Storms are going to hit our lives from time to time. They just are. And when they do, so often we're afraid. And that fear, it turns out, can completely immobilise us. So then what?

When we look at what it means to travel with a quiet confidence through the storms of life, as we have been doing this week on the program, well I think we need to stop and take a look at this thing that we call "fear". Now being afraid is natural, it's a natural response to danger. Fear is an actual inbuilt, protective mechanism, it stops us from putting ourselves in danger, it protects us as we recoil from danger when it strikes unexpectedly. Now fear has a very important function in our lives but fear also has some pretty big downsides too.

Fear is something that can absolutely immobilise us or it can make us do some silly things and take wrong decisions. And actually, fear is something that whilst we're equipped to cope with, we're not designed to live with it 24 X 7. So, if we're to deal with fear, then we have to learn to travel through the storms of life in a way that actually deals with it. Not just sweeps fear under the carpet, not just ignores it but actually deals with it.

Now that can be something of a challenge; you know it and I know it. So how do we deal with this 'fear' thing amidst the storms of life.

If you were with us earlier this week, on Monday I think it was, we had a look at the bunch of seasoned fishermen caught out in a boat, on the water, in the middle of a storm that just came up out of nowhere. Lets take another look at that account, it comes from Luke chapter 8, beginning at verse 22:

One day Jesus says to His disciples, "Let's go to the other side of the lake." So they got in a boat and set out. As they sailed He fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake so that the boat was being swamped and they were in great danger. The disciples went and woke Him and said, "Master, Master, we're going to drown." Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters and the storm subsided and all was calm. "Where is your faith?" He asked His disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water and they obey Him.

Now, at the time, when we looked at this earlier in the week, I said that there were a few things that these disciples learned about God that day. Firstly they learned that God was in the boat with them. Secondly, that He had both the will and the means of doing the impossible, of calming the storm and saving them from it. And thirdly, the most incongruous thing of all, that safely riding out that storm was a matter of faith.

Now it's easy to rattle those off, even memorise them and think, "well, here's my three point plan for dealing with fear the next time I hit a stormy patch.

1. God is with me. 2. He can still the storm. 3. All I have to do is believe.

Hmm, but you know something; it's not that easy, at least not in my experience. Because this is not something we learn by memorising things on a nice sunny day while we're sitting by the pool drinking Pina Colada's. This is something we only really learn in our experience while we're out there on the ocean.

Here's what happens to me; I can see the storm clouds brewing off in the distance, they start coming closer, the wind picks up, then the storm front hits and most times I just freeze. A fear stops me from moving forward to do the things that I need to do to save myself, it immobilises me.

Let's say you're having financial problems, I was listening to an experienced business consultant who helps small and medium sized businesses in the retail sector and he was talking about managing the business' finances. Now most business owners, they know they're having cash flow problems, it worries them sick. So what they do is they just ignore it, they go into denial and their business goes down the drain. Or the sales person who, who's afraid of making the cold calls or the call to follow up on a call. Fear immobilises them and so that stops them from selling. Fear either makes you want to pull over and stop or streak off completely in the wrong direction.

In fact the words "fear" and "afraid" appear 445 times in the Bible, that's a lot. Do a search, have a look and you'll find that's exactly what happens to people. These seasoned fishermen, what were they doing out in the storm? They were cowering in the boat, they were screaming out to God, "God, wake up!" See how stupid that is, "God, God wake up! Jesus, Jesus wake up! We're going to perish!" Jesus is in that boat with them, all His glories laid aside He's a man just like them, just like you and me and what does Jesus do, does He get panicked, does He get immobilised? Have a look:

He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters. The storm subsided and all was calm. "Where is your faith?" He asked the disciples.

You see what is says first up, it says, "He got up". God is a God of action, He doesn't just sit there, He does stuff and then, then He rebukes them for their lack of faith. Now that might seem a bit harsh but look at it from His perspective, He's the Son of God, He knew the right thing to do, it was blindingly, glimpsingly obvious to Him but it was foreign to them.

In fear and amazement they asked one another, "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water and they obey Him.

See the bottom line is that trusting God in the storm is so utterly unnatural to us. It's a bit like the gymnast; he has to learn manoeuvres that are completely unnatural, almost supernatural when you watch them sometimes. I particularly like the guys who get on those rings, you know they get up and they do all those things on those rings, I think 'my goodness, how do they do that?' 'Cause I have to tell you, I can't do that.

They don't learn those things sitting on the couch memorising three dot points, they learn them in the gym, the hard way, they fall off, they hurt themselves, they get up, they do it again, they fall over, they hurt themselves, they get up, they do it again until eventually, they can do things that are impossible to you and to me and that's how we learn to cope with fear in the middle of those storms.

Each time I go through one and I do, I go through them just like you do, I experience fear each time and I'm not some "scaredy cat" but that's just life. And what I've learnt is to go to God early, to pour my heart out to Him like Hannah whom we looked at during the course of this week on the program, if you were with us earlier this week, and what He does when I do that, is He gives me peace. And I've had to learn that over and over and over again and I'm still learning it and sometimes that peace comes sooner and sometimes that peace comes later but it always comes.

I would never have learned that sitting by the pool, only out in the sea amidst the storm and then, when I have that peace, the fear that once immobilised me, the fear that stopped me, is gone. I can get on, I can do my bit, I can do the practical things, I can deal with the finances, I can make the calls, I can manage the problems and wait expectantly for God to show up and do His bit, for God to show up and calm the storm, for God to show up and do the things that I simply can't do.

You know, when the storms of life are raging around us, humility is the last thing that comes to mind. But humility, it turns out, is the key to dealing with the storm, in a most unexpected way.

The things that go on deep in our hearts, well sometimes we think, only we know. "No-one really knows what I'm thinking, no-one knows that I hate this person or I envy that person or I lied about this or hid that. No, the things deep in my heart, they're completely hidden from the rest of the world."

And yet nothing could be further from the truth because those things in our hearts, well they're written all over our faces and the rest of the world sees them through what we say and what we do.

Our behaviour betrays our hearts because who we are on the outside comes from who we are on the inside. The two are linked, cause and effect, it's that simple and even if they weren't, even if the rest of the world couldn't read our hearts by watching us and listening to us, there's at least one other person who knows what's going on inside.

"God only knows". How often have you heard that? Well He does, He knows what's going on in our hearts and it turns out, what's happening inside, deep inside in our heart means everything to Him.

This week on the program we're looking at the storms of life. You know when you're out on an angry ocean, it's a scary place and a storm hits and your life and my life, you know we can both think of recent storms. Don't have to think back very far, big ones, little ones and over this week we've been taking a look at how two different people, or groups of people, handled their perfect storm.

Hannah was a woman, the wife of Elkanah, one of two wives, the other wife Peninnah had children and Hannah had none and there's incredible pain in her heart. She goes and takes it to God, have a listen, if you weren't able to join us earlier in the week. She prays, this is from 1 Samuel chapter 1:

Once they'd finished eating and drinking at Shiloh, Hannah stood up. The priest Eli was sitting on his chair at the doorpost of the Lords temple and in the bitterness of her soul, Hannah wept much and prayed to God and she made a vow saying, "O Lord Almighty, if you would only look upon your servants misery and remember me and don't forget your servant but give her a son then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life." Then she went away and ate something and her face was no longer downcast.

