Faith

P 2132 Reading the bible leads to faith in action.

/ DVH

The Word of God, without His mercy and grace upon it becomes legalistic. John 1:17, ESV: ‘For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The Lord Jesus didn’t change the commandments, instead His life, death and resurrection introduced Almighty God’s GRACE into His truth.

I don’t know if you have thought about this or not, but Jesus took the ten commandments and virtually made them impossible – without the Spirit of the Living God helping us. The Lord made rote obedience harder.

Listen to this in: Matthew 5:22, Jesus is speaking … KJV: “But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.”

Of course this verse doesn’t apply to anyone out there in blog land – none of US are ever unreasonable, and we never get mad at other people and call them an idiot… well … maybe … not that often, anyway! 😂 Me neither.  I am not going to offer you any sort of personal explanation, interpretation or application for this verse BTW … it’s in my how the heck do I do that (?) file … see below. BUT, I would like to point out the thing that jumped out at me today – the words – ‘danger of.’  Yeah. Some people find that getting mad means reaching for a baseball bat, and I can see that ending very badly. But I still need to apply that verse to me – so feel free to pray for me. Thank you!

Here’s my advice: never ever give up on understanding anything in the bible. If you don’t ‘get’ it, and you can’t figure out how to action it – then put it down, and take the time to go back to it later and ask Him to help you. I have a lot of things in my I-have-no-clue-how-to-action-this file. But just because I don’t know what to do with some of my automatic bad tempered responses, that does not excuse me from pursuing the answer. Instead I pray then go back and reread them, and I remind the Lord that I still don’t get it. In my opinion the Lord loves it when we follow things up.  

I am currently wading through 1 Corinthians. The thing is – I actually don’t need these verses explained to me, I can read English, I simply need to hear His voice in them. I need a plan of action! I wait for Him to speak, but I don’t excuse myself from obeying if I don’t know what to do about it. I want to change, and I’ve come to understand that God Himself has a WAY for me through the temptation to avoid losing my temper. I need to be changed from the inside out – which takes time and patience from everyone around me. We can all analyse the words but that is not what will change our behaviour – our behaviour changes when we have a plan of activation from HIM.

I don’t want to be surprised by any ugly stuff coming out of me when I am under pressure, because that means that things that have only been changed on the surface of my life. Agreeing with the bible, leads to surface change. However, I badly need my heart to be changed. The new attitudes and actions that the bible talks about need to become so much a part of me that I don’t react to stuff anymore, now I respond to it instead. As you know, I recommend doing what it says because reading it is one thing, and memorising it is another, but I’ve found doing what it says engages my whole body, and that forms a bigger memory cue than just reading it or remembering the words. 

Sometimes I am doing something else when the Lord reminds me about whatever I’ve read that day. He talks to me about what I said or did, and then He reminds me about what He said or did about that subject, in the book. Then I can see the contrast for myself. I must be honest with you … I would love to tell you that I smile and jump up and immediately obey whatever He tells me – but the truth is – I need Him to take what He said and show me how it works in the situation in front of me – otherwise I am stuck. Honesty and humility with other people is the only manageable way to deal with being stuck.”I’m sorry” is a part of the process not the end result.

I need guidance. Actually, I need HIS guidance! I need Him to take that “apple of gold” He just highlighted to me, and have Him help me to put it “into a setting of silver.” Because I want to know to how respond to His word and act in faith on it. A Christian book will tell me how it worked for someone else – but, I want to know how it works for ME in my life. When it comes to relationships, most of the time He tells me to fix things … now! This does not always enchant or delight me. 😶 Most of the time it does not even suit me! Obedience is always costly – humbling yourself when you do not think you are wrong costs even more! 

The Lord told me years ago: “If you let Me correct you, you will hear Me when I direct you.” If we let Him speak to the sin in our lives and act upon what He says in faith, we will hear Him more clearly. People often ask me: ”How do you hear the Holy Spirit?” I obey His corrections. When He corrects me, He is showing me HE LOVES ME. However, I don’t always instantly, passionately fall in love with what He tells me to do! Most of the time I have to humble myself, but the bible says that going after humility means I am on the right road. When I feel resistant to this process, I’ve learnt to do whatever He tells me to do, despite my feelings. I have scripture to back that one up BTW.  Read about the two sons in Matthew 21. It’s a real eye-opener. 

When we digest the bible, it is like eating our food with the chef in the room. The Holy Spirit has prepared that daily bread with us in mind, and He knows what we need to hear. He wrote this book and despite the 724 translations of the entire book and 1617 translations of the New Testament – we all still need a Personal Translator. He will daily apply what it says into our lives so we can obey Him. Reading the bible and applying what it says means we will start using our faith, every single day. 👋🏻

P 2130 Follow me, I know the Way out!

/ DVH

“This guy’s walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out.”A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, ‘Hey you. Can you help me out?’ The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.”Then a minister comes along and the guy shouts up, ‘Mate, I’m down in this hole can you help me out?’ The minister writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. ”Then a friend walks by, ‘Hey, Joe, it’s me can you help me out?’ And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, ‘Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.’ The friend says, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.'” 

