As long as you hold onto that thing from the past, it has a hold over you, and as long as it has a hold over you, you can’t take hold of the blessings that are coming your way.   WHO’S IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT? Imagine you’re driving along in your car one day, and you see a car swerving all over the place. Why? Because behind the wheel in the driver’s seat is a gorilla with a crazed look on his face. Would you be shocked? Yeah, me too. Driving a car is a serious business. The moment we get behind that wheel, we’re in control of a lethal weapon. But how often do you actually think about that before you unlock the car-door, hop in, strap your seatbelt on, and turn the key in the ignition? Most of us don’t think about it at all, and to be honest, I’ve been driving now for almost thirty years and until March last year, I didn’t think too much about it either. I’d just hop into my car, turn the key, and off we’d go. I was an aggressive driver because of my personality-type; I want to get where I’m going as quickly as possible. I’d tailgate people; I’d blast the horn; still do now and then; I’d zig in and out of traffic, without really thinking too much about the consequences. But in March last year, everything changed. I attended an advanced driving course. Now somehow in my head I imagined that I’d be learning how to drive faster still – how to zip in and out of the traffic more effectively, but instead, they taught me about the consequences of driving like a lunatic. The morning was spent in the classroom, and the afternoon on the racetrack. By the end of the day, I came to the realisation that for the past…well…thirty years of my life, there’d been a lunatic behind the wheel of my car. Me! A bit like that crazy gorilla I was talking about earlier. It’s not that I’m an overly bad person, per say; it’s not that I was intentionally being a lunatic about my driving – and in any case, my driving wasn’t all that outrageous; plenty of people drive like that – but once I listened to someone who knew what they were talking about, an expert; once I hopped into my car and participated in some controlled tests at what were in fact relatively low speeds, and I discovered the consequences of the way I’d been driving, I was confronted with the reality that my behaviour behind the wheel, unwitting though it may have been, was putting my life at risk; the lives of the people I love most – my family; and the lives of other people on the road. It was a shock, I can tell you, and that shock – being confronted with the deadly consequences of my behaviour – resulted in an instant change in the way I drove my car. In fact, these days, I see people doing what I used to do and immediately I think: ‘How can you do something crazy like that? Ah, yeah, I remember how.’ Now if driving a car is a serious business, living your life is even more of a serious business. What we believe, how we see ourselves, what we think, what we say, what we do, our relationships, our loves, how we cope with adversity, how we cope with success, how we live our lives, that’s a serious business. Steering our lives through all the obstacles and hurdles this world throws up at us from beginning to end. Let me ask you a question: “Who’s in the driver’s seat of your life? Is it a lunatic, or is it someone with a good heart, a wise head, a steady hand?” Let’s say, a bit like going to an advanced driving instructor, you paid a forensic psychologist to review your life – your attitudes; your successes and failures and how you handle them all; the depth and the effectiveness of your relationships; your whole life – what might they find? What sort of a scorecard would you end up with? If someone brought you face to face with the consequences of some of your wrong attitudes towards others – perhaps your own perception of yourself, your foibles and insecurities and all that stuff – how would you go? The sort of life we end up living comes back to who or what is in the driver’s seat. It comes back to the skill and the wisdom and the integrity and the insight of whoever’s driving our lives, and the whole thing of educating us on how to drive our lives is left somewhat to chance. Some cultures handle it quite well, but others (in fact, the more affluent cultures where people see themselves primarily as individuals, rather than members of a family or members of a community) we don’t handle this life-education stuff that well at all. So where do you go? How do you get the sort of input into your life that sets your course in the right direction? Here are the words of the very first Psalm in the Old Testament. Have a listen to this: Happy are those who don’t follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers. But their delight is in the Word of God, on which they meditate day and night. Those people are like trees planted by streams of water that yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves don’t wither. In all that they do, they prosper. The wicked, on the other hand, aren’t like that. They are like chaff that’s blown away by the wind. Academically, I’m a pretty smart guy. But when it came to actually living out my life, I didn’t have a lot of wisdom. Being smart and being wise are two entirely different things, and so unwittingly, I wasn’t living the sort of life that I had the potential to live. I wasn’t taking what I was smart at, what I was good at, and using it with wisdom and compassion, and so, I wasn’t all that happy. The turning point came when I let someone else take the driver’s seat. The turning point for me was when I let Jesus drive for a while, for a long while; when I started to listen to His words – what He has to say. Then, all of a sudden, my life started yielding the fruit it was always meant to yield. Just stop and think about this: God made you and me who we are. He knows exactly what He made us good at, and the things that we’re not so good at. And when we stop taking the advice of the wicked, when we stop treading the path that sinners tread, when we stop sitting in the seat of the scoffers as though somehow we’re in a position to judge people, something awesome happens. We discover the freedom that we’ve always been looking for. We discover that we were made with a purpose. We’ve been given some gifts and some abilities that are absolutely unique and special, and when we live out who God made us to be according to His wisdom, His ways, when we drink in His words and His wisdom the way a thirsty tree sends down its roots into the soil to draw up the water, then you can’t help it. Fruit starts to appear. We end up producing the goodness and the yield that we were designed, handcrafted to produce. And look, maybe you know something that I don’t, but there isn’t one thing on this planet that I’ve found to be more satisfying, more fulfilling, than being who God made me to be; doing what God made me to do; producing the fruit that others get to eat – the fruit He always planned for me to produce. But it only started happening when I got out of the road, and let Jesus hop into the driver’s seat. Can I ask you this question again? Who is in the driver’s seat of your life?   