A Different Perspective Official Podcast Podcast By Berni Dymet cover art

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

By: Berni Dymet
Listen for free

LIMITED TIME OFFER | Get 3 months for $0.99 a month

$14.95/mo thereafter-terms apply.
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
  • A Fresh Start For Your Relationships // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 4

    A Fresh Start For Your Relationships // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 4
    Jan 15 2026
    As we contemplate the year ahead, we can't think for too long without thinking about our relationships. The good ones. The mediocre ones. And, the downright destructive and hurtful ones too. It's just so good to be with you again today, looking forward together at the year that lies ahead. And as we think about that year, all the good things and the difficult things that are going to come our way, it is hard to think for more than a few minutes without turning our attention to relationships. Have you ever though about how many relationships you have? Relationships ranging from absolutely crucial to distant; fantastic to fiasco; blessing to bust. And those relationships it turns out have a huge impact in the quality and the effectiveness of the lives that we lead. So what if we looked across all those relationships and looked at the ones that are causing us grief and did something about them. What impact would that have on our lives this year? This week on A Different Perspective we're looking at spring cleaning our lives. Over the week so far we have look at spring cleaning our homes, our finances, our priorities. If you have missed any of those you can listen to them again online at our website www.Christianityworks.com . There are different sorts of people in our lives and one of the groups of people that we have in our lives are what I have called "Poisonous" people. People who drag us down. People who criticise and abuse and compromise. Recently my wife Jacqui and I met a couple. Here was this married woman behaving improperly without setting appropriate boundaries. It was so easy for us to have friendships and relationships with people who are "Poisonous" people. There is a great picture of the apostle Paul on the island of Malta. You can read about it in the 28th chapter in the book of Acts in the New Testament. He is picking up some wood and a viper, a snake, bites him on the hand and starts pumping poison into him. And he shakes it off and throws it into the fire. We all know people like that. People who when we are around them they pump poison into our spirits. I would contend that part of having a healthy life is looking at some of those relationships that in fact we shouldn't even be in. Some of the sorts of people that are so bad for us we need to just say, "I am not just going have a relationship with this person." You might be listening and say, "But that's not a very Christian attitude to have." I would like to point to you what Jesus said to the disciples when he sent them out. You can read about it in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 10 verse 14. He said "Look, go into these towns and tell them about the good news. Tell them about Me. If they don't listen shake the dust of your feet and go into the next town." Sometimes there are people in our lives (and in our hearts we know who they are) we are having friendships and relationships with that are just dragging us down. Is it time to spring clean those. Maybe those people are really close, maybe they are husband or wife. Maybe someone is being hard on us and it is hurting us. Well this is my husband or this is my wife, I just can't leave them. I would agree. It's not time to trash a marriage or our children. That is not what I am talking about. But in that case I just wonder whether it is time to deal with the issues. To try and figure out what I am doing wrong in this relationship. Honestly. Half the time bad relationships come back to what I am doing not what the other person is doing to us. And also dealing with issues. If someone is always angry with us, if someone is always criticising us, or if someone is always whinging, sure let's love them. Let's encourage them, let's be there for them, but let's speak the truth in love. But if you are having a tough day and if you just feel like grumbling, and you're with me, I will empathise with you, I will counsel you, I will listen to you. I will love you. But I tell you what there is one thing I will not do. I will not sit down and grumble with you. And I won't let you ruin my life. Sometimes we need to confront issues. Because if we let poisonous people continue to pump poison into us, eventually it is going to hurt us. The second group of people I would like to talk about is distant people. There are sometimes people we should be close to, our family, maybe and older parent, maybe an older brother and sister that have grown up. Maybe our kids. You know, kids go from being a kid to being a teenager and somewhere along the line there as most teenagers do, they close their lives off. And we end up feeding them, clothing them, driving them, disciplining them but sometimes we don't have a relationship with them. It's not an easy time having teenagers in our family. And parents have a kind of different set of standards and kids want to do… you know what it's like. You've been there. What do you do about people that are distant to us that we should be close to? What can we do to spring clean ...
    Show more Show less
    10 mins
  • A Fresh Start For Your Priorities // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 3

