Goodness

P 3314 Galatians 5:16-26.

/ DVH

“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.      The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.        But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.”

Let’s reflect on this scripture for a little bit — the Holy Spirit is always moving. This means we will need to keep in step with Him. He is always doing something, going somewhere, reaching out, calling out and blessing someone. He can’t help it, it’s His nature. He is so saturated and filled to overflowing with the Love of God for each and every human being on the planet – that He simply oozes love, compassion, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness etc.… everywhere He goes. 

The Holy Spirit is a beautiful Companion. He is compassionate, impartial, non-biased, and non-discriminatory toward each one of us – individually. He knows how to teach us to avoid sin, by staying close to Jesus. The Lord Jesus beautifully illustrated incredible qualities in the Gospels. His teaching was very clear, the people who choose to follow Him, walk, sit, stand, laugh, eat, pray with the same heart He had. A lover’s heart. SomeOne Who can tell us how to walk through the mire of this life without getting soiled.

Like the scripture above says: bad things aren’t hard to see, most of the time they stand out like a sore thumb! And before you and I start excusing ourselves by saying ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ My advice is to ask His opinion and then take a closer look in the mirror of the Word. Some of that icky stuff presents with other symptoms. Like sneaking looks at some chick or guy in the train …and wondering stuff we shouldn’t be wondering. Of course nobody who says they are a ‘Christian’ ever does that stuff – do they? These thoughts fly through everyone’s heads, you just don’t have to throw them a party! 

Hubby told me that he had to look at the ground for years, because so many women today were so poorly dressed. His problem with skimpy outer wear, that was more like underwear, got easier after he began to see everyone through the Lord’s eyes instead of his own. That’s the secret to staying in the river. Walking with the Holy Spirit changes the way we see other people, things, and situations. Allow Him to correct your path with His eye upon you. Simply give Him permission to interrupt you. He never, ever, takes His eyes off us – that’s because YOU and I are ‘the apple of His eye.’

We treat the Lord’s book like a precious Friend Who sits with us, showing us daily who He is, and how to walk with Him. We need this ongoing course correction and the Holy Spirit provides it. God’s book is a book of wonder — things you thought you knew one day, suddenly open up like a beautiful flower and we find ourselves glimpsing Who He is in a new way, through the same words we read yesterday! His book is like a kaleidoscope, the slightest movement changes the view. 

‘Walking with the Holy Spirit’ means we are choosing to walk with Him aware of His Presence, all the time. Whether things are busy or not. If He calls, then we stop and listen, because we know His voice in our lives is a great privilege. If we can’t find Him, then we go and look for Him in the book. Because, just like the Shulammite in Song of Songs — lovers of God feel His absence very keenly. Walking with the Holy Spirit means walking through this life seeing everything that happens through His eyes, doing things the way He wants them done. And we have purposed in our hearts to learn to love other people like He does. 

Being with Him is the pleasure of pleasing SomeOne so dear to our hearts …we live for His joy-filled responses! They are even greater than we can imagine. Falling in love with SomeOne does that to you.  It has nothing to do with us being perfect people — instead we know and love SomeOne Whose POV is so precious, we don’t want to go anywhere, or do anything without HIM. We like listening to His voice.  

The result of the Lord’s sacrificial death is that we now own His legacy. All the Godly qualities He gave to His vast family. Now our inheritance is the ability to live in this world like He did, walking in fellowship with the Holy Spirit.  And Galatians 5:16-26 sums it up!  Bye 👋.

P 3290 Choose your weapons.

/ DVH

2 Corinthians 10:3-5  “For though we live in the world, WE DO NOT WAGE WAR AS THE WORLD DOES. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  This scripture always evokes the same thought in me, ‘so why on earth are WE acting like everyone else does?’ Like brother James says: “this ought not to be so…”

We quite simply can’t use this world’s weapons in our daily ongoing battles that we fight. Let’s always remember we aren’t fighting people – we are fighting those things, spiritual forces, that people have embraced to protect themselves and often they are deceived. BTW, this immediately makes me wonder why we think talking aboutstuff will fix it!  2 Corinthians tells us His Word is meant to demolish arguments and pretensions. We definitely need to know what that looks like. To me: it looks like knowing God is always good. Plus we live this life knowing our side WON … but sometimes, we have momentary afflictions. However, our Saviour and our Comforter will never leave us. 

We need DIVINE weapons. The armour of God, the fruit of the Spirit, plus His Wisdom and spiritual gifts to combat whatever comes at us. Let’s look at that statement for a minute  …  because our weapons are divine, then they are weapons from the Lord. So our next question is – what do they look like? Do some research in Ephesians 4&6, or 1 Corinthians 12&13, or Romans 12. But let’s start with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control those are Jesus’ kind of weapons. I recommend using them liberally under the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Start by showing the Lord you love Him … by LOVING AND OBEYING HIS WORD.

