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P 2598 No fake smiles please!

/ DVH

My dear hubby loves the Emoji movie, especially that over-the-top female smiley face that blinds people with its toothy grin. He thinks she is hilarious. You know, that face is actually pasted on – it’s stuck. In other words that emoji has been carefully drawn to pretend to be something it isn’t.  So when bad things happen, that smiley emoji isn’t being REAL — which is just like a whole lot of Christians. Bad things happen and they paste on a smile but inside they feel God, and everyone else, has let them down. 

Most people in this world know FAKE attitudes a mile off. It is so much better to be your real self and repent for stinky attitudes, than it is to hide who you are. Now if you happen to be a grump … then the answer is to be transformed. 😂 The bible covers that! Please note: transformation is not instant. It’s repetitive… it’s re-pet-it- ive … it’s actually quite repetitive! So now we spend our days learning to lean. Getting stuff right is no longer our goal, leaning on Him is! 

If we are not careful we can make living for Jesus … into a future goal. We can live this life hoping that if we fake it we will eventually make it. Yielding, surrender, dying to self – these are all key words.  Otherwise transformation becomes something we work hard towards achieving, but we never seem to arrive!  The bible says we need to be living for Him every single day. 

Almighty God wants us to draw on His strength all the time, using our faith. Faith grows when you use it! So we exchange His beauty for our ashes. His joy for our mourning etc. We are human and we run out quite quickly — but Jesus is rich in these things ! He will give us what we need as we live a life of total dependence. The Lord is not fooled by our positive, Sunday morning smiley faces.

We could see miracles every single day if we stop trying to be what God already made us and learn to yield to and trust in Him! Listening to yourself being kind to someone, when you wanted to smite them mightily a minute ago is a miracle! Success is no longer our goal – because we know can’t do anything without Him and we don’t want to be without Him.“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths.” Proverbs 3:5-6.

We need to be changed inside, and honesty matters.  We can’t! … But He already did it for us. Some of our nice attitudes are barely skin deep — so when they are provoked they end up coming out. The Lord is not looking for perfection … Jesus already nailed that, and then He generously gave it to us – for free. Ask yourself this: why would Almighty God – Who loves us – want us to live our lives pretending to be something we are not? But oh! How He LOVES a truly transformed heart and life. Then when someone else hurts us, we feel worse for them than we do for ourselves.

I know some transformed people. They know they can’t do anything without Him, but they yield in obedience to what the bible says daily, so they can change the way that they live. They are not perfected. Not at all! But they enjoy being close to Him, and they don’t want to give that up for living a shallow life that has no substance. Things stay shallow when we stop living by our faith.  We must learn that we are not called to exhaust our OWN patience/love/joy/peace,  first — only to find that we have run out! Here’s a hot tip, let go of your pride and GIVE UP RIGHT AWAY and fall into His everlasting arms. He will supply that need.

My point is, learn to pray “Help help” early! We cannot afford to wait until we are overwrought and exhausted because we’ve been wrangling a problem in the natural. I pray a surrender prayer all the time now. I remind the Lord that I won’t be able to  manage anything at all without Him. I do that at the beginning of the day and I repeat it when I find myself pasting on a fake smile. I could care less about looking incompetent, or inefficient. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy seeing Him active in my life. I feel Him help me to go further than I ever could in my own strength. I know I can’t meet Christ’s standard, what He did was perfect. So I start with surrender and I don’t move from there. 

We have all developed coping mechanisms over the course of our lives and when we get saved, we carry those coping mechanisms over into our faith. Then when we read in the bible and see what we are supposed to look like, who we are meant to be, we increase the pressure on ourselves to be like that. Unfortunately, when we fail in our own efforts – we feel we are letting Jesus down. And if we do happen to succeed, then WE GET PROUD.

