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.

It's amazing how thoroughly we manage to delude ourselves about our own failings and weaknesses. We're actually pretty darned good at it. But God is a skilful surgeon capable of performing radical surgery. This week on the program, we've been looking at intimacy with God through His Spirit and His Word. And when you think about it, those are the two things of Himself that He has left here on this planet for you and me. His Spirit – God Himself, with a promise that if we believe in Jesus, He will make His home in us, dwell in us when we put our faith in Him. And His word – the Bible. I so often see people cringe when I mention that book. But as we've been exploring this week, this is the most amazing and awesome love letter God's left here for you and for me. Through His Spirit (we open that book), He speaks to us in the most direct and intimate and extraordinary way. And sometimes when we open that book and read it through His Spirit, it's like holding up a mirror to who we are. And I don't know about you but sometimes I don't actually like what I see in that mirror. Let's not kid ourselves. When things aren't going well, when we're under pressure, we blame everyone else. He did this; she said that; if he hadn't done this, I wouldn't have blown up in his face, you know the sort of stuff. It's amazing how much more quickly we'll forgive ourselves than we forgive other people. We are so quick to rationalise our own failures and yet to blame others for theirs and even ours. And the longer we delude ourselves about the things that we're doing wrong or our bad character traits or our bad habits or our anger or our fear or our insecurities, the more they're going to ruin not only our lives but also the lives of people around us. There's a great passage in Hebrews in the New Testament. The book of Hebrews chapter 4, verses 12 and 13, says this: The word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides the soul from the spirit, the joints from the marrow. It's able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart and before God no creature is hidden but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account. Boy, that's bad news isn't it? Who wants to read God's word? Sharper than any two-edged sword, it pierces, it divides the spirit from the soul, the joints from the marrow, it judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart. No, thanks. I'll give that a miss, I think. I'll pass. But it's only bad news if we want to hang on to the bad stuff. If you or I want to hang on to our dishonesty, our critical spirit, our nasty attitudes or whatever, then this bit about God's word is bad news. But if we want to be set free from this stuff, it's fantastic news. In other words, we read God's word and it's like a mirror, it judges the intentions of the heart. It lays everything bare, it lays everything open. We can see in there where our intentions are wrong – where the way we think is wrong or hurting us or hurting other people and it happens to me all the time. When we let God do that, when we go to God's word and open it up and say, "Dear Holy Spirit, you wrote this thing. Will you now open it up for me, will you now hold it up, will you pour into my heart, will you show me who I am through your word"? When we let God hold His mirror up to our faces it changes us. Let me give you an example …there's a story about a woman caught in adultery. And the religious leaders whip up the crowd and they drag her out in front of Jesus for a good old-fashioned stoning. And it wasn't because of what she did; they were trying to trick Him. Jewish religious law prescribed that a person caught in adultery should be stoned to death. But Roman law, (remember at this point in the first century Rome had occupied the land of Israel), Roman law said, they weren't allowed to do that anymore. So whichever way Jesus answered, He'd lose. So Jesus pauses and squats down and doodles in the sand. Then He looks everyone in the eye, one by one, and He says:  Whichever of you has never sinned, you pick up the first stone, you cast the first stone. (John 8:7) And one by one they all drift away. They all go embarrassed because they know that none of them can say that they have never sinned. And He's left alone with her and He says: "Woman, is there no-one left to condemn you?" And she says, "No-one sir.' And He says, 'Then neither do I condemn you. Go, go and sin no more." (John 8:10-11) That is brilliant isn't it? But I remember reading that and it was as though God's spirit was holding a mirror up to my face. God's spirit spoke to me and said, "You know Berni, the way you think, the way you act, you would have been one of the people in that crowd." And it was true ... I was so judgemental, I was so critical, I was so ready to jump down peoples' throats and tell them what they were doing wrong. And here I was reading God's word and through this beautiful story of Jesus' wisdom and the way He protected this woman and yet He dealt with her sin. The spirit of God said to me, "Berni, there's something I want to change in you." My favourite saying used to be, "It's so hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkeys." And the Holy Spirit took that and said, "Now I'm going to do something in you". And He really challenged me. God used that story. And He's still using that scripture in my heart and in my life today, and He's done a radical work. I used to be so judgemental, and now other people's weaknesses and failures (by and large), I just let them go. And the more I've been able to do that (not in my own strength but because I opened the Bible and read the story and the Spirit of God did this work in me), you know what's happened? He set me free … from me! God is good. God through His word and His Spirit give us the power to change. That's what God's word does and that's what God does through it, through His Holy Spirit. He lifts the words off the page. He breathes them into our hearts and into our souls and into our spirits. He makes things happen inside us. He changes us in a way that we could never even begin to contemplate. It's not just about believing in Jesus, but about letting Him change us. Jesus said, "I have come to set the captives free." That's you and me He's talking about day by day. For me, that wouldn't have happened thus far. And it wouldn't still be happening if I wasn't spending time in His Word, letting His Spirit breath His life into me. Awesome stuff – God's plan! God's Word is sharper than any two-edged sword. And He is the skilful surgeon who cuts out just as much as He needs to – through His word and His spirit – and leaves us healthy and whole and free. Pretty good plan, huh? God's Word … God's Spirit … God's way.

Once people get over the fact that the Bible isn't a bunch of do's and don'ts, the biggest thing that stops them from reading it is that it doesn't makes sense. One of the things that I'm really passionate about is, I guess, just being here with you today and knowing that through our time we've spent together (somehow), God's used that time to draw you closer to Him. Life's too short to live it without a passionate and a dynamic and a real and a beautiful relationship with Jesus. Some people may scoff at that. But deep down – right deep down in our spirit – we all hunger for God to touch us, for God to fill us, to give us His peace and His joy and His abundant life. And what's so sad for me is to see people living their lives as though all of God's blessing, as though God Himself is somehow a million miles away. When all along, He's closer, closer than even their deepest secrets of their hearts. This week on the program, we're looking at intimacy with God through His spirit and through His word. People make a mistake and say, "God is all about a bunch of rules and it's all about a bunch of doctrine and logic and so I've got to get all this head knowledge to know God." And hey, knowing God's word is fabulous. I make a living out of doing that. I try and let God use me to bless you by doing that. But there's more … there's God's Holy Spirit. If I just pick up His Bible and read it as a bunch of words and a bunch of rules and don't let God's Spirit work in me and lift the words off the page and put them into my heart, what I end up with is some sort of legalistic – religiously thing. Here, you and I are in the world that God created. Jesus in the flesh has been here and gone, He's promised to come back. But in the mean time God has actually left two things of Himself behind. Now sure, the world and the universe and all that's in it are God's but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the two things of God Himself that He's left here for us, here and now. What are they? The first is His Spirit, the promise of Jesus to His disciples and to you and to me (here and now) is to pour His Spirit out on us, to come and dwell in us. Through His Spirit God has left behind God Himself, the Spirit of God. And the second thing that God has left behind of Himself is His word, the Bible. Now many people cringe at that. But His word is His love letter to us, His story, His promises, His wisdom, His grace. And it's so sad to see people want more of God, to hunger for Him, to thirst for Him and they have a Bible on a shelf or in a cupboard somewhere and it's gathering dust. I often meet people like that and they see my enthusiasm for God, or they hear it in my voice and they say, "I wish I had that." No! I'm nothing special. In my own way, I'm just like you. Where do you get that real relationship with God that just bubbles over? And so I say to them, "When was the last time you read your Bible?" Hush … silence. The Bible (in my neck of the woods) is looked at with mistrust and negative connotations, fundamentalism, conservatism. There are more 'isms' poked at the Bible that we could poke a stick at. And so I say to people, "If God wrote you a love letter, wouldn't you want to read it?" Well, He did and it's called the Bible. "Yeah well, I don't understand the Bible. The Bible's hard to read. It's all over the place, who's Ephraim, what was Babylon all about? And who was Paul? And why did Jesus tell a story about a Samaritan? None of it makes sense to me so I just gave up. It was too hard." I understand that … so I'm going to share just four practical tips with you that anyone can implement and do in their lives to read God's love letter. And the first one is – to pray in the Spirit. The Bible says of itself that the Holy Spirit inspired every word that it contains. If the Holy Spirit inspired and wrote the thing through men and women, then the Holy Spirit can open it up and speak it into your heart and into my heart. And I tell you the truth, I never open that book without first asking Him, the Holy Spirit, to open it up for me. Dear Holy Spirit, I'm about to read your word, and I need you to open it up. And I need you to lift the words off the page. And I need you to feed them into my spirit because if they're just words, they're useless. But these are God's words and God I need you to feed me with your word. That's the first thing, to pray in the spirit to ask God himself to open the book for you. The second one is nowhere near as spiritual – get a Bible dictionary. What's that? You can get a Bible dictionary that's thin and small paperback. You can get one that's 27 volumes. I've got one that's 27 volumes but I've also got one that's one volume and it's called, "The Holman Bible Dictionary". And I just had a look online and it's under $50.00 or less than a pair of shoes. And it has pictures and diagrams and maps so when you come to read about Ephraim you can read two paragraphs and you know who or what Ephraim is. And when you come to read about Samaria or the Temple or David or Ruth, you can go a look those people up or those places up and just in a short time, all of a sudden we know what it's talking about. A Bible dictionary is a wonderful tool. As I said I use the Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary. It's under fifty bucks and there are stacks of them online. You can go to www.biblegateway.com. It has a whole bunch of Bible dictionaries online to help explain things and issues and concepts that we may not understand because the Bible was written in different times and different cultures. Pray in the spirit, get a Bible dictionary. The third one, – get a Bible translation that makes sense to you. People sometimes ask me, "What's the best translation? Which one should I have?" The one that you'll read is my answer. I have several. I love the New International Version. I love the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version). I love the Contemporary English Version. I love The Message By Eugene Petersen, I love that, it's really contemporary. So I have a few, I rely on the NRSV as my favourite translation but hey, that's me. It may not work for you. You may prefer an NIV. And one of the things that we can do is get a study Bible. A study Bible has an explanation about each book and what the context was that it was written in … about the author, it explains situations and has word references and maps and cross-references. They're really helpful. Get a Bible translation that makes sense to you. And the fourth one is – get serious, do this every day. Just twenty minutes, some prayer time, reading God's word, listening to Him, praying again. Read it through book by book. We have on our website www.christianityworks.com some 'read me' plans. You can read from beginning to end. You can read in chronological sequence, you can read the Old Testament, the New Testament in parallel. Go to our website www.christianityworks.com and have a look at the Bible 'read me' plans. Come on – get serious! This is God wanting to talk to you. Let me ask you a question, are you hungry for God? Are you thirsty for God? Do you want to be filled with His Spirit? Well, get serious! Open His love letter and enjoy.

When you think about it God's gone to amazing lengths to preserve His love letter to us down through the centuries.  You know the Bible.  Yeah – that's it – His love letter. Sadly, these days we tend to send and receive very few letters. I mean personal letters, letters of friendship, and letters of love. There's something about receiving a personal letter in the mail. It's so much better than email, it has a stamp and a post-mark and you have to open it and then you sit down with a cup of tea and you read it. That friend who wrote it, you can see their handwriting, it's so personal, it's so wonderful! So much better than all the emails that flood in my in-tray. I wonder if you can ever remember receiving love letters. Well, what if we received a love letter that was thousands of years old, written by God himself and preserved down through the ages just for you, just for me, what if? That's what the Bible is; it's a love letter from God (sixty-six different books). Some of them stories, some of them songs and poems, some of them letters written to different groups of people at different times. Each one of them, written by someone that God handpicked – someone in whom He breathed His Spirit, someone to whom God spoke and was just the right person at the right time – this someone who listened to God and wrote one of the books, one of the sixty-six. Paul, the Apostle, wrote letters to Churches while he was in a dungeon on death row. Matthew and Mark and Luke and John wrote the four Gospels to different groups of people to tell them about Jesus. And God preserved them all over thousands of years from the first to the last with an incredible degree of historical accuracy. Before the printing press they were copied out by hand, by people called scribes. You know how thick a Bible is; it's a pretty big book. And you can imagine hundreds and thousands of scribes copying the Bible over and over and over again. It wasn't until the 30th of September 1452 that Johan Gutenberg's printing press published the first book on mass and that book was the Bible. Now, these days, when we look at all those different copies and translations and manuscripts there are almost no discrepancies in the hand copies and any that there are there are really minor and not very important. The Bible is this vast, amazing, confusing book, and story that begins right at the beginning with God creating the heavens and the earth. And tracks through the story of Israel in Egypt and their departure through the Red Sea and their forty years in the desert, into the promised land and all the turmoil and war, the exile and the return. And there are stories of people, Moses and David and Ruth and Esther and Paul and Timothy. And it's an account of God's Son, Jesus. And of the fledgling Church and the Book of Acts, the letters of Paul and Peter and John and others. This amazing array of God's stories spread over thousands of years, preserved for thousands of years more, now here, in your hand, in my hand to read. God's amazing love letter! Not a text-book, not a theological text, not a book of dry rules, not a book of dot points – but of stories and poems and people in pain and agony and fear, crying out to God. And people praising God and worshipping God, seeing God's hand in delivering them and protecting them. God's a heartbeat through it all, loving them. God's word's there for you and me, God's story there for you and me. God crying out through it all, 'I love you, I love you so much.' God's promises, God's power, God's mercy, God's wisdom all laid out in this vast story. This huge canvas which is a story of God touching people. It's the story of God revealing Himself. It's history; His story and not in a dry text, not just in words but through His Spirit. Every part of the Bible was inspired by God's Spirit. If we open that book and just read the words, we miss the point. But if we approach this love letter in prayer, in the Spirit of God and say, "God open it up to me. God, as I open it up speak to me today." The most awesome amazing spiritual reality happens as God pours His love and His spirit out through those pages into our hearts and our lives. People who stare at the Bible as some fundamentalist doctorial statement like Karl Marx's communist manifesto or Hitler's Mein Kampf, you miss the point or people who call themselves Christians who have a Bible or two or three or four that they never open, just collects dust. It's too hard to read or hard to understand, we miss the point. God's written a love letter. God's taken men and women and told their story and had them write it down and preserved it and put it in our hands to tell us about His love for us, "I love you." God is speaking to someone today; I believe that God today is crying out to you, reaching out from His heart into your heart saying, "I love you, read my love letter." Can I ask you a question? Do you want to know that love, deep in your spirit every minute of every day? Do you want to live through the turbulent and difficult and uncertain days knowing the promises of God in your spirit? Do want to have so much of that love in you that you can't contain it? That His love and His spirit just overflows from you into the lives of others? Are you so hungry for God that you ache? Are you so thirsty and parched and dry that you just have to drink? Then pick up His love letter for yourself, pray, "Lord, where do you want me to begin?" Follow His lead, follow His spirit. "Lord, now show me, now speak to me, now feed me because I need you." And He will show up and in those words of His love letter, you and I will experience and know and hear Him through His spirit. Father, I pray for each one of us today, pour your Spirit into us, give us a passion to open that love letter. And as we do, as we read the words, lift them up off the page and speak them into our hearts. Bring life, bring refreshing, bring peace, bring joy in Jesus Christ's name, we ask. Amen.    

