Lifestyles

P 3021 “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”

/ DVH

OK. Don’t freak out. I have not lost my mind, that’s an expression. I don’t secretly engaged in cat-skinning!  EW! That saying simply means: There is more than one way for something to be done. Hopefully the title got your attention. Gird up your girdle Gertie, its gunna be a bumpy ride. 

This world is currently extremely “me-centred” and hedonistic. Today, our society has been forced to make room for all kinds of weird, ugly, and downright disgusting ideas, and it has gone on to legalise them. Some self- expressions are from the pit. However … ”You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one Who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”1 John 4:4.Here’s my point for today:  do we believe that or not? 

Without the Lord Jesus in our lives, none of us could ever know who we truly are, or why we are here. Without Him, all we can produce is dissatisfaction, rage and despair. People everywhere are so busy chasing happiness like a lepidopterist chases rare butterflies – it seems like they think that is what this life is about …grabbing happiness where they can.

We know, from the bible, that what these ?alternate? groups think about this life is chock full of sin — but unfortunately the church has taken a bad stance when it comes to God’s POV. We’ve eliminated many people before they’ve had a chance to change their minds. And at the same time the Father of all light is losing HIS beloved children, while we are erroneously operating on the idea that their sin is worse than ours!  Um…even liars end up in the lake of fire! And yes, fibs count – even well intentioned ones.

Everybody’s sin has been paid for.…including Hitler’s and sexual deviants, and let us remember that Jesus Christ overpaid! Read the book. We are concentrating on the wrong bit – other people’s sins, not the people themselves. I know that some churches welcome all sorts of nasty things from the pit, yet others would never let that sort of person darken their doors. And they wear that attitude with misguided pride.

We cling to bits of the scripture like they are our entire life-raft, when God has given us a whole book! And then we thump it over other people’s heads, because …”we know the truth and it has set us free …”  (Let’s please remember that we were not set free to be judgmental and unloving!) …God Himself is the truth that rules everything. The bible is not a private, or public opinion poll. It’s a book about God, and what He wants from His people.

There is room for ALL at the foot of the cross. Let’s at least give any outcasts an opportunity to find out!  God loves them as much as He loves us. We don’t have to become them to love them! In His eyes, there is no grading system to love. He loves us because HE IS LOVE. Who knows what an encounter with Jesus will do in someone else’s life? Pray for that!

But the lost cannot decide if we won’t allow them to find out there is another way to live. We are keeping our own faith supposedly safe at someone else’s cost. And pretty soon, those other people might be our own sons and daughters! Lot lived among people with deviant lifestyles and still maintained love.

We need to aim higher. Almighty God is bigger than I think He is! And He is bigger than my denomination thinks He is. And much much bigger than this world thinks He is!  Here’s the right attitude from Jude V 23: ” Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.” Hate the sin, not the sinner … there’s more than one way to skin a cat! Bye.🐈.

P 2825 We are weapons that are forged in the fires of adversity …

/ DVH

Many Christians like to think that we are doing our best when we just meander along, picking up this new thought and putting down that old one — hopefully teaching our own kids … but probably not very worried about other people. We pray, and then we secretly blame God if He doesn’t send us revival! Be your own revival. To be a Christian is to be a true revolutionary! These passionate individuals see hatred as an opportunity to love others!  Meanwhile. loving and caring for those that hate you, is contrary to what humans want to do – of course it’s radical! 

In most countries today there are not many practising Christians. And by practising, I don’t mean going to church week by week. I think we’ve been reduced to a remnant – how else can we explain the excesses of the West in the face of the total deprivation everywhere else?! We’ve learnt over years of inactivity to pay lip-service to things that need our total devotion. When Jesus said: “Follow Me” – He wasn’t talking about a parade!  

Christianity is not designed to be a religion. Jesus is the way we live and breathe and learn to love others – even the ones that wish we were dead. We cannot call ourselves Christians, if we have not learnt to OVERCOME — things like our own penchant for sin, our greed for the things of this world, as well as our own personal trials and tribulations. We must learn to handle bad times the same way as good ones looking to Jesus Who is the Author and Finisher of our faith.

It seems to be that what we believe has not affected the entirety of our lives. Instead we plaster over the things that need to be purged, including those personal attitudes that Christ Himself preached against. Sadly, when we water down what we believe for our own benefit and convenience, we are watering down the power of God at the same time! We need to remember, we are either on fire, or the fire is slowly dying, or it has gone out! A tiny bit of Christianity that makes us feel safe will not do, we must be completely immersed in the things of God. And what we say has to be exhibited by our lifestyles. His love always becomes incredibly real in the fire of adversity.

