People

P 3042 The real and the unreal.

/ DVH

As Christians we dare not live our lives in religion. We have been reborn to live permanently in the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection – together with all He died to give us. This attitude needs to be present, daily. The Holy Spirit will correct us with His eye on us, then we pray and then we yield. Living with a metaphor – a concept, a mere picture of the truth – means that we will find our metaphorical faith is tested a whole lot, because it does not have its roots in the reality of what Jesus already did!

At the same time, we cannot afford to have untested faith. Otherwise, how will we know whether what we believe is real or a theory? When tests come, and they will!…The first thing to do is check with Him that He is giving us an opportunity to practise what we preach. Then we prayerfully accept the Holy Spirit’s guidance and help, and go forward into doing or saying whatever it is from His point of view. If I haven’t got a clue – I make use of His reference book – the bible.

Cultivating a quiet spirit within, is essential. It can be difficult, but it is not impossible. I know the world around us is like a brass band at full volume, but living in the awareness of the stillness of His Presence will help us triumph over everything else that comes our way. Jesus lived this way – He was peaceful inside despite the outside circumstances. The difference between the real and the unreal, is easily diagnosed by its fruit – agitation or acceptance.

Likewise, giving up on people just because they are not responding to us the way we want them to, is self-centred. You and I don’t have the only way – Jesus Himself is the Way! What we need in awkward moments, is a word of knowledge, or a word of wisdom, or a revelation from our King about how we interact with that person. Here’s a helpful hint:  spiritual things don’t always come with a huge angel and a trumpet! His Voice inside us is so discreet, so gentle, we can miss it.  But there is a way to check out your own hearing— love knows how to be quiet and let the other person speak. Many times we are actually dealing with our own fears and insecurities and projecting them onto someone else. 

God loves them.Ask yourself: ‘why would I annoy or hurt someone GOD loves and expect it will be alright?’  He loves the world, remember? Personally, I would not like to have to explain to the Lord, why I thought brow-beating somebody else was a good plan. Jesus didn’t do it, and neither should we. Our aim is to respond with Grace, Love, Kindness and Peace, and those precious things are enough to keep us busy! Positive things can create teachable moments.

In John 20:11-18, it says:“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put Him.” At this,she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking He was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him. Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward Him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!”

Human beings can be so distracted and disturbed by our current circumstances, that we miss Him when He speaks to us  As you can see, from this scripture, Mary was absolutely overwhelmed by grief, and consequently she was unable to see the Lord when He was right in front of her! It is good to ask the Holy Spirit to keep us alert to whatever the Lord Jesus wants to say to us.  

The thing about Mary in this scripture, is that her faith was at an all-time low, and she didn’t expect to see Jesus again. He was dead and gone in her mind. And if He wasn’t in the tomb, then where could He possibly be? The unreality of the situation channelled her thoughts in a specific direction — to a human answer. Somebody must have done the unthinkable and stolen His body!

If I get bewildered or I am full of despair, then I stop and I refuse to move. After that I go back to the beginning and start to pray all over again. But if my thoughts are still as clear as mud, then I put everything down at His feet, and ask the Holy Spirit to take care of it – until I am led, by Him, back into clarity again. Hearing from God is our birthright, it is not a test. It takes faith, but every single one of us has been given the ability to hear our Shepherd. After all, we are His sheep, the people of His pasture!  

Let’s not underestimate the value of PAUSING. Pausing gives me a chance to catch up with what He is doing. It steadies my personal human reaction, and takes me into His space – where there is no panic, no timetables … only Him. Our faith has been carefully designed, by the Holy Spirit, to be active and real, every single day. If we find we are mistaken, then we need to prayerfully replace the unreal with the real. Bye. 🙏

P 3021 “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”

/ DVH

OK. Don’t freak out. I have not lost my mind, that’s an expression. I don’t secretly engaged in cat-skinning!  EW! That saying simply means: There is more than one way for something to be done. Hopefully the title got your attention. Gird up your girdle Gertie, its gunna be a bumpy ride. 

This world is currently extremely “me-centred” and hedonistic. Today, our society has been forced to make room for all kinds of weird, ugly, and downright disgusting ideas, and it has gone on to legalise them. Some self- expressions are from the pit. However … ”You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one Who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”1 John 4:4.Here’s my point for today:  do we believe that or not? 

Without the Lord Jesus in our lives, none of us could ever know who we truly are, or why we are here. Without Him, all we can produce is dissatisfaction, rage and despair. People everywhere are so busy chasing happiness like a lepidopterist chases rare butterflies – it seems like they think that is what this life is about …grabbing happiness where they can.

We know, from the bible, that what these ?alternate? groups think about this life is chock full of sin — but unfortunately the church has taken a bad stance when it comes to God’s POV. We’ve eliminated many people before they’ve had a chance to change their minds. And at the same time the Father of all light is losing HIS beloved children, while we are erroneously operating on the idea that their sin is worse than ours!  Um…even liars end up in the lake of fire! And yes, fibs count – even well intentioned ones.