I imagine that you can see that similarities between my anecdote from an episode of “West Wing” years and years ago, and the Good Samaritan. Luke (10:25-37.) “(Jesus) answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’” “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 

A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii[ and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

The similarities between my anecdote, from the series, West Wing, years ago, and the story told in the bible are obvious. Meanwhile the good Samaritan does more than jump in the hole – he utterly engages in the solution. But I wanted to repeat that other story here, because I believe it points to something worth remembering. Simply telling people that Jesus is the solution to their pain and suffering is inadequate. However, jumping into the ‘holes’ in their lives as He leads you, and letting Him use you to guide others out, is called engagement in the process. Anybody can talk – but caring enough to help is the real point and even a Hollywood scriptwriter recognises that! 

Meanwhile, it is also easy for US to fall into a hole and get stuck. Some times our best stories and testimonies are born out of the pain of abject failure. IE: We have failed Jesus or one of His/our precious brothers and sisters. At the time of our failure it seemed that things could never be redeemed, and we were, or maybe we think we still are, doomed to live with that failure. Jesus Christ was rejected for our sakes when He did nothing wrong. We do not have to face our personal failures alone – we are now part of a family – who can pray we will find our way out of the situation, with His help.

In some circumstances you may need to start by forgiving yourself, plus avoid blaming others, and take responsibility for whatever you did. Then ask for forgiveness from other people as well. Our God is much bigger than the sinful stupid things we may have done. Jesus Christ made Himself NO-ONE in order to save this world’s ‘so called’ someones. Some of our finest testimonies are born from facing worse case scenarios and being delivered by the Lord, Who is SomeOne greater, more forgiving, loving and powerful than we are. To do that we will need eyes to see Him at work, even if it seems like nothing is happening. Plus the faith to keep believing.

The best person to talk to someone who is stuck in a hole, is the person who has been in one themselves … sometimes of their own making … and God Himself got them out. We dare not ever forget that our story is always a Redemption story. When we get to heaven people will not be praising US for our clever solutions, they will praise Almighty God and the Lamb forever for what They did in our lives. We may like what we believe to sound and look like a success story, but the truth is – it is His success story – not ours. We miss the whole point if we only repeat the things that testify to how we responded well, or we used our faith etc. etc. That is when the Lord becomes an add-on, not the feature. Our stories and testimonies need to be about how HE, our God, turned things around. To cultivate this kind of attitude, we need to be able to see Him at work in any situation, no matter how dire it is. 

Our job is to tell others that we know the way out – we are here to be His hands and feet, so we can help others escape from the holes of this life. We are not the way out, but we know the One Who is.  Humility and service are the way forward – serving and helping others who are inside, and outside our churches. His love is never wasted, even if the person we give it to does not understand what they have been given. Finally we need to realise that … I am never ever going to be ‘all that’ … but I know SomeOne Who is ‘all that” and He loves me passionately. I have His favour. That means I can help, as well as pray for someone else.  👋🏻 

P 2129 Tick tock.

/ DVH

Ephesians 3:14-21 TPT “So I kneel humbly in awe before the Father of our Lord Jesus, the Messiah, the perfect Father of every father and child in heaven and on the earth. And I pray that He would unveil within YOU the unlimited riches of His glory and favour until supernatural strength floods your innermost being with His divine might and explosive power.” 

I think these verses are a fantastic prayer to pray for yourself and all the people around you. This is how we need to live – when things are good, as well as bad. We all live on the other side of the cross. Even if we don’t know Him yet, we can ask the Lord Jesus to reveal Himself to us. He has already given this world everything – total forgiveness, plus He poured out eternal His love, and He gave us the power to learn about Him and walk with Him. Our God hasn’t left mankind alone. The Holy Spirit is God and He is here. He came and He never left! And our task is to cherish His Presence and follow Him – the same way Jesus’ disciples followed Him. Using our faith.

You know, the disciples didn’t go on holidays, or have a slouching-about-the-house-day, in those three and a half years of intense ministry? They simply walked and talked with Jesus, each other, and anyone else who needed something. It takes faith to do that when the immediate stuff of this world presses in on us. These men woke up with Him, they ate with Him, they walked dusty roads following Him. I don’t think we can begin to understand the blessing of living, walking and talking with Jesus Christ, every single day. Christianity does not work part-time. We need to constantly use our faith for something else other than excusing our bad behaviour.

Back to Ephesians: “Then, by CONSTANTLY using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you, and the resting place of His love will become the very source and root of your life. THEN you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences—the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far-reaching is His love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding—this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!”  WOW!

There is one thing we need to know above everything else – our Heavenly Father is looking for a resting place – a habitation – and He wants US to be that place. God is holy and we are not.  But Jesus Christ made this utterly impossible thing – walking and talking with God Himself –  possible for us, in our lives, before we were ever born. I cannot give anyone some formulaic system on how to walk with Jesus minute by minute. My only solution is to make Him the centre of everything you know, and then go out and live for others while we are doing that. This means simple things like – in a conversation with someone else – what they have to say is more important than what we have to say! We need to intentionally reverse the selfish polarity that is dominating this world – and that has to be done prayerfully, and on purpose, through our own choices.

