Cultivate

P 3311 Just enjoy the ride.

/ DVH

So many times we can be so caught up in ticking our daily boxes of things to do, we can easily forget that none of us get out of this life, alive! My advice for today is this: take the time each day to allow yourself to enjoy the ride. Taking pleasure in each day is the secret of true ongoing acceptance and happiness. It is much too easy to postpone JOY ‘until things get better.’ Don’t let disappointment jump on you and stay!

We can use up our allotted time here on earth, on things that won’t last, and those things can steal away the truly important things. Years ago, there was a saying: ‘Take time to smell the roses.’ Good advice! Unfortunately, today most people feel they don’t have time to grow roses … let alone smell them! We can spend so much time, planning this, and organising that, we can forget to live in the moment. But sometimes His JOY comes in brief moments that help to perfume our whole lifestyle. 

I just heard a story about two black holes which collided outside our universe, billions of trillions of light years away. There were two astrophysicists monitoring the night sky – night after dreary night – and they were tired of looking at nothing much. So one turned to the other and said: “I’m tired, let’s just go home early.” 40 minutes later, the gravitational pressure waves of those two black holes merging eons ago, washed across the earth! This phenomena had never been noted before. But that night it showed up, and registered on their many dials and gizmos. History happened and these men had gone home to bed. I laughed and laughed and laughed.Missed it by ←  that much → Things like this help me enjoy the ride. The two men laughed at themselves too.

If I have one piece of advice to anybody reading this – ya just gotta learn to laugh at yourself! Some of this stuff isn’t worthy of the angst you are spending on it! Make cherished moments just for YOU!  I truly enjoy the bible — it has lovely interesting, expressive words and phrases … a-n-d puzzles. I do love a good puzzle, and the bible is the best puzzle of all! Big confession! I’m a cheater, so I ask the Author loads of questions and He helps me. The more I read, the more I become delighted. Our Father’s Personhood comes out, particularly in the Old Testament. I enjoy this ride every day. At the same time we are so blessed to be able to know the Lord Jesus, He is there — on page after page, in the Gospels. “Jesus is God’s story!” Don’t treat reading it as info – see the Person.

Our Heavenly Father loves to hide things in plain sight. That to me is a big part of the enjoyment I get on this ride we call life. It’s the feeling that He isn’t half as serious about the things that turn our hair grey, as we are! Cyclone Alfred hit us last February, and we are still working on getting our bedroom fixed. So far we’ve moved out of our room 4 or 5 times – we actually lost count. All the furniture – in and out! At the same time, we’ve had people come to fix this, and remove that, and as a consequence — we have had the opportunity to meet people we would never have met who don’t share our faith. 

Enjoying the ride is a skill we can cultivate. It is like living with silence – it is incredibly valuable! I slowly picked things like this up, right after my last child went off to school, when I found I could think in proper English again! 10 years of babies, toddlers etc blew my brain. Sadly I got sick somewhere in there, and then I stopped enjoying the ride, for quite a while. So the Lord had to teach me step by step, how to see the good in things. Living this way helps me focus, despite what is going on round me. Despair bangs on my door too! But looking for Jesus has made it easier to see His pearls amongst the dark grey gravel of life!  

In Galatians 5: 17,18a it tells us why we need to look for the good. “For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other …” The still-being-redeemed part of me can fight against what God wants to give me.That’s why I need to put to death the deeds of the flesh … because I can’t see the good until I change my focus. For me sometimes coping with life, is like turning trouble upside down … to find out what’s good about it! I’m going to shake that joyful sucker out of there somehow!!

One of my best blessings is my dear hubby who has the silliest sense of humour. Somehow I find his peculiar Dad-humour absolutely hilarious!! ‘A cheerful heart truly is the best medicine!’ And I appreciate the Lord’s joy through him. I have checked this out personally, and I can tell you —-‘the joy of the Lord really can be our strength’ … a couple of minutes of laughter will lift anyone’s mood.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1. The yoke we need to fight against is the idea that this life should be perfect. This verse tells us that God has already given us freedom, so we don’t have to be slaves labouring away to maintain something we already have! That’s like praying for more air in the middle of a forest. I think many man-made yokes rob people of enjoying the ride in their lives. 

Our participation in this life, is that we get to give our burdens to Him. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matthew 11:28,29. WE ARE WEARING THE WRONG YOKE. Jesus has a better one.  Let’s allow ourselves to enjoy the ride. Bye 👋

P 3310 The power of Pausing.

/ DVH

There is a word in the bible that means … “stop and think on this.” It appears often in the Psalms — SELAH. We translate that word into ‘pause.’ So we need to do more than agree with what it says, we need to stop and think about it. Selah means ‘I will stop and think about how these words I have just read can impact my life, my concerns, my hopes.’  Pausing and waiting for Him allows us to breathe, instead of anxiously holding our breath.

Pausing is like hitting the refresh button on a computer. It means we’ve been captured by something and we want to stop long enough to go back over it and see what is really being said. Pausing adds clarity.  We can find His Presence far more easily when we stop ‘think-worrying,’ and choose to pause. Then pray. I call it pausing, but Father God calls it by many names. In James 1:12 it says it like this: “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him.”  This is a person who stands still, when everything around him is whirling about. He is pausing to steady himself.  

