Each minute that slips by is one less minute that you and I have to live on this earth. In fact life slips by with each tick of the clock. How we spend this precious time has everything to do with the sort of life we will have ended up living when it all comes to an end. So how are you spending your time?

When we were young children most of us didn’t think too much about dying. We pretty much have this mindset that we’re going to live forever here on this earth. I mean just think back, when you were a child did you ever think about dying?

Of course some people do. I have a dear friend who grew up in a war zone and was chased by rebel fighters through a jungle as they tried to forcibly conscript him to take up arms at the age of eight and nine. So some people I guess do think about dying young or perhaps a child with the life threatening disease but most of us as children simply aren’t wired to think about dying.

And even as teenagers and young adults we pretty much think we’re bullet proof and we’re going to live forever. One of the reasons that males under twenty five have more car accidents than any other age demographic is because they think they’re invincible.

But as time slips by our own children come and then they go and before you know it the grey hair starts appearing and then what really surprised me was the body just doesn’t work quite as well as it used to. At first I was shocked, then I was annoyed and then this sense of my own mortality crept in.

At some point the stark reality that our life here on this earth isn’t infinite becomes real in our hearts and in our consciousness and that my friend is a sobering realisation. Perhaps you’re at that point, maybe you’re way beyond it or maybe not.

I have a dear friend Phyllis at our Church, she’s ninety-nine years old as we go to air and as sharp and as witty as she is she’s at the point in her heart and her mind where she’s actually ready to cross over to the other side.

So when you and I get to Phyllis’s stage in life, if not perhaps her age but at that point when we know that the end isn’t far off, how will we look back on our lives? Come on, how will you look back on your life? And just as importantly how will others look back on your life? A life well lived, a life full of impact, a life with purpose, a worthwhile life or maybe not so much.

I remember being confronted by those questions when I read a book in my mid thirties called, ‘The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People’ by Steven Covey; a business best seller. One of the habits, the second one in fact, is to begin with the end in mind. In other words, to set your life on a course that gets you to where you want to head.

He begins the chapter by taking you to a funeral, your funeral; as though you have a chance to listen to what other people will say about you when you’re gone. And the question he asks the reader, me as I was reading it is this, will the people say about you the sorts of things that you really like them to say or not?

And that right there is an incredibly confronting question because it speaks directly about the gap, small or large, between the sort of life you’d really like to be living and the one you’re actually living. Are you really living the sort of life that you’d like to be living? Is it having the results, the impact, the outcomes that you’d really like to be having or not?

Because if it’s not then the only way it’s going to change is if you change. The only way that your report card at the end of the day is going to be different is if the attitudes, the desires, the motivations and ultimately the things you say and do become different.

And with life slipping away with each tick of the clock my friend, do you really have time to waste? It was that very question that brought me to a complete turning point in my life at age thirty six because I decided there was a huge gap between what I wanted my life to add up to at the end of the day and what it was going to add up to if I kept heading in the same direction.

I was living my life, by and large, for me, me and me and that, as it turns out, is no way to get the results that I was looking for because the results I was looking for from people who would stand up at my funeral were about the positive impact I’d had on their life’s journey.

Some might call that a mid life crisis, I don’t know but at some point we each need to ask ourselves whether our lives are headed in the right direction. So without putting too finer a point on it can I ask you quietly and gently and respectfully, is your life headed in the right direction?

Jesus once told this story about a man, Luke chapter 12 beginning at verse 16:

The land of this rich man produced abundantly and he thought to himself, ‘what should I do for I have no place to store my crops?’ And then he said, ‘I’ll do this, I’ll pull down all my barns and build bigger ones and there I will store all my grain and my goods and I will say to my soul, soul you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry.

But God said to him, ‘you fool, for this very night your life is being demanded of you and the things that you’ve prepared whose will they become?’ So it is with anyone who stores up treasures for themselves but is not rich towards God.

That story had a big impact on my life because I was that guy. I thought it was all about what I could build and what I could have. With no doubt we’ve all heard that saying, “you can’t take it with you” to which I would rather stupidly respond, “well you know if I can’t take it with me I’m just not going.” Yeah what that’s an option.