All that leads to a level of inadvertent deception, and a lack of transparency that prevents intimacy. It stops Christians from becoming all we can be in Christ. It also leads to a form of religion with no power in it. We need to learn to live our lives dependent upon Him, using our God-given faith instead of striving to reach an unattainable goal. We cannot make ourselves perfect. He has already accepted us.  No more fakey fake smiles. Learn to lean on Him. 👋

P 2572 Life is hard, we need His Oasis.

/ DVH

““Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to Me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis. Simply join your life with Mine. Learn My ways and you’ll discover that I’m gentle, humble, easy to please. You will find refreshment and rest in Me. For all that I require of you will be pleasant and easy to bear.”” Matthew 11:28-30 TPT. 

We can easily lose sight of Jesus, our oasis, when we try to figure out, or fix things by ourselves. That’s why Jesus said … “Come to ME!” The first place we need to go is to Him. I have personally prayed so many many times, “Lord please hold me up.” The stuff that is going on in my life doesn’t always disappear, sometimes it even gets worse. Man … I hate worse the same as anyone else! At this stage of my walk with the Lord, I have yet to say to myself: “Hooray, everything has gone upside down, here’s another great opportunity for me to learn stuff, and watch Jesus at work!” However, now I am being held up by SomeOne greater than me.

What I say is more like … “Oh NO! Not again!!” But I have also learnt from experience that my very next best move is to scurry alongside Jesus and start reminding Him of His promises! And the first promise I remember is “I”m sinking fast Lord. Help help!” I’ve learnt to do that from reading the Psalms. Those psalmists knew how to praise God, as well as worship … and they definitely knew where their help came from! Read them again and count how many times they cried out for help. These were grown men!

An independent spirit is the antithesis of what learning to follow Jesus is all about. Our task is to learn how to lean – on Him, and on each other. What we are doing is learning to lean into Him. This life is bigger than we are. It’s harder, meaner, and contrary. We need a hiding place. He’s the HIDING PLACE. I run! Most of the time like an elderly bunny rabbit – I’m slower these days OK? – yelling all the way … “I need you Lord!” There is something about acknowledging that we cannot do this life alone, that touches the heart of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.

The bible says: “It is NOT GOOD for Man to be alone!” That verse isn’t just talking about finding a spouse. It means human beings don’t do well without SomeBody else wiser and greater than we are, looking after us. Sheltering us. Caring about our pain, suffering, and our deep deep sorrows. My advice is to talk to the One Who suffered so much alone, Jesus knows how not good it is to be alone.

Just like spouses are designed to walk together, we have been remade to walk with Almighty God, like Jesus did. This means we are never alone!  And the Holy Spirit will help us to do it. When I am in pain or troubled, I don’t always feel anything but I kick start my faith by praying anyway. Our God knows how we feel deep down in our hearts. Holding that stuff inside us will not help us live through it, or even cope. It is part of learning HIS WAY to share with Him. Jesus did not hide anything from God and neither should we. Remember, we don’t have to BE the Answer – HE IS!

We can sometimes get stuck seeing something or other as a bad thing, because there is an un-renewed place in our minds. That mindset will prevent us from seeing His blessings. Yesterday the Lord spoke to me about something I’ve been praying over for ages, and He said this: “You are looking at this event as a bad thing, what if I intend it to be the answer to this other prayer?” 

You could have knocked me down with a feather, literally. My mind was fixated prayerfully on the thing I thought was insurmountable – but that thought from Him blew everything bad away in milli-seconds. My thought then was – “He is doing something else!” We desperately need to know His ways – especially in this time of great deceit, with all those smoke and mirrors swirling around us. Nothing is the way it seems … not even the weather forecast! 😂 We need a fixed place in our hearts that will not move. Jesus is our fixed oasis, at any given time, and the Holy Spirit will always lead us to Him. 

This means that now I have a place of REST because I have HIS POV. I tell myself: “The Lord has got this, I will not give it another thought.” And then I take the thoughts of worry, stress, and angst captive, when they blast at me from all sides, and give them to Him as they come. I quote whatever He says to me, at that time, at those thoughts. Now I can rest, knowing He’s got me.

