2 Corinthians 10:4

P3386 Unusual style of fighting.        

/ DVH

When Jesus’ disciple Peter’s anger flared up at some soldiers who had come armed to the teeth to take the Lord away — the Lord Himself said: “put your sword back in its place … for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” Matthew 26:52. Hatred can so easily explode into actions, and then we hurt others, and ourselves, in the process. We hurt our own hearts when we hate. We can’t afford to live any other way except for living in love. In love with God, and the people who drive us crazy.

We are the people who fight on our knees! Unfortunately, many of us cannot be trusted with a gun, because most of the time, we don’t know what spirit we are in! Jesus had already fought and won the above battle, in the garden of Gethsemane, on His knees — while His disciples were sleeping. Peter’s sword was just going to hurt someone, and it did! Meanwhile, what is Peter – the fisherman – doing with a sword? … Moving on …

We are not fighting the same kind of war that many other people fight, although what we have to say, is equally as explosive. Our war is spiritual. Because “the weapons of our warfare are not CARNAL but they are mighty because they pull down strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4. We can’t win if we continue to fight with the weapons from this world, because Jesus has already given us our appointed task. All we will do is kill off more people that our Lord loves. We are clearly told, by the Lord Jesus Himself, to “pray for our enemies” and “do good to those who despitefully use us.” 

Open hands in prayer, are far more effective than the clenched fist of war. If we are tempted to hate, then we must choose to bow our knee. And then we start praying for the people who are hurting, persecuting and despitefully using us. Pray for them like they are your own family!! Sometimes those people hurting you ARE your own family!

Pray for their salvation. Pray for redemption from sin. PRAY and then pray some more. We are not fighting that person in front of us, we are fighting the devil on his back. Those people who hate us believe in what they are doing because they’ve carefully been taught to hate. They don’t know what real love is. When an honest man meets Jesus, his first response is to bend his knee and say: ‘I didn’t know love like this existed.’ 

You and I have been appointed by Him to bring His love with us wherever we go. That happens when we choose to put down this world’s plans and ideas, and pick up the life Jesus has chosen for us. LOVE is the only antidote for hate, and love is the way to win. Even if we die … WE still WIN! Paul said that in Philippians 1:21. “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.” That is our banner. 

Oh, let’s be real here for a minute. How can we possibly say that being dead is better than living, when we have a mortgage, kids, extended family and obligations to others? Because we have been practising dying to self for years. That’s how. Now we live our lives making daily hard choices to die to our own desires – and then, at the moment of deep impact, we will have enough freedom to choose to follow the Holy Spirit, wherever He goes.

Let’s use the right weapons to fight. The bible says: Love conquers everything. Meanwhile, we can’t fight a spiritual war with tolerance  … because tolerance wears thin – and eventually it wears off – we need God’s supernatural love. Press in, beloved of God, and don’t stop until you get it! The people we think are our problem, are the ones God calls us to.

When we put on the whole armour of God we are not doing it to go to WAR, we are doing it to protect the faith that is in us. These weapons , these protections – this armour – has been given to us to protect us. It will stop us from being taken out of the fight. Our Father needs every single one of His kids standing in their place doing what He put us here to do – loving Him first, then others. In His eyes ALL of mankind is irreplaceable. 

We see a multitude of people – but Father God sees Amar, George, Hina, Amanda, Lev,  Malosi, Mary, Rufus, Jai, Vasilisa, Jessica, Patrick, Joachim, Freya, Zyar, Ikem and Leah! Our Heavenly Father is such an incredibly good, good Father. He sees each one of us as if we were the only one. We’ve been told to “put on the whole armour of God.” It will protect us from the fiery darts of the enemy so we can stand in the middle of the war raging all around us. Just like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, stood in a fiery furnace and Jesus joined them there. He’ll join us in prayer for our enemy’s souls too.

Jesus came here to show people just like you and I, that there is another way to live this life, one day at a time, one step at a time. He did not pick a fight with anyone. These battles need to be stopped in our prayer closets. Then we can see our TRUE purpose, because we’ve chosen to put aside this world’s ideas of what a perfect life should look like.  