WHAT’S DRIVING YOU? Ok, so the alarm clock goes off again in the morning. Great! You switch it off, into the bathroom, get dressed, have breakfast, and then you’re off and running. For some of us, it’s off to work. Perhaps you have a long commute ahead or maybe you work from home. You get to your workplace and the day begins, or perhaps you’re a stay-at-home mother. Other people think: “Man, wouldn’t it be great to be able to stay at home and not have to go to work!” But kids are hard work, right? Housework is boring and no one seems to appreciate all that you do. Maybe you live on your own. A lot of older people do. The day is going to be lonely and empty, so you’d like to sleep in for as long as possible, but somehow you seem to be waking up much earlier these days. Some people seem to have such exciting jobs. I remember when I was a consultant, almost every week I was flying off somewhere here or there, and people would look at me and say: “Wow! I wish I had Berni’s job”. Little did they know how sick I was of taxies and airports and hotels and planes and landing and scrambling to get to the next meeting … There’s a hotel in Wellington in New Zealand, where I’ve stayed one hundred and eight times. That’s a hundred and eight return-trips between Australia and New Zealand. Even what appears to be glamorous or desirable really ends up being a grind, so I’m going to come back to it. Whatever your lot in life is – however you spend your day, however glamorous it may appear to others or however boring – what motivates you to get up out of bed every day? Is it just that you have to? You have to get up. You have to go to work. You have to do that long commute and sit in that cubicle and do that job, ‘cos that’s what pays for the mortgage, that’s what puts food on the table, and that’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. The tragic truth is that that’s precisely how it is for a lot of people. They’re stuck on this endless merry-go-round of drudgery and pressure and stress, that has precious little in it to be motivated about. I lived a lot of my life just like that. There was nothing in it to motivate me and to give me satisfaction. Now let me say, I did have some motivations. I wanted to make a lot of money, and I was on the way. I wanted to be successful and to some degree, I was. I wanted to be a recognised leader in my industry, and to be sure, people knew who I was and my consulting services were very much in demand. Those were my motivations, but there was no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They’re motivations you’d think that if realised would bring a great degree of satisfaction and contentment. Well, there was a bit of that, but it was all too fleeting. It didn’t last. Deep down, at the end of each day, when I laid my head on that pillow, that sense of achievement and satisfaction at what I had achieved that day simply wasn’t there. And of course, in just a few hours, that alarm clock would be going off again and, hey presto… Come on, what are your motivations, your hopes and your dreams that get you out of bed every day, and most importantly, are they the sort of motivations and hopes and dreams that are going to bring you the sense of satisfaction and contentment and fulfilment that you’ve been spending most of your life looking for? Well, are they, or aren’t they? You know that Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, but that’s how many people live; can I say, most people live. ‘Well, you know, I’m not content. I’m not satisfied, but if I just keep doing it, if I just keep working harder, maybe it’ll come.’ Can I be really direct here? No, it won’t! Because 99% of that sense of satisfaction and contentment and fulfilment that everyone’s yearning for has to do with what’s going on inside your heart. And there’s a simple yet profound switch that each one of us can flick on the inside that changes everything. Would you like to know what it is? Well, here it is – the words of Jesus. Matthew 23:11-12: The greatest among you will be your servant, but all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. That switch is turning our lives around from filling ourselves, gratifying ourselves, satisfying ourselves, to using who we are and what we have to serve others. It’s turning our lives around from dreaming about how successful we can be, to harnessing our hopes and dreams to impact other people’s lives. And when we do that, here’s what happens. The things that we’ve been doing that seem mundane all of a sudden have a purpose outside themselves, and that purpose is to help and to bless other people – to use who we are and what we have to make their lives better, and that is where the satisfaction and the contentment and the greatness are. What’s greatness? Greatness lives in the hearts of the people whose lives we’ve impacted, doesn’t it? All of those who humble themselves to be servants will be exalted because their greatness will live on in the hearts and the lives of those people whom they’ve served. It’s a simple switch. ‘Oh, Berni, you don’t know how boring, how terrible my job (my life) really is, do you?’ I have no idea, but God does, and this is what His Word for you today is. If that’s what you’re going through right now, have a listen to this. Colossians 3:22: Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while you’re being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task is, put yourself into it as though you’re doing it for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord, you will receive your inheritance as a reward. You serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Serving God ultimately means serving people. When we love Him and we want to serve Him with all our hearts, He often calls us into difficult places; dark places, to be that one light that shines there; to be, in effect, His light shining in the darkness, and that is what brings meaning into the reality of our mundane existence. That’s what brings purpose to our lives – a focus to serve Him, and then impact others with His love. No, people won’t always be falling over one another to come and thank us. We won’t always feel appreciated and some days, it’s going to be a tough gig, but that’s ok, because when we do it for Jesus, then it’s from Him that we receive His inheritance as our reward. When we’re in the business of serving Jesus, that’s the only place so far that I’ve been able to find the peace, and the contentment, and that sense of fulfilment and satisfaction I’ve been looking for.   