The daily grind can really get you down. It can be so relentless, we end up losing heart. You know what I mean. But what if God has a plan – a plan of encouragement? To build us up?

There’s a well known chain of coffee shops around the world whose slogan is “Escape The Daily Grind”. Okay, it’s a cute pun but they have a point. About the daily grind I mean. It doesn’t matter who we are or what we do for a living or whether we’re married or single, children or no children, rich or poor, black or white. We all seem to have that daily grind.

I was talking to a judge recently who has a 3-hour commute each day and a really heavy case load, someone who works in ministry and a Information Technology consultant. They all told me the same thing. Different words mind you but the same thing. They told me about their daily grind. About how it was grinding the life out of them. And it’s so easy when we’re in the middle of that, for us to lose heart.

I talk to so many people who’ve seem to have lost heart in life. Life is just getting them down. It’s normal, it’s human for us to have emotional ups and downs but more and more, people are living in a constant state of down. A constant state of pedalling so hard through life that they’re only just making ends meet. Just getting by.

Over the next few days, on the program, we’re going to look at some of the circumstances and reasons where we lose heart and what we can do about it. Today we’re going to talk about that daily grind. And tomorrow we’ll look at what happens when we lose our hope and vision for the future.

We’ll look at taking risks which is a special sort of stress. And sometimes we go through a season that nothing we do seems to work out. And other times it seems like other people are trying to drag us down.

There are lots of reasons that people lose heart in life. They’re just five and we’re going to poke around in each one of those this week on the program. And we’ll take a look at them from a different perspective.

Today, let’s start by looking at our daily grind. So many people feel like they’re living in a rut. You know why that is? Because they’re living in a rut. We all do that at some point. We wake up and we think, “my life is the same as it was yesterday and the day before and the day before. It’s just this grinding thing that goes on. You know, I’m not enjoying my life.”

I heard someone say once that a rut is just a grave with the ends kicked out. Now maybe you’re a mother and you’ve got kids and work and you’re juggling this and lunches and dinners, trying to spread yourself so thin. I’m not being sexist here but that’s the lot of so many women.

And there are people with long commutes. People with stressful jobs. Maybe you’ve just been doing the same thing for so long, it just seems forever. It doesn’t matter how glamorous or exciting someone’s life might be, there’s a mundane side to it.

I was catching up recently with a well known photographer, Ken Duncan. And he produces brilliant stuff that’s sold in galleries all around the world. And he was sharing with me that the planning and the scheduling that goes on for his photographic work. I mean, it normally happens 12 months out.

Now you don’t think of that. You walk into his gallery and you see these brilliant creative works but there’s a mundane dimension to it. There’s a running a business. There’s planning ahead. There’s that side to the most creative of work.

It’s the same in this ministry. We produce daily and weekly programs. 450 of them each year. I’ll be planning teaching series and doing research and preparing 12-18 months out. There are production deadlines. Programs have to go to stations around the world. It is true in everyone’s life, no matter what we do.

I know people who are so buried in that mundaness that it’s suffocating the life out of them. They’re working so hard and so long at doing what they think they have to be doing, it’s slowly draining the life out of them. And those people need to escape the daily grind.

Now escape isn’t always possible. We kind of imagine, ‘what I really need is two weeks on a tropical island sitting on a beach’. Well maybe you do. Maybe a holiday is what you need. But probably what we really need is a change in lifestyle.

Solomon is one of the wisest men who’s ever lived. In Psalm 127 he writes this:

Unless the Lord builds the house, it’s builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stands guard in vain. In vain you rise up early and stay up late toiling for food to eat for He grants sleep to those whom He loves.

You know, that had a huge impact on me because I am your classic workaholic. And I can get so busy doing my own stuff in my own strength, it becomes a grind. And you know, even people who believe in God, you can end up behaving as though God doesn’t have a place in our day to day lives. As though He wouldn’t be involved. As though we have to do it all ourselves. But listen to this:

Unless the Lord builds the house, it’s builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. Because in vain you rise early and stay up late toiling for food to eat because He grants sleep to those whom He loves.

And for me it’s been a humbling experience. As I’ve moved from the corporate world into the world of Christian ministry. To realise I can do a whole bunch of things in my own strength but I cannot begin to even scratch the surface of what God can do.

