Power

P 3491 God has a bigger plan for your life. 

/ DVH

Over the centuries, the church has progressively lost God’s plan. Today we are far too busy counting who belongs to our little group and who doesn’t. Jesus’ last resting place on earth was a tomb, and normal living people don’t live in tombs, if they can avoid it! A tomb is a jail unless you break out of it. The Body of Christ has been held captive for far too long in a tomb. We’ve been fragmented and separated from one another by rules and laws and opinions. Even today, we are still straining out gnats and letting through camels… and our inaction is one of those blooming camels! Tombs are only good for dead things! 

Father God loves to bless His kids, however blessing us is not all He wants from us. When we make our Heavenly Father into SomeOne Who is merely here to help us, we are reducing the power of Calvary. Our Father’s plan is so much bigger than a cross or a tomb. God made room for all of His glory to descend upon all human flesh. (Acts 1:8.) We’ve proven, over the past 2000+ years we cannot transform ourselves into vessels fit for the Master’s use. We need to be familiar with, and walking in His Grace and His Way of love, in order to walk with the Holy Spirit. This kind of walking changes us. You can’t walk with Jesus and be selfish. The two things are incompatible.

You may have noted that I hardly ever talk about when I think Jesus is coming back, I have other things to do. I don’t talk about it, because I want to be too busy doing what He sent me here to do, until that comes! If we think that He is coming soon, then we could easily slip into simply waiting for Him to come, and bunkering ourselves down, inside what we already believe. Instead of pressing on, under His guidance. There is more of Him for us to know this side of heaven. There’s far deeper reconciliation between people as well as denominations. Not just words, but true heart reconciliation, and we get to bring it with us – everywhere we go.

Just because we know the Lord will come back, that does not mean now we can lay back and wait, simply because we are all safe, bound for glory — singing happy songs, week by week, in our churches. There is such an urgency in the Spirit for us to move, individually, and corporately. That will be hard. It seems we’ve all been too busy building a life outside of Christ. “When Christ, Who is our life, appears …” Colossians 3:4. Thoughts like these should be uppermost in our minds. “Or do you not realize about yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you?” 2 Corinthians 13:5.

There has never been this many bible-believing Christians in the whole of history. There are a billion of us, and approximately 8.32 billion human beings altogether. That means you and I have approximately 8 and a third people each! Sadly nearly all of us are leaving the work He gave us to do, to someone else – like a pastor, prophet, someone with a healing gift or teacher. Maybe we avoid witnessing because it makes us feel uncomfortable – it was more than uncomfortable on that cross.

We must learn to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading. This means our flesh has to die, in order for the Holy Spirit to flourish in us. Prayer is great – do it! But let your prayers lead your feet into action. Live for Jesus, let everything else that wants to capture your attention, fade away. 

The Lord wants us to be pressing in and pressing on, not just floating about – waiting to be rescued from this problem and that situation. The disciples died thinking Jesus was going to come back any minute for them. He did come for them – however, they still died waiting, first! We can spend a lifetime trying to figure out when He is coming back, when Jesus clearly said “No man knows the hour etc!”  Let’s buy back the days while we can!

This world is SICK, and sometimes Christians are contributing to it. We can’t get along with our neighbours, and we barely manage emergency compassion, let alone living a life of love. Father God has done everything He can to reconcile mankind back to Himself, as well as reconcile us back to each other. He is totally committed. Are we? Jesus Himself, handed this ministry over to us, and gave us  the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God is not here so we can speak in tongues, or feel good … He’s our Empowerer! Doing things His way will change our lives.

Today, in our world, there are Christians who have lost everything they have, family, friends, a way of life, a place in society … all this and more, simply because they’ve chosen to follow Jesus. Now they live their lives standing on what Jesus said. They don’t have our Western choices, they live their new life wholeheartedly, because they value what they’ve been given. These people know what cost is. Often we think cost is about somebody being rude to us, and we refrain from  punching them in the face.

Our spiritual enemies look harmless. However, they want to woo, win and deceive us by encouraging us to do whatever we want whenever we want it. Encouraging us to pitch a tantrum if we can’t! We cannot afford to leave His work to someone else. You and I know people no-one else knows. Father God has a bigger plan for your life. You may speak to thousands, or only speak to one – but He has a plan for you. Let’s stop hypothesising about when He is coming back, and begin to live this life as laid-down lovers of Jesus.

We are wasting the time God has given us, right here and now. Christianity is not an add on, a PS to our real life. Unless Jesus Himself is our real life we are in big trouble, spiritually. I plan to follow Jesus … so wherever He goes, I go. Bye. 👋.

P 3480 More attainable than we think.

/ DVH

It can be hard to adapt to new ways of thinking, doing and being. But when we choose to live this life totally sold out to Jesus, living out His Will, His way, that choice is far more easily attainable than we’ve ever realised. It is worth anything, but it will cost us, comfort-wise. Nowadays, bad stuff happens all the time.

As usual, I have what I hope will be an illustrative story. A couple of years ago, my dear hubby began to develop osteoarthritis in his hands, feet, fingers, toes, back, shoulder etc. and he not only experienced awful pain, he had to have injections for that pain regularly. His ability to do ordinary things easily, just disappeared. It was very traumatic, as you know, we travel a lot. Hubby had just begun to enjoy watercolour painting and he loves to give his paintings away. He paints whatever God tells him to paint and it speaks to the other person.

Because of his lack of dexterity and the awful pain, losing the freedom to paint was very hard. Then the Lord gave me a word of knowledge – the skill to paint does not come from our hands and fingers or their co-ordination.. that skill comes from God and it can’t be taken away. It is a gift. A visual word of knowledge. I passed that on to hubby and suggested he try to paint with his other, non-dominant hand. At first he thought I had gone a bit loopy, but he trusts the LORD, so he began to paint with his other non-dominant hand, which wasn’t as painful. He had never ever done this before.

