Humanity

P 2351 What smells good to God?

/ DVH

“Be imitators of God in everything you do, for then you will represent your Father as His beloved sons and daughters. And continue to walk surrendered to the extravagant love of Christ, for He surrendered His life as a sacrifice for us. His great love for us was pleasing to God, like an aroma of adoration—a sweet healing fragrance.” Ephesians 5:1-2 TPT.

Jesus is our own personal visual aid for our lives here on earth. It is a mistake to think we can serve Him and live the same sort of life that the people around us live. We are not from here anymore – we are travelling through this world representing SomeOne Else, with the Holy Spirit’s help. Our home is elsewhere. Now we have eternal eyes, not just eyes fixed upon the immediate. The thing is, to stay in those places we find challenging and difficult –  we must fix our eyes on Him, not our circumstances.

Walking surrendered to Christ’s extravagant love means no matter what goes on around us, or what happens to us, we must never ever forget we are dearly, over-abundantly, loved. As far as this life is concerned, realistically speaking, it is hard to feel loved, when people are being mean, or you are in pain, or your circumstances have gone awry. But the Cross changed everything. Christ’s freely-given Grace is our ever-present help in times of need. The difficulty is this, we must learn how to fight our enemy for our God-given rights, as well as yielding to the Holy Spirit’s leading. 

There is no room for striving in yielding. We cannot afford to berate ourselves for our dumb remarks and our accidental, or even intentional, lack of response to His Will. Jesus Christ understands humanity – and the Holy Spirit is now with us to continually remind us that we can be our renewed self – with His help. However, we cannot give Grace away if we do not take Grace in!There are times that the way to fight for victory over our circumstances and feelings is to refuse to entertain the thoughts that we are somehow exempt from that GRACE. 

When the day to day earthly realities remain difficult… and God’s goodness comes into question – our resting position is to hold fast to the fact that He is good. Even if we’ve prayed and prayed to no avail, and so have other people, we must learn to stand firm. At the same time we aren’t denying the reality of pain and heartache, rather we face them with the quiet confidence that the Lord has a way through our current circumstances.

I have had many increased physical limitations after those falls I had, now I get very tired. Some nights I barely manage 4-6 hours of very broken sleep. Let’s be clear, I’m still praying, hubby is still praying for me even at 2.00am when I can’t sleep for the pain in my arm. PAIN has a plus, it keeps you honest! Other faithful people are regularly praying for us, including both our families. Yet we are still stuck going round and round. WHY? I dunno but our God is doing something I can’t see …YET! 

I just know that in order to cultivate eternal eyes, I need to deliberately keep my eyes on Him. I know that God is not the Author or the sustainer of my discomfort, but, nevertheless, it is still daunting and exhausting. At these times I have to watch over my feelings and thoughts and focus on the God I know – Who is always good! I can drive myself batty trying to figure out why this has happened or what can I do to escape or … I can yield and wait. 

I have found great comfort in the Psalms because good old King David doesn’t seem to always be cheerful when things go bad for him either. However I cannot recommend the ‘smash them, get them, squish them, kill them all dead … mindset’  he had either. 🤪

Now let’s look at what smells good to God – a life laid down for Jesus’ sake, no matter what our external circumstances look like, and yes, we do that without lying! We need to remember that the Lord God called some things a pleasing aroma. Things like dead burning flesh from cattle, sheep, birds  (Genesis 8:20,21;  Exodus 29 :18;  Leviticus 1:9) —  my conclusion is this —HE DOESN’T LIKE WHAT I LIKE!  My death to self may hurt me, but HE is pleased by it.

Ephesians 5:2 says: ‘Jesus’ death was a pleasing aroma.’ That’s hard to comprehend, but true. If we tell Him “I want to know You more”  then we must remember the journey Christ took – ‘He learned obedience through suffering.’  Hopefully, right now, that is what I am learning too! 👋🏻

P 2250 Value His opinion.

/ DVH

We should never be surprised by this world’s actions and activities – this kind of hate filled stuff has been going on for centuries. Sin is common to mankind. After all, we were like this from the very beginning. God said to Adam and Eve: ‘You can have everything you see, but that tree over there – don’t eat from that one.’ He had a great reason, and He gave it to them … but they didn’t value His opinion.

