Dangerous

P 3261 What are we walking toward?

/ DVH

If you and I want to see other people, (Christian or not), the way Jesus sees them, then we will need heavenly eyes that can see beauty in the midst of a pile of ashes. And even if we are in mourning, we are still able to find His JOY. We will sincerely praise Him, even when we feel lower than a snake’s belly and people are after us! What we need is the kind of Love that does not falter ... please don’t settle for less!  And the way to get these heavenly things, the things that money cannot buy, is to be obedient to the things Jesus taught us to do.

“This love means living in obedience to whatever God commands us. For to walk in love toward one another is the unifying commandment we’ve heard from the beginning.” 2 John 1:6 TPT. The reason we are so separated as a Body is thatwe are not walking in Love toward each other! Do you have anyone in your life that you want to run away from them? Me too. Some people scare me. But John tells us that God’s Love causes us to walk toward one another. That isn’t a suggestion, it’s an instruction – we need to use our faith. 

Sadly, we think if we can’t do that, then that’s OK, God will understand it’s a bit too hard, especially when we promise to try harder next time. John, BTW, doesn’t say TRY, he just says do it. Because doing it is what obedience looks like and Jesus has provided us with the power to participate. Many earthly relationships are shattered because we believe a lie. The lie is that other person is too hard for God to change. Here’s a thought, maybe we need to change, and when they meet with a transformed ‘me’ then perhaps the other people will change their responses! There is nothing like mixing things up a bit!!

Jeremiah says in 32:17:’Ah Lord God! Behold, You have made the heavens and the earth by Your great power and by Your outstretched arm! There is nothing too difficult or too wonderful for You—“  When we read the above scripture we can see that our reality is not what Jeremiah said! Our belief system is faulty. We cheerfully sing … ‘Nothing is too difficult for thee’ … and then go out and act like what we just sang isn’t true. Um,,, that’s called hypocrisy.  FYI, saying one thing and doing another is called … hypocrisy. We are much better off to be honest with the Lord and talk about it with Him with an open bible in front of us. Just be honest and tell Him ‘I don’t want to.” Then repent for disobedience. The Holy Spirit wants to show us the way forward, and if we wait for Him – He will help us.

Any negative responses in us can be triggered by fear, or anger, or thinking we are not strong enough, as well as …just plain old rebellion! This can include: “Why should they get away with hurting me?” Because our sin hurt Him! He paid, in full so now we CAN be obedient if we use our faith instead of our faulty imagination. The reality is: “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.” Philippians 4:13. That means I can love you even though outwardly you are pricklier than the ‘jumping chola cactus’ pictured above. That’s a cactus that apparently grabs you if you even remotely brush by it. Looks nasty doesn’t it?? OW!! I know quite a few chola cacti people – boy, are they a challenge! 

The point is this: If Almighty God Who made the heavens and the earth says I can do it, then I can do it. Not because I am clever, and not even because I can be obedient … although that helps! But because He said so!  We can’t afford to pick and choose what we decide we will believe. We need to go back to: ‘HE SAID SO,”Let’s repent and go at it again… and again… and again. Always remembering that God looks at our hearts and He helps us when we act in faith. The Lord knows when we don’t want to do stuff, but He is happy when we value what He values. 

Jesus didn’t shirk away from doing the hard things, just  because human beings can be hard to love. He continued to lovingly walk toward those who were going to destroy His life. Because we want to be like Him, we need to participate in the things He did. The difference for us is this— SomeBody else went down those roads to give us His power to overcome those very things that seem to be impossible. Now, we have His strength available to us to help us to do the very things we don’t want to do. Jesus didn’t run away from the cross – however, He was honest about how He felt about it. 

Hey! Personally I get up tight when I have to go to the dentist, eye doctor or the hospital etc. I ask people to pray for me or I can’t  go in the right spirit. I want to approach the staff wherever I go with love, not fear. Hope not despair. I can’t afford to let some nasty imagined outcome, spoil my day. We need our peace it keeps us going.This is what happens when we learn to value what the Lord valued – we keep our peace!