At the end of the day He doesn’t share His glory with anyone. And unless the house is planned and being built by the Lord and I’m just one of His labourers, I’m building in vain. Unless the Lord keeps watch over my life and this ministry, then me trying to protect it, I’m doing it in vain.

And if I think that I can impress God or people or make things happen by rising up early and staying up late and burning the candle at both ends and toiling. I’m kidding myself. Because if God loves us, He grants us sleep and rest. He knows that we’re human and that we need to relax.

Some people are so tired and so exhausted. When you’re in that state, is it any wonder that you lose heart? You get overwhelmed. Emotionally and physically. It happens sometimes to all of us. We need to get some balance back into our lives.

You know what this psalm tells us that Solomon wrote? God is in this place with me and He is my helper. You know, sometimes women’s libers get upset with the Old Testament referring to women as being their husbands helpers. But you know the most common use of that word in the Old Testament is of God being our helper. What a humble God!

God is in this place with me. And if I’m walking in His direction and down His paths, He is my helper. If I’m racing off doing my own thing, well that’s my problem. But when I am in His will, He is my helper.

And sometimes we’ve got to change some things. We’ve got to prioritise and say no to some things.

Jacqui and I are constantly looking at our lives. We work long and hard and I’ve got to tell you, I am no good to you if I’m burnt out. So I take it to God and I wait on Him and He gives strength to the weary. He increases the power of the weak.

Even young folk grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall but those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles and they will run and not grow weary and they will walk and not be faint.

How about it? People who get this right. People who discover that God wants to do stuff in them and through them. They are the people who, at the end of the day, stand out from the crowd. You know why? ‘Cause they end up looking like Jesus.

One of the worst things that can happen to us is when all our hopes and dreams lie shattered on the ground. Ever been in that place? I have. And it’s so easy in those times for us to lose heart.

I wonder if you’ve ever been in a place where it seems like you have no future. You’re here. You can’t go back. But when you look forward, you just can’t see a future for yourself. I have. And it’s a devastating place to be.

Now one of the most important things to our sense of well being is that we have some real hopes and dreams for the future. Hope keeps us going. Hope gives us something to look forward to. Hope says, ‘You know, I might be having some ups and downs right now but I have something to look forward to’. And when we don’t have anything to look forward to, you know what we do? We lose heart. There’s no wind in our sails.

I’m a great believer in living for today and enjoying today but we also need a future.

This week on the program I guess we’re looking at all different circumstances that cause us to lose heart. There are so many things that can drag us down and drag us back in life. People don’t often like to talk about it in their lives.

You know how we go to work or we put on a mask and pretend that everything’s okay. Some people put on this really aggressive or confident front but inside they can be dying. Inside they’ve lost heart. People can be stuck in a rut and you just can’t see how to get out of it.

It’s not something that just happens to schmucks, it happens to all of us. Sometimes life just bears down on us in a way that obscures the future. We need to have a good and certain hope for our futures. Some things are going to happen to us that we don’t want in our futures. Sickness or loss or retrenchment or maybe financial problems or maybe the kids don’t just grow up the way we’d hoped. We all have those things.

Other times life is going really incredibly well. Whether we’re on a mountain top or in a valley, I truly believe we need to have a hope for the future. When marriages fall apart. The hardest thing, often, is that the hopes and dreams of that wife or that husband, the things that they wanted to do together. Those dreams are lying shattered and destroyed on the floor.

When someone gets retrenched from their job. Their aspirations for their careers or promotion or future or financial security seem to be torn out from underneath them. Without a hope for the future people, very quickly, lose heart.

The apostle Peter was writing to Christians who were being persecuted 2000 years ago. And these people could have easily have lost heart. I mean they were being tarred and put on stakes and burned as torches at the Roman emperors garden parties. They were being fed to lions. They were being tortured just because they believed in Jesus. What does their hope for the future look like then?

This program is heard all over the world. All different sorts of political and social contexts. Places where persecution happens. Places where people are really hurting. Place where people could easily lose heart.

What did Peter have to say to them then and to us now? This is what he wrote:

I praise God and the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. In His great mercy He’s given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish or spoil or fade. Kept in heaven for you who, through faith, are shielded by Gods power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in those last days.

In this you greatly rejoice though for now, for a little while, you might have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith, which is much more precious than gold which perishes even though refined through fire, so that your faith may be proved genuine and may result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus is revealed.

