Judgment

P 2845 This is what love looks like.

/ DVH

Grace, hope, peace, joy, mercy, patience, kindness, these things are the love of God freebies we are to give away to other people every single day! The bible tells us that giving away this stuff is not even illegal. Galatians 5:22-23:“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Well, yay!! It’s great to find things that are legal! Sneezing on your kid is now called child abuse, so there isn’t much around us that isn’t illegal. The thing is legal systems can’t change hearts, but He can!

Regarding Love, Father God’s barns are always bulging full – there is no trouble with OUR SUPPLIER! I keep hearing from the Lord, it’s time to feed the poor in spirit! You and I have an all access-pass to that bulging barn of love-joy-peace-patience-kindness-goodness etc. we simply need to use our faith to grow the fruit, and then we can give away what He has grown in us. You get patience, kindness etc. as you lean on Him and ask Him to give it to you. Then you go out and act like you have it… Does that actually work? It has so far … !!! 

The spreading of any sort of excess is a very current subject in our household over the past few weeks. Our mango tree had stacks of fruit on it this year, so we have given away lots of huge mangoes, the largest was nearly 1kg in weight! We gave them away everywhere, to everyone around us. That’s what happens when you have an abundance of something, it means you have plenty to give away. I urge all of us to daily let the Lord overflow your spirit with loads of … lots of … an abundance of … as well as a huge excess of … all these things!! So you can give them all away! But make sure you take in some yourself OK?

The only thing that can take away our knowledge of His incredible excess is our focus. If we focus on our lack, of  patience, kindness, goodness etc. we will always see and feel that lack. That’s a good time to remember that Jesus took 5 loaves and 2 fishes and fed thousands. He can multiply and create anything, even intangible things. He once gave me love for a spoiled brat… strangely — after I began loving this child, I found it was a sweet kid after all! That’s what I mean when I say, most problems are both sides! The Lord has also multiplied bibles in the boot of our car. We counted them about 20 times, and sure enough, there was more than we put in! 

The poor in spirit, the unlovely, the forgotten, will never be hard for us to find because they are all around us. I’ve decided to just love everyone I meet the way He would. I figure that covers it, and makes it easy for a bird brain like mine. That’s not modesty BTW, as you get older things fall out of your ears far more easily than you would like!  I forget words all the time, always in the middle of a sentence. My poor hubby gets to be my memory bank, concordance, and dictionary all at once. And you thought your spouse was a pest! Meanwhile, hubby just shared these thoughts with me regarding God’s love:

“The expression of God’s love toward others is the fruit of HIS Spirit in us and through us. So His fruit is simply an expression of Who He is flowing outward. When we display His fruit of love, through us, it will produce life, simply because it flows from Him. But when we try to mimic the behaviour of the fruit of Spirit, without His help, those things without His love as our source – eventually produce judgment, intolerance, guilt, obligation and religion.” “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”John 3:6. 

The sap of God’s love in and through His chosen vine is constantly flowing … we will receive its benefits as we choose to remain in that vine. Remaining “in Christ” is the secret to living a life of love. Jesus simply can’t help loving people, despite their personal proclivities – He simply wants what is best for them without using force or manipulation.  Remaining in Him means that we learn to want what He wants, instead of living a life that makes us feel comfortable.

That will happen without us even thinking about it. This is what His Love looks like…. letting the Holy Spirit have His Way … and … loving every bit of it!  🥰

P 2707 Somebody’s been at the Kool-aid again!

/ DVH

Have you ever heard someone prophesy in church, or had somebody give you a word and you thought: ’huh??’  Well that was a bit weird?’ At this point you may be tempted to run around yelling: ‘That person has their marbles scrambled – fruit-loop alert!’  Don’t do it … don’t do it …don’t do it! Resist the temptation. You might learn something,God taught one guy with a talking donkey, and Jesus taught His disciples with a tree! Now at this point a religious person could observe: ‘Of course when we act like that, that’s judgment.’ Oh right… thanks for your input! 🙄

I’ve asked the Lord once, about whatever it was that someone else said that sounded off to me, and He replied: “What’s that got to do with you? Your part is to follow Me.” Well, there’s me in my box with the lid nailed on. There are times when somebody who says they are listening to the Holy Spirit can get it wrong.They stand up and announce that the end of the world will be the last Friday of this month, and that Friday comes and goes … and!!!  … Nuthin’ happening here…!  Then people can start avoiding that person like they have the plague. Here’s a thought maybe we could let them learn from their own mistakes? We all make them!

We simply must refrain from slicing and dicing people with gossip and judgment etc., we need to repent, and ask for the Holy Spirit’s insight instead.  Why? Because even though someone’s word was not accurate, we can still learn something. Maybe the thing we can learn is this: it is not the height of wickedness to get a message scrambled, or to ‘hear’ the wrong morse code!  As a group we can become so lazy and put such pressure on other people to be ‘the mouth of God! We even do it to our pastors. These are human beings right? They put their pants on one leg at a time like you do!

