We all have a plan – for today, tomorrow and for our lives.  But things don’t always go according to our plan.  And it’s times like that that the rubber of faith really hits the road.

We all know that we can plan this or plan that but really, when we get out of bed each morning we have no idea what that day’s going to hold. In fact the whole thing can unravel right before our very eyes despite the best-laid plans of mice and men. Or on the flip side of the coin we can be dreading something and it goes so much better than we could ever have imagined.

Sometimes things go just as we planned and other times there’s a huge disconnect between our plans on the one hand and what actually happens on the other. And that disconnect can be a pretty stressful place to be. In fact its right in the middle of that stressful disconnect, when our plans go out the window, that the rubber hits the road.

If this Christianity thing is supposed to work then faith has to make a real difference when our plans start unravelling before our very eyes, right?

Last week on the program and again this week we’re getting down and practical. Sometimes you look at the Bible and you think it’s a dusty old book and you think, ‘Oh, what practical value is that?’

You know when we grow up from being kids to teenagers to adults you get some good advice along the way but ultimately that advice mixes in with our own experience. And hopefully we learn things and we grow and we mature and we’ve been looking through some wisdom from King Solomon, one of the wisest men that ever walked the planet, in his book of Proverbs.

Proverbs is written in the Old Testament as some advice to some young men. So we’ve been tuning into that advice and saying, ‘well I wonder if there’s anything there for us? I wonder if as Solomon talks to these young men maybe Gods going to talk to me.’ Maybe God’s talking to us with some of His wisdom.

Things that we looked at last week, things like keeping bad company and what to do in a panic attack and what to do when people don’t match up to our expectations. Really cool stuff and if you missed any of those programs you can listen to them again online or download them and I’ll let you know at the end of the program how to do that.

Today we’re going to continue along the same vein with a question. When our plans unravel, when it all gets uncertain, when it all gets scary, does faith work?

One of the pieces of advice Solomon that gave to these young men along the way is this. It’s in Proverbs chapter 16, verse 9. It says this:

In our hearts we plan our journey but the Lord determines our steps.

It’s a bit of fatherly wisdom and advice. Well let’s unpack that a little bit more. “In our hearts we plan our journey.”

That’s true. We all have hopes and dreams for the future. Some of them are big hopes and big dreams. Some of them are kind of at the life level. And then there are small ones, day to day ones. The little plans that we have for today and tomorrow and this week and next week.

On that ‘life’ level, on the macro level we have a plan to grow up and to get married and to be happy. And to have a good job and plenty of money and a couple of kids. And for them to grow up and get married and to be happy. You know, that’s sort of our life plan.

We all want that basically with different variations. Very few people’s lives go completely like that though, don’t they? My parents were post war immigrants and they came from the battered Europe to emigrate to a better life in Australia. And they worked really hard so that their kids, myself and my sister, could have a better life. And we did. We had so much more than they ever had.

My sister was studying to be a concert pianist in Italy in her early twenties when she came home and she’d been struck down by schizophrenia and that robbed her of all her future and all the life she had planned. You know life hasn’t been what her life should have been.

We don’t plan that stuff in life. That’s nobody’s fault, we just don’t plan for it in our plans and hopes and dreams.

And at a day-to-day level, you know a few years back I remember when my kids were young and microwaves had just come in. And one morning I got up and I had plans for work and this and that and the other. And like we all did in those days because microwaves were new we did everything with our microwaves including boiling the water for our cup of coffee.

And I was just taking a cup of boiling water out of the microwave when my little 2-year old son reached up and he slammed the microwave door onto the boiling cup of water and it poured down the left hand side of my face. It was very painful. The next thing I knew I was in the back of an ambulance and I spent the day in hospital in pain. I didn’t plan for that for my day.

Yet good things and bad things happen to people who believe in God and people who don’t believe in God. Christians get cancer. They lose children. They get retrenched. That stuff just happens and when it does we can lose our dreams. Our lives can feel shattered and in our hearts we plan our journeys but God determines our steps.

What’s that bit of advice that Solomon was trying to get across to his boys? What was he trying to say here? Well, we know the first part.

“In our hearts we plan our journey.”

