Motivated

P 3493 Let’s never forget the real benefit.

/ DVH

Hebrews 10:18-23. “Now, when sins have once been forever forgiven and forgotten, there is no need to offer more sacrifices to get rid of them. And so, dear brothers, now we may walk right into the very Holy of Holies, where God is, because of the blood of Jesus. This is the fresh, new, life-giving way that Christ has opened up for us by tearing the curtain—His human body—to let us into the holy Presence of God.

And since this great High Priest of ours rules over God’s household, let us go right in to God Himself, with true hearts fully trusting Him to receive us because we have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean and because our bodies have been washed with pure water. Now we can look forward to the salvation God has promised us. There is no longer any room for doubt, and we can tell others that salvation is ours, for there is no question that He will do what He says.”

I was born in one of the poorer areas of a capital city in Australia. Everyone I knew worked for a living. And then, when I was fourteen, so did I! I had no clue about God, except that I was taught that He wouldn’t love me if I did the wrong thing. Sadly it seemed like I was forever doing the wrong thing. Living with the threat of hell can kind of put a dint into whatever faith you have. 

Up until I read the bible I had no idea that it said things like we just read in Hebrews 10. I had tried to read it many times but I got stuck in the begat section or the Old Testament stories … they only seemed to come out well if you chose the Lord’s side, but I had no idea how to get on God’s good side. I avoided it because I was positive He was never going to accept me. I had no clue that the Lord loved me, or knew my name — in fact I kind of hoped He didn’t — because I didn’t think we would get along all that well together! Mainly because He is holy and I am not. But nevertheless, Jesus still came after me, and that changed everything.

Even today when I read this: “…sins have once been forever forgiven and forgotten …” it blows my mind. I’ve been given some precious things in my life, but that one gift is beyond my wildest dreams. There are times when I wonder … why would He do that for someone like me? I just cannot comprehend the kind of perfect all-encompassing love that just won’t quit. Yet here it is – in His book. We are not forgiven because we deserve it, none of us do. We are forgiven because our Heavenly Father is beyond our imagination. He is generous, loving, kind and forgiving, and His Ways are perfect. There is no shadow, no turning away in Him. God Himself is pure love and light through and through.

As we keep on reading in Hebrews 10, we discover that not only did Jesus pay an incredible price to have all of us for His Bride, He paid that price so now we can have access to our Heavenly Father at any time. This means you and I don’t have to stand outside His door waiting to be told we can enter. We can throw open that door and run in and yell, “Dad, Dad, Dad, guess what happened to me!”

So when Jesus asks me to repent, why wouldn’t I? I’d want to hear Him even if He whispers! His love came after me and saved me from myself. Let’s think about the kind of people you would love to ask for dinner! Did you know in the bible it Exodus 24:9-11 it tells us that God Himself came to dinner?

“Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under His feet was something like a pavement made of lapis lazuli, as bright blue as the sky. But God did not raise His hand against these leaders of the Israelites; they saw God, and they ate and drank.” 

I mean, how utterly brilliant is that, right?  Then, as if that wasn’t enough, then Jesus Himself did this:

“…that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” 1 Corinthians 11:23-25

And there it is again. Almighty God and mankind, sitting down at a table and eating together, only this time, anyone can join in. Because the One sitting at the head of the table is the One Who paid the price for you and I to be able to come and eat and drink from it. Here’s something else to think about – SomeOne had to die to give us that privilege, and He did it gladly.

We need to learn how to be motivated and saturated in God’s love. Let’s be so soaked in it, that it runs out of us onto other people. I’m talking about His heavenly kind of love that just won’t quit on anyone. All the healing services, retreats and prayer in this world, are no substitute for the privilege of personally coming into His Presence and being received by Him. This is the point of the Gospel. It is not just so we can have access to heaven one day, or get into right house or school … or even have steak for dinner!

Jesus died so we can have ACCESS to our Heavenly Father – whenever we need to and want to. And we are guaranteed that Father God will never be disinterested, busy, or too distracted at any time, to allow us to come to see Him and fellowship with Him. NOT EVER.  We can have this, because He gave us the right to wash our filthy clothes in the blood of the Lamb, knowing that His blood sprinkled everywhere in our lives, makes us clean. Why would we ignore that benefit?