The pressure to be always right and ‘speak for God’ is too big for one person.”Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said.” 1 Corinthians 14:29. At the same time, we don’t have to go home and pack our bags, and make sure our wills are in order — just because Brother So-and-so announced the sky is falling. Ask the Lord – what’s in that for me to learn? Then quietly move on. Plus … try not to peer at the sky all day on that Friday!! 😳

Meanwhile, my take-away from what Brother So and so said is …“LIVE READY.” That way I’m learning to walk with Jesus and ready at any given moment. That’s in the book. Now if, by chance, that prophetic brother keeps on revising the date of the apocalypse – then PRAY FOR HIM. He obviously ate something that has disagreed with him. or maybe he has drunk too much Kool-aid! That can happen to all of us. That’s why unity is more important than being right. Sorting out that lost lamb is a job for the pastor, or an elder. You and I should just keep on praying for them.

Hubby and I have very different ministry gifts that enhance one another, and I am in awe at what God does with his obedience. I often watch him as the Lord works out His plans through him. Some of the time what hubby says to other people is like a bridge way-too-far-away for me. He’s so bold. I’d probably pussy-foot about and then say not very much of anything. I talked to the Lord about it and He kindly explained to me that my husband is His servant first. Well, that resolved that conflict! When Almighty God puts dibs on someone it goes straight into none-of-my-business basket. I learnt that skill the hard way. 

But what if hubby were actually wrong and his leading is inaccurate? Here’s what I’ve learnt. At times like that I can put my faith in God to redeem and transform whatever is going on for His glory. I’m no longer looking to be a smartie-pants who is always right, now I am looking for the Lord’s outcome. At the same time that doesn’t mean I can’t speak to hubby about it, lovingly. ‘…or how can two walk together unless they are in agreement?’ For the sake of unity we will need to come to a place mutually where we leave things to the Lord to sort us both out. Even if I am positive that I am right, a wrong attitude can discount love.

The bible says this is what love does — it suffers long. It believes all things, it hopes all things, it is not rude and … love can’t fail! If we choose to stand in love then we are putting ourselves on the Lord’s side. We need eyes filled with His love to see Him working. Our human POV won’t be enough, it is tainted by our own theological opinions. My point today is this – the only person who is right all the time is the Lord! The rest of us mostly muddle about.

We may find there are times when some poor soul has been at the Kool-aid – be kind. Maybe they are desperate to be heard. Whatever the reason – Almighty God is bigger than their mistakes – Jesus died to pay for their sins and errors too. Let’s practice “bearing with one another in love.” Otherwise we can end up even wrong-er than Brother So- and-so. Bye 👋

P 2696 “This is the Way.”

/ DVH

“But the love of God will be perfected within the one who obeys God’s Word. We can be sure that we’ve truly come to live in intimacy with God, not just by saying, “I am intimate with God,” but by walking in the footsteps of Jesus.” 1 John 2:5-6.

I may surprise some people when I say I have enjoyed the series – ‘The Mandalorian.’ I’ve watched it several times, and the theme behind this fictional story, is that this man lives by a strict code of honour. His tribe adopts and looks after orphans – James calls that pure religion. Man I love it!! PS I hate all the creepy, ginormous creatures in that series – the ones that startle, pounce and munch. Back to my real point, I think there is so little honour in our society today. People criticise their spouses, friends, children, parents, teachers, workplace companions, bosses, our country’s leaders, church leaders … judgment seems to flow through most people’s lives like a river. That’s a polluted river! … Bad plan.

Because God Himself honoured us with His Presence and came here as a baby – plus He chose to obey man-made rules, He set the standard for us, His kids. Jesus Christ voluntarily submitted to His parents as well as the authorities of that time. And … He didn’t judge. His desire was to please God, and benefit others – and if He had to correct people, He did it with love and grace. Then He left here and went back to heaven, but before He left He released the power for us to live like He did.

In our current society I think we have completely overlooked the very real benefits of not judging others. Judgment is like garlic, you barely have to wave that stuff over the top of food to get it to flavour whatever it is. Our society chops judgment up and throws it into everything! We simply cannot benefit from soaking in a marinade of judgment – we’ll just STINK!  Personally, I think the lack of the flavour of the Living God, in and through our lives, can easily make us distasteful to others. Let’s always remember, religion tastes terrible, but the sweetness of His Presence enriches us as well as others. Unfortunately in our world, we have learnt to call what we say an opinion, and we think it is something we are entitled to. Sadly, God Himself still calls it judgment.

The Way into living a life of honour is to make informed choices, followed up by actions – based on the Word of God. We need to act on what we read. EG: Feed the poor. If we leave caring for the poor to established institutions, we will have totally missed out on the blessing that is promised for us when we bless others! Likewise if we judge our pastors,  … for things that we do ourselves, then they may become discouraged and leave the ministry. Plus if we deliberately harbour grudges, spite, unforgiveness, hatred, anger, sarcasm and criticism then we will spread those destructive flavours around us, and they will spoil whatever we do. But when we spread love it saturates and covers all things … including SIN. Yours, mine and ours.

