Liar

P 2955 Don’t be lost – be found!

/ DVH

John 8:42-47: “Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father [but He is not], you would love and recognize Me, for I came from God [out of His very Presence] and have arrived here. For I have not even come on My own initiative [as self-appointed], but He [is the One who] sent Me. Why do you misunderstand what I am saying? It is because [your spiritual ears are deaf and] you are unable to hear [the truth of] My word. 

You are of your father the devil, and it is your will to practice the desires [which are characteristic] of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks what is natural to him, for he is a liar and the father of lies and half-truths. 

But because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me [and continue in your unbelief]. Which one of you [has proof and] convicts Me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe Me? Whoever is of God and belongs to Him hears [the truth of] God’s words; for this reason you do not hear them: because you are not of God and you are not in fellowship with Him.”

Man, I love the book of John, I’ve been glued to it for weeks! Let’s just quickly revise what Jesus says in the 1st paragraph above. He came here to us, from the Presence of God. There are times, sadly, when we don’t live like we know this …we just think we do, because we’ve heard the words before. The power in those words comes from acting on them. If we really knew this, then whatever He says to us through His Word would not, and could not, come into question.  It is a waste of time to frame what the bible says by our own denominational bents. This book is God speaking to us, and we need to listen. We simply must stop rationalising the power of God to change lives out of His Word!

Coming from the very Presence of God means that Jesus has Almighty God’s authority to say what He says. And everything He says is covered in and by God’s Presence, and it will be interpreted to us by the Holy Spirit, Who was sent here to help us understand. There are no optional extras in the gospels – if ‘every promise in the book is mine’  — then every obedient response to those promises are mine as well! Ya might want to sit and think on that. Lastly, Jesus was sent here by God Himself– the Lord didn’t just decide to pop down here off His own bat!

Because of what Jesus says here, we know what the devil does;  how he sounds;  and what his aim is, so we don’t have to be ignorant of our enemy’s tricks. Did you get that it is natural for our enemy to lie? This means we need to desperately know the truth, because whatever he says will be really convincing! he’s despicably good at lying – it’s not a habit, it is part of his nature. He hates people. I also think that he loves to distract people with his lies … after all half the planet is chasing the good life, money, great circumstances and the dream of happiness, here and now! But that is not what the bible clearly says we should pursue.

The last paragraph tells us that human beings can’t hear the Lord Jesus because He speaks truth, and we like lies better than truth. Think about it – God says “Go and make disciples” and “Love one another” and we say: “That’s someone else’s job!” “That’s too hard!” Our preferences regarding what we choose to hear, can make us deafer than a post! However, listening to lies leaves us room to do whatever we like, whenever we want to, because we think: “God doesn’t mind” …! But God’s truth is destined to lead us into a totally different lifestyle. Sometimes we are happy enough to believe lies because believing lies leaves us undisturbed in our sin! But practising sin has a bad destination… Jesus came here to change our destination.

The questions every single human being has to answer are quite simple… is Jesus Christ Who He says He is?  Did He really come to do what He said He did?  Did He really rise from the dead? Today, I believe that His greatest plan is unfolding — He’s alive IN His people. You and I can easily make up a god in our own image and take a chance that what we think is right, IS actually right. But remember, our intellect and wisdom are limited, so we are making a limited choice. Sooner or later we will have to take someone else’s word. Why not take GOD’S own WORD? It’s been around for 2,000+ years or so. I know people who set out to disprove what God said and they ended up following Him because they found Him in the book!

Anybody can read the bible for themselves, starting with what Jesus said and did, and talk to God like this: “God if you are there, I am talking to you, if not, then I am talking to myself. Please help me to find You in Your book. ”Amen. All kinds of amazing things happen when you take the time to pray like that. Don’t be lost … be found! May God Himself lead you as you search to find Him. Jesus Christ IS truth. Bye 👋  

P 2954 Jesus conquered death!

/ DVH

John 8:20: “Jesus said these things in the treasury, as He taught in the temple [courtyard]; and no one seized Him, because His time had not yet come.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1,2a:“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die…”

Romans 14:8:“If we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord. So then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”

Luke 24:5b,6:“…but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; He has risen!”

There is a time to be born and a time to die, and because of what Jesus did for us, death is a door. Mankind has always had an eternal destiny. So when we die we simply change locations! Heaven belongs to us here and now, today – because Jesus loves us that much. 

So, just for today, I want talk to anyone who wants to leave this life prematurely. My heart goes out to the person who feels they can’t go on — I can hear your desperate cry for mercy, right here, in my funny old chair. I am praying for you as I am typing this blog. I don’t care what you’ve done, or with whom, we need every single member of this Body that is currently so badly broken. There is no despair so deep as the despair a human being suffers when they can no longer see Him or have any hope that will change.

