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
  • When God Forgave Us // Forgive and Forget, Part 3

    When God Forgave Us // Forgive and Forget, Part 3
    Feb 11 2026
    We all know that we need to forgive people. That's the theory, But let's now put the shoe on the other foot and talk about God's forgiveness. Does He really need to forgive us? Really? Forgiveness is one of those fluffy words that quite often we pay very little attention to. But when you think about it, it's pretty obvious that without forgiveness, we can't have effective relationships. Without forgiveness on a daily basis between husband and wife a marriage falls apart. And they do in epidemic proportion. Without forgiving our work colleagues for their shortcomings and failures, workplaces become a sieving bed of politics and strife. And you know, they are. We can't do anything really effective in a relationship when there's resentment and strife. Forgiveness is the first and only real step towards really dealing with issues. But what about God? I mean, if God's God, why is forgiveness really such a big deal for him? Surely none of us is really that bad. For me this whole issue of God forgiving us is one of the toughest issues I've ever had to get my mind around. Now I'm the first to admit I have faults and mistakes. Absolutely. And you can too. We all say, "None of us is perfect." But if there is a God. If God is God, all powerful, all loving. Why doesn't He just look at me and say, "Well there's a guy who's trying to live a good life. He's not perfect, but hey, who is? He's in. Heaven, eternal life. This guy is trying to live a good life. He's good enough." Have you ever wondered that? I mean, come on God, if you make the rules, if you can do whatever you want, why don't you just accept me for who I am. And yet, we turn around and we watch the evening news. You know, the latest drunk driver who's killed a young kid. The latest sex abuse scandal, the latest corporate executive who's taken a short-term unauthorised loan and neglected to pay it back. And something rises up inside us . You know, they should be punished. That drunk driver who walked out of the pub and got in his car and ran over that kid. He deserves to be locked up for life. That's our reaction isn't it? Are you with me so far? On the one hand, we all have in-built innate sense of justice when it comes to other people. On the other hand, when it comes to us, to you and me, we want to rationalise our mistakes, explain away our selfishness, ignore some of the destruction that's left in our wake. I remember thinking, well that's all well and good. I'm not a drunk driver who's killed a kid. I'm not a murderer or rapist. I'm not any of those things, so why should God have to forgive me? I'm just human. Hmm. But imagine. Imagine if His standard is one of perfect love. A love that never fails. A love that never stops searching for, caring for us. What if this God has a love so wide, so wide, so deep for us that we can never fathom it. Just imagine you go outside at night away from the smog and the light of the city and you look up at the sky and you see all the stars of heaven lighted above, and God says to you, "Compared to the vastness of the universe that I've created for you, you are so much more important. Those things are just a drop in the ocean in my heart. I love you. I love you with a perfect love." Imagine if that's the standard that God applies. Now let's apply the same innate sense of justice that we feel when we're watching the evening news set against this standard of perfect love. And anything short of that perfect love, well, it just falls short in this deep and mighty Father-heart of God. There are two things. There is love and there's justice. Both need to be satisfied. It's in our nature. So why wouldn't it be in God's nature? If we really, truly love someone, we won't sweep their selfishness, their failures, their rejections, their alienations, their addictions, their anger, their resentment, their hatred – we won't sweep those things under the carpet. If we really love someone, we'll do whatever it costs. You know when we look at God and we say, "Well why doesn't God just accept me the way I am? Why doesn't He just accept me and give me eternal life and say, 'Hey, this person is human?'" When we look at God like that, we're judging God by the wrong standard. We really need to judge God, if I can use that term, by the standard of His perfect love. A love so great that He would send His Son Jesus Christ, the most valuable person in His life, and allow Him to be beaten, to be spat on, to be abused, to be nailed to a cross to die for you and me. God is a just God, and justice needs to be satisfied. But God is a God of grace, a God of love. And when He looks at you, when He looks at me, His heart just overflows with love. There are no words to describe this. And so He sent Jesus His Son to die on a cross for me so He can look at me, He can look at you and say, "There's a person who has placed their faith in my Son. There is person who has said, 'I fall short of the glory of God. I fall short of God's standard of perfect ...
