Paul

P 2376 Living a transparent life.

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“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” James 5:16. “But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” 1 John 1:7

Transparency in our lives frees us to walk with each other … not to mention the cleansing effect it has as we walk along! However, our current society loves to expose people simply for the shock value. But that is not the same as choosing to live a transparent life for Jesus’ sake. Exposure in today’s world often equals intrusion. 

Unfortunately it is very easy to hide the reality of who we actually are at our house, and present a better picture to others on the outside. But choosing to live honestly frees all of us to openly trust the Lord more, and to present our faith in its true light. We are the people who live in, and value, forgiveness. It is way too easy to hide who we are and simply claim we are being positive. Lots of nasty stuff hides in there! We need total honesty when we are coming before the One ‘to whom all hearts are open’  – and if I lie to you about who I really am, I will hurt the BODY – I will stunt its growth.

Transparency is a hallmark of belonging to Jesus, because we are the people who have nothing to HIDE, so we don’t live in fear of exposure. Instead we live in reality. We know we are sinners saved entirely by His Grace. It is dumb and a waste of our time here on earth to be saved by grace, and then go on to try do our best to LIVE hiding in external works and nice attitudes. Paul talks about that in Romans and Galatians. 

Our God will never take our choices away, He wants us to surrender them, willingly. You only have to read the Old Testament to see how patient He is with all sorts of people. He dealt with them as individuals. He let them grow INTO whatever He had for them to do. It is sad when pride, plus fear of judgment, along with a fatal saving-face attitude, can get in the way of owning our own frailties – we can’t reach our full spiritual potential that way! 

Sadly, some things we choose to hide because we are ashamed about them, and other things we hide because of the way we want to appear to others. We can unfortunately, easily acquaint hiding with privacy or safety, but trying to remain safe and secure without Him being in charge, hinders our growth. Growth comes from acknowledgment, not sweeping stuff under the carpet and hoping nobody else notices the lump! Jesus is gentle and lowly in His heart – that’s our reality. Isn’t that an amazing thing to be able to say about our Saviour? No wonder we love Him!

And He loves for us to be our true selves, freely and willingly, because there is a great deal of healing in being honest and open. I am not talking about being nasty or letting your nasty feelings attack others. The idea is to be CHANGED – not just released to be a pain! This kind of life means we will learn how to accept ourselves and others, and their flaws. However, self is definitely going to die in the process of changing the way we live, because all pretence has to go out of the window. Polite and nice simply get in the way of real Spirit-given love. We use so much energy trying to look right, that in the end, we have nothing left to give away.

Owning our own frailties is so important. To live like this we have to deal with fear, which can snarl at us from the corners of our minds and emotions and tell us that those ‘other people are not safe.’ Let’s be absolutely clear. Other people are definitely not safe! They need saving too!! That’s why we don’t put our trust in them, we put our trust in Jesus, to get us through anything and everything that comes at us. We are doomed to disappointment if we misplace our trust. We may need to give other people the benefit of the doubt as to their motives, but we trust HIM, not them. Others will fail us, accidentally, or on purpose. Human beings are frail, they have faults and foibles and they can easily stomp on us without even knowing it, or thinking about it.

That’s why we need to trust the One Who knows us better than we know ourselves. I’ve found that all kinds of nasty little things hide in corners when we are not honest with ourselves or one another. It is good to forgive and forget when people let us down, but the best way to deal with others is by living in His love with His help. That Love looks like 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. This is what the Lord Jesus already looks like, and that’s WHY we can trust HIM.

I found it is helpful when dealing with difficult people, to go straight to forgiveness and not pass “go!” until I’ve done it.  At the same time I continue to cultivate the company of the One Who will never ever fail me. The Holy Spirit. Transparency and honesty help us to relate to Him, and He helps us to become who we wish we were. 👋🏻

P 2374 Take these two verses together with prayer.

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“Casting all your cares upon Him because He cares for you.” 1 Peter 5:7. “Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell Him every detail of your life, …” Philippians 4:6 TPT. This could be a good time to reflect on the fact that one of these verses was written by Peter, and the other one was written by Paul.  From what we know about these two mighty men of God they had plenty of opportunities to practise this stuff, even if they did live in totally different locations! You might want to think about why they wrote these things in the first place.