So Adam and Eve ate from the only tree that was forbidden. Did you know that there are 73,300 tree species? Approximately 20,000 plants are edible by human beings. That’s a whole lotta choices. Yet the tree that attracted those two was the one they were not allowed to eat – and it wasn’t about hunger at all. It was really  about ambition. That teaches us a lot about what makes people tick! The power of choice was always going to be our downfall – as well as our salvation.

satan put a caveat on that fruit when he told this couple if they ate it they would be just like God Himself. satan, BTW lied, by twisting the truth and not stating the consequences. Adam and Eve were already like God, they were eternal pure beings. satan implied that the lack of choice in one area was robbing them. However when they sinned, it corrupted them, the same way satan had been corrupted. he was ambitious too. Many people want a God who provides – but not one Who is in charge. 

Now let’s look at Genesis 9:1 for another illustration: “Then God blessed Noah and his sons. He said to them, “Have children so that there are many of you. Fill the earth.”… But they didn’t! … Genesis 11:2-4: “The whole world had only one language, and everyone spoke it. They moved to the east and found a broad valley in Babylon. There they made their home. They said to one another, “Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them well.” They used bricks instead of stones. They used tar to hold the bricks together. Then they said, “Come on! Let’s build a city for ourselves. Let’s build a tower that reaches to the sky. We’ll make a name for ourselves. Then we won’t be scattered over the whole earth.” 😳

That is in direct disobedience to what they were told to do. And here’s human defiance and ambition sticking up its nasty little head. Father God told those people to fill the earth, literally … spread OUT. But they clubbed together instead. Then they built a tower because their building was going to get them to heaven – their way! They even changed their building materials to make that tower more permanent! They had to work to make those bricks!

Humanity wants the freedom to decide what is good for us, and what is not. Instead we need to recognise that what holds us all back is common to mankind. Sin. Defying God. Wanting our own way. Let’s look at Job 5:1-7: ““Call for help, Job, if you think anyone will answer!To which of the holy angels will you turn? The hot temper of a fool eventually kills him, the jealous anger of an idiot does her in. I’ve seen it myself—seen fools putting down roots, and then, suddenly, their houses are cursed.

Their children out in the cold, abused and exploited, with no one to stick up for them. Hungry people off the street plunder their harvests, cleaning them out completely, taking thorns and all, insatiable for everything they have. Don’t blame fate when things go wrong— trouble doesn’t come from nowhere. It’s human! Mortals are born and bred for trouble, as certainly as sparks fly upward.” 

The bible tells us that sinful attitudes are inevitable – because human beings think that what WE know, is all there is. That, and blaming others when we get it wrong, is our downfall. Sin isn’t just sex, booze and deviancy. Sin is saying: “I know better than You do God.” That’s what happened in the garden. Blame and disobedience. However, Almighty God already had a much bigger plan. If satan had had even a whiff of God’s plan he would have left those two newbies in the garden alone! 

We are more than capable of corrupting ourselves – we once gave away purity for independence.  We gotta stop blaming the snake for our own proclivities. All satan did was give Adam and Eve an opportunity. he’s a tempter, and he studies humanity for flaws, but he’s not able to make us do, anything. Our will can oppose his temptations, but instead we allow supposed needs, and our own opinions drive us. We need to value God’s opinions above our own, and see what He will do with our obedience. 👋🏻

P 2232 How to witness.

/ DVH

When we go out to give away bibles etc. hubby often finds that people weep – even grown men and women. Then they get embarrassed about crying and say things like: “I don’t know why I’m crying.”  Here’s how we explain that to them: “Oh that’s Jesus. He’s just crazy in love with all of us. He came here 2000 years ago, and personally fell in love with mankind. Then people killed Him… but He didn’t stay dead. Now He lives inside me. He sent me here to show you His love and bless you, and the thing is, I just can’t stop Him – He loves us all so much, He can’t help Himself. He is always reaching out to people.”

I am not trying to give you some sort of a formula, instead I want to encourage you to put something that resembles this into your own words – as He leads you. Just allow the Holy Spirit to give you a way to talk about things like this, that is natural to you. I’ve only written the above words today, because so many Christians only speak Christian-ese. 

That’s the language in the church that we all understand, and use. It has words like faith, joy, grace, saved, redemption, salvation, sanctification, propitiation … in it. However, those words have complex meanings and they sound old-fashioned and out of touch with this world we live in. For most people the way we think in church is like a foreign language, filled with unmanageable incomprehensible concepts. Faith doesn’t make sense to people who don’t have any. 

