If the last few years have taught us anything, it's that disease spreads. Actually, we've known that for rather a long time. If I have a cold and go around coughing and sneezing, those around me are going to catch it too.

The Spanish Flu erupted toward the end of World War I, starting in Kansas, USA. Through troop movements and global trade, it reached Europe, Asia, Africa, even remote islands, within a matter of months.

Lasting until mid-1919, it infected some 500 million people and killed 50–100 million, more than the war itself. Unlike most viruses, it struck down healthy young adults in droves. Nowhere was spared. In just over a year, this invisible enemy became one of the deadliest pandemics in history. Staggering, isn't it?

And what's equally staggering is that since time immemorial, sin has spread just as quickly. In fact, some of the dark things hidden in our hearts - envy, mistrust, pride, anger, ambition - have far more wide-reaching effects than we might imagine, just as they did between Adam and Eve's two lads.

Genesis 4:6-8 The LORD asked Cain, "Why are you angry? Why does your face look sad? You know that if you do what is right, I will accept you. But if you don't, sin is ready to attack you. That sin will want to control you, but you must control it." Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." So they went to the field. Then Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Sin never remains contained—it always spreads. Just as Cain's sin led to Abel's death, our sin wounds others too. Be careful of what you carry around in your heart.

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

In captivity, a simple broadcast carried the message that transformed a prisoner from the inside out.

Anger is an interesting thing – it comes from our sense of justice. Even God gets angry. Problem is, sometimes our sense of justice can be a little distorted. So when we experience anger – what can we do with it?

Anger is one of those basic facts of life and in many respects it's a natural reaction to a whole range of situations. Sometimes we think that anger in and of itself is wrong, well that's not so. See, God gets angry so either God is a sinner or anger itself is not a sin. Hmm, makes you think doesn't it? I passionately believe that Jesus Christ came and died for my sins and yours and that He was and is utterly perfect. A perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins.

And yet when He went to the temple in Jerusalem and saw that they had turned it into a bizarre He was angry, He made a whip and turned over the tables and drove the traders out of the temple with that whip. Of course God is a loving God but God is also a god of anger and ultimately, of punishment. So is anger right or wrong in our lives and what do we do with that anger?

Well, well let's take a look at the anatomy of anger today. Basically it goes something like this: I've been wronged by someone, I therefore feel angry, they owe me some recompense so I'm going to respond in anger to obtain vengeance. That's kind of the cycle and in a sense, anger comes out of our sense of justice.

Of course, as we've seen on the program this week we can have quite a distorted sense of justice sometimes. We can be touchy or selfish and throw tantrums and so even though actually sometimes we haven't been wronged, people just fall short of our expectations or, or we're being selfish and we feel wronged and then anger, justice and vengeance take hold in our hearts.

Sometimes people do things that are clearly wrong and we're angry, okay how do we respond? The other day on the program we read this passage from the New Testament book of Ephesians, chapter 4, verse 26. It says:

Be angry but don't sin. Don't let the sun go down on your anger and don't make room for the devil.

In other words, sometimes we get angry, God knows that. The question is whether we dwell on it and let it fester over night and tomorrow and the next day and over and over and over and in doing so, whether we make room for the devil to distort our sense of justice and then this root of bitterness takes hold in our lives OR whether, like God, we're "compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."

See, anger itself isn't a sin, God is angry with those who turn their backs on Him. You see that over and over and over again throughout the Bible. Let me read you just one example of God's anger, this is about Israel, Gods chosen people and it comes from the book of Judges chapter 2, verse 12:

Israel forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of Egypt. They followed and they worshipped various gods of the peoples around them. They provoked the Lord to anger because they forsook Him and they served Baal and the other gods. In His anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to the raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around whom they were no longer able to resist. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them just as He had sworn to them. They were in great distress.

See, this is God's response to His people forsaking Him but it's a right response. God never gets angry without just cause and this anger of God against Israel comes from God's sense of justice. He had a relationship with Israel, they were His people, He was their God and He said:

I'm a jealous God; you will have no other Gods before Me. You will worship me and me alone.

And of course Israel turns away from God and does these horrible

The truth is that you can have it all, so to speak - everything that the world deems desirable: safety, wealth, money, power - and yet live the most miserable life imaginable. Hmm. Why is that?

