Life coaches are all the rage at the moment. Business mentorship. Financial. Personal. Spiritual. People have finally figured out that they’re missing something.

It is so good to be able to join you again this week; I love the fresh feeling at the start of a week. Now have you ever known someone for a long time? A work colleague, a so called friend, even a family member, and then you find out something about them or they do something that surprises you and you think to yourself, “I really don’t know you at all.”

I was having lunch with a friend the other week, a man I’ve known for twenty years, and he mentioned he’d been married and divorced as a young man. It blew me away. I thought I really knew him. That’s how I felt when I started reading about this Jesus a few year’s back. I had a picture in my mind, I thought I had him pegged, but then you look at the things He said, the things He did, and it certainly shattered my stain glass image of Him.

Life Coach’s they are the trendy thing aren’t they? Often you see them now advertising to be business mentors, as if there aren’t enough experienced men in business to mentor the younger folk. The personal trainer I often see as I go for my early morning walks around the park where I live. There are people who engage personal trainers to help them to get fit. There are financial coaches.

What motives this problem, why have life coaches become so popular all of a sudden? My hunch is it is our drive to succeed. I have a friend who runs a mentorship group called, “The Achievers Group” and I get a fortnightly email from him called, “The Vitamin Pill”. Now they’re great insight and they’re very, very good. I guess we have these images of success that we try to measure up to and as we do we sense that we’re missing something, we sense that we missed out on something.

You know as we grow up there are various inputs to our life in that process where you and I matured. Our parents mostly, are a major influence; school and what we learn from the teachers and in the class room; friends particularly once we become teenagers that whole peer pressure thing; television in my upbringing and in my children’s upbringing has had an enormous impact on how we see the world. They’re the key inputs into our life, and so often the thing that we discover is missing as we grow up, is how to live.

I mean, how to be effective. Personal discipline, finding direction for your life, developing those interpersonal skills that are so necessary, dealing with our spirituality. A few months ago back in October or November last year I did a series over a couple of weeks called “The stuff they forgot to teach us when we were growing up.” So often it’s the absence of those basic skills that ruins our lives. You know we have knee jerk reactions, we struggle in dealing with uncertainty, we struggle in knowing how to relate to difficult people.

In so many societies that important life stuff is just left to chance. Church, religion, well to so many people that stuff is so irrelevant, that bunch of rules just doesn’t seem to fit with today’s life, with what’s going on here and now. Well as they say “there’s nothing new under the sun”, and in a sense it was exactly the same thing in the First Century AD. Religion was an intrinsic part of the culture, probably in the same way that secular humanism is for us today.

I mean secular humanism is that whole thing, let’s do good to other people, and the environment, and all those other things, there are different flavours of it but it denies any sort of God it’s permeated our secular mindset and it’s permeated our psyche. Well in the same way the Jewish religion in Israel at least, had permeated the psyche of the people that lived there in the first century.

But just as today, you know as we look at secular humanism, that just somehow the spirit of the times doesn’t ring true. For most of us we say “there must be something more.” Just as we feel that about secular humanism, it turns out in the first century, religion was a bunch of rules and it didn’t ring true for the people, they wanted something more, something relevant to life. And when Jesus began his public ministry aged around thirty, he began speaking.

He’d get up at the synagogue and very soon he was speaking to huge crowds I mean four thousand, five thousand, six thousand people. Now we think today ok four or five thousand, that’s a big hall maybe a small stadium, that’s not that big a number. But back then when Jesus was talking in country areas with small villages, and even Jerusalem only had a few thousand, you know, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five thousand people, that order of population. Crowds of four and five thousand were absolutely huge.

So Jesus began speaking and started drawing these huge crowds. Remember this is not London, it’s not New York, it’s not Sydney, it is villages and towns. Why? Why did so many people flock to Him in a way that for instance today, they wouldn’t flock to a church? Why was that? Because He spoke with a ring of authenticity, it’s what it says, people were amazed because he spoke with an authority that they just didn’t hear from their religious leaders.

There were stories, there were parables about seeds and lamps and bushels and farmers and all this sort of stuff that they could relate to. There’s the parable of the sower, we talked about that last week where a farmer was throwing seed, and He told these stories and people flocked and they didn’t always understand what he was talking about, they didn’t always get it straight away, what Jesus was doing, but He inspired them somehow.

