Christianity

P 2688 To grow faith – use supplements!

/ DVH

“So devote yourselves to lavishly supplementing your faith with goodness, and to goodness add understanding, and to understanding add the strength of self-control, and to self-control add patient endurance, and to patient endurance add godliness, and to godliness add mercy toward your brothers and sisters, and to mercy toward others add unending love. Since these virtues are already planted deep within, and you possess them in abundant supply, they will keep you from being inactive or fruitless in your pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately.” 2 Peter 1:5-8 TPT.

I love the way this version brings out a clear meaning to some quite complicated verses. I like to look at this progressive thought Peter has, as a way of walking with the Lord. If we look at these faith ‘pills’ then we can see that this kind of walking is not aimless. We are actually going somewhere when we deliberately add goodness to our fragile as well as sometimes wobbly …faith. Instead we are deliberately, step by step, walking toward unending love.

Instead of seeing these verses as a whole lotta words that seem to be joined together like beads on a string, it helps to read it as progressive instructions. Let us say my faith is lagging, I am living my daily life doing the same old, same old. My prayers seem dead and lifeless – and maybe a bit repetitious. My bible reading ends with the thought …“thank goodness that’s over with for today.” If things get difficult my first thought is nearer to: “the end of the world as I know it”  … than it is to: “what are You going to do with this Lord?” 

I may even start to think tithing is beyond me, maybe I will just give what I can afford until I have resolved my current financial crisis.. And I begin to avoid anybody who drives me crazy because I can’t cope with them. My faith is heading for a crash, and I don’t know how to stop it. Well, here’s the solution, thank you Apostle Peter!! First of all I pick up what remains of my dragged along faith, and repent. Then I start my new spiritual vitamin regime. That means I add other things into my basket to help, or supplement my faith. I am not stingy with these add-ons, I throw lots of each one in. (That’s what ‘lavish’ means!) 

Let’s look at goodness. How do I add goodness to faith? First of all I look at the source of all our goodness – Almighty God. I deliberately sit and think about my life, so I can notice how His goodness has been following me, quietly, and unobtrusively. I deliberately look for the signs of His Presence in the midst of my troubles. I start noting all the good things, and I choose to leave the disappointments behind. Then I find someone worse off than me and do something spontaneously loving for them!  After that is moving along, and I acknowledge that I can be good to many people, not just one! Then I take another supplement – understanding. My understanding is based on WHO He is, not whether my life makes sense or not.

He is the only way my life will make sense. I must discipline myself to understand that He is God, and this means I may not always comprehend what is going on. But I know He is good, so I start reading verses about how good He is. To do that I am going to need self-control … focus. In essence I have stopped seeing my problems as the centre of my universe and I have begun to let go of them giving them over to Him and leaving them there.  I will need self control to fix my mind on good things instead of rehearsing how hard my life is. 

Next I need patient endurance. That’s because I serve Him He does not serve me! Every now and then I also stop and remind myself of these intentional supplements. I need these things to get through the mire of how I feel, simply because now I want to arrive at unending love – not just to escape from difficulties. That means that I will need to be patient with myself as well! Endurance, holding our focus, helps us to let the Lord accomplish what He wants to do IN us. 

Ding, ding! Time for the next supplement. Now I need to add godliness to the previous supplements, otherwise I can easily become obsessed with how hard things are, instead of looking for His goodness in the land of the living now I am focussing on His promise that I can endure all things because He is strengthening me! To live aware of His godliness I am going to need to adopt mercy – for you, and for me, and anybody else who crosses my path. All judgment and condemnation does is chuck us out of the battle right when we are about to win it.

Last supplement, unending love. Each previous vitamin I have taken has reminded me that I am a recipient of His everlasting, unfailing love. Even though I may not feel like I have all these supplements, the bible says I have them! “Since these virtues are planted deep within.” So my faith needs to kick in. BTW the book says that I don’t just have some – I have lots.

The bonus buy in all this vitamin taking is that I will walk away from constantly staring at my problems, because I have a new focus —  now I wanna see His goodness in the land of the living!  Instead of going round and round, trying to find solutions, going nowhere – I have a purpose. I want to know the One Who rescued me intimately and my vitamin taking helps me REMEMBER Who He is. I know I can’t do anything without His help, but I can step out in faith by obeying what He says, step by step, from His book, and become a good old lady, who takes all of my vitamin supplements!  Bye. 👋

P 2687 The bible is huge – it just keeps getting bigger!

/ DVH

The bible is constantly revealing more about our Lord and Saviour, and His Ways – it is like the universe, still expanding. As our knowledge of Him grows so does the power and content of this book! Our corporate or personal experiences should never be used to negate what His book says, because we don’t know everything … despite the way we sometimes present ourselves to this world! We can easily misunderstand what this book says, or we can accept someone else’s POV and take it as our own without even personally investing in it. It is folly to say “God doesn’t do that” or “He won’t do this,” based on the fact that He has not done whatever it is for us, personally. We dare not judge the scriptures by our own experiences. Our experiences are limited and He is a limitless God! 