I try to see the cares of this life as being like playing basketball – not that I have ever played that game (!) 😂  I just throw everything over to Jesus as it comes up … that’s in the book … the casting thing… Two things happen then, the problems get resolved or He tells me what to do. BTW, the former is usually something I would not have ever thought of doing! And sometimes, I get to practise my hoop shot over and over again!  I’ve also found that prayerfully naming said cares can be useful, especially when things are a nameless knot of stuff in the middle of your stomach. I do whatever He tells me to do, immediately, and hand the rest off to Him, one by one.

Isn’t Jesus so lovely? He doesn’t want us to wander about weighed down by cares. Relieving us from the weight and pressure of them is one of the ways He shows us He is always there for us. I find that ‘cares’ are kind of like very sticky paper, before you know it you’ve flicked the dratted thing off one hand but it lands on the other one! You gotta work pretty hard to get rid of that kind of darn sticky stuff. It’s the same with our cares, it might take quite a few tries to actually leave what is bothering you with Him. Persevere. Bonus buy, perseverance is a fruit of the Spirit so if you do it enough, you are growing good fruit!!

And if you accidentally get to thinking after time has passed and nothing has happened yet, that NOW you just might find a solution – then immediately send whatever it is, wrapped in love and prayer, right back toward Him and refuse to take it back again. That’s because YOU need to remember you aren’t stupid, and it is obvious that you are going to need a supernatural solution! I usually find I chase ‘solutions’ at  2.00am when I can’t sleep. Eventually (!!) I repent for thinking I can somehow work out that thing I couldn’t actually work out when I was fully awake !!! … And then … I give it all back to Him again. It’s a process.

Paul also tells us not to be worried about anything. Great aim! But sometimes, when you have cultivated a lifetime of stewing on stuff, that can be a hard habit to break. That’s why you have to practice it.  In my family of origin we had a designated worrier — and, oh joy! — it was me! This was decided without any personal consultation with me, so that the other members of my family could be free to enjoy a life without any worry at all – having handed the bad bits off to me to resolve, apparently that was my job. As a result, if you hand me a problem I will turn my brain upside down trying to solve it for you. Obviously I actually can’t do that! And that’s where my spiritual game of basketball has been incredibly helpful. Then I repented of being a rescuer – that’s Jesus’ job.

Back to the book. I also love the Passion Translation of Philippians 4:6 TPT“Don’t be pulled in different directions or worried about a thing. Be saturated in prayer throughout each day, offering your faith-filled requests before God with overflowing gratitude. Tell Him every detail of your life…”  See? I told you those two verses are similar. Here’s how I do my best to be saturated in prayer … I’m working on being friends with the Holy Spirit. I look for the good in things going on around me, and anything that reminds me of how wonderful He is. Even if all I can see is the sky, or a little bit of grass, or hear a bird sing or a child laugh. I wish I could tell you that I pray all day, but I don’t. However, I do my best to keep my mind and heart on Him, and I’ve learnt to cultivate thanking Him heaps as I go along. 

Plus, I refuse to let my inability to be good at something stop me from working on it!  Like the scripture up the top of my blog says: ‘Not that I am there already, but I keep aiming at it!’ BTW, I am also not all that sure about always making faith-filled prayer requests, sometimes I accidentally make complaining prayer requests instead. ☹️ The secret to getting rid of worry and anxiety is to give the situation to Jesus, do whatever He tells you to do about it, and then leave it with Him. He is way more concerned about our past, present and future than we are, and He can be trusted. I simply take these two verses together, and wash them down with prayer! Bye 👋🏻

P 2373 Pain is often inevitable.

/ DVH

Pain can happen when His will crosses ours – so we are going to need to learn how to dig through that pain to find a pool of blessing. “Even when their paths wind through the dark valley of tears, they dig deep to find a pleasant pool where others find only pain. He gives to them a brook of blessing filled from the rain of an outpouring.” Psalms 84:6 TPT. I have to tell you I need to take a permanent shower in this word for about a year! It shows what the Holy Spirit does with a precious totally-yielded soul. It also explains that God’s ways are not our ways. A pleasant pool actually puts me in mind of a trouble-free existence – obviously that is not what the Lord means here! He says we must dig to find the blessing in the middle of the hard bits.

I already know the location of one of these pools because I am totally blessed to know people who are like this psalmist. Even though I’m not always there yet, these people always treat me like royalty. That’s the hallmark of the children of the kingdom – they value other people above everything else … apart from the Lord Himself. When I meet people like this, I immediately feel like I can be bigger. They know how to dig one of those pools! Their kindness and love can open doors that have remained shut because of fear and pain.

