I have a confession to make, I love my work, I really do. This very program; I was up one morning a few weeks ago at about 3.00am and I started working on this message around 4.15am. A chance to pray first, spend some time with the Lord in the cool of the morning, first cup of tea with lemon and no milk the way I like it, followed a little later by a cup of decaf coffee.

As something happens when I sit down at my desk before the rest of the world is awake it’s special. I open my Bible, I seek out what I think God’s wanting me to say today and off I go at my computer preparing this message. There’s nothing better than doing what God’s made you to do, but there was a time in my life when I had my work completely out of balance. There was a time in my life where I spent so much time at work, labouring under this yoke of expectation, that it pretty much tore everything that mattered to me apart.

Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Well Berni, what’s changed? You were there at 3.00am, I mean that’s ridiculous, you’re still a workaholic.” Yeah I’ll tell you what’s changed. On that day I was preparing this and quite a few other messages, I finished my work day with a telephone conference at 1.00pm and then went off to the gym for some solid exercise, back to have a shower, a quick nap, off to do a few errands and fresh as a daisy when my wife came home at 5.00pm.

Okay it’s not quite your conventional working day but you know what? It works brilliantly for me. I’m at my sharpest, my most creative early in the morning. I work generally a ten to twelve hour day and yet I fit in the things that matter. I get the rest I need, and I don’t spend my whole time working anymore.

Why am I sharing this blow-by-blow description of a typical working day of mine with you? Because I want to show you that you can be creative in setting boundaries around your work. Even if you have to work some long hours like I do, I suspect that if you think about it, you can always find ways of working that work for you, rather than ways of working that grind you into the ground.

The title of this series of messages is ‘Learning To Set Boundaries’. So this week we’re going to look at some relationship boundaries, real ‘rubber hits the road’ stuff to help you get the right boundaries happening in your life, because not all boundaries are good boundaries. Set them too tight and you’ll end up living a constricted lonely life, set them too loose and you end up being run ragged and your life plundered of the most important things.

And nowhere is that more true than in your work. Most, not all, but most of the organisations we work for will suck you dry. They create cultures of long working hours, of hanging around work until the boss goes home just to be seen doing the right thing, of taking work home at night, being expected to answer emails at all hours, including on the weekends.

In fact the more connected we’ve become the more demands work places on us. And I know there are a good many people listening to this today and you’re sleep deprived. The stresses and burdens of work never seem to leave you and you just don’t know what to do to set the boundaries.

Listen to what God has to say to you today through His Word, Psalm 127 verses 1 and 2:

Unless the Lord builds the house those who build it labour in vain. Unless the Lord guards the city the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest eating the bread of anxious toil for he gives sleep to those whom he loves.

So if you’re allowing work to plunder your life rather than to fulfil you by enabling you to use your God given gifts, then it’s time to draw a line in the sand, it’s time to set up some boundaries.

For years the environmentalists have been talking about sustainable development and, whilst I’m no greenie, clearly sustainable development makes sense. So I would like to introduce you to the idea of sustainable work practices, an approach to work that says, “yep it’s right to work hard but no, it’s not right for me to work myself into the ground, or to allow my boss or my company, or yes, even the ministry I work in, to work me into the ground.”

Listen up, if your workplace is sucking you dry you have every right and you should carve out some boundaries. Boundaries that close work out of your private life, boundaries that protect you and your family from interruptions, boundaries that give you some rest and some solitude, boundaries that allow you to switch off, boundaries that allow you to take some holidays at times that matter to you.

Okay it will never be a perfect world but you weren’t made by God to be run into the ground. Now I know, I know, you’re throwing your hands up in the air and you’re saying, “Berni that’s a great theory but that’s not just possible in my work place.”

Well you know what; if it isn’t maybe you need to think about changing jobs. Find a job closer to home that pays a little bit less but buys you back an extra hour or two by a shorter commute. Find a job that’s a better fit with your natural skills and God given gifts so that your stress levels go down. Find a job with a boss who, sure has high standards, but who is realistic about what he or she can expect of you.

Even when things are hectic you need to rest. The Bible makes that very point, Exodus chapter 34 verse 21:

Six days you shall work but on the seventh day you shall rest. In ploughing time and in harvest you shall rest.

