Give thanks

P 3037 Praying the bible.

/ DVH

Hubby shared the following verses with me the other day, and this morning I want to encourage you to use them for prayer – because that is the way he sent them to me. I am learning to do it when I can’t think what, or how to pray. It kind of ‘primes the pump’ so to speak. 

“Grant me to be strengthened with power through Your Spirit in my inner being, so that Christ may dwell in my heart through faith as I encounter Him in Your Word. Root and ground me in His love, so I would have strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that I may be filled with all of Your fullness, O my God.’ Amen. Ephesians 3:16–19.

We need to know, that we absolutely know — that we are dearly, passionately, LOVED, by God Himself. It is not enough to just know that in our heads, we need to be rooted and grounded in that love spiritually. We must hold tight to that fact in the good times, and, in my way of thinking, especially in the bad ones! To be grounded in His love means it goes right down inside us, comprehensively covering every part of who we are. The bits that are seen and unseen.

Then it will flow out of us when we are squeezed tightly by this life. Lately at my house, that seems like practically every other day!  If I were attending baseball practice in the nets – the pitching machine has gone insane, and I keep getting bopped on the head by the multitude of random, erratic balls flying at me. Not fun. I want to yell: “Will somebody please turn that rotten thing off?” Stuff just keeps happening! Sometimes it seems like there is no time to take a breath. 

You know, a big dollop of curiosity is a valuable thing in this life. It helps me to step outside the same old same old routine and look at them differently.  I used to take things apart when I was a child. Fortunately they mostly still worked when I put them back together again, or I might have met the hand of great disapproval on my delicate rear end! 🤣

Once, when I was about 9 or10, I took apart a pair of pyjamas I particularly liked, and used the bits as templates to make another pair. I hand-sewed both pairs back together again and I had two pairs of pyjamas instead of one. They weren’t Chanel – but they worked! Another time I took a watch apart … but that’s a whole other story with a less happy ending. However the watch still worked! Curiosity is just part of my nature.

So, whenever I read the bible, that’s what comes out, and one of the first things I want to know is… “why.” There are times I also want to know …“what on earth were they thinking?!” Or even; “what does that mean?” Then the ‘game is afoot’ and off I go. The Lord points to something and I start researching this and that, fitting bits together like a big jigsaw puzzle.

Sometimes I suspect that In His great kindness He indulges me, because He knows I like that kind of chase. He just drops one word or a phrase into my heart and tells me to go look it up. Then I am off like that artificial bunny running round the greyhound track. My step-Dad liked to gamble, so I went to all sorts of interesting places I’d rather not talk about, when I was a kid. 

Moving on … Jesus helps me with the process.  He gives me the strength to get up and sit at the keyboard tapping away writing this blog. Some days it feels like I would rather be a contented carrot in His garden — not mindful of anything! Yet every single time, when I read His Word, things just leap off the page and off I go again. Meanwhile there are days when I get lost trying to accomplish the task, instead of just simply walking with the Holy Spirit. He is wonderful at helping. The moral of that story is ask for His help immediately!

When we pray the bible over ourselves, we are doing more than just reading it, and agreeing with it. We are acknowledging its power. This book is incredible. It has within it, the power to change our minds. I don’t know exactly when this happened to me, but after years of reading, praying and doing, now I find myself using the bible as the reference point for everything else! I bring absolutely everything up against what His book says and chuck anything out if it doesn’t fit. I didn’t set out to do it, BTW, I just left secular understanding behind somewhere back there, and now all I care about is: “What does Jesus say about that?” 

In the above verses, I particularly like the phrase:“so I would have strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that I may be filled with all of Your fullness…” Boy do I need that kind of strength. My comprehension of love is so limited by my life experiences. Have you ever noticed how our enemy likes to reinforce negative stuff? I’ve  become aware of a little kink in my thinking that just slightly colours everything so that I miss out on LOVE.  Yes, I’m praying about it!

You and I are in a race. Some of us aren’t as fit as we used to be, and some of us weren’t fit in the first place! I  understanding most word meanings, but the word love, the way it is used here, often escapes me. It’s bigger than I am. I have nothing to tie it into, no reference point. My own personal experiences of love have darkened its meaning for me. So I have to start with the fact that I need His help to even begin to understand the kind of love the Holy Spirit describes in the book! It is much too easy to revert to;  love means I get what I want. 

