Generosity

P 3343 It’s always a choice.

/ DVH

Philippians 1:27-30: “Meanwhile, live in such a way that you are a credit to the Message of Christ. Let nothing in your conduct hang on whether I come or not. Your conduct must be the same whether I show up to see things for myself or hear of it from a distance. Stand united, singular in vision, contending for people’s trust in the Message, the good news, not flinching or dodging in the slightest before the opposition. Your courage and unity will show them what they’re up against: defeat for them, victory for you—and both because of God. There’s far more to this life than trusting in Christ. There’s also suffering for Him. And the suffering is as much a gift as the trusting. You’re involved in the same kind of struggle you saw me go through, on which you are now getting an updated report in this letter.”

I want to emphasise that we need to make sure that if we are suffering, it is not because we are unaware that we are being tormented by satan in a fake hat. If the Lord is allowing something for a greater purpose, then that is different, but a lot of what Christians put up with is sheer satanic attack — and the tragedy is they think they are suffering because it is about His kingdom, or their transformation, or they are just bad Christians and God is allowing this stuff to teach them something. 

Jesus suffered and died for our sins, but torment can quite often knock on our door especially if we’ve done something that we think can’t be forgiven. But the truth is our view of what Christ did, and what He allowed others to do to Him, is too small. We’ve made our sin bigger than Calvary. Our faith in God’s bigness, His love and His generosity toward mankind needs to grow by reading what the Lord Himself has said over and over. This will help to expand our faith levels and it goes from our heads to our hearts. It is literally, “life and health to our bones…”

Here are some scriptures to stew on: “For Christ [the Messiah Himself] died for sins once for all, the Righteous for the unrighteous (the Just for the unjust, the Innocent for the guilty), that He might bring us to God. In His human body He was put to death, but He was made alive in the spirit,…” 1 Peter 3:18. AND … Romans 6:9-10: “For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over Him. The death He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life He lives, He lives to God.” Hebrews 2:9: “But we do see Jesus, Who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.”

Jesus suffered for us, so now we need to make sure that we are not deceived. That part is clear. But His suffering had a purpose and it was humanity’s total redemption. Sin separates us from our relationship with God Himself – He’s the Life giver! Sin renders us a pale shadow of who we can be. Because of it, we can become deaf, dumb and unable to see, receive, or accept His goodness. Meanwhile we can’t kill ourselves, we have to let others do it for us – our part is to yield. We resist the devil and yield to God. We fight what satan says, and take what the Lord says to heart and stand on it.

Sin puts us squarely into satan’s territory, a place where he rules, and please remember, he hates people! Human beings can easily be deceived and dragged away from our primary purpose, which is to present Christ to the rest of this world, by who we choose to be now, today. The power of choice is enormous! And thinking that living a neutral, quiet life will hide us from satan’s games is unrealistic. Now we all have the potential to be like Jesus, and so we need our Resident Helper’s help – He is Jesus’ gift to us in this new life!   

It was not just the Lord’s death that impacted our faith – it was also the way He lived while He was on earth! Those two things go together. Jesus has given us the same power to overcome that He had when He walked the earth with the Person of the Holy Spirit. However, you can’t have a new life without dying — you can only get a resurrected life if you are dead in the first place!  Sadly, most of the time we aren’t prepared to die to self to get it. Both things are needed — death to self and a brand new life in Christ. The power to walk in our new life comes from the choice to die. Not just a little bit dead, but all dead. Dead dead. That old life cannot walk with Jesus, it will fail so it has to go. 

Now we surrender our hopes and dreams to His purposes. After we have chosen to lay down the life that we have now, then we choose to live a life of love. We put aside what we need, and let go of all those daily things that can act as abrasions in this life. Our responses to other people, help us to diagnose the places we are still clinging to the old life. That minute by minute struggle against voluntarily choosing His way over our Way, can show us where we are not yielded to Him. Father God will not do this for us – because that would rob us of our freedom. It has to be our choice. 

Jesus Christ chose the cross – He prayed, and then He followed it through by His actions. This is the pattern WE follow. We pray and then we deliberately choose to submit to Him. At Calvary the Lord submitted to every dastardly plot of the enemy – the stuff that was sent to destroy Him. But He chose to stay in Grace toward others. He is our example. It’s always a choice.  However, let’s remember: “God (Himself) is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Our Helper lives to help us. Psalm 46:1 Bye. 👋

P 3324 Part-time Christianity doesn’t work.

/ DVH

Ephesians 3:4-13 MSG.“As you read over what I have written to you, you’ll be able to see for yourselves into the mystery of Christ. None of our ancestors understood this. Only in our time has it been made clear by God’s Spirit through his holy apostles and prophets of this new order. The mystery is that people who have never heard of God and those who have heard of Him all their lives (what I’ve been calling outsiders and insiders) stand on the same ground before God. They get the same offer, same help, same promises in Christ Jesus. The Message is accessible and welcoming to everyone, across the board. This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.

And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, Who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels! All this is proceeding along lines planned all along by God and then executed in Christ Jesus. When we trust in Him, we’re free to say whatever needs to be said, bold to go wherever we need to go. So don’t let my present trouble on your behalf get you down. Be proud!”