Well we’ll say amen to that. Absolutely. We all do that. But God determines our steps.

Someone I really respect once said this to me. ‘Berni, do you know what peace is?’ I said, ‘Nup.’ He said, ‘Peace is trusting in the sovereignty of God.’ That’s good. Peace is trusting in the sovereignty of God. In our hearts we plan our journeys but God determines our steps.

Wow, what a great piece of advice because I think Solomon was trying to bring peace into these young men’s lives. He knew stuff would go bad for them. It’s just the way life goes. Relationships break up. We have our ups and we have our downs.

And Solomon is bringing peace into these young men’s lives because when it doesn’t go well, it’s still okay. God’s still right there with you. You may well have planned your plans and dreamed your dreams and hoped your hopes in your heart. But God’s there and He determines our steps. Every step.

I look back on my life and there are several things that I really would never have planned for or hoped for. In fact there are several things I would not plan for, for my worst enemy in his life or her life. There were some big issues in life. And now I look back on last week and there were some smaller day-to-day issues that I wouldn’t have chosen for myself.

I don’t know one person who’s been around the block a few dozen times who wouldn’t say that about their lives. There have been great parts of their lives but there have been some bits they would rather not have had. Some bits that they would rather wouldn’t have happened.

But as I look back on the last decade and a half or so, which is the time I’ve been walking with Jesus. I look back at all the blessings, the unreal blessings, there have been some real crises on top of that as well. And you know something, those crises in my life, those difficult times, they were the things that have humbled me. That have taught me. They’re the things that have made me useful to you.

And there have been some outstanding blessings along the way as well. Like the most wonderful wife. You know a dozen or so years ago we didn’t have two pennies to rub together. Today we have our own home. We have health. We have joy. We have peace. We have ….

God has blessed us with so much but the biggest blessing, the biggest blessing is the peace that I have in my heart because every day I know I don’t have to control the outcomes anymore. I know that when things don’t go according to my plans I don’t have to worry anymore.

I don’t have to stress. I don’t have to run around in a panic attack like Mr Bean because even though in my heart I plan my journey, God determines my steps. I know that His plan is so much better than my plans. And when things go awry, when things aren’t quite the way I want them to be, it’s in those times that He teaches me. That He grows me. That He matures me. That He softens me.

Everything He does, He does out of His love.

In our hearts we plan our journeys but God determines our steps.

Anger and rage are on the rise.  Road Rage.  Supermarket rage.  It seems that as the pressure grows, our tolerance and our ability to cope diminish.  

I don’t know whether it’s just me but the pace of life seems to be getting faster and faster and the whole ‘more, more, more’ thing is taking its toll. We know we’re putting stress on the environment, that’s putting it mildly and we know it’s putting stress on us.

It’s a bit like a fault line between two of the tectonic plates on the earth’s surface. As they shift the pressure below the surface builds up and builds up and builds up until bang! There is a massive earthquake.

With the stress that we’re under anger is a growing problem. Road rage. Supermarket rage. People feel more like they’re at breaking point under the stress of the ‘more, more, more’ and so they’re snapping with angry outbursts more and more.

Anger is a real issue. How do we wake up to it and what do we do about it?

Have you noticed how anger is playing its way out in your life? We all get angry and in a sense that’s a natural thing. We have someone who does something wrong to us or they tread on us or they ignore us or they do it to other people. And our normal response is sometimes to be angry.

But anger can dominate people’s lives too. You can take it to the extreme. Go to Iraq and you see people bombing each other out of anger. And on a smaller scale, at home we can be like a hare trigger. We just go off because we’re under so much stress.

Little things rob us of our peace. Noise can make us angry. Someone in the car in front of us who doesn’t put on their indicator can make us angry. Some people are more prone to anger than others. People who are achievers, you know they set goals and they plan their time and they have ‘to do’ lists, a place for everything and everything in its place.

Those sorts of people, well, they’re more prone to anger. Me? I am more prone to anger. It’s like that tectonic plate, you know those two plates rubbing as the pressure builds up, our tolerance goes down and we just want to snap.