At some moment in time we are all going. We are all going to breathe out last breath. My heart will stop one day, your heart will stop one day and within just a few short minutes every cell in our bodies will be dead. If I have the opportunity to look back on my life in the weeks and the days and hours leading up to that event I decided that I’d like to be able to look back on a life with contentment, with satisfaction.

Okay every life has it’s mistakes and it’s regrets, yours does and mine does, things we wish we could unwind, things we wish we could have done differently but the greatest tragedy of all would be to get to the end, look back on it all with way more regret than satisfaction. The greatest tragedy of all would be a wasted life.

So is your life headed in the right direction and if not what are you doing about it? There’s something that the Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians in the New Testament that had a huge impact on my life. It was the thing that God used to start turning round my life. And just quietly it’s still turning around, it’s still a work in progress. None of us is there yet; at least I don’t feel that I am. Have a listen to these amazing words, Colossians chapter 3, verse 1 to 3:

So if you’ve been raised with Christ seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above not on the things that are on this earth for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ.

And then just a little bit further down in the same chapter verse 16:

Let the word of Christ dwell richly in you.

For me change didn’t happen, I mean real change, radical change, the sort of change that sets my life on the course that would give it the impact and the results that deep down I was secretly hoping for until my perspective changed. Once I stopped focusing on this life, what I could get out of it and lifted my gaze and set my mind on heavenly things that would last forever rather than the earthly things that satisfy me today but are as fleeting as the morning mist.

What I wanted changed, what I desired changed and then my life started heading in the right direction. Up until then I’d tried everything but the only thing that really worked was following Jesus Christ and setting my heart on Him.

If I died tonight would I be content with the life I’ve led? Well there are some things I’d still like to achieve but if the Lord God called my home tonight, if this is it, you know what, I’m content with the life that I’ve lived, can’t ask for much more than that can you?

Who’s the most important person in your life? If you’re a husband may I ask you, is your wife the single most important person to you on this planet? And if you’re a wife, is your husband the single most important person to you on this planet? Come on, really? And if not, why not?

Marriage is one of the most sublime and wondrous of all human institutions. Well it’s not entirely human, it goes a whole bunch higher than just us but I’ll get to that a bit later. The coming together of a man and a woman in a life long union, an emotional, spiritual, physical is just the most fantastic thing. Well at least it’s meant to be.

Sadly for all too many people, way too many people, the whole marriage thing ends up going horribly wrong. 99% of couples, when they’re standing there at the altar, or wherever, exchanging their wedding vows, pledging their lives to one another, well they don’t ever expect it all the head off the rails. They don’t ever imagine that divorce could happen to them; that domestic violence could happen to them; that infidelity and adultery could happen to them.

They can’t begin to comprehend a relationship that’s anything but romance, sweetness and light. And yet many of them will end up, if not separated physically through divorce then certainly separated and isolated from one another emotionally and spiritually.

What begins with a flurry of passion, for far too many, all too soon begins to fade into something’s that’s a little less satisfying. It goes from inexorably fantastic to good to something a little less than good to poor to terrible. And you look back on that and you think, hang on what happened? What went wrong? At what point did this thing head off the rails?

Over this last little while on the program we’ve been chatting our way through a series of messages that I’ve called, ‘The Art Of Living’. Just I guess having a bit of a poke around in your life and mine looking at the things that really matter. You and I have only one life to live here on this earth and I don’t know about you but me, I want to live the best life, the most fruitful life, the life that in a sense I was made to live the best way I can possibly do it.

Most people end up getting married, not all of course but the vast majority. The relationship between a man and a woman as husband and wife is meant to be the most special, the most important human relationship that we can have and yet so many things get in between that, so many things conspire in this world to tear the two apart that have been joined together.

I’m not someone who subscribes to the idea of a disposable marriage. I do not believe for one instant that separation or divorce is a valid lifestyle choice. Of course sometimes it’s inevitable. A woman married to a man who is a serial adulterer, I mean at the end of the day if he won’t mend his ways what choice is there? Or in the case of domestic violence and abuse but these days all too many people treat their marriage like a disposable lighter, the flames gone out, time to throw it away and get a new one.

So why does the flame go out? Well that’s easy because we each start putting something or someone else ahead of our wives or our husbands. Men are pretty good at putting work before their wives, absolutely we are and women are pretty good at putting their children before their husbands.