In the meantime, we can have utter confidence, because we know how this fight ends. We win! So we will continue to participate in unusual fighting with interesting weapons. Prayer, grace, kindness, forgiveness, love, joy, peace etc., these things are our weapons. We choose to turn the other cheek, and walk the extra mile, and we give some demanding guy our tunic when he asks for our coat! Bye, 👋. 

P 3104 Cultivate living faith.

/ DVH

“For although we live in the natural realm, we don’t wage a military campaign employing human weapons, using manipulation to achieve our aims. Instead, our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide. We can demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 TPT.

I don’t have to think, or negotiate my way around your little peculiar habits or quirks or sins. I have the Holy Spirit as my Counsellor, and He made us both. He knows how to get through to you and I when we  shut down and we can’t hear anyone, anymore, because we are hiding. We can hum and haw about this and that, and obfuscate about why we did whatever it was – He knows the reality. We are so blessed, we have a secret weapon that cuts through everyone’s angst. He promises to show us how to reach others with His love and understanding. The Holy Spirit is our secret weapon!!

These verses are not about any on of us winning anything—instead we have chosen the Lord Himself to be victorious in all things. If we use the power of choice to get snarky and nasty and pay out on someone else, satan is the only being that will win. Plus he will postpone change in our hearts, in favour of petty squabbles and life-long longings for revenge. The way to be transformed is through God’s LOVE shed abroad, not just explanations! Or ignoring stuff and hoping it will go away. If you have sewerage bubbling up in your toilet, putting the lid on the top is a temporary solution. CALL A PLUMBER! 

Here’s some wisdom in its purest form … we can’t fix each other … we are ALL broken!“ ALL have sinned!” BUT! We know the Manufacturer and if we have faults and/or flaws, HE KNOWS HOW TO FIX THEM. Praise Him!! 🙌 

The Holy Spirit does these things in the quietest, most extraordinary way, and in our difficulties, nobody involved has a clue that at the same time, He is changing everyone who says ‘yes.’ Personally, I often figure it all out much later! Transformation happens when someone obeys Him – I love the way He does things. Retrospectively, we can see what was His doing, it was something He initiated that diffused the situation. However, the Holy Spirit will not blast His way in—instead He gives us understanding about Himself, ourselves and each other and a choice.

God is for us. We say that a lot, but sometimes I wonder if we know that when stuff happens. If we live most of  our lives, doing day to day things, unaware of Him – we will miss His miracles. When something unexpected and difficult happens, we can often drop into head knowledge and react in the flesh. I’ve found the very best thing to do is to pray that what we already know in our heads, will drop down into our hearts-–where it will do everyone good. Here’s a little test to see the difference between what you have carefully committed to memory and remembered – and what you know inside your heart. 

Are you doing it? Are you living your life differently because God Himself showed you a new way to do what you have always done? Has He helped you change your response to hard situations and difficult people, plus the way you see the Lord, yourself, and others? Otherwise all we will have is theories—or other people’s spiritual ideas. Those things that we desperately paste on the outside of ourselves hoping somehow that will do. Christianity is a personal, intimate experience with Almighty God and His Ways.

We are always going to experience some tension between knowing what He wants us to do, and our flesh. That is the place where what we want goes to the cross and dies. We always have a choice to die to self. Jesus Himself had a choice. He could have refused the cross. It was not inevitable that He died for us, it was His choice! “Not My will but Thine.”Jesus Himself set the example for us, He showed us that the seemingly impossible can be possible, with God Himself helping us.

If we are not aware of our spirituality, we can look at our lives as though we are all meant to be bright shining stars, and it is our attractiveness – spiritually, physically and mentally, that is meant to lead others to the Lord. But the truth is—one of our greatest achievements ever, might be learning to love someone who has treated us despicably! Yeah! I bet that is not written up in someone’s Facebook hall of fame! We must never ever forget the incredible POWER contained within redemption! When we choose redemption, instead of revenge God’s power of Grace and Mercy is released.

