Permission

P 3191 Find reverse!

/ DVH

The wonderful thing about walking with Jesus is that when I apply His attitudes to my own life, with His help, I can daily learn from the Holy Spirit, how to die to self. I can always chuck my car/my life into reverse and change direction. Why would any of us want to remain in a pig pen, when God Himself has given us access to the Kingdom of His love – through His Grace?

Initially, I learnt that it is much easier to push dying to self aside, than it is to tackle it. In my own strength, I cannot do it. The reality is, I need to use my faith in His goodness, and start doing what He said in the book, using my own power of choice. There are no short-cuts. This life is our battlefield and our enemy is relentless. So if we get knocked down, we pick ourselves up and go again.

Let’s humbly confess our utter poverty of spirit to the Lord — “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3. The bible says being poor in my own ability to conquer the things that pop up in me – is a blessing! Now, I need to ask the Holy Spirit to lead me through the maze of thoughts and feelings that I have constructed internally. I’ve picked up attitudes and ways of thinking that are not from Him. So I need to come out of denial, into the reality that … without Him I’m sunk. Jesus Christ is truth personified. I was saved by Him, for Him. This means those things that drag me about can be conquered —I can change! I can live as His child right here, right now, in this world. God gets all the glory when I trust Him!

However inside my thoughts and emotions, I may have been already set up by my previous circumstances to become a seething mess of anguish, frustration and disappointment in myself and others. So my best choice is to pray fervently for relief and I have put the prayer “Please help me Lord” on repeat, minute by minute day by day! What if things don’t change? Should I assume I am the one exception to the rule? Of course not. I choose  to accept postponement, and allow my faith in Him be stretched.  Accepting NO, not now, is still a faith step.

We were not saved by Him to fail. The Lord Jesus and all He did, made this new life of ours, goof proof. Meanwhile – freedom from sin, is not permission to sin!  We cannot live as over-comers if we try to find the means of overcoming inside ourselves. Our permanent choice is to believe In HIS power within us.  When we discover somewhere in our lives where we are not using our faith, we ask for His help to tackle it. The Holy Spirit has a road-map out of anything. If you are sick you could end up taking pills because He told you to do it.

Sin is not just our actions, it also comes from our own inward cultivated attitudes. Jesus said this:“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.” Matthew 5:30. Sometimes these attitudes and thoughts are so entrenched within our beings it will feel like cutting off a hand! But because of what Jesus did for us, we do not have to sin or make excuses for it. We have been given His power to walk away. He walked away, we can too.

We simply have to relearn how to live. That’s what the bible is for, to teach us how God Himself wants us to live. 1 John 1:9 says: “IF we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Jesus is utterly faithful – He can be relied upon to carry out His Word, because He is the Living Word! And now He is alive, in us! Every interaction with the Lord, is an interaction with His Word – here and now. We are writing our own stories of victories in Christ! Our lives will be transformed when we take whatever God Himself says, as truth and act on it, despite how we feel.

His love toward all of us is well and truly established in the bible. It was established before time began, and it will continue on into eternity.  When I choose to follow Jesus: “…the blood of Jesus continually cleanses me of all unrighteousness” – see 1 John 1:7. Lemme say that another way…AS I confess my sin and choose to follow Him, and not my feelings, I will be continually cleansed of my unrighteousness before God. This is how Jesus lived!

“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, purifies us from all sin.”  Keep living in the light of His Word, and His blood will cleanse us. Sin has been dealt with. It has no power over us. That stuff that niggles and nags at us, is our old nature. Our feelings can lie to us and tell us some things are too hard and we can’t do it. Don’t you believe them!

Let’s take steps of faith, and put our feelings to one side, and do what He told us to do in the book. The way to get rid of a muddied view of this life is to live humbly, admitting our faults to one another and not excusing them. Let’s choose to forgive, and put aside the fact that so-and-so was bad to me when I was little.  Leave the past in the past. At the same time, I will have to capture those intrusive thoughts that have been sent to remind me of what they did, and conquer the feeling that I can’t help what I am doing.

Our new-life-focus is about staying attached to the Holy Spirit, doing things HIS way, This life is a series of choices, often made on the hop –  IF we stuff up and make the wrong choices, we throw ‘our car…our lives’ into reverse, repent and restore the Lord to the driver’s seat and drive on! Bye. 👋

P 3155 “Behold the NEW has come.”

/ DVH

“My OLD identity has been co-crucified with Christ and no longer lives. And now the essence of this NEW life is no longer mine, for the Anointed One lives His life through me—we live in union as one! My NEW life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God Who loves me so much that He gave Himself for me, dispensing His life into mine!” Galatians 2:20 TPT.

Right here, in this scripture, we can see the benefit of living that new life we have been given – ‘in Christ.” IN CHRIST always means He is IN CHARGE. It also means because it is IN Him – then it is NOT in us. However, we can get the benefit, by simply acting on what He says. Despite our unrealistic hopes and expectations, this is not an automatic thing!  It will not fall on us, the Lord wants our ongoing permission, so we must choose His Way, every single time.

