hUman hearts

P 3258 Unless the Lord …?

/ DVH

Here is a quick quiz to help you to identify the gifts the Lord has given YOU. Ask yourself, how do I? “… show that… (I am)… … a letter from Christ, … … written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”  2 Corinthians 3:3. 

Part 1: What stirs your heart and sets it on fire? Is it, talking about Jesus to others, or helping them spiritually by praying for them, or do you like to do practical things? Do you find yourself secretly praying for strangers? Is it really important to you that people understand the bible, as well as read it?  Do you look at others and suddenly understand what is holding them back? Are you in love with Godly wisdom? Ready? … Here’s more!

When something bad happens does your faith rise up and say – “God can fix that!”  Are you the kind of person who looks at difficulty and you can see a way through? Do you love to help others to regain their hope in Him? Do you love to write music, or sing along praising God for no other reason than He is worthy — whether anybody else is there or not? Do you suddenly find creative answers to sticky problems? Does purity mean everything to you? Do you like to help others grow?  Here’s some more…

Can you stick with difficult situations and remain determined to see God at work? Have you got a deep unfathomable, reverential respect for the Lord and His ways? Do you see gifts in other people’s lives and they don’t know about them? Have you got a burning desire to raise up many churches for God’s glory? Do you see and want to help sick or broken people, and no matter where you are, you want to pray for them? Does the devil and his rubbish make you mad and you want to go after him because you know Jesus died to see people set free? Can you see through satan’s lies,to the truth? Nearly there…

Have you found that extraordinary things happen all around you? Do you speak out words you don’t understand, but somehow the Holy Spirit helps you to understand them? Here are some scriptures that are worthy of your prayerful attention.1 Corinthians 12; Romans12; Ephesians 4. This little quiz was FYI. If you look at your answers they may help you find a gift in these scriptures. Personally I’m not fussed about labels, because I think they can limit what we think God can do.The Holy Spirit has very kindly given us His three expositions about gifts, and they are worthy of our attention.

A spiritual gift is God’s power at work through us to build up, change, transform, and help others. It may be one person or it could be ten thousand. These gifts are given to use for other people, they are not of this world! We don’t earn these things, nor do we deserve them—they have been chosen for us by the Holy Spirit specifically. He gives His gifts to as He wants, to use in situations of His choosing.

Part 2, How to know what gift you don’t have! Years ago, there were all kinds of meetings we needed to attend at our church. You were supposed to bring food, often delegated by someone else. I can bake a cake … any idiot can! I used to make all sorts of cakes for my kid’s lunches etc. But as soon as someone asked me to bring a cake to a meeting, it would collapse, burn, or get stuck in the pan.

When I made it at home for us, it was fine. But when I made it for a meeting … it transformed into an ugly mess the minute I walked through the church door. So they asked me to make sandwiches instead. That was worse! You know those little pointy bits are meant to stand up like soldiers in a neat row? Mine instantly fell apart – and turned into two soggy separate bits that laid flat and looked appalling. The thing was, nobody ate them, they’d always end up in the bin. 

Over the years, I became aware that I definitely do not have the gift of hospitality – it is torture for me to have to entertain! However, I know people who have this gift and they are delighted to have strangers turn up at their door so they can pull together a meal for them … out of two bits of old bread and some stale sausage!!Everybody has a fabulous time, including the hosts. When guests leave our house, I need a cuppa tea, an aspirin and a good lie down – my fear of doing it wrong exhausts me!  

I’m also not good at arranging flowers. I just shove ‘em into a vase and hope for the best! Yet the church I went to years ago, kept putting me on the flower roster. In the end I plucked up the courage to tell them they didn’t deserve what I would come up with!! Another time we had a fete. My job was to put fringes on these fabulous shawls the minister’s wife made. I cut the first piece and then I used the first piece to cut the second and so on, all around the shawl. The fringe kind of looked like it was swimming up hill, getting smaller as it went. His wife looked at me, shook her head — then she went and did it herself. Hers was perfect. Of course!