We — as part of the whole body of Christ, must stop thinking that our little denomination contains the only people who know the truth, so what our church thinks and says, is the only way. Actually only liking a church because you agree with its theology can be a dangerous thing. We just limited God to whatever our church believes. That won’t lead to transformation … it could lead to all kinds of false expectation – some of it very unrealistic! We need honest uncharismatic leaders who simply walk with the Holy Spirit.

Just because Joe Bloggs goes to a little church on top of a hill in the country, and you or I go to a mega church that meets in the city – that doesn’t make our doctrine more right than Joe’s – or Joe more right than us. It’s great if our really big church has an evangelist, pastor, prophet and teacher and lots of functioning helpers etc!  Perhaps Joe’s church has a pastor who only comes once a month!! What does it matter, if he bows his knee to Christ and so do we? We are family. Personally, I think that as ‘the Lord looks on the heart’ then that’s where we should learn to look too! 

If we want to find a good leader then we need to find an honest man who admits he’s not all that, and he’s not there yet … (wherever there is) … and that honest person continually shares his personal growing edges from the pulpit. Meanwhile it is daft to leave everything, including pressing in, to the pastor, or the prophet or someone-Who-knows Jesus better-than-I-do. Otherwise we are putting undue pressure on the top. Reaching the world belongs to all of us not just to the guy out in front. He’s the Leader. That means he is the one appointed to give us direction. He gives the Lord’s accent on things that God wants us to carefully look at, as a part of the whole body … and that includes Joe’s church!

We simply must stop seeing our own little corner of this world, and what we have learnt, as the whole answer. Jesus Christ is everyone’s Answer!! If Almighty God gave any of us His whole answer it would blow our minds! And then we would end up running about like headless chickens trying to make whatever He said happen … when none of us can accomplish anything lasting. We have more resources than the generations that went before us, yet reaching the world still escapes us! While we are fragmented we are losing the incredible power of agreement. We need humble, respectful unity.

There is spiritual power available for any individual who has been trained by obedience, and learnt love while they are following Him. In the Bible, we have our best example of the power of an obedient man! During the temptation in the wilderness – Jesus told our enemy: “man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” After resisting the enemy’s temptations, Jesus went out into the world and lived out what He just said. How hard can it be? it ain’t rocket science, even fishermen eventually managed to listen and do!

The Lord Jesus lived minute by minute giving us an example to follow. If we insist on simply adhering to our denominational rules there is a strong possibility that even more generations will miss out on the POWER that flows through corporate obedience. This life isn’t just about giving the right answers, it’s about living out what we know, and what we are becoming, in our own small way. We are the Word of God that people can see, so everyone around us can know that Jesus Christ is real. We don’t follow religious rules, we follow the same Holy Spirit Christ Himself followed.

So every single day, individually, we personally go to God to get instructions for ourselves, for our own life. We read the book, pray over it, and then go out and do whatever the bible told us to do! And that’s why I think it is not good to shop around and join a church that preaches the kind of stuff we think we want to hear. Personal growth comes from being stretched and challenged. We need the person who is our leader to LEAD, let’s forget the popularity contest.

In many churches today, we have allowed popularity and/or fear to rule us. Jesus did everything He did for ALL of us, so it is a crying shame for the body of Christ to be ruled by inactivity, social programs and fear of error. While we are back-slapping ourselves over all the programs we are running, we are missing the point. People don’t have to be taught to be obedient, obedience is normal for Christians. That’s what becoming a disciple of Jesus entails. 

This means we repent, quickly. We stop thinking we know it all and we are better than the church down the road who only have a congregation of fifty. We listen with our spiritual ears open so we can hear what the Spirit of God is saying to me, personally. We don’t just listen for praise – we listen to diagnose why we are not effectual and fix stuff with the Holy Spirit’s help. That’s where true humility starts. At the same time we refuse to pledge allegiance to anything or anyone other than Christ Himself. Plus we acknowledge that we don’t know everything and we could learn something from someone else’s church.

The bible is far bigger than we have allowed it to be. Our disobedience and lack of love is costing us generations. Let’s start by obeying Him as individuals to see where He leads us all, corporately.  Bye.👋

P 2686 The way we see others …

/ DVH

makes all the difference!! 

For years I had quite strong expectations regarding the people who are close to me – people like family, friends and relatives …I hoped they would be nice to me because I had a broken-heart because of a difficult early life. That’s what you call an unwise expectation!  I was very immature and quite dependant on other people’s approval. My time recently has been spent growing UP!

I think I kind of expected other people to be nice to me because I was abused as a child. And those people who hurt me, were still in my life. Some of their personal faults and proclivities meant they actually formed my world-view in the first place!  But I’ve learnt over time, that unless Jesus is in charge we all remain the same, and sometimes … we can get worse! Putting the key to our happiness in someone else’s pocket is a very dumb idea.

