Helper

P 2489 Allow His beauty to inspire us.

/ DVH

“Discover creative ways to encourage others and to motivate them toward acts of compassion, doing beautiful works as expressions of love. This is not the time to pull away and neglect meeting together, as some have formed the habit of doing. In fact, we should come together even more frequently, eager to encourage and urge each other onward as we anticipate that day dawning.’Hebrews 10:24-25 TPT

We can concentrate on relating to others, by nagging away at someone else, and doing our best to get the other person to understand our POV. The objective of that idea is that the other person will change. OR, we can help motivate the people around us further in God, by encouraging them to be bigger!  One way leads to war, and the other leads to expansion. Personally I think that winning in any conflict is hollow. We simply must decide to learn to speak life, not criticism. But maybe we got our feelings hurt by somebody else? Boo-hoo! Move along please … you and I aren’t meant to be living in our feelings in the first place! We.Walk.By.Faith.

Will we grow our faith, or will we invest in our flesh, our feelings, or our supposed needs, and allow those needs etc. to grow stronger and even more demanding? Let’s not be the generation the Lord has to pass over to get to the next one coming after us! Right now, it is our turn, our time … on the stage of life to shine forth His light and motivate this dull cranky and crabby old world into better things! Having come so far, we cannot afford to quit on this faith life now!! At the same time, we can always inspire each another. Because of Jesus, we are the broken who can be made beautiful.

There are people who are leaving churches because they are not happy in their current church – their focus has gone off others onto themselves. They have stopped contributing beautiful things, encouraging things, and started to focus on “how hard MY life is.” Join the club, nothing is easy for anyone nowadays!  Spreading around His love and kindness is a high AIM, that sort of thing can be harder to do when we don’t practice it. However, deciding to do positive things and making them into a lifestyle… changes us. Always remember, we have a Helper!  Plus what we focus on grows bigger in our minds. If I focus on your faults and mistakes those things will eclipse any good stuff you might do… Just saying is all …

Going to church has become difficult for many people, for all sorts of reasons, but that is not a reason to stop going. We need to meet with others in order to receive the kind of understanding and encouragement that comes from talking to other people who want to live a life of faith like we do. It isn’t about bragging on this spiritual exploit or that – it’s about our kindness and mercy helping others to press on, and prevail, against those pesky difficult things that stop growth. Other people’s stories, their testimonies … even their struggles can be used to reassure us that even though our lives may be topsy-turvy at that moment, the Lord is still busy on the Body’s behalf.

“You know God has bigger plans for us than we have for ourselves.” (The director of the movie “Journey to Bethlehem” said that.) It seems to me that we all need to stretch and decide that internal growth is not a great theory, it’s a lifestyle. When we focus outwards, on others, on blessing and encouraging them … the things that bug us daily shrink back to normal size. Self-focus is self-limiting.

In our everyday world, art, nature, literature and such things can inspire people to appreciate beauty. In the world of His kingdom, the things He does, sometimes silently – almost unnoticed, those things need to become our inspiration. If we don’t talk to each other, the little things that He does, will come and go and we will all have missed the opportunity to be grateful for those blessings. What are we here for if not to appreciate the One Who saved us, and the One Who is continually helping us transform our lives?

As I read this scripture today, I wondered, what “beautiful works as expressions of love,” look like! Thankfully, I have dear friends who love to let me know how God has blessed them, even in a small way, so I can give thanks with them. I have a pastor who produces the loveliest tracts with reminders of the things He preached about recently. I know those things that he makes take time, and effort and research, so I think that qualifies as a beautiful expression of love. 

But then I began to wonder what do I do, that would qualify me. And that led me to write about this subject today. Sometimes in this life, one day follows another with almost alarming similarity. There is a lot of same old, same old in our days! I think that is why I like to make bookmarks etc. I feel like I am investing in someone else’s future, in their opinion of Who God is, and helping them to see Him in a unique way that is unchurch-ified. 

Today, I want to leave us all with a challenge for this coming year — are we going to let the darkness hide everything God has done and what He is continuing to do, all over this globe? I think we need to let the beauty of Who He is inspire us to grow and encourage others even when things are tough. Bye 👋🏻

P 2350 Jesus, our perfect example.

