approval

P 3472 Don’t leave Him out – He wants in!

/ DVH

Lately it seems to me that we have become so busy creating things ourselves and making money, that we have forgotten the simple pleasure of enjoying everything the Lord has made. Ambition is often applauded in today’s world, but I think contentment is far more valuable than that or money. You have to learn how to be content – Paul tells us that. And at the bottom of a lot of sin today is the sad state of … deliberately leaving God out. Even Christians. We relegate the Lord to Sunday, and a ‘quiet’ time, but true contentment comes from knowing Who is in charge here – every moment, every single day. 

It is important to give the Lord His place, and if we don’t, then repentance is the best way back. Sometimes the pride of life overtakes us, and the idea that our best is not ‘good’ enough, can be difficult to swallow. But the truth is, unless we totally lean our lives, unreservedly, unashamedly and wholly on what Jesus Christ did for us — we are wasting all our energy and passion. It becomes incredibly easy to repent when you realise you haven’t just done wrong – you ARE wrong!  As Christians we do our best to avoid visible sins, and that can fool us into thinking we are getting things right – those thoughts start us on a downward spiral into works and pride. Gratitude is the best attitude. And genuine repentance, keeps us under the blood of Jesus.

In this life, we need the Lord … every single second of every single day. I am not intimidated by that thought, it blesses me. God knows the way I should go, I can trust Him. We are so fortunate to know Him. Blessings are not a sign of His approval, they occur simply because He is a generous Father and He loves to give.

The bible says so “ … so that you may [show yourselves to] be the children of your Father who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on those who are evil and on those who are good, and makes the rain fall on the righteous [those who are morally upright] and the unrighteous [the unrepentant, those who oppose Him].” Matthew 5:45. 

God is good to everyone! We are His ONLY because of what Jesus did. If you are far from Him, and still breathing, then it is never too late to turn around and go home to your Heavenly Father. Jesus is a Saviour – He saved us from ourselves and our idea of what is right and wrong. It is time for every single one of His children to come home. It doesn’t matter how much dirt you’ve accumulated along the way – Jesus’ blood washes all of us clean.

Repent. Fix whatever you can, but come home. Your Father is waiting at the gate, looking down that road you ran off on. He has prepared a celebratory garment for you to wear and He wants to throw a huge party —- simply because you are irreplaceable to Him. Ask Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help you leave behind the pigpens of this world, and go home. The Lord wants to help you, you just need to ask … and then start taking faith steps.

We don’t have the power within us, without His help, to overcome our passions, proclivities and preferences. Like Adam and Eve we can easily be deceived by satan, and self-deceived into thinking that the Lord approves of what we are doing, or have done. Repentance means turning around and going the other way. That’s hard. It takes a huge effort to shake off the dirt of this world, because it thinks self-promotion and self-importance are the pinnacle of this life. People’s idea of right and wrong changes with political climates and popularity.

The church has made a god in her own image when she moved away from what the bible says, into popular opinion. Human beings have fooled themselves, believing that what we know today, and have experienced, goes far beyond what God planned when He wrote the bible. We think we are bigger than God Himself … until something goes wrong and we can’t fix it!  What we are saying is this: Almighty God is old-fashioned, we are now smarter than He is, and we know more than He does. That is blatantly untrue …when we are dead and gone we will be forgotten — but His Word remains forever.

We’ve all been saved by the Grace Jesus Christ extended to each one of us, when we didn’t even know, or care that He did it! All WE could do, was acknowledge what He had already done. My prayer for all of us is that every single day is filled to overflowing with the knowledge that:  you have never been more loved than you are right here right now.. 

Never ever doubt that you will be joyfully received by God. However the past needs to become the past. We are now living in a time of Grace, and Almighty God has postponed judgment in the hope that all of us who need to do it, will turn around and come back home. Those who have known Him and those who have not, yet. Grace does not smile on our faults, it has covered them with the most expensive substance known to mankind… Jesus Christ’s BLOOD! Please don’t leave the Lord out of your life, He wants to be IN everything. Bye.👋.

“Beware that no one distracts you or intimidates you in their attempt to lead you away from Christ’s fullness by pretending to be full of wisdom when they’re filled with endless arguments of human logic. For they operate with humanistic and clouded judgments based on the mindset of this world system, and not the anointed truths of the Anointed One. For He is the complete fullness of deity living in human form. And our own completeness is now found in Him. We are completely filled with God as Christ’s fullness overflows within us. He is the Head of every kingdom and authority in the universe!” Colossians 2:8-10 TPT.

P3459 Popularity with man.

/ DVH

This is a current theme in our society, everyone has to be PC, or you will be told! I am all for being sensitive and careful, because wisdom itself demands the kind of thoughtfulness that allows it to speak clearly to someone without the distraction of offence! However, our priority should always be whatever the Lord says to us. And I think we need to practice tolerance and forbearance toward other people not political correctness. I want to look at a brief few verses from Jeremiah today, bearing in mind that this man was a salmon swimming upstream for most of his life!

“Then the officials said to the king, “This man should be put to death. He is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, as well as all the people, by the things he is saying to them. This man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin.”“He is in your hands,” King Zedekiah answered. “The king can do nothing to oppose you.” So they took Jeremiah and put him into the cistern of Malkijah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah by ropes into the cistern; it had no water in it, only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.” Jeremiah 38:4-6.

