P 3000 HOW??

/ DVH

“But HOW can people call on Him for help if they’ve not yet believed? And HOW can they believe in One they’ve not yet heard of? And HOW can they hear the message of life if there is no one there to proclaim it?” Romans 10:14 TPT. There are people in your life and mine, right now, who will never hear the gospel if we do not share it with them. The way we do that is entirely between each one of us and the Lord Himself. But we must face facts —there are simply not enough of us to go around! That means many, many, many people will miss out, and find out what they’ve missed out on, when it is too late. 

Fun facts:Only 1 of every 174,463 Christians goes as a missionary to the Unreached. Christians make up 32% of this world’s population. What about the other 68%? I believe that the people who have not met Him yet, are aware that they’ve done this or that, and somewhere deep inside they know God has said “don’t do it.”“They show that the essential requirements of the Law are written in their hearts; and their conscience [their sense of right and wrong, their moral choices] bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or perhaps defending them.” Romans 2:15.

In John 8:9, it also states that “…those who heard, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last: and Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst.”Human beings have a conscience, but that part of our heart can be turned off by repeatedly ignoring it, or by deliberate disobedience. The people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet don’t understand that He did not say “don’t do this or that” to make anyone’s life miserable – He gave us instructions so our lives would be better. 

Many people think that our God doesn’t approve of things like fun! They do not know that there is another way to live and that God has a bigger picture, a bigger plan for us all. The people outside our churches don’t know anything about that – at all. They think the Lord is a killjoy! We can pray someone else will share the gospel with our friends, rabbits and relations, until His kingdom comes, but the reality is this – they are our friends etc. etc. and you and I need to tell them. Everyone needs the opportunity to meet Him before they get to the Great White Throne!

My point today is this, how can we say we truly love others the way He loves – sacrificially – when we are afraid to step out of our comfort zone? He has promised to help us, but we will never know the joy of our salvation so completely until we share it with another person. The Lord never intended us to obey Him in our own strength …we have a Helper! Meanwhile, our incredibly good, forever news is that this life is not all there is! Death is a doorway into another realm, where Jesus Christ is King. True fact!

Courage, I am told, is not the absence of fear, it is doing the thing that scares me – anyway. One time, years ago, that meant I sang “Jesus loves you” to an old man I had never met before in my life! He was in intensive care dying. He utterly refused to listen to his relatives. The dear man was a captive audience! I sang with tears pouring down my face because I knew this old man was not long for this world. At the same time I also knew that the Holy Spirit was going to have to follow up whatever I did. I don’t know what the old man decided, I just did what Jesus told me to do! 

Never ever feel bad about sharing the gospel with someone, even if you think you blew it. Our obedience opens a door that gives the Holy Spirit room!  It does not matter if what we say comes out sideways, or we stumble over our words, or we need to use a book, pamphlet or sign on a billboard. What matters is that the people around us understand that this life has so many options that are unknown to them. Most people think Christianity is just another religion – and many think all we want is their money! They do not know A REAL LIVE PERSON backs up what we believe. They don’t know any better, because they haven’t met Him yet!

Part of our personal growth process is sharing our faith. We simply tell someone else what we know — what we have seen and heard for ourselves— and then we rely upon God Himself to do whatever He wants with that act of obedience. People don’t need fancy words, they need the reality of His Presence! Because the Holy Spirit walks around with us, inside us – we are now His temple. At the same time we have been transformed by His power to be walking talking examples of what faith looks like!

We are not walking love if we do not share our personal knowledge of eternity with the people around us. That is not about presenting a doctrine or a set of church rules or even bible bashing. Instead we simply share our relationship with our Friend and Brother, Jesus, with someone else who has not met Him yet.  HOW?… does this happen? When we each decide that sharing what we know is not meant to be a closely guarded secret. It is part of living in His kingdom to talk about Him to others. It is not a duty, or a chore, it is our privilege. Bye 👋 

P 2999 God, You are more than enough!

/ DVH

“God, You’re such a safe and powerful place to find refuge! You’re a proven help in time of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need You.”Psalms 46:1 TPT.

‘Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another Person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, He got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one Man said yes to God and put many in the right.

All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.” Romans 5:18-20.

We have a wonderful Heavenly Father, and the Perfect Saviour, Jesus Christ, and the glorious ever-present Holy Spirit to help us. Just let that sink in for a few minutes. We are not alone. The God Who made the world is more than enough for you and me! God’s Grace changed everything for everyone, and now we need to change our point of view to line up with Who He is.

