Heroes of the faith

P 3055 Don’t wait – move!

/ DVH

“This is why the Scriptures say: Things never discovered or heard of before, things beyond our ability to imagine — these are the many things God has in store for all His lovers. But God now unveils these profound realities to us by the Spirit. Yes, He has revealed to us His inmost heart and deepest mysteries through the Holy Spirit, who constantly explores all things. For we did not receive the spirit of this world system but the Spirit of God, so that we might come to understand and experience all that grace has lavished upon us. 

And we articulate these realities with the words imparted to us by the Spirit and not with the words taught by human wisdom. We join together Spirit-revealed truths with Spirit-revealed words. Someone living on an entirely human level rejects the revelations of God’s Spirit, for they make no sense to Him. He can’t understand the revelations of the Spirit because they are only discovered by the illumination of the Spirit. For Who has ever intimately known the mind of the Lord Yahweh well enough to become His counsellor? Christ has, and we possess Christ’s perceptions.”1 Corinthians 2:9-10, 12-14, 16 TPT.

I wish I had understood some of these wonderful truths sooner – so I could have jumped joyfully into the ever on-going journey of full and total surrender – earlier! Instead of merely standing on the edge of it, dipping my toe in and out, hoping that would do. The only thing I got from dipping my toe in, was a truck load of reasons why total surrender was not for me. I became too engaged with the things of this world. My bad!

Sometimes I think the Body of Christ has been so disillusioned by the previous whole blab it and grab it theological movement, our disappointment has led to us standing afar off from the Lord. We are a bit like the Israelites. When Almighty God appeared to be unmanageable and scary, that’s when they told Moses: “You go up the mountain, we’ll stay down here.” Yet, we know darn well it is still our choice to stand so far away. Every now and then, some brave soul makes a bold stand to trust God for this and that, … and when, or if what they pray over doesn’t happen, disillusionment sets in … again!

We’ve seem to have forgotten it’s the thief who comes to steal kill and destroy. And even worse! —- We have forgotten that God is good ALL THE TIME. Let’s learn to look for the good no matter how bad things seem. Instead of wagging the Spirit’s school of learning about God Himself, we all need to sit up front and learn. Just because you or I feel let down or deserted by Him, that does not make what we feel the truth. Let’s stop, read and reread what He has said, and reinforce the wonderful things we know about Him and His Ways. I’m praying for brave souls to step up, and step out, and go on to live in and love on unsaved countries. Our country is an unsaved country! Here I am God send me!

Today I want to lay down a challenge to everyone reading this. There are glorious things about our God that we know nothing about. Those things exist now, and they are there for us, if we just ask. Instead of feathering our own nests, let’s be about His kingdom! Those strategies and secret things are needed right here, right now. I’m not talking about the kind of prayers that will make me more comfortable, because something bad has happened. I’m talking about the kind of lay-your-life down praying that turns the world on its head. These things are not only glorious, they are there to be taken – merely for the price we are prepared to pay to go and get them!

(Isaiah 55:1-6) 

Oh, where are our heroes of the faith? I have known some precious people of God in the past 52 years, and over those years I have seen some of these people persevere and press in, despite their circumstances. Praise God for their faith! But I’m so tired of the same old, same old, slog we participate in daily, week by week, paddling our broken canoes up the fantastic, enormous wild river of God’s love and provision. We need to step up, stand up, and ACT, by participating in what He is doing — instead of hiding away in our little hidey holes of supposed safety and security. 

I also know many dear saints who have been broken by their circumstances, and yet they bravely limp on. But there is a much harder step forward than even maintaining what we have, and it comes from the men and women who know His heart and pray and act on it. No matter what the consequences are.The best things, the most glorious things, are still in front of us, but we will have to put down our ideas of a normal life, and step into the unknown. He’s there, waiting for us. Let’s remember that 11 other men remained in that boat when Peter stepped out of safety into the impossible!

Many generations today chase youth in their attitudes and activities – everybody wants to keep fit. What about spiritual fitness? His ways are so much better than the ways of this world. It’s time to stop hoping somebody else will answer His call, and go ourselves! We need to move. Whether we take our faith to the office, our schools, or some foreign country – if we do not use that faith for more than our own personal gain – we will lose it. Bye 👋

“Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well.”  Ecclesiastes 12:6.

P 2974 Wake-up!

