A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Some people are trapped by the past – and that ruins their present and robs them of their future. But Jesus has a plan. It's a good plan. A plan for our welfare and not our harm. A plan for a future full of hope.
The past, some people look back at their past with a fondness, they remember their childhood with great joy but the more I chat with people the more I firm up on my belief that it's simply not the case for most people. The more I chat with people the more I come to realise that for many, many people the hold that the things of the past have over their lives is ruining their present and robbing them of their future and man that is such a tragedy. It was never meant to be like that.
As we saw yesterday on the program God wants us to have a new life, a fresh start when we put our faith in Jesus. Completely new, that's why His Word says in the second letter to the Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 17:
If anyone is in Christ right there is a new creation. Behold old things have passed away and all things are new.
If you've been tuning in over this past week you'll know that my guest on the program again today is Mike Ricchini and we've been on his life's journey, a little bit, as much as we can in the short times we've had.
He was born into some really tough circumstances, foster care, adoption, the victim of some deep racial prejudices, all those things have an impact on us and so we've been chatting with him about that, if you've missed any of those interviews I'll let you know at the end of the program how you can listen to them.
But right now Mike welcome again to the program.
Mike: Thank you.
Berni: Mate, the lies that you were told when you were growing up, when you were like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, what did they do to how you saw your future? Did you even see a future for yourself? What was that like?
Mike: I did see a future. I've always wanted to be a teacher for kids in the schools and I've always had that as my goal for life but often times going through school there were always kids that were better than me. They're always the ones that say, "Yep I've got better grades than you" or "Dude you're never going to make it that far that's why you're going to be a teacher, you'll never end up in something successful because only the teachers are the ones that suffered at school." So I often viewed myself as the stupid one, the one that's dumb because the only thing I could do is become a teacher.
Berni: So you had this dream if I can call it that, the heart to become a teacher. Did you ever think you'd realise the dream, did you ever get, did you ever think it would happen?
Mike: I did. Since I was in middle school which is grade six through eight I've always been working with my dad, my Dad's a teacher also so I've been working with him. Even through high school I started interning at my school, helping with the kids, helping any way I could with kids.
Berni: That is awesome. Isn't interesting how God takes who He's made us to be and puts a dream on our heart? I mean different people receive their dreams at different times. I never dreamt that I'd be doing what I'm doing now but there was a point in my life where God gave me very specific that dream and calling in my life and even though there had been lots and lots of times where you think it's never going to happen, it's just not, I never stopped believing, like you I never stopped believing that it would happen.
Can I encourage you, when I heard you speak the other Sunday and you'd never preached at a Church right?
Mike: No.
Berni: I was blown away by how well you communicated; you have an amazing gift of communication I have to tell you. To be able to get up the first time you preach at a Church, to be able to preach such a corker of a message is just awesome. It took me forty years just to realise my gig in life is being a communicator. I hope you realise it much earlier and you're much quicker at it than me because you have an awesome future in communicating God's love and communicating God's truth. And your background, this tough background, Hispanic kid, mum's fifteen, drug addict, all that stuff, that's woven into the fabric of who you are; it makes you who you are and it gives you an awesome gift.
Sorry I'm just, we're just chatting here, if anyone is listening that's cool, Mike and I are just having a conversation here. God bless you and I really, really encourage you don't ever lose the sight of the fact that you are an awesome communicator.
Mike: Thank you.
Berni: What's it feel like to know that you have a future? I mean it was ugly back then as a kid, what does it feel like to know that you have a future, you know have a dream, you know you have a gift and you're going to go and do it?
Mike: I think the greatest thing is knowing that it's there but with everything there's often a fear of failure and I've definitely had that fear because people have told me, "oh you're not going to succeed, you're only doing this because you're stupid" or "teachers are for stupid people". I've had that fear that I'm not going to be a good teacher. I didn't used to be good at communicating, in high school couldn't get up in front of my class and talk to them.
Berni: Yeah I did the same thing.
Mike: I had that fear and it's something that you've got to learn to get over it, you've just got to learn to trust God.
Berni: The first three or four hundred times are the hardest okay and after that it gets a lot easier. That's my gift of encouragement. You do have a fear don't you? You have a dream, you want to reach your dream and yet you look at your circumstances in the reality of your life and all the stuff that was going on that you've talked about and you think the gap between where I am now and reaching that dream is a huge one and it's a scary one.
