Sometimes when you take a good, hard look at your various relationships with different people, you sense that not all of them are what they should be – so how do you breathe new life into them?

Relationships are a funny thing we can be close to someone at one level but when it comes to really connecting with them at a meaningful level we can be a million miles apart. We’ve all seen it socially; this couple looks like they have it all together, but a home they hardly talk. So often relationships are just relationships of convenience, there’s nothing deep or rich or meaningful to them. And so life starts feeling well pretty hollow right? I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a cocktail party but people stand around talking about superficial things then when they run out of stuff to say they make an excuse like “I just need to duck of to the bathroom,” or “I’m just going to get another drink.”

We can’t live our lives at that cocktail party level, well I guess we can, but what an empty hollow life it is, and that’s the sort of life that we’re encouraged to live these days in all sorts of ways. So if we have a string of relationships like that, superficial and hollow, what can you and I do to start turning those relationships around into lasting relationships, not next week, not next month, today?

Let’s just take a moment to survey the landscape of relationships in our lives, just think through the deep rich ones, the superficial ones, the people you love but seem to be a long way off, the people you butt up against who drive you bonkers at work. There’s quite a variety isn’t there? Now out of all of those I just ask you, choose one or maybe two that matter to you the most, just think of the people and the relationships and where they are, the one or two that you’d really like to lift up to a new level, richer, closer, deeper. A month, six months, looking back that you’d like to say, “You know I started something back then, I’m so glad that I did it.”

Closeness, intimacy, connecting with someone, is so rewarding isn’t it but so often we don’t know how, we just don’t have a sense of, “Where do I start?” “I’m supposed to be close to my wife or husband but we’re a million miles away, how to I start? My boss at work is such a nice person but you know we just don’t connect, where do I begin?”

When we have drifted apart or perhaps never been as close as we’d like to be to someone or as close as we know we should be, we need to do something about it. Ok have you got those people, one or two relationships in your mind? Let me ask you something are you prepared to do something about them, are you prepared to invest into those relationships? Because if so, I’m going to pray for you right now.

Father, you know each one of us; you know the people that you’ve put next to us; you know the grace and the blessing that you have planned in those relationships, and Father you know how lousy we can be at this sometimes. So Father I ask in the name of Jesus Christ that you would do something in each one of us today, that you would breathe a new spirit, a new life, a new desire into our hearts to have this relationships. And as we just spend a little bit of time together today Father I pray that you will start a new work, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Well, we’re going to look at two things, I like to keep things simple, I don’t know about you but I listen to a program on the radio but I can’t remember five dot points. So two things you and I can do to breathe new life into a relationship. Yesterday on the program we spoke about differences, the fact that I’m different to you, you have different strengths to me I have different weaknesses to you, we both need each other just like the body needs eyes and ears and mouth and nose and hands and feet and kidneys and stomaches.

The body needs all of those things, they’re all part of the one body, but they’re different and sometimes we can sit there comparing and looking at each other and say, “Well you know I’m not as good looking as that one or I’m not as smart as that one,” and “Oh I wish that one was faster like I am.” We compare, what a waste, an ear is an ear, a nose is a nose, an eye is an eye, a mouth is a mouth and that’s just the way it was meant to be, praise God!

So, the first thing that we can do to breathe new life into a relationship is to resign from the renovation committee. Over, no more, I am not going to try to change this person any more, instead I’m going to accept them for who they are, today, tomorrow, the next day and for the rest of our lives together, I am no longer going to try and change them.

When you and I take a decision like that it shows. The other person all of a sudden starts to sense that we’re happy with who they are, we accept them just the way they are. Maybe your teenager, you’d like them to go out and get a real job but they just want to be an artist, and I know it's not a real job, but if that’s who they are can we accept them for that. Can we validated them? Can we encourage them. Can we say, “You know the world needs artists go on be a great artist.”

Maybe wives, your husband, you’d like him to be more attentive but he seems to need some space right now, will you let him have space without nagging him? Will you say, “Darling I know when you get home you just need a little bit of time to watch the news?” Husbands, maybe your wife, you’d like her to have the house tidier than it is when you get home. Now that sounds old-fashioned but I have to tell you that’s what’s in a lot of men’s hearts.

But she, she doesn’t feel cherished by you, you’re trying to get something out of her. But the one thing that she needs more than anything else is to know that you cherish her and value her just the way she is, whether she cleans the house the way you want it or not. Today you and I can decide to have a relationship not for what we get out of it but instead to give to the other person, to love them, to experience their beauty to just accept them the way they are.

The second thing we can do after we resign from the renovation committee, is say, “How can I serve them, how can I meet their needs, how can I do something practical that’s just what they need, just what they want?” Sit back, have a look, have a listen, what are they saying, what’s in their language? You know we hear each other talk but we never listen. Is this person at work aggressive? Maybe they’re just lonely. Is the neighbour grumpy? Maybe they’re just having a hard time with the kids and need a break. Husbands and wives, what are your real issues, what are you real needs?

So often we look at relationships from the perspective of, “What can I get out of it? What can I squeeze out of this relationship for me?” Can I give you a response to that? No! What can I give? Are we going to be like a farmer that constantly wants to reap but never plants or waters or weeds, come on, this is the crux of relationship we want to get without giving. Actually in relationships all we can control directly is what we give, the getting is the fruit of the giving and it’s largely out of our control.

Jesus figured it out he said, “The greatest among you will be the servant of all for whoever exalts themselves will be humbled and whoever humbles themselves will be exalted.” When we become the servant of the people we want to have relationships with we stand out from the crowd. We become a bridge builder we step down off our little pulpits and get our hands dirty.

Just two things, accept people for who they are and serve them without expecting anything in return. Practical, real, decent, honest and watch that relationship blossom it’ll be like light and food and water. Greatness isn’t being famous, greatness is the honour and respect that we build in people’s hearts when we take them just as they are and we serve them.

When you look around at other people, one of the first things you notice is that they’re all different.  And sometimes, just sometimes mind you, those differences can really get to you.

Deep down, one of the things we all hunger for is to have rich and satisfying relationships. I see so many people looking for that something and trying to find it in things or career or, when all along what they’re really looking for is meaning in life, meaning, real meaning comes through relationships. Now I happen to be one of those people that believes that there’s one particular relationship, a relationship with Jesus that’s the most important of all when we’re looking for real meaning, and we’ll talk about that one later this week.

But God made us to be community creatures not hermits and so building lasting relationship is so important in our lives, but so many of us were never taught exactly how to do that. Riding your bike is easy peasy once someone shows us how and we’re fallen off a few times right? It’s the same thing with relationships and one of the things that can really stop us from building those lasting relationships is the fact that we’re all different, and those differences can grate on us to the point where we just give up.

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember jigsaw puzzles, they don’t seem to use them much any more these days; they’re a much humbler form of entertainment than I guess computer games are. But you get the puzzle and it was 1000 pieces and you’d tip them out of the box and think, “Oh man how am I going to get these together?” They’re all part of the one picture, all different shapes and sizes, they look the same but they’re different and they all have to go in exactly the right place to make up the picture.

Now you either love the challenge or find it absolutely frustrating, bit like that with people. You think of the people in your life at the moment, the ones that are similar to you, some are fast some are slow, some are good communicators others aren’t, some are generous, some are thrifty, some are morning people, some are night people, some are detailed people, some are big picture people. There are so many different dimensions of the differences between people and those differences rub us the wrong way sometimes.

