Michael Ramsden - Lord Mayors Breakfast Belfast 2014

mentally is a director with the exactly driver Sakurai's must find it in 1997 at least returning to the UK to work and investing money for the Lord Chancellor's department and for personally Rankin is also the lecturer at the University each other slightly possibly will speak for 500 times during the course of 2014 I develop limits we look at those in universities churches at conferences on domestic arts thank you very much for your introduction and warm welcome and it is a privilege for me to be able to speak to you whether it's privilege for you to be able to listen to what I have to say I'll leave up for you but if you eat that breakfast regularly you may want to have a little nap now to recover for the rest of the day which I'm sure will be busy the question of integrity and about integrity and business has may be to the surprise of some become one of the main talked about issues of the 21st century the challenges with words like that that have such a long and rich heritage we're not always sure exactly what they mean and what it entails I was speaking on this subject matter and very well-known bank in London last year and as I sat in their boardroom the one of them are senior people in this Bank and also one of their largest private clients one of the largest companies in the United Kingdom were talking with me asking me various questions about how integrity was impacting their own business models and then one of them said you know I have to tell you this story he said my good friend who sat opposite you took his son to be interviewed for one of England's most prestigious schools just a couple of months ago and the way the interviews work is the headmaster will interview the boys at age of entry age 12 and the father will sit behind the son he's not allowed to say anything he sits in on the whole interview and here's the headmaster interviewing his son for a place at this school and the interview is going very very well and the father's feeling very relaxed about it and then the headmaster looked at the boy and asked him what is the thing that scares you the most and that's quite a that's quite a good question the boy was silent for a couple of seconds looked down at the floor and then looked up and said oblivion now the headmaster was stunned oblivion has a variety of meanings as most word to do it can mean to cease to exist in someone's mind that's what most politicians live in terror of they can mean to cease to exist at all but whatever it is it's not good the headmaster was stunned by the response and the end of the interview the boy was given exceptions to the school but now the father is driving his son back in his Range Rover with the son in the passenger seat next to him and all he can think about is my son is terrified of oblivion so when the moment seemed right and when the conversation came to a natural points has naturally and as calmly as he could he said oh when the headmaster asked you what's terrifies you the most you responded oblivion why why did you say that and the boy looked at his father and said well that was the name of that really scary ride at the theme park we went to not long ago now you see the issue a a profundity was detected in the answer that strictly speaking really wasn't there and when we talk about an issue like integrity and why it may matter in business it raises very important questions to make sure we know what we're talking about now the Oxford English Dictionary defines integrity as wholeness been undivided uncorrupted sinless now what I find interesting about all of those definitions is that they are almost all negative undivided not being divided uncorrupted not being corrupted sinless being without sin there's only one positive which is there which is wholeness what does it mean to be whole to have the quality of being integrated integrity there is a wholeness a completeness to the picture to who we are as people as well as people in business what does that mean how do we go about understanding it the great writer and thinker GK Chesterton once gave a wrote a very famous essay called the medical mistake and he said when we listen to politicians speak very often they use in a medical analogy and they'll say you know our society is sick our nation is sick our city is sick and what we need to do is we need to we need to heal it we need to we need to make it better this isn't we we often hear he says in the social sciences people using this medical analogy but what he then went on to say was I think this may be very wrong hedid he said there was a very big difference between medical science and social science in medical science doctors often disagree about the nature of an illness but they all agree on what a healthy body looks like so although doctors may disagree about the nature of the sickness they all know what it means to be whole they may by necessity he said send you home with one leg less but they will not in a creative rapture send you home with one leg extra there is an agreement on what it means to be whole and healthy in the social science he says it looks very very different in the social sciences everybody seems happy to say that we aren't well what we can't agree on and what it means to be good so when it comes to politics it is about the solutions that we tear our eyes out of and what to one person is a solution to a problem to someone else is worse than that solution is worse than the problem it purports to solve and so therefore this question of defining when it comes to this question of integrity of wholeness what is that integrated picture look like then becomes very very important now you may