Old life

P 2775 The best kind of knitting.

/ DVH

“He Himself carried our sins in His body on the cross so that we would be dead to sin and live for righteousness. Our instant healing flowed from His wounding.” 1 Peter 2:24 TPT. This verse shows us that Christians have been totally restored in God’s sight through Christ’s selfless act. When Jesus said: “It is finished …”  — the exchange of His life for ours was complete, signed in His own blood, forever. When He rose from the dead He proved, once and for all, that He had the authority and power over death. He authenticated His claim.

You and I don’t have to be trapped, or sucked into sin anymore – because Christ’s death has taken us out of the kingdom of darkness and put us firmly into the Kingdom of God’s marvellous light. This is a fact, it is already established in heaven. Our job is to believe Him and start spreading this good news around. God is not angry with mankind – SomeBody else PAID for our sins. We are to introduce, and display God’s kingdom, down here, in Christ’s absence. However, we have His Presence, the Holy Spirit –inside us. He is always with us to help us accomplish the things He tells us to do.

God said way back in Genesis, that the sun, and the moon and stars, were put into the sky for a sign. They are there to exhibit His faithfulness. Human beings know that the sun will come up again tomorrow, but before that happens it will disappear temporarily, and night will come. In the same manner, we know that we are as eternally saved, today, as we were yesterday. The sun and the moon are there to remind us that what God has established cannot be changed, until this world passes away.

As Jesus’ followers, we really do need to make sure we understand what Christ did for us. When He died – we died. Even if we don’t feel any differently, we can no longer legally be held captive to death anymore. Our old life is gone. We’ve been given a new life and that means we no longer have to sin. Sinning was part of our old dysfunctional life. Now, we can choose to operate in His power and overcome our old ways. Christ’s death gave us the power of choice.

Before Christ did what He did for mankind, people were trapped by their proclivities, heartaches, family habits, and lacks. But we’ve been taken OUT of that life and given powerful, eternal choices. Our sole thought now, is how do we live this new life the way HE would?  We gave away our old way of life, when we said yes to Him. We serve Him now. Christ died voluntarily, and now we serve Him voluntarily. Simply because we love Him and we are grateful to God that His Son saved us from the previous life we were trapped inside. Now we live in freedom – one decision at a time.

We useour faith in His truthfulness and goodness to believe that we are free from the impulses and attitudes that bound us in the past. That’s why we read His book, so we can see His faithfulness and truthfulness in action, with other people who are just like us. We probably won’t feel any different when we begin to live like this, because it will take a while for our feelings and thoughts to come into line with what the bible says. We don’t have to live in that old kingdom where feelings and circumstances run our lives anymore! Instead, we choose to obey what we read in His book. Jesus Himself taught us that this is the way God has chosen to release His Kingdom into this world.

“When someone curses you, bless that person in return. When others mistreat and harass you, accept it as your mission to pray for them.”Luke 6:28 TPT. This verse from Luke shows us that the way Jesus did things is not at all like the kind of response we would expect in this world. When somebody’s sin, or their attitudes against us come up in our minds, we need to take those thoughts captive … Why? Because what God said is the greater reality! Then we act upon His Word, rather than our feelings. The Kingdom of God has a language, a culture, a way to treat others that is foreign to this world. We are now ambassadors of that Kingdom. That is our mission. To bring heaven down to earth.

The language of heaven is LOVE. Love recognises no boundaries, no faults or sins, no personally inflicted pain and hurt –love loves others, simply because He received us, first. His love is powerful! It has an ongoing effect in the lives of those who receive it. That love motivates and propels us forward into serving others. Even people who hate us. By choosing to live a life laid down for His sake, we gain continual freedom to release the power of God in extraordinary ways. As we walk in this kind of selfless love, the Body of Christ will grow. It is knitted together. Bye. 👋

“From Him the whole body [the church, in all its various parts], joined and knitted firmly together by what every joint supplies, when each part is working properly, causes the body to grow and mature, building itself up in [unselfish] love.” Ephesians 4:16.

