – all of a sudden that disappears out the window. Maybe you're sick right now and maybe you need to hear this right now – Jesus Christ is in that place with you. And maybe God's plan, the reason that you're listening to this program today, maybe God's plan is just to tuck that away in your heart. For one day, when you might need it. To tuck away the reality that Jesus Christ spent His time with people who are marginalized, people who are hurting, people who were alone and people who were sick, He healed some of them. And some of them He healed in such an amazing way but others He didn't. Why does that happen? How come God does some amazing miracles in some people's lives and not in others? If I could answer that I'd be God and I'm not. I don't know why God chooses to heal some people and not others. I just don't know, but He does, and He cares. And when we're sick, He is more powerfully, profoundly, amazingly, intimately, personally, beautifully present with us than we can ever imagine. That's a blessing. That is an enormous blessing! Jesus is a healer. The Old Testament says that He is a God who heals our every disease and He's the lover of our soul. He's there to be with us when we're sick. I know that when someone has cancer and when someone has a serious health issue, they can be Christians, they can pray for healing but it is not always God's plan that they should be healed. We all die eventually, our bodies all give out eventually. And the only instance in which that won't happen is if Jesus Christ comes back before it's my time to die or yours. That's the reality of the life we live, we are mortal, we will die physically but never spiritually. Spiritually we will live on, either in the presence of God or in the outer darkness called hell away from Him. Jesus is in this place when you are sick. And Father, I pray for anyone who is sick today, that you will just give them the most amazing sense of your presence with them right now. Father, I pray for their complete healing in their body, their soul, their mind, everything that's wrong with them. And above all Lord, whatever your will is in terms of this person's health and future and life, I pray that you'll bless them with the knowledge of your presence that is indescribable. In Jesus name I pray, Amen.

Loneliness is a tough gig and it's way, way more common than you might think. But God is a God who speaks into our loneliness. God is a God who shows up in our loneliness. God is a God who takes away … our loneliness. It never ceases to amaze me how we can be surrounded by people and yet, still feel lonely. That's probably because loneliness has nothing to do with how physically close we are to other people. It's more about how emotionally connected we feel. I remember in a restaurant, recently, having dinner with my wife and there was an older couple at the next table, hardly talking and completely bored looks on their faces. It's so sad, isn't it? Loneliness can strike anyone, anytime, anywhere. We receive so many requests for prayer on our www.christianityworks.com website and one of the most common requests has to do with loneliness. I'd like to share one of those requests with you today (quite anonymously of course), so we can look at the whole issue of loneliness – from A Different Perspective. Just the other day, we received this prayer request from a University student who's away from home studying overseas. I ask you to pray for me for comfort from the Lord as I'm feeling really lonely just at the moment. I'm away from my family and friends overseas. And I'd ask you to pray for renewed strength and confidence for me over this coming year to lean more on the Lord, to lift up my worries to Him. Thank you so much. And he signs his name. It's so natural, isn't it? So real and everyday, this problem of feeling lonely. Me, well, I actually enjoy my own company a lot. I don't like to have a lot of people around me. I'm happy to spend days on my own reading and praying and thinking and walking. But even so, I still (sometimes) feel lonely. Now, we're not all like that. Some people depend a lot more on company. Some people, to tell you the truth, are over dependent on other people and that's not healthy. But whatever our balance is, whatever our fit is, we can all end up lonely. I know people who call themselves Christians who feel desperately lonely. Now, in part you can understand that. We all need human company – women need female friends, guys need their mates, we all need people around us. But there's another part of me that is so profoundly sad when I hear that. There are two promises of Jesus that I'd like to look at today, in this context of loneliness. The first one, He made to His disciples, He said, "It's good for you that I go away, because if I don't go, the promised Holy Spirit won't come." And the second one was, He said to them, "I will never leave you or forsake you." You put those two together and really what He's saying is, just the way that He was physically present with those disciples, a couple of thousand years ago, by sending His Holy Spirit (and this took me a while to come to grips with. I have to tell you, the notion that when I believe in Jesus the Spirit of God comes to dwell in me), so He was saying … just as He was present physically with those disciples two thousand years ago, today, He is spiritually present with His disciples, with those of us who say, "Jesus I want to follow you", here and now. Just as real, just as amazing. Sometimes I hear people talking about praying as though it were a chore. I just struggle to believe that. Jesus said: It is good for you that I go away, I will never leave you or forsake you, I will send my Spirit. He said, "It's good for you, it's almost better for you that I've gone away physically so that you can experience me spiritually through the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, people are desperately lonely. And yet on the other hand, they're hungering for some authentic spiritual experience – something that's more than pews, and choirs, and stain glass windows. You know, something that is real and alive. And so sadly, so many people never put the two together. We can do that. We can, in faith, put the two together – our problem of loneliness and