God is so profoundly different to anyone or anything that this world has to offer. His ways are so different to our ways, and unless and until we have a personal encounter with the risen Christ, unless and until we encounter Jesus in our own, personal experience, our lives simply cannot be transformed.

 

Who Exactly is God?

That simple little three letter word, ‘God’, is used in so many different ways. I mean, when you use the word ‘God’, different people have different views of who that is.

Is He some angry despot? Is He a judgemental old man? Is He kind? Who or what is God? Well you go out and ask different people and what you discover is that they have a picture of God in their heads that doesn’t always have a whole bunch to do with who God actually is.

It’s almost like we reconstruct Him in our own image, to suit ourselves, to suit our own agendas, but let me ask you something, if God is God wouldn’t it be worthwhile kind of figuring out exactly who He is? IF God has the power, is the power, to transform our lives, shouldn’t we get to know Him?

I mean, who is He really and how do you and I relate to Him? What if God is awesome and powerful and loving and kind and we spend the rest of our lives missing out on all that because we never really went after Him to discover who He really is? So how do we discover who God really is?

This week on the program we’re setting about laying hold of God’s power to completely and utterly transform our lives. And the place that we discover that power, the place that God the Holy Spirit has made available for us to lay hold of that power – is His Word, the Bible.

I mean reading the Bible was something I would never have done in a million years. What do you think I am, some wacky fundamentalist? But you know something, reading the Bible for myself has completely and utterly transformed my life. It didn’t stunt me, it opened me up. It didn’t narrow my mind; it opened me up to the wonder and the possibilities of life with God, to the power that God wants to unleash in my life.

Over the last twenty or so years I guess I’ve spent a lot of time in that Book, in fact its 66 different books. I’ve had the chance to study and to learn and to think and to mull it all over and truly, in those twenty odd years I’ve really only scratched the surface. But the more I think about it, the Bible is basically about four things:

1. 1. Who God is, what He’s like and how He reacts to things.
   2. What God’s will and purposes are, what His plan is.
   3. Where my life is headed. It’s about who I am, made in His image but how does He see me? Who did He make me to be?
   4. And … how I can respond to God.

Some people think this last one, number four, is all that the Bible has to offer; just rules and regulations … but you know, as you read it for yourself, how to respond to God is quite simply not the main thing, it just kind of drops out at the end, it’s the natural consequence of the first three.

Those four things again are: who God is, what His will and purposes are, who you and I are in His eyes and how we can respond. That’s what the Bible contains, it’s real and it’s practical, it’s about life, it’s awesome and it’s exciting and it contains power … power unlimited to transform you, to transform your life, to heal you, to bless you, to empower you.

Today I just want to look at the first one of those; who God is. I mean if God is God, shouldn’t we figure out who He is? Who He says He is? Where better to do that, to search Him out, than that great love letter that He’s written to you and to me, the Bible. It makes sense, doesn’t it?

When I first laid eyes on my wife Jacqui, when I first saw her from a distance, I was speaking at a Church and she was sitting in that congregation. As far as I was concerned, she was just another face in the crowd and had I never sought her out, I would never have come to know her and to have a relationship with her. So, I did seek her out and she responded to that.

In a sense, picking up the Bible is seeking God out, it’s the same thing, He responds. It’s not a dead book written by men thousands of years ago. It’s the living, active word of God and His promise is that when we pick it up, the Holy Spirit, God Himself, will bring it to life in our hearts. God promised that He would pour His Spirit out on all flesh and that He would write His words onto our heart.

By far, the greatest reason for reading the Bible, is to encounter God Himself, to discover who He is, and how He sees things; what He’s like and what He’s up to. You see, it’s easy to read this story or that in the Bible and say, "Well that was a story about King David" or “That one over there, that’s the story about Moses or Peter or Paul”. But so often in the pages of this great and mighty book, the great unseen player is God Himself and as I read every story, every verse, I keep asking myself, “What does this tell me about God Himself? What’s He up to in this story?”

Let’s take just one example, it’s a short story. God makes a promise to this man called Abram who is childless. You know, Abram’s an old man, his wife Sarai is an old woman, they’re childless and yet God has called them to go from their home on this huge journey. God’s promised them children, a multitude of children, but it’s never happened. It’s gone on for years and years and years. Abraham’s out of his comfort zone, he’s on this long, uncomfortable journey and he’s frustrated and this is what happens.

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:1-6)

It’s really easy to read this story and imagine that it’s a story all about Abram. But the real question that we should be asking is What does this short little story, tell us about God?