Last week and again this week on the program we’ve been working our way through the book of Proverbs. It’s a wonderful book. King Solomon wrote it and he’s one of the wisest men that ever walked the planet. And it’s a set of fatherly advice from Solomon, who’s been around the block a few times in his life, to these young men, his sons.

And it kind of fits really nicely for me with that old Yiddish proverb: ‘Every generation has to learn for itself that the stove is hot’.

As we grow up, as we mature from being children to teenagers to adults and well into our ’30’s and ’40’s and ’50’s. Our whole life is about learning and growing and maturing and becoming more capable and becoming more rounded out as people.

Problem is though that as we grow and we mature anger is highly reactive. You know, it’s like Pavlov’s dogs. There’s a stimulus and there’s a response and often we don’t think about it. Anger can become a really deeply entrenched pattern of behaviour.

Maybe you struggle with anger. It’s something that I’ve had to work through. Maybe you know someone who struggles with anger. Is anger a growing issue in your life? Well if it is let’s just share a few minutes together.

I think we all know someone whether it’s us or someone else who’s close to us who’s dealing with the problem of anger or maybe not dealing with it. They’re just impacting themselves and others around them through their anger. Solomon in the book of Proverbs, he says this:

A person who is slow to anger is better than a mighty warrior. A person who controls their temper is better than one who takes a whole city. (Proverbs 16:32)

Wow, slow to anger, I love that term. Listen again, slow to anger and controlling our temper. Now those things are easier said than done and especially if, like me, you’re prone to anger just because of your makeup as a person.

God’s like that. God’s slow to anger. How can we become slow to anger? How do we control our temper? They are lessons I’ve had to learn and I’m still learning in life because of who I am.

I’m quick. I eat quickly. I work quickly. I walk quickly. When I drive I don’t like being slowed down. You know, I’ll duck out of this lane into that lane just to get there efficiently because time is important to me. I achieve a lot with my time and so I’m just someone who does things quickly.

And quickly can be habit forming. Quickly can be rush, rush, rush, rush, rush. From this to that to this to that. Mobile phone. Email. We’re not made to function like that. It’s great that some people can do things quickly and achieve a lot in a short period of time but we’re not made to be like that all day.

When we get into that habit, wherever somebody gets in our road we get angry. It’s like a drug. It’s like an addiction and we can’t change the outside patterns of behaviour without first going and letting God do something on the inside.

You know what helped me to start changing things? It was some key realisations. The first realisation is that when I get angry it’s like the devil is robbing me of my peace and my joy. Jesus died to give peace and joy and contentment. That’s what He died to give me.

It doesn’t mean I don’t have to work hard. It doesn’t mean I don’t do things quickly. It doesn’t mean that sometimes I don’t feel like I’m under pressure. But by and large, when I get up every morning, you know what my plan is?

My plan is that I’m going to enjoy living today. I’m going to glorify God today. And whatever comes, as much as it is up to me I’m going to enjoy today and live a life of peace.

The second thing, that deep realisation that helped me to begin to change in Christ is that anger ruins relationships. Let me say that again. Anger ruins relationships. We might be able to bully people into getting things out of them but at the end of the day it ruins the relationship.

Let me ask you, what sort of person would you prefer to be around? Someone who is quick to anger and anything sets them off, bang and they’re off. Or someone who is calm and dependable and faithful. It’s not much of a choice is it?

In fact we seek out people who are calm and dependable and faithful because they’re great to be around. And we actively avoid the people who are always angry and cranky. They’re judgemental. We just want to keep away from them.

Why is it that Solomon writes that someone who is slow to anger is better than a mighty warrior? Why does he write that? Well there are two ways of winning something aren’t there? One is to overcome the person. It’s a win: lose paradigm. And the other is to build relationships and bridges that we can just stroll across and get things done.

Someone who is slow to anger builds relationships and bridges and builds trust. A much better way of getting what we want. Why is someone who controls their temper better than someone who takes a city? The same reason.

If they take a city by force there are going to be casualties on both sides aren’t there? If I go in with my army to take the city and I fight your soldiers, some of my soldiers and some of your soldiers are going to die. If I come to take you and I take something by force, there are going to be casualties, in your heart and in my heart and our relationship.