Now please there is no way that I’m saying our children and our jobs and a whole bunch of other things, friends, hobbies, all those other things of course are important, absolutely they are but the moment we put them ahead of our wife or our husband, the moment work becomes more important than my beautiful wife, that’s the moment that things start to head off the rails.

My beautiful wife was made to be my number one; I was made to be her number one. There’s a fabulous Book in the Old Testament of the Bible called the Song of Songs or sometimes it’s called the Song of Solomon written by a wise old king called Solomon.

It’s a love story, it’s a story about passion, the passion between a man and a woman, it’s quite steamy in parts and certainly not the sort of Book that I’d expect to find in, well you know, in the Bible but there it is in all it’s glory and because it’s there I can only surmise that the passionate love between one man and one woman is incredibly important to God and in fact He invented the idea and that’s why the Book is there.

And the secret to that passion is priority. Let me say it again, the secret to the passion is priority. Have a listen to this. This is what Solomon says about his beloved:

Like a lily among the thorns so is my beloved amongst the maidens. (Song of Songs 2:2)

And in the very next verse this is what she says about him:

As an apple tree among the trees of the wood so is my beloved among young men.

In other words even amongst the competition she is number one to him and he is number one to her. Not just by a little way but by a massive margin. It’s like the difference between a lily and a bunch of thorns.

Another time at some point in the future we’re going to talk a whole lot more about the love between a husband and a wife but at some point we all have to get real, at some point we have to be honest with ourselves about who or what we’re putting ahead of that one person who’s supposed to be our number one, our wife or our husband.

At some point I had to be honest with myself and tell myself that I was indeed putting my work ahead of my wife and once I had admitted that to myself I had to start making choices and decisions that reflected right priorities.

Our wedding anniversary is coming up soon and a very large Church asked me to speak at an important event, yep you guessed it on the night of our anniversary. Now it was a great opportunity for the ministry and it was the start of something new and I could come up with every reason under the sun why I should go and speak on that night and push our usual anniversary night, a romantic dinner out for two, to the following night.

But either my wife is my absolute number one or she isn’t. Come on, this is where the rubber hits the road, husbands is your wife your number one and wives is your husband your number one and if not why not? Because this is the single most important human relationship God will ever give you. What’s the matter with us?

When the religious leaders of His day challenged Jesus about divorce, which seemed to be sanctioned by God’s own law and what we now call the Old Testament, this is what Jesus said:

Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh so they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together let no one separate.

Sure He was talking about divorce but what we do when we put other things and other people before our once and for all soul mate is we are kicking off that process of separation. Isn’t that how it happens? And Jesus is telling us here “don’t do that, just don’t.”

I want to encourage you today to be honest with yourself about your priorities. Men if you’ve isolated yourself from your wife by immersing yourself in your work admit it to yourself, admit it to her, seek her forgiveness and live a new set of priorities that honour your beautiful wife as your number one.

And women if you’ve been putting your children before him, as admirable as that may seem, if you’ve been replacing the emotional bond that should be there between your man and you with a bond between you and your children, be honest. You’ll be a better mother if your husband is your best and closest friend than you can ever be without him being emotionally by your side.

If you and I have to live one life here on this earth and if we have a marriage partner given to us by God then making that a great friendship second only to our relationship with God is the best way I know how to live an utterly fantastic life. Do you think?

Being a parent is, I think, absolutely one of the most challenging things we can ever do. And in part that’s because there is always, always a generation gap between parents and their children. We always end up parenting in a world that’s profoundly different to the one in which we grew up. So how can we be good parents when someone’s moved the goal posts?

When I was growing up I remember feeling incredibly misunderstood by my parents. It’s not that they weren’t fantastic parents, they tried their very best and gave us all that they could, it’s just that they had ways of looking at the world that were different to mine.

Of course I didn’t entirely understand that at the time, I couldn’t quite of put it into those words but that was the reality. They came from a different culture and they grew up in a different era and surprise, surprise as though it was anything new under the sun, as a parent I’ve discovered the exact same thing albeit from a different perspective.

Bringing up children isn’t easy, that’s the truth, we love them, of course we love them but they’re different from us in so many ways. Firstly children by their very nature are immature, God gave them to loving parents because there has to be someone who loves through their immaturity and out through the other end of that.

