Human desires

P 3428 A soldier does what he is trained to do.

/ DVH

“Since Christ, though innocent, suffered in His flesh for you, now you also must be a prepared soldier, having the same mind-set, for whoever has died in his body is done with sin. So live the rest of your earthly life no longer concerned with human desires but consumed with what brings pleasure to God.” 1 Peter 4:1-2 TPT. These kinds of choices are part of our suffering for His sake. We deliberately choose to give up what we want to do, and we yield to what He sent us here to do. It’s a total change of focus. But we can’t live like this by ourselves – we are wrestling against principalities and powers, we need our Commander-in-chief leading us, giving us His Grace every step of the way.

This verse is a magnificent thought, but a terrifying one as well. It is like a spotlight showing up the places where what we think – is different from what we do. In other words, it is easy to say we do this stuff, but can we actually live it? My only answer is “yes” we can — simply because Jesus did it first … but … we cannot do it alone! We’ve been empowered, by Christ’s death into living this life a new way. After the Lord Jesus died, even the disciples wrangled with their feelings of loss, and yet they went back to what they knew … fishing! Human beings without the influence and leading of the Holy Spirit can be loveable, but dumb as a rock when it comes to spiritual things. Those things won’t fall on us, we must go after them. His grace will help us. 

When I was a young Christian, I noticed that there was a level of commitment in a few people that I didn’t seem to have. It was as if there were some sort of line in my mind that I would walk up to, then I’d look over into the other side of it and it all looked too hard for me. So then, I’d walk back to where I came from. That line was called — a total commitment to Christ. I wanted His life in me, but I wanted my own ideas for my life too. I wanted to  ‘make my own choices’ – to be a Christian when it suited me, and walk away when it didn’t. My perception of His benefits  was all about me, instead of Him. Maybe that’s why Psalm 103:2 tells us not to forget His benefits!

I had plenty of friends, rabbits and relations who were quite happy to explain to me that my ideas about Christianity were nice .. but surely I didn’t have to take the whole thing quite so seriously!  And that was the beginning of an odd period in my life where I did the hokey pokey. I put one foot over the line, then took it back, then the other foot  … if you have ever done the hokey pokey … you get it. In the end I became double-minded. I got to the stage where I finally agreed with others. that I should coast along, do nice things when I felt like it – yet I could still be angry with the people who were mean to me, because I couldn’t help it. After all they’d been truly awful and they should know better! I succumbed to ‘poor little old me!’ Self-pity will wreck our faith in a heart beat.

At the same time I was told I had a “virus,” year after year and a lot of people prayed for it to be healed. But it wasn’t healed … because it wasn’t actually a virus! It turned out I needed a liver transplant. Meanwhile, I was in every healing line I could get into, and yet I still got sicker. Then something else unthinkable happened, I was divorced. I knew what the bible said, and I knew what Jesus said … and yet it happened anyway. The ambition to die for Jesus’ sake, fell in the dirt, I couldn’t do it. If I stayed inside that marriage, I would die.

I totally knew I had broken ‘the rules.’ I loved Jesus, but trying harder became impossible, I was too ill. I knew nothing about walking by faith, not by sight. Even though I had carefully memorised the verse! I didn’t actually understand what the New Covenant meant, except in vague terms that definitely didn’t apply to me anymore – because now I thought I was doomed to hell. Folks, religion kills. It murders your faith and it will take your life. Put it down. I exhort everyone reading this to ask the Lord to teach you to walk by faith, otherwise our common enemy will use your circumstances against you.

Even after the transplant, they couldn’t tell me why my liver was so damaged. It just was! Eventually I learnt that a simple very common blood test would have diagnosed what was wrong with me. I didn’t drink alcohol etc. so the medical profession didn’t think to give me the blood test. However, God in His great mercy, didn’t let go of me, just because I let go of Him. He’s like that! This advice in 1 Peter 4 is so incredibly important. Living our lives for Jesus is not an alternate way … it is the only way. God has given us a totally new way to live, step by step, little by little … He calls us to fall in love with His goodness and follow Him. He paid dearly to give us His grace to do it.

I think sometimes, we’ve had our eyes fixed on the wrong application of His principles. In the following verse from Hebrews the Lord is telling us about HIMSELF – not how to get what we want from Him!  “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” (11:6) We’ve used our faith for years hoping to make our lives more comfortable, telling ourselves God wants us to be healthy and happy. But it actually says … He rewards those who chase after Him and the result is … WE WILL PLEASE HIM … He doesn’t have to please us … He’s GOD!