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    10 m
  • Forgiving is Accepting // Forgive and Forget, Part 2

    Forgiving is Accepting // Forgive and Forget, Part 2
    Feb 10 2026
    Every person we will ever meet, is going to annoy us at some point. Something in their personality will grate, something they do will hurt … so what's the secret of having a great relationship anyway? It seems that there are really only two types of people in this world: those who love getting up early in the morning and those who don't, those who love cats and those who hate them. Or, you know what I mean. It seems that different people just come out of different moulds. We have different likes and dislikes, different strengths and weaknesses. And as much as those differences make life interesting, they make life fun. They can also just plain get on our nerves. So how do we make sure that for our part, the differences between us and other people become a source of pleasure instead of pain, richness instead of resentment? As I've watched people over the years I've come to the conclusion that with every strength in a person, there's an equal and opposite weakness. It's like Newton's Law of Physics. You know, you meet someone with really good insights. You know they see things so clearly; they articulate a situation so well. And you go, wow, you know that person's clever. But often on the down side, they can be judgmental and blunt; they can be intolerant of other people's opinions that differ from their own. When you meet a person with a real servant heart. My wife's like this. They're the sort of person that always gets up to get the coffees. When you're out at dinner, they always get up and help the hostess and say, "Let me help you clean up." They're always the first to volunteer for something. It's wonderful being around someone like that. But on the flip-side, people like that can be critical of others who don't help as much as they do. They can be pushy or interfering in their eagerness to help. Or when you meet a strong and capable leader. You know, someone with real vision and that gift and ability to get other people just to follow them. But on the down side leaders like that can become upset with people who don't share the same goals and visions. They can regress into using people to accomplish their goals and visions. And have you ever met the sort of person that's got what I call a pastoral gifting? You know they're just the sort of person that will pull alongside someone else who's struggling with whatever. And they'll just spend whatever time is needed talking, having coffee, visiting them in hospital. Have you met those people when you think if I was ever stranded on a desert island, that's the sort of person I'd like to be stranded on an island with. The flip-side though is that people like that are really good managers of their time. They're rarely people who can force a whole bunch of things into a given time because the whole point of their gift and ability is that they don't worry about time as much as they worry about relationships. There's a pattern isn't there? Every strength seems to come with a corresponding weakness. I wonder if any of those ring a bell for you. For me, absolutely. My gig is insights and teaching and leadership. That's, I guess, what I do. And as I came as a businessman, someone who'd worked in business and commerce for sixteen or seventeen years, into Christian ministries, people saw some skills and abilities and thought, well gee I could use that skill in my ministry. I could use that ability that Berni has in my ministry. And they asked me to do a whole bunch of things like pastor a church. Can I tell you something? I think I would be hopeless at pastoring a church because I don't have the heart to do it. I don't have the sort of pastoral giftings, the gift to want to sit with people for a long time. That's just not me. And so it's really easy to look at someone and only want to harvest the things that are good about them. And yet, when you interact with them on a day-to-day basis, it's the other side of the coin. It's the weaknesses. It's their failures that hurt us, that grate on us, that ultimately drive us nuts. Reality? You and I are a package of strengths and weaknesses. I know I am and it's very true of me. I have some strengths but I also have some weaknesses. And the person that knows most about my weaknesses is obviously my wife. She could sit here for quite a long time and share with you all of my weaknesses. You wonder why I never have my wife on the program! And you know if it's true of me it's true of you too. But the funny thing is, we are so quick to justify our own weaknesses. Well you know, it's just how I am. I just can't change that thing about me. But then we look at other people. And even though it's true about them too. Even though every other person that you and I will ever meet is a package deal of strengths and weaknesses, what we want them to do is we want them to be only strengths. We don't want to accept the package deal that comes with every person that we meet. And as we get to know their weaknesses and limitations just that ...
