Me

P 3342 HOW?

/ DVH

Philippians 1:9-11: “So this is my prayer: that your love will flourish and that you will not only love much but well. Learn to love appropriately. You need to use your head and test your feelings so that your love is sincere and intelligent, not sentimental gush. Live a lover’s life, circumspect and exemplary, a life Jesus will be proud of: bountiful in fruits from the soul, making Jesus Christ attractive to all, getting everyone involved in the glory and praise of God.”

I have come to understand that Paul’s prayers are not just in the Epistles for the churches he started and pastored – those prayers are for us too. It is good to read these things aloud and say Amen … I personalise the scriptures and pray them for myself. I’ve been praying for years that “the eyes of my heart would be enlightened” so I can see what He wants me to see. PS I also ask for wisdom. I don’t stop praying for that, because I don’t want to put a ceiling on what He wants to give me. And I thump the daylights out of Psalm 91, mainly because I need to remember every single day I’m only a spectator – participation is optional!!

Yesterday what I wrote was pretty intense. When I read things like yesterday’s blog, my first response is always: “That’s terrific, and I am all revved up and ready to go… but how?” … The secret is in the HOW …  BTW today’s blog is not comprehensive, however I have learnt it is good to make some sort of a beginning – and remember to be kind to yourself while you are learning – God is! Stay filled with the Spirit – if you mess up, repent, and refill. If you give out to others refresh yourself in His love for you.

The Apostle Paul tells us what love looks like over and over again in the scriptures. Part of HOW is this: Love looks like something. It looks like patience when you ran out an hour ago and you and the Holy Spirit are wading through the ghastly stuff of life and He’s holding you up!  I think any mother can tell you what patience looks like.

I think it looks like a two year old who wants to get dressed “all by myself” … and then go to church in any old jumper, especially if it is inside out, together with odd socks and shoes – I let the kid wear them BTW!  Kindness looks like your elderly parent who tells the same stories over and over again and you already know them word for word. Kindness understands they are really saying: “I’m still here, I had a life, things happened to me too.”

Love looks like not giving someone else – who often clearly deserves it – a piece of your mind. Instead, you tell that person how much you appreciate them and why! ‘But, but, but – that’s so-oo bad — aren’t you lying?’ OK. Let’s unpack this — are you saying that telling them what you really think about them isn’t bad? BTW, for your info, I’m not talking about lying – I’m talking about asking the Holy Spirit what HE sees in that person to love. The Holy Spirit knows everything and He will share those things with you. This means I’ve received, for free, a whole heap of insight into the person who is bugging the daylights out of me. 

One of the Holy Spirit’s Names is HELPER – why not allow Him to help you! We have a Resident Helper Who knows you, as well as that other person. As I was typing He reminded me about a person who is in my ‘difficult to relate to file.’ I prayed and asked for His help, and I saw them just yesterday – we got along so well. I think it was because I relinquished my own efforts and gave our future conversations to Him.

This is the biggest part of the secret of HOW. I urge you to pray over things, repent of your own bad attitudes – and don’t forget to let Him decide what a bad attitude is! … Then give it all to Him and leave it alone. He’s GOD, He can do anything! Sometimes we think we can see what that the other person needs, and we don’t even ask the Lord what He wants! Bad plan. Take the time to consult the Master Planner first. He knows it all. He’ll tell you what to do, He will give us useful stuff to help us love others .

Plan to live a life of love. That’s my next bit of advice. You have to plan it, and own it, day by day. A life of love cares about others. It is not absorbed in promoting itself, and it doesn’t emphasise ME being understood, instead it concentrates on love. The last suggestion about how to do it – is this: There are things we often say, and we say them because we are down, or someone has hurt us. But, if we are honest, they really don’t need to be said – I would like to suggest that it is better if they are not said.  

