Beauty for ashes

P 2876 Why do we suffer?

/ DVH

“These (sufferings) have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.”1 Peter 1:7. Suffering, first of all, exposes and helps purify our faith. It reveals to us where we are. There is nothing like multiple events of hardship and sorrow to uncover what’s actually going on inside. Now we can see in God’s Ways, suffering can usher in revelation about our own inner attitudes. Our faith is incredibly precious to God, it glorifies Jesus.

He’s the One Who ‘gave us beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise (hallelujah!) for the spirit of heaviness…’ It gets easier to begin to stretch our faith as we start to glimpse how Jesus takes our hardships, failures and lack of belief, and makes something so marvellous it goes right around our brain.  Even though we don’t always get answers, or even solutions … I think we will always need eyes to see Him at work.

The more we choose to walk with Him, His Way, the more our own stinky attitudes begin to fade into the background and we will become filled with delight and we begin to understand Who He is and what He has actually done!  I just love watching Jesus work in my life. As we choose to live God’s way, it transforms our view of anything that will distract us from walking with Him. We become willing participants in this new life and we gladly leave behind the stuff that drags us about in the wrong directions. The problem is, most of us have never fully comprehended what we have been GIVEN.  

These are the things that need to become part of our conscious reality, because that’s when we will understand that He has actually saved us from ourselves. That’s when our wonder in Who He is grows. Even in the face of sometimes insurmountable odds. And yes, I am still talking about suffering! That ghastly stuff that happens to every one of us all the time! This is why we need to learn to choose Him and His Ways, we get to see what real love, God’s love in action does in our own lives.. 

Jesus is transforming ugly things about me into beauty, in such an incredible, unexpected way – I’m always gobsmacked, over and over again. This is what living a life of faith produces in us. AWE!! God doesn’t renovate us – HE RECREATES us in His own image, using our choices, our obedience to His word and our hard-fought love toward each other. He is so patient, gentle and kind about teaching us. When we fail, He lifts us up. We can see this world differently because we know Him! I think suffering has a redemptive quality to it. 

Here’s an example from my life to illustrate my point. When I was a child, I used to get severe migraines. My teacher sent for a parental figure and told them I couldn’t see properly even though I was in the front row at school. The person in charge of me did not know that a child of my age could be so short-sighted, and in the end they took me to an optometrist and the optometrist prescribed glasses. 

The day I walked out of that man’s offices, it was like I had landed in a brand new world. My entire point of view of what I was looking at was changed. Grass had individual pieces, trees had leaves! I was overcome with joy. In the same way – a living trusting faith in Who Christ is and What He is doing in my life is just like that. Over and over again I notice that I can only see in part of the picture … but when He opens my eyes … boy, can I see so much more. I have seen and experienced, personally, how HIS Love always finds a way, as we let Him lead us.

His kingdom is meant to flourish in our hearts. Eventually we realise that we need to stop relying upon ourselves and start jumping into the river of His Grace. We must learn to let Him be God, even in our sufferings. In the past I felt angry with that other person who was caring for me, because I had had years of suffering, but you can’t solve a situation like that with anger, or even by making excuses for someone else’s behaviour. You solve those things with choice. He chose to love me and I choose to love others. I do it to honour the choice He has already made. I don’t have to go it alone either, He helps me.

Because of these choices, you and I become spectators, observers of whatever He does. And the more we notice what He is doing, the more we will see!  I’m not perfected, so I can still react badly, and He has to gently remind me. I have another way to respond now. He has already empowered all of us to put aside the bad, so we can see the good. He did it on that cross!  Only Jesus Himself can and HAS already perfected the saints.“A person may have many ideas concerning God’s plan for his life, but only the designs of God’s purpose will succeed in the end.” Proverbs 19:21 TPT. God wants to BE OUR LIFE … not just facilitate it. Let Him into whatever is happening to you, right now.

Bad attitudes and responses hide themselves in sneaky ways, and a lack of love toward others can successfully hide under a plastic smile. Suffering takes away our pretences. However His love can enrich us in so many ways – especially when we are stuck in hardship. Christ is deeply acquainted with mankind’s sorrow and suffering. He understands persecution, false accusation, physical punishment, mental anguish etc., and He lived a life where nobody else understood Him. He did that with the Holy Spirit’s help and Grace.

To know God and His Ways means we will also suffer, and many times it will be unfair and almost unbearable. Why do we suffer? I think it shows us our fallibility clearly, and it introduces us to real compassion and genuine love. Bye. 👋

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. 👋