Jeremiah was doing what God asked him to do, yet he was being persecuted for what he said. That’s because other people interpreted his actions for their own agenda. Lately, I have had to become so much better at forgiving people, simply because they have thoughtfully given me so many opportunities to do it! Meanwhile the Lord helps me, every single time, or I would succumb to self-pity. Sigh. But that’s an observation, not my point. My point is things have not changed all that much since Jeremiah’s time. We still think we can judge other people and put pressure on them to be just like us.

Pressure comes from all sorts of directions – but many of them are internal. We fall into political correctness by saying we don’t want to offend others – but actually we are scared of what others will do to us! The point of this passage in Jeremiah is that all kinds of pressure will be unfairly applied on us. It is to be expected. We may not end up in a cistern, but ‘the fear of man (still) brings a snare’ if it affects our ability to be truthful.

Proverbs 29:25. Here’s the Message version – “The fear of human opinion disables;  trusting in God protects you from that.”  Yeah. That’s the rub, moving away from what others might say, into …’what do YOU want from me Lord?’ Then we need to take the time to find that out for ourselves. Christians have hidden behind denominational creeds for too long. We need to hate any sin, but love the sinner just like Jesus did. The point is, the gospel is for everyone and we can’t possibly know who the Lord is going to turn around.

I think that Jeremiah was a victim of the downside of popular opinion. I like this verse from Proverbs 18:13: “Answering before listening is both stupid and rude.” It is so easy to decide that we already know what other people need, and miss the Lord’s wisdom altogether, because we have prejudged our own way to be the right one. We can also fall into the trap of being ‘nice’ and insincere, all at the same time. For times like ours, we need the Holy Spirit’s wisdom, not just a creed, or what we think.

If we are serious about extending love to other people who are not like us, then we cannot be motivated by political correctness. We must be motivated by God Himself. Here’s a verse to chew on: “Make love your aim.” Folks! The elephant is now actually in the room! We cannot avoid it any longer. Our real problem is, we have avoided some subjects for so long, we no longer know how to address them! It is time for the kind of prayer that leads to action. Choosing to loving others is never easy. God’s love can turn all kinds of people around, I think we would be better occupied remaining full of His love ourselves, than finding reasons to exclude people.

I don’t have to love what you do, to love you! The church has an opportunity right now to choose how she will behave toward people, especially those She has decided are already illegitimate because of their choices. The bible says: ‘Love is patient, kind, it is not jealous, it doesn’t brag, it is not selfish or rude, angry or resentful. It hates injustice, it loves the truth, it bears all things, hopes all things – it is long-suffering.’ Love is an ETERNAL quality. We can’t afford to draw up our ‘holy robes’ around us anymore – our holy robes have holes in them that you can drive a truck through. If we are hiding any kind of sin from others, the Lord in His Grace will allow those things hidden in the darkness to come into the light. He is not punishing us – He is cleaning up His house. 

I believe we simply don’t know how to love anybody who lives their life in ways we find unacceptable. We think love is approval. We need to pray for real revelation about His idea of love – He loved us long before we arrived here! Jesus Christ had no qualms about touching the unclean … the religious people did! His power, glory and strength are released by loving others.

Maybe it is time to admit we were wrong and ask forgiveness for the way we have treated others. Humbling ourselves won’t kill us. Sin still remains sin – one is not worse than another. We also need to remember, many times it is the people in our own churches who have hurt others. The Body of Christ has misplaced our discernment and used religious rules to compensate. Then we boarded up, and sealed our hearts of compassion against the very people the Lord wants to speak to … and fear of contamination made us do it. We’ve thrown people into a pit of despair simply because we are not walking with Him – we need the Lord’s input, we need His heart! Gifts are not a sign of holiness – loving others in what we do and say is.

Jeremiah was thrown into a pit because what he said was unpopular, and the King didn’t want to enter that arena. We can’t afford to approve of sin because we are swayed by popularity, anymore than we can afford to label people and walk away from them. We need the Lord Himself “to extend the boundaries of our tents” and “pull up the stakes” we have driven into the ground, to define who we are, and what we believe. Popularity with man is not just political correctness – it’s also religion that can bind us. Look after widows and orphans instead – that’s true religion.

We are His people and we are so blessed, each one of us has been given a chance to change. Walking with the Spirit of the living God means that whoever we meet, will meet with the Lord Himself through us… then we leave the results to Him. Let’s extend His love to everybody, in the hope that we may see some saved, and refuse to judge because that leads to even more judgment. Our part is to extend Grace and Mercy to everyone, and focus on being a carrier of the Presence of God Himself. He has straightened US out, and we know He has the power to do that in other people’s lives.

Lastly, let’s value intimacy with Him above all else. We need to read the bible and do what it says, and love others, because love is our priority. Forget political correctness, and religion — we love people because He loved us first. Loving them does not mean we agree with them. Popularity, or unpopularity with mankind is over-rated. Bye. 👋.

P3409 Watch your head, Fred.

/ DVH

Years ago, there was a saying – “don’t get too big for your boots.” It was wise advice that warned anyone not to become fat headed in a situation that turned out very well. It means – don’t covet the applause. I think many of us can do this more easily than we care to admit, mainly because we need approval more often than we care to admit, and it can go to our heads!

