A Different Perspective Official Podcast

• When Nobody Understands // The Best of the Best, Part 2

  We've all been misunderstood. Hey – Jesus was misunderstood. It's not an easy thing. We have good intentions, perhaps we don't execute those intentions perfectly, but all of a sudden the world falls down on us like a ton of bricks. Now over the last weeks on the program we had a look at the fast, well ... God doesn't always do things quite the way we want him to do. Sometimes we feel like crying out to God, "God! What are you doing? Why are you letting this happen to me? How long, our Lord, how long will this go on?" But you see, God has a plan for your life, for my life. And it's a good plan, a plan of getting up close to Him, a plan of being blessed and being a blessing to others. And yet, sometimes ... sometimes ... life can be awful, life can be really harsh and tough and I'm always conscious when I'm talking about God's blessing that someone's sitting there thinking to themselves, "Well I don't know whose life you're talking about buddy," or "Whose God are you talking about but it's certainly not mine". So this week on the program we're going to have a look at what it means to live the life that God always intended for us even when life's tough, even in the reality of life. We all go through those tough times sometimes, I do and the real question is when the chips are down is God still going to show up? When was the last time that you went through a difficult time in life? Conflict at home, in the family, or sickness or fear or the death of a loved one or loneliness? The list goes on doesn't it? There's not one of us who can't point to something difficult or hurtful in life, even when it looks like on the surface we're doing ok. That's the thing isn't it? When we're doing it tough people look at us on the outside, and you and I are pretty good at pretending that everything's ok and then we live out that lie, we live out that surface existence and the feeling wells up inside, no-one really understands what's going on in my life, nobody knows how I feel, I feel so not understood. I recently went through a tough time with the hours that I had to work, I had several really big things going on at the same time and there was about a four month period when I literally only had three days off. And when you're working seven days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day, now remember I'm no spring chicken, it's really tough. I love what I do but it was a grind, it was very tiring mentally and emotionally, it was exhausting stuff. Now that season is over but back then I remember going to Church and people would ask me, "How you doing Berni?" And sometimes I'd smile and say, "I'm fine." and other times I'd say, "Well you know, I'm working really long hours and as much as I enjoy what I'm doing with God, it's really tough, I'm finding it hard, it's tough on my wife Jacqui and on our marriage." And more often than not no-one really understood. And when we're at that point, when something is dominating our lives and affecting our lives and it hurts and it's difficult, it's tough when no-one understands us isn't it? Because we really would like someone to understand and we get to the point and we say, "Oh, ok God, tell me, how am I supposed to live the life that you always intended for me, a good life, a blessed life when I'm doing it tough and no-one really understands or worse still, they misunderstand us, they misunderstand our good intentions, they misunderstand who we are?" That's a good question because when we're doing it tough we desperately, desperately need someone to understand us, maybe not to do anything except listen and go, "Hmmm, I understand." But that empathy, knowing that there's someone else who just empathises with us, who is just prepared to sit and to listen and to cry with us through the difficult times is so important isn't it? I remember when I was going through really tough times in my life a decade ago, I was so blessed by a couple, a husband and a wife, who were prepared just to be with me and to weep with me when I wept and to laugh with me when I laughed. Can I tell you? These days that is very, very rare indeed, to experience that true emotional empathy and support. It's sad but true. People who are prepared to take the time and travel through the difficult times with us and be there and just cry with us when we need someone to do that for us. Everybody else is so busy, they haven't got time. Everybody else is so busy taking; they haven't got any time to do any giving. You can relate to that. So often I go to Church and I'm guilty of this too, you say, "How you going?" and people say, "I'm really busy, I'm really, really busy." Well that means that we're too busy to understand people who are hurting and for Jesus the most important thing of all is that we walk in love, that we walk sacrificially. We'll talk about that next week on the program. When we're too busy to do that, we're too busy to do the thing that Jesus wants us most to do and when everybody's busy taking and no-one's got time for us and we're hurting, we just want to scream, "God, what are you doing to me?" Let me truly tell you, there's only one person who always, always shows up and makes a difference, there's only one person with true empathy, true understanding, true emotional support that can make a difference 24/7 and that person is God. Sometimes people think that prayer is like a ritual, you have to know the formula, there has to be a key that unlocks the code to God's treasure chest. But have a listen to what Jesus said, "Don't be like all those other people who heap up empty phrases or who think that God will hear them because of all the great words they use, your Dad in Heaven already knows what you want even before you open your mouth to ask. Whenever you pray, just go quietly into a room on your own, shut the door, pray in secret and your Dad who sees in secret will reward you." Don't you love that? God already knows, He knows the hurt, He knows the pain, He knows what it feels like to be misunderstood before we even open our mouths and the promise of Jesus is, "Dad's in that place." When we go into that quiet room and close the door and pray and spend time with God in secret, our Dad in heaven will answer us, will respond, will be there because that's who He is, that's what He does, He's God. God knows everything and He's the God of pure love and pure grace who is always willing to listen, who knows our hearts but He also knows what we're going through. When Jesus was born in Bethlehem, He was a boy, He was a man, He grew up, He lived his life for you and me, He was misunderstood. He healed people on the Sabbath and they accused Him of being ungodly, He hung around with outcasts so they accused Him of being a glutton and a drunkard. He promised a new kingdom, the kingdom of God, so they tried to conscript Him to overthrow the Romans. He stirred up the religious hypocrites so they crucified Him. God is a God who knows what it's like to be misunderstood and in that secret, quiet place, experiencing something that you can't find anywhere else, that's where we'll find the understanding of a misunderstood God, the very same one that was prepared to go to the cross for you and for me. In that quiet, secret place when we experience that, it changes us deep inside, it's an experience like no other, God shines the light of His love and His understanding and His acceptance and His grace and it's part of His plan, there's nothing else quite like it. It's one of the most wonderful parts of living the life that God always intended.

