Holy Spirit

P 2117 Don’t judge a book by it’s cover – because bibles have boring covers!

/ DVH

Not everything that the Lord Jesus is doing LOOKS good to us immediately. However, as we wait for Him to bring beauty out of ashes, and believe in His goodness – no matter how things look in this world – WE will be changed. And at the same time we will begin to comprehend His ways. Why does He do things like that? I think it is because the bible says: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Tasting involves engagement and action, not just mental assent to some so-called expert. This life is about progressively becoming more and more acquainted with Him, how He thinks, the Way He does things – Who He is.

There are times when we don’t want to take risks and steps of faith into our new life in Christ – because we are trying to prevent disappointment. Maybe we have experienced that feeling a number of times before … we prayed for something to change…and so far … it hasn’t. Perhaps we prayed for a loved one to be healed … and they are still sick… or they died. Me too! I am definitely not smart enough to have an answer to that!  It would be a mistake to think that just because we serve Him – we know all the answers! He’s still God and breathtakingly incomprehensible at times. 🙌 That’s why we need the bible… even though it looks boring … it isn’t. This book comes to us with a way better “help desk” than any internet site. THE HOLY SPIRIT.

Unfortunately our personal historical circumstances and memories can easily lead to us to metaphorically hold our breath, watching the Lord to see if this time will be different from the other times that we were disappointed! That’s when we know that we are praying prayers that are loaded with agendas! Perhaps we are disappointed because we have already formed an idea of how things will look, or how they should go. Our Heavenly Father is not a fast food joint … a place where you put in your order and wait impatiently for the result. The way to be blessed by learning about Him, as well as prosper our faith, is to find out what He IS doing and join in with that and hold tight when it seems He has gone ‘off script.’ Faith is like a rubber band it needs to be stretched.

I am pretty sure that we could go to a hundred of His preachers, and ask them what He is doing in these days, and each one of them will tell us that He wants to mature His bride. BTW that isn’t just because Jesus only wants a mature bride! It’s because Jesus is the perfect Bridegroom! His desire is toward us, and He is protecting us from what comes next. Hard things are going to happen no matter what we believe, but it is in the nature of maturity to stick close to His purposes. These mature followers will survive – scarred and sometimes battle-weary. I know a whole lotta people who dun fell off our twig already because they were misinformed about Who He is, and they were told He would give them whatever they want.. Even Jesus met someone like that! (Matthew 19:21 and Luke 18:22. BTW this incident is so important to the Lord – it is in the book twice.) We must remember the parable of the sower – stuff happens and it will choke the life out of those seeds of faith in Christ.

It is far better to ask Him into everything, than to live a reactionary life – bouncing about from one bad thing to another. Ask Him: “How would You like me to pray about this?” He knows how to pray better than we do. Right now, here on earth, the Holy Spirit is praying for us, perfectly. And up in heaven, in the throne room, Jesus is praying for us perfectly too. We simply need to know what He thinks. The safest place is a positional one – we get that by maintaining unity with others, prayer, and reading the very ordinary looking  book. Then doing what it says! (Well, you knew I’d say that didn’t you? 😆) We can cry, pout, and stamp our feet to try to get what we want, but He absolutely has a far better plan for all of us. You and I know that those plans He has are: “…plans to give us a hope and a future.”  However, He won’t rubber stamp His signature on what we think is a good idea or what suits us. Human logic and rationality is flawed by selfishness. We can make anything sound OK – but our God works for the good of ALL MANKIND. 

Ezekiel gave the perfect response to God once when He was asked a question by the Lord in Ezekiel 37:1-10 “He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, You alone know.” Then He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life…“ The really cool bit about this scripture is Ezekiel got to see this whole thing happen through his spiritual eyes. HE SAW US – and millions like us. WE are those dry bones. Laying around dusty, dry, separately. No life in us! But in my heart I can hear a rattling and a shaking …

Ezekiel prophesied back then, that we would live. That those dry dead bones would come together, and muscles and sinews would cover the bones, and organs and flesh would appear in and on them – and God’s OWN life would come into His army. Father God is going to honour that man’s prayer.  I may be gone by then, but I believe with all my heart we are at this stage in history … when maturity, reverence, and holiness have become more important than getting what we want. And the boring book becomes our road map, and mission statement.Bye. 👋🏻

P 2115 A word for thought.

