Homeless

P 3393 And a-w-a-y we will go… … again.

/ DVH

Very early this Sunday morning, we shall pack the last few items into our car and set off again. The Lord has asked us to go and take more bibles etc., blankets and toiletries to two separate hubs out in the country, because the weather has been so very cold and the people out there need to know SomeOne wonderful cares for them. Jesus, of course.

As we travel, we often also find ourselves comforting the people who help those who are down and out. The government workers suffer because there are far too many people and not enough funds. Plus as we go, we pray for and help those whose lives have taken a terrible turn and they are now on the streets, or hiding from brutality, grief, and chaos. They are the homeless and defenceless.

The news has finally begun reporting on the crisis our farming communities are currently facing. Many families on the land rent their properties and their rent has gone up too. And some, who have a mortgage, are now facing those awful rising interest rates. Sadly, the oil crisis has caused the prices of fertiliser, feed, seed and spray to rise. 64.1% of farmers have been heavily impacted by rising transportation costs.

Australia runs well because of our truck drivers, but it is a hard life, driving vast distances, and the roads are often not good out in the bush. All these people need our prayers, plus any emotional, practical, and financial help we can give them. When we act like they don’t matter, we are biting the hand that feeds us. They provide our food!  Let’s do more than think about that.

Here’s some info -14% of our entire population, that’s approximately 3.7 million people Australia-wide —including one in six children …are currently living below the poverty line. I am choosing to speak for those human beings among us who have no voice, they are too busy to have one!

Especially farmers – those faithful men and women who are far too busy getting up at 3.00am to 5.00am to milk their cows or pick their crop, to be complaining about the way someone else lives. The people in our cities simply cannot afford to forget them. Those who work on the land suffer the hardships of this great, wonderful, sometimes frightening land we live in — along with children, the elderly and the disabled. We need to help each other. 

My own personal success rate with growing our own fruit and veggies at our house is about 5%. So I definitely need them or I would starve. I don’t even want to begin to think about killing a chicken! I just thank God for someone with greater skills than I have, who will do that for me. Maybe today we can take the time to prayerfully remember those people who put the food on our plates. And I don’t just mean just the supermarket magnates – who have entirely different problems! I mean the little guy stocking the shelves all day every day, just so you can have your favourite brand of Cornflakes.

In the past 21 years we’ve found that we don’t always have to give money to help, even a tiny bit of love shared, lightens the load. We just try to spread kindness, compassion around wherever we go, as He leads us. When His Grace visits these precious souls He loves so dearly, we’ve seen people with tears pouring down their faces because we simply came to help them however we could. “… I was in prison and you visited Me…” Matthew 25:36. Poverty, despair and abuse, are all types of different prisons. 

The Body of Christ has been told to live this way. It’s not an optional extra. Over the years, many of us have left ministry to our leaders, instead of understanding that we can all do something.  This time some children in a local school bagged up the toiletries for us. When we take care of the poor and disadvantaged, we are doing it for Jesus, because He has chosen to totally identify Himself with them. He has also been rejected and misunderstood by the world around Him. Not to mention His parents, and immediate family. (Mark 3:20-21), (John 7:1-5), (Mark 3:31-35).

For three and a half years the Lord Jesus Himself lived on the road, going from town to town, walking long distances. And He lived like that to totally identify with all of us. He slept by the side of tracks, and relied upon the kindness of friends and strangers for food. He even ate grain straight from a field, and drank water from a well!

At the beginning of His life – not long after He was born, in the poorest of circumstances, His parents took Him as an infant and ran for their lives from persecution. This is one of the many things I love about the Lord Jesus. It says: “…He shared our sorrows and pain….” Not just in theological theory, but in practice. A follower, is someone devoted to Jesus’ Ways. They choose to pick up their cross and learn from the Master Himself, daily.

Jesus Christ, God incarnate, deliberately chose to live like we do. I remind myself … that the KING of heaven chose to live like an ordinary human being. This means He knows suffering, firsthand. After all, none of us can live this life without bumping into it! That’s why the Lord Jesus is the perfect Saviour. His compassion for mankind is so much greater and all encompassing than we can imagine. We don’t have to be millionaires to care or share. When our lives are not our own, its easy. We just share whatever we have.

