Matthew 4:4

P 3179 What does love look like?

/ DVH

If you have been reading this blog on and off for a while you will already know my answer to that question. Real love looks like an innocent man hanging from a cross – suffering willingly and terribly, for every rotten, evil thought and deed humanity has accidentally and purposefully perpetrated against themselves and others.

At the same time love looks like 1 Corinthians 13, 1 John 4:18, 1 Peter 4:8, 1 Corinthians 16:14, Colossians 3:14 just to name after few verses. Every single time I read that chapter in Corinthians, I know I do not have it in me to be that person – I’m going to need truckloads of supernatural help! But God Himself wants to transform my own personal experience into His kingdom experiences, as I learn to walk in His Love. However, I will need to remember that His love is not permission to do whatever I want. It has aims for my life. But the Holy Spirit will always help me.

God’s kind of love does not in any way resemble our modern world, which shouts and jumps up and down at everyone else and says:‘ If you love me you will give me what I want!’ God’s love is founded on, and maintained, through sacrifice. His love is so real, deep and comprehensive it will not rest until it brings out the very best in His beloved. Read the book. Start with the Old Testament and watch our Heavenly Father work with a rebellious, cantankerous, wilful people. The Israelites wanted a god who would smite their enemies, and leave them alone to do absolutely anything they wanted to do, and who cares about the consequences?

Now listen to what the Lord God Almighty says about Himself: “I am the LORD, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed.” Malachi 3:6. Did you get that bit? He does not change – you and I might have wanted to do some smiting and biting because of the Israelites horrible attitudes, but our God does not change – His Holiness is fixed. Self-centredness has nothing in common with God’s pure and holy love. Amazingly, Father God does not want to destroy the man He made, that’s why Jesus came. “But when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil.” 1 John 3:8.

If God had not sent His Son to die for us then the devil would have destroyed all of us. We were sitting ducks! Jesus thwarted our enemy’s attempt to subvert the ways of God so we can walk with Him ourselves. Jesus not only saved us all from hell – He saved us from our own choices. Then He took us out of satan’s kingdom, paid our debt, so we can live in His Father’s kingdom – LOVE’S KINGDOM. Love’s kingdom has parameters.

“But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for He called you out of the darkness into His wonderful light.”  1 Peter 2:9. It is way too easy to skip over some bits of verses, and just kind of go for the sweet bits we like, that are often in the middle.”The Scriptures say, ‘People do not live by bread alone, but by EVERY word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Matthew 4:4. Let’s go back to the words we often don’t see …1 Peter 2:9 …”As a result you can show others the goodness of God… OR “…you are not like that …” 

If we are not careful we can easily skip right by those few words, to the ones that tell us what we want to hear.… You are ‘a royal priesthood, a chosen people, God’s very own possession’…those bits. But if we are to live this life as the Father’s royal priests. We are not meant to be the Levites or Pharisees – there is a new order of priests – we are priests who live like Jesus did! We cannot afford to live like everyone else around us. Jesus is ultimate royalty and His life and teaching are our example. God’s Love corrects us and disciplines us, to transform us into royalty.

Human beings don’t think of love as correction, however, correction and discipline are definitely a part of His love! God Himself allowed US to punish HIS SON for OUR own ultimate good. That’s how much He loves us and that’s what love looks like to Him! The devil will quibble, question and defer to our so-called right to be indulged, on the basis of “poor me’ until we are DEAD! However, our Father guides and corrects us because He utterly and unreservedly loves us. Our Father does not discipline us because He wants to spoil our fun… He does so because the stuff we wander into is like treacle or quick-sand – we wander in and we can’t get out!

Trapped in sin is a very bad look for human beings! We were made to worship the Lord, and enjoy Him all the days of our lives… and beyond! But sin, when it is embraced, colours everything around it. Colour goes out of this world when we leave God out. However, living for Jesus and others, as He leads us, is the most delightful thing anyone can aim at. It brings out God’s purpose in our lives, and we learn to live aware of Him. Living a life of faith means we know who we are, and why we are here. That changes the way we see everything else around us.

