Grudges

P 3315 A monument to a dead past.

/ DVH

“We LOOK AWAY from the natural realm and we focus our attention and expectation onto Jesus Who birthed faith within us and Who leads us forward into faith’s perfection. His example is this:  Because His heart was focused on the joy of knowing that you would be His, He endured the agony of the cross and conquered its humiliation, and now sits exalted at the right hand of the throne of God!”  Hebrews 12:2 TPT.

Jesus, because of His love and passion for us, endured the kind of things that make us shudder when we read about them,  Now HE is our example of what we are aiming at in this life. Let me put that this way: ‘Because our hearts are focussed on knowing He is ours, now WE are learning to endure like He did…’  God wants us to leave behind those things that cripple us, and choose to refocus. We have focussed too much on other people, it’s time to put our focus solely on Him!

When we are hanging around with Him, we are relating to SomeOne Who is so perfect, and so beautiful, His Presence promotes a desire for personal change. Especially when Who He is begins to saturate us. I think I am a nicer and totally different person than I was before I met the Lord – simply because I met Him and He has impacted my whole life.

Before I met Jesus I held grudges. I could only see someone else’s faults. I didn’t even bother to look for their good side. Back then I could be cynical at the drop of a hat and make it sound funny, but there was a sting in the tale of that scorpion. Leaving that behind me was a hard attitude to break, because it had become a defensive weapon. The Lord and His Word have helped me leave that kind of past behind me. But first I had to learn TO LOOK AWAY FROM the things that I had adopted to define myself, and look toward Him instead. I had to see ‘ME” through HIS eyes. 

That junk I had picked up to protect myself, was like a pile of filthy laundry sitting in my heart. It came from my own rotten attitudes and other people’s sins against me. Their actions against me continually weighed me down. Plus I kept going back and digging around in the ugly stuff other people did, and concentrating on how bad it was back then, and my own revulsion of what ‘they’ had done. This meant that I could not see beyond that pile of dirty laundry. 

That stuff grew and grew until it filled my vision. The people involved became evil in my eyes – they did bad things to me and somebody needed to pay, so I picked them!! I had no clue SomeOne else had already paid before I was ever born. I focussed on the BAD and it influenced me and I happily excused my own abhorrent behaviour. I used my own knowledge of their flaws to influence other people against them … and told anyone else who would listen to me about their abuse. “Love covers a multitude of sin …”

I couldn’t see the Lord, yet He was always there, standing behind that giant pile of dirty laundry. However when He wanted to talk to me about the person I was furious at, I wanted Him to take my side— agree with me, and authenticate my rotten attitude. Why didn’t He punish these people for doing such terrible things to me and ruining my life? The incredible truth is, He never gave up on me. Eventually, I understood that the people who hurt me were as trapped as I was. Their behaviour had tainted their personhood, and as the years went on, they became defensively stuck too.

That’s when I realised that the Lord didn’t approve of what had happened at all — Instead He was asking me to forgive others and move past it. My new life in Him, was going to be so much bigger than that pile of dirty laundry I kept staring at — and He wanted to lead me out of captivity into a much bigger place. The more I edged around the horrible pile of ‘aughts against any,’ by randomly throwing forgiveness on the top — the clearer the world beyond other people’s sins against me, became. I am an adult, so it was time for the wounded child within me to grow past anger and revenge and step into a brand new mature life. My new life was worth much more than a pile of dirty laundry! 

If I continued to let that stuff torment me it meant I was losing the life I had NOW – today. These people were broken, and I had let grief and anger drag me from the past into the present. It tormented me. I had to learn to say: ”I’m not going to let those things torment me anymore.” In the end the other people didn’t actually change — I DID! I walked out of that prison of bad focus. However, if I even accidentally looked back, the pain would rush toward me like a river. So I regularly asked the Lord for healing and kept right on looking straight ahead, doggedly forgiving others as this stuff came up.

Just like Lot’s wife I had to turn away from the things that dragged me down, or I too would turn into a pillar of salt! A monument to a dead past. Other people’s attitudes were their business and not mine. This stuff still pops up unexpectedly on my radar occasionally, and I take my feelings to the cross and leave them there – I do it because Jesus told us to do it. The benefit is peace in my own life. I left regret, self-pity, sorrow and suffering behind me when I realised the only person I was hurting when I kept on going over what had happened …was me! I had been rubbing salt in a raw wound wondering why it would’t heal, but Jesus healed me when I wasn’t looking as I moved on following Him.

Let’s all look away from the past and leave it where it belongs – behind us. Destroy those monuments of your past! Or perhaps you are currently listening to the Lord Jesus and daily choosing to leaving your past behind you too. God bless you … and WELL DONE!!  Bye 👋.

P 3252 Letting Go – lets Him IN!

/ DVH

“As for us, we have all of these great witnesses who encircle us like clouds. So we must let go of every wound that has pierced us and the sin we so easily fall into. Then we will be able to run life’s marathon race with passion and determination, for the path has been already marked out before us.” Hebrews 12:1 TPT.

