Love

P 2194 What is God aiming at?

/ DVH

I Thessalonians 4: 23-24 “May God Himself, the God who makes everything holy and whole, make you holy and whole, put you together—spirit, soul, and body—and keep you fit for the coming of our Master, Jesus Christ. The One Who called you is completely dependable. If He said it, He’ll do it!” Amen. The Person Who can teach us Holiness is the One Who has HOLY in His Name. We need to learn to listen to the Holy Spirit, from the bible as He leads us.

There are times when we think we know what the Lord wants from His kids, and so we get nit-picky about superficial things. What people wear – what people say – but the Lord looks at hearts. Think about this – the woman that was taken whilst she was committing adultery was thrown down at the Lord’s feet. She did not look pure and holy – she looked guilty! Jesus went around the visible things and her actions and He taught her accusers a lesson, plus He spoke to her heart, all at the same time. His love released her from fear and guilt …

Human beings look at attitudes and actions for proof of sin – but the Lord looks at our hearts. Ask yourself, am I amenable and open to change? Do I listen to what other people say about me or am I suspicious of others and their motivations? Our hearts can be changed easily when they are soft toward Him and others. Unfortunately we don’t always know what is IN there. So we need to take note of what we do, feel and say, and how we respond to others.

Our circumstances will uncover the real US. We are who we really are when we are damaged, provoked, or passed over, or treated badly. Our responses to those things reveal our actual heart attitudes. My best advice is don’t make excuses for yourself. Repent anyway. Make His pleasure in who you are, more important than saving face, or pretending to be someone you aren’t. Don’t be afraid to be your real self – Jesus paid for all our sinful attitudes. However, let’s keep working on those attitudes while it is still day, because night is coming.

We are not here to uncover other people’s sins! Instead, His kids are always looking for a way to love, connect and help each other – we choose to see the good in each other. Sin starts in our minds and if it is unattended to, it will drop into our hearts. Sin needs justification. “I do this because they did that!” But Jesus’ death and resurrection empowered us to a higher place where the greater law prevails.

Our God is not content with lip-service, He works from the inside out, but we must overcome our fear of change and embrace the fact that because what Christ did – He totally and utterly loves us. He loved us all before we were ever born. Sadly, for too long our aim has been our own comfort, but the bible makes it very clear – we are His kingdom people – we are here to usher His kingdom here on earth the way it is in heaven so our comfort is non-existent or secondary.

This is why verses like this one in Thessalonians are important. They show us the Lord’s AIM. His aim is not to fluff our pillows and make sure our beds are all comfy cosy – His aim is to have a people – a family. And Jesus Christ is our example of what that family will look like! You will, however, still be you, and I will still be me – but we will both be changed, praise the Lord … because we both need it. Maybe me more than you!

The thing this verse shows us is that God Himself will do this work in us, as we step out in faith and use the bible as our guideline. As we continually use our faith, we step into His kingdom and then even our own transformation adds weight to His kingdom growing around us. The more we change, the more the world around is influenced by our new way of thinking, doing and being. 

Almighty God will make us holy the same way He is holy. And the Person Who totally understands and knows how to implement it into our lives, is the Holy Spirit.  But we need to continually learn to co-operate with Him. One of the most important revelations to grasp, is our utter helplessness without Him. We cannot do this work of transformation ourselves. We can read about it, agree with it, and eventually we will realise that we come up short. Paul talks about this in Romans. 

When we discover it is beyond our reach to change ourselves, that is the time that the Lord has begun His work in us. Poverty of spirit is a good thing. That’s why Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven…” Our Spirit-led responses to life’s difficulties are the building blocks of our new life. We need to learn to rely upon the Holy Spirit to show us how to be holy the way He is holy. 👋🏻

P 2189 Fellowship.

/ DVH

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3:28

Hubby is Singaporean Chinese, a chosen-Aussie, but he doesn’t speak a whole lot of Chinese any more. Meanwhile, his mother speaks 5 Chinese languages as well as English – she was matron of a hospital! I adore her, she is the sweetest, dearest lady. There are plenty of highly-motivated people in my hubby’s family. His father was a nursing educator before he retired, as well as a lay preacher – his family is filled up with over-achievers. There were no Christians at all in my family, but several generations of Christians on my husband’s side. What a contrast! Meanwhile, because I am a multi-generational Aussie, I can have trouble with this world’s idea of English … forget Chinese!

Years ago now, my dear hubby’s beloved mama, his precious grandmother was still with us, here in this world. When she died, we both cried and cried for days. I still have tears in my eyes while I am typing this. What a truly wonderful little lady she was – from the minute she met me I was instantly family – and hubby was a favoured grandson. She didn’t speak a great deal of English and her main fellowship came from her church family. 

