Overcoming life

P 3120 Know what you believe.

/ DVH

“Christ’s resurrection is (y)OUR resurrection too. This is why we are to yearn for all that is above, for that’s where Christ sits enthroned at the place of all power, honour, and authority!” Colossians 3:1 TPT. My first question—do you often during your day, reflect on what Jesus did for YOU? Are your thoughts on His kingdom, or yours? I thank Him when blessings come, and pray ‘help,’ when stuff is difficult. Whatever we mull over and meditate on influences our daily walk of faith. Don’t beat yourself up if you forget or overlook His new way to live. Just remember, that  faith, and our awareness of His love for us, will simply melt away IF we lose focus;  or we choose to live in the dark and pasty, unhealthy light of this world’s rejection, ideas, schemes and plans.

Meanwhile, even though we may not actually say – ”I choose this” – we can end up choosing to stew on bad stuff by default. A lack of a positive God-breathed choice will leave a vacuum that satan would be delighted to fill! That guy will get us going round and round and round:  worrying about this, thinking about how to fix that, and concentrating on the lacks we all have … Until we have wasted away our precious time. Time is a gift. And we don’t have to live that way anymore. Just as surely as Peter, (who was in prison at the time), looked up and saw his jail door open – and walked out a free man!  Our jail door is also OPEN. Look up!! Revise your circumstances. We need to walk out of sin’s prison using our faith. 

At the same time we can concentrate all our thoughts and efforts on dying to self, but in the end that will just make us SIN conscious. We want to be Him-conscious, so I pray He will reveal Himself to me during my day. We need to add to our life with Him, by seeing Him at work in our lives, not just concentrate on getting rid of our sin or adverse circumstances. Jesus Christ has already done that for us! Because God’s unrelenting, always available, never-ending kingdom power was released at Calvary – we can NOW live in this world absolutely devoted to Him.  He has a much better plan for your life and mine than either of us can imagine!

“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—…” Romans 6:6. Sin, regret, anxiety does not have to be in charge of our lives anymore! Our minds, our emotions will help us when they are fixed on Him;  to do that is not difficult, we meditate on His never-ending love.  We can’t afford to give up our precious time stewing over former things, turn your worry into prayers of thanksgiving for Who He is and what He did for you.

Worry is a habit – habits can be changed. When we gave our lives to Jesus, we put Him in charge. And His response 2000+years ago, was to take our sin with Him to the cross and nail it there in HIS OWN BODY. The urge, desire, and the will to sin has been dealt with, we are now free to choose.“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live IN THE BODY, I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Galatians 2:20. 

That’s how we walk out our Promised land of becoming a new creation. I don’t ignore sin, or gloss it over, or pretend it didn’t happen, instead I acknowledge it on the spot, and repent and repair things. Why? There is incredible power in redemption! satan can’t make us do anything anymore because of what Jesus did for us. But unlike satan – the Lord will not coerce us or make us do anything. He loves our freely-made choices!!  We were not saved just so we can go to heaven and be with Him one day in the future… He saved us for here and now, today—from this world, the devil and ourselves —so we can live our earthly lives, like He would. 

It was a transaction. An exchange, His life, freely laid down, bought us a new way to live and the power to do it. It was the greatest LOVE GIFT EVER GIVEN. Our sin has been exchanged for His new life overflowing in us, we take on His obedience, His passionate desire to please His Father. It was not God’s plan just to kill off sin!… Instead, Christ defeated its power over mankind! Our Father’s plan was to give us back what Adam and Eve had in the garden … the greatest inheritance ever – Emmanuel, God-with-us. The freedom to choose what is good right and profitable, AND THE POWER TO DO IT.

Acts 1:8:“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.”The Holy Spirit fell on mankind at Pentecost and HE DIDN’T LEAVE. He is still here, to help, counsel, transform, and motivate us into our new life in Christ. He didn’t give us  power just so we can raise the dead, heal the sick etc! Those blessings are a by-product of our redemption.We should all live like that. But that is not God’s primary AIM. 

The Holy Spirit came to help us, and live inside us, so we can live a victorious, overcoming life, in a world that is going to hell in a hand basket. The person I was 52 years ago, died the minute I asked Jesus to come into my life. That is also true for you. If you dearly love and want Him — He will be yours, forever. His love is so great He chose to die for the whole world, even those people who refuse to accept Him. Imagine that. We have been bought with an unbelievable price.