But if I control my temper, if I just bite my tongue, if I build the bridges into a relationship between you and me, I’ll be able to come across and ask you for things and you’ll give them to me. And you’ll be able to come across that bridge that we’ve built and you’ll be able to ask me and I’ll give things to you.

A person who is slow to anger is better than a mighty warrior. A person who controls their temper is better than one who takes a whole city. (Proverbs 16:32)

When we get angry and lose our temper, we lose our peace and our joy and we ruin our lives and we ruin relationships. When we proactively rethink and plan we can think about the triggers that set us off and armed with that wonderful advice from God we can live a life of peace. But you know something, we’ve got to want that peace.

Don’t you just love being around a cheerful person?  The grumpy pessimist on the other hand – saps the life out of you. So how do other people think of you – cheerful … or grumpy?   

There are basically two types of people on this planet. Pessimists and optimists. And you know the difference, when they look at a donut the optimist sees a lovely, tasty, sweet, sugary, cinnamon coated thing and the pessimist sees the hole. The optimist looks at the glass of water and sees it half full, the pessimist of course, sees it as being half empty.

In other words, optimists see what they have and they rejoice in it. Pessimists look at what they don’t have and complain about it and moan over it. And even though the optimist and the pessimist, well they’re a bit of a stereotype, we all know people who fit into one or other of those two camps.

And we all know who we’d rather be around, right? So let me ask you, which one are you? Are you mostly an optimist or mostly a pessimist?

Optimists and pessimists, well maybe it sounds like a bit glib but it’s true, isn’t it? You know an optimist is someone who is hoping for the best and a pessimist is someone who is believing for the worst. Another way of saying it that’s trendy these days is to talk about energy givers and energy takers.

You know when you’re round someone that seems to build you up, that it seems that they have enough joy, enough peace and enough enthusiasm inside them that they’ve got some to spare. And it overflows out of their lives and they just can’t help it. They give some of it to us and they’re great people to be around.

The chairman of our board in this ministry, a man by the name of Anthony, is one of those people. I love being around the guy because he has this exuberance and joy and he looks forward to things and I find him encouraging.

Now there are other people, there are others who are energy takers. And when you’re round them they drain you, they sap you of energy. They’re complaining. They’re needy. They’re victims. We’re always propping them up emotionally and that takes energy and it takes effort. You spend time with someone like that and you feel drained and exhausted.

If you close your eyes, if I close my eyes and when we picture our friends and family and work colleagues and just picture their faces, pretty quickly we can look at them and fit them into one of those two camps. Energy givers or energy takers. Optimists or pessimists.

Last week and this week on the program we’ve been having a look at that wonderful Yiddish proverb that you may have heard me talk about a few times now that says, ‘Every generation has to learn for itself that the stove is hot.’ I love it. It’s a great proverb and we know what it means, don’t we?

People can give us as much advice as they like but sometimes we’ve just got to go out there and make our own mistakes and learn for ourselves and hopefully benefit from those mistakes and grow and mature as people.

Some people naturally are energy takers. Some people naturally sap people of energy. And if that’s you, the question you’ll probably ask is, ‘Well, you know, now that you mentioned it, now that you’ve talked about it, it would be so nice not to be. It would be so nice to change and be someone who gives and someone who overflows and someone that people want to be around rather than being someone who drains other people’.

Question is, is that possible? And my answer is, absolutely. Absolutely it’s possible but sometimes to make such a change the only way I know is for God to breathe His love and His Spirit and His words into our heart. And there’s a picture that God has in His book, the Bible, in the book of Proverbs which was written by King Solomon as fatherly advice to young men.

There’s a picture that I think is more than just a picture. It’s a picture that God can use, that God can use in your heart today to evoke something special. To change something that we, ourselves, can’t change. It’s in the book of Proverbs chapter 17, verse 22. It says this:

A cheerful heart is goo d medicine but a downcast spirit dries up the bones. (A cheerful heart is good medicine but a downcast spirit dries up the bones).

Well Berni, you know it’s easy for you to say that, to say go out and have a cheerful heart, great, but I don’t feel cheerful. I’m lonely or I’m rejected or I’m feeling down or I just don’t feel cheerful. I can’t think positively.

