Almighty God

P 3257 It’s time to get the band back together.

/ DVH

Years and years ago, when I was a much younger Christian, I loved reading instructional Christian books, plus I listened to tapes, music, and videos, everything I could. I was trying to grow my faith. I desperately needed to belong, to feel like a part of the Body of Christ. You know, there’s a whole lotta of odd people out there who really really need Jesus – we all might want to think about that. Back to it … eventually, I realised I was reading the bible and understanding it through someone else’s filter!

The Holy Spirit truly is the very best Teacher, He explains things first-hand – personally! There’s nothing like getting your own revelation from His book. Back then, whenever I read 1 Corinthians 13, I read it through other people’s interpretations to help me understand it. My thoughts were ‘boy do I fail at that!’ No wonder I felt a failure, at that time I had no idea how complete the Lord’s redemption was on my behalf. Like Paul said in Galatians 3:3 MSG bible: 

“Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God. If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up!”

I believed my sins were bigger than what Jesus did. So when I messed up … and I did, a lot … I was shattered. Yeah, I know, that makes no sense at all. The Lord has a whole new kingdom reality for all of us. Sadly, at that time, I just had too much luggage that I dragged along behind me! To top it all off I erroneously believed this kind of stuff was true Christianity, and I was just really really bad at it. 

You see, people in my family or the church still irritated me, and when they were unkind, I wanted to run away, or thump them. Eventually, I became ill. So getting healed became my new focus. I figured I had become sick because I was failing the Lord all the time. I just want to strongly insert the fact that Jesus is not like that! 

But at that time, I jumped into every single healing line I could find, simply because I badly wanted to be well! Instead I just got sicker, and that added a further burden. It seemed to me that I must be a terrible Christian because I was ill in a generation that thought if you were sick it was your own fault! For years I wandered around thinking God had given up on me. And getting divorced did not help that perception. 

I know there are verses that clearly talk about divorce, and yes, I accept them! God definitely says don’t do it! However, He’s also merciful – He explains WHY. Participating in a divorce makes our hearts hard. Even though I repented up one hill and down the other, I had hardened my heart against any sort of redemption by Him. Unbelief is still sin! Works will do that to you. They will cut you off from true redemption and also real gratitude. It’s hard to be grateful when living for Jesus is a whole lot of hard work, and you can’t do it.

I guess I saw Almighty God as SomeOne Who held a grudge, like most people I had met. And I thought I deserved to be rejected. In that process I lost the One Person Who dearly, eternally loved me. At that time, I had no comprehension of unconditional love. If you happen to feel like that, I would like to testify to you that the Lord Jesus is not keeping a score of our sins against us. He can’t, His blood wiped them out!! At the same time, I hadn’t properly personally digested 2 Corinthians 5:19: “…that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people’s sins against them [but canceling them]. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation [that is, restoration to favour with God].”

It’s pretty hard to go out and tell others about the reconciliation that exists in Christ, when we aren’t living in it! Eventually, through the patience of a dear old minster, I came to see that the Lord Jesus is the One Who knelt beside a woman who was taken in adultery. and He also dealt with the people who wanted to stone her. Once He sat by a well and talked with a woman who had had five husbands … He didn’t give either of these women permission to live like that! However, the Lord altered the course of  both of their lives just by being Himself! The love and power of God is like that – it sets people free. 

I believe the church world-wide needs to go after the Lord’s lost sheep. The bible clearly tells us the Shepherd always does! Those broken, beaten sheep who have wandered away – or maybe they were even shoved out because the church didn’t want to be contaminated by their sin. Let’s ask the Lord to help us to win back our brothers and sisters – mothers, fathers, friends, rabbits and relations. The Body cannot function without ALL its parts. We need to be like Paul and participate in their reconciliation and restoration. So let’s love them OUT of their isolation. Maybe they are ready to repent and come back! 2 Corinthians 2:5-11.

How about we stop shooting the wounded, or leaving our broken-hearted members behind? And ask the Lord if we can be used by Him to restore them instead. Let’s get the band back together. Who knows what God will  do when we embrace others who have gotten lost along the way? Bye. 👋

P 3256 Make a decision to be thankful.

/ DVH

Obviously after yesterday, you can see I have so much to be thankful for! But I want to talk about the reason I   made this decision… Life has a way of whizzing by us, day by day by day. In fact, bad things or good things are often an interruption to the ordinariness of life. The problem with living an ordinary life is that you think you are ordinary, and you don’t matter… we become passive, not active.

Almighty God has made us His house! Whether we feel like it or not. That’s not ordinary. It seems to me that we think like this because we have come to believe there is another breed of Christians, a special, elite, gifted group. Super saints, people who have ministries and gifts and hoopla surrounding them. Spiritual gifts are not just for a selective group. We all have them!  Maybe you just haven’t found yours yet? 

In Ephesians 4:8: “Therefore it says,“When HE ascended on high, HE led captivity captive, And HE bestowed gifts on men.” and in Ephesians 4:11-13: “Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do His work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.”

Spiritual gifts are given to build up the body. We have often put an emphasis on this kind of verse in the wrong place. GOD has given gifts to men, so we will become mature in Christ. It is the Giver that matters, not the gifts or the men or women! These gifts have His purposes on them. It is never good to elevate the people God has given them to. Because of these gifts in our own lives, we can see the Lord’s incredible generosity toward all of us and be thankful!.He knows maturity is beyond human beings, so He has given people all over the Body of Christ supernatural gifts to help us move from the natural, to the supernatural, and from the mundane, into the heavenly realms.

