It’s great to be here at the beginning of another week. It’s a pretty amazing fact, but when you look at global research, it says that across OECD countries, there is little or no correlation between average incomes and levels of job satisfaction. For instance, average salaries in Australia are ten thousand dollars a year higher than in New Zealand, yet Australian job satisfaction ranks twenty sixth in the world, where as the Kiwi’s rank themselves at seventeenth in the world. In the UK, another affluent nation, only sixty four percent of employees are satisfied with their jobs, and yet, at least in the so called developed world, people are working longer and harder. There’s been a gradual, but relentless increase in the working hours over resent years. I mean, whoever heard of stress leave thirty years ago. Does this strike you as a little bit odd? I mean, are we missing out on something?

Last week on a Different Perspective, we were looking through a book, written by Clive Hamilton and Richard Dennis called “Affluenza.” It’s about the disease of over consumption, when too much is never enough. We have this passion to consume. Advertising gets us to buy stuff and get ourselves into more debt and more debt and more debt and we’re always chasing our tail.

Chapter six of this book “Affluenza” (and I would encourage you to get the book. It’s published by Allan and Unwin. It’s just a fabulous book.) Chapter six of this book is about ‘overwork ‘and it starts with a story which just tears me apart. Have a listen to this story. It’s from some actual research.

A merchant banker, who worked very long hours, was persuaded by his wife to take a day off work to spend some time with his teenage son, David. David pined for his dad’s attention, but he was always too busy. Never the less, the banker took a day off and they spent a magical day sailing. Although never repeated, David stored it in his memory as the wonderful day he spent alone with his dad. A few years later the merchant banker died suddenly of a heart attack and David now in his twenties, finds his father’s work diaries when going through his things. He opened up to that date they went sailing. His father had written, “a complete waste of a day”. Doesn’t that tear you apart?

But doesn’t it hold a mirror up to our faces about our priorities in life. About work, about how we somehow seem to aspire to career and wealth, cars and bigger houses with three car garages and en-suites and three bathrooms and visitors toilets and, you know, the list goes on, right? And all of us in some part can relate to some of those aspirations. And its not until you hear a story like this about the merchant banker, you think, “Hang on. Maybe there’s a little bit of that in me too. Maybe there’s some of that going on in my heart.

The OECD average for the number of hours worked per year is one thousand six hundred and forty three. That’s what Clive Hamilton and Richard Dennis write in their book “Affluenza”. That’s about thirty five hours in a week and that’s reasonable. Remember, a lot of people work part time, so that takes that part time into consideration, calculating the average. In Australia the average is one thousand, eight hundred and fifty five. That’s over two hundred hours more and it’s the longest in the developed world. Now I would have thought, because Australia’s a pretty laid-back sort of nation. I would have thought maybe Japan would be the highest. Or America would be the highest, or maybe Germany would be the highest. Oh no. The stats say actually, that Australians work longer than anyone else in the OECD. And remember, we have a higher percentage of part time workers than any other country too.

We have twenty seven percent working part time, so actually that number is even worse. Hey, people aren’t taking their holidays any more, people are saying, “I’ve got too much stress at work, there’s too much going on, I can’t afford to take my holidays.” Starting early, staying late. In that book “Affluenza” they talk about ‘deferred happiness syndrome’. I’ll work really hard now and then I’ll be happy later. Yet at the same time the newspapers are full of men’s health issues. Increasing heart disease, increasing diabetes, sleep disorders are becoming a big deal. Men are overweight, they are snoring a lot more. They are not sleeping as well. They are always tired, they are always grumpy. No relationships.

Hamilton and Dennis write this in their book. Superannuation Funds advertise showing couples in their golden years walking hand in hand, and they exploit this image of deferred happiness. Yet many retirees report that after a life time of long working hours, they don’t have the relationship in place or the living skills, actually to realise that dream. What’s going on?

