Action

P 2771 The kingdom of God.

/ DVH

In Isaiah 55:8-9 the Lord said: “My plans aren’t your plans, nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My plans than your plans.” That kind of clinches it eh? Because it can’t get any plainer than that! We have not got a clue how God operates, and without the Holy Spirit’s help we never will … He is far too complex for us to understand. Aren’t we blessed that He reaches down to us, and shares how He wants us to participate? The Lord has plans for everyone’s good – not just mine. His plan is to save the world … one person at a time … and He wants to use us to do it.

Sadly, at least half of Christianity, at this moment in time, are not even trying to participate in His plans. We pray for His kingdom to come, and then we go out into the world and try to further our own kingdom instead! It is impossible for someone to live in two kingdoms. We are either living for His, or living for ours. And the sad fact is this – we postpone participation in His kingdom, in favour of organising our own. BTW, age does not factor in this reality, Moses was 80 when he started living the life God planned for Him. 

It seems like Almighty God is looking for “Onward Christian soldiers” but most of us want: “The Happy Song.” So, what do we do with the fact that we seem to like “The Happy Song” better? Here’s what I think — I think we can have the Happy Song AND Onward Christian soldiers, when we have learnt to stop allowing this world be the source of our happiness. And we make Jesus, together with obedience, our source of inspiration and action, instead. How do people know I am an Aussie? When I open my mouth! Kingdom people have a different focus in their conversations.

The bible says in Matthew 6:33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” Seek His kingdom first. That’s not hard to understand! There are apparently 46 scriptures that point out a facet of what God’s kingdom is like. Obviously I can’t list them here, but looking those verses up is worthwhile. If we are going to aim at something it will help us to know what it looks like! We are told to seek His Kingdom first, after that comes the righteousness that only Christ’s death and resurrection can give us. And after that we use our faith and believe what His book says … and …we step out using our faith. Participation in that process means we will get our needs met. 

Most of the time, I have observed when we pray, we feature our own needs. That’s backward. Start with the Kingdom. Seek the kingdom first. Pray like this: ‘Your kingdom come in me,’ OR… ‘I‘present my body as a living sacrifice.’ OR …’Your will, Your way, Lord.’ When we start with His kingdom, a whole lot of unnecessary stuff falls off instantly. It means we’ve put down our little list of needs and wants, and started to focus on Him and what He wants. We need to remember Christ’s position before His Father is now our position. So we live this life, the only one we have, like His kingdom is more important than ours … because it is. Our needs are temporal, His kingdom is eternal.

Here are a few examples of what His kingdom looks like in action: a/ righteousness, peace and joy. We can have these 3 things in the here and now, because they are part of living our new life IN Christ. b/ Being spiritually helpless and ignorant doesn’t cancel His kingdom – it gives us access to it. c/ His kingdom is activated by faith, not knowledge or wealth. d/ It’s a treasure and it’s often hidden. e/ The kingdom of God starts out small but then it grows. f/ It blossoms in us as we embrace it. g/ In His kingdom HE is the ruler. h/ This kingdom is not just a place per se, like heaven! His kingdom comes in a ‘people’ wrapping. You and I, we are kingdom carriers. i/ Final one for me, the kingdom of God is a treasure – it must be sought, dug for, paid for by surrendering every bit of our lives to the King.

Remember, His kingdom is now within us but it needs to be released through us by our obedience to His word. The Holy Spirit is our Helper, He will teach us which way we should go, and how to serve the King. So if we go to school, or work, or to the shops, etc. He goes there with us.  We carry the kingdom of God – what a privilege! Jesus wants to be wherever we are, because He loves us and…He wants to reach the people all around us.. Seeking His kingdom is like seeking the King – the rewards are out of this world. They are priceless. Bye. 👑

P 2770 God has a plan.

/ DVH

If you have been a Christian for a while you may have bumped into Jeremiah. Jeremiah is, in my mind, one of our great faith pioneers. He kept his faith strong even when his life was awful. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11. But when you look at Jeremiah’s life, it was a far cry from being filled with great plans and fab future! I want to comment on this particular verse today, because I believe it has been misused on occasion, to imply that our God is more like a genie, than our omnipotent, omnipresent, always wise, sovereign God and glorious Father – Who made heaven and earth!

Let’s just look carefully at what this verse says: God totally declares that He has plans for each one of us. We have not been left here, in our often difficult circumstances, all alone. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to help us with every second, of every minute of every day. We can now walk with Him like Christ did, that’s the plan! In order to walk with the Holy Spirit – emphasis on the word ‘holy’  … our lives need to change. Our focus has to come off our own comfort, and be firmly planted into whatever the Lord wants for us.

