Mature

P 2525 Go after more!

/ DVH

Be self-motivated. Jesus Christ surrendered His will and His life for us, and now we voluntarily surrender our life —- the only life we have been given, to Him. We cannot afford to compartmentalise the Lord of all glory, into a designated time, place and space! The bible says: He is our all in all. We have the power to make that word, that God Himself spoke —- flesh… By doing it. Devotion to Christ is not an over-the-top concept – it is the reason we were saved!

“Be imitators of God in everything you do, for then you will represent your Father as His beloved sons and daughters. And continue to walk surrendered to the extravagant love of Christ, for He surrendered His life as a sacrifice for us. His great love for us was pleasing to God, like an aroma of adoration—a sweet healing fragrance.” Ephesians 5:1-2 TPT. 

This verse is telling us how we can please God, and smell good to Him. Forget Chanel, or Yves St. Laurent … death-to-self smells good to God. His only Son sacrificed His life, to give US life, and that pleased the Father. ‘Our lives are no longer our own, we’ve been bought with a price – paid for with a preciousness that is out of this world.’ Our own personal response to that incredible gift and invitation, matters.

After that we step through the door of deliberate obedience, into the world of the Holy Spirit. Those of us who may have been StarWars fans will know that famous line Yoda spoke. “Do or don’t do. There is no try.” Isn’t it amazing how the rocks cry out sometimes? There is no “try” in dying to self. We choose, we don’t try.  “We (deliberately) set our minds on the things above …” Colossians 3:2. In Christianity, there is no try. The thing is, it is way too easy to bail out of ‘trying’ when it gets too hard. We need to trust God with everything we have, because He gave us everything He had.

In the Old Testament smelling good to God included slaughtering and burning dead sheep, or a bull, a goat, or a turtledove. In my opinion, blood smells terrible. It has an ugly tinny metallic smell – ugh! Death smells even worse! Imagine the flies!! This was not a quiet gentle scene, with angel singing, and a holy hush! And yet our God loved it. “It is a burnt offering, a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord.” Ephesians 5:17.

His own precious Son, hanging, dying a terrible, painful death was pleasing to Him – Almighty God looks through pain to the holy results. We simply must stop making a God after our own image by deciding that of course He will like what I like! He is not there to please US – we are here to choose to please HIM. 

And the real truth is, we still sometimes don’t know what He likes, because we are still learning. His book, the bible, keeps unfolding itself before our very eyes day after day after day!  That’s why Jesus said “Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:6. We all need to go to church hungry and thirsty for more of God. 

Many people in our churches are now sitting back in their seats, arms folded, double-daring the poor pastor to say something they haven’t already heard! It is almost like they think God is lucky that they came there at all! Hebrews 2:1 says: “For this reason [that is, because of God’s final revelation in His Son Jesus and because of Jesus’ superiority to the angels] we must pay much closer attention than ever to the things that we have heard, so that we do not [in any way] drift away from truth.” My advice is to pray that we will always listen with our hearts open, even if we have heard some things before … maybe the pastor is not preaching new stuff because we are not doing what he has already taught us! Let’s selah that thought…

These pastors preach to inspire us to greater things. Their desire is to see us grow up into Christ Jesus’ likeness. Otherwise they are simply running a spiritual day-care centre. Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. With spiritual babies yelling play with me, feed me, make me feel important! No wonder these wonderful people, who are gifts from God Himself, can get fed up and quit the ministry! Yet Sunday after Sunday it can be so easy to thank this person for their sermon:  and still go home and kick the cat, yell at our spouse, and chastise our kids. And we kid ourselves that Jesus understands how hard it is to be us! 

We all need to mature. And maturation takes more than attending church meetings, bible studies, prayer meetings. It takes SELF-WATERING, plus the cultivated curiosity to get to know all three of the Trinity better. They are not just our ‘Suppliers’ of answers to prayer, or even wise life information. We have been saved to interact with the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. 

