Possible

P 3285 Practical stuff.

/ DVH

I want to be practical today because I have spent a number of days talking about living in the new life that Christ died to give us. So today I want to talk about how I am learning to live that way. First of all, I refuse to allow things I’ve done, or things other people have done, to remain hidden and unacknowledged. I treasure my relationship with the precious Holy Spirit above everything, so whatever He wants, I do. Pretence shoots honesty in the foot.

Theories cannot change our lives unless we actively decide to participate in them. Most people want to practice the things we are taught, so they nod and smile and go home … and try harder to meet the impossible standard Jesus set for all of us. Over the years I’ve learnt I am not capable of anything but the appearance of good. However, Christianity is not just practical, it is possible. Here’s the good news. Jesus died to give us His power to overcome our enemy, our own faults, as well as this world! And here is the bad …truth, humility and honesty are the highways we need to travel on.

We cannot expect to serve Jesus and maintain the life we already have. The whole point is for US to be changed. This point is the place where so many Christians part company with the Holy Spirit’s Ways. However, we simply cannot live with a foot in each camp, eventually we will slide back into the camp that looks after “me, mine, myself and I!’ “Mankind heads for sin and misery as predictably as flames shoot upwards from a fire.” Job 5:7.

Over to an illustration … I have been at odds with someone in my immediate family, all of my life. We both just saw things differently – we simply didn’t get each other. I tried to avoid dealing with this person by staying in their presence for the shortest time possible. Then the Lord began to challenge me about how I was treating them. The truth was, I treated them like a bad smell! I was polite … and distant. The Holy Spirit can lead us into distancing ourselves from someone for a purpose and a time, but in this case, I just plain disliked everything that person said and did, so I stayed away. I didn’t like being around them – they uncovered who I really was! 

Then He began to challenge me and I saw that underneath my hurt and pain, was resentment, hatred and bitterness. I wanted THEM to change who they were to make ME more comfortable! Anyhoo, they weren’t changing, and as time went on, things got worse. OH, how I hate the land of worse!! So I gathered up my courage and asked Him how HE wanted me to treat them, and His perfect answer sent me into self-pity, tears, and petulance. After all, everybody I knew agreed that I was much safer far away from this person. But HE didn’t. I just need to say, that if you have a problem like this one, then you need to ask the Holy Spirit what He wants YOU to do, and do it – but be guided by what the Bible says!

At that time, Jesus told me to treat that person like I would treat HIM. Sigh. I would have rather swum through shark-infested giant seas to South America, than do that. It seemed to me like I was giving them permission to continue to treat me badly. Then the Lord said this from Psalm 91:15&16 “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. …I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress…” So I crawled up into that Psalm, and clung on to it like a Rhesus monkey and prayed ‘help help!’ At the same time, I banged on my hat of salvation, picked up my breast-plate of righteousness and the sword of truth, and off I went. FYI the sword of the Spirit is not for slicing and dicing the other person – the Holy Spirit guides and teaches us how to use this sword His way.

I recommend tackling this kind of relationship difficulty, with at least 3 Holy Spirit inspired scriptures, that you’ve prayed over – as well as asking Him for His wisdom. After a while of loving on this person the way I love Him, I noticed that they hadn’t changed at all … … but I had! That sore place inside me had become inaccessible because I had stepped into FAITH. Then I realised that so much of what happened when I was with them, I had taken personally – but those things were the result of this person’s mal-formed personality. What I thought was personal viciousness, was their way of getting what they thought they needed. Their humanity was on display, and they didn’t know Jesus so it was the only course of action they had.

As I stuck with the Holy Spirit’s plan, I gradually saw a brand new person I had never met before. I still didn’t much like the way that they did things, but that stuff is not actually my business. I found we could laugh together, and genuinely express love for each other. At this point I want to stress that only someone very close to you can hurt you so badly.  Other people can come along and poke you in the scars you bear from your previous injuries. Don’t maltreat them for jumping on your hurt places.

We call it protecting ourselves, and God says “He is our protection and with Him we will be safe!” I found practicing loving my enemy – in this case a family member – worked best, when I started with the person who hurt me the most! That person could be a spouse, or a parent or a sibling, but the transformation that we personally experience, gives us the impetus to continue living this way. We get to see His power at work in our lives.

Here is a final question: “Have you ever noticed when you are with someone who hurts you, it never occurs to you that you might be hurting them at the same time, because you are way too busy firing arrows at them?” Yeah, I know… bring that up! We can become so entrenched in our own attitudes we can’t see anything, or anyone else. Let’s remember that God’s word is practical, you can stand on it.  Fixing relationships is essential! Bye. 👋

P 3125 The Lord has His own way of looking at things.