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The Lord is not just talking to us about memorising scriptures when He tells us in Psalm 119:11.“I have stored up Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” OR Matthew 4:4 which states: “But He (Jesus) answered and said, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'”

Jesus is also talking about a heart attitude, not just a memory one. He is teaching us that we must value what He says above what we think, or feel, or have already experienced. When we measure God by human standards – things like results, or our ability to remember (!) – we are reducing all that He is to our ideas and opinions. However, the Lord Jesus came here to save us, and show us what a human being led by God looks like — He has deliberately empowered us to live that way with the Holy Spirit’s help. Just like He did!

We dare not even measure our God’s performance by our answered or unanswered prayers, because that is putting Him to the test! Jesus Himself said this in Matthew 4:7.“Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: “Don’t you dare test the Lord your God.” He was talking to the enemy at the time, but this is an incredibly important scripture. God reveals Who He is to us, through what Jesus said here. 

We must not question His goodness – His goodness hung on a cross until all of mankind was totally reconciled back to Him! He does not have to prove Himself to us … we have a book full of His history with mankind! When we come up against something that puts His goodness into question, our belief in His goodness needs to prevail. I firmly believe some of our prayers may not be answered until after we’ve gone home but that does not mean God has thrown them away. Men and women DIED holding onto God’s promise of His Messiah – I call that enduring faith.

God is holy, and He cannot lie, He is Who He says He is. It is fatal to our faith to question His goodness. Plus His unfailing love is unquestionable – He demonstrated it through everything Christ did. His ability to save us, transform us, and make us even bigger so we can receive even more of Him – is legendary! Don’t ever be satisfied with what you have, always go after more.

We need to learn to respond like that widow-woman, in 2 Kings, whose husband had run up a debt. She had two sons, who were going to be sold into slavery. She ran to Elisha the prophet for help, and as he instructed her, she grabbed anything that was in her house that might hold oil. These verses are not just an illustration or a great story about something God did long long ago …it’s for here, it’s for now … it’s for YOU! … and me! Give Him any areas that remain untouched by His Grace, His Spirit, His OIL in your life … and let Him fill them.(2 Kings 4:3) “We have not because we ask not.”(James 4:2)

The history of God and mankind related in the Old Testament are the true stories about the Love, Goodness and Grace of our Heavenly Father toward His own ungrateful chosen people. They rejected Him over and over again. Instead the Israelites just wanted to be like everyone else around them. Boy! That’s a big fat danger sign if ever there was one! If we want to fit in, more than we want what He wants, we are tottering on the edge of a ditch. God will get us out again, but then we will most likely have to battle shame and guilt afterward because the enemy will rub our noses in our failure. It is so much better to just do what He says!

Our enemy sneaks about watching for opportunities to pull us under, because when we are under pressure of drowning in our situations and sorrows, it is easier to doubt God. The thing is: with God on our side, any one of us, from the littlest child, to the oldest person is ENOUGH. We can’t afford to rate God by His Answers to our prayers, that attitude will make Him too small in our eyes. It limits our prayers. Just hold on to your faith and keep telling yourself God is good – He’s not done yet!  WAIT FOR HIS ANSWER – it will blow your mind!

The Lord values things that human beings don’t. The Old Testament proves that!!  It teaches us that HE IS MORE THAN ENOUGH.“Pressed down and running over …” and you and I had better believe it! Bye 👋

P 2998 Thankfulness, the gift that keeps on giving.

/ DVH

This morning at 2.00am hubby had some thoughts that were so good, I have repeated them here today.

“We can be so busy obsessing over what we don’t have, or what we’ve lost, that we fail to be grateful for what we have been given. It is a fundamental tactic of the enemy to foster the seed of discontent in us, to steal our vision and the purposes that God has prepared for us. However, living in discontentment means that we are inadvertently saying … we don’t know Him – Who He is, the fact that He is good. Gratitude matters. It pulls our focus back on to Jehovah Jireh, our great eternal Provider.

We are also saying, when we indulge in our fears, that we are still in charge of our lives and destiny. By refusing to give the reins of our lives to God we are saying something about the way we regard Him. We are saying we don’t trust Him to be good to us. At its foundation there is rebellion, but satan colours those feelings of self pity and despair, in order to build a framework through which we can see this world. How to break this framework…? Repent of rebellion and start trusting God to be the Master of your life and begin to be thankful and grateful for what He has provided and expect Him to take care of you.”

Over to me and my thoughts now … As I reflected on what hubby said, I saw that we can’t afford the luxury of choosing what we will obey, and what we will not in this battle we call life. Even the little things matter. As soon as we refuse God’s ways for us, we are giving satan access into our minds and lives and then we can become double-minded. At worst we can be easily deceived! 

