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
  • Suck It and See // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 5

    Suck It and See // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 5
    Feb 27 2026
    You know – when we're travelling through one of life's dark patches, it's so easy for someone else to say – "Well, just take the problem to God." But there's only one way to find out if that's good advice. Suck it and see. Over these last few days on the program we've been looking at those dark patches in life, those times that we all travel through that we'd rather not and we've been sharing in some of the experiences of King David who had more than his share of dark times in life and as he writes about that in Psalm 34, looking back on what he's leaned in those times, he makes this simple yet profound statement: I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. And maybe, maybe you've been travelling through one of those dark times and you hear what David has to say and perhaps you've heard the little that I've shared of my own darkness's and you think to yourself, "Well that's okay for someone like David or for that guy on the radio. Maybe God would show up for them but I don't think this stuff is for me." Well here's the rub; unless we seek we never find out whether it is or not and so today I want to share a very specific invitation from God, an invitation that is seriously for you. This week on the program we've been looking at some of the debilitating darkness's we travel through in life, you know those really tough times when we're hurting or we've lost something or someone's hurt us. You know those dark times in life and we've discovered that God is very much in the "light" business, He's in the business of shining His light into our darkness's, taking our fear and replacing it with His radiance. Perhaps that's why King David writes – it's in Psalm 18, verse 28: It is you O Lord who lights my lamp. The Lord my God lights up my darkness. And again in Psalm 139, verses 11 and 12. He writes: If I say, 'Surely the darkness will hide me and the light will become night around me', even the darkness will not be dark to you O God. The night will shine like day for darkness is as light to you. See, you get this impression that David is an incredibly seasoned traveller through the darkness's of life and we know that he spent years on the run from King Saul who was trying to kill him, we know that David went through so many wars and battles where he could have died and where he would have been afraid and the people grumbled and sometimes turned against him. He's been through dark places and then some and he's learned some stuff that God would have us learn, each in our own way because you're not David, I'm not David. So let's head back to this psalm that we've been looking at, Psalm 34, verses 7 and 8 just to see what it is that David learned. This is what he writes, he says: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Now there are two things in here that we need to get into. The first is that bit about the angel of the Lord, look at verse 7 again: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Angels have a bit of a funny symbology these days in our society, we stick them on our cards and they're fluffy little creatures with wings but you just take a short study of the angels that God describes in the Bible and what you discover is they are a fearsome lot. Often God uses them as messengers and He sends them to talk to someone and invariably when an angel confronts a person the very first thing they say is, "Don't be afraid." And then they deliver a specific message to Gods people to protect them from trouble and often they appear as fearsome beings to protect Gods people. I'm going to read you a little passage from 2 Chronicles chapter 32, verse 20. It says this: King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah son of Amoz cried out in prayer to heaven about this and the Lord sent an angel who annihilated all the fighting men and the leaders and the officers in the camp of the Assyrian king. So he withdrew to his own land in disgrace and he went to the temple of his god and some of his sons cut him down with a sword. See, get it? This angel equals serious protection. You see presidents and prime ministers and kings and queens, they get around with their bullet proof glass cars and they're security contingents. They got nothing on an angel of the Lord and you might say, "Berni, do you seriously believe in angels?" Absolutely! We can't see them but when we fear God, when we reverence Him and we belong to Him, He sends His angels, listen to what David says: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him. He sends His angels literally to lay siege around us to protect us. How does David know that? Because he's experienced it and that's exactly what he says in the next verse. He says: Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. This is an often quoted scripture and often out of context, this "taste and ...
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    10 m
  • Bad Fear, Good Fear // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 4

