Belief

P3456 Fix your eyes on Jesus, not on the results.

/ DVH

“Jesus replied, This is the work (service) that God asks of you: that you believe in the One Whom He has sent [that you cleave to, trust, rely on, and have faith in His Messenger]…” John 6:29. Father God sent His Son here to us to save us. We believe that. The bible was not given to us to be nice stories and sentiments — it has been given to us to be a life-line, so we can negotiate the good times, bad times, pitfalls and difficulties of this life, still holding onto the GRACE God has given us. That Grace was released by His Son, Jesus Christ, and what He did.  

So when we start foundering on the sea of our sometimes difficult lives, that’s when we actively choose to hang on to our belief in the One Who God has given us. We need Him to save us from the things that could drown us and ruin our faith. The Lord Jesus doesn’t care how many times we need saving from our own misbeliefs, He will just keep doing what He does best, loving us, leading us and saving us.

Our part is to believe that He wants to help us be all we can be … that’s the key. Please don’t let the enemy throw up any disappointing times on the screen of your mind, when things appear to get worse. Instead, believe and focus on the ever-present Presence of God Himself, right here, right now. Standing there with you. That’s WHY Jesus came to be with us, and it is why He gave us the Holy Spirit – the same Spirit Who was IN Him.

Ask Him to help you get through whatever is going on.  It is human to ask for our difficulties to go away — do it! In the bible there were people Jesus fed, just because they needed food. But at the same time we need to plant our feet and make a quality choice that Jesus Himself will see us through whatever is going on, and we will come out the other side with our faith still intact, plus a testimony to the goodness of God. 

Many Christians set false finishing lines. Their aim is about their comfort here and now. We need to learn to remain steadfast, in the good times and bad, just like Jesus did. His eyes were fixed on the prize, His faith in God was steadfast. Jesus did not come just to do miracles. He came to manifest and glorify our Father in Heaven and fulfil His Father’s Word… and He came to save us. Let’s keep our faith steady in the knowledge that we are to stay fixed in what Jesus has already done. This life is not about whether we win or lose, it is about the One we choose to believe in, no matter what happens.

Almighty God Himself has asked us to believe in Jesus, and He told us that this is the way we serve Him. I would like to read the above verse in another version: “Then they ( asked Him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.” (V28 & 29) Believing in Jesus means we live our lives faithfully guided by what He said and did. The disciples wanted a method, but God gave them a PERSON to follow. We can still make that mistake today, we seek methods because methods are easier to follow. There is no method, we simply follow the Spirit of God, like Jesus did.

Following Jesus means we will give up anything in order to keep up with whatever He wants to do next. In order for the Head to help the Body, the head and the body have to be co-ordinated in their purpose. The Lord Jesus gave us signs – the purpose of a sign is it is like an arrow … it points somewhere. Now we are to live our lives pointing at God’s Love with the Holy Spirit’s help.

The verses right before V28,29 show us why Jesus said what He said: “Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for Me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on Him God the Father has placed His seal of approval.”

At that moment in time the disciples were taken up by the miraculous free food, but Jesus didn’t focus on that, He used it as an example of our real target … eternity. “On earth, as it is in heaven.” Many people have used that scripture to say that nobody is sick in heaven, so that should be true down here. But the truest thing in Heaven, is that our God is forever glorious and He is still sitting upon His throne!! It is not about whether we have enough buns for our dinner! Our focus needs to rest on Oneness with Him, not just the stuff this life is made of.

Jesus is the best bread, He is everlasting! “Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to Me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in Me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35. Let’s stop labouring for the wrong food!  What happens here and now will pass away … our food needs to be like His, doing the will of the Father. Our eyes need to be fixed on Him, He started our faith and He will finish it. When we ‘seek His kingdom first, all those other things we need will be added unto us.’ Bye, blessings! 👋.

P 3414 Learn to stand still and value silence.

/ DVH

Most of the problems we face from day to day take place in a chaotic atmosphere, or they are sown by chaos, and we can’t easily get rid of the thoughts afterward. We have been given the power to enjoy huge blessings as we learn to live with His inner peace and we cultivate appropriate silence. We don’t have to let the babble of this world creep into our minds and hearts to distract us from the reason we are here.

When I am not deliberately watching something on TV, I turn it off. I had to learn to love silence. Actually, my brain makes more sense out of this life when there is very little noise! I learnt this blessing, when the last of my three children went off to school. My house seemed like a morgue. The first day I laid on the floor and cried my eyes out – but then I got up and went about my daily routine, and I turned on the telly, or the radio for ‘company.’ 

That was fine, but over time I discovered that I knew the latest ad jingle better than anything else, and I began to hear the Lord’s voice less frequently. Not good! Anything that is not good, by the way, is not God — He is where good comes from. Weeks went by, and His peace became more elusive. At the same time, I was struggling with the kind of grief that comes when one area of your life changes, and you know it won’t or can’t change back again. So, as a last resort, I decided to bite the bullet, go cold turkey and turn everything off. Man, was that hard? Mainly because I was so used to ambient noise. However, I persevered and things began to turn around, including my quiet times. 