/ DVH

John 15:26 “I will send you the Helper from the Father. The Helper is the Spirit of truth Who comes from the Father. When He comes, He will tell about ME.”Whenever there is a problem, difficulty or hardship – God has an answer!  Let’s look more closely. The answer is always JESUS. 

Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit – His Helper! It is important to know that if the ‘voice’ you hear is not leading you to know Jesus better – then it is not the Holy Spirit. If that ‘voice’ tells you there is a short-cut or an easier way to go … guess what? That’s not the Holy Spirit. If that ‘voice’ tells you that you are going to be so-oo-oo important in God’s kingdom – that’s not the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t talk like that.

So Who IS important? JESUS is, that’s Who! Everything is all about Jesus. The Father has put everything we will need or we are going to need IN Him. That was the Father’s plan right from the beginning of this world. Jesus is the only way IN. He shows us the way forward, and we need to follow Him. Plus Jesus Christ is the way through whatever comes at you. Park on those promises.

Long before Christ was born Almighty God reached out to us through His prophets and leaders. Now in our time, God is telling us through the bible, that we can be strengthened against difficulties, instead of being bowled over by them. That’s what Jesus came here to give us – a God-sent way through hardship and difficulties. Christ knew that God does not leave us when things get hard and intense. Grabbing hold of that reality will stabilise and establish our hearts so we can hold steady in the middle of any storm.

In John 16:31-33 “Jesus answered them, “Do you finally believe? In fact, you’re about to make a run for it—saving your own skins and abandoning Me. But I’m not abandoned. The Father is with Me. I’ve told you all this so that trusting Me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world.” 

Now isn’t that fascinating? Jesus is giving His final instructions to His disciples and He says: ‘Guess what boys, it’s going to get HARD – but it is all good because I’M GOING TO WIN. You will all leave Me — BUT — He’s got this too!’ Faith is believing what Jesus Christ said, simply because He said it! The bible is not an opinion or a theory, it is a faithful recording of God’s interaction with other men and women who are just like us. Some things look disastrous but it is God working in our lives …He’s pruning!

Lastly, let’s quickly look at something Jesus said in – John15:1-2 “I am the true vine, and My Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” The Lord does not ‘prune’ us for nothing – He has a purpose. Pruning is God’s plan to develop more fruit, it is not punishment or desertion. We need to let Him prune away any stuff – even if it looks good to us. There are some things that will not add to our character and strength. This is when we need to use our faith in His goodness to hold fast to our beliefs. Pruning cuts away any extraneous junk that we’ve adopted to cope with this life. 

Who is going to be with us and hold us up while all this stuff is happening to us? The Holy Spirit will… He did it for Jesus and He will do it for us. He will bring what the bible says into our minds so we can hold on to Christ’s words when everything in our lives has gone utterly insane.  We can be at peace despite the chaos around us because Jesus knows the Way out … He IS the Way out. We must learn to recognise our Helper, He sounds just like Jesus did. Despite what is going on around us – or even TO us, our God doesn’t change.

This life is not meant to be an easy ride, because we are producing Godly fruit, and the people of this world have never seen or tasted that kind of heavenly fruit. So we need to live by faith that He is good no matter what kind of stuff flies about, in us and around us. This means that others can “taste and see that the Lord is good.”👋🏻

P 2327 The good fight happens in your head.

/ DVH

“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.” II Timothy 3:16-17 NKJV. 

After reading this scripture, I had this totally mad thought. Could this be the reason so many of us are stuck in the same place we’ve always been, with one foot nailed to the ground, going round and round? Mainly because we have not grown beyond the places of assent into action. Is this happening because we are not accepting the inspiration and discipline of scripture to correct us, reprove and instruct us in righteousness? And so we only read and accept the bits we like, rather than we actually read the book to find out where we need to be changed? Yikes! 

I know the bible says “…and forget not all His benefits…”BUT! That’s just one kind of verse. The bible has loads of other verses that are instructions, and it is time we started memorising scriptures that challenge our religious beliefs. Christianity is not a club, or a part-time occupation, it is a monarchy –  a theocracy.  A single Ruler …Christ.

