Almighty God

P 3013 Our God is incredibly generous.

/ DVH

When the Lord comforts us, He is also giving us something we can pass on to someone else who is in need. Almighty God is so incredibly, over-the-top generous, He doesn’t only give us what we need, He gives us more than enough, so we have plenty to give way!!

“All praises belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For He is the Father of tender mercy and the God of endless comfort. He always comes alongside us to comfort us in every suffering so that we can come alongside those who are in any painful trial. We can bring them this same comfort that God has poured out upon us.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 TPT. I’m a conduit, a channel. You are one too – all of God’s children are conduits of what He has given us.The secret to thriving in His Ways is not to own anything! I don’t just mean that literally, I mean whatever we have is always available to help someone else. Time, love, compassion, faith etc… as well as practical things.

We give away what we have already been given, because sharing is now part of our new nature. We don’t have to squirrel stuff away for another day, because we already know that:“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.“ 2 Peter 1:3. As the bible says what we have is: “…pressed down and running over…” This means we will always have more than enough! We simply have to be flexible and divide between our needs and wants. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1. God loves His kids. Each one of us is precious to Him – He covers, guides and protects us.

We get comfort from Him, through other people, and through His Word, plus other people’s prayers for us – and then we give it away. I have found that right along with comfort we also get “hope” when ours has started to wobble and get wonky under duress. The next time something dastardly happens to you, instead of hunting about trying to find Him, just remind yourself that He is right next to you. The bible says that like this: “He ALWAYS comes alongside us …” That means we can bank on it. Don’t feel around to see if it is true, remember Peter — he got out of the boat and stepped onto the water, and LET GO, and then he did the impossible. 

Believe God is with you because He is. If your difficult situation has not gone away, then He knows that together you and He can get through it. Ask Him to show you the way through. Some things are meant to be endured with patience because that’s how you get the fruit of long-suffering love. We cannot afford to consult our feelings when the ceiling of our life just fell in. Our feelings will react. It’s normal.  Read the book – Jesus had feelings! But … they were not in charge of His responses. 

The society we live in makes feelings way more important than they ought to be. In years gone by people elevated the brain. It seemed that knowing stuff was going to help us through any crisis. Information proved to be a dud, because our knowledge kept changing along the way! If we elevate our feelings over our faith we are missing out on His generous flow of wisdom and comfort that constantly comes our way. God wants us to win. Everything He has done is to help us win in this battle called ‘life.’

We are the people of His Spirit, so feelings and knowledge take a secondary place in our lives. They are still there – after all we are not stoics, beating our feelings into submission! We simply relinquish how we feel and whatever has happened, to the Holy Spirit. Jesus told us to pick up and wear the yoke He wore. His yoke was obedience to His Father in every circumstance. He saw the “Yes” of God and He saw the “No” and the result was the same – He continued to glorify God. We simply can’t afford to let our feelings stay in control of our lives or reactions. Cry if you have to, yell if you have to, but yell out to God for His help to walk through whatever has happened. 

We have been exhorted, with His help, to grow suitable, sustainable fruit… the fruit of the Spirit called “self-control.” That fruit grows in good times and in bad, as we ask for His help to watch over our inner lives.. As we yield our will to Him, and follow His instructions from the book, we prepare the ground for good fruit. Fruit takes time, so we need to be ready to persevere. That allows His fruit in us to ‘set.’ The very first year our mango tree appeared to have fruit, it got all these happy little nubs on it and we got so excited … fruit at last … then they all fell to the ground! The fruit had not set – it had not been successfully pollinated. God will pollinate our feeble attempts at faith, with more faith, because He is generous!

Our knowledge of Who He is, and the Way He does things, needs to be established in an ongoing fashion in our hearts, otherwise we will continue to flounder about like a fish out of water. We were born for this life. He chose us to be His, before the foundation of the world. Did you get that? He picked us to be His children before there were trees, stars, oceans, dry land, good food to eat! And Father God is incredibly generous, He will give us everything we need for a Godly life. So we can complete the works He sent us to do. If you don’t got what you think you need, then you don’t need it! Believe in your Father’s generosity – He believes in you. Bye. 👋

P 3007 “Take My yoke upon you … and learn from ME!”

/ DVH

Whatever we want to learn about God’s kingdom can’t be second-hand knowledge, because that stuff will simply fill our brain and puff us up! Unless we choose to action what we’ve heard it can’t change our lives! I can carefully listen to my pastor, but unless I go away and pray over the things he said, I’m deceiving myself. Meanwhile the pastor is probably praying everyone listening to him will action what he says in the first place! Because when we act on what we’ve heard – that introduces opportunities for inner transformation. 

