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A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Berni Dymet
A Different Perspective Official Podcast
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  • The Olive Trees Around the Table // Building a Godly Family, Part 15
    Bringing up children can feel like such a thankless task some days. You invest, invest, sacrifice, invest some more – hoping that one day, it’ll all have a positive impact on them. Well, I want to share something with you about this investment thing that’ll just blow you away. We've been talking, these last 3 weeks, about Building a Godly Family. And today, today I want to share a story with you that blew me away. And my prayer is, it will blow you away too. It's all about fruit, well olives actually; the fruit of the investment of building a godly family. Now, you and I both know that whenever we invest in anything, what the word "investment" really means is "sacrifice now in order to reap the harvest later" because investing is about putting something we have in hand now; something we could use or spend in another way. And investing is about taking that thing and planting it somewhere else to reap a reward later. If we save for our retirement, we take money that we could blow on things that we'd love to enjoy today but we set it aside in some form of investment plan so that the seed grows into a tree that will feed us when we retire, right? Or if we decide to lose weight and get fit, we sacrifice today's "eat whatever you want" plan, we sacrifice that in order to reap the reward of a healthier body. We give up time that we'd rather spend watching television to exercise to reap the reward. And as it turns out, exactly the same principle applies when we invest the time and the effort and the emotional energy that's required to build a godly family. Now earlier this week you may have heard me talk about my friend Mark and his family who live in the United States of America. Let me tell you the story about Mark. Mark is a wonderful godly man; a man I respect tremendously. He has this outrageous sense of humour and laugh. I remember he and I were driving together through the chaotic traffic of India, the first time I'd ever driven in India and I thought I was going to die. I mean Mark was in the front seat, me in the back seat and amidst my sheer terror, in this traffic, all I remember is the outrageous laughter of this man. And yet, he's one of the godliest men I know. He and his wife have nine children, all home schooled. Not a perfect family by any means but a godly one. Nine kids! I find that hard to comprehend. Nine! And yet there is a calm delight in this man and his family and godliness that really catches your eye. You think how is that possible? So I've shared with you over the last few days some of the things that he said to me that were the most important in building a godly family. And today, I want to share Mark’s final take on this. And it comes out of Psalm 128, verse 3. Now Psalm 128 in written to the father of a family. It is a message written specifically to him. Have a listen. It's actually a very short psalm. Psalm 128. Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands. You shall be happy and it shall go well with you. You wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of you life. May you see your children's children. Peace upon Israel. To our 21st Century ears that take on family life, well it may seem a tad patriarchal but remember it was written to people who lived in a patriarchal society. So let’s go with it. The first verse says: Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways. Everyone who fears the Lord – what we've been talking about over these last few weeks. Putting God first in everything, every part of our lives including the way we do family. And that brings blessing. The sort of blessing the psalmist talks about in verse 2: You'll eat the fruit of your labour. You'll be happy and all will go well for you. But now listen to verse 3. It sounds a bit patriarchal: Your wife will be a fruitful vine within your house. But it comes back to the Old Testament view and concept of blessing. Blessing equalled lots of children in your own land. It's pretty simple. So to the person reading this psalm when it was written, that's what verse 3 meant; the first part. But have a listen again to the second part of the verse: Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Olive shoots, these new shoots of plants that grow into mighty olive trees that bear one of the staples of the Eastern diet – olives, from which comes the precious commodity of olive oil. Now have a listen to what my friend Mark wrote about this particular verse. Here it is, word for word, from this father of nine children. I love this. God impacted us with the idea, out of our own family study of the Scriptures some time back. It comes out of Psalm 128, verse 3 which says that: Children will be like olive shoots around the table of the man who fears God”. When we learned that olive plants typically take sixteen to eighteen years of careful cultivation, pruning and watering and during that time they typically bear very little fruit until after the eighteenth year they bear abundant fruit for many, many years to come. That gave us a reason to persevere and not to be weary in