There are things in this life that we get a bit nervous and anxious about … but every now and then we’re confronted by something that strikes fear into our hearts. Fear – how do you handle it?

When was the last time that you were afraid? I’m not talking just about being a little bit nervous, I’m not talking a bit anxious about something, I’m talking serious fear. That sort of gut wrenching, debilitating fear that we all go through from time to time. When was the last time you felt the cold blade of fear pierce your heart?

I have no doubt whatsoever that you know exactly what I’m talking about because we’ve all been there in that place and I have no doubt that you can remember the last time of great fear in your life as though it was yesterday.

I can think back to maybe four or five times in my life when I’ve been incredibly afraid. One time was when we just bought a new house. It was an old place built back in the 1890’s badly in need of renovation. An old three-storey terrace and we felt really led to sell our previous house and buy this one and do it up.

We tend to make big decisions in our lives only after praying, only after committing them to God and we, my wife Jacqui and I, felt really this is the step that God wanted us to take so we did. And once the house was settled and we moved in we submitted our renovation plans to the local council, it’s all pretty normal and what came back shocked us and filled us with fear.

Despite all the normal disclosures by the venders and all the normal searches by our solicitor during the purchasing process it seems there was some obscure ruling that designated our house as a low cost rental boarding house. Now there are a few large terraces in our street that were just that but our place? And the result of that was that not only that we may not be able to do our renovations at all but quite possibly the government could force us to turn the place back into a boarding house.

The night I found that out I was sick to the stomach. I didn’t sleep at all that night; fear gripped every cell of my body. I don’t know how it is for you but when we buy a house, hey that’s pretty much all our savings that we pour into it. Well, were we about to come completely unstuck and lose everything? And the battle with city hall went on for over nine months before the whole thing was finally resolved.

Do you remember that sort of fear in your place; that fear that grips every cell of your body? Maybe it was during a time when one of your children was gravely ill. Perhaps you’ve travelled through divorces, so many people have and you know the fear of the uncertainty of your future.

The terrible thing about fear aside from how it makes us feel is that it’s totally debilitating. It does one of two things, either it causes us to lash out and do stupid things, things that aren’t in our best interest, things that are only going to make things worse instead of better.

Or the other thing that fear does is that it makes us freeze. It’s as though we’re totally immobilised, incapable of thinking straight, incapable of taking any actions that are going to make things better and keep us safe. Like the proverbial rabbit on the road at night, caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, it freezes. Unless it moves quickly it’s going to get run over.

Over the last little while on the program we’ve been talking about how to live an extraordinary life in a series of messages that I’ve called, ‘The Art of Living’.

You see my theory is this: we only have one crack at life here on this earth. We can either waste that life completely or we can live a mediocre life that never really amounts to much, that never impacts other people’s lives, that’s what most people seem to do or we can live an extraordinary life. Part of living that extraordinary life is knowing how to get through fear, how to deal with fear and cope with fear because it doesn’t matter who you are, what your position or your status or your wealth is, you are going to experience fear at some point in your life.

Now I’m a very strong person emotionally, it’s the way I’m wired, my personality type has some down sides but one of my upsides is that I’m strong but still there are times when I’m afraid and the only place where I’ve been able to deal effectively with that fear, the only place where I’ve been able to discover the peace in the middle of a storm is in God Himself. Have a listen to what God has to say about fear, Isaiah chapter 41, verse 10:

Don’t be afraid, I am with you. Don’t be afraid, I’m your God. I’ll strengthen you, I’ll help you, I’ll uphold you with my victorious right hand.

This God who sent Jesus His Son to suffer and die for you and me is a God who loves us and a God who doesn’t want us to be afraid and the truly awesome thing about that is that we only really discover the power of that love when we’re afraid.

I have no idea where you are in your life. It may be that you simply don’t believe in this God, and okay, that is completely your decision. I’m not here to ram anything down anyone’s throat but what I’ve discovered in my experience is that it doesn’t matter how fearful I am, it doesn’t matter how overwhelming my circumstances are, this same God of whom I speak is prepared to step into our space, to walk with us and to be with us and to protect us and to provide for us.

I don’t care what it is, a tsunami, an earthquake, God is right there in the middle of all of that. Psalm 46 from the Old Testament beginning at verse 1:

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in the time of trouble. Therefore we will not be afraid even if the earth should change, even if the mountains shake in the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble with this tumult we will not be afraid.

And it doesn’t matter which way you look at that, what angle you come at it from, that is such good news, it’s great news, it’s fantastic news and the only way to discover whether it’s true or not is to try it next time you’re afraid. To pray, to commit your situation into Gods hands and wait for Him and see what He’s going to do. You know what? There is absolutely no other way to find out if it’s true or not.

Someone once asked me, “but Berni is it the right thing for me to do, to in a sense just assume that God wants to help me, to rely on God in this way? Isn’t it wrong just to expect God to show up when I’m afraid? Maybe He wants me to be afraid, maybe He’s too busy, maybe… Am I being presumptuous?”

I can kind of understand but my answer is “absolutely it’s the right thing to do”. Listen to a few Scriptures here, Joshua chapter 1, verse 9. God says:

I hereby command you, be strong and courageous, don’t be frightened, don’t be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Psalm 23, verse 4:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not be afraid for you are with me.

Romans chapter 8, verse 15:

You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear; you have received a spirit of adoption as children by whom we cry ‘Abba – Father’.

Hebrews chapter 4, verse 16:

Therefore come boldly before the throne of grace so that you may receive mercy and grace in the time of your need.

And so it goes on. Friend, that’s just a handful of Scriptures, just a smattering of the many, many passages in Gods Word where He tells us that He wants us to boldly and confidentially rely on Him.

I’m really conscious that right now that someone might be listening who is travelling through a difficult time. Can I say to you, God has not given you a spirit of fear but a spirit of love and of power and of a sound mind so that you can confidentially say, “The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid, what can anyone do to me?”

There are a lot of things in this life that we can worry about. Our health, finances, relationships, family, work and quite a lot more. What are you worried about at the moment – and what difference is your worrying actually making, hmm?

So what is it that’s worrying you just at the moment? Is it your health, maybe it’s your finances, perhaps it’s your job, will you have a job tomorrow, will you have a career? Are you going to get married or is your marriage ever going to get any better than this? Are your children ever going to grow up to be great human beings? Will the economy pick up? And what about… It’s quite a list isn’t it and I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface?

Sometimes we worry over little things, things that really in the scheme of things aren’t that important. I wonder what so and so thinks of me, do they like me, do they think I’m stupid or ugly? How do I look in these clothes? Some people I’m telling you are a mass of insecurities. Some people waste their whole lives worrying about stuff that, well it doesn’t matter.

There’s a bit of that in all of us. The other day I was crossing the road at a traffic light, it was green for pedestrians and red for the cars, I stepped out onto the crossing and just turned to the right for a little to talk to my wife Jacqui, we were coming home from a favourite cafe and as I turned back a car travelling at I’m guessing at least sixty kilometres an hour whizzed literally past me two or three inches in front of my nose. If I’d taken a slightly bigger step or if I’d been walking just a little bit faster I probably wouldn’t be alive anymore or at the very least I’d be in a coma in hospital somewhere.