Mike: Yeah it is.
Berni: See a lot of people – I mean you were very fortunate and blessed to have that dream early on – a lot of people have been through difficult tough times as you have been but in different circumstances, they actually don't have a dream and there's no hope for the future and there's nothing to look forward to. And I remember a time in my life when I didn't have any future to look forward to and there was no hope, that is the most shattering thing in the world. Jeremiah chapter 29 which I'm sure you're familiar with and a lot of people who are listening are familiar with:
Thus, says the Lord, only when Babylon is seventy years complete I will visit you and I will fulfil to you the promise of bringing you back to this place, for surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for your harm, to give you a future with hope.
Listen to that people, plans to give you a future with hope.
Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me and I will hear you.
Is that not an awesome promise? This is Israel, their country has been destroyed, the Temple has been destroyed, they've been taken by the Babylonians into captivity, they're doubting that their God even has the power to deal with the Babylonians, they're saying 'what's going on here', they have no future and God in that place comes and speaks hope into their lives. You are really blessed to have had a dream from early on, there are people who haven't had that dream from early on and I just want to take you to that truth, Jeremiah chapter 29, verses 10 to 12 is what we just read. It's great having hope isn't it?
Mike: It is.
Berni: Yeah it's great being able to look forward to a future. I just want to pray right now for people who are struggling with that, people who don't have hope in their lives because it's a scary thing. Let's just take a minute now and pray.
Father
There are people today, you know exactly who they are, your hand is upon them, you are in that place with them who do not have hope for the future, who do not have a vision for the future, who do not have a dream for who you made them to be and what you made them to do.
Father I pray that as we've shared with Mike today, as we've spent some time together talking about stuff, I pray that you would speak your purposes and your plans into their lives by your Spirit.
I pray just as your Word has been read, just as we've spoken your Word over everybody who's gathered around your table right now, around your Word that you will give us a future that has welfare and not harm, to give us a future with hope, I pray that that Word into the lives of everybody listening today, every soul, every person, every man, every woman, every child, everyone who is hurting and is without hope.
I pray that you would make the reality of your certain hope through Jesus Christ the reality of their lives. I ask it in Jesus name.
Amen.
Berni: Mike it has been awesome to have you and I really thank you for making the time to come in and chat with us.
Mike: Sure.
Berni: One last word, one last thing you want to say to people.
Mike: Yes, a burden on my heart is this power of words and Matthew 12 talks about:
Out of the abundance of our heart our mouth speaks.
And it's very important to look at the words you share with people, every word that you say has power to affect people and it's clearly words that have affected my life. It's words that ruined most of my life but then it's words that healed my life as well. And just understanding Gods forgiveness, His truth and His Word that He showed me I can now show to other people and we've just got to examine our words, examine our heart and the ways that we've been hurt so we can now affect people in a positive way and build people up.
Berni: God bless you, thanks mate.

The lies that the world tells us about ourselves – who we are, who we aren't, who we should be – you know all that stuff – we'd like to think they don't have any impact – water off a duck's back. But that's just not true.  Sticks and stones aren't the only things that break our bones – because words do truly hurt us.
I don't know if you've been able to join us so far on the program this week but I'm joined again today by my special guest in the studio, Mike Ricchini who has an amazing life story. We've been walking in his shoes for a bit, understanding what God's been doing in his life.
Born as the second child of a fifteen year old mother and removed from her care by the authorities, into foster care where he really wasn't loved, finally adopted by white parents and growing up in white schools in America, as a Hispanic kid looked down upon, taunted by his friends.
This guy has every reason to have a bitter and twisted outlook on life, don't you think? This guy has every reason to be angry or withdrawn or whatever and yet God's doing an amazing work in setting him free from the past.
Okay, it's a work in progress, but today I want to have a look at specifically the lies that God's set him free from because so often in our lives it's the lies that we've been told about ourselves that rob us of having a great life, it's like the world is perpetrating this huge fraud on us.
I remember coming out of my teen years with a total lack of belief in myself, without a balanced outlook of who I was and who I wasn't and what I was capable of and what I wasn't. It's something that would haunt me for another twenty years or so before God started setting it right.