Pain, BTW, is often inevitable, especially when His will crosses ours. Boy my voyage of inner self-discovery this year has been eye-opening. There was all this hideous stuff hiding around corners inside my heart and it didn’t show up until life squashed me! When everything goes well, I can be as ‘nice’ … as anyone else, but when the ceiling falls in – hmmmm…. that’s a whole other story. That’s when I’ve begun to realise that pain is an opportunity to dig for more – it kind of sounds like Ps 23:5.: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.“ 

Digging deep produces blessings – when we dig deep we will get a POOL of blessings, like this Psalmist said. Most of us just want to run away from pain and hardship – but this man has learnt a better way. Sadly when I get into digging it seems like the first thing I find is a stinky attitude in me!  Father God is so kind, He has explained to me that this is a symptom and I need to extend forgiveness to myself, others and the world around me. My next response is to tell the Holy Spirit if He doesn’t help me I’m sunk. I am permanently grateful we have a Helper – especially while I am looking for that pool… because HE knows where those pleasant pools are!

Ya gotta wonder if those pools in Psalm 84, actually come from the dark valley of tears this guy just crawled through … but NO! That pool comes from a brook of blessing that came from an outpouring. Wouldn’t it be great if we  could just skip the hard times and go straight to the brook and the outpouring? That’d be ACE! There are times I stumble over that prayer I prayed eons ago – to be like Jesus inside and out – you can’t complain when you asked for it can you? But there is a blessing in there – God is answering that prayer. Maybe that is why you gotta learn to dig beyond your current circumstances.

There are times that I learn great things, retrospectively. It would be so much better to know that piece of info before the bad stuff rushes over me like a rampant river and threatens to drown whatever faith I have. At the same time the bible mentions another pool provider — regular pruning. The Lord loves to prune the bits that aren’t fruitful …! 😱 Wark! I know the Lord loves to do it but pruning can be hard – it mostly happens when you think you are getting somewhere – at last! 

You are going along, a happy little branch on the vine and you discover this nice green little shoot popping out right near the end of your branch. Goodie! New life you think – aha!  And then the Shepherd/Gardener comes along and prunes the whole branch back to a nub!  The indignation is almost palpable. Why would the Gardener prune something that had so much potential? To get more, that’s why. Right there, when it seems your hopes have taken a nose-dive …is some of that blessed pool potential. God is so happy with our progress and He can see even more is possible. That’s an instance where He does not think like we do. 

Here’s a tip on digging a pool – get used to using your faith in His goodness, no matter how things look – because that is the thing that our enemy challenges all the time. Holding on to our faith is part of the excavation to find that pool of blessing in the middle of the hard bits. Sometimes it’s important to simply choose to embrace the mystery of Who He is, to keep your faith in Him strong. Pain is often an inevitable part of this life, we can do it alone, or with Him and learn the art of excavation – our choice. 👋🏻

Ps the Apostle Paul was a fantastic digger – he knew how to find the blessing in the middle of a trial – look out for it when you are reading the Epistles, EG. 2 Timothy 2:9 “…for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained.” 

P 2368 So what does saturated look like?

/ DVH

I dunno — yet! But I’m aiming at it. I’m sick to death with living a namby-pamby safe life that is dominated by the things around me that hurt, inconvenience or distract me. More Lord! 🙌  Wherever it takes me! I want to return love for hate, and kindness for carelessness and selfishness, without even thinking about it! I desperately want to leak the Lord’s love wherever I go, no matter how tightly I’m squeezed. That sure sounds like saturation to me!

That word saturate means to permeate until no more can be received, to soak thoroughly. Like a sponge that can’t hold any more fluid, saturated people drip the Lord’s goodness, loving kindness and His precious heart wherever they go, even under pressure. I would love to see the day arrive when His saturated people will leave puddles of His glory behind them. Puddles that heal and transform, just like Peter’s shadow healed the lame man in Acts. Wow, even that thought blows my mind!

I believe Jesus is looking for wild, unbridled men and women like John the Baptist. Passion is meant to motivate them. We are to return HIS passion with OUR PASSION, because our Saviour deserves it. Passion drove Him to the cross. Today, our response needs to match His example. I know a certain SomeOne Who would be de-lig-ht-ed to help us with that! The Holy Spirit.🕊 I think, BTW, that two of the most valuable things we can give the Lord are our time — as well as our obedience. Saturated people are passionate and devoted to His will, by being around Him.