Now, every day silence is like an old friend. My dear hubby leaves me by myself to tap away on the computer, while I’m writing this blog in total silence, every single morning. I hear the Lord far more clearly when there is nothing distracting going on. I’d never want to condemn anyone … I totally understand how the distractions of this life can help someone survive something difficult. The thing is, for me, it was very detrimental to my overall spiritual health, and I found a far greater benefit in treasuring silence.

Those “still waters” of Psalm 23, plus Psalm 46’s call to “be still and know that He is God,” helped me. Every single day. Silence became “my secret place” of refuge. I’ve found I can far more easily be “only a spectator” like Psalm 91 says … when I prioritise silence. Hilariously, I’ve been known as a chatterbox, and I talked very early. Yet, as an adult, I found “my strength” came from cultivating His silence, inside and out. Now when His silence leaves, so does my peace! But now I can do something about it. This virtually unrecognised trait has become one of those many riches Christ has given to all of us. I recommend valuing it, because this world has so much froth and bubble, and silence can help keep you sane!

At the same time I believe we have also lost the value of standing still, knowing we have the Lord Jesus’ and His  righteousness on our side. The bible says that like this “…having done all, stand. (Ephesians 6.) We do whatever He tells us to do and then we simply quietly, confidently, stand. That other guy may try to jump up and down waving his arms at us trying to distract us from simply waiting for the Lord. Sometimes we can make so much noise trying to get rid of the enemy …we can’t possibly hear Jesus. Meanwhile satan is delighted with the adverse publicity! ‘Standing’ is all about believing God when He speaks to us and waiting for Him to do what He said He would do.

Abraham knew how to do these things, this man had incredible faith in God, in the middle of impossible circumstances. He is called the Father of our faith – His faith was that strong. He knew the value of silence and standing still and listening to God. Just pause and think about how much fun that must have been for his wife, Sarah! Abraham was often away somewhere talking with God, and the Lord gave him tremendous promises. This man chose to believe Almighty God, in spite of his circumstances, and he was made righteous by his belief in God’s words. However, maybe Sarah’s faith was not all that strong?

The Lord was very serious with Sarah. Let’s quickly look at her experience, when three strangers announced that these two geriatrics would have a child. We quickly see that they are two different people who happen to be married to each other, and they each have different responses to God’s word. Three strangers turn up to predict Isaac’s birth in Genesis 18:10 -15… “Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him…  Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing … So Sarah laughed to herself …(and then she denied it )… “I didn’t laugh.” But the Lord said, “Yes you did; you laughed.”  God held Sarah accountable. She would have been better off if she’d stood still and said nothing!

Father God takes what we say seriously. We need to stand on what we tell the Lord we will do, or what He tells us to do, no matter what we feel, or what happens around us. “Don’t take your faith back” – is one of the most useful pieces of advice the Lord has ever given me. Be brave, silent, and stand still. Hold onto Him and hold Him to His word and don’t let go. We can give up too easily, and lose what is ours. Learning to live in silence and stand still, while we are waiting for what He will do next, are two qualities that are greatly underestimated. I’ve learnt to practise them, on purpose. Bye. 👋.

P 3124 Accessing His power to change.

/ DVH

Each one of us needs to choose to grab hold of the power Jesus died to give us to change the way we live in this world. It is always available. We do that by using our faith that what Almighty God has said in His book, the bible, is true. I will not lie to you – living like this is costly at first. We have to give up our right of reply, self-defence, or vindication and trust God Himself to vindicate us. And that whole scene usually happens when you feel extremely provoked and you want to zap a zinger back at the other person! 

But we have to choose to be finished with our old life when we said yes to Jesus. Then we choose to enter this new life to learn how to walk by faith. Sometimes by taking baby steps, or by making big strides. Almighty God loves faith. “…It’s impossible to please God apart from faith. And why? Because anyone who wants to approach God must believe both that He exists and that He cares enough to respond to those who seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6b MSG.

Here’s an illustration that might help make this ‘faith’ thing clear. Let us say, I have $1000 in the bank, I can’t see that money, it’s just a number on a bank statement. It won’t become viable until I use it, or collect it. I can even  give you $500 of that thousand dollars, and no physical money needs to change hands. All that will happen is that the numbers being recorded will change on both sides – yours and mine. I’ll now have $500 and so will you. With regard to using our faith – the power for transformation Jesus gave us is limitless, it cannot and will not run out until time itself ceases.

Back to my illustration. For you to get the money I’ve given you, you will have to spend it, or somehow use it, and you do that by using your faith that the money is actually there, even though nothing visible needs to change hands! Our God loves it when we use our faith – our belief that He is Who He says He is, and He Has done what He said He has done, is His pleasure. We can do whatever He says we can, it is all written on His bank statement in the New Testament and He has given it to us. When He says we can do it – then we can do it – feelings don’t come into it. We defer to the Holy Spirit’s goodness and wisdom:  then we obey and trust in the Person Who gave you His Word. 