It’s a bit like that jigsaw puzzle we think, “Well I’d like to have all these relationships in place, I’d like to have the picture together but you know something, it’s just such a hard work I couldn’t be bothered.” Relationships can be frustrating but we can’t live without them. Just look at those dimensions of difference again, fast and slow, some people and I’m one of them, we like to get things done quickly we’re outcome focussed we’re always planning and trying to achieve outcomes. Other people, well they’re much more leisurely and their slower and those people and the relationship people, they create relationships much better than fast people like me.

Some people are good communicators, but others aren’t, it’s just as well we’re not all preachers. Some people are generous, boy we need those, and other people they’re thrifty and you know we need those too. Some people do really well at the detail; other people understand the big picture really well.

Actually when you look at those differences, we need them all for things to work well and that’s what the Apostle Paul wrote all those years ago, he said:

I want you to think about how all this make you more significant not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge, it’s all the different but similar parts arranged and functioning together. If the foot said, “I’m not elegant like the hand, embellished with all those rings, I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would it make it so? If the ear said “I'm not beautiful like the eye, limpid and expressive, I don’t deserve to have a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from your head? If the body was all eye how could it hear? If it was all ear how could it smell? As it is we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where He wants it. (1 Corinthians 12:14-18)

I love how Paul starts that off you know this sense that being a part of the body different but similar meant to compliment one another makes us more significant rather than less significant. You know when all the instruments of the orchestra play the one piece together that’s when life really sings. We need each other, now sure differences come with pluses and minuses, the pluses though are that we benefit from each other.

My wife, Jacqui who works in the ministry she is a detailed person, if you ring up the ministry or you write to us chances are she’ll be involved in responding to that; and she cares for people who ring and she’s always wanting to fix this up and make sure that CD goes out, you know she loves the detail. I tell you without someone like that in our ministry it just wouldn’t work, I’m a big picture person I like the story, I’m a story teller and Gary our Assistant Director, Gary’s a really relational sort of a guy, he binds things together really, really well.

We’re all different but we benefit from one another’s differences even though the differences sometimes rub us up the wrong way. Why did God put those differences there? I think to teach us humility, to teach us not to be the top dog, to help us to learn that real significance happens when we lay down our pride and our rights and our haughtiness and live in relationships and community. In society for instance we lay down our right we’re subject to the law it’s the price of being in community, now that’s the macro scale.

And the micro scale it’s the same thing, if I want to live in community with you I have to lay down some of my rights, I have to let you be different to me. To have my way all the time to make everyone look like me to have everyone nod when I speak, my way or the high way that’s not community, that’s not relationship its not reality. In real life people are different and they have different perspectives and by and large that creates a rich tapestry.

People who are closed off to that are stunted, people who are open to that are some of the smartest people I know, as long as they do that in a discerning way. I’ve learned so much by accepting other people for who they are, for their differences and learning from them. Does that mean that I’ve become just like them? Of course not, but I can take on the good things from them to make me richer.

A man called Graeme, who mentored me taught me how to listen and how to reflect and how to think about things. Another man called Hake one of the smartest people I know taught me never to have pride in my own ideas, you know he was so smart and he’d hear something better from someone else, he’d lay down his own idea and pick that idea up. A young man that I know, Nick how to burrow into detail and be systematic, the list goes on. I look nothing like them but I’m so much the richer for having been blessed by these different people.

Now to be sure one another’s differences can drive us nuts, but here it is, God made us all different, very different and this diversity is His idea, it’s His choice and when we get with that plan what a rich life. Accepting other people just as they are, right here, right now is the starting point of rich relationships. The point isn’t to change them but as they discover who we are and we discover who they are what are the good bits from each other that we can share that can contribute to one another’s lives.

And when that happens relationships become richer, they become deeper because that’s the fabric, that’s the rich tapestry that God always planned. We can try and fight the differences, we can try and make other people like us, let’s get a revelation – doesn’t work – because they’re just different. When we get with God’s plan, when we enjoy those differences, when we benefit from those differences, when we accept other people just the way they are, now that’s relationship!

A lot of life is about relationships.  But sometimes, when people are difficult and we’re busy – we can get to thinking – “Is this whole relationships thing really worth it?”

It’s great to with you for a fresh new week on this program, 'A Different Perspective'. Over the last three weeks we’ve been sharing some time together to talk about dealing with difficult people, we all have them it’s a fact of life, people are difficult sometimes. They wear different faces and we end up having a siege mentality so learning how to deal with all of that makes a huge difference to our lives.

This week I’d like to look at the other side of that coin, in a series of five programs I’ve called building lasting relationships, let’s face it when it comes right down to it, its our relationships that really add meaning to life. The eternal relationship with God, our husbands and wives and families and friends and colleagues, those relationship with those people, well, that’s what really matters right? So how do we build lasting relationships?

Have a think about your relationships, between husband and wife, with friends, colleagues at work, what are they like? Are they rich and rewarding a source of incredible joy to you, or do have this nagging sense that they should be better? I haven’t got time, I’m too busy I’m too tired, I’m, too something. On a scale from 1 to 10 if you looked at the relationships that you have, the ones that are important to you what’s the richness and satisfaction of your relationships?

The reality in today’s world is that mostly people are very busy, it seems to be an extreme, we’re either really, really busy or life’s really quiet and lonely, there doesn’t seem to be much balance for people in between those two extremes. I heard a story about email on radio the other day that one working day in every ten in offices now involves answering emails. The people are answering their emails at night and on weekends and they’re just so connected they can’t get away.

I read another article in the newspaper, it was about the etiquette of cancelling social engagements because we were too busy or tired or whatever. It’s pretty sad isn’t it? We get conned by the advertising that its all about me and I’m important I’ve got to be busy and I’ve got this to do and that to do and it becomes a cocktail of work and business and selfishness. And relationships, well, they can come down at the bottom can’t they?

Come on, sometimes the relationships that are really important - because relationships take time; they take effort they take energy, we’re so busy doing other things, come on, that relationships end up at the bottom of our list. Let me ask you, compared to when you were younger, how much time do you really spend with people that matter in your life today? I mean just husbands and wives, Jacqui my wife lights up my day but I can get so busy on stuff I end up trading the diamonds for stones.

Let me ask you another question, how rich do you want your relationships to be? Paul the Apostle a couple of thousand years ago has a beautiful about God’s family, one that we can apply right through life. It’s about the church being the body of Christ, hang with me, let me just share some of it with you. He said:

You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body, your body has many parts, limbs and organs and cells but no matter how many parts you can name you’re still one body. (1 Corinthians 12:12)

It’s exactly the same with Christ, by means of His one Spirit we all say goodbye to our partial and piecemeal lives. Which each used to live independently calling our own shots but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which He has the final say in everything. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant and not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge, it’s all the different but similar parts arranged and functioning together.

If foot says look I’m not as elegant as hand embellished with all those rings I guess I don’t belong to the body, would that make it so? Or if ear said I’m not beautiful like the eye, limpid and expressive, I don’t deserve a place on the head, would you want to remove that from your body? If the body was all eye how could it hear? If it was all ear how could it smell? As it is we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.

But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blow up into self importance, because no matter how significant you are it’s only because of the fact that you’re part of the body. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be significant it would be a monster, what we have is one body with many parts, each with its proper size and its proper place, no part’s important on its own. Can you imagine the eye telling the hand “get lost, I don’t need you,” or the head telling the foot, “You’re fired, your job’s been fazed out?”

