Happiness

P 3426 Dead is the new way to live. 

/ DVH

In Galatians 2:20, Jesus reminds us what this life is really all about. Paul said: “I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

This getting-dead process can be challenging sometimes. So the reality is, I choose to die to what I want, over and over again. Here’s what that means practically. Someone says something I think is provocative, so I ask for the Holy Spirit’s help, and I say nothing. Despite how provoked I feel, the Lord Himself will give me that soft answer He talks about from Proverbs. I’m just doing what Jesus told me to do, ‘turning the other cheek.’ If people cheat me and they lie to me, I pray a blessing over them until I mean it. In other words, I let the Lord Jesus fight my battles for me. It’s up to Him what happens to people who behave like that, He knows more about them than I ever could.   

This means I have deliberately chosen to live this life dead to what I want, and alive to what He wants. Let’s be clear, I am not talking about being mostly dead, or I wish I was … dead. What I mean is – I’ve chosen to die to the way I used to think about, relate to, and treat other people. Now, I owe them LOVE and I use my faith to trust Father God to help me with that. He clearly told me “that vengeance is His.”  Here is the Good News part of the gospel. Because of Jesus’ resurrection I don’t have to stay dead — now I have a new way to live, right here, right now. TODAY – and the power to do it.

Of course I will need the Holy Spirit’s help to live that way. But He won’t do it for me. I’m not a puppet, I’m a person who makes a choice.. I take a step of faith, and the Holy Spirit helps me to move forward. When I refuse to be angry back at someone else, He gives me something sweet to say to them, that helps to diffuse their anger. Meanwhile, you can’t pick a fight with a dead person, because they won’t say anything back. You could yell at them, if you want to, but … you’d be wasting your time. You’d be better off shouting into a black hole.

Each one of us has to choose to die to what we want, and come alive to the reason Jesus brought us here. But once we do, our thinking begins to change and we start to think like He does. Then the Holy Spirit helps us to use our God-given faith and hope in His goodness, to live a brand new way. It’s the way Jesus lived. We all know His plans are good for us, that’s also in the book! I’ve decided to trust what He said more than I trust what I can see going on around me. We choose to come alive to Christ and His Way of living and leave our past behind us, when we die to self and live for Him.

It is not humility when I say on this blog that Jesus helped me with this and that – it’s a fact. If I try really really hard to be what He has already given me for free, well — that’s when the trouble starts! I begin to lose my sense of His Presence with me, because my excuses for my own bad behaviour fill the air around me! The only Person Who can resurrect a dead person is Jesus. When He does that He makes them sweeter. Trying to resurrecting yourself and hold on tightly to being right, is a waste of time and energy. Whatever we try to do by ourselves doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. We will just wear ourselves out doing it, as well as becoming jaded, and losing hope. Give up. Die to self.

It is easy to tell when I have wandered off and given up living for Him – I want my own way. Day by day living His way is always a choice. Sadly, I can get offended before the poor schmuck with their foot in their mouth has finished their sentence. I am not at all nice to be around, especially if I try to change myself. I get mad at other people because they annoy me and they want their way. The safest, sweetest place to live, is to live this life using the faith He gave me. Then my priorities change. My focus needs to be on what He did. Not what I have or haven’t done. Like I said yesterday, “nothing can ever separate us from God’s love” — we have proof of that. Jesus died to make that statement eternal.

Many Christians cheerfully sing 🎵 “We are here for You, Jesus…”🎵and then everyone goes home and lives this life we have been given, for themselves again – often using heaps of energy to be ‘nice’ to people who aren’t ‘nice’ to them. Day by day, we are so focussed on our plans, our lives, our ideas, our success, our happiness, our money … plus our wellbeing. That isn’t the deal… not the one in His book! The deal is — He died for us — so now we live for Him. Meanwhile dead people don’t have aims, or opinions.

We don’t have to sit around, impassively, waiting for this stuff to fall on us. We need to aggressively choose to live this life of LOVE He provided for us and act it out. We take faith steps, and take up this new life He has given us. Let’s run, and choose to use our faith to do things His Way, for His kingdom’s sake. And read and re-read His book, daily refreshing our memory about what He has already said.

Choose to live a life of Love, it’s the outworking of our inward faith. Dead is the new way to live – because the Lord’s kind of new life can only blossom and bear fruit in dead people, who choose to live this life, His way. Bye. 👋

P 3360 Keep looking at Jesus.

/ DVH

“We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, He organises and holds it together, like a head does a body.                                                                                                      He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—He is supreme in the end. From beginning to end He’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is He, so expansive, that everything of God finds its proper place in Him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of His death, His blood that poured down from the cross.”                                 You yourselves are a case study of what He does. At one time you all had your backs turned to God, thinking rebellious thoughts of Him, giving Him trouble every chance you got. But now, by giving Himself completely at the Cross, actually dying for you, Christ brought you over to God’s side and put your lives together, whole and holy in His Presence. You don’t walk away from a gift like that! You stay grounded and steady in that bond of trust, constantly tuned in to the Message, careful not to be distracted or diverted. There is no other Message—just this one. Every creature under heaven gets this same Message. I, Paul, am a messenger of this Message.” Colossians 1:15-23 MSG.

