Christianityworks Official Podcast

Suffering isn’t a subject most of us like to talk about, or even think about, but suffering is a reality in life. And right in the middle of that not-so-pleasant reality, I have some good news for you today. Your God wants you to have victory, right in the middle of your suffering.

VICTORY IN SUFFERING

People pay a lot of money for wilderness eco tours these days, and yet as Christians, God seems to take us on wilderness tours free of charge on a regular basis. Why does He do that? I mean, can’t our lives just go along on a nice, even keel for ever and ever amen?

Funny thing, but when Jesus was baptised, as He come out of the water, the Spirit descended upon Him like a dove and a voice spoke from heaven saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased”.

Did that happen at your baptism? No, me neither. Let’s take a look. Mark chapter 1, verses 9 to 13:

Just as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’. And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan.

A booming voice from heaven – “This is my beloved Son in You I am well pleased” … and yet, the very next thing that God did with His precious Son was to drive Him out (literally the word means ‘throw Him out’) into the wilderness to starve and to be tempted by the devil for forty days and forty nights. God didn’t even spare His own Son, but when He was finished, Jesus came out of the wilderness we are told ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’.

It’s just how God does things, get used to it. Suffering is part of God’s plan for our lives. None of us enjoys suffering. I don’t and I’m pretty sure you don’t either. But suffering is a normal part of life. And God tells us that when we suffer, we should consider it nothing but … pure joy!! Come on! Is that bizarre or what!? Have a listen to this. James chapter 1, verse 2:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but pure joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, and lacking in nothing.

God’s plan is that in that wilderness of suffering, He will test and strengthen our faith. That’s one of the main reasons for suffering. So far, my record for bad days in my life, is that I’ve managed to survive each and every one of them just fine. In fact, that’s a one hundred percent survival rate, and there have been some real shockers in that lot, I have to tell you.

As I look back on them, I can see how the Lord carried me through, how He cared and provided for me, how He grew me and moulded me and how He’s used every one of those bad days for good in my life. Isn’t it amazing how the fire of trials and suffering refine us purer and purer each time?

When an athlete trains to compete at an elite level in their sport, they go through a lot of pain. They run until it hurts, they pump iron until it hurts. And what that pain, what that suffering does for them, is, well … it does two things really. It makes them strong, and it gives them endurance, both of those are important. Strength and endurance – you need both of them to compete well in a sport, and you need both of them to get through the tough patches in life. Strength and endurance.

Do you know what the biggest temptation is for you and me when we’re suffering? I think it’s the temptation to start behaving badly. I’ll just go out and get drunk, or I’ll sleep around, or I’ll be nasty to other people that are causing me the pain. Somehow we have this distorted ledger in our heads that goes something like this:

Well, God’s certainly not blessing me at the moment, so why not behave badly? Why not do what I want? Blow God!! What do I have to lose?!

Of course, in the cold, hard light of day, that’s a stupid line of reasoning, because we know that behaving badly, eventually, is just going to make other things worse. So just in case you were wondering, here’s God’s plan for what to do when you’re suffering. Galatians chapter 6, verses 9 and 10:

So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.

God is a God of seasons. Look at how regularly they roll around – spring, summer, autumn, winter; year after year. Seed time and harvest, season after season. There are seasons of blessing in our lives, there are seasons of trials in our lives, there are seasons of temptation in our lives, and there are seasons of suffering in our lives.

And through it all, here’s the thing, if we don’t grow weary of doing what is right, we will reap the harvest that’s waiting for us. When? Well, at harvest time, of course! So don’t panic. Don’t worry, just cry out to God, pour out your heart to Him.

A few years ago, I was sitting in a small group Bible study with a bunch of earnest, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians. We were looking at that verse in Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7 that goes something like this:

Don’t worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Great. So we discuss it, we prodded it and poked it, and we’re about to move on. The Bible study leader summarises with: “Well, that’s is really good, but we still worry, don’t we?” Berni – I can’t help myself at this point – Berni shouts out, “NO!” And they all stare at me.

Come on – do we take God at His Word or not? Here in this passage, He’s telling us, if instead of worrying, we pray and give thanks, His incomprehensible peace will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Now, I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty good deal to me! All we need to do, is to take God at His Word in those difficult times, and keep on keeping on, and we will discover in our very own experience just how faithful God is.

POWER TO YOU

Spiritual victory is an awesome thing. So many things come against us in this world – people, circumstances, our own selfish desires, the devil and his legion of demons, it’s almost as though we’ve been set up to fail, don’t you think? You look at all the stuff you have to get through in this life and there is just no way that you can live your life the way God wants you to live it.

Way too many people who call themselves Christians are living in that sort of a defeat but Jesus came to give us victory and victory we shall have if only we can get over our desire to be self-sufficient, if only we can get over this natural instinct we have somewhere deep inside us to set out on our own to become better people, to become better Christians if you will. How did we get that idea into us in the first place pray tell?

Well here’s how it generally unfolds in our lives. One of the very first things we try to teach our children is to become self-sufficient. I mean when they’re born they’re completely dependent on us for everything, by the time they leave home we want them to be able to cope with the big wide world out there on their own, we want them to be self-sufficient and that’s good but there’s a downside. The danger is that we take that thinking and that teaching, each one of us, into our relationship with God.

Jesus once said this to His disciples, John chapter 15 verses 4 and 5, He said:

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches, those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit because apart from me you can do nothing.

Allow me if you will to paraphrase that so that we can get it into our thick skulls once and for all. In effect Jesus is saying this, look guys I don’t care how clever you are apart from me you can do nothing. I am the vine, you’re the branches and the only way that you can bear fruit is to be in me.

When I became a Christian that’s a lesson I had to learn the hard way. I was Mr Self Sufficient, in fact that’s still my natural instinct to try to crash through things on my own so it’s still a lesson I’m learning over and over again. When it comes to overcoming my sin, when it comes to blessing others, here’s what I’ve discovered. Apart from Jesus I can do nothing and nothing means NOTHING.

It’s exactly what God’s Word says by the way, 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 56 and 57:

The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law but thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The only place you get victory is in Jesus. No, you can’t do it alone, the only place you can get victory just in case you missed it is in Jesus. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Berni that’s a great theory but exactly how does that work? Where do I go to actually lay hold of that victory? How can I experience this victory you’ve been yabbering on about in my life? How can I stop being a spiritual loser? How can I start winning the battles each day?

Well the most amazing thing about being a Christian is having the Holy Spirit dwelling inside you. Just stop and think about that for a minute – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – three persons, one God, so when the Spirit dwells in you that’s God, that’s the God who created the universe, the Jesus who died and rose again for you, the same Holy Spirit who filled those disciples with power at Pentecost, that’s that God dwelling in you.

A lot of people shy away from the Holy Spirit, He’s a bit harder to get a handle on. The Father, yeah we get that, the Son, we get that too but the Holy Spirit, well it’s not so easy.

Listen up those disciples even though they spent three and a half years with Jesus, were a disorganised uneducated rabble. Even when Jesus ascended into heaven they still lacked that power, that ability, that focus to do what Jesus had called them to do – to be His witnesses even unto the ends of the earth.

Then something happened, have a listen, Acts chapter 2 verses 2 to 4.

Suddenly from heaven there came a sound like a rush of violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues as a fire appeared among them and a tongue rested on each one of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability.

They were filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. He brings such incredible power into our lives, the power to do things we never imagined, the power to be all that God made us to be, the power to overcome sin, the power to live our lives in victory come what may.

The Bible actually commands us, Ephesians chapter 5 verse 18 to:

Go on being filled with the Holy Spirit.

And yet some Christians shy from Him, like that makes sense somehow. The very same day that the disciples were filled with the Spirit listen to what Peter, the uneducated fisherman achieved, Acts chapter 2 verses 14 and 41.

Peter standing up with the eleven raised his voice and addressed them and those who welcomed his message were baptised and that day about three thousand persons were added.

He hadn’t been to the elite theological colleges of Jerusalem, no he was a fisherman from Galilee of all places. When Jesus needs him most during their many trials leading up to His crucifixion this Peter, who had promised to stand by Jesus denies Him three times just as Jesus had foretold.

Now let’s wind the clock forward to this day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit falls on the disciples, Peter gets up and speaks about Jesus to this huge crowd filled with the very same people who, just weeks before, had shouted, ‘Crucify Him’. He tells them about Jesus, about their sin. There was every chance that he too could have been arrested and crucified, instead we’re told that on that very day about three thousand people accepted Jesus.

Now that’s what you call power, the very same power that’s available for you today.

THE REST OF YOUR LIFE

So let me get back to that question I just asked you, how are you going to spend the rest of your life? Defeated or victorious? It is such a terrible tragedy that so many of God’s people are living their lives out as losers when everything that needs to be done for them to have victory has in fact already been done.

Let me be blunt and direct with you here, I know that’s going to be a surprise to you given I’m such a shy and retiring type but let me whack you right between the eyes with the God honest truth. This is true for every man and woman and child who have accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, every man and woman and child who has put their complete trust in Jesus.

God means you to live out the rest of your life in victory through Jesus Christ, full stop, end of story. And He had a plan for that to happen before you were even born. Now granted life is a funny thing, it goes in fits and starts, sometimes there are long boring patches of the same old same old, you know business as usual interspersed with the odd high and the odd low.

All of a sudden something exciting happens maybe a marriage or a birth or a holiday or a promotion and then bang, car accident, relationship problems, the death of a loved one. That’s how life seems to play itself out. Sometimes without rhyme nor reason, more like a lottery than a life but that’s not actually the way it is. God knew before you were born, He already had a plan for your life, He already knew how your life would pan out, what He gifted you to do.

This is what He said to the Prophet Jeremiah about the life He’d planned for him, Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 5.

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you and before you were born I consecrated you, I appointed you a Prophet to the nations.

And the same is true for you, your life isn’t a lottery, it’s a part of Gods plan and that right there is a great reason to bounce out of bed every morning with a sense of anticipation ‘I wonder what God has planned for me today’, don’t you think? Sure some days are going to be scary days, some days you’re going to have this feeling that God’s abandoned you, you’re pedalling so hard up hill, into the wind, into the driving rain, pedal, pedal, harder, harder.

Then one day you look up and God is nowhere to be seen and not only is He nowhere to be seen but the storm clouds have thickened and, well you’ve got the picture, you know exactly what I’m talking about because you’ve been there. When the whole world is lined up against you here’s the rub, Isaiah chapter 41 verses 9 and 10. God says to you, He is saying to you today:

You are my servant. I have chosen you and not cast you off. Do not fear for I am with you, do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

In other words God is still God, God still loves you, there’s no need to panic, there’s no need to be afraid, He’s right there with you closer than the deepest secret of your heart. God will strengthen you, God will help you, God will uphold you with His victorious right hand. Why?

Not because I say so but because He does. Isaiah chapter 41 verses 9 and 10, that’s His promise and when that little truth is tucked away in your heart you can relax. He has it all under control, so much so that right in the middle of one of those life storms He’s going to call you to step out of the pitching boat that you’re in, the pitching boat that seems to be keeping you alive, He’s going to call you out to walk on the water with Him.

Some people, entrepreneurs in particular are natural risk takers, others quite simply are not. Wherever you lie on that risk taking continuum I have something serious to share with you today. If you’ve set your heart on following Jesus you can leave behind any notion you’ll be able to stay in your comfort zone.

The twelve disciples were out in a storm in a small boat on the Sea of Galilee and even though some of them were experienced fishermen who knew these waters the storm became so ferocious that even they were afraid of drowning. Jesus comes walking across the water. They’re even more fearful because they think they’ve seen a ghost. Matthew chapter 14 verses 28 and 29.

Peter answered him, ‘Lord if it’s you command me to come out onto the water with you’ and Jesus said, ‘come’. So Peter got out of the boat and started walking on the water and came towards Jesus.

Now Peter, if you know anything about him, was obviously a risk taker, he doesn’t wait for Jesus to call him out there but he asks Jesus to invite him to step out of the boat. And when Jesus does just that crazy Pete steps out of said boat and walks on the water right in the middle of a howling storm. Now you’d think that Jesus could have calmed the storm first right? But no, He called Peter out of the boat in the middle of that raging storm. But that’s Jesus, that’s the way He does things, go figure.

You and I want to wait until the storms of life abate until we step out of the boat and follow Jesus but victory, real victory is stepping out and following Him in the middle of the storm. Again Matthew chapter 14 verses 30 to 33.

But when Peter noticed the strong wind…

So he’s out there, he’s on the water right? He notices the strong wind.

He became frightened and began to sink and he cried out, ‘Lord save me’. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him saying to him ‘you of little faith, why do you doubt?’ When they got into the boat the wind ceased and those in the boat worshipped him saying ‘truly you are the Son of God. (Matthew 14:30 to 33)

When Jesus says to you ‘follow me’ it isn’t an invitation to an easy life, far from it. Jesus promised His disciples quite the opposite. Hmm, I’ve been out on a few of those stormy oceans like that in my time, stepping out of the boat to answer Jesus call, it seems alright at first but when you’re out there on the water the storm gets your attention like nothing else and what happened to Peter has happened to me on more than one occasion.

The moment you take your eyes off Jesus and you focus on the storm, the problem, you start to sink. Note to self: keep your eyes on Jesus, would you?

One day, the day will come when you and I breathe our last breath on this earth. One way or another, either because our body has just given up on us or because Jesus returned, that can be a scary thought too, particularly the older you get and the more you feel your body aging but here’s another exciting bit of news.

No matter how it ends for you and me if we believe in Jesus, if we’ve been living our lives for Him, walking out on the stormy water even when the storm is raging, we’ve been living for Him the best way we know how then He has a promise that removes even the fear of death. John chapter 14 verses 1 to 3.

Don’t let your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me for in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it weren’t so would I have told you that I would go and prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and will take you to myself so that where I am there you may also be.

He has been preparing a place in His Father’s house for you so you can spend the rest of eternity with Him. Whatever happens to be going on in your life right now just let that one sink in for a moment, eternity with Jesus in His Father’s house. Whatever this life throws at you, however howling and raging the storm is between now and your last breathe eternity with Jesus in His Father’s house, that’s His promise – His rock solid promise.

That puts a whole new spin on things doesn’t it? God has a simple plan for you, to live your life in spiritual victory, that’s why Jesus came, that’s why Jesus died, that’s why Jesus rose again.

Sin couldn’t hold Him down and His victory is your victory now and forever.

Many who call themselves “Christians” are not, in fact, living the life of victory that Jesus came to give them. Somehow, the promise of victory isn’t happening in their lives. Something has to change. Not next year, not next month, not next week … now!

A NEW WAY OF LIVING

Over the last couple of weeks on the programme, we’ve been talking about the reality that Jesus came to purchase a special kind of victory for each one of us

The sort of victory in life that lifts us up above temptations, that lifts us up above the devastating impact of our sin that lifts us up above the power of the devil to destroy our lives.

The sort of victory that brings a sense of God’s abundance into our world so that no matter who or what attacks us, no matter who or what tries to rob you and me of the joy and the peace and the gladness in our hearts, we can have victory of that who or what and still have the joy and the peace and the gladness in our hearts.

That’s what I call victory and that abundance is precisely what Jesus came to give to you and me. A pivotal passage of Scripture that I come back to again and again in my life when the ravages of the devil and of circumstances are tearing away at my flesh is what Jesus said to His disciples in John chapter 10 verse 10:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.

I sometimes ask people, ‘What sort of life do you think that God wants you to live?’ A boring life, an ordinary life or a stunning life. Come on, on a scale of zero to ten what sort of life do you think that God wants you to live? This God who sent Jesus to die and rise again for you. Zero – a rotten life, five – well an okay kind of life I guess, seven and a half – a pretty good life or ten – a stunning life.

Remember Jesus said that He came so that we might have life and have it abundantly and that anything less than that was from the devil. The original Greek word that sits aback of our English translation literally means ‘super abundantly’. That super abundant life isn’t always a comfortable life or a wealthy life, no often it’s not that at all but it is a life that weighs in and counts for Jesus, a life that bears fruit super abundantly. That’s the life that Jesus has planned for you.

The question is, how do you and I grab hold of that life because let’s be honest, of the millions of people who will listen to this message today in over a hundred and sixty countries around the world, the vast majority, eighty, ninety percent aren’t living that sort of a life?

It seems as though in the Kingdom of God today there are the ‘have’s’ and the ‘have not’s’ when it comes to this abundant victory. Which one are you? A have or a have not? Something has to change right? And I believe, in fact I know that the biggest con out there robbing God’s people of His abundant victory is this, that life is all about being happy, us being happy, me being happy, you being happy.

This big con, the reason that so many people are so unhappy in this world, is that we’re told happiness comes from self-gratification, from buying and having everything we want, that new dress or that new pair of shoes, that new camera, that new car, that new house, that new whatever it is, that’s why most people often think to themselves, ‘If only, if only I just earned a little bit more, just maybe ten percent more then I’d be happy’.

From bitter experience I can tell you that’s simply not true. In fact the biggest shock I had when I became a Christian back in 1995 was that once I started using my God-given gifts and resources to do things for other people, something frankly I had never done much of before, all of a sudden I discovered the satisfaction and the contentment I’d been looking for, for all those years.

That’s exactly what God tells us through His Word, Philippians chapter 2 verses 3 to 8:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ who, though he was in the form of God, didn’t regard equality with God as something to be exploited but he emptied himself, humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

These days I bless other people, not because I’m a good guy because I’m not but because it makes me feel good because it brings me the peace, the joy and the contentment that I was always looking for but was forever unable to find so long as I was trying to make myself happy. Why did it take me so long to figure this out?

Probably because right from the beginning, right from when we’re little we’re taught that the aim of the game is to succeed, it’s about winning, it’s about coming first, it’s about me feeling good about myself. It doesn’t matter what game you’re playing the aim, the only acceptable outcome is to win.

Well, winning is all well and good, it’s great to be successful and yet so many Christians think that success is the name of the game that they’ve completely lost sight of Jesus. I even had one Christian tell me once that his aim was to have the latest BMW SUV sitting in his driveway. Really? Is that really what’s going to make you happy, success?

John chapter 19 verses 28 to 30:

After this when Jesus knew that all was now finished he said in order to fulfil the Scripture, ‘I am thirsty’. A jar full of sour wine was standing there so they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it up to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine he said, ‘It is finished’ then he bowed his head and he gave up his spirit.

When Jesus died on that cross He didn’t even have the clothes on His back. He was beaten, crucified, this miracle working Jesus who had promised so much looked like the biggest loser of all time. They scoffed at Him, they spat at Him, they mocked Him, ‘Save yourself’ they shouted.

And yet through His suffering He purchased eternal life for you and me. It’s fine to succeed but that’s not the aim of the game. Now He wasn’t a loser Jesus, when He gave up His life for you and me, far from it, He did it willingly, John chapter 10 verses 17 and 18.

For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me but I lay it down of my own accord. I have the power to lay it down and I have the power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.

In the world’s economy losing makes you a loser, losing the argument, missing out on the promotion, not being as beautiful as the beautiful people, all that makes you a loser but that’s not the way it is in God’s economy. In my life and I know this has happened in yours too, many things have come against me.

I set out each day with faith in Jesus and the joy of the Lord in my heart and like a pack of wolves people and situations and circumstances and things come to tear away at my flesh, to attack my faith, to drag me down and our natural reaction to that is, well God what’s going on here? What have I done to deserve this? Can’t you make it stop?

We behave as though something is wrong when the truth is the moment we step onto the spiritual battle of life with Jesus in our hearts the devil is going to come after us with a pick axe, with all the powers of hell unleashed against us but no matter how bad it gets remember this powerful truth from God’s Word, Romans chapter 8 verses 37 to 39.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us for I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In this world there are winners and there are losers but in God’s Kingdom there are only winners, victors, conquerors. No sorry, that’s not quite true – more than conquerors, there … that’s better.

GIVING AND SACRIFICE 

Giving in sacrifice is an interesting notion because inevitably if you and I are going to live in victory we need to discover that real victory in this life only comes when we develop a generous heart. At the moment you decide to become a generous person you realise that it’s not all peaches and cream, generosity inevitably involves sacrifice and sacrifice inevitably costs us something.

More often than not it hurts, a lot, so do you still want to be generous? Do you still want to have victory over your cravings and desires by becoming a giving person? It stands to reason that generosity is one of the things that brings victory into our lives because God is generous and you and I, well we’re made in His image.

Let me ask you this, what was the very last act of creation? What was the very last thing that God did on the sixth day before He rested on the seventh day to enjoy all He had created? Most people would answer that the last act of creation was to make Adam and Eve, to create humanity, God’s crowning achievement and if that’s your answer too then sorry to disappoint you but it’s the wrong answer.

God did one more thing before He was finished, do you want to know what it was? Genesis chapter 1 verses 27 to 28:

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. God blessed them and he said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over everything that moves upon the earth’.

What was the last thing He did? He gave the whole thing away, He gave it to Adam and Eve, to you and me. He blessed them with all He had made, now that’s what I call generous. These days people seem to be in it whatever ‘it’ is for themselves. Generosity seems to be an old fashioned concept. Well in a sense it’s a very old concept, the very first act of generosity happened precisely six days after the beginning of time.

It was Gods idea and when you and I live out who we are, created in God’s image, by being generous with our time, with our money, with our emotional energy, with our gifts and abilities, then we’re living a life of victory. But you see God when He looks at your level of generosity and mine He’s not primarily interested in how much we give. That may sound a little odd at first but it’s true.

I had an elderly woman write to me recently and she said this;

I’m so sorry that I can’t give much to support your ministry, I’m only an elderly pensioner and I don’t have much to live on.

Those were her exact words. Now look I can’t respond to every letter that I receive, I wish I could but I can’t but this one I just had to respond to personally. I was able to write to her and remind her of what Jesus said about the poor widow who dropped her two small copper coins in the offering plate alongside all those wealthy guys who obviously had much more to give. Luke chapter 21 verses 1 to 4.

Jesus looked up and saw the rich people putting in their gifts into the treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in much more than all of them for all of them have contributed out of their abundance but she, out of her poverty, has put in all she has to live on.

Don’t you love that! Jesus was so excited, He grabbed His disciples, He shook them, He said in effect ‘guys check this out, look at this old widow, she gave more than all the rest because they gave out of their abundance but she gave all she had.’ Jesus isn’t interested in how much we give, He’s blessed each one of us with different things and in differing amounts but what He’s really interested in is how much it costs us.

For Him giving and sacrifice are one of the same, part of that is because He knows that you and I are enslaved by our desires and the one way to break that, the one way to set us free is to turn us into sacrificial givers. Jesus knows there’s a powerful yet very tender connection between our hearts and our wallets, Matthew chapter 6 verses 19 to 21.

Don’t store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there your heart will also be.

Jesus said some of the strangest things, basically the upshot of what He’s saying here is, where your wallet is there your heart will also be. Okay so I brought it into the twenty-first century but you get my drift. You read that and you think about it for just a moment and you have to come to the conclusion that He’s got it the wrong way around. Surely the money follows your heart right? But that’s not what Jesus said, He said that your heart would follow your wallet, they’re connected.

Keep spending on your own self-gratification and just guess where your heart’s going to end up. So what’s the answer? Well He gives it to us in the very same breath. Start living your life sacrificially with the aim of storing up treasures in heaven. In other words get focused on serving God and other people.

Do that and two things happen. Firstly, obviously you end up with treasures in heaven but secondly, not quite so obviously the power that money has over you is broken. Sacrificial giving of everything we are and everything we have breaks our enslavement to our own selfishness.

And in that one thing there is so much victory that flows out of learning to become a sacrificial giver. What’s sacrificial giving again? It’s giving that costs you something. God isn’t so much after our money, I mean think about it, He created the whole universe, He doesn’t need your help or mine in anything, no the thing He’s really after is your heart, not part of your heart, not a divided heart but the whole lot.

Let me share another letter that I once received from a man, it’s at the other end of the spectrum from that little old lady who had a real giving heart. This is what the guy wrote:

How dare you ask me to support your ministry? Don’t you trust God, if God wants you to be in ministry let Him provide for it.

Now on the surface of things that sounds pretty fair until you realise that ninety-nine percent of the time God funds His work through His people. The first fundraiser in the Bible is in Genesis chapter 25. God tells Moses to build a dwelling place for Him amongst His people, it was called the Tabernacle. Great God, how do you want me to fund that little number? Exodus chapter 25 verses 1 and 5:

The Lord said to Moses, ‘Tell the Israelites to take for me an offering from all those whose hearts prompt them to give, you shall receive the offering for me in accordance with all that I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all its furniture, so you shall make it.

So let me ask you, is God poor? Did He need their gold and silver and purple cloth and all the rest of the things He listed there to build the tabernacle? No, He just wanted their hearts. He knew that their hearts were attached to their money and He wanted to set them free to live in the victory that He planned for their lives.

You can’t live in victory if you’re enslaved to your own selfish desires and when we do let go, when we do start giving sacrificially something else amazing happens. The blessing of God, in all sorts of different ways, gets poured into our lives, Luke chapter 6 verse 38:

Give and it will be given to you. A good measure pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put back into your lap for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

I used to think the more I gave to God’s work the less I’d have for yours truly, numero uno, me. But that simplistic thinking just doesn’t work in God’s economy because when it comes to God’s blessing the worlds formula’s are completely irrelevant. As God graciously led me through the transformation from being stingy to becoming more generous (a work by the way that remains in progress for the Lord), I discovered that the blessing of God began to flow in so many different ways that I simply couldn’t contain them.

Giving to God is not a zero-sum game; in fact it’s anything but.

FAITHFULNESS AND POWER 

When you think about it, it’s only in the tough times that we can in fact discover first-hand, in our very own experience, how faithful God is. In fact, sometimes, life is just plain tough. I don’t care who you are; how super-spiritual you are; how much people look at you and think, ‘Boy! That one there, they have it all together with God’, sometimes life is just a shocker! You believed in God for good; you did good; you gave; you sacrificed, but all you can see around you is devastation.

I love the beautiful old song that goes like this: ‘The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; His mercies never come to an end: They’re new every morning, new every morning, Great is Your faithfulness, o LORD; Great is Your faithfulness.’ Do you know it? It’s an awesome song. It comes straight out of the book of Lamentations, chapter 3:22-24. The writer’s looking around, just after Jerusalem’s been destroyed and raised to the ground by the Babylonians. God’s city is gone; God’s temple is gone; God’s chosen people are gone out of His promised land, and in the middle of all that – that devastation, he writes this because he knows this truth deep in his heart: That the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; great is His faithfulness.

Despite all the evidence you and I may see to the contrary, that’s the truth, and when you and I can stand in the midst of the ruin and the devastation that comes into our lives, during those times of trial and suffering, and whisper those words from our heart – ‘Great is His faithfulness’, that right there is the victory that the Bible promises, and the victory that God calls us to, and the victory that Jesus died and rose again to give to you. In fact, to be honest, it’s the sweetest victory of all.

‘Great is Your faithfulness, LORD, unto me. Morning by morning, new mercies I see. All I have needed Your hand has provided. Great is Your faithfulness, LORD, unto me.’ Amen to that.

And from the very beginning, Jesus asked His disciples to get out there, and to give, and to sacrifice, but before they went, He gave them the power: The incredible power to do that and to get through it all, the same power that’s available to you and me. Back then after His resurrection and ascension, they began to proclaim Christ, and they began to see thousands of people coming to believe in Him! And they went out and they suffered much persecution, and they laid the foundations of the church and our faith, which still lives on two thousand years on. How did all that happen? Through the power of the Holy Spirit, despite the obvious failures and limitations of those disciples. Let me come back and say it again: The very same power that they had is available to you and me here and now.

Let me tell you the truth, each time I look in the mirror when I’m shaving in the morning, I see my own face – the wrinkles; the grey hair; the dimple on my left cheek; all the imperfections, and if you stare at your own imperfections long enough, you become fixated on them. No amount of wishing we could look different can change the face in the mirror, right? It’s like that with the rest of our lives too. I can’t change the way I am. I can’t remove the bad habits and the dimples and the imperfections from my life on my own, but fortunately I don’t have to. Neither do you, for that matter. Galatians 2:19-20:

I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

 In other words, the moment you believe in Jesus, the old person dies; a brand new person comes to life. It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. It’s no longer you who lives, but Christ who lives in you. That’s the only power that will ever bring transformation. It’s the only power that will ever give you a new lease of life: Resurrection-power, the only power that will give you victory in this world.

All too often, God’s people – who we’re told are meant to be more than conquerors – lie bloodied and beaten on the spiritual battlefield we call life. What they need is power, but they just can’t seem to find it. Well what if I told you that God has already provided you with all the power you need?

IT’S TIME TO REPENT

I want you to imagine a person who wants to become an elite athlete, whatever their chosen sport may be. This person sets out to become a great tennis player or footballer or track and field competitor and yet all they ever do is they sit on the couch eating chips and sweets and drinking sugar-laden soft drink. Would you expect that person to realise their dream of becoming an elite athlete on that sort of a diet and that sort of an exercise regime? Not likely.

And yet that’s what so many Christians do. They want to live a life of spiritual victory in Christ and yet they fail to turn away from the things that are ruining their lives. Those things have a collective name in God’s Book – He calls them sin. Have a listen to the Apostle Paul’s take on all of this, Romans chapter 6, verse 21 to 23:

So what advantage did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death but now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God the advantage you get is sanctification, the end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For much of my life I shied away from God simply because I thought becoming a Christian meant living out some out dated, irrelevant bunch of rules that would restrict me and constrain me, a bit like a straight jacket. That’s the view that so many people have of being a Christian – you can’t do this, you can’t do that, how’s a person supposed to have any fun in this life?

What surprised me though when I looked closer at it is that God only tells us not to do the things that are actually going to hurt us and hurt other people. And the list of do’s and don’ts, well it’s actually quite small in the scheme of things and yet still there’s always at least one of those that we want to hang on to in our lives, isn’t there?

Listen up, there is no such thing as a small sin. Hang on to any sin and eventually it’s going to kill you, let it go and the reward is freedom today and eternal life for the rest of eternity.

Over the last few days on the program we’ve talked a lot about the powerful transformation that happens to you and to me the moment we believe in Jesus. Our past is completely forgiven, as far as the east is from the west so far does God remove our transgressions from us. So much so that our past misdemeanours become completely irrelevant in God’s eyes and in God’s eyes we’re as pure and as blameless as Jesus Himself.