God’s word is ‘near us’ when we study it and want to understand it… but it becomes a part of who we are when we act on it. However! When I enforce the Word on myself, without asking for the Holy Spirit’s help, I can develop things that are not desirable. I can easily become proud and religious, or easily intimidated, and overwhelmed by life’s circumstances. James clearly tells us how to make the bible a part of our inner selves:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” (Chapter 1 – Verses 22-25)

We can so easily be self-deceived if we read the Bible and then dismiss what we read as something ‘that doesn’t apply to me.’ Maybe we don’t want to face a realistic picture of ourselves? Instead, it is wise to ask the Holy Spirit to show you where what you have read applies to you and what He wants you to do about it.. Father God wants us to become so saturated in His Word through our actions, that wherever we go … we respond just like Jesus did. He didn’t just speak, He acted.This means our behaviour will change and other people will see God in action in us and through us. 

Willingly forgiving anyone in all kinds of circumstances, is a sign of God’s Word on the inside. So is generosity in all our dealings with other people. If we pray for patience, and then give up when it seems like nothing has happened, that’s when we need to carefully survey our surroundings and the people in them, and look for the ones that drive us crazy! These people are our God-given test cases. After we find them, we need to go on to thank Him for these impossible people who are giving us daily opportunities to change the way we respond. Instead of cursing them, this is an opportunity to bless them.

Likewise, when things don’t work out according to our prayers, we need to reinforce our faith with action, instead of worrying or panicking. Like I said yesterday, God always has a bigger plan. The thing to do is to keep our hope in His redemptive power alive, through prayer, thankfulness and HIS WORD. His absolutely totally reliable goodness is our eternally, ever-fixed mark. We hold onto His promises and keep the faith that God is good, all the time. This means that if we cannot see any good — then we are not through the difficulties …YET!… Hold fast! …“The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9. 

Our faith is always in God Himself, not just in what He does or how He does it. When our faith is in how God does stuff we can misguidedly try to manipulate our circumstances, or the Lord Himself, into doing whatever it is we want. Almighty God won’t be fooled by this deception. We are not God, He is!

I think we have totally misunderstood the Way faith works. We can rush about quoting this scripture. and that passage, up one hill and down the other, but all we are doing is bludgeoning our faith, trying to make it fit and submit to a standard that we think we need from it. Faith is not about getting – it is about Giving God Glory at any time, in any place. It’s about Him — not how well, or poorly we use it. Our faith has substance because God Himself has substance!

I have yet to get excited about being overtaken by trouble and difficulties … but I am learning if I go to the Lord and ask Him what He wants me to do about the situation I am facing … He will answer me. I want to learn – and I know that Jesus wants to personally teach me. I’ve picked up the yoke of walking together with Him. The Lord was human just like me, tempted the same ways I have been – He understands the weariness that can overtake us in the middle of the battles we face. Sometimes we need to know the way THROUGH situations rather than the way OUT.

The Holy Spirit will always be our personal Leader and Guide. He leads us through any wildernesses in this life. He tells us daily how to walk, where to go, and what to do. Just three minutes ago, hubby texted me to say that he had met 9 Samoan fruit pickers and given them all bibles. He was just going about his business in the little town of Mundubbera in outback Queensland!  Almighty God is the best co-ordinator ever!!

He is all WISE, all KNOWING and… FOR US! Let’s learn personally from Him, through our circumstances – good and bad. When we pick up Jesus’ yoke and deliberately learn from Him, we are honouring Him and His Ways above all else. Bye.🤚

P 3006 God always has a bigger plan!

/ DVH

John 18:10-11: “Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) Jesus commanded Peter, “Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given Me?”

There are times in our lives when we have a very painful  cup set before us, just like our Lord Jesus did. At those moments, it seems horrendous to even contemplate accepting that vessel  —- let alone drinking from it! Yet in this verse the Lord defended that cup to Peter. It was the one He knew His Father wanted Him to drink. In the light of the cross, we can clearly see the purpose that Almighty God always had on the other side of this awful ghastly time … mainly because we have the benefit of hindsight – and we have the book!. 

But in our everyday lives it is much harder to comprehend what has sometimes been set before us. Our natural instinct is to fight the idea that we are meant to eat and drink some of the things the Lord has allowed to impact our lives. I’ve heard people say: “God would never ask me to do such a thing!”“ I thought that you said God is good – why would He ask me to live through this?” My short answer is this: because He asked it of His Son, first. 