A living faith means we will put what the Lord Himself wants, first. Jesus shed blood through His pores because the pain of what He was asked to do, by His OWN FATHER, was so incredibly great and weighty on HIm. Yet His disciples slept through the whole thing! The truth is sometimes we would rather live this life asleep in the light, than face the pain it takes to put down our old self, and let Him help us put on the new one. Bye 👋

P 3070 The person who knows they cannot lose is not afraid to die.

/ DVH

We need to stop thinking that using our faith only means moving mountains, healing the sick, raising the dead, or talking to someone else about Jesus. Of course those things matter. But actually, controlling my temper also takes faith. I need faith Jesus’ ability to help me close my mouth and quieten my heart! My internal default position needs to learn from Him how to live in love. Otherwise my faith will fade away and I will wonder why it is weak. Romans, Galatians and Hebrews all say: “The just shall LIVE by faith.”

As I said yesterday, we learn faith incrementally. What I mean by that is, faith grows, it hardly ever just falls on you! When it falls on you it is the gift that 1 Corinthians 12:9 talks about. But we have been given spiritual equipment and we must use it daily. And at the same time, we are learning to walk in faith and die to self. You may have a job, or a family, but you are permanently His kid, His representative in this world. This new life Jesus died to give us, takes dedication and time. We actually begin by taking daily faith steps, so that if we need to fight Goliath we will run at him!

Chasing off devils is great, do it – as He leads you. But allowing His Grace to flow through each one of us in these chaotic, difficult times, is about daily walking with Him. Very few people receive the gift of faith, it simply rises up within them. Most of us need the fruit of self-control far more than we realise. BTW, self-control is a fruit, not a discipline. Jesus wants to grow His kind of fruit. David ran at Goliath. That guy was huge, but David’s faith was bigger! He had already experienced what God could do through his life. Later on he was able to maintain a good attitude toward Saul, because he kept continually building the faith he already had, by his daily choices.

We are growing fruit at the same time as we learn to use the gifts. Otherwise we will lurch along like Frankenstein – in the Spirit one minute, and in the flesh the next.  All Frankenstein had was dead flesh, and electrical input! But we have the glorious Holy Spirit Who made us in our mother’s womb!! He was Jesus’ Personal Helper and the Lord sent Him back to help us. The Holy Spirit knows our weaknesses and flaws, and He wants to help us walk us through this life filled with His power and grace for others. 

Over to God’s equipment in Ephesians 6:10-19. 

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.  In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests …”

We usually start out talking about God’s armour by naming the bits. Great! Do it. But Paul’s actual exhortation begins with verse 10!“BE STRONG IN THE LORD AND IN HIS MIGHTY POWER.” Can you see how much that verse changes every other verse in this scripture? Paul goes on to explain why it is essential to begin with verse 10 … we are going to come up against demonic authorities and they have power and authority in this world etc. We train for the bigger fights by dealing with our own flaws and foibles – the ungodly stuff that is holding us back. That happens one faith step at a time. It is just plain stupid to fight with the guy who has your back in the battle!

This life is not a cake walk. It is an eternal struggle between the forces that control this world and the Kingdom of God. We all know Who won …but wisdom exhorts us to be prepared for the battle. All we need to do is stand our ground, and the enemy will fall to Jesus’ power. This is why we need to be daily concentrating on how to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. We can learn to overcome the Goliaths that occur, by participating in our day to day battles and dealing with our own flesh.

The verses that follow verse 10 explain HOW! Know God’s truth – inside out, upside down, backwards and frontwards. Read it, sing it, say it, study it, refer to it, obey it, and defer to it. God’s sovereign act of Grace is our only righteousness. Always be prepared to be the one who ushers in peace. This means we are at peace with God and our fellow man on the inside of our hearts. “Owe no man anything but LOVE.” And always keep the cross ever-present in our minds and heart. The cross is our sign of ultimate victory!

Our faith needs to be strong – we have to know that no matter how things look – God has not run off and left us at the mercy of some evil thing or other. Bad things happen, even to God’s kids:  but the person who knows he cannot lose is not afraid to die. This is why we give our faith a daily work out. So when temptation, or a challenge comes, we will have Godly skills, stamina and strength. Bye 🗡️. 

