A Different Perspective Official Podcast

So many people, when they open their Bibles, run into a significant problem. They don't quite understand what's going on – that's certainly the problem I used to run into. It's not that I'm stupid, it's just that a lot of it didn't make all that much sense to me. So if you find yourself in that boat from time to time, stick with me, because today, we're going to make your Bible a whole bunch more accessible to you.
I have to tell you, that thing they call the Bible was a real problem for me. I mean, first coming to grips with the fact that it is what it says that it is, the Word of God but then, just getting into it. It's made up of 66 separate books written over about 1,500 years in different times, in different places and different cultures. So there are words and names and places and concepts and ways of thinking … well, we're not always familiar with them.
We're continuing in our series 'Power Unlimited' – because that's what God's Word brings into our lives so today, we're going to get down and really practical on just how to get into the Bible because unless we do, we're going to miss out on much of the power that God wants to pour into our lives.
Over the years I've discovered a few very simple helps or resources that have made such a difference in making sense of God's Word. You see, it turns out there's a whole bunch of people much smarter than me who have done some great research and put the information together in such easy usable ways and all their work makes getting into God's Word, the Bible, so much easier for the likes of you and me. Today I just want to share some of those resources with you.
I remember twenty or so years ago, just after I became a Christian, I started attending a tiny little Baptist Church in the southern suburbs of Sydney. A little place called Oyster Bay. Our pastor, Phil, was a passionate and gifted Bible teacher and that man has had a huge impact on my life.
Now as well as Sunday services, the Church used to have these little home Bible studies and we'd meet one night a week in someone's house. In our small group, five of us would gather together. And at the time, the particular little home fellowship that I'd joined, was studying the Old Testament book of Hosea.
So we'd lob in there each Wednesday evening, we'd have a cup of tea and some fellowship and then we'd sit down and do a Bible study together. And right through that book, over and over and over again, Hosea talks about Ephraim – that word is mentioned 29 times by Hosea. So I remember asking these people, most of them had been Christians for a good many years, "Okay, who or what is this Ephraim thing?"
I mean, Hosea kept talking about it and so it seemed to be quite central to what he was saying. But you know something, no-one could tell me who or what Ephraim was. Now it turns out the Ephraim was one of the tribes of Israel, Ephraim was one of Joseph's sons and there's a whole history around this tribe and how they rebelled against God, but we didn't know that in that Bible study so a lot of what God was saying to us, through this amazing, powerful book of Hosea, well it was frankly lost on us. And that sort of thing happens a lot more than you might think.
Consider the story of the Good Samaritan. It loses its whole meaning if we don't understand the Samaritans and who they were and what the Jews thought of them. Now when Jesus told that story to the assembled masses they all knew the Samaritan story but we don't, it's not natural to us. And there are names and places and concepts and ways of thinking in the Bible that are foreign to us, because we're separated from them by time and culture. It might have made sense to the people back then but not to us now. And unless we understand those things, we miss out on the richness, on the gravity, on the power of what God is trying to say to us.
I remember coming to grips with the Jewish system of blood sacrifice in the Old Testament. Now I kind of think about blood sacrifice and it's pretty ghastly to me here and now, but it's something I really had to understand to understand what Jesus did for me on the Cross. So I decided I was going to find out, not just skim the surface, not read through a story and have them talk about Ephraim or Samaria or all these other things I didn't know about and miss out on what God was trying to say to me through the story.
Now these accounts were written such a long time ago and God has preserved them and kept them accurate for us here and now but there is indeed a gap of culture and time in history that we have to bridge to understand completely what's happening in what's been written. I mean after all if the Bible is God's Word and if God is speaking to us through it, I decided I needed to know what He was saying. And surprisingly, that's not as difficult as I thought it would be.
Right now, I'm going to talk about a handful of really simple resources that made absolutely the world of difference. The first one was my Bible, a simple English translation, not the King James with the 'thees' and 'thou arts', there are so many good contemporary language translations available to you and me today. The New International Version or the NIV as it's called, is really popular. I happen to use the New Revised Standard Version (the NRSV). There's a translation called The Message which is really in here and now language. The Contemporary English Version (CEV). The New English Translation (NET). Which one is the best one? The one you're going to read.