The reality is this, in order for us to be like Jesus, we need to choose to follow the Lord, step by step through the troubles and tribulations of this life, because at the same time we are learning to live resurrected lives. In the presence of death, a resurrected life shines so brightly. However, the bible also tells us we will have times of triumph when we tell trouble and strife to get out of our way! Sometimes we resist, and trouble flees, and sometimes we quite simply need to go through. 

Dying to self is painful, it is utterly impossible without the Holy Spirit’s Presence in our lives. And we cannot live in the fullness of the Christian life without Him. You can’t have a resurrected life without death first! There may be times we are simply asked to contemplate drinking the cup of suffering, and in those times, we learn to yield — but at other times we cannot escape, the only way forward is to walk into the valley of the shadow of death.

However that situation comes upon us  – we need to keep walking through it. He will walk with us, and He asks us to walk through any hardship, and even the kind of destruction that looms against us. HOWEVER – satan cannot design one thing that can bring forth life … But even death itself, under the Lord’s watchful, passionate eye, brings LIFE and more life in abundance. Sometimes the way to get more life is to die!

Acting like Peter did, when he sliced off that soldier’s ear, is the same as taking difficult matters into our own hands. When the Lord does not give us personal intimate instructions, we always have access to His book filled with the Way He wants us to respond. However, cutting off someone else’s ear for retribution and defence — is not the way forward. Anger breeds more anger, revenge breeds more revenge, and hatred and violence breed an even greater desire for the kind of hatred that can lead to murder! 

God always has a bigger plan than we do. Think about it. Do we think that the Lord has ever said: ‘Whoops, I missed that one!?’ We all know that His timing is perfect, even in the worst possible times. Now, hold onto your hat —- here’s a verse that nobody likes much: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints.”  Psalm 116:15:  I’m pretty sure nobody has ever stitched verse that onto a sampler and hung it up on the wall.

However, if you have lost someone dear to you, then this verse is also not the kind of verse that will comfort you instantly. Instead remember and comfort yourself with the thought that Mary and Martha couldn’t not see the bigger reality when Lazarus had been dead 3 days. We can all falter under that kind of pressure. Their faith was in Jesus doing something about the situation before things got to that stage, but Jesus’ aim was to glorify God through what happened. We need to go past the immediate situation, remembering He is good.

Even in terrible things like death, our response is often about US — our loss, our feelings, our idea of what God should do. When these things happen we have an opportunity to transform our minds by remembering that: “He knows about everyone, everywhere. Everything about us is bare and wide open to the all-seeing eyes of our living God; nothing can be hidden from Him to whom we must explain all that we have done.” Hebrews 4:13.

Lazarus’ sisters, two women who both followed Jesus, could only see their terrible loss. Death takes us all by surprise, even if it is expected. However it can also be swallowed up in the kind of victory that expands our view of God Himself. Sometimes the hardest thing to remember in times of trouble and strife, is the fact that God  has a much bigger far-more-wonderful-than-we-can-ever-imagine, plan.

Especially when hardship does not disappear quickly. Our biggest challenge in those times is to remember that He’s a good God, and He will walk us through these things. Faith continues to grow when we trust Him in that dark valley. My prayer for all of us is that we can continue to walk, no matter how slowly, using our faith, and reminding ourselves that our Saviour is always right there with us … even when grief clouds our sight. Bye. 😢

P 3004 We get in for free!

/ DVH

“You can pass through His open gates with the password of praise. Come right into His presence with thanksgiving. Come bring your thank offering to Him and affectionately bless His beautiful Name!” Psalms 100:4 TPT.

I enjoyed a Wednesday morning recently, when one of my precious grand-daughters came to our house to help us prepare the Great Wall of blankets for distribution. We are dropping off the first pile today. It is always so special to hang around with my family. The grandkids are all beautiful people – their parents have done an amazing job raising them.These young people cause me to give thanks over and over again, because they like to be around me. Are they perfect? Nope! But, then again… neither am I.

What the Psalmist is saying when he wrote this verse in Psalm 100 verse 4, parallels what happens with our own  families – it is not formal – it is joyful. He is saying that our deep affection for Jesus just bubbles out of us in praise and thanksgiving, all the time. I can instantly recall my appreciation for my family at any time — because they mean the world to me. And because I know Jesus, I can’t help but praise Him. Then that praise will lead me into worshipping Him. Worship is much more than singing and dancing and magnifying His Name — it also includes me presenting my body to Him as a living sacrifice, daily. 

We can go and visit with Almighty God in our hearts, using our all inclusive free pass plus our faith and thanksgiving, whenever we like, wherever we are. Imagine the incredible privilege we have been given. We don’t need an emissary or an Ambassador to introduce us, or someone who will explain who we are – we have the greatest Ambassador of all time standing right next to the throne of God – and He knows who we are – personally! 