The Holy Spirit pointed out to us one day that whenever we saw her, she always had her dear little nose in her bible. He reminded us that we could talk to her … using the bible. So we did. Her bible was written in Chinese, and ours was in English. We just made sure we had the same version and … away we went! Oh, we had such a glorious time together. It was truly God-kissed.

We laughed, we cried – with joy – and we shared our love for Him together as well. Other people couldn’t work out how we were managing to talk to her because she only spoke Teo-Chew. But that didn’t matter one bit, the Holy Spirit’s system worked splendidly! And every time we went to where she lived, we’d go down to the room where she sat, and fellowship with her, we never wanted to leave her. It was just such a blessing and  something we looked forward to doing.

Because of Mama, I learnt to say ‘praise the Lord’ in Chinese, pretty quickly. And hallelujah is the same in any language. Mama prayed for us, and we prayed for her – and nobody understood a word anybody else said but it didn’t matter! There are no barriers in the Spirit. Hubby’s grandma went to a Chinese Church of Christ, and we went to a Pentecostal one and that did not matter either! Theology never came up – but Jesus came up a whole lot. You know this dear elderly lady merrily gave out words of knowledge to other people? Even though she didn’t actually have a label for it – she just told them whatever God told her to say! And those words were accurate, every time. 

At 85 she used to catch the bus to go across town to visit the ‘old’ people in her church. Some people are just pure gold! … And she was one of them. I learnt so much from our too-short time together. I plan on hugging her to bits when I get to heaven I can tell you. Because Mama taught me so much about the unity we can have in the Spirit – the unity that has nothing whatsoever to do with theology.

I was not exactly a prized granddaughter-in-law in this world’s eyes, but that did not matter at all to her. She loved me on sight and I loved her right back. You know, older people still have a lot to give if we don’t park them in the snoozing bay up the back of the church. 😂 The bible tells us not to despise wisdom, and growing old teaches you a lot – if you let it, and your brain doesn’t periodically go on strike!  Age teaches us all about what is important … and what is not. 

It seems today, that I am bragging on family, so I’m just going to continue. As you know, hubby just had a nasty operation on his right hand recently. His dominant hand. He is sitting two feet from me painting some things to give away on our next trip. My dear man likes to paint prophetic paintings for other-people-who-don’t-know-Jesus-yet. Right now he is painting with his LEFT non-dominant hand. And it looks no different to the lovely work he does with the right one. I told you we have really talented people in our family! See above.↑

My point today is obvious, there are no barriers that can keep the Holy Spirit out. Not language, race, creed, or attitude … if you see a barrier ask the Lord how to bring it down. He comes up with the most amazing things. We can spend so much time trying to figure stuff out, trying to be the people we think we are meant to be – and heaven’s vast resources are left dormant.  We need to learn to access those heavenly things … and throw our supposed skills out of the window, by cultivating Holy Spirit’s Presence. He will do amazing things in our ordinary everyday lives. Let Him. 👋🏻 

P 2188 Living by faith, hope and love.

/ DVH

1 Thessalonians 1:3: “We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” In many of our minds those things mentioned in this verse in 1 Thessalonians, are merely concepts. However they don’t easily translate into real life. These concepts need to be part of how we live otherwise we will nod our heads in agreement and then forget all about living from this new place.

This verse is an extremely valuable diagnostic tool, when we are doing whatever it is, without stretching and engaging our faith. If it doesn’t stretch us then it isn’t FAITH! Sometimes we do stuff out of obligation or pressure, or to give a good impression. Repent. Even making dinner, going to work, or making a cup of tea can be faith. We do whatever we do, for the Lord Jesus. If we aren’t living that way, then we need to go back and ask for His help and have another go! BTW, this verse is not some sort of escape clause or an excuse – we can’t just go to the pastor and tell him that the Lord didn’t tell us to do whatever it is – so we ain’t doing it!  We are now subject to His instructions, in the bible.

We need to be inspired by the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God is gentle, lowly in heart, He is obedient and kind. He has a heart of service toward mankind. As we walk with Him that will be the way we think too. He inspires us into these greater works because He loves us all. Any reservations we have about these things provides personal insight into whatever is motivating us. They diagnose our inner human resistance. 

Faith has works, James made that clear.  But those works aren’t simply done to produce or facilitate some sort of end result. Rather, we use our faith to serve Him and others, and that faith is meant to promote His kingdom mentality in us. We use our faith to obey the bible, and Holy Spirit’s inspired leading. When we do things because we’ve been asked to do them by the Lord, the faith we use to carry out the task produces MORE faith. The difficulty is, most of the time, we can actually do whatever it is and not use any faith at all, and that kind of response is more out of convenience, appearances, or duty, or habit. But our faith will produce works that have been prompted by obedience to the word, or the Holy Spirit. 

