God’s Presence

P 3494 Start from the right place — His Grace.

/ DVH

“Even if the mountains were to crumble and the hills disappear, My heart of steadfast, faithful love will never leave you, and My covenant of peace with you will never be shaken,” says YAHWEH, Whose love and compassion will never give up on you.” Isaiah 54:10 TPT. God’s love is not limited … but our time here is.

“Do not yield to fear, for I am always near. Never turn your gaze from Me, for I am your faithful God. I will infuse you with My strength and help you in every situation. I will hold you firmly with My victorious right hand.’” Isaiah 41:10 TPT. He will help us to flow in His Grace.

“Don’t be obsessed with money but live content with what you have, for you always have God’s Presence. For hasn’t He promised you, “I will never leave you, never! And I will not loosen my grip on your life!” So we can say with great confidence: “I know the Lord is for me and I will never be afraid of what people may do to me!”” Hebrews 13:5-6 TPT.

Aren’t these scriptures great? If we choose to read the Word of God like a love letter, which has been made complete with loving personal instructions, we can be utterly blessed by it. Loving eyes see far more than scared, nervous ones … … or even constantly distracted ones! Distraction is a big deal today. It is no longer strange to see people flick flick flicking their phones trying to find something that interests them. If we take that attitude over into reading the bible, we will get bored quickly. Even the language used in it will defeat us.  

Let’s choose to start from His Grace, and never lose the kind of gratitude that acknowledges we are nothing without Him, because He is everything to us. Religion can often be part-time — but GRACE cannot. Grace is a living thing that accomplishes far more than we can ever imagine. Let’s choose to see His Grace like the tide, flowing in and out. It flows in to us, and with our permission, back out toward others. That tide is lovingly relentless in it’s quest to saturate human beings with the kind of loving Grace that bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

There are times when I can get pretty snarkey if someone pinches a parking spot, or pushes ahead in a queue! That kind of response started in the garden and flowed out onto Cain and Able. It’s sin. The truth is, my negative response to someone else’s thoughtlessness is sin. It shows that I still don’t understand that God’s Grace goes where it wants to go — it is not hindered, or restricted by my prejudices. No matter how many verses of scripture we can find to prove our point! Walking in Grace is facilitated by walking in His love, and we can have it all! 

Let’s daily, minute by minute, buy up the days, because our time on earth is finite and precious. And let’s choose to be obedient, pushing aside our reluctance to engage with strangers, or even family members. Grace flows beautifully when we make God choices. We can stop up that God-given flow with revenge, indifference, anger and unbelief … not to mention guilt. Entering into it is so simple – we simply stop thinking about our lives as our own, and start living them for Him. That is not just for the few keen ‘spiritual’ people who seem to find it easier than we do.. It’s for all of us. 

Father God will never give up on us, but we can short-circuit our progress in our life of faith by believing our sin is greater than His sacrifice. Or we can tell ourselves that we simply must say thus and thus, otherwise that other person will never get the point. That kind of vigilante attitude is not the way the Lord wants us to operate. That person who irritates us, is the vehicle we step into and discover how far short we are from Jesus, God’s glorious ideal. That person is our friend because they show us what is truly inside us. Let their attitudes be their problem. We just need to keep following Jesus, listening to Him, obeying Him.

He sent out His disciples to heal the sick and raise the dead and preach the good news that God’s kingdom had arrived. It was good news — not a list of everyone else’s sins. I suggest we use the energy that is needed to maintain anger and disappointment to propel us forward into giving away God’s Grace. It’s our job. We take that Grace in and then we pass on all the forgiveness, acceptance and love we’ve received from Him, to others. Please be encouraged, this is a learned skill!

We don’t have to love someone’s behaviour to love them. God loves us, and our behaviour stinks sometimes! Jesus saw beyond the sin to the trapped person who needed an opportunity to get free from it. Sin is a prison. It won’t let you think about anything else, whether it is your sin or their sin, it just rumbles about inside like concrete in a concrete truck. However, the Holy Spirit can soften our hard hearts when we ask for His help. That other person’s heart isn’t our business.