They’re different, as I said, because they’re growing up in a different world with different priorities, different technology, different perspectives, different music and they’re different because their personalities are different to our own.

It never ceases to amaze me how children who are so closely related genetically and who grew up in the same environment can be so profoundly different and all those differences cause real tensions in families and on top of that part of growing is pushing the boundaries.

So if you have children in your life whether they be young or whether they maybe grown up how can you impact their lives in a positive way? How can you leave a legacy, a good legacy that lives on for generations to come through your children, their children and their children’s children?

That’s the power of a generational legacy; whether it be good or bad it will live on. Habits, behaviours, attitudes, faith, perspectives that we pick up in our formative years live on in us and we pass them onto our children and down they go through the generations.

It seems to me that being a fantastic parent is a blend of three things: love, discipline and our own behaviour as a role model. Without love we can’t be great parents. It’s a given that our children are going to make mistakes, they are going to fail us, they are going to dishonour us, they are going to be rude to us, they are going to do all sorts of things along the way, they just are, it’s part of growing up. Yet through all that the most important thing they need to know is that we love them. Unconditional parental love needs to be the bedrock beneath their feet.

Jesus once told a story, a parable of a son who left his father’s house, took his share of the inheritance, squandered it all on drinking and prostitutes the lot, completely dishonoured his father and yet when he fell on hard times he headed for home hoping to get a role as a servant rather than a son knowing he deserved little better.

But every day his father went out on the road to see whether his son might be coming home and when he did, listen to this, his father was filled with compassion. He ran, threw his arms around his son, kissed him, he called for the servants to bring out a robe, put a ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, he threw a party. That’s unconditional love.

Whenever our children fail, no matter how badly they fail, they need to know that we are their one safe haven in this world. But at the same time love involves discipline, it just does. A parent who doesn’t set boundaries and discipline their children isn’t making the emotional investment that the child needs to learn and to grow and to become a balanced mature adult.

God disciplines His children. Why? Because He loves us. Hebrews chapter 12:

And you have forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as children. ‘My child do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when he punishes you’. For the Lord disciplines those whom he loves and he chastises every child whom he accepts.

And the greatest way of all to teach our children is through our own example, our own high standards of love and sacrifice and integrity and reliability and kindness and gentleness. Often they won’t hear the things we say to them; instead they see what we do. And the way we live our lives is the single, strongest, most lasting influence that we will ever leave with them.

The Bible is replete with role models; the greatest of all is Jesus Himself. After learning from His earthly parents, Mary and Joseph, for a good thirty years, as a child and then as a young man in the workplace, He launched into His three and a half year public ministry and chose for Himself twelve disciples.

Jewish Rabbi’s had disciples, followers, that was the custom of the day. Jesus chose twelve. A disciple, that word literally means ‘to be a learner’ and these twelve men were by and large uneducated fishermen, tax collectors and the like yet they followed Jesus around for three and a half years and learned from His example.

They saw how He treated people, how He reacted in difficult situations, what He believed, what He said, what He did. He was their role model and this relationship between this Rabbi, Jesus, and His disciples has had a huge impact down through the generations.

In the same way our children learn from us, they learn our good traits and yes, they learn our bad traits. Who you and I are as parents, how we live our lives is going to have a massive impact on our children.

You and I, we only have one life to live here on this earth but in a very real sense when we’re gone we live on through our children. That’s true genetically as they carry our genetic imprint on down through the generations and its true emotionally and spiritually as they take on our character traits, our perspective on decency and honesty and kindness and humility. Or alternatively the terrible opposites of those things.

Do you want to live a fantastic life? Do you want to have a real impact in this world? Then take this whole parenting thing seriously. I mean incredibly seriously. Your children need your unconditional love. They need to know that they are unconditionally loved and no matter how badly they fail, that you will always protect them and accept them and love them.

They need your discipline. They need you to set boundaries to teach them to grow and they need an example from you that will equip them to live their lives and pass a great example on to their children. Being a parent is so important.

I always find it interesting in revealing Himself to us God comes up with this model of the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit; three persons in one; perfect love and community and yet one God.

You and I are made in His very image, we are in small, apart from our sin, what He is in the infinite and one of the ways He chooses to reveal Himself, come on, is as God the Father, God our parent, God the one who brought us into existence and who loves us the way a fantastic parent is meant to love their children.