doing good. That is an incredible truth from Scripture that has kept us going through some of the toughest times with our children. Don't you love how God packs so much into His Word. It's so full of practical truth. What an amazing picture, this picture of the olive tree. A man who fears God, a family that fears God can expect the children to be like olive shoots around the table. This fresh young shoot. You put all the effort, all the investment into that tree. For years it occupies a part of your orchard. It takes investment and work and it doesn't bear any fruit. But then, then one day, just as God had always planned long, long ago, that tree produces olives. I love olives. There's a cafe just down the road from us owned by a Greek man, Alex. And his olives are to die for. You get them with some toasted Turkish bread and a bit of Greek dip. Imagine, Alex's olives come from one of those trees. A tree somewhere that some farmer has nurtured and watered and pruned and cared for, for eighteen years without much fruit until finally, it bore this wonderful fruit. Do you see this beautiful picture? And just on top of this, the psalmist at the end of the psalm, helps us to realise that when we invest in our family and invest in our children and it goes on, day after day, week after week, year after year and it seems so hard. There is so much more at the end of this than just the olives of that first tree. There's much more, Psalm 128, verse 6. May you see your children's children. Peace upon Israel. The investment in these little olive shoots sitting around the table of the parents who fear God, who honour God. These parents who are prepared to invest tirelessly, day after day, is going to bear fruit in a little while; fruit that will last for GENERATIONS; your children's children. I look at my three: Simon who's almost 30; Michael in his late 20's; Melissa, our baby, who's just turned 18. And Jacqui and I are so proud of who they've become, so delighted in seeing the fruit growing in their lives; seeing them making their way in this world. Rising up to be the people who God made them to be. Truly, naturally, I'm just not into the 'little kid' thing. It's just not my gig. So for me, many days, it was a tough, long, hard road. But sitting at this end of it, the fruit, the fruit that this investment is now bearing is so sweet. It is so incredibly worth it. I want to encourage you today. That the investment of building a godly family is one that we will never, ever regret.
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  • Sharing in the Challenges // Building a Godly Family, Part 14
    One of the greatest teachers of all is life itself. We learn so much just by living life. Now – here’s a thought. What if, I mean what if we shared some of the challenges and trials that we face, with our children? What if they were able to benefit from the things we’re learning? A good many years ago now, when I was in the Information Technology industry, I used to attend I guess 3 or 4 conferences each year; the sort of thing to do to learn and to make connections. And often, one of the things I'd notice about the speakers at these conferences is that many of them would get up and just rattle off a bunch of facts. And you'd think, 'Well, I kind of knew that already and in any case, I could have read that in a text book.' And then others would tell us about this IT project or that one and it seemed they always had such rose coloured glasses on. They'd tell us all the things that went well. The implication being that their organisation or their company had done such a great job.But anyone who's ever been involved in an IT project will know that it's not easy – technology, people, politics. It's actually quite complex changing an organisation and its business processes to fit with the new technology. And so I'd often walk away from these conferences thinking … well … wishing that someone had shared something with me that was for real. You know, lessons from the trenches, lessons born out of real life so that I could take something useful away: some insight, some experience that would make a difference back in my trench. You know what I'm talking about. And this is something we kind of finished up with on the program yesterday. If you've been with us over the last few weeks, you'll know that we've been talking about building a godly family. There is such incredible fruit that comes from that; something that doesn't just give us more peace at home; something that just doesn't benefit our children. But it's a blessing that will flow down generation to generation as each new generation picks up the Godly habits, the godly perspectives of the previous generation. So the things that you and I do, from this day forward in building a godly family where we live are going to leave a lasting godly legacy to so many generations to come. What an awesome thing! And we finished up yesterday talking about the fact that if we want our kids to be godly; if we want them to have a powerful, dynamic relationship with Jesus Christ; if we want them to know the peace and the joy that comes from that; if we want them to see their lives through God's eyes, then we're going to have to tell them about Jesus; to share the word of God with them. But you know what the temptation is? The temptation is to put a plastic