Generation

P 3110 Wars and rumours of wars!

/ DVH

I have heard so many people lately who think it is the end of times. Is it? I dunno! All I know is that it seems to me that a whole lotta people have bunkered down, waiting for Jesus to come and get us, instead of growing up into the fullness of Christ. Meanwhile it’s just too bad about the poor sods who have no idea what He did for them. Let’s just leave them trying to tread water OUTSIDE the ark! 😱

I know I just mixed my metaphors, but you know what I mean. I can’t see how knowing that Jesus is … hypothetically, coming next Monday, is useful information! Ask yourself this question – what would YOU change about your life and your actions if you knew for sure that Jesus IS coming next Monday?! Now there’s a great diagnostic question if ever there was one! Here’s another one, have you been postponing obedience to a better, easier day? There’s a whole lot of other far more important stuff to go on with, than; “Is it the end of the world?” And that other stuff IS within our power to change.

The Lord Jesus is saying ‘always be ready’ — which is truly exceptional advice. I think He knows what we need to know, and what we don’t, and what’s the point of chasing unicorns when we have work to do? We need to live like Luke 21:36 says: “Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.” This is important because our inner attitudes will no longer be hidden. Right now, the church we go to, may not know we are as sweet as pie when we are with them, and a pain in everyone’s heart at our house!!

Jesus specifically taught us to take note of the times – but He didn’t say write a thesis on it. Look it at this version of Matthew 16:3: “ ... …why can’t you read the signs of the times? An evil and wanton generation is always wanting signs and wonders. The only sign you’ll get is the Jonah sign.” Then He spun around and walked away.”Take note of what is going on and pray. We also need to apply God’s Word to our hearts faithfully, and make sure we let the Holy Spirit keep us humble. 

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.“ 2 Timothy 3:1-5.

Yeah, those verses read like the lead story of our news! If WE are any of those things let’s grow up and fix them quickly. There are some days that I would be better off avoiding myself!  Meanwhile I do need to start with me …because so far nobody else came up! BTW, these are fantastic verses to meditate on. It’s like a check-list of heartless, mean, dumb things to do. However, instead of putting a mental tick on each thing mentioned, we need to ask the Lord, ‘Do I do this?’ 

At the same time, don’t let yourself be condemned, because you and I are now “in Christ Jesus” and there is no condemnation in Him. Instead, we need to agree with the Holy Spirit’s diagnosis, and ask Him to help us repent and repair stuff, then go and do it, just do what you can do to fix things. Then, move on – none of us have a guaranteed tomorrow.

Back to my main point. Jesus gave this information to His disciples two thousand years ago. He talked a lot about the end times, but the Lord did it in conjunction with our own behaviour toward others. Yet we keep carrying on like we are supposed to know when this stuff will happen, when the bible clearly says:’No-one but the Father knows.’ See Matthew 24:36. And if the Father did not tell His precious, beloved, always-obedient-to-His-will-SON, Jesus Christ, then WE are not meant to know. Think again! Let’s pray and ask Him to forgive us all, for our arrogance.

However, the “signs” Jesus mentions in Timothy, in Matthew, and Luke – are a wake-up call for us to do something about our lives. We can pray for places where there is war. We can go out of our way to care for others. We can witness. And we can let this life teach us how to love the unlovely – after all, who needs to know the love of God more? I’m talking about those people nobody likes, so nobody wants to tell them anything— just in case they repent and get saved!

We all might want to think about that, while we are contemplating – wars and rumours of wars. Personally, I think we need to use our God-given time on earth well and participate willingly in our transformation. Do you want to be like Jesus and your heavenly Father?? Then …“Love your enemies, do good to those who despitefully use you …” Matthew 5:43-48. After all, that’s our Father’s business.  Bye. 👋

P 3059 Up close and personal!

/ DVH

“Your hand-to-hand combat is not with human beings, but with the highest principalities and authorities operating in rebellion under the heavenly realms. For they are a powerful class of demon-gods and evil spirits that hold this dark world in bondage.” Ephesians 6:12 TPT. 

Ignoring our enemy may well be one of Christianity’s biggest mistakes so far. But I totally believe in the Lord’s great all-encompassing goodness. I know He is raising up a generation of believers who will face all of our enemies, unashamed, and fearless. The way we can enter this brave band of brothers, is to practice fighting the good fight in our own little lives, every single day. Up close and personal! I pray all the time for His Grace to be abundant upon me because I’ve lived long enough to know that I need it!

Lately it seems the Lord is stretching my patience, while He is perfecting me and transforming me …Sigh. So there is a big l-o-n-g space between whatever bad event just happened in my life – to finally being able to see the Lord’s outcome. I will always need a big dollop of His hope daily to cope. Here’s a freebie …put your hope in Jesus, not in the Answer. Sometimes we don’t actually know what is good for us. My faith can be feeble and self-serving, and without His help, impatience will jump up and down on the inside of me – demanding my attention.

