A Different Perspective Official Podcast

She's flat out running the kids around, cleaning, cooking, all the stuff she thinks she should do. And he's just lonely. She never has time for me. He never helps me!
This week on A Different Perspective we're taking a bit of a look at what it means to communicate our love for one another in the context of marriage. You know I believe that marriage is just one of the most amazing gifts that God can bless us with, but sometimes husbands and wives get so frustrated because they don't know how to love one another. And that is just so frustrating because you're doing your best.
You think to yourself, "Man, I couldn't possibly be trying any harder to love my husband, or love my wife and yet they say they don't feel like I love them." And so often it's because we're speaking our love to them in one language but they need to hear it in another.
So this week we're working our way through the fantastic book by Gary Chapman, it's so insightful, it's called The Five Love Languages and today, today we'll be looking at the fourth of those, Acts of Service.
Jesus was visiting two sisters Mary and Martha. Now these young women were really quite different from one another. If you'd like to read the story you can, it's in Luke's Gospel, Chapter 10 beginning at verse 38. Jesus comes into their home and Martha, well Martha is working flat out, she's cleaning the house and cooking the dinner and doing all the things you need to do when you have a guest come into your home.
Mary her sister, on the other hand, Mary sits at Jesus' feet and listens to what he has to say, she's glued, she's riveted and Martha gets pretty frustrated, she says to Jesus, "Don't you care that Mary's just sitting there and leaving all the work to me?" Now that's fascinating because then you see a conflict between two sisters.
Mary obviously loves spending quality time; she's sitting there with Jesus and she's doting on what he's saying. Mary's primary love language is probably spending quality time with someone.
On the other hand Martha, Martha's gifting clearly is in Acts of Service. She's just one of those people who like to do all the busy things and to serve people. Some people are just hard wired doers, they jump up, they help, they cook, they cater, they clean, at home, with friends, at church, at the club, whatever they do, they express their love by serving them.
Now we should all serve. Jesus said it himself, "I've come to serve, not to be served" right. But Mary and Martha are clearly wired differently, somehow in their DNA, deep in their character, in their persona, they're quite different and that's life, we're all different.
This week so far, we've looked at three primary love languages, that is, that we all receive love in slightly different ways, for some people it's Words of Affirmation, they experience love when their husband or their wife encourages them and says, "you look fantastic, that was a great meal, thank you so much for doing that for me".
The second is Quality Time; it's what we see in Mary, some people experience love most when they and their spouse simply spend exclusive time with each other and focus exclusively on one other, and that quality time is how they drink in one another's love.
The third one, which we looked at yesterday, is Receiving Gifts. And each one of us has maybe one of the five that we're looking at this week, which is the main way that we receive love.
Today we're looking at Acts of Service, and the picture of Mary and Martha is a great one. But imagine if they were Max and Martha, imagine if they were husband and wife. And Martha is your hard wired acts of service type. For her to love is to serve, for her to love is to cook and to clean, for her to love is to do stuff.
But Max, Max is your gentle type, he's one that loves to spend time together. He doesn't care if the dishes don't get done. "We'll do that later, let's just spend some time together now that the kids are in bed and we'll do the dishes later."
You can see how the chips would fly. Martha on the one hand would resent the fact that he doesn't do anything. He doesn't love me because he doesn't do stuff, he doesn't clean up the kitchen, he doesn't wash up, he doesn't sweep up, why doesn't love me? And Max would say, "you know Martha never sits down, she never stops, she's always doing and rushing, she never has time for me."
It doesn't matter how much Martha does for Max and it doesn't matter how much time Max spends with Martha, neither of them will feel loved, neither of them will feel fulfilled in their marriage relationship. They can do what they do until they're blue in the face but the other one will still feel unloved.
Let's get a revelation! That's because they're doing and giving the type of love that they need, instead of the type of love that the other one needs. Hello are we listening? This is so blindingly, glimpsingly obvious isn't it? But we all naturally get this thing wrong. We all naturally try and give the type of love that we want to receive. Natural!
Martha gives love by serving; she wants to receive love by serving. Max gives love by sharing quality time; he wants to receive love by sharing quality time. And if they both just give the sort of love that they want to receive, they will be like ships passing in the night and they will never connect.
My wife Jacqui is hard-wired for Acts of Service, that's her primary love language and her secondary one is Quality Time. Those are the two that are most important to her, they speak love to her. So in order to do that I have to serve her. Now, Berni is not your acts of service type of person so what do I do? I have to learn, I actually have to learn.