Christianity has blown itself out of all proportion, and in the process we’ve left behind compassion and mercy. We’ve allowed rules to become doctrines. Only God Himself knows the terrible pain and suffering in someone’s heart. Physical, emotional and mental anguish have to be personally experienced to be understood. If that happens to be you, then please remember – Jesus Christ suffered all kinds of agony and anguish on that cross, He alone totally understands where you are right now.

That’s why He came to earth in the first place – to experience humanity first-hand and save us from ourselves. He asked me to write to you today. He wants you to do the bravest thing you have ever done and ask for help. Remember, despite how it looks to you — we need you. “The weaker members are more important…” 1 Corinthians 12:22.

I’ve found that terrible, unthinkable things in this life can suddenly turn around and situations can change in a heartbeat … because God is always on His Throne. He’s on your side, no matter what you have done. Grab His hand and hold on! I’ve also learnt that satan loves to find and add fuel to the fire of despair, depression and pessimism. You aren’t useless – you are under attack!

We can always tell our enemy’s voice — it accuses and condemns us. It remembers things we desperately want to forget, and it comes up with thousands of dreadful reasons why you are a waste of space and how everyone else would be better off without you! Treat him like the TV – turn him off.

Even if what he is saying is, or was true – he’s not trying to help you —he wants you dead. Start singing to yourself, with Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Spiritual songs are the songs we sing that we make up as we go along. I sometimes sing the Psalms, after all God does not care if we are tone deaf or totally tuneless. Doing this puts a spark to our rapidly fading faith. satan’s a liar and if he is coming up with these ghastly scenarios then you can bet God has something that only you can do … The bigger the brambles and booby traps, the bigger the prize on the other side of any test. 

Grace is the vehicle we need to automatically climb into every single day, in order to keep running this race. We cannot do this life in our own strength, because our strength runs out! It also gets incredibly battered by the stuff that comes at us. What Jesus did for us, once and for all, triumphs over everything else that is to come, and everything else that has gone before us. It is in our heavenly account, credited to us by the blood of Jesus. Hallelujah! 🙌  He whispers to us: “I have forgiven you.” Dare to believe Him.

Our mind cannot always rationalise its way around the deepest pain. Let His Word soothe your thoughts, and suffering – “He will not break a broken reed …!!”  When we cherish what the Lord has said and put it above our own thoughts and experiences, that’s when we begin to build a bank within our heart of testimonies about His power. We start to remember that He has helped us to overcome the very stuff that tried to drown us. He stops being the God I read about in His book, and becomes the God Who knows and loves ME. And because His Word is powerful, it works whether I think I believe it or not. 

Jesus went through all He suffered … so we would not have to suffer alone from this life’s torments. HE CAME OUT OF THAT GRAVE and proved that He conquered death and destruction once and for all! That means YOU … He conquered death and potential destruction – for you. Hold fast beloved of God – as we celebrate His victory over the very things that seek to destroy us all. 🕊️

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.  👋

P 2506 What is God’s love language? God’s love language is obedience.

/ DVH

“Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”1 John 3:18.“Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me.”John 14:21. BTW, let’s not get stuck on ‘but I can’t do that – I get it wrong all the time.’ Yeah me too. Jesus gave us something to aim at – the results come with practice … plus denying yourself and taking up your particular cross and following HIM.

There has been a lot of talk in the past about our own individual love languages … this one means this and that one means that. Yay! They are all very useful when we are trying to relate to one another. However, when it comes to Almighty God, He has ONE love language. Obedience. Funnily enough, if you practise obeying Him, you may not need to know your own love language – you’ll be too busy getting DEAD.

Anyway, this stuff isn’t all that hard to remember is it? Actually, it’s dead 🤪 easy — the problem seems to be about applying it … not understanding or remembering it! Let’s look at what Jesus did while He walked amongst us – after all, He is our Role-model. Oh! And my plan is to jump all over the current theory that Jesus obeyed so that we don’t have to. Rhubarb.

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to His own advantage; rather, He made Himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:5-11.

You see, first of all, that’s a whole lotta words, and unless we take the time to pull those words apart, and even check on some of their meanings, we can easily read, blah blah blah blah! nice thought …And we conclude — isn’t Jesus ace!? Of course He is!! Thank you Lord for doing that for us. Big sigh. All done now for today, nice thought that one… praise God!! I got that part. And so we move on to the rest of our day, doing what we’ve always done   … 😳

EXCEPT! It actually says at the beginning of that passage … “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus …“ In Philippians we are being exhorted to think about others the same way Christ thought about us. So we’d better pay attention because there are some pretty big obedience issues in there. Remember, our premise today is … what is God’s love language (?) and … I decided it’s obedience. But He said it first.

