His wisdom

P 3290 Choose your weapons.

/ DVH

2 Corinthians 10:3-5  “For though we live in the world, WE DO NOT WAGE WAR AS THE WORLD DOES. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”  This scripture always evokes the same thought in me, ‘so why on earth are WE acting like everyone else does?’ Like brother James says: “this ought not to be so…”

We quite simply can’t use this world’s weapons in our daily ongoing battles that we fight. Let’s always remember we aren’t fighting people – we are fighting those things, spiritual forces, that people have embraced to protect themselves and often they are deceived. BTW, this immediately makes me wonder why we think talking aboutstuff will fix it!  2 Corinthians tells us His Word is meant to demolish arguments and pretensions. We definitely need to know what that looks like. To me: it looks like knowing God is always good. Plus we live this life knowing our side WON … but sometimes, we have momentary afflictions. However, our Saviour and our Comforter will never leave us. 

We need DIVINE weapons. The armour of God, the fruit of the Spirit, plus His Wisdom and spiritual gifts to combat whatever comes at us. Let’s look at that statement for a minute  …  because our weapons are divine, then they are weapons from the Lord. So our next question is – what do they look like? Do some research in Ephesians 4&6, or 1 Corinthians 12&13, or Romans 12. But let’s start with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control those are Jesus’ kind of weapons. I recommend using them liberally under the Holy Spirit’s guidance. Start by showing the Lord you love Him … by LOVING AND OBEYING HIS WORD.

Here’s something that could raise your hair and your eyebrows! Almighty God used the weapon of His own Son’s obedient death, to defeat sin and death. We don’t use normal weapons, we don’t have to … HE WON! Hmmm. Those particular weapons don’t look like the stuff you buy in your local gun-shop. You will probably hardly ever see a bible lying side by side with a gun. Why not? Be-ca-use … Jesus said: “The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance [to the full, till it overflows].” John 10:10. We simply can’t get to abundant life using carnal weapons! Those things diminish and destroy it. Carnal weapons are motivated by “look after me and mine.” Abundant life is motivated by “what did Jesus say?” 

Prayer is another one of God’s most potent weapons. It takes you and I out of the equation, and puts the Holy Spirit in charge. Ain’t nobody out there that wants to mess with Him! He made the world and everything in it!  Do that stuff at your own peril. The Spirit of God will love us and help us, until we feel so-oo-oo full, we will wonder why any of us went the wrong way in the first place! This is why Jesus said: “Love your enemies!”  He inhabits that kind of outwardly looking passion. Jesus has passionate eyes of fire in the book of Revelation.

Love will set captives free, and do even more things that we haven’t personally discovered, yet.  When it is carefully uncovered and digested, loving people is a revelation of Universal proportions and a weapon of mass destruction! It destroys the work of the evil one. If we try to use our own love, we will probably run out fairly quickly and come up short. But God’s love is endless. It is shameless in its passion. It smashes any stronghold of unbelief, fear, mortification, spite, anger etc. and restores and heals everything it touches. This is why love is the best weapon ever – it simply can’t be defeated. You can stuff love into a tomb, and 3 days later it will come bursting out, destroying every one of your theories and theologies!                                                                     

We need to cultivate love in even the smallest things, because it doesn’t come naturally to us. We are far more used to self-preservation. We often end up using our tongues like swords and knives and cut people up into little bits because they have somehow threatened us “…These things, my brothers, should not be this way [for we have a moral obligation to speak in a manner that reflects our fear of God and profound respect for His precepts]. James 3:10 sure has a handle on humanity and the way it thinks and acts!

Let’s choose our weapons carefully – we can’t possibly live this new life well, unless the Holy Spirit helps us. He is pure love in action. And He can love both sides!  We need His weapons that cut people free, not maim them.  I think we should always start by applying love first. When love is uppermost, there is no room for hatred.   Learning to love others transforms our minds. Bye 👋

P 3285 Practical stuff.

/ DVH

I want to be practical today because I have spent a number of days talking about living in the new life that Christ died to give us. So today I want to talk about how I am learning to live that way. First of all, I refuse to allow things I’ve done, or things other people have done, to remain hidden and unacknowledged. I treasure my relationship with the precious Holy Spirit above everything, so whatever He wants, I do. Pretence shoots honesty in the foot.