This verse says that His plans are about giving us hope. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus Christ is our ever-present hope, and this scripture is a prophetic statement about Christ! It is not a promise that this life will never ever be bad again. The hope in our future is Christ Himself. Jeremiah did not live an easy life. His whole nation went into captivity. However, our God has incredible plans and if we ask Him, He may even let us in on them! He has promised He will listen when we pray, and answer us. But we may not understand His answer right away!

We need to consistently remember that Father God will never ever mislead us, quite often we simply can’t see beyond the end of our noses and our need to control everything and make it peachy! However, our future always lies with the Lord. It is very important that we understand that – the scripture above is about security IN God. You and I have eternity ahead of us, so we have an ever expanding future!  Heaven is real and we will go there. I think our God is incredible – He’s planning to spend eternity with all of us! Imagine that!

Our Heavenly Father, has already provided everything we will ever need IN Christ. Sadly we can spend our short lives looking for monetary or physical gain, and we do live this life celebrating the reality that eternity is ours, now and forever … and LIVE that way. Unfortunately we often want ease, now. It matters where our hope is, because ours is always in Christ. …Our hope is not in some scripture that I picked up, or one I decided suited my problem, my hope is in Christ. Christ is God’s demonstrated goodness.

In my opinion, Jeremiah, makes a very interesting example of God’s input into one man’s life. He remained courageous and loyal to his calling despite his difficulties. He faithfully told the Israelites the bad news about their future, over and over again. Sometimes … lucky him!…. he also got to physically demonstrate it too! He was beaten and ridiculed simply because he spoke out God’s truth. The people who follow Jesus Christ do not always have easy carefree lives. However, He will ALWAYS help us, so our faith is in His Character. These things flow out of intimacy. And intimacy is about God always being with us, so we live by faith – because that is the reality.

We must stop thinking that serving God means we will remain trouble free! Our wonderful Father is doing more than one thing at a time. He is answering our prayers for transformation, preparing us for eternity, and restoring and healing relationships, here and now. Jeremiah was carted off from his homeland along with everyone else, despite the fact that he was busy being obedient … doing and saying what God said!  He continually prophesied bad things were coming, not good ones, and sadly the Jews didn’t like it, or him. And he also pointed out that there is a great difference between saying something – even sincerely believing it, and… doing it. Belief must turn into action.

Personally, I think the Old Testament brings a much needed balance into the church-at-large’s current theory of: “let’s all have a jolly old party down here, because SomeBody else paid the bill!”  We cannot choose hedonism and indulgence and expect everything to be AOK with the Lord. What part of ‘take up your cross and follow Me,’ don’t we get? We serve Him – He doesn’t serve us. He proved His love for all mankind when He gave us His Only Son. Our choices from day to day matter, because Father God does not wink at our sins, they were far too costly for His Son. The very least we can do is acknowledge them, and live this life, here and now, differently.

He has a plan to give us a hope and a future. Our future is with Him, today, tomorrow, and forever, and His plan has already given us hope in Christ and all He did. Let’s stick with HIS PLAN and leave behind the idea of some sort of a trouble-free cushy life. Bye. 👋

P 2729 Jesus believes in us … isn’t He wonderful?

/ 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.”AMEN!!! Philippians 1:9-10 TPT.

I think that there are places in God that Christians have yet to discover, let alone explore. We have been prevented from even seeing them, or comprehending them, by our own lack of devotion to walking in grace and love toward each other as well as the rest of the people on this planet. It is an easy thing to dismiss walking this way as something that is too hard, or unattainable for ordinary people. By believing that, we are hobbling our own spiritual lives, because we are not actively pursuing love toward Him, and others. We need to let this thought spur us into action. Otherwise we are settling for the appearance of grace and love, instead of pressing on into the real deal. The real deal is the only thing that will change this world.

And if you’re wondering why I felt bold enough to write that first paragraph it’s because at this point in our history – it seems to me that the world around us is changing US, more than we are influencing them. And that is a tragedy. The people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet living around us, should know that we have chosen to love Jesus. Today I doubt most people know what any of us believe. We’ve lost our singularity of purpose because we are presenting so many differing faces to the world.

At the same time, I wonder if we have applied the dubious ointment of compromise much too liberally, everywhere we go. I don’t see Jesus Christ talking about compromise at all in the book. It never seemed to come up! I think we are missing the mark, because we have voluntarily become so bland and invisible, our salt has lost its savour. Instead we are applying this world’s methods of dealing with difficult things.

In rare circumstances someone does stand up and object to this, or they might speak out about that. However, the Bible clearly says they will know we are Christians by our love for one another, not by our protests. Our primary question and quest today, should be – how do we love the people around us the way He would? People are leaving this life daily, falling by the millions off the cliff of death. They follow one another simply because they don’t know there is another way to live and they think they can’t avoid the inevitable. Nobody has told them that underneath us ALL are the Everlasting Arms! How can they know if nobody tells them …??

