accept

P 3165 Learning to be satisfied.

/ DVH

“I’m not telling you this because I’m in need, for I have learned to be satisfied in ANY circumstance. I know what it means to lack, and I know what it means to experience overwhelming abundance. For I’m trained in the secret of overcoming all things, whether in fullness or in hunger. And I find that the strength of Christ’s explosive power infuses me to conquer every difficulty.” Philippians 4:11-13 TPT.

Trouble can train us – if we will just choose to listen to Him and trust in Him. We cannot afford to waste our energy running about like headless chickens looking for an exit. May I suggest that we use our energy going after Jesus instead? He’s always the Answer! Let’s learn to recognise and accept the Lord’s correction and  discipline. That stuff isn’t always fun when it is happening, but it is sent to train us in righteousness, and peace, as well as leading us into a real, viable, lively fellowship with the Holy Spirit. His correction and discipline helps us sort out our motivations. People love to hear things from Him that they want to hear, but will we listen to what we don’t want to hear?

Today many human beings think correction and discipline are bad things – which is why we have decided that smacking children is a no-no! Unfortunately, now we are reaping the whirlwind …and so are the poor kids! I’m not talking about randomly whacking your kid simply because you had a bad day, and YOU are out of sorts. I am talking about the careful and thoughtful, considered hand-of-reason being applied to the seat of learning. Kids need to learn how to monitor themselves, under your loving supervision. And with some children, saying “stop” won’t do it! Life has penalties. If you pinch a car you go to jail. It is better to teach little Agnes or Angus how to restrain themselves, when they are small. However, I admit some do learn quicker than others!

Discipline when it is too strong, and it is done for the wrong reasons, can let the enemy in and have an adverse effect. Things like: “now you have ticked me off,” are not the right reason to whack your kid. That’s because at the bottom of that sort of discipline it isn’t about monitoring the kid, and leading them into making better choices. Instead, the reality is, you are trying to create a carefree, easier, happier environment for you! The point of discipline is to learn to monitor yourself – your own behaviour – with God’s help. So prayer needs to accompany discipline – pray with your child, teach them to repent. Model it in front of them. The bible is clear, discipline and correction are part of God’s love in our lives. They are His wisdom entering into our lives through our circumstances, lovingly exposing where the enemy of our souls can get at us. 

On that loving note, just to clarify another thing: God doesn’t make anyone sick. He does not and will not “send’ sickness to us to teach us something! However, He will take all that bad stuff and make it work together for our good, as we let Him do it! Bad things happen because satan is loose – he hates people. So if you blame yourself for illness, then you may have fallen right into satan’s cleverly laid trap. Our God loves to reason and interact with us in every aspect of our lives … He especially loves it when we talk with Him, personally. So we need to turn to His love and wisdom, and ask Him what this or that is all about, and always pray for healing! 

Whether we receive healing on the spot or not, is far less relevant than our ongoing attitude toward Him. We can’t afford to let a lack of healing stand in the way of real growth. Holiness has the smell of sacrifice on it. In the past when the Israelites wanted to restore their relationship with God, the Jewish people had to have a specific beast or bird killed, and then it was burnt — skin, feathers and all! If you have ever been to a tannery you will understand that it wasn’t the sweetest smelling BBQ in town! Let’s stop thinking that God only likes what WE like, otherwise we are shrinking Him down to our size — and that’s BAD.

If we choose to look at the Lord through the eyes of fear, we will find there is plenty of that to go around! In the Old Testament, there is the odd example of God smiting someone. But King Hezekiah once turned his face to a wall and prayed for deliverance from a fatal disease, and God heard his prayer and the king was given more time. Time to change his ways, perhaps? Let’s stop looking at prayer as a one-stop-shop and start looking at the Holy God we are talking to!! Maybe He has more than one thing going on at the time, and because we are mortal we simply don’t get it. 

I have learnt to be satisfied with praying about any situation, so I give it to the Lord, and then I leave it all with Him. This one action has created trust in me. Like I said: sometimes God is doing something else! After I have prayed, I walk away. And if I happen to get caught up in thoughts like: ‘what if’ or ‘maybe this or that,’ then I give everything back to Him and walk away again. What I am saying is this: ‘I trust you Lord to have the best answer and I am not going to mess around trying to fix something I can’t fix.’ If He tells me to repent of this or that, I don’t argue, I repent. If He wants me to apologise and make reparation, I do that.