Here’s something that could raise your hair and your eyebrows! Almighty God used the weapon of His own Son’s obedient death, to defeat sin and death. We don’t use normal weapons, we don’t have to … HE WON! Hmmm. Those particular weapons don’t look like the stuff you buy in your local gun-shop. You will probably hardly ever see a bible lying side by side with a gun. Why not? Be-ca-use … Jesus said: “The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance [to the full, till it overflows].” John 10:10. We simply can’t get to abundant life using carnal weapons! Those things diminish and destroy it. Carnal weapons are motivated by “look after me and mine.” Abundant life is motivated by “what did Jesus say?” 

Prayer is another one of God’s most potent weapons. It takes you and I out of the equation, and puts the Holy Spirit in charge. Ain’t nobody out there that wants to mess with Him! He made the world and everything in it!  Do that stuff at your own peril. The Spirit of God will love us and help us, until we feel so-oo-oo full, we will wonder why any of us went the wrong way in the first place! This is why Jesus said: “Love your enemies!”  He inhabits that kind of outwardly looking passion. Jesus has passionate eyes of fire in the book of Revelation.

Love will set captives free, and do even more things that we haven’t personally discovered, yet.  When it is carefully uncovered and digested, loving people is a revelation of Universal proportions and a weapon of mass destruction! It destroys the work of the evil one. If we try to use our own love, we will probably run out fairly quickly and come up short. But God’s love is endless. It is shameless in its passion. It smashes any stronghold of unbelief, fear, mortification, spite, anger etc. and restores and heals everything it touches. This is why love is the best weapon ever – it simply can’t be defeated. You can stuff love into a tomb, and 3 days later it will come bursting out, destroying every one of your theories and theologies!                                                                     

We need to cultivate love in even the smallest things, because it doesn’t come naturally to us. We are far more used to self-preservation. We often end up using our tongues like swords and knives and cut people up into little bits because they have somehow threatened us “…These things, my brothers, should not be this way [for we have a moral obligation to speak in a manner that reflects our fear of God and profound respect for His precepts]. James 3:10 sure has a handle on humanity and the way it thinks and acts!

Let’s choose our weapons carefully – we can’t possibly live this new life well, unless the Holy Spirit helps us. He is pure love in action. And He can love both sides!  We need His weapons that cut people free, not maim them.  I think we should always start by applying love first. When love is uppermost, there is no room for hatred.   Learning to love others transforms our minds. Bye 👋

P 3284 We have His deposit in us.

/ DVH

“Everything we could ever need for life and godliness has already been deposited in us by His divine power. For all this was lavished upon us through the rich experience of knowing Him who has called us by name and invited us to come to Him through a glorious manifestation of His goodness. As a result of this, He has given you magnificent promises that are beyond all price, so that through the power of these tremendous promises we can experience partnership with the divine nature, by which you have escaped the corrupt desires that are of the world. 

So devote yourselves to lavishly supplementing your faith with goodness, and to goodness add understanding, and to understanding add the strength of self-control, and to self-control add patient endurance, and to patient endurance add godliness, and to godliness add mercy toward your brothers and sisters, and to mercy toward others add unending love. Since these virtues are already planted deep within, and you possess them in abundant supply, they will keep you from being inactive or fruitless in your pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately.” 2 Peter 1:3-8 TPT.

When it comes to spiritual matters, like transformation through obeying the things Jesus said, or praying for the sick etc., we can no longer say we can’t do these things. Why not? Because the moment we gave our lives and hearts to Jesus, the Holy Spirit has already deposited the potential for a new life and totally different responses in us. They just need to be exercised. In other words we simply have to cultivate them by saying ‘no’ to the stuff we used to do before. The seed for a Godly life is already in us, we water it with the Word of God and prayer, and throw in the fertiliser of self-sacrifice. Mature people know we can’t always have everything we want and they face their responsibilities realistically, and with God-given determination. (See 2 Corinthians 1:8.)

The same power that enabled Christ Jesus to do what He did, is already in us. Let’s choose to obey Him and let it flow out of us, using our faith. Despite the lies we sometimes tell ourselves, we are no longer under a yoke of slavery. If you think about that sentence it will suddenly hit you how true it is – the more we think about what we do, the more we will realise we choo-oo-oose to do stuff! One of the best things the Lord gave us, apart from the Holy Spirit, and His OWN righteousness, salvation and redemption in our lives, is the power of choice. We can now choose. However, we will face the cost as we lay aside those things that are trying to drag us down. 

