Personhood

P 2680 Walking free.

/ DVH

“I waited and waited and waited some more, patiently, knowing God would come through for me. Then, at last, He bent down and listened to my cry. He stooped down to lift me out of danger from the desolate pit I was in, out of the muddy mess I had fallen into. Now He’s lifted me up into a firm, secure place and steadied me while I walk along His ascending path.” Psalms 40:1-2 TPT.

I have this theory … the things that we consciously walk into, we often need to walk out of. What do I mean by that? When we are careless and wander off His path for us, it is highly unlikely that the Lord will sovereignly transport us back to wherever we wandered off! Instead we have to turn around and make our way out of the mess we’ve made. He will always help us, but it is our responsibility to repent and repair. An-y-w-ay, this man in the above scripture fell in a hole! I like this guy already, I’ve been down more holes in my lifetime than a gopher! 

Did you get the ‘waiting waiting waiting’ part? Nobody likes that bit. Why do we have to WWW? Patience grows as we stretch our faith by firmly holding on to HIS faithfulness. The secret is to keep looking at Him — it won’t help us to constantly revise how stretched we feel! Our spiritual predecessors knew all about waiting. Some of them died … still waiting!! Hebrews 11 – the great faith testimony chapter. There’s a whole big clump of people – whose names we all know and recognise – on that list, and it says – ‘by faith’ in it 20 times! When God repeats Himself, I pay attention.

The important part of these two verses above in Psalms 40 is this: “knowing God would come through for me.” See… I actually think that most people would think “stooping down” and “lifting me up” etc. are the important bits. In other words …we all want to escape from trouble. But the longer we stand still and wait for Him, and look at how faithful He is, the stronger our faith gets. Human beings focus on deliverance, while Almighty God focusses on growth. I’m not saying it’s wrong to focus on getting out of the trouble we’ve landed in, but there’s not that much growth on that path. In the end, it seems to me that it’s the wait, wait, waiting that grows us. And yeah, I don’t like that thought either!

The Lord wants us to know our own limitations, so we can continually enjoy His limitlessness. Everything good comes to us and meets us on the path of waiting and believing in His faithfulness. Christians are not meant to stay immature. We were born again to grow, and mature people know how to wait! BTW, did you also get that word “danger?“ Yup. Another thought no-one likes. But we will be rescued and grow — all at the same time. And that path leads UP, afterwards. I won’t have wobbly weak faith anymore, because God Himself will steady me. So the path I am on now, HE put me on! He has a purpose for me, for my life  — it isn’t just to continually test me, it is to show Himself strong and mighty on my behalf. Now I will need to live using my faith so I can see what He is doing.

Almighty God should not have to prove His goodness to us day in and day out by making our lives easier. His Personhood should be an established fact in our lives. This is not something debatable – His faithfulness is a pillar in the inner house of our hearts.  We are so blessed. We are living our lives on the other side of that cross. We have the writings of the New Testament, His living active will, to refer to. It is our check-list of who we are and where we are going. Otherwise the winds of change and tribulation will keep blowing us over, like the fierce wind speed of a hurricane. 

Psalm 103:4 says: “Who redeems my life from the pit”… Redeem doesn’t just mean ESCAPE … redemption makes things better than they were. It means transformation. Jesus bought my life back from destruction and healed me, changed, and transformed everything. My old ways to live, things like – being frightened, overwhelmed, nasty, spiteful etc. have gone. All that was killed off when Jesus took my sin onto the cross. Now I don’t have to live like that anymore.

We are blessed. We get to leave behind our grave clothes just as surely as Lazarus got rid of his! Now we have a new way to live – calling us up, higher and higher. Any tests or trials along the way are not our God being whimsical … He is not testing our loyalty – He’s preparing a table before us in the presence of our enemies! Now we can enjoy walking free of that old way of living, where we lived in fear that help wouldn’t come. We have proof in the bible that help has already come. Bye. 👋

P 2669 Stuff happens.

/ DVH

Sometimes I miss out on seeing what faith looks like. We can all quote this scripture and that, but when the chips are down and ghastly stuff is pouring all over us, it is easier to give in to despair, first. Scriptures are great for quoting and reading and understanding … but real comfort and victory comes from our actions and our decision to stand in the face of attack. But first we must recognise what is actually going on and grab onto Him.