Our Heavenly Father is so kind to us, but sadly we can start to think our church, or our denomination, are the only ones who have God’s favour. Mainly because of His gifts, or prevalent spiritual attitudes, someone’s ability to prophesy. At times we are influenced by the way we regard other people’s sin. EG: my sin is little … yours is … HUGE! “For who regards you as superior or what sets you apart as special? What do you have that you did not receive [from another]? And if in fact you received it [from God or someone else], why do you boast as if you had not received it [but had gained it by yourself]?” 1 Corinthians 4:7. That kind of puts a lid on it, doesn’t it?

There is a very important balance that we need to maintain in our lives, and we will definitely need the Lord’s help to do it. Being someone important in today’s church communities has perks. So if you are known as wise, or you have a visible gift, or you are seen as spiritual — people can treat you differently. They think you have some sort of formula that means you can tackle life better than they can. Christians do this because they only see the man or woman of God in front of them. They miss the marvellous, glorious, multi-faceted loving God behind them! It is error to focus on a person, not on the One Who has given us the gifts. We end up over-emphasising people, and ignoring or diminishing our God Who gave this gift to them, and the church.

So many Christians are following a man or woman! It is great to identify gifts, but if that person makes a mistake or falls down, we are more inclined to vilify them, instead of helping them up again. Human beings can’t live with that kind of intense scrutiny. What we are looking at when someone has these incredible gifts is God Himself in action, through a human being. That human being is fallible! But God is NOT. I’ve met many Christians who follow Brother I-have-the-gift-of-miracles, or Sister I-can-prophesy-at-the-drop-of-a-hat, but they left their church because the person they were following turned out to have feet of clay. We must look beyond the person and see our Generous Father Who loves to give and give and give.  Please, please don’t follow a person —FOLLOW JESUS! 

Love your pastor, support his ministry, and praise God for the man or woman of God and the gifts He has given them. Fantastic. But don’t put them in a place that was never theirs in the first place! This life has plenty of hard knocks in it, and it can turn anyone’s head to find that they are being appreciated for something that was given to them before they were ever born. Unfortunately those actions transform from faith in Almighty God, into a performance from the platform. We need a holy REVERENCE for God Himself…  “The reverent and worshipful fear of the Lord is the beginning (the chief and choice part) of Wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight and understanding.” Proverbs 9:10. 

Let’s acknowledge what Father God has graciously given us when He gave us so many gifts — but those gifts will never surpass the generosity of the Giver.  When Ananias and Sapphira decided to be clever and cheat God — they got dead in the process. Those people who saw it fell on the their faces in the reverential fear of the Lord. They saw beyond those two dead people in front of them, to the God Who deserved far better … and they responded. We can wait for God to appear in our churches like He did that day with Ananias and Sapphira, or we can choose to get on our faces and give God the glory He will always deserve, right now! Whether we feel Him or not.

It is a terribly demeaning thing when we tolerate popularity in the church, and we choose to see one church as better than another. Our churches are to depend on Him, we do not control Him. He must always be in His rightful place. As the King of our hearts, our Saviour, our Lord, and our Master. It is always our joy to serve our King – even if we are cleaning out the church bathrooms.

Let’s remember that He is not with us to be at our beck and call. Before we got here He was here, when we’ve gone … He will still be here. That’s what everlasting means. It is not just a matter of respect, we all need more reverence. We can respect an enemy and still hate them. Reverence on the other hand, means we cherish every moment with Him. He’s the reason we get out of bed, each day. We listen carefully for a word, a whisper of our precious Saviour in our hearts. 

Too many greatly needed saints have fallen over because we’ve lost, a deep loving awe, and profound respect for our Heavenly Father. We put those poor people on a pedestal and they fell off! When and if God uses anyone, we need to watch our head, Fred, because human beings can quite easily get puffed up by acclaim. Bye 👋.

P 3062 The Eternally Grateful are coming …

/ DVH

There is an army of people who will be coming into our churches any day now. In my heart, I can see them. They are broken-down by this life and the way they have chosen to live it. These are the people that you and I might reject because of their outward appearance, or bad life choices. However, these people have discovered that the Saviour is not interested in their past misdeeds, or their backgrounds, and as a result, they are overwhelmingly grateful. These people know they need saving.

They’ve done all the dumb, monstrous things mankind is capable of, and they’ve seen through the tissue of lies our enemy has been feeding society that says: “people are just expressing themselves.” They know, if Jesus is not Who He says He is, or He doesn’t save them, then they are utterly lost. Everything depends upon how we treat these lost broken souls when they begin to join us – will we tolerate them, or make them feel so uncomfortable they leave – or receive them gladly with humility?

One of the difficulties we face today in our churches is that we do not comprehend the depth of our own personal sin against the Lord, and His holiness. Sadly, we can even become totally pre-occupied with someone else’s sin against us! But …we are living our lives, from day to day, totally unaware that we are disobedient to our heavenly calling. Repentance is part of our ongoing salvation. ps. we all need saving from ourselves, daily! We need to be aware, pride and complacency have entered the church. Jesus taught us this about that subject:

“Two people owed money to a certain moneylender. One owed him five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. Neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon replied, “I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.” “You have judged correctly,” Jesus said.

