Obeyed

P 3237 Always remember WHO He is.

/ DVH

“Look at the splendour of Your skies, Your creative genius glowing in the heavens. When I gaze at Your moon and Your stars, mounted like jewels in their settings, I know You are the fascinating artist who fashioned it all! But I have to ask this question: Why would You bother with puny, mortal man or care about human beings?”  Psalms 8:3-4 TPT. Because HE LOVES US! That’s why.

In John 13:23 we are told this: “One of His disciples, whom Jesus loved (esteemed), was leaning against Jesus’ chest.” I want to say this before I say anything else today … If safety is something that you treasure, then what John said shows us that being right here next to Him, is the safest place in all the world. The Lover of our souls, our Beloved, will keep us safe – in spite of whatever is going on around us. 

Resting in and on, the Lord Jesus, is our great privilege and quest. Forget ministries, or human importance, or platforms, or even other people’s admiration, this particular disciple picked the best place to be — listening to His heartbeat.  We will miss so much of Who He really is when we are too busy to listen to His heartbeat.

It is important that we understand that our God, our Heavenly Father, the Great and Wise Omnipotent, Omnipresent Everlasting God of all the ages – is to be listened to, and revered and obeyed, not just quickly passed over or ignored!  We must learn to put our easily influenced feelings aside, to stop and remember the God – Who made everything we can see – loves me! 

The fact that He loves all of us with a love that will never die, does not mean we can simply flick away our responsibility to pay attention to everything He has said. We can’t ever afford to cherry-pick our responses or use His beyond-our-ability-to-understand, Grace, against Him… by telling ourselves: ’God loves me, He understands, He won’t mind.’ That’s misusing the Grace He has given us. This ever-present, always living and loving Grace has been released into our, lives. Yours and mine, as a gift. It was incredibly costly.

I think that deceit has wrapped the Christian church in its blanket, and we are becoming hard of hearing and blind to what is actually going on around us. I urge us all to pray  —  and then go and do!  Don’t ever let the size of the task discount you from participating. The bigger the test, the greater the victory.  Instead be truthful and sincerely tell the Holy Spirit: “I can’t do this, please help me!”  Amen. 

We need to remember, that we are not dealing with a god made in our own image, we are dealing with the One Who placed the stars in the sky…with His fingers!!! And despite what we tell ourselves, or this world tells us, we are His people.  Whenever we are ill, or infirm in one way or another, we truly find out how frail we are, often helpless against the darkness that presses in against us without Him. The answer is simple —never do anything without Him!

Let’s stop our solitary focus on me, my situation, my health – or lack of it, my family, my poverty – and start gazing at Him. Gazing at Him is another form of worship. Worship is not just singing songs on Sunday—it is the way we live. When we know, from our own personal interaction and experience, that our God is bigger than anything we can think or imagine – we can more easily rest, be at peace, and let Him do the work. BTW, rest does not mean we sit on our hands and do nothing. It means that we know we can do a whole lotta somethings, because we are utterly relying upon Him! 

God can do anything, with anyone, no matter how inadequate they feel. The bible shows us that. It is filled with men and women who would never have made it without God helping them. Instead of wrongly using His Grace to excuse our non-participation in His kingdom, let’s choose to rely, rest and depend on that Grace to help us do the things we are here to do. Everything the Lord asks us to do, we simply cannot do without Him. 

You may not have my difficulties, Some days, I have to ask Him to help me get out of bed or go to the loo! But the reality is I have been blessed so many times because of the Way He loves and helps me. Over and over again the Lord Jesus surprises me with His goodness. Plus He never does the same thing twice. Bonus buy!

The daily opportunities to serve Him and others that the Lord puts before us, will always be bigger than we are. Stretching us is part of His plan. My advice is to start cheering right away!! Take it from me that this means we are going to see the goodness of God operating in a way we’ve never seen before. And that … is simply ev-ery-thing!!

Because our God is so big, and so mighty, plus His creativity is inexhaustible … routines or methods won’t pass this way of thinking on, it is a LIFESTYLE. We choose it, and then we hold fast to it, despite everything else that happens around us. Jesus gets all the glory because what happens is undeniably impossible. He is so much more glorious, caring, kind, creative and wonderful than we can ever imagine! Bye.👋 

“Yahweh, You are my soul’s celebration. How could I ever forget the miracles of kindness You’ve done for me?” Psalms 103:2 TPT. Amen. 🥰

P 3045 This includes YOU.

