Judgmental

P 3117 Listen.

/ DVH

“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 TPT. A stony heart is a liability. It does not allow the Word of God to penetrate the surface of our lives and bring about inner growth and change. Plus the birds of the air can easily steal away whatever God wants to reveal to us. We must learn to listen with our hearts as well as our ears. It is our heart that will lead us into acting on what we hear.

Today I want to look at the type of stuff that hardens our hearts and how to collect our new God-given tender heart — by cultivating the willing spirit He gave us – exercising our faith. This message, from Jesus Himself, shows us how important a soft heart is.“Some seed fell on the stony ground. That is like a person who hears the message and right away he is glad to hear it. But it does not go down deep in his heart. He believes it for a short time. When trouble or a hard time comes because of the message, he stops believing.” Matthew 13:20,21.

“As has just been said: “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.” Hebrews 3:15. Rebellion will harden our heart faster than we can say hippopotamus! Our enemy hangs around watching for us to fall head-first into set-ups he’s already laid in front of us. he wants us to be disappointed with God, and our lives, and our relationships with others. Rebellion wants its own way. It does not want to bend like bamboo in the wind, it stands like a telephone pole daring someone else to push it over! For this person, their own strength and purpose reigns over everything else. Those attitudes will harden any heart.

Repeated, unrepentant sin can cause our hearts to harden. Sin does not have to be outward, where everyone else can see it, it can fester inside us, like when we mull over other people’s sin in our minds, and we stubbornly refuse to allow gentleness and kindness to prevail. Instead those things are seen as weakness or giving in. We all need to be discerning because that’s one of the Holy Spirit’s gifts, but not to the point of suspicion.

“Love suffers long, hopes all things, believes all things …” A hardened heart ceases to understand the Spirit’s promptings, so when He speaks to us, or even when our Helper acts, this person misses what He says or does. This kind of hardened heart can become spiritually obstinate. Many people refused to believe the time when Jesus fed so many with the loaves and fishes, …”For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened…” Mark 6:52. Truth will slide right off a hardened heart. Miracles are His gift to us, in spite of our  inner attitudes.

We can also harden our hearts because of fear. We can be so fearful of walking into error, that we step away from other people to protect ourselves. God’s definition of Love needs to be at the bottom of everything we do and say. It is not good to have caveats on our love. Like: “If you do that, then I will not forgive you.” If we feel prickly when someone else points out a fault of ours, we revise our response. That perceived blow, merited or not, can help us keep our hearts soft, when we identify what is really going on. One thing that helps me to identify if I am cultivating a hard heart, is whether my response is defensive, judgmental – or willing to learn.This means our hearts need to remain soft and pliable or we will miss what the Lord is going to do next.

At one time Jesus was teaching the disciples, while they were all in a boat together. Jesus says something they don’t understand and they are immediately concerned that they should have brought some actual bread with them. However He is talking about the kind of yeast that comes from Pharisees, because that group think they are the only ones who know … and their attitudes are contagious. The disciples don’t get it because they are focussing on the natural world. A lack of comprehension can mean our heart is hardening, because our eyes are only fixed on what is in the material world, in front of us. But Mark 8:17-18 says: “Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?”

All of us can easily be sidetracked by the things around us that will pass away and then we miss the spiritual implications of any situation. Being dull of hearing also hardens hearts. Ask questions. Don’t close the door on anything you don’t understand until you have had some revelation. The very best way to soften our hearts is to soak in His Word and His Presence – humility is a key component of a soft heart. Let’s let His Word work on us and in us, because we can’t afford to just agree with it. Jesus needs to be our Lord and Saviour, not just our Saviour. When we live with Him as Lord over our lives that becomes a transformative way to live.. 

Lastly, God Himself says He has given us a new soft heart, and the willingness to walk in Grace. To pick those things up we have to take our old hardened heart to the cross and leave it there. That means we refuse to hate the people we hated before, instead we choose to love, like Jesus did, over any hate. We deliberately make the Holy Spirit the Guardian of our hearts, because He alone knows what God wants to bring out in our lives to be a blessing to others. And then we listen when He speaks to us, even if we don’t like it. Bye. 👋.

P 2611 The way forward.

/ DVH

The first thing I want to say today, is this: without the Holy Spirit’s help – and He is available to each and every one of us – we cannot overcome sin and inadequacy by ourselves. Self-talk is not the answer, that’s this world’s answer! Confession, repentance, and humbling ourselves is the only way to thrive and survive in the Christian life. 

Jesus Christ LET Himself be humbled in the most extraordinary ways. Purity, blamelessness, grace and love hung dying on Calvary and He did nothing to deserve the appalling treatment He faced. We all know He only ever did humanity good. So if we meet ugliness from other people, we should not be surprised or offended. Jesus said that in John 13:15-17: ”I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”

So let us not be arrogant and imagine ourselves as somehow superior to the world around us, just because we happen to know something they don’t.“What do we have that was not given to us?”1 Corinthians 4:7. Here’s a useful thing I’ve learnt … When I stopped trying to outtalk others, or even organise people into suiting me, and I accepted that only God Himself can change people … I began to see other people in a totally different light.

Before that, my judgmental attitude blocked my view of them, even though I had God-given spiritual eyes, my own judgment clouded them. At the same time, I became more and more blind to my own sins. Plus I couldn’t see other people’s needs or understand them. Instead I saw myself as far more needy and unable to change than they were, because of my difficult background. That’s called pride … … think about it!  

I felt entitled to be angry with the other people because they were not helping me. It was their fault I kept falling over, their meanness made me stumble. Yeah, I know wunnerful attitude eh?  I’m not writing this stuff because I am proud of it! Spoiler alert!… I still fall over. Especially when I am tired, sick, or out of sorts!  Like Paul, I’m not there yet, but I continue to aim at transformation. Sadly, if you poke me hard enough, I probably will snarl at you. Sigh.