It is good to remember when Jesus was tempted He responded with the scripture. He did not pit His will against His tormentor, instead He declared God’s word to satan as His shield. Jesus is our example of how to fight, when discouragement strikes, or when we think we need to postpone using our faith, and that overtakes us. We must constantly be using and strengthening our faith, or it can be weakened by adverse circumstances, and life’s testing times. God’s truth is our shield, even when we don’t like what it says. Instead immediately look for things to thank Him for!

“At each place they (the Apostles) went, they strengthened the lives of the believers and encouraged them to go deeper in their faith. And they taught them, “It is necessary for us to enter into the realm of God’s kingdom, because that’s the only way we will endure our many trials and persecutions.” Acts 14:22 TPT. Did you get that? What helps is to look at our circumstances and decide if it is “kingdom material” – or not! Having a kingdom mindset and using it as a yardstick in our lives, protects us from the things of this world that are constantly battering at our lives to demand our attention, trying to drag us under. However, even when we don’t feel like it, we need to give thanks.

A thankful attitude can be cultivated under fire. We can’t afford to think; “I’ll learn about that stuff later.”  satan is a snake who uses discouragement and despair – which are normal human emotions – against us. he will hand us so-called evidence that God is not good, that we cannot manage whatever is going on – in order to sway our attention, loyalty, and devotion away from the Lord and onto ourselves. satan will focus our attention on our feelings instead of God’s word. If we can’t think of anything to thank God for in our pain, then let’s thank Him that He saved us, so we can always ask for His help! “God is our refuge and strength, always ready to help in times of trouble.” Psalm 46:1.

We dare not even attempt to fight any kind of destructive fight ourselves, we need the Holy Spirit’s discernment and wisdom to clear away the cobwebs of deception and shine a light on the real truth. It is hard to find something to be thankful for if you feel like the world is on top of you. The secret is to quickly recognise that our feelings come from provocation from our enemy. Then we can start rebuking them. And that’s another reason to thank God – because  He has given us power over our enemy! “Listen carefully: I have given you authority [that you now possess] to tread on serpents and scorpions, and [the ability to exercise authority] over all the power of the enemy (Satan); and nothing will [in any way] harm you.” Luke 10:19.

Here’s another great verse to be thankful for: “Trust in the Lord completely, and do not rely on your own opinions. With all your heart rely on Him to guide you, and He will lead you in every decision you make. Become intimate with Him in whatever you do, and He will lead you wherever you go.” Proverbs 3:5-6 TPT. God is the only reliable Person in this world, and ever-so-fortunately for us … HE IS GOOD! The Lord sees our hearts are toward Him, and His loving heart and goodness cannot help but reach out to us in our bewilderment and sorrow. Yet another reason to thank Him!! Our help and hope is in the Name of the Lord. He is THE strong tower we run into when we know we need help. And thank God for that tower!

I exhort you to give everything that comes up to oppose you, to Jesus, and leave it with Him. Trust Him to guide you out of whatever happened to you. Hold fast to the fact that God is good… all the time, because He is. Thank Him for His incredible goodness!  God’s Grace enables me. It enables me to give my situation to Jesus and watch what He will do with it. Having Him as my back-up also makes me thankful! Thankfulness is the gift that keeps on giving. Bye👋

P 2996 Outer space is yelling at you!

/ DVH

“God’s splendour is a tale that is told, written in the stars. Space itself speaks His story through the marvels of the heavens. His truth is on tour in the starry vault of the sky, showing His skill in creation’s craftsmanship.” Psalms 19:1 TPT. Today, we are going to do some pausing to contemplate … off we go …!!

Every now and then it is good to take yourself outside at night, and just look at the stars. And if it won’t wreck your life, or your nightly routine — take your kids too! We all love to watch fireworks, but God Himself has the kind of splendour that is on display almost every single night of the week. Looking up at it opens up our eyes to His incredible creativity. He decorated that sky just like he decorated this earth …for His glory and for our benefit, then He declared everything He made “good.” That’s a really big statement from our God, Who is the ultimate definer of GOOD.

Here’s a fun fact:  the world has a new telescope – the James Webb Space telescope. It is floating about in space above us, and it can see much farther than the old Hubble could. It recently saw a large cluster of what appeared to be brand new stars … Yay! It turned out, on closer inspection to be a cluster of galaxies just like ours! Doesn’t that just blow your mind. It blew mine. 

