A Different Perspective Official Podcast

• Experiencing God's Deliverance // Taste and See That He Is Good, Part 5

  We all end up in tight spots at sometimes. Big or small. Just annoying – or tragic. And if God's God – well shouldn't He show up on those days? If He loves us – wouldn't He help? Every now and then, we find ourselves in a tight spot. Sometimes we've behaved our way into a problem; maybe a wrong diet or no exercise and we get diabetes. Or a neglected relationship and we end up with tension and strife. Or just a day-to-day thing, a difficult "what do I do?" kind of situation. Lots of people have lots of different spiritual beliefs and practices, meditation, yoga, crystals but when it's crunch time, what difference can they really make? When we need help surely help comes in the form of someone not something. When you or I are in a tight spot, can we have the confidence that someone will deliver us out of it? This week on "A Different Perspective", we're looking at the whole question of experiencing God as King David wrote back in Psalm 34, three thousand years ago, "We need to taste and see for ourselves that the Lord is good." And over this last few days we've been looking at the fact we need to come to God just as we are, trusting that all the rotten stuff in our lives – the stuff that God calls sin, is dealt with because Jesus paid for it on the cross. And then we need a desire, a God-given desire, to have a relationship with Him and then enjoy walking in God's plan for our lives. But as we do that, as we walk in God's plan for our lives, and if that sounds a bit strange, I would really encourage you … if you are seeking an authentic spiritual experience; if you've been looking around, shopping around in the spiritual market place; if we want real, authentic, loving, powerful spiritual experience that makes a difference – try Jesus. But as we walk in God's plan every now and then, we hit a crunch time. We hit a time where things are difficult … there's a pressure. There's something that we don't seem to be able to get through. There's something that scares us. There's something that unsettles us. Maybe it's sickness, maybe it's physical, maybe it's spiritual, maybe it's financial. Well, from where I sit; if God promises that He will be my God, if He loves me so much that He sent Jesus, His Son, to die for me; then the real proof of the authenticity is in those crunch moments. Where's God? If God says to me through the Son, "Taste and see that the Lord is good", then when I'm at that pressure point, where pressure is coming in from all sides, surely God should be in that space too. Now, I'm not talking about having a perfect life, I'm not talking about God taking all those pressures and problems away. I'm not talking about some sugar-coated unreality. When you're a kid, a perfect parent is someone that gives you lollies whenever you want them and we all know, as a parent, that's not the right thing to do. So it's not some unreality that we're talking about, it's God being in the middle of that reality with us. There's a great story in the Old Testament, in the Bible about David and Goliath. Most of us will know that story. The army of Israel and the army of the Philistines were having a stand-off. And the Philistines had challenged a soldier from the Israelite army to come to dual with their soldier and their soldier was Goliath. He was a big, big man and it turns out there was not a single soldier among the Israelite army that was prepared to go and fight this man. And then this young David, young kid, comes along to the battle scene – not because he was a soldier, not because he's been invited but because he was bringing food to his brothers who are soldiers. He's the runt of the litter and his job is just to be a courier. And he goes and sees what's going on. And he sees this Philistine over there and he says, "Hang on a minute, how is it that no one is going to fight Goliath? I'll go and fight Goliath." So he went to see the King, Saul and they all laughed at him. But this is what David said to them: I've been a shepherd tending sheep for my Father, whenever a lion or a bear came and took a lamb from the flock, I'd go after it, knock it down and rescue the lamb. If it turned on me, I'd grab it by the throat and wring its neck and kill it. Lion or bear it made no difference, I killed it and I'll do the same with this Philistine who's taunting the troops of the living God. God who delivered me from the teeth of a lion and the claws of a bear will deliver me from this Philistine. (1 Samuel 34-37) And Saul was amazed and said, "Well go. God help you." Now, just consider this David for a minute. The youngest of all these sons. His dad was Jessie and the prophet Samuel had come to see Jessie because he felt that God had a new king for Israel amongst all of these sons. And so Jessie, dad, lined up all his sons in front of the prophet Samuel except one, little old David because little ol' Dave was out tending the sheep and surely he wouldn't be a king. And Samuel looked at one after the other and said, "I don't know, it's someone else." And ultimately he chose David. What would that do to your self-esteem if you're David? Out in the back blocks, lonely, no-one to see you, just David and God tending some useless sheep. Every now and then a lion comes and a bear comes and somehow you get the courage and God gets you through that. This David spent time alone experiencing