The Christian life is more than going to church Sunday by Sunday – it is a way to live. If we only ATE once a week we would rapidly starve. Most Christians are malnourished with some of the most brilliant meals in the world, right at their finger tips. We must grow up into the fullness of Christ. We will never realise our dreams for more, sitting about hoping it is going to fall on us! …  It is time to go after MORE.  👋🏻 Jeremiah 15:16.

P 2521 The cross needs to be at the centre of everything.

/ DVH

One day, everything in this universe will bend its knees to what Christ did!1 Corinthians 1:17 says:“And I declare this message stripped of all philosophical arguments that empty the cross of its true power. For I trust in the all-sufficient cross of Christ alone.”Our God tells us He is a jealous God, and the Apostle Paul recognised, understood and respected and honoured that fact, in all of his ways. That man lived his life gratefully.

Paul has a huge discourse in 1 Corinthians 1 because some of the members of the Corinthian church were polarising about who baptised them, and they had divided themselves into factions, under a man’s name. These people were trying to make themselves look important by association. However, Paul could not give two hoots about any of that nonsense … he is not spreading the gospel for popularity. He is constrained by the Holy Spirit to make Christ famous. Our single-mindedness is important.

Paul speaks to these factional people very strongly. His point is that we are all baptised into Christ … not Joe Blogs or Tom Smith … In other words some guys who happen to be prophetic or have a healing ministry. These men and others like them, are just His vehicles, Christ Himself is our whole salvation and destination. Christ living in us is our hope of glory!  It is good to realise that we can be distracted, and we can end up following somebody else whose doctrine appeals to us. But salvation comes from Christ alone, and it’s all in THE BOOK. We have been promised so many things in that wonderful book, but think on this; “would you give care of your car keys to a four year old?” Salvation is the beginning, we need to let Him mature us.

Christ is the centre of our faith. But when we treat the Lord and His death like a commodity, and disrespect what Father God has done for us, we are walking on thin ice. When Jesus died for us, He exchanged His life, His favour with God, His obedience, His humility, His purity of heart and focus, and devotion … for our sins. We can easily be dragged away by our own wilful carelessness, ignorance, and blatant disregard for other people, plus our disobedience, and distinct lack of true reverence for Who Almighty God is!  What is important is not just being saved at an altar — but letting the Holy Spirit transform our hearts INTO an altar for God Himself. We live this life we have now for His sake.

If Christ Himself was not willing to grasp at His Heavenly Father’s glory, then it follows that as His followers, we too need to follow His example.“And now, O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine Own Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.”John 17:5. Jesus Christ’s sacrifice started before He was born here. It started when He chose to give up every right and privilege He had as God’s only begotten Son to leave heaven and be born here! That is the reason I exhort us all to daily linger at the foot of the cross. 

We cannot afford to be seduced away from our destiny by any one person who has a mighty anointing. That’s what the members of the church at Corinth were doing. They started following and giving their allegiance to the MEN who baptised them, and what they said. We need to thank Almighty God that He gave His gifts to men – but remain steadfast to the One Who gave them. It is in our own best interests to pay attention to what Almighty God likes, and what He doesn’t like and it’s all in the book! That’s the real reason that we ‘hide His word in our hearts’ … ‘so we may not sin against Him.’ .

Salvation isn’t just something we do once, and then we have a free ticket to heaven so we are safe. Salvation is a process, one we participate in. It is a life that choses to be laid down deliberately for Christ’s sake. We were saved and now we are daily in the process of being saved. It is a lifetime filled with moment by moment decisions to follow the way of the cross. It means we live for Him now. Every time we choose His will, His way, we die to the old way we lived before, and we are choosing to live our lives glorifying the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He breathes His life into us, minute by minute, so we can continually walk with Christ. Our job now is to co-operate with what the bible says, and follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit!