Our free will needs to be yielded to the Lord out of love and trust in what He has already done for us. This our gift to Him. It consists of daily, progressive choices, to yield and die to self, and live for Him instead. “In Christ”  means His Grace is in action in our lives and the lives of others around us. We are learning, first-hand, from Jesus things like ‘how to stop judging others from our flesh.’ At the same time we also realise this world hasn’t got anything lasting to offer. But now we can start seeing others through the Holy Spirit’s eyes. We are honouring the consistent pursuit of what Jesus calls “good.”

Let’s be clear, everything we need in this life to walk with Jesus, is already in our “heavenly account.” It was deposited there 2,000+ years ago. Now we simply exercise our faith to step into what is already OURS. We quite literally go into our heavenly bank account and make withdrawals over and over again — using that faith He already gave us. Because God says I can love the unlovely, that means I can step out and ask the Holy Spirit to show me how to love the person in front of me. I simply follow His instructions using my faith.

In our past, these blessings were presented with trying harder as a subtitle. And so we did our best to try to be nicer. We’d try to be the kind of person Jesus would be proud of, and we would try to persevere, etc. but in the end our soft, flabby flesh, outweighed our ability to try to push through. We need ongoing daily faith. In the try harder system, we learnt to give up, and go back to hating ourselves for getting it wrong, or we became proud and superior, because we think we got it right! God never meant for us to be frustrated by a system. Instead we are to be drawn into an incredible relationship where we follow HIM, step-by-step into a new way of living this life. 

We cannot continue to use the systems of the past to usher in whatever our God wants to do next. Jeremiah tells us that any system we can devise will spring a leak! “For My people have committed two evils: They have abandoned (rejected) Me, The fountain of living water, And they have carved out their own cisterns, Broken cisterns That cannot hold water.”Jeremiah 2:13. This scripture shows us, that Almighty God requires our loyalty … not just our lip-service. Our hearts need to change and when we obey His will, His way, the Holy Spirit writes that onto our hearts. You don’t forget those lessons!  Jesus came here to be an illustration of how God’s Way works. He even modelled dying to self right up to the end of His earthly life. His kind of faith moves away mountains of doubt and unbelief. 

In the past, the church centred itself around men and women who we saw as ‘specialists.’ They were God-gifted, and God-appointed, and they seemed to have a better hold on how to operate in the Holy Spirit than most lay-people did. They grabbed hold of His promises and operated in their gift by using their faith. But our God did not mean for His promises to be relegated only to specialists – He wants us ALL to walk in faith. The Holy Spirit is here to lead us into this kind of obedience.

When the bible says we are dead to the things of this world, it is not just a hope-filled saying … that saying has a whole lot of power attached to it! It is an absolute concrete reality. But living in that reality is not something the average church goer understands. We have no idea, that despite our age, or injuries, we are all elite runners who are spiritually fit for the journey ahead of us. What Jesus did for us, made us fit. Now we need to believe and ACT on whatever He says in the bible.

We have accidentally accepted a level of unbelief that is not biblical! We need to know His voice because Jesus Himself said: “My sheep know My voice and they follow Me.” John 10:17. In some versions it says:“My sheep LISTEN to My voice …”  Listening is every bit as important as hearing – we have to give HIS truth our attention!

“Since we are now joined to Christ, we have been given the treasures of redemption by His blood—the total cancellation of our sins—all because of the cascading riches of His grace.” Ephesians 1:7 TPT.

We were given something of incredible value and it is now up to us to choose to enter into it. Let’s take the time to comprehend what we have been given, so we can co-operate with the Holy Spirit, and give it away to others. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, the new has come into being.” 2 Corinthians 5:17. The new is already here, because the old has been gone for 2,000+ years! Bye👋.

P 3139 We make life way too complicated.

/ DVH

Hubby and I love to pray for the-people-who-don’t-appear-to-know-Him-yet. We ask them if they need prayer, and if they say yes, then we pray simple, clear, un-preachy prayers about whatever is going on in their lives. People cry all over the place.This means we need to totally focus on the Lord coming with us wherever we go.”We can’t do anything without Him,’ it says so in the book! 

So let’s get that big fat lumpy bit of our personal pride out of the way, so we can be a channel of His love into the lives of the needy people around us. We need to live under His watchful care. We don’t have to be obsessive, but it is also important to make sure we haven’t bungled something or other, or offended anyone. In this current climate that is easy to do. People get offended, and hurt each other all over the place. Nobody wants to give anybody the benefit of the doubt. Here’s an interesting thought:  people aren’t necessarily doing things against you – instead they are doing those things for themselves! Sadly suspicion is rampant, and blaming someone else is the name of the game.

The truth is, we won’t even know if the Holy Spirit is with us, if we insist on pretending to be something we are not. We can’t hear Him properly when we live like that. We are not meant to be experts, we are FOLLOWERS of Jesus! Please remember the disciples bungled things too! In my opinion we should all be still learning, even when we are nearly dead! Jesus IS truth – He doesn’t like deception – too much yukky stuff hides in deception. He is and always was, totally and absolutely real, and that means we don’t have to lie about our life with Him at all, because we are not trying to sell anything! Get used to being humble and not knowing the answer to everything.