Please don’t waste your time waiting for the moment to be right. The best time to do good is while it’s still daylight! I find if I wait to do good to others, I can end up talking myself out of it. So I try to do what He has told me to do – right away. Here’s the very best most fun thing to do – like EVER!  Do good to the people who are deliberately maliciously mean to you. Wow! What a buzz. When I do that my feet barely touch the ground for a week. Meanwhile saturating people in His goodness, is sometimes the only thing that impacts those people who have been hardened by this life. I’m crazy about the saying: LOVE YOUR ENEMIES, IT DRIVES THEM NUTS! However, I don’t recommend actually …doing it TO drive them nuts!  ‘See through you we do.’ 

When we are intimately involved with someone we dearly love we can’t wait to see the world through their eyes. We want to spend hours together just sharing thoughts back and forth. You and I dearly love Jesus – so we need to esteem the Holy Spirit directed skill of seeing the world through His eyes. There is no judgment in the Father’s Eyes. Judgment and all our sins fell on Christ on that cross. IT’S GONE. So let’s not drag it up again. Strangely other people don’t like being reminded of their sins about as much as you and I don’t like it! Speak life instead.

We cannot successfully walk with Him if we do not walk LIKE HIM. God’s power does its best work through the humble wisdom that comes down from above. The Way to walk with God and know Him intimately and bless others, has already been provided for us. “This is the Way.” That fiction character understood the power of loyalty, and choices. Bye. 👋

P 2693 A new perspective on Giving.

/ DVH

“Give generously and generous gifts will be given back to you, shaken down to make room for more. Abundant gifts will pour out upon you with such an overflowing measure that it will run over the top! The measurement of your generosity becomes the measurement of your return.”” Luke 6:38 TPT.

Hubby and I have seen the truth in this verse, personally. The more we give away stuff – time, money, kindness, love – the more we are given back by God Himself. Then that interaction psychologically helps replenish our potential supply of stuff to give away next time. Meanwhile, we get our motivation to give from the Bible as well as the Holy Spirit. After a while, giving becomes a way of life. The thing is, we need those enlightened eyes I talked about yesterday, so we can notice the return waves of blessings from the Lord. Otherwise it can be too easy to miss whatever He is doing, because we are distracted by the busyness of this life. 

Here is what I’ve learnt over the years, which might help you: God does not always reciprocate in kind. In other words, perhaps you gave away apples, but the Lord may simply give you the strength to be kind in the face of someone else’s nasty disposition. The return wave of blessing, won’t necessarily contain the same thing you sent out. This is yet another opportunity to get to know His Ways even more. We can learn a lot about the Lord by the way He meets our needs, as well as the way He blesses us.

Which is why we need those enlightened eyes! Otherwise we won’t relate one thing to the other and we will miss what He is doing entirely. God gives us what He values, that’s how we get to know His Way of doing things – by taking note of what He values. This works when we are reading the bible, or we are using our enlightened eyes. It’s our generosity toward others that opens that particular flood-gate. He is such a giving God and it makes sense to me that the Lord would want His kids – who are re-presenting HIM – to be that way too. Encouragement is a great form of giving.

We can partially hinder the ever-expanding floodgates of His loving kindness toward us, by missing the blessing of giving. Giving is not just about things or money. He is always giving. In my limited opinion, God’s nature is so beautiful, He cannot help Himself! He gives because it is Who He is. Stepping into living a giving kind of life is one the ways I have found that we can ’taste and see that the Lord is good.” Many times we can pin our thoughts and hopes on Him answering our prayers. We think those things  are the only kind of blessing, but He has a myriad ways to give us Himself – I have even seen Him stretch time.

TIME is the most valuable thing we have …You and I woke up this morning, but some people didn’t!  This means our God has given us another day. Praise Him! That day is filled to the brim with opportunities and possibilities for change. We can choose to fix the things in our lives that are broken — EG:  we can choose to be reconciled, no matter who did what! And we can start dying to self, one step at a time. Dying to self is a process — it starts with taking one deliberate step after another. When our time runs out we won’t be able to do that, anymore. Today, I want to call our attention to the fact that there are so many places we can be generous to others.

So we choose not to give an angry answer – and instead we take charge, and take personal responsibility for a moment – instead of retaliating badly. We choose to say nothing, or give a soft answer instead. I have found nothing diffuses somebody else’s grumpy attitude better than apologising, even if you don’t think whatever it is was your fault! And yes, that means with some people you are always going to be the one who apologises, but this life is not a competition – we lose when we live that way. This life we now lead we lead by faith. We walk in another realm, a realm where giving away undeserved GRACE away flourishes.

