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P 2994 Love = great grow food!

/ DVH

“I continue to pray for your love to grow and increase beyond measure, bringing you into the rich revelation of spiritual insight in all things. This will enable you to choose the most excellent way of all —becoming pure and without offense until the unveiling of Christ.”Philippians 1:9-10 TPT.

Choosing to love the unlovely, ushers in growth.However, this will not be a happy little ‘walk in the park’ — it will cost us to learn to love the people who have hurt us, ignored us, and despitefully used us. Especially those people who did it on purpose! That’s the dying to self bit. In the flesh I may want to tell the whole world about the mean things that person did to me. I also want to vindicate myself, as well as give myself valid reasons to live this life as an emotional cripple! That’s called a side benefit BTW.  If I blame ‘you,’ or ‘them,’ then I have no responsibility to change. I can point to other people and say it is their fault I am like this. My sins, errors and missteps become sad, a result of someone else’s unkindness, not my own choices.

Adulthood will not fall on us. Hopefully sooner rather than later, we must choose to grow up and face this life from a mature point of view. Maturity is not about voting, or being able to drink alcohol, or get married. True maturity is taking responsibility for my own actions and responses to whatever has happened to me. Otherwise I am still allowing the person who hurt me to control my life. My own personal choices can take me out of that place of weakness, and place me firmly into God’s place of strength. 

This is why Paul is praying for the Thessalonians to “grow and increase beyond measure.”  Greater offences need even greater measures of love. Instead of sloughing off my responses in my situation onto whoever hurt me … now I stand up, make a choice and let Him take control of my destiny. Because now my aim is no longer just to survive—now I want to learn how to thrive within His unconditional, eternal love.

Living in love, which is the way the Jesus Himself lived, expands my capacity to take more and more of His life, and His ways, IN. If I want to be an overcomer, I must first of all learn to overcome the unnecessary things that tie my life into this world with cords of distrust, anger, bitterness and hatred. Choosing not to excuse my behaviour goes a long way toward changing it. We all know 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 well, but here’s a very different reverse, self-centred view of what Paul said: … 

“Love is not patient because you need to love me! I’m broken, and you can’t expect me to fix my own broken places. My love doesn’t have to be kind because I need people to be kind to me, and my needs are more important than yours. My kind of love is jealous, because I can’t stand for you to get more of anything than I do. At the same time, I’m needier than you! My love totally needs to boast because it makes me feel important and I need to be important, because I have good things inside me that will amaze you, if you would only co-operate with me and treat me kindly. 

Why shouldn’t I talk about you? You don’t appreciate me! When I am seen and appreciated I will be a much better person. Of course I get angry with you, you are constantly showing up my bad side, and I hate you for it. I have lists and lists of things you have done to hurt me. I need to keep those lists! They are my protection against letting you get near me in case you hurt me again. I love it when someone else is mean to you the way you have been mean to me – maybe it will teach you a lesson! 

The truth is what I think and say it is. Because I’ve been hurt, now I have lots of insight into other people’s faults. Why should I protect someone else? I don’t trust other people, they are just out for themselves. My kind of love doesn’t dare hope, it is always scared disappointment is heading my way – again. And my kind of love is too tired to persevere with anything or anyone. Nobody does that for me, why should I do that for them?”

Let’s all pray that this person never ends up in charge of anything!! … Sh-a-ll we? Amen! You know what was really scary, I wrote the above perverted version of 1 Corinthians 13 … so easily. Yikes! None of us can afford to go down that road, we’ll fall into a ditch. Here’s a huge tip to help us on our way — stop waiting for other people to love you and start actively loving them.

Real Love, the God-kind of love, helps us choose His very best way through all kinds of situations. It gives us insight into our own faults and the things that will make us stumble and fall. We simply have to ask ourselves regularly, “Is this love?” And if it is not, then we repent, go back and fix it. That’s not hard to remember! God has a way for things to be done. As we live in His love and give it away to others, we will find we know what He wants us to do. And when we are challenged by love, remember, the result of that challenge is growth. Bye 👋

P 2763 Mo-ove along the car …

/ DVH

…nothing to see here, I’m coming through … and I’M BUSY!! 