We’ve been reborn to take what this world thinks, and stand it on its head. We don’t just saunter along smiling at everybody, waving cheerfully, holding a banner for Jesus and putting up cute pictures of scriptures over our sink! What we believe needs to be lived out – day by day by day. We are His living bibles, to be read by everyone else around us, we are not just nice polite people! Instead, Christians live real lives filled with real problems, and a lot of those problems are totally insurmountable without God’s help … so we are learning how to utterly RELY upon Him.

Our faith is nothing without the power and Presence of God. All we have to offer others presently, is pie in the sky when they die. God cares so much more about all of His kids, than the trite things we present to others. He is not an absent God Who benignly, and absent-mindedly smiles down on His sometimes AWOL, naughty children. That is insulting to the Holy Spirit, Who is ever-present. He longs to be our ever-present help in time of need, not the spare tyre on the back of yet another brand new vehicle! Instead of working ourselves up into a lather trying to demonstrate His power – we need to daily die to self and demonstrate HIS LOVE instead.

I think the reason people aren’t coming to Jesus is because our ideas of witnessing have made Him seem weak. We present Him as a baby, or God on a cross unable to come down. Or even SomeOne Who can be contained by a church building!  WE ARE HIS ALTAR – our hearts are His home. Our contribution to this world is that we know the God of all Hope! We need to talk about Who He is. He’s the Almighty, ever-present, always holy, always with us, Father. The God Who knows everything about each one us. Who freely gave us His own Son to pay for humanity’s wilful sinfulness.

We must not be afraid when the fire around us, and in us, heats up, and life becomes unbearable. That’s when the truly great weapons of war are forged … IN THE HEAT OF THE FIRE. He promised to be with us when we walk through the flames. (Isaiah) The biggest enemy we face, is not the other guy – it’s us – as we lead lukewarm lives at the cost of someone else coming to know Christ. God’s Love cries out daily to be demonstrated.“But God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8. 

It’s time to do more than idly talking about Him when the subject comes up. It’s time we showed our enemies His love, like they are our best friends. We need to stop using prayer for release or an escape vehicle, and pray for the Grace and courage to walk through the flames – untouched. ‘We are weapons of His warfare, and those weapons are not carnal but mighty to the pulling down of strongholds.’ 2 Corinthians 10:4. People are dying every single day and they have no knowledge that this life is not all there is. 

We have to become His swords, forged in the fires of adversity, so we can cut off other people’s chains and set them free, like Jesus did. Bye.🔥

P 2758 Perspective.

/ DVH

Sometimes the bible jumps right out at me and wallops me ‘round the ear-hole. Those modern language versions mean I can’t hide behind the thought:  ‘what the heck does that mean? Oh! Never mind, I’ll get to it later.’ So hang onto your socks because this next verse is a doozy. “Keep in mind that we who belong to Jesus Christ have already experienced crucifixion. For everything connected with our self-life was put to death on the cross and crucified with Messiah.” Galatians 5:24 TPT.

Did ya get that? You might want to read it again. Yeah. It really does say that. You and I, we are already DEAD. My selfishness;  my inability to care about how you feel;  if I am rude, uncaring and unkind to you;  all that may seem to be alive – but in His Kingdom reality — it’s already dead. My choice to yield to His will makes the difference. Now, I can bring His kingdom into this world, using my faith and my choices. How do you like them onions?!

There are all kinds of attitudes, actions, lifestyles, and supposed realities in this world, that we can choose to live in —  ‘the wide and extremely varied world view where anything goes and we don’t much care about what happens to anyone else.’ The ‘I am never going to have enough ideology,’ or the ‘I’m stuck! I cannot possibly change who I am because this is who I am’ theory. And then there is living in His kingdom, here and now, where we live for Jesus no matter what it costs and LOVE RULES.

In His kingdom we are no longer susceptible to sin’s power. Jesus sent us SomeOne to help us – the Person He sent to help us overcome our penchant for sin – made the world. He can certainly lead us out of sin! It’s the Holy Spirit, BTW! He is Christ with us now. We can choose to obey God. We can choose to love, to care, to engage, to die for others  – He gave us the power to choose to die to our own selfishness. Because of what Jesus did for us – we have been given a choice – we can live His way, our own way, or this world’s way. But Christ’s way is the only WAY that brings eternity down here. “On earth as it is in heaven …”

However, there is also a default place we can live… and sometimes I think most of us end up living there. That’s the place where we really want to please Jesus, but we know we are falling short and making mistakes over and over again. We try and we try, then we fail, and with each failure comes more condemnation. The answer to this problem is at the beginning of this scripture. ‘We are already dead.’ Living this life dead involves exercising our faith. We choose to believe the bible! We live our lives now, like the way we use to live is gone. It’s in the past because of what Jesus did for us.