Then He turned toward the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give Me any water for My feet, but she wet My feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing My feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore I tell you, her sins, many [as they are], are forgiven her—because she has loved much. But He who is forgiven little loves little.” Luke 7:41-47. Our omissions, our refusal to obey Him, can harden our hearts.

I just love this lady! She interrupts a meeting between some bigwigs from the synagogue and Jesus, because of her desperate need for reconciliation with Almighty God. She knew how wrong her life was, and she did something about it!  Many believers today have become complacent about their faith. We can learn something from this unnamed woman. We need to take notice. She displayed her gratefulness all over Jesus’ feet, publicly. She did not care for herself or her dignity.

Everybody knows we are all sinners in theory. However, there are people who know, for sure, that they don’t deserve any of the costly Grace Jesus has poured out for them. They’ve learnt, the hard way, they are only capable of selfishness and chaos. Sadly it is too easy to think about repentance as an add-on, instead of a life-line. That’s when we end up excusing sin, instead of facing it.

I think the Apostle Paul is a wonderful illustration of how easy it is to think we are right, and that we are living our lives well serving God. This man was being obedient to what he knew, to the letter — and then God Himself went and knocked him off his (high) horse! Immediately Paul’s life was transformed.  “As he journeyed he came near Damascus, and suddenly a light shone around him from heaven. Then he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting ME?” And he said, “Who are You, Lord?” Then the Lord said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” Acts 9:3-5.

These verses show me that it is possible to think you are right, and still be wrong. Paul was. He thought he was doing God a favour by persecuting those radicals who followed Jesus. He saw himself as an avenger, getting rid of someone stealing God’s own glory. I particularly like the point inferred in these scriptures, where Jesus says persecuting believers is the same as persecuting Him. He takes our persecution, personally! No wonder we should pray for our enemies!!

Grateful people know that without Him they can do nothing. They’ve had their ability to resist sin and temptation tested, and they failed … or they came up empty. That’s when they realised that they simply did not have the power inside themselves to change themselves. These people now live their lives gratefully and they have an attitude that says: “I will serve You Lord, any time, any place, anywhere. My life is Yours now.“ Their desire is to see Him get all the glory, because heaven-sent gratitude has overtaken their sense of self-aggrandisement or need for approval.

These greatly anticipated newcomers, who are covered in the filth of this world, will have so much to teach us all, because their humility and devotion will be stunning. They won’t know what to say or wear, but they will be crazy about the One Who saved them! The Apostle Paul gave away his life, his position and his reputation to serve Jesus. He demonstrated what being saved means – it means we are a people who will always be eternally grateful for what we have been given. Have a good day! Bless you. 🙏

P 2981 I’ll never get this stuff right!

/ DVH

“Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for His miraculous power constantly energises you. Now we offer up to God all the glorious praise that rises from every church in every generation through Jesus Christ—and all that will yet be manifest through time and eternity. Amen!” Ephesians 3:20-21 TPT.

What a fantastic bunch of promises in Ephesians we have today!!  We literally need to drag our eyes away from all the things that force their way into our lives, and focus on His bigness, not on our inadequacies. This is the best advice I’ve had all morning…I can’t—but He can!  Boy, I just can’t do some things anymore… it drives me nuts. I used to be able to do at least four things at once, now I have to ask hubby to repeat what he just said to me, when I am typing. 🙄

My mother is 97, very ill and fading. She used to be the most powerful person in every single room she ever walked into …and … that person is quite simply not there anymore. Instead she’s having trouble holding onto her thoughts and confuses the past with the present. But here we are today, reading that God Himself has said to every single one of us: “I will be your strong right arm. I will catch you when you fall. I can take the mess that you’ve made of your life and make a glorious garden out of it.”  Oh, Amen to all that!

There is a terrible tragedy in allowing our sin to be bigger than the Saviour. My mother has lived for years in the wilderness of not knowing whether God loved her or not. And yet she has always believed in Him, and tried to please Him. That’s a terribly scary place to live, especially when you are old and infirmed. It can totally desolate the soul. I think that kind of theology is one of the reasons I hate religion —I love the Lord!— but boy I hate religion! It puts a dreadful fear in the place of faith. 

So this week hubby and I sat next to her and read from one of the books I’ve made, and my dear mum glowed like a light bulb as she allowed herself to bask in the comfort and approval of God’s love. It is incredible how our precious Father’s loving acceptance can do the things we cannot do. Love is the best communicator in the world, and love is all over His bible.

I still have some pretty wild dreams, plus a far dollop of imagination – and yet Ephesians 3 says: ‘Almighty God’s power can do greater than my imagination, or dreams, or requests.’ Not to mention the whole energising thing thrown in for good measure. I can always do with energising – how about you? His love takes me places that I would never dare to venture. There is a different kind of freedom for all of us in His love.

And energising is a huge thing if you happen to have a toddler, or an infant at your house — or two or three, or… maybe four? God’s help is way bigger than them all screaming at once, and the dinner boiling over and the cell phone dancing across the kitchen bench!  I’ve prayed for myself  many times in the past: “please re-energise me Lord!” It’s when we feel like we are going under for the umpteenth time that we let go of Who He is and start to grab hold of who I am not! Grab hold of Him instead. What you think about you, doesn’t count – it’s who He says you are.