Walking toward each other is always going to be hard. Human beings have a way of pecking at each other’s faults like grumpy chickens. And the further we are away from some people, the better everyone looks!  Walking toward each other seems dangerous, but it means we are prepared to take a risk. Let’s start walking with Grace Himself guiding us, and trust the Holy Spirit to get us through what happens next. The love bit comes later. Bye. 👋

P 3168 Things nobody wants to talk about.

/ DVH

I can’t count the number of times somebody I loved so dearly has wandered off into the darkness clinging ever-so-tightly to the words: ‘the Lord said to me…’  After a while, those words can become a torment and a dark confusing prison. This person doesn’t dare move away from what they think He said, in case they miss out on the promise they hope He gave them. That false leading has caused so many wonderful brothers and sisters to fall. And some, as Paul says …have even wandered away from the faith!

Over the years I have realised that an independent spirit can wreak havoc in our midst. Churches have fallen apart because of it. Truly lovely, God-fearing people won’t talk to others because they consider them to be going the wrong way, and they don’t want to be tainted. Sin is not contagious …but disobedience is! And we need to understand that love is not about obedience, it is about valuing people!

I’ve also watched suffering souls cling ever-so tightly to the promise of healing – well, who wouldn’t? – only to see these precious people of God disappointed or crushed because the promised healing has not come. We all need the mature, tried and tested saints among us for the Lord’s council – and those brothers and sisters don’t always have grey hair either! I mean the ones who pray for you and watch over your soul, often on their knees. God corrected me once, when a kid at church accidentally said something that poked me in the heart! 

I’ve agonised over how to say this so I wouldn’t hurt or mislead anyone who is currently stuck in ‘I’m standing on the promises of God-land!’  Because hearing from God personally is a blessing. But there are times when any of us can be sincerely, misled. If our enemy cannot get us passive and inactive, then his next ploy is to wind us up and send us off in the wrong direction. Here’s my point—Almighty God does not operate like that. We are in a Body because we need a Body around us, loving on us, knowing us, and speaking into our lives. 

We cannot afford to let our opinions about someone else’s spirituality spoil our own faith walk. Especially as  we’ve been designed to walk in relationship with each other. Anything less misses the mark of Christ’s all-encompassing love. Remember He had twelve very different opinions around Him!  People tend to congregate around others who have are like-minded. I think that’s dangerous. A bunch of people with the same ideas or gifts can end up saying and doing all sorts of things. We need everyone — the servers, the mercy givers, the teachers, the healers etc. – not just people who think like we do.

That’s because we can’t see ourselves properly. Those things that we can easily dismiss as little errors, could be gaping holes that will swallow us up. Let’s stop judging where other people are coming from and love them instead. You can learn a lot about yourself when you choose to submit..I know that it is easy to slip into a POV that says: ‘But the people I know are wrong, they say this and that, and that stuff is not in the bible.’  The bible and our brothers and sisters are our protection. BTW, there is only one truth – God’s truth. And it will take all of us to uncover it.

The biggest error I have ever seen, is one that operates almost universally – personal opinion. The same God who gave you those thoughts, can confirm what He said – through a leader. Our bible says: “Don’t think of yourself more highly than you should. Be reasonable when you think about yourself. Keep in mind the faith God has given to each of you.” Romans 12:3 NIV. Praise God He is always wa-ay bigger than our mistakes. He is bigger than anything and everything stupid we can fall into. We need to put our trust in the Lord, and embrace the Way of life Jesus spoke about in the gospels, like – ‘preferring one another.’ 

Ephesians 5:21: “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” Why? Because none of us are all that – that’s why! Romans 12:3 says: “For by the grace (unmerited favour of God) given to me I warn everyone among you not to estimate and think of himself more highly than he ought [not to have an exaggerated opinion of his own importance], but to rate his ability with sober judgment, each according to the degree of faith apportioned by God to him.” All the nice words and the self-effacing attitudes in the world will not necessarily mean our hearts are right. Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: WHO CAN KNOW IT?” Well that kicks ‘trusting in my own understanding’ in the bin doesn’t it?

Pastors are often too intimidated to repeat verses like these, because they will be accused of being overbearing and controlling. When is the last time you read that particular scripture and … applied it to yourself? Our place of safety is in the Body, submitted to the leadership. And if you disagree with the leadership … now there’s a common theme (!!)… then get on your face and ask the Lord where you have gone off the rails! Don’t ever be so proud you can’t back up and turn around and go in the other direction. 

