Fruitless

P 3306 Learning to yield.

/ DVH

“You crazy Galatians! Did someone put a spell on you? Have you taken leave of your senses? Something crazy has happened, FOR IT’S OBVIOUS THAT YOU NO LONGER HAVE THE CRUCIFIED JESUS IN CLEAR FOCUS IN YOUR LIVES. His sacrifice on the cross was certainly set before you clearly enough. Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God.                                                  

If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it? Did you go through this whole painful learning process for nothing? It is not yet a total loss, but it certainly will be if you keep this up! Answer this question: Does the God who lavishly provides you with His own Presence, His Holy Spirit, working things in your lives you could never do for yourselves, does He do these things because of your strenuous moral striving or because you trust Him to do them in you?” Galatians 3:1-6 MSG bible.

You might want to sit a while and think about those 6 verses. Then if you dare, ask yourself some questions … ‘Do I act from day to day like the Galatians did? Does what I think and how I behave, seem more powerful than the Holy Spirit — Who was specifically sent TO ME, to help me? Am I excusing myself from the things I know He doesn’t want me to do and saying: ‘I can’t help it?’ “Our help comes in the Name of the Lord Who made heaven and earth.” Psalm 121:2. Our own welfare depends on forgiving others. We need to surrender and yield.

Does anybody reading this have a toddler? You will probably be well acquainted with the: “me do it” stage! It’s a healthy, but annoying sign of independence in a toddler – but it is less than healthy in a grown person. When it comes to spiritual matters, giving up quickly and asking for help is the way to go. Those people who work hard at ‘being Christian,’ are trying to BE what God already says they ARE. I’ve learnt that trying harder without Jesus, leads to even more fruitless effort. Expending all that effort can result in despair. Or even arrogance. Especially when we are dealing with other people who do not have the same strength of will we have. We can end up in judgment quicker than a bee sting hurts!

The Holy Spirit has helped me to manage my feelings and responses on countless occasions when I was interacting with someone who was difficult. I had persevered and anguished over them in my prayers, with loads of tears, anger, frustration and lots of effort. At times, I actually made myself go and see them and I’d tell myself: “It’s the right thing to do.” I dunno why! You would think that bumping into that brick wall would have registered on my Richter scale … but no! I just kept trying harder and falling flat on my face. I not only came up with bruises, I came up angry.  After all, I was doing my best! 

Here is the solution the Holy Spirit gave me within seconds, when I stopped pouting, and complaining, and asked Him for His help: “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have made it my own yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead,…” Philippians 3:13. I was holding on to the way they had treated me in the past, and the past could easily have been last week! I had to forget the past. What they had done, what I had done, and the things I felt. Then yield to Him and move on. I was stuck because I wasn’t forgetting what lay behind me. 

‘You don’t know what they did to me blah blah blah.’ In my life there were many people who had damaged me to the core. So how do you forget that stuff? DELIBERATELY … that’s how. No, I am not kidding. This is a war about our spiritual well-being and the wrong result means our feelings will interfere with our ability to hear the Holy Spirit. BTW forgiving is not the same as trusting the other person. Jesus knew what was in men’s hearts, and the bible says He didn’t entrust Himself to them. (John 2:24).You don’t have to trust those people who hurt you, just forgive them, and start renewing your mind. We have to be Kingdom of God thinkers, not just ‘immediate comfort’ ones.

Then, whenever what happened, pops into your mind, shove it straight out — don’t even entertain it for a minute— and whack at that thought with scripture. The Holy Spirit will give you something. Learning to yield to the Holy Spirit is so necessary as we go about our day. He is our Guide, and He’s the One Who leads us into good works that God Himself has prepared for each one of us. Everything is about making a choice. Drag your feelings and thoughts back to the centre … Jesus. When we treat people consistently differently, they act differently. His mercy is new to everyone every morning.

The Lord suffered so we could have the right to choose to ask for His help — not just be forced into doing it by rules, fear, or obligation. Over a period of time it transpired that yielding my will to His, had enormous benefits in my daily walk. I stopped listening to my feelings, which were kind of ‘over-developed’ and learnt to refer to what the Lord said in His word. My feelings needed to be tamed and replaced by grace, peace and love in what God says about me. Our feelings lie to us, they tell us we can’t, when we have Almighty God resident inside us! And His Son, Who came and died for everyone’s sins. Yours, mine, and theirs.

Once I made up my mind that I wanted to choose His Way over my way, because His way was far far better than mine!! I realised the Lord wanted to do something  deeper inside me. Back then, in my past, my trust had been betrayed as a child, so my idea of HIS goodness, kindness and unfailing love was all messed up.  That was healed as I decided to yield to Him, instead of trying to fix it by myself. I simply surrendered my perceived right to be angry with others, and the Lord proved Himself faithful! Bye. 👋

P 3065 Fruitless trees.