Berni: Mike welcome again today on the program.
Mike: Thanks.
Berni: Huge to have you here. I guess you've had a chance to really look back, to think about, to reflect on the impact of your childhood on your life today. Can I ask you, out of everything that went on what's the single biggest hurdle, what's the single biggest disappointment, what's the single biggest impact on your life?
Mike: I think the biggest thing for me is just being adopted, it's honestly something that unless you've been adopted it's hard to cope with. It's hard to understand and adoption pretty much puts a sign above you that says you weren't loved and humans run by love, if we're not loved we die, if we're not loved then we're going to stop believing good stuff about ourselves, we're only going to believe negative things about ourselves. And having that sign over my head my whole life I automatically believed negative things about myself.
Berni: Even though, I mean you said the other day on the program that your adoptive parents are your heroes in life and the love that you experience from them was massive but it still somehow didn't erase that sense of 'I'm a second class citizen because I'm adopted'.
Mike: No, it never will unless you really forgive the original source and for me it would be my biological mum and I never erased or forgave my mum and because of that the hatred and the hurt is still there.
Berni: So how do you stop living that hatred? How do you stop feeling that disappointment? I mean when the rubber hits the road what is it that changes things for you? How do you start getting set free from the past?
Mike: What set me free was knowing that God loves me and that was ...
Berni: It sounds corny doesn't it? I mean you say it like that, "well you know I know that God loves me" and someone might be listening and say, "Boy! That's a corny line." Tell me why it's not a corny line.
Mike: It's not because it's true and it's a hard thing to understand because you go to Church every single Sunday and say God loves you but many humans don't understand what true love is. Most of my life sadly I was addicted to pornography and so I was giving into love that doesn't really exist, love that you see through a screen and so I didn't really know what God's love looked like. That's a love that no matter what happens to you in life, no matter what circumstances or trials or situations you're in, financial, health or whatever, His love is still going to be there and He's always going to be helping you, holding your hand and directing you.
Berni: There's a passage in the Bible, its 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 17, it says that:
If anyone is in Christ there is a new creation. Behold old things have passed away and all things are new.
Have you ever thought about that one verse, that powerful truth in the context of who you once were and who you are today?
Mike: Yeah I'm so grateful for verses like that where you realise that your old person, who you used to be, it doesn't have to be the same anymore because of the work that Jesus did on the cross and because of that now I feel free, I feel like a release like all the hatred that I had towards people, not necessarily coming towards me, that I had towards people is now gone and I can just totally turn around and walk away with God knowing that He's helping me the whole way.
Berni: Do you feel a bit like that old you, that old person that's talked about here, is almost like a different person? You look back at that old Mike and you think, 'that was me but it's not really me anymore'.
Mike: Yeah I try not to even think about it anymore because when I look at just adoption in general or rejection or hatred it brings back memories, the memories are still there, they're never going to go away but if you can just release, forgiveness is a powerful thing.
Berni: Have you forgiven your birth mum?
Mike: I have, it was extremely hard but with the power of words that you have, just saying, "I forgive my mum." It took a whole hour of me saying it over and over and over and crying but afterwards I knew I'd forgiven her, I knew the forgiveness was there as I just spread forgiveness over the whole situation.
Berni: Forgiving the people who have hurt us is so huge in moving on. There's so many people living the hurts of the past and I've had people who have really hurt me and for me it didn't happen in an hour, I've got to tell you it took months and years of doing what God says, what Jesus says is love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you and praying for the people who have hurt you is one of the hardest things you can do but it's one of the most liberating and freeing things that I reckon that you can do.
Are there some days when you still want to fall back and believe the old lies? Does the devil come and knock on your brain and go, "well you realise you are adopted, you realise that your mother didn't love you?" Does that happen?
Mike: Yeah I found that after I forgave my mum and after I turned from my former sense, now the devil tries even harder to get me to fall back.
Berni: Sure he does, before you weren't a problem for him.
Mike: And it's funny how he works because as I began to study I realised, the devil knows humans extremely well, he's been studying them for thousands of years and so he knows our weak points, he knows when it's easy for us to fall and he knows as soon as adoption comes up, as soon as I see rejection or start to feel rejection he's going to start throwing lies at me and it's a battle that we need to fight back, we need to say the truths that we know about God, that He believes about us, that we are loved.