This was kind of like a giant chip on my shoulder, but I didn’t know it was there, I thought how I felt was normal because of my greatly disrupted early life. I saw myself as broken and it was someone else’s fault, not mine, so I couldn’t help it. Meanwhile I totally ignored the fact that as an adult I now had the power to change! Everyone else seemed so normal, and it often looked to me like I was the odd man out. I did not make allowances for the fact that others are as broken, if not more so, than I am. We are all broken in different ways.

When we choose to view life through pain, sorrow and suffering, it can result in a distorted view. I was a very disappointed, broken-hearted, and sometimes angry child – now walking about in an adult body, with a warped view of others. Sadly that meant at that time I was making a choice to go round and round in a little whirlpool, instead of advancing up the river, under the Lord’s loving Eye. Meanwhile, if these people happened to hurt me again, then that was often the final straw. That action meant that they would never change, they would never be nice to me! And despair joined the party.

I wish I could say that Christianity totally healed me from any of those thoughts and ideas, but it didn’t. It sort of kind of fed them, by telling me over and over that I was fine, God loved me, but I was definitely broken, it was not my fault and I desperately needed healing! I was one of those people who were never going to triumph in adversity purely because of my back ground. That meant that I chased healing up one hill and down the other, using pretty messed up faith. Unfortunately what I believed at that time actually cemented me into the very place I wanted to escape from!

That’s when the Lord began to deal with me. He was gentle and kind, but firm and unrelenting. He made it clear that I could no longer go forward excusing my behaviour whilst I was holding other people to account for theirs!  I love these words from the bible  “…but God …” because HE is always the real reason we keep moving on. He is so patient, and many times I’ve clung tightly to the words in Matthew 12:20, that say this about Jesus:“He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle. Finally He will cause justice to be victorious.”

I started to understand just how broken everyone else is. We all need healing, and the people I was interacting with didn’t know Him at all. That meant if I wanted to see real change then someone was going to have to co-operate with Him! He gave me this strategy: “What if you choose to see those people as human beings – not as someone who owes you something?” That meant viewing them as lost, broken, damaged human beings, just like me..

You know in all those years in the wilderness wandering around desperately looking for someone who could heal my broken heart, it never occurred to me that I had the power for change already …but I wasn’t using it. I could choose to forget the past and simply love the people I was avoiding or I disliked. He gave all of us that power at Calvary. He chose, and now I can too. So I did. I chose to believe Him and not how I felt. I let go of any expectations that the other people would EVER change and grabbed hold of His hand – because HE will never change. Now He’s teaching me to love the unlovely, the people who persecuted me, and those who were supposed to love me but they didn’t or couldn’t.

When I made that choice, it opened my eyes. I already knew lots of scriptures about forgiveness. The reality was I read them, and I prayed and I meant it. However, I got disappointed over and over again because forgiveness didn’t seem to help me with how I felt – and the other person did not change. It was then that  I saw that my forgiveness was conditional, it relied upon the other person changing.

Praise God my feelings eventually caught up with His reality. The way we see others, makes all the difference.  God  is gently teaching me His Way to love, how to look and see others the Way He sees them. If I don’t expect things from others then I won’t be disappointed if they lack the ability to love. I have to see everyone through His eyes and leave my expectations with Him. This life is about learning to love, even those people who don’t love us. When we live that way – we are truly free.

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11.👋

P 2684 FIRE.🔥

/ DVH

Daniel 3 – An excerpt from the GN Version V21-25: “So they tied them up, fully dressed—shirts, robes, caps, and all—and threw them into the blazing furnace. Now because the king had given strict orders for the furnace to be made extremely hot, the flames burned up the guards who took the men to the furnace. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, still tied up, fell into the heart of the blazing fire. Suddenly Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement. He asked his officials, “Didn’t we tie up three men and throw them into the blazing furnace?” They answered, “Yes, we did, Your Majesty.” “Then why do I see four men walking around in the fire?” he asked. “They are not tied up, and they show no sign of being hurt—and the fourth one looks like an angel.…”

Just briefly to recap, these three men were thoroughly bound and thrown into an incredibly hot furnace, through no fault of their own, simply because they refused to bow down to a huge statue of the egotistical king. My point today has come from this story. Sin will tie us up and leave us bound. Our own sin, or even other people’s sins against us. However the fire of God comes to burn away everything that is holding us fast into the past. We need the fire of His love to burn away our bondages. 

This is why it is imperative that we forgive other people quickly. The longer we stew on our offences the deeper the roots of those offences drive themselves down into our hearts, minds and emotions. If we are not careful we can end up with a full grown tree that has a root of bitterness, plus all kinds of other junk. Îf you have ever pulled up some sort of a real tree you will know that they are very hard to get out of the ground once they are established!

However, His fire comes on our lives to burn off these bondages – even the ones we have willingly embraced. It doesn’t matter how we got into the furnace, He will get us out! He will not leave us there. Because the fire of His Love and passion for us is always upon us.But we will need to walk WITH Him through those flames.The hotter the fire the quicker and more productive our new found freedom is going to be. When those three men came out of that furnace, everyone’s life changed— for the better!

