Courageous

P 3131 Don’t give away your peace …

/ DVH

… to anyone! Cherish it. “And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in Me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in Me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!”John 16:33. Peace is a Person, Jesus! He’s the Prince of peace – Who brings with Him a stable unfettered state of mind, so we can serve God and focus on what matters to Him.

What drags us away from the kind of peace that Jesus is talking about here – is the ordinary stuff that is unrelenting, and it flies at us daily. “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not LET your hearts be troubled or afraid,“John 14:27. We now have the power to not LET things get to us. Most of us deal with stuff every day. Kids don’t pick up their toys, or they disobey, or they talk back. Bosses have agendas, and many times they can have unrealistic expectations. Spouses don’t always understand what we are trying to tell them. 

We need to recognise that when human beings are living under pressure they say and do stupid, careless things!I Ask the Holy Spirit to – ‘Please help me to learn to live in peace – under fire!’ Jesus will teach us, as we read His Word, day by day, so we can have the inner resources to combat the thief. We all know where our help comes from! Our reality does not exist outside the Lord Himself. His Words in our heart comforts and upholds us, particularly as we choose to cherish and act on them. God has us in His care, and He knows what He is doing.

Those God-words from Him to you, daily, are powerful, they will pull down strongholds in our lives, when we let them. Don’t let your perception of yourself, or even your family history,  limit you. Now we are in a new family, a new kingdom. We can do things we’ve never done before because of HIS GRACE in us. Throw away family traits – unless they are Godly. Peace is an inside job. Let’s stop excusing our own shortcomings and face them squarely, instead. A lack of peace inside, is an indication that we need to pause and ask the Lord to show us what has caused our peace to leave … and then fix it.

Sometimes we lie to ourselves by soft-soaping the scriptures – like the one that says Jesus understands us in our weaknesses – Hebrews 4:15. Of course He does! That is why He is the perfect High Priest! But we can’t rely on excuses and continue to tolerate the very things that take our awareness of His Presence away from us. Which means we must face the truth and the consequences that our attitudes have had in our lives and the lives of others. Then repent, repair and move on because these things steal our peace away.

Let Jesus protect you. Be wise when you relate to difficult people, but always be prepared to be open and honest about yourself and your failings. Say: “I’m so sorry but I don’t cope with things like that. I need the Lord to help me, please pray for me.” Hiddenness can lead to a loss of peace because the Holy Spirit loves truth and unity, and when we hide ourselves to save face, or protect ourselves- He quietly leaves. No peace there then!

My next point is – over-thinking things, which can lead to anxiety and stress. So many times I have tossed and turned instead of happily sleeping, while I’m trying to figure out a good way to approach a difficult person. Or trying to think up ways to manage a hard day that is rushing at me. My advice is to give these things to Him, then leave them alone. At first it feels neglectful, because we are so used to worrying out answers to problems!

However, now we are engaged in peace maintenance, so we let the Prince of Peace take care of everything that clutters up our minds. “You will keep in perfect and constant peace the one whose mind is steadfast [that is, committed and focused on You—in both ]inclination and character], Because he trusts and takes refuge in You [with hope and confident expectation].” Isaiah 26:3.

Busyness is a thief – yet sometimes we can’t help but be busy. Jesus Himself was often busy! Crowds came and came, demanding this and that. Unfortunately the cares and worries of this world demand everybody’s attention. Mark 4:19 says:“… but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.” Peace can be choked out by worry. I’ve found it extremely helpful to let go of these things by naming them, one by one.

We can think of prayer as taking many hours, and we know we have no time. But the truth is He already knows what is bugging you and HE wants to help you. Sooooo many times I have discovered He has a better way to carry out what must be done than I have. Remember, in the bible, we have two instances of Jesus Himself helping fishermen to FISH! We have given Him our lives, so we need to let Him organise them. That does not mean we do nothing, but it does mean we will enjoy His company through the day. 

Prayer is an attitude of surrendering our hearts to Him, deferring to His wisdom. It isn’t always WORDS. Think of the Lord Jesus as SomeOne Who is glad to be an intimate part of your life, SomeOne Who wants you to do much more than slog through your busy days. He wants to be with you. Imagine that – the Perfect One longs for your company.  His Presence within us is our peace.  Let that peace be your umpire. Bye. 👋

P 3103 Historical faith!

/ DVH

Our faith is meant to be living, it carries us from day to day. We look at trouble and say to Him: “How are You going to get me out of this mess please Lord?” Prayer, is walking around aware of Him, it is not meant as a last resort. It is as natural as breathing. We refuse to toss what we believe out of the window, just because things get rough or we get disappointed. This new life we’ve been given is not lip service, it is the thing that nurtures the biggest part of us. Our spirits! Every single day we too, are writing His story into our world around us. Let’s look at Luke 24:13-35:

“Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.  As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognising Him. He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked Him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”“What things?” He asked.“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He WAS(!?!?!) a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 

The chief priests and our rulers handed Him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified Him; but we had HOPED that He was the One Who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find His body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said He was alive.Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter His glory?” 

