A Different Perspective Official Podcast

It's kind of embarrassing to have to admit sometimes that we've made a mistake. And even when it's the right thing to do – we still sometimes get mixed reactions. Have you ever been dreading something, a trip to the doctor's or the dentist, or maybe a confrontation at work or a reunion after a broken relationship? You know that sick feeling you get in the pit of your stomach, the sleeplessness the...

Sometimes, we come to the conclusion that decisions and choices we've made – just aren't working. But turning them around, well, it can be a long road. For years, and years, and years, I wandered around in a spiritual desert. Now the crazy thing was that I'd been a Christian in my teenage years. But when I grew up, I rebelled and I came to the point where I kind of knew that there was a God but af...

Sometimes we get to a point in life where we have to admit to ourselves that we've taken a wrong turn. That's not easy – and the decision to turn around – well, that's harder still. We've all had that experience of trying something, committing to it, believing in it, publicly promoting it, and then flop, we fall flat on our faces. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt! It's not a nice feeling, is...

We all love to kick our heals up every now and then. Problem is that the more you watch TV, the more they seem to tell us that life is just one long party. We all like a good party from time to time, the chance to kick up our heels, let our hair down, relax and enjoy, it's a part of life. In fact, it's a very necessary part of a balanced life. Now the advertising industries figured that out, that'...

There's a streak in each one of us that wants to rebel. You know – kick our heals up and just party. But you can't live like that all the time without there being some consequences. My hunch is that there are a lot of people on this planet who are wandering in some kind of spiritual wilderness. It's a wilderness experience that looks something like this: I've been wandering around here for what se...

You have a son. He's out walking one night. A car hits him. Leaves him for dead on the freeway so that a few minutes later, the next car on that dark road kills him. Imagine. This week on a different perspective we've been talking about forgiveness. In a world where we often experience emotional bumps and bruises it turns out that forgiveness is as important to our emotional well being as physical...

How do you get over the hurts of the past? You know, really let go so they don't hurt anymore. Well, today, we're going to meet an amazing woman – Lorraine Watson – who has a real story to tell. These days psychologists and psychiatrists talk about the fact that the act of forgiving someone often results in healing. On Monday I talked about some research with some incest survivors. Fifty percent o...

We all know that we need to forgive people. That's the theory, But let's now put the shoe on the other foot and talk about God's forgiveness. Does He really need to forgive us?  Really? Forgiveness is one of those fluffy words that quite often we pay very little attention to. But when you think about it, it's pretty obvious that without forgiveness, we can't have effective relationships. Without f...

Every person we will ever meet, is going to annoy us at some point. Something in their personality will grate, something they do will hurt … so what's the secret of having a great relationship anyway? It seems that there are really only two types of people in this world: those who love getting up early in the morning and those who don't, those who love cats and those who hate them. Or, you know wh...

When someone does something wrong – something that hurts us, it's easy to say, "I forgive you". But actually living out that forgiveness – what does that look like? In a recent edition, the magazine, Psychology Today, carried an article on forgiveness. In part, the article reports that until recently psychologists regarded forgiveness as the business of the clergy and theologians. But now, mental...

Sometimes, life gets so rough and rocky and we think to ourselves, surely, surely it must get better soon. But some people give up hope completely, and just live their lives in a constant state of despair. When we think about God, whoever that is, it's easy to get a distorted picture. The older we are the more we tend to think of Him as being judgmental, and the younger we are well, younger people...

We tend to think of oppression in global geo-political terms. But normal, everyday people experience all sorts of oppression – sometimes, in the most unexpected of ways. Oppression is just a fact of life in this world, we tend to think of it in political and in social terms, on a national or international scale, and it is huge. But oppression happens right at home too, oppression isn't about natio...

Imagine just for a moment that you're blind and all of a sudden, your sight is restored. What would that be like? How would it feel? As a young man I used to have 20/20 vision but like just about everyone else, when you get to your late 30s and early 40s the old vision gets a bit blurred, and I needed glasses. These days I wouldn't even think of driving a car or reading a book without the old mult...

