Co-operate

P 2521 The cross needs to be at the centre of everything.

/ DVH

One day, everything in this universe will bend its knees to what Christ did!1 Corinthians 1:17 says:“And I declare this message stripped of all philosophical arguments that empty the cross of its true power. For I trust in the all-sufficient cross of Christ alone.”Our God tells us He is a jealous God, and the Apostle Paul recognised, understood and respected and honoured that fact, in all of his ways. That man lived his life gratefully.

Paul has a huge discourse in 1 Corinthians 1 because some of the members of the Corinthian church were polarising about who baptised them, and they had divided themselves into factions, under a man’s name. These people were trying to make themselves look important by association. However, Paul could not give two hoots about any of that nonsense … he is not spreading the gospel for popularity. He is constrained by the Holy Spirit to make Christ famous. Our single-mindedness is important.

Paul speaks to these factional people very strongly. His point is that we are all baptised into Christ … not Joe Blogs or Tom Smith … In other words some guys who happen to be prophetic or have a healing ministry. These men and others like them, are just His vehicles, Christ Himself is our whole salvation and destination. Christ living in us is our hope of glory!  It is good to realise that we can be distracted, and we can end up following somebody else whose doctrine appeals to us. But salvation comes from Christ alone, and it’s all in THE BOOK. We have been promised so many things in that wonderful book, but think on this; “would you give care of your car keys to a four year old?” Salvation is the beginning, we need to let Him mature us.

Christ is the centre of our faith. But when we treat the Lord and His death like a commodity, and disrespect what Father God has done for us, we are walking on thin ice. When Jesus died for us, He exchanged His life, His favour with God, His obedience, His humility, His purity of heart and focus, and devotion … for our sins. We can easily be dragged away by our own wilful carelessness, ignorance, and blatant disregard for other people, plus our disobedience, and distinct lack of true reverence for Who Almighty God is!  What is important is not just being saved at an altar — but letting the Holy Spirit transform our hearts INTO an altar for God Himself. We live this life we have now for His sake.

If Christ Himself was not willing to grasp at His Heavenly Father’s glory, then it follows that as His followers, we too need to follow His example.“And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine Own Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”John 17:5. Jesus Christ’s sacrifice started before He was born here. It started when He chose to give up every right and privilege He had as God’s only begotten Son to leave heaven and be born here! That is the reason I exhort us all to daily linger at the foot of the cross. 

We cannot afford to be seduced away from our destiny by any one person who has a mighty anointing. That’s what the members of the church at Corinth were doing. They started following and giving their allegiance to the MEN who baptised them, and what they said. We need to thank Almighty God that He gave His gifts to men – but remain steadfast to the One Who gave them. It is in our own best interests to pay attention to what Almighty God likes, and what He doesn’t like and it’s all in the book! That’s the real reason that we ‘hide His word in our hearts’ … ‘so we may not sin against Him.’ .

Salvation isn’t just something we do once, and then we have a free ticket to heaven so we are safe. Salvation is a process, one we participate in. It is a life that choses to be laid down deliberately for Christ’s sake. We were saved and now we are daily in the process of being saved. It is a lifetime filled with moment by moment decisions to follow the way of the cross. It means we live for Him now. Every time we choose His will, His way, we die to the old way we lived before, and we are choosing to live our lives glorifying the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He breathes His life into us, minute by minute, so we can continually walk with Christ. Our job now is to co-operate with what the bible says, and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit!

The Holy Spirit of the Living God is going to confront areas in our lives that need change. The fight we fight daily to be transformed is about learning to yield plus learning to overcome. It is not easy, nor does it come naturally. This fight means we are taking God at His Word, and we are responding with obedience. It is the fight to prevail that matters. Remember, Jesus Himself did not want to go to the cross. He has personally shown us it can be hard to do the will of God. That is why we have the Helper Who is always available. There is no greater destiny for any one of us than to live and die for God’s glory. That’s what our Lord Jesus did. His cross needs to be at the centre of our lives.  🙌

P 2449 About the gifts of the Spirit …

/ DVH

“Every believer has received grace gifts, so use them to serve one another as faithful stewards of the many-coloured tapestry of God’s grace.”1 Peter 4:10 TPT. I have gifts that were given to me, so do you. The point is — what are we doing with them? Peter is telling us to use our gifts for others, they are not for our own self-serving purposes. When we use those gifts the right way, people don’t see US — they see Jesus! That tapestry we are all weaving reveals the Lord Himself.

I don’t have God-given gifts to help me feel better about myself, or to help make me important to my church. No. Those gifts are for others, they keep me humble and obedient to God’s Word. Because Jesus Christ died for me I have an opportunity to live and die for Him. Jesus means everything to our Father, and that means He gave up everything to purchase my life, by His Own dear Son’s death. He did it for all of us because He loves us that much. What a glorious generous Father we have!