We have a path God has prepared for us to run on. We are not running along aimlessly, bumping into things, we have been chosen to run in the same race our Saviour ran in. Imagine that! A race that will glorify our Heavenly Father! We simply can’t afford to hold onto old wounds, or other people’s sins against us. Instead, let’s ask the Lord for healing, extend forgiveness, and then make a quality decision not to go over these things again … and move on. When you get angry with someone, put the energy produced into something else! I don’t recommend punching out their lights BTW.

Our enemy tries to trick us that if we let go of stuff, we will not get any resolution – those people who hurt us will get away with it. That’s a lie from the pit.  Jesus Himself brings resolution and redemption everywhere He goes! Let Him in, He is a Redeemer, Healer, Comforter, Trusted Advisor. This type of thinking simply brings death with it – it is sent to torment us. It is like running around with one foot nailed to the floor. We go nowhere. These things tie us into the here and now – and we forget our purpose! 

We can’t afford to live like that –  holding onto grudges, or perceived slights from others, or continually probing old wounds to see if they have healed or not. Those things prevent us from running the race God has set before us. Our enemy uses other people’s actions to throw dirt and dust into the air, clouding our God-given ability to see spiritually. These things tie us into somebody else’s agenda. Forgiveness is mandatory, not an optional extra, no matter who did what to whom. My advice is to keep on asking for Grace, Grace and more Grace, daily. 

“Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God has forgiven you because you belong to Christ.”  Ephesians 4:32. What does that mean? It means that every time somebody hurts us the first thing we need to remember is the fact that we’ve already been forgiven for our own sins. Letting go of grudges —  the past, other people’s unwillingness or inability to change — frees us for better God-inspired things! We simply can’t afford to give our eternal blessings away. It’s too dear!! What we lose is clarity of heart and mind.

The way to be fearless in the face of other people’s sins, is to ask for His help and then act in faith. “Do good to those who despitefully use you…” Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27&28. Praying for these people is essential. And our  obedience is the key that opens up the kingdom, it will usher in the change we want to see.. “If you are willing AND obedient …” it says this in Isaiah 1:19a. It is not enough to just be willing, willingness needs to be followed through with action – obedience. 

Let’s stop merely agreeing with what the bible says, and go out and live this way, every single day. We can’t “afford” to stay angry with other people. We don’t have to go and live at their house! Pray and do what God says to do. Forgiveness ushers in real peace. If we haven’t got some personal instructions from the Holy Spirit — a directive on how to manage things. Then we need to read the book, and find something in it to do, that we are not already doing, and do that. Those biblical things are the principles of His kingdom. We always have plenty of those.

It is incredibly important to let go of the weights that have been holding us down. We sing these things … we say them, we read them and we even memorise them — but we need to do more than that. It is time to remember that the life we had before we met Jesus is over. Our previous dreams are over. There are better things than that ahead! He gave His life to us, and now we choose to give our lives to Him. We can’t tell Him how to operate His kingdom – He is the King! The more we let go of our own agendas, timetables, lifestyles, the more His kingdom will manifest itself among us. 

Our God is incredibly gracious to us, He lets us learn. But for some of us, even learning has become a side eddy. A place we’ve been caught up in. It stops us from going out and doing what He asked us to do. The best kind of learning finishes with practical application. Personal life changing experiences. By all means study the bible, every single day, but study it to find things you can do. The things that stir your heart are likely to be the things that stir His. 

We can read stuff like, ‘forgive one another’ but then we forget to do our “safety checks.” That’s like a sound check for believers … Let’s not put a big tick on any scripture thinking that we already know this stuff, and He died for it, so we’ve already passed. He paid for us, so we have already passed. However, now we need to ask the Holy Spirit: ‘do I have any little foxes in my life spoiling the vine?’  That verse above in Hebrews 12:1 sees sin and wounds as weights. Are we trying to run a marathon with a whole lot of weights all over us? 

We have to let go of our wounds, even though they are deep, and they still hurt. We are not releasing things because these things don’t matter – those wounds, those sins, cost Jesus His life. They matter! Let the Lord take care of them. Forgiveness is not giving in – IT’S A BATTLE-PLAN! Think about it. Let’s release everything that distracts us and let Him help us win. Bye. 👋

P 3195 Respond.

/ DVH

“Faith, then, is birthed in a heart that responds to God’s anointed utterance of the Anointed One.” Romans 10:17 TPT. 

The important word in the above scripture is respond. This is how we grow our faith, by actively responding to what Jesus says. The meaning of respond is — “do something as a reaction to someone or something.” Hebrews 11:1 says:“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  The thing is we want evidence to help us believe, but the lack of evidence is the very thing that stimulates and grows faith. So if our faith lacks substance it means we are not doing anything about what we believe!

Our response is always optional because Jesus won’t make us do anything! However, it is imperative and essential that our faith produces something more substantial than words. Let’s look at this a bit more deeply. In Isaiah 29:13 the Lord has been angry with Israel and He talks about His anger, because His people say one thing, but do another. He calls that lip service, and that is not a good look for His people. “And the Lord said: “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honour Me with their lips, while their hearts are far from Me, and their fear of Me is a commandment taught by men,…”  

In the New Testament in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness…” These  scriptures are not just for our information. They are written to teach us how to live. Training in righteousness is about acceptance, repetition and practice, it is not just about learning the language so we can fit in or have an opinion. Training implies effort, and that effort is to help us take what we hear, and act on it. We are to do more than just agree with the sentiment or the language. Our task is to make the faith He has given us real in our everyday lives. 

