Attitudes

P 2598 No fake smiles please!

/ DVH

My dear hubby loves the Emoji movie, especially that over-the-top female smiley face that blinds people with its toothy grin. He thinks she is hilarious. You know, that face is actually pasted on – it’s stuck. In other words that emoji has been carefully drawn to pretend to be something it isn’t.  So when bad things happen, that smiley emoji isn’t being REAL — which is just like a whole lot of Christians. Bad things happen and they paste on a smile but inside they feel God, and everyone else, has let them down. 

Most people in this world know FAKE attitudes a mile off. It is so much better to be your real self and repent for stinky attitudes, than it is to hide who you are. Now if you happen to be a grump … then the answer is to be transformed. 😂 The bible covers that! Please note: transformation is not instant. It’s repetitive… it’s re-pet-it- ive … it’s actually quite repetitive! So now we spend our days learning to lean. Getting stuff right is no longer our goal, leaning on Him is! 

If we are not careful we can make living for Jesus … into a future goal. We can live this life hoping that if we fake it we will eventually make it. Yielding, surrender, dying to self – these are all key words.  Otherwise transformation becomes something we work hard towards achieving, but we never seem to arrive!  The bible says we need to be living for Him every single day. 

Almighty God wants us to draw on His strength all the time, using our faith. Faith grows when you use it! So we exchange His beauty for our ashes. His joy for our mourning etc. We are human and we run out quite quickly — but Jesus is rich in these things ! He will give us what we need as we live a life of total dependence. The Lord is not fooled by our positive, Sunday morning smiley faces.

We could see miracles every single day if we stop trying to be what God already made us and learn to yield to and trust in Him! Listening to yourself being kind to someone, when you wanted to smite them mightily a minute ago is a miracle! Success is no longer our goal – because we know can’t do anything without Him and we don’t want to be without Him.“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6.

We need to be changed inside, and honesty matters.  We can’t! … But He already did it for us. Some of our nice attitudes are barely skin deep — so when they are provoked they end up coming out. The Lord is not looking for perfection … Jesus already nailed that, and then He generously gave it to us – for free. Ask yourself this: why would Almighty God – Who loves us – want us to live our lives pretending to be something we are not? But oh! How He LOVES a truly transformed heart and life. Then when someone else hurts us, we feel worse for them than we do for ourselves.

I know some transformed people. They know they can’t do anything without Him, but they yield in obedience to what the bible says daily, so they can change the way that they live. They are not perfected. Not at all! But they enjoy being close to Him, and they don’t want to give that up for living a shallow life that has no substance. Things stay shallow when we stop living by our faith.  We must learn that we are not called to exhaust our OWN patience/love/joy/peace,  first — only to find that we have run out! Here’s a hot tip, let go of your pride and GIVE UP RIGHT AWAY and fall into His everlasting arms. He will supply that need.

My point is, learn to pray “Help help” early! We cannot afford to wait until we are overwrought and exhausted because we’ve been wrangling a problem in the natural. I pray a surrender prayer all the time now. I remind the Lord that I won’t be able to  manage anything at all without Him. I do that at the beginning of the day and I repeat it when I find myself pasting on a fake smile. I could care less about looking incompetent, or inefficient. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy seeing Him active in my life. I feel Him help me to go further than I ever could in my own strength. I know I can’t meet Christ’s standard, what He did was perfect. So I start with surrender and I don’t move from there. 

We have all developed coping mechanisms over the course of our lives and when we get saved, we carry those coping mechanisms over into our faith. Then when we read in the bible and see what we are supposed to look like, who we are meant to be, we increase the pressure on ourselves to be like that. Unfortunately, when we fail in our own efforts – we feel we are letting Jesus down. And if we do happen to succeed, then WE GET PROUD.

All that leads to a level of inadvertent deception, and a lack of transparency that prevents intimacy. It stops Christians from becoming all we can be in Christ. It also leads to a form of religion with no power in it. We need to learn to live our lives dependent upon Him, using our God-given faith instead of striving to reach an unattainable goal. We cannot make ourselves perfect. He has already accepted us.  No more fakey fake smiles. Learn to lean on Him. 👋

P 2580 Unblocking blockages.

/ DVH

As Christians we can experience spiritual blockages. So today, let’s look at attitudes that can get in our way, and sometimes we are almost unaware of them. Our God is not legalistic, we are forgiven. However, WE can block the flow of the Holy Spirit in, and through our lives by ignoring Him or choosing not to be aware of His ways. Or even by disobeying the things we don’t like! It is our responsibility to discover for ourselves what He wants from us, by talking to Him, reading the book and then doing it. At the same time, praise God, He is always willing to engage with us at any hour or any moment, of any day to help us whatever is currently going on. 

