Obsessed

P 3225 Please don’t settle for postponing your only life.

/ DVH

The bible says that hope deferred, (postponed) can make our hearts sick!  Being ill or having a permanent infirmity can lock us into going round and round, searching for answers. We can easily forget to live the life we have. Sadly we are often bombarded by things on TV about what is wrong with us health wise – it seems we are obsessed with trying to live forever, here and now. Let me tell you that if this lot down here is the best we’ve got to live for, then we are all sunk! We definitely need higher aims!!

Some precious people in this world live their whole lives in abject poverty. What is appalling about that, is the fact that many of those who have more than enough, won’t share. Our world currently produces enough food to feed everyone in it. Back to the point: every single day the TV is full of diseases that might, or probably WILL kill you, and how we can and should avoid them. Cheery stuff! Turn off the TV I say, and put on something calming and relaxing. Something that lifts your heart. Counting symptoms doesn’t do that, it creates fear.

There are times when I see smiley-faced young and fit people doing repetitive and ridiculous exercises, or they are selling some gizmo or other and they happily tell me that ‘I can look like them if I just buy one of these.’ I laugh my head off. These people think they are telling me how to get and keep health … like somehow we have control over it! What a joke!! My genes have nothing whatsoever to do with me. The Lord knows what I need and He will always give it to me – in the meantime I want to concentrate on finding and keeping GRACE! 

Let’s do whatever we can to help ourselves, and then move our thoughts on to better things – like loving Him and loving others. Father God is not going to ask us if we used our faith to get good health. He will ask us if we took the time to help others to get to know Him. Meanwhile who wants to be the best looking old person with a great body …in a casket? Not me! Personally, I want people to remember me as that mad old lady who wouldn’t stop talking about Jesus! Let’s just aim at being His witnesses, and tell others He’s alive and He lives in us – so when we keep consistently loving others, eventually they will stumble across His reality too! 

Meanwhile good luck with keeping well enough to get out of this world alive, only one guy ever did that. All I can say is – Enoch knew how to choose a brilliant walking Companion. It never fails to astonish me that the easiest road to living forever seems to be the one people avoid the most! They’d rather do thousands of push ups! I’m not sure that being supremely fit is the best aim we can have, I don’t remember Jesus running in any other marathon but the one He called LIFE.  Moo-ving on …

Because of God’s incredible generosity, you and I have eternity to look forward too … neither of us will be sick or infirm there!  Healing is always God’s gracious generosity generated toward the sick person. It doesn’t matter whether the doctors say they can help you or not, just pray over it and give your health to Him and keep walking. 

Go after having enough Grace to manage whatever is going on. Remember we are all growing the fruit of patient forbearance in our lives. However, even when you are sick, don’t stop believing He can heal you. I urge you to keep your expectation in His goodness toward you alive by reflecting on how good He is.

Jesus didn’t only heal people – He also delivered them, taught them, fed them, physically and spiritually. Making one thing more important than another often leads to heartache for many. Especially those who struggle to believe He is good in the face of pain and suffering. Let’s just go after Him and see where that leads us. 

Even battered and bruised hope can make the best of whatever situation it is placed in, as we point that hope toward the One Who holds the future and loves us all more than life itself. Our faith rests in Him! I lean on Him and ask for mercy – a lot! I also hope today will be a better day than yesterday, and I will look more like Him today than I did last week.

Our hope needs to be well-placed and the best place for it is in Him. In His character, and love for us. When our hope is in Him, and not in our circumstances, we will not be swayed from our God-given course. It is the same one that was laid out in front of Jesus. “For your heart will always pursue what you esteem as your treasure.” Matthew 6:21 TPT. “He is no fool who gives away what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”(J. Elliot) 

Don’t settle for postponing living your life when bad health grabs you, because hope deferred can make our hearts even sicker. But focusing on Jesus first, becomes a tree of life. Bye 👋

P 2924 The future is HERE ……NOW!