Other people’s sins can trap us into a cycle that seems never-ending. That’s why Grace is needed. Grace, by it’s nature is not earned or deserved. But it blossoms and creates new life when it is given to someone who doesn’t deserve it, as we use our faith. However, if WE keep reacting the same way, we are continually going to get the same annoying response! Grace changes ME first, and it opens the door to God’s Way of thinking. Grace keeps silent when it has a LOT to say.

I urge you, don’t keep what you have been freely given bottled up inside, give it away. Let’s start from the right place, releasing His Grace to those who don’t deserve it anymore than we did. Bye. 👋

P3379 What have we learnt?  

/ DVH

Let’s take a look at what happened at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:3-9:

“They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let Us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that We may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”                                     But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.                                                                      So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.”

This is a difficult passage of scripture to look at. It presents what I would call, an interesting situation. Almighty God interfered with man’s plans — by wrecking their communication with each other. Hmmm… Smart phone anyone? It is fascinating how in today’s world, satan has come up with a similar way to bring about the same result. If human beings are dangerous and clever enough to do all that stuff on our own … and history proves this to be true … then …

…let’s pause and imagine what a people who choose to be connected to each other, and worship and serve Almighty God can do!

The temptation in the Garden wasn’t just about being disobedient, that couple wanted to be like God. It’s just like the stuff that went down at Babel. Human beings think we can do anything! We’ve walked on the moon, see how clever we are! Almighty God made the moon … and He put it where it is with His fingers! Humanity needs to get over itself … We can’t even feed the poor that live in our neighbourhood, because making ourselves feel more important has taken precedence. 

The knowledge of good and evil is a dangerous thing in the hands of unredeemed people. They can end up making plans to rule the world! Let’s not even mention that they think that they are so smart they don’t need God anymore. And, even today, we are still busy trying to make a name for ourselves.

Right now, it seems that we talk at each other, and use abbreviations and trite phrases to communicate our feelings — with likes and dislikes. Thumbs up, or thumbs down.  What makes me sad, is that people are buying into this stuff – even our children! It seems we are doomed to continually make the same mistakes. Yet we still think we are smarter than God. 

Right here and now in this world, human relationships have again been scattered and made null and void. If we don’t like someone else, we either kill them, blow them up, maim them, divorce them or avoid them. Co-operation has gone right out of the window, and we’ve traded in true human engagement for convenience … and loneliness. Pretty soon we will all be using AI to talk to each other. When will we learn we are not in charge here? What have we learnt from the Tower of Babel?

Even in our churches, holy things have been so twisted that we don’t feel free to actually be real with each other anymore. We can’t seem to tell others what is really going on in our hearts. We are afraid that a whole lot of judgment will rush toward us, roaring down the turnpike! 

Just like it was at the Tower of Babel WE must decide – is there anything we can’t do?  … YES! … We can’t save ourselves!! And despite our very best efforts to live forever, we can’t do that either. Many people are trying so hard to preserve their lives, yet they end up looking like the Crypt Keeper whose face has been carefully ironed instead! Yikes! Meanwhile, praise the Lord, eternal life is safely in the hands of our Heavenly Father, who cannot be corrupted or make mistakes.

My point is that we are not as smart as we like to think we are. Yes, we can build the tallest buildings on the earth, and search the deepest trenches in the ocean – but we cannot save ourselves. We will continue to be a hard-headed, hard hearted, wicked, pitiless, miserly, miserable people who torment and torture each other — without Christ Himself showing us another way to live. Humanity was made to live in God’s Presence! Father God visited Adam and Eve every single evening to talk with them. Look at what we have given up! Oh, thank God, His mercy endures forever …!!

Jesus took EVERYTHING to the cross with Him. Like the bible says: “It’s finished!” God has done something so extraordinary, because of what Jesus did for us. He has given us the opportunity to walk with Him again. Right here, right now, today. We can use our faith in what Christ did for us, to rise above our past and have a truthful, fruitful relationship with Him, and each other. Jesus Christ freely chose to represent us before God’s wrath. It was the greatest work of restoration of relationships this world has ever, or will ever, see. And Father God’s goodness sent Jesus after us.

