In this electronic age in which we live, identity theft is the big new crime. If someone can steal your identity – well, they can own everything you own. But what if you and I aren’t really sure of our identity in the first place? What if you and I woke up one day and simply didn’t know who we were? Then what would we have?

Lost Without a Passport

I remember once a few years back being at the airport in Christchurch, New Zealand. My international flight from Australia was late in getting in, and I had to race to make a last domestic connection that night to my final destination – Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. And in the rush, I left my passport lying in one of those luggage trolleys at the international terminal – something I didn’t realise until I was checking in on the domestic flight at the next terminal. Oh, panic attack! Can you imagine losing your passport while you’re overseas? No passport, no identity. Now what? How could I tell people that it was me? I couldn’t leave the country; I couldn’t stay there … It turns out that our identity is very important.

I’ve never forgotten that, and in a very real sense, the same is true in life. We need to know the answer to that all-important question: Who am I? Other people need to know who we are. It’s so basic; it’s so fundamental, and yet so many people don’t have a deep sense of who they really are. It’s a problem deep-down, and it’s not something we talk about much, but it’s there, and as I talk to people, I think it goes something like this.

Often we live life day to day without really thinking. We just go along and do the things we’ve always been doing: We go to work or we go to school or we look after the children, whatever it is, but bubbling away deep inside somewhere is a sense of: What’s this all about? Why am I doing this? What’s the point?

The reality is this. We just have one life to live here on earth. It’s not a dress rehearsal. We can’t hit the rewind button and play it over again. When today’s gone, it’s gone; that’s it, and every year, every week, every day, every moment that you and I have lived up to this point is gone. We can never get it back. The only thing left in our time here on earth is the time between right now and when we breathe our last breath. It’s a sobering thought, and at the same time, most people have some sort of sense of destiny.

Whether or not they believe in Jesus or some god even, they believe in things that are meant to be. How often have you heard someone say, “Well, it was just meant to be”, or “If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen?” Whether it’s karma or whether it’s “que sera sera”, whatever will be will be, we all have some sense of a future and a destiny to be fulfilled. It’s as though there’s some intelligent design or destiny that we just can’t quite put our fingers on.

I believe that that’s there because in each one of us, God has made us in His image – each one of us, and when we look at the time we have left in the context of some sort of sense of destiny, a profound question of life emerges. Am I being the ‘me’ that I was actually meant to be? Am I living the destiny that I’m supposed to be living? They’re huge questions. It’s not about having things; it’s more about being.

The turning-point of my life was when I was reading a book, and the author asked this question. He said: ‘Do you want to be, or do you want to have?’ and I realised very clearly that I was one of those people who wanted to have, and having things is not being. Having is about the next car; the next sound system; the next pair of shoes, but being is a profound sense of joy and contentment; being really happy with who we are and what we’re doing, and how we’re living, and enjoying the relationships that we’re having. When I realised that, it was so incredibly unsettling for me because I tried to do stuff my way, and it was turning out to be empty.

Let me ask you something. As you contemplate the remaining time you have left here on planet earth, when you ask yourself the question, “Am I being the ‘me’ I was meant to be? Am I living out the destiny that I was meant to live?” What’s the answer? Yes, or no? If your answer is “yes”, then you’re talking about some profound sense of joy and peace and contentment – the sort of stuff I was talking about just before, but if the answer is “no”, then probably there’s this nagging sense that you’re missing out on something. Is this all there is? Surely there has to be something more than this.

You know, in my experience, most people (by far the majority) are in the ‘no’ category. They have a sense that there should be – that there is – some destiny for their lives, but they also have a nagging suspicion that they’re not really living it out. That’s why we’re kicking off a brand new series of programmes over these coming few weeks called “Discover Your Destiny” – to … I don’t know … help us unscramble that, and maybe get a solid foundation of life sorted out in our hearts, get our lives on track, to live them out to the full so that when we’re on death’s doorstep, we can look back at our lives with a deep sense of satisfaction, and say to ourselves, “You know what? I’ve lived it to the full. I became the ‘me’ I was meant to be, and now I’m ready for my eternity with God.”

The starting-point of all that is an understanding of who we’re meant to be. It’s knowing where we come from and who we are, and what a tragedy it is for so many people who live their lives without knowing those things about themselves; without having a sense of what their lives are all about; without having, in effect, a really good handle on who they are – their identity.

We live in a world that wants to tell us who we should be. We live in a world shaped by commerce and sales targets and advertising, that tells us: ‘You’re this, and if you’re not, you’re not successful, and if you’re not successful, if you buy this, then you will be, and then you’ll be happy. Then you’ll have a sense of who you are, and where you’re going’. Hey, I lived out that life for a good many years. I mean, I lived it out par excellence, and so successful was it that it drove me to the point of suicide.

God’s take is completely different. God tells us that we’re made in His image – you and I. He tells us that not only did He make us who we are, but He also made every day of our lives to fit with who we are. More about that a little bit later, but right now, all I’m really trying to do is put my finger on the problem; that nagging thing that just doesn’t seem to want to go away; that sense that so many of us have that we’re missing out on something – something that we just can’t quite explain.

Surely there must be more to life than this, this drudgery. Surely there has to be something that sets my heart on fire; that inspires me; that lets me be the me I was meant to be; that lets me live out the destiny for my life. Do you really know who you are, who you were made to be, what you’re meant to be doing, or is your life a bit like a cork bobbing around in an ocean, completely at the mercy of the elements – sunny one day, stormy the next, but just drifting – kind of drifting?

The Perennial Pollution Problem

I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but living an average, normal, everyday life creates dirt. I mean, just eating and drinking and living – the most basic things – create waste: Carbon dioxide we all breathe out with every breath (and of course if we didn’t get rid of it, it would poison us), perspiration, and we excrete waste. If we kept all of those things inside us, you know, they’d kill us in a pretty short time. On a global scale, we call this pollution; it’s a perennial problem. It’s just the way it is. For so many years, I have to tell you, I listened to these Christians talking about this word sin, thinking, “Oh, go on, get a life. I don’t need this guilt trip. I don’t need to go to confession or to be absolved or any of that stuff. I mean, I’m basically ok. I haven’t killed anyone; I haven’t robbed a bank … please just leave me alone.”

The notion of sin had no place in my reckoning. “This is a dog-eat-dog world, and hey, there’s plenty of dog to go around. I will tread on whoever I want to; I will do whatever I want to, as long as I don’t break the law. I’m right, Jack.” That was kind of my attitude because, in today’s psyche, hey, anything goes, but this anything-goes thing doesn’t always work so well because it’s all about me, and for you it’s all about you; and when I spend on me, me, me, that’s great, but real satisfaction comes when we give of ourselves, of who we are and what we have.

It’s not until we give sacrificially to someone in need that we really get satisfaction in life, and that’s where we really discover who we are and what life is all about. For many, many years I kidded myself that I was ok, but it didn’t work. Just living my life created waste and mess and dirt and pollution, and here’s the rub: When we live the I-am-the-centre-of-the-universe, me-me-me philosophy, we want everything to flow in, and that stuff includes the waste and the mess and the dirt, and it stays inside with everything flowing in, and ultimately it poisons our system. It ruins our lives. Do you get it?

The word “sin”, as it’s used in the Bible, literally means to miss the mark. Like an archer aiming at a target, his aim doesn’t have to be off by much for him to miss the target altogether. That’s the idea of sin. It’s missing the mark or, as we might say these days, missing the point. Can you imagine getting to the end of your life, on your deathbed, looking back and thinking to yourself, “You know, the way I lived my life, I didn’t love people the way I should have loved them. I didn’t serve people the way I should have served them. I didn’t make the difference that I could have made. I haven’t left behind a lasting legacy of good at all. You know something? I think my life missed the mark. I think I missed the whole point.”

