God doesn’t do things by halves, not at all. And in sending Jesus to die and rise again for you, He meant … He means to give you a whole new life. That’s not religious mumbo–jumbo. It’s for real.
NEW PURPOSE
It’s a sobering thought isn’t it? The time that you and I have left on planet earth is finite. It will come to an end one day, no doubt at a time that we least expect it.
Now, I run a busy diary in my life – I use an electronic one, that’s available on my computer, my tablet and my smartphone so that no matter where I am, I can check my diary, add in tasks and appointments and move things around. In fact, I really don’t know how I managed my life, before I had this diary that replicates itself instantly and automatically across all my devices.
This week and next week are pretty much all taken. You certainly wouldn’t get a meeting with me this week, and a couple of slots are left next week maybe for emergencies, and even the week after next is starting to fill up.
And there are diary entries for speaking engagements and all sorts of things that reach out over the next eighteen months. All in my diary. All colour coded – board stuff, broadcasting stuff, admin stuff, meetings, personal stuff, even the odd holiday – put in my diary way ahead of time so I don’t book anything else. All good stuff.
But think about this: the Lord could demand my life of me today, or maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow morning. I mean, I don’t know. I’m planning and working as though I have a long time left on planet earth. I feel like I have … but really, none of us knows. I don’t know and you don’t know.
I remember once a few years back, with an equally busy diary, I fell quite ill and ended up in hospital, I was really very sick. Do you have any idea how irrelevant that diary became to me as I was lying there in that hospital with tubes sticking out of me?
All the things I thought were important became unimportant. All the things I thought I had to get done this week, next week, the week after, they were left undone as I recovered. And I know this is going to shock you – NO, the world didn’t come to an end, and there wasn’t a rupture in the space-time continuum because Berni didn’t get done the things he planned to do.
And I imagine that one day the Lord will take me home, and that diary with all its appointments and tasks that were oh, so important – well, they’ll just get deleted off the computer, off the tablet, off the mobile phone, out of the cloud. And that … will be that.
And it’s going to be exactly the same for you. All the things that you thought were so important … won’t get done, will be no more and will be forgotten.
So now I want you to think about … what really is important? In the time that you have left, what is your purpose for being here on this earth? What is your principal purpose?
Because it’s that purpose that will start to guide the things that you put into your diary. It’s your purpose that’ll tell you which tasks and meetings are important, and which ones really aren’t. It’s your purpose that will decide how exactly you spend your years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds … between now … and when you breathe your last.
Now it seems to me, if our purpose is just to get stuff done here and now that we need to get done, to make money, to put food on the table and enjoy life, then … well, that’s a pretty myopic, short-sighted view and it’s a recipe for a short-term life, a life that stops dead, when your heart stops.
When Jesus was asked, which of the commandments (all 613 of them in the Old Testament) was the most important, this is what He said. Mark chapter 12, verses 29 to 31:
The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second one is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.
Now let’s imagine for a moment that you were to take that to heart. Let’s imagine that you decided, if you haven’t already, that with every breath that you take between now and then, you decide to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, with every fibre of your being. And similarly to love others as you love yourself.
Might I ask you, if that were true, if that became your purpose for living, how would it change the things that you put in your diary? How would it change your priorities? How would it change what you spend your time on?
What I’ve always found in my life, and I’m pretty sure it’s true in your life as well, is that nothing changes in what I say or do, until something changes in my heart. The reason I know it to be true is not just that it’s true in my experience, but because it’s precisely what Jesus said. Luke chapter 6, verse 45:
The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good, and the evil person out of the evil treasure produces evil; for it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks.
There are many people today whose life isn’t going in the right direction. Often we don’t know why, we just know it’s not right. There’s a lack of joy, there’s a lack of fulfilment. Or perhaps there’s the pain of regret. And often we don’t know what the right direction even looks like.
And if perhaps you sense that that’s what’s going on in your life today, and you’re looking for a fresh start in this new year, then I want to encourage you with all that I am, I want to implore you … to have a change of heart, to establish YOUR purpose based on what Jesus said was the most important thing. And that is:
…to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength and to love your neighbour as yourself.
Because if that truly becomes your purpose in living, then God will set a new life before you. A life that, whilst hard some days, you’ll know is heading in the right direction.
NEW FOCUS
Back when I was in the Army, we used to use a 7.62mm SLR – now, that’s not a camera, it’s a rifle. A fairly large 7.62mm standard NATO round, in a self-loading rifle, which means you didn’t have to cock it each time you fired it. When you fired it, it had a mechanism in it that would harness the power of the gas in the muzzle as the bullet was flying out, as a back-force to automatically re-cock the rifle, putting the next round in the chamber, ready to fire it again.
Pretty clever stuff. We spent hours, and hours and hours in the hot sun out on the firing range, practicing hitting the target. Now the target was pretty big – it was one metre square, with obviously concentric circles and a bullseye in the centre. At the 25 metre mound, you couldn’t help but hit it dead centre. That became a bit harder at 50 metres and then 100 metres.