Perhaps our pastor asks us to go and see and help Sister Mary who is ill. So we carry out this seemingly ordinary task using our faith that the pastor is the leader, and we are serving him, as well as serving our sister, by doing whatever it is. We do what we do as though we were doing it for the Lord Jesus. This is what using our faith to obey, prompted by love for the Lord and others, looks like.

What if we can’t stand Sister Mary and we don’t want to do what the pastor asked us to do? Now we have an opportunity to grow. That’s when we need to go to the Lord and tell Him that we have a wrong attitude, could He please help us? I can’t tell you the result of that scenario, because I don’t know – I just know if my aim is to grow my faith using love – I will have to choose to be transformed in this area. It is no sin to acknowledge that we lack the right motivation, we are all spiritually poor without Christ. We need His riches. It is not a sin to be poor, we just need to admit that we need help. Maybe the pastor can pray for us? 

In my personal experience if I refuse to do something or make excuses, I am probably going to bump into Sister Mary every single time I turn around. Why? God is giving me an opportunity to change my POV. However, please don’t tell Sister Mary you don’t like her … she’s got enough going on already! Go to the Lord and talk to Him about how you feel. Let Him minister His love to you … we can only give away what we have. Now go and do whatever it is anyway and put your feelings aside. This is what living by faith looks like. Avoidance simply postpones the lesson, and trust me, next time it will be harder – because we just hardened our heart!

In order to use our faith we need to line up with the bible – not our feelings. Feelings deceive us – they can be affected by the weather, pizza, or our own personal preferences. They tell us we can’t, when we clearly can, but we just don’t want to! Feelings come and go – the word of our God stands forever. We need to choose to participate in the eternal. Christians do whatever they do, using their faith and hope in His love and power to motivate us through the difficult bits. The Holy Spirit will always help us to persevere despite any personal difficulties. 👋🏻

P 2186 Break out the rods and nets.

/ DVH

One of the worst side-effects of Covid – quite apart from the awful physical ones – was that the enforced isolation caused many of us to lose contact with others. And so we lost the Way of love in the process and we lost the lifestyle of always reaching out. However, it would be a great pity if Christians were dissuaded from their primary calling, by a virus! Yet we’ve left behind things like sharing His love, witnessing, and evangelism – out there where the people Jesus dearly loves, live. Maybe because fear has taken over and squeezed us silent.

Looking down on the rest of this difficult world is another wrong viewpoint. Sadly His love goes out the window whenever we forget where WE came from. We’ve been given His holiness – and now we steward it.  In other words we are made holy by what Christ did for us, and we have to look after that way to live – carefully, with the Holy Spirit’s help. Holiness matters to God … nobody will see Him without it. Jesus gave us His holiness – and we are still here – today – in this life … the only one we will get … to live our lives like He would. We were not saved to go and sit down in a comfy chair, and criticise the pastor, or each other, and wait for eternity.

If we are ever going to reach the unreached people of this world we need to stop treating other people like we are in some kind of exclusive club. We are not better than others – we just know what Christ did for humanity. There are so many times when we leave behind sharing His grace and love with other people  – because we are too busy with our own lives. Or we go into judgment and make that an excuse. Christians disapprove of the way people dress, or the way they live, the way they talk, the way they smell … the things they do. But those people are not saved … yet. Why on earth would we spend hours commenting on the way others live – instead of living this life the way He told us to live? 

This can be a real problem … I call it the older brother syndrome. He’s the guy who stays at home doing the right thing endlessly. He gets grumpy when some dead-beat lost son staggers in, because the father is so happy to see his lost son, he throws a feast! There are times I’m not sure any of us totally understand what SIN is! The sin we are guilty of, is living our lives for our own benefit – instead of dying to self for His sake, daily.

The church at large has forgotten that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners … and every single human being qualifies. We put out the vibe -“if you want to be like us, then come and join us!” Most people in this world don’t know there is an another way to live. And from the outside, we don’t look that good! That’s the problem when Christians start to think we are now somehow special.

Because we’ve collected our eternity ticket – we’ve become immune to other people’s heartache and pain. Sadly, we don’t change the way we live. Or perhaps we think that we don’t actually need to change  … surely God would not want our lives to be difficult? Perish the thought! What book are we reading? Nobody in the bible had an easy life! However, the longer the Apostle Paul was saved, the lower his estimation of himself became: “Although I am less than the least of all the Lord’s people, this grace was given me: …” Ephesians 3:8. Whatever we have has been given to us. 

So here’s my point today – we gotta learn how to throw out the net of the gospel where the fish are, and most of them won’t come into our churches! We simply must stop deciding who qualifies and who doesn’t, and go out everywhere we can, whenever we can, and share His love. The people who don’t-know-Jesus-yet know nothing about GRACE. Sometimes it seems to me that we want to sort out the fish even before His wonderful heart has caught them! In many churches we want to throw out the noisy ones, or the smelly grubby ones, or the ones who don’t dress properly, or perhaps they are living in sin. But a net catches anything and everything swimming past it.   