I battle with a sense of overall tiredness daily. It’s the kind of tiredness that makes you want to sleep for a week and hope that everything will be fixed when you wake up! I sort of understand the whole deal with the Israelites when they left Egypt and wandered around in the wilderness. I don’t like to live my life feeling uncomfortable either! The solution is easy – instead of waiting for my circumstances to change I need to give the whole thing to Jesus and walk away, leaving it with Him. And refuse to pick it up again..

God is good ALL the time. I simply need to cultivate my spiritual eyes and ears and make what He wants my priority. The problem is not with Him. It’s me!! There are days when I realise there is much more of the world inside me than I’ve comprehended so far. You know some days I also understand the Israelites longing for the leeks and garlic of Egypt, even when Manna fell out of the sky every day. It seems to me that there’s not that many ways you can cook Manna over an open fire! Boiled? Scrambled? toasted? I have a limited diet but manna porridge every day for forty years seems hard to bear. That problem is not with what I am eating – it is with what I am thinking!

The bible says in Galatians 2:20:“I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” I love the bible so much,.it shows me clearly there is no way forward without sticking to, leaning on, and totally surrendering to Jesus. ‘By faith’ means He is now my reference point, not the awful circumstances, or my feelings, but Jesus.

I love the bit in Galatians that says: “in the body.” My ability to conquer what’s going on in my head is already inside me – it came in when He came in! Salvation is not just something that happens only once. I am saved from all kinds of sin every single blooming minute of every day! Especially when icky thoughts float through my educated-idiot-box if I am irritable. That thing says stuff inside my head to the person who is annoying me: “If I give in to you, I am letting you win and there is no way you should win … because I don’t trust you!” Look at me, thoughts of reconciliation flowing about like a river! Hah! Fighting with YOU will not help ME overcome!!

That’s what this verse from Ephesians 6:12 is about. It is reminding us …“The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” 2 Corinthians 10:4. The war we fight daily, sometimes minute by minute, has nothing whatsoever to do with guns, spears, swords, or nuclear weapons – but it has everything to do with my own private thoughts … by the time that junk comes out of my mouth, I’m sunk!

If I let irritation with you pull up a chair in my private thoughts … then … all by myself, I can personally conjure up why you said what you said, and what you meant by it!   You did get the whole “conjure up” vibe right? I mean that junk floating about is not valid. It shows me that somebody else has been whispering to me:  “They said that because of this – and they mean this because of that!” That’s like one step away from necromancy and that stuff is bad news according to the bible. Saul lost his kingdom and his life to that sort of Chinese whispers because God did not answer the man according to his timetable. 

All of this fight is internal, and most definitely up close and personal! However, yielding my will to His, when I am in the middle of it, changes everything. When I choose to daily learn to give up quickly, and lay my life down for His sake, not yours …then He can make whatever He wants to make, out of it – and it is always good! Bye 🤗 

P 2981 I’ll never get this stuff right!

/ DVH

“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!” Ephesians 3:20-21 TPT.

What a fantastic bunch of promises in Ephesians we have today!!  We literally need to drag our eyes away from all the things that force their way into our lives, and focus on His bigness, not on our inadequacies. This is the best advice I’ve had all morning…I can’t—but He can!  Boy, I just can’t do some things anymore… it drives me nuts. I used to be able to do at least four things at once, now I have to ask hubby to repeat what he just said to me, when I am typing. 🙄

My mother is 97, very ill and fading. She used to be the most powerful person in every single room she ever walked into …and … that person is quite simply not there anymore. Instead she’s having trouble holding onto her thoughts and confuses the past with the present. But here we are today, reading that God Himself has said to every single one of us: “I will be your strong right arm. I will catch you when you fall. I can take the mess that you’ve made of your life and make a glorious garden out of it.”  Oh, Amen to all that!

There is a terrible tragedy in allowing our sin to be bigger than the Saviour. My mother has lived for years in the wilderness of not knowing whether God loved her or not. And yet she has always believed in Him, and tried to please Him. That’s a terribly scary place to live, especially when you are old and infirmed. It can totally desolate the soul. I think that kind of theology is one of the reasons I hate religion —I love the Lord!— but boy I hate religion! It puts a dreadful fear in the place of faith. 

So this week hubby and I sat next to her and read from one of the books I’ve made, and my dear mum glowed like a light bulb as she allowed herself to bask in the comfort and approval of God’s love. It is incredible how our precious Father’s loving acceptance can do the things we cannot do. Love is the best communicator in the world, and love is all over His bible.

I still have some pretty wild dreams, plus a far dollop of imagination – and yet Ephesians 3 says: ‘Almighty God’s power can do greater than my imagination, or dreams, or requests.’ Not to mention the whole energising thing thrown in for good measure. I can always do with energising – how about you? His love takes me places that I would never dare to venture. There is a different kind of freedom for all of us in His love.