Instead, our desire is to do our best to announce Him – not pretend to BE Him.  Acting ‘holier than thou’ puts people off. Meanwhile, I’ve noticed that Christians can be so scared of making a mistake they don’t do anything at all!. You know it is not a good thing to give ourselves permission to be two people, depending upon where we are. The person who lives at our house, needs to be the one who interacts with everyone else! All that deceitful, hiding stuff will shoot anyone down in flames. We are all saved by GRACE – so what’s the big deal if you are an argumentative fathead and I am a nasty big mouth? Pray for me, and I’ll pray for you! 

I hate being politically correct OK? I call that sort of stuff lying. I’ve found that political correctness means I am being so careful not to press any buttons in you – I end up not wanting to love you and I will avoid you. But if we want the Holy Spirit to come everywhere with us, then we need to be the same born again, still-being-transformed-person we always were. Leave the fancy-schmancy acting performances on the stage …  be yourself. 

Ask Him to help you see and overcome those things that pull you into mindless silly games. And then… ‘ask and keep on asking…!!’ Especially if you know you have weaknesses, then pray for His strength to be strong in those weaknesses. There are no incurable diseases in Christ – He always has the last word – physically and spiritually!  “There’s a time to die…” remember? We’ve learnt that talking to anyone, and staying filled with His Grace, draws people to Him. You stay filled with Grace by acknowledging you need it. The bible tells us HE will separate the sheep from the goats, I have no idea why we would ever think that should be our responsibility.

Those people all around us are just human beings like us, and often we have no idea how that person arrived at all those nasty, ugly attitudes. Nor do we know what the Presence of Jesus will do, if we take the time to take HIM with us, wherever we go. The Body of Christ has lost its focus — we are like Esau, going for the immediate thing that suits us, but to get that, we have to give up our inheritance for no good reason except that living and walking with the Holy Spirit seems too hard. Actually, it’s easy. We just need to point our hearts toward that aim and get ready to be wrong and acknowledge it – OFTEN.

We already have a perfect example of how to live like our Father’s children. Here’s the VERY best advice on being yourself in the whole New Testament. “Then He (Jesus)said: I promise you this. If you don’t change and become like a child, you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3. ‘Become like a child’ … remember that little children happily went to Him. And babies felt safe in His arms. We need to be childlike, not childish.The Lord is not like other people – we can trust Him.

Life is much simpler when you live with a childlike attitude. This means you hand your broken toy/life to SomeOne bigger than you are, and then hang around Him watching and waiting to see what He will do with it.  Then you obey Him. I love living like that. Complications give me a headache! Jesus has invited us to enter into a relationship with Him that is pure, trusting and real. Nothing covered up or denied. Be yourself and uncomplicate your life. Human beings aren’t actors in a role – we are just ordinary people saved by His Grace. Bye. 👋

P 3115 Obedience is action.

/ DVH

We sometimes kid ourselves about stuff in our lives that we cannot seem to overcome and say: ’God will understand.’ Yes He does, praise Him! The Lord knows we are all just glorified dust. But that is not our cue to merrily go on our way, and do nothing about whatever our problem is. His understanding, comfort and compassion are not His permission to continue down that road.

Jesus bore those weaknesses of ours upon Himself on the cross —He totally identified with us in our weaknesses … and then He overpaid. He took those things on Himself so we can live free of them! When something is already paid for, you don’t have to pay for it, again. But ignoring our flaws, weaknesses and ongoing battles with sinful attitudes, means we are postponing the power of God in and through our lives for everyone else’s good. A part of our inheritance is to be able to overcome sin with His power.

Hypothetically, if Abraham had just said “Yes,” to God and he didn’t start walking and following the Lord to the Promised land – he would not have had an heir from his own body! Those steps he took were obedience in action, and each one increased the patriarch’s faith. We must choose to step into our God-given inheritance, and live like Jesus did, by faith. Obedience reveals our inheritance. It is fatal to faith to cling to our weaknesses like they are some sort of excusable behaviour. Some of that junk we’ve been cultivating and giving into for years is destructive to US and others.

When things get hard in our lives, it means our Father knows we can get through them with His help — He strengthens us against the things that try to paralyse us. He stretches our faith so we can face what comes next. Have you ever wondered why somethings that used to flatten you are no longer that powerful in your life? Almighty God had mercy upon you and helped you. We can never do any of this by ourselves. The Holy Spirit wants to help us… He longs to help us! Let’s learn to ask for His help to do things His Way, because His Ways are higher, and far more fruitful than ours.

Instead of asking for what we think we need, we can practice asking Him for what we actually know we all desperately need – transformation. Let’s not pray to get out of trouble, and instead we need to pray He will help us go through! Then when we need help, we will be tuned into Him. We have His promise that He will be right there, with us, coaching us through our wrong ideas and thoughts into a new way to think. 

He will never cross our will, because our Heavenly Father God has respect for the man He made. He made us in His image – sin has spoilt that image! His kind of love allows us the freedom to choose to act like His kids and be a part of His kingdom …or not. However, His love is not based on indulgence, it is based on what Jesus did for us. “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the Name which is above every Name” Philippians 2:5-9.