This is the way we find out He is gentle, humble, and easy to please  – by following His instructions. Step by step. We get to know Him from His responses. And then we hold fast. God is bigger than our understanding and we must stop trying to organise Him into doing things our way, and learn how to do things His way. Stepping into His oasis is His way!  👋

P 2522 Throw away your fear of failure.

/ DVH

I think that we need to tone down our need to learn, and ramp up our doing what we already know! There are times when we’ve measured our Christian faith by our faithfulness in attending church.  However our allegiance, as I said yesterday, is to Christ first – fellowship comes second. We cannot ever afford to let our fear of failure decide what we will and won’t do.

Today it is easy to wander from one church to another – or even not go to church at all anymore – purely because of this conceptual error — “they don’t meet my needs!” I can’t see in the bible where it says the church is meant to meet MY needs. I know there is a verse that says: “My GOD will supply all my needs …” 😳 However we are clearly told not to forsake meeting together. Plus the church is His BODY, so good luck with going somewhere and leaving your hand home!  Meeting together in church is more about loving each other, and/or … learning to love each other!! … than it is about having MY needs met. The essence of the Christian faith is about Him meeting other people’s needs through ME … If we feel we are not up to that then we haven’t been doing our homework again! 

We will fail in our primary mission to reach the world, if all we do is to go to church Sunday by Sunday with a personal expectation that the church is there to meet our needs! When we think like that we start looking for criteria … proof about where they should be meeting our needs and eventually, why they are not doing it. That thought makes church into a support CLUB. Yet the bible says we are an army. Many things seem to be an easy excuse to avoid going out to talk to the-people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet! That also includes the thought – what if we mess up – and we get it wrong? We have a Saviour Who is a Redeemer! I can personally testify that He can save and transform anybody. We simply need to step into His process with the idea that He cannot, and won’t ever fail! That’s what faith looks like!

That principle of agreement fails us when we apply it to something that needs US to take action. We must deliberately choose to engage in the process of our transformation. I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me: “WelI I prayed about that …!!” As if it is now the Lord’s will or fault when they stay fleshly! He won’t do it for us! As His body we need to make hard choices. Christians go to so much trouble to give the appearance of good, and we seem to have forgotten that we will answer to the Lord, not to the people around us. Let’s remember some people will never hear the gospel if we do not vanquish our personal fears.

Hubby and I have been on the road for Jesus for nearly 19 years. In that time we freely admit that we have done some dumb bunny things. Too many to repeat here! Plus we’ve been tested as a couple over and over again. Living like this has tested our relationship. It’s no fun fighting in the middle of nowhere …  if you don’t drive. I’ve had to learn to swallow my pride, and get on with repentance, plus pray like mad. And sometimes even phone home for prayer as well! 

Boy, all those things will humble you! Especially when you are supposed to be a “missionary” and you have unfortunately swapped your God-given peace for being opinionated! It can get very quiet in our car in those times. Being human is not an excuse to avoid what He told us to do. Read the gospels. Those disciples were pretty ordinary when Jesus sent them out, but they still raised the dead, delivered people from demons and ministered healing!

Hubby and I have also had many learning curves simply because of the difficulties we encounter. Things like packing well so we don’t need something that is right up the back of the car when we get to an overnight destination. We’ve learnt tired people fight easily. That some toilets, beds and lounge suites are always going to be too low for adult people with wonky knees – so get over yourself and stop complaining! A-n-d … petrol will always be expensive. How else will the petroleum executives be able to travel first class everywhere around the world if we are not overcharged? 😂 Plus the accommodation will very rarely look like the photos. Too bad if you believed the pictures … they were taken by someone who crawled right up into the opposite corner of the ceiling. They wanted to make the room look bigger!

