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P3408 King David, an example of God’s faithfulness.

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“Holy Spirit, there is nowhere I can run to escape Your Presence! You won’t give up on me because You are too kind to leave me the way You found me. You guide me, counsel me, and show me the paths that lead to life. Today, make me more aware of Your goodness so that I can share Your goodness with others.” In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Isn’t this a great prayer? I didn’t write it by the way, I wish I had! It contains some beautiful truths about Who our Father is, plus it reveals His character, His intentional engagement with us and His ever-present, unfailing love for each one of us. Personally, there have been so many days when remembering His love keeps me going. Today I read Psalm 34:1-3.…“Lord! I’m bursting with joy over what You’ve done for me! My lips are full of perpetual praise. I’m boasting of You and all Your works, so let all who are discouraged take heart. Join me, everyone! Let’s praise the Lord together. Let’s make Him famous! Let’s make His Name glorious to all.”

This is David speaking and he is talking about his favourite subject, God Himself.  ‘David wrote this Psalm after escaping from King Achish of Gath. He was constantly being pursued by King Saul, so he fled to a Philistine city. And when he was recognised he feigned madness to escape execution. He wrote this Psalm when he was finally safe.’  

So this man, this King-in-waiting — who refuses to take his God-delegated throne by force, has been running away from practically everyone and yet he still so focussed on God’s goodness and kindness that when he is finally safe – JOY comes out, not just relief! These verses really made me think. When some hardship or other comes along, what is my reaction? Can I still see the Lord in the middle of my life crashing in on me on every side? When everyone else deserts me, am I incredibly glad He is still with me?

I’m not prepared to share my answer, it embarrassed me. It is not a sin to try to pray away our troubles and strife, even if we have caused the mess ourselves. But true heart repentance is only available to us as we begin to understand we can’t do anything at all without Him. Humility of heart is a huge key and David had it. As I see it, problems come up when we are so focussed on whatever is going on, we can’t see God in our situation anymore. And then — sadly — we actually stop looking for Him … because we are too busy trying to fix things on our own.

Here’s another Psalm, written by David at another time. This Psalm is addressing yet another terrible situation. He has been betrayed, again, and he is desperate for deliverance from those who seek to kill him. “Trust only in God every moment! Tell Him all your troubles and pour out your heart-longings to Him. Believe me when I tell you—He will help you! Pause in His Presence.” Psalms 62:8. David’s first thought is: “God is faithful, He will help me!” Meanwhile, can you believe this guy wrote PSALMS while he was running for his life??

It seems to me that this man’s heart was so precious to God because under pressure all that came out was David’s faith in our Heavenly Father’s goodness. He knew about God’s unswerving faithfulness to us. Here’s another important scripture for us to think on today:  “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” Psalm 51: 10,11.

These verses are great ones to pray over ourselves. While  the rest of the world runs about trying to impress the Lord with their great exploits, David understands the way to God’s heart lies through the way we regard Him … and this prayer shows us that we can ASK for a right heart.  We simply need to accept His Way of doing things is not the same as ours.

What an example to us David’s life is. As we read about him we watch him run, stumble, and also fall. In times of ease, he gets complacent. and he forgets Who he is serving ,and makes terrible mistakes. Yet his faith in God’s goodness is outstanding, and his ability to repent is monumental. It is almost like David had no deliberate thoughts about how to  cultivate his heart – rather his responses come from not being able to bear the separation sin brings. 

Because David is God’s idea of a heart that is right before Him, I think we need to note that it is this man’s belief that God is good, that holds him fast in that attitude. It has nothing to do with his actions, but everything to do with his responses. These difficult situations, in the main, aren’t about what King David is actually doing … with the notable exception of Bathsheba. Instead, they are far more about someone else’s jealousy of David’s position before God. An ambitious heart sometimes envies someone else’s pure motivations. It will often credit the other person with the same motivations they have. 

David’s love and passion for God’s Presence drove every other thought out of his mind.  When he allowed his humanity to overtake him, he immediately remembered that God is a God of forgiveness, and he threw himself on His mercy. He never forgot our Heavenly Father is faithful and despite our  circumstances, our God will help us! Bye. 👋.