When we look at Jesus Christ we see God’s original purpose for mankind … minus sin and its effects. Sin couldn’t make Christ do anything because His love and devotion for His Father was greater than anything else. Instead He set us a perfect example. Our sin has a habit of colouring in everything around it. So when we focus on our sin, or their sin, or the government’s sin, we cannot effectively keep our eyes on the Lord!

Personally I think that judgment is a terrible stumbling block for everyone, but the Lord Jesus died to remove that and all other stumbling blocks way… once and for all! We can find our place in this broken world when we drag our gaze away from other people’s sin and look steadily at the One Who gave us His place. Looking at sin skews our focus.

This is a great passage of scripture above, because it encapsulates the things that Jesus has willingly done for us. People rattle on and on about recycling, and saving the planet, but one day everything broken and dislocated will come together in Christ! His greatest achievement is the total restoration of mankind with its Creator— not just to where Adam and Eve were—we have been restored to be like Him in this world, and that starts right here, right now.

Boy if that doesn’t make anyone happy then I don’t know what will!! We don’t have to be qualified to live this way, we simply need to yield to Him no matter what is going on around us. The good, the bad and the … oh! my goodness! Our first step is total surrender – the next is to choose to live under His guidance, His Way. Don’t hold anything back, whatever we hold back can still be influenced by sin … that’s why we must give it all to Him. He is the Restorer, the Redeemer of everything. 

Jesus has already taken us out of the kingdom of darkness that surrounds us and we are now a part of the kingdom of His marvellous light. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated nation, a [special] people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies [the wonderful deeds and virtues and perfections] of Him Who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.” 1 Peter 2:9. I don’t care what you do for a living, this is our real job now. To live in, and reflect the light He died to give us into this world around us. The darker it gets, the brighter that light shines.

Our dedication to living in His light (described in the book) causes darkness to run away … This is the real Good News – not some other form of religion! Religion has rules and regulations, but our Saviour’s Good News just helps us to live this life, with all its positive and negative experiences, well. And the source of our happiness never changes, because Jesus never changes! 

As Christians we cannot afford to focus on what this world thinks, we need our focus to be singular, on what He said. Day by day we get to know Perfect Love in an ever increasing measure. Jesus demonstrated His perfect love by what He did. We demonstrate our love for Him and others by what we do and say. However, perfect love is hardly ever a feeling. Perfect Love is a series of ongoing chosen actions that will cost us something to participate in them. God hasn’t taken away our freedom to choose – instead He has given us something better, something worth choosing! 

We can’t afford to rely upon feelings, because they will slowly sink our little lives into the mire that surrounds us. Instead we need to make what happens to us less important than what Jesus Christ did for us. Our focus is not on some pie in the sky when we die theology – because Jesus already did everything for us. It’s done! He said it way better than I ever could: “IT. IS. FINISHED.” Done and dusted. The Lord Jesus Himself purchased our freedom,- He paid with His own blood. It cost Him His life. Now we have been given the freedom to choose to live His Way. Don’t misuse the freedom He gave you. Meanwhile, there is no need for us to work hard for something that is already paid for. 

We choose to live with His pure focus in this life – right here, right now. Let’s shift our focus off the immediate stuff around us and lift our focus up to the eternal. Then we will progressively exchange every bit of the darkness that assails us, for what He has already given us. This new life is a life of forgiveness and love. Right now… right here … we are learning to cherish His light. Every single day. I urge us all to keep looking at Jesus, He started our faith and He will finish it. Bye. 👋

P 3311 Just enjoy the ride.

/ DVH

So many times we can be so caught up in ticking our daily boxes of things to do, we can easily forget that none of us get out of this life, alive! My advice for today is this: take the time each day to allow yourself to enjoy the ride. Taking pleasure in each day is the secret of true ongoing acceptance and happiness. It is much too easy to postpone JOY ‘until things get better.’ Don’t let disappointment jump on you and stay!

We can use up our allotted time here on earth, on things that won’t last, and those things can steal away the truly important things. Years ago, there was a saying: ‘Take time to smell the roses.’ Good advice! Unfortunately, today most people feel they don’t have time to grow roses … let alone smell them! We can spend so much time, planning this, and organising that, we can forget to live in the moment. But sometimes His JOY comes in brief moments that help to perfume our whole lifestyle. 

I just heard a story about two black holes which collided outside our universe, billions of trillions of light years away. There were two astrophysicists monitoring the night sky – night after dreary night – and they were tired of looking at nothing much. So one turned to the other and said: “I’m tired, let’s just go home early.” 40 minutes later, the gravitational pressure waves of those two black holes merging eons ago, washed across the earth! This phenomena had never been noted before. But that night it showed up, and registered on their many dials and gizmos. History happened and these men had gone home to bed. I laughed and laughed and laughed.Missed it by ←  that much → Things like this help me enjoy the ride. The two men laughed at themselves too.

If I have one piece of advice to anybody reading this – ya just gotta learn to laugh at yourself! Some of this stuff isn’t worthy of the angst you are spending on it! Make cherished moments just for YOU!  I truly enjoy the bible — it has lovely interesting, expressive words and phrases … a-n-d puzzles. I do love a good puzzle, and the bible is the best puzzle of all! Big confession! I’m a cheater, so I ask the Author loads of questions and He helps me. The more I read, the more I become delighted. Our Father’s Personhood comes out, particularly in the Old Testament. I enjoy this ride every day. At the same time we are so blessed to be able to know the Lord Jesus, He is there — on page after page, in the Gospels. “Jesus is God’s story!” Don’t treat reading it as info – see the Person.