God on those lonely nights, on those nights when he felt insignificant and unrewarded, and the beautiful mornings and the sunrises and those dangerous times. And I'm sure he used to sit there with his slingshot practicing over and over and over again, hundreds and thousands of times being accurate with that sling shot. And so when he goes out now and he fights Goliath who, let's remember had a full set of body armour on and only had one small part of his forehead exposed, and the whole army of Israel didn't have the guts to get out there and do this. This young, small, insignificant David, who in God's presence had learned to fight lions and bears. And use his sling shot and experienced God's faithfulness in the tight spots, it's this young David who'd experienced God that went out and did the job. You get it? When we experience God's faithfulness through the tough times. And we see that God is good in the tough times, our faith and our belief and our trust in Him grows and so often we're hidden, the tough times aren't public, no-one else sees except God and us and it's lonely. As I look back, I could quickly rattle off several dozen of those times in my short ten-year walk with the Lord. And each one God was there and was a part of it. And it was like each one built on the last one and out faith and our confidence in God grows. Just recently I was sitting with a CEO of a large Christian radio network of 350 stations in the USA and as I was sitting talking to this lovely man, I felt like David. I thought 'what am I doing here? Who am I to be sitting down with this man and with these people?' What we do, is we look around at all these other people, all the people that were in that army that had ranks and they were officers. David wasn't even a private. He was bringing food to his brothers and we look at these people and we say, "Gee, I'm not as clever as they are or as big or important. I'm just a nobody; I'm just some young stupid kid out there in the back blocks of nowhere minding a bunch of useless sheep." David became the greatest king that Israel ever had because David learned through experience – through fighting lions, through fighting bears, through being alone and trusting in God. That right when he needs God, God is in that place with him. And it's when we're alone and it's when we're going through those tough and difficult times that we experience God's faithfulness. And we get to look back afterwards and see how God worked it out and see how He was there in all of that. When we've done that, we can look back and we can say with everything that we are, "You know something … I've tasted it for myself and I know that God is good."

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• Walking in God's Plan // Taste and See That He Is Good, Part 4

  If any sense of spirituality that we have in our lives is going to be any good – well it has to be relevant. Useful. In day to day life. Jesus can't be just a stained-glass window.  He has to be a part of life…. I don't know about your life but mine's pretty hectic: ups and downs, joys, disappointments, stresses, and strains. In a way, all our lives are different. But in another sense, well, they're pretty much the same. And if we're going to consider any form of spiritual belief or experience, well, that spirituality has to be relevant, useful, (I mean), it has to help along the way. Otherwise, it's – it's just a candle or a stained glass window or a crystal, or whatever it is – but in the cut and thrust of daily life, pretty useless. So when it comes to experiencing a relationship with God, coming to believe that this Jesus is who He said He is, does it help? I mean does that faith make a difference here and now? It turns out that there are kind of two ways of knowing something: knowledge, head knowledge, you know, a bunch of facts or precepts that we believe in; And experience, actually living that out day by day and experiencing it. Three thousand years ago King David of Israel wrote this, He said: Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 3:48) As I've said over the last few days, it's a bit like knowing that we should eat more fruit because it's good for us versus really enjoying the taste and the experience of eating that rock melon or watermelon or orange or mandarin. And sometimes we can have this kind of stained glass window churchy image of Jesus that can be the set of facts that we have in our head. And yet, we therefore can't experience in our lives, really know and taste and see that God is good. It was a real surprise to me couple of decades ago when I gave my life over to Jesus, when I said, "Yes, I want to follow this God, I believe that Jesus came for me." It was an incredible surprise how beautifully and how sweetly and how intimately that relationship began to develop. Over the last few days, we've been looking at the whole subject of having that experience and that relationship. And we talked about the need for there to be a desire in our hearts that I believe is a God-given desire. And then to come to God, just as we are and have that relationship with God. But today, I'd like to ask the question, but what about that relationship in the heat of battle? If we should taste and see that the Lord is good, if we should experience the goodness of God, well, shouldn't that happen in life? I mean, day-to-day in the ups and downs? That whole quote from King David, "Taste and see that the Lord is