That abundant mercy and grace is a kindness and a generosity that is simply indescribable and that kindness and generosity is actually meant to have a transformative impact on our lives, Romans chapter 2 verses 3 and 4:

Do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself you will escape the judgement of God? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Don’t you realise that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.

Isn’t it funny how quick we are to judge others and yet how readily we find excuses to rationalise our own behaviour. Maybe it’s time for us to stop kidding ourselves. Other people’s sin, by and large, isn’t our responsibility but our sin is and one day Jesus will come back and judge the living and the dead, each one of us, Christian and non-Christian alike will stand before Him to give an account for our lives, our behaviour and our sin.

Make no mistake judgement day is coming but right now God has done everything that needs doing, He has shown us every kindness, He has given us every opportunity to repent, to turn away from the things that we know are wrong and to turn our lives back to Him.

The right response, the only response to God’s kindness is repentance. The right response, the only response to Jesus death on that cross is letting go of our sin and loving Him in word and in deed. Surely that’s not too much to ask, is it? And it’s not as though we’re powerless to change because God gives us the very power we need to leave that sin behind. He never takes us to a place where temptation is more than we can bear, 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13:

So if you think that you are standing watch out that you don’t fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength but with a testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.

Let’s be honest we all struggle with sin, somehow each one of us has that one Achilles heel and one temptation, that one sin that we’re vulnerable to and doesn’t the devil know it. He waits for just the right time, when we’re tired, when we’re distracted, when we’re under pressure, when we haven’t prayed or opened our Bible for a few days or weeks and then whammo, he swoops in and he strikes.

The result, we succumb to the temptation, we stumble, we suffer guilt, we suffer condemnation and we want to run and hide from God just like Adam and Eve did. What’s your Achilles heel of temptation and sin? What are you struggling with? Are you wondering what you can possibly do to overcome it?

Well here’s a powerful promise from God, whatever it is He will never allow you to be tempted beyond your ability to withstand the temptation and He will always provide you with a way out. That’s Gods promise to you, He will always be there to help you overcome the temptation and that’s important because that sin robs us of the spiritual victory that He wants for our lives. That sin steals the very thing that Jesus suffered and died and rose again to give us, abundant victory.

God’s thought of everything, of forgiveness, to be set free from the past and of the power we need to overcome the future. Yeah, God’s thought of everything

THE POWER OF PRAYER

For many Christians prayer is one of those optional extras. It’s something we fit in now and then when we can and it seems we’re especially good at fitting in a quick prayer when things aren’t going so well. ‘Oh God please help me, oh God please stop the pain, oh God when are you finally going to show up’? Sound familiar?

Imagine that someone you love only ever talks to you when they’re in trouble, it wouldn’t make much for a relationship now, would it? I wonder sometimes if we don’t have a completely wrong view of prayer because the only sort of prayer that the Bible teaches us about is the sort that has powerful results.

Let me say that again just in case you missed it – the only sort of prayer that the Bible teaches us about is the sort that has powerful results. Now when you think of it that way you have to ask yourself, so why do I keep banging my head up against a brick wall? Here’s how Jesus put it, John chapter 15 verse 7. He said that:

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you can ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you.

In other words if we’re close to His heart, if we know what He wants then our desires will be aligned with His and in that context we can ask Him for whatever we wish and it will be done for us. That’s a powerful statement and when we live that out in our lives it yields powerful results.

We’re in the middle of a series of messages called Your Road To Spiritual Victory because that’s what God wants for you, for your life, spiritual victory. And as I said at the beginning of this program, you can’t have that sort of victory if you don’t spend time in prayer. I mean you just can’t.

So many of Christ followers want spiritual victory but they’re too busy to pray. Huh, that’s about as smart as the couple who want a great marriage but are too busy to talk to one another about the things in life that really matter, as though that was somehow going to work. Yeah I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, ‘Berni that’s great for you but I don’t have the sort of faith that you need to get powerful results through my prayer.’

Well you’re not alone, I know many a Christian who firmly believes they don’t have enough faith to go and ask God for the things they need, for the help they need and for the victory they need. It turns out that these people have more than enough faith to believe that they don’t have enough faith but not enough faith to believe that their loving powerful God could give them the breakthrough that they so desperately need.

I mean when you put it like that it sounds crazy but that’s exactly what’s going on here. Now let me warn you, I’m one of these crazy nut cases who takes Jesus at His word. In other words, if Jesus said it it’s not just true but it’s actually true for me. So what did Jesus say about how much faith that you and I need to overcome a whopping great obstacle that’s in our road? Matthew chapter 17 verses 19 and 20:

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘How come we couldn’t cast the demon out?’ and he said to them, ‘Because of your little faith. Look truly I tell you if you have faith the size of a mustard seed you will say to this mountain ‘get up, move from here, over there’ and it will move and nothing will be impossible for you’.

Did you get that? NOTHING will be impossible for you. The answer to how much faith you need is that faith the size of a mustard seed which was the tiniest of all seeds known to human kind when Jesus was walking this earth, faith the size of a mustard seed is more than enough to move the mountain, to move the obstacle, that’s what Jesus said. Question is, will you take Him at His word? Because it’s not about the size of your faith, it’s about the size of your God – a God who is so powerful that He created the universe.

Have a listen to this beautiful and powerful truth, Psalm 33 verses 6 to 9:

For the word of the Lord is upright and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.

Isn’t that beautiful?

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made and all their host by the breath of his mouth. He gathered the waters of the sea as in a bottle, he put the deeps in storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord, let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him for he spoke and it came to be, he commanded and it stood firm.

When you and I are praying that’s the God we’re praying to, the God who created the whole universe, a trillion trillion stars by the breath of his mouth. Do you think that He doesn’t have the power to deliver on His promises? Really? And yet He’s the very same God who wants to hear the deepest thoughts and secrets of our hearts. He is the God who delights in the intimacy of prayer. He wants a relationship, a real conversation.

The sort of prayer I was taught when I was growing up was formal prayer, kneel down, bow your head, clasp your hands together and then come up with some really sensible words maybe words that someone else wrote for you. The problem is though that that’s not the sort of prayer that the Bible talks about at all.

Jesus, just before He was crucified we’re told, threw Himself on the ground and prayed, He poured His heart out to His Father in heaven, He told His Dad exactly what He was thinking and feeling. Matthew chapter 26 verse 39:

And going a little further he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it’s possible let this cup pass from me yet not my will but let your will be done’.

Think about it, God loves you more than words can possibly ever say and when you love someone that much you want them to be real with you, you want them to pour their hearts out to you to tell what’s really going on, right? It’s exactly what Jesus did when He was under that terrible stress of being crucified.

Well, your Dad in heaven wants the same, your Dad in heaven wants your quiet times of prayer as the most intimate moments that you and I will ever have with God.

THE WORD OF GOD

I guess in a good loving marriage if you love someone it’s not unreasonable to expect that they would from time to time, even reasonably often, say kind, loving, encouraging, uplifting things to you. Not an unreasonable expectation, right? And yet so many Christians have never heard God whisper those sweet nothings into their ears.

Why? I was having lunch with a friend the other day and he said something along the lines of, ‘Well, look, I don’t read my Bible, I find it boring. In any case I have a deal with God, as long as I have love in my heart that’s all that matters.’ Yeah right. My question to him was this, ‘So if you don’t read your Bible, if you don’t listen to the loving things that God has to say to you and about you how can you possibly have His love in your heart?’

If you want to hear God speak read your Bible, if you want to hear God speak audibly then read it out loud. That Bible is His love letter to you.

As we journey through this series on living our lives in spiritual victory we have to talk about one of the greatest maladies in Christendom today, the Biblically illiterate majority who are so longing for victory, real victory over sin, over the devil, over trials and obstacles and circumstances and situations and yet they leave the one offensive weapon in their armoury locked away in a cupboard somewhere.

The Apostle Paul had this to say about the spiritual battlefield on which we live, have a listen, it’s Ephesians chapter 6 verses 10 to 17:

Finally (he writes) be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle isn’t against the enemies of blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of the present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.

Therefore take up the whole armour of God so that you may be able to withstand on that day of evil and having done everything to stand firm. Stand therefore and fasten the belt of truth around your waist and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the Gospel of peace. With all of these take the shield of faith with which you’ll be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit which is the word of God. (Ephesians 6: 10-17)

So there is one of the best pictures of the spiritual battlefield on which you and I live that you will ever find in the Bible. The point he’s making is that we focus on the things we see, the things of flesh and blood and yet there is a spiritual battle raging in the spiritual dimension, in the heavenly places, that is every bit as real as anything you and I can see or feel here and now.

A spiritual battle that sits aback of the trials and the troubles that we experience in this world. A spiritual battle that we ignore at our peril. We can’t have spiritual victory without being aware of that spiritual battle and then doing the things that we can do to win it. As Paul puts it, ‘Putting on the whole body armour of God’ not just part of it but all of it.

Now when you think about it armour is by and large defensive, in other words, it’s there to protect you. The belt of truth holds things together, the breastplate of righteousness protects your chest, your heart, your lungs, the shoes for your feet they make it easier for you to run, the shield of faith quenches the fiery darts of the enemy, the helmet of salvation protects your head. All of those are passive and protective to stop the enemy attacks from hurting you, great.

But you don’t win a battle just by defending yourself, you win a battle by attacking, by going on the offensive and in that whole list we are given only one offensive weapon, did you pick it? It’s the sword of the spirit which is the Word of God. In other words your Bible – the living Word of the living God is the one offensive weapon in your armoury.

When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness the devil came after Him by misquoting and twisting God’s Word, how did Jesus respond? Each time He responded with the truth, He defeated the devil with the truth, with God’s Word, Luke chapter 4 verses 3 to 12.

Jesus filled with the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing at all during those days and when they were over he was famished. The devil said to him, ‘If you’re the Son of God command this stone to become a loaf of bread’. But Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, man does not live by bread alone’.

Then the devil led him up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and the devil said to him, ‘to you I will give their glory and all this authority for it has been given over to me and I give it to anyone whom I please. If you then will worship me it will be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, worship the Lord your God and serve only him’.

Then the devil took Jesus to Jerusalem and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God throw yourself down from here for it is written ‘he will command his angels concerning you, to protect you and on their hands they will bear you up so you will not dash your feet against the stone.’ But Jesus answered him, ‘It is said, do not put the Lord your God to test. When the devil had finished every test he departed from him until a more opportune time.’

Three times Jesus hit back at the devil with His one offensive weapon, the sword of the spirit which is the Word of God. But leave the sword in its scabbard; leave the sword in the scabbard at home in the storeroom and it won’t do you any good. We need to get it out, to read it, to let God speak to us through it, to listen to what He has to say about us and this world rather than the perversions that the devil will whisper in our ears.

Let me be perfectly blunt, you cannot, you simply cannot live in spiritual victory without regularly reading your Bible, it just isn’t possible, get it? You and I don’t have the power to defeat the devil, we don’t have the power to overcome the obstacles in life but God’s Word is so incredibly powerful. Why do we miss that? Why do we trifle with the Word of God?

One of the most frightening things that I see in the Kingdom of God today is people who call themselves Christians and yet they trifle with God’s Word. They have a Bible to be sure but it collects dust on the shelf or it’s tucked away in a drawer somewhere. They listen to sermons most Sundays, well sort of but by the time they’re having that post Church service cup of coffee their heart and their mind has already wandered off somewhere else.

In the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter 1, we hear how God created the universe but let me ask you a question, exactly how did God create the universe? Answer, He spoke it into existence, Genesis chapter 1.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light and God saw the light and it was good and God separated the light from the darkness.

God spoke the whole universe into existence. As the Apostle Paul said later in Romans chapter 4 verse 17:

God calls into existence the things that do not yet exist.

That’s the power of God’s Word. I wonder what things, what blessings God wants to call into existence in your life through His Word. And His Word is the place where you’ll discover the spiritual victory that you’ve been looking for all this time. The sword of the spirit which is the Word of God – your one offensive weapon. Don’t leave home without it.

Life is something of a spiritual battlefield and when we’re in the thick of things, it’s so important for us to know what side we’re on. Each one of us has a new identity in Christ, but how many of us know that deep in our hearts, in the heat of the spiritual battle we call life?

GOD’S GRACE

Spiritual victory is something of an odd concept, we live life, we go through all the stuff we go through, we know somehow there’s a spiritual dimension to it all but for most of us, particularly westerners like me, the spiritual dimension of life can feel somewhat distant, irrelevant even in the cut and thrust of daily life. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

The battles we fight often appear to be battles against circumstances, adversity, and other people – especially other people. Our daily battles appear confined to the here and now when all along there’s a spiritual battle raging for your soul in the heavenly places. This is what the Apostle Paul writes, Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 to 13:

Finally (he says) be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil for our struggle isn’t against enemies of blood and flesh but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God so that you may be able to withstand on that day of evil and having done everything to stand firm.

So today we’re kicking off a brand new series of messages called Your Road To Spiritual Victory because Jesus didn’t come and die for you and rise again so that you could spend the rest of your life being defeated by your circumstances or by people or by satan or by your sin. Gods plan for your life is victory – spiritual victory. 1 John chapter 5, verses 4 and 5.

For whatever is born of God conquers the world and this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world? That the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

And that’s why today and over the next couple of weeks we’re going to focus on spiritual victory, your spiritual victory to be precise. Often when I start talking about this to people I get a response that goes something like this, ‘Yeah I hear you but I’m not good enough, I’m such a weak person, I don’t think I will ever experience the victory that you’re talking about.’

This is way more common than you think. Perhaps you’ve been thinking along similar lines as we’ve been chatting about this whole ‘spiritual victory’ thing today. Well my job is to open God’s Word with you and show you that that’s a whole bunch of baloney.

Let’s go back to Paul’s words about the spiritual battle and putting on the whole armour of God. The whole purpose of that, he says is quote, ‘So we may be able to withstand on that evil day and having done everything to stand firm.’ In other words ‘to win the battle‘.

‘But I’m not good enough,’ I hear you say. No, you’re not good enough, that’s the truth and nor am I for that matter, we’re all in the same boat. None of us is good enough or strong enough or pure enough or holy enough or smart enough to win the spiritual battle, that’s the whole point, that’s why we need Jesus, that’s why we need the Holy Spirit.

And the starting point for the transaction of spiritual victory can be summed up in one word – grace. And that’s something that your God and mine, has available in bucket loads for you and me. Again listen to how the Apostle Paul puts it, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 4 and 5.

But God who is rich in mercy out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, has made us alive together in Christ.

There are times in our lives when we know that we’ve blown it, I mean completely blown it. There is nothing worse than waking up the morning after the night before and remembering that you hurt someone you loved and damaged a relationship that was so terribly important to you. How could I have been so stupid? How could I have said that? How could I have done that? Yeah I know, you’ve been there right? So have I.

I remember one time when I was in that place when the person I had hurt reached out to me and without berating me, without showing anger, without judging me simply forgave me and opened the door to healing our relationship. I’ll never forget it. That person was Jesus. What He did is called mercy and here’s the thing, mercy is only mercy when it’s undeserved. If we deserved it, it wouldn’t be mercy, would it?

The Bible tells us that God is rich in mercy, ain’t that the truth.

For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing, it’s a gift from God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8 and 9)

See mercy and grace are two sides of the one coin. Mercy is when God takes away the punishment that we so richly deserve for rebelling against Him and grace is when He gives us instead untold blessings that we simply don’t deserve. You and I have rebelled against God and the wages of sin, as we’re told in the Bible, is death and yet because He loves you so much He heaps the death that you deserve on the shoulders of Jesus on that cross. Jesus suffered and died on your behalf – that’s mercy.

And then instead of the death we so richly deserve, He gives us a rich abundant life here and now, a life that we’ll spend with Him for the rest of eternity, that’s grace.

Some days we look in the mirror and we see just what we’ve done wrong. We see how unworthy we really are. We realise that there’s simply no hope and that’s the whole point, that’s why He sent Jesus, for you. He loves you so much, mercy and grace through Jesus Christ.

And so no matter how low the base that you’re coming off is in this spiritual game that we call life, God’s mercy will trump everything. In fact so much so that He’ll wipe away all of your past misdeeds, also known as sin. He’ll make your past completely irrelevant to you, to your life and to your relationship with Him. That’s how rich God is in His mercy and grace. Psalm 103, verses 11 to 14.

For as the heavens are high above the earth so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him, as far as the east is from the west so far he removes our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him for he knows how we’re made, he remembers that we’re just dust.

As far as the east is from the west – I recently had to fly from Sydney in Australia, it’s on the eastern seaboard up to Singapore and it takes about seven and a half odd hours to make that flight. Four and a half of those hours, over half of the trip, is involved just in flying from east to west to get out of Australia.

So as I made that flight I looked down on the red dusty land below me and I think ‘the distance between east and west is enormous’. So far has God removed our transgressions from us – as far as the east is from the west. Your slate is wiped completely clean and your past becomes completely irrelevant. 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17.

So if anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away and see everything has become new.

Your past is gone, it’s irrelevant. You want spiritual victory in your life then you need to know the truth so that the truth can set you free and the truth is this, it’s what I just shared with you from God’s Word today, the truth is that you are forgiven, completely and utterly, the truth is that as far as the east is from the west so far have your transgressions been removed from you.

That’s the truth and that’s the starting point of spiritual victory in your life – the truth.

YOUR IDENTITY 

Living our lives in spiritual victory over the devil, over sin and evil, over circumstances and adversity isn’t just some theoretical pipe dream, no it’s God’s plan for our lives. Let me be even more direct than that, it’s God’s plan for your life, Romans chapter 8, verses 35 and 37.

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Don’t you love that? Not just conquerors but more than conquerors, not just victory but more than victory. There’s a reason for that and the reason is that God is a God of abundant blessing, abundant mercy, abundant grace, abundant power, abundant love. He’s an over the top kind of God and He wants you to live in this abundant life that Jesus came to give you.

And to make that happen for you, all this abundance, God gives you a new identity the moment you believe in Jesus. Instead of being the sinner you once were in God’s eyes, completely deserving of His wrath and His punishment, He transforms you through your faith in Jesus, it’s the beginning of victory.

And just as a soldier on a battlefield needs to know who he is and who he’s fighting for in order to win the battle, so you and I need to know to understand and to accept our new identity in Christ. Have a listen to this, 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

In other words, God transferred all our sin onto Jesus shoulders so that now, when you and I stand before God, through our faith we look a whole lot like Jesus to Him. Jesus took your sin, He paid the price, He died for you so that you might become the very righteousness of God. That’s now your new identity if you believe in Jesus – a complete right standing with God no matter what horrible things you may have done in the past.

And not only in the past, in the present and what is to come in the future as well because God has given you a new standing, a standing in fact as a member of His family. Romans chapter 8, verses 14 to 17.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are in fact children of God. For you didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry ‘Abba’, Father it’s that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are in fact children of God and if children then heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ if in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

When the going gets tough as it invariably does out there on the spiritual battlefield that we call life, it’s so easy for us to imagine that God has abandoned us. There’s nothing worse than that feeling of abandonment because you and I we’re created to belong – families, societies, sporting teams, clubs even countries – they’re all about belonging, we need to belong, that’s how God has created us.

And when the going gets tough that sense of isolation, that sense of abandonment is devastating but our feelings are quite fickle, they aren’t always able to witness the truth into our hearts. In fact quite to the contrary because you and I are frail human beings the devil often uses our feelings to speak lies into us in order to rob us of the truth.

Listen up, God will never abandon you no matter how ferocious the spiritual battle becomes, no matter how heavily you may stumble and fall some days, if you believe in Jesus, yeah some day’s you’ll be called to suffering just like Jesus but that doesn’t change the fact that you are His child, that He loves you beyond measure. He will never abandon you. That’s Gods honest truth because He has given you a completely new identity.

You have become the righteousness of God through your faith in Jesus Christ. You have become a member of His family through Jesus. And there’s something else you need to know about how God sees you, have a listen to this truth from His Word, this is God speaking to you about how He sees you and what He thinks of you and what He’s going to do for you right now, Isaiah chapter 43, verses 3 to 5.

For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your saviour. You are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you. Do not fear for I am with you.

How we see ourselves – you and I – has a huge impact on the quality and the effectiveness of the lives that we lead and this life of yours, hey it ain’t no dress rehearsal, it slips away a minute at a time, a day at a time. And one day it’s going to be over, one day the end of this life will come.

What a tragedy it would be to have missed out on all that God has to offer you simply because you believed what the world said about you and as a result you lived out your life through your own inadequacies and insecurities rather than believing what God has to say about you.

Hey, do you believe in Jesus? If you do this is what God has to say about you, you are precious to Him, you are honoured by Him and He loves you. That’s who you are, that’s your identity, that’s what God thinks about you. It’s your passport through life. So who are you going to believe, the world or God? Hmm?

When the devil comes against you on the battlefield and whispers lies into your ears, ‘oh you’re not good enough and what’s more you never will be, you can never win, give up, throw in the towel’ all that stuff who are you going to believe? The devil, the father of lies or God?

God never lies and as one whom He has transformed into His very own righteousness, as one whom He’s adopted into His family and is called a child of God. There is something else that you have, something else which is already yours, have a listen to this, 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 3 to 5.

By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading being kept in heaven for you who are being protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Around where I live real estate prices have become so prohibitively expensive there’s a whole generation of young people who will have to wait for their parents to die before they can purchase a home using their inheritance. In most families children can rely on the fact that they’ll receive the lion’s share of their parent’s estate so why is it then that so many Christians are uncertain about their inheritance from God? Will I make it to heaven or won’t I? Will it be everything I expect? Will God keep my inheritance for me?

The future can be scary some days even more so as we approach that final hurdle out of this life into the next. So in case you’re wondering the truth is this, God has an inheritance waiting for you in heaven that is quote, “Imperishable, undefiled and unfading.” And not only that, it’s an inheritance that He has actively protecting through His power. It doesn’t get any better than that.

Do you see how your new identity completely transforms your own view of who you are? Seeing yourself through God’s eyes changes everything because as we look at ourselves through His eyes, through His truth, all of a sudden we realise that by His grace and His mercy we are a completely new creation.

So when the enemy comes against you out there on the spiritual battlefield of life, you can declare with boldness, ‘I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. I am a child of the living God and He has an inheritance waiting for me.

Full stop – end of story.

ALL POWER TO YOU 

Power is so important in living a life of spiritual victory. We’re going to talk a whole lot more about power next week on the programme, but in the few minutes that we have left together today, let me give you a taste of the power that God has already given you. Ephesians 1:17-20, Paul writes:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know Him, so that with the eyes of your heart enlightened you may know what is the immeasurable greatness of His power for us who believe. God put this power to work in Christ and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.

 It took me a long while (and maybe I’m a slow learner), but eventually I came to the conclusion that I cannot overcome my own sin in my own power. In fact, the harder I worked at it, the more I would fail, and the more condemnation I would feel. As far as I can see, working harder at becoming a better Christian is a recipe for guilt, condemnation and failure. What you and I really need is some power. I mean, serious power: Power to overcome our sin, and not surprisingly, God already has that figured out. Through the apostle Paul in Ephesians 1 (that passage we just read), God tells us that we already have available to us the same immeasurably great power that raised Jesus from the dead to give us a new life. The literal meaning of that verse, if I take the original Greek words (which is something I don’t often do on the programme) and I kind of transliterate them into English, it reads like this: Hyper ballistic, mega phonic, dynamic power.

See, this same incredible resurrection-power that raised Jesus from the dead is available to overcome your sin. It’s available to you and me here, now, today, through Jesus, so listen up. Stop praying for power, and start praying with power ‘cos you actually already have this power. Paul’s saying: ‘I wish, I pray, that you would through a spirit of revelation and wisdom come to know the immeasurable greatness of His power that’s already available to you.’

Stop praying for power, and start praying with power, but listen up. Prayer isn’t just a one-sided transaction. It’s not a one-sided conversation. I hope this is going to shock you (shocked me too, I have to tell you), but prayer is more, so much more than just rattling off our shopping-list to God.

Now don’t get me wrong; I absolutely believe in asking God for His blessing because without that, nothing I do is going to amount to very much at all, but if our prayer is a monologue rather than a dialog, then it’s not much of a relationship, is it? If our prayer is a one-sided conversation, us talking at God, then just imagine what we’re missing out on. Just imagine how God feels about that. Hearing the voice of God, hearing God speak back to us, that’s what the Holy Spirit is ready, willing and able to do, and there is such power when God speaks to us. Have a listen to what Jesus had to say on hearing His voice. John 10:1-4:

Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, the sheep hear his voice, he calls his own sheep by name and he leads them out. When he has brought out all of his own, he goes ahead of them and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

 Do you know His voice? Have you heard that sweet quiet powerful whisper in your heart? If not, be still. Just wait on Him. He will speak. Absolutely, He will. Take this whole communication thing, this whole prayer thing, seriously and you’ll be amazed at the victory that the Lord brings to pass in your life: Real victory, make no mistake. I’ve already said it, but let me say it again: You have the power to live your life in spiritual victory. It’s already been given to you. That’s the God-honest truth, and it’s that truth that will set you free to live your life in victory over the devil, over sin, over every obstacle that this world throws your way

May the Lord truly bless you as you receive His Word into your heart today.

The Bible has something incredibly exciting to say about the purpose of God’s grace in your life. Not just the fact that God’s grace is amazing, which of course it is. But it also has a purpose. And that purpose is to take you on the path of freedom. Real freedom.

FORGETTING THE PAST

Over the last little while on the program we have been chatting together about the amazing transformation that the grace of God brings into our lives. I like to think of it as a grace transformation.

If you’ve been able to join me, you’ll know that we’ve been spending some time in just one chapter of the Old Testament, in the book of Isaiah chapter 43 because that one chapter happens to be cram-packed full of the transformation that God’s grace brings into the lives of His people.

It’s amazing to me how much Gods managed to pack into just one chapter of His Word the Bible, His living Word. And if you and I can just drink that in, the amazing power of God’s grace, then we’re going to experience a transformation in our lives that words simply can’t describe.

Now to some that might sound to be a bit over the top, a bit much if you will. Transformation? ‘Hey I’ve believed in God for years’, some people are saying, ‘I’ve never experienced any transformation’.

Well that may be you, that may ring a little true for you and if it does stick with me because we’re going to dig deep today into what God has to say into your life about His grace transformation for you.

Have you ever wondered what grace is? Grace is when you receive something good but you don’t deserve, it’s the flip side of mercy. Mercy is when you are spared a punishment that you deserve. Grace is when in its place, you receive a blessing that you don’t deserve. Two sides of the one coin – mercy and grace. And one of the greatest acts of grace that God could ever pour out on anybody is a freedom from their past.

Let’s dive into Gods Word now, Isaiah chapter 43, a pivotal time in the history of Israel, they were in Babylon of all places, having been captured and exiled as slaves by the Babylonians.

Now for them that was an outrageous thing because they knew that they were God’s chosen people. They knew that God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt some centuries before and brought them to the Promised Land, the Land He had promised to Abraham many many centuries before.

And yet here they were again, not living in freedom in that Promised Land but living in captivity as slaves in another land. Why? Well because they had turned their backs on God. Now God was patient with them but eventually His patience ran out and He allowed the Babylonians to destroy Jerusalem, destroy the Temple and take His own people into captivity.

The Israelites were living out the consequences of their own sin. Does that sound vaguely familiar? It happens to all of us when we turn our backs on God and go our own way in sin, in rebellion against Him. We all end up living out those consequences and as far as the Israelites could see there was no hope for the future, they were stuck there in slavery, great, just, let me say, like it is for you and me when we’re wallowing in the slavery of our own sin.

But then God decides to speak through the great Prophet Isaiah. He speaks of bringing the power to change things. He speaks of breaking into their dismal reality. He speaks of the fact that He has redeemed them, that they are precious to Him, that they needn’t be afraid, that He’s going to open their eyes to the great reality, the great unseen reality which is Him.

He is bringing transformation, release for the captives, a new life, the very same thing He wants to bring into your life, the very same thing that Jesus came to this earth to bring for us.

But before that transformation, before that release can happen something else needs to happen in the hearts and the minds of His people. Have a listen to what God says through Isaiah chapter 43, verses 14 to 21.

Thus, says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, ‘For your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned into lamentation. I am the Lord your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King’. Thus, says the Lord who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse and army and warrior. They lie down, they cannot rise as they are extinguished and quenched like a wick.

‘Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I’m about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, don’t you see it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people, the people who I formed for myself so that they may declare my praise.’ (Isaiah 43: 14-21)

What is it that needs to happen? God needs to shift their focus off their circumstances onto the great and mighty redeemer that He is. And God needs to get them to forget their past and place their hope in Him for the future because if all they can focus on is their past failures and their present predicament then they won’t be ready to receive the freedom that He’s about to bring. And the very same is true for you and me.

There are some people tuned in today who are gripped by their past. They can’t get over their failures, they can’t get over their hurts, perhaps the abuse, whatever it is in their past that’s holding them back. And the thing about the past is that it’s so powerful it seems that nothing, NOTHING, can set you free.

That’s precisely how it would have seemed to the Israelites. Seventy years in captivity, seventy years of the punishment that by now they knew they so richly deserved and no hope for the future until all of a sudden, without warning the grace of God breaks into their bleak reality and God calls on them to forget their past and replace it with a vision of a bright future – a way in the wilderness, waters and rivers in the desert to give drink and to bless His chosen people, the people whom He formed for Himself to declare His praise.

I believe that God is saying the very same thing to us today, to you and me. Forget the past, He’s wiped your slate clean through Jesus, through the death and the sacrifice of Jesus on that cross for you, the past is irrelevant when you consider the future in the light of the grace transformation that God wants to bring into your life.

Do you hear Him through His word today?

LET GO OF YOUR IDOLS

It’s one of the great paradoxes of life: that the good things in our lives can actually distract us from the best thing in life. It’s actually far more common that you may think.

Consider a marriage, the most important of all human relationships on this planet, always has been, always will be. How easy is it for a young couple to get married and then they buy a home and the mortgage cuts in and so they work longer and harder and in any case, they both enjoy what they do.

Then children come along and they focus on those as they rightly should. And as the months and years slip by they become so focused on all those other good things that they forget to focus on their marriage. And then one day they wake up and they wonder, ‘where did all the love go?’

Is it a bad thing to buy a home? No. Is it a bad thing to enjoy work? Of course it isn’t. It’s great to have a job that really invigorates you. Is it a bad thing for a husband and wife to bring children into the world and to love them and to nurture them and to sacrifice for them? No, that’s a great thing! In fact it’s hard to imagine a greater blessing than children.

