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
  • The Year of the Lord's Favour // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 5

    The Year of the Lord's Favour // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 5
    Feb 6 2026
    Sometimes, life gets so rough and rocky and we think to ourselves, surely, surely it must get better soon. But some people give up hope completely, and just live their lives in a constant state of despair. When we think about God, whoever that is, it's easy to get a distorted picture. The older we are the more we tend to think of Him as being judgmental, and the younger we are well, younger people, how do they see God? I saw an article published recently that reported younger peoples' views of God, it was based on a survey that had been conducted nationally in Australia with young people, and they commonly see Him as an "online butler". He's nice and loving and friendly and forgiving but with a consumer mentality God's there to fit in to my life when I need him to help me, when I need Him. Hmm. So how do we make sense of God in our lives today? Why did He send Jesus? What was the point? Does Jesus make a difference? Is this whole Christianity thing worth exploring? Is it worth pushing deeper into a relationship with Jesus? This week on the program we're looking at those questions, and today let's explore this whole idea of God's favour, of God's blessing, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, but God the Butler???!!! People talk about Jesus but what was He all about, why did He come to earth? Why did He leave the air-conditioned comfort of heaven to be a little baby in a disgusting smelly little manger, to go and live in a grotty place like Nazareth and then to be crucified and misunderstood? I mean why did he do that? Well, He tells us actually, He tells us His reasons in an early speech. One of his earliest public addresses was in his hometown in the synagogue, Nazareth. And he quoted Isaiah Chapter 61 verses 1 and 2. Now we've worked our way through the first four of those reasons this week, looking at in Luke's Gospel Chapter 4 exactly what Jesus said. But today we're going to do something a little bit differently, and to look at the last reason we're going to go back to the original text in Isaiah which was written centuries before Jesus walked the earth. And this was the text that Jesus actually was quoting, this is what Isaiah wrote: The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, he sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from the darkness for prisoners and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour and the day of vengeance of God. To comfort those who mourn and to provide to those who greaves in Zion, to bestow on them," (this is good stuff) "to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of morning, the garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair, they'll be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for a display of his splendor, they'll rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated. They will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. (Isaiah 61:1-4) Now it's interesting, Isaiah here is writing to the nation of Israel after it's been exiled in Babylon for almost 70 years. Israel spent about 400 years as slaves in Egypt. They then went through the exodus for 40 years where they wandered in the desert and finally Joshua led them over the Jordan into the Promised Land, and there they lived. And the promise of God was, "This is the land I've promised your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, this is the Promised Land, and if you obey me, if you live with me as your God you'll be blessed, this is the land of milk and honey and I'll bless your socks off." "But," he said, "if you don't, if you go and worship other Gods, if you do the things, the very few things I tell you not to, I will punish you and you will loose the land." And that's exactly what happened. The Babylonians came into Jerusalem, they destroyed Jerusalem they took the nation into captivity in Babylon and there they'd been for 70 years. And this is the context that Isaiah is speaking into. That's why he's talking about the good news to the poor and binding up the broken-hearted, and freedom for the captives because they were captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, because they were prisoners. And he said: This is the year of the Lord's favour. This is the year you get to go back. So that's what Isaiah was talking about, but Jesus took that and he said it of himself in Nazareth, but he's also saying it to us. Those people were oppressed by the Romans, they were oppressed by the religious leaders, they were poor, they were broken-hearted, they were captives, they were prisoners, but He wasn't dealing with a geo-political situation. Jesus was talking about lives, He was talking about individuals, He was talking about poor, broken hearted captives and prisoners that he was about to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour over. Hmm the favour of God! So what is that favour? Is it God the butler? Well, ...
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    10 m
  • Let the Oppressed Go Free // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 4