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if He were going farther. But they urged Him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So He went in to stay with them. When He was at the table with them, He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and He disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

This is a big chunk of scripture today, but I put is here because I want to talk about how easy it is to let our faith become historical. Faith from yesterday is not the same as the faith we use today. We are growing fruit, and we really need personal intimate times with Jesus Himself, otherwise – like these two men – our day to day sadness can overcome the fact that, HE LIVES!! Jesus explained to these men that all the prophets had pointed toward Him, and these old saints foretold that the Messiah would die. These two men had already relegated the Lord Jesus into their history. BUT … He was present – right there, with them!!

The bible says they had been prevented from seeing Him. However, I do think they recognised His hands as He broke the bread, because they had seen those hands do that before! Here’s my little opinion. They were in the same position that this world is today – Jesus had become part of history. They thought of the Lord in the past tense. The Lord wants us to live by faith today – present tense! Faith IS… the substance of this new life we have with Him, and head knowledge is no substitute for the reality of His Presence with us.

Jesus indicated to the disciples that He was going to continue to walk on … and the men had to ask Him to stay. Daily, we need to recognise He is always with us, so let’s ASK Him to stay with us, and watch out for the things He will do. The Lord is actively looking for the hungry, those who want to be with HIM. He needs our YES! Let’s refuse to be distracted by the stuff that flies around in our daily lives, and remember that the Lord is our everything. Nothing will make sense without Him.

Jesus knows humanity, personally and experientially, as well as our penchant for mediocrity. We need to choose to move on into the next phase of our faith lives with Him. We must go beyond our daily commitment to pray, or read His Word, into daily depending upon Him and His deliverance from sin and evil. These two disciples had walked, talked, eaten and watched and listened to Jesus constantly. But, they did not recognise Him because they were not expecting Him! There must be expectancy in our faith. These men thought He was dead and gone.

We can fall down the same hole that swallows our faith because the Lord doesn’t appear to be with us. Especially when we pray and the answer we want does not happen. In our own daily lives we can become preoccupied with day-to-day mediocrity and we forget our main purpose – His will is our main purpose. He is always alive within us. If we have no answer to our prayers, then we need to hand whatever it is over to Him, and ask the Lord to reveal to us what He wants us to do next. We can get so tied up in making our lives comfortable, that we forget that we are a people with a mission. 

Christians love to pray for revival, but revival starts with ME … being obedient to what He tells me to do. Let’s not settle for historical faith! Every minute I postpone doing what He says to do, is a minute of my life I am wasting. Our obedience to Him, will usher in personal revival. Bye. 👋 “Here’s what I’ve learned through it all: Don’t give up; don’t be impatient; be entwined as one with the Lord. Be brave and courageous, and never lose hope. Yes, keep on waiting—for He will never disappoint you!” Psalms 27:14 TPT

P 3075 Hope is for today!

/ DVH

“Rise up in splendour and be radiant, for your light has dawned, and Yahweh’s glory now streams from you! Look carefully! Darkness blankets the earth, and thick clouds covers the nations, but Yahweh arises upon you and the brightness of His glory appears over you! Nations will be attracted to your radiant light and kings to the sunrise-glory of your new day. Lift up your eyes higher! Look all around you and believe, for your sons are returning from far away and your daughters are being tenderly carried home. Watch as they all gather together, eager to come back to you!” Isaiah 60:1-4 TPT.

We cannot afford to postpone promises from the Lord into the future. The tense in the above passage from Isaiah is present tense. The future, in the natural, can look pretty bleak! However faith is a daily walk, so believing God and what He says, needs to become an every day occurrence, not just an emergency vehicle we jump into and try to use when bad stuff happens. This life is a giant disappointment for many people. They had hopes and dreams and then the ordinariness of every day life has ground them into the dust.  Postponing our HOPE into the future, is not a viable option. When our faith is low our ability to cope grinds to a halt. 

Jesus is the solution! You and I are hope carriers. Our hope is never exists in an absence of trouble. This is earth – bad things happen here – what matters is our response. Listen to what Jesus said:“I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace. In the world you have tribulation and distress and suffering, but be courageous [be confident, be undaunted, be filled with joy]; I have overcome the world.” [My conquest is accomplished, My victory abiding.]” John 16:33. AMP. Abiding means more than existing, it means thriving in the face of difficulties, by choice. It means holding onto hope when you have no earthly reason to do it, simply because of the truthfulness of the One Who said what He said.

In this world tribulation and distress and suffering fly at us from all angles. Meh! Nobody wants that stuff. Unfortunately we can’t just package up our lives as an overall time period, and set our faces into living for hope and peace in the sweet bye and bye! Of course there is peace in heaven – the Father, and Son are there. But down here in this life that we live in from day to day … sometimes from minute to minute … we need to learn to live out the things He asked us to do, despite the degree of difficulty it can take. Like Jesus said, we aren’t sweating blood, yet. That’s why the Holy Spirit is here with us, we need Him!  WE are not the Answer – He is! 

When conflict happens at my house I ask Him: “What do you want me to do with this Lord?” Half the time the Lord says this – far more politely than I would! “Shut up now.” I’m really bad at that, so I choose to leave the room and go and pray. There are also times when I waste my God-given time being a cry-baby and moaning my head off about how hard life is, and how difficult people are… blah blah blah. That’s when I feel the Lord waiting patiently for me to get over myself. Then He brings me round to viewing what I actually do already have, differently.