/ DVH

I know the bible says we must love the unlovely – but I confess, there was a time when I didn’t want to believe that. So I repented of unbelief and then the Holy Spirit very patiently took me through the bible and showed me His love in action in that book. This has totally changed the way I read the bible. It meant that I stopped reading stories about the men and women in them and their response — and started reading them from God’s point of view. Our God has endless patience with us!

I recommend that everyone have a go at this! Actively prayerfully, look for God Himself – His ways, His thoughts. Read the bible as if He is speaking to you, personally. Our God is incredibly active, and as we see Him in His book, His reality impacts our lives. Ask Him to reveal Who He is to you, and BTW, be aware that wonderfully interesting things can happen when you pray that prayer. Jesus came here, in Person to show us and teach us – what God is like. 

WE might treat sinners badly, but Jesus definitely didn’t. Instead, He bent down to where the sinner was, in the dirt! And He had compassion on everyone. The thing I immediately noticed was that Lord knew these people didn’t have a Shepherd to explain God’s Ways to them. Jesus Christ is our God-given Shepherd. The Bible clearly tells us God’s ways are not our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts – but we must never forget we have a book full of what He thinks and what He does. Let’s stop looking at His book as stories about people, and what they think or say, and start looking at it as God revealing Himself to us. 

Otherwise His book becomes a series of instructions to be memorised and treasured purely for the WORDS. When I read God‘s book, I can choose to read it and read about other people who are like me and their struggles with God and man. But the person who really needs to know God is the one who chooses to follow Him. We will grow in our understanding and His grace for our part in His plans, when we choose to read the bible watching out for God Himself. Reading something, someone has written down, helps us to get to know the Author.

I believe it’s time for the bride of Christ to have deep meaningful times with the Holy Spirit, and let Him reveal God‘s heart to each one of us. Almighty God wants us is to triumph over our supposed enemies by doing things like – loving those who despitefully use us. When we do this, we release the Holy Spirit to have His Way. As we choose to make the bible about Him, it changes everything. Almighty God dearly longs to reveal His heart to all of us, and as He does that, we will see a part of His heart that has previously remained hidden. 

That thought is not meant to foster competition, or be a status symbol, by the way — many people have mistaken the Lord’s POWER for His HEART. However, He’s way too big for any one of us to understand. That’s why we will have eternity together, because we just plain don’t – and often can’t – get it. Instead we keep discovering new things and making them the next big thing … the NEW answer. Our God cannot be explained by a formula – He told us to seek Him. The Lord always plays the long game and human beings  are geared up for instant answers.

Until the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, His people remained ignorant. The precious Holy Spirit opened the disciples’ eyes, ears and their hearts to the reality of Christ’s life and death … who He is, what He has done for us. The very things that looked impossible for them before, now looked possible, because the Holy Spirit was there present with them, expanding their inner beings. He wrote what God said on on their hearts that day and nobody had to explain it. The Teacher, the Counsellor, the perfect Guidance of God Himself was there with them. He is with us, too. 

So that person you think you can’t stand for another minute;  or that person who used to beat you when you were a kid;  or that boss who is so unreasonable;  that spouse who can’t hear a word you say;  those people are all loveable IN Him! We simply need His heart, His eyes to see and hear them, not our own. Who loves them? GOD! Who knows them? He does! You will be amazed at how different people look, when you look at them through the eyes of the Holy Spirit. As we know Him we will understand how, and why He loves the way He does.

This happened to me with a near and dear relative. If I told you my story you might feel sympathy for me, and probably a bit angry with them. But God‘s point of view is bigger than yours and mine! The truth was I needed to look at this person through His eyes, and the minute I started to do that, I saw how broken they were. What I saw as rebellion and wickedness, was their response to the world they had come into, a world they didn’t understand. They were sheep who didn’t have a shepherd! 

Compassion rose up, and I began to truly love someone who was previously quite unlovable in my eyes. Meanwhile, I must warn you, the enemy did not let up on bashing away at my resolve – he doesn’t want anyone saved! That other person had been cemented into their attitudes, by time. So I had to choose to maintain my position in His plan for their lives, and make strong choices, with His help … to leave the past behind. I started to look forward to seeing them and being with them, because pleasing Him became my aim. Take the time to get to know how Almighty God thinks. Bye. 👋

P 3104 Cultivate living faith.

/ DVH

“For although we live in the natural realm, we don’t wage a military campaign employing human weapons, using manipulation to achieve our aims. Instead, our spiritual weapons are energised with divine power to effectively dismantle the defences behind which people hide. We can demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One.” 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 TPT.