positive spin on things just like those speakers at the IT conferences I was talking about earlier. We want our kids to get the best of God so we put a positive spin on things. We recite the facts. We preach at them thinking that somehow this is going to make a difference to their lives. Kids are pretty savvy these days. They can pick up the phoney baloney from a mile off. Whether they realise it or not, what they really want and what they really need is to be part of our lives, warts and all. That's when they feel valued and when they share in our insights and what we've learned, that's when the gospel message really has an impact. One of the reasons I love the apostle Paul is that the guy didn't pull any punches. Have a listen to what he writes to his friends in Corinth. It comes from 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 1 to 11: Therefore, he said, since it is by the mercy of God that we are engaged in His ministry, we do not lose heart. We've renounced the shameful things that one hides, we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God's word but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. For we don't proclaim ourselves, we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for His sake. For it is the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness' who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We have this treasure in clay jars so that it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and doesn't come from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed. Perplexed but not driven to despair. Persecuted but not forsaken. Struck down but not destroyed. Always carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be visible in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. Do you see what's happening here? Paul is writing to the Corinthian Church. Now he could be putting his best foot forward. He could be promoting his ministry. He could be telling people how wonderfully things are going. All the things we'd be tempted to do to build ourselves up in the eyes of others. But instead, what does he say? Well he tells them how it really is. "We do not lose heart." Well, you know, if he's saying we don't lose heart there's some stuff going down, right? And he's saying, "Look, we're out there preaching the gospel but the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers and we have this treasure in clay jars so that people don't think it's us, they know it's God. We're afflicted, we're not crushed. We're perplexed, we're not driven to despair. We're persecuted, we're not forsaken." Things are hard for Paul. Things are going tough but Paul is telling them, to the Corinthians, the way they really are; a realistic, practical view, from the trenches, view of the world; sharing with them the sorts of insights, the lessons that are really going to make a difference really going to have an impact because they're being mediated through the real life trials of this man whom they honour and respect. Think. They know this is Paul. They know what an amazing thing God’s done to him. And yet, Paul writes to them, "We're afflicted but not crushed. We're perplexed but we're not driven to despair. We're persecuted but we're not forsaken. We're struck down but we're not destroyed." Isn't that powerful? I wonder if we couldn't start sharing some of those things with our kids; sharing our faith through the things of life. Making sense out of the stuff they're going to encounter in their lives, the trials – the things that are going to be unfair at school and at work; the things that are going to happen to them along the way by sharing the fact that those same things have happened to us; those same things are happening to us. And we look at them through God's eyes and no, it didn't all come out perfectly. Everyone didn't all live happily ever after. But you know something – my God reigns. My faith is intact; my conscience is intact. I'd rather lose a battle and honour God in losing that than to win the battle and dishonour God to please myself. That's my story, that's how I see things. Now imagine if we started sharing those sorts of truths with them. Do you see the power in that? No-one can argue with your story. No-one can argue with my story because they're our stories. But as our children start to figure out that we're for real, that our faith’s for real, you know something, it's going to have an impact on them. It's a powerful way of sharing the word of God with them because instead of preaching at them, we're opening up the door and letting them into our world and letting them see our humanity and our frailty. And through the cracked clay jars, the glory of God is bound to shine out into their lives. So many of us have been brought up to shield our children from these things because that's just the way we did it when we were growing up. But look at the Bible, read it. Pick any chapter and read it. You know what oozes out of it? The glory of God through the "warts and all" telling of the story of peoples lives. That's what! Just like this bit here, from Paul, to the Corinthian Church. What an incredible legacy we can leave – not only in the hearts of our children but in their children and their children's children. When we let them become part of our godly lives – however imperfectly we may live them.