good," comes from Psalm 34, where David had just been through a really tough spot. I'm going to read all of what he said because I think the context is really important. He said this: I live and breathe God. If things aren't going well, hear this and be glad. God met me more than half way. He freed me from all my fears. Look at Him, give him your warmest smile. Never hide your feelings from Him. When I was desperate, I called out to God, "'God get me out of this tight spot." His angels set up a circle of protection around us when we pray. "God, get me out of this tight spot" (Psalm 34:4-7) See, His angels set up a circle of protection around us when we pray. Open your mouth, taste that God is good because those who do, those who run to Him, they are blessed. Isn't that great? I mean David was in a tough spot. And out of his experience, out of that experience of God's goodness and faithfulness, in that tough spot, he was able to write something as beautiful as that. Well, that was David then but what about you and me, here and now? Well, I know that twenty years ago I was in a tight spot. It was the toughest time of my life. Everything came crashing down - finances, relationships, everything. It was just awful. And it was in that space, in that dark, scary space that I came to faith. You may have heard me tell the story before about a car boot sale (that we had at the church) that I had just started going to. Well, you'll have to bear with me. The car boot sale. It was just a fascinating time for me because I've always been very wealthy back then, and at this time in my life I was flat broke. I mean I didn't have enough money to buy groceries for the next week because of the things that had been going on in my life. I had just recently come to faith in Jesus Christ and I'd just recently joined this little church in a little suburb called Oyster Bay in Sydney and we had a car boot sale. And so everyone went up there and I had a whole bunch of things that I didn't need anymore and opened my car boot, a chess set and some scuba diving equipment, as I recall. I sold everything I had by 11 o'clock in the morning. And the other people around haven't sold a single thing. And they all went, "Hang on, how come Berni sold all his stuff and we didn't sell anything?" Well, they didn't know (what I knew), I was on tight spot. God knew it. God knew I didn't have enough money for the next week for groceries and I needed that money. But it doesn't have to be a disaster. I had a difficult situation with a person just recently, someone who really matters to me. And it was an angry situation and this man was just, you know from where I sat, being difficult. And I stopped and I just turned to God (just for a fleeting second), in the middle of all of that and I was flooded with a joy and a peace; and the anger in my heart, it disappeared like that. The harsh words that I wanted to say, they stopped like that. And I was firm, but there was a wisdom, there was a measured, loving approach that I have to tell you simply couldn't come from me. This is real stuff. This is real day-to-day stuff. Just this morning I was praying and God gave me just a glimpse of something that He's planning for me in the future. Now, I get these sometimes. It's just a gift that God's given me where I can see into the future, something through the Holy Spirit. It's not a "ooh, hey" thing, it's just a natural thing that happens. And it's happened so often over the last couple of decades, that when God speaks to me in that way I just – I know that it's Him. I know that I know that I know. You know when we launched these radio programs that you're listening to now, we had to step out in faith. But we just felt that God was calling us to do this. This was the future He had planned for us. And here we are (all these years on), ten years later, on 1,100th station across 160 countries, including this station, broadcasting the very same program that you're listening to now. I was thinking just about one region and how to take our programs into that region. I prayed a little bit about it. And God just gave me some ideas that created a win-win between some radio stations and some other organizations, and off it went. It just took off. When we have a relationship with Jesus, when we sit down and pray and ask, God knows before we ask everything that we need. And before we sit down and ask, He's already planned the outcomes. He's already there. He's already started doing things that we can't see that are going to bless us. I believe that when we desire God, when we draw close to Him – not through our own good works, but by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, forgiven because He died and paid for our sins on the cross – when we spend those quiet and intimate times, it kind of ends up exploding your view on life. It certainly does with me. This walk of life that I now walk in faith in relationship with Jesus Christ, it's a whole new walk, it's a whole new life. God in this mix, guiding and helping and intervening, this is where the rubber hits the road. It's exciting. It's powerful. And on those really bad days, there's a joy and a comfort and a peace you just can't put into words. It's like biting into a piece of sweet fruit and go, "Man, that is sooo good!" It's not just me; it's everybody who believes in Jesus, who puts their complete trust and faith in Jesus. And by the way, that includes YOU. Especially, it includes YOU.