Christ’s death and subsequent resurrection is the place we need to build our life on— that is the heavenly reality and we are to live this life making it part of our earthly reality. We don’t build our lives on gifts, or fame — but on Christ and what He did for us. That way the storms of this life will not be able to knock us down. Building on sand means I am building on the things of this world, and they will pass away. But when I build on what Christ did for us, that will stand forever!

Let’s look at Isaiah 11:2&3 – He’s talking about Jesus Christ: “The Spirit of the Lord will rest on HIM—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and He will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what He sees with His eyes or decide by what He hears with His ears;…” 

We can see these words in action in the Gospels, in Christ. He was so wise and so dedicated to His Father’s will. When Jesus dealt with a woman who was adulterous, He did not decide by what He saw or heard from others – He listened to the Spirit. The Spirit of God knows what is in the heart of a man and only He has the wisdom to see through the things human beings stumble over. Jesus walked with the Spirit of God, in Wisdom, so He didn’t give permission for this woman to continue in sin, or tell her she couldn’t help it, He gave her forgiveness and a new beginning.

Today I am talking about spiritual gifts… and you could ask, what am I doing in Isaiah? Everyone knows that spiritual gifts are a New Testament concept! They are mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:8-10. And …Romans 12:3-8! Yes, they are;  but Isaiah is pointing us to the One Who was coming, long before He came. He is our example in life and death. Our Leader. He is the illustration of God’s purpose in the Holy Spirit’s Presence in this world. Jesus is the One Who is the Author and Finisher of our faith. As we follow Him, and grow to be like Him, the gifts will follow us.

Before Christ died – the Holy Spirit came and rested on various people at various times for different purposes. However, He was not sent to just anyone … He came for a purpose. Isaiah describes Christ and His ministry, long before Jesus left heaven and came here. This Old Testament prophet is making it clear where the gifts we have today, came from… They came from the One Who was sent back to help us – the Holy Spirit … the Spirit of the Lord … That is the place to start when we think about spiritual gifts. We look at Jesus Who is our example. We don’t covet gifts simply for our needs or to feel important, instead we covet the Presence of the GIVER, like Christ did.

Jesus healed the sick, He raised the dead, He cast out demons. All this and more happened because of the Holy Spirit’s guidance and Presence within Him. Jesus Christ loved the Holy Spirit more than people. Whenever He chose what to do, He chose according to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Even His brothers and mother could not sway Him from obeying the Spirit. Currying favour with other people can be a stumbling block in our walk with the Holy Spirit, and we need to love His Presence more than anything, or anyone else. Humility is His favourite language. 

We can spend way too much time concentrating on ‘what gift is mine,’ and not enough time focussing on the Giver! And sometimes we can even let those gifts make us seem important. But Jesus Christ cherished the Holy Spirit’s company, and that’s the way we are to walk with Him too. God’s grace manifests itself toward others through those gifts. Because of the Holy Spirit’s Presence, they flow into us … and they  flow out through us. The gifts are not a lake, they are a RIVER. The flow is more important than the results.

To operate in the gifts of God we need to be intimately acquainted with the Holy Spirit in us. He is the same Spirit Who lived in Christ. Now He moves through us, as we actively learn to co-operate with Him. It is His power that empowers us to do what we do for the building up of the saints, and the releasing of God’s Grace into this world. BTW, the Holy Spirit will be friends with ANYONE who is prepared to obey and cherish Him. Don’t seek the gifts, seek the GIVER. – the gifts will find you!  Bye. 👋🏻

P 2323 Fruit inspection.

/ DVH

John 15:1-4 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.” Matthew 7:18-20 “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”

When things go upside down, one of the first things we need to look at is what kind of fruit is being produced from our lives. That’s a big clue for us to diagnose whatever is coming OUT of us! God good … devil bad. Bad fruit = not God. Don’t blame someone else –  instead face your own flaws. A-N-D … please don’t make excuses for yourself either: – “I’m sick.” “I’m tired.” “Life’s too hard.” “My family is like this!” “You’ve been mean to me.” Excuses. Face whatever has happened with honesty, humble yourself and repent.

The place where we can fall over is when we analyse or judge what other people are doing. Learn to accept that your reactions are just your reactions – they may be born out of experience and pain – but they are not always truth! Our feelings, or even any mental knitting we might do, are not good spiritual barometers. The minute we start analysing situations so we can defend or even explain ourselves – is the minute we start walking away from His guidance.

Sometimes fear gets in the way of facing reality. Our God took CHAOS and made something glorious out of it. And we are still enjoying His Creation today. God is not scared of, or intimidated by CHAOS. Even the chaos of our thoughts. That kind of stuff can become His building materials for a brand new day and world. So don’t be afraid of chaos … HE CAN TRANSFORM ANYTHING. He is Lord over any chaos. 