Here is the last bit today: “Never doubt God’s mighty power TO WORK IN YOU and accomplish all this. He will achieve infinitely more than your greatest request, your most unbelievable dream, and exceed your wildest imagination! He will outdo them all, for His miraculous power constantly energises you. Now we offer up to God all the glorious praise that rises from every church in every generation through Jesus Christ—and all that will yet be manifest through time and eternity. Amen!”  

We cannot know what we have been given, unless we make an effort for ourselves to find out and seek Him. Somebody else can’t give this to us – even the most anointed man or woman has to choose to pray when they have other matters pressing in on them. We need to ask for a revelation of the importance of our lives for His kingdom’s sake. Otherwise spiritual things just stay as words on a page, and eventually they become interesting information.  

But the reality is, we are all destined to be citizens of heaven, our names are written in His book, the book of life, forever. How sad it would be if we won some super prize in a lottery and we didn’t go to pick up the prize! JESUS IS OUR PRIZE – His nearness from day to day is our greatest blessing, whether we feel like it or not. And most days, at my house, I live with ‘OR NOT.’ We must pray for His power to overcome the seemingly unimportant every day things that hold us back from living our Christian lives in victory!

Everything depends on how you look at this life you have been given and what you cherish most. Whatever we make our priority, will fill our vision. I love that old hymn, “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart…” If living this life from day to day, is all about finding the rent, going to work, or paying the mortgage, and raising our kids then that will be the main priority of our lives. Ask the Lord to help you to focus on Him above everything else. satan does not have to corrupt us in order to render us useless, and stop us daily living in God’s kingdom. he just needs to lull us off to sleep with our everyday humdrum lives, lurching from one financial or moral temptation to another.  

The Lord has some people in this world, who dearly love Him yet they live under a constant barrage of fear and danger, as well as a huge need for food and shelter. They don’t have a problem focussing on God! He fills their thoughts. Our biggest danger in the Western world is apathy and human busy-ness.  It takes focus to walk with Him and live our lives acknowledging His ways, because this life we live from day to day, crowds our thoughts of Christ and what He did for us … OUT. If not now, then when? Tick tock. ⏰ 👋🏻

P 2125 The Lord’s wisdom is pure gold.

/ DVH

Every time we individually read the bible, we need to read it with the thought in the back of our minds that we are looking for something fresh, even though perhaps we have already read what we are reading, many many times before. Reading like this means we are looking for personal, individual, fresh revelation. Pure gold from heaven. My best advice when you read the bible is to come to it with fresh eyes, each time, and … don’t rush the process. 

Meanwhile, the biggest danger in Christian teaching, is that we can choose one man’s interpretation, or one school of thought, as the way we want to think about this verse or that principle  … now and  forevermore Amen! That’s a dumb idea! 🙄 Development and change are vital – we cannot settle, we are pioneers, not settlers. Settling for reading this bible, without digging for gold, is the very thing that lost track of the Holy Spirit speaking to us, individually, in the first place. I know that human beings like routine, I know it personally! But succumbing to routine whilst reading the book, precludes the expansion of His life within us.

If we want to know what the Lord thinks, or what He wants to say to us, today, then we need to approach the bible with an open heart.  We simply must allow Him to renew and expand our meditations and thoughts in ways that show us more about HIM. Having one POV about any verse is limiting, and our God’s wisdom is many-sided. I would go so far as to say that His wisdom is limit-less and incomprehensible to us without the Holy Spirit’s help! We also cannot limit Him and His ways to our own experiences …  So, unless we continually allow our view to be enlarged, and stop thinking there is only one way for us to go, we will end up limiting His wisdom for our lives, and as a consequence, we will limit our spiritual growth.  

Over the years I’ve met many people who have quite literally stopped following the Lord Himself, and start following Brother ‘I’ve-got-proof-I-am-right’, or Sister ‘I’ll-just-get-the-food-ready-for-you-shall-I?’ 😳 And yes, I see the irony whilst I am writing a blog!  However, it is not good to continually eat pre-digested food all the time. Let me just say that when we have to hunt down food, by searching the bible, that is actually good for us. At the very least it exercises your faith and helps it stretch and grow. Plus it is ridiculous to expect one individual, apart from JESUS, to know everything. You can always talk to a mature Christian to see if what you thought you heard or read, was fresh from fantasy land!

The Lord, the God of heaven and earth, wants to talk to us, personally. He wants to counsel us, as individuals, with His eye upon us.(Psalm 32:8) We will gain so much from His personal attention.That’s when we stop just being a lemming, and start running our own race. At the same time our gifts will start to manifest themselves. Not to mention that the Lord wants to be that intimate with each one us!

One of the biggest truths about the modern church is that we do not know what we do not know. We just think we do! Maybe because we read somewhere in a Christian book that someone acted on what He said, and saw a miracle. Miracles are not stamps of approval – they are signs of the Lord’s Presence and His incredible loving generosity! The entire Universe shifts when we stop making ourselves, our opinions, our church, and our theology the centre of everything.  