“A cheerful heart is good medicine.”

If you’re struggling to have a cheerful heart this picture of God is for you and I’d ask you to open your eyes and look out across your life. The things that are near. The things that are far. Look out across to the horizon and just scan your life and there’d be some good things out there and there’ll be some tough things out there. And I would ask you just to look at the good things and say, ‘Lord, thank you for those good things.’

Jesus said:

I came to bind up the broken hearted. I came to set the captives free. To give sight to the blind. (Luke 4:18)

Me? I met Jesus when everything else in my life was going wrong. It wasn’t fair, it was hurting a lot. I was on my own and the person that was in that place with me was Jesus. He came and He sat down in my space with me and you think, ‘How did He do that? Jesus died 2,000 years ago’. Jesus my friend is alive and well today because He rose again.

Jesus said, “You come and believe in me and my Father and I will come and make our home with you through the Holy Spirit.”

So I began to read about Jesus in the Bible. I found this radical lover of my lost soul. I found someone who is prepared to come out with me to bring me home again. And then, when His Spirit comes and lives in you He talks with you and He walks with you. You might think, ‘Berni, you must be smoking something. You know that can’t be real’.

This is as real to me as my hand when I look at it in front of my face. As anything else physical, the spiritual presence of God is just as real to me.

Each one of us looks out across our lives and there are some good things and there are some things we’d rather not have there. And the balance of those is going to change over time. What it’s like this week is different to what it’s going to be like next week and what it’s going to be like in two years time.

This year we might be up in the balance. Next year that balance might get down a bit lower. There might be a few more things that we’d rather not have there and things we really do want to have there. Life goes up and down.

But when you’ve got Jesus sitting there with you and walking with you, you look at it from a different perspective. Having a cheerful heart when Jesus is living in there is not actually something you have to work too hard at.

Now I work hard. I work long hours. Not everything always goes to plan in my life. Sometimes people hurt me and they upset me. But you know something, I made a decision. Jesus died for me. Jesus rose again for me. Jesus died to buy me peace and He died to buy me joy and I’m going to have a cheerful heart.

That’s a decision. It’s not something I have to work at. It is the decision because in my heart is the very presence of God Himself – a wonderful gift. It’s a wonderful present. Christ in me. And that Jesus, His glory shines in my heart.

You know what the alternative is? The alternative is a downcast spirit which dries up the bones. Dry bones mean being dead inside. Bones are what hold us together. They’re our structure. They’re our framework. They’re what hold us upright. Your bones dry out and our lives fall apart and it impacts those around us as well.

Are you downcast? Do you have dry bones? Can I encourage you again to look out across your life, to survey your life and take it to Jesus and give it to Him and say, ‘Jesus, I believe what this joker’s just said on the radio. I actually believe that You died for me. I believe that you died to buy me a great life and I plan to enjoy my life.’

“A cheerful heart is good medicine but a downcast spirit dries up the bones.”

Jesus, I pray that you will give me a cheerful heart.

The good Lord has given us five sense – sight, smell, touch, hearing and taste – five of them to drink in the beauty and the wonder of all that He’s created.  But sometimes, we forget that – ears are for hearing and eyes are for seeing!

It’s a funny thing. No it’s an absolutely brilliant thing how God has given us five senses – Sight, Hearing, Smell, Touch and Taste. Five different senses all designed as sensory input devices. Different dimensions of drinking in of the world and the people and the animals and the views around us. Ears to hear. Eyes to see.

Just as I was preparing for this program the other day, you know my son is pretty quiet, there was some unwanted noise distracting me. So I put on my headphones and I listened to some of my favourite music. Beethoven piano sonatas. Music written almost 200 years ago. Recorded by a pianist 10 years ago. Piping in through my ears. Resting and delighting my spirit all because God gave me ears to hear.

But it’s funny how sometimes our hearing becomes dull. Our vision becomes clouded. We have all these senses, sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. We forget sometimes how to use them.

Over these last few weeks on the program we’ve been hovering around this theme, ‘Every generation has to learn for itself that the stove is hot’. It makes me smile. It’s so Yiddish, it’s so profound but it’s true, you know.

