Here we are, we’ve literally just stepped over the threshold of the New Year. And the question for many of us is this: Is this year going to continue to be the same as last year which was pretty much the same as the one before that and even the one before that? Or am I going to make some changes and get some things happening just a little bit better in my life?

Round and Round and Round

You see them less and less these days but one of my favourite things when I was a young boy was riding the merry-go-round. There was just something so special, so magical about these brightly coloured red and yellow contraptions with horses and elephants and sometimes even kangaroo’s on them that went up and down and round and round. And then there was the music to top it all off and the sheer excitement of the prospect of riding a merry-go-round was something that would set me aquiver.

Every now and then my parents acquiesced to my pleas and spent a few pennies to let me have a ride. Wow, that was something incredibly special. And on I’d hop and go round and round and up and down only to come off the ride feeling slightly nauseous as a result of the experience but totally delighted to have been on the ride.

So when the Mary Poppins movie was released when I was just five years old, you can imagine how I felt about the merry-go-round scene when the horses they were riding on the merry-go-round broke away and started heading off over hill and dale. Totally, totally magical to the eyes and the heart of a little boy.

Now that was over half a century ago and yet I can still remember the feeling of the rapture at experiencing the wonder of the merry-go-round. I wonder how many oldies like me who are tuning in today and you’re totally getting this. It’s bringing back some incredibly fond memories of your childhood.

Well today, we’re kicking off a new series of messages called Why Not Jump Off The Merry-Go-Round because the sad thing is that many people’s lives are a bit like constantly living on a merry-go-round. They’re going up and down and round and round so this perception that something is happening, they’re going forward each day. But when they wake up the next morning they find themselves back in the same place again because they haven’t been going forward at all. They’ve been going round and round and round and round day after day.

And just as a single ride on a merry-go-round can make you feel, well, a little nauseous, imagine how you’d feel if you were stuck on that merry-go-round for several hours because it just wouldn’t stop and you couldn’t get off. It would make you feel positively sick, wouldn’t it? Round and round and round and round, always returning to the same place.

Life was never meant to be a merry-go-round. Like the riders in the Mary Poppins movie we’re meant to break out and ride over new territory and meet new people, win new hearts, experience new things. Might we just take a look at your life at the moment … how much of it is a merry-go-round where you end up back in the same place again each morning? What things in your life would you like to change?

Another way of coming to this whole thing is to say that our lives are stuck in a rut – it’s the same thing over and over again. We can experience this in all different parts of our lives, ‘Oh my marriage is stuck in a rut, my career seems to have stalled, I’m going up and down and round and round but I’m just not moving forward. My Church life is stuck in a rut or I feel like we eat the same food every night. I live in the same place, I go to work in the same place, I do the same things on the weekends with the same people.’ Is this how the rest of my life is going to play itself out?

These are the sorts of things that we think about when we feel entirely helpless to stop the merry-go-round and hop off it and end up heading in a different direction. It seems that someone else or something else is controlling the merry-go-round. We have no control so we just keep on going up and down and round and round.

Have a listen to this. It’s a lament from a great king of Israel after living a life of great wealth and great excitement, the most amazing life, if you will, of power and riches. He was a man of great wisdom and eventually though he came to this conclusion. Ecclesiastes 1: 2-11

‘Meaningless, meaningless,’ he cried, ‘utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless’. What does a man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and to the north, round and round it goes ever returning on its course.

All streams flow into the sea yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from there they return. All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun.

Is there anything of which anyone can say, ‘Look, there’s something new’? It was here already long before. It was here before our time. There is no remembrance of men of old and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

Isn’t that the pessimistic conclusion we can so often come to? It feels as though we’re going round and round and up and down over and over again in the same place. And after about a thousand times of doing this none of it seems to have any meaning – it seems empty, it seems hollow.

There’s not one of us who hasn’t been there and I know that many people are there today. But I want to hit you up with some really good news today, you’re not powerless at all because the God I read about in the Bible is not stuck in a rut – no way! He’s a God of new beginnings.

Have a listen to these Words from God through the Prophet Isaiah, chapter 43: 18 – 22. These Words are to you and me. God says:

Don’t remember the former things or consider the things of old because I’m about to do a new thing, now it springs forth, do you perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, the wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.

And that’s what we’re going to be talking about over this next couple of weeks on the program because your God has a stunning life plan for you. Make no mistake about it – an absolutely stunning life.

Your Own, Personal Merry-go-Round

Each of us has our own personal merry-go-round. That part of our life where we just don’t feel as though we’re moving forward the way we should. That part of our life that seems to be so vacuous, so meaningless, so stagnant and that part of our life is the very part that we feel as though we have no control over.

So my question for you today is, what part of your life feels like that? What part of your life is your personal merry-go-round that you just seem completely incapable of stopping so you can get off?

Is it maybe your marriage? Many people after having kids and investing in them and slogging away at a career, feel as though their marriage seems to have evaporated. Where’s the love we both used to feel? Where’s the tenderness, the fun, the capriciousness, the intimacy? Is it just going to go on this way until death the two of us doth part? For many, their marriage is a source of great disappointment, round and round the same issues, the same tensions, the same … everything.

Or is it singleness? Some people (not all, mind you), singleness is a perfectly valid and wonderful state for many people but some are sick and tired of the prospect of being single for the rest of their lives but they just don’t see any prospect of meeting the right person to spend the rest of their life with.

Here’s the great paradox, both a marriage and singleness can feel like a silent invisible prison. You know that’s true. And the same job at different times can either be an absolute delight or feel like a millstone around your neck. Can I ask you today, what’s your millstone? What’s the merry-go-round that you seemed to be trapped on? Is it perhaps a relationship that you feel trapped in?

I had coffee with a man just the other day who’s heavily involved in his local Church in a leadership capacity. He said to me, ‘You know Berni, I’m going away for a few days this weekend just to get away from the people at my Church. It’s sad I know but that’s how I feel, that’s just how it is at the moment.’ Now I give him points for that because the man was prepared to admit that here was some relationships in his life that were getting him down, I mean really down. And at least, he was prepared just to insert a bit of a circuit breaker to give himself some space.

There are times and seasons in our lives where there is just this one situation, this one relationship or this one part of our lives that seems to be going round and round, up and down but actually heading nowhere.

And when you’re in that place, the thing that you most often do is to just ignore it and continue to live with it through the stress and the pain of it all, round and round, up and down, over and over. And it gets worse and worse and worse. You just keep on going everyday with it as though somehow things are going to get better but they just don’t.

The key to kicking off this ‘getting better’ thing is admitting you have problem. Like the man who took the break, looking at it and naming it and saying to yourself, ‘You know, this one part of my life, whatever it happens to be for you, isn’t going the way I want it to be going.’

Have a listen to these amazing words of wisdom from Gods Word the Bible. He says:

Come O children listen to me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Which of you desires life and covets many days to enjoy good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it. (Psalm 34: 11-14)

Now, on the surface of things that doesn’t seem to relate too much to what we’ve been talking about but actually it has a lot. In fact, it has everything to do with what we’ve been talking about. The opposite to that feeling of being strapped to the merry-go-round going round and round, up and down, over and over is the feeling of peace. It’s the feeling that you’re in the right place, that things are going as they should be.