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your Name, and cast out demons in Your Name, and do many mighty works in Your Name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness.’ Matthew 7:21-23. 

Chunky stuff eh? Not to be trifled with, and yet it seems so harsh. It is amazing that Jesus would say something so direct and severe. It seems to me that there are two kinds of Lordship, the one that it is in name only, and someone who chooses to live like Jesus would – if He were here with us today, in Person. Whether we are at home, alone, at school, or in the middle of our work environment. Lordship is not something to be trifled with. It is clear Jesus takes it extremely seriously! So we need to take it seriously too. 

The next issue is how? How do we live in His Lordship, day after day and night after night? The only way I know  is to choose to make quality decisions, minute by minute, and stick by them. Well meaning, sincere declarations at an altar made in a moment of time, don’t always work! They must be followed up by training.  Eventually we will begin to exchange the habits of a lifetime through prayer and practice. I’ve found some habits, some ways of thinking, are harder to shift than others. I think the secret is in what David did. He took his reference point for using his faith, from his experiences of God’s Grace in the past. 

Living in and giving away Grace is essential to the Lord’s kind of inward transformation. We cannot maintain grudges etc. and keep moving. Think of your internal heartache as mountains that will not stand a chance, because Jesus is on the scene. Remind yourself and the enemy, that the Lord Jesus once cursed a tree and it was dead as a dodo the next day! Everything in the bible has a practical application. We will just have to look for, and seek those applications out for ourselves and then live them out.

Second-hand information can seem to profit our emotions temporarily, and even stir us – but it is our commitment to find out for ourselves that causes transformation. Daily the Lord says: ‘Will you walk with Me today?’ That’s when we will have to file all our past failures and disappointments away into His hands — under: “things I will understand one day in the future.’ Or …’maybe I won’t understand but I won’t give a darn by then.’

Job’s response to all kinds of pressure was this: “Even though He kills me, I’ll continue to hope in Him. At least I’ll be able to argue my case to His face!” Job 13:15. Letting go is the only way forward that will lead us into living in His peace. Remember, it’s His peace, so we must do it His way! The bible is crystal clear that our God’s ways are not our ways, so our lack of mental or emotional understanding is irrelevant. Unfortunately, the person who needs to make this kind of decision is always ME – you can’t do it for me, I can’t do it for you. 

Our responses matter. We have entered into a time where our training often happens under duress. That stretching and buffeting could cause us to doubt He will help us, but the way to learn that the Lord is utterly good and reliable, is to live like He is utterly reliable! Talking about it doesn’t make it real – acting on what He has said makes it real and gives it substance.. Our responses count. Bye 👋

P 3174 Let’s get rid of abstract concepts …

/ DVH

… and go for REALITY instead! For years we’ve gone about repeating bible verses over and over, in the hope that saying them all the time, meant we would become them. Has anybody out there noticed that that idea doesn’t work? Even sincerity can be dodgy, we need to activate our faith by living it! There’s nothing wrong with knowing, and prayerfully linking bible verses to our circumstances, but we need to remind ourselves that we are not ordering something from a catalogue – we are conversing with Almighty God, the God of all the Ages, the High and Holy One! Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us. HE knows how to pray!!

In every kind of trouble, it’s not all about what I need, it’s about what He wants. Under pressure, we are more than capable of praying those catalogue-type repetitive prayers, given the right circumstances. However, the best kind of prayer is this: “what do You want right here, right now, Father God?” Then we need to stop and listen for His whisper. Love Himself is knocking on our door, just let Him in, because He will not desert us. 

The day before yesterday, hail stones the size of tennis balls were hitting the side of our house and a medium sized waterfall began to merrily cascade down from our bedroom ceiling onto our bed and the floor. It was scary, a-n-d … I forgot my own advice! Eventually, because the Lord is always gracious, when I stopped praying prayers AT Him, and talked TO Him, He whispered to me: “It’s all OK, just wait, you’ll see, it will be OK.”  I’ve learnt that He does not always answer us immediately. That’s because He’s the King and we are not. Every time I went back into anxiety, I handed the situation over to Him again… and went off to sleep. 

Then at 1.00am this morning we had to physically move out of our bedroom, because the waterfall started up again with a vengeance, so I focussed on what He had said to me, and I started to do a lot better… This is how faith grows, it gets stretched by something bigger than we are!

In the middle of the first storm, our neighbour was on her way to pick up her child from school, and she too encountered very large hailstones and a bit of someone else’s roof- while she was driving her car!  She’s OK praise God. But, even though I didn’t know it, I was praying for her at the time.

Actually, I didn’t have a scripture settle in my heart until after the hailstones stopped crashing into our house! Then I suddenly remembered: “…before you call I will answer you…” Isaiah 65:24. I kept on asking Him to help us, and the Holy Spirit totally helped me find my peace in the middle of this physical and emotional storm. Until I get another scripture, I will simply hold onto what He said, as we wait to find out what happens to our roof today.  