Lo and behold the pictures he painted with his left hand, were fantastic! Even more full of life than the original ones. The original paintings were beautifully done, but his left hand produced things that were much free-er. Now here’s what I think … hubby could always paint, with his left, or right hand, it didn’t really matter – but using his left hand to paint meant he really had to extend his faith. What we do in faith reaches into God’s kingdom and it creates miracles. Read John 21:6.

Over to my point today. For years the church at large has wandered in the wilderness, trying so hard to please Jesus, and follow Him. But we did not know what to do with the “stuff’ that continued to happen to us, every single day. Everybody wants to cope and remain victorious, but we don’t seem to have the skills to help us to stay away from the very things that were sent by the enemy to drag us down. So we often have no personal victory over sin. We promise God over and over again that we will not gossip, or drink too much, judge others, or watch risqué films  etc. but it seems we have no power to change.

However, because of what Jesus did, now we have inside us the very gift and power we longed for, it just isn’t going to manifest itself according to our knowledge and our rules. God Himself has a WAY to do things. The bible is full of illustrations of what His Way looks like. His way looks like total surrender and confidence in everything Jesus achieved on that cross. It operates in faith and splashes love freely all around it. It knows when to say yes, and when to say no. Now we need to lay aside our coping mechanisms and learn to live this life dead to what we want and think we need, and alive to what Jesus wants for us, every day.

It is easy to say that we want to do everything the Lord asks us to do … until we don’t — because suddenly it seems too hard. Sometimes what Jesus asks us to do, doesn’t suit our plans, or make sense to our natural minds. Acting in faith is not automatic, it is learnt by practising it. Living this way. I know I need to take what the Holy Spirit said in the bible seriously, and continually choose to act on it at every opportunity, even when my flesh is desperately screaming its head off. I do that by returning love for meanness, faith for doubt, exercise real joy because of what Jesus did, no matter what else is going on. As we are following Jesus we continually need to make faith adjustments. We pray – do whatever He tells us to do – and then we follow Him. Human beings  want to escape trials, but the Lord has promised to take us through them.

Humility is one of our greatest strengths, and we get it by humbling ourselves and admitting we need His help to die to what we want, and live for what He wants. When some awful trial or other seems to be much bigger than we are, we have an opportunity to lean on everything Jesus did for us, and learn to trust Him, no matter how it looks. Let’s use our faith to respond to trials differently. This is not a passive thing. We must grab hold of Jesus, just like Peter did when he thought he would drown. 

Jesus once said this to Peter when he began to berate the Lord for talking about His death. “Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” Matthew 16:23. But this man had been following the Lord for over two years! Then Jesus explained what God wants: “…“Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will find it.” Verses 24&25.

In other words we have to be prepared to put down our own ideas, and agendas, and pick up the things of God, that are eternal. Returning love for hate. Faith for passive resignation. When we were born again eternity entered our hearts. Let’s begin to rely upon His ability to know what we can and can’t do and trust the Lord to get us through it. We can get through things we have never ever dreamt about because we have God’s Spirit in us, with us, to guide us. Just like my little illustration, we can paint with our left hand even though we can barely write with it! This new way of living is more attainable because of His Grace, than we realise. Bye. 👋.

P3477 Moving house.

/ DVH

“We cross the threshold of true knowledge when we live in obedient devotion to God. Stubborn know-it-alls will never stop to do this, for they scorn true wisdom and knowledge.” Proverbs 1:7 TPT. The bible says all kinds of incredible things that we can barely take in, let alone remember day by day. That’s cause for a pause, right there! Many people like to focus on the negative – sadly the daily news proves that point. Even the words used by the people writing these articles are evocative and negative, all at the same time. However, God’s kingdom is always GOOD NEWS.

The thing is, we were born again to WALK with God – not just sit down comfortably inside the door! The bible was not written as a list of the things we are no longer allowed to do or participate in – it is about how dear we are to Him, and how important it is to Him that we choose to live like His kids. Father God does not have subtexts like we do – His aim is LOVE. When He asks us to obey Him, it is so that we can live in that love and freely give it away. That place is the safest place on this earth. 

Stuff will still happen, but we need to remember, a yielded soul is a catalyst. That soul changes everything around it.  When I choose to cling to what God Himself says, I am not denying reality — I am yielding to SomeOne, greater than I am. He is a far far greater reality. Almighty God made this world, so He knows our place in it. Let’s trust what He says over what I think, or you think, or even what Brother-I-know-everything thinks. We need to forgive him … and move on.

In years gone by, we used to sing a song called “Come and go with me to my Father’s house.” I loved the idea of living in my Father’s house … but sadly, after I went home, it seemed to me that I was leaving behind the loving fellowship, and prayers, plus power of the Word preached. It seemed like I was leaving that behind until next week. Then one day, it dawned on me that I could go to my Father’s house and STAY. What’s more I could choose to live FROM that Kingdom, not the one all around  me. Jesus came here to usher in the Father’s kingdom. Now I follow Him along the narrow way, and I live by faith, in His kingdom, here and now.  

When God told us to seek His kingdom first, it’s because the things we do are meant to come from our place in His kingdom. We live there now – we never have to leave. What’s more, we take His kingdom with US wherever we go! It all depends on the way we look at what was said, and our personal decisions to obey Him. And the Holy Spirit helps us with that too! I think we’ve been looking at many scriptures from a negative reinforcement point of view – instead of seeing these things as a glorious statement of our new position. 

120 people were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit when the Holy Spirit came upon them, then they went on to live IN and FROM, God’s Kingdom. Their lives were now framed by it, and it occupied their thoughts, their actions. Everything they did was with God’s kingdom in mind. “Silver and gold have I none but such as I HAVE give I Thee.” (Acts 3:6) Peter was already living in that kingdom – so he could give the things of God’s kingdom away! All disciples now had it, and they took His kingdom wherever they went. Jesus Himself said: ‘…the Kingdom of God is among you.’ His kingdom is motivated and supervised by the Holy Spirit. 

