P 3416 Do you — everyone else is taken.

The Lord has given us a brilliant tool – the bible – to help us to tighten up this screw of doctrine that may be loose, and that bolt of our creed that rusted out or needs replacing. That’s what the bible is for — transformation. It’s been given to us to encourage us day by day, and to correct our course when we wander off chasing random butterflies. The Lord “.. knows the plans He has for YOU, plans to give you a hope and a future …”

Jesus Christ, the Living Word, came to earth and died for each one of us. At the same time I know that Jesus is still continuing to speak, through ordinary vessels in His body. What HE says is important, not the vessel. We must stop putting pressure on our leaders by expecting perfection from them when we haven’t even achieved it for ourselves! Remember, what you and I know about Jesus, personally, is our testimony, and I don’t have your testimony! Neither of us need to be eloquent, we just need to be truthful. His Word is indestructible and more stable than the earth we stand on. My words won’t last one nano-second, but His Word stands forever. 

Personally, I believe that we will still be reading the bible in heaven. Why? Because it tells real stories of His love for us, and lovers love to hear things about each other. My faith is not in me, it is not in you — it is not in some famous brother or sister in the Lord who, praise God, reaches thousands of people. My faith is in the living written Word of God, the Living Word Himself, Jesus Christ! The Holy One. The Righteous One. Whatever He says is true.

The Lord Jesus saw the people around Him clearly, and He went right to the heart of the matter in their lives. He didn’t even have to try.  Love just flowed out of Christ like water. … Until one terrible wonderful day they pierced His side and then water flowed out onto, and into, this earth. God’s Word can teach us, you and I, how to see Him through our own renewed grateful, worshipful eyes. Here’s what Paul saw in Ephesians 3:9-11.

“Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to His eternal purpose that He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Paul knew that Jesus had so much life in Him that one man was never going to be able to describe the Lord completely. So we have Luke, Mark, Matthew, John, Peter, James, John and Jude to help us. They are inspired by the Holy Spirit Who knows Jesus and our Heavenly Father personally. We can excuse our lack of sharing what we personally know about the Lord with others, by saying things like: “I’m not as eloquent as Paul ..” Who is??

The thing is, unless we choose to be someone who walks with Him, we will miss the blessing of holding the Holy Spirit’s hand and walking into brand new, and sometimes scary territory, but we will be taking that territory back for Christ. We are not just witnesses to what happened to Jesus, we are witnesses to what happened after He left this world! What He has done in your life and mine. 

We can’t beat any kind of fear by avoiding the things we are afraid of … we beat fear by facing it and doing whatever it is anyway.  And the glory of this whole administration of gifts is the Holy Spirit knows exactly how you should minister your gift. Someone else can point you in the right direction, but because the Lord knows you, inside and out, He knows how to walk you through truthfully witnessing and sharing His love with others.

God’s Word has millions of applications, and sadly, most of them are still hidden because the church just keeps right on copying the people we greatly admire. But everybody has something to contribute! Hubby recently kicked his toe on a skirting board at our house and he limped for ages. It hurt! He has nine other toes that didn’t hurt but when that one little toe met the skirting board it jumped up and down and made every other cell in his body aware that it was ‘not happy Jan!”

This is why I say: ‘don’t follow me, you’ll end up in a ditch.’ We can follow someone else the way they follow the Lord, but that is meant to lead to us into a bigger place, where we learn to be ourselves-in-Christ. This world doesn’t need clones, it needs real, truthful, testifying people. The Apostle Peter was very outspoken, yet you don’t hear a peep out of James, son of Alphaeus, who was also a faithful disciple – and one of the twelve. Yeah I didn’t know him either until I looked him up!

We have this incredible kaleidoscope of colour available to us and yet we keep painting Christ in monochromatic ways as we seek to influence this world around us. Let’s stop narrowing other people’s view of Him. Be the ‘you’ Christ meant you to be, sincerely walk with Him, and stay open to being transformed by being near Him. Do YOU! Someone else needs to hear you talk about HIM. Bye.👋.

P 2733 Let’s let PAUL pray for us.

“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being,  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. Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” Ephesians 3:16-21. 

Aren’t we blessed to be His? After all, God has made His love available to you and I, in so many ways, through Jesus Christ, as revealed by the Apostle Paul. Most of us are in fact, Gentiles. Now there’s an interesting thought to start our day. I’ve been praying bits of the bible for myself for years. I pray this other verse too … ya just gotta love Ephesians! Here’s chapter 1:V18: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people, …” Amen to that one as well. I need that! Hope deferred can make my heart sick, but hope that is recognised enlightens my inner eyes.