On the road, reaching out in His Name has helped me personally find out who I really am. Bonus buy! I can actually look pretty good in my own home, because I can hide my occasional grouchiness there, because … WELL …everything suits me there. But on the road nothing suits me anymore! Boy is that a litmus test. Using your faith stretches you and reveals stuff you don’t know is there. The biggest plus of all is that it throws you back upon the Holy Spirit to lead, guide and challenge you. We need to throw away our fear of failure and just do what He told us to do.  👋

P 2491 We are being trained.

/ DVH

When life is on top of us and we are struggling to take the next step, we must always remember He will never leave us, instead, we need to remember that we are a people in training. People who are in training work hard for a purpose. Our God is preparing us for those greater works Jesus talked about. We gave away our right to live this life the way we want to, now, we are learning obedience. Sometimes through suffering. I find looking at things in the natural world, helps me to understand spiritual ones. Jesus did this a lot in the Gospels.

Because I gave my life away — my reference point can no longer be what I want, feel or know! Actually I can’t do what you want either, I left pleasing you behind, when I left pleasing myself behind! Now, my reference point has to be what does Jesus want? I believe He wants us to continually learn to love other people – it is a life-long lesson. Our current society thinks it is successful if we keep all the unhappy people around us happy. 

Happiness is fleeting, and many people are kind of whimsical, so what suits them one day doesn’t the next! Aiming at keeping others happy is just a different kind of self-centredness, because if you are happy with me, then of course I’m going to feel better – the atmosphere around me will probably change if you are happier.  However, I am still inadvertently looking after me when I try to keep you happy!  My focus is wrong. I need my eyes to be on what He wants.

When we live His way, we need to actively learn to be humble in all things, because next time it could be our turn to be a pain! However, I won’t be concerned about who did what and why … when I am following Him, I am simply focussed on following the Leader’s instructions. Jesus spoke to twelve very different men and said: “Come and follow Me and I will make you fishers of men.” Matthew 4:19. And the church has been stuck squabbling over fishing methods and rights ever since! Instead of gathering all His people into His delegated green pastures, and letting Him sort out the sheep from the goats – we fight for our own little bit of paddock.

That reminds me, in all our travels we have seen many paddocks and properties that run cattle and sheep, and these properties often use dogs to control their herds and flocks. Although on really vast properties they also use helicopters and quad bikes! Today I want to talk about this kind of dog –  they are called cattle or sheep dogs. These smallish bundles of totally focussed energy, have one task in their little brains. “Do what the boss tells you to do.”  This dog adores its master and his master is always the boss. 

In our new life, the Holy Spirit is our Boss, but He does not enforce the rules, He wants us to willingly obey Him, using the bible, and He personally leads us. And just like the cattle dog does, He wants us to obey Him because we love our Saviour Jesus. I’ve watched these incredible dogs, they are a great example. They pant their little heads off, sitting quietly beside their master, looking at the boss to see what he wants next. This dog would no more run about chasing butterflies, or a ball, than I can fly to the moon.  It has been trained. That training produces incredible obedience. Sometimes the master just gives a whistle and a look, and off goes the dog, because he knows the man so well.

Our God is teaching and training each one of us, with His wonderful Eye upon us, what will be good, right, and profitable for our own lives. He knows what we need to know so we can get through whatever comes next. Many times in my Christian faith I have felt like my foot was nailed to the floor and I was going round and round. I couldn’t seem to get anywhere. I asked the Lord …why is this happening? He said: “I’m teaching and disciplining you, but you are not listening to Me. You cannot go onto the next stage of your life without the lessons I want you to learn right here and now. It is My kindness to you to keep you where you are, if you do not learn, you will not make it through what comes next.”

That is why I called this blog – first floor messages – because I think the church at large has been stuck on the ground floor, spiritually speaking, for many years. Most churches are all still stuck on which one is more right than the other one! It is not good to compare churches. It is like comparing kiwi fruit with bananas, they are both fruit but they are still very different. We can all belong to Jesus and still be, and look, different! He’s simply that BIG – big enough to love us all! I believe that, right now, the Lord is looking for us to rise up to look like Him. Our God is much more interested in us spreading His message of love and reconciliation, then He ever has been in our theologies, ministries, comfort and so-called happiness.