Steadfastness is the ability to believe God is good even when every circumstance around you says differently. We deliberately choose to hold fast to Him. It means you stop trying to solve the unsolvable and simply look at the One Who is so much bigger than our problem or questions. It’s taking a big breath and taking the time to lay these things aside, then we choose to take hold of Him and His Word, and wait. We want to cultivate the ability to understand that despite how formidable something seems, God has it. Meanwhile we patiently wait to see what He will do next!

“I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in His word I put my hope.”  Psalm 130:5. Waiting means I don’t react, so eventually I choose to act as He prescribes. I believe what He said in the bible and so I put my whole thought processes into meditating on that. And I stop ruminating on stuff.  My hope is always in Who He is, not just getting an answer. The secret to being blessed in waiting is not merely waiting til the trial is over — it’s waiting to hear what He says about it in the time you have chosen to pause. That is done deliberately. Pausing is letting go and letting Him do what He wants.

“Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” Romans 12:12. These things are unattainable if we do not take the time to pause. Our un-renewed minds can easily run into panic without real, tangible, God-given reassurance. Our assurance is in the bible! Pausing helps us to learn His Ways. We learn first-hand how He handles things. How unhurried He is in a world that is often rushing here and there. Whatever is flattening our well-being slides away in the light of His Word. Standing still, waiting, pausing, remaining steadfast – all these things can help us to unravel the difficulties that land on us. Then we can see them without a whole lot of mind-busyness. Pausing releases and relieves stress. 

Moses literally paused.  He was going about his daily routine and then he saw the burning bush — and the bible says this: “And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”  Exodus 3:3. He stopped what he was doing long enough to do more than give the bush a cursory glance. He actually physically engaged his body by using his feet to find out what was happening. He immediately encountered Almighty God when he took the time to pause and wonder.  

Pausing shows the Lord we value Him and His input. It engages His attention. It says: “I am not going to rush past this moment, I will give it to You. I am curious to hear what you want to say to me Lord.” It has a parallel truth present in the Song of Songs. The singer says to His beloved: “You have captivated my heart, my sister, my bride; you have captivated my heart with one glance of your eyes, with one jewel of your necklace.” The shepherd has been captivated, He stands still long enough to notice not just her, but her presence. He refuses to move past his beloved’s loveliness quickly. Pausing is about deliberately paying attention to something that captures our hearts.

It may not be about something unusual, it might just be we have seen whatever it is many times before, but this time it grabbed us and other things faded into the background. Then all we can see is Him, His wishes, His Way. Time stops pushing at us because, it becomes irrelevant. Like Moses we turn aside to ‘see.’ Pausing is about those moments, when the busyness of this world fades into the background and we are lost in what we’ve seen, or read, or experienced. Pausing, waiting on Him, adds depth where we might simply live in the shallows.

Pausing is about ceasing from any activity temporarily, whilst listening to and waiting for the Lord. Personally, I think if we practice learning to pause over Godly things, we will learn to live in His rest far more easily. Pausing is like drinking in the Lord’s peace, on purpose. There is such value in simply stopping and choosing to look at Him, to see what He wants to say. I recommend it. Bye. 👋

P 3153 Hope is a process.

/ DVH

Romans 5:3-5: “Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, HOPE. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, Who has been given to us.” Learning to walk in HIS hope is a process which is girded and birthed by character, perseverance, and suffering. I want to break it down further today so we can all begin to understand a little bit about the process. 

First of all, here comes everyone’s fav subject …Suffering: ‘the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship‘. This stuff happens to everyone. For most of us the trial begins when we are still tiny, while we are being born. Giving birth is no fun for the mother, but it certainly isn’t too much fun for the infant either! Just imagine, if you will, what it would be like if your nice comfy house starts to shrink, and the goal of that shrinkage is to squ-ee-ze you out! Just like toothpaste out of a toothpaste tube. Eventually, you arrive at the exit only to find you barely fit through it, head first. No fun there!

Actually, suffering is not a fun word – at all. It brings up images we want to quickly forget. People daily suffer in many ways – mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. But right now, I want to be clear …this is also the God-kissed place where our journey into hope begins! Jesus started there! If you are suffering at this very moment, I want you to know that I am deeply sorry terrible things are happening to you. But please, do your best to remember you are on a personal journey into HOPE. Suffering is part of a process, it is not the end result of your journey. 

It is important that we understand that we are going to need character development to get through this process, otherwise we will soon get to disappointment and despair! Just like our mythical infant, that exit seems to get smaller. Good time to stop and remind ourselves that the Lord knows what we can, or can’t do. It’s a trust issue. It has taken me a while to learn that you can suffer and still live a joyful life!

This next step is part of moving on through this process — it’s a time of squeezing called perseverance. We get perseverance when we believe God is good, no matter what is going on around us and IN us and we choose to keep right on going with Him. Whether things change immediately or not. Perseverance means:  persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.