They crave His Presence more than anything else. They love to be near Him, whether that means, prayer, bible study, or helping others etc. All of these things come from a saturated overflow. When you are saturated you don’t have to think about doing what He tells you, YOU DO IT simply because you know He will come with you. And that is the best bit – it’s everything! You enjoy watching Him work, seeing Him reach out to somebody else the same way He did back in those days before His crucifixion. Jesus Christ loved people. He didn’t have agendas – He just loved people. That’s where we are aiming – to be so full of His love it cancels out our own preferences and prejudices.

My testimony is this: I know He saved me, so He definitely can save anybody who wants in! I truly don’t see anyone as being too hard for God — outside the pale, so to speak. If you need a Saviour then Jesus is the One, He cannot let you down because it is in His very nature to be FAITHFUL and TRUE. Read the book. I encourage you to read what He said, for yourself, in the gospels. My premise is —“whosoever will may come …!”

So when hubby and I talk to people, we have that in mind and we just let them be themselves. We have no judgment toward what they say or how they live. It is the Holy Spirit Who convicts, challenges and convinces. It’s our job to “go” and let Him do what He does best, through us. He loves to love on people.  We just tell them what we’ve seen and what we know about the One Who is everything to us. 

I enjoy the example in the bible where Paul and Silas’ jailer falls on his knees in front of them. The bible says this: “In desperation the jailer asked, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Never missing an opportunity to share the good news, Paul and Silas said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” And that night, as Paul and Silas shared “the word of the Lord,” salvation came to that jailer’s house… “ Act 16:3-34.

Now that’s fantastic saturation! I would love to be so kind, so forgiving to those who deliberately hurt me, that that would be my automatic response!  I want them to see Jesus Christ in me. Knowing the Lord personally, has changed all my aims. I used to aim at being loved, feeling accepted – now I aim to give those things away to hungry people around me. 

I believe God wants a passionate people who will do whatever it takes to fulfil His will while they here are on this earth. A saturated people. 👋🏻

P 2328 Tenacity.

/ DVH

The bit that is actually easy in the Christian life is doing what He wants with the help of our ever present Helper. ‘His YOKE is easy, His burden is light.’ If it is hard then maybe we have wandered away from His yoke. However, sometimes we can get so caught up in trying to find ‘comfortable’ when things assail us …we can forget we are in a battle. We live in enemy territory, not the garden of Eden. STUFF is gunna happen. After a while when that stuff keeps on coming, and coming at you, you can feel you are permanently under siege. Time for a time out with Jesus.

At our house right now, we are two people with only two good useful hands between us … and both of them are left-hands. 😂 You’d be amazed how much you need both hands – maybe that’s why the Lord gave us two in the first place! Whatever. 🙄 For the past 9 weeks I have typed this blog with my left index finger. Boy has that been interesting! I am not, BTW, looking for sympathy, other people have their own problems. I simply think the Lord is currently making the Western world uncomfortable … HE wants to be our reason to live — not just an optional add-on.

So hubby and I have started to pray together that the Lord Himself will be our strong right arm … because our own arms are letting us down big time. There is nothing like running out of your own strength to remind us that we can’t do this stuff by ourselves! We never could. Some days I can be seen mumbling to myself – ‘Its OK – our side wins in the end.”

I am writing about these types of situations today to put forward the idea that we all have these blooming awful, hard-to-find-anything-good-about-them, times. This Christian life is not always some sort of ongoing party – where we all cheer for our side, because we won! Hallelujah! We DID win! Thanks to our precious Saviour – but now you and I have to walk out that victory minute by minute, day by day, week by week… …. And it will cost us.

It’s officially a fight – the man of God said so in 2 Corinthians 1:8.“We were so utterly burdened we despaired of life itself.” You and I are not failing just because we are struggling. It just so happens we are struggling to keep the faith!  Meanwhile the Lord is filling us with His endurance and stamina so we can run our race well. Paul also said this: 2 Timothy 4:7:“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith…”

We are winning, because even though we might despair and fall down, eventually we get up and go again. Sometimes we may crawl, but that’s ok – that will humble anyone pretty quickly! Tenacity is invaluable. Perseverance the bible calls it, I call it refusing to quit. And don’t be fooled by that seemingly positive statement, it sometimes takes all you have to even get up off the floor, but remember the Holy Spirit will not break bruised reeds. 

In the Western world we are often vastly under prepared for life’s storms. But Christians can survive any storm because Jesus is in our little boat with us. HE can calm the stormy sea of anxiety, sorrow and suffering inside us. Creating an awareness of His Presence and help can be our most daunting task … and our greatest asset. Mainly because life happens and it ain’t like the TV ads.

