A Different Perspective Official Podcast Podcast By Berni Dymet cover art

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

By: 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 Christianity Ministry & Evangelism Spirituality
Episodes
  • The Problem of Christmas // Old Story, New Twist, Part 1

    The Problem of Christmas // Old Story, New Twist, Part 1
    Dec 15 2025
    Well … here we are again. It's December. It's almost the end of another year … and it's almost Christmas time. Again! Happens year after year. Christmas. Question is … what do you make of it? What do you do with it? It's an age-old problem. Christmas. I don't know if you've ever thought of this but Christmas is a real problem for guys like me, preachers I mean. Year after year, we have to crank out yet another Christmas series. And for the first few years, that's pretty easy but then after a while you start thinking to yourself, "Well, how am I going to put a new twist on Christmas this year?" Last year, I approached it from this perspective, the year before from that perspective, the year before that from ... well, you get the picture. There are only so many different perspectives on Christmas. Well, we've all been there, done that, got the t-shirt. Yeah, so it's Christmas again, so what? If you live in the Northern Hemisphere it's an excuse for a few days off. If you live in the Southern Hemisphere as I do, it's probably the summer holidays that you're looking forward to more than Christmas itself. A chance for a decent break, a bit of a much-needed R and R and sure Christmas is part of that but the Christmas bit can be a bit of a hassle. Buying presents, figuring out who has Christmas lunch with whom and then perhaps scooting off to Christmas dinner with another part of your family. Kids, uncles, aunts, grandparents – it all gets complicated. And then there's the fact not everybody in the family gets on. You know Christmas day is one of the peak times of the year for domestic violence. Even if it doesn't get that bad you know there are going to be clashes or you're going to have to smile sweetly at someone that you don't really like or you just know that so and so is going to have too much to drink again this year. Those are the burdens that many people carry into Christmas, it's just the reality of life. So as things turn out, Christmas isn't just a problem for preachers like me who have to dream up something fresh and new each year, it's a problem for many, many people. I heard someone say once, a Bible believing Christian she was, "I hate Christmas, I wish we could just skip over it." It's pretty sad but it's the reality for many people even those who actually believe in Jesus. So Christmas gets something of a bad rap, I wonder how many people who are out there who would just love to skip Christmas. I wonder? Well, as you look ahead to the next ten days or so in the run up to Christmas, I wonder how you're feeling about it all, exhausted, frustrated, anxious, stressed. What are the emotions that generally accompany this thing we call Christmas in your heart in your life? What are you feeling? Is Christmas a problem for you? Can I be honest here? I struggle with the kids pantomime version of Christmas. I struggle with the whole Carols by Candlelight phenomenon around Christmas where people get together in parks and sing Christmas carols as though they believe them, when most of the entertainers up on the stage and on our television screens don't have the remotest faith that Jesus is actually the Son of God. It's like we wrap this whole Christmas in tinsel and lights and tie a neat bow around it. And we make it out to be this happy time, when the truth is, for many people, well, they struggle with Christmas. Now I don't mean to be a Christmas Grinch here. Personally, I love singing Christmas carols because they mean something to me but what I really want to know is why don't we sing Christmas carols all year round? Why don't we celebrate the coming of Jesus all year round? I remember hosting a Christmas in July service at our Church some years back. It's a bit of a phenomenon down under as many restaurants put on Christmas dinners in the middle of winter when it's cold and at the service we actually sung Christmas carols. I can't tell you the number of people who came up to me afterwards and told me how weird it was singing Silent Night in the middle of July. Yeah, we wrap a whole bunch of rituals up in a nice neat package in December and we call it Christmas. And it's all supposed to be sweetness and light and yet how much of it really, really, really speaks into our hearts about the wonder of what God did on that first Christmas? What I want to do today is to unsettle you, to drag you out of your Christmas ritual comfort zone and ask you: Why do you do what you do at Christmas time? Why are you racing around buying presents for people who don't really need anything? Why do you put tinsel and Christmas decorations around your house and maybe even a Christmas wreath on your front door? What are the candles and the Christmas tree and presents and all that food really about? What do you do it for? If you stripped away all that packaging and paraphernalia what would Christmas actually be for you? In that region there were shepherds living in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night....
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    10 mins
  • God Values the Heart // The Best of the Best, Part 10

