Human

P 3088 On being human.

/ DVH

Never forget you are a human being – Almighty God doesn’t!! “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in Your unfailing love;  my heart rejoices in Your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been good to me.” Psalm 13.

We can all have days, or weeks, or sometimes even months like these! Times when it seems like we are all alone, and we appear to have been forgotten by God. Faith is our in-built God-detector. As we use that faith despite the mess we are in, we will begin to see signs of His loving kindness all over our lives. It wouldn’t be called FAITH if we could be certain about it all the time. There are times when even though we know He is not absent, our feelings become bigger than what we know to be true.

I know what it is like to wrestle with my thoughts and struggle to break through to a more peaceful, victorious place. When we feel like God has deserted us, it is way too easy to turn our focus back onto whatever is going on inside us. Sadly, that way we can eventually sink into despair. You can hear those thoughts from Asaph in the above Psalm. This life can be hard and cruel, many things happen to us that are outside our control. 

Even though our primary desire is to be a joyful, song singing, obedient and prayerful, worshipping person of God, we will always need to learn more about how to use our faith to get through stuff. Those times can be both enriching and hard – all at once. They seem to pull us toward despair, especially if we think that we are supposed   to have everything together, and remain cheerful all the time! That’s a lie that will lead you and I into striving, because we can never reach that goal without Him. No matter how we feel, our God will never desert us.

Day after day when I read what these men wrote, I am greatly comforted by the truth that is exposed by what is in the Psalms. They took the time to write down their blessed happy feelings – as well as their  “I’m not coping, let’s brain the bad guys” ones. There are times when my own thoughts betray me, and I can’t figure out why! Let’s not to mention other people, whose feelings, and interpretation of what is going on in life often leave me spinning. The blessing in reading the Psalms is that I will come away from them feeling more normal, if not a bit reassured that my humanity has value to God Himself! He left this stuff in His book!

How can I ever manage to learn anything, almost in spite of myself? Glad you asked that. The Holy Spirit, the-greatest-of-all-time-Leader and Editor, left these grumpy, sad Psalms IN. That whole vibe of – “couldn’t we just kill those people and tell God they died?” – is not what you expect from the bible! It’s astonishing. Many other books in the Word are about mankind’s interactions with God. But here is a whole collection about the human heart, and feelings – warts and all! When the Holy Spirit did that, He left room for us to be real and learn.

At the same time, we can all be kept so busy with this life, that we forget our sin is paid for, so we don’t have to let it master us any more. The problem is that we have well-established old pathways, and they fool us into thinking they still have power over us. However there is no greater force in this world than love: “it hopes all things, believes all things, bears all things.”And our God loves us LIKE THAT. Meanwhile, we don’t only need help, although we do! … We need personal SUPERVISION. And the Holy Spirit is brilliant at it,  His vigilance is without peer, His promptings gentle but firm.

Human beings can become insecure, especially if our proposed ways of thinking and being are unrealistic to the very real level of our faith. Some stuff we want to walk in may be currently a great theory, but we can’t quite put it into practice — especially if we don’t get answers immediately! BTW, don’t take your faith back, hang on to Him and don’t let go  Our help is in the Name of the Lord – God will sort stuff for you. Father God allows us to be stretched to help us grow and rely more completely upon Him. God Himself is our safe place.

Our part is to daily absorb His Ways, and, with the Holy Spirit’s help, then we consistently apply the things He shows us. In the end we need to remember, we are day by day, rewiring our brains! “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12. This is no small task, thank God the Word of God is powerful!  

It is important to know the path to take in times of ease, or when difficulties arise, and the Psalms show us other people struggled too. God’s path means that over time, we will learn to use our faith as a full time way to live – because it is not just meant to be emergency relief in times of strife. Feeling helpless in the face of trouble and difficulties happens to all of us. These Psalmists help us remember that it is not a sin to be human. Our God is always with us no matter how much we’ve wandered off!  Bless you 👋

P 2932 The 3 W’s.