And energising is a huge thing if you happen to have a toddler, or an infant at your house — or two or three, or… maybe four? God’s help is way bigger than them all screaming at once, and the dinner boiling over and the cell phone dancing across the kitchen bench!  I’ve prayed for myself  many times in the past: “please re-energise me Lord!” It’s when we feel like we are going under for the umpteenth time that we let go of Who He is and start to grab hold of who I am not! Grab hold of Him instead. What you think about you, doesn’t count – it’s who He says you are.

Beating yourself up is quite unfruitful. Instead reassure yourself that the God of all the Universe loves you so much He always has your back! He will take our ashes and make beautiful things out of them. Perhaps you have worked all day and then come home exhausted, and you are trying so hard to be the perfect parent. One of the things we need plenty of in this life is the knowledge that our hope is in Him— Who He is. Guilt must never drive us.

Ephesians offers us an incredibly realistic picture of Who God is. We are all still in transit, so let’s stop should-ing on ourselves all the time … “I should do this and I should be that and I should never lose my temper, and if the kids turn out to be wrecked it will be all my fault!’  Instead let’s choose to remember that God can indeed—‘work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes…’  He’s already got our sin covered, now we need to let His love cover us in our vulnerability. 

Whether you too have a parent you love dearly, whose faith is wobbly, or your kids have sailed merrily off into the sunset and seemingly left the Lord behind… remind yourself that our hope is in His Character. Putting our hope into our circumstances or our own actions is foolish and heartbreaking.  

“Help” is a prayer.“The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, And His ears are toward their cry for help.”Psalm 34:15. “The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever;  Do not forsake the works of Your hands.”  Psalm 138:8. You and I don’t have to always get this stuff right – we just need to remember that He’s a God Who always keeps His promises! Bye, 👋

P 2969 Hope maintenance.

/ DVH

“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!”Ephesians 3:20-21 TPT. Jesus is our steadfast anchor and hope, and the bible is hope’s back-up and proof that what we know is true. Finally, our praise and prayers mirror what we hope for! 

You and I need to take the time to protect our own hope. We can’t always just jump in and start out with faith, because our faith can be weakened by circumstances, emotions and trouble. Christ’s birth, life, and death have established HOPE on the earth, permanently.”To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.“ Colossians 1:27.This is not a transitory thing, it is an eternal thing. It is an established, firm, foundational fact. We cling to His incredible goodness. Faith will spring up in us, as we continually maintain our hope in Who He is and what He did for us.

We need to remind ourselves about what the Bible says, instead of focussing on what is going on around us or inside us. We ask the Holy Spirit to remind us of the incredible things the Lord has already done in our lives that are good, filled with hope, grace and truth. Verses like those two above, are so helpful, they remind us that God has dominion over everything else that is going on, and He doesn’t just want to answer our prayers — He wants to bless us while He is doing it! He has our best interests firmly established in His heart.

Here is another well known verse that show us ‘hope’s purpose.’“May Your unfailing love be with us, LORD, even as we put our hope in You.” Psalm 33:22. Our hope is an investment in God’s greatness, not in our ability to believe! There are times when we hope for things that are bigger than our faith seems to be. However, God is always good, He will get us there, He will turn our hearts toward Him! Just be honest with Him and ask for His help. When we asked Jesus to save us He made our heart His home. We could be bad at living like that is a reality, or good at it, none of that makes any difference at all to HIS goodness.

Things happen all the time in this life, stuff like —- a loved one is desperately sick, or the job we want to be available isn’t. Maybe we need somewhere safe to live. Of course we pray about such desperate things, but our hope needs to be in WHO He is, not just the answer to our prayers. If our hope is in the answer to our prayers then our hopes can be shattered if things don’t turn out the way we think they should. We must start with the known, the reality, the substance of Who Jesus is — His character, and His attitude toward people like me, we are the people He loves. All of that is in the bible.

Sometimes we desperately hope for things that are beyond our immediate scope of belief. Pray and ask Him to walk you through your failing hope and faith, until you are again standing on His goodness. Things like these are a place for us to continue to stretch our faith IN HIM. Here is an example: it is one thing to believe God can get you to work on time when the trains are late — and totally another to believe He can heal someone who is severely depressed! He can! But we can drive ourselves batty struggling and striving to stretch our hope and make our faith into something it isn’t … yet. When you find a weak place, let Him be your strength.

You and I might have a mustard seed size of faith, and still grow a big tree that will shelter others. The important factor in that sentence is time. We never arrive, we are always in transit in this life – that’s part of the adventure. We need to invest our hope in His goodness, like we invest in breathing or having enough water — not in our ability, or inability to pray. Let His goodness be a fixed point. Then hope will not disappoint you. HE never changes. But our ability to hope in Him answering our prayers might easily be swayed or changed with adverse  circumstances. 