You know what I see looking at Hannah, you can probably see it too, I see a humble heart. I see a heart humble enough not to lash out at other people or whinge or complain or act badly. Amidst the bitterness of her soul, the extreme pain, she pours her heart out to God.

Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, priests, turns out they're bad dudes. I mean the priests are meant to be the religious leaders, they're meant to be Gods men, the go betweens between God and His people, if anyone should have honoured God in their hearts, it shouldn't have been Hannah, it should have been them. But instead they slept with prostitutes and they plundered the peoples sacrifices to God and this is what God does. We looked at it briefly yesterday on the program:

A man of God comes to Eli the priest and says to him, "This is what the Lord says, 'Didn't I bless you? Didn't I reveal myself to your father's house? Didn't I appoint your family as priests? Haven't I given you everything? Why is it that you scorn my sacrifices and offerings that I've prescribed for my temple? Why do you honour your sons more than you honour me by stealing, by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by my people of Israel'?

Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel declares: 'I promise you that your house and your father's house, I promised that you would minister before me forever but now', the Lord declares, 'far be it from me because those who honour Me, I will honour but those who despise me I will disdain. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father's house so that there will be not one old man in your family and you will see distress in My dwelling.

Let me ask you something; who do you think was on solid ground here, Hannah or Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas who pleased themselves? Hannah who was struggling in the midst of her storm and who honoured God or these priests, Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, who just plundered and took what they want and turned their backs on God? See, Hannah with her humble heart or the priests, with all their positions and titles and all that stuff but who wouldn't know God if they fell over Him.

You know what I reckon; it's easy to be like Eli, Hophni and Phinehas but it's hard to be like Hannah. You know why? Because we can't really see God, not like we can see the physical reality we're in, not like we can see our circumstances, not like we can see the storm and feel the fear. All those things seem so much more real than this notion of a God that we can't see; a God that we have to talk to by faith instead of touch and hear physically.

And so this present reality takes over and God has to kind of, I don't know, fit in with our present reality, if at all. Absolutely, it is so easy to be like Eli, Hophni and Phinehas and just stuff ourselves full and turn our backs on God and forget about honouring God.

It's easy to relegate God to one of the things that just has to fit into our days agenda but let me tell you something; God is no less real for the fact we can't physically see Him. He's no less powerful for the fact that we interact with Him by faith. God is God and solid ground is the place that Hannah knew.

I heard someone say once that peace is trusting in the sovereignty of God, Hannah knew that peace. For that very reason, in the eye of her perfect storm, in that place of taunts and disappointments and pains where she couldn't even utter the words when she poured her heart out to God, Hannah discovered Gods peace. Just a simple act of faith.

So many times, over these recent years for me, when the storms have blown in, so many times and you know, in a sense you're so inadequate to deal with those storms. People who come against you and circumstances and the finances and the things that really hurt and the things of real fear and we feel so inadequate.

Just kind of say, "well, I'll go and pray" but you know what that prayer of faith is, that prayer of anguish and pouring our hearts out before God, it's honouring Him as the sovereign God above all things, above all powers and dominions and circumstances and storms and listen again to Gods word, 1 Samuel chapter 2, verse 30 says:

God says, 'I will honour those who honour me and those who despise me will be treated with contempt.

Next week we're going to see how Gods contempt was poured out on Eli, Hophni and Phinehas and how Gods honour was carried out for Hannah through Samuel, her son. Haven't talked a lot about him this week but we will. We'll see that next week on the program. See God blesses Samuel and sets him up as the priest and the prophet and the judge over the whole of Israel, Gods blessing flows through him to Hannah, through the generations.

The question we need to ask ourselves is this; when I look at my life, do I look like Hannah or Eli? Cause that's how we figure out whether I someone who honours God, whether I see Him as the Kings of Kings and the Lord of Lords and sovereign above all things. Whether I go to Him and pour out my heart or whether I steal from Him. Make no mistake; God takes His honour and His glory very seriously – very seriously!

Different people handle the rough times differently. Some seem to find peace in the middle of it all. For others, it's a complete disaster. Let's meet some people at different ends of that spectrum.

Over the last couple of days on the program we've been taking a look at how different people weather the storms of life. And in particular yesterday, we met Hannah, a woman who had been childless for years, taunted by others and in her pain, poured out her heart to God and discovered, when she did that, God gave her peace. And not only that but God answered her with a son and she gives that son back to God but what comes next is a prayer of thanksgiving and rejoicing. We'll take a look at that in a moment

And then we're going to look at some men, men who were around Hannah at the same time, priests in fact, Gods men but when Hannah knew how to approach God to get her feet on solid ground, these so called priests hadn't a clue. In fact, Hannah on the one hand and the priests, Eli and his sons on the other were like chalk and cheese. Opposite ends of the scale and the outcomes for each of them, in their storms, well they were at opposite ends of the scale too. My hunch is there's something in that for us so let's check it out. Now listen to what Hannah prayed when God gave her a son:

Hannah prayed and said, "My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted up. My mouth boasts over my enemies for I delight in your deliverance. There is no-one holy like the Lord; no-one beside you, there's no rock like our God. Don't keep talking so proudly or let your mouth speak such arrogance for the Lord is a God who knows and by Him deeds are weighed. The bows of warriors are broken but those who stumbled are armed with strength.

The prayer goes on and on, you can read it in the book of 1 Samuel chapter 2 and you know what it's all about; it's about the power and the sovereignty of God, it's about a Hannah who went to God with this in her heart, that God is above all things, not to reform God in her own image. Do you know how I know that? Because when she poured out her heart to God, she offered her son back and she honoured that promise.

That's a challenge for each one of us, about how we go to God. How we see Him, as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords or as some performing puppy that jumps when we say jump. How can we tell the difference? See it's very hard to discern our hearts sometimes, how can we tell the difference between a right and a wrong attitude towards God? Well lets go back to this 1 Samuel book in chapter 2. We're going to meet Eli and his sons, the priests:

Eli's sons were wicked men; they had no regard for God. Now it was the practice of the priests with the people that whenever anyone offered a sacrifice to God and while the meat was being boiled, the servant of the priest would come with a 3 pronged fork in his hand. He'd plunge it into the pan or the kettle or the cauldron or the pot and the priest would take for himself whatever the fork brought up. This is how they treated all the Israelites who came to Shiloh.

But even before the fat was burned, the servant of the priest would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, "Give the priests some meat to roast. He won't accept boiled meat from you, only the raw stuff." If the man said to him, "Well let the fat be burned up first and then take whatever you want", the servant would answer, "No, hand it over now, if you don't I'll take it by force." The sin of the young men was very great in the Lords sight for they were treating the Lords offering with contempt.

See, the way we tell the difference is through how we behave. Hannah could have complained and fought back and acted up badly when she didn't have a child. She could have lashed out at her husband and grumbled to God yet, in her pain, she went to God humbly and asked Him to bless her and He honoured that.

See, it's an amazing truth, its one of those pivotal passages in the Bible that tells us a huge amount about why, when we have a wrong heart towards God, things go badly. It's in 1 Samuel chapter 2, verse 30:

For those who honour me, (says God) I will honour and those who despise me, I shall treat with contempt.

And what you read in the remainder of chapter 2, starting at verse 27, is that God deals with Eli and his two sons. He sends a prophet to Eli and this is what happens, the prophet says:

This is what God says, "Didn't I clearly reveal myself to your father's house when they were in Egypt under Pharaoh? I chose your father, out of all the tribes of Israel, to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to wear an ephod in my presence. I gave your father's house all the offerings made with fire by the Israelites. Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I've prescribed for my dwelling?