And Jesus Christ sometimes isn’t an actual person to them, He’s an historical figure. So when He reaches out and touches someone through you, it is good to explain to them that it is not you – it’s Him. We understand a lot of what we’ve been taught as normal, but it is not normal to the people we meet in the street. Our aim is to make the Lord visible and accessible, and the more we mystify Him, the more we are making Jesus inaccessible. I am not speaking about being sacrilegious, far from it, we definitely need to be reverent and honour Him. But it is more about presenting Christ as a God-Man.  A Man Who came and died for all of us – on purpose.

This is why I really recommend that we need to know the four gospels really well – everything we will need to talk about the Lord is in there. The more well-rounded our thoughts and ideas are about Jesus Himself, the easier it will be to talk about Him to others.  In my opinion, talking about the Lord should be so natural, it flows out of us. That takes practice, it doesn’t just happen and we all have to start somewhere. It should flow the same way as it would if you were talking about your friend, mother, father, brother, cousin. Christianity needs to be much more accessible in this world, less intense, and more natural. Also talk about what Jesus has done, recently in your life – that’s your witness.

Hubby told the people we’ve spoken to on this trip, about the Lord helping him to paint with his non-dominant hand. He explained that he is right-handed and he rarely if ever uses his left hand, except in conjunction with His right one! People were astonished simply because it’s a miracle. And if I were talking to someone about what God has done in my life recently, I’d tell them about losing my earrings, as well as looking hard for them, and then finding them on the floor in plain sight! Our experiences with the Lord and His great Grace, need to be repeated and we should brag on Him! Tell them that when He touches them personally, that Jesus sent you there to pray for them and/or help them. So it’s not you – it’s Him … making Himself known.

Our greatest strength lies in the fact that we know that we ARE the same as the people we are talking to. The difference between us and the-people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet is what Jesus did for all of us. We know about what He did… and they don’t! This fact is Christianity’s best kept secret and it shouldn’t be. Jesus died to open the doors for everyone. At some time somebody told us that truth, and now we are telling others. Christians and non-Christians are not on opposing teams – we have our humanity in common. 

Some of us grew into understanding what we believe and some of us encountered Him in a remarkable way but we all live our lives for Him now. It isn’t the experience or lack of it that matters – it is the real live Person that we know personally. 👋🏻

“But in your hearts set Christ apart [as holy—acknowledging Him, giving Him first place in your lives] as Lord. Always be ready to give a [logical] defence to anyone who asks you to account for the hope and confident assurance [elicited by faith] that is within you, yet [do it] with gentleness and respect.”  1 Peter 3:15

P 2229 ‘Help help’ is a great prayer!

/ DVH

I read this today in Psalm 91:1”Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” Today I just want to mention God’s provision of rest for His kids is the only way human beings can manage this life and all its pressures. The Lord is wonderful, when we live this life for Him – He blesses everything.

We are not alone. We need to learn to progressively and intentionally “rest in the shadow of the Almighty…whose power no-one can withstand!” Our enemy has no power over us in that place of peace-rest. The Lord Jesus Himself said the same thing in Matthew 11: “Then Jesus said, “Come to Me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you. Let Me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  Jesus Christ understands humanity – He understands how hard this life is. We can LEARN THIS, He will teach us.

The best place of shelter, EVER, is IN God Himself. We hide in what Christ already did for our sake. We can try to hide away from trouble by staying busy, or actively choosing to forget stuff, but hiding in God is the only place we will find the kind of real safety, and solutions that last. Everything else is temporary. So, how do we do that? Learn to run to Jesus immediately when things go upside down – and tell Him He is your refuge. 

I do that out loud! Even before I lift the phone to get others to pray – I start running toward Him inside – yelling help help all the way. I understand that we’ve all developed independent … not-so-great habits … of relying upon ourselves – but I have found personally, that when I try to figure things out … the line of admitting defeat moves away from me, and so does inner peace and sleep. And my brain starts to feel like messy mush. 😂 I get exhausted. That’s why I’ve learnt it’s easier to give up and ask for help immediately. When I see God acting on my behalf, that miraculously reminds me that GOD LOVES HIS KIDS. Real peace and safety in this life is an illusion. Our Father wants to help us. 