/ DVH

 Many times in Christianity’s history, churches have prayerfully and sincerely slipped into the flow of what the Holy Spirit is actually doing and saying. We call that revival. I have seen a number of these revivals in my lifetime and they have fascinated me … because they rise… and then they eventually fade and disappear. I have a  theory about it to share with you this New Year’s day. 

The Holy Spirit loves the unity that is created by Him in these unfortunately, all-too-brief moments of heaven on earth. The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit live in perfect unity in eternity and They love to see us live that way too. Sadly, I think that that is the place where we need to be more interested in loving and pleasing Him, than in the supernatural stuff that is happening. If we are not careful we can focus so much on the miracles etc. at those times, than we do on the One Who is touching us!  Man’s personal agendas creep in.

Sadly, there are many needy people in this world, and it is easy to become enamoured with signs and wonders and start to try to benefit from His Presence. Things like the Lord blessing the flock, as well as the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet. When these times of revival and refreshing occur maybe we need to carefully listen to what God wants to DO with what He created, when He brought this group of particular people together in the first place! He has a purpose for the fire that fell on them. It seems to me, that the leaders get so busy trying to spread what He is doing, they cannot see that they are trying to organise Him. And I don’t think we know we are doing it! 

Many wonderful people of God have been given a Grace to even know how to work together at those times. But that is still His Grace in action. We can only give away to each other what He gives us, in the first place. We are receivers first .. distribution happens almost as a secondary benefit – a bi-product … not the main event. On many occasions in church history the Lord Himself brought those sticks, and branches (the people) together to create His revival fire. 

At the same time, satan loves to create situations that cause the unity we have in His Presence to be eroded, broken, or displaced, and one by one those people that lived to love Him and each other, walk or drift away. Maybe they simply want to take the fire of His Spirit elsewhere. We need to remember … the Holy Spirit is the WIND. We cannot micromanage the WIND. You simply go along with where He is blowing! Persecution brought about the disciples’ dispersement in Acts.

At the same time, human beings also seem to be very fond of duplicating existing models that seem to be working. So they use this church’s model or that denominational theory to try to get God to do stuff. Their motivation is to bless people. But the root of God’s Vine is Christ Jesus – not us. Sadly perhaps we have not realised that revival happens in the first place without human help. Just because WE prayed, however we did it, that does not mean that is why revival is here. The thing is at those times of fire and blessing, it looks to me like the leaders try to take control of His fire – that’s when He will take His hands off – because He honours our choices, even when they are NOT GOOD.

And this leader goes over here to start another church – like that person had that fire in the first place! What do we have that was not given to us? Pretty soon, the lives that provided the kindling for that particular blaze – start to become separated. They try to repeat the pattern they thought brought heaven to earth in the first place. We forget that Father God takes the initiative, that’s what Christ’s coming shows us. We respond – GRATEFULLY. We are not the fire starters … HE IS. This is where I’ve seen many people come to a fork in the road. I truly believe it is possible to have two perfectly-right, God-kissed things in front of you… however, we need to know which one does HE value the most? 

It seems to me that we need to show the Holy Spirit far more honour and constantly look to His wisdom and guidance. He loves for us to pause and carefully wait for Him, and not run on ahead. I personally think pausing is extremely  powerful because He values US dying to self, our ambition, our hopes and dreams, above everything else. A  revival is a display of His love and passion for us. However, He is God, He can say more than one thing at once. We pray “Lord send the fire, please send revival” – because we want to see lives changed and souls saved. I think we need ONE aim – our singular aim needs to be to obey, please and follow Him in any season. Everything else, including signs and wonders, is secondary to that aim.

Jesus Himself did all kinds of unusual things in men’s eyes. Sometimes He told the people who were healed to tell no-one. At other times He disappeared whilst the fire of healing and change was burning brightly. WHY??? Why did He do what He did? I dunno, but I have a theory! However, we need to find out by leaning heavily on the Holy Spirit’s wisdom. Personally I think He did those things because His primary aim was to obey and please His Father. Our Heavenly Father HAS LONG RANGE PLANS – we dare not run ahead of them.