To get there, we will need to stop looking after our own interests and be like that sheep/cattle dog, obediently waiting for what He wants US to do next. He is our reference point … not the circumstances or whatever is happening all around us. We are in training. What does He say in His book? Are we doing it? If not why not? We must stop “straightening each other out so other people will think like I do,” and simply get on with the job of learning to love others. Bye 👋🏻

P 2447 We need to learn His Ways –

/ DVH

He already knows ours!!Judges 7:1-7 “Early in the morning, Jerub-Baal (that is, Gideon) and all his men camped at the spring of Harod. The camp of Midian was north of them in the valley near the hill of Moreh. The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against Me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’ Now announce to the army, ‘Anyone who trembles with fear may turn back and leave Mount Gilead.’” So twenty-two thousand men left, while ten thousand remained.  But the Lord said to Gideon, “There are still too many men.

Take them down to the water, and I will thin them out for you there. If I say, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go; but if I say, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.” So Gideon took the men down to the water. There the Lord told him, “Separate those who lap the water with their tongues as a dog laps from those who kneel down to drink.” Three hundred of them drank from cupped hands, lapping like dogs. All the rest got down on their knees to drink. The Lord said to Gideon, “With the three hundred men that lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hands. Let all the others go home.”

The first thing I want to say, is that it is extremely important to:  a/ make sure you don’t miss any of the details when reading scripture;  and b/ today, take particular note of the fact that Gideon eyeballed every single man as he drank and there were 10,000 men! There were 22,000 cowardly custards BTW! Our God is always in the detail! Human beings love to run on and start planning how to make what God says work.

Maybe like this? … “Oh so the lappers stay, and the cupped hands guys go? Hands up all the lappers.” But Gideon had to listen to God for each individual man’s involvement. All 10,000 of them! God’s answer to prayer and Him helping us, doesn’t look like we think it will. I cannot begin to count how many times that has been my experience. My advice is this – don’t get ahead of Him – you’ll miss the blessing. HE’S THE BLESSING. 

When you are about to fight an army that is called, by reputation, ‘without number’ … eliminating fighting men does not seem all that clever. And that’s the bit I want you to take away today – the Lord does not do things the way we do them. HIS WAYS ARE NOT OUR WAYS – HIS WAYS ARE PAST FINDING OUT. I often wonder why people drive themselves nuts trying to figure out and plot the way that the Lord is going to do something or other, in the light of a story like this one. He exhorts us to wait for Him.

His ways are so far above ours! I urge us all to read the book looking carefully at the details, He reveals Himself there. Otherwise, it can seem out of touch and pretty weird … that He would even think of saving a whole city with an evangelist who spent his entire preparatory time for preaching, in the belly of a whale! Maybe getting swallowed up, helped with repentance and obedience.  

Let’s look at the New Testament to see if things like this are any different from the stuff in the Old… sh-a-ll we? How about feeding thousands of people from 5 loaves and 2 fishes … Now you and I don’t see that every other Friday at the fish shop do we? Or how about making a brand new eyeball out of spit and dirt? Granted, it was Jesus’ own spit, but … … you get my drift. You know I figure the Lord was there when Father God made man in the first place, so He knew all about how to make people’s spare parts out of dirt! 

What about walking past a pool, which was specially set up for sick people to congregate around, and yet the Lord went there and healed just one man! Where did ‘He healed them all’go?? We need to learn to laugh at ourselves and our pitiful attempts to understand what He is doing and WHY! To know Him better, and stand in awe of His awesomeness, we must begin to notice the details in the book. We can’t just cherry pick and choose the bits that suit us and our own understanding – which, BTW, we are not supposed to lean on (!) … when we read the bible.

You know, the bible says God Himself laughs!! Psalm 2:4 “He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision.” I thank God that I have an Advocate standing right by my Heavenly Father’s right hand explaining the way human beings think. No wonder the Lord laughs! We make such hard work out of everything!