Why do you honour your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering?" Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel declares: 'I promise that your house and your fathers house would minister before me forever but now the Lord declares, far be it for me for those who honour me I will honour but those who despise me I will despise. The time is coming when I will cut short the strength and the strength of your father's house so that there will not be a single old man in your family and you will see the stress in my dwelling.

And then he goes on, this prophet, to say all the horrible things that are going to happen to Eli and his two sons. Even to the point where he says:

This will be a sign to you. Your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, they will die on the same day and I'll find myself another priest, I will establish him and his house and he will minister before me and this boy Samuel, ministered the Lord under Eli.

See, there it is; the priests were in a position of power and authority and responsibility and they didn't honour God. In their words or their deeds they rejected Him and God dealt with them. We'll have a look at what happens to them next week.

Hannah, on the other hand, well she's like chalk and cheese when you compare her to Eli, Hophni and Phinehas. Hannah's this lowly of lowly, the priests are up there on the social religious register and yet that makes no difference to God because He says:

I will honour those who honour me and those who despise me shall be treated with contempt.

What Gods saying here is, "well, if I can't change the people, I'm going to change the people", and He did and Eli, Hophni and Phinehas end up dying and young Samuel, Hannah's boy, this Hannah who honoured God, young Samuel is the one who's blessed.

You know it's easy to ignore the invisible God, to just go our own way and then to blame our storms on everyone else but deep down in our hearts we know don't we? We know that when we front up to God, in humility, the way Hannah did, He honours that; He just does. And when we live our lives like Eli and his sons, well God's about to show up in our storms and not the way we wanted Him to.

We can ignore Him and deny Him and remonstrate all we like but deep in our hearts we just know that God honours those who honour Him and He despises those who despise Him. Come on people, there is a direct link between how we behave towards God and what happens in our storms. This picture of Hannah in deep distress, going to God, asking for a son in humility is such a beautiful picture.

You see, we feel so weak in those storms don't we? We feel as though there's nothing we can do. And God shows us through these stories, it's not about the position we have or the power we have or how much we get to eat or how well we get rewarded in this world, it's not about any of those things. It's about whether or not we bow down and we honour God.

Okay – so the going gets tough. The storm hits. Now What. Let's meet a woman who's been there, done that – and see what we can learn from her. This woman's name? Hannah.

We're going to meet someone today who was dealt a cruel blow in her life. She was a beautiful young woman called Hannah who, to the taunts of those around her, remained childless for many years. And yet in the midst of this most painful storm of her life she discovered a peace, a peace that surpassed all understanding. It doesn't matter who we are or where we're at in life, storms are going to come along and hit us when we least expect them. We can't change that but what we do in the middle of that storm, well it makes such a huge difference.

And that's why I'd love to have the opportunity to spend just the next few minutes sharing in Hannah's journey 'cause I have this hunch that there are just a few of us that need that encouragement today. Is that a reasonable thing to do? Maybe there's no storm in your life at the moment, maybe there's clear blue sky, well that's fabulous but what we discover together in these next few moments might just be something that you can tuck away in your heart and pull out the next time those storm clouds start brewing.

If you've got a Bible grab it because we're going to have a bit of a look at the book of 1 Samuel, the first few chapters, over these coming days and weeks. We're going to discover a truth that we kind of know, that we should know and yet it kind of gets lost in the world that we live in. It's a 'me' centred world, we keep on going to God and asking for these things for me, me, me.

You know, I sometimes think that we're trying to turn Him into a performing poodle. "You know, God do tricks on my command, when I say 'now, jump', when I say 'now', deliver this". You think there's a risk to that? I think there is, in a very "me" centred world. It may seem harsh but you turn God the wrong way round and you get 'dog', right? Am I expecting God to dance to my tune or am I dancing to His tune? Good question, it's what we're going to explore in this story and it begins with a storm.

A woman called Hannah, it turns out she's going through some really rough times but she, she has the Creator/creature relationship the right way up. This is what the story says in the book of 1 Samuel:

There was a certain man from Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph who's an Ephramite. He had two wives; one was called Hannah, the other one Peninnah and Peninnah had children but Hannah didn't. Year after year this man went up from his town to worship and sacrifice to the Lord Almighty at Shiloh, where Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli, were the priests of the Lord.

Whenever the day came for Elkannah to go and sacrifice he would give portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters but to Hannah, he gave a double portion because he loved her and the Lord had closed her womb and because the Lord had closed her womb, her rival kept provoking her to irritate her. This went on year after year, whenever Hannah went up to the house of the Lord, her rival provoked her until she wept and would not eat. Elkanah her husband would say to her, "Hannah, why are you weeping? Why don't you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don't I mean more to you than ten sons?"

Pretty rough wasn't it? It's a real storm, anybody who's been through that pain of not being able to have children. Imagine somebody else who has kids, your husbands other wife, taunting you like that, absolutely brutal and Hannah has lots of choices. She could have lashed out, she could have been angry, she could have withdrawn, she could have given up and her husbands pretty useless, typical bloke. He says:

Hannah, why are you crying? Why don't you eat? Why are you downhearted? Don't I mean more to you than ten sons?

Like, well you've got me, everything is okay. Hannah is going through the incredible pain of not being able to have children. She's one of two wives, something you saw in early civilisation even in the Bible. Really pleased that's something that's gone away. Can you imagine the rivalry and this ongoing white hot skewer in that relationship?

So what does Hannah do? As I said, she had a whole bunch of choices; to retaliate, to act up badly, to give up, to curl up in the corner and give up on life and die. To spend a life complaining, let the bitterness consume her, what does she do in her perfect storm? Here's the story:

Once they'd finished eating and drinking at Shiloh, Hannah stood up. Now Eli the priest was sitting on a chair by the doorpost of the Lords temple. In the bitterness of her soul Hannah wept much and prayed to the Lord." (Look at it, a sad picture) "And she made a vow saying, "O Lord Almighty, if you would only look upon your servants misery and remember me and do not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life and no razor will ever be used on his head."

And as she kept praying to the Lord, Eli the priest observed her mouth, Hannah was praying in her heart but her lips were moving but her voice wasn't heard and Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine." "Not so my lord" Hannah replied, "I'm a woman who is deeply troubled. I've not been drinking wine or beer. I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Don't take your servant for a wicked woman, I've been praying here out of my great anguish and grief." And Eli answers, "Well go in peace and may God of Israel grant you what you've asked of Him." She said, "May your servant find favour in your eyes." Then she went away, she ate something and her face was no longer downcast.

See it turns out, she does have a son, calls him Samuel, gives him over to God as soon as he was weaned and Samuel comes and serves as a priest, in this temple, under Eli, whom we discover later is a really bad dude. He's the priest, he's supposed to be the "go between" between God and His people and yet, he and his sons have no respect whatsoever for God. We'll look at them another time.

Now, notice she doesn't lash out or whine or complain, she humbles herself before God and asks her Sovereign God, pours her heart out to Him in her grief and Eli, this scoundrel, with about as much spiritual insight as my pet cat, thinks she's drunk and gives her platitudes and yet here's this simple woman, at the bottom of the heap, pouring her heart out to God and notice what it says after she does that, verse 18 chapter 1:

Then she went her way and ate something and her face was no longer downcast.

