A Different Perspective Official Podcast Podcast Por Berni Dymet arte de portada

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

De: Berni Dymet
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God has a habit of wanting to speak right into the circumstances that we're travelling through here and now; the very issues that we each face in our everyday lives. Everything from dealing with difficult people … to discovering how God speaks to us; from overcoming stress … to discovering your God-given gifts and walking in the calling that God has placed on your life And that's what these daily 10 minute A Different Perspective messages are all about.Christianityworks Cristianismo Espiritualidad Ministerio y Evangelismo
Episodios
  • A Tough Decision // The Long Road Home, Part 3

    A Tough Decision // The Long Road Home, Part 3
    Feb 18 2026
    Sometimes we get to a point in life where we have to admit to ourselves that we've taken a wrong turn. That's not easy – and the decision to turn around – well, that's harder still. We've all had that experience of trying something, committing to it, believing in it, publicly promoting it, and then flop, we fall flat on our faces. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt! It's not a nice feeling, is it? On the one hand there's the public humiliation but even worse than that, is that deep loss inside of having wanted something, believed in it, committed to it emotionally and then failed. Sometimes we're angry, other times we deny it, and then we just hope it'll go away and nobody will notice. You can tell, can't you, that I understand this pretty well? But when it comes to our life choices, sometimes we back the wrong horse and we let the failure linger on and on, and eat away at us. Because going back to what we know is right in the first place, well, that can be a long road home. There's something that's fun and exciting about rebelling, about turning our backs on things and thumbing our nose at authority. Just recently we had a bit of fun in our Ministry, we redeveloped our website, www.christianityworks.com. And all of the developers, (the team there are in their early 20s), and if you go there, there's a video image of me on the homepage. And during the development time before the whole thing went live, some of the developers put a little halo above my head! You know what I mean, it was fun, now not withstanding it was theologically correct because of course we all are saints in Christ Jesus! I had to tell him to take it off, you know a bit of disrespect but it was fun, you know we all had a good laugh. And so there are times when it can be fun but if we go on and on, and on, and we rebel, and we turn against things, life gets unbalanced, and there are consequences. There are so many people who think, "well, I can have fun all the time, I can joke all the time, I can reject all the time, I can rebel all the time, I can do what I like." And as they try and pour gratification to themselves, as they try and chase that illusory oasis in the desert, what they discover is actually, it's a mirage. Actually as we try and pour things in, we find ourselves in a spiritual wilderness. Jesus knew that, Jesus told a story, it's the story of the prodigal son, which we read yesterday and the day before, and we're going to look at for the rest of this week. He told a story about this spiritual wilderness and what the road home looks like. Let's pick up the story. A man had a couple of sons, the younger of them said to his father, "Dad give me my share of the estate that I have coming to me" so the dad distributed the assets to them. Not long after the younger son gathered all the stuff that he had and traveled to a distant land where he squandered his estate in foolish living. After he'd spent everything, a severe famine struck the country and he had nothing. And then he went to work for one of the citizens of that land who sent him out to feed the pigs. He longed to fill himself with the carob pods that the pigs were eating but no one would give him any. When he finally came to his senses he said: How many of my father's servants have more than enough food and here I am dying of hunger. I know what I'll do, I'll get up and go to my father and say, 'Father I've sinned against Heaven and against you, I'm not worthy to be called you son anymore, just make me one of your servants'. And so he got up and went to his father. See it all begins with rebellion. It all begins with this illusion that we can spend our lives having fun and partying and doing what we want, and if it feels good do it. I mean morals are old-fashioned and, it has consequences, life isn't like that. There is a reality to life; enjoyment is much deeper than partying and doing what feels good. It's an interesting cycle. It begins with rebellion, we reject something, we reject God along with it and we all do that sometimes. And then we think we can kick up our heels and do what feels good. And people do drink and drugs, and they have attitudes that are against God, and they have mindsets that are strongholds against God, and "Ah! Sure, have an affair, the world's saying it is ok." And yet there are consequences. People go and have affairs and it hurts. There are divorces; there are kid's lives that are often so deeply impacted by all of that stuff. And on the one hand people are saying, "No, no it's alright, what if it feels good, go and do it." And yet this whole rebellion, kicking up our heels thing is linked to the consequences, but we deceive ourselves, we don't connect the two at all. And that was the cycle for the prodigal son in that story. Dad and the farm, and the work, and the brother, compared to parties and an exotic far off land. Well, which one do you think looked more appealing to the young man at the time? There were consequences, he ...
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    10 m
  • Partying Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be // The Long Road Home, Part 2