We also need to start embracing collective wisdom – especially from those who have gone before us. There is an attitude today that says, everything that went before us was wrong! Now, apparently … God has has given this generation a greater revelation. Phooey! The Lord builds “layer upon layer, precept upon precept, and line upon line.’ (Isaiah 28:10) Maybe we have not asked Him to show us how Brother-I’ve-gone-home-to-be-with-the-Lord’s-revelation can benefit us! We will never get above the first floor if we keep yanking out what was already there when we arrived in His kingdom! 

Our God’s ways are so incredibly wiser and more powerful than we are letting Him be – He knows exactly what sort of revelation to release to us peanuts-for-brains down here, and when to do it! However, only the Holy Spirit Himself knows how to take those “apples of gold” God Himself gives us, and He knows how to put those apples into a “setting of silver.” (Proverbs 25:11) There is a verse in Isaiah (54:2) that talks about ‘enlarging the boundaries of our tents.’ I think that this verse needs to be taken more seriously. God is not talking about making our houses – temporary or not … bigger.  He is talking about the way we view this life. In our efforts to get things right, we have forgotten that Father God already has a MAN Who got everything right – JESUS CHRIST.

The Lord’s word is always multi faceted, and pure gold from heaven, but He has only one side. HIS! And if we want to survive this life with our faith intact, growing and expanding in the knowledge of His ways, we better start chasing what His side looks like. I’m starting to say: “I dunno” a lot more than I used to, nowadays. How about you? 👋🏻

P 2123 The road to maturity.

/ DVH

Maturity in God happens as we choose to do the things we do not want to do, for His sake. Like loving people, and reaching out to strangers …  by helping them practically, and sharing God’s loving kindness with them. That is the best way I know to stretch our faith and start down the road toward maturity. The church has become so stuck on evangelising people – it has made those people who don’t serve God for a living, feel inadequate!  Evangelists are one of the gifts that have been given to the Body of Christ. If you have that gift you know you have it because telling people they need to be saved comes naturally to you. However, a witness simply tells others what they know about Him and what they have seen for themselves. 

John 4:28-30: “Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a Man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward Him…” 38-42 ”…Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to Him, they urged Him to stay with them, and He stayed two days.  And because of His words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world.”

This Samaritan woman didn’t give a theological discourse to her village, she just told her neighbours what she heard Him say about her, and her life! I believe that we step into our destiny by actively sharing with others, and that puts us on the road to becoming a mature Christian. But this life is distracting, and so we concentrate on what has happened around us, or to us – instead of intentionally focussing on God’s purpose in our lives. That’s when we miss the blessings He has for us in the middle of the trials and troubles.

God is treating us like His very own precious children. He allows things to come into our lives so we can choose to follow Him through them. Our minute by minute choices to do what He said, or not, count. The trouble with choices is we can make them too quickly, and give in to our emotions – sometimes for convenience sake – without even giving our responses to the difficulties thought. Maturity makes hard choices.

In the bible, the people who love God and serve Him, are either, in trouble, about to get out of trouble or about to get into more trouble. Read the Old Testament! Or read the NEW! Trouble is a sign we are going the right way!! Paul had himself a whole heap of trouble, he was in and out of jail unable to travel sometimes, but he chose to see and learn God’s ways, rather than focus on the liabilities. Meanwhile how could Paul ever know that those difficulties would benefit US? He was just looking after the churches he founded back then. He had no idea his letters about Christ and how to grow in God, would become a book that would reach the entire world! We cannot always understand the purposes and plans of God – that’s why it is called faith. 

Sometimes we miss opportunities to choose to mature because of our immediate needs. This life is full of distractions. Things that need to be done instantly. But when we choose to trust Him above our own understanding that is when we let our faith loose. A transaction occurs inside our spirits and we stand up a little straighter and feel bolder – we actually start owning who we really are by making hard choices. Read Romans 8:31-39. ‘Nothing’ … means even our feelings can’t separate us from Him, unless we give in to them. We belong to Him now, and even though we can be faith-LESS He is always faith-FUL.  You can stake your life on Him. 

Philippians 2:13 says: “For it is [not your strength, but it is] God Who is effectively at work in you, both to will and to work [that is, strengthening, energising, and creating in you the longing and the ability to fulfil your purpose] for His good pleasure.”

The Holy Spirit wants us to win. He believes in us. He longs to help us. I exhort us all to step out of the boat of safety onto the waters of change. He will not let us drown. Dust off your testimony about how the Lord Jesus changed your life and tell Him He can call on you whenever He likes. Don’t worry about time – I’ve watched Him stretch my own time, personally. Challenge yourself to find one person today who needs to hear that they are beautiful in Christ’s eyes, they matter to Him, and He loves them dearly. “Shed the love of God in your heart ABROAD …BY FAITH …”👋🏻

P 2119 What comes out when the pressure comes on?