Now I have become so excited about the incredible way the Lord fixes things. It can often seem to take years, but boy! When He is done with what He is doing, it really is FINISHED. It is a total joy to watch Jesus’ work. He does stuff I would never even think of, because He knows the end from the beginning, so He knows how it will all go and work together for everyone’s good.

Have you ever have an argument with someone else inside your head? Me too. The thing is, in that made-up scenario, I will probably look wise, and patient – and the other person will most likely look like a cranky dummy! In my head, they will fall at my feet and beg my forgiveness. Let’s now quickly return to the real world! That’s the place where nothing turns out the way we try to choreograph it. We need the ultimate choreographer – Jesus Himself. 

I have seen glimpses of heaven revealed on earth, when I changed my response and began to use my faith and treat the person I was mad at, like I love them like crazy! That is a huge faith step – and for a while I kept falling off it!  Now I treat them like I would like to be treated. I give the other person the benefit of the doubt, and stopped defending myself, and instead, I have decided to believe for the best in them. It is much harder to fight with someone who comes over to your side and silently stands with you! You don’t have to agree with people to love them – that idea is devilish misinformation.

It is even better when we choose to stand on the Lord’s side and just love everyone else involved. What if withdrawing love from someone who seems to want to hurt us, is the devil’s itinerary? Jesus kept Judas in His followers until Judas chose to leave. He gave that man the opportunity to be with Hope personified, Peace like a river and never-ending Truth! We cannot look at, and stare at this life, and still see Jesus. Obviously, if someone else is abusive, we will need the Lord’s guidance, but … what if we let love reign instead of hate, antagonism and suspicion?

The bible tells us our light has already come, because Jesus Himself is our light. We don’t have to run about, looking for light or seeking after light like demented loons, because we choose to acknowledge that we already have the light IN US. Our hope is in His Word! Do we think Jesus will stand by what He said or not? We are talking about NOW, not one day – we won’t need that stuff in heaven – we need it now!

The Gospels and the Epistles clearly tell us that Christ IN us is the truth — this means that we can continually make a withdrawal on the deposit God Himself has put inside us. Now we have a choice to believe, every single time we are tempted to doubt. Jesus’ death and resurrection gave us the freedom to choose. Sin can’t make us its slave, because we already have the greater One inside.  

This is not some weird doctrine – it’s in the book! And I am not talking about always getting what I want, I am talking about us having what He wants us to have. Let’s live in His hope, today! Bye. 👋

P 3003 False expectations.

/ DVH

I unintentionally, and without any prior warning, walked into a wall of nasty attitudes in someone else yesterday. They were angry with me for no other reason than they could not have their own way. This is someone I care about, and sadly I’ve had many bad experiences with them before, but I thought that kind of trouble between us was gone… It’s just goes to show we cannot afford to let our guard down –  we need each other. My own discernment was severely lacking! Hubby was far more discerning than I was – he emphasised caution.

So what do you do in those moments, when you feel utterly betrayed by someone you think you can trust? I start with the realisation that I can’t deal with anything else but my emotions in that moment, because they’re all over the place like jam on a baby’s face. After that I need to go straight into my will and reinforce my decision to live my life His way. This step is important, otherwise I can get tangled up in what I want, and leave what He wants behind me! 

The next thing that happens is I pray and choose to forgive myself — despite my awareness of many multiple feelings of ineptitude and lack of wisdom — I know that I need saving from my own reactions like everyone else does! So I deliberately put blame, guilt, recrimination and shame down — and at the same time I pray and ask for the Lord’s healing, help, forgiveness and guidance.

Then I deliberately forgive the other person as an act of my will. It is so much easier to forgive someone else when you’ve just dealt with the log in your own eye first. Just saying is all … At the bottom of our instant pain, are often even more memories of previous pain – and that definitely needs sorting out, but first things first.  Any sort of betrayal is painful, and Jesus Himself knows personally all about that.

Judas betrayed Him for 30 pieces of silver, and Peter ran away under pressure. When someone we care about suddenly reverts to previous behaviour, it can be easy to be taken by surprise and feel like we’ve been ambushed. But we can’t afford to sit there, we must choose to move past our feelings into a place where we can pray full of His Love for that other person. Jesus prayed for Peter, remember? He prayed for Peter’s faith to not fail. 

Loving people who are often erratic in their way of speaking and living, means we need to pray before we spend time with them. I actually remembered to pray this time, but because I thought things had changed for the better, I relaxed. I forgot that scripture in 1 Corinthians 16, verses 13&14. “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong. Do everything in love.” I was distracted and forgot to stay on my guard. I wanted something from this person, that they can’t give me, and I let my emotional need blind me to where they are actually coming from. Jesus Himself, does not meet their needs… yet. 

At the same time I forgot to ‘stand firm in the faith.’ The bible says:’My God shall supply ALL MY NEEDS according to His riches in glory.’ Philippians 4:19. Part of our surrender to Christ entails our willingness to lift our expectations off other people, and put them firmly with Him. That takes practice! It appears I missed out on a practice session this time, but I’ve put the Lord and my hubby on alert to remind me! Otherwise I could easily fall down the same hole again. Instead of “being courageous” under fire, I crumbled like a stale biscuit. So I repented of that too and asked the Holy Spirit to help me to go back into “doing everything in love.”  

