Episodios

  • 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 ...
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    10 m
  • 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...
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    10 m
  • 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 ...
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    10 m
  • A Fresh Start For Your Homes // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 1

    A Fresh Start For Your Homes // Spring Cleaning Your Life, Part 1
    Jan 12 2026
    So often – we can be looking for a miracle – and yet we forget to manage the mundane. We want God to bless our lives – yet the house is a pig sty and we wonder why we're depressed. It's just great to catch up with you again, this year. There is something intensely satisfying about being clean. You know, you come home you're hot and you're and you're sweaty and you get in the shower, clean. Fantastic. Or your hair is growing so long. It's just driving you nuts. And when you get it cut you feel a million dollars. You with me? And I guess the same is true of your homes. When they are a mess it's kind of depressing. But when you put in the effort, clean the place up. Well, it makes a difference to how we feel about ourselves. So what about your place right now. How messy, or tidy or clean or dirty is it? Hmm … My wife Jacqui, my daughter Melissa and I, live in a small semi detached terrace house, right in one of the inner city suburbs of Sydney. Now it's a lovely suburb. But the house is very small, the block of land is very small, there is no off street car parking so we have to park our car on the street. When we bought it, it was a nasty little place. It was built in 1876 and had a very small, very plain layout, and the kitchen was just the most disgusting place. But since then we have renovated the house, and now we live in a well designed, nicely finished home. It's not big, but it is very comfortable and it's lovely. It's a pleasure to live in. And when the renovation was done, there was fresh paint, and clean surfaces and new floorboards, and it was really nice. But even after the renovation as time goes by, as we live life in a house, it gets messy and dirty. Have you ever notice that? I call it the pollution principle. Life causes waste and mess. It's true in a whole bunch of different parts of our lives. It's true with our bodies, we breathe in oxygen and we breathe out the waste product carbon dioxide. We perspire, we urinate. We, you know, produce waste products. It's true in our home…that bottom draw in the fridge, under the fridge, the washing machine, the dust on the side of the side board. The garbage bins, the toilets, if we don't get rid of the waste and clean up, it just builds up. And ruin our lives. Imagine if we never threw the rubbish out. It's true with cities and the pollution, and the smog and the congestion. It's true in our relationships, even in good relationships. There is static sometimes, there is a by-product of something that really is rubbish, in a lot of relationships. So there is this type of pollution principle that applies throughout our lives. That normal, everyday lives, even good living creates rubbish, it creates waste it creates by products that we have to get rid of. So why are we talking about rubbish. Well this week on A Different Perspective we are looking at "Spring cleaning our lives. "I know, I know it's not spring. But here we are the beginning of the year, and I just wonder if it isn't time to look at our lives, at different parts of our lives. And think about leaving the rubbish behind. So this week on a different perspective we are going to be looking at spring cleaning our home, our finances, our priorities, our relationships and on Friday our souls. This whole pollution principle, how do we get rid of the pollution, how do we get rid of the rubbish. And I think a good place to start is the home because it makes a difference to the quality of our lives. Having a nice home, is something that we all really aspire to. Whether we live in a really big expensive suburb or whether we live in a more modest place. We still like to make our surroundings as nice as we can. But the reality is that so many people live in a mess. I don't know if you remember that comedy, that sit com in the 1970's called "The odd couple". But it was about two men who were living together. Felix Unger played by Tony Randall, and Oscar Madison played by Jack Klugman. And Felix was obsessively tidy; he was so clean and so tidy. And Oscar, well he was the slob. And the whole comedy was how these two men shared an apartment. Now look, Felix lived at one extreme of cleanliness, a Oscar lived right at the other extreme of being a slob. And when I talk about spring cleaning our homes, I am not talking about being a Felix Unger. I am not talking about being obsessive. I love one of the things that Joyce Meyer, a wonderful preacher from the US once said, "Some people, well they want to take authority over the devil in their lives, but frankly they don't even have the authority over a sink full of dirty dishes." It can be true can't it. The environment we live in has an impact on the way we feel. My wife Jacqui and I, as I have said, live in this terrace house, and even after we renovated we left a cellar under the lounge room pretty much unrenovated. It is the only place we have to store all those large suite cases, you now the stuff you have to find somewhere that often people ...
