God’s guidance

P3502 “Train up a child …”

/ DVH

After yesterday’s blog I thought I was done with this subject, but the words — “train up a child…” kept rolling about in my heart and mind. I already had something I had planned to write on but when the Lord gets insistent, it is up to me to listen — so here goes …

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.”  It seems to me that those two words, should go, are a key for good parenting. I have three adult children who are now very different people. There are still a few things they have in common, and praise God for His Grace, their faith is one of those things! However they all express that faith differently. Now they have embraced personally, for themselves, the same values that they were taught as babies..

I noticed these two words – “should go” – many many years ago, and I realized that because each child is an individual, a precious gift from our Heavenly Father, so there is a way He wants them to go. And a parent’s job is to prayerfully discern what that way looks like and guide the child accordingly. Parents have been given the often unrecognised job of teaching children to respect Him, them, and others, and to live this life aware that their life has meaning – simply because Jesus gave it to them.

Parenting is not just about having children, it is also about raising them to respect the Lord’s will. We are responsible to teach them about these things toward Almighty God and others. They don’t just need to know you pray — they need to see and hear you pray. And it is the same with reading the bible. They need to see parents pour over God’s Word, struggle with it, and write things down. Parents cannot afford to give away their responsibility to teach them. That generic grey world that many of us have embraced regarding faith, is not FAITH.

People need to train to be a rocket scientist or a marine biologist, because realistically speaking, they will need help to achieve those goals. Parents need to actively and interactively teach their kids as they go about their normal lives. As we embrace His guidance, to the extent that His teaching is completely and honestly visible in our lives – we will have something solid to stand on. Children need to see as well as hear.

Meanwhile, there are no expert parents because nobody else has a child like yours! And it is your task to ask the Lord to show you the way you need to specifically teach that child, His ways. God’s ways give us a comprehensive overview on how to approach this life. His Love needs to be experienced as well as spoken about. The Lord taught me that each child has a destiny in Him, and its parents have a huge influence on the way this child regards itself, even when it becomes an adult.

Sin is a part of everyone’s DNA until Jesus transforms us. However, when His sacrifice is applied into our lives, that takes us out of this world’s kingdom and introduces us into God’s kingdom. We are then spiritually reborn. Children can do this from an early age, one of mine was four, and even as an adult they have never faltered in their faith.

Parents need to pray together and pray with their children allowing everyone to participate. One of the best things we can teach our children is to relate to, and rely upon God’s guidance. The other is to be honest with them, and tell them you also struggle with the things that happen. We are not looking to give them perfect faith – we want to give them living faith. If kids don’t understand we are in a war, they will be swamped by what this world spews all over them. As parents we hope to become the home plate they can always gladly return to, no matter what happens.

In those early days the Lord told me what to do and how. This was back in the days when children were smacked. I literally had to teach myself to raise my kids from the scriptures, because my own parent’s style had been oppressive, aggressive, and my view of parenting had been drastically skewed by those experiences. It was tempting to simply do my best to avoid the very clear mistakes my own parent had made. The Lord kindly straightened me out, by explaining that if I did that, I was actually living in judgment of what they had done. So I repented.

It has always been astonishing to me that the very words I hated as a kid could come out of my own mouth … sigh … but they did. So I voluntarily entered a phase of forgiveness toward my parent, as I learnt that a child’s hatred can be powerful. I was not outwardly disobedient on purpose, but back then I was a seething mess of anger, hurt, resentment and rebellion inside. Eventually I withdrew from the offending parent to punish them, because they hadn’t treated me the way I thought I needed to be treated. I had to turn around and go back, under His instructions.

As a child, I thought that parents automatically knew how to be parents, they always seemed so sure of their actions, as well as strong and powerful. But when I became a parent I quickly found out that they don’t! Deliberately avoiding previous hurtful mistakes simply leads to new and different ones. Instead that stance becomes a judgment on your own parents and their parenting style. Our best choice is to live in a place of giving away Grace.