Nehemiah 6:1-9 tells us a story: “When Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall and that there were no more breaks in it—even though I hadn’t yet installed the gates—Sanballat and Geshem sent this message: “Come and meet with us at Kephirim in the valley of Ono.” I knew they were scheming to hurt me so I sent messengers back with this: “I’m doing a great work; I can’t come down. Why should the work come to a standstill just so I can come down to see you?” Four times they sent this message and four times I gave them my answer.

The fifth time—same messenger, same message—Sanballat sent an unsealed letter with this message: “The word is out among the nations—and Geshem says it’s true—that you and the Jews are planning to rebel. That’s why you are rebuilding the wall. The word is that you want to be king and that you have appointed prophets to announce in Jerusalem, ‘There’s a king in Judah!’ The king is going to be told all this—don’t you think we should sit down and have a talk? I sent him back this: “There’s nothing to what you’re saying. You’ve made it all up.” They were trying to intimidate us into quitting. They thought, “They’ll give up; they’ll never finish it.” I prayed, “Give me strength.”

I’m starting to love this guy Nehemiah! He not only knows how and where to start … he knows how to finish too! God has given this man great wisdom as he went about his work. We can always ask the Lord for wisdom at any moment. I’ve discovered that we often want it at the beginning of a project, but we also need it in the middle, while we are being harassed, plus at the end too! The Lord likes us to follow Him, as He leads us – using our faith. Nehemiah knew to stay the course.

So, back to this man of God:  next news you know, the Israelites’ enemies have sent someone with a flattering message, to supposedly support him… … As we begin to prevail in our obedience to the Lord, our enemy is not above sending someone else along to give us reasonable doubt about what we are doing. Four times these men tried to engage the man of God as he laboured over rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls. The last time Nehemiah’s enemies used the fear of death to startle him into stopping. But he sent them away with a short, sharp word.

When we choose to do what the Lord wants – as we seek Him, He will guide us and protect us from the enemy’s lies. Nehemiah saw right through Shemaiah. This man wanted him to hide from his enemies and that meant he would stop building the wall God told him to restore. So Nehemiah went right back to prayer. You know it sounds to me like that man was praying as he was mending the wall!

Let’s be clear …Nehemiah had confronted a King about the Israelites’ plight. His courage and sense of duty caused him to make that request when he needed too – even though he was a minor player in the court. He was respectful, and clear, and dedicated to the cause. What he did was nothing short of miraculous, however, whenever Almighty God smiles on something you are doing – no-one can stop you … BUT YOU – and He will go around you, if He has to – His will, His purpose!

Nehemiah refused to be distracted. He called Shemaiah and his cronies, liars. You know sometimes we need to identify the spiritual opposition and name it! We can waste our time trying to be polite to our enemies in a difficult situation, when the reality is we need to confront them and tell them to take a hike. When God tells us to do whatever it is, it must be done no matter what, and Nehemiah kept on acting in faith. “And I am sure that God who began the good work within you will keep right on helping you grow in His grace until His task within you is finally finished on that day when Jesus Christ returns.”Philippians 1:6.

The thing I want to highlight today is that all these interruptions and distractions led this man of God into prayer – they didn’t make him give up or give in. Instead he went back to His source of inspiration. I can only speak for myself but I am sure in my life so far, there have been times when I have given in to fear, much too soon. Afterward, I dearly wished I had pressed on.  My fear of ‘missing God’ – which is an enemy accusation – made me vulnerable. At that time I didn’t have enough confidence to believe I could keep going, so that meant that I gave into the pressure around me. The nagging voice inside my head kept telling me over and over again – “you’ve got it wrong, see this and this has happened.’ I limited God’s ability to redeem my errors – sinful or not. 