The very minute we begin to praise God, the gates of heaven swing open and we can go right on in and approach the eternal throne of His unending Grace, giving thanks for all He has done for us every single step of the way. In those moments we need to present our body to Him as a living sacrifice, as an offering of our gratefulness. Jesus gave us His life, and we give Him ours – daily – not just on Sunday!

Because of what the Lord Jesus did for me, and what He is still doing, right now … at this very second — I can call on His Name and spend time with Him anywhere, any time. “I am not ashamed, because I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.” 2 Timothy 1:12.  I know HIM! And when I give Him myself, I remind myself that  He has given me Himself. That’s not a fair exchange – it is unparalleled in its generosity. Jesus Christ is the best family member ever, He loves us no matter what mood we are in. Let’s just stop and thank God that He is never, ever unapproachable.

Almighty God loves the thanksgiving songs and praise hugs we freely give Him. He knows when our hearts are heavy, but we still choose to give Him praise despite our circumstances. That’s called a sacrifice of praise: “Through Him, Jesus, therefore, let us at all times offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of lips that thankfully acknowledge and confess and glorify His name.” Hebrews 13:5. Our God is so aware of sacrifice – He made the greatest sacrifice of all time!

No matter what is going on around us, we don’t just praise Him because it makes us feel good – although it will!  And we don’t praise Him to use Him, or get something from Him – although He is incredibly generous. We praise Him for Who He is, because He is worthy of all praise and honour. LOVE SPEAKS! It quite simply can’t help itself! You can’t shut it up!!

I love my grand-kids because they are my offspring’s offspring, and they delight me. But my love for my family is not in the same ballpark as GOD’S LOVE FOR ALL OF US. We are so privileged, we can get our Father’s attention at any minute of the day. The bible tells us “His ears are always open to our cry …”How amazing is that?! The next time you spend a few moments just quietly appreciating Him, remind yourself that we have been given a total-unlimited-complete-accessibility-at-any-given-time-any-time-of-the-day-or-night PASS.

Let’s not waste it because we think we are too busy right now to pray. Instead, go through the gates thanking and praising Him all the way.  Ask Him to go with you wherever you go – He loves doing that. Tell Him you will stop for anybody He wants you to speak to. And always remember, we get in for free. Bye🥰.

P 2989 Use your inheritance wisely.

/ DVH

We all understand the concept of our salvation — Jesus came and chose to die, and as a man He became our sin substitute at Calvary. It was an exchange, our sin for His purity. Because of the incredible Grace Jesus released, we now have full access to our Father, God. We have been freed from the clutches, the seduction, and the appeal of sin. We are so free now we can choose not to sin! While the Lord Jesus was on earth, He did not sin, in thought, attitude, or actions—and He is our example of how to walk with the Holy Spirit — Who knows the Way through anything!

This morning as I was thinking about the magnitude of what happened for our sake – I saw a different kind of parallel between the story of the Prodigal Son and what Jesus did for us. And, most of all, I saw the Body of Christ’s voluntary response to that gift. I understood how easily that incredible generosity and love can be abused.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the younger brother goes to his father and demands his inheritance. Then he goes off and does whatever he likes with what he was given. Enter my point for today …this young man does not value what he was given to him, even though it was not his right to have it.  His father was still alive!! Instead he took his inheritance, and thoughtlessly squandered it. Using it to fashion his life the way he wanted it to be without a thought of the cost to his father!

I think this is a problem when we become Christians. Because we live in such a materialistic, hedonistic world, we start to devalue what we have been given. Just because it was free that does not mean it was cheap! It’s a perception problem. Our inheritance belonged to Jesus — He gave it to us, through what He did for us. Sadly, we often use our inheritance to live like everyone else around us, and thereby misuse it. What we’ve been given was incredibly costly. At the same time, we know this inheritance  belongs to everyone, so we need to pass on what we now know to the people we meet. They are the legal recipients of this treasure too! God reconciled them to Himself in Christ.

We can carelessly live ignoring that the point of Christ’s death was total transformation, not just freedom. I am not denying we want to avoid sin … me too! But we can end up misusing what we have been given, simply by living like everyone else around us. That is not what Calvary’s exchange was for! It wasn’t only given to take sin away, and reconcile us back to our Father — it was to transform us into someone who is just like Jesus. We are to live for Him now. We’ve been saved to live to love others, so now we tell them the good news that God’s Will included them!