I want to remind us all of something Isaiah said. “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.”  Isaiah 43:2. I believe that Isaiah 43:2 is a visual example of what Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego experienced. They were thrown into that fire and it was not their fault. However, SomeBody Else was in there with them, and in that place they were released from all captivity. The fire set them up with a new way to live.

At any given moment we can be thrown into some sort of ‘fire’ by life’s difficulties. Everything is fine, and then suddenly you are standing there watching your life disintegrate, with the fire’s intense heat all around you, and you don’t know where it came from and you don’t know why it has happened! That fire may have been sent by the enemy to destroy us, BUT God will use it to burn off all our bondages. However, our responses to any temptation to run away, can thwart the fire’s purpose. Always remember, God does not send these difficulties, He uses them to take us to a new and safer place, so we can stand in the blazing fire of adverse circumstances and not be afraid.

He promises to always be with us. That’s the first and only place you need to nail your faith to the wall. Not whether we will get out or not, not why we are in there, or even what we did to get in there, but the fact that He promised to be with us! We cannot come to harm when He is there with us. His rod and staff are there to comfort us. He’s setting the table in front of our enemies for a brand new feast. That cup He is holding for us to drink from, is overflowing with His goodness, His love, His compassion, and His deliverance. 

Drinking from His cup of suffering, and sorrow will always taste bitter initially, but as we yield to HIM, these things will do us good. BTW, yielding is not the same as giving up! The more we drink from His cup and share His suffering, the more we will understand what He has done for us, and what we have been given. We will benefit if we choose to stand in the fiery furnaces of this life WITH HIM by our side. His perfect love will throw out all fear. Pray for ‘endurance, until He accomplishes in your heart whatever He wants for His glory.’ 🙌

“Beloved friends, if life gets extremely difficult, with many tests, don’t be bewildered as though something strange were overwhelming you. Instead, continue to rejoice, for you, in a measure, have shared in the sufferings of the Anointed One so that you can share in the revelation of His glory and celebrate with even greater gladness!” 1 Peter 4:12-13.

P 2683 We are here to be a blessing.

/ DVH

Our lives are God’s love gift to others. So today, here’s an extremely powerful way to see how surrendered we all are! Let’s say somebody has just deliberately hurt you or annoyed the life out of you – what is your immediate response? We are only as surrendered to the life of God within us, as we are in our weakest, crankiest, most vulnerable moments. Telling the Lord we surrender to Him isn’t worth a hill of beans, if that doesn’t have its roots firmly established in reality. The power to change this world around us grows, as we use His power to change ourselves, first.

What we say, sing about, or have carefully read about on the subject of surrender, is utterly pointless – if it doesn’t bear fruit that is seeable in our lives! God is looking for fruitfulness, not hot air or even wishful thinking. We can tell if we have any fruit or not when this life squishes us tightly, That’s when our true selves emerge. It is also when the fruit of the Spirit can appear and spread a blessing.

Jesus Christ showed humanity GRACE from the cross. He got that Grace the same way we get it. HE MADE CHOICES. He showed Grace to His captors when they came to arrest Him, and they nailed Him to the tree. If we want to let Grace flow out of us, like AIR, then we need to continually take it in by faith and keep releasing it. That means we don’t excuse ourselves when we react to someone else, instead we choose to repent. So we let that grace flow out of us, towards others who probably don’t deserve it. His Grace is THAT powerful. It will transform us while it reaches out to others. This life is not about acquiring graces, it is about becoming His GRACE to others.

We can daily facilitate our own walk with Him, simply by valuing Grace, staying humble, and participating in repentance. If we continually pay attention to our feelings, instead of acting on the Word of God, we are choosing to empower a place inside us that needs to die. It is not that we are not ‘allowed’ to have feelings – rather, those feelings don’t need to run our responses or our lives. We actively make a choice to stop empowering the things that don’t produce His life in us. However, if we are being real with ourselves we probably already know the kind of things that make us stumble. They are often the things we excuse and we say: “Well, that’s not all that bad!”

The greatest Grace of God, Love, includes self-control. For the sap of the vine to flow into the fruit of the vine and grow wonderful grapes, the branch must stay attached. When I choose my way instead of His way I am restricting the flow of His sap. That branch has no destiny of its own, its entire destiny is tied up IN the Vine. If we want to abide in His love, then we must to learn to operate daily using the Grace He has given us. It’s endless! We don’t need to consult our feelings to see if we have grace, we simply step out and act appropriately toward the other person using our faith. We submit to Grace, come under Grace and then release what we already have.

“Since we are approaching the end of all things, be intentional, purposeful, and self-controlled so that you can be given to prayer. Above all, constantly echo God’s intense love for one another, for love will be a canopy over a multitude of sins.… … For to Him belong the power and the glory forever throughout all ages! Amen.” 1 Peter 4:7-8, 10-11 TPT.

Christians have been saved to serve others. We are going to need loads of humility to do that. This means we choose to progressively, and intentionally, learn to live as Christ Himself lived. He lived entirely for His Father’s purposes, not just what suited Him. He didn’t pretend – He simply was that Person. However, we haven’t been redeemed to be Jesus clones either, stringently following a bunch of rules. Rather we are to be voluntary imitators of Christ. Choosing to lay down our lives like He did..