You can get a thing called A Study Bible, it's got not just the words of the Bible, but it's also got a huge amount of resources packed into it. It explains the meanings of different words, there are notes and maps and cross references. They're really good, they don't cost a whole bunch more than a Bible with just the Bible words. So if you want to do more than just skim across the surface, it's really good to have one of those – a Study Bible. Check them out.
One of the most helpful features in a Study Bible is a summary of each book: who wrote it, when, to whom and why because context is so important isn't it? Before I read Ephesians I read four or five paragraphs in my Study Bible which explain the context and all of a sudden the book of Ephesians made a whole bunch more sense to me. A Study Bible is a really worthwhile investment and it's not much more than an ordinary Bible. You can get one from a Christian bookshop or you can buy one online. I happen to have an electronic one these days on my tablet device.
The second resource is my Bible dictionary. Now I happen to purchase a Bible dictionary called the Holman Bible Dictionary, years ago – it's just one, single volume. You can get Bible dictionaries that are 25 volumes, mine is just one volume and it has pictures. So when I was reading and it talked about the Temple in the Bible, I could go to my Bible dictionary and look at it and see a picture and plans and explaining the different parts. So I'm able to read a few paragraphs in just a few minutes, and I'm there, I understand what the writers saying about the Temple, about the Holy of Holies, wow!
When the Bible talks about Ephraim I look it up, half a column, three minutes, I know who or what Ephraim is. The story of the Good Samaritan; who were the Samaritans? What was their relationship to the Jews? Ah! That's what Jesus meant by the story of the Good Samaritan.
And lastly, the third resource was a Bible timeline. It's one of these things you can fold out and it's about four pages wide that show the chronology of the Bible. You read about King David, when was he king? Who was King before him? Who was King after him? What else was going on? Which prophets were writing when David was alive? And all of a sudden you put the whole Bible thing in time sequence, that's huge.
And just to top things off, let me tell you about two stunning websites. The first is biblegateway.com (https://www.biblegateway.com) where you can compare different Bible translations. The second is studylight.org (https://www.studylight.org), it has Bible dictionaries online, the meanings of Greek and Hebrew words, and so many more great resources. All free. So let me ask you? Do you take Jesus seriously? If you do then we need to take the Bible seriously. And for just a small investment on your part in just a few simple resources, they pay such huge dividends in hearing and understanding what God is saying to us today through His Word.

God's Word is packed full of power … power unlimited … to transform your life. But one of the biggest problems people have with the Bible is understanding it. Making sense of it. Knowing where it comes from, and where what they're reading today fits into the big picture. Well, I think it's time we did something about that.
We've all heard of those word association tests that psychologists use. You know, they say 'black', you say 'white'; they say 'rabbit' and you say 'carrot'; day/night; God/mmm love; devil/mmm evil; Bible/hmm … Bible? How do you respond to that? Stuffy, old, irrelevant? Well, different people will have some different views but actually in Australia where I live, the Bible is one of the least trusted of all historical documents.
Over the last week and a bit on the program/ over the last few weeks on the program we've been talking about the incredible power that we unlock, when we read the Bible. But this thing that we call "the Bible", it's a big book, it's massive and it can be daunting. So today I thought it might be useful just to have a look to see what this Bible is exactly.
I want to share with you a secret, it's sad but true. I never read a book cover to cover until I was in my early twenties. I managed to get through school and university and did pretty well I might add, without ever reading a book from beginning to end. I remember at university, in first year English, we studied the book Wuthering Heights which absolutely bored me to tears, I'm sorry and I never opened the book once.
There are companies that publish crib notes, you know the summary of the book and a summary of what's in it and a summary of what some of the critics say, so I just quickly read those, crib notes, wrote essays and did, by and large, reasonably well. And I never, ever liked libraries either. You know how libraries have this kind of dusty, dank smell; all of them are the same. Every library on the planet has the same smell. I thought about it for a while, I thought 'Berni, why don't you like libraries? Why did it take you so long to read books?' The answer I guess has two parts.
Firstly, libraries for me always felt really big and inaccessible. They have tens of thousands of books and in the old days when I was at university, they had card systems for accessing, for finding things, I mean these days they have computers. The old card systems had what they call the Dewey Classification system and finding anything just took so incredibly long. And secondly, when you did find the stuff, there was always so much of it, there was so much time involved to, I don't know, look through all those books and research them. I mean, some people are natural book worms, well I'm not. I still frankly don't like libraries. I'm sorry if you're a librarian, I just don't like libraries. I haven't darkened the doorstep of one since I finished my last degree quite a few years ago now.