have gathered already that I I quite like words and meanings of words and that's going to be very true and I'm going to be looking at meanings of various words with you I do apologize whether I actually enjoy reading dictionaries there are other people here who enjoy reading dictionaries but you're ashamed to admit it I I I can't recommend it to heartily you will find that the plot is not that exciting but it does explain every word as you go through so what I would like to do if I can is borrow an outline from a man by the name of Aristotle don't war if you haven't come across him recently he he died a little while ago who in his book the politics outlined three categories which I would like to use in a slightly different way to which he used them to frame my thoughts I'd like to share with you this morning but when he wrote the politics and when he wrote the book the rhetoric he said there are three things that you have to bear in mind he labeled them a toast a toast Lagos or give a more colloquial ethos pathos logos so let me just take each of those ethos ethic interestingly Aristotle said whenever you listen to a retro Titian speak whenever you listen to a public speaker speak the question you should ask yourself is not what is the ethic they espouse the question you need to ask yourself is what is the ethic they live by what does it look like in their own life the question he is raising is one of trust can you trust them not what are the standards which they want to espouse for others but what is the standard they actually live by themselves and where on earth does it come from how can they justify it now this is absolutely important because whether you're in business relationship family relationship or friendship all of those relationships depend on trust and Trust is a moral and ethical quality a couple of months ago I was asked to appear on every BBC local radio station in succession and she'll do 16 back-to-back and you wake up nice and early and then you just go bang bang bang bang bang through every single one the topic for discussion was to do with something called the NAT Sal the NAT Sal is the largest survey done in the world in any country on people's attitudes to sexual lifestyle and behavior the reason why they wanted to talk was the Nat South had thrown up a very interesting statistic which no one was anticipating it's only done once every 10 years 10 years ago when they last surveyed the nation and they're do some like 48,000 responses or 60 thousand responses there's truly huge undertaking one of the questions they asked was about people's attitudes to adultery and 10 years ago the response was over two-thirds of the people couldn't really see what the big problem was when it was done this year that statistic had dropped dramatically now with the majority of people saying that they thought that actually it was not a good idea or was wrong and the question was why the BBC were asking our we as broadcasters out of touch with the average person so this is the question they're putting to me as if somehow I know what the average person actually thinks I mean I I live in Oxford for goodness sake is not exactly a ground level but as I reflected on that question all I could think of is this is when we talk about a faithful friend we're talking about someone we can depend on someone who knows our weaknesses and our vulnerabilities and has our back but when you talk about an unfaithful lover that is someone on whom you can't depend who has broken your trust and broken your promises and if you've experienced that kind of pain in your life you know how devastating it can be all relationships are morally governed because all relationship is founded on trust and even in the business world it's not the fact that we don't do business with people we can't trust whether consciously or subconsciously we're continually taking a moral audit and the greater the moral risk we see in any particular client relationship the greater the reward we demand in order to justify the risk that we're taking because we realized that we may not get out of it what we hope or indeed what we have been promised there was a pro TV series done a couple of years ago and it got discontinued coming out of the states called lie to me I don't if any of you saw it it was based on the real-life researcher professor Paul Ekman now Paul Ekman made himself famous and has now made a very large sum of money by working with secure security services around the world and also now major government major corporations in terms of their governments because his research showed that regardless of where you were born what culture you were from what country you were from or where you were raised every face gave a universal language and if you could read the universal language on everyone's face what are called micro expressions which aren't influenced by cult or anything else you could detect when people were lying and this is now how he makes all of his money now as you would expect someone who spent the last 35 to 40 years asking the question how can you detect by reading someone's face when they are lying to you has also given some thought to what it means when we do lie listen to what he says when commentating on his own one of his own TV programs he says trust is a matter of faith that the person who was trusted won't exploit that trust intimacy in close working relationships romance and/or friendships requires and in fact depends on trust but it is well known that the last person to realize that he or she is being betrayed is the person suffering the betrayal why because the betrayed trust quite simply blocks out all recognition of the signs by lying