My hunch is, this disease of affluenza, this disease of over consumption , this desire to ‘have’ instead of ‘be‘, to ‘own’ instead of ‘enjoy‘, to ‘buy’ instead of ‘relate‘, leads us into debt. We know that household debt is skyrocketing. Just on the way to the studio today, I was listening to a radio report on ABC Radio, our National Broadcaster, and they were saying that Australians last year withdrew twenty billion dollars from their mortgages. This is stuff they have already paid off. Equity in their house, to go out and spend it on holidays and stuff. Twenty BILLION dollars! There’s only twenty million of us. That’s one thousand dollars a head. We are spending too much! Spending too much results in debt, debt results in over work.

As a society we have never been wealthier, but household savings have never been lower. Let me ask you a question. In your life, how many hours do you work? And what impact is that having on your relationships? I was recently on holidays with my wife and I’d been really tired, because, you know something, I work some long hours. Building a ministry, it’s a global ministry. I record three radio programs, a daily program, a weekly program, some short spots. They are being promoted internationally, so I have to travel internationally to speak with radio stations. Running the organisation. We’ve got internet sites, a lot of stuff. I love doing this because it makes a difference to peoples lives, but you know something, I have a risk of overwork too. For me it’s not money. For me it’s I just enjoy my job so much, that I end up working too long. It’s not until you take a break on holidays that all of a sudden you realise. None of us is immune to this.

Jesus applies some real common sense. He said, “Don’t go storing up treasures on earth, moths and rust will get to it, thieves will break in, they’ll steal it. Store yourself treasures up in heaven, where thieves can’t break in, where the moths and the rust can’t get it. Because where your treasure is your heart is. You can’t serve two masters. You can’t serve money and God. What you’ll do is love one and hate the other.

Take stock for a minute. Just stop. Let’s just think, is the money worth it? Are the things that we can buy with the money worth it? So many people say, “I believe in God”, so many people whisper “Jesus” in their hearts somewhere and yet lives are a mess. Yet they are so busy chasing after, chasing after what?

What about you? What about the people you love? Wake up! We only have one chance at this. Wake up! Are we wasting our lives? Wake up? Is Jesus calling you today? Is Jesus quietly whispering in your heart today? I’m talking to you! Change can be scary. Working fewer hours can be scary. Taking maybe, a job that maybe doesn’t pay so much, so we can live more. That can be scary. I need! I need! I need!

Tomorrow we are going to look at how much we waste. Let me tell you something. Tomorrow’s program is a beauty because the statistics on what we waste and what we throw out are mortifying. We have never earned as much as we do at this point in history, we have never thrown out as much as we do. Sometimes we kid ourselves that we have to have this ‘stuff‘. God turns around and says, “Don’t worry so much about this stuff. I can give you the stuff, I know what you need. Worry about your life, worry about your relationship with Me, and all these other things, they’ll be added to you.”

Let me ask you seriously today, “Is God saying to you, “Wake up” you only have one chance. Wake up!”

Great to be with you again today. Now I have a theory and it goes something like this. If I came to your house and I went to the refrigerator, you know those drawers at the bottom, the vegetable crispers? I am almost certain that I would find some wilted lettuce, fungicidal zucchinis, or squishy tomatoes. Have you ever noticed the stuff that we throw out? The exercise bikes on the pavement when the council clean-up weeks are on. Stuff that we don’t need. In a country of just twenty million people, Australians spend – get this – ten point five billion dollars per annum, that’s one thousand two hundred and twenty six dollars per household, every year on things that they don’t use. Most of it, five point two billion, on uneaten food. It’s the same the world over, in developed countries. While every three seconds a child dies of poverty, somewhere in a hell hole in the developing world. I don’t know. Do you think maybe we are missing the point?