I don’t think we need to be paranoid about these things, because then they can become a task that needs to be done, instead of a way of thinking about others. Let’s revise our thinking prayerfully, repent wherever necessary, but be careful not to end up religious about it. Religion prospers, because it becomes a cultivated habit … it’s easier! But it doesn’t bring LIFE. Listening to the Holy Spirit means we’ve given up our agendas and we want to walk in His. So that’s the how, to yesterdays’ theme – “there is a bigger reality.” Bye. 👋 

P 3285 Practical stuff.

/ DVH

I want to be practical today because I have spent a number of days talking about living in the new life that Christ died to give us. So today I want to talk about how I am learning to live that way. First of all, I refuse to allow things I’ve done, or things other people have done, to remain hidden and unacknowledged. I treasure my relationship with the precious Holy Spirit above everything, so whatever He wants, I do. Pretence shoots honesty in the foot.

Theories cannot change our lives unless we actively decide to participate in them. Most people want to practice the things we are taught, so they nod and smile and go home … and try harder to meet the impossible standard Jesus set for all of us. Over the years I’ve learnt I am not capable of anything but the appearance of good. However, Christianity is not just practical, it is possible. Here’s the good news. Jesus died to give us His power to overcome our enemy, our own faults, as well as this world! And here is the bad …truth, humility and honesty are the highways we need to travel on.

We cannot expect to serve Jesus and maintain the life we already have. The whole point is for US to be changed. This point is the place where so many Christians part company with the Holy Spirit’s Ways. However, we simply cannot live with a foot in each camp, eventually we will slide back into the camp that looks after “me, mine, myself and I!’ “Mankind heads for sin and misery as predictably as flames shoot upwards from a fire.” Job 5:7.

Over to an illustration … I have been at odds with someone in my immediate family, all of my life. We both just saw things differently – we simply didn’t get each other. I tried to avoid dealing with this person by staying in their presence for the shortest time possible. Then the Lord began to challenge me about how I was treating them. The truth was, I treated them like a bad smell! I was polite … and distant. The Holy Spirit can lead us into distancing ourselves from someone for a purpose and a time, but in this case, I just plain disliked everything that person said and did, so I stayed away. I didn’t like being around them – they uncovered who I really was! 

Then He began to challenge me and I saw that underneath my hurt and pain, was resentment, hatred and bitterness. I wanted THEM to change who they were to make ME more comfortable! Anyhoo, they weren’t changing, and as time went on, things got worse. OH, how I hate the land of worse!! So I gathered up my courage and asked Him how HE wanted me to treat them, and His perfect answer sent me into self-pity, tears, and petulance. After all, everybody I knew agreed that I was much safer far away from this person. But HE didn’t. I just need to say, that if you have a problem like this one, then you need to ask the Holy Spirit what He wants YOU to do, and do it – but be guided by what the Bible says!

At that time, Jesus told me to treat that person like I would treat HIM. Sigh. I would have rather swum through shark-infested giant seas to South America, than do that. It seemed to me like I was giving them permission to continue to treat me badly. Then the Lord said this from Psalm 91:15&16 “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. …I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress…” So I crawled up into that Psalm, and clung on to it like a Rhesus monkey and prayed ‘help help!’ At the same time, I banged on my hat of salvation, picked up my breast-plate of righteousness and the sword of truth, and off I went. FYI the sword of the Spirit is not for slicing and dicing the other person – the Holy Spirit guides and teaches us how to use this sword His way.

I recommend tackling this kind of relationship difficulty, with at least 3 Holy Spirit inspired scriptures, that you’ve prayed over – as well as asking Him for His wisdom. After a while of loving on this person the way I love Him, I noticed that they hadn’t changed at all … … but I had! That sore place inside me had become inaccessible because I had stepped into FAITH. Then I realised that so much of what happened when I was with them, I had taken personally – but those things were the result of this person’s mal-formed personality. What I thought was personal viciousness, was their way of getting what they thought they needed. Their humanity was on display, and they didn’t know Jesus so it was the only course of action they had.

