Love our enemies

P3448 Danger is present when we choose to love.

/ DVH

“For Yahweh is always good and ready to receive you. He’s so loving that it will amaze you— so kind that it will astound you! And He is famous for His faithfulness toward all. Everyone knows our God can be trusted, for He keeps His promises to every generation!” Psalms 100:5 TPT. The biggest temptation we will ever face is not about having a happy life – the biggest temptation we face, daily, is whether we choose to believe our GOD IS GOOD and FAITHFUL … or not.  Any other attitude is dangerous. This points to the very heart of Who our Father is. 

Now before we move an inch further, I want to say … The Lord is so faithful, loving and kind, He deserves every single bit of our thanks, praise and worship, forever. But when stuff happens around us, and to us, it can become so easy to doubt His goodness, faithfulness, etc. Doing that undermines our faith. Doubt yourself, your friends, your life, what you hear, your family, your circumstances, but do not ever doubt God’s goodness.

I know the concept of His kind of love is far above our understanding, but that’s the bit of the kite of God’s Grace we totally need to hold onto. I strongly urge you, don’t ever let go of Who He is – His goodness – no matter what is going on in your heart or around you. I’ve found that when I focus on what I think I need, my knowledge of His goodness toward me, fades away. Like that kite I mentioned, it climbs up so high, I can barely see what is written on it. God Himself has promised us grace, grace and more grace. (James 4:6).We will have it when we need it – ask.

This is why we read and soak in the bible. It daily reminds us of His loving kindness, which is so much better than this life can be. It is also very helpful to read the bible looking for descriptions of Who He is, How much He loves us, as well as the things that position our hearts to be in communion with Him. We were made for that. Let’s enjoy Him now, and appreciate His love now. In our hard times a sacrifice of praise is a worthy gift for our King.

However, there is always a danger for us to simply fit the Lord in, around the edges of our already busy days. Or we can take up our time with Him, with lists of prayer requests. But the bible tells us to … “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.” Psalm 100:4. So much depends on our responses to His instructions, and I choose to treat those things as a to do list! I follow the verses looking for things to do, or things to say, or not to say -then I act on them. 

We already know that love, is an action word, not just a noun. God loved, so He gave. And Jesus laid down His life. He healed the sick. Raised the dead. He taught the truth. He lived to serve His Father’s will. All action words. Now we are alive, right here, right now, to do the same things He did. We choose to love our enemies and those who despitefully use us. We don’t love them because they are loveable, because that would be masochistic! We do it because Jesus Himself told us to treat people this way.

If we take our Heavenly Father and faith out of our own daily lives, we won’t have anymore power to overcome the things of this world, than the-people-who-don’t-know-Him yet. Why are we surprised when all kinds of people do terrible things? “Without God, (as in all of mankind!), none of us can do anything.” We need Him to lead us out of temptation, into loving those careless people around us who have no idea how to live in love, and it’s our job to be a witness for them.

The danger we face every single day is that we will read what He said, agree with it, and then DO nothing about it. That’s when our faith becomes dormant, because we only use it to ask for the things we think we need or want. I understand when desperate people pray for healing – I need healing too. I too have been in impossible relationships that nearly destroyed me. But if Jesus came to our house in Person, I would not say: ”Why was I not healed, or delivered, Lord?” I would put my face on the floor and worship Him, and all that other stuff would fade away.

The things I need to remember are things like these: “The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; …” Psalm 34:19. “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. In Him we have placed our hope that He will yet again deliver us,..” 2 Corinthians 1:10. “We are hard pressed on all sides, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; …persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9. This life is a blink. A hiccup in the passage of time, only made boring or heartbreaking by the way mankind approaches it!

As Christ’s followers, let’s learn to live with the possibility of danger and trouble landing on us, pressing up against our faces and hearts until we feel we are going to die … but we won’t. That’s when Jesus says to us:  “Now, you are ready to learn of ME!” So we pick up His yoke, and find true freedom. Feelings come and go, depending on whether we get what we want or not, but ‘The Word of our God stands forever.’ Isaiah 40:8.