None of those things in and of themselves are bad things, they rarely are. But when it comes to the health of that marriage, if those good things become more important then the best thing – the marriage that brought them to pass in the first place then that, that’s a bad thing, a very bad thing.

Over the last little while on the program, we’ve been looking at the nation of Israel through the eyes of the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah at a time in their lives where they’d been in exile as slaves because they turned their backs on God to follow after a whole bunch of other things that seemed good in their eyes.

We’ve picked up the story in Isaiah chapter 43 where God speaks of the amazing grace that is about to befall them, the grace transformation as I call it.

But to bring about change sometimes we have to let go of some apparently good things, things that are drawing us away from the best thing.

Let’s pick up their story now in the next chapter, Isaiah chapter 44 beginning at verse 9. God says this:

All who make idols are nothing and the things they delight in do not profit, their witnesses neither see nor know and so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? Look all its devotee’s will be put to shame, the artisans too are merely human. Let them all assemble, let them stand up, they shall be terrified, they shall be put to shame.

The ironsmith fashions it and works it over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong-arm. He becomes hungry and his strength fails, he drinks no water and he’s faint. The carpenter stretches out a line and marks it out with a stylus and fashions it with planes and marks it with a compass.

He makes it in human form with human beauty to be set up in a shrine. He cuts down cedars or chooses a Holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it, then it can be used for fuel, part of it he takes and he warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread.

Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire, over this half he roasts meat and he eats and he’s satisfied, he also warms himself and says, ‘I’m warm, I can feel the fire’. And with the rest of it he makes it into a god, his idol and bows down to it and worships it. He prays to it and says, ‘save me for you are my God.

They do not know nor do they comprehend for their eyes are shut so they cannot see and their minds as well so they cannot understand. No one considers nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, ‘Half of it I burned in the fire, I also baked bread on the coals, I’ve roasted meat and have eaten, now shall I make the rest of it a abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood’? He feeds on ashes and a deluded mind has led him astray and he cannot save himself or say ‘is not this thing in my right hand a fraud’. (Isaiah 44: 9-20)

It’s a pretty simple and powerful piece of logic, isn’t it?

Okay back then, people made idols and worshipped them. Of course in some parts of the world that still holds true for the rest of us though we make idols out of other things, good things it would seem – jobs and careers and relationships and reputations and possessions.

Mostly none of those are bad, I mean the wood that the idol makers used wasn’t bad of itself but they become bad and they become dangerous and they become destructive when we elevate them to a level in our lives where we start believing that they have the power to save us and to make us happy. Because when we do that, in our hearts we have no need of God and He becomes less important in the scheme of things.

That’s exactly what Israel had done in the first place seventy years before which had landed them in this mess of slavery and exile that they found themselves in, a mess that God allowed to befall them to bring them back to their senses. They built these idols in their lives and in effect they worshipped them instead of God and it’s in the same way that we make idols of things in our lives and worship them in place of God.

Can an object make you happy on your deathbed? Can it? Or some prized possession that you’ll soon be parted from? No of course not, they’re powerless. It doesn’t make any more sense than taking a bit of wood and using half of it to cook your dinner and the other half to make an idol that you worship.

God’s grace is completely and utterly amazing but for God’s grace to have its full effect in radically, powerfully transforming our lives then you and I need to worship just the one God. The God whose poured His grace out on us through Jesus Christ. The God who has the power to transform our lives.

So you and I need to renounce some of the things that we’ve put above God in our scheme of things, some of the things that are just good things that we’ve elevated to the wrong level, that will be most of them and a handful of them will be the things that we know are wrong. Whichever they are we need to put them back into their rightful place so that God can be in His rightful place in our lives and our Lord of all. That’s where transformation begins.

A FUTURE OF FREEDOM

Freedom is a big deal. I grew up during the cold war at a time when the threat of communistic dictatorship loomed large as a threat across the globe – or at least that’s how it appeared to most of us. And still today there are totalitarian regimes where people aren’t free to say what they think or do what they please within the reasonable bounds of a just law.

I remember some years ago I was in a place, a country in Asia, that on the surface of things seemed to be a peaceable, lovely place to live. I was doing some IT consulting work for a large well-known organisation. Late one Saturday evening when a few of us were still at the office getting some work done that had to go out as quickly as possible, we sat down to have a bite of dinner.

And I was chatting with one of the young men whom I’d come to know reasonably well over the preceding few weeks and I was telling him what a lovely country I thought this was. As I did, a dark look came over his face. His eyes darted around to make sure that no one else was within earshot. He lowered his voice and said, ‘Well yeah it is on the surface but understand we’re not free to say what we think. If I criticised the government in any way I would probably go to prison. It’s a terrible thing’, he said, ‘when you can’t say what you think.’

Up until that point in my life I’d never even thought about it because I have, all my life, lived in a country where we have complete freedom of speech and action and religion within, as I said, the reasonable bounds of a just law.

And yet the more I thought about it the more I realised how terrible it must be simply to not be able to have one of those basic freedoms, the tension and the oppression that a person must feel when they simply aren’t allowed to speak their mind.

My dictionary tells me that freedom is the power or the right to act, speak or think as you want, the freedom of choice, the absence of subjection to a foreign domination or a despotic government. The power of self-determination or that sort of thing.

To a degree that definition hits the mark and yet to a greater degree I think it completely misses the mark. Why do I say that? Because the dictionary definition of freedom, the common definition assumes that freedom means to be free from something out there somewhere whereas the most common slavery that we all experience is the slavery to the evil that lies within.

Don’t believe me? Ask anybody who has ever been addicted to something. Ask anybody who has ever suffered because of their selfishness or their anger or their dishonesty. Ask anybody whose marriage has ever failed because they were unfaithful. Yeah surely the greatest tyrant of all lies within and God calls it sin.

Now conventional wisdom has it that we are masters of ourselves, that we can determine how we think and act and feel and react and behave. The Bible on the other hand, God’s Word, maintains that we are all slaves to sin until God sets us free. It’s a view that’s one hundred and eighty degrees diametrically opposed to conventional wisdom in this world.

In the course of the story of Israel’s redemption from slavery in Babylon that we’ve been looking at and exploring together over these past few weeks through the Book of Isaiah chapter 43 and 44. It’s really interesting that God isn’t about just setting them free from their captors, the Babylonians who had enslaved them in a physical sense. God’s also is in the business of setting them free from their sin which led to their physical enslavement and which has enslaved them in a spiritual and emotional sense as they live out its consequences.

Have a listen to this, Isaiah chapter 44, verses 21 and 22:

Remember these things O Jacob and Israel for you are my servant. I formed you, you are my servant. O Israel you will not be forgotten by me. I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud and your sins like a mist. Return to me for I have redeemed you.

I love that. I absolutely love that because you and I know that the most powerful slavery of all is our slavery to sin, our addiction to some behaviour based on a destructive attitude or thought pattern that try as we might we cannot, simply cannot rid ourselves of. It is every bit as powerful as a heroin addiction, this slavery that each one of us has to our sin.

And God comes along and says, just look at the powerful picture language here. He says that He swept away our transgressions like a cloud and your sins are like a mist for He has redeemed you. Past tense, done deal, end of story. Again centuries later the Apostle Paul puts it this way writing to his friends in Galatia, Galatians chapter 5, verse 1.

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.

It seems a strange saying, ‘for freedom Christ has set us free’, it’s a tautology in grammatical terms and yet it’s a powerful statement of the whole purpose of Jesus coming to this earth. The whole purpose of His sacrifice on the cross, the whole purpose of His being raised up from the dead, the whole purpose of God’s grace is to set you free.

Did you hear that? The whole purpose of God’s grace is to set you free. For freedom Christ has set you free so that you can be free indeed. How ridiculous is it for us to go looking for freedom in the idols of this world, which only lead to slavery and destruction? How ridiculous is it to look for freedom in the works of our hands, which only lead to enslavement to our own dead works.

The only place where we find true freedom, freedom that exists even amidst the most oppressive regime – is in Jesus Christ, an inner freedom that is so free that there is no condemnation, no guilt, no limit, no boundary. A place where we can soar like an eagle though a storm may rage around us. The whole point of grace is to set you free. That’s the grace transformation, its freedom.

Just a few verses on in chapter 5 of the Book of Galatians, Paul writes that we have all been called to freedom, so don’t use your freedom for an opportunity for gratifying your desires but use it to serve one another in love. That’s verse 13 of Galatians chapter 5.

Imagine a Church, imagine a world even where people instead of always being out to get what they want, turn their whole lives around to help others to get what they need. Just imagine such a Church. Just imagine such a world. How different would things be if people truly were free to live that way?

Well my friend that freedom isn’t something that you and I can conjure up in our lives. It’s not something that we can make happen in us. It’s not something that we can work harder to make happen. It’s only by the power of the Holy Spirit, the very power of God that dwells in each one of us who believe in Jesus Christ that it will ever happen and that freedom is available to each one of us here and now.

Father God, we know that we’re sinners saved only by grace, by your grace, your free unmerited favour through Jesus Christ and we believe each one of us that you mean to bring an amazing grace transformation about in our lives.

Lord God, we confess to you today how desperately we need that. And we pray that you will bring this grace transformation to pass in our lives for every day that we have left on this earth so that when we come to you on that day we’ll be ready, ready to live eternity in the presence of your glory. Through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen.

And may the amazing grace of God lift you out of the pit of your sin and raise you up to be all He meant you to be.

So many things can crowd our vision for the future, normally they're the things right under our noses in the here and now. But there’s a different reality, the Great Unseen Reality, which, if we get a handle on it, gives us a whole new vision of the future.

SIGHT FOR THE BLIND

It’s funny how you and I can be blind to something which is patently obvious to someone else. A lot of that has to do with proximity. I was sitting with a young man the other day who has a great business. He’s a well-known speaker and author and travels all over the world and he’s an absolutely delightful human being, not full of himself in his own sense of self-importance which is pretty rare among media personalities.

Anyhow, he and I catch up every once in a little while to chat and before our last meeting I was thinking a bit about his business and something glaring jumped out at me – an opportunity that he was missing to really take his enterprise, which he works very hard at, to the next level.

So we chatted over lunch and he became more and more excited and then I could see it in his eyes, he had one of those, ‘now why didn’t I think of that’ moments. It’s so obvious, how come I didn’t come up with that? Can I tell you I’ve had many of those moments in my life from my early days in IT consulting when our managing director would fly in and review a project that I was working on and he would see this and see that and this and the other thing that I’d missed, why didn’t I think of that? I remember thinking that to myself, it’s so obvious.

And these days in this ministry of Christianityworks of which I’m the CEO. The ministry that’s responsible for this radio program that you’re listening to and lots of other things to boot. Even though I’m many years older and hopefully just a bit wiser than I was as a young consultant I know that there are still things that I miss.

And so what I’ve done is to surround myself with some smart, insightful, external advisors as well as some great board members who see things differently because they’re not involved in the day-to-day running of the ministry. It’s through their input that so many of the amazing things that God’s done through Christianityworks have in fact happened. And it’s also through their input and advice that we’ve managed to avoid a few mistakes along the way.

You get the point right? The closer you are to something the harder it is to see the wood for the trees. And one of the things that you and I are really close to, far too close to, unavoidably close to is our sin, our weaknesses and our failings. Now that’s a dangerous thing because as we saw last week on the program – sin always, always, always has painful consequences.

And if our weaknesses and failings, our sin are tucked away in the blind spots where we can’t see them they’re going to continue to ruin our lives. What we need is that external perspective and wisdom and insight to help us see what’s wrong so that we can do something about it.

If you’ve been able to join me over the last few episodes on the program, you’ll know that we’ve been talking about the powerful transformation that God wants to bring into our lives, to make our lives better by setting us free from sin which robs us of the amazing life that he always intended we should have.

God is a God of new beginnings and He is also a God of powerful lifelong transformation and growth. That seems a little far-fetched when you’re down there in the mire of the consequences of your own sin but it’s true. And we saw together how God spoke and brought transformation over the nation of Israel precisely at such a time as that, when it seemed impossible.

When as a result of their sin they’d been in exile in Babylon as slaves for seventy years, when because Babylon was the dominant super power of the day freedom and transformation and redemption and restoration all seemed completely impossible.

Right in the middle of that God stepped in and said this:

‘But now’ thus says the Lord, ‘he who created you O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name and you are mine. When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flames shall not consume you.’

‘For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. I give Egypt as your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you because you are precious in my sight and honoured and I love you. I give people in return for you, nations in exchange for your life.’ (Isaiah 43: 1-4)

So God steps in to redeem them but the problem for Israel is that they still probably don’t completely see their sin, they still probably don’t have a good handle on what got them there in the first place and how to avoid it in the future.

So just a few verses later God acknowledges that and this is what He says, Isaiah chapter 43, verses 8 to 10:

Bring forth the people who are blind yet have eyes, who are deaf yet have ears. Let all the nations gather together and let the people’s assemble. Who among them declared this and foretold to us the former things? Let them bring their witnesses to justify them and let them hear and say it is true. You are my witnesses, says the Lord and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he.

In other words, the blind will see and become God’s witnesses. The deaf will hear the truth and will be able to tell others, ‘hey guys, it’s true’. God is going to remove the blind spots and clear out the deaf ears so that they can really see things as they are, so that they can see God as He is, so that they can see themselves and their sin for what they are.

When you think about it that’s exactly what you and I need in our lives, isn’t it? That external perspective and where better the get that than from God Himself? Who could be wiser? Who could care more? Who could love us more? Who could give us better advice than God Himself?

So God goes on and sets Israel free and restores them back to the Promised Land, back to Jerusalem, great. But if He doesn’t bring sight to the blind and hearing of truth to the deaf then they’re just going to make the same mistakes all over again just like you and me.

Do you imagine that a sculptor would begin and sculpture and then leave it incomplete? Do you imagine that a potter would toss a lump of clay on his wheel and leave it to go rock hard as a half-formed lump of dirt? No. They want to complete what they started and so it is with God.

He didn’t redeem you from your sin. He didn’t reveal Jesus to you to save you just to let you rot in your sin for the rest of your life.

Listen to how the Apostle Paul puts it in Philippians chapter 1, verse 6. He says:

I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.

God wants to finish what He started in you. He wants to keep shaping you and transforming you and one of the main ways that He does that, just as He did with Israel, is through His Word.

One of the great tragedies of the Church is that there are so many so-called Christians. People hungering to be set free from the consequences of their sin, who trifle with the Word of God, who pick and choose what suits them and worse still who ignore it all together.

I wonder how many people today have a Bible or two or three or five, sitting on a shelf or in a cupboard at home, somewhere gathering dust. A Bible that they haven’t opened for months or even years. I wonder. And those self-same people are invariably the ones whose lives are in turmoil. They are the same people who are wallowing in the consequences of their sin.

Wake up! God wants to bring sight to the blind. He wants to bring truth to the deaf. He wants to transform your life so that you can be all that He ever planned you to be, so you can do all the things He ever planned for you to do.

God has an amazing plan for your life, God wants to transform your life, are you ready?

THE GREAT I-AM

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember this but back when I was young there was a game that came out called Twister. Here’s how it worked. There was a plastic mat with coloured circles on it and you put it down on the floor. There might be two or three or four players and for each player the dial would be spun on a wheel and it would land on a certain colour.

What you had to do is put one of your hands or your feet on a circle of that colour on the mat. Now it’s easy for spin number one or perhaps two but with multiple players on the mat, by spin number three or four you had to do contortions to get around the other players on this relatively small mat to be able to place either a hand or a foot on the colour required.

Eventually, the three or four of you playing would end up collapsing in a heap from all the contortions. I mean I really can’t remember how you won the game but I do remember it was a lot of fun.

Well I have to say the contortions could get pretty uncomfortable particularly when someone else fell on top of you and knocked the stuffing out of you.

Now when you stand back and you think about that game objectively you come to realise that the reason people were doing these contortions there on that mat, is that their reference point was the dial that was spun around to select a colour. And to tell you the truth I see a lot of people living their lives like that because of the reference points that they choose.

If you choose wealth as your reference point then you’ll be contorting your life to fit with its demands. If you choose career you’ll be contorting your life to fit with its demands. Let me give you an example. The other day I caught up with a man for breakfast, now he’s just a few years younger than me and he works in the finance sector.

He had taken a new job in the bank that he works for to advance his career. So instead of working close to where he lives, he now has to travel a long way each day to and from work. And he’s having problems in this new job. It’s a high pressure, high target work environment with an unreasonable boss. So much so that in this large bank they simply can’t get people to apply for jobs in this particular office.

The more I listened, the more I heard this man basically asking me for advice as to how he could contort himself to fit into this environment. But what I saw from what he’d told me was that it was a toxic work environment where no matter how good he became at his job, no matter how much he twisted himself to fit he was never going to succeed.

When I pointed that out to him in an instant he looked at me with eyes wide open and said, ‘You know what, you’re right, you’re absolutely right’. His reference point was trying to please an unpleasable boss. And because I wasn’t close to it I was able to stand back and basically point out to him that he had the wrong reference point.

Do you see how easily we can do that when we’re close to a problem? It’s something that happens to each one of us and it’s something, as we saw last week on the program, happened to Israel. God brought them out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land, the Land flowing with milk and honey, where He blessed them immeasurably and yet off they went and they worshipped idols and foreign gods and behaved badly and turned their backs on God so after many warnings He punishes them.

The Babylonians invade, they destroy Jerusalem and they take God’s people into captivity for seventy years. But after that time God decides, look enough is enough, so He comes to set them free as we saw, if you were able to join me, in Isaiah chapter 43.

Now even though they were being set free one problem still remained. He needed to reset their reference point from the things of this world back to Him. Have a listen to what He says to them in verses 11 to 17 of that same chapter, chapter 43 in the Book of Isaiah.

I, I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour. I declared and saved and proclaimed when there was no strange god among you and you are my witnesses, says the Lord, I am God and also henceforth I am He. There is no one who can deliver from my hand, I work and who can hear it? Thus, says the Lord your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, for your sake I will send to Babylon and break down all the bars and the shouting of the Chaldeans will be turned to lamentation.

I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King. Thus, says the Lord who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings out chariot and horse and army and warrior. They lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, they are quenched like a wick. (Isaiah 43: 11-17)

So what God is basically talking about here in this passage is that He is going to defeat the Babylonians also called the Chaldeans.

Now that’s amazing because they were the dominant super power of the day. But in doing this amazing thing before the eyes of His people these Israelites, who indeed had been in captivity for seventy years as slaves, He’s making a point to them.

He’s saying, "Look, the only one who has the power to do this is me", God Himself. All those other gods that you were worshipping, which is what got you here in the first place, do they have the power to do this? Do the Babylonians have the power to stand against me? No, of course, they don’t.

So why chase after those other gods? Why have your reference point for your life out there somewhere? Because if you do that you’ll end up doing contortions to fit with the demands of those other things which you call gods, whether it’s wealth or career or reputation or maybe a physical idol, whatever it happens to be for you, all those things are false gods.

I know there are some people who need to reset their reference point today, who need to stop spinning the dial in their lifelong game of twister and focus on the one reference point, God Himself, who has the power to set them free.

Can I ask you quietly but directly, are you one of those? Because if you are today, here, right now is the time to make Jesus the number one reference point of your life.

In the days of old before satellite navigation, ships always didn’t know exactly where they were. Of course these days using simple Sat Nav technology they can pinpoint their location on the globe within just a few metres. But back then they couldn’t. So when it was dark or stormy or foggy if they were close to the land they ran a very real risk of crashing into the rocks.

That’s why lighthouses were built, as a reference point, a light that shone out into the darkness, to help them head in the right direction rather than the wrong one which would lead to death and destruction.

Jesus said this, He said:

I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life. (John 8:12)

The question however is for each one of us, who or what am I following? Who or what is my reference point? Is it that unreasonable boss who somehow tricked me into thinking that I had to conform to his plans and contort my life? Is it that extra money I’m chasing which is causing me to do that long commute and to miss out on time with my family? Is it …? Well, what is it?

I’ve said it many times and I’ll say it again. God’s plan is to transform your life completely and radically, to set you free to be who He made you to be and He’s done that by grace.

And when we let the light of Jesus shine in our hearts, when we let the light of Jesus guide our steps, when we make Him our reference point in place of all those other imposters out there, then the grace transformation that God has always wanted to bring you starts to happen in your life.

Listen to Him again: I, I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour.

A NEW REALITY

Before we believe in Jesus, our reality is determined by the here and now, how we feel and what we’re going through, and all too often what we’ve been through in the past shapes us to a great degree, but the moment anyone believes in Jesus, the past becomes completely irrelevant. The moment we take God for who He is, the great I-am, all those other things cease to be all that relevant to our lives because in Him, you and I are completely transformed. Have a listen to 2 Corinthians 5:17, written by the apostle Paul:

If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new.

How much of the past has passed away? Everything, all of it, every last little bit is gone the moment you believe in Jesus because in God’s sight and in reality you have become a completely new creation, you have literally been born again and everything about you has become new, everything.

And God wants us to see that today. That’s why in that verse that I just read He says, ‘See, see everything has become new’. Do you see? Because that’s the great reality that God wants you to see today – the reality of your complete transformation. You, your life, your slate wiped clean and your future, whatever it may hold in God’s plan for you is bright because your God, the same one who sent Jesus for you, is pouring His grace out into your life today through His Word and His Spirit.

Back there in the Old Testament, Israel was punished for their sins but you and I, we have a new contract, a new arrangement with God written in the blood of Jesus who bore the punishment that you and I so richly deserve. Back then, the Israelites didn’t receive mercy but eventually they received grace.

Today you and I, if we believe in Jesus, we receive both mercy and grace, both freedom from punishment that we deserve and the unmerited, undeserved favour and blessing of God through Jesus, through Him alone and nobody else.

What a grace transformation, the power of the past over you is broken, your future lies in God’s hands – what a blessing! What a grace transformation!

When the apostle Paul was writing to his friend Titus, this in part is what he said about this utterly amazing grace transformation. Titus 2:11-14:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passion, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright and Godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for Himself a people of His own, who are zealous for good deeds.

In other words, the way we respond to God’s grace, the best way to experience the grace transformation in your life, is to let go of all of that bad stuff: The bad stuff that’s crowding God out of the picture, and to live your life as a great big thank-you to God for what He’s done for you. Now isn’t that a powerful idea? Simple, but powerful. Live your life every day, everything you do, as a big thank-you to God for His grace. Wow!

Now there’s a transformed life right there, right? Of course we’re going to make mistakes along the way, but when you say thank-you to God the best you can with every thought and every hope and every deed, just imagine how powerfully God will work in us and through us. That’s where it’s at.

Those idols, those things that we’ve elevated to the wrong level in our lives, they can never deliver that. In fact, quite the opposite. They end up being burdens that weigh us down. The only thing that lifts us up, the only thing that sets us free, the only thing that brings the change that we need in our lives, is the grace of God through Jesus Christ. That’s the only thing.

We’re going to talk a lot more about this next week on the programme as we continue our look at the amazing, powerful grace transformation that God wants to bring to pass in your life.

I wonder if you can think of the most precious person in your life. Just picture their face. If that person, the one who means more to you than anyone else in your life, if that person were in trouble, what would you do? How would you react?

They say that old habits die hard. It’s true. And it’s even truer about bad habits. Have you noticed how difficult it is to get rid of bad habits? Some … me included… would say, that it’s virtually impossible. So, what bad habits do you need to get rid of out of your life?

THE POWER TO CHANGE

We’ve all been there. There is this one bad habit that we just can’t seem to get rid of. There’s this one … no, let me start again. Let’s call a spade a spade. There is this one sin that we just can’t seem to get rid of. That’s better – sin. That’s the right word. I know that some find that word just a tad confronting, maybe even anachronistic; a bit old-fashioned, irrelevant in this day and age, and I understand that.

If we focus on today, our lives here and now, it can seem just a bit irrelevant; but if we zoom out, and look at our lives as a whole, we can see how our sin (the bad things we’ve done) has left a trail of destruction in our lives and in the lives of others. Zoom out a bit further and look at the whole world, and you can see how sin – the sin of men and women and even young folk – is tearing families and societies and nations apart.

Now twist the lens some more and zoom out even further, and look at the whole of the history of humanity, and the thing that’s wrecked a great world and a great plan has been what? The sin of humanity: The hatred; the selfishness; the anger; the wars; the exploitation; the genocide …

Think about it. God gave us a perfectly good world in which to live. I mean, He’s given us an amazing world: An amazing universe in which to live. He’s created each one of us so incredibly: The way our bodies function; the incredible talents and gifts and potential that each one of us has, and yet somehow, humankind has been on a course of self-destruction. Whether down in our personal lives or in the geoclinal events that are sweeping the globe today, the destructive power of sin is as plain as the nose on my face and yours. You just can’t miss it. Its effects are totally devastating

And yet we kid ourselves that somehow, our personal little brand of sin, whatever that may happen to be, doesn’t really matter. I’m not such a bad person; I mean, really I’m not. Okay, I get this wrong and I get that wrong, but I’m not that bad. Everybody’s entitled to one or two bad habits, aren’t they?

Well … you see how easy it is to rationalise our own personal sin when the truth is that the cumulative effect of my sin and yours and everyone else’s is what sets us on a course to destruction. Do you see how easy it is to downgrade our sin, and write it off as just a bad habit?

So deep down, we know that sin is sin, even if we don’t’ like to admit it to ourselves, and what’s more, we use the sin of others as our excuse to escalate our sin and get revenge. The problem is (call it sin; call it a bad habit; it’s the same thing) that try as we might, we can’t seem to shake it. It’s entrenched. It’s deep-graven in our flesh. We know the difference between right and wrong; we know what’s right to do; it’s just that we can’t seem to do it. Have you noticed?

The reason for that is that it was always meant to be like that. The reason for that is that God wants to have a relationship with us and the only way, the only way that that’s going to happen, is through what He does, and what He has in point of fact already done for us, not through what we do for ourselves.

Have a listen to this. It was written by the apostle Paul a couple of thousand years ago. He was writing about this self-same problem that you and I have – the problem that even though we know what’s right, we can’t seem to do it. Romans 7:21-23:

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what’s good, evil lies close at hand. You see, I delight in the law of God in my innermost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?

That’s rather a good question. Who indeed? Well our first response, yours and mine, is to get a handle on our sin. When we finally do and decide for ourselves, ‘You know what? I just have to do better. I just have to stop sinning. I have to overcome this one bad habit that’s totally ruining my life: My anger; my gossip; my jealousy; my smoking or my overeating or’ … whatever other addiction happens to be plaguing us.

It’s just that it never works. In fact, that’s exactly what Paul goes on to say just a few verses later in Romans 8:3-4:

For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, couldn’t do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, He’s actually condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

So let’s just focus on the first part of that for a moment. God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. In other words the law, a bunch of rules, is completely and utterly powerless to help us to change and get rid of this rubbish, particularly when those rules in effect are weakened by our own sinfulness.

So many people, so many people, believe with all their hearts in Jesus, and yet because they themselves can’t seem to overcome their sin, they live with a constant sense of guilt and condemnation before God. Well, if you know anyone like that, I have some good news for you today.

Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! For there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death, because God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, couldn’t do. By sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and to deal with sin, He condemned sin in the flesh so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. (Romans 7:25-8:4)

What Paul’s saying there is, the answer is Jesus. The answer is grace, but the grace of God in Jesus Christ is something that you and I struggle to get our minds around because grace is completely unnatural to us.

And that’s why today we’re kicking off a series of messages that I’ve called ‘The Grace Transformation’. The only thing that is ever going to change us, the only thing that is ever going to transform our lives by gradually getting rid of the sin which is so destructive, is the amazing grace of God in Jesus Christ.

“Amazing Grace” is one of my favourite hymns, but every time I sing it, I wonder to myself whether I really grasp what grace is all about. Do you? Do you have a real handle on the amazing grace that God afforded to you by the death of Jesus on that cross to pay for your sins?

I think I’m going to spend the rest of eternity and then some trying to wrap my heart around the grace of God, but as we begin to do that, what we discover is that the transformation and the freedom that we’ve been trying to make happen in our own lives (and failing miserably) just starts to happen of its own accord, as the Holy Spirit makes grace real in our lives.

You have been saved by nothing more and nothing less than the incredible grace of God; the unmerited favour of God; the sovereign decision of God to spare your life and to give you a new start and a new eternity by heaping the punishment that you so richly deserve onto Jesus on that cross. Romans 11:6:

And if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

So just as we spend some time together in this series over the coming weeks, my prayer for you is that the grace transformation that God intends for you will become a reality in your life as you come to know the truth, and that truth sets you free.

BUT NOW

There’s a beautiful old hymn called Would you be Free from Your Burden of Sin. Now I’m not going to sing it for you; I would never do that to you, but here are the lyrics of the first verse and the chorus, just as a bit of a reminder.

Would you be free from the burden of sin?
There’s power in the blood, power in the blood
Would you o’er evil a victory win? There’s wonderful power in the blood
There is power, power, wonder-working power in the blood of the Lamb
There is power, power, wonder-working power in the precious blood of the Lamb

A great old hymn, one of my favourites. I wonder how often we think about the burden of sin. The incredibly heavy load that it causes us to carry. The word sin as it’s used in the New Testament simply means, ‘to miss the mark’ or as we might put it ‘miss the point’. And the whole point of life isn’t that we should carry around a heavy burden that drains us emotionally and physically and spiritually but that we should live free as a bird to enjoy our lives.

That was Gods original plan, that was the plan that Adam and Eve were living out in their idyllic existence in the Garden of Eden until they sinned. And from that moment forward they had to live out a terrible burden of suffering and sickness, the murder of one son by the other and on it went.

Those are the consequences of sin. They were back then and they still are today and Lewis E Jones when he wrote that beautiful old hymn back in 1899, asked exactly the right question, would you be free from your burden of sin? Well … would you? The sin that dragged you down, the sin that holds you back.

Then listen to me, the only place where you’ll find that freedom is not in your good works, not in trying harder but in the wonder-working power that can only be found in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for you on that cross – the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

And it’s that grace that we’re going to chat about for a few minutes together today and the best way I know to do that is to take you back to a time when the nation of Israel was suffering under the burden of their sin.

It was a terrible time. God had brought them into the Promised Land from their slavery in Egypt. He had set every good thing before them, the land flowing literally with milk and honey just as He does for you and me. And just like you and me these people rejected God. They went their own way, they worshipped their idols, they sinned against Him and so following warning after warning He sent His judgement upon them, He gave them what they deserved.

