Cherishes

P 3474 We follow the thread.

/ DVH

This is something hubby and I have learnt to do over the last 20+ years. Personally, and together, we walk with the Holy Spirit, daily. He tells us “Go here” and we do, then we follow the thread. We feel so blessed when we do it. This is how He stretches  and strengthens our faith. It is the way we live. There is nothing like working with the Spirit of God!

The first thing I want to say is that — the Lord loves it outside our comfort zone, because that means we are using our faith. Just tell Him:  “I am going for You, and You are utterly in charge. Please help me to pay attention to everything You say!” No matter how unusual stuff seems, as He brings it up, hubby and I simply go and do what He tells us. This has led to growth in the area of our own faith — and bucket loads of Grace for others, plus something I call automatic praise. 

That’s not like the loving cheerful songs we sing to enter His courts. Automatic praise is startling in it’s power and accuracy. It happens when we get so overwhelmed by His goodness, and we are so happy – praise just pops out, unbidden. When you get to see the Lord at work, it’s not hard! The Holy Spirit loves it when God’s people do what He asked them to do – and one of the things He has asked us to do is: “GO!” As far as I know the Lord Jesus has never taken back that directive. Simply tell Him you are available and then you obey.

When I read the Epistles I can see a whole lot of very different people who spent their lives “going!” Even those people who didn’t travel. The ones that stayed home reached out to their neighbours, and the church functioned together as a unit to bless anyone and everyone around them. You don’t read much about them buying this and that, or going on holidays – their plan was to follow HIS PLAN. 

There are times when the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet can be difficult … but just when we want to quit, we pray: “help help” and He helps us. If He says: “Go down that road and talk to someone at the other end,” we do it. There is always somebody who needs to hear what we have to say, at the other end of that road! It never ceases to amaze me. Someone needs to know that God loves them so much that He sent His Son to bring them into a relationship with Him. We have driven miles out of our way to go and talk to just one person. 

Let’s be real, there have also been times when we were both exhausted from driving for hours, and the Holy Spirit said: “Turn off here” … and … we didn’t. That is hilarious. Have you ever watched something that isn’t aligned properly as it tries to continue with the task it performs? It kind of clicks, and clunks and stops, and slowly clicks and clunks some more. That’s what it is like when we don’t turn around. We both look at each other, and then turn the car around and go down the road we tried to avoid. That quiet feeling of being ‘out of step’ just gets to you. 

Nobody taught us to do this kind of reaching out, it simply happened as we obeyed Him and followed His thread. It has never been our intention to make a big deal about it. I’ve only written about it here, in case someone wants to know how you reach out to complete strangers. It’s actually easier than reaching out to the people you know! The Lord gave me this helpful thought on one of our trips — “You are never going to see these people again. Do you care about what they think of you?” After I finished laughing …because boy is that true … I realised I actually was scared of other people’s faces and dealt with that. 

The Lord is so gracious about helping us when we are trying to obey Him. Do we get it right all the time? I dunno ask Him! That part actually doesn’t really matter. We’ve personally seen that God cherishes anyone’s baby steps into His much larger world. At the same time, we’ve learnt so much about humanity in the past 20+ years. The people we think won’t respond, usually bawl their eyes out.

Please understand that we are not evangelists. We simply take the command of Jesus to be witnesses seriously, that is all. “But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency, and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.” Acts 1:8. It is not hard to be a witness. They simply tell others what they know, and what they’ve seen, and invite those people to come and meet Him too.

Here’s what I’ve noticed … when you make yourself available to Jesus, He will take you up on it, because He is looking for witnesses. Ordinary people who will probably never stand out in a crowd, but they know that they have a story about Who He is and what He has done in their lives. My advice is, just tell your little story. We call things like that a testimony, but to be honest … it really is just you, telling your story! People have said to us: “Why don’t you write a book?” I said… “Because we are too busy doing it!“

The Holy Spirit will have people lined up for you to talk to. Half the time we don’t look for them, now they talk to us first!  We’ve seen miracles. We didn’t set out to see them, they just happened along the way. I encourage you reader to follow the Lord’s thread, His leading. The Holy Spirit has been sent to lead you and He will lay what He wants out in front of you. Then you follow it as far as it goes. He lives inside you, please, let Him out! Bye. 👋. 

