You hear people talk about their calling, and it sounds oh-so noble. But a calling, inevitably, has a cost. It involves laying down your own desires in the service of others. And that is noble indeed.

Some like to flaunt their works for all to see. Sir Nicholas Winton was not one of those. In 1938, he cancelled a ski holiday to help a friend working with refugees in Czechoslovakia. Seeing the Nazi threat, he organised the rescue of 669 Jewish children by arranging trains, securing visas, and finding foster homes in Britain.

He kept quiet about it for 50 years, never seeking recognition. Living entirely for himself would have been much safer and easier, but Winton chose the harder road of service, valuing others above himself.

Philippians 2:3-4 In whatever you do, don't let selfishness or pride be your guide. Be humble, and honour others more than yourselves. Don't be interested only in your own life, but care about the lives of others too.

I think you'd agree that the sort of life Paul's talking about in that passage is the very definition of a noble calling. We don't have to achieve some great thing to attain that nobility. It's the little things we do along the way that impact people's lives.

In a world where self-interest is the norm, it's never been more true that living for yourself alone is the lowest form of life. The richest life isn't measured by what you keep, but by how much of yourself you give away.

Don't be interested only in your own life, but care about the lives of others too.

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

Every now and then we go head first – splat on our faces. Two options. Just lie there and give up. Or get up, wipe the tears from your eyes and the dirt from your wound and keep going.

One of the sports that always amazes me is the hurdles in the athletics. I remember trying to run and clear those hurdles in high school but I'm afraid these little short legs of mine, well I could never quite make the grade. And one of the most difficult things I've ever seen is a hurdler in the Olympics missing one of the hurdles and going flying head first into the track. Think about it. What an incredible public humiliation. Not to mention the pain and all those years of training wasted in a split second.

The truth be known, none of us likes to fall splat on our faces. And it happens in life. And when we do, it's so hard to get up again. The easiest thing in the world would be to give up. But the truly great sportsmen and women are the ones that don't do that. They get up. They wipe the tears from their eyes and the dirt from their wounds and they keep going. Come what may, they just keep going.

Today is the last of the series of 10 programs that I've called "Breaking Free from the Power of Sin". And I just thought I couldn't finish up without spending a few moments talking with you about what happens when we go splat and fall over flat on our faces. Because that's the point where so many people give up.

Here's what we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks in a nutshell. We've been talking about sin. And sin isn't some outdated concept of an irrelevant church. Sin simply means missing the mark. Ruining our lives. Anger robs us of relationships, pride and greed and dishonesty and unforgiveness. All those things are sin because they miss the whole point of life. And you know it seems that some days that we're powerless to change them. They just keep coming back to haunt us.

So many people believe in Jesus. So many people look at the cross and the price that Jesus paid and know they have forgiveness, they know that the empty tomb means the resurrection and new life. But somehow the power of sin isn't broken in their lives. But actually it is. We're told that by God Himself.

In Colossians Chapter 1 Paul writes this:

He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son in whom we have redemption and the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1: 13-14)

And again in Romans Chapter 6:

For sin will have no power over you since you are not under the law but under grace" (Romans 6:14)

It's not about a bunch of rules and failing and therefore it's hopeless. No. The slate is completely wiped clean. And yesterday we talked about the need for us to have a change of heart. It's like the judicial system looks were the criminal has remorse or not in sentencing.

Remorse says that, "I know I was wrong. I see the impact, I see the pain of what I've done". And that together with God's forgiveness leads us to turn away from all that rubbish, that stuff that ruins our lives, sin, and back to God.

Again the Apostle Paul in Romans Chapter 2:

Or do you despise the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience. Don't you realise that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? (Romans 2:4)

And repentance is a change of heart. It's a change of direction. All that we do comes from our hearts.

So many people hear that message, they accept Jesus, they have a change of heart and then they set on their journey with Jesus and they discover they're not perfect. In fact, like that athlete I was talking about before, we fall splat on our faces over and over and over again. And before you know it, the change of heart, well, it just evaporates into thin air. We lose heart. We pack up our

There’s probably someone in your life you’d rather avoid. Jesus says love them anyway. Prayer is where that impossible love begins.

As crazy ideas go, Jesus' idea of feeding a crowd of five thousand with two small fish and five loaves of bread is right up there … wouldn't you agree? I mean … what was He thinking?

Gladys Aylward had little formal education, almost no money, and so, was rejected by countless missionary societies. But with barely enough for a one-way train ticket she set out alone to China, trusting God to use what she had.

Over the years, God multiplied her small "offering" into extraordinary influence: she established an inn to share the gospel, became a trusted advisor to a Chinese mandarin, reformed cruel prison practices, and during the Japanese invasion led over 100 orphaned children on a perilous hundred-mile journey to safety. What had begun with a handful of resources, in God's hands became a lifeline for countless lives.