Berni: It's the Word of God over your life. I mean the Bible's really clear, the one where Paul is talking about the body armour of God, you know the one offensive weapon that we have is the sword, the one thing we can attack with is the sword and the sword is the Word of God and if we know what God says about us then we're free.
Let's imagine there's someone out there today listening who's struggling with their self image right now, they're listening to you, they kind of relate because their past is robbing them of the present, what have you got to say to them? What's the one thing you want to say to that person today?
Mike: I just want to say that God loves you no matter what and I know that a lot of people have situations like this maybe situations that are extremely far beyond what I can even imagine but it doesn't matter because Jesus went through so much more. By Him dying on the cross was the worst form of torture possible, the worst form of punishment or trial that anybody could go through so no matter what you're going through Jesus has been through far more and not only that but because of Him dying on the cross He welcomes you into His family and says I'll take all the pain you've been through, I'll take all the sin that you've done or had done towards you and the power is forgiveness, forgiving the people from your past but recognising that Jesus forgives you.
Berni: And those words from a young man who is himself experiencing the healing power of Gods love. Mike thank you very much.

This week on the program, I'm joined by a special guest Mike Ricchini – who had one of the most difficult starts in life and a tough childhood as an Hispanic Kid in a white neighbourhood in America –and today he's going to be sharing how it was that his life took a turn for the better.
The last couple of weeks on the program we've been chatting about the fact that the lies that the world and people tell us about ourselves: who we are, what we're capable of, what we're not capable of, who we should be. Those lies are so powerful they can destroy our lives, there's such power in words. And over the last couple of days and again today I'm joined by my very special guest, Mike Ricchini, who had so many lies thrown at him.
Born as the illegitimate child of a fifteen year old girl, her second child, bumped around, in foster care onto adoption, white parents. But he's Hispanic and that was a huge deal at school as we saw yesterday on the program. And it's not just his life, you see it's your life and my life too.
I remember I was short and dumpy. I was no good at sport, couldn't run fast and in Australia where sport is our national religion that's going to draw some enemy fire. I remember as I headed into my late teens and early adulthood I had a terrible self image and the way that I coped with that was through anger and through rolling over the top of people with this apparently amazing self confidence which was really nothing more than a protective mechanism against the hurts of the past.
It's something that's taken me a lifetime to unlearn. So that's me, what about you, something for you to think about? But right now because he's sitting here in the studio with me we're going to chat with Mike Ricchini about him.
Berni: Mike, welcome again to the program.
Mike: Thank you.
Berni: And I want to start off by asking you, that as you look back on all the stuff that you went through in those early years, the family that was meant to love you, the foster family that didn't love you and then being adopted in a family and learning to be loved, how did that impact on how you saw yourself, your self image, your understanding of who you actually were?
Mike: Honestly, it was destroyed. I didn't have a self image most of my life. I viewed myself as worthless and I viewed myself as nobody, I didn't have a place in this world. I often asked God, 'God why am I here? Why did you bring me into this world? Why am I suffering right now?' I've gone through trial after trial throughout my life and I keep asking God. Sadly I've tried taking my life several times just because I feel like I'm nobody; I don't have a name in this world. I felt going through school, through sports that I'm Mr Nobody, I'm not good at anything. I've had those lies thrown at me my whole life – you're not going to succeed, you're not good at anything – and I believed them.
Berni: Because there's a lot of power in those lies isn't there? There's a lot of power in the lies that people, circumstances and society tell us and as you've just shared that my hunch is that a lot of people listening today totally relate to what you're talking about. See this is stuff we don't talk about to other people right? But when we feel worthless the fact that you tried to take your life a couple of times says to me how powerful those lies really were.
Tell me really what it was like growing up as a Hispanic kid with white parents in a white neighbourhood?
Mike: It was weird.
Berni: Because you've got an Italian surname right? So you're Hispanic with Italian adoptive parents, Italian surname. Boy, that must be a weird mix.
