Confront

P 3082 I AM your oasis.

/ DVH

“Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to Me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis.” Matthew 11:28 TPT.

When I read this verse today the thing that hit me right between the eyes was that Jesus said: ‘I AM your oasis.’He didn’t suggest going on a 4 week cruise, or going to some spa, or theme park or even a Christian conference of some sort – the Lord says HE(!!) is our oasis. We have been misled by our feelings to think that Jesus only goes to conferences or turns up for revivals – He’s IN US – we take Him with us wherever we go! Ya might want to sit and think about that for like a millennium – I know I did – OK so it was 60 seconds … you caught me. 

You know I think we can be really bad at comprehending what the Lord is saying, most of the time. We either overstate it to the point of fanaticism and make it into rules, or we ignore it and hope He won’t mind. We can be so lax with our obedience that we only participate in extending our faith for minor things – like finding a car spot when we need one – or asking God to help us with our day. He wants to BE our day!!

He’s not an add-on. Faith steps are about things we can’t easily do by ourselves — and maybe we kind of step really quickly around things like submission, which is also a faith step. It’s like we think these things are beyond us … so we hope the minimum participation will do …”After all, Jesus knows I am weak!” That’s why He wants you to call on Him to be your strength. We go through this life trying to avoid problems or pray them away, He wants us to confront them with Him!  He longs to be our oasis.

It seems we have yet to work out that His motivation is not just to bring relief, but to usher in permanent change. Transformation of our hearts. Maybe we are hoping the Lord won’t notice because we are embarrassed with our lack of engagement with the things that matter … well guess what?? He knows, because the same Heart that tenderly watches over you, pays attention to everything else. Some problems can be solved by simply changing the way we live. Please do not misunderstand me, He is not watching over us to catch us out in our sins or errors. Instead He patiently waits and watches for us to turn our heads, even just a little bit in His direction – because He knows a better way. 

There is an easier way to live this life we have inherited from Him. But we will have to humble ourselves and submit to Him in order to fully participate in it. Everything in our world’s current view of modern reality suggests submission is not a good thing. Children don’t have to submit to their parents, wives don’t have to submit to their husbands, and nobody has to submit to anybody else’s agendas — unless they pay them well! Submission seems to be a bad word — but that word actually means we have a primary mission which takes priority over other things. Seeking His kingdom is primary – then other things get added on!

It is no wonder that we have left God’s Kingdom behind, it’s because His kingdom is a theocracy, not a democracy. Let’s daily remind ourselves that Jesus Himself submitted to His Father’s will. Sadly it seems that unless human beings can see that it BENEFITS them, they don’t give those ‘other things’ He wants to add into our lives very much attention. So many Christians have cleverly found and featured all the me-first benefits … because the bible tells us“to forget not all His benefits…” I am not sure this response is all He had in mind! 

Off-loading our burdens onto Jesus seems to be a gigantic benefit to me – but we will have to relinquish our anxiety, worry and fear at the same time. Personally, I can’t think of anything better than handing my awful pile of nasty impossible stuff to Him. However, what does He mean by – I am your oasis? An oasis is a place of water in a desert, or a place of refuge in a crisis — or even a place of refreshing. When you view that word this way it begins to make sense. The Lord is not talking about using His Presence like we would drop off our dry-cleaning and return to find everything neatly pressed and clean …He means in this life His Presence is our dwelling place.That’s an AIM – not a suggestion.

I like Ephesians 3:16-19. These 3 verses are great to meditate on because they show us what we are aiming at. 

“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Being filled to all the fullness of God is another AIM. We need to remember ..these verses are a prayer … the Apostle Paul prayed it for the church at Ephesus. But the Holy Spirit Himself not only inspired it – He preserved that prayer in the bible for our benefit. Paul is praying for US too – every time you read it say Amen! And please –  read it a lot. Now we need to use our faith to believe that Christ actively dwells in our hearts, and we need His power to understand what we have been given! It is not enough to say ‘yes’ — we have to DO yes!

Then our roots go down, so deeply into His love we cannot be moved. This is how and why the saints of old gave up their lives and were martyred. They didn’t do it for an ideology, they did it because they had been internally changed, forever!! His Presence in our lives is our OASIS. Bye. 🥳

P 3058 A change is needed.