And Jesus the Son honoured His Father by doing His Dad’s will. Jesus the Son had a close, intimate, personal relationship with His Dad. Interestingly the Jewish nation before Jesus would never have thought of calling God Father or even more familiar ‘Abba’ which literally means dad, which is how Jesus referred to Him.

And yet here we have it, the parent/child relationship is used by God as a tangible means of revealing Himself to us. He uses a relationship that we should know something about, the relationship between a father and a son to speak of the love He has for us.

Hey that should tell us something, that should tell us how important it is, this parent/child relationship in living our lives, it should tell us the powerful impact that we can have in this world by being a fantastic parent.

During a recent trip to India there was a profound difference between Indian culture and western culture that really hit me between the eyes. The Indians, as with many Asian cultures, are much more family and community orientated than perhaps we westerners are. Community is such a powerful thing and that’s something about which we westerners living in so-called ‘developed economies’ frankly have a lot to learn about.

In my line of work I get to talk with a lot of people, lots, especially people who are Christians and who are either part of a local Church or not. Now Christians sometimes get all high and mighty about who they are and what they believe, most of us has seen that. I’ve seen Christians look down their noses at people who don’t believe what they do, which is all pretty sad really because anyone who calls themselves a Christian is supposed to love others as much as they love themselves. That’s what Jesus said.

Now in the west in countries like Australia and the US and the UK there’s something that Christians and Churches, many of them, simply aren’t good at. That thing is community. As I said it really strikes me what a powerful, powerful impact family and community have in countries like India.

Interestingly one of the things I noticed a complete absence of was billboards with scantily dressed women advertising whatever they’re advertising. Something you see rather a lot of around where I live. So I asked on of my Indian colleagues about this, why is that? Is it cultural, is it religious? What? This is what he said to me:

No it’s not so much religious, it’s something we all agree on because family is so very important to us here in India. We see that sort of thing as undermining the family so we’re against it.

See this attitude of family and the Indians are so incredibly family orientated as a people, has the power to influence even the behaviour of the advertising industry. Just wow! In the west we think more as individuals. Individual freedoms, individual beliefs, individual rights, individual this and that. Now to a point it’s of course great to have individual freedoms but in the eastern cultures people think far more collectively, as families, as communities and that brings a strong component of mutual responsibility, mutual respect.

Take either of those two models, extreme individualism or extreme collectivism and that’s not a good thing but I guess the point I’m trying to get to is that if my life and your life is going to have a real impact, if we’re going to leave a lasting legacy then a part of who we are needs to be about serving a community.

I want to come back to the concept of Church and whilst a lot of good things happen there, I see so many people struggling to find even genuine connection and community belonging to a Church and that’s sad. Whatever you may believe, whatever faith or belief system you may ascribe to, come on community is incredibly important.

Have you ever wondered what community really is? Well it’s not the complete subjugation of the individual; we are all individuals. No two people look alike except maybe a very rare set of identical twins but even then no two people have the same abilities, skills, experience, outlooks. Each one of us is unique and yet uniqueness was never meant to mean isolation, which is what individualism leads to for many.

Do you see the kind of paradox that emerges here? We’re created to be an individual and yet not in isolation, in community and community doesn’t work if it doesn’t accept, love and value the uniqueness of each individual in it. That doesn’t mean we have to say look everything that someone else does or says or believes or thinks is right, clearly there are times when in community people do do the wrong thing and that’s where community brings a sense of mutual obligation into play.

Can I ask you something? What part do you play in your community? How do you contribute to your community? Do other people benefit from your uniqueness in a relationship of genuine family and community? Because if not then I don’t believe you’re living the life you were made to live.

None of us was ever made to live in isolation yet I see so many people, maybe bruised or hurt or injured by others, withdrawing into their shells kind of like a hermit crab as though that’s the solution to anything. Community is laughing and crying together. Community is sharing the ups and the downs. Community is serving each other and benefiting from each other and benefiting from serving one another.

The most beautiful picture I’ve ever come across of this community thing is a picture I find in the Bible, in the New Testament and it uses the metaphor of a body to represent community. Have a listen, 2 Corinthians chapter 12, beginning at verse 15:

If the foot would say because I’m not a hand I don’t belong to the body that wouldn’t make sense, that wouldn’t make it any less a part of the body and if the ear was to say, because I’m not an eye I don’t belong to the body that wouldn’t make it any less a part of the body.