Sometimes, in personal relationships our expectations of other people are so great, the other person will probably fail in meeting them.That’s life. We must realise that we cannot meet each other’s needs – our job is to point people to the One Who can do all things.  Sometimes when I think that Hollywood has totally messed with our brains and we see someone else and think they will totally understand me. In a pig’s eye! That’s narcissistic. I don’t care who it is, people aren’t here to serve our needs, we are here to serve Him..

We can easily be blinded by our own need for immediate love and gratification. I think this is why many marriages fail. The couples have false expectations. Only Jesus can meet all our needs. There is no point in expecting human beings to meet them, simply because we like instant answers. In case you haven’t noticed …Jesus doesn’t often DO things immediately! My advice is to remind yourself that God always has a better, bigger plan. Bless you! 👋

P 2921 Running over!

/ DVH

“Overflow with mercy and compassion for others, just as your heavenly Father overflows with mercy and compassion for all.””Luke 6:36 TPT. That verse doesn’t sound much like a suggestion does it? It sounds like a constantly ever-expanding instruction to me. So the real question becomes…how? How do you overflow with mercy and compassion for others, the way Jesus does for you … ? Sacrificially that’s how.  That, by the way, is the same loving attitude He has toward everyone on this planet!  

Well, the first thing to remember is this, nobody can think their way through this one – our brains just can’t take in the magnitude of God’s love for people. We will always need His Spirit to help us. The Holy Spirit can and will expand our capacity for love and compassion as we allow Him room in our lives — the more room, the bigger the expansion!! It is worth also saying at this juncture that as we renew our minds, the easier it will be to know what the Lord wants from us! So we have to stop skipping over the bits in the bible we think we can’t do and start asking for His help to do them.

This is why we cannot afford to hold grudges, or cheat on our income tax, or walk past a poor person who needs help, or break the law by excessively speed along the highways. Those are dumb examples of an all pervasive current attitude toward this life. When will we decide we have more than enough and start to act like it by helping others? We simply must move away from greedy, grasping, looking after ME,  into gloriously generous, overflowing giving, looking after OTHERS.

This is one of our Heavenly Father’s characteristics … He looks after us daily. Look out of your window – did the sun come up again? Then His mercy is brand new again today. If we want to look like Him then we will have to walk down the same pathways Jesus walked. It was not a mistake that Christ was born into a poor ordinary family… rich people have a hard time with FAITH. That’s not my opinion …Jesus said so!

Speaking for myself, without the Holy Spirit’s help there are many times I want to say to someone who wants even more time than I can give: “Just go away will you? You are disturbing my nice image of myself!” But we can’t actually successfully think our way through spiritual things like this. The things of the Spirit belong to HIM! It isn’t helpful to berate yourself for not having the fruit of the Spirit either. We quite simply need His help, so we throw ourselves on His brand new mercy today, and take a leap of faith. First of all, how we feel needs to become wa-ay less important than His WILL. He will lead us, He will guide us, He will show us where we can be His hands and feet.

Compassion includes action.Not just sympathetic remarks, kindly meant and said. Love actually looks like something! Now here is the rub, the Lord doesn’t just say, ‘have compassion and mercy’ — He said OVERFLOW WITH IT! Yeah! Good one. Overflowing means there is more than enough, not just a little bit kind of oozing out the edges. I often drive other people mad, because I take things in the book, so literally. I can tell you that this whole overflowing bit is supernatural – in other words you can’t manufacture that lot by yourself! And you can’t talk yourself into it either – you either got it or you don’t, and if you don’t ASK AND THEN ACT, using your faith, and then just keep on doing stuff.

We can get so tied up with ordinary everyday things taking away our valuable time, that we don’t think to ask Him in to help us with whatever is going on. He wants to be part of every bit of our lives, not just delegated to an hour every day and four on Sunday. He will show us His compassion as we learn to rely upon Him. We need to know that He is gracious and compassionate, personally. Our theories aren’t worth a kilo of bananas! To learn things like that we must LET Him help us through our own difficulties, by choice – on purpose! 

The bible tells us that our God is a compassionate God: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” Psalm 103:8.  I just want to stop here, and say that the bible uses lots of effusive words. Like ‘over abundantly, abounding, overflowing’ … these are all greatly excessive words. They aren’t excessive words for nothing! Don’t just settle for a little dab will do ya! Go for the gold. Be like Joshua strong and courageous … and then stay and wait in the tent after everyone else has gone home! Press in. It doesn’t take a lot of words to press in, it just takes confidence in His loving nature and the ability to believe God is good.

Let Jesus be the One you run to, when stuff happens. He wants to be closer to us than a brother. That means we will give our time, it means using we will use our faith. It means giving out of the abundance of the knowledge that our God is in charge – so I will not diminish ME if I give something to YOU.I will care if your life is tough, not just in words but in deeds. If we want a pressed down and running over kind of life where we can spontaneously and generously give to others, we will have to change the way we live. 

It will not be comfortable. What part of Jesus’ life was comfortable? If I want ‘running over’ with compassion and mercy  I will have to stop thinking of my life as mine and start thinking about it as His. Bye. 👋

P 2897 Peace is our portion.