/ DVH

Our mango tree is a much discussed tree on this blog. Initially, it produced no fruit – but then the tree started to produce little nubs that had …potential!!…Then they fell off. Sigh. I’ve learnt a lot about personal fruit production in my own life by watching the progress of that darn tree. 

Here’s my thoughts. Some fruit trees can take a while to fruit. And some trees have no fruit because the tree is not mature enough to produce and sustain any! Fig trees, for instance, can take 2-3 years to get into fruit production. Let’s look at fruit production from a real fig tree: “…fig trees typically produce leaves before they produce fruit. They have a cycle where they first develop leaves in the spring, and then the fruit develops on the new growth or on the previous year’s growth depending on the fig variety and climate.”

The scripture below appears in Matthew and Mark. PS:always take note of something in the gospels that is written up twice. Here we go: Mark 11:12-14: “The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to find out if it had any fruit. When He reached it, He found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then He said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And His disciples heard Him say it.“

You know, this scripture bothered me! Why did Jesus curse that tree? That thing died because He cursed it. This whole incident kind of seemed a bit petty, and irrelevant. And yet it was included twice, so it obviously needs prayer and Holy Spirit-inspired insight!  After all there was no McDonald’s on every corner back then in Jerusalem, so that lack meant no breakfast!

Here’s what I came up with: ‘If Jesus cursed that fig tree because it had no fruit, then I’d better make growing fruit a priority!” That improved my prayer life! I realised that the fig tree in this incident is a lot like some of our churches. All show and no go! We can have lots of leaves — singing, dancing, arm waving, kneeling, sermons etc. – but when you lift the leaves – where is the fruit? Our God’s-kind of fruit is people getting saved, healed, delivered and transformed. Where has that fruit gone? 

I want to take a quick look a those little nubs that look like fruit is coming, or the tree that produces fruit that looks soo-oo good … yet at the first sign of a change in the weather… it all falls off. I think this happens quite a lot in our churches too. Pastors, ministers etc. see someone in their congregation who look like they have loads of potential. But this person’s immaturity makes them a target for the enemy to come in, steal, and destroy, or even just nibble away at those gifts. So, should we throw away all that potential because of an immature faith? Maybe the little potential tree needs to go back into the greenhouse for some specialist attention.

Now let’s go to the optimum fruit tree situation — that is, we get fruit in all its perfection and glory. And you and I get to stuff ourselves with the results. In my little allegory, this means we are in church whenever the doors open, and we only leave because it’s morning! With truly wonderful fruit, the colour, smell and taste are fabulous, intoxicating! You have so much to enjoy, you can happily share with others and give lots away! So we advertise revivals, healings etc. to attract people to the church. We recognise the fruit of His Presence with us – but we fail to prioritise growth! The Holy Spirit’s power is with us to transform lives, not just make us feel good!

So then the thief comes — in my mango tree’s case he comes in the form of fluffy grey possums and imported minas — comes pecking at the fruit destroying its eating value. The beautiful fruit has munch marks all over it. Nasty little holes made by nasty little beasties and beaks!! I think this can happen when God’s people begin to revert to type, and they start pecking at what God Himself is doing.‘ This fruit is too big, too small, the wrong sort of fruit, not ripe enough’ and criticism begins to flourish. All that stuff happened to Israel. Read the book!… 

Eventually the church becomes divided and opinionated. And instead of Almighty God getting all the glory for the wonderful things He is doing, now nasty, spiteful remarks start eating away at the roots of His church. The real point is that everyone is so busy enjoying what God is currently doing, they become lax and careless about what they are saying – instead of maintaining the fire on the altar. 

I’m no horticulturist but it seems to me that any kind of fruit on a tree depends on new growth. Fruit comes from new growth. So if our churches aren’t growing … and I don’t mean numerically! I mean that each one of the members are actively choosing, day by day, to grow up into Christ’s likeness, instead of coasting along…  Then maybe that’s a reason why our fruit production has disappeared. 

Having fruitless trees is not a good witness to the world around us. Our churches need to prioritise personal growth and not just fantastic experiences. We want our little potential-filled trees to survive and thrive.  Bye 👋

P 2985 Learning to soar.

/ DVH

Anything that talks about soaring above the difficult things in this life will grab my attention. So today I want to read Paul’s idea of soaring above the cares of this world —- from Galatians 5:16-18 TPT. “Let me emphasise this: As you yield to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life. When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit you hinder Him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the new creation life of the Spirit. But when you yield to the life of the Spirit, you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it!”