In the past, I have been in a Body where the pastor was controlling, and you know what? After I spat the dummy and complained to the Lord about it, and then HE disciplined me – for my own good. That’s when I learnt a lot about ME!! Everything, everything, everything is an opportunity for growth. If you are still here on earth, then you are not done yet. Even mature Christians have blind spots. We need each other, and the kind of care that says: “I have your back’ … but it is not afraid to tell us the truth when it is necessary. Let’s stop avoiding those things we don’t like to talk about. Bye 👋

P 2648 There is no instant reward.

/ DVH

OR… how I have been learning to love somebody His way. Someone who drove me crazy! There’s been an important person in my life that I couldn’t live without, and yet they literally drove me nuts. I have been so angry with them! They had a terrible effect on my wellbeing, first I’d cry, then I’d start ranting and raving, then I’d cry some more – mainly because I felt bad about the raving and ranting bit! Please note, I’ve used the past tense … but I am very aware that I can’t afford to be complacent about this issue!

One of the hardest things to do is to love somebody who is difficult. People who are dangerous and hurtful in our eyes. I secretly hoped the offender would move, and go and live far, far away. Then I was utterly condemned because Christians aren’t supposed to be like that! SoI repented until I was blue in the face, but this person continually kept jumping all over my heart… This situation is like an awful ride — you never want to get on, because you know you will hate it and go round and round, but you can’t easily get off either! In the past I used to get my hopes up that things were changing, and then the other person went and did something worse and I felt even more betrayed.

My bible-based learning curve started like this:  I was complaining to the Lord about how misunderstood and cheated I felt whenever I was around this individual. I tried to love them, I really did! I did nice things to please them and then they said or did something worse, and I sank back into anger and despair, adding to my failure. The list of their faults and infringements just kept getting bigger. There was no way of permanently pleasing them. It took me a while to realise that I needed to leave pleasing them behind, and start living to please God! 

I asked the Lord why He thought I had to have that person in my life. And this is what He said: “You asked me to help you to learn to love the way I love, and this person is your opportunity to learn!” Did you ever pray something when your heart was all soft and mushy at the altar, then afterward wish you hadn’t? Me too! I’d prayed He would change my response to this person – yet in the middle of the daily scrum I failed. I still wanted to punch out their lights! I was desperate, because I truly wanted to obey Him … but it seemed like I just couldn’t. My whole concept of LOVE God’s Way was wrong. I kept trying so hard, but my thoughts and emotions let me down. I needed to let go and follow instructions.

Then the Holy Spirit, my Resident Expert, said this: “You see giving someone else love, is a reward for their good behaviour. I see loving others as simply living in the River of Life. It’s always your choice, whether you live in that River or not. You are angry with this person because they hurt you. They bring out the very worst in your own attitudes. Actually, they are doing you a favour, because this is a fault in you that you can’t see, and their actions have brought that fault into the light.”

He was right. Duh! … I saw God’s love as FEELINGS not as a guideline for life. The thing is you can follow guidelines, it’s simple. You just follow the instructions – no feelings involved. When I consulted my feelings, I didn’t feel anything but anger, disappointment and disdain toward this person, so I didn’t think I had any love left. That’s when I did the smartest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I gave up! And I asked Him to show me how He loved people, whether they were nice or not!  I began re-reading the Gospels. 

As I read about how the Lord was treated I noticed that very few people actually appreciated Him! They wanted stuff from Him all the time, but He didn’t get many ‘grateful hugs,’ that’s for sure! He operated His whole earthly life under a different system. He was not interested in “What’s in it for Me?’’ He was far more interested in – “What can I do for you?” So I switched my focus from getting to giving. I asked Him: “How can I possibly bless this person?” Loving people God’s way is about how we choose to treat people, it is not about how they treat us. People cannot steal our emotional and mental health when what we are doing is OUR deliberate choice!