/ DVH

Sometimes I think the body of Christ in the West no longer has a song of deliverance, because we have our lives so busy and organised, there is no time to find out what’s really going on around us. It seems to me that a lot of the difficulties we face are seen as an interruption to our own personal definition of how this life should go! We pray ‘deliver us from evil’ and hope that will cover it. What a luxury we have!

We all live somewhere:  maybe we have a job and kids, their school stuff — this thing and that to do. We are so busy that we simply must continue to do things to maintain the rhythm of our lives.  Unlike our brothers and sisters in conflict areas all over this world… today more than ever, Christians are living their lives like a people who have forgotten Who He is, and what He has done, and what we OWE Him! Instead we sing “Live for Jesus” then go home and live for ourselves. We spend our  precious time here maintaining the things of this world.. 

I wonder what happened in Lazarus’ life after he came out of that tomb? You see this man knew, first hand, what it was to die … and then be given a new chance at this life. Are you sure your ‘new life’ is making a whole lot of difference? Maybe we need to become more acquainted with other people’s suffering and sorrow, instead of wallowing around in our own disappointment… all because we missed out on the brand-new bargain TV on sale! Our wonderful God is so much BIGGER than the Person we’ve made Him out to be. We see Him as SomeOne Who is supposedly hanging about waiting for bad things to happen to us  – so He can bail us out of them!  We serve HIM, it says so in the book.

After all, this is Almighty God we are talking about, and I don’t think it is appropriate to fit Him in around the edges of our already well-established lives, do you? I know, we have plans, things we aim at … but what about His plans? Did He just save us so we can go to heaven in the sweet bye and bye? Or does He have something for us to do with this new life He has given us?

How can we ever know the sweetness of His deliverance from hell and death, when we are often too busy, or scared, to be obedient and take a risk?  The Lord needs a people who are prepared to take risks all over the place just to bring glory to His Name. We cannot have our cake and eat it too – we must DENY ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. That kind of life is never going to be convenient, the time is never going to be right, and … obedience is not an optional extra!

Here’s something to rattle everyone’s cages: “Don’t look for shortcuts to God. The market is flooded with surefire, easy going formulas for a successful life that can be practiced in your spare time. Don’t fall for that stuff, even though crowds of people do. The way to life—to God!—is vigorous and requires total attention.”  Matthew 7:13. MSG. I wish someone would tell me why we all work so hard to be on the wide road of ease, when the bible is quite clear, that road is the wrong road. This life is not meant to be easy!

Jesus Himself also said this, through Peter in I Peter 4:12.“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which is taking place to test you [that is, to test the quality of your faith], as though something strange or unusual were happening to you.” They are a big part of this new life we’ve been called to embrace. They are not interruptions to the routine of our household, even though they sometimes seem like that! They are opportunities to stretch and strengthen our faith.

Hardly any of us are interested in being missionaries to Africa, or an Asian country, or our local suburb! Most of the time we can barely manage the day to day difficulties that pop up regularly — those things that keep us distracted from our main purpose. Our main purpose now is to live for Him not just survive! Did Jesus settle down in a little flat somewhere in Jerusalem and hold bible study meetings every third Wednesday? He did not! He fought for us and died and then He left us in charge. Boy does HE know the meaning of faith!!

If this world is a mess then it is because the church has been silent for far too long, because we are afraid of the consequences of speaking out. We need to faithfully pray for those dear brothers and sisters who are living in conflict areas all over this world. Those people who are still faithful to their heavenly calling. These people face horrors beyond imagining, simply because they have chosen to follow Him! These are the real heroes of the faith today. They live by faith daily. And they are not just victims of geography either … Unlike us, they are unable to think ‘ aren’t we lucky because we live somewhere safe?’  

The Bride of Christ in the West is enjoying an enormous indulgence – we are asleep in the light. Sadly we’ve sometimes been known to pitch a fit if we can’t get eggs at the supermarket this week. It’s time to wake up and do the things God previously planned for all of us to do.“My old identity has been co-crucified with Christ and no longer lives. And now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the Anointed One lives His life through me—we live in union as one! My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God Who loves me so much that He gave Himself for me, dispensing His life into mine!”Galatians 2:20 TPT. Bye. 👋

P 2109 Transformation is the way ahead.