“But we are certainly not those who are held back by fear and perish; we are among those who have faith and experience true life!” Hebrews 10:39.

P 2810 Discipline is not a bad word.

/ DVH

I wanted to call this blog:“What can you do when life whacks you around the ear-hole?” But then I thought: “Nah! That’s too long for a title.” Bad things have been happening at our house – as well as in our immediate family, and to people we love dearly. This stuff has been going on for weeks, sometimes it feels like forever!  It seems like we are being water-boarded by circumstances! We’ve barely had time to take a breath –  it’s like ‘whack a mole!’  

The latest jolt at our house was my 97 year old Mum being carted off to hospital with chest pains. There ought to be a law against getting difficult news before 7.00am! My mother is fine – she’s still very old – but she’s fine! I had to repent for not trusting the Lord to take care of her. You know when life overwhelms me, and it really does, there are times I have to crawl into the throne room to worship Him. I’m not looking for pity, BTW, we all have things going on that stretch us further than we want to go. 

Actually, apart from the actual circumstances — it’s my response to them that turns things upside down. I have come to love 💕 this scripture. “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” Ephesians 4:26-27. Did ya get that? The bible says it in black and white … it is my all-time fav book, and – it gives me permission to be angry – temporarily! Of course that permission comes with a caveat … don’t sin. Fix bad stuff before the sun falls out of the sky. I guess that means whacking people around the ear-hole is out… sigh. But still … it is not a sin to be angry … BUT it IS a sin to let it go on and on and on, for DAYS, without fixing it.

Lately, as I have mentioned before, I have had to avoid the news. It makes me shouting-at-the-TV-mad! And I can’t even hold onto the mad … I have to get rid of it before night comes!!  I came from an era that believed when kids were naughty or rude you smacked them … not round the ear-hole … just on the padded bit that we all sit on. This whole no smacking kid’s policy is at war with the bible … read Proverbs and hang on to your hosiery… otherwise you just might end up fighting HIS system. 

Where I live 12-14 year old kids, boys and girls, are pinching other people’s cars, bashing up old people, disrespecting the law, and carrying knives and guns. Yeah! I rest my case! BTW, I live in a quiet suburb in a reasonably quiet city. It’s not the location that matters, it is the lack of discipline in the home. We are going to live to regret the new-age idea that children are born blameless. That’s not what the book says.

As a little child I lived in one of the worst suburbs for crime … two of my childhood friends tried to burn their mum’s shop down. Crime bosses walked down the street, and if you were unfortunate enough to meet them, you looked at the ground and said ‘hello’  and hoped they didn’t know where you lived. You also said SIR because you didn’t want to annoy them.  

Consequently, I can get really angry about the lack of discipline everywhere today, because it’s ungodly. Read the book! These poor greedy kids will end up in prison – all because discipline was a distasteful word to their parents. Any bird brain knows that people should not beat their kids up, but a well placed smack on the seat of learning can help little brains realise they don’t rule the world. Start young. You won’t catch them when they get into their teens, they can out-talk and out-run you.

Changing the subject slightly – here’s a great verse that can easily get stuck in anyone’s throat: “For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes.” Hebrews 12:6. And here’s another one — but this one is guaranteed to bring a huge lump into your throat if you think on it.“Then Pilate took Jesus and had Him scourged.” John 19:1. I think this shows us clearly that Almighty God did not spare His only One-of-a-kind Son– so telling yourself that God will make an exception for you …  ! Well, you do the sum.

It also means that His discipline in our lives shows us that we are cherished by Him. Now ain’t that a rare and precious new thought!! I keep telling people that His ways are not our ways …BTW, did ya get the “everyone” bit in that Hebrew’s verse – no exceptions – not even JESUS! I understand that nobody likes discipline. It hurts. But it is necessary, because we can easily end up going the wrong way.

