John

P 2236 What is your foundation like?

/ DVH

“Everyone who hears My teaching and applies it to his life can be compared to a wise man who built his house on an unshakable foundation.” Matthew 7:24 TPT.  Every now and then we need to look closely at the things we believe, and deliberately revise our foundations – the things we stand on. Sometimes we have accidentally added stuff into that foundation that will not bear the weight of what is to come. We need the Word of God itself and what Jesus Christ intentionally did for us – to be our firm foundation. It is way too easy to have added in some exciting new doctrine, or even something we were specifically taught years ago by somebody we admire. God’s word does not change – but fads, spiritually speaking – come and go.

We need what we stand on to be stable. So trouble should not change what we believe, nor should it steal from us, permanently. Our Heavenly Father, graciously gives us further revelations about what He has already said in the book, to enlarge what we already know and believe. But those things are not given to replace our true foundation … Christ and His complete work. However, revelation often extends what we believe into a wider place. (Isaiah 54:2) There is always room for more of Almighty God. 

Unfortunately, we can start building our lives on peripheral doctrines that are presented by teachers within the wider Body of Christ. These things can be very popular, from well-known teachers, or people who have large churches, plus already established ministries. It is a good thing to want to grow and develop spiritually in our own lives, but we need to take care what we devour. We eat from His book not just from someone’s else’s thoughts, no matter how appealing they are – or how many scriptures they have cobbled together to prove their point. 

Take this blog. My aim in writing this is to encourage the reader to learn to rely upon the Word of God – the bible, and the Holy Spirit – input from other believers is secondary. I would never suggest that anyone blindly follow me because, like everyone else I don’t know much – I definitely know I am not “done” yet! I could spend hundreds of lifetimes and still not absorb everything the Holy Spirit wants to teach me. His knowledge is simply that incredibly vast. The only Person Who is worth following slavishly is the Holy Spirit, and what He has said is … in the book. So we need to take the time to revise whatever is currently being taught, under His guidance. Life can be difficult, and some teaching seems to be a short cut to maturity. In my very limited experience there are no short cuts.

Just because the Lord has kissed gifts within any church, that does not mean the speakers or leaders are infallible. Any one of us can be sincerely wrong. This is why it is essential that we don’t just swallow things willy-nilly because we happen to like what is being said, or even if it seems to appeal to our hearts. We need to test out the spirits – (1 John 4:1-6). Many sincere people have been led astray simply because they followed a personality in lieu of Christ Himself. People are easier to follow because we can see them! 

For example during the Charismatic movement we rediscovered that God loves to heal us. That is true. At that time you couldn’t walk into some churches, without being told that it isn’t God’s will for us to be sick. I agree, the bible says so. However, that scripture is balanced out by many others including:  “…there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” … If any teaching about healing condemns us, then it is not firm enough to stand on. Conviction and condemnation are two very different things! And Christianity is not a competition to be won because of what we do or don’t believe. Whatever leads us into despair, that thing is making our foundation faulty. Instead give those thoughts to the Lord, and pray over them. Then study that subject in the bible for yourself until it becomes part of what you have personally absorbed – part of you.

We need to test the spirits, and balance is an important part of sound doctrine. (2 Timothy 2:15) So instead of blithely “liking” this person or “that church” let’s just fall in love, over and over again, with the bible and the Person Who wrote it.  The above scripture in Matthew 7 specifies that we need an unshakeable foundation – not just an appealing one. Christ’s life, death and resurrection are our unshakeable foundation. We need to build on top of that. So every now and then we need to go back and pull out anything that shakes our faith in Who He is and how good He is. If our faith is resting on whether some revelation or not is true or not – then we may need some spiritual renovations. In our humanity, we can desperately need something else, an answer, an idea, more than the Lord Himself. 

Anything that places itself above Jesus has to go. HE IS ALL WE WILL EVER NEED. 👋🏻

P 2233 There is no light like His light.

/ DVH

The world we live in today does not like the light, so it has hidden and distracted itself away from it. Maybe they like to think it is more fun in the dark … but the real truth is, they don’t know any better. I am of the opinion that the church needs to stop throwing rocks and abuse at the-people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet, and begin to realise that we are also guilty of ignoring the light of God! What’s our excuse? We know the truth, and the-people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet don’t even know exactly WHO they are rejecting!

John 1:9-12 “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.”

Just because we’ve been blessed by the Holy Spirit with spiritual insight that Jesus Christ IS Who He says He is – that does not mean we can skate merrily on by waiting for our turn to go to heaven one day. We act like salvation is the Lord’s final goal. His goal is transformation – which is a very b-i-g step beyond salvation. It’s called total surrender and it’s not just for the pastor or the evangelist.  Every single Christian has a purpose, a role in His plan. Let us recognise what we are here for and go and do it.

The power of recognition relies upon sight, and sight relies upon LIGHT. Sadly, the people of this world cannot see Christ, because the church is not being the LIGHT. Yet, the bible tells us clearly that we are to be the light of this world … Jesus said so: in Matthew 5:14:“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.”  However, being the light doesn’t mean we just run about constantly pointing out the dark – it means we shine with the reality of Christ IN us. We glow with His light and love, and that ushers in illumination and revelation. The people around us will see the darkness when we shine.. “But when Simon Peter saw this, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, “Go away from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!” Luke 5:8. Take the time to learn how to shine.