The older hubby and I get, the less enchanted we are with our own brain power and memory bank.  We seem to have developed a super-power of forgetting most things ten seconds later! This Psalmist knew how to stay safe until disaster had passed by Him. Because of what Christ did, WE can live in that place permanently. Jesus gave us that when He died for us, that’s why He mentioned it. Praise God we all live on the other side of the cross!  We have a safe place to run where we will always be welcome, and that is God’s ever-active MERCY toward us.

We all get beaten down by this life and some of the people in it. That’s the time to pick up those burdens and give it ALL to Jesus. Then we do whatever He says, in the book – and then…we  leave everything with Him. Tell yourself ‘God is looking after that!’  If we accidentally revert to worrying and problem solving, then repent, and give it back to Him again. Learn to live relying upon the finished work of Christ’s death on the cross. The more you live like this, the more it becomes the way you think. The technical term is called renewing your mind. Even if you accidentally go back into worry etc.- then give it back to Him, just one more time. Human beings are much too frail to walk around with heavy burdens on their backs.

Listen to this: “Yet it was our weaknesses He carried; it was our sorrows that weighed Him down.” Isaiah said that 700 years before Christ was born. One day he was praying and he ended up in the throne room and God’s incredible holiness gave this prophet a revelation about who he really was. Isaiah saw his sin. Thank God, he also prophetically saw Jesus coming into this world 700 years later! Isaiah saw God’s provision for his sins and everything else, long before Jesus was ever born. Seeing that changed that man’s POV forever.

This is what Jesus Christ came to earth to do for humanity, to show us another way to live. The bible gives us so many witnesses. Today I have put one from a Psalmist, plus Isaiah, plus Jesus Christ Himself. They all tell us we can come to God, and offload our burdens, troubles and sorrows, because SomeOne has spiritually taken them for us – JESUS Christ took all those things to the cross, 2000+ years ago. Those weighty things in our lives are as gone as our sins!  Let’s ask for His help to continually lay our burdens down, and live in His rest, instead of this world’s turmoil. 👋🏻 

P 2211 The cross!

/ DVH

The cross is the place where humanity stands totally alone. It is the place where God’s will impacts and challenges ours. That place where Jesus defeated all our stinky self-serving attitudes once and for all – and gave us new soft pliable hearts. We own this new heart bit by bit, as we say no to our own way, and yes, to His.

The cross is the place where sin is simply SIN. At that hallowed place, there are no big or small sins. It is the greatest equaliser ever seen. We were given the power to live in obedience to the One Who died to give us the right to stand in Almighty God’s Presence – unashamed. The cross is the place where our Saviour deliberately submitted Himself to humiliation, punishment, torment and death on our behalf and He left us, clean, forever!  

Now we have the utter freedom to choose to obey Him. Before the cross we had no choice. That is a fact that always astonishes me, no matter how many times I read it in His book. All of us know we were not worthy of everything He did for us during that terrible day.

If you and I look carefully at that wooden cross you will see our names carved there into those precious hands that blessed people and healed them. Our names are somewhat obscured by all the blood running down from His face, His side, as well as His hands and feet. There was so much blood that day, His sacrifice spilled all over  mankind – everyone who has ever been born. That cross was dripping with His blood. That’s where Jesus Christ cleansed us and made us brand new people. 

Christ’s blood was incredibly rare and costly, because the One Who had never ever sinned, became our sin. At that cross Jesus’ goodness, grace, love, joy, peace, patience, mercy, kindness and long-suffering, together with absolute and total purity, was drowned in our sins. And hell was let loose on Him – until Christ died from the sheer agony of it.

After truly seeing and understanding that cross, how could we ever refuse to do whatever Jesus wants us to do for His kingdom’s sake? He will not refuse us. He will not turn us away, even though He knew, like Peter, we would all betray Him. He knew before we ever gave Him our lives that we would walk through some of our days acting like His cross was nothing to us – just an historical record. You and I are blessed because we live after Calvary. Calvary is His-story to all of us. 

Whenever I look at Christ on that cross I marvel that Almighty God would so submit Himself to mankind that He became an infant, and grew up here on earth, in a dusty little town. He walked, talked, lived and breathed around among ordinary people like you and I. He allowed others to treat Him like they treated the rest of humanity, with indifference, disdain and cruelty. Jesus Christ let the Jews and the Romans punish Him like a criminal. Yet He died for them too. 