“…When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26. There will always be lessons for human beings to learn. Humility is a great starting place. Bye 👋

P 3068 We have an inheritance.

/ DVH

“For in His wisdom, God designed that all the world’s wisdom would be insufficient to lead people to the discovery of Himself. He took great delight in baffling the wisdom of the world by using the simplicity of preaching the story of the cross in order to save those who believe it. But for those who have been chosen to follow Him, both Jews and Greeks, He is God’s mighty power, God’s true wisdom, and our Messiah. For the “foolish” things of God have proven to be wiser than human wisdom. 

And the “feeble” things of God have proven to be far more powerful than any human ability. But God chose those whom the world considers foolish to shame those who think they are wise, and God chose the puny and powerless to shame the high and mighty. He chose the lowly, the laughable in the world’s eyes—nobodies—so that He would shame the somebodies. 

For He chose what is regarded as insignificant in order to supersede what is regarded as prominent, so that there would be no place for prideful boasting in God’s presence. For it is not from man that we draw our life but from God as we are being joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. And now He is our God-given wisdom, our virtue, our holiness, and our redemption.” 1 Corinthians 1:21, 24-25, 27-30 TPT.

God’s Wisdom cannot be accessed through our puny little, oh-so-easily-distracted minds. We desperately need His minute-by-minute input into our daily life. Together, as His Body – we have been freely given everything we will need in this life. The Lord Jesus’ life of love showed us all of God’s fullness in an every day setting. 

Jesus did so many things deliberately, for a far greater purpose than we ever imagined in our restricted thinking. He came to teach us by example. It is astonishing that Almighty God, Himself, would come to save the world in such an awe-inspiring totally selfless way. Now He is always present with us, as well as in us, in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Because He said it, we can believe it.

Jesus’ life and death are our God-given key which can unlock the mighty revelation of Who God is. Plus we have the Bible which is a road map into eternity. Now, anyone with a heart to learn His ways, can access Him in that book. However, every single one of us will also need the Author’s insight and revelation to open our eyes, so we can read it and be enlightened. The prime objective is to let the bible read you while you are reading it. Then we act upon it. Fame, money, earthly power or human intelligence, won’t help us understand what happened on an ordinary wooden cross outside Jerusalem, that’s why we need His Spirit to open our eyes and hearts.

Without God and all He did for us, we will live limited, small  lives — but with the Holy Spirit’s help – the impossible becomes possible. However, our enemy wants us to ignore these facts, using discouragement, despair and suspicion. It is one of his wiliest, sneakiest tricks. There is but one standard and that is – Christ IN us – HE is our hope of glory. He, and He alone, is our daily inspiration to live above the mundanities of this life. Jesus is SomeOne so good, so pure and holy, yet so normal, we struggle to comprehend how an ordinary human being could live and die the way He did.

At the same time, the bible also reveals to us, that we have not even begun to plumb the depths of Who our Heavenly Father God is … or how utterly beautiful and incredibly wise His Ways are. As we study His book, we can see that we still have such a limited understanding of spiritual things…. God Himself has equalised mankind in one sovereign action – through His precious Son’s obedience. It is no wonder that it can be difficult without the Holy Spirit’s help, to comprehend the vastness of what happened. Now we do not have to reduce God to our size — He already did that, once and for all!

Our access to understanding Who He is, comes from reading to His Word, with the simplicity and obedience of a little child. We need to read it looking for something to obey! Christ lived His life in total obedience to His Father’s will – He did all the work for us. Now we can come to Him the same way any child would come to a loving gracious parent… joyfully, without fear, or shame – always expecting to be received. Our Father’s enormous wisdom and love, coupled with His incredible goodness and kindness, coaxes us into an intimacy beyond our comprehension.

Jesus’ death and resurrection opened the door to a whole other way to live. That wide-open door can only be closed by our own choices. The devil can’t finagle his way in, or short-circuit what God has done because it can only be seen and understood through the spiritual sight of the Holy Spirit’s goodness, mercy, grace. Our enemy is so defeated—he now spends his time trying to distract us from the ongoing, never-ending revelation of our Father’s incredible love.  