Just recently we were awoken by some unfortunate news …my precious mum had fallen down – she IS nearly 97. Unfortunately, she broke both bones in her shin. Because of some old family circumstances, which are way beyond my ability to manage, I fell prey to despair. Now she’s older, someone who is not a Christian started making pronouncements, and this and that, and in the end, I started to think, ‘bye bye Mum!’ 

First of all, I want to start by saying God is so good to me, instead of panicking, I was actually calm inside. My emotions, were demanding attention, but my spirit man was fine. I knew it was the Lord, because I can quite easily flap-doodle. However, despite the very large clue of God’s peace-which-passes-all-understanding, — I started making burial plans in my head! Plus I forgot to pray – I simply accepted what that other person said. Of course when I finally came to my senses I prayed like mad and started praising Him for looking after Mum.

Nevertheless, when we finally got to the hospital after a whole lot of trauma finding parking etc. I expected to find my mother pale, in great pain, and at death’s door. And there she was sitting up on the bed like a cheerful white-haired budgie! She can’t see well, can’t hear hardly at all, and yet she was cracking jokes. At that moment, I was very grateful for everything the Lord has done to change our relationship … which has not always been great. Nowadays, talking to my mother is often hilarious, as she’s not as on the ball as she used to be. 

Anyway, normally, she can barely move about, and you have to shout – even though she is wearing hearing aids. She merrily describes herself as being as deaf as a badger. Honestly talking to her is so funny and yet at the same time it can be so frustrating repeating yourself over and over again. However she bears it all with a smile and her own weird self-deprecating humour. At the same time, like a lot of old folks, she tells the same stories over and over again, and when we returned from our last bible trip she asked us 4 or 5 times in just one visit, if the trip was a good one.😂

When I was younger she was a tour de force! Striding through crowds … picking up other people’s children who got in her way and putting them to one side. As a teenager, whilst trying to be invisible, I trundled along behind and copped the angst from the child’s parents who weren’t keen on their kid being man-handled! I was often mortified by her over-the-top exuberance. One of her favourite things was singing along loudly to elevator music. She sings quite well, so maybe she thought she was treating the other lift occupants – I dunno! Whether the lift was full or not, she’d sing away, and I would do my best to blend into the lift like wallpaper – madly hoping no-one knew I was with her.

Back to Saturday’s saga … apparently, both of the bones in her lower leg were broken but they had lined up neatly like soldiers, so a severe operation was not necessary. Thank the Lord that nobody wanted to give somebody that age an anaesthetic! When we left her she was demanding for someone to please cover her shoulders, and why hadn’t anyone given her a cup of tea? Meanwhile, the prospect of surgery had cancelled all food, and she was on a drip. 

Saturday helped me realise, yet again, that stuff happens, and we don’t always react as well as we would like to. But God’s grace is so enormous, there are times when He picks us up and carries us. I know my Mum’s forever starts in heaven, but I sure would miss her down here! Absentminded or not, I have my own private miracle which I celebrate every single time I see her. Sadly, we have not always been friends, but the Lord worked with me to give me such an appreciation of who she is. 

Meanwhile, Mum hasn’t changed one bit, she’s just a tiny little bit more sentimental now. Today, I want to celebrate the fact that nothing ever goes the way you plan it, and people do do the darndest things! But in every circumstance, LOVE IS THE VERY BEST WAY TO MOVE FORWARD. The bible tells us to pursue it and I can highly recommend the Lord’s wisdom. Because of His Grace, I have yet another testimony that He can take negative attitudes and transform them into a real appreciation of someone else’s personhood. He did it for me. He taught me to keep choosing love over my past hurt feelings and He transformed ME, along the way. Bye.👋

P 2653 Insight gives us clarity.

/ DVH

Hebrews 1:1-3a.“Throughout our history God has spoken to our ancestors by His prophets in many different ways. The revelation He gave them was only a fragment at a time, building on truth upon another. But to us living in these last days, God now speaks to us openly in the language of a Son, the appointed Heir of everything, for through Him God created the panorama of all things and time. The Son is the dazzling radiance of God’s splendour, the exact  expression of God’s true nature—His mirror image.” TPT. Boy, those verses are a WOW moment! Jesus Christ is God talking to us now … today, through His book.