Sometimes I think I’m like Peter on one of his earlier incredible revelation/dumb days… John 6:66-69.“After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that You are the Holy One of God.”That was the great revelation bit…

A-N-D … here comes the dumb …’”Peter took him aside and began to rebuke Him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to You!” Matthew 16:22. Poor guy, he so totally went the wrong way – into his flesh. One minute in the Spirit … the next, not-so-much. I have a theory about that BTW, sometimes we go the wrong way to learn about ourselves. It sure helps to keep me humble!  

Tenacity is not about getting it right. It’s about not giving up when you get it wrong. It’s about facing your fears and failings and clinging to the Lord. It’s about repentance and humility and clambering up from the floor when you’ve fallen on your face. You know sometimes this life is not about making great strides… its about taking the next step. 👋🏻 

P 2312 As He was in this world so are we.

/ DVH

The most important question we can ever ask ourselves is this – WHAT DOES LOVE LOOK LIKE TO GOD? The bible clearly defines what His love looks like to mankind, but how does the Lord God, Maker of heaven and earth, define love – the love that flows from US to Him?

Jesus said in Matthew 22:35-37 “ One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’” That original commandment was given by God Himself to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6… sadly, in 6,000 years they hadn’t gotten very far had they? Have we?

Our daily question needs to be: “Holy Spirit how can I do that? How can I love God truthfully with all of me?” Many people might answer this question like this: “by loving each other, by serving Him, by reading the bible, through worship, praise, prayer and fasting.” All of these things are great. Do them with the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance! However Jesus Himself said in John 14:15-31 GNT – “If you love me, you will  obey My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, Who will stay with you forever. He is the Spirit, who reveals the truth about God.’”

It is just like the Lord Jesus to ask a question and give us the answer … all in the same sentence. To truly LOVE GOD – WE NEED HELP! We need the One Jesus specifically sent back to earth to help us. With the Holy Spirit’s help, obedience to His commandments is the way we show God we love Him. When God’s very special, One-of-a-kind-Son came here from heaven, that’s what He did. Christ modelled that kind of obedience all the way through His life, and on through death, into resurrection life.

We are living after the time that Jesus first breathed on His disciples, and told them to receive the Holy Spirit. And then they went out and obeyed Him, and did what He did and saw the same results. Here’s food for thought – Jesus breathed on Judas! Judas did this stuff too, even while he was pinching money from the common purse! We must stop thinking that the people Who have miraculous gifts are somehow holy. Holiness comes from GOD Himself so we need to learn to let Him flow through us, using our faith. His presence in us, with us, and through us, as we obey Him, will do the changing.

The gifted ones among us were given something from HIM – they simply had the faith to pick up their God-given gifts! That’s God’s glory healing someone, not Brother Everybody-knows-my-name. That guy can’t heal a banana without the Holy Spirit’s help! So let’s quickly look at Stephen… who waited tables … he had the gift of helps. “Now Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people.” Acts 6:8. 

That’s the key to who Stephen was right there, he was – ‘full of Grace!’ How do you get this Grace? You live your life openly and honestly, acknowledging your faults and flaws, repenting, fixing things, and receive His forgiveness —and then you give that away. “…freely you have received, freely GIVE!” If Jesus Himself could do nothing without the Holy Spirit – then without Him WE are sunk. But the other side of that coin means if Christ lived that way as a man, then so can we. 

What we all need, what we must cry out for – is what occurred in ACTS 2 … after the Holy Spirit came to stay there were only DEAD MEN WALKING in the church. His Presence changed them – they valued His Presence above all else. The Body of Christ needs to be changed – and we’d all better get a wriggle on too! 

There were no schizophrenic Christians back then … people with one foot in this world and one foot in the next. They surrendered everything for His sake. Before Pentecost, they were all over the place, but they came out of that encounter with the Holy Spirit resurrected. Their old man, their old way of life was DEAD. Paul died on the road to Damascus, the resurrected new man went on from there.

Our struggle in this life is to die daily …one decision at a time. It’s a choice and Christ died to give us the freedom to make that choice. Together we must learn to constantly rely upon the Holy Spirit.  Time to wake up church and chase after your destiny. “…as He was in this world SO ARE WE!“ 👋🏻

P 2309 Grab a cup of something you like and … enjoy what He is saying to you!

/ DVH

1 Thessalonians 1:3&4 “We ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love all of you have for one another is increasing. Therefore, among God’s churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring.”

