Heaven’s kingdom

P 2719 Our faith is a faith of paradoxes.

/ DVH

“That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”2 Corinthians 12:10. Paul gets happy when most of us would run away. Ya might want to think on that for a bit. 🤔  When is the last time you cheered when everything went wrong and you couldn’t fix it? …. Me neither!! When is the last time either of us remembered that the weaknesses we feel are a sign we are strong in Him? 

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” Matthew 5:11-13. When we suffer for righteousness sake, we are blessed! And if people hate us then we are even more blessed. Yeah… r-i-gh-t! “How enriched you are when persecuted for doing what is right! For then you experience the realm of heaven’s kingdom.” Matthew 5:10 TPT. So, in keeping with the theme of today’s blog — when is the last time you ran about shouting gleefully: ”I’m rich, I’m rich?” — simply because people were rude to you, or cursed you, or criticised or threw rocks at you or made your life difficult. Rocks can be words too! 

Here’s another one to chew on:  “As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed;…” 2 Corinthians 6:9. These are things nobody in their right mind would want to experience – yet when we chose to follow the Lord Jesus, that way of life became our portion. We have paradoxes by the bucket load:“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs in the kingdom of heaven.”Matthew 5:3. As Heidi Baker once said: “My poor in Mozambique know they are poor, in the Western world, you don’t know you are poor.” Here’s a big fat revelation … she’s not talking about money or goods, etc. She’s talking about us being spiritually poor… Having stuff can cause a huge pre-occupation with keeping stuff … or getting even better stuff. We can be so obsessed with keeping our routines and systems ticking over, that our spirits can be in abject poverty. 

One of the greatest paradoxes of all is putting what we can see or feel above what He has already said in the book! Or maybe it’s thinking we can live this life however we want, and still enter His kingdom…?  Here’s another interesting one: “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” 1 Corinthians 13:3. Usually effort means we gain something!! But in this verse effort is secondary to something that is so ephemeral, so subjective – we need His book to define what it looks like!! And it looks like stuff we cannot naturally do – fancy God asking us to do stuff that we cannot do!

The real thing about paradoxes is that they run contrary to the way we want things to happen. Up becomes down;  in is out; and saved becomes a way of life, not just a ticket to heaven. The bible says that salvation needs to affect everything, especially the way we relate to others. If you find yourself getting snippy with someone, it’s time to do a spiritual check up, with His help. Just like you would check your temperature if you feel a bit off. Each time we say ‘yes’ to His Ways, we are saying ‘no’ to our own way, and that’s when we step into our own personal battle. 

The paradox of our faith is that it has no evidence until we act on it!  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1. It takes faith to say nothing when you feel provoked by circumstances or someone else. It takes faith to speak to another person about the Lord. It takes faith to be kind when someone else is unkind.  Ya might want to think on things like that today. The Christian life is filled with paradoxes that cannot be understood except through the eyes of faith. Bye👋  

P 2553 Ssssshhhhhh!

/ DVH

I John 3:9 “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.” This is an extremely comforting verse in all its aspects. To start with, if this world didn’t know the King of all glory, then I am not a failure if the world thinks I’m peculiar because I believe what I believe, and I act on it, seen or unseen.

Despite the fact that Christianity has been stuck in super-star mode for many years – the truth is, ordinary unknown people with 9-5 jobs, doing whatever the Lord tells them to do, day by day – are actually our greatest strength! They are the real army. Here’s why … ordinary people aren’t doing loving stuff to make a living, they are doing whatever they do because they love Jesus, as well as other people. Ask yourself, how do I show His grace and love to others? And please don’t try to be someone else – we need YOU to be YOU!  By all means, go for transformation, but we don’t need clones, we need the people God designed us to be, each one of us. He had a plan when He made you – don’t stuff it up by trying to be someone else!

Meanwhile my point is this:  we can’t and won’t all win some quiz show or talent contest or start some super church to give us fame and a platform, so then we can publicly testify to His loving kindness. If we aren’t already witnessing now, we will not witness then! Witnessing is a life choice. That whole fame thing is just a disaster waiting to happen. Lovely people can end up on the rocks simply because they’ve entered a much larger playing field, vastly unaware that the bigger the audience and responsibility we have, the greater the dangers, we will face! 

Human beings can easily fail, fall over and do dumb stuff, because it utterly messes with most people’s heads when they become important. They start to think that they are the only person on the planet that knows the truth. And, sadly, sometimes that idea works with churches too. Many churches nowadays affiliate themselves with others, to form some sort of sub-denomination, But the fact is, they have affiliated themselves with other people that they basically agree with, whose theology isn’t different from their own. There is not much reconciliation in there! We all need to be challenged beyond what we can manage in order to grow.

The truth is we can have a whole lotta theories, some of them are vastly untested – because to test stuff you have to live like it! I am aware that some of these theories have been tested by Brother or Sister ‘I’ve-written-ten-books-and-it-works-for-me-what’s-wrong-with-you? Hmmm. That scripture about our road being narrow and hard suddenly popped into my head, right now! The anointing of God is not a stamp of approval, it is freely given to us to empower us to love, bless and reach out to others! Many Christians slog along, trying hard, standing on their tiptoes. They are killing themselves trying to reach someone else’s mark! Jesus gave us the mark – LOVE GOD AND LOVE OTHERS!

In my life I have known a number of people over the years who were called by God to be evangelists. I would not call them ordinary, not by any stretch of anyone’s imagination! As a matter of fact, it seems to me, they can’t say: ‘hello how are you’ without getting right in your face and leading you to Jesus! I’m being serious!! Their calling is so intrinsically woven into His new creation in them … that they can’t help themselves! They simply don’t have an “off” button. They see this world through their gift. Whenever we meet, I had the strangest feeling that if George the evangelist went to the fish and chip shop to buy fish and chips for dinner, he’d end up evangelising everybody who came in the store, as well as all the people who stood behind the counter … and then he would step into the busy street! 

George has a gift – he didn’t earn it or deserve it – God Himself chose it and gave it to him. We need to be like George regarding the gifts God has given US. Things you spontaneously do to bless and help others. We have all been called to do what He chose for us to do. And over time, we will start to be flavoured by the gifts He has given us. Just find your gift and use it to benefit others. It ain’t rocket science!  At the same time we dare not use the Lord’s calling on our lives to make ourselves important. Jesus chose us and He saved us. He’s the One Who is important! Our greatest blessing in this life is to testify to that. Be glad to be ordinary — being extraordinary is not what it’s cracked up to be. Ask Moses!

This world does not know us, because we’ve been chosen to remain mostly unseen. We don’t have to be seen to do good to others. Anonymity is useful. I believe our greatest strength lies in our ordinariness. The time is coming when secret agents will do what all the evangelists in this world have not been able to do by themselves. Every single person on this planet will hear about Jesus and that won’t necessarily be from some huge evangelical campaign – instead it will come from people like you and I who testify that Jesus is entirely wonderful, because we know Him, personally. ”And as you go, preach this message: ‘Heaven’s kingdom realm is accessible, close enough to touch.’“ Matthew 10:7 TPT.  👋