Finally, I want to look at the parable of the wedding feast. Those people who were already invited made all kinds excuses not to participate in that joyous event. So He sent His servants out to the streets and lanes to compel anybody else wandering about to come in. The servants didn’t have to check to see if the people out there were ‘eligible.’ I wasn’t eligible and … neither were you. I think the greatest harvest ever, is going to be from the people who are so soaked in this awful world – it will take a miracle to save them. And Jesus loves 💕 doing miracles!!

I want to leave you with this final thought today … where are you fishing? The best place to fish is in a river, a lake or the ocean – not in your own puddle.  👋🏻 

P 2182 On the matter of active faith.

/ DVH

Over the years I’ve learnt that if I want to love others the way Jesus loved them – then I’m going to need a whole lot more faith than I currently have! 😶 “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God…” Romans 10:17. If I don’t actually live my life listening to, and acting on what He says – it is no wonder when my faith is wobbly and weak. Our faith is extremely valuable to the Lord, everything Jesus talked about required us to use our faith. Galatians 5:6b “… all that matters now is living in the faith that works and expresses itself through love.”

It seems to me that we need to stop thinking that – talking about faith, writing about faith, and singing about faith is the same as living by faith. We must start living out our faith every day, so we can do those great exploits Jesus talked about. I agree with James: “faith without works is dead.” If we say we have faith and we have nothing more to show for it than the fact that we read the bible today, and we prayed, or we fasted, plus we went to church last Sunday – our faith is mostly inactive. Yeah I know, that’s not a great thought eh?

For years I thought doing the above stuff every day was enough. I literally had two lives. One was for Jesus – and I did my duty to Him as best I could, but I felt guilty if I forgot … Then I did what I wanted to and hoped He would bless it. In effect I expected God to join in with my life –  I had no clue that I was supposed to join in WITH HIS! Of course I prayed every day and told the Lord I was happy to do what He wanted me to do … but when I had no leading to do much of anything – I had to remain satisfied with doing whatever came up. 

After all, I had kids and a home that kept me busy. Friendships to maintain, family to care for. You know things like reading the bible, praying etc. are great, but truly using our faith is an active thing – not just a good habit! It is supposed to change our daily lives. This new life we lead is meant to touch other people, as well as reveal our hearts to us. And we will need to use our faith to do both. So we will have to face our fears. Using my faith is the very best way I know to find out what I’m afraid of and I learn about who I really am – inside. And it all comes from doing that thing I don’t really want to do! 

Of course we need faith to even read the bible, but we can come away from that reading as empty as we went into it! Jesus said: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” To get that kind of feed-your-spirit-bread/word every single morning takes faith … as well as commitment. But ‘hearing without doing’ means a few minutes later we can forget what we just read! Reading the bible is an active thing – we read looking to change our behaviour with His help and use our faith to do things differently.

Look at these two verses as an example: “wives respect, revere, honour your husbands …” or … “husbands, live with your wife the way you know is right. Respect her because she is a woman…In this way, you will not stop God from doing what you ask Him to do. “ 1 Peter 3:7. Unless each married person applies this scripture personally, spouses can end up fighting. BTW did you see that fighting with your spouse hinders your prayers??

There are times when I do not agree with my hubby and he does not agree with me – but I listen to the Holy Spirit, and do whatever I can to end the disagreement. “Whatever you do work at it with all your heart as though you are doing it for the Lord.” Colossians 3:23. I surrender for Jesus’ sake and I let the Lord fight for me. The bible is meant to be the substance of who we are, not just knowledge we agree with. This means I sincerely make up with my husband because I love Jesus – not because I particularly like the process of humbling myself. Especially if I happen to know hubby is wrong. 😂 I definitely will die daily because I won’t want to do it! And it gives me the pip that hubby is often the first one to apologise!!

Our God reveals His word fresh every single day to release His hope into our hearts, even if we already know what it says. His mercy is new every morning because HE is faithful. Me? Not so much!  If we don’t eat food regularly, we will fall down. If we don’t EAT in the spirit we will have no power. No power or faith to fight the enemy when he sends a neighbour to complain at us, or the school rings and says little Johnnie is failing at maths. We need His power daily to overcome the ordinary irritating things that niggle at our lives. This life in Him, is not a little dab will do ya thing. It is a way of life. 

There is a list of people in Hebrews 11 who used their faith: Verse 13 “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.” Did you get that? They didn’t ever SEE the answers to the things they prayed for in this life? Those things that God promised them! Now that’s what faith really looks like.

