Hebrews 12:4

P 3045 This includes YOU.

/ DVH

Acts 5:32 “And we are witnesses of these things, and the Holy Spirit is also, Whom God has bestowed on those who obey Him.”Ask yourself this question — if you are passionate and you want to walk with the Holy Spirit … then, when was the last time you obeyed Him? We need to press through our feelings, and be guided by His Spirit and obey – Jesus did it and so now, we can too!

Yes, of course the Lord forgives us when we act like Peter, and betray Him by denying our knowledge of Who He is! Even when we are putting our own safety, or our public persona ahead of our desire to own our Saviour. But just because it is common, that does not make it the norm. Total honesty is the best way through difficult  situations. Honesty with yourself and the Lord. Don’t settle for pretending, that just muddies the water. Be real. Tell Him you don’t want to do whatever it is, take a deep breath and ask for His help … then do it anyway – using your faith that He will catch you if you fall.

Sometimes, it seems much easier to crawl along … instead of making the effort it takes to get back up again! However, in spite of the ungodly attitudes that I know I sometimes tolerate, all that falling down and getting up again, IS doing something. Even physically speaking, when I get up and down, I am strengthening my muscles. Meanwhile, that thought is a laugh-riot! I have trouble getting out of my chair, let alone getting up off the floor! Moving on … do squats for a bit. Your muscles will quite quickly explain to you that they don’t like being stretched like that. Our emotions and our own way of thinking won’t like being stretched either.

So let’s look at the bible, where the answers are. In the story below the apostles are under scrutiny by the usual suspects … the spiritual leaders! The council are talking amongst themselves, discussing what they can do about these men talking about Jesus all over the place. Shock, horror … now people are starting to follow the disciples!!  One of the leaders speaks up, his name is Gamaliel – he is very wise. 

Acts 5: 40-41: “So, convinced by him, (Gamaliel) they took his advice; and summoning the apostles, they flogged them and sternly forbade them to speak in or about the name of Jesus, and allowed them to go…V41…”So they went out from the presence of the council (Sanhedrin), rejoicing that they were being counted worthy [dignified by the indignity] to suffer shame and be exposed to disgrace for [the sake of] His Name.”

Did you get that? These men rejoiced that someone beat the daylights out of them because that meant they were worthy to bear the Name of Jesus. You might need a few minutes on that one! That flogging showed the world around them, that they belonged to Him, and what they were doing was working, so well people tried to beat that obedience out of them..I’m pretty sure flogging and maintaining a great attitude don’t always go together! (Hebrews 12:4) But the Holy Spirit gave them Grace for that situation. 

Our God is FOR US. He’s not upstairs somewhere sharpening His pencil writing down our misdeeds – He is so-oo-oo not like that! He loves us and He has made sure that every impediment that prevents our faith from growing –  is now gone. Now we repent and repair things, for our own sake, and because that other person needs His GRACE too! I do loads of stuff for Jesus that I probably wouldn’t do for anybody else. 

This scripture from Acts revealed to me the way I thought about trouble. In the past I saw trouble as punishment. However, at the bottom of it all, when I really prayerfully looked really hard – I discovered that I actually didn’t trust God enough to get me through hard things. The reason I took difficult things into my own hands and fiddled with them, trying to make them go away, was that I didn’t believe He always has my best interests in His heart! His love for us is described in Ephesians 3:18-19: “..that you may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

It takes His power to help me understand that He loves me! That was a brand new thought for me, and it started me down the road I’ve been travelling on for years. We’ve applied the bible as a rule book slavishly, but most of us were too scared to get to know Him and understand how, and why He does what He does. We cannot try to understand Him with our brains or emotions  – we need to use our hearts! The Holy Spirit was given to us to lead us into the promised land of fellowship with the Father, Son and Himself. He knows the Way – He brought the Way into this world through Mary! 

The power of God is not just about someone walking on water, or food being multiplied, or when someone receives a miracle. We need His power every single day to obey and understand HIM. How do you get it? Ask for it. I don’t just read the word – I ask Him to use His word to read me – my actions, attitudes, thoughts and feelings. That’s when the Holy Spirit showed me something amazing. Because Jesus chose to be human, God Himself understands how human beings operate, in a Way He didn’t before! He has chosen to experience humanity. He learnt about His creation, firsthand, by being here among us. NOW HIS SON IS HIS PERFECT EXPRESSION OF FORGIVENESS.

