attract

P 3085 Dust? … Anyone?

/ DVH

“The first one, (Adam) made from dust, has a race of people just like him, who are also made from dust. The One sent from heaven has a race of heavenly people who are just like Him. Once we carried the likeness of the man of dust, but now let us carry the likeness of the Man of heaven.” 1 Corinthians 15:48-49 TPT. (Just keep reading I do have a point!)

I have had dust on the brain recently, what with spring cleaning, and finding cobwebs in my own life in unexpected places. Then hubby found this verse in his daily readings and we both had a good laugh. Laughter really is good for all of us, especially if we can laugh at ourselves. So we hit a joy bubble together and laughed way out beyond the reality of whatever was supposedly funny and … felt much better.

Apparently people much smarter than I am, suggest that if you are struggling with depression or anxiety, watching a marathon of movies that you know can make you laugh can help. They suggested the Three Stooges – which made me doubt the accuracy of their prescription … mainly because I don’t find the Three Stooges even remotely funny. I’m not into physical gags. I find people having pianos dropped on their heads hard to watch!

Back to today’s verse, because inheriting and sorting out other people’s old things has been part of my day for weary weeks now. My take on what these verses are saying goes like this: If you want Adam for an ancestor more dust awaits you. Ya might want to think about that! You could definitely need one of those dust-buster gizmos they sell for $59.99 on TV. On a good TV advertising day you can get two for the price of one. My question is — why not sell ONE for thirty bucks and be done with it? ps maybe you need two because the one you start with will kark it and then, the other one will come in handy? Or you can always give the extra one to your mother-in-law. I’m allowed to tell M-I-L jokes – I ARE one. Splendid! Now there’s Christmas sorted. I am so-oo-oo helpful!

Did you read the next line in that scripture? I underlined it so it would stand out! “The One sent from heaven has a race of heavenly people who are just like Him.”  I underlined that bit because it serves my point. I know HEAPS of people who aren’t like Him and sadly, they dusty-up the church in this world all over the place. At the same time they also obscure other people’s view of what Jesus actually looks like! I’ve been in a dust storm – you can’t see a thing! Dust, BTW, in the Lord’s hands can be useful stuff – Jesus once wrote in it and saved a woman’s life. 

Meanwhile our churches need some of those dust-busters because we’ve forgotten where we came from — we are dust-free simply because of what HE did. Before we met Jesus we used to be Pig-pen … see picture above. But now we have been bought back from that dirty dusty scenario to live in the freedom and light that surrounds our Saviour, Jesus. Our job is to carry around His likeness wherever we go. No more cloudy nasty dust for us – it only makes people allergic to us! But that kind of cleanliness and clarity won’t fall on us – we will have to choose it. 

I have included this next testimony purely because it was not me that suffered through it. My hubby was on the phone for an hour and a half yesterday to Centrelink  – listening to truly awful music … who picks that stuff and where do they live? I want to disconnect their CD player right away – I may even jump on it! … An-y-wa-y he rang Centrelink to tell them that they had paid my mother her pension, and as she is no longer with us, he wanted to ask them, how could we give back those extra $$s? 

When hubby finally did get to speak to someone – hours later! The guy at the other end of the phone was gobsmacked by our honesty. Apparently nobody wants to give money back anymore, they usually have to chase after a person if the extra cash wasn’t theirs in the first place.. No wonder the government has no spare money for poor people to buy bread and milk! And now comes the kingdom of God angle…

… this young man then explained the money was actually legally ours. Colour me astonished! I can’t be bothered here explaining why here, because it isn’t worth the space, but no bill collectors will be knock knock knocking on our door. Praise the Lord!

I wanted to use this illustration to show the difference between dusty people and heavenly people — it’s the way they live and act. Dusty people attract dirt, cobwebs, spiders, and other nasty creepy critters… BUT … the people who choose to live in His light, attract other people who are out there looking for the light! Let’s go! Let’s live this life we have been given, carrying the light of heaven wherever we go. 