Let’s look at prayer as an example …“Then Jesus told His disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.” Luke 18:1. Why must we persist? Because God is not a vending machine, that’s why. Our interaction with Him IS part of this process. We need His help, to cope with birthing His hope into our lives. That whole process changes us. It means we choose to stop to pray, and we will learn humility as we do it. Bonus buy. Perhaps you are starting to catch on to the fact that this particular assembly line includes some pretty harsh realities. YES. But having Jesus’ hope IN us will not disappoint us!

The word character means — the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual. After we’ve decided to follow Jesus, we will learn to pray that our character will become like His character.  Perseverance produces character, which is the ability to “hold please,” in the middle of chaos. Cultivating hope in God’s goodness leads us into taking bigger faith steps.

This life is not meant be easy, and by now we have caught on that we are going somewhere, and that somewhere is going to be so much better than the place we started — or even the place we are squished into right now. We will begin to understand that HOPE is worth having! The light at the end of the tunnel is no longer an oncoming train, instead it is the end of a production line that brings us closer to Jesus and our God-chosen purpose in this life. 

“During the days of Jesus’ earthly life, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the One who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverence. Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered. And having been made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him…” Hebrews 5:7-9. Did you get that? I bet you missed it! Jesus was heard by His heavenly Father – but the answer was NO! This is an important factor in our journey toward hope, when we learn that we don’t know the BEST answer, we only want the immediate one. 

God has a different end-game from what is! His end-game benefits everyone, not just ME. Christ’s life and death shows us God’s ways clearly, and we need to remember that the cross seemed to make no earthly sense, it only made sense on the other side of it. To the disciples the cross was the end of the world but in God’s way, it was the beginning of a glorious new way to live.  Our plans are not even remotely like His plans, because our ways of thinking, doing and being, are not yet His ways. However, the point is — this journey into hope helps us to cultivate His ways. In God’s plan —suffering leads us into HOPE. In our world, suffering leads to despair. 

We cannot arrive at hope when we only have an earthly investment – gaining hope is a transformational process. Today, we are being birthed, by the Holy Spirit, into a whole other reality … Heaven’s reality. It can be painful sometimes, but this pain has a purpose–our transformation! Because we know JESUS we can always get to HOPE, and it will not disappoint us — because JESUS IS our hope! Bye. 👋

P 3141 The power of Choice.

/ DVH

These pictures directly above the blog, all look so pretty — the golden poison frog, the aconite flower, mercury, and the last one is deadly nightshade. All those things look harmless, but they can kill you in a heartbeat. So does sin. And most human beings are very poor judges of what will harm us. Plus we can be adept at finding thousands of great reasons why what we are doing won’t hurt anyone! The thing is —sin in our lives affects our spiritual hearing, our spiritual sight and we can’t recognise what the Lord is doing. The truth is we are dead to this world, and we no longer have to do anything. 

You know, dead people no longer have anything to do with the law, simply because laws don’t apply to the dead. They apply to the living. We are dead to sin exercising its power over us, when He died. When we chose to follow Him we died. Maturing faith continually chooses to enforce this new reality, day by day. We can’t afford to let the world tell us who we are, instead we let Jesus define us. Independence is overrated! It is a small-minded story thrown up upon the screen of our minds by a deadly enemy — who points out someone else’s sin, and says ‘poor you,’ whenever life is hard. We can end up living under the influence of a lie!

In this modern world people covet getting their own way, because they think they know what makes them happy, and they know best!  True happiness can only be found in Jesus. That’s not just a pretty saying – it’s the truth. in reality, there is no happiness, peace, joy, love, faithfulness, kindness etc. outside of Him..“For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” Romans 7:5-6.

One of the most wonderful things Father God gave Adam and Eve when He created them, was the freedom to choose. As we mature, we need to grow into making Godly decisions, through our daily choices. Our decisions can have huge ramifications, as we decide to die to self, we will need to walk away from the things that came naturally to us in our past. Now we have chosen to live a different way, and we want to cultivate the reality of the cross in our lives. It hurts to say ‘no’ when everything inside you screams ‘yes.’ Just ask a drug addict or an alcoholic – they grapple daily with choices. 

Human beings have become obsessed with sacrificing the long range benefits of this life, at the cost of immediate gratification. We want what we want now. And we will work day and night to get a holiday that only lasts 3 weeks, or slave to pay for a house we may never own.“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:36. As Christians, we need to live our lives focussing on the things that will LAST! The thing that is wrong with leaning on our own understanding is that our own understanding is faulty!

When Jesus went to the cross, He took our sin WITH HIM. Now we no longer have to be held captive by the things that have haunted us our whole lives … “no longer to be subject to a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1. Our enemy daily tries to trick us into giving our power to him, so he can set up his nasty little strongholds in our lives.  But the answer is in the book – our obedience to God’s word. Choosing to die to self is the way to kill off our rampant self-centredness. It is foolish to indulge ourselves. It’s death in a prettily wrapped, greatly appealing, immediately gratifying box!

HOWEVER – right, here, right now – we have a Helper, a guide, a counsellor, a comforter Who wants to help us win! Babies cry and crank over lost things, mature people move on. Sin has no power to make us do anything – it’s all down to our choices. We need to practice asking the Holy Spirit to help us!  The power for us to be transformed was released over 2,000+ years ago. The Holy Spirit exploded all over Pentecost and demonstrated to those believers what God’s power looks like in action. Lives were irrevocably changed. That power is still here to transform us — we get it by using our faith as we follow Him.