/ DVH

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” Matthew 11:28.MSG

The secret to living like this is in the ‘walking’ and ‘working’ … and …’watching’ thing. Praise God we don’t have to do any of those things by ourselves — we are learning to do it all, every single bit of it, WITH THE REAL VICTOR right there with us! Seriously, we will struggle to win this war if we don’t know how to give into God, and lean on Him. This is where we learn to fight (walk), endure (work) and overcome (watch) – by simply surrendering. And yes, I agree, it sounds nuts. 

But yielding to His wisdom and Grace is leaning on Him so … give up! Tell Him you can’t do whatever it is you feel you should do and then keep on forgiving, if that is necessary. Remember to take your errant angry, or disappointed thoughts captive. If you start thinking about bashing someone up, repent, forgive them again. Go back to the Lord – He understands your disappointment etc. with yourself and others. Ask for His help to practice love in the face of hate. Kindness in the face of cruelty, patience in the face of interminable suffering.

We simply must stop pretending to be what we are not, and … let Him make the difference. Lemme ask this question: do you once see Jesus struggling to be what God sent Him to be? The only struggle the Lord had was with facing the crucifixion and even then He yielded! Even reading about that is a blessing to us. When we struggle with our lives, with really hard things, we are not faithless – we are human. Jesus understands our struggles. 

God does not do things the way we do them. We can’t overcome by gritting our teeth and telling everyone we are ‘fine.’  We do it by acknowledging our weaknesses, because that’s when His strength can be made perfect in us. If someone asks you in the middle of a struggle if you are OK, instead of pasting on a smile and lying, say something like this:‘I’m not OK. But I’m learning to trust that Jesus can do a miracle and make it OK.’ 

Christianity is an upside-down world. We receive by giving. We lose our rights voluntarily. We win by giving in to Him. We rejoice in the face of loss. We forgive by choice, not by our feelings. We learn to give people to God for Him to deal with them. He’s good at it. Read the book! God plays a long game! In today’s sue-them-or-punish-them world all that sounds completely NUTS. But eventually, losing means we win! 

That verse above is a wonderful recipe for walking with Jesus. When everything inside us is shouting:“There is no point in praying. This is the end. You can’t come back from here …things can only get worse!…”  We run like bunny rabbits straight to Jesus and say: “Lord please hide me.” And that’s when the Holy Spirit comes into His own. He’s so-oo good at fixing stuff. And every time you say no to what you want to do… you are growing the fruit of the Spirit in so many ways you won’t be able to count them. It’s HIS fruit, we can’t grow it! His fruit needs to be grown His way.

That person you wish you could avoid, or maybe you actually successfully avoid them, probably IS as difficult as you think they are. You are not lying to yourself. Why would anyone need Grace if someone else is already a nice Godly person? We need His Grace for the people whose aim in this life seems to be about making our life miserable. We must stop using avoidance to bring about an uneasy peace, and start walking with Him, working with Him, and watching how He does it. Most human beings are not nice enough on the inside to maintain a pleasant facade when they are under great pressure. 

Here’s a big thought … and … believe it or not I got it from a TV show – because Christians are too busy claiming this and praying for that … so now the rocks are crying out. “Humility makes a place for new possibilities.” There are things we can’t see when we are in the middle of a terrible struggle …but God can! He doesn’t want wounded warriors, He wants to truly heal us. Everything we meet is an opportunity to see this life from His point of view.

We can be influenced by the bad, hurtful things that have happened in our lives. Every now and then some angry word or action bubbles to the top, and we can’t figure out how it got there. Somebody or some situation reminds us of something that is long gone, but the memory of the pain lingers. However, when we deliberately choose to die to ourselves and we yield, God plants a tree in the place of our hurt and that tree starts to bear fruit. 

The only way through this often difficult life, is to live like He would, if He were you. HE UTTERLY RELIED UPON THE HOLY SPIRIT AND HIS FATHER! Jesus didn’t pretend – He loved people, yet He did not live to please them, He lived to please His Father. And then He accepted the consequences of that decision. He was always delighted to do His Father’s will.  