Can you even begin to imagine what a tragedy that would be? We’re chatting this week about discovering who we are meant to be – our identity, and laying hold of what our life was always meant to accomplish – our destiny, and we can’t do that if we miss the mark; if we miss the whole point. We just can’t. You can’t, and I can’t. See, God has a plan for us. I’m reading now from Psalm 139:13:

God, You created my innermost being. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I’m fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well because my frame wasn’t hidden from You when I was being made in that secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and all the days ordained for me were written in Your book before even one of them came to be.

It seems to me that we can either cooperate with God’s plan or we can run hard against it, and whatever we may want to call it, whatever word we may want to use for doing the wrong thing – for running against God’s plan, whether it’s the word “sin” or something else, you and I know when we’re swimming against the tide. You and I know when we’re into things that are selfish and angry and dishonest and just plain wrong. Come on; we know, and if that’s the way we want to live our lives, then the last thing we’re going to be doing is cooperating with God’s plan.

The last thing we’re going to be doing is discovering our destiny; all those days that were written down in God’s book before any of them as yet existed. The last thing we’re going to be doing is being the person we were made to be, and living the life God made us to live. Does it make sense to you? I mean, does it seem like a wise way of spending your life, this one precious life that you’ve been given to live?

The reason we’re talking about this today is that the last thing I want for you, and honestly, the last thing God wants for any of us, is to waste our lives; to miss out on our destinies; to live as square pegs in round holes, and this thing sin, the wrong things in our life – that’s what robs us of our identity and it robs us of our destiny, and I can’t say it any plainer than this: That’s just about the dumbest thing that we can do with our lives, you and I. The problem is that you and I are very good at rationalising away our sin, at justifying it, at defending the indefensible.

I was just talking to a couple of smokers the other day, some builders working outside the front of my house. I used to smoke heavily, and as I talked to them about their smoking, you know what their response was? “Oh, look, yeah. We know it’s wrong. We know it’s stupid, but hey, we just can’t stop.” See, we get addicted to this stuff. We get addicted to this poison in our systems. We know it’s wrong; we just can’t stop, so we rationalise it. We brush it off. We resign ourselves to it, as though it doesn’t matter. And when others challenge us about it, when others confront us with the consequences of our sin, we say, “Come on mate. Get off the grass. It’s none of your business what I do with my life.”

Well, I guess it’s not, but if you and I want to live a life that God intended us to live, if you and I want to be the person that God intended us to be, if you and I want to fulfil the destiny that God has for us, we need to deal with this. Listen to me: We need to deal with the sin. When we come face to face with Jesus Christ, we know in our heart of hearts the things that are wrong.

There’s a woman you can read about in John’s gospel chapter 8 if you have a Bible, caught in adultery and they dragged her out to stone her in front of Jesus, and they were just going to trap Jesus (now there was a legal issue, which we won’t go into now), and Jesus said, “Look. If any of you is without sin, let him be the first one to cast the stone.” You know what happened? Those who heard began to drift away – the older ones first, until the only people left were Jesus and the woman. When we look Jesus in the face, we know the stuff that’s wrong in our lives. The question is, how do we fix that?

I Find Myself With a Dilemma

I remember how hard it was for me to give up smoking. What did it for me was when I was with someone when they died of lung cancer. I watched them breathe their last breath, and when I walked out of that hospital-room just over thirty years ago now, I threw my packet of cigarettes in the bin and I haven’t smoked since that day. It wasn’t easy. It was a day by day proposition – a craving by craving proposition. Letting go of that habit actually took years, and there are still times today thirty years on when I feel like a smoke, but I figure I can do it for just one more day. Giving up bad things can be really, really hard.

Before the break, we chatted about this me, me, me, anything-goes model. The problem is, for anyone who’s ever tried it, you end up facing a dilemma. On the one hand you know It’s not working. I mean, I did it for much of my life. I’m a very intelligent person; I’m also short so there’s no pride in that; I just happen to be a bright person, and I had everything going for me; and you looked on the outside and everything was going well, but it wasn’t working on the inside, and we know this stuff (me-me-me) doesn’t work.

Now on the other hand, we want with all our hearts sometimes to believe in God – to have a relationship with Him that’s awesome and amazing and fulfilling and exciting and tender and wonderful, but we know there are some things in life that He wants us to give up. It’s like there’s a roadblock between us and our destiny with God. With me it was ego; it was a huge thing. I’d speak at conferences all round the world in the IT industry, and I was frankly full of myself and I had an ego the size of a small planet, but I read the bit in the Bible that says God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Gulp. Looks like He wants me to do something with my pride, so there’s a crunch time for me. Hey, there always is.

There’s always one or two things, often that’s all there is, that we really need to give up; and they’re inevitably things that are so important to us that we want to hang on to them for dear life, or should |I say for grim death (because they’re bad for us and they’re poisoning our lives). When you have a strong pride that dominates who you are, you can’t have close relationships. Pride is also worrying about how other people see you, so you never have any peace. Life is always a competition to be the best; it’s one-upmanship, but I knew I had to give this up, and it’s like giving up smoking.

There are two parts: the first part is that deep-down decision of throwing the packet of cigarettes into the bin. You see, you can’t be double-minded about this. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t be a smoker and a non-smoker at the same time, can you?

So what is it with you; what’s the sin? I hope you don’t mind me using that word, but it’ll do. We have a sense of what it means. What’s the sin that’s robbing you of your identity – the sin that’s robbing you of your destiny, and is it really worth it? Maybe it’s anger or maybe you’re cheating on your spouse or being dishonest at work or being selfish. Perhaps you like playing politics; undermining people behind their backs; playing the game just so you can win, not for the good of others. We don’t have enough time in the day to go through them all, but there’s always something, isn’t there?

And here’s what I know because I learned it the hard way: That something is going to rob you of your destiny – the amazing future God has planned for you. Friend, that’s a tragedy. Can I ask you to think right now what’s the one thing, the one sin, that’s robbing you of your destiny? Just think. Know it in your mind. Just look at it; turn it over and over; that one thing – your something. Now let me ask you two questions about it. Firstly, are you proud of it, or do you hide it? The chances are you hide it. That’s what we inevitably do when we know that we’re doing something wrong, and secondly, of what benefit is it to you? The very same question that the apostle Paul asks in the New Testament. Romans 6:21:

So, what advantage did you then get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death.

The key to letting that one thing go, your something – your sin, is realising that it’s not good for you. It’s not good for those around you, it’s not good for the people you love, and it’s robbing you of your destiny. Remember you can’t be a non-smoker and a smoker at the same time. You can’t have your cake and eat it as well. You can’t hang on to sin and fulfil your destiny. You just can’t.

Deciding to make the change is something only you can do. I can encourage you, but you have to make the choice. Some people want God on their own terms. “Well, you know, you know, um, I’m living with my girlfriend or I’m living with my boyfriend and that’s just the way things are these days, and if God wants me, He has to accept that because that’s the way I am.”

You know, we want to remake God in our image to suit our consumer lifestyle. I’m sorry, but that’s not the way it works because our identity, our true identity, is in God Himself. Genesis Chapter 1. God said, “Let us make man in our own image, in our own likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the livestock – over everything”, so God created us in His own image; in the image of God He created us, male and female He created us.

Letting go of sin is hard, but when we live through that – every craving; every urge; every disappointment – just to honour Him, to be true to our identity, He blesses us because the sin robs us of life, and when we finally put Him at the top of the heap with all our hearts – with every fibre of our being, then doors open. Being true to our identity opens the door to our destiny.

