Living faith

P 2927 God loves diversity.

/ DVH

Inadvertently, in Christianity, people have made some subjects into major things — stuff like the speaking gifts. Some things are entirely up to the perseverance of the individual and application. Things like speaking in tongues will help believers with their focus. It takes faith to step into this gift, but people should not drive themselves crazy because they don’t speak in an unknown tongue, or they haven’t so far.

Christians from all generations – people who came from all over this planet, have followed the Holy Spirit into this world’s darkest places. They died for what they believed. We know that they were devoted saints – yet they didn’t happen to speak in tongues and if they prophesied we weren’t told! Tongues, teaching, exhortation,  prophecy, any speaking gifts are not some sort of spiritual badge, they are spiritual GIFTS and those gifts have been given to us to benefit everyone else! Our aim should be to step into the flow of what the Lord wants, so we can carry it out. Every gift matters.

By the way, people who pray in tongues pray as the Holy Spirit leads them, but their minds may not understand what they are praying. That’s why we need to pray both ways, with the Spirit and with our minds. We have inadvertently divided His Body over things that were given to us to be a blessing, not a prerequisite or a qualifying mark of greater spirituality. Personally, I ask Him to help me pray, and I let Him choose how!

Those Christians who find that this precious gift is not part of their package from the Lord, are often people who are afraid of being blasphemous – their fear of hurting the Lord is blocking their faith in His ability to be faithful to us! That’s not SIN. It is a sensitive, badly-informed heart. When anyone prays in tongues, they have stepped into the stream of Eternal Never-ending Flow of what God is doing and saying, using their faith… We are speaking the Holy Spirit’s language, not necessarily ours!

The real test is the level of our humility, not our ability to look spiritual. Prophecy, for instance, should edify and build up everyone’s faith, as well as speak directly into the heart of the people who hear it. It is not a badge that proves one person is more spiritually attuned than someone else. It is a gift. It was giv-en to them — but the Person really responsible for all that beauty is the Holy Spirit! So when others hear Him speak, they will hear Him speaking directly into their hearts, their situations, their pain and joy. It touches them, sets them free, and makes them feel they are not a failure. Father God doesn’t see His kids as failures – He sees us through the shed blood of His darling Son! 

We need to honour what Jesus did for us over how we feel at any given time. Yes, we might have a good reason to be caught up in our feelings, but that’s often precisely when we need to step out in faith and tell the Lord that He is bigger than our feelings, and then do whatever it is, anyway! This means we are putting Him into His rightful place. Making Him our first and highest priority. 

Just like repentance and reparation are not optional extras, they are a part of a living faith. We get muddled up because we think those two things mean we need to feel something. Maybe we should feel sorry about what we have done. But actually these two things are about sheer, unqualified obedience to His Word, not our feelings. I have asked for forgiveness from someone and it was months later I realised what I had actually done! Think of this as being like an orchestra, when the instruments are not tuned together there will be disharmony. Only the conductor knows each part and how in tune to His composition accurately.

1 Corinthians 12:4-11 says: “God’s various gifts are handed out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various ministries are carried out everywhere; but they all originate in God’s Spirit. God’s various expressions of power are in action everywhere; but God Himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows Who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people! The variety is wonderful:”

These verses explain the main point of Spiritual gifts. The majority of Christians have gifts they have not activated, so they remain unaware of the power of letting Him operate through them. All His gifts showcase the glory of Almighty God to others. That’s why we were given them. Those gifts are all about HIM, not us. I really don’t care if anyone prays or exhorts others well, or prophesies so brilliantly that God’s glory comes down upon everyone, or teaches us so clearly, it is mind-blowing… They are still His gifts, for His glory. It’s about HIM.

We can elevate some gifts over others – but we should never underestimate the gifts that operate quietly, behind the scenes because that’s the Lord too! Jesus served humanity without capital letters on everything! (Unlike me! 🤣 –  I’m still being perfected!) There are no big or small gifts, only big or small human attitudes. Our God loves everything we do to honour, elevate and illustrate His goodness to others. Spiritual gifts are for everyone’s benefit – and God loves diversity.  Bye for now, 👋

P 2629 Going from reading into transformation.

/ DVH

“He has rescued us completely from the tyrannical rule of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom realm of His beloved Son. For in the Son all our sins are canceled and we have the release of redemption through His very blood.” Colossians 1:13-14 TPT.

Lemme ask a curly question … if we need rescuing, and SomeBody has already done it …then what keeps going wrong?? This is the bit most of us get stuck on – mainly because we often don’t feel any different. Especially if we have been provoked by other people or circumstances. The change we need to make, is about the way we treat the Lord and other people, despite our circumstances— even when under pressure. I’m not talking about hiding the fact that painful, hard things things exist, I’m talking about finding out what the Lord says about any particular situation, and walking through them His Way.

Our finite brains are not the most reliable guides, especially if there is a barrel load of feelings tied to some thoughts! In the academic world E = mc². That’s called knowledge. Hilariously I had to ask hubby if I remembered that formula correctly because I learnt it like, 60 years ago! I also have learnt, from experience, that my knowledge has become faulty over time. So, what if I embark upon a new way to live and I exchange my old thoughts and reactions, FOR WHAT GOD HAS SAID? That’s when I enter what Christ has already given me – His kingdom. We must move on from the concepts into the reality of living HIS way.

If I replace what I’ve learnt, or what I think I know with scripture, plus relevant matching actions, then over time that means I will automatically start to reference things that float through my head, by what HE SAID in the book. I believe that’s what this scripture means:  “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2. By doing we end up testing out God’s will for ourselves. 

Here’s another verse:  “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5. WE do it. He will help us but we do it! We refuse to entertain anything that contradicts what He has already told us in Person, through His word. Here’s yet another from Isaiah 26:3:“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” This is the kind of “work” we are engaged in now. We become vigilant to any thoughts that are contrary to the revealed will of God in the book. We live now to please Him. Here’s my last verse that explains this ongoing battle: Romans 7:23:“But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”

My body and its functions have a memory. For instance, when I think about some food, I can remember its taste. In some circumstances, I might remember fear, danger or disappointment. Those things can rule, cloud, and limit my faith if I am not prepared to put aside what I think I already know, in favour of what God has already said. The important bit is to wait upon God and find OUT what He says! We don’t just need to hear a Voice, we need to have what we hear validated by what we are reading, or have read in the bible previously. 

satan taunts us. he tells us we can’t be different because – we are still feeling, reacting, and responding the same way we always did. Feelings aren’t FAITH. We need to learn to defer to God’s opinion, not our own, and that will take time, patience and persistence. When we don’t act on what we believe, we are undermining the very thing God gave us for transformation – living faith. True faith has evidence – it has actions that match up with our belief system.  We are going to have to actively restore the balance we will need in this new life of faith … by knowing what God says even more than the data we’ve been collecting and collating all our lives. Then we go on to choose to ACT the way the bible says.

Jesus did everything that needed to be done to set us free at Calvary. Now we faithfully and progressively change our minds to think the way He thought. This means we don’t have to be ruled by our appetites and fears etc. anymore – we’ve moved away from our old location of fear etc. into a new place. We’ve been born into a new kingdom and it has a new way to live. Like that scripture above in Colossians says, we no longer have to live the way we used to. 

SomeBody paid our debt — and now we must clear out the closets of our old way of thinking and replace those things with Godly thinking. SomeBody – the Lord Jesus Christ! – freely gave us the power to go from reading the bible into doing what it says = transformation. Now we need to go out and act on what we read. Dying to self means we refuse to be led about by our appetites and needs, instead we live to serve and obey what our King says. Bye. 👋