Now our circumstances don’t always allow us to experience that sense of peace but the Bible tells us, God tells us, that we should what? Seek peace and pursue it. In other words, don’t just sit there on the merry-go-round like some victim and let this thing, whatever your thing is, keep on happening to you but take a proactive step to seek out God’s peace and to pursue it.

And you and I both know that what that’s talking about is taking responsibility for our situation. Naming the problem, the issue and taking ownership of it in our lives. And there are few verses before that thing on seeking peace and pursuing it clearly points out, sometimes the merry-go-round we’re on, the prison we’re in is about our own attitudes and behaviours.

Do you desire life? Do you covet many days to enjoy it? Do you want peace? Then the place to start is with that thing that’s ailing you. And there’s every chance, at least a fifty-fifty chance (probably more), that a great part of what’s ailing you is the sin in your own life.

That’s often the hardest thing to accept because we don’t want to admit that we’ve been in the wrong. We don’t want to admit that we might be the cause of the problem, at least in part.

In a marriage, it takes two to tango, right? In our relationships with other people (like that man with his Church) there are often issues on both sides. In our jobs sometimes we run into difficult situations sure but then our attitudes harden and we inflame them and that makes things even worse.

Question: What part of your life feels like that and what exactly are you going to do about it?

How to get off the Merry-go-Round

Before the break, we were talking about the fact that often the situations or the relationships that we feel trapped in aren’t just a result of people out there or circumstances and situations out there but a good percentage of the time, they originate with us, our bad behaviours, our stinking attitudes, our weaknesses and limitations, our this and that. Our … can I call it this, our sin?

Come on, let’s be honest. Let’s call it for what it is and when that difficult relationship or situation (be it at home, at work or in some other part of our lives), when that difficult situation has been going on for some time we lose our peace, we feel under stress and pressure. We basically find ourselves in a state that’s not good for us or for the people around us.

Caged animals often react very badly to their situation. In the old style zoo’s that were around when I was a kid, those animals, I remember looking at them and they always seemed to be, well, not what I’d imagined they’d look like in the wild. They looked sick to me. They looked unhappy to me and that’s because they were.

You and I, we’re not meant to live like caged animals either. Yet I know as we stand here having just stepped over the threshold of yet another year, there are so many people listening today who actually feel like a caged animal – trapped. Not a good place to be right?

See, intuitively we know that we’re meant to be free but freedom is an all too rare commodity these days.

I sit and chat with a lot of people and I can tell when someone has that gleam on their face, they feel free. And they have an innate sense of wellbeing and peace and joy in their hearts. But to tell you the truth, I don’t see that all too often. Most of the people I chat with show the signs of stress. They look to me much like those caged animals I saw in the old time zoo’s with the concrete enclosures that were nothing like the natural state that that animal would have lived in.

Are you relating to some of this? Are you sitting there thinking to yourself, ‘That guy is actually talking about me? I would never have admitted it to myself but now that I hear it, it’s true. I feel more like a caged animal than a free one’.

So if that’s you then the obvious question is, how do you get free? How do I get off this merry-go-round when it never seems to stop? What’s the key to my cage so I can get the blazes out of here? Well, I’ve only found one way and that way is Jesus.

Now to some that might sound trite, to others really corny but I’m absolutely serious. The only way that I have found to get off the merry-go-round of my circumstances and my sin is Jesus. This is what He once said, John chapter 8, verse 36:

So if the Son makes you free you’ll be free indeed.

I like that word at the end, indeed. What He’s saying is that if He makes us free then we’ll be truly free, really free, free once and for all and that, all of a sudden when you’re trapped in a relationship or a situation or whatever it is that has you feeling like a caged animal, that becomes a really attractive proposition doesn’t it?

What if Jesus actually does want to set you free? Really free, truly free – but does He? After all, there’s a big ‘if’ in that statement:

If the Son of man makes you free, you’ll be free indeed.

So does He, does He really want to set the likes of you and me free?

Here’s something else that Jesus said, it was right at the beginning of His public ministry. He was quoting the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah and applying what Isaiah had written all those centuries before to Himself as the Son of God who had come among men and women. He said”

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour. (Luke 4: 18-19)

In other words, God sent Jesus into this world to proclaim release to you and me, to open our eyes so that we can see clearly, to lift the oppression off us so that we can go free, to proclaim God’s favour over our lives. That was the very purpose for which Jesus came. That was the commission from God the Father upon the Son’s life here on this earth. That’s why Jesus did what He did. That’s why Jesus died on that cross for you and rose again for you and ascended to heaven for you, to make you really free indeed – really free, truly free, once and for all.

Imagine here you are going round and round, up and down for the umpteenth time on your own personal little merry-go-round, that thing that’s trapped you that you seem to have such little power over and all along Jesus came to set you free. You’ve been thinking, ‘I have to do something about this’ and you’ve been trying and trying and trying but try as you may, there you still are, still going round and round, up and down in the same place.

Listen to me … Jesus is the answer. He’s the only answer, He came to set you free, He came to break you out of that merry-go-round – YOU.

‘I believe in Jesus!’ I know that’s what at least some people are thinking right now, I believe in Jesus and I’m still on this rotten stinking merry-go-round.

And if that’s you, then let me ask you, ‘But have you taken Jesus at His Word?’ Do you look at Jesus and then cast your eyes down to your circumstances and then look up at Him again? And do you believe in your heart that Jesus is your personal Saviour, your personal answer? Do you believe that Jesus, the Son of God, is your Saviour? That He can and that He will set you free, well do you?

You see, for many people that’s the gap, that’s the disconnect, if you will. Many people believe in Jesus from a distance but they don’t get close enough to start believing that He came for them, to set them free. Others wish that He had come to set them free but somehow it’s not that easy to take that leap of faith. It seems like such a huge leap when actually it’s not, believing that He came for you.

Writing about how we live and behave and believe in the midst of great trials, James says this in the New Testament, James chapter 1: 5 – 7:

If any of you is lacking in wisdom just ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly and it will be given to you but ask in faith, never doubting for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind, for the doubter being double minded and unstable in every way must never expect to receive anything from the Lord.

See there’s your call. There’s the call of Jesus, for you to take the step of faith to actually trust Him. The doubter, the one who is of two minds must not expect to receive anything from the Lord. But get in there, cast your life into Jesus’ hands, completely, desperately, only to Jesus. And you, all of a sudden, discover that God is a generous God. He is a God who gives to all. Did you hear that? To ALL – generously and ungrudgingly.

The answer is Jesus. Jesus is your Saviour, yours.

Questions is, will you believe Him – believe Him, I mean with your very life?

 

 

So, you have this situation. It’s been going on for a while. It’s causing you some grief. But you feel powerless to change it. It’s as though you’re going around and around on this merry–go–round and ending up back in the same place each time. So what you really need is some power. I mean … real power!

