Myself

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 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. 👋