The power of God looks like preaching when you are scared to death of it. It looks like praying for the sick when you don’t feel so flash yourself. It looks like owning up to the things in your past that you have tried to keep hidden, and then deliberately taking the time to fix them. Mature people don’t leave sin lying about – they take responsibility, and prayerfully and obediently, deal with it. Babies expect someone else to do that for them. We are suppliers of God’s love and grace, not consumers like the rest of this world.

Most Christians have faithfully memorised heaps of scriptures. Now we need to take those scriptures from theory into practice, and INTO our lifestyle. Agreeing with what God says, won’t change a thing unless we act on it. Obedience is the key to His kingdom, but it’s the one key we like to leave dangling on its hook! We can all have genuine reasons why we should hate this person or that circumstance. We’ve chosen to forget that we don’t have to live under any circumstances anymore, because Jesus has let us out of that prison. His love set us free and that love is so powerful, it will continually do it. Our daily choices are powerful. Bye. 👋

P 3059 Up close and personal!

/ DVH

“Your hand-to-hand combat is not with human beings, but with the highest principalities and authorities operating in rebellion under the heavenly realms. For they are a powerful class of demon-gods and evil spirits that hold this dark world in bondage.” Ephesians 6:12 TPT. 

Ignoring our enemy may well be one of Christianity’s biggest mistakes so far. But I totally believe in the Lord’s great all-encompassing goodness. I know He is raising up a generation of believers who will face all of our enemies, unashamed, and fearless. The way we can enter this brave band of brothers, is to practice fighting the good fight in our own little lives, every single day. Up close and personal! I pray all the time for His Grace to be abundant upon me because I’ve lived long enough to know that I need it!

Lately it seems the Lord is stretching my patience, while He is perfecting me and transforming me …Sigh. So there is a big l-o-n-g space between whatever bad event just happened in my life – to finally being able to see the Lord’s outcome. I will always need a big dollop of His hope daily to cope. Here’s a freebie …put your hope in Jesus, not in the Answer. Sometimes we don’t actually know what is good for us. My faith can be feeble and self-serving, and without His help, impatience will jump up and down on the inside of me – demanding my attention.

I battle with a sense of overall tiredness daily. It’s the kind of tiredness that makes you want to sleep for a week and hope that everything will be fixed when you wake up! I sort of understand the whole deal with the Israelites when they left Egypt and wandered around in the wilderness. I don’t like to live my life feeling uncomfortable either! The solution is easy – instead of waiting for my circumstances to change I need to give the whole thing to Jesus and walk away, leaving it with Him. And refuse to pick it up again..

God is good ALL the time. I simply need to cultivate my spiritual eyes and ears and make what He wants my priority. The problem is not with Him. It’s me!! There are days when I realise there is much more of the world inside me than I’ve comprehended so far. You know some days I also understand the Israelites longing for the leeks and garlic of Egypt, even when Manna fell out of the sky every day. It seems to me that there’s not that many ways you can cook Manna over an open fire! Boiled? Scrambled? toasted? I have a limited diet but manna porridge every day for forty years seems hard to bear. That problem is not with what I am eating – it is with what I am thinking!

The bible says in Galatians 2:20:“I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” I love the bible so much,.it shows me clearly there is no way forward without sticking to, leaning on, and totally surrendering to Jesus. ‘By faith’ means He is now my reference point, not the awful circumstances, or my feelings, but Jesus.

I love the bit in Galatians that says: “in the body.” My ability to conquer what’s going on in my head is already inside me – it came in when He came in! Salvation is not just something that happens only once. I am saved from all kinds of sin every single blooming minute of every day! Especially when icky thoughts float through my educated-idiot-box if I am irritable. That thing says stuff inside my head to the person who is annoying me: “If I give in to you, I am letting you win and there is no way you should win … because I don’t trust you!” Look at me, thoughts of reconciliation flowing about like a river! Hah! Fighting with YOU will not help ME overcome!!

That’s what this verse from Ephesians 6:12 is about. It is reminding us …“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4. The war we fight daily, sometimes minute by minute, has nothing whatsoever to do with guns, spears, swords, or nuclear weapons – but it has everything to do with my own private thoughts … by the time that junk comes out of my mouth, I’m sunk!

If I let irritation with you pull up a chair in my private thoughts … then … all by myself, I can personally conjure up why you said what you said, and what you meant by it!   You did get the whole “conjure up” vibe right? I mean that junk floating about is not valid. It shows me that somebody else has been whispering to me:  “They said that because of this – and they mean this because of that!” That’s like one step away from necromancy and that stuff is bad news according to the bible. Saul lost his kingdom and his life to that sort of Chinese whispers because God did not answer the man according to his timetable. 

All of this fight is internal, and most definitely up close and personal! However, yielding my will to His, when I am in the middle of it, changes everything. When I choose to daily learn to give up quickly, and lay my life down for His sake, not yours …then He can make whatever He wants to make, out of it – and it is always good! Bye 🤗 

P 3039 You gotta dig to find gold.