What I want to say today is that we need to move away from the kind of thinking that God’s Kingdom is unavailable to us, unless we meet certain requirements. Jesus did that for us. So now we use our faith to live in the reality that God’s Kingdom is already here. It’s already IN you, and me. When we were born again, we left the kingdoms of this world behind, now we are in His kingdom seeking more and more of it. We’ve been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and transferred  into the Kingdom of His marvellous light. 

However a negative bias on any number of verses can change the way we apply them. What I’m talking about means we choose to walk away from vague possibilities into reality – we need to do whatever we can to use our faith. This is why using our power in His kingdom to try to get what WE want is a travesty! Aim at living in His kingdom where love prevails.

Most of us already have so much information about His kingdom, but just like the sensational headlines in the news, we are limited by another agenda. That agenda says, “I can’t change.” The question I want to ask today is: ‘Then why do we have the Epistles in our bible, if we can’t be changed, here and now. Why did Jesus preach change if it was unavailable until we die?’ Like Paul I want to say, “Not that I have l already attained this, but I press on toward the mark..” (Philippians 3:12) Our aims matter. When we surrender them to despair, or destruction we will be the losers.

Some things may seem to be difficult to us, but they are definitely not unattainable. “…Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26) Let’s learn to live from God’s kingdom. What does He say? What does He want from you and I right here, right now? We need to choose to move house and live our lives, from His kingdom, and see for ourselves what that looks like in real life. It’s all in the book. Bye. 👋

P 3474 We follow the thread.

/ DVH

This is something hubby and I have learnt to do over the last 20+ years. Personally, and together, we walk with the Holy Spirit, daily. He tells us “Go here” and we do, then we follow the thread. We feel so blessed when we do it. This is how He stretches  and strengthens our faith. It is the way we live. There is nothing like working with the Spirit of God!

The first thing I want to say is that — the Lord loves it outside our comfort zone, because that means we are using our faith. Just tell Him:  “I am going for You, and You are utterly in charge. Please help me to pay attention to everything You say!” No matter how unusual stuff seems, as He brings it up, hubby and I simply go and do what He tells us. This has led to growth in the area of our own faith — and bucket loads of Grace for others, plus something I call automatic praise. 

That’s not like the loving cheerful songs we sing to enter His courts. Automatic praise is startling in it’s power and accuracy. It happens when we get so overwhelmed by His goodness, and we are so happy – praise just pops out, unbidden. When you get to see the Lord at work, it’s not hard! The Holy Spirit loves it when God’s people do what He asked them to do – and one of the things He has asked us to do is: “GO!” As far as I know the Lord Jesus has never taken back that directive. Simply tell Him you are available and then you obey.

When I read the Epistles I can see a whole lot of very different people who spent their lives “going!” Even those people who didn’t travel. The ones that stayed home reached out to their neighbours, and the church functioned together as a unit to bless anyone and everyone around them. You don’t read much about them buying this and that, or going on holidays – their plan was to follow HIS PLAN. 

There are times when the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet can be difficult … but just when we want to quit, we pray: “help help” and He helps us. If He says: “Go down that road and talk to someone at the other end,” we do it. There is always somebody who needs to hear what we have to say, at the other end of that road! It never ceases to amaze me. Someone needs to know that God loves them so much that He sent His Son to bring them into a relationship with Him. We have driven miles out of our way to go and talk to just one person. 

Let’s be real, there have also been times when we were both exhausted from driving for hours, and the Holy Spirit said: “Turn off here” … and … we didn’t. That is hilarious. Have you ever watched something that isn’t aligned properly as it tries to continue with the task it performs? It kind of clicks, and clunks and stops, and slowly clicks and clunks some more. That’s what it is like when we don’t turn around. We both look at each other, and then turn the car around and go down the road we tried to avoid. That quiet feeling of being ‘out of step’ just gets to you. 

Nobody taught us to do this kind of reaching out, it simply happened as we obeyed Him and followed His thread. It has never been our intention to make a big deal about it. I’ve only written about it here, in case someone wants to know how you reach out to complete strangers. It’s actually easier than reaching out to the people you know! The Lord gave me this helpful thought on one of our trips — “You are never going to see these people again. Do you care about what they think of you?” After I finished laughing …because boy is that true … I realised I actually was scared of other people’s faces and dealt with that. 

The Lord is so gracious about helping us when we are trying to obey Him. Do we get it right all the time? I dunno ask Him! That part actually doesn’t really matter. We’ve personally seen that God cherishes anyone’s baby steps into His much larger world. At the same time, we’ve learnt so much about humanity in the past 20+ years. The people we think won’t respond, usually bawl their eyes out.

Please understand that we are not evangelists. We simply take the command of Jesus to be witnesses seriously, that is all. “But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency, and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.” Acts 1:8. It is not hard to be a witness. They simply tell others what they know, and what they’ve seen, and invite those people to come and meet Him too.

Here’s what I’ve noticed … when you make yourself available to Jesus, He will take you up on it, because He is looking for witnesses. Ordinary people who will probably never stand out in a crowd, but they know that they have a story about Who He is and what He has done in their lives. My advice is, just tell your little story. We call things like that a testimony, but to be honest … it really is just you, telling your story! People have said to us: “Why don’t you write a book?” I said… “Because we are too busy doing it!“

The Holy Spirit will have people lined up for you to talk to. Half the time we don’t look for them, now they talk to us first!  We’ve seen miracles. We didn’t set out to see them, they just happened along the way. I encourage you reader to follow the Lord’s thread, His leading. The Holy Spirit has been sent to lead you and He will lay what He wants out in front of you. Then you follow it as far as it goes. He lives inside you, please, let Him out! Bye. 👋. 

