Curse

P 2940 Kindness.

/ DVH

People often think about kindness as a human quality. Personally, I think that means we are underestimating the power of God for total transformation! Loving the poor, providing for them, helping those who cannot help themselves may be this world’s idea of kindness, but it is not the fruit of the Spirit. Those caring things are simply normal behaviour to a kingdom dweller.

So, let’s look at what God’s idea of kindness looks like.“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;  That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for He makes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” Matthew 5:44. See? Kindness is a God-quality, not a people one!  

It is the ‘doing good to them that hate us’  bit that I’m talking about, today. That takes extraordinary God-given, ongoing kindness, it is something that lasts. It’s spiritual … it has to be!! It is not enough to refrain from blowing your enemies up … or stopping yourself from giving them a piece of your mind … My test for the fruit of the Spirit is this — can I find it in myself? If that answer to that is no, then it is likely I am doing my best – but that’s not the fruit that comes from an abiding relationship with Him. 

I define spirituality by actual growth in my life. That means I stop doing something I was doing before. as He helps me! Otherwise, changing myself always seems to be out of my reach. I think that this means you can’t grow the ‘God kind’ of love, that bears everything, hopes everything, and never fails, plus joy, hope, kindness etc. in the soil of this earthly life. We need to reach right up into heaven, using our faith, and bring His kingdom down here, right here, right now, to bless others. I’ve learnt to regard the fruit of His Spirit as something that is unattainable without His help! The Holy Spirit grows His fruit His Way. How is your day going? Mine just got remarkably difficult!!

This is the sort of transformation that changes the way we think – see Romans 12:2. We can’t make this stuff up -we might fake it and fool the world around us, but we can’t fool the Lord. By the way, the idea that “I can’t help it,” is just our way of excusing a lack of change. The Lord Himself will burst that bubble and introduce something, or someone, into our picture-perfect life that exposes His reality. Think Peter and his resolve, and then he met that chicken! When any fake stuff is tested it will blow up, get rude, vote with its feet and generally express the ‘poor me’ attitude that seems so prevalent in this world. Today, we would rather put a technical label on something to make it sound like a medical/mental condition …than call it SIN.

Good luck getting God to buy into that excuse. Unless you have a few chromosomes missing, you will be standing on very thin ice. He made us. He already KNOWS what He put in there … !! We all have the potential for transformation. And yes, I know from my own experience, that some things are incredibly difficult to conquer .. but the Lord conquered SIN, DEATH AND THE DEVIL. That means that Jesus knows all about the level of difficulty required – He can guide us through anything. So there’s that flimsy excuse chucked out of the window – ask for His help and use your faith! Read the book. OK, on we go … are we having fun yet? 

Romans 2:4: “Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realising that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?”Almighty God’s kindness always has a target, and God is incredibly  rich in these things! We can miss so many things in the book when we do not study those peculiar, sometimes-out-of-date, words. We do not have to dredge up, make up, or beat ourselves into submission to walk into growing God’s fruit of kindness or anything else. We simply have to remain in the Vine. 

The true point becomes, how do we remain in the Vine? We stay IN Christ – in what He did. That’s how. Oh goodie, another one of those difficult things nobody understands, and everybody quotes! How do we stay in the Vine? We choose to die. This new life can only come from Jesus, so we choose to give up what we want by living this life we have been given, the way He would live it if He were here. He IS HERE, by the way. Inside us. We asked Him in when we gave our lives to Him!

Now we put our feelings and educated idiot-boxes to one side… those things have lots of uses, but they will not help us DIE.  Dying is something most people like to avoid. It means we say no to what we want and choose to do what He said, using our faith. No matter how we feel, or what we think. At the same time our brains need to be rewired – the bible is God’s method of rewiring. God gave us the best upgrade this world has ever, or will ever, see! He said: “If you read this book I will help you to think like My Son would. Now go and do it and it will become part of you.”

If we want His kindness then we will need to let His life in us OUT, so we can be kind to our enemies. They will never ever deserve it. BUT!! When we live like that we release His Grace toward them! Win Win! Bye 👋

P 2819 Antagonistic people.