What a great teacher this man is! Paul really encouraged me with this passage, he puts everyone on equal footing and includes the people who-haven’t-met-Him-yet, as well as each other. There are no rock-stars in Paul’s theology. Jesus Christ is all in all and He is everything! It’s such pure brilliant revelation. This man of God definitely found his heavenly-calling – it was to help everyone he met find God and understand His Ways. Then he says something that just blows me away. “I couldn’t have done what I do without His help. I wasn’t equipped to do this job.”

Paul was brilliantly equipped to preach the gospel to the Jews, he knew the law inside and out. Yet God sent Peter – the fisherman – whose only qualification was that He loved Jesus – to the Jews … and Paul went off to the Gentiles. Do you see that? Neither man was well-equipped to “argue God’s case” to the people they were sent to. God’s qualifying feature is WE CAN’T DO IT.  So if you know you can’t do it, then you are half-way there! The other half is knowing the Holy Spirit and His ways, personally. 

If you feel like you are a failure because you may have done dreadful things, but you have the revelation that God is redeeming you, day by day, then you are equipped. That’s called humility BTW! Paul consented to the murder of Christians, and that horrible thing became one of his greatest assets. It helped to keep this man humble. Everywhere he went, people knew what he had done. He even had problems with the Lord’s disciples because they knew his reputation for murder! 

Don’t let the past dictate your future. Our God is brilliant at do-overs and He does them so well, they stop being do-overs and become new beginnings.  Please don’t give up on yourself when you fail either, go to Jesus and begin again. I tell myself daily: “Just one more time. I need to get up one time more than I fall down!” He’s the God of second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth chances etc. He won’t give up on you, so don’t you give up on your faith in His goodness.

Paul knew he was ill-equipped for the job God gave him, but His faith in God’s goodness was bigger than the things that happened to him along the way. Having a big faith IN GOD matters. The trouble is, most of us scrounge about trying to make our faith bigger. Set your EYES on our big God! Did you know that there are 3,600 types mosquitos in this world, and there are over 25,000 -35,500 kinds of fish, and 90 species of whales. Does our Father sound limited to you? 

The only thing that can limit God is sitting right above your shoulders. That 28-35 cm bit of skull, brain and flesh, can distort our thinking and deprive us of our part in Jesus’ plan for our lives. That’s why the bible says: ‘renew your mind’ … it needs renewing!  Have you ever caught yourself thinking something and then you suddenly realise you still have a childish view of reality? We all do it. Things happen and we get stuck. Our brains are definitely not perfect. 

But His love is. That’s the bit to remember. That’s what kept Paul going through so many trials and tribulations. Plus the wonder and joy that he discovered as the Holy Spirit revealed God’s plans for mankind. This greatly admired and learned man found out he knew nothing, and he accepted his ignorance with great joy, because it meant he could rely upon our God even more! We have nothing to contribute but ourselves and a total surrender to Him, daily. Part-time Christianity doesn’t work! Bye. 👋

P 3308 Living for Jesus, daily.

/ DVH

Colossians 3:12-17: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

These few verses give a comprehensive overview of what our new life in Christ looks like, every single day. To be honest, we can’t say Almighty God hasn’t told us what He expects – He has told us right here! If you like memorising verses, I’d like to suggest that these five verses are worthy of any effort you might make. This new life must be embraced personally —using our individual faith. By engaging with the Holy Spirit. 

He will help us to follow the Lord’s instructions, and at the same time He will expose all the damaging, misleading, useless things we have embraced. None of us in the Body of Christ can do these things alone! Let’s thank the good Lord He has given us SomeOne Who is so personal – He lives inside us. Learning to listen and obey Him is essential. We need to learn how to host Him, in our lives. That means somebody will have to change. He’s holy, and we aren’t — so you do the math! I know I can easily be polluted and distracted by the things of this world and arrogantly dismiss the Holy Spirit’s promptings as “something I made up.” 

So my responsibility is to check the thing I think I have heard from Him, as I am reading the bible. I read carefully, and then I jump in and obey. Some things are obvious. We know what God thinks about generosity, or forgiveness, or helping others. We ask for Him for a scripture and then go and do those things. I have many times when I need to pray and ask Him to redeem any mess I made. Then I choose to embrace the bible’s idea of what faith is, and how it works. I’m personally grateful that Jonah ended up in the bible. He shows me my ideas and thoughts are much too small. He ended up whale mail. In the end he still did what the Lord told him to do – grumbling all the way. Haven’t we all been there?

In the course of writing this blog I have written many pages that I have subsequently deleted because the Holy Spirit didn’t like them. I wrote them in faith and He told me to throw it out. Plus I cannot remember how much re-writing I have had to do along the way! I’ve given groceries to ungrateful people who didn’t need them, spoken to people about Jesus who promptly showed me the door — but the amount of individuals impacted by God Himself far outweighed the risk of me looking like an idiot! I will be a fool for Christ, even though I probably won’t much like it! But I will do it, because for me, taking risks is part of the cost. If I already know that something will turn out alright at the beginning, then I am not exercising my faith.