Almighty God gave and we receive. Who is greater? The Giver or the receiver? You do the sum. The Body of Christ seems firmly stuck on the gifts, or the ‘ministry.’ He gives gifts to ordinary people to showcase His own extraordinariness! Once He made a donkey talk, and the donkey made good sense! We are not all that — HE is all that! That’s the POV we need to cling to. Mankind is not equipped to handle the kind of fame that can be slathered all over those who are famous. 

By elevating the gift over the Lord, we have put undue attention and pressure on those people who do have a gift. All Peter did when he prayed for the lame man was give what he had, He didn’t say “I have the gift of healing and a word of knowledge for you” He gave what he already had. It came from His relationship with Jesus! When we give thanks we put God back into His rightful place in our lives. He’s our King, brother, Saviour. (James 1:17)

It’’s the Lord that we need to thank, not the men and women who He has gifted! When I hear someone or other did something incredibly dumb, and they are famous, I feel compassion and pity for them. Fame goes to people’s heads – only God can bear it. That’s why the bible tells us: “to make HIS Name famous!” (Psalm 45:17) Anything else can cause chaos, God is always our first thought, not man. Thank HIM for HIS gift, and praise Him for helping us through others.

Thankfulness is a way of life – we can learn it. Step by step. The way into that life is to acknowledge that “without Him we can do nothing permanent.” (John 15:5)  Jesus Himself said that! At the same time we need to live with the reality that we too have been given gifts to benefit the Body, so whatever happens to us has His hand on it. We know we have been blessed because He is a generous God. Giving up the right to approval by man, comes under the heading of complete submission to God, and it won’t always give us a happy ride. There are so many things we can learn through difficulties and hardship, including the fact that the Lord Himself is not fazed by them! That’s why we give thanks.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 it says: “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” We are told to give thanks in every thing…if we want to know God’s will for us, here is a big fat clue… GIVE THANKS to Him, no matter what happens. Yeah, I know, it sounds upside down, but ‘God’s ways aren’t our ways…’  (Isaiah 55:8-9.) And faith would not be faith if it was something we could be certain about! Giving thanks changes gears. We stop looking at the problem, and start wondering how the Lord is going to get us out of this one! Sometimes hard things just fade away … sometimes we see a clear solution … that bit doesn’t matter. Giving thanks for all He is and what He is doing right now … changes gears.

It shifts our perspective from earth to heaven because the bible says: “we are seated in heavenly places with Christ.” Ephesians 2:6. Again, this scripture is something the Body of Christ has seen as a bragging point, rather than seeing it as a gift! When what Jesus did for us, was so complete, it seated us with Him! We didn’t climb up there, or earn that place, it was given to us, no matter how spiritual we seem to others. If we continue to read the bible with the accent only on what’s in it to benefit me – we won’t comprehend what He has given us, that we don’t deserve.  We will overlook the opportunity we have to make a decision to be thankful. Bye. 👋

P 3255 We can easily miss what He is doing.

/ DVH

“…but just as it is written [in Scripture], “Things which the eye has not seen and the ear has not heard, And which have not entered the heart of man, All that God has prepared for those who love Him [who hold Him in affectionate reverence, who obey Him, and who gratefully recognize the benefits that He has bestowed].” 1 Corinthians 2:9                                                                       

“Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides You, Who acts on behalf of those who wait for Him. You come to the help of those who gladly do right, I who remember Your ways.” Isaiah 64:4,5.

The above two scriptures are such a comfort. They tell us how much Almighty God loves us and how He has plans for our lives. He’s so much more generous than we can ever hope or imagine. Somehow it seems kind of sad that He would need to tell us, via the scriptures, to remember to think about Him with loving affection and deep respect! The second part of the verse in Corinthians explains why. We don’t recognise what He does for us every single day. 

For instance, I woke up today. Lots of other people didn’t, but, by the Grace of God, here I sit typing away, doing something I love doing. This is one of many benefits, I can see that the Lord has given to me. I sometimes drive my family nuts because I am very vocal about what I believe! I’ve been loving Jesus and following Him for 53 years, and some of those times have been so very very difficult – but He has helped me through them.

Years ago, when I had a liver transplant, it all happened very suddenly. It was at a time of great massive turmoil, I had just been through a divorce. That morning seemed an ordinary day, the family was off doing their thing and I could barely drag myself about, so I ate a few jelly beans and an apple. Then the phone rang… I had to go into hospital immediately… Somebody else’s life had ended with the same suddenness that my new life was about to begin. I rang my husband, worried because I had just eaten something so maybe they couldn’t do the op! The things you think of at times like that – what I had eaten was the least of my concerns.

That was thirty five years ago. And so began a huge awful, scary adventure. I am typing this by the Grace of God plus a stranger’s unimaginable generosity, at probably one of the worst moments in their lives. Someone they dearly loved had died, and in those devastating moments, they had chosen to help somebody they would never meet.  

Eventually, I woke up in ICU with more tubes and bags of stuff hanging off me than I could have ever managed. I felt like a Christmas tree! Another incredible blessing that God had given me at that time was – I had the three finest liver transplant surgeons in the world operate on me that day. Many doctors came from other countries to learn from these three men. These doctors had travelled all over the world teaching a method founded in the very hospital, that was just 3 minutes down the road from where we were living, I could have walked to it. 

