Month: August 2025

P 3087 Mercy.

/ DVH

“How blessed you are when you demonstrate tender mercy! For tender mercy will be demonstrated to you.” Matthew 5:7 TPT.  Oh, let us thank the Lord for that!! This is the kind of verse that can slide by our understanding, yet most of us have needed mercy from someone else at some stage or another in our lives. The Holy Spirit has mercy on us simply because He is merciful by nature. He is not winking at sin – He will convict us the minute we give Him a chance! But His loving kindness immediately welcomes us back into true fellowship when we turn around, face our faults, confess and repair things. 

At times, anyone can quite easily excuse their behaviour like this: ’They did this evil thing and that awful one and it was unforgivable.’ There are times when we seek and search for a short-cut to get us through the things we think we cannot bear, and we forget God has given us the power to overcome sin and the devil. That’s why it is essential to remember that Godly attitudes and actions have nothing whatsoever to do with our feelings – they run on our choices.

However, when we demonstrate mercy to someone else who does not deserve it — we are deliberately stepping out of darkness into His light. In His light we can see what is really going on. We will remain blinded by darkness when we choose to not forgive or hold a grudge. If I stay in unforgiveness, or I refuse to extend mercy to someone else, my emotional reactions or responses have blocked my ears and eyes to that other person’s need, because my own judgment got in the way. 

The dictionary explains that mercy is: “compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.“  It says this about grace: “this word is commonly translated as “favour,” which means acceptance and goodwill regardless of whether we’ve earned it.” Those two things are not the same! Mercy goes beyond grace. It loves the unlovely. To do that we must recognise who WE really are, without Jesus.

And that particular point is the reason why a lot of Christians have been shot in the foot and they keep going round and round. Because we forget who we are without Him, and we leave Him behind when we step into unforgiveness and refuse to extend mercy. We start to think: ‘God saved us, but I wasn’t all that bad in the first place, after I don’t deliberately hurt anybody.’  Come again??

We have been saved from sin, and it’s power, because we needed it .God does not have gradients for sin. Ever since the garden of Eden human beings were born in sin, and we dare not trust our own un-renewed hearts.. Eventually, what’s really in our heart will find its way out! We cannot afford to make our own assessments about who anyone is … until we’ve lived this life squashed so tightly into a corner and we feel we cannot escape from it, we will have no idea how we will react. I dunno about you, but I’ve wished people DEAD! I know I’m a sinner, but mercy came to me and drew me back to God, when I had no excuse! And if He ever His took grace to change me and His undeserved mercy back… well … bye bye me!! 

However, when you have a hole shot through your middle by someone else’s sin, those kinds of God-honouring thoughts rarely come up. Some people just won’t quit being mean!  So we are going to need the Holy Spirit’s supernatural power, grace, mercy, plus His strength to continue to give them what He has given us for free. Outright undeserved mercy opens doors that appear to be nailed shut. 

In reality what we think is happening, is probably not what was actually happening. That other person who hurt me was not acting against me – they were simply acting FOR themselves. In other words, there was no intention to do harm. It did not come into their decision making, instead they were self-absorbed. If you do not know you have a Guardian Who is on your side — you will probably mount your own guard and fire away!!

Maybe we think someone like a wife basher or paedophile, a rapist, or a murderer, or a thief is beyond our help. So we choose to withhold grace and shut up our heart of mercy. We think they deserve to get whatever they get, for the way they have acted and the choices they made. I am not making excuses for anybody’s actions — all I want to say is that the person with the greater sin needs the greater mercy. In that moment, I can choose to give it to them. Good place to remember we didn’t deserve what Jesus gave us either.

I like this verse: “But whoever has the world’s goods (adequate resources), and sees his brother in need, but has no compassion for him, how does the love of God live in him?”  I John 3:17. People can be needy because they are spiritually poor! We must continue to sow grace and mercy everywhere and remind ourselves that judgment belongs to the Lord, He is the One Who knows all things and sees all things – not us. He will have mercy and compassion on whoever He chooses. We all deserve hell! Mercy is grace that goes beyond forgiveness, instead of punishment, it ushers in the power of God. Bye. 👋

P 3086 Followers.

/ DVH

“IF you want to be My disciple, follow Me and you will go where I am going. And if you truly follow Me as My disciple, the Father will shower His favour upon your life.”John 12:26 TPT. As the nice man said: we are followers of Christ, so where HE GOES — WE GO.  As we follow Him we get to be a part of whatever He does. The Lord loves to go into dark places, and talk to scary people. Light works best in the darkness. He likes to go to places that most Christians would probably like to stay out of – where the people who know they are sinners hang out.

Simon Peter once asked the Lord this question: “Simon Peter asked him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus replied, “Where I am going, you cannot follow now, but you will follow later.” And Peter did. After a few disasters, hiccups and missteps, the powerful Presence of the Holy Spirit fell on Peter and He preached one of the greatest sermons Jerusalem had ever heard. 3,000 people got saved, when this ordinary fisherman preached. He followed the Holy Spirit out of his hiding place and into the heart of the city.