That thought about scared the daylights out of me. Do we really think that simply agreeing with what it says, is the same as doing what it says?  Double yikes … and … an ‘oh my goodness’ thrown in! 😳 I know we can’t make every single change all at once, but we need to start somewhere. Sometimes the Holy Spirit is more willing to help us than we are to be helped. 

Pick something that comes up often in your life and start there. Maybe that could be traits that drive other people close to us nuts, YAY!! We need to be humble and open and pliable enough to go after change. Seek advice, don’t hide from the truth. “Confess your faults to one another that you may be healed.“ Otherwise we are easily diagnosed by James as double-minded. And we will get nowhere because we continue to ignore our own faults.

By all means be encouraged by the Lord from His book, but please don’t let the need for pastoral care overshadow, or eliminate the need to be transformed. We can spend so much time trying to make ourselves feel better over things that actually need forgiveness, or repentance, or reconciliation, or reparation… or all of them! 

We can end up so focussed on ourselves we forget our mandate…which is to love others, by sharing the gospel in all its power and authenticity. Plus living our lives the way Christ would – today. In our own homes, with our families, and the people who really know us – as well as other people we don’t know well. They can’t see through our pleasant exteriors. 

There is no lasting value or even any transformation in just admitting our faults and praying over them, and then leaving the transformation to Him. We simply must engage in the process. I’ve found that once the Lord highlights some fault of mine, opportunities to yield to Him and act in faith – pop up like daisies. I am not always thrilled by this, but I have also discovered that obedience and transformation leads to greater revelation and deeper commitment to the King.

I’ve also learnt that I need to actively, prayerfully, continually, revise my behaviour – especially when I find my thoughts start feeding me a diet of other people’s faults. Have you ever noticed, when someone is being provocative and contrary, how easy it is to remember the last time they offended you? Our enemy is delighted to run these things by us when we feel weak or vulnerable. Take heart — this means the Lord is giving us strength training.

I don’t know how we can ever think we can fight satan when we have difficulty fighting temptations. God sent us a round-the-clock, available at any second, Helper. Instead of denying the faults we have, we need to use these things as an opportunity to diagnose, repair and bring healing into our lives and the life of someone else. We are fighting for other people’s right to hear the good news for themselves. Of course our enemy wants to distract us at any turn, we have been given the power to usher in new beginnings for others. Ya might want to think on that. 🧐

P 2315 The Way ahead, is dead.

/ DVH

If we want to see God’s way ahead of us in this life then loving the people who hate us – is actually the way to go.  Meanwhile we are going to need His ‘eyes of faith’ to see that pathway. And I don’t care if those mean, unpleasant people are Christians or not. If we want God permanently making His home in us, instead of Him just being a Sunday visitor, then we need to make the Holy Spirit our new BFF and let Him change our lives accordingly. 

The bible tells me that I have been saved, delivered, and changed, but unfortunately … none of that can show up in who I am, without me choosing to change. Long ago, I had a huge expectation of what Christians should be like. Now that was a crushing blow. In the church I met people who were supposed to be nice … but … actually they hadn’t got that memo yet, so they were sometimes nice and most times NOT! Some of them were meaner than the people out in the streets..

Meanwhile the difference between who the bible said I was supposed to be, and who I still was, was wider than Bass Strait! These new lovely people of God stuffed me full of information, bible studies, prayer groups, conferences, but the gap between what I read about who I was in the book, and who I really was IRL, or even who I was supposed to be, was ginormous …to say the least.

Eventually I actually realised I was never going to fit in, because the Lord made me into the kind of person who wanted to know … why not? If it was in the book, then why weren’t we doing it? Why did we not make the poor a priority when Jesus clearly told us to? Why didn’t we pray for the sick? How could Christians live a life of pretending to be nice – when they could be mean etc. at the drop of a hat, and then smile at you next time …without ever asking for forgiveness?!  

Disappointment and discouragement dogged my footsteps for years. I would try my best, get provoked by circumstances, then fall flat on my face, cry for a bit, get up and … try again.  … I had no idea that Christianity was to be gloriously lived by totally transformed people –  not just better actors than me! Also I was ignorant of the fact that I now had my own personal Guide, Helper and bible translator … If I just paid attention to what He said instead of merely reading the bits in the book that made me feel good!