Our Heavenly Father loves to hide things in plain sight. That to me is a big part of the enjoyment I get on this ride we call life. It’s the feeling that He isn’t half as serious about the things that turn our hair grey, as we are! Cyclone Alfred hit us last February, and we are still working on getting our bedroom fixed. So far we’ve moved out of our room 4 or 5 times – we actually lost count. All the furniture – in and out! At the same time, we’ve had people come to fix this, and remove that, and as a consequence — we have had the opportunity to meet people we would never have met who don’t share our faith. 

Enjoying the ride is a skill we can cultivate. It is like living with silence – it is incredibly valuable! I slowly picked things like this up, right after my last child went off to school, when I found I could think in proper English again! 10 years of babies, toddlers etc blew my brain. Sadly I got sick somewhere in there, and then I stopped enjoying the ride, for quite a while. So the Lord had to teach me step by step, how to see the good in things. Living this way helps me focus, despite what is going on round me. Despair bangs on my door too! But looking for Jesus has made it easier to see His pearls amongst the dark grey gravel of life!  

In Galatians 5: 17,18a it tells us why we need to look for the good. “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 …” The still-being-redeemed part of me can fight against what God wants to give me.That’s why I need to put to death the deeds of the flesh … because I can’t see the good until I change my focus. For me sometimes coping with life, is like turning trouble upside down … to find out what’s good about it! I’m going to shake that joyful sucker out of there somehow!!

One of my best blessings is my dear hubby who has the silliest sense of humour. Somehow I find his peculiar Dad-humour absolutely hilarious!! ‘A cheerful heart truly is the best medicine!’ And I appreciate the Lord’s joy through him. I have checked this out personally, and I can tell you —-‘the joy of the Lord really can be our strength’ … a couple of minutes of laughter will lift anyone’s mood.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1. The yoke we need to fight against is the idea that this life should be perfect. This verse tells us that God has already given us freedom, so we don’t have to be slaves labouring away to maintain something we already have! That’s like praying for more air in the middle of a forest. I think many man-made yokes rob people of enjoying the ride in their lives. 

Our participation in this life, is that we get to give our burdens to Him. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Matthew 11:28,29. WE ARE WEARING THE WRONG YOKE. Jesus has a better one.  Let’s allow ourselves to enjoy the ride. Bye 👋

P 3202 No Room.

/ DVH

I don’t think we can begin to imagine what it was like for Mary and Joseph long, long ago. They travelled nearly 200 kilometres, basically on foot, to obey the law and be counted, so they could pay taxes to an occupying army. And when they arrived at their destination, they learnt that there was nowhere for them to to stay. To top all that off … Mary was about to give birth. The very last possibility they had for a room told them: “No room!” But then the innkeeper takes pity on them, and tells them about something they can use. It’s a place for animals to shelter. 

2,000+ years ago, there were no camp grounds, caravan parks, AirBnb, hotels, motels, or resorts. No phoning ahead to make a booking. And even if there had been, this young couple were poor, they couldn’t afford to pay much. So they end up in a shed out the back. It’s freezing cold in Bethlehem at that time of the year – I looked it up (!) and animals probably used that shed to get out of the cold weather. This young couple were in the lowest place possible … yet God chose it for them. He had a bigger plan! 

Mary’s labour started ramping up, and there’s no help coming. Imagine that! This is her first baby. Mary doesn’t know what to expect, and her female family members are 200 kms back the way they came. This means they are utterly on their own for the birth of their child. Mary already knew all about this precious infant, and how and why she is pregnant, and so does Joseph. It might have seemed a tiny bit odd to them that the light of the whole world is going to be born under these dreadful circumstances, but they have no time for reflection, opinions, or alternatives … because it was happening to them, now. And so, God’s precious Son is born in a shed with animals for company. Praise God. The Lord Jesus brought such incredible joy with Him – because you might have a party in a barn, but it is not a place to have a baby! 

Many times we can translate the word joy into happiness, but the truth is JOY is a spiritual gift. Happiness seems to depend upon our circumstances and our reactions to them. This life screams at each one of us – there is no room for you! Your life is awful… God doesn’t love YOU! You are a waste of space. This is the point of my blog today. Those words NO ROOM seem final. But nothing is final to the Lord! He tells us in Psalm 23, that we can walk with Him through the valley of the shadow of death! But even that is only a theory … until it is tested. Boy. Mary and Joseph had it tested, alrighty and they held onto His promise.

There are times when it seems like there is no rest for us from walking around in the middle of some fire or other that has exploded into our lives. We can easily forget we are walking around in the middle of a miracle, despite the circumstances … we will live to tell the tale. Like the three guys thrown into the fiery furnace, things happen to all of us, and those things are not punishment, they are part of an imperfect world. They don’t always make sense!

The specific problems this young couple had, may not have happened to you, but this kind of intense and suffocating opposition and oppression has become very common in our lives today. One difficult thing happens, then another, then just when it seems like it will all be OK …something else pops up that sends us spinning. Someone over-spends on the credit card, or hacks our account, and now the mortgage or the rent is past due. Other people attack us and we have no idea why. Some people seem to have brought their mess or incompetence with them into our lives. 