The day we said ‘yes’ to Jesus, we were given Christ’s power to overcome. To use my illustration, that power was ‘deposited’ in our account. It came when the Holy Spirit convicted us and we responded with joy and repentance. While He was on earth, the Lord Jesus overcame sin, this world and the devil. Because of that He has imparted that power to us as His legacy. Just like someone might leave you money in their will – in Jesus’ will, we inherited many blessings including total transformation into His likeness!“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,…” Romans 14:17. “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to Me…” Acts 1:8. Do some research for yourself in the book, and start obeying what you find. 

Even though we may not see anything or feel anything our inheritance is still there. It is a reality. Hebrews 8:12: “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”When Jesus took His own blood and poured it all over the heavenly Mercy seat, He washed away all our sins. and now God has no record of them. They are like a bill you’ve paid – stamped “PAID IN FULL” However, I may not feel any difference, because I’m still living in this world which is anti-God. Now I will have to take the Lord God Almighty at His Word. 

Everything we have been given comes from Calvary, and it was carefully written down in the bible, by the Holy Spirit. These things have been credited to our account, but we will need to access them by using our faith. We don’t need to make big one-off withdrawals, rather we can access the kingdom of God step by step as we ask for His help to obey Him, and then step out and act on what the bible says. That help is with us, right now, from the moment we gave our lives to Him. We began by using our faith and we continue by using it.

This means we can with His help – love the unlovely. We can, with His help …”do good to those who despitefully use us.”We can overcome personal sin, this world, and our enemy because Jesus gave us His power to do it. At the same time, each deliberate act of obedience transforms the way we think. Daily we use our faith to access the Holy Spirit, our personal Coach and Helper. As we learn to walk with Him using our faith, His Way of living becomes more and more natural to us. We’ve stopped looking for our own advantage and started doing what He wants. Jesus began our faith, and He always finishes what He starts!

One of the difficulties of this transformation is that faith is not feelings. It is a deliberately chosen act of obedience responding to what God has already said in His book! The feelings, if they come, come much later. Accessing His power to change our old ways of thinking, doing and being, will now become our new way to live. We live for whatever Jesus wants, and follow His ways. Bye. 👋

P 3076 Road building.

/ DVH

“And how blessed all those in whom You live, whose lives become roads You travel; They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks, discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain! God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!” Psalms 84:5-7 MSG. 

“One day spent in Your house, this beautiful place of worship, beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches. I’d rather scrub floors in the house of my God than be honoured as a guest in the palace of sin. All sunshine and sovereign is God, generous in gifts and glory. He doesn’t scrimp with His traveling companions. It’s smooth sailing all the way with God-of-the-Angel-Armies.” Psalms 84:10-12 MSG.

I’m a word person. I love the Word of God, but today I’m also talking about the way words are put together. For me, words paint pictures in my mind. They take ordinary things and endow them with the Holy Spirit’s thoughts and beauty. We’ve travelled along a lot of roads – bumpy ones, dusty ones, gliding highways and roads with beautiful scenery, as we take bibles all over Australia. So I feel like a little bit of an expert on roads.

In the first part of Psalm 84:5-7, the words take me into our car,  winding our way through beautiful scenery, watching for what will appear when we get around the next bend. I dearly love to go on roads I’ve never been on before. Occasionally as we’ve travelled along, we’ve taken a side road – just to see what was at the other end! The picture at the bottom of this blog show you what we found at the end of quite an ordinary road. It was surrounded by cane fields. (Lucinda,Qld.) 

However, the bit in this Psalm that captured my heart is the very first verse. “And how blessed all those in whom You live, whose lives become roads You travel.”I would love to be a road the Lord travels upon to reach out to others. The kind of road that takes people from living in the same old same old, into the bright fresh land of daily discovering Jesus. I pray that other people can see Him in me, and enjoy the view, and maybe they will want to know Him for themselves. We can often think about witnessing as speaking etc. but enjoying Who God is, in the middle of this crazy upside-down, often scary life, can be the greatest witness and worship of all!

This Psalmist values God’s Presence more than the supposedly fine things this world can offer us. I’ve sat on a Greek Island, and their beaches are very pretty.  The sea around those islands, is the most beautiful colour. But the writer tells us that they would rather be scrubbing God’s floor, than be in any place of this world’s natural beauty. Anywhere our God IS, is a far more beautiful place than this world can offer.

I love to sing and worship, but I also love to sit and listen to worship as well. Listening to worship lifts my heart and thoughts above this often cranky old world. We all need that refreshing, so we can keep God’s highway in our heart OPEN. Worship makes us bigger inside, and more open to whatever He wants to do next, and it also positions our hearts to hear Him. The thing is, I don’t just think of worship as singing, or playing an instrument. I see it as a life-laid down, together with the way we love others. Surrender, is worship to me. 

Jesus travelled along a lot of dusty roads as He ministered, and distances never seemed to matter to Him. He sometimes went off the beaten track for just one person. He saw broken roads all around Him. His whole life was a highway into the Father’s heart, for mankind to travel on. Now that’s worth pausing and thinking about! 