our hunger for an authentic spiritual experience. Because if Jesus said, it's good for you that I go away because I'm going to send my Holy Spirit to dwell in you, to make My home in you, through My Spirit … if that is true, if we can believe in that (just with the smallest bit of faith), Jesus wants to do something here. Jesus wants to show the lonely that they don't have to be lonely anymore. I remember being desperately lonely when I was going through marriage breakdown, ten years ago. And Jesus did something in me and just gave me that little bit of faith that I needed to believe that He is here, right now. That the moment we say, "Jesus I believe in you," He sends His Holy Spirit to dwell inside of us – today, tomorrow, forever and ever because He will never leave us or forsake us. I believe that I can come boldly before the throne of grace. And that I'll find God's help with exactly the thing that I need at the time that I need it. When we have a desperate hunger after human company that just isn't being satisfied, maybe you're there now, maybe this is something that you've got to tuck away for the future, if only we would just hunger first after God's company, just as much. In fact, I don't think that until we've been drenched in God's company, in God's presence, we're going to be any good company to anyone else. And in the same way, I don't think we can really enjoy other peoples' company (the full and rich thing that relationships with other people have to offer), until we've been so hungry for company that we've found in the company of Jesus Christ. That we've found the joy of that quite beautiful relationship with Jesus Christ, that can sustain us through every high and every low, and everything that this earth has to throw at us. So often, Jesus allows us to wander in a lonely wilderness to give us the space to discover Him. And maybe, if today, you are desperately lonely, or you know someone who is desperately lonely, maybe today is the day that He is speaking to you and saying, "The reason I allow this loneliness is so in the midst of it all, you would hear my quite still voice. In the midst of it all, you'd notice I'm waiting for you. I'm here, I'm with you. I so want to have a relationship with you." For me (for my part), as I look back on that time in the middle of loneliness, where I got to discover Jesus and have a relationship with Him, I know that I could not be the husband that I am for my wife, Jacqui, today, if I hadn't first discovered Him. I know that I wouldn't enjoy the fullness of our relationship, if I hadn't been lonely and bumped into Jesus in the middle of that. And I know, I couldn't love her and honour her and bless her with who I am unless first, I discovered who Jesus was. Unless first, I let Him change me, take out some of the rubbish that was swimming round inside me. I'm not perfect, nor are you, none of us are. Some days, I'm just not your perfect husband. Some days, I'm grumpy and tired. But you know something, most days, I'm not. Most days, I get to enjoy the life that Jesus gave me and enjoy the relationships that He has brought me because of that lonely dark time in the wilderness when there was just One Light. And that light was called Jesus Christ! God has a plan. That plan is to bless us. And when we are starving and hungering for company and there's just nobody around, there is – Jesus is! And He's waiting.

What happens to us in life happens to us in two different places. On the outside, and on the inside and in fact it's on the inside where we experience emotions like joy, delight, fear and failure. So … have you ever found yourself feeling like you're dying on the inside? I was sitting next to an older man, recently, in the bus and I thought I would just love to know your life story. Yet through the anonymity of the internet so many people come to our website, www.christianityworks.com and ask for prayer for things in their lives that (in most cases) they could never talk to anyone else about. And it never ceases to amaze me how great their need is. This week, anonymously, I'd like to share some of those with you starting with someone who writes, "I'm just dying inside." I always remember the story of a young doctor who used to visit wealthy houses in a suburb, near where I used to live. And he said that, it doesn't matter how many houses he went into, all these large wealthy people, in big houses, he said, 'Time after time after time, in almost all of them, there was some form of tragedy or abuse or drug abuse or marriage breakdown'. And I guess, that's the thing, isn't it? At the train station or the bus stop, you just don't know. You look at a person and you see a blank face and you think 'what happened to them yesterday or last night or today? What's going on in their hearts? What are they feeling right now – joy or pain or boredom or emptiness or loss or gain? You don't know. And sadly, so often, no one cares either. It's the same with us too. We go out there in life, we may have had an argument or a hurt or a pain or you maybe feeling desperately, desperately lonely and we go out to the bus stop or the train station or to work and we put the face on that hides what's going on in our hearts. When people send prayer requests to our website www.christianityworks.com, it's interesting how the anonymity of the internet allows people to be much more open and frank with what's going on in their lives. In a way, that's quite different to face-to-face contact, where they would be much more inhibited about talking about themselves. This week, on A Different Perspective, I'd like to walk through some of the common types of prayer requests we get (quite anonymously, of course). Not talking about anyone's names or particular circumstances but just look through some of those things because, to me, those many prayer requests and kind of like a cross-section of what's going on in the lives of the people at my bus stop and my train station. One of the ones that we often get, and this is a typical example, is the sense of "I'm falling, I'm plagued by dread and doubt and depression. I've stopped having contact with people and I'm afraid of being judged". Now recently, I had one like that from a person who said, "I'm just dying inside", and this person