So off we go again… Bye …🚙  PS I’ll be writing blogs as we travel, and a huge thank you to all those who are praying for us.

P 3383 Are you a risk taker?  

/ DVH

I listened to a Christian speaker yesterday. She is regarded a ‘mover and shaker’ in Christian circles. She spoke about how, over a period of time, she was challenged by the way her life was going. Even though it seemed that she was always busy, and her time consisted of many Christian, Godly, worth-while activities. She’s also been a good wife and mother, someone who paid a great deal of attention to the bible and prayer, and she spent time balancing her health and wellbeing and caring for her family. A real Proverbs 31 lady, except I don’t think she sold real estate — but she was “up there!’

Outside her home she regularly did things like raising money for the poor, helping the homeless, reaching out into the community, witnessing to people and so forth. Plus she ran every single day, and ate all the right things. She seemed to be the kind of person I am allergic to, mainly because she cheerfully did everything I think I can’t! Eventually this nice lady realised the things she was doing were good, right and profitable, but it wasn’t enough. She felt empty. She wasn’t UN-happy, but she wasn’t fulfilled in her life either. So she began to pray about it.

Then the Lord challenged her with these thoughts. “I am looking for risk takers. My people want to play it safe, and just do and say all the right things. I don’t want your life to be about ‘the appearance of doing good,’— I want all of My people to live their lives to their fullest spiritual potential. That includes taking risks and daring to believe they can do far more than the same things over and over again.” 

A few years ago, there was kind of a buzz word, and it describes the way Christians today often choose to live: Risk averse! “Being risk-averse means having a strong preference for avoiding uncertainty and potential loss, even if it means sacrificing higher potential rewards. Rather than gambling on unpredictable outcomes, a risk-averse person or organisation will consistently choose a safer, more predictable option.”

When I read that description I laughed. It is so easy to look at our lives and justify why we do this and that – or  why we sometimes don’t do that other thing. That’s usually because we think our personal responsibilities outweigh the risk factor … or we are a tad scared it might be a bit dodgy. Sometimes I think we spend so much time learning to be a good Christian – we end up doing nothing. Meanwhile, I’m not quite sure how that kind of mentality is helpful as we follow Jesus!

I look back at His disciples and remember that those 12 men left their way of life behind, instantly. Imagine how their wives, mothers, fathers, kids, friends, rabbits and relations felt about them waltzing off like that! And then they traveled about with the Lord all over the country-side, sleeping by the road, etc., jumping on religious theories. Now there’s some risk taking!

When I asked Google about risk – because as we all know, Google thinks IT knows everything! I realised that many people think being risk-averse is normal and a good way to live. It seems that mankind’s idea of adventure flew out of the window when we headed for the moon. The reality is that precious few people actually DID that!

But when you read the bible, the Old and New Testament, you will find a whole lot of characters who were plodding along enjoying their normal little risk-free lives … And then Almighty God crashed into their lives and interrupted their well made plans with His wishes. Now these people had two choices, comply, or suffer the consequences. Some of the dumb bunnies actually chose the consequences and ended up in all kinds of trouble. Then they had to pray like mad for the Lord to get them out. And because of all that to-ing and fro-ing, and weeping and wailing, they gained a testimony to God’s greatness.

Perhaps today, we don’t have any testimonies because we rarely face those kinds of tests … we kind of wiggle out of them? Maybe we need to revise what we think Christianity is all about. My point today is to challenge everyone – including me -anyone who is living their new life in Christ, risk free. We all do good wherever we can, but when is the last time we prayed for a dead person to come back? Your own answer to that question might surprise you. I’m kind of curious to know, how come all the risk takers died off? 

My risk-averse lady is now utterly engaged in challenging laws-of-the-land-that-need-to-be-changed. She simply loves what she is doing – despite the sometimes nasty opposition. Risky living seems to be like that. It scares the daylights out of you – but you know you are alive alright. It’s time we stopped playing it safe. Bye. 🤪  

P 3357 Take note of the criteria.

/ DVH

Jesus once taught a parable about sheep and goats in Matthew 25:31-46, and we would be wise to pay attention to what He said. When I looked this parable up on Google, I found so-oo-oo-oo many sermons – it’s a popular subject! Many of these sermons talk about Christians, specifying that we are sheep, and some-other-guys are supposed to be the goats. Like I’ve said before, I’m a purist, I like to take what He says seriously.

