Genie

P 2770 God has a plan.

/ DVH

If you have been a Christian for a while you may have bumped into Jeremiah. Jeremiah is, in my mind, one of our great faith pioneers. He kept his faith strong even when his life was awful. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11. But when you look at Jeremiah’s life, it was a far cry from being filled with great plans and fab future! I want to comment on this particular verse today, because I believe it has been misused on occasion, to imply that our God is more like a genie, than our omnipotent, omnipresent, always wise, sovereign God and glorious Father – Who made heaven and earth!

Let’s just look carefully at what this verse says: God totally declares that He has plans for each one of us. We have not been left here, in our often difficult circumstances, all alone. Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to help us with every second, of every minute of every day. We can now walk with Him like Christ did, that’s the plan! In order to walk with the Holy Spirit – emphasis on the word ‘holy’  … our lives need to change. Our focus has to come off our own comfort, and be firmly planted into whatever the Lord wants for us.

This verse says that His plans are about giving us hope. The New Testament makes it clear that Jesus Christ is our ever-present hope, and this scripture is a prophetic statement about Christ! It is not a promise that this life will never ever be bad again. The hope in our future is Christ Himself. Jeremiah did not live an easy life. His whole nation went into captivity. However, our God has incredible plans and if we ask Him, He may even let us in on them! He has promised He will listen when we pray, and answer us. But we may not understand His answer right away!

We need to consistently remember that Father God will never ever mislead us, quite often we simply can’t see beyond the end of our noses and our need to control everything and make it peachy! However, our future always lies with the Lord. It is very important that we understand that – the scripture above is about security IN God. You and I have eternity ahead of us, so we have an ever expanding future!  Heaven is real and we will go there. I think our God is incredible – He’s planning to spend eternity with all of us! Imagine that!

Our Heavenly Father, has already provided everything we will ever need IN Christ. Sadly we can spend our short lives looking for monetary or physical gain, and we do live this life celebrating the reality that eternity is ours, now and forever … and LIVE that way. Unfortunately we often want ease, now. It matters where our hope is, because ours is always in Christ. …Our hope is not in some scripture that I picked up, or one I decided suited my problem, my hope is in Christ. Christ is God’s demonstrated goodness.

In my opinion, Jeremiah, makes a very interesting example of God’s input into one man’s life. He remained courageous and loyal to his calling despite his difficulties. He faithfully told the Israelites the bad news about their future, over and over again. Sometimes … lucky him!…. he also got to physically demonstrate it too! He was beaten and ridiculed simply because he spoke out God’s truth. The people who follow Jesus Christ do not always have easy carefree lives. However, He will ALWAYS help us, so our faith is in His Character. These things flow out of intimacy. And intimacy is about God always being with us, so we live by faith – because that is the reality.

We must stop thinking that serving God means we will remain trouble free! Our wonderful Father is doing more than one thing at a time. He is answering our prayers for transformation, preparing us for eternity, and restoring and healing relationships, here and now. Jeremiah was carted off from his homeland along with everyone else, despite the fact that he was busy being obedient … doing and saying what God said!  He continually prophesied bad things were coming, not good ones, and sadly the Jews didn’t like it, or him. And he also pointed out that there is a great difference between saying something – even sincerely believing it, and… doing it. Belief must turn into action.

Personally, I think the Old Testament brings a much needed balance into the church-at-large’s current theory of: “let’s all have a jolly old party down here, because SomeBody else paid the bill!”  We cannot choose hedonism and indulgence and expect everything to be AOK with the Lord. What part of ‘take up your cross and follow Me,’ don’t we get? We serve Him – He doesn’t serve us. He proved His love for all mankind when He gave us His Only Son. Our choices from day to day matter, because Father God does not wink at our sins, they were far too costly for His Son. The very least we can do is acknowledge them, and live this life, here and now, differently.

He has a plan to give us a hope and a future. Our future is with Him, today, tomorrow, and forever, and His plan has already given us hope in Christ and all He did. Let’s stick with HIS PLAN and leave behind the idea of some sort of a trouble-free cushy life. Bye. 👋

P 2593 Duty.

/ DVH

Luke 17:7-10: “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do?  So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”

Now there’s a scripture everyone wants to carefully embroider and put into a prominent place in a nice picture frame in the lounge! Hmmm. Not-so-much?? Gee, I wonder why not!? Maybe this scripture throws a spanner in the idea that we can have whatever we want, whenever we want it —- we just need to ask for it. Sometimes I think our attitudes to Who He is and who WE are, are completely out of whack. The biggest smack upside our heads is the fact that Luke is quoting Jesus Himself. We serve Him, He does not serve us! And the Lord Himself calls that our duty. 

Now there’s a word that has kind of fallen out of favour eh? Right along with the idea that we are His servants. Here’s another nice chewy verse or two to mull over. Matthew 20:26-28 “Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

FYI … that thought is also in Mark and John — just in case you or I were worried it has been taken out of context, or it is just a one off! It is time we accepted that God’s truth is w-a-y bigger than ours, and it is a bit more final too! After all, He’s God … a-n-d  we’re not! And that’s the end of that story. 

I love the way Jesus opened up the Father’s Love for our understanding, as well as toward us — however, He did not die to open up avenues for presumption. Jesus Christ did not come here to be the kind of Santa Claus/Genie we have sometimes made Him out to be. The way He interacted with His disciples made it perfectly clear how much He loved them, as well as WHO was in charge … and it wasn’t them! He gave clear directives and expected them to be carried out. That is a good thing to remember.

We can easily get trapped in our own human rationale and excuse ourselves, when the Lord plainly told us what we are here for, and what we need to do. He knows we are basically just glorified dust. However personally, I’d much rather try to do my duty, with the help of His grace, than sit about making well-crafted excuses that are really based on rebellion. PS, I often don’t want to do heaps of stuff either, but He rarely asks me for my opinion! Plus you die daily quicker when you do stuff you don’t want to do … and you do it  – just because He said so.

Here’s another bible story that could put a spoke in our bicycle wheel, and trip us all up. Matthew 21:28-31“What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work today in the vineyard.’ “‘I will not,’ he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.“Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, ‘I will, sir,’ but he did not go. “Which of the two did what his father wanted?” “The first,” they answered.” 

Yes, it is Jesus talking! Yes, He is telling us that our grumpy attitude does not matter – what matters is whether we obey or not! Check out the bible, God loves cheerful givers but He looks for obedience whether we are grumpy and non-compliant or not. The really, really good news is that we don’t have to do any of the things He told us to do ALONE. Oh! Praise God, we have a Helper! 🙌 What would we do without Him? Whenever my get-up-and-go, gets-up-and-goes … without me … He is the One Who empowers me to keep moving on.

Here’s a quick update: above is a picture of our car. We are off to Armidale to pass on some of the 66 blankets etc. Actually I have no idea how the Lord fitted any of that stuff in our car! Kudos to my hubby, he’s a hero, with the Lord’s help he did it – praying all the way. Now our car looks like it has been eating too many Tacos!  Bye. 🚙 …