What the Lord did at Calvary was tremendous, He did more than die for our sins, He imparted His character, His love for His Father, into us. The potential for transformation is already inside us! Obedience now becomes a matter of using our faith and putting our feelings aside. Who are we going to believe? The Lord Jesus, or that other guy, who loves to throw doubt around. Listen to this: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “DID GOD REALLY SAY (??) ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” Genesis 3:1. There you go! Doubt!! Here’s Matthew 4:3: “The tempter came to Him and said, “IF you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”  He uses “if” like this, 3 times.

We simply cannot afford to let satan steal our God-given faith. It is just as real as our eternal salvation. When we let him do that we are not reaching our full potential in Christ – yet! In Christ means standing in a God-given position. We’ve been united with Christ – He chose to do it. This represents a new God-given identity. Jesus took my old ‘self’ to the cross with Him and gave me a new identity, like His. When Father God looks at us now, He sees the blood of Jesus covering all our lives. Just like a foetus is in the mother, we are now in the Son under the blood. The safest place for us to stand is in Him, using our faith to believe that sin is no longer our Master. 

Before we met Jesus sin dragged us around like the tail on a kite. But now, we have the power to ignore its diversions, deception and lies, and live this life, here and now, like Jesus Himself would. We don’t have to give in to the urges and feelings we cultivated before we were saved. The power of God now resides within us. The Holy Spirit came here and He never left! He also gave us gifts to bless other people. Now we don’t have to give in to the temptation to live like we did before. We don’t even have to manipulate others to get what we want, Jesus will supplies those needs now.

We can be loving, patient, kind, long-suffering with others. He promised He would not leave us alone and He didn’t! Let’s believe what the bible says, above our experiences or feelings or the PAST. We have the Holy Spirit, God’s deposit within us. We are attached to the Vine, now we let the sap (the power of God) do its work! It can be hard initially, because we have a lifetime of experiences to the contrary, but keep on keeping on and you will breakthrough into a new place. You are His own child. You share His DNA. Bless you. 👋

P 3262 What language does God speak?

/ DVH

This could blow your mind, it blew mine. Just out of the blue this morning the Lord said to me: ”What language do I speak?” WOW! … I mean I wasn’t even praying or anything! We know that the Lord speaks every language of man but does HE also have a language?… I decided to go with what Ezekiel wisely said instead:“Only YOU know Lord.” Then He reminded me that He can speak every language on the planet and all the languages of angels. Plus the unutterable sighs and groaning of the human heart. WOW … again! 🤯 In fact, we don’t even have to speak, because the Lord already knows. (Psalm 139:4)

Over the years, I’ve learnt that when the Holy Spirit asks me a question, it’s time to be quiet and listen, He’s about to teach me something I don’t know. So I put a sock in it and listened. This is what He told me:“I speak faith,  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control..” Colour me flabbergasted. It took me ages to even comprehend what that means – I think of those things as actions.

First of all, it rocked my world to find out that these things we call spiritual gifts or traits, are languages! Then I realised that many people call ‘love’ a language. I know that Jesus is our perfect example of these things we call fruit… but are these things also God’s language? Off we go! In Psalm 139:6 it says:“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.”  I’m so-o going to need His help!

I kept on praying about it, and then I read this:“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, the Word was God.” John 1:1. Our Lord Jesus, is His Father’s language in human form. 🤯 Jesus Christ is God’s living LANGUAGE. The more I prayed over this, with the Holy Spirit helping me, the more I started to remember other scriptures. God also speaks faith! He spoke this world into being when there was nothing – that’s faith! The Holy Spirit went off and did what Almighty God said, and that too was faith!!  Faith is a language – our universe and beyond were founded on His Words, and then Holy Spirit turned the language into an action. 

Adam and Eve blew it when they disobeyed and ate the fruit. They stopped speaking the languages God had given them, when the devil slithered in and taught them to speak doubt! A questioning perversion of the language of faith. Faith has a way to speak, and it originates in God, and freely obeys Him. Here’s an interesting thought for free: Moses lifted up his staff over the Red sea and Psalm 114:3 says: “The sea SAW it, and fled…”  The SEA saw WHAT? The staff of authority in Moses’ hand! There are many bigger ways to see and understand the things of God than we can imagine – sadly we’ve restricted ourselves to just MAN’s knowledge.

My hubby had this thought: “Jesus spoke PEACE to the sea when it was turbulent.” That rough sea obeyed the Lord immediately He spoke faith to it. When the Lord said “Peace be still,” He was speaking one of His Father’s languages. He told the disciples once in John 12:49 “For I have never spoken on My own initiative or authority, but the Father Himself who sent Me has given Me a commandment regarding what to say and what to speak.”