He allowed the Babylonians sometimes also called the Chaldeans, the largest and greatest world power of that day, to completely destroy Jerusalem and the Temple and kill many and take the rest into captivity. It was a terrible time, those left were taken into slavery in Babylon where they lived out their burden of sin and the sin of their forefathers for seventy years, seven decades.

Imagine what that would be like, being torn from your home, seeing everything around you destroyed and being taken from your freedom into captivity as a slave. Sounds rather dramatic but I imagine if it happened to you it would be devastating. And in a very real sense the effects of our sin are devastating. Homes, marriages, families are being torn apart every day through sin. Lives are being destroyed every day through sin, it’s all around us, look up and see and it’s in us too. Our lives are devastated when we allow sin to reign.

What’s the answer? Who will save us from this body of sin and death? Hard work won’t, trying harder won’t, only grace, God’s grace. And at some point something has to give, at some point something has to change ’cause nothing else works. And at some point something did change for the Israelites who are captives there in Babylon. God came along and changed it. Have a listen, Isaiah chapter 43, just verse 1.

‘But now’ thus says the Lord, ‘He who created you O Jacob, who formed you O Israel; do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name and you are mine’.

We’re going to spend quite a bit of time in this chapter of the Book of Isaiah over the coming days but for now I want to focus with you on just two words. Here they are ‘but now’. I call it a grace interruption. Life was going along so miserably for those Israelites, those captives as it is for anyone who’s carrying the burden of their sin.

And then all of a sudden along comes God with an interruption, a complete discontinuity of grace, His free unmerited favour that He lavishes on those whom He loves, His people, those who believe in Jesus His Son who died for their sins and my prayer for you today is that you’re going to have a grace interruption just like those Israelites had almost two and a half thousand years ago.

They had no prospect of a future, all they saw was more slavery tomorrow and the next day and for the rest of their lives. But along comes God through His Prophet Isaiah and says. “But now …”

Now despite everything that’s gone before things are going to change. Now despite the fact that all you can see is a bleak future and more suffering at the hand of the sin that’s holding you captive. Now I am going to break into your world, says God, with my grace, I’m going to turn everything on its head, my free unmerited favour is going to flow into your life because I love you, but now …

That same thing that He did for His people, breaking into their slavery to sin and setting them free, is what God wants to do in your life right now, today.

‘But now’ thus says the Lord who created you. ‘Do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name and you are mine.’ (Isaiah 43:1)

With all my heart I believe that that’s the word the Lord has for you today, NOW. The grace of God, the favour of God in Jesus Christ has come to set you free.

YOU ARE REDEEMED

Anybody who has ever come to the conclusion that they’ve made such a mess of their lives that nobody or nothing could ever, ever, ever make things better, anybody who’s ever been in that place needs to know something, something important … something, the only thing that could ever make things better.

One of the things that Christians do is that they throw around words, words that seem important to them but are meaningless to the rest of us. Worse than meaningless actually, it makes them sound almost like a cult, the blood of the Lamb, sin, salvation, communion, redemption. It’s a pretty long list of in-house jargon that for quite a long time kind of made the goodness of God, the amazing love of God, His grace in Jesus, inaccessible to me, it turned me off religion, to tell you the truth I remain turned off from religion and jargon and rituals. None of those things in and of themselves have ever done anything much or meant anything much to me.

And I guess that the sad thing about all of that jargon is that by using it without explaining it we kind of obscure the power and the wonder of the meaning that lies behind it.The word that I particularly want to focus on right now, not because I want to do some irrelevant word study but because it really matters, is redemption.

What does it mean to be redeemed? Who cares? Does it matter? Is it relevant to our lives today? Well you make up your own mind.

Yesterday on the program, we were talking about a bad time in the life of Israel, a time when through their rebellion against God they found themselves living out the consequences of their sin as slaves and captives to the Babylonians. It was a terrible time. It lasted for seventy years which is almost three generations.

But one day God decided that enough was enough. They’d had enough pain, enough suffering, the direct consequences of their rebellion – their sin, it’s what always happens but enough was enough, it was time to act because God so loved His people beyond measure. Isaiah chapter 43 beginning at verse 1.

But now thus says the Lord who created you O Jacob, he who formed you O Israel, do not fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name and you are mine.

See there it is, that word ‘redeem‘, did you pick it up? He goes on to say:

When you pass through the waters I will be with you and through the rivers they shall not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire you shall not be burned and the flames shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour. I give Egypt as a ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in exchange for you. (Isaiah 43: 2-3)

So what does it mean to be redeemed in the context of what God is saying there to His people? Well in that context, remember as far as the Israelites were concerned all was lost, they were third generation slaves in captivity with no prospects of freedom. Jerusalem, their capital, lay in ruins. The Temple where the presence of God supposedly dwelt lay in ruins, all was lost, their lives were lost, their future was lost.

But now God comes along and says, ‘Do not fear for I have redeemed you.’

I have brought you back from the abyss. I have lifted you out of this pit, I have restored your future to you. I have saved you from a lifetime of living out the consequences of your rebellion against me, aka your sin. I have removed the burden of your sin from you.

And notice with me if you will the tense of the verb ‘redeemed‘. It’s not future tense. God’s not saying ‘I will redeem you one day’. It’s not even present tense, ‘I am redeeming you today’. It is in fact past tense, it’s a completed act, it’s a done deal, ‘for I have redeemed you’ says the Lord.

Now just imagine what they, the Israelites, felt when they heard the great Prophet Isaiah declare that to them. ‘But now’, says the Lord, do not fear for I have redeemed you’. They would have been confused. Hang on a minute, right now I’m still a slave, right now the Babylonians are still the dominant global super power on the planet, nothing’s changed.

And yet this isn’t just anyone saying this, this is after all the Prophet Isaiah. What do I do with this? How do I process this? The Word of the Lord and the evidence of my circumstances are in total conflict and opposition to one another so what do I do now? Which one do I believe, Gods Word or my circumstances?

That is pretty much the dilemma that we all find ourselves in pretty often. It looks like the burden of our sin will never leave us. The consequences will never go away and yet the truth is that in Jesus, just as the Israelites were redeemed through God’s Word and in subsequent chapters in the Book of Isaiah you actually see how all that plays itself out. Just as they were redeemed so have you and I have already been redeemed, already plucked from the pit of our despair by the grace of God.

The free, unmerited, unlimited favour of God who doesn’t want us to live out the punishment and the consequences that we so richly deserve but who wants to set us free to be all that we can be for His glory.

Romans chapter 5 beginning at verse 6:

For while we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed rarely will anyone die for a righteous person though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.

Much more surely then, now that we’ve been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his light. But more than that we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:6-11)

It’s a done deal! It’s past tense. Whatever it is that’s going on in your life at the moment, whatever exile and captivity and slavery that your rebellion against God has been brought upon you, I want you to hear this very good news. The very Word of God for you today is this, ‘Do not be afraid for I have redeemed you .I have called you by name and you are mine.’

Where there’s a conflict of evidence between your circumstances and God’s Word, God’s Word wins. God’s Word always wins.

How much impact is your life having on other people? Not bad impact, good impact? How much is the miracle of your life, creating miracles in the lives of others? Because if the answer is “not much”, then Houston, we have a problem.

NO BLESSING, NO RESULTS

I remember one of the saddest times in my life, I’m going to share it with you. It happened, ooh about twenty years ago now. Everything that mattered to me, everything in my personal life and family life had fallen apart – completely. I’d been working so hard on growing my business that I hadn’t had the time or the energy to work on the things that really mattered in life. The people who really mattered – or should have mattered anyway. It was deeply distressing.

The business that I was a partner in, was an IT consulting firm, you know I guess, in its early stages of success. We were in the process of moving to a larger, better office and one of the things that we had to do was to go through all our stuff and clean out before we packed and moved.

I was sitting on an old, carpeted floor by a number of those grey metal four-drawer filing cabinets, going through all the consulting reports that we’d written for many, many of our clients, sorting out those that we’d keep and those that we’d throw away. We kept probably twenty-five percent and we threw seventy-five percent away.

And I remember looking at that pile of the seventy-five percent of consulting papers there on the floor, thinking … is that what I poured my life into? These reports that we’re about to throw away – is that what I sacrificed everything for? Is that what my life amounts to? Is that the legacy I want to leave behind? A whole bunch of trash!

It was a tragic wakeup call for me, and it was all about the impact that my life had had to date. How much impact? Despite all the hard work, answer: Not very much real impact at all.

I remember deciding then and there, that I wanted my life to have an impact in other people’s lives. I’d made a whole bunch of mistakes to that point in my life. I’d worked hard, I’d been part of a successful business, but in real terms, in life impact terms, in terms of what really mattered – it hadn’t amounted to much. That was one of those experiences that God used to usher me into what I’m doing right now. And while it pays a whole bunch less, it’s a whole bunch more satisfying because it has a whole bunch more impact.

Just last night, I had a Facebook message from someone who said that they were listening to this program each day and it had literally transformed his life. That’s what gets me out of bed each morning – being part of something that God is doing with a real impact in people’s lives.

By the way (he wrote), what he wrote made me realise that he didn’t quite have things right. This is literally what he said, ‘You have changed my life’. Well, no actually, I haven’t. I wrote back, ‘God has. Yes, He’s used our small team here at Christianityworks to do that, but it’s His work and not mine.’

I know that absolutely because there is nothing that I possess, and there is nothing that I, in and of my own self can say or do, that can have an eternal impact on your life or anyone else’s life. Only the Holy Spirit can do that, only He can make that happen. And it happens, when God’s blessing flows down into me in such huge volumes, that I just can’t contain it; that it overflows out of me into the lives of other people, like that man who wrote to me on Facebook last night.

We’ve been talking a lot over the last few weeks about God’s blessing and the fact that it’s right and proper to ask Him to bless us. I ask for God’s blessing each and every morning in prayer. I pray that He will bless me so that I can bless you. That’s how it works in God’s economy. And if I don’t have God’s blessing flowing into me and out through me, then frankly, I have nothing of value to give you.

Listen to how Jesus talked about this very thing, John 15: 1-11, He said:

I am the true vine and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you.

Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

The fruit only happens on a branch, like you and me, when we’re connected to the vine. When the Spirit of God flows from the trunk to the branch – when the blessing of God flows from the trunk to the branch; when the Word of God flows from the trunk to the branch – then and only then, does the branch grow the sort of fruit that God wants it to grow. The sort of fruit that other people can come along then and pick off the branch and enjoy, and be blessed by, and be nourished by.

And do you notice what Jesus says about how much you and I can achieve without Him? Apart from me you can do NOTHING!

The point I’m making right here is that you and I need God’s blessing. We can’t operate without God’s blessing. When we step onto the battlefield of life, if we don’t have God’s blessing and His Presence and His power and His joy and His peace, we have nothing to offer the rest of the world.

It’s a tragedy to me that so many Christ–followers don’t connect with the vine each and every day by quietly, gently starting off their day resting in Him, praying, chatting, asking for His blessing.

Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we absolutely covet the blessing of God and make it the greatest priority to get connected into that blessing through Jesus each and every day? Come on, what’s the matter with us?

Can I ask you this? Do you want to be filled with God’s blessing or not? Do you want to experience every blessing that God has for you or not? The answer is obvious, isn’t it? Of course, we all want to be blessed. Well, why don’t we connect with the vine? The answer is kind of obvious and yet it’s easy not to make the blessing of God an absolute priority.

I know that the idea of God’s abundant blessing seems incongruous in difficult circumstances. It seems that it’s simply not possible when you’re going though the middle of a testing time, a wilderness experience, a dungeon experience. It’s simply not possible to imagine that in that place you could receive the blessing of God.

But it’s precisely in that place that you and I need the abundant blessing of God. Think of Paul and Silas in prison. They healed a girl, and delivered her from a demon. For that the crowd attacked them, the magistrates had them stripped and beaten to within an inch of their lives with rods.

But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all of the doors were opened and everybody’s chains were unfastened. (Acts 16: 25-26)

See, right there in the middle of their impossible circumstances, their painful and uncertain circumstances, they received the blessing of God. Why? Well, it wasn’t because they were cowering in fear and licking their wounds and grumbling about their plight, it was because they were praying and singing hymns to God.

That’s how you get connected to the vine. That’s how you get the blessing of God flowing through you. That’s how the prison doors swing open and the chains fall off. And then, they went on to bless everyone around them. Hello! Are we getting this?

You and I need the blessing of God in our lives. And God is a God who wants to bless us abundantly.

Let me say it to you again, so that this time it’ll sink in once and for all. God is a God who wants to bless you abundantly! For it is to His glory, that you get out there and you bear much fruit.

NO BLESSING, NO FRUIT

Before the break, we were talking about the impact of your life on other people. And that’s a theme I want to continue to explore some more right now, because when we talk about the blessing of God in our lives, the whole point of that blessing isn’t just that it should be a blessing to us. But that it should flow out through us and be an abundant blessing to the people around us.

I am here with you today because some people who had experienced God’s blessing in their lives, shared that blessing with me amidst of some of the most difficult circumstances I’d ever experienced. God’s blessing to them overflowed into my life.

I think of an elderly woman, well into her seventies she was at the time, with whom I boarded for several months (this is about 20 years ago now), when I was going through a tough time and I was in the throes of giving my life to Jesus. Her name was Norma. And she gave me a place to stay when I didn’t have anywhere to live. Each night after dinner, Norma and I would sit down over a cup of our favourite Twinings Russian Caravan tea. And she would share with me the abundant joy that she had in her relationship with Jesus. Her husband had died eighteen years before from a massive heart attack walking back from the letterbox on their front lawn.

So here she was a widow, lonely often. And yet when she told me about Jesus and her relationship with Him, and what that meant, and how He blessed her (on and on, night after night) I could see it in her eyes and I could hear it in her voice. It was infectious. And that ‘it’ (I now look back and), I can give that ‘it’ a name. It was the blessing of God in her life. It was so real.

And so the blessing of God in Norma, overflowed into my life. And since then; as I do what I do now, sharing the love of Jesus with you and many other people through this program; the blessing of God that first came to me through Norma and a handful of other people (just like her) now overflows into so many more lives.

That’s God’s plan. That’s how it works in God’s economy. His blessing fills us to overflowing and then multiplies to feed countless more people. Have a listen to this beautiful, powerful story of the multiplication of God’s blessing:

After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a large crowd was following him, because they had seen the signs that he was doing on the sick. So Jesus went up on a mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?’ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, ‘Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.’

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?’ Jesus said, ‘Have the people sit down.’ Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number.

Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, when he had blessed them, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!’ Perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew to the mountain by himself. (John 6: 1-15)

The disciples thought they had nothing with which to feed the thousands. But Jesus knew that He had more than enough, more than enough! So He took the little that they did have, and what did He do? He blessed it! He gave thanks for it! And when He’d done that, there was more than enough blessing to go around for five thousand.

Watchman Nee was a Chinese Evangelist who was martyred for his faith and Gospel work in the 1970s. This is what he wrote about this perspective, this expectation issue, in relation to this sign – the feeding of the five thousand. In a little booklet that he published called Twelve Baskets Full, here is what he said:

What do we mean when we talk of God’s blessing? We mean divine activity that is not based on human activity. We mean a working of God that is not based on our work. The blessing of God is not something that we can earn by our efforts. It is not something that we can buy with our money.

One penny should always procure one penny’s worth; but if with our one penny God gives us ten thousand penny’s worth, that is His blessing. His blessing makes our calculations futile because it leaves us without any basis on which to calculate. When five small loaves provide nourishment for five thousand people and leave a surplus that fills twelve baskets, that is God’s blessing.

So many of us, instead of looking to our Lord to bless the loaves, are looking at the loaves in our hands. Our one hope in the face of today’s immense need is that He will perform a miracle and that He will do it by taking the bread into His hands and blessing it.

When the Lord in His goodness brings us to a totally new position where we recognise the paramount importance of His blessing, then the way will be open for Him to work.

I’ve shared this story on the program before. But I’m sharing it again as we come to the close of this series about God’s amazing blessings because I deliberately want to blow your mind with the power of expecting God to bless you. I want my calculations and your calculations to be absolutely futile when it comes to sharing the blessing of God around, because I want God to bless more people through you and me than we can possibly ever imagine.

Now, in my case, I don’t say that arrogantly because what God does through me and what He does through you is completely up to Him. But when we desire His blessing, when we expect His blessing and we see it happening through us, it’s just the most amazing thing that we can ever experience. It’s like being there and having a small part to play. But really, at the end of the day, you feel like a privileged spectator.

Let’s say in your life, that you impact just ten people, ten, with the amazing blessing of God. And those ten people impact another ten, and those ten, another ten. That’s not an unreasonable expectation. Then, in just those three generations of blessing (if I can call them that), a thousand people will have been blessed by God, because you were God’s entry point of blessing into this world, in your little corner of the vineyard.

And those thousand people are going to go on and have children, and their children will have children, and their children will have more children – and the blessing of God as it came into this world can ripple down through countless generations – the blessing of God that came through you.

There are people in this world that need you to be the entry point of God’s blessing into their lives. Just like Norma was into my life. There’s something about you that’s absolutely unique.

And I know, you kind of look at yourself and think, ‘Well, I’m nothing special and I don’t have a lot to give’. Welcome to the club! When I was sitting around that Laminex kitchen table with Norma all those years ago, I knew absolutely that I was nothing special, I had way less than you to give. But as Norma’s blessing flowed into my life, something happened to me. I can’t put it into words, I just knew that I had to take the little I had, and start sharing it with other people, using the abilities that God had given to me

And here we are today (twenty years on), you and I, and I’m privileged to share the blessing of God with you. I can tell you beyond any shadow of doubt that God wants to bless you and it’s time for you to get out there and for you to multiply that blessing.

A DAILY PRAYER FOR BLESSING

Well, as we come to the close of another series of messages (don’t the weeks fly by?), I’d like to take us back to where we began, with the prayer of Jabez. It was such an audacious prayer of a Mister Nobody, buried deep in the Bible amidst nine chapters of genealogy of all things, that prayer that audaciously asked God for His blessings.

Let’s listen to it again because there’s something that I’m going to challenge you with as our time together in this series God Wants to Bless You draws to a close. 1 Chronicles 4: 9-10:

Jabez was honoured more than his brothers; and his mother named him Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, ‘Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my borders, and that your hand would be upon me, and that you would keep me from evil that I may cause no pain.’ And God granted what he asked.

If there’s one thing that we’ve discovered throughout this series, it’s that God wants to bless us and that He wants us to ask for and depend on His blessing just as Jabez did.

As you know, I’m not into prosperity doctrine at all and I’m not into name it and claim it style of faith. That’s not what the Bible teaches. But what the Bible does teach, as the very living Word of the one true living God, is that God wants us to ask for and rely on His blessing.

Jesus commanded His disciples to ask for God’s blessing. Jesus taught His disciples how to live in the power of God’s blessing to feed the thousands with just a few fishes and loaves.

And so my challenge to you over the next thirty days, every morning, is to faithfully spend just a few minutes praying this prayer of Jabez. Not a meaningless rote type of prayer. But from the depths of your heart, believing what God’s Word says, taking God at His Word that He does want to bless you and that He wants you to ask for His blessing.

If, at the end of thirty days of this faithful (simple way of praying), God hasn’t shown up with such power and might that you will want to keep on praying this way for the rest of your life, I will be completely and totally gob-smacked.

Don’t expect every wrinkle in your life to be ironed out in thirty days. Don’t expect your coffers to be full at the end of thirty days. But please, do expect that you will be filled to the brim, to overflowing, with the blessings from God that you couldn’t have dreamed of or imagined. Because God wants to bless you!

There are many times when we hear someone talk about God’s blessing and we kind of relate to it but from a distance, or in small doses, or as a theory lesson. Well I’m not here to entertain you or to tickle your ears with stuff you want to hear. I’m not here to give you a theory lesson.

I’m here to challenge you to believe that God wants to bless you beyond measure and challenge you to take the steps that the Bible teaches us to take hold of His mighty blessing. And be prepared for such great blessing to flow into your life that you simply won’t be able to contain it.

I believe that if you start praying this prayer with me each day, you’ll be imploring God to fill you with blessing, to expand your territory, because you have so much blessing to pour out and share around. And you’ll be imploring God for His mighty hand to be upon you, because you will know that you will be in desperate need of His help to share that much blessing around.

Will you step up to the plate and take the challenge or not? Are you ready to be overwhelmed by God’s blessing or not? Are you ready to get out there and start sharing His abundant blessing around with others or not?

Look at Jesus’ life on this earth. Despite the difficulties – the persecutions, the afflictions, the lack of a steady income, the lack of even a place to rest His head on a regular basis – He spent His whole time sharing the amazing blessings of God His Father flowing out through Him. Will you do the same? Will you be Christ to a lost and hurting world? Will you?

Sure, God’s Word talks an awful lot about blessing. And yet when I tell people, ‘God wants to bless you’, most often I get one of two reactions: either, ‘Well, I’m not sure He’s really blessed me much yet’; or ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to ask God to bless me. Isn’t that selfish?’

WHY DON’T I RECEIVE?

Well, if you were able to join me last week on the programme, you’ll know that we chatted about the prayer of Jabez. What an amazing little prayer that some unknown guy, tucked away in the middle of nine chapters of something as boring as genealogy, prayed. Here it is again:

Jabez was honoured more than his brothers. And his mother named him Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, ‘O, that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from hurt and harm.’ And God granted him what he asked. (1 Chronicles 4:9-10)

It’s quite an astounding little prayer for a couple of reasons: The first is because on the surface of things, it appears to be entirely selfish; and second because despite that, God granted him what he asked for. So, either God is in the business of answering selfish, self-serving prayers, or there’s something else going on here.

As I said at the beginning of the programme, there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus, who haven’t really experienced a whole bunch of blessing in their lives. Well, perhaps that’s not quite true; let me rephrase that … there are plenty of people who believe in Jesus who don’t feel particularly blessed; that’s probably more to the point.

It seems we’re pretty good at ignoring the blessings that God gives us – you know, the basics: our health, the air that we breathe, the food that’s provided for us, the roof over our heads, our family, our friends, our job. Of course, not everybody listening today has all of those things. In fact (as I often say), there are more people listening in to this programme today who live in poverty (many of them in war zones) than there are wealthy people in the western developed nations.

But whoever we are, wherever we are, we all have some blessings to be thankful for. It’s just that we ignore those. And we want this or we want that in our lives, and when we don’t get those, we figure that God mustn’t be in the business of blessing me.

And when I suggest to people that they should ask for God’s blessing, I get this response like, ‘No, no, no! That wouldn’t be right. I can’t impose on God like that.’ Part of that is because we’ve all probably heard the ‘God-wants-to-make-you-rich’ distortion of the Gospel, and we’ve rejected that. Rightly so, I couldn’t agree more.

But let me take you back to Jabez. He (as we’ve read) didn’t have the best sort of start in life, with a name like Jabez, which literally meant pain. But at some point, he decided enough was enough; it was time to ask God for His blessing. And he did and God answered him with a great big fat yes.

Here’s how Jesus put it to His disciples. You can read it in John 16:23-24:

Truly I tell you, if you ask anything of the Father in My name, He’ll give it to you. Until now, you haven’t asked for anything in My name. Ask, and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

This isn’t the only time He says that, by the way. Quite a number of times, Jesus says, ‘Ask and you will receive’. Now why is that? Is Jesus promoting selfishness? Let’s stop and think about that.

If a child goes to its mother or father, and asks for help (asks them to do something for them), will the parent grant their request or not? I’m a dad. Let me tell you how it works. I want to bless each of my children. Sometimes though, they ask selfishly, or they’re behaving badly (well, not often these days because they’re all grown-up, but back when they were kids), and on those occasions, I would withhold my blessing. But if they came to me and asked me for something good for the right reason, I couldn’t wait to bless them! It’s just what I wanted to do, ‘cos I love them.

Now, the Bible talks about asking for God’s blessing for the wrong reason. Have a listen. James 4:2-3:

You do not have because you do not ask. You asked and you didn’t receive because you asked wrongly, in order to spend what you gained on your pleasures.

So God’s just like any father! He’ll bless whenever He can, but not when we ask selfishly with the wrong motives. The point is (it’s a point that Jesus made over and over again) that He does want us to ask. And to ask believing that He rewards those who do, because He’s the best Dad in the universe and He wants to bless you; He really does.

Now, you may look at your life at the moment – at the one difficult situation that’s confronting you right now, and doubt deep in your heart that God actually wants to bless you. Let’s say you have a totally, completely and utterly intractable issue going on in your marriage. You and your wife (or your husband, as the case may be) are drifting apart, and you simply can’t see how it’s going to work out for the good. You just can’t seem to get on the same page as each other, even though you’ve tried everything in the book. Ok; you’re not perfect, but you’ve tried everything, EVERYTHING. You’ve prayed over it, and God hasn’t shown up. Well, here’s the answer – Believe that God wants you to ask. Believe that God wants to bless you. Take Jesus absolutely at His word. Claim the Word of God yourself because God means it for you.

Literally, ask and receive, that your joy may be complete. That’s what Jesus is saying to you right now. They are not my words. They are not the empty, hollow promises of a prosperity-doctrine preacher. These are the very Words of Jesus:

Ask and receive, that your joy may be complete.

Into that difficult, intractable situation, ask over and over again. Pray, knowing that God hears you … that God wants to bless you, and that God (in His absolutely perfect time) will answer you … and don’t stop until He does. I wonder, given that difficult situation you’re going through, whether you’ve prayed that way – faithfully and consistently – day after day for God to do what you cannot do.

I wonder whether you’ve dived into your relationship with God in this real, practical way, and spent times asking Him over and over again because if you haven’t, that’s what He’s waiting for! If you haven’t, that’s exactly what the Bible tells you to do, because God wants to bless you. 

THE BLESSING IS A DONE DEAL

I want to share with you right now the biggest turnaround in thinking about God’s blessing that we can ever experience. It’s changing our understanding completely about what God is on about when He talks about His blessing.

I want to go back to another parable about persistence in prayer, because I think we can get the wrong impression about God’s blessing if we read these parables from Jesus incorrectly. We’re going to Luke 11:5-8:

Jesus said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go them at midnight, and you say to them, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for another friend of mine has just arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’

“And this guy answers from within, ‘Don’t bother me. The door’s already been locked. My children are already in bed with me. I can’t get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you anything because he is your friend, at least because of your persistence, he will get up and give you what you need.

It’s an odd parable that one, like the parable of the unjust judge. In this one, God is compared to a neighbour who’s unwilling to get out of bed and help you in the middle of the night, which is really weird because God never sleeps; He never doesn’t want to help you; He is never short on bread to give you.

Soo what’s this parable saying? Is it saying that we have to drag a blessing out of God? No. It’s saying that God wants us to be persistent; to keep on asking, because He wants to build a healthy dependence on Him in us. How do I know that? Because immediately what follows on from this parable is this familiar passage, Luke 11:9-13:

So I say to you, ask, and it’ll be given to you. Search, and you’ll find. Knock, and the door will be opened. Everyone who asks receives; everyone who searches finds; and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you, if their child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if their child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?

So God’s saying here that He totally gets it that we need a blessing when we ask Him, even more so than an earthly parent. Our heavenly Father will give us every good thing, but here’s the turnaround I want to share with you today. It’s not a case of having to drag the blessing out of God, because God has already purposed the blessing for us. Listen very carefully to these words written by the apostle Paul to the church in Ephesus – very, very carefully. Ephesians 1:3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

What does that verse say? It says that God has already blessed you in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, so what’s a spiritual blessing? Well, the word spiritual here relates to the human spirit or the rational soul, that part of us which is akin to God. It belongs to God, but it’s part of us. That’s what the word spiritual is referring to, and blessing.

What does that word actually mean? Well it’s the Greek word eulogia, which means to praise – to speak well of. You know the word eulogy, when someone gets up at a person’s funeral and says nice things about that person. That’s where we get the word eulogy from. So if we put those two words together – spiritual and blessing, God is already, He has already, He continues to speak His good words, His praise for us, His good things for our lives into our spirit in the heavenly places.

Now, at first blush that may not be so encouraging. ‘Okay, so God’s saying nice things about me.’ But let me ask you, how did God create the universe? Do you remember? Back there in Genesis chapter 1:

Then God said, ‘let there be light and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)

And each part of creation, God spoke into existence. Why? How? Well, Paul tells us in Romans 4:17: He says that:

God gives life to the dead, and calls into existence things that do not yet exist.

So God is speaking blessings into existence, just in the way that He spoke creation into existence. In fact, it’s past tense. He’s already done it. It’s a done deal. Not just a few blessings, but every spiritual blessing. They’re already on their way because God has already spoken them into existence. Let’s read that verse from Ephesians again with a brand-new understanding. Ephesians 1:3:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

He has already blessed you in Christ with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. And those blessings are already on their way, a steady flow right when God purposes them into your spirit … into your life.

So not only is God a fantastic Father who wants to bless you, not only does God have the power to bless you but He already has! He’s already spoken every blessing for your whole life into existence, and they will each come to pass on the very day that God purposes them.

Has that just blown your understanding of God’s blessing completely out of the water? Has that just given your understanding of God’s blessing a complete one hundred and eighty-degree turnaround? Because now, when you’re going to God over and over again asking for His blessing, you don’t have to go to Him with this hangdog kind of attitude – that you have to drag a blessing out of a stingy God, who really can’t be bothered getting up out of bed for you.

Now you can go to God forearmed with the truth knowing that He wants to bless you … knowing that He has the power to bless you, and knowing that He has already spoken every spiritual blessing into existence. Now you can go to Him day after day, asking for His blessing and knowing that it’s really on its way; because by knowing the truth, God has set you free to receive His blessing.

Listen to me very carefully … God wants to bless you.

EVERY NEED FULLY SUPPLIED

I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Gaither band. But I absolutely love them, love their music and what they’re on about. They sing a song called One Good Song. It’s all about cutting back all the stuff we have in our lives – all the clutter, all the things we buy and we think is so necessary to our lives. The chorus of that song goes something like this. I’ll just say it, I can’t sing it. It says:

I’m learning how to separate the wants from the needs,
A good life now comes with just a few simple thing.
Jesus in my heart, a place to belong,
A few good friends and one good song.
Oh my latest list, well, it ain’t too long,
Just a Godly love and one good song. 

I first heard that song quite a few years back now, and the line that really convicted me was the one about learning to separate my wants from my needs. The more I thought about it, the more I realised that I’d started to believe that a whole bunch of my wants were in fact my needs, that all these optional extras were necessary to my well-being and happiness, necessary to life itself.