/ DVH

“How enriched are they who find their strength in the Lord; within their hearts are the highways of holiness! Even when their paths wind through the dark valley of tears, they dig deep to find a pleasant pool where others find only pain. He gives to them a brook of blessing filled from the rain of an outpouring. They grow stronger and stronger with every step forward, and the God of all gods will appear before them in Zion.” Psalms 84:5-7 TPT.

I find the Psalms are such an enormous comfort in this life! There are times that I simply cannot cope with some stuff. I need Jesus, and the precious Holy Spirit. And if you think that sounds pious or something …you would be wrong! The Holy Spirit’s Presence comforts me, and whispers things I need to hear into my heart, when I am angry. Like:“Why not suffer wrong?….” Jesus can say that to me because He lived His life that way long before I was ever born! 

When things get difficult, or I’m tired, or I have had a series of unlovely events that were not my fault — that is when I can get tetchy. Suddenly I can’t hear Him clearly. And yes, there are also times when I can hear Him fine — but I still get cranky anyway. That’s the time I know I made a choice … it was the wrong one …but I know I definitely made a choice! 

This life to me, is a battlefield, and there are seasons when we end up in the firing line. The thing is, it is not good to beat yourself up when you fall off the wagon, and you end up needing to deal with your own temper – as well as whatever caused it to flare up! Sadly, that response can add to an already difficult situation. Rules don’t help me then, they are too easily discarded. Instead I pray:  “Please help me Holy Spirit!” I have found He is so utterly dependable –  He always answers that prayer. Take a pause and a deep breath, so you can let Him help you through whatever is happening. 

The bible says this in Proverbs 25:28: “A man (a person) without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” It is way too easy to put self-control right down the bottom of the list of things that we know we are going to need. Other spiritual graces sound so much sweeter …but self control is an important key to everything else. This is the digging part of Psalm 84:5-7. We have to dig down into what we already know about Him, to help us withstand what is going on externally. 

After a while, like the Psalmist says, we also need to cultivate and develop a habit of going to Him first. Even when all you have is a desperate cry for help! That choice is ours. We have to choose to believe He will answer us. But whether we feel His Presence in those moments or not, He is always with us – that is where He promised to be!  It’s in the book. Sooner or later we all hit the very difficult wall that says — “do we believe our experiences, or lack of them — or do we believe in Him because of Who He is, and what He said?’

That’s what Lordship is. It is the place where the rubber hits the road and we choose to go His way instead of ours. That’s also the place where we will need to start digging deeper. Eventually our tears and heartache will create a pool that can comfort others. Finding our strength in Him takes perseverance. And when that Grace is cultivated within us, it will produce His fruit, in its season. Holiness isn’t what we eat or drink or do – holiness is in Him.The more we trust in Him and put our faith on the line, the more we will end up walking like a child of the King. The Spirit of God within us, rises up to help us.

Some people think of Grace as something that comes upon them. That is not true. We stir it up from within us, we don’t pray it down. Listen to this:  “Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He replied to them by saying, The kingdom of God does not come with signs to be observed or with visible display, Nor will people say, Look! Here [it is]! or, See, [it is] there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within you [in your hearts] and among you [surrounding you].” Luke 17:20-21.

You and I, together with entire Body of Christ, are the display case of the kingdom of God for the rest of this world. Yeah, that’s kind of a bit daunting isn’t it? We will allow this kingdom to grow within us as we choose His ways over ours. And let me tell you, in  my experiences, those opportunities will always come at the most inopportune times!  

Maybe somebody just jumped all over your feelings, or a pet theory and then …watch out … what you can potentially display is either His kingdom, or your own bad temper! Yes, you have a reason to be angry, yes you may want to strangle the offender, but if … at that moment … you ask for His help, and pause, and pray, and then you will be empowered to give a kingdom response.

That’s what grows that fruit we are always on about. Growing fruit is vastly underrated. However to grow a fruit tree, like a lemon tree, or a cherry tree – you will have to dig deep. You have to make enough room for the roots to expand and grow. We have to dig to produce His fruit! It  is eternal, it’s golden, it’s forever. So we gotta dig out the weeds of our old life and let the tree He plants in us grow!  Bye. 👋.

P 3011 He is a Merciful Father.

/ DVH

“Lord, You’re so kind and tenderhearted and so patient with people who fail You! Your love is like a flooding river overflowing its banks with kindness. You don’t look at us only to find our faults, just so that You can hold a grudge against us.” Psalms 103:8-9 TPT. This Psalm was written 1100 years before Jesus was born. Imagine that! Just spend a minute drinking in the knowledge of Grace that exists in David’s words. He had such a clear, wonderful picture of Who God is. Almighty God was this man’s singular focus. Not sin. Not what he did, or what I did, or even what some Philistine did! His focus was on God Himself. David knew God and His mercy so clearly.

It would be an utter tragedy if we became so obsessed with our failures, that we cannot see, or imagine the Niagara Falls of our Father’s Grace falling, falling, falling into our lives, day after day after day. Let’s always remember to thank Him for it! He’s such a good good merciful Father! We must continually chase after Him, longing to know more about His goodness and mercy toward us, until it fills our thoughts and eyes. If we look at our failures, we will end up obsessing over them and letting those things rule us. That is that kind of stuff that makes people hide from God.