Sometimes I think the thing that separates us from those ants which are always scurrying about, is the fact that God did not come to earth to save the ants! Did you know it says in the bible:“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!…” Psalm 8:3-8. It is good to stop and consider what God Himself has made. This kind of pausing is good for us.

Moving on, but still star-gazing …“And the Lord brought Abram outside [his tent into the night] and said, “Look now toward the heavens and count the stars—if you are able to count them.” Then He said to him, “So [numerous] shall your descendants be.” That’s some kind of promise! Have you ever thought about the fact that we, you and I, are sons and daughters of Abraham? God fulfilled, and He is still fulfilling His promise to that patriarch in each one of us,  until Jesus comes back. Here’s another fun fact:  Abraham was not alive on the earth to see that promise fulfilled! And yet there are times when we complain to the Lord because He doesn’t get us a parking space when we need one. 🙄  Sometimes we can be easily distracted by trivia.

It’s called perspective, and we need to deliberately stop what we are doing and get some.  Maybe we can sit and look at the clouds roll by in our lunch break, or watch rain drip off leaves on the trees. Perspective ushers in balance. There have been terrible things in your life and mine that seemed like they were going to end us! The ceiling fell in, or someone did something unthinkable, and we could feel life draining everything out of us.. 

But, here and now, we are sitting  – with me typing, and you reading this dumb blog … teehee – and we are still going. We survived whatever that horrendous thing was, even though it seemed insurmountable at the time. Sometimes things really aren’t as bad or permanent as we think they are  — all we need to do is look at the bigger picture instead of what is happening within our own little tiny frame.  And yes, I do know that sometimes when you stop to smell the roses you can get stung by a bee – or you find that very pretty rose has no scent whatsoever … but nevertheless, pausing is worth it. 

We need to give ourselves permission to pause. And take off all those hats we force on our heads. Maybe we could assess how many of those hats actually belong to us! I have found when I’ve done this, that many of the hypothetical hats I wear, are there because I don’t want someone else to be angry with me, or I feel obligated to put on a Christian face and do the right thing! Now there’s some dumb motivation!! Here’s a thought: that means that somebody else, other than Jesus Himself, is controlling me. It means my faith in His ability to protect, comfort and help me is slipping.

Romans 8:9 states,“You, however, are not in the flesh but are in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.” Have you noticed that the Holy Spirit is never in a hurry, but He is always right on time? Especially when you take the time to look at whatever happened to you retrospectively. SomeOne Else will be up tonight watching over us, no matter what is going on around us or outside, while we are sleeping.

The bible says in Psalm 121:3-4:“He won’t let you stumble, your Guardian God won’t fall asleep. Not on your life! Israel’s Guardian will never doze or sleep.” We need to remind ourselves that the Lord Himself has got me! He will not let go. So this life that presses in on us, actually doesn’t rely upon you, it relies upon Him, and His faithfulness and He ain’t moving! Give yourself a break, and start to inhabit a life that makes room for thoughtful  pauses …maybe there are times we just might hear outer space yelling at us! 🤣 Bye. 👋

P 2995 Controlling our mouths …

/ DVH

…is actually the biggest part of our daily battle … because speaking well of people is essential for our new language of love, so we all need to learn it. After all, the spirit of self-control needs to set its fruit somewhere … why not our tongues?

“Do not LET any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:29. Here’s something I’ve learnt about myself that may benefit someone else. Sometimes the best response to something negative someone else says to you, is to smile — remember to include your eyes —and say nothing. Listening is a fantastic skill. Humility listens. Most angry people will de-escalate if we are prepared to give them a hearing. While I am listening, or trying to, I am inwardly praying: “Please help ME Holy Spirit, my feelings are out of control.”  

As we seek to truly love one another, reconciliation must never be far away from our minds. We cannot afford to make any argument a competition about who wins and who loses. If we start keeping score it adds to the anger. One of the participants in the problem is going to have to put their grievance – their sword– down. The best way to do that, is to start with an apology.

“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” Proverbs 15:1. So it is good to say neutral things like: “I’m sorry you feel like that, and I have obviously hurt your feelings. I apologise.Please forgive me.” And then continue to say nothing. While we are busy defending ourselves, we aren’t loving that other person – we are empowering our flesh.

Loving each other is the secret ingredient to watching whatever we say. People who fall in love with someone else, watch their speech. The thing is, it is not good for our personal spiritual well-being to be a hypocrite, and love some people and not others simply because: “Love covers a multitude of sins …” It covered OURS!

