Freed

P 3120 Know what you believe.

/ DVH

“Christ’s resurrection is (y)OUR resurrection too. This is why we are to yearn for all that is above, for that’s where Christ sits enthroned at the place of all power, honour, and authority!” Colossians 3:1 TPT. My first question—do you often during your day, reflect on what Jesus did for YOU? Are your thoughts on His kingdom, or yours? I thank Him when blessings come, and pray ‘help,’ when stuff is difficult. Whatever we mull over and meditate on influences our daily walk of faith. Don’t beat yourself up if you forget or overlook His new way to live. Just remember, that  faith, and our awareness of His love for us, will simply melt away IF we lose focus;  or we choose to live in the dark and pasty, unhealthy light of this world’s rejection, ideas, schemes and plans.

Meanwhile, even though we may not actually say – ”I choose this” – we can end up choosing to stew on bad stuff by default. A lack of a positive God-breathed choice will leave a vacuum that satan would be delighted to fill! That guy will get us going round and round and round:  worrying about this, thinking about how to fix that, and concentrating on the lacks we all have … Until we have wasted away our precious time. Time is a gift. And we don’t have to live that way anymore. Just as surely as Peter, (who was in prison at the time), looked up and saw his jail door open – and walked out a free man!  Our jail door is also OPEN. Look up!! Revise your circumstances. We need to walk out of sin’s prison using our faith. 

At the same time we can concentrate all our thoughts and efforts on dying to self, but in the end that will just make us SIN conscious. We want to be Him-conscious, so I pray He will reveal Himself to me during my day. We need to add to our life with Him, by seeing Him at work in our lives, not just concentrate on getting rid of our sin or adverse circumstances. Jesus Christ has already done that for us! Because God’s unrelenting, always available, never-ending kingdom power was released at Calvary – we can NOW live in this world absolutely devoted to Him.  He has a much better plan for your life and mine than either of us can imagine!

“For we know that our old self WAS crucified with Him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—…” Romans 6:6. Sin, regret, anxiety does not have to be in charge of our lives anymore! Our minds, our emotions will help us when they are fixed on Him;  to do that is not difficult, we meditate on His never-ending love.  We can’t afford to give up our precious time stewing over former things, turn your worry into prayers of thanksgiving for Who He is and what He did for you.

Worry is a habit – habits can be changed. When we gave our lives to Jesus, we put Him in charge. And His response 2000+years ago, was to take our sin with Him to the cross and nail it there in HIS OWN BODY. The urge, desire, and the will to sin has been dealt with, we are now free to choose.“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live IN THE BODY, I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20. 

That’s how we walk out our Promised land of becoming a new creation. I don’t ignore sin, or gloss it over, or pretend it didn’t happen, instead I acknowledge it on the spot, and repent and repair things. Why? There is incredible power in redemption! satan can’t make us do anything anymore because of what Jesus did for us. But unlike satan – the Lord will not coerce us or make us do anything. He loves our freely-made choices!!  We were not saved just so we can go to heaven and be with Him one day in the future… He saved us for here and now, today—from this world, the devil and ourselves —so we can live our earthly lives, like He would. 

It was a transaction. An exchange, His life, freely laid down, bought us a new way to live and the power to do it. It was the greatest LOVE GIFT EVER GIVEN. Our sin has been exchanged for His new life overflowing in us, we take on His obedience, His passionate desire to please His Father. It was not God’s plan just to kill off sin!… Instead, Christ defeated its power over mankind! Our Father’s plan was to give us back what Adam and Eve had in the garden … the greatest inheritance ever – Emmanuel, God-with-us. The freedom to choose what is good right and profitable, AND THE POWER TO DO IT.

Acts 1:8:“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”The Holy Spirit fell on mankind at Pentecost and HE DIDN’T LEAVE. He is still here, to help, counsel, transform, and motivate us into our new life in Christ. He didn’t give us  power just so we can raise the dead, heal the sick etc! Those blessings are a by-product of our redemption.We should all live like that. But that is not God’s primary AIM. 

The Holy Spirit came to help us, and live inside us, so we can live a victorious, overcoming life, in a world that is going to hell in a hand basket. The person I was 52 years ago, died the minute I asked Jesus to come into my life. That is also true for you. If you dearly love and want Him — He will be yours, forever. His love is so great He chose to die for the whole world, even those people who refuse to accept Him. Imagine that. We have been bought with an unbelievable price.