I don’t have to think, or negotiate my way around your little peculiar habits or quirks or sins. I have the Holy Spirit as my Counsellor, and He made us both. He knows how to get through to you and I when we  shut down and we can’t hear anyone, anymore, because we are hiding. We can hum and haw about this and that, and obfuscate about why we did whatever it was – He knows the reality. We are so blessed, we have a secret weapon that cuts through everyone’s angst. He promises to show us how to reach others with His love and understanding. The Holy Spirit is our secret weapon!!

These verses are not about any on of us winning anything—instead we have chosen the Lord Himself to be victorious in all things. If we use the power of choice to get snarky and nasty and pay out on someone else, satan is the only being that will win. Plus he will postpone change in our hearts, in favour of petty squabbles and life-long longings for revenge. The way to be transformed is through God’s LOVE shed abroad, not just explanations! Or ignoring stuff and hoping it will go away. If you have sewerage bubbling up in your toilet, putting the lid on the top is a temporary solution. CALL A PLUMBER! 

Here’s some wisdom in its purest form … we can’t fix each other … we are ALL broken!“ ALL have sinned!” BUT! We know the Manufacturer and if we have faults and/or flaws, HE KNOWS HOW TO FIX THEM. Praise Him!! 🙌 

The Holy Spirit does these things in the quietest, most extraordinary way, and in our difficulties, nobody involved has a clue that at the same time, He is changing everyone who says ‘yes.’ Personally, I often figure it all out much later! Transformation happens when someone obeys Him – I love the way He does things. Retrospectively, we can see what was His doing, it was something He initiated that diffused the situation. However, the Holy Spirit will not blast His way in—instead He gives us understanding about Himself, ourselves and each other and a choice.

God is for us. We say that a lot, but sometimes I wonder if we know that when stuff happens. If we live most of  our lives, doing day to day things, unaware of Him – we will miss His miracles. When something unexpected and difficult happens, we can often drop into head knowledge and react in the flesh. I’ve found the very best thing to do is to pray that what we already know in our heads, will drop down into our hearts-–where it will do everyone good. Here’s a little test to see the difference between what you have carefully committed to memory and remembered – and what you know inside your heart. 

Are you doing it? Are you living your life differently because God Himself showed you a new way to do what you have always done? Has He helped you change your response to hard situations and difficult people, plus the way you see the Lord, yourself, and others? Otherwise all we will have is theories—or other people’s spiritual ideas. Those things that we desperately paste on the outside of ourselves hoping somehow that will do. Christianity is a personal, intimate experience with Almighty God and His Ways.

We are always going to experience some tension between knowing what He wants us to do, and our flesh. That is the place where what we want goes to the cross and dies. We always have a choice to die to self. Jesus Himself had a choice. He could have refused the cross. It was not inevitable that He died for us, it was His choice! “Not My will but Thine.”Jesus Himself set the example for us, He showed us that the seemingly impossible can be possible, with God Himself helping us.

If we are not aware of our spirituality, we can look at our lives as though we are all meant to be bright shining stars, and it is our attractiveness – spiritually, physically and mentally, that is meant to lead others to the Lord. But the truth is—one of our greatest achievements ever, might be learning to love someone who has treated us despicably! Yeah! I bet that is not written up in someone’s Facebook hall of fame! We must never ever forget the incredible POWER contained within redemption! When we choose redemption, instead of revenge God’s power of Grace and Mercy is released.

A living faith means we will put what the Lord Himself wants, first. Jesus shed blood through His pores because the pain of what He was asked to do, by His OWN FATHER, was so incredibly great and weighty on HIm. Yet His disciples slept through the whole thing! The truth is sometimes we would rather live this life asleep in the light, than face the pain it takes to put down our old self, and let Him help us put on the new one. Bye 👋

P 3068 We have an inheritance.

/ DVH

“For in His wisdom, God designed that all the world’s wisdom would be insufficient to lead people to the discovery of Himself. He took great delight in baffling the wisdom of the world by using the simplicity of preaching the story of the cross in order to save those who believe it. But for those who have been chosen to follow Him, both Jews and Greeks, He is God’s mighty power, God’s true wisdom, and our Messiah. For the “foolish” things of God have proven to be wiser than human wisdom. 

And the “feeble” things of God have proven to be far more powerful than any human ability. But God chose those whom the world considers foolish to shame those who think they are wise, and God chose the puny and powerless to shame the high and mighty. He chose the lowly, the laughable in the world’s eyes—nobodies—so that He would shame the somebodies. 

For He chose what is regarded as insignificant in order to supersede what is regarded as prominent, so that there would be no place for prideful boasting in God’s presence. For it is not from man that we draw our life but from God as we are being joined to Jesus, the Anointed One. And now He is our God-given wisdom, our virtue, our holiness, and our redemption.” 1 Corinthians 1:21, 24-25, 27-30 TPT.