Here are some things that have helped me. If I find myself gossiping about someone, then the first place I go to is – am I angry with this person? If perhaps I get sick of somebody I know bragging about their skills, or their possessions etc. then I look at jealousy. Instead of blaming my attitudes etc. on others, the first place I need to look at is myself. Personally, I try not to excuse my behaviour, by saying ‘I’m tired or sick, or life has been a bit much.’ If I really believe that the Lord holds my life in His hands, then I need to see that everything that comes toward me is Father-filtered. But that does not mean I will not hesitate to tell the enemy to take a hike when oppression comes at me! 

The thing is, I refuse to let my sinfulness prevent me from running toward my Father, because Calvary took care of any legal requirements on my behalf, so now His Grace predominates. Grace frees people everywhere it is embraced – Grace is not ‘permission to sin!‘ Grace is ‘we have an advocate!’  Now I am free, Christ made me free and I’m the boss of what I do, say and think, and I can’t blame you! We can stop the flow of His life through us by our choices, actions and attitudes at any given moment. God gave us power, and that power can be used to help others, help us adjust our behaviour and theology – or … tune Him out! Paul wrote this in his second letter to Corinthians, chapter 12 verse 9!

“But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” You know there are days when I wish the Holy Spirit would just arbitrarily do this stuff through me, or to me, instead of me having to choose and apply myself? But freedom means choices. Dying to self is hard. The problem is this, a lot of the time, my ‘old man’ is trying to bring about an unlawful resurrection! That’s called necromancy. We can blame the devil if we want to, but really, the devil ain’t that big! Nobody can stop us from moving, but US. Seriously. Like the book says: “What then shall we say to all these things? If God is for us, who can be [successful] against us?” Romans 8:31.

The answer to that rhetorical question is ME. I can exercise my God-given power of choice at any given moment, and simply refuse to move on. I can take offence with something that God, or someone else has done, and spit the dummy and opt out of discussing it with Him. I can look at my circumstances and decide that I am too weak to fight, or I am sick of fighting my old self. Instead I can just feel sorry for myself and sit marinating in my sorrows.

This whole ‘walking with Jesus life’ is optional. And if we do not use every opportunity to get to know Him better and fall in love with Him, and the way He works — then we can be pretty sure we will eventually take ourselves out of this marathon race, in favour of comfort and safety! Some people, sadly, have even walked away. The good news is repentance will bring us back again!

There are areas in all our lives with big fat “KEEP OUT” signs on them. You and I put those signs there in some moment of desperation, angst or a fit of pique. Maybe someone hurt us and we feel we can’t get over it. My advice is to exercise the power of choice and … just get over it. Here’s why I think that. We can actually tie ourselves up like a loin of pork and wonder why we aren’t moving on spiritually. Or we can discover, by prayer, persistence and reading the bible, where we have put up stop signs. Blockages come from us, not from the Lord.

Christ took away every single road block between God and us, even though it killed Him. Brothers and sisters, there is so-very-much-more-of-Him-and-Who-He-is for us to know. Why waste time? Let’s go on a “seek and ye shall find tour,” and pull down, or starve out, every single one of those strongholds that are imprisoning us. Let’s throw away the balloons, cakes and streamers at our frequent pity parties and just get on with it. 👋

P 2555 Boldness/ confidence.

/ DVH

Boldness and confidence are both initiated and fostered by our personal relationship with the Lord. Let’s look at Hebrews 4:16 “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” The place to foster confidence in our relationship with the Lord, is in the throne room – in our intimate one on one, time with Him. This is the place where God freely gives us mercy and grace and the will to live new lives. Our desire to walk wholeheartedly with the Holy Spirit will lead us into His new life. 

Yielding our will to His, means we have chosen to learn to love Him through participating in His processes. Selfishness falls off when we love for what we can give, not just for what we can get! Some people believe we approach the Lord only to worship Him. YES! Please always do that! However, our primary reason to be with Him, is simply because we enjoy His company, His POV. We have fallen in love with the wonderful God we are coming to know, day by day.

Boldness and confidence are fostered by intimacy. There is no presumption, instead this precious intimacy becomes so important to us, we start to loathe the idea of any separation. That POV motivates us over and over again. I don’t believe that pretending to live in His love and grace can do that. satan knows each of us well enough to fling something at us and our self-effort will collapse. I know very little in this area, but I can say this, the more you seek the Lord for Himself, the more He will reveal Himself to you. Sometimes there are some questionable things that people have told me God said or did, and my heart jumps up, unbidden, and says: “No! He would never act like that!”  I think that’s a little part of what confident intimacy looks like.

Almighty God always wants us to be confident in Him, especially in His goodness and goodwill toward mankind. His book the bible becomes powerful for us individually, when we take His instructions personally and act on them. Our precious Father doesn’t want us to live in any fear, at all. He sent His perfect love in the form of a Man, Jesus Christ, to show us, in Person, that He loves us. Christ is our source of spiritual life.  Everything in this New covenant is voluntary and our participation and obedience are the result of our passion toward the Lord.

Let’s clarify that. The size of any disobedience is not the issue, the attitude of our heart toward whatever it is – will be the thing that comes between Him and us. Openness needs to prevail, and, in turn that leads to true openness with each other. Confidence in Who He is and how much He loves me will actually release incredible freedom. However, that freedom is never carte blanche to be nasty and use His agonisingly hard-won Grace against Him or others. 