No matter how much we want to believe that God is a God of grace, we all at some point end up living life as though He's a God of rules……the law of His Spirit and life can seem a long way off. When we talk about God, well that name "God" means so many different things to so many different people. Yesterday on the program, we looked at the notion that God is kind of a bunch of rules and sometimes people want to reduce Him down to being just that but that's not it. If God's a bunch of rules, then He's bad news not good news. It's an easy thing to do and some people do it, to pick up the Bible and read it as though it was a book of rules. And that's where people get this sort of Bible bashing, accusing, condemnatory form of religion. But that's not it. Jesus said: "I've come to set you free and if I set you free' said Jesus, 'then you're really free." (John 8:36) So how do we make sense of all that? If we read this book, the Bible, as the letter of the law then it's full of condemnation. But what about the spirit of the law? What does God mean by it all? And what about the law of the Spirit, which is what the Apostle Paul talks about? Is there really freedom in all of this? The way I try to understand that is looking at the three different ways that we can be a parent. To me there are three models: The first model is the model of being the tyrant dictator. I'm the dad or I'm the mum and these are the rules of the house. And if you don't like it, go and live somewhere else. It's rigid, it's inflexible, it's dictatorial and it doesn't work. We can force kids, I guess, to comply with rules but we can end up losing their hearts. We lose the relationship, we lose what it means to be a mum and a dad and a family. So that's one model, the tyrant dictator where being a parent is all about enforcing rules. At the other end of the scale, the second model is what I call the anarchistic model. No rules, anything goes. Messy room – fine. Stay up late – fine. Let the boyfriend or the girlfriend sleep over in the same room – fine. Smoke, drink, get drunk, be rude, be disrespectful, be lazy – fine. And that's the model where the parents abdicate responsibility, where there are no rules. Is that good for our kids? Is it a fun way to live as a family? The third model is the model that God always planned, the model of being a good parent. It's about love and relationship and affirming our kids, and caring for them, and honouring them, and respecting them. But at the same time setting some boundaries. Setting some rights and wrongs, saying, "No, in this house there are some rules". And letting them bump into those rules and live the consequences of bumping into those rules. Under those circumstances home is a place to live and to love and to learn. It's a place where it's okay to make mistakes and live out the consequences and still be forgiven and held and affirmed and nurtured. So the three models: the tyrant dictator, the anarchistic model and the good parent model. Which one makes sense? No one would advocate totalitarianism, no one would advocate anarchy, and it's pretty obvious, really. So why do we think that God is any different? Why do we say God is a dictator, God is a bunch of rules? It's easy to look at God that way but to do that is to miss the point. On the other hand, people try and see Him as a god of no rules, as a god who's being a sugar daddy and that's misses the point too. God's a good dad. God's a good parent, one that loves and wants to be in relationship with us, and wants to affirm us, and care for us, and honour us, and respect us. But still set boundaries of right and wrong. God's a good dad. And that's what the Apostle Paul's says when he writes: There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because the Law of the Spirit of life in Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. (Romans 8: 1-2) There's no condemnation because God has replaced the rules of law and said, "It's different now in Jesus because in Jesus you're one of my kids. In Jesus you're one of my family and I want to breathe my spirit of life into you. I want you to know that I honour and respect you and care for you." And in that relationship you get to grow because God did what the law, what a bunch of rules couldn't do – by sending His Son as a man to pay for sin on the cross. He did away with sin through Jesus so that the just requirements of the rules and the law could be met. And then He said, "Now that you're forgiven, walk in the Spirit. Here, let me breathe my Holy Spirit into you." Says God, "Be one of my kids." There's no condemnation because the law that God wants now is the law of the Spirit, the law of life, the law of being set free from rules and regulations dominating our lives. The law that says, "Jesus paid for our failures, we're forgiven." God's approach is the good dad model, not the tyrant, not to say there are no rules. God's a god that's a good dad. He's wiped the slate clean. I don't know whether you have stopped to let that sink in. But in Jesus, He's taken all our failures and all our sins and every mistake we've made, are making and will ever make. And He's wiped the slate clean and said, "There's a different law. There's a new law, there's a law of my Spirit of life and goodness and relationship with me." How does that work? You know when we have kids who are teenagers and they might be lazy, or they might be disrespectful, or they might be doing something wrong, or they mightn't be working hard enough at school. And when we put boundaries in place and part of that is, if they step over the boundary, there are consequences and there's punishment. It's painful for a while but when we accompany those boundaries with love they respond and they grow. It's amazing how relationship with them, honouring them, kindness, and gentleness affects them and they grow and they actually want to please. God knows that, that's what we're like, that's how He made us and that is why He forgives us and brings life and love rather than rules and regulations. Further down in that passage we just read, in Romans chapter 8, He says, For all who are lead by the Spirit of God are kids of God. You didn't receive a spirit of slavery and fear but a spirit of adoption so that we can cry out, "Dad". (Romans 8:14) God's word, the Bible, does set some boundaries; don't lie, don't steal, don't talk behind people's backs, and don't yell at people. Don't get angry with them and let that anger fester. Don't be critical. But when you look at those boundaries, you look at any of them and you say, "You know something, those boundaries make sense." And God even, somehow, sets these boundaries for our hearts that are designed to set us free. He says, "Go and forgive people." In a sense it's a boundary because He says, "If you don't forgive people, I'm not going to forgive you." But on the other hand it's an enormous freedom, when our hearts forgive other people, we are set free from what they've done. Yeah sure, God's word sets some boundaries but not many and they're good boundaries. And at the same time God's Spirit brings forgiveness. If you believe in Jesus, you are forgiven. And His spirit comes into our lives and ministers that forgiveness into our spirits, into our souls, into our hearts. God's Spirit comes into us and brings God's very presence into our lives, to change them, to make this faith real. That's why Paul talks about the rules and the regulations as the law of sin and death and the law of the Spirit as life. What a great Dad!

Sometimes we can look at God's Word – the Bible and think of it as a book of rules.  But it turns out that this notion that God is all about the letter of the law is way off the mark. Sometimes we can look at God's word, the Bible and think of it as a book of rules. But it turns out that this notion of God is all about the letter of the law is way off the mark. The law's a funny thing … some people say the law's an ass, it's something that we both love and we hate. On the one hand, when we see a serious crime committed like a child killed by a drunk driver or a murder or a rape or terrorism, we want the perpetrator to experience the full force of the law. On the other, sometimes the law does indeed seem to be an ass. When people apply the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law, we can end up with silly, sometimes damaging outcomes. In a sense that's how we think about God. If God was God, holy and righteous (whatever that meant,) then I knew that I fell short of that. And therefore, God must be a bunch of rules that I'd fallen foul of. But my hunch is that, I don't know. If we understand God that way well maybe we're missing the point. I wonder if you recognise any of these: I'm your Lord, your God and you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol or bow down and worship an idol. You shall not use the Lord's name in vain. You shall keep the Sabbath day of rest. You shall honour your father and your mother. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bare false witness against your neighbour. You shall not covert your neighbour's wife. (Exodus 20: 1-17) Well of course, we recognise those as probably the Ten Commandments – Gods law in a nutshell – the things that Moses brought down from the mountain on the tablets of stone. But actually, you may or may not know that in the Book of the Law (as the Jews understand the Law), which is the Books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, known as the Torah, there a 613 commandments and prohibitions. So the Ten Commandments are just like the top ten. Then there's another 603 commandments and prohibitions on top of that … do this, don't do that, don't do this, do that. Some of them make a lot of sense – don't kill, don't steal, don't commit adultery, and don't lie. There's a whole bunch of other ones that we look at now and they'd make our stomachs turn like animal sacrifices and all that sort of stuff, things that don't make a whole lot of sense to us, (here and now, today). I mean, could you imagine going to Church and taking some animal and slitting its throat? Probably they'd come and lock us up for doing that these days. So some of God's Laws come naturally. They make sense and others don't. Don't lie, don't cheat, don't bare false witness – they make sense but the temptation's always there. Just run your eyes down those ten and most people have broken at least one of those in just the last 24 hours let alone the other 603. In one sense, the law does make sense. Imagine what our society's would be like without the will of law. Look at what happened in Bosnia, look at what happened in Rwanda, look at what's happening in Israel and Lebanon. Without law there's anarchy and innocent people get hurt and there's pain and there's oppression. So the law does make sense but you can take it to extreme. Totalitarian law is ugly and oppressive. People's freedom is taken away. So the law is a great servant but a terrible master. But (and here's the but), it's easy to think of God's Law as being like a totalitarian regime. If God's God, He is the ultimate totalitarian because He's all-powerful, so who wants to have a part of that? Who wants to have some rule-based God that's got all the power? No, thank you very much. Well, in fact, there was a bunch of people called the Pharisees. They were a bunch of religious leaders in the 1st century who lived at the same time Jesus did and the word Pharisee comes from the Hebrew word 'to separate'. They were religious separatists and they took following God's Law, those 613 commandments and prohibitions, to the most absurd and extreme lengths. What do you think God would say about that? Is God a rule-based god? Is God a god that says, "Yes, there's someone following my law, I'm excited about that." This is what Jesus said to these Pharisees. He said: Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites because you tithe mint and dill and cumin but you neglect the weightier matters of the Law. Justice, mercy, faith, it's these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others, you blind guides, you strain out a gnat and you swallow a camel. (Matthew 23:23) What's this tithing of mint and dill and cumin all about? Well, these days we go to the supermarket and we buy a bunch of mint or we buy some dill or we buy a jar of cumin and we think so what? Back then, mint, dill and cumin were pretty high priced herbs and spices. There weren't take-aways on the local corner. So herbs and spices were important and tithing was part of Gods Law. Tithing was giving a tenth of your income to the priests to keep that whole priestly system in the temple and the synagogue and everything running and so everybody had to tithe. But Jesus is saying to these people: You hypocrites, you do the tithing, you do the external things but in your heart what about justice? In your heart, what about mercy? In your heart, what about faith? It's like straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel, you hypocrites. (Matthew 23:23) It seems to me that Jesus was much more interested in goodness, in relationship, in justice and mercy and faith. He didn't want to throw tithing out but to Him it wasn't the main game. To Him there was something much more important – what's going on in our hearts. Sure do the right thing and tithe and all that sort of stuff but there are some things that you should never, never neglect. Why are we talking about this stuff today? Because this week, we're starting a new series called Spirit and Word. Some people pick up the Bible and discover the letter of the law. They think that's what God is all about, and you can read the Bible that way. You can pick it up and read the 613 commandments and prohibitions and if we did that we'd be missing the point. On the other hand some people never pick up the Bible. 'Man, I'm walking in the Spirit, you know'. They believe they're getting inspiration direct from God and they're missing the point completely too. Paul writes to his junior minister, Timothy and he says: Every last bit of the Bible is inspired by God and it's there for our instruction and for our correction and for us to grow and to learn and to understand. (2 Timothy 3:16) That's why the Bible is called God's Word, it's God speaking to us. Maybe some people think, 'Oh no, that wacky fundamentalist sort of Christian thing, the Bible! Give me a break'. Part of me agrees with that because if we try and understand the Bible as just a bunch of rules, what we discover is that some apply to us today, like murder and adultery and stuff. But others, like the Levitical sacrificial system, no pork, no crustaceans, a whole bunch of stuff that doesn't. And we try and apply those rules and say, "God is a bunch of rules and if I work hard and I follow those rules, I'll make it into Heaven." Try and do that and it just doesn't make sense. It's where you get that Bible bashing, fundamentalist, oppressive, totalitarian religious thing from. But in that book, the heart of God is there. There's the Spirit of the Law, the gentle, powerful, breath of fresh air. That's what we're going to look at for the rest of the week on the program – His grace, His mercy, His love, His forgiveness, God's Spirit and God's Word.

