Baptism

P 3217 This book is alive!

/ DVH

“God has transmitted His very substance into every Scripture, for it is God-breathed. It will empower you by its instruction and correction, giving you the strength to take the right direction and lead you deeper into the path of godliness. Then you will be God’s servant, fully mature and perfectly prepared to fulfil any assignment God gives you.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit  and life.” John 6:63. ‘For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12.

Today’s blog is about the sort of expectation we can fall into, because we mistakenly believe God has to fit in with our agendas. Over the years my hubby has found that he can often interpret the meaning in other people’s dreams etc., it goes with his name. He explained to me yesterday, that people can sometimes have an attitude that the Lord is obligated to answer them. 

So here’s a slightly exaggerated illustration: “God has talked to me about this problem 10 times, in my dreams. And a stranger gave me some confirming verses. What do you think I should do?” Hubby cracked me up with this answer: “Ten times?!!! Go right now, this very minute, and do what He said! What do you want, an angel with a trumpet?!”  How many signposts do we need??

How many times does the Lord have to speak to us before we obey Him? I know that there is a kind of paralysing fear about stepping out into faith – it’s normal. We are scared of being wrong, and so the enemy attacks us. We think things like: ’But what if I do what the Lord says, and nothing happens, or, even worse … something BAD happens.’ That’s easily fixed! You say: ‘I’m so sorry Lord. Please forgive me for messing up. Would You help me with it? I got it wrong. Please will You redeem it?’ 

Then you repent to anyone else involved, and repair any relationships wherever it is necessary. Humility never killed anyone – it’s good for us! When you are done repenting to Him and others, and repairing relationships, then you give Him whatever it is, and leave the rest to Him. Go home, lie down, have a big cry and then blow your nose… then get up and get on with your life. 

People say: “If only I could just get a word from the Lord for my situation …” Let’s think about this, the New International Version contains approximately 728,000 words, the Amplified has 820,980 words. Choose any bible you like and go for it. Our God is so incredible His life inhabits every single word. It is not like reading Charles Dickens! Father God doesn’t do background, or character depictions, or scene descriptions – every single solitary word in His book has power in it.

And those words don’t have to be big incomprehensible words either. The Holy Spirit has taught me so much through just one little word “let.” Three letters that changed my life. “Let this mind be in you …” “Let us make every attempt to enter that rest …” “Let us love one another…” “Let us throw off everything that hinders us …” ‘Let us not become weary in doing good …”  You get it… … Trust me ‘let’ is a very BIG little word.

I’ve learnt many times that the Lord wasn’t doing some things, because I wasn’t giving Him permission to do it in whatever way suited Him! He had something for me to learn, and sometimes He had an even greater blessing if I just followed Him in faith. Here’s another made-up illustration: Let’s say I wanted a new car, but I found out through prayer and reading the word, that He wanted me to give my old car away first. So my prayer asking for help with a new car could remain unanswered, because I have an agenda. I am not yielding to Him, and praying for His Will His Way. 

We can’t be in charge of what we think we need, like we can give a chemist a prescription. But, spiritually speaking, we must choose to put God in charge of our needs – that way He gets all the glory! We live on His timetable, not our own. If you didn’t decide to die to self when you were baptised, or nobody told you that was what baptism is all about — then make a quality decision to do it now!  And ask for His help to live this way. You know, some of the Apostles made a living to support themselves, but they did not have two careers – they simply served God first, whatever they did. Putting the Lord first is a sensible response to His generosity toward us. And if things remain unclear, then ask for wisdom, and keep right on reading the bible. 

Please, don’t get stuck on ‘what hasn’t happened,’  move on to ‘what do you want me to do now, Lord?’ Some things happen as we are going along in the way the Lord leads us. “He(Abraham’s servant) said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not denied His lovingkindness and His truth to my master. As for me, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brothers.” Genesis 24:27. This servant had no idea how to go about what His master Abraham told him to do. But God met him as he stepped out and tried to do what he was told. He was simply obedient.