That’s why our hope must be in Who He is. Our thoughts aren’t about things like – did He answer my prayer this week, last month, last year? Our prayer needs to be fixed to the only true fixed point – is Jesus God or not? Can God do anything or not? Anything else leaves us open to being knee-capped by the other guy when we get overwhelmed by whatever is going on. God is good. He gives good answers. No matter how things look now, He’s got this. He’s with you in what is going on. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.” Hebrews 11:1. We hang onto our hope in Him, until we hit faith and we return to the certainty of Who He is … now we have substance … we aren’t trying to push faith out, we know that we know Who He is.

Silence from heaven is never final … it means it is faith-stretching time – during that time we need to dig into our hope chest and remind ourselves of Who He is and what He has done for us. Hope maintenance facilitates growing and strengthening OUR faith. We stop using other people’s experiences to push us along, and start developing our own history, our own stories of His grace in action. Then we can’t be stopped. Remember:  “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” Proverbs 13:12 . I believe that hoping in God’s goodness is the key that breathes life into overwhelmed struggling, sad hearts. Bye. 👋

P 2878 Unconditionally forgive everyone.

/ DVH

““Your ancestors have also been taught ‘Love your neighbours and hate the one who hates you.’ However, I say to you, love your enemy, bless the one who curses you, do something wonderful for the one who hates you, and respond to the very ones who persecute you by praying for them.”Matthew 5:43-44 TPT. Many people don’t like this scripture because it hits something inside them that they don’t care to acknowledge. Personally, I think things like gossip have their roots in these attitudes. We try to bring people down by badmouthing them to others, especially if they threaten us or we can’t forget what they did! 

Hatred can be generational. It can be taught to us by the people we dearly love, who raised us. After that sort of family indoctrination, it can become quite easy for gossip, slander, lies, and hatred to be passed down from one generation to another. When generational things are cherished and repeated endlessly, eventually they break out against other people Jesus died for! Meanwhile, how sensible is it to hate some people ‘cos your folks, or your friends, or people we esteem hate them too? You know that voice that you can hear in your heart that keeps saying: “Wrong way, go back.” Listen to it.  We have the power of God in us — we can usher in generational change by our choices.

Any unloving focus can drag us away from our main objective – loving others. Gossip and judgment build themselves, through repetition about what some perceived enemy did or said.  And when the bad incident that started with anger, or judgment happens to our people, our house, our group of friends – then it becomes personal!  That personal experience adds weight to everything else that has gone before it. It’s a distraction from our main purpose – let’s not allow ourselves to be distracted away from our purpose.. 

Between all the hating, cursing, lies and the repetition of the terrible stories — hatred is now flourishing in this world. Now this ghastly attitude is set firmly inside a demonic stronghold. I think the press/media etc. lies to us regularly in order to provide sensational stories to get our money and attention. Advertisers love that idea! The press blows up information and twists things to make what we read, see, or listen to, sensational. 

Meanwhile, our thirst to be in the know, and our efforts to find out about something that garners a lot of attention, have created a monster. We have made ‘knowing things;’  or ‘having the skinny on this or that,’  into some kind of a competition, and in the process we have devalued the people Jesus died for. Those people who are supposedly informing us – prefer making money, or gaining information — to caring about their fellow man. Real lives are affected and sometimes destroyed, by falsely reported things. 

This happens when the story becomes more important than the participants. Things like that help to create hard, and sometimes deceitful hearts. Meanwhile the media is about money and making some people rich. It seems to me, that the press take their little texta pens, and colour-in what really happened, by bringing up the bad shades and diminishing the good ones, so that we will read/watch/listen to their version of what is actually going on. We can easily get sucked into this filthy whirlpool and end up angry with somebody we’ve never met!

I believe this practice is a device of satan, because he loves to capitalise on greed, plus our own perceived desire to know stuff. Gossip etc. has become a new form of addiction. But the truth is, we don’t actually need to know! We can pray for the people involved in terrible things, but we often can’t do anything about whatever is going on. All we can do is to STOP and deliberately let His light in through prayer. Unfortunately our idea of light, and the Lord’s idea of light can be very different things. How do I know that …? Because our light can often be hidden under a basket – that’s how! Hidden light is not useful. Darkness still remains in the corners. We dare not bring our own agendas into our prayers. 

Even some churches have been deceived, they have become more concerned about being politically correct than loving others. Our priority is always LOVE. There are times that we too borrow the press’s textas and do some colouring-in of our own – villainising people! We are here to shine His light into the dark places – not to spread the darkness around. To me, that means I need to be like Him no matter what is going on around me. A light illuminates, it doesn’t have an opinion, it simply shines by its nature. 