We need to choose to learn from the Holy Spirit, our Personal Trainer, our Father’s Ways of thinking and being and doing. At the bottom of most sin is the way we think. And sadly, we sometimes think that we already know things! Try agreeing with conviction when it falls on you, and then follow Him into a better place! We can easily think we know ourselves better than He knows us! So we cry and beg the Lord for more time or more strength — when the bible clearly says He is happy to give His strength to weak people, and there is a time for everything – including change.  

Isaiah 45:9 has something to say about all that: “Woe to the man who fights with his Creator. Does the pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with him who forms it, saying, “Stop, you’re doing it wrong!” or the pot exclaim, “How clumsy can you be!?” Good luck with wrestling with God about stuff that needs changing. Jacob tried that and walked away limping! Think of Samson, or Jonah, or the Israelite nation! Let’s remember that although our wonderful Father sent His Son to die for our sins, Christ’s death was not permission for us to remain the same! 

Our part in all of this, is to be grateful for His help, and stay obedient to our Heavenly calling. Because of what Jesus did for us, now we have His unlimited FAVOUR. We need to cherish that favour. The stories in the Old Testament are there to teach us what rebellion looks like, and how it doesn’t work out well for the people who are rebellious! The Father’s heart is revealed to us, through those OT stories. They make it clear what He likes and wants from mankind – our loving interactive companionship. 

He sent His Son to teach us it would be a battle: “… surely this time they will respect My Son…”!!! (Matthew 21:37) So let’s not play in the devil’s dirt, just because we can’t be bothered fighting him off! We need to take the Lord seriously, because He first took us seriously. My catch-cry is this: obedience needs action. Bye. 👋

P 2996 Outer space is yelling at you!

/ DVH

“God’s splendour is a tale that is told, written in the stars. Space itself speaks His story through the marvels of the heavens. His truth is on tour in the starry vault of the sky, showing His skill in creation’s craftsmanship.” Psalms 19:1 TPT. Today, we are going to do some pausing to contemplate … off we go …!!

Every now and then it is good to take yourself outside at night, and just look at the stars. And if it won’t wreck your life, or your nightly routine — take your kids too! We all love to watch fireworks, but God Himself has the kind of splendour that is on display almost every single night of the week. Looking up at it opens up our eyes to His incredible creativity. He decorated that sky just like he decorated this earth …for His glory and for our benefit, then He declared everything He made “good.” That’s a really big statement from our God, Who is the ultimate definer of GOOD.

Here’s a fun fact:  the world has a new telescope – the James Webb Space telescope. It is floating about in space above us, and it can see much farther than the old Hubble could. It recently saw a large cluster of what appeared to be brand new stars … Yay! It turned out, on closer inspection to be a cluster of galaxies just like ours! Doesn’t that just blow your mind. It blew mine. 

Sometimes I think the thing that separates us from those ants which are always scurrying about, is the fact that God did not come to earth to save the ants! Did you know it says in the bible:“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!…” Psalm 8:3-8. It is good to stop and consider what God Himself has made. This kind of pausing is good for us.

Moving on, but still star-gazing …“And the Lord brought Abram outside [his tent into the night] and said, “Look now toward the heavens and count the stars—if you are able to count them.” Then He said to him, “So [numerous] shall your descendants be.” That’s some kind of promise! Have you ever thought about the fact that we, you and I, are sons and daughters of Abraham? God fulfilled, and He is still fulfilling His promise to that patriarch in each one of us,  until Jesus comes back. Here’s another fun fact:  Abraham was not alive on the earth to see that promise fulfilled! And yet there are times when we complain to the Lord because He doesn’t get us a parking space when we need one. 🙄  Sometimes we can be easily distracted by trivia.

It’s called perspective, and we need to deliberately stop what we are doing and get some.  Maybe we can sit and look at the clouds roll by in our lunch break, or watch rain drip off leaves on the trees. Perspective ushers in balance. There have been terrible things in your life and mine that seemed like they were going to end us! The ceiling fell in, or someone did something unthinkable, and we could feel life draining everything out of us.. 

But, here and now, we are sitting  – with me typing, and you reading this dumb blog … teehee – and we are still going. We survived whatever that horrendous thing was, even though it seemed insurmountable at the time. Sometimes things really aren’t as bad or permanent as we think they are  — all we need to do is look at the bigger picture instead of what is happening within our own little tiny frame.  And yes, I do know that sometimes when you stop to smell the roses you can get stung by a bee – or you find that very pretty rose has no scent whatsoever … but nevertheless, pausing is worth it. 

We need to give ourselves permission to pause. And take off all those hats we force on our heads. Maybe we could assess how many of those hats actually belong to us! I have found when I’ve done this, that many of the hypothetical hats I wear, are there because I don’t want someone else to be angry with me, or I feel obligated to put on a Christian face and do the right thing! Now there’s some dumb motivation!! Here’s a thought: that means that somebody else, other than Jesus Himself, is controlling me. It means my faith in His ability to protect, comfort and help me is slipping.

Romans 8:9 states,“You, however, are not in the flesh but are in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.” Have you noticed that the Holy Spirit is never in a hurry, but He is always right on time? Especially when you take the time to look at whatever happened to you retrospectively. SomeOne Else will be up tonight watching over us, no matter what is going on around us or outside, while we are sleeping.