Praying the scriptures is another way to digest them. Meanwhile, it seems to me that we can all use greater spiritual vision. Here’s an interesting thought, I’ve noticed something interesting, older people seem to gain spiritual vision as they start losing their physical eyesight. I wonder if that works for hearing too? However, it seems kind of a shame that you can see stuff more clearly just when your energy starts to run out! But then again there’s that other thing that Paul said elsewhere in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 …  “His Grace is sufficient for us, for His strength is made perfect in weak people …” Now that’s definitely a cheery thought! I’m weak all the time, how about you? This means we can all be stronger, spiritually!

Most of us know that verse off by heart, but do you know the rest of it? “Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Let’s just pause there for a minute, Paul is saying that he is glad, to the point that it gives him pleasure — that he is weak. Because now he has to rely upon God’s strength and not his own. I wonder if anybody is brave enough to pray:  “Lord please make me weak so I can be strong in You.” Do I hear an Amen? ….Moo-ving on… Actually I don’t think Paul is over emphasising anything. I believe HE LIVED THAT WAY. Instead of barraging heaven with personal prayers for relief from our difficulties, maybe it is time we started to thank the Lord for giving us the opportunity to be weak and helpless, so we can be strong in Him, in the middle of whatever is going on!!

The bible is designed to challenge us at every turn. It says so many incredible things that it becomes easy just to nod our heads and say, ‘yes, that’s great – hallelujah!’ But as we’ve seen before, nothing will change just because we agree with it. I honestly don’t think the Apostle Paul was prone to exaggeration or that he indulged in overbearing rhetoric – I think that he did not say one word that was not alive and active in his own life. As well as prayerful about. So what does that mean to us? Only you can answer that question.

So when he says:‘ask for the power to comprehend how deep, wide and all-encompassing God’s love is…” – let’s just ask expectantly for it! Let’s pretend it’s an important parcel and wait and watch for it to turn up! It’s not like we have to dig and slog away to try and find it. That’s what it says, so why not take the man’s word and ask the Lord for it? I think that sort of comprehension of the power and passion of God’s love for us has to change us, and mark us forever. Let’s ask … and keep on … asking!

Praise the Lord we have a book full of these things and they all belong to us. Feel free to cheer, after you catch your breath at the enormity of it all. Like I said at the beginning, let’s let Paul, as well as Peter, and Jude and John, all the authors of this book, pray for us. It’s in the book, so we can’t get muddled up about it. Bye. 👋

PS: JESUS HIMSELF PRAYED FOR US TOO, THAT’LL REALLY BLOW OUR MINDS! LOOK IT UP. 🤪

P 2581 Living Grace.

“God’s marvellous grace has manifested in Person, bringing salvation for everyone. This same grace teaches us how to live each day as we turn our backs on ungodliness and indulgent lifestyles, and it equips us to live self-controlled, upright, godly lives in this present age.” Titus 2:11-12 TPT.

Our God’s great grace has been manifest in Christ. In order to understand it we must carefully observe and interact with Him. Jesus Christ is God’s grace in human form. I deliberately said that today, because sometimes grace is reduced to a nebulous thing that we are supposed to have toward everyone else, as well as live by it. Nebulous things add to uncertainty and they are definitely hard to grab hold of!  

Our uncertainty disappears when we understand that Christ is God’s illustration of grace, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness etc. in action! Almighty God gave us a glorious gift – CHRIST. Grace we can see and hear in His book. Reading the Gospels makes us acquainted with what grace looks like because it is the way SomeOne lived. It is not about stories – the stories Jesus told are illustrations of God’s ways in action. If all we do is read the Gospels and think, “oh that’s so nice.” We missed the point!  These ‘stories’ show us how to act and react!

Jesus Christ is God’s LIVING GRACE. God does not need visual aids – He went way beyond them to sending SomeOne Who would illustrate a lifestyle! The bible is not just teaching – Jesus, in the Person of the Holy Spirit,  is with us so we can learn His Ways. The way Christ lived His life, is the way we have been designed to live ours. Yeah. Ya might want to sit and think on that one for the next 20 years. 

It is error to think that Jesus could do stuff because He is God’s Son and He is ‘special.’ He’s not superman who came from another planet and that means He can do stuff we can’t!  He did not operate in some sort of incredible way that meant He always did things right and was full of the power of God all the time. He simply chose to live in the Holy Spirit’s Presence in all things.  

Jesus Christ chose to come to earth and be a man – that’s Grace and Love IN ACTION. That was a normal little baby boy born in Bethlehem, He chose to learn about God from when He was young, and He did so well at it He amazed all the people who supposedly knew everything! Jesus made knowing God His priority from His youth. He had grace on His life as a child.

