Christ in you

P 2969 Hope maintenance.

/ DVH

“Never doubt God’s mighty power to work in you and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for His miraculous power constantly energises you. Now we offer up to God all the glorious praise that rises from every church in every generation through Jesus Christ—and all that will yet be manifest through time and eternity. Amen!”Ephesians 3:20-21 TPT. Jesus is our steadfast anchor and hope, and the bible is hope’s back-up and proof that what we know is true. Finally, our praise and prayers mirror what we hope for! 

You and I need to take the time to protect our own hope. We can’t always just jump in and start out with faith, because our faith can be weakened by circumstances, emotions and trouble. Christ’s birth, life, and death have established HOPE on the earth, permanently.”To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.“ Colossians 1:27.This is not a transitory thing, it is an eternal thing. It is an established, firm, foundational fact. We cling to His incredible goodness. Faith will spring up in us, as we continually maintain our hope in Who He is and what He did for us.

We need to remind ourselves about what the Bible says, instead of focussing on what is going on around us or inside us. We ask the Holy Spirit to remind us of the incredible things the Lord has already done in our lives that are good, filled with hope, grace and truth. Verses like those two above, are so helpful, they remind us that God has dominion over everything else that is going on, and He doesn’t just want to answer our prayers — He wants to bless us while He is doing it! He has our best interests firmly established in His heart.

Here is another well known verse that show us ‘hope’s purpose.’“May Your unfailing love be with us, LORD, even as we put our hope in You.” Psalm 33:22. Our hope is an investment in God’s greatness, not in our ability to believe! There are times when we hope for things that are bigger than our faith seems to be. However, God is always good, He will get us there, He will turn our hearts toward Him! Just be honest with Him and ask for His help. When we asked Jesus to save us He made our heart His home. We could be bad at living like that is a reality, or good at it, none of that makes any difference at all to HIS goodness.

Things happen all the time in this life, stuff like —- a loved one is desperately sick, or the job we want to be available isn’t. Maybe we need somewhere safe to live. Of course we pray about such desperate things, but our hope needs to be in WHO He is, not just the answer to our prayers. If our hope is in the answer to our prayers then our hopes can be shattered if things don’t turn out the way we think they should. We must start with the known, the reality, the substance of Who Jesus is — His character, and His attitude toward people like me, we are the people He loves. All of that is in the bible.

Sometimes we desperately hope for things that are beyond our immediate scope of belief. Pray and ask Him to walk you through your failing hope and faith, until you are again standing on His goodness. Things like these are a place for us to continue to stretch our faith IN HIM. Here is an example: it is one thing to believe God can get you to work on time when the trains are late — and totally another to believe He can heal someone who is severely depressed! He can! But we can drive ourselves batty struggling and striving to stretch our hope and make our faith into something it isn’t … yet. When you find a weak place, let Him be your strength.

You and I might have a mustard seed size of faith, and still grow a big tree that will shelter others. The important factor in that sentence is time. We never arrive, we are always in transit in this life – that’s part of the adventure. We need to invest our hope in His goodness, like we invest in breathing or having enough water — not in our ability, or inability to pray. Let His goodness be a fixed point. Then hope will not disappoint you. HE never changes. But our ability to hope in Him answering our prayers might easily be swayed or changed with adverse  circumstances. 

That’s why our hope must be in Who He is. Our thoughts aren’t about things like – did He answer my prayer this week, last month, last year? Our prayer needs to be fixed to the only true fixed point – is Jesus God or not? Can God do anything or not? Anything else leaves us open to being knee-capped by the other guy when we get overwhelmed by whatever is going on. God is good. He gives good answers. No matter how things look now, He’s got this. He’s with you in what is going on. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.” Hebrews 11:1. We hang onto our hope in Him, until we hit faith and we return to the certainty of Who He is … now we have substance … we aren’t trying to push faith out, we know that we know Who He is.

Silence from heaven is never final … it means it is faith-stretching time – during that time we need to dig into our hope chest and remind ourselves of Who He is and what He has done for us. Hope maintenance facilitates growing and strengthening OUR faith. We stop using other people’s experiences to push us along, and start developing our own history, our own stories of His grace in action. Then we can’t be stopped. Remember:  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 . I believe that hoping in God’s goodness is the key that breathes life into overwhelmed struggling, sad hearts. Bye. 👋

P 2118 It is not us. IT IS HIM!