When we put our trust in Jesus alone, we’re embarking on a journey that’s not going to be easy – a journey that’s going to have trials and temptations and some days we’ll make mistakes and we’ll fail, and you’ll have to get up again and brush yourself off and keep on going for Him, but you know something? When we commit to that journey, and we understand that we have to work through the issues in our lives failure by failure, craving by craving, temptation by temptation, day by day, week by week, month by month, all of a sudden what happens (and this is what I experience; this is what so many others experience) … When we go through that, after months and years, you look back and think, “You know something? I’m the person that God meant me to be! That’s the direction I’ve headed in; that’s where my life’s going; that’s how He’s using me; that’s how people are starting to see me … I’m actually living my destiny.” Are you being the person God meant you to be? Have you made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life?

Have you ever looked at yourself in a photo and cringed, or seen yourself in a video and thought – Yich – do I really look that bad? Other people don’t seem to have a problem with how you look, but somehow you always do. Today, we’re going to discover how you can be really happy with who you are.

Being Happy with Who I Am

As I look around at people, big, small, black, white, young, old … what I see is an awful lot of people who aren’t happy with their lot in life. And as you talk to them, what it often comes down to is not that they’re not happy with their lot and the things that are going on – although that’s sometimes part of it – but something much deeper going on. Because more often than not, they’re not happy with who they are.

In our last program, we chatted about the fact, that often, that’s because we feel we don’t measure up to what the world expects of us but today, I’d like to go even deeper than that again. Let me ask you, forgetting everything that goes on around you, when you’re alone in a quiet room, completely alone, do you like who you are? Are you excited about who you are … your potential? Do you enjoy your own company? Or are you one of these people who can’t stand to see themselves in a photograph or in a mirror?

Every now and then I think to myself, “it’s time to get right in your face about something”, and today’s one of those days. I mean, I don’t mean to shove anything down your throat, that’s never my intention but I don’t know, I just feel that today it’s time to really challenge you about how you see yourself. I’m someone who for many, many years, in fact the first 36 years of my life, appeared to be so confident on the outside. I have to tell you, everyone who ever met me thought to themselves, “this guy is so confident”.

But on the inside, which after all is where we live and where we feel and where we laugh and where we cry, I wasn’t happy with who I was. People would never have guessed it, because in my confidence I used to roll over the top of them. I’m not talking about the things that we do but who we actually are. As a woman by the name of Joyce Meyer says, “It’s not our do that I’m talking about but our who.” I didn’t like my “who”, I didn’t like myself and you know the more I tried to pump myself up in my own eyes and in the eyes of others, somehow the lower I sank in my own estimation.

But the very day, the very instant that I gave my life to Jesus back in 1995, from that moment onward I knew I was okay. I’ve thought a lot about this and I thought why did it happen like that? It’s one of those things that changed in an instant for me, why? This is such a deep thing. My own self image had been plaguing me for years and years. How could it change in an instant? So far as I can see, there’s only one answer because on that day I felt accepted and I felt loved in a whole new way, at a whole different level.

Different people believe different things. Oh – whatever you believe – let me ask you this? Does your belief system, does your faith – whatever that is – make you feel loved and accepted? Does it bring healing to that deep, nagging suspicion that you’re not good enough? Does it bring you into a place where you are truly happy and content with who you are?

I never used to be able to look at myself in a photo without cringing. I recently had a photo shoot, something I have to do from time to time, to get some images to use on websites and in the back of my books, that sort of thing. And when the photos came back, I looked at them and I was really happy with what I saw. I’m never going to win a beauty competition, you understand – that’s because I’m just a pretty ordinary looking kind of man. But as I looked at those photos, I smiled, because I realised that I now like myself. I didn’t become Mr Perfect overnight and all my faults and all my failures and all my weaknesses didn’t disappear in an instant, it’s not how it works. Sometimes I make mistakes – I don’t like that. So I get up and learn, and work on my weaknesses. But fundamentally, these days, I’m really happy with who I am … and indeed with who I’m not.

So change in me didn’t happen overnight but the thing that did happen is that I knew that God had accepted me just as I was and that even though I could see all the things I’d done wrong, that I was completely forgiven. He came to me and said, “Now, that you have a new beginning let me help you to change.”

That’s the thing, I thought if God sees me that way maybe it’s time for me to see me that way and still today there are some things that I’m really good at and others that I’m just not and I may never be. Some of the things that come naturally to you, I’ll never be able to do it’s unconditional love that brought me to a point with all my heart, I’m delighted to be who I am. I often say to my wife, Jacqui, “I’m so glad I’m me, I never want to be anyone else.” That is a gift from God because I never liked me before.

Let me get in your face and ask you a question, is it time for you to ask yourself do I see myself the way God does? Do I love me in the right way, not proud and arrogant but in a humble delight in who he made me to be? Because how can you and I possibly ever be the me we were meant to be and live the life we were created to live, if we don’t like who we are.

When we compare ourselves to other people and think – Wow, I wish I was like him, or I wish I was like her … we’re completely missing the point. Completely. I will never be a basketball player, because I’m too short. I will never be a surgeon, because I don’t have the skill in my hands. I will never be a pop star, because I can’t sing. But what I can be, is the best me that I can possibly be.

And you know something – that’s just fine with me. And the reason it’s fine with me is that I was handcrafted by God and the love that He’s shown me is the unconditional love of Jesus … Jesus His one and only Son, who died so that I might be forgiven.

We can’t truly be happy with who we are, until we know beyond any shadow of doubt that Jesus died to pay for all our shortcomings and failings and because the price is fully paid, we can now stand before God completely forgiven, completely whole, completely loved. And if you’ve ever stood in that place – with your faith in Jesus … Jesus alone – you will know that the acceptance of God is what makes you whole. The love and acceptance of God – is what sets us free to see ourselves through His eyes.

Discovering My Gift

I think we all have a sense of wanting to fulfil our destiny, doing the things we’re meant to do, achieving the things we’re meant to achieve and being the person we’re meant to be. But the more I talk to people the more I discover how many aren’t happy with who they are.

I spent a good many years of my life comparing myself with other people, here’s how it goes. Here’s what we do when we compare ourselves with other people: all we see, are their good points: ‘he’s athletic and good looking, and she’s really intelligent, and he’s caring, and she’s so perceptive about people, boy he’s got such great hand-eye co-ordination, that couple over there everyone seems to like them. He is such a good cook, she has her house so tidy, they have such well behaved kids.’

You see what’s going on here right? We construct some super human unreality which is a pastiche of the very best points of everyone we know and then when we don’t live up to that unreality, all of a sudden we come to the conclusion that …, “Ah, I’m a failure”. Never mind that everybody we know is good a some things and not at others, never mind that each one of those people has weaknesses as well as strengths. We tend to construct an unrealistic image of who we should be and then we spend a lifetime, fuelled by the advertising industry – with all these images of success – we spend a lifetime trying to live up to something that no-one can ever be or live up to. Hello!

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. The family next door always seem perfect compared to our family.That job that your friend has – that’s the perfect job, … look at mine. I’ll never have a job like that. I’ll never have a husband as good as hers, or a wife as good as his, my children will never grow up to be like their kids, my house will never look as nice as … Are you getting the picture here?!

I wonder if we did a stock take of our strengths and weaknesses maybe sit down with a few people who really know us well whether we would look at that and go, “That’s not a bad plus and minus ledger, you know, okay there are some things here I’m not very good at but actually there’s one or two things here, oh, that’s really my gig, that’s my shtick, that’s what I do.” The Apostle Paul in Romans, chapter 12:3-8 wrote this he said,

By the grace given to me let me say this to you, don’t think of yourself more highly than you should but instead look at yourself with sober judgement in accordance with the measure of faith that God’s given you. Just as each one of us has a body with many members these members don’t all have the same function and so in Jesus, we who are many form one body, each member belongs to the other. We have different gifts according to the grace given to us, if your gift is in prophesying, then do that in proportion with the faith that God has given you. If it’s in serving then for goodness sake go and serve. If your gift is teaching go and teach. If your gift is encouragement go and encourage people, if it’s contributing to the needs of others giving well for goodness sake give generously and if it’s leadership then lead diligently and if it’s showing mercy then go and do it cheerfully.