You talk about faith, He said, if you’ve got faith the size of a mustard seed you can say to this mountain, “throw yourself into the sea, and it will be done for you.” He knew how to inspire, a mustard seed was the smallest seed that was known to human kind at the time and He said, all you need is that tiny bit of faith and you can move mountains. He talked about the Kingdom of God, he said that’s like a mustard seed, it’s the smallest of seeds but it grows into this huge tree and it’s a tree where birds build their nests and you think, “man they’re a big shady tree, maybe the Kingdom of God is for me, maybe Jesus’ talking about me.”

He was so often confusing, he was so often confounding. And as Jesus unpacks the issues of life, it’s so often the way it is because we see things one way and yet when we let His words, when we let His being, when we let His spirit minister to our spirit, minister to our hearts, when we hear that voice and those words and the wisdom that turn our world upside down.

It’s not simple, it’s not straight forward to learn. We need to explore it with our hearts, and yet when the penny drops, when you read something that Jesus said, and we can in the four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the first four books of the New Testament. And you read about what He did, what He said and how He behaved and the penny drops.

It is so profound, it is so life changing, so deep. You know this gentle, kind Jesus who cared about the flotsam and jetsam of society, who was like a lamb and yet he raged. He was powerful and scathing about the religious hypocrites, he was wild like a lion. He defies being put into a box, He defies definition and He told stories like no one else I know.

It blows our preconceptions of life when we listen to Jesus, this Jesus who opened up life, who unpacked life issues. I challenge you to read just a few chapters of one of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. If you don’t have a Bible go on line www.biblegateway.com you can read all of the Bible in more translations than you can image.

Let me ask you, “How’s your life? Are you looking for a life coach, someone that can unpack the real issues?” Well … what about Jesus.

Throughout history, women have received a raw deal. They’ve been treated like 2^nd class citizens, abused, raped, enslaved. Whilst things are getting better, it’s still, sadly, happening. So how did Jesus treat women?

As you look back through history there is no larger, single group of people, who have been more oppressed and appallingly treated than that group in our society known as women. Treated like chattels and decorations; beaten, raped, killed, all through the physical reality that men, physically, are stronger than women. The official statistics say that each year over one million women are trafficked, as sex slaves, across international borders…over one million! But the reality is that it’s much, much higher than that.

Add to that the psychological and physical abuse of women in the home, right through to the clear reality that women today are still paid less than men and are clearly under-represented in the ranks of senior management, and politicians, and professionals, and as much as we might want to deny it, it’s a pretty bleak global picture, if you’re a woman.

We’re looking this week and last week and the next couple of weeks, at the question, who exactly is Jesus? Who is Jesus? In the first century women had no rights by and large. They couldn’t own land, they couldn’t inherit land. If you were a widow and you had no husband to provide for you, you were destitute. If you were unattractive you wouldn’t find a husband and you would probably starve. If you came from a poor family and didn’t have a dowry, you would probably end up alone and destitute. It was a tough world especially for women.

And if we ask the question, “who’s Jesus?” We have to ask, “well how did he treat women?” What was his relationship with women? Jesus never married, Jesus never had children and yet there were women around him. In a tough patriarchal society where women were chattels and had very few rights apart from, either their father, or their husband, I think it is relevant to say, “what did Jesus do with women?”

I’m going read you a story, it’s a story about Jesus interacting with two women and a man. If you have a bible, if you’d like to look it up later, it comes from Mark chapter 5, verse 21 and onwards. This is what is says; let me read it to you.

When Jesus had crossed over by the boat to the other side of the lake, a large crowd gathered around him while he was at the lake. Then one of the synagogue rulers, named Jairus, came there. Seeing Jesus, he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, ‘my little daughter is dying, please, please come and put your hands on her so that she will be healed and live.’ So Jesus went with him. A large crowd followed and pressed in on him.

And a woman, a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years. She’d suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors and she’d spent all that she had, yet instead of getting better she grew worse. When she heard that Jesus was coming, she came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak, because she thought, ‘If I could just touch his clothes, I’ll be healed.’ Immediately her bleeding stopped and she felt in her body that she was freed from the suffering.