P 3059 Up close and personal!

/ DVH

“Your hand-to-hand combat is not with human beings, but with the highest principalities and authorities operating in rebellion under the heavenly realms. For they are a powerful class of demon-gods and evil spirits that hold this dark world in bondage.” Ephesians 6:12 TPT. 

Ignoring our enemy may well be one of Christianity’s biggest mistakes so far. But I totally believe in the Lord’s great all-encompassing goodness. I know He is raising up a generation of believers who will face all of our enemies, unashamed, and fearless. The way we can enter this brave band of brothers, is to practice fighting the good fight in our own little lives, every single day. Up close and personal! I pray all the time for His Grace to be abundant upon me because I’ve lived long enough to know that I need it!

Lately it seems the Lord is stretching my patience, while He is perfecting me and transforming me …Sigh. So there is a big l-o-n-g space between whatever bad event just happened in my life – to finally being able to see the Lord’s outcome. I will always need a big dollop of His hope daily to cope. Here’s a freebie …put your hope in Jesus, not in the Answer. Sometimes we don’t actually know what is good for us. My faith can be feeble and self-serving, and without His help, impatience will jump up and down on the inside of me – demanding my attention.

I battle with a sense of overall tiredness daily. It’s the kind of tiredness that makes you want to sleep for a week and hope that everything will be fixed when you wake up! I sort of understand the whole deal with the Israelites when they left Egypt and wandered around in the wilderness. I don’t like to live my life feeling uncomfortable either! The solution is easy – instead of waiting for my circumstances to change I need to give the whole thing to Jesus and walk away, leaving it with Him. And refuse to pick it up again..

God is good ALL the time. I simply need to cultivate my spiritual eyes and ears and make what He wants my priority. The problem is not with Him. It’s me!! There are days when I realise there is much more of the world inside me than I’ve comprehended so far. You know some days I also understand the Israelites longing for the leeks and garlic of Egypt, even when Manna fell out of the sky every day. It seems to me that there’s not that many ways you can cook Manna over an open fire! Boiled? Scrambled? toasted? I have a limited diet but manna porridge every day for forty years seems hard to bear. That problem is not with what I am eating – it is with what I am thinking!

The bible says in Galatians 2:20:“I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” I love the bible so much,.it shows me clearly there is no way forward without sticking to, leaning on, and totally surrendering to Jesus. ‘By faith’ means He is now my reference point, not the awful circumstances, or my feelings, but Jesus.

I love the bit in Galatians that says: “in the body.” My ability to conquer what’s going on in my head is already inside me – it came in when He came in! Salvation is not just something that happens only once. I am saved from all kinds of sin every single blooming minute of every day! Especially when icky thoughts float through my educated-idiot-box if I am irritable. That thing says stuff inside my head to the person who is annoying me: “If I give in to you, I am letting you win and there is no way you should win … because I don’t trust you!” Look at me, thoughts of reconciliation flowing about like a river! Hah! Fighting with YOU will not help ME overcome!!

That’s what this verse from Ephesians 6:12 is about. It is reminding us …“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4. The war we fight daily, sometimes minute by minute, has nothing whatsoever to do with guns, spears, swords, or nuclear weapons – but it has everything to do with my own private thoughts … by the time that junk comes out of my mouth, I’m sunk!

If I let irritation with you pull up a chair in my private thoughts … then … all by myself, I can personally conjure up why you said what you said, and what you meant by it!   You did get the whole “conjure up” vibe right? I mean that junk floating about is not valid. It shows me that somebody else has been whispering to me:  “They said that because of this – and they mean this because of that!” That’s like one step away from necromancy and that stuff is bad news according to the bible. Saul lost his kingdom and his life to that sort of Chinese whispers because God did not answer the man according to his timetable. 