I can’t tell you how shocked I was but the thing that I didn’t expect is that for the rest of that day, in fact for the rest of the week, every time I was confronted with something that should have been worth worrying about, it didn’t worry me in the least. When you’re confronted with the important things in life like am I going to be alive tomorrow or not, the little things all of a sudden, well we see them in perspective.

I wonder if in the next twenty-four hours you wrote down every single thing that you’re worried about, everything that concerns you and also the number of minutes you’ve worried about them and then sat down over a cup of tea or coffee and read through that list in the cold hard light of day how many of those things really have been worth worrying about. Well?

Of course there are other things in life that seem much larger and seem to be worth worrying about. A woman who has a lump in her breast and she’s sitting there in the Doctor’s surgery waiting to hear the test results. She probably didn’t sleep so well last night. She’s probably really, really worried sitting there, waiting for what seems like forever.

The man who’s just lost his job and he’s travelling home on the train to tell his wife: how am I going to pay the mortgage or the rent? How am I going to put food on the table? How am I going to find another job? I’m fifty-five, no one wants to hire a fifty-five year-old. I was having coffee with a man in exactly that situation just the other week and those were exactly the things that he was worried about and yet, as I said at the beginning of the program, worrying doesn’t solve a single thing, not a thing.

That’s exactly the point that Jesus was making when He was talking with a bunch of relatively poor subsistence farmers and trades people. People whose lives were at the complete whim of the Romans because they were the occupying force in the land of Israel. Have a listen; it comes from the Bible, Matthew chapter 6 beginning at verse 25:

And Jesus said, ‘I tell you don’t worry about your life, what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to drink, about your body, what you’re going to wear. Isn’t life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither reap nor sow, they don’t gather into barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Aren’t you worth so much more than them?

And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of your life? And why do you worry about clothing? Look at the lilies in the field, how they grow. They don’t toil nor spin yet even Solomon in all his glory was never clothed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field which is alive today and tomorrow it’s thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you you of little faith. Therefore don’t worry saying, ‘what will I eat or what will I drink or what will I wear?

For it is the Gentiles who strive for all those things and indeed your heavenly father knows what you need but strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be given to you as well. So don’t worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will bring worries of it’s own, today’s trouble is enough for today.

You know what I know, one day I’m going to die, just as sure as God made little green apples one day Berni Dymet is going to breath his last breathe on this earth. My heart will stop, my blood will stop flowing through my veins and my spirit, who I am, is going to depart from this body that I’ve fed and cleaned and exercised and lived in for however long I’ve had on this earth.

How will I die? Well you know at this point I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow a car or bus will hit me, and that will be the end, quick as you like. Maybe next month I’ll be diagnosed with cancer and given only a few weeks to live or perhaps in forty or fifty years time when I’m in my nineties or even a hundred years old I’ll end up just dying in my sleep. Who knows?

But it’s going to happen one day. Now I can worry about that, sure I can but that’s not going to change a single thing. There are some things I can do that will probably extend my life, if I eat healthily, exercise, and don’t smoke. Well I’m doing all those things; I’ve lost a lot of weight but still who knows about the next time I cross at the traffic lights?

Jesus is saying, there’s only one person that does and that’s God Himself. He has it all under control. He knows what I need, what you need. And if you want to have a life that’s free from worry the one thing you can do is to trust that He’s got it all under control and that His plan is a good plan.

I don’t know where you are in your life but these days there aren’t many things that I worry about and trusting in God’s goodness and in God’s provision and in His plan is the only thing I’ve been able to find that sets me free from worry.

It’s a strange thing but the closer I get to God, the more I listen to Him and the more I worship Him, the less I worry. It’s not something I have to work hard at. The absence of worry is just … it’s an obvious and natural outcome of my relationship with Jesus.

Yet you know, I do get rattled by things sometimes, we all do. But the only place to take that is to Jesus and He does take the worry away. The energy that we put into worrying can be put to so much better use in prayer. Have a listen to this passage of Scripture that I come back to again and again in my life, Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7:

Paul says, ‘Don’t worry about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known to God and the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

See what it says here? Take the time and energy you’ve spent worrying and use it instead in prayer and what’s going to happen is that God will put His peace around your heart and your mind. That Jesus Himself will take the worry and the anxiety away in a way that someone who’s never experienced it simply, well it doesn’t make sense, in a way that completely surpasses all understanding.

My friend it is time to trust your God for everything, big or small, it’s time to trust God for all your needs, in your relationships, in your job, in your family, in your health, sitting outside the Doctor’s surgery waiting for the test results and watching your children make mistakes. Everything.

Have you ever wanted to take revenge on someone for something they did? It’s a pretty common desire when people make us angry. But when you have taken that revenge – how did it make you feel?

There are some people in my life who have really hurt me. Of course, we all have ups and downs and we all suffer emotional bruises and scratches along the way. That’s pretty normal. But what’s also fairly normal, sad but true, is that we each have some people in our lives who have deeply, deeply hurt us. Sometimes they do something really, really bad like abusing you when you were child; or a wife or a husband cheating on their spouse; or a business partner swindling you out of money. Other times its not that there’s anything particularly big or bad about what they’ve done, it’s funny how the little things can really hurt.

One of my greatest memories of growing up as a child was that I was never really one of the ‘in’ kids. I was always different somehow. See, all the other boys, they were good at sport, running, jumping, football, cricket – but I wasn’t. I was a short, dumpy, studious kind of a kid. I could play 3 different musical instruments because I came from a musical family. I was almost always at the top of my class, I was a keen learner but I couldn’t play sport for nuts. I’m a big cricket fan but I can’t hold a bat or bowl a ball. And all that in a sports-mad nation like Australia. Well as a kid growing up, it was a big deal I have to tell you.

So the other children would poke fun at me, pick on me and that affected my own view of myself. It affected what they call my self-esteem. And it only got much worse when after finishing school I joined the military and that whole negativity was reinforced. So they don’t have to be really big things. I remember wanting to take revenge on the kids who made fun of me and picked on me.

I would plot these sinister things in my mind, and you know, when I hear about one of those high school massacres, it brings back those dark and difficult days. And I can still remember vividly my feelings for revenge. Now I never seriously contemplated anything like a massacre, but I have some small understanding of how the pressure and the other children can cause someone to snap like that. It’s a terrible, terrible thing.

Many people spend much of their time thinking about revenge. Wars are about revenge. You look at the centuries of killing in Northern Ireland, in the Middle East. Much of the escalation was about revenge – tit for tat killings. And whilst it may feel at the time that revenge is justified, revenge never fixes anything. It never heals anything. It doesn’t restore things. It doesn’t make things better. Revenge appears to be logical but it’s the worst thing we can do.

The opposite of revenge is forgiveness. The opposite of revenge is reconciliation. One of the great marvels of the ending of the apartheid system in South Africa was the leadership of Nelson Mandela who having spent 27 years in prison took on the presidency of the nation with a heart to see healing and not revenge.