Right now I want to talk about conversational prayer – the kind that isn’t formal, but it is based on relationship. It often seems so natural that you aren’t sure if you are doing it right! It means we don’t talk AT Him, we talk TO Him. Remember, He’s the best Dad ever!  Our Heavenly Father is always watching, always listening to every single cry and prayer. That means He isn’t like earthly Dads, preoccupied by other things. 

He lovingly pays attention to each and every single one of us. Right now the Holy Spirit is roaming all over the earth … 2 Chronicles 16:9a – “For the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth so that He may support those whose heart is completely His…”  It is good to remember that the Holy Spirit is our support team and He hovers over each and every one of our hearts. He has such a deep love for human beings – whether they know-Jesus-yet-or-not.The very essence of leaning on Him means, without His stability we will probably fall over!

Matthew 21:22 says: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Here’s another slant on that —  I believe He is good. This means I can receive His totally focussed personal attention at any time. I can always talk to Him. Remember, He doesn’t hold grudges – Jesus already paid for our access! Just talk to your Father about what is happening, and ask Him to help you deal with it.  Ask for His wisdom, and comfort. Whether you have been formally introduced to the Lord or not. He knows you. 

When we look at Jesus’ life on earth we can see that He did not demand this or that from the people He prayed for, He simply prayed for them. He saw their need and met it. We have complicated the Way our Heavenly Father works to the point that people think they must meet certain conditions to hear from Him. Back then, not one person who asked for help was turned away, they all received acceptance and love. At calvary, His compassion overflowed toward mankind. IT STILL DOES – it’s bigger than the waterfall in our bedroom!

Psalm 145:8: “The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.” Psalm 103:8 – “The LORD is compassionate and merciful, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love.”  Matthew 14:14-21- “And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick.” Matthew 9:36 says- “But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.” 

It isn’t about whatever is happening to us, it is about our faith in His goodness holding us up in spite of the situation. Our abstract concepts need to go into the bin. Now we are deliberately choosing to learn to live using our faith in His Kingdom reality. Bless you! 👋

P 2951 Grace is an overlooked GIFT.

/ DVH

First we forgive ……then we walk it out. Yeah. Forgiveness is a piece of cake … in theory! Living it out has terminal repercussions – you will have to die to self! Saying “I’m sorry” and “please forgive me” is hard. Especially when the other person is wrong. They hurt you, it was real, and right now, your heart is limping.

Saying we are sorry, without accompanying actions, is tokenism. It is not Grace – true Grace has the power of God in it. The point of entering into forgiveness with someone who has truly hurt you, is not just about them -Jesus made that incredibly clear. When we hold on to grudges against other people we are hurting ourselves. We need to introduce the possibility of restoration. Unrestricted Grace does that. Grace is the gift we give ourselves, as we give it to someone else. Meanwhile, people’s reactions change when animosity leaves the room.

We can spend so much time telling ourselves “we are right and that other person is wrong” and forget that we are ALL under the same banner of redemption. Reconciliation is what Jesus did when He took away the punishment for our sins, forever. He reconciled mankind to Himself. This means HE DOESN’T HOLD GRUDGES. He has chosen not to remember our sins, and clearly told us to treat each other the same way. 

If we pretend to forgive, or even withhold forgiveness for one reason or another, we are short-circuiting His heavenly transaction and the possibility of redemption is not complete. It is a process – it can take time – so we just keep pressing on. We need to tear up and throw away those carefully hidden lists we have against people who have deeply hurt us … sometimes over and over again. You know the enemy lies to us and tells us that those nasty little lists of someone else’s faults are protecting us. What a rort! Love doesn’t keep a list of wrongs. 

Unfortunately, it is incredibly easy nowadays to label those lists as “things I need to be careful about with So and So, or they will hurt me again.” Even if we hear ourselves thinking ‘they have done to me again,’ that means we forgot to throw away the original list! My advice is, tear the list up and burn it, but write PAID IN FULL, BY THE BLOOD OF CHRIST across it before you are done! In true forgiveness there is no AGAIN … Jesus doesn’t have an alternate book of life with things against US written in it!

He took His own blood and scrubbed our pages clean when we confessed our sins and asked Him to save us. Now all we have is a blank page, covered in His blood. Hallelujah! What’s more, when we confessed our sins to Him, plus other people, He took that list of our sins on Himself, and washed us clean with His Grace and His Word.

His Word is the greatest washing machine ever known to man! Even the sins we don’t know about at the time, are cleansed simply by digesting what the Scriptures say. His Word can wash out even the memory of wrong. We do this step by step, day by day…using our faith not our feelings.

Meanwhile, it is often likely that the other person will not change, because they may not be taking sin as seriously as we are! But we are now living in the freedom that comes from Grace … and they are not. So when the thought of whatever happened between you and that other person, pops up in your memory bank, take it captive. Find a scripture with His help and throw it all into the heavenly washing machine.

We no longer have to be suspicious of what that person says or does, because now we’ve handed our case over to our Lawyer, Jesus. That happened when we chose to enter into His Way of forgiving others. This means the Holy Spirit will fight for us, releasing His Grace to be quiet, or even genuinely kind, in those moments when we feel provoked by that other person.