When I was a child, my parents used to say, “Eat your food”. You know, you wouldn’t eat all your dinner, or you wouldn’t eat the bread crusts and they would tell you about all the poor children around the world. Now I don’t know what you thought when your parents said that to you, but I remember thinking, “Well you post the bread crusts to them then, if you’re so keen on me eating these bread crusts.” But as an adult, maybe its time to take the pinch test and really quantify what households are wasting. In this consumption frenzy we have, you know, we sign up to that membership to the gym that we never use. We buy CDs that we never listen to.

A few years ago my wife, Jacqui, and I took stock of just what we were spending, and just what we were wasting, and you know, as we went through our cheque account statements and our credit card statements, it was horrifying to see how regular expenses had just accumulated and got there and some of them we weren’t even using. For instance, life insurance, most of us carry life insurance. When was the last time you sort of looked at your circumstances and thought, “I wonder if I’m insured at the right level?” As we get older our mortgages get less and we have fewer responsibilities in terms of bringing kids up. Are we paying too much for our life insurance? Well, it turns out we were paying much too much for our life insurance. What about your telephones? There are always new plans, capped mobile phone plans, free local calls. When was the last time you looked at how much you are paying just in telecommunication costs, on your mobile phone and your household phone? What about that gym membership that you pay fifty or one hundred dollars a month for – that you use how often? Or that golf club membership, how often do you go and play golf? What about the interest on your credit card? I mean, we go and buy, we have good intentions of paying the credit card off by the due date, but do we? Or we are paying sixteen or seventeen or eighteen percent interest. And I found I was so busy, I was working so many hours in my life, and I never was able to pay my bills on time. It wasn’t that the money wasn’t there, just the bills kind of went into the tray and it wasn’t until you get the disconnection notice, that all of a sudden you think, “Oh no, I’d better pay that bill.” Did you notice the late fee on the bottom of that bill? The twenty or thirty, or forty dollars on late fees?

What we discovered a few years ago was that we could cut our outgoings by around six thousand dollars a year and not impact on the things we actually wanted to have or to buy or to use or to be entertained by. That’s an awful lot of money. And as we observed last week, if you were able to be with us, what’s going on, is that, with consumerism running rife, with there being so many choices in the market place, advertisers are working harder and harder to create an image that we aspired to.

You think about car ads. Remember we talked about them if you were with us last week. What are car ads trying to talk about on the television – freedom, out on the road, on our own, whereas most of us use our cars to commute in disgusting, noisy, terribly stressful traffic? So, in order to sell their products, they create this image that we aspire to.

The subliminal message, or maybe not so subliminal, is that in order to aspire to this image, and to be who we want to be, we need to spend our money purchasing the things that they tell us to spend our money on. We love a bargain, we want to fit that image, and the surveys yet, show that the wealthier we are, the more we waste in this spending frenzy. We just buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. And we end up wasting an awful amount.

I was talking with someone recently who was paying fifty dollars a month for a gym membership that she had never used. Now let me ask you. Would you take fifty dollars or fifty pounds or whatever your currency is, would you take that and set a match to it and just burn it each month? Would you do that? Of course we wouldn’t.

In the wonderful book that they‘ve written, Hamilton and Dennis’ book “Affluenza”, talk about the United Kingdom. Britons discard – just sit down and listen to this. This is mind blowing. Britons discard eighty point six billion pounds of unused goods. Now, I look at these things and I think in Australian dollars. Pounds are real currency, right? Pounds are worth a lot of money. Eighty point six billion pounds of unused goods and services each year, enough to cover all Government spending on transport, defense, industry, agriculture, employment and housing. Are you gob smacked? I am. That is just amazing. Let that sink in for a minute. Now take that and translate it to you and me.

You might say, “Berni, why are we talking about this?” I’ll tell you why. Because I passionately believe that Jesus Christ came to set the captives free and we have become slaves of consumption. We are on a treadmill, a merry-go-round that we just can’t seem to get off. And you know, maybe, we need a mirror like this put up to our face. To say, “You know something; this joker’s talking about me. That’s what’s going on with me. Why am I doing this?” I believe we need to break the cycle, and when this consumerism, these powerful images that they put on the television, in magazines, these glossy images, they are so powerful.