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• The Path of Simplicity // Taste and See That He Is Good, Part 3

  We all try to put our best foot forward in life. Fair enough. But eventually, we can find ourselves trying to impress people rather than being ourselves. So – should we try to impress God – or is it come as you are? One way or another, we all try and put our best foot forward. When we go for a job interview, we make sure that we're dressed well and our hair is combed and we go in with a smile and we say the right things. When friends come over to visit, we tidy up the house. And in one sense, there's nothing wrong with that. But we live in a world, well, it rewards us for how we look or what we do or the size of our pay packet. You know what I mean. And so we can end up on this treadmill. Whatever that looks like in our different circles or cultures, way deep down inside, we end up believing that life is about – impressing people. That's why so many of the experiences available out there in the spiritual marketplace are about getting off that treadmill – relaxation, massage, meditation, aromatherapy, feng shui to design a tranquil home. But what about God? Is having a relationship with Him about keeping up appearances or getting off that treadmill? This week on "A Different Perspective", we're looking at the whole subject of experiencing God. If you were with us the other day, we talked about the fact that there are two ways of knowing something. We can know it as fact, as head knowledge. And we can know it in experience. We can know that we should eat more fruit because it's healthy for us, it's good for us and it will reduce heart disease and diabetes. We know that. But it's not until we experience the fruit that we go, "Wow! That's really good!" Three thousand years ago, David said: Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 32:8) In other words, experience Him for yourself in a relationship. Yesterday, we spoke about desire. The need for us to have a God-given desire to want to have a relationship with Him. Any relationship needs to have an element of desire, a spark, a flame. Without desire a relationship goes nowhere. As the deer pants after streams of living water so my soul pants after you our God. (Psalm 42:1) Some psalmist wrote that three thousand years ago. Today, I'd like to talk about one of the biggest obstacles to experiencing and enjoying a relationship with God. It's the feeling that deep down inside (somewhere), "Well, I'm just not good enough. I have to get my act together before I can go and talk to God." It's that idea that somehow sitting down with God to pray is … well, it's like a bit of a job interview. You put your face on. You wear the right clothes. You say the right things. You smile. It's about appearances. There's a formula, you know, we need to impress God Well, is that right? Do we need to put on good clothes to talk to God? Do we need to impress God? Well, let's see what Jesus said. If you're interested, you can find this quote in the very first book of the New Testament, Matthew's gospel, chapter 11:25-26. This is what He said. He said: "Father, Dad" He loved calling Him Dad. "I praise you because you have concealed your ways from the know-it-all(s); from the people who think of themselves as being sophisticated and intelligent. But you spelled them out clearly to ordinary people." Question: What sort of people do you like to socialise with? I mean, do you like to hang around with hoity-toity people, the know-it-all(s), the people who always have a face on and they're part of the set? Or would you rather hang around with plain, ordinary people, no face, no pretence, what you see is what you get, no effort to impress. Well, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? I mean it's much nicer to be around people, who are just themselves, who just relax, who don't have a need to always compete. And put their best foot forward. Well, so why wouldn't God