What we need is balance. The ability to see His mercy-in-action in our own lives and yet not presume on it.  To do that we rely upon what the bible says and the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance. His singularity and purity of mind and heart is like our compass, pointing us to true north. So we press on hoping to be more like David, he treasured our God with so much passion. Let’s leave our sinful attitudes and actions at the foot of the cross and praise God He didn’t given up on us!

The letters in the Epistles were written so we can understand the comprehensive everydayness of God’s divine intervention into our lives. Like the people who followed Him then, we lay aside the weights that try to attach themselves, and keep thanking Him for His goodness. Always remembering we are never ever going to deserve anything He has done for us. The pressure to perform is a weight. These saints knew, firsthand, that they could not have done what was done without our Father’s Divine Love, plus His incredible intervention. They marvelled at what they were allowed to see and take part in – their joy, suffering, miracles and troubles. 

That’s the starting point for each one of us, giving thanks that He loves us. We cannot move past that. Then we will begin to understand our role in His plan and receive power from Him to do the works He has prepared for us to do before we ever arrived into this world. I like to cultivate, fertilise and weed the seed beds of my life with His totally engaged oversight. When God puts His finger on something, then it is important and it needs to become a priority … not a postponement. He does this with loving mercy, not accusation.

I often think about all those other people-today-who-don’t-know-Him-yet. The people who worship so-called gods that have no power to help their followers to change the very things that have driven them to find someone, or something, greater than themselves in the first place! And, how I love the Lord Jesus so much for coming here and illustrating what LOVE looks like in a Person. 

Mercy is a greatly underrated virtue, today. Many people think it means we go soft on someone who has terrible attitudes and actions. Actually, mercy means we don’t kill them for what they’ve done, we forgive them instead. But mercy is not about standing against a wall for someone else’s target practice – that’s giving that person the opportunity to abuse Grace. It is not just bad for you – it is bad for them! Grace was expensive. We need the Holy Spirit’s guidance to help us live in it and administer it. Jesus persevered with those who persecuted Him, but He did not excuse their behaviour. Mercy is no-one’s free ticket to punish someone else.

Our God is full of mercy:  “… that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting people’s sins against them [but canceling them]. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation [that is, restoration to favour with God].”2 Corinthians 5:19. If you want to know more about what His mercy looks like in action – read the book. Bye for today, 👋.

ps For those who have asked about our trip: on this trip we gave away— nearly a hundred blankets. Plus donated tinned food, toothpaste, deodorants, baby clothes, baby bottles, nappies, toys, handmade bags, children’s books, bookmarks, pens, paintings, thank you cards, blocks of chocolate for the maids, prophetic words, plus nearly 300 bibles. That’s approx. 678 things in 8 days. We could have given away so much more, but our car was stuffed full, and we tied more to the roof! We had countless conversations talking about what we believe – many of the people we spoke to, wept. 

There are governmental agencies doing their best, but the funds are incredibly low for the sheer volume of misplaced, abused and over-looked people out here in the country. We met a worker in Nanango who had been a police officer for years. She had to give it up because of post-traumatic stress disorder. She looked at us with eyes filled with tears and said:“I couldn’t take the dead and abused children anymore. It nearly finished me. I couldn’t even talk to my husband about it for a year.”  Please pray for her, now she helps the homeless – you cannot stop a mercy gift and she has one!

The church needs the kind of mercy that stops seeing broken people as just someone we are meant to harvest for God’s kingdom and purposes, and simply see suffering human beings instead. 🙏

P 2985 Learning to soar.

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Anything that talks about soaring above the difficult things in this life will grab my attention. So today I want to read Paul’s idea of soaring above the cares of this world —- from Galatians 5:16-18 TPT. “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!”

Eagles soar. Have you ever noticed that chickens are always looking down, kicking up dust, looking for worms, scratching and pecking …  But eagles!! They fly higher and higher above this world’s activities, enjoying the warmer air that helps them fly. They see this world from a different vantage point.

I think this is part of Paul’s point today. We can face this life one of two ways. After the dust of trouble and strife has settled, we can choose to mount up on eagle’s wings. Thank you Isaiah 40! Or we can go on scratching about in this world’s ideas and clever trends, and miss seeing the vastness and incredible plans of God Himself. But we will need to choose to rise up and see what’s going on from His point of view. 

Sometimes, I end up being a chicken! Life can seem like one ghastly event is followed rapidly by another and then another — and I end up thinking “If I could only just get a moment to catch my breath!’  But the waves of life’s difficulties keep coming … and coming … and coming! Suddenly you have the horrid thought that you may be stuck in an endless sea of trouble, and it seems like you’ve been there for months! In the end I asked the Lord “Jesus, what is going on?”

Yeah! Have you ever had one of those moments when you wish you hadn’t even thought to ask a question…because you were pretty sure the answer was not going to be all that great?? I hear ya! This is what the Lord said to me, and I have to be honest – because I promised I would be honest on this blog …I was not over-the-moon thrilled with His answer. He talked to me about pruning. You know that stuff you have to do when you have a garden and the rose bush is heading for another state and your trees are hanging over into your neighbour’s yard? “I’m pruning you,” He said.