As a matter of fact in practice it works the other way, the lower part the more basic are the more necessary. You can live without an eye but not without a stomach, when it’s a part of your own body you’re concerned with it makes no difference whether the part is visible or closed, higher or lower, you give dignity to it and honour to it just as it is without making comparisons. That’s the way God designed our bodies and it’s a model for understanding our lives together.

Good stuff isn’t it? Beautiful picture, you and I aren’t significant because we’re just good at stuff, we’re significant because we’re part of a group of people, we’re in relationship with other people. Just imagine you can be the best concert violinist, a veritable virtuoso but without an audience, so what? You can be the best hairdresser or butcher or plumber, with no clients so what? And where would the virtuoso violinist be without a hairdresser or a butcher or a plumber?

Come on, God is saying that His church, His family is the body of Christ brought together by His Holy Spirit. But it’s like that in just about every social structure too, we’re meant to be a part of a body; the body of Christ is special because the Holy Spirit’s involved. But look at the family, we’re part of a family we have different roles but we’re together. In work we have different roles but we compliment one another; in sporting teams they have different roles but you need all of the roles.

We’re all different, sometimes very, very different, but unless we are a body, a whole, the thing doesn’t work. We’re not a bunch of solo prima-donna opera singers, we’re a choir, we’re a team and significance is about us taking just the special thing that we are. God made you so specially, significance is taking that and being all that we’re meant to be in the context of a relationships.

Tomorrow we’re going to look a bit more at the fact that we’re all different and that can be tough and it can be annoying sometimes too. But let me tell you it’s an awesome thing that you are different from me, that you can do things that I can’t and I can do things that you can’t. And when we say, look relationships are important to me that’s a starting point, to me it’s so important to understand that I’m different and I’m special and who I am and what I can do is unique and beautiful.

And you’re different and you’re special and who and what you are is unique and different and you know, what you are or what I am doesn’t matter unless we have each other, unless we have other people. And that’s how God planned it, that’s why He has a church, that’s why He has a family, that’s why He adopts us into His home, because He wants us to be in relationship with other people. Rich relationships, significant relationships, become richer and more significant when we value who we are and value who other people are. It’s God’s plan.

When life hasn’t been going so well and we have a breakthrough – well that’s fantastic.  But the shine soon rubs off – unless of course we choose to share the blessing.

Don’t know if you’ve been able to join us during this week, but we’ve been looking on the program at what happens when our lives are under siege. You know its like everything around us is conspiring to rob us of life, we’re surviving but only just, we want to grumble and complain and give up hope. But the reality is that no matter how impossible it all looks, wait for it, God has already done the miracle.

He’s already done everything that needs doing to break the siege and He’s just waiting for us to trust Him enough to step out and walk into those miracles. Jesus came that you may have life and have it to the full, does that sound like a siege to you? No when we step out, as a good friend of mine, Barry Chant, keeps saying to me, we discover that God has already stepped in.

Over the last few days on the program we’ve been looking at a siege in a city called Samaria which is just north of the city of Jerusalem. This siege happened a few thousand years ago and it was just an amazing time, the Aramean army came and surrounded Samaria and they starved the people. This siege was so bad that women were cannibalising their children and the King completely lost the plot and he went to Elisha the prophet and went and blamed God and waved his arms and hands at him and the prophet said, “no you don’t understand, within twenty four hours there’ll be so much food in this city you won’t know what to do with it.”

What an impossible promise, when women were cannibalising children because there was so little food, for the prophet, for God’s man on the ground to say in just one day there’d be a heap of food here was impossible.

Well the King lost the plot, he didn’t do anything but whenever God does a miracle, God wants us to step out into that miracle, just sitting there complaining running round in ever decreasing circles isn’t going to do it. And what we saw yesterday on the program is there were a few lepers at the gate of Samaria and they were sitting there because they were outcasts, they couldn’t be in the city and they said, “well you know if we stay here we’re just going to die of starvation if we try and go back into the city we’re going to die in there because everyone’s starving, why don’t we walk out and defect to the Aramean’s, I mean, you know, what have we got to loose? We’re going to die anyway we might as well see if they’ll take us in and get some food.”

And they walk out to where the Aramean’s were camped laying siege and what they discovered was God had done a miracle, God had created sounds in the distance that sounded like another army and the Aramean’s fled because they thought that another army was coming. And so these lepers wandered around plundering the tents of the Aramean’s. I mean these people were so afraid they left everything, gold, silver, food, you name it they left it there and the lepers were wandering around plundering.

What a blessing for stepping out and you know when we step out in the middle of our siege and believe in God I have never been disappointed by Him, I have never been left alone by Him. It’s hard sometimes, I know, I have sieges in my life from time to time, we all do, no one’s exempt from this phenomenon because God uses those sieges and He uses those problems and He uses the adversaries that come against us, to help us to grow in maturity to trust in Him, it’s part of His plan.

So here are all these lepers the four of them out there plundering with an outrageous surplus and they know that back in the city people are still starving. I mean lepers were the lowest of low it wasn’t the King that went and stepped out into God’s blessing it was the lowest of the low.

Just ordinary guys, you and me, that’s how God works, we don’t have to be a high flyer, we don’t have to be some big name for God to do miracles in our life. And when we step out it takes so much courage sometimes to believe in Him, sometimes it’s easy to try our own self help program, but you know when it’s a big issue we can’t help ourselves, and in my walk with Jesus can I tell you truthfully? I have never, never been let down by God ever. But wait there’s more, see the blessing is great, the lepers were wandering around taking and plundering everything else but it’s even better when we share it round.

Let’s pick the story up that we were looking at over the last few days and these lepers have found all this gold and money and food and they’ve eaten, and drunk and carried off clothing. And this is what they say, they say, “What are we doing this is wrong this is the day of good news if we don’t say anything and we wait till the morning light we’ll be found guilty because someone will go and tell the King that this happened."

So they came and called to the gate keepers of the city and told them, "we went to the Aramean camp but there was no one there nothing except the horses and the donkeys and all the food was there". And the King found out and got up in the middle of the night and he said, "no this is an ambush. I don’t believe it they know we’re starving they want us to come out there." But ultimately the people did go out there and they plundered the camp of the Aramean’s.

It’s funny you know sometimes God does a miracle in our lives and no one else wants to believe it; no one else really understands the miracle. But so often when God blesses us we maintain this me, me, me type mentality, wears out pretty quick, I mean true significance is when we bless other people, we’re wired in our DNA by God to do that, we’ve just forgotten somehow.

I was at a conference in South Africa of Christian Broadcasters recently and one of the first people I met was a man called Juan. Juan runs a radio station, he’s disabled, he’s in a wheelchair, but the man has a deep joy about him, he doesn’t even have full use of his hands he could sit at home and spend the rest of his life feeling sorry for himself, looking out the front window watching the world go by. But you see Juan bumped into God somewhere along the line and this gentle giant has a fire burning in his heart, does he keep it to himself? No against all the odds this guy shares the blessing around.

Was it easy? I mean it’s a faith step, he has a wife he has two young boys he has a disability and he blesses others. Come on, Juan isn’t some high flyer, he’s not one of the beautiful people, he’s an ordinary human being like you and me but with the odds stacked against him, and he chooses to step out of his siege and bless other people.