Holy Spirit Power

Okay, so last week on the program, we chatted about getting of this wretched merry-go-round that many people are on. It’s a timely discussion too. Because so often at this time of the year, people have made new year’s resolutions and for most – almost 90% – give it another week after new year’s, and that new year’s resolution is broken.

I’ve thought a lot about this phenomenon of New Year’s resolutions. Most common one by far of course is, ‘I’m going to go on a diet’. In fact, here are the top ten New Year’s resolutions from last year according to the website Statistic Brain. Here they are:

(1) Lose weight,
(2) Get organised,
(3) Spend less, save more,
(4) Enjoy life to the fullest,
(5) Stay fit and healthy,
(6) Learn something exciting,
(7) Quit smoking,
(8) Help others with their dreams,
(9) Fall in love,
(10) Spend more time with my family.

They all sound pretty familiar, don’t they? I think there’s not a one of us who hasn’t resolved at least two or three or four of those at some point over New Years. In fact, I know there are many people who’ve resolved a few of those over and over again over many New Year’s and still nothing’s changed, right?

For me, over many of my almost six decades, it was always number one to lose weight, something I struggled with for decades until I finally slayed that dragon. But most people, to be honest, never slay their dragon. They don’t lose weight, they don’t get organised, they don’t spend less, they don’t enjoy life to the fullest, they don’t stay fit and healthy, they don’t learn something exciting, they don’t quit smoking, they don’t help others with their dreams, they don’t fall in love and they don’t spend more time with their family.

What it says to me is despite the best will in the world, despite all the obvious reasons why you want to lose weight or spend less or enjoy life or quit smoking, people seem powerless to change. And that truth flies completely in the face of all the advertising industry tells us that you can be slim and sexy and healthy and wealthy and wise if only you buy this particular product.

The facts speak for themselves, New Years resolutions, by and large, never work because people don’t have the power to change, full stop, end of story

I said to you yesterday that the only place that I have discovered that sort of power, the power to truly be free, is in Jesus. Again this is what He said, Luke 4: 18 to 19:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Jesus came to set us free. Release to those who are captives to their circumstances. Sight for the blind to see what God has in store for them and how to get there. Freedom for the oppressed and the favour of God on your life. Friend, that’s why Jesus came, that’s why Jesus is the answer.

The problem is that Jesus, well, He ain’t here anymore, He’s gone so maybe it was okay for those people back two thousand years ago to receive all those things, but what about you and me?

Well, notice what Jesus said right at the beginning of that statement as He quoted from the Old Testament Prophet Isaiah, He said, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and he has anointed me to do all these things’. At the same time that same Holy Spirit is available to you and me today if only we’d put our trust in Jesus.

That same Holy Spirit power is available to you today. That same Holy Spirit power to change, power to be transformed, power to grow, power to get rid of your sin, power to overcome. That power comes from the Holy Spirit and He is available to you today. His power is available to you today. Hallelujah!

Have a listen to this, the very last thing that Jesus says to His disciples before He ascends into heaven, Acts 1: 8 and 9. He says:

You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all of Judea and Somaria and even to the ends of the earth. When he’d said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight.

Come on, these were uneducated bumpkins He was talking to, not the religious elite from Jerusalem but fishermen and tax collectors and the like. And that power, that Holy Spirit power did come upon them just a few weeks later. And out of those eleven men, God raised up men of power who founded the Church and changed the world. And through whose work He is still changing the world today. Go figure! That’s the sort of power that’s available to you.

Do you believe in Jesus? Then you have the Holy Spirit and you have that power and you can be filled completely with the Holy Spirit and His power. All it requires is for you to yield your life to Him. Completely surrender your life to Him.

Here’s what we do, we hang onto things, bad things, we hang on to them so strong that they become strongholds in our lives. Listen to what the Apostle Paul wrote about those very strongholds in 2 Corinthians 10: 4 and 5. He said:

Look, the weapons of our warfare aren’t just human but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle raised up against the knowledge of God and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.

A stronghold isn’t something out there. Q stronghold, according to Paul, is something in the heart and the mind of the believer that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. But when we hand those strongholds over to Him, God’s weapons of warfare have divine power to destroy the strongholds.

So often we’re trapped by our own bad attitudes, our own blind spots, our own pride. And so we live out the consequences of those going round and round, up and down on that stupid stinking merry-go-round we’ve been on for years and our lives head nowhere. Trapped, powerless to change, hey powerless even to follow through on a crummy New Year’s resolution.

Do you want power? I mean do you want real power? Do you want Holy Spirit power? Then hand it all over to Jesus, the whole lot, your whole life and welcome the Holy Spirit in to fill you to overflowing with His presence and His power. Not by your own might, not by your own power but by the Spirit says the Lord.

Are you ready to do that? Do you want to do that right now? Well, why don’t you pray this prayer with me right now?

Father God, Your Word is true and You are right and I’ve heard Your Word today. I confess to You that I have some strongholds in my heart and in my mind. I have strongholds that I’ve been hanging on to and that I’m completely powerless to get rid of and so I’m living out the consequences of my sin and I feel completely trapped. I just can’t get off the merry-go-round – I’m stuck, I’m trapped and so I need You. So today, I hand my strongholds over to You. They’ve gripped me in their vice like hold, I can’t let go but I believe in Jesus. I believe Jesus that You sent Your Holy Spirit for me.

Dear Holy Spirit, please fill me. Not just a bit but a lot. Fill me to overflowing. Fill me with Your power. Fill me with your love. Be my power to change. Transform me radically, completely, whatever it may cost me. In Jesus mighty name, I pray. Amen.

Friend, if you prayed that prayer with me to be filled with the Holy Spirit get ready to have your life turned upside down. Get ready to be set free from your strongholds – this Jesus came to set you free.

The Mighty Word of God

Before the break, we were talking about the fact that by and large people seem powerless to change. Millions, perhaps even billions of people making New Year’s resolutions, year after year and ninety-nine percent of them end up failing within the first few weeks. Sensational! Depressing, isn’t it?

I knew I had to lose weight, each year I made a new year’s resolution that I’d go on a diet. Hey, I wanted to lose weight to look good and to feel better about myself. My health was suffering. My sleep was suffering. Everything was suffering. And still, I couldn’t lose it and keep it off.

Often, we have strongholds in our hearts and minds that set themselves up against the knowledge of God. And the only way to rid ourselves of those, as we prayed yesterday together, is to invite the Holy Spirit to fill us to overflowing with His power. What Jesus said to His disciples, Acts 1: 8 and 9.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

And that’s exactly what happened.

When the day of Pentecost had come they were all together in one place and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages as the Spirit gave them ability. (Acts 2: 1-4)

And these men, these hapless disciples who were uneducated, who had failed Jesus so many times, who had left Him alone to die, who had even denied Jesus. These are the men whom God used to proclaim the Good News of Jesus throughout the whole known world.