The Holy Spirit of the Living God is going to confront areas in our lives that need change. The fight we fight daily to be transformed is about learning to yield plus learning to overcome. It is not easy, nor does it come naturally. This fight means we are taking God at His Word, and we are responding with obedience. It is the fight to prevail that matters. Remember, Jesus Himself did not want to go to the cross. He has personally shown us it can be hard to do the will of God. That is why we have the Helper Who is always available. There is no greater destiny for any one of us than to live and die for God’s glory. That’s what our Lord Jesus did. His cross needs to be at the centre of our lives.  🙌

P 2452 Further to yesterday … another important key.

/ DVH

Here is a very interesting picture from the prophet Joel: “The invaders charge. They climb barricades. Nothing stops them. Each soldier does what he’s told, so disciplined, so determined. They don’t get in each other’s way. Each one knows his job and does it. Undaunted and fearless, unswerving, unstoppable. ……”God Himself bellows in thunder as He commands His forces.” … …Look at the size of that army! And the strength of those who obey Him! God’s Judgment Day—great and terrible. Who can possibly survive this?

But there’s also this, it’s not too late— God’s personal Message!— “Come back to Me and really mean it! Come fasting and weeping, sorry for your sins!” Change your life, not just your clothes. Come back to God, your God. And here’s why: God is kind and merciful. He takes a deep breath, puts up with a lot, This most patient God, extravagant in love, always ready to cancel catastrophe. Who knows? Maybe He’ll do it now, maybe He’ll turn around and show pity. Maybe, when all’s said and done, there’ll be blessings full and robust for your God!…” Joel 2:7-14 MSG (parts of it.)

Yesterday, I talked about the blessing of actually knowing, standing, and operating in your own place in God’s plans. And lo and behold, that morning, hubby read me this great descriptive scripture from Joel. You can almost hear the clashing of swords! I understand, BTW, that these verses are an illustration of something else, but I think the coming reality is going to be way beyond anyone’s imagination… … And I also know the Lord needs an obedient people to do whatever comes next!

The soldiers described here are not only ready for battle, they know exactly what is required from them and how to go about it. This is what true submission accomplishes, it brings about harmony within the troops. There is no competition because each mature soldier already knows everyone else relies upon him doing his designated job. These people cannot be intimidated out of their tasks or position. They can’t be stopped because they are not just a ragtag well-armed army busy doing their own thing — they are an unstoppable God-disciplined force. So they understand the strength, both individual and corporate, that gives them a spiritual unification and purpose and they protect it.

Right in the middle of this battle in Joel … because there is faith present in those who make up this army, there is a God-given opportunity for those who are being attacked to repent. The kind of faith these soldiers of the Lord need to have in this spiritual army, releases Grace. And Grace draws people to the Lord Himself. This kind of army serves the King’s real purpose. They show the world who He is, and who we are to Him, and what is possible when you and I, and anyone else who wants to come, serves Him! There is no competition, because there is no need for competition. Nobody has anything to prove. They just want other people to know Him the way they do.

Sometimes I think we are too busy trying to show the world that WE — our little church or big denomination — have all the answers. “We’ve got it right you can follow us.” But our job is to showcase the glory of our King not to point to ourselves or our churches. Our doctrine isn’t worth bupkis unless the Holy Spirit kisses it, and that kiss is not authentication  – it is a further display of HIS GRACE. Otherwise our churches will become yet another man-made institution that actually serves and produces nothing … except maybe loads of hot air. Plus four million helpful handy books that sit on shelves after the new fad has passed. It seems that so many authors have a short-cut to maturity – there is no short-cut. Dying is hard.. Did I say that out loud?? 😶

I am not saying there is anything wrong with Christian books, fiction or non-fiction, but my heart’s cry is that we need to read and esteem His book above any other. We are to be a living example of His book to other people. Meanwhile, I am pretty sure we still don’t get what He is saying, by the way the people outside the church regard us! We’ve put doctrine over Spirit and life, because I suspect Spirit and life seem harder to discern and walk in. The disciples did not put any kind of organisation over obeying His command to “Go!” They just went. Sometimes LIFE itself pressed them into moving on, but they trusted God, used their faith and took the gospel all over the known world by following the Leader – the Holy Spirit. 