The bible clearly tells us that we need to change. (Malachi 3:6) Almighty God won’t ever change because He is already perfectly holy and wise. Jesus said this to help us:“And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in Me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in Me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!”” John 16:33 TPT. 

God’s peace inside us, is our pathway into confidence in Him and His Ways. If the Holy Spirit says ‘repent’ and we don’t – then our peace will slowly disappear. We will get caught up in the very thing we can’t seem to let go of.  The Holy Spirit Himself IS our peace, and because He is perfect love, He and fear can’t occupy the same space.  So fear has to go, as we make room for more of His perfect love to be shed abroad into our hearts. It isn’t about getting this stuff right, it is about being willing to enter His processes, and co-operating with Him. To do that we   believe what He has already said, in the book. We show Him we are willing to change by operating in things like repentance— not by what we say … but by what we do! “You must prove your repentance by a changed life.” Matthew 3:8.

All this teaching and preaching we have today, isn’t about gaining more knowledge —it is about the speaker prayerfully allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to the listeners. Boredom is irrelevant. Just because a speaker may be boring, that does not mean we cannot be changed. We need to listen to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to ME. Pressing in despite how we feel about things, shows God we are serious about change, we are willing to pay the cost. Not everything that is said from a book, pulpit, podcast etc. is a pearl from God for you. But we can enter God’s processes by voluntarily co-operating with what we hear and read, and then applying it into our lives, daily. If something seems hard to do, then it is probably right! 

BTW, I am as prone to panic as anybody else is, and if the ceiling falls in I can easily fall apart without His Grace helping me. The great part about that, is that over time, I have learnt to recognise His Grace in action. Walking with Jesus daily, is allowing Him to lead and guide me. This means I am prepared to step into the unknown when it is convenient, and when it is not. We can’t fail, He’s holding us tightly. Bye. 👋

P 3278 Who owns what?

/ DVH

You may recall this scripture, it is in: Matthew 19:21-23: “Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth. Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Boy, Jesus really loves to speak plainly! No wonder angry, greedy, power-loving people plotted to kill Him, He spoke into the very heart of the things that most people embrace. Money is a big thing to all of us. If you haven’t got any, then you need it. Yet at the same time it seems like you can never have enough of it! Sometimes others have more than enough, and they like to give, but they carefully dole out what they can afford to give and not care about. Giving involves a cheerful open heart. We give because He gave us everything, and everything we have belongs to Him.

We have learnt through the bible, that the Lord doesn’t want us to have a grudging attitude. He is teaching us about His kind of priorities. Meanwhile, money is a difficult subject for most of us. Let’s be clear, the Lord neither wants or needs OUR MONEY. He has gates made out of pearls, and walls made out of precious stones, and HIS streets are paved with heavenly gold. Add to all that the fact that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills – the conclusion is – our God is not poor! That’s a good thing to remember!! 

Talking about money is actually never about money or who needs it or who deserves it. That’s works. It is about the state of our faith. This young man could not follow Jesus, because the things he owned, owned him!  When we let the Lord dictate what we do with our money, we are putting Him in charge of our wellbeing. We know that without money and assets, our societies today cannot function. Unfortunately, that line for ‘enough money’ moves away from us. One of the best places I know to test how your personal faith is doing is … money. For fifty years God has shown me His faithfulness regarding finances.

Many years ago, I was convicted about tithing. My ex was not. In the end, after some wrestling with my own conscience, I decided the only money I had that I controlled was my housekeeping money. Co-incidently, our tithe was the same amount of money as the sum I had! So I did a deal with the Lord. I told Him I would tithe the housekeeping money to make up the shortfall. That meant no food was going to be bought that week, plus a grumpy husband. (There is always a risk involved!) In the car, on the way to church… (I keep telling you God is never in a hurry) … my ex suddenly said – without ANY discussion at all: “I think we need to tithe.”  You could have heard my sigh of relief in Pakistan.

Almighty God says this in Malachi 3:10: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”  He invites us to test Him about this matter, by making sure whatever and whenever we give, we are generous. Generosity is not a legalistic thing, it quite simply bubbles over. If we hesitate about how much money can we afford to give, we will lose the spirit of what the Lord is saying here. The barn is meant to be full. That’s excess, not need. Because it’s not about the money! It is never about the money, or the goods and things we own. It’s about whether that stuff owns us!

When we get things sorted out, faith-wise regarding money, we are standing in a place where God can teach us in a concrete, seeable fashion about faith. It is always about our faith. Diagnostically we can tell what state our faith is in, if we look carefully at how we prioritise our finances. I want to leave you with one last scripture — it’s in two places in the Gospels –  Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4.  Let’s look at Luke: “As Jesus looked up, He saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”

The point the Lord is making here is that He loves sacrificial giving. Giving out of excess is still giving, but Jesus Himself commented on the sacrifice this woman made. The amount is irrelevant, it was the fact that this widow gave all. Don’t concentrate on the money, look at her heart! This is what faith requires – ALL. We simply can’t afford to live this life using part-time faith. To start with, it will become more and more difficult to try to figure out which bit is His and which bit is ours! We need to give up everything to follow Him, or the devil has a place to stand on in our hearts, and he will torment us. It’s the same with sin, whatever we tolerate gives our enemy room to plague us with doubt, unbelief and indifference. 