    A Fresh Start For Your Priorities // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 3
    Jan 14 2026
    Balance – if only we could get some balance back into our lives. It can be tough can't it? But the way we spend our time – well it comes from the priorities we set – deliberately, or unknowingly. It's just great that you can join me again today. I was driving along in my car just the other day. And I drove past a newsagent. You know how they have the newspaper headlines on the signs outside the store? One of the headlines said this ... "Money or family". Ouch! That really hits a raw nerve with a lot of people. Balancing work and family. Just after that I ended up having breakfast with a man visiting from another city and during the breakfast he received a phone call from his son's teacher. There was a problem with his young teenager. You could see it on his face, as he talked. The tension, the feeling of being torn between being away from work and spending time with his family. He travels a lot you see. The balance can be so hard to get right. Maybe we need to spring clean our priorities? This week on ADP we are looking at spring cleaning our lives. I know it's now spring, but it is kinda the beginning of the year and we are looking forward to all the good things that could be happening this year. And I just wonder if it's not a good time to look at some of the rubbish, some of the baggage that we carry around and say, "Why don't I have a spring clean. Why don't I get ride of some of this stuff, so that I'm not carrying its weight around all during next year." Today I would like to talk about spring cleaning our priorities. So many people are looking for a miracle from God. I wish God would do this, I wish God would do that. If there is a God why does he let this happen in my life. And yet they are not dong their bit in managing the basics, the mundane things that God leaves up to us. They want to feel good about themselves yet their house is a pig sty. They wonder why when they walk in they feel depressed. They want to be a real giver and help the poor, but their finances are a disaster. Today I would like to look at getting some balance into our lives. "But Berni you don't understand, I don't set my priorities, I have all these other things going on". Don't give me that. We can claim to be a victim of our circumstances. Or instead we can come to grips with this basic reality. My priorities in life are mine. And your priorities in life are yours. When our life gets out of balance, it's because of the way that we are prioritising what we do. It's the setting of our priorities that dictates how we spend our time. After all, my diary is mine, I am the one that puts meetings and work and things into my diary. And you diary is yours. And we can claim to be victims, but the answer is it is up to us. "But Berni you don't understand, my boss expects me to work long hours and to do this and to do that". Well maybe you need to educate your boss. Maybe it's time to draw some boundaries and some lines and say, "Well you know, I have to have sustainable life. I have to spend time with my teenagers. I have to spend time with my wife or my husband". And if your boss can't be educated maybe it's time to find a different job. "No, no you don't understand, I have a huge mortgage; I have this house that I am paying off. I need the money… I have to … " Do you need the big house? Do you need the big mortgage? You know we look at all these things in our lives and this is a given, the house is a given, the mortgage is a given, the job is a given. Maybe it is time to change jobs. Maybe it is time to take control and set priorities and say, "My family is important to me. My kids are important to me, and maybe if I take a different job and earn a little bit less money, and maybe live in a house that is a bit smaller or closer to work, maybe I will have more time." Maybe it is time to re jig the priorities. "Ah but there is so many people that need my help you know". Maybe it is time to learn to say, "No". Maybe it's time to ask God, "What do you want me to do? What have you got me doing, what are you doing?" it is interesting how Jesus said, and you can read this in John's gospel chapter 4 verse 19, Jesus said: Truly I tell you, the Son only does what He see's the Father doing. There were so many things that Jesus could have done when He was walking on the Earth, there was so many people He could have helped but He just listened to God. He listened to his Father talking to Him in His spirit. And He went and did the things that God was already doing. I see so many people, running around doing dead works. Things in their lives that God never planned for them. God never anointed them to do, and yet they're racing around doing them. And wondering why they're getting burned out. Now there are times when we have to work long and hard and it can be tough. When I took over the helm of this ministry, Christianityworks here in Australia, the ministry needed some serious work. There were some issues and they needed a lot of...
    Show more Show less
    10 mins
  • A Fresh Start For Your Finances // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 2