In a few weeks on 'A Different Perspective' we’re going to talk about true significance in life but I believe true significance is when we bless other people with the blessings that God has given to us. A siege is about when an army surrounds a city and starves it to death, and in life a siege is when we allow our circumstances or other people or some adversity to stop us from living life to the full.

The first step is to admit that that’s happening could be hard sometimes and to stop blaming everyone else for our problems. God’s promise is that he will bless us. God does amazing miracles to do that, we don’t have to have a huge amount of faith we just have to have the smallest modicum of faith. Just enough, like these lepers, to step out into the unknown, to go out and walk into the miracle that God is already doing. And when we do that when we get the blessing we take that like Juan and bless the others around us, what an economy, what a God.

Can I encourage you if you have things in your life that are stopping you from living life to the full, God is speaking to you today, and He plans not only to set you free from your siege but to use you to be a blessing to the people around you, that is awesome.

When things aren’t going so well in life – it’s one thing to believe that God has a good plan for us.  But it’s entirely another to step out and live life as though we believe that.  So what do we do when we’re afraid to trust?

When our lives are under siege one of the hardest things to do is to decide that life just isn’t meant to be like this and to step out and to trust God. A siege is when a city is surrounded by an army and they just wait until the people in the fortified city die of starvation. When our lives are under siege well, that’s a desperate time, we loose hope we blame everyone else, we just want to sit there and give up. But life isn’t meant to be like that and no matter who we are and how desperate our situation God is in that place with us and he has a future for us.

Sadly I have watched people; even people who profess to believe in Jesus Christ live their whole lives without ever taking that step of faith. Why? Because stepping out in faith, believing in God for an end to the siege is a scary thing to do. So people just sit there, what an incredible waste.

This week on 'A Different Perspective' we’ve been looking at what happens when our lives are under siege and in particular we’ve been looking at it through the story in the Old Testament in 2 Kings, the book called 2 Kings, Chapter 6 and 7, which is a story of how Samaria, a city just north of Jerusalem was laid to siege by the Aramite army and they were there so long that the people inside began to starve, it became so bad that the women cannibalised their children.

And the King completely lost the plot and instead of leading his people went to God’s prophet Elisha and blamed God, and the prophet said, "well you know something, here’s what's going to happen, here’s what God is going to do. Just within twenty four hours there’ll be so much food you won’t believe how much food there’ll be."

Now that must have been such an outrageous impossible claim that the prophet Elisha was making to the King, because I mean people were dying, people were starving, the problem was so big the Aramite army was so real. And at times like that we lose perspective, the problem looks much, much, much bigger than God, God looks quite small when we have a big problem. But God’s promise came through the prophet.

God’s promise was to do something, but you know when God does some miracles in our lives He always, always wants it to be a partnership. It’s kind of like when someone comes to us on our birthday and says I’ve got a present for you, they can hand the present to us but we have to take the present from them too, it’s a two sided transaction, and it’s the same with God doing amazing things in our lives, reaching out into our lives to solve our sieges, and fix our problems.

Sitting there grumbling ain’t going to do it, cannibalising our kids, ain’t going to do it, blaming God ain’t going to do it. God wants us to step out in faith and that’s a risky thing to do when we feel like we’re under siege as it was for Samaria who were surrounded by the Aramite army. The Samarian King was running around in ever decreasing circles but there were some lepers, some outcasts just outside the gate and I’m just going to read a small part of the story from chapter 7 beginning at verse 3 of 2 Kings. This is what is says:

There were four lepers outside the city gate who said to one another, ‘why are we going to sit here till we die, if we say we’ll go into the city there’s a famine in the city and we’ll die there, if we sit here we’ll die, so why don’t we desert to the Aramean camp, I mean if they spare our lives we’ll live and if they kill us well we’ll die maybe just a day or two earlier.’

So they got up at twilight and they walked out to the Aramean’s camp, but when they came to the edge of that camp there was no one there because God had caused the Aramean army to hear sounds of chariots and of horses, the sound of a great army so they said to one another the King of Israel has hired the King of the Hittites and the Kings of Egypt to fight against us so they fled away in the twilight and abandoned their tents, their horses, their donkeys, leaving the camp just as it was and fled for their lives. When these leprous men had come to the camp they went in to a tent and ate and drank and carried off silver and gold and clothing and went and hid them. They came back in another tent and carried out things more and they just plundered the camp.

This is a wonderful story because God had already gone ahead of them with a miracle. This was pragmatic desperation, this was, if we stay here we die, if we go into the city we die, if we walk out to the Aramites we’ve got a slim chance let’s do that. Imagine that walk, crunch, crunch, crunch, twilight, the fear, they had really a rotten choice but just sitting there was not going to do it for them. Here’s the 'but', God had already gone ahead of them with a miracle, God’s ready to do a miracle and half the time God’s already done a miracle but we have to walk into it. Sitting in the siege complaining and blaming God and blaming everyone else is not walking into a miracle.

I remember when I was training to be an officer in the Australian Army, we had an obstacle course that we used to do quite often and part of the obstacle course was a really narrow plank that we had to run up and then run along. And then there was a gap in the plank which was just wide enough that you couldn’t step over if, probably two or three inches too wide, the gap, so you had to actually jump, it was very much a leap of faith. Now it wasn’t very far down to the ground but I don’t like heights and so I never, never will forget the gap in the plank and the leap of faith every time I had to run over those planks.

Many a time I baulked at this stupid little gap, it’s what we do, we don’t want to take the step of faith, it’s hard, it’s scary. But God wants us to do exactly that because God has gone before us we’re His creation, we’re His workmanship and God has created us to walk into the things that He has already prepared for us beforehand to do. God goes ahead of us, God goes into the Aramean camp, God goes into the thing that is holding our lives to siege and does miracles.

Well how about it, what’s holding your life to siege? What’s robbing you of life, draining you of life, starving you of life? Are you just going to sit there? Are you just going to die? “But Berni I feel like …” Like what, a leper? Well Gods grace and God’s miracle is for lepers too. In fact God’s grace and God’s miracles are for lepers especially, ordinary people, ordinary men and women like you and me. “I feel, I feel, I feel, nothing ...”

When we’re in a siege we have a choice, it’s a very stark choice, we can stay there, we can blame the rest of the world, we can starve and we can waste our lives or we can listen to God’s word and God has a good plan for your life, just like God has a good plan for my life even when sometimes my life is under siege. And impossible as it may seem, when God calls us to step out of that siege, as he may well be with you right now.

Maybe you’re in a difficult marriage, please don’t get me wrong I’m not saying walk away from the marriage by no means, but maybe you’re in a difficult marriage and God is calling you just to bless your marriage partner, to stop grumbling, stop complaining, stop arguing and just to bless them. Well you’ve a choice, you can keep blaming them or you can follow God’s leading and leave the rest to God.

As we step out, step by step by step all of a sudden we walk into what God is already doing, what God has already prepared for us, and we can walk into those miracles no matter how impossible they may seem. If it was easy faith wouldn’t be faith, but when we step out like those lepers what have we got to lose to walk into God’s miracles in our life?

When we have problems in life – sometimes they loom so large, that they make God appear to be small – at least from where we’re standing. Surely God won’t help me?!