Jesus took care of all our sins, but that doesn’t give us a free pass to do whatever we like with our lives. It was an exchange – His life for ours. Just in case we haven’t done the Math yet —that means our lives don’t belong to us anymore. We are so blessed, the Holy Spirit has given us the ability to follow Him, just like Peter and all the other disciples did!  Asking the Lord what we are here to do, is one of the most important questions we can ever ask. But Jesus didn’t concern Himself with their gifts or ministries, following Him was the first step into their new life.

Many sincere Christians pray: “Lord please show me what You want me to do for Your kingdom.” And when no answer comes, they figure that He doesn’t want them to go anywhere or do anything and they put down their personal calling, and sometimes … they settle for religion. Our personal calling is this: “FOLLOW ME!” Gifts and ministries follow that.

Here’s a huge revelation for today – obeying and following Jesus will lead each one of us into our calling… because part of that calling is to be transformed. Sadly many of us still aren’t ready for ‘the calling bit’ —we are too steeped in this world’s ways. Forget about the past, or the fact that you prayed and prayed for Aunt Minnie and she died anyway! I’m so sorry you suffered the loss of someone dear to you. But many sincere people have sadly gone under simply because they tried to lead – not follow Him. 

Be like Jesus, just LOVE PEOPLE and see where that leads you. Loving people opens so many doors! Christians are out there searching, wandering about, looking for miracles … if you wanna see a miracle … take a risk and be obedient! ”God  will not let you fall. Your guardian will not fall asleep.” Our guardian doesn’t sleep, because the Holy Spirit is always on.

The Word of God is a sword! Swords belong to warriors – not couch potatoes. It works the other way around – we take a risk, and speak or share, and God will back us up, and if He doesn’t, we get humbled! Bonus buy! You know, it is very windy at my house today, tomorrow it may not be windy at all – the WIND goes wherever He wants to – He’s always blowing somewhere. Find the wind and follow Him. Go into your prayer closet and stay there until you find Him.

Jesus did not die to make our lives easier…. read the book. Then ask the Holy Spirit questions while you are reading and do something about what it says.  Ask the Holy Spirit to show you where you are out of step with Him, and what He wants you to do about it.  It continues to totally astonish me when I realise what I have been tolerating in my life, because one day follows another and I am walking around half asleep, or telling myself it is normal to be mad at someone else. Try asking Him ‘Am I mad at anyone? “ Take a pen, you could be there a while!

Peter and Andrew moved away from what they knew how to do – which was toiling on the family fishing boat – and they immediately followed Him. Then Jesus set about showing them that what they had always done before with fish, they could now do with men and women. Here is the best question ever to ask the Holy Spirit … “Lord, where are YOU going?”  It is an oxymoron to call ourselves ‘followers of Jesus’ when we are not going anywhere. Jesus did what His Father told Him to do every single day. He got exhausted following the Father’s will. He had nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat. Yet He treasured His relationship with His Heavenly Father above everything else, and obedience to the Father’s Will was His sole purpose. 

The Holy Spirit stayed WITH Him, IN Him, and UPON Him, because the Lord Jesus understood the word devotion, He knew that ministry means movement, engagement, interaction with others. Be a follower of Christ – He’s always doing something! Bye 👋

“As for us, we have all of these great witnesses who encircle us like clouds. So we must let go of every wound that has pierced us and the sin we so easily fall into. Then we will be able to run life’s marathon race with passion and determination, for the path has been already marked out before us.” Hebrews 12:1 TPT.

P 3085 Dust? … Anyone?

/ DVH

“The first one, (Adam) made from dust, has a race of people just like him, who are also made from dust. The One sent from heaven has a race of heavenly people who are just like Him. Once we carried the likeness of the man of dust, but now let us carry the likeness of the Man of heaven.” 1 Corinthians 15:48-49 TPT. (Just keep reading I do have a point!)

I have had dust on the brain recently, what with spring cleaning, and finding cobwebs in my own life in unexpected places. Then hubby found this verse in his daily readings and we both had a good laugh. Laughter really is good for all of us, especially if we can laugh at ourselves. So we hit a joy bubble together and laughed way out beyond the reality of whatever was supposedly funny and … felt much better.

Apparently people much smarter than I am, suggest that if you are struggling with depression or anxiety, watching a marathon of movies that you know can make you laugh can help. They suggested the Three Stooges – which made me doubt the accuracy of their prescription … mainly because I don’t find the Three Stooges even remotely funny. I’m not into physical gags. I find people having pianos dropped on their heads hard to watch!

Back to today’s verse, because inheriting and sorting out other people’s old things has been part of my day for weary weeks now. My take on what these verses are saying goes like this: If you want Adam for an ancestor more dust awaits you. Ya might want to think about that! You could definitely need one of those dust-buster gizmos they sell for $59.99 on TV. On a good TV advertising day you can get two for the price of one. My question is — why not sell ONE for thirty bucks and be done with it? ps maybe you need two because the one you start with will kark it and then, the other one will come in handy? Or you can always give the extra one to your mother-in-law. I’m allowed to tell M-I-L jokes – I ARE one. Splendid! Now there’s Christmas sorted. I am so-oo-oo helpful!