Ask the Lord to reveal to you and your spouse which way He wants each and every child you have in your care, to go. And let’s always focus on the fact that Jesus provided for everyone’s sins once and for all. No matter what happens, praise God, there is always redemption. Thank you Jesus! Bye. 👋.

P 3263 God’s Will is challenging.

/ DVH

Jeremiah 1:7-10 “God told me, “Don’t say, ‘I’m only a boy.’ I’ll tell you where to go and you’ll go there. I’ll tell you what to say and you’ll say it. Don’t be afraid of a soul. I’ll be right there, looking after you.” God’s Decree. God reached out, touched my mouth, and said, “Look! I’ve just put My words in your mouth—hand-delivered! See what I’ve done? I’ve given you a job to do among nations and governments—a red-letter day! Your job is to pull up and tear down, take apart and demolish, And then start over, building and planting.”

Did you notice that right after the Lord tells Jeremiah, He will be with Him, the Lord tells the man what He wants him to do? Guidance from the Lord is our birthright, but it won’t always be a picnic in the park. It is almost certain to be guaranteed to look bigger than we are!  In Psalms 37:23&24 it says. “The steps of good men are directed by the Lord. He delights in each step they take. If they fall, it isn’t fatal, for the Lord holds them with His hand.” Don’t you just love that? We can’t even fall over when we are His, because He promised to lift us up with His own hands!

Let’s look at a New Testament truth, one of the last things Jesus said to His disciples: “He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” Mark 16:15&16.This task was far bigger than they were! Until the Holy Spirit came, they men hid away from this world, because they had lost their Teacher. But if the Lord always asked us to do things we can do, where would faith come in? We wouldn’t need it. Sometimes the first thing the Holy Spirit teaches us is that we can’t do anything without Him! No matter how clever we are – we don’t always know how to get out of our own way. 

Our daily struggle isn’t about whether we should rob a bank or shoot someone, it is about an individual’s right to have a ‘say’ over their own lives. But the mutinous thoughts tip our hearts away from God. For example, most people I speak to, haven’t got a clue how their behaviour affects other people — they are too self-involved. That’s not smart, BTW, it’s DUMB. Sadly, because of this, there are times it appears as if these people don’t care. We need to remember that other people don’t have our comprehension or our yardsticks. They have their own. If we remain humble maybe we can learn from them. Submitting to God has such a positive side to it. 

Jesus has faith for us to be bigger than our unknown limitations. He said in Matthew 5:14: “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.” A Christian’s life is built on a hill! Our lives have been built by God on Calvary’s HILL!  We cannot be hidden unless we choose to be hidden. The first active step into God’s guidance in our lives is this: “…choose this day Who you will serve.” There is no point in going anywhere or doing anything, until we’ve made that choice. Otherwise we can be taken out by the enemy because we are still standing on his ground. We must choose — are we all in — or not? That’s what dying to self looks like.

The bible encourages us to follow Jesus step-by-step into a daily process, a series of moment by moment choices. Our part is to continually choose life. His life in us. So we pick up all those other things, ambitions, dreams, hopes etc. and go to the cross and leave everything there. What stays uppermost in our minds, heart, and spirit is this; now I live for Jesus’ sake, and for Him to live in me, I have to be dead! See Galatians 2:20:

“What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work. So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man. Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with Him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,” but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me. I am not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God’s grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily.”

My point today is this, because of what Jesus did for us, we are ALL sent ones. Whether we have an official title or not. Jeremiah, God’s handpicked prophet, struggled with it, and it has often made me think. We can try so hard to get out of what the Lord wanted us to do, and not like where He wants to send us. We ask ourselves, is that fair? No! Not by this world’s standards! But God doesn’t operate by this world’s standards – He has His own. And they are good, righteous, and give glory to the only One Who can bear it. We are called to be a light, and He trusts us to get on with it. He has so much faith in His kids!

These holy things that form His Character in us will not to be obtained by searching or pleading.  Because Jesus took care of everything. Father God isn’t begging people to follow His Ways — He’s a good, good Father, Who knows the Way we should go. And that’s where our trust needs to rest. Let’s choose to remember that, when we live a life dead to self, we are entering into living by His Grace. We will never be alone in our quest to follow Jesus, because we have the Holy Spirit, our Helper Who also has our good in His heart. Plus we have His book to refer to. Every time we say ‘yes’ to His way instead of our own, we are letting the Spirit of God loose in other people’s lives.