the breach of faith all those signs that everyone around them so easily picks up on we don't want to learn that our trust has been betrayed that the person we hired is embezzling that our children are stealing money from our purses it is terrible to discover that our trust is being misgiven consequently most of us will deliberately avoid any clues to that discovery once Trust has been betrayed can it ever be restored not always and not by everyone even when the betrayal is forgiven and the betrayed does not want to give up the relationship it may still be very difficult to completely trust again that is the price of lying about very serious matters the loss of trust that may never be restored suspicions on the other hand the opposite of trust undermines relationships and results in the suspicious persons misery let me just say that again suspicions on the other hand the opposite of trust undermines relationships and results in the suspicious persons misery all of us face choices about this do we based on faith take the risk of being misled by trusting or do we take the risk not only of disbelieving a truthful person but never been able to establish close connections because of our chronic suspicion who do you trust on what basis is that trust given some of you here are business owners would you employ someone who you knew you couldn't trust it's very interesting how especially when you're talking business I don't know why it happens when I when I fly around the world of how people get talked to on the aeroplane one of the things I do is I teach business ethics people would say to me what do you do I teach business ethics and laughter was normal normally response there seems to be happening less in business we often ask the question can I afford to be moral can I afford it and the cost of a moral or ethical position is high and if you share your business model with me I can calculate it for you I can tell you how much it will cost you but even though the cost of compliance is high the cost of failure can be catastrophic in 2001 after the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in North America stock markets around the world collapsed now by early 2002 they had largely recovered now those of you who can cast your mind back to February March and so on of 2002 will remember that after the WorldCom scandal and the Enron scandal the market fell further and faster than it did after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 showing that what the market feared most was not a terrorist attack from without but a moral corruption within towards the end of that year I was in one of the world's largest banks with in front of me six of the largest private clients of this particular banking group one of them asked me a question which I'll never forget because he looked at me and he said do you think that confidence will return to the market anytime soon and I smile and swell that's an easy question to answer you can answer it more easily than I can if you think the kind of moral failure we have just witnessed are one-offs then confidence will return soon but if you think this kind of thing is endemic then I don't see a future in the long term for us and all of the color drained from this guy's face and I can remember thinking now's the time to sell what is the ethic we are living by what is the ethic you live by where does it come from and on what basis is it justified who do you trust I was speaking in Pakistan a couple of years ago and at the end of my talk a psychiatrist stood up to ask a question and he said you talked a lot about the fact that we need to learn to trust God in our lives I have a question for you he said can God trust us now it's not an interesting question I remember looking at him and the formulating the beginni of my response by saying you know Jesus once appeared before a crowd and it says in the Gospel of John that he didn't trust himself to them because he knew what was in their hearts but if you ask me Jesus Christ does want to trust us but first of all he has to transform us who do you trust ethos where do you get it from secondly pathos what drives you what gets you out of bed in the morning what makes what you are doing worthwhile is it simply to make money now if it's just money you're interested in I'll be honest with you you don't need any form of integrity because so long as you can cheat and not get caught you will be highly successful in monetary terms but there are some bigger questions that come here when it comes to pathos now here in this section I'm indebted to three oxford university academic adem expresser haven't offered to jelly professor of economic history professor John Lennox here from Northern Ireland a professor of theoretical mathematics and also a professor Colin Mayer the former head of the side Business School and one of the leading economists at Oxford today let's just start with understanding about economics when I was taught economics at school I was taught about something called the rational consumer and the rational consumer acted in such a way that you could predict his behavior and draw pretty little graphs now some of you may have done economics and you may be aware of these supply curves and curves which you learn right at the ground zero of all economic theory and understanding however one of the least controversial statements to make in economic theory today is that the idea of a rational consumer is a myth all of our research shows that consumers will consistently make self-defeating choices for the classical economists of the 18th century if you are talking about building up wealth in a nation one of the qualities necessary to establish and