In 1972, Richard Nixon became President of the United States in a landslide victory. A brilliant strategist, he opened diplomatic relations with China and oversaw key arms control treaties. Outwardly, he had it all — power, prestige and legacy.

But his own wrongdoing shattered it. Nixon's involvement in the Watergate scandal — a cover-up of illegal activities tied to his re-election campaign — revealed deep paranoia, deceit, and abuse of power. Under growing evidence and public pressure, he became the first U.S. president to resign in disgrace in 1974, leaving him in political exile.

His own corruption robbed him of peace, joy, and the dignity that could have defined his legacy.

Isaiah 48:22 "There is no peace," says the LORD, "for the wicked." (ESV)

That's a warning to Israel at the end of their seventy-year exile as slaves in Babylon, which had resulted from their disobedience toward God. He's about to return them to the Promised Land, to allow them to rebuild, to give them the peace He'd always wanted for them.

But God's people, both then and now, needed to be warned that His peace never comes to those who continue in their sin. I know, that's perhaps not a popular notion these days. I get that.

But still, I implore you to heed this solemn warning in how you lead the rest of your life: "There is no peace," says the LORD, "for the wicked."

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

The world might be falling apart, but it’s still in God’s hands.

It is so easy to go from cool, calm and collected one minute into a temper tantrum the very next. Dr Jeckle and Mr Hyde. But God has some really practical advice on how to handle that.

When you get a group of people together there seems to be, well, two sorts of people there. First there's the person who talks all the time, never shuts up and the other is the person who almost never says anything in the group. Somehow it seems that not many people seem to get the balance right, the balance between talking and listening and often the people who are really quiet in the group can be quite vocal even aggressive in a one on one situation.

Well take for instance when someone provokes us, you know when they do something and you can feel your blood boiling and you go all red in the face, right at that moment it's so easy to spit out something venomous, words we can't take back, words that damage a relationship. Sometimes when we're provoked we can be a bit quick on the draw when it comes to responding.

I want to share a story with you, I remember once as a consultant (I used to run an IT consulting firm with some partners before I became a Christian. Quite a few years ago now) I was being mucked around by a large and important client of a particular ethnic heritage. I was dealing with him for months trying to kick off a project that meant a lot of money for our firm, it was a large global organisation and after months of investing time and effort with the people and with their management they pulled the plug on the project.

I remember I was sitting in my office and I received an email from one of our consultants working with me on this particular project, explaining that the client had decided not to go ahead. I just blew my stack, I couldn't believe that they had wasted so much of our time and resources and it wasn't fair and we were losing all this revenue and I tell you, I am not afraid to admit, I had a few choice sentiments that I almost expressed in a reply to that email to my fellow consultant. I even typed this angry venomous email.

I was just about to send it and I thought better of it and instead I erased all of that and I sent a fairly benign email. Well, it's just as well because I hit the "reply to all" button on the email, and the email ended up not only with my fellow consultant but also with the client. Gulp! Can you imagine, if my thoughts of anger had been included in this vitriolic angry email, what would have happened?

Now you might say, "Berni, why are you sharing this stuff with us?" It's simple because we all go through situations day by day by day that make us angry. People, organisations, circumstances drive us insane and we want to explode. Just the other day I was staying at a place and the houses were fairly close together and it was a little holiday place and a neighbour, a few doors down, had their music on really loud, I mean really loud. Couldn't sit in our lounge room and just talk so I just went down and asked them if they wouldn't mind turning it down. Well, you should have heard what came out of that guy's mouth.

Just a simple thing, their music was too loud and obviously they'd never been taught to take other people into account and the vitriol, the words, the venom that came out of his mouth and now he just ignores me and I just asked him to turn it down and I thought, "hang on, you're missing something. You were the guy who was doing the wrong thing!" And you know what I wanted to do? I just wanted to explode at him, I just wanted to tell him what I really thought, I wanted to teach him a lesson, I wanted to teach him some manners. You know the feeling don't you? And then he ignores me, he was the one that did wrong.

Now I'm really glad that I went through that experience and as hard as it was, can I tell you? Every fibre of my being wanted to tell this guy what I thought, as hard as that was I didn't say anything because explodi

I wonder what's going on in your heart today. I mean, basically, you're a good person, right? But there's a risk that something is lurking in your heart – some desire that, left unchecked, could seriously ruin your life. There's always that risk, believe you me.