That’s when I realised I’d asked a question that I didn’t really want an answer to because I had already decided what kind of answer I would like! Which is an incredibly dumb idea. What I really wanted to say was: “Lemme outta here, I’m drowning. I need a happier times fix!” Eventually I sat and read the book. So far I’ve read John 15 about six times because it talks about pruning. Spiritual pruning didn’t sound all that much fun. The first thing I noticed is that if a branch in my life is fruitless … then a-pruning He will go! That pretty much emphasised the fact that being fruitful is extremely important to the Lord, even though I believe being fruitless can happen to all of us..

The secret to being fruitful is to stay in Him and His ways. This is what came up for me, as I was meditating on it. Remaining in Him, means I live this life aware of what I have been given by Him, but it is not just a happy thought I visit every now and then. Everything I am now, comes from that place of grateful recollection of Him saving me, plus everything He died to give me. I need to live my life, my very ordinary life, aware of the incredible exchange Jesus Himself provided for me. His eternal life for my death to self. His righteousness for my sinfulness. His perfect love for my own natural human affection …His peace for my irritability etc.

At the same time, I will have to actively cultivate and deliberately let what He says in His book remain in me – in my life and my thoughts. So now His Word becomes my reference point for everyone I relate to, everything that happens to me, and everything I do. It becomes my new conscious-thought pattern. Which sounds remarkably like “renew your mind” to me! The Lord cannot be an add-on —. He, and His life in me, are to be my focus. Living like this will lift me up above life’s difficulties and give me an eagle’s view instead!

We all want to be productive for His kingdom. We may be daily growing in knowledge, but if we are not bearing fruit, then we will eventually need to be pruned. Not because He is mad at us, but because pruning produces … fruit! Maybe we have all lived in the natural for so long, we’ve turned into chickens and the things of His kingdom seem hard to scratch out and find. We will have everything we need for whatever comes our way, if we let Him teach us how to soar, and cutting off the old dead wood is a good start. Bye. 👋

P 2887 What ARE we thinking?

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“Perfect, absolute peace surrounds those whose imaginations are consumed with You; they confidently trust in You.” Isaiah 26:3 TPT. What we think about matters. You might ask me can anyone change their own thinking? God says we can! What I mean is this, because our minds are often easily distracted, we need His help. Here’s another scripture to chew over from Proverbs 23:7 it says: “As a man thinks in his heart so is he…”Proverbs 14:12 says: “There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.”

What we think about will eventually come out of our mouth. Let’s just stop and selah that thought for a hundred years or so! One day, the bible tells me, what I am thinking is going to be broadcast from the rooftops. Luke 12:3. Man have I thought some dumb stuff! Stuff that I sincerely want to take back. Today’s world wants us to be consumed by what we think we want, or what we think we need. There is a general assumption that people know what is best for themselves. My point is, what occupies our thoughts even when we are ‘resting?’ Even in His Rest, God is thinking about us! He’s always thinking about us. We are so blessed.

If God is a PS or an after thought in our lives then it will be much harder to occupy our thoughts with Him, we will be distracted and established on other things that can colour our point of view – the things of this world. Thinking about what the Lord has already told us in His book, needs to be cultivated. When someone we love gets sick – they are never far from our thoughts. At the same time, we are often bombarded by negative thoughts of death, devastation and destruction. That’s the other guy – he is very adept at throwing thoughts at us and then blaming us for having them!

Eve tangled with him and look what happened there – mankind lost their intimacy with God! Our thoughts need to be regularly transformed through dedicated application of His Word. We must change the ungodly patterns in our minds if we want to transform our hearts. When the Lord made Adam and Eve, He put them into the garden of Eden to enjoy it – then He came every evening to walk and talk with them. You know, in the absence of God, sin flourishes. The responsibility to cultivate and correct our thinking rests on us.

The sin Adam and Eve made was one we often make, we use our own understanding. Big mistake – HUGE! Let’s look at Genesis 2:6:“When the Woman SAW that the tree LOOKED LIKE good eating and realized what she would get out of it—she’d know everything!—she took and ate the fruit and then gave some to her husband, and he ate.” Eve’s weakness was that she wanted to be “in the know,” then she influenced Adam to join her. 

Human beings are already way too power hungry and revenge-seeking for that kind of power! The enemy ambushed Eve with ambition. She wanted to be like God and know everything. That’s what the fruit of satan’s work does. It puffs up. Humility and obedience go sailing out of the window, and people throw away our position of protection that God gave us. Sometimes, we don’t even bother to find out why He said no! Instead we start assuming He is keeping something from us, like Eve did!  

Our loving Father had already had a plan for what Eve went after – He planned it HIS WAY. Christ death is the God-given link to God’s power in us and for us. When we start feeling cheated, or robbed, that means we’ve fallen into our own understanding and we are ignoring His. It isn’t that we not allowed to think our own thoughts — it is about staying safe under the shadow of His wings. It’s about having peace in our hearts and minds, instead of the chaos of manipulation, fear and domination that comes with our enemy’s whispering! Our thoughts are often influenced by our circumstances and the immediate. This is why we read His book. The bible is food, it helps us grow spiritually, and digesting it creates a spiritual outlook, not a fleshly one. It feeds our minds and hearts with what God thinks … and why.