Eagles soar. Have you ever noticed that chickens are always looking down, kicking up dust, looking for worms, scratching and pecking …  But eagles!! They fly higher and higher above this world’s activities, enjoying the warmer air that helps them fly. They see this world from a different vantage point.

I think this is part of Paul’s point today. We can face this life one of two ways. After the dust of trouble and strife has settled, we can choose to mount up on eagle’s wings. Thank you Isaiah 40! Or we can go on scratching about in this world’s ideas and clever trends, and miss seeing the vastness and incredible plans of God Himself. But we will need to choose to rise up and see what’s going on from His point of view. 

Sometimes, I end up being a chicken! Life can seem like one ghastly event is followed rapidly by another and then another — and I end up thinking “If I could only just get a moment to catch my breath!’  But the waves of life’s difficulties keep coming … and coming … and coming! Suddenly you have the horrid thought that you may be stuck in an endless sea of trouble, and it seems like you’ve been there for months! In the end I asked the Lord “Jesus, what is going on?”

Yeah! Have you ever had one of those moments when you wish you hadn’t even thought to ask a question…because you were pretty sure the answer was not going to be all that great?? I hear ya! This is what the Lord said to me, and I have to be honest – because I promised I would be honest on this blog …I was not over-the-moon thrilled with His answer. He talked to me about pruning. You know that stuff you have to do when you have a garden and the rose bush is heading for another state and your trees are hanging over into your neighbour’s yard? “I’m pruning you,” He said.

That’s when I realised I’d asked a question that I didn’t really want an answer to because I had already decided what kind of answer I would like! Which is an incredibly dumb idea. What I really wanted to say was: “Lemme outta here, I’m drowning. I need a happier times fix!” Eventually I sat and read the book. So far I’ve read John 15 about six times because it talks about pruning. Spiritual pruning didn’t sound all that much fun. The first thing I noticed is that if a branch in my life is fruitless … then a-pruning He will go! That pretty much emphasised the fact that being fruitful is extremely important to the Lord, even though I believe being fruitless can happen to all of us..

The secret to being fruitful is to stay in Him and His ways. This is what came up for me, as I was meditating on it. Remaining in Him, means I live this life aware of what I have been given by Him, but it is not just a happy thought I visit every now and then. Everything I am now, comes from that place of grateful recollection of Him saving me, plus everything He died to give me. I need to live my life, my very ordinary life, aware of the incredible exchange Jesus Himself provided for me. His eternal life for my death to self. His righteousness for my sinfulness. His perfect love for my own natural human affection …His peace for my irritability etc.

At the same time, I will have to actively cultivate and deliberately let what He says in His book remain in me – in my life and my thoughts. So now His Word becomes my reference point for everyone I relate to, everything that happens to me, and everything I do. It becomes my new conscious-thought pattern. Which sounds remarkably like “renew your mind” to me! The Lord cannot be an add-on —. He, and His life in me, are to be my focus. Living like this will lift me up above life’s difficulties and give me an eagle’s view instead!

We all want to be productive for His kingdom. We may be daily growing in knowledge, but if we are not bearing fruit, then we will eventually need to be pruned. Not because He is mad at us, but because pruning produces … fruit! Maybe we have all lived in the natural for so long, we’ve turned into chickens and the things of His kingdom seem hard to scratch out and find. We will have everything we need for whatever comes our way, if we let Him teach us how to soar, and cutting off the old dead wood is a good start. Bye. 👋

P 2935 This is where the Power went!

/ DVH

“So you must remain in life-union with Me, for I remain in life-union with you. For as a branch severed from the vine will not bear fruit, so your life will be fruitless unless you live your life intimately joined to Mine. “I am the sprouting vine and you’re My branches. *AS you live in union with Me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you—but when you live separated from Me you are powerless.” John 15:4-5 TPT.

Do you see that little asterisk in the scripture above? I put that there to make my point for today. I believe this is where the power of God has gone from our daily lives. We must not treat God’s love and passion carelessly!  We need far more respect, for Almighty God, our Saviour and the Holy Spirit. We’ve been saved to serve – we serve Them, They do not serve us. Perhaps the Body of Christ has become half-hearted, and lax in our faith. Please take note, I am speaking about the Body of Christ as a whole, not just one individual.

Unfortunately sometimes prayer and reading the bible is like trying to walk up a steep hill backwards with no idea about what is coming up behind you! I need back-up and I suspect you do too – so we pray for each other.

There are times our prayers seem unanswered, and they are sincere, tearful, heart-felt, passionate prayers. We fast, we pray, we plead, and yet lost loved ones remain lost, or they wander even further away!

People we prayed for died, instead of being healed. Or we are now further in debt than we were before. Why?? Because prayer is not an ordering system to get God to do something you want Him to do. Prayer is active communication and interaction between us and Him. Remember, if I don’t got it, after I asked Him – then I don’t need it!