However, forgiveness has nothing whatsoever to do with ACTING! Instead, it has everything to do with giving your active permission for the power of God to help you find your way through the enemy’s traps. We don’t just need His Grace, we must rely upon it – it is the power given to us by Christ to help us overcome.

And if the other person doesn’t change right away, their ignorance, or refusal cannot turn back the power of the Grace of God that has been released into their lives because of our decision to forgive them. Just don’t let any disappointment with the slowness of this process take it back in an off moment. NOW WE STAND. We’ve done everything we can and we stand still and watch what He will do.

We have chosen to apply what we know into our day-to-day lives in a concrete way. That’s how we digest it, it is what ‘walking it out’ – a day at a time, sometimes a minute at a time – means! Grace is an overlooked gift! Bye. ✞

Matthew 18:21,22.“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”  Ephesians 2:8,9. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

P 2921 Running over!

/ DVH

“Overflow with mercy and compassion for others, just as your heavenly Father overflows with mercy and compassion for all.””Luke 6:36 TPT. That verse doesn’t sound much like a suggestion does it? It sounds like a constantly ever-expanding instruction to me. So the real question becomes…how? How do you overflow with mercy and compassion for others, the way Jesus does for you … ? Sacrificially that’s how.  That, by the way, is the same loving attitude He has toward everyone on this planet!  

Well, the first thing to remember is this, nobody can think their way through this one – our brains just can’t take in the magnitude of God’s love for people. We will always need His Spirit to help us. The Holy Spirit can and will expand our capacity for love and compassion as we allow Him room in our lives — the more room, the bigger the expansion!! It is worth also saying at this juncture that as we renew our minds, the easier it will be to know what the Lord wants from us! So we have to stop skipping over the bits in the bible we think we can’t do and start asking for His help to do them.

This is why we cannot afford to hold grudges, or cheat on our income tax, or walk past a poor person who needs help, or break the law by excessively speed along the highways. Those are dumb examples of an all pervasive current attitude toward this life. When will we decide we have more than enough and start to act like it by helping others? We simply must move away from greedy, grasping, looking after ME,  into gloriously generous, overflowing giving, looking after OTHERS.

This is one of our Heavenly Father’s characteristics … He looks after us daily. Look out of your window – did the sun come up again? Then His mercy is brand new again today. If we want to look like Him then we will have to walk down the same pathways Jesus walked. It was not a mistake that Christ was born into a poor ordinary family… rich people have a hard time with FAITH. That’s not my opinion …Jesus said so!

Speaking for myself, without the Holy Spirit’s help there are many times I want to say to someone who wants even more time than I can give: “Just go away will you? You are disturbing my nice image of myself!” But we can’t actually successfully think our way through spiritual things like this. The things of the Spirit belong to HIM! It isn’t helpful to berate yourself for not having the fruit of the Spirit either. We quite simply need His help, so we throw ourselves on His brand new mercy today, and take a leap of faith. First of all, how we feel needs to become wa-ay less important than His WILL. He will lead us, He will guide us, He will show us where we can be His hands and feet.

Compassion includes action.Not just sympathetic remarks, kindly meant and said. Love actually looks like something! Now here is the rub, the Lord doesn’t just say, ‘have compassion and mercy’ — He said OVERFLOW WITH IT! Yeah! Good one. Overflowing means there is more than enough, not just a little bit kind of oozing out the edges. I often drive other people mad, because I take things in the book, so literally. I can tell you that this whole overflowing bit is supernatural – in other words you can’t manufacture that lot by yourself! And you can’t talk yourself into it either – you either got it or you don’t, and if you don’t ASK AND THEN ACT, using your faith, and then just keep on doing stuff.

We can get so tied up with ordinary everyday things taking away our valuable time, that we don’t think to ask Him in to help us with whatever is going on. He wants to be part of every bit of our lives, not just delegated to an hour every day and four on Sunday. He will show us His compassion as we learn to rely upon Him. We need to know that He is gracious and compassionate, personally. Our theories aren’t worth a kilo of bananas! To learn things like that we must LET Him help us through our own difficulties, by choice – on purpose! 

The bible tells us that our God is a compassionate God: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” Psalm 103:8.  I just want to stop here, and say that the bible uses lots of effusive words. Like ‘over abundantly, abounding, overflowing’ … these are all greatly excessive words. They aren’t excessive words for nothing! Don’t just settle for a little dab will do ya! Go for the gold. Be like Joshua strong and courageous … and then stay and wait in the tent after everyone else has gone home! Press in. It doesn’t take a lot of words to press in, it just takes confidence in His loving nature and the ability to believe God is good.

Let Jesus be the One you run to, when stuff happens. He wants to be closer to us than a brother. That means we will give our time, it means using we will use our faith. It means giving out of the abundance of the knowledge that our God is in charge – so I will not diminish ME if I give something to YOU.I will care if your life is tough, not just in words but in deeds. If we want a pressed down and running over kind of life where we can spontaneously and generously give to others, we will have to change the way we live. 