P3402 Move from plodding into yielding.

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“Let me emphasise this: As you YIELD to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life. When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit you hinder Him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the new creation life of the Spirit. But when you yield to the life of the Spirit, you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it!” Galatians 5:16-18 TPT.

Paul just said that better than I ever could. Yielding is a dynamic approach to the Word of God. We don’t have to have some sort of passive, informal laissez faire attitude.. We have the Holy Spirit and His book – They are always right!  However, I just want to try to break this stuff down a bit so it is more accessible. If anyone has things in their life they think can’t do without — then that stuff is distracting us from our purpose. I ask Him: “Lord in this area of my life why aren’t You enough? I know You are, the bible says so! But something inside me is pushing me in the wrong direction. Please reveal it to me.” I don’t want head-knowledge to push me into places, where He personally wants to lead me.

We need to remember, that the Lord in His infinite wisdom, sees our sincere efforts toward obedience, and He undergirds us. Our God got His hands bloodied and broken while He cleaned up our lives. He knows our hearts, and our want to – is as good as – we did it. However, we cannot afford the luxury of continuing to return to the same captive place over and over again. The enemy waits for us in those places of temptation and memories of wrong doing. 

Let’s keep on pressing on, facing Jesus and the cross – pushing away those temptations and replacing carnal thoughts with His ways and His way of thinking. Our ‘want to’ counts, because we can be assured He will help us, but that isn’t the final step… Faith comes next! I have sat with Him said: “I don’t want to do this, but I will do it anyway. Please help me to do this without making the other person feel awkward.” It’s called trust – we learn to trust Him as we let Him take care of whatever it is, and bring us through to a new place. And then we begin to take faith steps.

At the same time, we won’t always notice when we are being hindered by something, Have you ever said to someone else: ‘I can’t hear the Holy Spirit the way you do, what am I doing wrong?’ My next question is — ‘who am I mad at?’ I mean, who makes my teeth clench, and I react to them like I just heard fingernails down a blackboard. Who can’t say a word right around me because they set me on edge? Deal with that. Forgiveness is not a feeling – it is a GOD TRAIT. When we haven’t got access to it, something is blocking the flow between us and the Holy Spirit.

“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:14,15. Forgiveness is not an optional extra that depends upon how dastardly the deeds were against you — unforgiveness puts us in opposition to God Himself! In this modern world, our minds and emotions have been let loose to wander, plot and plan. There are times we can’t hear God, because we’ve wandered onto this world’s wavelength, not HIS. And because we are spiritual people, the enemy will hiss lies into our ears, telling us things that are not true … but they seem true at the time.

The time to yield hardly ever comes up when I feel ready. You and I have been invited to a ‘come as you are party.’ We come as we are, honestly and truthfully, and leave His Presence with a brand new vision of a different way to live. Yielding to His will His way makes it easier to accept the difference. Otherwise doubt creeps in. If I am in doubt then I check things out with my spouse, and if necessary, also my pastor, because they both watch over my soul.

Plodding along playing ‘hit and miss’ with our faith, means we can get frustrated and give up really easily. This world is like being in the middle of a fire-fight, with bombs and machine guns blazing away all around us. We will always need the quiet steadfast love, experience and kindness of Jesus, to keep us sane, safe and moving forward. If you have ever followed anyone you will know you have to keep your eyes on them, or you can easily lose them in a crowd. My favourite question to ask myself is this —’what is Jesus doing right now?“

Here’s a thought: He is not likely to be screaming at the kids, or that guy who just pinched your car parking spot. If we happen to be screaming, then we need to take a breath and stop, we’ve lost our peace. Don’t concentrate on who pinched it! Concentrate on yielding to Him so you can get it back! Ask for the Holy Spirit’s help. I am learning to stop in the middle of a sentence when that sentence is not going to be profitable. A-n-d …. sad to say … at other times I stop in the middle of a sentence when I forget what I started out to say, because it is another senior moment! Getting things right is not our aim, our aim is to stay firmly fixed and grounded within His love. (Ephesians 3:17.)