Christians are not meant to walk around dishing out judgment. We died with Him, and we are now living a new life, filled with His power to overcome the old ways. When we get into how right we think we are and how wrong the other person is … even if that stuff is only going on in our thoughts, then sadly, we just hit judgment! That junk is going to come out of our mouth, today, tomorrow, a year from now. Judgment, when it is not dealt with, does not have a shelf life – it will pop out of our mouths at the darndest times. But blessing others becomes a way of life.

Leaving judgment to the Lord is another form of giving. We are giving away what He freely gave us. We have a personal responsibility to live like Christ did, and He lived a giving life. If we think about giving as simply sending out money or things, we’ve missed the greater revelation. JESUS LOVED, HE GAVE. Then giving becomes our way of life. Now we love, and we give – no matter what comes back at us. It’s His way to live. I think it is also part of that narrow gate, Jesus mentioned  – be warned …. few find it. 👋

P 2688 To grow faith – use supplements!

/ DVH

“So devote yourselves to lavishly supplementing your faith with goodness, and to goodness add understanding, and to understanding add the strength of self-control, and to self-control add patient endurance, and to patient endurance add godliness, and to godliness add mercy toward your brothers and sisters, and to mercy toward others add unending love. Since these virtues are already planted deep within, and you possess them in abundant supply, they will keep you from being inactive or fruitless in your pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ more intimately.” 2 Peter 1:5-8 TPT.

I love the way this version brings out a clear meaning to some quite complicated verses. I like to look at this progressive thought Peter has, as a way of walking with the Lord. If we look at these faith ‘pills’ then we can see that this kind of walking is not aimless. We are actually going somewhere when we deliberately add goodness to our fragile as well as sometimes wobbly …faith. Instead we are deliberately, step by step, walking toward unending love.

Instead of seeing these verses as a whole lotta words that seem to be joined together like beads on a string, it helps to read it as progressive instructions. Let us say my faith is lagging, I am living my daily life doing the same old, same old. My prayers seem dead and lifeless – and maybe a bit repetitious. My bible reading ends with the thought …“thank goodness that’s over with for today.” If things get difficult my first thought is nearer to: “the end of the world as I know it”  … than it is to: “what are You going to do with this Lord?” 

I may even start to think tithing is beyond me, maybe I will just give what I can afford until I have resolved my current financial crisis.. And I begin to avoid anybody who drives me crazy because I can’t cope with them. My faith is heading for a crash, and I don’t know how to stop it. Well, here’s the solution, thank you Apostle Peter!! First of all I pick up what remains of my dragged along faith, and repent. Then I start my new spiritual vitamin regime. That means I add other things into my basket to help, or supplement my faith. I am not stingy with these add-ons, I throw lots of each one in. (That’s what ‘lavish’ means!) 

Let’s look at goodness. How do I add goodness to faith? First of all I look at the source of all our goodness – Almighty God. I deliberately sit and think about my life, so I can notice how His goodness has been following me, quietly, and unobtrusively. I deliberately look for the signs of His Presence in the midst of my troubles. I start noting all the good things, and I choose to leave the disappointments behind. Then I find someone worse off than me and do something spontaneously loving for them!  After that is moving along, and I acknowledge that I can be good to many people, not just one! Then I take another supplement – understanding. My understanding is based on WHO He is, not whether my life makes sense or not.

He is the only way my life will make sense. I must discipline myself to understand that He is God, and this means I may not always comprehend what is going on. But I know He is good, so I start reading verses about how good He is. To do that I am going to need self-control … focus. In essence I have stopped seeing my problems as the centre of my universe and I have begun to let go of them giving them over to Him and leaving them there.  I will need self control to fix my mind on good things instead of rehearsing how hard my life is. 

Next I need patient endurance. That’s because I serve Him He does not serve me! Every now and then I also stop and remind myself of these intentional supplements. I need these things to get through the mire of how I feel, simply because now I want to arrive at unending love – not just to escape from difficulties. That means that I will need to be patient with myself as well! Endurance, holding our focus, helps us to let the Lord accomplish what He wants to do IN us. 

Ding, ding! Time for the next supplement. Now I need to add godliness to the previous supplements, otherwise I can easily become obsessed with how hard things are, instead of looking for His goodness in the land of the living now I am focussing on His promise that I can endure all things because He is strengthening me! To live aware of His godliness I am going to need to adopt mercy – for you, and for me, and anybody else who crosses my path. All judgment and condemnation does is chuck us out of the battle right when we are about to win it.

Last supplement, unending love. Each previous vitamin I have taken has reminded me that I am a recipient of His everlasting, unfailing love. Even though I may not feel like I have all these supplements, the bible says I have them! “Since these virtues are planted deep within.” So my faith needs to kick in. BTW the book says that I don’t just have some – I have lots.

The bonus buy in all this vitamin taking is that I will walk away from constantly staring at my problems, because I have a new focus —  now I wanna see His goodness in the land of the living!  Instead of going round and round, trying to find solutions, going nowhere – I have a purpose. I want to know the One Who rescued me intimately and my vitamin taking helps me REMEMBER Who He is. I know I can’t do anything without His help, but I can step out in faith by obeying what He says, step by step, from His book, and become a good old lady, who takes all of my vitamin supplements!  Bye. 👋

P 2682 Easy Peasy … NOT!