“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 10:39.

P 3472 Don’t leave Him out – He wants in!

/ DVH

Lately it seems to me that we have become so busy creating things ourselves and making money, that we have forgotten the simple pleasure of enjoying everything the Lord has made. Ambition is often applauded in today’s world, but I think contentment is far more valuable than that or money. You have to learn how to be content – Paul tells us that. And at the bottom of a lot of sin today is the sad state of … deliberately leaving God out. Even Christians. We relegate the Lord to Sunday, and a ‘quiet’ time, but true contentment comes from knowing Who is in charge here – every moment, every single day. 

It is important to give the Lord His place, and if we don’t, then repentance is the best way back. Sometimes the pride of life overtakes us, and the idea that our best is not ‘good’ enough, can be difficult to swallow. But the truth is, unless we totally lean our lives, unreservedly, unashamedly and wholly on what Jesus Christ did for us — we are wasting all our energy and passion. It becomes incredibly easy to repent when you realise you haven’t just done wrong – you ARE wrong!  As Christians we do our best to avoid visible sins, and that can fool us into thinking we are getting things right – those thoughts start us on a downward spiral into works and pride. Gratitude is the best attitude. And genuine repentance, keeps us under the blood of Jesus.

In this life, we need the Lord … every single second of every single day. I am not intimidated by that thought, it blesses me. God knows the way I should go, I can trust Him. We are so fortunate to know Him. Blessings are not a sign of His approval, they occur simply because He is a generous Father and He loves to give.

The bible says so “ … so that you may [show yourselves to] be the children of your Father who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on those who are evil and on those who are good, and makes the rain fall on the righteous [those who are morally upright] and the unrighteous [the unrepentant, those who oppose Him].” Matthew 5:45. 

God is good to everyone! We are His ONLY because of what Jesus did. If you are far from Him, and still breathing, then it is never too late to turn around and go home to your Heavenly Father. Jesus is a Saviour – He saved us from ourselves and our idea of what is right and wrong. It is time for every single one of His children to come home. It doesn’t matter how much dirt you’ve accumulated along the way – Jesus’ blood washes all of us clean.

Repent. Fix whatever you can, but come home. Your Father is waiting at the gate, looking down that road you ran off on. He has prepared a celebratory garment for you to wear and He wants to throw a huge party —- simply because you are irreplaceable to Him. Ask Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help you leave behind the pigpens of this world, and go home. The Lord wants to help you, you just need to ask … and then start taking faith steps.

We don’t have the power within us, without His help, to overcome our passions, proclivities and preferences. Like Adam and Eve we can easily be deceived by satan, and self-deceived into thinking that the Lord approves of what we are doing, or have done. Repentance means turning around and going the other way. That’s hard. It takes a huge effort to shake off the dirt of this world, because it thinks self-promotion and self-importance are the pinnacle of this life. People’s idea of right and wrong changes with political climates and popularity.

The church has made a god in her own image when she moved away from what the bible says, into popular opinion. Human beings have fooled themselves, believing that what we know today, and have experienced, goes far beyond what God planned when He wrote the bible. We think we are bigger than God Himself … until something goes wrong and we can’t fix it!  What we are saying is this: Almighty God is old-fashioned, we are now smarter than He is, and we know more than He does. That is blatantly untrue …when we are dead and gone we will be forgotten — but His Word remains forever.

We’ve all been saved by the Grace Jesus Christ extended to each one of us, when we didn’t even know, or care that He did it! All WE could do, was acknowledge what He had already done. My prayer for all of us is that every single day is filled to overflowing with the knowledge that:  you have never been more loved than you are right here right now.. 

Never ever doubt that you will be joyfully received by God. However the past needs to become the past. We are now living in a time of Grace, and Almighty God has postponed judgment in the hope that all of us who need to do it, will turn around and come back home. Those who have known Him and those who have not, yet. Grace does not smile on our faults, it has covered them with the most expensive substance known to mankind… Jesus Christ’s BLOOD! Please don’t leave the Lord out of your life, He wants to be IN everything. Bye.👋.

“Beware that no one distracts you or intimidates you in their attempt to lead you away from Christ’s fullness by pretending to be full of wisdom when they’re filled with endless arguments of human logic. For they operate with humanistic and clouded judgments based on the mindset of this world system, and not the anointed truths of the Anointed One. For He is the complete fullness of deity living in human form. And our own completeness is now found in Him. We are completely filled with God as Christ’s fullness overflows within us. He is the Head of every kingdom and authority in the universe!” Colossians 2:8-10 TPT.

P 3469 What a Saviour!    

/ DVH

“In many separate revelations [each of which set forth a portion of the Truth] and in different ways God spoke of old to [our] forefathers in and by the prophets, [But] in the last of these days He has spoken to us in [the person of a] Son, Whom He appointed Heir and lawful Owner of all things, also by and through Whom He created the worlds and the reaches of space and the ages of time [He made, produced, built, operated, and arranged them in order]. He (Jesus) is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God’s] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power. When He had by offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of sins and riddance of guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on high, …” Hebrews 1:1-3. Amplified Bible.  “For the rule and authority over all things has been given to Christ by His Father; except, of course, Christ does not rule over the Father Himself, Who gave Him this power to rule.” 1 Corinthians 15:27. 

Like I’ve said many times before, God’s ways are not our ways. The Lord has been revealing Himself constantly for over 2,000 years, through His various servants, but now, on our side of Jesus’ history … He has chosen to reveal Himself through His own dear Son, Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus came here and showed us what was in our Father’s heart toward mankind. So when we see Christ being kind to sinners, that’s God Himself doing it through His Son. That’s Almighty God healing the sick, delivering people from evil … He’s doing it, in Person.