Let’s stretch the Prodigal Son parable a little further, and take a look at the Older Brother. The supposed good guy. The one who always did whatever he was supposed to do. He was not subject to the same temptations as his brother. His temptation was way more subtle. He too, had access to a gladly given inheritance, but instead of enjoying what he had, he was living his life trying to earn his way. He was not living his life gratefully. He too, was a son and heir, all His father had belonged to him.

My point is that neither one of these young men had  comprehended what they were given. The inheritance they were supposed to gain after their father’s death, was free and clear. It was already theirs by right of birth. But the older brother thought that because he was the good son, he had earned special privileges.

The younger son finally caught a glimpse of what he had done, as he lived alongside the sinful members of this world, doing whatever he pleased. He saw he had laid aside the privilege of His rightful place. When we ignore God’s plan for our lives we are like the Prodigal. Like greedy children we take what we want – the freedom to choose – and ignore the privilege and responsibility of what we have been given.

We will never understand what we have been given if we think we’ve earned it because living like a Christian is so much hard work. Both of these young men’s attitudes are wrong, and neither one should govern our lives now. What we have been given is a gift. It was not given based on attitudes or actions, it was given because the Giver is mind-bogglingly generous! Our inheritance demands a respectful response, because SomeBody else paid for it! 

Almighty God has given us Christ’s position of purity, innocence and cleanliness before Him, in exchange for our previous sinful way of living. It is free, and undeserved.  If Jesus had not come and died in our place there would not be an inheritance for anyone. But God did not punish His only beloved Son so we could be free to go and skip through the daisies doing whatever we like, because now we have a get-out-of-jail free card!  

Everything we have depends on our Father’s generosity. We need to use our inheritance wisely – by gratefully living like Jesus would in this world. We must become His Sons and Daughters who value what we’ve been given, and tell everyone else what He has done for them. Bye 👋

P 2988 I can’t cope Lord.

/ DVH

There are times where we feel we need to make a ‘good confession,’ and repeat some scripture or other, when life has knocked us down — or we will be failing Him, or betraying our faith. No pressure or anything! I’d like to momentarily call your attention to the Old Testament where real people grizzled their heads off!  There are also plenty of illustrations in the New.

Today I want to point out that the Psalmists talked a lot about their enemies flourishing, plus having to hang around with wicked people, and their souls being tormented etc. So did the prophets. It is not a sin if you cannot cope! It is a sign of our own humanity. None of us are perfected yet, we are on a road with Him, learning as we go. We have the benefit of the bible, and the Holy Spirit telling us to ‘put our foot here, and put our foot there.’  And on many days we are walking up a very slippery slope. Without Him we would slip away. Overcoming is not just about having a positive outlook. Overcoming is getting up again, soaked to the skin by our own tears, covered in other people’s filth, or our own … and taking yet another trembling step.

The Holy Spirit is incredible. He can be in Dubai comforting someone, and in Tasmania comforting someone else etc. – all at the same time! He’s everywhere – because He is needed everywhere.There are some places that are so deep, so fraught with despair, that only Jesus Himself understands them. Other people can only look on in horror at our suffering. The Holy Spirit gives us Christ’s own words to shed light at these times when others are on the darkest of paths. But that does not mean the path is not painful. We cannot psyche ourselves into thinking evil to be ignored and pretend we are fine. That’s Disney – not the GOSPEL! God’s glory in these situations, is that these dear people keep on following HIM, trembling, walking on in naked bleeding faith.

In my limited experience, sensitive souls are often fighting off oppression through no fault of their own. If we are not careful we will end up developing a ‘Cone of Silence’ …thank you, Maxwell Smart! That spy loved that stupid thing … but it never did work properly!! Moving on …the bible is full of people who felt that what God asked them to do was bigger than they were. Starting with Moses, who pushed his younger brother into the firing line.  Whizzing right past Abraham – who tried to help God out because the Lord was taking His own time.  

Sometimes the “silence of God” can lead to not coping, and that is where we need our Christian families. Not to labour the point, but the other day I mentioned Ecclesiastes 3 — where not coping is clearly legitimised. God has allowed us time to walk through the valley of the shadow of death. That valley can be the death of a loved one, the death of a dream or the death of greatly needed relationship or position. 

Almighty God Himself chose to become human, so now He has a personal understanding of the result of pain in human lives.  Jesus stands next to His throne, praying for us as we walk through those valleys and He doesn’t have a stop watch on us! He has a big staff in His hands so He can clobber our enemies, not us!  We must always remember the compassion that Jesus had for people in all kinds of trouble, some of it self-inflicted.