The above scripture from John is an accurate diagnosis of my problem. John is trying to tell me something! Perhaps I have wandered away from active abiding into drifting. Maybe my faith is taking a back seat to my feelings …again. Because of this, I am no longer quietly enjoying my attachment to the vine. The solution, as I see it, is this — I need to use my faith and go back to resting in Him, and everything He did, even though learning to rest and abide can be difficult.

Unfortunately the church has been preaching activity and action for centuries! But all I need to do, is to continually live in my awareness and obedience toward Him, and He will continue to live in me. If sin has distracted me or dragged me away, then I need to repent and repair whatever has happened and then go back into trusting in everything He did.  WE FIGHT THE ENEMY, BUT WE REST IN GOD.

If I have had an argument with someone, then first of all I need to own I’ve left the Light behind. Because walking with Him means we have fellowship with one another, so if the fellowship is gone then ….??? !!! … I need to go to my brother, and ask them “have I offended you?” By the way, blame is a poor substitute for active learning. We need to learn to listen to the Lord … as well as our brothers and sisters.

We don’t need to defend ourselves because when we defend ourselves, we turn away from Jesus, Who is our Strong Defender. God will give us whatever we need! And that’s not just a happy verse – it’s the way we live. Jesus did not argue with His accusers – He yielded and trusted God to bring Him through those awful times. When it was satan tempting Him, the Lord thumped him with bible verses. 

The bible is truth. Over the years I have learnt to doubt myself, not the bible, because the bible is our measuring stick, our plumb line. It shows me what God wants from me. He won’t demand my response – He wants me to trust Him enough to believe Him and what He said. So if my faith ain’t working then it is because I am not practising what I am reading!

I may be misinformed, I may have wandered off into works, trying to please God. Meanwhile my nomad tendency is not your fault either, no matter how difficult you may have been! It simply means I have wandered off out of the ‘listening to the Lord’ meditating over His Word zone, and I’ve been distracted by this life. We get deaf when we stop using our faith, and believing that what He said, He meant!

Because the words ‘abide’ — or in this version above – ‘life-union,’— are not commonly used today I decided to look them up in the dictionary. Abide:‘Old English word signifying progressively to “await,” “remain,” “lodge,” “sojourn,” “dwell,” “continue,” “endure“; represented richly in Old Testament’. And the word ‘life-union’ means: “union with Christ.“ “Life-union” signifies a mystical, spiritual, and permanent connection between believers and Jesus Christ, where believers are united with Him in His death, resurrection, and life, leading to salvation and eternal life.” Thank you Google! Now there’s a bit to chew on.

Here’s something else … 1 John 1:6:“If we claim to have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.” Remember my little black rectangle at the top? Not walking in the light looks like that. We not only lose our hearing, we can’t ‘see’ either! God is not mad at us when we wander off – He is a good Shepherd. He goes after us and brings us safely back in His fold. But we need to revise whatever it is that we have been doing, under the guidance of the Word of God.

Why? BECAUSE JESUS IS THE LIVING WORD! That’s why! He becomes real as we practise what He told us to do. He makes this old, often hard-to-understand book, alive and pertinent to each of us, every single day. He inhabits it – just like God inhabits our praises.The Word of God washes us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness, when we pay attention to what it says, and stop making excuses for ourselves.

To be honest with you, I don’t much care how or where I pray either … on my figurative knees, or just walking around living with Him, mindful of Him. Prayer is essential, because prayer increases my awareness of Him. But it isn’t just talking! Now my life becomes a prayer, as I live this life around the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter what is going on, or what I am doing. I don’t leave Him out of anything. Instead of putting a big tick over what I am doing, and saying to myself:‘Well, I’m in the light, so that’s not my problem’ … ASK Him what He can see that needs to be attended to. 

We lack power because we are not treasuring His Presence in our ordinary, every day lives. His Presence is the light in the darkness around us, not how we feel, or don’t feel. Bye.👋

P 2874 Our attitudes help define our understanding …

/ DVH

Luke 8:15 “But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.”Jesus is teaching the people who choose to follow Him around, about God’s kingdom, and how it works. First, He uses a story about a sower, and then He explains that further. However, His meaning is only clear to those passionate souls who want to truly hear about God. We, have been incredibly blessed – we get to hear both versions!