On this day, I want to pause, and celebrate the cross. Someone … God bless them!!!… told me what Christ did for me. Today, I stand there, in my mind’s eye, and look up at Him … I remember what my life was like without Him in it. I remember all the things He has given back to me, those things that I lost with my own careless, sinful, selfish ways. Jesus Christ freely gave us eternal things, the kind of unearthly qualities and attitudes that humanity never dreamt we could have. 

Standing there, I take the time to remind myself that I will never ever be totally alone again. I will never lack love again. The purest love this world will ever know is hanging right there in front of my eyes. The cross shows all of us that it was always Father God’s plan to be One with mankind, and save all of us from ourselves as well as our enemy. Christ’s love heals every wound, every heartache, every painful moment and His hope calls us into a brand new future. The cross is the day our possibilities became endless. 

This was the day Almighty God made the beginning of His dreams for mankind known. Let’s rejoice! We were born on the other side of that terrible wonderful day and we know the end of this story … it’s in the book. He came and rescued each one of us from ourselves and our humdrum little lives, and nothing can snatch us out of His hands. Our lives can no longer be out of control, because now He is in control. 

Jesus and you and I swapped destinies, our destination was hell and His was heaven. So He died that day in an unrelenting, dreadful, painful fashion – then He went to hell and beat up the devil, and purchased our freedom and gave mankind the promise of heaven, instead. Happy Easter! ✝️

P 2202 The safest place in the world…

/ DVH

…is NOT under the bed or an island all by yourself! So please don’t give up on yourself, or other people … too soon. We all have learning curves. However, there is good news. “In Christ Jesus” is the only incredible place of safety and shelter for those who are learning to live in love! “Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up.” 1 Corinthians 13:7 TPT.

But to get to that safe place we will have to give up many things we have become attached to.: like doing what we want when we want, or the power of arbitrarily telling other people what to do. Or always being right and never admitting you are wrong. Or making my world a safe place for me so I don’t have to care about what that does to you! Safety is a strange issue, but the real point is without Jesus a safe world doesn’t actually exist. He is our only safe place, and living in safety in this world is left behind, because the people who live for Him:  “… love(d) not their lives unto death …”  Revelation 12:11

The only way in is the only way out and it’s YOU.

“Came a time in my life I had to be free

From all of the lies that used to be me

And the only way out is the only way in and it’s YOU.

I’ve been waisting my time but not anymore

I’ve been through the maze and it led to Your door

And the only way out is the only way in and it’s YOU.

I spent a lot of time at the crossroads

Getting that lonely feeling inside

Suddenly You stopped the rain, You changed the view

Now every way’s leading to You

Let’s get this thing going, let’s move it along

Let me do all the things I’ve been missing so long

’cause the only way out is the only way in and it’s YOU.”

Ray Martinez.

Jesus is our only hope – He’s the only way out of the trials, sin and suffering of this world, and He is the only way into a new life. We can’t afford to waste our time anymore. It says that verse in Revelation like this, in the Message bible: “They defeated him  (satan) through the blood of the Lamb and the bold word of their witness. They weren’t in love with themselves; they were willing to die for Christ.” I think that we have fallen far far away from that place of being prepared to die for Him. Unless we live somewhere where they love to kill and torture Christians. The people who live under life or death threats have to make incredibly hard choices – every single day. However where I live, we get to choose to die to self – daily, minute by minute.

But nothing in this world we are living in today, is actually truly safe. Talk to the people in countries where war has broken out. One day they were at the supermarket shopping, and now the supermarket is gone and so is their house! Now, it no longer matters if the man of the house keeps putting the tomato sauce bottle, or his dirty socks in the wrong place – there isn’t anywhere to put anything, anymore! 😢 Sigh. When did we become such petty people? This life has serious issues – and safety is an illusion. 

Sadly I feel, humanly speaking, we often make it through the trials in this life, breathing a sigh of relief that whatever was happening to us is now over. And then we go on to waiting and willing our lives to be easy again. I know I do! I hate being stretched. There is a saying from a movie: The Princess Bride – “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”  Amen! Preach it brother. Expecting this life to be easy is a childish view of this world. “The rain falls on the just and the unjust.” Everybody has hard times. 