Beating yourself up is quite unfruitful. Instead reassure yourself that the God of all the Universe loves you so much He always has your back! He will take our ashes and make beautiful things out of them. Perhaps you have worked all day and then come home exhausted, and you are trying so hard to be the perfect parent. One of the things we need plenty of in this life is the knowledge that our hope is in Him— Who He is. Guilt must never drive us.

Ephesians offers us an incredibly realistic picture of Who God is. We are all still in transit, so let’s stop should-ing on ourselves all the time … “I should do this and I should be that and I should never lose my temper, and if the kids turn out to be wrecked it will be all my fault!’  Instead let’s choose to remember that God can indeed—‘work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes…’  He’s already got our sin covered, now we need to let His love cover us in our vulnerability. 

Whether you too have a parent you love dearly, whose faith is wobbly, or your kids have sailed merrily off into the sunset and seemingly left the Lord behind… remind yourself that our hope is in His Character. Putting our hope into our circumstances or our own actions is foolish and heartbreaking.  

“Help” is a prayer.“The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, And His ears are toward their cry for help.”Psalm 34:15. “The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever;  Do not forsake the works of Your hands.”  Psalm 138:8. You and I don’t have to always get this stuff right – we just need to remember that He’s a God Who always keeps His promises! Bye, 👋

P 2897 Peace is our portion.

/ DVH

“And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in Me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in Me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!””John 16:33 TPT.

We cannot survive 21st Century living without His peace.  Injustice pops up everywhere like wild mushrooms, all across the world. Peace is an inside job. Everything around us will try to steal it away. This week we have had a procession of endless, skilled tradesmen parading, banging, clumping, etc. right through our house. We discovered mould in one of our least used rooms. It’s a long story and not worth repeating here. One of my mum’s brand new hearing aids has grown legs and walked away, plus our daughter and grandson are moving in about a month. And our next trip is in 16 days. Not to mention all kinds of malfunctioning arms, legs, heads, backs, knees …a-n-d … we are both preaching this Sunday! 🤣

None of us can afford to rely upon good, positive circumstances to help us feel peaceful. We already have peace within us because the King of peace resides within us. That peace will thrive in an atmosphere of faith as we believe and act on what the Lord has said. It gives us confidence so we can face whatever comes at us from the world around us. Christianity is an ongoing relationship with the Man of peace, Jesus Christ. We learn to live in His peace as we watch and study Him, because He didn’t just teach us what to do, He showed us how to do it, by the way He lived! “Keep turning your back on every sin, and make “peace” your life motto.Practice being at peace with everyone.” Psalms 34:14 TPT.

We need to remind ourselves that we are foreigners, ambassadors of Christ, living in a foreign land where peace is now either enforced or ignored, or labelled impossible. Unfortunately, peace cannot be legislated, otherwise our freedom to choose His way, goes right out of the window. To me that means peace is always OUR choice to pick up or put down. It means we learn to bend with the winds of change and opposition, not just strive to be in control and stay rigid. Peace comes with a great cost to the people who are living any conflict. 

Sadly when there is no positive choice made, there can be no true peace, because the ‘machinery’ of our lives returns to a habitual default setting of agitation and worry. Yet Jesus Himself chose to live at peace in a society that hated everything He stood for, He had no home, His relatives opposed Him, His church leaders wanted to kill Him, He was surrounded by needy people … yet He had true peace, all the time, because He chose to walk with the Holy Spirit and obey His Father. 

The people who lived around Him were superficially content to live within their religious rules, and often those rules actually opposed or destroyed peace for many of them. Rules carry within them the possibility of failure – true peace doesn’t see failure as the end of the story. The Lord was not affected by people’s approval or disapproval, He carried out the things He did by choosing to reflect His Father’s will. He wasn’t looking to win a popularity contest then, and He still isn’t. 

He teaches us in this verse that rest, which is a part of peace, is also our portion. It is OURS. We learn to rest when we choose to put aside our own opinions, and feelings, and aim at His Ways, with His help. As we do that we are mirroring Jesus’ own relationship and trust in His Father. Father God made the supreme effort for us, to come here and reveal His will in Person. God Himself stopped being remote, and hard to access, instead He walked the roads of Israel and its surrounds. Jesus was assimilated into this world so well, that some people identified Him by where He lived as a child. He was known —as Joseph the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. 

If you and I have no peace, then we have somehow left Him out, or left Him far behind us. His peace within us is present to saturate the atmosphere around us. But if we lose our peace, then we need to return humbly to the Source of all peace, Christ, and ask Him to help us live in harmony with Him, and His ways again. When trouble and difficulties bash on our doors or seep into our lives, those things are not a statement about our personal efforts or lack of them. Instead they are simply the result of living in a fractured, unredeemed society. It means we have forgotten who we are and WHO He is! The answer is not to condemn society, instead we are to flavour it … with His qualities.

Peace is a Person. We walk in peace, when we choose to walk with Him. If we revert to our old ways of thinking, then we simply repent and start walking with Him again. Walking with peace means we do not have to carry our own burdens, we turn them over to Jesus and ask Him to deal with them, us and the situation. Peace is our God-given birthright, freely received – part of our inheritance.  Jesus said:“Peace I leave with you, MY peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27.

Jesus gave it to us, so now we have it, just like salvation whether we feel like it or not. Bye. 👋

P 2853 Be real.