Isn’t that beautiful? I love this passage and I come back to it often because what it says is, “Look! You can go and think of yourselves either too highly or too lowly”. There is nothing worse than when you see someone who aspires to doing something or being something and you look at them and think, “it’s just not them’. If you could see me I’m 5 foot 9.5 right, 174 cm if you think in metric. I may want to be a basketball player, I don’t, but if I did I could never be a basketball player, you know why? I’m too short and it doesn’t matter how much I hope I could be a great basketball player, when you’re up against 6.5 to 7 foot basketball players you can’t win.

It is so sad to see people to aspire to something they just can’t do. People who want to be leaders, even though they were never cut out to be leaders. People who want to be singers, when they can’t sing to save themselves – have you ever watched those talent show auditions on television and someone comes out to sing and they think they’re brilliant, but in fact they’re terrible?It’s embarrassing. It’s painful. They look so foolish.

Paul’s saying here, “The body has many members; each one belongs to all the others.” When we get comfortable with our strengths and our weaknesses, with who we are and who we’re not, with the idea that we’re all meant to be different and complementary, that’s the way it’s meant to work – it is such an exciting thing because you know what? We’re not threatened anymore, we’re not touchy anymore, we can relax. We can enjoy the things that we’re good at and let other people do the things we’re not good at.

And the very clear message is this: do what you were made to do; discover your gift, your unique talent and ability, that thing that you’re good at, that thing that you enjoy doing … and for Pete’s sake go and be you. Go and do that – because that’s what it means to fulfil your destiny. Right there.That’s it!!! Now there are always going to be some things in our lives we have to do that we don’t enjoy doing.

Now maybe you’re a young mother thinking … “But Berni what I really enjoy being is a mum. Just seeing my kids grow up, that’s all.” As though that’s not one of the most important things on the planet, “Well Berni, you know I’m only an accountant.” WHAT! That’s fabulous, I could never be an accountant, we need accountants. Thank God for Elia!

When we pick something up and put it into God’s hands, when we’re being the me we’re meant to be it is just the most awesome thing and so many people spend their lives doing jobs, aspiring to things that they just aren’t. I’m not saying set low standards, I’m not saying don’t aim high, I’m someone who always aims high, always think big but you know I don’t think big about being a basketball player.

What I think big about is doing the things that God made me to do and when we persist and get good at them, it’s so wonderful to be the me we were meant to be. Not someone else’s “me” but my me and your me.

Becoming Who I Already Am

Survey after survey tells us that 75% of people don’t enjoy their work. I wonder how many of those are trying to do a job they just weren’t cut out to do, it’s just not them.

And yet it’s not all that hard to see how different we each are. A child at school who is great at creative writing – but terrible at mathematics. So – what do we do? We make them work harder at their mathematics, instead of encouraging them to go with the creative writing thing that we’re good at. Of course, we all have to do a few things that we’re not good at from time to time, but if we end up majoring in those things, it’s a disaster.  When I left school I was accepted into a medicine degree – I would have made a terrible doctor, and a law degree – and same with being a lawyer because the law is all about detail and I’m not into detail.

So – pardon me for saying so, but blind Freddie can see that we have all been made differently. I think it was Oscar Wilde who said – Be yourself, Everybody else is already taken. Pretty good thought that. Okay baby is born right, what does it grow up to be? It grows into who it already is, let me explain. A little baby gets born, it can’t even go to the toilet on its own, it can’t feed itself, it can’t protect itself – in fact it can’t do anything pretty much except eat, sleep, scream and dirty its nappy. So …is it any less a human being than you and me? Well, no of course not, this little bubs is just in an early stage of life and just like we all did, it goes through all stages. It begins to recognise and smile at its parents and the psyche develops and it grows an awareness and it crawls and walks and it becomes a toddler and it goes to school and becomes a teenager and then an adult, it’s a natural progression.

What is it that influences who that little baby becomes when it grows up? Well two things, firstly its natural disposition, its abilities, who God made that child to be and secondly, the things that happen along the way. Now some of those things along the way are positive, some of those things like the good parents who love you and good teachers at school. Those things develop the child’s natural abilities, but some of the things that happen rob the person, rob the child, give it a wrong impression of itself.

You see bad things will always happen to good people, they do, they always have and they always will. But if we know who we are and if we let God into our lives to be with us, to develop us, to care for us, to nurture us, those bad things instead of robbing us end up enhancing our characters. The negatives get turned into a positive. The problem is so many people never get with God’s plan for who they are.

For years I tried to be all things to all people, I set myself up to be this and set myself up to be that because I thought it would make me look important and good. But it wasn’t until I got with God’s plan and started seeing myself the way he sees me that I really started being the me I was meant to be. God made me to be doing what I’m doing right now spending this time with you. I’m never as happy and as fulfilled as when I’m sitting here with you.

A friend of mine, a Pastor, once said to me, “You know Berni, you should be more pastoral than that.” In other words, you should be around lots more people and you should do this and you should do that and you should be this. And I love people but think about it, much of what I do is I prepare these programs alone and then I come into a studio basically alone. Okay millions of people are listening around the world but they’re not in this room with me right now. If God made me to be someone who needed to be around a lot of people, don’t you think I’d get awfully lonely doing what I do? He didn’t so I don’t.

Who are you? Who did God make you to be? Maybe you’re just one of those people who loves entertaining and having a house full of people over all the time. That’s a gift, go and be that person, go and grow into that, go and love it and enjoy it and be the person who God meant you to be. Maybe, maybe you’re a quiet, backroom kind of person who does things, book keeping or cleaning or cooking and you know, when you’re doing those things you feel so fulfilled, can I tell you something?

Go for it, if that’s what God made you to be, don’t compare with other people, grow in that, develop that, be delighted with who God made you. When we compare ourselves with others, we aspire to be someone who we aren’t, who we were never made to be and come on – that’s just plain crazy. I’m excited about who God’s made me to be – and I focus on the things I’m really good at, try to grow in areas where I’m still a bit immature … and leave the stuff I’m not good at to other people – people who actually love doing those things because they’re good at them. It’s not really that complicated, is it?

Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good things that God prepared beforehand for us to walk into.

That’s exactly what God’s Word says – do the things that God prepared for you – not the things that other people want you to do. God knows who we are, he made us and he made us to be the me we were meant to be. Right now in this instant, His heart and His eyes are on you and me and He knows who He made us to be and He is delighting in us. Wake up! It is time to stop trying to be someone else, it is time to stop trying to squeeze into the world’s mould, into a shape that doesn’t fit, into something that ultimately becomes a distressing straight jacket. He wants each one of us to be the person He meant us to be.

I am so excited because God has a plan, he has a plan for me, he has a plan for you. And we only discover who we’re meant to be – it only happens when we get right up close to him, when we have a relationship with him through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the vine and you are the branches. Apart from me you can do nothing.” And you know? You’re going to grow different fruit to me ’cause that’s how Jesus made us. And if you want to grow the fruit that you were meant to grow in your life, you need to get right up close with Him. His word and His Spirit in a rich and dynamic relationship that’s so wondrous and so huge and so safe and secure and at the same time exciting, then and only then can we be the me we were meant to be.

We all have some sense that there is some destiny for our lives to fulfil and yet so many people struggle lay hold of that, to really start to live the life that know is fulfilling their destiny. That’s why I think it actually means to live our lives to the full that’s what I think it means to get the most out of life.

Living Life to the Full (1)

So can I ask you something? Are you really living the life to the full? I mean really. The worst possible outcome to my life and I think to yours too, is to get to the end of it one day and to look back and think to ourselves ‘I think I missed out, I don’t think I lived the life I was meant to live, I don’t’ think I’ve fulfilled my destiny. If only I could go back and live it again and do it properly this time.’ Don’t you agree? Wouldn’t that be just the most tragic outcome to our lives here on earth?