Every single day we can always have the input of precious Holy Spirit. He has been given to us to open our eyes and hearts to that new way to live. Under His help and guidance, now we can gladly pass that Grace onto others who don’t deserve it either. You and I have been chosen to be the inheritors and recipients, as well as the distributors and executors of the Lord Jesus’ will. Bye. 🙌

P 3052 What was that?

/ DVH

Today I want to exhort you, don’t give up on yourself if or when, you give into how you feel, when you are trapped by terrible circumstances. Even if you find yourself going under. In our efforts to please Him, and others, we can end up occupying ourselves with frantic efforts to mend things by ourselves. That’s called works and it is bound to fail. Never stop praying, but also remember to give the Lord the muddle and mess. 

I’ve learnt to trust Him to redeem and transform everything. Remember, ‘His Love covers a multitude of sins.’ If we repeatedly give in to how we feel, a strong-hold can form in our lives, and that becomes more of an issue to overcome. That’s when we often react automatically. Yet we have His power in our lives to live differently – to bring joy to others. Nothing is insurmountable – because “… nothing, nothing  … NOT ONE THING … can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” Great place for a full stop!

The bible says: Jesus “…will work all things together for our good for those who love Him and are called according to His purposes.”  His purpose is for us to destroy the works of the evil one. He longs for us to ‘dwell, live in, take up residence within His love. In other words, we are to LIVE THERE in the land of love – living a life laid-down for Him and others. Here are two of my favourite questions that I ask myself: “Is this Love? Would Jesus do it?”

“Then Christ will make His home in your hearts as you trust in Him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.” Ephesians 3:17. This is what I am aiming at in the issues I face from day to day – my aim is to automatically give a response that is filled with His love. Not that I have achieved that aim… but I keep pressing on! Life is short. I can’t afford to goof off and indulge myself in a pity party. “Poor me” is a waste of my remaining delegated days! I want the people around me to catch the smell of the sweet fragrance of Christ, so they end up saying: “What was that?” 

Don’t ever give up on pushing through to find love when you have lost your peace. Even if you have just abused your spouse, slammed the door and kicked the cat!  Repent. This is a matter of our will, not our feelings. The harder it is to repent, the more you are stretching that faith muscle. It will hurt!  But think of the pain as breaking down any big brick walls, we’ve built to keep other people out! If it is hard that means it is working.

I ask myself, when people take a bite out of me, what will they taste? Just recently I discovered that I was cultivating complaining and criticising – instead of living a life of acceptance with joy. I didn’t complain when I was with the people who annoyed me – BUT -I complained long and loudly when after I left them! Yeah … not proud of that lot! Each one of us needs to prioritise remembering that our hearts are His home, and Jesus loves sacrificial love. If we want Him to be in charge and present in our lives – then we will have to deal with any entitled attitudes that lead to us into sin. 

Sin separates us from His input and wisdom – fortunately repentance restores us, immediately. Our roots are designed to grow down into our Father’s love and keep us strong – even in the storms and hurricanes of this life. Instead, let’s talk about the things the Lord Himself is doing and share what’s really happening in our hearts. Moaning, complaining or getting angry at others, creates death. ‘The power of life and death is in the tongue’ and so we need His help to speak LIFE. BTW, this means what goes IN will eventually come OUT. I’m not being legalistic when I say that we can diagnose our own hearts by listening to our speech!

Life flows more easily when we live in His kingdom, instead of desperately trying to manage everything alone. We need His help, all the time! Sadly, it is way too easy to take this life too seriously, stressing over the things I can’t possibly change, or majoring on minor issues. I can get cranky when somebody at the shops is unaware of the disabled around them. I heard someone say this yesterday – and it impacted me — everybody around us has a story. Life is difficult for all of us.I think if we truly want to follow the Lord, we will need to remember Jesus SAW people. They were not like extras or bit players on the stage of His life!

Here’s something precious to think on when irritation strikes: “He chose the lowly, the laughable in the world’s eyes—nobodies—so that He would shame the somebodies. For He chose what is regarded as insignificant in order to supersede what is regarded as prominent, so that there would be no place for prideful boasting in God’s Presence. For it is not from man that we draw our life but from God as we are being joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. And now He is our God-given wisdom, our virtue, our holiness, and our redemption.” 1 Corinthians 1:28-30 TPT.

