Individual

P 3024 The sky is the limit.

/ DVH

How many people today have been boxed in by this world’s interpretation of their ability to learn, or their mental condition, or emotional or physical skills? Today’s so-called experts analyse people and put them into categories, with more labels on the outside than a misdirected parcel! This one has ADHD .. that one has Autism …  the kid is three and someone has boxed it up and classified it for life!  Our kids are actively being “categorised” before they have left High School. We need every member of our Father’s huge family and some people are just plain late bloomers.

It is a very bad idea to put this world’s ceilings on what we think someone else can do – no matter how many letters they have after their name. We must appreciate what each of us has been given for the benefit of others  “… preferring one another in love…”  There are times we try to use someone else’s differences against them – that’s ungodly. Almost half of the recorded disciples were fishermen and Jesus chose them! Today, in order to manage humanity, our societies’ categorise people, so we don’t have to deal with each person, one at a time. 

Thank GOD! He is not even remotely like that! He sees every single one of us and loves each one of us as His very own individual children. He doesn’t look down and think; “This one is broken” OR –“That one is no use to Me.” We are all incredibly dear to His heart – no matter how this world sees us. And we are all incredibly important to His Body too. We are going to need every single member of the Body of Christ standing in their place, because the enemy of our souls is at the gates and he is trying to pinch our kids by writing “not acceptable,” “don’t expect much” and “broken at birth” all over them. Don’t you believe it.

Our Heavenly Father is a redemptive Father, Who longs to reveal Himself to all of us. Every single one of us has a place in His plan! Yes, even the so-called broken ones!! We are all broken one way or another— some of us are simply badly broken inside where nobody else can see. Occasionally some of that ugly stuff leaks out every  where and that person gets put in jail. We must not disqualify people on the grounds of what this world thinks about them. Jesus clarified sin: “…but I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.” Matthew 5:22.

Sinfulness is our common denominator, not so called beauty, athletic prowess or intelligence! Right now we are reaping what we have sown into this world through our own ambition, and greed for more. Sadly we have sown into the whirlwind. Our children are growing up believing that to be pretty, handsome, athletic, gifted and/or highly intelligent is something to be greatly desired. Who says that? 

Manufacturers, fashion gurus, universities, teachers, people in political arenas — the people who will make money from what we do … THAT’S who is saying it! Give me one reason why we should trust their judgment? Unless making money is your god, these attitudes are poisonous vapours. They come, they go. Even the best athletes get hurt, highly intelligent people go wandering off into abstract land, and supposedly beautiful people are constantly criticised. What are we doing to our kids? Why are we not teaching them to be who God made them to be? We are a gift to each other. 

Even in the church we fail. We can easily make too much of one gift over another …“But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”?

As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honour just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?” 1 Corinthians 12:21-27 MSG.

I think the bible tells us very clearly how we need to treat each other – we need to encourage other people’s potential to serve the Lord. Let’s look for Jesus in others, watching for the Grace of the Holy Spirit on each life. I’m not talking about positive speaking either. I’m talking about having a genuine prayerful appreciation for someone else’s POV. You never know, if we all do that we all might learn something!

We need every single member of the Body of Christ, even those gentle, timid souls who hide up the back and hope nobody asks them a question. We are limiting a limitless God if we limit His kids based on our own opinions and experiences. Instead we need to proclaim – the sky is the limit and the heavens beyond it! Bye.👋

P 2847 God is long-suffering.

/ DVH

God puts up with a lot from us. That thought is how I began to see that we need to focus on walking in His love, instead of just gathering more and more knowledge. At the same time we can end up working hard to be somebody we are not, while we are trying to gain something from God that is already free, and belongs to every man, woman and child, ever born! 