The Lord gave me some helpful hints:  “Don’t do a revision of how your time with this person went after you leave them. Give it all to Me, and leave it with Me. Continue on asking Me to help you love them. Then stop constantly bringing up why you are annoyed with them. Remain silent in the face of adversity.” Did you know we can talk ourselves into bad stuff? Neither did I! “The words you say will either acquit you or condemn you.” Matthew 12:37. 

Lastly, He said: “Let Me define HOW you love them. You think love is about you, because it makes you feel good. Loving others is about them, not you.” Through this time I discovered that loving difficult people means we give up the right to get any reward for doing right. So I took my ‘feelings’ – good or bad, back, and I stopped trying to feel loved by them. I simply chose to obey HIM and obey His instructions.👋

P 2495 Let God disarm you …

/ DVH

“Now, please listen, for I need to address an issue. I’m making this personal appeal to you by the gentleness and self-forgetfulness of Christ… … Now I plead with you that when I come, don’t force me to take a hard line with you (which I’m willing to do) by daring to confront those who mistakenly believe that we are living by the standards of the world, not by the Spirit’s wisdom and power. For although we live in the natural realm, we don’t wage a military campaign employing human weapons, using manipulation to achieve our aims. Instead,our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide…” 2 Corinthians 10:1-6 (with omissions.)TPT.

Paul talks about this greater wisdom in the verses from 2 Corinthians above. This wisdom relies upon God’s power not man’s clever plans, or great counselling … or even avoidance. Instead it exposes lies, and disarms the sorts of excuses that men and women often make in order to stay the same and feel good about themselves. Paul is quite severe in this edict, as he first establishes the essence of this lie – there is no power of God in it … therefore … it won’t accomplish anything lasting!

He is explaining that the Lord’s spiritual wisdom goes beyond the stuff we understand with our minds, into the very heart of what is actually going on. It leads to complete exposure of the desire that human beings have to justify themselves, and hide our true selves, for one reason or another. That hiding gig started in the garden of Eden, the first thing Adam and Eve did after they sinned was HIDE. Hiding is not good because that action denies the power of the cross. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. IF we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness…”1John 1:8&9. Confessing sin means we own it!

Meanwhile, we don’t have to tell every single person every single thing about ourselves! But we do need to be ready to have the Lord uncover the things we have hidden …  sometimes … even from ourselves. I have found hatred in the weirdest circumstances in my life. If you asked me I would have said: “I don’t hate anyone, its a waste of time.” Actually what I was really saying was: “I hide my hatred under another name.”

But the Lord had my number, and He showed me what I called hurt was actually hatred, and I avoided looking at it because I did not want to know. It was like my own private warning system that flashed a sign that said: ‘this person is dangerous,’ when I looked at certain people, and that was my excuse for not loving them. These are the lengths we go to to justify ourselves! When all we need to do is confess our sin. 

Unfortunately, in reality, I think I sadly felt quite OK about having that attitude – the people I was scared of, and concerned about were very mean! Hiding was a way to avoid their meanness – but it also cleverly disguised my real feelings! None of these thoughts were allowed to prevail in my conscious mind, because I had become really adept at concealing this stuff from myself.  I would have noticed things like that in a heartbeat. So instead, I gave it another name. HURT. But as I chased after loving like He loves, things kept floating up into my conscious mind. Like gritting my teeth when that person spoke to me – a big clue right there!! 

That’s when I realised that I actually went out of my way to reward those who were good to me, and secretly avoided those who weren’t. I pretty quickly figured out that loving like the Lord loves, means my opinion, or experiences no longer matter. He does not love us based on our behaviour. He took that aspect of our lives out of the equation, when He died on the cross. Indeed, our bad experiences and attitudes actually need to be confronted because they create greater potential for His Grace to be released! 

He wants us to treat everybody the same way – we are to love them enough to die for them. And if we truly want to changed to be like Him – then that’s the standard! Here’s a red hot tip, taken from my own experience: you and I can’t do that all by ourselves – we need supernatural help. This is the place, mentioned in the bible, that is designed by God, for His power to be made manifest through us. His strength is made perfect in weak people.  And along the way we will gain, bonus buy …  self-control.