Our commitment to Christ means we are to be committed to Him, and His mission, as much as He is to us. We must remember that He died for what He believed.Thank God Jesus made it past the Garden of Gethsemane and went on to face the cross and conquer it! Let’s not make any bones about the reality – it looked like He lost but He WON. He smashed it!  … Eternally! Sometimes our lives could look like His did  – full of sacrifice and pain – but Galatians 6:9-10 it says: “So let’s not allow ourselves to get fatigued doing good. At the right time we will harvest a good crop if we don’t give up, or quit. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of ALL,, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.”

The church today, has inadvertently become all talk, and sadly, not much action!  I think the main reason this situation exists is because each one of us leaves the work of the ministry to a precious few — instead of ALL of us devoting our lives to the cause of Christ. That’s why we were saved, to lend a hand to the person next to us, who is probably  about to fall off that cliff. The thing is, we’ve been lied to, our enemy has whispered to us that ‘we can never change, it’s all too hard, it will be alright. God won’t mind, He understands we are weak  … and busy’ — and we believed him! Like Paul said better than I ever can – let’s not let Jesus have died for nothing! (Galatians 2:21.)

Jesus never intended for following Him and learning His Ways to be the only thing His disciples ever did.  Listen to His first words to the very first two disciples: “As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. Come, follow Me,” Jesus said, “and I will send you out to fish for people.” At once they left their nets and followed Him.” Matthew 4:18-20. Can you see it? Right after they were called to follow, they were informed of their mission. Their mission was not just to follow – it was to lovingly reach out to others. Here’s a red hot tip folks – the mission hasn’t changed.

Sadly some people get saved at the altar, but they don’t make it past sitting back down on their seat again. Please … go out the door and bring others in. Talk to them, tell them what you know about God and His Love for us. We don’t need fancy illustrations or words, we just need to tell them what we know for ourselves, what happened to us. By all means pray, but then put your feet into your prayers. Jesus believes in us, He trusted His message into our hands and that’s what grace and love looks like. Bye 👋

P 2658 The possibilities are endless.

/ DVH

Our ever-present, ongoing motivation, needs to come from an active desire to please God. The body of Christ simply must understand this truth, because that means we will be moved beyond comprehension into action. Acting on what we believe helps our experiences change. We get a HIS-story with Almighty God! And that transforms the way we think. Untested theories will just continue to rattle about in our brain box! Talking about stuff is not the same as doing it. At the same time the Lord can do trillions, if not gazillions of things, all at the same time. Think about that! What happens to us most of the time is this … we let our immediate need overtake His input – and miss opportunities.. 

As we all know, many people ran to the shops during Covid because they didn’t want to run out of toilet paper! Hubby confided in me that it took all his effort to simply buy only what we needed during that time. He was stretching his faith that God would provide for us. It’s the little things that raise our awareness of His Presence in our lives. Even now, a lot of the medicines I take have disappeared from most pharmacies in our area, and we have had to go all over our city to find them. Hilariously, this means we have met a whole lot of people we never would have met, simply because of that shortage! God can do more than one thing at a time. He can open doors I’ve never even thought about!

We need to stop viewing inconveniences as a nuisance sent to put us off our game, and start to see them as possibilities! The Lord may be giving us an opportunity to speak to someone new, someone we wouldn’t have met any other way. This year we’ve had all sorts of important appliances in our house suddenly fall over dead on us. We really needed them, so at the time it was a huge inconvenience. Sometimes it even cost us a lot of money we didn’t have – but at the same time, in ways that continue to amaze us – He supplied our needs. Plus He gave us opportunities to talk with people that we would never have met. If He knows that you will ‘STOP for the one in front of you’ – you will be amazed at where that leads you!

At the same time, because of our disabilities, lately our activities have been greatly restricted, so God brought people to us instead! Many Christians pray to see miracles, when there are opportunities for the miraculous all around us. If something happens to your washing machine, it’s normal to pray that God will fix it, we have done that many, MANY times, but please understand … if that stupid thing stays broken … He’s doing something else.  He can do more than one thing at a time. There is no such thing as the secular bit of our lives, as well as the Holy … we gave our lives to Him, IT’S ALL HOLY NOW.

Remember Philip? Philip was doing something else, and God said, “Go and stand on that road”, and along came a chariot with a spiritually hungry man inside. We know this important man was hungry, because he was trying to read the book of Isaiah all by himself! So here comes Philip minding his own business and God says: “Go and stand beside this road and WAIT.”