At once Jesus realised that power had gone out of him. He turned around in the crowd and asked, ‘Who touched my clothes?’ ‘You see all these people crowding around you,’ said the disciples ‘and you ask, “Who touched me?”’. But Jesus kept looking around to see who’d done it. Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.’

While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. They said, “Your daughter’s dead”, “Why bother the teacher any more?” Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, “don’t be afraid; just believe”. He didn’t let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. When they came to the home of Jairus, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, “Why all this commotion and wailing? The child isn’t dead just asleep.” But they all laughed at him.

After he put them all out, he took the child’s father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in to meet the child. He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (Which means, “little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.”

Isn’t it a great story, it’s a story of Jesus, the superstar, Jesus who had fans flocking around him. And then this powerful man Jairus, the synagogue ruler, he was someone in town, he was a leader, he was respected, his daughter’s dying. And he comes to Jesus and he bows down before Jesus, it’s a powerful act of faith in front of all these other people, who knew who he was and he says, “Please, please come and heal my daughter.”

But then in the throng of the crowd there’s this woman, this woman who’s been bleeding for 12 years who just thinks, “if I can just touch Jesus, I’ll be healed”, and she was. And Jesus turns around, he knows what’s happened. He looks around, “who was it, who did it?” She says, “it was me” and then she tells him the whole story, it says, “she told him the whole truth”, I don’t know how long they took but it wasn’t thirty seconds, five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes telling him about the Doctors and the pain.

And don’t you think it would’ve been embarrassing for her? I mean this is a menstrual problem. Right lets not muck around here, this is, you know, this is very personal and in a society where religion dominated, when a woman was having her menstrual period she was unclean. She was a social outcast, she couldn’t integrate with other people. This woman has been an outcast for twelve years. She’s had this problem, she’s suffered under Doctor’s, and pain, and humiliation, and alienation – couldn’t go to the synagogue, couldn’t go to the temple … nothing!

Now all this time, this important man Jairus, this man who had power, this man who had humbled himself before Jesus, was waiting. What do you think Jairus was thinking? “I wish Jesus would just hurry up, my daughter’s dying”. Wouldn’t you be thinking that? Wouldn’t I have been thinking that? Yet Jesus made him wait while he spoke to this woman, while he put her first, this woman who was an outcast, this woman who had no job, probably no husband and no family.

We don’t even know her name and yet Jesus put her first. And then when Jairus’ friends came and said, “too late, she’s dead”, Jesus said, “no, I’ve got enough left, I can do this too, it’s not either/or, it’s both. I haven’t run out of power, I haven’t run out of the desire to bring her back to life, I won’t give up, come on let’s go, let’s do that too.”

In a social, cultural, religious context that Jesus and these people were living in, what Jesus did, for this woman who was bleeding, is utterly extraordinary. To make Jairus wait while his daughter died, I think is wonderful. I look at that and I think, you know here’s this woman, she didn’t understand really who Jesus was yet (he hadn’t revealed that). She didn’t understand that theology of the crucifixion, she didn’t know that Jesus was going to die for her sins, she knew none of that, she just knew that something in her told her that this man was from God.

Something in her told her this man could heal her, and so in a desperate act of faith, she reaches out to Jesus and Jesus notices. Jesus puts her first; Jesus makes the important religious leader wait in excruciating circumstances for Him.

How did Jesus treat women? What’s Jesus’ view of women? This story tells us. You know as I look at what Jesus did here, as I look at how he behaved and who he put first, man that touches me deep inside. That is the sort of Jesus that I love, that is the sort of Jesus I want to follow. That is so real, that is so awesome – Jesus!

We live, work and think in the physical dimension. But most of us would at least admit that there’s probably a spiritual dimension to life. And sometimes, spiritual things get us down.  So where’s Jesus in all of that?

The alarm goes off and you wake up, out of bed, into the shower, the day’s up and running. We talk, we think, we see, we feel, we react, we eat, we watch, we hope. We focus on the physical dimension of life. But get us in a quiet moment, a reflective moment and ask us “is there more?”

Well most of us would tilt our heads to one side and say “well there must be.” And that “more” has something to do with the spiritual side of life. You can’t see it, but its there, can’t taste it but it can make life bitter or it can make life sweet. Sometimes there’s like an oppression, a weight on us, we just can’t explain it but its there. The question is what to do about it?

