When something unexpected comes our way – a curved ball from left field – our first instinct is to have a knee jerk reaction.  But reactions aren’t always the best thing to have …    

Last week on A Different Perspective, and again this week, we’re looking at ‘Bringing out Your Very Best’, a sort of basic, fundamental life-skill where we often have gaps in our knowledge and our experience. Last week, we looked at a few subjects like dealing with our blind spots, learning to communicate and collaborate, learning to listen, investing in relationships.

These are such important skills in getting on with people. For me, I had to learn these things the hard way. For seventeen years, I worked as a consultant in the information technology industry, over 200 over organisations. And when I started out in this consulting game, I struggled through these things, and the last place that I expected to find any answers was in the whole Christianity religion, Bible space. Eck! And it was a surprise to me when I met this Jesus that the Bible – even though for me was a historical document that frankly, rated very low in my trust – actually works through real life things like this.

What about our reactions? What about the pedestrian who is in the wrong, or the person who is driving who is in the wrong? And when someone who blows their horn at them, they are the ones – the ones who are in the wrong – who end up hurling abuse at people. Sometimes we have knee-jerk reactions, not just in a car honking our horn, but in life generally.

When something different, something unexpected, something comes out at us at left field and we find it disturbing or threatening or hurtful, or we just don’t understand it, we can react badly to those sorts of things. In the workplace, I’ve often seen people send an angry e-mail. I have a very important rule when it comes to e-mail.

I never send an e-mail when I’m angry because so often, people will send an angry e-mail in a knee-jerk reaction, and afterwards, they regret it because afterwards, you realise an e-mail is not like a conversation – you speak and it’s gone – an e-mail is on the record. An e-mail can be printed, copied, sent to other people. So many people send angry e-mails and live to regret it. I’ve seen it in the workplace, at meetings, you have different people from different departments with different needs and ambitions and hidden agendas.

I’ve been to some very brutal business meetings where people are angry and they’re knee-jerk reacting to things. Or you know, those family functions, at Christmas, when the extended family gets together and people see some issue differently, and the whole thing ends up in a row. The knee-jerk reaction thing is an everyday occurrence. Just have a look around over the next 24 hours, at home or at work. Where are people reacting, both us and other people? And how small sometimes are the things we have a knee-jerk reaction to?

There’s been a puzzling verse in the Bible that I’ve agonised over for a long time. It’s in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. If you’re interested, it’s in Chapter 4, verse 26. Paul says, “Be angry, but do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.” Be angry but do not sin. I think, “Okay, at least he acknowledges the reality that we will get angry.” It is a reality.

When something surprises us or hurts us or offends us, inside of each one of us the blood boils. God acknowledges that reality. When people feel threatened, they react. When we feel threatened, we react. Well let’s look at the two sides of that coin. Let’s look at us reacting, and then other people reacting.

Us, what are the things that push your button? What are the things that set you off? I know what sets me off. I’m someone who is very time-focused. I love to have my time organised, and when I’m dealing with someone who is consistently late, someone who consistently moves slow, someone who doesn’t have a sense of urgency, let me tell you something – that drives me nuts.

We all have the things that set us off – at work, at our home. What is it for you? Is it maybe someone who just has a different point of view, and that sets you off or somebody who behaves differently? How could we be angry but not sin? Over the years, anger has been a real problem for me. Anger has been something that I’ve had to learn to control.

So here’s how I deal with things when they set me off. I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t always have to win. It is not important for Berni Dymet to get the last say and to get his way each time. The second thing is that I used to get very suspicious of people. I’ve decided that I’m going to think the best of people. Rather than be suspicious, I’m going to think the best, and when they make a mistake, still think the best of them.

And when I just can’t, when I am just so driven to a frenzy because I am so angry – you know what I’m talking about – I’ve decided, like with the e-mails, to button my lip until the initial anger subsides. Button my lip. Be angry, but do not sin. We all get angry; sin is about hurling a rock when we are. And in that time, in that space that I give myself, that I buy myself by buttoning my lip, I’ve decided to think it through.

Knee-jerk reactions damage relationships, but if we just stop, if we take that space, we buy some time for ourselves and process what has just happened. We process the fact that, “Okay, this person has behaved that way but then again, that’s them”. Then again, maybe no one ever told them about knee-jerk reactions, maybe no one ever taught them to buy a little bit of space and a little bit of time, and process this without hurling a rock as a first reaction.