We chug, chug, chug through life – and pretty soon, we're running on empty.  And then we try filling up with all sorts of different things.  But running on the wrong fuel can have disastrous consequences. In a world that's hungry for some sort of authentic spiritual reality. It just blows me away that God has a plan. He's always had a plan, that plan is to pour His Spirit out on us, His Holy Spirit, a flood tide of His life, His love, His presence, rivers of living water, an overflow of abundance. You think I'm going a bit over the top? Well they're God's words not mine. Sometimes in our day-to-day desert existence we get a puny view of God and His plan, but that doesn't change the fact that God is a god of overflowing abundance. And the biggest blessing of all is to be so immersed in Him and His Holy Spirit that we can't wipe the smile off our face and adulation out of our hearts. That's why He urges us, "Go on, go on being filled with the Holy Spirit." We all go through times in our lives when God seems a long way off and the further away He seems the smaller He looks. The day-to-day reality crowds our vision, God ends up being a small speck somewhere in the landscape, you know what I'm talking about? Recently I had a large job to do, it was a huge job, now I'm involved full-time in this ministry of Christianityworks but I still do some IT consulting work because it helps us to cover the costs of producing these radio programs. And for four months I worked 12 hours a day and had literally only about 3 days off that whole time. Now don't try this at home, it is not a balanced existence, it's not to be recommended and you can't sustain that sort of thing but it was a season, it was something that I had to travel through. Fatigue and exhaustion really knock you around physically, emotionally and spiritually. I have to tell you some days, God felt like He was a long, long way away. So what does it mean, "go on being filled with the Holy Spirit". It's easy to say but when life's not easy you don't feel very spiritual, some days maybe we even despair, where is God? But what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit when life's tough? Because that's exactly the time that we do need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. There's an interesting story of Jesus when He's ministering and Jairus the leader of the synagogue, whose daughter is dying comes to Him and there are crowds everywhere and he presses through and says, "My daughter's dying, quick I need you to come." But there's this other person, this woman, this woman who'd been bleeding for 12 years, she's unclean, she's an outcast, she's spent all her money on Doctors, she's in absolute despair and she hears that Jesus is in town and this is what she does. When Jesus crossed back over by the boat from the other side of the lake a large crowd gathered around Him while He was at the lake then one of the synagogue rulers named Jairus came there, he saw Jesus and fell at His feet and pleaded earnestly with Him, "My little girl is dying, please come and put your hands on her so that she'll be healed and live." So Jesus went with him and this large crowd followed and pressed around Him and a woman was there who'd been bleeding for twelve years. She'd suffered so much under the care of so many Doctors and she'd spent all she had and instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard about Jesus she came up behind Him in the crowd and just touched His cloak because she thought, ' if I just touch His clothes I'll be healed.' Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering and at once Jesus realised that power had gone out from Him. He turned around to the crowd and said, "Who touched my clothes?" His disciples went, "Come on, there's a whole crowd pressing in against you and you ask who touched me?" But Jesus kept looking around to see who'd done it and then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at His feet trembling with fear. She told Him the whole story. He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go on, go in peace and be freed from your suffering. That power that flowed out of Jesus when she touched Him in faith was the power of the Holy Spirit and a small desperate seed of faith is all it took. It was an act of sheer desperation, just a single touch and a desperate faith. "Go on being filled with the Holy Spirit." Paul writes that, the Apostle, in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 18. He says: Don't get drunk on wine it leads to debauchery, instead go on being filled with the Holy Spirit. Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and sing spiritual songs and sing and make music in your heart to God, always giving thanks to the Father for everything in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ. We can try and fill ourselves with all sorts of stuff. Here Paul says, don't try and fill up with wine, that's not where it's at. Shopping doesn't soothe your soul. Winning at work doesn't make you happy. Don't chase after all those things; instead be filled with the Holy Spirit. Do things like reading God's word and singing hymns and songs and making music to God in your heart. God's given us the ability to sing in our hearts maybe you haven't got such a great voice, that's okay, God loves your voice. When you and I worship Him from our hearts, when we sing and we say, "Praise you God," we just sing the melody in our hearts. God is overjoyed because we're worshipping Him and that's how we end up getting filled with the Spirit by doing the simple things of drawing close to Him every day. Just the simple basic things, spending just a little bit of quiet time every day, praying and asking Him and bring Him our needs and worshipping Him. He says in His word, "If we draw close to Him, He will draw close to us." My experience is that every day I need to do that because every day I get filled with His spirit afresh and I pour that out to other people, other people benefit from that and I get to the end of the day and I think, "I need some more of what God's got, I'm addicted to the Holy Spirit. I'm addicted to His joy and peace and His wonder and awe." Be filled with the Spirit, deliberately do the things that will reach out and touch Jesus, press through the crowd and the clutter of every day life, through adversity and pain and worship Him anyway. Pray anyway, make a melody in your heart to Him anyway. Lord I don't feel like worshipping you today but I will anyway. God seems so small on those days, such a long way off and our faith feels so small like the size of a mustard seed but what happens? What happens when we reach out through the crowd and the clutter with just the smallest bit of desperate faith and touch Him? Immediately Jesus felt the power go out of Him. The Holy Spirit, day after day wants to do that as we touch Jesus. When we do the little things to draw closer to Him, He will draw close to us, to fill us day by day, to flow through us, to re-fill us to flow out, to re-fill us in the process to be changed, healed, and transformed. That's the plan for the Holy Spirit and you.

The biggest thing that keeps us from drawing close to God is the fear of condemnation.  He's perfect and I'm not - so I'm in trouble.  Makes sense.  But fortunately, God's grace isn't logical. The biggest fear I ever had of getting close to God was the fear of judgement and condemnation. I didn't understand what Holy meant but I understood that if God was God then He was holy and He was good and He was perfect and I wasn't. And so the only logical thing for God to do if I let Him get close to me was to judge me. I could just hear Him, "Well now let's have a look at your ledger, hmm, no you're not worthy. No you're not good enough, no go over there and sit in the corner." That would be logical, it would be fair too, but fortunately, fortunately God's grace isn't logical and His mercy isn't fair, maybe that's why they call it the Good News. It's a bit of a dilemma isn't it? Because when we look in the mirror we know that there are things that we're doing wrong and when we talk about the Holy Spirit and Holy God, holiness means that God is perfect that's why this week we're having a look at the Holy Spirit and me. Who or what is the Holy Spirit? And if I'm meant to get close to God, which I am and you are, how do we do that? When God and His Spirit is holy, perfect and I'm not and you're not. The Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood of the three persons who are God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit and I guess that's because we can understand Dad, we can understand Jesus the Son but we don't have a picture in our heads about this Holy Spirit. Earlier on this week we saw that it was an amazing part of Gods plan for us to have a really close intimacy with God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit and Gods desire to take our life, which is sometimes a desert and to bring it to life, to put rivers of living water through it. To fill it with peace and joy and life, that's what Gods plan, is and it comes to life in us and through us, through His spirit, His holy spirit but me, I look at God and I'm just not up to it. Now some people these days would laugh at that, "Come on Berni. We're all good enough, if it feels good – do it. We eat and drink for tomorrow we die so let's just get on with it." But get those people in a quiet honest moment and that sense of deep inadequacy, of failure, of emptiness, of uncertainty, it's out there in plague proportions. And that very need is so often the thing that keeps us from drawing close to God, from seeking Him out and having an intimate real relationship with Him through the Holy Spirit who, over the last couple of days on the program we've seen that God promises us, if we believe in Jesus, if we give our lives over to Him, if we love Him and obey Him, He wants to fill us with the Holy Spirit. He wants to come and make His home in us through the Holy Spirit. This problem of us being imperfect and God being perfect, is something the Apostle Paul writes about. If you have a Bible you can check it out later in Romans, chapters 7 and 8. He writes something along these lines, he says: "You know what my problem is, I know what's good and I know what's bad and I want to do what's good but the problem is that I can want to do what's good but I just cant do it, in fact this is how it works for me, whenever I want to do good, evil is right here with me. There's nothing good in me," says Paul, "Nothing, I'm so wretched and pitiful. Who'll save me?" Thank God Jesus will. In fact," he writes, "there's no condemnation for those who believe in Jesus. None because in Jesus God did something that rules and regulations can't do. He did away with sin because Jesus paid the price with His own body on the cross and now that struggle between good and evil isn't my problem anymore because Jesus set me free from that. So here's the choice that I have, if I set my heart and my mind on things that are wrong, that's where I'll end up, an enemy of God but if I set my heart and mind on the things of God, on the things of His spirit, that's where I'll end up, with abundant life. It's not a self-help program anymore, if I draw close to the Holy Spirit, He's the one that changes me, He's the one that brings life to my otherwise dead body, He's the one that makes the freedom that Jesus bought for me on the cross a reality here and now in my life today." Isn't that great, Paul's coming to a realisation. I mean, here's a man, God gets him to write almost half the books in the New Testament, he has the same problem that you and I do. He knows what's good, he'd love to do it, he just can't and that's our problem. The self-help program doesn't work. We can pedal and struggle and try but ultimately we can't change ourselves. Paul is saying here, "You know something; I've finally figured it out. Even though I've made mistakes, even though I continue to make mistakes, I believe in Jesus and Jesus is my salvation and Jesus is the one through whom God forgives me and because of Jesus dying on the cross and rising again, you know something, I go to God and there's no condemnation because Jesus paid the price for me. Now I have a choice to live; now I can do one of two things. I can either set my mind and my heart on things that are wrong or set my mind and my heart on the Holy Spirit and when I set my mind and my heart on the Holy Spirit, He changes me from the inside out, He changes me." And that's been my experience. I get so much joy from God. So much peace, so much life, so much enthusiasm, so much strength, so much power that I can't conjure up on my own. Power to be humble, power to be honest, power to be decent. Don't get me wrong, I'm not perfect and I never will be until that day when I stand before God but God is busy changing me from the inside out and that's the way it works. And you know the days when I really, really make a mess of it, they're the days when I haven't set my heart on Him. They're the days when I haven't stopped and rested and just prayed and spent some time with His word in the morning and set my heart and my focus for the day on Him. Come on, God wants to change us, God wants to give us power and life through His spirit and the message of the Bible is that it is not a self-help program. It's about setting our hearts and our minds on the Spirit and walking in the Spirit, spending that time with Him in the mornings, walking with Him during the days, worshipping God, making melodies in our hearts to Him. Thanking Him, turning to Him in every circumstance, every step, every situation, every struggle, every victory He changes us. He heals us from the inside out instead of us trying to change ourselves from the outside in but not only does He change us, He imparts Gods forgiveness into our spirit so that we know, that we know, that we know that we're forgiven. This is what Paul writes in the same chapter that we just read over, Romans. "We that are led by the Spirit of God are God's kids and God didn't give us a spirit of slavery so that we'd fall back into fear but He gave us a spirit of adoption so that we can cry out 'my God, my Dad', that's the very spirit of God bearing witness in our spirits, that we're His kids." Father it is hard sometimes for us to accept your forgiveness and to know it. I pray in the name of Jesus Christ that you would pour your Spirit into us right now, that you would witness your love to us through your Spirit, Lord that you would open our hearts and blow us away with your awesome wonder and joy and power through your Holy Spirit. Father I ask it in Jesus name.