Of course, South Africa still has it’s problems, of course it will take more time, maybe a generation or two, to see yet more change, but it’s Mandela’s refusal to exact revenge that makes him one of the greatest and most respected leaders of our time. And of course, before him, in India there was a man called Mahatma Ghandi. And before those two there was a man called Jesus. And this is what Jesus had to say about revenge. He said:

Look, you’ve heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’. But I say to you, don’t resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other one also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give them your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everybody who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. (Matthew 5:38-42)

Now my reaction to that when I first read it was that this is about being a weakling. I should just roll over, I should just be a doormat for people to walk all over and wipe their feet on. But as the years have passed it’s more and more struck me that turning the other cheek is a huge act of courage.

It takes a lot of strength not to lash out with revenge. It takes a huge amount of courage to refuse to take revenge. When someone offends you and you just want to say something harsh back to them, holding your tongue, staying silent is really, really hard, isn’t it? Letting injustice pass and simply forgiving it without having a say, without getting restitution, without at least taking a swipe is so difficult.

And yet as we see in Mandela’s case, as we see in Ghandi’s case in recent history there is a greatness about choosing to break the cycle of revenge; there is a greatness about reconciliation; there is a greatness about being the person that says, “No, I will not take revenge”. It takes courage, it takes character, it takes the ability to forgive. And that right there is maturity and greatness.

I wonder how different this world would be if just you and I learned to be people who turned the other cheek. How much less conflict there would be. Seems to me that turning the other cheek … well, it’s going to cost us something in the short term, but it’s the one thing that will break the cycle of abuse and revenge when we refuse to strike back.

It takes the wind out of your assailant’s sails; it turns the opinion of those around us against the person who’s doing the wrong; it brings goodness into a difficult situation. And let’s face it, we’re never going to overcome evil with evil, are we? The only way to overcome evil is with goodness because evil begets evil.

Let me encourage you, the next time you want to take revenge try something different – turn the other cheek. You might just be amazed at the result.

Okay, but words are cheap. It’s easy for Jesus to say these things, but it’s another thing entirely for Him to live them out. But that’s exactly what He did. He didn’t just say this stuff – He lived it.

On the night He was betrayed by one of His own to be crucified, they came to arrest Him in the garden of Gethsemane. And Peter, one of His Disciples, drew a sword and cut off the ear of one of the assailants. But Jesus said, ‘No more of this!’ And He touched the man’s ear and healed Him. (Luke 22:51)

Having done that, Jesus let them arrest Him, accuse Him, beat Him and nail Him to a cross. He took this ‘turning the other cheek’ thing to the extreme, to the point where it cost Him His life. Revenge never wins but turning the other cheek does. Forgiving does. Love always defeats evil and good always defeats evil. It’s what the Apostle Paul wrote many years later:

Don’t repay anyone evil for evil but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it’s possible, as far as it depends on you, live peaceably with everyone. Never avenge yourselves but leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord’. Now if any of your enemies is hungry, feed them; if they’re thirsty, give them something to drink. By doing these things you will heap burning coals on their heads. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21)

Are you challenged? Yes, me too. But you know something, it works!

Every now and then, something that someone says or does can make us angry. Really angry. It’s just a fact of life. But it’s what we do with that anger, how we handle it, that makes all the difference.

All right, let’s get going then. So, have you thought about it. How much is your anger robbing you of living an extraordinary life? Well? Anger is something different to annoyance. We can be annoyed by little things and some people, very sadly, live much of their lives in that constant state of annoyance. It’s something you may have heard me talk about recently on this program.

Anger is a much bigger thing. When there’s a fly buzzing around your face and you swat it and it keeps coming back, that’s something you might find annoying. But let’s imagine for a moment that someone says something nasty about you. Or someone consistently fails to meet your expectations of honesty and loyalty. Or someone speaks lies about you behind your back. There’s every chance that those things are going to make you angry. Right?

When was the last time that you were angry? Maybe you’re angry now or it happened earlier today, or just yesterday. With the way the world is it’s probably not that long ago. Can you remember how you felt? It comes on quickly, doesn’t it? It kind of rises up within you; sometimes you want to shout or hit out; sometimes we just want to glare the person down. Above all we want recompense, we want an apology and sometimes, even, revenge.

Anger is a complicated emotion. And so often when we experience anger we make some stupid decisions. We say something or we do something that destroys a relationship or hurts someone – sometimes ourselves, sometimes other people. Which is why when a husband and wife are having an argument for instance, neither of them should ever say something that they can’t take back. ‘I hate you! I wished I had never met you!’ Things like that can do permanent damage to a relationship.

Okay, back to the last time you were angry. Can you still remember it? Now, here’s my question: how long were you angry with that particular person? Was it just a minute or two before you calmed down? Five or ten minutes, maybe? A half-an-hour or an hour, a day? Overnight perhaps? A week or two weeks? Are you still angry with them? I know people who’ve been angry with each other for years and literally haven’t spoken to one another for all that time because somehow they couldn’t let go of their anger.

Right now on the program we’re in the middle of a series of messages that I’ve called, ‘The Art of Living’ and it’s all about how to live an extraordinary life. Each one of us is such an amazing creation. Each person I’ve ever met has these talents, sometimes hidden talents; abilities; things to offer. It’s just not hard for me to imagine that there is a creator and it’s not hard for me to imagine that He wants us to live extraordinary lives. And that in a sense is why we’re chatting today about anger because anger robs so many people of living that extraordinary life.

The fullest most horrific conclusion of unbridled anger is of course murder. Jesus said, “Murder begins in the heart.” Anger is something that happens deep down in our hearts and unless we learn to control it, we can end up doing some terribly destructive things. There are many people whose marriages, whose families, whose careers are lying on the scrapheap right now because they didn’t learn to control anger.

I’m sure you probably know one or two people like that yourself. So there are two aspects of anger that we’re going to chat about briefly today: how quickly it happens; and how long it takes to get over it.

First of all – how quickly. Remember, earlier I said that anger can rise up very quickly indeed, especially if that person is already done something before to make us angry; especially if that person has perhaps hurt us or in someway dishonoured us in the past. I want to encourage you today to be someone who is slow to anger. This God I mentioned earlier today, the one who sent Jesus His Son to die to pay for my sins and yours, well His Word, the Bible, says this about God’s anger. Psalm 103 verse 8:

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

See, God get’s angry but He’s slow to anger because He’s abounding in steadfast love. Love is the key. Caring deeply for other people is the key. If we can become servant-hearted then we can show mercy and grace. I happen to believe that there is a God and that you and I are created by Him in His image and so it makes absolute sense that we should be like Him: slow to anger, full of steadfast love and prepared to show mercy.

Can I ask you? When you do something stupid, something that with the wisdom of hindsight you know was wrong, as we all do, don’t we? We would like other people to cut you some slack, show you some mercy, be gracious to forgive you quickly? Well, of course you would. Me too. And that’s how we should be; slow to anger and full of mercy and grace. When that’s how we live our lives, we become angry far less often. We accept the limitations that other people have, we even compensate for them instead of getting angry.