It is incredibly important to find our own place and stand in it. Rather than creating some grandiose ministries that have an enormous buzz, but they raise rebellious believers who think that being right is more necessary than dying to self, or serving one another! God does not need our help. Our partnership with Him comes from His Grace toward us and His Love, not expertise. We need more Holy Spirit balance, and balance readily comes when we love and serve Him and others, no matter what the cost. This is a key we desperately need. Bye. 👋🏻

P 2443 Stand on His love for you.

/ DVH

“And I pray that He (the Holy Spirit) would unveil within you the unlimited riches of His glory and favour until supernatural strength floods your innermost being with His divine might and explosive power. Then, by constantly using your faith, the life of Christ will be released deep inside you, and the resting place of His love will become the very source and root of your life. Then you will be empowered to discover what every holy one experiences—the great magnitude of the astonishing love of Christ in all its dimensions. How deeply intimate and far-reaching is His love! How enduring and inclusive it is! Endless love beyond measurement that transcends our understanding—this extravagant love pours into you until you are filled to overflowing with the fullness of God!” Ephesians 3:16-19 TPT

This scripture has so much in it, it just blows my mind whenever I read it. Today I want to think about the word continually, as in on purpose (!) … reminding ourselves of the ever-present presence of God’s loving favour in and on our lives. Oh how He loves us! And His love is an utterly committed love. The price He paid to buy us back from hell and damnation is beyond our understanding, far more than we could ever ask or think.  You know, my opinion of my performance and who I think I am, does not matter to Him. Neither does yours. His opinion is the one that matters.

You may like me, you might not. The main thing I have to wrap my heart around is that Father God utterly loves me. In order to walk with the Holy Spirit, Who is the revealer of these great truths, I will need a firm foundation to stand on. Jesus died for my sins, once and forever, to make all this possible, is that foundation. Now we have to let that love sink down into our hearts so we become so completely saturated by it and there is no room for insecurity. Otherwise if my life does not go well, I might end up blaming Him, or other people … like you, or my family, my circumstances etc. And then the ground I am standing on becomes shaky. Our houses (lives) are only as good as their foundations!

We cannot start out with anyone else’s performance but HIS. What Jesus did was perfect. Anything else is this world’s measuring stick. Christ is now the perfect illustration of what mankind can look like. We can’t afford skip, or dismiss lightly this truth about how much God loves us. As soon as we dismiss it, or water it down with provisos, we miss the  magnitude of how wide, how deep, how all encompassing and powerful God’s love is! We dare not build on the wrong foundation, because His demonstrated Love is the only foundation that is eternally stable.

Many human beings don’t value love, except as a feeling —because this world’s idea of love is fickle, selfish and unpredictable. Humanity can be so unfaithful that our Father’s eternal faithfulness hardly registers in our hearts and lives. But it must. Otherwise we are moved around by circumstances and the winds of change too easily. We cannot use OUR measuring sticks to put a value on God’s love. It is far too easy, in these times we live in, to think that real love means permissiveness. 

Self-sacrificing, altruistic love wants only the very best for the one it loves. Father God’s incredible vibrant love has provided all of us with the means to be transformed. And all we need to do is to live for Him the way Christ lived for us. We have all the needed illustration and demonstration of that, in the book! Comprehending that sort of ongoing loving grace gives us a firm footing, as we walk through a weak wobbly world with no stable footholds.

I have learnt, from experience, that WE WILL GIVE OUT TO OTHERS WHAT WE STORE UP! If we store up our own mistakes, our wrong attitudes, our own idea of what love looks like … OR … spend our lives concentrating on someone else’s sins, their mistakes, and their wrong attitudes, we are no longer standing firmly on LOVE. The Holy Spirit was sent here to teach us to how to walk, talk, sit, and stand totally saturated with God’s love. He’s an expert. Re-read today’s scripture it entertains no doubts. 