/ DVH

Human beings can be quite clever at hiding stuff, from themselves … as well as others.  Like Jesus showed us in John 7:37-39 “On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” … If we want rivers of His water flowing in our lives … then  we have to stop building dams to protect ourselves, or diverting His streams of life away from the purposes of God into our own purposes. This water goes through us to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. LET IT FLOW.

I realised a number of years ago that I could be ‘nice’ and fool people, even the people around me … but Almighty God sees my heart, and I can’t fool HIM.  Now, despite the fact that I can lie to myself and get away with pretending I am a nice person … who I really am comes out when I am squeezed tightly by life’s pressures and difficulties. HOWEVER, I am here to say today, do not give up on yourself, and definitely do not give up on Him! “But…”you wail, “I pray all the time about my bad temper, sarcastic tongue, petty stinky attitudes  plus rebellion, pomposity, resentment and bitterness I feel inside, and God hasn’t done anything about it SO… perhaps it doesn’t bother Him!” (Yeah right, telling yourself that won’t change anything.) 

You can tell yourself that, but you and I have read the book, and we all can see instantly in there that’s not what He is aiming at! I now understand that nothing happens to me, or around me by accident. The Lord allows circumstances into my life so I can acknowledge my sin, then repent, and repair things and ask for His help to change. THEN!!! …Then I gird up my loins and deliberately start taking faith steps. I’ve pray this – “help help “ all the time. Why? “The Lord is close to all who CALL on Him, yes, to all who call on Him in truth. He fills the desires of those who fear Him: He hears their cry and saves them.” (Psalm 145:18) My advice is we need to be truthful and admit our faults.

I’ve learnt that there is no use blaming other people for your response. Your response is your responsibility. Saying nothing is better than letting stinky dangerous stuff fly out of your mouth. “But I mean what I am saying at the time!” Yeah, we all do, but what is said in anger cannot be easily repaired. The thing is, someone has  threatened us, and we use our words to push back at them. At that moment we are deliberately telling that other person something they don’t need to know about themselves. Their bad attitude, if they even have one, is their responsibility – not ours. Our aim is to spread love, and our opinion about someone else’s behaviour or thoughts or actions isn’t something they need to hear from us. BTW, if you poke the bear serves you right if it bites your head off! 

Our words are meant to HEAL not hurt. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:29. (The dictionary says: LET is a verb (used with object), let, let·ting. to allow or permit:)  “But I have a foul temper!!” Hmmm.. Thank you so much for telling me that, I will do do my best to avoid YOU! 🤣 We do not have to feed our weaknesses by indulging them. Instead, we can learn to actively transform who we are with His help. The Lord Jesus has done all the work at Calvary, now we get to live out what He did IN FAITH. The only power satan has over us is the power we GIVE him. Faith, however, is the substance of things hoped for …” We give our faith substance by acting on what we believe, in spite of our feelings or circumstances.

So when my mouth wants to vomit bad stuff over someone else, I take a great big breath and pray ‘help help.’ And if doing that doesn’t stop the flow, then I excuse myself and go be by myself until the Lord and I have a strategy – and that strategy never includes hurting the other person. The Power of God can only flow through us to the extent that we let it work ON us. Ya might want to read that sentence again, I know I need too!  Stop looking at what the other person said, and look at what you are saying. Our speech needs to build up and help others, not shatter them.

“His strength is made perfect in our weaknesses.”  When I am weakest then I am strong in Him. We get strong in His Might … using our faith. Faith has substance, we learn that when we use it.  We don’t get zapped there, we WALK there deliberately, on purpose, using our faith. Jesus did it. He went up a mountain and prayed, then He spoke things that were going to help His disciples to rely upon the Holy Spirit when He came. We need to stop reading the bible for benefits and start reading it for our ways to become His ways. What comes out when the pressure comes on is what is already IN there. Change and transformation require co-operation, if we want His rivers of living water flowing through our lives.

Our mouth is not a DRAIN for our emotions. 👋🏻

P 2110 We work with Jesus when we feed people.

/ DVH

Mark 8:1-8 “During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with Me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.” His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?”“How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked. Seven,” they replied.

He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When He had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, He broke them and gave them to His disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; He gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.”

The first thing I noticed about this scripture today was this – if this had been one of our church meetings, I wonder if we would have noticed that these people needed feeding? To be totally honest with you, maybe we would have been too busy examining the size of the crowd! Jesus was concerned for these faithful people because they had to walk home and some of them had walked a long way. We need to watch out for opportunities to minister to, and help people in practical ways.

Meanwhile, my first honest question to myself, was whether I would have even stayed at a meeting that went for so long?! That was some sermon, they had been together for three days of non-stop teaching. Most of us would call that an extraordinary meeting! However, the Lord Jesus saw it as His responsibility to physically feed these sheep. It is a good thing to appreciate people who care about practical things – they are vindicated right here in this scripture. Meanwhile, it doesn’t say these people were followers of Jesus but He fed them anyway!

My next thought was, it can be very easy to get stuck on the question about how the bread and fish were multiplied? Did it multiply in the disciple’s hands, or the Lord’s hands? Some times we can get so busy trying to figure out how things happened … instead of looking at the fact that the natural world obeyed the spiritual one! Maybe we can get so tied up in who did, or said what – hoping to figure out the circumstances and duplicate them – that we can miss what GOD actually did. He revealed His heart toward ordinary people and provided for them. When you read the bible carefully, you will see that Jesus did that all the time!