So there are a few things that I've done just in the context and I'm going to share these things with you because your context's different. If you're married to someone who is an acts of service person and you're not, you're going to have to figure out your own. You're going to have to figure out what works in your family and in your relationship. Here are some of the things that I've done.
I thought right early on in our marriage, I could see that Jacqui is someone who serves and I thought, "How can I regularly serve her in a way that matters?" And you may have heard me say this before, so every night when we go to bed, I bring Jacqui a cup of tea in bed every night, very, very rarely we don't do that. I make a cup of tea for her, I serve her.
And in the mornings I get up very early. I work generally about 6 o'clock in the morning, I'll go down the stairs, I'll make her a cup of tea and bring it up to her in bed, and she is woken up with a cup of tea in the morning. Now am I saying that Berni is a fantastic guy? No, I'm not. All I'm saying is that that is one way that I have discovered, that twice a day (at least twice a day) Jacqui is served by me, and you know something? I delight in doing that. That's from me to her, and no one else can share that, and she is served.
Jacqui ends up doing most of the cooking in our family because I work very long hours. But I love cooking. I love getting in the kitchen. And so once a week I try and get in there and cook her a really nice meal, something she would never think of cooking herself. It's fun for me and she's being served.
And every now and then I try and look at something and think, she needs a hand with this, or I can help here, or I can do this and pitch in, and help her unexpectedly. And those things are practical expressions of love that speak to her in a language she understands.
Now in this society of house working kids and house working Mums and changing role of men, it's not easy to come to grips with this whole service thing. But are you married to someone who's like this? It's time to look at what they do. Are they super critical of people who don't help in practical ways, maybe this is a person who receives love through acts of service?
Specific, regular and unexpected acts of service are what we need to do for a husband or wife like that, in order to say I love you. God wants us to love one another, God wants marriage to be the most amazing blessing. But we have to learn what it is that blesses the soul mate that God has given us.

That Neil Diamond song "You Don't Send me Flowers Anymore" says it all in some marriages.  What happened to those unexpected gifts?  What happened to the love?
This week on A Different Perspective we're taking a look at how to express our heartfelt commitment to our soul mates, our wives, or our husbands as the case may be. Imagine; boy meets girl, she only speaks Swahili, he only speaks Japanese, they get married but they still can't speak one another's languages, what sort of a marriage are they going to have?
Well there are two options; they either decide to learn one another's languages or things are going to fall apart because unless they learn to communicate, the frustration and the isolation would just tear them apart. That's how it is with different languages and love.
Gary Chapman's written a great book called The Five Love Languages, the last couple of days we've looked at the first two of those, Words of Affirmation and Quality Time, today we're going to look at the third, Receiving Gifts.
Anthropologists are a funny lot, they love to study human patterns of behaviour across different cultures, and in fact right down through history. And they look for common themes and patterns of behaviour. One of the most basic, one that appears in every culture is the notion that love is about giving.
My hunch is that in the garden of Eden Adam used to go out looking for flowers for Eve and pick them, and give them to her, no doubt, and we know for a fact that she loved picking fruit for him to eat! Well I guess no one's perfect! So over the last few days we've looked at the first few languages of love that Chapman talks about in his book, The Five Love Languages.
The first was Words of Affirmation. Some people's primary way of experiencing love is through words that other people say to them that affirm them. So a man who needs words of affirmation will need his wife to say, "Darling you look great in that suit. Darling, thank you so much for doing that." And a woman who needs words of affirmation will need exactly the same thing from her husband.
The second of those was Quality Time. It's a happy buzz phrase isn't it? But quality time is more than just sitting in front of the box and just being in a safe space together. Quality time is focusing our attention exclusively on one another, and there are some people whose primary way of receiving love is through the knowledge that their husband or wife spends quality time with them.
The third one, which is the one that we're going to look at today, is Receiving Gifts.
Now a gift, I used to think, "Well how can someone experience love by receiving gifts, isn't that kind of tacky and cheap and materialistic?" Truly that's what I used to think. But when you think about it, a gift is something tangible. You can hold it in your hand, you can look at it and say "he loves me", or "wow she loves me" and you'll look at it again, and again, and again.
It's a tangible tactile physical expression of the giving part about love, that thing that anthropologists discover is common to every culture that they've analysed. It's a symbol of a thought. We've heard the saying, "it's the thought that counts."