/ DVH

“For the Scriptures tell us: Whoever wants to embrace true life and find beauty in each day must stop speaking evil, hurtful words and never deceive in what they say. Always turn from what is wrong and cultivate what is good; eagerly pursue peace in every relationship, making it your prize.” 1 Peter 3:10-11 TPT.

Monitoring our words is so powerful and special, when we fail to do it, we can prevent ourselves from finding beauty in each new day!  I bumbled along saying whatever came into my head for years. I was being true to myself – a common theme nowadays – but I was in the wrong spirit, because I was not yet walking in a renewed mind. Jesus Himself talked about that kind of thing in Luke 9:55. The disciples were unhappy because the Samaritans did not welcome the Lord into their village. They wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume this village, like Elijah did and the Lord Jesus rebuked them for saying and thinking like that.

To be honest, it seems to me that the disciples did not fully understand the working of the Holy Spirit. He came to facilitate our new birth, not to exterminate us! Watching what we say means we will always need His full-time help. Today I want to share the little bits I’ve learnt so far as I’ve been walking along with Him. To start with, the Holy Spirit always gives me a warning nudge. What I mean by that is that He knows what I want to say, and He will speak to my heart and say: “Don’t say that,” before I’ve opened my mouth. 

You see it is much too easy to think I’m a big girl now, I can judge and choose my own words and I don’t actually need a filter. But the truth is … I need a full-time filter BIG time! The whole thing about our words is that they are intimately personal. They come from our own private thoughts. The Lord knows my heart and He knows that other person’s heart as well, and He knows what will hurt, and what will heal. He also knows what will send me off into a tangent, or what will build up my faith, as well as theirs. Knowing someone’s heart means knowing their motivation, and inclinations – our God is brilliant at that!

He knows when I feel inclined to bad mouth the other person or try to put them in their place, because I happen to think it is called for.  So unless my mind is renewed, I am sunk … I will actually need to make quality choices to participate in His renewal. In other words – unless what I think, is the way that I act, not just something I say I believe or agree with – I can, and probably will misspeak. That realisation is a ‘woe is me’ moment. The best thing to do after woe is me is to repent … fast! Repent to the Lord, the other person and to anybody else within ear-shot.

We must never forget that our words are powerful. We can speak life or death to someone else, whether they are present or not. That same voice we’ve been given that can raise the dead and heal the sick, needs oversight!  I have struggled with a number of relationships over the years, and I have found that if I give in to self-pity, grumbling or criticism, whether those things are justified or not … I’m definitely going to end up saying something stupid that I will regret. 

It is better to remain silent rather than say something that cements the other person into a role you have created in your own mind, whether they mean to treat you badly or not. We have the power to speak life, this means we need to pull our focus back onto what is “good, right and profitable.” The bible tells us to “let our minds dwell on these things.” So when we let fly and say something unkind etc. — guess what our minds have been doing??  Yeah, I don’t like that idea either.

We have to choose to live this way now, and it cannot be a religious thing, it is a reliance thing. It’s a choice we make for the Lord and the other person. If you can’t trust yourself to say something good, then saying nothing at all, is a truly great idea. However, we are not meant to lie, so how do we say good things about people who have deliberately and sometimes maliciously treated us badly? Glad you asked that question – because I have an answer! We ask the Lord what He wants us to do or say in that moment. We choose to lay aside our own judgment, anger, and hurt, because when we do that, we are also avoiding being judged ourselves. So we either keep schtum or we choose our words carefully with Him helping us.

Just to make things clear, this can be a very difficult thing to do when you are someone who finds out what they think when they say it out loud! I’m an external processor, and telling me to watch what I say is like sending me to the Paris Olympics to enter a relay race. Not happening! BUT … I have a Helper Who knows exactly what I am going to say before I say it so I am learning to rely upon His judgment not my own. I’m happy to do that because the bible says: “lean not on your own understanding …” Win win. Easy peasy … with His help. Bye. 👋

P 2676 Judgment makes us blind and deaf –

/ DVH

… to God and to each other! In the beginning Adam and Eve chose to do what seemed right in their own eyes. What entered into them when they ate from that tree, was the knowledge of good and evil. That meant that they left the wisdom of God behind. Sadly, this was also when humanity lost the privilege of His Presence and suspicion arrived on the scene. After that, influenced by satan, we opted for our own thinking and rationale. The miracle was Almighty God did not utterly reject all of us, because He is never caught unaware – He always had a bigger plan. Over time, human beings walked further and further away from Him. And the further away we walked, the more we left HIS wisdom, His dear Presence, behind. In that garden, living in the Spirit came naturally. Our disobedience changed that.