Theories cannot change our lives unless we actively decide to participate in them. Most people want to practice the things we are taught, so they nod and smile and go home … and try harder to meet the impossible standard Jesus set for all of us. Over the years I’ve learnt I am not capable of anything but the appearance of good. However, Christianity is not just practical, it is possible. Here’s the good news. Jesus died to give us His power to overcome our enemy, our own faults, as well as this world! And here is the bad …truth, humility and honesty are the highways we need to travel on.

We cannot expect to serve Jesus and maintain the life we already have. The whole point is for US to be changed. This point is the place where so many Christians part company with the Holy Spirit’s Ways. However, we simply cannot live with a foot in each camp, eventually we will slide back into the camp that looks after “me, mine, myself and I!’ “Mankind heads for sin and misery as predictably as flames shoot upwards from a fire.” Job 5:7.

Over to an illustration … I have been at odds with someone in my immediate family, all of my life. We both just saw things differently – we simply didn’t get each other. I tried to avoid dealing with this person by staying in their presence for the shortest time possible. Then the Lord began to challenge me about how I was treating them. The truth was, I treated them like a bad smell! I was polite … and distant. The Holy Spirit can lead us into distancing ourselves from someone for a purpose and a time, but in this case, I just plain disliked everything that person said and did, so I stayed away. I didn’t like being around them – they uncovered who I really was! 

Then He began to challenge me and I saw that underneath my hurt and pain, was resentment, hatred and bitterness. I wanted THEM to change who they were to make ME more comfortable! Anyhoo, they weren’t changing, and as time went on, things got worse. OH, how I hate the land of worse!! So I gathered up my courage and asked Him how HE wanted me to treat them, and His perfect answer sent me into self-pity, tears, and petulance. After all, everybody I knew agreed that I was much safer far away from this person. But HE didn’t. I just need to say, that if you have a problem like this one, then you need to ask the Holy Spirit what He wants YOU to do, and do it – but be guided by what the Bible says!

At that time, Jesus told me to treat that person like I would treat HIM. Sigh. I would have rather swum through shark-infested giant seas to South America, than do that. It seemed to me like I was giving them permission to continue to treat me badly. Then the Lord said this from Psalm 91:15&16 “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. …I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress…” So I crawled up into that Psalm, and clung on to it like a Rhesus monkey and prayed ‘help help!’ At the same time, I banged on my hat of salvation, picked up my breast-plate of righteousness and the sword of truth, and off I went. FYI the sword of the Spirit is not for slicing and dicing the other person – the Holy Spirit guides and teaches us how to use this sword His way.

I recommend tackling this kind of relationship difficulty, with at least 3 Holy Spirit inspired scriptures, that you’ve prayed over – as well as asking Him for His wisdom. After a while of loving on this person the way I love Him, I noticed that they hadn’t changed at all … … but I had! That sore place inside me had become inaccessible because I had stepped into FAITH. Then I realised that so much of what happened when I was with them, I had taken personally – but those things were the result of this person’s mal-formed personality. What I thought was personal viciousness, was their way of getting what they thought they needed. Their humanity was on display, and they didn’t know Jesus so it was the only course of action they had.

As I stuck with the Holy Spirit’s plan, I gradually saw a brand new person I had never met before. I still didn’t much like the way that they did things, but that stuff is not actually my business. I found we could laugh together, and genuinely express love for each other. At this point I want to stress that only someone very close to you can hurt you so badly.  Other people can come along and poke you in the scars you bear from your previous injuries. Don’t maltreat them for jumping on your hurt places.

We call it protecting ourselves, and God says “He is our protection and with Him we will be safe!” I found practicing loving my enemy – in this case a family member – worked best, when I started with the person who hurt me the most! That person could be a spouse, or a parent or a sibling, but the transformation that we personally experience, gives us the impetus to continue living this way. We get to see His power at work in our lives.

Here is a final question: “Have you ever noticed when you are with someone who hurts you, it never occurs to you that you might be hurting them at the same time, because you are way too busy firing arrows at them?” Yeah, I know… bring that up! We can become so entrenched in our own attitudes we can’t see anything, or anyone else. Let’s remember that God’s word is practical, you can stand on it.  Fixing relationships is essential! Bye. 👋

P 3254 It ain’t rocket science.