Some people, in fact a lot of us find it hard. Change is hard. It’s hard to do. Some people can’t do it. Some people are shop-alcoholics. We talk about retail therapy as though it’s something good. And even when Berni waves the decaying waste under our noses. Even when that stench goes up into our nostrils, it’s so ingrained.

You look at kids. How difficult is it these days to get kids to eat left-overs for dinner? Have you ever tried that with a teenager recently? Two thousand years ago this Jesus said, “Where your treasure is there your heart is also.” Now if affluence is your treasure, even though it doesn’t make us happy, if you decide to stay on that treadmill, that’s the treadmill that you are going to live on. But if you decide, as seventy percent of people can, instantly today. Now seventy percent of people say they believe in God. Well if we decide in our hearts, deep down somewhere, that Jesus will be that treasure, then all of a sudden something amazing happens. Money becomes our servant, not our master.

That six thousand dollars that we saved, most of it we are able to give away. Not because we’re wonderful people, but because giving is a part of life. Because as I see people in need, as I see God’s work that needs to be done around the world, I have the opportunity to participate with other people in doing that. Giving is such a wonderful thing, and when Jesus becomes our treasure, somewhere, in the quiet depths of our hearts, we discover meaning. We discover what life is all about. We discover that when we put Jesus first, all these other things – God knows what we need; they get added to us anyway. And you know, we enjoy them more, because all of a sudden we have our perspective right. Let me ask you a question. “Those mouldy zucchinis in the bottom of your fridge and all that stuff that you waste, where’s your treasure, where’s your heart? What about your life?

It’s just fantastic that we can get together again today. If I were to ask you what your priorities in life are, my hunch, just a hunch mind you, is that your health would be pretty high up there on the list. Now the stats go something like this: if you randomly choose one hundred people, male, female, old, young, out of those one hundred people, precisely one hundred will die eventually. But along the way none of us wants sickness. OK, the odd cold, maybe the flu every few years, but cancer, diabetes, heart disease? There is not a single person I know that wants any of those. Right? But the experts tell us that there is a strong correlation between the way we spend our money and the rising rate of serious disease.

Over this last week and a bit, we have been going through this fantastic book, called “Affluenza” by Clive Hamilton and Richard Dennis. I really would encourage you to read it. It is one of those ones that really gives you a wake up call. Published by Allen and Unwin. It talks about the disease of over consumption, when too much is never enough. You know, when you eat too much at a meal. You sit down – you go to an Indian restaurant, and they put all the food in the middle. You think, “I’ll just have a little bit more of that one, I’ll just have a bit more of that one.” You know, walking out of the restaurant, feeling so bloated, and yet even though we’re bloated, we’re not satisfied inside.

It’s the same when we spend too much on STUFF. You know, we just buy ‘stuff‘, and this affluenza thing is like a disease. The advertising industry throws up all these glossy, wonderful images that we end up aspiring to, and we spend money on those things and we end up being bloated. I mean, come on! We’ve never been richer, as a society. We end up being bloated, but somehow we’re not satisfied. So over this last week and a bit, we’ve taken some time to unpack it all because I truly believe that so many people are chasing their tails financially. They buy stuff, there’s no joy, they get themselves into debt, there’s overwork, there’s waste, there’s broken marriages, the credit card is maxed out, the mortgage is getting us down, and the car lease is getting us down. Peddle harder and faster and harder and faster, work longer – for what?

Despite the huge improvements in our material wellbeing in the last fifty years, we have become no happier. That’s what Hamilton and Dennis write, in their book Affluenza, and it’s based on global research. Don’t you think that’s sad? Despite the huge improvements in our material wellbeing in the last fifty years we have become no happier. Real, disposable incomes in the west have trebled since the nineteen fifties and the problem is not so much that we own things. The problem is that the things end up owning us. The desire to buy and consume, ends up consuming us. Our aspirations keep growing.