/ DVH

“I had to nurse you and feed you with “milk,” not with the solid food of more advanced teachings, because you weren’t ready for it. In fact, you are still not ready to be fed solid food, for you are living your lives dominated by the mind-set of the flesh. Ask yourselves: Is there jealousy among you? Do you compare yourselves with others? Do you quarrel like children and end up taking sides? If so, this proves that you are living your lives centred on yourselves, dominated by the mind-set of the flesh, and behaving like unbelievers.” 1 Corinthians 3:2-3.

You know, there’s a deeper place for Christians to live daily – simply because God’s GRACE is available to each one of us all the time. His Grace facilitates our new way to live. However, Grace can’t change a FAKE ME. By that I mean, who we are can be carefully hidden under layers of ‘pious sucking it up’ instead of true transformation. Real transformation means when somebody presses button “A” in our lives, we don’t explode anymore. OH for THAT day!! 

In our society today it seems the land of harder and worse is looming up right in front of mankind. Sadly, most of the time, instead of listening to our own reactions, we make excuses for our behaviour and get furious at someone else. But because of what Jesus did for us, we no longer have to be ashamed to acknowledge where we personally went wrong.

A lot of our time in this life is wasted by pretending we are managing – when we are not. The best thing about sin is that we have an opportunity to be saved and transformed from it, when we acknowledge it! Every person on this planet has sin in common. Realising that, can lead us deeper into the Lord’s incredible Love, we must understand that despite our sinfulness, He will not turn any of us away. It is always our choice … we can live in the need for revenge, or inner peace. You know, babies always need to be looked after, adults have a life to live. Babies are not productive at all, they are consumers.

It would seem from these verses in Corinthians that the Apostle Paul knew some undernourished fat-babies in his life as well! However! “There IS NO condemnation for those who are IN Christ Jesus…!!” Acknowledgement of our own sin will lead us into a wider, broader place … where I can love you no matter what you did, because I’ve learnt hating you is just as bad as whatever you did to me! Comparison of big and little sins is killing us – and our fake identities are muddying the waters of this life. There are higher places for every single one of us to go. I tell myself: ‘Every time I confront these things in my life, I’m building my faith muscle. Every time I humble myself I am stepping into His Grace.’

So we must decide, and choose to move on from the stuff that has held us captive for most of our lives, and believe what the Lord Jesus said. It’s all part of the same faith. “It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1. The slavery comes in when we refuse to acknowledge to ourselves, that we were all born broken! Accepting the never-ending, all-encompassing love of God is available to everyone, changes our perception of things that appear to be stuck. Transparency helps us. We cannot afford to walk around with our noses in the air looking at others thinking: ‘they are more broken than I am!’

Let me be clear – the Lord won’t physically stop us, we must learn, through experience, to use our faith in His truthfulness, to stop ourselves. That’s what our faith is for – we are to live this new life we have been given, using our faith that what the Lord said He did, He did! Acknowledging our sinfulness puts feelings in second place, and at the same time we are telling ourselves that no matter how things look, Jesus has got our troubles or difficulties and He’s THE penultimate Redeemer. 

The door to that jail we lived in before we met Him – is now permanently open.There are no guards! They fell on their backs when He burst out of that grave! The enemy tries to keep all of us busy examining everyone else’s attitudes and actions for our entire lives. Unfortunately, if we put our faith down, and aim at excusing ourselves, we will continue to commit whatever sin we’ve been fighting that trips us up. Instead we must believe Jesus is telling the truth. He said He did it, so it is done. Now we repent and repair things wherever we need to, and move on.

Jesus said that while He was hanging on a cross in agony. “It. Is. Finished.” Every requirement for our new life is already in our account, it has been paid for, in full. Now we put aside the temptation to resent people, or to lie, to ourselves and others, or get angry and hate people. We simply go and do what Jesus would do. He came here to love people, so that’s what we do too! We are all pilgrims, we have not yet arrived: “but we press on!! …” 

There is incredible freedom in not excusing yourself and facing up to reality. There were times Jesus physically went up a mountain to pray. Here’s my little theory … I think He did that because He needed the spiritual, physical and emotional respite from the stuff all around Him. He need to find true REST in His Father.  Prayer and reading the bible are our spiritual life-blood – they gives us rest from striving. Listen as if God Himself was speaking to you, personally. What we need to change is our belief that your sin is worse than mine! Bye. 👋

P 2829 God bless us all, everyone!