Through these men countless others came to faith in Jesus. In fact, Peter, the very one who had denied Jesus three times, Peter got up on that day and he preached to the very same people who had bayed for Jesus’ blood just a few weeks earlier, who had shouted, ‘Crucify Him’ and ‘we want Barabbas’. And this is what happened, Acts 2: 41 and 42.

So those who welcomed his message were baptised and that day about three thousand persons were added. They devoted themselves to the Apostle’s teaching and fellowship and to breaking bread and prayers.

That’s power but power my friend is not enough. I know that sounds crazy but it isn’t. We need wisdom and knowledge as well. We need to know how to step forward and live for Jesus. We need to know how to love, how to serve, how to stand for Jesus. The “what” isn’t enough. We need to know the “how” as well and know it in a way that’s real, know it in a way that we can work together with the power of the Holy Spirit rather than against Him. Wouldn’t you agree?

If you and I are stuck on our merry-go-rounds, up and down and round and round, in our sin, in our failures, in our circumstances, in those poison relationships that seem to entrap us, we need both the power and the wisdom to jump off that merry-go-round and into the life that God has planned for us.

And here the Holy Spirit has another role to play because it was through Him that the Word of God, the Bible, all sixty-six books of it, was written by different people over a couple of thousand years or so. And it’s through Him that God’s Word has been preserved down through the ages accurately and it’s through Him that the Word of God becomes a powerful reality in our hearts.

Listen here to the truth about His Spirit and His Word. Jesus said:

When the Spirit of truth comes he will guide you into all truth but he will not speak on his own but he will speak whatever he hears and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me because he will take what’s mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine, for this reason, I said he will take what is mine and declare it to you. (John 16: 13-15.)

I love how beautiful Jesus puts it here. The Holy Spirit, who has now come, who is available to each one of us who has put our trust in Jesus and Him alone, this Holy Spirit will guide us into God’s truth by speaking it into our hearts. And whatever belongs to Jesus, which is everything that God has, He will declare and impart to you and to me and that is all that God the Father has, everything, holding nothing back.

Think of the blessings, think of the wisdom, think of the incredible difference that the Holy Spirit is going to make in your life. And He does that through the Word of God, this thing that we call the Bible, this very living Word of the living God. Hebrews 4:12;

Indeed the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from Spirit, joints from marrow, it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

So the Bible isn’t some dead Book. It’s not just a bunch of printed words like any other book, it’s the Living Word of God – active, sharp, able to sort out the sheep from the goats in our lives, able to help us discern the intentions of our thoughts and of our hearts.

You want to change? Do you want to learn and grow? Do you want to be transformed? Then that’s exactly what you need because you have blind spots just like I do. We need this – the Word of God. For it is both the wisdom to change and because it comes to us through the Holy Spirit, it is the very power to change. 2 Timothy 3:16 and 17 says:

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

That’s why you and I need to get the Word of God into us constantly. So many people though, they have Bible’s at home that are just gathering dust, that are never opened. They even rock along to Church and listen, sort of, to the Sunday sermon. And by the time they’ve had their cup of coffee and walked out the Church doors they’ve even forgotten what’s been said.

Why is it that we trifle so with the Word of God when it’s the power to change us and transform us and to set us free from all the rubbish going on in our lives? Why do we do that?

God has a plan, He has a plan to pour His power into your life, to help you get off that stinking merry-go-round, to set you free, to fill you with power and with joy and faithfulness and love. But when we ignore His Word, when we trifle with His Word, when we don’t take Him seriously, then we are actively working against His purpose for our lives.

It’s as simple as that, pretty grim when you think about it. Have a listen to God’s plan for your life, to what He has already given you, 2 Peter 1: 3 and 4.

His divine power has given you everything you need for life and for Godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus, he has given you through these things his precious and very great promises so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in this world because of lust and maybe become participants of the divine nature.

The power is already given and with it, everything that you and I need for life and for Godliness. But we need to know Him and the way that we get to know Him, the way we get set free from all this stuff and lay hold of His promises is through what He says – His Word, the Bible.

Ignore that and you’re ignoring God, you’re closing your eyes and your ears to God. And that is why so many Jesus’ believers are stuck on their merry-go-round going round and round and up and down, headed precisely nowhere.

Bringing it all Together

I’m someone who for most of my adult life, always thought I was right. I always thought that when there was a problem, it was because the other person had a problem; because they were wrong, because they were behaving badly. It rarely, if ever, occurred to me that I could be part of the problem. It’s not that I was all that bad a person, it just didn’t occur to me that I was inflaming a situation, or that I was behaving badly and contributing to my woes.

And so that’s what kept me going around and around, up and down on my own personal merry-go-round. My life was headed nowhere, except maybe down the tube.

It wasn’t until I met Jesus somewhere along the way in my life and started learning more about myself that I began to realise that hey, I have issues, I have behaviours, I have stinking attitudes to address. And, allow me to let you in on a little secret, I still do. It’s a constant process of growing and learning.

And along that process, I’ve discovered that God’s Word and His Holy Spirit have such incredible power to disarm those attitudes and behaviours. In fact, they are the only real power to change that I have ever discovered in my life.

So whatever it is that’s robbing me of peace these days, whether it’s something that starts out there somewhere, or whether it’s something that starts inside me, or whether it’s a combination of both as it so often is, my plan – not always executed perfectly mind you – my plan is to invite God into that space. To get proactive and not accept the status quo. To believe that God wants to resolve issues, that He wants to bring peace; that He wants me to learn and to grow. That’s my plan.

So what’s yours? And the reason I ask that question is that I know God wants you to live a stunning life. A life with impact. A life that shines his light. A life of trials and sacrifices, and yet deep satisfaction.

I know that you may be thinking, ‘That stunning life, nah, couldn’t possibly be for me. No way. I’m in a rut, that’s it! My life’s on a merry–go–round and nobody is ever going to turn the stupid thing off’.

So often, we go looking to change our circumstances to make something new happen. To get out of the rut. To hop off the old merry-go-round. And yet, that’s more often than not, not the answer at all. Because more often than not, it’s what’s happening on the inside that gives us the feeling of monotony.

Let me leave you with this Scripture, 2 Corinthians 3:18. Have a listen:

And we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Remember – God has a stunning life planned for you. His power is here for you. All He needs you to do is to join hands with Him, through His Spirit and His Word.

 

These days, particularly in the affluent west, we’ve become so self-sufficient that narcissism has become the norm, der Rigour if you will. Over the last half a century, which is most of my lifetime, we’ve seen people en masse switching from looking after each other to looking after themselves, and that – that has some devastating effects on our sense of self, and our sense of wellbeing.

What Ails Us

Narcissism is a term most of us have heard of but a good many people don’t really know what it is other than it sounds a bit nasty. Well, as things turn out, it is a bit nasty, more than just a bit actually. A narcissist is someone who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves and particularly their own physical appearance. Psychologists will tell you that it’s characterised by extreme selfishness. The narcissist has a grandiose view of their own talents and a craving for admiration.

The word narcissist actually comes from the mythical Greek figure Narcissus – a handsome youth who rejected the nymph Echo and fell in-love with his own reflection in a pool. He pined away and was changed into a flower that these days bears his name.