Walk away from your feelings, work at holding onto Him and watch what He will do. Bye. 👋

P 2840 We must remember, we sin against GOD, first.

/ DVH

“Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD.” Nathan replied, “The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die.” 2 Samuel 12:13. 

“And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’”Luke 15:21.

“Against You, and You alone, have I sinned; I have done what is evil in Your sight. You will be proved right in what You say, and Your judgment against me is just.”Psalm 51:4.

We often talk a great deal about sinning against each other, but today I want to talk about the fact that first of all, any sin is against Him. When we dismiss or disobey His word, our sin is dismissive of God’s holiness. Yes, we need to fix things with others, but we need to start at the top … with Father God Himself. Everyone of our sins had a consequence. And Jesus bore the penalty of those consequences on His body – so we need to treat these things with humility, honestly, reverence and respect. 

Let me be as clear as I can be … Our sins are absolutely, positively, completely G.O.N.E. – gone forever! Thrown into the sea of forgetfulness, with a NO FISHING sign clearly displayed. That sign needs to be read over and over again because guilt and shame no longer belong to us. “Jesus said, “I tell you most solemnly that anyone who chooses a life of sin is trapped in a dead-end life and is, in fact, a slave. A slave can’t come and go at will. The Son, though, has an established position, the run of the house. So if the Son sets you free, you are free through and through.”John 8:34-36.

This means that before we repent and repair things with others, first of all, we need to thank God and His precious Son again, for all Jesus suffered and chose to do for us. Thankfulness, not guilt is now our response – however presumption is not a right response either. We need to treasure our relationship with our Loving generous Father above all else. There is no longer any fear in sin and God’s love has now taken over our way of thinking, doing and being. We live a life of love now, standing by our choices- we are now free to choose His Will, His Way.

We’ve been set free from the demands and focus of sin, to focus upon HIM.  Freedom means we can still sin – however, now, we’ve been empowered not to!! Instead of blame and shame motivating us, we can be confident that we can restore things – simply because Christ’s death on our behalf has empowered us. Now we praise Him for all He has willingly done for us and we go back into happily submit to His will, His way. The point of the ‘get out of jail free card‘ is not carelessness – it is redemption. So we must acknowledge our sin against His freely-given goodness.

Here is another scripture for all of us to think on today:“My little children (believers, dear ones), I am writing you these things so that you will not sin and violate God’s law. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate [who will intercede for us] with the Father: Jesus Christ the righteous [the upright, the just One, Who conforms to the Father’s will in every way—purpose, thought, and action].”  1 John 2:1. The best news ever is this, JESUS is in the throne room praying for us, every single second of the day. IMAGINE THAT! Because of what He willingly did, sin is not the “norm” for us. Our new normal life is in Him. THAT’S WHERE THE POWER TO OVERCOME COMES FROM!

Almighty God does not wink at our sin … it says so in the book!  An exchange took place 2,000 years ago and Jesus Christ became the Lamb Who was slain, forever. It’s part of His title, just like Prince of peace, wonderful wise Counsellor, and Saviour of the World. So when we sin and disobey God, we take ourselves out of fellowship with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, Who is the One Who helps us – and the Son. The One Person Who perfectly understands how hard it is to be human! Dumb move … He knows the way through temptation!

Let’s be clear. God made sure all this stuff was written down, we have a book! Now we do not have to be dragged about by our weaknesses, and weird ideas. Because of what Jesus did, we have a live-in Helper. The Holy Spirit was our midwife! He birthed us and now He is raising us, day by day as we learn to live a life of obedience. God did not just trust our discipleship to ordinary men … Jesus Christ, Who followed the Holy Spirit’s instructions to the letter – is still making disciples! 

We have the bible to show us where we are out of order with His ways and we need to respond to conviction with real repentance. Because when sin happens we stop walking with Him and start hiding from Him. And people don’t just hide by leaving the church, they hide in busyness, and by elevating things that are distractions, or supposed  recreational activities. Dead people don’t need that stuff – they don’t have an opinion or a need. That’s why we rely upon God to meet them!