I won’t pretend any of it was fun. But I can remember, in the middle of the flowers on the curtains around my bed talking to me, I told the Lord I didn’t want to go on without Him. And He came!  Jesus stood right by my bed. I didn’t see Him, but I sure did feel His loving Presence. I felt Him there so strongly, that when my poor hubby turned up with his worried face, I kept telling him to not speak because the Lord might go away! I asked Jesus why He had come for someone like me, and He said:“You told me you wouldn’t go on without Me, so I came.”  God’s incredible kindness at one of my most vulnerable moments overwhelmed me – it still does. 

The Lord acted on my behalf in so many things regarding the transplant – the experienced surgeons, plus the nurses  So here I sit, typing this. I’ve lived long enough to see my three children married, plus I now have five grown grandchildren. All of this life we have now, has been an unforeseen benefit of God’s Grace. We had only been married for two years, when I had the transplant, we have now been together for 39 years in July. 

It is incredibly important to our overall health to remember all His benefits. It’s good to write things down, do it! But it is even better to sit with Him and remember.  At the time of that terrible illness I didn’t even dream about having a future. I had no clue about the places I would go to, what I would see, who I would meet – until after all this happened. We’ve travelled over 250,000 miles in this country, meeting ordinary people, giving away bibles, for nearly 21 years.

We can easily miss what the Lord is doing, and has already done, because this life can be one giant distraction. You have your own story of His grace, I hope I have helped you to remember it. Bye. 👋

P 3251 Learn to see like He does.

/ DVH

We can easily think ‘knowing’ others is about hanging around them, or watching their faces and actions. Often we take note of what they do or don’t do, or pay attention to the results of their decisions – or even what they say about themselves. In the natural, that could be true … but spiritually speaking it’s not. The reality is here and now we can no longer afford to only use our physical eyes to see others, anymore. We must learn from the Holy Spirit, how to see others the Way He sees them. And He longs to help us do it. How others appear on the surface is often learned or adaptive behaviour, it does not always bear a resemblance of their true, God-designed selves.

“Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at Him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life emerges! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and Him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with Himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what He is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ Himself now: Become friends with God; He’s already a friend with you.”  2 Corinthians 5:16. MSG. 

The church at large has spent so long focussing on sin … by avoiding it, plus making sure we are not polluted by it, that we forget that people are the primary reason we are still here!  This verse says we (mankind) have ALL misjudged Christ. His goodness is all over the bible, so I’m thinking that it is entirely possible, based on that One Witness (Jesus), that we all utterly misjudge other people and their motives! 

Let’s pray, and storm heaven about having spiritual sight, and ask Him to help us see others through His eyes of Love. Almighty God does not look at this world and its inhabitants the way we do. We often assess people based on fear, experience or what someone else says about them. Father God has a lot to say about people in general in His book – the mistake we often make is we hear His words with someone else in mind!  It is so easy use His book as an accusation to suit our own agendas. Let’s avoid that mistake by reading the Word like He is speaking to you, not the guy standing behind in church, or your family, or any other people you don’t like.

The Lord doesn’t assess this world into people who love Him and those who don’t! He sees us all as His kids, the ones He loves – the Holy Spirit Himself formed each one of us inside our mothers. He knows our names, our history, our passions, our needs – He even knows how much hair we have on our heads. Does this sound like SomeOne Who is watching us to see if we sin? Jesus paid for everybody’s sins – murderous attitudes, thievish lying ways etc., but He is not motivated, nor does He react to, what He sees – because Love looks at things differently! 

It looks for the good in others. Our God isn’t partisan. Right now, He doesn’t divide any of us into groups – the good guys and bad guys … that’s MEDIA, not God! One day Jesus will sort out the sheep from the goats, but that’s not our job! He may not favour what we think, just because our POV seems right to us and everybody we like to hang around with!! God is love and love looks like 1 Corinthians 13! And Love always wants to capture the heart of His kids! God’s love, despite modern society’s ridiculous ideas — is not permissive, or soppy, or prejudicially flavoured – or only in favour of our little group. His love is all over His book. The things we like, as well as the things we don’t.

Jesus loves because Love is Who He is – it is not a changeable attitude affected by whims. Read the book! In order to see others the Way the Lord sees them we will need to look at others as precious to Him, despite their dreadful actions and our personal prejudices. Every single human being on this planet is undone without His Presence. That thing you hate in others, or your supposed enemy, is just a lack of the Presence of God, first of all in you, and then in them.

We choose to forget that He died so we can all live differently. We’ve attached ourselves to all manner of creeds and attitudes, because we think we need power over others to straighten them out. And some people we just plain HATE, because they are breathing! At the same time, we like to hang around with people who believe in the same things we do.

Seeing through His eyes means that nobody is left out – every single human being was saved 2000+ years ago. Now we treat others like we would treat the Lord, when it suits us or even when it doesn’t. We live our lives in the reality of His kingdom, where we can do nothing without Him, His insight, His loving kindness, His love. So His people look for the good, and highlight that, because that’s the way we’ve chosen to see. Bye. 👋

P 3240 Come up higher.