He’s Almighty God and I believe He has the very best answers for me. I don’t always understand them …but my mind is like the size of a speck of dust in comparison to His infinite wisdom. When it comes to smarter than me – HE WINS! Let’s learn to be satisfied, and then release things, to Him. Then we can watch what He will do when we yield. We just might learn to be content, no matter what. Bye, 👋

P 2808 Love triumphs over everything.

/ DVH

The world we are living in today, has created a huge vacuum, by banning some things and not replacing them with better ones. Hubby and I were talking about this yesterday. There are so many rules about how you and I must interact with other people, with no thought to what we can do to replace the things we are told we must not do, except swallow the poison like it doesn’t matter.  It’s left a vacuum…

…so we can’t say this and we mustn’t say that. We dare not imply that someone else’s lifestyle is incorrect, we simply have to accept everything. These rules are pressed right up against our faces, every single day. They batter us through the news, and the TV. Plus there are images everywhere that you can’t UNSEE. And you must not comment on them either! 

These pagan, hedonistic attitudes are reinforced through our kindergartens, schools, and universities, as well as in the work force. We are told we must be tolerant, or we will be punished and penalised. We have to accept this thought and that idea, because we must be inclusive. Actually these thoughts are everything that true faith, by itself, can and will accomplish — but unfortunately now it’s law, not GRACE. Otherwise someone will sue us, or we will go to jail, and be shunned by society to boot! Fear of reprisal comes at us from every corner of the globe. So how can WE – the people whom the Son has made free, live this kind of life – when the-people-who-don’t-know-Jesus-yet demand that we obey things that would make normal Christians shudder?

Glad you asked that!! The bible teaches us to live this life, the only one we are going to get, loving others. That means our freedom lies within. We are told, in the book, by the King of all Kings and the Lord of all Lords that we need to pursue love. However, that does not mean we have to accept everything! So we cannot possibly go forward in this horrifying atmosphere of permissiveness – without His wisdom. We now need Jesus like He is our Air, He can no longer be an optional extra. We will need His guidance all the time. And yes, I know that some things are so repulsive to innocence it is hard to cope. But we need His eyes, His ears, His heart of love to guide us through, so we can continue to live and flourish in love.

I tell the Lord all the time: “I just plumb ran out of my kind of love, I definitely need Yours.” That may be simple but it is a great prayer and it works for me. He always helps me when I ask Him. My prayer is not fancy, but it is heart-felt, because I know I can’t do this stuff and live this way, without Him. I’m w-a-y to opinionated for my own good. Sigh. 

Back to my point today …God’s LOVE can fill any vacuum. He’s GOD He can do anything! Well, YAY! Today, we need to be so familiar with love, and so fluent in its language, that we are societally sweet, but pragmatically out of sync with this world’s ideas and ideals. Loving others does not mean we agree with their behaviour or ideals. Love is a higher law.  We don’t have to live this life down in the dirt staring at sin – we are to live a kingdom life, looking at Him.

Here’s an example of a conversation Jesus had when He met with Nicodemus. This man was a Pharisee. In reality he was in the religious rules camp. He was steeped in the law, because the law was part of his training. Yet Jesus did not dismiss him, or avoid him, the Lord met and talked with the man and gave him access to truth. 

John 3:1-8. “Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that You are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs You are doing if God were not with Him. Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at My saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

The Lord did not argue with this man’s theology, He simply replied with REALITY – the ACTUAL TRUTH. He was stating a fact. Jesus never ever separated our earthly life from spiritual reality  … like we sometimes do. Instead He spent His time teaching others that spiritual things can, and do actually govern earthly ones. He did not see mankind as fleshly people who need a spiritual reality – He sees us all as spiritual people who have LOST our spiritual reality!

When we live in love, for love’s own sake – we step into who we really are. What people do with their flesh may be utterly repulsive but it is not ALL they are. We don’t have to live inside this world’s vacuum, we live IN CHRIST. He is a spiritual reality that supersedes whatever happens to be in fashion currently.  Love will always triumph, it can take a bit longer, but it is permanent. Bye 👋

P 2774 It’s time we started …

/ DVH

… to hear His Voice in someone else’s voice. Someone prayed for this at church the other day and it impacted me. We need to find and see Jesus in each other. How? Well, to start with – He lives there! We said: “Come into my life Lord Jesus, and take over.” And He did. How we feel from day to day is irrelevant. Emotions are fickle they change with our circumstances.