But He was tempted just like we are. The difference between Him and us, is that He said no! There is great power in our NO! I know that today, it seems like ‘no’ is an optional extra, but it isn’t. Saying no to temptation and sin is the way into bringing that new heart God gave us into this life … our reality. Doing what God wants becomes our life-blood. It’s the way to be dead to self and alive to God. And every single thing you do counts! Praise God we can repent from our lack of single-mindedness and go back and partake of His grace – over and over again.

We are limiting ourselves by thinking that Christ was some sort of special-case human being so He could do stuff we cannot. That is a lie from the pit. “God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.” 1 John 4:17.

Fear of over-stepping our place in God … is still FEAR!  We start to overstep when we use God for our own purposes or benefit.  Our Lord Jesus Christ was the perfect example of grace in action. He had authority, but it was love-based authority, and He allowed His Father to decide what that looked like! Our hearts matter, and God knows when we choose to excuse ourselves rather than obey. It is the things that we choose to do that can shoot us down. Power can be misused by self-indulgence, instead of ushering in God’s kingdom! Jesus came to serve, and so we are here to serve – God first, and then others. 

God’s Grace is not of this world. It is a heavenly quality which is to be lived out in everyday life. And when we look deeply into how Christ acted, and what He said, we gain His clues from His lifestyle. He lived in grace, He constantly gave away grace even to His tormentors.  Like I said, the things Jesus said are not just stories or parables – they are a way to live. Paul, Luke, John and Jude etc. developed these themes in the Epistles. They tell us how these things worked in their lives. In Paul’s case they give us further revelation of what God did when He sent us Christ, why He did it, and how it works! 

The bible is God’s book about GRACE. Grace is God’s enabling power to prevail over our own sinful nature, sin in this world, and the devil. This is God Himself speaking …“I will graciously give you a new, tender heart and put a new, willing spirit inside you. I will remove your hard heart of stone and give you an obedient, responsive heart instead.” Ezekiel 36:26.

We have already been given this new heart, God gave it to us – because Christ made a way for us. Grace is LIVING  and practical it is not just a mushy attitude toward others. It is strong and powerful. Jesus Christ is our perfect example of God’s grace – alive on this earth!  He showed us that it can be done and how it is done! 👋 

P 2543 Just thinking … out loud.

“But you, my delightfully loved friends, constantly and progressively build yourselves up on the foundation of your most holy faith by praying every moment in the Spirit.Fasten your hearts to the love of God and receive the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who gives us eternal life.”Jude 1:20-21 TPT.

The bible always gives us excellent advice. However, it is in kind of flowery, pretty language that seems like a whole lot of today’s advertising – minus the exorbitant pricing! That’s why I think it is good to pause and take note of the meaning of the words, and interact with them enough to find something to do. I believe that the normal human beings who wrote these books, prayed over what they said as they wrote it down. And I know, that the Holy Spirit is so brilliant He can take what they said and translate it into something extremely meaningful for you and me, any, and every day!

So here’s a new thought that challenged me: how do we pray every moment? Sadly, I haven’t mastered that yet … but I’ve translated it to mean pray every time you think of the Lord!  I also wonder if that’s the reason why we don’t pray enough? … More on that later!  I like to treat prayer like a compass because praying helps me find true north. It tugs at my heart like the earth’s magnetic north and re-orients my perspectives. Personally, I need that, all day, every day. 

Panicking or getting angry, or feeling down has also become a cue for me to pray. But! I have been known to ‘spit the dummy’ and ‘get my crank on’ – and that means it can take a while for me to get to prayer! I actually pray a whole lot of “help” prayers. And when things are really quite bad, I pray “help help!” prayers. And when things are absolutely awful –  then I text a friend to pray for me!! I think that Jude’s point is that ongoing prayer is essential for true Christian living. That’s kind of like having prayer rumbling away inside you wherever you are, whatever you are doing. May it be so Lord Jesus! Amen.

Prayer positions us for new possibilities. Praying about stuff means I’ve made the Lord my reference point —and I’m going after the One Who knows all things and sees all things and asking Him for help. Praying gives me a new perspective on my own attitudes, new thoughts about other people, plus the Lord helps me solve problems.

Paul tells us to ‘pray without ceasing’ too. (1 Thessalonians 5:16) To be honest, praying without ceasing or praying every moment is a challenging thought to me. But just because I don’t think I can do it, I utterly refuse to excuse myself and tell myself that it can’t be done. If it’s in the book, then there’s a way!  All that means is that I haven’t found it yet!  Meanwhile, I do love that promise that praying this way will build me up in my most holy faith!! I absolutely want that!!