Almighty God saw the people’s need of nourishment and He provided for them, practically. Remember, Jesus only did what He saw His Father doing. This shows us that our God takes care of His kids. He does not sleep. There are not big needs and little needs, our God cares about all our needs. He knows the pain you’ve been going through, and He cares for you. Don’t believe the lies the enemy keeps telling you – just because nothing has changed that does not mean Father God doesn’t care. The Holy Spirit is already working on your behalf to change everything together for your good. 

Our God doesn’t PATCH things! HE MAKES THEM NEW. Patches tear – but the Lord makes things new. That’s because the new … stretches. Trust me, we are going to all need to be pliable in His hands in the days ahead of us. The Lord Jesus kept getting cranky at His disciples, because they continually looked at the natural situation, and they didn’t see the stuff that was going on around them through the eyes of faith. The eyes of faith know that God is doing something – maybe we dunno what it is – but we know He IS doing something. 

Our faith is exceedingly precious to Him. One of the ways we nurture it, is by believing He is good, when everything around us looks terrible. Another way to nurture faith is to use it. I’m guessing most of that crowd present that day had no idea they were eating a miracle! I’ve thought a lot about this. So many times in my life, I thought what was happening at that time would be the end of me – but it wasn’t… God was doing something else. He was working those things together for my good. 💕

We must not dismiss the miracles in the Gospels as simply “stories” because when we do that we miss the greater message. We are not reading some “Boy’s own book of adventures” – we are reading God’s personal history and interaction with mankind – plus man’s response to Him. If God cared that much about Gideon or Jonah don’t you think He cares about what is happening to you? In Hebrews the writer calls the Old Testament men and women, heroes of the faith. Personally I call them examples of how Almighty God deals with individuals! 

The Lord Jesus fed those thousands of men, women and children spiritually, but that did not preclude the fact that physically they also had pressing needs. They were hungry. I think today, He is looking at you and I and saying: “feed them” – just like He told His disciples on the side of that hill. There are plenty of hungry people around us, and it will take lots of faith to reach them, but that’s OK, the precious Holy Spirit is pure faith in action. Bye. 👋🏻

P 2109 Transformation is the way ahead.

/ DVH

I had an interesting thought this morning about – 2 Corinthians 12:9 says: “My Grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Gird up your girdle Gertie, it’s gunna be a bumpy ride! So why don’t we share our weaknesses more? Yeah you might like to think on that for a month or nine!! As HE is strong where I am weak – then where’s the shame in being weak? All I gotta do is ask for help and the Holy Spirit is right there. Instantly. I may not feel Him – but I know that He is close to the broken-hearted … so … He is there!!  Then when I pray for help maybe using my faith means I will believe that He wants to help me even more than I want to be helped.

It seems to me that we avoid displaying the very thing that the bible says will empower us with HIS power! We try so hard day after day, to keep the wheels turning, hiding our weaknesses, as well as trying to maintain a sense of normal? When the reality is, we can’t do anything eternal and lasting without Him. Christians all around the world climb out of bed daily and try to present a good picture of the benefits of what we believe, everywhere they go. JESUS IS THE BENEFIT FOLKS. He didn’t come to earth so we could try harder – He came to save us from sin and ourselves! So why are we so scared to death to admit that we can’t hack it on our own? Do we really need to have other people admire us so badly? Does envy lead to saving faith?

Perhaps somebody asks us: “how are you today?” And we paste on a fake smile and reply: “fine thank you, and how are you?”  Christians constantly do their best to present themselves as perfectly adequate people who are coping…. WHY? Why do we lie to ourselves and others? Here’s my little theory. We feel if we don’t present a good picture we will be letting the Lord down. You know, FYI, being officially sick can almost be a relief in one way – because you don’t have to pretend anymore.

Back to my point, are we so scared of judgment? Or feeling inadequate, because we are supposed to be bright shining stars for the Lord? Maybe we are protecting His reputation? Except He made Himself of no reputation for our sake – so that’s kind of a waste of time and energy. I just want to say to anyone reading this today – ‘It really is OK not to cope all the time!  It’s OK to struggle with difficult people and situations. It’s not just OK … it’s actually normal.’ Because ‘without HIM we can do nothing’  We were not designed to be the all-singing all-dancing Jesus ad. He does perfectly well by Himself – He has the Holy Spirit at work all over this earth! We are here to point to the Answer and WE are not the Answer – HE IS.

So here are some quick thoughts I came up with to explain why we hide our faults from each other: a/ we don’t know how to access Grace. b/ We don’t know how to give Grace away! Jesus said in the verse in 2 Corinthians HIS GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. because that is where HIS power is. I think the reason we pretend so much is because we know very little about living by faith. We get Grace by using our faith not trying harder.