A narcissist is someone who is obsessed with his or her own image, and so is constantly trying to become more beautiful, have more people like them, acquire more things, become more lavish in how they spend their money on themselves and their surroundings.

Now narcissism is nothing new. It’s been around for a long, long time, but by necessity, as you look back over history, it’s been confined to the wealthy class and there’s a good reason for that. When you think about it, if you’re living in a poor agrarian village where most people live hand to mouth as subsistence farmers, you can’t afford to be a narcissist. People rely on each other within families, within communities, simply to survive; and when you rely on each other, you know that in order to survive, you need to pitch in and help other people when they need help because if you don’t, they won’t pitch in and help you when you need help in order to survive.

But the moment you become wealthy it’s easy to start believing that you don’t really need those other people anymore because if you run into a problem your money will get you out of trouble. Now all of a sudden it’s much easier, even becomes more natural to be self-obsessed or narcissistic. And since in our world, many many more people are wealthy, not everywhere but in many parts of the world, there are by default many more narcissists in this world.

I was watching a documentary about animal behaviour the other day and the researcher being interviewed made the point that all animals are pleasure-seeking. Pleasure involves, basically, food and sex, that’s the animal drive. We were designed to eat lots of food when there was plenty in order to put on fat to carry us through the winters when there were meagre pickings.

We were designed with a sex drive which is pleasurable in order to ensure that as a species we would procreate, multiply, as God put it talking to Adam and Eve as it’s recorded in the Book of Genesis.

God created human kind in His image, in the image of God He created them, male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them ‘be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. (Genesis 1: 27 and 28)

And that’s all well and good but the natural tendency of humanity is to seek pleasure and to become obsessed with our own image rather than the image of our Creator. To forget Him, to get busy with making ourselves comfortable and popular and happy and wealthy and of good reputation – well liked. And so our natural tendency, therefore, is to sin. Sorry, if that word offends anybody but it’s the right word to use here. Our natural tendency is to sin, in the extreme that turns us into narcissists.

But here’s a paradoxical tragic dilemma – the narcissist can never be happy ever because satisfying yourself will never actually satisfy you. Why? Well, I think it’s probably because God designed us that way.

I know many narcissists because I happen to be blessed with being born in a very wealthy country by global standards. And I can tell you that none of them are satisfied, none of them. And if they were honest with you they’d tell you exactly that. They’d tell you they were never truly fulfilled or satisfied, that they feel as though they’re missing out on something even if they can’t quite put their finger on what that might be.

Can I ask you very kindly but very directly, have you fallen into the trap of narcissism? Of putting yourself at the centre of the universe because if you have you probably relate to what I’ve been talking about, you probably feel trapped like you’re on a merry-go-round going round and round and up and down but always ending up back in the same place wondering, ‘Why do I feel trapped?’

Well, the answer is quite simply this, it’s because when you put yourself at the centre of your world, it’s as though you’re tethered to a stake on the ground. You can never get away from yourself and so all you can do is go round and round and up and down.

So how do you finally break free? How do you finally get free of yourself? The answer is Jesus. The answer is the call of Jesus to live not for yourself but for Him and in living for Him to live for other people. Now that’s a radical change of direction because the whole point of following Jesus is that it’s nothing about yourself at all. Have a listen to what Jesus said. This comes from Matthew 16: 24 and 25:

Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If any of you would come after me let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me for whoever would save their life will lose it but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it’.

Do you see what a radical change in direction Jesus is talking about here? The picture of us taking up our cross and following Him is the picture of Him dragging that brutal cross of His up to Calvary and dying for us. It’s the picture of self-sacrifice. It’s the picture of self-denial. It’s the complete opposite of being trapped on the merry-go-round of narcissism. And self and paradoxically, it’s the only place that you and I will ever ever find the satisfaction that we’re looking for.

A Radical Turnaround

I’m pretty certain that the one thing more than anything else that keeps so many people on a constant merry-go-round of going round and round and up and down, as opposed to seeing their lives heading in a certain direction, is this whole thing of narcissism.

I like to think of narcissism as selfishness turned into an art form. This constant focus on self, how we look, how we feel, what other people think of us, our career’s and making sure we experience this and experience that is robbing so many people of the life that Jesus came to give them.

Anybody who’s listened to this program for any amount of time knows that one of my favourite passages of Scripture, I have quite a few, but this one is right up there is John chapter 10:10 where Jesus says to His disciples:

The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy but I have come that you may have life in all of its abundance.

And the original Greek word used there for abundance literally means ‘super abundance’, completely over the top abundance. God wants you through Jesus to live a super abundant life, a life of fulfilment, a life of satisfaction. You know that sort of exhausted satisfaction you can have on a Friday night when you’re completely washed out but it’s because you’ve had a fantastic week at work, that sort of satisfaction.

Pouring your life out and getting the returns and the rewards of living life to the full but the mistake that we make because as people for whom sin has been ingrained into our DNA we are all really natural narcissists at heart. The mistake we make is that we imagine that this abundant life is found by getting all the things we want but that’s not what Jesus meant when He said to His disciples:

Let anyone who is thirsty come after me and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’. Now He said this about the Spirit which believers in Him were to receive for as yet there was no Spirit because Jesus was not yet glorified. (John chapter 9: 37-39)

This is what the brilliant speaker and author SD Gordon had to say about this particular passage in his book, Quiet Talk on Power back in 1903. I’m sharing his words exactly with you because there’s no way that I could put it any better than him. Here’s what he wrote:

The heart of the sentence is in the last word ‘water’. Water is an essential of life, absence of water means suffering and sickness and dearth and death. Plenty of good water means life. All of the history of the world clusters around watercourses. Study the history of rivers and seashores and lake edges and you know the history of the earth.

Those men who heard Jesus speak would instinctively have thought of the Jordan, it was their river. Travellers say that no valley exceeded in beauty and fruitfulness than that valley of the Jordan made so by those swift waters. No hillside was so fair in their green beauty nor so wealthy in the heavy loads of fruit as those sloping down to the edge of that stream.

Now plainly Jesus is talking of something that may, through us, exert as decided an influence upon the lives of those we touch as water has exerted and still exerts on the history of the earth and as this Jordan did in that wonderful historic Palestine. Mark however the quantity of water, rivers, not just a Jordan merely, that would be enough but Jordan’s, a Jordan and a Nile and a Euphrates and a Yangtze Kiang and an Olga and a Rhine and a Seine and a Thames and a Hudson and a Ohio – rivers of living water.

Notice to the kind of water. Like this racing, turbulent, muddy Jordan? No, no. Rivers of living water, water of life, clear as crystal. You remember in Ezekiel’s vision in the Old Testament that the waters constantly increased in depth and that everywhere they went there was healing and abundant life and prosperity and beauty and food and a continual harvest the year round and all because of the water’s of the river. They were the veritable waters of life.