During the French Revolution, Maximilien Robespierre began as a principled advocate for liberty and justice, championing the rights of the poor and opposing the death penalty. But as he rose to power, his desire to purify the revolution grew into a tyrannical obsession.

He orchestrated the Reign of Terror, sending thousands to the guillotine — including former allies — in the name of virtue. The very ideals he once upheld became warped by fear and control. Eventually Robespierre himself was arrested and executed by guillotine, a victim of the same brutal system he'd enforced.

This man, who began with integrity, was slowly consumed by unchecked ambition, demonstrating the danger of righteousness corrupted by pride.

James 1:14-15 You are tempted by the evil things you want. Your own desire leads you away and traps you. Your desire grows inside you until it results in sin. Then the sin grows bigger and bigger and finally ends in death.

Friend, with all my heart I implore you to take stock of what's going on in your heart today. Don't be tempted by evil desires lurking deep within. Don't let them go unchecked lest they rob you of life itself.

Jesus came to set you free by dying on that Cross to pay the price for your sin and rising again to give you the power to overcome it and live for Him for all eternity. Jesus.

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

It takes more than human intelligence to find the clarity that God’s truth can offer.

Every now and then – we all throw a temper tantrum. And so often it's over the craziest little things. A hot temper isn't a good look. So – how do you deal with it? How can you conquer it?

Now when we're bringing up children we expect them to have temper tantrums. They're never fun of course but a temper tantrum is part of growing up. It's a part of the process of moving from immaturity to maturity, of discovering how to exercise the responsibilities that come with new freedoms and that's why I believe Gods plan is to put children into loving families so that mum and dad who are more mature and who love the child are there to guide the child through that growing process and the love bit helps us to absorb the pain and the inconvenience of the tantrums along the way.

It's something that I think none of us really appreciate until we become parents ourselves. Now temper tantrums are par for the course for a child or a teenager but what about an adult, what about a person who is supposed to have matured and learned how to control their emotions? And when you or I have a temper tantrum do we just shrug our shoulders and say, "oh well' or is it something we need to deal with?"

We've all been there haven't we? Having our little temper tantrum and 99% of the time they're over silly little things. If we were truly honest with ourselves we'd stand back and say, "well, that was dumb wasn't it? Why did I bite my wife's head off over something small? Why did I snap at my husband because of this tiny little thing?"

For me it's the fact that I'm a perfectionist, it's just the way I am, it was the way I was brought up. Our school motto was "Age quod agis" which means "whatever you do, do well" or "if it's worth doing it's worth doing properly". So I always fold and hang the bath towels perfectly, when I'm dusting I pick up things on the shelf and dust under them instead of dusting around them, I'm always on time and normally five minutes early, I always put the milk back exactly the same spot in the fridge not in a different place, the knives in the knife block, each one has to be in its place.

When you're a person like that God is going to make absolutely sure that He puts you in a family and into a work place into a Church where there's at least one person who's completely at the opposite end of the spectrum. Someone who's not neat and tidy, someone who's not always on time. It's an absolute dead certainty that God's going to do that.

And it doesn't matter what personality type we are He's always going to make sure that we rub up against someone who's different and that is sometimes going to drive us nuts if we let it. That's where so many people have their temper tantrums, right in that place of difference.

Instead of standing back and realising those differences we just react like Pavlov's dogs, stimulus: response, stimulus: response, stimulus: response. It's a vicious cycle that leads to anger and temper tantrums. Someone does something that flicks our switch off we go with this temper tantrum. I wonder if you can relate to this.

My daughter Melissa works part time on a check-out in a large department store and every time she comes home at least one customer had to have a temper tantrum at the counter over something. Let's get a revelation today; we live in an imperfect world full of imperfect people who are going to do imperfect things. At the department store, on the road, at work, at home, at Church, everywhere we go.

And we can either have temper tantrums or decide, you know something I actually want to have some peace in my life. I want to enjoy my life and you know something other people's failures are not going to rob me of that peace. Other people falling short of my expectations are not going to rob me of that peace. You know something we want everyone to be just like us, we want everyone to see the world just the way we see the world an