identified themselves as someone who actually believed in Jesus Christ. They identified themselves as a Christian. I wonder how many people feel like they are dying inside? Despite all the worldly goods and things we have around us – whether they have ever met Jesus before or whether they are Christians – they live in this centreless, materialistic world with more choices than we can poke a stick at. And yet, they have this sense that they're dying inside. It's so sad to see people to be surrounded by all the good things they could ever want, every comfort, every luxury and yet still, to be dying inside. All sorts of things promise a new life and a new beginning. And I tried a lot of them before I became a Christian and they're okay for a while. But ultimately, they lead to disappointment. They don't work. Religion doesn't work. I love the fact that Jesus specialised in people who were dying inside. The prostitute, this woman who is so despised, yet obviously, still had a business. Obviously, there were men in the society who were using her and paying for the privilege. But this prostitute, who just kind of saw Jesus and He encouraged her and He stood up for her when the religious leaders wanted to belittle her and to kick her out. The demon possessed man, the Gerasene demoniac. This man who was like an animal, living in a graveyard amongst the gravestones and Jesus went and touched him. All sorts of people; weirdos and unhealthy people. Jesus went and healed them. But something more than that … there was compassion. There was a reality an authenticity, a Jesus just wanted to put His arms around these people and love them. I remember a time in my life when I drove a large flash car and lived in a huge house with gold taps. And was so full of my own self importance as an International Consultant, that sat with Boards and CEO's of large Corporations. And the first time I met Jesus, under a tree, after a Church service (I got to tell you, I hadn't been to a Church for years other than the odd wedding or funeral), I went to this Church service and I went out afterwards and sat down under a tree and for the first time – I encountered life. When I gave my life to Jesus it was like I was a little balloon full of helium, you know, it was like I was floating. It was the most awesome experience of my life. And it wasn't until after I did that, that I could look back on my life and think, there I was with the big car and the big house and the self-importance but all along, deep inside, I had a sense of being an impostor, a sense of dread and doubt and depression. Just like this person (who sent this prayer request to us last week), afraid of being judged, I wanted to be so high and mighty. But inside, there was a secret fear and so I put on a strong exterior, a strong face. That stuff is completely, completely gone. Why? What happened? Because over the last ten years, I have spent hours and hours and hours, quietly, in the presence of God – praying, listening, reading His word. Just sitting quietly to hear what He had to say; and tasting His goodness, seeing His hand on my life; feeling the blessing of His goodness all around me and what He did; and how He interacted with me as He puts His spirit inside each one of us. And the greatest thing; the most important thing for me was (over a period of many years of spending time with Him), finally coming to grips with the fact that all my failures, all of them, were paid for by Jesus on the cross. And today, I know I have a right standing with Him. There's no dread, no doubt, no depression, no fear of being judged because in Jesus Christ, God accepted me. In Jesus Christ, God accepts me and in Jesus Christ, God accepts you. We need never, ever, feel as though we are dying inside. And the reason, quite plainly, is this – because Jesus has already done the dying for us, because Jesus has already suffered the pain of all our failures and inadequacies, and He just waits. He longs to spend hours and hours and hours with you and with me, quietly, beautifully, gently pouring His love and His grace and His blessing and His goodness into our very soul and spirit and being. We need never… ever again feel as though we are dying inside.

There's nothing like sharing in someone else's loneliness to get a handle on overcoming your own loneliness. And today, we're going to meet a man who, well, if anyone has a reason to wallow in self–pity, it's this guy. But that's the last thing he ends up doing in his loneliness. For me, I think prison would have to be one of the loneliest places on the planet. The loss of freedom, infrequent visits, perhaps none at all, the threat and the danger of prison politics. I was re-reading a letter from a guy called Paul who was on death row (in Rome, around about 60 or 61 AD), the letter he wrote to some good friends in a Roman outpost called Philippi. And there's one bit in there that really struck me, the sort of thing you just wouldn't expect from this guy in a damp dungeon, waiting to die. The reality of prison … I cannot begin to imagine being in jail let alone, like the Apostle Paul, being on death row. You see, Paul had quite some fall from grace. As a young man in Jerusalem, he was a religious hot-shot. He was a member of the ruling body of the Sanhedrin. He was well-known academic. He was busy persecuting Christians. Man this guy had his career all cut out. And then one day, as he was traveling to Damascus, on the road he encountered Jesus and that turned his whole world upside down. He left all of the prestige and status behind and spent over a decade traveling around Asia Minor, preaching, telling people about Jesus Christ. Now, Paul was thrown out of synagogues; Paul caused riots; Paul was beaten and flogged and run out of town and imprisoned several times. And now as we look at this letter that he wrote to the Church at Philippi (it's known as the book of Philippians in the New Testament), he is on death row in Rome. He has every right to feel lonely, has every right to feel resentful, has every right to say to God and shake his fists, "Come on God, what's going on here? I did all the stuff you asked me to do and now I'm on death row in Rome, what's going on?" And while he was locked up there are others out there doing what