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  • Blooming Where You're Planted // A New Page, Part 5

    Blooming Where You're Planted // A New Page, Part 5
    Jan 9 2026
    A lot of people spend a lot of their time imagining how good life would be, if only this…or if only that. In fact, you can spend your whole life living that way. Until finally, you wake up and realise, you were supposed to bloom where you've been planted. This week, as we've been standing on the threshold of yet another New Year, we've been taking a look at the newness that God brings when we decide to have a real relationship with Him. We're made up of body, soul and spirit, you and I. Not in three nice little separate boxes but instead, each one's so tightly coupled with the others to make up who we are. And where religion fails time and time again to meet the needs of the whole person, a real relationship with God, the God who created us in the very first place, created us in His image to have a deep and wondrous relationship with Him, that deep relationship brings real refreshing. And this time of year, I think that's important. In fact, I think its important 365 days a year but especially as we look forward to this New Year. Do you know, there's one thing that I think that we get wrong sometimes. We imagine somehow that "refreshing" – that a new start – comes when our circumstances change. "I know, things would get better if only I could get rid of this person out of my life. If only I could change jobs or find a decent wife or husband, or get that pay increase that I really need, then things will be better." But sometimes, in fact, often times that's not the case at all. We've seen that on the programs over this week. Sometimes what God really means is for us to bloom right where we've been planted. I want to share a story with you today because this whole idea of running away from the things we don't like in our lives isn't something I'm up on my little pulpit preaching to you about. It's something that we all go through, me included, and learning this lesson of blooming right where we're planted, for me at least, it's never been an easy one to learn … probably because I grew up in the very first disposable generation – the first generation whose parents could take a pill not to have us; the first generation where packaging and cups and plates and knives and forks and spoons and all sorts of stuff became disposable. I grew up in the generation where people stopped darning their socks. Instead we just throw them out now and buy new ones. I grew up in the generation where people started, on mass, disposing of their marriages, the one relationship that's meant to last a lifetime. I grew up in the generation where, instead of holding down the same job for a lifetime, people began to move jobs every two or three years. I grew up in the generation where, in fact, not just jobs were changed but it's quite common now for people to change their careers. And I'm also a product of this society in which I've grown up, a society that's moved away from the permanent to the transient; from commitment to variety; from valuing loyalty to valuing adaptability. We value different things, we can do different things. Technologies that cost a fortune a few years ago have become commodities today. I remember my first transistor radio – all my Christmases had come at once! Wow! Today, we're taught to change our mobile phones about as often as we change our clothes. Technologies have become adaptable; when we change our moods we can have different coloured covers for our mobile phones. Even one card that's out there on the market that comes with different coloured panels so you can change them when your mood changes. Can you believe that? 'What I want, when I want it'. That's what we're taught and the more we swallow that stuff, the more it becomes a part of us. So back to the story I wanted to tell you before I started rabbiting on. Before I became a Christian I used to go through relationships like changing socks. See, here was the deal. I was at the centre of the universe; it was my way or the highway, if you didn't suit me I'd get rid of you. As a friend, as someone I worked with or if something that I was involved with didn't suit me I'd just walk away. I don't like this, don't like that, no problem, just ditch the people or the organisation or the activity or whatever it was. Then, then I became a Christian and, not some religious nut, not into religion much at all actually. I just started getting involved with Jesus, started attending a Church and what I discovered was, that God wasn't so keen for me to ditch people when they didn't suit me. In fact, more and more, He led me to hang in there with people when they were dead set pains in the neck. Of course, you understand, I'm never a pain in the neck. Fortunately I'm perfect and the world revolves around me. Yeah right! More and more, God grew me in this sense that instead of changing people like socks, instead of changing my circumstances or my situation or my job or whatever, God's plan was actually for me to bloom right where He'd planted me. Can...