And the second part of anger that I want to chat about right now is how long we stay angry because that’s a huge issue. The quicker we get over it, the quicker we forgive, a the quicker we move on, the less destructive our anger is going to be. So, how does God handle it? Let’s have a look at the very next verse in that same Psalm in the Old Testament. It says this about God’s anger. Psalm 103 beginning at verse 9:

He won’t always accuse nor will He will keep His anger forever. He doesn’t deal with us according to our sins nor does He repay according to our iniquities.

In other words, God gets over His anger quickly instead of hanging on to it, He doesn’t pay us back. So how do we minimise the damage that anger can do. Well, here it is again:

Be slow to get angry, and when you do, get over it quickly.

It’s not bad, is it? And what is it that allows God to behave that way? Again it comes back to this one simple thing. The next few verses of this same Psalm verses 11-17:

For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far He removes our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear Him. He knows how we are made; He remembers that we are dust.

As for mortals, our days pass like the grass; we flourish like a flower in the field then the wind passes over and we’re gone. The place knows us no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting for those who fear Him.

And it’s that one simple thing – His steadfast, His rock-solid love, a love that goes on and on and on. Let me ask you, is that a love that you’ve experienced? Because if it is imagine asking God to give you the power to show that same kind of love to those around you. The steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting.

There are plenty of people and things in this world that want to rub us the wrong way – things that annoy us and some days they just all seem to gang up on us at the same time. So – then what?

It seems like a funny thing to be talking about on the program, but being annoyed is one of those emotions that can eat away at us like cancer. Some days we’re all irritated at something. I remember, recently I was flying internationally. My last meeting in the country that I was in, well … it hadn’t gone quite as I expected.

I’d been working some long hours while I was there and then the taxi driver didn’t take what I thought was the most direct route to the airport; the security guard at the airport was being so difficult; the woman at the check-in counter was a real pain and to top it all off the plane was running two-and-a-half hours late. By the time I was six or seven hours into that flight I’d had enough. All I wanted to do was, “Let me off this plane! That’s it. I’ve had enough! Get me off!”

The temptation was to be narky with the person who was sitting next to me and to snap at the stewards on the plane. You know how it is. You get to a point where you’re so cranky and agitated and annoyed that all you want to do is snap someone’s head off. Whether you’re someone who flies a lot or not, I think you’ve been in similar situations. All these little things seem to conspire to rub you up the wrong way. All these seemingly minor things come at you one after the other. It’s like they’re ganging up on you. Like Chinese water torture – drip, drip, drip, drip – and before long you’re ready to scream. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

For some of us it happens once in a while. But for other people well … they live their whole lives in a constant state of annoyance. It seems that nothing’s good enough. Their wife or their husband – not good enough; the service at the local restaurant – not good enough; the Government – not good enough; their children – not good enough; the place where they live – not good enough; their boss at work – not good enough.

We have a name for people like that; they’re called perfectionists. Nothing is ever up to their standard. Now, I happen to understand this state of living particularly well, because for a long time that’s how I lived my life; probably for the best part of the first 30 years of my life. I can tell it’s not a lot of fun; in fact it’s no fun at all because you are constantly annoyed with people. If you are annoyed with situations and with people it shows.

It may be that you have the force of character in order to bully people into doing things for you. But people who know you are constantly annoyed with them, constantly judging them, constantly criticizing them, they’re not going to do anything for you willingly and they’re certainly not going to go out of their way to help you. I’m someone who has very high standards at work, in my behaviour, and with that came arrogance – this attitude that it’s so hard to soar like an eagle when you’re surrounded by a bunch of turkeys. When I was living my life that way, I was never happy, I was never content; I was never able to build close relationships of friendship and mutual understanding and respect and support.

I wonder if there isn’t a little bit of that in all of use – some to a greater extent, others to a lesser extent – where we judge other people by how we would have done it. Mmmm. But there is one group of people in this world who seem … well, they’re people who’ve experienced great tragedy in their lives; people who perhaps stare death in the face, who seem not to get so easily annoyed.

I have a great friend called Keith. He and I co-authored a book. About twenty-something years ago he broke his neck in a surfing accident and he came very close to losing his life. He’s had many operations since. He spent months in traction, he was told he would never walk again, and still today the guy’s often in a great deal of pain. But you know something funny about Keith? Nothing much upsets the guy. He seems to be able to take things in his stride. And that’s that point I want to get to today.

Some of us allow the little things to get to us; the little needles from other people to get under our skin, and yet others don’t. Some of us expect perfection in everything all the time. We live in a world where nothing and no one is perfect. It doesn’t matter how cranky, how annoyed we get, it is never, ever going to change. We live in an imperfect world. Not so long as you and I draw breath on this earth is it going to change. Would you agree?

So then you have to ask yourself, “What’s the point of being annoyed all the time? What does it achieve? Does it change people? Does it change the world?” Well, certainly not in a positive way, does it?

I’ve lived my life in two different ways. For most of my life I’ve been annoyed with everyone and everything most of the time. It wasn’t fun for me; it wasn’t fun for everyone else. It didn’t make a positive difference in this world. It certainly didn’t help me live an extraordinary life. And then about twenty years ago I came to the realisation that, “you know what, I’m not perfect either. I do things and say things that annoy other people too.” And with God’s help that’s changed everything for me, that realisation.

Every now and again, things do annoy me, sure, but I don’t have to live my life in a constant state of annoyance, and that means that I have much, much more peace in my life. There’s a great verse in the Bible, written a couple of thousand years ago by the Apostle Paul. It says this:

With all humility and gentleness, with patience bear one another in love. (Ephesians 4:2)

It seems that the antidotes to being annoyed all the time are humility, gentleness and patience. Maybe the next time someone or something annoys you, maybe the next time a bunch of tiny little things gang up on you all one after the other and you’re tempted to be annoyed, to be critical, to complain, you can remember those three – humility, gentleness and patience. I’m still learning, I’m still on the journey but I have so much more peace and joy in my life these days because I spent much, much less time being annoyed with the rest of the world.

It’s pretty simple. Would you agree? And right at the heart of this huge change for me in my life is the person of Jesus because I don’t have the power to be patient; I don’t have the power to be humble and gentle in my own right. It’s Jesus and what He did for me that brought about the change and in fact is still bringing about the change.

Now, another thing that Paul wrote to his friends at Colossae is this. Colossians chapter 3:12-13:

Since God chose you to be the holy people He loves, you must clothe yourselves with tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults. Forgive anyone who offends you; remember the Lord forgave you so you must forgive others.

It’s the memory of the pain that Jesus suffered on the cross to forgive me that brings about the amazing change in my life. Now how can I possibly be annoyed with people all the time if Jesus suffered to pay for all the things that I do to annoy God.

If that much grace and mercy has been shown to me at such a huge cost, the suffering and death of God’s own Son on the Cross, how can I possibly stay annoyed at you and the rest of the world all the time. The two can’t co-exist. You can’t believe one thing and then do the complete opposite. Can you?

Most people are pretty good at telling you what’s wrong with their life – come on, we don’t mind having a bit of a whinge. But those same people, often, aren’t very good at doing anything about it. So – what’s your objective for this year? What do you want to change?