It will not be comfortable. What part of Jesus’ life was comfortable? If I want ‘running over’ with compassion and mercy  I will have to stop thinking of my life as mine and start thinking about it as His. Bye. 👋

P 2834 Clear out the cupboards.

/ DVH

In order for our lives to be transformed, God has given each one of us so much help. We have His book. Full of the Lord’s dealings with others. Plus the ongoing Presence of the Holy Spirit. Who is always active to remind us of what our Father has said.

However, when I want to follow the Holy Spirit, that means I am going to have to learn how to WAIT for His answers, and learn to trust that the Lord knows what’s going on.  At the same time I will need to believe that Almighty God is bigger than any of my immediate problems. I need to choose to change my behaviour, as well as my reactions, to facilitate and undergird my new belief. I cannot enforce that decision I’ve made upon you — because you need to learn for yourself! This means I will be stretched even further because I’m not living in a vacuum. 

Living this way is part of God’s ongoing process for us. It isn’t always easy, but it will teach me patience and perseverance, and draw me closer to Him and the Way He thinks. As I digest how He thinks, by doing what His book says, I will need His help – right from the minute I open my eyes every single day. Meanwhile, Father God doesn’t want me to learn  how to wait just because He likes to take His time … actually the bible says that ‘He is quick to answer us…’Father God wants me to learn how to wait, because I will renew my spiritual strength and because of that, I can resist any temptation to give up easily. We have His book full of His Ways to use as a prayerful reference point.

Today, I want to look specifically at something difficult that Jesus said. Matthew 18:21-22 gives us a tough illustration.“At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?” Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.”  When I read this I chose to do the Math – that means every 2.9387755102 minutes in a day, if someone were to sin against you or I, over and over again, the Lord is saying to us – we still need to forgive them. Let’s round that number up to someone sinning against us every 3 minutes, all day. It is easy to see His point when we do the Math! Nobody would want to forgive someone if they sinned against them that often and consistently. I’m pretty sure that the person sinning against us might even run out of the energy to sin with those numbers!!

Jesus went on to tell us a parable that we all wish we hadn’t read – the unforgiving servant. Personally I don’t think that the Lord’s point is even remotely about how many sins and how often – Jesus was telling Peter if he wanted to be forgiven then he needed to have his reference point changed. It’s not about numbers … because of His Presence in our lives, we are changed. It was all free to us but it was incredibly costly to our Lord.

Through these verses I believe the Lord wanted to show Peter that human beings cannot forgive others without God’s help, and oodles of His GRACE.  Jesus was exaggerating to illustrate His point. He became sin — so we can become the righteousness of God. We were given forgiveness for free from the Lord, but it was incredibly costly to Him. Now we give it away to others for free, but will cost us, just like it cost Him. Our gratitude expresses itself in showing mercy to others, when they don’t deserve it either.

One of the things that can definitely hobble us spiritually from acting like His kids, is our unwillingness to forgive the way we’ve been forgiven. People sometimes say that they can forgive easily, but they can’t forget. Personally I think if we can still remember what happened, that will probably have the worst effect on our forgiveness factor! Those two things can’t go in the same equation, because one shoots the other one in the foot. So why am I writing about this today? Because some of us are going to have families descend upon us as we move toward Christmas. Family can, and often does more damage than anybody else. 

Our families don’t always consist of beautiful Godly people who always get it right. After all, WE belong there, and that fact alone just plain ruins that idea! Jesus is saying to us we need to live a lifestyle of forgiveness… and let past hurts and injuries go. Why? Because the greatest power on earth is released when we forgive, it’s GRACE. Some of Christ last words spoken from the cross were: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do…” When He said that … God’s Grace started raining down upon the earth out of all proportion to whatever would be needed for all time.

Grace moves mountains. It heals the sick, it restores our souls, it changes our circumstances. It opens up things that have been shut down and left to fester, so they can heal. Grace is the AIR of His kingdom. We can’t afford to count how many times that dumb person we know did whatever they did – because when we do that we step out of Grace, and literally stop breathing in the Spirit. God takes no pleasure in our grudges. So we need to clean out our spiritual cupboards asap. Then we will be amazed at how differently we can view the people who are around us. We all need to: “learn the unforced rhythms of Grace…” Bye. 👋

P 2696 “This is the Way.”

/ DVH

“But the love of God will be perfected within the one who obeys God’s Word. We can be sure that we’ve truly come to live in intimacy with God, not just by saying, “I am intimate with God,” but by walking in the footsteps of Jesus.” 1 John 2:5-6.

I may surprise some people when I say I have enjoyed the series – ‘The Mandalorian.’ I’ve watched it several times, and the theme behind this fictional story, is that this man lives by a strict code of honour. His tribe adopts and looks after orphans – James calls that pure religion. Man I love it!! PS I hate all the creepy, ginormous creatures in that series – the ones that startle, pounce and munch. Back to my real point, I think there is so little honour in our society today. People criticise their spouses, friends, children, parents, teachers, workplace companions, bosses, our country’s leaders, church leaders … judgment seems to flow through most people’s lives like a river. That’s a polluted river! … Bad plan.

