Marrow

P 3176 Sounds like a laser to me!

/ DVH

“For we have the living Word of God, which is full of energy, like a two-mouthed sword. It will even penetrate to the very core of our being where soul and spirit, bone and marrow meet! It interprets and reveals the true thoughts and secret motives of our hearts.”  Hebrews 4:12 TPT.

Yeah, that last bit is a bit of a doozie! The writer is talking about those inside, hidden-in-our-heart bits we sort of kind of know about, but we do our best to hide them from ourselves, and others! You know what I mean, the things that we suddenly glimpse, and we try really hard to instantly forget them because they look like the Great Wall of China and it’s all too hard! We all know a Godly life is a priority. We must remember that stuff like this is a distraction. The thing is, those hidden things I’ve mentioned, flavour our lives and our points of view …to the extent that we end up seeing bad motivation where there is none. Then we end up trying to escape or debate over the issues of the very things that can transform us.

We know that God’s Word will go straight to the heart of any matter and, at the same time it lays our phoney, self-serving excuses bare. So there we are … uncovered and exposed, feeling lower than a snake’s belly in a wheel rut. Guess what? In those self-discovery moments we must remember that Jesus died for every stinky evasive attitude we have as well. We will lose our way when we stop listening to the cues that the Holy Spirit gives us. He wants to lead us back into true fellowship with Jesus and our Heavenly Father. That’s the only safe place for us. Our God is always for us.

When we choose to allow His Word to work on our hearts, it will do the kind of surgery that will affect our minds emotions and bodies. It can expose errors between what the Lord says, and what we think. It often shows us the way we think is shooting us in the foot spiritually, especially when we choose to take it seriously! His Word takes the doubt out of what we believe because it reveals to us the Way the Lord thinks, and what He wants from us. Plus it separates our way of thinking away from the world’s way of thinking. All that happens because this morning we decided to prioritise His Word – reading it until something strikes us in the heart. Then we choose to go out and act on what we read. 

The acting on it bit is incredibly important. James 1:19-27 exhorts us to not just hear what the Lord says but go out and do it. “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 

For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. If anyone thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his heart, this person’s religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

Looking into God’s word and persisting with it, until we identify how to act on it, means we are moving away from being a hearer, into being a doer. We will begin to walk with the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God never theorises – He acts! It is in His nature to be active for us and others. The people who choose to follow Him, act like Him. They know they need His help, because they know themselves clearly enough to realise that they can be deceived so easily.

These people are not driven by emotion, instead they manifest what righteousness before the Lord, looks like. The Word working in them and on them changes the way they react! They truly love the Lord, because they have discovered His love is a love that is like no other. ‘Listening and doing’ people deliberately set aside anything that remotely looks like it might hold them captive. They know that Godly actions bless them and others, as they participate by working with Him. His kids understand Who the Lord is, who they are, and they are realistic about this life. They constantly remind themselves that Jesus died for their inadequacies.

These people James is talking about are never self-deceived because they don’t trust their own opinions – instead they use the bible as their permanent reference book. They are well-aware that life and death is expressed through what they say, so they pray and watch over the way they use their words. Their desire is to bless others and if what is said won’t bless anyone, then they refuse to say it. His kids love to honour the Lord in everything they do, simply because He has revealed His heart to them and they’ve fallen in love with Jesus and the Way He does things. They can never forget that the poor, hungry, homeless among us are our responsibility. 

The Holy Spirit’s leading and freely given understanding are just like a laser, cutting through our wishes and wants, to expose who we really are, but without any fear or shame. Bye. 👋

P 2676 Judgment makes us blind and deaf –

/ DVH

… to God and to each other! In the beginning Adam and Eve chose to do what seemed right in their own eyes. What entered into them when they ate from that tree, was the knowledge of good and evil. That meant that they left the wisdom of God behind. Sadly, this was also when humanity lost the privilege of His Presence and suspicion arrived on the scene. After that, influenced by satan, we opted for our own thinking and rationale. The miracle was Almighty God did not utterly reject all of us, because He is never caught unaware – He always had a bigger plan. Over time, human beings walked further and further away from Him. And the further away we walked, the more we left HIS wisdom, His dear Presence, behind. In that garden, living in the Spirit came naturally. Our disobedience changed that.

I think the ongoing result of this action is that we have all lost the ability to see Him, clearly. We’ve become deaf and blind toward His Ways, and we can’t see each other, either! However the clearer we can see Him, the clearer and closer we will get to each other. In our current world we have chosen to live by our own judgment and this means most of us have rejected Him. This attitude is devastating in its overall consequences. Look at it like this – broken people come to their own conclusions. Often because of our own battered sinful past, we unconsciously analyse others, then we reject, avoid or persecute them. Eventually we make those conclusions into life actions and give those actions some sort of great sounding purpose that makes sense to us!

If someone in my life was cruel to me, inside my heart I may have carefully laid some early warning signals that mean if anybody even remotely sounds or looks like that person who hurt me — I will avoid or punish them. In effect, I am passing judgment on that other person without even thinking about it. It is as if I see others through a screening system that filters out the people I consider to be my enemies. I do not look for GOOD in others, instead now I am looking for DANGER. We can end up judging our brother by a standard that came from fear and the ever-present need for revenge.

Because I am human, and my human wisdom is faulty, in order to protect myself, I can easily learn to apply judgment to oversee whatever I think. Sadly when I do that, I am allowing the people who hurt me, or caused me to be afraid, or misled me, to continue have power over me – whether they are present or not! At the same time I have been blinded to my own sinful attitudes by fear and judgment. I can no longer see others the way God sees them, because my own judgment is exalting itself over His wisdom. Over time I will use my logic, and incidental observations to prove to myself that my judgments are right, and that those other people really are dangerous to my own well-being and they should be avoided. 

Hebrews 4:12 says: “For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Only God Himself knows our intentions –only He can rightly divide them using His Word.  I think the answer to this particular interpersonal difficulty is to ask the Lord to help us see other people the way HE sees them. Otherwise we are in constant danger of living in judgment, and that judgment will cloud our view over everything else. And at the same time it neutralises our understanding of His wisdom. That other person may have no clue that the way they behave is ‘pushing your buttons.’ Their own brokenness and faulty judgment causes them to act this way without them being aware of it.

Sometimes we can attribute motivation to other people’s behaviour, but it isn’t true discernment or a clear view of their actions, it’s a fear response. And at other times people may even employ demonic strategies because they feel a lack of personal control in their lives will be catastrophic. It goes without saying that demonic strategies are not only unnecessary, they are definitely likely to lead us into all sorts of temptations! Like …  Adam and Eve … or Cain and Abel. After all the Lord warned Cain he was in danger of crossing a line. Instead, we need to remember that we have a Redeemer, Who runs to our aid. He cherishes us all and He will always impart the wisdom from above. In order to see and hear His Ways – now we must put away personal judgment, and let the word of God change us. 

1 Corinthians 2:6-9: “Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love Him”— these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit.”  👋