The bible says in Psalm 121:3-4:“He won’t let you stumble, your Guardian God won’t fall asleep. Not on your life! Israel’s Guardian will never doze or sleep.” We need to remind ourselves that the Lord Himself has got me! He will not let go. So this life that presses in on us, actually doesn’t rely upon you, it relies upon Him, and His faithfulness and He ain’t moving! Give yourself a break, and start to inhabit a life that makes room for thoughtful  pauses …maybe there are times we just might hear outer space yelling at us! 🤣 Bye. 👋

P 2951 Grace is an overlooked GIFT.

/ DVH

First we forgive ……then we walk it out. Yeah. Forgiveness is a piece of cake … in theory! Living it out has terminal repercussions – you will have to die to self! Saying “I’m sorry” and “please forgive me” is hard. Especially when the other person is wrong. They hurt you, it was real, and right now, your heart is limping.

Saying we are sorry, without accompanying actions, is tokenism. It is not Grace – true Grace has the power of God in it. The point of entering into forgiveness with someone who has truly hurt you, is not just about them -Jesus made that incredibly clear. When we hold on to grudges against other people we are hurting ourselves. We need to introduce the possibility of restoration. Unrestricted Grace does that. Grace is the gift we give ourselves, as we give it to someone else. Meanwhile, people’s reactions change when animosity leaves the room.

We can spend so much time telling ourselves “we are right and that other person is wrong” and forget that we are ALL under the same banner of redemption. Reconciliation is what Jesus did when He took away the punishment for our sins, forever. He reconciled mankind to Himself. This means HE DOESN’T HOLD GRUDGES. He has chosen not to remember our sins, and clearly told us to treat each other the same way. 

If we pretend to forgive, or even withhold forgiveness for one reason or another, we are short-circuiting His heavenly transaction and the possibility of redemption is not complete. It is a process – it can take time – so we just keep pressing on. We need to tear up and throw away those carefully hidden lists we have against people who have deeply hurt us … sometimes over and over again. You know the enemy lies to us and tells us that those nasty little lists of someone else’s faults are protecting us. What a rort! Love doesn’t keep a list of wrongs. 

Unfortunately, it is incredibly easy nowadays to label those lists as “things I need to be careful about with So and So, or they will hurt me again.” Even if we hear ourselves thinking ‘they have done to me again,’ that means we forgot to throw away the original list! My advice is, tear the list up and burn it, but write PAID IN FULL, BY THE BLOOD OF CHRIST across it before you are done! In true forgiveness there is no AGAIN … Jesus doesn’t have an alternate book of life with things against US written in it!

He took His own blood and scrubbed our pages clean when we confessed our sins and asked Him to save us. Now all we have is a blank page, covered in His blood. Hallelujah! What’s more, when we confessed our sins to Him, plus other people, He took that list of our sins on Himself, and washed us clean with His Grace and His Word.

His Word is the greatest washing machine ever known to man! Even the sins we don’t know about at the time, are cleansed simply by digesting what the Scriptures say. His Word can wash out even the memory of wrong. We do this step by step, day by day…using our faith not our feelings.

Meanwhile, it is often likely that the other person will not change, because they may not be taking sin as seriously as we are! But we are now living in the freedom that comes from Grace … and they are not. So when the thought of whatever happened between you and that other person, pops up in your memory bank, take it captive. Find a scripture with His help and throw it all into the heavenly washing machine.

We no longer have to be suspicious of what that person says or does, because now we’ve handed our case over to our Lawyer, Jesus. That happened when we chose to enter into His Way of forgiving others. This means the Holy Spirit will fight for us, releasing His Grace to be quiet, or even genuinely kind, in those moments when we feel provoked by that other person.

However, forgiveness has nothing whatsoever to do with ACTING! Instead, it has everything to do with giving your active permission for the power of God to help you find your way through the enemy’s traps. We don’t just need His Grace, we must rely upon it – it is the power given to us by Christ to help us overcome.

And if the other person doesn’t change right away, their ignorance, or refusal cannot turn back the power of the Grace of God that has been released into their lives because of our decision to forgive them. Just don’t let any disappointment with the slowness of this process take it back in an off moment. NOW WE STAND. We’ve done everything we can and we stand still and watch what He will do.

We have chosen to apply what we know into our day-to-day lives in a concrete way. That’s how we digest it, it is what ‘walking it out’ – a day at a time, sometimes a minute at a time – means! Grace is an overlooked gift! Bye. ✞

Matthew 18:21,22.“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”  Ephesians 2:8,9. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

P 2947 Who are you really … ??

/ DVH

Matthew 21:33-46: “Now listen to another story. A certain landowner planted a vineyard, built a wall around it, dug a pit for pressing out the grape juice, and built a lookout tower. Then he leased the vineyard to tenant farmers and moved to another country.  At the time of the grape harvest, he sent his servants to collect his share of the crop. But the farmers grabbed his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. So the landowner sent a larger group of his servants to collect for him, but the results were the same.