We must never ever forget the real glorious benefit of Calvary. God loves us … up close and personal, and we can love Him back the same way … freely, worshipfully and gratefully. Bye. 👋. 

P3477 Moving house.

/ DVH

“We cross the threshold of true knowledge when we live in obedient devotion to God. Stubborn know-it-alls will never stop to do this, for they scorn true wisdom and knowledge.” Proverbs 1:7 TPT. The bible says all kinds of incredible things that we can barely take in, let alone remember day by day. That’s cause for a pause, right there! Many people like to focus on the negative – sadly the daily news proves that point. Even the words used by the people writing these articles are evocative and negative, all at the same time. However, God’s kingdom is always GOOD NEWS.

The thing is, we were born again to WALK with God – not just sit down comfortably inside the door! The bible was not written as a list of the things we are no longer allowed to do or participate in – it is about how dear we are to Him, and how important it is to Him that we choose to live like His kids. Father God does not have subtexts like we do – His aim is LOVE. When He asks us to obey Him, it is so that we can live in that love and freely give it away. That place is the safest place on this earth. 

Stuff will still happen, but we need to remember, a yielded soul is a catalyst. That soul changes everything around it.  When I choose to cling to what God Himself says, I am not denying reality — I am yielding to SomeOne, greater than I am. He is a far far greater reality. Almighty God made this world, so He knows our place in it. Let’s trust what He says over what I think, or you think, or even what Brother-I-know-everything thinks. We need to forgive him … and move on.

In years gone by, we used to sing a song called “Come and go with me to my Father’s house.” I loved the idea of living in my Father’s house … but sadly, after I went home, it seemed to me that I was leaving behind the loving fellowship, and prayers, plus power of the Word preached. It seemed like I was leaving that behind until next week. Then one day, it dawned on me that I could go to my Father’s house and STAY. What’s more I could choose to live FROM that Kingdom, not the one all around  me. Jesus came here to usher in the Father’s kingdom. Now I follow Him along the narrow way, and I live by faith, in His kingdom, here and now.  

When God told us to seek His kingdom first, it’s because the things we do are meant to come from our place in His kingdom. We live there now – we never have to leave. What’s more, we take His kingdom with US wherever we go! It all depends on the way we look at what was said, and our personal decisions to obey Him. And the Holy Spirit helps us with that too! I think we’ve been looking at many scriptures from a negative reinforcement point of view – instead of seeing these things as a glorious statement of our new position. 

120 people were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit came upon them, then they went on to live IN and FROM, God’s Kingdom. Their lives were now framed by it, and it occupied their thoughts, their actions. Everything they did was with God’s kingdom in mind. “Silver and gold have I none but such as I HAVE give I Thee.” (Acts 3:6) Peter was already living in that kingdom – so he could give the things of God’s kingdom away! All disciples now had it, and they took His kingdom wherever they went. Jesus Himself said: ‘…the Kingdom of God is among you.’ His kingdom is motivated and supervised by the Holy Spirit. 

What I want to say today is that we need to move away from the kind of thinking that God’s Kingdom is unavailable to us, unless we meet certain requirements. Jesus did that for us. So now we use our faith to live in the reality that God’s Kingdom is already here. It’s already IN you, and me. When we were born again, we left the kingdoms of this world behind, now we are in His kingdom seeking more and more of it. We’ve been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred  into the Kingdom of His marvellous light. 

However a negative bias on any number of verses can change the way we apply them. What I’m talking about means we choose to walk away from vague possibilities into reality – we need to do whatever we can to use our faith. This is why using our power in His kingdom to try to get what WE want is a travesty! Aim at living in His kingdom where love prevails.

Most of us already have so much information about His kingdom, but just like the sensational headlines in the news, we are limited by another agenda. That agenda says, “I can’t change.” The question I want to ask today is: ‘Then why do we have the Epistles in our bible, if we can’t be changed, here and now. Why did Jesus preach change if it was unavailable until we die?’ Like Paul I want to say, “Not that I have l already attained this, but I press on toward the mark..” (Philippians 3:12) Our aims matter. When we surrender them to despair, or destruction we will be the losers.

