Hebrews 12;2

P 3265 Where are you looking?

/ DVH

2 Corinthians 4:5-12: “For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, Who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that His life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”    

 At times maybe we think following Jesus shouldn’t cost us! These verses give us the alternatives. The bible is so clear — words like:  ‘hard pressed; perplexed; persecuted; struck down; death is at work in us, but life is at work in you’… should be a major clue. Those among us who think this new life of ours should always be fun, fun, fun, well, they need their heads read. Or they need the bible to transform their thinking! Perhaps some of us are resigned to living with continual disappointment, which is definitely not fun and very bad for our faith! Just to cheer you up even further …

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” That was Verses 16-18 same chapter. 

Why does Paul tell us he did not want us to lose heart? With that list of unhappy endings, that thought seems a bit redundant! He goes on to explain that our outer man maybe diminishing all the time, but our inner man, our spirit, is being renewed by His Presence within us. We can’t live, work, play, or even breathe without Jesus! Seriously. Some of the worst damage has been done to the basic tenements of Christianity, by trying to make it sound like a cross between winning the lottery and a fun fair. In this passage Paul is describing a people who live to see Jesus get all the glory, all the honour – all the time. That’s because their eyes are on Him and they look at everything around them through the light of eternity.

If we focus on our comfort in the here and now, we are going to be utterly disappointed a lot. God is maturing His saints! What part of ‘stoned’ – (ps the writer isn’t talking about taking drugs!) ‘…and sawn asunder, sliced with a sword, tempted, wandering about practically naked with nowhere to live, don’t we get? (Hebrews 11:37) God doesn’t promise us flowers, happy endings and blue birds. Jesus said clearly that this is a narrow difficult road.

 Our fear that reality may put other people off is well-founded. Comfort is king in all our western societies. We desperately need the Lord Jesus to renew us every single day, or any one of us can lose heart and give up. Let’s ask Him to help us to produce the fruit of self-control and perseverance, and water it with tears and fertilise it with surrender. 

Paul calls these ghastly things that bowl us over in this life, “light and momentary afflictions.” Boy that sure puts everything into perspective. What would happen if we saw our difficulties through fresh eyes?  Imagine living life in such a way that love oozes out of our pores, and we leave puddles of glory behind us. We can’t go to the shop and buy Glory! His glory flourishes as we make our hearts His home.

The more we choose to die to self, the more He can be seen within us, flashing out His glorious brightness and capturing other people’s hearts with just one glance. It is imperative here and now, to fix our eyes on Jesus and what He wants for us – including the people He has gathered around us. When we fix our eyes on this world, we can be so easily distracted by what is going on, instead of focussing on Him, this allows other important things to pale into insignificance. I am not there yet …obviously! … But that’s my aim. To daily take in His love for me, and give it away. 

There is no other answer for this world but Jesus. Hubby and I can’t even watch the news anymore it is so chock full of – this person did that evil thing and another one did worse! The bible says: ‘Without Christ we can do nothing.’This whole world is without Christ – that’s why it is in the state it is in. Why are we so astonished? I am learning to assess my focus, and keep my eyes on Him – no matter what else is going on. Where do I look for daily inspiration? Let’s “… all look … unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, …” Hebrews 12:2. Bye 👋

P 3248 Let joy REMAIN.

/ DVH

“Yahweh, you are my soul’s celebration. How could I ever forget the miracles of kindness You’ve done for me?” Psalms 103:2 TPT. “When You speak to me, I devour every word. Your word brings me such boundless joy. The endless delight of my heart is in knowing that Your beautiful name is attached to me, O  Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies.” Jeremiah 15:16 TPT. ‘I have told you these things, that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy and gladness may be of full measure and complete and overflowing.” John 15:11. First of all we let JOY remain by remembering Jesus has chosen to walk with us here and now – and the Holy Spirit is here to lead us.

Joy is like peace, don’t lose it! If you lose it I urge you to go and find it again. His joy, in us, makes this life worth living. It is precious and costly – it cost Jesus His life. Let’s treat our lives like an operating room. Nobody operates on a patient without first thoroughly scrubbing themselves clean, so we must make sure we ask Him to help us look after our hearts. This means if and when, we get angry etc., we need repent quickly. Nurturing anger and feeding irritation, facilitates letting our hearts harden against that other person. Sorrow and suffering are joy murderers, unless our joy is permanently in the One Who saved us. Then circumstances can’t rule us.

Our enemy comes at us with whispers about this and that, and before you know it, there is no joy, no peace, no reconciliation – there is only RAGE and SORROW left. To let JOY remain, we need to guard our hearts against pride, self-satisfaction, revenge, bitterness, self-pity etc. And deliberately repent and remove any reason to justify ourselves, our actions and words. Take all that ugliness to the cross and leave it there. Humble yourself and fix things with others. We can’t serve two Masters … we will end up with divided hearts. Let’s choose Who we will serve and permanently settle it inside us. 

Then we need to deal with the state of our hearts, and the all pervading feeling that we are entitled to be angry, because the other person did or said this and that! Rehearsing other people’s sins is not only a dead end road, it’s a disaster! When we go to the cross we leave our entitlement, our judgment, our need for retribution there – my best advice is this – don’t go back and dig it up!  

Baptism isn’t just a ritual, some people go under the water and come up exactly the same! That means the water of the Word has not washed them clean of this world’s attitudes and systems. Instead this life continues to feed them entitlement and anger – over and over again. There are others who like to think of themselves as wounded beings, and they feel the rest of the world owes them something, because this life has wounded them. Here’s a big revelation for all of us, we are all wounded one way or another. Hurt is not a reason to indulge ourselves.

Thankfulness in the face of adversity is one of the biggest keys to allowing our joy to remain. Meditating on what someone else did or said, feeds the wrong spirit. Eventually that becomes a defensive way to think, and the habit of not seeing the good in things, will drag us under. But God is bigger than the spirit of stupid we can so easily succumb to – cry out for help, and He will rescue us, over and over again. Consider this life to be a journey, and point yourself in His direction and don’t allow detours. 

This is what the Lord said in Matthew 26:53 when people were deliberately murderous, vicious and cruel to Him.“Do you think I cannot call on My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”Right there, is the well-spring of our joy. The Lord didn’t try to save Himself, instead He chose to rescue us. Our choices are also powerful! We can help each other immeasurably if we simply stop putting our expectations onto other people. Other people cannot hold us up, that’s like putting your expectations on a badly broken chair. You’ll hurt yourself when you fall down! 

There’s real joy in what Jesus did. JOY is one of God’s glorious traits. Jesus didn’t sail through His earthly life without conflict and confrontation, He walked carefully, prayerfully through it, sometimes one step at time. And every single time He did that with that with US in mind. Our focus matters! “Keep your eyes on Jesus, Who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how He did it. Because He never lost sight of where He was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—He could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now He’s there, in the place of honour, right alongside God.” Hebrews 12:2.

The joy we experience here and now, when we see what Jesus can do with one ordinary little changed life, that is our way through to the finish line. Where incredible eternal joy awaits us. We need to put immediate gratification, or instant relief from annoyance and irritation down … In favour of the greater good. Jesus looked through the pain of the cross, the separation from His Father and the Holy Spirit, and He saw us —- all of us together, in His Father’s house – forever. It is HIS joy we are learning so we need to learn it HIS way.  The Lord Jesus is the best reason of all to choose to learn to let joy remain. Bye. 👋