God never shames us for recognizing a wrong turn. He welcomes us back and leads us toward the life He intended.

These days, the whole self-discovery thing seems to have become all the rage. I need to know myself and not be ashamed of who I really am. Yeah, right. Look around. How well is all that introspection serving us in this increasingly self-obsessed, narcissistic world in which we live?

Back in the day, Greek philosopher Aristotle posited that knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. Indeed, the famous maxim "Know thyself" was inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Socrates and Plato were also big fans.

So, what does all that ancient history have to do with us, here, today? Well, there's a multi-billion dollar, global self-help industry that's rooted in this whole self-discovery thing; in the notion that you are your own solution; that you already have everything you need inside you—you just need to unlock it. Endless tools, books, courses, and coaching are all designed to help you "discover your true self."

But the further you go down this rabbit hole of introspection, the deeper you sink into a subjective self-centredness that right now is tearing this world apart, wouldn't you agree?

God's plan, as it turns out, is the complete opposite:

Proverbs 3:5-8  Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body.(NRSV)

So, sure … be self-aware. Totally. But real wisdom doesn't come from looking inward—it comes from looking upward. Don't rely on your own insight but in all your ways acknowledge God and He will make straight your paths.

Friend, that's His Word. Fresh … for you … today.

There are times in our lives when we need protection – from other people or from ourselves or from circumstances we can't control. But where do you get that sort of protection?

Now there are times in our lives when we need protection. Sometimes its from our enemies, sometimes its from situations we find ourselves that we can't control and sometimes it's from ourselves, our own short sightedness or selfishness or the consequences of our mistakes. Now kings and presidents and prime ministers, they all have body guards around them to protect them but you and I, we don't have those sorts of body guards in that way. But that doesn't mean that we still don't need them sometimes. But in those times, when we need protection, often there's not a body guard to be found.

In fact, in those difficult times, so often the people, who should be there for us, just aren't. Now let me ask you, where do you turn to? Who do you turn to? Some would say God but the problem for many is well, you can't see God. You can see your enemies, you can feel the fear, you can look at the calamities around you but, but how do you know that God is in that place and how do you know that He'll protect you? See, if God is going to protect us in those times, we need to know it, but how?

It's really hard you know when people plot against us. They talk behind our backs, they plan and they scheme. It is really hard when we're in danger, when someone is looking to do us harm either physically or emotionally or to harm our reputation, whatever it might be, it's really hard.

Over these last few days we've been looking at some promises that we can depend on, you and I. God's promises and today, today I want to look at His promise of protection and I tell you, there are so many instances of this promise throughout His word but I want to look at them today through the eyes of a man called King David. We'll see it as he experienced it, on the run for his life from his predecessor, King Saul. You know, David was anointed king while Saul was still king and Saul figured out that everyone was looking to David to be king so Saul tried to kill him and so David spent a long time on the run.

Now have a listen to what David writes about those dangerous years, you can read it actually in Psalm 18:

I love you Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge. He's my shield, He's the horn in my salvation, He's my stronghold. I call to the Lord who is worthy of praise and I am safe from my enemies. The cords of death entangle me; the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me. The cords of the grave coiled around me, the snares of death confronted me but in my distress I called to the Lord, I cried to my God for help.

From His temple He heard my voice, my cry came before Him into His ears. The earth trembled and quaked and the foundations of the mountains shook and they trembled because He was angry. Smoke rose from His nostrils, consuming fire came from His mouth, burning coals blazed out of it. He parted the heavens and came down, dark clouds were under His feet, He mounted the cherubim and He flew and He soared on the wings of the wind.

He made darkness His covering, His canopy around Him, the dark rain clouds of the sky. At the brightness of His presence, clouds advanced with hail stones and bolts of lightening. The Lord thundered from heaven, the voice of the most high resounded. He shot arrows, He scattered the enemies, great bolts of lightening routed them. The valleys of the sea were exposed and the foundations of the earth lay bare at Your rebuke O Lord at the blast of the breathe from Your nostrils.

He reached down from on high and He took a hold of me, He drew me out of the deep waters. He rescued me from my powerful

Fear and faith ask the same question about the future but only one of them leads to the God who can be trusted with what we cannot see.

