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It's easy to imagine that the joy, the fulfilment, the contentment we all long for lie in recognition, comfort and success. And yet, you can imagine all you like, but you'll never find them there.

Twentieth-century American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst built a massive media empire and lived in opulence on his vast estate, Hearst Castle. He influenced presidents, shaped public opinion, and lived like royalty.

But Hearst's deep sense of entitlement to admiration and control eroded his joy. Obsessed with legacy and public image, he manipulated headlines, crushed competitors, and clung to a long, scandalous affair. In later years, isolated and anxious, his empire crumbled during the Great Depression.

So despite outward success, his joy was hollowed out by pride and possessiveness, which, let's be honest, is always how these things end. Jesus, in His famed Sermon on the Mount, said this:

Matthew 5:3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (ESV)

To be poor in spirit is to come before God with humility, not entitlement. Lord, I'm spiritually bankrupt. I can't save myself. I need your mercy.

Such a person is blessed, according to Jesus, because that blessedness begins where our self-entitlement ends. Or as someone once said, joy dies in the spirit of entitlement but thrives in an attitude of surrender.

Friend, the longer we aspire to the things of this world, the more deeply we're gripped by our sense of self-entitlement, the more joy will elude us because surrender is the gateway to joy.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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

When bitterness destroys you from the inside, discover the peace Jesus promised, a gift only God can give.

I often think that it's easier to go off the rails in the good times than in the bad. There are no atheists in foxholes. When the bullets are flying, when you're in danger, of course you cry out to God. But when the going's good … hey, eat, drink, be merry.

Interestingly, the Apostle Paul, from his prison cell, writes this to his friends in Phillipi:

Philippians 1:5-6 I thank God for the help you gave me while I told people the Good News. You helped from the first day you believed until now. I am sure that the good work God began in you will continue until he completes it on the day when Jesus Christ comes again.

In other words, the Philippians, through both good times and bad, had remained faithful to God's work, supporting Paul. They'd demonstrated clearly through their actions that they'd stayed on track.

Which leads Paul to bless them in the certainty that the good work that God had begun in them would continue to completion on the day when Jesus Christ comes again.

Listen, the work of goodness in our hearts is the work of God Himself. We don't perform in order to be saved, but when we are saved, we participate in His work, knowing that He'll continue to work His good in us to the end.

It's an exquisite partnership that invites our participation, not performance. Stay faithful, keep doing good, because the good work God began in you will continue until he completes it on the day when Jesus Christ comes again.

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

Each of us has a destiny out there somewhere. But some people are too afraid to follow it because they compare themselves with other beautiful, talented people and come to the conclusion that they could never be as successful as them. Those people have, what I call, Ugly Duckling Syndrome.

Well here we are at the end of the week again and in fact at the end of a series of twenty programs over the last four weeks that together have made up the series that I've called Discover Your Destiny. I hope you've been able to join me on that journey over these last few weeks but if you missed any of the programs you can listen to them again online at our website www.christianityworks.com.

Now one of the reasons, one of the many reasons that people don't step out into their destiny, that yearning, that dream, that thing deep down that they know that they were made to be and to do, is that they compare themselves to other people.

Well we all do that, we all look at these talented and gifted people around us and somehow we convince ourselves that we could never be as good as them, we can never do what they can do, we can never live out our dream, our destiny. You know what I call that, I call it ugly duckling syndrome.

Hans Christian Anderson's powerful story 'The Ugly Duckling' is a literary classic. Not so much because of the way it was written, my hunch is that the piece loses some of its poetry and its lilt at having been translated into English. No the power of 'The Ugly Duckling', the thing that made it a classic is in the way that it resonates deeply with our souls.

A swan's egg by some strange set of circumstances finds itself in a ducks nest in the farmyard and so a swan is born into a family of ducks. No one really cares why or even realises that it's happened, everyone just assumed that he's meant to be a duck and all of his little life people reject him because for a duckling he is one ugly bird.

Everyone misunderstands him, everyone rejects him and it hurts, he's all alone but amidst the bleakness and the hopelessness of this world there is one thing, just one thing that makes his little spirit soar. Have a listen.

One evening just as the sun set amid radiant clouds there came a large flock of beautiful birds out of the bushes. The duckling had never seen any like them before. They were swans and they curved their graceful necks while their soft plumage shone with dazzling whiteness.

They uttered a singular cry as they spread their glorious wings and flew away from those cold regions to warmer countries across the sea. As they mounted higher and higher into the air the ugly duckling felt quite a strange sensation as he watched them. He whirled himself in the water like a wheel, he stretched out his neck towards them and uttered a cry so strange that it frightened him.

Could he ever forget those beautiful happy birds? And when at last they were out of his sight he dived under the water and rose again almost beside himself with excitement. He knew not the names of these birds nor where they had flown but he felt towards them as he never felt for any other bird in the world.