When I buy time and I buy space and I think it through, you know something? I tend, not always but most of the time, to come up with a better approach, a more measured approach. Be angry, but don’t throw a rock. Be angry but don’t let the sun go down; don’t hold on to this anger and what about when someone else reacts? Most people haven’t been taught the stuff, so we need to cut them some slack and when they react. An angry reaction is often different from a considered position. So again, in my life, I’ve decided when someone reacts, to forgive, to be patient, to give them time and space to change.

It is really cool how the Bible deals with this stuff. Be angry but don’t sin. In the next 24 hours I guarantee you and I will have opportunities to put this stuff into practice. I guarantee that something will come along that makes us want to honk our horn in the car, or hurl abuse at someone, or send an angry e-mail. Question: When it does, will we make a decision?

Sometimes the anger just wells up in us. Choice: Do I hurl a rock or do I just sit back for a minute? Cool stuff.

Have you ever been driving along and the car in front of you decides to hang a left turn without putting their indicator on?  It’s infuriating, right?!  Well, it turns out that signalling our intentions is a very important life skill.

Yesterday on A Different Perspective, we looked at the whole subject of people having knee-jerk reactions, as a part of a series that we’re doing now on ‘Bringing out Your Very Best’, those basic life skills. And yesterday I shared with you how surprised I was to discover that when I finally one day opened God’s word the Bible – which I always thought of as being an old-fashioned stuffy theological thing – that God actually deals with some of these really important life issues. And it’s funny that when we take His wisdom and His love and His guidance and put it into the gaps, we end up having quite an amazing life.

Now, knee-jerk reactions happen when something unexpected comes our way, something that’s threatening or we don’t understand it. It puts us off our guard and we react and other people react too, it’s a daily occurrence.

So we talked about knee-jerk reactions and a whole bunch of other things over this last week and a half. Now one of the biggest causes of knee-jerk reactions in other people is when we do something unexpected, something that threatens other people, they react. Yesterday we saw how Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians wrote, “Be angry but do not sin.” I love it how God recognises in His book, in the Bible, the reality that sometimes we do get angry.

When was the last time that someone or something set you off? The last 24 hours, maybe? The last 48 hours? That person who is driving their car too slowly and they get through the traffic light but you get the red light? It’s fabulous, isn’t it? But when something does set you off, how much is the element of surprise the cause of your reaction?

The story that I talked about at the beginning of the car in front that all of a sudden slows down and turns right without putting their blinker on, and we get upset not because they’re turning right, we get upset because they didn’t tell us that they were going to do it so that we could do something to counter that, which of course is putting our foot on the brake.

Sometimes we all have to do things that upset or threaten people. Let’s take an example of a manager at work. He or she looks at the business process, maybe the way the mail’s coming in and it’s being processed and maybe they look at this process and say, “Hang on a minute, we can do much better at this. If we reorganise this and shift that to there, and get so-and-so to do this, and tweak that, gee, we can actually turn those things around much faster, much more effective way of doing things.” And so the manager comes up with an action plan – step A, step B, step C. Now notice something here. This is an entirely legitimate thing for them to do but change is threatening – most of us find change very threatening. Let’s look at two different ways that the manager could approach this with his or her staff.

The first way: the manager has a staff meeting. Gets all the staff in a room and says, “Right. I’ve had a look at this process and we can do much better at this. Here’s the plan – step A, step B, step C. Fred, you won’t be doing that anymore. Debbie, I want you take over that, and Fred, I want you to do something else.” How often does that happen? And then, so many other managers act surprised when they get a reaction.

Just like our friend in the car in front of us who didn’t put an indicator on. When we drop something unexpected on people without giving them time and space to get used to the idea. We all need time and space to get used to ideas about change. I remember when people reorganised stuff who were above me at work; I would find it threatening, even though I am a change agent in a sense. I am someone that helps people. But when it affects me, when it affects my life, buddy, I have to tell you I get affected and chances are so do you. So there was plan A, have the staff meeting and just announce it to all and sundry.

