Prayer

P 2196 The danger of judgment.

/ DVH

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:1-5.

Other people’s flaws are not anyone else’s playground for entertainment. However, in today’s current society, other people’s actions are spread around like peanut butter and jelly! You can’t watch the news without being informed of this or that person’s dreadful behaviour – their condemnation is often the headline! I have noticed that when things are retracted, because they were wrong – the retraction is always teeny tiny and glossed over. 

Lately I’ve noticed that judging our pastors and leaders has also become almost a national sport. Plus we criticise other denominations like somehow our truth is better than, or more right than – what they believe. I noticed recently that one very prominent church has hit the headlines again – and my first thought was: “Oh you poor things. Dear Jesus bring your truth into this mess. Amen.” I have to be honest, my next thought was: “I am so glad I’m not anyone noteworthy, sadly I have plenty of things I’ve done and I would hate to have those things paraded around in front of the world!” 

These things are hardly ever put into context. Jesus did not condemn the woman caught in adultery – He gave her protection from her accusers and a new way to live. We must never forget that the power of life and death is in the tongue. Christians have the power to speak life and hope into despair and devastation.We don’t need deliverance – we just need to stop doing it! Let’s treat any knowledge we have as a point of prayer. I think people judge others because they feel powerless. However, …“To whom much is given, much is required.”  I love an old OLD song by Stormie Omartian – “I’m believing for the best in you …” 

What I hear the Lord saying in Matthew 7, is that if we can see it, then we can definitely pray for it. And maybe we even have IT ourselves. Before you prepare a rope to lynch me for saying that, I just want to mention that sawdust comes from wooden planks! Our eyes can get gritty because we have done the same thing, though perhaps not on such a grand scale. Or … maybe nobody found out? Therefore we can recognise the other person’s plank because we know what it feels like personally. Again, another good reason to pray! That knowledge should promote kindness, forgiveness and empathy – not judgment. What’s wrong with them is also wrong with us.

The fact that the Lord says we will be judged the way we judge others, ought to scare the living daylights out of us! Yet we nod our heads and agree with the bible, and then toddle off to dismember this person or that relative – usually behind their backs. It is as if we lack the spiritual ability to see other people the way the Lord does. Yet we ARE the light of this world. We don’t lack light – sight should never be a problem for us! Jesus is saying don’t use the light we have to hurt people –use it to help others. Nothing will separate us faster from the precious Holy Spirit than judgment. “Gracious words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.” Proverbs 16:24.

Personally, I want and need mercy, loads of it, every single day. Judgment is the most dangerous thing a Christian can participate in … Always remember, human beings judged Christ – anybody can be wrong. 👋🏻

P 2180 Time for some reality.

/ DVH

Good morning. It is 4.00am at my house and the one great thing about this time, is that it is incredibly quiet. Unfortunately I am awake at this hour because of my concern for my family. Worry and despair jumped all over me at 3.00am and I’ve spent the last hour working on practicing what I preach!  Plus I also prayed for you guys. I don’t know your name and you don’t know mine, but I know that things in your part of the world aren’t always great. Some of you are facing incredibly hard times and my prayer for you today is that ‘the Lord would be with you in trouble … because you know His Name.’ Psalm 91:14-15

One of the things I am still learning about the Lord is that He is much too kind to leave us in the kind of misery that can grab us by the throat and cause us untold pain. However, at this dumb hour, I can also tell you that it gets much harder to roll your cares off onto Him! 🙄 I had to insist, then insist some more! So I climbed out of bed, trying not to disturb my lovely hubby – who has just had nasty surgery on his hand, and he needs his sleep – and I came upstairs to talk to you about the things in our lives that don’t seem to prayerfully resolve themselves easily. And some of those things include other people’s choices.

There are countless books that tell us how to pray, where to pray, how to cope, or how to overcome, but the truth is – when you look at everything carefully – WE will have to use our own faith. No-one else can roll my cares off my heart except ME. And I will probably have to kill off my flesh, yet again, to do it. This means that some days I can try to sit in the dirt and pout, and complain, and hope that Almighty God will be impressed by my sadness enough to change my circumstances!

And praise Him and His generosity, He does – many times. But the Lord doesn’t always help me by instantly changing things – most of the time He helps me by changing my attitude! 😶 Which means that somewhere in my thinking I will have to stop feeling entitled to a better, happier life and thank Him for the life I already have! However, I always need to start with the fact that He died for me, otherwise I can get stuck in the whole entitlement thing.

Years ago, my generation was taught that the answers to prayer relied upon US. If we had enough faith, and a right attitude, bingo bongo all would be well. But prayer is by nature, the acknowledgement that I cannot fix something. Instead I am reaching out to SomeOne bigger, wiser and more loving than I am. Which means I will have to take a risk – and a step of faith … and trust that this incredible Person hopefully wants the same answer I do! I’ve been a Christian for a long time. So I have learnt that Jesus doesn’t always want the same answer we do – HE WANTS MORE than I ever hoped or dreamed and that can take a whole lifetime and more to fulfil. But sometimes those answers won’t look like the answer to my passionate emotion- filled prayers. I will need His eyes to understand what He is doing. Read the book.