I don’t think God cares if we have Mega churches or not – what He is looking for is a people who will take the time to listen to Him, love each other and follow Him in through all kinds of circumstances. It seems to me that He loves people who esteem His approval over everything else. The hallmark of people like this is best expressed by a man who had his head chopped off! John the Baptist said … in the middle of a booming ministry (!!) … “He must increase and I must decrease.” And then he died.

People who value the Holy Spirit like this, lack human ambition, and I am blessed to know them. They would rather someone else’s ministry prosper, because they feel the heartbeat of God on what the other people are doing. Revival does not capture God – HE CAPTURES US!! The Lord is looking for a people who want what He wants no matter what it costs them. These are my thoughts at the beginning of this New Year.  May the God of all hope be praised and glorified among us even more in 2023. 👋🏻

P 2110 We work with Jesus when we feed people.

/ DVH

Mark 8:1-8 “During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with Me three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.” His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?”“How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked. Seven,” they replied.

He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When He had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, He broke them and gave them to His disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so. They had a few small fish as well; He gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.”

The first thing I noticed about this scripture today was this – if this had been one of our church meetings, I wonder if we would have noticed that these people needed feeding? To be totally honest with you, maybe we would have been too busy examining the size of the crowd! Jesus was concerned for these faithful people because they had to walk home and some of them had walked a long way. We need to watch out for opportunities to minister to, and help people in practical ways.

Meanwhile, my first honest question to myself, was whether I would have even stayed at a meeting that went for so long?! That was some sermon, they had been together for three days of non-stop teaching. Most of us would call that an extraordinary meeting! However, the Lord Jesus saw it as His responsibility to physically feed these sheep. It is a good thing to appreciate people who care about practical things – they are vindicated right here in this scripture. Meanwhile, it doesn’t say these people were followers of Jesus but He fed them anyway!

My next thought was, it can be very easy to get stuck on the question about how the bread and fish were multiplied? Did it multiply in the disciple’s hands, or the Lord’s hands? Some times we can get so busy trying to figure out how things happened … instead of looking at the fact that the natural world obeyed the spiritual one! Maybe we can get so tied up in who did, or said what – hoping to figure out the circumstances and duplicate them – that we can miss what GOD actually did. He revealed His heart toward ordinary people and provided for them. When you read the bible carefully, you will see that Jesus did that all the time!

Almighty God saw the people’s need of nourishment and He provided for them, practically. Remember, Jesus only did what He saw His Father doing. This shows us that our God takes care of His kids. He does not sleep. There are not big needs and little needs, our God cares about all our needs. He knows the pain you’ve been going through, and He cares for you. Don’t believe the lies the enemy keeps telling you – just because nothing has changed that does not mean Father God doesn’t care. The Holy Spirit is already working on your behalf to change everything together for your good. 

Our God doesn’t PATCH things! HE MAKES THEM NEW. Patches tear – but the Lord makes things new. That’s because the new … stretches. Trust me, we are going to all need to be pliable in His hands in the days ahead of us. The Lord Jesus kept getting cranky at His disciples, because they continually looked at the natural situation, and they didn’t see the stuff that was going on around them through the eyes of faith. The eyes of faith know that God is doing something – maybe we dunno what it is – but we know He IS doing something. 

Our faith is exceedingly precious to Him. One of the ways we nurture it, is by believing He is good, when everything around us looks terrible. Another way to nurture faith is to use it. I’m guessing most of that crowd present that day had no idea they were eating a miracle! I’ve thought a lot about this. So many times in my life, I thought what was happening at that time would be the end of me – but it wasn’t… God was doing something else. He was working those things together for my good. 💕

We must not dismiss the miracles in the Gospels as simply “stories” because when we do that we miss the greater message. We are not reading some “Boy’s own book of adventures” – we are reading God’s personal history and interaction with mankind – plus man’s response to Him. If God cared that much about Gideon or Jonah don’t you think He cares about what is happening to you? In Hebrews the writer calls the Old Testament men and women, heroes of the faith. Personally I call them examples of how Almighty God deals with individuals! 