he was supposed to be doing, getting all the limelight. Got the picture? A dark, dank, dungeon, in chains, actually chained to a guard. Now I am sure that prison today is no cakewalk but this, we cannot begin to imagine. Got the picture? And this is what he writes towards the end of this letter. You can read it in the book of Philippians, the last chapter. He says to them: Finally my friends, 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 those things. (Philippians 4:8) I think this is one of the best pieces of advice from someone who had every right to be lonely and resentful, to someone who is lonely, that I have ever heard. You look at loneliness and there's this kind of downward spiral. People are lonely, they're not in meaningful connections with other people, there's no one to encourage or support or to strengthen them. And so the mind wanders and wanders and goes down the gurgler. It focuses on rubbish. It focuses on regret, on anger, on revenge, on disappointment, on the inevitability and on the powerlessness of the situation. You know, when we feel lonely, we want to blame someone. When we feel lonely, we want to exercise our right to be resentful don't we? When we feel lonely, we just want to grumble and because we are alone we got time to do that, and do it "par excellence'. Often, lonely people spend all of their thinking time and feeling time in this bad, rubbishy, regretful, angry, revengeful, disappointed place. And Paul, our buddy, sitting on death row there, who has every right to feel angry, says, "Hang on … no, don't do that. Think about the good stuff, anything that is honourable or just or pure or pleasing or commendable or excellent or worthy of praise." What do you think about that stuff? Now, what are you saying here Berni? Are you saying, "Just think positive thoughts. Be positive?" I don't think that's what Paul is saying. I think he's saying, "Consume positive stuff, exercise your mind in a space, that's healthy". You know the routine: eat junk food, you'll carry extra weight. You don't do any exercise and your cholesterol will be up – your triglycerides will be up, your blood pressure will be up, your blood sugar will be up, you'll be diabetic, you get a heart attack, you have a stroke, you die young. Right? Simple. They're the consequences. On the other hand, you eat cereal, fruit, go walking and exercising, lose some weight and all of a sudden the consequences are good. You have energy, you feel stronger, you're not as tired, you reduce your health risks, your blood levels go to all the right levels. There's vigour and sparkle and joy, because there are consequences to what we do with our body. It's simple cause-and-effect stuff. We all know this. If it is true with our bodies, it's also true of our hearts and minds. It depends on what we read, what we listen to, what we say, what we think, what we believe. "Oh, I'm never, ever, ever going to get over this loneliness. I'm never going to be able to do this." Well, that's one place you can spend your time. Or maybe, you can go and buy a book like The Mystery According To Susie, which is about someone who struggled with loneliness and depression and fear and overcame it. We can spend time mulling over the bad stuff or – we can take deliberate steps to consume good stuff. Paul goes on though. He doesn't stop there. He says, in effect: I have learnt to be content with whatever I have. Whether I have a lot or a little, whether I am happy or sad, whether the world is good or bad. I'm going to be content anyway. And then he reinforces it with this, he says: You know why, you know why I can do that? I can do all things through Christ Jesus, who strengthens me. (Philippians 4:13) He can do this stuff. He can be sitting there on death row and instead of grumbling, he can be saying to his friends, who are free, "Think about good stuff, do good stuff. Don't get tired of doing that." Why can Paul do that, on death row, in the dungeon? Answer, he tells us. Because he can do anything, he can do everything through Jesus. He can give this good advice to someone who is lonely and disappointed. He can give this advice because, and only because, he has a real relationship with Jesus Christ. I would challenge you… pick up a Bible or go on the internet, and read the letter in the New Testament called Philippians. It's Paul's letter from the dungeon to some dear friends of his. You will not find a more encouraging, upbeat piece of prose than those four chapters of that letter written by a guy on death row. What does that tell you? We can choose to exercise our mind in disappointment; or we can decide to consume good things. We can choose to let our heart rest in loneliness and fear; or we can choose to give our heart over to Jesus Christ. That positive language and positive sentiment wasn't coming out of positive thinking, it was coming out of a mind and a heart given over to Jesus Christ. It was coming from a heart flooded with the presence of God. The dungeon of loneliness can be a reality. But it's an opportunity to get to know ourselves, to get to know God, to reach out to other people with our gifts and to consume goodness and grace and peace and joy from the one person that will never disappoint – Jesus Christ.

When we're going through a lonely patch in life, the most common response, is introspection. We withdraw into ourselves and have a pity party about how terrible things are. Well, as it turns out, that's absolutely the worst thing you can do, because it just makes things worse. What we really want, is something that makes things better, right?! Loneliness – that deep hurt inside, that rises out of the painful realisation that we're not connecting with other people. And a key part of that downward spiral of loneliness is a sense of powerlessness, a sense that we're not good enough, or worthy enough, or important enough to do anything about it. That's why this week we're looking at dealing with loneliness. I really believe that if God is God, He doesn't want us to be lonely. If you've missed any of these programs this week on loneliness, I'll let you know at the end of the program how you can listen to them again online. You know when we're lonely the last thing we think we can do is to help other people, but