Nihilism is the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning, value or purpose; that objective moral truth is an unnecessary and unwanted relic of the past; that we should simply eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. With so much of it doing the rounds these days, how well's that going, do you think?

Doubtless, you've heard of Noah - that crazy dude who, miles from any ocean, built a massive ship. I mean, this was a big sucker, about the size of a modern cargo ship or ocean liner. And why? "Because God told me to."

He was surrounded by a nihilistic, debauched society – social breakdown, violence, injustice, exploitation were rampant. And why not? In the end, nothing really matters, right?

Genesis 6:13-14,22  So God said to Noah, "Everyone has filled the earth with anger and violence. So I will destroy all living things. I will remove them from the earth. Use cypress wood and build a boat for yourself. Make rooms in the boat and cover it with tar inside and out … Noah did everything God commanded him.

It took Noah decades to do "everything that God commanded him"; to build that massive ark smack-bang in the middle of the evil that surrounded him. Can you imagine the opposition he faced?

But Noah didn't stop to explain himself to every doubter and hater. He just kept on building … and let the rain do the talking.

Look, people will oppose you for doing good, for honouring God, for following Jesus. Because to them, you're just some nutcase like Noah. Do good anyway. Honour God anyway. Follow Jesus anyway, however long it takes, and leave the rest to Him.

That's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.

Loneliness is a tough gig and it's way, way more common than you might think. But God is a God who speaks into our loneliness. God is a God who shows up in our loneliness. God is a God who takes away … our loneliness.

It never ceases to amaze me how we can be surrounded by people and yet, still feel lonely. That's probably because loneliness has nothing to do with how physically close we are to other people. It's more about how emotionally connected we feel. I remember in a restaurant, recently, having dinner with my wife and there was an older couple at the next table, hardly talking and completely bored looks on their faces. It's so sad, isn't it?

Loneliness can strike anyone, anytime, anywhere. We receive so many requests for prayer on our www.christianityworks.com website and one of the most common requests has to do with loneliness.

I'd like to share one of those requests with you today (quite anonymously of course), so we can look at the whole issue of loneliness – from A Different Perspective.

Just the other day, we received this prayer request from a University student who's away from home studying overseas.

I ask you to pray for me for comfort from the Lord as I'm feeling really lonely just at the moment. I'm away from my family and friends overseas. And I'd ask you to pray for renewed strength and confidence for me over this coming year to lean more on the Lord, to lift up my worries to Him. Thank you so much.

And he signs his name.

It's so natural, isn't it? So real and everyday, this problem of feeling lonely. Me, well, I actually enjoy my own company a lot. I don't like to have a lot of people around me. I'm happy to spend days on my own reading and praying and thinking and walking. But even so, I still (sometimes) feel lonely.

Now, we're not all like that. Some people depend a lot more on company. Some people, to tell you the truth, are over dependent on other people and that's not healthy. But whatever our balance is, whatever our fit is, we can all end up lonely. I know people who call themselves Christians who feel desperately lonely.

Now, in part you can understand that. We all need human company – women need female friends, guys need their mates, we all need people around us. But there's another part of me that is so profoundly sad when I hear that.

There are two promises of Jesus that I'd like to look at today, in this context of loneliness. The first one, He made to His disciples, He said, "It's good for you that I go away, because if I don't go, the promised Holy Spirit won't come." And the second one was, He said to them, "I will never leave you or forsake you."

You put those two together and really what He's saying is, just the way that He was physically present with those disciples, a couple of thousand years ago, by sending His Holy Spirit (and this took me a while to come to grips with. I have to tell you, the notion that when I believe in Jesus the Spirit of God comes to dwell in me), so He was saying … just as He was present physically with those disciples two thousand years ago, today, He is spiritually present with His disciples, with those of us who say, "Jesus I want to follow you", here and now. Just as real, just as amazing.

Sometimes I hear people talking about praying as though it were a chore. I just struggle to believe that. Jesus said:

It is good for you that I go away, I will never leave you or forsake you, I will send my Spirit. He said, "It's good for you, it's almost better for you that I've gone away physically so that you can experience me spiritually through the Holy Spirit.

On the one hand, people are desperately lonely. And yet on the other hand, they're hungering for some authentic spiritual experience – something that's more than

Small compromises rarely feel dangerous—until they begin to dim the light we’re meant to shine.

What happens to us in life happens to us in two different places. On the outside, and on the inside and in fact it's on the inside where we experience emotions like joy, delight, fear and failure. So … have you ever found yourself feeling like you're dying on the inside?

I was sitting next to an older man, recently, in the bus and I thought I would just love to know your life story. Yet through the anonymity of the internet so many people come to our website, www.christianityworks.com and ask for prayer for things in their lives that (in most cases) they could never talk to anyone else about. And it never ceases to amaze me how great their need is.

This week, anonymously, I'd like to share some of those with you starting with someone who writes, "I'm just dying inside."

I always remember the story of a young doctor who used to visit wealthy houses in a suburb, near where I used to live. And he said that, it doesn't matter how many houses he went into, all these large wealthy people, in big houses, he said, 'Time after time after time, in almost all of them, there was some form of tragedy or abuse or drug abuse or marriage breakdown'. And I guess, that's the thing, isn't it? At the train station or the bus stop, you just don't know.

You look at a person and you see a blank face and you think 'what happened to them yesterday or last night or today? What's going on in their hearts? What are they feeling right now – joy or pain or boredom or emptiness or loss or gain? You don't know. And sadly, so often, no one cares either.