Let’s look at another one of the things that we call fruit, but God uses them as one of His languages. I picked patience. When someone is speaking to a little child and the little one doesn’t understand them, we will often say that the person is speaking patiently to the child. Patience has a tone, It is another kind of language. That language can speak to human beings as well as animals etc. and get the same response. It relaxes and soothes. God’s languages are spoken for the other person’s well-being. 

The kingdom of God down here on this earth has a voice. These kingdom languages help us to serve, know and honour the Lord, as we learn to speak them. He uses us to speak His language to others. We dare not waste our time speaking ‘man’ – we need to learn to speak His language everywhere we go – by believing and listening to what He says and acting on it. That’s how His Word begins to transform our language – when His Word becomes our language! We will learn how He speaks, when we stop predicting what we want to hear from the Lord, and take the time to wait for Him to speak to us.  

Like I said at the top of the page, the Holy Spirit shared this with me, but let’s be totally clear, my brain is not smart enough to come up with these thoughts! We need the Holy Spirit to teach us our Father’s native tongue … so we can be pure in our speech. Purity of speech isn’t about throwing out swear words, or criticism, or hate – it’s about learning to speak LOVE. The bible says: “That which is not faith is sin.”  We often go for avoiding the negative – instead of participating in the positive. 

We could be outwardly speaking well of others — but in our hearts, which are open to Him at all times, what do we really think? What are we projecting toward other people – His languages of faith, hope and love? Or are we speaking from the hurt of the past …and head knowledge… which can be a dead language. What language does our Father speak? – I think it is love. And you can be sure He speaks your language too. Bye. 👋

P 3260 Always our choice.

/ DVH

“Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything —every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.” 2 Corinthians 9:8 TPT. Amazing isn’t it? Here it talks about the clear reality that God has given us so much Grace that now we have more than enough to give away. It’s in writing, in Jesus Christ’s WILL and WE benefit. 

Everybody likes abundance. I do too! But I wonder how often we are tested on that particular concept … ?? It feels to me like I’m tested daily to be honest! If you are tired, ill, young, old, especially or you don’t have what everybody else appears to have… all that stuff we think we need. Those things we seem to be missing out onwill come and sit on us and camp there. Removing our God-given view of the eternal. The problem is, for years we have thought that Almighty God is here to indulge US! 

Look, I’m very happy for the Lord to ‘supply all my needs according to His riches in glory‘ … Whoo-pp-eee!! Yes, please! But IS THAT what this verse is actually about? Hmmm. Please note it says… ‘according to HIS riches in glory.’  Our Heavenly Father’s idea of riches is totally different than ours! Jesus is rich in all of the Graces that this life needs… and… I am not … a-n-d … neither are you. Not unless we start to use our faith. 

He has infinitely more Grace than I can ever imagine, and He won’t run OUT… e-v-e-r.  So, because I am now in Christ Jesus — I don’t have to run out either! That’s what Calvary did for all of us. When we choose to follow the Lord and obey Him, we are potentially rich in the things that last. The thing we need to ask ourselves is this, are we appropriating what we have been given? Or do we bleat ‘it’s too hard ‘ like a lost sheep waiting for the Shepherd to come and rescue us all the time.

Have we become so busy with earthly riches we’ve forgotten all of His benefits for us? “Bless (affectionately, gratefully praise) the Lord, O my soul, and forget not [ONE OF] all His benefits” – Psalm 103:2 AMPC. It’s all a done deal! He has already given us His Grace, now we can’t afford to let our hearts forget what He did! The Lord could care less about worldly wealth. He knows it can disappear in a heartbeat. Let’s list some of His real benefits. 

1. He forgives our sins. (Matthew 6:12)

2. He heals our diseases. (Exodus 15:26)

3. He redeems our life from destruction. (Psalm 34:22)

4. He crowns us with loving kindness and tender mercies (Luke 15:11-24)

5. He satisfies us with good things (James 1:17)

6. He renews our youth like the eagles. (Isaiah 40:31)

7. He executes righteousness and judgment for all the oppressed. (Matthew 11:38-30).

8. He makes His ways and His acts known to us.

Stop for a minute and just breathe. You and I, right here, right now, have access to Jesus’ own unlimited supply of His Father’s Love, the Holy Spirit’s wisdom, salvation, redemption, a brand new heart, plus a new way to live. And… AND!! … HEAVEN IS OURS!  Are these benefits or what? Let’s not ever forget that we have Grace, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control … These things now belong to us. Why on earth should we worry about money, etc. when heaven belongs to us? Jesus died so we can have all this heavenly stuff that changes our lives, here and now. 