Take my advice and decide to live your life as good soldier of Christ – don’t wander in and out like I did. Leave behind the ‘stuff’ you’ve picked up along the way. Make that choice. Bitterness, anxiety, and disappointment doesn’t belong in our brand new heart. Neither does lying, hating others, abusing or hurting people. Whatever your excuse is for staying the same – it’s a lie.

A good soldier does exactly what he is told to do, no more, no less. We have been given a wonderful Companion in our daily journeys, He knows how to strategically get us through our battles – don’t leave home without Him.  We need the Word of God, plus GRACE. Bye. 👋

P 3282 Live dead!

/ DVH

“Since Christ, though innocent, suffered in His flesh for you, now you also must be a prepared soldier, having the same mind-set, for whoever has died in his body is done with sin. So live the rest of your earthly life no longer concerned with human desires but consumed with what brings pleasure to God.” 1 Peter 4:1-2.

It is good to ask ourselves questions about our own reactions. The thing I have learnt is that you can think you have utterly surrendered to the Lord, and you only want to live for His will — then suddenly something unexpected happens and things that you didn’t know were inside, pop up like daisies! My advice is this, don’t excuse your behaviour, pay prayerful attention to it. Making excuses gives us a back door out of personal growth. It stops us discovering the real issues. These issues are far more likely to be about us, than others. We can make other people’s lives a living hell by refusing to confront our own inner attitudes.

When life stays on a pretty even keel, we begin to understand the normal day by day pressures, and we learn to manage them, by yielding to the Lord, and watching Him do the miraculous on our behalf. But it becomes easy to dismiss some not-so-great attitudes we have as …”that’s just who I am. It’s normal for me.” Ignoring the fact that we have a new normal now, and it isn’t based on our individuality, it is whether we look like Jesus, inside and out.

What comes out under pressure? Love, or temper, and impatience, or a distinct lack of mercy etc. What happens if it is your kid suddenly being bullied at school? satan knows that we will lean on the Holy Spirit to manage stuff coming at us, but what if trouble hits your kids, or your parents, or your friends? Maybe your spouse has to take a pay-cut, or even lose their job. Who are we then? I learnt many years ago, the yardstick we use to measure things must be based on the Word, not on our feelings, or our personal coping skills. The place of equality for all is in Christ Jesus, it is not in our ability to make nice noises under pressure.

For a number of years, Christians clung to what we believed about a group of wonderful verses that tickled our ears and made us feel good about ourselves. Sadly, I believe that has led to a distinct lack of adulthood in the Body of Christ. Pastors are often so busy trying to wipe adult noses, and soothe adult bumps and scrapes, plus sort out their life issues, that they have very little time to do what the Lord wants them to do! The way to maturity is through selflessness.

Years ago, I was a latch-key kid I got into all kinds of mischief because there was no parental eye on me. I was reduced to what I could get away with, rather than what was required of me. Not a good place to be. I realised I could out-think the person in charge and go around the rules! That is not obedience, it is evasion, half-truths and deception. Who are we when nobody is looking over our shoulder? 

Our new life is a new way to live not just a theme. The other day I spoke a little bit about money. I think most people don’t like it very much when money comes into the picture — however, the truth is dead people don’t own their money anymore. When we give everything we have to the Lord, He takes it and that includes the things WE think WE own.

Let’s be clear. This life we are living flows directly against our old one. And we are more familiar with the old way of thinking than the new. Some dear people don’t last, because they give up too soon. The cares, worries and struggles of this world overtake them.The best news ever is that we are NEVER alone! The Holy Spirit is a brilliant strategist and leader, we simply follow His Ways by reading the bible and applying what we’ve read, with His help, into our own lives. Plus we obey His inward checks and prompts. 

Initially that can be scary. But this also is how we find out, for ourselves, that we don’t like apologising, or looking like a daft goose. Human beings don’t like making mistakes or even having them pointed out – the old life rises up within us. We are always going need the Holy Spirit’s help – we can’t do this alone. But He’s not a tap we can turn off or on. He’s a Person! Let’s learn to live in such a way, that we are not distancing ourselves from Him. 

As we let go of the reins and allow Him to guide us through the potholes and bumps, He becomes the driver in my life, and I get to sit in the car as a passenger. But some days I really do think I belong in the boot! Soldiers are trained to obey orders, and as we learn to be obedient and cherish the Lord’s will, we are dethroning the whole me, mine, myself and I, mindset. Most people don’t drift away from faith because they hate the Lord — instead they drift away on a sea of careless indifference, aimlessly floating along unaware they are being  influenced by the changing tides of this world around us.  