At those negative times I desperately need His power to understand what the Lord has freely given us. That’s why I pray the scriptures over me. Otherwise I can very easily get stuck in error, subscribing to the age-old system “if you do something wrong you will be punished.” Jesus was punished in our place and Almighty God paid an incredible price for us to know how very much we are loved individually and corporately. Wouldn’t it be incredibly sad, if we missed it because we don’t understand how anybody can be that loving, and care that much about us?

I want to encourage you today, to see the bible as a resource for your prayers. Especially for intangible things like love, joy, peace. Find a verse that says what you would like to say, and pray it for yourself. Bye.👋

P 2822 Remembering.

/ DVH

Mark 1:9-13 “At that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptised by John in the Jordan. Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, He saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on Him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, Whom I love; with You I am well pleased.” At once the Spirit sent Him out into the wilderness, and He was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.”

My first thought when I read this scripture is this: isn’t Almighty God so wonderful to bless and reassure His beloved Son in this way… He owned Jesus as His Son right in front of His cousin, John. It was so personal! And then the Holy Spirit came and kissed Him. All that happened immediately before He had to wrangle with extreme fasting – and the kind of temptation that urged the Lord Jesus to accomplish what He came here for without any pain! satan tested Jesus at His weakest physical hour. And there would come another day, three+ years later, when satan would come at Jesus again, as He wrestled with God’s will in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Here is something I have noticed over the years that can happen in our walk with the Lord. (I try not to make a rule out of anything, this is just an observation.) I’ve found that the Lord sometimes extravagantly blesses you or I and our families, with something quite wonderful and unexpected – and right after that – something happens that truly stretches and tests our faith. You will notice I offer no explanation for this – I don’t have one. I’ve just seen it happen.

My point today is that God is so good, and so kind, He gives us something substantial to hold onto as we slog through our own personal wilderness and testing time. A memory of good is a brilliant asset, it will hold you up in times of pain and sorrow and stress. Here’s my free advice — don’t be someone who is always looking for the next thing, the next blessing, the next breakthrough – take the time to savour everything He has ever done for you in your life-time, so far. 

Also, don’t ever wander so far away from your salvation that you can no longer see the cross anymore. To me blessings and trouble mean I had better pay close attention to whatever is going on, in me and around me. Otherwise I know I will  totally miss the blessing, and end up flailing about when the bad stuff hits me. I have a teenage grandson, he used to be little now he is taller than his mum! Growth stretches us and sometimes that is uncomfortable, the clothes we’ve grown so used to don’t fit anymore!

Jesus Himself did a reassuring thing with His disciples, right before He was betrayed. It says in 1 Corinthians 11:23b-25.”The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is My Body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”We all know this litany by heart, but there are also times when God is doing something on many levels – we need to live looking for Him in everything that happens to us.

Right after this meal, the downward spiral toward Christ’s death starts. His betrayer and captors are almost at the door. Jesus knows these men, He loves them. They have been dependent upon Him, His leadership. They have seen His wisdom in action in every single moment. While He was eating, sleeping, and interacting with them and others. He has been their in-front-of-your-eyes example of how to live. He was with them for three and a half years, and He knows they are going to need something spiritually substantial to remember Him by — because right after this meal together, He will be brutally beaten, murdered, and resurrected. Soon after that He will go back to His Father in heaven. And then, for our sake, He sent back the Holy Spirit for us. The Holy Spirit has never left.

Christ lovingly gave His men something spiritual and physical to do that night – it will remind them in the dark days to come, that He is still with them – even though He is no longer physically present. This action is to be a continual visible reminder, a joining together, ‘a remembrance party’ that what He did will last, and be with all of them their whole lives. But like I often am, sometimes these men were clueless. Fortunately the Holy Spirit came and opened their eyes at Pentecost!

I love another story that is in the book. It also happens while all these devastating things were going on. Two of the Lord’s men walking along the road to Emmaus. And Jesus, the resurrected One, walks with them and joins Himself into their conversation. They have no clue Who He is!  The Lord gives these men an opportunity to remember and revise all the things that have happened to the Jews, as well as when He was with them. He is so kind even in the face of their heartbroken loss. Further, the Lord pretends He wants to keep on going with His journey, but they are so taken with Him, and the conversation, they beg Him to stay…

…AND THEN HE BREAKS THE BREAD. Those men knew that action!!!… They had seen Him do that very thing days before with their own eyes. Suddenly, He is gone again, but now, their hearts are are rejoicing. They gallop off to tell the others – because now they know that DEAD isn’t DEAD! 