When we read the Old Testament and study the Way He interacts with each individual person, we see that Almighty God loves our uniqueness and He is prepared to work with every person mentioned, personally. Inside their perceived limitations. The Holy Spirit is currently teaching me how to follow Him in ways that stretch my faith, while He is showing me how to love. He started me off with the most difficult person in my life, someone I could not relate to, at all. My natural response was to react at this person. Instead of pretending to manage the situation, I began admitting I was an abject failure, I could not possibly change myself  – plus I had absolutely no faith for it. I realised I could not live up to an impossible standard, by myself, and failing all the time was extremely discouraging. 

That is when I came to the conclusion that there is a strong possibility that we have been reading His book incorrectly for years! We’ve studied it like we might study Maths or English, instead of applying it so it becomes part of who we are.“Christ Himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip His people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” Ephesians 4:11-13. God wants us to know and experience Jesus in His fullness, for ourselves. The result is that we will do what He did – He lived to obey His Father.

If you happen to be a pastor, prophet, apostle, evangelist etc. then you are merely one of Christ’s gifts to His Body. You are a GIFT … you are not the star .. HE is the star! I’m so OVER people following other people who are supposedly more spiritual than we are! When we follow other people and their revelations, we begin to lose sight of our Saviour personally, and we start following man-made directives. That means that we start thinking like Pastor Rex or the Apostle George, and shape our lives around the way they think and preach. No wonder the Lord said it was a huge responsibility to be a teacher – people could end up following individuals instead of Him! The Lord Jesus is so kind, He does not want us to have second-hand faith – He wants us to have our own testimonies of His active grace in our lives. 

Meanwhile, I do wish that some leaders would tell me HOW to apply the scriptures into my life instead of merely explaining what it says. I think it is a leader’s job to teach us HOW. In 1 Corinthians11:1, Paul says: “Follow my example, AS I follow the example of Christ.” How did Paul follow Christ? Wholeheartedly to his death!!  If I choose to learn information from someone else and I do not personally learn how to let Jesus carry me through life’s impactful situations;  I will have nothing at all to stand on. I need to hear from God for myself, and follow Him, step by step. As I do that I will learn about HIM and His Ways for myself.

Leaders LEAD – they are not just there to pray for us when our prayers appear to be hitting the ceiling. They give direction, encouragement, they take the scriptures and make it plain to ordinary people, and we all add new believers to our churches. Sometimes they lead by example, showing their flocks how the scriptures have impacted their lives. They teach us obedience, and submission. 

Paul explained the teachings of Christ brilliantly and he lived that way, himself. Best advice ever … don’t follow anyone who does not live the way they speak, especially if they never ever share their missteps or mistakes. Our God is incredibly generous, He will share His wisdom and His power with anyone who has faith and seeks it – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that individual has a Godly character. Gifted people can usher in miracles and still live this life with an unredeemed character.

We cannot afford to follow everything Brother-I-seem-to-know-a-whole-lot-of-fancy-stuff-you-don’t-know says … that road can lead to huge disappointments. Keep on FOLLOWING JESUS, do what the bible says, and read God’s book for yourself. Do what the Lord Jesus Himself did, wait on God for answers personally. It is sad to say, but the love of many has grown cold – I think this is why there is often no power of God in our churches! Yet, we have access by the Holy Spirit’s Presence to all walk in His power, not just a select few. We can all participate in the miraculous, that should be normal not extraordinary. Our lack of devotion to Christ Himself has led to many of us being passengers on someone else’s bus, instead of soldiers, daily fighting to set captives free for His sake. 

Our God is long-suffering, He puts up with a lot in His great tender mercy and love,  —- so I think He deserves our total devotion.“For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain…” Philippians 1:21. Now there’s a good verse to live by this year. Bye. 👋

P 2294 What you won’t hear me talking about….

/ DVH

… Denominations. Honestly, I could give two whoop-dee-doos about what denomination you belong to.  I only ever mention mine rarely and that is usually to give context to what I am saying. Why not …? 😶 I don’t care. I so-o-o totally don’t care about that kind of stuff, at all, because it is absolutely irrelevant to me. 