Some things may seem to be difficult to us, but they are definitely not unattainable. “…Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26) Let’s learn to live from God’s kingdom. What does He say? What does He want from you and I right here, right now? We need to choose to move house and live our lives, from His kingdom, and see for ourselves what that looks like in real life. It’s all in the book. Bye. 👋

P 3106 This will blow your mind.

/ DVH

“Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in His eyes.” Romans 12:2 TPT. As carefully as I can, bearing in mind I’m not a theologian, I want to give you my thoughts about this verse. I have taken note of any other verses like it – Joshua 24:14-15;  2 Corinthians 10:5;  Philippians 4:8;  Ephesians 4:23. 

’We have now chosen to live our lives passing on our Father’s beauty to others, together with His power flowing through our hearts, and minds as well as our lives. This means we daily choose to reject the ideals and opinions of our current society. Now we live by a different standard, the one illustrated by our Saviour. He also lived His life under extreme pressure to conform. But His death and resurrection bought us the freedom to choose.

Now, we value and act on those things He taught us and what was illustrated in His own life. Jesus Himself taught us that we could live in this world but not be influenced by it. Our desire is to learn a new way to think—scrubbed clean of self-centredness, self-protection, guilt, shame and blame. Using our faith, we recognise that we have been released by God’s power to be the most loving version of ourselves. Purely for His sake. Our daily responses to the Holy Spirit help us move forward. We need, and will always have, His help.’

There is no ambition in Romans 12:2, rather it simply explains the way to achieve the kind of ‘oneness’ with the Holy Spirit that Jesus Himself enjoyed. All the work has already been done. This kind of transformation will require our deepest trust in Jesus’ truthfulness. It goes way beyond agreeing with Him. Instead it falls happily headlong into our knowledge that He cannot or will not fail us. We have learnt that retraining the way we think, by meditating on His Word and daily living that Word in actions – ushers in heavenly thinking. Unfortunately, we will always end up half-hearted in our endeavours if we excuse our own wilfulness as being normal.  

This complete turn around cannot be attempted in our own strength, because humanity’s lack of altruism means we have to look outside ourselves, including our own inner and outer resources, or our valiant self-efforts—to SomeOne Who is pure Love, and totally devoted to our good. Jesus is our God-given, perfect, practical, and ONLY trustworthy example of our new way to live. His disciples reflected His Way to live until they died.

The Lord was motivated by love and guided by love, plus He utterly and totally cast Himself headlong into God’s love, grace and mercy;  these things guided and motivated Him. Because of the Lord’s example, following Him will take the deepest kind of faith – the kind that cannot be manufactured by human beings. To walk in this kind of faith, we must move beyond trusting Jesus to save us—into trusting Jesus to save us from ourselves, and our past, while we are still ALIVE. That’s called living faith.

If we trust Him to save us after we’ve left this world, we actually still have something to gain! He promises we will live forever, in eternity with Almighty God Himself – this is faith that needs to be developed. However, trusting the Lord Jesus to save us while we are alive in this world has no side benefit. We simply have His promise that He will help us!  It will involve sacrifice and it will cost us but the gain is always greater than the cost. Just like Jesus lived a life of sacrifice that cost Him everything while He was on earth. He did what He did for our sake.

Now, we choose to daily put aside our hopes of being understood (security and peace);  and our dreams of making a valid contribution to the world (ambition);  our desire for human love and approval, in favour of His will. We refuse to panic about whatever comes at us, because we know that our God is always in charge.

However, we are eligible for the blessing that Jesus explained to Thomas: “But he (Thomas) said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” A week later His disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to Him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed;  blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”John 20:25-29. Thomas had to see to believe – God has given us His grace to see by using our faith – and then faith opens the door to see further.

This verse shows me how much our God values our FAITH, He says believing without seeing is the better way. The very best place to start renewing our minds is to take our immediate needs: heartaches, suffering, fears, etc. and lay them down at the cross. These things are deadly to faith, and, sadly, if they are allowed to flourish, they will come back over and over again to torment and deceive us. The bible clearly tells us God will supply our needs, and we can ask Him for whatever we need – but then we leave those things with Him and go about our Master’s business. We must never stop asking. God is good He loves us dearly, and hears every prayer – His timing is not like ours.

Living like this, will literally blow, (and change!) … our minds. It produces a beauty in us that this world cannot manufacture. Bye, bless you! 🥰