We start off as these little toddlers, we become children and then teenagers and adults. And all our lives we’re learning and growing and changing and hopefully getting rid of some of the rubbish and becoming more mature and just enjoying our lives.

Bringing up teenagers can be, well it can be frustrating, can’t it? I think we can learn something from a teenager. I remember when I was a teenager, it felt like I couldn’t see beyond a brick wall that was the end of my schooling.

For as long as a teenager has known they’ve been at school. And school is all that there is but you know, as a teenager you have dreams about the future, your whole life is ahead of you. You dream. You have vivid hopes and desires and ideals. Maybe there’s a bit of naivety about it because we haven’t had that idealism whacked out of us by the stresses and strains of life. It’s a wonderful time to be a teenager.

And the other thing is that teenagers are great at experiencing the here and the now because they don’t have the responsibilities and the pressures and the stuff, most of the time, that you and I do when we grow up and we’re an adult. It’s a beautiful time.

But something happens when we move from being a teenager into adulthood. All of a sudden we get responsibilities. You know, you have a job, you have a career. You’ve got to have a plan and you have a mortgage. You have a future to think about and then kids come along.

But somehow we can lose those dreams and those hopes and those intense experiences of the here and now that we used to have when we’re young. And life can become a blur. Work. Running kids to music lessons. Running them to sport. More work. A bit of TV. More work. Earning money. Shopping. More work.

A lot of people are very tired. And you turn around and you say, ‘I’m not living anymore. I’m just existing’. Do you get it? I mean, hello! A lot of people are just existing. We have so much stuff, we’re so blessed these days, we have more than our parents ever did and yet so many people feel like they’re on the run. They feel like there’s no tomorrow. They feel as though they can’t see beyond five o’clock tonight.

The book of Proverbs is written by King Solomon. One of the wisest men that ever walked the planet. And it’s advice to some young men. Proverbs chapter 20, verse 12, he says this:

The ears that hear and the eyes that see the Lord has made them both.

“The ears that hear, the eyes that see, the Lord has made them both.” We’ve heard that cliché ‘go and smell the roses’. I mean it’s a cliché but think about it. Our sense of sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. God made them all.

I think that’s a revelation. Let’s get a revelation today. God gave us these rich sensory input devices. Sight, the things that we can see. The things that we can hear with our ears. The things that we can smell and taste and touch. The world around us. People. All that stuff was Gods idea.

I love watching the shows on TV, you know the underwater shows where, you know you look at coral reefs and fish and stuff like that. There are some amazingly coloured and shaped fish swimming around in the ocean that you and I would probably never see. And coral polyps and reefs, all those wonderful swaying things. It’s amazing, isn’t it?

And the be able to see that on television let alone going down there and seeing it for yourself, I think it’s awesome. It’s God saying, ‘You know something, I can’t help myself.’ God has a glory that we just can’t imagine and every part of creation we see that glory manifest. We see that glory unfolding.

Funny how sometimes we miss it and you know, God made the ears that hear and the eyes that see. My hunch is He wants us to take some of that in. He wants us to look at it and go, ‘Wow! Wow isn’t that fantastic?’

I work hard days. Some long days. It’s a hard slog. I love it, I really enjoy what I do. I enjoy being here with you. I enjoy the preparation. I enjoy everything about my work. But we can all get to the point, well that’s all there is. And it’s not all there is.

So, for me, I’m a natural workaholic so I have to deliberately do things that make sure that my ears are hearing and my eyes are seeing. Almost every day I go for a walk around where we live. I love the old architecture of the houses. I love how the people have painted their houses different colours and the different leaves and flowers of the plants. I just love looking at that stuff. I really enjoy it. I love the fresh air and the sun on my face or the wind and the rain. Or going for a drive on the weekend. Just experiencing life.

Every now and then Jacqui, my wife and I, we’ll go out for dinner on a Friday night. Just enjoy some different food. Enjoy each other’s company. Enjoy a glass of something to drink. We plan the odd weekend away. Just the weekend after next, Jacqui and I are going away. Just the two of us. Just a place an hour and a half drive away, to get a change of scenery.