This week on the program we’re looking at our lives when we find ourselves under siege, you know, every way we turn we feel as though we’re cut off from really living life to the full. We’re surviving … just; we want to blame everyone else instead of actually doing something about whatever it is that’s causing us grief. And God, well God, He’ll help other people but, no not me, my problem is so big, it’s so real, it’s so impossible, no, no, God wouldn’t do anything about it. Well look I know that God in theory could do something about it I mean after all he is God, but in practice… no, on balance I really don’t think God’s going to show up.

Haven’t we all been down that road? Desperation when our life is under siege, when we’re dealing with one problem and maybe, maybe problems in life on multiple fronts. Maybe work’s not going well at the same time as this isn’t going well at the same time as we’re having money problems and kid problems and … And in that desperation those problems loom so large, they look like they’re bigger than God. In our head we know it’s not the case but in our hearts, where we believe, that’s where we perceive the problems to be bigger than God. It maybe an uncomfortable fact but in those times we can put more faith in the problem than we do in God. It’s true isn’t it?

Over the last couple of days on the program we’re been looking at a story from the Old Testament, 2 Kings, chapter 6 and 7. It’s about the siege of a city called Samaria just north of Jerusalem. And what happens in this siege is that the Aramite army comes and lays siege around the city and the siege is all about, well the Aramite army can’t break the defences of the city so they lay siege. They cut off the water, they cut off the food, they starve people out. And so food is so scarce it’s worth a fortune, women are killing their children and cannibalising them, the King has completely lost hope, everyone’s seen that the King has lost hope, the place is an absolute mess.

And Elisha is God’s man on the ground, he’s a prophet, he speaks for God and when the King comes and says, “I accuse God of this, this is God’s fault you know, God did this to me.” How often have we heard that? We’ve got to find someone to blame, Gods as good as any, he’s a big target, let's blame God.

When the King comes to Elisha and says that, this is what Elisha says, “Hear the word of God today, tomorrow about this time in just twenty four hours a measure of choice meal will be sold for just a shekel and two measures of barley for a shekel at the gate of Samaria. And the Captain who was with the King said to the prophet, “Come on, even if the Lord made windows in the sky could such a thing happen?” But Elisha said to him, “You know something, you’re going to see it with your own eyes but you will not eat from it.”

So here’s God’s man on the ground, this siege has been going on we don’t know how long but in the opening of that story in chapter 6 verse 24 of 2 Kings, we know that food was selling for an outrageous amount of money. We know that women were killing their children to eat them, we know that there was a desperate, desperate famine going on, and in the middle of all of that, when all is lost, God comes along and speaks into that situation through Elisha and says “in twenty four hours there’s going to be abundant food.”

Now that was completely and utterly impossible you understand. And in my experience when we feel under siege and we feel God coming along saying to us saying, “I’m going to deliver you from this siege,” His word always seems impossible. Because we’re people, we’re human, we’re focused on the problem, we’re focused on the need, we’re focused on the siege and we lose sight of the enormity of God’s love and grace and power. Isn’t that what we do?

When Jacqui and I were on our honeymoon a few years ago, we flew on a small plane over the Fiordlands on the South Island of New Zealand, beautiful, beautiful country but when we got to the airport they said, “Look you know, it’s going to be windy, a bit bumpy, do you still want to come?” And of course being the fool that I am I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course we’ll still go.” And so we got on this plane and about 100 feet off the ground it was so bumpy I thought, ‘what have we done’? And when we got up high I tell you what those mountains, those alps they looked so big and God looked so small.

The mountains that we were flying around or near were called the Remarkables and they’re not called that for no reason, they’re massive, they’re big rocky snow covered mountains. And we flew through such turbulence in this tiny little plane, when we were coming in to land it’s like you see in the movies sometimes from the cockpit of a plane in the old movies all you could see top, bottom, left and right out of the window of the plane was mountain. You couldn’t see sky, you couldn’t see ground, you could just see mountains so you lost your distance perspective, and I was sure we were going to crash into that mountain before we turned left to land.

I was absolutely certain, and in that moment, for me God somehow shrunk and became a whole bunch smaller than those mountains. I mean really did God lose His power to keep me safe right then? Did He lose His will to keep me safe? Of course He didn’t, it just felt like He did and that’s life, it’s hard in that siege, everything looks so impossible.

So we have a few choices at that point, we can sit there and grumble and complain like the King did and blame God and stay there and starve to death, in many respects you know that’s the easy option. We can try the self help program but so often we get involved in circumstances in life that we just can’t change by ourselves. Or we can take a mighty step forward to trust in God.

“But Berni, how do I trust in God when I’m scared, when the circumstances look too big?’’ That is a good question, and for me this is what happens. Sometimes when the circumstances look bigger than God I just believe with as much faith as I can, my faith isn’t perfect, in fact it’s not about how big my faith is it’s about how big my God is. Jesus said you only need a mustard seed of faith that was the smallest seed that those people knew of at the time, and that little mustard seed of faith can move mountains; even the Remarkables let me say.

And the second thing that I do, even though my faith isn’t complete and my faith isn’t perfect, is I walk out of my siege, even when I’m scared even when I’m afraid, I just take a step forward anyway. And what I’ve found is that when I do that, and God always shows up it grows my faith for next time, and next time I can believe in God a little bit more.

God isn’t looking for perfect faith; God is just looking for a heart that says, “Lord I believe you enough to take that first step in the direction you are telling me.” Faith someone once said is the opiate of the masses, not for me, for me following God in faith takes a lot of courage and some days we do it afraid and some days we do it scared but we do it anyway. What’s the alternative, stay there and die? Doesn’t matter how big the mountains are, doesn’t matter how big the siege is, doesn’t matter how big the problem is and how small our plane is, God doesn’t shrink when we’re facing a siege.

God doesn’t lose interest, God doesn’t get bored, God doesn’t wander off somewhere. Jesus said all you need is faith the size of a mustard seed and you can move mountains.

When life’s not going along quite like we’d hoped it would be, we know exactly what to do – find someone to blame. Problem is that that whole blame game ends up robbing us of the solution to our problems.

Yesterday on the program we looked at the fact that sometimes we feel as though our lives are under siege. People or circumstances or just the break-neck speed of life means that part of us, that part of us that’s truly us, you know, deep down inside where we live, that part ends up being cut off from real relationships. And so its like life is holding us to ransom and the longer that siege continues the more desperate we become, we can end up developing a siege mentality, survival at all costs; and just forget about enjoying and living life, it’s just about getting by in a siege.

And as we sit in our bunker alone, we finally come to the conclusion that life stinks, and that’s great, that’s the first step, admitting that there’s something wrong. But then, then, instead of doing something constructive about it, we fall back on that tried and proven misery guts approach - finding someone to blame.

The blame game – life’s not going the way it should, you know, it must be someone’s fault, who can I blame? God or the government or my boss or my husband or wife or ... humm… who else is there? The neighbour, the friend the work colleague, the tax system, the kids, the list is as long as our arms. There must be someone I can blame!

Yesterday on the program we looked at the siege of a city, we saw how quite sometime ago the city of Samaria, just north of Jerusalem was laid to siege by the Aramites, their army. And the whole point of a siege is when the army cant attack the city because its too well fortified what happens is the army surrounds the city, cuts off the water supply, cuts off the food supply and starves the people to death. And the King’s job is to be the leader, right, to set the example, to figure out what to do to fix the problem, what the King hears is a story of two women who’ve decided to kill their sons and to eat them. I mean can you imagine a siege doesn’t get much more desperate than killing and eating your children.