So what can we do about these things? Well, I think investing emotionally in something we have no control over, is the enemy’s way of wasting our time. We may even feel better initially, more in control of things, but unless we pray for both sides of whatever is going on, we are missing the point. We don’t get to judge who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. My advice is – don’t believe everything you hear, and remember to unconditionally forgive everyone. Let’s not get so tied to the things of this earth, that we can’t hear when heaven comes calling. Bye. 👋

P 2848 Risky living.

/ DVH

To be a risk taker means that we choose to take hold of whatever courage we do have and use it. Jesus taught us that our faith needs to only be the size of a mustard seed – and a mustard seed as you can see, is a very little seed. ”For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20-21. I think a major flaw in the way we use our faith is we wait for some feelings, like confidence or assurance, to come first. And sometimes we need to work on our stinky attitude because that is the mountain we are currently facing! Risk takers put their feelings to one side and act on what the Lord told them to do regardless of the consequences.

A risk taker sees the bible as God’s instruction manual, complete with all sorts of interesting stories about Almighty God intervening in the lives of His kids. Take Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego … Meanwhile fancy calling your kid those names!! Teehee. Moving on … these three men’s faith changed the destiny of a king, and saved their lives. This is what they said to the king in Daniel 3:8:17-18 “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and He will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if He does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.”

Right there … “even if He does not…”…  that’s the tip of the spear of their faith. They threw that faith spear into the heart of a King and it pinned him to the wall. Look at what comes next:  “Nebuchadnezzar then approached the opening of the blazing furnace and shouted, “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out! Come here!” These three men and their collective faith changed that king’s attitude, he was watching to see if they had been delivered!  The power of their testimony overcame the enemy and they released their faith through what they said, then they let God be God. At the same time they got to walk around in that fiery furnace with Jesus … well, it says a fourth man … but I think it was Him! They came out of there not even smelling of SMOKE.

Hubby has this saying, I love/hate it. “If you want to see a miracle you are going to have to need a miracle first.”Think about what that means. I love what he says because it is true, I hate it because I like life to be easy. Therein lies the problem. We all want to see miracles without getting chucked into a fiery furnace! You know if you put gold into a furnace, all the impurities trapped within the gold, come to the top and you can skim them off. That action produces pure gold. The impurities can be seen clearly when the gold is fluid, they float to the surface.

We can see what is really going on in our hearts by our reaction to difficult, awkward, dangerous, unsettling  circumstances. Just like the process of gold refining – our anxieties, fears, short-comings, and lousy, cranky attitudes come to the surface under the pressure of opposition and trouble. What we often do in those times is to wait out the trouble, or try to deal with it, so we can get to the end of whatever is going on, and exit the problem and go back to ?normal?. Instead, as much as we are able, we should take note of our impurities and give them to Him, and ask Him to deal with them. And yes, I do know that is hard when you are going through stuff, but confession is good for us!

Jesus, our primary example of faith in action, did it too. The Lord said this in the garden of Gethsemane:“And after going a little farther, He fell face down and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible [that is, consistent with Your will], let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” Matthew 26:39. He prayed the same kind of prayer that those three men prayed facing the furnace. Jesus exercised TRUST … to the death! Some people call this prayer the prayer of relinquishment. Actually, I pray it all the time. It is my “hands off” prayer. I give the situation to Him, like our three faith heroes did when faced with a fiery end, and then I leave the results to Him. 

That is why today’s blog is called risky living.  I would like to acknowledge that my title is also the title of one of the great-books-I’ve-read. “Risky living” by Jamie Buckingham. He is one of my all time favourite authors. Sadly don’t go looking for this book, because all his books are now out of print. That book would benefit this generation heaps.

Dear Jamie is with the Lord now but I loved his writing because he was so honest about his failings and his humanity, as well as being crystal clear about how good God is … despite how dumb we are! God is faithful, as I said yesterday, He has given us people who are gifts! Jamie Buckingham was such a gift to me. He taught me that when I gave my life to Jesus, now my life is about furthering His kingdom. not my own.

Even my personal comfort is subject to His will. It is an important truth and we should choose to learn not to be tossed about by fiery trials. “Friends, when life gets really difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process, with glory just around the corner.” 1 Peter 4:12 MSG. Bye, 👋.

“Praise be to the LORD my Rock, Who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” Psalm 144:1.

P 2784 They are not just stories.

/ DVH

The whole time the Lord Jesus was preaching, He was demonstrating, teaching, and living out a kingdom life in front of everyone around Him. Praise God that people wrote this stuff down! These things are illustrations of how God’s kingdom works. He preached about what the people in God’s kingdom look like. And He talked about what the kingdom looks like —  check out what I mean for yourself. There’s plenty of stuff to do in there! All of the Gospels show us what a life laid down for others looks like. It is an error to think that only Jesus was meant to live that way. He’s the Person we imitate with the Holy Spirit’s divine help.