P 2740 Hidden.

/ DVH

Colossians 3:3: “For you died [to this world], and your [new, real] life is hidden with Christ in God.” (AMP) This verse reads like this in the MSG version: “Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.”

It is essential that we understand our God-given position because our Saviour’s blood bought and paid for it! Right now, we are dead to ourselves and alive to His Way of thinking and being. This is now our hiding place! Psalm 91 talks extensively about what being ‘hidden’ means. Read it often. Otherwise we can easily get discouraged, disappointed, and feel over-whelmed. Our complete strength lies in the place we choose to live. His will, His way is now our motto. Living hidden in Christ means we’ve put aside our way of living – grabbing this and fighting for that – and we’ve picked up His Way – the way of the Cross. And if I don’t have something, then I don’t need it!

God loves us so much that He wants to hide us in the safest place on this planet…He has hidden us in Christ, simply because He loves us. Our position is one of protection. Peace is now our right – because our peace comes from the inside, not from external circumstances. We live confident in the knowledge that nothing can get by His powerful, gentle, passionate love – unless He lets it through. When He allows stuff through, we face a learning curve, so we prayerfully follow Jesus through His ‘master class in surrender.’ So when something does come at us, we know that with His help we can deal with it..

God will never leave us alone to muddle along… He has chosen to hide us in what Christ did for us. He carved us into the palms of Jesus hands. (Isaiah) Those wicked nails carved through Christ’s flesh and bone, and Jesus has an eternal reminder that we belong to Him now. That’s how strongly He identifies with you and I. To Christ we were always worth the agony He suffered. That’s also our hope-filled message for others, that there is a safe place to live – our sins gone, hidden in what Christ already did! Jesus totally identified with us. He took our old self out of this world, so now we can be a blessing IN this world!  We are IN this world, not OF this world. Now we live our lives like He did – full of sacrifice and love for others.

Jesus faced down sin, as a human being, and He was punished for all of mankind. Now we have the power to step away from it. He has hidden us in the secret place of the most High God because in that place we can remain fixed — not tossed about by circumstances, fear, worry or our own emotions. Instead we are under the shadow of the Almighty … Whose power no foe can withstand. satan and his cohorts have nothing to say in the face of what Jesus did for us. Start speaking that out. Start saying of the Lord‘that He is your refuge, your fortress, your deliverer.’

We need to learn to become spectators. This means we step back and invite Him in, and now we are looking at our troubles through His eyes. Our emotions and thoughts are no longer in charge, and at the same time, while the terrible, worrying or difficult thing is going on, we will always have His thoughts (the bible) to think on …Learn to choose to emotionally, and mentally step away from being a participant, who has to come up with the answers — into being a spectator who is trusting God to be in charge.

The bible says there is peace in the secret place of God. I love that in the Old Testament, the Holy of Holies was quiet. That means that my brain shuts up — and wonder, security and His love all take over instead. I don’t have to pray endlessly because I am confident that He has got me. At any given moment, I can come out of there, because I always have a choice – but why on earth would I want to? Chaos is waiting for me right outside that door!

My best advice today is that we start praying to learn how to be spectators, instead of jumping into the devil’s plot and trying to wrangle with his ways– tormented by his innuendos and spiteful whispers. There are so many daily things that are far too hard for us to solve. Learn to pray first, then ask for the Holy Spirit’s help and step back away from the trouble into His peace. Hand Him every single part of whatever is going on because He knows what to do next. Now leave it all with Him. We need to learn to trust Him because … HE HAS A PLAN for us – He said so, in the book. 