I read Jude in four different bibles, because it is such a really short book and I decided that I think the key to this passage is found in the part that says: “Fasten your hearts to the love of God…” That sounds like spiritual velcro to me – I know I can use some of that sort of stuff!  “Make me like sticky weed Lord, attached to You so strongly I’m aware of You all day!” Amen! This passage means as we pray all the time, we are fastening ourselves to God … all the time!  

Maybe one of the problems that we have nowadays, is that we have compartmentalised things. Perhaps we think like this… ‘This is God’s bit:  bible study, praying in the morning and evening, reading the bible, prayer groups, going to church, having coffee with a fellow believer, etc …’  AND… ‘this is MY bit… going to work/school, having fun, daily travelling about, cleaning up my house, shopping, caring for my kids, looking after my spouse’ … Many people give everything to God at the beginning of the day … and then go out and do whatever comes next. 

Here’s an even bigger thought. What if we asked the Lord to say … go to work/school/shopping with us? Not as an airy-fairy thought, but as a reality. Which means we are prepared to be part of the answer to that prayer. And then, while we are moving about we ask Him to point out someone we can share His love with? Maybe shout someone a coffee … ?  Perhaps there is someone who needs cheering up. It doesn’t have to be a two hour counselling session … sometimes … “what a great job you did on such and such …”  will do! I actually think the Lord would love to sit with us when we watch TV or video games.

Here’s a revolutionary thought … what would happen if I decided that all MY time is NOT actually my time, but HIS time – and approached that idea practically? Not just in theory, but IRL. Maybe… that’s the way to stay pointed toward our true north? Just thinking … out loud. 🤔

P 2470 “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal …

…but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.” The best way to get rid of a stronghold, is to first of all … identify it! There are some things that we can quite cheerfully call habits, or traits, or mindsets, that are against God’s greater purpose. The tragedy of that kind of scenario is that then we are often quite reluctant to part with the very thing that is holding us back from going deeper into the Lord’s plan for our lives. 

It is very easy to use the temporal things of this world to explain the stuff in our lives that has not changed, or the things we do not want to change. That’s called having a stronghold. Those things start in the mind and work their way into our everyday attitudes and actions. We dare not normalise these thingsby explaining them away, or by calling them our own personal individual attitudes … the things that make me, me! Judas did that and look at where that got him!

Sadly, strongholds mean that selfish, heartbreaking, soul destroying stuff is allowed to roam free through our lives, because we justify these things and wreak havoc on other people. Our own thought life, and internal reactions are also affected. A temper is a temper, that’s still a temper … even if your great grandfather had one too! It is not a family trait to be proud of or laughed off! Or what about having to be in control all the time? Control uses manipulation to maintain it. It avoids the personal discomfort of making different choices. At the same time as we are toddling along resisting transformation, other people are judged and crushed by our sinful decisions to remain the same.  

Because of the stronghold, we think to ourselves, there is nothing wrong with me … it’s YOU! You are, and you have the problem. If you didn’t bother me and resist my way, we’d be fine. We can hide behind our severe, sometimes judgmental thoughts, because we can’t face the truth – WE have sinned. Thinking like that is a big fat clue that we are resisting the Holy Spirit’s work in our heart and lives. If we have to exert our will to make it happen – that is the wrong spirit. Over a lifetime, we’ve learnt to dismiss and excuse destructive things, as momentary aberrations, and we’ve distanced ourselves from the very real consequences in other people’s lives.

However, our whole purpose is to be changed to be like HIM … not carry with us the details of death that have strangled and destroyed us, plus other people along the way. None of that is LOVE — and LOVE MUST ALWAYS BE OUR AIM. That Love is described in 1 Corinthians 13 and Colossians 3:13-15. Now, here is the same verse as the one above, but this time it is from the Passion Translation. I really like it, it inspired me today. 

“For although we live in the natural realm, we don’t wage a military campaign employing human weapons, using manipulation to achieve our aims. Instead, our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide.We CAN demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One. Since we are armed with such dynamic weaponry, we stand ready to punish any trace of rebellion, as soon as (we) choose complete obedience.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 TPT.

We cannot and we dare not, avoid obedience. Obedience is essential. Otherwise we will spend our lives protecting me, myself and I, and forget about poor old Fred who is half dead in the corner! If Jesus Christ chose to obey and He never sinned in thought, attitude or deed, don’t you think we need to follow His example? Telling ourselves we are OK and we don’t need to change anything, is putting another nail into the coffin, they will eventually carry us off in! Metamorphosis is part of our mandate from Almighty God. 