It seems to me that we can be alive and kicking but not really living life. We can be alive but for all and intense and purposes be dead. So I guess when I talk about discovering your destiny is what I’m really talking about is being who you were always meant to be and living the life you were always meant to live. Getting the most out of life, is that something you want? I certainly do, and I hope you do as well.

And so today we’re going to take a look at a man who in a very real sense managed to get a second chance and whatever you may think of his story, his name is Lazarus, the question is, what does it say about your life here and now and the possibility of a second chance?

It’s a powerful story the story of Lazarus. It’s about a real man who died and whom Jesus we’re told brought back to life again. Now there are two parts to the story, we’ll look at the first half right now and the second part after a short break on the program so let’s have a bit of a read. Johns Gospel chapter 11 is where you’ll find the story of Lazarus.

Now a man named Lazarus was sick, he was from Bethany the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Now this Mary who’s brother Lazarus now lay sick was the same one who had previously poured perfume on Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sister’s sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love Lazarus is sick’. When he heard this Jesus said, ‘The sickness won’t end in death. No, it’s for God’s glory so that God’s son may be glorified though it.

Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was for two more days and then he said to his disciples, ‘Well ok, lets get up and go to Judea’. ‘But Jesus,’ they said, ‘a short while ago Jews there tried to stone you and here you’re going back?’ And Jesus answered them, Isn’t there 12 hours of daylight in a day? A man who walks by day won’t stumble for he sees the worlds light, its when he walks by night that he stumbles for he has no light.’

After he said these things he went on to tell them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep but I’m going there to wake him up again’. And his disciples replied, ‘But if he sleeps he’ll get better.’ But Jesus had been speaking of his death and the disciples thought that he was just asleep. So then he told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I’m glad I wasn’t there so that you may believe. But let us go to him right now’.”

The last couple of programs we’ve dealt with an issue, well, so many of us don’t really want to deal with head on – sin. I mean in our world sin is something of a four-letter word. The stuff in our lives we know is wrong that robs us of life itself, when I look back on my life as a wealth apparently successful businessman on the outside people envied me. I seemed to have it all together and I seemed to have it all, but on the inside I was dying. I was dead and empty and hollow just like a shell, truly. I describe myself as a dead man walking. And so many people are living their lives that way today, truly they are!

Are the things you’re doing wrong robbing you of the life you were meant to be having? Are you a bit like this Lazarus alive sort of but not really? Sure physically alive but spiritually through the things you are doing with your life not really having a life at all?

You know something, it doesn’t matter how much we deny it and try and put a respectable face to it, or sell it as a feature of our freedom to do whatever we want, sin does that to all of us. It makes us dead on the inside. At this point someone might be saying, “Come on Bernie, what an old fashioned point of view.” If you’re in that camp I encourage you to do something, take a look, a good hard look at the way you are living your life and ask yourself am I really being the me I was meant to be? Am I really living the life I was meant to live?

Do I have this sense that I’m fulfilling my destiny? See to me, it’s a tragedy when people can’t answer those questions with a clear assurance that yes they are being the person they were meant to be. Yes they do have a deep sense that they’re fulfilling their destiny that God has for them because that’s what God wants for your life, he wants a new life. Let’s look at new life; let’s look at how things unfold in this story of Lazarus.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him and Mary stayed at home. “Lord, Martha said to him, if you’d been here, if you’d only been hear earlier Lazarus wouldn’t’ have died!’ and Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ But Martha answer, ‘I know he’ll rise again in the resurrection on that last day.’ Jesus said to her ‘I am the resurrection and the life, who ever believes in me will live even though he dies and who ever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ And she said, ‘Yes lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who has come into this world.’

And after she said this she went back and called her sister Mary, ‘The teacher Jesus is here.’ she said, ‘he’s asking for you.’ when Mary heard this she quickly got up and went out to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered their village but was still in the place where Martha had met him, when the Jews who had been with Mary in the house comforting her noticed how quickly she got up and went out they followed her thinking that she was going to the tomb to mourn there for Lazarus.

When Mary reached Jesus and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, ‘Lord if only you had been here my brother wouldn’t’ have died.’ And when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come along also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit was troubled. ‘Where have you laid him?’ ‘Come and see Lord.’ And Jesus wept. And the Jews said, ‘See Jesus loved Lazarus!” But some of them said, ‘Couldn’t he who opened the eyes of the blind come and kept this man from dying?’

See here’s the thing, nobody was expecting Jesus to come along and raise Lazarus from the dead. And when we look at our lives and when we see our dead things can be on the inside and we look at God and say, ‘God, why didn’t you show up earlier?’ And we can’t imagine how God could possibly breath life into our situation, we can believe he could have done something back then like the people with Lazarus, he could have stopped him from dying. We can believe that one day we will rise again and have eternal life, but it can be so hard so hard to believe that Jesus could come and breath a new life today, here and now. Let me ask you, what do you believe?

Living life to the full (2)

Well let’s get back to the Lazarus story because there is so much more in it about living our lives to the full, remember that everyone wanted Jesus to have fixed the problem before Lazarus died, but Jesus had said to his disciples he had a different plan. A plan that people around him didn’t really understand, so no one could see it.

Jesus was saying to Martha, Lazarus’ sister. He said, “Your brother will rise again.” But Martha said, “Look, I know he’ll rise again on the resurrection on the last day” so she doesn’t get it. She’s happy to believe in pie in the sky when you die but not so much about steak on the plate while you wait if that makes sense.

Lets pick up the story and lets read the simple story, its in John’s gospel chapter 11 and it begins verse 38:

Jesus was deeply moved when he came to the tomb, it was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ‘Take away the stone’, he said. ‘But Lord,’ said Martha the sister of Lazarus said, ‘by this time a bad odour will be there, I mean he’s been dead for four days!’ And Jesus said, ‘Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the Glory of God?’”

I love that! If you believe you will see the glory of God!

So they took away the stone and Jesus stood up and said, ‘Father I thank you that you have heard me, I always knew that you would but I’m saying this for the benefit of the people around that they might believe that you have sent me.’ And when he had said this Jesus said in a loud voice ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out. His hands and feet were wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth was around his face, and Jesus said to them, ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’ ”

Jesus was deeply moved … I mean he loved Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha; he cared for them! Lazarus was a good friend, that’s why Jesus wept for him. So it’s not some publicity stunt, but it’s a tender encounter when people were thinking well, what’s Jesus up to? He can’t do this I mean Lazarus is dead he’s going to smell, he’s on the nose, his flesh is already rotting!

I reckon we have to be very, very careful indeed about telling God what he can and can’t do. About putting God in a little box of our expectations, imagining somehow that he could somehow never bring Lazarus back to life, imagining somehow he could never really bring life back into us!

You see, all these people – Mary, Martha, the disciples all the others – they’d seen Jesus do amazing things, do amazing miracles, yet they couldn’t believe that he would actually bring a man back to life. It didn’t even enter their minds, but he did! And look at the picture of Lazarus when he walks out of the tomb. ‘Lazarus come out!’ said Jesus. The dead man came out, his hands and his feet where wrapped with strips of linen and a cloth was around his face.

See Lazarus was bound up in his grave clothes, and this looks a lot like some people that I know. Living a half-life. On the one hand Jesus has spoken a word of life into them but on the other they’re still bound up in their grave clothes, bound up in the things of the past, the old life. When Lazarus walked out of that tomb, beneath those grave clothes he was living and breathing there was colour in his cheeks but he couldn’t’ live the rest of this life wrapped in those grave clothes and the same is true for you and me.