/ DVH

Hi! You know, there are times that we like to quote the verse “with God all things are possible …” especially when we need the Lord to do something impossible on our behalf! Being real means we see Him change impossible things in our lives, every single day. Yet, most of the time, we merrily roll along ignoring change, hoping the guy who annoys us will change instead! We only drag out our faith first thing in the morning and last thing at night, as well as on Sundays, and maybe for prayer meetings. OR we crank it up for those desperate times when the emergency bell is clanging away in our lives, and something has happened that we can’t fix!

Ticking off spiritual boxes is a way to appear to be spiritual. Many Christians seem to be totally unaware that we are knee-deep in practising living with the appearance of goodness – without embracing the substance of the kind of change that will transform us. And consequently, we affect the lives of every one else around us. Unfortunately living like that is like a great looking apple that’s been in the cool store too long. On the outside it looks fine but inside it is all brown and inedible. Real fruit is startling in its sweetness with every bite.

We can get by with hiding our faults from other people by going to church regularly, giving to the poor, never swearing, always being seen to do the right thing … but the truth is …if what we are doing is not coming from our hearts, then we actually need the kind of repentance that is followed up by change — not play-acting. Here’s an astonishing and amazing thought: GOD LOVED US WHEN WE WERE YET SINNERS! Pretending, or keeping up appearances, is a waste of whatever precious time we actually have on this earth. His love will never withdraw from us – actually most of the time, we withdraw from Him. Humbly admitting our faults to each other clears up the idea that we are somehow perfect. It is a much safer place to stand.

My point for today is that we always need to be real. Let’s not live our lives pretending to be something we aren’t just so we can fit in. Be yourself, warts and all. Let the One Who has changed men and women’s hearts since the dawn of time operate on your heart. One of the most valuable graces we can embrace – besides repentance, and obedience – is honesty with ourselves. The truth is, we don’t have to be afraid of sin anymore, because Jesus paid it all! So now there is no reason to hide. Hiding from His love is counterproductive – the power for us to change comes through receiving His unconditional love and forgiveness, and then giving it away to others. If we hide we short-circuit this process.

Today I want to briefly look at a woman who threw herself down on the floor at Jesus’ feet, at a dinner party. To start with – she wasn’t invited! And for her efforts the rest of the crowd judged her, plus they judged the Lord as well! But like I said before – HE looks at hearts! “She has been forgiven of all her many sins. This is why she has shown me such extravagant love. But those who assume they have very little to be forgiven will love me very little.”” Luke 7:47 TPT. The result of diminishing our sin is this: we miss out on understanding how much love HE gives us and how much worship He deserves!


Dismissing sin’s very real consequences produces ongoing bad results. To start with, we lose gratefulness. This dear woman did not care what others thought, she knew she needed to be right with God more than she needed their approval! She poured out all she had on His feet in repentance, and total adoration. And the Lord saw her and received her. Her honesty gained her an audience with the King and a chance to worship Him. Who doesn’t want that?

Here’s something I have learnt, over the years … Instead of spewing out my anger or withdrawing from people who hurt me …kindness, mercy and forgiveness opens amazing unseen new doors. Those doors lead to refreshing changes, and deeper relationships. Instead of minimising our faults, and accenting someone else’s sins against us – releasing loving forgiveness takes us out of any hot-headed drama and puts us squarely back into His kingdom.

It will cost us, of course. Worthwhile things are costly – just like that alabaster box. But our transformed attitudes in those moments become like that perfume that was released to the Lord. Jesus is not concerned with sin anymore – now He wants us all to move on into the freedom that flourishes in His Father’s kingdom. When I set you free, I get freedom too, whether you pick up your share or not! Learning to be real about who we are, plus who we are not —removes the weights and burdens we’ve tied on ourselves.

“Those whom the Son has set free, shall be free indeed.” These people will be free to enjoy who God made them to be. We can pick up a lot of dumb stuff in this life, and some of it comes from when we are too tiny to block it out. Let God Himself heal you and reveal how He sees you. Learn to be real. Nobody else can do YOU like YOU can! Bye. 👋

P 2809 Keep pressing on!

/ DVH

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39. The Apostle Paul really had a handle on something that we need to pick up and wear as a permanent garment! Nothing can take us away from the Love of God. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. His love has been freely given to us, because of what Jesus Himself chose to do for us.

Real love gets down in the dirt … then it writes something in that dirt that shames everybody else present. The people who are standing there, waiting to throw rocks at someone else! Jesus did that. Love dismisses the naysayers and critics because its source is from the sternest, boldest, most magnificent, strongest place of all. The throne of God Himself. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ, plus the infilling of the Holy Spirit, has made that kind of strong, powerful love, available to us.

So why don’t we have it? I mean seriously… we both know we don’t!  All we need is a hard couple of days and love leaks out of us like we are a sieve, and we end up wondering what we did to deserve this next heartache. Sadly I think sometimes we settle for a NICE attitude and hope that will do. Nice and pleasant seem easier …it means  we can make up a bunch of rules and stick with them, and after a while ‘nice’ becomes a habit which seems like love … until it is severely pushed by life’s circumstances!