Please understand that when we act in faith, with a spirit of reconciliation, we are not necessarily validating what the other person is saying – we are simply choosing to obey scripture: “First take the LOG out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see the splinter.” Matthew 7:3-5. None of us are blameless. What does it matter if we are falsely accused? What does it matter if we lose an argument? We might win the war by appearing to lose. The walls of Jericho came down because of a long silence, and one well-placed shout of victory!

Very few people walk up to someone else and punch them in the face FIRST! Arguments usually start with words, and then things grow exponentially as we use more and more words, and move on into hurling spiteful responses at each other and bringing up the other person’s past misdeeds. That’s the time we need to remember that we cannot control another person’s actions or reactions, we have to start with ourselves first. Maybe His Grace in our lives – which we get from spending time with Jesus in the secret place – has been diminished by the troubles and cares of this life.

“LET your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” Colossians 4:6. One of my favourite preachers from the Brownsville Revival used to say – “this thing right here … (and he would point to his tongue) – that’s the thing we all need to be aware of.” “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be so.” James 3:10. But it obviously IS so, because God Himself tells us through James …that it should not be so! This is where our personal test of obedience kicks in.

The next verse is the secret to overcoming all that. We cannot afford to live this life forgetting, for even a second, WHO we belong to now. “Little children, you can be certain that you belong to God and have conquered them, for the One who is living in you is far greater than the one who is in the world.”1 John 4:4 TPT. You see our confidence is not in our ability to conform, or even perform – our confidence is in Him. It is not in me or you … it’s IN HIMI We believe and have faith in His ability to conquer whatever situation we find ourselves in — after all He conquered DEATH! Therefore my big mouth is not a problem to Him. 

All this is possible because we belong to Him and He lives in us. We have a God Who saves us, and Who lives in us! He has already saved us from the sin we will perpetrate against someone else by what we’ve said. Because of the Lord Jesus we have the deposit of self-control within us, by His Grace. All we need to do is to release it, using our faith. Controlling our mouths is the biggest part of our daily battle. Bye 👋.

P 2994 Love = great grow food!

/ DVH

“I continue to pray for your love to grow and increase beyond measure, bringing you into the rich revelation of spiritual insight in all things. This will enable you to choose the most excellent way of all —becoming pure and without offense until the unveiling of Christ.”Philippians 1:9-10 TPT.

Choosing to love the unlovely, ushers in growth.However, this will not be a happy little ‘walk in the park’ — it will cost us to learn to love the people who have hurt us, ignored us, and despitefully used us. Especially those people who did it on purpose! That’s the dying to self bit. In the flesh I may want to tell the whole world about the mean things that person did to me. I also want to vindicate myself, as well as give myself valid reasons to live this life as an emotional cripple! That’s called a side benefit BTW.  If I blame ‘you,’ or ‘them,’ then I have no responsibility to change. I can point to other people and say it is their fault I am like this. My sins, errors and missteps become sad, a result of someone else’s unkindness, not my own choices.

Adulthood will not fall on us. Hopefully sooner rather than later, we must choose to grow up and face this life from a mature point of view. Maturity is not about voting, or being able to drink alcohol, or get married. True maturity is taking responsibility for my own actions and responses to whatever has happened to me. Otherwise I am still allowing the person who hurt me to control my life. My own personal choices can take me out of that place of weakness, and place me firmly into God’s place of strength. 

This is why Paul is praying for the Thessalonians to “grow and increase beyond measure.”  Greater offences need even greater measures of love. Instead of sloughing off my responses in my situation onto whoever hurt me … now I stand up, make a choice and let Him take control of my destiny. Because now my aim is no longer just to survive—now I want to learn how to thrive within His unconditional, eternal love.

Living in love, which is the way the Jesus Himself lived, expands my capacity to take more and more of His life, and His ways, IN. If I want to be an overcomer, I must first of all learn to overcome the unnecessary things that tie my life into this world with cords of distrust, anger, bitterness and hatred. Choosing not to excuse my behaviour goes a long way toward changing it. We all know 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 well, but here’s a very different reverse, self-centred view of what Paul said: … 

“Love is not patient because you need to love me! I’m broken, and you can’t expect me to fix my own broken places. My love doesn’t have to be kind because I need people to be kind to me, and my needs are more important than yours. My kind of love is jealous, because I can’t stand for you to get more of anything than I do. At the same time, I’m needier than you! My love totally needs to boast because it makes me feel important and I need to be important, because I have good things inside me that will amaze you, if you would only co-operate with me and treat me kindly. 