The Lord loves to helps us, we can always have His input. Plus the blueprint for our own lives will come more clearly into focus. Moving from plodding to yielding is costly. We will have to give up our idea of immediate answers, in favour of learning to wait for His ways to be revealed. However, plodding along does not usher in joy! As Christians we are blessed to create the atmosphere around us, we don’t just plod through it. Yielding to Him opens this world up to Who He is.  Walk with the Holy Spirit – the flesh will fade away. Bye. 👋

P 2906 Humility is essential.

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Luke 19:3-10:“He wanted to see Who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see Him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”So he came down at once and welcomed Him gladly. 

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Zacchaeus gave up his former life at warp speed, no questions asked! Here’s a little thought about this man. He had invested his energy in being able to see Jesus properly when he ran and climbed that tree. I’ve heard people debate what the tree means … I could care less. What I see is a man who wanted to see Jesus. We pray for those kind of people when we go on the road, that we would find the ones searching for Him. Something was happening in that man’s heart that prompted him to get a better view. 

First he climbed the tree, then Zacchaeus came down when Jesus called him. Immediately afterward, his validity to have Jesus come to his house for dinner, was questioned. So he started cleaning up his sins on the spot. After all, his sins were calling Jesus’ wisdom into account. Then he went one step further than simply fixing his sins, he became outrageously generous.

After that this man repaid four times over what he had cheated out of others. You can see his faith progressing as Zacchaeus began to understand the honour he had been given. Jesus was honouring this man with His Presence, owning him, in front of everyone. And this guy shows what true repentance looks like! Repentance requires turning around not just sorrow – Judas was sorrowful.

OH! That we would understand the honour we have been given when Jesus chose to save us! It is not something to be pushed aside and treated lightly. It needs to be the focus of everything we do. Pharisees etc. expected to be treated well, have the best seats, and have their thoughts and lifestyles admired by everyone. But we must remember, we serve a God Who SEES. He sees through our uppity attitudes, into whatever is in our hearts and half the time even we don’t know what has crept into it!!

Some times we feel bad because what we did was bad – that’s called conviction. I’ve learnt to pray this prayer from Psalm 51:10-13 often, because I want the best attitude. I need to spring-clean myself from sin, selfishness, ambition, and the need for recognition. I don’t have to do anything else but confess my sin, repair things with other people, and then I rely upon His faithfulness!

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your Presence,
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners shall be converted to You.“

The thing is, we cannot even have a clean heart without His help! This Psalmist’s reverence for God comes through his words, and so does his heart. He has a desperate need for God to help him achieve what his heart desires. And He values God’s Presence more than anything else, and wants to always remember, that he has been saved from who he was and God has restored him. There is no value we can put on being able to respond with such humility. And we see this in Zacchaeus and a woman who washed Jesus’ feet. She is perfect example of repentance and humility in action.

You know we can have this opinion and that thought, but the way God thinks about people often escapes us. Jesus was incredibly loving and supportive to this woman. She washed His feet with her tears and dried it with her hair and she did it to honour Him.  She broke the most valuable thing she owned and poured it over Him. Right in the middle of a dinner party where she stuck out like a sore thumb! She did not care, she was testifying to His Sovereignty, His God-honoured total right to be glorified. And she had gone there to be forgiven and worship Him – then she humbled herself because He was worth it. That’s called having an open heart!

Spiritual eyes and ears are incredibly valuable. Any one of us, at any time can be in His Presence, at home, in church, in the car — and yet we can’t hear His voice, because our hearts have hardened — maybe we think we’ve heard it all before — the thing is — we aren’t listening. Maybe we are too busy critiquing the message!! Big mistake. It’s one I have made more times than I care to remember. The Lord is looking for humble hearts, a people who will put His needs above everything else. These people won’t care if whatever they do is ever seen by anyone by Him. Here’s a big thought: … if HE is the only One Who can see it, then it is true worship.

Humility is essential, otherwise we wander along, never changing, and blaming others. Instead we lay ourselves at His feet and wait to hear what He will say. Bye. 👋

P 2677 Looking for the good.