Hubby recently said something that piqued my interest and I wanted to explore it further. He said: “Everybody wants to be a sheep. Christians think they are already a sheep – but did they read the criteria for being a sheep and not a goat?” My dear hubby also asks questions no-one wants to think about!

“Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited Me in, I needed clothes and you clothed Me, I was sick and you looked after Me, I was in prison and you came to visit Me.’                                                                                                   “Then THE RIGHTEOUS will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? When did we see You a stranger and invite You in, or needing clothes and clothe You?  When did we see You sick or in prison and go to visit You?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did FOR ONE OF THE LEAST OF THESE BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF MINE, you did for Me.’“Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave Me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave Me nothing to drink,  I was a stranger and you did not invite Me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe Me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after Me.’ 

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help You?’ “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, YOU DID NOT DO FOR ME. “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

In the above verses, Jesus totally identifies Himself with the poor, downtrodden, sick and imprisoned. The bible tells us that He came to save sinners, and He takes giving , caring for, clothing and feeding, visiting and sheltering the poor – personally. He clearly says: if you do it for them you are doing it for Me. Meanwhile, let’s not even go into the fact that He calls one group righteous and the other cursed !! …I learnt a long time ago, just because I don’t like what Jesus is talking about, that does not mean I have the criteria to ignore it. I’m dead remember? Dead people have no say – nor do they care.

The Holy Bible is His chosen yardstick, so if Jesus said it, then we’d better sit down and take the time to listen to what He said! If we want to GROW then the next thing to do is to act on what He said. You can tell, BTW, that the Bible is His yardstick because the Lord refers to it all the time – even when He is under extreme duress. 

I believe we have romanticised things to the point that we dismiss the reality of what the Lord is saying here. In Matthew 25:31-46 it says that we ignore the people who are suffering all around us, at our own peril. However there is a simple  remedy, find a way to help people like this and do it — and please don’t forget when you are doing it, you are ministering to HIM! Do you want to wash His feet with your tears? Then weep over the heartache of another human being who got lost, or never had what you were given. Then help them.

That’s not just some random stranger, prostitute, drunk person, homeless person, dishevelled or needy person in front of you and I – it’s JESUS. HE says so.… how are we responding to Him?

Who is more likely to listen to the message of the Gospel? A rich man who is distracted into making his money work for him — or a poor one who struggles to feed his family? I believe this scripture links to the one about the Wedding Banquet. Some people in that parable are too busy with the things they are doing, to say yes to the Master of Ceremonies – so in the end, he sends out his servants to bring anyone in.

Jesus came here for the people who know they are poor in spirit. When Hubby and I go to help the poor, etc. we meet the Lord when we get there. He has a word, or something practical He told us to bring: a New Testament, a thoughtful present to make them feel special – to let them know He loves them. Can I be honest with you? I don’t know why every Christian isn’t doing this. Sending money is great, but going is better. 

Today I want to issue a challenge to anyone interested. Find someone on the list of people Jesus identifies with, and start helping them. Bonus buy! You will definitely struggle and learn a lot about who you really are. You may meet people who will live in your house for years and then never let you know where they are, or what happened to them, after they’ve moved on. But you did it for Him. He knows!!

But we must face facts, we are going to get our hearts broken over all the things that have broken His heart too. This is not a fun task. But our criteria is to be like Him and we will meet Him as we interact with the needy and outcasts. He chose to be one Himself. Bye. 🙏

P 3345 Faith has works.

/ DVH

If I were to put my title another way, I would say that faith needs works! Faith is something that should cost us. Our faith needs to be visible to others. We just drove over 4,000 kms to give away 110 blankets, 70 packs of toiletries among a lot of other things. The people we met needed a hundred times that or more – it was simply all we could carry. The current state of our world means that hard-working people are falling off the grid. Homeless people aren’t people who don’t want to work, they are people who have lost everything – including hope.