/ DVH

Sometimes we can become so earthly-minded we are no longer of any heavenly use. It seems to me that the church has become distracted by the cares and worries of this world. At the same time, it kind of looks like we expect Almighty God to enter our world and meet our needs here and now — He already did that. The thing is, He has higher priorities and I don’t think that it is His priority to make sure His kids have a cushy life.

Let’s take what the bible says seriously, and start making investments and withdrawals, using that book as our guideline. Then we can begin to bring His kingdom down here where the truly needy live. Truly needy people are the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet! Personally, I think telling people Jesus died to make them rich and prosper, is an abomination! 

None of Jesus’ disciples settled down into living in a grand house, in the ‘burbs, with everything they needed on tap. Instead they hit the road, and trusted Jesus to meet their needs. BTW, I am not saying, sell your house, go and sit on the curb and wait for Jesus to come back, but I am saying  – He is our priority. His agenda is now our agenda. We have given our lives to Him, so we can’t afford to let this life dictate what happens to us, through us and around us. 

As kingdom people, our destiny is to bring light and hope into the darkness. We may have to punch a hole in the darkness sometimes. The author of the book of Daniel punched a hole, and it took a while for the answer to come. Yet this man kept waiting for the Lord to do what He loves to do for all of us. Redeem the situation. Jesus loves to redeem situations, as well as relationships. It’s faith that gives us the impetus we need to pray, and keep on praying as we wait for Him to answer.  

Sometimes a believer’s problems can be a wrong attitude. Especially when we want to use God to make this life, our own earthly life, better. This world is a sewer. You can’t see the kingdom of God in a sewer, unless God Himself called you in there! This means we can’t afford to steep ourselves in the gunk that goes on around us – we need to soak in the Word of God to stay clean! We are called to be IN this world and not OF it. That means this world is not alive in us.

We can use our spiritual energy up by trying to praying our way out of this and that. But the bible says we are already more than conquerors, because of what Jesus has done. Let’s focus on that instead, and deliberately make sure all our relationships are based on the kind of love Jesus gave us. And when things are difficult, and “stuff” happens – while we are in the middle of it – let’s look for someone we are there to help, to witness to, to care for.

We seem to have given up on fulfilling the Great Commission. Sadly, we’ve become so involved in human affairs, we’ve forgotten our mandate. My advice is this – tell the Lord your needs, and choose to walk with the Spirit of God. Our faith is not designed to be like a credit card that is whipped out for use when we need it. Our faith is like an atmosphere that surrounds us. We live there, in good or bad seasons, we choose to focus on our glorious God being in charge. We comfort ourselves that He is doing what He set out to do … we just can’t see it yet. So we pray for steadfastness in trials and the ability to rest while He’s doing whatever He is doing. It is going to be for our good, we just can’t see it yet.

The Body of Christ is here to be salt and light — to lift everyone around us up higher, by the way we regard others. It is not lying to speak to the good in someone else who has been anything but good to you! It takes faith. We have the power to speak things into being – ask the Lord to show you what He sees in those people. Let’s stop rehearsing other people’s sins, and start looking for why they are here, and speak into that… … encouraging them into those things. 

In the last century, my age group made a mistake, we started exalting ourselves. Telling ourselves that we were  this or that and quoting verses from the bible to prove it to ourselves and others. It was a lot of hot air. Forget being the head instead of the tail – Jesus is our Head! I do not care if I am a toenail in the Body of Christ, I’m just glad to be included! Jesus is the only One Who is all this, AND that. We are here to encourage and bless and uphold others. We don’t need to big note ourselves spiritually. 

What stands us out in this world needs to be His GRACE and LOVE operating in us and through us. Let’s  decide what kingdom we want to live in, here and now – HIS kingdom is the Higher Place, living like He lived. We dare not call ourselves successful unless we are living to help others, because loving one another has become our priority. Let’s put our prayer, faith and energy into that. Bye 👋.

P 3230 Active faith is essential.

/ DVH

The Lord Himself chose the Israelites to be His own people, and He chose Israel as the place for His precious Son to be born. When you read the book, it is incredibly obvious that the Jewish people were not perfect. Ps neither are we!!… The entire bible is a demonstration of how people related to Almighty God and the way He responded to them.  Jesus Christ, God wrapped in human flesh, is our revealed illustration of our Father’s will and love for ALL mankind. 

The story of God Himself and His Ways with men, is a two-part story, lovingly and truthfully disclosed by the Holy Spirit. The New Testament does not replace the Old, it completes it! In the New Testament, at the beginning of the Lord’s ministry, Jesus’ mother told the servants who came to serve fresh wine this: the wine that Jesus miraculously transformed – “WHATEVER HE SAYS TO YOU, DO IT.” That’s our mandate. Obedient actions, made and acted upon in faith, as we follow the Holy Spirit, will transform our minds and soften our hearts. 

“This is why the Holy Spirit says, “If only you would LISTEN to His voice this day! Don’t make Him angry by hardening your hearts, like your ancestors did during the days of their rebellion, when they were tested in the wilderness. There your fathers tested Me and tried My patience even though they saw My miracles for forty years they still doubted Me! This ignited My anger with that generation and I said about them, ‘They wander in their hearts just like they do with their feet, and they refuse to learn My ways.’ My heart grieved over them so I decreed: ‘They will not enter into My rest!’ ”  Hebrews 3:7-11. 