Confronted by Jesus' crazy idea of feeding the five thousand …

John 6:7-9 Philip answered, "We would all have to work a month to buy enough bread for each person here to have only a little piece!" Another follower there was Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. Andrew said, "Here is a boy with five loaves of barley bread and two little fish. But that is not enough for so many people."

But Jesus blessed those meagre morsels … feeding the whole crowd, with twelve baskets of leftovers to spare. From that miracle onward, in the lives of countless of His followers – ordinary people like Gladys – God has made it clear:

It's not your job to feed the five thousand. Your job is to bring the five loaves and two fish. When you give God what's in your hands, He can turn a ticket and a trembling heart into a miracle that echoes for generations.

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

Giving up smoking is a tough choice – really tough. But it's worth it. And in the same way – giving up some of the other rubbish wreaking havoc in our lives –well that can involve tough choices too. But then – what's the alternative?

I wonder if you've ever heard a news story about someone convicted of a crime and in sentencing the judge makes comment as to whether or not the criminal has expressed genuine remorse. What tends to happen at least in legal systems that I'm familiar with is that the person who shows genuine remorse receives a lighter sentence than the one who doesn't show any remorse.

Why is that? Why does the legal system behave that way?

Because the role of the legal system is two-fold. Firstly, obviously to protect society by putting dangerous people away and acting as a deterrent and secondly to reform the criminal back into an effective member of society.

It doesn't matter what legal system we live under, it's never perfect, but that's the idea. And so remorse, remorse is an important step. When the criminal experiences remorse what he or she is saying is, "I understand what I did was wrong. I understand the hurt and the pain it caused and I'm sorry".

So why is that so important? Well, that's what we're going to be taking a look at on the program today. Why is remorse so important?

Last week and this week on the program we've been looking at what it takes to break free from the power of sin. Sin is the stuff that we think and say and do and feel, the rotten stuff, that robs us of life. Anger, unforgiveness, resentment, envy, pride, fear. All those things begin in our hearts and have terrible consequences on our lives and the lives of others.

I've observed on more than one occasion as we've been looking at this notion of sin and breaking free from it's power that God's opened the way for that to happen.

Jesus died on the cross. The just requirements of God, God's system of justice, had been met. Jesus paid the price for your sin and for my sin. Through Him we're forgiven. Instead of us living out the sentence of sin He did it.

And then He rose from the dead. And that empty tomb gave us a new life that starts here. We have both of those things, a clean slate and a new start, when we believe in Jesus. The problem is, so many people do but they never seem to be able to break free from the power of sin. Today we're going to talk about taking the tough decision to do just that.

Now I'd like to illustrate it using that legal example because it is something that most of us understand. Sin in God's court of justice, no matter how big or small, is punishable by one thing, death – eternal. Eternity without God and there's a name for that. It's called hell. It's something we're all guilty of so we should have to serve the sentence. Instead because of God's love and His grace God sends His son Jesus to die, once and for all, for you and me. And here's what the transaction of faith looks like.

We stand before God. We know the sentence we deserve and He asks us, "Are you sorry?" And we say, "God, I'm so sorry. I know I've done wrong". And He gives us this option. "Will you, instead of accepting your punishment, accept that Jesus has died for you?"

You have a choice. You can stay on death row and wait for inevitable or you can put your faith in Jesus and accept what He has done for you in taking your punishment for you. Put it that way, it's a bit of a no-brainer if you ask me.

So let's assume for a minute you say, "Yes God, Yes Your Honor, I accept Jesus". God's response is this, "You are free to go". You have life again, abundant life, eternal life because you've accepted what Jesus did for you. The gate of the gaol swings open and you and I walk free and it clangs closed behind us for the last time. And in fact Jesus died for every sin past and present and future. Now the question is as you or I, the prisoner, walk out of that ga

What if real love requires a real choice?

We each tend to have a somewhat malleable relationship with the notion of justice. When we're on the receiving end of an injustice, man, we want justice done! But what about when others suffer an injustice? Then how much do we really care?

Many global industries, from fast fashion to electronics, are linked to forced labour, child exploitation, and trafficking.

If we truly care about justice for others, then it's not only about avoiding their products but actively advocating for change—writing to companies, supporting ethical brands, raising awareness.

The challenge is immense, overwhelming, inconvenient, costly. Choosing justice for those people means paying more, changing habits, risking backlash from those who prefer comfort over confrontation. As you ponder that, drink this in:

Isaiah 1:17 Learn to do good. Treat people fairly. Punish those who hurt others. Speak up for the widows and orphans. Argue their cases for them in court.