See, Hannah's feet were on solid ground. Even before her prayer is answered, this seemingly impossible prayer. You know what this tells me, she trusted God. No matter what His answer would be, she trusted her God. She let it go, she stopped worrying and God answered her prayer.

Some things sound too simple. It sounds too easy to go to God and pour your heart out and hand it over to Him. It seems that it could never possibly make a difference but pouring our hearts out to God is like a first step of putting our feet on solid ground. In fact, sometimes it's the only step we have.

Now you might say to me, "Berni no, it's too simple. In any case what difference could it make? God already knows my problem". And I'd say this to you; this is something that, over the years, I've known and so often forgotten to do. Not 'til I hit rock bottom sometimes do I remember and every time I do it you know what happens? He puts my feet on solid ground – He just does!

When you're caught in a small boat on a stormy ocean – what you discover is how much you love good old terra firma. The more firma, the les terra, right? So how do you get some solid ground beneath your feet?

I am really excited to be starting a new series this week on the program that I've called, "On Solid Ground". Now I have to tell you I am definitely a land lover, I like to have terra firma under my feet. In particular, I don't like being out on the water on the ocean, in fact, the more firmer the less terror if you get my drift. I have this basic theory that, if God had meant us to be out on the ocean he would have given us gills or at the very least, steering wheels and rudders right? And for me, there's nothing more terrifying than being out on a stormy ocean.

I'd much rather be standing on solid ground looking out at the stormy ocean than being out there on it and yet, it seems that in life we do travel through stormy oceans and we do have to live through those storms. That's one of the central dilemmas of life, surviving those storms. In fact not just surviving them but learning to ride through them with a peace and a confidence because, well they happen; it's just the way things are. What we really want is we want solid ground under our feet but it's not always possible, or is it?

That's the dilemma, dealing with the storms of life. I remember when I was a young boy; I sailed in a ship from Australia to Europe. It was a four week trip each way through the Suez Canal and it was such a long way. I was only four or five years old and along the way, I remember to this day, we had some HUGE storms and this great ocean liner rolled around like you can't believe, there were ropes in the corridors to hand on to. I've never forgotten those storms, I was so sea sick and I was very, very afraid.

Even though we were such a big ship and you'd go up on the deck and you'd look out the port hole or if you dared, go out onto the deck and these massive waves, they were like, they were like buildings, would come towards the ship and just toss it around, it was pitching around in this fearsome ocean and for me there's nothing as frightening as that angry sea and the violent storm and the ground, as it were, is moving under your feet.

Now for some people, life seems to be a constant storm, the ground underneath their feet is never solid. There's always some fear and uncertainty and they never quite figure it out and many of these people even believe in God and yet life seems to be this endless storm. Question is, how do I get some solid ground under my feet? Well that's what we're going to be exploring in this series that I've called On Solid Ground, starting right here and now.

Now today, we're just going to head out on the ocean with some fishermen and take a look at what it was like for them. These fishermen were disciples, they were followers of Jesus. Remember, they're seasoned fishermen, they'd been doing this all their lives, let's have a look at how they handled the storm. Luke chapter 8, beginning at verse 22:

One day Jesus says to His disciples, "Let's go over to the other side of the lake." So they get in the boat and set out. As they sailed Jesus falls asleep and this squall comes down on the lake so that the boat was being swamped and they were in great danger and the disciples went to Him and woke Him and said, "Master, Master, we're going to drown." He got up, He rebuked the wind and the raging waters and the storm subsided and all was calm. "Where's your faith?" He asked the disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water and they obey Him.

Now these fishermen, they were afraid because they knew the terrible consequences of the storm swamping their boat. Now it may sound a bit silly but, well they wouldn't have had to worry about they consequences if they were fish, if they'd had gills and fins because it's not dangerous for a fish to fall into the ocean or in this case, the lake. The people, they're fishermen, well it's a whole different story, we fall into a stormy sea and we end up drowning and that's what their fear was all about, that's why they panicked. And when we're in the middle of a storm, that's what our fear is all about. It's the fear of being swamped, it's the fear of losing our grip, it's the fear of drowning.

I never cease to be amazed in life, the different circumstances this world, this life on this planet seems to be able to conjure up and hurl at me in the form of a storm. The tensions, the oppositions, the challenges and sometimes they come so rapidly, one after the other that no matter how strong or resilient we are, it feels like we're being swamped.

And here's the bottom line for you and me, just as with those fishermen, we're made to live on solid ground, not in the ocean. We're not made to live out on that stormy ocean in fear of drowning 24x7, even though that's sometimes where we find ourselves at in life. We're not made to be swamped by the ocean, we're made for terra firma, we're made to be on solid ground, would you agree?

Whether you're a fisherman or a land lover like me, whether you're a thrill seeker or someone who prefers a quieter life, none of us is made for the constant battering by storms out there on angry oceans and yet sometimes we can't avoid them. Sometimes, like those fishermen, we just have to be out there on that sea and the storm hits and there ain't a thing that we can do about it.

At the end of the day we're land lovers, the lot of us but we need to know how to ride that storm. I've seen people where storms seem to go on half a lifetime, others have precious few but as resilient as a character I am, I have had to learn how to ride a storm with confidence, are you with me, otherwise you end up drowning? Read that passage again:

One day Jesus says to His disciples, "Let's go over to the other side of the lake." So they get in the boat, they sail, He falls asleep, a squall comes down and hits them so that the boat is being swamped and they're in danger and the disciples went and woke Him and said, "Master, Master, we're going to drown." He gets up, He rebukes the wind, the raging waters, the storm subsides, all is calm and He goes, "Well, where's your faith?" In fear and amazement they ask one another, "Who is this? How can He command even the winds and the water and they obey Him?"

See, to them it was startling and surprising. It's not a myth, this is historical fact. It's easy to write this off as some fable but it's never meant to be that. With all my heart I believe it's an historical record and these fishermen go, "This is amazing". It's something completely new; they'd never seen it before. Now they learned some things about God that day, in fact they learned 3 things.

They discovered that God was in the boat with them. That He had both the will and the means of doing the impossible, of calming the storm and saving them from it. And thirdly almost the most incongruous thing of all, they discovered that safely riding out the storm was a matter of faith.

This week and next week on the program, we're going to meet some people who learned that in their lives. See, you just can't memorise those three dot points and go, "I'm ready, bring on the storms, I can do this" because you don't learn this sipping pina colada's by the pool. You don't learn this by memorising three dot points.

You have to learn this only one way; the hard way. By getting in the boat and being hit by the storm and exercising your faith. So that's why, over these next couple of weeks on the program, we're going to learn what this means in our lives. It's riveting stuff so make sure you join me each and every day.

Each of us has a destiny out there somewhere. But some people are too afraid to follow it because they compare themselves with other beautiful, talented people and come to the conclusion that they could never be as successful as them. Those people have, what I call, Ugly Duckling Syndrome.

Well here we are at the end of the week again and in fact at the end of a series of twenty programs over the last four weeks that together have made up the series that I've called Discover Your Destiny. I hope you've been able to join me on that journey over these last few weeks but if you missed any of the programs you can listen to them again online at our website www.christianityworks.com.

Now one of the reasons, one of the many reasons that people don't step out into their destiny, that yearning, that dream, that thing deep down that they know that they were made to be and to do, is that they compare themselves to other people.

Well we all do that, we all look at these talented and gifted people around us and somehow we convince ourselves that we could never be as good as them, we can never do what they can do, we can never live out our dream, our destiny. You know what I call that, I call it ugly duckling syndrome.