In the past week we have had several conversations with others, not always Christians. They asked us how they could help us to continue what we are doing … and may God bless them for wanting to be involved! However, our intention was never to be another charitable organisation, nor are we affiliated with the government. Hubby and I are two very ordinary pensioners who have been motivated by the Lord to put our faith into action. Living day by day with many disabilities and difficulties has made doing this a challenge – it has figuratively and literally stretched our faith. We can’t go overseas and join a missionary group, and God has arranged for us to do His will where we live. 

This means we will travel vast distances on dodgy roads, because extreme weather produces extreme road surfaces!  At one stage in our recent trip, our car took off. It hit a huge bump and went airborne for a few seconds before it came down with a thud and then continued on. Now that was an experience! On our journey we passed many petrol stations in small towns with no petrol. The thing is, we can’t afford to get stuck in places like those, they have very limited medical facilities and we could need them.

In some places if we were stranded, we would have to call in the Flying Doctor! It kind of felt like we could have waved at the pilot when we were airborne in our car! Yet we stuff the car full of more things than you can imagine and set out for places we have never been. And in 20 years we’ve been to a lot of places. We don’t do this so others would admire us. We do it because God told us to go. We are not looking for a ministry either. We go because He asked us to go, and doing this stretches our faith in more ways than anyone could possibly imagine. Stuff happens!

You can’t just learn faith, you have to do it. “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Hebrews 11:1. This means if our faith doesn’t result in actions it has no substance! It will stay a theory and we will live our lives fighting doubt. Personally, our own faith has grown exponentially since we started taking risks and using it for things that don’t benefit us. Faith has to have works. This means we will step into the unknown believing He will catch us. And because Jesus is faithful, He will. 

Faith has been designed to stretch us, and glorify God to strangers in such a way that they will never see Him the same way again. We RE-present God to others when we use our faith. Going to church on Sunday, prayer group on Wednesday and Bible study on Saturday uses faith. But if what we are doing does not stretch our faith beyond our own little horizon, then it will comfortably stay in the realm of ‘knowledge’ and not end up in the realm of ‘experience.’ Acting on our faith ushers His presence into what we do. JESUS LOVES FAITH. “When the Son of man comes will He find faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8.

Let’s look at Peter, who threw his legs over the edge of a perfectly good boat when Jesus said, “Come!” His fisherman’s mind knew it was impossible, but perhaps his faith in Jesus over-rode his knowledge of the ocean. The Lord did not let that man drown, and He won’t let us drown either. He is FOR US, He proved that at Calvary! Instead He turned Peter’s experience into a lesson. We all need to learn and change when we follow Him.

Matthew 14: 28-31“Lord, if it’s You,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to You on the water.”“Come,” He said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, “Lord, save me!” Immediately Jesus reached out His hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”

You and I may never get to walk on water, but we need to stop living this life influenced by the appearance of things around us and start living by what Jesus said. Instead of just using our faith to pray for day-to-day hiccups, or difficulties that occur – like praying for Uncle Bob who is sick and he is now in the hospital. Our faith needs to be active! Go lay hands on Uncle Bob. We need to aggressively take back the ground the enemy has stolen from all around us. Prayer rallies our faith, but then faith needs actions – our actions will give it substance.

Faith is designed to have works. (Read James and watch the Lord Jesus!) Faith isn’t just a creed. A bunch of words we all agree with; it is a way to live. May God bless you as you step into a bigger world. Amen!  Bye. 👋  Daniel 11:32b “…but the people who do know their God shall be strong, and do exploits.” 

P 2850 Risky living applied.

/ DVH

“We have come into an intimate experience with God’s love, and we trust in the love He has for us. God is love! Those who are living in love are living in God, and GOD LIVES THROUGH THEM.”1 John 4:16 TPT. We can easily breeze through this life unaware of what God’s love looks like – perhaps because we unfortunately measure love by this world’s standards. This verse is a great measuring stick, one of many we have been given. The New Testament and the Gospels are filled with measuring sticks about what the Love of God actually looks like.

Are you living in love? Maybe your reply might be … “Well, of course… I love my kids and my spouse … most-of-the-time, and my church friends, my immediate family etc. YES! I am living in love!” So, Whose definition of Love are you using? There’s the rub. We tend to use our natural human feelings to tick that box. Here’s another box for you: be honest — who don’t you love? “Well, I love everybody, but there are some people I like more than others.” Right. 