amazingly reaching out turns out to be very much a part of the solution. Go and stand in the local shopping centre and just watch for five or ten minutes, you see people rushing around, doing stuff and not connecting. Now my local shopping centre is a really large, new, flash shopping centre. And you almost never see people stop and recognise each other and connect. A century ago and more, communities had like the village square, you know that green patch and the houses were all around the village square and families connected. That's been replaced by the shopping centre, the shopping mall. The connection and community have been replaced by lots of lonely people wandering around aimlessly, in and out of shops. Here's a tough reality … the world is not going to stop and help you or me just because we're lonely. Let me say that again – the world, the way it is today, is just not going to stop and help you and me because we feel lonely. It's true in many families, it's true even in many churches, not all but in many. That's painful but it's not our fault, it's not your fault, it's not about you or me, it's just the way the world is. Probably, this is not what you want to hear if you happen to be feeling lonely and powerless right now. But the fact is that Social Darwinism is alive and well. It is a jungle out there and it's all about the survival of the fittest. It's not that people are horrible; it's not that people don't want to help; it's not that everyone is nasty; it's just not a neighbourly kind of world anymore. People are too busy. Great, so now what? If I'm lonely in a world where everybody's too busy to stop and connect with me, what's going to happen to me now? With loneliness, with a sense of being desperately alone and not connected with people, comes a sense of helplessness – I can't do this; I can't change this; I'm no good; no one's going to want me. Now that's understandable but it should be temporary. Unfortunately, the further people go down that downward spiral of loneliness, it sets in and becomes permanent. Some people just plan on being perpetual victims for the rest of their lives. Maybe you are walking through loneliness right now? Maybe someone that you know is walking through loneliness right now? And this sounds particularly tough. It is, it has to be. Here's the rub, maybe being the victim would've worked thirty or forty years ago. But it's not going to work today. No one has got time. Bottom line, wallowing won't work and that's a good thing. It's a good thing because if you're someone that's lonely, one of the biggest needs that you have is to get over self-pity; is to get over that sense of powerlessness; is to get over this reality that "I can't do anything and it won't work". What you need is to reach out. Maybe you know someone who is lonely and who feels powerless, they need to take this step and reach out. They need to connect. If you're lonely you have this deep need but how, how do you do that when everyone is just too busy? Comes back to something we were talking about the other day – loneliness gives us a time and a space to discover who we are, what we enjoy, what we're good at. Maybe that's basketball or maybe you're like me and you're vertically challenged and you'll never be any good at basketball. Maybe your gift is sitting down and talking to people and making them feel better, drinking coffee. Maybe you've got a coffee ministry coming up, maybe your gift is serving. We don't discover these things until we've had time and space in a period of loneliness to explore them. I truly believe that's true. It was true in my life. I had some things I was good at but I never really had time to develop them and to nurture them and to come to grips with them. Me, I discovered in that time that I was good at story telling. So, in the period of loneliness we have time to discover our gifts and what we're good at. And we can now go and take those gifts and add value to someone. Busy people don't notice victims. Busy people do notice other people who add value, that's one side of the equation. The other side of the equation is lonely people need to develop their self-esteem and they can do that by adding value. I don't know about you, but it seems to me, like those two things are made for each other. When Berni was lonely and single again ten years ago, God was doing stuff in my life so I ended up going to a church. It was a little church in a place called Oyster Bay, in the southern suburbs of Sydney, in Australia. There were only about 30-35 people in this church and I went along all broken and lonely and not knowing whether anyone would ever think anything of me again. And I discovered they only had one piano player. Well, I can play the piano and so I practiced and practiced and practiced and I ended up playing the piano during the services. And people noticed that I seemed to be good with words and so I was asked to lead worship. And so the pastor of the church asked me to preach. I'd been a Christian for five minutes and this guy said to me, "Hey Berni, why don't you get up and preach one Sunday?" All of a sudden, I discovered I could contribute to other people's lives using my gifts. Have you noticed I'm still doing that? Right now, I'm doing the thing that I discovered when I was lonely. Isn't God fantastic, isn't God just wonderful? And that was great for me; I needed to have a sense that I could add value to other people's lives. Wallowing won't work, adding value will. Jesus was just a crummy carpenter. He was misunderstood, misinterpreted, mistreated. He often went to lonely places to pray, but that loneliness didn't debilitate Him; that loneliness didn't stop Him from doing what God had called Him to do. That's the picture, that's the model! Are you in a world that's too busy to notice that you're lonely? Well get up, take up your cross and follow Jesus – not to be served, not to be the victim – but to serve. And as you take the gifts that God has given you and you serve other people with those gifts, you're going to bless your socks off. You're going to do things in your heart and your soul and your spirit that you never dreamed that you could possibly do, because God is a God of grace. You get up and follow Him and watch out what God does with that.