/ DVH

There’s an old saying – you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. The wonderful thing about Christmas is that we are often forced to confront the people we’ve managed to cleverly avoid all year! Christmas is a fantastic diagnostic tool. 🥳  I’ve found, in the past, that if I thought really hard, I could come up with great reasons as to why we will be unavailable to do the extended family thing. Things like ‘the kids are sick’, ‘my spouse is over-worked and about to have a nervous breakdown’, or … the very least popular one … ‘we’ve decided to have our own holiday this year. Just a quiet one. Sorry!!‘

I do, however, have a word of caution regarding this practice, if your kids see you regularly avoiding people for whatever reason, then you ARE actively teaching them something. Especially if you have lived that way from when they were little to when they are big! You are teaching them that they don’t have to confront the things they don’t like. 🧐 It is a sad fact that kids absorb so much more of what we do, than what we say. Obviously dangerous-to-children people must be supervised or avoided, but at the same time, I learnt that we need to show our kids, by example, how to still love others even when they hurt us or behave badly. You do that by your own actions. And if you mess up, say so. I’ve said so many times over the years.

Back to my point: Christmas with the rellies. Hmmm… so now you have run out of worthy reasons, and you are there, shuddering, or clenching your fists in anticipation of yet again having to talk to Mad Cousin Max. He always manages to hit every button inside you, and smirks at you while he is doing it — because picking on people and finding their weaknesses is his hobby. His all time favourite thing includes jumping up and down on the button inside you marked “failure.” He’s so good at it, or bad at it, that you started praying about managing him last January!! 

The thing is, Max has no clue that people’s responses to him are directly linked to the way he behaves. He thinks he’s a fun person – a stirrer! At Christmas, we have an opportunity to speak God’s life into Max. So I’ve learnt to pray so the Lord can help me find something good about dear old Max, and speak into that, instead of just winging it on the day. Avoidance leads to disaster!! This man doesn’t need our disapproval – he badly needs God’s love and as you are there, you are possibly the best source of that love that poor sod has. However, if Max thinks he is a Christian … then all bets are off! I’m joking OK? …I’m hopefully using humour to make a point – love perseveres.

Let’s look at what Jesus did in a sticky family situation. You will get even more insight if you read from Mark 3:20 …But here’s Mark 3:31-35. “Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they told Him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for You.”“Who are My mother and My brothers?” He asked. Then He looked at those seated in a circle around Him and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! Whoever does God’s will is My brother and sister and mother.”

FYI Jesus just enlarged His family to include US. The Lord was not paying anybody back because they said He was possessed by satan, or out of His mind … … see … other people have a Cousin Max in their family too!! Instead He simply included everyone present in His statement. He had been previously preaching to a bunch of people, and He simply continued on with it…despite the interruption from His earthly family.

The Lord persevered with a higher truth, and He used that opportunity to make a deeper point. He told the crowd present: “Anybody who does the will of My Father is My family.” Amazingly Jesus was not drawn into other people’s accusations, He simply went straight to the greater good, and then He returned to ministry for those present. He was there to do His Father’s will, so His Father’s will came first.

One of the ?? joys of Christmas is getting gifts you will never use, from people you-don’t-like-very-much in the first place. The whole, smile and lie your head off routine. At the same time you are prevaricating all over the place, you are trying to remember where the nearest Op shop is… even before you’ve left the party! The thing is, at that moment when you’ve torn off the wrappings, and ended up with lime green, yellow, blue, black and hot pink, argyle socks, is the moment when love can overcome and prevail. I can’t tell you what to say, because I will be way too busy thanking someone else for some dreadful book I’d never want to read… like … EVER!

People who give us opportunities to be grateful for inappropriate gifts are another diagnostic tool. It may mean that the other people don’t know us well enough to buy something we might like … BUT! Maybe … just maybe … that’s because we have been hiding from them for years!  Jesus loves Christmas! But not because it is His birthday, I kind of think when you get to be over 2,000 years old birthday’s don’t matter much!! He loves families and restoration. Let me leave you today, with Tiny Tim’s favourite blessing … “*God bless us all, everyone.”  Bye. 👋

*A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

P 2763 Mo-ove along the car …

/ DVH

…nothing to see here, I’m coming through … and I’M BUSY!! 

