P 3322 What’s so important about obedience?

April 23, 2026April 24, 2026 / DVH

“For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command: Obey Me, and I will be your God and you will be My people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you.” Jeremiah 7:21-23.

“Why are you so polite with Me, always saying ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘That’s right, sir,’ but never doing a thing I tell you? These words I speak to you are not mere additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundation words, words to build a life on.” (Jesus is speaking.) Luke 6:46.

Without obedience, our foundation in the Lord can be a bit wonky. He will never let go of us, but if we ignore Him and don’t obey Him, we are letting go of our relationship with Jesus. It really does matter if the Lord tells you to go and fix things with this or that person. Obedience is not just witnessing about Him, it is the every day practical submission we carry out as we deliberately obey His Words. The Lord Jesus loves us so much — He doesn’t want us to carry those things around inside us. That’s a burden that needs to be thrown down at the foot of the cross. He carried it for us, so we don’t have to.

When it comes to forgiveness there are no exceptions. God tells us these things for our own good, not because He is a control freak. Why would we choose to walk around in satan’s backyard when God has already picked out His pathway for us to walk on? Unforgiveness nails one foot to the floor, and then we go round and round talking about it – trying to figure out what to do next about that person. Ruminating over imaginary conversations that never work out IRL. Instead, go and ask for the Lord and your abuser’s forgiveness for ‘not loving your enemy and not doing them good.’ It’s probably best not to use those exact words BTW. Remember – healing often needs time – and forgiveness sets me free.

God’s plan for us is a plan for our good, it includes righteousness, peace, love and JOY, as we walk with the Holy Spirit. He has plans to give us a hope and a future. We can short-circuit His processes when we choose not to obey Him, and our foundations will rock and creak. That’s because they are not fixed on what Christ already did. Jesus did what He did so we can have the freedom and grace to forgive others and live free from all kinds of angst and fear.

Forgiveness is not about giving permission for someone to keep tormenting you. Instead it teaches us to speak one of Almighty God’s languages. Some things work so much better when they are a fixed part of our lives, and obedience and forgiveness are two of them. Jesus forgave us. He didn’t just forgive the men who killed Him – those words from the cross have echoed down the centuries and provided access for us here and now. Forgiveness is a lifestyle choice not an optional extra.

When we live in unforgiveness, we are rebelling against the very thing that the Lord came here to do for US. Living like that will expose us to self-deception. His blood is our permanent refuge, so put the past under His blood. I don’t care what the person who is still hurting you did. You need to be free of it. Freedom doesn’t always come when the other person acknowledges their sin – it comes when we choose to put our focus on Him. If you don’t put those carelessly repeated actions down and walk away it will strangle your own faith.

You don’t have to like people to forgive them. And the bible doesn’t say “feel like it” – it just says do it! Remember love is a choice not a feeling. We put our hearts into compromising positions when we harbour unforgiveness. Please remember there are often a lot of things we don’t know about that other person that could be causing them to behave the way they do. Plus I have noticed that when two people collide, one of the best ways of finding resolution is for one of them to change the way they respond to any oppositional stimulus. Be that person – the peace-maker.

I have forgiven a number of people a great deal of manipulation, hurt and vicious behaviour, some of which was deliberately malicious and some of it was unwitting. Some have even insisted that I vindicate their behaviour … but I declined, because their behaviour is not my responsibility. I refuse to take somebody else’s response into account, or let it influence my own actions, as I continue to move forward toward Him.

If I need protection from an aggressor then the Lord will tell me to avoid them. He has told me to “leave now,” when I was in danger of being hurt again. At the same time, I’ve learnt some things can’t be easily resolved. They need REST, not instant RESOLUTION. Forgive, and then let Jesus do what only He can do. At the same time resist the temptation to hold a grudge. If it comes up again then I forgive again, and give it to back to Him again. We forgive others because God says so. We do it because He told us to do it. It becomes so much easier to do the things He asks of us, when we choose to obey Him. That’s why forgiveness is foundational in its importance. Bye👋

P 3316 Be a good farmer.