We can stand on the side of any road we choose, but what happened to Philip won’t happen to us, unless we are listening to the Lord and He sends us! Acts 8:26-29: “Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Go south to the road—the desert road—that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”  So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasury of the Kandake (which means “queen of the Ethiopians”). This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the Book of Isaiah the prophet. The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.”

What if nothing happens when we obey? You’ll feel like an idiot, but you’ll live through it – I have!  I think the Lord is tapping His big microphone – He is saying: “Testing testing 1,2,3…”  Does it really matter if nothing happens? Right now we are daily learning to obey by stretching our faith. Our God can do more than one thing at a time. We need to learn to live our every day lives prepared to be interrupted from our train of thought. Some things are much more important than what often preoccupies us.. 

Here is another biblical example of an interruption with a purpose: Jesus was going with a desperate father to pray for a little girl who was very ill. But an equally desperate woman who had also been ill for many years pressed through the crowd and touched His robe. (Read Mark 5:21-43.) There was a really good excuse not to stop, as that little girl was so sick she eventually died! However, the Lord was arrested by the lady’s faith reaching out. He saw her….I mean He REALLY saw her. We need to learn that interruptions can be possibilities.

In your neighbourhood, that old lady in the next flat, who always wants you to stop and talk, may need His comfort through you. Yes, she’s boring and repetitive, yes she takes up your time – but doesn’t she deserve her chance to know Christ loves her? Hubby and I have seen Him reorder our time for us, over and over again. Our God can change and teach us, plus bless someone else, plus transform our hearts and theirs – all at the same time. The possibilities are endless. 👋 “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lays down his life…” John 15:13 KJV

P 2624 Take positive action.

/ DVH

“Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him.” (CS Lewis.)

God said that like this, in Colossians 3:2-10: “Set your minds on things that are above …(!!!That’s where the real action is!) “… not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ Who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.

In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator….”

… “  (12-14) “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

So here’s my question — WHO gets all this nifty, but really nitty, gritty, hard stuff? We do! You. Me. US! This means I can’t sit about on my hands praying fervently that the Lord will change me … while I keep on doing the stuff the bible says DON’T DO! This is a really good time to remember that the Lord put Jonah in a whale (!!) to get him back on track. So if you wanna be rebellious, then you’d better stay away from SeaWorld!

Seriously, this stuff is a no-brainer. We need to take what Jesus said and make it our great AIM to leave the ugly stuff that will tangle us up and make us fall over, behind us. If you are a fighting person who gets bad tempered at the drop of a hat, then whack your hand over your mouth and vacate the premises. And don’t come back until the urge has left you! Our mouths get us in so much trouble – sadly, I have learnt this truth the hard way. What we say, or sometimes refuse to say … is responsible for so many bad things. If we choose to abuse someone else it will escalate – and unless you are talking to a door, then that other person will retaliate!

No-one wins in an argument. Even if you think you’ve won you’ve lost! When we bad mouth or abuse someone else, we are deliberately walking away from the Lord and empowering the Old Self. Jesus won’t interfere, He wants us to take responsibility for our own behaviour. Honestly, I don’t care what they said — what am I going to do about it? We must stop expecting the Lord to supernaturally intervene, and work on changing our own hearts. HE WILL HELP US but He will not do it for us! Nothing else matters but being with Him.  So put away the things that are going to drag us away from loving Him, worshipping Him, following Him. We cannot serve two Masters. Jesus said that in Matthew 6:24. 

For those of you who are related or married to somebody who loves to pick fights, or someone who gets irritable easily … stop blaming them, and quit engaging with the argument. I don’t care how wrong they are – what is the kingdom of God worth to you? Sadly, for some people it is worth less than their own opinion. We want all the power in the world so we can move mountains, but we cannot deal with the mountains of disapproval, criticism and lust in our own lives? Good luck moving that other mountain Jesus spoke about, if you can’t control YOU.

Start speaking love and approval to the other person. It is extremely hard to argue with someone else who keeps telling you how terrific you are, how valuable you are. It is not lying – that person is valuable to God! When we are angry with someone, we rehearse their faults – why not rehearse their good points?! Life is not a competition, it is not about who wins or loses. It is about life and death. Yours, theirs and the people around us. We’ve been put here to shine His light into a dark place —- not to increase the darkness! Lastly, revenge belongs to the Lord, so do yourself a favour and don’t get in His Way.

Jesus said this verse nobody likes, remember? (Matthew 5:29)“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for. thee that one of thy members should perish, and. not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Imagine what we would all LOOK LIKE if we took that verse seriously! 😱 We need to choose to participate in positive actions with His help. Lastly, “Love your enemies …” — because at the very least you will drive them crazy!

Bye. 👋

P 2609 Here’s the gem-finder.