Like I said, our choices can work by default. When we don’t choose the Lord’s Ways, and we give in to whatever stupid thing we feel we simply must do… that default position means we are allowing satan to drag us around. he can torment us and lie to us that God won’t love us anymore and we are a hopeless case. But when we read the bible, we eat the kind of food that gives us spiritual strength to manage whatever stuff comes at us in a day. We remind ourselves that our debt has already been paid, as we worship the Lord, and we live our lives gratefully serving Him.

When we start out trying to make Godly/kingdom choices, our responses might be weak and wobbly and a bit on the pathetic side. Why? Because this is a new way to live and we aren’t used to asking Him to help us. The person we were before is used to being in charge, but now we are living in and for His kingdom. Let’s be clear, in His kingdom we own our sins and confess our faults, and we repent and deliberately repair things. 

The moment we chose to follow Jesus we give up our right to choose where we live, where we go, who we marry, what we have and what we don’t. We died. Dead men have no rights!  Every self-centred thought and action on our behalf went on that cross, it all landed on Christ. He bore the weight of it all. Enormous things and small ones. He willingly gave that incredible gift of God’s forgiveness, to mankind. Now our part is to give ourselves to Him, every single day, living the way He has chosen for us. 

We have given up the right to live like the people around us. However, we don’t serve Him as slaves – that is people who have to live this way to please Him. What Jesus already did for us pleased Father God! Now we serve Him voluntarily. He died voluntarily and we choose to die to our old lives – voluntarily. Here’s another scripture to chew on: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If you truly want to follow Me, you should at once completely reject and disown your own life. And you must be willing to share My cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to My ways.” Matthew 16:24 TPT.

Following Jesus Christ isn’t about making this life better –  it is about whether I am willing to die to what I want in my life, every single day. Jesus has already paid for our sins – our sins are no longer the problem. The problem is the kingdom we are choosing to live in. That’s called perspective. Bye. 👋

P 2752 Welcome banners for the lost.

/ DVH

I was somewhat concerned yesterday when I thought about linking something from YouTube to this page. Not because I am unhappy with the content I shared, but, because … guys …  … as Christians … we can be so religious! I am aware that if something dubious popped its head up from YouTube, that those people who do read my blog could miss the blessing in what I was sharing.

It’s a fact that there are people in this world who have evil lifestyles, that biblically speaking, put them in spiritual harm’s way. We all know that there are things that the bible clearly condemns. But, we can be so intent on getting across our disapproval of someone else’s lifestyle, we omit to pass on His LOVE to the very people Christ was sent to save. Those things are not mutually exclusive.  Love is a spiritual gift given to us by Jesus Himself, to disarm the lost and help the needy.

How can anyone know that God loves them while we are afraid of other people’s sin? We treat it like it is CoVid or something else highly contagious. Yet we are not exempt from sin ourselves, otherwise the Epistles are irrelevant and Paul was teaching and correcting people who were already perfected! Just because we are saved, that doesn’t mean we know everything. We need to be humble when we approach somebody else who has been caught in satan’s trap – and there are plenty of his traps about! Hands up those people who have never ever lost their tempers… I can’t put my hand up either. 

People, as in human beings, need to be loved. When love is in short supply, and hatred and disapproval flourish, they will find love wherever they can. Just like a thirsty man will drink filthy water. Maybe the reason we are afraid to associate with some people is because we are not walking closely with our King. Jesus wasn’t afraid of anything. because our God can deliver anyone from evil – even us! Once a man with many demons (2,000!) sat in his right mind, at Christ’s feet. Instead of ostracising or alienating people, we should be asking ourselves why the love and Presence of God is not convicting them through US – without us even having to say a word.

We have a responsibility for what is happening in this world – WE ARE HIS SALT. Sadly, I think the church has not loved others well. Instead we’ve condemned them, and made their sin more important than their spiritual well-being. There will always be some people who are given over to a reprobate mind – but God can snatch anyone from the fire. He saved me … and I had no idea what holiness looked like – I still struggle, how about you?