If the whole body were an eye where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing where would the sense of smell be? But as it is God arranged the members of the body, each one of them as he chose. If all were a single member where would the body be? But as it is there are many members yet one body.

The eye can’t say to the hand, I don’t need you nor again the head to the feet, I don’t need you. On the contrary the members of the body that seem to be weaker are in fact indispensable and those members of the body that we think less honourable, we clothe with greater honour and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect whereas our more respectable members don’t need any of this.

But God has so arranged the body, giving greater honour to the inferior members that there maybe no dissension within the body but the members may have the same care for one another because if one member suffers all suffer together with it, if one member is honoured then all should rejoice together with it.

Beautiful picture. Can I ask you? What part are you playing in your community, your local neighbourhood, maybe your block of apartments? Do you serve the person in need next door? Do you use your skills as an accountant to manage the finances of the apartment block where you live? Anyone who wants to have an impact in this world needs to be part of their community, serving it and benefiting from it.

The problem is that too often we’re too busy worrying about ourselves. Too often we’re too concerned about who’s on top, who’s got the best reputation, who’s going to get the accolades, the most money, the nicest house, the most well adjusted children, you know all that stuff.

Greatness isn’t about winning it’s about losing. Being first is really about being the last. That’s what Jesus said. In setting straight the religious leaders of His day who for the most part were hypocrites, who manipulated common people in the name of God and religion, this is what Jesus said, Matthew chapter 23 beginning at verse 11:

The greatest among you will be a servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted.

Do you want to live a life of impact? Do you want to live a life that will have people remembering you when you’re gone with fondness, with a sense of gratitude for the impact you had in their lives? Then it is time to focus on your community.

How could you serve? How can you make a difference? Is there sacrifice involved? Yeah of course there is but at the end of the day there’s nothing so satisfying as using the unique gifts that you’ve been given to serve others even when that serving is hard. That’s what community is.

God made us not as loners, not as hermit crabs to live our life in isolation, He made us to be social beings and community creatures and if perhaps you’re one of those people who’s forgotten what community is, whether in a Church setting or frankly in any other setting, maybe today’s the day to rethink that, maybe today’s the day to engage, to become part of, to serve, to sacrifice for your community.

The 9th of November 1989 is a significant day in history. One of the most significant in my lifetime and one that I’ll never forget. It’s the day that the Berlin Wall, erected by the Communists, started to come down after almost 30 years of dividing a nation, dividing a community and dividing many families. But sadly many walls still remain.

This is our very last message in a series that we’ve had on the program called, ‘The Art Of Living’. There were so many ways that I could have finished this series off but there’s one thing that I see time and time again that so robs people of a life of impact and a life of joy and so that’s what we’re going to chat about on the program today.

That picture of the Berlin Wall is a powerful one. Germany, you may recall, after World War 2 was separated into east and west by the allies. The majority of the country, which had been under control of the Americans the British and the French, evolved into an open democracy.

The East however, which had been occupied by the Soviets, became a closed nation annexed to the eastern block. The capital of Germany was Berlin and this was in the Soviet zone so as part of the arrangement Berlin itself was divided so the Soviets controlled part and the democratic government of West Germany controlled the other part.

The reasons for erecting the Wall to separate the two parts of Berlin are complex but they were largely driven by economics. The Soviet-controlled portion was not doing very well at all so people were flooding out of East Berlin to the west. Had the Soviets not erected the wall their quarter would have become a ghost town.

That wall was a terrible thing separating families: parents from their children, husbands from their wives. It was the brutal thing of division and suspicion. I wish we had the time to chat about the events that culminated in its destruction in 1989 because that was a fascinating time in history.

Walls are always damaging, sometimes they exist as a physical structure but most often they live in the hearts of people. We saw it for centuries in Northern Ireland where historically, peace is a relatively recent phenomenon. We’ve seen it for centuries in Israel. In many parts of Africa there are tribal, national and international wars that continue to rage. You see religious divisions you even see sometimes violence around sporting teams.