Our Lord went out and did God’s will, every single day He was on this earth. Doesn’t that blow your mind? Think on this: our glorious Savior was forgiving, saving and inspiring someone while He was dying. He didn’t stop even when He was taking His last breath! He was still leading the people around Him into a greater knowledge of God’s ways from the place of His enormous pain. WOW! And we think talking to Mrs Kerfoops next door is hard! Jesus was struggling to breathe, and He still witnessed to His Father’s great love and passion for people. And if you are short on words for witnessing, that’s OK – Jesus didn’t use many ‘cos it was too hard for Him to speak! 

In the New Testament, the Gospels are a visual illustration, an aid, they show us HOW God’s kingdom functions. They are not just ‘stories’ about the things Jesus did and said, they are Jesus’ demonstrating and explaining to us how God’s kingdom WORKS. He taught, then He did, and sometimes He did, then He taught!  And at other times both things happened simultaneously. To be quite honest with you, I could get stuck on the Gospels for the rest of my life. There is just so much richness in there. 

You and I are adults, we aren’t little kids going off to Kid’s Church hearing stories about Jonah and the whale, or Jesus expanding some little boy’s lunch anymore. Everything the Lord Jesus says and does in the Gospels is a life lesson.  It is not just some fairy tale like Jack and the bean stalk! These things are instructions. Through Jonah, God is saying to us, no matter what big thing swallows you up, even if it is your own fault – He still has a plan for your life. And the boy with the his little lunch teaches us that even the little we have, can grow in His hands and feed others, if we will just give it to Him. 

There’s a way to read the book and it is not the same way you read a novel. It is too easy to read God’s book as simply words on a page. This book is God’s carefully preserved and chosen Manufacturer’s Handbook and it has been written down and kept safe for us. The Jewish people are trustworthy, they memorised their own history by word of mouth passing these stories down from generation to generation. We have what we have today because of those stories passed down. Even the New Testament, although written down, was also passed down by word of mouth. That’s what preaching is! The miracle is that it doesn’t matter which version of the bible you read personally, because the Holy Spirit kisses those things that are important to US, with His wonderful Presence. 

Then revelation comes. After that comes repentance – I guarantee that bit! You can’t read the book without finding places where you’ve fallen short of the mark. Don’t be condemned. Getting it wrong is not the end of the world. It’s a place where we can learn to trust in His faithfulness. We must do more than just sing: “Great is thy faithfulness … 🎶” – we need to live believing it! This life is not about our performance, good or bad, it is about His faithfulness to honour His word! People all over this world are living and dying without any knowledge of the One Who loves us all.

Take your little lunch, your little life, and give it to Jesus. Then go and do what He says to you. Read this scripture with that in your mind:

“When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?”He asked this only to test him, for He already had in mind what He was going to do. Philip answered Him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” Another of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there). Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.” John 6:5-11.

This kid didn’t have anything worthwhile to feed so many people, yet he shows us that our spiritual poverty is not the end. In Christ’s hands that is always the beginning of something extraordinary. Anything that is given to Jesus will multiply. These are not just stories, they are a living history of how God can use ordinary lives and bring forth His kingdom. Bye. 👋

P 2692 “But God!”

/ DVH

There are days when I look at a blank page and think — ‘really?’ Time to write another blog? Didn’t I just do that yesterday? And the day before that!… And the day before that …! 🤣 Meanwhile nobody makes me do this stuff but me. Right now, I’m sitting on a sofa in the lounge of a 6th floor apartment. Some terribly clever, far sighted person built this building right next to the ocean. Praise God we are in the Penthouse – would you believe? We were given an upgrade. Wow! The things the Lord does when we aren’t looking. 

It feels like I can step into the scenic picture that is right outside the huge wall of glass windows. Hubby took a photo so you can see how lovely it is. I’ve been sitting here mesmerised, watching the huge waves roll on and on hypnotically. Check out the tiny man in the left hand corner. Those are BIG WAVES! But even waves calm down and find their way quietly to the sand. After a while you realise you’ve been sitting staring out of the window for a half an hour with a goofy blank look on your face! 🤪 For me there is something about watching the ocean that zones me out. 

A-ny-wa-y, hubby sent me the verse I’ve put down below —and it totally inspired me. When I read it today, I realised Father God is at work in all of us with the same ferocity I can see in those waves. The bible has so many verses like these, verses that show us His heart and passion toward us. The praise we raise to Him is simply our grateful response, as we see glimpses of His glory and purpose for our lives.

“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!” Ephesians 3:20-21 TPT.