/ DVH

I had an interesting thought this morning about – 2 Corinthians 12:9 says: “My Grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Gird up your girdle Gertie, it’s gunna be a bumpy ride! So why don’t we share our weaknesses more? Yeah you might like to think on that for a month or nine!! As HE is strong where I am weak – then where’s the shame in being weak? All I gotta do is ask for help and the Holy Spirit is right there. Instantly. I may not feel Him – but I know that He is close to the broken-hearted … so … He is there!!  Then when I pray for help maybe using my faith means I will believe that He wants to help me even more than I want to be helped.

It seems to me that we avoid displaying the very thing that the bible says will empower us with HIS power! We try so hard day after day, to keep the wheels turning, hiding our weaknesses, as well as trying to maintain a sense of normal? When the reality is, we can’t do anything eternal and lasting without Him. Christians all around the world climb out of bed daily and try to present a good picture of the benefits of what we believe, everywhere they go. JESUS IS THE BENEFIT FOLKS. He didn’t come to earth so we could try harder – He came to save us from sin and ourselves! So why are we so scared to death to admit that we can’t hack it on our own? Do we really need to have other people admire us so badly? Does envy lead to saving faith?

Perhaps somebody asks us: “how are you today?” And we paste on a fake smile and reply: “fine thank you, and how are you?”  Christians constantly do their best to present themselves as perfectly adequate people who are coping…. WHY? Why do we lie to ourselves and others? Here’s my little theory. We feel if we don’t present a good picture we will be letting the Lord down. You know, FYI, being officially sick can almost be a relief in one way – because you don’t have to pretend anymore.

Back to my point, are we so scared of judgment? Or feeling inadequate, because we are supposed to be bright shining stars for the Lord? Maybe we are protecting His reputation? Except He made Himself of no reputation for our sake – so that’s kind of a waste of time and energy. I just want to say to anyone reading this today – ‘It really is OK not to cope all the time!  It’s OK to struggle with difficult people and situations. It’s not just OK … it’s actually normal.’ Because ‘without HIM we can do nothing’  We were not designed to be the all-singing all-dancing Jesus ad. He does perfectly well by Himself – He has the Holy Spirit at work all over this earth! We are here to point to the Answer and WE are not the Answer – HE IS.

So here are some quick thoughts I came up with to explain why we hide our faults from each other: a/ we don’t know how to access Grace. b/ We don’t know how to give Grace away! Jesus said in the verse in 2 Corinthians HIS GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. because that is where HIS power is. I think the reason we pretend so much is because we know very little about living by faith. We get Grace by using our faith not trying harder.

Speaking for myself I always thought of people living by faith as missionaries, or really holy special people who chose that lifestyle. Boy was I wrong!  People rarely choose this lifestyle – it usually lands on them – often from a great height! The way you learn to live by faith is to be needy, and if you’ve got no money in a world that uses money – guess what?? You’ve just become needy!! I know people who live this way but they didn’t choose it – it chose them. 

Here’s the true secret to living a happy Christian life.: transformation is not an optional extra – it’s a survival skill! Ya might want to Selah that thought. 

If by any chance, anybody else out there has become tired of pretending to be ‘fine thank you’ – then we are all going to have to let Him use our ugly, difficult circumstances to expose all our inadequacies. Those nasty little things we don’t ever want anybody else to know because then they won’t like us, or – we won’t like us. Or – maybe the Lord won’t like us!  How about instead of hiding them- we admit them. The bible says: “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed….” James 5:16. It doesn’t say hide them under a rock and hope nobody notices. Unconfessed sin leaves us open to enemy attack.

God was good to Jonah and he had his problems. That man was prejudiced and opinionated, not to mention a racist. The Lord was good to Gideon and he needed more proof than a prosecuting attorney. He was good to Job who thought he had it made and didn’t know that everything he had came from the Lord in the first place! He was good to Moses and David who murdered someone. God was good to Elijah who was the super spiritual guy of his day – Elijah ran away and hid. The list goes on. And now …here’s the GREAT NEWS. We can read all about the men and women of God and what He saw as faith, in a wonderful faith chapter in Hebrews 11.  

The Lord praises every single one of these people, and some of them were definitely not perfect – they made huge mistakes. BUT! The Holy Spirit speaks about each of these men and women of faith with great love. Our faults, when they are transformed by living in His Grace, are testimonies to His loving kindness and glory.  We all might want to think on that with the New Year coming up. Bye. 👋🏻