It’s a bit like that old kid’s game: “stacks on the mill, more on still.” Everything starts to pile on top of you. Bin there, dun that. I couldn’t afford a T-shirt and I couldn’t escape either – I had to go through. Beloved of God we must learn how to go through! What we focus on in these tests reveals our weaknesses, but that’s also where we can freely take advantage of the Lord’s strength! Or we can try to make the best of a bad bargain and slog on. But the very best response is to yell for HELP and hold on. Let’s learn to hold fast to Him, steadfastly believing that nothing can separate us from the love of Jesus. He knows what He is doing! We are not always given room to grow. Like a baby being born, we have to push through, despite how we feel. Birth is painful.

I have had my share of miserable tales from living this life, and it sees to me that most of the bad things that happen to us, are normal. (Meanwhile if you are looking for a blog that talks about sunshine and happiness all the time you are reading the wrong blog!) BUT, if you want to learn how to be an overcomer, you will have to have something to overcome! “He who overcomes (is victorious), I will grant him to sit beside Me on My throne, as I Myself overcame (was victorious) and sat down beside My Father on His throne.” Revelation 3:21. Jesus’ seating arrangements are directly correlated to our ability to conquer self, the devil, and dastardly situations, and still keep on maintaining the Love of Jesus toward others, as we push through.

That’s what happened to Mary, Joseph and the newborn infant Jesus. This life can squish us flatter than a pancake, and hit us harder than a Mac truck. The secret is to put our eyes on Him, and let the problem fade into the background. We are carriers of His goodness –  remember, goodness makes its own room. Bye. 👋

P 3197 Christmas is almost upon us.

/ DVH

You can tell that when you step inside a shopping mall. People are buzzing about like bees in a hive, frantically buying gifts for family and friends. It definitely seems official — consumerism is addictive, just like smoking, drinking and gambling. Sadly, you don’t have to have actual money to participate in this particular not-so-merry-dance. Many people put themselves into a lot of debt to create some sort of happiness, even for a day. When life is hard even a little snatch of laughter is valuable. How about we find a way to put a smile on the face of our neighbour!

Here’s something I stumbled across while following Jesus, Psalm 127:1. It challenged me regarding gift giving..“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain…”  Man there have been a number of times when I wished that verse was not in there!  I need the Lord to help me with giving gifts. I love giving gifts to people – particularly if they like them. There is something about that surprised happy face when they open their present that just blesses me. I pay very little attention to what I am given – but boy do I love giving!  And little kids are my super-duper favourite people to give to — they rip into the paper, and tear apart the boxes to get at that prize. It’s a joy to watch them. Meanwhile who can afford to buy a teenager a gift today? You almost have to re-mortgage your house!

Wouldn’t it be great if we thought about unwrapping what Jesus has said to us in His book, with that sort of expectation and happiness? Imagine facing the bible like an unknown beautiful gift, all wrapped up and sparkly … instead of a chore that must be performed – otherwise our day might fall apart. What if we couldn’t wait to get at the treasure inside? And, what if seeing one another had precisely the same effect? We might even buy a whole field just to own a precious pearl like that. … now there’s a think spot!

Back to the verse. This verse kind of means I’ve laboured in vain a lot in my lifetime. I’ve gone for the hope of happiness for me, instead of leaning on the discernment of Jesus. When it comes to giving gifts I’m hopeless. I go nuts. Somewhere in my head, I think my wiring is upside down! I am not saying that Jesus doesn’t like presents and gift giving, after all He loved all of us by giving the greatest gift of all – His life. But what I am saying is that it is possible to use gift giving to try to bridge gaps between you and people-you-don’t-get-along-with, and that can often lead to great disappointment. We can sometimes try to use gift-giving to curry favour with particularly fussy friends and relatives – instead of seeking restoration.

Maybe you have recently spent days trying to find the right gift for Great Uncle Bulgaria, and then he just kind of sniffed at your present and said a dull lifeless: “Thanks” as he plopped it on the floor. Your heart sinks into your shoes and you can almost see the sign that says: ‘That one is going in the recycling bin!”  The things we drag along behind us like the tail on a comet. Those things we think we have no say over, and feel we cannot change – except because of what the Lord Jesus did – we can!  Maybe I just need to obtain more trusty book gift-vouchers instead of driving myself balmy trying to find something just right.

There is a plus side to all this to-ing and fro-ing regarding buying gifts at this time of the year.… people smile at you and say: “Merry Christmas.” Meanwhile, it’s just like Jesus to have HIS birthday benefit everyone else, in more ways than one! We’ve found you can end up chatting to people in the lifts, instead of staring at the floor hoping the lift will get to your floor quickly, because you are feeling trapped with strangers. I have this thing with strangers, the nature of who they are to me, means I’m never going to see them again! You can say anything!  Sometimes they even talk back – WOW! 

We love Christmas at our house. My dear hubby is a huge fan, and when you put that together with someone who loves giving gifts, well … Christmas is a busy time for us. We start shopping and planning decorations in August! My fella loves his outdoor lights and he plans them for months. Lights are a lovely way to speak to your neighbours without saying a word. Our manger scene and ‘Happy Birthday Jesus’ lights have been going for 12 years. We also have joy, hope, and peace signs that hubby made. 

