Nurture

P3444 Eyes to see and ears to hear.

/ DVH

“But we are certainly not those who are held back by fear and perish; we are among those who have faith and experience true life!” Hebrews 10:39 TPT. Most of the time what I write on this blog is about my own learning curves. This one in Hebrews has been a real challenge to me, because fear smacks me upside-the-head quite a lot. I have had to discipline myself with His help, to put aside what I feel, or even the very real negative experiences I have had, and press on regardless. Trust me … I can come up with a lot of good reasons why I don’t have to do such and such! 

Here are a few: I have whiny ones …“but I’m s-i-c-k!! They will be mean to me, they are always mean to me. I might even get more sick!” Rebellious ones … “why should I help those people? They never did anything for me but hurt me. Why should I be nice to them?” A-n-d … a … complete lack of faith … “I’ve prayed and prayed for them and they are still the same grumpy nasty people they always were! I can’t see any possibility at all that they will change.” However, the Lord says this in Galatians 6:9 (ESV) “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap if we do not give up.” 

OK that’s enough fault finding …  we both know I’ll get an inferiority complex! You get my drift. The author indicates in the verse in Hebrews, that we can be held back by fear and fear can easily take the form of excuses. Things that sound reasonable to other people, but what does Jesus think about them?

I am greatly comforted by the fact that God Himself sees us as ‘those who have faith … who experience true life.’ He’s like that, always positive. But what does it mean? I think it means this – what we know here and now, about this life, is extremely limited by our own way of looking at stuff. But people who use their faith, experience the depths this life in Christ can have. Here’s one of my merry metaphors!

Right here and now, without my glasses on I can see fairly well. Before I had cataract surgery my unaided vision was extremely limited. After that surgery my eyesight was vastly improved, and consequently I have better vision. But I still need glasses … just not the bottom-of-the-bottle-ones I needed before! … Before we chose to follow Jesus, we were all a bit like me before that cataract surgery. I saw men as trees walking – just like that guy Jesus prayed for twice! After the surgery, I can now see well enough to identify what is in front of me. But you probably wouldn’t want me to drive you anywhere, because I still have myopia. 🤣

My point is this …using our faith improves our spiritual eyesight. When we take that first giant leap of faith and ask Jesus to be Lord of our lives, it is as if a veil is lifted from our eyes, and the things we couldn’t see before are suddenly so much clearer. The bible makes sense. Faith makes sense. What Jesus did for me makes sense! And as I choose to walk with Him using my faith, day by day, my spiritual vision will become clearer and clearer. The key to seeing well, spiritually speaking, is to stay focussed on the bible, and go out and do what it says – using our faith to do it. The Holy Spirit gladly comes with us – whether we feel anything or not – and life becomes an adventure.

If we choose what to believe and what not to believe, we can end up with spiritual myopia. The bible is not a Pick and Pay … it is the Manufacturer’s handbook. Solomon agreed with me, he says this in Proverbs 14:12: “There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death.” Our ideas can be so limited by our viewpoints we can end up dead! We need to be rewired, or in the case of my dumb illustration, we need those cataracts to be removed, otherwise things get cloudy and we can’t tell the truth from a tree stump. 

It is the same with our spiritual hearing. Someone I know had trouble with their day-by-day hearing, and it was becoming so evident it could no longer be ignored. I suggested a hearing test. They were not thrilled with that idea because the idea of hearing aids made them feel old. But then they went and had the test and lo and behold, they had wax in their ears impeding their hearing.

We too can get wax in our spiritual ears when we listen to stuff that is not “good right and profitable…” Paul tells us that. Have you ever deliberately blocked your ears when you didn’t want to hear some terrible sound or other? Ignoring what God says in the book, just because we don’t like it, blocks our ears. However, this is what faith can look like: right now, because of the way the economy is going, hubby and I can’t afford to buy a new car even if we need one. (We don’t.) But if the Lord told us to buy a new car we would take whatever money we have, and follow Jesus to the new car lot!  It is ‘impossible to please God’ if we don’t use our faith. 