The body of Christ today lacks trust, probably because we have placed more importance on feelings, encounters, and getting what we want. We can grow trust in Him by trusting Him when everything inside us is screaming that this a dumb idea and it will never work!  I guarantee that nobody feels like doing it at the time! That’s why it’s called faith. Learn to be a spectator, stay hidden, safe in His secret place – surrender everything to Him and live for Him. Bye 👋

P 2656 Let’s remember we are to be married.🕊

/ DVH

Romans 7:4-6 MSG: “So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died He took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with Him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to “marry” a resurrection life and bear “offspring” of faith for God. For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious. In the end, all we had to show for it was miscarriages and stillbirths. But now that we’re no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we’re free to live a new life in the freedom of God.”

Oh man, some days I can’t wait to get to heaven to listen to the Apostle Paul preaching  – that’s if I ever get over following Jesus around! What a conundrum … Picture this: Jesus is talking about how He and the Holy Spirit made the moon and stars, as He heard the Father speaking them into being. At the same time, Paul is talking about the beauty of Christ Jesus;  and James is reminding us of what we’ve been given … OR …OR!!! … every now and then we fall on our faces from the sheer wonder of where we are! And… AND!!! Here’s the biggest plus of all! We can run into the throne room and fall on our faces and worship at the throne. Choices, choices!  Maybe in heaven we can do all those things at once?! Sorry I got so distracted … moving on …

Romans 8:1-4 MSG: “With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death. God went for the jugular when He sent His own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In His Son, Jesus, He personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all.”

Feel free to stand on a chair and cheer! 🥳 What a brilliant explanation! First of all I want to say, there is no worship and devotion toward the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit like the worship we choose to give All of Them down here. Why? Because down here worship is a choice, a sacrifice – in heaven, worship is joyously spontaneous. We give the Trinity the best gift when we choose to worship Them, because They are so worthy. Despite our busy lives, or whether we feel like it or not!

Just imagine the throne room for a second … there are these incredible angels — flying around the throne crying out; “Holy holy holy” over and over and over and over again – they never stop. I asked the Holy Spirit once why they do that and He told me this: ‘Because at every single turn they see something new, something glorious to enjoy, some aspect of the Father’s Love and Grace they have never seen before.” 🤯 Well, that’s my mind blown… how about you? Down here, we are always running after whatever is new – in heaven we simply have to gaze at our Heavenly Father and the view will be breath-taking and endless.

I shall vacate this heavenly rabbit trail and get back to my point … which is … look at what our beloved Bridegroom has done for us!  Take a minute to wander back to Romans 8:1-4 and read those verses again. Just when you think things can’t get any bigger or even more wonderful, we are reminded that our precious bridegroom, Jesus Christ, volunteered … because He loves us that much. Well, there’s me in a soggy heap in the corner. 😭

Christians can live like everyone else, staring at the ground, thinking that the next episode of our fav show is the only moment of joy in a week of drudgery and effort — OR — we can reread Romans and rediscover what we have been GIVEN. Those verses mean that we have the power to throw off depression and the cares of this world, because of our Bridegroom’s gifts. Those freely-given gifts mean we can be at rest, care-free, living in pure peace, despite our circumstances and difficulties.

JESUS HAS GOT US AND HE WILL NEVER EVER LEAVE US OR FORSAKE US. How we feel is just a blip on time’s radar. We don’t have to live under this world’s clouds of pessimism, constant drama and angst. Instead we can choose to embrace what we’ve been given. Each and every time I take hold of those hard-won gifts that He died to give me, I fall in love with Him over and over again.

Real Love is like that. It is a journey of discovery, familiarity …  as well as delight, where we visit and re-visit the Lord’s loving kindness, mercy and grace, and realise how much He loves us.  It’s time to remember we are engaged to be married to the most incredible Bridegroom … Who loved us before we even knew Him! Our faith is not based on pretty thoughts or theories, now we live in the daily reality of being totally forgiven, loved and cherished … And if we aren’t living there, then it is time we did!  Bye. 🙌

P 2649 Moving house will change your life.