Finally, have you ever reflected upon why the Lord God chooses such unusual methods of operation? Why was that snake allowed in the garden? What can I learn from that?? Why stick Jonah in a whale? Why take trumpets and lamps into a battle, or march round the city for 7 days in silence, and then shout!  Why pour gallons of water over an altar that is meant to be set on fire? God’s ways are past finding out … we need to stop trying to finagle Him into bringing about the results that we think are going to be great, AND instead start listening to Him. Let’s follow His implicit instructions, obey what He says and learn how to trust Him instead. Learning to listen… another great key.  Bye👋🏻

P 2426 I know I need the Holy Spirit desperately.

/ DVH

You may think that I’m always going on about transformation, a-n-d … you would be right! Without transformation we simply cannot build His church above the first floor. People who are not in the process of being transformed can quite easily have the right motivation but the wrong agendas. They can want to do good things for the right reasons … but good things out of His timing have no life in them. We need the Holy Spirit desperately.

That’s because we are following SomeOne, not just making stuff up as we go along!  We cannot move forward unless we follow the Leader, and Jesus sent back the Holy Spirit for us to follow HIM. We need His life, His input, in every single thing we do. Before you throw your hands up in the air because you know you can’t do that at this moment – (me neither!) …I just want to remind you that getting it wrong is never the issue. We can always repent of being wrong! However, being willing to admit we are wrong is definitely an issue, and so is repairing any damage we may have done. Meanwhile, leaving Him out of everything is just plain DUMB. He made this world by speaking – no-one can follow that kind of productivity!

The works of the flesh are also a problem, because our good works stink in God’s sight. We need to use whatever energy we have to learn what the Holy Spirit likes, so we can walk with Him. “How can two walk together unless they be agreed?” That’s just a fancy schmancy way of saying if you can’t walk to-ge-ther as ONE, then two people can’t possibly walk – together! Not rocket science. Here’s a free heads up. Fighting with your spouse is amongst the dumbest things you can do, you are negating your own prayers. Swallow your pride, repent and trust God to help you out of the hole you both dug! Learn to be wrong, even if you think you are right. It doesn’t matter if your spouse joins in or not – you and God are a majority. It may be slower than you’d like but HE will win. Outdo one another in HUMILITY and loving service. The higher ground is always the lower place.

In the church and in marriages, there are way too many pretender un-holy spirits. Christians can forget that we can’t see properly in the first place — mainly because we are all so good at being a pompous ass!  Let’s remember, that in church and in our marriages, we are here to serve one another, not rule the roost. When we choose to rule the roost individually, the Holy Spirit goes right out the door, and the devil rubs his hands in glee and takes over. Meanwhile, if people are afraid of you, or avoid you, you are in the wrong spirit. 

We dare not think we are the only person within any relationship that hears the Lord! God has been known to speak through a donkey – BOY is that a good thing to remember! 1 Corinthians 13 is a great yardstick. We need the art of humbling ourselves. I only know two people, in my whole life, who will always spontaneously apologise when things go topsy turvy! Whether they did anything wrong or not. Personally, I think that is because these two people value the Holy Spirit far more than being right! It is good to check with your kids, spouse, etc. and find out what they think is coming at them from you.

We need to remember that the Holy Spirit and Jesus are two different People. They both have exactly the same agenda, They want to glorify the Father. However, the Holy Spirit is not a man. Jesus Christ understood human beings, because He is one. But the Holy Spirit of God is different, He can be easily grieved. So … what grieves Him? Here are some thoughts: people who are unloving, joyless, they lack peace. They are impatient, unkind, what they think on and do is not good, they are not faithful, or gentle, nor do they have self-control. (This would be a great time to think about yourself in this context.) In other words their fruit of the Spirit tree is BARREN. They are like the fig tree Jesus cursed, lots of leaves and nothing for anyone to eat. Remember, genuine repentance is the immediate answer.