God has not stopped speaking, but I believe that we have stopped really listening! We are too used to being spoon-fed. Every single thing Christ SAID and DID was to speak to us, now – today. Even His actions were WORDS. They contain a huge revelation of His Character, Personhood and power. Let’s just start with the fact that He was born as a baby, and He had to grow up the same way we have. At twelve, we find out that Jesus chose to value the Scriptures, and He took the time to do more than study them, HE LISTENED TO THEM, and He drew a deeper meaning out of them. A twelve year old boy confounded the experts of His day.

Anybody have a twelve year old at their house? It is quite likely that you won’t find their nose in a bible – you may not even find their nose in a book! They can tell you the last thing that happened in the game they’re playing but they probably only know a few scriptures. There was nothing about the Lord Jesus life that would make Him exceptional. But He was!  He was attracted to His Heavenly Father even as a child. Remember, He’s our Father too!  Read lt like your DAD wrote you a precious letter…because He did!

In the scripture above it tells us:“The Son is the dazzling radiance of God’s splendour, the exact expression of God’s true nature—His mirror image.”  Yet Isaiah 53:2 says the precise opposite. “He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.”  I love that! I love the conflict and contradiction of the Word, it provokes me into asking questions. Those two verses are talking about two different things. Isaiah is talking about Jesus’ appearance. Paul is talking about His heart!

This is the conundrum that has haunted mankind. Some people see the Lord Jesus one way, and some see Him another. Why is there a difference? I believe the eyes of faith see what is hidden. To truly see Christ, we need insight. Otherwise the bible is just words on a page of a book written in weird English. We are far more than the skin we live in – we are far bigger than that, the bible shows us how big. Anybody can ask for insight, it belongs to us all!

Isaiah is talking about the way the Jews saw Christ. The Lord Jesus looked like nobody to them. However, we can see Him today, if we open our eyes of faith and take note of the way He treated people … that helps us to really see Him. He is not an ancient figure in a dusty book. Here we have God’s Son, He is the image of His Father!. Let’s say that like this: Almighty God looks just like Jesus Christ! Ya might want to sit and Selah that a while.

There is more to mankind than just our outer shell!  What we say, and how we say it, what and who we admire, and what we give our time to – helps us to truly SEE each other. Don’t live in the superficialities of this life – we are made for bigger things! We have been exhorted not to just know each other after the flesh – but to know each other after the Spirit. What’s INSIDE that person you are speaking to?  At the same time our inside ears need to be attuned to Him speaking to us. I am not talking about a disembodied voice out of the air, I am speaking about an attitude that looks beyond the words, to the heart that spoke them.

INSIGHT is undervalued in our society. It cannot be studied out, it must be prayed over, chased, and pursued. We need to seek it. Otherwise the bible ends up being like a well-written collection of words written by 40 old guys. The bible says in Proverbs 4:7. ESV“The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight. “ Why would King Solomon say that?  Because the desire to truly understand is everything. That guy had hundreds of wives and even more kids, boy did he need insight … even to remember all their names!! Insight is the ability to look deeper, to go beyond the words and expose the heart and sight of the writer and whatever he is writing about.

Jesus Christ is God’s LOVE language to us. The bible does not describe the Lord Jesus physically, it simply said He was ordinary. Instead it describes His heart toward mankind. That’s how it is to be read. Not as a series of instructions, or exhortations, but as the Father’s heart written on every page. I have just been slogging away through the book of Chronicles. Man that will test your patience – name after name after name!! So I asked the Lord, “Why all these names?” He said: “Every single person is important to Me. Their names are there to show that they are valuable, whether they lived for Me or not.”

Insight takes the ordinary and looks beyond the superficial words, because it wants to know the One Who wrote it. I exhort everyone reading this blog, don’t just read the bible … look for the Lord’s heart. If you don’t see it right away, then ask the Holy Spirit to help you to go deeper. Insight adds clarity. And don’t forget to do what it says! 🤣