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    10 m
  • A New Spirit // A New Page, Part 4

    A New Spirit // A New Page, Part 4
    Jan 8 2026
    Have you ever been exhausted to the core? It's like there's nothing – nothing left on the inside. What we almost need is a new inside. A new life. Some mighty, new spirit within us. Is that even possible? Well, with the new year just beginning it is such an important time for each one of us to decide whether we want this year to be different from the last one; whether somehow we want to break out of the rut that we've been caught up in. But, as we've been observing over these last few days, so often it's not about breaking out of the rut but breaking out of the mould. It's not so much the track we're on, it's the shape we're in. And we've been looking at that from a different perspective. Each one of us has a body, a soul and a spirit. That's who we are and we saw, a couple of days ago that, for some people, well their body's are in such a mess with the wrong foods and not enough exercise and not enough sleep. It doesn't matter what else they do with their lives, they are going to be held back by their bodies. And yesterday we saw that our soul, that our mind, our will and emotions, sometimes we come alive with the disposition of the soul with an attitude that's just plain bad. And so it doesn't matter what else we try to do and change in our lives, we're still carrying around that baggage of bad attitude. Today I want to look at the third part of this complex puzzle that is our human make up – our spirit. Wow, there's more there. Body, soul, I get those two but, but what about the spirit? What does our spirit look like and what does our spirit have to do with their lives, lives we're living and the rut we're perhaps in? I tell you the truth, the notion that, in addition to a body and a soul, that you and I also have a spirit. That's the hardest one for me to come to grips with. I mean the cut and thrust and the busyness of life I can sure come to grips with a body. I can understand that. I can understand a soul. But a spirit? Well it kind of feels a bit esoteric or it's like an invention that some religions made up to justify its existence. Huh, doesn't it feel a bit that way sometimes? What is the human spirit? Where do I go for a definition? Well fortunately God gives us one. Very specific, it's in the Bible, it's in Proverbs, chapter 20, verse 27: The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord searching the innermost parts. Our spirit is the light of God. That word spirit is a Hebrew word, it's Ruach, it means "the Breathe of God". It's that breathe that God puts in us that's from Him. It's that identity that God puts in us that means that you and I are made in His image. The Breathe of God, the Light of God, that spark that lives and searches and dwells in our innermost being. It is the very essence of who you and I are, made in the image of God. You and I have a spirit that is breathed into us from God that shines in us with the light of God. The best way that I've ever come to understand this wonderful mystery is this: in our flesh, in fact in every cell, we have a unique identity, our DNA, the very stuff of life. And that DNA has elements about our fathers DNA and our mothers DNA. It is, in every respect, our unique physical identity. It makes us who we are. It impacts how we think and react and what we're good at and how we look at all those things. That's our physical DNA identity. And in the spiritual realm we have a spiritual identity. That's our spirit breathed into us by God Himself, "Formed by God" it says in Zechariah, chapter 12, verse 1. And the problem with most people on the planet is that they either deny their spirituality altogether or they hand it over to someone else or something else. Spirituality's a big thing. So many people and religions and belief systems and advertising companies talk about the human spirit but when we hand our spirit lives over to someone other than the Living God, we've sold ourselves to the devil. Unless and until my spirit and yours are united with the Spirit of God then we're no more than walking dead. Oh sure we live and breath and we do things, some good things, even some brilliant things but it's our body and our soul that's dominating everything and our spirit lies dormant and corrupted, almost dead within us. Yet each one of us is made in the image of God and yes, each one of us has a spirit but God knows that until our spirit encounters His, it lies dead within. It needs to be made new; it needs to be brought to life. A life that's eternal that begins here and now. Listen to how Ezekiel, the prophet, speaks to words of God about this very thing. Ezekiel, chapter 11, verse 19: I will give them one heart and put a new spirit within them. Ezekiel chapter 18, verse 31: Cast away from you all the transgressions that you have committed against me and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. Ezekiel chapter 36, verse 26: A new heart I will give you and a new spirit I will put within you. Three times He says the very same thing and Jesus picks up on ...