Many people make scriptures like these about money. Money is simply a byproduct of an attitude we can secretly have about the Lord. That attitude is often steeped in fear. If we look at our need, we will end up with greed. We have chosen to follow SomeOne Who did not care about material goods. What makes us think we can follow Him well, if we are obsessed with them? The big question today is: Who owns what?  Bye. 👋

P 3256 Make a decision to be thankful.

/ DVH

Obviously after yesterday, you can see I have so much to be thankful for! But I want to talk about the reason I   made this decision… Life has a way of whizzing by us, day by day by day. In fact, bad things or good things are often an interruption to the ordinariness of life. The problem with living an ordinary life is that you think you are ordinary, and you don’t matter… we become passive, not active.

Almighty God has made us His house! Whether we feel like it or not. That’s not ordinary. It seems to me that we think like this because we have come to believe there is another breed of Christians, a special, elite, gifted group. Super saints, people who have ministries and gifts and hoopla surrounding them. Spiritual gifts are not just for a selective group. We all have them!  Maybe you just haven’t found yours yet? 

In Ephesians 4:8: “Therefore it says,“When HE ascended on high, HE led captivity captive, And HE bestowed gifts on men.” and in Ephesians 4:11-13: “Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do His work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.”

Spiritual gifts are given to build up the body. We have often put an emphasis on this kind of verse in the wrong place. GOD has given gifts to men, so we will become mature in Christ. It is the Giver that matters, not the gifts or the men or women! These gifts have His purposes on them. It is never good to elevate the people God has given them to. Because of these gifts in our own lives, we can see the Lord’s incredible generosity toward all of us and be thankful!.He knows maturity is beyond human beings, so He has given people all over the Body of Christ supernatural gifts to help us move from the natural, to the supernatural, and from the mundane, into the heavenly realms.

Almighty God gave and we receive. Who is greater? The Giver or the receiver? You do the sum. The Body of Christ seems firmly stuck on the gifts, or the ‘ministry.’ He gives gifts to ordinary people to showcase His own extraordinariness! Once He made a donkey talk, and the donkey made good sense! We are not all that — HE is all that! That’s the POV we need to cling to. Mankind is not equipped to handle the kind of fame that can be slathered all over those who are famous. 

By elevating the gift over the Lord, we have put undue attention and pressure on those people who do have a gift. All Peter did when he prayed for the lame man was give what he had, He didn’t say “I have the gift of healing and a word of knowledge for you” He gave what he already had. It came from His relationship with Jesus! When we give thanks we put God back into His rightful place in our lives. He’s our King, brother, Saviour. (James 1:17)

It’’s the Lord that we need to thank, not the men and women who He has gifted! When I hear someone or other did something incredibly dumb, and they are famous, I feel compassion and pity for them. Fame goes to people’s heads – only God can bear it. That’s why the bible tells us: “to make HIS Name famous!” (Psalm 45:17) Anything else can cause chaos, God is always our first thought, not man. Thank HIM for HIS gift, and praise Him for helping us through others.

Thankfulness is a way of life – we can learn it. Step by step. The way into that life is to acknowledge that “without Him we can do nothing permanent.” (John 15:5)  Jesus Himself said that! At the same time we need to live with the reality that we too have been given gifts to benefit the Body, so whatever happens to us has His hand on it. We know we have been blessed because He is a generous God. Giving up the right to approval by man, comes under the heading of complete submission to God, and it won’t always give us a happy ride. There are so many things we can learn through difficulties and hardship, including the fact that the Lord Himself is not fazed by them! That’s why we give thanks.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:18 it says: “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” We are told to give thanks in every thing…if we want to know God’s will for us, here is a big fat clue… GIVE THANKS to Him, no matter what happens. Yeah, I know, it sounds upside down, but ‘God’s ways aren’t our ways…’  (Isaiah 55:8-9.) And faith would not be faith if it was something we could be certain about! Giving thanks changes gears. We stop looking at the problem, and start wondering how the Lord is going to get us out of this one! Sometimes hard things just fade away … sometimes we see a clear solution … that bit doesn’t matter. Giving thanks for all He is and what He is doing right now … changes gears.

It shifts our perspective from earth to heaven because the bible says: “we are seated in heavenly places with Christ.” Ephesians 2:6. Again, this scripture is something the Body of Christ has seen as a bragging point, rather than seeing it as a gift! When what Jesus did for us, was so complete, it seated us with Him! We didn’t climb up there, or earn that place, it was given to us, no matter how spiritual we seem to others. If we continue to read the bible with the accent only on what’s in it to benefit me – we won’t comprehend what He has given us, that we don’t deserve.  We will overlook the opportunity we have to make a decision to be thankful. Bye. 👋

P 3230 Active faith is essential.

/ DVH

The Lord Himself chose the Israelites to be His own people, and He chose Israel as the place for His precious Son to be born. When you read the book, it is incredibly obvious that the Jewish people were not perfect. Ps neither are we!!… The entire bible is a demonstration of how people related to Almighty God and the way He responded to them.  Jesus Christ, God wrapped in human flesh, is our revealed illustration of our Father’s will and love for ALL mankind. 