His Grace has given us gifts that we are to use for the benefit of others. They are not to call attention to ourselves or raise up some sort of following. When we actively, continually forgive those who trespass against us, we will learn humility. At the same time we are extending His love canopy over them as we share what we already have. We are here, right here, right now, to be a blessing to this world, just like He was. 👋

P 2682 Easy Peasy … NOT!

/ DVH

“For the Scriptures tell us: Whoever wants to embrace true life and find beauty in each day must stop speaking evil, hurtful words and never deceive in what they say. Always turn from what is wrong and cultivate what is good; eagerly pursue peace in every relationship, making it your prize.” 1 Peter 3:10-11 TPT.

Monitoring our words is so powerful and special, when we fail to do it, we can prevent ourselves from finding beauty in each new day!  I bumbled along saying whatever came into my head for years. I was being true to myself – a common theme nowadays – but I was in the wrong spirit, because I was not yet walking in a renewed mind. Jesus Himself talked about that kind of thing in Luke 9:55. The disciples were unhappy because the Samaritans did not welcome the Lord into their village. They wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume this village, like Elijah did and the Lord Jesus rebuked them for saying and thinking like that.

To be honest, it seems to me that the disciples did not fully understand the working of the Holy Spirit. He came to facilitate our new birth, not to exterminate us! Watching what we say means we will always need His full-time help. Today I want to share the little bits I’ve learnt so far as I’ve been walking along with Him. To start with, the Holy Spirit always gives me a warning nudge. What I mean by that is that He knows what I want to say, and He will speak to my heart and say: “Don’t say that,” before I’ve opened my mouth. 

You see it is much too easy to think I’m a big girl now, I can judge and choose my own words and I don’t actually need a filter. But the truth is … I need a full-time filter BIG time! The whole thing about our words is that they are intimately personal. They come from our own private thoughts. The Lord knows my heart and He knows that other person’s heart as well, and He knows what will hurt, and what will heal. He also knows what will send me off into a tangent, or what will build up my faith, as well as theirs. Knowing someone’s heart means knowing their motivation, and inclinations – our God is brilliant at that!

He knows when I feel inclined to bad mouth the other person or try to put them in their place, because I happen to think it is called for.  So unless my mind is renewed, I am sunk … I will actually need to make quality choices to participate in His renewal. In other words – unless what I think, is the way that I act, not just something I say I believe or agree with – I can, and probably will misspeak. That realisation is a ‘woe is me’ moment. The best thing to do after woe is me is to repent … fast! Repent to the Lord, the other person and to anybody else within ear-shot.

We must never forget that our words are powerful. We can speak life or death to someone else, whether they are present or not. That same voice we’ve been given that can raise the dead and heal the sick, needs oversight!  I have struggled with a number of relationships over the years, and I have found that if I give in to self-pity, grumbling or criticism, whether those things are justified or not … I’m definitely going to end up saying something stupid that I will regret. 

It is better to remain silent rather than say something that cements the other person into a role you have created in your own mind, whether they mean to treat you badly or not. We have the power to speak life, this means we need to pull our focus back onto what is “good, right and profitable.” The bible tells us to “let our minds dwell on these things.” So when we let fly and say something unkind etc. — guess what our minds have been doing??  Yeah, I don’t like that idea either.

We have to choose to live this way now, and it cannot be a religious thing, it is a reliance thing. It’s a choice we make for the Lord and the other person. If you can’t trust yourself to say something good, then saying nothing at all, is a truly great idea. However, we are not meant to lie, so how do we say good things about people who have deliberately and sometimes maliciously treated us badly? Glad you asked that question – because I have an answer! We ask the Lord what He wants us to do or say in that moment. We choose to lay aside our own judgment, anger, and hurt, because when we do that, we are also avoiding being judged ourselves. So we either keep schtum or we choose our words carefully with Him helping us.

Just to make things clear, this can be a very difficult thing to do when you are someone who finds out what they think when they say it out loud! I’m an external processor, and telling me to watch what I say is like sending me to the Paris Olympics to enter a relay race. Not happening! BUT … I have a Helper Who knows exactly what I am going to say before I say it so I am learning to rely upon His judgment not my own. I’m happy to do that because the bible says: “lean not on your own understanding …” Win win. Easy peasy … with His help. Bye. 👋

P 2681 Absolute Surrender

/ DVH

“Since Christ, though innocent, suffered in His flesh for you, now you also must be a prepared soldier, having the same mind-set, for whoever has died in his body is done with sin. So live the rest of your earthly life no longer concerned with human desires but consumed with what brings pleasure to God.”1 Peter 4:1-2 TPT. 

And there you go, a fantastic standard that is impossible to reach outside of the governance of the Holy Spirit! This life is always about choices. Unfortunately, the church today is in a bit of a hole, because we have figured out ways to make that choice sound user-friendly, or – we’ve hidden the choices away somewhere in the fine print. The thing is, we cannot legislate, or even subtly obfuscate reality. Doing that will eventually turn around and bite everyone of us on the backside. It’s His truth that sets us free.

