New birth

P 2682 Easy Peasy … NOT!

/ DVH

“For the Scriptures tell us: Whoever wants to embrace true life and find beauty in each day must stop speaking evil, hurtful words and never deceive in what they say. Always turn from what is wrong and cultivate what is good; eagerly pursue peace in every relationship, making it your prize.” 1 Peter 3:10-11 TPT.

Monitoring our words is so powerful and special, when we fail to do it, we can prevent ourselves from finding beauty in each new day!  I bumbled along saying whatever came into my head for years. I was being true to myself – a common theme nowadays – but I was in the wrong spirit, because I was not yet walking in a renewed mind. Jesus Himself talked about that kind of thing in Luke 9:55. The disciples were unhappy because the Samaritans did not welcome the Lord into their village. They wanted to call down fire from heaven to consume this village, like Elijah did and the Lord Jesus rebuked them for saying and thinking like that.

To be honest, it seems to me that the disciples did not fully understand the working of the Holy Spirit. He came to facilitate our new birth, not to exterminate us! Watching what we say means we will always need His full-time help. Today I want to share the little bits I’ve learnt so far as I’ve been walking along with Him. To start with, the Holy Spirit always gives me a warning nudge. What I mean by that is that He knows what I want to say, and He will speak to my heart and say: “Don’t say that,” before I’ve opened my mouth. 

You see it is much too easy to think I’m a big girl now, I can judge and choose my own words and I don’t actually need a filter. But the truth is … I need a full-time filter BIG time! The whole thing about our words is that they are intimately personal. They come from our own private thoughts. The Lord knows my heart and He knows that other person’s heart as well, and He knows what will hurt, and what will heal. He also knows what will send me off into a tangent, or what will build up my faith, as well as theirs. Knowing someone’s heart means knowing their motivation, and inclinations – our God is brilliant at that!

He knows when I feel inclined to bad mouth the other person or try to put them in their place, because I happen to think it is called for.  So unless my mind is renewed, I am sunk … I will actually need to make quality choices to participate in His renewal. In other words – unless what I think, is the way that I act, not just something I say I believe or agree with – I can, and probably will misspeak. That realisation is a ‘woe is me’ moment. The best thing to do after woe is me is to repent … fast! Repent to the Lord, the other person and to anybody else within ear-shot.

We must never forget that our words are powerful. We can speak life or death to someone else, whether they are present or not. That same voice we’ve been given that can raise the dead and heal the sick, needs oversight!  I have struggled with a number of relationships over the years, and I have found that if I give in to self-pity, grumbling or criticism, whether those things are justified or not … I’m definitely going to end up saying something stupid that I will regret. 

It is better to remain silent rather than say something that cements the other person into a role you have created in your own mind, whether they mean to treat you badly or not. We have the power to speak life, this means we need to pull our focus back onto what is “good, right and profitable.” The bible tells us to “let our minds dwell on these things.” So when we let fly and say something unkind etc. — guess what our minds have been doing??  Yeah, I don’t like that idea either.

We have to choose to live this way now, and it cannot be a religious thing, it is a reliance thing. It’s a choice we make for the Lord and the other person. If you can’t trust yourself to say something good, then saying nothing at all, is a truly great idea. However, we are not meant to lie, so how do we say good things about people who have deliberately and sometimes maliciously treated us badly? Glad you asked that question – because I have an answer! We ask the Lord what He wants us to do or say in that moment. We choose to lay aside our own judgment, anger, and hurt, because when we do that, we are also avoiding being judged ourselves. So we either keep schtum or we choose our words carefully with Him helping us.

Just to make things clear, this can be a very difficult thing to do when you are someone who finds out what they think when they say it out loud! I’m an external processor, and telling me to watch what I say is like sending me to the Paris Olympics to enter a relay race. Not happening! BUT … I have a Helper Who knows exactly what I am going to say before I say it so I am learning to rely upon His judgment not my own. I’m happy to do that because the bible says: “lean not on your own understanding …” Win win. Easy peasy … with His help. Bye. 👋

P 2498 Transformation is an ongoing process.

/ DVH

1 Samuel 10:6&7 “The Spirit of the Lord will come powerfully upon you, and you will prophesy with them; and you will be changed into a different person. Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you.”

We can choose to walk away from our birthright. King Saul did. These two verses from 1 Samuel are a great example of how someone who was anointed by God and totally transformed, could still go on to be corrupted by the very power he was given. King Saul shows us that sin is a choice – and this man made very bad ones. Almighty God gave this king many chances to repent. But eventually, the Lord withdrew His hand on the man’s life and the demonic took over. You can read the whole story in the bible. King Saul is the perfect example of a man who was transformed and continued on with his life – in the flesh.

Today, I just want to highlight the fact that our God does not give up on people, but His patience with man’s careless sinfulness does have a limit. Saul illustrates that. He was made King by God’s grace only. Meanwhile, presumption is not faith, surrender to the Lord’s will is faith. See Genesis 6:3. It is up to us to choose how we live after we are saved – but God’s greatest desire is to walk with us. I know I rattle on about this, but our ongoing transformation is essential for whatever comes next! King Saul valued the power he was given, over the opportunity to be continually transformed.

Yes, I know – we are blessed to be alive on the other side of the cross, because Jesus paid our debt for us. But Christ did not go through that tremendous ordeal simply to allow us to remain the same. He came and died for our sins, and we now have the power to overcome them. We need to live in love, and for love, not for ourselves. Transformation is now our aim. Voluntary transformation provides immediate humility. “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Mark 8:36. King Saul is an example of someone who did not take the opportunity to be continually transformed – instead he used the power he was given for his own purposes.