If we sin, we need to go to our Heavenly Father, first, and confess our faults, errors, lapses, nasty attitudes and selfish ways and He will empower us to overcome. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John 1:9. Bye. 🕊️

P 2675 Don’t let the lipstick/liposuction fool ya!

/ DVH

“But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God does not see as man sees, since man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7 NASB. 

My first thought when I read this scripture today was this: wouldn’t we all be better off, if we saw others like the Lord does?! What if we appreciated people’s hearts, more than the colour of their lipstick or the fact that they have no fat around their middle? I cannot believe our society vacuums away fat! YUCK!! Social media, movies, magazines, or even the news, all present a false view of this life. See that movie star? FAKE! The media lies to us and they get paid for it! The pretty, witty, fit, and powerful people are supposed stars, yet they have had more work done on them than a renovated broken-down house! Apparently, we enjoy being fooled by illusions. Sigh. You know, many pretty people have an awful lot of spak-filler plastered on. 

Now, let’s STOP and look at SomeOne worthwhile. SomeOne truly beautiful… let’s look at Jesus the way Isaiah saw the Lord in Isaiah 53:1,2.“He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.”  Imagine that. Jesus didn’t actually need physical or scholarly attributes… yet people were attracted to Him like bees to honey. What was inside showed up on the outside. Hah! I’d like to get me some of that kind of surgery thank you Lord! Hmmm. Sometimes, when the spirit of nasty has grabbed me by the neck and I’m spewing unkind venom everywhere – I sure need some bad attitude liposuction!  Thank God for our Saviour!

Moving on … rather quickly…   that scripture from Samuel reminded me of another one: “So from now on we regard no one from a human point of view [according to worldly standards and values]. Though we have known Christ from a human point of view, now we no longer know Him in this way.”  2 Corinthians 5:16. Let me see if I can try to interpret that. We can’t know Jesus or anyone else, just with our brains. We are going to need open hungry hearts. More Lord!! 

Why is mankind so obsessed with outward beauty, physical strength, and brain power? None of that stuff lasts. People go to the gym every single day and they work out ….even in their eighties!🙄… Well, that’s nine kinds of ridiculous. Fancy spending whatever time you have left on earth, lifting weights and dieting! How tragic to live out a life not actually comprehending the things that really matter. I can’t see Moses in a gym, can you? He was too busy getting his work-out doing what God said!

Meanwhile, I can tell you personally that old age is a great leveller. You simply can’t feel superior in your intellect anymore, because you often end up forgetting the end of the sentence right after you just started it! And some days it is all I can do to get around our house. Since I decided to try to fly down the stairs, instead of just plain walking, one of my knees is out of sync with the other one. I could go on … but it would bore you to death … and I am definitely not a pretty person … so I can’t get away with that!

But, thanks to Jesus, inside me, right here, right now, I have a spiritual well that sustains me even when my body complains and my brain seizes up! BTW, I don’t believe in mirrors. My problem is that I keep looking for the 19year old I once was, in them. I’m definitely going to be disappointed on that one! A mirror cannot tell you who you are – God’s Word is the only mirror that is accurate. Praise God for a mirror that shows our true selves – and then it points to the solution!

Oh Jesus is so incredibly beautiful. He’s the One Who gladly laid down His life for His friends … that’s you and me. He has given all of us the greatest love this world will ever know. And He actually chose to do that so that for everyone – including those who are obsessed with how they look. HE LOVES them for free. The Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit are our very Best Friends, our personal cheer-squad, and our life-coach on the road to eternity. We are sooo rich!!

The thing that makes this life wonderful isn’t what we have, or look like, or how smart we are — it’s what we can freely give away to others. Envy, disappointment, and causing others to feel like they are a waste of space – those things are terrible gifts to give someone else. LOVE enriches us all. But comparison and competition highlight lack and we live this life, the only one we will get, feeling deprived.