It must be an amazing feeling for a prisoner to be set free after years of incarceration. I wonder when they step out of the prison – what that freedom looks like, tastes like, smells like. I'm not sure if you every saw that movie in the mid 90's called The Shawshank Redemption with Morgan Freeman. But it's about two men essentially who find themselves in jail, one played by Morgan Freeman is ther...

Most of us like to watch the news, or listen to it on the radio, or read the newspaper. But really, there's precious little good news these days. It all seems to be bad news, especially for the poor. But Jesus said that He had good news for the poor. So what did He mean? One of the little rituals that I love to perform every night is to watch the evening news on television. It's just, I don't know...

Believe it or not, God has this edgy, amazing plan to change us on the inside through His love and mercy and grace ... and then for that to work its way to the outside – in what we say and do. That's the plan. I love meeting people where what I see is what I get. The person that I see on the outside is the person who they are on the inside even, you know, if they're a bit abrasive on the outside a...

Sometimes what we do on the outside reflects what's happening on the inside. Other times, we try to hide what's happening on the inside by behaving differently on the outside. And in the long run – that just doesn't work. Something we love to do, it comes pretty naturally, is to have a disconnect between our spirituality or our faith on the one hand and our lives on the other. Maybe we go to Churc...

Some people are so busy doing stuff, they don't have time for relationships. Other people are so relationship-focused that they never actually get anything done. So, which one is better? Most of us understand the concept of smelling roses. We're so busy, so flat out running around doing stuff that we don't take the time to smell the roses, to stop and pause and wonder and think and enjoy God's cre...

Love is something that begins in the heart. So is hatred. In fact, just about everything we say and do on the outside, begins with what's happening on the inside. The same holds true for – worship. One of the things that we all kind of know is that the great achievements that we have on the outside all start on the inside. Somewhere deep in her heart a little girl dreams of being a great athlete....

It turns out that we all worship something. Success. Money. God – whoever that might be. There's invariably something that dominates the way we feel, think and live. I'm not much into religion per se, you know the whole structured ritual thing but one of the great spiritual concepts that sometimes gets tagged with religious baggage is this idea of worship. Well when you hear the word worship, what...

If only.  If only she'd want to hold my hand still.  If only she'd touch my cheek like she used to.  It's funny how as we get busier in life, we become less and less intimate in our marriage. Here's a cold, hard, statistic – depending of course in which country you live in. Somewhere between 30 and 45% of all marriages end in divorce. In California the registry of births, deaths and marriages is n...

She's flat out running the kids around, cleaning, cooking, all the stuff she thinks she should do. And he's just lonely. She never has time for me. He never helps me! This week on A Different Perspective we're taking a bit of a look at what it means to communicate our love for one another in the context of marriage. You know I believe that marriage is just one of the most amazing gifts that God ca...

That Neil Diamond song "You Don't Send me Flowers Anymore" says it all in some marriages.  What happened to those unexpected gifts?  What happened to the love? This week on A Different Perspective we're taking a look at how to express our heartfelt commitment to our soul mates, our wives, or our husbands as the case may be. Imagine; boy meets girl, she only speaks Swahili, he only speaks Japanese,...

He thinks he's doing a great job working hard, paying down the mortgage.  But all she sees is that he never has time for her.  He's working flat out, she's feeling unloved and it's all heading downhill fast. This week on A Different Perspective we're looking at how to communicate love between husband and wife. Actually you can apply it to any loving relationship. So often a wife and a husband well...

Mark Twain once said "I can live for two months on a good compliment".  It's true, when people affirm us and encourage us – it somehow builds us up on the inside. Another new week. You know last week on A Different Perspective we went on a bit of a journey to look at how we can have the kind of marriage that we were meant to have. I guess we looked at some of the really important foundation stones...