You know something; I think for a lot of people the Bible is exactly like that. It feels big and inaccessible. There are many, many people who wouldn't mind having a read but, for goodness sakes, where do you start? Well today let's break it down a bit, let's make it a bit more accessible. I remember when I started Bible College only a few months after becoming a Christian, everyone took for granted that we knew about the Bible. The reality was, I didn't and my hunch is, I wasn't alone. Let's unpack it a bit, let's demystify it a bit. All of a sudden you know it becomes a whole bunch more accessible.
The thing that we call the Bible is made up of 66 different books written by different people over somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 years. That's the kind of period over which the Bible was written. And it wasn't just written by different people but at different times and the last book was written, well almost 2,000 years ago.
There are essentially two parts to the Bible, this was complete news to me when I first opened it, the Old Testament and the New Testament, and when I started at Bible College I didn't know which one was which. The Old Testament, well the Old Testament is God's story and the story of how He interacted with and engaged with His chosen people, the Israelites. The Old Testament is written completely B.C., before Christ, before Jesus came to be on earth with us here. What Christians call the Old Testament is in fact exactly the same as the Jewish Hebrew scriptures, Jews still use those same scriptures today, Christians call it the Old Testament.
It's written mostly in the original language of Hebrew, the language of the Jews. Now there's small parts of books like Daniel which is written in a language called Aramaic which is the language that Jesus actually spoke but by and large, the Old Testament was originally written in the language of Hebrew. And what we have today, the thing that we call the Old Testament is an English translation of that. Now there are lots of funny name books, Deuteronomy and Judges and Chronicles and there's Ezekiel, there are 39 separate books and there are kind of 4 main parts of the Old Testament.
The first 5 books, Genesis to Deuteronomy, are the Jewish or Hebrew Law, the Torah.
And then you go Joshua through Ezra and Nehemiah and that's kind of the history of what God did and how His people responded.
And then after that are the wisdom books, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Lamentations.
And the rest of the books in the Old Testament are written by men called Prophets. Men whom God called to call His people back to Him.
That's the Old Testament, it's a story of God engaging with Gods people. And the New Testament is 27 books. Now, it was mostly written in the language of Greek.
The first 4 books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are gospel accounts, they're the historical account of Jesus' life and His ministry.
And the next book, the book of Acts is the story of the first 20 or so years of the Church after Jesus rose again to be with His Father.
Then there's a whole bunch of letters called Epistles from people like Peter and John and Paul, written to Churches that they were involved in or in some cases, to individuals.
This may be old hat to some, but I know to many, just a simple understanding of the basic structure of the Bible is going to be a real help. I know that when I was a new Christian, no one ever bothered to explain it to me – I wish they had.
Now some people might be saying to themselves, that's all well and good, but how accurate is the Bible. Because before the printing press was ever invented by Gutenberg in 1450, the Bible – there's this massive thing, the Old Testament and New Testament – was transcribed over and over by hand by people called Scribes who copied them by hand. It's hard to imagine.
But these days, there's a science called Textual Criticism. It studies whether any errors crept into the Bible as it was copied through all these generations manuscripts. And what it tells us, is that having studied thousands of manuscripts, the levels of accuracy are remarkable. I mean it's a science, people have done it. There are very, very few words or sentences where there is any doubt what was originally written.
And blessedly these days, this thing called the Bible has been translated into easy to read, contemporary versions. No more thee's and thou's – great, modern day, accurate, easy to understand translations. And did you know that in the Bible, over half of the 66 books, over half, you can read in half and hour or less.
Now look, in a few minutes we can't hope to do anything but scrape the surface. Today we've just talked about some basic factual stuff. No-one really taught me this stuff. I remember becoming a Christian and going and sitting in a Church and people just teach from the Bible which is wonderful but no-one ever explained to me that it was 66 books written by a whole bunch of people over different periods of time. That some of it was stories and history and some of it was letters and some of it was poetry. But when you simplify and demystify all that stuff, it turns out that it's just a wonderful book.
