Choose to die

P 3426 Dead is the new way to live. 

/ DVH

In Galatians 2:20, Jesus reminds us what this life is really all about. Paul said: “I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

This getting-dead process can be challenging sometimes. So the reality is, I choose to die to what I want, over and over again. Here’s what that means practically. Someone says something I think is provocative, so I ask for the Holy Spirit’s help, and I say nothing. Despite how provoked I feel, the Lord Himself will give me that soft answer He talks about from Proverbs. I’m just doing what Jesus told me to do, ‘turning the other cheek.’ If people cheat me and they lie to me, I pray a blessing over them until I mean it. In other words, I let the Lord Jesus fight my battles for me. It’s up to Him what happens to people who behave like that, He knows more about them than I ever could.   

This means I have deliberately chosen to live this life dead to what I want, and alive to what He wants. Let’s be clear, I am not talking about being mostly dead, or I wish I was … dead. What I mean is – I’ve chosen to die to the way I used to think about, relate to, and treat other people. Now, I owe them LOVE and I use my faith to trust Father God to help me with that. He clearly told me “that vengeance is His.”  Here is the Good News part of the gospel. Because of Jesus’ resurrection I don’t have to stay dead — now I have a new way to live, right here, right now. TODAY – and the power to do it.

Of course I will need the Holy Spirit’s help to live that way. But He won’t do it for me. I’m not a puppet, I’m a person who makes a choice.. I take a step of faith, and the Holy Spirit helps me to move forward. When I refuse to be angry back at someone else, He gives me something sweet to say to them, that helps to diffuse their anger. Meanwhile, you can’t pick a fight with a dead person, because they won’t say anything back. You could yell at them, if you want to, but … you’d be wasting your time. You’d be better off shouting into a black hole.

Each one of us has to choose to die to what we want, and come alive to the reason Jesus brought us here. But once we do, our thinking begins to change and we start to think like He does. Then the Holy Spirit helps us to use our God-given faith and hope in His goodness, to live a brand new way. It’s the way Jesus lived. We all know His plans are good for us, that’s also in the book! I’ve decided to trust what He said more than I trust what I can see going on around me. We choose to come alive to Christ and His Way of living and leave our past behind us, when we die to self and live for Him.

It is not humility when I say on this blog that Jesus helped me with this and that – it’s a fact. If I try really really hard to be what He has already given me for free, well — that’s when the trouble starts! I begin to lose my sense of His Presence with me, because my excuses for my own bad behaviour fill the air around me! The only Person Who can resurrect a dead person is Jesus. When He does that He makes them sweeter. Trying to resurrecting yourself and hold on tightly to being right, is a waste of time and energy. Whatever we try to do by ourselves doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. We will just wear ourselves out doing it, as well as becoming jaded, and losing hope. Give up. Die to self.

It is easy to tell when I have wandered off and given up living for Him – I want my own way. Day by day living His way is always a choice. Sadly, I can get offended before the poor schmuck with their foot in their mouth has finished their sentence. I am not at all nice to be around, especially if I try to change myself. I get mad at other people because they annoy me and they want their way. The safest, sweetest place to live, is to live this life using the faith He gave me. Then my priorities change. My focus needs to be on what He did. Not what I have or haven’t done. Like I said yesterday, “nothing can ever separate us from God’s love” — we have proof of that. Jesus died to make that statement eternal.

Many Christians cheerfully sing 🎵 “We are here for You, Jesus…”🎵and then everyone goes home and lives this life we have been given, for themselves again – often using heaps of energy to be ‘nice’ to people who aren’t ‘nice’ to them. Day by day, we are so focussed on our plans, our lives, our ideas, our success, our happiness, our money … plus our wellbeing. That isn’t the deal… not the one in His book! The deal is — He died for us — so now we live for Him. Meanwhile dead people don’t have aims, or opinions.

We don’t have to sit around, impassively, waiting for this stuff to fall on us. We need to aggressively choose to live this life of LOVE He provided for us and act it out. We take faith steps, and take up this new life He has given us. Let’s run, and choose to use our faith to do things His Way, for His kingdom’s sake. And read and re-read His book, daily refreshing our memory about what He has already said.