My last point is this – don’t be pushed into doing something that isn’t on the Holy Spirit’s agenda for you. This is why we need to know Him and His ways! Otherwise you will waste your time, energy and probably stretch relationships – all at the same time. But whatever the Lord asks you to do, you can do it, even if you do feel scared.“Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. ” Psalm 127:1. PS: I’m a lousy bricklayer too! Bye. 👋

P 2851 Fruitless, but they didn’t know it.

/ DVH

Mark 11:11-17: “Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then He said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And His disciples heard Him say it.

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as He taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The Lord once had a problem with a fruitless fig tree when he was hungry – He cursed its fruitlessness and moved on. And He and the disciples walked into the temple, where He became angry with the money changers etc. who were working in the temple courts. Those buyers and sellers were there out of necessity, to facilitate people’s sacrificial offerings  … but sadly they were doing what they did, purely to make a profit, not as an act of service to the community around them. Our perception of why we are here matters. Let’s always remember, we carry Love Himself with us everywhere we go. 

Today it struck me that the fig tree in this scripture is a spiritual example of the state of that temple back there in Jerusalem. Just like the empty fig tree, the temple itself was not bearing any fruit suitable for the place that was operating as God’s house. The temple was designed to be a place of prayer and worship not a market. Those money changers, animal and bird sellers etc. were supposed to be there to facilitate other people’s repentance and reconciliation before God – not to make a profit. 

The temple was established to be God’s house filled with the prayers of His people. And those now running it had made it all about gain. This clearly shows us that the intention of our hearts matters. The fruit of this activity did nothing but line pockets, and it cheated people who simply wanted to worship God. Just like the fig tree those merchants were producing nothing that people could spiritually eat. Or, even worse, they were taking advantage of the sincere participants. What they were doing appeared good, but just like that fig tree with lots of leaves – there was no fruit.

The buyers and sellers made it a costly hardship for ordinary people to get to God’s Grace. Well, there’s a huge warning right there! It seems to me that what enraged the Lord Jesus when He went inside was that people were making money off other people’s spiritual needs. Yet God had provided that temple for anyone and everyone. Even the desperate sinners and poor need a safe place to repent and worship! So that haggling had to go!

When the disciples saw the dead fig tree the next day they were astonished. Incredibly, Jesus turned that whole incident into a lesson about faith and how it works. Faith is meant to be productive – and bring us closer to God. It feeds our spiritual man. What the Lord taught constantly showed us was how to live by faith – what that looks like. He consistently used ordinary everyday illustrations to show us faith as a part of our everyday lives.  And on that particular day He was enraged about people taking advantage of others and their very real spiritual needs. 

God’s house is no longer a building, His home is now human hearts — Jesus Himself died to complete that transaction for us. The only things that can get in the way of our faith and spiritual development are our choices. We must choose to believe what Christ told us, and go on to live this life relying upon Him, every single day. We are not simply servants of the Lord. Now, today, at this very moment, we carry our King wherever we go. That ought to make us stop and think about where we are going, what we are doing and why! It would be tragic if, like the money lenders etc. we miss the point of what we are here to do.

There are times when we can easily end up running about raising money for this and that to improve the look of the building we use Sunday by Sunday. But sadly, the people who worship in that building sometimes remain vastly unchanged, simply because we are prioritising material things. The state of each of our hearts matters. His people can worship Him in a swamp or a wilderness, because we are now His temple as we gather together. Our aim is to be fruitful and feed people – unlike that fig tree!

It seems to me that sometimes we still regard a building as God’s house! Instead we need to pay attention to the needs of the people inside the building who are in reality, His house now. We glibly say: “My heart – His home,” and yet we act like God’s requirements are met within bricks and mortar. My final thought is this, nobody wants to be found fruitless when Jesus comes to do His fruit inspection! “… However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [this kind of persistent] faith on the earth?” Luke 18:8b. Let us never settle for tasks, let’s press on for a faith-filled fruitful life. Bye. 👋

P 2812 Contentment has great value.