I have been prayerfully reading Psalm 73 for days, and it is the best example of self-centred humanity… like ever! The Psalmist has his crank on because bad people are winning everywhere. When I read it I realised that he is grumpy because other people can do what they like, it seems – and get away with it. He’s mad because these people do not have to face the consequences of their actions. Eventually, he realises that even wicked people die in the end, and they face eternity unprepared. It is one thing to trick a human judge and jury, and plead innocent, and totally another to plead innocence in the face of true purity and truth.

The biggest problems we face today, are the seemingly insignificant everyday decisions we make about the way we act and react toward others. The decision to tell somebody where to go and how to get there, drags us away from our main focus. These are the days of deliverance from evil. Giving yourself permission to have a bad day can be deadly. The only safe place is living in Christ, living a life of laid-down love, for His sake … and dying to self.👋🏻

P 2191 Please don’t be tempted to live in a divided kingdom.

/ DVH

Parable of The Divided Kingdom – Mark 3:23-27. “So Jesus called them over to Him and began to speak to them in parables: “How can satan drive out satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house.”

Lots of people wa-ay smarter than me have preached on this parable but I’m not going to talk about all of it here. Today I want to talk about the fact that we can shoot ourselves, figuratively, in the foot, by having one foot in the kingdom, and the other in this world. That’s called having a divided mind and/or loyalty. Unfortunately we can easily be tied up by satan in this world’s difficulties.

We cannot advance God’s kingdom while we are constantly being overtaken by the things of this world. Sooner or later the world we live in will win – because this world is pushy! That’s what IN this world and not OF this world means. We live here but we are no longer from here – our home is somewhere else. So we have a totally different allegiance from the people who live around us. Our allegiance is with Jesus Christ and His Ways.

The King of all Kings wants to motivate us now, so we can serve Him … now. HE LOVES HUMANITY – He proved it! Now we live in another kingdom, by its rules. The thing is, many times we can easily kind of skate along the thin edge of looking like everyone else around us, so we can fit in. The problem with that is, while we are toying with this world’s games, we will have a clouded view of what the Lord Himself wants from us. The single greatest thing we can ever do – apart from choosing to follow the Lord, is to unequivocally give our lives to Him and refuse to take them back. Total commitment is the only way I know to eliminate the tendency in humanity to compromise.

We are not in this world to do the hokey pokey – one foot in and one foot out. It’s all in. OR … live in the hell of having to choose over and over again which way to go and getting sucked down the plug hole of sin. There is no compromise with the world around us, this world is too far gone. We simply choose to do what Jesus did – He died. We must die, here and now, daily – choosing His way over ours using our faith. His Grace can see us through anything. Sometimes it will hurt – but it simplifies matters.

When we make the bible our reference point we will definitely bump into other people’s excuses.This world doesn’t like that sort of clarity, it presents us with the wrong picture over and over again. EG: ‘if it hurts, then it is wrong, don’t do it!’ Avoiding pain has become a new art form. It will hurt, dying to self does! It killed the Lord… becoming sin broke His dear heart. 

I can remember seeing the line of total commitment off in the distance as a much younger Christian. I avoided going too close lest I fall over it. I did not jump right into the River of God. I sort of paddled about in the shallows – and sometimes I went in up to my waist. I was afraid of what the Lord might take from me, or what I would have to leave behind. But at that time I was absolutely ‘born again!’ I went to church every single time I could, and I joined in with everything. However, the line of what I could and couldn’t do, was blurry. It was blurred by my compromise. 

The Lord never meant for Christianity to be a two-step program. It is all in, forever. He sent back His power to the people who made a commitment to stay in the upper room for as long as it took. 50 days of waiting, praying and wondering if there was going to be a knock on the door, and men would come to kill them. Total commitment means we wait for His input. Staying close to Him has become our very life.

It means you start living forever today. Here and now. LET: “The Holy Spirit put steel in your convictions.” 1 Thessalonians 1:4b. MSG bible. 👋🏻

P 2150 Shame is no longer welcome in our lives.

/ DVH

Some of my very favourite people on this planet are perfectionists. Oh boy! That kind of trait will dig a hole and bury you in it!  Unfortunately, when you can’t meet your own inner standards, shame can be a constant companion. Shame damages the recipient and accomplishes nothing, spiritually speaking, because it has its roots in fear of failure. Actively absorbing perfect love will chuck all sorts of fear out of the window!