/ DVH

Acts 5:32 “And we are witnesses of these things, and the Holy Spirit is also, Whom God has bestowed on those who obey Him.”Ask yourself this question — if you are passionate and you want to walk with the Holy Spirit … then, when was the last time you obeyed Him? We need to press through our feelings, and be guided by His Spirit and obey – Jesus did it and so now, we can too!

Yes, of course the Lord forgives us when we act like Peter, and betray Him by denying our knowledge of Who He is! Even when we are putting our own safety, or our public persona ahead of our desire to own our Saviour. But just because it is common, that does not make it the norm. Total honesty is the best way through difficult  situations. Honesty with yourself and the Lord. Don’t settle for pretending, that just muddies the water. Be real. Tell Him you don’t want to do whatever it is, take a deep breath and ask for His help … then do it anyway – using your faith that He will catch you if you fall.

Sometimes, it seems much easier to crawl along … instead of making the effort it takes to get back up again! However, in spite of the ungodly attitudes that I know I sometimes tolerate, all that falling down and getting up again, IS doing something. Even physically speaking, when I get up and down, I am strengthening my muscles. Meanwhile, that thought is a laugh-riot! I have trouble getting out of my chair, let alone getting up off the floor! Moving on … do squats for a bit. Your muscles will quite quickly explain to you that they don’t like being stretched like that. Our emotions and our own way of thinking won’t like being stretched either.

So let’s look at the bible, where the answers are. In the story below the apostles are under scrutiny by the usual suspects … the spiritual leaders! The council are talking amongst themselves, discussing what they can do about these men talking about Jesus all over the place. Shock, horror … now people are starting to follow the disciples!!  One of the leaders speaks up, his name is Gamaliel – he is very wise. 

Acts 5: 40-41: “So, convinced by him, (Gamaliel) they took his advice; and summoning the apostles, they flogged them and sternly forbade them to speak in or about the name of Jesus, and allowed them to go…V41…”So they went out from the presence of the council (Sanhedrin), rejoicing that they were being counted worthy [dignified by the indignity] to suffer shame and be exposed to disgrace for [the sake of] His Name.”

Did you get that? These men rejoiced that someone beat the daylights out of them because that meant they were worthy to bear the Name of Jesus. You might need a few minutes on that one! That flogging showed the world around them, that they belonged to Him, and what they were doing was working, so well people tried to beat that obedience out of them..I’m pretty sure flogging and maintaining a great attitude don’t always go together! (Hebrews 12:4) But the Holy Spirit gave them Grace for that situation. 

Our God is FOR US. He’s not upstairs somewhere sharpening His pencil writing down our misdeeds – He is so-oo-oo not like that! He loves us and He has made sure that every impediment that prevents our faith from growing –  is now gone. Now we repent and repair things, for our own sake, and because that other person needs His GRACE too! I do loads of stuff for Jesus that I probably wouldn’t do for anybody else. 

This scripture from Acts revealed to me the way I thought about trouble. In the past I saw trouble as punishment. However, at the bottom of it all, when I really prayerfully looked really hard – I discovered that I actually didn’t trust God enough to get me through hard things. The reason I took difficult things into my own hands and fiddled with them, trying to make them go away, was that I didn’t believe He always has my best interests in His heart! His love for us is described in Ephesians 3:18-19: “..that you may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

It takes His power to help me understand that He loves me! That was a brand new thought for me, and it started me down the road I’ve been travelling on for years. We’ve applied the bible as a rule book slavishly, but most of us were too scared to get to know Him and understand how, and why He does what He does. We cannot try to understand Him with our brains or emotions  – we need to use our hearts! The Holy Spirit was given to us to lead us into the promised land of fellowship with the Father, Son and Himself. He knows the Way – He brought the Way into this world through Mary! 

The power of God is not just about someone walking on water, or food being multiplied, or when someone receives a miracle. We need His power every single day to obey and understand HIM. How do you get it? Ask for it. I don’t just read the word – I ask Him to use His word to read me – my actions, attitudes, thoughts and feelings. That’s when the Holy Spirit showed me something amazing. Because Jesus chose to be human, God Himself understands how human beings operate, in a Way He didn’t before! He has chosen to experience humanity. He learnt about His creation, firsthand, by being here among us. NOW HIS SON IS HIS PERFECT EXPRESSION OF FORGIVENESS.