Our Heavenly Father, God, is not a legalist. He took care of every single legal indictment against humanity at Calvary. We didn’t just escape punishment, because of what Jesus did, at the same time we inherited Christ’s status before the Father. We were given Christ’s FAVOUR. That includes the ability/power to resist the devil and overcome the stuff he throws at us, con-fid-ent-ly!

The Lord is not looking for us to tick boxes and get everything right, He’s looking for us to genuinely rely upon Him to help us to do the things He asks us to do. Leaning on Him and His power and wisdom is our birthright – that birthright makes us rich in incredible things this world simply cannot buy. As we live that way we will see Him work on our behalf and gain more and more confidence in the One we love, because what we believe is based on personal knowledge of HIM. We don’t have to live bewildered powerless lives, because we have been given the power to walk away from temptation and to live lives that bless, help, and bestow Grace everywhere. That’s our inheritance.

Boldness and confidence are also not about shouting or being forceful. Sometimes it means we simply stand our ground, quietly. Firmly insisting. We need to learn to recognise and resist the devil’s wiles, and horrid suggestions of hatred and bitterness. At the same time, we simply cannot afford to let our enemy con us out of what is now our birthright, by bringing up stuff that we’ve done wrong or things we omitted to do at all! Our enemy keeps lists of wrongs  – WE DON’T – neither does our Father. We fix the things we can, with repentance and humility, and own our own bad attitudes. Then we go on to pray confidently for the grace to continue our walk totally reconciled with Him and others. 

Personally I just keep telling myself: I need mercy so I’m going to give it away! I keep on sowing grace because I know I am going to need it every day, all day! Our boldness and confidence comes from our knowledge of Who He is, what He is like, and real-life, personal, intimate revelation of His goodness as we walk with Him. 👋

P 2516 Learn to recognise His love gifts!

/ DVH

“The fruit produced by the Holy Spirit WITHIN YOU is divine love in all its varied expressions:  joy that overflows, peace that subdues, patience that endures, kindness in action, a life full of virtue, faith that prevails, gentleness of heart, and strength of spirit. Never set the law above these qualities, FOR THEY ARE MEANT TO BE LIMITLESS.” Galatians 5:22-23. 

Imagine that! We have been given words, actions, attitudes, that are already within US – they came in when He came in. And those things actively show us all the time what His divine love looks like, toward us. This thought blew my mind. I think these verses are the most excellent description of what HIS LOVE looks like— and how we will know we are experiencing it, first hand. It starts to produce fruit in me, in you – everywhere we go. The Holy Spirit is relentless in His pursuit of good, and even if we get in His way, He will steadfastly continue His fruit production. And it is unbelievably fantastic fruit that does others good — but it also enriches US.

Thanks to Heidi and Rolland Baker of Mozambique – I have a really strong idea about what God’s love looks like through me toward someone else. My picture of what His love looks like IN us, begins with Jesus dying for us. He died to open up the door that was closed between the Father and all of us. I am aware that His love is not just about being blessed with earthly stuff … “…because He sends His rain on the just and the unjust…”  So understanding what He has, and is still giving to me, growing in me, every single day, needs to be recognised.

You see, because of His book, I know He blesses everyone – whether they are following Him or not!! God is so good His blessings overflow, everywhere all the time. That person who almost drowned, didn’t, someone was there to save them. That other person who lost everything has been anonymously given money to help them. That’s Almighty God motivating all kinds of people to help others with HIS LOVE. Personally, I think He can’t help Himself – He’s just THAT good. God is not like we are … keen on publicity! He doesn’t always sign His Name to stuff you know.

Think about this for a minute or nine …  everywhere Jesus went He blessed people. He didn’t just bless the spiritual people either. NO! He blessed people who had a need, when they came to Him to meet that need. His loving gifts were not discriminatory. He wore Himself out giving, teaching, caring and explaining God’s ways. At the same time, He was teaching US these attitudes are a hallmark of God’s people. His love inside us is a hallmark of His ownership of us.“…and the resting place of His love, will become the very source and root of your life.” Ephesians 3:17.

And BTW, FYI … Jesus wasn’t preaching to Christians! At that time He was preaching to Jewish people. He was telling God’s own chosen people that their destiny was to be a blessing. And He was showing them how it works! Jesus saw every need, and He cared about every single individual. Once Jesus preached for hours sitting on a hillside, and when He came down from that place His first response was to heal a leper! He lived His short life, taking in His Father’s love and giving it out. That is to be our experience, too.

On the few occasions I have had a tangible experience of His love … I just plain ran out of words to explain what happened! But when I read these verses this morning, I realised the Holy Spirit has given us clear signs of what the fruit/presence of His love looks like TOWARD US as well as in us, and through us. We need to pay attention to what He says. We should know what that love looks like — or we might miss it, like many of those Jewish people did. God’s love isn’t just His favour – His love contains tangible qualities that He has put inside us to share.