When loneliness strikes, it can be the bleakest, darkest, most inhospitable place on the planet … in the universe! If you've experienced loneliness, you'll know what I mean. But in that loneliest of places, at that loneliest moment, as things turn out, you and I – we are never alone. I wonder on a scale of 1-10 how content you feel in your relationships; zero is desperately lonely, ten is stunningly fulfilled. This week, we have been looking at loneliness from A Different Perspective. Because loneliness is a disease that is afflicting people in plague proportions, more work, more money, less time with the family, less time being part of a community. So we have a silent social pandemic that is sweeping the globe. The question is, what to do about it? Yesterday, we talked about the first of two people who can help you with loneliness – that person is you. If you missed that program, you can listen to it again on our website, I'll let you know how you can do that at the end of the program. Today, I'd like to introduce you to the second person who can help you with loneliness without ever having to make a phone call, or open the front door. This man, a carpenter by trade, knows all about lonely places and what to do with them. Have you ever thought about Jesus being lonely? Now here is the Son of God who becomes a man … little boy, grows up as carpenter's apprentice with his Dad and He becomes a carpenter. And then His public ministry begins around age 30. He has a dozen or so close disciples, many more who follow him around, huge crowds, who flock to see him and hear him speak and be healed by him. There are people clamoring to get a piece of him. This Jesus had rock star status. There was one time He healed a leper and said to the leper, "Look, just go and show the priests, don't tell anyone". (Yeah right!) Luke in his Gospel, (Luke 5:15, if you want to look it up), Luke writes this after the healing of the leper: Even though He told the leper not to tell anyone, obviously the leper did. And the news about Jesus spread more and more, so that crowds of people came to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. Isn't that amazing? By choice, Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. That word lonely means solitary, desolate, uninhabited places, to pray. Jesus knew exactly what it meant to be lonely. Here is the Son of God, He has been with God and in God, and part of the God Head, part of the Trinity for all eternity – Father, Son, Holy Spirit. He steps out of that and becomes a man. He was surrounded by people who didn't understand. God was doing a new thing through this Son of His, Jesus, a new thing of grace. Jesus would go to the cross and be beaten and reviled and crucified and killed. The religious hierarchy, they hated Him, they plotted against Him. In fact, they were so threatened by this radical Jesus, eventually, they killed Him. The disciples (well most of them, most of the time), they just didn't get it. Jesus was misunderstood, misquoted, misrepresented and mistreated. Jesus, of course He experienced loneliness. He was called to do something radical that people didn't understand. Imagine being surrounded by these twelve Disciples who, who you know will be the foundations of the church when you go. And for the whole time, they just didn't seem to understand. Every now and then, they'd have a flash of insight but most of the time they didn't get it. Who did Jesus have to talk to? Who was His peer? Who was His equal? Who was His support? He experienced everything that you and I have to experience and loneliness is one of them. Jesus has been lonely in a crowd and He makes a decision, a decision of choice. He withdrew often to a lonely place and prayed. Why did He do that? Well, despite His superstar status, the one relationship that gave Him His strength (to give out all that He gave out) – the one relationship sustained Him, the one relationship that gave Him wisdom and love, and grace – was the relationship with His Father, God (in that lonely place). I mentioned yesterday that I went through a lonely time in my life about ten years ago, when I went through a marriage breakdown and divorce. And I experienced loss, and betrayal, and hurt, and fear, and loneliness … what a poisonous cocktail! I was in a new city with new people around me, a new empty house. And I remember meal times, sitting down at the dinner table that used to have a family around it, and now there was just me. At the dinner table, my aloneness became so desperately lonely. And in that lonely place, I got a growing sense and a knowledge that Jesus was there. And I prayed, I talked, I listened, I read, I learned who I was and enjoyed my own company (I talked about that yesterday). That was great, but in that dark and lonely, and desolate, isolated place there was one light shining – and that light was the presence of God. That light was Jesus in that place with me. A Jesus who Himself had experienced the loneliness, who himself had prayed in lonely places. "Berni what do you mean, what did it feel like? How did you get that?" Well, the best way I can describe this is, in the bitterness of betrayal with a fear of the future, lamenting the loss, in that bitterness of fear and lament, the sweetness of His presence was so piercingly sweet. I just knew He was there. It was such an incredible joy. It took my breath away. In the lounge room, in the dining room, in the kitchen, the bedroom, God's presence, His presence just filled the place. Wherever I went, whatever I did, He was there just whispering in my ear, "I love you, I will never leave you, I'll never, never forsake you". And that was ten years ago. Now that I talk about this, just like it was yesterday. As I speak about it, it's though, I am there. And I remember the pain and I remember the enormous joy of God's presence in the middle of that loneliness. Have you noticed right now that He's here? Why am I going through this? Why am I so lonely? What's going on? Why is it so dark? Why is loneliness so painful? Why can't I do anything about it myself? Well, God didn't cause your loneliness. God didn't cause my loneliness. But when I was there and when you're there, He is there. Because in the middle of that loneliness, sometimes that's the only place that's quiet enough for us to hear Him. Sometimes that's the only place that He can get our attention. Sometimes (as much as it hurts), that place of loneliness is a place that Jesus Christ touches us, and reaches out, and loves us in a way that we cannot … we cannot miss or mistake. Loneliness can be the biggest opportunity that God ever hands us. It was certainly the biggest opportunity that He ever gave me. And that time that I had with Him, during that lonely period, I remember as if it was yesterday. I have a wonderful life now, but I remember that time. And even now, in the dark times, He sustains me.