The bible says something so extraordinary in these verses. Jesus Christ Himself ‘is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very image of [God’s] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and propelling the universe by His mighty word of power.’ Here’s my translation of all those words, if we want to know what Almighty God is like then look at His Son … Jesus came here to show us what our Father is like. The Holy Spirit’s power guided Him, sustained Him, held Him up, and Jesus is now our example.

God’s Word is so powerful it makes sure the earth doesn’t bump into anything, as we rotate our way through the days, years and seasons. Almighty God loves this planet, and the people in it – He called all of it good. You know, if God had fingerprints, they would be the same as Jesus’ fingerprints, They are so close to each other. We don’t understand Oneness, we think it’s just about agreeing. Actually, it is hearts blended and beating together so completely they have exactly the same purpose. That purpose is for our benefit. We need to get some of this kind of thinking out of our heads, and into our hearts. We are so loved – all that He did for us shows us that.

If we really understood the things we say we believe, inside, where it counts, we would ACT differently. Nobody would have to tell us what is good and bad, because the same Spirit that was in Jesus, would be guiding us from the inside. We definitely don’t want the Holy Spirit to quietly leave … if He leaves us it will be devastating. We will be left to our own devices … and that is not good! Let’s stop pretending to be what we’ve already been given and live this life differently because of what Jesus did. He did these things before we were born!

The same God Who sent Jesus here to help us, is now IN us. We give Him our lives and He is now the occupying Owner. We have been freely given the power to choose  —  so let’s choose to do whatever He asks us to do, simply because our relationship with Him is so valuable we can’t bear to walk away from, or without Him. That’s passion. Our constant prayer now, is for the Lord to stay with us and help us to walk in total fellowship with Him. I pray I will never be too busy to care about what Jesus thinks, because He is all I want to think about!

Jesus didn’t forget one thing that was necessary to reconcile us with God. He did it ALL – and all means all! His eyes are on you and I even in these times, wherever we are, despite all the ruckus going on around us. He is loyal to mankind. But the question is … are we loyal to Him? Father God is not distant, or far away from us. He deliberately came here, as a man, and lived the same kind of life we are living, so we can have SomeOne we can see, and follow.

People follow Marvel/DC comics and their movies with far less incentive! They also follow pop groups, sporting heroes, and music stars — and some of those people have such filth coming out of their mouths their momma should have washed their mouths out with soap … many, MANY times! Jesus told us: “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?” Don’t be surprised if you choose to eat bad fruit and end up with a tummy ache! These people are blind guides …trying to sell us something. We can end up in ditch.

“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!” (Right here, right now!) Hebrews 10:39 TPT. How can that be? He did the work for us, purely for LOVE.  Love Himself will lead us into the Ways of Love! There is no room for fear anymore, even if we step out of love – we can repent and go right back in again – because His sacrifice has made our new life possible. What a Saviour! Bye. 👋.

P 3468 Check out of lukewarm!

/ DVH

“No soldier when in service gets entangled in the enterprises of [civilian] life; his aim is to satisfy and please the One who enlisted him.” 2 Timothy 2:4. 

“Sow seeds of righteousness for yourselves, and you will reap a harvest of God’s unending love. Break up the hard, fallow ground of your heart. For it is time to seek YAHWEH’s favour until He comes to pour out righteousness on you like falling rain.” Hosea 10:12 TPT.

We remain in His teaching when we live the way Jesus would. The bible tells us there is no room for lukewarmness, yet that very state is almost normal today. We have excuses for the way we live that are like the Tower of Babel … they reach up to the sky. But the only thing that is meant to reach that high is our praises! It seems we’ve chosen to forget that we died the day we came to Christ. Dead people have no reasonable excuses, they can’t defend themselves, or criticise others. They can’t do anything!

We can’t afford to wait for this kind of passion to overtake us – our new life in Christ relies upon us choosing to mature and taking every bit of what He said seriously. Nobody else can make us do that – we must do it voluntarily. The thing is, let’s be aware that we can maintain a perfectly even, cheerful outside attitude, while inside we are seething with anger and keeping count of other people’s supposed trespasses against us! Actors count on their ability to deceive their audience with their performance, but we are not actors.

It is up to us as individuals to find and break up the hard fallow ground inside us. Those things are — ‘areas that have become cold, unyielding, and closed off due to old habits, pride, emotional walls, or unresolved pain.’ (Google.) The Holy Spirit loves to help us identify areas where our hearts lack true Godly compassion and mercy. Let’s choose to remember that if the eye suffers, the whole body does. 1 Corinthians 12:26. We no longer have any claim to any kind of judgment, dead people don’t.

Here is a quick test to see if you have anyone in your life that you really can’t stand, and you want to avoid them like the plague. Check out your state of generosity and love levels toward that person. Generosity takes our ‘temperature,’ and we can often ignore it. We are told to ‘do good to those who despitefully use us …’ sadly, most of the time we can settle for appearances, or avoidance, or living our lives removed from others with token, spoken care. Many people have moved from one church to another because they felt lonely in the crowd. Husbands and wives end up treating each other like opposing forces, yet they appear fine on the outside.  

Because of what the bible says, I know that Jesus has redeemed the old me, and the new me would not dream of flinging bad stuff at you! A mature person knows that any differences  are present because that other person is unique … so they don’t withhold love, or doing good to whoever crosses their path. They don’t live with a level of deception that pretends all is well when it is not, and they don’t blame others for their own shortcomings. Instead they find places of agreement, and ‘lose’ the bad memories under the blood of Jesus, and deliberately choose to remember instances where love prevailed.

Breaking up hard ground starts with acknowledgement, repentance, plus reparation … We are even prepared to take the whole blame when it is obvious to you that you have done nothing. Humility thrives. These people care more about winning their brother than winning some squabble! They don’t justify their own behaviour, and blame someone else for what they have chosen to say or do. Humility hates separation and will do everything in its power to repair things. Here’s a great incentive – Jesus lives in each one of us, when we are unkind to each other we are being unkind to Him. Let’s not care about who did or said what to whom, and choose to care about unity instead.