Our God He can never be less than Who He is, Almighty, invincible, omnipresent and omnipotent God … But because He IS Who He is – He chose to go the extra mile and experience humanity in all it’s ugliness and stinky attitudes. Jesus Christ is our perfect illustration that men and women don’t have to sink down into the lowest common denominator. That thought comes from the other guy. Look at what Jesus did, as a mere human being! He had perfect obedience to His Father’s will. 

The Lord Jesus totally relied upon the power of the Holy Spirit, and He made that power available, through His death and resurrection, to each one of us today. We don’t have to flounder along feeling guilty and hoping God won’t notice we aren’t perfect yet. SomeBody else took the exam for us AND HE PASSED … With flying colours. Now the Holy Spirit can come to live in us, because God established a precedent with Jesus. He made a Way to make the impossible, possible, and He gave that way to all of us. That includes YOU. Bye. ❤️🥰 

P 2962 What ARE you wearing?

/ DVH

When my kids were little I can remember uttering the above words to them many times. One of them insisted on going out with a jumper inside out and backwards. 🙄

We’ve all heard these words from Colossians 3:12, but applying them has become a priority. “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” I think it is appropriate for us to ask ourselves daily — what does compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience look like? Personally I do that with prayer and a whole lot of help from the Holy Spirit, with great truckloads of His Grace. Unfortunately, I have an awful feeling that these things that we are meant to wear, every single day, are the absolute antithesis of what the world all around us says we should wear daily to survive.

So let’s remember first of all, that survival by this world’s standard, is no longer our aim. Our Saviour set the example for us. Jesus led the way. He had so little personal stuff that the soldiers played ‘two up’ underneath His cross to own it!  At the same time, no matter what kind of a fancy slant we put on the way we live, we cannot disguise a lack of compassion, or kindness, humility etc. This means we will go out into this world naked unless we choose to wear the clothes that Jesus Christ bought for us. Ya might want to pause and think on that one. 🤔

Romans 13:14 talks about the origin of our brand new faith clothes. “Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.” The secret to wearing His clothes is stop worrying about what we wear, or how our life will go – or even what we can do to cheer ourselves up, because we’ve had a bad day. We just leave everything with Him.“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? … Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”Matthew 6:25-27… well, sort of … I left bits out OK?

Worry steals our God-given clothing. So does anxiety, or anything else you care to call that stuff we all do at 3.00am — when we can’t sleep and we are trying to figure out what to do about something that seems insurmountable! We are exhorted by Paul to put on Christ. Put on His attitude to this life. That’s the answer! After all, Jesus never worried about anything. By the way, let’s remember that the Lord Himself had a great deal on His shoulders – He only came to save the world! Plus there’s Isaiah 9:6 … Talk about expectations!! 

You can check what He did out for yourself in the Gospels. Jesus knew the value in trusting God in all things. He walked on the same dirt you and I walk on, probably a great deal further every single day than we do! He needed to eat etc, just like us, but He did not worry about those things – not even about where His next meal was coming from – He quite simply gave thanks for the meal in front of Him!

“… put away your former way of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to clothe yourselves with the new self, created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. So then, putting away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with your neighbour, for we are members of one another. Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,…”Ephesians 4:22-26. There are a whole lot of clues about our new clothing in these verses, and nodding our heads and agreeing with it will not make it happen! Restraint is invaluable. These things aren’t suggestions, they’ve been given to us to help us become an overcomer. Please note the big clue that we can be corrupted by our own lusts.

The thing is, we can’t fit into our new clothes, if we feel we must lie to protect ourselves, or make ourselves look good. Plus there are no good reasons why we should be angry with others. God turned His anger away from us and now it is our turn to do that for those people who live around us! Instead we are to live our lives grateful for the gifts of His righteousness and holiness  – these are the clothes Jesus personally paid for us to have. And we use our faith in what He said, to choose to live like that.

At the same time we must deliberately choose to stop revising and reviewing someone else’s faults and ask for the Holy Spirit’s help. We don’t give up until it comes. It’s called perseverance, and it’s in the book! When somebody or something annoys us — we choose to see that as an opportunity to cultivate the spirit of self-control by remaining silent in the face of provocation.That takes practice. In the meantime we can be grateful to God that the perpetrator has given us an opportunity to practice a skill we don’t have… yet. 

Maybe we think it is too hard to change. Here’s a verse: “You have not yet struggled to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;..” Hebrews 12:4. So … I look around me and at my clothes and say to myself —If the answer is negative then I conclude that someone has hurt my feelings but … I’ll live! Ask yourself, what are YOU wearing? Bye 👋