God’s Wisdom cannot be accessed through our puny little, oh-so-easily-distracted minds. We desperately need His minute-by-minute input into our daily life. Together, as His Body – we have been freely given everything we will need in this life. The Lord Jesus’ life of love showed us all of God’s fullness in an every day setting. 

Jesus did so many things deliberately, for a far greater purpose than we ever imagined in our restricted thinking. He came to teach us by example. It is astonishing that Almighty God, Himself, would come to save the world in such an awe-inspiring totally selfless way. Now He is always present with us, as well as in us, in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Because He said it, we can believe it.

Jesus’ life and death are our God-given key which can unlock the mighty revelation of Who God is. Plus we have the Bible which is a road map into eternity. Now, anyone with a heart to learn His ways, can access Him in that book. However, every single one of us will also need the Author’s insight and revelation to open our eyes, so we can read it and be enlightened. The prime objective is to let the bible read you while you are reading it. Then we act upon it. Fame, money, earthly power or human intelligence, won’t help us understand what happened on an ordinary wooden cross outside Jerusalem, that’s why we need His Spirit to open our eyes and hearts.

Without God and all He did for us, we will live limited, small  lives — but with the Holy Spirit’s help – the impossible becomes possible. However, our enemy wants us to ignore these facts, using discouragement, despair and suspicion. It is one of his wiliest, sneakiest tricks. There is but one standard and that is – Christ IN us – HE is our hope of glory. He, and He alone, is our daily inspiration to live above the mundanities of this life. Jesus is SomeOne so good, so pure and holy, yet so normal, we struggle to comprehend how an ordinary human being could live and die the way He did.

At the same time, the bible also reveals to us, that we have not even begun to plumb the depths of Who our Heavenly Father God is … or how utterly beautiful and incredibly wise His Ways are. As we study His book, we can see that we still have such a limited understanding of spiritual things…. God Himself has equalised mankind in one sovereign action – through His precious Son’s obedience. It is no wonder that it can be difficult without the Holy Spirit’s help, to comprehend the vastness of what happened. Now we do not have to reduce God to our size — He already did that, once and for all!

Our access to understanding Who He is, comes from reading to His Word, with the simplicity and obedience of a little child. We need to read it looking for something to obey! Christ lived His life in total obedience to His Father’s will – He did all the work for us. Now we can come to Him the same way any child would come to a loving gracious parent… joyfully, without fear, or shame – always expecting to be received. Our Father’s enormous wisdom and love, coupled with His incredible goodness and kindness, coaxes us into an intimacy beyond our comprehension.

Jesus’ death and resurrection opened the door to a whole other way to live. That wide-open door can only be closed by our own choices. The devil can’t finagle his way in, or short-circuit what God has done because it can only be seen and understood through the spiritual sight of the Holy Spirit’s goodness, mercy, grace. Our enemy is so defeated—he now spends his time trying to distract us from the ongoing, never-ending revelation of our Father’s incredible love.  

Every single day we can always have the input of precious Holy Spirit. He has been given to us to open our eyes and hearts to that new way to live. Under His help and guidance, now we can gladly pass that Grace onto others who don’t deserve it either. You and I have been chosen to be the inheritors and recipients, as well as the distributors and executors of the Lord Jesus’ will. Bye. 🙌

P 3045 This includes YOU.

/ DVH

Acts 5:32 “And we are witnesses of these things, and the Holy Spirit is also, Whom God has bestowed on those who obey Him.”Ask yourself this question — if you are passionate and you want to walk with the Holy Spirit … then, when was the last time you obeyed Him? We need to press through our feelings, and be guided by His Spirit and obey – Jesus did it and so now, we can too!

Yes, of course the Lord forgives us when we act like Peter, and betray Him by denying our knowledge of Who He is! Even when we are putting our own safety, or our public persona ahead of our desire to own our Saviour. But just because it is common, that does not make it the norm. Total honesty is the best way through difficult  situations. Honesty with yourself and the Lord. Don’t settle for pretending, that just muddies the water. Be real. Tell Him you don’t want to do whatever it is, take a deep breath and ask for His help … then do it anyway – using your faith that He will catch you if you fall.

Sometimes, it seems much easier to crawl along … instead of making the effort it takes to get back up again! However, in spite of the ungodly attitudes that I know I sometimes tolerate, all that falling down and getting up again, IS doing something. Even physically speaking, when I get up and down, I am strengthening my muscles. Meanwhile, that thought is a laugh-riot! I have trouble getting out of my chair, let alone getting up off the floor! Moving on … do squats for a bit. Your muscles will quite quickly explain to you that they don’t like being stretched like that. Our emotions and our own way of thinking won’t like being stretched either.