Everybody’s sin has been paid for.…including Hitler’s and sexual deviants, and let us remember that Jesus Christ overpaid! Read the book. We are concentrating on the wrong bit – other people’s sins, not the people themselves. I know that some churches welcome all sorts of nasty things from the pit, yet others would never let that sort of person darken their doors. And they wear that attitude with misguided pride.

We cling to bits of the scripture like they are our entire life-raft, when God has given us a whole book! And then we thump it over other people’s heads, because …”we know the truth and it has set us free …”  (Let’s please remember that we were not set free to be judgmental and unloving!) …God Himself is the truth that rules everything. The bible is not a private, or public opinion poll. It’s a book about God, and what He wants from His people.

There is room for ALL at the foot of the cross. Let’s at least give any outcasts an opportunity to find out!  God loves them as much as He loves us. We don’t have to become them to love them! In His eyes, there is no grading system to love. He loves us because HE IS LOVE. Who knows what an encounter with Jesus will do in someone else’s life? Pray for that!

But the lost cannot decide if we won’t allow them to find out there is another way to live. We are keeping our own faith supposedly safe at someone else’s cost. And pretty soon, those other people might be our own sons and daughters! Lot lived among people with deviant lifestyles and still maintained love.

We need to aim higher. Almighty God is bigger than I think He is! And He is bigger than my denomination thinks He is. And much much bigger than this world thinks He is!  Here’s the right attitude from Jude V 23: ” Be merciful to those who doubt; save others by snatching them from the fire; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.” Hate the sin, not the sinner … there’s more than one way to skin a cat! Bye.🐈.

P 3008 Some people need to be hugged back to life. OR …

/ DVH

…how to bore your congregation to death and get away with it!“On Sunday we gathered to take communion and to hear Paul preach. Because he was planning to leave the next day, he continued speaking until past midnight. Sitting in an open window listening was a young man named Eutychus. As Paul’s sermon dragged on, Eutychus became drowsy and fell into a deep slumber. Sound asleep, he fell three stories to his death below.” Acts 20:7,9.

Hah! And you think your pastor’s sermons are boring! The Apostle Paul had an agenda, he was leaving and needed to say everything he wanted to say. I’ve said this quite a few times before, sometimes really bad things are pre-cursors to miracles. I had a friend who used to say:  “If you want to see a miracle then you are going to have to need one —  and that won’t always be as much fun as it sounds!!” Just don’t sit in any windows OK?

Here’s another pretty good thought — I’d be careful about saying the preacher’s sermons are boring! If I were you, I’d make sure that guy is proficient in raising the dead first!  Meanwhile, ladies stop nudging your husband awake, let him snore away… you just might be missing out on a miracle —! 🤣 Lets’ continue on with this fun story and get to the hugging bit.

“Paul went downstairs, bent over the boy, and embraced him. Taking him in his arms, he said to all the people gathered, “Stop your worrying. He’s come back to life!” Paul went back upstairs, served communion, and ate a meal with them. Then he picked back up where he left off and taught until dawn. Filled with enormous joy, they took the boy home alive and everyone was encouraged.”Acts 20:10-12 TPT.

Retrospectively thinking about this subject, I have heard some sermons where I felt like I was nearly dying of boredom while I was listening to them. The bible doesn’t subscribe to political correctness, in this instance the writer says: ”…the sermon dragged on…”  So … this is PAUL preaching, right? The Paul who wrote more than a third of the New Testament – and yet he bored some poor guy into such a sound sleep he fell out of a 3 story window and got DEAD for his trouble.

You see, to my way of thinking —the one mistake this congregation made was this:  right after Eutychus died and was resurrected —  they went and FED Paul, and he got a second wind. And so he started up preaching again. I think we need a policy in place, that says — never ever feed a boring preacher. The moral of this story is don’t be boring – you never know who you might accidentally kill!

And do not, as in .. not ever!! — let the preacher guy get back into the pulpit again, because you could end up at church until dawn. Why prolong the agony? I particularly like the line that said: “he,(Paul), picked right up where he left off …” Most preachers would happily surrender their right arm to be asked to keep on going. It seems to me that there are two clear lessons for us all here. One is don’t ever fall asleep while somebody is preaching …and the second is … dead people are not a deterrent to whatever God wants to say!   Any dead people out there reading this today? No?? Good, just don’t go near any windows!

A word to the wise, for a pastor reading this – you may think your sermon is fantastic and all your points are valid … but if people start dropping out of the church’s windows like dead flies maybe you need an editor. Just saying is all … Some people need to be hugged back to life, and all the shouting and preaching at them that we can do, will not help them. There have been people in my life that I would rather have thumped on the head because they seemed pretty dense to me … but then I would need to be able to run faster than they can – so that shoots that idea down in flames.