/ DVH

In the past we have ‘assessed’ our ability to ‘do spiritual stuff’ by results. Some people seemed better empowered to pray for the sick etc. than we were. This meant that the largest part of the Body of Christ became inactive. I believe that we ALL need to live our lives daily filled with the Holy Spirit and His power.1 Corinthians 2:5, Paul is speaking:  ”… I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling.  My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.”

The power of God comes from Him, we totally rely upon Him and what Jesus did on the cross. So there is no point in looking in our pockets to see if we have it, because the bible clearly says it’s IN HIM!  I think the Body of Christ avoids some things because we think we have no power. But the power belongs to the Holy Spirit make Him your new BFF. Jesus breathed on His disciples and told them to receive the Holy Spirit, and then they went out and prayed for the sick and they got well. They told demons to get lost and they went! A-n-d they also raised the dead. By implication they could have quieted a raging sea. Jesus asked them: “Where is YOUR faith?”

We can rabbit on endlessly about whether we need to speak in tongues – or not; or wear a hat in church – or not;  or women should be silent – or not. Blah blah blah. But the real truth is that even if we try to begin to love one another WE FAIL. We have this sum backwards. We are ‘trying to be’ something, instead of learning how to live in His Presence. He PROMISED to be with us. I think we gave up because it is easier to claim scriptures than it is to live them out.  

Listen to this: “How God anointed and consecrated Jesus of Nazareth with the [Holy] Spirit and with strength and ability and power; how He went about doing good and, in particular, curing all who were harassed and oppressed by [the power of] the devil, FOR GOD WAS WITH HIM.” Acts 16:38. Where did Jesus get His power from? God. It wasn’t Christ’s power – it was the Spirit of God’s Power. Jesus just copied what He saw His Father doing…  Christ received the Spirit, and now we are learning to receive Him and make Him welcome. So we value His Presence more than our needs, opinions and lifestyles. 

That means our needs, opinions and lifestyles are gunna change because HE HAS DIFFERENT LIVING CONDITIONS THAN WE DO. To walk with Him we need to live mindful of what He likes. The challenge is to live our lives like Christ did – He lived in perfect love and loved and cared for OTHERS. Jesus became human and did all that for us. His power flowing through me will not make me arrogant, or controlling, it makes me humble. The more I see Him touch people when I inadequately pray, the more I give glory to God. 

Here’s a real life testimony for ya to show you it isn’t US, we simple need to learn to co-operate with the Holy Spirit and do what He is doing. Years ago, a couple next door to us had a baby boy. The little child started to fit with a high fever. The end result was he turned blue and stopped breathing.  The mother came running into our house screaming at me: “My baby is dead” and she handed him to me. He looked dead believe me. I didn’t pray.  I shook the baby hard and said: “Don’t you dare die on me!” The kid took a breath, opened his eyes and started screaming, probably because he didn’t know me from a bean pole. I handed him back to his mother screeching his dear little head off! Was he really dead? I dunno! He ain’t DEAD now! Here’s the kicker … his mother gave him to me because she thought I was a nurse. (Hubby is the nurse BTW.) 

Here is another one:  We travel on the road for Jesus as often as we can, and we give away bibles etc. etc. because you can start great conversations that way. Hubby went into a woodcraft shop in Tasmania once, and he came out a few minutes later VERY frustrated. The lady behind the counter was incredibly rude and angry with him and he wanted to leave that place … pronto. I’m the praying bunny in the car, and she wasn’t rude to me, so I asked him to go back and give her one of my bookmarks. Hubby did not want to go but he went back in anyway.  He was gone much longer this time and he came back out beaming!! The lady in the shop gave her life to the Lord on the spot – she burst into tears and he was able to share Jesus with her. Yay, Holy Spirit – the wind was blowing that day!

Live the way Jesus did – do whatever you see our Heavenly Father doing. It’s not you it’s Christ IN you!. Bye 👋🏻