/ DVH

It occurred to me this morning that in our efforts to be transformed to be like Jesus, we may have forgotten the biggest, and most important tool in our spiritual boxes. The bible – our gem-finder. We can’t ever afford to stop reading the bible, because this incredible book will diagnose all our blessings, mistakes, as well as errors in our thinking. Not to mention the times when some bits will leap out at us from the page and start to flow into a theme. My life is built on Christ, and doing what He says in the bible.

When I was a brand new Christian I couldn’t get enough of His book. I knew that my God, my Lord, my Best Friend, and the Way He thinks, is in that book. And boy did I want to know Him!  Insight is a gem-finder – it throws new light on what you are reading. ASK FOR IT before you read. Many years ago, I attended a church with an enthusiastic bunch of folk who were crazy about Jesus. However, bible studies weren’t part of their make-up, instead they were a bit more experience-based. They loved worship and were content to be fed by someone else’s interpretation of what the bible said. Serious bible study took a back seat, and it was done by those who went to bible school.

I believe that Christianity is a hands-on experience. That’s what separates us from religion. If we don’t do what the bible says, then the ones-who-don’t-know-Him-yet can’t see the reality of what we preach! Our new life in Christ is not about going to heaven – it’s about living this life down here for Jesus Christ’s sake – here and now. We are meant to demonstrate His love for others by the way we live. I have learnt that nothing else will stimulate faith more than taking a big breath, doing what the bible says and trusting God will help you. That’s what faith is all about … ACTION. 

This means we read His book, looking for things to do. It shows us where we need to change. Experiences are great! There are loads of stories in the bible about people who had them …BUT … we need a plumb line. Otherwise we can get caught up in all sorts of weird stuff and lose our way. Let’s watch what happened to this guy in Acts 8:9-19. (bits of it)

“Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. …But when they believed Philip as he proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptised, both men and women. Simon himself believed and was baptised. And he followed Philip everywhere, astonished by the great signs and miracles he saw. When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria. When they arrived, they prayed for the new believers there that they might receive the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit had not yet come on any of them; they had simply been baptised in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then Peter and John placed their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. When Simon saw that the Spirit was given at the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money and said, “Give me also this ability so that everyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.” 

Yeah. Simon got caught up in what he saw – not with transformation. He used his previous way of life as a yardstick. We can’t do that! Jesus Christ is God’s Living word, and it is our God-given task to read, and watch what Christ says, and does — and let it transform our hearts. He’s our yardstick now and the Holy Spirit will help us. That’s when we become the Lord’s visual aids for other people. Meanwhile, Simon had no respect for the One Who gives us the gifts. We cannot use the world’s ways to understand God – we need to connect with the One Who knows Him and let Him teach us. He’s a Person, He is a glorious Being, not just a concept on a page.

You know I have heard sermons about Simon, they go over and over the fact that this verse proves we all need the Holy Spirit and we do! But I have never heard one sermon that talked about the seriousness of disrespecting the Holy Spirit. We can be selective about what we think, and that’s dangerous. We cannot understand the Holy Spirit’s Ways using this world’s methods.

The bible is our personal gem-finder, because the Holy Spirit speaks to us through its words. There are times when the gems I have found will not minister to you and I think that’s a good thing! My purpose for writing this blog is not to feed you what I’ve seen, it is to encourage you to go and look for precious gems — for yourself. Those hard-sought gems will help you grow personally. They are God Himself speaking from His heart, to your heart. Living like this takes time, and dedication. However, Christians were not designed to be tumbleweed. We are standing and building upon the Rock Who is Christ Jesus.

We can’t build our own spiritual houses with someone else’s bricks or gems! We need to show God our dedication to His Ways by going into the Word and digging for ourselves. Then all of us need to take the time to act on what we’ve read. Personally, I refuse to read the word ‘repent’ in His book without asking Him to ‘please remind me what I need to repent from? Who am I mad at? Who have I offended Lord?’ The bible is not just a study book, it is a manual for our new life in Christ. It’s a gem-finder. 👋

P 2605 Faith in action.

/ DVH

I Kings 18:41-46 “And Elijah said to Ahab, “Go, eat and drink, for there is the sound of a heavy rain.”  So Ahab went off to eat and drink, but Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel, bent down to the ground and put his face between his knees. “Go and look toward the sea,” he told his servant. And he went up and looked. “There is nothing there,” he said. Seven times Elijah said, “Go back.” The seventh time the servant reported, “A cloud as small as a man’s hand is rising from the sea.” So Elijah said, “Go and tell Ahab, ‘Hitch up your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.’” Meanwhile, the sky grew black with clouds, the wind rose, a heavy rain started falling and Ahab rode off to Jezreel. The power of the Lord came on Elijah and, tucking his cloak into his belt, he ran ahead of Ahab all the way to Jezreel.”