It’s easy to do because the more the basics in our lives are met; things like food and shelter and our basic health, a job, an income, enough to go around; the more God has those bases covered for us, the more we start looking into the optional extras – a bigger income, a bigger house, a nicer car, a great holiday, oh and this and that and maybe this and that, wow look at that. And when we can’t have them straight away, we imagine that somehow our existence is impaired.

I say all this by way of qualifying what I’m going to be talking about today because we’re checking out what God’s Word has to say on the important, the vital subject of His blessing in our lives. And I want to make something very, very clear, right now, we’re going to be talking about our needs not our wants, our needs.

Everything I’m going to say about God’s blessing in your life today is focused on what you need, not necessarily on your wants above and beyond your basic needs.

Okay, so let’s get into them. As I said at the outset, not everybody in this world has their basic needs met. There have been times in my life (in the life of the ministry in which I work), where there wasn’t enough income to support the ministry and in fact, to support putting food on the table for our family, that’s a need.

And I know that there are people listening today who are desperately lonely, people who are looking for the right marriage-partner and he or she hasn’t come along. Perhaps, you’re elderly and your family is all gone and you find yourself desperately alone. I know that there are people listening today (many of them in fact) who live in war zones around the world, in parts of Africa and parts of the Middle East.

We have lots of people listening to this program today on stations all around the world from dangerous places and you don’t even know you’re going to be safe, right? And here Berni comes on the radio and he’s yabbering on about ‘God wanting to bless me’ again. Doesn’t this joker realise how desperate my situation is? Doesn’t he get it?

As things turn out, I do and so does God and that’s what I want to share with you right now. Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul has to say on having his needs met. And by the way, before I read it to you, let me tell you what the context is. When Paul wrote this, he was on death row chained to a Roman soldier in a Roman dungeon, just so you realise that he wasn’t writing this sitting back on the French Riviera sipping sauvignon blanc, right? This is what he said:

I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned for me but you had no opportunity to show it. Not that I’m referring to being in need, for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances, I have learned the secret of being well fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.

I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share in my distress. You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the Gospel, when I left Macedonia, no Church shared with me in the manner of giving and receiving except you alone.

For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once. Not that I seek a gift but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account. I have been paid in full and have more than enough. I am fully satisfied now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gift that you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God and my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in the glory in Jesus Christ.

To our God and Father be glory forever and ever, Amen. (Philippians 4:14-20.)

So Paul is out there doing ministry. He’s preaching Christ across the known world. That takes finances, that takes resources. And while we know that along the way he worked as a tent maker to support himself, sometimes he also relied on the generous support of the Churches which he planted and helped to grow, like the Church here in Philippi that he was writing to.

And he especially needed the help right now when he was in prison because when you’re in prison (back in those days), you couldn’t earn money. And they didn’t provide for you very well, you essentially had to provide for yourself. So Paul needed prayer support. He needed financial support. He needed friendship. But it seems that for a while, his beloved friends in Philippi had forgotten him. But now he tells them (and he tells us) he’s so thankful for their gifts which no doubt came in just in the nick of time.

Paul talks a lot about being content (however), whether in need or fully supplied, whether with a full belly or with an empty one, because he’s discovered the secret that no matter what the world throws at him, good or bad, he can do all things … he can get through all things … he can be content through all things through Christ who strengthens him. There’s a huge lesson in that for anyone whose basic needs aren’t covered right now – Christ is the answer.

Notice how boldly Paul says that he’s not a victim here cowering in defeat. He’s confident because Jesus is in that place with him. Just as well, because none of the other Churches that he’d served helped support him other than the Philippians. He could have become quite bitter and twisted over that, but no, his faith is in Jesus. Christ is his provision – come what may.

And that’s the first point I want to make to you. When you’re in that place where your needs aren’t being met and Paul’s needs, I think you will agree were pretty desperate there on death row, Jesus is your provision. You can get through it all. You can get through all things through Christ who strengthens you, even though, like Paul you find yourself in a time of distress.

When the days are black draw close to Jesus in prayer. Pull up and rest in Him and rely on Him and ask Him to bless you. And trust Him to bless you because here’s the bottom line, and this is my second point to you today, He will always supply your needs.

Did you notice how Paul, this death row prisoner, finishes his letter to the Philippians? Have another listen:

I have been paid in full and have more than enough. I am fully satisfied now that I’ve received from Epaphroditus the gift that you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God and my God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever, Amen.

Paul’s not writing a theological textbook here. It’s a letter to friends and out of his own real-world experience sitting there on death row, not knowing if he’ll live or die. He’s able to say to them that his God, the God whom he has come to know intimately in these dark days in the dungeon, that God will fully satisfy every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

Notice Paul makes a sharp distinction here between wants and needs. He’s talking about our needs only and based on his first-hand experience of the faithfulness of God. He is able to tell his friends in Philippi (and indeed you and me) that God will supply all your needs.

You know, I used to think that getting things done in this world was all about having control. If I could just control this and that, then I’d be able to achieve X, Y and Z. But the older I get, the more I’ve realised that it’s all about influence and not control. Because as things turn out, influence is far more powerful than control.

EXPANDING YOUR INFLUENCE

Well, if you were able to join me last week on the program you’ll know that we chatted about the prayer of Jabez – a man who had a pretty rugged start in life. His name literally means ‘You’re a Pain’, and yet he stood head and shoulders above his brothers and the hundreds of other names listed in the nine chapters of genealogy in the middle of which we find him.

Why did Jabez stand out from the crowd? Because he prayed a prayer for God’s abundant blessing. Here it is again:

Jabez was more honourable than his brothers and his mother called his name Jabez saying, ‘because I bore him in pain’ and Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that your hand will be with me and that you would keep me from evil that I may cause no pain’. So God granted him what he requested. (1 Chronicles 4:9,10)

We’ve seen the power so far of asking for the first part,

O God that you would bless me indeed. (1 Chronicles 4:10)

Bless me abundantly, bless me just the way you want to bless me. That’s a powerful prayer. Ask God to bless you and then leave it up to Him … His Father’s heart to choose how He wants to bless you. God wants to bless you abundantly, He really does. Not with trinkets and toys but with the sort of blessings that will fill your heart with joy and flow through you and over the top of you and right into the lives of other people. That’s how things work in God’s economy of blessing.

You know that line ‘faith without works is dead’? The opposite is also true. When our faith is working its way out – as God’s blessing flows through us into the lives of other people, as God uses the gifts He’s given us to bless others – all of a sudden our faith becomes alive and vibrant and real. Flat, dry, lifeless faith becomes a thing of the past. So can I say, faith with God inspired, God empowered works is so incredibly alive?

Now let’s go onto the second part of what Jabez prayed. Right after asking God to bless him indeed, what was the very next thing he prayed?

Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory. (1 Chronicles 4:10)

Territory was a big thing back in those days. In fact, for all of Israel’s history having your own land has been a big deal. They spent centuries waiting to take the Promised Land. And when finally, God took them there under Joshua they had to fight for it battle by battle. So expanding your land, expanding your borders, your territory was a huge deal for an Israelite. Still today, Israel is fighting for land several millennia on from when Jabez prayed this prayer.

A little while back on the program, we talked about whether or not you and I are kingdom builders or empire builders. Are you in the business of building your own personal empire or are you in the business of building the Kingdom of God? Good question, a question each one of us should be asking ourselves on a constant basis.

But let’s go back for a minute to the first part of the prayer, the request for God to bless us indeed – a whole lot, abundantly, over flowingly, more than we could ever hope for, dream or imagine – let’s say God does that. Let’s say God blesses you so much that you can’t contain it. The natural result is an overflow, kind of what, like Jesus was talking about in John chapter 7, verses 37 and 38. He said:

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’.

When you have that much of God’s blessing overflowing out of you, when you have the Spirit of God flowing out of you – it’s not just a trickle, it’s not just a stream, not just a river – but rivers of blessing, rivers of living water flowing through you into the parched dry land, of the lives of the people around you, people who need more of God’s blessing.

If that’s happening, what’s the next logical thing for you to ask? More influence of course, more people to share the blessing with. More people to experience the mighty blessings of God that you’ve been experiencing. The request for God’s abundant blessing flows, naturally and logically, into a request for God to expand your borders. So that His Kingdom will come one soul at a time, to more and more souls.

When I came to Christ (way back in 1995), right from the beginning, I couldn’t contain the goodness and the joy of what I felt. I knew right back there, on that first day, day one, that I wanted to share this love of Christ with lots of other people. So I started to pray that God would give me the chance to do that and He did. And today, here I am with you and a few million other people across a hundred and sixty countries, chatting about the good news of Jesus.

None of that came because I was particularly clever. None of that came through the great strategic planning of our Board of our ministry. It came as an answer to a simple prayer. Lord, please expand my borders and grow your Kingdom through me. It’s a prayer that I pray daily because I know that’s the only way people will be touched by the Holy Spirit through what I do.

You see, we all labour in different parts of Gods vineyard, with the tools and gifts He’s granted us by His grace. His blessing isn’t limited by a lack of power or a lack of will. The well of God’s blessing is infinitely deep. Imagine the delight in His heart when He hears you pray:

Dear God, please bless me. Bless me, indeed. Please bless me more than I can imagine. And then Lord, God, expand my borders, my territory, my circle of influence so that I can share your blessing … the blessing that’s overflowing through me with people who desperately need to experience you and your blessing.

What do you think God would think when He hears you pray that prayer every morning, huh? I’m thinking that God would be absolutely over the moon at your motivation and your desire. I’m thinking that God would be ready to show up and answer that prayer. After all that’s exactly what He did when Jabez prayed that prayer.

ALL THE POWER YOU NEED

Before the break we’ve been talking a lot about God’s desire to bless us. Let me be a little more specific – God’s overwhelming desire to bless you abundantly. No, not a sugar daddy kind of blessing, not an answer to prayers like, ‘Lord what I really want is a million bucks in my account, a Mercedes SLE in the driveway and a twenty-seven room house overlooking the water’.

Now, in the right context, none of those are particularly bad things in and of themselves. They’re just not prayers that God answers very often. God does want to bless us abundantly, super abundantly, Jesus said, ‘Beyond measure, without limit’. But He wants to bless us in a way that glorifies Him and in a way that’s good for us.

If you have a spoilt child at home, a teenager maybe, whose always demanding this or that and throwing tantrums when he doesn’t get it. Would you bless him with more stuff? I hope not, because if you love him you need to help him grow up.

If on the other hand, you had a child with a heart for helping other people, and doing the best she can possibly do, and sacrificing her life for other people – if she asked you for a blessing would you bless her? Absolutely you would! The only thing that would constrain you would be your resources and your power.

Well, here’s the good news, God is not constrained by resources or power. He has an infinite quantity of both of those. And like any good Father, God’s heart is to bless us without measure provided that our intentions are the right intentions.

And that’s why we’ve been looking at the prayer of Jabez found tucked away, amidst nine chapters of dry boring genealogies. Jabez stands out head and shoulders above his brothers and above hundreds and hundreds of names in that genealogy and he stands out for this reason.

It’s because of what he prayed, what he asked God for. Let’s take another look at it today, 1 Chronicles chapter 4, verses 9 and 10:

Jabez was more honourable than his brothers and his mother called him Jabez saying ‘because I bore him in pain’ and Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that you hand would be with me and that you would keep me from evil that I may not cause pain. So God granted him what he requested.

Starting his life off with a name that literally meant ‘I’m a pain’, well, it’s not such a good start in life, is it? But despite that less than optimal start in life (something that a lot of us can relate to), he asked God to bless his socks off. And as that blessing overflowed out of his life, he then asked God to expand his territory to enable him to share that blessing with so many other people.

Blessing is something that flows into us from above. But when God blesses us abundantly, it flows out through us to those around us. And as we see them being blessed through the blessing that’s overflowing through us, the next natural thing to ask for, is for God to increase our borders so that we can share this blessing with more and more and more and more people. And that … that is something that God’s only too delighted to do because after all, you and I are the entry points of His blessing into a lost and hurting world. We’re here to be His blessing to those who need it.

Before the break, I shared with you last week how early on (when I gave my life to Jesus); I knew that I just couldn’t contain that blessing. I knew that I had to tell people about it and so I asked God to expand my borders. This He did beyond anything I could have imagined (way back then). Here I am now with you sharing the love and the blessing of Jesus Christ.

But immediately, when those borders began to expand, I found myself completely out of my depth. When the number of radio stations airing this (this very program that you’re listening to) grew from a handful to a few hundred to over a thousand, there were many times along the way that I was completely overwhelmed by how much had to be done to make it all happen. How many things were beyond my ability and my wisdom and my foresight, by how inadequate I was (and still am) for the task.

Trust me, I’m not into false modesty. I’m telling you – the things that God calls the little ministry of Christianityworks to do (as we produce radio and television programs and reach out across the globe) – is breathtakingly, gob-smackingly scary on a daily basis.

I suspect that’s exactly what was happening to Jabez. And so the third part of his prayer went like this:

God that you will bless me indeed and enlarge my territory and that your hand would be with me.

He prayed that God’s mighty hand would be with him and upon him. Throughout Scripture the hand of God is used as a symbol or a reference to God’s immense power. Jabez knew – as more blessing came his way, and more opportunities to share that blessing came his way, as his territory grew – he simply couldn’t do it on his own.

Years ago, I stumbled across this amazing Scripture and it’s one that I want to give you today, 2 Chronicles chapter 16, verse 9:

For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth to show himself strong for those whose heart is true to him.

Isn’t that a beautiful scripture?

The eyes of the Lord range throughout the entire earth to show himself strong for those whose heart is true to Him.

In other words, when our heart is true to God – remember, God looks on a man’s heart not on his exterior qualities – when our heart is true to God, He actively sees that because His eyes are roaming the earth looking for precisely that.

And when He finds it in you and in me, He comes to us in a show of power to meet the incredible challenges of the abundant blessing and the expanded borders. God knows you and I can’t do it on our own, He knows that. In fact, His plan was that we should always, always have to depend on Him.

As Bruce Wilkinson writes in his little book, The Prayer Of Jabez, for the Christian, dependence is just another word for power. I love that! For the Christian, dependence is just another word for power. God wants us to depend on His power.

AN IRON–CLAD DEFENCE

The prayer of Jabez is an incredibly powerful prayer. Here it is again if you’ve missed it so far on the program:

Now Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, ‘Because I bore him in pain.’ And Jabez called upon the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain!’ So God granted him what he requested. (1 Chronicles chapter 4, verses 9 and 10)

Jabez asks God to bless him indeed, to bless him a lot. He asks God to enlarge his territory so he can share that blessing around. And with that increased territory and the increased opportunities to be a blessing, he asks that God’s hand – God’s power – would be upon him because he knows he won’t be able to do it on his own.

But it’s the last part of the prayer, the part that we haven’t yet talked about which is as important as the first three bits. Have a listen to it again:

Lord keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.

Now remember the very name Jabez means to be a pain because of the great pain that Jabez’s mother experienced in giving birth to him. So Jabez was already a pain, that’s how people saw him because in Hebrew culture (way back then), your name was synonymous with whom you are. It was seen as a prophetic statement of who you’ll become and how your life will turn out.

So imagine the teasing and the chiding that Jabez must have had growing up at school. I mean other kids can be so cruel. Imagine as a young man being introduced to someone, something like this, ‘Hi David, meet the pain’ and having David say, ‘wow what’s that about? This guy must be some kind of loser’.

Now Jabez did not want to cause pain and the one way to cause pain on this earth is to be evil. There’s something that David Wilkinson wrote in his little book, The Prayer Of Jabez, that leapt out at me. He wrote this:

Without doubt success brings with it greater opportunities than failure. As someone once said, ‘blessedness is the greatest of perils because it tends to dull our keen sense of dependence on God and make us prone to assumption.

And Jabez had been praying for huge untold blessing, for a great expansion of his territory of influence, for the power of God to be upon him. And God, as we heard, granted him his requests. Now, we know the Bible says:

Pride comes before the fall. (Proverbs 16:18)

When things are going really, really well, your enemy and mine (the devil), is roaming around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Just think about it … if God blesses you so much that you can’t contain the blessing, that His blessing flows out through you into the lives of other people, if He increases your territory so that you can share His blessing with more and more people, whose territory do you think you’re treading on? The enemy’s of course!

He doesn’t want the blessing of God to get around because people might discover who Jesus is. People might discover salvation is real and it’s in Him alone. The blessedness of having a true and intimate relationship with God through Jesus – nah, the devil does not want that getting out. And he is a wily, cunning, smart individual.

Don’t ever think that satan is a dummy. No, he’s been around the block a few million times. And nine times out of ten, satan has enough experience and enough gutter cunning to defeat us. He’s stronger than you and me. In his own way, he’s often smarter than you and me. And if we take him on – head on, on that field of temptation, it’s much more likely than not that we’re going to end up on the losing end of that equation.

You’ve seen great men of faith fall, haven’t you? Through sexual immorality leaving behind so many hurt and disillusioned followers. Ah no, the moment the blessing of God and the power of God is flowing through you (to touch the lives of other people), you can bet your life that your enemy, the devil, will be on your case. He’ll be coming after you with a pickaxe to undo your plans to have an impact for Christ in this world.

And the best way … the very, very best way … to win is not to fight at all. When I first read that in Wilkinson’s book I thought, ‘that’s so obvious, how come I didn’t think of that?’ And that’s exactly what Jabez prayed:

Keep me from evil, that I may cause no pain.

It’s exactly how Jesus taught His disciples to pray:

Lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil. (Matthew 6:13)

Let me ask you, how often do you pray that prayer? ‘Lord keep evil away from me, keep the devil away from me, keep temptation away from me’, how often? Because it’s the one prayer that provides you with an iron-clad defence against the enemy. Take him on and there’s every chance you’ll lose. Have God help you to avoid the battle and you’re guaranteed of a win.

Now, sometimes God allows us to be tempted as He did with Jesus, when He was cast out in the wilderness by the Holy Spirit (for forty days and forty nights) to be tempted by the devil. Sometimes God tests our faith in Him by using the devil as His tool. And that’s when you need to be clothed in the armour of God.

But my friend, when you’re tired and weak (in the cut and thrust of your day), the devil wants to slip under your guard. And the best way to avoid that is to ask God to keep you from evil each and every day. It’s amazing how supernaturally He answers that prayer, remember the devil has to obey God; he just can’t do anything without God’s permission.

I mean, when he set out to attack Job in the Old Testament and each step of the way the devil required God’s permission. ‘Lord keep me from evil, lead me not into temptation but deliver me from evil‘ is the most powerful prayer that you can pray to preserve your heritage, to keep the devil from robbing you of the blessing that God is giving you.

The thief comes only to kill, steal and destroy but I have come (said Jesus) that you may have life in all its abundance. (John 10:10)

Ain’t that the truth? God wants to bless you. And one of the things He will do for you is bless you by keeping evil away from you. That’s what Jabez prayed, that’s what Jesus taught because each of us have a Achilles heel, mine is perfectionism and anger. I used to be a very, very angry man. Now, I’m still not a softy. I’m no push over but there are certain people who I know who are going to rub me up the wrong way.

I cannot stand, for instance, laziness. It completely sets me off. So when I know that I’m going to be running into someone who’s going flick my switch as it were I pray this prayer:

Lord, Keep me from evil.

And the power of God to do that is simply amazing. Truly, I’ve said it so many times in my life where the Lord stills my spirit to avoid that critical spirit of perfectionism and anger that comes with it. Or He just changes the circumstances to avoid the temptation all together.

Truly, I tell you, when you ask God to bless you … when you ask Him to expand your territory of influence and blessing, when you ask Him to have His mighty hand upon you and with you … He will answer you in the most amazing ways. In ways that you can’t even hope for, dream or imagine.

And as that starts to happen, the devil will come along, just as Jesus predicted, to kill, steal and destroy – to rob you of the blessings because he knows that if he can get you to sin he will interrupt the flow of God’s blessings through you into this world. It’s like capping the oil well. He knows that, that’s why the moment you see the blessing of God flowing through you, you know that you have a target painted on your chest that the devil is going to be aiming at.

Listen to me … God wants to bless you. He so wants to bless you and yet like any father, if the child sins He’s going to interrupt that flow of blessing. That’s why you and I need to pray:

Lord, Keep me from evil, lead me not in to temptation but deliver me from evil. (Matthew 6:13)

It invites the supernatural power of God to protect you and to give you an iron-clad defence. Pray the prayer and like Jabez, God will grant you what you request.

Question: Does God want to bless you, yes or no? It’s a very serious question because how you answer it, is probably the best indicator to tell you what you think of your God. So I’ll ask you again, does God want to bless you, yes or no?

NO, IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK!

I remember, probably a decade or more ago, when I first read Bruce Wilkinson’s book, The Prayer Of Jabez. It had a huge splash when it was first released. And I don’t know how many millions of copies have sold since but it’s been a huge hit. I distinctly remember though, how uncomfortable I felt reading the first chapter of that little booklet, which, I read all in one sitting in a bed when I was in New Zealand. This is the bit that really got me, Wilkinson writes:

That God really does have unclaimed blessings waiting for you, my friend. I know it sounds impossible, even embarrassingly suspicious in our self-serving day, yet, that very exchange, your want for God’s plenty, has been His loving will for your life from eternity past. And with a handful of core commitments on your part, you can proceed from this day forward with the confidence and expectation that your heavenly Father will bring it to pass for you.

Think of it this way, instead of standing near the river’s edge asking for a cup of water to get through each day, you’ll do something unthinkable. You will take the little prayer with the giant prize and jump into the river. At that moment, you’ll begin to let the loving currents of God’s grace and power carry you along. God’s great plan for you will surround you and sweep you forward into the profoundly important and satisfying life that He has waiting for you.

Do you see why I was so troubled by this? On the one hand, Wilkinson was promising me the very thing that I wanted, God’s abundant blessing. Do you want that? Sure you do! I want that too. Who doesn’t want to be abundantly blessed by God? But on the other hand, it conjures up a fear … that perhaps the desire to have God’s abundant blessing was a selfish thing to want.

You and I, both, have seen the gross excesses of some who claim to be God’s people and who live this extravagant lifestyle that looks nothing … NOTHING … like taking up your cross and following Jesus. I found myself in a conundrum that I think we all find ourselves in, when it comes to God’s blessing.

Should I ask or shouldn’t I ask? Does God want to bless me abundantly; or does He not want to bless me abundantly; or at all for that matter? They’re the questions we often find ourselves asking.

Wilkinson hits the nail on the head, though, when he says that we live in a self-serving day, we do. And if we approach God’s promises of blessing unlimited, in a self-serving way, then of course, it’s not the right thing to do. To ask Him for blessings that just serve us. He’s much smarter than to give us everything we want. He loves us way too much to instantly fulfil our every desire.

When I was a child, even back then (over a half a century ago), the retailers in the stores figured out that the best place to put the sweets and the small toys was at my eye level, right at the checkout. They knew that I’d pressure my parents to buy me this and to buy me that. Do you remember pestering your parents to buy you these things when you were a kid, right?

But no, being wise parents, being good parents and loving parents, they didn’t always accede to our howls of protest as they dragged us kicking and screaming out of the store without that packet of lollies that we just had to have. And yet, I’m able to look back on all that my parents did for me, for the eighteen or so years that I spent under their roof, I tell you inequitably, that they blessed my socks off. I think most of us can look back on our upbringing and say exactly the same thing about our parents.

Good loving parents don’t always meet the selfish wants of their immature children. But they still bless them beyond measure because that’s how parents are wired … to bless their children. That’s exactly what God’s like. You don’t believe me? Well, let me ask you this, what’s the very first thing that God said to and did for Adam and Eve, when He created them, the very first thing? Do you remember?

So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them and then God blessed them and God said to them, ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit you shall have them for food and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food and it was so. God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good and there was the evening and there was the morning of the sixth day. (Genesis chapter 1, verses 27 to 31)

The last thing He did after completing all of creation, was to hand it over to Adam and Eve. God blessed them and He told them it’s all theirs. The whole cotton picking lot, He gave it to them. He gave it to us. And it was only then, on the following day (the seventh day), once He’d done all the hard work of creation, once He’d given it all away to us that He decided to take a day of rest.

Now, if you have any doubt, any doubt whatsoever that God wants to bless your socks off. If the story of creation still doesn’t do it for you, then please turn your gaze with me to the cross of Christ. Galatians chapter 3, verses 13 and 14:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us for it is written ‘cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’. In order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.

God doesn’t want to bring us up as spoilt brats. But wrap your mind around this; He wants to bless us beyond measure.

The picture that Bruce Wilkinson paints in the passage I shared with you from his book, The Prayer Of Jabez, of standing near the river’s edge asking for a cup of water to get you through each day, is how we’ve been conditioned to think about going to God, and asking for His blessings. "Don’t ask for too much, don’t be too demanding, don’t impose on God".

Well, that’s not how we are as parents, are we? Of course, we don’t want to spoil our kids. But the more they show us their gratefulness and maturity and selflessness, the more we want to bless them, right? We’re wired to bless our children without measure, in the right way.

Do you imagine that God isn’t up to the same mark? I mean do you really? Here’s what Jesus said on the matter, Matthew chapter 7, verse 11.

If then you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more then will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask it.

So let’s get this thing about God’s blessing straight. God is a good Father. He will never give us things that will cause us to become spoilt brats. So forget asking Him for that boat, or that holiday house, or that personal jet, or that bank account filled with millions and millions and millions of dollars or whatever currency you desire. He will no more fill us with that stuff than my parents would fill me with the candies at the store, that I demanded each time we were there.

But ask Him for good things, worthwhile things, things that will achieve amazing stuff on this earth. And watch God open up the windows of heaven and pour untold blessings into your life. "What to ask for? How to ask for it?" is what we’re going to be chatting about tomorrow and for the rest of this week on the program But right now, let me finish up by saying this, your God wants to bless you!

EXTREME BLESSING

Okay, so God doesn’t want to turn you into a spoilt brat, we get that, right? Dear God, please give me the latest model of the BMW 7 series, in a nice deep midnight blue colour. That’s a prayer that’s unlikely to get much of a response out of God. And certainly, when I talk about the blessing of God, that’s not what I’m talking about either.

But, in scrubbing those self-indulgent desires from our prayer list, I think, sometimes, we scrub off the idea of all blessings or at least the idea of abundant blessings, the sort of blessing that overflows out of us because we just can’t contain it.

The reason why I’ve called this series of messages, God Wants To Bless You, is because God wants to bless you. And no more so do we discover that, than in the prayer of Jabez. Maybe you’ve read Bruce Wilkinson’s book by that name. I only re-read it again recently. And I realised, even though I’m someone who spends a lot of time in God’s Word, I realised how easy it is to be drawn off track in our thinking, and in our perception of what God means, when He says "I want to bless you".

I truly believe that if we can wrap our hearts around the truth of God’s blessing for us, it will completely change the way we understand God, the way we see ourselves and the way we see the rest of the time we have left here on this earth. So let me read to you straight out of God’s Word, the prayer that Jabez prayed to God. It comes from 1 Chronicles chapter 4, verses 9 and 10.

Now Jabez was more honourable than his brothers and his mother named him Jabez, saying, ‘because I bore him in pain’. And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, ‘Oh, that you would bless me indeed and enlarge my territory, that you would be with me and that you would keep me from evil, that I may cause no pain. So God granted him what he requested.

Now these two verses, 1 Chronicles chapter 4 verses 9 and 10, are buried deep inside nine chapters of genealogy. Can you believe it? Nine chapters? I’ve read my Bible – front to back and front to back and back to front and back to front – on quite a number of occasions. But can I be honest with you? I lost it in these nine chapters, really. I know that all Scripture is inspired by God. I know that all Scripture is useful for teaching, reproof and correction and for training in righteousness, 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16. I get that, but nine chapters of genealogy? Give me a break!

That is, until you stumble across Jabez’s story in these two little verses. This dry list of names goes on for pages and pages and pages. And the only breather, the only diversion, the only bit of insight in all of that, is the prayer of Jabez. In other words, God is saying to us that this Jabez fellow is meant to stand out head and shoulders above the other five hundred plus names on that list.

He was not a great king, not a great Prophet. He was for all intents and purposes a bog ordinary human being like you and me. That’s the point and yet, he stands out head and shoulders above the rest. In fact, God very clearly tells us that "he was more honourable than his brothers".

Why? Was it because of the great start he had in life, is it? Well, no, we’re told his mother had a particularly difficult childbirth when it came time for Jabez to pop into this world. I obviously don’t know how much it hurts to bring a child into this world. But in theory, I can tell you that every birth has pain associated with it.

For the Bible to comment on this particular birth, means, that it must have been a tough one. So tough! So painful, in fact, that his mother gave him a name that means literally that he was a pain. I’ve tried to imagine what my life would have looked like, if instead of calling me Berni, my parents had given me a name "you’re a pain". "Hi you’re a pain, how are you going today"?

Do you think that would have influenced his life badly, in a culture, where the meaning of your name was synonymous with who you are? You bet it would! The kid had a rotten start. But the Bible tells us that he was honoured above his brothers because he prayed a particular prayer. And the first part of that prayer was this.

Oh, that you would bless me indeed. (1 Chronicles 4:10)

Now, in some of the contemporary Bible translations they omit the word "indeed", which is a mistake. And which is why I’ve used the New King James translation here. The short of it is that the tense of the original Hebrew word for "bless me" makes it emphatic. It’s as though he underlined it and put three exclamation marks after it.

So the sense of what Jabez is asking God is this, "Oh God bless me a lot", that’s the meaning. Have you asked that of God? Not a specific prayer for this or that but an open prayer for God to choose the blessing. And whatever it looks like, whatever form it comes in and whenever it does come, that it would be a huge blessing, that you will be blessed indeed. That the blessing would be so big that your tiny mind simply can’t comprehend it.

Have you ever asked God for that sort of blessing? And if so, why not? Because the Bible tells us that because of this prayer, Jabez was honoured above all his brothers. And as a result of this prayer, verse 10, God granted him what he requested.

This is a prayer that I pray often, almost every day of my life:

Dear God, bless me a lot. Not the blessings that I choose but the blessings You want to choose. Because I know, that You’re going to think of stuff that I would never ever think of. I know that You’re going to come up with blessings beyond anything I can ever hope for, dream or imagine.

How do I know that? Because in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 20, I’m told that God is the God, who by the power at work within us, is able to accomplish abundantly far more than we can ask for or imagine. And if that’s the God He is, if He can and He wants to do stuff that we can’t even imagine, why wouldn’t we simply ask Him to bless us the way He wants to bless us.