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  • Faith Comes By Hearing // Building a Godly Family, Part 13
    So many people want to build a godly family. To have a family that’s not necessarily perfect, there ain’t any of those, but one that’s full of peace and joy. A safe place for children to grow. But if we want our kids to grow up to be godly – one of the things we have to do, is actually talk to them about Jesus. Every time I look up at the stars and the moon at night, I'm utterly gobsmacked by what I see; this whole Milky Way thing. When you get away from the light and the smog of the city and see the sky clearly, it almost looks like a glowing cloud. Like countless specks of star dust strewn across this great dark blue/black firmament. And then, like clockwork, every morning this amazing ball of fire and light and warmth comes up over the horizon. That thing we call the sun. It never fails. Now, I'm wondering if you or I had never been taught anything about the cosmos, the earth, the solar system, the sun, the moon, the galaxy, the universe; if we knew absolutely nothing about any of those things, not even the simple stuff they taught us in grade school, what would we make of it? If we stood here on planet earth and watched this whole heavenly display go by, day after day, week after week, maybe we could tell the position of the stars changed overnight; that the sky looks slightly different across the seasons. What would we make of it all without the knowledge that science has given us? I wonder. Well actually we don't have to look too far because there were so many theories down through the ages – that the earth was flat; that the earth was at the centre and everything else revolved around it; that stars were like little holes in the firmament; this skin stretched up there in the sky. What happens is, we look at this incredible, cosmic light show that rolls past every day from our own miniscule perspective not realising how small we are; how narrow our view is. And we get a distorted picture of reality. We think the earth's the centre of the universe. We think we're the biggest, most important thing in the cosmos because that's all we can see and this whole light show revolves around us. Do you see what happens? It's exactly what's happened down through the ages. In fact when scientists started wanting to postulate that the earth was in fact round and not flat and that the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way round. Well people wanted to burn these scientists as heretics. But once we got the facts we started to look at things completely differently. At least a trillion trillion stars in the known universe which, by definition, means there's a whole bunch out there, God only knows how much, that we don't know about. And our sun is just one of those. And even our galaxy of billions of stars is such a small pin prick on the map of the universe. That it's infinitesimally small even though it takes light at 186,000 miles per second or 5.88 trillion miles per year – it takes light over 100,000 years to travel from one end of the galaxy to the other. Do you see how radically, I mean HOW RADICALLY the facts transform our understanding of reality? It is mind blowing stuff. Well what, if anything, does that have to do with the subject we've been talking about these last few weeks on the program, ‘Building A Godly Family’? As it turns out, a whole bunch. I mentioned yesterday on the program that I asked a good friend of mine, Mark, for some advice on building a godly family. Now Mark and his wife have nine children – nine! They live in the USA and he's one of the godliest men that I know. So I thought who better to turn to for some advice on how to build a godly family. My hunch is he's qualified. Now the question was, 'what are the three or four most important things that you've learned about building a Godly family?' Yesterday I shared with you what he had to say about setting a godly example. Ultimately our children will end up being like us and so how we live our lives will be the most important sermon we ever preach to them. Today I want to share one of the things he listed in his top three or four. Let me read to you what he wrote in his email. Have a listen. He said: Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. (That comes from Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 10) What do I mean by this? That the written Word of God is absolutely central to everything we do in parenting and to birthing faith in the hearts of our children. My wife and I can talk, lecture, admonish, discipline, correct, nag, whatever until we're blue in the face and it will do not good at all unless the Spirit of God takes His own Word and does a work in the hearts of our children. Therefore, we believe we have to expose and challenge them with God’s Word as often as we can. In our home that's taken the form, over the years, of bedtime stories, scripture readings at the dinner table, family devotional times in the morning or evening or both where possible. Scripture memory, using real life experiences to show how God’s Word speaks into every situation. See, to someone who hasn't grown up in this sort of environment, it may seem a little bit odd, even a little bit old fashioned but it makes so much sense. We started out by talking about the different perspectives we can have on the great cosmic light show. Depending on whether or not we know the truth about what it is and how it works. If we know the truth we understand that the earth is just this tiny little speck of dust in a vast cosmic array. If we don't, we imagine somehow we're at the centre of the universe. We only learn the difference when we hear the truth, right? And it's exactly the same for us as people. If we don't know the truth about God – who He is, What He did for us through Jesus His Son, who we are when we believe in Jesus, how we can respond to this incredible love that Gods lavished upon us – unless we know this then we're going to live our lives in complete ignorance, completely from the wrong perspective. It's when we teach our children the Word of God that they develop a godly perspective; a perspective that bears so much fruit. It's exactly what God taught His people, Israel, just before they crossed into the Promised Land. This bit that I'm going to read comes from Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 4 to 9. He says: Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. Keep these words, that I am commanding you today, in your heart and recite them to your children and talk about them when you are home and when you're away and when you lie down and when you rise. And write them on the door posts of your house and on your gates. Mark, in his little thing that I read to you, quoted Paul. Let me share the whole thing. Romans chapter 10, verses 13 to 17: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved but how are they to call on the one in whom they have not believed. And how are they to believe in one of whom they have not heard. And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim to them. (Romans chapter 10, from verse 13 onwards) So in other words, if we want to build a godly family we have to tell them about God. And here's the amazing thing, I asked Mark’s children for their comments. I mean, I thought, you know, will the kids really wear this? What do those kids think? Well they said, "You know the things we really enjoy? Reading the Bible together; the creative teaching we get from mum and dad; family prayer time." These were some of the things the children themselves said they liked about living in a godly family. Go figure! If we want to have a godly family, we've got to talk about God; got to tell them about God; got to share the love and the faithfulness and the power and the grace of God with our children because unless we do we're not going to have a godly family.
