A Different Perspective Official Podcast

About A Different Perspective Official Podcast

God has a habit of wanting to speak right into the circumstances that we're travelling through here and now; the very issues that we each face in our everyday lives. Everything from dealing with difficult people … to discovering how God speaks to us; from overcoming stress … to discovering your God-given gifts and walking in the calling that God has placed on your life And that's what these daily 10 minute A Different Perspective messages are all about.

Publisher

Berni Dymet

Category

religion & spirituality

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

5 Oct 2022

Latest episode

9 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

601 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   9 Oct 2026

   Set Apart for a Special Purpose // Rekindling the Flame, Part 5

   We each have a special gift or ability that God's given us – unique to us.  And so often we have a dream for using it … but somehow it doesn't ever quite happen.  Somehow this special gift or ability, just ends up being ever so ordinary … without much of an impact in this world.  Ever wondered why that is? You know, on the one hand the world's always shouting at us that we're special, that we deserve the best, that we should pamper ourselves and aspire to achieving this or that. By and large it's the advertising industry hype reaching into our desire for significance. You realise though that what they're really doing is playing on our insecurities in order to get us to part with our hard earned cash because quite obviously whatever it is that they're selling will help us to feel secure. Of course it never works that way, it never does that. So they try and sell us the next thing and the next thing, that's how the whole cycle works. The result of this inexorable cycle is that most of us don't think we're anything special at all. Most of us have so much of the world's dirt sprayed all over us that any specialness we might have had ends up being obscured, hidden as it were under layers of muck. And yet in each one of us there is something special, very special, not because you or I happen to be super clever or anything like that. Paul tells us that he knows that in his flesh in his human nature he's rotten to the core and that there's nothing good to be found there. We're special because you and I are made in the image of God and He's given each one of us a special gift or ability to use for His glory, if only we could find it amidst all the muck. So today we're going to have a look at what God has to say about all that. If you've been with me this last week you'll know that the thing we're exploring on the program is the special gifting that God has given to each one of us because He has a purpose for our lives and you won't be surprised if I tell you that who He made each one of us to be is a perfect match, an absolutely perfect match for what He's planning for us to do. Someone who's call in life is to work with kids is going to have a special mix of compassion and a teacher and an encourager in their make up. And because that's how they've been wired they're going to absolutely love working with children every day. Whereas that would send me absolutely bonkers. And someone who does what I'm doing is going to love telling stories and have a way of putting words together and holding people's attention so that they can do what they do and I'm sure that would drive the person who loves working with children absolutely bonkers too. Now this is not just me saying this, it's in God's Word. God has brought us into His Kingdom through Jesus Christ not just to bless us but to let our gifts and our abilities be a blessing to other people. Have a listen, Ephesians chapter 2 beginning at verse 1: You were dead through the trespasses of sins in which you once lived following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh following the desires of the flesh and the senses and we were by nature children of wrath like everyone else. But God who is rich in mercy out of his great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through trespasses made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing, it is a gift from God, not the result of works so that no one may boast for we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. So God has done this amazing act of grace by saving us from death that's certainly coming from our sin, it's a glorious act of mercy and anyone who's received that mercy, man we should be dancing in the streets. It wasn't through our works but as a free gift from God so that none of us may boast. In fact what He did was to create us in Christ Jesus and we are what He made us to be and He created us with a purpose for good works, the works that He has already prepared beforehand for us to do. So who we are, and what He's made us to do, fit like a hand in a glove. But then having been saved, as we saw yesterday, we seem to want to fall straight back into our own ways. It's like we've been let out of the mud, washed, clean and then we want to race straight back and roll around in the mud again. We're pretty good at that actually. And as Paul sets out to teach Timothy, when we do that, well we're hampering God's plan for our lives. Have a listen to this sobering instruction from the old Apostle Paul to his young protégé Timothy, it comes in the second letter of Paul to Timothy, chapter 2 beginning at verse 20. He says: In a large house there are utensils not only of gold and silver but also of wood and clay. Some for special use, some for ordinary. All who cleanse themselves with the things I have mentioned will become special utensils, dedicated and useful to the owner of the house, ready for every good work. Shun youthful passions and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Have nothing to do with stupid and senseless controversies, you know that they breed quarrels and the Lords servants must not be quarrelsome but kindly to everyone. An apt teacher, patient, correcting opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they will repent and come to know the truth and that they may escape from the snare of the devil having been held captive by him to do his will. You know the picture Paul paints here for me, it's the picture of being a special vessel. Clean and pure in Gods hands. Made of gold or of silver. Being used to pour Gods Spirit and Gods love and Gods mercy and Gods grace into the lives of other people. I can't go past that, to be a utensil like that in the hands of God is just the most awesome thing but some, some are clean so they're special utensils, others are not and they're just there for ordinary every day use. And then again Paul goes on to list what appears to be an excerpt from the B list of sins, youthful passions, stupid and senseless controversies. It's not murder or adultery or theft but smaller ones but sin is sin and all sin acts like a snare from the devil and so renders us unfit for use as a special vessel. God's looking for men and women who are mature in Christ. Those who pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace from a pure heart. Those who are kind, correcting people with gentleness. That's the sort of person Gods looking for, to be a special utensil in His mighty powerful hands because if we're dirty on the inside, well He can't use a dirty vessel to pour His love and mercy and power and grace and joy and peace out on someone else, can He? It's obvious. So here's the sobering thing that God wants to say to you and to me today, we may all well have a dream, we may be aware of the gift that God has placed in us, we may have a great hold on the purpose that He has for our lives but persistent sin is going to hamper that plan. It's going to hold us back from being the special vessels set apart for a very special purpose that God has for us. And friend only God Himself can get us clean, through our faith in Jesus as He forgives us and as He wipes us clean and through the Holy Spirit whom He would place in each believer to grow us and to mature us and to cleanse us and to get us fit for the special purpose that God has for each one of our lives. This is why some people have an apparent gift that makes little or no impact in the world because they're not yet cleansed. Some people today are missing out on living their dream because they haven't cleansed themselves through faith in Jesus and through cold, hard, brutal repentance, turning away from their sin towards God and that my friend, that is really sad.