build up wealth would be the moral quality of prudence prudence is the ability to judge between the immediate and the future when do you hold off consuming now and delay gratification to in order to invest to get a greater return which is yet to come and how do you know when is the time to legitimately enjoy your rewards so prudence that moral quality was essential for building up wealth wealth however they said gives rise to temptation and temptation if it is unchecked will eat up wealth now this is the challenge for all second and third generation wealth within families because the flow of new rewards into our life and a constant flow of new reward into our life undermines our capacity to enjoy them in the absence of a discipline to control our passions we can end up spinning out of control and a few people every year sometimes right at the very top spin out of control completely now this is where I think advert offer is very very insightful many of us mistake the presence of an ethos a moral principle in our life with scarcity to control our passions because the question isn't just about what drives us and gets us up in the morning the questions what make sure that what driving us doesn't actually drive us into ruin as it says in the book of Proverbs there is a way that seems right to a person but its path leads to death we often mistake scarcity for prudence scarcity means we don't have a lot of economic means at our disposal to indulge everything we want choices are made for us by necessity however in affluence when success comes scarcity becomes scarce so scarcity which focused and channeled our direction and our life now disappears the question is what continues to provide that drive and that focus to take things forward in a way in that kind of way without it just simply dissipating and collapsing in on itself what is it that makes this worthwhile now Jesus is very famous words which are known to many and sometimes strike fear into almost all business hearts so when in Matthew 6:24 where Jesus very famously says you cannot serve two masters you cannot serve both God and money now it's very very interesting how many people interpret this passage to think that what Jesus is saying is is you cannot make money which if you're in business would be problematic I admit but that's not what it says Jesus never asked the question about what you can make the question is about who do you serve the question is about fundamental motivation what is it that drives us is there a bigger picture than this in the collapse of your ethos of your ethic there comes nothing left to guide and direct our passions we so often make self-defeating choices at the time it feels like we can justify them and justify them in every single possible way now it's interesting that even within the Christian community when you ask the next question well then what is the the passion the pay sauce the motivation that drives work most Christians will say well that's easy we need some thick money to provide for our family and to be responsible citizens now there's a problem with that answer which is if you continue reading what Jesus Christ happens to say in Matthew 6 he then argues against that he then says the motivation to go to provide for food clothing and housing that's the non-christian answer to this question he says now that should raise hopefully a problem for every single one of you in this room if the motivation isn't to make money to provide then what is the motivation now this is where my colleague John Denix I feel has been so insightful Jesus goes on to say do not run after and worry about what you will eat and what you were wear or where you will sleep everyone else runs after those things but instead seek first got his kingdom and his righteousness and all these other things will be added to you in other words food clothing and housing is the byproduct of work it's not the goal of it now this is where I find professor Colin Meyer the head of the side Business School incredible he's written a book called firm commitment it's rapidly becoming the best seller in business circles in which he argues exactly the same thing the way our economy works is that food clothing and housing are the byproducts of work they're not the goal of it the goal is something greater and bigger and we have to figure out what it is if you don't know and if what the goal is and you lose sight of the goal you will take shortcuts to get the byproducts when hours flying over here yesterday evening I was reading the through the Financial Times and on the front page the Financial Times yesterday as on almost every single day the two out of the three banner headlines were all to do with integrity ethos how we live and what is the purpose in which we're doing all of this CS Lewis very famously likened ethics to being captain of a boat he said if you're the captain of a boat there are three questions you're going to have to ask yourself number one how do I stop from sinking he called this your personal ethics - how do I stop from bumping into other ships he called that social ethics and three why am I out here in the first place your essential ethics your essential ethics are vital to guiding your passion what is it that gets you out of bed that makes it worthwhile now this then leads into the final point Lagos now the way that aristotle meant this was to do both with words and logic Lagos is the Greek word where we get the English word logic from and it is fundamentally to do with the understanding of what the words mean and is to do with meaning and finding meaning a framework of interpretation which we can apply to understand it now this is where we often feel a