See, Peter is talking to these people and saying, “Look, I know you’re going through suffering. I know you’re going through persecution. I know it hurts at the moment. But you have a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus didn’t just die for your sins, He rose again and He sits at the right hand of the Father.”

When you and I die, do you believe in Jesus? I do. And if you believe in Jesus, when we die we have a certain hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ ’cause that’s what’s going to happen to us too. And not just a resurrection, we have an inheritance that can never perish or spoil or fade that is being kept in heaven for us.

You know, we can become so focused on the here and now, we completely lose our eternal perspective. I’ve seen people so focused on their careers as though, at the end of the day when they’re lying on their death bed, that’s what’s really going to matter. Or so focused on the next this or the next that or … Get a grip.

One day you and I will breathe our last breath on this earth. One day there’ll be no more career or house or car or job. One day all we have to take out of this world will be ourselves and our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And there’s this eternal, amazing future there for us. A future with no more tears or crying or sickness or pain or tiredness or exhaustion. An eternity in God’s presence.

You know what? It’s time for us to lift up our eyes and set them on the things that are above. On heavenly things. On this eternal reality. When we do that, you know, it puts the good times into perspective.

You know when something good happens, maybe you get a promotion at work or maybe you get married or you buy a new house. Just something really nice happens in your life and you think, “This is fabulous. I’m on a mountain top.” We need to see that in perspective. That house or that marriage or that job promotion. It’s temporal, it will pass away, it’s only for the here and the now.

I love the life that I’m living. And it has its ups and it has its downs. And some days, you know, you want to lose heart. It can be tough here on earth. When you step out, as I did in ministry for Jesus, you are bound to face opposition.

But I know, through my faith in Jesus Christ, that there is an eternal inheritance. A hope that’s not some uncertain hope. A hope that is so certain because Jesus was raised from the dead. And His promise is that we will have eternal life just like He does.

Have you ever done that? Have you ever given your life to Jesus, put your faith in Him? Let me encourage you. If you’ve never done that before, to do that right now, to give your life over to Him. Pray this with me.

Father, I just have heard about Jesus and I believe that Jesus died to pay for my sin and He’s risen again. And Father, I just accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Saviour. I believe that because of what He did for me on the cross, all my sins are forgiven. I am so sorry for all the things I have done wrong. I turn away from those now and I turn to you and I believe I have the gift of eternal life.

Lord, I want to live the rest of my life on this earth for Jesus. I accept Him as my Lord. Father, I pray all of these things in His name.
Amen.

Not everything is going to come up roses tomorrow morning but as we grow in our depth in our relationship with Jesus, He takes the burdens and the problems on Him. And whatever tomorrow brings there is a certainty of a relationship warmer and deeper and more wondrous than we can ever imagine.

Have wondered about the difference between taking a risk, and taking a step of faith? What is the difference? How does faith change the way we experience uncertainty and risk?

We all have to take risks in our lives. Risks in relationships. Risks at business or at work. Financial risks. Risks happen when we have to make a decision or do something or commit to something at a time when we don’t know all the facts.

Think about it. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, he proposes, they get married, they make a lifelong commitment. But they don’t really know each other. I think you spend your whole lives getting to know each other. But the commitment happens in the absence of all of those facts.

It’s the way things are. Some people hate taking risks, others seem to thrive on them. But sometimes, when we’re out on this limb, the pressure, the uncertainty, well it can get to us. We can lose heart. That’s why I’m not into risk taking. Instead I believe in taking a step of faith. So what’s the difference?

This week on the program we’re taking a look at the things that cause us to lose heart. We all do some days. But sometimes people live in that “lostness” almost permanently. It’s like all the hope for the future’s gone. They’re so under pressure and so depressed. One of the things that makes that happen is the pressure of risk.

Let me share a story with you. Probably one of the biggest financial risks that Jacqui and I have ever taken. We owned a largish house in the suburbs. We had five children so we needed some space. But as they grew up and they left the nest we literally became empty nesters. There were all these rooms that we never went into.

So we decided to move. We saw a smaller house, an old 19th century terrace or row house. It was in pretty bad nick. And it was close to the city so we prayed about it and both of us felt really strongly that it was Gods will that we should go and live there.

The trick was that we had to buy that place before we’d be able to sell our current home. Now that took either a big risk or a step of faith. Now we bought this new little terrace back then for a sum that doesn’t feel like that much now but back then it was a lot of money to us.