I think the ongoing result of this action is that we have all lost the ability to see Him, clearly. We’ve become deaf and blind toward His Ways, and we can’t see each other, either! However the clearer we can see Him, the clearer and closer we will get to each other. In our current world we have chosen to live by our own judgment and this means most of us have rejected Him. This attitude is devastating in its overall consequences. Look at it like this – broken people come to their own conclusions. Often because of our own battered sinful past, we unconsciously analyse others, then we reject, avoid or persecute them. Eventually we make those conclusions into life actions and give those actions some sort of great sounding purpose that makes sense to us!

If someone in my life was cruel to me, inside my heart I may have carefully laid some early warning signals that mean if anybody even remotely sounds or looks like that person who hurt me — I will avoid or punish them. In effect, I am passing judgment on that other person without even thinking about it. It is as if I see others through a screening system that filters out the people I consider to be my enemies. I do not look for GOOD in others, instead now I am looking for DANGER. We can end up judging our brother by a standard that came from fear and the ever-present need for revenge.

Because I am human, and my human wisdom is faulty, in order to protect myself, I can easily learn to apply judgment to oversee whatever I think. Sadly when I do that, I am allowing the people who hurt me, or caused me to be afraid, or misled me, to continue have power over me – whether they are present or not! At the same time I have been blinded to my own sinful attitudes by fear and judgment. I can no longer see others the way God sees them, because my own judgment is exalting itself over His wisdom. Over time I will use my logic, and incidental observations to prove to myself that my judgments are right, and that those other people really are dangerous to my own well-being and they should be avoided. 

Hebrews 4:12 says: “For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Only God Himself knows our intentions –only He can rightly divide them using His Word.  I think the answer to this particular interpersonal difficulty is to ask the Lord to help us see other people the way HE sees them. Otherwise we are in constant danger of living in judgment, and that judgment will cloud our view over everything else. And at the same time it neutralises our understanding of His wisdom. That other person may have no clue that the way they behave is ‘pushing your buttons.’ Their own brokenness and faulty judgment causes them to act this way without them being aware of it.

Sometimes we can attribute motivation to other people’s behaviour, but it isn’t true discernment or a clear view of their actions, it’s a fear response. And at other times people may even employ demonic strategies because they feel a lack of personal control in their lives will be catastrophic. It goes without saying that demonic strategies are not only unnecessary, they are definitely likely to lead us into all sorts of temptations! Like …  Adam and Eve … or Cain and Abel. After all the Lord warned Cain he was in danger of crossing a line. Instead, we need to remember that we have a Redeemer, Who runs to our aid. He cherishes us all and He will always impart the wisdom from above. In order to see and hear His Ways – now we must put away personal judgment, and let the word of God change us. 

1 Corinthians 2:6-9: “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”  👋

P 2673 Who or what has your heart?

/ DVH

“When you pass through the deep, stormy sea, you can count on Me to be there with you. When you pass through raging rivers, you will not drown. When you walk through persecution like fiery flames, you will not be burned; the flames will not harm you,” Isaiah 43:2 TPT.

The above verse is mentioned today to comfort to anyone who is in a very dark place. It promises us that God’s Presence is never absent despite our circumstances. The thing is, we must remember that this verse and others like it, are faith verses. Almighty God said it, and He means it, so we need to embrace it. However, in those hard times we may not feel a thing! We may dearly need to feel better, but our feelings have nothing whatsoever to do with His Grace in our lives! Even our disappointment could be seen as judgment against His ability to use everything to help us.

The lack of change can sometimes be the reason we are strongly tempted to think that He is not with us, because we have a great expectation that He will deliver us … but sometimes things can even get even worse!!  So what happened? Is it sin in our lives? No! Sin went on the cross. Does God not care that we feel overwhelmed by our circumstances? Of course He does, but we must remind ourselves that He says “I will be with you” — He does not say – you will FEEL Me with you! Yeah, I know, that seems to be splitting hairs, but let’s remember that now we are in His kingdom, where He is King. We chose to come under His rule, and we will need to trust Him to do what He has promised.

“God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”Numbers 23:19. In our society today, people are judged or exalted or rewarded because of their actions. As Christians we need to remember that Almighty God does not do things to meet mankind’s expectations. He does not answer to us. In other words, our societal attitudes don’t feature in His decision making processes. Whatever His answer, action, or lack of! … the real point is – His ways are perfect. So, if there is no answer, or corresponding change of circumstances, then we need to remember that He is sovereign. We must always leave our heart with Him, that is the safest place for it.

“No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; He’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; He’ll always be there to help you come through it. So, my very dear friends, when you see people reducing God to something they can use or control, get out of their company as fast as you can.” 1 Corinthians 10:13-14. MSG.

Personally, I have discovered that I can set my pain and strife limits a bit too low – I can probably move and change much more than I think I can! I get side-tracked because I am not all that excited about stretching — old bones, etc. Everything creaks when I am stretched! In those moments, it is good to remember that this life is the only one I’m going to get, and it is about growth and change. That’s two more things older people don’t like much!! I have to remind myself over and over again, that the Lord is bigger than my circumstances, and if they remain the same, after I have prayed … then He has a purpose I can’t see yet! Good place to pray: “Teach me Your ways, Lord, so I can walk with You.” Amen.