tension between what we would call idealism and realism and it's the job of every single leader on the one hand we have realism describing the way the world really is and on the other hand the idea what it could actually be and most people who exercise genius and leadership are able to properly define the first one adequately explain the second one and find a bridge to take from things where they are to where they can be in that sense all of us are looking not just simply through a word to inform our life to make sense of what we're doing but also to transform us let's just come back to where we started where there that story with that question from the guy in Pakistan this question becomes very important when someone is wrestling with the idea of meaninglessness in their life very often that sense of meaninglessness isn't hasn't come because they're reading some complicated book on philosophy it's normally much more straightforward than that it is the tension between the ideal and the real the way the world as we think it should be and the way the world actually is and it becomes acute when we look inside and we see the way that we actually are on what we actually look like and compare that against the measure which would use for ourselves now there are two ways of dealing with this tension the first one is to live in an agonized state of hypocrisy I know what it should look like I know what I should be and I know how I project myself to other people and I also know the reality and there is a huge gulf between them and the trick isn't somehow maintaining the public face while at the very best trying to end quell the internal storms now the other way of dealing with the problem is to simply to drop the standard so instead of having the standard up here on your life down here you simply bring the standard down to where your life is and you say well that's just the way it is and now that problem has gone but it seems to me there may also be a third way because the question comes and the question remains is it possible to bring find a way from where we feel this tension to a point whereby there can be a joy in the expression of who we are in terms of what we do now this is where I think the Christian faith is utterly unique if we have to ask questions as to ethos what is the ethic that we live by and we have to ask questions as to pathos what is the passion that gets us up and keeps us going and then we'd come to this question of logos where do we find meaning and hope within that it would seem that we need the logos the word not simply to provide meaning and understanding but also the hope of some kind of transformation now it's very interesting that's when Christians talk about the fact that we live in a fallen world in a broken world many people interpret that has been entirely negative now our writers just read that's not the best way of thinking about it when we talk about the fact that we live in a fallen and broken world that word comes first of all to explain they were explained what I mean my eldest daughter is 14 and a half and up until about a year ago she had very long hair all the way down to the to the bottom of her spine growing it for years and one day when I was traveling off to go and speak some she said daddy you have to be prepared because when I come when you come home I'm gonna have had a haircut that's like okay and when I landed in the country I understood the severity of the nature of the haircut when my wife rang me as I was coming back home in a car to say whatever you do don't say anything about Lucy's hair apart from she is beautiful so I come in and now my daughter's hair is all the way up to here and I walk in and I give her a big hug and I say sweetheart you look beautiful I always take orders but of course eventually curiosity gets the better of you so four days later we're sitting on the couch and now I'm waiting for the moment to ask the question I want to ask which is sweetheart your hair looks lovely stole my wife's advice still ringing in my ears what does what made you decide to have such a big change and she said well I was watching this program on BBC about a month ago about a charity that works with girls who have leukemia 6 7 8 years old and one of the problems they have is when they give the radiation the girls lose their hair and the problem is trying to find hair donors who can donate long enough hair for them to make wigs for them so she said what I did was I decided I'd have my hair cut and I'll send it to this charity so she'd washed and conditioned her hair that day and had it plaited in a special kind of way and had it cut up as high as it possibly could be so that she could send up much of it as possible to this group I am I love reading books and I was reminded of a line in the book Little Women where the main female character in that book sells her hair to buy a ticket to pay for her mother to go to a war hospital to visit her father who's in danger of dying from a war wound and the mother looks at the daughter and says your hair will grow back but you'll never be more beautiful than you are to me right now and I can remember as Lucy was telling me that story thinking I could say that to you right now I mean every word of it when we talk about the fact that we are fallen it's not the fact that we never see anything in any human action or activity that doesn't make us think wow but right-side alongside it in the same heart and the same life we can also see selfishness and greed and anger and everything all mixed up together we live in a world where we are struggling and it describes the human condition that is where we actually are all of us in this room aspiring to