And then, after that, we put our old house, the large house in the suburbs, on the market. But the sad thing was it was the year 2000 and it was the year that the Olympics were in Sydney, where we live, and all of a sudden the Olympics started and the bottom fell out of real estate.

I mean the place was like a ghost town. Nobody was looking at real estate. Nobody was coming to open houses. Nobody came to look at our house and settlement day for the new place was drawing near. Now I remember this as being a real emotional and spiritual roller coaster ride.

We had no money to settle on the new house. We could have lost our deposit and it’s a scary place to be. We thought, well, we’ve stepped out in faith. I mean we really felt, Jacqui and I, that God wanted us to make this move and this was from Him. But all I felt was the fear of the risk of losing everything. I guess as the man, as the provider, I probably felt that abject fear more than anyone.

One day I was praying and God just gave me this real sense of peace to go to the bank and ask for a covering loan. Now when you’ve got more than one house they do evaluations and the percentages have to be such that, you know, the debt to equity ratio is just right. And we literally only just squeezed in the limits by a couple of tenths of a percentage point. So God covered it all and within a few days of that the old house sold and it all worked out.

The question is, was that a risk or was that a step of faith? To me a risk is when something is completely out of my control. And that’s different from a step of faith. A step of faith is when I feel called by God to go somewhere or to do something and I pray and I talk to people close to me and I pray some more and I just believe that this is really the direction Gods pointing me in.

Like with this house thing. Now in the human dimension buying the new house before we sold the old house was a huge risk. But in the spiritual dimension it wasn’t a risk at all. Because I simply followed in God’s footsteps. He’d gone ahead of me to prepare the way and He called us to do what we did.

Do you know what the difference is between a risk and a step of faith? A risk is purely a human perspective. These things are out of my control. These ‘unknowns’ that I don’t know how they’ll turn out. I can’t see how they’re going to work out therefore it’s a risk that I have to manage.

But if I’m walking in Gods footsteps, if I’m following behind Him, there’s nothing outside His control – nothing. And sometimes we may not know exactly what outcome He has planned but everything there is in His control. And to human eyes it may feel like a risk but to the eyes of my soul it’s a sure thing.

And the roller coaster for me, as it was with the house that went from, “well, I believe in God” to abject fear was when I looked at it from a human perspective instead of from Gods perspective. And when you leave God out of the equation it is so scary. But when I looked at that step of faith, following after Him through the eyes of my soul, I had a real peace about it. A faith of trusting in God with our lives. A commonly quoted Scripture is this:

We walk by faith and not by sight.

That’s all well and good until we’re in a spot of bother where we seriously need faith. And then fear sets in and we lose heart. Did God really call me to do this? Did I hear Him right? Oh, what if I got it wrong? Then we want to rely on sight instead of faith. On what we can see instead of Jesus.

You may know the story of when Jesus was walking across the water to the disciples and there was a storm and Peter looked out of the boat and saw Jesus and got out of the boat and walked towards Jesus on the water. And he’s looking at Jesus and walking on the water but the moment he took his eyes of Jesus and looked at the storm he started to sink.

See, faith is what keeps us afloat. Faith in Jesus Christ.

Maybe you’re living through the consequences of some bad decisions. Or you’ve just headed off in your own direction and you can’t change where you’re at at the moment. What you can change is what happens from here on end.

What you can say is, “You know something, I am going to walk by faith in Jesus and not by sight. I may not be able to do that perfectly. You know there maybe days or hours when I’m petrified. But I have decided I’m not into risk taking anymore. I’m just going to go and do what He calls me to do and believe in Him for His outcomes.”

None of us can do it all on our own. But Gods heart is to guide us through the storms of life. And when we set our eyes on Him, He will hold us firm. He will encourage our hearts. I don’t do this perfectly. I always actually go through some fear. I think almost if there wasn’t a little bit of fear involved it would be easy.

Whenever God calls me to step out in faith it’s never easy. It’s always hard. And sometimes you just have to step out and do it afraid. But faith is stepping out and following Jesus even when every fibre of our being is petrified.

When this house thing settled and all finished fine, my wife Jacqui said, “You know, next time it will be easier.” And I said, “No, actually, I think next time it will be harder.” God’s just grown our faith to deal with that “next time” and you know something, next time it was harder. Next time God called me to leave my lucrative IT consulting career and go into a full time, faith based ministry.