It's not the actual gift, it's not how much it cost, it's the fact that the gift represents something and it represents love, or friendship, or whatever. So this visual symbol of love is more important to some people than it is to other people.
Let me tell you about Berni. A gift to me will fail to express your love or your friendship to me precisely 100% of the time. If I never receive another gift in my life it'll be too soon. If nobody ever remembers my birthday again in my life it'll be too soon. When we were first married, Jacqui and I, Jacqui thought, "Ah I'll go and buy my husband a tie, or clothes, or aftershave," and I was absolutely horrified.
I buy my own ties, I buy my own clothes, I buy my own aftershave. And Mum, my last birthday, she said "Berni what would you like for your birthday?" And I said "Truly Mum, give the money to charity, I just don't want a gift". So actually she gave a donation to the ministry of Christianityworks.
For me gifts simply don't say I love you. Yet Melissa, our daughter, it's one of her two primary languages of love. Gifts are really important to her. When I went to India last year, she loves silver, and so I saw an Indian silver necklace and earrings, and I bought that for her.
And at night time my wife Jacqui and I go for walks and we walked past this store that has this beautiful silver beaten jewellery and I'm always thinking and planning, "now I wonder which one of those I can get for Melissa's birthday".
And just recently, last Christmas, one of the things that teenagers in her age group in her culture, all want, is they want an iPod, right, that's what's happening amongst young people today, she's 15. And so we saved up our money and bought her an iPod Nano. And on the back, if you buy them online on the Internet, they'll actually inscribe whatever you ask them to inscribe, machine inscribed, beautifully done. And so we had it inscribed on there 'Melissa Dymet loved, cherished and adored'. And that spoke volumes to her because receiving gifts is one of her primary love languages.
The other morning I was out for a walk and she'd gone the bus stop waiting for her school bus and the frangipani's were out,(they're my favourite flower, they smell so nice) and I thought "you know when I come around the corner I bet you she's still at the bus stop". So I picked up just one frangipani flower that had fallen down and I walked up to her at the bus stop and I said, "Here, this is for you". Just the one flower. Well, her face just lit up because receiving gifts is one of her primary languages of love.
King Solomon, in Proverbs Chapter 18 verse 16, way, way back when King Solomon was alive he wrote this
A gift opens the way for the giver and ushers him into the presence of the great.
You see gifts to people for whom receiving gifts is their primary love language, gifts open the door into their hearts. Things are just things to me. Possessions are just servants they're nothing more. I'm not sentimental about those things.
But I'll tell you one gift, the one physical thing that I possess that I prize above all things is my wedding ring because it's a symbol of my wife's love for me. And I could be starving and have no money, I still would not sell this wedding ring. So even for the most hardened anti-gift person I have my price, you know what I mean?
Now when I used to think that gifts and giving were a bit superficial and a bit materialistic. Actually the symbolism of the gift is how some people experience and receive love. Have you ever heard a wife say, "He never brings me flowers anymore." Now think about it, flowers die in a few days but they are a symbol of romantic love.
Gifts can be purchased, gifts can be found, gifts can be made. "Oh but I'm not a gift giver." Congratulations, welcome to marriage. This is a lesson of love; we need to learn to give love in a way that our husband or wife can accept love. And if your soul mate receives love through the receiving of gifts, it is time for you to make a list of all the things that seem to push their buttons and we don't have to wait for special occasions.
We don't have to wait for birthdays, or Christmases, or anniversaries because for someone who receives gifts as love, just the little things, just the little frangipani flower that you pick up on the spur of the moment that you find on the street, can say I love you. And when you receive a gift from such a person, like my daughter Melissa did a painting at school and she brought it home and she gave it to me, that gift, that painting has pride and place in my study because when she gives me a gift she is saying something that goes beyond what I may interpret the gift to be.
We do all the other things, we can work, provide, clean, cook, make love, everything but if you're soul mate's primary love language is receiving gifts and you don't give them gifts, they will feel like their marriage is dead.

He thinks he's doing a great job working hard, paying down the mortgage.  But all she sees is that he never has time for her.  He's working flat out, she's feeling unloved and it's all heading downhill fast.
This week on A Different Perspective we're looking at how to communicate love between husband and wife. Actually you can apply it to any loving relationship. So often a wife and a husband well, they want to love one another but they just don't know how. It turns out that all to often they're talking different languages.