/ DVH

Hubby and I are blessed to attend a ‘missionary church.’ Our pastor is a missionary to this country, and his aim is to raise up missionaries for other countries, as well as right here … to go and preach the gospel. He is not concerned about numbers – our numbers can sometimes be few – but his aim is to get the gospel out there and encourage others to take it seriously and start living for Jesus. I think every church should have this aim. My question is today — where are our missionaries from the world-wide church?

I have a few observations to make about this subject. Most denominational, Pentecostal, and Charismatic churches have traditionally sent out missionaries to other countries. However, each group has their own individual slant on the bible. Who cares? As long as they preach the gospel – hallelujah! However, it is so easy to judge a missionary’s prowess by evident spiritual gifts as well as numbers, and a well-formed character comes second. My question is:  how will these people in strange environments respond to difficulties?

Meanwhile, people in the Western world leave their churches all the time and many start a new church to validate their version of doctrine. UM!! We weren’t saved to validate God’s doctrine! He can take care of it by Himself, thank you very much. We’ve been commanded/told to preach Jesus! I’m not trying to be critical because I know the aim is to make our churches grow – because each church wants to see people saved.Their purpose may well be pure, but they seem to think bigger, means better…  and I don’t! Bigger can mean more passengers, not participants.

It is tremendously sad for the world-wide church to be divided over individual interpretations of the bible. God’s wisdom is many-sided or faceted, it says that in Ephesians 3:10 AMP:“[The purpose is] that through the church the complicated, many-sided wisdom of God in all its infinite variety and innumerable aspects might now be made known to the angelic rulers and authorities (principalities and powers) in the heavenly sphere.”  What we see depends on where we are standing. Our finite brains can’t contain ALL His truth, we simply get little revealing glimpses of it.

Here’s an odd example of how misinformation works. A few blind men, found an elephant by accident. They didn’t know what it was. One man found the tail, so he thought an elephant was like moving rope. Another felt the skin, he thought the elephant was like wrinkled paper, etc. My point is this, when it comes to the precepts of God we are all still blind and sometimes, sadly, arrogant with it! I am not more right than you and you are not more right than me. Only Jesus Himself is Truth. But we both have gleaned little snippets of His wisdom along the way. However, we are here to make HIS name great and I’m not sure that can happen easily, when we decide we are here to push our doctrines and agendas. 

Whenever I write this blog, my dearest hope is that the reader will fall in love with His Word and go and look things up in the bible for themselves. My words can only have power in them IF the Holy Spirit kisses them for your ears. Otherwise I am bonging away, doing my best ‘gong’ imitations, hoping someone can hear me. In other words — please don’t follow me, follow Jesus. Here is another version of the above scripture in Ephesians 3 MSG bible, the Apostle Paul is speaking: 

“This is my life work: helping people understand and respond to this Message. It came as a sheer gift to me, a real surprise, God handling all the details. When it came to presenting the Message to people who had no background in God’s way, I was the least qualified of any of the available Christians. God saw to it that I was equipped, but you can be sure that it had nothing to do with my natural abilities.                                     

And so here I am, preaching and writing about things that are way over my head, the inexhaustible riches and generosity of Christ. My task is to bring out in the open and make plain what God, Who created all this in the first place, has been doing in secret and behind the scenes all along. Through followers of Jesus like yourselves gathered in churches, this extraordinary plan of God is becoming known and talked about even among the angels.” 

Paul was a missionary. He and the other disciples set out to follow Jesus’ instructions, and make disciples, not converts. Simon the sorcerer was a convert! This is what real commitment looks like: hundreds of years ago, the 18th century Moravian church sent out missionaries to preach the gospel to leper colonies. These men knew they were never coming back, they would die there. They left behind their own little families, their homes, their churches, and sailed away never to return to their homeland. Such was their devotion to the gospel. At the last glimpse of them they were standing on the deck of the ships that would take them away forever, and cried out until they could no longer be heard: “May the Lamb receive the reward of His suffering!”  Personally, I find that very challenging. That’s character!!

Missionaries are sent into this world to preach the gospel into places where it is not preached. They need to be mature in their faith. Enthusiasm is great, but nothing beats a changed character. We don’t go out to grow our churches or push our doctrines, we go to preach Jesus and what He did for mankind. Doctrine confuses people,and the Lord Jesus died to unite us. As His disciples/missionaries we are instructed to tell everyone we know the good news — that Jesus Christ loved them so much, He came here to save them! It ain’t rocket science.🚀 Bye. 👋

P 3169 Tests-4-me.