Why shouldn’t I talk about you? You don’t appreciate me! When I am seen and appreciated I will be a much better person. Of course I get angry with you, you are constantly showing up my bad side, and I hate you for it. I have lists and lists of things you have done to hurt me. I need to keep those lists! They are my protection against letting you get near me in case you hurt me again. I love it when someone else is mean to you the way you have been mean to me – maybe it will teach you a lesson! 

The truth is what I think and say it is. Because I’ve been hurt, now I have lots of insight into other people’s faults. Why should I protect someone else? I don’t trust other people, they are just out for themselves. My kind of love doesn’t dare hope, it is always scared disappointment is heading my way – again. And my kind of love is too tired to persevere with anything or anyone. Nobody does that for me, why should I do that for them?”

Let’s all pray that this person never ends up in charge of anything!! … Sh-a-ll we? Amen! You know what was really scary, I wrote the above perverted version of 1 Corinthians 13 … so easily. Yikes! None of us can afford to go down that road, we’ll fall into a ditch. Here’s a huge tip to help us on our way — stop waiting for other people to love you and start actively loving them.

Real Love, the God-kind of love, helps us choose His very best way through all kinds of situations. It gives us insight into our own faults and the things that will make us stumble and fall. We simply have to ask ourselves regularly, “Is this love?” And if it is not, then we repent, go back and fix it. That’s not hard to remember! God has a way for things to be done. As we live in His love and give it away to others, we will find we know what He wants us to do. And when we are challenged by love, remember, the result of that challenge is growth. Bye 👋

P 2993 Holy Spirit breathing – in and out.

/ DVH

“For athletic training only benefits you for a short season, but righteousness brings lasting benefit in everything; for righteousness contains the promise of life, for time and eternity.”1 Timothy 4:8 TPT.

One of the things that I love about this verse is anyone can do it.  You don’t have to be physically fit or train for 5 hours a day. Being trained by righteousness simply takes faith and dedication. The only thing that will stop any of us from living this way, are the choices we make. However, if we continually make the wrong choices it is like sticking our fingers in our ears and ignoring what the Lord is saying to us.

This option for spiritual fitness is available to all of us, because of what Jesus did for us. Ignoring the Holy Spirit is dangerous – so we need to train ourselves to listen to Him. When I don’t want to do whatever He asks me to do, I ask for His help to do it, then I do it anyway, using my faith. My job is to let God live in me and through me, just like Jesus did and the Lord Jesus gave us His own ability to do whatever God wants from us.

Romans 5:15-17: “Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” 

We need to grab hold of what the Lord has already given us with both hands and not let go, using our faith. Instead of believing we are ‘not good’ at spiritual things, and keeping a record of our failures – or the disappointments we’ve experienced when we’ve prayed and the answer we wanted did not come. To increase our faith we meditate on Who He is, what He gave us, plus things we’ve seen Him do through us and in us. This is how we train ourselves to walk in faith with Him – we take note to encourage our hearts.

We all know Jesus succeeded in what He set out to do, so that’s where we look – not at our failures… but at His victory! He was perfectly righteous with God and His death and resurrection gave us the power and right to:“act in accord with God’s divine law.”  So any sin is to be owned, repented from and walked away from. The very word repent means ‘turn around and walk in the other direction.’ Our aim is to maintain God Himself living within us – just like Jesus did. Then, by actively choosing to live in His Grace – His way of acting and thinking – our response to this world will be unconditional LOVE.

Training yourself to live in a Godly fashion takes dedication to living aware of Him. However, our continuing response to God’s faithfulness can also deliver us from all kinds of evil. Dying to self, and living for Him means we choose to value Him above everything else. We lean on what He has given us. Jesus died and gave us His ability to live differently, we enter into that gift by using our faith. Just like we expect the bank to have our money when we make a withdrawal, we make faith withdrawals by ignoring our feelings and inclinations and obeying Him instead. We will encourage huge spiritual deposits into our lives by spending time with Him.  

Athletes train for years, to achieve goals, they employ self-discipline, plus a singular focus to achieve what they want. We also need to have just one focus, pleasing Him! If we live our ordinary everyday lives putting to death those things that will only give us temporary relief or pleasure, in favour of making Him Lord, then our joy increases. The more we want what He wants, the more He will give us opportunities to use our faith, and choose His Ways over our own. It seems impossible simply because we are so used to indulging our flesh. 

The Lord loves the secret place. He does not want us to see time spent with Him as a duty, rather it is a privilege and provision that Jesus willingly paid for, to give us an incredible kind of togetherness. An athlete rehearses their skill to improve it, but instead, we practice looking to Him daily to be our ever-present help — all day every day. This hones our focus, our total faith-driven reliance upon Him to be there and help us. 