Mike: Because I'm Hispanic, you know typically you're supposed to be able to speak Spanish but growing up in a white family I don't know Spanish at all. I would love to be able to communicate with them but now I'm in a white family, I don't even look like my parents at all so it's funny going around and people say, 'Are these your kids?' or stuff like that. There's a Jamaican child in our family too and she doesn't look like any of the rest of us so it's kind of hard to relate with our parents when they talk to us in certain ways and tell us about certain things. It's hard to relate because you're not their kids and you don't have the same past as them, you don't share the same grandparents, legally you do.
Berni: So you kind of had one thing stacked against you after another right? Your first family didn't love you and now you're in a family that do love you but you don't look like them, you don't have the heritage they have, the names are different. People look at your family and go, 'that's weird, what's going on there'. So everything was kind of stacked against you.
I heard you preach at Church a few Sundays ago, you spoke about the power of the tongue. Just want to share that passage right now from James chapter 3 because it's really sobering thing. We say things to people sometimes we don't think about them. Just listen to what God says about the power of words, the power of the tongue. James chapter 3 beginning at verse 3:
If we put bits in the mouths of horses to make them obey us we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships, though they are large that it takes strong winds to drive them yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire and the tongue is fire.
It's really sobering; you know we say things and we don't think about them. I now listen to your story and it brings it right down. Here was a kid who felt worthless because he didn't fit the mould society wanted him to fit and they told you that, they peppered you with words, the kids at school gave you a hard time and there's such power in that.
So what changed for you? What was the turning point from this baby who almost didn't live, to this young teenager who almost didn't live because you tried to take your life a couple of times, to the young man that I heard preaching the other morning at Church? I'm really interested, what happened?
Mike: I came to Australia to do this trip with YWAM - Youth With A Mission and I came here primarily to get away from home just because I was fed up with it. Also I've always wanted to do missions and just help people that were dealing with the same kind of stuff I've dealt with. On this trip I wrote down tonnes of pages of lies, hundreds of them, that I've been believing my whole life and I took the paper, as I was reading over hundreds of lies I just realised that no matter what all these people say about me, no matter what I believe about myself, God loves me no matter what and it talks about that in Romans 8, that nothing separates us from Gods love.
And so I took these papers and I stuck them in a tin can and I just burned them and as I did that the pressure was completely gone. I started believing truths that God says over me; reading the Bible, seeing what God believes about me and we need to see people through God's eyes because often it starts in my own heart and because of the hatred that I had coming towards me I started taking that out on other people and so it was a transformation I needed to make in my heart, forgiveness but then learning to be forgiven and learning to receive forgiveness.
Berni: That's huge, that's like a massive turn around. And my sense is, because I had different circumstances same problem in my life, I couldn't do that for myself, it was ultimately only Christ who could come into my life and His spirit who kind of did things in my heart that I struggled to achieve but could never achieve for myself. You have that sense too? That God's sort of supernaturally been involved in all of that.
Mike: Oh I know He has. It was nothing I did. God just started working in my life day after day, revealing new things to me, just infusing me with His love, showing me that He loves me no matter what.
Berni: Yeah. So I'd just like to encourage anybody who's listening today who has this same "I'm a nobody, I'm not good at anything, I don't fit anywhere, I don't look right". I mean there's a list of lies, as you said you had pages of them. God is in this place … God is in this place and there's no accident that I met Mike, it's no accident that Mike's here and it's no accident that we're sitting here chatting together now. God is on your case and He wants to make a difference.

So many of the lies that the world tells us, society tells us – people tell us – end up messing around with who we are. Messing around with our lives. Racial tensions, the stigma of adoption – that'd have to affect you in your later years wouldn't it?
Exciting week this week on the program because we're following up on what we've been chatting about over the last few weeks. It's the fact that all the lies that the world throws at us about who we are and who we're supposed to be, how we're meant to conform to this model or that model of success, with all those lies, well a lot of damage gets done to us on the inside.
It's like eating bad food all the time and it makes you sick and these lies, they start pretty early on in life. In fact often it's the lies we were told when we were young, when we were children and in our teens that do most of the damage and live with us throughout the rest of our lives, robbing us of all that God has intended.