What that means, is this, in those moments I have totally forgotten that MY debt has been paid in full.  I’m living like an unsaved person instead of a redeemed one! If I am wrangling with guilt and shame over the way I spoke to someone, I need to remember that Jesus paid for my sin. (He paid for yours too!)  Now, my problem is no longer about my sin, it is … what am I going to do about it? Will I shrug my shoulders, and walk on and hope my awful attitude will disappear— or humble myself, repent and let the Lord discipline me?

When I fight for myself to prove myself ‘not guilty,’ or to justify any other nasty thing, or attitude, I am voluntarily walking out of the new covenant. That covenant is my agreement with God that the blood of Jesus will save, cleanse and change me. Unfortunately, at the same time, I am also choosing to put myself into harm’s way, into enemy territory, because I am stepping out from under the umbrella of Christ’s atonement, and now I am trying to shelter from the enemy’s onslaught with my own reasons, anger, excuses and inadequacies! 

The bible tells me to follow my Saviour down the same road He took. I suffer wrong because I am following Jesus. He suffered wrong and said nothing! Even if I truly think I am right, and I can prove it, I must make a choice to let go, and let God vindicate me! Reconciliation is my priority, not vindication. Vindication is the Lord’s work. My advice in a conflict is this —let LOVE be your default button. Not the kind of love that is portrayed on TV, but the kind that is in 1 Corinthians 13, and Colossians 3!

Jesus died to reconcile us to Almighty God, however, we still have choices. We can choose to step away from His Ways when we make our feelings, our needs, more important than His following Him! This means we can avoid being changed, and we will lose the ever-present ongoing war toward total transformation! Eventually guilt will drag us down and away from the light of God’s transforming love. And then shame makes us hide from the only One Who can help us – the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the Person Who helped Christ through His life on earth and the crucifixion, He is totally well equipped to help us through our bad days.

The way forward is described in Micah 6:8“But He’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbour, be compassionate and loyal in your love, And don’t take yourself too seriously—take God seriously.”  Bye👋

P 2348 Really?? Have we become this small?😱

/ DVH

Look, I totally get that we cannot, and must not, even by inference, give others permission to live sinfully. Yes, there are people in our society who live what we might call depraved lives. But please !! It’s time for the Lone Ranger and Tonto to climb down off their horses and walk amongst the ordinary people living in this world and start living a life of love – instead of judgment. Some of our finest warriors will be people who have been snatched away from the fires of hell!

Meanwhile what do WE have that was not GIVEN to us? “For who regards you as superior or what sets you apart as special? What do you have that you did not receive [from another]? And if in fact you received it [from God or someone else], why do you boast as if you had not received it [but had gained it by yourself]?” 1 Corinthians 4:7. 

Where do we ‘get off’ looking down our noses at other people – people who may never even have heard of the Saviour – and start judging their lives. We are not here to be permissive but we aren’t here to be judgmental either. Is this really how we think we should introduce people to the One Who loved them before this world began? Like that’s gunna work! Condemnation just drives people further into excuses, and defensiveness. If we want to see people set free, then we need to stay in Love with the Saviour and live a life of sacrificial love toward everyone around us.

“Oh, but they will go to hell if they don’t repent and change their ways.” RIGHT. So our plan is to use FEAR to push them into God’s ways? Fear always leads to faith doesn’t it? NOT!! Hmmm. Aren’t we confusing FEAR with CONVICTION? Have we utterly forgotten who WE were before Jesus saved us? Speaking for myself I was a huge bag of superiority – “I would never do stuff like that!”  says I as I looked down my nose at others. Meanwhile even though I didn’t blatantly lie, but I exaggerated heaps – and of course, that meant I was always the hero of any little story or anecdote I told. 

I was guilty of lust, plus a complete lack of honesty. I couldn’t stand my sole parent and the way I was raised, and I said so to anyone who was dumb enough to ask me about it. I hated some people with a passion — usually people who had the effrontery to not like me! In short I was as ugly inside as most people are, but I had become quite adept at hiding it so I would be accepted. But it is hard to hide yourself from yourself, you gotta be dedicated to do that stuff! That kind of self-deception has to be practised.

You know sometimes I think we have not matured enough to understand that sin is not contagious, it is a choice. I will concede that bad circumstances can, and will often appear to line up against us, and temptation often pops up when we are at our weakest. BUT… people make bad choices for many many reasons. 

Some things are not actual life-style choices, instead people are driven to these dark places because they cannot cope with how they feel, and our common enemy takes advantage of their needs and weaknesses. When we are starved of love and natural human affection we are easily swayed onto darker pathways. Desperate, lonely people do daft things to fit in. And … sometimes these things are also the cumulative result of cultivating rotten attitudes and activities.

Following Jesus means we leave that proud judgmental lifestyle behind us. We call our SIN – SIN. Not whoopsies. We don’t blame our parents for our unloving ways, because we have and regularly read HIS BOOK and understand that our parents probably did the best they could based what this life shoved at them! We look at the next guy and think: ‘that could have been me, God have mercy on us both!’

Jesus touched the unclean. He interacted with two thieves – Judas and Zacchaeus – one repented and turned his life around and the other didn’t. He even dealt kindly with promiscuous women, and spoke into their hearts instead of condemning them. The only language we’ve been licensed to speak now, is LOVE. Christians fall down when we use the bible as a club to punish, damage, judge and banish people – when in truth the bible is that glorious balm in Gilead that will save the sin-sick, wounded soul.

We need to remember where we were when He found us and called us. We have been GIVEN the greater portion, so let’s use that for everyone’s good and find His better ways to reach out to the lost – ‘cos they ain’t called that for nothing! 💕