The story of God Himself and His Ways with men, is a two-part story, lovingly and truthfully disclosed by the Holy Spirit. The New Testament does not replace the Old, it completes it! In the New Testament, at the beginning of the Lord’s ministry, Jesus’ mother told the servants who came to serve fresh wine this: the wine that Jesus miraculously transformed – “WHATEVER HE SAYS TO YOU, DO IT.” That’s our mandate. Obedient actions, made and acted upon in faith, as we follow the Holy Spirit, will transform our minds and soften our hearts. 

“This is why the Holy Spirit says, “If only you would LISTEN to His voice this day! Don’t make Him angry by hardening your hearts, like your ancestors did during the days of their rebellion, when they were tested in the wilderness. There your fathers tested Me and tried My patience even though they saw My miracles for forty years they still doubted Me! This ignited My anger with that generation and I said about them, ‘They wander in their hearts just like they do with their feet, and they refuse to learn My ways.’ My heart grieved over them so I decreed: ‘They will not enter into My rest!’ ”  Hebrews 3:7-11. 

What did the Jewish people do that made God angry? They ignored Him, rejected His Ways, and hardened their hearts with disobedience. They chose to indulge and control their own destiny, and make themselves at home with other more controllable gods. We can’t afford to follow their example. Almighty God has incredible plans for each one of us to make all our lives better in ways we cannot imagine. Why am I saying this? Because the bible says in 1 Corinthians 2:9: “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived”— the things God has prepared for those who love Him—“

We definitely cannot imagine what kind of life we would have if only every time somebody raised their voice or were spiteful to us, we chose to give away His love instead! If you add to that, the fact that He never responds the same way twice, we cannot live without the Holy Spirit to leading us! Sadly our negative experiences often take over and poison our thinking against change. We need His power to open our eyes to understand exactly what His Love, in us, for us, and through us … will actually DO TO US. And that’s where Jesus becomes the very best illustration we can ever have! His Presence on this earth transformed other people’s lives forever. 

Most of us have experienced the worst of mankind’s attitudes and actions, and that negative stuff has so seared into our brains and emotions, we can’t even begin to imagine God’s kind of goodness. Many times we think we already know the outcome to things that we have not yet experienced, personally. Let’s not follow the Israelites down that dead end road of unbelief in His goodness – let’s simply choose to believe and live and act on what Jesus taught us! 

The Jewish people themselves continually experienced so much goodness – God’s deliverance, His provision, but they couldn’t see the bigger picture – because they hardened their hearts against Him, and willingly applied their own view. They were slaves to their immediate position. Their fear of change negated the possibilities of new revelations. We need to allow the Lord to continually deal with our own hearts, so our receiver works! 

Having said all that, I want to quickly look at something that illustrates the incredible generosity of God and what the possibility of change looked like in the life of Abraham. Abraham gives us a brilliant example of what obedience means to God. He gave this man righteousness, because of Abraham’s active faith – he was an old man, old people like comfort. What did he do? He followed God and took the Lord at His Word! This man’s faith changed his life choices, and he became the father of our faith. You can read it about in Genesis 15. 

In Romans 4, we can also read that God Himself declared Abraham in right standing with Himself not because of perfect deeds, but because of his complete trust in GOD HIMSELF. As Christians we don’t just want the appearance of goodness in our hearts, we want the kind of transformation that has His power in it! Genuine faith leads to obedient actions – and Abraham clearly shows us how powerfully an ordinary life can change. Then Jesus came along and illustrated His own perfect obedience, unto death. Death is also a needed part of obedience.

The bible teaches us that in order to please God we must die to the kind of life we want, in order for Him to progressively enliven us into His purposes. It is not enough to say, “I will die for you Lord,” and then turn around and go away from that moment, and continue to live this life, our only life here, doing whatever WE want. That’s called paying lip service.  We ALL need active faith – like Jesus Himself had and only the Holy Spirit knows what that will mean in our daily lives. Bye. 👋

P 3225 Please don’t settle for postponing your only life.

/ DVH

The bible says that hope deferred, (postponed) can make our hearts sick!  Being ill or having a permanent infirmity can lock us into going round and round, searching for answers. We can easily forget to live the life we have. Sadly we are often bombarded by things on TV about what is wrong with us health wise – it seems we are obsessed with trying to live forever, here and now. Let me tell you that if this lot down here is the best we’ve got to live for, then we are all sunk! We definitely need higher aims!!

Some precious people in this world live their whole lives in abject poverty. What is appalling about that, is the fact that many of those who have more than enough, won’t share. Our world currently produces enough food to feed everyone in it. Back to the point: every single day the TV is full of diseases that might, or probably WILL kill you, and how we can and should avoid them. Cheery stuff! Turn off the TV I say, and put on something calming and relaxing. Something that lifts your heart. Counting symptoms doesn’t do that, it creates fear.

There are times when I see smiley-faced young and fit people doing repetitive and ridiculous exercises, or they are selling some gizmo or other and they happily tell me that ‘I can look like them if I just buy one of these.’ I laugh my head off. These people think they are telling me how to get and keep health … like somehow we have control over it! What a joke!! My genes have nothing whatsoever to do with me. The Lord knows what I need and He will always give it to me – in the meantime I want to concentrate on finding and keeping GRACE! 