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  • A Godly Example // Building a Godly Family, Part 12
    We parents try to do all the things we can to help our children to grow up. We advise. We admonish. We even end up preaching at them sometimes. But it’s not what we say, it’s what we do, how we live – what they see our life to be, that has the greatest impact in shaping them as they grow up. I don't know how things are in your neck of the woods but one of the really hot topics around where I live is binge drinking amongst teenagers. Now I know that different people have different views on whether drinking of alcohol is a godly thing to do or not, wherever you sit on that issue. However you understand what God’s Word says about the responsible use of alcohol. Blind Freddy can see that the abuse of alcohol is so incredibly destructive. I was listening to a Doctor, the head of the emergency ward at our local hospital; they were interviewing him on the radio recently. Some huge percentages of people are admitted to the emergency ward each week are there because of alcohol. I think, from memory, he was saying that something like 80% of the young people, the under 30's, that front up there every weekend are there because of something alcohol related – violence, injury, illness. Pretty scary, and it begs the question, how does that happen? Where do young people get this from? How do you go from being this beautiful little baby in your mother’s arms and your parents and your grandparents are gooing and gaaing over you? How do you go from that to being a drunken, violent teenager vomiting in the gutter? It's worth thinking about. To combat this teenage binge drinking thing, they've been running an ad on television – a bunch of Australian men in a backyard drinking beer over a barbeque and one of the dad's sends his young son to the fridge to get him another bottle of beer to drink. And the punch line of this ad is about making the point that our children are taking in our habits. They're watching us. They're taking it all in. They're picking up things that rub off from us. You know something that makes a lot of sense. Whether it's drinking or child abuse or whatever negative, destructive thing you'd like to mention. The imprinting from parent to child is incredibly powerful. I mean parents are right up there. They're the authority figures and when you're growing up, the only reality that matters is your own reality. You grow up in that family and that's all you know. That's it, whether it's anger, violence, alcohol abuse, whatever it is, if that's a powerful part of your reality growing up, it's going to leave its imprint on your life. Now our DNA determines who we naturally are but our personalities, our characters, our views of ourselves and others, our morals, our values, our patterns of behaviour. All of those things are hugely shaped by our environment, by the people around us, by our circumstances. Gods plan is for you and for me is to have a loving family. Not just our nuclear family but our wider family. In the New Testament in the book called Titus in chapter 2, have a listen to what it says: Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, prudent and sound in faith in love and endurance. And likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in their behaviour. Not to be slanderers or slaves to drink. They are to teach what is good so that they may encourage the younger women to love their husbands and to love their children. To be self controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands so that the word of God may not be discredited. Likewise, urge the younger men to be self controlled. Show yourself, in all respects, a model of good works and in your teaching show integrity, gravity and sound speech that cannot be censured, then any opponent shall be put to shame having nothing evil to say of us. You see what's going on here? Paul is writing to Titus and he's saying, 'look, you older men, you older women set the example so that the younger men and the younger women learn from you’. And so that needs to be handed down from the older men and women to the younger men and women and from the younger men and women down to their children. Because so much of our behaviour comes from the behaviour we learn and model from the older people in our lives, both as children and as adults. That's why mentorship is so important. You may have heard me talk about a man, Graham, who was my business partner for 20 years. Now Graham's almost 20 years my senior and he taught me so many things. I watched his behaviour. He was so good and decent and affective in so many ways. I learned to become more than I could be by watching him and learning from him. Like a life's apprentice. We've been talking over the last few weeks about building a godly family. And today I want to get really down to earth and practical. I believe, I truly believe, that the most important thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life. So let me say that again. The most important and powerful thing that you and I can do to build a godly family is to be a godly person and to live a godly life. Let me ask you, are you an older man or woman? Now, in some societies they respect their elders. Others, like mine, I'm not sure we're that good as we should be. Anything old is out of date. It's beyond it's use by date. Old is old fashioned. We take old people and stick them in nursing homes. I generalise but as a society and mine doesn't value old people as much as it should. But whatever society you live in, if you are an older person you can be such a godly influence on your family because you've been around. You know some