What did the Jewish people do that made God angry? They ignored Him, rejected His Ways, and hardened their hearts with disobedience. They chose to indulge and control their own destiny, and make themselves at home with other more controllable gods. We can’t afford to follow their example. Almighty God has incredible plans for each one of us to make all our lives better in ways we cannot imagine. Why am I saying this? Because the bible says in 1 Corinthians 2:9: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love Him—“

We definitely cannot imagine what kind of life we would have if only every time somebody raised their voice or were spiteful to us, we chose to give away His love instead! If you add to that, the fact that He never responds the same way twice, we cannot live without the Holy Spirit to leading us! Sadly our negative experiences often take over and poison our thinking against change. We need His power to open our eyes to understand exactly what His Love, in us, for us, and through us … will actually DO TO US. And that’s where Jesus becomes the very best illustration we can ever have! His Presence on this earth transformed other people’s lives forever. 

Most of us have experienced the worst of mankind’s attitudes and actions, and that negative stuff has so seared into our brains and emotions, we can’t even begin to imagine God’s kind of goodness. Many times we think we already know the outcome to things that we have not yet experienced, personally. Let’s not follow the Israelites down that dead end road of unbelief in His goodness – let’s simply choose to believe and live and act on what Jesus taught us! 

The Jewish people themselves continually experienced so much goodness – God’s deliverance, His provision, but they couldn’t see the bigger picture – because they hardened their hearts against Him, and willingly applied their own view. They were slaves to their immediate position. Their fear of change negated the possibilities of new revelations. We need to allow the Lord to continually deal with our own hearts, so our receiver works! 

Having said all that, I want to quickly look at something that illustrates the incredible generosity of God and what the possibility of change looked like in the life of Abraham. Abraham gives us a brilliant example of what obedience means to God. He gave this man righteousness, because of Abraham’s active faith – he was an old man, old people like comfort. What did he do? He followed God and took the Lord at His Word! This man’s faith changed his life choices, and he became the father of our faith. You can read it about in Genesis 15. 

In Romans 4, we can also read that God Himself declared Abraham in right standing with Himself not because of perfect deeds, but because of his complete trust in GOD HIMSELF. As Christians we don’t just want the appearance of goodness in our hearts, we want the kind of transformation that has His power in it! Genuine faith leads to obedient actions – and Abraham clearly shows us how powerfully an ordinary life can change. Then Jesus came along and illustrated His own perfect obedience, unto death. Death is also a needed part of obedience.

The bible teaches us that in order to please God we must die to the kind of life we want, in order for Him to progressively enliven us into His purposes. It is not enough to say, “I will die for you Lord,” and then turn around and go away from that moment, and continue to live this life, our only life here, doing whatever WE want. That’s called paying lip service.  We ALL need active faith – like Jesus Himself had and only the Holy Spirit knows what that will mean in our daily lives. Bye. 👋

P 3219 A different kind of fasting.

/ DVH

Isaiah 58:5-11: “Is this what I want—this doing of penance and bowing like reeds in the wind, putting on sackcloth and covering yourselves with ashes? Is this what you call fasting? No, the kind of fast I want is that you stop oppressing those who work for you and treat them fairly and give them what they earn. I want you to share your food with the hungry and bring right into your own homes those who are helpless, poor, and destitute. Clothe those who are cold, and don’t hide from relatives who need your help. If you do these things, God will shed His own glorious light upon you. 

He will heal you; your godliness will lead you forward, goodness will be a shield before you, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then, when you call, the Lord will answer. “Yes, I am here,” He will quickly reply. All you need to do is to stop oppressing the weak and stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumours! Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy you with all good things, and keep you healthy too; and you will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.”

In my opinion Almighty God makes it perfectly clear, in passages like this one, how to walk with Him. Here’s another interesting one from another prophet, Micah 6:8:“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Our spiritual wellbeing, and our spiritual health, relies upon our choice to do things His way. God is quite simply not into alternative theories. He has laid out His own eternal plans, plus He has written down His interactions with other men and women just like us, for everyone to see and for us to notice and obey. 

If someone asks me, ‘what should I apply myself and obey? Well, Isaiah 58:5-11 keeps me pretty busy! So do the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. PS they are called the BE-attitudes because we are to live like this, personalising His instructions into our lives. Jesus doesn’t waffle on making ridiculous, ostentatious, new age remarks – He simply taught. Everything He said and did in the New Testament was teaching. Here He is teaching us how this new life we have been given works — what it looks like in action.

In the past in our home, we have had a procession of people – mostly young people – who had nowhere to live. Their relevant adults threw them out, so we simply applied Isaiah into our lives and made room for them. Now we choose to help other people who do the same thing we did, only they do it on a grand scale. We don’t act like an organisation when we do this stuff, because we are not. People get quite puzzled that we are not ‘official’ in what we do. To me helping others is just normal Christianity. Our first response to people in trouble is: “how can we help you?”  

Meanwhile, whether the other person is a Christian or not – what’s that got to do with anything? We can’t afford to be selective … Father God wasn’t when He picked us! Despite current theology none of us is any prize …Yet He is so amazing because we are all prizes to Him. The value you put on another human being can change their life. It will most certainly change you! If we only take care of those people who care about us, then we are more concerned about our own comfort, than obedience.