“Finally, the owner sent his son, thinking, ‘Surely they will respect my son.’“But when the tenant farmers saw his son coming, they said to one another, ‘Here comes the heir to this estate. Come on, let’s kill him and get the estate for ourselves!’ So they grabbed him, dragged him out of the vineyard, and murdered him. “When the owner of the vineyard returns,” Jesus asked, “what do you think he will do to those farmers?” The religious leaders replied, “He will put the wicked men to a horrible death and lease the vineyard to others who will give him his share of the crop after each harvest.”

This parable reminds me that without active, visible, accountability and supervision what are WE, you and I, actually like? As in, who are we when we are at our house? The nice people at church can’t see us there! Don’t be two different people:“Admit your faults to one another so that you may be healed…” This is a good time to ask your family if you are the same person wherever you are. If not – why not?? The bible says:“I can do all things through Christ Who gives me strength …”

This is one of the parables I like to call, ‘the very-scary-better-think-carefully-about-them” parables. Not a cheery story. Not a happy ending either! However, I love that Jesus is a realist. He understood mankind, including the best and the worst of us and He knew what we could do to each other. Some of our biggest spiritual problems can come from thinking:“Oh, I would NEVER do that!” Can anybody smell the Pharisee in the room? Like somehow we have become exempt from our own humanity. That’s called P.R.I.D.E. OK, so now there’s another 27 people who have gone right off me! Ho-hum.

None of us know what we are capable of, until we are pushed hard enough by circumstances, or maybe we see an opportunity for gain. I’ve met a lot of the “Oh, I would never do that,” type of Christians in my life. Good luck with that one! If that really IS you, then you need to thank the Lord for delivering you from temptation! Nobody knows our hearts but the Lord, and boy does HE know what’s nattily hidden away in there. Stuff that can be disguised quickly with a change of our facial expression. I’m not keen on dishonesty. I think deceit is a deadly poison, it eventually floods the body and becomes a way of life. Self-deception is the biggest thief of all!

The only thing that can actively transform every single one of us is the blood of Jesus, and the truth is, if you don’t think you need it – then you won’t see the need to apply it into your life! Really, REALLY dumb move, Basil! You can lie to me, your mother, your family, the pastor, your friends, but … when life squeezes you hard enough you never know what is going to come out. The biggest danger we face is what I call the ‘who will know?’- opportunities.

So let’s get real, and hang onto your bonnet sister, it’s about to blow off —  there can be no redemption without acknowledgment of sin. Now breathe… and listen to what the book says … you could always read it out loud: 1 John 1:9 says:“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Hmm … maybe you need to read that again, it’s possible you missed a word in your clever speed reading. IF… if… if… if!!!! 

If’n ya don’t own your sins, you won’t see any need to confess them… and if we make excuses for our behaviour … we won’t own that either! I have heard about every excuse under the sun, from people who want to hide their real attitudes and self-centred ways from everyone. What a waste of a life! It is a waste of time letting fear and deceit run the show … we know that Jesus died to pay for all of it – but the prerequisite to qualification involves confessing our faults. We all have them. Presumption shot Peter in the foot, he was caught by a chook!

SomeBody already knows each one of us, who we really are!! He’s the Person we should all have holy fear about!We have made a god in our own image, and He’s very permissive and understanding … He understands I can’t help it, I had a hard childhood! Forget the gossip club at church, GOD knows! And our excuses just won’t hold water in front of His precious Holiness.

Forgiveness comes from His compassion, faithfulness, and that is only IN CHRIST. Our sin is no longer the problem, when we’ve given our lives to Him. However, when we try to hide from Him, and hide the things we still do from other people, then we are denying the power of the cross to cancel that sin. That’s the problem. 

Out of sight out of mind, doesn’t work in the kingdom of God. Honesty does. Confession does. Purity of heart does. The sacrifice Jesus willingly made for us does not give us permission to ignore the prompting of the Spirit of God. Just because we can’t see Him, that doesn’t mean He isn’t here, with us, right now. His Presence is all over His book … so quit skipping the bits you don’t like! The question for today is: who are we when no-one will know? Bye. 👋

P 2810 Discipline is not a bad word.

/ DVH

I wanted to call this blog:“What can you do when life whacks you around the ear-hole?” But then I thought: “Nah! That’s too long for a title.” Bad things have been happening at our house – as well as in our immediate family, and to people we love dearly. This stuff has been going on for weeks, sometimes it feels like forever!  It seems like we are being water-boarded by circumstances! We’ve barely had time to take a breath –  it’s like ‘whack a mole!’  

The latest jolt at our house was my 97 year old Mum being carted off to hospital with chest pains. There ought to be a law against getting difficult news before 7.00am! My mother is fine – she’s still very old – but she’s fine! I had to repent for not trusting the Lord to take care of her. You know when life overwhelms me, and it really does, there are times I have to crawl into the throne room to worship Him. I’m not looking for pity, BTW, we all have things going on that stretch us further than we want to go. 

Actually, apart from the actual circumstances — it’s my response to them that turns things upside down. I have come to love 💕 this scripture. “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” Ephesians 4:26-27. Did ya get that? The bible says it in black and white … it is my all-time fav book, and – it gives me permission to be angry – temporarily! Of course that permission comes with a caveat … don’t sin. Fix bad stuff before the sun falls out of the sky. I guess that means whacking people around the ear-hole is out… sigh. But still … it is not a sin to be angry … BUT it IS a sin to let it go on and on and on, for DAYS, without fixing it.