“In the beginning the Living Expression was already there. And the Living Expression was with God, yet fully God. They were together—face-to-face, in the very beginning.” John 1:1. Jesus is God’s living expression of His Word, that’s how powerful God’s Word is. His book is alive. Bye. 👋

I have discovered this sweet little series by REAVO. This one seemed appropriate for today. (Two minutes 39 seconds)

P 3205 A Clear Focus.

/ DVH

“We look away from the natural realm and we focus our attention and expectation onto Jesus Who birthed faith within us and Who leads us forward into faith’s perfection. His example is this: Because His heart was focused on the joy of knowing that you would be His, He endured the agony of the cross and conquered its humiliation, and now sits exalted at the right hand of the throne of God!” Hebrews 12:2 TPT.

If that scripture doesn’t move our hearts toward total surrender then I don’t know what will! The idea and actuality of  “…knowing you would be His …” is something none of us have earned or deserved. Even our desire to follow Jesus, wholeheartedly, or not … comes from the One Who birthed our faith on a cross, as He hung there dying. The thing is, I’ve noticed many Christians act like dying to self is an optional extra. It isn’t. 

Because we have been born again. and made the choice to participate in the obedient act of baptism — all that is a declaration of our intent to die to self. Now, day by day we live out that intention by monitoring and adapting our own choices, with His help. It may be a choice, but if we choose not to die, we won’t produce fruit. “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies …”  Many Christians live in this nether world. They feel like failures because they can’t produce the stuff, and yet they long to please their Lord with all their hearts. Because they don’t know what comes AFTER baptism.

It is only when we choose to focus on dying to self daily, that we will find the new life Jesus talked about all the time. Every time we say ‘no’ to self and ‘yes’ to Him, we are choosing to die, and His spiritual fruit of self-control begins to build and grow inside us. It takes a while for a nub on an apple tree to grow a fully mature apple. But the thing is – that apple doesn’t leap on and off the tree during the process! It clings to the tree because the apple tree provides the nutrients for it to grow. Jesus said in John 15:4: “Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.”  Let’s choose to know what Jesus said, thought, and did — because that is now the source of His life in us. We live as He lived, through our own freely-made choices, because we trust Him.

Clinging to Jesus is the only way we can grow. What He did at Calvary and in His death, has out-of-this-world  power to overcome, in it. “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.” Matthew 28:16. In this particular scripture, the Lord had already conquered death, defeated the devil and his minions, and now He is returning to hand over the reins to His disciples. We don’t participate in the power of God by simply claiming it, we operate in the power of God by believing what He said and acting on it. Our decisive death to self opens the door to living differently. We will not misuse Christ’s power when we learn about the cost, personally! 

His power has been given to us, and is available to us, to appropriate. So now we can leave being selfish, self-centred, and our uncaring self, behind – and grow into lovers of Jesus, who would gladly die for Him and others! Now we choose to daily walk as He walked, in humility, with His love for His Father guiding His every step. Jesus treasured His fellowship with His Heavenly Father. So He made hard decisions, against Himself, and His preferences, in order to walk with His Father, and bring heaven down here to earth.

Every step of faith we take, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance frees us from the chains, distractions and tyrannies of this world. Don’t let the words, death, dying, unselfish etc. put you off. We don’t do any of this in our own  strength, our obedience flows as we choose His ways. We grow there, one choice at a time. I read the bible, and I can see what God wants for me, so I just do what He says! This process may be progressive, but it was never designed to be static. Progressive, forward movement is part of the deal. We participate in growing fruit by clinging to the vine, that is Christ, and through that we learn how to live a life of Love.

“For we reach the goal of fulfilling all the commandments when we love others deeply with a pure heart, a clean conscience, and sincere faith.” 1 Timothy 1:5. It’s the way we love, that affects our hearts. The pure heart, clean conscience and sincere faith comes AS we learn to walk with the Holy Spirit. In the beginning, it seems like trial and error, but as we keep choosing Him and keep walking with Him, we discover that loving others starts to flow. Whenever we say or do something dumb, now we will want to immediately repent. WHY? Because we are walking with LOVE Himself and He is a joy to walk with.

