Mary

P 2475 Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh.

/ DVH

Today I want to talk about the Wise men. They were travelling on camels from the East so they took sometime to arrive. Following a star slows you up a bit … there were those pesky clouds and all. Eventually they arrived at the house Mary, Joseph and Jesus were staying in. Some people call these men, the Magi. “And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary His mother, and they fell down and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered Him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.“  Matthew 2:11.  

Each of these unusual gifts apparently had a special meaning, and smarter people than me have written loads, and even books, about them. When I was reading this part of the bible and talking about it with the Lord, He asked me this question. “What would YOU want to give me for a gift?” My immediate response was – ‘me!!’ But you might want to think on this question for yourself. 

I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but there are times when I talk to Him when I feel like what I said was … well, Ok-ay, … but not what He was looking for! This was one of those times… so I pressed on … and I asked Him what did He mean by that question? Pressing, BTW, on is the way to go …trust me!! I exhort you, don’t give up, push on! In those moments you are on the edge of a fresh revelation of Who He is. Unless you suddenly remember you have to go shopping, or get going to work on the same train you always take. I urge you to just give Jesus a few more minutes. I truly believe one of the Lord’s love languages is time spent with Him.

Then He said this: “Those Wise men gave Me gold. Gold represents everything you own, your money etc. Have you given Me everything?”  I sat and thought about that. Gold represents material things. Have I given all the material things I have to Him? Plus I also think that Gold is also about future provision. Cars, houses, money in the bank, clothes etc. Is there anything that I am holding onto, or that I think I want or need? There are times that I’ve told myself:  ‘God doesn’t care about that stuff!’ So I asked Him if there was anything I had overlooked- just to be thorough.

Then, I realised if we lost this or that, I would probably grieve over it but the things around me actually don’t matter much. When you lose your health everything else kind of fades into insignificance! But, I do find it hard to let go of the people I love, because I haven’t learnt to trust Him as utterly as I would like to. Sometimes I don’t understand what He is doing. If my dear hubby or my kids or my friends get sick, or unhappy, I have to fight a rising sense of panic at times. So I spent some time praying over those things too.

Then He asked me: “What about frankincense?” That one took me a while and I did a bit of research. Frankincense is given to Kings because it is valuable. So, to me, this gift is about the Lord Jesus’ Kingship over my life. It has its significance when I believe God IS God, no matter what is going on around me, in my life, or in my heart. Frankincense is about trust. Is He Who He says He is, or are we all at the mercy of circumstances? Are we affected by our decisions, bad or good, especially the ones we’ve made carelessly. Even the ones we haven’t repented about. We had a long conversation about this one – I found big spaces between what I knew and what I believed. BTW, I think belief is something we act upon not just what we talk about.

The last thing the Wise men brought is myrrh. Myrrh is about anointing and priesthood. The Lord asked me if I thought I was faithful to Him as a part of His priesthood. Did I minister to Him out of duty, or was I inspired by love? I spent a while on this one too. Mainly because I did not know the answer! That’s the problem with head knowledge, it sometimes gets in the way of the heart’s true answer! I ended up with Ezekiel’s wisdom. “Only YOU know Lord.”  That’s when I remembered that true worship is presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice – holy and pleasing to Him. 

Lastly I want to say that every one of these three gifts has great value, as well as significance. These things weren’t some cheap baby toys these Wise men picked up at the supermarket on the way to Jesus’ house! Anything and everything we offer to Him is valuable to Him, not because of monetary value, but because of the personal cost. Jesus knows everything about personal cost!