So how do I get it? Glad you asked me that!  “Don’t bargain with God. Be direct. ASK for what you need. This isn’t a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we’re in. If your child asks for bread, do you trick him with sawdust? If he asks for fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing. You’re at least decent to your own children. So don’t you think the God who conceived you in love will be even better?” Matthew 7:7-11.

A.S.K… Ask, and then A.C.T. — it’s a piece of cake. We’ve all been given faith – now we need to use it to enter into the riches Jesus won on our behalf at Calvary. Does anybody out there think that they will need love, joy, peace, patience, etc. IN HEAVEN?? Me neither. We need it down here! What the heck are we waiting for? We cannot afford to have His heavenly riches as an add-on to earthly ones. The earthly riches will distract us, and cause us to forget the heavenly ones. And, before you know it, how we feel becomes more important than loving others. 

We need to use our faith not our feelings. We can lose our peace because we are struggling with, and for, the things that do not last. Bad move. I’m with Joshua — smart guy Joshua! … He stayed behind in the tent of meeting and learnt stuff from God Himself, personally. He received wisdom and heavenly priorities in that tent! “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua 24:25. Joshua made a personal CHOICE. He chose to do things God’s Way. It was permanent and irrevocable – he didn’t forget God’s benefits. 

We can continue to scramble around in the dust like a chicken looking for worms, and forget to use our God-given blood-bought ability to fly high — OR we can fly like eagles and renew our strength. It’s always our choice. Bye. 👋

P 3241 God’s Inexhaustible riches.

/ DVH

“To me, [though I am] the very least of all the saints (God’s people), this grace [which is undeserved] was graciously given, to proclaim to the Gentiles the good news of the incomprehensible riches of Christ [that spiritual wealth which no one can fully understand],…”  Ephesians 3:8. My topic today is spiritual wealth. Jesus died to make us so rich spiritually, and now we need to give those riches away.  

Meanwhile, watch out for lukewarmness – that misses the blessing of spiritual riches because it cannot see spiritually. This trait, mentioned in Revelation 3:8, has nothing to do with feelings, it has to do with inaction.Anyone who does what the Lord says ends up crazy about Him, because they see His Personhood. How rich He is in the things that last. We can’t afford to ignore what we’ve been given, at great personal cost to Himself. 

These things that flourish in His kingdom – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. These spiritual traits are a part of His incredible wealth. But let’s not forget that we must not gloss over the cost of the cross, ever. The cross is the reason we can belong to Him.

BTW, being ‘lukewarm’ means I choose to look after ME. It thinks what Jesus said is nice, but unattainable, so it reverts to a default position of doing nothing. I want to ask you to think about this question for a few moments – is it in Jesus’ Character to ask us to do something we can’t do? Sometimes, He does ask us to do things we can’t do without His help… but as He has promised to always be with us, we can be totally assured that He will give us His input! 

Obedience isn’t an option – it’s a KEY. What is stopping us from being obedient? How did we get to be lukewarm? These kind of questions help us clarify our motivations. Deep down, when we truly love the Lord, we all know if we are fudging our answers. Are we hoping that if we say something enough that will make it true? The thing is — you might fool me —- but there’s no chance on God’s green earth that anyone is going to fool Him. Why not? 

Hang on to your hat Henry … JESUS IS TRUTH! He is not ‘a truth’- He is the One and only form of truth we can trust! In the book of John, we are told Jesus was here from the beginning, and He is called the Word of God. So here’s our first treasure – Christ Himself. The One Who lived and died for us is our Greatest Treasure. Jesus was equal with God but He did not use that equality to exult Himself, instead… He humbled Himself and became one of us. 

However, none of this could have happened without the Presence and power of the Holy Spirit. He, together with Christ, is our Primary Treasure. The Holy Spirit intimately knows the heart of the Father toward us. He longs to help us to daily bless our Father’s heart. In the past we have tried to use the Holy Spirit, but He is not a commodity – He is our treasure! 

The second treasure is: the bible.If you read it asking God to reveal Himself to you, you will find Him within its pages, unexpectedly. It has treasure troves in it stored up for us. Those things that we need to pay close attention to, and dig out. Any other book I have read, may have insight, but the bible contains and reveals God’s truth. We cannot say we love the bible without being obedient to what it says. Our calling is to be God’s obedient children. 

The bible is a word picture of the heart of God and His dealings with mankind. Our Father’s “unsearchable riches,” refer to His limitless, and inexhaustible spiritual blessings of grace, love, faith and hope. They include forgiveness, eternal life, our adoption as His children, and total salvation. He is daily offering us treasures too vast to fully measure or ever exhaust.. His love for us is so passionate it is inexhaustible! 