In times of extreme adversity, we each have to decide: Will I keep trusting God … or will I give up? And, let's be clear, it's one of the toughest decisions we'll ever face.

Author, John White, writes of putting his family on a flight in a snowstorm. Though he'd had a strong premonition that they'd be killed in a plane crash, he didn't discuss it with his wife. After they took off, he felt fear, shame, guilt and nausea. Shaking, he decided to pray.

But God replied, "What's the matter? Can't you trust me?" "Yes, I'll trust you if you give them back to me." "And if I don't give them back, will you stop trusting me? Can't you trust them to me in death as well as life?" In faith White replied, "I'll do your will whatever it costs me or them. I will trust you."

Their plane did indeed crash, killing all on board. But his wife had also had a strong premonition, disembarking at the stop before the tragedy. Had it not worked out, he said, "I would have grieved. But I wouldn't have regretted my decision to trust in Christ fully."

In the same vein, back in the Old testament, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego said this to King Nebuchadnezzar:

Daniel 3:17-18 If you throw us into the hot furnace, the God we serve can save us. And if he wants to, he can save us from your power. But even if God does not save us, we want you to know, King, that we refuse to serve your gods. We will not worship the gold idol you have set up."

Friend, in your darkest hour, trust God … even if the outcome hangs in the balance; even if the worst happens. Trust God.

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

There are times in life when we go through pain. When we mourn a loss. When we're lonely and afraid. What we need is someone to comfort us – but it seems that nothing anybody does or says can make it better.

I want to spend some time talking about comfort today. Not about the sort of comfort you get from sitting in a comfortable armchair but comfort in times of distress. It's an interesting concept. comfort. You know when we're children we fall over and we hurt ourselves and our Mum or our Dad picks us up, brushes off the dirt, holds us close while we sob and we wail.

What they're doing is they're comforting us and when we grow up, we still need comforting. I think it's about, well when you're going through pain or suffering, it's about knowing there's someone who cares, who empathises. Someone who feels our pain with us, someone who's not there to judge us or lecture us, just to hold us.

I think we've all felt that sense in our hearts when we see someone we love suffering, of wanting to hug them so hard that we can take their pain away even if it meant bearing their pain for them. That's comfort, my hunch is it comes from God, all good things inevitably do but sometimes, when we're hurting, it seems like there's no-one there to comfort us or we're hurting so deeply that nothing anyone says or does seems to make any difference.

I remember a time like that in my life, about 13 years ago. It was a time of deep distress and my whole being wept and I was completely alone on this earth. It was black, dark, fearful, lonely and the thing about the inky blackness is that it's like an impenetrable emotional barrier, a brick wall 3 foot deep. And no matter what friends and loved ones tried to say or do, nothing seems to be able to take the hurt away. Now the question is; what do we do in a place where we're desperately need to be comforted but it hurts so bad that nobody's able to comfort us?

Over the last few days and over the remainder of this week and next, on the program, we're taking a look at some of the promises that we can depend on. Promises direct from God, to you and me, ten of them in fact and today, I'm hoping to spend a few minutes with you looking at Gods promise to comfort us.

Now this word 'comfort' appears an awful lot of times through Gods word and more often than not its about God comforting us. In fact there's a promise Jesus made it during the Sermon on the Mount. He lists all the people to be blessed, 9 different groups of people and the second of those He says:

Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted.

And He also said,

I'm here to bind up the broken hearted.

He said that about Himself. Now when we're in pain and hurt, it's so hard for anyone else to break through but what I've discovered is that God breaks through, God, God has this amazing way of doing that. I remember when I was alone night after night after night and I just sat in my favourite armchair and prayed on and off, as best as I could and you know, somehow the Spirit of God got into my heart and I discovered how blessed we really can be when we mourn and God comforts us.

The apostle Paul got it too, he had a tough life this guy, he was in and out of prison, he was shipwrecked, he was beaten, he was starving. People rioted, people plotted to kill him, he was on death row. I mean you and I wouldn't want Paul's life for anything, ultimately he was martyred. This is what he writes to his friends in Corinth, you can read it in his second letter to the Corinthian Church, chapter 1 beginning at verse 3, he says:

Praise to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father of compassion and the God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with a comfort that we ourselves have received from God. Fo

Your unseen faithfulness is never invisible to God—and never wasted in His hands.

