Easy

P 3007 “Take My yoke upon you … and learn from ME!”

/ DVH

Whatever we want to learn about God’s kingdom can’t be second-hand knowledge, because that stuff will simply fill our brain and puff us up! Unless we choose to action what we’ve heard it can’t change our lives! I can carefully listen to my pastor, but unless I go away and pray over the things he said, I’m deceiving myself. Meanwhile the pastor is probably praying everyone listening to him will action what he says in the first place! Because when we act on what we’ve heard – that introduces opportunities for inner transformation. 

God’s word is ‘near us’ when we study it and want to understand it… but it becomes a part of who we are when we act on it. However! When I enforce the Word on myself, without asking for the Holy Spirit’s help, I can develop things that are not desirable. I can easily become proud and religious, or easily intimidated, and overwhelmed by life’s circumstances. James clearly tells us how to make the bible a part of our inner selves:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” (Chapter 1 – Verses 22-25)

We can so easily be self-deceived if we read the Bible and then dismiss what we read as something ‘that doesn’t apply to me.’ Maybe we don’t want to face a realistic picture of ourselves? Instead, it is wise to ask the Holy Spirit to show you where what you have read applies to you and what He wants you to do about it.. Father God wants us to become so saturated in His Word through our actions, that wherever we go … we respond just like Jesus did. He didn’t just speak, He acted.This means our behaviour will change and other people will see God in action in us and through us. 

Willingly forgiving anyone in all kinds of circumstances, is a sign of God’s Word on the inside. So is generosity in all our dealings with other people. If we pray for patience, and then give up when it seems like nothing has happened, that’s when we need to carefully survey our surroundings and the people in them, and look for the ones that drive us crazy! These people are our God-given test cases. After we find them, we need to go on to thank Him for these impossible people who are giving us daily opportunities to change the way we respond. Instead of cursing them, this is an opportunity to bless them.

Likewise, when things don’t work out according to our prayers, we need to reinforce our faith with action, instead of worrying or panicking. Like I said yesterday, God always has a bigger plan. The thing to do is to keep our hope in His redemptive power alive, through prayer, thankfulness and HIS WORD. His absolutely totally reliable goodness is our eternally, ever-fixed mark. We hold onto His promises and keep the faith that God is good, all the time. This means that if we cannot see any good — then we are not through the difficulties …YET!… Hold fast! …“The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9. 

Our faith is always in God Himself, not just in what He does or how He does it. When our faith is in how God does stuff we can misguidedly try to manipulate our circumstances, or the Lord Himself, into doing whatever it is we want. Almighty God won’t be fooled by this deception. We are not God, He is!

I think we have totally misunderstood the Way faith works. We can rush about quoting this scripture. and that passage, up one hill and down the other, but all we are doing is bludgeoning our faith, trying to make it fit and submit to a standard that we think we need from it. Faith is not about getting – it is about Giving God Glory at any time, in any place. It’s about Him — not how well, or poorly we use it. Our faith has substance because God Himself has substance!

I have yet to get excited about being overtaken by trouble and difficulties … but I am learning if I go to the Lord and ask Him what He wants me to do about the situation I am facing … He will answer me. I want to learn – and I know that Jesus wants to personally teach me. I’ve picked up the yoke of walking together with Him. The Lord was human just like me, tempted the same ways I have been – He understands the weariness that can overtake us in the middle of the battles we face. Sometimes we need to know the way THROUGH situations rather than the way OUT.

The Holy Spirit will always be our personal Leader and Guide. He leads us through any wildernesses in this life. He tells us daily how to walk, where to go, and what to do. Just three minutes ago, hubby texted me to say that he had met 9 Samoan fruit pickers and given them all bibles. He was just going about his business in the little town of Mundubbera in outback Queensland!  Almighty God is the best co-ordinator ever!!

He is all WISE, all KNOWING and… FOR US! Let’s learn personally from Him, through our circumstances – good and bad. When we pick up Jesus’ yoke and deliberately learn from Him, we are honouring Him and His Ways above all else. Bye.🤚

P 2718 A testimony and a lesson.

/ DVH

Just recently, in our stay in Cairns, we were mooching about in our accommodation, praying and talking about what we should do next. Then the Lord spoke to us and this is what He said: “There is a window open right now, for you to give bibles through it – GO!”  So we left right away.

My hubby had already listed all the known caravan parks, but the Lord, in His Grace, had organised that our seemingly random list was actually in some sort of order. We discovered that fact as we went from place to place  Long story short, our GPS is obviously behind in its updates … aren’t they always? … and the entry to the first caravan park was via a difficult, very convoluted process that was not on GPS map. We quite literally went back and forth on different roads to get in. Not a great start there!

By now …  because we too occasionally subscribe to the theory that these things are supposed to be easy (!)– we were beginning to doubt we had heard the Lord correctly at all!  However we decided to press on. As we eventually arrived at the first park on our list, someone else was checking in. The paying customers are always a priority, so hubby stood by with his hands full of bibles and waited … and waited  …. and waited … so He could speak to the elderly man behind the counter. Eventually this man took the new customer off down into the park and called out to hubby that he would be back soon.