April 17, 2026April 17, 2026 / DVH

In order to seek God’s kingdom first, we will need to choose to FIRST put aside this world’s kingdom! Otherwise we can end up with a huge competition between this world’s kingdom’s and His! Unfortunately, the wrong kingdom often wins, because this world pushes and prods at us incessantly. The kingdom of God, the kingdom we’ve been born into spiritually, needs to be cherished by us.

So before we do anything in our lives at all, let’s always ask the Lord: “What do You want Holy Spirit?” His kingdom aims are often long-range. Just like any farmer sows seed for a harvest, one little seed in God’s kingdom can produce a plant with many more seeds inside it, over time. This is how the kingdom of God spreads, through the cultivation of our lives. What He has planted inside our hearts was made to grow.

In the parable of the sower – Matthew 13 – the Lord explains how this process works, what to watch out for that can rob us along the way. Our bit is to receive the newly planted seed, by making sure the ground of our heart is open, soft and prepared. That’s not always easy. Preparation takes diligence, and physical engagement with what the bible says. We need to daily choose to live out what we read in the bible, IN REAL LIFE. This devoted tilling of the soil of our hearts, means we are also letting the Lord Himself turn over any parts of our soil that have become hard and we are trusting Jesus with our inner selves.

We can’t afford to hide behind our broken past or the difficulties of this life, or even pointing at other people’s sins – to avoid dealing with the our own hearts. We will take ourselves out of His growing processes and get stuck. We are in a battle, that battle isn’t just about avoiding sin, it is about producing more seeds. Sadly, weeds are a sign of a gardener who does not check their garden, daily. So let’s check our hearts before Him, and repent and repair things with Him, and others – daily. Keep refreshing your love for Jesus at every opportunity. It’s the farmer’s job to make sure the ground stays soft, weed-free, and watered so it can be planted out.

The Holy Spirit is right here with us, watching over us, waiting to see Christ’s qualities spring to life in us. For His plants to grow, bloom and produce even more seeds, we must engage in His processes – because you and I are the fresh bread of heaven that other people get to eat daily. We’ve been shaped and formed into loaves by our personal circumstances — the blessings, difficulties, joys and suffering in our lives. Our God-given responses to these things shape that bread.

Some seeds are sown onto the surface of the soil, and covered with a light sprinkling of more soil. This can be how the ‘birds of the air’ can get access to it. These seeds are not planted very deeply because they need the sun to germinate them, not just the warmth of the soil. So we need to watch out for the birds of the air! We must be on our guard, otherwise the seed of God’s word can be pinched or stolen away. This happens because of the inattention on behalf of the gardener. Those kinds of opportunistic situations that can occur when God’s word is lying on the surface of our heart.

When we accept the seed of His Word into us, it nourishes us and promotes growth. But the stuff that drags our focus away from Jesus is often current, and it needs our immediate response. The best response is “HELP!”However, there are other seeds are planted more deeply and their roots go down deep into the soil. “Have your roots planted deep in Christ. Grow in Him. Get your strength from Him. Let Him make you strong in the faith as you have been taught. Your life should be full of thanks to Him.” Colossians 2:7.

There is no need to hide from the Holy Spirit’s processes, we are designed to live in the Grace of God and His workings in our lives, experientially, day after day. Being a Christian is something we live— we don’t just believe it, or take comfort in the fact that we can repeat appropriate things at appropriate times. This is now our chosen way to live: “For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.” (Acts17:28.)

Humility waters the seed that God plants within us, and the bible is the best kind of water – Living Water! As we deliberately take notice, and act on what the Lord says in the bible, it then becomes the fertiliser of our faith. We need both His water and fertiliser. Jesus said this in Matthew 11:9. “Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.” Humility is not self-effacement – it is Jesus’ own yoke. He wore it, by choice, when He lived on earth.

Lastly, a mature bullock when it is selected to pull a load has to accept its yoke. The beast freely walks into it. When we are yoked to the Lord, it means we’ve chosen to walk with Him. Now we walk in step with the other bullocks around us, because we are part of a ‘team.’ When we come to Him we are choosing to accept the same yoke that He accepted – God’s Will comes first. The end result of planting seeds is food, and grain that has more seeds in it. To be a good faithful farmer of what we have been given, we will always need to follow Jesus’ example. Bye. 👋.

P 3308 Living for Jesus, daily.