Meanwhile, enough frivolity! Let’s get back to today’s real point … Love is always the answer. It is not an alternative response – it is THE ANSWER. Paul illustrated that practically. Love meant everyone went home from church that day happy, with a heck of a testimony all round. Loving others includes restoring them … back to life if necessary.This means we may have to stop and interrupt whatever we thought and planned to do, to love on somebody who seems pretty dead to us. The priority is always the people, not the sermon. 

Words can be blown away on the wind, and actions speak so much louder than words. Paul is the best kind of preacher because he interrupted his sermon to meet one young man’s need. Some of the people you and I meet every single day – might need someone to hold up their arms, like Aaron and Hur did for Moses, until the battle was won. … And some poor sods need to be hugged back into life. Maybe it’s time to start demonstrating instead of talking. Love in action is never boring. Bye 👋

P 2958 When the Master is away …!

/ DVH

… That’s when the bad servants beat up the good ones and started stealing, plus they cheat others, and complain about some people getting more than them.  Once they even killed off the heir so they could have the lot! There’s my potted version of at least 3 of those parables. 

The Lord told over 30 stories about servants and masters … do you think maybe He had a point for us?? My thought for today is this: those stories, parables, illustrations of what NOT to do are written to warn us. We’re His servants —remember? Those things were written to alert us about the kind of stuff we can fall into when the Holy Spirit is not welcome. You think that’s an exaggeration right? Yeah, so did I until the Lord put His great big exclamation point right next to the title of this blog! 

Years ago, there was this hair product called Brylcreem. It fixed a guy’s hair in place like glue!! Forget gels … this stuff was shiny and it stuck your hair together into the kind of a shiny helmet that wouldn’t move in a Force 4 gale! Men loved it. Meanwhile, at the same time, the ladies were also supergluing their hair into teased up balls that stood about 6-10cms away from their heads. We did this stuff … be-ca-us-e…it was the fashion. How dumb can you get and still breathe? Actually you couldn’t breathe much at all – that hair spray left you coughing and spluttering for ages.

What has hairspray and Brylcreem got to do with the church? Any church can get stuck in a shape that comes from the past by doing what we have always done, simply because it worked in the past! That’s what. OR we can end up following the fashions of the mega churches around us – instead of finding our own place. Maybe we’ve stopped thinking about what the Master of HIS vineyard told us to do, and started to think that our church is ours… OR … we want to do everything the way our great granddaddy did it because ‘he founded this church and they had wonderful ‘praise the Lord’ meetings way back then. This church has great roots.’ 

Fabulous. So how is the fruit production going? Good roots mean good fruit right? 😳 Are we still excited about the faith we first had when we met the Lord? We were over-the-moon-passionate about those things He is passionate about. IE: PEOPLE! We have been exhorted, in the book, not to leave our first love behind… plus our faith is meant to grow and expand and affect everyone around us … until we leave here. 

To me that means we should be trusting God with more today than we did last year … because, to begin with, more stuff keeps happening in this world each year! Things change, our kids grow, and our problems are no longer how long will they sleep? They are: what time did they come home last night? Who are they hanging around with? Unless we listen to Him and He starts blessing our meetings in such a way that others come to believe, we can easily lose our way. – like the servants in those parables.  

They had meetings in the bible that were so incredible people got saved just standing near the participants. I know that some churches have over 4,000 people attending and bible studies and programs up to the ceiling and back – but how many laid-down lovers of Jesus do you have? How many people can you call at four in the morning to help you with an unruly drunk or druggie who needs help? The kind of people who will open their homes and take that severely disheveled, smelly person in. 

The thing that corrupted the workers in those vineyards etc. was this – time passed and the master did not come back. So people starting improvising how they thought things would work better for them. In the absence of the Holy Spirit’s convicting Presence we will simply go through the motions …and then one day we’ll wonder why our kids don’t want to come to church anymore! Would we even notice that we are just going through the motions, Sunday by Sunday? There is a way to reach into our neighbourhoods … He knows it and we need what HE KNOWS. Let’s ask HIM! Let’s ‘ask, and keep on asking’ about that!

I don’t have answers, I just have questions. I’m not even talking about miracles, signs and wonders, although those things are great! I’m talking about healthy, happy, growing, spiritual babies who have a testimony to the goodness of God every single time you speak to them. People who are devoted to glorifying Jesus in every situation. Plus mature people who happily spend their lives for His sake, even if life takes a bite out of them – and it will – their fruit just gets sweeter and sweeter.

So what can you do about this? Pray. Raise your level of expectation – expect to meet with Him and have your mindsets challenged and changed, every single Sunday. It is not the preacher’s skill that will change you, it is the attitude of your heart toward God fulfilling His purposes in your life. Big duh! here … don’t stay mad at anyone! Let’s not be the kind of servants who mess around and mess up! Even if we feel nothing, HE will always deserve all the glory. Amen! When the Master is away …let’s do what HE would do. Bye 👋

P 2945 God’s TEAM needs HIS preparation.