My hunch is you know what I’m talking about, and yet particularly in the West we reject any notion of demons and devils and spiritual good and evil. It’s interesting to me that the statistics show that over 70% of people believe in some form of God, but only about 30% of people believe in a devil or in demons. And yet if we believe in a spiritual dimension, if we know in our heart of hearts that there is some spiritual thing going on that we can’t see, we know it’s there, we know that there is good and evil in the spiritual realm.

Over these last few weeks and for the next couple of weeks on A Different Perspective we’re looking at the whole question of who exactly is Jesus. Beyond the stain glass window thing is He real, is He relevant, is He here in life? Jesus made this outrageous claim “I’ve come to set you free”, ok, so are you a spiritual liberator Jesus? Is that what you meant? I mean if you have come to set us free and if we know in our heart of hearts that there is some spiritual dimension and we acknowledge that there is some evil there. Have you come to set us free from that?

It’s interesting how spiritual oppression often isolates us socially. We’re going to look at a story in a minute of a man who was in exactly that situation, a man who met Jesus in that situation. So is Jesus a spiritual liberator, and a social integrator? Let’s have a look. I’m going to read you this story, it’s a great story, it comes from the Bible from Mark’s Gospel, and it’s a story about Jesus and this man.

They went across the lake into a region the Gerasenes, when Jesus got out of the boat a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs and no one could bind him anymore not even in a chain, because he’d often been chained hand and foot but he just tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he’d cry out and cut himself with stones.

When Jesus saw him from a distance, this man ran and fell on him knees in front of Jesus he shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” “Swear to God that you won’t torture me.” For Jesus had said to him “Come out of this man you evil spirit.” And Jesus said, “what is your name?” And the spirit answered, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the hillside nearby, the demons begged Jesus “send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.” He gave them permission and the evil spirits came out and went in to the pigs.

The herd, about two thousand in number rushed down a steep bank into the lake and they were drowned. Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and the countryside and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons sitting there dressed in his right mind and they were afraid.

Those who had seen it and told the people what had happened to this demon possessed man, they told them about the pigs as well, and then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat the man who’d been demon possessed begged to go with Him. But Jesus did not let him come He said, “No, go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” So the man went away and began to tell all around him how much Jesus had done for him, and all the people were amazed.”

It’s a great story; it’s a strange story isn’t it? The notion that somebody could be demon possessed doesn’t really fit with our Western understanding our rational mindset. And yet, Jesus believed it, Jesus was there, Jesus had the spiritual insight the discernment to look at this man and his bizarre horrible behaviour, this demon possessed man. I don’t have all the answers; there are people who sometimes say everyone who has schizophrenia is actually demon possessed. I don’t believe that, but they might be, and some of them certainly are.

Some of the behaviour that we see in people comes from that darker, spiritual side, we need to acknowledge that, I do, I believe that. And here’s Jesus, He gets out of the boat, Jesus has got rock star status by now, the people are flocking around Him. Thousands want to hear Him speak and see Him healing people and blessing them. And instead of going and avoiding this street person, this outcast, this weirdo, He’s there. And He has the spiritual authority to cast those demons out, He deals with that spiritual possession.

Isn’t it interesting everyone else says “wow this is really weird, look what happened to the pigs, Jesus would you go away, would you just please leave our region and go away?” Isn’t that so how we behave when we don’t understand something? Why wasn’t there dancing in the streets, that this man who had been a mad man, who had been living naked amongst the tombs like an animal. Why wasn’t there dancing in the streets, that this man had been saved, that this man had his life back, this man had a future?

No they thought it was weird, they thought it was strange; they couldn’t cope with what Jesus was doing and said, “go away”. And He’s getting back in the boat and the man comes and says “can I come with you?” Wouldn’t you say that if you had been that man? I think I would. And look at what Jesus says, look its just fabulous, Jesus said to him, “go home to your family and tell them what the Lord has done for you, and how he had mercy on you.” The spiritual healing lead to social integration, the spiritual healing gave this man his family back.

I can hear you thinking “Berni, do you actually believe this stuff?” Absolutely, because the devil is alive and well today. And so often I see when I’m doing something that really is going to make a difference for God, so often on the morning that I’m about to come to the studio to record a program or the night before things happen in my life.