The Lord Jesus fed those thousands of men, women and children spiritually, but that did not preclude the fact that physically they also had pressing needs. They were hungry. I think today, He is looking at you and I and saying: “feed them” – just like He told His disciples on the side of that hill. There are plenty of hungry people around us, and it will take lots of faith to reach them, but that’s OK, the precious Holy Spirit is pure faith in action. Bye. 👋🏻

P 2108 My testimony

/ DVH

I felt that the Lord wanted me to talk about my conversion experience, even though it was over 50 years ago! 😊 I had some sort of squirrelled up faith/fear of God, for most of my life, up until I was 25. But there was no real life in it. It was more of a “pray, do my best, and hope like mad God wasn’t watching me when I did the wrong thing” faith! I prayed to be good an awful lot, that bit I remember clearly. Actually I wasn’t really sure if God even liked me. 

Then my sole parent decided maybe I needed some religion after all, so I was dragged hither, thither and yon through this whacky idea and that one. I can only say some of those places were more out there than was probably good for me. Eventually I got married in a Catholic church and we went overseas for a year. My faith was totally non-existent by that stage. We had two little girls, two years apart. And I can honestly say I lived my life back then feeling unloved and unwanted. Along the way, I discovered having a family, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

One day, somebody took an exception to our very loving dog, and poisoned her – they threw a bait over the back fence. My two tiny little girls were distraught. At that time I had a lovely Greek neighbour who also believed in different weird and whacky things and during my tearful discussion about our dead dog with this person – they announced that Jesus Christ was also dead. There was no resurrection. I have no idea why, but I was utterly shattered by that thought. I knew it was a lie – but I couldn’t prove it. I ran back to my house and tore it apart looking for a bible. We didn’t have one. 

Around that same time, I had our two little girls baptised in a local Anglican church. My ex was a nominal Anglican. Anyway, an older lady from that church visited people like me regularly, and she brought the Parish newsletter weekly. I would open the door – just a crack, stick my hand out to grab the newsletter and close the door quickly again!

When my lack of real faith crisis hit, I realised I had her phone number – so I called her. She came over immediately – God Bless her. She comforted me, because I was sobbing my heart out, and she told me that the Lord Jesus IS alive and He loved me dearly. Then she said: ‘Jesus would like to live in your heart, would you like to ask Him in?’  My answer was a resounding yes. She offered to pray with me but I told her I would prefer to pray by myself. So I went out to the clothes-line, sat down, and prayed this made-up prayer:

“God if You are real, I am talking to You, and if You are not, then I am talking to the clothes line.” Great prayer huh? 😳 And YES those are the exact words! The results of that prayer were instant and astonishing. It was as if someone switched a light on. One minute God was a theory that I hoped existed, and the next He was real-er than anything else in this world! I was instantly converted. I had no clue about anything spiritually real before that time.

Suddenly, the person who never ever went to church was there every time the doors were open. Jesus was so real and I was so passionate about Him – still AM!  At this time, I told everybody I knew that would stand still to hear it – He is real. They, of course, thought I’d lost my marbles. I joined that local Anglican church and was blessed with good solid teaching. I started to devour the bible – I’d never read it before. I began with the Gospel of John which is still, to this day, my favourite Gospel.

Now, don’t give up on me, you’ve made it this far OK?? Mo-oving on … I constantly wanted more of Jesus. Three years after that I still wanted more.  My best friend at church went overseas and she kept sending me back info about “the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.” Long story short, I was desperate for more, I asked the Lord for it. I immediately got some funny words rattling about in my head. I didn’t know what they were so I wrote them down so I wouldn’t forget them, and prayed them every single day in case I forgot them! You know, God doesn’t want to just sprinkle us with water, so our face is kinda sorta moist,  He wants us completely drenched and dunked in the middle of a very deep river.

In my country about a year after getting my three funny words, there was a train disaster, and when the news of it played out live on the TV, God unlocked my heart, and torrents of Holy Spirit’s language came pouring out of my mouth. I am aware that many people will tell you that it is a bad thing when you don’t know what you are praying. I disagree. The Holy Spirit knows what we need more than we do – He prays for US perfectly. Over the course of my life I have learnt that I don’t really know what is good for me, so I am more than happy to trust His wisdom. I recommend it!  From the moment I gave my life to Jesus, to this day, I have never doubted the Lord is real. I know Him. He talks to me.  😂 👋🏻 

ps I am proof that you don’t need a special prayer to meet the Lord Jesus personally. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you to cry out from your heart if you don’t know Him. Ask Him to make Himself real to you.“If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved..” Romans 10:9-10.