But as Revelation 3:8 says: the day will come for His judgment. Right now we are in the time of His Mercy. His mercy is another Inexhaustible treasure. It is essential that we understand this fact, His mercy is not just toward US! It is incredibly patient and long suffering toward everybody else on this earth. He is so rich in Mercy!

Next I want to talk about Grace, which is another incredible treasure of God. Grace is the vehicle we get into when we deal with other people and speak to the Lord Himself. Grace is the oil of God, given freely to us so we can distribute it toward other people. The body of Christ has been anointed with GRACE! It smooths the pathway that we travel on when we interact with people who have none. However, Grace is never permission to do whatever I want!

Lastly, we are told in 1 Corinthians 14 to chase love, to pursue it. WE are the object of HIS love and He constantly pursues us. God’s love is another  treasure we have been undeservedly given. Let’s give it away to those people around us who don’t deserve it either! When we choose to live in, and value these treasures … and there are lots more so check it out for yourself — then they become the tools we use. On ourselves, and everyone else. Our God is inexhaustibly rich in the things this world does not value. This means we can be rich in these things too. Bye. 👋 

P 3235 We give away what we have.

/ DVH

Now there’s a daunting thought!! Peter and John were off to a prayer meeting when a lame beggar asked for money. “When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. Peter looked straight at him, as did John. Then Peter said, “Look at us!” … … “Then Peter said, “Silver or gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.”  Taking him by the right hand, he helped him up, and instantly the man’s feet and ankles became strong. He jumped to his feet and began to walk…” This story is in Acts 3:3,4,6-8a.

The thought that Peter knew what he had, blows my mind. ‘Lord, please help all of us to know what You have given us in these jars of clay!’ Amen. This kind of confidence in God’s investment in His children can motivate anyone into action. One of our major difficulties in the church at this moment, is we don’t know who we are. People who know who they are, have confidence, they do great exploits. 

Secondly, Peter knew what was really important for this man. It was healing, not money. I mean wow! I counted the gifts Peter used;  two words of knowledge, plus discernment, and healing. Plus let’s remember, that he and John were actually going somewhere else! Think about that. What would be your response if you saw a lame man begging at the side of the road, as you were going off to church? Yeah, I know, bring that up! Sadly I think we’ve turned into a people who gather info and form committees, rather than responding to need. Could it be because we doubt what He told us He has given us?

It was amazing in Acts. Nobody knew what was going to come next and God came to every meeting. He was their treasure. How He must have loved it!  But people also dropped dead when they lied to God. Someone else died because he spoke the truth and was stoned to death for it. One man, whose name we all know, was going about his business, finding Christians to kill, and God knocked him down, and blinded him. Then, the Lord very kindly revealed to him how truly blind he was. “Please Lord do that for us too!” Amen.

Have you ever asked yourself – what on earth has happened to us? Good. It’s good to ask questions. Even better to start with yourself, like —why aren’t I doing this? Then, we need to move past ‘me,’ to all of us, the church as a whole. But please remember, we can hide ourselves away from our own personal responsibility if we start out by blaming the church, or the pastor etc. In that state, we may never find the answer! But if I start with me, I’m pretty sure I will get plenty to go on with. I have so far!

We can always give away His kindness, mercy, joy, peace, faithfulness and goodness. Because He gives that to us every single day, “Resist revenge, and make sure that no one pays back evil in place of evil but always pursue doing what is beautiful to one another and to all the unbelievers.” 1 Thessalonians 5:15 TPT. 

Did you get that? Paul said PURSUE it.  It won’t fall on us … we will have to run after it. I want to do my best not to waste my time even thinking about revenge. Otherwise I will have no time or energy left to pursue giving other people beautiful things. The beautiful things we do should far outweigh any revenge etc. that we have or an attitude that someone has toward us. Meanwhile, sadly, we are way too smart in the church to call anything revenge—we call it “hurt feelings” instead. That sounds much better doesn’t it?

Except for one little thing the Lord Himself said ..“Then Jesus told His disciples, “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” Matthew 16:24-26. It is necessary to look at what is really at stake, if we decide to  give in to our hurt feelings — or vengeful attitudes. 

People who deliberately do mean-spirited things to us are the splinters in our new life in Him. Some of those splinters really are BIG ones. And we get stabbed purely because we have chosen to deny ourselves and follow Him. Some situations are little splinters that you can feel, but you can’t seem to get rid of  … and every now and then they poke you hard and hurt you again.  And some slivers remain invisible for virtually years, only to stab you in the heart at the least expected moment. One way or another we all pick up, and get stabbed by splinters.