“Your people (that’s God’s own people) will rebuild what has long been in ruins, building again on the old foundations. You will be known as the people who rebuilt the walls, who restored the ruined houses.” Isaiah 58:12. Did you get that? Rebuilding ruins … those things that have been broken for years. But then you, together with the Holy Spirit, choose to rebuild on the foundation of what Christ said and did. We’ve made the mistake of thinking that we must agree with others for relationships to be restored. Instead we agree that other people, whoever they are, are worth the effort because Jesus died for them too. 

We are now “in the service of our King.” That doesn’t ‘turn off’ when we are tired, fed up, or even ill. Let’s not forget what Jesus did for us, and GAVE to us. Otherwise we might forget the reason the Holy Spirit is here with us. He gives us the power to overcome in spite of our difficulties. He isn’t just with us so we can feel good, blessed or comfortable – His sole task is to make us, with our co-operation … like Christ. His goal is transformation, not petting us and patting us so we feel happy, vindicated and okay. 

Like soldiers who obey orders, now we live our lives in obedience to the Lord’s will, His way. There is no room for lukewarm when we daily choose to live like that. Bye. 👋. 

P3461 For those who are suffering.

/ DVH

I don’t choose what I am going to write about each day, but I pray about this blog and ask for the Lord to help me to follow His instructions, carefully and prayerfully. Plus I am exceedingly grateful for my beloved praying editor, my husband!  I said that because I want the precious souls among us who suffer daily, to know first and foremost that the Lord definitely had you on His mind this morning.

First of all, I want to clarify what I see as suffering. It includes, imprisonment, hunger, thirst, lacking shelter, and then there is pain — mental, physical and emotional pain, oppression, the pain of never being completely understood. Plus mental illnesses, devastating loneliness, life-altering dependency, all kinds of physical illness, including terminal illness – although I think living in this world is a terminal illness, one way or another! Together with loss and grief. This is not a comprehensive list, so I am hoping you will get the gist of my thought.

My thought is this — Father God hides His most precious treasures in the most unexpected places. We know that He has hidden so much in His Word, and people have spent their lifetime meditating on and studying the bible so they can pass what they have learnt on to others. BUT let’s never forget that PEOPLE are His very favourite treasures and they too can remain hidden. To the world, you may not necessarily be all that important, but to God you are worth everything dear to Him. 

Today, I want to talk about those precious members of the Body of Christ who are suffering from any, and hopefully not all, of the above maladies. I know a little tiny bit about some of these things. I think one of the hardest situations a person who is suffering has to face is the entirely well-meaning, enthusiastic, Jesus-loving Christian, who has no clue about the depth of human misery… so they rave on merrily sharing their positive healing thoughts about this subject. 

Actually, I wish people with those particular attributes would just give me money, because by now I would be so-o-o rich! Instead, the Lord has chosen to bless me with many opportunities to forgive those who have trespassed against me. Many of these dear, somewhat misguided souls have no clue what ongoing suffering does to faith. Especially in today’s current attitudes and atmosphere of ‘everybody should be healed.’ 

So although I am only one person, I want to start out by saluting your courage. It takes so much courage to stand firm in your faith, when something or other is kicking the daylights out of you and it rarely lets you go. On the other hand, there is the kind of situation where the hard bits stop … but you are not sure if they are completely gone or not … so you can’t relax into the Lord’s arms easily. Mainly because you have become hyper-vigilant. This means you often second-guess yourself because you truly don’t know what might happen next! It is hard to know what to do with your faith when you aren’t sure if it is actually in working order.

I try to take the time to comfort myself with thoughts like these:  if I cut my hand it would take a while for the cut to heal, so I will have to be patient during the process. I might need to take extra care of that hand while it is healing. But when it is your heart that is broken, taking care of it means you need to pray over everything you might like to do, instead of just blazing away into the next thing.

When a heart has been damaged by fear, or misguided Christian help, plus medical people who are, after all, still human — the person doesn’t always make good decisions. So ask others for their prayerful support because you really are vulnerable and under pressure. Bad things have happened to you. By the way, that does not mean you are bad, or you have some deep dark secret that needs to be forgiven or fixed. Life happens to all of us and survivors should be saluted, not chastised! You are also allowed to grieve because you have lost your well being.

So what happens if it seems your circumstances won’t, can’t, or don’t change because they depend on someone else changing first? That stuff is also very hard to live through.  At those times I start praying: “Thank you Lord for remembering I am just glorified dust! I need more grace to persevere and remain joyful, and if You don’t give it to me, then I won’t have it!” Amen. I also pray for Him to help me develop through the pain, because I have learnt that pain colours the way I see and hear things, and I can get really offended by stupid stuff when I am not able to listen properly. 

Actually I can get offended by stupid insignificant stuff all by myself!! Forget about pain actively colouring everything in around me! Ho-hum. Here are a couple of verses that may be helpful: Psalm 34:18 “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” Whether we can feel Him or not … the Lord is here with us. God is lovingly drawn to those who are suffering, Jesus demonstrated that. Luke 6:19:  “…and the people all tried to touch him, because power was coming from Him and healing them all.” Yes. It is His will to heal however, the sick and broken need the Body’s help! 

Isaiah 43:2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;  and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” Lastly, cut yourself some slack – He’s God and you’re not! By His grace you will come through this. Amen. 🙏

P3460 Trying is out, doing is in.

/ DVH

Following Christ is not about trying hard to find the will to do what He said … it is about doing it. I hear so many sincere people telling me that they are trying to please the Lord but it’s too hard. Trying means you are simply attempting to do something — in other words — trying includes the possibility of failure. To DO something means you launch yourself out into the action hoping God Himself will catch you. Don’t try — DO.  Don’t try for instance, not to gossip, or criticise others, close your mouth! Let’s not let any immediate feelings of impossibility or failure discount your ability to do what He said.