    Bad Fear, Good Fear // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 4
    Feb 26 2026
    Mostly – we think of fear as being a bad thing. And often it is. But it's also a protection mechanism. And "good fear" if I can call it that – helps us to make good choices. So – exactly how does that work? Fear is a funny thing, mostly we think of it as a negative thing. None of us wants to be afraid, I mean who wakes up in the morning and thinks to themselves, "Gee, I hope I get to be afraid today?" No, fear is something we don't look forward to but fear is one of those funny emotions that also helps to protect us. We've all seen a little child who will chase a football out onto the street without any sense of the fear about what might happen if a car or a truck or a bus happened to want to occupy that very same piece of real estate just at the time that they're there. An adult on the other hand has learned a healthy fear of that and so we hopefully would have a good look before we ran out onto the street. Well that makes sense, the same is true when, of most things that are dangerous, an adult has a healthy sense of fear. Perhaps a better way of putting it would be a respect for the consequences and so that acts, in effect, as a protection mechanism. So as it turns out there is a right and good sense of fear in life, so how does that apply to our relationship with God? This week on the program we're taking a bit of a look at the dark times we travel through in life sometimes and we've all had them. Sadness, loss, pain, you can look back and say, "Yep! That was one of those dark times." Maybe you're even in one of those times at the moment and we've spent some time with a man, King David of Israel that had more than his fair share of those dark times and I guess because he was a man with a close relationship to God, he learns some things about God and about that relationship in those dark times. He shares a bit of that in Psalm 34 which we're having a bit of a poke around this week. Psalm 34 is written with the benefit of hindsight, looking back at some dark times, the fearful times and rejoicing because what David discovers is that God was faithful to him in those difficult times, hopefully that sets a bit of the scene. Now let me read to you the first bit of the psalm right now, Psalm 34 beginning at verse 1: I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me, lets exalt His name together because I sought the Lord and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered in shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. Today I want to take a bit of a look at this fear element. It's a word that David uses twice in that short passage. Now I hate being afraid, I'm sure you're the same. I remember when I was in the army and we would be repelling out of helicopters or going over high things on obstacle courses. I have a fear of heights, I just don't like them, I had the opportunity to go parachuting once, I said, "you've got to be kidding me! I am not jumping out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane." And as I said the other day, fear is what happens in those dark times too. In a broken marriage there's a fear of the future, there's a financial fear. In retrenchment there's a fear, will I ever get another job and we can lose hope? Fear is a big part of that, it kind of, well it immobilises us and obviously the times that David had been through he'd experienced that same fear that you and I do. Psalm 34, verse 4: I sought the Lord and He answered me, He delivered me from all my fears. In a sense that fear is a bad fear, that's the fear that God wants to deliver us from. We talked about that yesterday on the program and I can't tell you the number of times that, that I've been immobilised by that sort of fear and I've gone to God and just cried out to Him and He fills me with a peace that defies any human comprehension. Now I'm not someone who naturally gets afraid, I'm a fairly positive person 99.9% of the time but we all need God in those dark places with us to deliver us from that sort of fear but it's the other mention of fear in this little passage that I'd like to spend a few moments focusing on. You see this is one of the good fears that I was talking about at the beginning of our time together today. It's in verse 7 of Psalm 34, it says: The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him. You see, this is talking about the fear of God. Now it's easy to see this as one of those bad fears, "oh God is just this old grumpy old man with a big stick and a bunch of rules and old fashioned rule based religion. They start talking to me about the fear of God, see I knew I didn't need that sort of religion in my life,...
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  • A Simple Choice // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 3

    A Simple Choice // Dark Night - Bright Light, Part 3
    Feb 25 2026
    When life is really tough and when you've lost hope and you're afraid – you can either lie there, completely immobilised – or you can take a really simple, obvious step. Question is – in which direction? We all have choices in life. Sometimes we make good choices, more often than not those good choices have good outcomes and we can all look back and see some of the bad choices we've made and the consequences of those choices but you know the hardest choices to make are the ones we make in the dark. You know, in those dark times, the difficult times, the times when we're hurting so bad that our sense of balance and right and wrong and up and down is all out of kilter. The whole thing about that sort of darkness is that we can't see forward, we can't see back and it's such a difficult place to be. Well today, today we're going to look at a choice that we can make in those dark times that is always the right choice. When everything else has failed, when we don't quite know which way to turn, when even the good choices we made before now don't seem to hold any promise, there's one choice that we can make that always, always pays off. To look at that choice we're going to spend some time over the coming days with a man who had more of those dark times than most of us and he wrote a lot about it. The one place we're going to go is to take a look at what he learned and he records that in Psalm 34. It's an interesting psalm, it comes out of King David's life and it's his praise for deliverance from a time of trouble. So it's a psalm written, if you like, with the benefit of hindsight. David's been in a tough dark place and his learned something, he's learned something about God in a dark time. Now we're not quite sure when that time was, the introduction to the psalm says: A psalm of David when he feigned madness before Abimelech so that he drove him out and he went away. Now we don't have any other historical information about that situation. Abimelech was a judge, a leader of Israel, Gideon's son. The fact that we don't have the exact historical details however doesn't really matter. The fact that David had to engage in this deception tells us that it was a fearful time, it was a scary time, it was a time when he needed to escape. Now let's have a listen to the first part of this psalm as David reflects on that dark time, it's Psalm 34, verses 1-8. This is what he writes: I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips, my soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt His name together. I sought the Lord and He answered me, He delivered me from all my fears. Those who look at Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. This poor man called and the Lord heard him, He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see, the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him. See David is looking back on some hard times and he starts out by praising God for His faithfulness with the specific purpose of letting the rest of us know that God is faithful in the dark times. With a specific purpose, of us who are afflicted, being able to hear this and rejoice. This psalm was written for you and for me: My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. You see David's saying here, "You know why I'm writing this psalm? It's for you, if you're afflicted, if you're travelling through a dark and fearful time, you know what? Come and look at what God did for me." Glorify the Lord with me (says David) let us exalt His name together. In other words, so that you and I can rejoice together in our dark times we're getting the benefit of what David discovered in his darkness, in his fearful times and what he discovered is as profound as it is simple. Look at verse 4: I sought the Lord and He answered me, He delivered me from all my fears. Darkness and fear seem to immobilise us. Fear somehow stops us dead in our tracks, we just kind of sit there and we ache, and fear eats away at our hearts kind of like a quick spreading cancer and in that fear. Remember David was, as he had been many times before, in fear of his life. This was real fear, let me say it this way; deadly fear and in the midst of his deadly fear, he did the thing that he had learned to do over and over and over again all those times in his life when he'd been in danger. When he was on the run from King Saul for all those years he sought the Lord, he cried out to God, he said, "God, help!" The one thing we can forget to do when we're frozen by fear is to do exactly that, to seek God, to cry out to God and what a surprise; God answered him and delivered him from all his fears. I don't know about you but I can relate to that, in life and in ministry I come up against giants of opposition all the time and can I tell you, some days they scare me, seriously scare me and ...
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