Because God Himself honoured us with His Presence and came here as a baby – plus He chose to obey man-made rules, He set the standard for us, His kids. Jesus Christ voluntarily submitted to His parents as well as the authorities of that time. And … He didn’t judge. His desire was to please God, and benefit others – and if He had to correct people, He did it with love and grace. Then He left here and went back to heaven, but before He left He released the power for us to live like He did.

In our current society I think we have completely overlooked the very real benefits of not judging others. Judgment is like garlic, you barely have to wave that stuff over the top of food to get it to flavour whatever it is. Our society chops judgment up and throws it into everything! We simply cannot benefit from soaking in a marinade of judgment – we’ll just STINK!  Personally, I think the lack of the flavour of the Living God, in and through our lives, can easily make us distasteful to others. Let’s always remember, religion tastes terrible, but the sweetness of His Presence enriches us as well as others. Unfortunately in our world, we have learnt to call what we say an opinion, and we think it is something we are entitled to. Sadly, God Himself still calls it judgment.

The Way into living a life of honour is to make informed choices, followed up by actions – based on the Word of God. We need to act on what we read. EG: Feed the poor. If we leave caring for the poor to established institutions, we will have totally missed out on the blessing that is promised for us when we bless others! Likewise if we judge our pastors,  … for things that we do ourselves, then they may become discouraged and leave the ministry. Plus if we deliberately harbour grudges, spite, unforgiveness, hatred, anger, sarcasm and criticism then we will spread those destructive flavours around us, and they will spoil whatever we do. But when we spread love it saturates and covers all things … including SIN. Yours, mine and ours.

Please don’t waste your time waiting for the moment to be right. The best time to do good is while it’s still daylight! I find if I wait to do good to others, I can end up talking myself out of it. So I try to do what He has told me to do – right away. Here’s the very best most fun thing to do – like EVER!  Do good to the people who are deliberately maliciously mean to you. Wow! What a buzz. When I do that my feet barely touch the ground for a week. Meanwhile saturating people in His goodness, is sometimes the only thing that impacts those people who have been hardened by this life. I’m crazy about the saying: LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, IT DRIVES THEM NUTS! However, I don’t recommend actually …doing it TO drive them nuts!  ‘See through you we do.’ 

When we are intimately involved with someone we dearly love we can’t wait to see the world through their eyes. We want to spend hours together just sharing thoughts back and forth. You and I dearly love Jesus – so we need to esteem the Holy Spirit directed skill of seeing the world through His eyes. There is no judgment in the Father’s Eyes. Judgment and all our sins fell on Christ on that cross. IT’S GONE. So let’s not drag it up again. Strangely other people don’t like being reminded of their sins about as much as you and I don’t like it! Speak life instead.

We cannot successfully walk with Him if we do not walk LIKE HIM. God’s power does its best work through the humble wisdom that comes down from above. The Way to walk with God and know Him intimately and bless others, has already been provided for us. “This is the Way.” That fiction character understood the power of loyalty, and choices. Bye. 👋

P 2587 Why am I here?

/ DVH

I dunno! Ask the Lord! You and I both know that only He knows that stuff. I’m just the peanut writing this blog. Meanwhile, let me try to give a hopefully wise answer to that ‘why am I here’ question …  “to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbour as yourself.”  Hah! You didn’t expect that one did you? 

A Godly response to this scripture may sound easy …but it certainly isn’t a picnic, that’s because it’s a choice not a feeling – and sadly …other people do the darndest things!! The trouble is, those words are actually in His book! 

People sometimes can get fixated on trying to figure out why we are here, or what is the meaning of life (?)… But the truth is what Jesus said in Matthew 22:37-39. ‘Love God, love others.‘ I think I could teach that to a 2 year old! Did you ever ask yourself ‘how on earth do I love God with all of me, as well as loving YOU?’ Especially if you, my actual neighbour, are VERY far from nice! I suspect most of us have asked that question at some time or other, especially when actual reality replaced carefully crafted Christian concepts.← See that? That’s alliteration. 🤪 

Moving on! It would be so much easier to love God and others, if life just bubbled along like a telemovie, and we were all happy little Vegemites singing and dancing together … but we ain’t! And humanity is rapidly getting less and less nice as the years go by. Once we hit the 21st Century, then good manners and polite went rapidly downhill. Without a Saviour we are all doomed. I love that word doom.

There’s a scene with Tae-Kwon-Dodos in Ice Age Mark 1. (I think the film makers are up to Ice Age Mark 74, or thereabouts … whatever will still make the producers money!) These weird looking birds march around together chanting …”Doom on you. Doom on you. Doom on you …”  Then they fall down a hole into extinction. Now that’s not nice – it’s funny and ironic, but … hardly nice!

Back to my point …we seem to be overjoyed to blame our mother/father/uncle/cousin/teacher/boss for our very own ugliness and WE … as in – me, myself and I – allow awful attitudes to overwhelm us. They eclipse our concern for God’s opinion, as well as our fellow man’s well being. Nowadays we can end up holding onto grudges like they are special floatation devices, not stinking heavy rocks sent by the enemy to drown us. We measure everything by how it affects ME – not by its overall benefit to mankind.