I do not believe revelation is given to us just to tickle our ears and make us feel good about knowing something that nobody else does. Revelation is designed to challenge our own hearts, transform our minds, and lead to different attitudes and actions. Always remembering that ‘first He speaks, then after that, the opportunity to change my response will come along.’ I have given up thinking that what I imagine I will do, is what I will actually do – nobody knows what they will do when they are tested. 😶 

The Lord Jesus is a gentleman, He will not snatch things from us. We must give them, as willingly as we can. So today I want to ask you, what will you give Him? 👋🏻

P 2469 “I was sitting around … minding my own business …”

/ DVH

This morning I was thinking about those shepherds who were sitting in a the field, long ago, simply watching over their sheep. You know who I mean … Jo and Mo (Joseph and Moses) and …  Fred and Barney … These men were sitting about keeping an eye on their sheep, and watching out for sneaky Pete the wolf and his pack, plus the odd lion or bear. I can’t imagine what they were actually talking about the minute before the sky exploded… maybe the low price of sheep at the market?  Or where’s the best pasture to go next??

Then BOOM! The sky lit up, an angel appeared and the world exploded with sound. It’s just as well the angels told them to “be not afraid!” You know if they hadn’t said that word straight from the throne of God — Jo, Mo, Fred and Barney would have had a heart attack … on the spot. “Mighty dread will do that to ya!”

Mo-oving on … back to these ordinary men, who were doing an ordinary job, day after day, after day. The same thing their fathers did and their fathers before them —- and their fathers before them. And nothing ever happened … until it did! Their whole world changed in a heartbeat when these heavenly beings appeared out of nowhere!!

Look at the faith of these men, once they got over being stunned, amazed and blessed … all at the same time! … Then they left their sheep mooching about, and hurried off looking for a baby in a manger. You and I might say: “What’s a manger?” But these shepherds knew what that was, and where to find one. They entered into the greatest miracle of all time, on a seemingly ordinary night … with the only fanfare provided by heavenly beings.

Father God chose a dirty stable as the site for His most precious Son’s birth. Jesus Christ was not elevated in any way! And those ordinary shepherds found out about His arrival first… Are we feeling the Vibe yet? Like where would the greatest SHEPHERD ever born … BE born? ….Among shepherds.

Isn’t it just like Jesus, to reveal Himself to people like you and I? That’s why the Good News IS the good news, it’s for everyone and anyone. You know the current King at that time, (Herod), heard about this extraordinary baby second-hand from travelling wisemen. So right from the beginning, Christ was destined to be revealed to this world through the poorest of the poor, ordinary workers… first.  And that set the scene for the rest of Jesus’ short life. He would always reach out to the people who were not rich, those who had no hope, and needed Him the most.

Maybe there were animals restlessly moving about in that tiny shelter, all around this new little family – we don’t really know. Let’s hope all that animal breathing kept them a little warmer in the cold clear night air! Meanwhile, there was no air freshener … no sterile hospital… no antibiotics!!  And no family helpers to assist Mary … just some straw, the floor, her inexperienced husband, and the inevitability of this baby coming … right now. 

What a totally scary place to give birth! There was no indoor plumbing either!! Ya might want to think about that. Christ was not born into a house … right from the beginning He had no home. Maybe Mary hoped He would be born where she had come from, with helpers all around her – but she and Joseph obeyed the law of the land and trotted off to a place far away to take part in a census. They took their chances … and then Almighty God said: “It’s time.”

Joseph himself had an enormous amount of trust.  I often talk about faith on this blog, and boy was his faith alive! He married Mary because of a dream. Sadly he could not give her and their new baby, the King of all Kings … a better place to stay! Such a huge responsibility for such a humble man. He was destined to protect this infant and remain obedient to what God had told him. How devoted to God’s purposes he was. This honourable young man, whose wife is going to give birth … to SomeOne else’s baby! He’s almost a footnote in this amazing story. Yet he was chosen to father God’s Son, when Jesus was a child.

The world was silent that night, and the only players in this little play were overwhelmed with awe and wonder. How could that be Almighty God Himself lying in a food trough? What could it possibly all mean? At that moment, He was just another newborn infant  … they are born every day.  Only those heavenly announcements made Him special. God made Himself known in an ordinary place, to ordinary people who were sitting around minding their own business. But when He speaks, this world gets turned right-side up!  Bless you! 👋🏻

P 2423 The outworking of faith is seeable.