I did not understand that transformation is not just about trying harder.  Or even about praying about stuff and if God did not answer my prayer to be a sweeter Christian, then that was not my fault. That was on HIM. AFTER ALL I HAD PRAYED, I had asked … and if He didn’t answer me, then maybe my behaviour didn’t bother Him, or He just hadn’t gotten around to that stuff yet. Fat chance. 

In a nutshell I pushed away my own personal responsibility to co-operate with the Lord and humble myself enough to tell others that I did not know how to live the kind of life Jesus did. Privately I was of the opinion, given my current circumstances – that I probably never would make it.  Nobody told me that in order to be changed I would have to give up my right to live my life my way and do it HIS way instead. When I finally realised this truth, I hit another snag. I HAD NO POWER TO CHANGE because I had been feeding my flesh for wa-a-ay too long.

The way through stinky attitudes is death! Death hurts. We cannot bury these things and hope no-one will notice. GUESS WHAT? They will notice!  Christians can’t come out of following Christ alive. We need to get honest and admit we are not special spiritual people, but human beings who have cultivated wrong attitudes and habits that need to be killed off with His help. Jesus suffered and struggled with this truth and we do too. WE MUST DIE!

The way ahead is death to self, and living for Him and others. “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And your neighbour as yourself.”  Good luck with living that way by pretence and effort. Good luck with praying it falls on any of us out of the sky. WE DIE DAILY, or we ain’t dead at all. Read the book. 👋🏻

P 2312 As He was in this world so are we.

/ DVH

The most important question we can ever ask ourselves is this – WHAT DOES LOVE LOOK LIKE TO GOD? The bible clearly defines what His love looks like to mankind, but how does the Lord God, Maker of heaven and earth, define love – the love that flows from US to Him?

Jesus said in Matthew 22:35-37 “ One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’” That original commandment was given by God Himself to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6… sadly, in 6,000 years they hadn’t gotten very far had they? Have we?

Our daily question needs to be: “Holy Spirit how can I do that? How can I love God truthfully with all of me?” Many people might answer this question like this: “by loving each other, by serving Him, by reading the bible, through worship, praise, prayer and fasting.” All of these things are great. Do them with the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance! However Jesus Himself said in John 14:15-31 GNT – “If you love me, you will  obey My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, Who will stay with you forever. He is the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God.’”

It is just like the Lord Jesus to ask a question and give us the answer … all in the same sentence. To truly LOVE GOD – WE NEED HELP! We need the One Jesus specifically sent back to earth to help us. With the Holy Spirit’s help, obedience to His commandments is the way we show God we love Him. When God’s very special, One-of-a-kind-Son came here from heaven, that’s what He did. Christ modelled that kind of obedience all the way through His life, and on through death, into resurrection life.

We are living after the time that Jesus first breathed on His disciples, and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. And then they went out and obeyed Him, and did what He did and saw the same results. Here’s food for thought – Jesus breathed on Judas! Judas did this stuff too, even while he was pinching money from the common purse! We must stop thinking that the people Who have miraculous gifts are somehow holy. Holiness comes from GOD Himself so we need to learn to let Him flow through us, using our faith. His presence in us, with us, and through us, as we obey Him, will do the changing.

The gifted ones among us were given something from HIM – they simply had the faith to pick up their God-given gifts! That’s God’s glory healing someone, not Brother Everybody-knows-my-name. That guy can’t heal a banana without the Holy Spirit’s help! So let’s quickly look at Stephen… who waited tables … he had the gift of helps. “Now Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people.” Acts 6:8. 

That’s the key to who Stephen was right there, he was – ‘full of Grace!’ How do you get this Grace? You live your life openly and honestly, acknowledging your faults and flaws, repenting, fixing things, and receive His forgiveness —and then you give that away. “…freely you have received, freely GIVE!” If Jesus Himself could do nothing without the Holy Spirit – then without Him WE are sunk. But the other side of that coin means if Christ lived that way as a man, then so can we. 