Our God He can never be less than Who He is, Almighty, invincible, omnipresent and omnipotent God … But because He IS Who He is – He chose to go the extra mile and experience humanity in all it’s ugliness and stinky attitudes. Jesus Christ is our perfect illustration that men and women don’t have to sink down into the lowest common denominator. That thought comes from the other guy. Look at what Jesus did, as a mere human being! He had perfect obedience to His Father’s will. 

The Lord Jesus totally relied upon the power of the Holy Spirit, and He made that power available, through His death and resurrection, to each one of us today. We don’t have to flounder along feeling guilty and hoping God won’t notice we aren’t perfect yet. SomeBody else took the exam for us AND HE PASSED … With flying colours. Now the Holy Spirit can come to live in us, because God established a precedent with Jesus. He made a Way to make the impossible, possible, and He gave that way to all of us. That includes YOU. Bye. ❤️🥰 

P 2888 Obedience matters.

/ DVH

Ecclesiastes 8:2-6: “Do what your King commands; you gave a sacred oath of obedience. Don’t worryingly second-guess your orders or try to back out when the task is unpleasant. You’re serving His pleasure, not yours. The King has the last word. Who dares say to Him, “What are you doing?” Carrying out orders won’t hurt you a bit; the wise person obeys promptly and accurately.”

Obviously the ‘king’ referred to in this passage is Solomon, but I have taken the liberty today of extending its jurisdiction — I think it is also about obeying Jesus – our King. Especially as obeying Solomon kind of died-out when he did! I’ve found Ecclesiastes can be a bit of a down-a-later. Boy did King Solomon sound depressed a lot! 

I had to keep returning to the fact that I know that God Himself gave this man wisdom. That meant I had to go and find my trusty spiritual shovel and keep on digging! I won’t pretend it was easy either, I almost needed a blasting cap to get rid of some of those huge humanity-driven rocks that my mind kept putting in the way of what this entire book says. That King took a dim view of life!

The bible is like food. Some verses seem to be more like gravy and mashed potatoes and I think that there are definitely some verses we all ‘like’ more than others! As I thought about it I was not cheered up much by the thought that gravy and mashed potatoes are merely one step away from baby food! So … I went back to the steak and kept on chewing. The more I went over this particular verse, the more I realised that this is the very essence of what we need as Christ’s disciples. OBEDIENCE.

Jesus sent out twelve guys in Matthew 10:1 –“Jesus called His twelve disciples to Him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.” So what happened in Matthew 10:1? The disciples began to use HIS authority. That’s a bit like me writing a letter to the bank telling them that you can operate on my account. You are accessing my account because I authorised you, but you can’t do that by yourself, the bank will call a policeman!

These disciples were deputised by the Lord to be like Him in matters of healing and deliverance, wherever they went. So they obeyed Him, and they saw results that caused them to exclaim and marvel at what they had seen!  But they were still subject to the spirit of stupidity, as well as disobedience. Their characters remained unchanged – remember … Judas was in that group! Jesus corrected their misplaced enthusiasm by reminding them that the greatest thing that had ever happened to them was that their names were now written in the Book of Life. Like I’ve said a kajillion times — God doesn’t think like we do!

However, when Jesus was leaving them for the final time to go back to His Father, He breathed on them: And when He said this, He breathed on them and said to them, “And when He said this, He breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.”John 20:22. Perhaps they received perseverance and the courage to wait, at that moment. The Lord told them clearly to: “WAIT for the power.”  Then Jesus left them all alone in an astonishing manner. They went back to the upper room and hid themselves away again. But they obeyed Him, as they waited … prayerfully.

They were waiting to receive the same power the Lord Jesus Himself walked in, although they did not know it. They felt like orphans, but Jesus had clearly told them He was sending SomeOne Else, SomeOne Who would always be with them.  This time it was not just the power to wait, etc., now the Holy Spirit came amongst them and He became the new LEADER. He has never left. Every day He gives US the power to live laid-down lives for Jesus’ sake.  