I think that the men and women of God in the New Testament learnt this kind of stuff as they went along. The whole idea that everyone was suddenly rendered instantly whole, spiritually sound, as well as personally fabulous, is error. They had a Saviour just like we do – they had to learn stuff just like we do. If you read the New Testament carefully, you will see that there were troubles, strife and skirmishes even as the church was developing and growing.

People still did the dumbest things, even though they had given their lives to Christ and wanted to live their lives for Him. However, back then they knew they had the Holy Spirit,He taught those people personally, He will do that for us too!We need to learn to value and appreciate His Presence more than life itself. The Holy Spirit is not just about speaking in tongues – HE is our Helper, our Counsellor, our comforter, our personal teacher. Cherish Him.

Meanwhile, the Christian life isn’t just about what we don’t do. It’s about what we must do – ON PURPOSE.  We’ve lived for years with rules that are almost impossible to keep, and at the same time we invited other people to join us. Then we got disappointed when they didn’t want participate. “Come to our church and we will actively teach you to obey a whole lot of rules that we can’t obey either!” 😳

The same method that saved us, CHANGES us. It’s called absolute surrender. We do it in faith and we live it out daily. The problems come because we pretend to be something we are not. We will have to die to be these people, His new creation, and that ain’t pretty. Sadly, we’ve subtly altered His life-giving invitation to live a new life IN Him – because: “come to our church and we’ll teach you how to get dead to yourself” doesn’t’ look good on a billboard! 

Today, many people in the West are living in a secular nanny-state that insists we must be politicly correct. I personally believe that particular premise invites deception. I’ve had a number of conversations with people who are working and living out in this world and they cheerfully parrot off: “Oh, you can’t say that now!” or “That’s inappropriate!”  Human beings are never going to be legislated into being changed  – we are way too inherently disobedient! I truly love putting Jesus in charge of me – mainly because my memory ain’t what it used to be, and if you hand me societal rules I will have forgotten them before I’ve even put them in my bag. 

I actually think this PC stuff is all nonsense. We need GOD Himself, active on our behalf, not lists of rules for things we can say – and things we can’t. You cannot legislate caring, unselfishness, and inclusiveness, because there is no underlying core in normal human beings that can support it. Human beings without God are awful. We killed the Lord of all glory and we had lots of words and theories to prove that was the right thing to do. Think about it – God Himself came here and we killed Him. Praise the Lord Jesus – He did not stay dead! Our hope is in the Saviour Who rose from the grave, not rules. The same Holy Spirit Who raised Him up will change us.

The Holy Spirit has incredible, selfless qualities in super, unmeasurable, abundance. All that plus WISDOM! But human beings don’t. Watch little kids in the playground. They will haul off and clock each other. They will snatch things – and they won’t care two hoots about the other child crying. Adults buy guns and knives because they don’t feel safe. They don’t feel safe because this world is not safe … selfishness and sin were born into all our hearts! What we want in and for ourselves is to be indulged, and proved right. However, the assumption that I know what is best for me is, at best, twaddle! The best way for humanity to be changed and transformed is to submit to Christ’s leadership. 

Absolute surrender is the only way to go. Otherwise we will begin to reject any rules, and grow resentment, and that stuff leaks out in particularly vicious ways when nobody expects it. It’s called anarchy. Soldiers do not enlist to have a desk job, they enlist to fight. And if need be – they will die for what they believe. We too, were born again to fight … but not each other. We are to daily fight the selfishness that surrounds us – releasing His love everywhere we go, and if need be, we will die for the people who hate us. At the same time we must stop fighting the Holy Spirit for the right to run our lives the way we want them to be, and simply SURRENDER to His Ways. That’s the way forward, totally surrendered and absolutely sold out for Jesus. 👋

P 2677 Looking for the good.

/ DVH

“Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.”1 Corinthians 13:7TPT. I highly recommend speaking life into whatever you can see that is good, and of God in other people. It is God-honouring to tell the people we know, what’s good about them. So today, I wanted to follow up yesterdays’ blog with something positive we can hopefully all do.

I am not talking about flattery. I believe we need speak real things, positive things, things that will help others feel encouraged and loved. You can be used by God to create a safe verbal shelter for the people you care about — and who doesn’t need that?! Flattery is also deceitful. It can’t build anything because it has a rotten foundation. Often the motivation behind flattery is to gain advantage over someone else.

I love this verse from Song of Songs 4:7: “You are altogether beautiful, my darling;  there is no flaw in you.” Oh, the things the Lord says! This whole book is about a love story and worth reading just from that POV. The bride/beloved in it, is not flawless, the Shepherd is talking about the way he sees her. On the other hand, unfortunately, the Shulamite woman can see her flaws clearly. Some of them are even physical, but the Shepherd sees so much more than she can see. When we look through LOVE we can see so much more. It is interesting to note that if we have a physical flaw, sometimes we cannot see beyond it.