What I heard in the above scripture, is this: when I have joy I can’t contain, or peace that utterly calms my heart, or someone is patient with me with a patience that doesn’t run out, or even kindness that takes my breath away … when my life is full of virtue and my faith just won’t quit, and I don’t even want to think about hurting someone else,  I am also experiencing God’s love for me. He is present in me and with me in those times.

That love will flow through me to others, if I let it OUT. But I have to decide His love is like a river, not a dam! His system works like this – love in, love out. Sounds like breathing eh?The secret to living in and giving out the love of God is recognising it when it comes toward ME – FIRST. I have found it helpful to recognise those times and say to myself:  – “that’s God’s unconditional love coming at me!”  His love looks exactly like those things that are mentioned in Galatians Chapter 5 verses 22-23!  

These are things we simply can’t explain away, because we know, first-hand, that mankind cannot come up with them by themselves, or even endlessly maintain them. These God-given love gifts will never ever run out! And if that doesn’t make you happy, sit and think on those two verses. They will do it! Bye 👋

P 2492 The power in our choices.

/ DVH

Someone recently challenged me about how anybody can continue to do kind, loving things for people who are deliberately not sweet to us. To start with, if we do not tackle this kind of situation with our faith, we will fail. This scenario needs the Lord’s supernatural power, not willpower. This person asked me if I was asking them to lie – because they did not feel kindly toward the people involved, and they would be lying if they took the path I indicated. At the same time they thought that perhaps they were giving the person/s involved permission to stay the same, and keep on being horrible to them. First of all, we need to remember our flesh will complain at us – it doesn’t want to die.

Mine complained at me, yesterday, at 4.00 am! I couldn’t sleep because I needed to get up and make some notes about my thoughts. Hubby chose to get up with me, and I felt very guilty for depriving him of sleep. But he said something really interesting regarding the very early hour. He reminded me of this story: Jesus came walking on the water to the disciples while they were rowing their arms off in the middle of a huge storm, in the fourth watch of the night. Apparently Jesus doesn’t think 4.00am is too early!

The Lord actively encouraged me then, through my husband, despite my tired body, and despite my feelings of guilt – hubby is as tired as I am most of the time! He could easily have been grumpy at me for waking him up way too early, but he chose to respond lovingly, to support me. Feelings can be grossly overrated and motivated by other circumstances, or previous attitudes that are yet to be redeemed. I think that God wanted to teach me something. When I talk about choosing to love others who are unkind to us, I am simply repeating what the bible says. Actually, I personally hardly ever want to … “do good to those who despitefully use me!’  I do those things and follow His word as a choice. We are challenged daily with choices.

Christianity is full of these seemingly ordinary choices, to say no to ourselves and yes to Him. I love walking around with Jesus helping me, so, for me, it is not a hard choice. Hubby chose to walk with the Lord at 4.00am and that led to him reassuring me from the bible. He was blessed and so was I. If we make the wrong choices, it definitely becomes much harder to step away from those choices and go back to following Him. In those moments we will have to fight our own feelings and thoughts.

We may have to choose to suffer by making those hard choices … SO GRACE CAN BE RELEASED. Grace is undeserved by its nature, so releasing it must be motivated by our Love for Jesus and His Ways. However,His Grace changes everything! It enables us to see things that were not seen before. When you or I get into a bad situation with someone else, somebody is going to have to release grace – which is undeserved favour – in order to de-escalate that situation. We cannot do this kind of thing without the Holy Spirit helping us, and giving us His Word and His Grace. The thing is we will often feel nothing – OR still be very angry at the other person. It’s a sacrifice – you will die to self when you do it.

When we choose to love the people who aren’t loving us, we are entering into the Kingdom of God, and living by His edicts – instead of by this world’s ideas. That choice ushers us into a different arena. Now the things of this earth fade into the background, because something far more wise and powerful has come on the scene. I have found when God explains Himself it blows my mind. For example, for years I have looked at those two men hanging beside Jesus, dying on their own crosses and thought – ‘ Well, at least one of them was saved.’ But then the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said: “TWO men were saved but only ONE responded to Christ.” 🤯 God thinks differently than we do!

I was also reminded by the Holy Spirit that Jesus did not want to go through with His sacrifice. (Dare I say He did not feel good about what was going to happen?) We have an example in the garden of Gethsemane where He makes it very clear He did not want to go ahead with His appointed assignment. But He carried it out, and He let other people do to Him what they did, because of the greater good. Love was going to win – it always wins! This was, quite simply, the only way to redeem us. The innocent had to suffer.

We are given opportunities every single day to suffer for LOVE’S SAKE. Life is about those daily choices! We can enter into transformation in those moments, as we choose to believe what the bible says, over how we feel or what we think. Here’s what I’ve  learnt — 4.00am feels way too early to be awake …but when God is in it, suddenly it is not too early. Continuing to love others when they are spiteful or mean to me, often feels wrong. But the reality is, it is a CUE to release the Grace God gave me when Christ died in my place. That choice changes our view of what is really going on. Bye.👋

P 2475 Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.