/ DVH

“And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in Me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in Me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!””John 16:33 TPT.

We cannot survive 21st Century living without His peace.  Injustice pops up everywhere like wild mushrooms, all across the world. Peace is an inside job. Everything around us will try to steal it away. This week we have had a procession of endless, skilled tradesmen parading, banging, clumping, etc. right through our house. We discovered mould in one of our least used rooms. It’s a long story and not worth repeating here. One of my mum’s brand new hearing aids has grown legs and walked away, plus our daughter and grandson are moving in about a month. And our next trip is in 16 days. Not to mention all kinds of malfunctioning arms, legs, heads, backs, knees …a-n-d … we are both preaching this Sunday! 🤣

None of us can afford to rely upon good, positive circumstances to help us feel peaceful. We already have peace within us because the King of peace resides within us. That peace will thrive in an atmosphere of faith as we believe and act on what the Lord has said. It gives us confidence so we can face whatever comes at us from the world around us. Christianity is an ongoing relationship with the Man of peace, Jesus Christ. We learn to live in His peace as we watch and study Him, because He didn’t just teach us what to do, He showed us how to do it, by the way He lived! “Keep turning your back on every sin, and make “peace” your life motto.Practice being at peace with everyone.” Psalms 34:14 TPT.

We need to remind ourselves that we are foreigners, ambassadors of Christ, living in a foreign land where peace is now either enforced or ignored, or labelled impossible. Unfortunately, peace cannot be legislated, otherwise our freedom to choose His way, goes right out of the window. To me that means peace is always OUR choice to pick up or put down. It means we learn to bend with the winds of change and opposition, not just strive to be in control and stay rigid. Peace comes with a great cost to the people who are living any conflict. 

Sadly when there is no positive choice made, there can be no true peace, because the ‘machinery’ of our lives returns to a habitual default setting of agitation and worry. Yet Jesus Himself chose to live at peace in a society that hated everything He stood for, He had no home, His relatives opposed Him, His church leaders wanted to kill Him, He was surrounded by needy people … yet He had true peace, all the time, because He chose to walk with the Holy Spirit and obey His Father. 

The people who lived around Him were superficially content to live within their religious rules, and often those rules actually opposed or destroyed peace for many of them. Rules carry within them the possibility of failure – true peace doesn’t see failure as the end of the story. The Lord was not affected by people’s approval or disapproval, He carried out the things He did by choosing to reflect His Father’s will. He wasn’t looking to win a popularity contest then, and He still isn’t. 

He teaches us in this verse that rest, which is a part of peace, is also our portion. It is OURS. We learn to rest when we choose to put aside our own opinions, and feelings, and aim at His Ways, with His help. As we do that we are mirroring Jesus’ own relationship and trust in His Father. Father God made the supreme effort for us, to come here and reveal His will in Person. God Himself stopped being remote, and hard to access, instead He walked the roads of Israel and its surrounds. Jesus was assimilated into this world so well, that some people identified Him by where He lived as a child. He was known —as Joseph the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. 

If you and I have no peace, then we have somehow left Him out, or left Him far behind us. His peace within us is present to saturate the atmosphere around us. But if we lose our peace, then we need to return humbly to the Source of all peace, Christ, and ask Him to help us live in harmony with Him, and His ways again. When trouble and difficulties bash on our doors or seep into our lives, those things are not a statement about our personal efforts or lack of them. Instead they are simply the result of living in a fractured, unredeemed society. It means we have forgotten who we are and WHO He is! The answer is not to condemn society, instead we are to flavour it … with His qualities.

Peace is a Person. We walk in peace, when we choose to walk with Him. If we revert to our old ways of thinking, then we simply repent and start walking with Him again. Walking with peace means we do not have to carry our own burdens, we turn them over to Jesus and ask Him to deal with them, us and the situation. Peace is our God-given birthright, freely received – part of our inheritance.  Jesus said:“Peace I leave with you, MY peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27.

Jesus gave it to us, so now we have it, just like salvation whether we feel like it or not. Bye. 👋

P 2793 Learn to value peace above everything else …

/ DVH

…including toilet paper!More on that in a minute! … Peace can become quite elusive in this world today. My best advice to help maintain your peace is to make every effort to get along with others. I’ve learnt over the years that our emotions and wrong thinking can led us onto a slippery path where tempers flare and little things drive us insane. The bible tells us to “pursue peace.” We will have to run after it, it rarely falls on you, and it will take some pretty specific choices to avoid quarrelling. Loving others despite their behaviour, can stop any reciprocal attitudes. My rule of thumb to disengage from crankiness is this – what would love do? Then say something nice instead. 

Here’s a laugh… back when Covid was ruining everyone’s world. In my country there was absolutely no toilet paper in our supermarkets. It was all over the news. People were panic buying toilet paper … rolls and rolls. Why? I dunno! 😳 They tore about like demented loons chasing toilet paper. Peace went out of the window! Obviously some people can’t live without it. How hilarious! When I was a kid, our toilet paper consisted of torn up newspapers hanging on a hook. It totally blows my mind that at the same time in my history, fish and chips came wrapped up in newspaper too! 

