FRESH Official Podcast

If God's calling you—if you feel stirred to use your gifts for His glory—then you're truly blessed. But here's the rub: there's always a cost. And it's that cost that stops so many from stepping into the one thing that would bring true lasting fulfilment. David Livingstone believed that God called him to Africa as a missionary, explorer, and abolitionist. His primary goal was to bring the Gospel t...

If you were to look back on how (if at all) you've changed as a person over, say, the last five or ten years, would you be able to conclude that you're a markedly better person today than you were back then? What does it mean to be a better person? Perhaps that selfishness has given way to generosity, pride to humility, anger to kindness. You have greater empathy for others; you help them, forgivi...

Have you ever found yourself thinking, "Those people over there, man, they're behaving so badly. I'm so glad I'm not like them"? At which point, a sense of moral superiority rises up in your heart. You just know that you're better than them. Many object to Christianity because they've seen Christians act in ways that contradict Jesus' teachings—judgmental attitudes, scandals, greed, racism, abuse,...

Adversity tends to elicit one of two very different responses: we either become bitter or better. And please note, as similar as those words sound – bitter or better – they're mutually exclusive. Bitter, or better, one or the other. Never both. So … which will it be? John Bunyan and George Fox were both imprisoned in 17th-century England for preaching without the permission of the Church of Englan...

Adversity, though a fact of life, is never a welcome visitor. I get that. And yet, when it does strike, painful though it may be, it likely represents one of the greatest opportunities that God will ever hand you. Esther Ahn Kim was a Korean Christian imprisoned by the Japanese in the 1930s for refusing to bow down to a Shinto shrine. Realising what was coming, she spent months fasting, praying an...

Light and darkness, when you think about it, completely dictate the cycle of our lives. Daytime, nighttime; awake, asleep -  a cycle that repeats itself over 27,000 times in the average lifetime. And, let's be honest here, we all travel through dark times in life; times when hope for the future seems to have been snuffed out; times when the darkness seems to have defeated the light. Today, if you'...

Whether you're working flat out or retired, every Monday morning the weekly grind kicks off once more. It's inexorable – the weekend's over, it's back into it again. And even if you absolutely love what you do, the monotony of it all can get you down. Have you ever felt your life to be incredibly ordinary? Nothing that stands out, nothing that sets you apart from the rest of the little worker bees...

Can I ask you today to look back on your life thus far and, on a scale of zero to ten, decide how successful you've been (whatever success happens to mean to you)? Well, how successful have you been? When you're in the moment, fighting the battles you have to fight, dealing with the pressures coming at you from every direction, slogging away at whatever it is that you slog away at day after day, y...

All too often in this life we have to make difficult decisions. Faced with moral quandaries, we're left to choose the least worst option. That's not easy. So, in those critical moments of making choices that can have huge ramifications, how do you choose? What's your guiding light when things are murky? In 1940, Chiune Sugihara was the Japanese consul in Lithuania. Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi per...

In the fast-paced world in which we live, friendships can be fickle. All too often friends fall by the wayside when things get messy, when we need them the most. But – good news – inevitably, the right people will stick around, no matter what. Naomi was a Jewish woman who, during a great famine, moved to Moab with her husband and two sons. As things turned out, the boys married local girls, giving...

Many labour under the misapprehension that the best way to change others is to control them; to command, to force them. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. The subtle art of influence is so much more powerful as an agent of change. John Newton, once a brutal slave trader, was deeply impacted by the kindness, faith, and persistence of Christians — especially those like William Wilberforce,...

There are times in life when you have to stand, risking it all to do what's right, to do what you know you have to do. Sure, if you're a natural-born entrepreneur, risk-taking may come easily. But for most people, it doesn't. In the 5 th Century BC, although she was a Jew, Esther became the queen of Persia, married to King Xerxes who'd been tricked into decreeing that all the exiled Jews be killed...