In another version it says the first verse like this:“Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.”It is our strength and belief in God’s goodness, when we are under the pressure of highway creation, that makes our road solid and straight. This highway is not just a theory, it can make our lives with Christ accessible – but like any highway, the road to Zion comes at a cost. This cost exists, because quite beautiful, even seemingly useful things – that do not seem to be harmful – have to be removed from our lives if we are to become His highway.

There are times that I can see the precious Holy Spirit with His front-end loader, bulldozers, excavators, and graders, asphalt makers and road rollers continually rumbling along through my life, under the Lord’s watchful eye! All that equipment working on us is represented in our lives as situations, or other people. We all have difficult people who become implements in His hands —they are used by Him to make our road straight and strong and available to God and others. Road making is intense! It requires co-operation with the Lord, and a vision for a better, more available, ME.

We all want the King of Kings to travel down our highways so that other people can come out of the roadblocks and broken highways they are living in. Road building is a worthy calling. Bye. 👋

P 3074 Use your faith to make withdrawals.

/ DVH

“Everything we could ever need for life and godliness has already been deposited in us by His divine power. For all this was lavished upon us through the rich experience of knowing Him Who has called us by name and invited us to come to Him through a glorious manifestation of His goodness.” 2 Peter 1:3 TPT.

Our Heavenly Father’s goodness and generosity is glorious! It has forever changed the whole of human history. Humanity went from an exclusive club, to an everything-included open-door policy that flourishes and grows as we all get to know Jesus! Knowing Him continually opens new spiritual doors. Whether you are at the beginning of your walk with Him, or you’ve been walking with the Lord for years —there is no greater joy than to know Him and follow Him, by serving Him and others. 

The Apostle Paul says this in Philippians 3:10.“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death;…” Knowing Him includes suffering. We are bound to suffer when we don’t get what we want, because to serve Him, we must die to self! However, there is a huge plus — now we enter into true fellowship with Him. We have a shared experience! He is our chosen Leader in and through every situation.

Whatever we need to gain transformation, and greater intimacy with Him we already have. He already gave it to us.1 Peter says that in verse 3 Chapter 1! We didn’t even have to earn this honour. Feel free to raise a ruckus and jump about, because if that thought doesn’t want to make you cheer, maybe you’ve fallen a bit behind as you are following Him. May the Lord fix that! I’ve found astonishing things happen when we start yielding to Him. The more we lean our head on His chest, and listen to His words, the more we understand that this world has nothing lasting to offer us. 

If you were to give me a hundred million dollars and show me that you deposited that large sum in my name, in writing, all I would need to do to participate in what I have been given, is to turn up at that bank and start making withdrawals. And that’s the problem for many Christians — they don’t make withdrawals. That’s what our faith is for – to make withdrawals. We have been given everything we need for this life, but we need to use our faith to access it. 

We are going to have to put our whole selves into this new life we’ve been given, in order to experience transformation, because these holy, heavenly things won’t fall on us. So there is a pathway we tread, as we follow Him. That pathway leads down, and it will take care of pride. We learn to practice repentance and reparation, even when we think the other person should apologise. Now we are choosing to value peace above being right. The by-product is that we stop judging others by one standard, and myself by another. There is a far greater blessing when we walk through difficult things with Him.

Back to my thought above:  If I want to access that deposit Jesus died to give me, I will have to exercise my faith. Belief means I will act on what He has told me, whether it seems too amazing to be true or not, simply because Jesus Himself has told me. He tells me I can live life proactively instead of reactively now. I don’t have to wait for proof! It’s all in the book. I have chosen to live this life differently and I stick with it. I don’t try to weasel out of what He says, or excuse myself because of some reason or other — instead I ask Him to show me how to obey Him and then I do it. I don’t do it for YOU, I do it for Jesus, because that’s what a life laid down for His sake looks like!

When He says I don’t have to conform to this world, because I am no longer captive to its demands and threats, I step into what He said, rather than check with my feelings or previous experiences. When He tells me I can love the unlovely, I don’t wait to feel like it – I start loving them. I follow His instructions from His book daily, and I know He will teach me:  ‘this is how I want you to love that person.’ 

I might wait for you to bring that mythical 100 million dollars to my house, but I could have a mighty long wait. The way for me to access this blessing is to go to where the provision is – the provision is in activating our faith, and JESUS IS OUR PROVIDER. I go to Jesus and learn from Him how to repent about sin, and fix things with others, and then I obey what He says in His book.

The Lord has already told me that every other yoke I can pick up, apart from His, will be too heavy for me to bear.“Come to ME, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30.

Ask a bible-believing Jesus follower if they have experienced transformation, so they can live like He did – without His input. I’ve tried. I got fed up, then I gave up. My desires and needs were too great for me to manage. But when I asked Him to help me, I began to make withdrawals on the deposit He has already put into my name.“…Everything we could ever need for life and godliness HAS ALREADY BEEN DEPOSITED IN US by His divine power.” Amen. Use your faith to make withdrawals. Bye. 👋

P 3058 A change is needed.