There is no right way to suffer:“For I consider [from the standpoint of faith] that the sufferings of the present life are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is about to be revealed to us and in us!” Romans 8:18. God has a plan – it’s a good plan – because He is a good God. Jesus told us that we would have trials, He said this to give us heart, as we wade through evil times and circumstances. What He said is meant to be a comfort, because He is there with us. John 16:33. “These things I have spoken unto you, that IN ME ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” HE WON!! That’s all we need to know, and sometimes it’s all we can handle.

It is mean-spirited to judge and sentence others about their inability to handle any kind of pain. What someone else can blissfully sail through, might bring my life to a screeching halt. Compassion is a real word, and it is lacking in the body of Christ today. “When He (Jesus) saw the crowds, He had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Matthew 9:36. And compassion is not just the ability to say: “Oh, I am so sorry that happened to you,” sincerely. That’s a good beginning, but it is not the whole story. 

Compassion is understanding that any sheep – plagued, damaged, and surrounded by wolves and lions – will struggle to keep going. Meanwhile what do we think WE are still in this world for? We are His hands and feet, our place in this world is to take kindness and compassion to those who suffer. Whether they are Christian or not. Faith fades when you are in pain. Many battles are too much for us – we need help from those around us.

I have often said: “I cannot cope Lord.” And I have seen the Lord deliver me so many times I can’t count them … but I don’t always whistle a happy tune…sometimes I bawl my eyes out.  He gently holds my hand either way. Showing caring compassion is the very least we can do for each other. Bye. 😭

P 2983 We have a Friend.

/ DVH

“And in a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness. For example, at times we don’t even know how to pray, or know the best things to ask for. But the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super-intercede on our behalf, pleading to God with emotional sighs too deep for words. God, the searcher of the heart, knows fully our longings, yet He also understands the desires of the Spirit, because the Holy Spirit passionately pleads before God for us, His holy ones, in perfect harmony with God’s plan and our destiny. So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together for good, for we are His lovers who have been called to fulfil His designed purpose.”Romans 8:26-28 TPT. Prayer is our investment in someone else’s life.

I do love the way Paul says “at times we don’t know how to pray…” He only wrote half of the books in the New Testament!! I feel so much better!  I don’t know how to pray most of the time. I have to ask the Holy Spirit ‘please show me how to pray about this situation.’ And sometimes I ask Him ‘how do I join in with You in Your prayer?’ about this situation? I’ve gotten very picky in my old age, I don’t just want any old answer, I want His answer! I’ve tasted and seen for myself that the Lord is good, and I want to live in much deeper water than that. One word from Jesus and I come alive. There is always more… go after more.

For years I stuffed myself full of other people’s insights, simply because I liked what they said better than I liked what I managed to find for myself. I read this latest and greatest book, and that other fantastic book with the secret of getting your prayers answered. And my poor brain simply could not hold all that extra information and the keys they kept giving me. Just do this … and all will be well … . That stuff kept falling out. That’s when I started to grow tired of pre-digested food. I think the Holy Spirit must have been praying for me about this – I certainly can’t see how I could have been led into learning from Him for myself, otherwise! I was very stuck. And I was sick of being stuck!  

Hands up all those people who think that the Holy Spirit knows how to pray perfectly? Me too! So, what is better than chasing the One Who knows how to pray perfectly? Why follow another person who can get lost just like I can? To start with, I saved a heap of money on books!  It was a no-brainer for me. You know how the bible says in Psalm 103:2: “…forget not all His benefits…” ….Well, this is one of them. The Holy Spirit prays for us all the time, all day, every day, day in – day out. He’s in the eternal NOW and He doesn’t stop. That thought alone just makes me want to cry. Imagine that. Imagine His devotion to our spiritual well-being!

Even the best parent isn’t that good! Not only does the Holy Spirit pray, but when we feel weak, unloved, and unlovely;  He knows how to lift us up in that weakness, back up into the sacred space where we find God’s strength again. He reminds us how much Almighty God loves us. This is a fact — right here, right now. In all our failings and rotten attitudes, we have perfect love pouring down upon us, day after day after day. Not just when we pray. All day, all night, and when we finally open our little eyeballs in the morning again.

He isn’t just praying for us to be delivered from evil either … the Holy Spirit knows how to pray for everything and anything we need. Courage. A new pair of shoes. Someone who is flesh and blood to love us for who we are. In every need we have, He prays for us to be aware of, and strengthened, and helped by God Himself. He even sends out His angels to minister to us. Many times those angels are other people. Listening people. Are you the kind of person who listens carefully to Him, so you can bless others with a word, or an action, or kindness? That’s what He is like. Oh, I am such a fan of the Holy Spirit, the One Who loves to remain unseen.