How do we do that? Easy peasy. Live in His love. I am not good at it, yet …I freely admit that. But when I get done and dusted, (teehee) I get up again – that’s the secret! We will all get it wrong … and then we repent, and repair relationships, and deliberately go back to our precious Saviour and let Him further transform our lives with His redemptive love. We will end up thanking Him all over again for saving us from the never-ending dust piles of this life…as we choose to carry the light of His love and forgiveness out into this world. Bye. 👋

P 2914 Jesus lives in us.

/ DVH

“The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighbourhood.”John 1:14 “ …and yet the world didn’t even notice… …  they didn’t want Him.” John 1:10b; 11a. Imagine that. Jesus walked down their streets and at that time people didn’t even notice that God Himself had come into their world! That thought made me wonder what would happen if the Lord in me affected the people around me enough that they know that the King is in residence here – ‘here’ being inside me!

I like big spiritual thoughts, and … I kind of hate them, all at the same time!… They stretch me out of complacency. I am of the opinion that we have become so lukewarm that, at best, most unsaved people think of us as nice people. Kind people. Maybe even helpful people, or those people who are a little bit nutty and weird and go to church on Sunday. That led me into thinking how I can move on from being seen as a nice, kind and helpful person, into being a whole lot more like Jesus Who walked on water. The One Who condemned the Pharisees and their religious antics, and forgave obvious sinners! The One Who cared for those who were completely lost.

The bible is meant to be a challenging book. It isn’t just designed to be a soothing consolation prize when things get hard at our house. When we read the bible, we are feeding our spirits the kind of spiritual power that can and should transform our neighbourhoods. Speaking for myself, what I do, most days, will hardly blow up my letter box! His book is designed to be so solid inside us it will affect our outsides, as well as our immediate neighbours. Hopefully, not always adversely! I have noticed the only publicity about people of faith that I’ve seen lately is when Christians do something that this world regards as incredibly naive, idiotic, and harmful.

Yet Jesus lives in us. And the point I want to make today is that it is about time we let Him OUT! Where I live even our Christian government representatives compromise. They rationalise that being in power means they can influence others and do good over time. Personally, I think we have all compromised. We want to live our lives normally, and look like everyone else … only nicer!

The true Christian life has become an add-on. Maybe we tried to follow Jesus, prayed for people, helped them, maybe even saw some people healed … but somehow … it wore off! How can the power of God wear off?!? Maybe we are not living the kind of dedicated-to-Jesus lives that will attract … or repel people immediately. Good place to stop and think.

The people around us will not hear the good news easily from add-ons! Most people today could care less what someone else believes, they are too busy living their own lives, trying to scratch a better life out of hard work and a mostly good attitude. And the Body of Christ has so little OF HIS POWER – we scarcely make a dent on their lives. If what we do every single day is meant to represent Him, then we are all sunk.

It seems we represent Him when it is convenient, and most of the time, not at all, because ‘God understands that is hard for me and it never seems to be convenient.’  Sometimes I think we have so little of God’s power we could barely blow a hat off, let alone raise a roof or a ruckus. Compromise is flourishing. And yet the need for a Saviour in this world has not changed. It has, in my opinion, gotten even greater! When Jesus said:“The fields are white with harvest…” He wasn’t even  IN His own neighbourhood. I think the fields are ALWAYS WHITE, we just stay inside, curled up in front of the TV and try not to notice.

The Lord’s very Presence has been reduced into being something that is supposed to thrill us, Sunday by Sunday! He didn’t come to produce juicy feelings in us, the Lord Jesus Christ came here to save people. He left us behind so we could do what He did – and He specifically sent us the power to do it. To have the power of God present in our lives, we need to live this life, the only one we have, DEAD to what we want, and ALIVE to what He wants. We must stop hiding. I think we actually know we are not all we can be, instead we need to go after Him and His mission for each one of us. Witnessing is everyone’s mission.

I’m just going to say this out loud, and hopefully we will both be challenged by it. We have become a lukewarm people and lukewarm people get spat out!  We must change, because ... Jesus lives in us — and WE NEED TO LET HIM OUT!  Bye. 👋

P 2675 Don’t let the lipstick/liposuction fool ya!