Here’s Abram. He’s frustrated, he’s waiting for a breakthrough that’s not coming. He’s trying to believe in God, but it’s hard. I wonder if that sounds at all familiar to you? And it’s going on for years and years and years and he and his wife are old and it’s just absolutely impossible. But along comes God and He does this kind of gentle and kind and wondrous and patient thing with Abraham, He takes him outside to gaze up into this beautiful masterpiece called the Milky Way.

Have you ever looked up at the stars away from the smog and the lights of a big city at night? It’s incredible how many stars are up there and in the middle of Abram’s frustration, God says ‘Abram, look … look at this! This is how many descendants you’re going to have. My promise will actually happen”. And if you read the rest of this story, Abraham ultimately has a son, with his wife Sarah, called Isaac. He never saw all these offspring happen, he never saw the rest of the promise fulfilled in his life time, but here is this good and gracious and powerful God who takes a man in the middle of his frustration and just speaks lovingly to him.

It’s a story about God do you get it? It’s a story about how God treats those who He loves when they’re at the end of their tether. the Bible is full of those stories. You pick it up and you read them and wow, you discover who God really is. Do you see the power in that? Do you see how know God, and how in our small, limited way, coming to understand Him can make such a powerful difference to us, when we’re lost and frustrated and clinging onto a promise … but only just?

People often say to me, “Berni, you seem to be so enthusiastic about God.” Can I tell you why? Because over the last couple of decades I’ve discovered Him in the pages of the Bible and discovered what He says about Himself there and those things have ended up being etched onto my heart, so that I can experience Him in my life. I can’t help but be enthusiastic and you know, I can’t help but wonder, where would my life be? Where would I be, if I hadn’t laid hold of this power … power unlimited in the living Word of God?

 

What are His Plans and Purposes for Me?

You know one of the most common things that we all experience at some point or other in our lives, is this dilemma, this crisis if you will, of, well where is my life headed? I think it’s because somehow we’re hardwired to have hope for the future, to be able to look forward to a good future, to have a sense of significance, to make our mark in this world. Where is my life headed? … can become a question of quite some desperation.

And for our lives to be headed in the right direction we need a few things to come together. The way we live, the things that we can control, and the things that go on around us, the ones we can’t control. That’s not easy. It’s almost an impossible juggling act. But … what if God has a plan? What if He has a purpose in the things that we’ve been travelling through? What if there’s meaning behind it all, and He does want to do amazing things and He does want to be involved in the choices we make today? What if?

Wouldn’t you want to tap into that? I mean, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want Him to speak those plans and purposes gently into your heart and let them make a difference for you, here and now? Just think … what a powerful way that would be to live.

Yesterday we saw that the biggest thing that we can get out of the Bible is discovering God Himself, who He is, what He’s like, how does He react to different situations and things?

To me that is the greatest prize of them all, God Himself, getting to know Him, having a wonderful, rich relationship that just gets deeper and deeper as time goes by.

Today I want to look at the second thing that I think the Bible is about, God’s plans and God’s purposes, both the big picture and specifically for you and me. The big picture is so important. What’s Gods big plan? What’s He up to?

A friend and colleague of mine, Dr Graham Pratt, he and I were speaking a few years ago at an IT conference in Singapore. We were talking over coffee about some technology thing and he said to me, “Berni, context is so important, in fact in understanding something, context is almost everything.” I’ll never forget it, it’s a pearl of wisdom. We want to know where our lives are headed, my life, my little piece of the puzzle, right? If we want to do that we need to understand the big picture; God’s great plan as well as His specific plans and purposes for our lives.

You know, when I read the Bible, the stories and the things that happened a long time ago, somehow God’s plan for my life becomes so crystal clear. For me, life was just a ‘here and now’ thing. It was about wealth and career. In reality, it was empty, hollow, directionless. Where was it headed? What was the point? But when I encountered Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, when I started listening to Him by reading the Bible, I began to get a handle on God’s big picture. A big picture that’s best summed up in something that God says over and over again:

I will be your God and you will be my people. (Exodus 6:7)

From the beginning to the end of the Bible, you see God saying that and explaining it and sending Jesus so that it could happen. They’re not just words on a page. This is the very heartbeat of God to call us back to Himself, to call us back home, here and now and for all eternity, despite our rebellion, despite the fact that we rejected Him, despite all our mistakes; to give us a new life, an eternal life that’s not about rules and regulations but a relationship with Him.

