Heavenly

P 3519 There are two kinds of wisdom … 

/ DVH

… heavenly and earthly. When I write this blog, my aim is not to have people agree with me. Instead my hope is to inspire others to talk to Him, as well as talk to each other. Pre-digested food doesn’t help our spiritual health. There is nothing like fresh manna daily. So we daily read His Word to get a glimpse into His wisdom! James himself mentions that there are two kinds of wisdom. That gives us the opportunity to look at the Lord’s wisdom carefully, so we can identify it.

James 3:17-18 TLB: “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure and full of quiet gentleness. Then it is peace-loving and courteous. It allows discussion and is willing to yield to others; it is full of mercy and good deeds. It is wholehearted and straightforward and sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness.”

I know the bible seems to use an excess of words – descriptive ones and sometimes seemingly irrelevant ones. But I’ve found that every single word that comes from God’s heart, sweetly burrows its way into my heart and it will profit me – if I let it. It is so easy to look at the tasks that are in the book, and do them and think that’s that! But actually I think the Lord loves the communication between Him and us, far more than us gathering info, or doing tasks. To the Lord, us listening to Him, and us talking to Him, are just as important.

I truly believe we can be transformed by this simple daily interaction. The Lord’s unconditional love is life-changing. But unless we keep looking into the mirror of His Word, or we will end up going about our day forgetting what we actually look like! Even being near Him saturates us with His all-powerful love, wisdom and goodness – whether we feel something or not.

In order to partake of His wisdom we need to know what it looks like, and bless God, James is giving us a clear description of His wisdom. Sadly we all know what man’s wisdom looks like too, that stuff is everywhere. Books, TV, radio etc. When I turn the TV on, something or other blathers at me full volume, and my brain almost melts! But the Lord’s wisdom is so gentle, we can easily miss it. Yet we need to be able to identify it, or we will ignore what He is saying to us. He won’t force what He thinks on us, our involvement in this process is purely voluntary. He doesn’t want us to miss the truth in what He says when we hear it. This world is not like Him, and it is easy to see the difference.

The Lord’s wisdom is gentle, peaceable, pure, polite, not argumentative, and He loves peace. Our Father is kind and unobtrusive, we can ignore His voice when He calls us to Himself. It is easy to hide behind: “I don’t really feel like that today,” OR “I’ll catch up tomorrow … I’m busy Lord.” The verse in James shows me that He cares so much about my life, and my freedom. But He will not interrupt me, I will have to choose to ask Him to help me. And the result of Him speaking to me, will bring me peace, not turmoil.

The Lord doesn’t use a multitude of words, He speaks directly to the point. What He says is so powerful it produces incredible results. In Genesis our Father’s response to darkness was —-“Let there be light.” No waste of words there! On another occasion He said in Malachi to the Israelites; “Your words have wearied Me.” So rattling on, mouthing platitudes, pretending to relate to Him won’t impress Him – He would much rather we were honest.

Almighty God does not mind if I ask Him questions! I ask Him things all the time. I was raised around adults so getting a word into a discussion was pretty fraught with danger back then. Seven year old kids only think they are smart! But the Lord is not like that at all. He is quite happy to explain how things work. I literally never had a father, so talking to one is a really big deal to me. The ones I knew as a child were absent, scary and only saw me when I did something wrong — that didn’t help much.

But I have discovered that the Lord is always so kind to us even as we walk with Him. Because of these glimpses of His wisdom, we learn how incredibly inadequate human beings are. We may be great at stuff that is inspired by cleverness, but we are not good with the kind of purity He has. His goodness and wisdom are like flashes of lightning when we stumble across them. Because of that, I think that the worse kind of temptation we face is not necessarily sin…

Most of us want to avoid sin like the plague. but in my opinion the worst temptation we face all the time is the temptation to believe that He is not good and He won’t be good to us. When we take His goodness as our standard, then whatever happens cannot distract us. We know that He’s good, so what He does is good and pure, it is destined to transform us. Jesus Himself told us that He came here to give us abundant life! That’s our benchmark. Our Heavenly Father does not have any secret agendas. James clearly tells us here in this passage, that the Lord’s wisdom, is wholehearted, straightforward and sincere. And we have it in writing!