God’s will is meant to challenge us. It’s supposed too! It’s the reason we take our little lives, and invest them in His Kingdom, so we can beam His light into the darkness. Bye. 

P 2905 What will you leave behind for His sake?

/ DVH

Luke 18:22-30: “When Jesus heard this, He said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.” When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, 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.”

Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”Peter said to Him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”“Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”A kingdom life is not always meant to be easy!

We all need to take the time to carefully consider and discern what is keeping us from total surrender. Sometimes it can be people, or things, or even places. I try not to say: “I’ll never go to that place again” because IF I believed in gambling … and I don’t! — then the next trip is definitely going to be about going back to the place I just disavowed! Ages ago, I told hubby that we could not go on a plane anymore. Hah! I think I might have control issues – I’m still checking that out with the King. A-ny-wa-ay… next week we are flying off interstate, 2 hours each way. Never say never.

Father God loves to knock down man-made sandcastles. Why not? He’s God, He’s in charge of our lives. To my total astonishment – every single time, no matter what He does, it is always good! It hardly ever turns out the way I thought it would, because what He does is always better than I can think or imagine. I think this is why God allows us to be tested, He wants us to know that we know – from our own personal experience with Him – that He will always be there, helping us, guiding us, loving us. When you decide to trust Him, no matter how it looks – things may go more slowly – but in my experience, what God does, cannot be undone.

“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; And through the rivers, they will not overwhelm you. When you walk through fire, you will not be scorched, Nor will the flame burn you.”  That’s from Isaiah 43, verse 2. Our faith needs to learn to watch for, and expect His input – always remembering that Almighty God doesn’t do things the way we would do them!  By the way I like that word WHEN. Trouble is not optional, actually it seems to be quite normal as you follow Jesus and want to serve Him!

Just recently our daughter and her son were told that they would have to move. I actually spent sooooo much time thinking about how we could build something for them to live in our backyard, as well as repeatedly going on line to look up cheaper rentals … and then she came to me about a month ago with this huge testimony that had nothing whatsoever to do with all my efforts.

Father God had found the two of them somewhere marvellous, and she can afford the rent. It is so close to work she could walk there if she wanted to. Guess what? I wasted all that time trying to solve a problem, that was not mine. Our daughter gave it all to the Lord the minute she heard that their old house was going to be sold, and she left the whole thing with Him for Him to solve. Someone came to her about this other house… imagine that! I am learning that we need to leave the people we dearly love in His hands. Meanwhile, when you put whatever is disturbing your peace down you have to walk away at the same time.

The body of Christ has often been fascinated with the idea that brilliant preaching, miracles, supernatural happenings and healings somehow prove that whatever they are doing must be ‘right.’ It seems we think it means we definitely have God’s approval and, bonus buy, we are proving to other people that He exists. Well I believe, first of all, that we already have God’s favour because His Son died in our place! He chose us.  Miracles are a sign and a wonder, but they are not the point – Jesus is the point! 

A life laid down for His sake, makes itself available for whatever God Himself wants, whenever He says. If He says we are to love our enemies – that means we can do it! It is easy to feel like we can’t, but maybe we are bumping into fear or pride or ‘I don’t want to!’  However, bravely stepping out into the path of whatever Goliath is challenging us, while we are trusting in God’s guidance, means we’ve put the Lord in charge of whatever we are facing. Our faith is far away from any problems, because instead we believe in His goodness and we cling to our faith in HIM like a limpet to a rock. We literally shall not be moved.  

We need to give the Lord everything – our lives, our livelihoods, our kids, our health, our self-worth, our family and stuff etc to Him, and leave it all there – because  “… I (we) know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that Day.”2 Timothy 1:12. Maybe today is a good day to ask ourselves, what will we leave behind – for His sake? May God bless you, 👋.