This the way Christ lived. He died knowing that only the Holy Spirit could bring Him out of that grave. Jesus had to leave this life so the promised Holy Spirit would come to all of us. That would have been so hard for the Lord. Faith shapes us into His likeness. Without it ‘we cannot please God.’ (Hebrews 11) “We must wear faith and love as a breastplate, and our hope of salvation as a helmet.” 1 Thessalonians 5:8b. Because faith protects our hearts. 👋🏻

P 2181 Love is our primary mandate.

/ DVH

It looks like food and shelter to the hungry, and kindness and compassion to the broken hearted and bleeding. The church in this world today has never been as divided as it is right now. One group believes this, another believes that, and someone else pronounces them both wrong and postulates something else! And so we end up dividing our churches, our fellowships, or even our families over doctrine. We’ve forgotten that our focus comes off love when we drone on and on about doctrine. 

You know popularity is not a sign of being right, it can often mean we are tickling other people’s ears. Plus, being right is not as important as living a life of love for others. Only Almighty God is good. Only Jesus Christ is perfectly right. Only the Holy Spirit through the bible can shed His love abroad in our own hearts and through us. Everything else fades into insignificance without that kind of love. Christians can be doctrinally right, but still have their hearts ‘far from Him.’ (Matthew 15:18)

Jesus’ disciples followed the Lord around for over three years and they proved how wrong human beings could be … even though they were walking around and living with God Himself! Adam and Eve lived in God’s Presence daily, and still made terrible decisions. These two things alone show us how much power there is in our personal choices. God gave us the power to choose Him and His Ways for ourselves. His ways are motivated by LOVE.

But when the Holy Spirit came in the book of Acts, He unified those men and women in the upper room, in an extraordinary way – they went from being fearful to being bold – they were prepared to die to tell others Who Jesus Christ is. His Love and passion came into their midst, and fear and intimidation went straight out of the window. The Holy Spirit began to do something so incredible at that time that Jesus’ disciples didn’t have a “box” to put it in! That’s because Almighty God went right round people’s boxes and made His home in human hearts. They lived their lives so saturated, they simply had to tell others what they knew. 

Guys, the body of Christ needs to make the main thing the main thing. Are we loving others? Can we be found guilty, as individuals and churches, of truly laying our lives down and loving the unloveable? Jesus did it! This world is going to hell in a hand basket all around us, because we’ve been arguing over stuff that won’t matter a fig when we see Him face to face. In that moment, we will all fall on our faces and worship Him. All of our arguments and debates will not amount to a hill of beans in His Presence. 

However right now, we can easily bicker about this rule and that revelation, because we are not living in His Presence! Like so many other saints who have gone before us, we’ve been lulled off to sleep by comfort, safety, and self-preservation. Me too. 😢 We all need to remember that billions of people do not know how much Almighty God loves them because inside the church we are fighting to be right. 

There are well-meaning Christian people who want to corner the market on selling: ‘their tapes, their CDs, their DVDs, their music, their podcasts, their sermons.’ All that energy, creativity, even our supposedly brilliant minds could be put to better use by following Jesus down, down, down onto the lower road that He walked on. We are so busy trying to make a name for ourselves, we’ve forgotten HIS NAME IS HIGHER THAN ANY OTHER NAME.

Our righteousness comes from Him. And if Jesus said: ‘they’ll know we are Christians by our love…’  then it’s that simple. Love Him, love others. You can teach an infant that. We need to focus on loving others and leave the doctrinal issues to those who have nothing better to do. I ask myself this question all the time. “Is there evidence in my life right now, that I am following Jesus and LOVING OTHERS like He would?” 

And if you are unsure of what His idea of love looks like, try I Corinthians 13, or Colossians 3. The stuff in those verses will keep anyone busy for the rest of their lives. Love is the key that will unlock people’s closed hearts. Jesus came and died to give us the privilege of putting that key into action in a loveless world. We daily take His love and forgiveness in, and we give His love and forgiveness out. It’s that simple.  Bye. 👋🏻

P 2175 The treasures of redemption.

/ DVH

“Since we are now joined to Christ, we have been given the treasures of redemption by His blood—the total cancellation of our sins—all because of the cascading riches of His grace.”Ephesians1:7 TPT

I have a passion for words, so I’d rather read a really good book than watch some dumb thing on TV! Today those words in Ephesians …’cascading riches’ … caught my attention. When I hear that phrase, I can immediately see Niagara Falls in my mind’s eye. Hubby and I stood beside that magnificent wonder once, watching tons of water succumbing to gravity … endlessly. It was a force of nature like nothing else I have ever seen. The water just roared over the edge. The sheer power of so much water endlessly moving, falling down to smash on the rocks, just took my breath away. 

We also went on one of the boat tours, the ones that go right up to the bottom of the falls. Man what a rush! I was standing next to a tiny little Asian girl, who was nearly blown away by the power of all that falling water hitting the rocks and river below. I had to gently put my hand on her shoulder … she very nearly achieved lift-off! 😂 Wow! Seeing that particular waterfall was such a memorable experience – it was inspirational. Now, when I think of His love, I think of those falls. It blows my mind, every single time. 