In many of our churches we have tried so hard to present a positive image. We want to look happy, fulfilled and successful in our marriages, fellowships, friendships, homes, work places, and schools. We want to show the world that Jesus is the Answer to everything. So much so, we have forgotten that we are are fallible human beings who can still make mistakes. Awful ones. I’ve made my share – and some!  Many of us have worn plastic fake smiles for so long we are almost fully automated. That fake is killing us. Christianity is not a fairy tale, and following Jesus does not always mean we will have a happy ending in this life. Just look at the apostles and what happened to them. 

So today I am writing this to say to you that if your prayer life, or bible study, or Christian faith is NOT ALL THAT – be of good cheer. Our God is bigger than our failures. Jesus is the One Who is real, and sadly you and I are sometimes very poor reflections of His reality. But thank God, He does not rely upon our efforts. Our God did all the work for us – He knows we are not capable of fixing ourselves. We will always need a Saviour, and a Redeemer in this life. And if Jesus is not Who He says He is, then we are all sunk, and we should be pitied. 

Paul said something like that once in I Corinthians 15:19 & 20a.  “If our hope in Christ is good for this life only and no more, then we deserve more pity than anyone else in all the world. But the truth is that Christ has been raised from death,…”  Bye. 👋🏻

P 2166 Learn to wait, harmonise and agree.

/ DVH

Like I said yesterday, sometimes the best thing for us to do when heaven seems to be silent, is to be still, figuratively get on our faces … and wait. When we do that we are showing the Lord that what He wants is more important than what we want. Meanwhile, intentionally waiting for God IS doing something. Waiting, the bible says – strengthens US. 

Scripture from Isaiah 40:27-31”Why do you complain, Jacob? Why do you say, Israel, “My way is hidden from the Lord; my cause is disregarded by my God”? Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” 

Human beings don’t always understand what the Lord is doing, so sometimes waiting can be very difficult. If we actually understood what Father God wants to do for us, and in us, we would yield … immediately. The problem is our own personal perceived needs, together with impatience and all sorts of agendas. The problem is never with His plans.    

Sadly, Christians don’t always trust Him, or each other, and this can mean we are so busy trying to protect ourselves …  we’ve missed out on the blessing of agreement and harmony. Harmony is not about us all singing the same note. It is about the sound we all make when we are working together, doing what He wants. Harmony is about blending, not standing out. It is about facilitating other people’s joy, peace and love, by using your gifts to help them grow and thrive. Whether they are Christians or not!  It is not about MY gift – it is all about you finding and using YOURS. That sound gets bigger when we help each other.

The Father, the Holy Spirit and the Son are in perfect harmony. They excel at blending love, joy, peace etc. together and They want those sounds for us – in each of our lives. Love is exactly the right chord to initiate and sustain these things. Because we love Him, and each other, we will gladly die for each other. That’s what true submission to the Lord and each other looks like. I take my mission – which is what I want – and I intentionally make it less important than what HE wants. Plus, I lay down what I think I want or need, to help you become all you can be.

At some stage or other, most of us have come across the Coyote and the Road Runner. In the past I always felt soooo sorry for Wiley Coyote. And then one day I realised that the silly dingbat creature set himself up to fail. His desire to have what he was chasing pushed him into danger all the time! If you think of Wiley Coyote as humanity, and the Road Runner as satan – you can quickly see that the Coyote’s own passion for gain is causing his awful injuries.

“Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death.” James 1:14-15. You know, if that Coyote had only waited a minute or two, before setting out on his new cunning plan, he would have seen the anvil, truck, boulder etc. coming at his head! We need to learn how to wait. Not procrastinate … but wait. Procrastination, or putting off what God says to do is like the Coyote wondering why he is falling … on the way down. We can use our waiting times to learn about the Lord, ourselves and each other.

Remember, OUR HEAVENLY FATHER’S mind is always ON us! This is why we need to take our minute by minute choices far more seriously. We dare not just pick out the bits of the bible we like and obey them, we need all of it. His Word cleans, renews and heals – it can’t do that without application. Skipping the application is like cutting your leg and not applying some antiseptic and a bandage. The Word is the medium God uses to reveal Himself, transform us and heal us.

Waiting makes US stronger and living in agreement with each other multiplies the power of our prayers. We must learn to harmonise together and that begins when I care more for your life than my own. It is like putting a seed into exactly the right medium. God’s love is the right soil for those seeds of the Spirit to grow in. Finally … this is where waiting comes into it… seeds need time to germinate and grow.   👋🏻

P 2164 Dealing with all kinds of pain.

/ DVH

“God, I invite Your searching gaze into my heart. Examine me through and through; find out everything that may be hidden within me. Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares. See if there is any path of pain I’m walking on, and lead me back to Your glorious, everlasting way— the path that brings me back to You.” Psalms 139:23-24 TPT

Wow. Talk about confronting the things we often want to avoid at all cost! Have you noticed how the Lord just loves to look in those dark hidden corners that we hope He doesn’t see? He does it to help us out of pain. Some places we go to in our minds and hearts, are not in line with His thinking, so we need to have Him examine us, and sort out what is behind them. We also need to recognise enemy attack. Obviously, we are told to resist satan, and press into the Lord instead. 