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• Planting the Seed // The Best of the Best, Part 1

  Sometimes you can be going through a bit of a rough patch in life – a bit like a famine or a drought – and you wonder to yourself what God is up to? But sometimes, sometimes God is actually sitting there, waiting for YOU to do something. It's just fabulous to be together again at the start of a new week. Can I ask you, what do you want to get out of life? I mean when you stand back and survey the landscape called, "your life", the highs and the lows, what are some of the things that you'd love to see there? Relationships, achievements, family, career, money, a promotion, holiday? We're all different, but basically my hunch is that we kind of want the same sorts of things in life. We want health and happiness and fulfilment and a sense of belonging and a sense that we're needed, hope, a future. They're the main things aren't they? In a sense we want a harvest out of life, sure we expect to put in, sometimes we put in too much, other times not enough. But we want to get something out of life. Hmmm … a harvest! Back to your life for a minute, your landscape, the things that you're looking for - are they there? Are you reaping the harvest in your life that you're really hoping for? And if not, why not? I love going to lookouts, you get up high on a mountain somewhere and you look out over the hills and the valleys below and the green fields. There's one in particular I have in mind that I love going to, it's got these beautiful rolling green fields and you can see the ocean and the beaches in the distance. And yet if you look a little bit further you can see some great factory belching smog out into the atmosphere, and you can look over to the left and the sun will be shining over here and over to the right there's a storm going. It's something really uplifting to look out at the good and the bad and the ugly, and it's the same when we look at the landscape of life. When we stop and we get up on a vantage point and look across our lives, it's like looking at this landscape from the lookout, all the bits and pieces. Life's like that landscape, there's the good and the bad and the ugly and in some parts of our lives there's sunshine, fabulous! And you look in another part of your life and there's storm clouds and thunder and lightning and rain. All the different parts of life, family and how we feel inside, our contentment and security and the friends we have and the work we do, all those bits. What do we want out of life? Peace, health, love, pretty basic things actually, and you look at that landscape and maybe in one or two areas those basic things can be missing. You know what I'm talking about. Maybe marriage is not everything it's cracked up to be; maybe work you're so sick to death of it, it's boring, the routine the humdrum; maybe inside you just feel a lostness or a downness that you don't understand why. We go through these things, these are life, and they can happen right alongside, right in parallel with, right at the same time as the other good things. I can be having a fantastic relationship with my wife and not enjoying my work, or visa versa. Or both of those are fine but one of our kids is having some trouble at the moment. We want to have good harvests in our life, but sometimes right now, it's not what we want it to be. And before we can have a harvest we need to plant a seed. There's a great story, if you have a Bible you can read it later, you can go to Genesis Chapter 26, right at the beginning of the Bible. By the way if you don't have one you can go to a website. Biblegateway is the website, and you can read all sorts of different translations of the Bible on-line, good website. Anyhow, you can read about it. It's a story of Isaac who was Abraham's son, Abraham was the father I guess, of the nation of Israel. And Isaac was living in a place where there was famine and drought and he made some mistakes in his life that were exactly the same mistakes that his Dad, Abraham, had made. Isn't it the way sometimes, a chip off the old block? We pick up the good traits of Mum and Dad and we pick up, frankly, the bad ones too. And Isaac blew it! You know he hung his wife out to dry, which was what Abraham had done to Isaac's Mum. And there's a famine and there's a drought in the land, and Isaac wants to run away. He said, "Ah I've had enough of this, let's