What we all need, what we must cry out for – is what occurred in ACTS 2 … after the Holy Spirit came to stay there were only DEAD MEN WALKING in the church. His Presence changed them – they valued His Presence above all else. The Body of Christ needs to be changed – and we’d all better get a wriggle on too! 

There were no schizophrenic Christians back then … people with one foot in this world and one foot in the next. They surrendered everything for His sake. Before Pentecost, they were all over the place, but they came out of that encounter with the Holy Spirit resurrected. Their old man, their old way of life was DEAD. Paul died on the road to Damascus, the resurrected new man went on from there.

Our struggle in this life is to die daily …one decision at a time. It’s a choice and Christ died to give us the freedom to make that choice. Together we must learn to constantly rely upon the Holy Spirit.  Time to wake up church and chase after your destiny. “…as He was in this world SO ARE WE!“ 👋🏻

P 2308 NOW faith is …

/ DVH

Using our faith should not be a hobby, or something we only use in emergencies, or a ‘get out of jail’ free card when things get ugly. Nor is it a legal way to boss God around to get what we want! If our faith is not used as a life-giving source, then when we really need it, we could find it has quietly slipped away … And then it can become hard to find it again, because circumstances have trodden it into the dirt. 

Trouble rarely announces itself.  It sneaks up on us from unexpected places and it can totally pole-axe our hope in Him. Suddenly we are plunged into a miasma of emotional, physical and mental turmoil. Then come the ‘why’s.’ Why me? Why them? Why this place? Why has God forgotten us? The short answer is … He hasn’t. However! HE is not bound up by our desire for happiness … but sadly … WE ARE! The Lord has His own purposes.

Imagining Almighty God thinks like we do, is the biggest spiritual sink-hole … like … ever. It is our responsibility to actively learn and take notice of how He thinks…  by reading and rereading, and praying over His book. And then we need to go away and apply what we’ve read. Otherwise we end up making a god in our own image … and that made-up guy bears no resemblance whatsoever to our Heavenly Father! 

The bible says: WE HAVE A PERMANENT FULL-TIME – DAY OR NIGHT HELPER. We need to cultivate our relationship with the Holy Spirit, in a dedicated deliberate fashion.

Under pressure, we haven’t got time to strap on our faith like a fancy six-shooter. Instead we need to stay prepared for the bad guy who is hanging around on the horizon. When our enemy eventually bursts through our door – guns blazing. Stuff happens! SUDDENLY. Those things are not just unexpected, they cast a dark shadow over our lives …the other guy is constantly jumping out of the shadows with a cannon full of lead … enough to sink our hope in God with both barrels.

HOWEVER … “… our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”’ Ephesians 6:12. The secret to ruining satan’s ploy is to use your best weapons – faith and humility. Always start with repentance. Fall on your face before the Lord and thank Him for saving you and delivering you and setting you free. Meanwhile, I don’t care who did or said what – be the first to repent. 

“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds.”1 Corinthians 10:4. Saying what the bible says is not enough. Stand on it while the STUFF is happening and refuse to yield. Start using your hope that Jesus is Who He says He is and He did what He did for you. Our faith in His truthfulness and goodness is a mighty weapon.

Everything that happens to us is about learning to use our faith. At the same time, we still have the unfortunate option to lean on our own understanding in this world. That’s a human knowledge issue. BUT we need to use spiritual weapons to fight spiritual battles. Most of the time ordinary people think they are irrelevant they think that they don’t count, their contribution is not needed. This world does not authenticate others unless they are powerful, rich, handsome or clever. Sadly this world knows nothing of God’s ways!

“But God has selected [for His purpose] the foolish things of the world to shame the wise [revealing their ignorance], and God has selected [for His purpose] the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong [revealing their frailty].“ 1 Corinthians 1:27. 

satan will use any ploy he can to keep us from standing UP in our God-given places. Hold onto tightly to what you know about the Lord. No matter what your circumstances look like. Remember that Jesus modelled what God thinks about you – it’s in the book. Go after understanding, insight and wisdom … and… continually learn to live out and use your faith. IT IS A SHIELD. Our faith is always needed – NOW! 👋🏻

P 2281 We are here for the one in front of us.