Over many years one of the things that I’ve done a lot of is to consult to businesses large and small and government agencies across Australia, across New Zealand and in fact around the world. I guess it would be probably be over three hundred organisations that I’ve worked for in the past twenty years in one capacity or another.

And when you’re involved in a business or in a government agency one of the things you do a lot of is you go to meetings. Now some organisations more than others but nevertheless it can seem sometimes you’re going from one meeting to the next all day long and in many of those organisations they sit there, they talk about all sorts of things for hours but at the end no one agrees on any action points.

What needs doing? Who’s going to do each one? What’s the deadline? Now you’d think the whole point of a meeting is to get things done, in a lot of organisations that simply not what happens and so there’s a lot of discussion, often people feel great after having talked things through but nothing gets done.

You’d have to think to yourself, well that’s pretty much a waste of time and money and you’d be right, it is yet this madness isn’t restricted to large organisations, you see people running their lives in exactly the same way.

Now that might surprise you but just stop and think about it, people complain, let’s say it’s a wife complaining about her husband: (I always find that interesting) He doesn’t listen to me, he doesn’t understand how I feel, he doesn’t talk to me after he comes home from work, I don’t think he loves me anymore. Or a husband complaining about his wife: oh she’s always nagging at me, I feel hen pecked, it’s driving me absolutely crazy, I can’t stand it anymore.

Have you ever heard those words spoken by a wife or a husband? Have you ever been guilty of doing the same? And sometimes this whinging and complaining goes on for years with no improvement or resolution. It’s just like those meetings I was telling you about – people talking, talking, talking but never doing anything about it.

Why, you have to ask yourself, is that? It’s just because, because that’s what people do, that’s how people behave. We’re good at talking about things, we’re not so good, some of us, when it actually comes to doing something about it.

If I could take you back to those meetings with my clients one of the men who I’ll never forget is a man called, Mick McShea. He was a senior manager in a government organisation where, well to be honest, they had lots of meetings where nothing much happened.

But when Mick ran a meeting things always happened because at the end of the meeting he’d hop up, grab a pen and go to the white board and draw a table with three columns. The first column was ‘what needed to be done’, the second column was ‘who’, who was responsible for doing it and the last column was ‘when’, what was the due date of the action to be completed.

And he would always make sure that the first three tasks on the table were allocated to him. In other words as we used to say in military, he was a leader who lead from the front, he lead by example. Yeah whenever Mick ran a meeting things would get done.

It’s about deciding to take action and then taking the responsibility to get the job done. A wife who feels misunderstood could think about asking an older woman with wisdom and experience what she could do. She could talk to her husband about it and try to understand his perspective. They can work together to modify their behaviour, to empathise with one another, to draw close to one another again. That would be great wouldn’t it?

But often we don’t do those things because we’re like those people who like to go to meetings without any intention whatsoever of achieving anything unless of course someone else does the heavy lifting. Is any of this new? Is any of this rocket science? Not really, it’s as old as the hills. Have a listen to how Jesus put it:

Everyone who hears my words and acts on them would be like a wise man who built his house on a rock because when the rain fell floods came and the winds blew and they beat on that house but it didn’t fall because it had been founded on a rock.

And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and how great was it’s fall.

Now when Jesus had finished saying these things the crowds were astounded at his teaching for he taught them as someone having authority not as their Scribe. (Matthew chapter 7: 24-27)

He had a lot of really wise things to say did Jesus but here’s what He’s saying to us in effect. Look don’t just come along to hear me speak and to be entertained, take what I’m talking about into your hearts and actually get out there and start doing it because it’s going to make a huge difference to your life.

Hey maybe that’s where Nike got their strap line, “Just do it!” Who knows?

You know some of the things that need sorting out in your life, whether it’s you own sense of self worth, whether it’s the job that you’re in, whether it’s an important relationship that you need to work on, whether it’s some of the things that you know you’re doing in your life, some of the attitudes that you’re carrying around that you just know are plain wrong.

Are you just going to sit there and talk about it and whinge about it and blame someone else about it or are you going to do something about it? Well? I suggest you could do a lot worse than adopt what I’ve come to call the McShea method. Who does what by when and take the first three tasks and own them for yourself? Own them, set a goal, set an objective and then start doing the things that you need to do to get there.

By the end of the year I’ll … whatever it is and then you can get focused on the things that you are going to do to make it happen. Now this is pretty basic but it’s incredibly powerful. Of course there are going to be some things that you can’t do on your own but set that goal and get started with some doing and I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the changes that start to happen in your life.

Now does God bless hard work and dedication and perseverance? You bet you He does. Please don’t get me wrong, God is a God of grace and forgiveness and mercy and we don’t have to do one single thing to work our way into His favour, that’s not what I’m saying at all.

But you read anything in the Bible, just read even a few chapters that you care to pick at random in the New Testament let’s say, and you can’t miss the focus on perseverance and dedication to the task. Again have a listen to this; it comes from a New Testament letter, the Book of James chapter 1, verses 22 to 25:

But be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers they are like those who look at themselves in the mirror, for they look at themselves and on going away they immediately forget what they were like but those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty and persevere being not just hearers who forget but doers who act they will be blessed in their doing.

So, what do you think? Need some important breakthroughs in your life? Need a fresh start in this area or that area of your life? I’m very much about praying, I’m very much for talking it through with God, for seeking His leading, absolutely but there comes a time when we have to step out and start doing it.

What is it that you’re trying to achieve? Okay, got that clear? That’s where God wants you to head. Now who does what by when? Remember it; it’s called the McShea method.

Most of us have 3 or 4 key things in our lives that we’d like to change. A problem relationship. Perhaps something at work or our finances. And the mistake people often make is they try to change everything all at once. It’s a bit like .. juggling chainsaws.

So are you one of those people who’re trying to juggle four chainsaws with your bare hands? Is that how you’re living your life? You may be wondering why on earth I’m talking about this. Well this week on the program we’ve kicked off a series of messages that I’ve called, ‘The Art Of Living’ because as we look forward to the year ahead one of the things that a few people need to get sorted out is how they’re living their lives.

And over the last few days, just to recap if you’ve missed it, we’ve been chatting about the fact that many a person’s life is drifting. You know we don’t think too much about our lives, somehow we just live them. Perhaps we complain about this or that but very few people think about why they’re not satisfied with their lot.

Is it that they don’t like themselves? Perhaps they’re in the wrong job. Maybe it’s a important relationship that’s going sour or even just not having enough to quite make ends meet. And the upshot of all that is that I’ve been encouraging you to really figure out what it is that’s not working in your life and then to do something about it. That’s the bottom line.

We can just sit back and whinge and complain, we can wish things were better, we can blame other people, we can expect others to do it all for us, that’s including God but at the end of the day a whole bunch of this stuff is up to us.

Sometimes the reason we’re not happy with life is that we have a wrong self image. The hurts and the disappointments of the past have put a negative spin on how we see ourselves. Some people live their whole lives under that sort of oppression. Sometimes the people around us or the social structures tells us, well this is where you fit, this is the box where you belong and that’s it and yet all along you have this potential, this creativity, this dream that’s not being realised.