At the same time, if we are this careless, we are denying the power of Christ to make our old life, new. There is not one of us alive that does not need heavenly correction or change. I can’t talk for everywhere in the world, but where I live obeying the gospel means nodding your head and hoping someone else will do it for you! That’s not transformation – that’s avoidance. We avoid the opportunities God sends us to make different choices. Dying to self hurts. It is meant to, but it provides the impetus to drive us further into His ways.

We pull down personal strongholds by our choices. That means we continually choose to seek out the Holy Spirit’s correction and believe that He is bigger than our ability to resist Him.” …our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide.” And the best place to accomplish that, is to read the book and do what it says! Read Peter, Paul, Jude, James, Philemon etc … and take what they said seriously. Don’t read it and think “I don’t do that” ask the Lord …”Where do I do that? Please show me Lord.” Then we make it our personal aim to check out our behaviour and motivation toward others as we go along.

We live this new life that we have been given, alert, asking the Holy Spirit to highlight to us where we are living out of order with His words. And we value knowing Him over our own comfort. Lastly, let’s get ready to change … because you and I are going to get VERY busy. We are about to demolish some strongholds. Bye 👋🏻

P 2393 Those who have gone on before us.

“And consider the example that Jesus, the Anointed One, has set before us. Let His mindset become your motivation.” Philippians 2:5 TPT. Isn’t it marvellous that we have incredible, recorded, Godly examples to follow? Praise God we have what Christ did and said, in this book we read every day. Jesus made God’s will very clear! 

We have all of the New Testament to explain how the things of God unfold and transform, and how they worked for someone else. Whether it was Paul or Peter or Jude – they all lived this way… HIS WAY. All we need to do is to take what it says seriously and apply these things we read about into our lives! The sky is the limit when somebody starts living their life doing what God’s book says for Jesus’ sake.

Here’s something that Peter said: “Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.” 2 Peter 1:3 MSG. Peter knew that what he was given was also for others who would come after him – that’s you and I. 👏 We have been left an enormous inheritance by these great men and women of faith. 

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that getting to know Jesus is a series of endless spiritual experiences. It is so much more than that – we get to live the way He lived and do what He did – we get to be like Him, in this world. His loving heart, His Character, His devotion to the Father. Jesus Christ shows us how to live a transformed life of devotion to God and He actively taught us what God wants from His kids.

Let’s look at His disciples, who totally relied upon the Holy Spirit for Christ’s guidance, and they too lived overcoming lives. They lived that way in a world that used Christians for target practice, lion chum and barbecue lights! Nothing much has changed today, many Christians are still paying for their faith with their well-being, lives and health. However  I can be inspired into action, when I read about the saints’ of old’s adventures, missteps, and godly actions in His book — and from there I get the courage to have some adventures with God myself. 

Both the Old and the New Testament tell us about people who gave up this life to gain the next. They watched Almighty God work on their behalf. I’ve written down some examples from the New. Let’s look at Ananias who got a word from God and was used to restore Paul’s sight. That man was scared to bits about his God-given assignment, but he did it in spite of his fear. He teaches me that fear does not have to win! Plus, I can simply go and do whatever God tells me, I don’t have to feel like it.

There was another Ananias – Ananias and Sapphira. That couple taught me that lying to God and others has a really really bad ending! Or Timothy, who listened carefully to his mother and his grandmother, and ended up as a companion to Paul. He had two whole books in the bible written for his personal edification. Timothy has taught me that godly mothers with faith are powerful people. 

Or Simon Magus the magician. He taught me the Holy Spirit cannot be bought. Grace can embrace the Holy Spirit but a lack of Grace, together with greed, sends Him away. Or there was Stephen, who waited tables and witnessed to the Sanhedrin, Jerusalem’s supreme rabbinic court. He recited the whole Jewish history from Abraham to Christ! I believe Stephen’s pure faith, together with everything the Holy Spirit gave him to say, had an effect on Saul as he stood and watched that stoning, and heard Stephen pardon his murderers as he died. This shows me that the word of God is a SEED – it has the power to change a life. Stephen died, but Paul eventually converted!

We have these witnesses in God’s book to help us to enrich our own faith. We don’t have to stay within the status quo, living our lives in dull little always-acquiring-new-things lives. We can be led by God Himself, the Holy Spirit, to “go into all the world and preach the gospel…” Acts 1:8. Hubby and I are about to go out again into Samaria, even though we preach the gospel where we live, to anyone who will listen. 

We go out there where the people are and to our amazement – Jesus is out there too!  Listen to what Jesus said about the Samaritan woman and her village in Samaria: “Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.”John 4:34&35. What more do we need than… ‘GO?’ That was enough for the people in the book.👋🏻