Some people have life flowing through their veins because Jesus put it there and yet they have one foot in the past in that dead half-life that didn’t work, trying to live life to the full, kind of hoping things would work out but they never quite did. The picture of a living man wrapped in grave clothes is the picture of many a man’s life, many a woman’s life. We want to live life to the full, we want to discover our destiny and yet the past wraps us up and stops us from doing that. You know something, there is a reason for that. You can’t live your life wrapped in grave clothes.

What sort of life do you think would it have been if Lazarus had continued on wrapped in those grave clothes? And anyway, that wasn’t Jesus’ plan for him, Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.” You like that bit? Let him go, set him free. Set him free to be the Lazarus he was always meant to be.
Friend, how are you living your life? Is your life lived to the full? Or is your life held back by the past? Is it a life filled with joy and peace or are you still struggling with the stupid things you keep doing all the time? Is it a life of freedom or is a life wrapped in the grave clothes of your past?

I can ask you those questions but I can’t answer them for you, only you can do that. And wherever you are does a question rise up in your heart, a question that goes something like this? “Isn’t there some better way of living my life? There has to be!” Well there is, and it’s a personal thing. “Aww you know Berni, but I want to hang on to this compromise or that old attitude I still want to cheat or lie or be tight with my money or not serve other people and I want to be selfish because you know, all this Jesus stuff is not particularly convenient.” Great, great! Stay in your grave clothes, but don’t expect to live your life to the full. Don’t expect to realise your destiny.

The alternative is to set our hearts like flint on living life to the full know matter what the cost. You know there is a cost. There is a cost for a heroin addict to give up heroin and there is a cost for an alcoholic to give up alcohol and a cost for a smoker to give up smoking. The first step always is admitting who we are, where we’re at and the second is the step of deciding here and now, “You know something that joker on the radio has a point. I DO have to do something, I can’t live my life wrapped in these grave clothes anymore.”

And you know our grave clothes are all different. For some people it might be lying and cheating, for others it might be gossiping, for other people it might just be a deep attitude of selfishness. You look in the mirror and you know what it is, and yet we’re powerless to take off the grave clothes until Jesus speaks his power into our lives and says, “Take off the grave clothes and set him free.”

My friend the answer, the only answer is Jesus. Jesus is the one whose power breathed new life into Lazarus, Jesus is the one who set him free. Jesus is the one that can bring new life to you and to your life and set your free from the things of the past that have robbed you of your life, the full life the life God made you to live. THE answer, the only answer is Jesus.

A New Creation

You know, it can be a lot easier to believe in something way, way out there something spiritual, something crazy even, than it can be to believe that anyone or anything could improve the lives that we’re living right at the moment. How could anyone take a beaten up old wreck like me, me for goodness sakes and do anything with me?

I want to be the “me” I was meant to be, I want to live the life I was meant to live, but it all just seems impossible, but you know so many people have that problem. I had that problem. It’s just incredible to me how easily we throw ourselves onto the scrap heap. How easily other people put us out there on the scrap heap. How easily the advertising industry and our economy and all that stuff throw us out onto the scrap heap!

It’s interesting to me that back in Jesus’ day there were plenty of people ordinary people like you and me, people who weren’t rich or powerful and some of them were outcasts of society. If you were disabled in someway, blind or lame, you became a beggar because there was no social welfare system in first century Israel. If you had certain types of diseases, leprosy for instance you became an outcast. If you had certain types of occupation a tax collector, you were an outcast.

We have an amazing propensity as people to push other people away for all sorts of different reasons, and sometimes we’re not even being pushed away so much as well, you have an unhealthy perception of ourselves, low self esteem it’s called these days, or an inability to trust people.

There are so many different things from within and without that can act to isolate us to make us feel as though we don’t belong and that tragedy of all that is that people live their whole lives not belonging, not feeling loved, not feeling accepted, as a result well what do you do? That’s the question.

Each person is valuable. You’re valuable, you’re beautiful, you have gifts and ability that can have such a great impact on this world if only other people could see that, if only let’s face it, if only we could see that in ourselves some days. But how?

There is a beautiful poem by Myra Brooks-Welsh, I’d like to share it with you today. It’s call “The Touch of the Masters Hand”. Maybe you’ve heard it before and maybe you haven’t but it’s really worth listening to because speaks into this very dilemma.

T’was battered and scarred and the auctioneer,
thought it scarcely worth his while
to waste much time on the old violin
but he held it up with a smile.
“What am I bidding good folks?” He cried.
“Who’ll start the bidding for me?
A dollar, a dollar then two, only two?
Two dollars and who’ll make it three?

Three dollars once, three dollars twice,
going for three.” But no,
from the room far back a grey haired man
came forward and picked up the bow.
Then wiping the dust from the old violin
and tightening the loosened strings
he played a melody pure and sweet
as carolling angels sing.

The music ceased and the auctioneer,
with a voice that was quiet and low
said, “What am I bid for the old violin?”
And he held it up with a bow.
“A thousand dollars? Who’ll make it two?
Two thousand and who’ll make it three?
Three thousand once, three thousand twice
and going and gone.” Said he.

The people cheered but some of them cried,
“We don’t quite understand,
what changed its worth?” And swift came the reply,
“The touch of the masters hand.”

And many a man with life out of tune
and battered and scarred with sin
is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd
much like the old violin.

A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
a game and he travels on. He’s going once, going twice,
he’s going and almost gone.
But the master comes and the foolish crowd
never can quite understand.
The worth of a soul and the change
that is wrought by the touch of the Master’s hand.

It’s only now as I look back on those twenty years of living this new life that I can see how little by little I’ve become the “me” I was meant to be. I keep stressing this but I’m not here to tell you what to believe or how you should see the world, that’s something you need to figure out for yourself. But what I can do is tell you how this played itself out in my life.

Around twenty years ago, I was experiencing deep depression and I had this sense of worthlessness. I thought I’d lost everything; all my hopes and dreams and my future. I was that dusty old violin. Truly! People don’t expect the guy on the radio to talk about himself like that, but that’s exactly how it was!

I just couldn’t see beyond tomorrow. I couldn’t see how I could possibly be useful again, or achieve anything or become the “me” I was meant to be! Who the heck was I anyway? But there is something you have to recognise about that dusty old violin. It’s still a violin. Maybe it’s been neglected. Maybe he’s been disused, maybe it’s out of tune, maybe it doesn’t look that good anymore, but it’s still a violin. All that it needs is for someone to see it for what it is and that someone in my life is Jesus.

This God they talk about who appeared somewhat irrelevant to me in most of my life was the one that stepped forward from the back of the room to show me exactly what I’m worth, and that right there was the most amazing experience of my life. Still is. You and I are made in the image of God you want to read about that? Go to the very first chapter of the bible, the book of Genesis the first page and it’ll tell you that God looked at everything that he created and he said, “Let us make man in our image. Male and female he created us.”

Our mistakes and all the stuff that life throws at us can definitely make us look and feel and sound like that old violin but you know something all that it needs is for the master to come along and tune the strings a bit and strike up a tune and all of a sudden everybody else remembers what they had forgotten…its still a violin!

When I gave my life to Jesus almost two decades ago, things started to happen…they didn’t happen quickly from were I sat. In fact it felt like it took forever but other people would say to me, “Goodness what’s happened to you? How was it that you’re on the radio and you’re speaking with all these people? How’s that?”

Nothing to do with me! I was just a battered old violin in the corner, washed up but then there was a touch of the Master’s hand. And He came along and He struck up a tune. He knew exactly who I was and what He made me to be and what He made me to do and the tune he made me to play. And He put me in that place and that’s what I’m doing today. And that same God, that same Jesus is here today to meet you in the place where you are.

We each have a God-given destiny: A plan that God has for our lives, which fits perfectly with who He made us to be. The problem is that many people aren’t living out that destiny because there are some obstacles in their way, so let’s find out what they are and how to get around them, so that you can live out your destiny.