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  • A New Soul // A New Page, Part 3

    A New Soul // A New Page, Part 3
    Jan 7 2026
    It's funny how we embark on each new year with great expectations of new things – and yet, we never take a look at ourselves. Our attitudes. How we function on the inside. That never changes. So why would anything else change? Have you ever heard this? Dit dit dit, da da da, dit dit dit, you may recognise it, it's Morse code. Dit dit dit is an "s", da da da is an "o" and dit dit dit in an "s" again. SOS - Save Our Souls, Save Our Souls. It's the emergency distress signal when a plane or a ship or a submarine is going down. Save our souls, SOS. "Soul" is a word that's bantered around a lot these days. "This place doesn't have any soul", 'soul music' and in Christian circles, "soul" is a very common word but what exactly is our soul? I mean, what do you and I mean when we use the term 'soul'? It's one of those terms that we use a lot and yet we rarely stop to understand exactly what it is. The apostle Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians, 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 23, talks about us having a soul: May the God of peace Himself, sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and your soul and your body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. So, as you and I stand on the threshold of a new year, what's our soul? Is it worth saving? And what does it have to do with our lives and the quality of our lives? Over this week, we're looking at the rut that many of us get into. We have a tendency, this time of year, to think about life and we look at the rut and what we want to do is, we want to change our circumstances, we want to, kind of, run away from some things and ditch some things and improve some things and then our lives will be fine. Problem is that, for many of us, it's not the rut that we're in but the shape that we're in that's the problem. For many of us we're bent out of shape. We've been squeezed into the worlds mould and it doesn't fit so well and so life is uncomfortable and messy. I can run away wherever I like but until I get out of that mould, my life's not going to be transformed, I'm not going to have a new life, nothing's going to change. Yesterday we looked at our bodies. Today we're going to take a look at our souls. So what is our soul? What does God say it is? Well, the Greek word used in the New Testament for soul is actually a word that you and I are quite familiar with. It's the word "psyche". It's who we are and where we experience life. It is indeed the place of life, life itself. The best description I've ever heard is that our soul is our mind, our will and our emotions. It's where we think, where we decide and where we feel. That's our soul. It's that incredible place where we are human beings and it is in our souls that most of our problems in life occur. Yesterday I was talking about the body and the body's really important. The body's the place where the soul lives, it's the physical dimension and you can't separate the two. If my body isn't working properly, it's going to have an impact on my soul. Trauma in the body spills over into the soul. Hormones are the great link between body and soul, you can't separate the two. And if the body isn't being looked after properly then it is going to have a huge impact on our soul - our mind, our will and our emotions – one of the reasons that we really need to look after our body. But today, I want to talk specifically about our souls and the way that we tie ourselves up in a knots, the way we ruin our own lives because when we misuse and abuse our soul, that ends up ruining our lives. Let me explain it this way. If you and I don't look after our posture, the way we sit and stand, if we don't sit straight or walk properly then ultimately, we going to end up being permanently hunched over. If I slouch in front of my computer all day, I'll end up with a sore back and with headache and weakened muscles and it won't be long, another 10 or 15 years, and I'm just going to be living all my life all hunched over. In the same way, it's the same thing with the soul. If I'm constantly angry, unforgiving, proud, lazy, whatever it is, if I keep using my soul the wrong way, my mind, my will, my emotions, that soul is going to end up, well, hunched over, disabled in a sense. The best word I've ever come across to understand that disposition of our souls is our attitude to life. Some people have a great attitude, positive, optimistic, kind, forgiving and others are more like Uncle Scrooge – always angry, nasty, dishonest, always wanting their own way. See how a soul that's caught in that rut is going to ruin our lives? Some people are approaching their lives with a bad attitude; a soul that's hunched over, almost like it's cramped. A mind that's focused on self, a will that's brutal and won't yield and emotions that are all messed up. If I asked you to name three people in your life right now, who have a bad attitude, I bet you could do that in a split second, you just know who they are. And you know something...