    Partying Ain't All It's Cracked Up to Be // The Long Road Home, Part 2
    Feb 17 2026
    We all love to kick our heals up every now and then. Problem is that the more you watch TV, the more they seem to tell us that life is just one long party. We all like a good party from time to time, the chance to kick up our heels, let our hair down, relax and enjoy, it's a part of life. In fact, it's a very necessary part of a balanced life. Now the advertising industries figured that out, that's why they use images and stories that tap into our desire to kick up our heels, in order to sell whatever it happens to be they're selling on any given day. And so we get bombarded with these images of freedom and rebellion and success and leisure and partying, not just in the advertisements, but the TV shows themselves, basically tell us anything goes. So before you know it, you turn around and we've shifted from a post-war puritanical extreme of the 1950's, to an anything goes "if it feels good do it" society just half a century later. But more than ever people are finding themselves in their own private spiritual wilderness. Doesn't matter what they tell us on TV, why is that? There are so many people wandering around in a spiritual wilderness, the TV's and the advertisers, they're all saying, "It looks like an oasis, it is an oasis". But when we're in the spiritual wilderness, you know something? It feels like a desert. Jesus knew that, Jesus told a wonderful story, it was a parable it's not a real story, it was intended to illustrate His point. And it's the parable, the story, of the prodigal son, began with a rebellion. Let's have a look. A man had two sons, the younger of them says to Dad, "Dad give me my share of the estate that I have coming to me." So, the father distributes the assets to them. Not many days later the younger son gathered together all he had and traveled to a distant country where he squandered the estate on foolish living. After he'd spent everything, a severe famine struck that country and he had nothing. Then he went to work for one of the citizens of that country who sent him to feed the pigs. He longed to eat his fill from the carob pods the pigs were eating but no one would give him anything. Here's this young man, you know, he's living on this farm with Dad, he's bored, he wants to see the big smoke and do the things and have the parties. Maybe he's been watching too much television, I don't know. So he decides to go somewhere exotic, he decides to say, "Dad give me all my inheritance, I'm taking it with me." And he goes to some far distant land where he parties, where he does the whole "if it feels good, do it thing". Does it sound familiar to you? It's exactly what Jesus was talking about. But not long into that rebellion reality sinks in. You know, this guy's spending money as though there's no tomorrow, on anything he can think of he's spending money, and all of a sudden a famine hits the land. Now, it's not like a famine in a rich developed country. This is like a famine in a subsistence farming country, and when his money runs out, the things that (I don't know) this exciting living promised, the things that all these glossy ads on television promised him turned out to be hollow and empty, and he was hungry. That was a reality. Here's the paradox, the more you pour in to fill up, the emptier and the shallower life becomes. I wonder as each one of us looks at our lives, how much they mirror this story of the prodigal son. The parable is this: A home, Dad, the farm, that's God. Now to this young man they looked boring they were constrained, there's something in him that wanted to kick up his heels and rebel against all of that and so he left home. The place of privilege, the place of plenty of food, the place of wealth, it was boring. He wanted to go and do it his own way. He did that. He went and partied. You know something, any life that's out of balance will come crashing down around our ears. That's the problem with constructing our reality from all these flashing images on the television of success, success, success; party, party, party; freedom, freedom, freedom; life's not like that. Don't know about you but I have responsibilities, I have a family, a mortgage to pay and food to put on the table and ministry things to do, we all have those responsibilities. Life is not about partying even though relaxing and enjoying life is a normal part of a balanced life. But when we have an unbalanced life, when it's out of kilter, out of whack, things come crashing down round our ears, reality sets in. We all do our rebelling in a different way. But after a while, we discover that partying 24 by 7 ain't all it's cracked up to be right? So let's look at our own lives just for a minute. It's possible, you know, even for someone who says, 'Well, I'm a Christian' to have some form of rebellion going on in their lives. I was at a Christian Bible study some years ago and we were talking about things, there was a young woman there who was working in the church and she was doing all ...
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    10 m
  • It's Time to Party // The Long Road Home, Part 1