/ DVH

Hubby said this to me yesterday: “I don’t live for me anymore because I’m dead! I have no rights, because dead people have no rights.” That’s all news to me BTW – I distinctly saw him climb out of bed this morning. He was a bit creaky but still living! Yeah OK, he’s right, I get it. And that sentence is the actual pointy bit in Christianity – the bit nobody likes that was drowned when we were baptised. Today, we are the people who choose to live fulfilling Christ’s law of LOVE. We came up out of death into a new life.  And we live to bless each other. Since when did that become such a hardship?

The beauty of the scriptures, is that they say different things at different times, but those things always fit together to make a much bigger picture…“…don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:3&4. Baptism is our declaration of our intention to live a new life for His glory, from now on.

Our new life of living in love depends on us prayerfully acting on the fact that we are minute by minute, choosing to be dead!  There’s an oxymoron if ever there was one! Now we live a life of obedient faith that says: ‘when Jesus died – I died! That’s the essence of the Spirit-filled life. A life where we live to serve Him and others. Not a life filled with what we think or hope we need, but a life that is voluntarily laid down for His kingdom’s sake.

We may not feel any differently when we come up out of the water of baptism, but the bible says that baptism is our access into this new life in Christ. It may be symbolic, but it is designed to become a reality in each of our lives. That’s because baptism is the stated gateway into our new life of submission to His will, His way. That choice means we’ve deliberately decided to leave our old way of thinking, being and interacting with others behind us, and we have begun to live our lives relying upon His wisdom, power and strength.

As our life of faith continues to grow, we begin to see this world differently – now we do what He has told us to do, using our faith to obey Him. We have everything we need to grow, in His book, when we treat it like instructions. For example, we don’t need to be told how to interact with other people, it’s all in the book. And repentance is not just a great occasional idea – we do that all the time! God’s book, as my dear friend Harold Hill liked to say: is the manufacturer’s handbook! Just like you get a book to tell you how to operate your new stove or motor-mower, people also come with a book of instructions, lovingly crafted by their Maker.

And this book has no exceptions, or exemptions – you can be fat, short, a bit dim, a clever clogs, thin, talkative, silent, energetic or even worn out. So long as we read what He said carefully, prayerfully looking for things to do. Then we act on the things  we are reading. This means we are exercising our faith and dying daily and living for Him now. God’s ways are so incredible and intricately designed for each one of us, we can obey Him every day for a billion years and still come up with something new we haven’t seen or done before.  

I love to invite the book’s Author, the Holy Spirit, to watch over my shoulder, as I read. I read and I listen for Him to reveal to me something I need to do – I don’t argue with it, or excuse myself. If it says repent I say “what do I need to repent from, please Lord?” The Gospels are our example. They show us over and over again, how our faith works. In those five books we have a human example, right in front of our eyes. Jesus Himself shows us that nothing is impossible – including transformation. Plenty of testimonies in there!

BTW, I always include Acts with the Gospels, because I think we all need to be acquainted with the how, when, where, what and why of the power of God when it invaded other people’s lives. The Holy Spirit fell on people in seemingly random situations, but at the same time His power broke down religious strongholds that separated one group of people from another. Acts is a marvellous book to watch the Holy Spirit in action. It stirs our faith.

The bible always has a word in season about real people and real situations. We have details about our heavenly Father interacting with all kinds of men and women right throughout their lives – from lepers to Kings. Their tests included fighting “without number,” “fiery furnaces” and “being covered in boils!” And they ended in tremendous testimonies even though they weren’t any fun for the participant. The Old Testament has become a glorious table He has already prepared for us to eat from – even in the presence of our enemies. It shows us what the Lord likes, and what He doesn’t like. I love reading about these people who respected and admired the Lord so much – they took risks!  Our new life in Christ means so we will too.

On the other hand I also enjoy reading what Paul and the other disciples said in the Epistles. Those books have clear and great instructions about how our faith works and why. They teach us so much about how to die to self. What is written in the Epistles are not suggestions, they are a map of how our faith grows and what hinders it. The power of God dealt swiftly with Ananias and Sapphira — and interacted and discerned inner motivations in Simon the magician. Our faith is not for people who want to use Him for their own purposes.