God’s love on the other hand, in difficult times, can seem a bit ethereal. We need to walk with the Holy Spirit minute by minute to know what His thoughts on love look like. I do know His love is about way more than feelings. It means I give Him my trust and obedience, and I choose to follow His instructions no matter if my world is collapsing around me. I probably won’t end up responding the same way in every single situation – even if those situations are identical. People and their needs are not identical. 

And the Holy Spirit dearly loves people! Every single time He gets an opportunity, He sweeps them up into His arms and loves on them. It’s His all time favourite thing to do. That’s why He lovingly heals, delivers, and gives each one of us wisdom and insight when we ask for it. It’s because He deeply loves people. He is intimately involved in the things that concern us. He knows exactly what we need and why, He also knows when we need it. Plus He knows what is not good for us. My immediate response when things go bad is to want to escape from the bad … like yesterday!! But I know with His help, I can learn to live His way.

In this busy life it is too easy to forget that Jesus is our role model. I bet He would have wanted to come down from that cross from the very second He was nailed to it!  The pain would be excruciating!!  He is God – He had options! He could have come off it at any second, But He chose the painful way of obedience. God’s love is accessed by faith and it operates through our deliberate, intentional choices. His love actually makes hard, unpleasant choices. It is not weak, it constrains us to push toward good. 

His Love also chooses to love people who simply don’t deserve our approval, let alone our begrudging affections! How we feel fades into the background, when we choose to learn to walk in Love, because what He wants is far more important to us … and that takes over. We are no longer limited into escaping from pain – instead we understand that pain often speaks the loudest. TIME is also factor in our personal growth.“There’s a time for every purpose under heaven …”

Here’s another great scripture: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”Galatians 4:4-7. God’s timing is perfect…we need to gird up our loins and wrestle our feelings of desertion and not being loved by Him, into submission. Praying, reading the bible, joining in with fellowship — all these things give us courage to continue under pressure.   Each one of us, despite our personal feelings, were born again to be His Sons and Daughters — and we all know that sons and daughters have responsibilities!

I’ve found this helpful, when I have prayed the same prayer 100 times and there appears to be no answer — I start asking the Lord to show me what HE wants. He and I could be experiencing a conflict of interest, and as His interest is more important than mine … I may need to talk to Him about it. Always bearing in mind that He is not with us to serve us – we serve Him. His disciples died serving God’s plan. That means they put their own interests in this life to one side, and had a completely different life than the one they had planned for themselves. 

The glorious thing about this arrangement is that we will actually fall more deeply in love with the Lord as we watch Him at work in our lives – or even in someone else’s life. His love is REAL – we need to keep pressing on to experience it as a part of our daily lives.It is not a doctrine or a theory. It is worth living and dying for – Jesus thought so. Bye. 👋

P 2792 Speak life.

/ DVH

Tell everyone you know, saved, or not: “God has a purpose for your life;” or, “The God of the Universe and beyond loved you w-a-y before you were born.” My helpful hint for today is to practice speaking His destiny into the people around you – everywhere you go. Stop and make the effort to tell somebody they are doing a good job. Even when they mess stuff up, pick the time when they do stuff right and point out what they did that was a blessing to you. 

We have the power of life and death in our tongues. Here’s Proverbs 18:21 GNB: “What you say can preserve life or destroy it; so you must accept the consequences of your words.”God gave us this power, so it is essential that we use it for good. Half the planet is racing about joining this social media outlet or that, because they are looking for their destiny, their place in this world.. God has a plan for every single one of them! Human beings need acceptance and approval, even if they are doing ordinary jobs. We must look for the good in this life, and lift someone else’s spirit by telling them what we have seen. And yes, I mean your spouse and kids! Keep your marriage friendly, tell your spouse what they did right! 

Sometimes people express their uniqueness badly. They take most if not all of their clothes off, behave appallingly, or have lingering doubts about their sex or personhood… or worse, they don’t like who they are. So they can end up doing awful stuff simply because they feel life is in opposition to them. They live their lives based on: “every man for himself!’ This is why we can’t possibly start to relate to people by choosing to focus on their SIN. We need to start with WHO they are in HIS eyes. God loves them. Living this way may take lots of practice, because it’s a new way to think! His way. Meanwhile, ask and keep on asking for His GRACE – you will need it!

Like I said yesterday, opportunities to dislike situations or people, will fall on us everywhere we go. It doesn’t take talent to be a critic but it definitely takes talent to recognise someone else’s good points! Gracious, generous actions are getting so rare nowadays they make the news!  We need to be dedicated to His Ways and walking in His love, to even begin to see what’s good in other people.The people around us may seem ordinary, but they are extraordinary to Him. He has a plan for their lives, He wants to bring out the best in every single person we meet.

Remember, Jesus called local fishermen to be His disciples. He wasn’t looking for clever people, religious people, or popular people. What about Zacchaeus? Like he was Mr Popularity – the tax guy! Even one of the women who followed Him had a dubious past. And let’s not forget Jesus chose Judas! Father God sent His Son to ordinary human beings just like us. Sadly this world is choosing every day to qualify or eliminate people because they don’t have His knowledge and expertise. Let’s remember, He made them, He knows why they are here and who they can be. 

