Dormant

P3448 Danger is present when we choose to love.

/ DVH

“For Yahweh is always good and ready to receive you. He’s so loving that it will amaze you— so kind that it will astound you! And He is famous for His faithfulness toward all. Everyone knows our God can be trusted, for He keeps His promises to every generation!” Psalms 100:5 TPT. The biggest temptation we will ever face is not about having a happy life – the biggest temptation we face, daily, is whether we choose to believe our GOD IS GOOD and FAITHFUL … or not.  Any other attitude is dangerous. This points to the very heart of Who our Father is. 

Now before we move an inch further, I want to say … The Lord is so faithful, loving and kind, He deserves every single bit of our thanks, praise and worship, forever. But when stuff happens around us, and to us, it can become so easy to doubt His goodness, faithfulness, etc. Doing that undermines our faith. Doubt yourself, your friends, your life, what you hear, your family, your circumstances, but do not ever doubt God’s goodness.

I know the concept of His kind of love is far above our understanding, but that’s the bit of the kite of God’s Grace we totally need to hold onto. I strongly urge you, don’t ever let go of Who He is – His goodness – no matter what is going on in your heart or around you. I’ve found that when I focus on what I think I need, my knowledge of His goodness toward me, fades away. Like that kite I mentioned, it climbs up so high, I can barely see what is written on it. God Himself has promised us grace, grace and more grace. (James 4:6).We will have it when we need it – ask.

This is why we read and soak in the bible. It daily reminds us of His loving kindness, which is so much better than this life can be. It is also very helpful to read the bible looking for descriptions of Who He is, How much He loves us, as well as the things that position our hearts to be in communion with Him. We were made for that. Let’s enjoy Him now, and appreciate His love now. In our hard times a sacrifice of praise is a worthy gift for our King.

However, there is always a danger for us to simply fit the Lord in, around the edges of our already busy days. Or we can take up our time with Him, with lists of prayer requests. But the bible tells us to … “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.” Psalm 100:4. So much depends on our responses to His instructions, and I choose to treat those things as a to do list! I follow the verses looking for things to do, or things to say, or not to say -then I act on them. 

We already know that love, is an action word, not just a noun. God loved, so He gave. And Jesus laid down His life. He healed the sick. Raised the dead. He taught the truth. He lived to serve His Father’s will. All action words. Now we are alive, right here, right now, to do the same things He did. We choose to love our enemies and those who despitefully use us. We don’t love them because they are loveable, because that would be masochistic! We do it because Jesus Himself told us to treat people this way.

If we take our Heavenly Father and faith out of our own daily lives, we won’t have anymore power to overcome the things of this world, than the-people-who-don’t-know-Him yet. Why are we surprised when all kinds of people do terrible things? “Without God, (as in all of mankind!), none of us can do anything.” We need Him to lead us out of temptation, into loving those careless people around us who have no idea how to live in love, and it’s our job to be a witness for them.

The danger we face every single day is that we will read what He said, agree with it, and then DO nothing about it. That’s when our faith becomes dormant, because we only use it to ask for the things we think we need or want. I understand when desperate people pray for healing – I need healing too. I too have been in impossible relationships that nearly destroyed me. But if Jesus came to our house in Person, I would not say: ”Why was I not healed, or delivered, Lord?” I would put my face on the floor and worship Him, and all that other stuff would fade away.

The things I need to remember are things like these: “The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; …” Psalm 34:19. “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. In Him we have placed our hope that He will yet again deliver us,..” 2 Corinthians 1:10. “We are hard pressed on all sides, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; …persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9. This life is a blink. A hiccup in the passage of time, only made boring or heartbreaking by the way mankind approaches it!

As Christ’s followers, let’s learn to live with the possibility of danger and trouble landing on us, pressing up against our faces and hearts until we feel we are going to die … but we won’t. That’s when Jesus says to us:  “Now, you are ready to learn of ME!” So we pick up His yoke, and find true freedom. Feelings come and go, depending on whether we get what we want or not, but ‘The Word of our God stands forever.’ Isaiah 40:8.

“For we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about our trouble in [the west coast province of] Asia [Minor], how we were utterly weighed down, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life [itself].” 2 Corinthians 1:8. The Apostle Paul knew, first hand, how very dangerous choosing to love others can be. Bye. 👋.