The Holy Spirit knows the benefits of remaining ONE with the Father, and the Son. They all have perfect harmony. He knows everything … and He knows the way through everything …so why would we try to figure stuff out by ourselves? Our marriages, our lives and our churches need the Holy Spirit. We do not have enough wisdom presently to go forward without HIM. Check out how badly the Israelites did in the Old Testament, when they tried to go solo. I need Him desperately. 👋🏻

P 2268 We need His Grace to make changes.

/ DVH

Have you got a problem person in your life? Somebody that makes you feel like there are nails dragging down the blackboard? Sometimes in order to see the very real people around us, who love us, and live with us, we almost need to be laid aside to start being taught by GRACE. We simply must start giving each other room to grow. At this juncture I think it is important to point out that it’s all too easy to see what’s wrong with somebody else and totally ignore the fact that not only are we not perfect, actually we do the same thing all the time! 

I think the Bible talks about that somewhere in there -…logs and specks! No matter what we tell everyone else, what we all actually need as individuals is Grace. It takes great Grace to own your own faults, but if we keep skipping our own change whilst examining everyone else’s life, we’ve missed the point. The old standards of looking and sounding right are shackles – they must come off. Otherwise the pressure to perform will imprison the whole body of Christ! It will be scary at first but the plus side is we will be free to grow and HE gets what He wants. Win – win!! 

Some of us have been grown-ups for a very long time and others still feel they need to revert to control to get their own way. Our own way was never part of the deal! His life for ours, that’s the deal. Christians are battling with immature leftover feelings from childhood. People often need healing not constant critiquing, or reprimanding. It is unfair to expect perfection from others. God doesn’t, and we shouldn’t either.

Grace is the currency and language that we need to use to help one another, as well as ourselves. This life is not about convenience and expediency, it’s about us growing into Christ’s likeness. Everything we need for this is available using our faith; our job is to seize the opportunities. People do not mean to make mistakes. We need to leave others the room to learn. That is costly if you feel that you are the person everybody else is learning on! Nevertheless somebody has to decide that making sacrifices is part of Christianity and I think we all need to start with ourselves first.

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.” 2 Peter 3: 18. GRACE is our vehicle for growth. But in order to progress, we need to practise it. So those people who annoy the living daylights out of us are God sent opportunities for us to practice. They are not put there to annoy us, these people are just on their own journey toward truth and acceptance. Christ is our model … what He didn’t say speaks volumes. 

Sometimes we are so used to our own way of thinking, behaving, and being, that we forget that other people have a different place they are coming from. So what looks like a bad thing to us may be purely harmless to someone else.  We need to practise humility, and purpose to lean on Him and learn His ways. That will make us all bigger inside. Our task now is to encourage one another into good works. I think humility and vulnerability are a prime position to do that. I also think it’s why Jesus said, “Don’t call your brother an idiot.” Other people’s learning curves are often our greatest challenges and source of annoyance.

The Holy Spirit will not make anybody do anything. He can present us with urgency and encourage us to persevere. But He’s not a bully. The Lord means for us to treat each other in the same way. “Love one another as I have loved you.” Love does not have to abuse – instead it undergirds, it provides support, simply so the other person can learn. It does this unconditionally because that’s the way the Holy Spirit supports us. Some things are better not even being spoken about if it’s going to cause someone else to feel pushed or coerced. It is not another person’s job to force someone else to conform to their standards or ideas, to transform your life your attitudes your actions etc. 

Everything is about Grace. Christ’s death released unending Grace, which is always available to us but we must not abuse it – when we abuse it, we lose the benefit. The way to get Grace is to use it and rely upon it and realise that we are not complete without the Holy Spirit’s input. His Grace is freely available but we must humble ourselves, acknowledge our need and cooperate with the One Who was sent to help us. I have learnt, from experience, to trust the Holy Spirit’s opinion above my own – He knows me better than I know myself – plus He’s just plain lovely.  👋🏻