/ DVH

Today I want to talk about the Wise men. They were travelling on camels from the East so they took sometime to arrive. Following a star slows you up a bit … there were those pesky clouds and all. Eventually they arrived at the house Mary, Joseph and Jesus were staying in. Some people call these men, the Magi. “And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary His mother, and they fell down and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered Him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.“  Matthew 2:11.  

Each of these unusual gifts apparently had a special meaning, and smarter people than me have written loads, and even books, about them. When I was reading this part of the bible and talking about it with the Lord, He asked me this question. “What would YOU want to give me for a gift?” My immediate response was – ‘me!!’ But you might want to think on this question for yourself. 

I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but there are times when I talk to Him when I feel like what I said was … well, Ok-ay, … but not what He was looking for! This was one of those times… so I pressed on … and I asked Him what did He mean by that question? Pressing, BTW, on is the way to go …trust me!! I exhort you, don’t give up, push on! In those moments you are on the edge of a fresh revelation of Who He is. Unless you suddenly remember you have to go shopping, or get going to work on the same train you always take. I urge you to just give Jesus a few more minutes. I truly believe one of the Lord’s love languages is time spent with Him.

Then He said this: “Those Wise men gave Me gold. Gold represents everything you own, your money etc. Have you given Me everything?”  I sat and thought about that. Gold represents material things. Have I given all the material things I have to Him? Plus I also think that Gold is also about future provision. Cars, houses, money in the bank, clothes etc. Is there anything that I am holding onto, or that I think I want or need? There are times that I’ve told myself:  ‘God doesn’t care about that stuff!’ So I asked Him if there was anything I had overlooked- just to be thorough.

Then, I realised if we lost this or that, I would probably grieve over it but the things around me actually don’t matter much. When you lose your health everything else kind of fades into insignificance! But, I do find it hard to let go of the people I love, because I haven’t learnt to trust Him as utterly as I would like to. Sometimes I don’t understand what He is doing. If my dear hubby or my kids or my friends get sick, or unhappy, I have to fight a rising sense of panic at times. So I spent some time praying over those things too.

Then He asked me: “What about frankincense?” That one took me a while and I did a bit of research. Frankincense is given to Kings because it is valuable. So, to me, this gift is about the Lord Jesus’ Kingship over my life. It has its significance when I believe God IS God, no matter what is going on around me, in my life, or in my heart. Frankincense is about trust. Is He Who He says He is, or are we all at the mercy of circumstances? Are we affected by our decisions, bad or good, especially the ones we’ve made carelessly. Even the ones we haven’t repented about. We had a long conversation about this one – I found big spaces between what I knew and what I believed. BTW, I think belief is something we act upon not just what we talk about.

The last thing the Wise men brought is myrrh. Myrrh is about anointing and priesthood. The Lord asked me if I thought I was faithful to Him as a part of His priesthood. Did I minister to Him out of duty, or was I inspired by love? I spent a while on this one too. Mainly because I did not know the answer! That’s the problem with head knowledge, it sometimes gets in the way of the heart’s true answer! I ended up with Ezekiel’s wisdom. “Only YOU know Lord.”  That’s when I remembered that true worship is presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice – holy and pleasing to Him. 

Lastly I want to say that every one of these three gifts has great value, as well as significance. These things weren’t some cheap baby toys these Wise men picked up at the supermarket on the way to Jesus’ house! Anything and everything we offer to Him is valuable to Him, not because of monetary value, but because of the personal cost. Jesus knows everything about personal cost!

I do not believe revelation is given to us just to tickle our ears and make us feel good about knowing something that nobody else does. Revelation is designed to challenge our own hearts, transform our minds, and lead to different attitudes and actions. Always remembering that ‘first He speaks, then after that, the opportunity to change my response will come along.’ I have given up thinking that what I imagine I will do, is what I will actually do – nobody knows what they will do when they are tested. 😶 

The Lord Jesus is a gentleman, He will not snatch things from us. We must give them, as willingly as we can. So today I want to ask you, what will you give Him? 👋🏻

P 2470 “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal …

/ DVH

…but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” The best way to get rid of a stronghold, is to first of all … identify it! There are some things that we can quite cheerfully call habits, or traits, or mindsets, that are against God’s greater purpose. The tragedy of that kind of scenario is that then we are often quite reluctant to part with the very thing that is holding us back from going deeper into the Lord’s plan for our lives. 

It is very easy to use the temporal things of this world to explain the stuff in our lives that has not changed, or the things we do not want to change. That’s called having a stronghold. Those things start in the mind and work their way into our everyday attitudes and actions. We dare not normalise these thingsby explaining them away, or by calling them our own personal individual attitudes … the things that make me, me! Judas did that and look at where that got him!

