Old nature

P 2963 Quick sand.

/ DVH

One of the quick sand traps we can fall into as we learn to walk with the Lord, is that we can get stuck regarding sin. We try to explain things away. When we focus on what we think happened and why — that’s when a ‘sin’ focus takes over and we stop thinking like we are children of the King. My advice is in all situations, focus on the Lord. Dismissing our sin is like stepping into quick sand.

What we intently look at, has a tendency to grow larger, and we need the Lord to be larger than the dumb stuff  other people do. Focussing on the cross and everything He chose to do for us, produces clear focus and gratitude. I’ve found that ‘self’ will lie to you. It is not interested in dying … because it is afraid it will cease to exist if it dies. But death to the ‘old’ self is always the desired outcome. We can only LIVE for Jesus to the extent that we are prepared to DIE to self.

Otherwise we will start explaining why we did this or that, trying to justify ourselves. Let’s just level the playing field shall we? “ALL have sinned!” This means we can’t possibly justify ourselves – all means all!  Don’t fight humility or give self any credence, confession is the answer to sin. Renewing – or changing your mind – means our focus will change as we focus on His thoughts not ours. Otherwise we are trapped, but the minute we confess our faults – that trap flies open. Sin is a deceiver. It wants us to identify with it instead of leaning on and relying upon what Jesus did for us. The reality is, sin can no longer hold us, it can only take hold when we believe its lies.

Trying to justify ourselves means that we have been tricked into giving away the ground that Jesus died to give us. The efficiency of our enemy’s trap depends upon the personality of the individual person. For many people, He can grab them because of an underlying sense of guilt or shame. This means that we haven’t yet totally grasped what we have been given. Jesus Christ gave us His justification, His stature before God. We have it credited to our account. God gave us something that we could never do for ourselves – for free. But it cost Him everything – that’s the kind of wonderful God we serve! 

This what what this incredible exchange was all about – Jesus took our sin and gave us His holiness, His righteousness. To walk in those things we need to treat other people the same way He treated us. We were His enemies! We were against everything He stood for. We need to do this generously. Unselfishly. Not just the people we like, but even our known enemies. Now we are free to choose to follow Him down the road of sacrificial love, compassion, kindness etc.

The Christian life is about choices. It is often about choices that need to be made under pressure. Jesus chose to be a servant. So we choose to follow Him and live the same way He did, with thanksgiving and obedience. Our day-to-day choices provide us with a mirror – they show us how much faith we are living in. When we choose to give into our flesh, ourselves, our old nature, we are empowering our old life. That old life no longer has any power over us – we can only enliven it by giving it our allegiance. It is a mirage, a memory, a shadow of what was. We will find the attitude or actions that seem to imprison us, actually cannot hold onto us when we begin to use our faith to walk away from them.

The more we have indulged our flesh the harder the enemy will fight for us to return to that life. he never stops tempting us, because Jesus Himself said: “… in this world you will have trials…” When we are tried, by self-interest or difficult circumstances, our true self comes to the surface where it can be identified and dealt with. Instead of excusing that behaviour as ‘only human’ or ‘normal under the circumstances’ — we need to own how we’ve reacted so we can walk away from it, back into the freedom Christ has given us.

Then with the Holy Spirit’s help, we begin to take our renewed mind’s faith-steps away from the things that drag us down and step into our new life, our new identity, in Christ. We are now who He says we are. This means instead of giving you a piece of my mind, I give away His PEACE to you instead. Instead of punishing you because you don’t suit me, I choose to love you. Loving you is not giving you permission to continue to hurt me, instead it gives YOU a chance to know what unconditional love looks like!

The reason I can forgive you or you can forgive me is because of what Jesus did for both of us. We are standing on the same ground. Our issues are not people, our issues are attitudes and subsequent actions.“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.” Matthew 5:21-22a. See? Attitudes matter!! Anger is clearly out of God’s order. It’s not just a bad day, or a stinky attitude, or a suitable response to someone else’s sin, to warn them off.