Now mark that little yet significant phrase ‘out of’, not ‘into’ but out of. All the difference in the lives in men lies in the difference between these two expressions. ‘Into’ is the world’s preposition. Every stream turns in and that results in a dead sea. Many a man’s life is simply the coast line of a dead sea. ‘Out of’ on the other hand are the Master’s words, His thought is of others. The stream must flow in and must flow through if it is to flow out but it is judged by its direction and Jesus would turn it outward.

There must be good connections upward and a clear channel inward but the objective point is outward towards the parched earth. Before it can flow out it must fill up, an outflow in this case means an overflow. There must be a flooding inside before there can be a flowing out and let the fact be carefully marked that it is only the overflow from the fullness within our lives that brings refreshing to anyone else.

A man praying at a conference in England for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit said, ‘O Lord we can’t hold much but we can overflow lots’. That is exactly the Master’s thought, ‘Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’

Isn’t that beautiful? And that’s the turnaround we each need to have if we’re to discover the deep contentment and satisfaction of living the life that Jesus came to give us, that super abundant life. It’s the one hundred and eighty degree turnaround from ‘into‘ to ‘out of’.

Into is the world’s idea and as such it will only result in a life that’s much like a dead sea. Out of, now that’s God’s idea. It’s the idea that He wants to fill us to overflowing with His Spirit so that He can not only bless us on the way through but flow out of us with such utter abundance that we can’t begin to imagine. Into is what the narcissist is looking for, out of is what the Christ follower should be looking for.

Will that cost us something? Yeah sure it will, actually it will cost us everything but in losing everything and giving up our very lives for Jesus we will gain the thing that we’ve been looking for all our lives. My prayer for you is that the wondrous picture painted there by SD Gordon will stick with you for the rest of your life and as you ask yourself, ‘Do I want into or out of in my life?’ The Holy Spirit will guide you to the out of that will bring the super abundance that Jesus promised you.

Cause and Effect

How do you want to spend the rest of your life? Going round and round and up and down on the same old merry-go-round or getting out there and living the life that God’s given you to the absolute full. So that when you get to the end of it, you’ll be able to look back on it with a deep sense of satisfaction.

Even though we seem, at times, to be living in a crazy mixed up world where things can be so incredibly unpredictable, it’s also true that there are many, many predictable patterns in life that follow the old ‘cause and effect‘ model. I know that’s hard to swallow at times, we’ve all had days where things started off just fine and then went absolutely crazy and ballistic and you’re left wondering, ‘What else could go wrong today?’

I recently had my credit card scammed and stolen while I was overseas. Okay, the bank reimbursed me the money because I reported it straight away and it was a grating inconvenience, I always carry a spare. But when I get home I had to start interacting with my bank to have it replaced. Well, the first phone call to the call centre was just horrible. Then the next thing that happened is our Christianityworks website went down and I spent a few hours online talking to the support people at our internet service provider. It was a hardware failure.

I SMS my wife in all of these and I told her of the troubles and I finished it off with, ‘I wonder what else can go wrong?’ Well, just two minutes later I knocked over the teacup on my desk and it drenched a whole bunch of important papers – there you go, there was my answer.

We’ve all had days like that where it just seems to be one nasty surprise after the other. Let me say that tends to be more the exception rather than the rule.

Those things keep life interesting amidst the humdrum and boredom of cause and effect, the predictable stuff. Do this and that happens, love your wife or husband and most of the time they’ll return that love. Okay, not always perfectly but in the main, you keep on doing the right things in a relationship and it works out. Eat the right things and your weight stays under control, don’t eat the right things and you end up overweight, unhealthy and downright sick with probably a shortened life expectancy. Work hard at your job and you should do okay in the long run, not always (mind you) because invariably there are some nasty surprises along the way but most of the time it’s cause and effect. You get the drift?

Well, over the course of this week, we’ve been chatting about this small difference of ‘into‘ and ‘out of‘. The idea that we can either live our lives expecting all the blessings and all the good things that God has and life has for us, to flow into our lives making ourselves the centre of the universe. But if we live our lives like that, a body of water with all the rivers flowing inwards and none flowing outwards, our lives just become a dead sea.

That’s the life of a narcissist. That’s why someone who’s self-obsessed can never be contented and fulfilled no matter how much stuff they pour into their lives.

Or we can have the ‘out of’ mindset. The mindset that says, ‘Well look, the reason God wants to pour Himself into me, the reason God blesses me with all these blessings that He blesses me with is not just to bless me. It’s so that His Spirit and His blessings can flow out through me into the lives of the people around me just like Jesus said, John 9: 37-39.

Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink. As the Scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water’. Now he said this about the Spirit which believers in him were to receive for as yet there was no Spirit because Jesus was not yet glorified.

It’s this cause and effect that I want to focus on today because I have lived my life both ways. As a narcissist with the ‘into’ mindset of everything flowing in and as a Christ follower, an imperfect one (of course) but nevertheless with my heart set on following hard after Jesus with that ‘out of‘ mentality.

Remember ‘into‘ and ‘out of‘ are the complete opposites. They’re diametrically one hundred and eighty degrees opposed to one another. As I said, I’ve experience both so let me share with you the cause and the effect, the outcomes of each of those two options.

The life of the ‘into‘ narcissistic person is, to start with, a much easier life. It takes little or no effort to be self-centred because it comes naturally, have you noticed? But as self-centeredness grips our lives, it becomes incredibly hard to keep up. Particularly so when it’s not just yourself that you’re interested in but more and more in how other people see you, what other people think of you, what other people say about you.

If that’s what drives you forward, it becomes really hard work trying to get people to be impressed with you, to admire you and to speak well of you. That becomes a labour that drains the life out of you because you constantly have to keep up appearances, you constantly have to get out there and impress people.

That’s the lifestyle that drove me to the edge quite literally. And it’s living that lifestyle, essentially the lifestyle of the prodigal son, a narcissist (if ever I saw one) that brought me to a place of despair where I was ready to try something else. That something else turned out to be Jesus and His ‘out of‘ mindset.

The idea that He will fill me to overflowing but I have to be prepared to cooperate with Him and turn my life around and pour myself out with Him into the lives of other people. That idea doesn’t come naturally, let me tell you. It certainly didn’t to me, it just doesn’t, it’s what they call an acquired taste. But the beauty of it is this, the rewards are so great and so quick to come.

I remember the first time after I became a Christian that I actually went out of my way to help someone. And the mere fact that it stands out in my memory after a couple of decades tells you how often I’d helped other people before then. It required some sacrifice. I allowed a couple to live in my home. I moved out of the master bedroom for them so they could share that bed.

Now I’m a very tidy person – a place for everything, everything in its place so having other people leaving their stuff lying around wasn’t particularly enjoyable. And yet, the joy and the satisfaction that came out of just helping them, just giving them somewhere to live for just a few weeks was totally addictive so I tried it over and over again and pretty soon I was hooked.

This idea of helping other people has some real paybacks.

 

Every now and then you find yourself stuck on a merry–go–round in life, going round and round and up and down, but actually you’re headed nowhere. So what do you do when there’s simply no way to change the circumstances you’re in?