Sometimes I feel a heaviness an oppression, sometimes its physical things, sometimes it’s tension with someone else; I see that happen so much. I know that the devil is alive and well, I know that there is a dark side to that spiritual realm. And maybe you’re thinking, “well am I demon possessed, do I need and exorcist?”

You know Hollywood has a lot to answer for as it kind of sensationalises this whole thing. I’m not talking about that Hollywood model, I’m simply saying the devil is alive and well, and some people are overcome by powerful evil forces.

If you are struggling in your life and you don’t know why. If nothing seems to be going right, if you seem to be doing all the right things and yet there is a heaviness and a something happening, I would encourage you to take that to Jesus in prayer. The devil is alive and well, Jesus is a spiritual liberator and a social integrator.

Rejection is tough. Especially when the people that reject you are the ones who should have stuck by you. Jesus was rejected too. How did He react?

It’s great to be with you again today. Rejection – have you ever been rejected by someone? It hurts doesn’t it? And the whole thing about rejection is that it hurts because whoever’s rejected you is supposed to have been the one who welcomed you, who stuck with you. The closer the person is to us, the more in our minds anyway, they have a duty to stick by us, and so the more it hurts when they reject us. It’s a vicious circle isn’t it?

So if God sent His Son, and his name was Jesus, if the whole point was to show us how much God really loves us well then Jesus had to experience rejection too. He had to travel down that road to be one of us. Unless He did, the whole thing would have been I don’t know something of a sham in my view.

When I became a Christian about ten a half years ago, in my work life I was a consultant in the Information Technology game. And I traveled all around the world speaking at conferences, thousands of people in Asian and Europe and North America and people asked me for my autographs and there were lights and there were cocktail parties and I was highly esteemed in what I did. Not long after I felt the call on my life, you know I’d given my life to Jesus and I just felt a call to use that gift of speaking to audiences and speaking with people of telling stories, in God’s service.

Fairly soon after I became a Christian I was at Bible College, I was studying and I found myself in ministry. I found myself in this ministry doing exactly what I’m doing now, it’s taken a few years to happen, it’s been a long road, but God is doing some wonderful things. And it’s a ministry that’s supported purely by donation, purely by faith partners, people who believe in what we are doing.

And yet it was startling to me that almost none of the Christians that we knew in our church became supporters, became faith partners of our ministry. “Oh well, it’s just Berni, it’s great that he’s off doing stuff”. But only a handful became supporters. Most of them just ignored the needs of the ministry. And from the beginning it felt to me like a form of rejection. It was disappointing to think, “Well these people, who are my friends, these people who are my brothers and sisters in the church that I go to, haven’t become supporters.”

I was disappointed until I read a passage that told a similar story about Jesus. If you have a Bible you can look it up later, it comes from Mark chapter six, verses one to six. This is the story.

Jesus left there and He went to His home town accompanied by His disciples. When the Sabbath came (which was Saturday) He began to teach in the Synagogue, and many who heard Him were amazed. “Where did this man get these things?” They asked. “What’s this wisdom that has been given to Him that He even does miracles?” “Isn’t this the carpenter, isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simeon?” “Aren’t His sisters here with us?” And they took offence at him. And Jesus said to them, “Only in His home town and amongst his relatives and his own house is a prophet without honour.” He couldn’t do any miracles there except lay His hands on a few sick people and heal them. And He was amazed at the lack of faith.

Now … by this time, Jesus has been doing some amazing things, He’s been drawing huge crowds, thousands of people when he gets up to speak. Remember this isn’t some big city, these are small rural areas, a crowd of four, five thousand is massive. He’s been healing people, Jesus has celebrity status and He comes home, I’m not sure why He came home, maybe He was just coming home for a rest.

And He got up on Saturday and He spoke at the Synagogue, and it says there, “many who heard Him were amazed”. So He was delivering the same stuff, if I can call it that, He was being this insightful, powerful, authoritative life coach. He had a gift for unlocking God’s love and His truth, and yet the people looked at Him and said “Come on, this is Mary’s son you know, the carpenter, James brother and his sister are with us, come on, who does He think He is?”

Familiarity, he was from Nazareth which was nowheresville, He was a lowly carpenter, they’d seen him grow up, they knew his mum, they knew his brothers, they knew his sisters. They looked at him and thought “No! Get out of here”. And they took offence at Jesus. Because you and I both know that if God did decide to have this wacky plan of sending his Son to earth, well he certainly wouldn’t come as a carpenter from Nazareth, he surely wouldn’t be Mary’s son, and James and Joseph and Judas and Simon’s brother, come on, God doesn’t work like that.

