Poer

P 2740 Hidden.

/ DVH

Colossians 3:3: “For you died [to this world], and your [new, real] life is hidden with Christ in God.” (AMP) This verse reads like this in the MSG version: “Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you’ll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.”

It is essential that we understand our God-given position because our Saviour’s blood bought and paid for it! Right now, we are dead to ourselves and alive to His Way of thinking and being. This is now our hiding place! Psalm 91 talks extensively about what being ‘hidden’ means. Read it often. Otherwise we can easily get discouraged, disappointed, and feel over-whelmed. Our complete strength lies in the place we choose to live. His will, His way is now our motto. Living hidden in Christ means we’ve put aside our way of living – grabbing this and fighting for that – and we’ve picked up His Way – the way of the Cross. And if I don’t have something, then I don’t need it!

God loves us so much that He wants to hide us in the safest place on this planet…He has hidden us in Christ, simply because He loves us. Our position is one of protection. Peace is now our right – because our peace comes from the inside, not from external circumstances. We live confident in the knowledge that nothing can get by His powerful, gentle, passionate love – unless He lets it through. When He allows stuff through, we face a learning curve, so we prayerfully follow Jesus through His ‘master class in surrender.’ So when something does come at us, we know that with His help we can deal with it..

God will never leave us alone to muddle along… He has chosen to hide us in what Christ did for us. He carved us into the palms of Jesus hands. (Isaiah) Those wicked nails carved through Christ’s flesh and bone, and Jesus has an eternal reminder that we belong to Him now. That’s how strongly He identifies with you and I. To Christ we were always worth the agony He suffered. That’s also our hope-filled message for others, that there is a safe place to live – our sins gone, hidden in what Christ already did! Jesus totally identified with us. He took our old self out of this world, so now we can be a blessing IN this world!  We are IN this world, not OF this world. Now we live our lives like He did – full of sacrifice and love for others.

Jesus faced down sin, as a human being, and He was punished for all of mankind. Now we have the power to step away from it. He has hidden us in the secret place of the most High God because in that place we can remain fixed — not tossed about by circumstances, fear, worry or our own emotions. Instead we are under the shadow of the Almighty … Whose power no foe can withstand. satan and his cohorts have nothing to say in the face of what Jesus did for us. Start speaking that out. Start saying of the Lord‘that He is your refuge, your fortress, your deliverer.’

We need to learn to become spectators. This means we step back and invite Him in, and now we are looking at our troubles through His eyes. Our emotions and thoughts are no longer in charge, and at the same time, while the terrible, worrying or difficult thing is going on, we will always have His thoughts (the bible) to think on …Learn to choose to emotionally, and mentally step away from being a participant, who has to come up with the answers — into being a spectator who is trusting God to be in charge.

The bible says there is peace in the secret place of God. I love that in the Old Testament, the Holy of Holies was quiet. That means that my brain shuts up — and wonder, security and His love all take over instead. I don’t have to pray endlessly because I am confident that He has got me. At any given moment, I can come out of there, because I always have a choice – but why on earth would I want to? Chaos is waiting for me right outside that door!

My best advice today is that we start praying to learn how to be spectators, instead of jumping into the devil’s plot and trying to wrangle with his ways– tormented by his innuendos and spiteful whispers. There are so many daily things that are far too hard for us to solve. Learn to pray first, then ask for the Holy Spirit’s help and step back away from the trouble into His peace. Hand Him every single part of whatever is going on because He knows what to do next. Now leave it all with Him. We need to learn to trust Him because … HE HAS A PLAN for us – He said so, in the book. 

The body of Christ today lacks trust, probably because we have placed more importance on feelings, encounters, and getting what we want. We can grow trust in Him by trusting Him when everything inside us is screaming that this a dumb idea and it will never work!  I guarantee that nobody feels like doing it at the time! That’s why it’s called faith. Learn to be a spectator, stay hidden, safe in His secret place – surrender everything to Him and live for Him. Bye 👋

P 2703 Even if we die, WE WIN!