feel exactly the same? It turns out that He does according to Jesus. And so we go to God, when we stand before God and say, "Lord, here I am". There are some really good things in our lives, some things that we do well, some things that we're enjoying. And there are some pretty lousy things sometimes in our lives. Things that in our heart of hearts we know that we're doing the wrong things that we know we could do better – failures, hurts. And we have a choice. We can either stand in front of God and try to impress him and put a face on. And what Jesus said was, "Father I thank you that you have hidden and concealed all your ways from the know-it-all(s)" – the people who think of themselves as sophisticated. So, if we go to God like that, here's a promise from Jesus, God will hide Himself from someone who comes to Him like that. Or we can go to God just as we are. But here's the crunch and you see it in the Apostle Paul as he was writing and as he grew in his maturity in his relationship with God. The closer we get to God, the more the light of His love and His presence shines into our hearts. The more painfully aware that we become of the blank inky spots on our hearts, the things that are wrong, the things that God calls sin. The closer we get the harder, the more heavily they weigh on us. That's what Paul said, "Wretched man that I am! I know that there is nothing good that dwells in me, that's in my flesh. Who will save me from this? Who will set me free from this?" And then he comes up with the answer. "Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ who died on the cross for me." If we would come before God and have a relationship with Him in a way that's real, in a way that's, aahh, so warm, so close, we're going to have to deal with our sin. I'm sorry if you find that word offensive. I'm sorry if it sounds like I'm being judgmental but it's not my word, it's God's word. Sin is sin. The closer we get to God, the blacker it seems. And ultimately there's only one way of dealing with that sin and it's not putting a face on. How can we ever think that we can hide anything from God if God is, after all, God? The closer we get, the more acutely we become aware of our need for forgiveness and our need for someone or something to deal with that sin. And we know that … that's why Jesus Christ died on the cross so that we could go before God and say, "Father, forgive me not because of what I've done, but because of what my Jesus did for me." We can either do that or we can never come close at all. We can ignore our sin and live out its consequences and say, "Well, yeah. I believe in God from a distance. I believe I'm a pretty good person and I know that, um, yeah I'll hang out here at a distance and I won't deal with my sin." But you see people who do that are the ones who never enjoy their relationship with Jesus. They never know that wonderful sense of His peace and joy just flooding out of them. Yesterday, I was flying on a plane; I was up really, really early in the morning. So my usual prayer time that I usually have with God, I just couldn't have. And I was sitting on the plane flying to where I was flying and I have to say that I was pretty tired because it was so early in the morning. And without me saying anything, without me doing anything, just kind of closing my eyes and looking at God with the eyes of my soul – this peace, this joy, this Holy Spirit just filled my whole body. And that can only happen because I believe that Jesus has paid for my sin. That's why I can stand before God. And that's the only way that you can stand before God too. There's the choice. Hang out there at a distance and never experience it. Come to God and try and impress Him and the promise from Jesus is, you try and do that and God will hide himself from you. Or come to God, just as we are, and say, "Lord, I know there are some rotten things in my life but I'm going to experience you because Jesus died to buy that right for me."