    It's Time to Party // The Long Road Home, Part 1
    Feb 16 2026
    There's a streak in each one of us that wants to rebel. You know – kick our heals up and just party. But you can't live like that all the time without there being some consequences. My hunch is that there are a lot of people on this planet who are wandering in some kind of spiritual wilderness. It's a wilderness experience that looks something like this: I've been wandering around here for what seems like years. I know … I know it's out there somewhere but I just can't find it. Well, well probably … probably I can. I just don't think I'm ready, I just don't think I'm good enough. Besides, when I find Him, He'll want me to change. He'll want me to give up this and that and then life won't be fun anymore. So, I'll keep on wandering through the wilderness, that's fun, at least it used to be. But now, now I don't know anymore. It's a dilemma faced by a lot of people. When it comes to God, when it comes to Jesus, some of those people may never really have bumped into Jesus out there at all. Maybe some of those people wandering in that spiritual wilderness have and they've walked with Him for a while, but then they went their own way. And maybe some of them, well they thought they were walking with Him but He seems to have wandered off somewhere while they were busy doing something else. And what started off feeling like an oasis, what started off feeling like it was fun, what started off feeling good, after a while it just feels a bit like a desert, it feels like a wilderness because it is. I think I'll stay here, I don't think I can go back, I don't think I can go looking for Him, if I take that first step back towards Him, oh man … It could be a long road to home. And it doesn't matter from which direction we've come, it doesn't matter where we started from, we can all end up in this same place, in a spiritual wilderness. In a place where, I don't know, there's no fulfilment there's something empty, there's a hole, we're looking for something we can put our finger on it, maybe we've met Jesus somewhere along the way before but we don't know whether He's real or whether He's for us. We all face that dilemma at some point in our lives. What do we do? Where do we go? How do we deal with that dilemma? This week we're going to look at that dilemma from A Different Perspective through a story that Jesus told. It was a parable, not a real story. It was a parable to illustrate what He was trying to get across. And it's a story about the prodigal son. Maybe you've heard about it, maybe you've never heard about it. Today and the next four days on A Different Perspective, we're going to work our way through that story and say, "What was Jesus trying to say to the people He was talking to, and what's He trying to say to us now about this spiritual wilderness experience?" I've called this little series "The Long Road Home". It all starts … starts with an impulse we all have at some point – It's time to party, it's time to kick up our heels, it's time to rebel against authority, against structure, against routine, against norms. Whatever it is, at some point in our lives we all want to kick up our heels. My aunty who's something of a bush philosopher, she would always say, "You know if your kids are kicking up their heels you should thank God because we all kick up our heels at some time in life and its better they do it when they're young than when they're old." You know, I think maybe she's got a point. But we have this impulse to rebel, that's why young folk put studs in their eyebrows and have orange or green hair. Back in my day it was jeans, you know denim jeans in the 60's and 70's were a sign of rebellion, that's why most of us baby boomers, even thought we're in our forties and fifties and dare I say it, even in our sixties, still wear jeans. It was our symbol of rebellion. As adults we rebel against authority in the workplace, maybe we rebel against a marriage relationship and people go out and have affairs. I just don't want to play this same game over and over and over again anymore. I've had enough I want to stop the merry-go-round and get off and do something different. So often people go through a stage whether they're young or whether they're old – a stage of rebellion. You often see it strongest in young folk whose fathers have been Ministers because they've grown up in an environment that's organised, it's Godly and it's all of those things, and they come to that point in their lives when they just want to rebel. Jesus put His finger on that in this parable, this story to explain the wilderness experience. Don't often do this on A Different Perspective but I'd like to read you that story, if you have a Bible, if you'd like to look it up later you'll find it in the New Testament; it's in Luke Chapter 15. This is what Jesus said, we're only going to read a little short part of it today and we'll follow it through during the rest of the week. This is how the story goes: A man had two sons ...
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    10 m
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