He gives her flowers but all she wants is his attention; she want to spend time with him when he's dying inside because all he wants her to do is to stroke his cheek. These things are so deep; they're so buried in our DNA that it even hurts to talk about these needs sometimes.
That's why this week we're stepping our way through Gary Chapman's book, The Five Love Languages. Because it's not enough for us to want to love our wives or our husbands, we need to know how, and today we're looking at Quality Time as the second of those five love languages.
Time poor is the trendy expression at the moment. Time poor takes busy and elevates it to, "wow you're important because you're time poor." There are so many things, you know. There's work, and there's entertainment, there's housework, there's shopping and there's spending and there's traveling and there's the kids. And a lot of it, as we've looked at it on previous programs of A Different Perspective is about accumulating stuff.
But stuff doesn't make us happy. We can go on a flash holiday and get there and still not be happy, you can spend as much money as you like on stuff, but it still wont make us happy because its relationships that bring us that satisfaction: relationship with God, relationship with husband and wife, relationship with family, relationship with friends.
And these days it seems that just keeping our heads above water takes 99% of our time, and the other 1% we're so exhausted we've got no time for relationships, we've got no time to give anything.
We're looking through that great book, and would encourage you to buy the book and read it because it is a really good book, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. The five love languages that he lists are: words of affirmation, which we looked at yesterday; quality time, which we're about to look at today; receiving gifts, which we'll look at tomorrow; acts of service, the next day; and finally on Friday, physical touch.
And it turns out that for each one of us, one or maybe two of those are our primary love languages. In other words we need our wife or our husband, as the case may be, to speak their love into our lives using these languages. If my primary language is physical touch, which it is, then receiving gifts just never works for me. Or words of affirmation, I tell you I don't need them much, I need my wife to stroke my face and say "I love you" and that's how I experience her love, by and large.
Sure we need all of those things, but we're coming down to what's the primary way in which each one of us experiences love, takes it in. Now when we look today at quality time. Quality time is not about being in the same place together. You can be in the same place with your husband or wife but not have quality time because quality time speaks about attention. It speaks about focus.
A woman can be just yearning to have that undivided attention of her husband and he thinks "Ah I'll buy her some roses, that'll do it!" As though some how quality time and roses are equivalent. They are not to someone whose primary way of assimilating love is by spending quality time with her husband.
I'll let you in on a secret. I am not naturally good at quality time. It is not my primary love language, it is not what I do naturally. I'm a doer, I do stuff, I work hard then I rest, I'm a typical male specimen. I love to withdraw into myself and think and watch sport on television. Time is something that's there to be managed, I have a diary, I have a to do list.
The first hint, early in our marriage where I knew something wasn't quite right, was when Jacqui sent "Don't you ever dare put me into your diary, I never want to see in your diary 'appointment with wife'!" I thought, "Why not, it seems perfectly logical to me, I have to manage my time. I put my wife in there at 4 o'clock to have a cup of coffee with her."
It didn't work for Jacqui, turns out that quality time is one of her two primary love languages, acts of service is the other, we'll talk about that another day. And for her it means exactly what I just talked about, it means focus, it means conversation, it means attention. And unless she receives my undivided attention she doesn't feel loved.
Can you see the explosive potential of this, I am outcome oriented, I'm your classic time poor guy who does lots of stuff, and this guy meets this girl who just wants to spend time with him, and his answer is to schedule the time in his diary!!
How do I know if my soul mate needs quality time? How do I know if he or she is someone who really understands my love when I spend quality time with them? Let me ask you, have they ever said to you, "you never spend any time with me, you're always talking on the phone to other people but not to me." Chances are that person needs your quality time in order to experience your love.
Email, mobile phones, we're so connected and available to other people our soul mates miss out. So I've had to learn, it's not been a natural thing for me, I've had to say "I married my Jacqui and she needs this and so I have to learn to do this for her." And here are some of the things that I've come up with.
I tend to start pretty early in the morning. I love getting up at 4 o'clock, maybe 5 o'clock at the latest and I start working. And then about 7.30 in the morning when our daughter heads off to school I try and stop, I cant always do it, but I try and stop for 15 minutes, 20 minutes and we have our morning cup of coffee together, and we have a chat.
I'm a morning person, I do my best work in the morning. I love preparing messages and radio programs early in the morning because my mind is sharp at that time. But if I just get up and work and work and work Jacqui doesn't see me until maybe 4 or 5 in the afternoon. The other thing we do is in the evening, generally after dinner, we go for a walk for half an hour. We hold hands and maybe we talk and maybe we don't but we just share that time together.