As I stuck with the Holy Spirit’s plan, I gradually saw a brand new person I had never met before. I still didn’t much like the way that they did things, but that stuff is not actually my business. I found we could laugh together, and genuinely express love for each other. At this point I want to stress that only someone very close to you can hurt you so badly.  Other people can come along and poke you in the scars you bear from your previous injuries. Don’t maltreat them for jumping on your hurt places.

We call it protecting ourselves, and God says “He is our protection and with Him we will be safe!” I found practicing loving my enemy – in this case a family member – worked best, when I started with the person who hurt me the most! That person could be a spouse, or a parent or a sibling, but the transformation that we personally experience, gives us the impetus to continue living this way. We get to see His power at work in our lives.

Here is a final question: “Have you ever noticed when you are with someone who hurts you, it never occurs to you that you might be hurting them at the same time, because you are way too busy firing arrows at them?” Yeah, I know… bring that up! We can become so entrenched in our own attitudes we can’t see anything, or anyone else. Let’s remember that God’s word is practical, you can stand on it.  Fixing relationships is essential! Bye. 👋

P 2926 Compromise.

/ DVH

To die or not to die — that is the REAL question! One of the saddest deceptions that has gone vastly unchallenged today, is the idea that if we don’t want to die to self, then that will be OK. The logic behind that thought is this – after all Father God loves us, and He understands how hard it is for us – so we don’t have to be like … totally sold out to Him. He understands that we are only human! 

Yeah, that’s right, Jesus gets it. After all He took on our form and walked through this world, sinless. BUT! Jesus got His power to live an overcoming life, from His ongoing obedience and connection with the Holy Spirit. We always retain the power of choice, but the reality is, God knows the right way for us to go,so why the heck would you want to go any other way?? Obedience shows trust. Jesus obeyed His Heavenly Father – to the death!!  The bible says: “There is a way that seems right to a man but at the end of it is death!” Proverbs 14:12. Dying to self is not the same as losing the life of God in us to deliberate sin.

Everything about my natural man will try to protect ME, myself and I – and from personal observation, we are blooming good at it too! Not only that, but I can protect me, and make you look like a ruffian and then go on to prove you are dead wrong from the book! But the bible is not a club it is an implement of freedom.  And our inward, and often unseen choices, can undermine our spiritual life. We can’t afford to lose the Holy Spirit for a minute. We need Him daily – all the time. Temptation is waiting around every corner. When we choose to hide, or pretend, that’s when the precious Holy Spirit leaves us, quietly, unobtrusively. Sadly we won’t even know He has gone. Then our own vain imagination takes over …and boy! …  Is that a scary thought!

Jesus offered us a new way of life, not an alternative lifestyle. He said ‘this is the way walk ye in it.’It is extremely dangerous to try to walk, and/or balance our lives between those two worlds of total surrender and commitment … and living like Christianity is an optional extra – something I take part in when it suits me!  We cannot look after me and serve Jesus. We must leave looking after me to Him!

So the answer is simple – give up the power of choice, stop being double-minded and live this life like God is bigger than you are, and He knows what is best. We have a big book full of examples of what He can do with people who obey Him. Simply follow Jesus and see everything else as a distraction from that chosen path. Living like that is how we will learn to be in this world the way He was, because He was here to do His Father’s will. The Lord Jesus was always about His Father‘s business and that’s our mandate too. 

He told a lot of parables about people who went off and did their own thing. Stories about when the master of the vineyard etc. was busy or went missing. Those were not good stories for the people who chose to do their own thing, and they did not have happy endings. The safest way to choose is to choose to follow Him unreservedly. And because He is humble in His heart, that road will lead us down. Lower still. Less recognition for us, and more recognition for HIM.  