There are two kinds of wisdom, the wisdom that dazzles us with razzamatazz and the wisdom that comes down from above, from ‘the Father of lights.’ James 1:17. It illuminates Who He is and who we are to Him. Bye. 👋

P3382 Ours is an Eternal Love story. 

/ DVH

Romans 8:15: “The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by Him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’”                          Psalm 103:13:“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.”                                                                                                                                    1 John 3:1:“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are.”

Our God’s love is eternal, and redemption was always part of His plan. This means His love for us will never change. Most people often have no concept of what real love, the kind of love the Father has for us, looks like. Our ideas of love can easily be limited by our earthly experiences of it. 1 John 3:1 throws some light on that. It says ‘behold what manner of love the Father gives’ … behold means look at that love thoroughly and carefully. When we look carefully at God’s love, we can begin to understand His manner/His kind of love. God’s kind of love holds something special for us all inside it. It is a Love that never goes away, despite the unworthiness of the recipient.

Almighty God’s kind of love has no ending or beginning, it is complete in itself, and it is utterly altruistic. “Altruistic means someone is acting out of pure, unselfish concern for the well-being of others. It describes behaviour driven by empathy and a desire to help, without expecting any reward, recognition, or personal gain.” That’s what our Heavenly Father’s Love is like. The bad things that happen to us aren’t sent by Him, they come from our enemy. This is why we cannot afford to live our lives in the soulish, emotional and reactive realm. This world doesn’t produce that kind of love – it is heavenly, straight from the throne.

However, every single time we go into FEAR we will go back into slavery. This what Romans 8:15 is telling us. If we have fear, we are misunderstanding His love. Eventually, under duress, we can begin to be captivated by, and start serving the feelings of fear, instead of serving Him. Fear paralyses us. Fear likes to be protected and kept hidden. It demands to be fed lies and half-truths to keep all of us captive in it. Praise God, that our experiential knowledge of the love of God, personally, and through His word, chucks fear out of the window!

The fear of God which is mentioned in Psalm 103:13 is not the same as this world’s fear, which only bears the fruit of destruction. The fear of the Lord opens the door to further wisdom. Fearing God is not about being afraid, it is about being respectful and compliant in the things He has told us to do, because we acknowledge His Wisdom, His Ways and authority over our lives.  

God has provided for us to live in, and from, wisdom. The Lord’s wisdom is available to us at any time. Because of His incredible loving generosity, He will give us His wisdom whenever we ask for it. The Bible talks about wisdom like this: “For the reverence and fear of God are basic to all wisdom…” This is why our living, breathing, thriving relationship with the Lord matters … as we walk with Him we become aware of Who He is, and how much we need Him. “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, Who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” James 1:5.

When I read scriptures like the ones above, I am reminded of how generous the Lord is toward us – how remarkably rich He is in love. Being rich in love is almost incomprehensible to us – we are used to all kinds of poverty in this life, including spiritually – even though it has never been God’s will for us to be poor. Understanding the Lord’s love means we will develop a quiet confidence in HIM, not our circumstances.

He is reliable, faithful, good – so if I don’t see what I am asking Him for – I remember that James told me that I can ask amiss. Then I ask the Lord where I’ve missed it.  Romans 3:4 “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar;…” Making His Word our plumb line changes our perspectives, because we begin to understand real truth from His perspective.

Before we were even brought into this world, Father God’s Love was complete in itself. The Trinity worked in perfect harmony, They had such a precious bond of love and unity we can’t even begin imagine it. They did not need mankind … the love They have for each Other is already perfect and complete. Instead, They chose to create us from that love. The bible says: “Let us make man in Our image.” Genesis 1:26. We’ve been created to look like Them – we were born out of Their love.

The Father has given us the freedom to choose to love and obey Him … or not. Sadly, those “no”  choices have released death, destruction and decay, loose in a world that had never even seen an electron or proton out of place. You and I are designed to be like God, like His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in this life to others. We have the opportunity to know His kind of love, and give it away to others while we are still in this life. Our disobedience, ignorance, and disrespect can short-circuit this process.