The more you walk with Him, the more you want to walk with Him. Our focus changes from ‘me and what I want’to seeking ‘His kingdom and what He wants.’  I no longer have to make myself witness it begins to leak out of me. The other day I grabbed a lady’s hand and just started praying for her – and I didn’t even ask her permission! I was half-way through praying when I realised, I may have committed some sort of human faux pas! In those moments He’s just as real to other people as He is to you. Let us steadfastly, devotedly, and clearly focus our attention on the things that last.  Bye. 👋

P 3169 Tests-4-me.

/ DVH

Hubby said this to me yesterday: “I don’t live for me anymore because I’m dead! I have no rights, because dead people have no rights.” That’s all news to me BTW – I distinctly saw him climb out of bed this morning. He was a bit creaky but still living! Yeah OK, he’s right, I get it. And that sentence is the actual pointy bit in Christianity – the bit nobody likes that was drowned when we were baptised. Today, we are the people who choose to live fulfilling Christ’s law of LOVE. We came up out of death into a new life.  And we live to bless each other. Since when did that become such a hardship?

The beauty of the scriptures, is that they say different things at different times, but those things always fit together to make a much bigger picture…“…don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:3&4. Baptism is our declaration of our intention to live a new life for His glory, from now on.

Our new life of living in love depends on us prayerfully acting on the fact that we are minute by minute, choosing to be dead!  There’s an oxymoron if ever there was one! Now we live a life of obedient faith that says: ‘when Jesus died – I died! That’s the essence of the Spirit-filled life. A life where we live to serve Him and others. Not a life filled with what we think or hope we need, but a life that is voluntarily laid down for His kingdom’s sake.

We may not feel any differently when we come up out of the water of baptism, but the bible says that baptism is our access into this new life in Christ. It may be symbolic, but it is designed to become a reality in each of our lives. That’s because baptism is the stated gateway into our new life of submission to His will, His way. That choice means we’ve deliberately decided to leave our old way of thinking, being and interacting with others behind us, and we have begun to live our lives relying upon His wisdom, power and strength.

As our life of faith continues to grow, we begin to see this world differently – now we do what He has told us to do, using our faith to obey Him. We have everything we need to grow, in His book, when we treat it like instructions. For example, we don’t need to be told how to interact with other people, it’s all in the book. And repentance is not just a great occasional idea – we do that all the time! God’s book, as my dear friend Harold Hill liked to say: is the manufacturer’s handbook! Just like you get a book to tell you how to operate your new stove or motor-mower, people also come with a book of instructions, lovingly crafted by their Maker.

And this book has no exceptions, or exemptions – you can be fat, short, a bit dim, a clever clogs, thin, talkative, silent, energetic or even worn out. So long as we read what He said carefully, prayerfully looking for things to do. Then we act on the things  we are reading. This means we are exercising our faith and dying daily and living for Him now. God’s ways are so incredible and intricately designed for each one of us, we can obey Him every day for a billion years and still come up with something new we haven’t seen or done before.  

I love to invite the book’s Author, the Holy Spirit, to watch over my shoulder, as I read. I read and I listen for Him to reveal to me something I need to do – I don’t argue with it, or excuse myself. If it says repent I say “what do I need to repent from, please Lord?” The Gospels are our example. They show us over and over again, how our faith works. In those five books we have a human example, right in front of our eyes. Jesus Himself shows us that nothing is impossible – including transformation. Plenty of testimonies in there!

BTW, I always include Acts with the Gospels, because I think we all need to be acquainted with the how, when, where, what and why of the power of God when it invaded other people’s lives. The Holy Spirit fell on people in seemingly random situations, but at the same time His power broke down religious strongholds that separated one group of people from another. Acts is a marvellous book to watch the Holy Spirit in action. It stirs our faith.