/ DVH

“For the Lord is the greatest of all, King-God over all other gods! In one hand He holds the mysteries of the earth, and in the other He holds the highest mountain peaks. He’s the owner of every ocean, the engineer and sculptor of earth itself! Come and kneel before this Creator-God; come and bow before the mighty God, our majestic Maker! For we are those He cares for, and He is the God we worship. So drop everything else and listen to His voice!”Psalm 95:3–7 TPT.

““I tell you this timeless truth: The person who follows Me in faith, believing in Me, will do the same mighty miracles that I do—even greater miracles than these because I go to be with My Father!”John 14:12 TPT.

“Whether you eat or drink, live your life in a way that glorifies and honours God.”1 Corinthians 10:31 TPT.

Our total faith in God’s unchanging goodness, together with our decision to deliberately lay down our lives unconditionally — as lovers of Christ – IS glorifying to God. We have been destined to stand with the same steadfastness David had in front of Goliath, sure in the knowledge that God will help us, so nothing can stand in our way! You and I can walk into an enemy’s camp with nothing but lights and horns because He said to do it… and then we get to win! The Old Testament has profound teaching in it about the love and power of God in action in a people-group’s lives. Today I want to talk about difficulties being a part of our preparation.

Remember Job? God Himself set that man up for a huge test! He didn’t kill the man’s kids, or take his money, or cause his financial problems, the other guy did that. But we don’t like to think about what God will allow in our  lives, because we all love a happy ending! Unfortunately the bit in the middle of that process leaves us cold! Sometimes that is because fear has a foothold and we are not acquainted with His unending goodness. However, Job clearly shows us what life is like without the Lord’s protective hand … Job came through that awful test, because even though his faith was often misplaced and sometimes wobbly – He was still God’s man! 

The Lord wants to lead each one of us to those green pastures in Psalm 23, but we may need to go through the valley of the shadow of death to get there!! Even if He has to drag us through a bramble bush backwards! We need to approach this life dedicated to actively learn every day, to CO-operate with Almighty God, just like Jesus did. We need the same mind toward God HE had.  “Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself;  He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does. Yes, and He will show Him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.” John 15:19&20. 

This life we have here and now, is our chance to be the people who co-operate with God’s plan. But we must remember that we cannot choose how that works. That’s because God can do more than one, or ninety-four things at a time. So at the same time as we are walking in His power, we are growing fruit for His glory, fighting off the enemy and standing firm. Staying attached to the vine means we don’t move, we are there through thick and thin without doubting His love toward us.

The biggest mistake we can ever make is to see God’s goodness as a reward, or an add-on to what we already have – or even what we think we want or need – His goodness is about His character not our actions. God did not save us just to bless us and make this life peachy-keen! He is looking for A PEOPLE.  Read the book. He wants a people who will act and speak love toward others, just like Jesus did! He chose YOU because He knows what you are capable of when you choose to trust Him.

These daily tests we face are preparing us for what comes next. We are to be His salt in a bland, blah world, as well as His light shining brightly in the darkness all around us. We need to learn, through our own personal experiences, to be confident in God’s love for us even when things get difficult — because: “Depths of purpose and layers of meaning saturate everything You – (He) do(es).” Psalm 92:5 TPT.

Everything that comes AT us, is Father-filtered. So when we gave our lives to Jesus we put Him in charge of our new life. Now we are “His people, the sheep of His pasture…” It is good to remind ourselves that when we gave Him our lives, He took them! 🎼”It’s no longer I that liveth, but Christ that liveth in me…🎶” … that is not just a sweetly sentimental song … THAT IS AN AIM! …  A purpose … A battle cry!

Let’s stop trying hard to make our own lives perfect, by telling ourselves that when that happens we will have the freedom to obey Him! Otherwise we end up telling ourselves that when everything is going well for us — that’s when we will engage in His alternative unknown plan … after we’ve done this thing and that aim — THEN we can go be about our Father’s business. We need to GO be about our Father’s business, all the time — ready or not! Almighty God has not been, nor will He ever be, an add-on. Nor is the blood of Jesus just a free ticket to a better place after we have died. He’s the meaning of life!

We have been commissioned by the Lord Himself to tell others they need to be ready for what comes next … but are WE ready? “… However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [persistence in] faith on the earth?”  Luke 18:8b. Obedience to His heavenly vision is the key that unlocks the door to an eternal perspective … here and now. God’s team needs His preparation – and He chooses that for each one of us. Bye. 👋

P 2921 Running over!

/ DVH

“Overflow with mercy and compassion for others, just as your heavenly Father overflows with mercy and compassion for all.””Luke 6:36 TPT. That verse doesn’t sound much like a suggestion does it? It sounds like a constantly ever-expanding instruction to me. So the real question becomes…how? How do you overflow with mercy and compassion for others, the way Jesus does for you … ? Sacrificially that’s how.  That, by the way, is the same loving attitude He has toward everyone on this planet!  