We have been given the power to choose to turn away from this careless attitude that says we can do whatever we want, because He will forgive us. Nor are we supposed to assess how we are doing with the Lord by His answers to our prayers! We have been born again to inherit an attitude of humility, love and service. We inherit this from Christ our big Brother. Almighty God didn’t save us to allow us to go our own way with a handy get-out-of-jail-free button. Let’s not get puffed up by our own self-importance. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20.

King Saul forgot that he was chosen by God, to be king, it was not his birthright! His lack of humility, together with his jealousy, arrogance and rage, pulled him away from the very One Who could have helped him with his new role. Our God wants us to trust Him, daily. We use our faith, every single day, to allow Him to remove those things that will destroy us. We already have evidence He is incredibly trustworthy, by the written fact that when we didn’t deserve it, He came and saved us. We must not betray the Lord’s trust by mis-using His good nature and grace to fulfil our own agendas. This was Saul’s mistake. 

Our God is not a back-up to our imaginings or ambitions – He is the main event. His will, will always be the main event! He saved each one of us so we can voluntarily walk with Him into a totally new life. This means that transformation is meant to be part of our focus. The new birth is an invitation into knowing Almighty God, here and now in our daily lives. He will help each one of us leave the past behind, so we can step into a future where we are a loving blessing, from Him, to everyone around us.  

Overcoming our own old sinful nature, is part of the great adventure we have in front of us. We daily move forward with the Holy Spirit’s help. Transformation is an ongoing process, it is the outworking of the new birth in all our lives. 👋🏻

“May my only boast be found in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him I have been crucified to this natural realm; and the natural realm is dead to me and no longer dominates my life. Whether a man is circumcised or uncircumcised is meaningless to me. What really matters is the transforming power of this new creation life.” Galatians 6:14-15 TPT

P 2462 Get rid of the stuff that is holding you back.

/ DVH

1 Peter 2:1 “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” First of all, when I find a “therefore” I want to know what it is there, for! That means I went back and read 1 Peter 1. Therefore means in the light of what was said before it. When I did that I found a pearl… without even trying. 1 Peter 1:3-4 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade.”  

You know, a lot of people regard the opening and closing remarks of books in the bible as irrelevant, or advertising, or quite simply, polite contextual greetings. They are not. God can use the writer’s opening and closing remarks. This is a letter, but it is not like our letters. Every word in God’s book is profitable. 

Briefly, lets’ go back to our ‘living hope’ … our hope is not in what we think we believe. And that’s because people can believe the dumbest things!! Our actual firm hope is in the fact that Jesus Christ died and was raised from the dead and He now sits at the Father’s right hand.  HE is our hope. Who He is and what He did. Everything else is spiritual fluff! (And no, I am not splitting hairs – hope belongs to something concrete, it is not a theoretical thing.) 

The reason our hope sometimes dies very quickly is that we are hoping in the wrong direction. EG  … our hope is in answers to prayer! Hope cannot diminish when it is in the right place. I urge us all to put our hope in reality, not in wish thinking, or prayers, no matter how nicely we phrase them. What Jesus Christ did for us is proof that He can be trusted. So we actually put our hope in His trustworthiness and not in some pretty or earnest prayer! Jesus Christ really is Almighty God. He really came here, and He really loved humanity, and He really actually died and was raised from the dead! Hope in that. Base your hope on WHO He is and what He did. That will change the way you pray and help you to trust Him. BTW, this is why we pray in Jesus’ Name. Because HE is our hope. 

Now let’s go back to 1 Peter 2:1 ’Rid yourself of all envy and malice …’Why does Peter say that? Because envy and malice block our eyes and ears to what God is actually saying and doing. We stop seeing and hearing spiritually, and make our choices from the wrong place … the flesh! We cry: “I desperately need You to fix this Lord,” but we don’t and sometimes won’t, fix our own attitudes. When we entertain malice, envy, hypocrisy, and deceit etc. we become defensive and offensive, instead of loving, patient and kind. 

What we soak our minds in actually affects our attitudes and behaviour, and I am not talking about TV shows! Mulling over someone else’s sin against you is not profitable. Nothing is gained that way except more angst. Instead we need to identify if we have envy etc.etc in the way we think, and repent, then refuse to think like that. Seriously… we are the boss of our own thoughts! Don’t entertain them. Some people ask that junk in, tell it to put its feet up on a comfy chair, go and get it a cuppa, and then they wonder why they can’t shift the thoughts! Our minds are constantly at war – it is not safe to entertain rubbish. Here’s a dumb thought – offence will fence you in.

If a thought comes into my head, that does not mean I need to give it a party! I can refuse the thought. And I can keep on refusing it until it leaves. Personally, I do my best to look carefully at my thought patterns because I want to watch over my own heart. I am not obsessive about it, but I listen to what I am thinking because:“as a man thinks …so is he …” (Proverbs 23:7) And some of my errant thoughts deserve jail, not entertaining!  However, Paul says in Philippians 4:8 to “let your mind dwell on these things. Whatever is right … whatever is profitable…”  Live there! Start looking for the good profitable parts, even in bad things. Bad things awaken urgency within us to get closer to God. And that’s a good thing to start with! Then start being grateful.

I hold my thoughts up against the Word of God and if my thoughts are wrong I chuck them out. Bad things start festering when we ignore the fact that we are mentally chewing on unhappy relationships and difficult people. It is our part in this eternal arrangement we are in, to get rid of the stuff that is holding us away from our true inheritance. 1 Peter 2:1 tells us that. And most of the bad stuff starts out as thoughts. Try monitoring your thoughts sometime, it will surprise you. 👋🏻