And with the many contemporary translations, it's much, much easier to read than I ever thought. As I started to read the Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament, I was completely blown away by this amazing Jesus. Who would have thought … the Bible.

So, we've been chatting on the program recently about laying hold of the unlimited power that God wants to give those who love Him. Great … but come on, how do you actually lay hold of that power? Well … the answer may not be what you think.
A few years ago now, I had the opportunity to speak with a group of high school students at the opening of their college and senior campus. The subject of my presentation was this: 'How to Get More out of Your Parents'. I just remember that when I was at high school, speakers at those functions were so boring. I wanted to grab their attention and it certainly did that.
A few of the parents, I have to tell you, were listening pretty closely as well but the heart of the presentation was this. Our parents, at least the greatest majority of them, are hard wired to bless us, but one of the things teenagers do, I know I did, is rebel against them and that stops the flow of parental blessing dead in its tracks.
I shared some insights with these young men and women about how, in a very practical way, they can respond to their parents' love at the same time as growing up, to get that relationship and that blessing flowing again. You could see some lights going on as they came to grips with how to respond to their parents. It turns out, our relationship with God is no different.
Over the last little while on the program, we've been working our way through a series of messages called "Power Unlimited". Over the last twenty or so years I've spent a lot of time studying God's Word, the 66 different books in the Bible and so I've had the chance to mull it all over. And whilst I know I've really just scratched the surface, the more I think about it, the Bible appears to me to be about 4 things. Who God is, God's will and purpose for us, who you and I are in his heart and fourthly, the thing I want to talk about today is, how we can respond to God. And as it turns out, that's the key to laying hold of the unlimited power that He has for us.
Now some people think that all the Bible has to offer, is a bunch of rules and regulations. But as I've read my way through the Bible, what I've discovered is that, how we can respond to God isn't the main thing, it kind of drops out of all the other three; it's a natural consequence of who God is, His will and purpose, who I am and as we get our hearts around those things, well for me at least, my heart just wanted to explode and respond to Him.
We're going to unpack this last one today because you know something; it's not a rules and regulations thing. I don't stay faithful to my wife because I have to, I do, but that's not why I stay faithful to her. I stay faithful to her because I want to; it's my response to her love and to our promise to one another. Not a difficult thing to do at all, because she loves me and one of the ways that I respond to that love is through my faithfulness to her.
It's the same deal with God but you know something, it's not good enough to know that we ought to respond or even that we want to respond, we need to know how to respond. So often in marriages the husband wants to show love to the wife and the wife wants to show love to the husband, but they're actually two very different people and they don't know how. A lot of marriages fall apart simply because people don't know how to love one another.
We were talking about teenagers earlier; nobody ever explained to me what was going on when I was growing up. You know, we start with a total dependence on our parents, we're a baby, we have breast milk, we're in nappies and progressively we grow to be independent of them.
It's a natural thing to grow up and become an adult and to be independent of your parents. Jesus quoted the Old Testament, he said:
Matthew 19:5 For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they'll become one flesh.
In those teenage years, we're kind of almost adults but not really, we're still dependant on our parents financially. We're still under their authority and discipline; we still live in their home. Those awkward in–between years are times when a lot of people rebel against their parents in all sorts of ways. You know the teenage roll of the eyes, 'I know it all and what would my parents know'.
We continually do things parents ask us not to and we yet do them anyway. We leave the empty coke can on the sink or the underwear on the floor in the bathroom, whatever it is that a teenager does that drives their parents nuts, it's almost like if they know that it drives their parents nuts, they'll do it more. I did that. We establish a pattern of behaviour that's rebellious and so you get into a rut that you don't know how to get out of. In the short time we spent together, these young people and I, I just gave them some practical advice on how to honour their parents so that the blessing will flow to them.
You know something; I think it's the same in our relationship with God. It's the little things we do or we don't do. The way we think, the way we behave, the way we hold onto things and the pride and the selfishness. We can understand God's love, perhaps we even understand what Jesus did on the cross for us but unless we know how to respond to that, we may not respond properly. And sometimes we know but we just can't bring ourselves to respond.
The Apostle John explained how to love God:
1 John 5:3 This is love for God, to obey His commandments and His commands aren't burdensome because everyone born of God overcomes the world."