The bible always has a word in season about real people and real situations. We have details about our heavenly Father interacting with all kinds of men and women right throughout their lives – from lepers to Kings. Their tests included fighting “without number,” “fiery furnaces” and “being covered in boils!” And they ended in tremendous testimonies even though they weren’t any fun for the participant. The Old Testament has become a glorious table He has already prepared for us to eat from – even in the presence of our enemies. It shows us what the Lord likes, and what He doesn’t like. I love reading about these people who respected and admired the Lord so much – they took risks!  Our new life in Christ means so we will too.

On the other hand I also enjoy reading what Paul and the other disciples said in the Epistles. Those books have clear and great instructions about how our faith works and why. They teach us so much about how to die to self. What is written in the Epistles are not suggestions, they are a map of how our faith grows and what hinders it. The power of God dealt swiftly with Ananias and Sapphira — and interacted and discerned inner motivations in Simon the magician. Our faith is not for people who want to use Him for their own purposes.

Finally – looking for things to do will help anyone grow and have their own testimonies. Inactive, lukewarm people don’t do very well with their faith and they have bupkis when it comes to testimonies. That’s because we don’t really know anything about this NEW LIFE until we actually physically participate in it! Like the people in the Old and New Testaments! Our new life in Christ means that if we want a real testimony for His glory – we will need to participate in a test-4-me!  Bye. 👋

P 3135 Baptism.

/ DVH

Baptism is not only an outward sign of an inward heart response – it is a sign to the whole world that we are choosing to change our allegiance. Now, we live for Jesus! The act of baptism is making a statement that we want to die to this old life, and enter into His new life and live in God’s kingdom! Baptism shows us, and everyone else, that the person who used to live their lives doing precisely what they wanted, whenever they wanted to do it, is gone. Now, we have chosen to live under our King’s reign. We live this life, His Way. 

It means that person being baptised has deliberately chosen to die to our earthly ambitions and talents and proclivities and leave them behind. Those things are not gone, they may come back and jump up and down and demand that we pay them some sort of attention – but baptism is the pivotal point where we die to our old responses. Now we live for Jesus, and we respond with obedience and Love – just like He did. Baptism is a symbolic act that now we want what He wants.

“We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we will certainly also be united with Him in a resurrection like His. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.”Romans 6:2-8.

The difficulty I’ve often encountered, when studying books like Romans, is that sometimes the old fashioned language gets in the way of my perception of the truth. Some of the words are big and cumbersome and not many people use words like these in today’s society! I found, if I am not watching out, that I have a tendency to skip over the hard bits, instead of giving them prayerful thought. The Holy Spirit loves it when we ask Him for His help. I ask Him all the time. The truth is, I could not write this blog without Him.

Baptism is a statement of intent. It is not a ritual, or a religious routine – it is an action noted in heaven. Jesus was baptised! I think that the Lord did it as part of His identification with us, but, I’m no bible scholar. It is not like joining a club, it is more like moving from one country to another. Renouncing your former previous loyalty and affiliation to your country of origin, and declaring your allegiance to a new one and then standing by that choice. We literally move kingdoms – forever – when we choose to be baptised. 

It is a serious choice. And I think many times people don’t understand the spiritual implication of that physical activity. For some people it is experiential, like moving from darkness into light, and others don’t feel anything but they simply obey. Like Jesus said to Thomas, ‘blessed are those who don’t feel a thing and obey anyway!’ (That’s my slant on that story!) 

Years ago when I chose to be baptised, nobody took the time to explain to me what happened to you spiritually, when you chose to let somebody half-drown you! I was not told the life-changing spiritual implications of baptism. They are huge. The person being baptised is publicly declaring their allegiance to Jesus, and they choose to illustrate that decision with this action. The next step is to go on from there living out what they just symbolically did. They are literally moving from death into life, by their own choices, in front of our eyes. It is a solemn statement of intent. This is where they have chosen to die for Jesus’ sake and now live for Him.