Finally – looking for things to do will help anyone grow and have their own testimonies. Inactive, lukewarm people don’t do very well with their faith and they have bupkis when it comes to testimonies. That’s because we don’t really know anything about this NEW LIFE until we actually physically participate in it! Like the people in the Old and New Testaments! Our new life in Christ means that if we want a real testimony for His glory – we will need to participate in a test-4-me!  Bye. 👋

P 3165 Learning to be satisfied.

/ DVH

“I’m not telling you this because I’m in need, for I have learned to be satisfied in ANY circumstance. I know what it means to lack, and I know what it means to experience overwhelming abundance. For I’m trained in the secret of overcoming all things, whether in fullness or in hunger. And I find that the strength of Christ’s explosive power infuses me to conquer every difficulty.” Philippians 4:11-13 TPT.

Trouble can train us – if we will just choose to listen to Him and trust in Him. We cannot afford to waste our energy running about like headless chickens looking for an exit. May I suggest that we use our energy going after Jesus instead? He’s always the Answer! Let’s learn to recognise and accept the Lord’s correction and  discipline. That stuff isn’t always fun when it is happening, but it is sent to train us in righteousness, and peace, as well as leading us into a real, viable, lively fellowship with the Holy Spirit. His correction and discipline helps us sort out our motivations. People love to hear things from Him that they want to hear, but will we listen to what we don’t want to hear?

Today many human beings think correction and discipline are bad things – which is why we have decided that smacking children is a no-no! Unfortunately, now we are reaping the whirlwind …and so are the poor kids! I’m not talking about randomly whacking your kid simply because you had a bad day, and YOU are out of sorts. I am talking about the careful and thoughtful, considered hand-of-reason being applied to the seat of learning. Kids need to learn how to monitor themselves, under your loving supervision. And with some children, saying “stop” won’t do it! Life has penalties. If you pinch a car you go to jail. It is better to teach little Agnes or Angus how to restrain themselves, when they are small. However, I admit some do learn quicker than others!

Discipline when it is too strong, and it is done for the wrong reasons, can let the enemy in and have an adverse effect. Things like: “now you have ticked me off,” are not the right reason to whack your kid. That’s because at the bottom of that sort of discipline it isn’t about monitoring the kid, and leading them into making better choices. Instead, the reality is, you are trying to create a carefree, easier, happier environment for you! The point of discipline is to learn to monitor yourself – your own behaviour – with God’s help. So prayer needs to accompany discipline – pray with your child, teach them to repent. Model it in front of them. The bible is clear, discipline and correction are part of God’s love in our lives. They are His wisdom entering into our lives through our circumstances, lovingly exposing where the enemy of our souls can get at us. 

On that loving note, just to clarify another thing: God doesn’t make anyone sick. He does not and will not “send’ sickness to us to teach us something! However, He will take all that bad stuff and make it work together for our good, as we let Him do it! Bad things happen because satan is loose – he hates people. So if you blame yourself for illness, then you may have fallen right into satan’s cleverly laid trap. Our God loves to reason and interact with us in every aspect of our lives … He especially loves it when we talk with Him, personally. So we need to turn to His love and wisdom, and ask Him what this or that is all about, and always pray for healing! 

Whether we receive healing on the spot or not, is far less relevant than our ongoing attitude toward Him. We can’t afford to let a lack of healing stand in the way of real growth. Holiness has the smell of sacrifice on it. In the past when the Israelites wanted to restore their relationship with God, the Jewish people had to have a specific beast or bird killed, and then it was burnt — skin, feathers and all! If you have ever been to a tannery you will understand that it wasn’t the sweetest smelling BBQ in town! Let’s stop thinking that God only likes what WE like, otherwise we are shrinking Him down to our size — and that’s BAD.

If we choose to look at the Lord through the eyes of fear, we will find there is plenty of that to go around! In the Old Testament, there is the odd example of God smiting someone. But King Hezekiah once turned his face to a wall and prayed for deliverance from a fatal disease, and God heard his prayer and the king was given more time. Time to change his ways, perhaps? Let’s stop looking at prayer as a one-stop-shop and start looking at the Holy God we are talking to!! Maybe He has more than one thing going on at the time, and because we are mortal we simply don’t get it. 