Here’s another plan. The manager is looking at these things and in the next staff meeting, he or she gets everybody together and says, “Look, I’ve been looking at the way we do stuff, and see how this bit’s broken? And see how that bit’s broken? My hunch is we could do some better stuff. Can you all have a think about it between now and the next staff meeting, because I’d love to get your ideas on it. I’d love to see what you think and see how we together can make this better.”

So at the next staff meeting, people talk about their ideas. It might still be a difficult and thorny issue but the people who are really involved, maybe Fred and Debbie who are really involved, still aren’t convinced. So the manager says, “Thanks a lot for that. Let me take that away and have a think about it.” And then he goes and has a one on one with Debbie and says, “Look, this is my problem. This is the thing that’s really important to me. Can you help me to change this?” And then goes and talks to Fred and says, “What I’ve really noticed is that you have some skills in Client Service. On the one hand we want to change this, on the other hand, I really want to make better use of your Client Service skills.”

And then at the third staff meeting brings the team together and says, “Look, talk this around a little bit, and really where I think we’re headed is this.” Now tell me something. Of those two ways of handling it, which one do you think is better? Jesus says to us, “Love each other.” Well that’s nice, but how? Well look at those two processes. Which one shows more love and respect?

Which one reinforces the dignity of people and their value? Which one is likely to draw less negative reactions? Pretty obvious, isn’t it? The one that involves the people, the one that engages them.

Now we won’t always agree on everything, but when we signal our intentions, it gives people time to engage. It gives them a space to move. One of the things I’ve noticed in doing a lot of this sort of work in a lot of organisations, large and small, is that sometimes when people find out about change, you get a reaction, you get a knee-jerk reaction. There was a huge space between a reaction and a considered position.

And when we love and respect and discuss issues with people in that space, 9 times out of 10 we’ll get a much better reaction. What if we changed our approach to dealing with people at work and at home and church and in sporting clubs? What if we changed our approach and said, “When I’m going to institute some change or introduce something new, I’m going to give them space. I have a plan for doing a little bit of signalling.” What if we did that and that reduced knee-jerk reactions around us by 60 or 70 percent? Would it be worth it?

I’ll tell you what? It’s nice when people stop having knee-jerk reactions. And sometimes what we don’t realise is we are the ones who are causing the knee-jerk reactions to happen. Just thinking about how we can help people to give them space to go from a reaction to a considered position. It’s like we can be a cushion or a shock absorber in a relationship, where we become the peacemaker.

Jesus said, “Love the people around you as much as you love yourself.” Well, if I want other people to treat me this way, maybe I should treat other people this way too, even when sometimes they don’t understand this stuff. Loving is a practical thing, it’s a walk, and when we signal our intentions, when we accept initial reactions, when we give people time and space, when we engage with them during that time, you know something? That’s a four-letter word. It’s called ‘love’.

Some days, we don’t feel up to the things that we have to do – both at work and in our personal lives.  Some days – we just need an extra helping of wisdom and discernment.      

Last week and this week, we’re working through a whole bunch of things that ‘Bring out the Very Best’ of you. That sort of are basic life skills of dealing with our own blind spots, signaling issues and dealing with knee-jerk reactions. The sort of things that don’t fit into a curriculum anywhere. But on the other hand, the sort of things that are so important in us leading fruitful and satisfying lives, where we have good relationships with other people, and when we take some of those gaps that we each have in our knowledge and our behaviour and our experience, and we fill them with God’s wisdom, you know, it makes for a rich life. It kind of makes sense to me. Today I’d like to talk about wisdom and discernment. God talks a lot about those things in His Word in the Bible.

Things are not always what they seem. People have phases. I remember when I was in the Army and we were training out on exercise, we used to get fatigued and hungry; and I imagine when people are shooting real bullets at you, you’re really afraid and the term that the military uses for that is the ‘fog of war’. All of a sudden you can’t see exactly what’s going on. You don’t know what the enemy’s doing and where they’re going to attack from, and your judgment’s clouded because of fear and fatigue. In the heat of the battle, it’s often difficult to make good decisions.

I love this line that Graham shared with me, a friend of mine whom I was telling you about, about sitting and thinking – “Young man, when you sit and think, mostly you just sit.” Now, I’ve worked closely with this man over the past seventeen years and I would love a dollar for every time that he’d ring me up early one morning and say, “That thing that we were talking about yesterday. I’ve been turning it over in my mind, thinking about it.”