His definition of soon and ours seemed to be quite different! After a lo-ong wait hubby started to feel that this guy was never ever coming back, so he returned back to our car, and we prepared to leave. Then the elderly man suddenly appeared, hobbling away and he called out to hubby, “I’m free now.” Well … they had a lovely time chatting away, and hubby gave out bibles plus a word to him as well as one of his paintings and a compass. This older man was very encouraging about what we were doing. Up until then we pretty much doubted that we had heard the Lord at all. Or maybe something had happened and that window we thought we heard about had slammed shut!

The next place was miles down the road. It was one of those parks that never take bibles – it’s against their policy. But hubby rolled up his sleeves and went in. It transpired that they had 106 units and they would have taken 106 bibles. All the bibles we had! In the end we had to limit what we gave them to 40, as we had other places to go. Another lovely friendly conversation about Jesus ensued and two more bookmarks found a home. Moving on again, we were en route to another park on the list when we spotted one that was not on the list. This park had barbed wire all around the outside of it. Things didn’t look too hunky dory, but hubby went in anyway. He had a lovely, fun conversation with the owner and that park took bibles too. You can never tell who will and who won’t.

After that, we went back to our list and drove about and found the next park on it. They had already been given bibles recently by someone else – PRAISE THE LORD!  But hubby was able to give the receptionist a bookmark. Then he spoke to a young man sitting outside in the rain and offered to give him lift, but the man was waiting for a cab. So hubby gave him a a Nick Vijucic book to read while he was waiting. We thought we had finished with our window, and we started to head for our accommodation … when we saw yet another caravan park on the other side of the wide main road, so we had to do the whole U turn thing to get to it. It was an NRMA park, and they also do not ever take bibles … but they did this time…!  And hubby gave away a bookmark again.

To sum up, by obeying what the Lord said, we went to 5 caravan parks and gave away over 110 bibles, not to mention paintings, bookmarks, a Nick book, and one compass! I said all that to illustrate that sometimes it can be difficult when we choose to obey what He says. Hubby and I might have easily given up at that first park. But then there would have been no conversations about the Lord, and we could have come back to where we were staying extremely disappointed, because ‘we misheard the Lord.’ 

Yesterday I talked about ADDITION. In order to distribute these bibles we had to ‘add’ virtue, (that is the sort of excellence that means what it says) to our existing knowledge of what we already know about the Lord. And to that we needed to add temperance (self-restraint). Then we added godliness – ‘what would Jesus do?’ – to that, and followed it up with brotherly kindness. (That elderly man was slow because he was OLD!)  At that point we added in charity, which means love. And that’s great because we were aiming at love in the first place!

We’ve learnt that following Jesus can be wonderfully whacky and productive, all at the same time. When we started out we had no idea where that word from the Lord would lead us – but we sure learnt perseverance from it! Bye.👋

P 2606 Look for hidden gems.

/ DVH

‘With this in mind, we constantly pray that our God will empower you to live worthy of all that He has invited you to experience. And we pray that by His power all the pleasures of goodness and all works inspired by faith would fill you completely.” 2 Thessalonians 1:11 TPT. Now that’s a prayer! Amen.

I don’t know what you do when you read prayers like this, but the first thing I do is pray them for myself! I need all the help I can get – especially when it comes to leading a life worthy of Christ’s sacrifice for me. 🤯 I know that Paul prayed this prayer for his church family in Thessaloniki but the miracle is – we can participate in that prayer today because it’s’ in the book! It’s a hidden gem that will help increase our passion for Christ and His calling on our lives. I personalise prayers from the bible all the time.

Paul prays here for all of us to be empowered to the point that we fulfil our destiny in Christ. BIG prayer. HUGE. He is also praying from an established place. He says “with this in mind” –  that means he’s not ‘hope’ praying, he’s praying using his established faith in God’s goodness and ability, to ask for the answer. He has something in his mind as he prays for us  … a place that he knows well, because he lives there. There is nothing more inspiring than the passion that has personal knowledge of the circumstances.

But let’s look at what he is not praying for – he’s not praying for us to have happy lives, plenty of money, safe places to live, and an easy life!! Instead, Paul’s praying for a worthy life for each one of us. Amen!  He wants us to have increased experiences with God’s goodness so that we are inspired into more faith. Here’s another version of the same verse … (NIV)“With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of His calling, and that by His power He may bring to fruition your every desire for goodness and your every deed prompted by faith.”

I like that one too! To start with it puts Almighty God firmly in charge of my transformation. That does not mean I sit back on my hands and do nothing – it means I tap into His power and begin to do whatever He asks me to do, using my faith. I’ve been assured, by reading verses like this one, that this power has already been made available to me! This power is the power to be transformed and it activates, as I develop a passion to know Him and want to be like Him.