Doing what we have always done, day after day, means we are not using our faith! Let’s be bold and courageous like our brother Joshua said in Joshua 1:9 – and start acting on the things we’ve been carefully avoiding. Don’t start with picking a marriage partner or buying a house! Let’s start with getting rid of every place in our lives where we are angry, or walking in unforgiveness, and begin to repair broken situations, and stop expecting other people to make the difference.

This is how we nurture eyes to see and ears to hear. If we ignore the things He has already told us in His book, how can we expect to hear Him in our everyday lives? Food for thought. Bye. 👋. PS. Simply praying about faith actions, and doing nothing, will give us nothing. This is not a time to wait on God, this is a time for action.

P 3299 fall in love with God’s word.

/ DVH

“When You speak to me, I devour every word. Your word brings me such boundless joy. The endless delight of my heart is in knowing that Your beautiful name is attached to me, O  Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies.” Jeremiah 15:16 TPT.                   “But those who embraced Him and took hold of His Name He gave authority to become the children of God!” John 1:12.

I treasure the people God put into my life who have taught me to love His Word. Their passion for the bible ignited a fire in my own heart that still burns to this day. The thing I have observed over the years is that if I get lax and do not treasure His Word regularly, even the bits I have kept close to my heart seem to melt away, quietly, unseen. Suddenly it seems I can’t remember even the things I knew by heart. 

The bible says: “I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You.” Psalm 119:11. God’s word treasured, will keep us from sin … the kind that is accidental, or done on purpose. His Word is our yardstick. Taking any verse out of context, is dangerous. Do I get it right all the time? … Nope! The only thing I can say for sure, is that I know the Holy Spirit is right every single time. Human beings, not-so-much. The bible itself says: the Word of God is like … “an apple of gold in a setting of silver.” 

Father God loves to speaks things into being. In other words, whatever He says to us is not only possible, it’s a true word for us. However, these words are a teeny glimpse into our future, not a signed certain certification. We are still responsible to prayerfully steward and centre that word we were given upon His written word and maintain our obedience. I often urge people to hide His Word in their heart …but then I say, ‘don’t start selling T-shirts, yet!’ I have sadly seen too many dear people wander off into lah-lah land thinking they had already attained what was said to them. Prophetic words are future-centred. They are something we nurture, not run with. 

However, I confess I dearly love it when people give me scriptures, because then I can put what was said into a context and pour over it with the Holy Spirit helping me. His Word is my joy. These precious words are the  things that are our Heavenly Father, our beautiful Saviour and the Holy Spirit are daily speaking personally to us.  Some days those words are desperately needed, simply because they contain so much comfort. God’s comfort is far bigger and more comprehensive, than the comfort of a friend or a relative. His words have power in them, so we need to receive them and prayerfully act on them. Lastly we are so blessed, we fall over ourselves thanking Him.

One word from God can change the way we view a situation – things can go from hopeless despair, to joy – just because the Lord said something about it. We are told to hide His Words in our heart, in Psalm 119, and hold tight to them. However, it is not our responsibility to help God make them come true. Rather they become our reference point as we move forward prayerfully, carefully. Many times, with other people supporting us. God’s Word is a map, leading us on, letting in little brilliant shards of His light, plus exposing new attitudes, and things to conquer, helping us to find a better version of ourselves. At the same time, there is always more of Him to know, and love.

Loving His word means we are treasuring Him, and because the Holy Spirit wrote it, we have a sure foundation we can stand on. However, it is essential we do more than believe what we are reading. Let’s read it actively looking for something to do, looking for the places where we can pray and ask Him to help us change an inner attitude or action. Please don’t excuse yourself from obedience. That is a fatal error, and we cannot afford to be sidetracked by things like this. We put our feet firmly on the road of obedience, and watch and see what He will do with that singularity of purpose. The power of God’s word to comfort us will wash over us as we simply read, but the power of transformation lies in doing what He says – and not just when it suits us!

We can easily think of giving our whole lives to Him, at an altar, or in a special time of fasting and prayer – but our demonstration of inward yielding needs to be worked out daily in our lives. Father God is looking for fruit, and you can’t get fruit from a picture in a book. We have to grow fruit, day by day – by watering, fertilising, weeding.  Loving His Word, immersing ourselves in it, helps us to see what He wants, and then that Word provides the impetus for us to go ahead and act on it. 