The only way we really get to know someone is to live with them. Problem is that today, that can just mean shacking up. But God has a plan to make His home in us – and it's so much more than what the world has to offer. The only way really to know someone is to live with them in the same house, day after day, year after year. Boy meets girl and they get engaged, they get married and on their honeymoon they think they already know each other but the reality is they don't really and they're going to spend the rest of their lives trying to figure one another out. That's the wonderful mystery of marriage. When I signed up with Jesus, when I made that decision to give my life to Him, to follow Him, I thought, "I just don't want some Sunday religion thing, I want to know Him and the only way to know someone is to live with them." Nowadays living together, couples just moving in, is an accepted part of life in our society. Many people decide never to get married at all. In any case the whole marriage thing, well it ain't what it used to be, somewhere between a third and a half of all marriages end in divorce. The idea is that you move in on your own terms without any permanent commitment and if you want you can leave, it's the way of the world, it's a lifestyle choice. Sounds good until you talk to someone who's been through divorce or been through a separation, when a man and a woman share each others homes and lives and souls and bodies and when they sleep in the same bed they become one flesh, that's Gods plan. The two become one and when you tear that apart it hurts something terrible, it's an unbelievable pain. So what about God? If we want to know Him we have to live with Him and that's the way it goes but what does that plan look like? What if it ends up in divorce? How do we live with God? Jesus has a plan, it's a beautiful, eternal, wonderful plan for you and me to get to know Him. And it's not like the worlds plan that says, "Stay as long as you feel like it." It's a perfect plan, it's a plan made on God's terms and not ours. Have a look at this, this is what Jesus said. We looked at this yesterday and I'd like to look at it again today. He says, "If you love me you'll obey what I command and I'll ask the Father and He will give you another counsellor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. The world can't accept this spirit because it doesn't see Him or know Him but you know Him because He lives with you and He will be in you. I won't leave you as orphans, I'll come to you, before long the world won't see me anymore but you will because I live you'll live too and on that day you will realise that I am in my Father and you're in me and I'm in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them that one loves me and the one who loves me will be loved by my Dad and I too will love Him and show myself to Him and we will come and make a home with them." A promise of Jesus to be with us, in us, make His home with us through the Holy Spirit forever and ever and ever, but it's not for everyone. Let me say that very clearly, I was talking to a man a little while ago who wanted God but wanted to live his life on his own terms. He wanted the relationship but he didn't want to live it God's way. Look at what Jesus said again: If you love me you will obey my commandments and I will ask the Father and He will give you another counsellor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. In other words this is on Jesus terms. If you love me, you'll obey me. Jesus isn't some cuddly lap dog, some fluffy soft toy, not some buddy to perform tricks when we want Him to and to get us out of a pickle. God is God, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. Not a bunch of rules, not saying you've got to do all these things in order for me to love you but if we want to be in a relationship with Him we have to be in that relationship on Gods terms. He is looking for someone with a heart that's open to learn from Him: If you love me, if you really love me you will want to obey my commands and I'll send another comforter just like me. I love that second bit. I'll send you the Holy Spirit to be with you forever. Not shacking up, not a try before you buy arrangement, I mean I accepted God as a teenager but as I grew up into adulthood I turned my back on Him, I wandered so far away I didn't even know if He still existed but He was still there in my hour of need because the promise of Jesus was: I'll be with you forever. And I'd accepted Him and for eighteen years I wandered in this wilderness and forgot all about Him but He didn't forget about me. And the third part of His promise, firstly that God will send us another counsellor, Holy Spirit who's just like Jesus. The second part is that He will be with us forever; the third part is a promise of intimacy. Jesus says, "I won't leave you as orphans, I'll come to you. The world won't see me but you will and I'll be in Dad and you'll be in me and we'll be together and I'll come and Dad and I and the Holy Spirit will make our home with you." That's the language of marriage, that's the language of intimacy. The promise is the presence of God in us through the Holy Spirit. Jesus, Dad, the Holy Spirit making their home, living together in us forever. When you think about a husband and wife they share every room in the house, they share their body and their soul, it's the same with Jesus but deeper. With the Holy Spirit we get to share our spirit with Him, that deepest, deepest part of us. Now some people want to keep Jesus out of this room or that room and then they wonder why there's no intimacy. "Well I want all of Jesus but I don't want Him in this part of my life" or "I still want to go off and do this and not obey Him" and think well, it's not working, that's because Jesus said: If you love me you'll do what I command. It's on His terms; the amazing thing is Jesus doesn't actually say "don't do this" very often. There's a handful of things that He says, "they're not good for you - don't do them" but if we want to go against them, if we want to be angry, if we want to criticise people, if we want to lie or cheat or be dishonest, we're not going to know this peace and this intimacy and this relationship. Will we let Jesus and the Holy Spirit into every room in our lives, work, school, homes, thoughts, dreams, hopes, fears, anxieties, everything? Will we have a relationship where there's no room that we don't let Him into? No part of our lives that we don't share with Him, the Holy Spirit and me, the Holy Spirit and you. God has a plan, that plan is for a wonderful intimacy, that plan is for Him to set up His home in me, in you and to live together not for a month or a year or five years or ten years until we divorce but forever and ever and ever. And even when you and I blunder and we go off on our own and make mistakes, Jesus never forsakes us, He never leaves us, never goes away because His promise that when we accept Him, He will come and dwell in us forever and ever and ever. The Holy Spirit is how He does it; the Holy Spirit is God in us.

Jesus said some strange things.  Just before He was crucified He said to His disciples – 'You know something it's good for you that I'm going away.'  Really? What was that all about? When life is parched and dry, empty and hollow Jesus has a plan. That plan is to pour fresh living water into us, deep, deep inside. His plan is to fill us to overflowing with the Holy Spirit. Sounds all religious doesn't it? But here's the thing I really like about Jesus. He's not so much into ritual and religion.  No not that at all. There's another 'R' word that's much, much higher on His list. Relationship… and that's where the Holy Spirit comes in. But who or what is the Holy Spirit? What's He like? What's He about? Why does He exist at all? Well today let's check Him out. What did Jesus have to say about the Holy Spirit and what's the Holy Spirit got to do with you and me? Fresh living water is God's plan for a parched dry life. It's a great plan, in fact I think life is meant to get parched and dry and thirsty sometimes because God wants to make rivers in the desert and turn our lives into a fresh vibrant living life and the living water that He promises is God himself, God the Holy Spirit. Now God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are the three persons in the one God head. Don't ask me to explain it to you, it's a mystery. We don't fully understand why God is like that but we know that God is three persons in one. Now God the Father, Dad, as Jesus called Him which outraged the Jews, we have a picture of what a good dad is like. Maybe we all haven't had good dads but we understand what God is saying about Himself when He says, "I'm Dad." And Jesus, Jesus the Son, well we know what He's like because we've seen Him in the flesh. We can read about Him in the four Gospels, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John which are the accounts of Jesus life and all He did, the things He said. So we can picture Him. Tender hearted, He loved and healed and blessed and fed the outcasts. He hated religious hypocrisy, He suffered, He died, He rose again, we can read all about Him. We can in a sense see Him and hear Him. But the Holy Spirit, well He's not Father and He's not Son but He is spirit and holy and that's not easy to picture or to understand and sometimes I've heard people call Him "it". So who is He and what's He like? Jesus told us that. Jesus was about to be crucified, He'd lived for three, three and half years with His disciples, He'd been out doing His public ministry. He'd been out healing people and blessing people and preaching amazing sermons and just being Jesus and being God and being just the most wonderful, wonderful saviour. And they're about to go into this tough scary time because Jesus offended just a few people. Jesus showed up the religious hypocrites. Jesus went and healed people that the religious leaders wouldn't have even given a tuppence for. So there was this plot afoot for Him to be crucified because He was upsetting the religious apple cart and this is what He says to His disciples who, at that point in time, were fearing for their lives. Jesus had been telling them that He was going to be crucified, they were petrified, they saw this man who they knew to be God but He was going to be killed, what's that all about? And into that He speaks a promise, it's always what God does you know, we expect God to disappear when life gets tough, we think He's a million miles away and all of a sudden God shows up with a promise and here's the promise that Jesus had for them. He said, "If you love me you'll obey what I command and I'll ask the Father and He'll give you another counsellor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. The rest of the world can't accept Him because they don't see Him or know Him but you do because He lives with you and He'll be in you. I won't leave you as orphans." Jesus says, "I'll come to you. Before long the world won't see me anymore but you'll see me because I live, you will live too. On that day you'll realise that I'm in the Father and you are in me and I am in you. Whoever has my commands and obeys them he is the one who loves me and he who loves me will be loved by my Father and I'll love them too and show myself to you and I'll come and make my home with you as will the Father." Jesus promises another counselor, another comforter, another one just like me literally is what the words say in the Greek. So all of a sudden we know what the Holy Spirit is like, the Holy Spirit is just like Jesus. Jesus was crucified, He rose again, He went back to be with Dad in heaven and the disciples really didn't understand what was happening, what was going to happen, they were devastated. And into that Jesus says: This Holy Spirit I'm going to send, this other advocate, this other comforter who's just like me, it's not for everyone, it's not for everyone in the world because a whole bunch of people wont get it but if you love Me, if you follow Me, if you give your life to Me, if you're prepared to die for Me the way I am for you then I will send you another one just like me and we will come and make a home in you. I'm in my Father, you're in Me. You know this close and tender and wonderful relationship with God and the Holy Spirit is God in us dwelling, abiding, never leaving, never getting up in a huff and moving out. No that's not what Jesus said, "If you love me you'll obey what I command and I will ask the Father and He will give you another counselor to be with you forever." Just let's think about that for a moment. Jesus is saying, "God is not some distant concept. God is not some idea or book or building. God is not the dry, boring religious patriarch that we might expect. This God that I'm going to send you, God the Holy Spirit is just like Me." This Jesus who went into the tax collectors house and sat and had dinner with them, this Jesus who reached out and touched the outcast leper and healed him. This Jesus who looked the religious leaders in the eye and called them, "You brood of vipers. You hypocrites." This Holy Spirit is just like Jesus and in the same breath Jesus says, "Peace I leave with you and my peace I give to you. I don't give the way the world gives so don't let your hearts be troubled, don't let them be afraid." These disciples had everything to be afraid of, they were in fear of their own lives and Jesus said, "This Holy Spirit, this is Me coming to dwell in you and this Spirit that I'm giving you and putting into you and pouring out into your life will bring you peace and joy and living water in a parched land." In fact, Jesus said to them, "You know something, it's good for you that I'm going to go away because if I wasn't you wouldn't get the Holy Spirit." Isn't that awesome? Jesus is saying, "it's better that you should have the Holy Spirit than it is that you should have Me because the Holy Spirit can be with you 24x7 and the Father and I and the Spirit can dwell in you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without any physical limitations." This is an intimate, intimate desire of God to dwell in us, to give us joy and contentment. Father, I pray for each one of us, that you would just open our hearts and pour your Spirit in, in Jesus name.

So many people live out a spiritually parched existence and all along God has a plan – a plan of power, a plan of peace, a plan of intimacy, a plan……of abundant life. His name is the Holy Spirit. Sometimes life can feel, well, parched and dry. We can be doing all the right things – living life, being a parent, working, whatever it is we do – but it's as though we're giving out all the time and not drinking anything in. And we look at life and think, "Hang on, I'm doing all the right stuff. Why does it feel as though I'm running on empty?" And so people go looking in all sorts of weird and wonderful places to fill up again. Day spas, meditation, holidays, coffee shops, yoga, you name it and we look in some funny places for that … I don't know … spiritual reality. So, how thirsty are you? How dry, how parched do you feel? Let me invite you on a journey this week because as it turns out Jesus understands that dry and parched and thirsty thing, and my hunch is He has a plan. It's funny reality, but living life can drain the life out of us, it's a paradox isn't it? But it's true, whether you do work or study or maybe work at home, you're a husband or a wife or mum or a dad or a volunteer or doing all the good things in life that we do. Giving out like we're meant to do, it's all great, but you can stand back and you take a look at that – all the things that we do in life, that stuff together that we call life – and even in the midst of all that good stuff there can be something missing. We live in a world that's thirsty for a spiritual reality. There's a hunger in so many people's lives and can I say, even in people who say, "I believe in Jesus." There can be emptiness and dryness and an unsettled feeling to say, "I'm doing all these things but there's something missing, there's some spiritual reality that's not in the puzzle and until that particular piece of the puzzle is there, I'm not whole, I'm not complete." I wonder if you know anyone like that? Our soul and our spirit can feel like a dry, parched land, like a desert and we need to drink in that authentic something, a deep draft of fresh, clear, living water. I wonder if it wasn't always part of God's plan that we need that something, that we need Him. Have a listen to what He writes. He says in the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament: I will make rivers flow on the barren heights and springs within the valleys. I'll turn the desert into pools of water and the parched ground into springs. I will put in the desert the cedar and the acacia and the myrtle and the olive. I'll set pines in the wasteland, the fir and the cypress together, so that people may see and know and may consider and understand that the hand of God has done this, that the Holy one has created it. See, God knows that life drains the life out of us, God knows that sometimes our life is like that parched land, like that desert and He turns around, through Isaiah and says: I want to make rivers flow, I want to put springs in that place, I want to turn your desert into pools of water and the parched ground into springs. I want to put trees and life into that void for you and the reason I want to do it is so that when you look at it, you'll know it was my hand that came to do this for you, that it was I who breathed life into you, fresh, living water. God uses this picture all through His word, through the Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament about the way that He pours life and His sprit into us. There's a beaut story when Jesus … His disciples had gone on into the town and He's at a well outside the town but He doesn't have a bucket to put down into the well and draw water. And there's a woman there, a Samaritan woman. Now the Jews and the Samaritans did not get on, I have to tell you, and this woman was out there in the middle of the day in the heat lugging water because she herself was an outcast. And He comes to the well and He says to her, "I need some water". This is the story: When this Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give me a drink?" because His disciples had gone into town to buy food and the Samaritan woman says to Him, "You're a Jew and I'm a Samaritan woman, how can you ask me for a drink?" Because the Jews didn't associate with the Samaritans, and Jesus answers her and says, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him for a drink and He would have given you living water.  She said, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with in the well it's so deep, where are you going to get this living water from? Are you greater than Jacob who made this well?" And Jesus answers her, "Everyone who drinks this water, you get thirsty again but whoever drinks the water that I'll give them will never thirst. Indeed the water that I will give them will become like a spring inside them, this water welling up to eternal life. And the woman said, "Sir, give me some of that water so that I won't get thirsty again and have to keep coming here to draw water." And Jesus says, "Let anyone who's thirsty come to Me and let the one who believes in Me drink and from their heart will flow rivers of living water." Now He said this about the Holy Spirit. So how thirsty are you? How much do you want this fresh, living water, the Spirit of God pouring into your life? Jesus said, "Come to Me and drink but it's not for everyone." He said, "Those who believe in Me can come to me and drink." So what about you? Do you want this living water? Let me pray for you right now. Father, sometimes when we hear what You have to say and we hear the words of Jesus it can all get a bit scary, we can get a bit apprehensive. God getting this close to us, I remember Father how scary that was for me and opening ourselves up and letting You pour your Spirit into us in abundance, we can get apprehensive.   Father I pray for each of us right now. Lord, will you give us the peace to know that what we just read and what we just saw is You speaking to us in a supernatural way. Lord will You open us up to be filled up afresh today with your Holy Spirit, this fountain of living water. Father, we ask You in the name of Jesus to put that fountain inside us today. Lord, we want to have this fresh living water so that we are never, ever spiritually thirsty again. So that in an instant Father, we can turn to You and know that You are like a well in our hearts and in our souls and in our spirits to give us fresh life. Father we ask for this, to be filled with Your spirit in Jesus Christs name. Amen. It's an amazing thing that when we are in the desert, when our lives are dry, when we think that God has disappeared, that's the very time that He shows up – like He has today through His Word – and makes a promise. And that promise is very simply this, He wants to turn our desert into a rich, abundant valley of life. The promise is this, that if we believe in Him we can go to Him and say, "Father, give me this fresh living water, give me this well inside of me. Fill me to overflowing with the Holy Spirit so that every minute of every day I can know that you are in this place."