There are times when we read those words that we have not comprehended that when the Lord walked those dusty roads, and sometimes slept beside one, or ate nothing for dinner, or sat on the side of a hill for hours teaching people etc. etc. … He was obeying God. When He let men do those awful things to Him before He died… He was obeying God! Yeah, I know, that kind of jumps all over a lot of our current theology eh? He did all that to show us how to live – so we’d better pay attention. Because any minute now a TEST is going to show up!

Once, long ago, 120 people waited in an upper room because … Jesus Christ told them to do it. And that obedience changed their lives. We can so easily concentrate on the external vi-si-ble things: like fire falling on their heads, speaking in tongues, preaching a fantastic sermon about salvation. But what happened at Pentecost started with obedience. You wouldn’t want to be some guy that asked to be excused the day before all that happened, would you? You know that guy, the one that got married and bought a cow and had to get back home to take care of them and he couldn’t go to a wedding? Yeah him. Disobedience comes with big risks… just saying is all …

Now, let’s go back to looking at Jesus – because He is the best place to look! “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” Romans 5:19.“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” Romans 6:16.

Because we are pursing righteousness – and getting DEAD to self in the process … then that stuff is going to require our active obedience, not just our agreement. We could all agree that the sun is purple but that won’t change the reality and could bring on the men in the white coats to help us out!! Our agreement isn’t worth a load of old washing if it is not backed up by truth. FYI, truth is in the book – not the latest Christian doctrine, fad or fashion!

“Whoever says “I know Him” but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in Him …” 1 John 2:4. Yeah, I wish He hadn’t said that too. But He did! Not liking what the Holy Spirit wrote down doesn’t change a thing. Let’s go back to James and that mirror we would rather forget about. “Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.“James 1:23,24. This dumb schmuck has forgotten what a mirror is for!!  

Here’s another one to chew on as I leave for today: “And to love Him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Mark 12:33. Our Heavenly Father sees our deliberate, dying-to-self obedience as LOVE. Now there’s great motivation – when we obey Him we are showing Him our love.  Just FYI, SomeBody else did that first, remember? Bye. 👋

P 2262 How not to go up, or down the stairs!

/ DVH

Well, we had a difficult day the day before yesterday. Have you ever had one of those days where everything you already know about the Lord is tested, and then tested some more? That day had more surprises than we anticipated.

We have a routine in the morning, certain things happen before other things happen. Our bedroom is downstairs, so in order to have breakfast and type this blog I have to go upstairs. There are seven stairs and I slipped, and promptly   banged my chin etc and a few other things, on every step on the way down. 

And there I sat at the bottom of the stairs having broken off the neck of my humerus. A couple of hours later they managed to get me off to the hospital. We discovered low and behold, it would need a huge operation to fix what I broke. And liver transplant patients really should not ever have huge operations.  In this case, breaking my humerus was not all that funny!

A couple of hours later, the hospital sent us home because I can’t have an awful lot of pain killers either.  And I haven’t even got any plaster to show for my adventure!  I feel gypped.  It is an amazing thing when your world goes upside down, because you learn even more strongly, that you really can’t control anything.  Hubby and I were chatting on the way home because some disasters give you a fresh POV about what the Lord Jesus suffered on the cross.  We probably don’t think of things like that when life is normal.  

So now we have to wait for my body to heal itself, and hubby is helping me lots more than he usually has to…..what fun!  The healing process will take awhile so I am on restricted duties, not that I had many in the first place, and I am developing a distinct dislike of stairs.  Needless to say, nobody slept very well at our house last night.

“I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace.  In this world you will have trouble.  But take heart!  I have overcome the world.”John 16: 33.

I got to thinking about that scripture today and realised that Jesus figuratively, and literally, DID overcome the sorts of things we have to overcome.  I’m going to try and list a few, but I bet you will come up with a bigger list than me.  Mary got pregnant before she got married – that would have made her an outcast, so Jesus was rejected in the womb.  People would have looked sideways at Joseph too.  They were very poor.  The Lord was a refugee by the time He was barely walking. They had no family to help them because they left them all behind.  satan tried to kill Jesus right after He was born. 

His dad was a carpenter so Jesus knows all about the troubles and trials and sorrows that plague ordinary people like us.  He lived His life, literally, at war with the religious society around Him.  People came to Him for what He could do for them, very few came for Who He is.  He suffered from conspiracies against Him.  His stepfather died when He was young and He had half brothers and sisters.  He was stolen from, betrayed, misunderstood, called a liar, heretic, and this is just a sample of what He faced.

When they murdered Him, among many things, His shoulders were dislocated.  People fought over His clothes whilst He was dying … and, yet, the Lord still took the time to give the man hanging next to Him the opportunity as He was leaving this world to go and be with Him in the next.  He was the victim of somebody else’s jealousy, religious proclivities – and everybody left Him at the end.  Food for thought.

So as you go about earning your daily bread, doing chores or studying, remember He overcame the things that will bury us if we let them.  Because He did that, now we can do it too.  👋🏻🤕 Bye.