Doing what I do, I spend rather a lot of time flying in aeroplanes. And as those huge passenger jets trundle down the runway, it always amazes me how they get them into the air. So, you can imagine that I find this statistic somewhat troubling: commercial jets are struck by lightning, on average, once a year. Yikes!

Yep, that's a troubling thought when you and several hundred others are hurtling through the air at 40,000 feet in the middle of nowhere. But here's the good news:

When a plane is struck by lightning, people don't die because the aircraft is designed to handle it. The outer skin is made of conductive materials like aluminium, which allows the electrical charge to travel around the outside (it's called the "Faraday cage" effect) and safely exit, usually through the tail. Sensitive electronics are shielded, and fuel systems are protected. Planes are also rigorously tested for lightning strikes which typically occur without passengers even noticing. So while dramatic, they're rarely dangerous.

And if human engineers can design something amazing like that, you'd imagine, wouldn't you, that God would have a plan for when the storms of life hit us. As things turn out, He does:

Isaiah 43:2 When you have troubles, I am with you. When you cross rivers, you will not be hurt. When you walk through fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not hurt you.

None of us is immortal – not a one. But through every trial, through every storm, through every flood, through every fire … God is with us until He brings us safely home. Don't fret, don't fear, because God is in this place with you!

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

Sometimes – money can be a real problem in our lives. So many people spend so much time worrying about their financial future. We need to know that it's going to be okay.

Have you ever been in a place where you don't know where the next dollar is coming from? I certainly have and so many people in this world are in that place right now. I mean, where I live, mortgage foreclosures by banks are at record levels, people are stressed out over money and there's real poverty in this world too. The sort of poverty that afflicts countless of millions across the globe and some of those people are listening today. And then there are those in wealthy countries who are feeling stress of financial pressures but the reality is that a very few of us really know what poverty's all about.

Nevertheless, financial stress is a big issue; it's a huge issue around the world. We human beings, we can't cope with that sort of stress particularly well because, not surprisingly, we like to know that we're financially secure into the future. That's why suicide rates among business people increase sharply when there's a stock market crash. So in those times of financial stress, who or what can we rely on? That's a good question.

You know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about financial stress. We've all been there, even the wealthy, you know! Even those who have it all, they're highly geared in debt sometimes, they're leaking money all over the place sometimes and all that creates stress and worry. That's why I want to take a look at a particular promise from God today that speaks right into that reality.

Here's where I'm coming from, not from religion as a crutch thing, no not that but just the reality that you and I need to experience peace in our hearts. We need rest and we can't live in stress all the time and some people are living in constant financial stress and it's exactly when we're under that financial pressure, we need to experience Gods peace. Instead of that, so many people, they just worry all the time.

Well there's a promise from God that I've discovered in my life. It's a promise that I've lived out for many years now and a promise that He's never ever failed to deliver on and I, today; I have confidence in that promise. Yes, I have to be wise with the money I have, I have to be a good steward of the money that Gods given me but I have a confidence that God will deliver on this promise when I'm in difficult financial situations.

This one comes directly from the mouth of Jesus but first, first He deals with the whole problem, when it comes to money and it's a problem of faith. Have a listen, this comes from Matthews gospel chapter 6, beginning at verse 19:

Jesus says, "Don't store up for yourselves treasures here on this earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal. Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust can't destroy, where thieves can't break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. No-one can serve two masters, either he will hate the one and love the other or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can't serve both God and money."

What Jesus is saying here is, the problem is what you put your faith in. Money is so transient; I mean you might invest in a blue chip stock today. It's worth $20.00 per share today and you think, "wow, it's returning dividends, it's doing great" then all of a sudden tomorrow, there's a corporate scandal and it plummets down to $1.00. "Hang on, what happened? "See, you can't put your faith in money. Moths and rust and thieves, money is temporary, in any case we can't take it with us.

Come on, we all do this, we serve money the way we serve a god and because we take it so, so seriously it cause us so much stress. We have these expectations that grow higher and higher and higher and even chasing after things t