Yesterday, my husband and one of our granddaughters went off to take some gifts from our church to the local women’s shelter. Those poor ladies leave behind everything as they literally run for their lives. I’ve left everything behind once, so I understand their pain a little bit. However, in that position, you can’t afford to look back, or like Lot’s wife you will turn into a pillar of salt. Anyway … we have a big pile of assorted gifts to put under their tree. Knowing people care won’t fix everything but it sure helps when you are all alone and scared about what comes next. They were immensely grateful. My hubby likes to talk to the ladies in the office – nobody talks to them.

As I said, Christmas is upon us and many families will gather together and celebrate. Yet, whether they actually know what they are celebrating is a whole other ball-game! I pray we all get a chance to tell even one other person that Jesus is not a baby anymore – He’s all grown up and fighting for us! Blessings as you prepare to remember the miracle God gave us all, when He became one of us.Bye. 🥳

P 3154 Understanding is important.

/ DVH

We all know that the joy of the Lord is our strength. But man’s worldly idea of happiness is transitory. That stuff disappears like a badly needed pay check. Plus happiness can also be postponed. People do that all the time. They say things like: “I will be happy when I’ve paid off my mortgage. I will be happy when we finally get the kids married off. I will be happy when my baby starts to walk and talk. I will be happy when I find a job/home/spouse!” This is what I mean about when I talk about postponing happiness.

There is such a benefit to be gained by learning to enjoy every moment we’ve been given. Life is short – let’s not postpone enjoying it, by holding our lives hostage for something we may not get! Living for the future is a futile pursuit – nothing ever works out the way we plan it anyway! In the Lord’s kingdom His joy and peace can, and will, fill and sustain us. It will gently lead us into believing in Him no matter what our circumstances are. 

Knowing this can put a smile on your face – even if you do have to blow your nose, and wipe your eyes for bit! Father God wants us to know His Ways, because He has plans for each one of us. And when He talks to us through His book, He talks to us to usher in His joy and peace. Simply because He loves us. Those miserable, terrible things that seem endlessly to hang around in our lives will eventually come to an end. Especially if we stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, and just enjoy any joy-filled moments that He sends us – no matter how briefly they appear to last. This is how we can learn to prevail over adverse circumstances, by accepting joy in those moments.

Psalm 16:11…”You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”John 15:11…”These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” Psalm 30:5…”For His anger is but for a moment, and His favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

Finding joy can take practice but we must learn to grasp hold of it, even in the smallest moments. Those things are honey to our aching souls. Let’s look closely at Psalm 30, verse 5. On the surface this does not seem to be a fun verse. We need to remember Who our Father is when the ceiling falls in! IF and WHEN we take the time to remind ourselves that Almighty God spent all His anger on Jesus, then even in the darkest times that should start up a joy bubble. “Weeping may endure for a night — BUT JOY COMES IN THE MORNING!”Joy needs to be recognised or it will pass us by. 

When we are in the middle of hardship and suffering, let’s remind ourselves that our God is no longer mad at humanity. He has reconciliation toward every single one of us in the centre of His heart. When He says He loves us, it is not just some casual, quickly-passing, uninvolved affection. No! Jesus Christ dived straight into this life, giving His ALL. Our God’s love involves great passion. It took incredible passion and great sustaining grace and purpose for our Father to allow His precious Son to die in our place! Now… joy is our portion. The bible says: ‘He will turn our mourning into dancing …’

The world around us lives with a deep level of despair, because the bad guys seem to be winning. There are people who have the things we think we want or need. But money can’t save anyone from hell ‘cos ya can’t take it with you when you go! This is what God says: “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” Proverbs 14;12. There is a worse kind of death than no longer breathing! It’s waking up in the next life, with all the possibilities gone. Eternal life without God Himself in it. The Lord invested Himself in everything that surrounds us – we need to take the time to soak these things in and let them do us good.

Let’s deliberately choose to stop dipping our toes in this world’s way of thinking, being and acting, and learn to think like Jesus did. John 15:11: “I have told you these things so that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy may be made full and complete and overflowing.”  Do you want to live a joy-filled life? I do! Joy comes when we choose to listen to what He said. Jesus never focused on Himself, and His needs – He focused on His Heavenly Father’s will – as He spread God’s love to everyone around Him. We will find joy when we stop grabbing and scrambling for our own happiness, and accept the biblical premise that our delight is to do His will! 

We can experience some of our greatest moments when Almighty God paints His love in great glorious colourful strokes across the backdrop of our own personal cyclone. Look for Him in the storms. The Holy Spirit loves to do this — He loves to colour our lives with peace, joy, His faithfulness, gentleness and self control, and He is generous with His paintbrush. Ask Him to reveal Himself right in the middle of the next difficulty that plops on you unexpectedly. 

Understanding God’s Ways will help us to discover new ways to praise and worship Him. “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.” Proverbs 4:7. Bye. 👋

P 3141 The power of Choice.

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These pictures directly above the blog, all look so pretty — the golden poison frog, the aconite flower, mercury, and the last one is deadly nightshade. All those things look harmless, but they can kill you in a heartbeat. So does sin. And most human beings are very poor judges of what will harm us. Plus we can be adept at finding thousands of great reasons why what we are doing won’t hurt anyone! The thing is —sin in our lives affects our spiritual hearing, our spiritual sight and we can’t recognise what the Lord is doing. The truth is we are dead to this world, and we no longer have to do anything. 