/ DVH

Faith has evidence of its existence. Without any evidential faith we cannot please Almighty God! This means that there are appropriate actions that match the stuff coming out of our mouths. Christianity is not just a theory, or a set of really tough rules – it is a living, breathing, ongoing, active, growing, moving, productive thing. As we live our lives our faith stretches us. Daily.

Telling others we have faith, without being able to provide evidence in our own lives, is like telling people you are an astronaut because you’ve carefully studied the subject and you’ve been to NASA, plus you’ve studied it and know everything about it! 

Knowing and doing are two entirely different things. We can talk about, or discuss our faith until our faces are blue, but the truth is … real faith often makes no sense at all until it is acted on, and then the understanding comes afterward. Ask Gideon, or Mary, or Abraham, or Hosea! Our Heavenly Father does not operate like we do, instead we can be quite poor reflections of Who He is. We often misunderstand His directives as a substitute for a strong spiritual life. Rules are not faith – it took the Israelites only 40 days to break the ten commandments!  Agreement is not faith. The devil agrees there is a God!  

“And without faith living within us it would be impossible to please God. For we come to God in faith knowing that He is real and that He rewards the faith of those who passionately seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6 TPT. Faith has to be alive. It is not about last week, last month, last year – or even about when I gave my life to Christ, way back when. Or whether I go to church every week. Faith is about God and me – to-geth-er! DOING STUFF outside of church.  

Here are some uncomfortable questions regarding that point. If I was suddenly struck dumb how would someone who was watching me know that I have faith? What evidence would they have? Many people go to church but they don’t have active faith. Maybe they have HOPE – and sadly, sometimes, they have fear and/or religion. Ask yourself: “What does my faith DO that can be seen by others?”“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the EVIDENCE of things not yet seen.” Hebrews 11:1. 

Faith steps out – that’s why it is called evidence. First of all notice the ‘NOW’ in the scripture pictured above. Faith is always now … not yesterday. This does not mean we must spend our lives standing on a street corner witnessing. But it does mean that our faith is always active in our lives changing us. If people cannot see an ongoing change in our behaviour toward others, or our personhood being transformed, we need to ask ourselves, do we have faith that is alive? One of the best ways to activate inactive faith is to talk about Jesus to someone-who-doesn’t-know-Him-yet.

Changing the habits and selfishness of a lifetime takes faith. This means we will end up wrangling with ourselves every single day because we are longing to be transformed. Even though we also use our faith in His ability to transform us to maintain what we believe – Christianity is actually not performance based. What would be the point? SomeBody Else did everything necessary to include us!! More questions: Is Jesus the first Person we go to when we can’t manage? Do we actively rely upon Him, and do things His way? Our faith is activated every time we ask Him to help us obey and then act.

Faith has substance. It is not the result of airy-fairy wishy-washy theories. The actions of faith result in transformation, for you, and me, as well as for the people around us. Maybe that grumpy family member keeps behaving badly because we keep having the same response! Faith will produce something seeable. James 2:26 tells us that “faith without works is dead.” Faith does stuff. It may also talk … but it definitely does stuff!! It feeds the hungry, preaches the gospel, witnesses to others, helps the homeless, and ministers to the broken. Faith lives this life dead to self and lives for Jesus’ sake now.

However, faith is not just about the things we don’t, or won’t do. If someone refuses to cheat on their spouse, or asks for help for a foul temper, or stops spending money like it grows on a tree, that takes faith. But faith doesn’t just abstain from evil — it is a productive thing. It is not about the absence of bad things – faith introduces the provable presence of the goodness of the living God.