/ DVH

“Jesus continued, “In the same way, there will be a glorious celebration in heaven over the rescue of one lost sinner who repents, comes back home, and returns to the fold—more so than for all the righteous people who never strayed away.”” Luke 15:7 TPT

Would you like to bring the Lord Jesus joy and give Him glory? Then love on the person in front of you. We dare not ever lose our heart for the lost, or the ones who know Him and have wandered off. The biggest hurdle to today’s modern churches reaching the unchurched people groups around us, is the idea that reaching people for Christ is one man’s job – the evangelist. In bigger churches they probably have a designated evangelist and sometimes he is the youth pastor.  

While Mr and Mrs It-Ain’t-My-JOB and family, sit securely in their seat, week by week, knowing that Jesus’ desire to go after the unsaved is taken care of by somebody else. I am going to go out on a very large limb here, right to the very edge of a little twig that bounces up and down, and say that just because somebody else has a title, that does not relieve us of the responsibility to talk to the person in front of us. 

Let’s look at Stephen in the book of Acts. IRL he was a  deacon, a steward, a helper. His designated job was to look after the widows and orphans of other nationalities and make sure that they were not overlooked. You know sometimes we need to approach other people’s wacky ideas sensibly, and bring about a resolution that is simple and takes care of the problem. Stephen was delegated that job. People were getting their knickers all twisted and knotted up because they thought their widows and orphans were being neglected. Stephen was one of several answers to the problem. 

I don’t know if Stephen was divinely inspired or just a very well read helper – OR BOTH – but he knew the Old Testament well enough to be able to expound it in a clear and concise fashion from Abraham to Christ Himself to a bunch of guys who had studied that subject all their lives. His reward for such spiritual lucidity was they threw rocks at him until he was dead. He became the first martyr. In my opinion, upon reading Stephen’s story in Acts, he was glad to do it – He is a perfect example of “for me to live is Christ, to die is gain…”

Timothy was Paul’s student, his helper and His unofficially adopted spiritual son, and yet he founded churches himself.  Again, a further example of the fact that you never know what the Holy Spirit will do with obedience. It was said of the entire early church that: “these are the people who have turned the known world upside down.” However, most of the men and women who died for what they believed, and for sharing it with others, are not mentioned by name in the book. 

Ordinary does not mean overlooked by God. If you read His book carefully, you’ll find very few men and women who would’ve raised a headline in today’s news. They simply obeyed Christ’s clarion call to go and make disciples. My question today is: in the face of their courage and dedication, how can we dare not live lives worthy of all Christ did for us?  

I think it is a sad statement that most of us just pay lip service to Jesus’ final words to His disciples. He may not ask us to go to Upper Mongolia, but we’d better be ready in case He does! He has not asked us to build thousands of churches either. A sad fact is, most of our churches today are not founded on a group of people who are newly saved – they are more likely to be founded on a group of people who became disgruntled and disenchanted with their last church or their pastor! 

What ARE we doing with the eternal life God gave us? In the Western world we seem to be content to just puddle along building our own little denominational kingdoms. Jesus didn’t ask us to build churches … HE said HE would do that. (Matthew 16:18) Our job is to treat our salvation as a personal calling.  We are here for the person in front of us. So we live our lives asking the Holy Spirit, ‘what do you want me to do for this person, Lord?’ Then we do it.

We read the bible, obey what He said, absorb His Love for mankind from the book, and give what He gave us for free, away to someone else. We have our part and the Holy Spirit has His. We love on them – He draws them to Christ.  It ain’t rocket science. 👋🏻 

P 2146 Transformation comes through participation.

/ DVH

“Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at My saying, ‘You must be born again.’ ( John 3:3-7)

Because of what Christ did for us we are now in the process of being re-made (present tense) in His image, when we accepted Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. We can either fight the difficult circumstances in our lives, or look at hard things as potential for change – including our reactions! Every single time you and I co-operate with the Spirit of God and do what He says: transformation takes place.We receive the potential to follow the Holy Spirit at the moment we are born again – we cannot be born again without HIM, plus, we cannot SEE His kingdom. 