So we don’t try not to watch movies that create anger, or access sensuality in us – turn them off.  It’s dumb to allow the wrong kind of thoughts to sit in your head. Those things are leading you down an inevitable pathway, to all kinds of stuff that will steal your peace and make you hate yourself for failing. We can’t fail – Jesus did all the work for us! He conquered sin and death. That’s love. Let’s remind ourselves daily, how much the Lord loves us. Did you wake up today? 🤪 That means God believes in you. You have another opportunity to choose to change – some people didn’t wake up. Make the time to sit with Him and let His endless unconditional love minister to you, then go out and do what He tells you to do.

Let’s look at Matthew 14, and what happened to Peter, as he learnt that God can and will make a way! Verses 18-30:  “As soon as the meal was finished, He insisted that the disciples get in the boat and go on ahead to the other side while He dismissed the people. With the crowd dispersed, He climbed the mountain so he could be by himself and pray. He stayed there alone, late into the night. Meanwhile, the boat was far out to sea when the wind came up against them and they were battered by the waves. At about four o’clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them walking on the water. They were scared to death. “A ghost!” they said, crying out in terror. But Jesus was quick to comfort them. “Courage, it’s Me. Don’t be afraid.” Peter, suddenly bold, said, “Master, if it’s really You, call me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come ahead.” 

Peter didn’t just ASK for help … you and I can’t just stand there waiting for Jesus to come and fix things – there’s no active faith in that! Faith has substance, in other words you can see it. Instead, Peter acted on what the Lord said! Jesus said, “Come,” and Peter actually had to climb over the edge of a perfectly good boat, and start walking on the water. That’s faith! That’s what it looks like. Faith is obedience in action. Peter kept his eyes on Jesus and kept right on walking. He only failed when he took his eyes off the Lord. Keep your eyes on Jesus! … BTW, failure is not the end of the world because Jesus took that to Calvary too.

Here’s my advice: find out what the Lord says about that thing that you are struggling with, and act on it! Do something. We are only failing in some areas because we are leaving the things we need to do ourselves, to Him. We are not puppets, He will not make us. He will show us the way and help us, but we will have to decide to act differently, and then do something about it, using our faith. If you have trouble with swearing, stop. Seriously. Don’t believe that voice in your head that tells you, you can’t. YOU … “can do all things through Christ Who strengthens YOU.” So when you feel weak, ask Him for strength, and … whack your hand over your mouth!

I’ve learnt to do stuff like that all the time. If the Holy Spirit tells me to do something, then I start moving – despite the fact that I know I can’t do most things easily – it has now become an automatic response. Especially when I get grumpy. We all get angry sometimes, but the thing is … don’t stay there, ask the Lord to help you. Our faith is meant to be operating all the time. It is not just an emergency stop button on a runaway train. It’s the way we live now. ”For in Him we live and move and have our being.’  As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’” Acts 17:28. 

We are wrestling with our own will when we feel like we can’t do this or that. Jesus died so we don’t have to do anything anymore. Now we have the freedom to choose. Just because we don’t like some choice or other, that does not invalidate the fact that we actually have one! Let’s turn that around, when we want to do something we know is bad for us, other people can’t stop us. That’s what our will looks like in operation. We simply can’t live a life of faith, and indulge ourselves at the same time. Nor can we say to the Lord: “Thy will be done …” in our prayers, when we know full well that we only do what He wants, when and if, we feel like it! … Did you notice that word ‘feel?’ 

The real struggle is against our own flesh. Our will has survived thus far because we gratify it through the stuff we’ve done that we ought not to have done – so stopping it is bound to be a wrestling match. Let me put that another way — neither of us will probably want to participate in this wrestling match. It is so-oo much easier to just give in to our feelings. Plus this sort of scenario is usually accompanied by loads of angst and temptation. After all, we don’t live in a blameless holy society! Someone else will have done something to set us off. The point is … Jesus is bigger than anything we face, so we put Him in charge, and step out onto the water of change even though it seems like it will not be pleasant and we don’t feel like it.

BTW, this does not mean we are not supposed to have any feelings, it just means our feelings are not supposed to be in charge of us anymore — Jesus is now. How do you think the Lord endured the cross? “Saying, Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but [always] Yours be done.” Luke 22:42. Faith is not faith if we only believe things in our heads. Faith is faith when we let it change our behaviour. That will mean some wrestling matches. The upside is we will stop blaming other people for what we do, and start to take responsibility for our own choices. We don’t want to be the bad people, we want other people to be in that role. The truth is we are ALL bad, and … “It’s by Grace we have been saved, not because of works lest any man should boast.” 

The glory of Jesus and what He did for us, is that He gave us the Holy Spirit Who wants to help us to obey. Obedience is a wonderful smell to God, it is better than a sacrifice. Along with the Holy Spirit – Who gave us the power to obey our Father – we also have in writing, what the Lord likes and what He doesn’t. Feelings don’t come into it. I never feel like saying sorry when I am angry and I know I am wrong – how about you? Let’s ignore how we feel, and obey what He said. Nobody is making you or I choose to indulge ourselves — those feelings of helplessness and powerlessness are simply not true. The bars on the jail you have painted yourself into are not there anymore. Take a step of faith – you will walk right through them.

What I think I know about myself is not all there is to know, there’s more. Father God made me, and He knows me, and what I can do, I can choose to trust Him over my feelings. We will fail to use our faith when we don’t believe what He said, instead of what we think about ourselves. Trying is out, doing is in. Bye. 👋.

P3459 Popularity with man.