Have a look at what this stunning leader, the King, does to solve the problem. If you have a Bible it’s in the Old Testament, the book of 2 Kings, Chapter 6 and I’m reading from verse 30:

When the King heard the words of the women, (that’s the one who told him about eating the kids) he tore at his clothes. Now he was walking around the city wall at the time and all the people could see that he had sack cloth on his body which was a sign of being in morning. And he said, “So may God do to me and more if the head of Elisha the Prophet stays on his shoulders today.”

So he dispatched a man from his presence. Now Elisha, the prophet was sitting in his house and the Elders were sitting with him, and before the messenger arrived Elisha said to the Elders, “Are you aware that this murderer has sent someone to take my head off? When the messenger comes to see you, just shut the door and hold it closed against them. Is that not the sound of them coming?” While he was speaking to them the King came down to them and said, “This trouble is from the Lord why should I hope in God any longer?” Things are bad, mothers are cannibalising their children, the army is surrounding the city, people are starving to death and the King goes “I’m such a brilliant leader, I know what I know how I can fix this, I know, I’ve got it, I’ll blame God! What a strategy! Now that should do it, see, I’ve done it!"

When our lives are under siege we want to find someone or something to blame. Some of them are ridiculous, I mean blaming the weather or blaming a natural disaster or … those things, well, they’re ridiculous. Some of the things that we find to blame are justified. You know when we feel under siege because of our work pressures, maybe our boss is demanding too much, maybe we feel under siege because things aren’t going so well at home or we’ve got financial pressures, and so it may well be that someone or something directly has caused that.

And sometimes people do do things to mess up our lives, war and famine, and abuse, the past, our parents, our spouses. Those people do do things sometimes that put us under siege, absolutely. But let’s just get a revelation here, standing around blaming them isn’t, underline isn’t, going to make things better, “but I’m justified in blaming them,” well that may well be. The question I would ask is: does sitting there blaming them make things any better? Absolutely not! Underline not! In fact if anything playing the blame game can make things worse.

Now I know sometimes we’re justified in blaming people, it happens to all of us, the point that I’m making is that blaming people doesn’t solve the problem. We can become the perpetual victim, blame everything on everyone else and you know what that does? It stops us from taking responsibility for the things that we can do to make it better. It’s like an either or choice, I’ll get tied up in the blame game or I’ll actually just move on and do what I can about the situation to make things better.

Now we can’t always make everything better, we can’t always make things better when someone’s sick; you know its just one out of one people die. And maybe we have someone who’s dying of lung cancer because they smoked. And we can blame them for smoking but is it going to make anything better?

You think about a child growing up to become an adult, when a child is a child they’re responsible for almost nothing. Little children, we feed them we change their nappies, we put them to bed, we give them a roof, and as they grow up progressively the parents hand over, and the child assumes, more responsibility for themselves. Until ultimately, like my two boys who have grown up now, 26 and 24, they’re responsible for their lives, for earning an income for providing for themselves, its a transition. And as we go from childhood to adulthood we learn and we grow up as we take responsibility.

What comes out of your mouth when you’re life is under siege? Let me challenge you, do you play the blame game? And if you do is that blame game a substitute for you taking responsibility for the things that you can do to alleviate your suffering and the suffering of other people? This may be tough, this may be blunt but let me say if you are in that position it is time to grow up.

I made a decision a few years back that when my life was under pressure and under siege I was not going to criticise or blame or whinge or complain, I am not playing the blame game anymore. You know something? Life is unfair sometimes and yes it hurts sometimes, and if God lets me walk through those things I presume that he has me in that place for a purpose. God doesn’t cause all the bad things that happen in my life but sometimes he lets me, and sometimes he lets you have that wilderness experience to help us to learn something.

As for me, I would do whatever I can to make the situation better, even if I can’t do it all, because I serve a God who can do it all. The longer we whinge the longer God will keep us there, absolutely guaranteed. God talks a lot about character in His word, His heart is to see you and me grow up. His heart is to see us firstly learn to take responsibility for the things we can do, and secondly to trust in Him for the things that we can’t do.

What a God, and I would encourage you that if you feel that your life is under siege at the moment to bring that to God because He is in that space with you. As we’ll see tomorrow He will, underline will, get us out of it, if only we’ll let Him.

Sometimes we get to a point in life – where we feel as though we’re under siege.  You know what I mean.  And when that happens, we can develop quite a destructive outlook.

It’s just great to be with you again this week with 'A Different Perspective'. It seems that the faster that life gets, the more connected we become through technology, the more emotionally isolated we feel. So many options and choices and priorities and things to do but somehow deep down inside, you know where we live, the lonelier we become. It’s kind of a bizarre paradox, it’s as though the people and circumstances of life conspire around us to put our lives under siege.

Now don’t get me wrong I’m not being paranoid, it’s just that somehow we get to a point in life where all of those things, even the good things, surround us and cut us off from the really important things, our sense of wellbeing, meaningful relationships. It’s like a siege; we’re cut off, ever felt like that? And when we’re under siege we develop a siege mentality.

The last few weeks on the program we’ve been looking at dealing with difficult people, looking at the faces and the masks that people put on. We’ve been looking at relationships but so far we’ve been focussing on the other guy, the other people. This week I’d like to look at the whole relationships thing from the other side, from our side, from the inside out.

So we’re going to do a bit of poking around inside and look at what happens to us in life when we end up under siege. You know what I mean, I mean life gets so busy or hectic or something gets difficult and we just feel like everything’s conspiring against us. It’s not always like that, but it can be going along a little bit like, you know, a toothache, it just starts off small and it gets bigger and all of a sudden it turns into a raging pain.

Well what is a siege? In the olden days as my children say, back in history, you know a thousand, two thousand years ago, a siege was when an army tried to attack a fortified city and if the city was so well fortified or so well sighted that it couldn’t be attacked, what the army would do is simply surround the city and if there was water running through, a creek or a river, they’d divert the water and they’d stop food from going in. And so weeks and months and even years would go by and the whole point is they couldn’t get through the defence of the city so they’d cut them off from food and water and starve them out, and it was kind of a stale mate starvation.

And the people in the city effectively had two options, they could stay there and starve and die, or they could break out and fight their way out and maybe die doing that. And it was a very difficult option because often these armies were so big that there was no way that they could break out, so the only other option they had was to surrender.

Now it wasn’t very pretty, I mean you can imagine being in a city under siege, the desperation, the sense of inevitable fate, the hunger, the fear, the brooding dread. Well, sound familiar? I mean it’s what happens when our lives end up under siege, and in fact I’d like to take you to a story, it’s a Biblical story that I believe truly happened. If you have a bible and you can go and grab it now or later, it’s in the book of Second Kings, Chapter 6. It’s a story of when a city called Samaria which is kind of north of Jerusalem was put under siege. Let me just share it with you.

Sometime later King Ben-Hadad of Aram mustered his entire army and he marched against Samaria and laid siege to it. As the siege continued famine in Samaria became so great that a donkey’s head was sold for 80 shekels of silver, and one forth of a cab of doves dung for 5 shekels of silver. Now, as the King of Israel was walking around on the city wall a woman cried out for him ‘help me my Lord King!’ And he said ‘no, let the Lord help you, how can I help you, from the threshing floor or from the wine press?’

