Gift Based Ministry // How to Live an Extraordinary Life, Pt 6

A Different Perspective Official Podcast

Pretty much all of us want to live not just a dull, boring life, but an extraordinary life. The sort of life that – given who we are and where we live and what we’re capable of – makes a positive difference in this world. A life that counts for something. And one of the most extraordinary things we can do is to pour out our gifts and abilities for others?

Now last week on the program we've kicked off a series that I've called, "How To Live An Extraordinary Life" because on this earth you and I only have one life to lead, it's not a dress rehearsal, when it's gone it's gone and far too many people waste their lives.

They waste the opportunity to use their gifts and their abilities and their resources, the stuff they've been given to have a positive impact in this world; to leave a legacy that will live on and on with a ripple effect down through the generations.

Maybe that sounds a bit grandiose to you. Me? How could I have a legacy that ripples down through the generations? By having a positive impact on just one other person that helps them to grow or to change and then when that person has kids they pass that maturity and that wisdom on to them and before you know it you've impacted more people than you could ever imagine.

It's exactly what Jesus did. Think about it. He came into contact with a few thousand people in Israel two thousand years ago and He's impacted billions of people ever since. That's why this series is called ‘How To Live An Extraordinary Life’. We're taking a look at the different things that Jesus did to live His extraordinary life and seeing what we can learn from Him from the things He said, He did, in living our own extraordinary lives. Sound like a plan? Well let’s get into it today.

Over the past week we've seen that Jesus overcame His past which involved a pretty rocky start to life. We've seen that He drew a lot of His power from the fact that He humbled Himself and submitted to God. We've seen that despite the initial cost for Him He was a real team player and it's the team that He built that ended up impacting this world. And we saw how focused He was on His mission and His objectives in the three and a half short years that He had.

There are some great insights so if you've missed any of them I'll share with you at the end of the program how you can catch them up online. But today I want to kick the week off with an observation about how Jesus used His gifts to have an impact. Let's pick up the story in Matthew chapter 4, verse 23:

Jesus went through Galilee teaching in their Synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread all throughout Syria and they brought him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains and demoniacs and epileptics and paralytics and he cured them and the great crowds followed him from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and even from beyond the Jordan.

Now you're sitting there thinking, 'Well you know, I don't have the power to heal people and cast out demons. If I did I guess great crowds would follow me too but I don't so they won't. So why are you banging on about this Berni?'

Am I right? Sure I am, we all think that but let me tell you what I think of the two most powerful, most profound words in that passage I just read and they're not the words about curing every disease and every sickness, they're not the words about His fame spreading or great crowds following Him. You want to know what I think what the two most powerful words are in that passage?

Well I think they're the first two, these two words, "Jesus went". And the reason they're so powerful is that unless Jesus had gone, unless He got up off the sofa and left His comfortable, safe little carpenters shop and gone out throughout Galilee which by the way was the immediate surrounding area or the region of which He lived, then none of what He did would have been done and none of what He achieved would have been achieved and none of those people would have been healed. God wouldn't have been revealed and it's pretty certain that you and I wouldn't be sitting here chatting about Him today two thousand years on, would you agree?

It all happened because Jesus went and would you please notice the other thing about this with me, He didn't go to some far flung remote impossible place to start with, I mean He didn't even go up to Jerusalem in the beginning, He started in His own home region.

Sometimes I think that in order to do something really extraordinary and worthwhile for God we think we have to set sail and go to the farthest place on this earth. Yeah sure, some people are called to do that, we call them missionaries but far more people are called to use the gifts and the abilities and the resources that God’s given them right in the place where they live and where they work and where they socialise.

It's about just taking whatever we have in our hands and using it for the good of others. I know some people who sit there and say, 'Well how come God doesn't use me to have an impact in other people's lives?' Well my experience is that God is always up to something and when we're not involved it's probably a whole bunch more about us not going than about God not doing.

There's a great guy who works in Christian media in the UK, he's called David L'Herroux, he's just one of the good guys. Recently he Tweeted this, he said:

The winds of God are always blowing but you need to set the sails.

It's about hoisting our sails, it's about throwing our hat into the ring, it's about getting up off the sofa and going and just using what we have to hand. See it can be as simple as knowing that your neighbours just out of hospital and fronting up on their front doorstep without being asked and just taking a meal over to their house.

It can be as simple as offering to have a cup of tea or coffee with someone at work who's looking a bit down and a bit distracted. Okay maybe God hasn't given you or me the gift of healing but when we take stock of the gifts and the abilities and the natural strengths and motivations and inclinations and resources that we do have you start to realise how much He actually has already given us.

I was sharing this story of this ministry of Christianityworks that I work with in producing these radio programs with a group of business people at breakfast just the other morning and it's an amazing story, from nothing to a weekly audience that numbers in the tens of millions. They were impressed and hey I'm totally gobsmacked every time I think about it or tell people about it.

But my point to them is this, we have a massive global team of eight people who work in the organisation and a handful of dedicated volunteers and none of us, none of us is anything special. We just got together, we each threw our gifts and abilities and resources into the ring, we just believed that God was calling us to do something special, we took some financial leaps of faith I have to tell you, other people might call them risks and off we went.

Did we have a strategic plan? Well yeah but we never imagined that God would do what He's done. We never dreamed for a moment that we'd be sharing the good news of Jesus with that many people. The numbers and all the glory and all the impact, they belong to God, He did it, He's still doing it, not us. We just kind of figured that if Jesus went well maybe we could follow along after Him, maybe we could step out of our comfort zones and go and have a impact in people's lives too.

So let me ask you this, in your life right now, where you live, what are your opportunities? I mean just think for a moment, the people in your home that you live with, your husband or your wife, your children, maybe your extended family, maybe you have some older parents who need a helping hand, who don't know how they're going to get through, who are lonely.

What could you do to help them? To just touch their lives, to just make their lives a little bit better, to just shine a little light into a dark place and what about that woman just down the hallway on the right in that office who seems to be struggling? How could you make a difference in her life?

That's what Jesus is calling us to do. So what are you waiting for?