In this life, of ours, our human ways are often like a little stream bubbling along, moving past this, bumping into that — but God’s ways are a river in full flood. Carefully moving this obstacle, watering that dry place, and teeming with life. I exhort you to keep daily jumping into His river! We have a river of life in us. Remembering is part of following Him.  Bye, 🙌.

P 2790 Priorities.

/ DVH

The Holy Spirit loves to clarify and personalise His Word – that’s part of the joy of reading the book! One Sabbath day Jesus and His disciples were hungry so they picked some grain from a field they walked by, and ate it. The Pharisees – who were obviously spying on Him!… jumped up and down and accused them all of breaking the law. Jesus, ever gracious, tried to help them stretch their faith by pointing out that their ancestor David once ate the Shew bread and doing that was unlawful, according to their rabbinical rules. Plus, he mentioned that the priests on Sabbath duty break that law too, but they are declared innocent.

The Lord Jesus then says this: “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” After this He moves on from that conversation into the synagogue – because there’s another lesson coming up! On that day there is a man with a shrivelled. withered hand in attendance. Meanwhile the Pharisees are still spying on Him, waiting for Him to do something illegal on the Sabbath. They know He will heal this man. Can you believe it? How SAD. They are waiting to catch Jesus out for doing good! So there they were again, pointing out religious rules. They seem to be unaware that they have faulty religious priorities.

So He asked the Pharisees if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath and reminds them that if one of their sheep falls down a hole on the Sabbath they will pull it out! Matthew 12:12: “How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” It is part of Jesus’ nature to always desire good for His Bride. He stumped these religious guys every time. Meanwhile, they have no idea that this is their opportunity to think differently. The Lord Jesus loves people completely. I think problems occur when we decide to define good, as things that work out the way I want them to, or by categorising whatever supposedly meets our religious standards.

God has His own WAYS. That means it is important for us to know what He wants, in any and all of our various situations. What His will is. Here’s some scripture to help us focus on the way He thinks: “In everything give thanks for this is the will of Christ Jesus concerning you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18. The idea is to start by giving thanks, because doingthat will help us focus. We need to thank Him for helping us to know what He wants from us, remembering we don’t need religion either!

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.”Romans 12:2. I urge us all to be pliable, ready to expand what we think – we are allowed to learn. Always be big enough to renew your mind by acting on what the book says. I’ve found the best and quickest discernment comes to me when I actively let the Lord teach me His priorities in any situation. I ask myself all the time: “Is this love?” Then I ask Him to help me to be fair and not flavour any answer with my own POV, needs, or religious stuff.

At the same time, the Lord Himself chooses what He wants to change in our lives – not us!  The fact that He is so intimately involved in our lives and thinking must reassure us that He always has our good in mind. There are times when we try to avoid what the Holy Spirit wants to tell us because of fear. We’d rather focus on the little things than tackle the big hard ones. Like the Pharisees, we would rather stick with what we know because it feels safer. Often there are quite obvious things that we know need His transformation, yet we run away because of fear, or unbelief or a stronghold in our mind that says: “I can’t help this, everyone in my family is this way.” You and I are in a new family now – HIS. The old has passed away! We must prioritise His new kingdom now.

Romans 8:27 tells us that the Holy Spirit is already praying God’s will for us – how brilliant is that? Wow. To start with, the Holy Spirit totally knows the difference between the law and LOVE. Right here, right now. Today. There is no question about it we have a trustworthy Helper! Here are two more scriptures that will help us locate what the Lord wants to prioritise as we walk with Him:“For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.” 1 Peter 2:15. So I ask Him when I have doubt about any situation – is it doing good for someone else? Doing good is our priority. Our aim should always be for other people to tell us:  “I want to know the God you serve.”

Our Loving Heavenly Father;  His beautiful Son, the Lord Jesus;  and the precious ever-present Holy Spirit are our JOY! Let’s live celebrating Them!  There are times we can persecute other brothers and sisters with the law, by verbally beating them up, saying: “don’t do this and don’t do that “. And sadly, sometimes we say: “you did this AND that — so God won’t love YOU anymore.” But none of that stuff RE-presents Him truthfully. To know what is right on any occasion we must prioritise knowing Him. We have the book!