So let’s look at the bible, where the answers are. In the story below the apostles are under scrutiny by the usual suspects … the spiritual leaders! The council are talking amongst themselves, discussing what they can do about these men talking about Jesus all over the place. Shock, horror … now people are starting to follow the disciples!!  One of the leaders speaks up, his name is Gamaliel – he is very wise. 

Acts 5: 40-41: “So, convinced by him, (Gamaliel) they took his advice; and summoning the apostles, they flogged them and sternly forbade them to speak in or about the name of Jesus, and allowed them to go…V41…”So they went out from the presence of the council (Sanhedrin), rejoicing that they were being counted worthy [dignified by the indignity] to suffer shame and be exposed to disgrace for [the sake of] His Name.”

Did you get that? These men rejoiced that someone beat the daylights out of them because that meant they were worthy to bear the Name of Jesus. You might need a few minutes on that one! That flogging showed the world around them, that they belonged to Him, and what they were doing was working, so well people tried to beat that obedience out of them..I’m pretty sure flogging and maintaining a great attitude don’t always go together! (Hebrews 12:4) But the Holy Spirit gave them Grace for that situation. 

Our God is FOR US. He’s not upstairs somewhere sharpening His pencil writing down our misdeeds – He is so-oo-oo not like that! He loves us and He has made sure that every impediment that prevents our faith from growing –  is now gone. Now we repent and repair things, for our own sake, and because that other person needs His GRACE too! I do loads of stuff for Jesus that I probably wouldn’t do for anybody else. 

This scripture from Acts revealed to me the way I thought about trouble. In the past I saw trouble as punishment. However, at the bottom of it all, when I really prayerfully looked really hard – I discovered that I actually didn’t trust God enough to get me through hard things. The reason I took difficult things into my own hands and fiddled with them, trying to make them go away, was that I didn’t believe He always has my best interests in His heart! His love for us is described in Ephesians 3:18-19: “..that you may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

It takes His power to help me understand that He loves me! That was a brand new thought for me, and it started me down the road I’ve been travelling on for years. We’ve applied the bible as a rule book slavishly, but most of us were too scared to get to know Him and understand how, and why He does what He does. We cannot try to understand Him with our brains or emotions  – we need to use our hearts! The Holy Spirit was given to us to lead us into the promised land of fellowship with the Father, Son and Himself. He knows the Way – He brought the Way into this world through Mary! 

The power of God is not just about someone walking on water, or food being multiplied, or when someone receives a miracle. We need His power every single day to obey and understand HIM. How do you get it? Ask for it. I don’t just read the word – I ask Him to use His word to read me – my actions, attitudes, thoughts and feelings. That’s when the Holy Spirit showed me something amazing. Because Jesus chose to be human, God Himself understands how human beings operate, in a Way He didn’t before! He has chosen to experience humanity. He learnt about His creation, firsthand, by being here among us. NOW HIS SON IS HIS PERFECT EXPRESSION OF FORGIVENESS.

Our God He can never be less than Who He is, Almighty, invincible, omnipresent and omnipotent God … But because He IS Who He is – He chose to go the extra mile and experience humanity in all it’s ugliness and stinky attitudes. Jesus Christ is our perfect illustration that men and women don’t have to sink down into the lowest common denominator. That thought comes from the other guy. Look at what Jesus did, as a mere human being! He had perfect obedience to His Father’s will. 

The Lord Jesus totally relied upon the power of the Holy Spirit, and He made that power available, through His death and resurrection, to each one of us today. We don’t have to flounder along feeling guilty and hoping God won’t notice we aren’t perfect yet. SomeBody else took the exam for us AND HE PASSED … With flying colours. Now the Holy Spirit can come to live in us, because God established a precedent with Jesus. He made a Way to make the impossible, possible, and He gave that way to all of us. That includes YOU. 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 2915 How amazing is this?

/ DVH

“There’s a day coming when the mountain of God’s House Will be The Mountain—solid, towering over all mountains. All nations will river toward it, people from all over set out for it.They’ll say, “Come, let’s climb God’s Mountain, go to the House of the God of Jacob.He’ll show us the way He works so we can live the way we’re made.”Isaiah 2:2-5.

We made it safely to Hall’s Gap. It is our first stop — so today I thought I would talk about mountains, because I am surrounded by them. We are staying right at the base of an escarpment. There are lots of different birds, a mob of kangaroos etc. and the kind of quiet you will only experience when you are far far away from the city. We chose to come here because God told us to come. Then these poor souls had a very bad bushfire earlier this year. When a bushfire rages through your neighbourhood, love, hope and joy get burnt up too!