I have learnt to be satisfied with praying about any situation, so I give it to the Lord, and then I leave it all with Him. This one action has created trust in me. Like I said: sometimes God is doing something else! After I have prayed, I walk away. And if I happen to get caught up in thoughts like: ‘what if’ or ‘maybe this or that,’ then I give everything back to Him and walk away again. What I am saying is this: ‘I trust you Lord to have the best answer and I am not going to mess around trying to fix something I can’t fix.’ If He tells me to repent of this or that, I don’t argue, I repent. If He wants me to apologise and make reparation, I do that.

He’s Almighty God and I believe He has the very best answers for me. I don’t always understand them …but my mind is like the size of a speck of dust in comparison to His infinite wisdom. When it comes to smarter than me – HE WINS! Let’s learn to be satisfied, and then release things, to Him. Then we can watch what He will do when we yield. We just might learn to be content, no matter what. Bye, 👋

P 3130 The beginning of Wisdom.

/ DVH

“If you consider yourself to be wise and one who understands the ways of God, advertise it with a beautiful, fruitful life guided by wisdom’s gentleness. Never brag or boast about what you’ve done and you’ll prove that you’re truly wise.” James 3:13 TPT. “To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit,…”1 Corinthians 12:8. “Those who are wise will shine radiantly as the sky at midday. And those who turn many to the way of righteousness will shine brightly as stars for all eternity.” Daniel 12:3 TPT.“The beginning of wisdom is: Get [skilful and godly] wisdom [it is preeminent]! And with all your acquiring, get understanding [actively seek spiritual discernment, mature comprehension, and logical interpretation].” Proverbs 4:7.”The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Proverbs 9:10.

Proverbs shows us the importance of having the Lord’s wisdom, and when it says “fear’ it means reverence and awe. A deep respect for Our Holy righteous Father, puts us on the road to understanding His ways. Proverbs also states to get His wisdom you need to make it your first priority and realise you need it. Human resources and information feature a lot in this world we live in, accumulated knowledge is the big deal thing today. And of course, now we have the internet and Google! Not to mention Wikipedia. Ho hum.  

But the bible tells us that even though Godly wisdom is the thing to have, without understanding and mature comprehension we won’t know what to do with it. Boy, I could have saved myself a heap of angst if I had taken that concept seriously! I kept trying to teach my kids wisdom when they didn’t understand a thing I was saying, and most of the time they didn’t care to either. Wisdom has to be sought, and earthly knowledge is not the same as God’s wisdom.

God’s wisdom is prompted by the Holy Spirit. Kids learn to parrot off all kinds of stuff at school, but they have no idea what to do with it. They need spiritual application to make use of their knowledge. That’s why they need parents to help them to put theory into transformative actions. Knowledge without application looks great on a resume, but it won’t help you balance your budget!

Wisdom identifies what to do and a word of knowledge shows us how to do it. They are both God-given GIFTS—Proverbs makes this clear, so that means we can, and should ask for these gifts. “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” Matthew 13:43. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear.” Proverbs 25:11-13. Wisdom corrects our course and reveals the Holy Spirit within us to others.

Wisdom will give us ears to hear what Jesus is saying, when others can’t even hear Him. It is like a spiritual hearing aid – it takes the unclear and makes it clear. In Matthew, did you get the subtle reference to choice? If you have spiritual hearing …then make sure you use it! These spiritual gifts diagnose an anticipated outcome and wisdom knows the right way to go about it. Remember, Almighty God knows the beginning right through to the end. Knowledge identifies and wisdom applies.

We ALL need His wisdom. This world is too dark and too tricky to live our lives without it. Wisdom can see the lie hidden between two truths. At the same time, knowledge and insight will often know where God’s truth applies. When I need it, the Holy Spirit gives me part of a verse, but it is up to me to look it up and follow that thread. ‘Knowledge is about knowing facts, whereas wisdom is about having the insight and discernment to apply that knowledge correctly, often revealing what action to take or how to respond.’  Google.

I have found that wisdom means you know something that you cannot possibly know with your intellect. It is not cleverness that figures things out—this God-given gift is something that drops into our heart or mind, often unbidden. Before it happens you may not even be concentrating on the problem. Suddenly the answer is in front of you, and then His wisdom says: ‘Do it like this.” It helps us avoid error. 

Many times we were about to go somewhere and the Lord said to us: “Wait!” When it came to the time when we would have been elsewhere, much too far away to help — a text came through and we were asked to help someone, because an emergency situation had come up. The word of Wisdom was ‘wait.’ I have also found wisdom can help me discern when things are a bit ‘off.’ I’m pretty naive in my personality and so the Holy Spirit often kindly protects me with His Wisdom.