I figure if my life is difficult day by day, then perhaps your life is too! And then I read the above verses in 1 Thessalonians and the matter was confirmed. I thank God for you and your life laid down for His sake. It is good to read what the Lord has recorded in His book, and kept through the ages for all of us… and now, we need to personalise it! I urge you to read these verses like the Holy Spirit is speaking to you… because… He is! He is using Paul’s words to help each one of us with the hard bits of this life. These verses are a prophetic word of loving encouragement.

I have also included today, something I read recently from The Passion Translation blog called: “I Hear His Whisper.” Hubby passed it on to me. As I read it, I cried and cried. Life can be so very tough, and loving encouragement from our brothers and sisters in Christ is essential, so words like these mean a great deal in difficult times. Meanwhile, personally, physical therapy for a shoulder broken in 3 places can seem endless, plus typing this blog with one hand using my index finger for the past 7 weeks, is painfully SLOW! 😂

This lovely piece below has been written as if the Lord Himself is speaking to us. It is called – 

‘There is Beauty in your Pain.’

“Your pain has become the birthing ground for the beautiful.  In your greatest devastation, your worship has become a fertile, healthy womb.  From the seasons of sorrow now come glorious gifts for you to share.  Nothing has been overlooked.  Now you will see what I will do through you, because of what you endured while you bowed before Me in surrender.  In your place of your pain, I have poured out My beauty.

Heartbreaking tears of surrender have made you beautiful – so very beautiful to Me.  This is the most perfect offering of your yielded heart.  I haven’t forgotten one single prayer.  I have seen every movement of your heart toward Me in your suffering.  For every tear, I give you a seed to sow in someone’s life.  I have taken your sorrow.  I have cleansed your tears with My love.  Now I pour these tears back to you as rain upon dry soil – golden rain of a new season where flowers bloom and the air is clean and fresh.  Breathe deeply, My love.  The season has changed. “

(“I Hear His Whisper” by Brian Simmons and Gretchen Rodriguez.)

You might want to just sit a while and let that sink in, it is worth meditating on. 😶 

Sometimes doing nothing and holding on tight to Who He is, is the best answer of all. In Genesis it tells us that the Lord Himself rested. I think there is a time when it is good for us to hold on to what we know, and just keep hanging on, and let His great Grace carry us. I can remember during my accident, sitting awkwardly at the bottom of our stairs … having just bumped my way all the way down to the bottom,… and marvelling that I had such great peace. If I didn’t move my shoulder about I could almost pretend I was OK…⚡️ … I did say … almost! 😂

So I exhort us all to take the time today to remind ourselves  that Almighty God knows what is going on … even when we don’t. Take the pressure off and just BE …   He knows what He is doing. 👋🏻 

P 2286 Love that grows.

/ DVH

“I continue to pray for your love to grow and increase beyond measure, bringing you into the rich revelation of spiritual insight in all things. This will enable you to choose the most excellent way of all —becoming pure and without offence until the unveiling of Christ.” Philippians 1:9-10 TPT

Love is not just about having nice feelings toward other people – it is not even about being glad to see them! Paul prays for US in these two verses that our love will increase beyond our ability to measure it. Now there’s a mighty fine ambition! However, Love has a purpose over and above human beings simply feeling good. Love opens spiritual doors that will remain shut fast without it. Love opens the door to insight and revelation into the secrets and ways of God Himself. 

His love is not even remotely like our human experiences with love here on earth. ALMIGHTY GOD LOVES THE UNLOVEABLE, freely. Human love can be fickle because it depends on feelings and perceptions, and our feelings often depend on circumstances. God’s love dictates holy circumstances, it is not influenced by them. 

The wonderful thing about God’s love, is that when we choose it in the face of difficulties and hardship, THEN we begin to use our faith. We simply make a God-given choice, then ask for His help, and then we step out in faith and do whatever He says to do. Just the same as Moses had to, or Peter or Timothy.  At the same time we are giving out His love in faith we are personally receiving it. Insight and revelation are God’s love in action. 

Actually all of the gifts of the Spirit are God’s love in action. It is not enough to say kind, or sweet things, those kind of things need to ride upon the wings of the Spirit. His Love changes everything. I hope it is obvious that I’m not talking about man-made flattery. When we partake of His love, using our faith, and then we give it away, we are personally touched by Him, and changed, and the person we give it to is also touched by Him. The only thing you will touch with theories or flattery, is the mind. 