/ DVH

“I had to nurse you and feed you with “milk,” not with the solid food of more advanced teachings, because you weren’t ready for it. In fact, you are still not ready to be fed solid food, for you are living your lives dominated by the mind-set of the flesh. Ask yourselves: Is there jealousy among you? Do you compare yourselves with others? Do you quarrel like children and end up taking sides? If so, this proves that you are living your lives centred on yourselves, dominated by the mind-set of the flesh, and behaving like unbelievers.” 1 Corinthians 3:2-3.

You know, there’s a deeper place for Christians to live daily – simply because God’s GRACE is available to each one of us all the time. His Grace facilitates our new way to live. However, Grace can’t change a FAKE ME. By that I mean, who we are can be carefully hidden under layers of ‘pious sucking it up’ instead of true transformation. Real transformation means when somebody presses button “A” in our lives, we don’t explode anymore. OH for THAT day!! 

In our society today it seems the land of harder and worse is looming up right in front of mankind. Sadly, most of the time, instead of listening to our own reactions, we make excuses for our behaviour and get furious at someone else. But because of what Jesus did for us, we no longer have to be ashamed to acknowledge where we personally went wrong.

A lot of our time in this life is wasted by pretending we are managing – when we are not. The best thing about sin is that we have an opportunity to be saved and transformed from it, when we acknowledge it! Every person on this planet has sin in common. Realising that, can lead us deeper into the Lord’s incredible Love, we must understand that despite our sinfulness, He will not turn any of us away. It is always our choice … we can live in the need for revenge, or inner peace. You know, babies always need to be looked after, adults have a life to live. Babies are not productive at all, they are consumers.

It would seem from these verses in Corinthians that the Apostle Paul knew some undernourished fat-babies in his life as well! However! “There IS NO condemnation for those who are IN Christ Jesus…!!” Acknowledgement of our own sin will lead us into a wider, broader place … where I can love you no matter what you did, because I’ve learnt hating you is just as bad as whatever you did to me! Comparison of big and little sins is killing us – and our fake identities are muddying the waters of this life. There are higher places for every single one of us to go. I tell myself: ‘Every time I confront these things in my life, I’m building my faith muscle. Every time I humble myself I am stepping into His Grace.’

So we must decide, and choose to move on from the stuff that has held us captive for most of our lives, and believe what the Lord Jesus said. It’s all part of the same faith. “It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1. The slavery comes in when we refuse to acknowledge to ourselves, that we were all born broken! Accepting the never-ending, all-encompassing love of God is available to everyone, changes our perception of things that appear to be stuck. Transparency helps us. We cannot afford to walk around with our noses in the air looking at others thinking: ‘they are more broken than I am!’

Let me be clear – the Lord won’t physically stop us, we must learn, through experience, to use our faith in His truthfulness, to stop ourselves. That’s what our faith is for – we are to live this new life we have been given, using our faith that what the Lord said He did, He did! Acknowledging our sinfulness puts feelings in second place, and at the same time we are telling ourselves that no matter how things look, Jesus has got our troubles or difficulties and He’s THE penultimate Redeemer. 

The door to that jail we lived in before we met Him – is now permanently open.There are no guards! They fell on their backs when He burst out of that grave! The enemy tries to keep all of us busy examining everyone else’s attitudes and actions for our entire lives. Unfortunately, if we put our faith down, and aim at excusing ourselves, we will continue to commit whatever sin we’ve been fighting that trips us up. Instead we must believe Jesus is telling the truth. He said He did it, so it is done. Now we repent and repair things wherever we need to, and move on.

Jesus said that while He was hanging on a cross in agony. “It. Is. Finished.” Every requirement for our new life is already in our account, it has been paid for, in full. Now we put aside the temptation to resent people, or to lie, to ourselves and others, or get angry and hate people. We simply go and do what Jesus would do. He came here to love people, so that’s what we do too! We are all pilgrims, we have not yet arrived: “but we press on!! …” 

There is incredible freedom in not excusing yourself and facing up to reality. There were times Jesus physically went up a mountain to pray. Here’s my little theory … I think He did that because He needed the spiritual, physical and emotional respite from the stuff all around Him. He need to find true REST in His Father.  Prayer and reading the bible are our spiritual life-blood – they gives us rest from striving. Listen as if God Himself was speaking to you, personally. What we need to change is our belief that your sin is worse than mine! Bye. 👋

P 2834 Clear out the cupboards.

/ DVH

In order for our lives to be transformed, God has given each one of us so much help. We have His book. Full of the Lord’s dealings with others. Plus the ongoing Presence of the Holy Spirit. Who is always active to remind us of what our Father has said.

However, when I want to follow the Holy Spirit, that means I am going to have to learn how to WAIT for His answers, and learn to trust that the Lord knows what’s going on.  At the same time I will need to believe that Almighty God is bigger than any of my immediate problems. I need to choose to change my behaviour, as well as my reactions, to facilitate and undergird my new belief. I cannot enforce that decision I’ve made upon you — because you need to learn for yourself! This means I will be stretched even further because I’m not living in a vacuum. 