We live in a crazy, chaotic and confusing world. I mean, if you were God, how would you keep a track of it all? Would you even bother? And when it comes to the little problems, even the big problems, in the lives of people like you and me, well, where would you find the time and the energy to deal with those? I'm so excited to be with you again today. Here we are at the end of another week. I don't know about your week but mine's been pretty busy. In fact you look around at all of the things that are going on in our own lives, the kind of wider community and globally; six and a half billion people, and it just seems like utter chaos. I was in India just one year ago (where a billion of those people live) and the crowds and the poverty and the chaos, they were kind of sad and exciting and mind-blowing all at the same time. I mean if you were God how would you cope with all of that? You and I can't because we're not God. We're flat out coping with our little corner of the world, right? We see the high-profile prominent people in the world, and somehow we get this idea, well, God would notice them but not me, not in all this chaos and noise. God would notice Billy Graham or the Pope, or George Bush or Bono, but not me. What do you think? When you ask people a question like that you discover that there are two ways of knowing the answer. One is in our head. One means that we can recite the answer; one means that we can even argue it. Maybe I can quote the scripture verse that say no, no, that's not true, God notices all of us. I can know that in my head. The other way of knowing it, is in our hearts. If you know it in your heart you live by it. If you know it in your heart it makes a difference to the way you see the world. Well what about you? If I asked you, does God notice and care about and help little people like you and me, what would you answer? Would you know it in your head or would you know it in your heart? There's plenty of people who know the answer in their heads but far fewer who know it in their hearts. Well if God is God, of course He notices each individual, of course He cares, that's one way of knowing it. But do you know in your heart that it's true of God and you? When fear comes your way, when adversity comes your way, when uncertainty comes your way, when disappointment comes your way, does something in your heart go, "It's okay because God is in this place with me?" Is there a quiet, beautiful voice breathing into your spirit saying, "I love you, don't be afraid, I love you, don't be afraid?" If so, you know it in your heart, if not, you don't. Jesus knew but we need to know in our hearts that God knows what's going on in our lives, that God cares about what's going on in our lives, that God can cope with what's going on in our lives, that God is not surprised with what is going on in our lives. Jesus knew we needed to know that stuff. He was talking to some of his followers and He was saying, "Listen don't be afraid. When I go, things are going to get tough. People are going to try and kill you and they might harm you. Don't be afraid of those people". And I'm sure the people He was talking to said to themselves, "Well Jesus that's easy for you to say, you seem to be able to do all these amazing miracles. It's really easy for you to say but what about us?" I wonder what those same people thought when they saw Jesus hanging on the cross? And He said: Look think of it this way, look at these two sparrows, what are they worth? What do you reckon, a penny, that's what they sell in the market for, right? Yet not even one, not one of them will fall to the ground without God knowing about it, and without God being in control, not a one. 'So', said Jesus, 'in God's eyes what are you worth? More than these two sparrows you think?' Well, people answered, of course we're worth more than that. Jesus said, 'Absolutely you are. He even knows how many hairs you have on your head. Even the hairs you have on your head are counted by God, so stop worrying.' (Matthew 10: 26-31) Now this is more than a metaphor. Do you know how many hairs you have on your head? I got to tell you, I don't. Maybe you're lucky and you're bald and you can tell exactly how many hairs you've got on you head. But I'm not and I wouldn't have a clue. God does though. God knows every detail of your life and mine – how many hairs we have on our head, the things were good at, the things were not, the things were scared of, the things inside of us that need healing, the challenges, the fears, the hopes, the dreams, the adversity. God knows each one and He knows it better than we do. Isn't that exciting? Doesn't that make your heart go, nothing in my life is hidden from God. God doesn't miss a thing. God has an eye for detail that we cannot begin to imagine. I love how Jesus talks in pictures. I love it when He talks about these two sparrows, and you look at two sparrows and you know if God is God, I have to be worth to God than two sparrows. And then He says: If these two sparrows drop from the sky, if just one of them dropped, God would be in control, God would notice, God wouldn't miss a thing. How much more are you worth to God? Don't be afraid. God just doesn't hang around with superstars, God hangs around with you. Whenever it's tough, whenever it's scary, whenever people come against you, whenever there's a battle, God sees that. God is in that place, in the middle of that. God knows who we are and what we need better than we do. Jesus said of Himself, "If you want to know what God's like look at me because I'm Him." So when you read in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and those four gospel accounts, the historical records of Jesus, and you see Him touching the leper, you see Him standing up for the prostitute, you see Him protecting the woman caught in adultery, you see Him healing the sick. You know what He's saying when He's loving those little people? "This is what I'm like; this is how I care for little people." He didn't hang around with the religious leaders. He didn't hang around with the political leaders, He hung around with the little people. Have you ever read one of those gospels beginning to end? Matthew or Mark or Luke or John? I dare you. It's about a two to three-hour read to read one of them from beginning to end, and I dare you to read about Him. And when you see Him doing that stuff He's saying to you and me, here and now two thousand years on, on the other side of the world: This is what God's like. This is what I'm like. Come to me because you are worth so much more than the sparrows, than the mountains, than the oceans, than the seas and the whole plant and the whole galaxy. You're worth more than all of the stars in the universe to me. I know what's going on in your life, I care, I want to be a part of that with you. I believe God wants us to know that in our hearts today. You, today, here and now, do you know, have you heard? Have you heard him whisper in your life, "I love you so much?" No matter who you are, what you've done, what life has done to you, how good, how bad, how happy, how sad, how wonderful, how horrible you are and your life is, today – here and now, God wants you to know something in your heart. Not only does He love you, not only did He send Jesus to die for you, He knows everything happening in your life and mine. He wants to be a player. He wants to help. He wants to love. He wants to heal. He wants us to have peace when we have no right to have peace. He wants us to have hope when we have no right to have hope. He wants us to have joy when we have no right to have joy. He wants you and me to know that in our heart. And my prayer for you is that right now God's Holy Spirit will drop that truth into your heart for ever and ever and ever.

It's easy to look at some people and even at ourselves quite frankly and think, if God were going to use anyone for good it wouldn't be that one. It could never be me! Funny how quickly we are to underestimate what God can do, through bog ordinary people like you and me. Most of us would agree that war is a horrible, ugly thing. So, what motivates people to join the armed forces? I spent ten years as an officer in the Australian regular army. For me, well I was young, it was an adventure, it was about excitement. But what about a Roman Centurion in the first century AD? What motivated him? Would have been a tough gig, an officer in an army occupying a foreign land. The Roman Empire of course ruled the known world at that time. In fact if God was God and sent his son Jesus as a Jew, the last person you would ever expect God to use would be a Roman Officer, don't you think? Well think again, because God has this habit of doing things through people that you and I probably wouldn't have a bar of. Cool is a very, very important quality and commodity these days. It's about acceptance, it's about funkiness, it's about aspiration. Cool, is well … it's cool. And if you're not … you just aren't. Ask any teenage kid and they'll tell you, cool is an incredibly important thing. It's everything. Adults, we're into cool as well. Things, people, we judge them, if they're cool and acceptable we like them if they're not, they're not. We do that, don't we? So if we were expecting God to use someone, if God is God and God is doing something good in the world and God is touching people's lives, we would expect that He would use one of the cool people. Would He use a Roman Centurion, a soldier and officer? Well not if you're a first century Jew, I mean God is the God of the Jews. God was the God who chose Israel to be His chosen people. And Roman Centurions, Roman soldiers were a brutal occupying force. If I were a Jew in the first century I would definitely not be happy with God using a Roman Centurion to do something. But the scary thing is God did exactly that. He was a man called Cornelius, and he lived in Caesarea, a port city on the Mediterranean. And it says that an angel appeared to him and this is what happened. The angel says Cornelius! And Cornelius stares at the angel in absolute terror. This is what the angel says: Your prayers and your giving to the poor have ascended as a memorial before God. Isn't that an interesting thing for an angel to say to a Roman Centurion? Your prayers and your giving to the poor have risen up and ascended and they're like a memorial before God. And then the angel gives him some instructions. He says: Look send some people over to a place called Joppa, to where this man Peter the Apostle is, and get him to come over here and tell you about this Jesus. Recognise up until now the Jews thought that God was only for the Jews and Jesus had only come for them. I mean He was one of them. Jesus was a Jew and they figured well, if Jesus was the Messiah, not all of them believed it, but they said if Jesus is the Messiah surely He came for the chosen people for the Jews. God had a different plan. God came for you and me as well as the Jews. Because God loves us all. Now you have to understand this is a radical, radical notion. And God picks Cornelius and sends an angel to this Roman Centurion and his family. God picks Cornelius to be the first of the Gentiles, to receive the good news about Jesus. Now Peter is a Jew and it was a radical idea to him as well. But just at the same time as this angel was appearing in Caesarea to Cornelius, Peter was having a radical dream. You can read about it in the book of Acts Chapter 9. A dream that was opening him to the possibility of sending the good new to the Gentiles. And so the men came to Joppa and they knocked on Peter's door and Peter was ready to go and he went back to Caesarea with them. And he sat everyone in Cornelius's household down and he told them all about Jesus. And it says in the book of Acts, while Peter was still speaking the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who heard the word – Cornelius, his family, his servants, his whole household. The Jews who were there were astounded, that God had poured his spirit out on the Gentiles as well. And subsequently the Apostle Peter goes back to the other Apostles and says, "Look this is what happened guys … what do you reckon, is this legit?" They had to talk about it; they had to think through their theology and say do you think we should let God go to the Gentiles as well? And yet God had this plan. God had this plan to pour his love out to you and me as well as to all of the Jews. And you know what? You and I are a bit like those Jews that were there in Cornelius' house, they were surprised that God would use Cornelius in such a powerful way. You and I have preconceived ideas about what God should do and how He should do it and whom He should use, don't we? We look at some people and think, "Well God could never possibly use that person for any good." If you had asked Peter and the other Jewish followers of Jesus a few weeks before, would God do this, would God go to the Gentiles, would he use a Roman Centurion to do it? I bet you their answer would have been a resounding, "No, surely God could never use one of these brutal, Romans, to pour his love out." If someone asked you, "would God do something powerful through you?" What would you say? God is a big God, God uses little people, God makes some surprising choices. Berni Dymet was an IT Consultant; information technology is what I did. I was a tough, hard-nosed, materialistic, businessman. Berni becomes a Christian and today, tens if not hundreds of thousands of people are listening to this program in over sixty counties. Go figure!! God does some bizarre things that you and I would never, never, in a million years think that he would do. That is an exciting message. God doesn't care about our external packaging. God cares about our hearts, and he got the angel to say to Cornelius, your prayers and your giving to the poor, the things that you do in secret they have ascended as a memorial before God. What's a memorial? You know when you see a memorial to fallen soldiers for instance, it has all their names on it. And it stands above other things and separate from other things and it stands for a long time and it's something you notice, it commemorates them and you notice it. So what the angel said was to Cornelius, Gods noticed the way you pray in secret. Gods noticed the way you give money to the poor in secret, that's like a memorial in front of his eyes. When God was looking around for someone that He could use to be the first Gentile, this memorial with Cornelius's name was in front of God. It was there because Cornelius had a relationship with God. A Roman Centurion, for crying out loud, was doing this stuff. And when God was looking around for some little people like you and me to do something amazing to pour out his Holy Spirit on the Gentiles, absolutely radical, this memorial was in front of God's eyes. And God said, 'I know who I'll pick, I'll pick Cornelius, because Cornelius has a heart for me, Cornelius has a relationship for me, even though he's in an impossible job as a Centurion, Cornelius has bowed down before me'. And so when we take that step and say, "God, I want a relationship with you like what Cornelius had." And just quietly follow God, pray, adore Him, worship Him, do the things He asks us to do. That is like a memorial before God's eyes. And one day when God needs a little person just like you, to do something amazing that God has planned in His heart all along, that memorial will be in front of his eyes.