things. You should have the godly wisdom that comes from a life long faith in and walk with Jesus. You're not involved anymore, by and large, in the daily cut and thrust and pressures of bringing up the kids. What a godly influence you can be on your grandchildren; the gentle yet powerful faith; the glow, the radiance of God that shines out through your eyes and comes out of your mouth. And you parents, what an incredibly godly influence you can be on one another and on your children by just the way you live and talk and behave to other people; husband and wife, by your behaviour, by your countenance, by your attitudes and deeds and encouragement. How you can support one another. Let's say one of you is behaving badly. You're under pressure, you're tired. And the other one, instead of arguing and fighting, draws alongside and in love steers things down a different path. And then, see then what the kids see, instead of seeing a father and mother arguing and pulling in different directions, they see them trusting in God, supporting one another. What sort of a lifelong imprint do we think that is going to leave on our children? Now, each of us has bad habits. Sin, anger, selfishness, low self-esteem, pride, dishonesty, whatever it is, those things are going to be handed down to our children unless we deal with them; unless we sacrifice them to God; unless we let Him into that space to change us. And the fruit of that change, the fruit will be unto our children and their children and their children's children to a thousand generations. When the simple daily habits of our lives are godly, Christ-honouring and humble, this is going to be a powerful blessing. Now a friend of mine, Mark, has 9 children. He lives in the USA. I asked him to tell me what some of the most important things were in raising a Godly family. Listen to what he says. He quotes Luke chapter 6, verse 40: Everyone, after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher. And he says, "While not usually thought of as a verse on parenting, the implications here are clear. We can't hope to produce something in our children that we ourselves don't possess. Our children, after all of our teaching – creative or not, intentional or not, verbal or not – our children will be like us. So, watch your own heart for it is the well spring of life and don't forget that first things must be dealt with first, including keeping our marriage the priority in our family." That's from a father of nine children. You know something, I think them’s pretty wise words, don't you?
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  • Distractions // Building a Godly Family, Part 11
    With all the entertainment options and gizmos available to us these days, there are so many distractions. Things that stop us from interacting and doing the things that we need to do to build a godly family. I remember with great delight the days that I used to come home from school in my younger years. I was allowed to watch an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half of TV. It was a great big hulking black and white model that sat in the corner of our lounge room. I used to watch Gilligan's Island and Mighty Mouse, and later on Batman. Our time in front of this tube was strictly limited by our parents. They didn't want us getting square eyes. And then it was out to play with the other kids in the neighbourhood, and then in to do our homework. Help with setting the table, cooking the dinner and certainly helping with clearing up and washing the dishes. It was those times, washing the dishes and drying them up, that my sister and I used to sing songs. When it came to being a family it seemed that there were fewer distractions back then. Oh sure, my parents had to work hard and they had busy lives but there wasn't any internet. There weren't dozens of cable TV channels. We only had one TV set not three or four as many homes do today. There were just fewer distractions … distractions from, well, I guess from being a family. Things were never perfect but there seemed to be much more time to interact. More time to do things. I hope you won't mind indulging in my little bit of nostalgia. Maybe looking at it through rose coloured glasses you think. Maybe each time and each age and each generation has it's challenges in being a family. But today's entertainment options are so prolific. I mean, cable TV with more shows and programs than you could ever watch and a lot of it, I have to tell you, is rubbish. The internet … and so many people spend hours and hours in front of the internet; mobile phones with their SMS and texting and now there's the unlimited talk plan so you can fry your brain even longer; and so many movies. Lot's of them. I remember when I was a kid there were two or three movies on at any one time. Now there's dozens of movies on at any one time down at the picture theatre. And of course we all have cars. We can go anywhere, do anything anytime. Run the kids here, run the kids there. The world is kind of a whole bunch different. And I'm not suggesting we wind back the clock. You can never do that. I'm simply making the point that we live in a different world these days. A world where there's so many distractions; so many seemingly very good things, entertaining things; razza matazy things; glitzy, attractive things. After a hard day at work or at school all we want to do is we each want to retreat into our virtual cocoons to be entertained. To have 'stuff' dished up to us. And then of course there's take away food, there's the microwave oven, the dishwasher; a lot of the menial things that people used to do together as a family; times to talk and to laugh and