Knowing what the Lord likes and wants, occurs as we read the book, then we do what it says, and use our faith to obey what we’ve read. As time passes we begin to carry His secret place within us, everywhere we go.  It’s like breathing: valuing Him and spending time with Him is IN… and going out and sharing what He gives us is breathing OUT. Athletes need good breathing as well as fitness … so do Christians! We also need active faith. As we learn to hear His voice and do whatever He asks us to do, we will learn Holy Spirit breathing. Bye 👋

P 2992 Jesus is the ultimate poetry.

/ DVH

“Don’t just listen to the Word of Truth and not respond to it, for that is the essence of self-deception. So always let His Word become like poetry written and fulfilled by your life!” James 1:22 TPT. This verse diagnoses one of the saddest things in the list of dumb stuff we can do. There are worse things, but this is the one thing that can shoot anyone in the foot quicker than a wall-eyed cowboy. Self-deception is a bad idea… heading down. In fact we are officially going the wrong way, on a down-a-later rapidly circling toward the drain. To get out of that intense slip-stream we will have to apply ourselves to repent and paddle our way back. 

Paul explains that kind of stupidity like this: “We do not have the audacity to put ourselves in the same class or compare ourselves with some who [supply testimonials to] commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they lack wisdom and behave like fools.” 2 Corinthians 10:12.  First of all, it is of no value to measure myself against you – we aren’t the same! Paul is telling the Corinthian people that self-important opinions lack wisdom. The result is they are audacious and proud. Self deception always lets the perpetrator off easily — “Other people don’t think that verse means that, so I don’t have to take it seriously either” “It’s too hard for me, I just can’t do it.” “I’ve prayed about it sincerely, and God hasn’t answered my prayer yet.”Like that one works!!

This is my version of what this verse means to me: if you read the bible and don’t apply what it says into your life, then deception steps in and helps you feel like you are OK. That’s because ‘there’s no need to fuss about making sure we obey the bible … actually, sincerely agreeing with it is just as good.’ In a pig’s eye! That’s a one way ticket to talking ourselves into anything but the truth. It’s like opening the door and telling deception ‘to come on in.’ Doing what the bible says— even if it hurts, because we’ve become adapted to living differently —  paves the way for His truth to transform us. We have to address our behaviour with our whole being, not just our minds.

So what does that look like? It looks like shutting your mouth when you want to give someone a serve. Or blessing and praying for the people who deliberately hurt you. I actually like to physically do something for a person who has hurt me  — as well as praying about it – it reinforces my purpose and makes it concrete.  But I want to finish by saying it is always  essential that we know what the Lord says in the book, so the Holy Spirit can bring it back into our memory. 

The part I really want to get to is at the end of that scripture. “…always let His Word become like poetry written and fulfilled by your life”  This part shows us the weight we need to put on what He says. You and I are writing His poetry over our own live sby the way we live. Sometimes I think because of all the head-knowledge we have tucked away, some of us will be lucky if we manage to create a nursery rhyme out of a whole life! Or maybe we might be on the ball enough to get a Hai ku! 

This poem we are writing is not meant to be our politely-framed eulogy;  it’s a lifetime commitment! The verse says so. Our lives and the way we live, speak out our commitment to Him as we go out into the community. It is seeable. It is so seeable Paul commented on it when he noticed people who used knowledge to puff themselves up! It is never enough for the Lord that we simply know it, we must live it out. 

That means we end up with visible changes. Things that other people can see. And Paul could see the error in the way some people in that church were acting. The bible says elsewhere: “taste and see that the Lord is good.” So when somebody ‘bites’ us with a nasty attitude or act, they are meant to come up with a mouthful of love, not reprisal, or even silence. Like the verse at the top of my blog page says: “I ain’t there yet, but it’s where I’m aiming!’

It is not enough to fake change, and make nicey nicey  noises. Our goal, with the Holy Spirit’s help, is to become a brand new person, redesigned by God Himself for His purposes. I think this is summed up so eloquently by John 1:14, by the way, he is talking about Jesus: “And the Word (Christ) became flesh, and lived among us; and we [actually] saw His glory, glory as belongs to the [One and] only begotten Son of the Father, [the Son who is truly unique, the only One of His kind, who is] full of grace and truth (absolutely free of deception).” 

Our glorious and gracious Father became three-dimensional because Jesus took the Word of the God off the page and somehow beyond my understanding, became it. It is meant to be three-dimensional in us. He was a living breathing example of God Himself. Almighty God stopped being a series of conceptual behaviour that ruled Jewish lives, and became a Person Whose life was devoted to His Father’s will. Jesus chose to become a human being others could talk to, see, touch, smell and enjoy and walk with. Now there is something to sink our teeth into. 