But it wasn’t a risk, it was a step of faith.

I don’t know whether it’s ever happened to you, but sometimes we go through seasons in our lives where nothing seems to be working. Everything we touch seems to go wrong. It’s so easy to lose heart.

Have you ever been in a spot in life where everything you touch seems to fall apart. It’s like nothings working at the moment. At work and at home and in every corner of your life, things seem to be falling over and falling apart.

You try this, it doesn’t work. You try that, it doesn’t work. And it feels like we’re being attacked from every quarter. For goodness sake, what is going on? Why is everything falling apart? I don’t know, I think we’ve all been through those seasons in our lives.

Sometimes, with hindsight, we can see the consequences of our bad decisions. But, well, when you’re in the thick of it, it’s hard to see through that kind of fog. In the middle of it, it’s so easy to lose heart. It is. So when we go through those times, well what’s it all about?

Not everything we try in life is going to work out. Before I became a Christian I prided myself in being pretty clever and pretty competent and sharp. Built this international consulting firm and you know, most of the time I got things right but sometimes things didn’t quite work out so generally I’d blame someone else.

After I became a Christian I looked at my gifts and abilities and started using them for God and listening to Him and following down the paths I thought He was calling me down. But both before and after, there have been times where some things I’ve tried just didn’t work out.

I hired some people, the wrong people. Maybe I embarked on a strategy here or there that wasn’t the right one. And then, just when all that’s going on, something else in another part of your life also turns to custard.

And you stand back and you scratch your head and you think, “I haven’t been doing anything different, I wonder why this is happening? I mean I’m trying my best. I can’t work any harder or I can’t do any better. Why is this happening?”

It’s so easy to lose heart. You want to throw in the towel. Can I share with you my experience? Looking back on those times, each time that that’s happened to me I can look back on it and say, ‘you know something, God taught me something through that’. It’s amazing how we learn and grow and mature under adversity. Coal becomes a diamond under immense pressure and heat.

So often we expect that when we step out in faith, “well, you know, I believe in God and I believe He’s calling me, I believe this is His direction.” You know the thing. And then when it turns out to be harder than we think or something doesn’t work or it takes longer than we think, we lose heart.

Let’s get a revelation. When we step out for God, it’s going to be hard. I look back on my last four years in the ministry here at Christianityworks and I remember that kind of, you know, epiphany moment when I felt called to leave a pretty cushy consulting career I have to tell you, to become involved here in the ministry.

Yes, God is calling me and yes, He made me to do this stuff and in just two and a half years we’ve gone from no programs on air on any station to over 400 outlets in 80 countries with millions listening each week. Wow, that’s successful!

Well, that’s a human perspective. What people don’t see is the hard work and the trials and the uncertainty and the pain and the sacrifice that lies under that in being a disciple of Christ.

What is it that whenever we step out in Gods direction we think, well it should be easy? Jesus never promised that. In fact, He promised the opposite. He said:

In this world you will have tribulations.

So now, what I do is when I confronting obstacles, when the things that I’m involved in aren’t quite working the way I thought they would. When they’re causing me pain, none of us like to be there, right? You just never like to be in a situation where maybe someone’s lording it over you or it’s unfair or it hurts or it just falls over for no reason or something goes bad just because of something totally unrelated and it’s not your fault.

When I’m in those places I say, “Okay Lord, what are you trying to teach me today?” Because that’s how God teaches us. Everyone whom He loves, He disciplines. In fact, it even says in the New Testament during the days of Jesus’ life on the earth:

They offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could have saved Him from death and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Although He was the Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered.

Isn’t that amazing? Jesus, the Son of God, the eternal Son who’s existed since before time began for all time. In His life on earth He went through tough times and He offered up petitions and loud cries but He was heard, why? Because of His reverent submission. In that garden in Gethsemane, when He was praying there on His own, He said:

Lord, if this cup of suffering can pass from me let it do but not my will, let your will be done.

And sometimes that happens with us. Sometimes we’re going through suffering that we can’t understand and we want to flap around and run around and say, ‘What’s God doing?’ And we lose heart. Jesus was heard because of His reverent submission.

And although He was the Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered.