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• The Spark of Desire // Taste and See That He Is Good, Part 2

  Any relationship needs a spark of desire to make it fire. Friendships. Marriages. Families. Work. Desire is a key ingredient of a lasting relationship. Well – what about God? Relationships, they're a funny thing – boy meets girl, courtship, romance, engagement, marriage, honeymoon – what an exciting time! This passion, this desire, they enjoy each other to the full. Then they have kids. Sleepless nights, there's the mortgage, paying off the credit card, arguments, pressure and almost half, end in divorce. Of course, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. But somewhere along the way (somewhere), the fire goes out. The flame, the passion, the desire to be together – they evaporate. Not that relationships are all about passion and desire. But on the other hand it's pretty important. Wouldn't you agree, in making a marriage hang together? Well, what about our spirituality? Does desire, does passion have a role to play in our spiritual lives? When it comes to our spirituality, I believe that experience has an important role to play. Yesterday, on A Different Perspective we talked about the fact that there are two ways of knowing things. There's like head knowledge, a series of facts, a series of dot points and head knowledge is really important. But it's not until we marry that with experience that we can really say that we know something. Remember, if you were with us that we talked about fruit. It's one thing to know that we should eat more fruit because it's good for us. It's another thing entirely to bite into a banana or a mandarin or a peach and go, "Wow, that fruit is really nice!" Three thousand years ago, King David of Israel wrote this. He said: Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 32:8). When we look at the spiritual marketplace in the twenty-first century, crystals, eastern design of religions (you know, design your own), astral travel, the all-called "crossing over", "feng shui", you know, people designing their houses to be tranquil according to what they believe to be spiritual principles. It's all about taking spirituality and trying to experience it in life. And so sadly those same people will look at Christianity, they look at Jesus, they look at the cross and think, "No, no, no, no. That's boring, that's … I know the public image of that, that's just a set of rules." But what if God's plan is that we can have the most amazing experience of Him, here and now. I mean an authentic spiritual experience. All those other things; crystals and feng shui and the eastern design of religions; they involve things or forces or notions or feelings or idols. And yet, with God, with Jesus, it gets really personal. We forget sometimes … God isn't a stained glass window. He's not a book. He's not a bunch of rules. He's not pew, He's not a hymn. God's a person and we forget that. Deep in His mighty heart, God thinks, God wills, God feels, God suffers, God laughs, God cries. And if God's a person, then it follows that we can have a relationship with this person. Not a "thing" not a "concept" not a statue, a person. Jesus is the very image of God. It's Jesus who loved and laughed and cried and wept. That's God, that's what He looks like. There was a man by the name of A.W. Tozer who wrote in the mid twentieth century. He was a great writer. And at the time that he was writing, it was that whole time of science and post-war. You know, science was going to make things better. And it was all that head knowledge, it was all the go. And there the space race was starting and modernization and we were all getting kitchen gadgets and so on. He was writing straight into that and have a listen what he wrote into that space. He said: Look, where the modern scientists have lost God amid the wonders of His world, it's a real danger that we could lose God amid the wonders of His Word, the facts, the things we believe. We've almost forgotten that God is a person and as such we can have a personal relationship with Him. In this hour of all but universal darkness, one cheering gleam appears. Within the fold of conservative Christians there are people, increasing numbers of people, whose spiritual lives are marked by a growing hunger after God Himself. They won't be put off with words or shallow logic. They won't be content to busy themselves with nervous activity. And yet to still to know an inner emptiness. These people have a thirst for God. They won't be satisfied until they've drunk deep at the fountain of living water. There are those who, while they love the altar and delight in the sacrifice, they're just unable to reconcile themselves with this continued absence of fire. They desire God above all. There's a thirst to taste for themselves this piercing sweetness at the love of Christ about whom the prophets wrote and the psalmists sang. They want to taste. They want to touch with their hearts; they want to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God. I want deliberately to encourage this mighty longing after God. The lack of it has brought us to our present low estate. The stiff and wooden quality about