“Don’t be fooled by their outward appearance … the LORD looks at the heart.”  Skip the fancy red lipstick, the 100 one-handed push-ups … and do more bible study instead. Trust me, you will enjoy that life more. Why should any of us make some plastic surgeon/fitness trainer/make-up artist even richer? Bye. 👋

PS Today is our Anniversary. 37 years of being married to the man of my dreams!🎈🎈💕

P 2589 Don’t get caught up in the machinery …

/ DVH

… because the Lord is still talking to people! Just talk to Him. We have 4,998,214 books that have been written, by lovely people who want to help us learn how to pray … so it is extremely easy to get caught up in methods, not conversation, and hope that will do. Methods require remembering, but conversation allows you and I to be spontaneously ourselves, as well as honest with Him. It opens the door to further revelation about Who He is, as well as … who I am not!

Look, if you belong to a prayer group and you feel better praying ‘proper’ prayers there, then do it. But in your alone time with the Lord, just talk to Him. Jesus Himself talked to His Father like this … look at how personal He is!“Then Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that You sent Me.” John 11:41b-42. That’s what personal looks like. It shows the breadth of Their relationship. 

Our God is not a slot machine where you put in your $5 — (well, the price of everything has gone up nowadays) — and … out comes the answer. He is a Person. With feelings and passion. He loves, He hates, He is disappointed, He watches over us, etc. Does any of that sound impersonal to you?  We dare not reduce Almighty God to our way of thinking, or even some sort of a system. He wants us to love Him from a sincere heart, not just placating Him with trite sayings. What I mean is this, there are plenty of systems in place that indicate we HOW we should pray … if you want this, then you need to pray that. Jesus Himself gave us clues on how to pray, but don’t be so rigid about prayer that it becomes utterly formal and has no life in it. He’s our Father. Be real with Him.

If it appeals to you, you could take some time to study the kind of prayers Moses, Gideon, Jonah, Job, Ezekiel, Jeremiah etc. prayed. Pick a bible person for yourself and look at how they talked to God in the book. Jonah got cranky at Him and said so – but God did not smite that man mightily! Instead He conversed with Jonah, and reasoned with him. When you are reading the bible, take the time to look at the WAY these men of God related to Him. I want you to see, for yourself, that Almighty God wants you to be you, with Him.

Why? Why should I be myself? Here’s my little theory … there has never been, nor will there ever be someone else like you. Who you are, is a unique expression of our God’s creativity. He enjoys you, your company — the way any parent enjoys a beloved child’s presence. Following someone else’s prayer methods may feel safer, but in the long run, it is limiting … mainly because you are not them! Our God is bigger than our fears. Mightier than our mistakes, and more loving than we can ever imagine! Don’t worry about stumbling over words, or getting it wrong. The reality is prayer is about your heart talking to His heart. 

Our human relationships are often limited by a lack of communication. We don’t want to tell people that they are hurting us, because we want to be seen to be ‘nice,’ and ‘a good Christian.’  But when we act like that, eventually one of three things will happen — we will distance ourselves from the person who is hurting us and that means a severed relationship… Or we will tell the person exactly how we feel in no uncertain terms, because we’ve allowed a head of steam and anger to build up inside! That’s when we introduce the possibility of a worse, severed, irreparable relationship. OR we decide to talk honestly and openly about what is wrong and introduce the possibility of real restoration. 

Almighty God deliberately became a man, Jesus Christ – and that gives Him incredible insight into how people feel and act. Anybody who has read the Old Testament can tell you that real people wrangle with God. They don’t put on religious faces, or trot out religious rituals to take care of their relationship with Him. These people understand that they are dealing with Almighty God and being human is not a sin. Getting angry is not a sin. Being grief stricken and or even disappointed is not a sin – but we can’t fix something we won’t acknowledge.  He wants to become THE SAFE PLACE we take our burdens to. 