We don't like talking about our failures. We've all failed at something, and as you think back on it, it smarts, doesn't it? But how often have you failed because you didn't get up again after you stumbled? There's a thought. In the mid-18th Century, Vitus Bering, a Danish explorer in Russian service, set out to chart the waters between Siberia and North America. After successfully reaching Alaska...

So, a question: who are the people you hang with; those whom you invite into your inner circle; those who influence how you live, how you think, what you believe? Who are they and what impact are they having on your life? Back in the 5 th Century BC, Alcibiades was a brilliant Athenian statesman and general – handsome, gifted, well-connected. He was even mentored by Socrates, so he had every oppor...

Have you ever been so afraid that it stopped you from boldly doing the right thing, the thing you know you should have done? I think we all have. And having been there, knowing the shame and disappointment in ourselves that ensued, I'm pretty sure we each hope that next time we'll show a bit more courage. On December 1st, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. She was tired, but no...

Life is full of setbacks. Doubtless, you've had plenty too, right? Big ones, small ones, as far back as you can remember. Though discouraging at the time, some turned out much better than you'd imagined. Back in the Old Testament, Joseph (of technicoloured dream coat fame) was the youngest of Jacob's sons and also his favourite. His brothers were extremely jealous, to the point where they conspire...

Have you ever seen someone familiar in an unexpected place or context? You kind of recognise them, but you can't quite place them. Sometimes you don't recognise them at all. That unexpected context plays strange tricks on the mind. Such was the case for two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus after the tumultuous events of Jesus' crucifixion during the Passover festival. They'd been deeply tra...

The invention of the car has completely revolutionised the world, wouldn't you agree? From a standing start of zero in 1886, there are now over 1.5 billion vehicles on the road. But it wasn't until 1913, when Ford perfected mass production, that things really took off. In the early days, Henry Ford thought that success rested on his own genius. His first attempts failed — too costly, too slow. The...

It's utterly tragic to see people who are brimming with potential being held back by the shackles, the regrets, the stories of their past because they're at huge risk of wasting their lives – in fact, many do. I wonder what life-limiting, soul-destroying stories your past is whispering in your ear over and over again. For some, the harsh realities of life have taught them that they're simply not g...

Reunions are so incredibly special: Family reunions. Class reunions. Catching up with people with whom, over the years, you've developed a deep bond. For those of Chinese heritage, Chinese New Year is such a time. Families travel long distances to reunite and share the most important meal of the year together.  I know that when I catch up with the men with whom I trained to become an army officer...

As we toddle along through life, we inevitably find that we each have 'stuff' going on that, whilst not acutely painful, nevertheless contributes to a chronic sense of unease. And that's simply no way to live, wouldn't you agree? Take your sleep, for instance. Sure, you can get by with inadequate sleep for a while – for years in fact, until you realise that it's contributing to stress, hypertensio...

Have you ever felt completely inadequate for a task? Yeah, me too! Ignatius of Loyola was a vain, glory-hungry young soldier in 16th-century Spain—more interested in fame and romance than faith. Clueless about God's calling, he chased honour on the battlefield until a cannonball shattered his leg and his plans. During a long painful recovery, he had nothing to read but stories of Jesus and the sai...

One of the most confounding things about God is that He allows us to suffer. I wish I could give you the "whys and wherefores" of that, some concise reconciliation of a loving God and our terrible suffering, but I can't. What I can say is that He didn't even spare Jesus, His Son, from dying on a cross for you and me. In this imperfect, fallen world in which we live, it's pretty obvious that suffer...

Sadly, many people unthinkingly acquiesce to the unhealed wounds of their past: childhood cruelty in the schoolyard, harsh words from a parent, a broken relationship, an unresolved regret. I say "unthinkingly" because in order to be set free from the hurts of the past, we need to think about them. Allow me to be blunt. My first wife left me for one of my best friends. I wasn't a bad person, but as...

Sociopaths aside, I don't think that there's a one of us who doesn't want to have great relationships. In part, that involves meeting other people's expectations, which is fine up to a point. But when we cross that line to become a people-pleaser, life becomes miserable indeed – because they're a fickle crowd out there. You simply can't please all people, all the time. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a...