/ DVH

“We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:4,6,7,&11. “For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—  because anyone who has died has been set free from sin…”  In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Have you ever physically moved house? I have quite a few times. For those of us who haven’t ever moved, it is a long drawn out process that involves packing up your whole life, and putting everything into boxes, then shoving them into a moving van. Then you go to your new residence and you start unpacking etc. You won’t go back to that old house to live there anymore … because you’ve moved away from it.

Let’s look at what happened when we were born again. WE ALL MOVED HOUSE when we gave our lives to Christ. We left our old life behind us. There is no reason to try to live in that old house anymore, because we gave that house up in favour of living in a far superior new one. Somebody else was trying to kill us where we used to live, and that place we lived in was our life before we met Jesus.

Every time I have ever moved house, I have gone through my stuff and chucked OUT things I no longer needed.  I did not want to start my new life in a new house with junk I didn’t need anymore. When Jesus died for us – He took ALL OUR JUNK with Him to the cross. That junk is gone – just like the earthly junk I sent off to the Salvation Army! Amazingly, the bible says this: not only did we move house – at the same time WE DIED. This means we don’t NEED any of that old stuff any more! It belonged to our old way of life.

We gave up living there in favour of living in His presence, His kingdom. Our new house has given us a brand new way to live. Every part of us moved! Now our life has been hidden within Christ’s life, He took care of our sins, once and for all. Which is why sinning is a waste of time!! Why would we ever want to willingly go back to that old life where we were held hostage to sin? That was the place where sin ran the way we did practically everything.

Sin can’t have power over us the way it did before. The only way it can have power over us now is if we give it permission. Our permission, our choices are the criteria that will daily make all the difference. We simply tell satan we will not be dragged back into that old way of living! There will be some adjustment required because we are used to living in that old house, so familiarity could grab us.

But that was also the house where blame, shame, rejection and abandonment lived. In that old house love was conditional – it depended upon our behaviour. In our new house love is unconditional. Our precious Saviour oversees every single aspect of our lives now. To live fully alive there, all we need to do is simply follow our Master’s clear instructions in His book and leave the old house with its old ways BEHIND.

Nothing, not our current or previous circumstances, nor our old proclivities … absolutely nothing that happened to us before we were saved has the power to force us back into that old ‘house’ … even our old habits, our old ways of thinking, doing and being. We take our way of thinking, being and doing from the bible, now by choice. The bible is our illustration of what living in this new life looks like! Practically speaking, I can’t live in my physical old house anymore, because it is about 10 suburbs away and somebody else lives there now! That way I lived is now dead to me.

You and I could get into difficulties and become unhappy, if we decide we like the old way that we lived better than this new way. That’s why we actively look for His benefits in our lives. The bible tells us not to forget them … 

…one of the benefits of moving house for me, means my adult kids and grandkids live around the corner! Now I get to see them more. Plus I no longer live on the main road, with greatly increased traffic, now I live in a very quiet street.

When we gave our lives to Christ, we went from a life that had no purpose, no real meaning, into a life that moved forward and that new life propelled us into new exciting things. Things like getting to know the God of the Universe and beyond …!! SomeBody loved all of us enough to die for us. They WANTED us – we are not ‘extras’ on the vast stage of life, now we are HIS children. . 

In this new life/house we’ve been given, we all have a destiny. It isn’t just any old thing that someone made up so we wouldn’t be left out, this is something that only WE can do. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. Now we can all ‘live for our Father’s pleasure.’ Our job is to learn to occupy our new house, so no trace of the old house/life is left. Moving house will change your life! 👋

P 2584 Hang onto your hat. 🎩

/ DVH

Here’s some stuff to think on today …Have we inadvertently reduced the Living Word of God to a series of unwritten, but strongly supported rules about who is acceptable and who is not? I believe the church at large reacts badly to people who are not living inside our pre-set rules. Unlike Jesus Himself, Who treated everyone the same … including drunks, lepers and promiscuous women! Unfortunately, we are not responding with love or compassion – instead we react with abhorrence, fear, accusation, and condemnation. We just don’t know what to do with some people in this world. Here’s a big thought:loving anyone with His love isn’t giving them permission to continue with a sinful lifestyle.