Please don’t let the machinery of prayer take the place of real relationship. Many times, I ask Him questions … then I open my bible and the answer to those questions is staring at me right where I am about to read!  Don’t pray AT Him, TALK to Him. Bye. 👋

P 2387 God calls us His riches.

/ DVH

“I pray that the Father of glory, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, would impart to you the riches of the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation to know Him through your deepening intimacy with Him. I pray that the light of God will illuminate the eyes of your imagination, flooding you with light, until you experience the full revelation of the hope of His calling —that is, the wealth of God’s glorious inheritances that He finds IN US,His holy ones! I pray that you will continually experience the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available to you through faith. Then your lives will be an advertisement of this immense power as it works through you! This is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted Him to the place of highest honour and supreme authority in the heavenly realm!” Ephesians 1:17-20.

Did you know that because the Lord has all of us in His family, He considers Himself wealthy? He doesn’t care if you and I are fat, skinny, short, tall, good looking, extremely spiritual, or not. The bible says He counts US as His wealth. Now that’s something worth thinking on isn’t it? It shows us His heart toward us. I’ve prayed that God would illuminate the eyes of my heart for myself for years, because I know how easy it is to be distracted by this world and become as thick as a plank to the deep things of God. But everything we have ever needed or wanted we will find in Him.

We human beings concentrate on what we will gain from Him loving us, but we need to pause and look hard at what He says HE has gained, because that information is a sliver of insight into His Ways – Who He is. His incredible generosity. Before we were ever His adopted children, He looked at us with love and saw every single bit of our true potential in Him and He claimed US as His inheritance. Father God sees Himself as rich simply because we are His family. I find that astonishing! Especially because I know many people have been rejected and reviled by their earthly family. 

Today, the things we think make us as human beings rich, are mostly material things. In the Western world we accumulate ‘stuff’ a lot – it makes us look quite wealthy. Perhaps we are monetarily rich, but spiritually poor because our worth is measured by accumulation and achievements. But our God has chosen to love us simply because we are His family. If you and I are looking for acceptance, incredible acceptance flows freely from His throne.🙌

Paul is praying here in Ephesians for all of us, that we would understand what we have that was freely given to us. Sad to say, human beings can get so stuck in the things we are not – that we forget the most important thing of all. We are His and, it is only by His Grace that we know it. He chose us. Our worth is not in money, but in the fact that SomeOne so incredible – dearly and tenderly loves us. We have His love, and grace upon us … that very fact will take us into eternity. We’re loved and cherished by the One Who made the world, then He went further than that and saved us … then He went even further than that and He owned us … He claims us as His relatives. His kids. How amazing is that?

I think that realising and appreciating what we have already been given helps keep us content in a discontented world. Discontent rumbles around this world daily … my team won, your team lost. That guy got a promotion, I didn’t. That kid got great marks, I didn’t. Maybe this is why so many people have gotten into huge debt. Discontentment with the norm grabbed them and they want to escape it and prove to themselves they are special.

We are special because we are special in His eyes and that doesn’t change. Father God hates sin, not the man He made. We are made valuable by the fact that the God of all the Universe loves us. The value of the price He paid, is an indication of the depth of the love He has for us. When Jesus Christ died as a MAN, He gave us all worth.  

My point is this: fancy all of us working so hard to get something we already have! All of mankind is made in His image. You and I were His idea! I believe this is why the eyes of our hearts need to be DAILY enlightened. When we get saved, we are incredibly grateful for it … but then, for some reason, we do not park there. We move on. All I want to say today is – go back to the place where you first understood His salvation and stay there. We must have an appreciation for His sacrifice, not with our heads but with our hearts.

There is a part of us that needs to continually gaze at God’s love hanging on that cross for the world to see – and not stop doing it. It is a good thing to relive our gratitude for what He has given us, every single day, and enjoy our new found love in Him as it grows. It is in the light of the cross, where our real place in this world and the next is made clear. We don’t have to be special to this world’s eyes, we are God’s riches because we are the saved ones. “Oh, what manner of love the Father gives that we may be called the sons of God!”  We are His chosen riches and I pray we all know how very rich we are because of all He did for us.. Bye 👋🏻. 