Well, the first thing to remember is this, nobody can think their way through this one – our brains just can’t take in the magnitude of God’s love for people. We will always need His Spirit to help us. The Holy Spirit can and will expand our capacity for love and compassion as we allow Him room in our lives — the more room, the bigger the expansion!! It is worth also saying at this juncture that as we renew our minds, the easier it will be to know what the Lord wants from us! So we have to stop skipping over the bits in the bible we think we can’t do and start asking for His help to do them.

This is why we cannot afford to hold grudges, or cheat on our income tax, or walk past a poor person who needs help, or break the law by excessively speed along the highways. Those are dumb examples of an all pervasive current attitude toward this life. When will we decide we have more than enough and start to act like it by helping others? We simply must move away from greedy, grasping, looking after ME,  into gloriously generous, overflowing giving, looking after OTHERS.

This is one of our Heavenly Father’s characteristics … He looks after us daily. Look out of your window – did the sun come up again? Then His mercy is brand new again today. If we want to look like Him then we will have to walk down the same pathways Jesus walked. It was not a mistake that Christ was born into a poor ordinary family… rich people have a hard time with FAITH. That’s not my opinion …Jesus said so!

Speaking for myself, without the Holy Spirit’s help there are many times I want to say to someone who wants even more time than I can give: “Just go away will you? You are disturbing my nice image of myself!” But we can’t actually successfully think our way through spiritual things like this. The things of the Spirit belong to HIM! It isn’t helpful to berate yourself for not having the fruit of the Spirit either. We quite simply need His help, so we throw ourselves on His brand new mercy today, and take a leap of faith. First of all, how we feel needs to become wa-ay less important than His WILL. He will lead us, He will guide us, He will show us where we can be His hands and feet.

Compassion includes action.Not just sympathetic remarks, kindly meant and said. Love actually looks like something! Now here is the rub, the Lord doesn’t just say, ‘have compassion and mercy’ — He said OVERFLOW WITH IT! Yeah! Good one. Overflowing means there is more than enough, not just a little bit kind of oozing out the edges. I often drive other people mad, because I take things in the book, so literally. I can tell you that this whole overflowing bit is supernatural – in other words you can’t manufacture that lot by yourself! And you can’t talk yourself into it either – you either got it or you don’t, and if you don’t ASK AND THEN ACT, using your faith, and then just keep on doing stuff.

We can get so tied up with ordinary everyday things taking away our valuable time, that we don’t think to ask Him in to help us with whatever is going on. He wants to be part of every bit of our lives, not just delegated to an hour every day and four on Sunday. He will show us His compassion as we learn to rely upon Him. We need to know that He is gracious and compassionate, personally. Our theories aren’t worth a kilo of bananas! To learn things like that we must LET Him help us through our own difficulties, by choice – on purpose! 

The bible tells us that our God is a compassionate God: “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.” Psalm 103:8.  I just want to stop here, and say that the bible uses lots of effusive words. Like ‘over abundantly, abounding, overflowing’ … these are all greatly excessive words. They aren’t excessive words for nothing! Don’t just settle for a little dab will do ya! Go for the gold. Be like Joshua strong and courageous … and then stay and wait in the tent after everyone else has gone home! Press in. It doesn’t take a lot of words to press in, it just takes confidence in His loving nature and the ability to believe God is good.

Let Jesus be the One you run to, when stuff happens. He wants to be closer to us than a brother. That means we will give our time, it means using we will use our faith. It means giving out of the abundance of the knowledge that our God is in charge – so I will not diminish ME if I give something to YOU.I will care if your life is tough, not just in words but in deeds. If we want a pressed down and running over kind of life where we can spontaneously and generously give to others, we will have to change the way we live. 

It will not be comfortable. What part of Jesus’ life was comfortable? If I want ‘running over’ with compassion and mercy  I will have to stop thinking of my life as mine and start thinking about it as His. Bye. 👋

P 2894 Whose pleasure? …

/ DVH

 …His or ours??…

Around 4,500 years or so, ago, Noah sent out a dove to fly over the face of our flooded planet to find a resting place. The third time, he launched the dove, it did not come back …

“Then he (Noah) sent out a dove to see if the water had receded from the surface of the ground. But the dove could find nowhere to perch because there was water over all the surface of the earth; so it returned to Noah in the ark. He reached out his hand and took the dove and brought it back to himself in the ark. He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark. When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf! Then Noah knew that the water had receded from the earth. He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him.” Genesis 5:8-12.

Thousands of years later, in another time and pretty much another place … a dove landed on Jesus Christ’s head … and that dove remained with Him. (Matthew 3:16&17) Let’s be clear, when the heaven’s opened that day, and God Himself authenticated Jesus, I think it is pretty safe to assume that Noah’s original dove was long gone by then. That previous bird was deader than dead! But I wanted to bring this subject up today because hubby was talking to me about that thought a few days ago. I think the symbolism in it can speak to us.