The Lord rebuked me recently about the way I view myself and He said something that was so accurate I laughed out loud. It seems I avoid mirrors. If there is one in the room I look away from it, or even down. Apparently, I am ashamed of the way I look … so … I don’t look at me unless I have to! This attitude shows me a place inside, where I need His loving, caring touch. I know I need to let His Love into my mind and heart, or I will just pass that shame on to someone else in my own speech. 

The way the Shepherd in this book speaks to his bride, as well as about her, is a wonderful example of love building the other person up! Song of Songs is a fantastic illustration of the power of words to transform a life and develop LOVE. The Shepherd’s love spoken out, freely deposits that quality into the Shulamite’s life, and she does the same for him. That love transforms everything it touches.

This principle, prompted by the Holy Spirit, and activated in our own lives, can empower someone else to be bigger and more positive than they are. The other person discovers life is not about outward looks, or talents, it is about loving and being loved. In my opinion, there is a whole other person inside most of us, just waiting to come out. But we’ve learnt early on in our lives that freely expressing ourselves, and being ourselves, led to disapproval – so we quit.

Christians have the capacity and the power to speak life – Jesus died to give that to us. His truth was always tempered with mercy and hope. Everything He said contained within it the power to bring about transformation and security in love. BTW, I’m not talking about being fake, rather, ask the Lord to show you accurate things to say that encourage other people to see themselves through your eyes. This involves taking note of things that are often not easily seen. We glorify God when we notice His Ways in others.

The amazing thing is, you and I don’t have to be perfectly healed and totally whole to live this way. And the even greater bonus is that speaking out life actually increases our own faith. It takes faith to speak out kindness and love when what you are receiving from that person is anger, apathy or indifference. People don’t have to yell at you for you to know they are suspicious of you and your motivations – you can kind of guess….

Lastly I would like to include a short word of warning from 1 Corinthians 3:16: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person; for God’s temple is sacred, and you together are that temple.” If I use my words to destroy you and I don’t repent for what I’ve done, I am actively cursing you. I am destroying God’s house! Not to mention the harmony that is meant to exist within that house!  Words matter. They are more than a means to communicate, they are the building blocks that open a way to build a place for God Himself to live in!

I exhort you to start praying the Lord will show something good, upright and beautiful about someone who inhabits your world. At home, at work, in your church. Let’s begin to look for the good in others and tell them. Bye. 👋

P 2675 Don’t let the lipstick/liposuction fool ya!

/ DVH

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God does not see as man sees, since man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 NASB. 

My first thought when I read this scripture today was this: wouldn’t we all be better off, if we saw others like the Lord does?! What if we appreciated people’s hearts, more than the colour of their lipstick or the fact that they have no fat around their middle? I cannot believe our society vacuums away fat! YUCK!! Social media, movies, magazines, or even the news, all present a false view of this life. See that movie star? FAKE! The media lies to us and they get paid for it! The pretty, witty, fit, and powerful people are supposed stars, yet they have had more work done on them than a renovated broken-down house! Apparently, we enjoy being fooled by illusions. Sigh. You know, many pretty people have an awful lot of spak-filler plastered on. 

Now, let’s STOP and look at SomeOne worthwhile. SomeOne truly beautiful… let’s look at Jesus the way Isaiah saw the Lord in Isaiah 53:1,2.“He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.”  Imagine that. Jesus didn’t actually need physical or scholarly attributes… yet people were attracted to Him like bees to honey. What was inside showed up on the outside. Hah! I’d like to get me some of that kind of surgery thank you Lord! Hmmm. Sometimes, when the spirit of nasty has grabbed me by the neck and I’m spewing unkind venom everywhere – I sure need some bad attitude liposuction!  Thank God for our Saviour!

Moving on … rather quickly…   that scripture from Samuel reminded me of another one: “So from now on we regard no one from a human point of view [according to worldly standards and values]. Though we have known Christ from a human point of view, now we no longer know Him in this way.”  2 Corinthians 5:16. Let me see if I can try to interpret that. We can’t know Jesus or anyone else, just with our brains. We are going to need open hungry hearts. More Lord!! 

Why is mankind so obsessed with outward beauty, physical strength, and brain power? None of that stuff lasts. People go to the gym every single day and they work out ….even in their eighties!🙄… Well, that’s nine kinds of ridiculous. Fancy spending whatever time you have left on earth, lifting weights and dieting! How tragic to live out a life not actually comprehending the things that really matter. I can’t see Moses in a gym, can you? He was too busy getting his work-out doing what God said!

Meanwhile, I can tell you personally that old age is a great leveller. You simply can’t feel superior in your intellect anymore, because you often end up forgetting the end of the sentence right after you just started it! And some days it is all I can do to get around our house. Since I decided to try to fly down the stairs, instead of just plain walking, one of my knees is out of sync with the other one. I could go on … but it would bore you to death … and I am definitely not a pretty person … so I can’t get away with that!

But, thanks to Jesus, inside me, right here, right now, I have a spiritual well that sustains me even when my body complains and my brain seizes up! BTW, I don’t believe in mirrors. My problem is that I keep looking for the 19year old I once was, in them. I’m definitely going to be disappointed on that one! A mirror cannot tell you who you are – God’s Word is the only mirror that is accurate. Praise God for a mirror that shows our true selves – and then it points to the solution!