We will probably fall over and mess up a bit while we are learning these things, but the reality is the choice to remain on His road leads to life – and more life. That’s the abundant life that Jesus talked about. The Lord is so sweet, He will be very patient with us while we are learning. He will correct things “…and teach and guide us with His eye upon us.” But we simply can’t live this new life without HIM, because we will fail, get discouraged and fail again … just from sheer disappointment! There is no middle ground – that’s just something someone made up so they could live with a foot in each world! 

In today’s permissive climate this is definitely not the time to go skipping through the daisies doing whatever we like, and expecting the blood of Jesus to cover it! The blood of Jesus is incredibly precious, so we must not ever misuse it. We can’t afford to misunderstand and mistake God’s incredible Love for us as permissiveness. We dare not tell people that they simply need to be saved – without telling them they need to be changed – by His Grace and their own obedience! 

We need His wisdom to negotiate our way through all the things that will come against us. Personally I have found in the face of difficulties, it is best to immediately, verbally, yield. Tell Him you want His will, His way – no matter what. We are never alone, praise God, we have an Advocate Who understand what it is like to be human! Jesus prays for us all the time. After I do that stuff, I hand everything over to Him and I do nothing until I get further instructions, mostly from His book. Otherwise it is way too easy to be dragged about by the wind of this doctrine, and that clever theory/idea. 

At the same time we need to remember our aim is love, so when we fall short of love, we are falling short of what Christ would do. But when I am dead to self, and I have no agendas anymore, who I love is no longer up to me – it’s up to Him. Dying to self is not an optional extra … it’s the point! He died so we can have the power to live this life His Way. That’s what disciples do, they represent their Master’s wishes. Anything else is compromise. Bless you, 👋

P 2900 We pray from a kingdom perspective.

/ DVH

“Yes, feast on all the treasures of the heavenly realm and fill your thoughts with heavenly realities, and not with the distractions of the natural realm.” Colossians 3:2 TPT. There are so many instructional verses in the bible, just like this one, that we could apply one of them every single day and still not get through the book even once in this lifetime! So how do we feast on all the treasures of the heavenly realm while we are still on earth? We live like heaven is our home, not this world.

It’s all about focus. Most people today are focussed on me, myself, and I. My family, and my relatives, and my goods and possessions, my country, and my job or lack of one! In order to have a heavenly point of view we need to focus on what God wants – and fortunately He has told us what He wants – in writing! 

Jesus came here and He actively taught us what a heavenly perspective looks like. Our Father always has a greater plan than we can imagine — praise Him! Jesus was a walking, talking, teaching, healing illustration of God’s plan and His love for each one of us. Then He died to seal the deal, to give us our opportunity to live the way He did. Sacrificially. He didn’t just die to get us into heaven – He died to get heaven into, and flowing out of, US!

Jesus Christ is Father God’s faith in action be-ca-u-se … ‘faith without works is dead!’ Faith has substance – Jesus Christ is the substance of His Father’s faith. This is why without faith we cannot please God – our God is faith-filled! He has invested His Son’s life in each one of us. His kingdom is not just a place, somewhere ‘up there’ — it is a new way to live. The miracles Jesus did were secondary to the carrying out of His Father’s plan.

People could say: “Well being a Christian doesn’t sound like much fun, if God gave me a life  I want to live it, my own way.” And so the Lord steps back and says: “Have at it!” This means right here, right now, surprise, surprise, we are living in a world filled with people who want their own way. Even if what they actually want is a peaceful life, that is still what that person chooses for themselves! We should never be surprised at the mess this world is in, because human beings are in charge. And human beings, without Christ, are susceptible to demonic influences!

I think we all do our best to pray for good things, Godly things, things inspired by the Holy Spirit … but many times we pray for change or healing of things on this earth. Please Lord, heal this. Please Lord, change that. Please Lord, help those people etc. We are praying for the things that will one day pass away. Jesus Himself told us what to pray for: “Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name; THY KINGDOM COME; THY WILL BE DONE; on EARTH as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.”