You know, dead people no longer have anything to do with the law, simply because laws don’t apply to the dead. They apply to the living. We are dead to sin exercising its power over us, when He died. When we chose to follow Him we died. Maturing faith continually chooses to enforce this new reality, day by day. We can’t afford to let the world tell us who we are, instead we let Jesus define us. Independence is overrated! It is a small-minded story thrown up upon the screen of our minds by a deadly enemy — who points out someone else’s sin, and says ‘poor you,’ whenever life is hard. We can end up living under the influence of a lie!

In this modern world people covet getting their own way, because they think they know what makes them happy, and they know best!  True happiness can only be found in Jesus. That’s not just a pretty saying – it’s the truth. in reality, there is no happiness, peace, joy, love, faithfulness, kindness etc. outside of Him..“For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” Romans 7:5-6.

One of the most wonderful things Father God gave Adam and Eve when He created them, was the freedom to choose. As we mature, we need to grow into making Godly decisions, through our daily choices. Our decisions can have huge ramifications, as we decide to die to self, we will need to walk away from the things that came naturally to us in our past. Now we have chosen to live a different way, and we want to cultivate the reality of the cross in our lives. It hurts to say ‘no’ when everything inside you screams ‘yes.’ Just ask a drug addict or an alcoholic – they grapple daily with choices. 

Human beings have become obsessed with sacrificing the long range benefits of this life, at the cost of immediate gratification. We want what we want now. And we will work day and night to get a holiday that only lasts 3 weeks, or slave to pay for a house we may never own.“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” Mark 8:36. As Christians, we need to live our lives focussing on the things that will LAST! The thing that is wrong with leaning on our own understanding is that our own understanding is faulty!

When Jesus went to the cross, He took our sin WITH HIM. Now we no longer have to be held captive by the things that have haunted us our whole lives … “no longer to be subject to a yoke of slavery.” Galatians 5:1. Our enemy daily tries to trick us into giving our power to him, so he can set up his nasty little strongholds in our lives.  But the answer is in the book – our obedience to God’s word. Choosing to die to self is the way to kill off our rampant self-centredness. It is foolish to indulge ourselves. It’s death in a prettily wrapped, greatly appealing, immediately gratifying box!

HOWEVER – right, here, right now – we have a Helper, a guide, a counsellor, a comforter Who wants to help us win! Babies cry and crank over lost things, mature people move on. Sin has no power to make us do anything – it’s all down to our choices. We need to practice asking the Holy Spirit to help us!  The power for us to be transformed was released over 2,000+ years ago. The Holy Spirit exploded all over Pentecost and demonstrated to those believers what God’s power looks like in action. Lives were irrevocably changed. That power is still here to transform us — we get it by using our faith as we follow Him.

The power of God looks like preaching when you are scared to death of it. It looks like praying for the sick when you don’t feel so flash yourself. It looks like owning up to the things in your past that you have tried to keep hidden, and then deliberately taking the time to fix them. Mature people don’t leave sin lying about – they take responsibility, and prayerfully and obediently, deal with it. Babies expect someone else to do that for them. We are suppliers of God’s love and grace, not consumers like the rest of this world.

Most Christians have faithfully memorised heaps of scriptures. Now we need to take those scriptures from theory into practice, and INTO our lifestyle. Agreeing with what God says, won’t change a thing unless we act on it. Obedience is the key to His kingdom, but it’s the one key we like to leave dangling on its hook! We can all have genuine reasons why we should hate this person or that circumstance. We’ve chosen to forget that we don’t have to live under any circumstances anymore, because Jesus has let us out of that prison. His love set us free and that love is so powerful, it will continually do it. Our daily choices are powerful. Bye. 👋

P 2955 Don’t be lost – be found!

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John 8:42-47: “Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father [but He is not], you would love and recognize Me, for I came from God [out of His very Presence] and have arrived here. For I have not even come on My own initiative [as self-appointed], but He [is the One who] sent Me. Why do you misunderstand what I am saying? It is because [your spiritual ears are deaf and] you are unable to hear [the truth of] My word. 

You are of your father the devil, and it is your will to practice the desires [which are characteristic] of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks what is natural to him, for he is a liar and the father of lies and half-truths. 

But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me [and continue in your unbelief]. Which one of you [has proof and] convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? Whoever is of God and belongs to Him hears [the truth of] God’s words; for this reason you do not hear them: because you are not of God and you are not in fellowship with Him.”

Man, I love the book of John, I’ve been glued to it for weeks! Let’s just quickly revise what Jesus says in the 1st paragraph above. He came here to us, from the Presence of God. There are times, sadly, when we don’t live like we know this …we just think we do, because we’ve heard the words before. The power in those words comes from acting on them. If we really knew this, then whatever He says to us through His Word would not, and could not, come into question.  It is a waste of time to frame what the bible says by our own denominational bents. This book is God speaking to us, and we need to listen. We simply must stop rationalising the power of God to change lives out of His Word!

Coming from the very Presence of God means that Jesus has Almighty God’s authority to say what He says. And everything He says is covered in and by God’s Presence, and it will be interpreted to us by the Holy Spirit, Who was sent here to help us understand. There are no optional extras in the gospels – if ‘every promise in the book is mine’  — then every obedient response to those promises are mine as well! Ya might want to sit and think on that. Lastly, Jesus was sent here by God Himself– the Lord didn’t just decide to pop down here off His own bat!