Sadly, strongholds mean that selfish, heartbreaking, soul destroying stuff is allowed to roam free through our lives, because we justify these things and wreak havoc on other people. Our own thought life, and internal reactions are also affected. A temper is a temper, that’s still a temper … even if your great grandfather had one too! It is not a family trait to be proud of or laughed off! Or what about having to be in control all the time? Control uses manipulation to maintain it. It avoids the personal discomfort of making different choices. At the same time as we are toddling along resisting transformation, other people are judged and crushed by our sinful decisions to remain the same.  

Because of the stronghold, we think to ourselves, there is nothing wrong with me … it’s YOU! You are, and you have the problem. If you didn’t bother me and resist my way, we’d be fine. We can hide behind our severe, sometimes judgmental thoughts, because we can’t face the truth – WE have sinned. Thinking like that is a big fat clue that we are resisting the Holy Spirit’s work in our heart and lives. If we have to exert our will to make it happen – that is the wrong spirit. Over a lifetime, we’ve learnt to dismiss and excuse destructive things, as momentary aberrations, and we’ve distanced ourselves from the very real consequences in other people’s lives.

However, our whole purpose is to be changed to be like HIM … not carry with us the details of death that have strangled and destroyed us, plus other people along the way. None of that is LOVE — and LOVE MUST ALWAYS BE OUR AIM. That Love is described in 1 Corinthians 13 and Colossians 3:13-15. Now, here is the same verse as the one above, but this time it is from the Passion Translation. I really like it, it inspired me today. 

“For although we live in the natural realm, we don’t wage a military campaign employing human weapons, using manipulation to achieve our aims. Instead, our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide.We CAN demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One. Since we are armed with such dynamic weaponry, we stand ready to punish any trace of rebellion, as soon as (we) choose complete obedience.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 TPT.

We cannot and we dare not, avoid obedience. Obedience is essential. Otherwise we will spend our lives protecting me, myself and I, and forget about poor old Fred who is half dead in the corner! If Jesus Christ chose to obey and He never sinned in thought, attitude or deed, don’t you think we need to follow His example? Telling ourselves we are OK and we don’t need to change anything, is putting another nail into the coffin, they will eventually carry us off in! Metamorphosis is part of our mandate from Almighty God. 

At the same time, if we are this careless, we are denying the power of Christ to make our old life, new. There is not one of us alive that does not need heavenly correction or change. I can’t talk for everywhere in the world, but where I live obeying the gospel means nodding your head and hoping someone else will do it for you! That’s not transformation – that’s avoidance. We avoid the opportunities God sends us to make different choices. Dying to self hurts. It is meant to, but it provides the impetus to drive us further into His ways.

We pull down personal strongholds by our choices. That means we continually choose to seek out the Holy Spirit’s correction and believe that He is bigger than our ability to resist Him.” …our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide.” And the best place to accomplish that, is to read the book and do what it says! Read Peter, Paul, Jude, James, Philemon etc … and take what they said seriously. Don’t read it and think “I don’t do that” ask the Lord …”Where do I do that? Please show me Lord.” Then we make it our personal aim to check out our behaviour and motivation toward others as we go along.

We live this new life that we have been given, alert, asking the Holy Spirit to highlight to us where we are living out of order with His words. And we value knowing Him over our own comfort. Lastly, let’s get ready to change … because you and I are going to get VERY busy. We are about to demolish some strongholds. Bye 👋🏻

P 2462 Get rid of the stuff that is holding you back.

/ DVH

1 Peter 2:1 “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” First of all, when I find a “therefore” I want to know what it is there, for! That means I went back and read 1 Peter 1. Therefore means in the light of what was said before it. When I did that I found a pearl… without even trying. 1 Peter 1:3-4 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.”  

You know, a lot of people regard the opening and closing remarks of books in the bible as irrelevant, or advertising, or quite simply, polite contextual greetings. They are not. God can use the writer’s opening and closing remarks. This is a letter, but it is not like our letters. Every word in God’s book is profitable. 

Briefly, lets’ go back to our ‘living hope’ … our hope is not in what we think we believe. And that’s because people can believe the dumbest things!! Our actual firm hope is in the fact that Jesus Christ died and was raised from the dead and He now sits at the Father’s right hand.  HE is our hope. Who He is and what He did. Everything else is spiritual fluff! (And no, I am not splitting hairs – hope belongs to something concrete, it is not a theoretical thing.) 

The reason our hope sometimes dies very quickly is that we are hoping in the wrong direction. EG  … our hope is in answers to prayer! Hope cannot diminish when it is in the right place. I urge us all to put our hope in reality, not in wish thinking, or prayers, no matter how nicely we phrase them. What Jesus Christ did for us is proof that He can be trusted. So we actually put our hope in His trustworthiness and not in some pretty or earnest prayer! Jesus Christ really is Almighty God. He really came here, and He really loved humanity, and He really actually died and was raised from the dead! Hope in that. Base your hope on WHO He is and what He did. That will change the way you pray and help you to trust Him. BTW, this is why we pray in Jesus’ Name. Because HE is our hope. 