First of all, blind Freddie can see that Noah’s dove was looking for a resting place! The earth was covered in water and the bird was looking for a safe place to roost. I believe this is one of the many incredible word-pictures of the Holy Spirit’s work. Thousands of years later, the Holy Spirit wanted to find a place to rest and Jesus Christ provided Him with that place.

Please note that the Holy Spirit did not land on John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin! Yet that man was filled with the Holy Spirit from before He was born. He lived a very peculiar life devoted to God – but the Holy Spirit was looking for somewhere He could stay and make His home. Ask yourself – why? Why would He want somewhere permanent? What is this telling us about the Holy Spirit’s Ways? 

I personally think we can over-emphasis the experience of being filled by Him, over and above the sheer joy of simply obediently walking with HIm. We get stuck in our own pleasure, rather than emphasising His pleasure. Again, something we need to think about! We desperately need the Holy Spirit to abide in us, the same way He abided with Christ. So the next question is this: What must I do, personally, for that to happen in my life? How can I make Him welcome?

Here’s the good news!  Jesus has already done all the work for us. He removed the sin that kept us in captivity and stopped us from living pure lives before the Lord. Now, the only thing that can stop us from walking with the Holy Spirit for His pleasure, is strangely – OUR pleasure. Our society at large, l-o-v-e-s double standards. Ya might want to think on that one!! 🤔 Here’s an old saying: a ship in the water is great, but water in a ship is not so great! I think, the problem is there is too much water in our ships! We need to value what He values … and one of the things I think He values is people.

When the Holy Spirit filled that building at Pentecost people didn’t rush about talking about how they felt – instead they couldn’t stop preaching, talking about and worshipping Jesus! Their personal encounters with Him led them deeper and deeper into obedience and sacrifice for His Kingdom’s sake. They met a Person and they followed Him! Our primary focus in this life matters. We cannot serve Him, and have the Holy Spirit rest upon us like He did on Jesus, when we continually choose to be double-minded. We must learn to live a compatible life. “For how can two walk together unless they be in agreement?”Psalm 119.1-2.

Obedience to His Word, despite our own personal fears, or preferences – or even inconvenience – positions us to continually walk with Him, relying on His provision. Almighty God loves obedience – it is one of the ways we show Him our love for Him. Our deliberate and heartfelt obedience positions us to hear and follow Him. It is like opening our spiritual ears. If we cannot hear Him clearly then we need to start obeying what the bible says. Pick the verse that says “Love your enemies…” find an enemy – and DO IT! This is what valuing His company looks like. Throw away your need to stew in wonderful feelings, and doggedly, continually, choose His Ways.

Let’s put aside our pleasure and choose His pleasure instead. We want to be the place where the Holy Spirit is welcome, a place where He wants to land and remain. Because when He rests upon us, we will rest in Him. Bye 🕊️

P 2878 Unconditionally forgive everyone.

/ DVH

““Your ancestors have also been taught ‘Love your neighbours and hate the one who hates you.’ However, I say to you, love your enemy, bless the one who curses you, do something wonderful for the one who hates you, and respond to the very ones who persecute you by praying for them.”Matthew 5:43-44 TPT. Many people don’t like this scripture because it hits something inside them that they don’t care to acknowledge. Personally, I think things like gossip have their roots in these attitudes. We try to bring people down by badmouthing them to others, especially if they threaten us or we can’t forget what they did! 

Hatred can be generational. It can be taught to us by the people we dearly love, who raised us. After that sort of family indoctrination, it can become quite easy for gossip, slander, lies, and hatred to be passed down from one generation to another. When generational things are cherished and repeated endlessly, eventually they break out against other people Jesus died for! Meanwhile, how sensible is it to hate some people ‘cos your folks, or your friends, or people we esteem hate them too? You know that voice that you can hear in your heart that keeps saying: “Wrong way, go back.” Listen to it.  We have the power of God in us — we can usher in generational change by our choices.

Any unloving focus can drag us away from our main objective – loving others. Gossip and judgment build themselves, through repetition about what some perceived enemy did or said.  And when the bad incident that started with anger, or judgment happens to our people, our house, our group of friends – then it becomes personal!  That personal experience adds weight to everything else that has gone before it. It’s a distraction from our main purpose – let’s not allow ourselves to be distracted away from our purpose.. 

Between all the hating, cursing, lies and the repetition of the terrible stories — hatred is now flourishing in this world. Now this ghastly attitude is set firmly inside a demonic stronghold. I think the press/media etc. lies to us regularly in order to provide sensational stories to get our money and attention. Advertisers love that idea! The press blows up information and twists things to make what we read, see, or listen to, sensational. 