“Even when Your path takes me through the valley of deepest darkness, fear will never conquer me, for You already have! Your authority is my strength and my peace. The comfort of Your love takes away my fear. I’ll never be lonely, for You are near.” Psalms 23:4 TPT.

This verse from the 23rd Psalm is a great clue to the solution to my problem and it diagnoses the heart of what is really going on. Who or what has my heart? Does fear rule me when the going gets tough, or does He? We must always remember that “there is no fear in love,” as well as,  “what time I am afraid I will trust in Thee.” When I finally catch on to the fact that I am feeling afraid, it can take a while, but eventually I have an ‘AHA!’ moment. That’s when I realise that I have let circumstances fill my vision, instead of WHO He is. Rookie mistake. I’m back thinking that He’s there to make my life better, I’ve totally forgotten I am here for His purposes.

After repenting, my next move is to ask the Lord, “Who can I bless?” ‘ That’s because ‘it is in giving that we receive!’  And in those difficult times, my receiver seems to have gone off-line. Sometimes doing that simple thing leads to a fresh revelation about Him. And sometimes it leads to a fresh revelation about me. I need both! I have found that taking my focus away from the difficulty, and caring for someone else, eventually gives me a chance to view things from another angle. As I bless others, I remember that my heart belongs to Him, I gave it to Him. 

He won’t ever ‘leave me or forsake me or give me up.’ Switching focus clarifies what really matters. 👋

P 2637 Be an original.

/ DVH

I sometimes live in the land of stone-cold-tea! I actually get so focussed on writing, I forget to drink it when it is hot. It is the bane of my hubby’s life having to warm up my tea all the time, so I can enjoy it. There are days that I’m such a FUN person to live with. Not. Ho- hum. ☕️ I think my record of tea re-warming is 3 times in a row. Ask hubby!  Any-hoo, the other day I discovered this great little gizmo from China that keeps a cup of tea or coffee hot for hours. I love the creative genius behind that seemingly insignificant invention!! 

I have learnt over the years to appreciate human diversity and our individual ability to see the same thing in different ways. People are truly amazing, and our God made us that way, on purpose. Ya gotta love that!! It also means that when I look at you, I can see Him, in a totally different way. WOW!! It is a shame that religion aims at everyone being the same — yet God celebrates our differences. They are part of His creativity.  In my heart I believe that each person has a unique expression of Who He is to share with the world. In other words we are all richer because He sent YOU here! Thank you Lord – You really do give good gifts!

“God’s purpose in all this was to use the church to display His wisdom in its rich variety to all the unseen rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” Ephesians 3:10. We have this lovely lady, (she’s God’s gift!), who comes into our house once a fortnight to help us. She cleans the floors for us. I had to give up floor cleaning years ago!  Hmmm. I wish I thought that was a bad thing … but I don’t!! Tee hee. Ya win some – ya lose some. Maybe that’s one of the Lord’s benefits I’m not meant to forget!! 😂  A-ny-wa-y … this lady is the dearest Irish-born-Aussie person and having her around is a joy when you are mostly shut-in. Some people celebrate who they are, don’t they?

When she came to help us last time, she shared the above picture with us. Somebody had carefully chalked thought-provoking things about the Lord on a jogging track. There were a lot more chalk sayings that I could put here!  However, the minute I saw them, I was gobsmacked to see how this person had found such a non-threatening, original way to speak to people. I can’t begin to tell you how much that blesses me. I just adore to see people being themselves and loving Jesus and sharing His truth… all at the same time. 

Each of us has a unique way of expressing His love to others. The thing I have personally learnt lately is this — unless we are doing those things that make us feel a bit vulnerable, we are probably staying within our own comfort zone. That comfort zone is a poorly-made construct that we’ve allowed, it is used to hide us. And it will restrict our efforts to shine for Him if we are not aware of it. So we will have to learn how to be “strong and courageous” — like Joshua said. That’s what faith does. It tackles the difficult things as well as the unknown ones simply because those things can be a tourniquet on the life of God within us. 

We can sometimes hesitate to remove those restrictions that we’ve adopted into our lives because they protect our inner selves. Maybe somebody else thought that was who we are – or who they wanted us to be. Or we can use our weaknesses to our own advantage, because remaining unseen seems safer. But Jesus cheerily says: “Don’t be afraid, death is not your enemy – a lack of real life within you is!”  None of us are finished yet, but the Lord wants us to be established in Him daily, within our ordinary lives. If we yield to Him, we will have enough strength to withstand the bigger storms and dark seasons of this life. The way through difficulties is to trust in Him more than we trust our own judgment. 