We look after our family, plus we help others – that’s the mandate in this scripture. Once, in a major city, we were walking down the street and a young man was sitting on the pavement with a sign that said: “I‘m starving.”Who could walk past that? It was a busy city and loads of people never even saw him. Someone might say:  “What if he’s a drug-user? It isn’t good to give them money!” Quite right! But you can go buy the guy food and a drink! I don’t have to solve his problems, but I can help him a little even in a small way even if I am just passing through.

Another time, an elderly gentleman was huddled in a doorway, it was so cold. He had a thin little jacket on, pulled tightly around him. The wind was freezing, whistling away … I was cold and I had a jumper, a coat and scarf on! Hubby gave the man his pseudo-suede coat, some food vouchers and we prayed for him. Hey, if you want to open doors, this is the way to do it. Help them. We prayed for him and told him how much Jesus loves him. He told us he’d never had a coat like that one before. That’s when I teared up then, because the coat was not all that good, but … it was warm. 

If you want to know Jesus intimately, then do what He did when He was here. Put God first. Then choose to see what He saw, hear what He heard, look at what He looked at, without judgment – help the ones He helped.

In this fast-paced life today it seems that we think we can’t ever have enough money, because the line for enough, always moves away from us. However, it is good for us to do what we can. Things like, treating other people with kindness and respect, no matter how they look or smell! The poor, the downtrodden, the weak, the disenfranchised are far more likely to listen to what Jesus says, than the supposedly comfortable people who are spending their lives making money and collecting things.

Father God has clearly told us in Isaiah what sort of fast we need to participate in. He even tells us He has chosen it. The next move is ours. Bye. 👋

HAVE A TWICE BLESSED CHRISTMAS! Once because he saved us, twice because He loves us.

/ DVH

P 3203 Let the Lord be the flavour of your life.

We can easily get caught up in this idea, or that new invention, and forget that Almighty God has a purpose for our lives. We can even take those current, incredibly ingenious ideas, and bam them into a shape that we think will accomplish what God likes or wants. We’ve done that in so many of our churches, the majority of the people ended up spectating, instead of participating!

At the same time if you do choose to take that ‘let’s be popular’ road, please be careful …you can get really giddy going round and round … trying to maintain something God isn’t doing. Jesus taught us what we need to do and how to do it. He said: “I only do what I see the Father doing .,.. I only say what I see the Father saying…” We can quite easily get distracted from our purpose and caught up in one of this life’s out-of-the-mainstream eddies.

Meanwhile today, I want to talk about what flavours you and I! I happen to enjoy a cup of tea. So a few times in the day, my hubby takes boiling water, and he puts my fav teabag in it. He leaves it there to steep… to soak in the flavour. I’m a bit of a fuss-budget, because I like strong tea. So if someone else makes the tea for me, I ask them to leave the teabag in because I want more of the flavour than most people like. What do you like to steep in? Coffee, the movies, work, games, sports – what do you enjoy enough to just sit and relax into it?

Here is what I think the Spirit of God wants for us – He wants us to steep in the Lord’s Presence so that when our little cup gets bumped, all that comes out is a concentrated form of His Love inside! Life bumps us all the time. Ask yourself, what comes out of your little life? Obviously my illustration gets a bit overworked if I take it any further, but you get the idea. Remaining in the Lord’s presence, can and should include “Walking and leaping and praising God.”  No, I haven’t lost my marbles, you don’t have to sit still to steep!! You even can dance in the shower … just don’t slip over OK?

There is a youngish man on Youtube, who quite obviously loves hip-hop. He makes brief video clips .  I can tell the Lord has steeped him in JOY, because he walks up to perfect strangers in Walmart, while he is dancing. Then he grabs their hand and they start dancing and laughing and enjoying themselves. It’s the Lord’s gift over his life, but because the young man has taken the time to allow God’s gift to stretch and challenge him – I’ve actually seen this gift grow. 

He is fearless. He walks up to grumpy people, and before they know it they are bopping away to the music, and they have obviously forgotten whatever it was that made them grouchy! The busy grind of shopping just melts away in the light of God’s joy as it is let loose in a supermarket. Boy there should be more of that! 

Why do we keep His JOY in our churches, when so many people don’t want to go to church anymore?How will they know Jesus is loving, real, and happy…if we don’t share what He has given us outside the church doors? In the past we’ve thought sharing meant preaching at them, but I think it is sharing whatever God-gift we have steeped ourselves in!

Listen to Romans 12:6-8: “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” Why should all this good stuff God gave us to give away to other people, be locked up inside our churches?!

Hubby and I prophesy outside the church all the time. Mu husband gives people prophetic words, and I give a word of knowledge or whatever God tells me to give. The people-all-around-us-who-don’t-know-Him-yet need to know He is real, and that He cares about their lives. When the Lord uses you to release His flavour to everyone around you, they know it’s Him. He made them inside their mother’s womb … we’ve all heard His voice before!! 

If you have a serving gift, then go find somewhere you can bless people outside your fellowship, with your serving! Serving people as Jesus leads you, helps them see that He cares about them, because He will send you. It’s the same with encouragement, it isn’t only the people in church who need to be encouraged. We have been given His Words of eternal life, that means they are powerful! Instead of criticising or correction, try prophesying what the other person needs over them. I do that a lot!  And let’s stop thinking that generosity is restricted to tithing! Tithing is the norm. You have to ask yourself, do you want to be normal, or do you want your giving to be extraordinary like Jesus’ gifts to us are? 