Recently somebody called us and used the conversation to  clone our voice. They asked for this and that, but my spirit rose up and said – quite violently – “Hang up and phone the bank.”  The person on my end of the phone was not thrilled, but they trust the Lord, so they politely hung up. And lo and behold, somebody had tried to access our funds. Because the Holy Spirit helped us, we were recompensed immediately. We changed our passwords on the same day! I found reading the bible asking the Holy Spirit to help me, led me to these three gifts. I began to know His voice. I went out and obeyed what He taught me at that time.

Don’t rush – wait for your Teacher. Learn to listen and you’ll grow patience along the way, and then do your best to obey – because Christians need HIS WISDOM. ‘Ask and keep on asking, go after it, you will find it!’ Bye. 👋

P 3121 The kindness of God.

/ DVH

Almighty God’s kindness is not an open-door to live however we want … mainly because a lot of what the Lord says in the bible is definitely not lovey-dovey! That’s why I put that giant chunk of scripture on the page below today. Wherever we are reading – the gospels, or the Epistles, we can see that sin separates us from Him, other people, and His wisdom. However God didn’t wink at sin in the Old Testament either — His plan for mankind deliberately included permanent provision for dealing with it in the New! Our Saviour JESUS! Because the Lord is Who He is and He gave His all—He has an expectation that we will obey Him and trust Him. He sent us the Holy Spirit to guide us, and so He does not have to prove Himself, or His love, or His faithfulness! HE ALREADY DID.

Romans 2:1-7: “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, forbearance and patience, not realising that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when His righteous judgment will be revealed. God “will repay each person according to what they have done.” To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, He will give eternal life.”

His kindness is a pathway we must choose to acknowledge, and deliberately walk down, because it will lead us back to Him. After all, He is the One Who knows all things, believes all things, and hopes all things; especially when we focus on how much the Lord has been good to us… instead of our perceived injury or injustices. That’s when we begin to change our focus from what the other guy did—to what we have most likely done, because we’ve become aware of this blooming great log in our eye reminding us! His kindness  has already been released toward us, we don’t have to pray it down, it’s already here. Now we act on it using our faith. These actions only run into difficulties if we hate to admit we are wrong and we refuse to move on.

Hubby said something really insightful about that yesterday, it reminded me of Jesus’ illustration in Matthew 7:3-5. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” If we can see it then we have it too, and ours is probably worse than the other guy!

It isn’t the plank that obscures our vision … although it does! It’s the fact that we will go to great lengths to distract ourselves from dealing with our own sin – in spite of any immediate discomfort. We can easily identify what someone else has done because we’ve done it ourselves … that’s how we know what their splinter is! Have you ever had something in your eye? I don’t know about you, but the world stops for me until I get whatever it is out! I couldn’t possibly see, think or say anything, because that awful pain takes all my attention. Having something in our eye, is a no brainer … it makes itself known and it can’t be ignored. 

Sometimes that unacknowledged plank/log takes up so much of our focus and attention, that anything we think we can see in someone else’s eye, is totally immaterial – because we are in no actual shape to help them. Or even accuse them. The reality is we can’t can’t see anything properly because of our own unacknowledged pain and impaired sight. We have been blinded by a huge, sinful, judgmental attitude.

We can also get irritated because we can identify the splinter, but we simply don’t want to deal with our own plank! At that time we are definitely more likely to hurt the person who has a speck, simply because we can’t see properly! However, when we get rid of our own log, then we can help someone else with their smaller injury. And we will probably deal with things in a more kindly fashion, because the memory of our own pain is still fresh!!

When God tells us we have no excuse, we need to believe Him! That rebuke is His kindness in action, sent to lead us back to a position of humility and reconciliation with Him. However, our own pride will quite quickly make us fall over, and we can end up sitting on the floor wondering how we got there! Pride causes us to imagine that we can handle anything, because we sort-of kind-of, know it all. Sometimes we even barge into someone else’s life, acting like that we know  – when the reality is our plank means we can’t see it all! 

I don’t particularly care what anyone’s qualifications are… we have been told respect and love one another as a priority, and the Holy Spirit won’t take anyone else trying to do His work, lightly. He has a far sweeter, kinder touch than we can ever hope for. After He has dealt with us, we will be humble when we help someone else.