Sadly nobody talked about living by faith back in the ark, only ‘special people’ lived like that. We talked about physical things like healing and money. The favourite subject for discussing was speaking in tongues, being baptised in the Holy Spirit, spiritual gifts and miracles.They are my favourite subjects too! But understanding what was going to happen the moment I went under that water was not explained – except in religious language.. I did not know I was telling everyone I was choosing to die to self from now on!

That in effect, I would need to die over and over gain, every single time my will and the Lord’s collided! When we take our sin to the cross and ask the Lord to wash us clean, we are actively participating in the well-being of our spiritual life. Like many things in Christianity, It is a symbolic act, followed up by physical, emotional, and spiritual implications for change. So is baptism.

To be truthful I cannot recall anyone telling me that my salvation was something I had to live out as an inner and outer lifestyle, with the Holy Spirit’s help. That living like this would cost me daily, sometimes minute by minute. Particularly whenever I want to grump at my dear hubby! However, the Lord and my husband (!) are both so patient with me, and the Holy Spirit keeps me pressing in to know Jesus better. 

Baptism, as I said before, is a declaration of intent. It isn’t just about getting things right, and cleaning up your act, it is about choosing the same road Jesus chose. A road of voluntary self-sacrifice and contentment in God alone. Bye. 👋

P 2863 The fight!

/ DVH

This world is not our home. Seriously. And I’m not an alien and I don’t come from another planet, either! I have simply been reborn into another permanent, everlasting kingdom and … so have you! Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this blog. The only way you or I can move away from living in that kingdom, is if we are ignorant of His Ways. OR if, and when, we choose to be disobedient to what He asks us to do. Just FYI His kingdom has no end.

Now let’s read 2 Peter 3:8-9 to find out a little bit about what God’s ways … what His idea of time is looks like. ‘But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.’

This thing we call “time,” that human beings measure with clocks and calendars, is not what this passage is talking about. Here are my thoughts about the way Almighty God regards what WE call time. We are living in the time of God’s PATIENCE not permissiveness. It all started that day in the synagogue when Jesus stood up and read Isaiah out loud. God’s kingdom is so much more real than anything this world has to offer – plus you can SEE IT in action!

Luke 4:16-21: “He (Jesus) went to Nazareth, where He had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day He went into the synagogue, as was His custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him. Unrolling it, He found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, because He has anointed Me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”Then He rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down.” He sat down because that was the end of His mission statement!

Let’s look at what Jesus Himself said, about His mission… why did He say God’s Spirit was upon Him? To establish His authority, and to witness to His Father’s participation in what He was about to do, because the Holy Spirit was going to do glorious things through Him! He had an anointing to do those things to demonstrate God’s will, word and favour visibly toward these people. And He explained to everyone present that favour had arrived when He arrived. His mission started when He chose to undergo baptism.

In the bible it often says: “in the fullness of TIME…”  God has timing. This is mentioned in Isaiah, Galatians and Ephesians. There is a point to His patience with every single person on this planet – He is waiting for everyone to hear, and respond, like it says in 2 Peter.  Sadly, lately we’ve been leaving the bit He told us to do, to the experts. Look around — we’ve dun run out of experts! God has been extremely patient with you and I, because He wants us to walk with Him, just like Jesus did, while we are still here. You and I have things only we can do!

Part of His plan is about us learning to overcome, sin, this world, and the devil in our own lives – with His help! Overcomers always have something to testify about. Our overcoming is daily, sometimes minute by minute – it is our new way of life. A battle we willingly enter into all the time that ends in transformation. Our testimonies are about telling others HOW THE HOLY SPIRIT HELPS US win the daily fight for this transformation, as well as talking about how “God did this or that for me.”

These changed things are the result of the active nitty gritty daily choices we deliberately make to obey His Word. The things we suddenly find we no longer want to do, because we’ve learnt they are not part of His Kingdom. Here’s one of my icky questions; if someone were to ask you to talk about the reality of God in your life, today, what would you say? We often think salvation is just about when we are DEAD – instead it is about what we do when we are still alive HERE.