It is as if we believe people must be changed BEFORE they can come to Jesus. That’s not in my bible! We look at others with terribly unbiblical ways of life, and tell them if they really want to be saved they have to stop doing what they are doing. We are looking for self-control from those who don’t even know anything about His power. I dunno about you, but I am like a snake still shedding old skins as I go along, I’m not yet perfected in Godly things. Personally, I think you clean fish after you catch them!

Our denominations have put unspoken rules in place to make life easier, nicer and safer for us. So what about a person who is unsure about their gender identity for a number of reasons? Hmmm. If that turned out to be your precious relative or immediate family, what would you do then?? The hard lines that we have drawn against this type of person and that way of life, could end up dividing families. I know people who have chosen terribly destructive lifestyles, and now they cannot go home anymore. Their parents won’t even talk to them and they are doing that in Jesus’ Name! What a price some outcasts have paid. Imagine the kind of passion those people could have for Christ, if and when He delivers them!

Personally I cannot bear it when the church looks at others as if they are filthy. We are all fallen people. All have sinned.  I HAVE A SAVIOUR … and others need an opportunity!  Do I like how some people choose to live? Of course not! Like I said, it is abhorrent. Yet in our own churches we often turn a blind eye and allow gossip and spite to thrive… and eliminate others before they’ve even had a chance to respond to Christ’s teachings. “…straining out gnats and letting through camels!” 

We often choose to tell people who are not living a lifestyle described in the bible, you can’t come in here and be THAT!  And that’s them – ELIMINATED FROM GRACE. Personally, I can’t exist without grace … without Him I can do nothing!  Yes, I am aware that certain behaviour is described as an abomination to the Lord, but Jesus died for all. Here’s a think spot: I’ve told lies, how about you? Check out Revelation sometime: liars go into the lake of fire and random judgment diagnoses the person judging, it doesn’t end well for them either!… Just saying is all.

At the same time, I understand that Christianity is meant to be an all or nothing kind of faith. Jesus said this: “So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of My mouth.” Revelation 3:16. Lukewarm people don’t do well in His book either! When we water down salvation to simply saying a prayer, instead of it being a process, we are misleading those who-do-not-know-Him-yet, regarding true salvation. Meanwhile, are we behaving with repulsion because we have lost the power of God to deliver, anyone, anywhere, any time? I am not talking about forced conversions either. You can’t grow an apple tree from a weed’s seed, and you can’t usher in His kingdom with FEAR – instead of His love.

Some people are magnificently changed instantly. But that is not everyone’s experience. We must not ignore those souls who are trapped by appetites cultivated over time, or even circumstances beyond their control. There are people have been forced to live in all kinds of unimaginable decadence, that they didn’t deliberately choose. Or they have been exposed to horrors by care-givers. How dare we lock them out of knowing the One Who bore every single horror and atrocity for their sake?! Deception is rampant in our society … and most of our western governments support it. What’s the answer to that? Murder the government?! Heaven forbid. Change comes one soul at a time.

I really don’t have to approve of your lifestyle or way of thinking to tell you that God loves you dearly and He always will. My criteria for transformation is simple: ‘do you need a Saviour or not? Will you give Him your whole life and leave your old life behind?’ Whatever anyone does about His love is then up to them! It is my passionate belief that we have missed, and will continue to miss, some of the greatest miracles we will ever see because we are denying others the opportunity to know Him because of the way they look, or live. And that thought might blow a few hats off.