Speaking for myself I always thought of people living by faith as missionaries, or really holy special people who chose that lifestyle. Boy was I wrong!  People rarely choose this lifestyle – it usually lands on them – often from a great height! The way you learn to live by faith is to be needy, and if you’ve got no money in a world that uses money – guess what?? You’ve just become needy!! I know people who live this way but they didn’t choose it – it chose them. 

Here’s the true secret to living a happy Christian life.: transformation is not an optional extra – it’s a survival skill! Ya might want to Selah that thought. 

If by any chance, anybody else out there has become tired of pretending to be ‘fine thank you’ – then we are all going to have to let Him use our ugly, difficult circumstances to expose all our inadequacies. Those nasty little things we don’t ever want anybody else to know because then they won’t like us, or – we won’t like us. Or – maybe the Lord won’t like us!  How about instead of hiding them- we admit them. The bible says: “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed….” James 5:16. It doesn’t say hide them under a rock and hope nobody notices. Unconfessed sin leaves us open to enemy attack.

God was good to Jonah and he had his problems. That man was prejudiced and opinionated, not to mention a racist. The Lord was good to Gideon and he needed more proof than a prosecuting attorney. He was good to Job who thought he had it made and didn’t know that everything he had came from the Lord in the first place! He was good to Moses and David who murdered someone. God was good to Elijah who was the super spiritual guy of his day – Elijah ran away and hid. The list goes on. And now …here’s the GREAT NEWS. We can read all about the men and women of God and what He saw as faith, in a wonderful faith chapter in Hebrews 11.  

The Lord praises every single one of these people, and some of them were definitely not perfect – they made huge mistakes. BUT! The Holy Spirit speaks about each of these men and women of faith with great love. Our faults, when they are transformed by living in His Grace, are testimonies to His loving kindness and glory.  We all might want to think on that with the New Year coming up. Bye. 👋🏻

P 2104 Our faith needs to be real-er today, than this world around us.

/ DVH

And this world often gets …right up in our faces. I have noticed, in my own life, that one thing piles upon another and yet another until I feel swamped.. It becomes easy to despair. But I’m  learning, to live my life asking for His help.. The only way is to …“Let the peace of God be my umpire.“  What does that mean? It means I deliberately put any problem to one side in my mind, and pray my all-time favourite prayer… “help, help!”  I don’t even pray about what I think the answer might be – instead I just WAIT. I wait for peace inside me. I wait for my ideas and desperation to subside, then I simply breathe and focus on Him.

I have already resolved in my heart any internal issues about what I think I need, because I don’t want to live this life independently. I need Him more than anyone or anything else. This life does not make sense without HIM. I have found independence is overrated, it is what shoots my faith in the foot – the safest place for any difficulty to be, is in His hands. Sad to say sometimes it is easier to flail around looking for immediate relief – but I have learnt that immediate relief from pain and problems feels good, temporarily, but it doesn’t always accomplish the purposes of God. His purpose is to transform our lives and save this world. When we look at what we want, we need to ask ourselves, “Where will that fit into His greater plan?”

In the Old Testament there is an illustration that really spoke to me – it is in Exodus 21:5 – “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free, then his master is to bring him before the judges, And he shall take him to the door or doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he shall serve his master for life…”’ This excerpt is talking about a servant voluntarily becoming a love-slave. It is part of the law handed down by Moses from God – remember, the law is a good thing, Jesus said so. He didn’t come to change any of it – He came to fulfil it – and He did. Somebody needed to be punished for our disobedience and sin and He volunteered. Jesus became our offering before the Father, forever.

Back to my verse in Exodus 21:5. In those days, like I said, a servant who truly loved their master could choose to remain a slave. This was a lifetime thing, the master put the slave’s ear against a doorpost and put an awl through his earlobe – the awl left a big hole in his lobe that never went away. Choice seems important to human beings, and God is so kind to us, He will not make us do anything. However, we can choose to become His love-slave… And no, He won’t pierce our ears! Fashion already does that!! 😂

Because our choices are so powerful, at any time we can live out our Christian lives in lip-service –  instead of faithful, devoted service to the King. Lip-service is about living this life the way we want to. Being a love-slave is about putting the Holy Spirit in charge and then actively reading the bible looking for things to do, and repenting about the things we don’t. Transformation becomes our way of life. We understand that difficulties are the vehicles that God uses to strengthen our loyalty to Him. Faithful service is not simply doing the things that are convenient to us, it is laying down our lives, minute by minute, like Christ did, to do the Father’s will.

A love-slave lives to do his master’s will. He is so devoted to the master, that whatever his master wants becomes that person’s first priority. Christianity is not only about reading the bible, praying, and serving the church – Christianity is about becoming a loving, living illustration of that bible to everyone around us. To do that, His book has to operate on our hearts, thoughts and actions with our permission and co- operation. 

Remember, co-operation means the Holy Spirit and I do this together. It means I yield whatever I want, or the things that suit me, to live this life He gave me, however He wants. PS: personally, I don’t always like it when the Holy Spirit brings up something that needs to be changed in my actions or reactions  – but afterward… I LOVE IT. He knows how to live my life wa-a-y better than I do! And I adore watching what Jesus does with my teeny, tiny little LIFE/LUNCH – I’ve seen Him ‘feed’ lots of people on the smallest effort from me.