“For we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about our trouble in [the west coast province of] Asia [Minor], how we were utterly weighed down, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life [itself].” 2 Corinthians 1:8. The Apostle Paul knew, first hand, how very dangerous choosing to love others can be. Bye. 👋.

P 2742 Stand firmly on the Rock.

/ DVH

Our God is our ever-present Rock and foundation.”He only is my Rock and my Salvation; He is my Defence and my Fortress, I shall not be moved. With God rests my salvation and my glory; He is my Rock of unyielding strength and impenetrable hardness, and my refuge is in God!” Psalm 62:6-8. “Yahweh, You’re the bedrock beneath my feet, my faith-fortress, my wonderful deliverer, my God, my rock of rescue where none can reach me. You’re the shield around me, the mighty power that saves me, and my high place.” Psalms 18:2 TPT.  “He is the Rock, His works are perfect, and all His ways are just, a faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is He.” Deuteronomy 32:4.

What does it mean when the bible says that Almighty God is our Rock? It means because we are His, and we have learnt, through experience that HE cannot be moved, so we cannot be moved because we are standing on Him and all He has done for us! We need to continually practice the skill of not being moved, even if an adverse wind is taking our breath away. Our knowledge of the goodness and purposes of Almighty God need to be far greater than the intellectual knowledge we’ve collected about the force of any kind of wind. Otherwise fear will take control and fear makes a terrible driver. Almighty God, His goodness, His faithfulness are the firm foundation we stand on.

The winds of change are blowing all over this world, and I think that they sometimes seem like gale force winds. At the same time, I sometimes wonder how any of us will cope if we move on into hurricane winds? The kind of wind that brings total destruction in its wake. Like: what if war comes to where we live? What if hunger or thirst comes? What if the people we love, or our families are no longer safe wherever they go? What if our families do not love God with a greater passion than we have – what will become of them? Are we equipped to do what we can … and then go on to stand! That wind blows inside our minds, as well as outside and around us. God becomes an untested theory.

There is something that exists today, that I’d call ‘distance trouble’ — bad things happening to people like us, but they are happening far, far away. This means we can enjoy relative peace because those bad things occur elsewhere. Instead we live with a low distant rumble of what might come next. Because these things are not happening now, right where we live, we are still free to view them dispassionately. We can have sympathy, tears, or be shocked, but my question today is – what happens when those bad things invade our safe carefully cultivated personal worlds?

How will we manage to love our enemies, when right now, our enemies are mainly in our minds? One day we could have real actual enemies, facing us, who physically want to kill us. People all round this world are facing that reality right now. We have the luxury of viewing change as an optional  extra because we are positionally secure … However, even here, where I live, there are gangs of children roaming the streets, stealing things that don’t belong to them. The opinions about what to do about this reality are many and varied, but ineffective at best. 

There are people in this world who are daily too busy running for cover – to save their lives or their families – they don’t have time for opinions. What would we do if what is there, comes here? How will we cope? I want to propose that if we have not made the Lord our God our firm anchor – our ROCK, and have that reality established in our lives, we cannot possibly know what WE are capable of, under extreme pressure. Now is the time to learn to trust Him, and surrender to Him and His Ways. We need to give up our right (?) to determine our own destiny.

Human beings do not respond well under extreme pressure. Yet it seems that we are still not wise enough to make the Ways of God our first priority. Many people I know are selective about what they will and won’t obey. They dismiss someone else’s dedication as over-zealousness and extremism. “That’s not that important,” they say, “God understands I can’t live like that. I have other priorities.” Do we have to almost drown in our own sorrows, before we learn in the depth of our hearts that this life is brief? We need to do good while the sun is shining … because things may not always stay that way! Personally, I need the ever-expanding many-sided wisdom of God constantly instructing and helping me or I will lose my way. He is my Rock.

Now is the time to stretch and prepare ourselves and our children, for the things that could come and bang upon the door of our safe little havens. Now is the time to learn to love, give, share, and care — and make that loving caring concrete, as well as the aim of our lives. We need to learn to stand firmly on the Rock that is God Himself, and learn to remain stable and not falter, no matter what comes next. That takes training and perseverance.  Bye. 👋