After the sower parable the bigger crowds dispersed, then the Lord took the time to expound that story to His disciples. He treated these people differently than the crowds who followed Him around, because they were the people who were going to take His place! He wanted to teach His disciples, His dedicated followers, the ways of the kingdom. He was incredibly wise and He knew that those people in the facebook crowd can have hard hearts and little application! 😶

So after the crowds had left, Jesus expounded His allegory and made it clear and applicable for their lives. The Lord wanted His disciples to see, through His loving insight, that the gospel can fall upon deaf ears, or busy ears, or hardened hearts, as well as being subject to other unforeseen things which can literally pick up our knowledge of God and carry it off! Plus the real eternal life which is in what He tells us personally, can be choked out by our own fear, doubt, carelessness and disobedience.

He is showing us the way to ensure and increase our participation in the things of God. To do that, we need to learn to take note of the dangers, and make sure we are not involved in the sort of stuff that will drag us under. Our default settings are not getting the job done – we get distracted and the birds of the air, the cares of this world, are picking off our potential. Jesus has taught us that today, right here, right now, we need to pay attention and participate in the Ways of God.

To do that we are going to need dedicated obedience and prayerful watchfulness established in our lives in order to be able produce a good crop. He explained that we have a great need for hearts that will not swing about all over the place. Add to that, the ability to listen carefully to whatever He tells us, and esteem what we’ve heard, and ACT on it. Without HIM we are nothing. We can come up with great schemes, but only God can bring us through tough times.

I strongly believe it is essential to retain the word by making it a part of ourselves, so that we are transformed by ingesting it and becoming it. Did you know if you eat too many carrots for days you can turn ORANGE? That ingestion leads to an outward change everyone can see. As we live out what the bible says, it becomes part of the way we think, and act – it stops being a theory, or even a great admirable teaching, and becomes our way of life. Who we are.

The circumstances of us living this life – on again, off again, in and then out – can conspire against us and leave us fruitless when we finally stand in front of the Master Gardener. He has given us two options in this parable. Believe it or not both are useful. The first story shows us that life can and will conspire against us, plus circumstances can occur that can harden our hearts.

The second story shows us how incredibly important it is to walk daily with Him. The people who wander off from following Jesus do not plan to wander off. The cares of this world overwhelm their devotion to Him. And His teaching becomes story-like – interesting, instead of LIFE-GIVING. That’s when we are less likely to hear what He wants to say to us, right here, right now!

And obviously this parable shows us the need to choose the right way, if we want to be fruitful. That often comes at a very inconvenient time!  We must never forget we live in enemy territory and that means we are subject to other people’s agendas, and life’s circumstances – they can steal away the reality of what Christ has said. Only by progressively allowing ourselves to be changed, will we stay available to His heartbeat. 

Christ has already provided the answer to these difficulties that haunt us every single day. His death on the cross is the single ingredient that makes our ongoing spirituality available and viable. We dare not factor Him out – otherwise we will become groupies instead of disciples. Groupies follow someone for the fun, for the excitement and notoriety.  Disciples lay down their lives. Our attitudes define what we understand, we must choose to press in and press on. Bless you 👋

P 2851 Fruitless, but they didn’t know it.

/ DVH

Mark 11:11-17: “Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then He said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And His disciples heard Him say it.

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as He taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The Lord once had a problem with a fruitless fig tree when he was hungry – He cursed its fruitlessness and moved on. And He and the disciples walked into the temple, where He became angry with the money changers etc. who were working in the temple courts. Those buyers and sellers were there out of necessity, to facilitate people’s sacrificial offerings  … but sadly they were doing what they did, purely to make a profit, not as an act of service to the community around them. Our perception of why we are here matters. Let’s always remember, we carry Love Himself with us everywhere we go. 

Today it struck me that the fig tree in this scripture is a spiritual example of the state of that temple back there in Jerusalem. Just like the empty fig tree, the temple itself was not bearing any fruit suitable for the place that was operating as God’s house. The temple was designed to be a place of prayer and worship not a market. Those money changers, animal and bird sellers etc. were supposed to be there to facilitate other people’s repentance and reconciliation before God – not to make a profit. 

The temple was established to be God’s house filled with the prayers of His people. And those now running it had made it all about gain. This clearly shows us that the intention of our hearts matters. The fruit of this activity did nothing but line pockets, and it cheated people who simply wanted to worship God. Just like the fig tree those merchants were producing nothing that people could spiritually eat. Or, even worse, they were taking advantage of the sincere participants. What they were doing appeared good, but just like that fig tree with lots of leaves – there was no fruit.

The buyers and sellers made it a costly hardship for ordinary people to get to God’s Grace. Well, there’s a huge warning right there! It seems to me that what enraged the Lord Jesus when He went inside was that people were making money off other people’s spiritual needs. Yet God had provided that temple for anyone and everyone. Even the desperate sinners and poor need a safe place to repent and worship! So that haggling had to go!

