A Gifted Knob Twiddler // Little People Used by a Big God, Part 3

We're all different, aren't we? Each of us with different strengths and weaknesses. The problem is though, that we can spend so much of our time comparing ourselves with the next guy that we lose perspective on our own gifts and abilities.

One of the things we tend to do a lot is to compare ourselves with other people. We live in an age of superstar syndrome. It's sweeping the globe and frankly, it's more insidious than bird flu. And that's a dangerous thing. We look at the people around us and we see how clever they are, how talented they are. So and so is so good at that, I wish I was that good. So and so seems so confident and poised, I wish I was like that. You know what I'm talking about.

When we're in that sort of a mood, and that sort of a frame of mind, we kind of see their strengths but we ignore their weaknesses. Somehow we hold them up as paragons of virtue, and forget that they have failings. They make mistakes. I'd like to introduce you today to a good friend of mine, Max, who seems to have this part of his life pretty well sorted out.

Max is a knob twiddler extraordinaire. He is the producer of all the radio programs I am involved in. Every time I'm sitting here in the studio, behind the mike, Max is sitting on the other side of the soundproof glass panels, doing what he does. You hear the intro music to the program, well, that's because Max put it there. You hear the ending music of the program, well, he put that there too.

You think, man, that Berni could talk under water, he never stumbles. I'll let you in on a secret, that's because Max takes out all my stumbles. You will probably never see or hear Max but he makes me sound good. Listening to radio, we never think about production quality, but we sure would if it wasn't there. Well, that's Max's job. Put it simply, no Max, no Berni!

Every now a then I get in behind the mike to voice something. And you know something, he doesn't like doing it, but he does have an ear. He knows what it sounds like. I can be sitting in the studio and he'll come on in my headphones and say, come on, Berni, you can do much better than that, try that again.

Max is, well, he's fifty something, he's a lanky Australian, he has chooks in his back yard and he farms bees. So every now and then I get some eggs and some honey. He's got a grey ponytail, he's sort of an arty-farty, trendy sort of a guy, a gifted musician, a worship leader and there are any number of things that Max could be doing with his life.

He could be doing more commercial work, which would certainly bring in more dollars than the work that we do together. He could do more up front muso worship type stuff and he'd get a lot more recognition. He could do more work with the ministry that he's involved in, LL, which is involved in healing. And he would get much more one on one relationship and recognition and maybe satisfaction. Yet he chooses to twiddle knobs for me on this program. In fact, he loves it. I'm the only one who ever notices he's hidden. He unrecognised, he unsung, yet he still does it. Max, why do you do it?

"Gee, Berni, I guess because it's the sort of thing the Lord asks me to do. I was working in the commercial area, over twenty years ago now, working in theatre – working in live theatre, getting lots of kudos, working with lots of very big name people. And I just felt as though God was saying to me, I want you out of all of that and I want you to build a little studio under your house and I want you to do work for Me.

Now my ticket out of that situation was a regular job with a fairly large client, doing educational work. They were employing me six months of the year, so in a way it was pretty easy for me to give up a full time job and go freelance, but they dwindled. Work kept coming from different quarters and what was twenty years ago, work on to cassettes, now I work on to CDROM, and all those sorts of things.

 I still find myself sitting in the control room thinking, I actually enjoy doing this. There are some moments of it, like every job, ninety percent of it is just hard work, but there are moments, particularly with you, Berni, that I think, this is what God wants me to do.

There are other things in my life. I am involved, as you said, in music, and worship leading, with LL Ministries, with praying with people. We're doing all sorts of things, but there's something about this job that I really enjoy doing and I know it's making a difference to thousands of people around the planet."

Thanks for that Max. But it is great. You know Max and I spend a lot of time together in the studio and not only does he do the technical things brilliantly, but he has got such an ear, such an intuition for sound, and how we put things together.

Again, they're not things that you would normally notice when you are listening to radio but they are really, really