2. 

   8 Oct 2026

   A Firm Foundation // Rekindling the Flame, Part 4

   It never ceases to amaze me how we manage to rework God's Word to suit ourselves – to make it say what we want it to say. People argue about all sorts of things that if we were honest are plainly obvious. There is one way, one truth – plain and simple and it's like a firm foundation beneath our feet. This week on the program we're talking about staying focused on the God-given purpose that we have in life. But not in some legalistic sense, not this idea that God has a plan and therefore I have to conform to His plan whether I like it or not. Actually God gives us a choice to walk away from His plan and many people do. I did for much of my earlier years but there's this thing that I keep coming back to again and again, that God's made you in a certain way and me in a whole different way and He's given us each the days that He's set aside for us. And you and I are going to have different gifts and different dreams and different purposes and different days. And real fulfilment and real joy and real life only happen when we're living out who God made us to be and when we're living out what He made us to do. That's what I love about God. It's not that He's full of a whole bunch of do's and don'ts, it's not that He puts us in a straight jacket, it's that He has this awesome plan to make us this complex, intricate, wonderful, beautiful creature created in His own image and yet absolutely unique and then to plan a life for us that fits hand in glove with who He's made us to be. And yet you and I, we manage to find all kinds of ways to wander away from that plan and then to miss out on the joy and the fulfilment that lies in Gods plans and Gods purposes for our lives. You and I, we find all sorts of ways to pierce ourselves with the many pains of living life our own way. Sometimes we fall by the wayside and no doubt there are some today who relate to that but God's call is for us to rekindle the gift that He has placed in us and that's what we're all about on the program today. And we're doing that through Paul's second letter to Timothy, his protégé, in the New Testament. A beautiful letter all about rekindling the gift and guarding the treasure that God has placed within us. Now one of the ways that the gift grows cold and the treasure wastes away is that we allow little foxes into our lives and those little foxes are the ones that spoil the vine. Most of us have this idea that there are big sins and there are small sins. Sexual immorality, adultery, murder, theft, they're up there on our hierarchy as amongst the biggies but a bit of anger or some arguing or maybe this idea or that idea we get into our heads that doesn't quite fit in with God's Word, well hey, we all have that, they're just little sins and as long as we keep away from the big ones who cares about those little ones? We may never have quite put it in those words but that's how most of us think, that's how most of us operate. Now let me say this, the Bible knows nothing of this human hierarchy of sin. To God sin is sin; it's about missing the mark. You can miss by a little way, you can miss by a long way. Missing is missing right? And so as the Apostle Paul counsels Timothy about rekindling his gift and staying focused on the purposes that God has set before him he actually takes some time to deal with sins, many of which appear to be more than the little ones. Let's have a listen, 2 Timothy chapter 2 beginning at verse 14: Remind them of this and warn them before God that they are to avoid the wrangling over words which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed rightly explaining the word of truth. Avoid profane chatter for it will lead people into more and more impiety and their talk will spread like gangrene. Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus who have swerved from the truth by claiming that the resurrection has already taken place. They are upsetting the faith of some but Gods firm foundation stands bearing this inscription, 'the Lord knows who are his' and 'let everyone who calls on the name of the Lord turn away from wickedness. So here Paul is telling Timothy how to shepherd his flock and the big thing that he's on about is to warn them to stop wrangling over words, to avoid profane chatter. What's the big deal here? Can't people have an opinion? Can't there be healthy debate? Smack bang here in Paul's exhortation for Timothy to stay focused, to rekindle the gift that God has placed in him, to guard the treasure that Gods entrusted to him. Why would Paul seemingly go off in this strange tangent telling Timothy to tell his flock to be careful about what they say and who they listen to? Because it's the little foxes that spoil the vine. Or to use Paul's analogy here, this loose talk will spread like gangrene. Yuck …! Okay, what loose talk? It's talk about the most important thing of all – truth. What's true and what's not. It seems that there were some people with some rather long and difficult to pronounce names wandering around spreading the lie that the resurrection of believers had already taken place which seems kind of silly since by definition the people spreading the rumours had missed out. So what's Paul's point here to Timothy and why 2,000 years on are we talking about this when the main topic of our conversation over these weeks is staying focused on the plan that God has for our lives? Well, the answer is really simple. I have seen so many people led astray by others who throw red herrings into the conversation about the truth and then people go chasing after that and before you know it, instead of being focused on what Gods calling them to do they're off on a tangent miles away from where God wants them and needs them to be. I know one man who spends his life being ultra critical of Church structures. In his view there shouldn't be any leaders, we're all equals and there shouldn't be a preacher, we should just sit around and chat together about the Word of God. So when, over coffee, I've asked him to tell me where in God's Word he comes up with that, he kind of fluffs around and gets back to his theme and hardly ever comes to Church or participates in any sense of community. It's really sad because he's a very clever guy and in many respects a delightful human being with much to offer. What he should be doing is offering his gift, his ability, his unique contribution to the body of Christ instead he's off on some theory that ain't in the Bible and he's missing out. Friends we can pick holes in just about anything and Church – Church being full of a bunch of sinners on a journey – is about the easiest thing of all to poke holes in, let me tell you. But what happens is its like gangrene, it ends up robbing us of life. The good news of Jesus is pure and simple. God so loved the world that He sent His only Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. That's the firm foundation here, the firm foundation is that God knows which of us belongs to Him and which of us doesn't. And when we belong to God because our faith is in Jesus Christ, we're not here to argue this or that or pick holes in this or that, you know what I'm saying? That takes us way, way off course. That's not how we rekindle the gift that God has put in us, that's not how we make an impact in people's lives for Christ, that's not how rivers of living water end up flowing out through our hearts into a parched dry land. Let me encourage you, if you're off on some thing, if you have a bee in your bonnet about this thing or that thing, take your bonnet off, let the bee out. Get back to a firm foundation in Christ by reading His Word, by praying, by learning, by growing, by serving using your special gift and your special ability. God did not put us here to argue about what's truth or not. God's Word is clear, it is abundantly clear, it is crystal clear and God's truth in God's Word is His solid foundation, His solid rock beneath our feet. For some people today it is time to get your life back on track.

3. 