Isaiah’s verses impacted me today, because I am looking at a large rocky mountain, up close. Isn’t it great that one day we will see God’s mountain and climb it, hallelujah! Meanwhile my climbing days down here are over, I can barely climb into a people-mover without someone kind of shoving on my rear end. Stairs nearly do me in, and my rock-climbing days in this world are over.  But one day ….!!

An-y-wa-y … the bit of scripture that totally grabbed at me from these verses, was:‘He’ll show us the way He works so we can live the way we’re made.’Imagine that! Jesus came here specifically to do that for us … and so much MORE!! Sometimes we can forget we were created to live in God’s Presence, to go for walks with Him in the world He made for us. But we chose our own way, our own opinion, our own logic above His instructions. Jesus modelled what Christians can look like, then He sent US back the power to carry it out.

He came here with a huge download of the knowledge of His Father’s original plan. He came to pay the price for, as well as show us visibly, what redemption and restoration can do for human beings. Christ illustrated, gloriously, what living in the Father’s Presence, and walking with the Holy Spirit looks like! He revealed Father God and His Ways to all of us in such a simple, unobtrusive, selfless way. The Lord made the impossible, possible when He came here to show us how God’s Ways work. Now, we too can live our lives, right here, right now, like Jesus did. We too can respond to adverse circumstances the way He did, and love others wholeheartedly with no strings attached. Isn’t that a big thought?

The power to live this life, here and NOW, differently, was bought by Christ at Calvary and released through the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This world needed to be redeemed before the Holy Spirit could be everywhere. Before Christ’s birth, the Holy Spirit came to be with just with a person for special circumstances. But now, He is available to any one of us – all of us -to teach, help and guide us. Just like the disciples followed Jesus around, now we follow the Spirit of the Living God. This is not a special club, the bible says: “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” Revelation 22:17.EVERYTHING ABOUT OUR HEAVENLY FATHER SAYS: “COME!”

The power of God was released, through a human being just like you and I, and then Jesus died and left here — but then He sent back a PERSON Who can be everywhere – to guide us.  If Jesus hadn’t done what He did so freely, we would still be striving to reach heaven through a religious man-made Tower of Babel. I think this shows all of humanity that we need to know the Holy Spirit and what He likes and loves, better than we know anyone else. The option remains with us to choose. First, we choose Christ to save us from our sins, and then we choose the Holy Spirit to help us become everything we were always designed to be. 

God loved His time with Adam and Eve in the garden. That deliberately chosen time is an illustration of His intention. It shows us that He wants to be with us, because He likes our company. We are the only creatures on this earth who can choose to love and enjoy Him. I believe the Lord loves the reciprocity of this arrangement. We do not have to pray and talk to Him – now we get to pray and talk to Him. We were made in His image, God does not want ‘yes’ men and woman, He wants us to learn about His Ways and fall in love with the One Who made us by our own freely made choices. How amazing is that? 

Almighty God sent Jesus here to free us from sin, and show us how to really live. Because we have the freedom to choose, that means our choices are incredibly powerful. It’s the minute by minute choices we make that decide who we are now, and who we will become  – the choice to live out His will, His Way is filled with the Holy Spirit’s power. Bye for today, 👋.

P 2691 Time to make a Move!

/ DVH

Today I am sharing one of my fav songs by TobyMac. I love this guy, he has seen so much heartbreak and he still

continues to exhort and minister and in spite of his difficulties, this man is full of hope. I pray it blesses and encourages you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ou-p_RDUbB4

You know, for too long the body of Christ has been happy to sit on the sidelines, watching our leaders do stuff. Even sometimes criticising them, because we glimpse their humanity. It seems like we are watching the footie or some other competitive sport. We love to cheer for those who are out on the field battling, fighting to win and yet we still pick on the guy who gets it wrong!  Instead of looking at someone else doing the stuff, we … you and I, need to practice looking to the Holy Spirit for guidance… so we will know what to do next. After all we are His army! 

In the natural world, letting someone my age into the army is just plain ridiculous. I have 2 hearing aids – because otherwise I can’t hear a word anyone says. I wear old person glasses – trifocals … and I spend my time looking about for the next loo, because my insides are no longer young! So when I look in a mirror I don’t see a mighty warrior of God – I see a tired old lady, who loves to nap at least once a day! I’m pretty good at Nanna naps. Meanwhile, I’m guessing most of us in blog-land aren’t ready for the Olympics either. Yet Father God has called each one of us to participate in what He is doing on the earth today. It seems to me that we must make moving and growing spiritually, a priority. That may be hard initially, maybe some of us have not been living a totally sold-out life for Jesus. 