I love the way the Lord is been removing those badly made constructs around our lives to expose the great work He has been doing inside… Even when we weren’t looking! Personally, I think if we had seen what He was doing with some of us, we might have meddled with it or tried to help Him! But He works in, and on our hearts in secret and brings out the very best of who we really are, and He doesn’t do His big reveals about us until His project in us is established. Our God is a master builder, and unlike the world around us, He knows how to work with stone to bring it to life! Praise Him!! 

Years ago there was this dumb riddle …”Which came first? The chicken or the egg?” The minute I heard that riddle I thought:  ‘how silly, God would never leave a little vulnerable egg all alone to raise itself!’  Then I realised that my faith is in God’s judgment, not in what seemed right to me. It was meant to be a clever puzzle but my knowledge of Him made the answer into a fact!  BTW, please don’t ask me why that stupid chicken crossed the road? As far as I’m concerned that chook deserves whatever it gets when it is challenging cars! Like I said, be an original, we need your POV.  Bye for today, have a good one. 👋

P 2619 Let us not misunderstand God’s Love.

/ DVH

Our Heavenly Father’s Love is always ON. His love is ablaze with fire and passion for all of us. His love burst forth in a visible form at Pentecost.  And His Grace has been abounding on this earth for centuries. Imagine that! It doesn’t wane, become greater or less, or fall away. That’s because our God is love, it is His nature.

Jesus Christ suffered unimaginable pain and suffering, not to mention humiliation and death, so WE could be called the Sons of God. His death teaches us, by example, that Love ALWAYS looks like something. It looks like a broken, bruised, bleeding, unrecognisable, totally innocent man, hanging on a wooden cross, tortured and dying … simply because He loved us all, and He spoke the truth. But people rejected His truth because they could not comprehend a love that could love the unlovely.  Humanity’s glorious opportunity to know God’s love for us, literally cut Him so deep, it was, and still is – incomprehensible.  Father God spared no cost, and held nothing back, now we know that Almighty God’s idea of love includes sacrifice not just emotion. 

“If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates (works against) his [Christian] brother he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”1 John 4:20. Our Heavenly Father takes love  seriously and His love is so far-reaching into our lives, plumbing our very depths, simply because we choose to belong to Him. Now the way we love our brother, exhibits a direct reflection of the measure of God’s own love IN, and toward US. We cannot conjure up such a love, but we can learn it if we choose to – one sacrifice at a time. 

That thought today made me wonder if one of the reasons that we feel we can’t love some people is because we have not actually comprehended what we are constantly being given! We often excuse and underestimate our sins, and exaggerate the sins of others. God didn’t love each one of us just enough – as in a measurable quantity – just enough to meet the requirements, and no more! His love is so overabundantly great it is always available and it is designed to daily transform us. His love is so deep we can swim in it, drown in it … and yet still live.

As we start to understand, through our own experiences with Him, and others in this life, how much undeserved GRACE we have been given, we will start to comprehend what Paul said in Ephesians 3:17-19.“…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.”

Most of us have never experienced what being filled, right to the top with love, over and over again, is like … even though we all know Jesus. I have prayed Ephesians 3 for myself for years! I know I need ever-increasing comprehension! It seems to me that everything we know about Almighty God and His kind of love hangs on those verses. He wants our hearts to respond to His heart with the same kind of passion He has already shown us. And we will all definitely need His help to do it, because human beings have a habit of hiding who we really are from ourselves.

In the Old Testament the Israelites were kind of …blah about God. He was a figurehead Who was there to provide and care for them, and when it appeared to them that He wasn’t doing what they thought He should do – they voted with their feet and went after empty pagan symbols that had no power or meaning. That’s a childish kind of love. Our reciprocal love toward God is not meant to come from a “I won’t love You if You don’t please me.” kind of response. Our admiration for His Grace toward us, needs to overtake our judgment of others.

Maturity understands that what He did surpasses anything we can possibly hope for or imagine. Let’s remember God’s love in Christ is not exclusive.  It is utterly inclusive. He doesn’t treat us as we deserve – EG: ’that guy’s sins are worse than mine.’ Instead His love is part of His very Being, His substance. It simply doesn’t have self- imposed limits. The reason the bible tells us to love our enemies, those who hurt us – is so we will quickly realise that we need to be constantly and comprehensively flooded with His love to such a level, that the other person’s reaction or response doesn’t come into it! A shortage of His love is not the problem, our decision to die to activate it in ourselves is!

Let’s not misunderstand God’s love or make it into something that it isn’t… God’s love is utterly incomprehensible unless you start to chase it. His kind of love causes the one He loves to flower and be the best version of themselves. Loving others transforms ME so I don’t see them the same way. It is a key to “His kingdom coming here on earth as it is in heaven…” Jesus Christ left us His keys to His kingdom. Sadly this means we can lock other people into being less than they can be, by our lack of love for them. But if we live this life, prepared to die for others, like our Saviour did for us, the passion and fire of the Holy Spirit is always with us. He will do that IN US.  👋