So, how does the Lord’s church in 2023 manage to remain hidden? By our personal, and denominational choices. We’ve said ‘yes’ over time to so many things that the Lord does not agree with, that this world hardly knows what we actually stand for. Sadly, when we do stand up and say: ‘Well, you can’t do that, that’s against our religion” … This world turns around and says – “Good gracious, are YOU still here?? I thought you’d all died off years ago.”

The world around us does not know Who Christ is because we’ve failed Him. Time to repent. We reduced the Living Word of Almighty God to images. A baby in a manger, a cross on a chain, a big black book. We are here to be His Word in this world, alive and visible to everyone around us. That’s what light does. It shows up what’s in the darkness by illuminating stuff.

In this current age, Christians would much rather tell this world where it is WRONG – than love them – we say: “it’s too hard to love them, they are impossible.” Instead of blaming them – it is time to examine ourselves! We need to live this life shining with His love for others. “They will know we are Christians by our love …”  For us that means ‘show’ as well as ‘tell.’  You know if we want to truly follow Jesus, like the disciples did, then we will have to walk down the same roads He walked on. Transformation into light happens on that journey. 

Christianity is not meant to be a walk in the park, or a trip to a fun fair – with lots of groovy rides. We are on a death march. Our reward is not in this life. We have watered down the gospel to make it somehow more palatable, and doing that has diminished what Christ died to do. We need to repent before it is too late, or we will never reach our full potential in this life. Sadly humanity habitually thinks that we all have more time.

Our times are always in His hands … however, let’s remember that it is always time to be about our Master’s business. Even when we are very busy walking down some dusty road and we see someone bruised and bleeding in the dirt. We are never too busy to serve humanity. Christ wasn’t ever too busy – and being His light means we don’t have that option either.  👋🏻

P 2213 That tomb!!

/ DVH

John 20:1-2 “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.  So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put Him!”

11-14 “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put Him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.” 

In my opinion, Mary was not expecting to meet Jesus, because she thought He was dead. Every single story about God, mankind, and death in the bible shows us humanity’s responses and reactions to disaster and total desolation. We give up. We cry a lot. And then we mostly sit in the dirt, railing at God. At the time of the morning of the resurrection, people’s individual responses show us how easily human beings wander off into faithlessness, hopelessness, despair and unbelief and fear.

Grief is normalised in Ecclesiastes 3, and in the Beatitudes, but the men and women who walked with Jesus show us that despite the fact that they were warned in advance – human beings don’t cope with death. We can have our little theories and happy thoughts, but … just wait until those theories are tested!  Death seems final. Nobody expected His resurrection.

Even though the Lord told His disciples, in person, that He would rise again. Maybe their old religious thoughts got in the way. Not one of them said: ‘But, hang on a minute, the Lord told us He was going to die, and He would rise from the dead. So maybe this is that. Let’s not lose hope?!’  Every single one of them got stuck in loss, fear and grief. Not to mention they were all locked in the upper room to keep the bad guys OUT. To them, Jesus was dead and those who thought they saw Him were nuts or deluded. In the end a couple of those men went to check out Mary’s story for themselves. And one of them was a hero and went in … and the other waited outside.

Meanwhile total unbelief emerged toward anyone who actually saw the Lord in person! This shows me that it doesn’t matter what we think we know, or what we hear, or what we seem to believe – if we do not deal with it, unbelief and fear take over pretty darn quickly. But to the disciples, the tomb was a tomb and there was a blooming great rock in front of it, plus Roman guards. Meanwhile I never did figure out how Mary thought she was going to move the rock to get in for those burial rituals! That’s the thing with graves – they look permanent and they can steal away your hope.

Jesus predicted His death to His disciples on at least three different occasions. (Mark 8:31-33, 9:30-32 and 10:32-34.) But I’m not really sure the disciples actually heard Him. To be honest with you, I have often wondered whether they were totally attentive and listening to Him in the first place when He said it!  Yet they all saw Lazarus, who was dead 3 days, come out of his tomb, very much alive just a short while ago. It seems to me that the disciples were utterly shattered by the events that put the Lord Jesus in the tomb in the first place. That, plus the fact that they all ran away at a crucial moment.

I have come to the conclusion that there are times when we only hear what we want to hear.  And bad news ain’t it! I’ve also learnt how easy it is for despair to throttle the daylights out of you. Sigh. Christ’s tomb was empty, and the disciples had no idea how to deal with that either. They were still mourning the loss of the new way of life they had found. However, the kindness of Almighty God in that moment is glorious. Christ comes to them in Person, He sounds just like He did before He died.

And then He rebukes them because they didn’t believe each other. Why didn’t the majority believe the few? Perhaps that is because I can only believe what happens to ME. I probably think to myself, ‘that’s nice for you’ – if I hear a story about something fabulous happening in your life. But this is where the rubber hits the road – this is how we know we are not yet transformed, or living our lives by faith in the Son of God.  

On this Easter Sunday morning, we need this fantastic resurrection story because OUR OWN FAITH NEEDS TO BE RESURRECTED. We have let it languish in pits of despair, disappointment and dread and hidden it in tombs. We have to come out of our spiritual tombs and start living that resurrected life – right here, right now. I wonder if the Lord would say to some of us: “Where is YOUR faith?” 

All around us, this world is living without hope. Today of all days … please, please … tell someone who doesn’t know it, that …”Jesus Christ is alive, HE IS NOT DEAD.” 👋🏻

“My heart and soul explode with joy—full of glory! Even My body will rest confident and secure. For you will not abandon Me to the realm of death, nor will You allow Your Faithful One to experience corruption.” Psalms 16:9-10 TPT