In this new reality, we pray for His kingdom, His will to be done, first.. In this prayer that Jesus gave us as an example – God is the centre. Yes we can pray to be delivered from sickness, sin and evil, let’s do it! We sure need it!! But the point of being born again is to live in His new kingdom with His oversight. He tells us how to do that in the book. He even tells us what the fruit of that kingdom looks like … in the book! No fruit – no kingdom!  

Our new life means we have chosen to live in His kingdom, and we are to manifest that kingdom in this life down here …in the middle of wars, trouble, strife, evil, compromise, hatred, murder, lust, lies. That’s why Jesus said “don’t be surprised when bad things happen.” Those things are the fruit of this world!  We are to walk within this world’s worst nightmares, shining with the light of Jesus’ love for every single human being, always praying people will be saved by the truth of what we believe, as it is acted out right in front of them! 

“God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.” 1 John 4:17.

Now we pray from our new heavenly position within Christ. ‘Lord I want what You want.” I’ve learnt, from experience, that what HE wants is so much better than anything I can think of or dream about! We have given our lives to Him so He can live through us – we are blessed to be able to release His point of view, His healing, His love, peace, joy, into the darkness. That is not a part-time job, it is a kingdom lifestyle.  We need to learn to pray from a kingdom perspective.Bye. 👋 

P 2723 The one word that changes everything!

/ DVH

This morning when I prayerfully thought about what I wanted to write about today, I realised that a great deal of what I have previously said over all these years, that can be accomplished by simply walking in love.

1 Corinthians 14:1a says:“Make love your aim …” I’ve often found myself wishing that there was a full stop right after those four powerful words. In fact, I don’t think we can read the bible without remembering LOVE WAS GOD’S AIM WHEN HE WROTE IT! In another version, the same verse says:“Earnestly pursue love …”  In another it says: “make it your great quest …” 1 Corinthians 13 is titled … the WAY of love. Sometimes I think we can get so enthusiastic about using methods and acquiring knowledge, as well as implementing this and that, we can quickly forget Jesus exhorted us to be a people with a child-like attitude. Matthew 18:2-4 says:

“He (Jesus) called a little child to Him, and placed the child among them. And He said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

So did you get that? Grown ups don’t qualify. Knowledge and power actually mess with our obedience levels and simplicity. As a child I can remember wishing I could hurry up and grow up because grown-ups had power, and I had none. Hmmm. Many many years later I can see the error of that thought, but it took me a while.

So what do I mean by walking in love? Here’s what that means for me, I often ask myself the question …is it love? You know sometimes things are expedient, but there’s no love in them. In our hurry hurry rush rush world, which always seems like it must run full speed ahead at all times, we can do things that are not love, because they are easier. We might even justify them by saying: it is not natural to respond with love!  Ya might like to think about that thought… because we are supernatural people now. Yet it seems far easier to shout, grumble, and find fault with someone else, than to question yourself… but ….

… what would LOVE do? 

Did you notice how I just left that line there all by itself?? That’s because it is important. We really can’t fit love in around the edges of our busy lives. Loving God and others IS our life now. So how do you love others easily? Here’s my answer – you choose, over and over and over again, to die to yourself. The self is a major factor in most of the wars, evil doings, illegal operations, and appalling treatment that we have all perpetrated toward other human beings. A whole lot of sin starts with Me thinking about ME and mine and what I want.

Now if you are wondering what kind of love I am talking about? Then 1 Corinthians 13 supplies us with the answer and a perfect description. If you like to memorise verses, that’s a great one to memorise. Sometimes I ask myself these questions: Was I impatient, not allowing someone else to have a learning curve and forgetting that I often need one? Was I unkind, hurting someone else to make my point? Was I envious, because someone else has managed something better than I could? Was I boastful, full of myself, or just plain rude. 

Did I insist on my own way above the needs of others? Was I irritable, did I bring up the past, because of my own harboured resentment? Was I finding my jollies by pointing out someone else’s sin? Did I put the truth aside to make sure my POV was more important than anything else? Have I celebrated someone else’s downfall because I don’t like them?