Let’s briefly go back to the Israelites. They could not see LOVE leading them, and so they felt deprived when they couldn’t do what they wanted to do. Love Himself was talking to them and they couldn’t hear a word He said, because all their complaining and whining blocked His words out! But living this life as a totally surrendered lover of Jesus will transform us to look like Him. It isn’t always FUN, but ‘afterward we reap the peaceable fruits of righteousness.’ Hebrews 12:11. Love looks like Jesus. Bye. 👋

P 2999 God, You are more than enough!

/ DVH

“God, You’re such a safe and powerful place to find refuge! You’re a proven help in time of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need You.”Psalms 46:1 TPT.

‘Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another Person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, He got us into life! One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one Man said yes to God and put many in the right.

All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn’t, and doesn’t, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it’s sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that’s the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life—a life that goes on and on and on, world without end.” Romans 5:18-20.

We have a wonderful Heavenly Father, and the Perfect Saviour, Jesus Christ, and the glorious ever-present Holy Spirit to help us. Just let that sink in for a few minutes. We are not alone. The God Who made the world is more than enough for you and me! God’s Grace changed everything for everyone, and now we need to change our point of view to line up with Who He is.

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The Lord is not just talking to us about memorising scriptures when He tells us in Psalm 119:11.“I have stored up Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” OR Matthew 4:4 which states: “But He (Jesus) answered and said, ‘It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.'”

Jesus is also talking about a heart attitude, not just a memory one. He is teaching us that we must value what He says above what we think, or feel, or have already experienced. When we measure God by human standards – things like results, or our ability to remember (!) – we are reducing all that He is to our ideas and opinions. However, the Lord Jesus came here to save us, and show us what a human being led by God looks like — He has deliberately empowered us to live that way with the Holy Spirit’s help. Just like He did!

We dare not even measure our God’s performance by our answered or unanswered prayers, because that is putting Him to the test! Jesus Himself said this in Matthew 4:7.“Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: “Don’t you dare test the Lord your God.” He was talking to the enemy at the time, but this is an incredibly important scripture. God reveals Who He is to us, through what Jesus said here. 

We must not question His goodness – His goodness hung on a cross until all of mankind was totally reconciled back to Him! He does not have to prove Himself to us … we have a book full of His history with mankind! When we come up against something that puts His goodness into question, our belief in His goodness needs to prevail. I firmly believe some of our prayers may not be answered until after we’ve gone home but that does not mean God has thrown them away. Men and women DIED holding onto God’s promise of His Messiah – I call that enduring faith.

God is holy, and He cannot lie, He is Who He says He is. It is fatal to our faith to question His goodness. Plus His unfailing love is unquestionable – He demonstrated it through everything Christ did. His ability to save us, transform us, and make us even bigger so we can receive even more of Him – is legendary! Don’t ever be satisfied with what you have, always go after more.

We need to learn to respond like that widow-woman, in 2 Kings, whose husband had run up a debt. She had two sons, who were going to be sold into slavery. She ran to Elisha the prophet for help, and as he instructed her, she grabbed anything that was in her house that might hold oil. These verses are not just an illustration or a great story about something God did long long ago …it’s for here, it’s for now … it’s for YOU! … and me! Give Him any areas that remain untouched by His Grace, His Spirit, His OIL in your life … and let Him fill them.(2 Kings 4:3) “We have not because we ask not.”(James 4:2)

The history of God and mankind related in the Old Testament are the true stories about the Love, Goodness and Grace of our Heavenly Father toward His own ungrateful chosen people. They rejected Him over and over again. Instead the Israelites just wanted to be like everyone else around them. Boy! That’s a big fat danger sign if ever there was one! If we want to fit in, more than we want what He wants, we are tottering on the edge of a ditch. God will get us out again, but then we will most likely have to battle shame and guilt afterward because the enemy will rub our noses in our failure. It is so much better to just do what He says!

