A Different Perspective Official Podcast

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

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

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

Many people, many Christians even, let me say, live directionless, rudderless lives. Their lives don't seem to be heading anywhere in particular. And at some point, as we realise that life is slipping by ever so quickly, that shocks us into realising that before long, this life will be over … and for what?
You know one of the most common things that we all experience at some point or other in our lives, is this dilemma, this crisis if you will, of, well where is my life headed? I think it's because somehow we're hardwired to have hope for the future, to be able to look forward to a good future, to have a sense of significance, to make our mark in this world. Where is my life headed? … can become a question of quite some desperation.
And for our lives to be headed in the right direction we need a few things to come together. The way we live, the things that we can control, and the things that go on around us, the ones we can't control. That's not easy. It's almost an impossible juggling act. But … what if God has a plan? What if He has a purpose in the things that we've been travelling through? What if there's meaning behind it all, and He does want to do amazing things and He does want to be involved in the choices we make today? What if?
Wouldn't you want to tap into that? I mean, wouldn't you want to know? Wouldn't you want Him to speak those plans and purposes gently into your heart and let them make a difference for you, here and now? Just think … what a powerful way that would be to live.
Yesterday we saw that the biggest thing that we can get out of the Bible is discovering God Himself, who He is, what He's like, how does He react to different situations and things?
To me that is the greatest prize of them all, God Himself, getting to know Him, having a wonderful, rich relationship that just gets deeper and deeper as time goes by.
Today I want to look at the second thing that I think the Bible is about, God's plans and God's purposes, both the big picture and specifically for you and me. The big picture is so important. What's Gods big plan? What's He up to?
A friend and colleague of mine, Dr Graham Pratt, he and I were speaking a few years ago at an IT conference in Singapore. We were talking over coffee about some technology thing and he said to me, "Berni, context is so important, in fact in understanding something, context is almost everything." I'll never forget it, it's a pearl of wisdom. We want to know where our lives are headed, my life, my little piece of the puzzle, right? If we want to do that we need to understand the big picture; God's great plan as well as His specific plans and purposes for our lives.
You know, when I read the Bible, the stories and the things that happened a long time ago, somehow God's plan for my life becomes so crystal clear. For me, life was just a 'here and now' thing. It was about wealth and career. In reality, it was empty, hollow, directionless. Where was it headed? What was the point? But when I encountered Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, when I started listening to Him by reading the Bible, I began to get a handle on God's big picture. A big picture that's best summed up in something that God says over and over again:
I will be your God and you will be my people. (Exodus 6:7)
From the beginning to the end of the Bible, you see God saying that and explaining it and sending Jesus so that it could happen. They're not just words on a page. This is the very heartbeat of God to call us back to Himself, to call us back home, here and now and for all eternity, despite our rebellion, despite the fact that we rejected Him, despite all our mistakes; to give us a new life, an eternal life that's not about rules and regulations but a relationship with Him.
And right through the whole Bible you see Him engaging with people and drawing them closer, people just like you and me, people in their weaknesses and their failures and yet He loves them and touches them and reaches out to them. Okay, we see His anger too sometimes, you see God getting angry and yet despite that He still reaches out to people from in the midst of His anger and that's where we discover His grace and we see Jesus dying on a cross for you and me.
As we read those stories over and over again, His heartbeat touches ours, His desire touches us, His grace wraps itself around us and through us. I've only just started to wrap my heart around that as I've spent twenty odd years listening to Him, hearing His words and His stories and His heartbeat in the pages of that wondrous book – the Bible.
You know, you open the Bible and you read the story of Jesus dying on the cross and crying out:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46)
And from the pages of that book we hear God crying out to you and me, here and now; "Don't you realise how much I love you". And you know, as well as this big picture of God's engagement of all humanity and His plans for humanity as a whole, the thing that, for me, so often leaps off the pages of His word are His specific plans for me. Sometimes we think that 'Well, you know, God's stopped talking. God had the prophets in the Old Testament and He had Jesus in the New Testament and He had some Apostles in the New Testament … but that was back then. Today though, here and now God's stopped talking'.
But when we're travelling through times that are uncertain, when we want to give up, when we're in a relationship or in a thing we thought God had called us into but now we're not sure, we need God to speak.
I cannot tell you the number of times, in the early days, that I wanted to give up on this ministry of Christianityworks that I'm involved in. I can't begin to tell you. It all looked so impossible, it all looked so hopeless. How could this guy from the IT industry ever do this thing called 'sharing Gods love with people through the media'? It was incongruous but as I look back on it now, that regular habit of spending time in Gods word, day after day, is how He touched me and whispered in my heart 'just keep going'. That's what happens, you read God's word and you discover power … power unlimited … power to keep going with God's plan for your life. That's what happens.
Just when I was rock bottom I remember one time, reading this:
My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2,3)
Another time, just when I was wondering whether or not to step out in faith by growing the ministry into Africa when we clearly didn't have the resources to do so, I opened up to the next chapter and read about Peter stepping out of the boat. He didn't wait for the storm to stop. No, he stepped out in the middle of the storm and walked on the water towards Jesus.
Just when I was feeling so incredibly inadequate one tome, I read about how Peter and all the other disciples deserted Jesus when He was being tried and crucified. And yet Jesus still went on to use them to start this thing He called "the church".
The Bible is full of this stuff and somehow God, through His Spirit, takes those stories and connects them with our lives and in our hearts we just know that God is speaking to us. There have been so many times when just when I needed a gentle touch from God … then I read about how He healed the leper or the blind person or the lame man. The Bible is full of God's promises and plans and purposes.
And when we establish a regular habit of just spending some time in there with Him, His Spirit writes His promises and plans and purposes on our hearts with indelible ink, in a way that no person, no man or woman, no situation, no trial can ever rub them off. God Himself brings His word to life and that changes everything.
So often I wonder where I'd be if I hadn't established a regular habit of reading Gods word. You know, it just doesn't bear thinking about.