When the disciples saw the dead fig tree the next day they were astonished. Incredibly, Jesus turned that whole incident into a lesson about faith and how it works. Faith is meant to be productive – and bring us closer to God. It feeds our spiritual man. What the Lord taught constantly showed us was how to live by faith – what that looks like. He consistently used ordinary everyday illustrations to show us faith as a part of our everyday lives.  And on that particular day He was enraged about people taking advantage of others and their very real spiritual needs. 

God’s house is no longer a building, His home is now human hearts — Jesus Himself died to complete that transaction for us. The only things that can get in the way of our faith and spiritual development are our choices. We must choose to believe what Christ told us, and go on to live this life relying upon Him, every single day. We are not simply servants of the Lord. Now, today, at this very moment, we carry our King wherever we go. That ought to make us stop and think about where we are going, what we are doing and why! It would be tragic if, like the money lenders etc. we miss the point of what we are here to do.

There are times when we can easily end up running about raising money for this and that to improve the look of the building we use Sunday by Sunday. But sadly, the people who worship in that building sometimes remain vastly unchanged, simply because we are prioritising material things. The state of each of our hearts matters. His people can worship Him in a swamp or a wilderness, because we are now His temple as we gather together. Our aim is to be fruitful and feed people – unlike that fig tree!

It seems to me that sometimes we still regard a building as God’s house! Instead we need to pay attention to the needs of the people inside the building who are in reality, His house now. We glibly say: “My heart – His home,” and yet we act like God’s requirements are met within bricks and mortar. My final thought is this, nobody wants to be found fruitless when Jesus comes to do His fruit inspection! “… However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [this kind of persistent] faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8b. Let us never settle for tasks, let’s press on for a faith-filled fruitful life. Bye. 👋

P 2846 How are we living from day to day?

/ DVH

“So you must remain in life-union with Me, for I remain in life-union with you. For as a branch severed from the vine will not bear fruit, so your life will be fruitless unless you live your life intimately joined to Mine. “I am the sprouting vine and you’re My branches. As you live in union with Me as your source, fruitfulness will stream from within you—but when you live separated from Me you are powerless.”John 15:4-5 TPT.

There is no true faith without the reality of Christ – our life and decisions are no longer based on how we feel, or our circumstances, they are based on Who He is. When Jesus says: “We can do nothing without Him …” He means … we can do nothing spiritually lasting without Him. Can we live a normal life, 9-5 work, get dressed, go to school, eat 3 times a day, have a bed to sleep on? Yup. Sure can. We can all live superficially – it’s sadly – easy!However, living without an awareness of the reality of Christ every single day, means we are denying His life in us.

Today I want to talk about the incredible depth of spiritual security that is our birthright. Whether we have known the Lord for 5 minutes, or 50 years – our security lies in Him – His Character. 30.9% of people alive in the world today live by what Jesus said. Which means 69.1% don’t. Those dear people are spiritually unacquainted with His freedom, love, peace, and the wisdom He constantly supplies. That only comes from deliberately following Christ. Most people are not attached to the vine, so the life-changing, life-giving sap of His life in us, and for us, is not available to them. 

My question to all of us at the beginning of 2025 is this. How well are we attached to the vine, His new life in us?  Are we firmly attached? In order to be attached to something completely we will have to let go of everything else. When we gave our lives to Christ, He took them. He gladly accepted each one of us, despite our predilection for this sin or that attitude. We said yes, and He said “You’re mine.” Any lack of strong attachment results in a restriction of the nourishment a branch will receive. It is in our own best interests to remember we belong to Him now. We can’t afford to drink of this world’s wells and still try to drink from His well of Living water. That causes self-deception.

Christianity is not a part-time, bed time, happy story faith. It is a way of life. Which is why I believe …“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6. The Lord was not a vacillating kind of Person. He spoke in absolutes. And here we go with what the dictionary says absolute means: “not qualified or diminished in any way; total… viewed or existing independently and not in relation to other things; not relative or comparative.”  This world does not affect His plan for us – we do, when we ignore His plan.

Jesus was saying that there is no other Way to Almighty God except through Him. He is God’s freely provided Way for anybody to be in a relationship our Heavenly Father. This means we need to pay attention to our hearts, watching out for them wandering off after this dream, and that relationship – the things of this world will pass away. LIFE IS IN THE VINE.  It is essential that we prioritise staying attached. It needs to be the centre of our thoughts not on the periphery. I did some research on broken branches and it seems that they can still produce fruit, but the branch itself eventually dies from lack of nourishment.

Sometimes, it seems to me that the church at large … I am not talking about one denomination or another – lives by this mandate instead. “Seek ye first your own needs and wants and ask Me for them, and I will supply them. If I don’t supply what you ask for then you are doing something wrong. I won’t tell you what that is, I will make you run about here and there trying to find it.” Can you see that in the Lord’s allegory about the vine this worldly train of thought can affect our security? God is not changeable. Look it up! That’s why He is still loyal to Israel. 