But let me tell you, once you got back to the 300 metre mound, it was the easiest thing in the world, to completely miss the square metre altogether. Just the slightest movement and you’d miss, which is not at all good, since you’re practicing to take out the other guy who, in a war situation, would be shooting back at you.
We didn’t have telescopic sights back then. So you practiced your breathing, you practiced shifting your focus from the target to the front-sight to the back-sight and back again, and then squeezing – not jerking – squeezing off the round. Mind you, when you squeezed the trigger, the percussion of the bullet firing would fair rip your shoulder off. A lot of that was to do with the physics around a large bullet, these days most armies use a smaller 5.56mm round so it’s not quite as bad.
Now, after hours of practice and firing on the range, we’d go back to the barracks with chafed and aching elbows from supporting the rifle on the hard ground, and a really bruised shoulder from the impact of the rifle’s recoil. The point is, we practiced and practiced and practiced. I wasn’t a brilliant shot, but I was good enough to cause the enemy more than a few problems.
One of the things I learned from that was the importance of focus. Keeping your eye focussed on the target, coming back and looking at the sight and back to the target, breathing properly. All those things made a huge difference to your success rate.
That’s something I’ve been blessed to learn and something that I’ve carried forward into my everyday life. Focus is so important. When other people are flapping around and running in ever decreasing circles under pressure, the person who maintains their focus is the one who hits the mark.
Before the break, we were chatting about the purpose of your life. So many people’s lives are a mess, because they’re living with the wrong purpose. Jesus was pretty clear about priorities and purpose. Mark chapter 12, verses 29 to 31:
The most important thing is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.
Jesus is saying: the most important thing to be focussed on is putting God first and all of a sudden the things that you choose to do with your life, with your time, the things that you put in your diary, the things that you consider important are going to change. And when they change, your life starts to head in a new direction, a whole new direction. But once we decide on the right direction, we need to keep heading that way.
It’s amazing, I mean, it really is, the moment you decide to put God first, the moment you decide – enough is enough, I’m not living this mess anymore – stuff just seems to start happening. People come against us, the devil comes against us – and we get really disheartened, thinking well maybe this Jesus thing isn’t really for me after all.
Hey, get a revelation today. That’s exactly why the devil is attacking you and doing what he’s doing. That’s exactly what he wants you to think, because he wants you to turn back to your old ways. He doesn’t want you to persevere, because, he knows, as Jesus said, those who persevere to the end are the ones who will be saved.
The Apostle Paul was a guy who had more than his fair share of trouble. It all started when he gave his life to Jesus – sound familiar? They tried to kill him, he was beaten, he was locked up, he was shipwrecked, he was mocked, you name it, it happened to him. And so far as I can see, it’s pretty much par for the course when you’re following hard after Jesus.
So, how does Paul react? Does he grumble, does he complain, does he cower and turn back? Have a listen to this guy – Philippians chapter 3, verses 10 to 14:
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.
So no matter what suffering he’s going through, Paul wants to stay focussed on the prize, on his calling to proclaim the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, even though for a time he has to share in the sufferings of Jesus.
You know, it takes time, it takes practice, just like being on that firing mound, to maintain your focus when you’re hurting, it really does. But as you choose to do that, you’ll be amazed, how stable and focused your life becomes, how much more reliably you’ll navigate your way through those difficult patches.
Look at the target, the prize, focus on that, focus on your calling and God will get you through.
KEEP YOUR NEW LIFE
Over the last few weeks on the program, in this series called ‘New Year, Fresh Start’ we’ve been taking a bit of a look at the new life that God wants each one of us to live – it’s a new year so it’s time for a fresh start.
God is the God of new beginnings. God is the God who makes the past irrelevant, who forgives everything, who heals everything to give us a new life to walk in. He wants you to have a fresh start. That’s not some vague promise from some joker on the radio. That’s a promise from God that comes direct from His Word – Romans chapter 6, verse 4:
So when we were baptised, we were buried with Christ and took part in his death. And just as Christ was raised from death by the wonderful power of the Father, so we can now live a new life.
Did you hear that? A new life! But it’s not a life that comes on our terms. It’s not a life that we can conjure up out of nothing so that we can head back to the old life. That old life was all about pleasing ourselves. That old life was all about doing it my way, being healthy, wealthy, wise, being comfortable, being happy and that is not the new life that God is talking about here.
Too many people start the New Year off wanting some change. They’ll grab onto anything that’s on offer, go with it for a while, realise there’s sacrifice involved and then head back to their old life. Sound familiar? It’s a pattern that has repeated itself over and over again in countless people’s lives ever since time immemorial. In fact, the Israelites tried it too.