We also have Jesus’ Name and we have been given authority to use it for other people’s good. When we pray in His Name, we are not just using some formula to ensure that God will pay attention to what we are praying —we use His Name because we understand the power of that Name. Heaven and earth bow to His Name!  After we have allowed His power to work IN us, then we will experientially know that it truly sets people free, because it set us free. We use His Name because we know Him, and He knows us. 

Acts 19:15: “And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”   We are on a journey to intimately know the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. When we use the Name of Jesus with the same authority His disciples did, we are expressing deference toward Him.  Lastly, falling in love with God’s Word means we know who we are and Who our God is. Acts:17:28 says:  “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring.” Bye. 👋

P 2260 Kingdom farming!

/ DVH

Matthew 13:31-32 “He (Jesus) told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”

The kingdom of God it is described by the Lord, as being like many things: a treasure, a pearl, many seeds, family treasure, leaven, sprouting seeds, a net, and for today’s blog – a mustard seed. The more we tend to His kingdom in our lives, the bigger it grows. The more we cultivate, acknowledge, and obediently interact with His kingdom in our lives, the more we will grow. This means that other people can come to our little ‘kingdom of God mustard tree’ and shelter in its safety.

We don’t make this tree grow by ourselves – the ground it is planted in does. A whole lot of people move around from one church to another in Christian circles, because they decide they don’t like the soil they were planted in! Imagine a tree that moves around?? In His kingdom we do not grow because of the soil – we grow as we accept that it is our destiny to grow, and dry ground or rocks provide us with the opportunity to adapt and grow stronger. 

Every time you and I do whatever the Lord says in the book, on purpose, His way … we are nourishing the kingdom of God within us. Just like we would fertilise and water a mustard seed plant. That seed inside us is nurtured by  obedience and by us choosing to abide where we were planted. Saying ‘no’ to yourself in difficult moments, and ‘yes’ to God’s way, can seem very insignificant, but when we live that way, we are providing the right atmosphere for the Kingdom of God to grow inside us. We are abiding!

Sadly, we can’t just speak about growth and claim it, and hope it will magically appear. Like I said a tree when it has been planted – does not pull up its roots if it doesn’t like the spot it is in and go walk-about. It yields to and adapts to its circumstances. This means WE will need to change. The major point of this parable is that this particular seed is destined for greater things. It is there to grow and provide safety for others. When we have deep roots, our ‘tree’ won’t just flop over when a storm hits. Storms, I have decided, are inevitable. We cannot prevent them. Despite all our efforts to the contrary, we can’t control much of anything. Sadly, in some circumstances, we can’t even control ourselves!

It is also important to take the time to meditate on the fact that His kingdom has no end. So every time we co-operate with His kingdom coming into our lives, we are touching the eternal… and the eternal is touching us. Like I said before, we are providing for others when we live this way. I’ve watched this happen through my husband’s attitude toward strangers. He believes in the kingdom of God within Him and He knows God wants to touch others! 

Recently our bank changed its system. Yay! We were told if we did thus and thus all would be well. Naturally, we promptly did thus and thus – BUT … all was not well! The bank had provided for this time of change by listing a number we could call. Hubby called the number. But as he was talking with the bank operator, he empathised with her about what a tough day she must be having, because she had to deal with so many calls. Hubby cared for her, instead of getting grumpy because this new system inconvenienced us. She opened up to him like a sunflower. The young lady came into his mustard tree’s shade and was able to rest. For a few minutes she was free from having to explain her work’s policy and she was able to be herself. They had a great chat and in the end, all was finally well!

Matthew 13:10-12 says this: “The disciples came to Him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?” He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance…”

The way to get an abundance of His love to give away, and provide shelter for others, is to cherish and nurture His kingdom within us. His kingdom must go deep inside us – this means it will challenge and expose flaws and hindrances to growth. But many many people will find rest, comfort, encouragement, healing and a greater knowledge of God Himself in our own personal mustard tree. This is why we need to be good Kingdom farmers – so people can personally, “…taste and see that the Lord is good!” 🌳 Bye 👋🏻