We love renovating and so we're always talking about ideas and planning and doing this and doing that. It's fun, it's our hobby if you like, is renovating houses. And so we enjoy doing it that's something that we do together, its quality time. And Friday evenings once or twice a month we find a cheap restaurant somewhere and we just go and have a cheap little meal together.
They're just the things, the very practical things that Berni has had to think about and say, "well Berni, you know you're not natural at spending quality time with people, so here are the things that you've go to learn." Its not easy, its not perfect but its what my wife needs and what she deserves. And sometimes I make mistakes and sometimes things fall through the cracks, none of us is perfect, but the point is I've had to learn.
And we all have to learn when we're married to someone who experiences love differently to us. We're always so focused on getting what we need and what we want, the real issue in marriage is figuring what our soul mates needs are, and delighting in meeting those, it's a sacrifice.
What about your life, what about your marriage? Do you have a spouse who needs words of affirmation, do you have a spouse who needs quality time? What are yours and your soul mate's primary love language?
To me it is such an exciting thing to explore and to dream and to plan how we can give to our husband or our wife the love that he or she so desperately wants and so richly deserves.

Mark Twain once said "I can live for two months on a good compliment".  It's true, when people affirm us and encourage us – it somehow builds us up on the inside.
Another new week. You know last week on A Different Perspective we went on a bit of a journey to look at how we can have the kind of marriage that we were meant to have. I guess we looked at some of the really important foundation stones to a great marriage and if you missed those programs I'll let you know at the end of this program how you can listen to them again.
This week we're going to build on those foundations by looking at how to speak the language of love to our wives or our husbands, a language that they can actually understand.
A man, by the name of Gary Chapman has written a book, it's a great book called The Five Love Languages, in which he points out that too often husband and wife are actually speaking different love languages without even realising they're doing it. That leads to hurt and frustration and anger and a sense that "Oh, my husband doesn't love me, or my wife doesn't love me." So what are the five love languages, and why are they important?
Well in his book Gary Chapman says there are five different basic languages of love and these are the five that he lists: Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service and Physical Touch.
So the first one again is words of affirmation, affirming each other through what we say. The second one is spending quality time together, isn't that a happening phrase! The third one is receiving gifts, the forth, acts of service, the fifth, physical touch.
Think about it, we all need all of those things in a loving relationship, after all what would quality time between a husband and wife be without some encouraging words or physical touch. But it turns out that for most of us there are one or two out of those five that are the primary ways in which we perceive that our soul mate is expressing love to us.
Me, I'm odd because I'm not really a touchy feely person yet physical touch is my primary love language. (we'll talk about that in a few days time) But if my wife Jacqui doesn't touch me all day, I don't feel loved, and she can say "I love you" as many times as she likes but it doesn't feel like it to me unless she touches me.
For Jacqui its acts of service, that's who she is, she's hard wired that way. She loves serving other people, that's how she naturally expresses her love. Now imagine we don't ever realise that, imagine we get married and we live our lives and we never realise that about each other. How do you think the marriage would go? How do you think it would pan out over the years?
Well the answer is, not so well, because if my primary love language is touch then the natural thing that I will do is to express my love that way to my wife, but if her primary love language is acts of service, if I all I ever do is express my love by touching her and never serving her, the chances are she'll never feel as though I'm saying I love her.
And it's the same with me, if she thinks she can express her love to me just by serving me, because that's what she does naturally, she's great at it, she does it with me, she does it with all sorts of people, everyone she meets. She's just a person who loves to serve. But if she thinks that she can express all of her love that way to me and not understand that what I really need is that touch which says "I love you," in my language, she's never going to say I love you in a language that I can understand.
So it's important, not only to understand what is it that I need my partner to say to me or do to me, so that I experience their love in a way that makes sense to me, but more important than that is to understand our spouses language and to learn to express our love in a way that they can receive it.
You know something, that's not easy, and some days it doesn't feel natural. And over the course of this week we're going to look at those different love languages, starting today with words of affirmation, and I guess just share some practical insights and tips and stuff that I've experienced along the way. And my heart is that as we do that God will speak His grace and His love into your life, into your marriage.