A CHANGE OF DIRECTION Probably one of the most devastating things that could happen to us in life is when we lose our soul-mate. A wife loses her husband or a husband loses his wife. There are many widows out there because we men have a tendency to die a bit younger than our wives, and depending on what country and culture you live in, there are plenty of men out there whose wives have divorced them. It’s hard to imagine something more devastating than losing your soul-mate, except perhaps losing a child. Now none of us wishes those things on anybody, right? We certainly don’t wish them on ourselves, but here’s the one thing I know. At some stage, my beautiful wife Jacquie and I will be separated because for one of us, our time here on this earth will be over. I’ve seen people react to that sort of loss in a few different ways. First of course, there’s a time of grieving, and that’s so normal and people should be allowed to grieve. And that’s followed by a sense of emptiness and loneliness – a void that it doesn’t seem that anyone else can fill. But after that, there are basically three different ways that people can handle that sort of a loss. Some will never recover. They never get over the loss and they pine away, and often they pass away soon thereafter. Then there are those who never quite recover. They live a kind of a half-life, never really enjoying the rest of their lives. And then there are those who (whilst they will always miss their soul-mate) get on and live this new stage of their lives in a different way. It may not be a loss of a soul-mate. Maybe you lose your job; or your house burnt down; or all your possessions, all those things that you were sentimental about, are gone. Perhaps you suffer an injury that stops you doing what you were once able to do. The thing is that we never know what’s around the next corner and what’s over the next rise, do we? Life’s going along just fine, and then bang! It seems to blow up in our faces. Okay, so now what? I know with absolute certainty there are people today listening, thinking: “That’s me! That’s where I am in life”, and I also know that there are people listening who next week or next month or next year are going to be hit by one of these terrible, life-changing events, and who’ll be left reeling, wondering what to do. So, what do you do? What’s the answer? I’ve been through a couple of those in my life, and as I look back on them, I would never wish them on anyone – not even my worst enemy – and yet those tragedies (which have left their scars) in a sense are part of who I am. They’ve changed me and moulded me and shaped me into a person that I would never have been but for the tragedies, in a good way. Of course I grieved. Of course I struggled for a time, and I needed the help of friends and loved ones around me, but there came a point where I had to make a decision – a three-way decision. Do I just give up on life altogether? Do I live this kind of grey half-life that some people seem to live? Or do I get on, and grab life by the horns and get on with it, and live my life to the full? What am I going to do? Tragedy has a way of immobilising us, but I’m naturally your glass half-full kind of guy. That’s how I see the world, and so the couple of times that my life has taken a twist that I would never have dreamt of or wanted for myself, what I’ve discovered is a world full of new possibilities. Does that make sense? Tragedies take away someone or something that we love. That’s why it’s a tragedy, but with the benefit of hindsight, they also tell you that when the dust settles, when the grieving’s over, tragedies remove limitations and boundaries, and open up new possibilities. There’s a man by the name of Job, who lost everything. It’s a long and tragic story. I mean, the guy lost all his wealth, his possessions, his family, his friends, his health – everything; his status … and he was really a good guy. He was a man who honoured and obeyed God – He was devastated. His friends criticised him, he went to God and asked God why and God refused to answer him, but at the end of all those trials, this is what happened to Job. Job 41:10: And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends, and the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before. Sometimes we’re so busy holding on to that which we’ve lost that we can’t take hold of the new blessings that the future holds. When Job was struggling through all his devastating trials, he could never have imagined that he’d end up with double for his trouble. Can I ask you, what are you grieving over? What is it: Something that you lost, something that hurt you, something that left you feeling worse-off? As long as you hold onto that thing from the past, it has a hold over you, and as long as it has a hold over you, you can’t take hold of the blessings that are coming your way. As long as we’re grieving over the past, that grief displaces the joy that we can experience today and in the future. Sometimes things happen that aren’t fair. Sometimes things happen we would never have chosen for ourselves, and that we wouldn’t even wish on our worst enemy, but I know with all my heart, with every fibre of my being, that there are new blessings waiting on the other side of that. The only question is whether you’re prepared to take hold of them. The simple yet profound truth is that God is a God of blessing. Suffering and blessing visit our lives. Jesus wasn’t immune to either. Do you remember how He suffered and died, and yet through it all, God was with Him and at the end of his story is this. Ephesians 1:20: God put His power to work in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come. And He has put all things under His feet. Jesus is the name above all names. Yes He suffered; yes He died, but yes, He rose again, and everyone and everything is under His dominion. Earth is His footstool, and it’s the perfect hope that we have in this Jesus that gives us back our future after a tragedy. Let’s finish with God’s Word about hope. 1 Peter 1:3: By His great mercy, God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you. Rejoice in this! Even if now for a little while you have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith (which is more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire) may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus is revealed.

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