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P 2647 Hitting the refresh button.

/ DVH

“Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to Me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis.” Matthew 11:28 TPT. As I have said many times before, I am very literal when it comes to reading the bible. This means that I tell the Lord, “Please help me Jesus, I am tired out of my brain, I need Your refreshing.” I call that hitting the refresh button. Now here’s a truly great refresh button, from the bible, just for you and me!

“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through His life! Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through Whom we have now received reconciliation.” Romans 5:10, 11 &17. “For if,by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!”

So after I’ve read that, I put what it says in my own words. It goes like this, “If one ordinary guy (and his wife) managed to stuff up the wonderful things God had for mankind – then it stands to reason that His own Son, coming here to earth and living this life the way it can be lived – will release grace, and righteousness, plus the ability to rise above our day to day circumstances.’  Amen.

Here’s a heads up. You can’t do what I just did if you are running by the bible with a piece of toast in your hand, on your way to the office! The best thing to do is to pretend you are a tea bag and just sit in the Word until its goodness comes out! If we want to live this life refreshed, we must allow the bible to wash us, and let it soak in. If a stupid computer needs to be refreshed from time to time, then I sure do. Stuff happens in my world all the time and I forget to duck! 

The other day we went to the doctor and she was such a negative Nancy I wanted to go home and pull the covers over my head. However within days, Father God proved her negative POV wrong. Sometimes people will say and do things … ugly, grumpy, faithless things. You know when Jesus is not in charge, none of us are all that great. Life happens and it isn’t always happy happy joy joy! This means I will often need a fresh page to go on with – how about you? I need to pull focus back to what is real, and separate out whatever is shadows from the past, floating through my mind making me angry, unhappy or afraid.

The bible clearly tells me that God is not mad at me, now I have the freedom that Christ died to give me. After I soak in that thought, whatever I need to do is already done, because I am yielding to the will of the greater One within me. FYI, I’ve learnt to let go of my own way – my way ends in death! So … I forgave the doctor and then I got on with what was going on, even though it was a little hairy at our house for a bit. I want His way, the way that leads to life — life and more life. This means I can have His grace for any situation I find myself in, and if I forget to partake of that Grace — then I have His Grace to lead me back into His complete redemption!

Here’s an important key to living this life refreshed … Don’t look at your circumstances and defer hope by waiting for things to change before you enjoy His benefits. “Hope deferred will make your heart sick!”  Start reading about His benefits and then start cheering.The bible tells us not to forget His benefits in Psalm 103:v2. Remind yourself of everything that He has done in your life. The more we pull on that string of remembrance the more good stuff comes to the surface – we start remembering how good He has been to us.  We can preach ourselves happy if we take the time to really remember, read, and tea-bag soak in all He has done for us when we read our Beloved’s words.

The bible is not just an ordinary book. It is God Himself speaking to us from day to day. Imagine this. Suddenly you are pulled up into the throne room, you have no idea how … and Almighty God starts speaking to you from the throne. That’s what happened to Isaiah and Paul … do ya think they might have remembered what He said? To be refreshed we need to give His book more than a cursory glance. We need to prayerfully ask “What have You got for me today precious Holy Spirit?” Then pause, and read. Read until your heart gets happy and you start to think ‘I never knew that stuff was in there.’

Every day we meet the Lord in His book, and we use that book to refresh ourselves. We pray and talk things over with Him, so we can spend refreshing times with Him. We are His kids whether we feel like it or not. We cannot afford to live in our feelings because they change with the weather and our circumstances. Push the refresh button and drag your thoughts out of hell and into heaven. He’s waiting for you … 👋

P 2341 His Word needs to become flesh IN US.

/ DVH

’“But the hope of God’s kingdom kept spreading and multiplying everywhere!” Acts 12:24 TPT. That hope kept spreading everywhere back then, after the Holy Spirit came… because God’s people wouldn’t shut up! We need to look deeply at the effect the Holy Spirit had on ordinary human beings …  They were so confident in WHO they had met, that they were not afraid of death.  

In other words, they were suddenly fearless. We can analyse these words up one hill and down the other, but the truth IS, these people met SomeOne so extraordinary He utterly changed them, not by His doctrine, but by Who He was! What Christ had taught them came alive in their hearts. In those moments everything Jesus said to them was instantly digested and made part of them. It became flesh.

Being born again takes what God said in His book and makes it into a living word, in our lives. It stops being what we have to DO and becomes who we ARE! We simply must not settle for how many hands are raised when there is a call to come and meet Jesus! He is beyond extraordinary, and if meeting Him does not utterly change our POV on this life and the next … then we didn’t meet Him yet, we just heard about Him. 

That is not a bad beginning place BTW, we simply need to understand that the Holy Spirit did more than change mindsets – He totally changed people’s hearts, their inner lives. I exhort you strongly, don’t settle for the smaller portion! Meeting the risen Christ is meant to have an irreversible impact – He is to be sought because meeting Him changes our view of the world around us and Who He is.

The kind of wishy-washy half-hearted faith many of us settle for, is a pale shadow of really knowing Him. With Jesus there is always more – more to love, more to learn about, more to worship. Christianity is not a passive  belief. It demands everything. But He gave us His all too – without hesitation – that’s what keeps us going!

I think that many people are not living a life worthy of what He did for us, because they have not met the Man Who is God in human form. If this is how you feel, then I strongly urge you to study the gospels over and over again. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you see beyond the words and doctrines of this world, and pray for an ever increasing revelation of Who HE IS. (Read the bits in red!) That means read what Jesus Christ Himself SAID. 

Sometimes we get way too clever and so we stop listening with the heart of a child, and listen with our heads instead. One word of heart revelation is worth a billion words of clever ploys and well-written words. WE MUST SEE HIM FOR WHO HE IS, FOR OURSELVES! His Word needs to BECOME ‘flesh’ for all of us. Our brains cannot possibly comprehend just Who we are dealing with. We need that place inside us that has been dead in sin all our lives to come alive. The Holy Spirit will do that for us. First He captures our attention then He captures our hearts. He came to lead us into greater things.

I love His book because it reveals Him to me. That kind of mind-blowing view of Who He is, is my daily bread! If what I believe elevates me and what I think I know, if it elevates knowledge over truth … then I’ve missed His whole message. Jesus Christ did not come here so we could be clever or famous – HE CAME TO EARTH TO REVEAL GOD’S HEART OF LOVE TO MANKIND. He did not come just to teach us the new covenant – He WAS that covenant in human flesh. If you want to know about how much God loves you, look at Christ.

Sadly we cannot spread abroad a HOPE we do not have! We’ve been doing that for 2,000 + years and we have gotten nowhere. Let the Holy Spirit take your hand and let Him lead you into a deeper, wider, more intimate place where all you can see is how beautiful Jesus is. How generous He is, how precious He is, how much we need Him. We need to comprehend what mankind has been given before we try to give it away. We are to be His living illustrations.

However, don’t stop reaching out to others with what you know already, and don’t stop going after knowing the One Who loved YOU more than life itself.  I bless us all with fresh revelation of Who He truly is, and what He did for all of us. AMEN. 🙏