That, by the way, isn’t a suggestion from God, it’s a command. Even during the peak periods, during ploughing time, during the harvest time when people were expected to work hard God said, “Rest”. So what are you going to do, are you going to continue being ground into the ground, continuing to risk your family and your health and everything that is important to you or are you going to set some boundaries? I mean some real boundaries around your work, so that you’re working to live, not living to work.

See, the reason that I’m being so direct, so blunt about this is that you’re hearing from a man here who twenty years ago pretty much lost all that was important to him because he worked too hard. We men are very good at trading diamonds for stones when it comes to work and there are quite a few women who are in that boat too.

Listen to me, I don’t care how much you enjoy your work, don’t let it plunder your life. I don’t care how much you’re locked into the paradigm of having to work like an idiot, to carve out a career, to provide for your family, to get ahead, to protect your job, to get that promotion, to earn just that little bit more money, listen to someone who’s been there. It simply isn’t worth it, it just isn’t.

Let me come back to where I started. Yes, I still work longer than normal hours, yep, running a global ministry is a tough gig some days, the amount of work that needs doing always seems to exceed the available resources, time, money, people. I still have enough work to keep me going seven days a week, twenty four hours a day. But after I decided to put some boundaries around my work, you know something? It didn’t fall apart, because unless the Lord builds the house, the one who builds it labours in vain. Remember God’s in this with you, He never sleeps, He never rests, He doesn’t have to. He is working behind the scenes with you and for you. And a prayer of faith to Him can achieve so much more than you working another three hours every day.

In fact a key part of me setting up my boundaries around work has been prayer. The more I pray the less I fret, the more God actually does for me, in fact He does things I couldn’t possibly do no matter how long or how hard I worked.

God will satisfy your weary soul, every languishing soul He will replenish.

Jeremiah chapter 31 verse 35.

And you know something, that includes you.

I tend to think that bringing up children in this rapidly changing world is just one of the toughest gigs going. I mean our grandparents and our parents, my generation, we all had to contend with changes in society and the classic ‘generation gap’ thing but there’s something about this day and age, I think it’s just that things are changing so quickly.

I was chatting with a friend the other day, just in the few years that the smart phones has been around, think of how profoundly things have changed and as information and entertainment from around the world are available in a palm of a child’s hand even before they are old enough to read. Well the influences on them these days, are more and more coming from outside the home than in the home.

In my day growing up back in the 1960’s the only real outside influence in our home was the black and white TV and that was strictly regulated. Our major influences were our parents, our teachers and our friends. Our teachers structured class time and back in the day they were feared and respected.

We played with our friends at school, sometimes after school, but then we didn’t connect with them again until the next day at school and perhaps on the weekend. And our parents were around us the rest of the time. Mother’s mostly didn’t work, but they stayed at home to raise the children. Well that’s just not the world we live in anymore, it just isn’t and it’s no good wishing we could wind back the clock, the horse has bolted on that one, it’s a new world. A world where children are being taught both by their peer group and by the media that it’s all about them, that they need to do whatever feels good, that they need to be themselves, that they, that they, that they. You see children increasingly are less influenced by their parents and more influenced by the world out there and that, for the most part, is simply not a good thing.

So what do you do about it? How do we help them to grow up whole and mature, to become effective, loving, compassionate, strong, courageous adults who pursue their dreams, who realise their potential but who love their God and serve their fellow man and woman? How do you actually do that in this day and age?

I just want to talk about one boundary today in a parent’s relationship with their children and indeed in a child’s relationship with his or her parents. Just one boundary that I think is being forgotten to the detriment of our children and to the detriment of society as a whole.

But before I get to that let me say that what I’m talking about here isn’t just a problem of the developed western world, although it is at its most acute there, it’s also a growing problem in so called developing economies where western influences and affluence are turning traditional families and social structures on their head, where younger people are now travelling away from the home for the first time to chase the big dollars in the city.

The problem of how to bring up your children is a global problem. So into that scenario this one boundary that I want to speak about is this. It may sound old fashioned but actually it’s a piece of wisdom that has stood the test of time, Exodus chapter 20 verse 12:

Honour your father and your mother so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God has given you.

You might recognise that as the fifth of the Ten Commandments, it comes just after the first four Commandments which are all about our relationship with God, and it comes just before you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness and you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife or possessions. An interesting placement in terms of order of priority. You or I may have put that stuff about murder and adultery and theft before that bit about honouring your parents or perhaps we may have even left the whole parent thing out of the Ten Commandments all together.