Being a mother would have to be one of the toughest jobs going around. And mums often feel that they go unnoticed, that nobody values their enormous sacrifice. Today we're going to meet a faithful mother, who, as it turned out, ended up having a huge impact in this world. Of all the jobs someone could have in life, have you ever wondered what would be the toughest one? I've had a chance to think about it and I reckon being a mother would be the hardest of all. Of course that's not an option to at least 50% of us. Being a Dad's hard sometimes too, of course. But I don't know, to me there's something so incredibly special and sacrificial about mums – carrying the child, the pain of childbirth, the night feeds and mostly these days, it's still the mum who stays at home with the teething and the dirty nappies, you know! Rewarding, but tough. And so often the mum has to put her career on hold, it must be really tough. So often mum just wants to be her own person for a while, have some adult conversation for a while. My hunch is that some days mums feel undervalued, ignored and forgotten by everyone. And yet you know the two sides of the motherhood coin, the sacrifice on the one hand and the reward on the other, they're so special. I think the sacrifice is so much a part of the reward, seeing the kids grow up, seeing them develop, seeing them become independent. And you mix mum's sacrifice in all of that, what must go on in a mothers heart who has borne this child? You get a sense of that as a Dad. But I think you'd agree being a mum is so very special. Through all those different stages, through bearing the child for nine months, through the pain of childbirth, and then the feeding, and the toddler, and the school, and the teenage years and the young adult. They all have different stages and different joys and different challenges. But they all along involve sacrifice. They all involve giving, making a long-term investment. And you know when I was a kid I never appreciated what my parents did for me, not even as a young adult. It's not until you kind of have to start making you own way in the world and bring your own children into the world that you realise the enormity of the sacrifices that your mum and dad made for you. And so much of being a mum is mundane, it's routine, it's a grind. Women often say no one notices, no one appreciates me. I do this stuff day after day, takes me all day sometimes half the night and no one appreciates me, no one even notices. Let me ask you a question, does God notice? I mean does God show up to that place? This week and last week on A Different Perspective, we've been going through a little group of programs called Little People Used by a Big God, because you know something? I think we need to know that God does show up. I think we need to know, and I think mums need to know in those difficult times God's in that place with you. He hasn't left, he hasn't departed, he knows exactly what's going on. God is in that place with you. I'd like to introduce you to two mums today. One's called Lois, and one is called Eunice. The Apostle Paul was responsible for telling much of the known world in the first century about Jesus. And he wrote almost half of the books in the New Testament of the Bible. You'd have to say Paul is right up there on the Bible "A" list. You name Abraham and Moses and David and the Apostle Peter and Paul, he's one of them. He's one important high profile dude. Did God notice Paul? Of course, He did. Paul was a superstar and yet along his journeys Paul meets a young man who effectively becomes his apprentice, a young minister. His name was Timothy. Now Timothy is not as well-known as Paul, he's not one of the "A" list names. You'd probably have to say Tim would be on the "B" list. Paul writes two letters to Timothy in the New Testament. They're letters of guidance from an old hand in ministry to this young fresh but really talent and gifted minister. And they're beautiful, warm and loving letters. In the second of those letters in Chapter 1:5, the Apostle Paul writes this verse. He said; I really, really want to see you again Tim, I'm reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois, and then your mum Eunice, and now lives in you. For this reason, let me remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you. (2 Timothy 1:4-5) So Paul writes to Tim and he remembers Tim's mother, Eunice. And he remembers Tim's Grandmother, Lois. This one verse is the only place in the whole of the Bible that Lois and Eunice appear. But what a beautiful reminder of the impact that a mum can have from one generation to the next. If Paul is on the "A" list and Tim is on the "B" list, well Lois and Eunice are really just extras. You know their names gets mentioned once. Yet Paul speaks of a beautiful faith that's in Timothy and he says, "Look you know where that faith came from Timothy? It came from your grandmother Lois then she passed it on to your mother Eunice, and your mum Eunice she passed that faith Tim, on to you." And young Timothy ends up impacting hundreds even thousands of people's lives with God's love. Being a mum is one heck of a sacrifice. It's an investment that lives on. I imagine that when Lois was bringing up her young daughter Eunice, I imagine there were some tough days. There were no disposable nappies in those days. I imagine that when Eunice was a teenager, Lois had problems with her and yet somehow through all of that time Lois talked to her about God. Lois passed her faith on to Eunice and then Eunice gave birth to Timothy. He was a boy, he did all the stuff that boys did. He probably did all the stuff that teenage boys did, all the stuff that maybe your teenage boys have done, and yet Eunice talked to him about God and passed her faith on. They experienced all the things that mums do today and then some. And yet Timothy went on to touch hundreds and even thousands of people with the love of Christ because of what Lois passed on to Eunice and what Eunice passed on to Timothy. Some days we wonder whether these kids that we've loved and sacrificed for, whether they will ever turn out okay. God's message to each mum today is that you have such an incredibly important job to do, from Lois to Eunice to Timothy to thousands of people. And on those days that days that you look at your teenagers and you just want to scream, on those days when you as a mother feel as though no one notices and no one cares and no one understands what you're going though. On those days, Jesus Christ is with you in that place, on those days He notices, on those days he wants you to taste and experience His love and encouragement for you. As you grow in your relationship with Him, as you develop a faith and a joy of knowing Jesus, you have the most incredible opportunity to put that seed in to your children, like Lois did for Eunice, like Eunice did for Timothy. And Lois and Eunice must have looked at that boy Timothy as he grew up into a young man and started doing things in the name of Jesus Christ. They must have said, 'What an amazing harvest, what an investment that was so worthwhile'. God uses little people, like Eunice, like Lois, to plant seeds, to serve children, to make them ready to go and do things that God wants them to do. He's a big God. He uses little people like you and me.

You and I are, well, we're us. But in 100 years' time, if we're lucky we'll be an unknown name on a family tree somewhere.  Nothing to make us stand out from the crowd. Probably, in a hundred years' time, we'll be completely forgotten. Or will we? Have you ever looked at your family tree? I have. My dad gave me a huge piece of paper with our family tree, going right back to the 1700's to a Duchess of Romania. Of course, I recognised my generation and my parents and my grand-parents, but to tell you the truth, that's about it. Just a long dry list of unimpressive names, pretty sad really. All people with lives. Who knows who they were? Two books in the Old Testament, 1 and 2 Chronicles are books that chronicle the history of Israel. And the first dozen or so chapters of 1 Chronicles is a long list of dry boring names, sound familiar? Now you get to 1 Chronicles, Chapter 4 and verse 9, and so far they've been through 425 different names. Then suddenly without explanation there's a brief biographical sketch given of a man called Jabez. It's like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room. What's going on there? We've been looking at what I call "superstar syndrome", you know, this notion that we all have great people that we admire, sports people media personalities, that's great. But the media kind of pumps them up and makes them larger than life. And we live in a culture of fame and superstardom. And one of the things that I really love about God is in stark contrast to that, He loves little people and He uses little people. The fact that there are big people, implies that we're little people, we're not as big, we're not as important, we're not as well-known, we're not as wealthy as some of those other people. And God delights in these so-called little people. Last week we talked about little people used by a big God, and I introduced you to some of the people in my life. People who in the world's eyes might be little people, average people like you and me. But for me, in my life, they were superstars and they still are and they always will be. Yesterday, we looked at a man called Jahaziel. And it's a real encouragement to see historically how God used this nobody, this little person this face in a sea of faces to bring enormous encouragement and guidance to the King, when they were about to be attacked by the Ethiopian army, which was a million strong. Today, we are going to look at Jabez because you go through all this whole family tree and the first dozen or so chapters of this book of 1 Chronicles. I got to tell you it's really dry reading. But all of a sudden name number 426 in Chapter 4 and verse 9 is a guy called Jabez. This is what it says: Now Jabez was honoured more than his brothers and his mum called him Jabez because it means I bore him in pain." (It's a good start to life, isn't it?) Jabez called on God saying, 'Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my borders, and that your mighty hand would be with me and that you would keep me from sin and I would cause no pain'. (1 Chronicles 4:9-10) Isn't it an interesting little biographical sketch that comes out in the middle of all these names? You know so and so begat so and so who begat so and so. And all of a sudden we hear about Jabez, and Jabez's name is Jabez because his Mum says, "I bore him in pain". Could you imagine if your mother or mine called us "You are a pain"? If I was given a name in the culture where the meaning of names is important and my name was "You are a pain" and my mother gave it to me, now there is a stunning start in life isn't it. And yet it says Jabez was honoured more than his brothers. There are so many people who think that their start in life has ruined their lives. Maybe you had a lousy upbringing, maybe your parents weren't the best, maybe you look at yourself in the mirror and you think I just don't look anything or maybe there's a health issue or a disability or something. We all have something in our lives, don't we? And we think, well you know I'm kind of handicapped, well you know I kind of can't do as well as the next person because I've got this in my background or I've go this in my past and you know what I'm talking about. God would have none of that. Here's this little person Jabez, it says that he was honoured more than his brothers. Why? Jabez prayed: God bless me, bless me indeed, God enlarge my borders, God I want your mighty hand to be with me and God stop me from doing stupid things so that I may cause no pain. Very specific prayer by Jabez. His name means, "I caused my mum pain" and he says, "But Lord I don't want to cause anyone else pain." Here's this man Jabez whoever he is, whoever he was, this is the only thing we know about him. And he humbled himself under God. He bowed down, he said, "God bless me." Question: What is Christianity all about? Is it doing good? Is it playing by the rules? Is it telling other people when they're not playing by the rules? Is it being superior? Is it being a superstar? Well, those things are sure what used to be high on my list of what I thought Christianity was about. But the more you look at it, it's not about being mighty, it's not about being superior, it's not about telling people what they're doing wrong. It's about doing what Jabez did – humbling ourselves. God I want you to be my God and me, I'll be your me. Lord I want your way, whatever you say goes. Change the things that are rotten in me Lord, let me be a blessing. Let me do good, God bless me, be with me. It's so normal, it's so ordinary, there's nothing super spiritual or super academic about any of this stuff. We've this tendency of separating the spiritual dimension from our life and this huge separate gap but yet here Jabez is saying God I want you to be in my life. It wasn't separate for Jabez. Lord, I had a lousy start, will you bless me, anyway? And it says the Lord honoured him more than his brothers. God will you enlarge my borders? Yes! Will you give me influence? Yes! God, will you come with me? Yes! God stop me from doing the stuff that will hurt others. Yes! And right after the passage I read to you it says this: And the Lord granted his requests. What do people expect out of life? Superstars? Well … 00001% of us might become superstars. Wealth? Well you get wealth and how happy does it make you? Me, I like this prayer by Jabez. In fact I pray this prayer from my heart to God almost every morning: Lord just give me a simple life, just bless me. And the borders, the borders I pray for that I want God to extend are the borders of this program and this message into different countries. Are the borders of these radio programs into tens and hundreds of thousands of people's hearts. People just like you! A quiet, simple, spiritual desire to have God in my life, not separate, not in a cupboard, not in a box, not in a Sunday morning church box, but here with me every day. Lord, bless me indeed today. Lord I just want to see you extend my boarders so I can touch more people for you. Lord I just want you to keep me from evil. Lord that I won't hurt anyone. Lord I want you to go with me; Your mighty hand to be with me all the time.  What a great prayer, and it's that prayer that distinguishes Jabez from the 425 names that came ahead of him, and from all the names that came after him in that long, long list. You and I, in thirty, forty or fifty years we will be forgotten. What will they write on your epitaph, what will they write on my epitaph? God honoured him, God honoured her more than their brothers or sisters? Well, that depends, you and I, we're just little people. But will be humble ourselves before a mighty God and let Him do great things through us?

So let me ask you a question. If God is God, does He speak? I mean, does He speak here and now to people like you and me? Interesting thought. Does He? It is great to be with you in a new week and look at life again from a different perspective. We live in a world of superstars. We suffer from celebrity syndrome. Many of the people we admire and aspire to, well, they're in the media, on TV in newspapers and the media tends to pump them up until they're larger than life. With so many people like you and me, we end up feeling like little people, as though somehow we're less significant. Maybe God's like that. Maybe He only shows up for superstars. Well last week, I introduced you to some superstars in my life, little people in the world's eyes. This week, I'd like to introduce you to some so-called little people in history who God used mightily. Let me take you back almost 3000 years to a time when a man by the name of Jehosaphat was the King of Judah. This is a time when Israel had split into two. And the ten tribes at the North were called Israel and the two tribes in the South were called Judah. And this King Jehosaphat, it's a weird name, isn't it. "Berni why are you doing this, why are you taking us back to the Bible and all these old-fashioned names. What's that got to do with today?" Well it depends on whether you see the Bible as a set of myths like Grimm's fairytales or Aesop's fables or a real historical account of what actually happened. And what I see is a real historical account of what actually happened that's where I am. So the story of how God did stuff with real people in real situations is His way of speaking to you and me, here and now. So humour me. Jehosaphat let's call him Josh. So Josh is one of the good guys, he honoured God and God blessed him and all the people and they had peace and rest. So Jehosaphat as King of Judah, had ten years of peace, there were no wars, it's a real blessing. Then all of a sudden the Ethiopian army, one million strong decides it's going to attack Judah. This is serious stuff; this is a war like the ones we see on TV only massive. An army of one million Ethiopians is about to march on Judah, and Judah has a much smaller army of only five hundred and eighty thousand. In the book of 2 Chronicles, Chapter 20 and verse 3 in the Old Testament it says that Josh was afraid, he was petrified, and he prayed. Nothing's really changed has it? People tend to pray when they are afraid, when they have loss or when a disaster happens. Anyway, Josh prayed and all the people gathered with him and they fasted and they prayed. It's a huge crowd, because they were taking this very seriously. They were saying "God this army of a million people is marching on us what are we going to do? We can be taken as slaves, we could be killed, the place could be burned down." And in this crowd in front of the King as they were praying was a man, just one face, called Jahaziel. Jaza we'll call him. There were thousand around him and somehow God chose him. The spirit of the Lord fell on Jaza like a bright light. Somehow deep inside him God empowered him. Now the nation of Judah had recognised prophets. These were men whose job it was to listen to what God was saying. They were gifted to speak on behalf of God, that was their gig. But not Jaza, Jaza was one of the little people. He was a nobody, and God did something. God got Jaza to stand up in front of the King and the whole of the nation of Judah and say something on behalf of God. Now remember the King isn't a King like we understand Kings to be today. The King has absolute power and authority. The King has power of life and death over everybody. But Jaza just senses that God has touched him. And in the middle of this tense situation in the middle of a nation and a King who are bowing down before God and they're petrified of the Ethiopian army marching on Judah. Jaza speaks barely hundred words. This is what it says in 2 Chronicles Chapter 20. The Spirit of the Lord came on Jahaziel and he said, "Listen all you inhabitants of Judah and you King Jehosaphat, God has something to say to you today. The message that God has for you is don't be afraid of this great army that's coming against you, the battle isn't yours the battle belongs to God. Tomorrow God down against them and the end of the valley, that's where they will be, this battle isn't for you to fight, take your positions, stand still and watch the victory that the Lord your God will win on your behalf." (2 Chronicles 20: 14-17) What courage must it have taken for Jaza to stand up and say something like that in front of the King, in front of a nation that was petrified? What if he got it wrong? They would stand there tomorrow at the battle and be defeated by a million strong army. And yet when Jaza got up and said this it rang true in the heart of the King. It rang true in the heart of the people who were afraid. And it goes on to say that the King and all the people bowed down and worshiped God and said thank you and praised God. It was an incredible encouragement to the nation of Judah. You see they were afraid, they were focusing on what they could see, not what they couldn't, because what they couldn't see was God. They were focusing on what they knew was marching over the hill, an army of a million men. God knew that. So God gets Jaza – a nobody, a little person, He raises up one of the very least so that the people would know that it hasn't come from the man, its come from God. Because what "nobody" would stand up in front of the King and say something as radical as this? And it gave them an instant encouragement. Here was a small person, used by a big God for a huge impact. There have been a few occasions in my walk with God where somebody has come along and given me a word of encouragement like that. And I've known instantly that it was from God. I remember on my last day at Bible College, I was just rearing to go, you know I want to do stuff for God and a man by the name of Mark came and spoke to me and he said, "Berni I just feel that God wants me to tell you, God is not in a hurry. He's not in a hurry." And that has just given me so much peace; it gave me the peace to wait until God was ready to use me in the way that He wanted to use me. We think God would never use me to do anything significant, but He does. Look at Jaza, one face in a crowd of nobodies. One face in the middle of a country that was in despair. And God, for some reason picks Jaza and pours his spirit out on this man. And the man stands up and speaks boldly and prophetically exactly the words of encouragement that God wanted him to speak. And the next day, if you read on in 2 Chronicles Chapter 20 exactly what he said comes to pass. God fights the battle for His people and they defeat this massive army without raising a finger. God does amazing things; God uses people we would never expect. What about you? Do you believe that God still speaks today? Do you believe that a small person like you or me could be used by a big God? Go on! Do you believe, do you have the faith, do you want to live your life serving a massive and wonderful and exciting and tender and loving God? God uses little people to do amazing things.