I definitely do not bat in Elijah’s league and I’m not sure I wish I did either – that man of God did some truly spectacularly brave stuff!  He prayed until he knew what God was going to do next! Meanwhile, I love the way the bible does not hide the other bits where human beings act like faithless cowards. Whilst reading about Elijah this time, I learnt that if you want to beat the rain, then you will have to learn to run like the wind! 

I enjoy these stories. The courage in Elijah’s heart that led him to obey God’s instructions step-by-step, eventually flew out of the window when he was threatened by Jezebel and co. He’s so human! Right after that huge miracle of fire from heaven – when he dispatches the opposition’s front men – he turns into a scared, whingey whiner-pot, because he is threatened by Jezebel. She wants to make him into cat food! Sigh. I so identify with his response.. But, eventually, his personal relationship with the Lord takes him where his feet do not want to go.

I fight fear about what comes next all the time … instead of focussing on the wonderful thing the Lord is doing NOW. Sometimes, other people and their responses and actions don’t help either! There have been times when I have caught myself waiting for the other shoe to drop, because bad things are happening all around me and I hope I can somehow avoid the bad stuff… instead of watching for the Lord’s deliverance. There are also times where I mentally run away hoping God won’t notice. Fat chance.

Back to this passage, Elijah prophesied rain when there was no rain, and nobody expected it either. Let’s get this straight – Elijah did not imagine rain … he simply spoke out what he had heard from the Spirit of God out loud. He declared it. He saw the rain coming in his spirit-man before it ever appeared on the horizon. Prophecy is not saying what WE want, or WE think we need, and expecting it to happen, it is tuning in to what GOD Himself is saying and announcing that. And yes, there is a difference.

Meanwhile, does anyone else but me think that Elijah’s servant must have gotten sick of running back and forth, looking for clouds that weren’t there? …  …Until they finally were! Six times that man trudged back and forth with nothing to report. To me this is what true servanthood looks like – it looks like doing what our Lord says, simply because He said it. In our current environment, that servant would have probably quit, and gone and reported Elijah to the union! 😂 At the same time, imagine Elijah’s faith – he kept continually sending that man to check!

You know, today we could carefully analyse, or even try to copy what Elijah said, or what he did, or how he did it, when he saw all those incredible miracles. That giant heavenly mountain-top barbecue is so awe-inspiring, perhaps we secretly hope that we can do stuff like that too? But God isn’t looking for repeat performances. That was then. Analysing how it happened so we can do it again, will not bring us any closer to the God Who made it happen. These stories are not formulas to be followed – they are testimonies of how incredible our God is, and what a man of faith can do! The best aim we can ever have is to know Him, intimately. When you look at Elijah’s conversations with Almighty God, you can see they have a relationship!

This great prophet shows us that imperfect people can serve a perfect God and see and do spectacular things … or not! This is one of the reasons I love the Old Testament. A parade of very different people pass by, serving – or not serving God, ushering in all kinds of outcomes. It is astonishing that in this day and age, the bible appears to end up being about us getting or making God do stuff for us … when the Old Testament clearly says He is looking for people who will do what HE wants!

In my heart, faith = obedience. No more no less. Sometimes there are feelings, sometimes there are not. Feelings are a nice bonus, but my advice is, don’t get used to them… because sometimes our feelings will drag us away from God, leading us into running away and hiding. These stories about Elijah are profound, because we can see with our own eyes, that our God is the God of second, third, fourth and fifth chances. Faith does something. It doesn’t just have opinions – it has actions. We are faltering in our faith because we have head knowledge NOT active faith like Elijah. 👋

P 2603 Some thoughts are not welcome!

/ DVH

Some thoughts are definitely not welcome, they are not worth our time, or even losing sleep over! Here are some great scriptures. Matthew 9:4 “Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts?” Romans 12:2: “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

I am sure you already know these scriptures — but today I want to briefly talk about taking them seriously and acting on them. We would not ask an unreformed, repeat-offender, serial killer to stay at our house and babysit our kids! That would be, like … insane!! Yet, in our minds, there are times when we entertain all kinds of bad and poor thinking habits… and we kid ourselves that those thoughts don’t matter. Entertaining dumb thoughts is like nailing one foot to the ground — we will go round and round and round – and get nowhere. Because those thoughts will eventually take us CAPTIVE.

Whatever we have meditated on in our heads will come out of our mouths. ‘As a man thinks so is he.’ If all you can think about is how mad you are at someone else, then that stuff will leak out… somewhere. It’s like a forest fire, give those thoughts enough kindling and we end up with a blaze nobody can control!! Let’s look at this a bit to clarify the subject. 