Did you read the next line in that scripture? I underlined it so it would stand out! “The One sent from heaven has a race of heavenly people who are just like Him.”  I underlined that bit because it serves my point. I know HEAPS of people who aren’t like Him and sadly, they dusty-up the church in this world all over the place. At the same time they also obscure other people’s view of what Jesus actually looks like! I’ve been in a dust storm – you can’t see a thing! Dust, BTW, in the Lord’s hands can be useful stuff – Jesus once wrote in it and saved a woman’s life. 

Meanwhile our churches need some of those dust-busters because we’ve forgotten where we came from — we are dust-free simply because of what HE did. Before we met Jesus we used to be Pig-pen … see picture above. But now we have been bought back from that dirty dusty scenario to live in the freedom and light that surrounds our Saviour, Jesus. Our job is to carry around His likeness wherever we go. No more cloudy nasty dust for us – it only makes people allergic to us! But that kind of cleanliness and clarity won’t fall on us – we will have to choose it. 

I have included this next testimony purely because it was not me that suffered through it. My hubby was on the phone for an hour and a half yesterday to Centrelink  – listening to truly awful music … who picks that stuff and where do they live? I want to disconnect their CD player right away – I may even jump on it! … An-y-wa-y he rang Centrelink to tell them that they had paid my mother her pension, and as she is no longer with us, he wanted to ask them, how could we give back those extra $$s? 

When hubby finally did get to speak to someone – hours later! The guy at the other end of the phone was gobsmacked by our honesty. Apparently nobody wants to give money back anymore, they usually have to chase after a person if the extra cash wasn’t theirs in the first place.. No wonder the government has no spare money for poor people to buy bread and milk! And now comes the kingdom of God angle…

… this young man then explained the money was actually legally ours. Colour me astonished! I can’t be bothered here explaining why here, because it isn’t worth the space, but no bill collectors will be knock knock knocking on our door. Praise the Lord!

I wanted to use this illustration to show the difference between dusty people and heavenly people — it’s the way they live and act. Dusty people attract dirt, cobwebs, spiders, and other nasty creepy critters… BUT … the people who choose to live in His light, attract other people who are out there looking for the light! Let’s go! Let’s live this life we have been given, carrying the light of heaven wherever we go. 

How do we do that? Easy peasy. Live in His love. I am not good at it, yet …I freely admit that. But when I get done and dusted, (teehee) I get up again – that’s the secret! We will all get it wrong … and then we repent, and repair relationships, and deliberately go back to our precious Saviour and let Him further transform our lives with His redemptive love. We will end up thanking Him all over again for saving us from the never-ending dust piles of this life…as we choose to carry the light of His love and forgiveness out into this world. Bye. 👋

P 3084 When trouble strikes – strike back!

/ DVH

Psalm 44:23-26:“Awake, Lord! Why do You sleep? Rouse Yourself! Do not reject us forever. Why do You hide Your face and forget our misery and oppression? We are brought down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground. Rise up and help us; rescue us because of Your unfailing love.”

Those Israelites seemed to grumble a lot! It seems they let their fear, disappointment and troubles take precedent over ‘trusting in the Lord with all their hearts and not leaning on their own understanding.’ Often their prayers echoed their disappointments – see above!  Maybe they mistakenly thought that their God was like all the other pagan gods they had seen all around them – deaf and useless! 

They thought Almighty God should be SomeOne Who would serve, protect and answer them — IF He wanted their loyalty. Then I needed to repent for the many timesI have thought like this, or something else like it, when things got stressful. Have you ever looked at your situation and internally wondered if Almighty God is not listening?  Is He busy instead listening to some wonderful worship on Spotify? Where did He go??

Maybe you have said this … (I know I have!) — ‘I don’t see why God is not answering my prayers, after all He said in His Word … blah blah blah …  why isn’t He answering me?’’ Perhaps it is time we started asking ourselves hard questions — because Father God is so much bigger than our stupid hard questions! I don’t know about you, but my shadow hasn’t healed anybody recently …  … or ever … come to think of it. Sigh. 

I think that we are being tempted to reduce the Lord down to the level of our disappointments, and we’ve settled there. This means we have lowered our expectations of God’s goodness. I don’t think anybody can be happy in that unhappy place, but people gotta live, and it doesn’t seem to look good for people who want to live a life of faith. Unanswered prayers are a real thing – but should we let that stop us?!

There are times I think God allows us to be reduced to a more realistic size so we can stop looking down on someone else who isn’t doing very well with their faith either. The way we regard Him is clearly revealed to us when bad stuff happens and it doesn’t go away immediately. Thank the Lord He is a Redeemer!

After my mother died, my husband had heaps of work to do – he was the executor of her will. Meanwhile our whole world was tilted on its axis, because someone we loved was no longer with us. People told us all this stuff would be so easy, but as it turned out, those things were not easy for us. In the middle of all the legalese – and there was mountains of it – someone hacked into our bank account. My poor hubby practically had the phone glued to his ear for days. After we had been hacked, we reverted to not trusting anyone over the phone, and that meant even more work for him.