Jesus became God’s ultimate poem. Let us always remember that:“… we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”Ephesians 2:10. Bye 👋

P 2990 The great wall of blankets … as seen from space!

/ DVH

“If we are out of our mind [just unstable fanatics as some critics say], it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for your benefit. For the love of Christ controls and compels us, because we have concluded this, that One died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that all those who live would no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and was raised for their sake. 

But all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ [making us acceptable to Him] and gave us the ministry of reconciliation [so that by our example we might bring others to Him], that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people’s sins against them [but canceling them]. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation [that is, restoration to favour with God].” 2 Corinthians 5:13-15,18-19 AMP.

Well you could easily think that hubby and I have lost the plot…until you read 2 Corinthians 5. Then, hopefully, maybe not! It seems the Apostle Paul also suffered from the same idiosyncrasies as we do, only his case was wa-ay worse than ours! He went on the road and stayed on it, permanently. He preached in jail as well. Gee I hope we never have to check that jail one out!! And what Paul is saying in Corinthians above in a nutshell is this – if I’m nuts, then I’m nuts for God, and if I’m sane then it is for your benefit.

He knew what was important, and he did more than ask people to church next Sunday – as if!!  Or hand out flyers and pass-it-on cards, he totally left comfort behind and travelled all over the Mediterranean preaching and starting churches. He was not just saying “I have A message” — he is saying “I have THE message.”  The message of the ages…  and … you in your small corner and I in mine ... we two are off on the road again! 

If I told you everything that is in our way you would think we have totally lost the plot! The thing is, we probably have. But Jesus is our Redeemer and He can take our spirit of stupid and do something amazing with it. All we need to do is be obedient. We are going because we too know we have been given the message of the ages and we want to give it away to everyone we meet. Our wonderful God is incredible, He turns up even when we have nothing to give. Actually, I should say – especially when we have nothing to give! He truly loves poverty- stricken people. Sometimes I wonder why we try so hard to look like we are coping, when God promises to be our strength. Moving on… 🙄

The above picture is just some of what we need to fit in our wonderfully elastic car. We have heaps of medical aids for me as well – not to mention some little things … like food and clothes! Every single time we go, hubby throws his hands in the air and says: “It is just not going to all fit in the car, I can’t fit it in.” This whole thing is becoming like a well-known play – the stuff always goes in. And afterwards we say things like:“I dunno how it went in, but it did. Just don’t sneeze OK?” Meanwhile the relief we feel when we off-load blankets, food, and bibles along the way is huge. Suddenly there is oodles more room… 

We once took our only slightly crazy dog on a trip with us … just once mind you … once was enough! Her presence added a degree of difficulty we were not equipped to handle. We are never doing that again. Instead we are giving her a holiday somewhere else safe. Anyway, hubby went around a particularly steep corner and a packet of chips and the lid of a container fell on her head.  She sat there for ages until we noticed she had a new hat, and then we figured out how far back that corner was! What a patient creature she is… I know I could definitely use some of her doggie patience.

As you already know hubby and I are big fans of love in action. Love in action facilitated me hearing the gospel. I was 27 years old. Years ago a dear older lady at a previous church used to come to my front door and give me the local parish newsletter every week. She didn’t have a car, and she walked all the way from her house to mine. I imagine I was one of many people she kept up with. 

I was highly suspicious of her kindness, and barely spoke to her when she appeared at my door, because I had 3 little kids who needed my attention. However, that lady just kept on coming … and when a crisis in my life occurred she was the person I phoned. I gave my life to Jesus on that day, all because she just kept on coming, week after week after week. We don’t always know what key will unlock someone else’s heart. But God’s love through her did not give up on me. She too was constrained by the love of God.

It is good to understand that loving God and others, starts with our obedience to what He has told us to do.“Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies [dedicating all of yourselves, set apart] as a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God, which is your rational (logical, intelligent) act of worship.” Romans 12:1. 

I have absolutely no idea what God could possibly want with my busted elderly body, not to mention dear hubby’s bad back! My theory is this – let’s all just live our lives presenting whatever we have to Him, following Him. Visiting our neighbours, or people in hospital or old people’s homes, shut-in mothers, plus genuinely caring for those people who work alongside us. We may never reach multitudes, but anybody can talk to one person! Let’s live this life, stuffing our cars full of blankets. ‘Cos love looks like something. Bye. 👋