/ DVH

Here’s a great source of contentment for us from the Bible: “His love endures forever” — that’s in Psalm 136, it is repeated 26 times. Now there’s something we can attach our contentment to! In this mixed up world we need firm anchors for our faith, and the fact that God’s love is never-ending is a great anchor! Jesus freely gave us His access to contentment.

Let’s look at one of the Lord’s servants and see how this grace worked out for Him. Paul teaches us that we can learn to be content In any circumstance. In the book of Philippians, he clearly tells us he lived that way himself. Yet this saint’s life was full of more ups and downs than a giant roller-coaster on steroids – with a death wish! I have always thought that any guy with a theory is completely disadvantaged by the man who has experience, and Paul had heaps of experience.

We will begin by reading Philippians 4:9-13 “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you. I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through Him who gives me strength.”

You know I am constantly learning, often the hard way –  that when I am not content with what I have, and worse stuff happens, life quite quickly seems like the sky is falling. Ya might want to think on that one. We are now look at the Apostle Paul’s life very briefly — he was beaten three times with rods. Stoned once. Thrown in jail, and wait for it – shipwrecked three times! I mean can you imagine that? He tells us he was hungry, thirsty, cold and not clothed, dragged in front of governors etc. to ‘please explain!’ Plus he was once bitten by a poisonous snake! Meanwhile, in his spare time, he only wrote 23% of the entire Epistles!! That’d be funny if it was not so weird!

It can be easy to think that this was Paul, and he was specially gifted. But if we look at his life carefully we can see that he learnt to be content through … or even because of, his circumstances and suffering. You know, I’ve tried the popular system that says we are meant to claim this and speak out that – and I found that I was just going round and round, spiritually speaking. I didn’t actually grow! Instead, I kept fighting the same battles over and over again. The only sign of growth I had was grow in the wrong direction! I grew impatient with the Lord for not recognising all my efforts to follow Him! Boy, that’s not a good place to land! Self-effort promotes self … and …discontentment, and discontented people make allowances for repeated dumb responses!

Real growth started to happened when I chose to learn to be content no matter what was going on. Now let’s be clear, I would hate to think that you think, that I am saying: “Look at what I did all by myself.”  Hah! The thing that utterly changed my whole walk with Jesus was when I learnt to be obedient to His word, His way and started to rely upon Him to help me do it.  I stopped making excuses for myself because “my life is hard, blah blah blah, boring boring boring,’ and I chose to forgive others, put bad stuff behind me, I believed He could save me from all of it.

Father God grabbed me in my heart one day when I was merrily rehashing someone else’s faults and He asked me this question. “How do you think that they can make up for all they have done to you?”  I was stumped. None of us can redo yesterday! It’s gone. Plus these people had no clue about what they had done over long periods of time. But that was the very thing that had skewed off my thinking into ‘poor me.’ Actually the people thought they had done well and I was the difficult one. 

I learnt a couple of useful things that day – only God knows human hearts, plus He’s the only One Who can change them. To do that He needs co-operation, and that can’t happen when the person doesn’t think they are wrong in the first place! I am still regularly tested about forgiveness, but something amazing has happened that is worth noting. I have become far more generous toward others when they annoy me, as I continue to acknowledge my own humanity. Given their circumstances, I could easily have taken some of the same roads they did…if it weren’t for God’s enduring love and what Jesus did for me.  

Here’s a piece of trivia that may change the colour of your day – the word “let” is used in the bible 1,511 times. In order for change to come we must let/allow God to change our perspective. The Lord has never said what happened to me in my life so far was OK with Him – instead He reminded me that sin is common to man. So instead of exacting verbal, emotional, physical, and mental retribution from someone, I have learnt to pray over it and let things go. 

The secret of contentment is to remember God always loves us and His love is enduring, steadfast and eternal. I urge you to focus on that – not on someone else’s sins, deliberate or not. Their sins against you and I are as forgiven – just like ours are. But when I focus on what someone else did to me, my ability to remain content disappears. That’s how I discovered that contentment is a thing of great value.  Bye 👋