Things were already difficult and then, wouldn’t you know, they got … worse.  We all know about worse, because we’ve all bin there and dun that. Thank God for all the brethren who prayed for us! Around this time I got cellulitis and discovered I was allergic to the antibiotics! I had to have unexpected elongated hospital appointments because of that. Now I was beginning to look at those dopey Israelites that I mentioned above, with a lot more understanding! 

It didn’t take me long to figure out that human beings don’t like to be uncomfortable, we like things to be easy. And what was going on at our house was far from easy. I love what Isaiah says at the end of this prayer! “Please remember You love us Lord!” 

The days crawled by with me not sleeping and hubby walking around like a zombie because when I don’t sleep, he doesn’t sleep either. He’s my carer as well as my spouse. And we rocketed about lurching from one unexpected difficulty to another. When I prayed, it seemed my prayers bounced off the ceiling. I think I made the same mistake the Israelites made … I had forgotten we have an enemy who loves to make a big noise and mess with and agitate people. 

My focus was on what was going on, and praying like mad everything would resolve itself soon, because I didn’t like the place I was stuck in!!  We failed to check out the surroundings looking for spiritual enemies at our gate, and some of them pushed their way into our house and caused even more chaos. It was hard to live through. However, I’m sure other people have lived through much harder times. 

Today I just want to make one point …“When trouble strikes … remember to strike back.” Jesus gave us His authority. We can hide behind a rock while Goliath shouts at us OR we can run at that thing and kill it dead with the blood of Jesus. And boy do we all need the practice. God is not rejecting us, it’s a lie! Bye. 👋

P 3083 Adaptability.

/ DVH

““Learn this well: Unless you dramatically change your way of thinking and become teachable like a little child, you will never be able to enter in.” Matthew 18:3 TPT.

Back when my kids were little, once a year I took the three of them, separately, off into the city to buy an individual ornament each for our Christmas tree. Those individual journeys included a visit to the Christmas theme park on Myer’s roof, a ride on something or other, plus a joyous inspection of the Myer windows. Then we wandered around the Christmas shop together choosing this year’s ornament. Finally they had a yummy treat, and a return long train ride home, with lots of time to talk. 

However, even though fun was on the agenda, I knew I was there to teach them how to be responsible caring people, whilst preserving as much of their childhood fun as I could. So somebody else, (me!), cleaned their clothes, and decided what they would eat, and I looked after them when they were sick etc. Unfortunately, once they started to grow up, things became more difficult. They didn’t like this and they wouldn’t eat that. Their ‘teachability’ and ‘adaptability’ levels dropped clear away as they grew older. 

I discovered today, when I spent time meditating on this verse from Matthew, that I personally have no idea how to be a child when I am with the Lord. After all children trust their parent to get things right! But that kind of freedom was absent from my own life, because I don’t think I actually knew very many carefree moments. I’m not complaining BTW, I simply lived with a distinct lack of the kind of freedom a happy child enjoys. So it continually clouded my view of the way the Lord sees me. 

And let us be clear —the Lord sees us as His children, as well as seeing us as His people. It dawned on me that I need my thinking transformed in this area as I have a limited human reference point to draw upon. I strongly suspect that I am not the only pickle in this barrel, many other people have had limited childhood experiences too! But is this what this verse is all about? Is it just the idea of being taken care of without even noticing? Or being able to play anywhere you want, whenever you want? I came to believe this verse is all about our inner attitude toward God Himself.

So I did further research and decided to look at children in other countries. And lo and behold, in the midst of war, starvation, and suffering, I saw that if a child can play, it will. We’ve all seen pictures of children playing in bomb sites, or in the dust and dirt of a refugee camp. I came to the conclusion that childlikeness is an inner attitude – it is not formed by our outward situations. It seems to me that Jesus is talking about the way we approach this life. Things like wanting to learn and being adaptable to change.

Those children in refugee camps etc. don’t want to be where they are, they would probably like a nice little safe house to live in, but their circumstances have taught them to ADAPT.And as I have aged, it seems I have become less adaptable. That attitude, plus life’s ongoing difficulties, trials and heartaches can actually keep me from the very place Father God wants me to live in! He wants me to remember that I can always be confident in Him, despite my inner or outward circumstances. 

Faith is defined in the dictionary like this:“complete trust or confidence in someone or something.” That’s when I took a good look at my own measure of faith and I decided that my somewhat oppressive childhood was no excuse. I can’t hide in what other people did to me, because now – today! – I have a choice. I can’t even hide in what some people continue to do to me …because my confidence is in GOD HIMSELF, not in my circumstances or other people’s actions. Whether I am damaged by this life, or ill because of my body’s weaknesses, I can still choose to live in complete confidence that God is with me, and for me, and He will finish the work He started in me.

That’s what childlikeness looks like. It is about trusting in  SomeOne Who is greater than I am – even when I don’t understand what is going on. Every single thing that happens to me does not always have to be assessed by my understanding because my understanding is broken! Unless I believe that God Himself means to do me good, when things look bad – I will start to lose my childlike attitude and trust. 