However, sometimes what we are really saying is: “You can come into the lounge Lord. It’s nice and tidy in there, I cleaned that up the other day. But please don’t go into the bedroom, that’s a mess. And definitely stay away from the kitchen and the bathroom, You won’t like what You find in there!” A “Keep out” sign is a warning bell, clanging away trying to get our attention. It is not good to have keep out signs in our lives. It usually means something is badly amiss. Something we don’t want to fix or even pay attention to, because we like it, and we know full well … HE WON’T. It also contaminates our relationships with others.

I had keep out signs practically everywhere, when I first started to follow Him. Life had greatly shattered my trust in humanity. I was afraid I might lose something I cared about. Like my snarky attitudes that I had previously cultivated before I met Him, so I could protect myself. Did you know that keeping a bad attitude toward someone else is like SUPER GLUE? We have the power to stick them there, right in a place where we don’t like them! Read the book. We have the power to forgive people … or not!  A bad attitude is like wearing coloured glasses.

The Lord is far more patient with any of us than we will ever deserve. Praise God, Jesus came here as a human being, so He gets … PEOPLE. If you don’t believe me then read the way He relates to the disciples when they’d lost their brain. Or they didn’t want to change their minds because they couldn’t see anything wrong with their thinking! Those keep out signs stop US from changing too. Meanwhile it’s a wonder, at the beginning of my relationship with the Lord that He had somewhere, at all, to put a toe on. 

But after it took me awhile to realise my error, here’s what I did instead. I’ve pulled out all the keep out signs, because they limit God and I don’t want to limit the Answer! And instead I put up a “proceed with caution, please Lord” one. That sign is for my benefit, not His. He has more loving kindness than I will ever experience anywhere else, but I need to say it, and He listens to me so patiently. I love Him for that.

I think this is part of the problem with our fellowship within the church. Some of us have been so badly bruised by the very people we thought were perfect when we were growing up spiritually, that we put up keep out signs everywhere. On the chimney, on the lawn, in the window, by the front gate… you name it! Now we are just plain scared of other people’s faces and responses, so we live guarded lives. Lives peppered with plastic fruit. Other people could hurt us … BUT …we won’t tell them about it, because that would give them an advantage over us. No faith there.

Here’s a not-so-wonderful revelation — keeping His kids out, limits our growth. The Lord will not limit His right leg, His elbow or His kidneys by seeing them as separate to Him. We are all part of His body. We do whatever we do on His behalf. Jesus has owned us, and become engaged to us, by choice. And He will do everything He can, without violating anyone’s free will, to keep us safe with Him.

Accepting any difficult or nasty people at church is part of loving Him… it’s in the book. Actually it’s often in the part of the book, we don’t much like reading so we avoid it. But the Lord is so gracious, and spiritually attuned, that He can look after us and our overwhelming feelings of fear and doubt, and still not hurt someone else who scares the life out of us. Boy is that a skill I really want!

So, here’s the answer to the church-is-the-place-where-everybody-pretends-to-love-everybody problem. I look for Jesus in that other person. Sometimes  we may need the Lord to install a huge love filter.  My filter is in Colossians 3:14: “Together with these things, the most important part of your new life is to love each other. Love is what holds everything together in perfect unity.“Let the Holy Spirit do this whole relationship thing between each of us – He’s brilliant at it… At the same time we need to prayerfully insist that now, today, we want to accept and love other people. The real deal can take time to grow .. keep pressing on. 

We may have to throw out a whole heap of our own prejudices and smelly attitudes to get there – but embracing love helps us all grow beyond platitudes. Honesty is great, but please don’t tell the other poor sod that you’ve always hated them – that’s counterproductive. Seeing love through His eyes, means we develop spiritual sight, which goes right along with spiritual hearing. We need to turn off that snarky voice inside our head that comments about other people’s sincerity – and aim at love.

My last clue to solving the problem of loving the brethren is pray. Pray, pray, pray pray pray. Then do something nice, like ask them about themselves. You can get a whole lot of insight into someone else’s attitudes by simply listening, it’s a greatly underestimated skill. It is time we started to hear His voice within other people’s voices. The spirit of isolation leads to error. Bye. 👋