   7 Oct 2026

   A Soldier for Christ // Rekindling the Flame, Part 3

   Here's a question for you – do you take your faith in Jesus seriously?  Well, what I mean is … if  … if following Jesus was like being a soldier and following Him into battle, would you go?  God's Word actually uses that picture and so we're going to take a look at what that actually means. I don't know if you've been able to join me so far this week on the program but we've been chatting about, about getting back on purpose. You can always tell a politician who's struggling because that would be the politician who's been drawn off message. They become overly reactive to the opinion polls, chasing after people rather than leading from the front by being opinion makers. And you can always tell a Christ follower who's struggling because that would be the Christ follower who's been drawn off purpose. They've become overly reactive to their circumstances, chasing after what the world says is the right thing rather than persevering through the tough times and doing what Gods called them to do. I spent ten years as an officer in the Australian army and all levels of leadership from junior to senior ranks; one of the key principles of war is the selection and maintenance of the aim. In other words staying on purpose. In other words knowing which hill it is we're capturing and when the bullets start flying and the shells start going off around you, you stay focused on that one hill which is the reason that we're out here in the first place getting shot at. It turns out that being a Christ follower, which is what a disciple is, is about exactly the same thing. And there are far too many who have been drawn off purpose and so have ceased following Jesus. Now that may seem a little harsh and direct so humour me and let me unpack that with you. We've been looking this week at the Apostle Paul's second letter to his young protégé Timothy because it's a letter all about maintaining our sense of purpose and focus. Remembering what we're here for despite the bullets that are flying around and the shells that are going off around us, despite our circumstances, be they mundane or be they challenged or be they wonderful. Whatever our circumstances are, the easiest thing to do is, especially let me say when the going gets tough, is to lose our sense of what God made us for – what our gift is. And so Paul, who himself is chained up in a prison, counsels Timothy through that. The two verses that really stick out are these. 2 Timothy chapter 1 verse 6: For this reason I remind you Timothy to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands. And verse 14: Guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us. As I said, it's the easiest thing in the world to forget the gift that God placed in us. That one thing that you love doing, that one thing that you'll do better at than just about anyone else that you know and to have the treasure stolen from us. God didn't give the gift just to bless us, He entrusted His treasure into our care to be good stewards of it to use it. As I shared with you the other day, not so long ago when I was travelling through a particularly rough patch in full time ministry someone suggested to me that perhaps I should go back to being an IT consultant again and earn lots of money again. But I could no sooner do that then flap my wings and fly to the moon because I have a real sense of the gift and the treasure and the purpose that God has given me in my life to be doing what I'm doing right now. But it can be hard to hang on to that gift, that purpose, that treasure when stuff is flying through the air. So let's pick up what Paul has to say to Timothy about this very thing. 2 Timothy chapter 2 beginning at verse 1. He says: You then my child be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus and what you have heard from me through many witnesses entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others as well. Share in the suffering like a good soldier of Christ, no one serving in the army gets entangled in every day affairs, the soldiers aim is to please the enlisting officer and in the case of an athlete no one is crowned without competing according to the rules. It is the farmer who does the work who ought to have first share of the crops. Think over what I say for the Lord will give you understanding in all things. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David that is my gospel for which I suffer hardship even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God isn't chained therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. The saying is sure, if we have died with him we will also live with him, if we endure we will also reign with him, if we deny him he will also deny us, if we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. See Paul starts off with a premise that suffering – again remember how over last week we talked about the fact that whenever suffering comes, our first instinct is to compare that against what the world says equals success and figure that we must be failing God, but Paul starts off with a premise that suffering is normal. When we're hurting we forget over and over and over again that God's Word promises that we will suffer, that we will face trials, that He will discipline us. Do you get it? So Paul, on the premise that suffering, if it's not the norm then at the very least it's not an unusual occurrence, uses three powerfully simple analogies about staying focused on our gifting and our purpose through the suffering. The first he uses is a soldier. Now I've been a soldier so I really understand this: Share in the suffering like a good soldier of Christ. No one serving in the army gets entangled in every day affairs. The soldiers aim is the please the enlisting officer. So the soldier isn't meant to be chasing after a whole bunch of other things. The soldier is meant to be focused on the business of war, the soldier is meant to be focused on the business of winning the battle. That's the soldiers job, to do that well and to please his enlisting or his commanding officer. The second picture that Paul uses is that of the athlete. No athlete wins the prize unless they train hard and unless they run the race according to the rules. You've got to be there, you've got to show up, you've got to run the race. And the farmer who does the work is the one who's entitled to his fair share of the reward. Each of those three examples, the soldier, the athlete and the farmer are about maintaining the focus on the end game. Each case is the same. Stay focused on the end game through the suffering, through the battle, through the hardship, through the pain, through the training, through the ploughing and the planting in order to be who we were meant to be, to do what we were called to do and ultimately to reap the reward of having stayed the course and done the distance. Do you see the heavenly perspective here, the eternal dimension? Paul's helping Timothy to step back and to see the bigger picture because when we're suffering our eyes are cast down and we focus on the immediate and then Paul goes on to speak of the power of that endurance, the powerful outcome in bringing people to God and in ultimately being accepted into the Kingdom of God with eternal life through Jesus Christ. Time and time again I see people giving up because it's tough. I see people pulled off purpose because it's all gotten too hard. And the picture that the Lord's given me is that when I'm following Jesus down the dusty, sometimes very lonely road, when it gets hard and I see other people pulling off to the left or to the right and parking on the side of the road, even turning back, I should keep going. Following Jesus even if I'm completely on my own save for His presence alone. For the saying is sure, if we have died with him we will also live with him, if we endure with him we will also reign with him, if we deny him he will also deny us, if we are faithless he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. Let me encourage you to take God's Word into your heart today. If it's all too hard, if every fibre of your being is screaming out at you to stop; to give up, to turn back, take heart from Paul's counsel for it is God's Word meant for you and for me. And let me encourage you to rekindle the gift He's given you.

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