These words in Ephesians 1 describe how rich, how wealthy and more-than-we-could-ever-ask-or understand, in LOVE, redemption, and passion our Lord is. Much, much more than we can ever imagine.  When we came to know Christ and recognised Who He is, we stepped into a passionate endless river of love – and we get to jump off the edge with Him daily, in our own private waterfall. Plus, because of our decision to follow Him, we are now part of Him as well as each other – we are all a part of something so much bigger than our little lives.

From now on we have something we’ve all dreamed about – endless unconditional love. The Precious Holy Spirit looked through time and saw each one of us, standing there covered in the muck and bad choices of our lives in this world and then He came after us and washed us all clean in that river. Love was on His mind. 

I don’t know about your life before Christ, but mine was a total washout before I met Him.  Even though I was married and had two gorgeous little girls, and all that I thought I wanted … I was not happy. Life did not turn out the way I thought it would. I certainly knew very little about the sacrifices of love. So I was vastly under- prepared for the kind of human love that quickly turns into endless daily routine. But one day the Lord Jesus came along and interrupted that life, and offered me a chance to live differently. He asked me to live for Him, because He came here once and lived for me, long ago. This life became an adventure – with good bits and bad ones. However it was not ever boring again!

Before that day, I’d tried religion … many, ma-n-y kinds! My sole parent dragged me with them into some really weird things. But as I got older I realised the stuff I had experienced was pure religious hypocrisy, and so eventually, I walked away from all of it. I found out that there was nothing there to hold my heart. But the minute I met Jesus I knew immediately. HE. IS. REAL. He taught me a different, lasting kind of love that involves sacrifice. Redemption is a treasure that cost Almighty God everything, He sacrificed all He had and we cannot take that gift for granted. 

Personally, I think that when redemption becomes habitual, and not a great source of joy, it leads to traditional religion. That sort of religion sucks all the joy out of loving God, and shrinks relating to Him down to a series of unobtainable obligations and rules. It overwhelms people and numbs them. Either they hide who they really are – or they get so enamoured by the rules and regulations and run about trying to control everyone within the sound of their voice. Neither of those things even remotely look like the redemption Christ died to give us. He died to restore our relationship with our Heavenly Father. 

Jesus’ kind of redemption always leaves us free to accept or reject Him. He gives us choices. The downside of those choices is … we can easily end up part-time Christians … if we want to live like that. The Lord of all,  Jesus Christ, allows us to choose our own rate of growth – how amazing. The sad thing about that way to live is that every second we spend in this life living for ourselves is a second we freely give away to something that cannot last! However when we allow His complete redemption into our lives, He will transform us from self-centred, bigoted, controlling, weak human beings into loving, compassionate people with the strength to serve others daily, gladly. Transformation through redemption sounds like treasure to me.  👋🏻 

P 2174 The secret of a life lived in faith…

/ DVH

…is to look away from the natural realm. That BTW, does not mean we ignore the natural realm around us. It simply means we don’t let what is around us – in our faces, so to speak – dominate us. We see it all, but it does not have the final say – the Lord Jesus always has the final say. 

“We look away from the natural realm and we focus our attention and expectation onto Jesus who birthed faith within us and who leads us forward into faith’s perfection. His example is this: Because His heart was focused on the joy of knowing that YOU would be His, He endured the agony of the cross and conquered its humiliation, and now sits exalted at the right hand of the throne of God!” Hebrews 12:2TPT.

And there you have it. Our new life in Christ is all about focus. In today’s world, focus on Him takes faith, because there is so much to distract us. For most people, their lives are soooo busy it seems they barely have any time to take the time to focus on spiritual things. Perhaps that’s because we have over-spiritualised stuff. Spirituality needs to be like breathing. Adam and Eve didn’t flap-doodle about every evening when the Lord came into the garden … they expected Him!  This new life needs to be normal, not something we have to ‘work up.’ Faith isn’t what we do, it’s the way we regard Him. What we do comes from knowing Him.

We have become so enamoured with having ‘experiences’ that we have forgotten that this life is a relationship with a Person. Read the Old Testament – the men and women in there expected Almighty God to guide and help them, and that was normal. They complained when they thought He wasn’t helping them – read the Psalms! Stop for a minute. Imagine expecting the Lord to be with you in every single situation that you will face today. That was the way the Israelites lived. Yet they missed it, because they only saw His provision – they did not see Him or His wonderful Heart toward them.

When we get over into the New Testament we find that the Lord is SomeOne that the people in those stories utterly rely upon in every situation, and they know that He will be there for them. He is no longer an add-on – now He is their life! You know, we’ve unintentionally allowed the most precious things in this life to become secondary. Our God is a jealous God. He doesn’t ‘do’ second place. And that’s not because Almighty God is egotistical either – it’s because we were made to be with Him. He knows us. Every single thing He does is for our good. 