The thing to remember, in times of unrest – the Lord’s peace often seems elusive and it doesn’t seem to make any sense. We want to defend ourselves. I am talking about internal peace – external peace is another story. That takes humility and a willingness to forgive. Our world around us can be exploding and/or falling apart and yet when we have His peace, we are internally, supernaturally removed from whatever is going on. We become spectators, not participants. (Psalm 91) So we can totally see what’s is going on, but we’re watching things happen from the outside. We cannot afford to leave that place of His peace to participate with the bad stuff – because we will lose what the Lord has given us.

Peace disappears, slowly … one bad decision at a time. We give it away when we start using our minds and emotions to analyse trouble or other people’s actions. That’s when we begin to participate. It helps to remember that dead people have no rights! If we talk, talk, talk about how I feel about this or that, or I choose to have an opinion on why someone else is behaving the way they are – I am giving away my God-given right to live in HIS PEACE in those moments of agitation, I become enmeshed within the perceived problem.  Even if I allow myself to become secretly angry with someone else’s behaviour, I will slowly lose His peace. We need to learn to value peace more than self-expression.

God’s kingdom is a PEACEFUL KINGDOM. There are no enemies there. No battles to fight. It’s a real place where everybody’s aim is to glorify the Trinity! We can also be faced with the same choices to overcome that Jesus had in Matthew 4:1-11. The Lord used the scriptures against our enemy. We too have the power to overcome sin, the world and the devil, the same way He did, but we need to choose to allow the Holy Spirit to show us the Way He wants to do it. There were times when Christ was silent in the face of His accusers. The value of saying nothing is often greatly underestimated. At the same time, the Holy Spirit will hand us the scriptures, (the sword) we need to fight with – we just need to calm down enough to hear Him. Spectators do not participate, they WATCH.

God’s peace is not fragile, it is robust when it is established, but it needs to be treasured and respected.  It was given to us for free, because of what Christ did for us. When Jesus suffered for our sins He became our new identity. He shows us the way to cultivate this peace in the following scripture. ““I leave the gift of peace with you—My peace. Not the kind of fragile peace given by the world, but My perfect peace.Don’t yield to fear or be troubled in your hearts—instead, be courageous!” John 14:27 TPT. 

Fear, anger, and worry will always come knocking in times of trouble, but we don’t have to answer the door, we can use our courage to fight those things off. And refuse entry to our hearts and minds through the enemy’s ghastly thoughts, painted scenarios and hideous suggestions. Our enemy is always there, like he was when Christ was tempted – he will hand us the next nasty line to throw at the other person. There is no winning in a war –  even the guy fighting with you has an eternal soul. At the same time, we need to remind ourselves, through bible verses —who we really are. We simply tell the enemy that we are not going to accept his nonsense – God’s in charge here! 

The way to keep His peace with us all the time, is to die daily to what suits us, and live for Jesus. He will help us but we must ask, and in some stressful moments we may need to keep on asking, because God stretches our faith. However, the Lord is never demanding – so if a demanding thought comes into your mind it is not Him. Jesus is kind, gentle and lowly in His heart, He simply wants to help us, the same way He was helped when His life seemed so bleak.  He sent us the Holy Spirit so we can learn to live with His peace prevailing. We need to learn to value that peace. Bye 👋

“You are always and dearly loved by God! So robe yourself with virtues of God, since you have been divinely chosen to be holy. Be merciful as you endeavour to understand others, and be compassionate, showing kindness toward all. Be gentle and humble, unoffendable in your patience with others.” Colossians 3:12 TPT

P 2789 Our willingness to obey helps us with digestion …

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… and that leads to spiritual health. I think it also means that whatever we do repeatedly – we will become. 

Have you ever been looking for something and found it years later, hidden away at the bottom of your junk drawer?  Life is sometimes like that. Sometimes we don’t even know those things they are there. You end up saying to yourself: ”Oh, I’ve been looking for that for ages.”  Hold onto your hat. Today, I found some stuff hidden inside me that I had conveniently forgotten about. I took those things as past hurts and I didn’t consider the consequences to my faith.

Things get hidden in everyone’s lives. And some of the time it’s not deliberate sin, it’s carelessness. And this condition can be true for many kinds of attitudes. Some attitudes in our hearts are sneaky – they hide away under pious talk, and seemingly righteous indignation. But those things are not from the Lord, instead they are devices of our own choosing to hide ourselves from who we really are. I found a bunch of that stuff in my own life recently. 😱 Like this morning.

One way, over the years that I have learnt what is going on in my heart, is to carefully listen to what comes out of my mouth. Boy, that will scare the stuffing out of you! When I began to pray over the things I found in my thinking, I learnt that— lo and behold — my thinking in some areas was definitely not good. It nearly gave me indigestion! Hey, it’s great to watch your mouth, do it — but renewing our minds takes work and application, so we are going to need the Holy Spirit’s help with our thought lives too.  And that nicely leads into my thought for today.