So, by way of an illustration, let’s look at an orange for a second. A fresh orange smells great, it is a fantastic colour and extremely yummy to eat. Inside it are individual segments, all separate and complete in themselves. We hardly ever analyse the orange, we just eat it. You know, I wish the body of Christ regarded their own belief systems like we regard that orange. No matter how you squeeze it, it is still an orange, and no matter what you call it, we are ALL part of the body of Christ – by choice. What you believe and what I believe probably hardly even barely resembles what Jesus thinks, and says. As far as I’m concerned, He can always have the last word.

Sometimes we can major on minor things. I don’t care if you worship God on your face, standing up, sitting down, dancing or saying nothing. It’s none of my business. If He likes it, then so do I! We will never get to unity of purpose and identity, going via the detour of doctrine and theology. If I met you, I would not care what church you go to, I will be looking for love. I will be looking for the way you treat other people, and hopefully, me. I have the strongest feeling when Jesus yells, “It’s time!” a whole lot of stuff is gunna get blown away and none of it will be love, ‘cos the Bible says: “Love remains..”

People who fight over this religious duty, and that idea, puzzle me. I have no desire to concentrate on the things that separate us, instead I would rather find the things we agree on … Because there’s power in that! So you can have your proverbial bit of the orange and I will have mine, and let’s just hope that when somebody bites into either one of us we both taste sweet. 

Today I want to talk about an incident that recently. Because we are older and need help, the government provides us with someone who comes to clean our floors, once a fortnight. This last time, it was a bloke, and he was kind of unusual, to say the least. He asked us what we needed him to do, and then proceeded to tell us why he couldn’t do it because it was all against the rules! Somehow this dear chap – who had more words than a dictionary – hit a bad button for the slightly-battered-by-life’s-immediate-circumstances pensioners who live in this house. The dear fellow proceeded to tell us that everything we needed him to do was not permitted.

As all his predecessors for the past 15 years, have done these things without a whimper or one complaint, my dear long-suffering hubby was not thrilled! After we had sorted out what was ‘legal’ and what was not … FYI we didn’t ask him to take his clothes off, or wallpaper and paint the house, we just asked him to vacuum and wash some of our floors!! 😱 He insisted he was right and did so over and over again, endlessly. His manager explained to us that some of his points were accurate, and so we asked him to please send us a list of these rules we had never seen or heard about. Inside my head, I thought: “Well dang! There goes our opportunity to love on this guy,’ and then the Holy Spirit whispered to me: ”Ask people to pray,” so I did.

The Lord turned everything around! Despite hubby’s misgivings that he too had blotted his copy book by being so openly cross, the Lord Jesus encouraged him to pray for the cleaner who had a very sore elbow. The dear fellow submitted to it cheerfully, and we had a short discussion about the formal, traditional church where he worships, and what he believes. We did not feel the need to convert him to our way of thinking, hubby just prayed for his arm.

Then we blessed him for his hard work and sent him merrily on his way. My husband said after he’d left: “I did not know that God could use me to reach someone after I’d been so cross with them.” That BTW, is how we both knew it was the Lord, the guy got blessed, and we both learnt something! Sometimes, all our enemy has to do is point out our errors and differences, and then that’s us – knocked right out of the ball game because we’ve forgotten we’re forgiven! It’s time we learnt that God is bigger than our stinky attitudes, and His love will go through any barrier – even denominational ones. Bye 🤗

P 2156 Our children belong to all of us.

/ DVH

The Western world has very firm ideas about how to raise kids. No smacking or corporal punishment of any kind. You are supposed to reason with them, or maybe bargain with them, and/or bribe them. Well that’s not in my bible! And it could be why we have teenagers rampaging about, doing things that are not good for the community or themselves. Many kids are being left alone daily by their parents in favour of a bigger TV, car or house. Kids need love and attention, first. 