Some people are just plain in the wrong job. There are so many jobs on this earth given who I am, given who God made me to be that I’m simply not cut out to do. I could never, ever be a good accountant. You would never want me as a personal carer for the elderly. There are so many things I can do but there are plenty that I can’t. See some people spend their whole lives doing a job they’re not cut out to do. A job they don’t enjoy and frankly a job that they’ll never be any good at.

And we’ve seen in this series so far, for some people it’s a relationship that’s robbing them of the joy and the contentment in their lives. For others it comes down to their finances and their resources and what I’ve been encouraging you to do is to really think about your life strategically, beyond the symptoms and down to the root causes. Because it’s when we deal with the root causes that we can begin to think about what we can actually do to make the thing better.

That’s how a Doctor works. They hopefully don’t just give us a pain-killer for a persistent headache, they use the technology that’s available to them to figure out whether there’s something more serious going on below the surface that they need to treat. And I encourage you this week to do just that. As you look at your year ahead what is it that’s robbing you of the satisfaction and the contentment that you’re really looking for? And what are you going to do about it?

But today I want to talk briefly about focus because for many people there is no doubt a raft of issues going on in their lives. Perhaps the things going on in your life are all mixed up together in a way.

Let’s look at one example, low self esteem which lead to problems at work and so then you bring those tensions home with you and that in turn leads to arguments with your wife or your husband and that drags your children in because they sense the tension, they hear the arguments so now they’re on edge and they resent you and so that brings even more tension which in turn causes you to blame yourself, pushing your self esteem to even lower levels.

And if any of that sounds vaguely familiar, hey, you are not alone. That one scenario plays itself out over and over again in the lives, in families and in work places right across the globe but here’s the big mistake that people make, please listen carefully to this, they try to fix all of their problems at once, at the same time and frankly that right there is like juggling chainsaws. A – it’s incredibly difficult to do B – it’s dangerous and C – you have a very high chance of failure.

What’s needed here is focus, a sharp focus on the one thing that’s at the bottom of it all; the one thing that’s the root cause. The one thing you need to sort out before you can address the flow on impacts.

Now have a listen to this story from the New Testament of the Bible, Mark chapter 18, verses 35 to 41:

As Jesus was approaching Jericho a blind man was sitting by the road side begging. When he heard the crowd going by he asked what was happening. They told him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth is passing by’. Then he shouted, ‘Jesus, the son of David, have mercy on me’.

Now those who were in front of him sternly ordered him to be quiet but he shouted even more loudly, ‘son of David, have mercy on me’. Jesus stood still and ordered the man to be brought to him and when he came near Jesus asked him, ‘what do you want me to do for you?’ The man said, ‘Lord, let me see again.

So Jesus said to him, ‘receive your sight, your faith has saved you’. Immediately he regained his sight and followed Jesus glorifying God and all the people when they saw it praised God.

See this man had a lot of problems. He was a beggar because he was poor. He was poor because he couldn’t work. He couldn’t work because he was blind and so he was isolated, unemployed, shunned by society. He had multiple dysfunctions, multiple problems in his life. Does that sound like anybody you might know?

But he knew the root cause of all of them which was his blindness which meant he couldn’t work. So when Jesus came along, this Jesus who had apparently healed a whole bunch of other people before, the one thing he focused on was the one thing he needed.

And that’s how it is with us. We need to get down to the one thing, the most important thing that needs doing in our lives because let me tell you this, just in the same way you and I can’t juggle four chainsaws at once, we can’t fix all the problems in our lives all at the same time.

And you know in my experience this Jesus is always ready to oblige. Sometimes He does things quickly and miraculously the way He did for the beggar but other times He addresses our problems and meets our needs over weeks and months and years, even over a whole life time.

It’s a remarkable thing, whenever you see Jesus touching people’s lives in one of those four Gospel accounts of His life in ministry – in Matthew or Mark or Luke or John, take your pick – He always, always focuses on the one thing that needs doing; the one infirmity that needs healing, the demon that needs casting out, the sin that needs forgiving, just one thing.

He doesn’t try to get people to juggle chainsaws, He touches them and heals them of that one thing and if you’re in that place in your life, where the problems and the dysfunctions and the alienations are overwhelming you here’s what I’m going to encourage you to do.

Go to Jesus and ask Him to heal just one thing, and if you don’t know what that thing is that needs healing ask Him, He already knows. He’s already here waiting to touch you, to heal you, to forgive you, to give you a fresh start in life. How do I know? Because He’s done that in my life and in fact He’s still doing that in my life and from my own experience now I know why it is that they call this stuff the good news.

Most of us get up every day and live out the same old, same old day after day. And whilst we might have a few niggles here and there, we really don’t think too much about it. And that’s why many a person’s life – maybe your life – is just drifting.

So do you enjoy sailing? I don’t, I’d much rather be on the land than on the water. Nevertheless let’s put ourselves back in that drifting boat for just a moment, out there on this massive great ocean. No sails up, no rudder in, it’s frankly no way to get to where you’re going and eventually unless we do something about it we’re just going to die out there on the water.

With the oceans covering 71% of the earths surface and with the way the tides and the currents travel the chances of making landfall is somewhere between Buckley’s and none. Yep, stay in that boat, keep the rudder out of the water, the sails off the mast and eventually you’re going to die.

I don’t know how many people die out there on the oceans each year but as a percentage of the world’s population you’d have to imagine that it’s a very, very small number. The tragic thing is that back here on dry land many people, way too many people are living their lives that way, they’re just drifting aimlessly.

And on top of that they’re expectation is they should actually get to where they want to go. Don’t believe me? Last night on the news they interviewed a sixteen year old girl who had had triplets. Now she and her boyfriend were both unemployed, relying on the government to keep them afloat.

When the interviewer asked them whether they planned on getting a job they answered, “No.” They’re plan was to have more children, they’re plan was to rely on the government to support them. Now that’s by no means an isolated case. Extreme? Yes, but not unusual.

Whether it’s in our lives or in our jobs drifting aimlessly along is not a recipe for success. Now I’m not suggesting that we should all be chasing after success, the big house, the big car, the big salary and nor am I suggesting that all the positive outcomes in our lives have everything to do with hard work alone but there are many people just drifting their way through life wondering why nothing’s happening, wondering why they’re not getting to where they want to go.

This week being the beginning of a new year, we’ve kicked off a series of messages that I’ve called, ‘The Art Of Living’. It’s about being deliberate in planning and living our lives here on earth. One of the big mistakes I see people making, can I say particularly amongst Christians that I have so much to do with, is that they somehow over-spiritualise their existence.

“Well you know, it’s in God’s hands, I have to wait for Him to do everything.” Others might rely on something else, on karma or whatever. And look, please don’t get me wrong I am a Christian, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus and I know that many of the big things that have happened in my life have happened not because of any brilliance or hard work on my part but because of God’s mighty hand was on it from the beginning.

But I also know that laziness doesn’t bear fruit. Have a listen to this. Proverbs chapter 19, verse 15:

Laziness brings on a deep sleep and a idle person will suffer from hunger.