Putting First Things First

Most people these days live hectic lives, just scraping through each day. Personally, my list of things to do is as long as my arm and then some. There are some personal things I have to do; things to do with writing and recording and producing this radio-programme; there’s an organisation to run; people to meet with; this project; that project; a new idea over here, another one over there; hundreds of e-mails each day … Welcome to my world.

Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not complaining and none of those things are terribly bad at all, but the point is that with so many more things to do than I can possibly fit into my day, or my week or even my year, my process for deciding what I do is absolutely critical. Chances are, the same is true for you.

One of the big mistakes I used to make is that I’d sit down in the morning, which (given that I’m a morning person) is my most lucid and productive time, and just start answering e-mails. After a while, I realised I wasn’t getting anything else done because by putting my E-mails first, I was putting other people’s priorities first. I was in fact dancing to their tune instead of sorting out for myself what the most important things were on my agenda, and doing those things first.

There’s a well-known principle or framework that you read in a lot of management books, that sets out the difference between what’s urgent and what’s important, and what you discover is that almost nothing that’s urgent is important, and almost nothing that’s important is urgent. And yet most of us react to urgent things, or at least the things that other people say are urgent, and so we spend most of our time doing urgent things, instead of the important things – day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. And before you know it, your life is kind of slipping away, doing a whole bunch of things, which, in the scheme of things, sure, they make you busy, but how important are they?

Do you see my point here? How are you spending your life, and are the things you’re spending your time on important and worthwhile? I guess I’m asking those questions for you to ask them of yourself, and answer them. Come on! Be brutally honest. For instance, making sure I have some time with my beautiful wife Jacqui is important. Making sure I encourage her and give her a hug and a kiss, and spend some unhurried time with her in the morning over breakfast is really important, but it’s not urgent. It’s not as urgent say as the e-mail that comes in from a radio-station somewhere around the world that says they weren’t able to download tonight’s radio-programme from our FTP server.

And yet what I used to do (because remember, mornings are my most productive time) is get up early and spend no time at all with Jacqui over breakfast, and just work furiously through that time, and by the time she comes home from work and I come home from work, we’re both tired and there you go. We haven’t spent any time together.

Do you see how easily this stuff happens in people’s lives? The urgent trumps the important in so many people’s lives, and before you know it, your life is falling apart. Things are in a mess. Marriages are falling apart, all because we allow the urgent to crowd out the important. It’s scary, isn’t it?

So what about you? What about your life? Are you letting the myriad of urgent things crowd out the important things like spending time with people, managing your finances properly, nurturing your children, developing relationships with your co-workers? See, all those things are incredibly important, and in many-a person’s life, they’re being cast aside simply because we’re too busy doing the urgent stuff.

‘I don’t have time to exercise!’ Well, if you don’t make time for exercise (which is important), let me tell you you’ll certainly be making time for sickness (which will be urgent), and actually, that’s how it works. Doing the important things generally over time reduces the number of urgent things that you need to do because if the important things go undone, that leads to crises and those crises increase the number of urgent things requiring an immediate response.

I don’t know what your destiny is, but this is what I do know: It doesn’t lie in a myriad of things that other people tell you are urgent; it lies in the things that, in your heart of hearts, you know are important. If you or I went to God, this God who handcrafted us, who designed us in His heart – blueprinted our DNA, if we went to Him and said: ‘Lord, what’s the most important thing that I have to do with my life’, what do you think He’d answer? What would He put at the very top of our to-do list? Well, actually, we already know. A clever young lawyer once asked Him a very similar question. The lawyer sort of said (and this is my paraphrase):

Well, Jesus, you and I both know that in the Law of Moses handed down over all those years, there are 613 commandments and prohibitions. That’s kind of a lot. I mean that’s a lot day-to-day to remember to do, so how would you sum up the Law? I mean, if I’m trying to prioritise these things in my life, which one of all those commandments is the most important one?

You can read the exact words in Matthew 22 and Mark 12, and if I had to paraphrase Jesus’ reply in kind of here-and-now speak, it’d run something like this:

Look, I know you have a lot of things to do. There are lots of rules: Do this, do that … They’re all good things, but you can sum up the whole Law in just two commandments – to love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. That’s the most important one, and the second one is just like it: Love the people around you as much as you love yourself. That’s the whole Law in a nutshell.

Do you know something? The most important thing that I do almost every day, the thing that I do before anything else, is that I spend an hour or so alone with Jesus praying; reading the Bible; asking Him questions, and that’s what sets the course for my whole day – day after day, month after month, year after year. Actually, it sets the course for my whole life. It is quite simply the single-most important thing that I do, and it’s through that time with Him that I’ve discovered my destiny.

A Lifelong Journey

If I were to ask you, “What’s your destiny? What were you put on this earth to achieve – to do? What impact are you meant to have on this planet of over seven billion people? What’s the point of your life, and is it heading in the right direction”, I wonder how you’d answer those questions.

I ask those questions of people rather a lot, and I can tell you the number of people who have a clear sense of destiny and purpose and direction – well you know, it’s less than five per cent – maybe one in twenty; maybe. Now I’m not saying that we should each have our lives completely mapped out because things happen along the way. There are twists and turns in life that are totally unexpected. Little things can change the whole course of a life.

We can’t map out our whole lives in the minutest detail and say. “Yep. That’s what I’m going to do, that’s where it’s going”, and yet deep-down, we need to have some sense of a destiny. Another way of putting it would be to have a sense of direction for our lives. Where’s your life headed? And that destiny is invariably tied up with two things: Our dreams, and our skills and abilities.

If you’re one of the majority – one of those people who hasn’t quite yet cottoned on to the direction for your life, where it’s meant to be headed – then this is for you. Can you remember the dreams that you had for your life when you were young? Can you? There were some back there that were never going to fly. I mean, if you’re short and slightly dumpy, and you were dreaming of becoming a famous basketball-player, well, that was obviously never going to happen. But so often, there’s a dream in people’s hearts that’s been there for a very long time.

Here’s a conversation that I’ve had so many times with people about this whole question of destiny. We get to talking about the direction in which their life is heading, and the person says to me something like: ‘But you know, I’m sure there’s meant to be something else, something more, something that I don’t know, something I’m meant to be doing, but I don’t know what it is’. Does that sound vaguely familiar?

So I ask them then, “If you had no constraints, if money wasn’t an issue, if you could be anything or do anything that you wanted, what would that be?’ And the answer invariably comes back along these lines: ‘Oh, well! Anything I want? Well you know, I’ve always dreamed of” … and then, they tell me the answer. They tell me about their destiny. It’s already there; it’s already been woven somehow by God into their DNA.

Now of course, there’s a risk that this is a short dumpy basketball-player kind of dream, and so then I follow up with my second question: ‘What are the things you’re really good at?’ Most people can tell you that, and what I’ve found is that there is almost always, in 90% of cases, a wonderful fit between their dream and their natural skills and gifting. You know something? We’ve just discovered their destiny. We’ve just discovered what they’re meant to be doing with their lives, and the tragedy (I mean, the absolute tragedy) is that deep down they probably already knew that. So what’s held them back? The constraints we put on our lives.

Remember my first question? ‘If you had no constraints, if money wasn’t an issue, if you could be anything or do anything that you wanted, what would that be?’ My question removes the constraints. Then all of a sudden, people can look at things the way they’re meant to be looking at them – through the eyes of freedom.

For twenty years, I was a high-priced IT consultant, but there came a time of dissatisfaction – a time when I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t fulfilling my destiny. Every few years, the opportunity emerged to do what I’m doing now – to produce these radio-programmes, and use one of the small handful of talents that I naturally have (which is to be a communicator), to bring hope and change and transformation into people’s lives through these radio-programmes, but that meant taking a risk.