So we do good, give thanks, walk in Love and change our mindsets by reading His word. The Holy Spirit is continually praying for us to live an overcoming life filled with the Lord’s love for us. Walking with Him is our priority now. Bye. 👋

P 2586 Stars and grains.

/ DVH

Genesis 15:4-6 “Then the word of the Lord came to him: “This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir.” He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness.”

Genesis 22:17: ”I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies,…”

If I were to give this blog an alternative title I would call it — “Dust off your prayers, hopes and dreams … and start thanking Me.” 

We have all been through some incredibly hard times spiritually speaking, and not just recently — some of us have been stuck in hardship for a prolonged period of time. The Lord spoke the above word to me last Sunday, and I’m sitting here at 2.30 AM today, typing this because He told me to do it. You may be on the other side of the world to where I live, it makes no difference. The above verses from Genesis show us that God always has plans bigger than we can imagine. We all know, from experience, that His ways are past finding out – but we will see Him working with our own eyes – start looking.

When we pray, we often think about a truckload of blessings, but in these passages from Genesis the Lord shows us a SKY full of them. Abraham had his mind blown twice, and I sincerely believe we are about to see the Lord do what seems to be the impossible, again. Our part is to watch and give thanks, knowing only HE can do these things – we can’t.

There are relationships and the enmities between people that seem hopeless and broken, and I believe that they will start to turn and mend. Thank Him for every single one you hear about, whether it is at your house or somewhere else. The financial situations that seem doomed to worsen will see a trickle of help turn into a stream … People are going to listen and be touched by Him when you share His love and tell them about the Jesus you know, personally and intimately.

I want to be clear, I am not talking about some huge explosive revival, I am talking about a groundswell that starts small and builds over time. Breakthroughs are upon us, and our job is to thank Him for every single little tiny change and keep on thanking Him. Our God loves a grateful people so we need to be alert and thank Him, for everything no matter how small it seems. We need to thank Him for Who He is and what He is doing.  We need to stay alert and pray we will be awake and aware to see every little detail coming to pass.He’s looking for a groundswell of thanksgiving … even for the tiniest things, that seem almost insignificant.

Now, more than ever, we are to be grateful to be one of those tiny little grains of sand – one of those billions of unnamed stars. These are the days of the nobodies and God has been waiting for you and I to step up to the plate. We don’t have to be perfect, or gifted, JUST WILLING. The big rock stars of baseball or cricket have come and gone, and it’s just us now, the tail end … the guys who are lucky if they can see the ball, let alone hit it! 

We may well be a people with not a lot of talent, but we know that Jesus is so big, He can break 5 loaves and 2 fishes and feed thousands. He can multiply anything. He has been breaking our lives and our hearts so He can begin this multiplication process. Give the mess that is in your little life to Him and start thanking Him for every detail that changes, no matter how small.

God spoke to Abraham and He told him that WE, you and I, are the answer to his prayers for a child. And no I have not lost my tiny mind! He told that man that His descendants would be like the stars in the sky …and Abraham did something amazing, he believed God. Something spiritually is turning that will not turn back again and we need to be alert and thank Him for everything He is doing. Every bit of hopeful news, every smile from someone who has forgotten how to smile. Every teeny tiny prayer that seemed to fall to the ground dead, is going to be resurrected. Watch and see what He will do with your little life.

Jesus broke bread the night before He was betrayed and gave thanks. We are that bread and He has been breaking us. As a result now we know that we cannot do anything without Him, and we’ve learnt, from experience, that we don’t want to, either. Now we can watch as He takes the broken crumbs of our lives and feeds the people around us. Just keep thanking Him for every single detail you see that changes. No matter how small –  we are going to start looking for the good. Stars that are without number … fill the sky. Grains of sand that cannot be counted make up the seashore. 

We are the nameless, faceless ones, who only care that people remember HIS NAME, not ours. Bless you. 🙌 👋

P 2573 Godly advice for the sleepless.

/ DVH

From the book! “I lie awake each night thinking of You and reflecting on how You help me like a Father. I sing through the night under Your splendour-shadow, offering up to You my songs of delight and joy! With passion I pursue and cling to You. Because I feel Your grip on my life, I keep my soul close to Your heart.”Psalms 63:6-8 TPT.