It's a harsh, cruel world out there, isn't it? And sometimes it seems that we live in a world devoid of encouragement. Some days, it feels as though all the encouragers that God ever created, have been wiped off the face of the earth. Completely extinct. And then you meet one. Wow! Thank God for the encouragers in this world. Amen? We've been looking this week at being a little person used by a big God, and in particular, I have been sharing some stories about some little people, who God has been using so mightily, in my life. A young man called Joseph in Africa, Max who works in the studio here with me, my wife, a silent servant. It's amazing how we suffer from superstar syndrome. We see all these larger than life media personalities, people who aren't really people, they're brands, and think, 'I can never be like that. I can't have significance like that', when all along, God has a crazy plan. He's looking for little people, little people like you and me, who He can use in the lives of others. I'd like to finish up this week as we look at significance by talking about a man in my life called 'Ton', as he likes to call himself. He is a few years my junior, but he is the most excellent encourager you will ever meet. Tony is this tall, gangly, curly redheaded guy and he himself would say, 'I'm no oil painting'. He's kind of right, he should be in radio with me. He's a Queenslander, that's a little bit like being a Yorkshire man in the U.K. or a Texan in the U.S., right? Queenslanders are kind of special, something different and wonderful about them. And he runs an advertising and design company. They do the most amazing, creative work. I met Tony when he was really, really down. He'd done some free concept work for a particular ministry who were doing a media campaign and they took some of that and then didn't use his company any more. God had really laid something on his heart at the time to support a media ministry, and one thing led to another and now he supports our ministry. Now he's on our board and he has this passion and fire for what we do. His creative company helps us with brochures and newsletters and just stuff that a ministry like this has to do. And as I said, they do the most wonderful creative work. We have recently put a website together, called www.whosjesus.com. They did all the printing and promotional stuff for that and it's just stunning. You know, the work they do is just wonderful. Now this guy was full of disappointment because he thought God was leading him down one path and that fell over, when all along God was getting him ready to work with us, to be with us. And in the middle of this disappointment, God was getting things ready for him to not only be a ministry supporter of Christianityworks, but also a personal friend and supporter to me. We live in a world where very few people encourage one another. Encouragers are like dinosaurs, they seem to be almost extinct, in the work place, where people give you the credit when credit is due. I was talking to a young man by the name of Mike and he is the assistant manager of a large organisation, well known and they just opened a large new iconic store in the middle of a large city and the regional manager visited and gave the credit to the store manager. The store manager, in reality didn't really do much. He left it all to his assistant manager, Mike. But the store manager never passed the credit on. The store manager never said to the regional manager, 'You know, this guy, Mike, has done such a good job we could never have done it without him'. Not so much as a 'thank you'! No, 'I could have never done it without you, Mike'. Have you ever noticed that? Sometimes it feels like we live in a world devoid of encouragement. Like you have been wiped off the face of the earth. And then God goes along and gives me Tony. Now Tony is a visionary guy. Tony lifts my gaze. I think big, this guy thinks huge. And in a ministry, when you are working day to day and you're managing the detail and the nitty gritty, sometimes you loose your strategic vision. Well, I organise to have coffee with Tony once every three, or four or five weeks and this man is so passionate for God. He focuses me, he lifts my gaze, he lifts my focus up to remember what God has really called us to do. So he doesn't just help the ministry, he encourages and builds me up. I don't know if you have ever thought about it, but being a person who does radio, who lives in a studio and does programs, you don't exactly have a million people around you. Not that I get lonely, but it is naturally a lonely way of working. Now fortunately for me, I am cut out to do that. But it is so wonderful to have Ton in my life, to get me over a cup of coffee and give me a shake and encourage me and bless me with his stories and pray for me and support me. Doesn't matter who we are, we all need that, and you know something, the people around us need that too. They are needful as well, they need support, they need encouragement, they need kind words, they need people to help them make connections, they need people who exercise their own gifts in their favour. This week I've spoken about four different people – Joseph, a young African man whom I met in the UK, who's been through the most horrendous life as a refugee on the run for his life, hunted like an animal. And he stepped into my life and has just blessed me. Because of Joseph, our programs are now going right across Africa. A gifted sound technician and producer Max, a knob twiddler, as I call him. You know, Max sits here in the studio every day with me and encourages me and blesses me with his gifts and abilities. A gifted, silent servant, in my wife, who does so many things in our ministry, that I could never do, looking after the supporters and looking after people who call in after programs and looking after our prayer partners And now, Tony an advertising executive. You know advertising and marketing people, they are kind of a different breed to the rest of us. They're creative and you know, wear different clothes to me and all that sort of stuff. But this guy takes everything he is in his business, everything he is as a person, everything he is as a follower of Jesus Christ, and lays that at my feet and supports me and encourages me, and blesses me. Just four people we have talked about this week who so bless me. If we talked about them all, we'd be here for months, because God has just been so good by putting these people in my life. Have you ever thought you and I are meant to be those people in other people's lives? Have you ever thought that your ability to encourage, just to write a kind email, just to pray for someone and say, "I've been praying for you." Just to say to someone, "You are doing such a good job, keep going." Just to say to someone, "You blessed me so much." We are put there to bless other people, you and I, little insignificant nobodies. We're not superstars. We're not going to have our faces plastered all over televisions, and we're not going to earn $130 million dollars a year for wearing a particular brand of sporting clothes. That's not us! If it is, ring me, I'd love to talk to you. But, it's just not us, right? God takes little people, and in my case, just a small number of little people who have a number of things in common. First, they are little people, they're not famous. Second, I happen to know them. Third, they put their gifts in God's hands and use them for my benefit. And fourth, He has taken the ordinary things that they do, the ordinary gifts that they have, the ordinary people that they are, and done extraordinary things with that in my life, and the lives of so many other people, touched by these programs. I believe God is calling you today, to put your ordinary gifts, your ordinary resources, your ordinary abilities at His feet and say, 'Lord Jesus, how do you want me to use this for You?' I believe God is calling us to lay our gifts and our abilities down at His feet so that He can take us, little people, to be used by a powerful God.

Every now and then you meet someone who just has this knack of serving you in the most incredible way. They're not some great superstar but this wonderful, silent, servant. We all, absolutely love that quiet achiever. Every now and then in life you meet a person, someone who has a particular gift to serve you. You can probably think of just a handful of people in your life, who, you know, just serve you. They're the sort of person who if you put them in a customer service role, in a large department store, or in a call centre, well, they'd stand out head and shoulders to the customers, above everybody else. Their gift is to serve. These people are not only rare but are worth their weight in gold. And as much as we value them, we don't recognise them in society. They are not superstars, in terms of our superstar syndrome mentality, but we value them in our hearts. Silent servants! I met one on the 22nd June 1997, and I married her. On the 21st June 1997, I was a very sick little puppy dog. I had a temperature of around forty degrees Celsius, which makes you really sick. It was a Saturday and I was scheduled to preach and lead worship at my Church on the following morning. Now that means about an hour and a half on your feet, singing and speaking. Well, I have to tell you, I was in no shape at all to be able to do that. On the Saturday, I wrote the sermon, about a minute or two at a time, because that's all I could sit up. The next morning, I woke up and I was still so sick. I still had a high temperature, but I just felt that God wanted me to get up and go to the Church and lead the worship and preach. And so I had a shower and hopped in the car and very slowly I drove the mile and a bit up to the Church. I went inside and I just knew that couldn't stand up in this state, so we went into the Pastor's office and a few friends laid their hands on me and prayed for me. Nothing happened … nothing happened. Then all of a sudden, one of the women, her name was Kim, she's English, laid her hand on me, and she prayed for me and I felt the temperature drain out of my body, from my head to my feet. Now, I wasn't perfectly well, I still had a cough, but I felt I could stand up and do what I needed to do. I did, I led worship. I began to preach and about half way through the message, in the middle of a sentence, I looked out and there was this beautiful woman and I just felt God say to me, 'That's her! She is going to be your wife', and unbeknown to me, she was having exactly the same God experience from the other side, saying, 'He is the guy that you are going to marry.' Well, one thing led to another. It's all history now. In six months we became engaged, and about a year and a bit later, we were married. And before we were married, someone said to me, a wonderful Christian woman, she said, 'This woman, Jacqui, whom you are about to marry, will be able to help you in your ministry, in ways you can never imagine.' Now, I wasn't even involved in full time ministry then. I had no idea what God had before me. Jacqui's worked in all sorts of different rolls. She's worked as a personal carer in aged care. Now those people have a tough job and they get paid peanuts. You know, there's heavy lifting, it's messy, it's smelly, people with dementia who try to take a swipe at them, and hit them. It is a really tough job. And when she left her job, all the elderly people in the home were so sad to see her go, because she just has a gift for working for the elderly, loving them and caring for them and being gentle with them. She went on to a role as a rehabilitation assistant, where she was again dealing with older people, who had hip replacements and were doing rehab. And it was the same, she was dealing with people in pain, and she just had this ability to love them and care for them and walk them from their bed up to the rehabilitation unit and back again. When she left that job they were so sad to see her go. From there she moved on to a large department store, where she ran the bridal register. You know, when people get married they have a bridal register at a store and then you can buy the gifts from that store. Now it all looks really wonderful and romantic, but the truth of the jobs is, it's a tough job. It's complex administratively, it's about bringing gifts together from right around the country, and getting them there on the day. It's a tough job and she had this real client focus, of looking after the couple that was getting married. Making sure that everything went well on the bride's special day. There is a pattern emerging here – this gift. Here is a little person. Now, you will never see Jacqui up on a platform speaking. You will never hear Jacqui behind a microphone speaking. That is not her gift. Wild horses could not get her to do what I do, and I have to tell you, wild horses could not get me to do what she does. And here we are in this great ministry, Christianityworks, where we are sending radio programs right around the world, we are building internet sites, that tens of thousands of people come to each month. And if you happen to call our ministry, on one of our toll-free numbers, in Australia or New Zealand, chances are, you'll end up speaking to Jacqui. She handles the data bases, she is so passionate about getting peoples names right, she's passionate about getting the radio program CDs to the stations before the due date, and making sure that when someone gives to the ministry the thank you letters get sent out on the same day. She remembers people's names and their situations, she cares so much, she gets back to people quickly when they ring and they get the answering service. Everything you'd expect if you called a Christian Ministry. That's what she does; she works long hours, she loves it, her satisfaction is not in external recognition, because nobody notices outside. Her satisfaction is in meeting the needs and expectations of listeners, supporters and prayer partners. She's got it figured out – I'm really good at this, I really enjoy this, I don't need to be a superstar. I love one on one, just to touch people in the way that God made me to be. You know something; I reckon we've been duped. We've been duped by society into thinking that money and recognition and fame is where it's at. Yet when we exercise our gifts, the simple everyday gifts and motivations that God has given us, it is such a joy, it is so fulfilling. When we put those gifts and abilities and resources and time into God's hands, God takes little people like you, like me, like Jacqui, and like Max that we talked about yesterday and like Joseph, that we talked about the day before, and He has this amazing plan. You would not believe the number of people walking on this planet thinking, 'I'm not good at anything, I'll never succeed,' yet they have this incredible ability, this incredible gift locked inside them. And when we look at ourselves sometimes, we think, yeah but, my abilities are so ordinary. Of course we think they are ordinary, because we live with them all the time. You look at someone else's ability and I look at Jacqui's ability to do what she does in our ministry, I think it's amazing because I certainly couldn't do what she does. But to her it's ordinary. Our own gifts always appear ordinary. To me getting up and speaking to two or three thousand people, getting up behind a radio microphone and speaking to you, to me that's ordinary. Because that's who I am, it's a joy for me. Just because we think our gifts are ordinary doesn't mean that they're not a gift. It doesn't mean that when we put them in God's hands for Him to use, for Him to touch the hearts of other people, that He won't do that. That's what He wants to do. Not just bless us but use us to bless other people. God see us with the abilities that He has wired into our DNA. The Apostle Paul writes in Ephesians Chapter 2 and verse 10, that: We have been created in Christ Jesus to do the good things that God planned beforehand for us to do. So we kind of walk into them, bump into them because God's already put them in our path. Jesus picked disciples that were fishermen and tax collectors, they were bumpkins, they were uneducated. He took the ordinary and with them He did the extraordinary. You and I have gifts and when we let Him take them the ordinary, He will take those and do extraordinary things with them.