P 3427 Let Him prune you.

/ DVH

Now there’s another happy thought. Most of us, if we are truthful, start backing up and going the other way when we see the Lord Jesus coming at us with the secateurs! Like I said: … let’s be honest!! We look lovingly at some little, hopeful, tender tendril, that has started to grow at the end of what looks like a dead stick on His vine and start to feel ….  a little bit proud of ourselves… ‘Look at what we’ve made … all-by-ourselves!’ And here comes Jesus, snip snip, snipping away. If we had legs in this dumb allegory, we’d run away.

It is unrealistic to continually tell people that our new life in Christ means we will grow a bunch of juicy grapes year after year. Grapes grow best when you prune them. You see, the Lord Jesus is the Master Vine-dresser and He knows exactly when and where to prune so that the vine produces only the best sweetest grapes … and He wants quality, not just quantity. To get that there must be sacrifice and that means even those things that have heaps of potential. All this happens so the sap in the vine will be channelled into less bunches of fruit, and produce better quality grapes in the ones that remain. This happens in winter, when the vine seems to be dormant.

What that means to us, is this — sometimes our most unfruitful seasons, our times of great difficulty and trials, are channelling the flow of God’s Spirit in our lives in certain directions. So we can see the tendrils of new growth in good things like worship leading, or preaching … yet the Lord says … ‘I don’t want fruit from those branches, I want fruit from this little nub down here.’ Then the fruit that will remain comes from the branches HE chooses. Maybe that means developing greater service to others, or deep empathy in our lives. We need to listen, step down from the platform, and follow the SAP!

Let’s make sure we are able to clearly identify what is the Holy Spirit’s work, and what is not! Sometimes our own good works can get in the way of what the Spirit of the Living God wants to do in our hearts and lives. We can be so enamoured with what He is doing through us, we don’t even want to know what He wants to do IN US. That little tendril we like so well could have come from a sucker that snuck itself in at the base of the vine. If it is left untended, it will draw all the goodness out of the true vine, and waste it on growing that sucker. Suckers don’t produce fruit – they are parasitical. They steal growth energy from the host. It seems to me that Jesus utterly understood this and lived by it.

I believe this is one of the reasons why the Lord Jesus said in John 5:19-20. “Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does. Yes, and He will show Him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.”

And then He said this in John 12:49: “This is because I have never spoken on My own authority or of My own accord or as self-appointed, but the Father Who sent Me has Himself given Me orders [concerning] what to say and what to tell.” The Lord Jesus laid aside His own will to manifest His Father’s will in everything He did and said. Think about it!  He LIMITED Himself. This is what He is asking us to do, limit ourselves to His plans for us, the same way He limited Himself to His Father’s plans. There are more instances where the Lord said the same thing: John 5:19; John 8:28 and John 14:10. 

Jesus prunes away every single bit of growth that will not profit us spiritually, because we need the energy and the zest of His life in us to be protected, and channelled in the direction He has chosen for our lives. This is why Father God gave gifts to the whole church. Because no human being is meant to have to hold up the entire weight of the vine. The Lord sent back His Spirit to help us achieve what He wants from us. 

“However, I am telling you nothing but the truth when I say it is profitable (good, expedient, advantageous) for you that I go away. Because if I do not go away, the Comforter (Counsellor, Helper, Advocate, Intercessor, Strengthener, Standby) will not come to you [into close fellowship with you]; but if I go away, I will send Him to you [to be in close fellowship with you]. “John 16:7.

The Lord Jesus knew what He could do and say, and He also knew when to be quiet. It doesn’t say He didn’t know stuff, the book clearly tells us that He chose to be limited by His obedience to His Father’s Will. We are asked to do the same. Let’s not get distracted by what this life demands that we do. Obviously we need to do normal stuff, like eat, sleep and take care of our families, but in everything we do, we must choose to go where the SAP of the Holy Spirit goes. That requires us knowing and recognising His Ways.

You know, we’ve all probably bought a bunch of grapes in the supermarket that looked fantastic, but they had no taste. For our personal spiritual fruit to be juicy and full of the flavour of Jesus, we must learn to “… throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us …” Hebrews 12:1a. Bye. 👋 🍇