Loneliness isn't an easy thing to deal with when it strikes. When we're alone, it seems as though there are no answers, no solutions. But actually, nothing … could be further from the truth. Whether you live in China surrounded by 1.3 billion other people, or the Pitcairn Islands (in the Pacific), surrounded by just 44 other people, you can feel lonely. We can be desperately lonely in a crowd yet be delivered from loneliness by just one other person. Today, if it's okay with you, we're going to continue looking at the whole question of loneliness. I'd like you to meet the first of two people who can help you with loneliness, without you ever having to pick up the phone or open the front door. We'll meet the second one in tomorrow's program. Today, we're going to meet the first one. Someone you've known all your life, someone who's with you constantly, every minute of the day – that someone … is you! The problem with loneliness, it's not so much in being alone, we all want to be alone (sometimes). The problem is feeling alone. The problem is feeling that terrible sense that I'm not connected in a meaningful way with another person. It's painful, you can get angry, you can get distressed, you sense this loss. And the other thing about loneliness is that often, it's accompanied by a sense of powerlessness. We end up in a passive state. I remember ten years ago being single again. One minute, I was surrounded by a family – you go out, you go out with your family, go out with your wife. The next minute, not only is there the pain of a broken relationship, but you see all of these other people in relationships. I truly hated seeing couples together; their enjoyment seemed to hurt me. You know, you see a man and a woman walking hand in hand down the street. And I'd just been through what I'd just been through and it was painful seeing them enjoy themselves. You feel so powerless when you feel lonely. I felt like a second-class citizen, I felt like a failure. It's like it wasn't okay for me to be alone. It's a state that I felt I couldn't change. Have you ever felt like that … "I'm the only one?" I'll let you into a secret, we all do that sometimes. We're not Robinson Caruso. Everybody at some stage in their life feels devalued because they're lonely. We feel rejected because we're lonely. Part of the loneliness trap says, "I can't function unless I have other people around me." Well in part that's true; we certainly all need to have meaningful relationships with other people. But the idea of "I can't function without other people," misses something. It misses an opportunity – an important opportunity. When we go home, you know at the end of the day or (I used to do this when I was going through my lonely stage where I was on my own) at the end of church, you know I'd go home on a Sunday and all these other people went home with their husbands or their wives or their children. And I went home alone. When we go home, whether we go home to a family or whether we go home alone, you and I are home in our space, maybe people there, maybe not. Whether there are people there or not, it can be a lonely place. Well for me there were no people there at the time. And what I discovered in that place was to my surprise … I enjoyed my own company. Now that might seem trivial and trite to you. But in my life where I'd been a busy business person and working long hours and working hard and having people around me all the time. Here I was, at age 36, alone for the first time (in a very long time). All of a sudden, I had time and space to figure out, "Berni, you enjoy your own company." The first thing I had was time to think, time just to sit at nights and let the imagination roam across the hills. Time to dream, time to hope, time to contemplate the day, time to plan for tomorrow. What an incredible gift! And even though we all do that to some extent, you know something, when you're on your own (particularly when you feel lonely), it's somehow sharper, somehow it's more important to be able to do that. It's so evident in a lonely place that time to think and imagine and dream and hope and contemplate is a wonderful gift. And it was in the middle of that … that I learned to turn the TV off. It was still. It was quiet. And in that place I discovered I liked myself. It's one of the biggest gifts I ever received out of that time of loneliness. And you know this is a habit that has never left me. Today, I'm wonderfully, happily married to the most beautiful, lovely women on the planet and have a wonderful family. Yet, I still draw away into my own space – into that quiet peace to enjoy me, to spend time with me, to discover who I am, to think and dream and hope. We are created in the image of God. And God looks at us and He delights in us. So why shouldn't we delight in ourselves? Why shouldn't we like ourselves? The second thing that … that period of loneliness gave me was time and space to do things I had never had time and space to do in the past. I discovered I really loved walking. I've always played the piano but I'd never had time and I relearned the playing of piano. I love to read, I love cooking. Some people say, "Well, it's not worth cooking for one". What they're really saying is, "I am not worth it, I'm not worth cooking for". Yes you are! The third thing was that I decided I liked my own company. And the step that precedes that – I liked me. It doesn't mean I can't improve. It doesn't mean that there aren't some things that I'd change. But basically, in that time alone, I decided I like me. That brings some serious healing. I realised I wasn't a second-class citizen. I realised the real joy of discovering me. Now, there was another inseparable part in that healing process … another person that we'll talk about tomorrow, when I introduce you to the second person, who can help you and me in a period of loneliness, without ever picking up the phone or opening the front door. Loneliness … absolutely, we need to get connected meaningfully with other people. But a time of loneliness is a huge opportunity to connect meaningfully with ourselves. Have you ever been travelling through a lonely patch? Maybe, you're travelling through one now. Go look in the mirror. You are a beautiful person. You are so wonderfully hand-carved by God. You have some abilities and talents and humour in you that other people don't have. And sometimes God takes us through times of loneliness to help us to discover that. It's no substitute for relationships with other people; it's no substitute for having family and friends around. But you know what I think? I think for us to really enjoy our relationships with other people, to really connect with other people, first – we need to connect with ourselves. If God is God, if God made you and me the way we are, if God delights in who you are and who I am, isn't that a valid thing that we should delight in who we are? Isn't it a wonderful thing to have time and space to enjoy our own company? To think, to go and do things and develop skills and develop talents that sometimes we never realised we had? I learned to play the piano when I was a young boy and I'd almost forgotten, and I relearned that in that time of loneliness. And it's such a wonderful blessing. You are made by God … go on take the opportunities He gives you to discover yourself.