I love music. How many of us have CD’s that we haven’t listened to for years? And yet music gives us such a joy and such peace. It evokes such emotions. When was the last time you went for a drive to a look out and just looked out over a valley or over the sea?

Maybe you enjoy photography but you haven’t taken photos for ages. Maybe you enjoy looking through a telescope at the stars or a microscope at cells. It’s an incredible world we live in. Maybe what you really love doing is cooking nice meals but you’re so busy and you’re so tired that you just haven’t got around to it for such a long time.

Listen! God’s given us such an incredible creation and the ears that hear and the eyes that see and the nose that smells and the hands that touch and the mouth that tastes. God made them all! It is a wonderful world!

Can I shake you out of the rut you’re in? I love it, you’ve probably heard me say this so many times, I love it. Jesus said:

I came that you might have life and have it in all of it’s abundance. (John 10:10)

Can I tell you? There is no abundance in a rut. When we’re running around in a rut, just existing, just getting by each day, it’s not abundance. Abundance is using our ears to hear and our eyes to see all the wonderful things the Lord has made for us. To drink in His creation. To enjoy it. To think about it. To have colour in our world.

Solomon was talking to some young men. God today is talking to us. What do you think? What’s God saying to us? Is God shaking you out of a rut? I pray that He is because we can all get into ruts but listen:

“The ears that hear and the eyes that see the Lord has made them all.”

They say that wisdom is as sweet as honey.    The problem is though that honey is simple, wisdom is complicated.  We’d all love to be wise but, well … you know.

Well here we are again, another week older because it’s the end of another week. The last couple of weeks on the program we’ve been working our way through this proverb, an old Yiddish proverb which goes like this. “Every generation has to learn for itself, the stove is hot.”

In other words, growing up from being a little kid to being a teenager to being an adult to being elderly or chronologically endowed. We’re always growing aren’t we? We’re always learning. And people come along with good advice but sometimes we just have to experience it.

It’s not just knowledge we’re talking about. We can know stuff but not know what to do with it. Wisdom is something in the head and the heart. Wisdom weighs right and wrong. Compassion and judgement. Being and achieving. And as wisdom grows in our lives it produces a sweet, sweet fruit.

King Solomon in the Book of Proverbs was giving some advice as an older wiser man to some young men. And so we’ve been tuning in to what Solomon’s been saying to these young men and thinking, ‘Well I wonder, I wonder if there’s any wisdom there for us. I wonder whether God has some wisdom to bring into our lives today.’ Sometimes it’s there for the taking but sometimes we just don’t take it.

Since we’ve been talking about wisdom these last couple of weeks in all sorts of different situations, I thought it would be a great place to finish off. So we’re going to listen to Solomon again in Proverbs chapter 24, verses 13 and 14. And this is what he writes. He says:

My child, eat honey for it is good and the drippings of honeycomb are sweet to your taste. Know that wisdom is like that to your soul. If you find it you’ll find a future and your hope will not be cut off.

It’s a beautiful picture isn’t it? It’s like we all know what honey is like. Honey is just gorgeous. Good honey, it’s so smooth and it’s so sweet and just rolls down the side of your throat. It’s fabulous. I love honey. And Solomon is saying to these young men, ‘Look, wisdom is like honey for your soul’.

You know eating honey is good for you. We know that. We eat sugar and all sorts of stuff in cakes and sweets but they’re not so good for us. But honey, honey is sweet and it’s really healthy. And so Solomon is saying, ‘You know that stuff that drips out of the honeycomb? It’s good for you and its sweet and wisdom is like that. That’s all wisdom does to your soul’.

You find wisdom and you find a future and hope and it will be a great life. It’s a beautiful picture, honey and wisdom.

The problem is honey is a really simple thing. You know it comes out of a jar, you put it on your toast, it tastes great. Wisdom on the other hand, well wisdom can involve a lot of labour. There’s a lot of pain goes into learning wisdom isn’t there? We learn that through experiences in life and sometimes we have to fall flat on our faces, time and time and time again. Until we finally grow in wisdom.

A good friend of mine, Max, who works with me here in the studio, he produces our program. Max loves keeping bees. He has about four hives and every now and then we wander down his back yard and we have a look at his hives. They say that bees go and collect nectar and pollen and bring it back to the hive. They turn it into honey, into food.