Daily, with His help, we identify and guerrilla fight all the stubborn stuff we’ve cultivated over the previous years before we met Him. Those things that keep pretending they have a hold over us. Now we can take God at His Word and believe Him. That’s how faith works. we refuse to listen to the so-called evidence that pops its ugly head up, and say to ourselves: “What does the Lord have to say about that? Is He REALLY like that?” satan can no longer use my history to define me – even if I did something extremely dumb yesterday! I have been redefined as alive in Christ. I urge you, take the time to know what you believe. Bye. 👋

P 2790 Priorities.

/ DVH

The Holy Spirit loves to clarify and personalise His Word – that’s part of the joy of reading the book! One Sabbath day Jesus and His disciples were hungry so they picked some grain from a field they walked by, and ate it. The Pharisees – who were obviously spying on Him!… jumped up and down and accused them all of breaking the law. Jesus, ever gracious, tried to help them stretch their faith by pointing out that their ancestor David once ate the Shew bread and doing that was unlawful, according to their rabbinical rules. Plus, he mentioned that the priests on Sabbath duty break that law too, but they are declared innocent.

The Lord Jesus then says this: “If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent.” After this He moves on from that conversation into the synagogue – because there’s another lesson coming up! On that day there is a man with a shrivelled. withered hand in attendance. Meanwhile the Pharisees are still spying on Him, waiting for Him to do something illegal on the Sabbath. They know He will heal this man. Can you believe it? How SAD. They are waiting to catch Jesus out for doing good! So there they were again, pointing out religious rules. They seem to be unaware that they have faulty religious priorities.

So He asked the Pharisees if it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath and reminds them that if one of their sheep falls down a hole on the Sabbath they will pull it out! Matthew 12:12: “How much more valuable is a person than a sheep! Therefore it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath.” It is part of Jesus’ nature to always desire good for His Bride. He stumped these religious guys every time. Meanwhile, they have no idea that this is their opportunity to think differently. The Lord Jesus loves people completely. I think problems occur when we decide to define good, as things that work out the way I want them to, or by categorising whatever supposedly meets our religious standards.

God has His own WAYS. That means it is important for us to know what He wants, in any and all of our various situations. What His will is. Here’s some scripture to help us focus on the way He thinks: “In everything give thanks for this is the will of Christ Jesus concerning you.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18. The idea is to start by giving thanks, because doingthat will help us focus. We need to thank Him for helping us to know what He wants from us, remembering we don’t need religion either!

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.”Romans 12:2. I urge us all to be pliable, ready to expand what we think – we are allowed to learn. Always be big enough to renew your mind by acting on what the book says. I’ve found the best and quickest discernment comes to me when I actively let the Lord teach me His priorities in any situation. I ask myself all the time: “Is this love?” Then I ask Him to help me to be fair and not flavour any answer with my own POV, needs, or religious stuff.

At the same time, the Lord Himself chooses what He wants to change in our lives – not us!  The fact that He is so intimately involved in our lives and thinking must reassure us that He always has our good in mind. There are times when we try to avoid what the Holy Spirit wants to tell us because of fear. We’d rather focus on the little things than tackle the big hard ones. Like the Pharisees, we would rather stick with what we know because it feels safer. Often there are quite obvious things that we know need His transformation, yet we run away because of fear, or unbelief or a stronghold in our mind that says: “I can’t help this, everyone in my family is this way.” You and I are in a new family now – HIS. The old has passed away! We must prioritise His new kingdom now.

Romans 8:27 tells us that the Holy Spirit is already praying God’s will for us – how brilliant is that? Wow. To start with, the Holy Spirit totally knows the difference between the law and LOVE. Right here, right now. Today. There is no question about it we have a trustworthy Helper! Here are two more scriptures that will help us locate what the Lord wants to prioritise as we walk with Him:“For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.” 1 Peter 2:15. So I ask Him when I have doubt about any situation – is it doing good for someone else? Doing good is our priority. Our aim should always be for other people to tell us:  “I want to know the God you serve.”