Jesus spoke to some ordinary men He met, men who didn’t even know Him. They became His disciples. He said: ‘Come and follow Me.’Right now, the Holy Spirit is saying that to every single Christian on this planet. He knows the WAY we should go! Just give up your own plans for your life and learn to follow Him. This is how our faith becomes REAL. 👋🏻

P 2103 There’s a difference between truth and a concept.

/ DVH

For instance, faith is living truth, it has substance – faith in God is trustworthy. It is not a theory a concept or an idea. Instead faith is designed to be the way we live. It is definitely substantial – you can stake your life on it – other people have!  “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.” Hebrews 11:1,2.

First of all, faith is always now – ’Now faith is.’…” Faith is not just about yesterday, it needs to be active all the time for it to be the driving force in our lives. If we are going to live by faith, then faith needs to occupy the way we think. EG: I exhort you to go to work using your faith that God gave you that job and He wants you there even if the boss is not happy with you. It is helpful to remind yourself often: “God’s got this and He’s got me!” Honing our focus = using our faith! God uses our faith as a vehicle to manifest Himself to others. 

Faith also has EVIDENCE – it is not just a nice hopefully-it-works theory. That’s what other religions look like – all noise with no power. Real faith results in real actions and produces real results – IN us and in this world.. It is actively investing in what we believe by acting on it. Simply saying what we believe without any accompanying actions is not the same thing. No action means what we have said is just a concept, not truth. Acting on our faith totally changes our hearts within us, as well as the world around us. Faith is see-able when you use it. Think about catching a train, when you get ON it, you expect to arrive at your destination. Wanting to give up smoking is merely a concept – refusing to smoke again, is a faith-filled action. When we use our faith, we expect to see something change.

People who want to mature in God’s grace, take the little bit of faith they have, and invest it in Him. And I’m not just talking about money. They live their lives voluntarily giving up having safety and comfort. Instead they’ve chosen to live their lives daily dying to self. They live by the faith they profess, it is not just a concept they trust God and act on what He has told them to do, day by day. They have learnt to appreciate that we can do nothing without the Holy Spirit so they pay close attention to Him. He is so gentle and kind they don’t want to send Him away, so they consider Him, FIRST.

Faith is about taking risks … risks that show others that you love them even when that person treats you badly. When people are mean – and we all are sometimes – faith means we offer them understanding, because their view of this life may not be the same as ours is. James, Chapter 2 says: “Faith without works is dead.” Our faith needs to be used and stretched, so that means we will end up doing stuff that doesn’t always appeal to us and it isn’t always comfortable. Like apologising to someone who provoked YOU. This means our faith is stronger than the person we are engaged with because we don’t need their validation – we already have the Lord’s!

Our God used HIS faith by speaking this world into being. Actually, He spoke and the Holy Spirit went away immediately and created what Almighty God had spoken. The Holy Spirit is waiting for us to speak, and then act. He is longing for us do things using our faith, hope, and love out there, in this world. As we step out in faith, and go and do what He brings to us, we are choosing to learn obedience – He loves to be around obedience. Using our faith shows our Heavenly Father that our faith is not dead. It is about our obedience. It is good to remind ourselves that our God doesn’t work with theories – Jesus is the original action Man! He used every opportunity to display the love of God to other people.

He said: “Consider …(think about – look at – and wonder about) … the lilies…” To show us that worrying and obsessing about the things we have no control over, is fruitless. We need to start reading the bible like a prescription that needs to be followed, not just a description of something that happened long long ago. This book is a practical book – full of practical illustrations of ordinary people, who trusted Him, used their faith and saw God’s great exploits. They can teach us about the ways that the Holy Spirit interacts with people like us. Our bible is a testimony to God’s Grace operating in ordinary people’s lives. 

People heard and saw the Holy Spirit at work on the day of Pentecost. It was seeable, it was heard! At that time He touched ordinary people who were milling about in the streets, and many of them got saved – on the spot. But if our inner hearing is not good, that is still not an excuse to give up and say; ‘Well, that’s not my fault, I can’t hear anything.” I urge you to get yourself your own spiritual hearing aid, by reading, and praying, and rereading His book and asking questions.  Then we need to act upon what we read – then the little bit we have, will lead to MORE. Fortunately, the bible is full of instructions which encourage us to change, and act.

To start with, Christians need to be the most forgiving people on earth, no matter who jumped all over our hearts, and broke them. We are going to choose to bless them.“  …do good to those who despitefully use you” “…Bless those who curse you …” We need the help of the Holy Spirit for that kind of reaction and it takes deliberate, inconvenient practice – because … ’faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things NOT YET SEEN.”  Our faith can’t just be a theory, or a nice comforting thought, it needs to be used to become visible, because it is displaying God’s truth. Just imagine where mankind would be if Jesus Christ had lived His life with a secret faith.

Transformation is part of our job description and using our faith ushers in transformation – that is what makes the difference between truth and a concept – concepts don’t always happen! 👋🏻