Do I personally love the Lord’s revealed truth? Is it more important to me to feel good about myself than to help someone else see the best in themselves? Have I forgotten to hide myself under the overwhelming love of God? He knows how to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and how to endure all things. Jesus is my perfect illustration of what love in action looks like. And the Holy Spirit is my Helper, Guide, Companion, Teacher …

The thing I have learnt is that WHEN LOVE COMES TO TOWN, EVERYTHING CHANGES…even me! All I need to do is to pause, ask for His help and do what love would do. Love is never wasted. It can be tested and tried to enhance its purity but it cannot be wasted. That’s because this kind of love is eternal. Instructions come and go, systems fail, but love will last forever, so I need to learn this truth before I run out of time. Love, is the one word that changes everything. Bye. 👋

P 2657 Self-effort will fail.

/ DVH

Romans 8:5-11. MSG.“Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores Who God is and what He is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored”.

“But if God Himself has taken up residence in your life, you can hardly be thinking more of yourself than of Him. Anyone, of course, who has not welcomed this invisible but clearly present God, the Spirit of Christ, won’t know what we’re talking about. But for you who welcome Him, in whom He dwells—even though you still experience all the limitations of sin—you yourself experience life on God’s terms. It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, He’ll do the same thing in you that He did in Jesus, bringing you alive to Himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and He does, as surely as He did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With His Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s!”

Wow! That’s some plain speaking right there! I’ve read that quite a few times and this time it is from the Message Bible. What Paul is saying is this: … Saying “I can’t change” is denying the reality of God within us. Before we understood what the Lord Jesus did for us, we had an excuse – we were empty and ignorant. But now! We are full to the brim of God and His purposes. Paul is explaining when we focus on us, how we feel — we become self-absorbed and after that, it is no surprise that we are not aware of God and what He is doing! We are too busy making sure we get what we want from Him or trying hard to please Him. Christ already did that – for us. 

We need to give up trying and start believing. Next comes obedience. We cannot go around these things because as soon as we do, we will go back to thinking about my life, my family, my purposes and what I want. And there you go, I’m self-absorbed again. That’s the thing about trying harder, you will get the stitch with it because we cannot maintain the effort … After that it becomes too easy to start focussing on what He’s not doing in my life. When I gave my life to Jesus, He took it. That’s what faith is all about. I just believe what He said and act accordingly. Feelings are nothing! Instead we choose to believe in the Lord, that He has whatever it takes to change us and we start doing what He said.

Meanwhile, that self-effort hole is deeper than we think. Paul explains it wonderfully – if I think about ME and how I feel, and how whatever you said hurt me, more than I do about Him and His purposes … I’ve totally moved into self-absorption. And that’s not a hard step to take. Everything around me lives like that. Plus I’ve been thinking about me for most of my life! Instead, I need to focus on what He wants and Who He is, and His desires for my life;  to overcome my natural penchant for selfishness.

So my diagnostic tool is this — WHO AM I FOCUSSING ON?  I must focus on Jesus, He perfectly met every single criteria for the things of God. Without His input those things are beyond my natural ability. I need the Holy Spirit Who is my Helper, He is brilliant at them. His emphasis on the other person is total. We will not get to where we want to go by forcing ourself to do what He says … we get there by asking Him to help us, and then we step out of the boat of self effort and self-centredness into FAITH. We need to GO WHERE THE GRACE IS!

I am so greatly encouraged by these verses that the same Spirit that helped Jesus to do everything the Father assigned for Him to do – IS NOW IN ME. I simply need to adopt a posture of total deference. In other words to walk with Him I need to learn to YIELD. He is not on ‘our’ side, HE IS ON THE LORD’S SIDE. He’s an expert at pleasing the Father. Any effort we make to change without His input is doomed to fail. It may produce a temporary result – but it will not grow FRUIT that lasts. You know the really great thing about growing fruit, is once it starts happening the fruit happens all by itself. We simply need to keep our focus on the Lord – then the Holy Spirit will supply what we need.  Doing what the Holy Spirit leads us to do, transforms our whole view of this life.