I grew up in a nice little house. My parents, three bedrooms, one bathroom, one garage. It was about twelve hundred square feet. Now people are wanting thirty five hundred square feet houses, with three bathrooms and four car garages. And three cars in the family. It’s what makes our economy go round.

On the radio on the news on the way to the studio today, I heard them talk about the risk of a collapse in consumption growth. They‘re not talking about a collapse in consumption, they’re talking about a collapse in growth in consumption. See, our economists and our politicians and our business leaders aren’t happy unless consumption is always growing. I said last week, “What’s wrong with keeping consumption at the same level?” Anything particularly wrong with that? Somehow our psyche has become greedy and we just want to spend. It’s just part of the whole mentality of society these days. So what about our health? Is there some linkage between this spending, this over spending, and our health? Hamilton and Dennis in this book, Affluenza, called together some very interesting, startling and very reliable research.

Depression, for instance. In the golden years since the end of World War two, you know the last five decades or so, depression has increased in the USA ten fold. There are ten times as many people, as percentage of population, depressed in the USA today, as there were just after the end of World War two. The top ten diseases affecting young men in the west are psychological disorders and substance abuse. As many as ninety percent of street people in the west, have one of those too, either psychological disorders or substance abuse. In France one in four people are on tranquilizers, anti-depressants or some other form of mood altering drug. In Great Britain, seventeen point two percent of the population suffers from some sort of mental health disorder. And the estimates are that over 50 percent of prison inmates in the west are there for drug related crimes. What an incredible paradox. We earn three times as much in real terms as what we did in the nineteen fifties and yet these sorts of health problems – mental health and physical health – have skyrocketed. The big issue in the news at the moment is men’s health – sleep disorders, diabetes, heart disease – they are all on the up and up.

Let’s just stop and have a reality check. All this, despite the fact, that in the west, we have never been wealthier. Go figure! What’s going on here? Let me postulate a theory. This image that the advertising agencies and the economists put in front of us, this image that we aspire to, of success and wealth and consumption, is causing us to overspend, and our overspending is causing us to overwork. Ultimately we have to pay for what we spend, and our overwork is giving us less rest, less recreation time, less time with our family, less time to walk the dog, less time to play a sport, than we have ever had before, and that’s having an impact.

The body is an amazing machine. The mind is an amazing creation. In your lifetime your heart will beat, reliably, two billion times and pump blood through kilometers, miles of blood vessels. And the mind, the memory is an amazing thing. Let me ask you a question. Are you overspending? The stuff you buy, the size of your house, the mortgage, the car, the credit cards. Are you struggling with a ‘never enough’ type feeling in your life? Yet you’ve never earned this much. And so, what sort of job do you have? One that pays more, one that has more responsibilities? Why? Because we have aspirations. Now we can say, “But I really want a career. “ Sure, we want satisfying work. You want to be satisfied with your work, I want to be satisfied with my work, but we sort of say, “Well, the reason I’ve got have this job is for job satisfaction,” but so often it’s to earn more money, to work longer hours, to pay for all the spending.

How long and hard do you work? Why? And when you get home, how useful are you to your family at nights and weekends? To your teenage kids, to your grown up kids, to your little kids, to your husband, to your wife? How happy are you in all of that? How healthy are you as a result of your working habits? Come on! Why do we do that? What’s the matter with us? Wake up! Over the next couple of days, we’re going to be looking at what we can do about this whole disease of ‘affluenza‘. This whole disease of over consumption.

But right now, because I believe that Jesus came to set us free. To set us free from the things in this world that would ensnare us and entrap us and masquerade around and say, “Look, I’ll make you happy. I’ll make you successful,” but in fact only deceive us and make our lives harder. I believe Jesus came to set us free from that. And it’s tough but don’t we all need to ask ourselves the question, “Why am I living life the way I am and what impact is it having on my sleep and on my recreation, on my balance in life and ultimately, on my health?