    A Fresh Start For Your Finances // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 2
    Jan 13 2026
    Sometimes, our heart can be aching – if only I had enough to give more money to the poor and the needy. And so the next thing we do is go and buy something useless on the credit card. Hmm. In recent years there's a new word that's appeared in the vocabulary of sociologists. That word is Affluenza. It's about the high social, personal and environmental cost of over-consumption. The bloated sluggish and unfulfilled feeling that people get from over consumption. Work more, shop more, live less. The research tells us that actually in the west it is becoming a serious social disease. And yet 24/7 is seems people are going down to the local shopping centres running the plastic through the machines spending it on stuff that in a years time will probably be lying disused at the bottom of the wardrobe. And then you get the credit card bill. It turns out that there is a lot of people that live in a constant state of debt and for what? Spring Cleaning our lives. I know it's not spring but you know as we look forward to the year its kind of nice to review our lives, to look at different parts of our lives, and think where's some of the rubbish in my life that I can leave behind. Yesterday we talked about spring cleaning our homes. Now some people want to live a good life and feel good about themselves, and yet there house is a pig sty. And they wonder why when they walk into their home they feel depressed. Sometimes we have to deal with the mundane issues to give God some space, to bring miracles into our lives. Today I would like to talk about our finances. What does it means to spring clean our finances? Jesus actually talked quite a bit about money. He said: Where you treasure is there your heart will also be. Sometimes people read that and they kind of miss the sequence that He is using. Sometimes they read it the other way round, they read where your heart is that's where you'll spend your treasure. But actually he puts the money first. He says where you spend your money, where you invest the cash, that's where you will invest your emotional energy. If we invest in conspicuous consumption, what ever that means in each of our lives and our social context, if we buy, buy, if all we want to do is get the new car, get this, get that… that's where we end up investing emotionally as well. Maybe that explains why people end up feeling so empty when all they do is try and spend money. That used to be me. It used to be so important to me that I had the latest up market car. It used to be so important to me that I had the latest this and the latest that, the best this and the most expensive gadget there. You ended up being bloated but you are never satisfied. Yesterday on A Different Perspective we looked at the story that we find in the book of Acts in the New Testament, of the apostle Peter being in jail. He's locked up, he's being guarded by Roman soldiers. And in the middle of the night an angel of the Lord comes to him, taps him on the shoulder and says come Peter lets go. Put on your clothes put on your shoes put on your belt and follow me. Miraculously the chains fall off his hands, he walks past the guards and they are asleep. They get to the outer gate and the gate swings open of its own accord. There are two dimensions to this story. There's the mundane, there's the angel saying to Peter, "Get up, put your coat on, put your belt on, put your sandals on, follow me." Do the mundane things that you can do for yourself. And the other dimension is the miracle. The fact that God showed up at all. The fact the chain fell off, the gate flew open. Sometimes we hunger after miracles in our lives and we ignore the basics the mundane. If only we would spend some time getting the basics right. Maybe that would give God some space to bless us with his miracles. We spend, spend, spend. We just spend money. We end with sky high debt on our credit cards, we cant' pray for a miracle to get us out of that. We can't pray for a miracle, say, "God when I wake up tomorrow morning I pray that there would be a zero balance on my credit card." We live in the days of credit cards. Back in the good old days when I was a little boy we lived in a cash society. My father used to bring cash home. He was paid in cash. He used to give Mum the housekeeping. When housekeeping ran out, well, that was it. And so there was a control on the way in which we spent our money. Now today, you can just keep running it up and running it up on the credit card. And when that one is full you can just go to the next credit card provider and get another one, and run it up and run it up. And so many people live under this power of debt. This is what Jacqui my wife and I have done in our lives in our little part of the globe to deal with the whole money issue, to spring clean our finances. Jesus is heavily into the realities of life. Remember when he teaches the disciples to pray which we commonly refer to as the Lord's Prayer. One of the lines in that is ...
    Show more Show less
    10 mins
No reviews yet