Why wouldn’t we leave the choice open to Him? And if the Bible tells us that Jabez was honoured above all the others. And that God gave him what he asked for, why wouldn’t we ask for the same thing?

It seems pretty obvious doesn’t it? And here’s what happens when we do, God begins to move supernaturally in our lives despite and even through some of the tough things we’re going through. God starts to make appointments for us. He starts to give us opportunities to take the blessing He’s giving us, to let it flow through us, into the lives of other people.

A blessing is literally someone speaking well of you. In the New Testament, the Greek word for blessing is eulogia, from which we get the word, eulogy. A blessing is God speaking well of you. But when God speaks, something amazing happens. The Bible tells us,

God calls into existence things that do not yet exist. (Romans 4:17)

So when God blesses you, He speaks into your life and supernaturally makes things happen that don’t yet exist and would otherwise never have happened.

Sometimes, He does that of His own accord. Dad’s are like that. As our Father, His heart is to bless us. But as any father does, He longs for us to come to Him and ask. He longs for us to humble ourselves and turn to Him and ask for His blessing, His eulogia. He’s calling into existence things that don’t yet exist into our lives.

Does that give you a different perspective on God’s blessing? Does that make you want to get down on your knees right now and ask for His blessing? Does that make you want to pray this prayer at the start of every day? If it doesn’t I have absolutely no idea why.

And here’s the great thing, the totally fantastic thing … by leaving the decision up to God, it means that instead of asking for selfish things, we know that we’re going to get God’s good things. And you know what Jesus said? He said,

If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish and it will be done for you. (John 15:7)

So then, the only question is, what are you waiting for?

IT’S TIME TO ASK

I’m not a great one for prayer formulas. I don’t think God works that way. In fact, Jesus made it clear that the way to pray wasn’t to heap empty praises upon empty sentence before God; that just doesn’t impress Him at all.

What God wants us to do is to pray from our hearts, but can I tell you this? Since I’ve started praying along the lines of that Jabez prayer (it’s something that I do almost every day these days), I have seen God’s answer to that prayer in so many ways; in powerful ways; in mighty ways; ways that have always been much, much further and beyond anything that I could have conjured up.

The Bible says that:

God desires everybody to be saved and to come to a knowledge of truth. (1 Timothy 2:4)

And that’s why He blesses the likes of you and me; so that we can be the entry point of His abundant overflowing blessing into this world; so that He can bless the lost and the hurting through you and me.

If you’re still not convinced that you should be asking for God’s blessing, then listen to Jesus Himself. John 16:22, Jesus said:

Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.

I want to encourage you to start asking for God’s blessing every day in your life. The thing about God is that He’s like any good father. He knows when to bless and He knows how to bless.

Just the other morning, I was talking to a very, very wealthy man about his children over breakfast, and I asked him, "How do you go about blessing your children? In fact, when they grow up, are you going to help them financially or will you allow them to make their own way through in life?" and this is how he answered me. I thought it was really wise.

"Well," he said, "that depends on them. If they want to go out and serve God and sacrifice their lives for other people, I have told them if they can’t afford it, I’ll buy them a house. I’ll help them, of course I’ll help them, I’m their father. But if they want to go and sit on the beach and laze around and be selfish and lazy, I’ve told them, they’re on their own. The choice is really theirs."

And I thought to myself, "What a Godly piece of wisdom!" Isn’t that how God wants to deal with us? Of course, He wants to bless us, but it really depends on us – on our heart; on our attitude. And if you and I have an attitude of putting other people before ourselves, of serving them and serving God, hey; why wouldn’t God want to bless us abundantly? He’s the best Father that’s ever been, or ever will be.

So I pray the prayer of Jabez pretty much every day – not by road, not as a formula, but from the heart. That’s why I find myself praying for you every day. I pray that God would expand my territory by letting His Word take a hold of your heart – by growing the kingdom of God in you and through you, into the lives of countless other people.

To me, sitting here and chatting with you, (and just quietly a few million other people around the globe as well), is like throwing a pebble into a pond and seeing the impact ripple out through your life. It’s like throwing a few million pebbles in a few million ponds, and seeing them ripple out. That’s been the impact for me of asking God to bless me indeed and to expand my territories. A simple prayer by a simple, ordinary guy, and it’s what God does. And if He allows His blessing to flow through a clutz like me, I can’t begin to imagine what He can do through someone as beautiful and gifted and talented as you are. Are you starting to get the picture here?

Perhaps, you haven’t been receiving because you haven’t been asking. Perhaps, it’s time to start asking and asking, and asking and asking, day after day after day after day, ‘cos I guarantee: if you’re asking for the right reasons and not selfish reasons, you are going to see miracle after miracle happen in you and through you

So here’s the challenge, here’s the dare: start asking! You’ll be amazed at the miracles because God wants to bless you.

Any real estate agent worth half his or her salt will tell you, that your house is only worth what someone else is prepared to pay for it. Fair enough. So how do you tell what you’re worth in the scheme of things? Really?!

The world tries to tell us what success and wealth and popularity and beauty and all those things should look like, and by definition therefore, who we should aspire to be. But what if life’s not about those outward measures of success at all?

BODY BEAUTIFUL

Let me start today by letting you in on a little secret, so that you understand where I’m coming from on this whole body-image thing. For most of my adult-life until a few years ago, I hated seeing myself. I hated looking at my face in the mirror, and I hated even more seeing a photo of myself. In fact, as much as possible, I avoided photos. Why? Because I was grossly overweight, and that was something that I was deeply ashamed of. I struggled with my weight all my life, and as someone who pretty much always succeeds at things I turn my hand to, I hated (I mean, I absolutely hated) the fact that I couldn’t succeed at looking good.

It’s a terrible thing, I can tell you, not to want to look at yourself in the mirror. You avoid it studiously, and it eats away at your self-esteem. People would never have guessed it of the apparently bold and confident Berni Dymet, but it was the scourge of my life. Of course, I finally found out what was causing me to be so grossly overweight, and that’s something that I share in a free E-booklet called ‘How I Lost 25 kgs.’ You can download it from the Resources section of our website, ChristianityWorks.com if you’re interested. Thousands already have.

But do you see my point? When I come to talk about body image, I’m speaking as someone who has struggled with the body-image thing for most of his life, so this is not a theory lesson; this is someone whose life has been transformed by Christ speaking here.

Now before we get rocking and rolling to talk about the emotional side of body image, let me say this: What I am not saying is that we shouldn’t worry about our health and our weight. The thing that’s causing gross obesity on a global pandemic scale is our addiction to sugar and processed foods. Get rid of those two things out of your diet, get back to what your grandparents and their parents were eating (yes, including bacon, eggs and all those things), and the weight just comes off. Absolutely, get back to natural whole foods, but weight isn’t the only thing that ruins our sense of body image.

Some people just think they look ugly, ok? Some of us don’t fit the stereotypical images of beauty that we see in the glossy magazines and on television. In fact, the reality is that most of us don’t, right? But that doesn’t stop many people from feeling visually inadequate. Some people have birthmarks or scars, or perhaps you’re shorter than you’d like to be, or taller than you want to be, or you wish your hair was a different colour or those wrinkles would just go away. There’s any number of things that we fret about when it comes to body image, and for many people, it simply ruins their lives. Am I right?

So, where do we go with this? If you’re someone whose body image is ruining their life, do you want to be set free from that (I mean, completely, totally and utterly set free from that)? Then stick with me because that’s what we’re going to be doing right now: Not because I happen to have anything profound to say, but because God does, and first up, this is what He has to say about body-image. Are you ready? This comes from a time when the prophet Samuel was sent by God to find a new king to replace King Saul of Israel, who’d gone off the rails. Have a listen (1 Samuel 16:1-13):

The LORD said to Samuel, ‘How long are you going to grieve Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel, so fill your horn with oil and set out. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for Myself a king among his sons.’ 

So, Samuel did what the LORD commanded and he came to Bethlehem, and sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the LORD’s anointed is now before me.’

But the LORD said to Samuel, ‘Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.’

Then Jesse called Abinadab and made him pass before Samuel. He said, ‘Neither has the LORD chosen this one.’ 

Then Jesse made Shammah pass by, and he said, ‘Neither has the LORD chosen this one.’

Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, ‘The LORD has not chosen any of these.’ Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Are all your sons here?’

And he said, ‘There remains yet the youngest son, but he is out keeping the sheep.’

And Samuel said to Jesse, ‘Send and bring him, for we will not sit down until he comes.’

He sent and brought him. Now he was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome, and the LORD said, ‘Rise and anoint him, for this is the one.’

Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers, and the Spirit of the LORD came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah.

Now that’s a profound story of how God chose David, who turned out to be the greatest king that Israel ever had, and notice that David was the runt of the litter. He was the little one, considered so unlikely that his father didn’t even put him before the prophet. Samuel thought, ‘Oh, number one son. You know – the tall, the good-looking one … That’s the one that’s going to be king’, but God said to the prophet, ‘Do not look upon his outward appearance or on the height of his stature because I have rejected him. For the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.’

Listen to me. God doesn’t give two hoots about your physical stature. That’s the last thing He’s interested in! What He’s interested in is who you are – your heart, and if that’s the most precious thing in God’s sight, isn’t it time to ditch this whole body-image inadequacy thing that you’ve been going on about? Well? What you look like is, by and large, God’s sovereign choice. Other than perhaps your weight and a few cosmetic things, the rest is completely out of your control; what matters is who you are – your sense of humour; your heart; your passions; the gifts God’s given you. If that matters most to God, shouldn’t that be what matters most to you?

DRESS TO IMPRESS

I haven’t had that many job-interviews in my life. In fact, I’ve only really had two of them, but the first one is the one that I remember most. It was a daylong selection board they called it, in front of some generals and colonels who were selecting candidates to train as officers in the Australian army. There were about twenty of us young men there vying for contention, and about six or seven of these senior officers. They spent the whole day putting us through the hoops. There were group-sessions where we were asked questions. We each had to get up and give an impromptu speech. There was an obstacle course that we had to traverse, with problems to solve along the way … All sorts of different things. It was an exhausting day, I can tell you, and the whole time, you were really trying to impress these guys because you wanted to be selected to train as an officer. The pressure was intense.

Out of the twenty of us, just three or four made it through. I happened to be one of them, and then for the next four years at the Royal Military College, Duntroon, we were constantly being assessed. Every time you interacted with one of the military or academic staff, they were assessing you and constantly filling in these pink slips (“OQ9’s”, they were called) that were entered into a computer system. Almost without notice, a fellow officer/cadet would be plucked from a class, and discharged because they hadn’t measured up. We started off with 148 young men in our class, and yet only 61 of us graduated 4 years later – I by the skin of my teeth, because I had failed the cross-country run by a few seconds in my final year.

It seems to be the way of the world, doesn’t it? We’re constantly under the microscope; constantly being assessed and evaluated in the workplace, in social settings, on the sporting fields … It’s almost like we’ve been conditioned to compete, and in a competitive environment, if you want to succeed, you have to impress other people. I remember a publisher telling me that if I wanted to succeed at the book-writing game, I’d have to become a shameless self-promoter. That’s terrible, isn’t it? And self-promotion, having your own PR-machine to tell other people how good you are, seems to be the order of the day. We dress to impress.

But what I’ve discovered is that all this competition makes you insecure, and the shameless self-promotion that many people carry on with is simply a mask behind which they hide in deep insecurity. You’ve been there; I’ve been there, and it’s simply no way to live your life. We’re in the middle of a series of messages called "So … How’s Your Self-Image Looking", and the reason that we’re chatting about this whole self-promotion thing today is that for many people, it’s white-anting their sense of self.

God actually has something very specific to say on this because He knows that it’s no way to live your life, hiding behind that mask of insecurity. If who you are on the outside is different from who you are on the inside, you end up feeling like you’re being torn apart. You end up feeling that you have to spend your whole life pretending; impressing other people; dancing to their tune; marching to the beat of their drum. You end up feeling like a fraud, with a fear that someone’s going to catch you out – that they’ll discover that really, you aren’t anywhere near as good as they think you are.

I hope you can tell that I’m speaking first-hand here, because this is very much how I lived my life before Jesus set me free. Have a listen to these two Scriptures from God’s Word. 1 Samuel 2:3:

Talk no more so very proudly; let no arrogance come from your mouth, for the LORD is a God of knowledge, and by Him actions are weighed.

And also Proverbs 27:1-2:

Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring. Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.

What God’s saying is, stop boasting. Stop being so full of yourself, because arrogance is foolish. God is a God of knowledge. He knows what you’re on about. He sees through all of that façade and all that rubbish, and while some people might be intimidated by pride and arrogance, most of them (like God) can see straight through it.

Who cares what you say about how good you are, or what you can do, or what you’ve achieved, or what you’re going to do? Self-praise is pretty much worthless. In fact, it has negative value in most people’s eyes, including in God’s eyes. So much better to just get out there and do good, and let someone else praise you; not your own mouth, a stranger even; not your own lips.

When I was in the army as an officer, each year, we had a formal confidential report written on each one of us. There were two types of officers: Those who set out to impress their superiors so that they’d get a good annual confidential report, and those who just got on and did good and led their soldiers and honoured their seniors, and didn’t think at all about their annual report, and it was the latter (not the former) group that I wanted to follow into battle. It was the latter (not the former) who we spoke well of. You see self-promotion is ugly. It’s ugly on the outside to those who receive it, and it’s ugly on the inside because it feeds a deep insecurity and makes you feel even more insecure.

If you’re someone who constantly worries about what other people think of you, just stop it! Stop it. It ain’t worth it, and you can never please them all. Just get on; do good; honour God. Let the rest take care of itself. Sometimes people will love you; sometimes people will criticise you – who cares? And even more to the point, let God take care of it for you. 1 Peter 5:5-6:

God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time.

See, the bottom line is this: Self-promotion is nothing; nothing compared to God-promotion. Listen. "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time"! When we humble ourselves, we start to discover a deep security in Christ, and we end up reaping the benefits of His promotion in due time.

STOP COMPARING

Who was it, during your teenaged years that you compared yourself to? Most of us, we had a few people back then to whom we looked as the ideal image. First up, there was probably a peer. If you’re a male, it was another boy; if you’re a female, it was another girl … It was that one person that you wished you could be like then … As good-looking; as well-liked; as smart; as athletic. Whatever it is that you admired about them and the life that they had, it gnawed away at you on the inside that you weren’t as blessed in that department as they were.

If you’re a girl, probably what you envied was that other girl‘s appearance. If you’re a boy, probably what you envied was that other boy’s popularity – the fact that everyone seemed to listen to him. He was the leader of the pack, and you were just … well, you. At another level, there was probably an adult that you wished and dreamed you would grow up to be like. Perhaps it was a movie star, or a sporting star, or somebody famous that you dreamed that one day you’d be like them.

I’m sure all that brings back some memories for you: A few things that you haven’t thought about for a very, very long time, or perhaps you’re still thinking about them. Perhaps you’re still comparing yourself with other people, wondering why it is that you never quite seem to measure up to the ideal person that you see in them. You find yourself comparing your marriage to your best friend’s marriage, thinking: ‘Why can’t my wife or my husband be as passionately in-love with me as they are?’ Or perhaps that other person at work, who seems to be so articulate and well liked. Whenever someone needs something, they always go to that person instead of coming to you.

So why do we do that? What’s the matter with us that we’re constantly comparing ourselves to other people? Well in part, it comes naturally in a sense and to some extent, some comparison isn’t a bad thing. In fact, when you think about it, it’s by comparing ourselves that we learn. We compare ourselves to our parents and we learn from them. We pick up their good habits and sometimes, we pick up their bad habits too.

And when we’re grown-up, I mean, I had a mentor in the workplace for over twenty years – a man called Graham, a couple of decades older than me, and I saw how he operated and the results that he achieved by operating that way, and I modelled myself on him because I liked the results he was getting.

Now that’s not a bad thing at all, but there’s an unhealthy level of comparison that often goes on: when we just want to cherry-pick the good things that other people have in their lives, as though they don’t have any bad things in their lives. Of course that’s completely unrealistic because when we cherry-pick the good things and ignore the bad things, what we’re going to do is we’re going to construct an ideal image that we aspire to, which is totally unrealistic – an image that we can never achieve, and that feeds our insecurity and robs us of our identity.

When you think about it, those comparisons are about wanting to be what the other person is, or have what the other person has. So destructive is this that the Ten Commandments include a commandment specifically about this very thing. It’s the last commandment, number ten. Have a listen (Exodus 20:17):

You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.

Why? Because when we covet, when we want the thing that our neighbour has, it causes us to do one of two things: Either we do the wrong thing and we go and take it (which is what adultery is all about; that’s what theft’s all about), or we don’t take it, but the desire eats away at us like a cancer, and we tell ourselves that we’re not complete without having it. We can’t enjoy our lives without it. Unless we have that one thing that the next guy has, we can never live a life full and contented and happy. What a load of malarkey!

There are some things that you and I will never have; yet the desire for those things can end up ruining your life. Some people desire great wealth, but they can’t attain it. That’s why God says in His Word (Hebrews 6:10):

The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich, some have wandered away from their faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

Notice it’s not money which is the root of all evil; it’s the love of money; it’s the desire for money; it’s coveting wealth that becomes the root of all evil, and ends up piercing us with many pains. It’s true.

We’ll talk about that more another time, but there’s an alternative, and here it is. Hebrews 13:5:

Keep your lives free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for He has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’.

And that’s the key: Contentment. Have a look around, and consider all the good things that God’s already given you: Your health, your life, the air that you breathe, the roof over your head, the food you’re eating, your family … Just do a stocktake of all that you have … Oh and by the way, the gift of eternal life, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ – a completely new life, through His resurrection … Come on. Add up all the good things that you already have. It’s amazing, isn’t it, how blessed you are. Is it perfect? Is your family perfect? Are your circumstances perfect? No, of course they aren’t. They were never meant to be perfect, but the richness of God’s blessing is utterly mind-blowing.

So here’s the rub: Be content with what you have. Be content with who you are. Be content with your lots in life. Give God thanks for that. Keep blessing Him and praising Him and worshipping Him and living for Him, and all of a sudden, all those stupid ridiculous things that you covet, all those crazy comparisons will simply go away. They’ll pale into insignificance because all of a sudden, you discover how rich you already are in Jesus Christ. Come on … what is it in your life that’s eating away at your self-image? Is it really worth it, or is it time to focus on the good things that God’s already given you?

And that’s the key, you know. We just can’t miraculously all of a sudden overcome our insecurities; it doesn’t work that way. If we could, we would; but we can’t, so we don’t. They just don’t seem to go away on their own, these insecurities. That’s where thanksgiving comes in. The Bible is packed full of exhortations for us to be thankful, and for good reason. 1 Thessalonians 5:18:

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

 Psalm 107:1:

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good, for His steadfast love endures forever.

Psalm 50:14:

Offer God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and perform your vows to the Most High.

On and on … we’re called to thank God for all the good things, and let me tell you when we do that, He changes us. He takes away that gnawing sense of inadequacy that comes from these silly comparisons, and the terrible coveting and jealousy that He tells us not to have, and He replaces it with an overwhelming sense of joy, irrespective (let me say) of our circumstances; even when things are going against us, in fact especially when things are going against us.

Let me be blunt here: If you’re desiring to have something you can’t have, or to be someone you can’t be, it’s going to be ruining your life. It’s giving you a distorted self-image, and God’s command to you is clear: Stop it! Just don’t do it anymore. Instead, praise God and give thanks, and let Him change you.

You see, God’s already made provision for your deliverance and healing from this terrible disease through the simple and utterly delightful habit of giving thanks to Him. The only question is, what exactly are you waiting for?

Some people spend their whole lives trying to sort out their identify – and as a result, they struggle terribly from problems of self–esteem and self–worth. But God has a plan to put you in a place where you can learn firsthand who you are, and what He made you to do.

DON’T BE SQUEEZED

None of us likes wearing clothes that don’t fit particularly well. It’s a horrible feeling isn’t it? That shirt that’s too tight, or that pair of pants, or in the case of women the skirt that sits awkwardly on you. My personal nemesis has always been the stiff collar with a tie in the middle of summer. I tell you, after thirty years of having to wear a tie and a collar, these days I almost never wear them because I hate that feeling of being uncomfortable.

So what happens with these ill-fitting clothes, because you hate wearing them, is that you can’t wait to get home and rip them off and get into something comfortable.

I think we all relate to that, don’t we? And yet, so many people live their lives in something much worse than ill-fitting clothes – they live their lives in a straightjacket. Why? How? Because they’re somehow trying to be someone who they’re not; they’re trying to do something that they were never made to do.

Interesting to look at the history of the proverbial straightjacket. It actually originated in France back in 1790, invented by an upholsterer named Guilleret for a hospital. It was in the time before psychiatric medications were developed and doctors simply didn’t know how to treat mental disorders like schizophrenia or depression or anxiety disorders, according to Wikipedia anyway.

By the time of the American civil war, the mentally ill were often placed into poorhouses, workhouses and prisons, and forced to live with criminals. And again, they were being restrained by straightjackets.

Now, it’s a terrible picture when you think about it, someone suffering from mental anguish, being restrained in something much, much worse than ill-fitting clothes. And not on a rare exception basis, it was the routine approach for the mentally ill, considered to be more humane than chaining them up.

Now, the main point of what we’re chatting about today isn’t to get a complete history of straightjackets. The reason I’m painting that picture is so that you and I can put ourselves in that picture, moving from the ill-fitting clothes that we’ve all experienced and the discomfort that all brings, to the whole idea – the terrible idea – of living even one day, let alone a whole lifetime in a straightjacket.

It’s pretty obvious that we were made, you and I, to be free, to be able to move freely and to think freely and to act freely. And yet, let me come back to it, so many people are living their lives under some oppressive straightjacket regime because they’re trying to be someone they’re not or do something they were never made to do.

I spent over twenty-five years as a consultant in management and IT and so I’ve worked in hundreds of organisations around the world. And the number of people I saw in the banks and the insurance companies and the government departments and the oil companies and all sorts of different enterprises who were so depressed, so dissatisfied with work, made me realise that this is happening on a mass, global scale.

People are being squeezed into a mould they were never meant to fit in. Now I came to know many of these people in these client organisations over the years, and time and time again, what I saw were people who were doing jobs they were never made to do, jobs they just wouldn’t ever be suited to do.

The Bible has this to say about who you are and where you fit, and I’m reading here from the more obscure J.B Phillips translation, because I love the way in which he renders this verse, Romans chapter 12, verse 2:

Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your mind from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, that it meets all of his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.

I’ve had so many people try to do that to me, to squeeze me into another mould. Its like God loves me but they have a plan for my life. My dad, when I was young, wanted me to be a doctor. I wanted to be a lawyer. I’d have been a disaster at both of those, because I hate the sight of blood and I’m not very good with masses of detail that are so important in the legal profession. And over the last twenty years or so, as I’ve preached at churches, several have asked me whether I’d be interested in becoming their pastor, when the truth is, I’m just not pastorally gifted.

Do you know why so many people feel as though they’re failures? It’s because they’re trying to be something and they are trying to do something they were never made to be or to do.

I will never be a great cricketer – I don’t have the hand-eye-ball coordination. I will never be a great basketballer because I’m just too short. In fact, most professions, the vast majority out there, as I look around, I am just not suited to.

So imagine if I chose one of them, and slogged away at it for forty years. What would that do to my self-image? What would that do to my self-esteem? And this, I can tell you, is happening as a mass, global, pandemic.

I was watching the great singer Billy Joel on TV, (by the way, that’s another thing I’d love to be able to do, but I really can’t), and I remembered back to his great song, The Piano Man, that he wrote when he was a poor musician, working in a late night bar somewhere. And you look at a guy like that and you realise – hey, this Billy Joel, there’s someone who has discovered their gig in life. The one thing they were made to do.

God made you to do something, to be someone. It’s a different ‘who’ and a different ‘do’ to anyone else that you know. You’re a unique antique let me tell you, and when you discover your shtick, your gig, your one thing in life that God made for you, it will totally change your ‘self-image’ because all of a sudden you will be able to excel at it.

Just after that bit on not being squeezed into the world’s mould, the Bible goes on to say in Romans chapter 12, verse 6:

Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them.

That’s the answer. Be who God made you to be, and for goodness sakes, get out there and do what God made you to do.

SOMETHING REMARKABLE ABOUT YOU

The whole point of what we’ve been chatting about so far in this series of messages that I’ve called "So … How’s Your Self-Esteem Looking?" is that we can make two equal and opposite mistakes in life when it comes to how we see ourselves and where we think we fit in, in the scheme of things.

Some people suffer terribly from low self-esteem. I’m worthless. I’m not good at anything. I’ll never fit in. There’s no hope for me. Life is just one big long blaaaaah.

Plenty of people are living like that, whether they realise it or not. And that self-image clouds their whole life. It robs them of joy in anything and everything.

At the very opposite end of that scale is pride, hubris, that sense of superiority where no one is as good as me. I have to tell you, that’s just as destructive, because it robs you of just as many things as low self-esteem does.

And in fact for much of my life, I had a touch of both. I covered up my deep insecurities, by putting on a front of bravado and self-confidence that had a lot of people fooled … or maybe not!

There’s good self-confidence and there’s bad self-confidence, isn’t there? Good self-confidence is a quiet, humble confidence in who you are, with a genuine acceptance of who you aren’t; your own limitations. That’s good. Being around people who are like that is in fact lot of fun. Bad self-confidence, well, we know all about that too, don’t we? People who just roll over the top of others.

How do you get all this right? Let’s say that God created you to be the person that you are, and in fact, the person who you aren’t as well, if that makes sense. And let’s say, like many people, you haven’t really figured out a healthy self-image for yourself yet, one that makes you really happy with who it is that God made you to be and not to be.

So where do you begin? Where do you get that sort of a self-image?

Well, before the break we were chatting about the fact that instead of letting the world squeeze you into its mould, the one that will forever leave you with a distorted image of your self–worth, instead of that, do something else.

Let’s have another listen to it. Romans chapter 12, verses 1 to 8, and this is the Apostle Paul writing to the Church in Rome, and again I’m reading from the J.B Phillips translation. Paul says this:

Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your mind from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity.

As your spiritual leader I give you this piece of advice to each one of you. Don’t cherish exaggerated ideas of yourself or of your importance, but try to have a sane estimate of your capabilities by the light of the faith that God has given to you all. For just as you have many members in one physical body and all those members differ in their functions, so we, though many in number, compose one body in Christ and are all members of one another.

Through the grace of God we have different gifts. If our gift is preaching, let us preach to the limit of our vision. If it is serving others then let us consecrate ourselves onto service; if it is teaching let us give all we have to our teaching; and if our gift be the stimulating of the faith of others let us set ourselves to it. Let the man who is called to give, give freely; let the man who wields authority think of his responsibility; and let the man who feels sympathy for his fellows act cheerfully.

So there it is, don’t cherish exaggerated ideas of yourself; don’t think of yourself more highly than you should. But instead, have a sane, rational estimate of your capabilities in the light of … what? … in the light of the faith that God has given you. That’s good advice. The question is how do you do that? And Paul immediately goes on to tell us how.

He says we’re all part of the one body with different gifts, different functions. Just as the different parts of your body – your eyes and your nose and your pancreas – just as they all have different functions, so those who believe in Jesus are the same, we also have different functions; we’re made differently. So … Romans chapter 12, verse 6:

Having gifts that differ according to the grace that’s given to us, let us use them.

The exciting thing about this is that right here, God’s telling us through the Apostle Paul, how to get this thing right. It’s the link between the theory and the practice. God’s given you this gift now use it in the context of God’s family in which He has placed you.

That’s why being part of the Body of Christ, part of the Church, isn’t some optional extra. It’s vitally important. Because it’s in the context of God’s community that we get to find out who we are and what we were made to do, and sometimes, by trial and error, what we weren’t made to do.

I said at the beginning of today’s message that there’s something remarkable about you that you need to know. And that remarkable thing is this: the moment you believe in Jesus, you’re part of God’s family. You’re not your own. You’re part of the community, that body of Christ, through which Christ lives out His love into this lost and hurting world.

Don’t have a wrong self-image, says Paul. Instead, start using your natural, God-given talents as part of the body of Christ and if you’re a nose, be happy with being a nose. If you’re an ear, be happy with that. Be the greatest nose ever! Be the best ear ever! Be a great pancreas! Do you get it?

If you’re a great concert pianist, let’s say, it means nothing if you’re playing to an empty theatre, doesn’t it? Play to a full theatre. Take your God-given gift and be a blessing to others, let God’s blessing flow through your gift into the lives of the people around you, because they need what you have, they need who you are. They can’t do what you can do; they can’t be who you can be. Who you are and what you can do is God’s gift to them, through you.

And as you get on and enjoy being a nose or an ear or a pancreas or whatever you happen to be in the body of Christ, your sense of self-image, your sense of self-worth will become completely and radically transformed. That’s what God is saying to you and me through this passage today.

OVERCOMING INSECURITY

People don’t believe me when I tell them that I used to be an incredibly insecure person. I mean, terribly insecure, chronically insecure all of the time. Concerned about what people were thinking of me and how they saw me and what they thought of what I said. I mean, what if my voice sounded funny to them, I mean it did when I listened to it from a recording.

What if they didn’t like the fact that I was grossly overweight, and I used to be a very big boy! What if they thought what I was saying was just downright stupid?

Those were all the doubts bouncing around in my head and my heart, and I got to tell you, it’s a terrible way to live your life. Anybody who has experienced that feeling of insecurity, or is still living in that place right at the moment, is right now nodding their heads, because they know, you know, exactly what I’m talking about.

But the reason that people would never have believed that I, of all people, was suffering from chronic, deep-rooted insecurity, as I said earlier, I was able to put on a very convincing façade of confidence.

I’m a fairly strong character and I’m reasonably articulate and I find it very quick and easy to collect my thoughts and to express them coherently. So you combine those two abilities, those natural gifts, and you can see how easy it was for me to build that over-confident façade.

Of course, it didn’t fool mature people, wise people. You can always tell when it’s an act, when you have to keep promoting yourself, and telling other people how good you are, lots of people will see through that. But others are intimidated by it and they back off, although they never love you and respect you for it.

The reason that I’m being so blatantly transparent here is that I don’t want you to think for one moment just because I’m the smooth voice on the radio, that I’ve had a perfect life. I’m talking about overcoming insecurity here as a first-hand practitioner and not a theoretician. That’s my point.