Shame also makes you disappointed and angry at others, because many other people give up their efforts to change, w-a-y too quickly, and people driven by shame often struggle with making comparisons. We are adults, and we are responsible for our own actions and choices, so we need to watch out for shame, resentment, anger, fear, pride etc. before they grow into trees with bitter roots. Meanwhile, any perfectionists I know are always pushing themselves to meet some sort of imaginary impossible target, and wondering why they feel exhausted every day of the week.

Sadly they don’t make any room for their own weaknesses and humanity, and they end up feeling disappointed with themselves, out of sorts, and wondering where their God-declared peace went! They can get cranky at this person or that system. They are the kind of people who would easily score 100% on a test and wonder why they didn’t get 110%! 😱 They are most probably fans of Superman because he can do anything! Yet the very thing that pushes them on, is also their kryptonite.  And that is  … shame. The shame that assails them with ‘not good enough.’

This trait is one of the larger blights on Christianity because in the past the church has used – and sometimes even still uses – shame, to change people’s behaviour. Transformation comes from renewing our minds, and staying in a close relationship to the Lord – not from hating yourself – that BTW is the other guy. 

Perfectionists like to accentuate perceived faults and ignore the normality of humanity’s weaknesses. These people may be tough on you – but, believe me, they are even tougher on themselves! You will never feel completely satisfied with anything when you walk with shame. It can feel like self defence when you attack others for no reason. I’ve read a little bit on this subject over the years, and I found that people who allow shame to push them around can have a form of inverted pride. That’s a big clue with dealing with this issue. You can repent of pride, inverted or not! Pride, BTW, refuses to accept reality, which is we are all sinners saved by His GRACE. The only Person who is totally right is Christ and He gave us His rightness. (Or righteousness) We live there by faith.

We can get rid of those things that mess with our mind like these things do – stuff that easily weighs us down – (please note the word easily). We do that at the foot of the cross. At the cross Jesus bore all our sins, burdens, shame, hypocrisy, spite, pride and anger … just to mention a few things! The point is to off-load them there and leave them there, then exercise your faith that what He said He did He did. And then, we REPENT – we cannot leave that bit out – so with His help and guidance, we choose to challenge and change our behaviour.

So today I have a couple of diagnostic questions. If you were to look at Jesus what would you see? Would you see SomeOne Who did everything perfectly and set a standard you cannot possibly attain … OR …

… would you see the CROSS first? Ya might want to selah on that for a couple of months or so. 🧐

The Lord’s death took care of our weaknesses and infirmities, and I believe that shame etc. is both a weakness, and an infirmity.  “Surely He has borne our griefs (sicknesses, weaknesses, and distresses) and carried our sorrows and pains [of punishment], yet we [ignorantly] considered Him stricken, smitten, and afflicted by God [as if with leprosy].” Isaiah 53:4. So please don’t be ignorant when you look at the cross! Understanding what happened there will absolutely change your life. An exchange was made. Our sin for His right standing in the Father’s eyes – it would be a shame if we knew that but never lived it out. Please excuse my terrible pun!

Jesus took shame and everything else to the cross by hanging there naked, subject to everyone’s inappropriate, self-serving lies and abuse. People misunderstood His very motivation. They attributed evil things to His Godly, passionate, unselfish act. He finished the job that day, so we don’t have to carry shame for our past, or even what we did yesterday – or who we were before we met Him. Today is a brand new day and His mercies are new every single morning. We have no excuse however, for not seeking and pursuing change, because what Christ did made permanent, life-time changes freely available for all of us. We were reborn to be transformed into His likeness.

When Father God sees us now, He sees us IN Christ, covered with the Lord Jesus’ blood. Our part in this new life is to realise Jesus’ blood was costly to the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Sin, shame, weaknesses are not stagnant things, they grow like fungus and mould. So let the light and fresh wind of the Holy Spirit blow across your mind, will, and emotions, every single day!  On purpose. Let Him stop you in the middle of a sentence if that sentence is not helpful to your new life in Christ. We will stagnate spiritually if we do not pay attention to what is happening inside us. That’s where things like shame grab a foothold. 

You and I have no excuse for staying in the past, or letting it control us, and we have no excuse whatsoever for allowing the past to dominate the present. We have a Saviour Who conquered all the stuff that seeks to trip us up. We simply must watch where we put our feet and give our enemy nothing to stand on – like Jesus did!. 👋🏻