Oh Jesus is so incredibly beautiful. He’s the One Who gladly laid down His life for His friends … that’s you and me. He has given all of us the greatest love this world will ever know. And He actually chose to do that so that for everyone – including those who are obsessed with how they look. HE LOVES them for free. The Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit are our very Best Friends, our personal cheer-squad, and our life-coach on the road to eternity. We are sooo rich!!

The thing that makes this life wonderful isn’t what we have, or look like, or how smart we are — it’s what we can freely give away to others. Envy, disappointment, and causing others to feel like they are a waste of space – those things are terrible gifts to give someone else. LOVE enriches us all. But comparison and competition highlight lack and we live this life, the only one we will get, feeling deprived.

“Don’t be fooled by their outward appearance … the LORD looks at the heart.”  Skip the fancy red lipstick, the 100 one-handed push-ups … and do more bible study instead. Trust me, you will enjoy that life more. Why should any of us make some plastic surgeon/fitness trainer/make-up artist even richer? Bye. 👋

PS Today is our Anniversary. 37 years of being married to the man of my dreams!🎈🎈💕

P 2674 Yeast.

/ DVH

“Then He (Jesus) taught them another parable: “Heaven’s kingdom can be compared to yeast that a woman takes and blends into three measures of flour and then waits until all the dough rises.””Matthew 13:33 TPT.

“Later, as Jesus and His disciples crossed over to the other side of Lake Galilee, the disciples realised they had forgotten to bring any loaves of bread. Jesus spoke up and said, “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” Thinking Jesus was scolding them over not bringing bread, they began to discuss it among themselves. 

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, “You have such little faith! Why are you arguing with one another about having no bread? Are you so slow to understand? Have you forgotten the miracle of feeding the five thousand families and how each of you ended up with a basket full of fragments? And how seven loaves of bread fed four thousand families with baskets left over? Don’t you understand? I’m not talking about bread, but I’m warning you to avoid the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” Then finally they realized He wasn’t talking about yeast found in bread, but the error of the teachings of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” Matthew 16:5-12 TPT.

Years and years ago, when I was in my late twenties, I decided to make my own bread. In those days bread making was not popular, nor was it an easy task! No bread making machines back then …the baker was the bread making machine!!  Like most mothers of three young kids, I was looking to save money anyway I could, and so I had the brilliant idea that if I made my own bread it would be healthier and save money – all at the same time. Win, win!

Boy was that a growing edge! Back then dried yeast was not what it has since become … it had only just arrived on the market. So I spent a whole lot of time writing back and forth to the manufacturers and distributors, explaining my struggle with their recipes, because their product was not all that good or even greatly effective. 

Bread making occupied an extremely tiny niche back then, but I am convinced my perseverance in complaining about that yeast product, made all the difference … eventually! Thank the Lord. My poor kids daily ate all sorts of not wonderful bread – which they privately called “lead bread.” (The little darlings!) And they longed to return to the days of eating unhealthy white bread like everyone else! After a day of struggling to make said bread — one of my kids – I forget which one … it might even have been my ex … remarked that yesterday’s bread would have made a particularly great door-stop! I was not enchanted. 

Bread making involved a whole of of kneading and proving and it took absolutely ages. Eventually, I got better at making it … OR …maybe the manufacturer finally improved the product!! But I know how hard I worked to give that manufacturer feedback! I ground up Vitamin C to improve the rising, plus I purchased bread improvers and generally worked like a navvy … all to save a few pennies. Eventually I even graduated to making fancy bread like croissants and bagels. Meanwhile my mind was consumed with bread making for years. Over time I decided fresh yeast was best … it worked a treat.

After reading these two scriptures the other day, I must confess that I totally understand why the disciples were side-tracked when Jesus began to talk about yeast. It’s easy to get side-tracked when you know a lot about the subject, especially if it is food! Food is so ordinary – you don’t expect spiritual illustrations about it. If I had been there when the Lord was talking about the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees I would definitely have been a dumb bunny like they were, thinking totally irrelevant material thoughts about that subject, as well as utterly missing His point!

Human beings often look for immediate results, and gratification … but Jesus Christ spent His entire life glorifying God. He had spent His time on earth allowing the ‘good yeast of God’s Word’ to infiltrate every corner of His Being. I think this is the essence of our faith, so I was motivated enough to ask myself: “Are my prayers about my own comfort – something immediate, like food!  Or am I looking to see what God will do for His kingdom with what is actually going on?” Unless the yeast of His word transforms me, I have nothing to offer others. Reflectively, I wonder  if the “yeast” In our daily lives could be the digested Word of God? As we add it into our days, it will permeate every single bit of our lives, causing us to become palatable to others.

Then it hit me — Jesus always saw God in ordinary things, those things we confront day by day. We need to see Him that way too! We must allow the yeast of His Word to rise within us so that other people can “taste and see that the Lord is good.” Bye for now, 🍞😊.