April 9, 2026 / DVH

Colossians 3:12-17: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

These few verses give a comprehensive overview of what our new life in Christ looks like, every single day. To be honest, we can’t say Almighty God hasn’t told us what He expects – He has told us right here! If you like memorising verses, I’d like to suggest that these five verses are worthy of any effort you might make. This new life must be embraced personally —using our individual faith. By engaging with the Holy Spirit.

He will help us to follow the Lord’s instructions, and at the same time He will expose all the damaging, misleading, useless things we have embraced. None of us in the Body of Christ can do these things alone! Let’s thank the good Lord He has given us SomeOne Who is so personal – He lives inside us. Learning to listen and obey Him is essential. We need to learn how to host Him, in our lives. That means somebody will have to change. He’s holy, and we aren’t — so you do the math! I know I can easily be polluted and distracted by the things of this world and arrogantly dismiss the Holy Spirit’s promptings as “something I made up.”

So my responsibility is to check the thing I think I have heard from Him, as I am reading the bible. I read carefully, and then I jump in and obey. Some things are obvious. We know what God thinks about generosity, or forgiveness, or helping others. We ask for Him for a scripture and then go and do those things. I have many times when I need to pray and ask Him to redeem any mess I made. Then I choose to embrace the bible’s idea of what faith is, and how it works. I’m personally grateful that Jonah ended up in the bible. He shows me my ideas and thoughts are much too small. He ended up whale mail. In the end he still did what the Lord told him to do – grumbling all the way. Haven’t we all been there?

In the course of writing this blog I have written many pages that I have subsequently deleted because the Holy Spirit didn’t like them. I wrote them in faith and He told me to throw it out. Plus I cannot remember how much re-writing I have had to do along the way! I’ve given groceries to ungrateful people who didn’t need them, spoken to people about Jesus who promptly showed me the door — but the amount of individuals impacted by God Himself far outweighed the risk of me looking like an idiot! I will be a fool for Christ, even though I probably won’t much like it! But I will do it, because for me, taking risks is part of the cost. If I already know that something will turn out alright at the beginning, then I am not exercising my faith.

The bible clearly tells us that we need to change. (Malachi 3:6) Almighty God won’t ever change because He is already perfectly holy and wise. Jesus said this to help us:“And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in Me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in Me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!”” John 16:33 TPT.

God’s peace inside us, is our pathway into confidence in Him and His Ways. If the Holy Spirit says ‘repent’ and we don’t – then our peace will slowly disappear. We will get caught up in the very thing we can’t seem to let go of. The Holy Spirit Himself IS our peace, and because He is perfect love, He and fear can’t occupy the same space. So fear has to go, as we make room for more of His perfect love to be shed abroad into our hearts. It isn’t about getting this stuff right, it is about being willing to enter His processes, and co-operating with Him. To do that we believe what He has already said, in the book. We show Him we are willing to change by operating in things like repentance— not by what we say … but by what we do! “You must prove your repentance by a changed life.” Matthew 3:8.

All this teaching and preaching we have today, isn’t about gaining more knowledge —it is about the speaker prayerfully allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to the listeners. Boredom is irrelevant. Just because a speaker may be boring, that does not mean we cannot be changed. We need to listen to hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to ME. Pressing in despite how we feel about things, shows God we are serious about change, we are willing to pay the cost. Not everything that is said from a book, pulpit, podcast etc. is a pearl from God for you. But we can enter God’s processes by voluntarily co-operating with what we hear and read, and then applying it into our lives, daily. If something seems hard to do, then it is probably right!

BTW, I am as prone to panic as anybody else is, and if the ceiling falls in I can easily fall apart without His Grace helping me. The great part about that, is that over time, I have learnt to recognise His Grace in action. Walking with Jesus daily, is allowing Him to lead and guide me. This means I am prepared to step into the unknown when it is convenient, and when it is not. We can’t fail, He’s holding us tightly. Bye. 👋

P 3192 The joy at the other end.

December 14, 2025 / DVH

In order to move forward into all the Lord has for us, we will need to stop relying on instant answers, and start choosing to enter into His processes. As promised in Psalm 23, the Lord Jesus Himself is our good Shepherd. He wants to walk with us through any and all deep valleys in our lives, and give us what He has personally prepared for us from His own bountiful table. All of this with our enemies looking on, as they watch us, receive His anointing – together with His goodness and mercy. To walk with Him, we will need to put away our own devices, and have faith in what He has said.