Lately, as I have mentioned before, I have had to avoid the news. It makes me shouting-at-the-TV-mad! And I can’t even hold onto the mad … I have to get rid of it before night comes!!  I came from an era that believed when kids were naughty or rude you smacked them … not round the ear-hole … just on the padded bit that we all sit on. This whole no smacking kid’s policy is at war with the bible … read Proverbs and hang on to your hosiery… otherwise you just might end up fighting HIS system. 

Where I live 12-14 year old kids, boys and girls, are pinching other people’s cars, bashing up old people, disrespecting the law, and carrying knives and guns. Yeah! I rest my case! BTW, I live in a quiet suburb in a reasonably quiet city. It’s not the location that matters, it is the lack of discipline in the home. We are going to live to regret the new-age idea that children are born blameless. That’s not what the book says.

As a little child I lived in one of the worst suburbs for crime … two of my childhood friends tried to burn their mum’s shop down. Crime bosses walked down the street, and if you were unfortunate enough to meet them, you looked at the ground and said ‘hello’  and hoped they didn’t know where you lived. You also said SIR because you didn’t want to annoy them.  

Consequently, I can get really angry about the lack of discipline everywhere today, because it’s ungodly. Read the book! These poor greedy kids will end up in prison – all because discipline was a distasteful word to their parents. Any bird brain knows that people should not beat their kids up, but a well placed smack on the seat of learning can help little brains realise they don’t rule the world. Start young. You won’t catch them when they get into their teens, they can out-talk and out-run you.

Changing the subject slightly – here’s a great verse that can easily get stuck in anyone’s throat: “For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes.” Hebrews 12:6. And here’s another one — but this one is guaranteed to bring a huge lump into your throat if you think on it.“Then Pilate took Jesus and had Him scourged.” John 19:1. I think this shows us clearly that Almighty God did not spare His only One-of-a-kind Son– so telling yourself that God will make an exception for you …  ! Well, you do the sum.

It also means that His discipline in our lives shows us that we are cherished by Him. Now ain’t that a rare and precious new thought!! I keep telling people that His ways are not our ways …BTW, did ya get the “everyone” bit in that Hebrew’s verse – no exceptions – not even JESUS! I understand that nobody likes discipline. It hurts. But it is necessary, because we can easily end up going the wrong way.

We must learn to resist the devil and persist in doing good while we still have the opportunity. Be-cau-se we need to be … “making the very most of (y)our time [on earth, recognising and taking advantage of each opportunity and using it with wisdom and diligence], because the days are [filled with] evil.” Ephesians 5:16. Discipline is not a bad word. Bye!👋

P 2730 SSSSSSHHHHHH!

/ DVH

Psalm 91:1,2. RSV.“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.”TPT.“When you abide under the shadow of Shaddai, you are hidden in the strength of God Most High. He’s the hope that holds me and the stronghold to shelter me, the only God for me, and my great confidence.”

Here we have two different versions of the same two verses. This psalm is my all-time favourite one – many people love it like I do! These verses tell us where we can live – they point to a place of great safety and security.  Absolutely everything else that is in this fabulous Psalm hangs on those two highlighted words. “Dwell and Abide.” We can learn to be spectators, protected by God’s shadow over us, and nothing can touch us there, unless He gives it permission. 

The bible has some of the best kept eternal secrets known to man. Forget Indiana Jones … that’s a whole lot of made up rot! These verses are about a real treasure, a place that belongs to YOU and me. Nobody else can keep us from this treasure because it hinges on our own choices.  It is our birthright! When we live there we allow the Saviour to rule absolutely every aspect of our lives. He is no longer an after-thought, or even a place we like to go that blesses us and makes US feel good … instead we have fallen so much in love with Him, we want HIM to know how much we love HIM… so we keep nothing from Him.

Christians don’t have to live subject to this world anymore, we can live our lives safe and secure in His secret place. No more struggling with the pettiness, greed, vainglorious ideas, rage, and strife because we have a place to live permanently, and Jesus died to give it to us. No-one else can take this treasured secret place away from us — however we can forfeit our rights to live hidden, if we undervalue His Presence, His will, His way. Jesus Himself lived in that place while He walked this earth, and … He voluntarily gave it up, when He chose to come out of that safety and contentment to fulfil His calling. BUT! He went right back in there FOREVER when He had finished His appointed mission. He’s there now, waiting for us.

These two verses are not metaphorical. This is a real place, and not many people find it, and choose to live there. To live like this we must choose to die to this life and all it seems to hold, and live for Jesus’ sake instead. That means we go wherever He takes us and let Him take away whatever He likes. At the same time He will give us whatever He thinks is best for us. I call that way to live – TRUST.  We allow Almighty God Himself to be our only security and safety, and spurn this world’s idea of comfort etc. And so we choose to live this life, the only one we have! … His Way. The Way the Holy Spirit describes in the bible.  