So if you had a blind beggar who stole things, and he camped outside on your front lawn, would you take him in and feed him, and help him before you sent him on his way? Or maybe you would give him a couple of dollars to help him out? Hmmm? God utterly wrecked my life when He showed me my hidden hypocrisy. He did that by introducing me to HIS kind of people. People who utterly would, and DO, take blind beggar/thieves into their homes. You know, most homeless people do not do nice things, especially when they are starving and needy. And no, avoidance is not a good idea. Loving others this way, is not just someone else’s ministry. I took that excuse out for a walk and it crashed and burned. Because of what Jesus has given us, living like this is utterly possible.

One of these precious, always challenging Christians said to me: “What if the homeless poor came into your pretty house and, accidentally or not, smashed up all your lovely china, and pinched your special things?” Well, that whole thought was a big fat reality rush. I realised that I had a truck load of excuses for the way I was living, while so many other people in this world have to steal or scrounge in order to live. Feeling sorry for poor people doesn’t help them much, even if you do shed a tear. Love always looks like something. It looked like sacrificing His life to Jesus!

Our sensibilities fool us. They tell us that it will be OK to do this or that. So getting rid of thieving blind beggars is the responsible thing to do. Call the cops, let them sort those guys out! But, what have we done to our hearts when we act like that? Because it is our hearts that matter to the Lord — what are we doing with our hearts when we ignore the homeless poor at our doorstep, the needy in our own families – as we drive by in expensive cars that could feed them for years. Is that love? Is that the kind of love the Lord means? Is it even what love truly looks like? You know, we cannot stay comfortable and still follow Jesus …that’s not love, it’s fooling yourself.

The Lord Jesus didn’t live a comfortable life. He shared His life with the downtrodden, poor and hungry. He used His faith to feed people. He set the kind of example that we can easily attribute to others — the more spiritual-people-than-me Christians. He talked to and explained salvation to anyone, even the people He wasn’t sent to, and shared the gospel with them. Love does that! And He specifically taught us to love our enemies. Remember, to Jesus — loving means we will DIE – one way or another!! Our response to this kind of radical advice, is to mentally eliminate any potential enemies with a pretty feeble bunch of excuses that fall over instantly when the Lord turns His eyes on them.

I am not saying that we should sell our houses and live in a shack! But please never forget that other people are our responsibility. Jesus had no home of His own. No fancy place to lay His dear head from when He was born ’til He died. And even then, He had only the clothes on His back. When we care for others it is like we are doing it for Him. Think about the state of the world around us, there are the rich, and then there are the desperate. – is there no middle ground? Is there no way we can live more simply and help those who have no way to live at all? Or are we going to leave ‘that kind of stuff’ to the evangelists and missionaries, because we think it isn’t ‘our’ ministry. Ya might like to rethink that thought!

This world is not going to believe in a loving, kindly, merciful, gracious Saviour when His so-called family all live comparatively comfortable lives, and only give away what they think they can afford! That’s not Risky Living – it’s hypocrisy. No wonder people don’t want to join us, they are too busy scrambling for their next penny. There are times when we even fail to properly care for our church families. However you look at it, obedience to His Word means we open our doors to loving the kind of people we would normally walk around.

To live like Christ did we need to engage in Risky Living and start loving others … which, BTW, is called living by faith in the bible. We need to do the sort of stuff that is way outside of our comfort zone. Otherwise we will one day exit this world still protecting what is supposedly “mine.” Our personal thoughts about comfort and money shouldn’t ever stop us from caring for others. Changing our lives is not impossible – the bible shows us that. Bye. 👋

ps. Our precious family member has gone home – his race was run. Heaven is rejoicing.😢

P 2832 Get ready to be stretched.

/ DVH

Years ago, a young fellow who had no family and would have been all alone for Christmas, joined us for Christmas lunch.  And when he started in on his third helping of a heaped plate, we started to suspect something was amiss. In those days we didn’t know a lot about the munchies, but the evidence spoke for itself, so we sort of kind of figured it out. The sad part was his everyday behaviour was often all over the place, even though he was part of the leadership team, yet nobody had ever noticed that this poor kid was hooked on Marijuana!