go somewhere like Egypt, which is much better than this place that God's got me at the moment." But God said, "No actually I don't want you to do that, I want you to stay because I've got a plan for you Isaac, and My plan is, even though there's a drought going on, and even though you've made this huge blunder with your wife, I'm actually going to bless you in this place. Now that's easy for God to say, you know God is there in air- conditioned comfort in heaven and we're down here in the drought and in the famine and in the mess right? And we can sometimes hear God say it, sometimes you'll hear it through listening to a voice like mine, sometimes you'll hear it by just sitting down and spending some time quietly with God. And God says, "You know something I'm going to bless you, I know you can't see it at the moment but I am going to bless you." And I've felt, I've thought, "You know God that's really easy for you to say but I just can't see it at the moment, you know, my place is a mess you know, I just can't see this blessing." Isaac wanted to run away and give up but he stayed, and not only did he stay but right in the middle of the drought he sowed some seed. It said, "Isaac sowed seed in that land," that is in the land that God picked for him! And in the same year he reaped a hundred fold. A hundred fold! Things weren't going well; when things don't go well for us what do we want to do? A – Give up; B – run away; C – bully the people around us into submission; D – all of the above, right? We kind of don't feel like sowing good seed when things are not going well. But if you want a harvest we have to sow seed. It's a basic principle of life, it's a God principle, whatever you sow you reap. You sow good things, you reap good things, you sow bad things, you reap bad things, it's not rocket science. It's not just in the Bible but its obvious to us all in life, I mean there might be a situation at work that you have with a colleague, I know that things can get really tense at work, I've experienced that, praise God I don't experience it now, but I've been there. I've seen how people get feral at work and want to rip each other apart, and when there's anger at work, if we sow anger what do you reckon we're going to reap? Anger. On the other hand when there's anger and tension at work what if you and I sow peace, what if you and I sow blessing, what if you and I sow kindness? What are we going to reap then? What if amidst the feralness of work we sow a seed of gentleness? What's the harvest going to look like then? Can it be any worse than what it would have been if we'd have sown anger? If there's some part of our marriage that's unhealthy how does it go when we sow criticism within the marriage? Come on wives, how does it go when you peck, peck, peck at your husband? Does he respond well? Does it do it for him? Does he become better when he gets hen-pecked? Not on your Nelly! He closes down, he pushes away. When there's tension in a marriage what if we sow anger? Well, we're going to get anger back. Now let me ask you, what if we sow unconditional love? What if we sow kindness and gentleness and intimacy? Sowing and reaping is blindingly, glimpsingly obvious, it's one of God's basic principles of life. There's a time for sowing seed and there's a time for harvesting. It's at natural as night following the day. And when we look back at our lives, when we look back at the landscape of our lives the bits that aren't working at the moment we just want there to be a harvest in there without there being a seed time. But harvest comes from planting seeds, and sometimes we have to plant seeds in a drought, in a famine. Yes it's a big risk, yes we don't always feel like it, but the God I know is a God of blessing. He lets us travel through stuff, he lets us wear the consequences but He is a God of abundant blessing. Not some sugar daddy but one that involves us in the blessing. That's why He has seed time, it's our bit, it's our faith step. When we plant the seed in the middle of the famine, God comes along and says, "You know something, you obeyed me. You honoured me, I'm going to bless you." In the midst of the famine, Isaac planted seed in that land, and the same year he reaped a hundred fold. A hundred fold!

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• 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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