“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you WERE. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11) It seems even in Paul’s time, people with all kinds of ungodly lifestyles were changed by Christ’s life-giving death! Bye. 👋

P 2379 You shall receive power …

/ DVH

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts1:8. The power Christ sent back to us, through the Precious Holy Spirit’s Presence, isn’t simply the power to raise the dead, heal the sick, preach the gospel, give words of knowledge, serve thousands lunch, or walk on water! That power is with us to help us read the bible, and live out our daily lives bringing glory to God. However, the Holy Spirit is also the power to overcome the daily stuff that often trips us up.

Please don’t quit relying on Him before you’ve won the prize – I am talking to myself as well as you, OK? Learn to press IN when difficulties overtake you – insist. Tell Him you don’t want to go a step further until you start, thinking, acting and looking like Jesus. Risk takers see miracles – in themselves, as well as others. Imagine what this world would look like if every single professing Christian in it at this moment, started acting like Jesus would? What if we all started loving people, and putting others first? What if we all lived our lives for His sake, and obeyed what He told us to do in the book?

Let me put that another way – if a squatter came to your house and sat down in it, and started to say things like: “This is my house now …you have to leave.” What would you do?  Would you sadly pack up your things and head for the front door and leave? NO-OO-OO-OO-OO!!! You’d tell the guy: “What?? Have you lost your mind? I have a piece of paper that legally says this is MY house.OUT!!  Get the heck out of here. Or I’ll call the police to turf you out.” 

WE HAVE A BOOK! That book is a heaven-sent legal document that tells us what God will and won’t do. It tells us what we can do on His behalf. Because of Christ’s sacrifice, we now have His power of attorney. We are legally able to act like He would if He was here … because He IS here – He lives inside US now. Please don’t let satan lie or trick you, by influencing your feelings out of what is legally yours!

Don’t lose your birthright over a bowl of stew like Esau did. That young man gave away his future, to bring relief into HOW HE FELT in the immediate moment. Sadly we can do this often, I know I do! I can easily let how I feel, rule what I do, how I pray, what I concentrate on. We can’t afford to do it. We are giving away our birthright so we can try to deal with the difficult or sad things in this life. Instead of leaning on Him, we lean on our own understanding. Or … we try soooooo hard to ‘look’ right, and feel like a fake.

The most difficult moment there ever was … was that moment Christ died. To the disciples, it looked like hope died. I can’t imagine what the world was like for those three days, but I bet nobody from that group was walking and leaping and praising God! Then, the change slowly unfolded. First the tomb was empty, then someone else said they saw Him, then two other someone’s said they saw Him … BUT in those terrible moments…the disciples valued what they saw and humanly understood – more than what Jesus had told them would happen. Those guys still went back to what they knew. That’s the biggest danger for us as Christians. The old life, the life we are familiar with … beckons.

Nobody was waiting for Jesus to walk through a wall! Let me tell you the Person of Christ got incredibly bigger the moment He walked through that wall!! This was SomeOne Who had defeated death and was even more alive than they were. We cannot afford to limit God. We have to let Him do things the way He wants to do them. Our obedience to what He has said, and what He is still saying today, is paramount. 

For example, He told us to love our enemies, to do good to those who deliberately hurt us. (Read the Beatitudes!) Our journey forward as a Body depends on our willingness to obey no matter what the cost is. Disobedience to His Word makes us deaf. We often can’t hear HIM, because we are listening to self, and then we start making pretty excuses so we don’t have to do what He said. We tell ourselves that that sort of devoted obedience belongs to missionaries and pastors and evangelists etc etc.. Go back to the book. Did it say it was only written for an elite few? We ALL need the mind of Christ – to get that we must stop simply reading, and start doing.

“Please Lord Jesus we want our hearts be on fire like Yours! Help us to use Your power in our lives to defeat our own personal enemies and failings.’ Amen. It’s OK to realise you are spiritually poor, because our God is so rich in the things we need – and that’s a good place to live! Depend on Him. Just remember we have the power of heaven behind us to be transformed choice by choice. 👋🏻 

“What happiness comes to you when you feel your spiritual poverty! For yours is the realm of heaven’s kingdom.” Matthew 5:3 TPT.