It's the same with us too. We go out there in life, we may have had an argument or a hurt or a pain or you maybe feeling desperately, desperately lonely and we go out to the bus stop or the train station or to work and we put the face on that hides what's going on in our hearts.

When people send prayer requests to our website www.christianityworks.com, it's interesting how the anonymity of the internet allows people to be much more open and frank with what's going on in their lives. In a way, that's quite different to face-to-face contact, where they would be much more inhibited about talking about themselves.

This week, on A Different Perspective, I'd like to walk through some of the common types of prayer requests we get (quite anonymously, of course). Not talking about anyone's names or particular circumstances but just look through some of those things because, to me, those many prayer requests and kind of like a cross-section of what's going on in the lives of the people at my bus stop and my train station.

One of the ones that we often get, and this is a typical example, is the sense of "I'm falling, I'm plagued by dread and doubt and depression. I've stopped having contact with people and I'm afraid of being judged". Now recently, I had one like that from a person who said, "I'm just dying inside", and this person identified themselves as someone who actually believed in Jesus Christ. They identified themselves as a Christian.

I wonder how many people feel like they are dying inside? Despite all the worldly goods and things we have around us – whether they have ever met Jesus before or whether they are Christians – they live in this centreless, materialistic world with more choices than we can poke a stick at. And yet, they have this sense that they're dying inside. It's so sad to see people to be surrounded by all the good things they could ever want, every comfort, every luxury and yet still, to be dying inside.

All sorts of things promise a new life and a new beginning. And I tried a lot of them before I became a Christian and they're okay for a while. But ultimately, they lead to disappointment. They don't work. Religion doesn't work. I love the fact that Jesus specialised in people who were dying inside.

The prostitute, this woman who is so despised, yet obviously, still had a business. Obviously, there were men in the

Man, there's so much going on in the world today; wars and rumours of wars; vitriolically partisan politics; deeply divided societies. And then there's all the stuff we each have going on in our own lives. Executive summary? We live in tumultuous times.

It's easy to feel like some hapless cork being tossed around on an angry sea without any ability whatsoever to calm the storm. And so, many people's lives have been reduced to complaining about life on social media, ridiculing their national leaders, reposting inflammatory and often ill-informed memes on climate change or identity politics.

Really?! Is that what our lives have been reduced to - seething, complaining, arguing? And in any case, why is God letting this all happen?

Human history has a strange way of repeating itself. So I'm wondering, can you and I be part of breaking the cycle - if not in some macro, geopolitical way, then in a micro, local way, by asking this simple question of God:

Lord, what's my divine assignment during these tumultuous times? What do you want me to do?

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ … He comforts us every time we have trouble so that when others have trouble, we can comfort them with the same comfort God gives us.

Look around. Who is God calling you to comfort? To whom is God calling you to show kindness? Who's He laying on your heart to befriend? What's your divine assignment in these tumultuous times? Because …

You can comfort others with the same comfort that God gives you.

That's His Word. Fresh … for you … today.

A good many people say they believe in Jesus (sort of, I guess), but put off committing their lives to Him and laying down their prideful pursuits to follow Him in humility. Well, yeah, okay … I'll get around to it one day. But that – and here's today's solemn warning –  that turns out to be an eternally fatal error to make.

Captain Edward Smith was the seasoned and respected officer in command of the Titanic on her maiden voyage. Yet, despite receiving six iceberg warnings, he delayed reducing speed or altering course. Confident in the ship's design, he saw no immediate danger. By the time the iceberg was spotted, it was too late. Over 1,500 perished in the icy waters that night.

Hold that thought, as we listen to Jesus when He said.

Luke 13:24-27 "The door to heaven is narrow. Try hard to enter it. Many people will want to enter there, but they will not be able to go in. If a man locks the door of his house, you can stand outside and knock on the door, but he won't open it. You can say, 'Sir, open the door for us.' But he will answer, 'I don't know you. Where did you come from?' Then you will say, 'We ate and drank with you. You taught in the streets of our town.' Then he will say to you, 'I don't know you. Where did you come from? Get away from me! You are all people who do wrong!'

As 20th century theologian Carl Henry put it, "The Gospel is only good news if it gets there on time." Don't delay. Follow Jesus today.

That's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.

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It's one thing to take pride in your work – you know what I mean, in a good way – but it's quite another to be prideful about your work, your great achievements, the amazingly brilliant things you've done.

Back in the 19th century, William Carey, the "father of modern missions" as he was often called, accomplished extraordinary things in India—translating the Bible into multiple languages and founding a good many schools. But for a season, he grew quite proud of his scholarly achievements.

He displayed his work like trophies. When a fire destroyed years of translation manuscripts, Carey was devastated. Yet in that loss, he confessed how much pride had crept in.

God used the setback to remind him that this was never about human accomplishment, but about divine purpose. From then on, Carey worked with deeper humility, knowing it was God, not his own brilliance, doing the lasting work.

I've always taken pride in my work. My parents instilled a strong work ethic in me, so I've always wanted to do my very best in anything I turned my hand to. But, like Carey, in my earlier years, I was also prideful – seeing life as a competition to outdo the next person and win the accolades.

That's something God knocked out of me over many decades now, as I came to the realisation that the greatest things happen when God gets the glory.

1 Corinthians 3:7 So the one who plants is not important, and the one who waters is not important. Only God is important, because he is the one who makes things grow.

Ain't that the truth, because that's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.

A simple radio broadcast reaches a Turkish prison—and five men begin listening and learning of God’s good news together.