/ DVH

Right here, right now, we have been re-born into something new. To start with, we are now risk takers. We take a risk every time we talk about Jesus to someone we care about, or even somebody we don’t know. People have been punched on the nose for less! It’s always a risk. I’ve learnt to do whatever He tells me to do — but, at the same time, I figure if I heard Him incorrectly, Jesus can redeem anything! So I ask Him to redeem whatever I did that missed the mark.  Plus I carry lots of hankies, and bandaids! … only joking.🤣

The bible teaches us to love other people, but the reality is we have no actual guarantee that whoever we love can’t, won’t, or don’t love us back. The best answer to that unfortunate dilemma is to focus on how much HE loves us! Sadly I think most of us are ignorant of that particular fact. We let the fact that other people don’t love us dissuade us from the reality of His eternal, passionate love for us.

So it is good to make that error our prayerful starting place. It is way too easy to start in the wrong place. Sometimes we start by doing our best to love others – but we actually need His power to love others. Sooner or later, everyone is going to annoy us, and there goes love out of the window. Instead, ask Him to reveal to you how much He loves you.

At the same time, it is not good to sit around waiting to ‘feel like He loves you’ to fall on you – instead, deliberately choose to decide to believe the book! Then begin to live this life the way we have been taught by Christ’s own example. One step at a time, always walking with the Holy Spirit. He doesn’t leave us, we may not be aware of Him – but He is there. If we fall down and do something that breaks our connection with Him, then we repent, repair and get up again. The whole point of Christianity is selfless living!  Sometimes, because many of us are needy one way or another, being selfless can be risky. Actually, some days it can look downright stupid!

However, we are now playing the long game, because this life we lead is eternal. We aren’t interested in a quick return on our investment, because we’re choosing to live this life invested in heaven. That’s a long term investment that holds countless treasures beyond our wildest dreams – some we will see here, some we will see there.  It won’t be hard to be nice to difficult people in heaven – it won’t even come up! That’s because we will ALL be changed. Interestingly enough, maybe the people who bug us won’t be changed at all, but WE will! And if that sentence grated on you – maybe you still have issues. PRAY SOME MORE. 😂

Jesus Christ sealed this incredible provision in His blood. He has made it so we can’t lose – the only thing we can do is to default on what we have been given.  We simply follow the precious Holy Spirit’s prompts and be prepared to die to self. Now, that’s the knotty bit … that’s when we find out who we really are, and polite falls off! Here’s a whacky thought, maybe we can’t get along with some people because our unchanged attitudes have corrupted our POV. 🤔 We can say that we will die for the ungrateful, the unkind, the deliberately wicked – BUT!! When that turns out to be somebody close to you … meh! Not-so-much! 

Here’s another thought … when we change our response with His help, then the unhelpful people will be wasting their time. They can say or do whatever they want, but we will have moved! The Holy Spirit is powerful, He just needs our co-operation. This is how we learn what the power of God can do, when we see ourselves leaving stuff behind we thought we had to have, and we step into Christ’s shoes.

It is how we become those people mentioned in Psalm 91:8-10 “Only a spectator shall you be [yourself inaccessible in the secret place of the Most High] as you witness the reward of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord your refuge, and the Most High your dwelling place, There shall no evil befall you, nor any plague or calamity come near your tent.” Every time we choose His Way, over our way – we enter into His protection, His kingdom. That ugly stuff can’t hit us in there. It just kind of lies about on the ground looking pretty silly.

Try it out. The next time someone tells you you are stupid, dumb, ignorant, difficult, grumpy, talk too much – just tell them, ‘ Yes! I know I am. BUT! I have a Saviour and He’s changing me.’ Duck those punches and pretty soon you will start to see them coming, and head them off before they hit you. That’s when you king hit them …. WITH LOVE. His Love is a collectable. It accumulates. The more you partake of it, and freely give it away – the more you have to give. Joy pops up fast on the heels of love. It’s hard to be unhappy when you know He loves you.