And again:

Since we are surrounded by such a great crowd of witnesses let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that’s so easily entangles us and let us run with perseverance, the race marked out for us.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfector of our faith who for the joy set before Him endured the cross. Scorning at shame and He sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured so much opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

If Jesus is the model, it was so brutally unfair that He had to come to this earth to die for you and for me. But He swallowed that. He didn’t worry about the shame or the pain or anything else. And here, the writer of this book, Hebrews, is saying, “Look at Jesus who endured so much opposition from sinful men for you and me so that we won’t grow weary and lose heart.”

Sometimes, when we go through these things, God is teaching us something about ourselves or maybe we’ve headed in our own direction or maybe we’ve ignored Him. Don’t be surprised when we run into road blocks and consequences. Maybe God wants to deal with some attitudes of pride or misconceptions that everything that He calls us to do should be easy.

And some days, you know, the devil’s having a go. You know what I’ve noticed, every time there’s some breakthrough or something fantastic happens here in the ministry of Christianityworks, the businesses of our board members get attacked left, right and centre. The devil’s alive and well.

Do we enjoy this stuff when it’s happening? Do you enjoy suffering? Do you enjoy when God takes His pruning shears out and prunes the dead wood off? I don’t. We never enjoy that stuff. Do you think Jesus enjoyed being beaten to within an inch of His life and suffering and dying on the cross? No. But He did it. And He did it without complaining and he learned obedience from what He suffered.

Don’t lose heart. God is in that place and He’s teaching us something. We can’t change the past but we can change what we do from here on in. We can say, “Lord, what are you trying to teach me and how do you want me to respond?” The quicker we get it, what He’s up to, the quicker the pain’s going to go away.

Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary or lose heart.

That’s it. That is where the rubber hits the road.

n’t be surprised when we run into road blocks and consequences. Maybe God wants to deal with some attitudes of pride or misconceptions that everything that He calls us to do should be easy.

And some days, you know, the devil’s having a go. You know what I’ve noticed, every time there’s some breakthrough or something fantastic happens here in the ministry of Christianityworks, the businesses of our board members get attacked left, right and centre. The devil’s alive and well.

Do we enjoy this stuff when it’s happening? Do you enjoy suffering? Do you enjoy when God takes His pruning shears out and prunes the dead wood off? I don’t. We never enjoy that stuff. Do you think Jesus enjoyed being beaten to within an inch of His life and suffering and dying on the cross? No. But He did it. And He did it without complaining and he learned obedience from what He suffered.

Don’t lose heart. God is in that place and He’s teaching us something. We can’t change the past but we can change what we do from here on in. We can say, “Lord, what are you trying to teach me and how do you want me to respond?” The quicker we get it, what He’s up to, the quicker the pain’s going to go away.

Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary or lose heart.

That’s it. That is where the rubber hits the road.

One of the hardest things in life is when we want to do the right thing, but the people around us want to pull us down with old habits. It’s so easy to lose heart when that happens.

You know, one of the toughest things in life to deal with, I think, is when other people try and pull us down. I remember when I was an officer in the army we used to joke about the comments that officers would write on our annual reports. One of those jokes was, “This officer sets low standards and fails to achieve them.” We all know people like that. And when we have one or two of those in our lives, particularly if they are close to us at work or at home, it’s tough.

Maybe we start off with all these good intentions of living a good life and doing the right thing and doing our best. Whatever. But these people want to drag us down. Down to the lowest common denominator. Down to their level. I’ve been in that place and after a while you start thinking, “Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe it’s me who’s going nuts here.”

I want to share this story with you. Recently I was in a book store with my 16 year old daughter Melissa. She is a great kid. Great young woman I should say. They watch so much TV and internet these days, we decided she needed to spend some time reading as well. And so Jacqui and I went into the bookstore with her to look around and we left her there for a while we did some other shopping.

And we came back. And she’d chosen some books, the ones that all her friends were reading. And I had a look at a few these. You know how you look at the back what the book is about. I tell you, they were nothing short of pornography for teenage girls. And they were in the teenage girls section of the bookstore.

Now, this is a tough position for me. Because on the one hand I’m encouraging her to get away from the television and get away form the internet and read; but on the other I had to say, “No” to these ones. Well, you know the position she’s in. She’s 16 so she says, “But all my friends are reading these books and I go to a Christian school so what’s the matter?” As a teenager, I don’t know how it was for you, but for me peer group was really, really important. And that’s normal. So I had the opportunity for a discussion and we talked about it.