Let’s do whatever we can to help ourselves, and then move our thoughts on to better things – like loving Him and loving others. Father God is not going to ask us if we used our faith to get good health. He will ask us if we took the time to help others to get to know Him. Meanwhile who wants to be the best looking old person with a great body …in a casket? Not me! Personally, I want people to remember me as that mad old lady who wouldn’t stop talking about Jesus! Let’s just aim at being His witnesses, and tell others He’s alive and He lives in us – so when we keep consistently loving others, eventually they will stumble across His reality too! 

Meanwhile good luck with keeping well enough to get out of this world alive, only one guy ever did that. All I can say is – Enoch knew how to choose a brilliant walking Companion. It never fails to astonish me that the easiest road to living forever seems to be the one people avoid the most! They’d rather do thousands of push ups! I’m not sure that being supremely fit is the best aim we can have, I don’t remember Jesus running in any other marathon but the one He called LIFE.  Moo-ving on …

Because of God’s incredible generosity, you and I have eternity to look forward too … neither of us will be sick or infirm there!  Healing is always God’s gracious generosity generated toward the sick person. It doesn’t matter whether the doctors say they can help you or not, just pray over it and give your health to Him and keep walking. 

Go after having enough Grace to manage whatever is going on. Remember we are all growing the fruit of patient forbearance in our lives. However, even when you are sick, don’t stop believing He can heal you. I urge you to keep your expectation in His goodness toward you alive by reflecting on how good He is.

Jesus didn’t only heal people – He also delivered them, taught them, fed them, physically and spiritually. Making one thing more important than another often leads to heartache for many. Especially those who struggle to believe He is good in the face of pain and suffering. Let’s just go after Him and see where that leads us. 

Even battered and bruised hope can make the best of whatever situation it is placed in, as we point that hope toward the One Who holds the future and loves us all more than life itself. Our faith rests in Him! I lean on Him and ask for mercy – a lot! I also hope today will be a better day than yesterday, and I will look more like Him today than I did last week.

Our hope needs to be well-placed and the best place for it is in Him. In His character, and love for us. When our hope is in Him, and not in our circumstances, we will not be swayed from our God-given course. It is the same one that was laid out in front of Jesus. “For your heart will always pursue what you esteem as your treasure.” Matthew 6:21 TPT. “He is no fool who gives away what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”(J. Elliot) 

Don’t settle for postponing living your life when bad health grabs you, because hope deferred can make our hearts even sicker. But focusing on Jesus first, becomes a tree of life. Bye 👋

HAVE A TWICE BLESSED CHRISTMAS! Once because he saved us, twice because He loves us.

/ DVH

P 3203 Let the Lord be the flavour of your life.

We can easily get caught up in this idea, or that new invention, and forget that Almighty God has a purpose for our lives. We can even take those current, incredibly ingenious ideas, and bam them into a shape that we think will accomplish what God likes or wants. We’ve done that in so many of our churches, the majority of the people ended up spectating, instead of participating!

At the same time if you do choose to take that ‘let’s be popular’ road, please be careful …you can get really giddy going round and round … trying to maintain something God isn’t doing. Jesus taught us what we need to do and how to do it. He said: “I only do what I see the Father doing .,.. I only say what I see the Father saying…” We can quite easily get distracted from our purpose and caught up in one of this life’s out-of-the-mainstream eddies.

Meanwhile today, I want to talk about what flavours you and I! I happen to enjoy a cup of tea. So a few times in the day, my hubby takes boiling water, and he puts my fav teabag in it. He leaves it there to steep… to soak in the flavour. I’m a bit of a fuss-budget, because I like strong tea. So if someone else makes the tea for me, I ask them to leave the teabag in because I want more of the flavour than most people like. What do you like to steep in? Coffee, the movies, work, games, sports – what do you enjoy enough to just sit and relax into it?

Here is what I think the Spirit of God wants for us – He wants us to steep in the Lord’s Presence so that when our little cup gets bumped, all that comes out is a concentrated form of His Love inside! Life bumps us all the time. Ask yourself, what comes out of your little life? Obviously my illustration gets a bit overworked if I take it any further, but you get the idea. Remaining in the Lord’s presence, can and should include “Walking and leaping and praising God.”  No, I haven’t lost my marbles, you don’t have to sit still to steep!! You even can dance in the shower … just don’t slip over OK?

There is a youngish man on Youtube, who quite obviously loves hip-hop. He makes brief video clips .  I can tell the Lord has steeped him in JOY, because he walks up to perfect strangers in Walmart, while he is dancing. Then he grabs their hand and they start dancing and laughing and enjoying themselves. It’s the Lord’s gift over his life, but because the young man has taken the time to allow God’s gift to stretch and challenge him – I’ve actually seen this gift grow. 

He is fearless. He walks up to grumpy people, and before they know it they are bopping away to the music, and they have obviously forgotten whatever it was that made them grouchy! The busy grind of shopping just melts away in the light of God’s joy as it is let loose in a supermarket. Boy there should be more of that! 