Let me run a scenario by you. The mortgage is killing you, interest rates are pushing up, you just can’t seem to make ends meet, and the credit cards are close to the limit. Why did I ever take out that interest free – don’t pay anything till March loan, that’s just around the corner; school fees, the kids need some new school shoes and yet your income’s never been higher. If that sounds even vaguely familiar, there’s one very simple answer – you’re spending too much! Let me ask you a question. What if you downsize? Sell the big house, move to a smaller one, with a smaller mortgage. What if you got rid of that expensive leased car and drove a second hand one? Would you be any less happy?

Over these last couple of weeks we have been slowly unpacking this whole subject of affluenza, based on a book written by two men, Hamilton and Dennis, called “Affluenza” and it’s a fantastic book. Bit by bit we have been unpacking it, and really what we have seen, we have never been wealthier, yet we feel as though we’re poorer. We have larger houses, we have two cars, three cars, four car garages, ensuites, family rooms, rumpus rooms, lounge rooms we never use, Pc’s, ipods, cable TV’s, networks, laser printers in our houses. You name it and we’ve got it, and as a result of this politics of self-interest, what we see is election pork-barreling by our politicians with middle class welfare. Welfare is not just for the poor anymore, because a lot of people in the middle class are spending too much. They feel poor, and so the politicians often try to win votes with welfare for the middle class, whereas welfare was really only ever meant for those who were struggling, who were legitimately poor. It kind of reinforces our sense of self-pity.

An interesting man by the name of Haggai about 520 BC wrote something really insightful. He wrote this, he said, “What’s the matter with you? You’ve spent a lot of money but you don’t have much to show for it. You keep filling your plates but you never get filled up. You keep drinking and drinking and drinking but you’re always thirsty. You buy more and more clothes but you never get warm. You earn all this money but it is a though you put it into a purse with holes in it.” Pretty insightful isn’t it? Does it sound vaguely familiar? It actually comes out of the Bible, the book of Haggai, and a lot of people will relate to that. We know we are earning more money but we don’t feel like it. Because we’re spending more too. I think its crunch time.

We’ve been talking about this whole over-consumption thing for the best part of two weeks. Let me ask you a crunch question about your priorities. Is your first priority to ‘have’ or is your first priority to ‘be‘? Is your first priority to own and purchase and have things, or is your first priority to enjoy and live life? Because ‘having’ is an addictive thing. I know, I used to be a ‘having‘addict. ‘Being’ is something that we all aspire to. We aspire to have a wonderful family life, we aspire to have plenty of leisure time, we aspire to being contented and satisfied and full of joy and peace but it seems so illusive, because so many of us are addicted to ‘having ‘, to consuming, to buying a boat or a jet ski or stuff and stuff and stuff, that most of the time we actually don’t have time to use.

What’s our first priority – being or having? I believe it’s a decision of the heart. I believe ultimately, each one of us needs to confront this decision in a society that says ‘having’ is more important than ‘being‘. In fact it says ‘having’ is ‘being‘. If you have this, you’ll have satisfaction. If you have this, you’ll enjoy your life. If you buy this new car, if you buy this boat, if you build this new house, if you have this new computer, you’ll by happy. Rubbish! You and I know that ain’t true! It is complete rubbish!