When I went looking for a picture for today’s blog, I easily found the verse I wanted. This verse had all these pretty pictures with flowers and scenery. I rejected them! I chose the picture above, because the man in that picture is putting his faith into action. He knows all about gravity – but his desire to move on motivates him into action. Faith is prepared to take risks, because it has seen personal evidence that God is in charge and it stakes its life on that. 🤗

“But the love of God will be perfected within the one who obeys God’s Word. We can be sure that we’ve truly come to live in intimacy with God, not just by saying, “I am intimate with God,” but by walking in the footsteps of Jesus.”

1 John 2:5-6 TPT

P 2361 What’s next?

/ DVH

“You can pass through His open gates with the password of praise. Come right into His Presence with thanksgiving. Come bring your thank offering to Him and affectionately bless His beautiful name!”Psalms 100:4 TPT.

I believe we need to take verses like this one literally, instead of simply reading it and nodding our heads in agreement …  we actually need to do what it says. We must get into the habit of seeing the bible as a book of instructions, and not just a book of nice thoughts, interesting stories and stuff that God said to other people! I use His own words to form my prayers as He reminds me of an appropriate verse for my current situation.

The verse above is filled with instruction. It is a road map into the throne room for a personal interview with our Father!  A bunch of people can participate together, or one person can apply it just for themselves … it doesn’t matter. This means we stop what we are doing and use the password! I never thank Him for the problem … instead I thank Him that He is going to get me out of it!  “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them ALL, …” Psalm 34:19… Man, how I love those little words!!! Learn to insist no matter how long it takes.

At the same time I truly believe our fantastic Father can use any verse in His book to bring somebody to Himself! Sadly, I think we have limited our own comprehension by making exceptions. “Oh, that’s just for the Jewish people. Oh that’s just for sinners. Oh that’s just for people who never met Him.” And we miss the blessing and the deeper knowledge of His ways. 

Praising God means we will get blessed too, it’s just an automatic flow-on effect. So when it says, bring your thank offering to Him, do it. And if you find it hard to think of something to be thankful for, ask the Holy Spirit for His help… and then thank Him! And then … repent, because you obviously have not been paying attention to what God is doing in your life! No I am not joking. 

Almighty God uses His book to tell us how we can have fellowship with Him, so we’d better be more concerned about His thoughts than someone else’s! You might wonder: ‘will my fear of failing God ever go away?’ Here’s my answer –  does satan ever fall asleep? 😳 That war inside our heads is normal, it wouldn’t be FAITH if we didn’t get stretched in the process! 

“Whatever He says to you, do it.” Mary said that to some servants at a wedding once. She had a right to ask them to do that – she knew Father God’s ways first hand! She put her body on the line. I’ve practiced doing that scripture for 50 years, ever since I first read it. Boy, I’ve done some monumentally stupid stuff, trust me – I’ve mentioned that on this site … but I’d rather try than excuse myself, and miss the blessing of seeing God do what He does best – He loves to surprise people!  Including me.

How can we affectionately bless His holy Name if we are standing way off in the distance, too scared to be seen??Maybe we are scared He will bring up something we hope He doesn’t know we’ve been doing, or something we have already done?! Get over yourself, and fix the things that need fixing. I know other people are difficult, I have a bunch of those people in my life. He knows how to handle them. We need to just follow the prompts and watch what He will do with our obedience.

Personally, I have a bunch of awkward messed-up things in my life that look like a cat got at my knitting! Stuff is tangled up so badly I have no confidence it can ever be untangled, unless He does it. But I know my God, and I’m not taking my faith back, because I know, that I know that – HE IS GOOD and His mercy endures forever. (That’s another Psalm BTW.) I learnt that stuff by using my faith – especially at times when things didn’t work out and I could see no solution. Our God loves the impossible. I loathe the impossible, I get so stretched by stuff I feel like I am going to break – but so far … He just keeps bailing me out. However, you probably won’t ever hear me say: ‘Oh goodie! Another terrible test for me to trust God with.’ 