greatness but in our times of privacy aware of what we really like integrity matters in business because integrity matters in all of life and when we detect a lack of integrity in our own lives it starts as causing to our serious questions and the ultimate question has to be well is there any way out of this what do we do when integrity fails so if I may let me just bring this down into a even more personal level when we ask the question as individuals what do we do with failure of integrity the two immediate things that follow hot on the heels of that question are to do with forgiveness and redemption now it's interesting when we fail what we're hoping for is forgiveness the trouble is is that when forgiveness and mercy are used at the expense of justice it often makes other people feel angry or fall into a state of despair because when justice collapses in any society hope collapses with it I remember speaking in a very troubled part of the world once and there was again time for people to ask questions and this particular audience and strong I think how I can word this correctly were of a very radical mindset and some of them in the room were potentially armed which always makes you think carefully how you'll answer the questions and so this young guy stood up at the back of the room and he said I have a question for you he said I've asked it many times to many Christians but I've never had a satisfactory answer says and this is my question you Christians say that in order for human beings to be forgiven that Christ the Son of God has to die on the cross why it doesn't make any sense to me if God is forgiving why can't he just forgive people why the necessity for something like that so I thanked him for his question and asked him to take a seat because that way the line of fire would not quite be so direct and I said I if I understand your question correctly I said you're asking a very profound question and it does goes right to the heart of what Christians believe it is true that we look for mercy the trouble is is mercy by definition is always extended at the expense of justice you are merciful when you don't do what justice demands and you say I'll forgive you so justice says they should get that we decide to exercise mercy they get something different that's why it's mercy if we gave them what they deserved that would be justice and it wouldn't be mercy in the way that we would understand it so mercy is always exercised at the expense of justice now this becomes a challenge for any society how do you bring about mercy and forgiveness without without also crossing the boundaries of justice at the same time because when justice fails we often respond with anger we don't like it although many of us believe that God may be forgiving this causes an even greater problem for God because the same logic that would extend to us would extend to him his mercy must always be expended extended at the expense of his justice but that isn't that isn't true at the cross of Christ the cross of Jesus Christ mercy isn't extended at the expense of God's justice mercy is extended through God's justice at the point of the cross where Jesus Christ makes himself one with every human being and takes on into his heart and life everything that has gone wrong in ours and takes the punishment and the penalty as he becomes one with us justice is fulfilled crimes and things that we have done and our failings are dealt with and as a result of having dealt with it and having he having paid he then extends his mercy through his cross this is why Christians talk about a great doctrine called justification as opposed to merciful it is the idea that God and the judge of all the earth will do right nobody will get away with anything every failing every failure every wrong thing justice is ultimately met out no one gets away with anything he pays the price he takes the cost and through fulfilling that and having him paid through his resurrection he comes in an office and extends forgiveness to everyone else not in the absence of justice but in the presence of it you know there is a way of enforcing justice in the world that can make it look ridiculous I can remember living in Saudi Arabia they used to be a story told about a a businessman who you know British businessman who leaves the country and forgets when he returns its traffic week now I don't if they still do this in Saudi I think they do but when I lived in Saudi Arabia you could break almost every rule of the road for every rule of the road for 51 weeks of the year but for one week of the year all the rules of the road will be enforced to the letter so if your wheel of your car rolled up onto the white line in front of a traffic light if there were a white line you would be arrested and put in jail for the rest of traffic week so you get caught on day one you spend seven nights in jail it caught on the last day you to spend one night in jail but every breach of the traffic rules there's only one sentence and it's jail for the rest of traffic week so the stories of the business money comes back if it gets his traffic week his car rolls onto the white line that the red light there's a policeman there and he gets thrown in jail and the die says as they lock the door says this is an outrage I demand to speak to the British ambassador and the guy in the cell next door said yes what is it you want there are ways at times of enforcing some rules in ways that seem to be petty but there is a very real sense in which none of us want to see a failure of justice in this world especially when it comes to our own lives in our own family what makes it possible to extend forgiveness is the knowledge of