Bernard Levin is a really well known British journalist, and you may have heard me quote him before. He is not a Christian but he writes very insightfully, and you would have to say, boy, he’s getting close to being a Christian. This is what he says, “Countries like ours are full of people who have all the material comforts they desire, together with non-material blessings like a happy family, and yet they lead lives of quiet and sometimes noisy desperation. Understanding nothing except the fact that there’s a hole inside and however how much food and drink they pour into it , however many motor cars and television sets they stuff it with, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends they parade around the edges of it, it aches. Buying stuff doesn’t work. And all the time we have this secret, quiet, hidden dream inside, for a sea change, for not working so hard, and long, for having more time with our family and friends and picnics and football games and a simpler and slower life.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating that we should all sit on the beach seven days a week. That doesn’t work either. That doesn’t make you happy either. But what I see is that we’ve got it out of balance in the other direction. We spend too much, so we work too much, so we don’t get satisfied in life. Here’s a radical thought! What if we changed our lives? What it we worked in a different job where there’s less stress and less money? What if we sold the house and bought a smaller one, and had a lower mortgage? What if we drove around in an old car instead of a new car and didn’t have the lease payments? What if – would I be any less happy? My hunch is we would be much happier, because the thing that most people are poor in is time. The thing that most of us would like more than anything else is time to rest, time to enjoy life, time to have fun with our family and connect and spend time with friends.

I wonder why we shouldn’t stop dreaming. I wonder whether we should just do it. Just get on and do it. Maybe move house, maybe stay put and adjust our spending pattern. Maybe instead of five star holidays, maybe a four star or a three and a half star holiday. Someone who was being researched about downshifting, which well’l talk about in a minute, said a BMW won’t give you a hug or draw you a picture. Downshifting is about changing our priorities. It’s about recognising that stuff doesn’t make us happy. And if you’re one of the seventy percent who believe in God, really putting Him first, really spending time with our families. It’s a question of values; it’s a question of priorities. What do you value most really? So, why don’t you put that first? If in your life you say, God is the most important thing in my life, so why don’t we put Him first? Question of values. Being or having.

So why don’t we make the change? Why don’t we ultimately say, I am going to have balance in my life. I am going to have a career that satisfies me, but I will find a work place that allows me to balance career and family. God is a God of balance. I am prepared to earn less money in order to enjoy my life more. Come on, husbands and wives, talk about it. Think about it. I’m not here to say this will work for you. I’m not here to say – don’t buy a new car. If that’s what is happening in your life, do it. But what will work for you, to create a sort of balance, where you can get your priorities sorted out?

We only have one chance at this life. This is not a dress rehearsal. When we are in our thirties, soon we’ll be in our forties. When were in our forties, soon we’ll be in our fifties and our sixties, and our seventies, and you know guys , we only live to our early seventies on average, and women, you only live till your early eighties on average. What balance can you bring into your life by saying – I know that spending lots of money isn’t satisfying. So now I am going to live my life in a way that is satisfying, because there are no second chances.

If you have been able to join me over these last couple of weeks, you’ll know that we’ve been talking about this disease that people are calling ‘affluenza’. Over-consumption, buy, buy, buy. It seems that our whole economy is based on economic growth, through consumption, and yet the paradox is, while historically, we are the wealthiest we have ever been, people don’t feel that. Our aspirations have grown, but so has our credit card debt. We feel more deprived than ever because we’re chasing some advertising image of what life should be like. Only to discover when we get there it really doesn’t satisfy, because when we get there, the advertisers have just another image, just another, just one more and yet another for us to chase. That’s what fuels economic growth. But maybe there’s one question that has been bothering you over these last couple of weeks. We know that ‘stuff’ ultimately doesn’t satisfy, but why? What is this longing inside of every heart?

It’s a good question. Why is it that ultimately things and experiences don’t satisfy? What is this yearning we all feel? Sometimes people aren’t happy in their life, and so they say, look, I’ll be happy when I get married. So they get married and they discover, oh, I’m not really that happy any more because someone else can’t make me happy. But then they go, “Oh ok, I know, I’ll be happy when we have kids”, so they have a baby or have two and then they discover what hard work is all about. Then they think, “oh no, I’ll be much happier when the kids grow up”, then they become teenagers! Sensational! Then we say I’ll be much happier when the kids are off my plate, you know, and we can do what we want to do.