Here's what a regular pattern of Bible reading and prayer has done for me: it's changed me progressively. Just when I'm going through a tough time in a relationship I read something like this,
1 John 4:18 There is no fear in love but perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears isn't made perfect in love, we love because God first loved us. If anyone says 'I love God' yet hates his brother, he's a liar because anyone who doesn't love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he hasn't seen and he has given us this command, "Whoever loves God must also love his brother.
You know, when you're going through a tough relationship and you want to rip someone's head off, you pick up your Bible and you read that, you go 'God's speaking to me about how I should respond to His love.' Just when I'm struggling with this or that, I turn the next page and He speaks to me right into that struggle, right into that need, right into that 'I want to go my way' and God says, 'but if you want to respond to my love, this is my way. It's a much narrower path, it's a much more difficult path, but these are my ways and my ways are not always your ways, my thoughts are not always your thoughts'.
His quiet, still voice speaks into our heart with a power and gentleness and calls us in His direction, not our own and for me it's always been that God's spoken to me in a way that my heart just wants to receive what He says. In a way that nobody else could speak and He does that through His Word, the Bible. He speaks in a way that changes me, that fills me and equips me and prepares me and encourages me. When I read God's word I'm not just a better preacher, I'm a better husband, I'm a better father, I'm a better work colleague. God teaches me how to respond.
Now I have to tell you, this is still very much a work in progress and others no doubt are much further down the track than I am but that's not the point. Like a surgeon He's taking out the cancers, the cancers of sin, reconstructing, repairing, healing, encouraging. That's what happens when we go to Him and listen to what He has to say. He teaches us and shows us how to respond when we spend time in His Word – He just does!
That's why there is such incredible power in the living Word of the living God.

They say that following Jesus isn't easy. And not just "they". In fact Jesus said that following Jesus wouldn't be easy. Because following Jesus means swimming against the tide of popular opinion. Following Jesus means, all too often … in fact most of the time … going in the opposite direction. That's why we need power … power unlimited … to follow Jesus.
Last week on the program, we were chatting about the unlimited power that's available to you and me through God's Word. It seems like a bit of a crazy notion, this idea that you can find incredible power, unlimited power in a book. But the Bible, well … the Bible isn't just a book. It's the living Word of the living God and when God speaks, amazing things happen.
This is what the Bible says about the Bible – two key verses that change everything about how we look at God's Word:
Hebrews 4:12: Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
2 Tim 3:16-17: All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
It never ceases to amaze me how people who call themselves Christians think that they can live their lives in peace and joy and power and service … by never, ever opening the Bible. By never, ever drinking in the living, active Word of God that helps us discern the intentions of our hearts. Because let's face it, it's in our heart that we deceive ourselves. It's in our heart that we conceive sin and give birth to it. And so we do need teaching, we do need reproof and correction and training in righteousness in order to be proficient and equipped for every good work.
What I've discovered in my life is that there are fundamental flaws and weaknesses in my personality, that, try as I might, I am powerless to change. And yet, when I let God's Word wash through my heart, when I allow the Holy Spirit to write God's Word on my heart, He does things that I could never do, He unleashes power … power unlimited … to do the things I cannot do. That's what happens when we listen to God through His Word. Because God calls into existence the things that do not yet exist (Romans 4:17).
Think about it, how did God create the universe?
God said "Let there be light and there was light." (Genesis 1:4)
God said "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters. (Gen 1:6)
God said "Let dry land appear" and it was so (Gen 1:9)
God said … God said … God said … and so the universe was created. In other words God spoke the whole universe, the trillions of stars, the great lights, all the creatures and plants on the earth … God said … and it was so. That's the power of God's Word. And if that isn't power unlimited, I don't know what is.
But … there always seems to be a "but" doesn't there? … but you and I, all too often, we want that power for all the wrong reasons. We want it to make our lives better, rather than to empower us to sacrifice our lives for Christ's sake. We want it to get ahead, to overcome this, to get that … rather than to take our Cross and follow Jesus. I said at the beginning of the program that Jesus said that following Him would be hard. Here it is:
Matthew 16:24-26: Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life.
Let me ask you plainly, quietly but very honestly: Why do you want God's power, God's unlimited power, in your life? 