But those moments are the time to enter His gates with thanksgiving and go right on into His courts with praise. Why? Well, first of all, praise and thanksgiving won’t change God’s mind –  He is always for us. Praise and thanksgiving changes ME! We all need to stop paying lip-service to what He says and act on it instead. The bible is a book filled with instructions, plus stories about other people who followed instructions! It ain’t rocket science. 👋🏻

P 2253 One step at a time.

/ DVH

Our God is overwhelmingly limitless … so we must never limit what He is able to do with one person who is prepared to live their life for Jesus’ sake!  I love the Old Testament, there are huge glimpses of Almighty God’s Personhood for those who take the time to look.

Take the book of Job – he was a happy man. Then God and satan had a word war over what was the source of Job’s happiness. Job lost everything he owned, plus his wife, kids and friends! Then God did an amazing thing – He showed Job the difference between man’s wisdom and HIS. Almighty God shifted Job’s reliance over to Himself, and He made Job’s faith even deeper by revealing Himself. One step at a time.

Moses was a murderer. He ran away from his destiny as Pharaoh’s adopted son. Instead he was living a happy, quiet life, looking after his father-in-law’s sheep … when God confronted him. Through Moses we see how God handles perceived problems, situations and people. We get insight into His Ways. Our God moved that man from shepherding sheep, to boldly confronting Pharaoh and demanding that he let his Israelite slaves go. Moses followed the Lord’s instructions … one step at a time.

Gideon was another ordinary man, living an ordinary little life. He was hiding grain from the multitude known as the Midianites. The conversations that Gideon had with an angel the Lord sent, show us the way Almighty God takes into account our character, our weaknesses. The Midianites stomped all over the Jewish people, they stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, but God used an ordinary fellow to defeat the very people who oppressed them. One step at a time – that’s how the Lord taught Gideon. 

Peter, Andrew, James, and John were simple fishermen. But their Heavenly Father had other plans. One day an itinerant Teacher turned up and told them to follow Him, so they did. They saw more in their lifetimes than they ever imagined they could. God gave them a commission they couldn’t turn down, and they followed it – one step at a time.

Stephen in Acts, was Greek. He waited on tables, looking after widows and orphans, then God made him a deacon. He taught others about Christ, by what he did and said. Then he was arrested, and ended up preaching the gospel, going from Moses to Jesus in front of all the religious leaders of that day. A brilliant sermon. They promptly hated every word he said – and even as he lay dying, surrounded by their rocks, he pointed to their Messiah. He did all this … one step at a time.

Paul was killing Christians when God knocked him to the ground and made him blind. Truth be told, that man was already blind, spiritually! And Almighty God just let his outsides match his insides for a few days. However Paul was irrevocably changed by that encounter. He went into God’s private bible school – the accelerated course – for three years, and then he trundled all over the known world. He also spent time in jail on and off, and he wrote letters that are still changing our world. One step at a time.

I could go on and on – Mary was simply a devoted peasant girl. She had ordinary plans for her life, and Almighty God interrupted them with His own plans to bring His Son into this world. Esther was the town pretty girl, and God had plans to make her a queen so she could save her nation. Ruth was a widow, and so was her mother-in-law – yet God made her one of Jesus direct fore-bearers. Ordinary people living ordinary lives until an extraordinary limitless God transformed them all into sign-posts, keys, and examples of what His Grace can do with an ordinary life – one step at a time.

My point today is this: … what does He want to do with your life?? We will never know our real purpose for being here in this world, outside of His plans. Our lives may be ordinary and hidden – but when we read the Old and the New Testament, these people who went before us, are a blazing flashing neon sign in the sky that our God can do anything …if we will just follow Him … one step at a time. When we follow Jesus we don’t arrive, we begin a journey … one step at a time.

Will you let Him use you? It is highly unlikely that most of us will have a book written about our God-given exploits – but I believe, in heaven, there are books and books and books. Why? Because the things we do down here, are the things of faith, and they point to Jesus, just as surely as Job, Moses, Gideon, Paul, Peter, Andrew, James, John, Stephen, Mary, Esther and Ruth’s faith steps did… one step at a time. 👋🏻 

P 2213 That tomb!!