Because of what Jesus says here, we know what the devil does;  how he sounds;  and what his aim is, so we don’t have to be ignorant of our enemy’s tricks. Did you get that it is natural for our enemy to lie? This means we need to desperately know the truth, because whatever he says will be really convincing! he’s despicably good at lying – it’s not a habit, it is part of his nature. He hates people. I also think that he loves to distract people with his lies … after all half the planet is chasing the good life, money, great circumstances and the dream of happiness, here and now! But that is not what the bible clearly says we should pursue.

The last paragraph tells us that human beings can’t hear the Lord Jesus because He speaks truth, and we like lies better than truth. Think about it – God says “Go and make disciples” and “Love one another” and we say: “That’s someone else’s job!” “That’s too hard!” Our preferences regarding what we choose to hear, can make us deafer than a post! However, listening to lies leaves us room to do whatever we like, whenever we want to, because we think: “God doesn’t mind” …! But God’s truth is destined to lead us into a totally different lifestyle. Sometimes we are happy enough to believe lies because believing lies leaves us undisturbed in our sin! But practising sin has a bad destination… Jesus came here to change our destination.

The questions every single human being has to answer are quite simple… is Jesus Christ Who He says He is?  Did He really come to do what He said He did?  Did He really rise from the dead? Today, I believe that His greatest plan is unfolding — He’s alive IN His people. You and I can easily make up a god in our own image and take a chance that what we think is right, IS actually right. But remember, our intellect and wisdom are limited, so we are making a limited choice. Sooner or later we will have to take someone else’s word. Why not take GOD’S own WORD? It’s been around for 2,000+ years or so. I know people who set out to disprove what God said and they ended up following Him because they found Him in the book!

Anybody can read the bible for themselves, starting with what Jesus said and did, and talk to God like this: “God if you are there, I am talking to you, if not, then I am talking to myself. Please help me to find You in Your book. ”Amen. All kinds of amazing things happen when you take the time to pray like that. Don’t be lost … be found! May God Himself lead you as you search to find Him. Jesus Christ IS truth. Bye 👋  

P 2933 Joy is not just happiness.

/ DVH

I’ve learnt this truth from experience, even as I have grown older. When I was about 40 years old, I was misdiagnosed with liver cancer and told I had 6 weeks to live. To confirm that diagnosis I had to undergo a series of large needle biopsies to find the whereabouts of the cancer. A biopsy means you have a local anaesthetic into the area to start with, and then they poke a hole in the liver. If you’ve ever had a biopsy you will know what I mean. 

So the consultant did the biopsy and phoned for results. Negative for cancer.. So she did it again – negative. Apparently it is dangerous to repeat this test over and over, yet they did it 18 times on me, that day. My liver consultant, on the phone, insisted they were missing what he wanted, and he made the female consultant do it again and again, and the results all still came back negative. Even experts can be wrong. At the same time I had to lie perfectly still while they did this test.

After 18 times, the specialist consultant was crying, and so was I .. silently. Tears were pouring down my face but I couldn’t sob or cry out loud because the liver is a vascular organ, it bleeds very badly. So poking holes in it meant I could haemorrhage if I moved, so I had to lie still. In the end I heard this lovely lady yelling at the liver specialist that there was nothing there and she refused to take anymore specimens. Boy was I grateful!! 

They trundled me back to the ward, to lie on my side, doomed to lay there, absolutely still, for at least 8 hours. Fortunately the liver clots quite quickly, but because mine was not functioning properly it was more of a problem. The various liver specialists were so convinced that I had cancer, I had to have a major operation, so they could actually see the liver. It turned out I did not have it, I had an auto immune disease. That’s also when I learnt that joy is not necessarily happiness, because that was when I found out I needed a liver transplant!

Now, let’s look at a commentary, in Isaiah, about Jesus’ suffering: “I GAVE My back to the smiters, and My cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not My face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help Me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set My face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifieth Me; who will contend with Me? Let us stand together: who is Mine adversary? Let him come near to Me.”Isaiah 50:6-8.

The full details of the Lord’s crucifixion appear in Matthew 27, Mark 15, Luke 23 and John 19. Those details reminded me today of that particular day in my own life, long ago. It powerfully reminded me about how hard it must have been for the Lord to keep still as He let them beat Him, shredding the skin off His back. Then they shoved those awful thorns into His dear head, pulled out His beard, and hammered those huge nails into His hands. He did not cry out in pain – the bible tells us He was silent as a sheep is going to the slaughter. He did not choose to retaliate against His tormentors or try to escape.

When the Lord reminded me about that time of difficulty I had, long ago, I remembered all I wanted to do was escape! Imagine the level of self-control Jesus must have had, the love, the patience, despite severe provocation, and the injustice of it all! My consultant, a perfect stranger, kept yelling down the phone: “This is not fair, it’s torture.” But Jesus had nobody to speak for Him. He LET those soldiers carve our names into the palms of His hands with those huge nails. He could have called for angels. Angels were present at His birth. But in this terrible process they were absent. He kept silent and still, and endured the cross because He could see all of mankind on the other side of it. I said all that to say this: “For the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross.” Hebrews 12:2.