I won’t digest whatever the Holy Spirit wants to teach me about myself, and the way I relate to Him and others, if I continually excuse myself. Even a flippant attitude can be a hiding place. The Lord is very thorough and kind with me. He often quotes me, to me. I hate it and love it … all at the same time. Sigh. Sometimes I wish the things I write every day will just kind of seep into my pores, rather than me having to work at it!  But obedience helps me with digestion, and I want His Word to be a part of me. … so-oo-….!!! On we go…

The thing is, none of us can afford to simply agree with what the Holy Spirit says without doing something about it. Now there’s the rub! I debated about whether to write about this subject today, and then hubby sent me an excellent, completely spot-on and appropriate scripture. I didn’t know whether to brain him, or thank him!! Of course I thanked him, and then I gave him one of those beautifully pious smiles, I’ve been talking about. 🙄 Meanwhile, eventually it turned out that I was measuring God and His actions, by the way I was raised> Now there’s a really dumb thing to do.

I know I cannot be gracefully transformed if I will not change my mind. And reading the bible is meant to be a heart searching event – not just a daily chore. So I started off with repentance, and in this whole process, I discovered something wonderful! The Lord is not legalistic. He is incredibly kind and generous!  I realised that I had yet another idea squirrelled away inside my heart, and it was a bad one. It needed to be changed because I don’t need to hold onto wrong concepts any longer. Father God is not like the ordinary sometimes sinful people that raised me, He’s perfect. Therefore I cannot put Him in the same category as my parental figures, because that will spoil our relationship.  

Praise God for a Saviour, because I find I need saving from myself all the time! I asked Him to forgive me for totally misjudging Him, and using my own human experiences as a reference for His actions. This sin had been hidden away deep inside, under pain, misunderstanding, despair, hopelessness, and just plain misery … that awful pile of stuff we all have that we hope no-one knows about … because we tell ourselves we ‘gotta be strong and courageous.’  Well I’m not. I’m weak and sometimes terrified and I definitely need His help all the time! 

This means that my active and interactive obedience has to come from owning my own questionable and inaccurate feelings. So I asked Him to replace them with how HE feels about me. And then I asked for a personal revelation of the kind of parent He is. I need one. I forgave all the people from the past who wrote all over my soul, “this is what love looks like.” Whether they did that on purpose or accidentally! And now I will take the time to meditate on every verse I read that tells me what He is like – and soak in it. 

“Why would you ever complain, O Jacob, or, whine, Israel, saying, “God has lost track of me. He doesn’t care what happens to me”? Don’t you know anything? Haven’t you been listening? God doesn’t come and go. God lasts. He’s Creator of all you can see or imagine. He doesn’t get tired out, doesn’t pause to catch His breath. And He knows everything, inside and out. He energises those who get tired, gives fresh strength to dropouts. For even young people tire and drop out, young folk in their prime stumble and fall. But those who wait upon God get fresh strength. They spread their wings and soar like eagles, They run and don’t get tired, they walk and don’t lag behind.” Isaiah 40:27-3.

Our willingness to obey and be taught by Him – as well being open to discover what’s really going on inside us – will help us digest the Word. The Holy Spirit doesn’t want to hurt us, He has been sent to help us. Bye. 👋

P 2770 God has a plan.

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If you have been a Christian for a while you may have bumped into Jeremiah. Jeremiah is, in my mind, one of our great faith pioneers. He kept his faith strong even when his life was awful. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11. But when you look at Jeremiah’s life, it was a far cry from being filled with great plans and fab future! I want to comment on this particular verse today, because I believe it has been misused on occasion, to imply that our God is more like a genie, than our omnipotent, omnipresent, always wise, sovereign God and glorious Father – Who made heaven and earth!

Let’s just look carefully at what this verse says: God totally declares that He has plans for each one of us. We have not been left here, in our often difficult circumstances, all alone. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to help us with every second, of every minute of every day. We can now walk with Him like Christ did, that’s the plan! In order to walk with the Holy Spirit – emphasis on the word ‘holy’  … our lives need to change. Our focus has to come off our own comfort, and be firmly planted into whatever the Lord wants for us.

This verse says that His plans are about giving us hope. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus Christ is our ever-present hope, and this scripture is a prophetic statement about Christ! It is not a promise that this life will never ever be bad again. The hope in our future is Christ Himself. Jeremiah did not live an easy life. His whole nation went into captivity. However, our God has incredible plans and if we ask Him, He may even let us in on them! He has promised He will listen when we pray, and answer us. But we may not understand His answer right away!

We need to consistently remember that Father God will never ever mislead us, quite often we simply can’t see beyond the end of our noses and our need to control everything and make it peachy! However, our future always lies with the Lord. It is very important that we understand that – the scripture above is about security IN God. You and I have eternity ahead of us, so we have an ever expanding future!  Heaven is real and we will go there. I think our God is incredible – He’s planning to spend eternity with all of us! Imagine that!

Our Heavenly Father, has already provided everything we will ever need IN Christ. Sadly we can spend our short lives looking for monetary or physical gain, and we do live this life celebrating the reality that eternity is ours, now and forever … and LIVE that way. Unfortunately we often want ease, now. It matters where our hope is, because ours is always in Christ. …Our hope is not in some scripture that I picked up, or one I decided suited my problem, my hope is in Christ. Christ is God’s demonstrated goodness.

In my opinion, Jeremiah, makes a very interesting example of God’s input into one man’s life. He remained courageous and loyal to his calling despite his difficulties. He faithfully told the Israelites the bad news about their future, over and over again. Sometimes … lucky him!…. he also got to physically demonstrate it too! He was beaten and ridiculed simply because he spoke out God’s truth. The people who follow Jesus Christ do not always have easy carefree lives. However, He will ALWAYS help us, so our faith is in His Character. These things flow out of intimacy. And intimacy is about God always being with us, so we live by faith – because that is the reality.