And right through the whole Bible you see Him engaging with people and drawing them closer, people just like you and me, people in their weaknesses and their failures and yet He loves them and touches them and reaches out to them. Okay, we see His anger too sometimes, you see God getting angry and yet despite that He still reaches out to people from in the midst of His anger and that’s where we discover His grace and we see Jesus dying on a cross for you and me.

As we read those stories over and over again, His heartbeat touches ours, His desire touches us, His grace wraps itself around us and through us. I’ve only just started to wrap my heart around that as I’ve spent twenty odd years listening to Him, hearing His words and His stories and His heartbeat in the pages of that wondrous book – the Bible.

You know, you open the Bible and you read the story of Jesus dying on the cross and crying out:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46)

And from the pages of that book we hear God crying out to you and me, here and now; “Don’t you realise how much I love you”. And you know, as well as this big picture of God’s engagement of all humanity and His plans for humanity as a whole, the thing that, for me, so often leaps off the pages of His word are His specific plans for me. Sometimes we think that ‘Well, you know, God’s stopped talking. God had the prophets in the Old Testament and He had Jesus in the New Testament and He had some Apostles in the New Testament … but that was back then. Today though, here and now God’s stopped talking’.

But when we’re travelling through times that are uncertain, when we want to give up, when we’re in a relationship or in a thing we thought God had called us into but now we’re not sure, we need God to speak.

I cannot tell you the number of times, in the early days, that I wanted to give up on this ministry of Christianityworks that I’m involved in. I can’t begin to tell you. It all looked so impossible, it all looked so hopeless. How could this guy from the IT industry ever do this thing called ‘sharing Gods love with people through the media’? It was incongruous but as I look back on it now, that regular habit of spending time in Gods word, day after day, is how He touched me and whispered in my heart ‘just keep going’. That’s what happens, you read God’s word and you discover power … power unlimited … power to keep going with God’s plan for your life. That’s what happens.

Just when I was rock bottom I remember one time, reading this:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2,3)

Another time, just when I was wondering whether or not to step out in faith by growing the ministry into Africa when we clearly didn’t have the resources to do so, I opened up to the next chapter and read about Peter stepping out of the boat. He didn’t wait for the storm to stop. No, he stepped out in the middle of the storm and walked on the water towards Jesus.

Just when I was feeling so incredibly inadequate one tome, I read about how Peter and all the other disciples deserted Jesus when He was being tried and crucified. And yet Jesus still went on to use them to start this thing He called “the church”.

The Bible is full of this stuff and somehow God, through His Spirit, takes those stories and connects them with our lives and in our hearts we just know that God is speaking to us. There have been so many times when just when I needed a gentle touch from God … then I read about how He healed the leper or the blind person or the lame man. The Bible is full of God’s promises and plans and purposes.

And when we establish a regular habit of just spending some time in there with Him, His Spirit writes His promises and plans and purposes on our hearts with indelible ink, in a way that no person, no man or woman, no situation, no trial can ever rub them off. God Himself brings His word to life and that changes everything.

So often I wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t established a regular habit of reading Gods word. You know, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.

 

Who Am I, Really?

One of the things that many people ponder in life is this question, “Who am I?” We have so many pictures and images of who we should be thrust under our noses each day … and yet none of them ring true, so we end up feeling a bit like refugees, lost. The media and the advertisers, they want to define success for us. They want to tell us what it means to be open-minded. They want to tell us what we should aspire to. They want to tell us what a happy, well adjusted family looks like, and what beauty looks like and what we have to achieve, who we have to be, what we have to look like, to be successful.

They tell us if we don’t look like this, we haven’t made it, but we will if we buy their product and I don’t know about you, but I can get so lost in that maze because my life never quite looks like those images of success that they wave under my nose. And we compare ourselves with other people, people who look successful and so often we come to the conclusion that we aren’t. And so that question, "Who am I?" rattles around in that empty, hollow void inside. Who am I?

Have you ever been to one of those fairs, you know where they have Ferris wheels and merry-go-rounds and amusements and sideshows? And in side-show alley, they have those distorted mirrors. You know, you walk in front of one and you look all tall and skinny or short and fat or all wobbly and wavy. They’re good fun for a little while, about a minute or two. But imagine, imagine if our mirrors at home were like that, all distorted … not good.

I remember when I was working as an IT consultant one of the clients I used to work for, the front door of their offices had this glass that was a perfect distortion of me. It just made me look a bit slimmer and a bit taller, you know I could have stood in front of that door all day and looked at myself. We’d like to have a mirror like that at home, wouldn’t we? Or would we?