WE are His joy! His sacrifice made our transformation possible when He let those soldiers do what they were doing, even though they were tormenting and torturing Him beyond our imagining. Joy comes from completing the Father’s will. You know, the Lord Jesus did not deserve what happened to Him. It was deliberate, a malicious spite-filled action filled with hate, murder, rage and jealousy and death. 

Pilate himself did his best to walk that huge surge of evil, murderous emotion in the crowd, back. … But the Jews were determined. At the same time their prognosis of Jesus’ purpose was wrong! The same people who cheered Him and sang “hosanna”and threw their coats down in front of the donkey He was sitting on … cried out; “Crucify Him.” A week later!

Human beings are often evil, fickle and selfish, and despite all our best efforts we are often very wrong. As Christians we must learn to be pliable within His hands… even as we pray and believe for deliverance and release from any captivity. Almighty God promised us all far more than a nice car, a house, a good job, a perfect spouse, plus intelligent perfectly healthy kids!… He promised He’d make us like Him!🤔 JOY is not the same as happiness – happiness comes and goes. .

Happiness is this world’s answer to everything. True Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. That fruit grows in the face of sorrow and suffering. It grows even when you lose someone you dearly love, or someone betrays you, or even if the doctor is totally wrong. It grows as we let Him rule and reign in our lives. Bye. 👋

P 2889 People disagree …

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… sometimes very loudly! When you read the gospels you will find different people from all walks of life that are outrageously unkind, plus people who cheat each other, or they hate each other for all kinds of reasons. The thing is, disagreements are not necessarily about who is right and who is wrong – that’s this world’s way of thinking. ‘I think I am much right-er than YOU are,’ is a really common theme. I hate disagreements … everybody loses!

To be perfectly honest with you, difficulties can have a positive side, they can usher in change in us – if we put down our sword of attack, and pick up His Grace, the people around us would feel much safer! God’s Grace needs to be the way we live now. What Jesus did at Calvary, released an incredible, overabundant Grace, and it is ours for the taking. We need to use our faith. Let me clarify that into English – let what you’ve been given by God be your new motivation – it makes it easier to apologise! Do it for the Lord!  He deserves to see the reward of His suffering in our lives.

This is our highest form of worship. This, in its very essence, is Romans 12:1 ”Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”When we choose His will, His Way, we are choosing to worship Him! Here’s another scripture nobody much likes, Jesus said it: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13. We live this way for people who totally don’t deserve that kind of attitude or action from us! I’ve known people who said: “I would die for you” – but they haven’t considered that dying for the other person might include not liking or loving them very much at the time! 

Jesus chose to die for us, and He loved us while He did it! Good place to praise God for mercy!! Before you throw your hands up in the air in frustration, because we all have difficult people in our lives …think about it. Name somebody in the bible who had a happy, trouble-free, carefree life – you can’t do it can you? Our happiness, our purest joy comes from knowing Him – other people and relationships line up behind that. It often seems to me in those angry moments, that I’ve forgotten that love is a choice not a feeling!! 

Human beings stagger about doing the weirdest stuff, searching for that mythical land that is called “my happiness.” It won’t happen – it can’t happen. If we don’t find our happiness in serving Him, and learning His Ways – we are doomed to keep repeating the same rubbish mistakes over and over again. We will remain stuck in a mire of our own choosing. The answer to other people driving us crazy isn’t them changing – It’s our own personal transformation – we change the way we think and see everyone else, and they don’t bother us anymore!

There really is a place where other people don’t have to get on your nerves – Jesus Christ lived there and He was a man just like us. Every single one of those irritations are giving us an opportunity to die to self. Jesus didn’t have to wrangle His emotions, because He knew what was important – He knew the book from when He was 12! Everything He did He did to further His Father’s Kingdom. That’s now our job.

Christians admire other people’s testimonies. Things like: some dear missionary went to some lost tribe, and the tribe was saved but they chopped the poor missionary into little bits.’ Let’s pause a minute … the thing is, we don’t have rampant indigenous tribes waiting to kill us … instead we have Mrs Kerfoops who is always gossiping about everyone and she comes to church every Sunday … that dear lady needs to know His Grace. Obviously she has none, because she can’t keep her mouth shut. Somebody is going to have to be a source of God’s Grace toward her!

The bible works as a WHOLE. That missionary who died released Grace to the pagan tribe …  they left their comfortable homeland and went to a strange place for the sake of the gospel. That’s GRACE. Today’s Christians don’t value GRACE enough. We expect other people to understand US.. Instead we need to learn to turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile, right in the middle of the time when we feel so provoked we just want to thump the person who is provoking us. 

This means we will need to put His Grace into action to manage our painful circumstances. Think on this — the Grace that we cling to while the world around us continually shifts on its axis, is the same Grace we give away to other people when they don’t deserve it. In those moments I remind myself — “I don’t deserve His Grace either!” It really does help. Right along with my all time favourite prayer. “Help help!” Prayer is so much more than words, it is an attitude of our hearts!

Some of the time people disagree because they don’t know Him well enough yet. So there are no hard and fast rules as to who should be the one to give away Grace. I’ve found if I can actually see what is going on, then that means He will help me to get through it. I step out in faith, and I ask for His help to holster my own opinion. I’ve yet to start cheering when a disagreement comes up, but these things are opportunities for me to practise what I preach. Bye. 👋