You are not all that, and neither am I. On the other hand – HE IS EVERYTHING. When people cross my path I want them to think, what was that? Bye. 👋

P 2979 Saturated.

/ DVH

To be saturated means that when life squeezes the daylights out of you — all that comes out is love! The Holy Spirit’s Presence in us, transforms us, and touches everyone around us. He attracts people, and He knows exactly what every heart we meet needs to hear. We are not called to pat down or pacify other people’s sin – we are called to shine HIS light into sin, without destroying the person captured by it. Love shines into the darkness with such a brilliance that even grumpy people are surprised.

We don’t seem to understand that He is now in all of us, and it is our joy to co-operate with Him. We make our hearts, His home, with the Holy Spirit’s help, otherwise we will get progressively deaf. That’s what disobedience, and carelessness does. Because He is now our dearest, most trusted Friend, the Holy Spirit can put His finger on anything He sees that is clogging up our flow of His love, in us and for others. As He flows through us that is the normal Christian life. 

Peter told the lame man in the book of Acts: “I don’t have money but what I do have I will give you.” He knew the Holy Spirit was in him and with him. Peter’s focus was on walking with God not ministry, or avoiding sin. The secret to flowing with the Holy Spirit is to allow Him to lead you. He is not some kind of emergency spare Friend sent to bail us out of trouble or make us look good! Life is so much easier, when He is in charge. Meanwhile, I can guarantee you that whatever He wants us to do, we will need to use our faith to do it. 

I find it incredibly interesting that Jesus Himself did not teach the disciples about what we call “the anointing.” He did not speak about God’s Presence with these men as a method—because the Holy Spirit is a PERSON, not a method! He simply taught these men God’s ways, then He demonstrated them, and then He told them to go and do it! 

The Lord’s importance and proximity in their lives had an overflowing effect – they were able to do what He did because they were living in His Presence. Ya might want to stop and think about that one! 🤔 Yet these men, who walked with Jesus, weren’t perfected in their personal faith – until their spiritual debt had been paid, and the Holy Spirit came to each one of them at Pentecost. After the Spirit’s arrival, they would’ve gladly died for what they believed instead of running away, as they had previously done.

The bible tells us that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts. We already have it, so we must stop checking out our feelings and instead follow His prompts. God loves it when we do what we do prompted by faith – every single day. Including TODAY! … “Today when you hear His voice, don’t harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled.” Hebrews 3:15. When you hear Him—obey Him. If He says you should apologise and fix things, then that other person’s response has nothing whatsoever to do with the outcome… even if they snarl at you! We are here to please Him, other people may be touched by Him as we obey, but that is not our priority. Our obedience releases our faith.

The source of His life in us is never US—it is His Presence IN us. “Christ in you the hope of glory..”  As we daily choose to use our faith to allow God to redeem our lives from fleshly habits—like holding apathy, offences,  bitterness, bad attitudes, wrong relationships and carelessness, we will become increasingly more free. Even seemingly unimportant things, that can trip us up — things like lying to save someone else’s feelings must go.

The love of God needs to fill us daily with the purposes and things of God. We can’t just pray: “Fill me now please Lord” and then walk out of the door and get grumpy because somebody parked across the driveway. And we don’t just go to work to do a job – now we work for Him! As we walk with Him we will move away from those things that are distracting us from our true calling and purpose. 

At the same time, the love of God captures our hearts. We begin to see Him do things through us that we cannot do ourselves. And I’m not just talking about walking on water! I’m talking about a bad tempered person finding that as they yield to the Holy Spirit’s promptings, and obey Him in faith, they are transformed. They experience the growth of the  fruit of self-control. Because of their obedience, they are choosing to remain in the vine.This love lifestyle doesn’t just work on things like a bad temper, it works on anything that keeps you and I from being distracted by this life. We remember how much God loves us! 

Our proximity to Jesus minute by minute, grows exponentially as we live aware of Him. The Holy Spirit is with us to remind us we are not guided by our flesh anymore.“Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell Him every detail of your life, then God’s wonderful peace that transcends human understanding, will guard your heart and mind through Jesus Christ.” Philippians 4:6-7 TPT.