Lastly, we need to pray for eyes to see what our Good God is DOING, all the time, in each of our lives! That’s when we will have something to talk about. I am of the opinion we sometimes barely notice what He has done, or is doing on our behalf.  So this is our daily FIGHT – to recognise what He is doing in the middle of the junk that flies at us day after day after day! Think of this life as an opportunity to grow and when it gets even more difficult – it’s weight training! Bye👋

P 2862 Are we an explosion, or a pop?!

/ DVH

You can put that title on the back-burner for a bit, and let’s look at Colossians 2:11b-14 …“Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, GOD MADE YOU ALIVE IN CHRIST. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Our faith is in what Christ did, not in who or what we are! I think we need to stop seeing ourselves as ordinary people, who happen to have faith. The bible clearly tells us not to live ordinary lives anymore, instead we need to remind ourselves that we are dead to this world, and constantly alive to Him. When we live that way — every single day – every encounter with someone else becomes an opportunity to share His love. His love is not meant to live on that ‘back burner.’ It is the fire that sends us out every single morning!

The only thing dead people can successfully do, is to become worm food! Yeah. Right now I am hoping you aren’t  eating your breakfast and reading this … but I ain’t taking it back!! Our Heavenly Father God, did it all, He provided Jesus as the sacrifice for us – and then Jesus chose to die in our place. Now we continually make a choice to die to this life and live for Him. Our resurrection comes moment by moment as we live by faith in the brand new life He has already given us. That’s our bit ← and it’s past tense! Jesus Christ gave us a life do-over. We can still live our lives as worm food if we choose to, but the truth is — the sky is the limit!! It always was around Jesus! 

That’s why people followed Him around. It didn’t matter if He spoke for hours and hours, because His very words were filled with Holy Spirit life. Have you ever thought of asking yourself what are your words filled with? 😳People were enthralled by whatever Jesus said. So much so, they forgot about ordinary stuff like eating! Imagine that! God’s Words are filled to the top with His life, and it is satisfying. Plus what the Lord Jesus said was often explosive!

His preaching was like a geyser, it flowed out and up and over everyone who heard Him – every single time He did it! Thats why people got mad – they were convicted! Others kept talking about what He had said all the way home! God’s word, when it is preached in the flow of the Holy Spirit, fills us and satisfies us like ordinary food never will. Jesus said it much better than I can: “Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Matthew 4:4.

I know many many Christians are incredibly sincere, they love the Lord and they want to serve Him … but maybe they are shy, and they don’t want to intrude on other people. So if someone else wants to know something – they will have to ask them. These people have forgotten they’ve been made brand new, we don’t live like other people anymore – the old has passed away – the new has come. They are living like they are the can of fizzy drink in the picture above, it bounces and fizzes when shaken, then… … it settles down again. All the fizz will eventually go out of it when it is opened. The “POP” becomes a trickle. Many of us live our lives in that place.

Others live their lives going from conference to conference to conference, hoping to regain their ‘fizz.’ I’ve personally been to a lot of conferences, but let me tell you a secret … the very best way to become a geyser, is to develop a relationship with Him. Then you become far more than you can personally contain! Instead of fizzing up and calming down, you become a part of the Giver of Life – you and He flow together. If He turns, you turn, and His happiness inside you explodes like a geyser! 

God’s Words have eternal life in them, but sadly most of the people in this world have never ever heard the real Gospel. They may have heard about this religion or that one – they may have even tasted a bit of the fizzy drink, but they haven’t heard the Good News that they can be reconciled instantly back to God FOREVER! That’s where the geyser comes from! Are you a can of pop or a force of His nature? Bye for today. 👋.

“They were amazed at His teaching, because His words had authority.” Luke 4:32.

P 2747 We need Clarity.