If we choose to hide our weakness – the result is we will miss out on that perfect strength. Father God is not interested in the appearance of good.  He wants His goodness to be immediately evident even when someone else takes a nasty big fat bite out of us. Boy is that’s going to cost us! It cost Jesus to save us, and we are following Him now on the road to total transformation. Praise God! Right now we have His power available to us, so we can overcome anything that paralyses us, by leaning on Him and following His ways – instead of pretending we are A-OK.  

We simply must let/allow the Lord to disarm us. This new life in Christ comes with honest transparency, not deceit, shame or guilt. Embracing transparency will, over time, help us to know that we are truly loved by Him – especially when His love reaches into the hidden corners of our hearts.  👋🏻

P 2338 Live willing.

/ DVH

We’ve been isolated at home for 11 weeks so far … and the saddest part is that we love being on the road for Jesus. We like to go where He says to go, and talk to anyone we meet along the way. It is the most fun you can ever have, and we have been doing this over and over again for the past 18 years.

But the Lord has decided we need to be home, laid aside while we are waiting for this bone in my upper arm to heal. Hilariously, since then, hubby too has fallen UP the stupid stairs – TWICE. But fortunately he skipped the bouncing all the way to the bottom part. Our dog has also nearly had the same accident as well. Someone is coming to check out those stairs next week. Yay! Now our back stairs are against us!

What might be a holiday could easily feel like a prison. It’s Covid all over again. Now here’s some fun facts for you. We’ve interacted with so many people since we have been stuck in this Cul-de-sac of injury, even though we are, hypothetically, marooned. OT’s, administrators, PTs, doctors, radiologists, specialists, hospital clinics, government provided home assistance etc. These people, and the things we literally have to do as part of the healing process, have been thrust into our isolation. 

Of course there has been a whole lotta pain, no continuous sleep, and HEAPS of waiting waiting waiting in those very appropriately named waiting rooms! But let’s just skip over that part. With home help alone we have met a total of five different helpers, with three more government assist persons coming this week.These are all strangers that we’ve never met before, and each time we have had opportunities to talk to them about the Lord. 

Hubby asked one young man to open up his heart to Jesus last week, and invite the Lord in. He did. This particular young man talked non-stop all the time. The first time he came, I got so mad at him. He was completely non-compliant about the work he was supposed to do, and he argued with everything that normally happens. It was a total nightmare. I was so incensed by his lack of sensitivity in a hurting household. So … tada! JESUS SENT HIM BACK AGAIN! 😂 Goodie. Now we are praying for him and his life and having fellowship together. And only God can organise that …!

One young lady helper came from Burundi – which, BTW, is the poorest country in the world. Horrendous things happen there. We blessed her and her family with all sorts of stuff and had fellowship together. And another lady covered in tattoos is about to get married, so we had books and a bible for her. Everybody has been delighted to listen and take stuff, and our front door is like a revolving door. We’ve never seen so many people come into our house in such a short time before. 

I said all that stuff to paint a picture. First of all life never goes the way you plan it. Almighty God has His own ideas and He probably won’t consult you – or me either! It has been fascinating to see how something so painfully awful can be worked together for everyone’s good!  And I mean everyone. It seems to me that hubby and I are currently stuck in Jerusalem, and we haven’t been able to get to Judea, or Samaria, let alone the uttermost parts of this world! Anybody can live like this – we simply have to stop seeing other people as a service industry for our lives, and see them as people Christ died for. We need KINGDOM EYES.

All this has caused me to be more reflective, if our Christian lives remain undisturbed and we continue to live our life routinely, we can easily think that we are doing sort of, kind of, OK.  (See Luke 17:27) The same old same old is dangerous. When trouble comes and we are no longer ‘on top’ of anything, rather we struggle to be pleasant in unpleasant circumstances … and fail. That is when we start to understand just how deeply we’ve been lulled off to sleep. Business as usual is deadly for Christians.

Personally I found all sorts of bad stuff in me that I didn’t know was there – until somebody pushed the right button. I have also found I must constantly revisit my desire and intention to remain willing, in spite of my circumstances. Life is about moving – people who don’t move are often DEAD, and not the good kind of dead either! 👋🏻

Acts 1:8 “You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.”

2 Corinthians 11: 30 ‘If I must boast, I will boast about things that show how weak I am.’