The first point I want to make today is this: nobody’s flesh is reasonable. Even children are little bags of ‘gimme gimme, I want want … ’ We are the adults, we need to carefully choose what is actually good for them. Meanwhile despite public opinion, kids are not basically good – left to their own devices they can create havoc. While I agree that we should not thump the daylights out of a child to govern its behaviour – because when you do that you introduce fear – we definitely need to do much better than we’ve been doing. Toothless warnings don’t work. If we don’t discipline our children then rebellion takes over. “Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; The rod of discipline [correction administered with godly wisdom and lovingkindness] will remove it far from him.”  Proverbs 22:15. 

My best advice is first of all, asap, introduce kids to Jesus. We desperately need people prepared to dedicate their lives to raising the next generation for the Lord – people who are called by God, to witness to and share with kids. And then we must deliberately DISCIPLE them. Teach them daily how to follow Him. It can be helpful to remember that you are teaching individual children. Blanket statements are not as effective – the Lord Jesus sees individuals so we should too. He knows their names! When you have a bunch of kids together you will quickly find none of them are the exactly same. Love the kid in front of you like it is the only one. And BTW, don’t typecast them either. Nobody is all one thing.

Back when I was an active parent, I learnt that some children need strong discipline, and others barely need a feather… plus a whole range of stuff in between. So you really do need to know what is what, before you sail forth and do them harm! Discern the child’s nature as well as the reason for its behaviour. Back to my point – our children belong to all of us – this world around us will not profit if we only care about OUR kids. There are too many orphan-spirited kids in our world today. Children get into mischief and trouble without supervision. We are so busy saving the whales, etc. we’ve forgotten, first of all! –  We need to save our children! They won’t magically arrive as mature adults – they need direction and supervision.

I want to share a story from my own history. When my son was much younger, he used to play with a kid who lived up the road. That kid was a bit of a bully. One day this boy picked up a big lump of concrete and threw it at my son’s head and hit him on the temple. There was blood everywhere … I calmed my boy down and fixed his head, then, my temper took my feet out of the front door. I’m pretty sure I was NOT thinking very Christian thoughts at the time … I imagine I left my Christianity in the sock drawer! I was so furious, I marched up the street and banged on the front door of the other boy’s house. 

This boy’s father was often home and the man was a huge fellow.  Sadly, I can’t tell you why he was home – I didn’t know them well enough. At the time I was shaking like a leaf with anger … as well as quite a bit of fear chucked in. However, when he opened the door I still shouted at him. I told him to control his son or else … I have no idea what I was going to do about it if he didn’t BTW! The guy just kept laughing at me and slurping his beer – I truly don’t think I had much of an impact on him at all. However, he must have told his son to stop playing with mine and there were no further incidents. 

Recently, I’ve begun to realise that when you are under pressure, what is really INSIDE you – comes OUT. And the only kid I cared about that day was mine! At the time I was not even remotely concerned about the poor kid who had a beer-in-his-hand-father-drinking-away-at-two-o’clock-in-afternoon!  I’ve repented, but I don’t ever really remember even apologising to the guy nor did I speak again to that boy. I just sort-of kind-of avoided them after that. I let my embarrassment and pride win.

My point is this, these kids are the future, and it is unrealistic to label badly behaved kids as: ”Somebody else’s problem,” like somehow we have no part in them. Undeserved kindness has a profound influence on kids, I know it did on me when I was young – I can actually remember the names of people who were kind to me. Punishment may become necessary, but it needs to be tempered with wisdom and mercy. Psalms 127:3 says: “Children are God’s love-gift; they are heaven’s generous reward.” Matthew 18:10:“Be careful that you not corrupt one of these little ones. For I can assure you that in heaven each of their guardian angels always see the face of My heavenly Father.” Mark 9:36&37 “Then He had a child come and stand among them. He wrapped the child in His arms and said to them.“Whoever welcomes a little child in My Name welcomes Me.”

I have learnt the hard way that when things get difficult we can easily forget what we believe – in favour of simply taking care of our own. We all live on the same planet and we need to remember that today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. This world’s children belong to us all.  We simply must care enough to help them find their true selves in Christ. 👋🏻