Hans Christian Anderson's powerful story 'The Ugly Duckling' is a literary classic. Not so much because of the way it was written, my hunch is that the piece loses some of its poetry and its lilt at having been translated into English. No the power of 'The Ugly Duckling', the thing that made it a classic is in the way that it resonates deeply with our souls.

A swan's egg by some strange set of circumstances finds itself in a ducks nest in the farmyard and so a swan is born into a family of ducks. No one really cares why or even realises that it's happened, everyone just assumed that he's meant to be a duck and all of his little life people reject him because for a duckling he is one ugly bird.

Everyone misunderstands him, everyone rejects him and it hurts, he's all alone but amidst the bleakness and the hopelessness of this world there is one thing, just one thing that makes his little spirit soar. Have a listen.

One evening just as the sun set amid radiant clouds there came a large flock of beautiful birds out of the bushes. The duckling had never seen any like them before. They were swans and they curved their graceful necks while their soft plumage shone with dazzling whiteness.

They uttered a singular cry as they spread their glorious wings and flew away from those cold regions to warmer countries across the sea. As they mounted higher and higher into the air the ugly duckling felt quite a strange sensation as he watched them. He whirled himself in the water like a wheel, he stretched out his neck towards them and uttered a cry so strange that it frightened him.

Could he ever forget those beautiful happy birds? And when at last they were out of his sight he dived under the water and rose again almost beside himself with excitement. He knew not the names of these birds nor where they had flown but he felt towards them as he never felt for any other bird in the world.

He wasn't envious of these beautiful creatures but wished to be as lovely as they were. Poor ugly creature, how gladly he would have lived even with the ducks had they only given him some encouragement.

At the moment he didn't yet know who he was, he just knew who he wanted to be but because he didn't know who he was, who God had made him to be he simply didn't have a license to go and be who he'd been made to be. And even when he finally encounters those birds again he thinks he's going to die, surely that can be the only outcome."

I will fly with those royal birds', he exclaimed, 'and they will kill me because I am so ugly and dare to approach them. But it does not matter, better to be killed by them than pecked by the ducks, beaten by the hens, pushed around by the maid who feeds the poultry or starved with hunger in the winter.

Then he flew to the water and swam towards the beautiful swans. The moment they espied the stranger they rushed to meet him with outstretched wings. 'Kill me' said the poor bird and he bent his head down to the surface of the water and awaited death.

But then something happened that changed everything in an instant.

What did he see in the clear stream below? His own image. No longer a dark grey bird, ugly and disagreeable to look at but a graceful and beautiful swan. To be born in a duck's nest in a farmyard is of no consequence to a bird if it is hatched from a swan's egg.

It's not until we really know who we are that we discover how inconsequential the distorted image that the worlds misunderstanding reflects back at us, in fact is. My friend as I meet people around the world and I've met so many, more and more as the years go by I'm so deeply impressed by the amazing abilities and talents, ideas, creativity, perspectives, motivations that are buried inside each person, each and every person who I meet.

As I have the opportunity these days to listen to what they say, read their blogs and tweets, I'm constantly amazed at the brilliance and creativity that people are capable of. That's not just other people, it's each one of us, it's you, it's me, each in our own uniquely different ways we have this capacity, this capability, this potential to do the most amazing things and to be the most amazing people.

I don't mean that we're all going to be super stars. I don't mean that we're all going to be on the world's stage or in the lime light. No, no. True greatness often lives in people whose names we'll never know, whose deeds most of us will never see but whose lives touched the hearts of others and leave a legacy of love and of service that will change another person's life forever.

Please don't fall for The Ugly Duckling thing. You are such a person, you have a future, you have a destiny, it's waiting to be lived and if you only look at yourself you'll discover abilities and talents and creativities and beauties that you never imagined possible. Just think of that little ugly duckling, he thought he was so ugly and finally when he looked in the mirror what he saw was a graceful beautiful swan.

And it's precisely this thing that God wants you to know when you set out on your journey of destiny. For as the Apostle Paul writes in the Book of Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10.

You are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good works which he prepared beforehand for you to walk into.

See He's already prepared the way. The good works already waiting for you on the road up ahead and He's created you as His piece of workmanship perfectly suited to the destiny to which you're called. It's about discovering that we are indeed Gods workmanship you and I.

It's about discovering who we are and what our purpose is so that we can go and walk into the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk into with a certainty and a quiet confidence in the knowledge that we're a perfect fit, that we're the right one for the job no matter how daunting that job may appear.

Father God We've heard your Good News; we know we've made many mistakes. We stepped out of your plan, we went our own way, each one of us in our own way knows it didn't quite work and so we want to come back and we want to discover the me You always meant us to be.

FatherThank you for Jesus. We just want to accept Him. I believe that He died for me and that He rose again. I believe that I'm forgiven because of Him and that I have eternal life because of Jesus and Father right this day, lock, stock and barrel, with everything that I am, with every hope and every dream, everything I have I step back into your plan. I give everything that I am and everything that I have to you for you to do with as you please.

Father God Thank you that you have a plan, thank you that I can come back because of Jesus and thank you Father that in that plan I'll get to know you and as I get to know you more and more and more I'll discover the person you always meant me to be.

Father We just pray all of this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Becoming the "me" we were meant to be is – well – a life long journey. And sometimes, it's not until we stop to look back, that we can really see God's hand in all of that.

If I want to ask you, what's your destiny, what were you put on this earth to achieve to do, what impact are you meant to make on this planet of over seven billion people, what's the point of your life and is it heading in the right direction? I wonder how you'd answer those questions.

I ask those questions of people rather a lot and can I tell you the number of people who have a clear sense of their destiny and purpose and direction, well it's less than 5%, maybe one in twenty maybe. Now I'm not saying that we should each have our lives completely mapped out. Things happen along the way, there are twists and turns in life that are totally unexpected. The little things can change the whole course of a life.

I remember a long time ago now I was really sick one day with a high temperature. I was scheduled to speak at a function the following day but I was so sick. I should have rung up and cancelled. The next day came and I was still so sick and yet deep inside me I felt I should go. I did and that was the day I met my wife Jacqui. It turns out that that was the only day I would have ever have met her in the place. Going and speaking on that day despite my sickness completely changed my life. I wouldn't be married to her today had I stayed at home.

Just the other weekend a good friend of mine Paul, a magistrate, was swimming in the surf. It was a normal day, I'd chatted with him by sms an hour or two before to invite him over for dinner that night. A wave picked him up crashed him on his head in the sand, paralysed him and they found him floating face down in the water.

They only just got him in the nick of time. He survived, all's well, he can walk and everything but I'm sure that one experience has changed his perspective on a few things in life.

So we know things like that can happen. We can't map out our whole lives in the minutest detail and say, "yep that's what it's going to be", and yet deep down we need to have a sense of destiny. Another way of putting it would be a sense of the direction our life is meant to be headed and that destiny is invariably tied up with two things, our dreams and our abilities and skills.

If you're one of the majority – one of those people who hasn't yet cottoned on to the direction in which your life was always meant to be headed – then this is for you. Can you remember the dreams you used to have for your life when you were young? Can you? There are going to be some dreams that, well they were never going to fly.

If you're short and slightly dumpy and you were dreaming of becoming a famous basketball player, well that one was obviously never going to happen but so often there's a dream in people's hearts that's been there all along.