Nehemiah 6:1-9 tells us a story: “When Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall and that there were no more breaks in it—even though I hadn’t yet installed the gates—Sanballat and Geshem sent this message: “Come and meet with us at Kephirim in the valley of Ono.” I knew they were scheming to hurt me so I sent messengers back with this: “I’m doing a great work; I can’t come down. Why should the work come to a standstill just so I can come down to see you?” Four times they sent this message and four times I gave them my answer.

The fifth time—same messenger, same message—Sanballat sent an unsealed letter with this message: “The word is out among the nations—and Geshem says it’s true—that you and the Jews are planning to rebel. That’s why you are rebuilding the wall. The word is that you want to be king and that you have appointed prophets to announce in Jerusalem, ‘There’s a king in Judah!’ The king is going to be told all this—don’t you think we should sit down and have a talk? I sent him back this: “There’s nothing to what you’re saying. You’ve made it all up.” They were trying to intimidate us into quitting. They thought, “They’ll give up; they’ll never finish it.” I prayed, “Give me strength.”

I’m starting to love this guy Nehemiah! He not only knows how and where to start … he knows how to finish too! God has given this man great wisdom as he went about his work. We can always ask the Lord for wisdom at any moment. I’ve discovered that we often want it at the beginning of a project, but we also need it in the middle, while we are being harassed, plus at the end too! The Lord likes us to follow Him, as He leads us – using our faith. Nehemiah knew to stay the course.

So, back to this man of God:  next news you know, the Israelites’ enemies have sent someone with a flattering message, to supposedly support him… … As we begin to prevail in our obedience to the Lord, our enemy is not above sending someone else along to give us reasonable doubt about what we are doing. Four times these men tried to engage the man of God as he laboured over rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls. The last time Nehemiah’s enemies used the fear of death to startle him into stopping. But he sent them away with a short, sharp word.

When we choose to do what the Lord wants – as we seek Him, He will guide us and protect us from the enemy’s lies. Nehemiah saw right through Shemaiah. This man wanted him to hide from his enemies and that meant he would stop building the wall God told him to restore. So Nehemiah went right back to prayer. You know it sounds to me like that man was praying as he was mending the wall!

Let’s be clear …Nehemiah had confronted a King about the Israelites’ plight. His courage and sense of duty caused him to make that request when he needed too – even though he was a minor player in the court. He was respectful, and clear, and dedicated to the cause. What he did was nothing short of miraculous, however, whenever Almighty God smiles on something you are doing – no-one can stop you … BUT YOU – and He will go around you, if He has to – His will, His purpose!

Nehemiah refused to be distracted. He called Shemaiah and his cronies, liars. You know sometimes we need to identify the spiritual opposition and name it! We can waste our time trying to be polite to our enemies in a difficult situation, when the reality is we need to confront them and tell them to take a hike. When God tells us to do whatever it is, it must be done no matter what, and Nehemiah kept on acting in faith. “And I am sure that God who began the good work within you will keep right on helping you grow in His grace until His task within you is finally finished on that day when Jesus Christ returns.”Philippians 1:6.

The thing I want to highlight today is that all these interruptions and distractions led this man of God into prayer – they didn’t make him give up or give in. Instead he went back to His source of inspiration. I can only speak for myself but I am sure in my life so far, there have been times when I have given in to fear, much too soon. Afterward, I dearly wished I had pressed on.  My fear of ‘missing God’ – which is an enemy accusation – made me vulnerable. At that time I didn’t have enough confidence to believe I could keep going, so that meant that I gave into the pressure around me. The nagging voice inside my head kept telling me over and over again – “you’ve got it wrong, see this and this has happened.’ I limited God’s ability to redeem my errors – sinful or not. 

Nehemiah is a fine example to all of us of perseverance and faithfulness. Once this man put his hand to the plow – he would not be swayed from his appointed task. Sometimes, at the first sign of trouble, we are so anxious to get the job done, we can bail out too early! We too can have Nehemiah’s confidence in our lives. Our confidence is not in our hearing, it is in our God getting us where we need to go despite our wrong turns, fear and inadequacy.  So, like Nehemiah, we tell our enemies to, ‘move along the car – nothing to see here, I’m busy, and I’m coming through!  We must put our confidence in God alone, not in our ability or lack thereof. Just keep swimming …!!

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28. The Lord God is so great, so mighty, that He can take our mistakes, and turn them into shining stars for His glory. Bye. 👋

P 2579 Faith that is alive!