It also means whatever I do, I respond with my own faith.The great thing about this verse is it is not a wish prayer. It is healthy to put our faith in the One Who started this new life for us in the first place! You and I have nothing to contribute here but our obedience and our love for Him, plus our utter gratefulness for all He has done for us. I’ve found that I need to pursue my desire to be like Jesus. He died to give me that total transformation. That is what I call passion. 

Passion should not be reduced to simply singing worship songs loudly etc. Passion is a driving life-force not just a momentary thing. In this world’s thought processes, ‘passion’ comes and goes so quickly — we have lost its meaning. Some people fall in love and then just as quickly, fall out of it. That fact alone tells me that human beings know absolutely nothing about passion or love. I like what one person said about that subject. ‘Anything you can fall into you can fall out of!’ I call that very powerful feeling this world acknowledges … LUST. Passion is not a feeling, it is a directional life-force that pulls us along. 

Today, people can get ‘passionate’ about rebuilding cars, or sport, or movies etc. But passion is more than feelings, it is a strong devotion to something outside ourselves. Actually, I think that passion turned inwards, is called narcissism! We can become so devoted to self-preservation, recognition and popularity, that other people and their needs disappear. However, the best place for passion to be born and maintained is through the Spirit of the Living God Himself – He is the Author of the kind of passion that does not fade – it increases. 

Our passion to know Him and be transformed motivates forward movement in our faith. It is way more than a feeling that pulls us to our knees at an altar — it is the driving force that stands firm in the heat of strong temptation. It is as alive and well when we are all alone at 3.00am, as it is in church. Passion is a hidden gem. It inspires increased intentional devotion, and a life laid down for His sake. 👋

P 2342 Learning to catch the wind.

/ DVH

This morning I thought about three different scriptures I’ve read recently that touched my heart … but none of them seemed right for today’s blog. Some days I have no idea what I want to write about. So it was utterly amazing that I came up with three extremely different things on the same day! You’d think that gave me heaps of choices… but NO! … not one of them seemed right. In the end I gave up trying to bam a square peg into a round hole and wrote this instead.😂 

We can get so intensely fixated upon a task that we forget: “His yoke is easy and His burden is light.” My immediate response to that thought is – if it ain’t easy then it ain’t God! And today, with those three different thoughts, none of them were simply right for now! We are not bull-dozers, we follow the wind. His Presence is in that task, and He lifts the weight or the burden for us. 

Today I want to talk about the similarities between writing this blog and witnessing. Facing a blank page is daunting, knowing that tomorrow total strangers are going to read it, and hopefully understand what you have written. And facing a total stranger and talking about your faith is also very challenging. You feel you must get it right or you will fail the Lord, and mislead that person so badly you will put them off Jesus forever. 😱No pressure of course!!  But that moment also clearly diagnoses that we are trying hard again. We do what we do because we love people, there is no pressure.

So here’s what today’s lesson showed me – when I feel the weight of responsibility to get whatever I am doing right – then I need to back up and …WAIT. I am waiting for Him to prompt me, or until I see an opening I can drive a Mac truck through. I’m waiting for HIM, I’m not waiting for feelings, I’m waiting for some sort of clarity. Sometimes that could be just one word so I go with that. I could look at someone and see anger, or sadness, and I ask them how they have been doing lately. These things, unfold, sometimes one sentence at a time.

Meanwhile, I figure things like witnessing probably will be scary because I am dying to my carefully cultivated life of self-preservation!! In these past few months I’ve noticed an opportunity to talk about what I know about Him, with strangers, a number of times. Those people asked me questions. I like that, it seems way easier than being obedient when He asks me to bring up something He gives me to say.  At those more difficult times I have a clear choice to obey or not …and I don’t always make the right one! Just being truthful …😶

Witnessing is not a rigid thing, it is fluid. In the past few weeks, practitioners in the health profession have asked me what I write about in this blog. I figure they are checking me out, since I fell downstairs quite badly, and they want to make sure my marbles aren’t scrambled, or broken or lost! The first time I simply told the person that it is a Christian blog and then they asked all kinds of questions, and I answered them as clearly and carefully as I could. We had a lovely talk together, and then we went back to my health again. The next time the new person asked exactly the same question and I thought ‘here we go again!’  Except we didn’t. They said “Oh, OK,” and they went straight back to asking health questions.

‘There is no system.’  Seriously, witnessing is a ‘fly by the seat of your pants, always relying on the Holy Spirit’  kind of thing. The Lord is always in charge, and right after His leading, comes the other person’s curiosity. Our job is to remain a safe place for them to ask questions. We are planting seeds, not restructuring their lives! Be prepared to stop in the middle of the most intriguing opportunity ever, to let the whole conversation slide. Even though you might badly wanna shout: “Dag-nab-it we were nearly there!!” We must leave it to Him to turn that conversation around again – if He wants to.

The Holy Spirit is gentle, HE Leads, He does not push – so no shoving please. He is the wind, we are just weather vanes turning to and fro as He blows on us. That’s all for today, maybe I will write about those three things I mentioned another time. Who knows, I’m just trying to catch the wind.👋🏻