Nehemiah is a fine example to all of us of perseverance and faithfulness. Once this man put his hand to the plow – he would not be swayed from his appointed task. Sometimes, at the first sign of trouble, we are so anxious to get the job done, we can bail out too early! We too can have Nehemiah’s confidence in our lives. Our confidence is not in our hearing, it is in our God getting us where we need to go despite our wrong turns, fear and inadequacy.  So, like Nehemiah, we tell our enemies to, ‘move along the car – nothing to see here, I’m busy, and I’m coming through!  We must put our confidence in God alone, not in our ability or lack thereof. Just keep swimming …!!

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28. The Lord God is so great, so mighty, that He can take our mistakes, and turn them into shining stars for His glory. Bye. 👋

P 2435 You don’t have to be clever to serve Jesus.

/ DVH

1 Corinthians 2:4&5, 9&10TPT “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power… … However, as it is written:“What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— these are things God has prepared for those who love Him—these are the things God has revealed to us by His Spirit.”

Some people say that the Apostle Paul had a really big brain — they say that about Einstein too. Apparently Einstein’s brain was 15% bigger in some areas than ours is. But in these scriptures above, Paul carefully explains that it is NOT his brain that comes up with the stuff he wrote! Those words came from the Holy Spirit’s inspiration and wisdom. And then Paul said something truly amazing – his words were a demonstration of the Spirit’s power. The Holy Spirit’s words are extraordinarily powerful. They heal, release, and open spiritually blind eyes, instantly.

The bible is not just there to comfort our soul when we are sad, mad or under the weather – the bible is a spiritual thermometer and diagnostician. The next time you read it, highlight the bits that really annoy you or puzzle you … The comforting stuff is great, but if we read just to gain comfort we will not grow.

There are often times when the way to get past something awful that you feel stuck in, is to persevere, and keep on reading the bible. Then go find something you don’t like, and you don’t want to do, and then go and do what it says. If you want a breakthrough this will give you one. This book can teach us about our real selves … if we let it. Human beings don’t just hide from others, we hide from God — and ourselves. Sometimes, WE don’t want to know what we don’t know!

The bible shows us our errors and missteps, as well as comforting us with God’s everlasting eternal unshakeable love – not just NICE thoughts that tickle our ears. Our God’s love is passionately fierce – He will not turn a blind eye to something that damages or is destroying His children … … even if they choose it.

We must be careful about what we let our faith REST ON. Seriously, keep that thought in the forefront of your mind as you read His book. We cannot rest our faith on what someone else said. We need to rest it on what the Lord says to us, personally. This is why it is good to read until the Lord speaks to your heart. Anybody can take 3 different scriptures and make them say 200 different things. Just read this blog every day, I take a stab at that with what I write all the time! 😂 

You and I need the Holy Spirit’s personal attention in our own personal lives, hearts and minds, so He can apply what we read into our own situations. Principles are great, but principles are an overriding umbrella, an impersonal thought, that can and will shelter you and I. But we need our own little Holy Spirit-given raincoat and wellies when we are struggling along against the wind and rain. We need to hear from Him, for ourselves. 

Remember what Jesus said: “Man cannot live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” The bible is our daily bread – our daily bread is not toast, coffee or weeties! It’s His word. Every single day we need a personal glimpse into His glory, to keep our faith alive and vibrant. We cannot do that without the Holy Spirit’s input. What we read when we read what Paul, or Peter, or John wrote, is the insight and wisdom they got from day to day as they too studied and thought about the bible as they knew it. 

We can only read the Epistles etc. with the Holy Spirit’s help – otherwise some concepts seem old-fashioned and irrelevant. The Holy Spirit knows what will settle our hearts when we are disturbed or afraid. We cannot possibly imagine what God will say … yet, when He speaks, that changes everything. He even speaks to little children who are not apparently, fully developed yet! But little children can come up with the most profound things. I think that’s because their childish faith doesn’t put what they know up against what He said!

Our wonderful heavenly Father has so much more He wants to give us. We must never leave His table, the one He has prepared for us in the presence of our enemies, feeling hungry or in despair. Stay there until you are full! Those times are the exact time to put aside what this world has said about our own ability to study or think, and go on to pick up the love, advice, comfort and wisdom of the One Who was here before this world began. It takes listening obedience to serve Jesus, not just a clever mind. Bye. 👋🏻