Living this way is part of God’s ongoing process for us. It isn’t always easy, but it will teach me patience and perseverance, and draw me closer to Him and the Way He thinks. As I digest how He thinks, by doing what His book says, I will need His help – right from the minute I open my eyes every single day. Meanwhile, Father God doesn’t want me to learn  how to wait just because He likes to take His time … actually the bible says that ‘He is quick to answer us…’Father God wants me to learn how to wait, because I will renew my spiritual strength and because of that, I can resist any temptation to give up easily. We have His book full of His Ways to use as a prayerful reference point.

Today, I want to look specifically at something difficult that Jesus said. Matthew 18:21-22 gives us a tough illustration.“At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?” Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.”  When I read this I chose to do the Math – that means every 2.9387755102 minutes in a day, if someone were to sin against you or I, over and over again, the Lord is saying to us – we still need to forgive them. Let’s round that number up to someone sinning against us every 3 minutes, all day. It is easy to see His point when we do the Math! Nobody would want to forgive someone if they sinned against them that often and consistently. I’m pretty sure that the person sinning against us might even run out of the energy to sin with those numbers!!

Jesus went on to tell us a parable that we all wish we hadn’t read – the unforgiving servant. Personally I don’t think that the Lord’s point is even remotely about how many sins and how often – Jesus was telling Peter if he wanted to be forgiven then he needed to have his reference point changed. It’s not about numbers … because of His Presence in our lives, we are changed. It was all free to us but it was incredibly costly to our Lord.

Through these verses I believe the Lord wanted to show Peter that human beings cannot forgive others without God’s help, and oodles of His GRACE.  Jesus was exaggerating to illustrate His point. He became sin — so we can become the righteousness of God. We were given forgiveness for free from the Lord, but it was incredibly costly to Him. Now we give it away to others for free, but will cost us, just like it cost Him. Our gratitude expresses itself in showing mercy to others, when they don’t deserve it either.

One of the things that can definitely hobble us spiritually from acting like His kids, is our unwillingness to forgive the way we’ve been forgiven. People sometimes say that they can forgive easily, but they can’t forget. Personally I think if we can still remember what happened, that will probably have the worst effect on our forgiveness factor! Those two things can’t go in the same equation, because one shoots the other one in the foot. So why am I writing about this today? Because some of us are going to have families descend upon us as we move toward Christmas. Family can, and often does more damage than anybody else. 

Our families don’t always consist of beautiful Godly people who always get it right. After all, WE belong there, and that fact alone just plain ruins that idea! Jesus is saying to us we need to live a lifestyle of forgiveness… and let past hurts and injuries go. Why? Because the greatest power on earth is released when we forgive, it’s GRACE. Some of Christ last words spoken from the cross were: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do…” When He said that … God’s Grace started raining down upon the earth out of all proportion to whatever would be needed for all time.

Grace moves mountains. It heals the sick, it restores our souls, it changes our circumstances. It opens up things that have been shut down and left to fester, so they can heal. Grace is the AIR of His kingdom. We can’t afford to count how many times that dumb person we know did whatever they did – because when we do that we step out of Grace, and literally stop breathing in the Spirit. God takes no pleasure in our grudges. So we need to clean out our spiritual cupboards asap. Then we will be amazed at how differently we can view the people who are around us. We all need to: “learn the unforced rhythms of Grace…” Bye. 👋

P 2770 God has a plan.

/ DVH

If you have been a Christian for a while you may have bumped into Jeremiah. Jeremiah is, in my mind, one of our great faith pioneers. He kept his faith strong even when his life was awful. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11. But when you look at Jeremiah’s life, it was a far cry from being filled with great plans and fab future! I want to comment on this particular verse today, because I believe it has been misused on occasion, to imply that our God is more like a genie, than our omnipotent, omnipresent, always wise, sovereign God and glorious Father – Who made heaven and earth!

Let’s just look carefully at what this verse says: God totally declares that He has plans for each one of us. We have not been left here, in our often difficult circumstances, all alone. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to help us with every second, of every minute of every day. We can now walk with Him like Christ did, that’s the plan! In order to walk with the Holy Spirit – emphasis on the word ‘holy’  … our lives need to change. Our focus has to come off our own comfort, and be firmly planted into whatever the Lord wants for us.

This verse says that His plans are about giving us hope. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus Christ is our ever-present hope, and this scripture is a prophetic statement about Christ! It is not a promise that this life will never ever be bad again. The hope in our future is Christ Himself. Jeremiah did not live an easy life. His whole nation went into captivity. However, our God has incredible plans and if we ask Him, He may even let us in on them! He has promised He will listen when we pray, and answer us. But we may not understand His answer right away!

We need to consistently remember that Father God will never ever mislead us, quite often we simply can’t see beyond the end of our noses and our need to control everything and make it peachy! However, our future always lies with the Lord. It is very important that we understand that – the scripture above is about security IN God. You and I have eternity ahead of us, so we have an ever expanding future!  Heaven is real and we will go there. I think our God is incredible – He’s planning to spend eternity with all of us! Imagine that!