And then he would share his ideas, and it never ceased to amaze me the really sensible, wise things this guy would come up with overnight. You know, after looking at this for a few years, I talked to him about it and I loved this phrase, “I’ve been turning it over in my mind.” Isn’t that a beautiful phrase? He’s been taking this issue or this problem that we’ve had, and overnight, maybe in the shower, maybe when he was up early in the morning, he’s just been turning it over.

Remebering once, he and I had a consulting firm and we were partners in this firm. We had a very difficult client, a woman in her 50’s. And he was driving down the freeway and she rang him on his mobile phone, and he told me about it later. He said, “You’ve never heard anything like this. This woman hurled abuse at me for ten minutes down the phone line.” And I said to him, “What did you do?” And he said, “Well, I didn’t react.” He’d said, “That’s very interesting, let me take it away, let me think about it, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

And interestingly, he always used to buy himself time and space to deal with difficult issues, and then by the next day, he would have turned this difficult issue over. And I remember him ringing me the day after this conversation with this difficult client, and he said, “Look, I’ve been thinking about it. I think you and I need to go and sit and talk to her. We’ll talk about this, we’ll deal with that.” He came up with a plan and I stood back in awe of this plan and I thought, “This is really clever stuff.”

God makes it clear that wisdom and discernment is a gift. There’s a passage in the 1st chapter of James that says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, ask God for it and He will give it to you because God gives generously.” So there are often times when I don’t know how to deal with an issue, and what I do is I take it God, and I’ll say, “Lord, what I need is wisdom to deal with this.” And I believe that time and time again God just gives me the gift of wisdom that I need for that day. But it’s not just a gift because the gift needs time to work.

Most mornings I’m up at 5:00 in the morning because since I’m a little kid, I’ve been a morning person. And the first order of business for me is time with God. Let me share with you what that looks like. It’s kind of a circle with three parts. In part, the time I spend time with God is prayer and for me, that’s me speaking to God. But I also spend time reading His Word, the Bible, because there’s so much good wisdom in there and it never ceases to amaze me how, when I’ve brought a problem to him and I open up and I’m reading the next chapter that I’ve planned to read, He answers that very thing right there. And these words jump out at me, and I think, “Man! There’s the answer staring me in the face.”

And the third part of the this time is kind of sitting and thinking and listening, maybe turning these problems over in my head and wondering, and then saying, “What do you think?” And so often, God speaks specifically and says, “What about this, or why don’t you talk to that person, or why don’t you send an e-mail, or have you thought of doing this?”

Wisdom and discernment are gifts from God. Let me share with you. Whether you’re someone who’s struck up a relationship with this Jesus or not, it truly, truly works. When I have a problem at work or an issue that I don’t know how to deal with in ministry, and I take it to God in this space and this time, of asking, of reading, of sitting and listening and thinking. It’s just amazing how the solutions just pop up either straight out of the Bible or somewhere deep inside me. I’ve learned over the years what His voice sounds like, and I know what that sound is, and as time has gone on and more and more confidence in hearing His voice.

I believe to have a rich and full life. We need to make the time to think, the space, the quiet, no distractions; just to stop to think about difficult issues, without the TV blaring or the kids talking or us having a conversation. And the second part of that for me is, in this space inviting God, the God who created the whole universe, into this space with me. And so the thinking and the praying turns out into plans, into decisions, into proactive things that I am going to do today that I have to tell you, work – time and time again.

I’ll often be thinking and praying through an issue and talk to God about it, and He’ll say, “Ring so-and-so, or send this e-mail; sit on that one for a while. But in the meantime, do this.” Thinking, planning, praying; God in that space. You know something? It’s a winning formula. I often feel I’m inadequate – I don’t have what I need today to do what God’s called me to do. But what I do know is that when I’m weak, He’s strong.

When I feel as though I don’t have the answers, I don’t, but He does. And the promise that He has for each one of us is if we’ll only trust Him, the One who died on the cross for you and me, if we’ll only trust Him and invite Him into that space, He will give us the wisdom that we need if we ask Him. He will give me the where with all I need to discern, to think, to plan, and to do. All I have to do is to make the time, and make sure that when I sit and think – mostly I think, not just sit – the choice is open to each one of us. We have this opportunity.