Man, those psalmists knew how to write. However, it seems like they didn’t sleep so good all the time, even back then!  The Holy Spirit must have helped them with their attitudes, because the things that are written in these psalms are wiser than the ways of men. There is no greater ambition than for us to live to praise and enjoy Him, at any hour. Today I was up at 4.30 am writing the blog … at about 6.30 am I started to wish I had stayed in bed. My brain feels like it is melting. I do wish I could write beautiful stuff like that psalmist did … he’s inspiring.

Here’s some of my less-than-spiritual advice for free — unless you are single and live by yourself —bursting into song singing to God in the middle of the night may not work out well for you! Somebody else… maybe even a bunch of somebody elses … could wake up and be less than enthralled by your singing! My advice is if you have to sing, then don’t sing loudly, or take it elsewhere … like into another room! I try to toddle off upstairs when I do the early bird routine – hubby needs his sleep, he works hard.  We can see that Jesus went away from His disciples to talk to His Heavenly Father. Apparently they weren’t like Joshua, who stayed talking to God longer than Moses did!  Moving away from those who can sleep is called appropriate public relations behaviour –  anybody with a lick of sense knows you don’t poke a bear when he is sleeping.

But in those moments, in the middle of the night, I sit and quietly read the scriptures to set my heart firmly back on Him. So often nowadays, this life squeezes us so tightly, sometimes it feels like we can’t breathe. Even the bible can seem to be impossible to grasp, especially when you feel like you have fallen down a deep deep hole and His love and light is hidden from you. That’s when you PAF … Phone A Friend. Seriously. But!! Not between 12.00am and 6.00am!  You might find out your friend’s smiley face is wearing thin at that hour. Most of all take the time talk to the Lord, despite how you feel. He’s your Dad and He’s always UP and happy to hear from you! “He that keepeth thee does not slumber.” Psalm 121:3.

Sadly, for me, and about a zillion other people in this world, that word ‘Dad,’ has little or no meaning. But I’ve seen enough Dad-like qualities in the godly men around me to get a picture of what a great father looks like. Plus Jesus talked about it too. Almighty God is the greatest of all fathers. He’s where Fatherhood comes from!  His book gives us a lovely picture of what a great father looks like. Here’s Matthew 7:9-11.“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!”Good verse to think about at 1.00 am.

Our Father will not lie or try to deceive us. When He says something He means it. Our task is to believe what He has said, even though sometimes in this world, other people are trying to sell us something. I’ve found that many people lie because they want something, or they have something to hide or lose. When we are sleepless, or down, because of life, or something someone else said or did — we need to remind ourselves that our God does not lie. HE has nothing to hide and He doesn’t have agendas. Everything He says is the truth. ‘There is no shadow or turning in Him.’ This simply means — because HE IS THE LIGHT … good luck finding anything dark anywhere near Him.

Our current world provides us with poor images, those things are not good to think about at 1.00am. This world is used to double-dealing, double-talking flam-flam artists who pretend to be one thing when they are really another. Deception often flows through our streets like water. Think about a simple thing like watching a movie. Movies are all about people lying to themselves …and to each other … and to YOU, for a living. And we pay them heaps of money to do it!  We’ve gotten so used to living with these things that we think of them as harmless. God is truth,  and we already know that ‘in Him there is no shadow or turning’ –so anything that is a lie is not from Him. And yes, I watch movies too! But I think that some movies are definitely not geared to help us sleep!

However, this psalmist has the sense when he wakes up at some ridiculous hour of the night, to respond to God with praise and worship. He meditates on God’s goodness, instead of making his worries bigger by thinking about them. Nor does he think about that cute little maiden he saw last week in the temple! He remembers what the Lord has already done and he gives thanks. This man is giving us sound advice. In the middle of the night when we have any worries, we need to hand them over, and go after Jesus. Try praying for people who need to be saved – satan is glad to let you nod off when you do that!  

I also like to remind myself, that even though I know I can be faithless, my Heavenly Father cannot!  BTW, FYI, I do not expect you to be Him — if I want to see what my Father looks like then I look at Christ – He’s a sure thing. The most wonderful miracle of all miracles happened a couple of thousand years ago – God came here to reveal Himself to us, personally.  And that’s plenty to think about today or tonight … or in the middle of the night when your brain is UP and you wanna sleep! Bye zzzzzzzz. 👋