And if you're not married, maybe you know someone who needs to hear these things and you can share with them the good news that marriage is a blessing from God. Marriage was God's idea in the first place, it's supposed to be wonderful. Not perfect everyday, not easy everyday, but it's supposed to be a wonderful union and experience between husband and wife.
Well let's begin today with words of affirmation. King Solomon, one of the Kings of Israel, way back in the book of Proverbs in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. He wrote this, he said,
The tongue has the power of life and death, reckless words are like a sword but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
We do say that sticks and stones might break our bones but names will never hurt us, but that's not true. What people say to us either builds us up and encourages us or it tears us down and breaks us. Mark Twain once said "I can live for two months on a good compliment." We know what he is saying; he's saying the same thing as Solomon.
What people say to one another actually matters an awful lot. Now Solomon and Mark Twain are saying, well, stuff that we already know. Verbal compliments or words that affirm someone are a powerful communicator of love, and in fact children growing up, particularly teenagers, if they don't receive those words of encouragement, it undermines their sense of identity and security.
But here's the thing, words of affirmation cost nothing to give, but they reflect what's going on inside in our hearts.
Jesus said "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks."
And for someone whose primary language of love is words of affirmation, when they hear us affirming them that says 'this person loves me'. The words aren't the important thing its what the words represent. They represent what's going on in our hearts. The person whose primary love language is words of affirmation needs to know in our hearts that we love them and they receive that love through the words.
"Gee you look great in that dress." "Darling I know you're working hard, you know I really appreciate it." "Sweetheart that was a great dinner." "Thanks so much for picking up the kids." "You've got such a great sense of humour; I love it when we laugh together."
Not rocket science is it, none of that? You don't have to have a PhD in Psychology to figure out that those words are good words. Just forget about the main love language for the moment, every marriage needs those words because the message is "I genuinely appreciate you."
And you know something when we do that we get benefits back. That's not why we do it, but those words bear fruit in our relationship. Is my wife or my husband one of those people whose primary love language is words of affirmation? Well, have you every heard them say, "You don't appreciate me, you never say thank you, you take me for granted?" Those are cries of love from someone who needs affirmation. Listen, answer.
The Apostle Paul in Ephesians, Chapter 4 verse 29, wrote this, he said,
Don't let evil talk come out of your mouth but only words that build up other people so that your words may give grace to those who hear.
Words of affirmation cost nothing, they're free. Why is it that we let them go in our marriage? Why is it that we forget to say, "That was wonderful, you're wonderful, I love you." "That was a fantastic meal." "You look fabulous."
They're one of the greatest love gifts that we can ever give. They cost nothing, but to someone whose primary love language is words of affirmation they mean everything.

How often have we all tried to change something in our lives – something on the outside – only to discover that the problem goes far deeper than that.  It's a problem on the inside.
It's just great to catch up with you again today with a different perspective on life.
The soul is something that seems to get quite a lot of attention these days. Body and soul, soul food, resting the soul, soul journey. They are all phrases that get bandied around. Different people try to find rest for their souls in different ways; creating peaceful rooms in their homes, playing relaxing music; shutting out the noise and the clamour and the stress of the world out there.
Now that's all well and good, but what if all that noise and the clamour and the stress, what if that stuff doesn't live out there. What if it's actually a problem deep inside? Then maybe it's time, time to spring clean our souls.
This week on A Different Perspective, I know it's not spring, I know you don't have to write and let us know it's not spring, but I thought that at the beginning of the year it would be wonderful to talk about spring cleaning our lives. Looking forward to the year and saying, "What is some of the rubbish I can leave behind?"
And over the week so far we have looked at spring cleaning where we live, our home, our finances and getting those right. Spring cleaning our priorities and getting some balance back in our lives. Spring cleaning our relationships we looked at yesterday and getting rid of some of the poisonous people in our lives; dealing with some of the difficult issues and hanging around with some of the people worth hanging around. But they are all on the outside.
Today I would like to finish up with looking at the inside the soul, the deep, the deep part of us. The danger is that we focus just on the things on the outside, the externalities. Now they do have an impact. A messy house is going to be depressing. Debt is going to put a weight on our shoulders. If we have the wrong priorities we are going to have a lack of balance in our lives. If we have some wrong relationships, ultimately that's going to tear us apart. So they do have an impact.
But if we just try and change those things, the outside, we can spend a lot of time and effort just to discover that there is something wrong in the inside, in our hearts, in our souls. You know that deep place that we live, that place that we laugh and where we cry, where we have fun and we feel sadness. That place.