Did you know that in Proverbs 11:25, it says: “A generous person will prosper; Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.” Today I want to present what I think could be an interesting idea. Ask someone who lives a lonely life, to Christmas lunch. Have you ever prayed: “Lord please show me something I can do for You?” Well, asking someone you don’t know very well to join you and your family for lunch at this time of the year could open a door to deeper relationships and possibilities, and it just might stretch you … all at the same time. Plus, bonus buy, everyone could make a new friend.

Over the years our family has learnt to have an elastic house. One year a young person slept on a fold-away-bed in our lounge, because his family had chucked him out. This dear young man could break things better than a compactor, but he was the most sweetly natured person. Eventually, after he left us, he matured, he married and now he is a plumber. Only heaven knows why his folks chucked him out – he was a great kid! Having him live with us was totally inconvenient, we lived in a tiny cottage, and we had to move his bed whenever we wanted to watch TV!  Plus at that time I was as sick as I could be. The immediate years post-liver transplant were not fun. But helping out people who were virtually homeless brightened up all our lives. Living an extra-ordinary life is challenging, but the rewards outweigh the negative bits. Especially retrospectively. 🤣

The thing we’ve noticed is that we can’t afford to let our own circumstances, govern our generosity. Back then, our lives were made so much richer by the people who came to live with us … even at the worst of physical and financial times – by God’s Grace we all managed. Father God is not trying to interrupt our carefully planned existence … He wants to enrich us. Other people and their unusual ways of thinking, being, and doing, will stretch us and bring us out into that bigger place mentioned in Isaiah 54:2.“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.”

We can pray that scripture for ourselves, and then wait for Him to do it for us until we are blue in the face, but the truth is, WE must learn to stretch our tents open and take risks… It is blatantly obvious that this kind of stuff is supernaturally natural, because Jesus Himself told us that when we do these things:“…for the least of these…”we are doing them for Him! Hands up anyone who wants to minister to the Lord? OK, you have your instructions. 

Just settle in your heart that it will be inconvenient, and put stuff away if you don’t want it broken! Actually, the surest way to discover the things that we are unreasonably attached to, is to have someone else break them! I learnt that the hard way!!  BUT … no matter what, we cannot lose, because of what we win… “Everything … everything … EVERYTHING … works together for our good, … for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.”

His purpose is to find willing vessels to fill with the Holy Spirit’s love and power! He doesn’t need experts — Jesus Himself chose ordinary  fishermen, a taxman, a former prostitute to be His followers  I mean, did you ever ask yourself Who taught Peter to speak like he did  in the book of Acts? The Holy Spirit did! The Lord is not looking for perfection – He doesn’t have to, He already is!

Like I said before, we will have to stretch ourselves to find His purpose for our lives. Remember, Jesus was homeless,  because there was no room at the inn. To me that means that you will never know who you could be taking in! Maybe a homeless angel, or a lost kid whose life was so painful he had to smoke his way through it. 

I think the poor are so poor, they have no time or energy for pretending, they are simply trying to survive. From a distance, it is easy to be put off by how they look … but God sees people clearly, He knows exactly who they are. We’ve found that poor people don’t need to be convicted of sin, when they are confronted with His Loving holiness, they know. The poor are easier to save than middle class people who think they are mostly pretty OK. 

Christianity is neither a hobby or a part-time job … it’s a life well lived. It’s a life lived the way Jesus would live it. I exhort you to begin to stretch your home and take in someone who might have Christmas dinner alone – or maybe even a bed for somebody who needs a safe place to sleep. That’s the way to get elastic houses. Bye. 👋 

P 2831 The place of satisfaction.

/ DVH

The Christmas season can bring family time sharply into focus, because Christmas itself came into being from what appears to be a perfect family unit. Let’s briefly look at Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Mary was pregnant-before-marriage, so she had to hide her pregnancy from her neighbours. Joseph, her soon-to-be husband was instantly installed as a step-parent to SomeOne else’s child – imagine how much Almighty God trusted that man! The tiny family were poverty-stricken, instantaneously homeless because of targeted persecution, and refugees to boot. God placed His precious Son into an ordinary family with its share of harsh difficulties.

My point is chasing perfection is a thankless task. Perfection does not exist outside of Christ Himself. Satisfaction comes from the Lord. However, as we are daily being perfected inwardly by what Christ did for us, I’ve noticed that everybody else changed along the way! Except they didn’t. Now I’ve woken up to the fact that my personal view of other people has changed, because I have started to see others through His eyes, and boy are His eyes kinder than mine!