If we pick up the sword of the Spirit under the instructions of the Holy Spirit then it becomes a powerful weapon that can clarify, divide and open up circumstances so we can see what is actually going on in a situation. A lot of the time we are boxing with or fighting shadows when we are unhappy with people. Shadows have no substance so you feel like any discussion is pointless and not worth the effort. 

This means you have not fully connected with the Holy Spirit, because He will not frustrate you, or anyone else. When He is present, it is as if a veil has been lifted off our eyes and we can see the real issues clearly. My advice is this, always be prepared to be the one who is in the wrong, the one who has judged the subject amiss. Even our own hearts can deceive us – live prepared to repent and repair things.

God’s word exposes the reality of the condition of our hearts. There’s nothing like discovering that the person you are mad at is being sinful, and suddenly realising YOU are sinful too, because clarity and wisdom removed the logs and specks! Initially we can see the person we are mad at with seemingly righteous indignation, but then insight comes and we see that person’s heart as well as our own, and we realise that we are all sinful.

‘Sin is common to man!’  When the love of God illuminates our hearts we find we all have sin in common. Now we can identify with the other person’s weakness, and mercy starts to flow because in them we can see ourselves. Difficulties occur when love is not present and we use man-made judgment to try to rectify problems. We need wisdom from above, not earthly judgment – that judgment always prefers itself. 

Every single time we call on the Lord for His love and insight and revelation in a difficult situation we are building a bank inside us of knowing Him and His ways. Those revelations change us. His Love expands situations. It gives meaning, it does not obsess about problems – it looks for the pain behind the problem in both parties and addresses that. Love grows as it is experienced through ordinary circumstances and then it is applied as the Lord Himself sees fit. Living a life of love is challenging but oh so rewarding. 👋🏻

P 2284 The undiscovered Person.

/ DVH

Our greatest quest in this new life of learning love is to know the Author of Love intimately. Sometimes, we can focus too much on what we can gain from Him and not enough on Who He is. He is the elusive, but always present, playful Father that some of us always wish we had had IRL. 

We can read the bible with a serious tone of mind or we can read it looking for the God Who has a twinkle in His eye and loves to walk and talk with the man and the woman He made, in the cool of the evening. I think that if we think God is no fun, we are seriously mistaken. 

Right now I’m thinking about Jesus and all the times that His pure theology bumped into the disciples’ squirrelled up theology. He sends them out two by two tells, them to take nothing with them – imagine doing that that with a missionary (!) – tells them to heal the sick and raise the dead, and on the strength of His word, they did it. And oh happy day, it worked!

They came back with a great report  only to fall in the hole of exclusivity, comparison and revenge shortly thereafter. I believe these events were fuelled by His power, because these men were obedient to what Jesus told them to do. And I think obedience carries a lot of weight with God. BUT …the time was coming when these men were to be filled with the very power and life of the precious Holy Spirit, the One Who raises us all from the dead. And they had a heart transplant … on the spot! Hard heart out – soft heart in!

That doesn’t mean they still didn’t make mistakes, they were still human, but the Holy Spirit’s presence became so vital, so important to these men that they knew that without Him they were nothing, but with Him, anything was possible. 

I love the playfulness of God, in His encounters with mankind. In Acts, Eutychus is so bored by Paul’s sermon … pause and think on that … that he fell out of the window, bored into sleep, stone dead, and Paul had to go downstairs to raise him up again! Hopefully, the brief trip to heaven changed him so he wasn’t bored anymore! There would be a whole lot of dead bored people in our churches if we applied that particular scripture today. 😂

What about Peter, who was so passionately outspoken, he was beaten and thrown in jail. And this mighty man of God, full of paste and flour, could not believe that the angel standing in front of him was setting him free! He thought he was dreaming. And back where everyone was fervently praying for his release, when he banged on the door – those guys were so filled with faith they thought he was a ghost!

These people who followed the Lord and His instructions all of the days of their lives were so changed by their walk with the Person of the Holy Spirit, that they didn’t only meet the Him, they chose every opportunity to know His ways. I believe the Holy Spirit is hidden from us for a reason. His insight, wisdom and love offer us a doorway into a different way to see this life.

When Paul met Him, He knocked him to the ground, blind. Suddenly this man’s outward condition mirrored his inward one. Paul was full of religious zeal and fervour. Ripe and ready to kill more Christians, when an encounter with the Ever-Living One bashed the wind out of his sails. Suddenly, this man who knew the law so brilliantly, is following a Voice. That happy encounter instantly showed him the difference between theory and REALITY. He saw everything he had been zealously following, in a totally different light. 