As you can see, God’s peace is the final umpire. Our task is follow His peace. We have to protect our peace and be guided by it.  Living this life saturated with His love is not a pipe dream – it is our new way to live.

Bye. 👋

P 2915 How amazing is this?

/ DVH

“There’s a day coming when the mountain of God’s House Will be The Mountain—solid, towering over all mountains. All nations will river toward it, people from all over set out for it.They’ll say, “Come, let’s climb God’s Mountain, go to the House of the God of Jacob.He’ll show us the way He works so we can live the way we’re made.”Isaiah 2:2-5.

We made it safely to Hall’s Gap. It is our first stop — so today I thought I would talk about mountains, because I am surrounded by them. We are staying right at the base of an escarpment. There are lots of different birds, a mob of kangaroos etc. and the kind of quiet you will only experience when you are far far away from the city. We chose to come here because God told us to come. Then these poor souls had a very bad bushfire earlier this year. When a bushfire rages through your neighbourhood, love, hope and joy get burnt up too!

Isaiah’s verses impacted me today, because I am looking at a large rocky mountain, up close. Isn’t it great that one day we will see God’s mountain and climb it, hallelujah! Meanwhile my climbing days down here are over, I can barely climb into a people-mover without someone kind of shoving on my rear end. Stairs nearly do me in, and my rock-climbing days in this world are over.  But one day ….!!

An-y-wa-y … the bit of scripture that totally grabbed at me from these verses, was:‘He’ll show us the way He works so we can live the way we’re made.’Imagine that! Jesus came here specifically to do that for us … and so much MORE!! Sometimes we can forget we were created to live in God’s Presence, to go for walks with Him in the world He made for us. But we chose our own way, our own opinion, our own logic above His instructions. Jesus modelled what Christians can look like, then He sent US back the power to carry it out.

He came here with a huge download of the knowledge of His Father’s original plan. He came to pay the price for, as well as show us visibly, what redemption and restoration can do for human beings. Christ illustrated, gloriously, what living in the Father’s Presence, and walking with the Holy Spirit looks like! He revealed Father God and His Ways to all of us in such a simple, unobtrusive, selfless way. The Lord made the impossible, possible when He came here to show us how God’s Ways work. Now, we too can live our lives, right here, right now, like Jesus did. We too can respond to adverse circumstances the way He did, and love others wholeheartedly with no strings attached. Isn’t that a big thought?

The power to live this life, here and NOW, differently, was bought by Christ at Calvary and released through the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This world needed to be redeemed before the Holy Spirit could be everywhere. Before Christ’s birth, the Holy Spirit came to be with just with a person for special circumstances. But now, He is available to any one of us – all of us -to teach, help and guide us. Just like the disciples followed Jesus around, now we follow the Spirit of the Living God. This is not a special club, the bible says: “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” Revelation 22:17.EVERYTHING ABOUT OUR HEAVENLY FATHER SAYS: “COME!”

The power of God was released, through a human being just like you and I, and then Jesus died and left here — but then He sent back a PERSON Who can be everywhere – to guide us.  If Jesus hadn’t done what He did so freely, we would still be striving to reach heaven through a religious man-made Tower of Babel. I think this shows all of humanity that we need to know the Holy Spirit and what He likes and loves, better than we know anyone else. The option remains with us to choose. First, we choose Christ to save us from our sins, and then we choose the Holy Spirit to help us become everything we were always designed to be. 

God loved His time with Adam and Eve in the garden. That deliberately chosen time is an illustration of His intention. It shows us that He wants to be with us, because He likes our company. We are the only creatures on this earth who can choose to love and enjoy Him. I believe the Lord loves the reciprocity of this arrangement. We do not have to pray and talk to Him – now we get to pray and talk to Him. We were made in His image, God does not want ‘yes’ men and woman, He wants us to learn about His Ways and fall in love with the One Who made us by our own freely made choices. How amazing is that? 