Before anything happens it starts as a thought. My advice is to do spot checks on your thoughts and begin to decide, for yourself, which ones aren’t worth a welcome mat, because they are not helpful. Otherwise, what we often end up doing is this:  we will beat ourselves up for having some rotten thought – and satan probably ran by and threw the thought at us in the first place. However! he is delighted to add fuel to that kind of fire. In the end we can get so busy concentrating on what we think we are not… WE FORGET WHO WE ARE NOW!

Blaming yourself produces nothing but shame. Shame produces hiding. Hiding produces avoidance of the truth instead of application. Stop the production line!  Simply agree with the bible and apply it to your life. Act on it. Truth becomes stronger when you stand on it in faith – no matter how you feel. You know, Almighty God doesn’t say ‘always get it right‘ – He says use your faith! God loves YOU and I unconditionally. As we walk with Him, we need to grow used to living in His unconditional love for us. That’s how we will grow His fruit. Acting on our faith, not our feelings.

Try to look at the bible as helpful hints, and don’t allow a bad thought to stay long enough to become an obsession or an action. There’s a very old saying:  ‘You can’t stop the birds of the air from flying overhead, but you can stop them from making a nest in your hair!’  When Paul tells us: ‘“let your mind dwell on these things.” He is talking about the things that help us: “whatever is good right and profitable.” Beating yourself up for doing something dumb IS NOT PROFITABLE. All you will learn is punishment, not LOVE. Repent, repair, and then – move on! Teach yourself to discern what is not profitable by digesting the book. Digestion follows doing.

The time to take the next step is often when we least feel like it, but we can learn through the Lord’s processes that our feelings run dead last in a kingdom mentality. God isn’t saying we need thought police, instead He is telling us what sort of things are helpful to think about and warning us what to stay away from!  Do you have family or friends? Start thanking God for them. Even if some of those things are broken – just transfer your thoughts away from what’s wrong about them, to what He says is right. It’s a skill, just like brushing your teeth… we all can learn it.

We can feed our minds good things to think about by reading His book regularly. Read the bible until you get happy that you started reading it! Look for how much He loves you. Instead of seeing the bible as things I can’t possibly do, read it to find out what Jesus wants to say to me, TODAY. If He is pointing out something that needs changing, thank Him. “For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes.” Hebrews 12:6. Don’t get stuck on the discipline part, firmly plant yourself on the fact that our God loves us enough to discipline us. That verse tells us that correcting us is His Way of showing us His love.

God is on our side and He does not stand afar off, instead, He’s closer to us than our heartbeat. The Body of Christ has forgotten who we are – we are His kingdom in action – we are the people who know that going the wrong way starts in our thoughts. Tell the things that push and shout at you, and demand to be entertained – they are not welcome. Put out the welcome mat for the things that remind you how much He loves you. 👋

P 2567 He did it for LOVE!

/ DVH

Almighty God was never ever going to be content with lip-service and form – His love is way too relentless and all-encompassing for that! His desire is to have a real relationship with each one of us. To our astonishment, now we have discovered what He did to make that happen… And we stand by in awe and wonder about the God Who came to earth by His own choice, to pay for our sins, misunderstandings and lack of comprehension! And He did what He did personally … Jesus Christ died for LOVE’s sake.

Every single human being ever conceived and/or born, has been and will be known, cherished and loved by our God. Try standing in front of a mirror and telling yourself that regularly – it will do you good!  Today is about how far the great and Almighty God of our Universe and beyond, was prepared to go – in order to set us free from the sinful things we’ve chosen. We have all made ourselves captive to our enemy in one way or another. But our Father did what He did, so we would be free to comprehend and partake of what He has given us – at great personal cost to Him.

In order to understand God’s Love for us, we need to comprehend the lengths that His love went to – to rescue even the vilest sinner. Love is not a sentiment, it is an action. It looks like something we can see, read, feel, hear, touch and experience.  Love sacrifices even itself, in its relentless quest to restore the recipient of that love. It is utterly selfless. It is not kissy kissy love hearts, chocolates and lots of flowers! It looks like a bloodied and badly beaten, deeply maligned, and unrecognisable Human Being, Who allowed mankind to take out our murderous spite, hatred, rage and anger on Him. Those men who whipped and tormented the Lord were demonically inspired — yet they were still part of God’s plan, and His love was available to them too. 

Personally, I’ve learnt first-hand how shallow my love for God can be, I’ve had my theories tested and I found out I was definitely capable of loving me, more than HIM! Those Roman soldiers were exactly like US – even though we weren’t there in person. Nobody knows what they will do until they are tested. Christ was tempted, tested and yet He completed what He came to do. You know, you and I were in that crowd yelling abuse at the Lord, or turning our heads away, as surely as we were born back then. We’ve all sinned. We are not even remotely like our dear Saviour, Who gave up everything for us. We need help. And Help … came! 