Living dead’ means we have chosen to exchange our old way of life for His Ways instead, our faith is in Jesus and it is progressive,  Bye. 👋

P 2681 Absolute Surrender

/ DVH

“Since Christ, though innocent, suffered in His flesh for you, now you also must be a prepared soldier, having the same mind-set, for whoever has died in his body is done with sin. So live the rest of your earthly life no longer concerned with human desires but consumed with what brings pleasure to God.”1 Peter 4:1-2 TPT. 

And there you go, a fantastic standard that is impossible to reach outside of the governance of the Holy Spirit! This life is always about choices. Unfortunately, the church today is in a bit of a hole, because we have figured out ways to make that choice sound user-friendly, or – we’ve hidden the choices away somewhere in the fine print. The thing is, we cannot legislate, or even subtly obfuscate reality. Doing that will eventually turn around and bite everyone of us on the backside. It’s His truth that sets us free.

I think that the men and women of God in the New Testament learnt this kind of stuff as they went along. The whole idea that everyone was suddenly rendered instantly whole, spiritually sound, as well as personally fabulous, is error. They had a Saviour just like we do – they had to learn stuff just like we do. If you read the New Testament carefully, you will see that there were troubles, strife and skirmishes even as the church was developing and growing.

People still did the dumbest things, even though they had given their lives to Christ and wanted to live their lives for Him. However, back then they knew they had the Holy Spirit,He taught those people personally, He will do that for us too!We need to learn to value and appreciate His Presence more than life itself. The Holy Spirit is not just about speaking in tongues – HE is our Helper, our Counsellor, our comforter, our personal teacher. Cherish Him.

Meanwhile, the Christian life isn’t just about what we don’t do. It’s about what we must do – ON PURPOSE.  We’ve lived for years with rules that are almost impossible to keep, and at the same time we invited other people to join us. Then we got disappointed when they didn’t want participate. “Come to our church and we will actively teach you to obey a whole lot of rules that we can’t obey either!” 😳

The same method that saved us, CHANGES us. It’s called absolute surrender. We do it in faith and we live it out daily. The problems come because we pretend to be something we are not. We will have to die to be these people, His new creation, and that ain’t pretty. Sadly, we’ve subtly altered His life-giving invitation to live a new life IN Him – because: “come to our church and we’ll teach you how to get dead to yourself” doesn’t’ look good on a billboard! 

Today, many people in the West are living in a secular nanny-state that insists we must be politicly correct. I personally believe that particular premise invites deception. I’ve had a number of conversations with people who are working and living out in this world and they cheerfully parrot off: “Oh, you can’t say that now!” or “That’s inappropriate!”  Human beings are never going to be legislated into being changed  – we are way too inherently disobedient! I truly love putting Jesus in charge of me – mainly because my memory ain’t what it used to be, and if you hand me societal rules I will have forgotten them before I’ve even put them in my bag. 

I actually think this PC stuff is all nonsense. We need GOD Himself, active on our behalf, not lists of rules for things we can say – and things we can’t. You cannot legislate caring, unselfishness, and inclusiveness, because there is no underlying core in normal human beings that can support it. Human beings without God are awful. We killed the Lord of all glory and we had lots of words and theories to prove that was the right thing to do. Think about it – God Himself came here and we killed Him. Praise the Lord Jesus – He did not stay dead! Our hope is in the Saviour Who rose from the grave, not rules. The same Holy Spirit Who raised Him up will change us.

The Holy Spirit has incredible, selfless qualities in super, unmeasurable, abundance. All that plus WISDOM! But human beings don’t. Watch little kids in the playground. They will haul off and clock each other. They will snatch things – and they won’t care two hoots about the other child crying. Adults buy guns and knives because they don’t feel safe. They don’t feel safe because this world is not safe … selfishness and sin were born into all our hearts! What we want in and for ourselves is to be indulged, and proved right. However, the assumption that I know what is best for me is, at best, twaddle! The best way for humanity to be changed and transformed is to submit to Christ’s leadership. 

Absolute surrender is the only way to go. Otherwise we will begin to reject any rules, and grow resentment, and that stuff leaks out in particularly vicious ways when nobody expects it. It’s called anarchy. Soldiers do not enlist to have a desk job, they enlist to fight. And if need be – they will die for what they believe. We too, were born again to fight … but not each other. We are to daily fight the selfishness that surrounds us – releasing His love everywhere we go, and if need be, we will die for the people who hate us. At the same time we must stop fighting the Holy Spirit for the right to run our lives the way we want them to be, and simply SURRENDER to His Ways. That’s the way forward, totally surrendered and absolutely sold out for Jesus. 👋