We leave behind the grabby, spiteful, greediness, and vanities of this world to live in a place where we care more about other people’s needs than our own. Some of us will die fulfilling that calling — it is a very serious choice —  choosing to live this life dead to what we want and alive to what He wants! However, this is a place of absolute safety – nothing happens there unless He allows it – so we know we will walk through the difficulties with the Lord by our side.  We can no longer be tossed about by the winds of doctrine or change. Like the Apostle John, who was put in a pot of boiling OIL — he simply prayed… When they fished John out again, there was not a mark on him!

Why? He was a spectator, not a participant!  He was safe in God’s secret place. However, he WAS put in that oil and if he had taken the time to notice that he would have been burnt to death. THE MAN’S FOCUS WAS ELSEWHERE.  He simply walked with Christ and that was enough. “He loved not his life unto death …” Just like Jesus did. That’s what following Jesus really means – we choose to die and He lives through us. We choose to love our enemies and that drives them crazy … or it changes them.

Sometimes the darndest secrets are hidden in the bible. You read it and think …’well blow me down, who knew that was in there?’ It’s not an ordinary book. If someone tells me that God told them that He was going to make them rich … I smile politely and walk away laughing inside. I am rich already. My money is in His bank! Nobody can pinch it there. I give where He says I should without blinking. If I need something, then I ask my Heavenly Father, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills –  He’ll just sell a cow!  

Living in the secret place means we are hidden in His strength, learning to roll with life’s punches because He is protecting us, and we trust Him implicitly. Ssh! The secret is out. Who wants to be a spectator, who wants to live to do what He wants? 👋 

P 2670 It’s later than we all think.

/ DVH

Romans 13:11-14: “Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”

In these difficult times, we can get extremely busy, and then we forget WHO we belong to. We start acting and re-acting like the people around us. Sadly, their god is often their appetites and misery. Even our own ideas of down-time and entertainment can sometimes wander off into hedonism and violence. Like Paul said – that stuff is not for us. I exhort you to treat entertainment like food, and pray over everything. I believe the Lord Himself will show anyone what is good, or not good in their life, when we ask Him. My own policy is this – when in doubt, don’t!  I have a pretty fertile imagination and so I’ve learnt you can’t un-see or un-hear stuff once you’ve sat around absorbing it!

As for casting off the works of darkness, the things of the darkness aren’t always on TV or in some game …we can easily be distracted by an argumentative spirit, or a bad temper, or a negative or critical attitude. The enemy’s deceptions are not obvious like sexual deviancy or a violent response to provocation! ‘It is the little foxes that spoil the vines…’  Likewise it is the things that we make allowance for, that drag us away from the Lord’s ways. We are exhorted to number our days, because they are few. Actively choose to learn to co-operate with the Holy Spirit, nobody else can do that for you.

The bible tells us clearly what to put off … let’s do that and leave our feelings and needs out of it! Currently practically every generation on this planet is held captive to how it feels at any given moment. Human beings are bigger than their feelings! Praise God, the bible doesn’t just tell us what to put OFF – it also tells us what to put ON. We put on the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords using our faith in His power within us…We do this one day, one interaction with Him, at a time. Basically Paul is saying: ‘Don’t make a space for anything that will entice you away from loving and serving Jesus. The things of this world will drag you under into despair and shame.’ Amen!

Our lives are geared into working hard, so we want to allow for relaxation. And if that pleasure is taken away, then we think the sky will fall, because we instinctively know that we need rest. We get our REST from Christ! Anything else is a poor substitute. Just because there are times when we are not good at achieving that aim, that does not mean we have permission to let loose, and ignore things. Pleasure itself is not bad, but exalting anything over our passion for Him, will result in the Lord ending up in second place. And eventually, if we are not careful, He slides right out of the picture. 

That’s one of the things I truly love about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They will not force Their Ways on us. We don’t have to do anything! We choose to do it, to remain close to Him, and daily learn more about our new life in Christ. There are times I wish preachers would talk more about falling in Love with Him, because I think the Body of Christ really needs this kind of exhortation. When we love someone we will do anything for them, and abstinence is not painful, because it is a joy to be close to them. Personally, I love to hang around with someone who knows Him much better than I do. I can learn from them how to hold Him up in such a way that my response is pure worship. The more we invest in His life in us, the more His life will flow out of us.   

Our contribution matters – even if it is unseen. Many, many people underestimate their contribution. A loving heart that wants the best for everyone around them, makes a far greater contribution than someone who is caught up in their own needs and wants. To live like Christ did, we must actively, daily, choose to die. Physically, the truth is, we are all dying anyway – we start to die the moment we are born! But if we cling to this life and withhold our loving contribution from others… our true self will die a lot faster!

James 4:14: “How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.” Let’s learn to respect the fact that we are visitors in this life. None of what we have been given belongs to us. As one very far-sighted person once said: “You will never see a U-haul trailer filled with this world’s goods, attached to a hearse!” Only God knows how valuable each contribution is – and how much it affects the people around us. Instead of languishing away under how hard life is – let’s learn to celebrate the fact that now we have the Author of life, living within us. That will involve our active participation. It is MUCH later than we all think.

Bye. 👋

Romans 14:8: “For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”