Changing Your Attitude

Perhaps you’ve heard that Serenity Prayer. It goes something like this:

Dear God, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

If you’ve ever wondered where it comes from, it was authored by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr some time in the 20th century and it’s been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous and a whole bunch of other twelve step transformation programs. It’s a great little prayer because it acknowledges that there are some things we simply cannot change and there are some things that we can change and that it’s not always easy to tell the difference between the two.

So let’s say you’re stuck in a dead-end job. You’re not enjoying the work, the boss is a pain in the neck and you have to drag yourself out of bed and go through that long commute each day for what? No job satisfaction, no joy, nothing to engage your heart or your mind, zip, nothing.

Question: Should you stay there because after all it’s a good reliable income each week or should you spread your wings and go find yourself a job that’s really you? Is this one of the things you should have the courage to change or should you accept it? I guess these days, most of us will say, ‘Get out of there, go find a good job that’s really you, where people appreciate you’. Fair enough, that could be it but what if God has a plan for you to make a difference in the lives of the people in that workplace that requires you to stay there for the next five years? After all Jesus said:

You are the salt of the earth but if the salt loses its taste how can it’s saltiness be restored, it’s not good for anything but is thrown out and trampled underfoot? You are the light of the world, a city built on a hill can’t be hidden. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket but on a lamp stand and gives light to all in the house. In the same way let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5: 13 to 16)

So maybe His plan is for you to stay in that job, in that place and be His salt and be His light into a dark and bland world. Maybe His plan is for you to have an impact in the sad and perhaps desperate lives of the people who work in that organisation or the lives of their families or in the lives of the customers of the organisation.

Last week on the program, we talked about the rampant cultural spread of narcissism, that tendency to have an unhealthy fixation on ourselves and in this incredibly narcissistic world in which we live. The obvious choice would be to dump that lot and find a job that’s going to make you happy, right?

But following Jesus isn’t always about doing the things that make us happy. In fact, often following Jesus is hard and painful, doing God’s will is about sacrifice and loss. When I’m making these decisions and we’re all making decisions all the time, whether to hang in there in some situation or relationship or whether to cut and run, I often think back to Jesus, praying to His Father alone on that dangerous and dark night in the Garden of Gethsemane just before He’s betrayed and handed over to be crucified. Matthew 26: 37-42.

He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and agitated. The he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even unto death remain here and stay awake with me’. And going a little farther he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me. Yet not what I want but you want’.

Then he came to the disciples and he found them sleeping and he said to Peter, ‘So couldn’t you stay awake with me for just an hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial, the Spirit is indeed willing but the flesh is weak.’ Again he went away for a second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it then your will be done’.

I think back to that dark and difficult time and I thank God that Jesus didn’t cut and run. Sometimes we find ourselves in difficult, painful and even dangerous situations and our survival instincts tell us to cut and run. But sometimes in those places the problem isn’t so much circumstances or people around us but our own attitudes.

Am I there to look after myself or am I there to serve Jesus? That’s the question we need to be asking ourselves.

I remember being on a Board of a Christian organisation once that cared for about three thousand people in aged care facilities. I felt called to join that Board, I felt called to be on the Board. It was somewhat dysfunctional, some people on it were Christians others weren’t and so there was this tug of war as to whether the aged care business we were in was also a Christian mission field.

I used to come home from those meetings and say to my wife, ‘What am I doing of this Board? Why am I here?’ and she had wondered the same thing. But I persisted until I knew it was time to leave, I’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

One day I had a phone call from the secretary of one of the Board members who wasn’t a Christian, this person wanted me to stop by and see them. It turned out that he’d just experienced a great tragedy in his life, the suicide of his brother. I remember walking into his office, he was visibly upset and he said to me, ‘I’ve been watching you for the last four years on this Board and now I want you to tell me about your faith’.

You see, you never know. Sometimes God wants you to hang in there, sometimes God doesn’t want you to run but instead to be faithful to what He’s called you to do because He has plans, plans that you and I cannot even begin to imagine.

God said through Isaiah 55: 8 and 9. He said:

‘My thoughts aren’t your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways’ declares the Lord, ‘for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts’.

Sometimes getting off the merry-go-round we’re on doesn’t involve changing our circumstances or our relationships. Sometimes getting off the merry-go-round we’re on involves changing our attitude. Sometimes getting off the merry-go-round we’re on is making the transition that Jesus made in His prayer in Gethsemane.

Did you pick up the transition? Have another listen:

He threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me yet not what I want but you want’.

And again:

He went away for a second time and prayed, ‘My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it then your will be done’.

He transitioned from what He wanted to what His Father wanted and given the circumstances He did it pretty quickly. Our problem is that all too often we go to God with what we want. ‘Oh God, please get me out of here, oh God please find me a different job, oh God please stop the pain’.

But how often, when it’s dark and dangerous and painful do we go to God and say, ‘Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink of it then let your will be done. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change’.

That serenity comes from submitting ourselves under the mighty hand of God and trusting our very lives into His hands. That serenity comes from knowing He absolutely knows what He’s doing and that you can trust Him with your very life. That serenity comes from deciding to stop seeing yourself as a victim of your circumstances and start to see yourself as His servant called to get out there and do His bidding.

Then all of a sudden we don’t feel like we’re on that merry-go-round anymore because we know that even though we can’t see it, God has a plan. He’s called you here into this place for this reason and you’ll see Him move in ways that right now you can’t even begin to imagine.

And to tell you the truth, even though it hurts sometimes, it’s not a bad way to live.

Changing Your Circumstances

Before the break we were talking about that beautiful Serenity Prayer written by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

And we focused on the first part, having the serenity to accept the things we can’t change because there are always going to be things we cannot change in our lives.

Some people hang onto impossible dreams – wanting to be an artist when they’re not good at drawing or a musician that’s not good at playing the piano or a leader when they’re not really gifted to be a leader.

We’ve all had those sorts of dreams and at some point we need to accept who we are, our strengths, our limitations because whilst we can grow and mature and whilst old dogs can learn new tricks, we simply cannot change who we’ve been made to be. Sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances we can’t change.

Take the person who made a mistake in life and so finds themselves in prison or whose marriage has fallen apart because of how they behaved or who’s lost a job they love because the company went through a round of retrenchments. Those are things we cannot change and that’s why we talked about learning to accept them with the right attitude.

But sometimes we find ourselves in circumstances or in situations or in relationships that do need changing. Perhaps it’s a toxic relationship that’s constantly dragging you down and you know you have to get out of that relationship. In 1 Corinthians 15: 33 the Apostle Paul writes:

Don’t be deceived, bad company ruins good morals.

In Proverbs chapter 16: 28 we read:

A dishonest man spreads strife and a whisperer separates close friends.

Yeah, some people can ruin you but when you’re in a toxic relationship it can be really difficult to break it off. It takes courage because often those people who are bad company or who spreads dishonesty and strife and rumours, they have hooks into us and they won’t let go. That’s why it takes courage for a wife who is being physically abused by her husband to remove herself from that abusive situation. You’d think it would be easy given the abuse that she’s suffering but actually it’s not.