Daily, with His help, we identify and guerrilla fight all the stubborn stuff we’ve cultivated over the previous years before we met Him. Those things that keep pretending they have a hold over us. Now we can take God at His Word and believe Him. That’s how faith works. we refuse to listen to the so-called evidence that pops its ugly head up, and say to ourselves: “What does the Lord have to say about that? Is He REALLY like that?” satan can no longer use my history to define me – even if I did something extremely dumb yesterday! I have been redefined as alive in Christ. I urge you, take the time to know what you believe. Bye. 👋

P 2989 Use your inheritance wisely.

/ DVH

We all understand the concept of our salvation — Jesus came and chose to die, and as a man He became our sin substitute at Calvary. It was an exchange, our sin for His purity. Because of the incredible Grace Jesus released, we now have full access to our Father, God. We have been freed from the clutches, the seduction, and the appeal of sin. We are so free now we can choose not to sin! While the Lord Jesus was on earth, He did not sin, in thought, attitude, or actions—and He is our example of how to walk with the Holy Spirit — Who knows the Way through anything!

This morning as I was thinking about the magnitude of what happened for our sake – I saw a different kind of parallel between the story of the Prodigal Son and what Jesus did for us. And, most of all, I saw the Body of Christ’s voluntary response to that gift. I understood how easily that incredible generosity and love can be abused.

In the story of the Prodigal Son, the younger brother goes to his father and demands his inheritance. Then he goes off and does whatever he likes with what he was given. Enter my point for today …this young man does not value what he was given to him, even though it was not his right to have it.  His father was still alive!! Instead he took his inheritance, and thoughtlessly squandered it. Using it to fashion his life the way he wanted it to be without a thought of the cost to his father!

I think this is a problem when we become Christians. Because we live in such a materialistic, hedonistic world, we start to devalue what we have been given. Just because it was free that does not mean it was cheap! It’s a perception problem. Our inheritance belonged to Jesus — He gave it to us, through what He did for us. Sadly, we often use our inheritance to live like everyone else around us, and thereby misuse it. What we’ve been given was incredibly costly. At the same time, we know this inheritance  belongs to everyone, so we need to pass on what we now know to the people we meet. They are the legal recipients of this treasure too! God reconciled them to Himself in Christ.

We can carelessly live ignoring that the point of Christ’s death was total transformation, not just freedom. I am not denying we want to avoid sin … me too! But we can end up misusing what we have been given, simply by living like everyone else around us. That is not what Calvary’s exchange was for! It wasn’t only given to take sin away, and reconcile us back to our Father — it was to transform us into someone who is just like Jesus. We are to live for Him now. We’ve been saved to live to love others, so now we tell them the good news that God’s Will included them!

Let’s stretch the Prodigal Son parable a little further, and take a look at the Older Brother. The supposed good guy. The one who always did whatever he was supposed to do. He was not subject to the same temptations as his brother. His temptation was way more subtle. He too, had access to a gladly given inheritance, but instead of enjoying what he had, he was living his life trying to earn his way. He was not living his life gratefully. He too, was a son and heir, all His father had belonged to him.

My point is that neither one of these young men had  comprehended what they were given. The inheritance they were supposed to gain after their father’s death, was free and clear. It was already theirs by right of birth. But the older brother thought that because he was the good son, he had earned special privileges.

The younger son finally caught a glimpse of what he had done, as he lived alongside the sinful members of this world, doing whatever he pleased. He saw he had laid aside the privilege of His rightful place. When we ignore God’s plan for our lives we are like the Prodigal. Like greedy children we take what we want – the freedom to choose – and ignore the privilege and responsibility of what we have been given.

We will never understand what we have been given if we think we’ve earned it because living like a Christian is so much hard work. Both of these young men’s attitudes are wrong, and neither one should govern our lives now. What we have been given is a gift. It was not given based on attitudes or actions, it was given because the Giver is mind-bogglingly generous! Our inheritance demands a respectful response, because SomeBody else paid for it! 

Almighty God has given us Christ’s position of purity, innocence and cleanliness before Him, in exchange for our previous sinful way of living. It is free, and undeserved.  If Jesus had not come and died in our place there would not be an inheritance for anyone. But God did not punish His only beloved Son so we could be free to go and skip through the daisies doing whatever we like, because now we have a get-out-of-jail free card!  