Come on, stop kidding ourselves. Things can’t make us happy. Other people can’t make us happy. Status can’t make us happy. Why is that? Because we have shifted what we think creates happiness to the outside. But the reality is that joy, peace, real contentment, they aren’t external commodities. You can’t buy them. You can’t put them on a credit card. Joy and peace are things that happen on the inside, despite what is happening on the outside. When we have joy and peace on the inside, then and only then, can we enjoy our relationships, our possessions, our entertainment, because then they have meaning. The external things don’t create the joy and contentment. That comes first. But why is that? Why are we wired like that? I believe God had a plan. God’s plan was to put us on this magnificent globe, the third rock from the sun, in the most stunning and amazing and awe-inspiring universe. Look around, look up at the sky, look at the trees, look at the friends you have, look at the people you love. Isn’t this an awesome place? Have a look in the mirror, you are so complex and beautiful and talented and wonderful but without Him somehow its not complete, somehow it doesn’t have meaning.

God doesn’t live in some temple and shrine. He created this universe so that in the middle of this beautiful, stunning, incredible world, some beautiful, stunning, incredible creatures like you and me would discover Him. He gives it meaning, He makes it complete. The whole point of life isn’t to consume. Do you get the sense; I probably wouldn’t get a job in an advertising agency? The whole point of life is to discover God and that comes right from God’s Word, from the Bible.

If you would like to look it up, go to the New Testament, the fifth book in the New Testament called Acts, chapter seventeen, verses 24 to 26, where the Apostle Paul writes, God is not some icon in a temple or a shrine, He created the whole universe, so that in the middle of this beautiful, incredible world, a beautiful, incredible creature, just like you would have the opportunity to discover Him. He gives it meaning, He makes it complete. The whole point of my life, the whole point of your life, the reason we are wired in such a way, that nothing else will satisfy us, is that God wants us to discover the one place where we can find satisfaction and contentment and joy is with Him. That’s the plan.

See, spirituality and money are closely linked. Jesus actually closely linked spirituality and money. You can read this, by the way, in the first book of the New Testament, Matthew’s Gospel, Chapter 6. He said, look, you people are putting the cart before the horse. You’re worrying about possessions. You’re thinking, where I will get the next thing, where will I get the food that I need or the clothes that I need. He said, you’re missing the point completely. You worry about stuff, but God already knows what stuff you need. God made you. God made the universe. He knows that you need stuff. Now look at what Jesus says, He says, Stop putting the cart before the horse. First seek out the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things, the stuff, will be added to you as well. See what He is saying here.

We don’t have to live in genteel poverty. God made the stuff. God put us in the stuff. God knows that. Jesus is saying you’ve got it the wrong way round. If you think you can get the stuff and buy and sit in a nice new car and smell the leather, if you think that’s going to satisfy you, you are missing the whole point of life. The sequence He says is first seek out the Kingdom of God. God meaning hope, love, peace, joy, forgiveness. First seek out God. And His righteousness – what does that mean? Jesus, forgiveness, being right with God. How much is a husband going to enjoy his marriage if he and his wife don’t have a good relationship? Answer, not much. How much are you and I going to enjoy life if we don’t have a good relationship with God? The answer is, not much. First seek out God then His righteousness, relationship with Him through Jesus and then the promise is all those other things will be given to you as well.

Now, Berni Dymet has tried it both ways. I tried the wealth, the gold plated taps, the career, the recognition, the stuff, the big car and I was always chasing. I was never satisfied. I had more than anyone ever needed to be satisfied, and ten years ago God steps into my life. A God relationship begins. It was such precarious timing. It looked like I was going to lose everything I had. I felt as though I was going to lose all my stuff and in the middle of that, God built a relationship with me. He loved me. I’d sit and pray and read His Bible and it was the most awesome, wonderful thing in my life. And what happened was a deep, deep sense of contentment and joy came first, and you know something, even though I left the big, high paying, high flying, career, God has looked after the stuff. I am blessed, and all of those things, my marriage, my family, the things that I own, they have meaning, they have joy, they matter to me because first inside, I’ve got God’s joy, God’s peace. What about you? When are we going to figure out its time to put the cart after the horse?