/ DVH

Here’s something I have learned over the years –  faith grows when we use it. If we hoard it, or sit about in little groups talking about our faith, without doing anything with it – that faith will rapidly become head knowledge. This type of thing is a major problem in our churches. Many churches have stopped PROCLAIMING THE GOOD NEWS … and that’s what we are here to do. At the same time, faith also gives generously – it never just meets requirements, or gives whatever is left over. That’s what our faith in action looks like. Plus we live to love the people who are mean to us or actively hate and abuse us – that’s also faith in action. And we help those who need help be-cau-se … our faith is seeable.

We are here, today, in 2024, to proclaim and demonstrate to other people what God’s unconditional love and favour looks like. And if anyone thinks that they can do that kind of stuff, by themselves, in their own strength, day in, and day out—- then, please … think again. We all need the Holy Spirit’s wisdom and help. Praise God, He is more than willing to help us! At the same time any time we use our faith, I can practically guarantee you, it will cost us. Sometimes it costs us more than we are willing to pay, but let’s just gird up our loins … so we don’t fall over our own feet  … and have at it! 

Here is another precious secret — KIND EYES ARE POWERFUL. When God’s love stops being a concept and it becomes a reality in our lives, the bonus is this:  we will have our Father’s eyes. Kind eyes. My hubby does this so well. He is so good at it I’d be jealous if it weren’t so beautiful. Me? Hmmm … glad you asked that … I’m still a work in progress. Father God and I are working on it. I’ve learnt that you can’t give away something if you haven’t got it, so now I go after His love every single time I think about it! “Let me see these people through Your eyes Lord. And let them see YOU through me.” Amen. Our Father’s eyes never condemn, judge or compare.  

So here’s my suggestion for today – find a way … your way, under the Holy Spirit’s leadership … to love others. Look, we can be on our best behaviour and look and sound like the nicest person in the world, but; “faith without works is dead!” (James 2.) We are here to demonstrate God’s love to others, just like Jesus did when He was here. So that means we will engage in something called: ‘Risky Living.’ That title comes from a book, sadly now out of print, by Jamie Buckingham. I’d loan you mine but the pages are all falling out. It is one of my great treasures.

This ordinary American journalist is one of my all time heroes in the faith. Nobody has ever made me laugh or cry as hard as Jamie. EG:  “The problem with Christians today is that no one wants to kill them anymore.” … …“A lot of my theology got all fouled up when I started reading the Bible.” … … “The real work of the kingdom of God is not carried on by miracle workers or high profile preachers. The real work of the kingdom is carried on by people like you and me as we go about our daily lives.” … ‘Every place we put our foot God wants us to leave a spring in the desert for others to benefit from”… … “He wants us to trust Him at all times and to carry on regardless of our particular wilderness situations.” See? That stuff is impossible and risky without the Holy Spirit’s help!

First we pray, then we DO.  Being selective about what we will or won’t do, will pull us into disobedience quicker than you or I can say: “Oh dear!” This world is crazy about boundaries, I believe boundaries are useful. BUT, we can’t afford to have boundaries with the Lord!! We need to be like those guys who jump off mountains in a flight suit and let the wind take them wherever it goes. It looks absolutely terrifying, but that’s actually using faith. It’s stupid faith, in my personal opinion, but it IS faith! 

Sometimes Christians remind me of a secret society huddled together behind closed doors. If some poor schmuck or other finds their way to that door and staggers in … not dressed properly, or smelling like a rubbish dump, or confused about their sex, or drunk, or stoned out of their gourds …we can be absolutely guaranteed to find a nice way to shuffle them back outside again … and use the bible to do it! Sigh. The trouble is we want the people who get saved to be nice, neat and well-mannered — we are not thrilled when zombies, or Frankenstein lurches through our doors!

“While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with Him and His disciples, for there were many who followed Him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw Him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked His disciples: “Why does He eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:15-17.

We need a faith that stands up when other people want to leave the room. A faith that is bigger than the things this world around us spews out. Instead of hiding from ghastly things, we must learn to confront stuff and face it down, armed only with His love, and guided by His book. Using our faith makes us way more alive than simply living from day to day. 👋 

“What’s the use of living if you don’t attempt the impossible?” (Risky Living, 1976) J. Buckingham.