Choose to live a life of Love, it’s the outworking of our inward faith. Dead is the new way to live – because the Lord’s kind of new life can only blossom and bear fruit in dead people, who choose to live this life, His way. Bye. 👋

P 2940 Kindness.

/ DVH

People often think about kindness as a human quality. Personally, I think that means we are underestimating the power of God for total transformation! Loving the poor, providing for them, helping those who cannot help themselves may be this world’s idea of kindness, but it is not the fruit of the Spirit. Those caring things are simply normal behaviour to a kingdom dweller.

So, let’s look at what God’s idea of kindness looks like.“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;  That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:44. See? Kindness is a God-quality, not a people one!  

It is the ‘doing good to them that hate us’  bit that I’m talking about, today. That takes extraordinary God-given, ongoing kindness, it is something that lasts. It’s spiritual … it has to be!! It is not enough to refrain from blowing your enemies up … or stopping yourself from giving them a piece of your mind … My test for the fruit of the Spirit is this — can I find it in myself? If that answer to that is no, then it is likely I am doing my best – but that’s not the fruit that comes from an abiding relationship with Him. 

I define spirituality by actual growth in my life. That means I stop doing something I was doing before. as He helps me! Otherwise, changing myself always seems to be out of my reach. I think that this means you can’t grow the ‘God kind’ of love, that bears everything, hopes everything, and never fails, plus joy, hope, kindness etc. in the soil of this earthly life. We need to reach right up into heaven, using our faith, and bring His kingdom down here, right here, right now, to bless others. I’ve learnt to regard the fruit of His Spirit as something that is unattainable without His help! The Holy Spirit grows His fruit His Way. How is your day going? Mine just got remarkably difficult!!

This is the sort of transformation that changes the way we think – see Romans 12:2. We can’t make this stuff up -we might fake it and fool the world around us, but we can’t fool the Lord. By the way, the idea that “I can’t help it,” is just our way of excusing a lack of change. The Lord Himself will burst that bubble and introduce something, or someone, into our picture-perfect life that exposes His reality. Think Peter and his resolve, and then he met that chicken! When any fake stuff is tested it will blow up, get rude, vote with its feet and generally express the ‘poor me’ attitude that seems so prevalent in this world. Today, we would rather put a technical label on something to make it sound like a medical/mental condition …than call it SIN.

Good luck getting God to buy into that excuse. Unless you have a few chromosomes missing, you will be standing on very thin ice. He made us. He already KNOWS what He put in there … !! We all have the potential for transformation. And yes, I know from my own experience, that some things are incredibly difficult to conquer .. but the Lord conquered SIN, DEATH AND THE DEVIL. That means that Jesus knows all about the level of difficulty required – He can guide us through anything. So there’s that flimsy excuse chucked out of the window – ask for His help and use your faith! Read the book. OK, on we go … are we having fun yet? 

Romans 2:4: “Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realising that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”Almighty God’s kindness always has a target, and God is incredibly  rich in these things! We can miss so many things in the book when we do not study those peculiar, sometimes-out-of-date, words. We do not have to dredge up, make up, or beat ourselves into submission to walk into growing God’s fruit of kindness or anything else. We simply have to remain in the Vine. 

The true point becomes, how do we remain in the Vine? We stay IN Christ – in what He did. That’s how. Oh goodie, another one of those difficult things nobody understands, and everybody quotes! How do we stay in the Vine? We choose to die. This new life can only come from Jesus, so we choose to give up what we want by living this life we have been given, the way He would live it if He were here. He IS HERE, by the way. Inside us. We asked Him in when we gave our lives to Him!

Now we put our feelings and educated idiot-boxes to one side… those things have lots of uses, but they will not help us DIE.  Dying is something most people like to avoid. It means we say no to what we want and choose to do what He said, using our faith. No matter how we feel, or what we think. At the same time our brains need to be rewired – the bible is God’s method of rewiring. God gave us the best upgrade this world has ever, or will ever, see! He said: “If you read this book I will help you to think like My Son would. Now go and do it and it will become part of you.”