No, no, if God were going to send His Son he’d make him a high religious official from Jerusalem. Now if Jesus had been that, my hunch is these people would have been all over Him. They would have been hanging off every word. God wouldn’t work this way, it’s how we think sometimes.

God works in surprising ways and Jesus came home where he’d had every right for people to look at him and say, “Oh, Jesus isn’t it fantastic what God is doing with you, isn’t it fantastic that you’ve been anointed to heal people and to bless people and to preach God’s word this way, Jesus, it’s awesome, can we come and have dinner with you? Can we come and pray with you? I’d love to come and listen to you on Saturday preaching.” But that wasn’t the reaction was it? It was a classic, familiarity breed’s contempt.

Now let’s assume that this story is true for a minute and I believe with all my heart that it is. What does it tell us about Jesus? What does it tell us about who He is? What does it tell us about what He’s like? He’s the only man in history who could choose the time and the place and the circumstances of He’s coming to this earth, and He chose Nazareth. He chose to be a carpenter; He chose to live in nowheresville as a nobody. God almighty chose this, let that sink in for a minute. That Jesus chose to be a nobody in the eyes of His own people. What’s He saying to us? What’s He trying to communicate to us?

They say that you have to walk a mile someone else’s shoes to understand them and my hunch is that Jesus’ saying, “I’ve walked a mile in your shoes, I know what it’s like to have God’s call on my life and to be rejected by the very people who should be supporting me, who should be rejoicing with me. I know how you feel, I know the pain in your heart when you’re rejected. I understand what’s going on inside you, I feel your pain but this is who I am, I didn’t have to be but this is who I am, for you”.

And as you read the stories what He did, what He said which we’re going to be doing for the next few weeks on this program, you think, “Man this guy, who’s Jesus, he’s for real.” He’s a man who wants a relationship. Their rejection took away His power to do anything much in their midst. Because for him, to do miracles required something of them, it required their faith, but they rejected Him.

It’s funny how sometimes we want Jesus to do stuff for us but we reject Him. Who’s Jesus? Jesus is the Son of God, Jesus is the Son of God who chose to be a carpenter in Nazareth and to be rejected by His own people and crucified for you and for me. Remarkable!

Empowerment is a buzz word in business at the moment. But the more they talk about it the less it seems to happen. So – was Jesus into empowerment?

One of the really popular buzz words that’s been doing the rounds in business circles over the last decade or so is “empowerment”. We need to empower our employees to make decisions, we need to empower our employees to innovate, we need to empower our employees to serve our customers.

Now, I don’t know about you but the more they talk about this stuff, small companies are being gobbled up by bigger ones there are merges and acquisitions and stock market listings and big companies have more services, they deal with the complexity by building bridging systems, and pushing customer contact to call centers, where you talk to someone who not only doesn’t get paid very much, but who doesn’t have the authority to make a decision in your favour. Empowerment!

Yeah when we talk about empowerment you know that whole thing of big companies fobbing off their customers and us having to deal with their systems and their call centers. It’s a pretty familiar story to most of us isn’t it? As consumers we certainly have more choice, and really choice means more ways to spend our money. But yet that complexity that comes with that choice means we have to fit in to the supplier systems, we have to play their game.

Talk to your bank, talk to your insurance company, there are rules and increasingly we are being fitted into predetermined products and processes rather than having things custom made. And as employees we’re working for bigger employers, mergers, acquisitions as I said. And so many of us feel like just a number, even the boss is just a number and so has an attitude of “well, the company’s not loyal to me why should I be loyal to the company or my staff.”

And yet I look in the mirror I see me, you look in the mirror and you see you, we’re so different aren’t we, we’re so different and special and creative. We have different skills and hopes and dreams and abilities and weaknesses. We want to express those. It’s human, we want to innovate, we want to be creative. We want to be, and contribute and be valued.

One of my sons who’s now twenty five years old has done so very well with a large retail chain. He’s a manager had lots of people working for him, did well, was on the up and up, was heading up the ladder, another few years he would have been a store manager and he left just recently. And I said to him, “Simon why have you left?” Answer, “Well it’s a big company, you’re just a number, they don’t really care about you.”