Is it in order to change the difficult circumstances, the difficult people the things out there, the things around you that are causing you grief? Or is it in order that God would change you, to empower you, to enable you to be the light of the world, the salt of the earth? Is it that the Holy Spirit would give you the power to take up your Cross and lay down your life, to potentially lose it all, for Christ's sake?
This whole series of messages Power Unlimited, comes with a warning. Don't try this at home, unless you're prepared to lose it all because this wild, untamed, Jesus, is radically counter-cultural and He's calling His followers to a radical, counter-cultural life. A life that could cost you, will cost you, everything.
Have a listen to these couple of encounters that Jesus had with the religious establishment. It's worth taking a few moments to see how Jesus upset the prevailing culture of His day:
Matthew 12:1-8: At that time Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath; his disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. When the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, "Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath." He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him or his companions to eat, but only for the priests. Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath."
He left that place and entered their synagogue; a man was there with a withered hand, and they asked him, "Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath?" so that they might accuse him. He said to them, "Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the Sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath." Then he said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and it was restored, as sound as the other. But the Pharisees went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.
Do you get it? This is what got Him killed. This is why they crucified Him … because He shone light where there was darkness; because He brought truth where there were lies … and that upset people. Have you noticed how vitriolic people, society, culture becomes when you stand up for the rights of the unborn child, or when you speak with love of the wonder of God's plan for marriage to be a sublime union between one man and one woman, or when you pull back from the filthy jokes that people tell at work? Have you noticed that?
Or have you noticed about the "dangerous religious teachings" in schools that people talk about these days in the news … when it was Christians who are responsible for taking education far and wide across this globe, founding schools, founding hospitals, caring for the needy. Have you noticed?
Jesus isn't calling you to an easy life my friend, make no mistake about it. You follow Jesus and you are going to upset people, and they will come against you like nothing else on earth. And what you're going to need the power for, is to make it through in love, to continue shining the light of God's love into this earth, despite the opposition, the persecution, the difficult people, the difficult circumstances.
As Adrian Pass wrote: You're going to need the joy to bear the pain and sorrow. And yet, when we get God's Word into us, the promise of Jesus, the Son of God Himself, is this:
John 15:7-8: 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. 
Did you get that? If the Word of God abides in you, dwells in you, has say in you, and if you abide in Jesus – you can ask for whatever you wish – whatever – and it will be done for you. There it is. Power unlimited. But not to do the things that you want, because once God's Word abides in you, you'll be asking for the things that He wants. Let your will be done on this earth … as it is in heaven. Power unlimited.

One of the most perplexing questions that each of us faces in life at some point, is: Who am I? What was I made to do? All too often we go looking for the answers in all the wrong places, and the image that we build of ourselves, the understanding that we have of who we are, becomes twisted and distorted. That one thing has ruined … is ruining … many a life.
One of the things that many people ponder in life is this question, "Who am I?" We have so many pictures and images of who we should be thrust under our noses each day … and yet none of them ring true, so we end up feeling a bit like refugees, lost. The media and the advertisers, they want to define success for us. They want to tell us what it means to be open-minded. They want to tell us what we should aspire to. They want to tell us what a happy, well adjusted family looks like, and what beauty looks like and what we have to achieve, who we have to be, what we have to look like, to be successful.
They tell us if we don't look like this, we haven't made it, but we will if we buy their product and I don't know about you, but I can get so lost in that maze because my life never quite looks like those images of success that they wave under my nose. And we compare ourselves with other people, people who look successful and so often we come to the conclusion that we aren't. And so that question, "Who am I?" rattles around in that empty, hollow void inside. Who am I?
Have you ever been to one of those fairs, you know where they have Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds and amusements and sideshows? And in side-show alley, they have those distorted mirrors. You know, you walk in front of one and you look all tall and skinny or short and fat or all wobbly and wavy. They're good fun for a little while, about a minute or two. But imagine, imagine if our mirrors at home were like that, all distorted … not good.
I remember when I was working as an IT consultant one of the clients I used to work for, the front door of their offices had this glass that was a perfect distortion of me. It just made me look a bit slimmer and a bit taller, you know I could have stood in front of that door all day and looked at myself. We'd like to have a mirror like that at home, wouldn't we? Or would we?
My hunch is, whenever we get a distorted image of ourselves, of who we are, that's not a good thing even if we happen to like the distorted image better than the real one. For example, the distorted image that society puts up that you can be whoever you want to be, it's all up to you, it's all out there, just go and be whoever you want to be.