Now let’s go back to 1 Peter 2:1 ’Rid yourself of all envy and malice …’Why does Peter say that? Because envy and malice block our eyes and ears to what God is actually saying and doing. We stop seeing and hearing spiritually, and make our choices from the wrong place … the flesh! We cry: “I desperately need You to fix this Lord,” but we don’t and sometimes won’t, fix our own attitudes. When we entertain malice, envy, hypocrisy, and deceit etc. we become defensive and offensive, instead of loving, patient and kind. 

What we soak our minds in actually affects our attitudes and behaviour, and I am not talking about TV shows! Mulling over someone else’s sin against you is not profitable. Nothing is gained that way except more angst. Instead we need to identify if we have envy etc.etc in the way we think, and repent, then refuse to think like that. Seriously… we are the boss of our own thoughts! Don’t entertain them. Some people ask that junk in, tell it to put its feet up on a comfy chair, go and get it a cuppa, and then they wonder why they can’t shift the thoughts! Our minds are constantly at war – it is not safe to entertain rubbish. Here’s a dumb thought – offence will fence you in.

If a thought comes into my head, that does not mean I need to give it a party! I can refuse the thought. And I can keep on refusing it until it leaves. Personally, I do my best to look carefully at my thought patterns because I want to watch over my own heart. I am not obsessive about it, but I listen to what I am thinking because:“as a man thinks …so is he …” (Proverbs 23:7) And some of my errant thoughts deserve jail, not entertaining!  However, Paul says in Philippians 4:8 to “let your mind dwell on these things. Whatever is right … whatever is profitable…”  Live there! Start looking for the good profitable parts, even in bad things. Bad things awaken urgency within us to get closer to God. And that’s a good thing to start with! Then start being grateful.

I hold my thoughts up against the Word of God and if my thoughts are wrong I chuck them out. Bad things start festering when we ignore the fact that we are mentally chewing on unhappy relationships and difficult people. It is our part in this eternal arrangement we are in, to get rid of the stuff that is holding us away from our true inheritance. 1 Peter 2:1 tells us that. And most of the bad stuff starts out as thoughts. Try monitoring your thoughts sometime, it will surprise you. 👋🏻

P 2386 Headlines from today are in the book. “Children will lead.”

/ DVH

Isaiah 3:1-7 “The Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, is emptying Jerusalem and Judah Of all the basic necessities, plain bread and water to begin with.He’s withdrawing police and protection, judges and courts, pastors and teachers, captains and generals, doctors and nurses, and, yes, even the repairmen and jacks-of-all-trades. He says, “I’ll put little kids in charge of the city. Schoolboys and schoolgirls will order everyone around. People will be at each other’s throats, stabbing one another in the back: Neighbour against neighbour, young against old, the no-account against the well-respected. One brother will grab another and say, ‘You look like you’ve got a head on your shoulders. Do something! Get us out of this mess. And he’ll say, ‘Me? Not me! I don’t have a clue. Don’t put me in charge of anything.’”

The Lord gave me one sentence this morning, and that’s the title of today’s blog. I looked up the phrase and found about a billion verses about how to be nice to kids, but I couldn’t find this particular one He put on my heart. However, I have learnt to persevere, plus hubby prayed for me, so I found it. Yay Isaiah! And if, per chance you think that I picked this version on purpose you would be right … but it says the same thing in all the versions. You would do well to go back and read it again because it reads like the newspaper and TV headlines.

I was gobsmacked. I tried to highlight any bits that spoke to me, and I simply couldn’t … all of it was relevant in today’s world. Scary huh?? This is what the Lord said to me: “My heart is grieving and bleeding for your kids.” BTW that’s not just your kids or my kids or even our grandkids – He means the kids that are out there right now, on our streets terrorising our neighbourhoods. We helped put them into those greedy grasping authority-defying attitudes when we refused to discipline them. We got “enlightened” … and decided our kids didn’t need smacking because the little darlings were basically good.

Maybe because you and I went to church and we drew our own kids in a little closer and hid them under the umbrella of ‘God’s kids’ and prayed and prayed for them, scared silly of what might happen to them. You know we can get so busy trying to protect our kids – that we forget about all the other kids who are now running riot in our streets!  BUT … “There is no fear in love …!!!”  Ya might want to think about that one.

Then Big Brother came along and threatened us with child abuse and told us he would throw us in jail if we didn’t stop smacking them. So we let fear rule – and these kids … who don’t know how to control themselves, were loose – doing what comes naturally all over the place. We’ve forgotten who the ruler of this world is! he grabbed them and dragged them down. Those kids are our future. Think on this, satan could not have offered Jesus any kingdom if the other guy did not already own them. We live in enemy territory – that’s why it is a bad idea to make ourselves at home here!