Now there is something to sink our teeth into. And just for fun, here’s another one! “…for it is God Who is working in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”  Philippians 2:13. How reassuring is that! Sometimes it can seem life is banging us about like a loose door in a fierce wind. You can barely get your breath. Instead of striding here and there as an overcomer, you feel more like a potato listlessly waiting to be made into chips and be done with it! Bin there, dun that!

Remember those two words I mentioned a couple of days ago, verses that I really love? “But GOD …” Our wonderful Father God has a plan – He always has a plan! It’s a good plan to help us through all the difficult things this life chucks at us while we are not looking! His plan is for here and now – not one day in the future, pie in the sky when we die. Take a good look at your day today, maybe right now, you can’t see anything good about it – I have days like that too. All I can see some days are the four walls hemming me in. But today, I have a view, and the ocean is just doing its little thing!

There are days when I specifically pray and ask the Holy Spirit to help me to see with His eyes. Enlightened eyes. Spirit-filled eyes. Eyes that can see the things around me. Sometimes I open the Word and go looking for things He said, just for fun. And at other times I play music on Youtube. You can go anywhere in the world on Youtube. If only I could afford to scrap the ads! Youtube ads are like SatNav in the car, always interrupting something you are enjoying!!

So some days I ask Holy Spirit to help me to find something beautiful to look at. Things don’t have to be expensive to be fun, actually simple stuff can often give us the most fun. Our daughter and our grandson went outside yesterday, with three different sorts of bubble makers, from Kmart, and had a bubble duel. Hilarious!! There’s nothing like bubbles in the sunlight to inspire you with the transitory nature of happiness. I exhort you to let yourself be silly now and then – let the child inside you come out to play. It’s a great stress reliever.

Life, all by itself, can give us plenty to be sad about … stopping to smell the flowers will lift anyone’s spirits. And… YouTube kittens…well, they make anyone smile. You would have to be a zombie with one foot on a banana peel to not laugh at the antics of baby animals. I know there are days when you have no words – and that’s OK – your mum probably told you there would be days like that…  “BUT GOD!!….” Bye for now  … 👋

P 2670 It’s later than we all think.

/ DVH

Romans 13:11-14: “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

In these difficult times, we can get extremely busy, and then we forget WHO we belong to. We start acting and re-acting like the people around us. Sadly, their god is often their appetites and misery. Even our own ideas of down-time and entertainment can sometimes wander off into hedonism and violence. Like Paul said – that stuff is not for us. I exhort you to treat entertainment like food, and pray over everything. I believe the Lord Himself will show anyone what is good, or not good in their life, when we ask Him. My own policy is this – when in doubt, don’t!  I have a pretty fertile imagination and so I’ve learnt you can’t un-see or un-hear stuff once you’ve sat around absorbing it!

As for casting off the works of darkness, the things of the darkness aren’t always on TV or in some game …we can easily be distracted by an argumentative spirit, or a bad temper, or a negative or critical attitude. The enemy’s deceptions are not obvious like sexual deviancy or a violent response to provocation! ‘It is the little foxes that spoil the vines…’  Likewise it is the things that we make allowance for, that drag us away from the Lord’s ways. We are exhorted to number our days, because they are few. Actively choose to learn to co-operate with the Holy Spirit, nobody else can do that for you.

The bible tells us clearly what to put off … let’s do that and leave our feelings and needs out of it! Currently practically every generation on this planet is held captive to how it feels at any given moment. Human beings are bigger than their feelings! Praise God, the bible doesn’t just tell us what to put OFF – it also tells us what to put ON. We put on the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords using our faith in His power within us…We do this one day, one interaction with Him, at a time. Basically Paul is saying: ‘Don’t make a space for anything that will entice you away from loving and serving Jesus. The things of this world will drag you under into despair and shame.’ Amen!

Our lives are geared into working hard, so we want to allow for relaxation. And if that pleasure is taken away, then we think the sky will fall, because we instinctively know that we need rest. We get our REST from Christ! Anything else is a poor substitute. Just because there are times when we are not good at achieving that aim, that does not mean we have permission to let loose, and ignore things. Pleasure itself is not bad, but exalting anything over our passion for Him, will result in the Lord ending up in second place. And eventually, if we are not careful, He slides right out of the picture. 

That’s one of the things I truly love about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They will not force Their Ways on us. We don’t have to do anything! We choose to do it, to remain close to Him, and daily learn more about our new life in Christ. There are times I wish preachers would talk more about falling in Love with Him, because I think the Body of Christ really needs this kind of exhortation. When we love someone we will do anything for them, and abstinence is not painful, because it is a joy to be close to them. Personally, I love to hang around with someone who knows Him much better than I do. I can learn from them how to hold Him up in such a way that my response is pure worship. The more we invest in His life in us, the more His life will flow out of us.   