If we want His kindness then we will need to let His life in us OUT, so we can be kind to our enemies. They will never ever deserve it. BUT!! When we live like that we release His Grace toward them! Win Win! Bye 👋

P 2670 It’s later than we all think.

/ DVH

Romans 13:11-14: “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

In these difficult times, we can get extremely busy, and then we forget WHO we belong to. We start acting and re-acting like the people around us. Sadly, their god is often their appetites and misery. Even our own ideas of down-time and entertainment can sometimes wander off into hedonism and violence. Like Paul said – that stuff is not for us. I exhort you to treat entertainment like food, and pray over everything. I believe the Lord Himself will show anyone what is good, or not good in their life, when we ask Him. My own policy is this – when in doubt, don’t!  I have a pretty fertile imagination and so I’ve learnt you can’t un-see or un-hear stuff once you’ve sat around absorbing it!

As for casting off the works of darkness, the things of the darkness aren’t always on TV or in some game …we can easily be distracted by an argumentative spirit, or a bad temper, or a negative or critical attitude. The enemy’s deceptions are not obvious like sexual deviancy or a violent response to provocation! ‘It is the little foxes that spoil the vines…’  Likewise it is the things that we make allowance for, that drag us away from the Lord’s ways. We are exhorted to number our days, because they are few. Actively choose to learn to co-operate with the Holy Spirit, nobody else can do that for you.

The bible tells us clearly what to put off … let’s do that and leave our feelings and needs out of it! Currently practically every generation on this planet is held captive to how it feels at any given moment. Human beings are bigger than their feelings! Praise God, the bible doesn’t just tell us what to put OFF – it also tells us what to put ON. We put on the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords using our faith in His power within us…We do this one day, one interaction with Him, at a time. Basically Paul is saying: ‘Don’t make a space for anything that will entice you away from loving and serving Jesus. The things of this world will drag you under into despair and shame.’ Amen!

Our lives are geared into working hard, so we want to allow for relaxation. And if that pleasure is taken away, then we think the sky will fall, because we instinctively know that we need rest. We get our REST from Christ! Anything else is a poor substitute. Just because there are times when we are not good at achieving that aim, that does not mean we have permission to let loose, and ignore things. Pleasure itself is not bad, but exalting anything over our passion for Him, will result in the Lord ending up in second place. And eventually, if we are not careful, He slides right out of the picture. 

That’s one of the things I truly love about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They will not force Their Ways on us. We don’t have to do anything! We choose to do it, to remain close to Him, and daily learn more about our new life in Christ. There are times I wish preachers would talk more about falling in Love with Him, because I think the Body of Christ really needs this kind of exhortation. When we love someone we will do anything for them, and abstinence is not painful, because it is a joy to be close to them. Personally, I love to hang around with someone who knows Him much better than I do. I can learn from them how to hold Him up in such a way that my response is pure worship. The more we invest in His life in us, the more His life will flow out of us.   

Our contribution matters – even if it is unseen. Many, many people underestimate their contribution. A loving heart that wants the best for everyone around them, makes a far greater contribution than someone who is caught up in their own needs and wants. To live like Christ did, we must actively, daily, choose to die. Physically, the truth is, we are all dying anyway – we start to die the moment we are born! But if we cling to this life and withhold our loving contribution from others… our true self will die a lot faster!

James 4:14: “How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.” Let’s learn to respect the fact that we are visitors in this life. None of what we have been given belongs to us. As one very far-sighted person once said: “You will never see a U-haul trailer filled with this world’s goods, attached to a hearse!” Only God knows how valuable each contribution is – and how much it affects the people around us. Instead of languishing away under how hard life is – let’s learn to celebrate the fact that now we have the Author of life, living within us. That will involve our active participation. It is MUCH later than we all think.

Bye. 👋

Romans 14:8: “For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

P 2537 A living sacrifice.