Evidence of the Holy Spirit’s fruit does not rely on external circumstances. Rather each one of these fruits is an expression of our Heavenly Father’s nature. His Personhood, His Character. His love can touch places inside us we didn’t even know we had, and when it does it does something permanent. Plus it opens our eyes to Who HE is. Then slowly but surely, that revelation takes His knowledge out of the realm of feelings into fact. 

God’s love has never relied upon US. It is a product of Who HE is. It is simply part of Him. Likewise His joy is not dependant on circumstances, like ours is. “For the joy that was set before Him, Christ endured the cross.” Hebrews 12:2. Joy is not human happiness, or satisfaction, it is actually a product of His ability to see further ahead than we can! We are often focussed upon the immediate and how stuff effects us – sometimes the greater good is coming towards us.

Lastly the Lord’s peace does not rely upon circumstances, because it is an INTERNAL thing. Jesus Christ said: “peace be still” to a stormy sea. He spoke out what was already inside Him, into this earth’s atmosphere and changed it. Understanding this will change how we pray for the sick. Peter said to the lame man, right before the guy was healed: “Silver and gold have I none but such as I HAVE give I thee.”

We can struggle and strain to BE something Christ’s death has already given us.  All we need to do is to follow Him, do what He says, and yield to the Holy Spirit, just like Jesus Himself did. We must stop trying to fit the Holy Spirit into our plans and instead find out what HE is doing, and do that.  

Christians can become obsessed with anointing and gifts – and skip over character. We’ve gone after the gifts instead of the GIVER. We desperately want the gifts, but we expect God to do all the work of transforming us. Both things will happen as we yield, and live our lives for the sake of letting His kingdom come. Inside and out! We have to learn to co–operate with the Holy Spirit. That’s when we will produce fruit that LASTS.

Each time we say ‘yes’ to His way and ‘no’ to ours – we die to self.  This is the pruning process, the stripping away of our own concepts and hopes for ‘self.’ So when we read His book, we discover what God’s love really looks like – human emotions are no substitute for it. Then we need to look at our own lives, as well as what we give away. Start with the way you treat those closest to you. Sadly we can all look good – superficially. 👋🏻

P 2282 There are no undercover Christians.

/ DVH

There’s an old saying; “You can run but you can’t hide.” Hmmm … not from where I’m standing! It seems to me most Christians could audition for ‘The Invisible Man’ and get that part – easy-peasy. On a really good day, we can also get some unsolicited applause for being extremely nice people. BUT, unfortunately, nobody would ever know we are actually almost superheroes … ‘cos we often do what we do to look good. Plus we don’t want to bring His Name into disrepute.

Jesus gave up His right to have a good reputation when He freely, permanently, associated Himself with US. Now He wants every bit of us … not just a nice outward picture. Christians desperately need the Holy Spirit’s minute by minute guidance and input. Then when we modify our behaviour, it is under His supervision. This life has nothing to do with our power to mislead people, and has everything to do with who we really are inside. We need to have active faith to co-operate with Him. Always believing that what Jesus said He would do, He will. Sin needs God-power to overcome it. Otherwise we are deceiving ourselves. Jesus Christ is our proof that it works!

Speaking of impossible concepts … I always wondered what on earth was wrong with the people from the Comic city of Metropolis? I mean really, a guy takes off his glasses and suddenly he’s Superman and they didn’t notice? They should’ve gone to Specsavers. There were a whole lotta blind as a bat people în Metropolis! Moo-ving along quickly… but not entirely irrelevantly… we can fool a whole lotta people, until they discover we weren’t being REAL and that we sin too, we just hide it better! Our sin is not an issue to the Lord.

Jesus Himself got into trouble for hanging about with sinners, however that didn’t damage His ability to speak the truth, because He IS living truth. He lived the truth out in front of everyone.  Christ knows truth comes from the inside OUT. That’s the key, following, step-by-step, the Man Who did it first. Being honest with our failings and continuing to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading.

Our God loves people. Proud ones, hypocrites, religious ones, liars, thieves, murderers, gossips, prostitutes, cheats, sexual deviants etc.etc. Aha! I hear you say, how can He possibly love those people? Here’s the long and short answer – He took all our sins to the cross and the whole of the punishment and banishment that belongs to all of us – fell on Him. ’And the Lord hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all.” 

Wonder of wonders, Jesus chose to do what He did!! Complete purity became utter depravity for our sakes on that cross. Of course He understands sinners! All of our sin was put ON Him! “He was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.” (Isaiah 53:3) We dare not skip on by any verses like this one, simply because they make us sad, or they seem to be beyond our comprehension. 