I’ve had the Lord correct me about only blessing people when I am happy with what I received from them… He asked me … ‘Who needs more love? The person other people like, or the one who is a grump?’ Isn’t it amazing how speechless you can get when He says stuff like that? It is like you no longer have a leg to stand on, and repenting is the best option. 

Meanwhile, trying dancing, singing or humming your way to the toilet, or your car. Who cares what other people think? He deserves the glory! We should be the happiest people on earth! Let the Lord be the flavour of your life … … and Merry Christmas!! 🔔  Bye. 👋

P 3189 Love looks like something.

/ DVH

At this time of the year, we are reminded that God’s love looks like a baby in a food trough, surrounded by His parents, animals, smelly unwashed shepherds, (no showers out there!) — and glorious angels lighting the sky, celebrating and singing the new baby off to sleep. That was one heck of a birth announcement! The Lord Jesus’ life was ended far too soon by jealous religious people who esteemed rules over love. If that happened to Him, then why are we surprised if unforeseen unpleasant things happen to us? Pure love will be opposed, because it challenges self-centredness. But, at the same time, it goes right around religion and hits people in the heart!

I think God’s Love looks like RISK. Following Jesus is a risky business. Unlike Forrest Gump’s naive, often quoted wisdom – “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.” I disagree with that thought – MY box of chocolates comes with a list of yummy contents — and so do the Lord’s blessings. My list of blessings are in His book! Mercy, for instance, turns up fresh and new every morning! We are going to have to stay spiritually alert to find His blessings in the middle of this life’s chaos. And we will have to risk what we think we know, to receive from the One Who knows everything. 

Love also looks like not getting what we want, or even like. I’ve met that one. And afterward I’ve given thanks because what I thought I needed, turned out to be a set-up, wickedly provided by the enemy. If anything distracts us from God’s purposes – it’s a trap! The bible calls such things a snare. Whatever it is called, sometimes not getting what we pray for is a blessing! No matter how good, right and just it seems to us. We can pray for more money ‘cos we need it, or a house, or a spouse, only to find that the picture in our mind looks nothing like the reality. Almighty God saves us from ourselves all the time. Praise Him! That’s what I call LOVE.

Love looks like not giving someone else a piece of our mind …especially when very few people care about what we think! This kind of stuff becomes clearer when other people have misunderstood us. Or, even worse, they have misinterpreted our actions. Love looks a lot more like putting a sock in it, than it looks like starting a war over who said what!  I’ve noticed that our lives today seem to be more about making ME understood – than it is about ME understanding YOU! That’s a swing and a miss… plus it flies in the face of everything Jesus said and did.

I really like this scripture: “You have worn out the LORD with your words. And yet, you ask, “How did we do that?” You did it by saying, “The LORD is pleased with evil and doesn’t care about justice.” Malachi 2:17. Even God Himself – the inexhaustible source of all real love, can get sick and tired of our irrational, petty excuses and miserable attitudes. Love can look like taking the blame, whether it is our fault or not, and then asking the Lord to make the difference – instead of pulling out our trusty broad sword and whacking other people over the head with it. The bible is the very best kind of sword, it will cut people free. But .. it doesn’t injure them on purpose for the sake of winning an argument.

Love does not look like compromise.Tell me one time Jesus compromised what He said to make someone else happy! JESUS the LIVING WORD – is the stone that other people stumble over!  “And another scripture says, “This is the stone that will make people stumble, the rock that will make them fall.” They stumbled because they did not believe in the word; such was God’s will for them.” 1 Peter 2:8. Sometimes we can end up striving so hard to make disgruntled people happy! We can’t upset this group because of this … We can’t afford to upset that other group, because we want something from them…  …but nobody says that bit out loud!  

Adapting the Lord’s’ Word to make others feel comfortable, can cause us to compromise all over the place. That is part of our enemy’s most potent strategies. We can call it love, or inclusion, or sharing, but if we compromise on the little things, without His guidance, then compromising on the big things will get so much easier. Love  always has an opinion – HIS!

Love looks like making hard choices – it is not about what we think we want, or need. How can God bless us when we are so busy grabbing stuff for ourselves? This kind of attitude shows us clearly the actual level of our faith. It means we don’t believe He cares for us enough to provide for our needs. So we finagle our way through things instead of sitting back and saying: “If You want me to have such and such Lord, You will provide it.” And then we let those desires go.

Years ago, when my kids were small, we got rid of the TV. Why? Because every single time I spoke to them, all I saw was the back of their heads! It was the Lord’s idea … so we sold it. We were the only people we knew, who had no TV! My kids found ways to amuse themselves, it was a win, win kind of thing. In our news right now we have an uproar about taking away some things that facilitate wrong attitudes in young children, exposing them to all kinds of danger and misadventure. Many parents are scared of not being popular with their kids, but popularity is not an adult’s priority, safety is!

Love looks like boundaries and it also looks like leadership. It looks like kind and firm responses that care about young lives because maturity can see what will happen down the road. Love could care less about popularity, it wants what He wants. Bye 👋

P 3188 His will His way.