But God, you see, in His wisdom puts the Commandment about honouring your parents straight after the four Commandments about our relationship with Him and before all the other Commandments. If I had to point to one prevailing fault in parenting today it’s that we’re ignoring the bit where it’s our responsibility to teach our children to honour their parents.

See, these days’ guilty parents who are working long hours lavish gifts and praise and attention on their children to try to absolve themselves of their guilt. They give their kids unfettered internet access to consume all sorts of rubbish, they over praise them and generally teach them that they are the centre of the universe which one day, presumably, they’re going to learn that they’re not, the hard way.

Saw an interesting article in my local paper the other day reporting a study about parents who overvalue their children, turning them into narcissists.

Quote: “While parents may think that telling their children that they are more special than others will increase their self esteem, the group found no evidence of this. Instead they discovered it was warmth and affection from parents that boosted a child’s self esteem.”

Parents listen up, you are not your child’s friend, you are not their playmate, your job is not to spoil them, you’re their parent. And while they’re home with you in a loving nurturing environment that you’re providing for them, your job is to teach them some of the hard, tough, difficult lessons that they have to learn.

Yes love them, yes encourage them, but for Pete’s sake don’t teach them by your behaviour that they are the centre of the universe. Set up some chores for them that they have to do rain, hail or shine, whether they feel like it or not. Enforce some rules, discipline them and yep, you know what, punish them when they transgress the rules. And whatever you do, husband and wife, support one another, father and mother, you have to support each other in this process.

If you disagree on how to discipline your children, have that discussion away in private. In front of your children however, present a united front so they learn the most important lesson that you will ever teach them, honour your father and your mother.

See, that tough love will be the greatest gift that you will ever give them, it’s the most important boundary you will ever set for them. Because presumably if you can help them with their relationship with God, Commandments one through four and teach them to honour you as their parents then they’re going to have a much higher chance of avoiding murder, adultery, theft, lying and envy which are the subjects of Commandments six through ten.

Now a word of warning here, if you proceed down this Biblical path you are going to cop some flack because the ways of this world are to teach children that they matter most and that whatever sin or perversion they want to pursue is their democratic right. Yeah you’re definitely going to cop some flack but have a listen to some of the things that the Bible has to say about disciplining children. Proverbs chapter 13 verse 24:

Whoever spares the rod hates his son but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

Proverbs chapter 23 verses 13 to 15:

Do not withhold discipline from a child. If you strike him with a rod he will not die, if you strike him with a rod you will save his soul from Sheol. My son your heart is wise, my heart too will be glad.

Now I am not advocating beating your children with a rod at this point. No I’m not, although I have to say that I copped the strap a few times at home and the cane a few times at school, and you know what, I am still alive. A slap for a small child is fine, beating on the other hand that arises out of anger is a terrible abuse.

The point is that there are many ways to discipline a child, grounding them, taking away their internet access, for younger kids sending them to their room. Oh I know it’s hard, I know there are going to be tears and conflict, but discipline is an investment. It’s an important boundary because when your kids come out the other side they’re going to be the sort of adults that you want them to be.

So let me ask you to think, right now, of the generous people in your life, the ones who really stand out for their generosity towards you and towards other people. Got them? Picturing their faces? Good and so now let me ask you what response do they evoke in you, what thoughts, what emotions, what feelings? These people who have been generous with their time, with their encouragement, with their resources and with their wisdom, what do you feel when you think of them?

I’d be very surprised if you don’t have warm feelings inside you right now as you think of those people, it’s natural isn’t it? When someone is generous towards you, you just want to respond with warmth and gratitude. And chances are that you’d probably be prepared to crawl over broken glass for those people in return.

The Bible, not surprisingly, has an enormous amount to say about generosity although it doesn’t always use precisely that word. More often than not it simply talks about generosity in action. Have a listen to just a few of those instances, Acts chapter 20 verse 35:

In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus how He Himself said ‘it’s more blessed to give than to receive.

Luke chapter 6 verse 38:

Give and it will be given to you, good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put in your lap for with the measure that you use it will be measured back to you.

Matthew chapter 10 verse 42:

And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple. Truly I say to you he will by no means lose his reward.