P 2217 We definitely need our minds transformed!

/ DVH

“…so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19. AMEN!  There are some great prayers in Ephesians. I pray that stuff for myself – often. I know I definitely need the power to understand what HIS LOVE LOOKS LIKE – that’s why I read, study, and chew over whatever I read in the bible.

Here’s another scripture that was rolling about in my heart today along with the one from Ephesians.  “Behold what manner of love the Father gives that we might be called the sons of God…” 1 John 3:1. For me that translates into: ‘take a good look at what KIND of love the Father gives us.’ 

First of all I want to say that our human ideas of love, contrasted with the reality of His love, seem very different to me. Our idea of love is nobody ever says NO to us, we get EXACTLY what we want whenever we want it, and we are indulged and petted by others as being ‘special’ and ‘worthy.’ These peculiar thoughts come from our current civilisation’s idea that anyone can be rich, famous, and popular if they are prepared to work at it. Baloney! Many a talented human being is now in their grave unrecognised by the rest of us – it is God Who exalts people … and He hides others.

Reading the book carefully will stomp on all that human deceit!  We simply must stop cherry-picking out verses we like and claiming them … and start asking the Lord God what HE WANTS. The bible is a whole book, it is not just a collection of ‘gimme’ verses. Paul is praying for each of US that we would have the power to understand how comprehensively big God’s love is. Which means, BTW, that in our natural selves we don’t get it! Spiritual stuff cannot be understood by our natural minds. (1 Corinthians 2:14) In other words it doesn’t make any sense to us! 

He then goes on to explain what God’s kind of love looks like – how comprehensively overwhelming and all-encompassing it is. The reason I pray those verses over my life is because I don’t want my idea of love anymore – that stuff is based on meeting my own needs and plans… or avoidance, or anger, or retribution. At the very least – my idea is self-serving! Instead, I truly want to choose GOD’S IDEA OF LOVE. 

At this point I need to realise that God’s idea of love nailed His Only Precious one-of-a-kind Son to a tree! Ya might want to think on that one for the rest of your life. 🧐 

To the world around us, Father God’s action for our salvation looks merciless, graceless, and loveless, because the Lord Jesus was totally innocent of any wrong doing – He only did humanity good! Even the bystanders at the crucifixion questioned how Jesus could be Who He said He was, when God was allowing this to happen! Can you see how squirrelled-up man’s thinking is?

This shows me how ingrained self-centredness, self-preservation and self-satisfaction is in mankind’s psyche. The reality is that solitary act actually proves that God’s love will go to any lengths to rescue humanity. “He Who did not spare His only Son …” (Romans 8) Yet currently, at the bottom of mankind’s thoughts is something like this … ‘God is there for my benefit – if you are suffering you must have done something bad.‘ 😳 Here’s a big thought:  maybe “and forget not all His benefits” is more about us not going to hell than it is about us having a big house with all the trimmings, living a comfortable life, or having overseas holidays etc.etc.  

It seems to me that we’ve thrown God’s idea of love right out of the window! God’s love is a different KIND of love. We’ve lived for years on the premise that God saved us to spoil us rotten – giving us what we want, or what we think we need. The reality is – His Precious Son died for us so we would have the power to live for Him, and be that kind of love in action toward other people. It’s about multiplication, not gain. And that’s quite a contrast. We need our minds renewed – daily. 👋🏻

P 2141 Mercy and compassion

/ DVH

You and I know all about mercy, it’s that thing we sometimes want from the Lord  when we need Him to be compassionate toward us! Even though there are times when we actually don’t want to give those things to other people. One of the hardest things about being human is that we think we have very good reasons to be hurt, angry, bitter and resentful. And, sadly, if you were to ask us, we can tell you all about what happened to us because we have a list. Hmmm. What part of that sentence sounds biblical? 😶

Today, I want to talk about two important Godly Graces. They are personal expressions of the Love of God in action. Please feel free to pray that God enlarges the boundaries of my own tent in these things because I will always be grateful for more. My own heart desperately needs this kind of stretching and exercise. When you are older and ill – you can easily get wrapped up in your own needs. However, mercy and compassion are God-qualities – they are His Grace in action for those who are undeserving, and those who are trapped. They have nothing to do with the health and well-being of the one called to minister to others. The body of Christ today needs these qualities because they are so powerful – they can heal other people’s hearts quicker than we can say: “Be healed in Jesus’ Name.” 