Our enemy sneaks about watching for opportunities to pull us under, because when we are under pressure of drowning in our situations and sorrows, it is easier to doubt God. The thing is: with God on our side, any one of us, from the littlest child, to the oldest person is ENOUGH. We can’t afford to rate God by His Answers to our prayers, that attitude will make Him too small in our eyes. It limits our prayers. Just hold on to your faith and keep telling yourself God is good – He’s not done yet!  WAIT FOR HIS ANSWER – it will blow your mind!

The Lord values things that human beings don’t. The Old Testament proves that!!  It teaches us that HE IS MORE THAN ENOUGH.“Pressed down and running over …” and you and I had better believe it! Bye 👋

P 2949 Only follow Jesus.

/ DVH

Feel free to show me one place in the bible where God ever blessed a theory. Yet in today’s Christianity – we follow people’s theories all over the place! That is the sin of the Israelites … they wanted a god they could understand and describe, and so they made a statue. At one time Almighty God allowed Himself to be resident within a box … but no box can contain Him.

The Universe cannot contain OUR GOD …  it is still expanding!! Almighty God is so generous to so many ordinary human beings. He gives one of His choice servants a revelation and we immediately embrace it, because brother or sister everybody-knows-their-name said so … and we know that they hear from God … so they must be right! Now we start following a teeny tiny little sliver of all the possible knowledge about Him, instead of the Great and Mighty God we serve. Could we please try to remember that Gideon ended up serving up an ephod and the Israelites worshipped that? We must stop making pronouncements about Him, and go back to wonder and amazement. 

People get so excited, we have bookstores full of things that our generous God has taught the authors. That’s why there are like 195 books on forgiveness, and most of what is in each one of them is different. When we catch a glimpse of Who He is, now we think we know how to describe Him! We are like blind men trying to describe an elephant, each of them from a different vantage point. Good luck with agreeing on that! The thing that we don’t seem to understand is that each of these precious revelations are just a splinter of Who He actually is. That splinter may be truth, but it is NOT all of WHO HE IS. 

Our God is eternal! It will take eternity to even just begin to understand Him. His character, His beauty, His glory…. sigh…When I think about Him I run out of words, really quickly. Language cannot contain Him. Maybe that’s why He gave us tongues in the first place! Because of His Grace, He has chosen to contain Who He is within a book. The bible. The bible is like a compendium, every word in it leads to even more revelation. It  is not just a book, instead it opens our eyes to Who He is – over and over again. The Holy Spirit once changed my life by highlighting the word “let.” 

We were reading the Word together one day and the Holy Spirit asked me:  “Why do you skip over the little words? The bible is not about speed reading. I’ve told you clearly in Matthew 4:4: “…Jesus replied, “It is written and forever remains written,‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by EVERY word that comes out of the mouth of God.” “Do you think everything God has ever said is recorded in His book? What about His conversations with Moses or Abraham or what He said to His dear Son Jesus, when They spent time together?”  

You know, that was the day I finally found some wisdom, and I shut my mouth and listened instead! I learnt that the bible is a trillion, billion, gazillion books, in just one paragraph! The Holy Spirit isn’t just wise – He IS Wisdom, Personified. Forget all the terribly clever men and women you’ve ever seen in writing or heard speaking — they can only tell you what they’ve seen… the things that He told them. I’d like to say that I saw Him as He looked at me when our conversation came to an end — but I didn’t see a Person – I saw nothing. But something inside me expanded, as He whispered: “BIGGER STILL…”

Trying to decipher God’s ways by reading all the books in a bookshop is like trying to empty all the oceans, a teaspoon at a time! Good luck with that! I’ve read the bible so many times I know some bits off by heart, yet I didn’t memorise them. They became part of me as I learnt to act on what it said. You can’t tell me God is not generous … I KNOW He is. However, I’m pretty much a dud at believing for healing, my worldly experiences have outweighed my faith so much that disappointment grabbed me by the throat and tried to drag me under. I don’t expect to stay there – my faith is in Him and I know He is a healer.

Our God is so good … “A broken reed He will not break [off] And a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish [He will not harm those who are weak and suffering]; He will faithfully bring forth justice.” Isaiah 42:3. My faith is right there, with Isaiah, in His Character. I know He’s good.