These things in the bible are not suggestions—the Lord Jesus Himself took the road of humility and look what He accomplished. We are privileged to watch the Expert handle this life in ways that may seem foreign to us, as we read the book! God’s kindness will lead us into repentance. Go after that. Bye. 👋

P 3060 Times of refreshing …

/ DVH

“For I will refresh the weary soul and satisfy all those who have given up on life.” Jeremiah 31:25 TPT. The thing with verses like these is that it is easy to look at it, and then look at your own personal experience and think … maybe I keep missing out on that.

Here’s what changed the way I read things like this — I stopped seeing my own experiences as the plumb-line and I chose to take His Word literally instead. Now I look up to heaven and say: “Dear Lord, Thank You for refreshing me. Thank You that You are so faithful, You always keep Your promises.”Amen.

Life today is hard. It is so easy to want to give up on it. The people all around us choose to surrender to the rapidly increasingly, flooding disaster of foul media water, which sweeps away everything else in its path. So we have people who doubt their sex, or people that think that killing a bad person is justified, or that  lying is OK so long as it doesn’t hurt anybody. Apparently stealing is not stealing when it is only on paper and nobody knows. And sleeping around is just normal.  

This filthy stuff can daily wash over us and constantly demand our opinions, our participation and our judgment. Big mistake – huge! We must choose to yield to His greater wisdom. There are times when those awful things push themselves right into our own homes. Right here, right now, there is only one body of water that is safe to jump into and that’s the river of life. It’s in the book! We cannot afford to agree with the people who are being swept along by a torrent of filth, and go on to join them by jumping into the miasma. His life in us has something life-giving to say in every single circumstance. Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding:  in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.” Amen.

Here is another verse of scripture that helps me with life. It goes like this: “We do not have the audacity to put ourselves in the same class or compare ourselves with some who [supply testimonials to] commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they lack wisdom and behave like fools.” 2 Corinthians 10:12. Jesus is always our yardstick.

I have learnt that who YOU are, and what you do, cannot be my standard. I cannot afford to take my standard from the rest of mankind, because the bible tells me that all have sinned, they have fallen short of God’s glorious ideal, and Jesus is God’s glorious ideal. He met every single standard and requirement that was necessary, when He overpaid our debt. The best measuring stick is Christ, in every single situation. We no longer have to see each other through that yoke of slavery, when I see you, in Christ, I am blessed.

When I am reminded of verses like this one in Jeremiah 31:25, I stop using my feelings, or peering at the circumstances, or even the manifold activities around me, to try to satisfy my own need for validation. I don’t have to blame YOU, Jesus validated me with His love. I would not go to the barbers to buy JAM, I need to go to the distributor of jam, the supermarket.

When someone is annoyed with me, my bible says:“My God shall supply my needs according to His riches in glory.”So I go to God to supply patience, long-suffering, joy etc. I have access to this blessing because of what Jesus has already done on my behalf! He has plenty of the stuff we need, and He loves us. We can just ask Him for it!

Our God is out-of-this-world rich in all those things we desperately need daily. He can’t run out – heaven rests on Who He is …

Plus, I have been promised my needs in writing. Who needs a Lear Jet or a mountain of gold, when you can have Grace whenever you need it? And boy do we need it when somebody gets all-up-in-your-face and you know that it’s their problem not yours. God promises us times of refreshing whenever we need it, and personally, I need His refreshing daily. Sucking it up buttercup does not work well when you are mad. You are likely to get indigestion instead of refreshed. 

There is nothing more life-changing than asking Him for patience, or long-suffering, or joy, or hope, when you need it. You will find you can go further than you ever thought you could, when your motivation changes from: “Please make me happy and comfortable” to “I want what you want Lord.” ←That BTW is a great prayer – but do gird up your girdle Gertie, because this ride can get bumpy before it becomes FUN. When we think of this life as the only life we have, we can make very poor decisions. Yet the glory of God, and all of heaven awaits us. 

Stephen, was a church deacon in the book of Acts. He was given such a clear look at Jesus standing beside our Heavenly Father in heaven, that I doubt he felt the rocks whacking into the side of his dear head, breaking his poor body. He was refreshed when He was dying!! When you are struggling, when you are fed up, when you feel like giving up – ask for times of refreshing from the Lord. Bye. 👋