Those disciples became instant over-comers when the Holy Spirit exploded upon them in that locked upper room. They went in afraid, and came out bold. And it was their obedience to Jesus’ instructions that facilitated what happened. Obedience is not just about participating in a single event – our deliberate choices to obey leads us step by step into facilitating change. We change direction. We line ourselves up with His will and His will positions us for MORE… Always.

At the same time some of us have not yet gotten out of the ‘starting gate’ so to speak, because we feel afraid and so we excuse ourselves from participating in the greatest adventure mankind has ever known – uncovering the Will of God for ME! You and I have been reborn to follow JESUS. He has a plan for our lives and there is no point in asking me to tell you what you should be doing – because I don’t know!!

We walk in our God-given destiny by following the Lord, one step at a time. And every single one of those steps will include being tested to see if we have purposed to obey Him, no matter what happens. What is He telling you? Maybe He wants you to stop picking a fight with somebody or other so you can hear what He wants to say to you! Sin and unbelief cloud our hearing. Obedience matters. Our own faith can be weak, but obedience strengthens our ability to live our lives HIS WAY.

The character of Christ is not an optional extra, given to those who are dedicated to His purposes. We’ve been dedicated to His purposes the minute we were saved. We die, so He might live in us and through us. Step by step, as we learn to obey the Holy Spirit, we will develop the skills we will need to walk in whatever comes next! Bye 👋

P 2841 Real RAW power.

/ DVH

I mentioned this parable a few of days ago, and almost immediately after I talked about it – I was tested on my response to someone else’s apparent debt toward me. 🙄 

Matthew 18:23-35: “Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened. “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’  In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

It is obvious to me in this life, that forgiveness is meant to be a supernatural act!  We are to freely give forgiveness to others because we are aware that Jesus has already given it to us. But there is nothing like a nasty argument to wreck our memory! By ourselves, we don’t have it within ourselves to forgive someone else, because sin is UGLY, it fills our perception and it definitely distorts our view of other people. But we took in the seed of the Holy Spirit when we said “yes” to Jesus, and He lives inside us now. That seed wants to grow as we walk with Him. Because we have been freely given forgiveness, we already have forgiveness on the inside of us – so now we can give it away using our faith. 

The reason this can sometimes seem difficult is because we don’t feel like we can forgive the other person. Our feelings are hurt, they betrayed us, they did something unforgivable etc.etc. Sadly then we are no longer looking at someone else’s sin through spiritual eyes, instead we are choosing to see it through injured ones. Have you ever noticed that what they did seems much bigger and badder than what you did? Yeah, me too.

However, our new lives are designed to be lived in the Spirit, we must not be guided by the flesh. The flesh has nothing profitable in it. It will come to nothing but dust one day, but the things of the Holy Spirit last forever. So now I must personally make the choice to obey, or to hold on to my hurt feelings. The thing is, I need to die daily to what I feel, or want, or like, and deliberately yield to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. 

Recently somebody pushed hard on a button I didn’t know I had inside, and my flesh had a whole lot of junk to say that profited nobody. I came to, when I realised I was so mad I wanted to  … quote: choke the life out of the person who was annoying me! Figuratively of course. I’m too much of a coward to be literal about it! 

That’s when the Lord reminded me of all the stuff I’ve written on this blog. So, through gritted teeth, I obeyed the word and let the other person off the hook, I accepted their apology and kept taking those nasty little irritable thoughts captive – whether the other person deserve it or not. God’s ways are not our ways! To be totally honest it was like stripping my skin off a centimetre at a time! I had a list of reasons as long as my arm as to why I shouldn’t have to do it … and then I did it anyway. 

However, my ‘hurt’ feelings kept jumping up and down, and they kept right on doing it. Learning to love when you feel wounded is very difficult, as I am sure we all know from experience. The thing that helps, is to focus on how much He has forgiven us – until our thoughts are taken captive and we go back to being grateful. Otherwise our memory of the offence – which can often be carefully coloured in, so WE look like the injured one – blocks out everything else. It really is a choice to renew our mind, and to deliberately push all thoughts about whatever has happened out, and focus on obeying the Lord instead. 