/ DVH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

P 2582 More on a heart like David.

/ DVH

The Lord said of His servant David, that “this is a man after My own heart”. (1 Samuel 13:14) It seems to me it is comparatively easy to pray:“Oh Lord please give me a heart like David had!”…in a moment of love and passion toward God Himself … with no understanding of what that means!  Will we blame God for not answering that prayer – when we ignore the opportunities He sends our way?

Think on this: if you and I really want a heart like David had, then God Himself will need to send us the kind of opportunities DAVID had! Hearts are formed, they do not fall on us. Here’s quick revision of David’s life — this young man was overlooked in his family. His earthly father forgot he had him and obviously thought the boy was not as promising as his six brothers were!  Did David moan about that? No! Instead he learnt about God in the middle of a pasture doing a job that was beneath his stature. This was where he learnt about soaking in God’s ways. That’s where he learnt to make the Lord his priority. He wrote beautiful Psalms… instead of complaining about his lowly position and the weather.

David chose God’s ways over his own human desires, many times. We all know about his failure and the subsequent consequences, but there were so many other times that David chose to honour the Lord despite his circumstances. His responses to his life were way above most men’s natural tendencies. He did not do that to curry favour with God, BTW, he did it because that was who he was! Soaking in God’s beauty had shaped his heart, and his responses came from that heart of love toward the Father. 

So if WE want a heart like David, then maybe we will have to fight our own Goliath and WIN. We all have Goliaths in our lives, and we often feel ill-equipped to fight them. But David took what he had – which was belief in Who Almighty God is – and defeated his enemy. There may also be a possibility that we will have to honour somebody in our lives just like King Saul, David’s persecutor of 20 years. Simply because that person is God’s choice to shape US… by handing out constant oppression! Maybe our tormentor has been tormenting us for years too!!

Let’s look at David’s response when his little baby boy died… “After Nathan had gone home, the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s wife had borne to David, and he became ill. David pleaded with God for the child. He fasted and spent the nights lying in sackcloth on the ground. On the seventh day the child died …” 2 Samuel 12:15-18. 

After his baby’s death, David’s servants were reluctant to tell him the little one was gone, but he figured it out. Then he does an extraordinary thing — it seems almost totally incomprehensible. He gets up, washes himself, and asks for food. Why on earth would he do that? You know when I think about his response it blows me away. This man is so concerned about doing God’s will, God’s way, once the Lord’s plan is revealed – He leaves the whole thing alone and goes back into ordinary life, immediately. Boy is that living this life surrendered!  

Much later, David actively sets out to find someone left in Saul’s house … even after Saul and Jonathan had died. He wants to do his enemy’s family good. (Now there’s a grand illustration of doing good to your enemies!) Despite his warrior life, this man of God had such integrity before the Lord. It all sprang from his deep love for God, not obligation, or religious duty. Those Psalms he wrote came right out of his own experiences! Instead of cultivating despair, anger and jealousy – David cultivated a sweet heart.

It may be that we too have lost else someone so dear to us, like David did, when his older son Absalom died. But David was not able to mourn Absalom … imagine that! He’s a leader, his sheep come first! He puts his grief aside, in order to be a good leader and king to his subjects. Funny how God picks ordinary people like that quite often. Think about it.

These are just some ?highlights? After all David’s life was filled with war and betrayal! If we truly want a heart like he had, maybe we are going to need some panel-beating first! That, and a sweet, spontaneous heart-response under pressure. God Himself forges men and women in the furnaces of trouble, pestilence, war, sorrow and strife. We must simply choose to learn His ways, they won’t fall on us.

Here’s my last thought – right after the Holy Spirit fell at Pentecost, persecution for the gospel’s sake broke out. But Father God had a purpose, He wanted the disciples to disperse to spread the gospel further. So, instead of becoming a jolly, happy, worshipping group, who enjoyed their new life together teaching the same things over and over again … persecution and bad experiences are now their teacher.

 We will have troubles and strife in this life, and this means God is working on our hearts. To have a heart like David we will need to be changed. 👋 “Create in me a clean heart O, Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.” Amen!