/ DVH

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God does not see as man sees, since man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 NASB. 

My first thought when I read this scripture today was this: wouldn’t we all be better off, if we saw others like the Lord does?! What if we appreciated people’s hearts, more than the colour of their lipstick or the fact that they have no fat around their middle? I cannot believe our society vacuums away fat! YUCK!! Social media, movies, magazines, or even the news, all present a false view of this life. See that movie star? FAKE! The media lies to us and they get paid for it! The pretty, witty, fit, and powerful people are supposed stars, yet they have had more work done on them than a renovated broken-down house! Apparently, we enjoy being fooled by illusions. Sigh. You know, many pretty people have an awful lot of spak-filler plastered on. 

Now, let’s STOP and look at SomeOne worthwhile. SomeOne truly beautiful… let’s look at Jesus the way Isaiah saw the Lord in Isaiah 53:1,2.“He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.”  Imagine that. Jesus didn’t actually need physical or scholarly attributes… yet people were attracted to Him like bees to honey. What was inside showed up on the outside. Hah! I’d like to get me some of that kind of surgery thank you Lord! Hmmm. Sometimes, when the spirit of nasty has grabbed me by the neck and I’m spewing unkind venom everywhere – I sure need some bad attitude liposuction!  Thank God for our Saviour!

Moving on … rather quickly…   that scripture from Samuel reminded me of another one: “So from now on we regard no one from a human point of view [according to worldly standards and values]. Though we have known Christ from a human point of view, now we no longer know Him in this way.”  2 Corinthians 5:16. Let me see if I can try to interpret that. We can’t know Jesus or anyone else, just with our brains. We are going to need open hungry hearts. More Lord!! 

Why is mankind so obsessed with outward beauty, physical strength, and brain power? None of that stuff lasts. People go to the gym every single day and they work out ….even in their eighties!🙄… Well, that’s nine kinds of ridiculous. Fancy spending whatever time you have left on earth, lifting weights and dieting! How tragic to live out a life not actually comprehending the things that really matter. I can’t see Moses in a gym, can you? He was too busy getting his work-out doing what God said!

Meanwhile, I can tell you personally that old age is a great leveller. You simply can’t feel superior in your intellect anymore, because you often end up forgetting the end of the sentence right after you just started it! And some days it is all I can do to get around our house. Since I decided to try to fly down the stairs, instead of just plain walking, one of my knees is out of sync with the other one. I could go on … but it would bore you to death … and I am definitely not a pretty person … so I can’t get away with that!

But, thanks to Jesus, inside me, right here, right now, I have a spiritual well that sustains me even when my body complains and my brain seizes up! BTW, I don’t believe in mirrors. My problem is that I keep looking for the 19year old I once was, in them. I’m definitely going to be disappointed on that one! A mirror cannot tell you who you are – God’s Word is the only mirror that is accurate. Praise God for a mirror that shows our true selves – and then it points to the solution!

Oh Jesus is so incredibly beautiful. He’s the One Who gladly laid down His life for His friends … that’s you and me. He has given all of us the greatest love this world will ever know. And He actually chose to do that so that for everyone – including those who are obsessed with how they look. HE LOVES them for free. The Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit are our very Best Friends, our personal cheer-squad, and our life-coach on the road to eternity. We are sooo rich!!

The thing that makes this life wonderful isn’t what we have, or look like, or how smart we are — it’s what we can freely give away to others. Envy, disappointment, and causing others to feel like they are a waste of space – those things are terrible gifts to give someone else. LOVE enriches us all. But comparison and competition highlight lack and we live this life, the only one we will get, feeling deprived.

“Don’t be fooled by their outward appearance … the LORD looks at the heart.”  Skip the fancy red lipstick, the 100 one-handed push-ups … and do more bible study instead. Trust me, you will enjoy that life more. Why should any of us make some plastic surgeon/fitness trainer/make-up artist even richer? Bye. 👋

PS Today is our Anniversary. 37 years of being married to the man of my dreams!🎈🎈💕