We know something that the other person may not know – He died for their sin too. Sin, or holding onto resentment or bitterness, or shame or guilt, is like stepping into quick sand. We will drown and smother our burgeoning faith. Our best combat attitude is to continue to renew our mind, and act on what we read. Then we begin to think about this life like Jesus did. We ask for His help – and use our faith to be obedient. Bye 👋

P 2828 Be proactive – learn to speak life.

/ DVH

Hi! I’m following up from what I said yesterday with more road building tips. Forgive me for repeating myself, but to see how to help anyone else, first we need to get rid of the planks/ rocks/pebbles/ boulders in our own eyes. How can we possibly fix anything – at all – if we can’t see properly? 

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:3-5.

I love the way Jesus goes straight to the point. The point isn’t to avoid helping others! Instead we live this life in such a way that we keep our hearts open and clear toward Him. This means we value our relationship with Him more than we value our own perception of ourselves, our convenience, or the way we are regarded by others. 🤔 So if I say something and someone else thinks it’s dumb or critical, I repent on the spot. If I hurt someone and I know it, I ask them to forgive me asap. Why? Because I want to see clearly! I can’t pray blessings for you if I am tolerating a bad attitude in me. The words will fall on the ground or choke me. I sincerely want you to know you are loved, and be blessed by the knowledge of His love for you. 

Love is HIS chosen highway and we are all labouring on it. You’re doing your bit on your stretch of the road, and I’m doing it on mine. We don’t want love to just be words on a page, we want people to experience His love through us. Real love, the love that embraces humanity – love that never ever gives up! God gives practical advice not just pretty words to remember. When we begin to know the will of God, through our own experiences, we will end up praying more confidently. We need HIM. All day every day, every second of our time here. He is our wisdom, our strength, our ever-present help in time of need. 

What do we do with offence when it smacks us upside of our head? This is what I do … I ask for Grace, and I keep right on asking for it. That’s because I am absolutely positive I will respond badly unless the Lord helps me, plus I have plenty of negative experiences with my old nature. My aim is to kill that off asap. I need to stop imagining, and perhaps even saying terrible stuff about the other person who is hurt, or has hurt me, and I ask for His mercy, and compassion instead. At times I pray that a situation will be redeemed. I simply pray the way He tells me to pray and then I step out in faith and do the opposite of what I might want to do!

Compassion is invaluable. Sadly, loving compassion evaporates quickly in the heat of dark situations, so, along the way, we will have to do a whole lot of repenting and dying-to-self. However, we will gain even more compassion in this life when we experience a need for it ourselves, and we recognise our own sinful attitudes, because we too hurt others. Just because we think what we said, or did was OK, that does not mean our opinion prevails over someone else’s experience!  We are not meant to be legalists excusing this behaviour and giving permission for that. Reconciliation doesn’t grow in an atmosphere of justification. I never ask if I have sinned, I ask Him to show me where and when. Then I take care of business. 

Jesus died to make us pure and innocent, and it cost Him everything. He deserves our obedience to His Word, including the humility to say we were wrong. When we say we are wrong, we’re humbling ourselves. Sadly, our old nature is always going to be at war with the new one. So we will have to choose, over and over again, to walk His highway of love, especially when we don’t want to do it. People are not always NICE. And hurt people can be UGLY. Read the book. My thought bubble about someone else might be: “Boy that guy needs avoiding big time. What a grouch!”  But when I pray I stop being blind to my own faults, and I can see my own attitude, then I can see the other guy more clearly.

Many people expect this life to be easy…  we are not in a fairy tale. Life is hard. We need a daily scrubbing with the blood of Jesus to help us develop eyes of love. We are designed to be part of the Answer – not the problem. You know, our enemy wins if we are so busy concentrating on our own problems, and heartaches that we don’t see other people’s pain. Undeserved love is by nature … not deserved! 

Here’s some advice worth noting …  people may not fall at your feet and start cheering even when you’ve repented etc. Nobody is perfect. People make mistakes, and they hurt themselves and others – it’s what humanity has in common. Almighty God will empower us to obey Him, but we need to take faith steps and keep at it. Refuse to believe the worst in others, instead, speak to the good. The power of life and death is in the tongue, and we’ve been given a huge responsibility – we can proactively speak life and build Love’s road.👋

P 2717 Let the Holy Spirit teach you how to add.