Proverbs chapter 24, verses 30 to 34:

I passed by a field of someone who is lazy, by the vineyard of a stupid person and it was all over grown with thorns. The ground was covered with nettle’s and it’s stone wall was broken down. Then I saw it and considered it, I looked and I received instruction. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest and poverty will come upon you like a robber and want like an armed warrior.

I don’t know where you’re at in life but bear with me here. Imagine that God is God, that He loves us like a Father – would you expect this God to bless laziness; to bless idleness; to bless a lack of planning, a lack of vision, a lack of a sense of direction? The answer is kind of, well self evident.

We live in a world of cause and effect. Planning, diligence, hard work, application, dedication, focus, persistence – those things tend to yield good results a lot of the time. Idleness, laziness – those things tend to yield bad results most of the time.

Let’s come back to that boat that we were drifting in at the beginning of today’s program. If your life is like being in that boat I’m going to ask you a question here, you might not like it but I’m going to ask you anyway. Whose fault is that?

We can blame our parents, our circumstances, our education or lack of it, our looks, our physical weaknesses, maybe even our disabilities but none of those things really cut it do they? If your life is drifting the buck stops with you. If my life is drifting the buck stops with me. It’s as simple as that.

We’ve all seen people with incredible disabilities achieve amazing things haven’t we? And we’ve all seen people who are born into a fantastic family, had plenty of money, had good looks and brains to go with it, make a complete hash of their lives.

No, it’s not our circumstances that determine the direction our life is going to head. Look at Nelson Mandella, look at Mother Theresa, look at Mahatma Ghandi and look at the dozens of ordinary people that you know in your life who’ve achieved extraordinary things despite their circumstances. No it has nothing to do with our circumstances and frankly adversity is no excuse.

If your life is drifting it seems to me you have a couple of options. Option one: just let it drift on by and one day you are going to die out there on that ocean in that drifting boat. Option number two: is doing something about it; deciding here and now that the status quo, this life of endless drifting is simply no longer an option.

That life can’t go on like this. It’s time to actually do something about it! It’s time for a new start, a new beginning and what better time than the beginning of a new year to come to that decision.

My friend, if your life is drifting the buck stops with you and it’s time for you to do something about it. The alternative, well the alternative is getting to the end of your days here on this earth and looking back on a life long missed opportunity. That’s not such a happy thought is it?

And let’s just take that one step further. You may remember the Parable of the Talents that Jesus told of the three servants each left a huge amount of money by their master to invest in order to get a return. Two of those servants did really well.

On the masters return they each gave him the original capital plus 100% return and those guys got a huge pat on the back but one of the servants, he was afraid so he hid the money to keep it safe. He returned the original capital to the master when he came back but without a dividend.

Now maybe you think the master should have been happy because at least he got his capital back but listen to what Jesus says:

You wicked and lazy slave. You knew did you that I reap where I didn’t sow, I gathered where I didn’t scatter. Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers and on my return I would have received what was mine with interest.

So take the money from him, give it to the one who has a lot of money for to all those who have more will be given and they will have abundance but from those who have nothing even what they have will be taken away. As for this worthless slave throw him into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.(Matthew chapter 25:26-30)

Jesus doesn’t mince His words. He’s made a huge investment in our lives, in your life and He expects us to live our lives in such a way as to deliver a huge return. He’s not calling us to live a life of missed opportunities and excuses; He’s calling us to live a life that counts. No ifs, no buts, no maybes.

On average, if you ask people – on a scale of 0 to 10 – how happy, how contented are you with your life, they’ll give you a six. Six out of ten! Is that any way to live the one life you’ve been given?!

The reality is that most of us, well we just kind of bobble along through life. We don’t think too much about it except perhaps the bits that may not be working so well at the moment. We’re all pretty good at brooding over that difficult relationship or what so-and-so might think about us; what they might be saying behind our backs. We’re all pretty good at worrying about our finances or our children or complaining about the fact that someone who, in our estimation is nowhere near as competent as we are, was promoted ahead of us at work.

Whatever it is we are very good at complaining and the other thing that we’re pretty good at is comparing ourselves to others. Oh she’s so much better looking. He’s so much smarter. Why can’t I do what that person can do? And so the list goes on.

But when it comes to strategically thinking about our lot in life – what’s working, what’s not working – am I satisfied with where my life is headed and if not what do I need to change? Well come on, let’s be honest most of us don’t think that way.

You have to ask yourself, why is that? With just one life to live here on planet earth why is it that we’re so good focusing on the negative things, in effect the problems, instead of what we need to do to make things better, the solution.

Well that nagging sense of dissatisfaction that many people live their whole lives with normally revolves around one of four things:

Firstly, a lot of people aren’t satisfied with who they are. Secondly, sometimes we can be like a square peg in a round hole doing things that we’re not meant to be doing. Thirdly, if an important relationship isn’t working, that tends to make us really dissatisfied with life. And finally, sometimes people aren’t satisfied with what they have. Let me summarise those four again:

Number one, who we are. Number two, what we’re doing. Number three, who we’re with. Number four, what we have.

Let’s come back to that question I posed at the beginning: on a scale of one to ten how satisfied are you with your life here and now today? I wonder what your answer is. I ask that question rather a lot when I’m speaking with groups of people not just around Australia but in fact right around the world and can I tell you with a degree of certainty that is very high the average response is about six out of ten.

And you know what makes that really scary for me is that most often I ask that question of Christians when I’m speaking at Churches. And so here’s a group of people who claim to have hit on the truth about life, who claim to have all the answers and yet even for them the average is a paltry six out of ten in terms of how satisfied they are with their lives.

Let’s say your response is pretty much bang on average, you’re a six out of ten, is that really any way to live your life – this life that’s been given to you; this life that is so incredibly precious? Come on I’m asking you to think about your life here and now. If your level of contentment and satisfaction is a six out of ten is that how you want to live the rest of your days here on this earth?

I’m going to challenge you today to think about a new start, a fresh start, a fresh look at your life. Not just to moan and groan about the things that aren’t working but to think honestly about the things that are robbing you on average of 40% of your contentment and doing something about it.

Firstly – who you are? A lot of people aren’t comfortable with who they are. Sometimes that’s because we have a distorted view of things but other times it’s because we’re not living a good life. Dishonesty for instance has a way of robbing you of your levels of contentment.

Either way whether it’s our attitudes about ourselves or our actions that are causing us to be unhappy with who we are, are you just going to sit there and let it go on for the rest of your life or are you going to do something about it? Well?

And that leads us kind of to the second area of discontentment, what we’re doing with our lives. So many people are square pegs in round holes. In other words they’re doing things, working away at jobs that they were never cut out to do.

Surveys consistently show that over two thirds don’t enjoy their jobs. They become accountants when they don’t enjoy working with numbers. They become carers looking after the elderly when they don’t enjoy people contact. So if that’s you are you going to spend the rest of your life working at something you were never ever going to be able to enjoy, something that you never ever going to be able to excel at?

The third area of contentment is relationships. Marriage is the obvious one. So many married couples start off happy and then the cares of the world, the pressures of children, the mortgage and the daily grind wears down their relationship until they’re married in name only.

I have a beautiful wife, Jacqui, who I love very much yet still the grind of life conspires to attack and wear down our relationship which is why we’re about to go and have a few days off together to restore and refresh and to just enjoy each other. How many people live in relationships that should be great, that could be great but never do anything about it?