The absence of loved ones in this season can make Christmas a very hard time. I have a grown daughter who lives 1800 kms away from me, and I don’t see her or her family, including my eldest grandchild at all. Hubby rarely sees his family either … we’ve chosen to live in another state! We try to make the effort to bridge the gap so we can see both sides of the family, but even when we do, there never seems to be enough time to catch up. Sometimes it seems like you’ve barely said “hello” and you have to say “goodbye” again.

This situation has given us an opportunity to be inventive about how hubby and I share His love and our love with our resident families. At the same time,  we are very acquainted with the kind of sadness that sits on you when you miss people who are so special to you. There is also the yearly fight about whose parents should we visit this year? Whose turn is it this year? Not to mention those people who will face Christmas alone. At the same time, a number of important people in our lives have died, and Christmas definitely seems to be the time of year when you think of them and miss them. One day God Himself will wipe away all our tears.

Here’s what I’ve managed to learn about this season as life has rolled along —“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep.”Psalm 127:1-2. Boy I wish I had taken those two verses to heart every Christmas for most of my adult life!! In my efforts to see everyone years ago, and do the right thing, I just did whatever my hand found to do, but I didn’t ask the Lord what He thought about my ideas! Dumb.

Inverted logic is a really stupid way to live one’s life. By that I mean thinking … “Well, I can’t see any harm in me working hard to make sure everyone’s Christmas is great. Other people are going to be blessed, so this can’t be a bad idea, God will like it.” Like I said – it’s dumb! It can quickly lead to exhaustion! Today, more than ever before, we need to be doing whatever we see Him doing. So my advice to others is this: skip that turkey, ham, Christmas pudding and cranberry sauce if cooking them means your Christmas is frustrating. Before you jump down the very deep, labour intense hole of making everyone’s idea of Christmas appear – ask Him what He thinks instead!! Otherwise you will end up exhausted and in no shape to share your faith, hope and love with the people you love dearly.

So today, here’s my testimony about how I’ve learnt not to do Christmas. For us now all that fancy specialised food is no longer important. We are just grateful for the opportunity to see the people we love and take the time to bless them. I’ve learnt if you are going to labour then make sure you labour over something God Himself is building, not just something that upholds the kind of stuff that doesn’t last. In years gone by, I know I tried desperately to bring a child’s idea of a fairy-tale dream about a perfect family to life. Like that worked!! I alternatively tried harder, year after year, and so I constantly had a lousy Christmas! At the same time, I got annoyed at the people who didn’t help me.

Christmas is a celebration – it needs to be shared by all, from the youngest to the oldest, otherwise we are over- stressing some people and exhausting them, as well as perpetuating problems that are not necessary. If you had asked me all those years ago I probably would have said: ‘I like doing all this work, I love blessing people’  More fool me — because, to be truthful, I actually didn’t. Other people’s thank-yous never seemed to scratch the itch of my enormous need for appreciation. I worked so hard, yet I couldn’t wait for it to be over!

Instead I badly wanted to be sitting with everyone else chatting like they were, while they were waiting for me to get all that food ready. The lies we sometimes tell ourselves!  You know, some pain is unconsciously self-inflicted, and it can lead us into anger toward the very people we are meant to be serving. And, at the same time, that pain will steal away our PEACE! Take the time to ask the Lord what He wants you to do this Christmas. To be brutally honest, I’ve learnt that I need to stop being so proud that I can’t ask for help.

I loved my kids so much, I wanted them to have a happier life than the one I had. It took me years to see that even that statement was judgmental toward the people who had cared for me and raised me. If we want to bring about real change in our lives we will need to target the root of the tree of dissatisfaction, not just the leaves. The leaves on that tree can easily be the inconsiderate, sometimes selfish and self-centred sinful people around us. 

Most people cannot love us the way we want to be loved. They are busy trying to manage their own lives – so catering to our needs  will not register on their richter scale. Without Christ and His Way of living, this world is doomed to continue to seek out something that is not real. This life is depicted over and over again by the media as an over- idealised, irrational dream. Perfect love simply does not exist outside of what Christ did for us. We must start with Him, not our feelings or needs, and throw away the pretty fairy-tale dream of what family is supposed to look like.