Today, it’s entirely different for me, completely. When something happens that would in the past have caused me to feel insecure, criticism for instance, or that feeling of inadequacy when I compared myself with other people, or perhaps someone knows more about a particular subject than I do, when those things happen, these days I’m completely at ease. There is not a single twinge of insecurity that sweeps through me.

This one single transformation in my life is one of the things that I am most thankful to Jesus for. And right now, I want to tell you how it happened, because it was all about what He did for me, not about what I did for myself, please understand that. It’s all about Jesus.

You hear about people who have emotional problems like this going to see a therapist, or they "go into therapy" we sometimes hear it said. And there’s a role for counselling and therapy. But my therapy came in the form of rehabilitation that was fed to me directly from God’s Word.

The single, most powerful, most incredibly mind-blowing transformation that I have ever experienced in my life, has come from quietly, every day reading God’s Word, praying about it, thinking about it and then letting the Holy Spirit write it on my heart so that I can live it out.

That’s how therapy becomes rehabilitation the word becomes deed, because that’s what God does. You start by crawling, then by limping and then you slowly graduate to walking and one day, you find yourself running. That’s how God seems to work. Yes okay, there’s the odd lightning bolt out of the sky that zaps you with power, but there are also weeks and months and years of quietly just living out God’s Word as a form of powerful rehabilitation.

So what part of God’s Word impacted me and set me free from the deep insecurities that I’d lived with all my life? Well, here it is. It follows on where we left off before the break where we were talking about living out the unique gift that God has given each one of us, Romans chapter 12, verses 9 to 21. Just quietly drink this passage of scripture in and let the Holy Spirit have a powerful effect in you as He speaks to your heart:

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.

If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord. No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Do you see how there is nothing spectacular here, God is just quietly talking about humbly using your special, God-given gift and the ability to bless others and going and doing it, nothing spectacular, just quietly, day after day after day.

All different ways of doing that, outdo each other in showing honour, be patient through suffering, keep on persevering in prayer, generously contribute, hospitality to strangers, the list goes on. Day after day, just, it’s so simple, it’s too simple, it’s too obvious.

And yet what happens, is that as we exercise our gifts over and over and over again, to bless others, just by doing good, just by what we’ve read here, the Holy Spirit flows out through us, the blessing of God flows out through us, and as well as blessing all those other people out there, God blesses us by validating who we are, who He made us to be and what He made us to do and the stuff we are good at. He validates that, as we use His gifts that He’s given us, in action. He uses us; He works through us.

You see, there’s the rehab, there’s the transformation right there. And there is a whole new sense of self-worth and self-esteem and self-image being rebuilt from the ground up by God!

Isn’t that just beautiful? Isn’t that completely wonderful? Do you see how God’s Word here powerfully translates into simple actions that bless others and transform us? Only God can do that. Only when we accept Jesus into our lives and God’s forgiveness flows, and the Holy Spirit power flows, can that transformation take place.

I feel like I’m jumping out of my skin at the moment, at the sheer privilege to be able to share this beautiful truth with you today. The wonder of God’s plan for your life – do you have any idea how much He loves you, do you have any idea how great God’s plans are for you?

God does not want you to live in chronic insecurity. God does not want you to suffer from pride or from low self-esteem or, as I did, from both at the same time. God wants to set you free from all of that, to humbly, yet powerfully live out the life of blessings that He has planned for you.

Yes, through a whole bunch of trials and temptations that will come your way, I mean, the devil is not going to leave you alone when you start living out this life, be sure of that. In fact, the mere fact that he comes after you with his legions of demons is a sure sign that you’re on the right path.

Your God wants you to know that the image in which He created you, is His image; and the hash that you’ve made of things through your sin is wiped away through your faith in the fact that Jesus paid the price for you on that Cross; and that His power, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, is at work in you now, to restore you back into that original image.

And the more you see that image appearing in you, the more you will delight in who He made you to be and the more that deep insecurity is going to flee from you. Trust me. I know.

One of the most important, the most profound, the most fundamental influences on our lives is how we see ourselves. And let me say, how we see ourselves, isn’t always that healthy. So … what sort of an impact is that having on your life?

DISTORTED MIRROR SYNDROME

On a fairly regular basis in the various series and programmes that I share with you here on ’Christianityworks’, I touch on things like self-image, low self-esteem, giftings and abilities – that sort of thing. There’s a reason that I keep coming back to that genre of discussion if you will, and that reason is this: I see so many people in this world who are walking around with a distorted view of who they are, and those distortions (fed to them largely by the people in the systems and the economy that surround them) are ruining their lives. So as I was thinking and praying about what we could talk about starting this week, I came to the conclusion that it was time for a whole series on self-image, and so I’ve called it "So … How’s Your Self-Image Looking?", because the aim I guess is to challenge you about how you see yourself.

If you’ve ever read Stephen Covey’s book "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", you may remember that one of the things he starts off with is how we see the world. He describes it something like this: ‘It’s like we each have a different set of glasses on our face. Maybe yours have a pink tint and mine have a yellow tint and the next person’s have a green tint, and what we see and how we see it depends entirely on those lenses through which we’re looking at the world. Most commonly, people say that "seeing is believing", but actually no, argues Covey, "believing is seeing". What you believe profoundly influences what you see.’

A few weeks ago on the programme, I shared the difference between someone who’s secure in themselves and someone who’s insecure. Let’s say you’re insecure. A person comes up to you and shares a constructive, well-meaning piece of criticism with you. None of us likes criticism, but an insecure person is going to react terribly to that. They might get angry; they might be hurt; they might withdraw further into their shell; they might start bad-mouthing the person who criticised them. They’re all the sorts of reactions that an insecure person would have. A secure person on the other hand might initially be annoyed by the criticism, but fairly quickly starts thinking about it, and assessing it as objectively as they can, and if the criticism has some basis to it, they start to do some things to change – to learn from what they’ve just heard; to get better at this thing that maybe they’ve botched up the last time round.

Do you see how believing is seeing? How the lenses through which we perceive the world profoundly impact what we see and what we feel and how we react? And let me ask you: In this one small example of handling criticism, which person ends up being better off for the experience, the secure one, or the insecure one? That’s pretty obvious, right? That’s why I said at the beginning of the programme that how we see ourselves is one of the most important, the most profound, the most fundamental influences on our lives. And it’s an influence either for good or for bad; for liberation or for bondage; for building an amazing future, or for living a rotten life. That’s not hyperbole. I’m not overstating the case here at all.

I used to have a terrible self-image of myself. Now let me tell you, it was truly a rotten life. When I was young (and that’s always where it starts, let me tell you), I was short and dumpy and not very good at running and not very good at sports, and in a sports-mad nation like Australia that simply wasn’t a good thing. The other boys used to make fun of me and even when I went and became an officer in the Australian army (a four-year degree course), I was almost kicked out in my final year of officer training for failing the cross-country by just twelve seconds. Other people looked down on me. Forget the fact I had other talents and abilities, my peers considered me to be something less than they were, in fact, considerably less.

Now I caught up with some of these guys recently from the Royal Military College, Duntroon (my classmates). It had been thirty-four years since I’d seen most of them. We were all young men back then, when we were training to be officers. Anyway, we had a great night together, eating and drinking and reminiscing and laughing, and you know, none of them seemed to remember anymore that I was the guy that couldn’t run as fast as them. They’d all moved on, but can you see how these hurts from the past can live on in you and distort your self-image? So many people are carrying round the reproach of the past with them, and they wonder why they’re not having such a great life.

The Bible talks about the reproach of the past, and God is super-keen to remove it from us, because while we’re still carrying it around with us, we simply can’t live the life that He has planned for us. Have a listen to this. Joshua 5:9:

“Then the LORD said to Joshua, ‘Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you’, so that place has been called Gilgal unto this day.”

That was said to Joshua (the new leader of Israel) after Israel had been slaves for several centuries in Egypt. Now they were about to cross over into the land that God had promised to Abraham many, many centuries before, so why did God say this thing about rolling back the reproach from the past? Why did God do that? Because God knew they wouldn’t be able to take hold of the Promised Land, battle by battle, if they were still living in their heads as slaves from Egypt. These people had to see themselves as God’s chosen people (not lowly slaves), in order to fight the battles they would need to fight to take hold of all the blessings of the promised land. So God lifted the reproach of Egypt, that sense of looking back on the past and deciding they weren’t good enough. He lifted that off them, so that they could enter and take and enjoy the Promised Land.

Well, let me tell you this: God wants to lift the reproach of your past off you too, so that you can enter the promises He has for your life, so that you can fight the battles He has for you to fight, and so that you can enjoy the blessings He has for you to enjoy. I know what some people are thinking right now. ‘Nah, my life has failure written all over it. That can never happen to me. I’m always going to be fat and ugly. I’m always going to be not good enough. I’ll never be free from my insecurities.’ Well, that’s simply not what God has to say about you, so let’s start listening to what God actually does have to say about you. Here it is, Isaiah 54:4-5:

“Do not fear, for you will not be ashamed; do not be discouraged, for you will not suffer disgrace. For you will forget the shame of your youth, and the disgrace of your widowhood you will remember no more. For your Maker is your Husband, the LORD of Hosts is His name; the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer, and the God of the whole earth He is called.”

Maybe you do have failure written all over your life. You’re divorced (maybe once, maybe more than once). You don’t look the way you want to look. You haven’t achieved what you want to achieve. You aren’t perceived the way you want to be perceived. People don’t acknowledge you and praise you the way you want to be acknowledged and praised, so you look at your crummy little life in your crummy little neck of the woods, and you think to yourself: ‘Blah! There’s nothing anybody can do with me; I’m done.’ Well, here’s what I want to leave you with today: God is not done with you. For as long as you have breath, God is not done with you. He won’t be done with you until you’re dead and then, if you believe in Jesus, you’ll enjoy eternal blessing. That’s what this series is all about. It’s called "So … How’s Your Self-Image Looking?" We’re going to discover together from God’s Word how to be free from the reproach of the past, so that you can enter into and live in the life that God has promised for you.

AN ACCURATE PICTURE

I had a message on my blog from a man just the other day who has been through bankruptcy. He and his wife had a taxicab business in New Zealand, and it just didn’t go that well. Anybody who knows anything about driving taxis knows that it’s very long hours just to get a reasonable return; it can be tough. Anyhow, this man couldn’t make a go of it, despite all the long hours. Let me ask you something: Do you enjoy failure? No. Me neither. So let me ask you then: How do you get on in the face of failure? When something like that, something you’ve worked really hard at in life, You’ve poured out all your energies into it and it goes belly up, and people look at you, and it’s as though someone has stamped the word failure across your forehead in big red upper-case letters, and it doesn’t seem to matter how hard you scrub; you just can’t get rid of that sense of failure plastered all over you?

See, it’s things like that, that shape our self-image, and when it comes to the making of our self-image, one failure seems to outweigh more than a hundred successes. Have you ever noticed how that works? That’s why relying on success and failures, on our comparisons between ourselves and other people, on what we think other people think of us, on the images of success that the advertising industry tells us we should aspire to but seem forever out of our grasp … That’s why relying on all of that stuff out there is so incredibly dangerous – because none of it’s accurate. None of it really tells us who we are, and what we’re worth. Looking out there to find our self-worth, and shaping our self-image based on all that palaver out there, is a little bit like looking at yourself through one of those distorted mirrors down at the local amusement park – something we talked about on a programme I think a few weeks back. Believing the wrong things about yourself is simply no way to live your life, is it?

The question is though, where do you start to get an accurate picture of who you really are – the good, the bad, and the ugly? Where do you turn to get an objective and yet incredibly loving assessment of yourself, on which to base your self-image (how you see yourself; where you fit in; what you were made to be and to do)? There’s nothing more wonderful, let me tell you, than feeling secure in your own skin; than enjoying who you are, and in fact, being totally relaxed and totally comfortable and even delighted with who you’re not. It’s just a stunning feeling to have twenty-four by seven for the rest of your life; really, and it’s a feeling that I’ve only had for less than half of my time here on this earth so far. That doesn’t mean that any of us is ever going to be perfect, but to be secure in who we are, to see yourself for who you truly are and to be totally at peace with that, is simply awesome.

So today, and for the remainder of this series, I want to share with you how to go from insecure to secure because I used to be an incredibly insecure person: Always trying to please other people; always worried about what others thought of me; trying to impress them; secretly feeling like a charlatan on the inside, because of all my failures and limitations that I knew about that I was trying to hide. Does any of that sound just vaguely familiar?

Most months, I write a booklet to go along with each of these new series. This month the booklet’s called: ‘How to Receive a Whole New Self-Image’, and I’ll share with you in a couple of minutes how you can request your free copy of this latest ten-chapter book, but because I’m a visual person, one of the first things I always do when I’m planning a new series (or a new booklet or a book) is to choose the cover-image for the book. It’s something I always do myself, because it’s an integral part of the creative process for me of putting together a new series of messages like this. So if you request your free book, you’ll see that the image is that of an apple reflected in a mirror: Well, not so much an apple as an apple core with the flesh eaten off. Isn’t that so often how we perceive ourselves – all chewed-up; all worn-out; all worthless by comparison to the rest of the world?

But how does God see us? Well, that’s the second part of the image that I chose, because the reflection of the apple core in the mirror is that of a full, green, healthy, shiny apple; whole and complete; a perfect specimen. And that to me so powerfully depicts the difference between how we perceive ourselves and how God sees us.

You see, there’s something special that you and I need to know about ourselves to be able to move on from a distorted self-image to the real one – the true one, and that’s this: That you and I are handcrafted in the very image of God (the imago Dei) and that always, always was God’s intent. Genesis 1:26-27:

“’Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: Cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind’, and it was so. And God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps along the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good. But then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the cattle, over the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’, so God created humankind in His image. In the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.”

And you see, there’s your starting-point, because that’s how God sees you: Not as a chewed-out old apple core, but as a perfect specimen made in His image – the apple of His eye. Now have you made some mistakes along the way? Course you have. Are you chewed-out to some extent? Well, yeah, probably. Are you forensically perfect in this moment? No, but God sees the potential for you to be, and that – that’s why He sent Jesus: So that through Jesus, you could be forgiven and restored back into this perfect image in which you were created – the very image of God.

That’s the starting-point, and that’s the ending-point, and that’s what Jesus is all about – restoring you back to the original image, the very image of God. That’s not some fairy-story; that’s the story. It’s the story that God has had for you and for your life from the very beginning of time … before the beginning of time. He always, always knew that you and I would be imperfect. He always knew that you and I would reject Him, and He always, always knew that He was going to send Jesus to die on that cross for you and for me so that we could be forgiven and restored back into His image (the imago Dei).

And do you know what God says in the very next breath after ‘Male and female He created them’? He says this in verse 28:

“God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it’.”

Made in God’s image in order to be what? Blessed! That’s you! That His plan for you! Do you know what the one profound difference is between the image that God has of you, and the image the world reflects back at you? His image is the image of love, whereas the world’s image is the image of criticism; of putting you down; of making you feel worthless. When the world looks at you, more often than not, it sees an opportunity to make use of you. But when God looks at you, the way a father or a mother gazes at their child, He sees someone He made in His image to love and to bless … And sure: He sees the chewed-out bits; the blemishes, but He looks at them not with criticism, but with love! What He sees is the potential to restore you back to that original image – His image. God looks at you and He sees your potential. He sees all that’s possible, and that’s why He sent Jesus for you.

A FAITH CHOICE

It seems to me that you and I have a significant faith choice to make each and every day when it comes to who or what we believe about our self-image. Way too many people are believing what the world has to say. After all, every time you turn the television on, advertisers are dangling these glossy images of beauty and success under your nose, and they tell you that if you buy their product, this is how it’s going to be for you: successful, beautiful, balanced, happy people fawning over you. But of course, it never happens quite that way, does it? Those images turn out to be a cruel mirage, and so they continue to feed our distorted self-image. They continue to rob us of the true image that God has created in us – His image, and the same is true of how we live our lives, what we actually do with our lives. That’s something we’re going to talk about a whole bunch more next week on the programme, but all too often, we’re trying to do things we were never made to do.

The passage I always come back to in order to get my faith choice right (about believing who I am and what my worth is) is Psalm 139. If you’ve been listening to this programme for any length of time, you’ll be getting to know this passage rather well, ‘cos it’s so important. Have another listen. It’s beautiful (Psalm 139:13-18):

“For it was You, God, who formed my inner parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works; that I know very well. My frame wasn’t hidden from You when I was being made in secret, intricately woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance; in Your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are Your thoughts, o God, how vast is the sum of them! I try to count them, but they are more than the sand; I come to the end, and I am still with You.”

In other words, the Psalmist who wrote that is saying to God: "LORD, I am amazed; I’m totally gob-smacked at who I am, who You made me to be. I … God, I just can’t get my mind round it." Now, let me ask you something: Which one are you going to believe – the Word of God, or the world; the advertising industry, or the Bible? Perhaps you’ve never quite thought about it in those terms, but it’s a stark choice. You know what they say: ‘You are what you eat.’ If you continually swallow the rubbish the world feeds you, if you continually dine on that junk-food emotional diet, and stare into those distorted mirrors believing the distorted image they reflect back at you, your life is going to be a mess. Your sense of self-worth is going to be destroyed.

It follows as surely as night follows day, but (and here’s the big but) if you choose instead to gaze into the Word of God, to listen to His Spirit, to experience His loving arms around you, to live out God’s Word in your life … If you choose to believe what God says about you, and you start living as though it’s true (‘cos it is), then little by little, your self-esteem, your self-worth, your self-image is going to be restored back into the right image – the image of God in which you were created.

So this is what I want to leave you with today: From this moment forward, which one is it going to be? Who are you going to believe? And perhaps to help you answer that question for yourself, you could start with: "What do I want my life to look like? Do I want to be safe and secure in who I am in Christ, or do I want to be insecure and plagued by low self-esteem or pride or both?" I don’t know about you, but that sounds like something of a no-brainer, I would have thought. So please, grab your Bible this week. Start reading it. Start here at Psalm 139, and some of the other Scriptures that we’ve been talking about today, and start hearing and seeing and believing who God says you are, and what plans God has for your life, and the love that He wants to pour out on you, through Jesus Christ His Son.

Would you like to live the stunning life that God has planned for you? Well, it’s not going to happen by listening to what the world has to say and chasing after worldly baubles and trinkets. It’s only going to happen by listening to what God has to say.

FORGIVE AND FORGET

So, when was the last time someone hurt you? Come on, think back. For probably the majority of us, we don’t have to go back even twenty-four hours. A harsh word, being left out, being ignored, being passed over, being misunderstood.

It doesn’t take all that much to get hurt. And they’re just the small things. Then there are the big things like the unfaithfulness of a spouse, physical and emotional abuse, theft and violence. There are plenty of people listening to this message today who have some of those in their lives. In fact, there are more people listening to this message around the world today, who are living in poverty or without basic housing or clean water or sanitation and safety, than there are those listening in the comfortable affluent west.

So, back to you, back to the people who have hurt you in your life – can I ask you, how easy do you find it to forgive them? Is it something that comes naturally, or do you struggle to forgive? Well the answer for most of us is that forgiveness is one of the most unnatural acts of all.

Because when someone wrongs you, that innate sense of justice that you have built into you, because you’ve been created in the image of God – who is, after all, the God of justice, your God. Given that sense of justice, well, what it demands in you, is that things be put right, correct?

When you are wronged, things should be righted. When someone causes you to suffer a loss, then justice demands that they should recompense you. That’s why people sue each other.

But forgiveness is the exact opposite in a sense. Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you, when you’ve hurt me. Forgiveness is me giving up the recompense that justice demands that I should have. And for God, forgiveness is rather a big deal.

Jesus once said this, Mark 11:25:

Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.

So us forgiving others, as it turns out according to Jesus, is a precursor to God forgiving us. Have you ever wondered: how is it that this God of justice, is so focussed on forgiveness? How is it that justice and forgiveness can live side by side in the one person? Isn’t there a conflict between the two?

Well, the answer is yes, there is a conflict between these two, justice and forgiveness, they are opposed to one another.

Imagine if you will, the murderer who is found guilty by a court and it comes time for the judge to sentence him. Imagine if the judge said, "Look, young man, I know that you’re guilty of this terrible crime, but I have decided to forgive you today. You can go free."

It’s inconceivable, isn’t it? We as a community would be completely outraged if something like that transpired in a court of the land, because we demand that justice should be done; that the person should be punished for their crime.

But God’s call on our lives is to forgive one another. Ephesians 4:32:

… be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

The problem with unforgiveness, other than the fact that it offends God, is that it continues to hurt us. Let’s say that someone hurts you and you decide not to forgive them. What happens then, is that you keep living through the hurt over and over again. You keep planning on how to get revenge.

You see, when we fail to forgive, the hurt just keeps on hurting. It’s like giving that person who hurt us, rent-free space in our hearts and in our minds, so that they can keep causing us pain. And when you look at it that way, it just doesn’t make sense. Sure, our sense of justice always says, hang on, I deserve justice, justice has to be done.

But common sense, says, let it go. Forgive them, without any expectation that the person who hurt you will apologise, or mend their ways or ask for your forgiveness. Because when we let it go, we end up free from the hurt. When we forgive and choose to forget, the pain starts to dissipate.

You’ve seen this and you’ve probably even done it yourself – when you fail to forgive someone and you just keep on throwing it back in their face over and over again. Is that good for you? Is that good for them? Does it change them in any way? Is it good for your relationship with that person or with God?

Marlene Dietrich once said this: Once a woman has forgiven her man, she should not reheat his sins for breakfast. It’s not bad is it? And how true. And it’s just not about women forgiving men; it’s about men forgiving women and other men.

Listen, this conflict between justice and forgiveness is nothing new. God is the God of justice, absolute justice. Nothing sways Him; He is completely impartial. And yet He is also the God of love, in fact the Bible tells us that God is love.

So what does this God of justice do with His love? What does this God of justice do when He comes across you and me who’ve sinned against Him, who’ve offended Him, and we deserve punishment?

Come on, the Bible says we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. It’s true about me, it’s true about you we just know it. We’ve all turned our backs on Him in thought, word and deed at some point in our lives and probably the last time is not that long ago.

We deserve His wrath and His punishment; and yet He loves us so much. How does He satisfy His absolute sense of justice and love when it comes to you and me? John 3:16, 17:

God so loved the world, God so loved you, that he gave his only begotten Son, so that when you believe in him you won’t perish but you’ll have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world or to condemn you or me, but in order that the world might be saved, in order that you would be saved.

Forgiveness is the supreme act of love. It always, always costs us something, but it’s always, always worth it in the end. Because it sets us free from the hurt, and free to get on with our lives.

TAKING GOD AT HIS WORD

I want to share a story with you today. It’s something that really opened my eyes to the power of God’s Word and how easy it is to dismiss that power that God means to give to you and to me.

There I was, I’d just become a member of a new church and after a few months, we joined one of the small home groups of the church. Each week, on a Wednesday night, we’d head over to the leader’s place, about eight or ten of us, and we’d have a time of fellowship, a time of studying God’s Word, and a time of talking about what we’d learned.

It was a great way to get connected with people, and to learn a bit more about what God had to say to us.

It’s week two or perhaps week three of attending this small home group and we’re studying Philippians chapter 4, in particular this verse, verses 4 to 6, Paul writes:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone for the Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

Now, we read this passage and then a discussion ensues about worry. We all have some worry in our lives, and what God is saying here through the Apostle Paul is that we should never worry about anything.

Well, the discussion went back and forth and to and fro. People shared some of their worries in their lives and some stories of what was going on. All good, all understandable. And then, in summing up the discussion as we came to the end of it, the home group leader said something along these lines:

Well, yes, that was a good discussion. But I guess we all have worries in our lives and we just need to learn to live with them.

He was about to move on, and at this point, I just couldn’t help myself. Out of my mouth came a rather loud, a rather emphatic and insistent:

NO!!

Well at that point, I’m pretty sure my wife Jacqui was hoping the floor would open up and swallow us both up. She was embarrassed. There was dead silence in the room and everyone was starting at me, waiting, I guess, for an explanation of my outburst. So this is what I said, something along these lines:

Guys, what this passage actually says to us is quite simply this: we’re not meant to worry about anything! Nothing!! And in fact, if instead of worrying, we take the time that we would have spent worrying and we spend that time instead in praying, with thankfulness in our hearts and letting God know what’s going on – then what God is promising us here (if we’ll actually do that) is that instead of worry in our hearts, it’ll be replaced with a peace that is completely beyond our understanding, as God actually guards our hearts and our minds through Christ. Do you believe that’s true for you or not? Do you believe that that is going to work if you do it or not? Do you believe through this scripture that God is speaking to you or not?

See here were these Bible-believing, Jesus-loving, faithful, kind, gentle Christian people, reading God’s Word – what God is saying to us today, and yet, they couldn’t accept this truth into their hearts for them. They weren’t prepared to take God at His Word. They weren’t even prepared to give it a go, vaguely kind of expecting it to work.

Now, that might seem a little bit harsh. Maybe it was more that no one had ever taught them to take God at His Word. Maybe no one had ever taught them to expect God to make a powerful difference in their lives through what He says in His Word.

And you see this isn’t unique, this is not an isolated case. The Kingdom of God is full of people who don’t take God at His Word, because they’re not expecting God to do mighty things in their lives.

Now, of course, it’s easy to take a Scripture out of context and make a doctrine out of it. That’s why there are so many people preaching the God-will-make-you-rich-and-comfortable kind of Gospel. That’s not, I hope you realise, what I am talking about because it’s a distortion of the truth.

But what I am talking about is taking the powerful, often counter–intuitive things that God says in His Word and believing them with our lives. And by that I mean, acting on them. Stepping out, prepared to fall flat on your face if God isn’t true to His Word, but stepping out anyway, expecting God to honour what He says.

I mean, I’m talking about this in real practical areas of need and in living out your faith through your life. Have you ever worried about your finances, let’s say? Well, listen to what Jesus says on that front. Matthew 6:25-33; He says:

Look, I’m telling you, do not worry about your life or what you’re going to eat or what you’re going to drink, or about your body or what you are going to wear. Isn’t your life more than food, and your body more than clothing? … For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows all the things that you need. So strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you as well, or added to you.

Living out your faith means stepping out on the basis that God means what He says, and He’ll do what He says, and that He’ll show up when He says He’ll show up.

Living out your faith means being prepared to abandon the so-called wisdom of this world, and instead trust in God’s wisdom, in God’s truth, in God’s promises even when, especially when, there is no concrete evidence to support making that decision … other than the Word of God.

So many Christians want to live a safe and cautious life. But that’s never the life that Jesus called us to live. He called us to live a dangerous life; a risky life; a life where we take Him at His Word as being the God who is faithful beyond measure and beyond anything that we can possibly comprehend.

The only time we really experience the faithfulness of God in a powerful way, is when we’re between a rock and a hard place, and instead of playing things safe, or instead of going the world’s way, we decide to take God at His Word. We decide to step out and experience for ourselves the incredible faithfulness of God.

DON’T EXPECT THE WORLD

I don’t know about you, but I’m one of these people that loves to live life to the full. I want each and every day to be something special; and most mornings when I wake up, I have this sense of opportunity and anticipation of what the day is going to bring.

Not every morning of course. Some mornings I’m tired, especially if I’ve been travelling, and speaking til late in the evening and then I have to stump up the next day and do it all again. Some mornings it’s hard to face the next day, isn’t it?

But by and large, to me, each new day is a new opportunity. That’s exactly what the Bible teaches us. Psalm 118:24 says this:

This is the day the Lord has made, let’s rejoice in it and be glad in it.

That doesn’t mean that everything is always going to be going swimmingly well in our lives. It just means that whatever is going on, whatever our circumstances are, there’s something to look forward to today, this very day, because it is the day that the Lord has made and He has a plan for your life today.

I can say that, in fact, I know that, because again, that’s what the Bible tells us and the Bible is, after all, God’s very Word, His living Word to you and me. The Bible is God speaking directly and unequivocally to you and me today.

This is what the Lord has to say about your day today. Psalm 139:16, 17:

In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them.

So, the Lord your God knows what your today holds. He planned it an eternity ago. And it’s a good plan. It’s a plan made by this God who loves you beyond measure. But the problem is that God’s plans and our expectations are often misaligned, they just don’t match up.

So, let me ask you, what are your expectations of today and tomorrow? What are you hoping that they’ll hold? What do you want them to bring to your life?

Well, often our expectations revolve around what we think is going to be good for us. In fact "often" is something of an understatement, isn’t it? We always expect and anticipate that things should be fantastic … for me, right?

You see, our expectation generally revolves around success. Success in relationships, success at work, success in our finances and in our health and in pretty much every sphere of our lives.

We want to be healthy, wealthy and wise. Just perfect! We’d like everybody to love us and to always agree with us. We’d like lots of money in the bank so that we don’t have any financial worries. We want our marriages and our families to be perfect.

And, oh, by the way, a nice, sunny, warm day would be just perfect to top it all off Lord. Yep, that’s what I’d like today to be. And tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day and pretty much, Lord, for the rest of my life. Can you make it like that?

And Lord, I’d like to live to a ripe old age as well. Forever would be good. Nice and comfortable and safe and happy and content without any stresses or strains or arguments or ill-health to ruin my day.

That’s pretty much it isn’t it? That’s what we, by and large, expect out of life. In fact, our hopes and expectations revolve around the things of this world. We’re expecting the world of God.

But have a listen to what Jesus says about you and me, in His final prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, just before He goes off and gets Himself crucified for you and for me. John 17:11, 15-17:

And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world (that’s us), they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as you and I are one … I am not asking that you should take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is the truth. As you have sent me into this world, so I have sent them into the world.

So according to Jesus, we don’t belong to the world and the world doesn’t belong to us. His prayer to His father for you and me, just before He gets crucified for us, is that God should protect us and keep us safe in the truth. Protect us from what?

Protect us from the enemy, protect us from the world, because when we believe in Jesus, believe you me, the world isn’t going to like that. It’ll try to seduce you, discredit you, and stomp on you, aided and abetted by Satan and his army of demons.

Is that what you’re expecting, today, tomorrow, the next day and for the rest of your life? Because that’s exactly what Jesus promises will happen. John 16:33:

I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will face tribulation. But take courage; be of good cheer; for I have overcome the world.

What we should be expecting, what we should be hoping for is that the Father will answer Jesus’ prayer for us in our lives. What we should be hoping for is that the victory that Jesus won for us will bring courage to our hearts. And what we should be hoping for, and looking forward to and expecting is the prize that comes at the end of all of this. Philippians 1:22, 23 Paul says:

For me, living is Christ but dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labour for me; but I do not know which one I prefer. You see, I am really hard pressed between the two: my real desire is to depart and to be with Jesus, because that is much better; but to remain here in the flesh is probably more necessary for you.