/ DVH

Um… yeah. maybe it is easier to think about becoming a sacrifice after we are dead. Not-so-much with the living part! Human beings like to avoid pain – whatever sort it is. My point is that being a living sacrifice is supposed to cost us and it is a hard process -.but it is part of our transformation process! It only hurts because we are still alive to self!

Personally, I think the hard bits are why many Christians don’t want to live this way. This kind of sacrifice totally goes up against the prosperity gospel, the ‘asking whatever you want’ premise or doctrine, and the ‘be careful what you say or you won’t get what you want‘ idea. In the past many people have embraced that kind of doctrine and, sadly,  that sometimes led to incredible disappointment and heartache. That is because it seemed like our wonderful Father had two categories of children. Those whose prayers were answered … and those whose prayers weren’t. We should have known something was off … just because of that thought! Our God is not like that. When He says “No!” He has a reason. We cannot cherry-pick the scriptures we want to obey.

I think those doctrines have grown out of a materialist age, and an overt desire to be powerful and “be like Him.” To rule and reign down here. That idea goes right up against the truth that we are here to choose to die and serve others! The other thought is a false premise. I want to mention a couple of scriptures here that I think have been misread, and misquoted. “And all of us, as with unveiled face, [because we] continued to behold [in the Word of God] as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are constantly being transfigured into His very own image in ever increasing splendour and from one degree of glory to another; [for this comes] from the Lord [Who is] the Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 2:18. 

The bible clearly says we are changed as we consistently look at Him, as He is revealed in His word. And His words, as we ingest them and assimilate them,then change our minds and our actions. We start living this life like Jesus Christ did. Unfortunately when we follow other people’s doctrines, or attitudes … simply because that worked for them … without doing any beholding ourselves!! … That’s when we put ourselves in danger of error. Here’s the second scripture:“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus.” 1 John 4:16&17. 

The reason we become just like Him, will be revealed as we walk in the way of love just like He did! Love is always made complete in us, as we embrace what He did, and Who He is, in us, but that love is for others. ‘As we seek the kingdom – stuff gets ‘added unto us’ … as Father God Himself decides. That’s how Jesus lived. Feel free to find one time the Lord looked after Himself! He did not presume on God’s Grace in any way. As we follow Him we choose not to presume on the Lord’s Grace either, because we’ve learnt that GRACE is a very valuable, a highly sought after attribute.

Listen to this last scripture about that: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” John 5:19. The Father set the Lord Jesus’ agenda! Jesus was not independently minded at all – He lived a life of sacrificial obedience to His Father’s will and Word. His normal human agendas were overtaken by His Love for His Father, and the Father’s will. (Read Isaiah 52:13ff and Isaiah 53.) Christ became a living, willing sacrifice. He gave up what we like to call ‘normal’ to live this life exactly the way Father God told Him to live it. To become like Christ — is to live like that! 

That’s our destiny. And if you will excuse my boldness please, we have fallen behind in following our destiny!  We are not here for us. We were not born again just for our sake, so we can go to heaven when we die and live the good life down here in the meantime! We are here for HIM. His will, His way. Jesus lived like that, and now we do too. That means we will have to choose to die in the process of every day living. Instead of debating whether we can bear to forgive those who have offended us… and that’s just the start of stuff we choose to willingly lay down for His sake. 

Here’s something I am currently learning in this life about forgiveness. We can exhaust ourselves expecting to get kind responses from a black hole. Some people have become black holes for one reason or another. Let’s not go there!  What I mean is everything goes in and nothing comes out. And yes it ticks me off too! Especially if they are people who are close to you. However, the Lord Jesus Himself told us to pray for them, so that is what we do. Sometimes through clenched teeth. That’s when I personally get out my trusty bible and find a verse that unclenches my teeth! 

Dying is not fun. Especially as you have to go on living with those things other people have done, and still do, because they are ill-informed or careless people. Often they will not value what we are giving them. Jesus prayed for people and God restored them, but many of them did not follow the Lord!  However, Almighty God sees what we do and why we do it. That’s what living sacrificially is all about! 🥰