The King asked her ‘what’s your complaint?’ and she answered, ‘this woman said to me give up your son we will eat him today and we will eat my son tomorrow. So we cooked my son and ate him and the next day I said to her give up your son and we’ll eat him but she has hidden her son.’ And when the king heard this, the words of the woman, he tore his clothes. Now since he was walking on the city wall the people could see that he had sack cloth in his body underneath, and he said, ‘so may God do to me and more if the head of Elisha the prophet stays on his shoulders today.’ So he dispatched a man from his presence.

Well you know sieges don’t get much worse in terms of sheer desperation and survival and basic instincts when mothers start killing and cooking and eating their sons. Awful stuff and you can see that the King who was supposed to be the leader didn’t react so particularly well.

Well that was a city back then, what about life now? When we’re under siege from all sorts of things, from people, from places, from priorities, from pressures, from being poor in time, what we do is we end up putting defences in place. I’ve recently been to a place where people have barbed wire around their houses, we do that emotionally, we protect ourselves.

And sometimes we don’t even realise we’re doing it, we push people away, we don’t really connect, we become superficial in our relationships, almost afraid to connect; with a quiet brooding and sometimes even a noisy sense of desperation, just surviving, just getting by, just living - only just. Come on, this is very common for a life to be under siege for all sorts of reasons, and if that’s maybe you or someone that you know it’s important that we recognise these symptoms.

So we have some choices, the first one is we can stay there and die. Now let me ask you how many years do you have left on this planet? Fifty? Twenty five? Ten? Two? One? Maybe six months, who knows? Life isn’t a dress rehearsal, life is there to be lived to the full and if we just stay in this daily tread mill with a life under siege day after day in quiet desperation, let me ask you something, is that really living?

The other choice is we can step out of the siege. In a siege, doing something about it looks to be a scary business but it’s really the only alternative to a status quo, what a decision. Let me ask you the hard question; is your life under siege? Are you just surviving, just getting by? With circumstances, or people, or work, or pressures cutting you off, am I just surviving?

The good news, the good news is that that is not Jesus’ plan for you. Jesus does not mean for it to be so, to be sure we go through seasons; we go through seasons that are kind of a wilderness experience. But Jesus doesn’t mean that life, the whole of life to be like that, that’s why he said, “I’ve come that you might have life in all of its abundance.”

They say for an alcoholic the single most important step is to admit that he or she is an alcoholic. And I just wonder whether with all the lives that are being lived right around the world with this sense of siege going on; with people who are made in God’s image who are not meant to be under siege, who are not meant to be suffering like that, I just wonder whether the first and the most important step isn’t to say. “I heard that joker on the radio the other day and that’s me he was talking about, that’s my life, my life is under siege.”

For the rest of this week on 'A Different Perspective' we’re going to have a look at what to do about it, but my prayer for you is that as you consider your life and your circumstances that you might identify the things that are causing your life to be under siege and go to Jesus and say. “You know something Lord, maybe it’s been a long time since I’ve prayed, maybe I don’t even know if you’re really there, but my life in under siege and right now, Lord Jesus, I need your help.”

We all have one or two perfectionists in our lives.  The ones that always squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom.  But perfectionism has – well – an ugly side to it.

I have a confession to make, I have to come out of the closet, come clean, by my very nature deep ingrained into my DNA - I'm a perfectionist. I like everything to be just so, everything. A place for everything, everything in its place. I mean how can you not hang the towel in the bathroom perfectly straight, come on how come the mustard isn't always in exactly the same place in the fridge door. It's tragic isn't it? Now in some respects it's not a bad thing, we need people like that in this world but perfectionism can be the scourge of a relationship because perfectionists use their perfection to condemn and belittle other people. It becomes a form of control. So what do we do when we run into perfectionists?

This week on 'A Different Perspective' we're looking at the faces that people sometimes wear and we do don't we? We put on faces to kind of hide what’s going on in our hearts. My face should reflect what's going on in my heart, if I smile I'm happy, if I cry I'm sad, if I have a frown I might be angry and that way you know what's going on in my heart and I know what's going on in your heart.

That's the theory and that's the way it's meant to work. But it doesn't always work that way and sometimes people put on faces or masks that kind of hide what’s really going on inside. And we read their face but we miss out on what's happening in their hearts and that causes confusion, it causes hurt, it causes descent, it causes anger.

We need to kind of get with it and begin to understand people at a deeper level and that’s why, this week, we've been looking at the faces that we wear and if you've missed any of the programs you can go and listen to them again online at www.adifferentperspective.org.

Now I was saying earlier this week that one of the things that I did for almost twenty years of my life was that I was a consultant in the IT industry and sometimes I'd deliver a report or deliver what I'd worked hard on and I'd get a bad reaction. And I'd think it was all about me when actually it was they that felt threatened, it was they that felt insecure and I needed to learn to read the terrain. So this week we've looked at the face of disapproval, which I've just talked about there; the face of over-confidence, which often hides deep insecurities; the face of aggression, which often hides a deep hurt; and today, today we're looking at perfectionism.

Where does that fit into the list? Why are we looking at that? Well perfectionism is a real insidious face because it proports to be one thing but actually, very deeply, it's something quite different. As I said at the front of the program I, by my nature, my very nature am a perfectionist. I used to have my favourite saying, "it's so hard to soar like an eagle when you're surrounded by turkey's".

Now perfectionism is different from perfection, two quite different things. My school motto was 'arguo quad argus' which meant 'whatever you do, do it well'. Now it's good to do our best, it's good to strive to excel, to achieve, to deliver, there's nothing wrong with any of those things.

I would encourage everyone to have a strong work ethic, to work hard to do the very best with their lives that they can do. That’s normal but perfectionism is when that striving, where that achieving, where that reaching perfection becomes an obsession. We have an eagles and turkeys mentality, we look down on the turkeys, we belittle them.

We use our perfection to dominate and belittle and marginalise other people. "How can you be like that? How can you not do this? That's appalling!" That's the sort of language that comes out of a perfectionists mouth and when you think about that it's a form of domination, I make myself bigger by criticising you and making you smaller, that's perfectionism.

It masquerades as something good, it masquerades as 'arguo quad argus' , 'whatever you do, do it well'. It masquerades as doing our best and striving and achieving but actually it's about domination and that's bad. Perfectionism doesn't mean to do well, it means that I'm trying to be better than you so I can be bigger than you so I'm more important than you are. And let me say, having been a perfectionist and addicted to this, it is a very, very powerful pattern of behaviour.

Now ten years ago when I came to Christ, I became a Christian I guess it's one of the first things that I began to see, that I couldn't actually go around talking about eagles and turkeys anymore and say that I believed in Jesus because Jesus loves eagles and turkeys. He loves us all and God began to deal with me, in my heart, about this spirit of perfectionism because the sense I had was that I have to perform to be loved. A lot of people, a lot of people live on that premise. In order for someone to love me I have to perform, I have to deliver, I have to do better and so I became a perfectionist.

But Jesus comes along and says, "no, no, no, you've got it the wrong way round. I love you no matter what, now go and be all you can be." Wow, isn't that a different way of looking at life, that's the Jesus way of looking at life. I don't have to perform at anything to be loved deeply by Him. I can go and sit in that red chair I have in my study and open my Bible and close my eyes and pray and spend time with Him.

And you know, it doesn't matter whether I succeeded or failed yesterday, we have that time together because He loves me and He died for my failures. And so over a period of time God dealt with me in this and little by little, grace sank in. Now my desire is still to do the best, I still love to do that but it becomes an asset instead of a liability.