That’s my prayer for anyone who reads this blog, that God would blow away all our neatly constructed boxes and introduce us to His wider, ever-expanding, always delightful kingdom, and blow our puny minds, so that we are forever changed. I think my voice on this blog is one of so many all over the world. There are thousands of men, women and children that the Lord has working for Him. They push on the edges of our boxes, and He stands playfully right there – at the very edge of where that box used to be, and says, “Come and follow Me, I will make you fishers of men.”

Abram followed God’s leading to a Promised Land. That journey totally changed his life, his family, his name, and his future – I pray that the Holy Spirit will so impact every single person who reads here that they will also begin a journey to discover Who He is and what He has in store for each one of us. This undiscovered Person IS OUR PROMISED LAND! 🤗 Amen.

P 2281 We are here for the one in front of us.

/ DVH

“Jesus continued, “In the same way, there will be a glorious celebration in heaven over the rescue of one lost sinner who repents, comes back home, and returns to the fold—more so than for all the righteous people who never strayed away.”” Luke 15:7 TPT

Would you like to bring the Lord Jesus joy and give Him glory? Then love on the person in front of you. We dare not ever lose our heart for the lost, or the ones who know Him and have wandered off. The biggest hurdle to today’s modern churches reaching the unchurched people groups around us, is the idea that reaching people for Christ is one man’s job – the evangelist. In bigger churches they probably have a designated evangelist and sometimes he is the youth pastor.  

While Mr and Mrs It-Ain’t-My-JOB and family, sit securely in their seat, week by week, knowing that Jesus’ desire to go after the unsaved is taken care of by somebody else. I am going to go out on a very large limb here, right to the very edge of a little twig that bounces up and down, and say that just because somebody else has a title, that does not relieve us of the responsibility to talk to the person in front of us. 

Let’s look at Stephen in the book of Acts. IRL he was a  deacon, a steward, a helper. His designated job was to look after the widows and orphans of other nationalities and make sure that they were not overlooked. You know sometimes we need to approach other people’s wacky ideas sensibly, and bring about a resolution that is simple and takes care of the problem. Stephen was delegated that job. People were getting their knickers all twisted and knotted up because they thought their widows and orphans were being neglected. Stephen was one of several answers to the problem. 

I don’t know if Stephen was divinely inspired or just a very well read helper – OR BOTH – but he knew the Old Testament well enough to be able to expound it in a clear and concise fashion from Abraham to Christ Himself to a bunch of guys who had studied that subject all their lives. His reward for such spiritual lucidity was they threw rocks at him until he was dead. He became the first martyr. In my opinion, upon reading Stephen’s story in Acts, he was glad to do it – He is a perfect example of “for me to live is Christ, to die is gain…”

Timothy was Paul’s student, his helper and His unofficially adopted spiritual son, and yet he founded churches himself.  Again, a further example of the fact that you never know what the Holy Spirit will do with obedience. It was said of the entire early church that: “these are the people who have turned the known world upside down.” However, most of the men and women who died for what they believed, and for sharing it with others, are not mentioned by name in the book. 

Ordinary does not mean overlooked by God. If you read His book carefully, you’ll find very few men and women who would’ve raised a headline in today’s news. They simply obeyed Christ’s clarion call to go and make disciples. My question today is: in the face of their courage and dedication, how can we dare not live lives worthy of all Christ did for us?  

I think it is a sad statement that most of us just pay lip service to Jesus’ final words to His disciples. He may not ask us to go to Upper Mongolia, but we’d better be ready in case He does! He has not asked us to build thousands of churches either. A sad fact is, most of our churches today are not founded on a group of people who are newly saved – they are more likely to be founded on a group of people who became disgruntled and disenchanted with their last church or their pastor! 

What ARE we doing with the eternal life God gave us? In the Western world we seem to be content to just puddle along building our own little denominational kingdoms. Jesus didn’t ask us to build churches … HE said HE would do that. (Matthew 16:18) Our job is to treat our salvation as a personal calling.  We are here for the person in front of us. So we live our lives asking the Holy Spirit, ‘what do you want me to do for this person, Lord?’ Then we do it.

We read the bible, obey what He said, absorb His Love for mankind from the book, and give what He gave us for free, away to someone else. We have our part and the Holy Spirit has His. We love on them – He draws them to Christ.  It ain’t rocket science. 👋🏻