Almighty God sent Jesus here to free us from sin, and show us how to really live. Because we have the freedom to choose, that means our choices are incredibly powerful. It’s the minute by minute choices we make that decide who we are now, and who we will become  – the choice to live out His will, His Way is filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Bye for today, 👋.

P 2673 Who or what has your heart?

/ DVH

“When you pass through the deep, stormy sea, you can count on Me to be there with you. When you pass through raging rivers, you will not drown. When you walk through persecution like fiery flames, you will not be burned; the flames will not harm you,” Isaiah 43:2 TPT.

The above verse is mentioned today to comfort to anyone who is in a very dark place. It promises us that God’s Presence is never absent despite our circumstances. The thing is, we must remember that this verse and others like it, are faith verses. Almighty God said it, and He means it, so we need to embrace it. However, in those hard times we may not feel a thing! We may dearly need to feel better, but our feelings have nothing whatsoever to do with His Grace in our lives! Even our disappointment could be seen as judgment against His ability to use everything to help us.

The lack of change can sometimes be the reason we are strongly tempted to think that He is not with us, because we have a great expectation that He will deliver us … but sometimes things can even get even worse!!  So what happened? Is it sin in our lives? No! Sin went on the cross. Does God not care that we feel overwhelmed by our circumstances? Of course He does, but we must remind ourselves that He says “I will be with you” — He does not say – you will FEEL Me with you! Yeah, I know, that seems to be splitting hairs, but let’s remember that now we are in His kingdom, where He is King. We chose to come under His rule, and we will need to trust Him to do what He has promised.

“God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”Numbers 23:19. In our society today, people are judged or exalted or rewarded because of their actions. As Christians we need to remember that Almighty God does not do things to meet mankind’s expectations. He does not answer to us. In other words, our societal attitudes don’t feature in His decision making processes. Whatever His answer, action, or lack of! … the real point is – His ways are perfect. So, if there is no answer, or corresponding change of circumstances, then we need to remember that He is sovereign. We must always leave our heart with Him, that is the safest place for it.

“No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; He’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; He’ll always be there to help you come through it. So, my very dear friends, when you see people reducing God to something they can use or control, get out of their company as fast as you can.” 1 Corinthians 10:13-14. MSG.

Personally, I have discovered that I can set my pain and strife limits a bit too low – I can probably move and change much more than I think I can! I get side-tracked because I am not all that excited about stretching — old bones, etc. Everything creaks when I am stretched! In those moments, it is good to remember that this life is the only one I’m going to get, and it is about growth and change. That’s two more things older people don’t like much!! I have to remind myself over and over again, that the Lord is bigger than my circumstances, and if they remain the same, after I have prayed … then He has a purpose I can’t see yet! Good place to pray: “Teach me Your ways, Lord, so I can walk with You.” Amen.

“Even when Your path takes me through the valley of deepest darkness, fear will never conquer me, for You already have! Your authority is my strength and my peace. The comfort of Your love takes away my fear. I’ll never be lonely, for You are near.” Psalms 23:4 TPT.

This verse from the 23rd Psalm is a great clue to the solution to my problem and it diagnoses the heart of what is really going on. Who or what has my heart? Does fear rule me when the going gets tough, or does He? We must always remember that “there is no fear in love,” as well as,  “what time I am afraid I will trust in Thee.” When I finally catch on to the fact that I am feeling afraid, it can take a while, but eventually I have an ‘AHA!’ moment. That’s when I realise that I have let circumstances fill my vision, instead of WHO He is. Rookie mistake. I’m back thinking that He’s there to make my life better, I’ve totally forgotten I am here for His purposes.

After repenting, my next move is to ask the Lord, “Who can I bless?” ‘ That’s because ‘it is in giving that we receive!’  And in those difficult times, my receiver seems to have gone off-line. Sometimes doing that simple thing leads to a fresh revelation about Him. And sometimes it leads to a fresh revelation about me. I need both! I have found that taking my focus away from the difficulty, and caring for someone else, eventually gives me a chance to view things from another angle. As I bless others, I remember that my heart belongs to Him, I gave it to Him. 

He won’t ever ‘leave me or forsake me or give me up.’ Switching focus clarifies what really matters. 👋