I'm 5 foot, 9 inches or 174 cm tall, so it doesn't matter how much I want to be a basketball player, I'm never going to be a basketball player. In fact there are some things in life that I am decidedly not good at. If I try to be those things, it would be a bad fit. Maybe that's why so many people aren't happy, because they're trying to do jobs or be someone that they're quite simply not cut out to be. Aspiring to something that we're never going to be any good at is one of the worst things that we can do in the world. I wonder if that's why there are so many people, who literally hate their jobs.
I was looking at a recent 'job satisfaction' survey on the internet. Have a listen to these stats: 45% of workers say that they're either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their jobs. You know what that means? That means that 55%, or over half, aren't.
Of those 45% who said they were happy, less than half again, in fact only 20% said that they felt really passionate about their jobs. That means that 80% of people don't feel passionate about their jobs and 33%, fully a third believed they'd reached a dead end in their careers, there was no hope for a future. 21% were eager to change careers.
I think that these statistics are a tragedy. The vast majority of people aren't passionate about what they do every day. So many people aren't enjoying their lives. But …. let's look at the flipside of that coin. There's a whole bunch of people wandering around in life, believing with every fibre of their being, that they're worthless. 'Oh, I'm only a stay at home mum. I'm only a clerk. I'm not as smart or as good looking or as talented or as successful or as wealthy or whatever as the next person.'
So many people and advertisers and product manufacturers and self styled guru's out there want to tell us who we should be and how we get there and if we aren't we need to get onto their program. Amidst all of that, here's a question, who am I? Who are you? In the cosmos, in the scheme of things, how do you define your worth and who you actually are?
And if you're living your life that way, then you are living a powerless life. A life that will, ultimately, count for nothing. In a very real sense, that was the life that I was living, until I discovered what God said about me. How God sees me. What His view of me from Heaven's balcony looks like. And that's something that you find in the Bible over and over again.
I want to set you a challenge today, to read Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 – only a few pages – and to write down all the things that just those three chapters say about you. Let me just give you the first few:
You are a saint, grace and peace are yours, you are already blessed with every spiritual blessing, you were chosen before the creation of the world, predestined, adopted into God's family, redeemed, forgiven, God's grace is being lavished on you, wisdom and understanding are yours, God's will is made known to you … and we haven't even arrived yet, at the tenth verse of the first chapter.
Do you get it? The Bible presents a radically different view of who you are. The Bible tells you who God says you are. So instead of believing the distorted images that the world reflects back at you, you can see, a crystal clear, accurate representation of who you are. As one of my Bible College lecturers, Dr Barry Chant, often used to say – you and I need to ditch our self image, and develop a faith image, by discovering and believing what God says about you.
Because when you know who you really are, who you are in Christ, you will have laid hold of the power to be who God made you to be. It's a power that will completely and utterly and radically transform your life.
You see God is no other pedlar of good philosophies or belief systems; He's not some distorted mirror of low self–esteem or unrealistic stereotypes. If God is truly God, if God made you and me, how does He see us? The answer to that question tells us who we really are.
And not knowing who we are is like trying to navigate your place from A to B, with an inaccurate map. Blind Freddy can see that that's no way to live life. I come back again, to the many people I speak to about the problems that they're experiencing in life. When I ask them … how often do you read your Bible, they invariably tell me, in a low voice, with obvious embarrassment … Well, not very often.
Okay then, so when was the last time you opened your Bible and spent just five minutes listening to what God wants to tell you? The answer? For many it's months and even years ago.
Who am I? If that's a question that you want the answer to, a question let me say that you want the right answer to, if you want an accurate map for your life, then the only place that you're going to find it is in God's Word.
Because when we come to His word, the Bible with questions like "Who am I?", His Spirit breathes those truths into our hearts. I can't do that for you, only you can do that with Him, only He can do that for you and that stuff is the stuff that's in the Bible because all of us who are led by God's spirit are children of God.
So let me take you back to that challenge. Open your Bible, go to Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 in the New Testament. Read them. And write down everything that you find in those few sort pages that tell you who you are. I found thirty statements about my identity. Let's see how many you can find. Right them down, ponder them, believe them … and tell me then if you don't find power unlimited to live your life.