Why do we keep His JOY in our churches, when so many people don’t want to go to church anymore?How will they know Jesus is loving, real, and happy…if we don’t share what He has given us outside the church doors? In the past we’ve thought sharing meant preaching at them, but I think it is sharing whatever God-gift we have steeped ourselves in!

Listen to Romans 12:6-8: “We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” Why should all this good stuff God gave us to give away to other people, be locked up inside our churches?!

Hubby and I prophesy outside the church all the time. Mu husband gives people prophetic words, and I give a word of knowledge or whatever God tells me to give. The people-all-around-us-who-don’t-know-Him-yet need to know He is real, and that He cares about their lives. When the Lord uses you to release His flavour to everyone around you, they know it’s Him. He made them inside their mother’s womb … we’ve all heard His voice before!! 

If you have a serving gift, then go find somewhere you can bless people outside your fellowship, with your serving! Serving people as Jesus leads you, helps them see that He cares about them, because He will send you. It’s the same with encouragement, it isn’t only the people in church who need to be encouraged. We have been given His Words of eternal life, that means they are powerful! Instead of criticising or correction, try prophesying what the other person needs over them. I do that a lot!  And let’s stop thinking that generosity is restricted to tithing! Tithing is the norm. You have to ask yourself, do you want to be normal, or do you want your giving to be extraordinary like Jesus’ gifts to us are? 

I’ve had the Lord correct me about only blessing people when I am happy with what I received from them… He asked me … ‘Who needs more love? The person other people like, or the one who is a grump?’ Isn’t it amazing how speechless you can get when He says stuff like that? It is like you no longer have a leg to stand on, and repenting is the best option. 

Meanwhile, trying dancing, singing or humming your way to the toilet, or your car. Who cares what other people think? He deserves the glory! We should be the happiest people on earth! Let the Lord be the flavour of your life … … and Merry Christmas!! 🔔  Bye. 👋

P 3201 Judgment belongs to God … only HE can be trusted with it.

/ DVH

I Corinthians 4:3-5: “I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.”

To begin with I want to make the point that no matter how sweet anyone appears to be, none of us are perfect. When that statement becomes a reality in our lives, it goes a long way to stopping judgment. Especially if you manage to figure out that you can’t actually see, because you have this blooming great log in your own eye!

Judgment belongs to the Lord, because only He has the wisdom and love, together with the spirit of reconciliation, to see through the lies we even tell ourselves. Jesus loves the truth, and the Holy Spirit is in charge of conviction, not us. What He shares with us will bring clarity into hidden things about ourselves so we can deal with them, together. But we need to be so very careful about even the appearance of judging others, as we can easily misinterpret what we think we can see. The best thing to do when you discern something in somebody else is to pray for them.

Paul’s writings show us that he totally understood something that is essential for our own personal knowledge of God’s kingdom. I believe he understood the way our Father does things. Our Father doesn’t uncover our sins in front of others, instead He wants His generosity and kindness to fill us, and draw us to a place of sincere repentance, without any fear of reprisal or shame. When Paul received all those heavenly revelations, he didn’t take dictation. He was given Grace, from God, to understand and comprehend the Lords intentions toward man. 

This kind of revelation is so helpful – I urge you to ask for it. Once we truly comprehend that only God is good, and the devil is the bad guy – then clarification brings revelation. Being filled and remaining filled with the Holy Spirit means we can’t afford to hide anything from Him. However, the light of God in and on our lives holds no dangers for us. Jesus faced our Heavenly Judge for us and was punished in our place. No crime = no time!Let’s put aside collecting mental lists of do’s and don’ts. Then hopefully we will stop slinging them at each other!

This passage in 1 Corinthians presents us with a good reason to stop that kind of thinking and allow our minds to be changed by His Word. When it comes to judgment, only Jesus knows what is in that other person’s heart. If I am angry or afraid of someone, I can so easily be deceived by my own heart, and run on at the mouth. At the same time I can end up filling up my thoughts with junk … simply because I am convinced I know why someone did, what they did! … But I don’t know and I can’t. The Person Who truly knows what someone else thought or did, pardoned them, by doing what HE did.

I lived in an atmosphere in my childhood, that threatened me with physical and emotional violence when it came to my performance. So I learnt to be deceitful to protect myself. I am now old enough and I know I have been empowered by Him, so I can choose a different response! “I know Whom I believe, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him until that day.” 2 Timothy 1:12.

I could hold a grudge and harden my heart, but I will stop moving forward in God if I choose to do that. But He won’t reject me, because we have a covenant – an agreement signed in His own Son’s blood. Sometimes we can shoot ourselves in the foot, because we can’t possibly know what God is going to do next, so we pick up judgment to defend ourselves. The Lord is not like us! Hallelujah! Now, there’s a good thing to remember. Some responses to circumstances have become so ingrained in our psyche, we do things automatically. We need to deliberately retrain our responses, by allowing His Word to become a part of who we are now.

Judgment in the Christian world can be a fatal flaw. It means that we can no longer get to “know each other after the Spirit “  … because we are too busy trying to duck blows that may or may not come. We can quite easily forget our ministry of reconciliation, and use God’s Word to brutalise others. That sword is for our enemy so we can cut people free – it is not to slice up your neighbour!!  We can’t know what is in someone else’s heart, so acting in wisdom means we need to suspend judgment and extend GRACE. 