Today, I'm joined again by my special guest on the program Mike Ricchini who was the second child of a fifteen year old – I was about to call her a woman but girl really – and after abuse and stuff had a pretty rocky road in those early years. If there's anyone who has an excuse to be bitter and twisted over the past it's Mike. And the reason I've invited him to join me this week on the program is just to share his story, his journey and I guess the healing that God's brought into his life, his difficult life over recent years.
Berni: Mike welcome again to the program.
Mike: Thank you.
Berni: Great to have you here. I've heard you speak about how you came into this world, your mother was fifteen, your father was thirtyish, you were born into an abusive situation, It was a really difficult time and then pretty early on you found yourself in foster care. I guess most of us don't think too much about foster care, tell us what those two simple words mean to you.
Mike: When I look back on foster care I just see it as a transition time between the family that's supposed to love you and a family that does love you and when I remember foster care I don't remember being loved. I know they had me in their house, for the most part it just seems like families that have you in their house just because their kids have gone away to university or to college or moved out and so they want younger kids in there just to feel a sense of not being lonely anymore.
Berni: You were only in foster care for about a year right?
Mike: Yeah it was only a year. Praise the Lord I was in foster care with my two other siblings which is very rare but I don't remember getting food very much, just weird breakfasts, pancakes or syrup or donuts and I don't remember feeling like their rules or I had to do stuff, I just felt like do whatever you want, just live the life you want and there's no boundaries, it was as if they didn't care about us in a way.
Berni: That must have really impact a young kid.
Mike: Yes. When I look at my family now, there're little kids in there now and they have rules and I can't imagine living the life that they have right now without rules because there's no guidance, there'd be no direction and as a young kid you look up to those in authority over you.
Berni: Yeah. But eventually you were adopted out, what does adoption feel like? Again most of us have never experienced adoption, what does that feel like to you?
Mike: Well it was the third family I'd been in because of my birth mum, foster care and then adoption, it was the third family in four years and as a young kid you know what's going on, you know the transition, you know you're moving from house to house.
Berni: You can remember that right?
Mike: Yes and it's very hard on the inside because you often blame yourself or blame many other people. I often blamed my mum for all the bad stuff and even to this day I was blaming my mum and it messes with your head because you have that sense of rejection, that nobody cares about you. That the first family, they didn't want you anymore so they put you into foster care, and the foster care family didn't want you because they didn't adopt you, and now you wind up in a family where they're supposed to love you, that's the idea that adoption is, oh now you're being put in a new family that actually cares about you.
Berni: So how did that end up unfolding? How did that feel to you being adopted?
Mike: As a young kid I don't remember exactly everything that happened but I had the sense of being loved. I did feel love coming to the new family except for the fact there were rules now. This is the first time in my life I really had rules.
Berni: That would have been a shock.
Mike: It was a shock because I'd never been disciplined before, never been put in "time out" before so I didn't know what that was like. I felt like they're supposed to love me but they're hitting me with the spoon on my butt or they're giving me all these rules and you can't dessert until you've done all your dinner, rules I'd never even heard of before that. In one way I was loved because I felt like they cared about me but in another sense I have restrictions on my life now.
Berni: But as you went along and you finally got the idea that you were being loved, that must have been a pretty amazing experience.
Mike: Yes, it was huge for me. Growing up my entire life knowing that somebody actually cared about me.
Berni: People who have good parents take that for granted. But not everyone's had that and so the feeling of not having been loved by your parents and then being adopted into a family where you are loved even though you're not their flesh and blood right? It's a real act of grace when you think about it. It's a real kind of powerful statement, almost more powerful than being born. I mean your natural parents are meant to love you, my natural parents who I grew up with loved me, thats their job but your adopted parents, they chose to take you and you wouldn't have been easy at that time not having had rules right? They chose to take you into their family. What an act of grace.
Mike: Yeah, my adopted parents no doubt are my heroes in my life. When I look at them right now I can't believe they ended up adopting six kids, I cannot believe that they would give up all their future that they had, even money just to welcome kids into their lives. And not their natural born kids, six kids that are from rough situations, that have nobody in the world that loves them at the moment and they welcome them in and say, 'We will be your parents; we will love you'.
Berni: So when God says He destined us for adoption as His children through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will to the praise of His glorious grace that He freely bestowed on us in His beloved Son, I guess that means a lot to you.
Mike: It does.