We must learn to cultivate that fixed reference point, because our own understanding is far more interested in our gain than obedience. We need obedience with trust. There is such incredible substance in God’s goodness, faithfulness, and His Ways. There is enough glorious reality in Him to keep us all busy for zillions of years. Our God is not boring. He is complex. Instead of talking with Him and negotiating with Him – like Moses, or Abraham, or Elijah, or Malachi, or Peter did — many people want to be wise and run their own lives, without any oversight. That kind of independent spirit can lead us away from everything that lasts. Human beings were made to inhabit eternity. 

Father God was not withholding anything from Adam and Eve, He simply wanted to protect them from the responsibility that comes when humanity has the knowledge of good and evil. Our judgment is faulty! It is influenced by our own passions. Peace went right out of the window the moment we gained that knowledge, and chaos ensued. Knowing evil also means that evil can tempt us.  Peace is our portion, but we must learn to think like the Lord does to live in that peace. Bye. 👋

P 2839 Waiting precedes fruitfulness.

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I enjoy this time of the year because I love looking at, and smelling the fruit of summer. Plums, apricots, peaches, mangoes, nectarines, raspberries, strawberries etc. However, waiting for harvest is time consuming. All that weeding, fertilising, watering etc. as well as pruning, which creates more fruit – it all takes time. Fruit trees can even  take a long time to produce fruit – most immature trees take 3-5 years. 

Our mango tree, which was originally grown from a seed, took about 7 years to start fruiting. But boy! That first crop was sooooo yummy. 🥭 Meanwhile, we had to fight birds, possums and creepy crawlies to get it. We have a pretty lush front garden, but it is periodically invaded by big fat locusts. Hubby kills them off one at a time and it gives him great pleasure. There is no John the Baptist at our house! We enjoy our plants and fruits, and we ain’t sharing it with bugs! Sadly, insects love those fresh green shoots – it’s all salad greens to them.

In the natural, there is no point in periodically digging up a newly planted seed to see how well it is growing. You will kill that plant stone dead!  So, today, I want to briefly look at Mark 4:26-29 – Jesus knew a lot about horticulture, He often used illustrations about growing things. “He (Jesus) also said, “This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. ALL BY ITSELF the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come.”

When it comes to growing stuff, we’ve found experience helps, but everyone is in the dark, until that fledgling seed pops its stalk and leaves through the ground! Then we are off. Clipping this, feeding that, regularly watering and protecting the plants. I have huge admiration for farmers! Such patience. The time it takes for any sort fruit to grow is labour intense and tedious. We’ve had a lot of storms this year, and they’ve manage to whittle down and eliminate the potential little nubs of our would-be mangoes. Fortunately we have still had had a good crop – some were 900grams!  

The thing is, when it comes to spiritual fruit, the process of growing His graces in our lives is very similar to growing actual fruit.It takes time!  First God plants the seed, (the Word) and then it is fertilised by His Grace kissing it. We know we have a seed that is just for us because He highlighted something when we read that particular scripture and now we’ve start praying about what we are to do about it. That kind of waiting on God waters the seed. We are saying to the Holy Spirit: “What You have given me is important, and I am paying attention to it.”

Feeding whatever grace the Lord wants to bring out in our life, comes from seizing opportunities. This, just like edible fruit – is not an instant process. Unfortunately, right after we have read the Word, our enemy often comes along to steal it. he will try to explain it away, or point out that you were given it so you can tell someone else. he will do anything to distract us and prevent growth in that seed. Father God, however, will bring opportunities across our path for us to cultivate this new fruit. I would just like to mention that those opportunities are hardly ever convenient, and they involve dedication.

What keeps us, keeping on, is the fact that God is at work, to His will and good pleasure!! This is what makes His Word flesh in our lives. It goes from theory, or thought into actions. I need to mention here that the first few times we try to obey might be quite difficult. We have already a tidy little group of cultivated weeds in our lives  – they are excuses, happy little reasons why that scripture isn’t there for my attention so I don’t have to do whatever it is. 

Then comes the assault of the rampant weeds, which grow more quickly than your plant!  Weeding is hard work. It goes against the grain and it pains the back!! Two roads face us at this moment, one leads to the death of that seed God Himself spoke into life, and the other leads to dying to self, so His seed will prosper inside us and start pushing against any resistance. The seed of God’s word will always seek the light of His love and His enabling. Remember, the Holy Spirit is always there to help us – but He will not do it for us! 

But ignoring our weariness in the well-doing, our feelings or even stinky attitudes is actually hard work. As soon as I get to this stage, and I know that have done everything He asked me to do – I stand. The bible says in Ephesians: “…and having done everything, … stand!”  Whenever the enemy fires fiery darts at me from others or my own thinking I give the whole situation over to the Lord and leave it there. On purpose. 

There are times when I have to give stuff back to Him over and over again, because those weeds of doubt and insecurity have grown quite large. So if He gives me something to do as all this is happening, I do it. I am enlivening my faith – that is hard work. Then I go back to standing and WAITING. Growing God’s fruit of Grace takes time, and I want to be in this battle for the harvest of fruit in my own life. I want to see that fruit growing so I can share it with others… Bless you, bye for today. 👋