Our Heavenly Father, has already provided everything we will ever need IN Christ. Sadly we can spend our short lives looking for monetary or physical gain, and we do live this life celebrating the reality that eternity is ours, now and forever … and LIVE that way. Unfortunately we often want ease, now. It matters where our hope is, because ours is always in Christ. …Our hope is not in some scripture that I picked up, or one I decided suited my problem, my hope is in Christ. Christ is God’s demonstrated goodness.

In my opinion, Jeremiah, makes a very interesting example of God’s input into one man’s life. He remained courageous and loyal to his calling despite his difficulties. He faithfully told the Israelites the bad news about their future, over and over again. Sometimes … lucky him!…. he also got to physically demonstrate it too! He was beaten and ridiculed simply because he spoke out God’s truth. The people who follow Jesus Christ do not always have easy carefree lives. However, He will ALWAYS help us, so our faith is in His Character. These things flow out of intimacy. And intimacy is about God always being with us, so we live by faith – because that is the reality.

We must stop thinking that serving God means we will remain trouble free! Our wonderful Father is doing more than one thing at a time. He is answering our prayers for transformation, preparing us for eternity, and restoring and healing relationships, here and now. Jeremiah was carted off from his homeland along with everyone else, despite the fact that he was busy being obedient … doing and saying what God said!  He continually prophesied bad things were coming, not good ones, and sadly the Jews didn’t like it, or him. And he also pointed out that there is a great difference between saying something – even sincerely believing it, and… doing it. Belief must turn into action.

Personally, I think the Old Testament brings a much needed balance into the church-at-large’s current theory of: “let’s all have a jolly old party down here, because SomeBody else paid the bill!”  We cannot choose hedonism and indulgence and expect everything to be AOK with the Lord. What part of ‘take up your cross and follow Me,’ don’t we get? We serve Him – He doesn’t serve us. He proved His love for all mankind when He gave us His Only Son. Our choices from day to day matter, because Father God does not wink at our sins, they were far too costly for His Son. The very least we can do is acknowledge them, and live this life, here and now, differently.

He has a plan to give us a hope and a future. Our future is with Him, today, tomorrow, and forever, and His plan has already given us hope in Christ and all He did. Let’s stick with HIS PLAN and leave behind the idea of some sort of a trouble-free cushy life. Bye. 👋

P 2359 Psalm 3.

/ DVH

King David’s song when he was forced to flee from Absalom, his own son: “Lord, I have so many enemies, so many who are against me. Listen to how they whisper their slander against me, saying: “Look! He’s hopeless! Even God can’t save him from this!”  Pause in His Presence. But in the depths of my heart I truly know that You, Yahweh, have become my Shield; You take me and surround me with Yourself. Your glory covers me continually. You lift high my head. I have cried out to You, Yahweh, from Your holy presence You send me a Father’s help. Pause in His presence

So now I’ll lie down and sleep like a baby—then I’ll awake in safety, for You surround me with Your glory. Even though ten thousand dark powers prowl around me. I won’t be afraid. Rise up and help me, Yahweh! Come and save me, God! For You will slap them in the face, breaking the power of their words to harm me. FOR THE LORD ALONE IS MY SAVIOUR. What a feast of favour and bliss He gives His people! Pause in His presence.”

Some times the people we love dearly, the ones who are our family, can do the most damage. It doesn’t even have to be what they say – neglect and abandonment can devastate us. The first point I want to make today is that this kind of scenario is not a walk in the park. We can’t just click our heels and the bad bits will go away. These things severely test us and often challenge our belief systems.They test our resolve to follow Him no matter what happens. 

Some things are a choice, but when it comes to family, those things are the places where we find we are most vulnerable. Family is about history. They knew you when. You knew them from birth…. That kind of history tears at our hearts like very little else, and betrayal from those who are meant to protect and care for us brings deep wounds. My advice is this;  start this process with healing, not rebuking or blaming your self. Ask the Lord Himself to be your Father and help you with the places that are bleeding inside from all that betrayal you feel. 

Don’t make excuses for them, and don’t make excuses for you either. It is what it is. David’s son was trying to kill him to take the throne. It wasn’t a whoopsie, or an error of judgment, it was a deliberate act of betrayal for Absalom’s gain. If you read the story, (2 Samuel 13-37 -15-12), Absalom went about whispering in other people’s ears, trying to turn the people’s loyalty away from David. That is not a mistake, it is deliberate SIN. In Absalom’s case it was jealousy and pride. He was beautiful and popular and he knew it and then pride took over.

Sometimes our family member/s are not simply making a mistake, they have joined their allegiances with destruction. They may call it correction, or caring for you, but because you are maintaining some degree of freedom or other they do not have, they will try to stop you anyway they can. Jesus Himself said this about families in Matthew 10:36 –“Don’t think I’ve come to make life cozy. I’ve come to cut—make a sharp knife-cut between son and father, daughter and mother, bride and mother-in-law—cut through these cozy domestic arrangements and free you for God. Well-meaning family members can be your worst enemies. If you prefer father or mother over Me, you don’t deserve Me. If you prefer son or daughter over Me, you don’t deserve Me.”