Loneliness. When we experience it, it's as though we're the only one on the planet that's lonely. I guess that's the definition of it – because we feel all alone. But the truth is, that loneliness is a global pandemic. And it's time we did something about it. I was doing some research the other day on world populations. And discovered that the current world population is just a tad under six and a half billion (6.5 billion). Every second that ticks by sees that number grow by another 2.3 people. So in one year from now, there will be an additional 75 million people added to our number. By 2050, they're saying there should be around 9.2 billion of us. The most populous nation in the world is China, with just over 1.3 billion people. But what's the least populous nation? It's the Pitcairn Islands, and it has exactly forty-five (45) people in it. Amazing! Yet, with a world population that's never been higher, loneliness is running at epidemic proportions. There have never in all history been more people on the planet. Yet, as people we have never been more lonely. Doesn't that strike you as odd? My hunch is that it's just as easy to feel lonely in China surrounded by 1.3 billion people, as it is to feel lonely in the Pitcairn Islands surrounded by just another forty-four (44) people. Why is that? Well, it's important for us to understand that loneliness is different to being alone. We all choose to have some time alone. One of the things I love to do on the weekend, is just read the paper over a cup of tea or coffee on Saturday morning. And you know something? As much as I love my darling wife and my beautiful daughter, I love to do that on my own. So being alone is not loneliness. Loneliness is that feeling of being alone and being sad about it. It's like a painful awareness of a lack of meaningful contact with other people. You feel empty inside, it's like there's a hole in your chest. You can be utterly desolate and lonely in a crowd and yet, be delivered from that loneliness by just one person. That's the China/Pitcairn Island's thing. In the developed world, single person households have increased from 10% of all households in 1950 to around 30% today. So almost one in three households that you drive past or walk past only have one person living in them. The Boston Globe reports that 36% of people, over one-third, feel lonely. But have a listen to the impact, the statistical impact, of loneliness. People who are isolated by health are twice as likely to die over a period of a decade as those who are not isolated. A study showed that the more isolated men are up to 25% more likely to die of all causes, at any age, versus non-isolated men. Isn't that amazing? And the odds for women are up 33%. Living alone after a heart attack significantly increases your risk of dying. People with heart disease have a poorer chance of survival if they are unmarried or don't have a partner to assist them. Women who are alone and have breast cancer live half as long as those who do not. What does that all tell us. What does that tell you? Well, I think they're compelling statistics and they point to a crisis of loneliness. Why are we so alone? I mean those figures tell us we need one another. We need other people around us. Being alone is a precursor to loneliness. Why? Well, the more money we have the more choices we have. Divorce rates are up for a whole range of reasons, but one of them is the fact that women can now be financially independent. They have a choice, whereas 50 or 60 years ago there was just no choice to divorce. Single parents, well those numbers are up too, they have a choice to be single. In those circumstances, relationships become less enduring. The less we feel we desperately need each other for physical survival, well, the less enduring relationships become. Why not end a marriage? Why not terminate a long-term relationship? You think of a subsistence farming community, I visited some not long ago in India. And what really struck me in the subsistence farming communities was people, by and large, people were well dressed; looked pretty happy, were pretty healthy even though they had very little. You go to the cities, however, where they don't rely on each other in the same way to produce the food together so that they can survive, those people were not happy. They were not well connected. They were poorer. And so there's this amazing breakdown that's happened over the last century as our economies have "developed" (I use that word in inverted commas!) where we tend to be far less connected. We use cars instead of public transport. In the past, before people could read and write, we needed each other to learn. We needed each other to communicate; well we don't anymore because we can read. We watch TV, we get isolated from one another. We use the internet. A man who I really respect, a man by the name of Peter Webb, I heard him speaking at a conference once. I used to work with him in the Information Technology Industry. And he made the observation that every radical invention or development in communications technology has been designed to let us communicate from further and further away. Just think about that for a minute; every invention in the communications industry has been designed to let us communicate from further and further away. You think about it … before there were telephones and internet and satellites and all the stuff we have today, if you wanted to communicate with someone you had to see them face to face, or at least you had to be in earshot of one another. Then we invented letters and postal systems. Well, maybe it took two years for a letter to travel from England to Australia but it was an amazing invention. You could write and maybe months later someone would pick that up and read it, and you could communicate. When two-way radio and telephone came along, all of a sudden you could talk to someone without the displeasure of having to look at their faces. Have you ever wondered why video-phones have never happened? Because we don't want to see the person! We enjoy the fact we can talk without looking at them. And now with email it's even better because we can type something and tic-tac at different times of the day and night right round the world and be a long way apart and yet – communicate quickly. And so the nature of our world is a slow downward spiral in community. It's a gradual slide to isolation, punctuated by the odd critical life event, like divorce or death or retrenchment. We have a misconception about loneliness. We think that being alone equals loneliness. I'm not alone therefore I shouldn't be lonely. That's simply not true. And sometimes we say, "Well it doesn't effect me, I'm okay". Are you? We often don't use the label lonely but you stand back and you think about it, are you? If you go through a crisis like divorce and you see a happy couple enjoying each other, you feel lonely. I heard the other day of a woman who was dying of cancer whose husband left her when she was in remission. And two of her best friends came over with their new baby and she said to them, "I don't ever want to see you again, because I can't bear to see you so happy." And if it's not a crisis, maybe it's just a dull ache. But stand back and really examine our hearts. Are we lonely? Maybe, that guy's right. Maybe, I am. Maybe, the pain and resentment and sadness I feel is because of no real connections. Come on! If it hurts, are you lonely? The rest of this week we'll be looking at what to do about loneliness – from A Different Perspective. I really hope you can join me.