I said to her, I’m not afraid of her engaging with the issues of sexuality. I mean, some of those things have to be worked through at this age. But what I couldn’t allow her to do, is to read stuff that basically said and reinforced the world view that teenage sex outside marriage is normal. And that’s what these books were about. So what about the peer group thing? That was the tough one. The discussion was really around the fact that just because other people do something, in fact, just because most other people do something doesn’t make it right. We ended up choosing a book called, “Sold”, which was about a young girl in the developing world who was sold into slavery and into prostitution. So in reading this book Melissa was still confronting those issues.

I wanted her to know that I trusted. But this book was both gritty and edifying. Now this isn’t just something that teenagers go through. It’s something that adults have to deal with too. Peer group pressure. Everyone does this or everyone does that. You know, a lot of men I used to hang around with in my consulting firm – an attractive woman would walk past and they would all leer at her and they’d make comments.

You know something, when I married my wife, Jacqui, I said to her, “My vow to her was I’ve set myself apart for you and for you alone.” And just because all these other guys do it, doesn’t make it right, and it’s not something I should be doing.

I used to be the don of dirty jokes in my consulting firm and when I came to Christ I had to step back from that. And there was derision, there was, “Oh well, Berni’s got religion.” And when you’re under that sort of pressure, it can really make you lose heart.

I had an email from a young woman not so long ago. She’s the only Christian in her family and she really felt persecuted by the rest of her family at home. So it is easy to lose heart.

Let’s put that into perspective today. The Apostle Paul had a huge conversion and turnaround a couple of thousand years ago. He was a Jewish religious leader who went from persecuting Christians and having them beaten and locked up to writing almost half of the books of the New Testament.

Now don’t you reckon his peer group would have given him some curry. And this is what He writes in the New Testament. One of the letters he wrote, Galatians. You can read it in chapter 1 verse 10. He says this:

Am I now seeking human approval or God’s approval, or am I trying to please people. If I was still trying to please people I wouldn’t be a servant of Christ.

At some point we need to decide whether we’re going to be God pleasers or people pleasers. And to some extent that’s the discussion Melissa and I had about that book she was looking at. It was a great learning time. The question is, Do you believe in Jesus? Because at the end of the day, we have to live out that faith. My experience is that everybody around us is not always going to be overjoyed with the fact that we’ve laid our lives down for Christ. It’s hard. Jesus said, “They persecuted me so one thing’s for sure they’re going to do the same to you.”

And when we come up higher; when we start living a life that’s a good life; a life that glorifies God; a life that’s wholesome and real and genuine and good; we might lose some friends. Some people might poke fun at us. They’ll want to laugh. But we have to decide. We have to ask ourselves am I prepared to stand completely alone amidst the whole of this earth for the sake of Jesus Christ. Whatever the pain, whatever the suffering, whatever rejection, whatever derision, whatever the persecution.

Now it’s probably not going to be like that every day, although, depending on where you live, it may well be. But this is an important decision. It’s a decision to put my faith and my hope in Jesus Christ. And for me, like Paul, it was a huge step because I came from a parallel universe. But I decided this is who I am. Am I seeking human approval or God’s approval. Well, I tell you, if I was still pleasing people I wouldn’t be a servant of Jesus Christ.

I decided I am born again; I’m a new person. Jesus said, ‘You cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless you are born again’. So this is not some optional extra. This is taking a big change in direction away from all that rubbish we know is wrong and towards God and saying, “You’re my Lord, I’m going to walk Your way.” And when I decided, “This is who I am”, some people accepted me, others rejected me. It was tough but it’s the way it is.

Now I haven’t become some religious nutter, but at the same time I’m different. I have an allegiance to Christ, I have faith in Him. And there are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong and that’s it. When we make that decision and grow in it, what happens is, we become mature and lacking in nothing. And we can walk into the world with a genuine, and a kind confidence and share this Jesus with those who don’t know Him yet.

When we put our faith in Him, we don’t have to lose heart anymore. We don’t have to worry about the fact that some people will reject us, or persecute us, or laugh at us. If we don’t make this clear decision, “Am I a God pleaser or a people pleaser?” We are going to continually wax and wane between the two: from God pleaser to people pleaser, from God pleaser to people pleaser. And ultimately you can’t live like that, ultimately you end up losing heart.