Jesus actually only had a go at people when he was walking on this earth about two issues. One of them was a lack of faith. The other one which we will look at today was hypocrisy. He detested hypocrisy. And when you think about it, hypocrisy is when what is happening inside us is not consistent with what is happening outside. Hypocrisy is when the outside doesn't match up with the inside and we say one thing and do another.
And in particular Jesus really detested religious hypocrisy. He said:
Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and it's fruit bad. Because a tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers.
He said to these religious hypocrites:
How can you speak about good things when you are evil, because out of the abundance of your heart, your mouth speaks. The good person brings good things out of a good treasure the evil person brings evil things out of an evil treasure. I tell you on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word that you utter. Because by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned.
He doesn't mince his words, Jesus, when it comes to hypocrisy and there is some insight. He talks about a tree and He says, "Look a tree that has good fruit is actually a good tree inside. And a tree that has bad fruit is actually a bad tree inside." He was yelling at these religious hypocrites who are telling the people one thing and then doing another themselves.
Now you and I both know people who bear bad fruit.You can see it in their lives. We know them at work, we know them in our social lives, sometimes we know them at home. It doesn't matter how much bravado they use, doesn't matter how much they rationalise it and they brush it aside, you see some of the bad fruit and you have to say, "That is actually a bad tree."
And to be really honest, sometimes you and I bear bad fruit. If you and I have anger in our hearts, or malice, or envy, or hurts form the past, and c'mon guys if you are eying off every woman that walks past you down the street. Doesn't matter how we dress them up or rationalise them, they are still there.
I used to live in our house that used to back onto a really busy road, a noisy road. And after about six to twelve months we didn't notice the noise on the road. I know my aunty who lives in a house just near a railway line, we can be visiting here and having a cup of tea, and this loud train rattles by and we'll look at the noise and she doesn't even notice it.
And the same is true, sometimes with the bad fruit that we bear in our lives. We can live in a dung heap for six to twelve months or years and years and eventually you know what happens, we don't notice the smell. But here's the rub it still stinks. The bad stuff robs us of good things.
If I get angry with someone all the time it robs me reaping the fruit from the relationship. If I bear malice towards someone, it robs me of joy and peace. If a man has a wandering eyes, you know what it does, it really robs him and his wife of true intimacy in marriage. If someone has a stingy nature it robs them of the blessings that happen when we stretch to give to the poor and to God's work in faith and then God steps into our lives and blesses us.
Isn't it true? Doesn't matter how we try and rub it away, it is the way it is. There are kind of two parts to our lives that we looked at earlier this week, when we were looking at the apostle Peter in jail. Remember when the angel came to let him out and the angel said, "Listen Peter, get up, put on your sandals, put on your belt and put on your coat and follow me." And then the chains miraculously fell of his hands, and the gate just swung open and God sprung him from jail.
There were two parts to that story, the mundane, the bit where Peter had to get up, put on his robe and his belt and his sandals on and follow the angel. That was the mundane, the things that Peter could do for himself, which God wanted him to do for himself.
And then there was the miraculous - the angel showing up, the chains falling off.
And as you and I stand on the threshold of a new year, can I suggest something to you? Your life and my life are exactly like that. There is the mundane and the miraculous. And sometimes we just have to roll up our sleeves and deal with some of the mundane issues and some of the things that we can do for ourselves.I wonder whether part of that isn't spring cleaning our souls.
What is the mundane? Well I think it is naming the things that are wrong inside us. Owning up to them and acknowledging them, and taking responsibility for them. If you are someone that gets angry quickly at people put it on the table, and say, "God I get angry quickly with people. I am sorry I don't want to live my life like that. I don't want to be robbed of all the good things you have for me in this coming year and the years down the track just because I have this rotten thing in my soul."
And here is the miracle bit. It's almost impossible sometimes for you and I to change some of those deep rooted things, right inside of us that are wrong. And the miracle bit is that as we acknowledge it and we lay it on the table and say to God, "Look, I can't deal with this, I need a hand, help me."
As we hand them over to him, as we submit them to him, God steps in and God comes along and sometimes he does it quickly and miraculously. And at other times he does it over weeks and months and even years but he helps us to deal with those things.
And it is so good to be clean, it is so liberating. There is a whole new level of life and relationship with God. Come on, as you and I look forward to this year, what is it in your soul that needs spring cleaning?