our spiritual lives, it's a result of a lack of holy desire. Complacency is the deadly foe of all spiritual growth. What we need is acute desire to be present, or there be no manifestation of Christ to His people. He waits to be wanted. It's too bad that with many of us He waits so long, so very long in vain. I love that! Three thousand years ago, in one of the spiritual songs, the Psalms, that's recorded in the Bible, someone wrote this. It's Psalm 42:1, if you'd like to look at it. As the deer pants for streams of living water so my soul pants for you my God. Maybe you're someone who has never met Jesus. You've never put your trust in Him; you hunger for some authentic spiritual experience. Maybe you've been going to church for thirty, forty years and in your heart of hearts, you know that you've never experienced sort of desire – passion for God. Or maybe that's the sort of flame that used to burn in your heart once upon a time. But like a couple with kids and a mortgage and credit cards and responsibilities, somewhere along the line, that flame went out. I've got some good news! Doesn't matter who we are or where we're at or what we've believed in the past or not believed or what we've done or not done. God longs for us for a close, intimate, personal relationship. An experience so real, so authentic, it'll blow your socks off. Isn't that what you want? Because in a minute I'm going to pray, I'm going to pray a prayer that A.W. Tozer wrote at the end of the first chapter of his book, The Pursuit of God. I believe that desire needs to be present in our hearts and I believe that God can put that desire there. If you want that, pray this with me: God, I have tasted Your goodness and it satisfied me but it has made me thirsty for more. I'm so aware, I'm so conscious of my need for further grace and I'm so ashamed of the lack of desire that's in my heart. God, I want You. I long to be filled with longing. I thirst to be made more thirsty (still). Lord, show me Your glory so that I may know You for real. Begin in me a mercy, a new work of love. Say to my soul, 'Rise up my love! Come away!' and then give me the grace to rise and follow You up from this misty lowland where I've wandered for so long. Father, I want You. Give me that desire. Light that flame. Spark that fire. Not by might, not by power, but by Your Holy Spirit. Father, I ask that specifically of You today, in the mighty name of Jesus Christ.

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• Tasting and Seeing // Taste and See That He Is Good, Part 1

  We should eat more fruit.  We know that…..but it's not until we taste the banana and smell the mandarin – that we go – oh, that's good.  It's the experience that seals the deal.  But what about God – how do we know that He's good? We've all heard that nutritionists say that we should eat more fruit. It's good for us. There's the fiber, the vitamins, the minerals and the colorful fruits have antioxidants in them that reduce the risk of cancer. The more fruit we eat, the lower the risk of heart disease and on it goes. We know all that stuff. But somehow it doesn't sink in, we keep eating chocolate, biscuits, cakes. It turns out that all the head knowledge under the sun won't change our behavior, even if it's a life or death issue. Staggering, isn't it? Even though we could avoid diabetes or add even five or ten years to our lives by simply applying what we know, nothing much changes. So what will change our behavior? That's a good question. It turns out that there are kind of two ways of knowing something. The first is head knowledge. We go back to the fruit – there are a whole bunch of nutritional and health facts that are very important, but they're kind of uninspiring. On their own, facts are dry. And indeed, the facts can be a source of guilt and fear. I'm somebody whose father died of diabetes and so I'm prone to diabetes. I know that I should eat more fruit and more bran and all of those good things. And if I don't, the facts become a source of fear and dread and lurking guilt knowing that I'm eating my way to death. The other way of knowing something is through experience, experiencing something in real life. The way to experience the benefits of eating more fruit, well, is to eat more fruit. It's something that I've had to do given the risk that I have of contracting diabetes as I become older. It has been a really important source of motivation for me. But when you pick a banana up out of the fruit bowl – you know that beautiful, ripe and yellow. And it has that smell and you peel the back and you bite into that soft but firm texture of a banana – you can only get that taste, that sensation in a banana. Or mandarins – mandarins where I am are really good at the moment. You know, one of those mandarins that's soft and the skin's kind of bubbling away a little bit and you just put your finger nail in to break the skin and immediately this pungent odor fills your nostrils. I love mandarins, or a crisp juicy apple, or plums, sweet grapes. I love the Isabella variety; they have muskiness to them. They're made just to pop in your mouth. Is your mouth-watering yet? Do you feel like reaching for a piece of fruit from the fruit bowl? Experience