My hunch is, whenever we get a distorted image of ourselves, of who we are, that’s not a good thing even if we happen to like the distorted image better than the real one. For example, the distorted image that society puts up that you can be whoever you want to be, it’s all up to you, it’s all out there, just go and be whoever you want to be.

I’m 5 foot, 9 inches or 174 cm tall, so it doesn’t matter how much I want to be a basketball player, I’m never going to be a basketball player. In fact there are some things in life that I am decidedly not good at. If I try to be those things, it would be a bad fit. Maybe that’s why so many people aren’t happy, because they’re trying to do jobs or be someone that they’re quite simply not cut out to be. Aspiring to something that we’re never going to be any good at is one of the worst things that we can do in the world. I wonder if that’s why there are so many people, who literally hate their jobs.

I was looking at a recent ‘job satisfaction’ survey on the internet. Have a listen to these stats: 45% of workers say that they’re either satisfied or extremely satisfied with their jobs. You know what that means? That means that 55%, or over half, aren’t.

Of those 45% who said they were happy, less than half again, in fact only 20% said that they felt really passionate about their jobs. That means that 80% of people don’t feel passionate about their jobs and 33%, fully a third believed they’d reached a dead end in their careers, there was no hope for a future. 21% were eager to change careers.

I think that these statistics are a tragedy. The vast majority of people aren’t passionate about what they do every day. So many people aren’t enjoying their lives. But …. let’s look at the flipside of that coin. There’s a whole bunch of people wandering around in life, believing with every fibre of their being, that they’re worthless. ‘Oh, I’m only a stay at home mum. I’m only a clerk. I’m not as smart or as good looking or as talented or as successful or as wealthy or whatever as the next person.’

So many people and advertisers and product manufacturers and self styled guru’s out there want to tell us who we should be and how we get there and if we aren’t we need to get onto their program. Amidst all of that, here’s a question, who am I? Who are you? In the cosmos, in the scheme of things, how do you define your worth and who you actually are?

And if you’re living your life that way, then you are living a powerless life. A life that will, ultimately, count for nothing. In a very real sense, that was the life that I was living, until I discovered what God said about me. How God sees me. What His view of me from Heaven’s balcony looks like. And that’s something that you find in the Bible over and over again.

I want to set you a challenge today, to read Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 – only a few pages – and to write down all the things that just those three chapters say about you. Let me just give you the first few:

You are a saint, grace and peace are yours, you are already blessed with every spiritual blessing, you were chosen before the creation of the world, predestined, adopted into God’s family, redeemed, forgiven, God’s grace is being lavished on you, wisdom and understanding are yours, God’s will is made known to you … and we haven’t even arrived yet, at the tenth verse of the first chapter.

Do you get it? The Bible presents a radically different view of who you are. The Bible tells you who God says you are. So instead of believing the distorted images that the world reflects back at you, you can see, a crystal clear, accurate representation of who you are. As one of my Bible College lecturers, Dr Barry Chant, often used to say – you and I need to ditch our self image, and develop a faith image, by discovering and believing what God says about you.

Because when you know who you really are, who you are in Christ, you will have laid hold of the power to be who God made you to be. It’s a power that will completely and utterly and radically transform your life.

You see God is no other pedlar of good philosophies or belief systems; He’s not some distorted mirror of low self–esteem or unrealistic stereotypes. If God is truly God, if God made you and me, how does He see us? The answer to that question tells us who we really are.

And not knowing who we are is like trying to navigate your place from A to B, with an inaccurate map. Blind Freddy can see that that’s no way to live life. I come back again, to the many people I speak to about the problems that they’re experiencing in life. When I ask them … how often do you read your Bible, they invariably tell me, in a low voice, with obvious embarrassment … Well, not very often.

Okay then, so when was the last time you opened your Bible and spent just five minutes listening to what God wants to tell you? The answer? For many it’s months and even years ago.

Who am I? If that’s a question that you want the answer to, a question let me say that you want the right answer to, if you want an accurate map for your life, then the only place that you’re going to find it is in God’s Word.

Because when we come to His word, the Bible with questions like “Who am I?”, His Spirit breathes those truths into our hearts. I can’t do that for you, only you can do that with Him, only He can do that for you and that stuff is the stuff that’s in the Bible because all of us who are led by God’s spirit are children of God.

So let me take you back to that challenge. Open your Bible, go to Ephesians Chapters 1 to 3 in the New Testament. Read them. And write down everything that you find in those few sort pages that tell you who you are. I found thirty statements about my identity. Let’s see how many you can find. Right them down, ponder them, believe them … and tell me then if you don’t find power unlimited to live your life.