The whole idea that our earthly happiness is His priority has nothing whatsoever to do with what Jesus taught us. He taught us that our attachment to Him is to be a priority over our attachment to anything and everything else. Even our families. That attachment is a heart attachment not a mind attachment. Our hearts belong to Him now, so we wouldn’t even dream of withdrawing from Him, despite our faults and bad behaviour, because He is the reason we get out of bed every single day. Plus He will never ever withdraw from US! Now there’s a bonus buy to die for.

Our Saviour is STRONG. Strong enough to carry and pay for all our sins! All we need to do as branches, is to let Him flow through us, and His sap will do the rest. It is up to us to stay aware of how we are thinking and living from day to day. Is there anything in our lives that is stealing from us, or distracting us away from our awareness of the reality of His love for us? Just free-fall back into the arms of your loving Saviour. He will always catch you.  Bye 👋

P 2688 To grow faith – use supplements!

/ DVH

“So devote yourselves to lavishly supplementing your faith with goodness, and to goodness add understanding, and to understanding add the strength of self-control, and to self-control add patient endurance, and to patient endurance add godliness, and to godliness add mercy toward your brothers and sisters, and to mercy toward others add unending love. Since these virtues are already planted deep within, and you possess them in abundant supply, they will keep you from being inactive or fruitless in your pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately.” 2 Peter 1:5-8 TPT.

I love the way this version brings out a clear meaning to some quite complicated verses. I like to look at this progressive thought Peter has, as a way of walking with the Lord. If we look at these faith ‘pills’ then we can see that this kind of walking is not aimless. We are actually going somewhere when we deliberately add goodness to our fragile as well as sometimes wobbly …faith. Instead we are deliberately, step by step, walking toward unending love.

Instead of seeing these verses as a whole lotta words that seem to be joined together like beads on a string, it helps to read it as progressive instructions. Let us say my faith is lagging, I am living my daily life doing the same old, same old. My prayers seem dead and lifeless – and maybe a bit repetitious. My bible reading ends with the thought …“thank goodness that’s over with for today.” If things get difficult my first thought is nearer to: “the end of the world as I know it”  … than it is to: “what are You going to do with this Lord?” 

I may even start to think tithing is beyond me, maybe I will just give what I can afford until I have resolved my current financial crisis.. And I begin to avoid anybody who drives me crazy because I can’t cope with them. My faith is heading for a crash, and I don’t know how to stop it. Well, here’s the solution, thank you Apostle Peter!! First of all I pick up what remains of my dragged along faith, and repent. Then I start my new spiritual vitamin regime. That means I add other things into my basket to help, or supplement my faith. I am not stingy with these add-ons, I throw lots of each one in. (That’s what ‘lavish’ means!) 

Let’s look at goodness. How do I add goodness to faith? First of all I look at the source of all our goodness – Almighty God. I deliberately sit and think about my life, so I can notice how His goodness has been following me, quietly, and unobtrusively. I deliberately look for the signs of His Presence in the midst of my troubles. I start noting all the good things, and I choose to leave the disappointments behind. Then I find someone worse off than me and do something spontaneously loving for them!  After that is moving along, and I acknowledge that I can be good to many people, not just one! Then I take another supplement – understanding. My understanding is based on WHO He is, not whether my life makes sense or not.

He is the only way my life will make sense. I must discipline myself to understand that He is God, and this means I may not always comprehend what is going on. But I know He is good, so I start reading verses about how good He is. To do that I am going to need self-control … focus. In essence I have stopped seeing my problems as the centre of my universe and I have begun to let go of them giving them over to Him and leaving them there.  I will need self control to fix my mind on good things instead of rehearsing how hard my life is. 

Next I need patient endurance. That’s because I serve Him He does not serve me! Every now and then I also stop and remind myself of these intentional supplements. I need these things to get through the mire of how I feel, simply because now I want to arrive at unending love – not just to escape from difficulties. That means that I will need to be patient with myself as well! Endurance, holding our focus, helps us to let the Lord accomplish what He wants to do IN us. 

Ding, ding! Time for the next supplement. Now I need to add godliness to the previous supplements, otherwise I can easily become obsessed with how hard things are, instead of looking for His goodness in the land of the living now I am focussing on His promise that I can endure all things because He is strengthening me! To live aware of His godliness I am going to need to adopt mercy – for you, and for me, and anybody else who crosses my path. All judgment and condemnation does is chuck us out of the battle right when we are about to win it.