All sorts of people tell me they are following Jesus, sometimes they are great speakers, or they can prophesy … but until I see a heart that is generous, unobtrusive, and wants to bless others—to physically bless them…I remain unimpressed. I want fruit. You want and need fruit too. Words are not fruit. Actions are. And the Person Who prompts all those actions is the Holy Spirit. Whispering… “why don’t you just go and do this or that …” He hardly ever shouts. That’s why we need learn to listen to Him. 

The Holy Spirit is the only Person I know, Who can take terrible situations, and awful people, plus a rotten personal  attitude and weave it into something so beautiful it will glorify God Himself! I have no idea how He does it – but I love watching Him work. One of the reasons you and I don’t always see the fruit of our prayers is that we cannot see God’s bigger picture. I’ve learnt to look for the good in any situation.  Where God is, there is good! Drag your eyes away from the obvious failures and disasters all around us, and ask the Holy Spirit to show you the good in it. 

I am learning to live with the expectation that there will be good, I will find His good no matter how it looks. God calls that faith … I call it knowing Him, just a little. We have the dearest Friend ever, He knows how to look through any storm and see Jesus walking towards us on the water. Hold on dear friends, the Perfect One is right there … can you see Him? Bye 🕊️.

P 2980 How to be really blessed!

/ DVH

“Let me emphasise this: As you yield to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life. When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit you hinder Him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the new creation life of the Spirit. But when you yield to the life of the Spirit, you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it!”Galatians 5:16-18 TPT. 

The verses above are probably one of the best explanations of how our life in the Spirit works. What I see when I read the above scripture is that we are in a war, right here, right now. Every morning we wake up to war, and war even disturbs our sleep at night. We are not warring against flesh and blood … His book tells us that. No! We are in the battle of our lives to fight apathy, disinterest and disengagement. All those things that are thriving all around us. The ugly stuff that has now become humanity’s way of life. In order to escape it, we must break away from the somnambulism that surrounds us, and take God’s ways seriously.

This world has taught us, day by day, that those things we don’t like are either too hard, not fair, too energetic or just plain boring. We have become incredibly used to being pacified and entertained. If we do not take the bible to heart, we can end up conforming to some advertisers’ fantastic image of who we could be and forget what we already ARE! Human beings are brilliant creatures, created in His image. Yet we sit passively inside our our little boxes, made of ticky-tacky and we’ve all come out the same! (Malvina Reynolds 1962) Let’s not waste this life we have been given simply learning about how to die to self — let’s be brave and jump in! Almighty God will catch us.

Do you know what is incredibly sad? Unredeemed people are currently setting the pace for the church and they are making a huge profit doing it. It seems like we’ve decided there are things that we simply cannot live without!! The unsaved living around us have chosen the cadence, plus the speed of this march toward death we are all on,  and off we go … following the greedy Pied Piper down funny little predesigned rabbit holes into oblivion. We simply must begin to contribute more into the society around us. Lost people need a guide, and God picked you and I. And I am just as inadequate as you feel!

Sadly, our children have become so used to being pacified and entertained that they simply must have the latest … whatever it is! Some of the most potentially brilliant minds in this world have been lulled off to sleep with ghastly music, false gamer finishing lines, bright flashing lights and lots of …loud. Many people are scared of silence, and they are seeking peace in all the wrong places. This is exactly what Paul is talking about in Galatians. Our flesh is wasting away the most important war of our lifetime—the time we have been given by God to be fruitful for His Kingdom. 

That time is being frittered and whittled away by all the useless stuff that has now become part of our everyday lives. The future of everyone around us is at stake, yet we are widely inactive — watching fictional human beings get swished down the drains in movies about death and destruction. We’ve become totally desensitised to the idea of human life as precious and important, because hedonism is being portrayed as great fun, a harmless goal. We seem to have forgotten how much we are loved, how much it cost Him to save every one of us. 

I still maintain that we can’t afford to sit about and wait for the ‘right’ feelings to fall on us. Actually, I think it is going to hurt for each one of us to abandon the cravings of these superficial life-styles we have all embraced. We’ve told ourselves we were “just fitting in.” But the real truth is we were scared of our God-given mandate—and fear won! All the other human beings all around us don’t know any better, mainly because we’ve been so inactive waiting for the pastor or the evangelist to do all the work. Maybe we decided that Christianity’s not all that palatable in this world — after all people could get offended with us. Who wants to hear about – denying yourself, every single day, and dying to self?