Mankind was not designed to walk alone. In Genesis the Lord says: “It is not good for man to be alone …” When Almighty God says something is not good it is NOT GOOD!  He walked and talked with Adam and Eve every single day. And His minute by minute input into our individual lives always refreshes and revives us! We are not good on our own. We can manage some of our time without other people, but we cannot possibly manage without HIM. I was raised without a father and I missed him. How much more should we miss the Presence of the One Who made us!

Jesus Christ lived day by day together with His disciples – He chose to be that close to human beings.  Ordinary people, not just religious scholars, asked God Himself questions and … He explained Himself! Sometimes His answers created even bigger questions (!!)  … but … just imagine that for a second. Those people were in His Presence and most of them didn’t even know it. Maybe we are still doing that today!  The Lord Jesus loved to interact with people. He healed them, fed them, talked to them, in Person! And He didn’t zap sinners into stone either – He is so merciful. When we don’t spend time with Him, we forget how precious His company is. And oh! – how He misses our company.

In this life we live, every single day is filled with pressure and distractions. But our God has enormous compassion toward us, because He knows we are glorified dust, and human beings fold up under pressure. BUT, He is there for us throughout each single nano-second – loving us – encouraging us to press on – into His Presence. We don’t go anywhere without Him knowing where we are. Most of us are just like a little baby who thinks the adult is not there when they play ‘peek-a-boo’ – He’s there. Turn your head. LOVE WALKS WITH YOU. He doesn’t sign in and out on a time clock!

The Holy Spirit is this life’s greatest treasure. Imagine this – the SomeOne Who made everything we see, wants to walk around with you and I through some of the dullest, dumbest days ever. Work isn’t called work because it’s fun! But our God loves us so much He can’t wait to be with us … He knows how to do what you do, much better than you do. You know, AWE is the natural outworking of a greater revelation of Who He is. 

Father God loves to share His secrets with anyone who wants to know them. But to do that we must look away from the natural realm into the things that will last, and pull focus onto His new life within us.  This life we have now is just a blink in eternity’s eyes. Living by faith means we live this life, right here right now – enjoying Him. 24/7. 👋🏻

P 2173 The way through to love.

/ DVH

Recently I realised that my inability to love some of the difficult people I know is actually a weakness in my character. Well yay! Boy did I get happy! 🥳 🎉!! No, I haven’t lost my mind – I think I actually finally found it again. The renewed bit anyway. You see, I remembered something from the bible. My bible says – ‘His strength is made PERFECT in my weaknesses.’ The Apostle Paul struggled with this, yet he says in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10. “when I am weak then He is strong!”  Plus it says to ‘rejoice’ or ‘take pleasure’ in our weaknesses! The greater the resistance to change, the more potential I have to build up strength … 

A lack of love in me reminds me that I have an opportunity to throw myself upon His strength, His mercy, His Grace, and all I need to do is to let Him help me. The Holy Spirit won’t sovereignly just take over and do it for me, I have to resist the devil for myself, and draw near to Jesus. Now, with His help, I have positioned myself to become a channel of the Holy Spirit’s love toward that other person. I simply need to follow the His prompts, step by step. Plus I will probably have to do quite a bit of ‘holding my tongue’ as well! That’s when I ask for His Grace.

My husband shared this thought with me the other day, about hearing the Holy Spirit. He said: ‘If we can hear the enemy, inside our heads, accusing us and reminding us of our faults etc. – then we can most definitely hear the Lord of ALL telling us He loves us and guiding us into His ways!’ The bible says our enemy accuses us ‘day and night before the throne of Grace.’ However, the One sitting on that throne IS THE GREATER ONE! Ya might want to think on that for a bit! Moving on …

If we choose to want to see His good in difficult situations, or ask Him to show us something good in them … that is when we cultivate looking through His Eyes of Love. Because: ‘Love hopes all things, believes all things etc.’ Nevertheless, we can’t do that repairing and restoring work by ourselves – we always need Him! When His Presence becomes more important than my opinion and hurt feelings, I am in a prime position to overcome what comes AT me. When we set our hearts to see the good in situations, that’s when He helps us, and we will start to see other people the way He sees them. Looking at sinful humanity through the Lord’s eyes is life transforming. Jesus is incredibly compassionate …

Then I need to remember that the Lord dearly l❤️ves Me, and His love is not based on my performance it is based on His own Character. Whenever I feel rejected and unaccepted, that’s when I can easily react, instead of acting in faith. His new life inside my heart will remind me from His Word, how to give away acceptance in the face of rejection. I always have the power to change my responses, but I need to use my faith to access that power. I have to put down what happened to me, and how I feel about it, and deliberately ask Him for His eternal viewpoint. 