Look, if Jesus Himself talked about it, then difficulties like this aren’t totally unexpected. My only advice is grieve for your loss and ask the Lord to heal your heart with His Grace and Love, and then, immediately go on to choosing forgiveness. Some family members will turn around, and others will see your forgiving heart as something that can be used against you. Then you will need grace, grace and more grace. Don’t leave home without it, because Grace can do the impossible. 

Don’t just content yourself with forgiving out of some kind of familial loyalty – ask and keep on asking for His Grace to truly forgive. INSIST. Meanwhile difficulties like this can take time to heal, so keep on believing God is helping you – and don’t quit. Take your focus off the family member/s that are persecuting you, and deliberately give those people as an act of your will, to Jesus. And then keep on doing that each time they come up in your mind – eventually Jesus in you will win.

At the same time it is good to go on into blessing these folks until you find you really mean it. It’s all a process and an extremely hard one at that. Your job is to watch over your heart and leave the work to the Holy Spirit. Let’s give thanks that we have a Parent Who never stops loving us, and He is totally devoted to the restoration of families. 👋🏻

P 2332 Our perceptions can limit our expansion.

/ DVH

Almighty God’s goodness, faithfulness, loving kindness, mercy, grace, love, joy and peace does not, and will not ever, depend on our perception. He IS all those things and more … simply because it is Who He is. Now there’s a good place to stop and cheer! 🥳 I have learnt during my life so far, that the ability to laugh at yourself is invaluable. Christians can be a bit ridiculous and intense, as well as ever-so-slightly pompous at times – if we are not careful we can suck all the spontaneous fun out of a room with a well placed raise of the eyebrows. 

We can also take ourselves way too seriously. I think we need to enjoy this life we’ve been given more. We can end up trying so hard to appear godly and pious, we give the impression that following Jesus is no fun at all. We should never be ashamed to share our faults and missteps with everyone around us, including our brothers and sisters – who knows what that kind of honest freedom could produce? 

How will others know what Christ did FOR US, if we are so busy trying so hard to look right all the time – without the Holy Spirit’s help. Trying to look good all the time, uses up way too much energy. No wonder we have no extra energy to witness and love on people. Keeping up that kind of appearance is exhausting. Conversely, some of us turn into undercover agents, and work on that sort of attitude so hard that the people around us don’t know we are Christians at all. We just ooze disapproval instead.

Today I decided to share some of the dumb things I have done in my lifetime. You know appearing to be the goods is exhausting, and when you get older you need all the energy you can find just to manage the stuff going on. Being changed from the inside out is the thing, it makes the supernatural normal!  

Hmm … back onto my point …I’ve done so many dumb things – it’s hard to pick. 😂 I once tipped a whole bottle of Shalimar perfume down the drain. I was utterly convinced that very expensive stuff was of the devil … so glub＄glub＄glub＄… down the drain it went. What was I thinking? I thought holiness was about being minutely careful over every little detail. I had no idea back then that holiness has already been imputed to us through our relationship with Christ. 

In other words holiness is about WHO we choose to hang out with, not just how paranoid we are about sin. How we look is mostly irrelevant, Who He is and what He has done for us is the main thing. Meanwhile down the plug hole went the Shalimar. Sigh. My drain smelled gorgeous for weeks! Retrospectively, my poor ex had heaps to put up with. 

Then there was the time I was utterly convinced that God was going to heal my severe short-sightedness. What a laugh-riot that was. I smashed my contact lenses convinced I needed to prove to God how serious I was in my belief that He heals today. You ain’t gunna believe the next bit … for two whole years I went about blind as a bat … doing all the normal things I always did. Fortunately, I didn’t drive back then! 

But I crossed roads, chopped stuff with big nasty knives, looked after my little kids and other people’s kids etc. caught buses, took trains, and carried on pretending that any minute now, praise God, I was going to be healed! Our wonderful Father protected and looked after this ding-bat and her kids, in spite of my theological blooper. I also told everyone else I was healed. Naturally, it was blatantly obvious to everyone around me I wasn’t. SO, what happened? A dear friend gently pointed out that not only wasn’t I healed … I was living dangerously. So, I cried heaps, swallowed my pride, confessed my fault and put my glasses back on. Then I apologised to everyone, and I put it all behind me.

I said all that to say this: at that time –  my perception of Who God is and what He will do, was skewed. I took the word of other people who had experienced His healing, and had actually been healed, followed their steps, and stood on that. Let me be clear, testimony from others can inspire and encourage us but we cannot stand on it. When we stand on things like that, we are trying to piggyback our faith on someone else’s belief – instead of using their faith to springboard us into a deeper relationship with Him, by praying over what the Bible says for ourselves. 

Our perception is incredibly important, it can limit our God-given expansion – we can waste the time we have, trying to be someone or something else! To get a bigger perception we must take His word seriously, wait for His personal input, and let Him expand our view of His kingdom. Be yourself – everyone else is taken!  👋🏻