Somehow our capacity to divide people, to set one against the other, to live in suspicion and fear of one another is incredible. But it’s not the macro perspective that I’m so much interested in today, it’s the micro, the individual, the personal.

Many people live their lives with walls in their hearts, rejecting loved ones over all sorts of ridiculous things, being suspicious of people in the work place of their motives. Sometimes we build walls around our hearts for protection after being hurt. You see that a lot sadly in marriages where husband and wife have their own Berlin Wall running right through the middle of their relationship; a wall that together they built brick by brick over many years until finally they find themselves living on the other side of it.

Do you recognise any of that in your life? It’s just as destructive in our lives and relationships tearing us apart as the Berlin Wall was in tearing families apart. What walls do you have in your life? What unforgiveness, fears, suspicions are you carrying around in your heart? Because these are the things that rob us of life; these are the things that stunt our growth; that gives us an outlook on life that just ruins everything.

I want to share with you today, as you look forward to the rest of your life, how you can tear down the walls in your life brick by brick. The Germans tore that wall down with their bare hands, this wall that had limited them for too long, and what followed was a united single Germany.

And in a very real sense that’s what I’m talking about here, tearing down the walls that divide us by hand, brick by brick. I don’t care what you believe, what you don’t believe, there’s really only one way to do this and that’s through forgiveness and reconciliation, not through religion. This is how Jesus put it, Matthew chapter 5 beginning at verse 23:

So when you’re offering a gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you leave your gift there before the altar and go first to be reconciled with your brother or sister and then come and offer your gift to God.

He’s talking about people putting reconciliation before sacrifice to God. He’s saying here, “look you can’t have a right relationship with God when you’ve got an argument going on with someone else. First go and be reconciled with that person then come and make your peace with God.”

As I said I don’t care what faith you belong to, what belief or set of values you have in your life, we all need to deal with these issues. Just picture that mighty Berlin Wall that divided families and communities for such a long time. The change happened when the mood of the people swelled up, enough of this division, enough of this separation, enough.

I remember at the time on television seeing people tearing that mighty wall apart literally with their bare hands, that would have been hard work, that would have been painful, that would have left some hands bruised and bloody but they tore down the wall.

Who are the people on the other side of your walls? Maybe it’s a family member, a mother, a child that you haven’t spoken to for years. Perhaps it’s a wife or a husband whom you’ve isolated, who knows? Perhaps it’s someone in your community who believes something different or lives differently to you.

I’m not saying that anything goes. I’m not saying that we have to say that wrong is right, just that it’s time to forgive, just that it’s time to lay aside the fears and the prejudices and the anger and the animosity and all that stuff that tears us apart.

Listen to me, love is always better than anger, forgiveness is always better than unforgiveness. If you and I want to live the life we’ve been made to live love is the answer, tearing down the walls is the answer, laying aside old angers and animosities and divisions is the answer, forgiving people is the answer.

What walls need tearing down in your life? What walls are limiting you and stunting you and robbing you of relationships and life? It’s time to tear down the walls. It’s time to forgive and get on with life.

Now I’m not talking here about something that’s usually complicated, it’s simple. I love the way the Apostle Paul puts it in his letter to the Ephesian Church, chapter 4, verse 32:

Be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

There’s the key, if you believe in Jesus God has forgiven you just as He’s forgiven me everything. He did that at a huge cost, the torture and the brutal death of Jesus His Son.

When we carry around unforgiveness it eats away at us like a cancer; it rots the soul; it robs us of an outlook on life that could be so full of anticipation of what the future holds. Do you believe in God? Do you believe in Jesus? Do you want to live the life that He always intended for you to live? Then my friend unforgiveness isn’t an option. Let me say that again unforgiveness is not an optional extra to our relationship with God, it’s a vital element. Mark chapter 11, verse 25:

Jesus said, ‘whenever you stand praying forgive if you have anything against anyone so that your father also who is in heaven will forgive you your trespasses.

Colossians chapter 3, verse 12 and 13:

Put on then as Gods chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, neatness, patience, bearing with one another and if anyone has a complaint against another forgiving each other just as the Lord has forgiven you, you also must forgive.

The list of those Bible references go on, trust me. As hard as it may appear forgiving those who’ve wronged you is the most powerful thing that you can do to get a fresh beginning in your life. What walls is God calling you to tear down in your life?