Holding a grudge needs to be addressed because that is also a stumbling block. And yes, I understand that the other person keeps on doing whatever it is, despite your pleas for mercy! The thing is, we cannot know what is in someone else’s heart, and mind, and perhaps they think they are right too. We can all think we are totally right and be totally wrong … all at the same time.

Meanwhile our obedience to His word despite our feelings, is the best way I know to prove HIS power! The more we practice the things Jesus told us to do, the quicker we are released from being tossed about by our emotions and mind. Having power over your own feelings is REAL RAW POWER.  Bye. 👋

P 2705 On being tested.

/ DVH

Jesus Christ, God’s precious Son, became a man. He respected and obeyed what His Father wanted above His own personal needs and ideas. He lived, and then He chose to die, in accordance with His Father’s will. He is our example of how to deal with temptations. Right at the very beginning of His ministry, the Lord Jesus was thoroughly tested, under extreme circumstances. FYI, that is recorded in Matthew 4:1-11, and Luke 4:1-13. Jesus came through it all, despite the incredible hardship He faced. But He met with the Holy Spirit and POWER on the other side of that test. This is a great place to stop, and think about what that means to ME. 🤔

The Lord personally demonstrated and proclaimed during this testing time, that the way for human beings to live – is primarily by the Word of God. He did this, under dire circumstances, live and in person, in front of His enemy. That is when He put a stamp on the scriptures as our primary source of spiritual food and defensive weapons..

After that, in the second temptation, His enemy offered Him physical well being, protection and personal safety – for the exorbitant fee of worshippinghim. Jesus refused to have anything to do with getting where He needed to go using His enemy’s help. He responded to this temptation with another scripture. Making it clear that He was not going to trust in anything but God’s Word to care for Him. The truth set Him free. Another good spot to stop and think about what that shows me! 🤔

The last and final temptation was that His enemy would give Him everything He came to do, without making the ultimate sacrifice. Our enemy tried to blind the Lord with success, which included the price tag of saving the world … without Him having to die. It looked like an easy answer, but it involved putting this world into satan’s hands permanently. 

I believe we all face temptations, often we face them daily. We are tempted to lose heart, and put our faith and hope down. Sometimes we are tempted to live by what Brother so and so says, and when we do that means we have put the Word of God second. We are taking another man’s interpretation of the scripture over what God wants to say to US, personally. The most valuable thing we have is our bible… obedience to what is commanded in that book is incredibly personally powerful. When we choose to live by His words — instead of our circumstances, or experiences, or what someone else thinks — we elevate Almighty God in our lives to His rightful place as GOD!

Secondly, there are times when we too are tempted and tested regarding our participation in whatever needs to be done in His kingdom, by methods other than FAITH. Things like clever marketing, slick presentations, and popularity without us having to make sacrifices. The Word of God is powerful all by itself, it does not need to be marketed! In the hands of someone who is obedient to the Holy Spirit, His Word will cut between human thoughts and intentions and go right into the heart of any matter. On that day in Christ’s life – it cut the enemy to pieces! When we rely upon our own skills and energies we are succumbing to the temptation to help God out, and so the accolades may go to a person, instead of the One Who made us and deserves our worship.

I think Father God is very particular about where our worship goes, because: a/ He is a jealous God. And: b/ our frame is not strong enough to be able to manage the kind of praise and worship that belongs to Him – alone. However, His power will flow quite naturally through our lives as we learn to resist temptation and live in obedience. There is always a way through whatever is going on, we just ask Him for His help! Christ was led into the wilderness, by the Holy Spirit — but He came out IN THE POWER of the Holy Spirit. Facing temptation and overcoming it, is part of our growth process – it is meant to test and stretch our faith and resolve to rely upon God and His Word. That means it will hurt!

The bible says this about being tested:“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed.”1 Peter 4:12&13. And in James 1:2&3: “My fellow believers, when it seems as though you are facing nothing but difficulties, see it as a valuable opportunity to experience the greatest joy you can! For you know that when your faith is tested, it stirs in you the power of endurance.”

Let’s reflect for a minute – in Jesus, Father God finally had a man He could talk to and trust. Just imagine the depth and breadth of the Lord Jesus’ faith!! God’s will was His only aim! In this world we will face trials and tests, but we do not face them alone. Praise God, our knowledge of His Word is our personal shield of faith. Jesus Himself overcame our enemy, and because of what He did on the cross, we can too. Now we can walk forward like Sons and Daughters of the Most High God. Bye. 👋

“Let me emphasize this: As you yield to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life.”Galatians 5:16 TPT.