You and I are always able give grace away, because we also need to constantly go to the cross ourselves to receive His grace for our own stinky sinful attitudes. We live this life of faith in a place of utter gratitude, this means I can give away love because I already have His love shed abroad in my heart. Love looks like the cross – and the cross is a place of suffering – you die (to self) there. 

In those moments when we choose to die to self and say nothing – or even proactively extend kindness;  we are refusing to bow down to our own limited understanding. Instead we seek His greater wisdom. It helps me to remember that the other people involved may not be following the Lord’s heaven-made script at this particular unhappy moment in my interaction with them. This is actually my moment to learn …but it may not be theirs.🤗

We don’t always have to like this process – nobody wants to walk with the Lord through the valley of the shadow of death! And dying to self is a form of death. Think about this for a minute, do you need to find God? He is always in that valley! The 23rd Psalm tells us that He is there to comfort us. Let us remember He suffered at the hands of mankind too! 👋🏻

P 2172 Beauty for Ashes.

/ DVH

The bible says that God wants to give us something incredible through all the discomfort, sorrow, pain, suffering and difficulties in our lives. Here’s a question for you. How can God give us beauty for ashes … without us having ASHES first?  Bad things happen to all of us. The problem is, especially in the Western world, we think of hard and difficult things as something to be avoided – or perhaps that the Lord is punishing us for something or other. Almighty God does not see suffering etc like that – He sees suffering as a doorway to something new – as an opportunity to trust Him more deeply,

Isaiah 53:10 says:“But it was the LORD’s GOOD PLAN…” (in some versions it actually says good pleasure) “… to crush Him (Jesus) and cause Him grief. Yet when His life is made an offering for sin, He will have many descendants. He will enjoy a long life, and the LORD’s good plan will prosper in His hands.”  It is very easy to think, how can a loving Father be pleased to hurt His precious Son so badly? Because something far greater was going to come from what happened to the Lord Jesus…WE WERE. Father God went froman ONLY Son to MANY sons and daughters.  And it was all part of His very GOOD plan. 🤔

Sometimes what Almighty God says in the bible seems tough and it can hurt us, but He hurts us to heal us. There is such a thing as good pain. Like the pain you get when exercising something that has been damaged – it hurts initially, but done correctly, it will help the injury heal. “Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty. For He wounds, but He also binds up; He injures, but His hands also heal. …” Job 5:17&18. “Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He will bandage us.” Hosea 11:3. 

I am not saying that if something terrible happens to us we should rush about cheering. Although… the Apostle Paul DID actually say that in Romans 5:3-5: “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”  

Remember, we always need the Holy Spirit to help us read His book, because …… THE HOLY SPIRIT SPEAKS OUR GOD’S LANGUAGE! He knows Father God’s Ways and He speaks the Father’s language. And, most of the time, human beings don’t. We speak man. And mankind can only see what is of benefit to itself – our Heavenly Father sees what benefits the WORLD – even the people we don’t like!

Despite how things may look outwardly, our Heavenly Father loves us all very dearly.  We need to regularly pause, and deliberately reinforce the truth when life gets dark. Living using our faith can be difficult when this world presses in on us. It takes courage to get up again, and face this life and the stuff it throws at people. It’s a “coming ready or not” kind of world at this moment, and most of the time none of us feel ready for what turns up next! 

It may seem like you are carefully trying to build something worthwhile, and then someone else walks past and kicks everything over! And now you have to forgive that person who hurt you. Personally, at times like that, my biggest problem is that my feelings are jumping up and down. But our God doesn’t love us because you or I feel like it. He loves us because it is His nature to love and His nature does not change … EVER. This life is about HIM. His good plans, not just us. It can help to remember how much He loves us. This life is about us learning to trust in His reliability, His Word, His promises, and that can be tough in the middle of terrible hardship. But that is what faith does – faith stands up, when it really wants to fall down.

If we want to see His beauty in the midst of this life’s ashes we must reconcile within ourselves that it will be costly. To start with, it will cost us the right to wallow in hate, self-pity and complaining. It will cost us the effort it takes to discipline ourselves to look at trouble through His eyes. Plus, we will have to pray when we definitely don’t feel like it – and believe in Him when everything inside says: you are wasting your time – God has given up on you and your situation! Trust me – He hasn’t! He just has a bigger plan than we can see. This world needs our faith in His wonderful character. Our faith is in the One Who deliberately came and died to reconcile us back to our Father.

The Lord Jesus wants to give us His incredible beauty in the middle of the overwhelming ashes that threaten to swallow each one of us up. The physical, mental and emotional stuff that the enemy uses to torment us. Remember, the beauty we find, is IN WHO HE is – it is not our circumstances. May the Lord grant you the courage to find Him in the hardships you are experiencing today, may you experience His love and kindness when your world keeps throwing ashes at you. Amen. 👋🏻