    Let the Oppressed Go Free // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 4
    Feb 5 2026
    We tend to think of oppression in global geo-political terms. But normal, everyday people experience all sorts of oppression – sometimes, in the most unexpected of ways. Oppression is just a fact of life in this world, we tend to think of it in political and in social terms, on a national or international scale, and it is huge. But oppression happens right at home too, oppression isn't about nations, it's about individuals like you and me. To be oppressed means to be down trodden. A husband can oppress his wife, a mother can oppress her child, a boss can oppress their employees, and ideas about how we should and shouldn't live our lives can oppress us without us even knowing. Oppression shatters who we are. It's like being broken into pieces and it happens whether the oppression is political, social, economic, or personal. We all experience it sometimes, even without really putting a name to it, all we know is that we're carrying around a heavy burden and it just seems to be crushing us. This week on A Different Perspective we're looking at the reasons that Jesus gave for coming to earth as a man. Here we have the Son of God, He could've lived in the air-conditioned comfort of heaven for all eternity, yet He chose to lay all his glory and power aside and become a little baby that grew up into a man, and to walk around on this earth in Galilee, and in Judea, and to tell people who God is. And right at the beginning of that public ministry when He was about 30 years old, He stood up in a synagogue in His own town Nazareth, nowheres-ville really, and He read this from the book of Isaiah about himself. He said: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor, he sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour. Now we've looked at the first three of those so far this week – preaching the good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind. Today we're going to look at the fourth out of the five reasons – to release the oppressed. Why did Jesus come for you? Why did Jesus come for me? Well one of the reasons is to release us from oppression. This is an amazing quotation because by quoting Isaiah chapter 61 verses 1 and 2, (and if you have a bible go and read it later, or we'll have a look at that particular passage tomorrow as well on the program). But He's really saying God has anointed Me, God has appointed Me, He is really saying to the people who were there on the day listening, "I am the Messiah", which is whom they were expecting; they just didn't expect Him to be a carpenter out of Nazareth. He said, "God the father has sent me to let the oppressed go free" – literally to send the oppressed away in release. And we might think, "Oh well that's not really me, I'm not oppressed, you know I have a pretty good life, I go to work every day, earn a bit of money, come home, go watch a movie, I'm not really oppressed." But the word that's used there in that quote for oppression the original Greek word that sits behind our English translation means literally, to be shattered into pieces, to be broken-hearted, to be bruised. Now those are things that we can relate to, those are things that we all go through. The most common complaint of adults in the developed world is stress, we are overstretched, we are stretched to the point of breaking, and lives, and marriages, and families are consistently shattered into pieces. The world is full of broken-hearted people; the world is full of hurting people. Now when you look at some of those reasons that Jesus gave there, poverty, freedom, oppression, in a sense they sound like macro social justice issues, but Israel in the first century well, it was under Roman occupation, it was under a tyranny from religious leaders. But Jesus didn't tend to speak into those macro social, political issues. Jesus here was talking into the lives, the inner lives of individuals like you and me, He was wanting to see people set free to have a real relationship with God. We see that right through the Gospel accounts, I mean in Mark chapter 1 verse 40 a leper comes to Jesus and the leper says: 'Lord if you are willing you can set me free, you can heal me' and Jesus is moved with compassion. This leper was diseased, he was oppressed, he was ostracised from society, he couldn't go near an able bodied person like you and me, he couldn't go into the synagogue, or the temple with other people, and this leper comes to Jesus and Jesus is moved with compassion, and reaches out, and touches him, and heals him, and integrates him back into society. The bleeding woman in Mark chapter 5, Jesus is about to go and heal the very, very sick daughter of the leader of the synagogue, and instead He spends time with a woman who has been bleeding, and again bleeding was a sign of being unclean, she was ...
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    10 m
  • Sight for the Blind // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 3

    Sight for the Blind // Why Jesus Came for Me, Part 3
    Feb 4 2026
    Imagine just for a moment that you're blind and all of a sudden, your sight is restored. What would that be like? How would it feel? As a young man I used to have 20/20 vision but like just about everyone else, when you get to your late 30s and early 40s the old vision gets a bit blurred, and I needed glasses. These days I wouldn't even think of driving a car or reading a book without the old multifocals. When you think about it, little by little without us even noticing, our vision becomes distorted. It's like that with glaucoma too, little by little people lose their sight and by the time they notice it, it's just too late. Being able to see clearly is one of the most precious gifts of life and if you ask anyone who's lost their sight, 'What would you like most in life?' Well one of the things that would be right up there on their list, would be being able to see again. They say that seeing is believing, that's the old saying but what we see, tends to be influenced by how we look at the world. I guess that's why we call this program A Different Perspective. But when you think about it the glasses I wear, they give me clarity of vision that simply doesn't exist when I take them off. And you know when I go to the optometrist to have my vision re-checked you know every couple of years, they put all these funny little lenses in front of you and they flick them and "is this one better or is that one better, is this one better or is that." And it's amazing how many different perspectives you get on the world, with all the different combinations and permutations of lenses that they flick, flick, flick in front of your eyes. Our view of politics for instance, is influenced by what? Well mostly by our parents and by the socio-economic group that we come from. Our view of the status of men and women in marriage and workplace, well a lot of that depends on what we've learned, and what we believe. I remember as young officer in the Australian army, you know I've been through four years of training at the Royal Military College at Duntroon and they're all blokes, I mean women at Duntroon was just, well I mean that would never have happened – it does now of course, but not in those days. And I remember as a young officer getting my first female boss, can I tell you? I was devastated, I could not believe that I would be working for a woman, I was horrified. Now, I had the honesty to sit down with her and tell her that. I look back on that now and I think, "How could I ever have had that attitude, that's a bizarre attitude" but yet it was a very powerful attitude as young officer who spent four years at Duntroon. Where we sit really influences what we see and how we respond to it. There's a wonderful little story, I have used this occasionally, I have used this before but I think it's a powerful one, written in the naval journal of the US and it goes like this: Two battleships were assigned at the training squadron and had been at sea on manoeuvres in heavy weather for several days, I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog so the Captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities. Shortly after dark the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, 'Light bearing on the starboard bow,' 'is it steady or moving astern?' The Captain called out. Lookout replied, 'steady Captain' which meant we were on a dangerous collision course with that ship. The Captain then called to the signalman 'signal that ship we're on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees', back came the signal 'advisable for you to change course 20 degrees'. The Captain said 'send I'm a Captain, change course 20 degrees', 'I'm a seaman second class' came the reply 'you'd better change course 20 degrees'. By that time the Captain was furious he spat out 'send I'm a battleship, change course 20 degrees' back came the flashing light 'I'm a lighthouse'…we changed course. Our sense of reality can get really distorted by just the way that we're brought up and the way that we're seeing things. What was the point of Jesus coming to this planet? Well we've looked over the last couple of programs this week, at what Jesus said about the reason that He came as the Son of God to be a man on this earth, and the first two reasons we looked at were that He came to give good news to the poor, and release to the captives. He actually told us that, in one of the first sermons He gave when He began his public ministry. The third reason he gave was to give recovery of sight to the blind. Now he literally did that. He healed the blind physically, it's a matter of historical record, but he also used that as a metaphor for our spiritual and emotional sight too. Now maybe you think 'well that's a bit patronising, the notion that we're not seeing straight that we need someone else to sharpen our focus, my perspective is my perspective, your perspective is your ...
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    10 m
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