P 2640 When you get stuck, ask for help!

/ DVH

The bible tells us over and over again that fearing the Lord is to be expected and embraced. Think about that for a minute – teeny, tiny man in comparison to incredible, wondrous, holy, pure and righteous God! He’s so astonishing, the Universe He made a long time ago – is still expanding!  In Proverbs 9:10 it says this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One increases understanding.”We need both!

So now let’s take a peek at Romans 3:10-17 – this passage levels the playing field for everyone: “As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one, there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”That is the Apostle Paul talking, he lived in awe of Almighty God and His ways.

There is a school of thought that wants to render the Old Testament less relevant than the New. Actually, there is no truth in that idea. In the OT we see how men and women obeyed God and things changed, supernaturally.  They are a visual aid for us today. Personally, I think if it is in the book, then it is there to help and instruct us. Instead of diminishing the OT’s value, we need to ask questions, wait for answers, and maybe put some things in our pending file. He’s God – He has a timetable, the Old Testament shows us that!

The marvellous thing about Romans 3 is it is telling us that all of us stand upon a level playing ground. NONE of us get it right. We can see that the people in the Old Testament managed to muck things up! That thought alone throws competition out of the window. This life is not about striving to get things right, we are simply following Jesus! We live like He did, and we have written instructions about how He did it! As we follow Him, we will find we come into harmony with one another. He’s in you and He’s in me – and He won’t fight with Himself! If we fight – one of us is not listening properly – they are probably acting out of their heads. The first one to sincerely say sorry wins! That’s a joke BTW.

Paul, the writer of Romans, was a brilliant student of Gamaliel but back then as a student, he was full of information. Information puffs up – it makes you self-righteous. But knowledge of Christ and His ways will humble us. So much so, we end up loving our enemies!  So when Jesus stopped Paul in his tracks, this man was humble enough to realise he knew nothing and he said so. Paul was not interested in factions or parties – He simply followed Christ and was obedient. Later on in the book to Corinth, he dismissed the idea that people should follow him, or some other teacher. He made it clear we need to follow Christ … only. 

Our bible cannot be carefully digested unless we ask the Holy Spirit to explain it to us and show us how we are meant to ‘eat it.’ This book is for eating … as we do what it says, we become like it, through our obedience. It is not for information, so we end up thinking we know everything!! The same verse that turns out to be veggies on your daily plate, could be meat and potatoes for a month for me! That’s the beauty of this book – the Author sits with us to explain it personally!  This life of faith we lead operates by … wait-for-it  …  …faith!

There are times that the Lord’s timing won’t always suit us – we’ve lost our humility. The truth is, if we constantly push back against His instructions and our circumstances – and refuse to wait for His timing, then the other guy will be absolutely delighted to turn up and deliver his pack of lies and misdirect us. The bible is to be believed, its instructions are there for us to follow. It is not there to be critiqued by the likes of us, even if we did come from a High School up a hill, and we have more degrees than a thermometer! Sometimes the smarter we think we are, the dumber we actually are. Paul was a clever person, but he humbled himself and learnt from God.

The saints in the Old Testament have taught me so much about faith. They’ve encouraged me when I’ve wanted to quit. They’ve shown me that my mistakes are not terminal because, unlike them — I know I have a Saviour! Praise God!! Those men and women of old who served God, are fantastic illustrations of what our wonderful Father can do with someone who simply follows instructions. Almighty God gave them instructions and they went away and did stuff!! Many people go searching for this easy method, and that clever way to get God to do whatever they want …when the easiest way of all is to be obedient.

I have found that the Old Testament adds enormous depth to everything the New has in it. Let’s always remember – Jesus never read the New Testament – HE WAS WAY TOO BUSY DOING IT, while somebody else wrote it down! Romans 3 teaches us that nobody can ‘lord’ it over someone else. We stand on a flat plain, together. Now we choose to follow Jesus Christ – He IS the book come alive. Digestion is so much more important than knowledge! In our lifetime we can become His book to others by doing what it says. And when we get stuck – we ask for His help. Bye.👋