It is such an incredible gift, the wisdom and the presence and the discernment of God. As we quietly listen to Him and let Him guide us through everything that the world has to throw at us today.

It seems sometimes that we have to make choices and decisions without having all the information in front of us.  Uncertainty and ambiguity are a fact of life, but sometimes, well, we just don’t handle them so well.      

I don’t know about you, but I really, really don’t like uncertainty. You know that feeling when you put a job application in and you wait and will you get an interview and you have an interview, and then another few weeks go by and there is all that sort of tension of not knowing. Or, there is a project coming your way in ministry and you believe that God wants you to step out and do that, but the money hasn’t just come in yet. And you think: “Oh, well, how do I deal with that?”

Or that feeling, I remember only too well, years ago where I did my finals exams at high school. And in those days, you didn’t get the results only sometime in January. It was a long, long wait over Christmas to know whether I’ve received the marks that I needed to able to do the studies that I wanted to do over at University.

A classic that I had to deal with over many years was in the consulting practice that I was involved in managing for seventeen years. We had some resources, we had staff and contractors who were consultants. They had different skills and different abilities. And of course, we had existing clients with work, and sometimes work that you thought would go ahead, would fall through, and other times, you thought it would finish and clients would extend the time, and then you are putting proposals in for new work and you will always have more proposals out there for new work then you had resources because you knew you wouldn’t win all of the proposals. It was always such a complex juggling act, of existing resources; existing work; new work, work falling through, unexpected work and not every consultants were able to do every job. So they were not all inter-changeable.

Dealing with things like that, juggling all of those balls, can be very, very stressful. You know if we bid too many projects, all of a sudden you’ve won them, and you couldn’t resource them and that was embarrassing. And if you didn’t bid enough, you would have consultants who ‘would be sitting on the benches’, we used to say and your profit margins would plummet. It can be big and complex at work, or it can be small – like, you are cooking dinner at home but you have no idea when the family will be home. “Do I put this in now, or will it get ruined? Or how am I going to deal with that?”

The most important thing, I have ever learned about uncertainty and ambiguity is this; it’s a fact of life, it’s there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day, day after day, year after year and it doesn’t matter how much I struggle, carry on, complain, worry, get tied up in knots, get ulcers, yell at people, it is not going to change the fact, that uncertainty and ambiguity are facts of life. Why was that important? Because all of a sudden, I learned that instead of stressing over it, the whole issue was dealing with it. And in fact, not just dealing with it, but, given that uncertainty and ambiguity are facts of life, excelling in that space. Jesus is … I love how pragmatic and realistic He is, He recognises this reality. Have a listen to what He says. This comes from Matthew’s gospel, chapter 6, beginning at verse 24;

Therefore I tell you, don’t worry about your life. What you’ll eat, or what you’ll drink or about your body or what you will wear. Isn’t life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

I mean, look at the birds of the air. They do not reap or sow or store things away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you much more valuable than they are? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life and why do you worry about your clothes. Look at the lilies of the field. See how they grow.

They do not labour or spin but I will tell you something, not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed as beautifully as one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow it is thrown to the fire. Won’t He do much more for you? You of little faith. So don’t worry saying “what will I eat?” or “what will I drink?” or “what will I wear?” Let other people run after those things. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them.

See, Jesus is saying, “Uncertainty about tomorrow is a fact of life. And we need to learn to deal with them, to deal with those uncertainties, to minimize their impact on us.” In fact, when you look at what Jesus is saying here, if you learn to accept them, and then say: “Hang on a minute! God is the One Person who can see what tomorrow brings. God is the One Person with the wisdom, to know that He needs to provide certain things for me, to meet my needs.”

And all of a sudden that worry goes away. And what we can then do is then become someone who excels in the middle of uncertainty. It may be that everyone else around us is in a flap over something.

I remember doing some work in New Zealand for a large government department. And sometimes in this very large project, that you know was a $150 million dollar project, things went really bad. And there was one man, a leader in that organisation, when things went really bad, and everyone else was in a panic, and you know what happens when things go bad? The blame game starts. This person wants to blame that person, and “it is your fault.” And he used to look at it and say: “Hang on a minute guys, we can’t help that this has gone bad; remember this is where we were going; remember that this is end game; remember that is the hill that we are going to take over there. Now let’s figure out how to get from here to there.” When everyone else was in a flap, he was the one that was the leader, and helped people through that.