Meanwhile, our thirst to be in the know, and our efforts to find out about something that garners a lot of attention, have created a monster. We have made ‘knowing things;’  or ‘having the skinny on this or that,’  into some kind of a competition, and in the process we have devalued the people Jesus died for. Those people who are supposedly informing us – prefer making money, or gaining information — to caring about their fellow man. Real lives are affected and sometimes destroyed, by falsely reported things. 

This happens when the story becomes more important than the participants. Things like that help to create hard, and sometimes deceitful hearts. Meanwhile the media is about money and making some people rich. It seems to me, that the press take their little texta pens, and colour-in what really happened, by bringing up the bad shades and diminishing the good ones, so that we will read/watch/listen to their version of what is actually going on. We can easily get sucked into this filthy whirlpool and end up angry with somebody we’ve never met!

I believe this practice is a device of satan, because he loves to capitalise on greed, plus our own perceived desire to know stuff. Gossip etc. has become a new form of addiction. But the truth is, we don’t actually need to know! We can pray for the people involved in terrible things, but we often can’t do anything about whatever is going on. All we can do is to STOP and deliberately let His light in through prayer. Unfortunately our idea of light, and the Lord’s idea of light can be very different things. How do I know that …? Because our light can often be hidden under a basket – that’s how! Hidden light is not useful. Darkness still remains in the corners. We dare not bring our own agendas into our prayers. 

Even some churches have been deceived, they have become more concerned about being politically correct than loving others. Our priority is always LOVE. There are times that we too borrow the press’s textas and do some colouring-in of our own – villainising people! We are here to shine His light into the dark places – not to spread the darkness around. To me, that means I need to be like Him no matter what is going on around me. A light illuminates, it doesn’t have an opinion, it simply shines by its nature. 

So what can we do about these things? Well, I think investing emotionally in something we have no control over, is the enemy’s way of wasting our time. We may even feel better initially, more in control of things, but unless we pray for both sides of whatever is going on, we are missing the point. We don’t get to judge who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. My advice is – don’t believe everything you hear, and remember to unconditionally forgive everyone. Let’s not get so tied to the things of this earth, that we can’t hear when heaven comes calling. Bye. 👋

P 2838 Our God is extraordinary in His devotion to us.

/ DVH

Around 2,000 years ago something incredible happened… Almighty God, did something astonishing – He came here personally, and lived among us. The One Who had walked and talked in the garden with Adam and Eve and led Abram to a new land; and talked to Moses from a burning bush – chose to live here, with people. Murderous ones, thieving ones, mean ones, nice ones, lost ones, promiscuous ones, as well as special…people!  Even way back then, the list of people who followed Him — or sadly, ignored Him — started to grow.

This very same incredible God then sent an angel to an ordinary girl who was about to be married. Almighty God sowed His eternal seed into the obedient heart of an honest, ordinary young woman. And that’s when the very first In Vitro-fertilisation occurred! (And WE think WE are so clever!)

The first point I want to make today is that when Mary was asked by God to give birth to His Son .. She said ‘YES’ — immediately. She said… “….I am the Lord’s servant, and I am willing to do whatever He wants. May everything you said come true.” And then the angel disappeared.” Luke 1:38. Right there, in her declaration, we can see something that was perfectly illustrated by Mary’s obedience and humility — the Wonders of God’s Love found a vehicle He could inhabit, for nine months, so He could be with humanity in PERSON. Jesus Christ walked, talked, slept, ate and was vulnerable in our midst.

He did that so humanity could become His people, back then – and now He with US – day by day. You know, God is still looking for a people who will say what Mary said: “Yes. Do with me whatever You want.” I would like to pray that He will be given free reign in all our lives. Amen! Imagine what that would look like! A people totally devoted to Him. But, back then in history, His own people progressively drove Him away. Well, not you and me exactly … but I think we would have if we had been there! 

Man’s greatest sin has always been rejecting the God Who created us in the first place! The people in the bible were just as human as we are, and most of them wanted nothing whatsoever to do with a God of such passion and purpose. They wanted a god they could manage – a god they could tell what to do. Humanity wanted a token god, someone who would judge between other people’s wrong and right actions, and approve of the one who was right – EG:… ME! And severely punish the other person who is quite obviously wrong: YOU! Especially if we don’t like each other, and we have a list of good reasons that have been carefully cultivated. 

We wanted SomeOne who would bestow lavish gifts on us, and make us feel good about ourselves. So eventually, we thought hard, and came up with a god that we made up, to worship at Christmas. He looks a lot like that overly rotund guy who appears everywhere, and he has a long white beard, and a bright red fur-laden suit, and a red hat. He was invented by clever men to steal away real faith from our kids – and cleverly introduce disappointment at the same time. As well as successfully sell stuff!