Now I don’t know exactly how they do that but they do and they fill the hive with honey. But the hive is an amazing place. They have a strata plan for the hive. Down the bottom of the hive is where they come and drop the pollen and the dirt and they clean their feet. It’s like the door mat.

And then they work their way up and there are different chambers in the hive. There’s the chamber where the queen lives and where they lay the eggs. There’s the chamber where they store the honey and the higher up they go in the hive.

And I said to Max one day, ‘What happens if the hive fills up?’ He said, oh it’s simple, what happens is the queen leaves. She takes half the hive with her but not just half the hive, half of the old bees, half of the young bees. Half of the teenage bees, half of the bees by function.

Exactly demographically by half they leave with her and once she leaves the other bees go, ‘Ooh the queen’s left, we’ve got to create some new queen bees’. So they go and they pick eggs that were laid by the last queen and they feed them royal jelly to create new queen bees. And the first queen bee that pops up out of that goes and kills all the other ones so that they won’t come out and there’s only one queen bee.

Now I can’t imagine how these busy little bees manage to figure all that out except for the fact that God is an amazing God and we look at honey and we say, ‘well, it’s so simple, it just comes out of a jar’. No it’s not. It comes out of one of the most complex social animal interactions that we can ever begin to imagine in the beehive.

There’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of industry. There’s a lot of organisation that goes into honey and yet it produces the most amazing output, doesn’t it? I mean honey is just fabulous. Sweet. Pure. Healthy. It never goes stale.

“My child, eat honey for it is good.” (Sounds like a honey ad, doesn’t it?) “My child, eat honey for it is good and the drippings of the honeycomb is sweet to your taste. But know this that wisdom is like that for your soul. If you find it, you’ll find a future and your hope will not be cut off.”

This honey, beautiful, simple, smooth, sweet which is so good for us, is the picture of wisdom that flows from God into our hearts. And just the way we sit here sometimes at breakfast and we have honey on our toast and we really, really enjoy the fruit of all the work that those bees have done, that’s the picture of wisdom you know. As wisdom grows through all of our experiences.

Okay, we will make mistakes along the way but eventually something breaks through in our hearts and God teaches us a bit of wisdom and we’re different people and that wisdom has a maturity in it. And a gentleness and a kindness to it.

It has a value that’s as sweet as the honey those bees produce and it’s the honey that flows through our lives and it’s the honey that other people experience as it overflows from us into their lives. Honey is actually quite a complex thing and so is wisdom. But you know at the end it’s so beautiful and so sweet and so simple. We’ll find a future, we’ll have a hope, it’s wonderful.

Now maybe you’re thinking, ‘Berni, that’s really good but sometimes we know that we lack wisdom. Sometimes we have patterns of behaviour that we know they’re wrong but we don’t know how to break out of them. We don’t know how to change what we do’.

In the New Testament in the first chapter of the Book of James it actually says, ‘Look, this is what life is like. You’re going along through life and you’re going to go through some trials and some tests and that’s going to build your faith, your faith in God.’

‘And that’s going to build your endurance and that’s going to build your maturity and you know something, as you become more mature you’ll be complete, you’ll be lacking in nothing.’

And then, as if He knows what our protest is going to be, He knows someone is going to say, ‘Well yeah, that’s great James, but you know I don’t feel very wise’. He says this:

So if any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God who give generously to all and ungrudgingly and it will be given to you. Just ask in faith and never doubt. (James 1:5-6)

And that wonderful cycle of trials and faith and endurance and maturity, James is saying, look don’t go and get wisdom for yourself, go and ask God. If you’re lacking in wisdom, if you’re going through some tough stuff and you need wisdom just go to God and ask Him and He will give it to you generously. He gives it to everybody generously and ungrudgingly and when He does my child, it is like honey to you, it is good.

The drippings of the honeycomb are so sweet to your taste and wisdom is like that for your soul and if you find it in God, you find a future and a hope and you’ll live a most abundant life. The life that Jesus came to give to you and me.

“Every generation has to learn for itself, the stove is hot.” But God is there to give us wisdom right when we need it.