Hmmm … … Do I hear the sound of a drain gurgling away somewhere in the background, and millions of voices crying out: “please, somebody save me,” as they circle that awful drain one last time? Don’t worry …  it’s OK. Just turn the TV up a little, and tell little Andy to “please take that dreadful noisy game up to your room, I’m trying to relax here.” … Well, thank goodness that desperate sound is fading even now …because so many people are giving up waiting for help to come …  Bye. 👋 

“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on His law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season…” Psalm 1:1-3a. 

P 2978 Our God writes poetry!

/ DVH

“We have become His poetry, a re-created people that will fulfil the destiny He has given each of us, for we are joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. Even before we were born, God planned in advance our destiny and the good works we would do to fulfil it!” Ephesians 2:10 TPT.

David and some other guys, wrote lots of poetry for us, about the Lord … but we are also His poems, written for all time. Because we are joined to Jesus – the kingdom things we do, are part of His poem. The fact that you love helping people —-that’s part of His poem. The way you sing your heart out in worship times—is part of that poem. You might not always be great at witnessing, but our God-given uniqueness in Christ, makes us His treasure. God doesn’t care about diamonds, gold, pearls, emeralds or rubies … He uses them as building materials … but He cares so-oo-oo deeply about people.

Have you ever met someone and you just clicked, you seemed to have so much in common? Think about this … you and Almighty God just click together. Jesus is the ‘permanent joint’ that binds us into God’s heart. And whenever He looks at His precious Son, He feels delight. Each one of us has been made as a reflection of Who Jesus is. And each one of us is a tiny mirror sliver of all the majesty and glory and honour and wisdom of Who Christ is. We’ve been given the honour and pleasure of reflecting what we find in Him, into this world. 

God has written poetry and we are part of His poem. That’s a bit more easy to believe when you see a new baby, and a little bit harder when you look at someone quite old! Nevertheless, you and I are a love poem to the rest of this lost, sad world. Greed, and the lust for more and more, blinds all the occupants of our world to the glory of God … but then there is YOU…

Shining away, daily reflecting whatever light He has given you. Some of that light is practical, and some of it is spoken out loud or in prayer, but because the Lord is our all in all – we just can’t help sparkling, like a bright gem on dusty ground! Goodness has its own light because goodness has its source in Him. We are daily being recreated so we can shine even more brightly with His light. Being a witness is about shining where other people can see you… like the old song says… don’t hide your light under a bushel.

“Yahweh says, “You are My witnesses, My chosen servants. I chose you in order that you would know Me intimately, believe Me always, and fully understand that I am the only God. There was no god before Me, and there will be no other god after Me.” Isaiah 43:10 TPT.

Sometimes a witness does not have to say anything.  All you and I need to do is to reflect His goodness to the people around us, and knowing Him makes us shiny. His love in us gives us a glow that cannot be ignored. The things of this world fade when He is around, they seem trivial and unimportant, and people start to realise the depth of love and acceptance, they have been given just because of His love and Presence in His people.

Becoming God’s love slave is a choice and we have given ourselves to Him simply because He willingly gave Himself to us. That’s what marriage is – we reflect our Heavenly Bridegroom into this world. Father God did that for each one us when Jesus came here to serve mankind. Our lives are poetry, written day by day – often speaking to this world without words. Love brought the Lord here and love kept Him here, until His work was done.    

You already know hubby and I go on the road and perfect strangers start telling my dear husband their secrets. He doesn’t have a system, or a clever repartee — sometimes all he says is “hello!”  But because each one of us was made by God, and destined to be a reflection of His precious Son, God goes with us and it is His Presence that draws people to us. These people don’t even know they are being drawn toward Him. But because we are part of His love poem, people hear and see Him through our little lives.

Our fatal flaw as human beings is that we see our mistakes, sins, and stinky attitudes as some sort of cancellation to our blood-bought destiny. Our destiny can’t be cancelled – our job is to rise above this stuff around us, and let Him shine! He’s IN you! Sometimes our windows might be a bit dusty with the cares of this world, plus dirt and unbelief, but the King of glory can’t ever be kept under wraps. That’s like trying to put the sun out – it can’t happen! Here’s a huge useful secret for you to think about – whatever God OWNS, He kisses.

Knowing Almighty God intimately means we have been granted access to His deepest heart secrets. What a privilege! Is anything else in this world, that is worth the price of forgetting about that privilege. It cost Him everything. If we are not careful we can end up defining ourselves by our sin … BUT …He defines us by His Son. Wouldn’t it be a pity if we let the junk from today — newspapers, hobbies, fashions, the way we earn our living, parenthood, or even circumstances etc. define us? We are His poetry… HAND-written to bless the rest of this world as we glorify His Name. Bye.👋