I am often astonished at how the Lord can take the worst situation, and He not only changes it – He utterly transforms it into something I’ve never even dreamt about! That’s the power of God in action. We’ve all been reborn to be risk takers – walking with Him means even if we die, we win! 👋

P 2662 “In this world you will have trials …

/ DVH

… cheer up! I have overcome this world.” John 16:33 … well that’s sort of what He said. It definitely is what He did! We are over-comers IN Him. Troubles come, and they go, but our God’s Word stands forever! Hallelujah! To have faith in the midst of hardship we must look away from the troubles, to Jesus, He’s the Author and Finisher of our faith.

“Don’t you remember those days right after the Light shined in your hearts? You endured a great marathon season of suffering hardships, yet you stood your ground. So don’t lose your bold, courageous faith, for you are destined for a great reward! You need the strength of endurance to reveal the poetry of God’s will and then you receive the promise in full. But we are certainly not those who are held back by fear and perish; we are among those who have faith and experience true life!” Hebrews 10:32, 35-36, 39 TPT.

For those of us who have been Christians for a while we can easily identify with this scripture. Sometimes all we can do is … stand. Even with our earthly legs wobbling and giving out, we will always need His help to keep standing up spiritually. That means we use the power our God-given choices and refuse to let the enemy steal our hope in Christ! This is how you get endurance. Standing firm in the face of adversity and holding fast to His goodness – which never changes. It is too simplistic to think that getting answers to our prayers will strengthen our faith. Most of the time, that simply makes us feel comfortable — because then, we have a well-ordered life to show to others.  The enduring life can be, and look … messy! 

Believing in His goodness in the face of adversity, means we are still standing … even if we have to lean hard against the wall of His Word to do it! We remain undisturbed spiritually, when that terrible bus of adversity keeps running over us. Even when our enemy is shouting through the broken windows …”He doesn’t love you, He’s gone off and left you all alone!”  And we lie there, bleeding. Blasted by our circumstances and pain, feeling every jolt and bump as the bus of infirmity, calamity and hardship keeps driving over our broken body … back and forth, back and forth. Endurance is a difficult thing. We get it by hanging on to Him, in spite of our terrible circumstances. We believe in His goodness when everything around us says He’s gone off and left us to our fate and weak devices. 

I hate to say this because it is not very cheery, but I do believe it is true – sometimes our REWARD will come in the next life, not this one. We simply must stop seeing answers to prayer as a reward — answers are His GRACE extended toward us, not rewards. Answered prayer is a place of thankfulness and worship. Even our covenant with Him is founded upon sacrifice. His incredible sacrifice at Calvary, and our daily sacrifices and choices that are made in His favour, instead of our own convenience, safety and comfort. 

Psalm 40:1-3 “I waited patiently for the Lord; He turned to me and heard my cry.  He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire;  He set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in Him …”

Trusting God when you are in the middle of “stuff” is incredibly hard. If you ask me in those dark moments when I want to be delivered from trouble and strife — my answer would be ‘about 30 minutes before it even happens!’ But the 23rd Psalm tells us that He is with us even when we walk through death’s dark valley. He is the Person who stays when the rest of the world walks away. We need to rely upon Him in those moments when we want to give up and give in to despair … because holding fast will stretch, strengthen and increase our faith that He will never leave us. 

I’ve found it works like this for me. Suddenly something awful happens, so I pray: “Lord, I need You badly.” And very slowly, as I hold fast to Him, my insides begin to calm down. If I turn my head to focus on the bad news, it will easily get bigger and panic will set in again. But when I focus on Him, those ugly circumstances may still exist, but inside I now have peace. In those moments, however, I need to stay alert, because the destroyer is still around. I have to  keep reminding the Lord, and myself: “I can’t do this without YOU.”

Don’t just grab at Jesus’ Arm to steady you – live your life clinging onto Him like a limpet – then those trials will eventually come and go, but we will still be standing. Whatever the immediate answer seems to be – the real Answer lives inside us. Bye 👋