Ok, who is Jesus in all of that? And over these four weeks, the last couple of weeks and the next couple of weeks we’ve been looking at Jesus who walked this earth two thousand years ago, and saying “well if he’s relevant today, what’s his take on some of these things? What’s his take on empowerment of people? Relevant question, is he relevant today? Does he matter today? Does he care today? Does he have something valid to contribute to you and me, to our lives that makes us go, “well yeah this Jesus has got a place in my life, in the here and now.”

I love to explore who Jesus is, in the plain everyday situations and stories and realities that you and I deal with, because that, for me is where the rubber hits the road. Let me share you a story about Jesus that kind of helps us to look a little bit at his take on this whole subject of empowerment.

“Then Jesus went around teaching from village to village, calling the twelve to him, the twelve disciples. He said to them, “Look, go out two by two” and he gave them authority over evil spirits. This is what he said to them, these were his instructions, “don’t take anything for your journey except a staff, no bread, no bag, no money in your belts, wear sandals but don’t take an extra tunic. Whenever you enter a house stay there until you leave that town, and if any place won’t welcome you or listen to you shake the dust off your feet when you leave as a testimony against them.”

So the disciples went out and preached that people should repent, they should turn away from their evil ways and return to God. They drove out many demons they anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.

Now what Jesus asked these twelve to do, these fishermen and tax collectors, these weren’t educated theologians they hadn’t been to Bible College and ministry training and didn’t have a masters in divinity or, you know … These were fisherman. And Jesus says to them, “Go out and tell these people all about me. I know this is Israel, I know they’re Jews; I know they’re focused on their law. But I’m the Son of God and God is sending a new message and I’m here to show God’s grace, you have got to go out and tell them that bring them back. I give you authority over the evil spirits, go and heal people, go and cast out demons, go on. And by the way don’t take a whole bunch of supplies with you don’t take a whole bunch of money, we don’t rely on what you’ve got just trust me, just go and do this for me.”

So where is Jesus on empowerment? These guys were his employees, I mean I know they were volunteers but they were his disciples, he was the boss, they were the workers. He says, “two by two, go on go together you need support and I will give you authority over the unclean spirits.” The Son of God gives these bumpkin fisherman and tax collectors, authority over the devil.

And he says don’t take any props, why did he say that? So that they would experience, they would taste the faithfulness of God. “Just go into the village, go and tell people the good news, go and stay with people and if they don’t welcome you shake the dust off your sandals, go to the next one. Trust me.”

What must it have been like for those disciples? To go out there with no money, no food, not even a spare tunic, no cash reserves, no overdraft, no credit card, just living off the land and trusting God.

They went out and they sold the tough message, “turn back to God, turn back to God”. And the authority that Jesus gave them caused demons to flee; it caused the sick to be healed. What an awesome experience it must have been in those weeks and months when the disciples were doing that. God sends His Son Jesus to become a man, Jesus sends His disciples whom he also called apostles. The word apostle means literally – someone who is sent out. So he sent them out, He made them apostles.

Were they weighed down with the rule book? No! Jesus inspired them, they’d seen Him they’d heard Him; they had a relationship with him. It was on that relationship that Jesus traded and said, “Don’t take anything with you, just go in my name.”

Was there some sort of top-down hierarchy? No, he was a bottom-up empowerment model. Jesus gave them authority. God provided for them on the way, God’s power showed up when they healed people and cast demons out.

Did Jesus say to them, “be careful because this is hard, you may not be able to do it?” No … he said, “just go, just believe you can. Use who you are, the gifts and abilities you have combine those with my power and my authority and you will change the world”. Was it too hard? No, they did it, they did it in God’s strength and power and authority.

If we look at here and now, there are a bunch of disempowered people around, at home, at work, even at church and you ask, “who’s Jesus, what’s He like, what would He be like here and now, sitting down with some business leaders talking about empowerment.”

Come on, tell me this isn’t relevant, tell me He’s out of date, come on tell me this doesn’t ring your bell, go on tell me that deep down inside you don’t want to know this Jesus who says to his disciples “I give you my authority, go, trust me, go and I will be with you and I will never leave you, even until the end of the age.” Tell me that is boring.