    God Values the Heart // The Best of the Best, Part 10
    Dec 12 2025
    We people are very much into surface things – things we can touch and feel. Someone dresses well or performs well or looks good – and we judge them to be successful. But God's interested in something else. Something quite different. God's interested in our hearts. I don't know if you've ever watched the Oscar's on TV. You know, the movie awards they give in Hollywood, in "Tinsel Town" each year. Look I think it's great that they award the best movies and actors and directors. But sometimes, as I see people prancing down that red carpet and accepting their glory when they get their awards. Well I can't but help have this sense that it feels just a tad superficial. It's about being beautiful. It's about being the best. It's about winning. And that my friend is pretty much what our world's like. If you're rich or beautiful or entertaining, we value you. But if you're not, we don't. We tend very much to judge the book by its cover. Now, it's not always true. Sometimes we form closer deeper relationships but in a world where there are so many options to consume and to be entertained, hey, you have to choose somehow. And we tend to choose a book by its cover. We tend to value outward symbols of beauty and success. And that's good because that's what makes the economy grow. That's what gets us to buy things. That's what gives people jobs. So it's a good thing, isn't it? Well, we know it's not but it's just the way the world is. This, of course, is nothing new. It's been around for a long time. The apostle Paul, a couple of thousand years ago, wrote about people who boast in outward appearance but not in the heart. You can read that if you like in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 12 in the New Testament. And another thousand or so years before that, God had this to say through the prophet Samuel when he was looking for a new king for Israel. God said: Man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart. (1 Samuel, chapter 16, verse 7) I was watching a show on TV the other day, it was out of the UK. About a woman who goes in to show shops how to turn their business around. So she goes into this struggling little boutique and she's helping this little boutique in Doncaster in the UK and she decided that their target market was, listen for this, the disciples of Beckham. People who wanted to be like and look like Victoria and David Beckham. Now sure, they're celebrities and there's nothing wrong with that. But this whole idea in turning this boutique around was to stock and promote clothes and the look that celebrities were sporting. To be seen to mimic the celebs. Do you see what's going on here? I don't knock the business. They're doing stuff to get money. But what they're chasing after is our desire to be all about appearances. But outer appearances aren't actually that important to God. See He's much more concerned with our hearts and to tell you the truth, when I started doing a bit of research in the Bible I was actually quite shocked with how much God has to say about our hearts. And how concerned He is for our hearts. Have a listen to 1 Chronicles chapter 28, verse 9. Listen to this: The Lord searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. Listen to that again. He searches every heart. See we race around doing things. Thinking things. Imagining no-one notices. Imagining that people can only see us on the outside and they don't know the rotten things going on on the inside. We can be angry, revengeful, deceitful, dishonest in our hearts. But we stick a smile on our face and have soft word on our lips and we think we're kidding everyone. We may well be. But we're not kidding God because He searches every heart and understands every motive behind our thoughts. And God tests our hearts too. Have a listen to these few verses. The first one comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 2. It says: Remember how the Lord your God lead you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what is in your heart. Whether or not you would keep His Commandments. And this one, it's a little bit longer. 2 Chronicles, chapter 32, verses 27 to 31. Have a listen, it's about a king called Hezekiah: Hezekiah had very great riches and honour and he made treasuries for his silver and gold and for his precious stones and spices and shields, all kinds of valuables. He also made buildings to store the harvest of the grain, new wine, oil and he made stalls for various kinds of cattle and pens for the flocks. He built villages and acquired great numbers of flocks and herds for God had given him very great riches. It was Hezekiah who blocked the upper outlet of the Gihon spring and channelled the water down the west side of the City of David. He succeeded in everything that he undertook. But when the envoys were sent by the rulers of Babylon to ask him about the miraculous signs that had occurred in the land, God left him to test him to know ...
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    10 mins
  • The Power of the Prophetic // The Best of the Best, Part 9

    The Power of the Prophetic // The Best of the Best, Part 9
    Dec 11 2025
    A prophet is someone who speaks the will of God. So let me ask you something – are there still prophets in this world today, or not? Does God still speak prophetically through some of His people today … or not? Well there's only one way to find out – what does His Word have to say on the subject? It's just fantastic to be with you at the beginning of another week and yes, we're continuing again this week in our look at how it is that God speaks to us today, right here and now in the 21st Century. It's interesting, way back in the Old Testament God spoke to His people through prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and all those Old Testament prophets – men who God called to speak His message to His people. Then in the New Testament He speaks to us, first and foremost through His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, and through the Apostles and the other writers of the New Testament books. And He's still using those to speak to us today by His Spirit. He speaks to us today through the Word of God. But it's interesting, the New Testament in particular tells how His Spirit speaks to us today. Sometimes it's easy to ignore that. It's easy to get all dull and boring about the way God communicates with us. But God is a stunningly creative communicator. There's nothing, absolutely nothing dull and boring about how God communicates with you and me. And one of the ways He does that is through the power of the prophetic. So today, that's what we're going to take a look at on the program. Now in embarking on this today I acknowledge that there are some amongst God's people who simply believe that there are no more prophets today; that this is something that belongs to the past and not the present. What's a prophet? Well, quite simply a prophet is someone who speaks on behalf of God; someone who speaks the will of God into the lives of God's people. Some people believe there are no prophets today, and yet other traditions and denominations really emphasise the prophetic dimension of God's communication and sadly some do so to the point of abusing the prophetic. What do I mean by that? Well, I don't carry any particular denomination baggage or tradition around this whole thing, my heart is simply to open up God's Word the Bible and figure out what is God saying and go with what God says. So that's precisely what we're going to do today. Let's take a look. This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth, after Jesus has died and risen again and ascended into heaven. This is the fledging New Testament church that the Apostle Paul is writing to. I'm going to read to you from 1 Corinthians chapter 12 beginning at verse 4. Have a listen: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. So here Paul's talking about supernatural gifts that are given to people in the family of God, and not just the special super-Christian leader people. Have a listen again to verse 7. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To each person, to each believer is given one or more of these supernatural gifts. Now I've heard people say, "Wow, wow, that was for back then not for now." This passage, 1 Corinthians 12, rolls straight on into 1 Corinthians 13, that famous passage about love that kind of says, you know you can have all the gifts under the sun, but unless you use them in love those gifts are useless. Now these same people love to quote 1 Corinthians chapter 13 but somehow, perhaps because, particularly in the west with our western mindset, we're uncomfortable with the idea that there might be supernatural gifts, things we can't explain rationally, we sometimes want to deny that this bit of the New Testament actually applies to us but accept other bits that make rational sense to us. I don't know what it is, but I find nothing – when we say nothing in the New Testament – that tells me that this theme of spiritual gifts, supernatural gifts was meant for then and not for now. Nothing. And the gifts? Words of wisdom, words of knowledge, extraordinary faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of the Spirit, speaking in ...
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    10 mins
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