We can have confidence that we are already accepted, we simply need to be prepared to become vulnerable. That is a rude word to some people. They avoid vulnerability like the plague. Repentance isn’t a sign of weakness, it is a sign of strength. It’s an honour system. Jesus honoured and pardoned us, so we honour what He did for us, by honouring and pardoning others and suspending any judgment. Sadly, our hearts can be deceitful. They can excuse me — and accuse you —- all-at-the-same-time! 

That’s why paying attention to what comes out of our mouths is the biggest clue to what is going on inside! Our speech, actions and attitudes need to be given our attention – especially the unguarded ones. The body of Christ can be a little like a slow leaky tyre, you want to fix it but you just can’t find the leak. This is a place where we lose touch with the Holy Spirit and HE is the ever-present Wind beneath our wings, let’s plug up them holes! Judgment belongs to the Lord — only HE can be trusted with it. Bye.👋

P 3172 The humanity of this man!

/ DVH

Paul is speaking in 1 Corinthians 1:11-17: “My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe’s household have informed me that there are quarrels among you. What I mean is this: One of you says, “I follow Paul”; another, “I follow Apollos”; another, “I follow Cephas”; still another, “I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Were you baptised in the name of Paul? I thank God that I did not baptise any of you except Crispus and Gaius, so no one can say that you were baptised in my name….(I love this bit!!) …(Yes, I also baptised the household of Stephanas; beyond that, I don’t remember if I baptised anyone else.) For Christ did not send Me to baptise, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.”

Look at that! The Apostle Paul used the ‘I can’t remember reason!’ Love it! Love it! Love it!! Because I’m older, that’s my all-time favourite excuse nowadays. Now that my hubby’s is using it as well, we bumble along hoping the other one will remember the important stuff. Fat chance!! Thank the Lord when it comes to appointments, people often send you reminder texts. 

I know I am about to lose half or more of my fellow travellers today, but I’m OK with that. Paul mentioned the word ‘following,’ and I gotta say I hate the whole “followers” thing that currently inhabits this world. Paul had the best idea –  he followed Jesus and, as far as I know, Jesus doesn’t have a Facebook page! Or any one of the rest of the alphabet soup pages people like to frequent. I know deep in everyone’s heart there is a need to be seen and understood… but the God of all the Universe and beyond, not only sees each one us, He knows how many hairs are on our heads … or not!! WOW!!

He knows what we need even before we know we need it, and He promises to supply it from His incredible riches. He bought us these fantastic blessings, like access to  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, perseverance etc. and He loves to give them away for free, to those people who ask Him. Our God always sees when our hearts turn toward Him, even if it is ever-so-slightly, and He comes to our rescue. Almighty God willingly gave up His only Son to be killed for us so we can be truly loved. Forever! That’s the kind of generosity and knowledge that is unforgettable.

Meanwhile, those Facebook enthusiasts often give anybody a bad rep, or the flick … in a heartbeat! I don’t want to support any of those vehicles, and line the pockets of already obscenely wealthy guys! I care about the poor – the poor are too busy being  hungry and thirsty and trying to find shelter, to worry about Facebook etc. Sometimes I get so sad, we are using up the time God gave us on things that will not remain. 

What remains is faith, hope and love – who gives a toss about Facebook? There are people who can’t wait to read their social media, and they skip the bible because it seems too hard. Isn’t that a terrible sentence? They take the words of strangers to heart — and ignore the King of glory. He took the time He was given to say all this fantastic stuff to each of us, personally! One of the reasons I can’t support social media is this:  our precious babies kill themselves because of cruelty in this arena. OK that was my little rant … I’d say I’m sorry but I’m not. The truth won’t kill us, actually it should shock us into action.

I love that Paul takes the time to explain himself to the naysayers and the permanently bewildered – his honesty is fantastic. What he said is so real and human: ‘I baptised, you, you and you … um … I can’t remember if I baptised you. Oh and there was that Stephanas guy and his family – I baptised them too. But what does it matter?? All that matters is the King of glory needs us to speak to others. That’s what we are here for!’ Amen! People chase unicorns and rainbows trying to find a purpose in this life, when Almighty God already gave each of us one.

Joshua found his purpose, He served God! –  In Joshua 24:14-15, he has always impacted me with these words: “Now therefore fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  I urge any parent reading this today to say to the Lord daily, “ …as for me and my house we will serve the Lord!”  Whether everyone in your family agrees with you or not – say it anyway! Speak purpose over those you love. People need a purpose! Why do you think kids drink, drive like lunatics, and take drugs? They have no purpose. Hopelessness leads to despair or sin. 

Paul is reminding us that there are some things more important than others in the kingdom of God. We don’t follow a preacher, we follow them, as they follow Jesus. God has something much better for each one of us to do, and some things are definitely more important than others! Who cares about who baptised who or whether I posted on social media today? Serving HIM, now, TODAY, is so much more important. We cannot afford to rest on past accomplishments when tomorrow is rushing at us. Praise God for Paul’s honest humanity! Amen. Bye. 👋