Almighty God IS going to snatch some people out of the fire. How? I dunno! But I think it is time we realise that Jesus touched the unclean, and made them clean because He, Himself was clean – inside and out. Plus I think it is a dumb idea as well as a poor game plan, to let FEAR rule our responses. We are running away from our first responsibility – to tell everyone that Jesus loves them – what they do about that piece of spiritual information is not up to us. And just to be clear, I am talking about living a life of love toward the people around us, as He leads us.

In the past, loving Christian families have been tormented and tortured by gossip and innuendo etc. because even though they raised their kids in the fear and the knowledge of the Lord, a member of their family has gone off into a lifestyle that the church feels we can’t approve of. So that entire family is held responsible for something that could happen to anyone. At this moment in time, the world we are living in has a tidal wave of positive reinforcement and approval toward those ungodly lifestyles. Those lifestyles come recommended by a society that loves to indulge the flesh.

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Instead of blaming families, we need to fall on our faces and repent that we have not modelled the love of Jesus clearly enough to those who were obviously searching. I know what it is like to commit yourself to something that you know is wrong – the further you walk down the wrong road the stronger your commitment to it gets, and the harder it gets to back up. People can get trapped by their choices. But our God is so much bigger than than our choices. To most people in this world, God’s love is a theory – we are the vehicles He has chosen to demonstrate that love.

It’s time for all of His children to come on home. We must hang up welcome home banners to the lost. Has any one of us been saved from our sins without God’s love reaching out to us, first?“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” Matthew 22:39. “God loved us while WE were yet sinners …” Romans 5:8 “Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.”Jude 22,23.  Bye. 🙏

P 2639 The hardest thing for a parent to do …

/ DVH

…is to love their grown up child, and hate their kid’s sin. As we all know, little kids are a lot of work, nappies, feeding, tantrums, cuddles, sleeping  – all that stuff is hard physically and mentally. It’s a demanding time. But – the hardest days are ahead — teaching your older kids to obey a God they cannot see is much harder. Unless they are prepared to read His book. 

Every bad habit you ever had or saw in yourself, can start to come out back at you, in their behaviour. As the maturing child grows you might end up judging your own investment in their lives, and feel like you fell short. Years of teaching, talking, redirecting, unselfishness and sacrifice are often forgotten. So when that older kid flops its big toe across the line and stares you right in the eye … while they are living without the Lord, and they refuse to change … that stuff is utterly devastating.

Some kids are so adept at getting what they want, they know exactly what buttons to press. In those moments we need to be careful. We can’t afford to come into agreement with a way of life that is out of agreement with God’s ways. Yet you can be so tempted to agree because you love your kid!

I know a little bit about this subject. Our kids are all now fully-mature functioning adults with grown-up kids of their own. But one of my adult children doesn’t walk with Jesus and they live somewhere else. Let me be very clear – I still miss that kid in my life. The pain from the semi-estrangement can be so hard I choose to refuse to think about it. Because I know that I can get caught up in the details of my own failure, and end up in blame and guilt. I second-guess my much earlier decisions and blame myself for the adult child’s wrong decisions.

Praise Jesus, I’ve learnt to hand this kind of situation over to Him and say: “I failed! Your turn!” The hardest thing for a parent to do is to keep on praying … but walk away. As a parent, you can throw His love over their fence – figuratively – as the Lord leads you, but don’t be tempted to try to change them. Let them come to you. And when and if they repent, do wait to see the fruit of their repentance. Refuse to be blackmailed by sad sack faces, and pleas of ‘it will be different this time, I promise.’  We cannot afford to let torment and guilt drag us around by the heart, we need to be led by HIS LOVE – which never ceases, but has boundaries.

The verse from yesterday really spoke to me: “…they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” Romans 1:32. I have dear friends whose adult kids are living in terrible life-styles, far away from the Lord. Of course they love their kids and hate to disapprove of them, however these grown up kids are light years away from that little child we can still see! Unfortunately, when your kids don’t follow the Lord, blame can follow you around like a rottweiler! It’s ready to grab and bite your ankles and drag you under. The devil is not satisfied with just tormenting you, hurting your kid and hurting you through your kid, he wants to destroy your faith as well.

An adult kid still knows how to get at you – manipulation is often its middle name! It can wind you around its little finger. Sadly, it doesn’t care about right and wrong, it will try every which way to drag your approval out of you. Even when it is clear to everyone else that the way that kid is living is not helping them! Christian parents can get sucked into the vortex of throwing love, lifelines and even money at wayward adult children in the hope that somehow that will convince them that the parent loves them and so does God. The raw truth is – when we do that, we are approving of, and feeding the very behaviour that needs change. 