He wasn't envious of these beautiful creatures but wished to be as lovely as they were. Poor ugly creature, how gladly he would have lived even with the ducks had they only given him some encouragement.

At the moment he didn't yet know who he was, he just knew who he wanted to be but because he didn't know who he was, who God had made him to be he simply didn't have a license to go and be who he'd been made to be. And even when he finally encounters those birds again he thinks he's going to die, surely that can be the only outcome."

Sometimes, even what seem like good things can become barriers to the deeper work God wants to do in our lives.

Life is a puzzle that, all too often, seems impossible to solve. You had plans. They were good plans. I mean, very good plans. Then … boom! Things inexplicably took a dark turn. We've all been there.

When you're faced with a dark, unsolvable set of circumstances so complex that you can't reason your way through, what do you do? Well, obviously, you ask God what in the blazes He's up to. Why would He let this happen … to you of all people?

It's 597 BC, a time of national crisis. Jerusalem is under siege by the Babylonians. Judah's about to fall. Yet God … get this … instructs the prophet Jeremiah to do something astonishing; to buy a field in Anathoth. Really, God? It'd leave you shaking your head, wouldn't it? But this is how Jeremiah responds:

Jeremiah 32:17 Lord GOD, with your great power you made the earth and the sky. There is nothing too hard for you to do.

It's easy to think of yourself as a person of faith until that faith is tested; until God seems to be doing something dark and inexplicable, like allowing the Promised Land to be overrun and His chosen people, Israel, to be taken into captivity.

When God does something like that, allows something like that, presides over something like that, there are two options: either He's malevolent and untrustworthy, or there's something else going on behind the scenes that you and I can't see or comprehend.

So the next time you find yourself in that place, you can either panic or pray ...

Lord GOD, with your great power you made the earth and the sky. There is nothing too hard for you to do.

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

Becoming the "me" we were meant to be is – well – a life long journey. And sometimes, it's not until we stop to look back, that we can really see God's hand in all of that.

If I want to ask you, what's your destiny, what were you put on this earth to achieve to do, what impact are you meant to make on this planet of over seven billion people, what's the point of your life and is it heading in the right direction? I wonder how you'd answer those questions.

I ask those questions of people rather a lot and can I tell you the number of people who have a clear sense of their destiny and purpose and direction, well it's less than 5%, maybe one in twenty maybe. Now I'm not saying that we should each have our lives completely mapped out. Things happen along the way, there are twists and turns in life that are totally unexpected. The little things can change the whole course of a life.

I remember a long time ago now I was really sick one day with a high temperature. I was scheduled to speak at a function the following day but I was so sick. I should have rung up and cancelled. The next day came and I was still so sick and yet deep inside me I felt I should go. I did and that was the day I met my wife Jacqui. It turns out that that was the only day I would have ever have met her in the place. Going and speaking on that day despite my sickness completely changed my life. I wouldn't be married to her today had I stayed at home.

Just the other weekend a good friend of mine Paul, a magistrate, was swimming in the surf. It was a normal day, I'd chatted with him by sms an hour or two before to invite him over for dinner that night. A wave picked him up crashed him on his head in the sand, paralysed him and they found him floating face down in the water.

They only just got him in the nick of time. He survived, all's well, he can walk and everything but I'm sure that one experience has changed his perspective on a few things in life.

So we know things like that can happen. We can't map out our whole lives in the minutest detail and say, "yep that's what it's going to be", and yet deep down we need to have a sense of destiny. Another way of putting it would be a sense of the direction our life is meant to be headed and that destiny is invariably tied up with two things, our dreams and our abilities and skills.

If you're one of the majority – one of those people who hasn't yet cottoned on to the direction in which your life was always meant to be headed – then this is for you. Can you remember the dreams you used to have for your life when you were young? Can you? There are going to be some dreams that, well they were never going to fly.

If you're short and slightly dumpy and you were dreaming of becoming a famous basketball player, well that one was obviously never going to happen but so often there's a dream in people's hearts that's been there all along.

Here's a conversation that I've had so many times with people about this question of destiny. We get to talking about the direction which their life is heading and the person says to me something like this, "but you know I'm sure there's meant to be, I don't know, something else. Something that, I don't know, I'm meant to be doing but I don't know what it is."

Does that sound vaguely familiar? So I then ask them, 'well if you had no constraints, if money wasn't an issue, if you could be anything or do anything that you wanted what would that be?' And the answer invariably comes back along these lines. "Oh, oh, anything I want? Well you know, I've always dreamed of ... " And then they tell me the answer, they tell me about their destiny, it's already there, it's woven somehow into the fabric of their DNA.

Now of course there's a risk that this is a short dumpy basket-baller kind of dream and so then I follow up with my second question. What are the things you really enjoy doing? What are the things you're really goo

This story of a Bible, a love letter, and God's relentless pursuit will leave you amazed.