/ DVH

John 20:1-2 “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.  So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put Him!”

11-14 “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put Him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.” 

In my opinion, Mary was not expecting to meet Jesus, because she thought He was dead. Every single story about God, mankind, and death in the bible shows us humanity’s responses and reactions to disaster and total desolation. We give up. We cry a lot. And then we mostly sit in the dirt, railing at God. At the time of the morning of the resurrection, people’s individual responses show us how easily human beings wander off into faithlessness, hopelessness, despair and unbelief and fear.

Grief is normalised in Ecclesiastes 3, and in the Beatitudes, but the men and women who walked with Jesus show us that despite the fact that they were warned in advance – human beings don’t cope with death. We can have our little theories and happy thoughts, but … just wait until those theories are tested!  Death seems final. Nobody expected His resurrection.

Even though the Lord told His disciples, in person, that He would rise again. Maybe their old religious thoughts got in the way. Not one of them said: ‘But, hang on a minute, the Lord told us He was going to die, and He would rise from the dead. So maybe this is that. Let’s not lose hope?!’  Every single one of them got stuck in loss, fear and grief. Not to mention they were all locked in the upper room to keep the bad guys OUT. To them, Jesus was dead and those who thought they saw Him were nuts or deluded. In the end a couple of those men went to check out Mary’s story for themselves. And one of them was a hero and went in … and the other waited outside.

Meanwhile total unbelief emerged toward anyone who actually saw the Lord in person! This shows me that it doesn’t matter what we think we know, or what we hear, or what we seem to believe – if we do not deal with it, unbelief and fear take over pretty darn quickly. But to the disciples, the tomb was a tomb and there was a blooming great rock in front of it, plus Roman guards. Meanwhile I never did figure out how Mary thought she was going to move the rock to get in for those burial rituals! That’s the thing with graves – they look permanent and they can steal away your hope.

Jesus predicted His death to His disciples on at least three different occasions. (Mark 8:31-33, 9:30-32 and 10:32-34.) But I’m not really sure the disciples actually heard Him. To be honest with you, I have often wondered whether they were totally attentive and listening to Him in the first place when He said it!  Yet they all saw Lazarus, who was dead 3 days, come out of his tomb, very much alive just a short while ago. It seems to me that the disciples were utterly shattered by the events that put the Lord Jesus in the tomb in the first place. That, plus the fact that they all ran away at a crucial moment.

I have come to the conclusion that there are times when we only hear what we want to hear.  And bad news ain’t it! I’ve also learnt how easy it is for despair to throttle the daylights out of you. Sigh. Christ’s tomb was empty, and the disciples had no idea how to deal with that either. They were still mourning the loss of the new way of life they had found. However, the kindness of Almighty God in that moment is glorious. Christ comes to them in Person, He sounds just like He did before He died.

And then He rebukes them because they didn’t believe each other. Why didn’t the majority believe the few? Perhaps that is because I can only believe what happens to ME. I probably think to myself, ‘that’s nice for you’ – if I hear a story about something fabulous happening in your life. But this is where the rubber hits the road – this is how we know we are not yet transformed, or living our lives by faith in the Son of God.  

On this Easter Sunday morning, we need this fantastic resurrection story because OUR OWN FAITH NEEDS TO BE RESURRECTED. We have let it languish in pits of despair, disappointment and dread and hidden it in tombs. We have to come out of our spiritual tombs and start living that resurrected life – right here, right now. I wonder if the Lord would say to some of us: “Where is YOUR faith?” 

All around us, this world is living without hope. Today of all days … please, please … tell someone who doesn’t know it, that …”Jesus Christ is alive, HE IS NOT DEAD.” 👋🏻

“My heart and soul explode with joy—full of glory! Even My body will rest confident and secure. For you will not abandon Me to the realm of death, nor will You allow Your Faithful One to experience corruption.” Psalms 16:9-10 TPT