It is the same as when we value the bible and act on it just because it says so, again – transformation takes place. The bible is the greatest revelation of Who He is and What He did that we have. In the eternal NOW, where Father God is, we are already transformed by the blood of Jesus, but from day to day we are working out our salvation with fear and trembling, by living our lives the way Christ lived His … loving others. Including the people who drive you crazy!

Any conflict we experience takes place when we indulge ourselves in our feelings, our flesh. EG: We feel bad, we feel like others were deliberately mean. We feel rejected, so we get angry …our flesh has … feelings!  Our feelings can be affected by the weather or the kind of day we had or the grouchy person we bumped into. When we give in to our flesh, instead of trusting in what the Lord said in the bible – to us as well as about us, we have limited our spiritual growth potential.

The more you and I rely upon the Holy Spirit to help us grow and accept change, the more our POV will change. We come alive in the spirit. This is how we gain spiritual eyes to see His kingdom all around us, like Gehazi did in the Old Testament. (2 Kings 5:20-27) It is incredibly unfortunate that many human beings want to see the results before they have actively invested in the process. We die in that process.

The Lord did not save us for us to continue behaving the same old way we always have. Yes, we can always repent. But I’ve learnt personally, that if I find myself repenting more than I am changing, I need to know the reason why! Some good guidelines come from the way we treat other people. If we end up continually hurting the people we live with, or the people around us, then that’s a big sign that it is the time to listen and ask the Holy Spirit to help us to find out why, and deal with it. We will need to change our ways. 

However, that process does not mean we can blame the Holy Spirit for our lack of transformation, especially when we are choosing to maintain the very thing that is alienating others. Meanwhile I don’t care who did or said what – it is our responsibility to fix it! Sincere repentance and a will to change, plus paying attention to our faults more than theirs, helps our spiritual walk. Our faith gets stretched in this process.

Human beings tell themselves; “It is not my fault, I can’t change. My parent was like this and I am too.” We now have an attentive Heavenly Father, and He raised a fantastic obedient HUMAN Son! When we think we can’t we are half-way to defeat, and we are denying the power of God given to us when we were saved. In effect what we are saying to Jesus is this: “What You did on that cross was not strong enough to change ME.”

Um… good luck with that one! 🙄 You and I can change anything we want to – it is our motivation that is lacking, not His power in us to change us. Whatever the Holy Spirit says – such as repent, humble yourself, confess your fault to the other person ..THAT is our new current point of faith. That’s the place where we do whatever we don’t want to do, anyway. Purely, as Peter himself said: ‘at Your word Lord.’ And that seasoned fisherman threw in his empty net in the sea, where he was told by the Lord to do it.

It is way to easy to excuse our behaviour sometimes: “It was a bad day, bad things happened.” But when we live like that, then we are insulting the Helper. He is not an optional extra, He is the One Who knows us inside out, and He is utterly equipped to reveal to us where we are believing a LIE. Our task is to embrace the Person the Lord valued so much, that He sent Him back to help us live this life like Christ did! The Holy Spirit knows the way through stuff. The flesh has to die, and it doesn’t like it very much. 

Christians are not powerless. They are either being wilful, or they have been deceived. Either way – the problem is our end, not His! It is OK to try and fail, but it is not OK to half-heartedly try and then give-up when it gets hard. Let’s not live out our lives implying that the blood of Jesus is not enough to conquer our sinful attitudes. Maybe there is a demonic stronghold and we need help. So, go to your pastor, humble yourself and confess your fault and get their prayerful support and advice. It is not Godly to make everyone around you live in hell while you continue to indulge your flesh and feelings.

The largest problem in Christianity today is not on God’s end. It is OUR FAULT. We have tried to pray away, or even ignore the very things He gave us the power to change. It is as simple as ‘asking, and keeping ON asking.” After that we need to go and do something concrete about it.

The best thing to start with, I’ve found is to ask Him ‘to set a watch over my mouth.’ Seriously. People get in the worst difficulties with what they say. It is so much better to be silent when provoked. Sadly, I’ve learnt this truth from personal experience. Transformation comes from participation – not just knowledge. 👋🏻