Some things are black and white. Thou shalt not murder – obvious, right? Though shalt not commit adultery – obvious, yes, although these days you have to wonder. Other things … well, not so obvious. And those not-so-obvious things cause a lot of conflict.

Question: Is euthanasia a compassionate choice to end suffering or a violation of the sanctity of life? Is artificial intelligence a wondrous innovation or does its unregulated development represent an existential threat to humanity?

I'm sure you have views on those and many other so-called grey areas in our understanding of right and wrong. And to be sure, when evil is being perpetrated in the name of social advancement, it needs to be confronted.

But as opinions become more polarised, as societies become more divided, as the rhetoric becomes more vitriolic, you have to ask yourself, what part am I playing in the erosion of civil debate and discourse? Why am I throwing stones at others rather than looking in the mirror at myself?

Romans 14:11-12 Yes, the Scriptures say, "'As surely as I live,' says the Lord, 'Everyone will bow before me; everyone will say that I am God.'" So each of us will have to explain to God about the things we do.

That's about present humility and future accountability. While we're out there busy judging others, the truth is that God alone is the judge and one day we will all answer to Him.

Humility and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. So before you rip someone's head off in an argument, remember … each of us will have to explain to God about the things we do.

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

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Do you like change? No? Well, you're not alone. The truth is, very few people do.

Picture this. Moses is preparing to die. Joshua's about to take over the leadership of Israel. They stand on the threshold of the Promised Land, with Moses giving his final instructions. They're facing powerful enemies, fortified cities, the uncertainty of a critical leadership transition. And in that moment, Moses entreats them not to be afraid, but to be strong and courageous.

Well, yeah, that's easy for you to say, Moses … you're not the one crossing over the River Jordan. You're not the one having to fight battle after battle to take the Promised Land. And that's why Moses gives them the reason to be courageous:

Deuteronomy 31:6 Be strong and be brave. Don't be afraid of those people because the LORD your God is with you. He will not fail you or leave you.

Most of us don't like change. As much as we might hope for this to improve or that to resolve itself (whatever your this's and that's happen to be) when change comes along, even positive change, it's unsettling because we don't know how it'll turn out. And that's especially true when change comes at a time, as it did for Israel, when we're facing some serious challenges ahead.

It's one thing to be told, be strong, be brave, don't be afraid. But that's not enough. What is enough - what's always more than enough - is the reason we have to be courageous, because the LORD your God is with you. He will not fail you or leave you

Because that's His Word. Fresh … for you … today

When a woman in Kazakhstan started living by God’s guidelines even in small things, she discovered something unexpected—it felt better.

The pressures we face in life often creep up on us gradually, imperceptibly. You just live with them, until one day you find yourself at breaking point.

I caught up recently with a man in his seventies, just finishing up a part-time job, wondering what God had for him next, in a bit of pain, facing knee replacement surgery, thinking about his finances, and the time he and his wife have left together on this earth. And as happy and positive a person that he is, I could see that with all this "stuff" swilling around in his head, he was under pressure. That's how it is in life. I'm sure you relate.

The person who wrote this psalm was part of a community under pressure, where the good people were suffering at the hands of the wicked. So he prays to God:

Psalm 94:18-19 When I thought, "My foot is slipping," your steadfast love, O LORD, held me up. When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.  NRSV

It's not a nice feeling, when under the load you're carrying it feels as though your foot's slipping, as though the cares that plague your heart are set to overwhelm you.

Let's be honest - God doesn't always remove the cause of our distress. Instead, He comforts us – He upholds us through it all. So, that divine comfort isn't the absence of trouble but the presence of God amidst it, turning anxiety to joy, collapse to stability. Hang in there. You're not alone.

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

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

Not every voice that pressures you is God’s—and learning the difference can set you free.

Life is mostly made up of the mundane and the repetitive … until it's not. Until something happens that goes way beyond anything you'd imagined, even if you can't see it until you look back on it years later.

Does the name Albert McMakin ring a bell? Probably not. But in 1934 this young farmer, who'd recently come to Christ, was keen to share his faith with others. There was a revival meeting happening in Charlotte, North Carolina, so he urged his good friend Billy to come with him. But that lanky farm boy wasn't in the least bit interested. In fact, he refused point-blank. So Albert offered to let him drive his vegetable truck to the meeting. That did it. Billy agreed.

That evening, under the preaching of evangelist Mordecai Ham, Billy Graham was convicted by the gospel. He didn't respond immediately, but within days he'd surrendered his life to Christ, forever changing the course of history. It's estimated that over 3.2 million people came to Christ through Billy Graham's public preaching events during his lifetime.

Back in the 1st Century AD,

Acts 13:4 Barnabas and Saul were sent out by the Holy Spirit. They went to the city of Seleucia. Then they sailed from there to the island of Cyprus.

That marked a turning point for the early Church … for the first time taking the Gospel beyond the Jews to the Gentiles. The rest, as they say, is history.

Albert, Billy, Barnabas, Saul. Ordinary people, each with a preordained role, through whom God did mighty things. For each one, their day had begun like any other day. But then … God. Watch out because, just when you least expect it, the Holy Spirit will show up.

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

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 for