/ DVH

“But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;..”Matthew 5:44.“But to you who are willing to listen, I say, love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you.” Luke 6:27. Here’s how it works – you find out who are your enemies then you deliberately, as in, on purpose, do something nice for them. Start by blessing them. Yeah, you know, if everybody did this then it is likely that our so-called enemies would not know they are our enemies! Think about it.

Living like the bible says takes a quality decision. There is no turning back or quitting. Here’s another favourite, much memorised verse – just kidding!!: 🤣 “…and a man’s enemies will be the members of his [own] household [when one believes and another does not]…” Matthew 10:36. I imagine most of the people who read this blog have experienced that last one. Long ago I had a first hand experience of this one. Praise God those people are now following the Lord themselves. But I know enough to know that a happy result does not always follow hard choices … there was a big space in the middle! People can be like mules.

Now, let’s look at Romans 12:20.“On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” Romans 12:14 ““Bless those who persecute you. Don’t curse them; pray that God will bless them.” I have prayed that last verse many times through clenched teeth. I persevered until I was able to let go of my anger! Being transformed involves choices and self-control.

You know, I can’t help but wonder how many wars might have been stopped if mankind acted on these verses. It seems to me that the entire world has gone from what the Apostle Paul said …into this style of thinking … ‘they did bad things to us, now let’s exterminate them.’ O-Kay! …That could be called extreme…!!  We can fool ourselves that we are justified in our anger, but that’s not what the book says – outside of Christ Himself, there is no justification … so why would anybody choose to live there?

This whole subject about enemies is a very interesting personal study. Because we often don’t think we have any! We will grudgingly acknowledge that we sort of kind of don’t like some people all that much. Now here is something else I’ve learnt that is fascinating. Never go into why you don’t like so and so – even in your mind. ASAP take those thoughts captive. 9 times out of 10 that kind of thinking leads to not liking that person/people even more! Many times in the past I have read verses about the way we need to treat enemies, and I have thought to myself …’I have no enemies …’ Hah! That’s like asking yourself “who am I mad at?’ It doesn’t work. Now I will give you my advice for free … 

Try not to excuse yourself on the grounds that “I-am-a-very-nice-person-just-ask-me !!”…  … Instead ask the Holy Spirit what He thinks. Ask Him who you see as an enemy. Take a pencil and some paper with you, OK? Because I’ve learnt that this kind of stuff excuses itself, hides, and jumps straight into blame … We excuse our feelings and put pretty titles on them. Like: ‘This kind of person and I are not compatible.’ The very worst kind of lies are the ones we tell ourselves … because they are so hard to uncover.

The answer to this dilemma is to ask the Holy Spirit to help us to love people the way He does. Even the ones who would like to see our heads on a pike! After that we must be prepared to go to war within ourselves, because our old self does not want to die, and it has strong roots and a big pile of great excuses!

There are times when giving into what the Lord wants, seems to be losing a battle we badly want to win, but: “He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12.25. The battle belongs to the Lord, just point your heart at Him and hang on. I will warn you, sometimes it takes a while to hear that mythical fat lady sing … 

There are also times when I think that fear motivates us far more than we realise. “Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You preserve my life. You stretch out your hand against the anger of my foes; with Your right hand You save me.” Psalm 138:7. When we believe this, and live by it, as well as counting on verses like this one, we are ‘living in the secret place, the shelter of the Most High God…Whose power no foe can withstand.” We don’t have to be afraid, GOD HAS A PLAN. Like Esther we can say: “If I die I die.”  

Except some of the time we have 94 good reasons why we shouldn’t die — yet! Those are the very best times to go ahead and choose to do it anyway. Stop counting how many times you’ve let somebody else off the hook even though they keep right on doing it – and do it one more time. And don’t peer into the future seeing the same result stretching on and on .. that’s not faith, it’s necromancy.

Antagonistic people are a gift. They call our attention to the stuff in our lives that we don’t want to see. They help us grow bigger than the traps the enemy has set before us. Now we get to fight different battles, not the same one over and over again. See you next time, bye. 👋