The major difficulty we have is that we don’t yet fully understand Who lives inside us. The Person Who lives IN us is greater than any old splinter. Peter and John definitely KNEW what they had. They had been filled with the Holy Spirit and He brought a whole new way to think with Him. They didn’t form a prayer group, or phone around to find out what everyone else thought. They were both there on the spot, so Peter gave what he knew he had. That’s our issue right there…

We cannot give away what we do not think we have. It’s definitely time we did something about that. Bye. 👋

P 3231 Stepping out in faith.

/ DVH

All of us meet people that are here in our lives one day, and gone the next. Living for Jesus means that we need to live this life prepared to spin around, and change our plans in a heartbeat. For some people we meet, we could be their only Christian contact, so let’s be alert to His leading. Sometimes strangers are more prepared to listen than friends.

Here’s one example of why it is good to talk about Jesus to people you barely know. Up until the age of 25, to my knowledge I had not met a Christian who had the life of God in them. According to Google, who apparently knows everything (!?!) this means I had met between 10,000 – 30,000 people. And not one of them impressed me with their own living faith. Faith that showed. Nobody talked about Jesus personally. He seemed to be an out-of-reach deity that we had to answer to, one day. A woman I barely knew, told me Jesus was alive and He wanted to know me.

Since then, in all the years of loving and serving Him, I’ve met heaps of religious folk – and let’s be clear about it – they were all lovely people. People with principles. People who went to church weekly… but hardly any of them stood out as someone filled with the life of Christ! What I noticed was this, those people who did stand out, did what He told them to do. They lived the kind of life He would. Jesus wasn’t only their Saviour – He was their Lord! Sometimes we skip that ‘Lord” part when we invite people to come forward to the altar. We forget to tell them they are giving their lives away. Making that kind of choice clear takes this huge decision out of head knowledge, into heart knowledge. 

Anyway, I attended the lady’s church, and I did so with happy anticipation. From my perspective, these were the people who knew Him. They had known Him much longer than I had, and I couldn’t wait to hear their stories. Sigh. They looked at me like I was from Mars whenever I talked about how meeting Jesus had changed  my life. It seems to me that this kind of sleepiness, has slowly been overcoming many of us who are attending  church. We’ve ended up as passengers. People who got onto the train with the destination of heaven in mind, but they know nothing about running the train.

Fortunately, our Lord wants to take us all on a journey, moving what we learn from our heads, into our hearts. Otherwise we end up leaving things like witnessing to evangelists, or we settle for asking people to come with us to church. Jesus never once asked anyone to come to the synagogue with Him! He simply proclaimed God’s love was Good News. Sadly we often leave proclaiming the good news to the pastor… because that’s what he’s paid to do! …And yes, I have heard that said, and similar comments.. 

However, if no-one dares to sound the alarm, or we don’t care to listen, we will keep on doing the same old, same old, until we leave this world. Consistently expecting that someone else will do what we’ve all been asked to do. Signing up is one thing, going out watching and listening to Him, is entirely another.

The way to totally transform our lives is to live our lives His Way! That’s in the book. This one decision — the action of complete and utter surrendered obedience — plunges us into a place where we need to rely upon His strength, goodness, wisdom, and loving kindness, because we’ve learnt our own resources aren’t working. The Lord is kind, the Holy Spirit will take us gently through His learning processes. He has never asked me to do anything He did not prepare me to do beforehand. Let’s be clear, I don’t always like His lessons, but I have definitely come to appreciate what they do for me, inside! 

These situations don’t appear in my life with big signs on them that mark them as ‘lessons.’  Instead I’ve found that the action starts by deliberately making a choice to do something He asked me to do. Today, I thought I’d give some ideas from my own life. —  I’ve found I am so much more willing to do a hard thing, after the Lord has taught my heart to be obedient in the little things… Like not telling someone what I think of them, when I am annoyed to the point of anger. Or perhaps I feel I am to give away funds I could personally use. Or I read the scriptures – and one word, one phrase or one verse jumps out at me, then I pray and ask Him to show me how to put it into action. 

At the same time we need Him to help us to be alert to every contact we make – some people are only in our lives momentarily. Hubby and I have had countless opportunities to speak openly and honestly to people who were never going to be a permanent or even a temporary part of our lives. Ships passing in the night, some people would call it. We were once driving a long distance, delivering bibles, and we stopped, randomly – so we thought – at a service station, to break up our journey. We decided to have a hot drink and sat at a table outside. 