All of this fight is internal, and most definitely up close and personal! However, yielding my will to His, when I am in the middle of it, changes everything. When I choose to daily learn to give up quickly, and lay my life down for His sake, not yours …then He can make whatever He wants to make, out of it – and it is always good! Bye 🤗 

P 2825 We are weapons that are forged in the fires of adversity …

/ DVH

Many Christians like to think that we are doing our best when we just meander along, picking up this new thought and putting down that old one — hopefully teaching our own kids … but probably not very worried about other people. We pray, and then we secretly blame God if He doesn’t send us revival! Be your own revival. To be a Christian is to be a true revolutionary! These passionate individuals see hatred as an opportunity to love others!  Meanwhile. loving and caring for those that hate you, is contrary to what humans want to do – of course it’s radical! 

In most countries today there are not many practising Christians. And by practising, I don’t mean going to church week by week. I think we’ve been reduced to a remnant – how else can we explain the excesses of the West in the face of the total deprivation everywhere else?! We’ve learnt over years of inactivity to pay lip-service to things that need our total devotion. When Jesus said: “Follow Me” – He wasn’t talking about a parade!  

Christianity is not designed to be a religion. Jesus is the way we live and breathe and learn to love others – even the ones that wish we were dead. We cannot call ourselves Christians, if we have not learnt to OVERCOME — things like our own penchant for sin, our greed for the things of this world, as well as our own personal trials and tribulations. We must learn to handle bad times the same way as good ones looking to Jesus Who is the Author and Finisher of our faith.

It seems to be that what we believe has not affected the entirety of our lives. Instead we plaster over the things that need to be purged, including those personal attitudes that Christ Himself preached against. Sadly, when we water down what we believe for our own benefit and convenience, we are watering down the power of God at the same time! We need to remember, we are either on fire, or the fire is slowly dying, or it has gone out! A tiny bit of Christianity that makes us feel safe will not do, we must be completely immersed in the things of God. And what we say has to be exhibited by our lifestyles. His love always becomes incredibly real in the fire of adversity.

We’ve been reborn to take what this world thinks, and stand it on its head. We don’t just saunter along smiling at everybody, waving cheerfully, holding a banner for Jesus and putting up cute pictures of scriptures over our sink! What we believe needs to be lived out – day by day by day. We are His living bibles, to be read by everyone else around us, we are not just nice polite people! Instead, Christians live real lives filled with real problems, and a lot of those problems are totally insurmountable without God’s help … so we are learning how to utterly RELY upon Him.

Our faith is nothing without the power and Presence of God. All we have to offer others presently, is pie in the sky when they die. God cares so much more about all of His kids, than the trite things we present to others. He is not an absent God Who benignly, and absent-mindedly smiles down on His sometimes AWOL, naughty children. That is insulting to the Holy Spirit, Who is ever-present. He longs to be our ever-present help in time of need, not the spare tyre on the back of yet another brand new vehicle! Instead of working ourselves up into a lather trying to demonstrate His power – we need to daily die to self and demonstrate HIS LOVE instead.

I think the reason people aren’t coming to Jesus is because our ideas of witnessing have made Him seem weak. We present Him as a baby, or God on a cross unable to come down. Or even SomeOne Who can be contained by a church building!  WE ARE HIS ALTAR – our hearts are His home. Our contribution to this world is that we know the God of all Hope! We need to talk about Who He is. He’s the Almighty, ever-present, always holy, always with us, Father. The God Who knows everything about each one us. Who freely gave us His own Son to pay for humanity’s wilful sinfulness.

We must not be afraid when the fire around us, and in us, heats up, and life becomes unbearable. That’s when the truly great weapons of war are forged … IN THE HEAT OF THE FIRE. He promised to be with us when we walk through the flames. (Isaiah) The biggest enemy we face, is not the other guy – it’s us – as we lead lukewarm lives at the cost of someone else coming to know Christ. God’s Love cries out daily to be demonstrated.“But God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8. 

It’s time to do more than idly talking about Him when the subject comes up. It’s time we showed our enemies His love, like they are our best friends. We need to stop using prayer for release or an escape vehicle, and pray for the Grace and courage to walk through the flames – untouched. ‘We are weapons of His warfare, and those weapons are not carnal but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.’ 2 Corinthians 10:4. People are dying every single day and they have no knowledge that this life is not all there is. 

We have to become His swords, forged in the fires of adversity, so we can cut off other people’s chains and set them free, like Jesus did. Bye.🔥