We must mature enough to understand that real LOVE corrects, it shapes, it guides, it teaches, and … it helps us. Love always fosters connection. Father God’s love is with us in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Jesus did not leave us alone to muddle along without Him – He sent back the Holy Spirit to help, teach, guide, correct, counsel, and comfort us into His Way of Love. We must let the love of God live in us, and make us so rich in love we can easily give it away!  We need to learn to stand on these things, gratefully. 🕊❤️‍🔥 

P 2401 It’s good for us, but sometimes we fight against it.

/ DVH

“In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don’t feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as His children? My dear child, don’t shrug off God’s discipline, but don’t be crushed by it either. It’s the child He loves that He disciplines; the child He embraces, He also corrects.God is educating you; that’s why you must never drop out. He’s treating you as dear children.

This trouble you’re in isn’t punishment; it’s training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God’s training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God’s holy best. At the time, discipline isn’t much fun. It always feels like it’s going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off big-time, for it’s the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.” Hebrews 12:4-11 MSG

… So that thing we’ve learned to love/hate, isn’t actually … tying our shoes … it’s Father God’s discipline! This scripture in Hebrews is food for thought. I really like the way the Message bible puts it … it is so clear and comforting. These verses reinforce that the difficult stuff that happens to us isn’t punishment – it’s training. Ya might want to sit and think about that thing that has been driving you batty. Maybe you are not being persecuted or driven nuts by someone else. Maybe it is part of growing up in God!

I can still remember teaching my children when they were little how to tie their shoes, over and over again. I know, nobody does that anymore because we all live in the land of velcro! But back in the ark, it was expected that by the time your little darling landed in kindergarten – he or she would have learnt how to tie their own shoes … as well as take themselves to the toilet. Shoe tying tried my patience heaps.

You know, sometimes I wish I could go back to those days for a do-over? It is a real shame how much easier it is to develop patience, and long-suffering, when you aren’t under pressure to run out of the door and deliver three kids to kindy or school. Especially if you are on foot.  Maybe one of your kids is a Dilly Daydream with their nose in a book, and they wouldn’t hurry if they were chased by a shark!

As I’ve gotten older, patience has become a bit more accessible to me. I’m much slower now, so I have had to learn to be patient with myself! Back then? Not-so-much. Sigh. I can remember recently talking with my now grown-up son many years later, discussing parenting styles. He was being very kind to me considering how little I knew about what I was doing back then!

A-n-y-way, my son laughingly made this remark about a question I asked him when I was fed up and he was younger and being naughty. I used to say: “Do you want a smack??” His comment was: “Honestly Mum, can you imagine any sane kid saying yes to that question??”… “Oh, yes please, Mum I’d love one!?” 😂 I’m so blessed that we’ve been able to laugh over the some of the stupid stuff I did and said. He has kids of his own so now there’s a lot of understanding between us. 

I just want to assure you if you have little kids at your house, hold on … they will grow like weeds and then one day sooner than you think, they will be gone. However, teaching them stuff they are going to need later on in life is extremely difficult, because not every kid is compliant … the little darlings. That means that parenting is not a whole lot of fun. Meanwhile, I am soooo totally over those ads with fake happy families in them. The idea that 4-5 people of various ages, are all outrageously happy at the same time, just because you fed them some fancy chicken, or pizza, is lunacy. Advertising is lying for profit!

Right now, I want to pause and just try to get my mind around how patient the Lord is with all of us. Some things in my life have come up over and over again, and I promise myself each time that I won’t do this or that … but then provocation happens, or it’s a bad day and I fail. I am so grateful to Him. I need to be reminded over and over again that the Holy Spirit is my teacher, and He is incredibly patient with me. He won’t withdraw His love and approval, ever. 

Some days I just can’t seem to get my heart and mind around the fact that trouble in my life is not punishment.

The Holy Spirit will not fail any of us … because He cannot fail. I’m praying I will stop fighting against His wise counsel because I know His discipline is good for me. Bye … 👋🏻

P2214 FRUIT is our evidence of change.