Jesus understands sin thoroughly, it landed on Him, the One Who had never sinned   … And then the unthinkable happened. Christ died and Father God turned His back on His Son Who had only ever known perfect love and unity. The Holy Spirit FLED from Him. We must aim so much higher than looking good. It’s like those apples you sometimes buy at the supermarket. They’re red and shiny, so they outwardly look delicious – but they are actually brown and going rotten inside …

Heaven forbid we should mimic goodness instead of using this life to be transformed! Our aim is to be as fresh as an apple that was pulled off a healthy tree 2 seconds ago. Then, the worst circumstances make us glow in the gathering darkness all around us. The meaner someone else gets the sweeter we become. We need to do more than pray, “Lord, change me from the inside out,” WE NEED TO LISTEN TO, AND CO-OPERATE WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT! SomeBody gave US the keys to HIS kingdom, and every asset from heaven that supported Christ, now supports US, as we draw on it by faith.

There is no need for us to live undercover anymore – instead our job is make the Holy Spirit welcome, and let Him chuck out anything He wants to – then goodness will flow from the inside of us OUT! Best advertising E-V-E-R.👋🏻

P 2224 Growing fruit.

/ DVH

Today, I want to use the fruit of patience purely as an illustration for growing the Lord’s kind of fruit. People say all the time, ‘have patience’ – like it is something that we can conjure up all by ourselves. I just want to say – if we already have it, then the Lord wouldn’t need to give it to us. Duh! 🙄 It is so obvious that our human patience and His spiritual patience, are two different things! His fruit and our ‘try harder’ are not the same! Godly patience endures all things and it grows inside our hearts like everything else He gives us – by investing in it. It involves my desire to co-operate with Him as well as being prepared to change and challenge my own mindset, at inopportune times.

In my opinion we only know we need His fruit, when we can see with our own eyes that we don’t have it!  Spiritual poverty is a great diagnostic tool of the stuff we lack. Don’t let pride, lukewarmness, or even feelings of inadequacy, fool you into missing out on the blessing of being transformed. Transformation starts in our minds, first. We need to change the way we think. Spiritual patience is one of those things that flow out from His Love in us. But the human version of patience consists of stretching ourselves beyond where we think we can go – and then announcing to the world that: “I ran out of patience, I don’t have any left.” That usually happens when we think someone else has gone too far! The fruit of the Spirit cannot run out. It is eternal. 🧐

If we already think we are quite spiritual enough, then that can cause all kinds of other problems … mainly for everyone else who happens to live around us! Under-developed unripe spiritual fruit tastes terrible – just like normal under-developed etc. etc. fruit does! 😖 I’ve found the best way to handle my own inadequacies in a whole lot of spiritual areas – is to treat this life as an ongoing learning experience. I have settled in my heart that I have not, and will not arrive, all done, all perfect, until I see Him face to face. I have chosen patience as my illustration today, because we can easily see we haven’t got it.

At the same time the best thing is to refuse to make excuses for our own bad or unwise behaviour. We are aiming at fruit, not just flowers, and that involves engaging with the process. Jesus death and resurrection has already empowered Christians to live a totally changed life – right here, right now. Recognising our humanity without excusing it, immediately releases us from the pressure to try to BE what the book says we already ARE. We rely on the power of HIS WORD. We live our lives co-operating with the Holy Spirit – today – this minute! And we are learning to live by His Grace alone. Let’s all leave ‘trying harder’ behind! Speaking for myself, I was awful at it – I don’t have the stamina for it.

God breathes His fruit into our own tree of His life in us, as we co-operate with Him. Co-operation with the Holy Spirit is like following a guide through a maze – you never know what is going to come around the corner, but our daily experiences with Him remind us that He knows where it is safe to put our feet etc. Impatient people … OR people who rely upon human patience … and then call it spirituality … get cranky at you. They often get cranky at you quite quickly. Now there’s a diagnostic tool! The result is, you feel like a dunce, a failure. Anybody who robs you of the fact that you are accepted by the Lord Jesus, is stealing your birthright, whether it is accidental, or not. Forgive them, pray for them, and then go back to leaning on Him.

When we feel inadequate – and I often do – my first port-of-call is to go to the Lord and ask where I have given my enemy, satan .. ground in my life. There is some place I am believing a lie, either because I was lied to, or I chose the lie over what God says in the book! Repentance is the answer to that one! I am allowed to learn. But, sadly, continually postponing change is a sign of rebellion. It simply means I have given rebellion a much nicer name to help ME to feel better… I called it hurt feelings, or other people’s provocation. 

Nobody can keep us from the love of God, but sometimes we need a larger revelation of His love than the one we currently have. Ask for it! The fruit of the Spirit grows from His flowing sap of love in my life – whether it is patience, kindness or long- suffering etc. I exhort you to actively ask for a greater revelation of His love, because we all need it. And He promises, in the book, to supply OUR needs. 👋🏻