Unfortunately, the truth is that somebody manufactured this apple-cheeked person for marketing purposes! This jolly permissive person doesn’t intrude on the way we live at all. He conveniently only appears once a year – and big plus! -he  doesn’t want anything from us … except that we worship mammon, wherever and whenever we can! The god of this world disguised in bright red, who wants to buy our affection by giving us everything we want. Yeah, that one! I’m not a santa fan if you didn’t guess it already.

My second point is this: we rejected Almighty God and eventually killed Him … but because He is the only wise God, our Saviour, He made His death a vehicle that we can personally choose to embrace. We can be totally restored, back into fellowship with Him.  Just like Mary, we too can have – God on the inside. You know, It would have been so easy for this innocent girl to think that huge angel was a dream or the result of a fish pizza! She stood to lose a lot of credibility by her obedience – that answer changed her whole life. Who says obedience isn’t costly?! But the very Presence of God Himself inside her womb, overtook her fears and she obeyed – despite the personal cost. 

Our God also loves to give His people gifts. He gave us the greatest gift of all time when He sent His Son here, to earth to die for us.  But He knows that anybody can be robbed and ruined by indulging their appetites – so the gifts He gives us are not just for the person who receives them– they are for others. Our Heavenly Father is, and always has been, EXTRAORDINARY in His devotion to us all. Praise Him! 🙌

P 2779 Let the book change your mind.

/ DVH

The bible is filled with miraculous stories. And if you or I want to see miracles with our own eyes, then we need to believe the bible and be prepared to look out for them. I’ve noticed that miracles hardly ever happen in a rarified, solemn, silent atmosphere. Nor is there quiet background organ music, or angels in white nighties with huge flaming swords!

Jesus did all kinds of incredible miracles with big crowds all around Him. Some people missed them, and they were there! Most sick people didn’t stand quietly in a healing line! They pushed and shoved, and called out. Hungry people, sick people, smelly people, mentally unwell people, little kids shouting and screaming! It wasn’t quiet like church!!  Forget the postcard pictures of Jesus with a halo round His head … if the Lord had had a halo, everyone would have noticed!  Instead think about these things like this – what if someone famous from today’s world was trying to get through a crowd? That’s a more realistic picture. Wherever Jesus went, it was along dirty, dusty crowded streets with very little shade, or privacy. There was no pretty music!!

Yet our Lord loved it all – simply because He loved people. He never got angry or annoyed at all the people pushing and shoving and crying out. Speaking for myself I know I have seen quite a few miracles … but I wasn’t paying much attention at the time, and didn’t know they were miracles until much later when I thought about it. We aren’t half as smart as we think we are, trust me. I’ve seen some really brilliant things, and my first thoughts were: “Are they making that up?” “Is that real?” “Do you think it will last?”

The whole idea that the miraculous depends on us and our faith, is just plain silly. I know the skin I am in and it is not faith-filled. We need eyes to see what He is doing all around us. Our faith is in Him not in whatever is going on. My point is this: miracles occur all around us while this life keeps marching on – but do we stop to see them – have we let disappointment stop us? We need to let His book make miracles part of our thinking.

They often happen in messy situations – I had someone hand me a baby that was totally blue in the face and utterly lifeless and they begged me to fix it. It’s a long story… with a happy ending... I shook the kid and yelled at it: “Don’t you dare die on me.” Whereupon said baby opened it’s eyes and screamed its little head off. I gave it back to its mother and quickly went back inside my house. It was only afterward… when the mother insisted on thanking me over and over again… then I realised what God had done. We need Holy Spirit inspired eyes prompted by His book to see the miraculous.

Giving away bibles etc. means we’ve experienced all kinds of totally impossible things.. One of my favourite occurrences is when hubby says: “hello” and he smiles, and the person in front of him immediately bursts into tears and starts sharing their life story…   I dunno how that happens — maybe he’s got a crying anointing. Or maybe I’ve gotta stop him from wearing those Dracula fangs! (Only joking OK?) 🤣 … moving on … quickly.

Our pastor is ordinary, but heroic – what a champion! I saw this lovely man pray for a child who had broken a bone in his arm at church and after being checked by a doctor, by the end of the service the kid’s arm was fine. We need to look at this new life we have been given as a real thing. God’s loving passion is inside us, and it surrounds us, and then it flows over onto other people-who-have-not-met-Him-yet.

The secret to spiritual eyes, is to aim at love, and keep insisting that you need it. BE POOR IN SPIRIT. We give up on the kind of love that endures anything, far too quickly. I believe that loving others is the biggest key on our Kingdom keychain. We read His book to find all the ways He has loved us and to learn new ways to love others.

Our God is marvellous, He always wants to help us! Listen to this:“So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn’t hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing Himself to the worst by sending His own Son, is there anything else He wouldn’t gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God’s chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—Who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us.”

“Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture: They kill us in cold blood because they hate You. We’re sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one. None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.” MSG bible.

I dare you to read the above scripture three times in a row. Now, let it change your mind and act accordingly. Let His love embolden you. Bye. 👋