to share and to get to know each other. They're disappearing. There are more bedrooms, bigger houses, more living areas. We're more isolated than we ever used to be. Not everywhere but in much of the world, this is what people aspire to. And you stand back from that and you have to come to the conclusion that families are under incredible pressure. We're talking this week, on the program, again about building a godly family. Well this whole pressure of distractions is something we need to think about because, by definition a family is a unit, a team. A group that functions and grows and develops by virtue of the fact that the younger and the older members of the family communicate and interact in their lives. Ever thought about that? A family is the closest interaction in life because we share the basics of living. Eating, sleeping, cooking, cleaning. This kind of place where people should be loved should be nurtured and should be protected. And along comes all these distractions, pretty things. They start to drive wedges between the members of the family because they rob us of time – time together, time to be a family, time to talk and to listen. I'm someone who really needs to hear this too. I don't know about you but as I said last week on the program I'm very happy with my own company. It's the easiest thing in the world for me to retreat into the bedroom and watch a re-run of one of my favourite TV series. Or skip meals and work through. So many families don't even have a meal together anymore. Not even once a week. Why? Because there are so many options. Meals have ceased to be times of table fellowship and they're all about shoving food down the hole and getting going with the next thing. God though places a high premium on our families. And again, as we saw last week and we'll be looking again in more detail next week, the Ten Commandments. Of those the first four are about God and us and the very next one, the fifth one, is: Honour your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. (Exodus chapter 20, verse 12) And wives and husbands, in Ephesians chapter 5 God says: Wives be subject to your husbands. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for her. God places a massive premium on the family because family was His idea in the first place. I mean Adam/Eve. From there came the beautiful gift of oneness and intimacy. And then out of that beautiful, intimate embrace came the gift of children. Ever figured out this plan, how beautiful it is for bringing children into the world. And there you have it, you see, there you have the plan, the plan for family; God’s plan for those who are made in His image to live in community and family. So many people hear that and they listen to that and they feel so ashamed. They feel so inadequate. "Well maybe that is God’s plan but look at the mess my family's in.' Well you're not the only one. I mean Adam and Eve had two children, Cain and Abel, and they had the same problem. One son murders the other one. I mean talk about a dysfunctional family. Here is the first family and they were so dysfunctional because dysfunction happens when we turn our backs on God. And that's exactly what Adam and Eve did. And yes, we do have a whole bunch of distractions these days. And distractions bring dysfunction. Let me say that again. They drive little wedges into the family. So distractions bring dysfunction. And the whole point of a wedge, if you pardon the pun, is you start with the pointy end and you drive it in deeper and deeper and it pulls two people apart more and more. That's what happens. Just think about it. I don't know what your family looks like but we do have more than one television in the house. And it's very easy for everybody to go into a different room and watch a different television and just have a quick meal and barely say a word to one another. The temptation is there. Now, there's a simple solution. There's something we can do right now, today, this very minute. We can start figuring out some clever creative ways of spending time together despite the distractions. We can talk with our kids in the car when we're running them somewhere. We can actually turn the TV off over dinner. We can start an interesting conversation over food. We can share something that happened in our day. We can plan some family things that involve the kids and their friends too so their friends go home and say ‘wow that was cool'. Something that's fun; an alternative to TV. There are so many creative things that we can do. You know something, we can make them fun. We can bake biscuits with the kids on a wet, cold, rainy Sunday afternoon. We can involve them in cooking the soup in chopping up and peeling the veggies. We can inject, we CAN inject some old fashioned fun into the mix. Okay, they might complain to start with but as we develop these new habits, as we get to know something new, you know what, these kids are going to look back on those simple pleasures in years to come. And that's what’s going to stick in their memory when we just spend the time.
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    9:38

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God has a habit of wanting to speak right into the circumstances that we’re travelling through here and now; the very issues that we each face in our everyday lives. Everything from dealing with difficult people … to discovering how God speaks to us; from overcoming stress … to discovering your God-given gifts and walking in the calling that God has placed on your life And that’s what these daily 10 minute A Different Perspective messages are all about.
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