/ DVH

Colossians 2:9-14 NIV: “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority. In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made YOU alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Oh man, God’s book is such an incredible blessing! I love it when seemingly complex subjects are written with this kind of clarity, that means I can sometimes understand what it is saying. You know, for many years, nobody ever told me that I am now dead. I listened to sermon after sermon about this interesting thing, and that glorious revelation, but how to live my life for Jesus and die to myself, never came up. OR – if it did I was too thick to hear it! I didn’t realise my bit was to die to what I want, and live for what He wants now. As a matter of fact, I thought the people who lived like that were special people – missionaries, pastors, evangelists etc. But for ordinary people like me – we just plodded along doing our best and failing – lots.

The enemy nagged at me: ’You are a failure, you are of no use to Jesus because you can’t live the perfect life. If you are sick it’s your fault, if God doesn’t help you, you must have some undiagnosed sin.’ If I was a donkey the load of weight to get stuff right, that was plonked on my shoulders was far too great to bear!! I was taught about what the right lifestyle looks like, how to pray properly, how to give, what my kids should be like, or how to live with difficult people. The answer was easy – just be nice to them now. HAH! How could I be nice to them when my instant response was to thump them?! 😱 No pressure!!!

Everybody has sinned – including the famous saints we think are perfect because they appear to get it right! They too have fallen short of His glorious ideal Jesus. His Grace is everyone’s equaliser. Sin is sin, it weighs us all down. And no matter how much we perfume sin, or cover it up with nice smiles and pretty responses, and appealing sermons, it still stinks. It smells of death!

After a while, I lost hope, I thought: ‘Maybe I’m just too broken and can’t be fixed.’  That happy little thought did not help me live with the aforementioned difficult people, and it didn’t make me very cheery either. BUT GOD IS FAITHFUL FOLKS… I’m here to tell you that every word in the bible is true, and if we choose to walk with Him, we can be transformed. It’s a process.  People may accidentally mislead you, but His book never will.  So we believe the book and then act on it. This means we will personally see God at work, every single day, when we act on what He says.  Meanwhile, the Beatitudes could keep us all busy for the rest of our lives.  He taught me about dying to self when I started living like His book says — plus, I desperately wanted to love others the way He loves them.

I use what the bible says, like a prescription from the doctor. And followed the instructions. Then I made my first assignment loving impossible people!  Boy does that keep me occupied!!  The book says: ‘all my flesh was put off when I came to Christ and was baptised…’ so I not only believe it,  I am daily living my life like it’s true. I realised that I didn’t have to sin anymore, I was making terrible choices that indulged my flesh! But Jesus paid for me to live free of my old ways and I have a HELPER.

Before anybody gets tangled up in the thought: ‘but I can’t hear the Holy Spirit’ … let’s make it clear. Try listening! Ask Him to help you recognise His voice. Don’t dismiss that quiet voice inside that says:”Don’t say that you will hurt someone.” The Holy Spirit speaks to me inside my heart. When I was a kid I would have called that voice my conscience. It seems I always had a place where God could speak to me, I just didn’t always like what He said! So I ignored it and did what I felt like. I was hardening my own heart by my refusal to listen and co-operate with Him. The truth is you and I are now dead, and we both daily choose to live that way on purpose.

Now, I walk in the power of my own God-given choices. The power of God is active on our behalf when we make that kind of choice. I had so much yuk stuff in my life that I was tolerating, thinking it was normal to struggle. I lived expecting to have to suck all the bad stuff up, buttercup!  I totally hoped my inner thoughts and behaviour didn’t show to others and that would kind of be OK. Hey, I still struggle! But now it is against my own flesh indulging itself, by having hissy fits and excusing its own bad behaviour.

If what you hear in your head is mean, nasty, spiteful, dangerous, and against what the bible says – deal with yourself and REPENT. It’s not somebody else’s fault – it’s ours! Pray and humble yourself. It’s the devil! he picks up on our weaknesses. If what you hear is kind, loving, supportive, helpful and it glorifies Jesus, and it’s IN the book – then that’s the Holy Spirit! Here is my advice on how to die daily — PRAY. Then find something you have never even tried to obey before, use your faith that God will help you, and go and do it.  We lack power because we lack the kind of faith that leads us into obedience.