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  • A New Body // A New Page, Part 2

    A New Body // A New Page, Part 2
    Jan 6 2026
    Sometimes we head off into the new year with great expectations – and yet, we just don't look after ourselves. Our body. What we eat. Exercise. Sleep. And so what happens, is that our bodies let us down. One of the things that I notice from time to time is how easy it is to over spiritualise things. There seems to be two opposite ends of the spectrum, two extremes if you like. Over spiritualising and under spiritualising. Some people go about their lives without any real sense of there being a spiritual dimension to things. But there is, it's powerful, it is God's dimension and the devil's dimension too, let's not forget that. We deny the spiritual dimension at our peril. The other extreme though, is to over spiritualise. I've seen that a lot of in my life too. People, who wonderfully, passionately believe in God and yet, they kind of use that as a haven to ignore the physical realities of their lives. For instance, I've visited a lot of Churches over the years and one of the things that I've almost never heard is a sermon on how to look after your body. Truly, people are going through tough times and so they pray and they believe and they pray and they believe and all the time, they're 30 or 40 pounds overweight. Not exercising, not sleeping properly and wondering why their emotions are on some roller coaster ride. Well let's have a little bit of a poke around and have a look at that today, on the program. This week is kind of the start of a new year. It's a great time to have a look at what it means to turn a new page in our lives. So many people are in a rut and what we want to do is, when we're in a rut, we want to change our circumstances when all along, the problem isn't the rut that we're in, it's the mould that we're in. It's not the path that we're travelling, it's the shape that we're in. The apostle Paul knew that. He wrote in Romans, chapter 12, beginning at verse 2: Don't be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the good and perfect and acceptable will of God. In other words, don't let the world squeeze you into its mould. Break the mould, get out of it. Let God renew your heart and your mind so that you can figure out what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God for your life. And see, we are complex people, we're physical, we're emotional, we're spiritual. That's what Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians, chapter 5, verse 23: May the God of peace Himself, sanctify you entirely and may your spirit and your soul and your body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Spirit. Soul. Body. Today I want to have a look at the body. See, many people get touchy about the body. I used to get touchy about my body when I was hugely overweight. See, we live in a society that says you're only beautiful if you're trim, taught and terrific, especially women, right? And then, on the other hand, you have these TV programs and the ads on TV and they say, "Oh look, hang all that, eat whatever you want, drink whatever you want, you're beautiful whoever you are. It's okay to eat anything, it's okay to be overweight" … and on it goes. Let me be really blunt. The body makes a huge difference to how much we enjoy our lives. Our body's important, not because of what other people think, not to measure up to their images of beauty and success, that's not important, let's not even go there. Now, I am who I am. I can't grow any taller, I can't change my face, you know what I mean? This is the wrapping that God gave me but you know something else, this body of mine and this body of yours, our body's a temple and I don't mean that in some "new agey, swami" kind of way. Have a listen to what God has to say about our bodies in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 19: Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you which you have from God and that you are not your own. See, the person who says, "Yeah, I believe in Jesus" – this is what happens. The Spirit of God comes to dwell in us, in my body. I have the very Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, dwelling in me and if you believe in Jesus, so do you. Now if I knew that the Son of God, Jesus, was coming to my place tonight, to have dinner, to visit, you know what, my hunch is I'd make sure the place was clean and tidy, not a mess, don't you think? So why is it that we can believe in Jesus, believe that the Holy Spirit dwells in us and yet, we keep the place a mess? See, our body is a complex, intricate machine. All the studies on robotics and computers, they haven't come anywhere close to the mechanical and cognitive abilities of human beings. Let alone intelligence and emotion and intuition, all those other uniquely human qualities. And sure we're complex but actually, the body's a very simple thing to look after. We only need three things, the right food, a moderate amount of exercise and a good night's sleep most nights. Now Berni, as I was ...
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