Let me give you an example, each of our program series is available on CD at our website or you can write or, whatever and we've decided that our CD packaging should be quite professional. So Gary our assistant director, Gary Brown, designs the packaging and then he sends them to me and I refine them and tune them and improve them and we collaborate in this creative process together that we both really enjoy. Now, let me say, when I was a perfectionist I would have criticised him for not getting it right completely up front, I would have said, "How can he do it that way? Why did he do it? How come he didn't get that spelling right? How come he didn't get that word right?"

And I would have done that to feed my own insecurity, to make me feel bigger and better and more important. But now, now I realise Gary has some skills that I just don't have and he knows I have some skills that he just doesn't have and we really enjoy that creative process of bouncing things around together and building them and developing them, it's really good fun because we've got complimentary giftings, it's a team experience that we both really enjoy and I have to say, the outcome is much better than if he did it on his own or I did it on my own.

So my desire to get all the words right, to have it perfect, to get it just so, that's still there but it's there in a loving and a supportive way, in a team player way rather than in a dominating and critical way. That's the difference between perfectionism and perfection and when perfectionism is out there it masquerades as perfection but it's not that at all. It's a face of perfectionism and perfectionism is a prison, it's like a treadmill. Jesus came to set the captives free, Jesus came to get us out of this eagles and turkeys attitude and His unconditional love leads us out of that prison.

I no longer need to be bigger by making you smaller and so, if you suffer from perfectionism, I trust that Gods really ministered into your life and if you're dealing with perfectionists, I trust that you have a better understanding of what’s really going on when you see the face of perfectionism but understand the struggle in the heart behind it.

We all remember being bullied at school – and sadly bullies grow up into adults.  Dealing with their aggression can be really hard – especially if they’re close to home!

When we were at school we all had bullies in our lives. They were the ones that seemed to be bigger and stronger than the rest of us and they imposed themselves on us, sometimes it was physically other times, emotionally. It doesn't matter much, bullies are bullies and bullies ruin our lives. When we grow up you’d expect the whole school yard bully thing to go away but actually bullies grow up too and they still try and lord it over people.

Research shows that people who are bullies are underachievers so sometimes we have to deal with the aggression that comes from those people and that can be tough especially if that bully is close to home. If we have to deal with them everyday, it can be really, really tough. So how do we deal with that face of aggression?

This week on A Different Perspective we're looking at the faces that people wear. I guess we do all, to some extent, wear different faces but it can become really quite a problem. The whole idea is, the way that God designed us, is that my face is supposed to mirror my heart. If I'm happy, I smile; if I'm sad, I cry; if I'm cross I get a cross look on my face, if I'm relaxed I get that relaxed look on my face and we can read each others faces and body language and what’s being said and get a sense of what’s going on inside the other person.

The problem is, when we put on a face, when we're two faced, when a person says one thing to one person and entirely another thing to another person then all of a sudden it becomes very difficult to know what’s going on inside of that person. We get a misleading map and that misleading map can cause deception, confusion, pain, anger, argument. We've got to get a correct map of what’s going on inside people and nowhere is that more true than when we're dealing with bullies, with aggressive behaviour.

Do you remember being bullied in the school yard? I do, it was awful, it would ruin my whole day. From the morning I would wake up and have this sense of dread of having to go and face these boys at school again who would bully me and belittle me and kick me in the pants, it was awful but bullying just doesn't happen there, I mean kids are vulnerable and they're cruel.

I don't know if you've read the book or seen the movie, 'Lord of the Flies' but it's a very good story and of course teens become clicky and they ostracize one other. And as adults we can experience aggression in the home or work or friends or clubs. Even with the elderly, I remember being on the board of an aged care organisation and we had to deal with bullying in those residential facilities. Bullying is something, aggression is something that affects us right through our lives.

Schools these days have anti-bullying behaviour, they have policies and guidelines and instructions and the teachers are taught about it, I was reading a report on this and one 5 year old said, "Bullying is when people force others, usually smaller people, to do what they want them to do." Pretty good definition for a 5 year old.

This aggression, this dominance, bullying it’s like a small war when you think about it, when one country tries to bully another country we call it a war. When one person tries to bully another person it’s kind of like a small war and it hurts, it’s hard, it ruins our whole lives. So when someone's aggressive towards us, you know, really goes for the jugular, what do we do? Do we hit back? I was really taken by this quote by Martin Luther King, have a look:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it's a descending spiral begetting the very thing that it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar but you cannot murder the lie nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater but you do not murder the hate. In fact violence merely increases hate.

And so it goes:

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral destruction. The chain reaction of evil. Hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars must be broken or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

He sure knew how to string a few words together did Martin Luther King and really he was talking about what Jesus talked about. Jesus said, "Don't repay evil with evil. Love your enemy." That's tough. When we're being bullied, when we're dealing with someone who is aggressive, who's after our throats and our careers and our lives. Boy it's hard to say, "Well Jesus, that's really cool. I will love my enemy." That is tough.

Aggressive people, bullies are invariably like that because they've never really known the warmth of that light that Martin Luther King was talking about. The studies with chimpanzees who have been isolated from their mother at birth show that they become really violent and aggressive with other chimpanzees.

So often bullying behaviour is a pattern and the older a person gets, the worse it gets. It's a pattern of behaviour that reflects not having been loved, that reflects a response to not knowing unconditional love and it's a really hard pattern of behaviour to unlearn and it often takes a lot of time. Bullying needs two things. The first thing is it needs unconditional love day after day after day.

If someone is being aggressive towards me I can love them in return. Jesus talked about it, he said, "If someone hits you, turn the other cheek." Ouch. That is so counter intuitive in this day and age but I truly believe it's the only way that we can deal with aggressive behaviour in a right way, in a way that shines light into a night that is already devoid of stars, is to love a person in return, to love our enemy and yeah, that love can be tough love sometimes.

Assertiveness is the right thing. You and I were not meant to be bullied, we're not meant to be door mats. It's not what we were made for and it's okay to assert ourselves, gently and firmly. I'm sorry but I don't accept your bullying. I'm sorry but I won't accept your aggression. Aggression is emotional blackmail; aggression says, "You do what I say otherwise I'll come after you." No I won't dance to that tune anymore, no matter what you do, no matter what you say, no matter what it costs me - I won't.

And if we come towards someone who's being aggressive, someone who's bullying us, with a real unconditional love that says, "I don't care what you do, I'll still love you." And yet in an assertiveness that says, "I won't be blackmailed by your aggression", I think that’s the right thing to do. We can either do that or react and fight violence with violence and through violence you may murder the liar but you cannot murder the lie nor establish the truth. “You may murder the hater”, as Martin Luther King said, “but you do not murder the hate. In fact violence merely increases hate”.

We can look at this person and give them a soft answer. Proverbs, Chapter 15, Verse 1 says:

A soft answer turns away wrath but a harsh word stirs up anger.

What about it? What about these people who are aggressive towards us. They come after us and want to yell and scream and be angry, what if we adopted a tough love attitude? What if we decided I'm not going to lift anything, a finger, a word against you?

I will love you unconditionally but I won't accept your aggression. Yes, draw boundaries but I still love you. That's hard, that's a really tough gig but can I encourage you? It's what Christ calls us to. The face of aggression, so often, masks a heart of desperate pain. What if you, what if I were the ones to shine light into that heart?