/ DVH

“But you need to be aware that in the final days the culture of society will become extremely fierce. People will be self-centred lovers of themselves and obsessed with money. They will boast of great things as they strut around in their arrogant pride and mock all that is right. They will ignore their own families. They will be ungrateful and ungodly. They will become addicted to hateful and malicious slander. 

Slaves to their desires, they will be ferocious, belligerent haters of what is good and right. With brutal treachery, they will act without restraint, bigoted and wrapped in clouds of their conceit. They will find their delight in the pleasures of this world more than the pleasures of the loving God. They may pretend to have a respect for God, but in reality they want nothing to do with God’s power. Stay away from people like these!”2 Timothy 3:1-5 TPT.

Yeah, I dunno about you, but at this moment, I’m thinking about heading for the hills, because this scripture sounds just like last week’s new’s headlines to me. Isn’t it scary when you can read something like this — which was written in 40-60 AD and yet you still think — boy does this sound so familiar! 

You know, God has never said that other people would like what we say – He just said: “TELL THEM.” And He also said, live like this – “make love your great aim” and the bible shows us how love lives. The news of today is filled to the top with death, anger, sorrow, murder, rage etc.and those things can subtly influence us to think people are not worth the sacrifice of laying down our lives. Sadly all we need if we want to be an influencer,  is to have a sad story, or  give away money, or stuff. Today you can buy people’s interest. And if you call it a competition, they will jump right in! 

But the bible says we are here to to tell them that they will go to hell if they keep going in the wrong direction. Yeah! That kind of changes the colour of anyone’s day. At the same time as we are actively loving them, we need to tell them what they are doing is eternally costly. 

However, we do not have to market God! There is a school of thought that says if we can be as slick and appealing as the things of this world, people will listen to us. This is what Paul was talking about in the above verse: “…having a form of godliness but denying its power …”True godliness is about fruit, it produces substance, not just appearances. There is no power in exhibiting the appearance of godliness, practising that will produce religion. When what we are looking for is inward transformation. 

Now, let’s look at that first line in Paul’s discourse. “The culture of society will become exceedingly fierce.”Hmmm. Does today’s world look like a loving, supportive culture? There’s a lot of talk about empowering people but not much talk about living a life of love. It seems to me that many people in the Western world have learnt to speak badly about others – so they can make money on TV shows by deriding the way people walk, dress, and live — we even pick on what other people EAT! We indulge in gossip simply for conversation’s sake. Gossip has become a way of life – a method of communication – a way to relate!

We need to assure the people around us that there is something much bigger, more important and infinitely more lasting, than working hard to look good. Mankind’s greatest challenge is to continue to be loving in the face of evil, and that will take the supernatural power of God! Meanwhile, the church can’t keep on doing what they have been doing because it isn’t working! Often our worst enemies are exactly who Jesus told us they would be – the people we dearly love.“… a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’ Matthew 10:36. We are going to need the power of God to cope, and still love them!

We have let our children down. Someone (??) decided the little darlings are basically good. Obviously these people haven’t read “Lord of the flies!” or “Grimm’s fairy tales” or the newspaper lately! Sadly we raised our children to be entertained, not instructed. But despite how cute they are, children are not born good. “All have sinned,” it says so in His book. Did you know that the first word most babies learn is “NO?!” 

We wonder why our kids are careless about the real things in this life that actually matter, and why haven’t they learnt integrity, obedience, and kindness etc? Wisdom and spiritual knowledge come from investing time and energy in people – not just chasing dollars. Our kids need to learn to contribute, not consume, and it is our job to teach them. Inanimate objects don’t cause delinquent behaviour, lack of supervision does.

I think Paul was looking through God’s Time Machine into a telescope of our future, when he wrote this letter of warning to Timothy. Let’s remember, Timothy was his disciple, he was teaching this young man the way he should go. He was also instructing Timothy about the times that were to come …  And now… happy, happy joy, joy, here they are! The future is here. Now! Always remember, the darkness cannot put the light out – HIS light in us will conquer the darkness around us. Love is the vehicle. Bye 👋

P 2510 Striving to enter His rest.

