
Hubby and I love to pray for the-people-who-don’t-appear-to-know-Him-yet. We ask them if they need prayer, and if they say yes, then we pray simple, clear, un-preachy prayers about whatever is going on in their lives. People cry all over the place.This means we need to totally focus on the Lord coming with us wherever we go.”We can’t do anything without Him,’ it says so in the book!
So let’s get that big fat lumpy bit of our personal pride out of the way, so we can be a channel of His love into the lives of the needy people around us. We need to live under His watchful care. We don’t have to be obsessive, but it is also important to make sure we haven’t bungled something or other, or offended anyone. In this current climate that is easy to do. People get offended, and hurt each other all over the place. Nobody wants to give anybody the benefit of the doubt. Here’s an interesting thought: people aren’t necessarily doing things against you – instead they are doing those things for themselves! Sadly suspicion is rampant, and blaming someone else is the name of the game.
The truth is, we won’t even know if the Holy Spirit is with us, if we insist on pretending to be something we are not. We can’t hear Him properly when we live like that. We are not meant to be experts, we are FOLLOWERS of Jesus! Please remember the disciples bungled things too! In my opinion we should all be still learning, even when we are nearly dead! Jesus IS truth – He doesn’t like deception – too much yukky stuff hides in deception. He is and always was, totally and absolutely real, and that means we don’t have to lie about our life with Him at all, because we are not trying to sell anything! Get used to being humble and not knowing the answer to everything.
Instead, our desire is to do our best to announce Him – not pretend to BE Him. Acting ‘holier than thou’ puts people off. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that Christians can be so scared of making a mistake they don’t do anything at all!. You know it is not a good thing to give ourselves permission to be two people, depending upon where we are. The person who lives at our house, needs to be the one who interacts with everyone else! All that deceitful, hiding stuff will shoot anyone down in flames. We are all saved by GRACE – so what’s the big deal if you are an argumentative fathead and I am a nasty big mouth? Pray for me, and I’ll pray for you!
I hate being politically correct OK? I call that sort of stuff lying. I’ve found that political correctness means I am being so careful not to press any buttons in you – I end up not wanting to love you and I will avoid you. But if we want the Holy Spirit to come everywhere with us, then we need to be the same born again, still-being-transformed-person we always were. Leave the fancy-schmancy acting performances on the stage … be yourself.
Ask Him to help you see and overcome those things that pull you into mindless silly games. And then… ‘ask and keep on asking…!!’ Especially if you know you have weaknesses, then pray for His strength to be strong in those weaknesses. There are no incurable diseases in Christ – He always has the last word – physically and spiritually! “There’s a time to die…” remember? We’ve learnt that talking to anyone, and staying filled with His Grace, draws people to Him. You stay filled with Grace by acknowledging you need it. The bible tells us HE will separate the sheep from the goats, I have no idea why we would ever think that should be our responsibility.
Those people all around us are just human beings like us, and often we have no idea how that person arrived at all those nasty, ugly attitudes. Nor do we know what the Presence of Jesus will do, if we take the time to take HIM with us, wherever we go. The Body of Christ has lost its focus — we are like Esau, going for the immediate thing that suits us, but to get that, we have to give up our inheritance for no good reason except that living and walking with the Holy Spirit seems too hard. Actually, it’s easy. We just need to point our hearts toward that aim and get ready to be wrong and acknowledge it – OFTEN.
We already have a perfect example of how to live like our Father’s children. Here’s the VERY best advice on being yourself in the whole New Testament. “Then He (Jesus)said: I promise you this. If you don’t change and become like a child, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3. ‘Become like a child’ … remember that little children happily went to Him. And babies felt safe in His arms. We need to be childlike, not childish.The Lord is not like other people – we can trust Him.
Life is much simpler when you live with a childlike attitude. This means you hand your broken toy/life to SomeOne bigger than you are, and then hang around Him watching and waiting to see what He will do with it. Then you obey Him. I love living like that. Complications give me a headache! Jesus has invited us to enter into a relationship with Him that is pure, trusting and real. Nothing covered up or denied. Be yourself and uncomplicate your life. Human beings aren’t actors in a role – we are just ordinary people saved by His Grace. Bye. 👋