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    10 m
  • Forgiving is Forgetting // Forgive and Forget, Part 1

    Forgiving is Forgetting // Forgive and Forget, Part 1
    Feb 9 2026
    When someone does something wrong – something that hurts us, it's easy to say, "I forgive you". But actually living out that forgiveness – what does that look like? In a recent edition, the magazine, Psychology Today, carried an article on forgiveness. In part, the article reports that until recently psychologists regarded forgiveness as the business of the clergy and theologians. But now, mental health experts are subjecting forgiveness to the microscope of scientific scrutiny with no apologies. It goes on to tell of 2 psychologists, Drs. Robert Enright and Suzanne Freedman, working with people who have been sexually abused, found that none expressed any desire to forgive their perpetrator. So in a controlled study, they selected 50 percent of the group to participate in a series of workshops on forgiveness. So, 12 months down the track, what were the findings of the study? What happened with the 50 percent who attended the forgiveness workshops? Not only did all eventually forgive, but a year later they reported far less anxiety and depression than the non forgiving control group. Researchers concluded that they had never seen such a strong result with incest survivors. They go on to say that "forgiving is giving up the resentment that you are entitled to." "The paradox," says psychologists Enright, Friedman, "is that by giving this gift to the other, it's the gift giver who ends up being healed." You know, I wonder whether in our society today whether for too long we've treated forgiveness as something that's fluff. It's one of those "touchy-feely" emotions. Oh well, yeah, I should forgive someone, but it's not really important. But in reality, forgiveness is a really hard thing to do. For those who dare to take that high path, I wonder whether there's something better along that path, something that we could maybe never imagine. It doesn't matter how we look at life. Everyday, everywhere people do things that either hurt us or offend us or threaten us. Sometimes it's people we love. It's the people who are the closest to us. Sometimes it's people we work with. And sometimes it's people that we don't even know. That person behind us in the car that just beeps the horn at us, because maybe we're just going a little bit too slow for them. And the things that hurt us, or offend us, or threaten us, sometimes they're small things. Sometimes, they're things that are quite important to us. Sometimes, they're really really big things. You might have heard me say once before that as a kid at school, I was never one of the beautiful people. I had snide remarks. I was ignored. I was left off the team. Sometimes at work a bunch of people go out for a drink after work and no one thinks to invite you or me. Those things can really hurt and when we feel the pain, we want to retaliate. We want to lash out. We want to pay them back. We want to get our pound of flesh from these people. "Well, if they ignored me, you know something, I can ignore them, too. Maybe those people who went out after that drink last night at work and they didn't invite us. Maybe when they send me an email today at work or need something from me at work, I might just ignore them. I might just frustrate them. I might just play hard to get. I might just completely block them from getting what they want to do." And before you know it, something small, something that somebody did that they may not have met anything by it. It was just an oversight. All of a sudden, something small escalates just like that into something significant in an instant. You know what I mean. Then sometimes we're dealing with significant hurts. With hurts, you know, an ingrained problem with your boss at work. For some reason, the boss just doesn't want to be fair. For some reason, every time there's a promotion, he or she overlooks you and me. Maybe you feel they're lying about you or maybe there's a real problem in our marriage. Maybe the relationship between husband and wife just, you know, over the years, it's tired. Haven't you heard people say "we've grown apart"? These are significant problems, they really get us down. And sometimes we have to deal with major hurts. You know, when people really, really hurt us. Later this week we're going to be talking to Lorraine Watson, we are going to be talking about abuse as a child, about our own children being killed by a hit and run driver. People go through divorce. You know, every now and then in life we have to suffer really major losses. We all deal with these things. Everyday. Whether they're small, significant or major. Whether it is with people we love, we work with, or people we don't know. And it turns out how we respond has a huge bearing on the quality of our life. Lets go back to that study that I mentioned at the outset, of the sexually abused women. The 50% who forgave, remember what the report said, they experienced far less anxiety and depression 12months down the track. In fact that startled the ...
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    10 m
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