Last supplement, unending love. Each previous vitamin I have taken has reminded me that I am a recipient of His everlasting, unfailing love. Even though I may not feel like I have all these supplements, the bible says I have them! “Since these virtues are planted deep within.” So my faith needs to kick in. BTW the book says that I don’t just have some – I have lots.

The bonus buy in all this vitamin taking is that I will walk away from constantly staring at my problems, because I have a new focus —  now I wanna see His goodness in the land of the living!  Instead of going round and round, trying to find solutions, going nowhere – I have a purpose. I want to know the One Who rescued me intimately and my vitamin taking helps me REMEMBER Who He is. I know I can’t do anything without His help, but I can step out in faith by obeying what He says, step by step, from His book, and become a good old lady, who takes all of my vitamin supplements!  Bye. 👋

P 2512 Who’s the Boss?

/ DVH

Part of the reason I think that most Christians have lost their free access to the power of God, is because we thought, or hoped, or maybe even prayed, that He would rubber stamp our grand ideas. I think we meant well … we were simply trying to advertise or showcase the goodness of God to those who didn’t believe. However, the power of God resides in every word that comes out of His mouth. Not our mouth – or even our head! If the Lord kisses an individual’s idea, then that person needs to start praising Him for His goodness toward them. He is under no obligation to do that. Even our faith comes from Him! 

God’s utterly kind consideration of mankind started in the garden. That’s where Eve came from – His kindness. After all, Almighty God was there with Adam in the cool of the evening, so he was not always alone!  Yet the Lord knew man needed someone who was the same, but different. God Himself saw and said:“It is not good for man to be alone …” Nothing is hidden from His sight, not even our needs. He is so good to us that He pays attention to every single detail. Which is why I am happy to say that if I don’t got it, then I don’t need it!

Read the bible carefully for yourself, and find somewhere where a man told God what to do, and how to do it, and it happened. “No one can tell God what to do or accuse Him of doing evil. He has always been praised for what He does; you also must praise Him.”Job 36:23-25. I found in my search for such a man, that Abraham bargained with God for Lot, and the city of Sodom and Gomorrah and God graciously listened. And Jonah was as cheeky as a man can get, but His attitude did not stop what God wanted to happen from happening – Nineveh was saved! And still God reasoned with that man. Moses ended up talking to Pharaoh even though he told God he couldn’t speak. The Lord let Aaron speak until Moses grew into the job! Our God can take a maladjusted man and make him into a great leader – He did that with Gideon. But with all these great men, Almighty God’s hand held them up!

The great Patriarchs in the Old Testament, knew enough to work with the Lord under His instructions. Moses knew the value of listening to Him and doing things the way God said. So much so, this great man refused to move forward without Him! These men, who had wisdom and understanding, as well as an established relationship with God, often learnt that kind of obedience by utterly messing up their lives first. Moses killed someone. Abraham treated Sarah like a bag of candy – he passed her around to save his life a number of times. Even Job learnt WHO is in charge the hard way. It is, I believe, an enormous error to think that we can organise God to do things our way.

Oh! If we could only enjoy what we have been given! He is a God unlike any other, Who watches over us, comes to live in us, came to earth to save us, and deeply cares about every single little detail in our lives. Independence is overrated! Total dependence upon the Spirit of the Living God is to be appropriated and cherished forever. Amen!

Sadly, submission is not a popular topic in this world – human beings are incredibly busy fighting for their own rights. Everybody  thinks if they yell loud enough and make a good enough logical case that things should change in their favour. I cannot imagine anything more frustrating or fruitless than going along banging into the Lord’s will, and getting up and doing it again! We show our ignorance and lack of maturity when we start to think that being saved means we are the boss now. WE do not have the omniscience and omnipotence of Almighty God – Who knows the end from the beginning … and all the bits in between.

Having said that: we can, and we should command the things of this world that are out of order to come into order – but that needs to be HIS order, not ours. I think that is why Jesus rebuked His disciples in Luke  “…  but the people there did not welcome Him, because He was heading for Jerusalem. When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” *But Jesus turned and rebuked them. Then He and His disciples went to another village.” Luke 9:53-56.

In another version it says that like this: *“Jesus turned about and rebuked them, saying, You know not what manner of spirit you are of. The Son of man has not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” It is plain from reading the book that we cannot be trusted with that kind of power. Mostly, because we don’t know if we are in the Spirit or not, half the time! Yet those men watched, walked, slept and ate, for three and a half years with Jesus Christ, God’s Son. And they still said and did the dumbest things!! Using our own understanding got us into this mess in the first place. The most blessed place to live is the place of freely submitting to His will. Like I said: Independence is overrated!

Who is the boss? Here’s a verse to think about:“Why do you call Me LORD, and you don’t do the things I say?”

Luke 6:46. 👋🏻