Colossians 1:27

P3507 Surprise!! It’s Jesus in YOU!

/ DVH

“There is a divine mystery—a secret surprise that has been concealed from the world for generations, but now it’s being revealed, unfolded and manifested for every holy believer to experience. Living within you is the Christ Who floods you with the expectation of glory! This mystery of Christ, embedded within us, becomes a heavenly treasure chest of hope filled with the riches of glory for His people, and God wants everyone to know it!” Colossians 1:26-27 TPT. Just stop for a moment and think about it.

The way to be closer to Jesus, know more about Him, is to participate in His Ways. Read the book, and do what you already know, using your faith.. Life presents us all with so many opportunities to utilise our faith. Ordinary everyday things happen, you are running late, and you need a carpark – hands up those who ask the Lord to help them park? ✋ I’m disabled, I always need one!

We pray before we go to the shops. We ask Him to help us only buy the things He wants us to have. Many times we buy nothing but we still have fun! Perhaps some driver does something stupid on the road in front of you, do you ask the Lord for help? I am learning to bless that person with better driving skills and an encounter with Jesus, and I thank God that we were all kept safe… including the other driver.

That’s the secret BTW, remember to thank Him. Don’t just treat the Lord like the drive-through at MacDonalds … acknowledge whatever He does. Ask Him for eyes to see Him at work in your life. “In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:6. The more we acknowledge Him the more He becomes part of our lives — and that’s how we end up with more of Jesus in our lives. We simply refuse to leave Him out!  We are living-for-Jesus spiritual beings. We live this life with heaven on our minds. All of us can have as much of Jesus as we want – just don’t leave Him out! Live a life of love, daily. (1 Corinthians 13, clearly tells us what that looks like!)

He promised to be with us always — always means always! Duh! As we live this new life Jesus bought and paid for, we seek the things of His kingdom first. Acknowledge your King in everything you do. Don’t walk away from your new life In Christ by acting like everyone else around you, but we gave up those options. Now we ask the Lord to come with us, and He will go anywhere — He went to HELL, so nothing surprises Him! If you do go to play in the devil’s backyard, and you know exactly what I mean … then the Lord’s voice inside will warn you, but then He will quietly fade away. It is as if He says: “Have at it!” Repent!

We have all been given faith — the book says so. (Romans 12:3) However, I rarely feel like I have faith … I have to use my faith to find it; but that verse from Colossians above is not just a happy thought! You have Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God inside you! Let Him out!! Faith cannot develop in a vacuum, so we must actively participate in the Lord’s work – whether we feel like we can, or not. Just take one step, then take another … and pretty soon it will become a lifestyle, not a place you visit when the ceiling falls in.

Here’s some more good news about having Jesus IN us! “But you are God’s chosen treasure —priests who are kings, a spiritual “nation” set apart as God’s devoted ones. He called you out of darkness to experience His marvellous light, and now He claims you as His very own. He did this so that you would broadcast His glorious wonders throughout the world.” 1 Peter 2:9 TPT.

So if people ask the Lord: ‘who is that old lady?’ The Lord smiles and says: “She’s with Me.” What an honour, to live a life in service to the King! He picked us. Did you realise that we can ruin HIS reputation by the way we act when we think no-one is looking? Meanwhile someone is always looking, it’s inevitable in this world’s obsessive atmosphere. But as we fall in love with Jesus, the Jesus portrayed in the bible, we begin to see that correction, and discipline, are not bad things – they are His love in action in our lives.

Christ lives in us and our job is to let Him out by acting like He would. My advice is to get to know your bible, read it, then do it. All the time. The Lord quotes the bible to me often! Half the time I don’t even remember where the verses are, I have to go away and look them up. That’s all good! Having our noses inside what Jesus says and does, has to be good for us! Surprise! It’s Jesus! And He wants to walk with YOU. “Christ IN us, the hope of glory!” (Colossians 1:27). Bye. 🥳.

👋 C.C.

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. 👋