We must stop thinking that serving God means we will remain trouble free! Our wonderful Father is doing more than one thing at a time. He is answering our prayers for transformation, preparing us for eternity, and restoring and healing relationships, here and now. Jeremiah was carted off from his homeland along with everyone else, despite the fact that he was busy being obedient … doing and saying what God said!  He continually prophesied bad things were coming, not good ones, and sadly the Jews didn’t like it, or him. And he also pointed out that there is a great difference between saying something – even sincerely believing it, and… doing it. Belief must turn into action.

Personally, I think the Old Testament brings a much needed balance into the church-at-large’s current theory of: “let’s all have a jolly old party down here, because SomeBody else paid the bill!”  We cannot choose hedonism and indulgence and expect everything to be AOK with the Lord. What part of ‘take up your cross and follow Me,’ don’t we get? We serve Him – He doesn’t serve us. He proved His love for all mankind when He gave us His Only Son. Our choices from day to day matter, because Father God does not wink at our sins, they were far too costly for His Son. The very least we can do is acknowledge them, and live this life, here and now, differently.

He has a plan to give us a hope and a future. Our future is with Him, today, tomorrow, and forever, and His plan has already given us hope in Christ and all He did. Let’s stick with HIS PLAN and leave behind the idea of some sort of a trouble-free cushy life. Bye. 👋

P 2743 HE is our Hope …

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… our ever present help in time of need! “Here’s what I’ve learned through it all: Don’t give up; don’t be impatient; be entwined as one with the Lord. Be brave and courageous, and never lose hope. Yes, keep on waiting—for He will never disappoint you!” Psalms 27:14 TPT  Today, I want to exhort everyone to embrace the hope that we have because of what Jesus Christ did for us!  When we dredge up or try to conjure up hope based on our circumstances, we can get disappointed in God, others, or ourselves. The bible makes it clear —if we have become disappointed, then we’ve lost our hope. God’s hope does not disappoint!  And Christ is that HOPE.

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It seems to me that we often want the Lord’s help, but we don’t want to live our lives looking to Him all the time. Maybe we are a bit scared that God’s idea of what is good for us, will not match up with what we think it is! Philippians 2:21 says: “For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”  We must take the time, even if it is just a few minutes every day, to stop, and specifically remember what Jesus did for us and thank Him. This pushes the refresh button in our hearts spiritually.

If we simply take the cross for granted, seeing it as a past accomplished event, there is a strong chance that eventually we will run out of hope, because the world around us is continually creating false finishing lines. I’m talking about running after those transitory things that really aren’t worth it when you get there! But Christ’s work and intercession on our behalf will create amazing things from our ordinary little lives. What Jesus did perfectly for us, is our best point of reference. His sacrifice is the hope that keeps us going, His POV is the lens we deliberately choose to look through.

Here’s what Paul said. It really sharpened my view of HOPE: Colossians 1:22,23a  “But now He has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in His sight, without blemish and free from accusation— if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.”

We choose to stay with the reality of the Gospel because we can’t afford to move. We can’t wander off into theology land. Our hope cannot come from there, owing to the fact that theology land creates debate and uncertainty. Our hope comes from what Jesus did, and it’s in the book! It is very important that we don’t use up our energies running toward false finishing lines. I’ve found there is a huge blessing after I realised that hope actually comes from somewhere else – actually, it comes from SomeOne Else! I learnt that if I’ve lost hope, then I’ve moved away from my real life in Him.  It means I’ve wandered off and gone over into my own agendas.

Christ is always our only hope – not our circumstances, not the possibilities tomorrow presents, or something material we are striving for. He is our HOPE source, and He will stretch and enlarge us as we choose to walk with Him. Our hope isn’t IN what we think we believe, or what our favourite preacher said – but Jesus Christ Himself! That’s what building your life upon the Rock, looks like. The sand in our lives is the stuff in that shifts and moves, it gets stolen away, fades, or falls away and it can’t last! Hope is now our leader, it takes us, day by day, further into what the cross did for us. We choose to trust in Christ because of that cross.

Paul finishes his thoughts a few verses further on:  “I have become its (the church’s) servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the Word of God in its fullness— the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 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.”(V25-27).

Real hope now lives inside of us. We all received that hope when we said yes to Jesus – at the same time we gave away our old life and began to learn how to live the way the bible says.  Our task is to keep feeding and watering our hope with an ever expanding knowledge of what the cross of Christ did, in us and for us. I add to that  whatever the bible has spoken to me today, together with my obedience. We can’t afford to get our hope from our circumstances … practically everything around us can change in a heartbeat. 

The way to get through the times when it seems like our hope is fading, is to look at the cross and revisit what Christ did on it, for us. Because of what He did for us  – we changed kingdoms. Our sins were ever-so-real to us and others, before, but now they are gone! When our Heavenly Father looks at us – He sees Christ. Our bit is to co-operate with the Holy Spirit so that what Father God sees, becomes who we really are!  We need to daily remember Christ is IN us. He is our reference point. He is our hope of glory. 👋