/ DVH

The principle of addition in the Spirit is a wonderful thing to learn, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance. That knowledge will save and help us from going under or giving up when storms, or even the wiggly daily annoyances of this life, hit us. 

Our Christian life is not just about survival, it is about overcoming. The word overcoming means conquering; subduing. By His grace, we conquer and subdue our old nature. Christianity is not about changing other people – it is about the Holy Spirit being charge of ME, my old nature. We can overcome anything when our knowledge of Who He is is bigger than whatever nasty attitude we have fallen into again. We simply turn our heads and instantly look to Him and ask Him: “Help Lord, please forgive me. How are You going to get me out of this mess this time?” 

As we read His book and take faith steps, we learn, experientially that God does not desert His kids ever. Even when He was teaching the Israelites about Who He is — He did not take His eyes off them. Our God is a promise keeper. He loves to keep His promises – and He has promised to never leave us. It is dangerous to put our feelings in charge of our circumstances.

Difficulties can occur if we only memorise promises that talk about making MY life better. We need to go on from that immature POV to understand Who He is, and what He wants from us. Knowing Who He is, is far more important than escaping from the trials of this life, because His faithfulness will hold us steady in contrary winds. We can walk with Him through minefields and His Presence will guide, teach and comfort us.

We need to know the Lord personally, and intimately. We can’t do that by pasting someone else’s testimonies and teachings over our lives. Under stress those things will fall off. Instead we need to ADD personal knowledge of Him into our way of life. This means we will continually, carefully be watching every word in His book for clues about what the Lord wants from ME. That is the seed bed of our faith.

When things drag on and on, and in this life sometimes they do … we use those unwanted opportunities to do what 2 Peter 1:5-8 says:“And beside this, giving all diligence, *add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” We can short-circuit the Lord’s processes in our lives by choosing not to use our faith and follow the Spirit’s guidance – step by step into a new way to live.

Every test, every trial, every harmful circumstance has an opportunity within it to learn how to add ONE GRACE to another! Every single one of us needs this kind of addition in our lives. The things we read in the bible are not just words on a page – they are the personal revelation of His progressive sequences, with the goal of transformation at the other end. Instead of looking at all those words as a jumble of sayings, we need to start asking: ‘What does that mean Lord?” ‘How can I make this true in my life?’ ‘How does this scripture apply to me?’ This kind of personal revelation is the most wonderful thing – it will help us to personally have confidence in Him.

That means that the next time we want to give in and give up, we won’t!  Instead we will ask for help to make it through our lack so we can continue to add the things that will last. In the above verses we learn that we can add – by being consistently true to Him and using our faith to do it – we add greater knowledge of the Lord and His ways. As we take faith steps toward Him. That kind of deliberate obedient movement will get rid of extremes and help us gain restraint (choice).  Restraint can lead to patience;  and if we press in and keep on going we will arrive at godliness.

Godliness is not just a series of actions, but inner transformation. We will stop blaming others for our missteps and repent, repair and move on. The Lord wants us to learn that making bad selfish choices will not discount us from becoming an overcomer – but hiding from our stinky attitudes will!  At the end of all this adding we find we have been enriched by His benevolent, generosity – especially toward those in need or in disfavour. Plus we gain leniency toward other people’s sins against us. This whole thing is an ever-expanding process, not an arrival place. This means we trust Him to get us through every single issue we face. (And NO! I am not there yet, either! I panicked about something just last night!)

Knowing the Lord’s Ways teaches us that if we haven’t arrived at good yet, then whatever is going on is not over yet!  Our God has goodness in every single aspect of His nature. Even when He punished the Israelites for their appalling behaviour it was to help them – to bring them back under into the safety of His sheltering Love. Let’s use His book to prove His goodness in our lives, daily. There is nothing stronger than a personal testimony about God’s Grace in action in my own life! We all need to learn how to ADD. Bless you. 👋