Family are the people who voluntarily stay when the world falls on you, whether they are relatives or not! Christmas can be a time of pain, unless we are prepared to throw away our own unrealistic plans and take the time to discover His. The Holy Spirit will carry us through every single bit of the loss, suffering and disappointment we face, into a brand new place, the place where whatever He wants — we want. That’s the place of satisfaction. Bye 🌲.

P 2585 Things to think on.

/ DVH

We are in the middle of preparing to go away into outback NSW next week with boxes and boxes of New Testaments etc. everywhere. And the huge pile of blankets for the homeless looks like the great wall of China. It is not exactly tidy here. I love-hate this waiting and prep time – for me waiting to go on the road seems to take forever. 

We will have to put racks on the roof of the car to accommodate all the blankets, not to mention somehow fit in the toiletries, canned food etc. we are taking with us. We pray a lot when we are loading the car!! Right now there are so many people homeless, or in dire straits in the bush. When hubby rang the local help-for-the-homeless line, in three NSW country towns, all of them had a huge response. The ladies on the other end of the phone almost came through it, they were so excited about the very little we can bring them. Perhaps they just like to know that other people care.

The government in our country allocates monies to help the poor, but those funds do not even begin to cover their everyday needs – so every single day is a struggle. However if the government forms one more committee to investigate the stuff that is staring us right in the face, I will scream!! We need to remember that these people are not worrying about what kind of TV they will buy next – instead, they often don’t know where their next meal is coming from!

Monies for governmental aid are distributed according to numbers, and there are far more homeless people, number wise, in our cities… so that means the cities are delegated the larger portion, and the little country towns struggle. Aid-workers in these agencies have so little help to give to those who come in day after day in desperate need.“But God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish.”Psalm 9:18

Sadly, there are also more and more abused wives and children who have to leave their homes to escape abusive spouses, and they have only what they can carry. These people have literally had to run for their lives.  Because of this hubby and I have become secret agents – which could be fun, if it wasn’t so sad! Over the phone we are given the time and place to meet someone, far, far away from where these poor terrified souls are actually hiding. Of course we pray for the carers and the little families that have been abused, as well as the abusers. Feel free to join us.

Poverty can happen to anyone. But out in the bush, we’ve seen first hand our society’s complete disregard for our farmers. The people who provide our daily bread etc. Instead it seems that greedy corporate companies regard profit over people, and they are prevailing. At the same time investors are demanding more and more return for their money, because they are not satisfied to simply make a profit, instead they want to keep increasing their profit margins in an outrageously excessive fashion. Have we all forgotten that the bible says: “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus Himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”Acts 20:35.

You don’t have to tell us that Australia truly needs revival. Hubby and I can see the results of the haves and the have nots every day we are out on the road. However, I do wish sometimes, that city folk would limit themselves to one car, instead of one car for each member of the family! By overplaying our needs we have created a false living standard and made the gap between the poor and the rich wider.

I believe our society’s ever present need for more is also contributing to the divide between the city and the country. Today, in all of our cities, we have upgraded normaI to mean that everyone has their own phone, plus 4 or 5 TV sets,  a couple of gaming consoles, a boat, and a 240 square metre house with a pool in the back yard. And everything inside that house must be brand new! 

Yeah I know, everyone works very hard to make a living — but while we keep insisting that things like our daily bread – or milk! – should be cheap cheap cheaper, our farmers will continue to go bankrupt. The ever-present corporate machinery has no conscience so it refuses to take a loss – instead, the farmers will. It is incredibly dumb to bite the hand that feeds you! We cannot expect to get more for less and not have somebody else suffer.

Hubby and I asked the Lord to be in charge of our money years ago. He is a fantastic money manager … However, doing that was hard. It is hard to go against the pressure that exists in our society. Money can make us feel safe, but we have forgotten what is given can be taken away in a heartbeat. God has given us such a passion to share, instead of hoard and acquire. Aussies can be great givers if there is a proven cause, but we also seem to thoroughly enjoy the idea of having more than enough. I know these things will not be popular thoughts, but they are worth sharing anyway. Bye.