It meant confounding people’s expectations of me. It meant leaving a big salary behind, and going and working in a small, at-the-time ailing, not-for-profit organisation. And those constraints and expectations and the money thing and the risk, all those things I have to tell you, were tough issues to navigate. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. It was (at the time) a huge leap of faith for me.

When I look back on it now, this is what I know … it’s always like that when we have to make a decision as to whether or not we’re going to get out there and fulfil our destiny, because destiny requires courage. In fact, the two seem inextricably linked. When we step out on the destiny journey, there’s always a risk of failure, and yet there is nothing as fulfilling and energising as living out your destiny.

These last years doing what I’m doing now, there have been some real challenges, some really tough times, but I wouldn’t swap them for anything. And in pursuing this destiny, here’s what I know: The only person who can make it happen in our lives is Jesus Christ. Now some may scoff at that, and sure; there’s plenty of evidence of genius and achievement out there in the world. People are capable of doing amazing things, but here’s what I’m absolutely certain of:

Jesus the Son of God, when He laid His glory aside, when He became one of us, when He came into this world with a destiny, His destiny was twofold. It was to reveal God to us and secondly, it was to die on that cross and rise again to give you and me a free gift of eternal life. And without that Jesus who fulfilled His destiny for you and me, you and I may well be able to achieve some amazing things, but we will never achieve anything of eternal significance and value.

Because of my gift of communication, I guess I can hold people’s attention. I think I can make them laugh and even cry, but without Jesus, without His story, without His grace, I have nothing of eternal value to impart, ‘cos he’s the One that saves. He’s the One that transforms. He’s the One that gives new life, and my destiny lies in Him to be who He made me to be, and to do the things that He made me to do, so that His purposes will be achieved on this earth; and my friend, your destiny, your true destiny, lies in Jesus too.

He has plans and purposes for your life, and He came up with them even before you were born, and when we give our lives to Him completely, wholly, fully, without constraint, without limit, without reservation, then we discover that destiny, and let me tell you it is a perfect fit (your destiny) with who He made you to be. How do I know that? Psalm 139. Go read it – His Word, His truth, your destiny.

Ugly Duckling Syndrome

The final obstacle to living out our destiny is this: We compare ourselves to other people. We all do that. We all look at these talented and gifted people around us, and we convince ourselves that we can never be as good as them; we can never do what they can do; we can never live out our dream, our destiny. You know what I call that? I call it ugly duckling syndrome.

Hans Christian Andersen’s powerful story The Ugly Duckling is a literary classic, not so much because of the way it was written (my hunch is that the piece probably loses some of its poetry and lilt, having been translated into English) – no, the power of The Ugly Duckling, the thing that’s made it a classic, is in the way that it resonates so deeply in our souls.

A swan’s egg, by some strange set of events, finds itself in a ducks’ nest in a farmyard, and so a swan is born into a family of ducks. No one really cares why or even realises that it’s happened; everyone just assumes that this little guy is meant to be a duck, and all of his little life people reject him for being an ugly duckling because he’s ugly! Everyone misunderstands him; everyone rejects him, and it hurts. He’s all alone, but amidst the bleakness and hopelessness of this world, there is one thing – just one – that makes his little spirit soar. Have a listen.

One evening, just as the sun set amid the radiant clouds, there came a large flock of beautiful birds out of the bushes. The duckling had never seen anything like them before. They were swans, and they were curved with their graceful necks, while their soft plumage shone in the dazzling whiteness. They let out a singular cry, as they spread their glorious wings, and flew from those cold regions to warmer countries across the sea. As they mounted higher and higher into the air, the ugly little duckling felt quite a strange sensation as he watched them.

He whirled himself in the water like a wheel; he stretched out his neck towards them, and uttered a cry so strange that it frightened him. Could he ever forget those beautiful, happy birds? Then when at last they were out of his sight, he dived under the water and rose again, almost beside himself with excitement. He knew not the names of these birds, nor where they’d flown, but he felt towards them as he had never felt for any other bird in the world. He wasn’t envious of these beautiful creatures, but wished to be as lovely as they. Poor, ugly little creature, how gladly he would have lived even with the ducks, had they only given him some encouragement.

At the moment, he didn’t yet know who he was. He just knew who he wanted to be, but because he didn’t know who he was, who God had made him to be, he simply didn’t have a license to go and be who he’d been made to be, and even when he finally encounters those birds again, he thinks he’s going to die. Surely, surely, that can be the only outcome.

‘I will fly with those royal birds,’ he exclaimed, ‘And they will kill me because I am so ugly! And to dare to approach them … but it doesn’t matter. Better to be killed by them than to be pecked by the ducks, beaten by the hens, pushed around by the maiden who feeds the paltry, or starved with hunger in the winter.’ And he flew to the water, and swam towards the beautiful swans. The moment they spied him, they rushed to meet him with outstretched wings. ‘Kill me!’ said the poor little bird. And he bent his head down to the surface of the water and awaited death, but then something happened that changed everything in an instant. What did he see in the clear stream below? His own image: No longer a dark grey bird, ugly and disagreeable to look at, but a graceful and beautiful swan. To be born in a ducks’ nest in a farmyard is of no consequence to a bird, if it is hatched from a swan’s egg.

It’s not until we really know who we are that we discover how inconsequential the distorted images the world’s misunderstanding reflects back to us, in fact, are. My friend, as I meet people around the world (and I’ve met so many; more and more as the years go by), I’m so deeply impressed by the amazing abilities – the talents, ideas, creativity, perspectives, motivations – that are buried inside each and every person, each person whom I’ve ever met. And that’s not just other people: It’s each one of us. It’s not just them: It’s you, because each (in our own unique different way) have the capacity, the capability, the potential to do the most amazing things – to be the most amazing people.

Please, please, don’t fall for that ugly duckling deception. You are such a person. You have a destiny, and it’s waiting for you to be lived. That’s precisely the thing that God wants you to know today, when you step out on your journey of destiny – your God-given destiny, for as the apostle Paul writes in Ephesians 2:10, you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works which God prepared beforehand, so that you would walk into them.

See? God made you in a certain way, and He’s already prepared the way – the good works, and they’re waiting for you on the road ahead, and He’s created you as a piece of His workmanship, perfectly suited to the destiny that you’re called for. If you go back to Psalm 139:13-18, you discover that not only did God create us in our mother’s womb, not only did He lay down every strand of DNA and give you a hair-colour and your heart and your eye-colour and all those characteristics, but He also at the same time wrote down in His book every day, every experience, everything that would happen on your journey, and those two (that He made you, and what He made you to do) are an absolutely perfect fit.

It’s about discovering that we are indeed God’s workmanship, you and I. It’s about discovering who we are and what our purpose is, so that we can go and walk into the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to walk into, with a certainty and a quiet confidence, in the knowledge that we’re a perfect fit – that we’re the right one for the job, no matter how daunting that job may first appear.

Father God, we’ve heard Your good news. We know we’ve made so many mistakes. We’ve stepped out of Your plan. We went our own way, and each one of us (in our own way) knows it didn’t work out. And so, we want to come back and we want to discover the me that you always meant us to be. Father, thank You for Jesus. We just want to accept Him; I believe that He died for me, and that He rose again; I believe that I’m forgiven because of Him, and that I have eternal life because of Him, and Father right this day, lock, stock and barrel, with everything that I am, with every hope and every dream and everything I have, I want to step back into Your plan for me. I want to step back into my destiny. I give everything I am and everything I have to You, for You to do with as You please.

Father God, thank You that You do have a plan. Thank You that I can just come back because of Jesus, and thank You Father that in that plan, I’ll get to know You, and as I get to know You more and more and more, I’ll discover the person I was always meant to be. I’ll discover the destiny that You have for me. I’ll discover, in my heart and in my experience, that I am Your workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do the good works that You prepared beforehand, so that I could walk into them. Father, in the mighty name of Jesus, I want to thank You. I want to thank You for giving me this life. Amen.