It seems “not nice” or SIN …whatever you like to call it,  is firmly embedded into the heart of man.  And we have no hope of fixing it unless we follow God’s Ways. I think right now, not nice is in plague proportions. But I have found it is not good for my own mental and emotional well-being, to over analyse stuff and impute attitudes to other people’s actions.  

Maybe that guy in the supermarket who just ran over my toe with his trolley was distracted and careless… maybe he isn’t a homicidal maniac who makes himself feel better by running over other people’s feet! When did this world lose the kind of rightness of heart that gives others the benefit of the doubt? And what about me making an effort to apologise for something I did to someone else, no matter what my motive was. When did we lose the words (?) … “I am so sorry, I was wrong.” ← That’s a full stop right there. 

So, here is today’s point … yeah … I know, it took a while! We can’t follow Jesus and hate others. Listen to John he’s going to explain it better than I can.“If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love BOTH.”1 John 4:20.

Personally, I think we are here in this world, to contribute, not consume. We are not designed to be greedy-give-me-that, OR … I-want-it-now-passengers… but participators. If we allow anyone else to rob us of our contribution because of what they have said or done to us, we are letting our enemy – WIN. Dumb move. The way to win is in 1 Corinthians 13:8: “Love never fails.” When everything else has folded up its little tent and departed, or crumbled into dust … LOVE WILL WIN … be-ca-us-e … IT SAYS IN THE BOOK … love never fails. 

So, why do I think I am here? To love God first, then you … but if you really are truly dreadful, well … He is always there to help me! Bye.👋

P 2520 Where’s your storage unit?

/ DVH

“But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed.” Romans 2:5. Yeah, this is one of those verses we rush over hoping it doesn’t apply to us, right? 😳 Personally, I think it is important to get the Lord to search our hearts regularly, and make sure we are storing up good stuff, not just clinging to the bad by default. That includes hoarding grudges, other people’s mistakes, plus the things that have been deliberately, even maliciously, done against you. 

Life is too short to live like that. Things can change in a heartbeat —- nothing is certain. Right now, on the other side of the world in Iceland, people’s homes and contents are being incinerated by a rogue volcanic display. They are powerless to do anything about it. My question today is this: what have we saved in our personal heart-storage unit, that is actually being carelessly facilitated by our day-to-day behaviour? Moving on …

“Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.  Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.”

1 Timothy 6:17-19.

I get why some people aren’t thrilled with the bible, it is so totally chock full of absolutes! Things like these verses for instance! However in comparison to a lot of the world we live in today, in our country we are rich. We have somewhere to sleep, food in the fridge or cupboard, and our kids can go to school. God hasn’t asked us to go without these things, however … I believe the scripture shows us that He IS asking us to think about others and SHARE. He calls that, “good deeds.” I am not saying that we shouldn’t own anything, but what I can hear the Lord saying is that NoBody, as in no thing … but Jesus Himself … should OWN US!If we can’t live without it – it owns us!

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Matthew 6:19,20. And right here is the reason why it is not good for our things to own us!  This world has many ways of siphoning off our things and finances. Giving to Jesus is storing wealth up in heaven. Plus it is also a fantastic kind of pest control … that way we will eliminate rats and moths – stuff that winkles away our money without us realising it.  We just give everything we have to the Lord and leave it there. Let Him be in charge of our stuff. When we begin to understand that we actually own nothing, then nobody can steal from us.

Just FYI, I think it is important to protect and treat the things God has given us carefully and responsibly. However, this verse is actually talking about storage, where to put stuff … and … where not to put it!  Almighty God is not against us having things — remember He gave the Israelites land they did not plow and houses they did not build! He’s a generous God! BUT …“Speaking to the people, Jesus continued, “Be alert and guard your heart from greed and from always wishing for what you don’t have. For your life can never be measured by the amount of things you possess.”” Luke 12:15 TPT.

Coveting and greed will distract us so fast we can easily forget our calling! Again, the Lord’s focus is talking about the state of our hearts, not our stuff. So many people in this world do not have their basic needs met. EG: fresh water, food, somewhere to safely sleep etc. Just because these terrible things haven’t happened to us, that does not mean we can hide ourselves, or insulate ourselves against other people’s needs … the bible even tells us clearly in Isaiah not ‘to hide ourselves from the needs of our own families.’ Isaiah 58:7.

It is not in our mandate to assess whether people deserve help or not, our place is to simply help those in need. In particular, widows and orphans. Our God is very protective over widows and orphans and the homeless poor. Exodus 22:22; Deuteronomy 10:14-18;  – there are heaps of verses in Deuteronomy! Psalm 68:5-6; Jeremiah  22:1-3;  1 Timothy 5:3-8; 9-11; 16;  James 1:27; and Acts 6:1-4. 

BTW, a widow in the biblical sense is not necessarily someone whose husband has died, she can be a married woman whose husband has deserted her. An orphan can be someone who has an absent father, not just parents who died. Our wonderful God has a heart for the lonely, the downtrodden, and the supposed rejects in our societies. When we care for people like these, we are using the right storage unit. We are storing things up in heaven. God sees what we do and He takes note of these things. Ya might want to Selah that for the rest of your life and let it become a Way of life. Bye. 👋