Wonder of wonders, my glorious Father has given me a book that gives me detailed descriptions of how He feels about me, (and many many other people) so I need to put my faith in His written word, more than I put it in whatever is going on around me. Children trust their parents to fix things – while they go on with what they are doing. In the end, I decided to pray to be more adaptable … how about you? 👋 

“Energise the limp hands, strengthen the rubbery knees. Tell fearful souls, “Courage! Take heart! God is here, right here, on His way to put things right And redress all wrongs. He’s on His way! He’ll save you!” Isaiah 35:3-4.

P 3082 I AM your oasis.

/ DVH

“Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to Me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis.” Matthew 11:28 TPT.

When I read this verse today the thing that hit me right between the eyes was that Jesus said: ‘I AM your oasis.’He didn’t suggest going on a 4 week cruise, or going to some spa, or theme park or even a Christian conference of some sort – the Lord says HE(!!) is our oasis. We have been misled by our feelings to think that Jesus only goes to conferences or turns up for revivals – He’s IN US – we take Him with us wherever we go! Ya might want to sit and think about that for like a millennium – I know I did – OK so it was 60 seconds … you caught me. 

You know I think we can be really bad at comprehending what the Lord is saying, most of the time. We either overstate it to the point of fanaticism and make it into rules, or we ignore it and hope He won’t mind. We can be so lax with our obedience that we only participate in extending our faith for minor things – like finding a car spot when we need one – or asking God to help us with our day. He wants to BE our day!!

He’s not an add-on. Faith steps are about things we can’t easily do by ourselves — and maybe we kind of step really quickly around things like submission, which is also a faith step. It’s like we think these things are beyond us … so we hope the minimum participation will do …”After all, Jesus knows I am weak!” That’s why He wants you to call on Him to be your strength. We go through this life trying to avoid problems or pray them away, He wants us to confront them with Him!  He longs to be our oasis.

It seems we have yet to work out that His motivation is not just to bring relief, but to usher in permanent change. Transformation of our hearts. Maybe we are hoping the Lord won’t notice because we are embarrassed with our lack of engagement with the things that matter … well guess what?? He knows, because the same Heart that tenderly watches over you, pays attention to everything else. Some problems can be solved by simply changing the way we live. Please do not misunderstand me, He is not watching over us to catch us out in our sins or errors. Instead He patiently waits and watches for us to turn our heads, even just a little bit in His direction – because He knows a better way. 

There is an easier way to live this life we have inherited from Him. But we will have to humble ourselves and submit to Him in order to fully participate in it. Everything in our world’s current view of modern reality suggests submission is not a good thing. Children don’t have to submit to their parents, wives don’t have to submit to their husbands, and nobody has to submit to anybody else’s agendas — unless they pay them well! Submission seems to be a bad word — but that word actually means we have a primary mission which takes priority over other things. Seeking His kingdom is primary – then other things get added on!

It is no wonder that we have left God’s Kingdom behind, it’s because His kingdom is a theocracy, not a democracy. Let’s daily remind ourselves that Jesus Himself submitted to His Father’s will. Sadly it seems that unless human beings can see that it BENEFITS them, they don’t give those ‘other things’ He wants to add into our lives very much attention. So many Christians have cleverly found and featured all the me-first benefits … because the bible tells us“to forget not all His benefits…” I am not sure this response is all He had in mind! 

Off-loading our burdens onto Jesus seems to be a gigantic benefit to me – but we will have to relinquish our anxiety, worry and fear at the same time. Personally, I can’t think of anything better than handing my awful pile of nasty impossible stuff to Him. However, what does He mean by – I am your oasis? An oasis is a place of water in a desert, or a place of refuge in a crisis — or even a place of refreshing. When you view that word this way it begins to make sense. The Lord is not talking about using His Presence like we would drop off our dry-cleaning and return to find everything neatly pressed and clean …He means in this life His Presence is our dwelling place.That’s an AIM – not a suggestion.

I like Ephesians 3:16-19. These 3 verses are great to meditate on because they show us what we are aiming at. 

“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Being filled to all the fullness of God is another AIM. We need to remember ..these verses are a prayer … the Apostle Paul prayed it for the church at Ephesus. But the Holy Spirit Himself not only inspired it – He preserved that prayer in the bible for our benefit. Paul is praying for US too – every time you read it say Amen! And please –  read it a lot. Now we need to use our faith to believe that Christ actively dwells in our hearts, and we need His power to understand what we have been given! It is not enough to say ‘yes’ — we have to DO yes!

Then our roots go down, so deeply into His love we cannot be moved. This is how and why the saints of old gave up their lives and were martyred. They didn’t do it for an ideology, they did it because they had been internally changed, forever!! His Presence in our lives is our OASIS. Bye. 🥳

P 3081 Priorities.

/ DVH

My title today seems to be the catch cry of this world we live in, people are practically lining up to take over our priorities: “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think He’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do His best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way He works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how He works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”Matthew 6:33 MSG.