Whenever He leads us, we cannot possibly get proud – HE helped us and WE KNOW IT!  Self-effort is an exercise in futility that will send us off into despair – following Him leads us into a freedom we have never known.👋

P 2638 Turning away from God has dire consequences.

/ DVH

“They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,  slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” Romans 1:29-32.

Those of you who are familiar with Romans will probably already know that chapter one clearly outlines why people end up doing appalling things. Some of them are listed in the text above, and there are still other things that have been mentioned in that chapter. I just want to say, once and for all, it is not my wish to comment upon other people’s lifestyles and choices. Whether I have done all of these things or not, I still found myself in that list above, so that list does not exclude me …whether I have done this thing or that …OR NOT!  … Praise God HE found ME and now I am learning to honour Him in all things.

My point today is that we can easily end up pointing the finger at someone else because they do things we consider to be truly despicable, and we know that the bible clearly says none of us should live like that. We can even go so far as to publicly condemn others for their actions and proclivities — but the real truth is – the bible is a mirror. And the first and best person to see in that mirror is ME! If, by God’s grace I am able to share with you what I’ve seen about myself – it is in the hope that it will help you. But I am not commenting on anything else in Chapter one except to say that that whole chapter hangs on verses 18-20 – in my opinion. 

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

We are all guilty of not recognising, or even looking for, Almighty God, and putting Him in first place – when the evidence that He exists is clearly everywhere! My point is that living like that will have dire consequences! We will end up in the mud of sin and it will pull us under. Paul came to preach God’s mercy and grace to the people who knew they needed mercy and grace. Putting a big tick on any abhorrent behaviour is dangerous. By saying a big tick I mean looking at others and condemning them, while we are feeling good about ourselves, because … we don’t do that. Judging people can become the biggest distraction of all! Sadly, it becomes way too easy to go on from there, and make excuses for whatever WE’VE DONE, in comparison to someone else. 

This chapter proves to me there is nothing new under the sun, we just think we are more clever now, than they were back when Paul was preaching, but …  we are still falling down the same holes they did!! Christianity’s real issue is not this sin or that action, it is WHO IS IN CHARGE HERE? If your answer is ME, MYSELF AND I – then you are going the wrong way. Our multiple sins cry out against us. They are proof of our inner selves and attitudes. However in order to slide off into one sin or another – somewhere, somehow – we had to decide that there was no God, or that God didn’t matter and we don’t have to answer to Him. Alternatively, we can make Him into the kind of God that is indulgent of everything we do – when the book clearly says otherwise! There’s another disappointment waiting to happen!

Our biggest sin is not acknowledging Him. Not just that list of stuff in His book. Mainly because, that list is the result of human beings living this life selfishly and carelessly.  It seems to me we can sometimes be much happier to look at others instead of ourselves because looking at others provides a happy distraction from the huge great boil on my nose! Metaphorically speaking, of course. Logs and specks. Matthew 7:1-5. Personally I have enough logs to go on with, you had better deal with your own specks, OK?

Sadly one of the next easiest things to do is to excuse ourselves and our sinful behaviour because of our upbringing. We merrily try to shove our responsibility for our behaviour off onto a sinful parent, (or authority figure), who had their own troubles. It’s ME that needs transformation! Even if you annoy the living daylights out of me, day after day after day – I have no excuse, because this world I live in proves God exists, and I will answer to Him. He has promised to help me change. 

As I have said before, other people’s behaviour cannot be an excuse for our own choices. Jesus Himself put up with a man who betrayed him for three years. He taught that man, encouraged him and prayed for him. Judas would be the first person to say: “I made my own choices.” We need to start there. It’s called taking responsibility for our own actions. Turning away from God has dire consequences. 👋