is a way of knowing. So on the one hand, we have a pile of chips and chocolate and biscuits and cakes and junk food. And over here in the other pile (in the fruit bowl), we have all those beautiful fruits: mandarins, nectarines, apricots, bananas, apples and pineapples. And the way we go from a habit of junk food to a habit of good food, there are two parts to that: First is the important part – we kind of have to know that we need to do it. We need to know some of those basic nutritional facts to motivate us. But the second part is experience. The second part is tasting and seeing that the fruit is good. It's the good taste of the fruit. It's the pleasure that we get out of the fruit – it makes it habit-forming. I have to tell you, I'm going to have a mandarin when I go home today because I know there are a couple of really nice ones sitting in the fruit bowl at home and I know I'm going to enjoy them. When you look at it historically, over the last, well, umpteen centuries, the pendulum has always swung in the way that we know something. Back in the 1940's and 1950's and in the early '60's the emphasis was on head knowledge. It was on dot points. I remember at school we used to memorize things by lists of dot points. These days, however, the pendulum has swung almost completely the other way and we're not interested so much in the knowledge as the experience. We like to experience things, to taste life to its full. And it turns out that knowledge on its own is dry. Experience on its own, well, it's kind of vacuous, it's kind of empty. It's great for a while, but without the knowledge, there's no anchor. There's no foundation. People feel empty and skeptical. Look at Christianity, look at how we believed in God. Back in the '50's and '60's, it was a series of creeds. It was knowing the facts, it was the head knowledge. It was knowing the information that we believed in. And don't get me wrong, I think that's actually very important particularly today. I think it's important to know what it is that we believe. But if it stops just there, if it's just a series of dot points on a page or a series of chapters in a book, well, you can separate that right from life. You can take the book and put it on a shelf. You can take the page and leave it on a desk. And in reaction of that dry way of knowing God and believing in Jesus, in the '60's and '70's, there was quite a reaction in some denominations against that dryness and some became very experiential. Now, I'm not criticizing experience. Experience is good particularly when we're having a relationship with God. If God's God, if God is as good as what they say He is, wow, wouldn't it be great to have an experience of God, experience a relationship? But some denominations reacted so far; they kind of left the facts behind. And when you take experience to such an extreme and leave the facts out of it, well, it fizzles out because it becomes vacuous. And to some extent, the public image of Christianity today is at those two extremes – those two poles. Either people see it as being a dry set of precepts and rules. Or they see it as being, "Well, you know, you see these Christians on television sometimes and they're praising God and they've got their hands in the air. Well, that's a bit wacky. That's a bit ooh, that's weird!" And yet, just like fruit – just like knowledge and experience are what gets us into good habits. And remember like eating fruit, our lives depend on this stuff! Well, I think the same is true of believing in Jesus. Now seventy percent of us believe in God. We may not all believe in Jesus, but seventy percent of us believe in God. And most of those people would say, "Well, yeah, I believe that Jesus was the Son of God. I believe He died on the cross and I believe He bought me eternal life." But so many people look at this Christianity gig and go, "Well, yeah. But maybe it's dry, maybe it's rules, I hunger for experience." We live in a society and a psyche that hungers for experience – good coffee, good restaurants, good food, travel, five-star resorts, health resorts, feng-shui design for our houses – we want to experience our spirituality in real life. We hunger for some sort of authentic spiritual experience to know God and Jesus. Not just as a series of facts but in our experience. Three thousand years ago, David, who was the greatest king Israel ever had, wrote this. He said: Taste and see that the Lord is good. (Psalm 34:8) Taste and see that the Lord is good. What if God is there to be experienced? What if there is an intimate, authentic spiritual reality and experience that we can have here and now? I'm not talking about ditching the knowledge. I believe that the facts about faith are important for us to have in our heads. But I also believe that if God is good, shouldn't we taste and see for ourselves that the Lord is good? The world is full of people who want to believe in Jesus but think that Jesus is a dry bunch of rules. And sadly, churches are full of people who have never really experienced the joy and the wonder and the awe of a relationship with God. I believe that we need to taste and see that the Lord is good.

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