Here's a conversation that I've had so many times with people about this question of destiny. We get to talking about the direction which their life is heading and the person says to me something like this, "but you know I'm sure there's meant to be, I don't know, something else. Something that, I don't know, I'm meant to be doing but I don't know what it is."

Does that sound vaguely familiar? So I then ask them, 'well if you had no constraints, if money wasn't an issue, if you could be anything or do anything that you wanted what would that be?' And the answer invariably comes back along these lines. "Oh, oh, anything I want? Well you know, I've always dreamed of ... " And then they tell me the answer, they tell me about their destiny, it's already there, it's woven somehow into the fabric of their DNA.

Now of course there's a risk that this is a short dumpy basket-baller kind of dream and so then I follow up with my second question. What are the things you really enjoy doing? What are the things you're really good at?' Most people can tell you that and what I've found is that in more than 90% of cases their dream and their natural skills and giftings are an almost perfect fit.

You know something we've just discovered their destiny, we've just discovered what they're meant to be doing with their lives and the tragedy, I mean the absolute tragedy is that deep down they probably already knew that. So what held them back? The constraints we all put on our lives.

Do you remember my first question? If you had no constraints, if money wasn't an issue, if you could be anything or do anything that you wanted what would that be? See that question removes the constraints. Then all of a sudden people can look at things the way they're meant to look at them, through the eyes of freedom.

For almost twenty years I was a high priced IT consultant but there came a time of dissatisfaction, time where I really came to the conclusion that I wasn't fulfilling my destiny through making lots of money. Over a few years the opportunity emerged to do what I'm doing now, produce these radio programs and use one of the few natural talents and gifts that I've been given, to be a communicator, to bring hope and change and transformation to people's lives through these radio messages.

But that meant taking a risk. It meant confounding people's expectations of me. It meant leaving a big salary behind and going and working in a small, at the time, ailing not for profit organisation. It's a decision that both Jacqui, my wife, and I took together and those constraints and expectations and the money thing and the risk thing, all of those, I have to tell you, were difficult issues to navigate, it wasn't an easy decision to make.

It was at the time, for me, a huge leap of faith. You know I look back on it now and this is what I know, it's always like that when we have to make a decision as to whether or not we're going to go out there and fulfil our destiny because destiny requires courage, the two seem inextricably linked when we step on the destiny journey.

There's always a risk of failure and yet there's nothing as fulfilling and energising as living out your destiny. These last years doing what I'm doing now there have been some real challenges and real tough times but I tell you I wouldn't swap them for anything and in pursuing this destiny here's what I know.

The only person who can make it happen in our lives is Jesus. Now some may scoff at that, come on Berni, people have achieved great things without Jesus. Yeah okay, there's plenty of evidence of genius and achievement out there in the world, people are capable of some amazing things but here's what I'm absolutely certain of, here's what I know beyond any shadow of doubt.

Jesus, the Son of God, when He laid His glory aside, when He became one of us, He came into this world with a destiny. His destiny was two fold, it was to reveal God to us, to speak of God in a personal language of a man in a way that we could understand and secondly it was to die on that cross and rise again to give you and me the free gift of eternal life.

And without that Jesus who fulfilled His destiny for you and me, you and I well may well be able to achieve some amazing things but we will never achieve anything of eternal value or significance.

Because of my gift of communication I can hold people's attention. I can make them think, laugh and even cry but without Jesus, without His story, without His grace I have nothing of eternal value to impart because He's the one that saves, He's the one that transforms, He's the one that brings new life and my destiny lies in Him to be who He made me to be, to do the things He made me to do so that His purposes will be achieved.

And my friend your destiny, your true destiny lies in Jesus too. He has plans and purposes for your life that He came up with even before you were born and when we give our lives to Him, completely, wholly, fully, without constraint, without limit, without reservation, then we discover our destiny.

Let me tell you, it's a perfect fit your destiny with who He made you to be. How do I know that? Psalm 139. Go and read it – His Word, His truth, your destiny.

It turns out that our priorities have an enormous impact on how we feel about our lives. So if we want to live an abundant, satisfying life we need to get our priorities sorted out; we need to put first things first. So – what should come first?

Most people these days live hectic lives, just making it through. I mean, for some people listening to this program it's a touch and go thing everyday just to find enough food. Others they're drowning in emails and more things on their list of things to do than they can possibly get done. Others are sinking in a sea of loneliness.

Whatever it is, whoever we are, wherever you're at in your life we can find so many things, really important things to clutter up our daily to do list. Personally my list of things to do is as long as my arm and then some. There are the personal things I have to do, things to do with writing and recording and producing this radio program, there's an organisation to run, people to meet, this project, that project, a new idea over here and a new idea over there.

And then I receive a few hundred emails pretty much every day, some of them are junk but many of them are people asking me to do this or get involved in that or can you answer this question for me please or can you help me with my new project, can you please write an endorsement for the book that I'm writing? Welcome to my world. Now don't get me wrong I'm not complaining and none of those things are terribly bad at all but the point is that with so many more things to do than I can possibly fit into my day, my week or even my year, my process for deciding what I do is absolutely critical.

One of the big mistakes I used to make was to answer my emails first thing each morning. I receive emails 24x7 from around the world so I used to sit down in the morning which given I'm a morning person is my most lucid and productive time and start answering emails. After a while I realised I wasn't getting anything else done because by putting emails first I was putting other people's priorities first, I was in fact dancing to their tune instead of sorting out for myself what was most important from my agenda, the things I needed to do first.

There's a well know principle of framework you read in a lot of management books that sets out the difference between what's urgent and what's important and what you discover is almost nothing that's urgent is important and almost nothing that's important is urgent.

And yet most of us are reactive, we react to the urgent things or at least to the things that other people say are urgent and so we spend most of our time doing urgent things instead of important things. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and before you know it your life is slipping away doing a whole bunch of things which in the scheme of things may well be making you extremely busy but how important are they really?

What of lasting value do they produce? What of lasting value does your life produce? You see my point here, how are you spending your life and are the things you're spending your time on important and worthwhile? I guess I'm asking those questions for you to ask them of yourself and to answer them, come on be brutally honest.

For instance making sure I have some time for my beautiful wife Jacqui is important. Making sure I encourage her, give her a hug and a kiss, spend some unhurried time with her in the morning over breakfast is really important but it's not urgent. It's not as urgent as say an email that comes in from a radio station from somewhere around the world that says, "we weren't able to download tonight's radio program from your ftp server".

And yet what I used to do because remember mornings are my most productive time, is get up really early and spend no time with Jacqui over breakfast and just work furiously through that time and by the time she comes home from work and I come home from work in the evening we're both tired and there you go, we haven't spent any time together.

Do you see how easily this can happen in people's lives? The urgent trumps the important almost every time and before you know it your life's falling apart, things are in a mess, marriages are failing all because we allow the urgent to crowd out the important. Scary, isn't it?

So these days I make sure that almost every morning during the week I'm around to share a time with my wife for breakfast. Sometimes I'm away and sometimes I have to be on a call to Africa or somewhere else but most mornings I have breakfast with my wife. Why? Because it's important and as a result sometimes urgent things don't get done. Let me let you in on a secret, the sky has yet to fall in.

So what about you? What about your life? Are you letting the myriad of urgent things crowd out the important things, spending time with people, managing your personal finances, nurturing your children, developing relationships with your co workers. All of those things are incredibly important and in many a persons life they're being cast aside simply because people are too busy.