Berni: Because you get it, you understand that bit more than perhaps I do because I've never been adopted and I wonder whether sometimes I under value what God did in adopting me into His family because I wasn't particularly easy to love just between you and me quietly, I wasn't particularly easy to love when God adopted me into His family. But it wasn't all beer and skittles because at school, you're Hispanic right? And you're growing up in a white family, in fact Ricchini, your surname is Italian, so you're a Hispanic kid growing up in Italian. Those of us who don't live in America might not get the whole white/Hispanic thing. Can you just give us, what was it like at school being a Hispanic kid in a white school and a white family?
Mike: I went to a school, it was pretty much all white kids so my siblings and I were pretty much the only Hispanics in the entire school and schools in America are usually a little bit bigger than here in Australia and so you get a lot of kids saying, "Why are you here, you don't belong here, you don't look like the rest of us." I remember having to explain to kids I was adopted and I remember getting phrases, "you weren't loved by your mum" or "you're not loved" or "you look funny" or "your hair is darker than ours" and having those feelings in your head, why am I here? Why am I not with my real mum? Why do their parents love them and mine didn't? That was in my head all of school.
Berni: It really strikes me that they're playing with your self belief about who you are as a human being and it drags you so far away from how God sees you and God sees us when He adopts us into His family as totally different to those kids at school, as totally different to the way the world yells at us, we should be this, we should be that, you should have lighter hair, you should have white skin, whatever it is Gods approach is really different. I want to talk to you about that a little bit more another time. Thanks for joining me today Mike.
Mike: You're welcome.

Imagine starting out life as the baby of a 15-year-old mother, with a drug habit … growing up bumping from one uncaring foster home to the next – when you grew up that sort of a past would mess with your head wouldn't it?
Every now and then God makes a divine appointment for us, have you noticed that? What appears to be a random decision or a chance twist or turn in life, all of a sudden you run into a God moment and go, "wow".
It happened to me the other Sunday. I woke up, said to my wife Jacqui, "Hey, I feel like going and visiting the Oyster Bay Baptist Church." That's the Church I first went to about seventeen years ago now.
It seemed like a good idea; Pastor Phil is a great guy, great teacher, so off we went. Kind of to my disappointment it wasn't a regular service and it turned out Phil wouldn't be teaching, there were some young folk from YWAM - Youth With A Mission visiting and leading the service and this young guy Mike got up to preach, I thought this would be interesting.
Well can I tell you something? What he had to say and how he said it just blew me away, what a preacher! And the thing that really made my hair curl is after the service I found out this was the very first time he'd stood up to preach. Unbelievable! And his life story, more to the point. His life story is one that's going to make your hair curl.
So today, and indeed for the rest of this week we're going to be joined by Mike Ricchini who's going to share his story which I guess is like a live case study of what we've been talking about this last couple of weeks on the program which is knowing the truth because it's the truth that's going to set you free.
Berni: Hi Mike, welcome to the program. Thanks for your great message last Sunday.
Mike: You're welcome there.
Berni: How old are you?
Mike: I'm twenty.
Berni: You're twenty? I was twenty once a long time ago. So we're going to share a bit of your journey today, in fact over the coming week but today I'd like to start with the beginning of your life, tell us about that, where were you born, your parents, how did all that happen?
Mike: I was born in 1991 in Miami Florida. I was born to a fifteen year old girl, she already had a baby ten months earlier so I was her second child and I really don't know how old my father was, I think he was a little younger than thirty at the time when she had me but they never really knew how to take care of me, just a young girl and you can just imagine the stress that involved not even knowing how to take care of kids or anything like that.
So when they had me I was born two months early, premature and there was a battle whether she keep me alive or put me down just because of the inexperience that she had.
Berni: So yours was the life that almost wasn't.
Mike: Yes. So praise the Lord they ended up letting me live and I was able to talk to my mum a couple of weeks ago and she said she had made the decision to let me live so I'm very grateful for that. And then after living out of cars, motels for a couple of months they moved up to Maryland which is just east of Washington DC in the States and I grew up there for about a year before I was taken from her with my two other siblings and put into foster care.
Berni: And that's because she had a drug habit.
Mike: Drugs, abuse, malnutrition, other sorts of stuff.
Berni: It's not your perfect start in life is it?