We're all different, aren't we? Each of us with different strengths and weaknesses. The problem is though, that we can spend so much of our time comparing ourselves with the next guy that we lose perspective on our own gifts and abilities. One of the things we tend to do a lot is to compare ourselves with other people. We live in an age of superstar syndrome. It's sweeping the globe and frankly, it's more insidious than bird flu. And that's a dangerous thing. We look at the people around us and we see how clever they are, how talented they are. So and so is so good at that, I wish I was that good. So and so seems so confident and poised, I wish I was like that. You know what I'm talking about. When we're in that sort of a mood, and that sort of a frame of mind, we kind of see their strengths but we ignore their weaknesses. Somehow we hold them up as paragons of virtue, and forget that they have failings. They make mistakes. I'd like to introduce you today to a good friend of mine, Max, who seems to have this part of his life pretty well sorted out. Max is a knob twiddler extraordinaire. He is the producer of all the radio programs I am involved in. Every time I'm sitting here in the studio, behind the mike, Max is sitting on the other side of the soundproof glass panels, doing what he does. You hear the intro music to the program, well, that's because Max put it there. You hear the ending music of the program, well, he put that there too. You think, man, that Berni could talk under water, he never stumbles. I'll let you in on a secret, that's because Max takes out all my stumbles. You will probably never see or hear Max but he makes me sound good. Listening to radio, we never think about production quality, but we sure would if it wasn't there. Well, that's Max's job. Put it simply, no Max, no Berni! Every now a then I get in behind the mike to voice something. And you know something, he doesn't like doing it, but he does have an ear. He knows what it sounds like. I can be sitting in the studio and he'll come on in my headphones and say, come on, Berni, you can do much better than that, try that again. Max is, well, he's fifty something, he's a lanky Australian, he has chooks in his back yard and he farms bees. So every now and then I get some eggs and some honey. He's got a grey ponytail, he's sort of an arty-farty, trendy sort of a guy, a gifted musician, a worship leader and there are any number of things that Max could be doing with his life. He could be doing more commercial work, which would certainly bring in more dollars than the work that we do together. He could do more up front muso worship type stuff and he'd get a lot more recognition. He could do more work with the ministry that he's involved in, LL, which is involved in healing. And he would get much more one on one relationship and recognition and maybe satisfaction. Yet he chooses to twiddle knobs for me on this program. In fact, he loves it. I'm the only one who ever notices he's hidden. He unrecognised, he unsung, yet he still does it. Max, why do you do it? "Gee, Berni, I guess because it's the sort of thing the Lord asks me to do. I was working in the commercial area, over twenty years ago now, working in theatre – working in live theatre, getting lots of kudos, working with lots of very big name people. And I just felt as though God was saying to me, I want you out of all of that and I want you to build a little studio under your house and I want you to do work for Me. Now my ticket out of that situation was a regular job with a fairly large client, doing educational work. They were employing me six months of the year, so in a way it was pretty easy for me to give up a full time job and go freelance, but they dwindled. Work kept coming from different quarters and what was twenty years ago, work on to cassettes, now I work on to CDROM, and all those sorts of things.  I still find myself sitting in the control room thinking, I actually enjoy doing this. There are some moments of it, like every job, ninety percent of it is just hard work, but there are moments, particularly with you, Berni, that I think, this is what God wants me to do. There are other things in my life. I am involved, as you said, in music, and worship leading, with LL Ministries, with praying with people. We're doing all sorts of things, but there's something about this job that I really enjoy doing and I know it's making a difference to thousands of people around the planet." Thanks for that Max. But it is great. You know Max and I spend a lot of time together in the studio and not only does he do the technical things brilliantly, but he has got such an ear, such an intuition for sound, and how we put things together. Again, they're not things that you would normally notice when you are listening to radio but they are really, really important. Now, on the days when I come in, and maybe I'm not feeling on top of my game, Max prays for me, Max encourages me. He's just good at this thing. He is just cut out to do it. Put him behind the mic, as I said, he doesn't really like being there. Now I'll tell you, I couldn't really be in the control room most of the time, because twiddling those knobs would just drive me absolutely nuts. I know I couldn't possibly do it. yYt he's cut out for something. In the world's eyes, Max is not a superstar; Max is not one of the people whose faces you will see on the television or at the movies. He's got the face for it though, not like me, but you're just not going to see that. He's good at what he does; he has a gift in this whole recording and production area that I could never dream to have. And together Max and I are a team, together we do something, and Max is happy to be a silent servant. Max is happy to do the thing that he's good at, that he's blessed to do, that he is gifted to do and he gets fulfillment from that. Even though he's not a superstar in the world's eyes. I just wonder whether there isn't a lesson in that for us. God uses Max, one of the little people in the world's eyes, to touch hundreds and thousands to people around the world every day with His love. Just let that sink in for a minute. God uses Max, uses the gifts and the motivations that Max has to do what he does so well, to touch lives all round the world. Max didn't have to give his time over to do this; Max didn't have to become involved in recording all these programs, and producing them and all that stuff. But the bottom line is, God can do so much with people who don't want the glory. Max is good at something, not just the techo kind of things, but with his ear and his encouragement, and his prayer, is a gift that he chooses to use for God's glory. He has a gift that he lays down at God's feet and God uses him. It's a partnership between God and Max. It's a partnership that brings deep, deep satisfaction. You! You aren't good at what Max is good at, probably. You aren't called to do what Max is called to do. But you are good at something, you are very good at something, and it's something that probably, you really, really enjoy doing. Now give that one thing to God, give that to God for Him to use. That doesn't mean run away from your job and do something totally different, maybe it does, but probably it doesn't. God uses who we are, where He's planted us, to touch other people with His love. When we offer up the gifts and abilities and resources that God has put in our hands, that God has put in our hearts, that God has put in our DNA, when we offer that up to God, and say God, You use it, I don't want the glory, You get the glory, God does amazing things. When you give your abilities to God, you watch how God shows up. When you give your ability to God, you see how He uses little people to achieve BIG things – that's God! There's nothing as fulfilling, there's nothing as exciting, there's nothing as wonderful, as letting God use our gifts. Go on, I dare you!

Now just imagine that you're a refugee from a war-ravaged African nation, your country is a mess, people are dying and you're on the run in a jungle from rebel fighters and from forced conscription as a teenager. What could you ever make out of your life under those circumstances? Superstar syndrome is something that touches just about every corner of the globe. You know larger than life media personalities that somehow, well, so many people secretly aspire to that sort of recognition and status. And when we look in the mirror at our faces, we discover not only aren't we like that, but we will never be like that. So is there any hope for little people like you and me? I was talking to a dear friend of mine the other day, Joseph. He lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He is 28 years old, and he has had the most incredibly destructive start to his life. His story begins in Liberia and in 1989, at age 12. He was faced with the ravages of war. Now Joseph is no superstar in the world's eyes. He is one of the little people, but to me, to me he's a giant! Have a listen to Joseph's story Joseph's father is a pastor in Liberia. In most parts of the world, pastors don't earn a lot of money. Well, that's especially true in Liberia. At age 12, civil war hits and Joseph became a refugee. Now I remember my parents, who were in Europe during World War 2, talking about what it was like being refugees during wartime. I can't imagine it, I've never experienced it, and I pray to God that I never will experience it. But Joseph did. In the West, we so often see images of African refugees, starving African children. Most of the people who watch those images on the news day after day, week after week, sadly become desensitized. Joseph is one of those. He fled to different countries, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Guyana, Togo, I gather not with his parents. And at one stage in the Ivory Coast, he lived in a car for almost a year with some other kids. Today, fifteen or sixteen years on, he still talks about those days with some difficulty. When he was in Guinea, he spent days and nights in the forest, hiding, escaping from forced recruitment as a rebel fighter. Remember, he's twelve or thirteen years old. He was hunted like an animal. He recalls living on a riverbank with lots of other kids his age and then fleeing on to yet another country. I, for one, cannot imagine the trauma of that, can you? I first met Joseph in June last year at a broadcasting conference in the UK, Stoke on Trent. It was a 'chance meeting' and the thing that struck me about Joseph when I first met him, was the sparkle in his eyes. I guess it is accentuated by the deep black skin. When we got talking, I had no idea about his background, or even his current situation. He heads up a Radio Broadcasting School at a Christian Media Training College in South Africa. He was so excited to meet me. He interviewed me for a radio program. He was excited with what I was doing. He listened to radio programs that I was producing and listened to what we were doing on the internet, and had a look at one of our internet sites, www.whosjesus.com. He's just an overwhelmingly delightful, enthusiastic young man. And so the conference finishes, and we head back to our respective homes, he to South Africa, me to Australia. Now don't know if you have ever done conferences. But how it normally works is, people make all sorts of promises – I'll keep in touch with you, we'll catch up, we'll do this, we'll do that, at conferences, and ninety nine percent of them never do. So Joseph went back to South Africa, and I thought, 'Oh well, I might hear from him and I might not'. Well, Joseph really made a point of connecting with me. Joseph made a point of not only connecting with me but trying to connect me with people of influence that he knew in Africa, with his boss, at the Media Village, where he works, with thirty or forty radio stations right across the continent. And still I had no idea of the circumstances in his life right at that time. It was only much later, in fact, only just recently that the life story of this bright eyed, well-dressed, enthusiastic connector of people, came to light. Today, as I said, Joseph is connecting us with dozens of radio stations around Africa. So that this program right now is being heard by tens of thousands of people right across Africa. Here's this little person, a person that most of us will never ever meet, Joseph, having an influence in the lives of tens of thousands of people. Isn't that exciting? Well, what's the point? Joseph is one of the little people. He looks like Tiger Woods, the American golfer. But, I tell you he doesn't get paid US$130 million a year to wear a certain brand of sports clothes! He's a little person with a tragic background, and right now, his current circumstances are that he's not particularly well off at all. I didn't find that out until somebody else, from Ireland of all places, visited me who knew Joseph, who told me his story. Joseph works fifteen, sixteen hours a day and then works all weekend, in order to make ends meet. Yet he has that sparkle in his eyes, the sort of sparkle you see from someone who knows Jesus. He could have let his background get him down. He could have let his current finances get him down, but, oh no, this guy has a fire in his heart. He has a sparkle in his eye; he has a smile on his face. When I met Joseph at that conference in the UK, he was smartly dressed but I would never have guessed what his background was. And he came with the attitude, 'I'm here to serve'. God took that young man, and taught me a thing or two. God took that young man and made him a superstar in my life. God took that young man and used him to reach tens of thousands of people, across Africa with his love. This little person, Joseph, is loved by a big God. This little person, Joseph, is used by a big God. I trust that you find Joseph's story a blessing and an inspiration. But it's not the main point of the story, because this is not just Joseph's story. This is also God's story. This is a story about a real God who calls His real grace into the real life of a person who was a refugee, of a person who was hunted like an animal, of a person who fled wars. This is a story about a God who loves Joseph so much that He would pour His own Spirit into Joseph and give him that smile on his face. This is about a God who puts a sparkle in Joseph's eyes. This is about a God who takes a life from such adversity and says, 'This Joseph is one of mine, this Joseph is someone that I can use'. This is a story about God's grace. And as I read through the Bible and I see how different people react to God, how different people interact with God, what I see is God's story woven through that. Joseph has a namesake in the Old Testament. There is a Joseph in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis. You read through the second half of the book of Genesis and you read about Joseph, who is Jacob's son, who is Isaac's son, who is Abraham's son. And Joseph had a life of adversity. And he just carried on and followed God and loved God and God used that Joseph mightily. Just as I believe God is going to use this Joseph, in Africa, mightily. When we look at our lives sometimes, and we look at our circumstances, we look at the adversity, we look at ourselves and we say, 'Well, I'm not a superstar, I don't have what it takes to do superstar type things'. I think we are kidding ourselves. And I think we are missing out on the whole point of God's story right through the Bible, which is, God takes little people like you, like Joseph, like me, little people who will make a decision just to follow God. Just simply with who they are and what they are and what they have and God uses people like that, mightily. Just as He's used Joseph. What about you?