God is so profoundly different to anyone or anything that this world has to offer. His ways are so different to our ways, and unless and until we have a personal encounter with the risen Christ, unless and until we encounter Jesus in our own, personal experience, our lives simply cannot be transformed.
Who or what is God? Well you go out and ask different people and what you discover is that they have a picture of God in their heads that doesn't always have a whole bunch to do with who God actually is.
It's almost like we reconstruct Him in our own image, to suit ourselves, to suit our own agendas, but let me ask you something, if God is God wouldn't it be worthwhile kind of figuring out exactly who He is? IF God has the power, is the power, to transform our lives, shouldn't we get to know Him?
I mean, who is He really and how do you and I relate to Him? What if God is awesome and powerful and loving and kind and we spend the rest of our lives missing out on all that because we never really went after Him to discover who He really is? So how do we discover who God really is?
This week on the program we're setting about laying hold of God's power to completely and utterly transform our lives. And the place that we discover that power, the place that God the Holy Spirit has made available for us to lay hold of that power – is His Word, the Bible.
I mean reading the Bible was something I would never have done in a million years. What do you think I am, some wacky fundamentalist? But you know something, reading the Bible for myself has completely and utterly transformed my life. It didn't stunt me, it opened me up. It didn't narrow my mind; it opened me up to the wonder and the possibilities of life with God, to the power that God wants to unleash in my life.
Over the last twenty or so years I guess I've spent a lot of time in that Book, in fact its 66 different books. I've had the chance to study and to learn and to think and to mull it all over and truly, in those twenty odd years I've really only scratched the surface. But the more I think about it, the Bible is basically about four things:
Who God is, what He's like and how He reacts to things.
What God's will and purposes are, what His plan is.
Where my life is headed. It's about who I am, made in His image but how does He see me? Who did He make me to be?
And … how I can respond to God.