The Holy Spirit chooses to reside within us, when we give our lives to Jesus. Now we have the capacity to share the same kind of complete and powerful love that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit share. Let’s thank God for His salvation plan incredibly implemented by Jesus Christ His beloved Son. Because of Jesus we are now part of His wonderful Eternal love story. Bye. 👋

P 3240 Come up higher.

/ DVH

Sometimes we can become so earthly-minded we are no longer of any heavenly use. It seems to me that the church has become distracted by the cares and worries of this world. At the same time, it kind of looks like we expect Almighty God to enter our world and meet our needs here and now — He already did that. The thing is, He has higher priorities and I don’t think that it is His priority to make sure His kids have a cushy life.

Let’s take what the bible says seriously, and start making investments and withdrawals, using that book as our guideline. Then we can begin to bring His kingdom down here where the truly needy live. Truly needy people are the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet! Personally, I think telling people Jesus died to make them rich and prosper, is an abomination! 

None of Jesus’ disciples settled down into living in a grand house, in the ‘burbs, with everything they needed on tap. Instead they hit the road, and trusted Jesus to meet their needs. BTW, I am not saying, sell your house, go and sit on the curb and wait for Jesus to come back, but I am saying  – He is our priority. His agenda is now our agenda. We have given our lives to Him, so we can’t afford to let this life dictate what happens to us, through us and around us. 

As kingdom people, our destiny is to bring light and hope into the darkness. We may have to punch a hole in the darkness sometimes. The author of the book of Daniel punched a hole, and it took a while for the answer to come. Yet this man kept waiting for the Lord to do what He loves to do for all of us. Redeem the situation. Jesus loves to redeem situations, as well as relationships. It’s faith that gives us the impetus we need to pray, and keep on praying as we wait for Him to answer.  

Sometimes a believer’s problems can be a wrong attitude. Especially when we want to use God to make this life, our own earthly life, better. This world is a sewer. You can’t see the kingdom of God in a sewer, unless God Himself called you in there! This means we can’t afford to steep ourselves in the gunk that goes on around us – we need to soak in the Word of God to stay clean! We are called to be IN this world and not OF it. That means this world is not alive in us.

We can use our spiritual energy up by trying to praying our way out of this and that. But the bible says we are already more than conquerors, because of what Jesus has done. Let’s focus on that instead, and deliberately make sure all our relationships are based on the kind of love Jesus gave us. And when things are difficult, and “stuff” happens – while we are in the middle of it – let’s look for someone we are there to help, to witness to, to care for.

We seem to have given up on fulfilling the Great Commission. Sadly, we’ve become so involved in human affairs, we’ve forgotten our mandate. My advice is this – tell the Lord your needs, and choose to walk with the Spirit of God. Our faith is not designed to be like a credit card that is whipped out for use when we need it. Our faith is like an atmosphere that surrounds us. We live there, in good or bad seasons, we choose to focus on our glorious God being in charge. We comfort ourselves that He is doing what He set out to do … we just can’t see it yet. So we pray for steadfastness in trials and the ability to rest while He’s doing whatever He is doing. It is going to be for our good, we just can’t see it yet.

The Body of Christ is here to be salt and light — to lift everyone around us up higher, by the way we regard others. It is not lying to speak to the good in someone else who has been anything but good to you! It takes faith. We have the power to speak things into being – ask the Lord to show you what He sees in those people. Let’s stop rehearsing other people’s sins, and start looking for why they are here, and speak into that… … encouraging them into those things. 

In the last century, my age group made a mistake, we started exalting ourselves. Telling ourselves that we were  this or that and quoting verses from the bible to prove it to ourselves and others. It was a lot of hot air. Forget being the head instead of the tail – Jesus is our Head! I do not care if I am a toenail in the Body of Christ, I’m just glad to be included! Jesus is the only One Who is all this, AND that. We are here to encourage and bless and uphold others. We don’t need to big note ourselves spiritually. 

What stands us out in this world needs to be His GRACE and LOVE operating in us and through us. Let’s  decide what kingdom we want to live in, here and now – HIS kingdom is the Higher Place, living like He lived. We dare not call ourselves successful unless we are living to help others, because loving one another has become our priority. Let’s put our prayer, faith and energy into that. Bye 👋.