Isn’t this a lovely version of this scripture? Here’s another version of the same scripture, from the Good News bible: “Instead, be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what He requires of you, and He will provide you with all these other things.” This verse reminds us that priorities are important. It is my belief that we have accidentally let our own personal human priorities take precedent over God’s Kingdom business. Now here is my third version of the same verse from Matthew: “So above all, constantly seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness, then all these less important things will be given to you abundantly.”

The secret to this verse is highlighted for me with the words “less important.” Which leads me into assessing how important God Himself is in my life. Is He more important than whether the sun is shining or not? Is He more important than what’s for breakfast? Is He more important than my job? Giving God first priority means we will discover a whole other way to look at everything around us. I think Jesus picked flowers etc. as an illustration because that stuff is beautiful, but fleeting.   

God is a giver, He gives us … Himself, His Son and …time. Time to worship the Lord. Time to say that thing you always meant to tell your spouse. Time to say I love you, you are my friend. Time to be glad to have somewhere to sleep and something to eat. Did you wake up today? Me too! 🤣 That means that God has given us another day. Some people didn’t wake up this morning, but we did! What are we going to do with this day? I truly believe the focus we choose is the thing that steers us from day to day. Our God is not thundering from Mount Sinai — He is whispering inside our hearts. When He is our focus He tells us clearly that we don’t have to worry about anything else. Well, there’s a blessing! “This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

I am learning not to project my time into tomorrow, otherwise I start to worry what I will do about this and that, and usually those worries are fears, not real things. My point is this:  I don’t have tomorrow … I may leave here and wake up there overnight! I think that’s why the Lord told us: “so do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34. Lately some of my days appear to have a fair share of difficulties, so that means that I will deliberately have to choose to put all those worrisome things down, simply because He told me to do it.

God made flowers, plants, trees etc and we know that He looks after them, but the book says —He loves US MORE!! Let that sink in a bit. He called you, by your name, you are not a minor member of the faceless crowd to Him. You are special to Him simply because you are you. His heart is sooo big it is more than big enough to take ALL of us IN. When we worry about tomorrow or what might happen, it means we’ve forgotten that His thoughts are always toward us. It’s kind of insulting really. We often lose our time to something that is not worthy of our attention. He made everything around us, and He will not forget us. We need to actively remember WHO HE IS and how much He cares for us.

Our earthly father may have been absent, busy, or just absent minded. He may have been switched on most of the time – or off. Those sad facts cannot override the fact that God is always ON and He is always interested in every single detail of our lives. When He mentions flowers which are transitory things, He is saying that nothing is too small for Him to care about. If it happens to YOU — He cares about it. I’ve found it is healthy to live each day I am given with eternity in mind. I think that’s what Matthew 6:33 is about.

However, God is not our head housekeeper, or a concierge, He isn’t with us to facilitate our lives and run them like clockwork! Emmanuel means God with us, so we are never alone. Maybe nobody else knows that we spend our days weeping over our heartaches. Or maybe soldiering on regardless – numbing our senses to cope with the pain that this life continually produces — but He knows. He does not want His precious people starved of love and meaning in their lives. That’s why He came here. 

Taking care of our day to day priorities can squeeze out the very life of God within us. Before we know it we are treating Him like an obligation, or, even worse … SomeBody Who is too hard to relate to. If that happens, go back to reading the Gospels and watch the way Jesus treats people, how He interacts with them. He is our priority because God made us His priority. Bye.👋

P 3080 Spring cleaning time!

/ DVH

Spiritually speaking, God’s people need a good spring clean out, regularly. This means we deliberately choose to get rid of any stuff the Lord doesn’t like, and let His love clean and shine up any dirty windows on the inside of us. We can even accumulate things around us that we have been tolerating. This prayer is invaluable:“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Psalm 139:23-24. 

Here’s an interesting scripture from the book of Acts 19:19-20.“A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. When they calculated the value of the scrolls, the total came to fifty thousand drachmas. In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power.“ 

The Word of God increased in power as the Lord’s people made it their business to get rid of anything that they had in their homes that elevated or attracted satan. I too, believe we can be spiritually hindered, unless we deliberately take our love for Jesus seriously, and we cherish His presence over anything else. When we make Him King over everything, His power increases in us and around us. Here’s another interesting story from Acts to think on.

“About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of artemis, brought in a lot of business for the craftsmen there. He called them together, along with the workers in related trades, and said: “You know, my friends, that we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that gods made by human hands are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess artemis will be discredited; and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty.” Acts 19:23-27. 

Further on in this story, a riot starts and nobody can stop it!. What I wanted to mentioned here is that God always has someone waiting in the wings. This time it was a man of wisdom. He was a man most people would overlook — a city clerk! But he stands up and speaks his piece and the riots stop and everyone goes home. You must never ever ever think your job is minor. God has people in all kinds of places, people we may not even recognise, but they are pivotal to His plan – He is Wisdom personified, and He does not advertise what He is going to do next.

The verses above show us how our enemy’s traps work. Some ‘iffy’ or doubtful things can become established in people’s lives when they are careless. Greed reared its ugly head too! Demetrius the unofficial leader, pitched a fit because his profit margin was going to go down!  There are times when accommodating stuff the Lord does not like, will interfere with our walk with the Lord. It becomes too easy to rationalise away the effects of compromise. I think it is good to occasionally go right through our houses and pray over what we have.