/ DVH

“When your lives bear abundant fruit, you demonstrate that you are My mature disciples who glorify My Father!” John 15:8 TPT. Now there’s a wonderful promise from the Lord. However, when we turn that coin over … if we don’t have any visible fruit, then we are not mature …yet. Sometimes I think in the church, we choose people to be leaders who have really great, pretty, fruit blossom flowers growing – they have lots of GIFTS and great charisma. Unfortunately those flowers are only a promise of what is to come … the potential for mature fruit is there … but that is only the beginning of the Lord’s processes. 

If you elevate and display those flowers in someone’s life too early – I believe you may hinder or eliminate the fruit. That person can get puffed up with their own importance, or even overwhelmed by responsibility, and stop living their lives under His direction … within a lively ongoing relationship with the Holy Spirit. Then they can get too busy with their ministry to work on their own fruit. The popular thought often, is this – these people have great gifts so let’s follow them and go build a church! Instead we need to pray that our leaders have the right discernment from the Lord to be able wait for the fruit in people’s lives to be ripening before they elevate immature believers. GIFTS ARE NOT FRUIT.

Now let’s take a look at what that fruit looks like: Galatians 5:22 MSG  “But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard— …” Galatians 5:22&23 TPT “But the fruit produced by the Holy Spirit within you is divine love in all its varied expressions: joy that overflows, peace that subdues, patience that endures, kindness in action, a life full of virtue, faith that prevails, gentleness of heart, and strength of spirit. Never set the law above these qualities, for they are meant to be limitless.” “You didn’t choose Me, but I’ve chosen and commissioned you to go into the world to bear fruit. And your fruit will last, because whatever you ask of My Father,  for My sake,  He will give it to you.” John 15:16

First of all – did you get that word limitless? Wow! 😳 And let’s please remember Whose fruit it is! Hallelujah for the Holy Spirit and His work in us – by ourselves we can’t produce anything that will last into eternity, and eternal edible fruit is the main thing! He alone produces limitless. The Holy Spirit is not limited by our perceptions of how He works or how He should work – He once used a whale and a donkey to bring about His purposes. He is limitless! Just wrap your thoughts around that HUGE word.

A pear tree will always produce pears, whether it grows untamed and untrained, or in nice neat little rows. But a wild pear tree won’t produce a lot of fruit, and it will probably be full of bugs!  The one in the orchard is nurtured, trained, sprayed, pruned, fed by fertiliser, watered by rain. It is being cultivated! We are all under cultivation right now – so let’s not pick at each other like blackbirds. The Holy Spirit needs to cultivate our lives, removing the stuff that is unprofitable, and fertilising the things that lead to greater growth and better fruit. 

When someone eats a nice, juicy piece of fruit, they say: “that fruit is good.” We begin to mature when we let the Lord decide what is good for us, and what to do with the fruit He is growing in our lives. The Lord needs to cultivate the right attitudes within us. satan, on the other hand, cannot produce good fruit even if he tries.  We saw what he produced in the garden of Eden … sin, disobedience and estrangement! Our enemy cannot produce anything that is good because he is not a creator. 

So how do I know if what I am producing is God’s fruit? His fruit is sweet and ripe and juicy, people are attracted to His fruit like bees to honey. Even the smell of the Lord’s Presence in a room attracts others. The bible says: “…taste and see that the Lord is good.” So anyone can taste God’s fruit as well as see and smell it. His fruit comes from within, from the sap of His tree of new life growing inside us. We will always need our daily fellowship with the Holy Spirit. He enriches our lives and our relationship with Him produces His fruit. We co-operate with the Holy Spirit and then the fruit comes from within us.

As we read His word, and let, or allow Him to change the way we walk, talk and think – we are giving the fruit of the Spirit opportunities to develop within us. His fruit in our lives will produce change. We should not be surprised to find that we don’t do the things we did before – that’s because we are now way too busy producing fruit fit for Our King! 👋🏻 

P 2117 Don’t judge a book by it’s cover – because bibles have boring covers!