Remember, when we start to think through these things and say: “OK, when I am dealing with uncertainty, and all this stuff, the people around me may not have learned these things, they may not have heard this program. They may not have been taught this by their parents or their mentors or their education system. They may be running around in a flap.” In the middle of all that, you and I can excel. You and I can make a difference. For me it comes down to this. The first thing is realising and accepting in our hearts that uncertainty and ambiguity is a fact of life. I may not always enjoy it. I may not like it, but neither am I going to get into a flap about it. It’s just the way it is.

I remember when we were buying a house, the house that we are living in at the moment. There was an enormous amount of uncertainty; and in fact, risk. We just felt that God had called us to be there and it was very difficult. The very first thing that I decided was, “I was not going to be in a flap.” The second thing was to revisit the objective with God. “God, is this where you mean me to be? Do You actually mean me to buy this house? Is that your intention? Because if you are involved, I know that you have the power and the love to bring this to pass. If this is your plan for my life, nothing formed against it will stand.”

On the other hand, if maybe I am not heading in the right direction, maybe God has a different plan, then in that stressful time of ambiguity I am prepared to adjust that plan to fit to God’s. That ain’t always easy. But if we are in God’s planning, in God’s space, doing what God’s doing, nothing will stand against it and then when everyone else is flapping around us, I learned a lot from that manager in New Zealand, I have decided that when they are flapping, it is my job to be calm and to nurture them and to accept that they’re afraid to accept that they haven’t learned this lesson, to try and help them through this lesson, to teach them, to make it better next time and then to think through the problem, to sleep on it.

“What is the objective? What do I know? What am I missing? Where can I get some better information? How much is stress clouding my judgment?” And it is never as bad as it seems to me and then lastly, it’s about trusting and praying. Remember what Jesus said there. “God knows what we need. He already knows. We can’t add one hour to our life, by worrying about it.” The effective thing to do, the blessed thing to do, the wonderful thing to do, is to place our trust in this person: Jesus Christ. So the next time we’re under stress, dealing with uncertainty, and ambiguity, what are we going to do? Are we going to flap? OR are we going to trust Jesus?

I’d like to share a secret with you – I’m not naturally a generous person.  But when I met this edgy, radical Jesus – I knew that had to change.  And when it did – a whole new world opened up to me.    

Over the last two weeks on A Different Perspective, we have been looking at a bunch of things that fall into a category that I have called ‘Bringing out Your Very Best’.

Now I had a great mum and dad, and they taught me a lot of things and I pray that you had a great upbringing too, but whatever our upbringing is like, we all end up with gaps in the basic life skills that we need to have a successful and a blessed and a satisfying and a fulfilling life. You know things like dealing with our blind spots, learning to listen to other people, communicating and collaborating effectively, learning what it is to invest in relationships, building influence with people, dealing with knee-jerk reactions that are signalling things to people, having wisdom and discernment, dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity.

They’re all the subjects that over the last two weeks, we have been looking at on A Different Perspective. And when we have gaps in our knowledge and our experience and our abilities, we … we stumble through life, and it can be painful, it can be upsetting. As I said a few days ago, it was a surprise to me, when I opened this book, the Bible, for the first time. This ‘stuffy old dusty theological thing’ that I thought it was, and all the places I didn’t expect to find real wisdom, in this place, I found it there, because God wrote it for you and for me.

Now if you have missed any of the programs over the last two week, I really encourage you to go to our website ‘www.christianityworks.com’ and you can listen to them again online. And if you are not online, I will give you some details at the end of the program and you can write to us and order the programs on CD. I truly believe that this teaching will be a blessing in your life. Today I would like finish up this ten part series on ‘Bringing out the Very Best’, talking about the issue of generosity.

I am going to let you in on a little secret; I am not naturally a generous person. When I was growing up I thought of unemployed people as lazy and when disasters happened, ’Oh well, someone else give them money. I am not going to ring on the telethon because I can’t make a difference with my 50 bucks’.

When I met this Jesus, this radical Jesus that dragged me out of my comfort zone, I read a story, in Luke’s gospel, and Jesus was looking at people who were giving into the offering in the synagogue and there was a rich man who put a whole bunch of money in and there was a little old widow, who just went along, and she put a couple of coins in and Jesus said to His disciples. “Have a look at those two.