Mike: Not really, no.
Berni: So you have met your birth mother?
Mike: I have a couple of times and she just found me the other day on Facebook.
Berni: Ah cool.
Mike: Yeah.
Berni: So what was that like, meeting your birth mother after all those years?
Mike: My first time meeting her was a few years ago and that was probably the scariest moment of my life up to that point. Just knowing that your mum was about to come in there, the lady that brought you into the world was about to step into the room and you don't have really any idea what she looks like, what she sounds like, you don't really have any idea of your past, like the stories of your past, what you looked like, pictures, I'd never seen a picture of myself as a baby.
Berni: How do you feel towards that?
Mike: Towards her at that moment? I didn't like her. It was one of those things where you want to know the lady that brought you into the world but there's resentment, there's hatred, there's bitterness, even rejection. There was a lot of rejection that drove most of my life.
Berni: Yeah I can imagine. I guess when you have a start in life like that it's going to mess with your head, it's not ideal. When you look back at your start what is that you feel in your heart? What's the thing that jumps out at you?
Mike: Rejection, hatred, just knowing you're not loved.
Berni: What's the impact of rejection? Why is that such a big deal?
Mike: You just feel like everyday, specifically for me, everyday I walked out to school or whatever setting I was in because the beginning of your life there was so much rejection, now you feel that way about everybody that interacts with you and you tend to interpret everybody's actions and how they interact with you at that point. And so for most of my life because of this huge rejection at the beginning I've always thought people hated me or didn't love me even if that wasn't their actual motive.
Berni: And I guess it's hard to trust people ...
Mike: Yes.
Berni: It's hard to have relationships, it affects everything.
Mike: Trust for me with specifically females was pretty much non existent until a few months ago. I would often fake it just to keep going in life but in my heart it wasn't there.
Berni: Yeah. It's interesting. Tomorrow on the program we're going to talk about those early years of growing up, I mean it can't have been easy but today I'd just like to stick with those early days because if anyone has an excuse from the past to get all bitter and twisted and to grow up, you have. Has getting into a relationship with God, with Jesus changed the way you look back at things?
Mike: Yeah. I grew up in a Christian home but even though growing up in it I didn't really know God and just His love and forgiveness. I didn't know what real forgiveness looked like. I knew it in my head but there's a difference between knowing something in your head and believing it in your heart.
Berni: And experiencing it, living with it in your own experience.
Mike: Right.
Berni: We're going to talk about that another day this week but it's just fascinating to me. I'd love to have a read of Psalm 139, those who listen to this program regularly will always hear me going back to Psalm 139. I guess you'll probably know that psalm pretty well where the psalmist writes to God:
For it was you who formed my inward parts. You knit me together in my mother's womb and I praise you for I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works that I know very well. My frame wasn't hidden from you when I was being made in secret. Woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me.
Berni: I guess looking back on your start in life, did you have problems believing that?
Mike: Yes, I've doubted God many times, just His plan for my life, His control, just believing that He made me perfectly, believing that He made me who He wanted me to be and I often blame other people even God. I've said to God that I hated Him because of the way my life has turned out.
Berni: Yeah and then the psalmist goes on to say:
How weighty to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. I try and count them, they are more than the sand. I come to the end I am still with you.
Berni: That's the language of victory isn't it? That's the language of someone who's totally delighted with who God's made them to be. And it seems to me that, okay you've got your circumstances and you grow up and they're quite unique and my experience is different and other people's experience is different but somehow we all have a past, right? We all have some things we look back on that are regrets that come back and haunt us and yet it's not God's plan for you to live angry, for you to live without a sense of trust, for you to live without love. And it's how God's started to turn that around that I really want to unpack with you further on this week because it's just an awesome thing what God does in our lives.
Mike: Amen.
Berni: So we're going to have a lot of fun this week. I really encourage you, you've heard Mike's story today and Mike's story is a powerful story. I mean you look back on his start in life and it wasn't a good start in life, it wasn't fair and it wasn't the kid's fault. Mike was this little baby brought into this world, it's not his fault he was born in those circumstances and yet even in his situation, as we're going to see later on this week, God's stepped in and has done some amazing things and changed the way he sees the world and changed the way he sees himself. Mike we'll chat again tomorrow.