I don't have time to exercise. Well if you don't have time for exercise, which is important let me tell you, you'll certainly be making time for sickness which is going to become urgent and actually that's how it works. Doing the important things generally over time reduces the number of urgent things that you need to do because if the important things go undone they lead to crises and those crises increase the urgent things requiring an immediate response.

We've been talking these last few weeks about discovering your destiny. I don't know what your destiny is, I mean really I don't but this is what I do know, your destiny does not lie in the myriad of the things that other people tell you are urgent. Your destiny doesn't lie in answering hundreds of emails. Your destiny doesn't lie in reacting to other people's priorities.

Your destiny is somewhere; it's doing the really important things in your life. Building the relationships, having a great marriage, doing the important things to take a career forward that's going to impact other people's lives. My friend please don't make the mistake of letting the urgent crowd out the important because, I'll say it again, I'm absolutely certain of this, your destiny does not lie in the hundreds and thousands of urgent little tasks that other people think that you should do.

I mean if you or I went to God, this God who handcrafted us, who designed us in His heart, blue printed our DNA, if we went to Him and said, 'Lord what's the most important thing I have to do with my life?' What do you think He'd answer? What would He put at the very top of our to do list?

Well actually we already know. A clever young lawyer asked Him a very similar question. The lawyer sort of said and this is my paraphrase:

'Well Jesus you and I both know that the law that Moses handed down to us there are six hundred and thirteen commandments and prohibitions, it's kind of a lot, I mean day to day that's a lot of things to remember to do so how would you sum up this law, I mean if I'm trying to prioritise these things in my life which ones of all of those commandments are the most important ones?'

You can read his exact words in Matthews Gospel chapter 22 and in Mark chapter 12. And if I had to paraphrase Jesus reply in kind of here and now speak it would run something like this.

'Look I know you have a lot of things to do, there are lots of rules, do this, don't do that, they're all good things but you can sum up the whole law in just two commandments. To love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength. That's the most important one and the second one is just like it. To love the people around you as much as you love yourself. That's the whole law in a nutshell, that's it.

And you know something the most important thing I do almost every day, the thing I do before anything else is I spend an hour or so alone with Jesus praying, reading the Bible, asking Him questions and that's what sets the course for my whole day and day after day, month after month, year after year it actually sets the course for my whole life.

It is quite simply the single most important thing that I do and it's through that time with Him that I've discovered my destiny.

Winning is everything. At least that's what everyone seems to think. But sometimes, the more we win, the emptier it all feels. Somehow, winning isn't all it's cracked up to be.

One of the things we're all pretty much conditioned to do in life is to come first. Now we all can't come first at everything right but it's pretty natural to want to be first, to be the best looking, to be the brightest, to be the most articulate, the fastest runner, the best football player.

Even when we think we have things under control in our lives that competitive spirit thing inside each one of us just wants to win, an argument, a situation, a minor conflict at work or at home, we want to have the final say. We want to assert our view, our way, our need, our whatever it happens to be. To be blunt we just want to win.

But sometimes winning comes at a very high price, let's face it, if I'm going to live out my destiny, if I'm going to be the me I was meant to be and if I'm going to live the life I was meant to live then surely I have to win at things right? I mean it stands to reason doesn't it?

But there are just a few problems with this 'I have to be first' thing. I mean for starters you can't always be first. If everyone was always first by definition none of us would ever be first because winning, coming first means that others have to come second, third, fourth and last and it sets up this thing where we become our own little demi gods and the moment things don't work out, the moment we don't come first we throw a little tantrum or a big tantrum for that matter.

To tell you the truth that's how I used to live. I expected everybody else to bow down and scrape to me and if they didn't I'd get upset, I'd roll over the top of them, I'd get offended and annoyed and disappointed because from as early as I can remember I've been programmed to win, to get the recognition, to win the prize.

And it turned out that all that stuff was robbing me of my destiny, it was robbing me of being the me I was meant to be and living the life I was made to live. I was this little tin pot god on my own little tin pot throne and I discovered it wasn't much fun up there or down there, wherever it was, especially when you're surrounded by other people with exactly the same world view. The paradox is that being first doesn't work. We need to let that sink in for a moment, the view that you or I are always meant to come first simply doesn't work.

Jesus and His disciples were travelling and the disciples were having this argument behind His back about which one of them was the greatest, you know that Mohammad Ali syndrome 'I am the greatest'. And when they came to Capernaum they went inside the house and Jesus said to them, 'So what were you guys arguing about out there on the road?'

But they kept quiet because on the way they'd been arguing about who was the greatest, in effect who would come first.

See there's nothing new here under the sun, this nonsense of wanting to win is as old as the hills.

And sitting down Jesus called the twelve of them over and said, 'Look if any of you wants to be first you actually have to be the very last and the servant of all.'

And He took a little child and He had him stand among them and taking this kid in His arms He said to the disciples, 'it's all about welcoming one of these little children'.

Don't you love that? They have this argument about who's the greatest, now I don't think for one minute that Peter was saying, "you know I think John's the greatest".

No, no, Peter was probably thinking, 'I'm the greatest' and John was probably thinking, "no, no, I'm the greatest". And these guys were playing a power game. Which one of us is on the top of the heap? And when Jesus said, "what were you guys arguing about?" They kept quiet, they didn't want Him to know.

Why? Because they knew it was such a stupid argument. They knew it and we know it but it still doesn't seem to stop us playing the power game. At work, in our neighbourhood or a community group, in our families, amongst our so called friends.

This idea that 'if anyone wants to be first he must be the very last and the servant of all', it's a really profound notion. Just seventeen little words and everything we've learned and believed about winning gets turned completely on it's head. In that one statement Jesus puts His finger on one of the deepest maladies on this planet, it was way back two thousand years ago and it still is today.

Think about it, who are the people who come first in your estimation? Who are the people whom you treasure in your heart? I know who they are, they're the very ones who have sacrificed the most for you aren't they? Those people are the ones you and I hold dearest in our hearts, the ones who loved us when we were tough to love, the ones who put up with us when we were difficult to put up with, the ones who were there for us when we didn't deserve them.

And those people instead of wanting to be first, instead of insisting on their rights, instead of all that stuff, we think we're owed and we deserve, instead of all of that they humble themselves to serve us. Instead of putting themselves first they were in fact last for us. If anyone wants to be first he must be the very last and the servant of all.

Being first ultimately is about sowing a seed in someone else's life, a seed of gentleness and compassion and to be first we have to be last. If you want to be first you have to be the very last, the servant of all and leave a legacy of respect and gratitude and profound appreciation in other people's hearts.

Being first is the thing that happens in their hearts when we serve them instead of what happens in our hearts when they serve us, that's the paradox. It's pretty simple, it's not rocket science but it's one of those things we forget in our business to make sure we get everything we deserve and then some, the me, me, me, thing, we miss it.

I didn't start discovering my true destiny in life until I resigned from my own little tin pot despotic role as my own pathetic little god and started serving others. It's something I'm still learning and the amazing thing is, counter intuitive as it was when I started to serve other people instead of myself I actually started enjoying my life again.

Not having to win each argument, not having to come out on top, not having to be smarter or faster or better or brighter than the next person is a whole better way of living than always having to come first. Because all of a sudden I wasn't trying to live this impossible life anymore, life became a whole bunch simpler when I started to live the Jesus way.