So sometimes it’s people, other times it’s our own sin that’s keeping us going round and round and up and down like being on a merry-go-round. People wonder why their life isn’t moving forward, why aren’t things getting better, why isn’t God answering my prayers? But there’s clear evidence in the Bible that our sin can be the cause of that merry-go-round experience.

Guys, listen to this one, 1 Peter 3:7.

Husbands live with your wife in an understanding way showing honour to the woman as the weaker vessel since they are heirs with you in the grace of life so that your prayers may not be hindered.

Like any good father, God isn’t going to bless a rebellious child. It seems that we’re really good sometimes in writing ourselves a special dispensation to justify our own sin. No, you see, my wife’s a pain so that one doesn’t apply to me or God understands my circumstances so all that stuff about sexual immorality doesn’t really apply to me.

It’s amazing how quick we are to make excuses for ourselves whilst at the same time demanding perfection from other people. Why would we possibly expect God to bless us when we’re walking in wilful disobedience to Him?

Have a listen to this sobering Scripture from 1 Samuel: 2 beginning at verse 30. Listen carefully:

Therefore the Lord the God of Israel declares, ‘I promise that your family and the family of your ancestors should go in and come out before me forever but now’ declares the Lord ‘far be it for me for those who honour me I will honour but those who despise me shall be treated with contempt’.

And this one, Galatians 6: 7 – 9.

Don’t be deceived, God isn’t mocked for you will reap whatever you sow. If you sow to your flesh you’ll reap corruption from your flesh but if you sow to the Spirit you’ll reap eternal life from the Spirit. So don’t grow weary in doing what is right for you will reap a harvest if you don’t give up.

God blesses obedience and you know something, it takes courage to confess our sins and to go to God and to admit that we’re powerless to do anything about them and that we need His help, His power to change our ways. Repentance is not an easy thing to do but let me be perfectly blunt about it, sin is holding many people back in their lives. Sin is the reason why a good many people feel as though they’re on a merry-go-round that they can’t get off.

Dear Lord, give me the courage to change the things I can.

It rings so true to the person who’s trapped in their sin because it takes courage to go to God and confess your sin, doesn’t it? But be assured that He is ready and willing and able to forgive you right now.

If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth isn’t in us but if we confess our sins He who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1: 8 and 9)

So not only will He forgive, but He will cleanse you from all unrighteousness so don’t ever be afraid of confessing your sin to God because Jesus has already completely paid the price for you. God will forgive you in a heartbeat when you go to Him with your sin and all of a sudden He will set you free to get on with a life, the stunning life, that He already has ready and waiting for you.

And if these Scriptures have spoken into your heart then please don’t leave it any longer, go to Him. Repent and see what He will do for you. Do it today, do it now.

The other thing that can change our circumstances and relationships is God Himself because every now and then He calls us to something new. So why, might you ask, would that require courage? Well, because almost always God calls us from comfort to discomfort, from certainty to uncertainty, from safety to danger.

I remember being called by God to leave the wonderful small safe Church where I was worshipping with a great pastor and people who loved us, it was such a great family. Being called to go to a Church where I didn’t know many people. A Church that was far less friendly than the one we were in. And it actually involved selling up our home, finding a new place to live which was nowhere near as nice as the place we’d just left.

Can I tell you? It wasn’t an easy thing to do. But God has His plans and so His Word said this in Ecclesiastes chapter 1:

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven, a time where you’re born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up what is planted …

And on it goes.

Seasons come and go, summer always gives way to autumn which always turns into winter before spring comes again, that’s God’s way. Perhaps you’re involved in something that has been a great blessing to you or through you it’s been a great blessing for other people. You love it, you know it, you’re comfortable in it but then all of a sudden God decides it’s a time to pluck up what He planted. All of a sudden God ushers in a change of season.

And no matter how much of a blessing that thing has been to you or others, when God’s done with it you know what, He’s done with it, that’s it. It’s time to move on to the next thing. It takes courage to move on to the next thing.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

And that’s my prayer for you.

If you’re on a merry-go-round in life and it’s time to jump off may you have the wisdom to know whether that God wants you there still with a change of heart or whether He wants you to move on and in what direction because remember … God has an amazing plan for your life

The Wisdom to Know the Difference

Okay, so we’ve prayed about having the wisdom to know the difference between something we can’t change and something we should change. But where do you get wisdom like that? Because it’s okay to talk about these things through examples, but the dry theory is much simpler than actually living this stuff in our lives.

When you find yourself in a situation that doesn’t feel right, when you seem to be stuck on some merry–go–round in life, you know what it’s like. You’re so close to the situation and probably so emotionally involved that it seems nigh on impossible to discern what to do next.

Does God want you in this place to do something for Him? Does He want you to persevere? Or does He want you to move on into a new direction? Is it your own sin, your own wrong attitudes that have you stuck on this wretched merry-go-round, or is it God putting you through a test and trying to teach you something?

I find it, at most times, as difficult as you do to get the answers to those questions, because I don’t have the wisdom to know what to do sometimes. Sometimes I’m emotionally involved. Sometimes I’m so close, I can’t see the wood for the trees. I don’t have the full picture. I can’t see into the future. But you know something? I know someone who can.

When Jesus had difficult choices to make, even though He was the Son of God, He went to His father to ask for help. He needed to choose an inner circle of disciples from among the hundreds who were following Him. I’m sure there were some obvious, more learned guys there. But Jesus didn’t want the ones that were obvious in the world’s eyes necessarily. He wanted the ones who His Father in Heaven had already chosen. So, what did He do?

During those days he went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the whole night in prayer to God. And when the day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, his brother Andrew, and James, and John … and so on. (Luke 6: 12 to 14)

See, Jesus didn’t just pray for a few minutes, He prayed all night. That’s pretty serious. I imagine He brought different people before His Father in prayer. I imagine He went through the detail with His Dad in heaven to make sure He chose the right people.

That, right there is a pretty good model, isn’t it? To really nut through things with God. Because He does have the wisdom, He can see the big picture, He does know how the different options would turn out.

It can be particularly difficult to have wisdom to make right choices when we’re in a place of suffering. Stay and tough it out, or cut and run? What’s the best option? What does God want you to do? What are His purposes? Man it’s not easy, is it?

So why not do what Jesus did? As things turn out, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. James chapter 1, verses 2 to 8:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you are facing trials of any kind, consider it nothing but pure joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete and lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given to you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind; the doubter, being double-minded and unstable in every way, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

So that’s what I do. More and more I seem to be hearing God right these days. It’s not like He waves a magic wand over every situation and trial and makes the stuff go away instantly. It’s more like I ask Him for wisdom and then He guides me through the fog and somehow, seems to point me in the right direction – prayer, Bible reading, reflection, talking with God, chatting things over, telling Him how I feel, asking Him to show me the way.

There’s no simple formula. God is God. He’s a person. Chat with Him. Expect Him to give you wisdom because His word says that He will give you the wisdom you need to figure it out.

Ask Him and discover that He is so incredibly faithful to guide you through the fog.