Paul is torn! What are you hoping for? The world? Or are you hoping for Christ? Are you expecting the world of God, and all the baubles and trinkets that it offers but will one day perish? Or are you hoping in this certainty of life everlasting with Jesus, forever and ever and ever, amen?

Which one? God’s plans are God’s plans. He is not going to change them for you and for me. So we can either hope for the world and struggle for the rest of our lives against God, or hope in Him and live out His plans. The question is… which one is it going to be?

What is it that makes us expect life to give us this fairy-floss dream that we know is completely and utterly unrealistic and then we get all disappointed when it doesn’t work out that way. Which it never was to start with, right?

God’s promise is not that He’s going to take away all the pain and suffering. In fact, when you listen to Jesus, it’s exactly the opposite. His promise though is, that in the midst of the pain, in the midst of the suffering, in the midst of the loss and the tears, we will know His unspeakable joy; His peace which passes all understanding, the certain, rock solid hope of an eternity with Jesus.

His promise is that with our eyes firmly set on the Author and the Perfector of our faith, we will be transformed from glory to glory into His image. The power of sin being washed away and the freedom that only comes from Christ, becoming the most abundant reality in our lives.

Come on! Is that a stunning life or what? But we can’t grab hold of that stunning life, we can’t live that life, when we’re always chasing after the trinkets that that the world dangles under our noses.

Perception is reality, and for many a Christ-follower, their wrong expectations are what is robbing them of this absolutely stunning life that God wants them to live.

Stunning on the one hand and sacrifice and suffering on the other, don’t seem to go together do they? They seem to diametrically opposed. Until you look at the Cross of Christ … the most stunning life and sacrifice of all time. That’s the life that He has for you. A stunning life.

So, will you take up your Cross and follow Him? Will you?

I believe – in fact I know – that God has a stunning life planned for you. Problem is that you and I have this amazing ability to work against Him and when we do that, we miss out. So, I’d love to share some practical, rubber-hits-the-road tips with you, for cooperating with God’s plans for your life.

START LIVING YOUR GIG

When I was young, finishing high school and making my career choices, I came very, very close to making a couple of major mistakes. I was blessed to be fairly academically inclined, so I basically had my choice of whatever university course my heart desired.

There were three on my shortlist, medicine, law and an information technology degree. Now back in those days, medicine was by far the favoured career. It was seen as the pinnacle of achievement and certainly, my dad wanted me to study medicine.

Law was right up there as well. Both of those professions appeared pretty much to guarantee a big income.

This whole IT thing though was pretty new. The question was: which one to choose? As things turned out, I’d been accepted to train as an Army Officer, undertaking a four-year IT degree along the way, and I guess it was that sense of excitement of a military career which, as a young man, to be honest with you, swung me to that decision.

As I look back on that choice, I thank God that I didn’t choose medicine or law. I can’t stand the sight of blood pretty much, which is not exactly the sort of prerequisite you want to have a career as a doctor. And the law, as I discovered later, is all about detail. Lots and lots and lots of detail, and whilst I can handle detail from time to time, it’s just not my first love. I would have ended up drowning in all the detail.

I think back to that pivotal career decision that I made way back when I was just seventeen and a half years old, with not a lot of life experience to draw on exactly, and I shudder at how easily I could have chosen something that I just wasn’t suited to.

I literally could have found myself living my life as a square peg in a round hole, and that I imagine, would be an incredibly uncomfortable position to find myself in.

There’s a basic rule or life principle if you will, that goes something like this: square pegs belong in square holes, and round pegs, well … they belong in round holes. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out now do you? And yet, as I said at the beginning of the program, so many people are living life as a square peg in a round hole.

A large survey conducted in the US not so long ago revealed that only 19% of workers were satisfied with their jobs; which means that 81% weren’t satisfied with their job. Of those, 16% were somewhat dissatisfied, and the rest were really unhappy. That’s pretty much Pareto’s 80/20 law right there, with the vast majority, the 80%, going to work unhappy.

Another global survey found that over half, 56% of people, actually were looking to find a new job.

Now, there can be a lot of reasons for those terrible statistics. Pay and conditions, poor management, they are just two. But if I were a betting man (which I am not), I would put money on the table that one of the major reasons is that people are doing jobs that they’re just not suited to do.

You yourself know that there are some things in life that give you enormous satisfaction, and other things that leave you completely drained. Now that I’m getting older, I watch people who are grandparents. We have one couple who lives a few doors away on the same floor in our apartment block, who look after a different set of their grandchildren almost every day of the week, while their parents go to work.

Other grandparents, they just can’t stand the thought of having to look after children, because it’s just not what they enjoy doing. They’ve brought up their own kids, and now they want a break from all that.

And so wherever there is this mismatch between the requirements of a role and the natural motivations and talents and abilities of the individual – right there you have a square peg, in a round hole. And it’s generally not the hole that feels the pressure. The role is what the role is. The requirements of the position don’t change. It’s the individual who has to squeeze themselves into a role that they’re just not suited to.

When I was at Bible College many years ago, the Principal of the College, Dr Barry Chant, made us memorise one particular Bible verse. In fact, he used to joke, although I’m not sure it was so much of a joke, that unless we were able to recite this one verse, we simply wouldn’t graduate from the College.

At the time, I thought it was rather an odd choice of Bible verses. Why this one from among the 31,102 verses in the Bible? Well, here it is. Ephesians 2:10:

For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works which God prepared beforehand for us to walk into.

The older and hopefully the wiser I’ve become since those days, the more I’ve discovered the wisdom of Barry’s insistence that we memorise this one verse. Because what it says, is that God made us; God handcrafted us; we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus and He made us, you and me, with a purpose in mind.

He in fact made us in order to do the good works that He prepared beforehand for us to do, literally for us to walk into. So picture your life – this journey over hill and dale. Just as you turn round the next corner, or come over the next rise, waiting for you right there is one of the good works that God made you to do, one of the ones that He prepared before time even began for you to make happen.

Now, do you imagine for one moment that God made a mistake? That He made you to do things that you weren’t good at doing? Or things that were impossible for you to do? Now way!! God knows exactly what He’s doing when He makes you. God knew, He handcrafted you to be a perfect fit to do what He made you to do. So why is it that we go and live a life we were never made to live?

You see it all over the place, you see people going and trying to do jobs that they are simply not good at doing. There are so many jobs that if I chose to try and do them, I would ultimately be a failure at, because I simply wasn’t made to do them.

Well sometimes its stubbornness, other times its ignorance, that’s why people do this. Or perhaps you’ve allowed circumstances to sweep you along in life, without ever taking a stand and saying to yourself: Hang on a minute; what I really want to do is … is this! My real dream in life is to go and be this and do that.

The most common question I am asked when I talk on this, which I do rather a lot these days, because like Barry Chant I’ve come to believe that being the me I was meant to be is absolutely critical in life … the most common question I’m asked is this: How do I know what it is that God made me to do?

Now that’s a fair question. Well, the answer is dead simple. Each one of us has something that gets us enthused in life, something that we’re passionate about. Something that we’re really good at, probably better at than anyone else that we know.

For me it’s doing what I’m doing right now. I love to tell stories. I get up mostly at three or four o’clock in the morning to prepare these radio messages. Why? Not because I have to, but because I love to! I love telling stories; I love seeing people’s lives transformed through those stories.

So let me ask you this: What are you passionate about? What do you absolutely love doing? What is it that you’re better at, than just about anybody else that you know? Maybe you love working with your hands and making things, or maybe you are great at looking after kids, or organising lots of detailed things, or … whatever it is that you are good at that you really enjoy doing, there is your pointer to what God made you to do.

No. It’s not always going to be easy, or convenient, or fun, or comfortable. Nothing worthwhile ever is. But there, right there, is the thing that God made you to do. Start walking in that direction and all of a sudden a whole bunch of new opportunities are going to open up.

Those opportunities are in fact the good works that God prepared beforehand for you to do. Get it?

PRAYER IS EVERYTHING

If you believe in Jesus, then you know that God is all-loving God and all-powerful. He is this God who can completely transform your life. If you don’t believe in God, then just humour me for a bit. Let’s assume that Jesus is who He said He is, that God is all-powerful and all-loving, the God who Jesus came to tell us about.

Then what follows from that is this: if God is all-loving and all-powerful, then surely He wants to make a powerful difference in your life and mine. And not only does He want to, He actually can.

Yet the lives of so many Christians simply don’t bear that out. There are so many people who love Jesus and want to follow Him with all their hearts, but for them, God doesn’t seem to be making any real difference at all, let alone a powerful difference. Why is that exactly?

In the first few months after giving my life to Christ at age thirty-six, I discovered something that greatly disturbed me. Not something that I uncovered only after years of study, but as a simple man with just a plain grasp of the obvious and a heart that was open to receive. It was something that rocked me to my core.

The discovery was this: that prayer that yields powerful results is normal in God’s sight. It sounds so simple and yet, the more I dwelt on that simple truth from God, the more it rocked me and it disturbed me.

Why? Because my prayer wasn’t yielding powerful results. I’d been through a cycle of delighting in prayer and then dreading it. In the first few months of giving my life over to Jesus, my prayer life was just awesome. I couldn’t wait to spend time with God.

It was a devastating time in my life, so much had fallen apart, that my times in prayer with God were the highlight, in fact the only light, of my life. But as can happen in any relationship, when the day-to-day post-courtship, post-honeymoon reality sets in, my communication with God had sunk to lows that I never expected.

I avoided Him. I prayed out of no more than a sense of duty. I would have been embarrassed in those days to tell anyone about my prayer life, if you could even have called it that. I was in every sense of the word, a pauper in prayer, absolutely bankrupt, so it seemed to me.

My prayer life was not what God set out in His Word as being the normal reality of the Christian life. If anything, it was the exact opposite. I felt so weak; I felt so inadequate; so sinful; so condemned. And over and over again I read about the powerful things that happened to people as they prayed.

In the Bible, the word pray (together with its derivatives: prayed, prayer, prays) appears around 350 times throughout the Bible. The very first appearance is in Genesis Chapter 20 which simply says:

… He will pray for you and you shall live. (Genesis 20:7)

So what happens in response to this prayer? What was the result of this prayer? Well, Genesis 20:17-18:

Then Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, and so also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. For the LORD had closed fast all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

Hey, it’s a pretty powerful outcome don’t you think, for the first recorded prayer to God in the Bible?

And the second story about prayer just a few chapters later, Genesis 24:12-21 (we don’t have time to read it all now) has a similarly powerful outcome.

So, what about the third story about prayer in the Bible? Well, let’s take a look; just one verse, Genesis 25:21:

Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived.

Now, call me crazy, call me whatever you like, but to me, there’s a definite pattern emerging here; a pattern that repeats itself over and over and over again right throughout the Bible. It is quite simply this pattern: prayer that yields powerful results is absolutely normal in God’s sight.

In fact, prayer that yields powerful results is the only sort of prayer that the Bible actually teaches us about. Sure, there are a couple of examples of ineffective prayer, but God hardly endorses those. In fact quite the opposite.

And the whole of what God has to say about prayer, from beginning to end, culminates in these few words from Jesus’ own lips. John 15:7, Jesus says to his disciples:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

Let me tell you something. I am not a natural pray–er. I want to race off and do things, not sit around and talk to God. I want to get up in the morning and answer my emails or start working on a radio program script or do something. But what I’ve discovered over these last twenty years or so in walking with Jesus, is this: the more I pray and the less I try to do things in my own strength, the more powerful things I see happening in my life.

You want to hear me say that one more time? The more I pray and the less I try to do things in my own strength, the more powerful things I see happening in my life. It’s that simple. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but to many of us, it is because we just don’t live our lives that way.

In fact, I became so passionate about this, that I wrote a book. It was the first book that I wrote many years ago now, called "Unlocking the Power of Prayer."

Now, what this doesn’t mean is this: God is not some lap dog of ours that performs tricks on demand. God isn’t some sugar-daddy who, upon request, will give us every comfort and desire that we ask for. "Oh God please make me rich" is not a prayer that gets answered all that often I’m telling you.

The key to what Jesus said is our relationship with Him. Listen to it again:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

In other words, if we’re close to Jesus, if we know what He wants and we listen to what He says, we’ll know what to ask for and how to ask. If His Word abides in us, we’ll be asking things in accordance with His will. And at that point let me tell you, the power of God starts to manifest itself in your life.

The sort of power that helps you love the unlovable and touch the untouchable and forgive the unforgivable. The sort of power that gives you patience when you don’t have any. The sort of power that helps you to hold your tongue when all you want to do is to rip somebody’s head off.

The sort of power to walk the difficult road with Jesus, carrying your own cross and sacrificing your own life. The sort of power you need to change the things you can’t change and to suffer through the things that you’re called to suffer through.

That’s the sort of power, my friend that changes our lives. That’s the sort of power that transforms us and restores us back into the original image in which God created us; His image.

Prayer changes everything. Prayer changes the most important possession that you have – your very life. Prayer changes your heart. When you do what Jesus said: pray for your enemy, Matthew 5:44, He doesn’t just change your enemy, He changes you.

Prayer isn’t some duty that we have to drag ourselves to. The more you pray, the more you want to pray, because you experience the joy of fellowshipping with God. You experience the peace that comes from resting in Him and waiting expectantly on Him. And you see things happen in your life and around you and through you, that you never thought were possible.

Listen to me, please listen. Prayer… changes… everything. The sooner you realise that, the sooner you start believing that, the sooner you start living that, then the sooner you’ll find yourself on that road to the stunning life that God has planned for you.

POWER + LOVE

As our time together draws to a close there’s one final thing that I want to share with you today. This God of ours, the same one who sent Jesus to die for you, is the God of the most amazing power. And like any loving dad, He wants to use all that He has to make a powerful difference in the lives of His children.

Have a listen to what the Apostle Paul writes to his friends in the church at Ephesus. Ephesians 1:17-20, he says:

I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance amongst the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.

God put this same power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all the rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.

So, what’s God got for us? According to Paul, certain hope, a glorious inheritance and the very same power for you, and for your life, that raised Jesus from the dead. That is simply stunning, right?

But the difference between what He has for you, and what the world has for you is that He knows how He made you. What your strengths are, the weaknesses and what suits you best. He knows what it is that will make you function and tick. He knows that it is only in a relationship with Him, only in His loving embrace, that you can ever find yourself and all that He has for you.

That sometimes means trials and wilderness experiences. That sometimes means great trials and long wilderness experiences. But when you and I trust ourselves in His loving hands, then it’s in that place that we discover and we experience the faithfulness of God.

It was when Jeremiah was going through a terrible trial, when all around him was destroyed, when all hope seemed to have been lost, that he wrote these words. Lamentations 3:22-24:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him’.

It’s only when we get out there, taking God at His Word, believing that God is who He says He is and that He will do what He says He will do, in His Word, that we can discover firsthand the truth of those words.

That’s the context in which you and I live our lives – our specific gig in life. That’s the context in which we come to the Lord our God in prayer. Right there even in the middle of the trials and the devastations if life, the certain hope that you have in Christ, the glorious inheritance that God has prepared for you, and the immeasurably great power – the very same power that raised Jesus from the dead – these are all there for you, right there, as you put your trust in Jesus they are available to you.

And so right now, let me close our time together today with a prayer for you:

Father I know that there are so many people who are listening to Your Word today who are struggling with stuff in their lives. Broken relationships and health worries and financial pressures and any number of things that cause us to take our eyes off You.

So we thank you Lord that we can come to You in prayer, knowing that You love us beyond measure, knowing that our hope in You is rock solid. Knowing that this inheritance that You’ve laid up for each one of us is imperishable and undefiled and unfading and knowing that Your power is available to us here and now.

Father, please comfort and encourage and strengthen all those today who are struggling with things in their lives. You know who they are, You know where they are and You know what’s causing them pain.

Bless them Lord. Empower them. Fill them with Your Holy Spirit and fill them above all with and a peace and joy that is simply beyond anything words can describe. We ask this in Jesus’ mighty name. Amen.

So many people who believe in Jesus find their lives are falling well short of what they expected. And all too often that’s because they’re so immersed in their culture that they believe more of what the world has to say, than what God has to say. It’s easy to do.

DON’T LET CIRCUMSTANCES CONTROL YOU

This is a tough one for me today because it doesn’t matter who we are: Our circumstances influence us to a greater or lesser degree. When you lose a loved one, of course, you’re going to mourn that loss; that’s natural. Of course, when you get a promotion or a pay-rise at work, you’re going to feel like celebrating. When someone treats you badly, you’ll be hurt. When someone treats you well, you’ll be delighted. None of us is divorced from the day-to-day realities of our lives, and sometimes our circumstances are for us; other times they’re against us. That’s just the way it goes.

Rudyard Kipling was a well-known writer and one of his most famous poems is called If. We don’t have time to read the whole poem, but it’s all about doing the right thing, irrespective of your circumstances. In fact, two lines of that poem are inscribed above the players’ entrance to the centre court at Wimbledon. Those two lines are these: If you can meet triumph and disaster And treat those two imposters just the same. Interesting isn’t it? Kipling calls both triumph and disaster what they are: Imposters. Now, Kipling wasn’t a Christian, but he was the son of two Methodist ministers, and no doubt his parents’ beliefs had a lot to do with the shaping of his philosophy and life.

Think about it. When you have a triumph, you win a race or you get a promotion or you succeed in some way, how long does that last? In Australia where I live, no sooner does a Prime Minister win an election than the press and the electorate are chasing after him or her with a pickaxe. It’s so easy to be seduced by success that pretty soon, you start believing your own propaganda, but success is by and large a fleeting thing. Even those who amass great fame and great fortune, they often find themselves struggling in their lives, so much so that many of them end up taking their own lives. What is success really, other than a narcotic – an imposter?

Jesus, when He was walking this planet, He drew massive crowds to His rallies – four, five thousand at a time, and in those days, that meant that whole towns and cities would all but close down, as people flocked to hear Him. They were amazed at His teaching. They marvelled at His miracles. Jesus had rock-star status across Israel, so was He intoxicated by the adulation of the crowds? John 2:23-25:

When he was in Jerusalem for the Passover festival many people believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing but Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to any of them because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about him for he himself knew what was in everyone

And just as well because just a few chapters later, in the same gospel (6:24, 66), we read this:

The Jews began to complain about Him because He said, ‘I am the Bread that came down from heaven’. They were saying, ‘Hang on. Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can He now say, “I have come down from heaven”?’ And because of this, many of His disciples turned back, and no longer went about with Him.”

And then of course, there’s John 19:16-18:

So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross by Himself, He went out to a place that is called the Place of the Skull (which in Hebrew is called Golgotha). There they crucified Him, and with Him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them.

There’s such a fine line, isn’t there, between success and failure? Yet we seem to become so swept up by success, when the adulation of the crowd is really just a fleeting aspiration, and so overcome by failure when failure is (after all) one of the most common occurrences in life.

We have this fairly floss-sugary expectation that our lives should always be fine, with never a cloud in the sky, let alone a howling storm. It’s a complete fantasy, yet we somehow cling to it like nothing else. We milk it when it’s going our way, and we beat ourselves up when it’s going the other way.

You have to ask yourself, "What’s the matter with us when we let our emotions swing up and down based on a fabrication like that, I mean really"? And if the truth be known, some of our great so-called failures can in point of fact be the greatest time of growth and learning and development in our character that we’ll ever experience. I mean, look at Jesus. When He was hanging there, nailed to that cross, crying out, "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani" (which means My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me), didn’t Jesus look like the biggest failure in all of history? Yet the moment of His death was in fact the greatest triumph of all time. Colossians 2:13-15:

When He forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands, He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in the end.

See, if we believe that God is, that He exists, that He rewards those who seek Him, if we make Christ the foundation stone of our lives, if we start making our love for God and for those around us our decision-making litmus test, then little by little, circumstances matter less and less.

When I told people that I was writing a book called "Your Road to a Stunning Life", many of them immediately leapt to the false conclusion that it was just another one of those prosperity doctrine, get-rich-quick-under-God books, but that’s not what God promises. What He promises us is this (John 16:33):

I have said this to you so that in Me you may have peace, for in this world, you are going to face persecution, but take courage, for I have overcome the world.

See, what Jesus promises us is that in the middle of the worst times in our lives, we can have peace. We can have courage. What Jesus promises us is His blessing, despite and irrespective of our circumstances, good or bad, and that’s the real thing. It’s not an imposter.

So what circumstances are you going through, the good or the bad or the ugly, that are causing you to believe in them rather than in God? If you’re riding the crest of a wave, have you started to forget the God who blessed you and put you there? Deuteronomy 8:12-16:

When you’ve eaten your fill, and you’ve built your houses and you live in them, and when you have herds and flocks that multiply, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, don’t exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; who led you through the terrible and great wilderness and arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. God made the water flow for you from the flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors didn’t know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good.

And if you’re down in a dark valley, what do you believe – the awfulness of your circumstances, or do you believe in the might and the power and the love and the presence of your God? Psalm 23:4-6:

For even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil and my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life.

The overriding reality of your life is not your current set of circumstances, good or bad, because they come and go. The overriding reality of your life is your God, who poured His love out for you, through Jesus Christ His Son. So which one of those do you choose to believe in: Your circumstances or your God? Because your choice is going to make a huge difference to the life that you end up living.

BE DELIGHTED WITH WHO YOU ARE

Yeah, so how do you react to seeing yourself or hearing yourself? I used to hate seeing myself in a photo. Now part of that was the fact that I was carrying so much extra weight. That bit’s changed over the last few years as I’ve slimmed down by rather a lot, but isn’t it funny how we can cringe when we see what we look like or hear how we speak?

I remember when I first started this whole radio gig, way back I think it was in 1998, so it’s been quite a few years. I’d go into the recording studio feeling quite uncertain about myself. Max (my producer back then, who still incidentally is my producer today), one of the most preached-at people on the planet (poor fellow), he’d record what I said and then edit out the stumbles, and turn it into a radio-program.

I distinctly remember the first time I listened to one of them. I was horrified. "Is that what I sound like? You’re kidding me". See, to me, my voice and how I spoke the words, it didn’t seem normal (the way other people speak). When I finally heard myself played back, I thought I sounded … well … weird, odd. Surely people wouldn’t want to listen to this stuff.

Now of course, we do all sound different; we all look different; we’re all distinctly different from one another, but layered over the top of that when you think about it is this sense of inadequacy, through which we judge ourselves. Haven’t you ever thought about how funny that is, that we can see ourselves in the mirror bleary-eyed every morning, and yet when we see ourselves in a photo, we cringe? Or the fact that when we’ve been talking all our lives, hearing our own words as we speak, but then you might hear a recording of yourself and you’re horrified by what you hear.

This phenomenon that ninety-nine percent of us are all too familiar with speaks about a sense of inadequacy, a sense of poor self-esteem. It’s fed a lot by the fact that we don’t match up with the images of beauty that we see in the magazines and on television. I frankly am never likely to have one of those rippling muscular bodies like the guys plastered across the front of the men’s health and men’s fitness magazines, and for you women, that sense of inadequacy can be even worse. Society tells you what you have to look like: Something that’s pretty much impossible to achieve, and in fact, as I’ve said a few times before on this program, it’s this gap between those ideal images of success and beauty on the one hand, and who we perceive ourselves to be on the other, that advertisers exploit ruthlessly to drive sales for their products.

Next time you watch an ad on television, watch it really carefully. Critically. There’s an implicit brand-promise on the ad. Buy this product or service, and you can look like this or have this or be this, or have other people think of you like this. And then, when that doesn’t work, having spent your money, they dangle the next carrot under your nose. Is it any wonder that so many people just don’t like themselves that so many people are so unhappy with who they are and what they have and where their life’s headed?

Now just stop and think about this for a moment. When you look at you, how happy are you with you? Are you falling into this trap of comparing yourself with those false, unattainable images of success, trying to achieve them but knowing that you never will? Come on. On a scale of zero to ten, how happy are you with you?

How comfortable are you in your skin? Now I know that none of us is perfect and of course, we need to think realistically and soberly about our flaws and our weaknesses. We should never stop growing and maturing and we should always be ready to make the changes we need to make, but that’s entirely different to having this nagging sense of inadequacy that so many people, so many people, live with day after day.

We’re chatting at the moment on the program about living a stunning life. What sort of a life are you going to be living if you’re never happy with who you are? The Bible, God’s very Word to you and me, tells us this about ourselves. Psalm 139:13-18:

For it was You, God, who formed my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are Your works; that I know very well. My frame wasn’t hidden from You when I was being made in secret, intricately woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance; in Your book were written all the days that were formed for me when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are Your thoughts, o God; how vast is the sum of them. I can’t count them; they are more than the sand. I come to the end, and I am still with You.

You know, the Psalmist who wrote that, he saying to God: "I’m completely amazed, totally gobsmacked at who I am, at who You’ve made me to be. I just can’t get my mind round it, Lord."

What a different view that is to the one that’s reflected back from those distorted mirrors that the advertising industry holds up before us. God made you. He didn’t make a mistake. He wasn’t churning out sloppy work that day. The same hands that flung stars into space, the same hands that worked the timbers in that carpenter’s shop in Nazareth, the same hands that were nailed to the cross for you, were the hands that laid down every strand of your DNA: Every gene, every chromosome that defines who you are is the sovereign choice of the living God who sent His Son to die for you, and you … You are utterly amazing.

You are who God made you to be, and you have a choice here. You can either believe what the world’s telling you about you, or you can start believing what God’s telling you about you. Which one of those do you think’s the more reliable? Which one do you think is telling the truth? Which one is going to set your feet on the road to living the stunning life that God planned for you to live, do you think exactly?

I remember one of my lecturers at Bible-college, Doctor Barry Chan, talking about this to me years ago and he implored us to ditch our self-image and replace it with a faith-image. Well, such great advice when you think about it, and what happens when we start doing that is that little by little, we’re set free from this burden and sense of inadequacy, and it’s replaced with a quiet confidence in who we are and who we aren’t, and it’s that second part that’s just as important.

You know how it feels when you compare yourself with someone else? You’re not as good-looking; you’re not as smart; you’re not as articulate; you’re not as wealthy or whatever it is, but then, you were never meant to be anything like that other person. God made you to be you. I used to feel so inadequate because of all the things I wasn’t good at, until I started to wrap my mind around who God made me to be, until I let the Word of God (and let me tell you, Psalm 139 is still one of my favourite passages) do its mighty work in me.

I realised just how much I’d changed when I started shooting TV-programs, and I saw myself for the first time on television. When the producer played the first program back, I was steeling myself for that awkward feeling of seeing myself on the TV, but it didn’t come! I really liked what I saw: Yeah, ok, a tweak here; an improvement there, but I realised in that moment how wonderful it is for me to accept me just as God accepts me: For me to see myself through God’s eyes, rather than through this nonsensical distorted false view that the world wants to reflect back at me. It totally transforms your life. It sets you free to be who God made you to be.

Listen to me. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are God’s unique creation. He loves you so much that He’s prepared to have His Son die to save you, so that you can spend eternity with Him. Wrap your heart around that, and you are on the road to a stunning life, let me tell you.

FAITH + LIFE = LIFE

You see, all He asks us to do is simply to believe: To believe in Him; to believe that He is; to believe that He rewards those who diligently seek Him out. So can I ask you this: Do you believe? And before you answer that question, let me say that I’m not asking you this as a theory-question. I don’t want to know whether or not you give intellectual assent to the existence of some supreme being. No, that’s not what I’m asking you at all.

Churches are full of pew-warming Christians that benignly believe in the existence of a God. It turns out that the devil is entirely happy for them to take up a place there in that nice, warm church that’ll keep someone else out in the cold, because he knows that when it comes to the things that really matter, their lives won’t count for anything. The devil knows that the person who ticks the box marked: "Yeah, I believe that there’s a God’ will never do anything of eternal significance in someone else’s life, nor are they themselves likely to spend eternity with Christ, because faith without works is dead" (James 2:17-26), and Jesus said:

Not everyone who says to Me ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in heaven. (Matthew 7:21)

So that’s not what I’m asking. What I am asking you, is do you believe in God with your very life, with everything you are, with everything you have, with every hope and with every dream? Are you seeking Him out? Are you seeking to approach Him, to be with Him, to know Him? Do you long for Him with all your heart? Well, do you? Because when you seek Him with all your heart, you will find Him, and when you do, you will discover that He is the God who accepts you and approves of you and rewards you, and sets you free from death, and gives you the most amazing eternal inheritance. That’s a complete game-changer. That’s why believing in Jesus with your life is so important in living an utterly stunning life.

What I mean to say is, your faith in Jesus: Is it the sort of faith that causes you to arrange every aspect of your life around Him as your foundation stone, or is it more the wishy-washy insurance policy kind of faith that believes in God … well … you know … just in case?

Perhaps you’re not quite sure. Perhaps you’re wondering: ‘How can I tell the difference’? That’s not unreasonable. Well, here’s how to tell the difference. When you make a big decision, is your primary concern whether God wants you to decide this way or that, or are you more concerned about what’s in it for you?

When you hear one of the tough sayings of Jesus – things like: ‘Love your enemy’ or ‘Anyone who’s angry with a brother or sister is subject to judgment’ or ‘If somebody strikes you, then turn the other cheek’ or maybe ‘If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away’, when you hear those sorts of things coming out of the very mouth of the Son of God, does your heart struggle to figure out: ‘How am I going to live that out’, or do you dismiss them as being for somebody else?

This, people, is where the rubber hits the road. It’s in the decisions, the life-decisions; in each relationship-decision; each work-decision; each financial decision, big or small, that we either set our lives out around the Cornerstone of Christ, or we choose to go our own way.

Is deciding in favour of Jesus, is going His way always easy? No, not at all. In fact, Jesus promises that it would be anything but. It oftentimes requires sacrifice and suffering, but going our own way, rejecting the Cornerstone, setting our lives out and building them according to our own plan, is the road to destruction. Yeah, it’d be as easy at the time, but the downhill run always seems easy.

The reason that so many people aren’t living the stunning life that God has planned for them is that they believe in Jesus with their heads; maybe even with their hearts, but not with their very life. How about you?

So many people who believe in Jesus are wondering – why isn’t my life all that I expected? Why isn’t my life everything that the Bible promises that it should be? Well, it turns out that those people, probably aren’t living the important stuff.