But the one thing that makes every single person ever born, extraordinary, is the ONE WHO CHOSE TO LOVE US! We are made precious because the most Precious Man of all Eternity loves people! Read the book. Here’s Paul. He wrote this to the Galatian church: “I’m obviously not trying to flatter you or water down my message to be popular with men, but my supreme passion is to please God. For if all I attempt to do is please people, I would fail to be a true servant of Christ.” Galatians 1:10 TPT. 

As you can see, flattery or pleasing people is a waste of time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be used by God to truthfully speak life into someone who has no idea of who they really are in His sight. Everywhere we go. This encapsulates what I want to say today – Christ is IN US. So, we can be the thermometer or barometer and fit in — OR, we can be the thermostat instead and lift the mood and atmosphere around us, and introduce a touch of His life to others.

God is good to all of us whether we deserve it or not. ‘The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike…’ Here is a great reason why we are to live like this. It’s  from Matthew 5:43-48 in the Amplified bible: “…so that you may [show yourselves to] be the children of your Father Who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on those who are evil and on those who are good, and makes the rain fall on the righteous [those who are morally upright] and the unrighteous [the unrepentant, those who oppose Him].” Our motivation as His Kids can easily be revealed to the-people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet, and living like that is tied to the way we treat the people around us.

Speaking life to everyone around us ushers in His kingdom. I learnt that when I expect bad things, that means I can only see bad things, and those bad things definitely outweigh everything else! I had selective sight, because I chose to put blinkers on. But when I began to expect to see good stuff, I saw it, even if it was only faintly there. It changed everything. Now my view has changed permanently. There’s an old saying:”If you are looking for trouble, you are going to find it.”  We can have our Father’s Eyes — my advice is to stop looking for the bad, and speak life instead. Bye 👋

P 2788 A new way to think …

/ DVH

It has become way too easy to look at the things of this life from our own personal POV. What do I mean by that? Jesus died to give us a new way to think. Unfortunately, we can get stuck in our own needs, and thinking, wanting everything to happen for our own pleasure. That’s what happened to Solomon, he mistook God’s favour for His approval. Thinking like this, has led to many people into imagining that their success or failure in this life is a direct result of their spirituality, or lack of it.  

Let me explain my thoughts – I won’t unfortunately, be able to put everything in here, (read the book) …but let me try. 

Solomon was considered one of the richest and wisest men who ever lived. But he disobeyed God and married 700 women, plus he also had 300 concubines and many of these women worshipped other gods — yet Solomon had the favour of God over his finances. He was so rich, He made the billionaires of today look poor! However, those wives etc. that he chose, for his own benefit, led this King astray from the faith of his fathers. 

However, because God is so faithful, He prospered Solomon, as well as the nation of Israel during this time, for the sake of his father, David. The Lord declared David was a man after His own heart, and He promised that young man, that his son would be a predecessor to the Messiah. Remember, God “… is not a man that He should lie…” He absolutely keeps His promises – He just doesn’t always have our timetable.

There were about a thousand years between His promise to David, and its fruition. Which is why we need to learn to adopt the Lord’s timetable. My advice? Don’t take your prayers back or give up on your faith – leave it out there! Outwardly, it looked like Solomon was a very blessed man, but his character showed a lack of spiritual maturity and he had a propensity to think every sweetie in the sweet shop belonged to him. That led him astray.

God gave this man’s father a promise. He promised David that his son would one day be a predecessor to God’s own Son. Solomon, and eventually the Lord Jesus Himself, was the result of that promise. The fact that this king was immeasurably rich was because Solomon was aware of his own lack, so at the beginning of his reign, he asked for wisdom. And God said “Yes.” And gave him riches as a bonus buy.

We must stop seeing answers to prayer as a reward. They are the glorious Grace of God in action on our behalf, so let’s praise and thank Him for everything He gives us. You and I have the favour of God because His favour is on His Son, and when we accepted His Son, we came under Jesus’ covering shed blood — that ALONE gives us favour. We have not earned these things nor do we deserve them – love gifts are love gifts, they are not earned! There are many many wonderful promises in the bible, and I think one of the best things we can ever do is to check out what God Himself wants before we start rattling off lists of what we need — especially before we start trying to cash in our pile of ‘You promised’ vouchers! 

‘Unless the Lord is building that house we are aiming at, we will labour in vain.’ We can carefully explain to the Lord how important things are to us until we are blue in the face, even when some precious person we know deserves to live, and get well, or prosper etc. But our development spiritually is more important to Him than our comfort — He wants Sons and Daughters who value His Ways, not people who use Him!  This is why we need to be engaged in learning His Ways, so we can walk with Him.

Jesus didn’t die to give us spiritual vouchers that we can cash in whenever we like. He wants relationship. Relationships are intentional. We choose the same person over and over again, despite our circumstances and how things look! We need to invest in our relationship with Him more than any other. Sadly Solomon chose to invest in 1,000 women! How the heck he found the time and energy I have no idea – but that is beside the point. God still honoured Solomon because of His promise to David. He was not approving of Solomon’s lifestyle and marriage partner choices! Engaging with that many women who worshipped pagan gods, led this King astray.

You know, just because the Lord graciously healed Sister Susie’s ingrown toenail that does not make you or I eligible for the same grace. BUT, we are ALL eligible for a relationship with Him, on His terms.That’s why we need a new way to think. God Himself went before us to provide us with a Helper. He knew we would need the Holy Spirit. Let’s think on that. Bye. 👋