/ DVH

Not everything that the Lord Jesus is doing LOOKS good to us immediately. However, as we wait for Him to bring beauty out of ashes, and believe in His goodness – no matter how things look in this world – WE will be changed. And at the same time we will begin to comprehend His ways. Why does He do things like that? I think it is because the bible says: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”  Tasting involves engagement and action, not just mental assent to some so-called expert. This life is about progressively becoming more and more acquainted with Him, how He thinks, the Way He does things – Who He is.

There are times when we don’t want to take risks and steps of faith into our new life in Christ – because we are trying to prevent disappointment. Maybe we have experienced that feeling a number of times before … we prayed for something to change…and so far … it hasn’t. Perhaps we prayed for a loved one to be healed … and they are still sick… or they died. Me too! I am definitely not smart enough to have an answer to that!  It would be a mistake to think that just because we serve Him – we know all the answers! He’s still God and breathtakingly incomprehensible at times. 🙌 That’s why we need the bible… even though it looks boring … it isn’t. This book comes to us with a way better “help desk” than any internet site. THE HOLY SPIRIT.

Unfortunately our personal historical circumstances and memories can easily lead to us to metaphorically hold our breath, watching the Lord to see if this time will be different from the other times that we were disappointed! That’s when we know that we are praying prayers that are loaded with agendas! Perhaps we are disappointed because we have already formed an idea of how things will look, or how they should go. Our Heavenly Father is not a fast food joint … a place where you put in your order and wait impatiently for the result. The way to be blessed by learning about Him, as well as prosper our faith, is to find out what He IS doing and join in with that and hold tight when it seems He has gone ‘off script.’ Faith is like a rubber band it needs to be stretched.

I am pretty sure that we could go to a hundred of His preachers, and ask them what He is doing in these days, and each one of them will tell us that He wants to mature His bride. BTW that isn’t just because Jesus only wants a mature bride! It’s because Jesus is the perfect Bridegroom! His desire is toward us, and He is protecting us from what comes next. Hard things are going to happen no matter what we believe, but it is in the nature of maturity to stick close to His purposes. These mature followers will survive – scarred and sometimes battle-weary. I know a whole lotta people who dun fell off our twig already because they were misinformed about Who He is, and they were told He would give them whatever they want.. Even Jesus met someone like that! (Matthew 19:21 and Luke 18:22. BTW this incident is so important to the Lord – it is in the book twice.) We must remember the parable of the sower – stuff happens and it will choke the life out of those seeds of faith in Christ.

It is far better to ask Him into everything, than to live a reactionary life – bouncing about from one bad thing to another. Ask Him: “How would You like me to pray about this?” He knows how to pray better than we do. Right now, here on earth, the Holy Spirit is praying for us, perfectly. And up in heaven, in the throne room, Jesus is praying for us perfectly too. We simply need to know what He thinks. The safest place is a positional one – we get that by maintaining unity with others, prayer, and reading the very ordinary looking  book. Then doing what it says! (Well, you knew I’d say that didn’t you? 😆) We can cry, pout, and stamp our feet to try to get what we want, but He absolutely has a far better plan for all of us. You and I know that those plans He has are: “…plans to give us a hope and a future.”  However, He won’t rubber stamp His signature on what we think is a good idea or what suits us. Human logic and rationality is flawed by selfishness. We can make anything sound OK – but our God works for the good of ALL MANKIND. 

Ezekiel gave the perfect response to God once when He was asked a question by the Lord in Ezekiel 37:1-10 “He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “Sovereign Lord, You alone know.” Then He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life…“ The really cool bit about this scripture is Ezekiel got to see this whole thing happen through his spiritual eyes. HE SAW US – and millions like us. WE are those dry bones. Laying around dusty, dry, separately. No life in us! But in my heart I can hear a rattling and a shaking …

Ezekiel prophesied back then, that we would live. That those dry dead bones would come together, and muscles and sinews would cover the bones, and organs and flesh would appear in and on them – and God’s OWN life would come into His army. Father God is going to honour that man’s prayer.  I may be gone by then, but I believe with all my heart we are at this stage in history … when maturity, reverence, and holiness have become more important than getting what we want. And the boring book becomes our road map, and mission statement.Bye. 👋🏻