/ DVH

This is a current theme in our society, everyone has to be PC, or you will be told! I am all for being sensitive and careful, because wisdom itself demands the kind of thoughtfulness that allows it to speak clearly to someone without the distraction of offence! However, our priority should always be whatever the Lord says to us. And I think we need to practice tolerance and forbearance toward other people not political correctness. I want to look at a brief few verses from Jeremiah today, bearing in mind that this man was a salmon swimming upstream for most of his life!

“Then the officials said to the king, “This man should be put to death. He is discouraging the soldiers who are left in this city, as well as all the people, by the things he is saying to them. This man is not seeking the good of these people but their ruin.”“He is in your hands,” King Zedekiah answered. “The king can do nothing to oppose you.” So they took Jeremiah and put him into the cistern of Malkijah, the king’s son, which was in the courtyard of the guard. They lowered Jeremiah by ropes into the cistern; it had no water in it, only mud, and Jeremiah sank down into the mud.” Jeremiah 38:4-6.

Jeremiah was doing what God asked him to do, yet he was being persecuted for what he said. That’s because other people interpreted his actions for their own agenda. Lately, I have had to become so much better at forgiving people, simply because they have thoughtfully given me so many opportunities to do it! Meanwhile the Lord helps me, every single time, or I would succumb to self-pity. Sigh. But that’s an observation, not my point. My point is things have not changed all that much since Jeremiah’s time. We still think we can judge other people and put pressure on them to be just like us.

Pressure comes from all sorts of directions – but many of them are internal. We fall into political correctness by saying we don’t want to offend others – but actually we are scared of what others will do to us! The point of this passage in Jeremiah is that all kinds of pressure will be unfairly applied on us. It is to be expected. We may not end up in a cistern, but ‘the fear of man (still) brings a snare’ if it affects our ability to be truthful.

Proverbs 29:25. Here’s the Message version – “The fear of human opinion disables;  trusting in God protects you from that.”  Yeah. That’s the rub, moving away from what others might say, into …’what do YOU want from me Lord?’ Then we need to take the time to find that out for ourselves. Christians have hidden behind denominational creeds for too long. We need to hate any sin, but love the sinner just like Jesus did. The point is, the gospel is for everyone and we can’t possibly know who the Lord is going to turn around.

I think that Jeremiah was a victim of the downside of popular opinion. I like this verse from Proverbs 18:13: “Answering before listening is both stupid and rude.” It is so easy to decide that we already know what other people need, and miss the Lord’s wisdom altogether, because we have prejudged our own way to be the right one. We can also fall into the trap of being ‘nice’ and insincere, all at the same time. For times like ours, we need the Holy Spirit’s wisdom, not just a creed, or what we think.

If we are serious about extending love to other people who are not like us, then we cannot be motivated by political correctness. We must be motivated by God Himself. Here’s a verse to chew on: “Make love your aim.” Folks! The elephant is now actually in the room! We cannot avoid it any longer. Our real problem is, we have avoided some subjects for so long, we no longer know how to address them! It is time for the kind of prayer that leads to action. Choosing to loving others is never easy. God’s love can turn all kinds of people around, I think we would be better occupied remaining full of His love ourselves, than finding reasons to exclude people.

I don’t have to love what you do, to love you! The church has an opportunity right now to choose how she will behave toward people, especially those She has decided are already illegitimate because of their choices. The bible says: ‘Love is patient, kind, it is not jealous, it doesn’t brag, it is not selfish or rude, angry or resentful. It hates injustice, it loves the truth, it bears all things, hopes all things – it is long-suffering.’ Love is an ETERNAL quality. We can’t afford to draw up our ‘holy robes’ around us anymore – our holy robes have holes in them that you can drive a truck through. If we are hiding any kind of sin from others, the Lord in His Grace will allow those things hidden in the darkness to come into the light. He is not punishing us – He is cleaning up His house. 

I believe we simply don’t know how to love anybody who lives their life in ways we find unacceptable. We think love is approval. We need to pray for real revelation about His idea of love – He loved us long before we arrived here! Jesus Christ had no qualms about touching the unclean … the religious people did! His power, glory and strength are released by loving others.

Maybe it is time to admit we were wrong and ask forgiveness for the way we have treated others. Humbling ourselves won’t kill us. Sin still remains sin – one is not worse than another. We also need to remember, many times it is the people in our own churches who have hurt others. The Body of Christ has misplaced our discernment and used religious rules to compensate. Then we boarded up, and sealed our hearts of compassion against the very people the Lord wants to speak to … and fear of contamination made us do it. We’ve thrown people into a pit of despair simply because we are not walking with Him – we need the Lord’s input, we need His heart! Gifts are not a sign of holiness – loving others in what we do and say is.

Jeremiah was thrown into a pit because what he said was unpopular, and the King didn’t want to enter that arena. We can’t afford to approve of sin because we are swayed by popularity, anymore than we can afford to label people and walk away from them. We need the Lord Himself “to extend the boundaries of our tents” and “pull up the stakes” we have driven into the ground, to define who we are, and what we believe. Popularity with man is not just political correctness – it’s also religion that can bind us. Look after widows and orphans instead – that’s true religion.

We are His people and we are so blessed, each one of us has been given a chance to change. Walking with the Spirit of the living God means that whoever we meet, will meet with the Lord Himself through us… then we leave the results to Him. Let’s extend His love to everybody, in the hope that we may see some saved, and refuse to judge because that leads to even more judgment. Our part is to extend Grace and Mercy to everyone, and focus on being a carrier of the Presence of God Himself. He has straightened US out, and we know He has the power to do that in other people’s lives.

Lastly, let’s value intimacy with Him above all else. We need to read the bible and do what it says, and love others, because love is our priority. Forget political correctness, and religion — we love people because He loved us first. Loving them does not mean we agree with them. Popularity, or unpopularity with mankind is over-rated. Bye. 👋.