knowing that actually justice is done and it is upheld and it's done ultimately through the cross of Christ now this then I suppose brings us to a conclusion and I'm wondering if I could ask you just to take a moment I guess there are three responses to what I've said so far the first might be complete disagreement with everything I've said in which case I hope you've enjoyed breakfast and even though you didn't agree with anything I said that at least it was worth while you've been here and that something was said I guess the second one would be to say well all this does is leave me with a lot more questions well if you're in a situation where you feel that listening to some like this is just provoking more and more questions and you want to find out more you will see on your tables there's a little response card and it asks for a name and a way of contacting you and there's a second box there which says apart from keeping me informed of events is I would like to speak to someone personally about what I heard today and if that is you and you tick that box within 48 hours I've been promised someone will get in contact with you meet up with you and do their utmost to answer the questions that you feel that you now have the third response would be to know that at this point you're at a place where you already are convinced that you believe what I have been saying so almost as if you're sitting here as almost as if you feel like God Himself has somehow reached out to your life in your heart and just got his hand on it well if that's where you are there's a very simple response to make and it's to ask for forgiveness we recall it a fancy word in the Christian faith with repentance it's supposing I were to offend you and it's supposing you were willing to forgive me what is the process by which I receive your forgiveness well assuming that you're willing to forgive me and I'm the one who's done something wrong the way I receive your forgiveness as I come up and I say I'm sorry now I find mean that and you're serious is about wanting to forgive that becomes the means by which I receive your forgiveness it's amazing have you ever had the experience where you've accidentally insulted a friend probably just me as my middle-eastern blood takes over sometimes but if you have had the experience where you've accidentally insulted a friend you go up to them afterwards as soon as the words leave your mouth you just wish you could take back those five seconds and you wouldn't say it so you go to them and you say I shouldn't have said what I said I'm really sorry and they say it was nothing forget about it it's interesting isn't it the very next time you see them you need one nanosecond in the room to know whether they've forgiven you or not have you noticed that it's incredible if it really was nothing you can tell but if it's something it's a problem isn't it and actually it's quite annoying because you go up again and you say look I really am sorry I shouldn't have done it and if they say it's nothing again it's still a problem isn't it because that reconciliation will never come for the reconciliation to come if they are willing to forgive and you are willing to admit what you have done wrong at that point of admittance and saying sorry that becomes the which you received their forgiveness and you only need once a nanosecond in the room within the very next day to realize whether you've been forgiven or not well that is what goes right to the heart of the Christian gospel God knows exactly what we're like he knows exactly what we've done he's willing to pay and has paid for what we have done and he extends forgiveness to everyone and the way to receive it is simply to say sorry so if you're in that place I would love to offer just a brief prayer for you which is a very simple prayer that says I'm sorry and I need that forgiveness so I'm wondering if I could just ask you just to take a moment just to think about which of those three groups you may fall into and if you do fall into the first group of disagreeing with everything then I'm going to be staying around here as long as you would like to talk to me or you have the capacity to and I'll do my very best to answer whatever questions you may have but if you fall into that third group I'm wondering if we could just take a moment what I'd ask you to do is just if it helps to close your eyes or whatever just to focus if you're worried about who you're sitting with do feel free to put your hand on your purse or your wallet we we live in a fallen and broken world and you have no idea who's sitting next to you and my question would be are you at that place where this day you know you need to say to him yes I'm sorry and I need your provision for forgiveness if you are then please do pray this prayer with me father I want to thank you for the fact that you know me Father I thank you that you know exactly what I'm like and you know my failings and yet you love me thank you for the provision you've made for me and for the price you have paid and I am sorry for what I've done and I need your forgiveness helped me to follow you whatever it may cost and may I know that intimacy with you amen well thank you for listening so well I can say this completely honestly I I speak all over the world but out of all of the audiences I've ever spoken to in my entire life you are by far the most recent

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Keywords: cbmc belfast, belfast, cbmc, michael ramsden, lord mayor of belfast, Ireland, Lord, Dublin, Lord Mayor (Government Office Or Title), Northern Ireland (Country)

Id: bva1Wxvq2pw

Length: 45min 25sec (2725 seconds)

Published: Fri May 16 2014