If we truly want to know the Lord intimately, then we need to engage with Him personally, so that means learning to love what He loves – and He loves PEOPLE. That necessitates our getting off the bench and getting into the game. We will have to use our faith to do more than make our own lives easier! The marvellous thing about the Holy Spirit is that He is more likely to choose people who can’t do … whatever it is He wants done… because already they know their ineptitude and lack, firsthand. He’s wonderful! He promises to guide us into and through whatever we have to do, each day. He has a plan and He wants to go everywhere with us! Bonus buy! He will give us His grace, plus His joy, so we can authentically praise God for His help as we are learning to live a life of faith.

I think we are falling behind in our ability to rise above any occasion or problems we have, and it’s not because Christians don’t love the Lord. I think it is because they love the Lord, AND… !! Sadly, we also want to be and look like everyone else, so we end up in a default position, serving Jesus like loving Him is a special hobby. Whenever we do obey Him, there is often an ever-present fear that we will be ostracised or somehow fall out of step with the people around us. 

Most people have great excuses too – mortgages, food, bills – those things occupy our thoughts and days because we need to work. This means we tend to fit Him in around what we do for a living. We have not grasped what a life of faith looks like. It is so easy to think: “Well that’s what Jesus did, and of course He is just special.” No argument here! But Christ died to make the seemingly impossible, possible in our lives. We can live for Jesus and earn a living plus raise kids or live in retirement. 

“Jesus said, “The food that keeps Me going is that I do the will of the One who sent Me, finishing the work He started. As you look around right now, wouldn’t you say that in about four months it will be time to harvest? Well, I’m telling you to open your eyes and take a good look at what’s right in front of you. These … fields are ripe. It’s harvest time!”John 4:34-35 MSG.

However, as we obey the Holy Spirit we will discover what God will do through you and me. Paul, or Peter or James – were not extraordinary men. They served an extraordinary, incredible God. They lived and worked in the Holy Spirit’s Presence. They did not stand still – they knew it was time to move, so they obeyed what He taught them. Those people turned the world upside down. 👋

P 2604 God’s word is a revelation waiting to happen.

/ DVH

Psalm 19:10-14:“God’s Word is better than a diamond, better than a diamond set between emeralds. You’ll like it better than strawberries in spring, better than red, ripe strawberries.There’s more: God’s Word warns us of danger and directs us to hidden treasure. Otherwise how will we find our way? Or know when we play the fool? Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh! Keep me from stupid sins, from thinking I can take over Your work; Then I can start this day sun-washed, scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.These are the words in my mouth; these are what I chew on and pray.”

Have you ever watched someone panning for gemstones or gold? They swish water over the collected river gravel and then they swirl the contents around. The heavy stuff, the gold and the gemstones, fall to the bottom and the other useless gravel ends up on top. It is a process of elimination. I think that’s what the Lord does in our lives daily!

This trip has become one of those swirly, whirly times for me. Just when I think I might know something – round we go again and I’m wondering whether I’m sinking or not —- or whether this time I’m gunna end up at the top and be thrown out! I only know one thing, I want to be found to be gold, not gravel. So I keep on digging into His word, looking for things that speak to my heart, as I press on to face each day. Then I look for ways to apply what I read.

To live like that as a body, we will have to be prepared to be rumbled and tossed about – yet at the same time stay incredibly pliable, always prepared for change spiritually speaking. Our trust is definitely going to be stretched  as we get tossed about! We will need to see what the Holy Spirit sees when He is dealing with us. The glint of gold, the sparkle of a gemstone, hidden under the detritus of every day life. The only way that that can happen is to continually expose ourselves to His Word, taking everything we read seriously, and personally. 

Faith says God’s Word is good, it tastes like honey – even if it is sometimes hard to digest! “How sweet are Your words to my taste, Sweeter than honey to my mouth! From Your precepts I get understanding; Therefore I hate every false way. Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path.” Psalm 119:103-105. His word can give us understanding about ourselves, and others … it will expose and illuminate our personal circumstances. It takes us out of self-interest into His interests …plus it makes the impossible, possible. 

It can seem that miracles are spectacular things, like raising the dead, turning water into wine, healing the sick, preaching sermons that convict and convince. Maybe when we read the word ‘miracles’ we are blinded by our own ideas. But when Jesus miraculously fed thousands of people, I wonder if everyone knew where that food even came from! We can miss our own miracles, because they don’t come with trumpets and angel song. Instead we need eyes to see and ears to hear what He says and does daily, quietly, without any fanfare. Every single day I submit to His word, I have found He opens my eyes to new perspectives. He also keeps me aware of danger.  