This is why I encourage people to not only read, or listen to what Jesus has said, in the bible, but to DO it. Even after the Lord Jesus left us, He kept on talking through Peter, John, Luke, Matthew, and Paul – so when I’m reading the Epistles I hear Him. Jesus’ advice to each one of us is this … and His own mother, Mary, said it: “Whatever He says to you, DO IT.” The subject or size of the miracle does not matter. This was the miracle of water into wine, something utterly irrelevant. That shows us that He will bend the rules for the ones He loves. It was not His time — but He did it anyway. 💕 

Studying the bible is not like studying science. First of all, we have our own Personal Tutor, and in the Gospels, we have God’s only Son as our human, physical example of how to walk with God Himself. Follow Jesus — most of the New Testament was written by the few men who did. Bye. 👋

P 2862 Are we an explosion, or a pop?!

/ DVH

You can put that title on the back-burner for a bit, and let’s look at Colossians 2:11b-14 …“Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, GOD MADE YOU ALIVE IN CHRIST. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; He has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”

Our faith is in what Christ did, not in who or what we are! I think we need to stop seeing ourselves as ordinary people, who happen to have faith. The bible clearly tells us not to live ordinary lives anymore, instead we need to remind ourselves that we are dead to this world, and constantly alive to Him. When we live that way — every single day – every encounter with someone else becomes an opportunity to share His love. His love is not meant to live on that ‘back burner.’ It is the fire that sends us out every single morning!

The only thing dead people can successfully do, is to become worm food! Yeah. Right now I am hoping you aren’t  eating your breakfast and reading this … but I ain’t taking it back!! Our Heavenly Father God, did it all, He provided Jesus as the sacrifice for us – and then Jesus chose to die in our place. Now we continually make a choice to die to this life and live for Him. Our resurrection comes moment by moment as we live by faith in the brand new life He has already given us. That’s our bit ← and it’s past tense! Jesus Christ gave us a life do-over. We can still live our lives as worm food if we choose to, but the truth is — the sky is the limit!! It always was around Jesus! 

That’s why people followed Him around. It didn’t matter if He spoke for hours and hours, because His very words were filled with Holy Spirit life. Have you ever thought of asking yourself what are your words filled with? 😳People were enthralled by whatever Jesus said. So much so, they forgot about ordinary stuff like eating! Imagine that! God’s Words are filled to the top with His life, and it is satisfying. Plus what the Lord Jesus said was often explosive!

His preaching was like a geyser, it flowed out and up and over everyone who heard Him – every single time He did it! Thats why people got mad – they were convicted! Others kept talking about what He had said all the way home! God’s word, when it is preached in the flow of the Holy Spirit, fills us and satisfies us like ordinary food never will. Jesus said it much better than I can: “Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”  Matthew 4:4.

I know many many Christians are incredibly sincere, they love the Lord and they want to serve Him … but maybe they are shy, and they don’t want to intrude on other people. So if someone else wants to know something – they will have to ask them. These people have forgotten they’ve been made brand new, we don’t live like other people anymore – the old has passed away – the new has come. They are living like they are the can of fizzy drink in the picture above, it bounces and fizzes when shaken, then… … it settles down again. All the fizz will eventually go out of it when it is opened. The “POP” becomes a trickle. Many of us live our lives in that place.

Others live their lives going from conference to conference to conference, hoping to regain their ‘fizz.’ I’ve personally been to a lot of conferences, but let me tell you a secret … the very best way to become a geyser, is to develop a relationship with Him. Then you become far more than you can personally contain! Instead of fizzing up and calming down, you become a part of the Giver of Life – you and He flow together. If He turns, you turn, and His happiness inside you explodes like a geyser! 

God’s Words have eternal life in them, but sadly most of the people in this world have never ever heard the real Gospel. They may have heard about this religion or that one – they may have even tasted a bit of the fizzy drink, but they haven’t heard the Good News that they can be reconciled instantly back to God FOREVER! That’s where the geyser comes from! Are you a can of pop or a force of His nature? Bye for today. 👋.

“They were amazed at His teaching, because His words had authority.” Luke 4:32.