We must learn to resist the devil and persist in doing good while we still have the opportunity. Be-cau-se we need to be … “making the very most of (y)our time [on earth, recognising and taking advantage of each opportunity and using it with wisdom and diligence], because the days are [filled with] evil.” Ephesians 5:16. Discipline is not a bad word. Bye!👋

P 2676 Judgment makes us blind and deaf –

/ DVH

… to God and to each other! In the beginning Adam and Eve chose to do what seemed right in their own eyes. What entered into them when they ate from that tree, was the knowledge of good and evil. That meant that they left the wisdom of God behind. Sadly, this was also when humanity lost the privilege of His Presence and suspicion arrived on the scene. After that, influenced by satan, we opted for our own thinking and rationale. The miracle was Almighty God did not utterly reject all of us, because He is never caught unaware – He always had a bigger plan. Over time, human beings walked further and further away from Him. And the further away we walked, the more we left HIS wisdom, His dear Presence, behind. In that garden, living in the Spirit came naturally. Our disobedience changed that.

I think the ongoing result of this action is that we have all lost the ability to see Him, clearly. We’ve become deaf and blind toward His Ways, and we can’t see each other, either! However the clearer we can see Him, the clearer and closer we will get to each other. In our current world we have chosen to live by our own judgment and this means most of us have rejected Him. This attitude is devastating in its overall consequences. Look at it like this – broken people come to their own conclusions. Often because of our own battered sinful past, we unconsciously analyse others, then we reject, avoid or persecute them. Eventually we make those conclusions into life actions and give those actions some sort of great sounding purpose that makes sense to us!

If someone in my life was cruel to me, inside my heart I may have carefully laid some early warning signals that mean if anybody even remotely sounds or looks like that person who hurt me — I will avoid or punish them. In effect, I am passing judgment on that other person without even thinking about it. It is as if I see others through a screening system that filters out the people I consider to be my enemies. I do not look for GOOD in others, instead now I am looking for DANGER. We can end up judging our brother by a standard that came from fear and the ever-present need for revenge.

Because I am human, and my human wisdom is faulty, in order to protect myself, I can easily learn to apply judgment to oversee whatever I think. Sadly when I do that, I am allowing the people who hurt me, or caused me to be afraid, or misled me, to continue have power over me – whether they are present or not! At the same time I have been blinded to my own sinful attitudes by fear and judgment. I can no longer see others the way God sees them, because my own judgment is exalting itself over His wisdom. Over time I will use my logic, and incidental observations to prove to myself that my judgments are right, and that those other people really are dangerous to my own well-being and they should be avoided. 

Hebrews 4:12 says: “For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Only God Himself knows our intentions –only He can rightly divide them using His Word.  I think the answer to this particular interpersonal difficulty is to ask the Lord to help us see other people the way HE sees them. Otherwise we are in constant danger of living in judgment, and that judgment will cloud our view over everything else. And at the same time it neutralises our understanding of His wisdom. That other person may have no clue that the way they behave is ‘pushing your buttons.’ Their own brokenness and faulty judgment causes them to act this way without them being aware of it.

Sometimes we can attribute motivation to other people’s behaviour, but it isn’t true discernment or a clear view of their actions, it’s a fear response. And at other times people may even employ demonic strategies because they feel a lack of personal control in their lives will be catastrophic. It goes without saying that demonic strategies are not only unnecessary, they are definitely likely to lead us into all sorts of temptations! Like …  Adam and Eve … or Cain and Abel. After all the Lord warned Cain he was in danger of crossing a line. Instead, we need to remember that we have a Redeemer, Who runs to our aid. He cherishes us all and He will always impart the wisdom from above. In order to see and hear His Ways – now we must put away personal judgment, and let the word of God change us. 

1 Corinthians 2:6-9: “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”  👋