Our Loving Heavenly Father;  His beautiful Son, the Lord Jesus;  and the precious ever-present Holy Spirit are our JOY! Let’s live celebrating Them!  There are times we can persecute other brothers and sisters with the law, by verbally beating them up, saying: “don’t do this and don’t do that “. And sadly, sometimes we say: “you did this AND that — so God won’t love YOU anymore.” But none of that stuff RE-presents Him truthfully. To know what is right on any occasion we must prioritise knowing Him. We have the book!

So we do good, give thanks, walk in Love and change our mindsets by reading His word. The Holy Spirit is continually praying for us to live an overcoming life filled with the Lord’s love for us. Walking with Him is our priority now. Bye. 👋

P 2646 “Hope thou IN CHRIST!”

/ DVH

Hope is a sign our faith is healthy. If we are feeling hope-less then our situation has overcome our awareness of how Mighty God is! That’s bad. It’s bad, like not breathing is bad!! It means there is something we need to fix, first with the Lord, and then with others. Other people can be stumbling blocks – especially the ones who see no need to change, or they think they can’t, because they were just born this way! Christ knows how to walk with difficult, dumb people – He did it for three and a half years!

Here’s a revelation – everything God made is good, so if it is NOT good – then it’s NOT God. To clear that up we need to start with ME not the other guy. But sometimes the difference between not good and good is simply time! Just saying is all …

… The truth is clear, we can hang on to resentment, bitterness, anger, lying, hatred as much as we want to, but those things’ll drown ya! You end up snarling and snapping at others. It’s dumb to be lying in the muck and mire when SomeBody paid for you to live an overcoming life!

You know, I think that Covid did more than make a whole lotta people very very sick. It stole some people’s hope! We gotta watch out for that. Hope is our anchor. Hope holds us steady when the waves of this life get too big for us to cope. Actually, when a boat slips it’s moorings or loses its anchor, it floats away! Hebrews 6:19 says: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, …””  Hope anchors us into God!! Remember, we hope in what Christ is doing, not in our circumstances changing.

Jesus Christ is our hope anchor. What He did for us, and what His death gave us, anchors us into Almighty God’s kingdom. Jesus took us into the Holy place by what He did. Now we have Him as our priest praying on our behalf, before the throne, and that never ends. The Lord God Himself provided the ultimate Answer – Christ! And He is ever-mindful of our humanity. We are so blessed to have a Saviour Who is God and also a human being – He understands how tough this life is.

Sadly we sometimes forget what we’ve been given and we wander off into the wilderness, wondering where God went. Bleating: “Why is He not looking after me – He promised He would look after me?!”  In those moments we have become imitators of the Israelites in the wilderness… remember, the Good Shepherd always goes after a lost sheep! The Lord always looks after His own, He just has a different timetable than ours. That difference is meant to help us with patience and perseverance, not introduce doubt.

“There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!” Romans 8:8 MSG.

When we lose sight of our anchor, our hope – Jesus Christ the HOPE of all mankind – we are forgetting who we are now. We do not have to grab, grasp, scheme, scream and connive to make life work. Now we trust God and let go of our own ideas, and pay close attention to His Word. His word is our strong fortress, our hiding place, our comfort, and our defensive position. Otherwise, we are running the risk of forgetting Who we belong to! Our strong hope is in what Christ has already done.

“But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God My Saviour; MY GOD WILL HEAR ME.”Micah 7:7. We remain confident that if the answer we were hoping for does not happen, then we remind ourselves that our God has heard us and HE HAS A PLAN. That’s our anchor. Hopelessness takes over when we concentrate more on the problem, than on our ever-present, always loving, constantly praying for us, Saviour. Our problem being solved is a temporary relief –instead we need to refocus on Christ Himself,  He is the Answer. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”BUT!!! …“We can do all things through Christ because He strengthens us.”

As we learn to cultivate patience, and wait on the Lord, we will renew our strength. We are given the energy to rise above our problems and keep running the race. We are enabled to keep on walking without fainting. Holding onto hope stretches our faith so the next time we use it, we become aware that our faith has grown. We must keep a watch over our hope, it is the warning light on the overcoming dashboard of our lives. We do not have to live downcast lives …”SOUL, HOPE THOU IN CHRIST!”👋