An older couple asked if they could join us. After a brief conversation, during which we explained we’ve delivered bibles all over Australia, they asked if it was possible for them to buy one from us. They had no idea about where or how to buy a bible. We happily gave them one, and some simple things to help them to read it themselves. After that… they went north and we continued going south. We arrived as they were leaving! But I believe that when we choose to yield to Him, God personally arranges our steps. 

The bible says… “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord …” Psalm 37:23. When we live like the verses we read are true – He makes them true in our lives. My own life is proof that incidental encounters can change lives! However, not everyone we meet is our God-appointed assignment. That’s why faith is required. Stepping out, even when it is not anticipated, can open all kinds of interesting doors. 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 3219 A different kind of fasting.

/ DVH

Isaiah 58:5-11: “Is this what I want—this doing of penance and bowing like reeds in the wind, putting on sackcloth and covering yourselves with ashes? Is this what you call fasting? No, the kind of fast I want is that you stop oppressing those who work for you and treat them fairly and give them what they earn. I want you to share your food with the hungry and bring right into your own homes those who are helpless, poor, and destitute. Clothe those who are cold, and don’t hide from relatives who need your help. If you do these things, God will shed His own glorious light upon you. 

He will heal you; your godliness will lead you forward, goodness will be a shield before you, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then, when you call, the Lord will answer. “Yes, I am here,” He will quickly reply. All you need to do is to stop oppressing the weak and stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumours! Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy you with all good things, and keep you healthy too; and you will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.”

In my opinion Almighty God makes it perfectly clear, in passages like this one, how to walk with Him. Here’s another interesting one from another prophet, Micah 6:8:“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Our spiritual wellbeing, and our spiritual health, relies upon our choice to do things His way. God is quite simply not into alternative theories. He has laid out His own eternal plans, plus He has written down His interactions with other men and women just like us, for everyone to see and for us to notice and obey. 

If someone asks me, ‘what should I apply myself and obey? Well, Isaiah 58:5-11 keeps me pretty busy! So do the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. PS they are called the BE-attitudes because we are to live like this, personalising His instructions into our lives. Jesus doesn’t waffle on making ridiculous, ostentatious, new age remarks – He simply taught. Everything He said and did in the New Testament was teaching. Here He is teaching us how this new life we have been given works — what it looks like in action.

In the past in our home, we have had a procession of people – mostly young people – who had nowhere to live. Their relevant adults threw them out, so we simply applied Isaiah into our lives and made room for them. Now we choose to help other people who do the same thing we did, only they do it on a grand scale. We don’t act like an organisation when we do this stuff, because we are not. People get quite puzzled that we are not ‘official’ in what we do. To me helping others is just normal Christianity. Our first response to people in trouble is: “how can we help you?”  

Meanwhile, whether the other person is a Christian or not – what’s that got to do with anything? We can’t afford to be selective … Father God wasn’t when He picked us! Despite current theology none of us is any prize …Yet He is so amazing because we are all prizes to Him. The value you put on another human being can change their life. It will most certainly change you! If we only take care of those people who care about us, then we are more concerned about our own comfort, than obedience.

We look after our family, plus we help others – that’s the mandate in this scripture. Once, in a major city, we were walking down the street and a young man was sitting on the pavement with a sign that said: “I‘m starving.”Who could walk past that? It was a busy city and loads of people never even saw him. Someone might say:  “What if he’s a drug-user? It isn’t good to give them money!” Quite right! But you can go buy the guy food and a drink! I don’t have to solve his problems, but I can help him a little even in a small way even if I am just passing through.

Another time, an elderly gentleman was huddled in a doorway, it was so cold. He had a thin little jacket on, pulled tightly around him. The wind was freezing, whistling away … I was cold and I had a jumper, a coat and scarf on! Hubby gave the man his pseudo-suede coat, some food vouchers and we prayed for him. Hey, if you want to open doors, this is the way to do it. Help them. We prayed for him and told him how much Jesus loves him. He told us he’d never had a coat like that one before. That’s when I teared up then, because the coat was not all that good, but … it was warm. 

If you want to know Jesus intimately, then do what He did when He was here. Put God first. Then choose to see what He saw, hear what He heard, look at what He looked at, without judgment – help the ones He helped.

In this fast-paced life today it seems that we think we can’t ever have enough money, because the line for enough, always moves away from us. However, it is good for us to do what we can. Things like, treating other people with kindness and respect, no matter how they look or smell! The poor, the downtrodden, the weak, the disenfranchised are far more likely to listen to what Jesus says, than the supposedly comfortable people who are spending their lives making money and collecting things.

Father God has clearly told us in Isaiah what sort of fast we need to participate in. He even tells us He has chosen it. The next move is ours. Bye. 👋