Our contribution matters – even if it is unseen. Many, many people underestimate their contribution. A loving heart that wants the best for everyone around them, makes a far greater contribution than someone who is caught up in their own needs and wants. To live like Christ did, we must actively, daily, choose to die. Physically, the truth is, we are all dying anyway – we start to die the moment we are born! But if we cling to this life and withhold our loving contribution from others… our true self will die a lot faster!

James 4:14: “How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.” Let’s learn to respect the fact that we are visitors in this life. None of what we have been given belongs to us. As one very far-sighted person once said: “You will never see a U-haul trailer filled with this world’s goods, attached to a hearse!” Only God knows how valuable each contribution is – and how much it affects the people around us. Instead of languishing away under how hard life is – let’s learn to celebrate the fact that now we have the Author of life, living within us. That will involve our active participation. It is MUCH later than we all think.

Bye. 👋

Romans 14:8: “For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

P 2545 Living this life revitalised.

/ DVH

Read this like the Lord Himself is speaking to YOU! —“My beloved ones, just like you’ve always listened to everything I’ve taught you in the past, I’m asking you now to keep following my instructions as though I were right there with you. Now you must continue to make this new life fully manifested as you live in the holy awe of God—which brings you trembling into His Presence. God will continually revitalise you, implanting within you the passion to do what pleases Him. Live a cheerful life, without complaining or division among yourselves. For then you will be seen as innocent, faultless, and pure children of God, even though you live in the midst of a brutal and perverse culture.For you will appear among them as shining lights in the universe, holding out the words of eternal life.”Philippians 2:12-16 TPT.

Our wonderful Father has not asked us to do those things that are impossible, without Him walking with us. He has simply asked us to follow Christ, and live like Jesus lived. For others. Jesus paved the way by His death and resurrection, for us to be so sold out to God, and everything He wants, that everything else fades away … Instead of using our faith to make our own lives better all the time, we need to begin to use our faith to allow the Holy Spirit to transform us to be like Christ – one faith step at a time. It really is that simple!

As we begin to aim at what Father God wants, we will continually be revitalised. Doing what His Father told Him to do, even when He was exhausted, revitalised Jesus! (The Woman at the well.) Obedience is the key. The Body of Christ must stop listening and merely agreeing with what we read, and start obeying it. So what if we mess up? JESUS IS A REDEEMER. Let’s choose to live our lives dead to what we think we want, and alive to what He wants, as He reveals it to us through His word. All that takes is total commitment. He totally committed to us, now we need to be totally committed to Him.

I have lived this way for many years. I literally cannot “do” my life. Last night I counted myself fortunate to sleep 5 hours. I can’t possibly ‘go on the road’ for Jesus in 6 weeks! It actually got much harder for both of us, when I broke my arm. However, right now, my only aim is to get in that car on the day we leave —- the rest is up to HIM. For all of us to live this way, and go deeper, we will need to value our relationship with Jesus more than we value our own comfort, plans and agendas. Peter, James, John, and Paul had ordinary stuff to deal with too! So did a whole lot of other people whose names we hardly know. We are the generation who are laying the foundations for the people coming after us.

You and I can pray our kids will follow Jesus, but when we set an example by the way we live, that is part of the answer to our own prayers. These young people will need to know Him personally in their own lives to help them through their darkest days, and their hardest choices. They need to see us survive and still thrive under very difficult circumstances … because this world is not getting any easier. People everywhere are daily facing harder stuff than we can imagine. We can’t do any of this without the Holy Spirit’s help … we need Him like we need air. He gives us HIS life. That’s what revitalises means. 

For nineteen years hubby and I have followed the Holy Spirit’s leading. It was sometimes right, sometimes wrong – sometimes fun and some times not!  And we went wherever He said to go. Which means we’ve been some scary places! Places with bars on windows, gangs roaming the street, people hiding from bikies. That is kind of scary stuff for an old lady. I’d rather be sitting knitting in my nice chair, in my nice little house, thank you. We’ve tried to quit, but His love for people will not let us quit. Yet, after I broke my arm last year, we still managed three trips! So many things have happened to us that should have stopped us, but … He simply will not let us quit. Always, always — He says to us; “Who will tell them that I love them?”  

That question breaks my heart. The people who do not know Him are a vast OCEAN. I’m just a little strangely bent teaspoon! I know hubby and I cannot make a dent in those numbers. We can’t afford to look at numbers. Instead hubby and I look back at the faces of those people we’ve already met, who actually heard His voice through what was said. The point of this new life we have been given isn’t just to save US. It is to be a light in the darkness to everyone around us. To do that we have to go, and in go-ing we are always revitalised.

Hubby and I have been privileged to see the light of Jesus dawn on the faces of so many people we’ve spoken to. Suddenly, they know Jesus is REAL. He’s alive – no tomb could hold Him! Our Heavenly Father is their DAD and people know LOVE when they see Him and hear Him. They don’t need platitudes, or rules — they need HIM.  👋