This peace and this joy and this rest started showing up in my life, I don't have to get angry every time someone doesn't meet my expectations. You know something, if anyone wants to be first he must be the very last and the servant of all but more than that I discovered my destiny.

I discovered that when I stopped trying to be first and having everyone serve me, when I in fact started to say 'no I'll start serving them' I discovered I had gifts and abilities that God wanted to use in other people's lives. We talked about this the other week and it's so incredibly satisfying, this double sided transaction of giving and serving.

First resigning from being first, from me at the centre of the universe and to discover what it means to serve, the pleasure and fulfilment and then you know what happens, all of a sudden in a whole bunch of people's hearts we have a warm significance, we have a firstness if I can call it that, that only comes when we become their servant.

Jesus said it in a whole bunch of different ways and it's a profound truth. I mean He said it again in Luke chapter 9, verses 24 and 25 if you want to have a read.

Whoever wants to save their life will lose it but whoever loses their life for me will save it. Because what good is it for anyone to gain the whole world and yet to forfeit their very self.

You see what we're forfeiting when we try and win, when we try and gain our life, when we try and be first, we're forfeiting our very self. In other words this is such an important part of being the person we were meant to be and living out our destiny.

We weren't made by God to be some little tin pot despotic god on our own. We were made to be His children and to lose our lives and in losing our lives to discover who we actually are.

It turns out that the more we try to fill ourselves up with all the fun stuff this world has to offer, the emptier we feel. When are we finally going to wake up to the fact that life's not just about "me"?

Life is full of paradoxes and contradictions and complexities. It's funny how we can see something one way, believe with all our heart that that's how it is and then in an instant you discover we had it all wrong. Like lemmings sometimes, we all rush in one direction and just in time someone says, "you realise that's a cliff".

People and societies chase after this idea or that belief; they believe it with all their hearts only to discover it doesn't work. Take just one thing, consumerism. The advertising industry has a single, very simple mantra that rings out through almost every advertisement and it's this, "if you buy me you'll be happy".

And to convince us of that each ad has glossy images of success plastered all over it, images of the things we aspire to: beauty, luxury, quality, comfort, happiness, a great marriage; a beautiful, happy, successful woman; a handsome, strong, driven man; delighted, well adjusted teenagers without acne.

In effect the ads tell us what to aspire to because they're defining success. Fine dining, business class travel, crystal clear wide screen televisions, big houses. Who doesn't want those things? But when we finally get there it's a case of, well so what? Great but now what's next?

Who doesn't want a good espresso coffee or sit in those wide comfortable seats at the front of the plane or to drive a nice car or to have a happy family? You know the ads that really, really get me, you see father's day and mothers day ads on television sometimes and they have images of happy well adjusted children, you know come in on mother's day or father's day morning and jump on mum and dads bed and they're all smiling, they're all happy.

What mother or father doesn't want that to be the story of their family? Or even the margarine advertisement, you know in the mornings and all these happy people, all well dressed and their hair groomed, having breakfast, drinking freshly squeezed orange juice, scraping margarine on perfectly cooked toast, just to sell margarine.

Or those watches that cost, you know up market, thousands of dollars type watches and you have images of multi million dollar racing yachts that appeal to the man inside the man. Or the four wheel drives. You notice they're always on beautiful wide country roads which lead towards freedom, never in the maddening peak hour traffic where most people drive them. Or the washing powder that will make your clothes whiter than white and brighter than bright. Or the showers that never need cleaning or the germ free sparkling toilets.

This incredible list, on and on and on, all with the same message, buy me and you'll be happy but the plain simple fact is, it's just not true. I mean most of the things they're good, there's nothing wrong with any of those things but they don't fulfil us, they don't fill us up. Our career, self actualising through our work and power and big salaries, whatever people want out of their careers. You see it doesn't matter what it is or how exciting or glamorous it appears ultimately all work becomes mundane and ho-hum.

You might be thinking, 'Berni what's the matter with you today? I mean why are you all down and pessimistic?' Well actually I'm not but I know a lot of people who are. They're living on this treadmill all their lives, round and round and round just to discover that it's hollow and it's empty. You know something, even the most wonderful marriage on the planet, if there's something not quite right inside one of those people there, it can end up being hollow.

The problem is we've been conned, this buy-me-and-you'll-be-happy thing we know it doesn't work but what's the alternative? I mean so often we don't know anything else so we just keep on going round and round on the same track again and again. You see people swilling around those glossy, ritzy shopping malls, what for? Are they looking for happiness there?

These last few weeks on the program and again this week we're looking at what it means to discover your destiny, to be the person you were made to be, to live the life you were made to live. And we've been unpacking this sort of emptiness that so many people feel, this nagging sense of dissatisfaction.

Can I ask you something? As you look forward to the rest of your life is how you're living it now the way you want to live it for the rest of your days on this earth? Are the things that you're aspiring to, the things you've been working so hard for, the things that you've been sacrificing your life for, are they really worth it? Is the story, the mantra, the perspective on life that society has somehow infused into you the story that you want for the rest of your life?

They might be unsettling questions, I hope actually that they are because this week I want to unpack this paradox, why is it that things don't seem to be working out in life sometimes? Why is it that somehow we try and live our lives kind of the way we're supposed to, the way that's supposed to make sense but it doesn't make sense? I don't feel fulfilled, I don't feel like I'm being the me I was meant to be, why is that?

To me this is the biggest paradox of all and it's one I had to discover and unlearn the hard way. The great British columnist Bernard Lennon once wrote this:

Countries like ours' he said, 'are full of people who have all they desire and yet they lead lives of quiet desperation, understanding nothing of the fact that there is a hole inside and no matter how much food and drink we pour into it, how many motor cars and TV's we stuff it with, how ever many well balanced children and loyal friends we parade around the edges of it, it aches.

See so many people relate to that, sad but true. Can I ask you today, do you relate to that? As we've been spending this short time together today are you one of those many people who, if you're really honest with yourself, would say, "you know, truly there is something missing in my life. The way I've been living my life, the way I'm living my life today is not the way I want to spend the rest of my life?" Because if you are the next question is, so what are you going to do about it, huh?

You may think that I'm railing against having money or having possessions, I'm actually not. There's nothing wrong with money, there's nothing wrong with having possessions, have a listen to what wise old King Solomon wrote in the Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes chapter 5, verse 19:

Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them and to accept his lot and to rejoice in his toil, this is the gift of God.

Maybe you have wealth, maybe you have possessions but do you have the power to enjoy them because that power is a gift from God. Accepting your lot, enjoying who you are, rejoicing in the work you do, all those things are a gift from God.

I like so many people of my generation made the mistake of believing the mantra of the advertising industry, "buy me and you'll be happy". It's not true, it never was true and it never will be true. Happiness and contentment are a gift from God.

Joy is something that comes only ever from an intimate close relationship with God, knowing that through Jesus Christ we've been forgiven, knowing that through Jesus we have a fresh start, a new life, the opportunity to fulfil our individual, custom made, handcrafted destiny that was written down in Gods book of life before any of our days ever existed.

The Apostle Paul hits the nail right on the head in the first chapter of the Book of Ephesians when he writes that God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and it's only when we lay hold of Gods blessing, real blessing, eternal blessing, blessing that lights up our hearts here and now, the very blessing of God Himself that all this stuff that we have, all the things that we do are enjoyable and make sense.

Does that sound like the sort of story you want to live out for the rest of your life? Yeah me too.