Every single time I have done this I have had a personal breakthrough, it is like spring cleaning my heart. We all know that the devil is not worth bothering about, but his agendas can cloud our walk with Jesus. We belong to Him so everything we have is His. So if the Lord doesn’t like something, then it is good to spiritually spring clean and get rid of it. That includes books, DVDs, Cds, video games – any doubtful items given to us by someone else that we have kept so we won’t hurt their feelings. Or stuff we thought – that will be OK, God won’t mind – but we didn’t ask Him.

My motivation is to make people aware that satan is sneaky – he will infiltrate our houses with his rubbish. Seemingly harmless stuff that just feels a bit “off.” I can’t tell you what might offend the Lord at your house, I can only suggest you and He go through your home together and let Him lead you through this process. At the same time I do not mean we should all go on a witch hunt. We all accumulate junk, all I am saying is that it is valuable to check with Jesus about the things we have collected, accidentally or not. Obviously this is something that needs prayer. I personally have this policy, ‘when in doubt, chuck it out.”

As we walk with Him, day by day, our main aim is to do more than just give Him lip service. The bible clearly says that this was one reason why the Lord was angry with Israel. Their repentance did not go beyond their mouths and that lassez faire attitude was totally their choice. They said YES to God and then went away did NO! Father God wants our hearts to be wholly His, and this is why we live our lives undergoing transformation. His desire is for us to go from strength to strength and glory to glory. That won’t happen by itself. It happens as we value Him above everything else.

The place to begin is revealed by our responses to difficulties, when our attitude is wrong, it will colour our tolerance levels. Ask Him to search your heart and show you any wicked way within you, then repent and do something about it. We need to do some spring cleaning. Repentance without fruit is like that fig tree story – it holds lots of promise but there is nothing substantial on it.  Bye. 👋

P 3079 Stuck!

/ DVH

“Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,…” Philippians 3:14.

“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” James 1:23-24.                                                        

“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.“ Philippians 3:14. 

It’s not the falling over that gets you – it’s all the effort it takes to get up again! But these verses offer us some great comforting advice and we should take it. Our lives have been redesigned so that now we can both live forgetting the past and pressing in toward our future in Christ. This means that if I want my past left behind, then I should leave your past offences toward me behind too. I guess that is why the writer used the word STRAINING! 

Choosing to become forgetful of the past is one of the biggest assignments of our faith. My problem can be a lie the devil chucks at me … It feels like, if I forget what you did to me then I am letting you off the hook. You can go and do the same thing, or even worse, to me next time! At the bottom of our lack of forgetfulness toward people who have really hurt us, is a lack of trust. I don’t trust you because I think you have given me good reasons not to trust you. I probably don’t even trust the Lord to deal with you – and ps I actually think He should take you off to the woodshed and give you a good whopping!

Let’s look at the situation this way: The above verses are part of a process, they are not the end game. The end game is …press on!  But to do that, we will need to be actively engaged in forgetting what is past. At the same time I will need to remember and face what I actually look like, because I can get so used to highlighting your faults that most of the time, I can’t see mine! In my mind your faults make mine look tiny. That kind of blindness is part of a defence system.

The reality is that I want to stay mad at you, because you did something so terrible I can’t let you be close to me again because I cannot bear the hurt again. That hurt may manifest itself in anger, like I said yesterday, because someone has punctured my little smiley-face balloon persona, and now I’ve found out that I am not the nice person I thought I was.  My real sin is not just unforgiveness, it is that my flesh is in charge, not my spirit, and this other person has forced me to face myself. 

I can kid myself that I am a nice person, especially if everyone around me plays fair, and no-one pokes the bear inside me. But when someone pokes that bear, suddenly I know that I truly need saving. Yet I still have a place I can hide in, because I can tell myself that I am not that bad. YOU made me look that bad because you did thus and thus and made life difficult for me.

Because of this almost unconscious process, I can exonerate myself from my own personal responsibility and I pass all the responsibility for my actions over to you. That is just so dumb on so many levels! One of them is that I already don’t like you, and yet I’m putting you in charge of my behaviour. The bible clearly tells me what I look like at that moment, because my focus is on you, it clouds my view of myself in His mirror, and I then I walk away SMUG. Sadly, I can also dirty up the mirror of God’s word with religion and good works.

But spiritually I am stuck. This following story is an illustration of what stuck can look like. I have been to Anne Hathaway’s house in England. ‘Shakespeare country.’ In the houses back then, there were solid beams going from the roof to the floor, and the floor consisted of stone paving. At the bottom of one such beam I noticed a deep groove. I asked the guide what it was, and they told me it was a post-middle ages’ method of keeping a tiny tot safe. 

The parent would strap the child into a leather harness and the kid walked round and round the beam. The beam was not all that big, so the kid must have been bored out of its gourd going round and round! These things were commonly used in those times. It’s a wonder kids didn’t turn out to be a little doolally … temporarily deranged and/or feeble minded! They were totally stuck there – all in the name of safety!