Everything we have depends on our Father’s generosity. We need to use our inheritance wisely – by gratefully living like Jesus would in this world. We must become His Sons and Daughters who value what we’ve been given, and tell everyone else what He has done for them. Bye 👋

P 2375 What constitutes “CARES?!!”

/ DVH

It occurred to me this morning that in today’s world, the word ‘cares’ can be quite generic. So I want to spend some time following along from yesterday talking about cares and what that means in my life. Cares to some people could mean my kid’s friend doesn’t wanna play with him anymore. Or my best friend just moved away. Or I can’t start my car so I can get to work today.

But ‘cares’ can also be very big as well. They can be things like – my Mother is ill and I don’t know how to help her. Or my marriage isn’t working… or my child is being bullied at school. Cares are the things we drag behind us, like the tail on a comet. We need them gone, but we don’t know what to do with them or how to get rid of them – we’ve prayed and tried to figure out solutions but nothing works. Perhaps we even need to understand a difficult situation better because it’s bothering us  We dearly want to handle all these things in a Godly fashion, but emotionally .. we can’t – we end up exploding or not sleeping with worry.

Jesus talks about how He wants to help us with our ‘cares,’ and this means He wants to work for us, for our good, in all of the above, and more. I have lived the way I described yesterday – ‘casting my cares upon Him’  for a while now, and all I can tell you is – it changes things — and one of the things it has changed, IS ME! The Lord really does transform everything He touches. It’s glorious Jesus helps us, however, He doesn’t always fix stuff the way we think that those things should be fixed. But we can be absolutely certain that He will always fix them better than we ever imagined. Sometimes we just have to hold on and wait and use our faith. 

So today, I want to give a few examples of what Jesus fixing cares, big and small, looks like here at our house. On one of our trips, hubby and I were on the road out in the middle of nowhere, taking bibles to outback places. By outback, I mean there were wild goats and pigs roaming around on the side of the road. We needed more petrol but there was no petrol available in the last little town we had stayed in. I had a large ulcer on my hip, and it was very painful. However, there was no way to get petrol where we were, so in the end we had no alternative but to press on. We prayed and told the Lord that we needed to get to the next town 200 kms away, and as HE told us to go there in the first place, it really was His problem if we ran out of petrol! 

As we drove along … trying not to think about it! Hubby actually didn’t share what he could see right in front of him right away. Mainly because he couldn’t believe his eyes! As we drove off into the middle of nowhere, (where there are no petrol stations or people!), the petrol needle that was on empty kept going up and up and up! The car never faltered once and we eventually arrived safely at the other end of a very long road! We both held our breath for the entire journey – and we deliberately did not talk about it, because we had given it to Him. By the time we arrived at our destination there was more petrol in the tank then there was when we set out!! The ulcer on my hip was totally healed after I had a short rest. Hubby was off giving away bibles by that stage. 

BTW, that little town we finally stayed in was a big source of copper for years, but the copper mine had closed and the little town was quietly shutting down with it. We prayed together that God would give them a new outlet and use for their copper, so the mine would reopen and bring new life to the town again. Months later I was reading the news and lo and behold there was an article about little towns and their financial situations. I read that this little town was again thriving. The copper in the mine was needed for something else! 🙌

OK now I want to talk about a smaller care. There is somebody in my immediate family that can be incredibly difficult to get along with – my faith is an enigma to them. If I don’t pray, when I see them, things get much worse. So I pray and I pray – and so does hubby – before I go to see them. I’ve learnt that prayer is great BUT some people need more! I need to do more. That person needs His help, and so do I – because we now have a history of failure. So when we’ve finished praying, we give it all over to the Lord and leave it there. Even on the car ride going toward their house, I refuse to pick it up again when it comes up in my mind. 

I just keep saying: “I gave that to you, Jesus.” That BTW, is my active faith statement. When I trust in myself and my ability to handle the situation well… it does not go well. However, when I give it to Him, I am amazed at what He does with it. Because He cares for both parties – He takes care of it. Always remember —HE CARES FOR US –  we are on His heart. 👋🏻

“Listen to my testimony: I cried to God in my distress and He answered me. He freed me from all my fears! Gaze upon Him, join your life with His, and joy will come. Your faces will glisten with glory. You’ll never wear that shame-face again.” Psalms 34:4-5 TPT