This probably means we will have to fix things with our neighbour, or our mother-in-law, or someone we don’t much like. Transformation works in us as we do these hard things using our faith. He promised to help us. Believe Him – take Him at His Word. The more we obey His directives, the more our faith becomes living, and the bible will give us His clarity. Bye. 👋

P 2649 Moving house will change your life.

/ DVH

“We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:4,6,7,&11. “For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—  because anyone who has died has been set free from sin…”  In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Have you ever physically moved house? I have quite a few times. For those of us who haven’t ever moved, it is a long drawn out process that involves packing up your whole life, and putting everything into boxes, then shoving them into a moving van. Then you go to your new residence and you start unpacking etc. You won’t go back to that old house to live there anymore … because you’ve moved away from it.

Let’s look at what happened when we were born again. WE ALL MOVED HOUSE when we gave our lives to Christ. We left our old life behind us. There is no reason to try to live in that old house anymore, because we gave that house up in favour of living in a far superior new one. Somebody else was trying to kill us where we used to live, and that place we lived in was our life before we met Jesus.

Every time I have ever moved house, I have gone through my stuff and chucked OUT things I no longer needed.  I did not want to start my new life in a new house with junk I didn’t need anymore. When Jesus died for us – He took ALL OUR JUNK with Him to the cross. That junk is gone – just like the earthly junk I sent off to the Salvation Army! Amazingly, the bible says this: not only did we move house – at the same time WE DIED. This means we don’t NEED any of that old stuff any more! It belonged to our old way of life.

We gave up living there in favour of living in His presence, His kingdom. Our new house has given us a brand new way to live. Every part of us moved! Now our life has been hidden within Christ’s life, He took care of our sins, once and for all. Which is why sinning is a waste of time!! Why would we ever want to willingly go back to that old life where we were held hostage to sin? That was the place where sin ran the way we did practically everything.

Sin can’t have power over us the way it did before. The only way it can have power over us now is if we give it permission. Our permission, our choices are the criteria that will daily make all the difference. We simply tell satan we will not be dragged back into that old way of living! There will be some adjustment required because we are used to living in that old house, so familiarity could grab us.

But that was also the house where blame, shame, rejection and abandonment lived. In that old house love was conditional – it depended upon our behaviour. In our new house love is unconditional. Our precious Saviour oversees every single aspect of our lives now. To live fully alive there, all we need to do is simply follow our Master’s clear instructions in His book and leave the old house with its old ways BEHIND.

Nothing, not our current or previous circumstances, nor our old proclivities … absolutely nothing that happened to us before we were saved has the power to force us back into that old ‘house’ … even our old habits, our old ways of thinking, doing and being. We take our way of thinking, being and doing from the bible, now by choice. The bible is our illustration of what living in this new life looks like! Practically speaking, I can’t live in my physical old house anymore, because it is about 10 suburbs away and somebody else lives there now! That way I lived is now dead to me.

You and I could get into difficulties and become unhappy, if we decide we like the old way that we lived better than this new way. That’s why we actively look for His benefits in our lives. The bible tells us not to forget them … 

…one of the benefits of moving house for me, means my adult kids and grandkids live around the corner! Now I get to see them more. Plus I no longer live on the main road, with greatly increased traffic, now I live in a very quiet street.

When we gave our lives to Christ, we went from a life that had no purpose, no real meaning, into a life that moved forward and that new life propelled us into new exciting things. Things like getting to know the God of the Universe and beyond …!! SomeBody loved all of us enough to die for us. They WANTED us – we are not ‘extras’ on the vast stage of life, now we are HIS children. . 

In this new life/house we’ve been given, we all have a destiny. It isn’t just any old thing that someone made up so we wouldn’t be left out, this is something that only WE can do. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. Now we can all ‘live for our Father’s pleasure.’ Our job is to learn to occupy our new house, so no trace of the old house/life is left. Moving house will change your life! 👋