And 1 John chapter 3 verse 17:

But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love actually abide in you?

And that’s just a smattering of the references about generosity, each one encouraging us to be generous with what we have. It turns out that no matter how little we perceive that we may have we actually have a lot more than we may think, a lot more than a lot of other people have and when we give those things away generously, more often than not, they cost us very little and yet the act of giving is such an incredible blessing not just to the recipient but to the one who gives.

I’ve always been intrigued by this particular Proverb, Proverbs chapter 11 verses 24 and 25:

One gives freely yet grows richer, another withholds what he should give and only suffers want. Whoever brings blessing will be enriched and one who waters, will himself be watered.

There’s a powerful spiritual principle in that Proverb that repeats itself in this world and in the universe over and over again. And the reason blessing follows the giver is quite simply that God is a generous God, and He’s so delighted when He sees His children being generous like Him.

You may have heard me say this before but the very last thing that God did before He rested on the seventh day following Creation was not to create Adam and Eve. No, that wasn’t His last act, there was something after that, He did something else before He rested, Genesis chapter 1 beginning at verse 27:

So God created human kind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. God blessed them and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

God said, “See I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth and every tree with seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food and every beast of the earth and to every bird of the air and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has breath of life, I have given every plant for food’ and it was so.” God saw everything that he had made and indeed it was very good and there was evening and there was morning on the sixth day.

Do you see? The very last thing that God did before He rested was to give all of creation, all that He’d made, to Adam and Eve, to you and me. That would have to be the single most generous act in all of history. Well maybe the second most generous act in all of history because there came the time when God gave us something even more precious than all of creation, He gave us Jesus.

Okay, so we’ve established in a sense the blindingly, glimpsingly obvious, that God is generous and He wants us to be generous and He blesses, in one way or another, our generosity. No surprises in that really are there? I mean really, I’m not surprised, no doubt you’re not surprised either.

But the reality is that you and I can’t solve all the world’s problems either. If you and I gave away everything that we had, every possession, all of our money, the truth is it wouldn’t make anything but the tiniest of dents in the world’s hunger problem, it wouldn’t stop wars and exploitation and terrorism and slavery. So surely there has to be some boundaries on our generosity, I mean in a practical sense of course, there have to be.

I’ve struggled with that a lot. As an Australian I am blessed to be born in a safe and relatively affluent society by any global standard that you’d like to name, although even close to home we’re surrounded by much need. Where do you draw the line? Sadly the more affluent people become, all too often the more tightly they draw this boundary.

I don’t know about where you live but where I live people on average spend twice as much buying pet food as they do on giving to the poor and needy, that’s scary. So let me niggle away here at you, where do you draw the line around your generosity? Thinking, thinking, thinking but look, while you’re thinking have a listen to Jesus’ take on this, Matthew chapter 5 verses 38 to 41:

You have heard it said “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” but I say to you, don’t resist an evil doer. If anyone strikes you on the right cheek turn the other also and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat give them your cloak as well and if anyone forces you to go one mile go also a second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.

What Jesus is advocating here is actually radical generosity, being generous to your enemies. What He’s saying here is draw your boundaries of generosity loosely, be prepared to give when you see a need. I think all too often our default position, our first position, is ‘no’ when in fact Jesus’ default position is always ‘yes’.

I remember when I was starting out in ministry and it was hard and I didn’t have any contacts and I approached someone who had been around in this media sector for a long time who was well connected and who could have given me a hand, but when I asked him for some advice or for guidance or to open up his network to me, his starting position was always no. So now, a good many years on as I meet people whom I can help, I try to have a default position of yes. Look I can’t help everyone, so many people write in and ask me to promote their books, I just can’t do everything, but as I meet people and get to know them and see that God is working in them I give wherever I can, of my time, of my experience, of my contacts, whatever I can.

Why? Because it’s awesome fun to help people, that’s the biggest revelation. I’m sure you always, probably always knew that, but that’s something I had to learn and whenever I give I know it pleases God and blessings flow in all sorts of different ways. Should we give in order to be blessed? No, but God’s blessing is a natural outworking of our generosity. Proverbs 11 verses 24 and 25:

One gives freely yet grows all the richer, another withholds what he should give and only suffers want.

If I were looking to set boundaries around my generosity, then that’s the Scripture that I’d go to, to look for guidance.