Some people think this last one, number four, is all that the Bible has to offer; just rules and regulations … but you know, as you read it for yourself, how to respond to God is quite simply not the main thing, it just kind of drops out at the end, it's the natural consequence of the first three.
Those four things again are: who God is, what His will and purposes are, who you and I are in His eyes and how we can respond. That's what the Bible contains, it's real and it's practical, it's about life, it's awesome and it's exciting and it contains power … power unlimited to transform you, to transform your life, to heal you, to bless you, to empower you.
Today I just want to look at the first one of those; who God is. I mean if God is God, shouldn't we figure out who He is? Who He says He is? Where better to do that, to search Him out, than that great love letter that He's written to you and to me, the Bible. It makes sense, doesn't it?
When I first laid eyes on my wife Jacqui, when I first saw her from a distance, I was speaking at a Church and she was sitting in that congregation. As far as I was concerned, she was just another face in the crowd and had I never sought her out, I would never have come to know her and to have a relationship with her. So, I did seek her out and she responded to that.
In a sense, picking up the Bible is seeking God out, it's the same thing, He responds. It's not a dead book written by men thousands of years ago. It's the living, active word of God and His promise is that when we pick it up, the Holy Spirit, God Himself, will bring it to life in our hearts. God promised that He would pour His Spirit out on all flesh and that He would write His words onto our heart.
By far, the greatest reason for reading the Bible, is to encounter God Himself, to discover who He is, and how He sees things; what He's like and what He's up to. You see, it's easy to read this story or that in the Bible and say, "Well that was a story about King David" or "That one over there, that's the story about Moses or Peter or Paul". But so often in the pages of this great and mighty book, the great unseen player is God Himself and as I read every story, every verse, I keep asking myself, "What does this tell me about God Himself? What's He up to in this story?"
Let's take just one example, it's a short story. God makes a promise to this man called Abram who is childless. You know, Abram's an old man, his wife Sarai is an old woman, they're childless and yet God has called them to go from their home on this huge journey. God's promised them children, a multitude of children, but it's never happened. It's gone on for years and years and years. Abraham's out of his comfort zone, he's on this long, uncomfortable journey and he's frustrated and this is what happens.
After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the Lord came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:1-6)
It's really easy to read this story and imagine that it's a story all about Abram. But the real question that we should be asking is What does this short little story, tell us about God?
Here's Abram. He's frustrated, he's waiting for a breakthrough that's not coming. He's trying to believe in God, but it's hard. I wonder if that sounds at all familiar to you? And it's going on for years and years and years and he and his wife are old and it's just absolutely impossible. But along comes God and He does this kind of gentle and kind and wondrous and patient thing with Abraham, He takes him outside to gaze up into this beautiful masterpiece called the Milky Way.
Have you ever looked up at the stars away from the smog and the lights of a big city at night? It's incredible how many stars are up there and in the middle of Abram's frustration, God says 'Abram, look … look at this! This is how many descendants you're going to have. My promise will actually happen". And if you read the rest of this story, Abraham ultimately has a son, with his wife Sarah, called Isaac. He never saw all these offspring happen, he never saw the rest of the promise fulfilled in his life time, but here is this good and gracious and powerful God who takes a man in the middle of his frustration and just speaks lovingly to him.
It's a story about God do you get it? It's a story about how God treats those who He loves when they're at the end of their tether. the Bible is full of those stories. You pick it up and you read them and wow, you discover who God really is. Do you see the power in that? Do you see how know God, and how in our small, limited way, coming to understand Him can make such a powerful difference to us, when we're lost and frustrated and clinging onto a promise … but only just?
People often say to me, "Berni, you seem to be so enthusiastic about God." Can I tell you why? Because over the last couple of decades I've discovered Him in the pages of the Bible and discovered what He says about Himself there and those things have ended up being etched onto my heart, so that I can experience Him in my life. I can't help but be enthusiastic and you know, I can't help but wonder, where would my life be? Where would I be, if I hadn't laid hold of this power … power unlimited in the living Word of God?