They’d been in slavery in Egypt for something like 450 years. Finally God hears the cry of His people. He raises up a leader, Moses, gives the man extraordinary powers, sends 10 plagues on the Egyptians and leads His people miraculously out of slavery. Woohoo! Have a listen to how the Israelites reacted at the first sign of trouble – Exodus chapter 14, verses 8 to 12:
The Israelites were leaving with their arms raised in victory. But the LORD caused Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to become brave. And Pharaoh chased the Israelites. The Egyptian army had many horse soldiers and chariots. They chased the Israelites and caught up with them while they were camped near the Red Sea at Pi Hahiroth, east of Baal Zephon.
When the Israelites saw Pharaoh and his army coming toward them, they were very frightened and cried to the LORD for help. They said to Moses, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt? Did you bring us out here to die in the desert? We could have died peacefully in Egypt; there were plenty of graves in Egypt. We told you this would happen! In Egypt we said, ‘Please don’t bother us. Let us stay and serve the Egyptians.’ It would have been better for us to stay and to be slaves than to come out here and die in the desert.’
Go figure! God’s done all these amazing things, these powerful miracles, and plagues on Egypt and the moment the going gets tough, they want to run back to the safety of their old lives in slavery. And this isn’t the only time. After God takes them miraculously through the Red Sea, destroying Pharaoh’s army in the process, all of a sudden they realise there’s no food out here in the wilderness. Exodus chapter 16, verses 1 to 3:
Then the people left Elim and came to the desert of Zin, between Elim and Sinai. They arrived at that place on the 15th day of the second month after leaving Egypt. Then the whole community of Israelites began complaining again. They complained to Moses and Aaron in the desert. They said, ‘It would have been better if the LORD had just killed us in the land of Egypt. At least there we had plenty to eat. We had all the food we needed. But now you have brought us out here into this desert to make us all die from hunger.’
So, because they’re under pressure, because they’re uncomfortable and uncertain and outside the comfort zone, the comfort zone of their slavery – despite all the miracles to date, despite the whole parting of the Red Sea and the miraculous destruction of Pharaoh’s army, what, they figure God is not into this? Exodus chapter 16, verses 4 and 5:
Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘I will cause food to fall from the sky. This food will be for you to eat. Every day the people should go out and gather the food they need that day. I will do this to see if they will do what I tell them. Every day the people will gather only enough food for one day. But on Friday, when the people prepare their food, they will see that they have enough food for two days.’
And so it was, exactly as God had said. Do you see my point here? This is exactly how we want to behave. We want a new life. We want the power of the Holy Spirit in us. We want to see miracles and transformation in our lives. But the moment the going gets tough, we want to run back to Egypt. It’s a pattern that repeats itself millions of times over and over again as New Year’s resolutions are abandoned. And it’s a pattern that repeats itself millions of times as people realise that taking hold of this new life, battle by battle, isn’t going to be that easy.
My exhortation to you today is: don’t turn back. Don’t be like the Israelites here. Know that your purpose is to love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and to love your neighbour as yourself. Know that God has a plan, He has the power, and He has the will to bring His plans for your life to fruition, no matter how daunting the opposition may appear. James chapter 1, verse 12:
Great blessings belong to those who are tempted and remain faithful! After they have proved their faith, God will give them the crown of eternal life. God promised this to all people who love him.
That right there is the Word of God for you today. That’s God speaking perseverance and hope and resolve into your heart today. They are not my words, this is God’s Word. In my heart I know that there are many listening in today, who had resolved to turn back, to give up. But God today has visited you by His Spirit and by His Word, to show you a way forward. And may you indeed be blessed as you receive His Word into your heart.
Right now in the couple of minutes that we have left together, it’s time to pray, because your enemy the devil wants to steal God’s Word away from you, just as Jesus said he would try to do. So let’s engage the power of God to protect you by praying:
Father God, what an amazing tragedy it is that so many people hear your Word, even receive your Word, and yet the enemy comes along and steals it away from them. We pray today for every person who is with us, every person around the globe who has received your Word through today’s program. Lord, we ask that by your divine grace and power you would protect us from evil, protect us from the devil. We pray that the seed that has been planted in our hearts by you today, would be protected by you, preserved by you, watered by you and through your grace would sprout forward, a new shoot, and a new life. For in Jesus’ mighty name we pray. Amen.
It is no coincidence that we’ve had this time together you and I. It’s no coincidence at all. God has a plan for you, a plan not to harm you, but a plan for good. A plan for the rest of your life here on earth and a plan for the rest of your eternity. If you believe in Jesus, if you have put all your trust in Jesus, that plan will unfold itself in your life, just as God’s amazing plans unfolded for Israel, after they were set free from slavery.
He was with His people back then, in power and in might and He is with you today, in the same way, with the same power, with the same might and with the same tender-hearted love. Don’t let go of that. And whatever you do, don’t let the devil plant his weeds around God’s seed – trying to convince you to turn back.
As the days, the weeks, the months and the years slip by, I know that you’ll be able to look back and see the mighty things that God has done for you.