/ DVH

Let’s imagine, or even try to stretch our imaginations a bit, and think about being fourteen or fifteen years old, unmarried and pregnant. You just happen to live in a society that at the very least, would shun you … but at its worst …it just might want to stone you to death! You know you are pure and innocent, but other people won’t see it that way. And you have to tell your fiancee that God Himself made you pregnant!  That would have been some conversation with him and her parents!

Now that Christmas is coming toward us at warp speed, I thought today was a good day to think about these two young people and what they had to face to carry out Almighty God’s calling over their lives. While we whinge and whine when the Lord asks us to mow our neighbours lawn! Or maybe He has asked us to be nice to our in-laws? We make lists about these presents and that food, but there are some among us that can’t wait for all the hoo-haa to be over! 

It seems to me that back then in Bethlehem it was a different, far-less-indulgent time. People often faced the consequences of their actions on the spot! God Himself chose this inexperienced young couple, for an honour the likes of which this world has never seen before — or since! Praise Him they both had integrity, character and a shared devotion to His will. They chose to obey HIM despite the hardship it involved. Imagine managing a faith test like Mary and Joseph had to face …in a very religious society to boot. 

The Roman occupying forces demanded that everyone, including Mary, who was pregnant out to here (!) ← → had to return to their place of their ancestor’s origins. Meanwhile, our census turns up in the post and people moan about that! Joseph himself was from David’s genealogy, so this young couple had to go all the way to Jerusalem. Which, BTW, was hardly a leisurely stroll to the local shops!  All this happened so the citizens could be counted and to make sure that the appropriate taxes would be paid to the Roman Government. And we think our lives are hard!! 

That donkey we see in all the so-called Christmas pictures, was probably something tradition made up, just to make a pretty picture out of a long and difficult journey. Mary and Joseph weren’t rich people, and while this young couple may have travelled within a caravan of people, simply because there was a possibility of bandits along the way — in that 129-145 kilometre week-long journey, it is more likely that they walked.… All that happened just so they could pay more tax to an occupying army! 

Let’s think about Mary for a moment… the last month of a pregnancy is not the greatest time to go on a bush walking tour! It must have been incredibly taxing for her, as well as disappointing to be in labour, and have no safe shelter at the other end. Plus she had no family on hand to help either of them with the process. I’m writing about this today because we have a tendency to mentally glamourise our picture of the birth of Jesus, without taking into account the reality of the situation. 

When we do that, we can minimise the pure faith of this young couple who were simply being law-abiding citizens doing what was asked of them!  But their obedience meant that they were walking straight into unknown hardship. And at the same time — they were also walking straight into God’s will for them. Funny how that happens sometimes, isn’t it?

When I think of giving birth the way Mary gave birth I shudder. I gave birth to three kids in a hospital. In one of them we couldn’t find a nurse. In another, women were giving birth in the corridor! But I had medical attention close to hand. All Mary had was Joseph. This young man was a carpenter – what did he know about giving birth? Mary was all alone, in pain, and her husband knew bupkis. There she is giving birth to God’s precious Son, her own Saviour – in a cave or animal shed. All because prophetically, they are clearly demonstrating that this world did not even want a Saviour. God’s will can put us into difficult situations through no fault of our own.

So much happened to them in the process of bringing Jesus into this world. I think their response is so beautiful – unrelenting devotion. After all that, this life was not finished with throwing hardships at them. They finally got settled as a family, only to have to escape from a jealous despot who wanted to kill all the Jewish baby boys so he could be the only king on the premises. So, off the little family goes again. This time they are running from persecution and the fear of death — simply trying to find somewhere safe to raise their little son. No wonder Joseph baulked at returning to their hometown, when it was finally safe again – their lives had been in chaos for months.

Jesus Christ was born under all these difficult conditions simply to fulfil prophecy. His life, birth and death identified Him with everyone. Including the poor, weak, homeless, unwanted, rejected, persecuted, marginalised people of this world – not in theory, but in practice. Jesus and His parents had to live minute by minute with stress and strain and hardship.. Nobody asked either Mary or Joseph if they thought they could handle all the persecution and fear that lay ahead, it simply happened to them. 

Let’s pray that we can grab hold of all the courage and clarity that has been made available to us because of what Jesus did. I wanted to talk about the things this couple faced, simply because we too can face awful, difficult situations regularly and we feel oppressed by them.Things can seem insurmountable. We can easily baulk at all those things we face, and wonder why God would let such hard and bad things happen to us. He didn’t spare His precious Son!  

In the bright joyous light of Christmas, we also need to deliberately remember the things which can turn us away from our devotion to Him. We won’t always understand why some things happen, any more than that young couple did. But we need to choose to look for the good in the middle of trouble and strife. Right now, we are training our spiritual senses to be aware of the very real spiritual war going on all around us.Let’s remind ourselves that some people are hoping for a decent meal in their Santa sack, plus somewhere safe to sleep – instead of being rudely awakened by vicious godless men with machetes.

What does it matter if our little Franco or Zelda does not get some you-beaut fancy electronic gizmo for Christmas? That temporary pleasure is something that will be probably pronounced boring and discarded in a week! The most precious gift ever, has already arrived, and He completed His heaven-sent assignment to the letter. Jesus Himself, is our proof that our God is out-of-this-world generous in His gift-giving. And instead of complaints, moaning and groaning, rebellion and disobedience — let’s also remember that two very ordinary people were brave enough to follow His will, His way. Bye. 👋