In our minds and thoughts, what happened at Calvary does not seem like it is love – that’s because we do not define love rightly! We cannot afford to define LOVE for ourselves – when we do that we will end up indulging or even excusing ourselves. God’s idea of love does not look like our idea of it. He tells us about Himself in Isaiah 55:8-9. “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

In our own personal lives, we want to be, and sometimes even choose to be – the heroes in our own little stories. But, in the new life that HE gave us, we are daily, minute by minute, challenged to change our minds, by renewing them — so that GOD Himself becomes the Hero in ALL our stories. The Father God, the Son, the Holy Spirit and everything They did together for each one of us on that cross, is our uniting force. Their love for us – unites us. No matter who we are or what we’ve done… WE.ARE.LOVED.

I know I have said this about a kajillion times, but our task now is to observe, learn, and absorb the way our God thinks, into our own personal lives until it becomes the way WE think. And we have a bible with 66 books in it, to help us. It details the way that God Himself interacts with other people in their own lives. It teaches us clearly what love actually looks like. It looks like sacrifice.

The bible showcases our Father’s thoughts toward mankind. His thoughts are always for us, reaching toward us. Here’s a little bit of what I have observed. He doesn’t treat any two people the same way. Our uniqueness is not a liability. To Almighty God each human being is the pearl He sacrificed everything precious to Him, so we can be His. The Bible is a LOVE STORY!  And we need to be transformed into a Worthy Bride for His dear Son – Who gave up everything for us. Our Bridegroom is oh! – so worthy of all our love and gratitude.  

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER WANTS US TO BE JOINED WITH CHRIST AND SHARE HIS LEGACY. We have a family inheritance – it is not gold, silver or precious gems  … our inheritance is the ability to love others the way Christ loved us. Loving others so deeply our self involvement fades away. Bless you today, as you press on toward that mark. 🕊️ 🙌

P 2524 This natural world has to yield to the spiritual one …

/ DVH

“Once your life was full of sin’s darkness, but now you have the very light of our Lord shining through you because of your union with Him.Your mission is to live as children flooded with His revelation-light! And the supernatural fruits of His light will be seen in you—goodness, righteousness, and truth.” Ephesians 5:8-9 TPT.

We need to deliberately determine in our hearts, to actively cultivate our relationship with Jesus – on purpose! We do that by regularly reading the bible, and going to church. And also when we pray  – which is talking to Him – referring to Him, and deferring to His will, His way. This is how we make Him a part of everything – we come into UNION with Him. I talk to the Lord all day long. I include Him in everything.

One thing makes all the difference to daily living constantly aware of Him, so I can be obedient. I lay my life down at His feet, deliberately. I have made a quality decision to live this life dead to what I want.  And that includes revenge on anyone who has hurt me. Then I ask Him for His help. I pray things like “You’re in charge, Jesus, please do whatever You want Lord, whatever You decide will be exactly what I need.” I pray like this even when things look awful. Or I’m scared. Or I can’t see anyway through something.

I don’t lie! I tell Him that I am scared etc. … but I probably won’t tell YOU! I’ve found that talking about fear or anger etc. makes those things bigger. It brings temporary emotional relief, but not permanent heart change. Over time Jesus has helped me to normalise my thoughts into His kingdom thinking. He taught me that I sometimes panic unnecessarily. I can scare myself by projecting even more bad thoughts into unknown or difficult situations, based on my previous experiences. So I’ve learnt to yield to Him all the time, not just once every morning. Day by day I accept whatever happens during the day, as my training with the Holy Spirit – because He is my Coach. One of my all time fav prayers is: “How are you going to get me out of this Lord?”

He often reminds me of some scriptures, and then I have something I can hold on to. But I have come to understand that in those difficult moments — I am confronting my own fears. Those things I have allowed to remain in my life because it seemed to be too hard to deal with them when they happened. Jesus always does over and above anything I could ever hope for… every single time. And it never ever looks like I think it will … the Lord knows the very best way through anything. I remind myself that the SPIRIT Who lived in Christ Jesus now lives in ME! (Galatians 2:20) He guided Jesus and He will guide me too.

“… Your (Our) mission is to live as children flooded with His revelation-light! And the supernatural fruits of His light will be seen in you—goodness, righteousness, and truth.” Ephesians 5:8-9 TPT. Love is an action not a feeling. We forgive those who trespass against us because He said to do it – that’s called faith in action.  When you and I bring the bible’s teachings — the supernatural thoughts and actions of Jesus into any natural situation, the natural world has to yield to the spiritual one. 👋🏻