The bible has many helpful hints on parenting. “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6)“Do not withhold correction from a child, For if you beat him with a rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with a rod, And deliver his soul from hell.” Proverbs 23:13-14 “Parents, don’t provoke your children in a way that ends up discouraging them.”’ (Colossians 3:21)

BTW, disciplining in anger is a really bad idea. Both the child and the parent need a time out – the parent needs to work on patience and the child needs boundaries. A child needs to learn that it cannot allow self-expression to rule the family. Being part of something bigger and Godly, is protection not oppression, it is Grace. How you and the Lord work that out for each child is between you and Him.

I don’t think I will be part of the generation who will solve this serious problem with angry children raging about doing others great harm. But we can pray, because we know our Heavenly Father loves those kids. He put judgment on Jesus, and just because they don’t know that fact, that does not change the reality. We need to treat them like kids who need guidance and instruction and teach them His kind of love. And pray that He will save them from themselves.

We must pray for God to raise up people who will personally pray and love them in spite of their anger and selfishness as well as reach out to them. We must not cede our responsibilities to the state, because the state’s answers are not Godly. The state does the immediate, it rarely thinks long-term – they neither ask for, nor walk in His wisdom. God has a way for these kids to go so they won’t depart from it.  We simply need His wisdom, His way and the saints need to pray.

Let’s start asking the Holy Spirit how He wants us to reach out to other people’s kids in our area. We need God-given strategies. The Holy Spirit knows the way through anything! GOD LOVES THOSE KIDS, and, right now, in this world, WE are His hands and feet. Bye.  👋🏻 🦶🏻

P 2349 Faith is to be generational..

/ DVH

“If your faith remains strong, even while surrounded by life’s difficulties, you will continue to experience the untold blessings of God! True happiness comes as you pass the test with faith, and receive the victorious crown of life promised to every lover of God!”

James 1:12 TPT.

Today, sadly, our society has become people of the immediate. We are addicted to instant answers, instant gratification, instant provision and instant success. When things don’t happen immediately it seems as if we are in danger of losing our faith. The bible doesn’t talk about stuff like that …it talks about eternity, eternal consequences.

Our list of priorities are askew because God isn’t first or last or even in the middle of our list. HE OFTEN ISN’T ON THAT LIST AT ALL. The truth is we all get the same amount of time in a day – it’s the one thing we have in common. And no matter how young or old we are, we will all run out of time eventually! We’ve forgotten that TIME is a gift, to be cherished and used wisely.

But those pesky day to day things press in on us, so we can easily get caught up in the immediate. So this kid has to go to football practice, and that one is off to gymnastics, and the other one is off doing heaven knows what with their mates. We, however, are breaking our necks to the point of exhaustion, because we also have to make sure we work, so we can pay the mortgage or the rent, plus the fees for the football and gymnastics, as well as provide the little darlings with the right clothes to go schlepping about with their mates! 

I think that we have passively taught our kids how to keep themselves busy and distracted, so successfully, it has become hard to get their attention for something really important. Like God’s will, and what He wants.  Instead they have been hardwired into indifference about other people’s pain, by their exposure to various types of media. 

Some times I want to ask people – what the heck did you want to have children for? … The experience?? If you did that then boy did you get gypped!! As I see it, our children are the seeds we sow into a future we may not see. Let’s hope we produce a crop of decent human beings that care about more than the ozone layer! Part of raising kids is to teach them how to manage their own thoughts, attitudes and emotions, while they are wading through this life’s share of difficulties. Instead our generation has chosen to protect them from reality. We’ve taught them that owning your own home and having a great holiday is all there is.

Sadly, most young people today probably won’t see their parents go to homeless shelters, to distribute food and clothing. We’ve protected them from the sad and difficult realities of this life. They don’t see us fast and pray either, or press into God to see what He wants us to do. They may see us plant trees, so we can all continue to breathe, or take stuff to the recycling depot – but have we taught them how to cope with this life’s everyday hardships? Have they seen us turn to God first? Do they watch us pray over things?

You can teach your family about faith and how it works, or you can SHOW THEM how your faith works, in front of their own eyes, when you help and care for others who are struggling. Today, real active, fruitful faith seems to come into the same category as sex – we’ve abrogated our own responsibility and left the work to someone else or handed them a book! Why should children’s church have the sole responsibility to teach your kids to give? We’ve learnt to ‘outsource’ everything – including learning about God. Does your family see you with a bible or facsimile in your hand? When is the last time you prayed with, or for your kid when they hit some snag or other at school?

Future generations must learn that troubles and hardship are normal in this imperfect world of ours. This life is always going to be difficult – it is full of people who all want to do their own thing – but because we all inhabit the same planet,  we are all doing our own thing in a limited space. Kids need to learn about faith more than they need to know how to get tickets to some pop concert or have a well-known brand of sneakers! We must remember that our character reflects our faith levels.

Life is not only difficult, people can be downright impossible, but they can also be instrumental in challenging and growing our faith – and all our kids need faith that is real.. “Your faith will be like gold that has been tested in a fire. And these trials will prove that your faith is worth much more than gold that can be destroyed.” 1 Peter 1:7. What we believe must be shared with the generations that are coming after us – it looks to me like they are going to need it! 👋🏻