Sadly, I think indulgence has grabbed hold of us and held us fast. The other guy has taken hold of the ball, so to speak, and he is almost in his own end-zone. We’re going to have to push back hard in the Lord’s strength to gain back the ground we have willingly, or inadvertently, given away. Here’s what I have learnt about that — the strength to push back does not come before I need it … it comes as I start pushing, praying all the way! But the joy that comes at the other end of what God has planned, is worth it. I can’t lose, because the 23rd Psalm clearly shows God’s intention for my good.

Jesus and His disciples spent three and a half years together. He taught them as He demonstrated His love in action, and they listened and saw. Even at the beginning of their time together He sent them out to do what they were called to do. HELP OTHERS. Those men could do those things because the Lord gave them His authority!

Even though they had not yet met the Holy Spirit in Person, the Lord Jesus’ authority alone ushered in miracles and things beyond their own wildest dreams. So they returned and reported to the Lord full of praise and wonder.Let’s pause and think about that — because those blessings have not changed! We still have that power! But we have allowed this world to distract us from our God-given authorised purpose.

Apart from the cross itself, when all our sins and the punishment for them plus the weight of them fell on HIM— I think, that when Jesus left His disciples behind – He took yet another enormous step of faith. He knew the Holy Spirit so well, He was able to walked away, even into a painful death, Jesus trusted the Spirit of God to look after those men! That is enormous. Human beings can be so proud that we can have a terrible time letting someone else take over something that we have started. However, Jesus is so devoted to His Father’s will, He was prepared to step aside.

The Lord is incredible. His faith is incredible. And the good news is this – Jesus Christ is the AUTHOR and FINISHER of our very own faith! Our faith in the Living Word of God is what changes this world. With one act of total humility Jesus transformed and sealed all of mankind’s destiny. And He knew that the very best Person to help His disciples to remain steadfast after his death, and be obedient to all that He taught them … was the Holy Spirit. These men needed the Holy Spirit’s power to transform them from the inside out …and so do we. When we obey, no matter what the cost, the Lord is right there, with us. Jesus knows all about COST. We need to be so unafraid that even death cannot stop us.

Obedience is everything. We have underestimated its value in our lives. We cannot taste the wonders of a fully redeemed life without it. Jesus Himself was obedient to His parents even from childhood… Luke 2:51. He was obedient to His Father’s will …Matthew 26:39. He was so obedient, He chose to die because that was what His Father wanted. Philippians 2:8.

Let’s become so intimately acquainted with the Holy Spirit’s ways, and pay attention to Him whenever He speaks – and please remember that sometimes He whispers! In the past we have done Him a grave disservice, because we took one aspect of the Holy Spirit’s Personhood and let it eclipse everything else. The Holy Spirit is power AND FIRE! The Gospels show us His power in action in people’s lives. He was given to us to help us with our God-given right to operate in Jesus’ power. Matthew 28:18.

Now we need to digest and embrace the fact that the Holy Spirit is also a purifying fire. We may feel the heat of that fire, as He purifies our yielded lives, but we will not be burned. We will be spectators kept safe in the secret place of the most high God. Don’t be afraid of His ‘Holy Fire’ – God’s dealings in our lives. This has been given to us to purify us, our motivations and aspirations. Because of the Holy Spirit’s ministry we will end up the best version of ourselves… so much better than we ever thought or dreamed about! All we will care about is God’s kingdom and seeing that kingdom come into the lives of others to set them free.

The joy always comes at the other end. It came when the disciples saw, with their own eyes, that the Lord Jesus was not DEAD. Psalm 30:5. Press on, beloved of God. He wants us to be bigger, more well-armed and informed, as well as purified for His purposes. There is nothing in this world like the joy we feel when we see His kingdom in us, on us and around us, and it is flourishing! Bye. 👋

firstfloormessages

"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.." Philippians 3:13,14.

His processes

P 3322 What’s so important about obedience?

P 3316 Be a good farmer.

P 3308 Living for Jesus, daily.

P 3192 The joy at the other end.