/ DVH

I think about rest like this … I do whatever He tells me to do, and He will do the rest. Meanwhile, resting in God is not about doing nothing. Resting in Him means we are trusting Him to help us, and get us through whatever is happening to us, and around us. We need to remind ourselves constantly that He’s in charge, no matter how this life looks, and that will give us confidence.

At the same time, we will have to fight the devil to maintain our peace and our assurance that God is always good – in spite of the circumstances we can see around us. Every time I am tempted to pick up and worry over whatever it is that I am obsessing about, I remind myself that He is now in charge of my life. My life is no longer my own. SomeBody bought me! And for HIM, Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world, you and I weren’t cheap! We were definitely not on sale, nor last year’s reduced price model!

This world is so obsessed with surviving … it is pushing us to strive to make sure that we become rich, beautiful, skinny, empty … corpses. We are supposed to work incredibly hard to market ourselves, YET, the King of all glory loves us simply because we are His. Why would anyone do that stuff to themselves? Yet we take untold questionable pills, exercise until we drop, and pinch, punch and pummel our bodies to somehow make them last forever. That’s just nuts! We already have forever, HE gave it to us. Why would you work for a gift? You accept a gift, that’s part of rest! This life is temporary.

Dying to self is the only way to live like Jesus did on this planet. It helps us see this life from His perspective, and it gives us, freedom. We simply give up our right to say what we will do, or where we will go, or who we will love, or where we will live … and then live the way He tells us to live … plus … love all the people He sends our way. Meanwhile, if you can’t do that …neither can I! That’s why we need to strive to enter His rest. We have to fight against sin, this world, our flesh and our enemy. Almighty God’s love is the reason we are all still here, because His Grace has kept us here. Rest is about Who we trust. Who we want to be in charge of our lives.

It has become much too easy to forget how to really live this life we have been given. Busyness and business take over! But we are here to be other-centred. We’ve been born again and now we’ve become a part of ushering in God’s kingdom, here and now, into this world. The self-centred things of this life lose their charm, because when you walk with Christ, you can’t wait to see what He is going to do next! The bible says:“Taste and see that the Lord is good”You and I are meant to be this world’s Godly taste test. 

It is extremely sad when fear is allowed to rule His people. The fear of failing Him, the fear of loss, the fear of not being good enough, even the fear of dying! But NOW, right here, right NOW, today — we are to live this life, the only one we have from another kingdom. Jesus Christ’s death took mankind OUT of the kingdom of darkness and INTO the kingdom of His marvellous light. And our lives are now the light switch for so many people!

Like Esther said in His book, once long ago: “If I die I die!” That’s what His rest really looks like. The bible doesn’t say how Esther felt about it. She just fell back into the arms of the ‘God Who saves!’  She knew how to rest – she left it up to God to see if she was going to survive – because other people’s lives were at stake. In Christ, we are a dangerous people. That’s why our enemy throws stuff at us all the time. That ‘stuff’ is batting practice. We pick up the bat of His Word, plus our faith in our Coach, and do things the way He says to do them. Just like Esther did. It takes effort to walk in faith, that’s what striving is. When I feel like I can’t do this anymore, I ask Him to help me with my effort! 

Our belief system is not just nice and comforting — IT IS POWERFUL. That power written about in His book does not just apply to an anointed few … it is here for all of us. Access to that power comes alive when we choose to love others, exercise forgiveness, exhibit generosity, and treasure to-geth-er-ness. There is NO LAW against those things because they are so far above the things of this world. We will not learn to raise the dead, if we do not learn how to raise our hopes! Rest is not just about knowing we are going to heaven when we die. It is about us fighting the good fight, bringing His kingdom down to earth, right here, right now in our own lives.

God’s kingdom has a higher aim. A greater calling. It desires to impart His reality not just a theory. Our God is real and we carry Him with us, every single place we go. The point is, we need to let Him out!  Striving to rest is about allowing Him to do what He wants with our lives. Instead of us choosing what we feel like, or want to do. We get out of His way and let Him do what He does best… love and save people through us. Bye 👋