The thing to do is to make your position, lovingly and clearly, and maybe say stuff like this: “ I am not rejecting you – you are bigger than this sinful lifestyle. I love you, I always will, I will always feed you if you are hungry. But what you are doing, the way you are living, is wrong, and I will not invest my approval, finances, and energy to help you go the WRONG WAY. I will not help you to go to hell!” Parenting is not for the faint-hearted. And sadly our society approves of everything! There is enormous pressure on parents. However, God loves them more than you do. Step out of His way. 

Only you know the maturity of your child. For some kids this relinquishment of responsibility might have to happen earlier rather than later. Don’t EVER stop loving them, but don’t dive in with them and let them run the show when they are clearly living sinful lives. Hold fast to your faith that God hears and He will deliver them. May the Lord give you grace to stand up against the devil’s onslaught. Amen. 🥲

P 2612 Where are our empowered lives?

/ DVH

In our world, we learnt – some of us from the cradle, to be polite and watch what we say. However, the latest younger generations have stomped all over that idea. I think they see manners as a kind of hypocrisy, and I honestly think I agree with them. I wish they were nicer about how angry they are, and that grace might abound in them more, but I think that older generations try to keep things the same, because ‘the same’ is comforting as we get older. However, the reality is the Body of Christ is not living Holy Spirit inspired, empowered lives. And who we are behind closed doors is daily disproving what we say and act out at church!

There is no more room to continue to hide our old ideas under excuses, traditions, and made up theology. Our stranglehold on what we call reality is not the only one. The thing is, I’m pretty sure that younger people scare the pants off people my age, because they’ve taken all our manmade rules and torn them up. Us oldies are guilty of living concealed lives, mainly because we do not want to be vilified by our peers. Sometimes we’ve simply hidden what we really feel;  because the old way, the polite society way, said it isn’t nice to blurt out your thoughts and feelings all over other people. After all, maybe those other people will judge us! In other words, we’ve been afraid. And fear and love can’t occupy the same space.

It is hard to believe for the best in people today – without pretending at least some of the time. We’ve been a powerless people who refused to talk about reality for way too long. In a world that says whatever it likes, I honestly think I’d have gone down the proverbial plug hole if it wasn’t for Jesus helping me. He has helped me to see the blessing in truth, openness, and facing what is really going on. And traditions, old and new, suck the life out of true faith. Our generational hypocrisy is now showing. It is much too easy to dismiss any messenger because they don’t say something nicely, or respectfully. Or maybe we feel superior because of age. However, if we don’t take what Jesus said seriously, there is a possibility we will continue to lose our God-given ability to change.  

My question is this: ‘how can we repent from stuff we’ve done, if we refuse to acknowledge it is there?‘ Many churches today are living cloistered lifestyles. However by shutting out what we think of as ‘bad things’ – we are turning away the very people the Lord wanted us to love on. Sadly, we can quite quickly draw up our robes and refuse to associate with anyone who doesn’t look like us. Many churches barely tolerate each other, instead they continue to live their own little autonomous lives, as if they were the only church in the world! If that isn’t hypocrisy I dunno what is! We all claim to have the same foundation but we’ve built all kinds of weird houses, with even weirder ideas and theologies on top of that foundation. It’s time to take down, or choose to tear up the stuff that cannot remain.

Maybe sometimes our kids don’t want to come to church because they are living their lives in a very harsh real world and they can see what we believe has no substance, it is hollow. We say we believe this and that, but the power to change is not present. These kids are sensible, they want something REAL from their faith, and our battered, bent and adjusted theology doesn’t do it for them.

I met someone recently who had been a missionary child, stationed overseas with their folks, and their parent had been powerfully used to evangelise the country they were sent into. The adults were successful in the eyes of their home church, because many people came to know Christ. But, their own children suffered all kinds of abuse at the parents’ hands and no-one else knew about it. Christians have been hooked on the devil’s crook that says we will undermine our credibility if we own up to our faults. It must stop.

It is a shame that others outside our walls are blowing the whistle on how far we’ve fallen from our glorious ideal, Jesus Christ. He didn’t preach church ideals and rules. He preached about a whole other kingdom that very few people know exists – thanks to us! We need to start thanking our children and grandchildren for saying out loud the things we’ve tried so hard to keep hidden from ourselves and others. “For the kingdom of God consists of and is based on, not talk but power – moral power and excellence of soul).” 1 Corinthians 4:20, and: “…God’s Way is not a matter of mere talk; it’s an empowered life.”  Bye.👋