Let’s take a look at how to move forward from being stuck. I need to actively choose to forget the old and press forward toward the new. There is a new place for you and I to occupy together, it is a place where hopefully, both of us let go of the past, and begin to look toward a new and different relationship. We have given up trying to make the old one that we had work, because it didn’t.  It is foolish to keep repeating old behaviour patterns, when they just lead us into the same old holes. And so now we choose to start again to rebuild trust between us.

We can use the Word of God as our guide, instead of our past experiences, or even our personal needs. As we look into His Word, we will discover that both of us have faults that have affected our ability to relate to each other in a Godly fashion. Instead we have chosen to look into His Word deliberately, to find places we both need transformation! That’s what pressing on looks like. We move beyond being stuck in our fleshly desires and wants, and press forward into doing what He wants. Bye. 👋

P 3078 Anger is like Hydra – it has a lot of heads!

/ DVH

Many people give up on God because it seems to them that following Him from day to day, doesn’t work, and so they just float off proclaiming “that religion thing didn’t work for me.” The good news is – Jesus never ever gives up on us. Even when we are kind of pretending we are OK, as we sob or angrily bob about on our man-made li-los. The Lord Jesus will always come after us. Reconciliation is at the core of Who He is. 

Anybody who has had a difficult person in their lives will tell you that being misunderstood;  or having your motivation treated with suspicion;  or even being judged by someone else’s standard —  is an awful kind of suffering. I think Christians are a bit like salmon, swimming against the pressing tide of the rest of humanity, waiting for the power to jump up the next waterfall. Meanwhile the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet are merrily cruising the freeways of this life, creating accidents and disasters for others.

This week I fell over, or under, or maybe into!  — an old learning curve and it knocked me on my head. My spiritual life lately has forced me to re-evaluate a whole lot of things, a death in the family does that. It included issues that I thought were kind of settled. I discovered that sometimes being ‘angry’ with someone else doesn’t go away permanently, even when I am trusting Jesus to help me with it. Instead it hangs about and waits for an opportune moment to pop its nasty little head up again and poke you! That aforementioned many-headed Hydra! Things often make a return appearance when we’ve been weakened by adverse circumstances.

I am astonished at how ordinary events can hit buttons you didn’t know you had anymore, because they have remained hidden. Even those things that you’ve given over to the Lord and forgotten, can still be dragged up and used by the enemy against you. satan will still remind us of our past grievances, and at the same time, we can get sucked into into a ‘poor me’ vortex. It is good to remember that when we confess our sins our God forgives us, and now our sins are under Jesus’ blood. We need that!

I’ve prayed about anger a lot, I had to!  And the Lord reminded me: “It says in the Bible: be angry but don’t sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.” This is what I’ve come up with since then —I’ve been practising giving my anger to the Lord before I go to sleep! Because right now when I am in an unexpectedly pressing moment, I can’t seem to deal with my anger. It just keeps popping out, unbidden, in the darndest places. I was in the bank the other day, facing mountains of idiotic red tape — and what I actually thought just flew out of my mouth, at someone else, and boy was I grouchy.

And, even worse,I wasn’t sorry either!! I fake apologised to the person I grouched at, but the inner rumblings continued. So, I exercised self-control, but I practically had to whack my hand over my mouth. Then  I managed to shut up. I actually didn’t repent, repent, until we were back home again. That’s when embarrassment grabbed me by the throat, because I had been caught publicly being rude to someone who was very nice and polite to me. Sigh.

God’s Grace came to meet me, through my husband. He reminded me that part of any normal grief is anger. I always thought that meant you got angry at the person for dying and leaving you. Wrong answer!  I’m actually  happy for my mother, because she was very old and very ill. But at the same time, I was also relieved, because we often had a complicated relationship while she was still here. 

My anger came from many many unresolved issues between us over the years. Instead of confronting those issues at the time, I simply sucked it up because she was my mother. They say one straw breaks the camel’s back? Well, I had a bus load of straw that landed on my head — and the bank’s rigidity and inflexibility regarding their rules won. The lack of justice banged on a wound, and I ran out of Grace. It instantly reminded me of my past injuries. Our enemy is a snake, he knows right where to poke us and find a sore spot..

Up until then, I thought I had been a bit successful at overcoming anger, because I had defeated my bad attitudes after a bit of a skirmish or two. It sounded like this: … “that was so tough, but I made it through to love – ya-ay me!” Here’s a really good thought to remember, pride goes before a fall! But fortunately Jesus throws all our sins in the sea of forgetfulness … however, our enemy still has a whole other agenda. 

This battle we are currently living in, will not be over until the Lord Himself comes back. Plus anger has a lot of heads, and it comes at us in many different ways. However, the bible tells us that the martyrs under the altar are continually crying out to be avenged. Revelation 6:9-10: “…I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying,“How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 

I found this scripture oddly comforting. These Godly people have left here and now they are in the safest most glorious place and yet they still want to be avenged!  Ya might want to think about that yourself – I did. Bye. 👋