The rich man who has given out of his surplus and this widow who has only given a couple of coins but she has actually given everything she has.” He said: “In fact, she has given more than the rich man in God’s eyes because she has given everything she has whereas the rich man has given out of his abundance.”

And you know, that really challenged me because I realised that there are people who are much worse off than me who are a lot more generous. And you look at this Jesus, what He did and what He said, He turns out to be a cool guy, because He was a giver. He gave of Himself to people. When He was tired and the crowds still followed Him because they wanted to hear Him talk more, He looked at them with compassion. He fed them when they were hungry.

Jesus had no house. He had nowhere to put His head down, day to day. He had no bank account. He had no superannuation or retirement plan and He was the One who said, “Look, don’t spend your life, storing up all of these treasures here on Earth, when you can’t take them with you. You should be storing up treasures in heaven because they are eternal.”

All the way through the Bible, God makes it clear, that firstly He expects us to be generous givers. It says: “He loves a cheerful giver.” And secondly, that He blesses our giving, and some people take that second part, all to a bit of an extreme. They look at God almost like a slot machine. You know, “I will take this promise that God will bless me if I give and so if I put a coin in here, then lots of coins should fall out of the bottom like a poker machine.”

Well, that’s not God. But if we take a really balanced view of this and say, “God’s heart is to bless His children, those people who believe in His Son Jesus, those people who are out there, doing things in His Name, blessing other people. He wants to bless them.” Sometimes He blesses people with wealth. Sometimes He blesses people with peace and for me, one of the things that He has really, really blessed me with is setting me free, from the tin-pot, little dictator that I used to be to myself in my life. It is such a freedom to have a life now, where it doesn’t depend upon my gratification anymore. God is so good!

Way back in the book of Proverbs that was written by King Solomon, a few thousand years ago now. Proverbs chapter 11 and verse 24 says this:

Some give freely, yet grow all the richer. Others withhold what is due, and only suffering want.

 Isn’t it amazing that we can try and build up all the wealth we would like but ultimately it is God who blesses our lives? And it is God who blesses a cheerful giver. So, the more that I read about this Jesus, and the more that I wanted to be a follower of Jesus, it became crunch time. I had to come to a point that, accepting that it was my job to give. There are people in need, there is God’s work, and it is for me to give.

The whole concept of tithing, you may or may not have heard of the concept of tithing. It’s in the Old Testament, and it’s about giving one-tenth of your income. It took me a few years to get to that point of tithing. But since I have accepted that as a principle in living my life for Jesus, I have never been so well off. And when I went from my consulting career into full-time ministry, I truly believe that I wouldn’t have been able to take that step of leaving the big six figure salary behind for ministry salary unless first I had been taking little steps along the way of learning to become a giver. Just as my Jesus gave for me. And when we took that step, my wife and I moving from the consulting career with the big salary, to a ministry salary, we sat down and we said, “Look. We have got to rationalise some of our spending here.”

We looked at the cable TV account and said, “We never watch those movie channels; there is $15.00 per month.” I checked the Internet account and discovered that there is a new plan, with better access: $30.00 per month saving. We went to some more mobile phone plans so we have a family plan now and that saved us $100.00 per month. And the list goes on and all of a sudden, we came to savings of $6,000.00 a year without losing anything. And then when I was in a school, in India, and there were these kids and they needed beds and I came home and spoke to some friends and we put a bit of money together and we sent it over there and just recently I received a photo of these kids in their beds; no longer sleeping on concrete floors.

That is such a blessing! Just in a small part, to be able to go to bed and know that: “Tonight, those 40 kids are sleeping in a bed and not on a concrete floor.”

When we give, we discover something outrageous. It’s because of the way I think that God has made us. There is such a pleasure; there is such a joy, in being a giver and seeing the impact of that gift in other people’s lives.

Whether it is money, or whether it is our time, whether it’s our skills and abilities. Giving is such a blessing to the giver, the little things, the big things. If you have been touched and moved with this, I would ask you to pray even if it is something that you have never done before, or haven’t done for awhile.

And say to God, “Lord, to what or to whom shall I give? How much? Show me the opportunities. Free me up. Lord, let me be a blessing to other people, in Your name.”