The Holy Spirit, through the bible, challenges who I think I am. He checks me when I am about to lose my way. Before I became aware of the reality of Christ, I just blundered about saying what I thought … when I thought it. Because I was living that way, I was blissfully unaware of how what I said affected other people. Truth alone can be harsh and unyielding, but truth kissed with LOVE will set people free to see Him, and find themselves.

I like to use the above scripture as a prayer. Especially the ‘keep me from stupid sins’ part! This psalmist understands God’s dealings with mankind. He knows, that we are like the precious, but yet-to-be-revealed gemstones hidden in the accumulated gravel of our lives. We all need shaking up. We need to be sloshed about in the whirlwinds of this world, so we can be separated away from the false comfort we think we need. Unfortunately we won’t cry out for deliverance if we don’t think we need to be delivered. Instead, we could easily blame someone else for our own faults, and make them the fall guy! Here’s a hot tip: try asking Him; “what did I do?”

God’s Word is everything we need for personal revelation. There are things for each of our lives that are poised, waiting to happen, waiting to be discovered. I exhort all of us to search for the gemstones, and be careful what we throw away!  Think about the bible says, chew on it, sink your teeth into it until you get happy honey nourishment from it.  👋

P 2378 Forget about winning lotto …!

/ DVH

… most Christians have incredible riches they have never even accessed. We have a Saviour. 🙌  He is the perfect substitute for our sins, He gave us His righteousness, so now we have His kind of access to our Heavenly Father’s attention. Now we give Him back our lives for His purposes. Our Heavenly Father has given us so many incredible things, including spiritual gifts to bless others. We have a book filled to the brim with stories about other people who dared to walk with God, despite their fears … so we can see for ourselves what God did in them and through them. Our God is not far away, but near to those who seek Him … and Jesus made seeking Him possible.

Our Saviour, died to give us healing, wisdom, strength, patience, kindness, goodness, etc. every single day. We are a blessed people! He provides for our needs, He comforts us with His comfort which knows no boundaries – including race, creed, and theology. He doesn’t judge us, but looks at us with understanding, kindness, mercy and grace through human eyes. Almost everything ever recorded about Christ is about Him gladly interacting with people! Because of Jesus – we are the people who are blessed to know what Father God, His Love and His kingdom are like. That’s what makes us rich. We don’t have to guess, or hope, or imagine – we have a BOOK full of His thoughts!

The next time someone says to you, what does Almighty God look like? You can tell them – HE LOOKS LIKE JESUS CHRIST.  Point the people who don’t-know-Him-yet to the gospels in the bible. Tell them to look at how Christ treats human beings – that’s what the Father is like. This is why hubby and I give away the four Gospels. The bible is a large daunting book to someone who doesn’t-know-Him-yet, and a lot of the language used is old-fashioned and unclear. Plus it’s a really BIG book! We want others to experience the Lord’s heart toward mankind. Then they can see Jesus in the gospels, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, teaching them God’s ways, talking to people, answering questions.

In those gospels we see Christ is single-minded – everything He says is to explain His Heavenly Father and how His Kingdom works – in terms that ordinary people can understand. He shows people how to relate to God. He talks to farmers, fishermen, religious people, homemakers, and children. He talked to everyone with the same purpose, He wanted to reveal and clarify His Father’s love. The Father’s love is the greatest treasure this world has ever seen – and Christ came here to illustrate it, in and through His flesh. People do not know about this treasure, they think the bible is all about rules that they can’t keep … BUT the bible is a fantastic spiritual gift for everyone.     

However before ordinary people can understand the death and resurrection of Christ, they need to know that ‘love looks like something’; so we believe in helping others, praying with them and for them, as well as telling them in person how much God loves them. We don’t care what they believe, our desire is for them to experience the love of God first-hand, through us!  Now, as Christians WE have also become His treasure. It is our job to feed the hungry, heal the sin-sick souls to follow Him. We encourage the down-hearted, show the lost the way home and tell people this life can have incredible meaning. 

Righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit – all these things are intangible, but totally heaven-sent riches. We are blessed to be a blessing and that blessing is not about earthly gain – it is about giving away heart happiness and contentment in spite of difficult circumstances. As well as His love which is like a spring of never-ending water. Human beings must stop thinking that blessings from God are about God being in a heavenly service industry. Prayer is not a way to place your order! It is privileged communication with the God of the universe. He provides for us, just like He provided for Adam and Eve in the garden, but our relationship with Him is about FAR more than provision.

Lastly, everywhere Christians go, we get to wear HIS ROBE. That robe is about humility. We lay our lives down for others because He laid His life down for us. You don’t get any richer in this life than that, no matter what a lotto jackpot is worth. Some of the richest, most blessed people I know, hardly have two beans to rub together. And if you happen to be hungry they will throw the only beans they have into a pot to feed you! Now that’s really rich! Bye. 😊