And finally some people aren’t content with what they have either because they’re always comparing themselves with other people and that’s an attitude thing or because they don’t apply themselves and work hard enough at doing something they’re really cut out to do.

So which ever of those four areas in your life is robbing you of your satisfaction and contentment here’s my question, in fact my challenge to you at the beginning of this year is this, are you just going to sit there or are you going to do something about it? Well?

A Scripture that I love to come back to time and time again is one that provides a complete executive summary of how to get some of these things sorted out in our lives, how to get our ducks in a row so to speak. Its Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10 in the New Testament which says that we are

God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good works that he prepared beforehand for us to walk into.

So firstly we are who God made us to be, hand crafted by Him, His workmanship and secondly in making us in that certain way with our natural gifts and strengths and talents and motivations on the one hand and our natural limitations on the other He did so with a very specific end in mind.

He made each one of us to do the good works that He already prepared beforehand, way beforehand, even before time began, literally so that as we take each new step in life we can walk into the good things that God has already prepared for us, the good things that are a perfect fit with who He made us to be.

What’s the matter with us? We’re not happy with who we are, we’re not happy with what we’re doing, we’re not happy with our relationships and our resources, why do we run around in ever decreasing circles at an average satisfaction level of only six out of ten?

Why would we want to spend the rest of our lives living like that when all we really need to do is to get close to Jesus and to figure out who He made us to be and what He made us to do? Friend you are Gods workmanship, you are created in Christ Jesus to do all the fantastic things that He’s already prepared for you to walk into.

Here we are at the beginning of a brand new year – a year full of hopes and dreams and possibilities. But the truth is, we can’t lay enjoy the present or lay hold of the future, until we’ve dealt with the past.

I remember a time in my life when my past was weighing me down. A time when, in fact, my past became such a burden, such a huge load, that it was completely unbearable. It was so bad that I came very close to taking my own life. I remember standing on that eighth floor balcony of a hotel seriously considering jumping over the edge. I’ll share with you a little bit later what it was that pulled me back from the brink.

Now you may be thinking, here we are kind of at the threshold of a new year with all sorts of possibilities, what is Berni doing talking about the past? Why is he going there? Shouldn’t we be looking forward to the year ahead? Shouldn’t we be talking about all the possibilites, the hopes, the dreams we have for this fresh new year ahead of us?

Well that would be a great thing to do, I agree and over the coming days and weeks on the program that’s precisely what we’re going to be doing. We’re kicking off the year with a series of messages the I’ve called, ‘The Art Of Living’ because if we’re going to realise the hopes and the dreams that we have for this new year we need to spend some time thinking about our lives.

Most of us don’t do that. We might spend some time thinking about the problems, the hurts, the things that aren’t working so well. A lot of people brood over the negatives in their lives but mostly we just think about the symptoms. So today and over the coming weeks we’re going to go a bit deeper than just the symptoms, we’re going to be chatting about exactly how we live our lives.

We’ll be looking at the ordinary things in our lives from a different perspective because when we do we can end up living an extraordinary life. And one of the very ordinary things in life is our past. We each have a past and, as I said at the beginning of today’s program, there are just so many people for whom their past is ruining their present and robbing them of their future.

In a very real sense, unless we let go of the past we simply can’t enjoy our lives today. We simply can’t look forward to our future with that sense of hope and anticipation.

Let me give you an example. I know a man who’s had a very difficult life. He was abused when he was young and for many years people told him he wasn’t good enough. Instead of encouraging him the people around him, his work colleagues, even his family kept on telling him what was wrong with him. They focused on his failures and his faults rather than on the good things about him.

Now come on, we are all something of a mixed bag aren’t we? We each have certain strengths on the one hand and certain weaknesses on the other and it’s really sad when people just focus on our weaknesses and that’s exactly what had happened to him.

So today he looks at his world through that set of eyes, through a mind set that’s deeply affected by the past. He can’t enjoy who he is and what he has and you know what, he has rather a lot. When he looks forward to his future he doesn’t have that sense of anticipation or hope even for tomorrow or the next day let alone for the rest of this year or the rest of his life.

We can talk about all sorts of things, wonderful things that this year might hold for you but unless we first let go of the hurts and the disappointments of the past then not a lot of that has any meaning.

You’ve probably heard that old saying ‘don’t cry over spilt milk’. You know what, there’s a reason for that because once the milk has been spilt you can’t un-spill it. You can clean up the mess, you can apologise to someone if it hurt them or inconvenienced them, you can even learn a lesson that might stop you from spilling the milk again but the one thing you can’t do is undo it.

None of us can change the past and for some people today it’s time to let go of the past. When I was standing on that balcony that day almost twenty years ago now, it was the past that was pulling me over the edge. Now don’t get me wrong I’d had a lot of successes along the way but I’d made some mistakes, some very big mistakes and I just didn’t know whether I could live with the consequences of the mistakes that I had made.

It seemed like the present wasn’t just worth living. It seemed like the future was so bleak and so hopeless that there was just no point. See when we lose hope what’s the point of living? I know there are some people who are thinking that very way today and what makes it even harder is that everybody else is out there focused on starting off the new year, looking forward to what the year has to hold and what possibilities there might be.

Let me tell you, the thing that pulled me back from the edge on that cool sunny morning was something that I’d read the night before. For some reason someone had put a Bible in the top draw of the bedside table inside my hotel room. I’d taken it out and I read something and here is what I read. It was in the Old Testament in the Book of Isaiah chapter 41, verse 10. This is what is says:

Don’t be afraid for I am with you. Don’t be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.

Do you see? That’s what gave me hope: the hope of a present where I wasn’t completely alone; the hope of a future that just might be worth living. None of us can change the past, it doesn’t matter how much we sweat on it, how hard we work on it we cannot change the past.

And so on that day on that hotel balcony began for me a process of letting go of the past. The future, the future begins today. The past’s gone and while we can and we should learn lessons from it. While we can and we shouldn’t make mistakes that we made before.

The past has no right to rob you of the days and the months and the years that lie ahead in your life and can I tell you that’s the very reason that God sent us Jesus His Son. The first time Jesus stood up in public and spoke He read these words from the Book of Isaiah chapter 61, verses 1 to 3. He said:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me because he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, the bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, to comfort and provide for all those who mourn, to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

My friend Jesus has a future for you. He understands how the past has battered you and bruised you. He knows the baggage that you’re carrying around just as He knows about all the baggage that I’m still carrying around and what He wants to do is to lighten that load, to lift that burden.

Since that day when I stood on that balcony my friend my life has changed completely. It’s not that some days aren’t still hard, of course they are, we all have hard days, we all have challenges in our lives but I look forward to each day and each month and each year with this sense of hope and anticipation because Jesus has healed me of my past.

My failures and my hurts no longer are the things that rule my life, He does and that makes all the difference. So as you stand on the threshold of a brand new year, your brand new year I want to leave you with this fantastic truth. My friend Jesus came to set you free from your past and to give you a present and a future that truly is worth living. Does it get any better than that? I don’t think so.