German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who courageously opposed Hitler, paying with his life, once said: "Your 'yes' to God requires your 'no' to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and poor."

Thinking about that from your position of relative safety and privilege, what do you, really? Because that sort of justice costs more than money—it costs comfort.

But seriously, isn't this the price of walking in step with God's heart? Perhaps it's time for us to value justice for others as highly as we do for ourselves. Speak up for the widows and orphans. Argue their cases for them in court.

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

For so many people – they have stuff in their hearts that's ruining their lives. And yet, somehow, we don't think about it too much. Except when the consequence of that stuff – hurts like hell. How do we get on the front foot?

Many people, in fact, let me be so bold as to say most people live life, day by day, without thinking too much about where it's headed. We might be focused on finishing a course of study or gaining a qualification or finding a wife or a husband. We maybe focused on some particular thing but how many of us really think, day by day, about how we, as people, are developing?

How many of us critically evaluate the stuff we see and hear and read in the media? How many of consider our ways? How many of us ever choose decisively to deal with the rubbish in our lives, the stuff that God calls "sin", the stuff that's ruining our lives? Come on, how many of us?

Who amongst us has identified that anger, lets say anger is our particular Achilles heel, that anger is robbing us of relationships and that it's time to do something about it? Not just live with it but powerfully to deal with our addiction to it and remove it from our lives. Pretty sobering, the answer is very few.

We kind of let things come along, people, perspectives, situations, belief systems and we consume them without really thinking. We react to them without really considering, "Is that right, can I come up higher?" And all the time, this thing that God calls "sin" is robbing us of the fullness of life that God always intended for us to have. Pretty scary isn't it?

Time today to talk about being decisive in guarding against sin. Sin, if you've been with me over the last couple of weeks on the program, well you would have heard me talk a few times about the fact that sin is not some out dated, moralistic concept that's clung to by an irrelevant Church.

Sin means literally to "miss the mark" both in Hebrew and Greek, in the Old Testament and the New Testament. It means to "miss the point of life". Jesus tells us what the point of life is, it's recorded in John chapter 10, verse 10. He says:

The thief, the thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life in all it's abundance." (In fact in super abundance).

And we know that when we live a life of goodness, where we serve others, where we're honest and decent and giving and forgiving. That's where the joy and fulfilment comes from. And all that good stuff comes from God.

And in the same way that God created the heavens and the earth and all that's in them, you and me, He also created the devil, the tempter, the deceiver, the accuser. Because the existence and the influence of the devil gives us a clear choice between God and the devil, between good and evil. Without the devil there's no real choice, God loves us and He wants us to love Him out of our own free wills.

Now the devil is alive and well and the reason I believe in his existence is because, as I read the gospel accounts of Jesus' life, Jesus clearly believes in the existence of the devil and there's a powerful passage written by the apostle Peter. You can read it in 1 Peter chapter 5 in verse 8. He says:

Be sober, be alert. Your enemy, the devil, like a roaring lion is on the prowl looking for someone to devour.

In other words, be on your guard and it's something that Jesus said over and over and over again to His disciples.

Luke chapter 12:

And He said to them, "Take care; be on your guard against all kinds of greed because your life doesn't consist of the abundance of possessions."

Luke chapter 17:

Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, rebuke the offender and if they repent, forgive them.

Luke chapter 2

God doesn’t always remove the struggles at once, but He always changes us through them.

Life's full of problems and yet, given the world we live in today, perhaps we've become all too accustomed to finding instant solutions. So, when you're faced with a problem that you just can't seem to get through, what do you do?

During the early 20th century, much of physics was dominated by Newtonian assumptions. Many accepted them as unquestionable "facts," but Albert Einstein trained his mind to think beyond the surface, asking deeper questions about space, time, and light.

His famous Theory of Relativity unveiled realities that had always been there, that had always been true, but had remained hidden. Einstein's genius was not in memorising what others knew but in seeking what lay beneath, exposing truth as it really is.

That's great in physics, but this idea of going deeper … well, it's even more important when we come to the real issues we face in life.

Proverbs 18:15 The heart of the discerning acquires knowledge, for the ears of the wise seek it out. (NIV)

Discerning people aren't content with what everyone else knows or takes for granted. They go below the surface, digging deeper to get to the real issues.

Think about that sticky relationship you're involved in right now, or whatever conundrum currently confronts you, a problem that you haven't quite been able to work your way through yet.

In this insta-world in which we live, we're always looking for quick fixes, easy answers. But sometimes you need to go deeper to get to the heart of the matter.

Knowledge is there for those willing to search—it's God's glory to conceal a matter, and our glory to search it out. Pray into it. Dig into it. God will reveal it.

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