P 2177 Keep stretching your faith.

/ DVH

Matthew 14:17-19 “And He commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, He blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to His disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.”

In this story of the feeding of the 5,000 all the disciples could see was the lack – their faith was limited by their own understanding … however Jesus was about to stretch their faith! After all, in the natural, there were only five loaves, and two fish found amongst all those people. Tee hee – obviously the people at that kind of meeting didn’t come prepared with tea, coffee and snacks! However, the food everyone ate, came from an earthly, insignificant source, but it was given freely.. and in the end it was supernatural bread and fish. So was the sermon, BTW, that sermon is still feeding and challenging mindsets 2000+ years later! Meanwhile, if you want to spiritually authenticate a sermon – maybe multiplying the food will help! 😂

The thing I see from this incident about the boy and his lunch, is this: very little in the hands of our mighty God can always become more than we can ever comprehend!  Which means people like you and I can see miracles too. He was a very ordinary little boy – but he had the faith to offer his lunch. I think our greatest oppositional difficulty sometimes comes from our own personal head knowledge. We are taught to value what we know from school, uni etc. The thing is, in the SPIRIT earthly knowledge isn’t worth bupkis. Earthly knowledge has to take notes and write books!  But ordinary people can live this way – it doesn’t take this world’s knowledge to multiply bread – it takes faith in the One Who multiplied it!

“But the natural [unbelieving] man does not accept the things [the teachings and revelations] of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness [absurd and illogical] to him; and he is incapable of understanding them, because they are spiritually discerned and appreciated, [and he is unqualified to judge spiritual matters].” 1 Corinthians 2:14 AMP.

The Holy Spirit takes the things we cannot possibly know, and explains them to us in words that we can understand. Reading the bible does not depend on head knowledge. I think it was written for all kinds of people who have connection to the smartest Person ever! The Holy Spirit speaks every known language and some unknown ones! He can translate His meaning into something important each and every individual person can understand – even in a huge crowd. He goes around our heads and touches our hearts.

I think most of the time we can be too clever for our own good, and we end up explaining away holy things and we ignore others, because our educated idiot-boxes think they know better! The bible is full of people who put faith first. The disciples thought you couldn’t feed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish, and they were wrong. 

This, BTW could be the reason the Lord was so unhappy with these men later that day, when they started to talk about bread, out in a boat in a storm. Jesus wondered where their faith went because they went back into human reasoning! We are all supposed to live by faith – faith isn’t wish thinking and it often includes stuff we know nothing about. That day the disciples acted in faith when they distributed the bread and fish … then they went back to reasoning and went into fear over a storm! Big mistake. 

Many times it is way too easy to cancel out the ‘God’-factor, and start reasoning about how to solve stuff, because I am looking at whatever is going on around me … instead of praying over it first. Learn to ask the Lord what HE thinks. Because … “the natural mind doesn’t understand the things of the Spirit..” Duh! That’s why we need to pay attention to His life in us. You can call that life whatever you want … born again, new life, making a decision for Christ, becoming a disciple – whatever. I don’t care what it is called – our spiritual life is about a new way to live and see this life! The real question is – who is in charge of your life? You or Jesus?

Our old life requires us to figure everything out using the resources around us. But His new life in us blows our minds over and over again. Renewing our minds through reading the bible is the only way to learn how to think like He does. Changing our minds won’t just come through simply memorising stuff from the book, but that won’t kill you. It’s called ‘hiding His word in our hearts so we won’t sin against Him.’ A renewed mind also doesn’t come from rushing about claiming this and that – that leads to us telling Father God what He should do.  A renewed mind comes from reading the bible, and walking with a PERSON Who knows everything. So we only do what we see Him doing. This will mean we all need more stretchable faith.  👋🏻