There are even times when the-people-who-do-not-know-Jesus-yet, can display them. We must stop thinking that God only speaks to this world through the church. Ordinary human beings who don’t know Jesus, leap into the ocean to save a stranger, sometimes they die trying, or they run into burning buildings and save other people’s lives, every single day! The bible says that the Lord once used a donkey, and a whale to save people! Our God loves human beings so much even dogs and dolphins have miraculously saved lives. That is how important these Graces are!  

Mercy and compassion aren’t just about feeling sad for someone else’s suffering, or even trying our best to help them. Those feelings can occur when we have distanced ourselves from the people we know who are suffering. Instead mercy participates in situations, not caring about its own welfare – it runs into danger or difficulty for the benefit of others – even the people who hurt us. ‘Mercy is forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.’ (Dictionary definition.) Hate kills, mercy and compassion bring life.

Compassion isn’t just about thinking: ’oh you poor thing,’  Actually that’s called pity. Compassion has feet on it! “Compassion literally means “to suffer together.” Among emotion researchers, it is defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering…” (Dictionary) The bible says that Jesus Himself always had compassion for the suffering people around Him and He showed them mercy. IF we allow our bad circumstances to teach us, over and over again, that we need His Grace, then we will receive something that is real to give away.

The Lord wants these qualities to flow out of our lives like an endless river of His Love  expressed through us. Meanwhile this also means that whatever He does for any of us, is done through His endless mercy and compassion. That love is not forced or coerced – it is given freely to us – and we have been reborn so we can give those things freely to other people. We are no longer of this world – we have qualities they often don’t have! Mercy and compassion voluntarily run toward suffering. These two things in the church are often represented by giving money, or time, but Christ came to us in Person. 

Sometimes I think we would rather pray at a distance than go to the bedside of someone who is desperate and suffering. We can get so obsessed about using His miraculous power to show others how spiritual we are, we forget that we have been given this power to bring healing, reconciliation, kindness, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion to others. Those things are not mutually exclusive they are inter-reliant upon each other. Helping someone else who doesn’t deserve help, as He leads us, marks US as His people. Taking other people’s pain personally is part of flowing in His love.  

Mercy and compassion are incredibly powerful – those qualities led to feeding thousands of hungry people, on two occasions. Mercy even forgave a sinful man hanging next to Jesus – while Christ Himself was suffering incredible pain! Any Christians who represent Him have eyes to see, and ears to hear – they always see or hear the one with a need. And in the Lord’s personal earthly ministry – those qualities in Him, also responded to the suffering of the friends and family around the patient, or the one tormented.

The point I want to make is that the closer we get to the Lord, the more mercy and compassion will leak out of us onto everybody around us. They are HIS qualities, not ours. Hang around the cross! We will find loads of mercy and compassion when we hang around it. Jesus loved, and died for the people who killed Him. That’s pure mercy. Forgiving people who do not know they need to be forgiven is not about obligation – it is a quality that flows from a heart filled with love – that heart treasures what it has been given so much, it can’t wait to give it away.. And it is the same with compassion. Compassion stooped down to write in the dust for a woman who had no hope of a reprieve, and Compassion walked across the city, to the mat of a man who had lain ill for 35 years. 

These qualities are part of the activities of love in action, and they are seeable. They are not just a passing sad feeling, or hoping someone feels better – they are love in action. Mercy and compassion engage in the disease ridden soil of mankind’s sin and the results of it – with the aim of bringing healing. With no strings attached. 👋🏻