P 2093 We all need to quit hiding in the dug-out and get into the game!

/ DVH

I have discovered over the years that I have this penchant for saying things out loud that other people don’t like to say because they are too busy being polite! Being po-lite dun killed off a whole lotta really really sweet folks who had a job to do for the Lord. 😳 And I ain’t talking about flower arranging! Sometimes, you just gotta say it how it is!

So many fantastic people over the years have given up trying to be themselves, because they couldn’t handle the opposition from the very place that was supposed to nurture them! The Lord Jesus LOVES His Bride … He sees her through His eyes of faith and love. A whole lot of people have ended up hiding from each other, mainly because they’ve been clobbered by OUR side one too many times. I’ve found that all of us just want to belong, and I suspect many of us secretly feel like giant failures. The Lord Jesus is the most wonderful fiancé… . It is time to let love cover a multitude of sins and move on to the real work – sharing His love with everyone around us.

Here’s my little tuppenny theory: these dear, difficult and awkward, sometimes annoying people that have been coming to our churches Sunday by Sunday, for years (!)  – despite them feeling alone, rejected, alienated and overwhelmed. They need to be seen differently. Perhaps it is time to realise that we have been blessed with some people who are incredibly loyal to Jesus – despite the opposition they have faced. Ya might want to pause and think on that one! 🤔

Our churches have been straining out gnats and letting camels through that dratted sieve for way too long. When anyone goes fishing, the fish don’t jump into the boat, all nicely cleaned and filleted. We need to accept each other. We have all been re-designed to grow in GRACE. Some of us are slower than others, but none of us do that just sitting in church, patiently listening to sermons – we grow by going outside the building, and stretching our faith! We all need transformation. May people have given up being REAL because they are so busy trying hard to be a good witness.  

Maybe some people in our congregations are a different kind of gift! They are here simply to annoy the living daylights out of others, because the Lord wants to show each one of us that we are not perfected yet! We gotta stop beating each other up, and start practising compassion on those amongst us who are struggling. Personally I have people in my life that I simply can’t talk to without asking for His help first. It is never good when Christians are scary.

Christians have been told by very enthusiastic leaders that if we just shape up, live right and sound right and look right, then God will be able to use us. I wonder how Balaam’s ASS managed that? Or how it worked out for Jonah, the whale mail specialist. The Lord accepted us before we even knew He was there. Let’s get this clear, being able to pray for the sick and raise the dead is not a sign of perfection. The Holy Spirit has given the Body of Christ  gifts. 🙌 Meanwhile, miracles are totally a part of everybody’s new DNA – we all get to do this stuff. Miracles are not a prize for getting Christianity right! Jesus hated it when people fussed over the supernatural and ignored opportunities for spiritual growth. He did what Father God told Him to do and walked on.

Our focus has slipped from Him to US. Do I like the singing – how was that sermon did it met my needs? The cross of Christ changed everything – now we are here for Him. The church is definitely not all that – but Jesus is! He always WAS! We’ve let our own immaturity govern the way we approach other people, as well as the rest of the world. The Body of Christ is not a club with an exclusive membership. We are a bunch of broken, ornery, sometimes imperfect people, who found out, by happy accident, that Almighty God truly loves all kinds of people! That’s what we must shout from any platform we have

I believe in miracles, and praying for the sick, and seeing people saved and set free – but you cannot convince me that one person is more valuable to the Lord than another. The people in the Old Testament that are featured were all leaders. But when we get to the New Testament, you see an ordinary man and a slip of a girl, fulfilling God’s purposes. The Holy Spirit is teaching us something from the first sentence in Matthew … you and I live in the time of nobodies doing great exploits. God is simply looking for hearts that are devoted to Him. Instead of praising or elevating men and women, because of gifts – we need to focus on the Giver Who gave them.

I don’t care how spiritual we think we are, ordinary people need to stop hiding and climb out of the dug-out and find somebody to help, and then start praying for and helping them. Share His love. Meanwhile, God’s love doesn’t need thousands of dollars to keep the ministry wheels turning – Jesus walked everywhere! 

His unconditional, overwhelming Love transforms people –  telling other people – that is our mandate. 👋🏻