Any diagnosis needs some sort of treatment! The bible recommends humbling ourselves, and submitting to others, by inviting the Holy Spirit to search our hearts prayerfully with their help. We also need God’s help and wisdom to find the stuff we have hidden away, even from ourselves. Human beings are funny creatures, we don’t like to admit faults and failures, yet confessing that stuff is a pathway to a new place in Him. I’m not talking about getting so self-obsessed you turn yourself inside out, but there are the times to pray the search me prayer and submit yourself to Him … as well as someone else. We are not alone, anymore – let your Christian family comfort you.

It is also good, in those times, to ask someone to join you that you know will tell you the truth. None of this flattering, “Oh you’re OK, it’s just a bad day” junk! Other people can have a wider view than we do, they can see the results of our attitudes and actions. Unfortunately we sometimes only see or understand our own intentions. It is incredibly easy to confuse those two things. “For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12. We need the bible to help us sort out what is motivating us.

Many arguments that occur in a Christian home have been about what was intended. We need to carefully examine with His help – what was the real-life result! Our intentions don’t nullify what actually happened to someone else. Learn to listen to your spouse, your kids, and/or any people close to you who know you – let them reflect the YOU they see. Don’t hide behind hurt feelings, or fear of change, but open yourself up, because this is a normal part of growth. Real change comes from confronting the corners of your heart and it isn’t all bad stuff. Pain has a pathway – let’s dig up the pathway!

In times of anguish we do need the body. Other people who are more mature. Or perhaps someone who has experienced the kind of pain you are going through, to help straighten out our perspective. I ask myself a couple of questions, when or if, I don’t like the other person’s answer: “Why would this person lie to me? What have they got to gain?” Heads up! Most other people usually have nothing to gain and they are also running a big risk of alienating you. In my experience, people who tell you what you want to hear aren’t helpful – they want something.

Here is some stuff I have observed from just living. Pain numbs our spiritual senses and clouds our view of Who He is. It forcibly shoves us over into our minds … logical answers, and problem-solving. Then thinking-our-way-through-pain takes over. But, in reality, PAIN doesn’t actually diagnose the cause of anything! … So doing that won’t help us. Pain is a symptom, not the cause – a result, not the initial issue. 

Always remember, we don’t have to deny or hide our faults and sins anymore, because we know we have a Saviour! Plus, most of our faults etc. have a way of showing up so clearly that the people around us are well aware of them anyway! The bible tells us to humble ourselves, God will exalt us when He is good and ready. (Paul did it – Galatians 2) Even my enemies have something to teach me about myself. My immediate response to being around them is a sign post to what lies within ME!  👋🏻

P 2147 We trust in God Who raises the dead!

/ DVH

2 Corinthians 1:8-11 “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death.”

As you will see below, I have split these four scriptures into three smaller sections to make my point.The first section, from verses 8 to 9a, is about what happened to Paul and Timothy. Things in Asia went pear-shaped in their travels while they were spreading the gospel. So much so, that they thought they would not get through the experience. Paul actually says that he thought it was time for them to die. It was not simply that they had missed their train or the washing machine repair man failed to turn up. No, Paul would never treat normal opposition so seriously. Plus despair is a pretty grim word!

Personally I think he means exactly what he says. The truth is something that is incredibly valuable to Paul,  he lives that way. He talks like this in these verses, because in his heart and mind, this whole scene was played out before the Lord Himself, not men. Meanwhile, I don’t think he is exaggerating to illustrate his point! A scholar could tell you about whatever it was that happened to both of these men, all I know is that whatever it was, it was so fierce it literally took these two committed brave men’s hope of continuing to serve Jesus in this life – AWAY.

I’m want to move on to verses 9b – 10a.“But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us again. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us,…” 

The intensity of Paul’s passion to see the Lord get what He wants jumps off the page. I want to illustrate the fact that even in the midst of such extreme, severe trouble, Paul’s faith is still in GOD, not in the resolution of their circumstances. What I mean is that this man is not put off by suffering, or even fear for his life. The problem we have today, when we read the bible is that this kind of language is foreign to us. It was normal back then, but today we would call what Paul wrote: “the introduction.” Which means we can skim over these things not realising the intensity of the situation both of those men faced. In other words our attitude to what it says, and where it is, can remove any meaning unless we are looking for meaning!

What he is saying here is that even if God had to raise them both from the dead, he knew that Almighty God will deliver them. Can you see the power and strength of this man’s faith?  He is speaking about something that is happening to them as a place for learning. Paul understood that God was stretching them for a purpose, and that fact didn’t flatten his faith. But when we first read this scripture it fades into the incidental background, it seems to us, today, that the real teaching comes later.  Everything Paul writes has A POINT. We’ve become very used to preaching over the years and I don’t think that’s a good thing – it can mean we tune important stuff out.

However, Paul’s mind is so renewed that he can’t imagine, even for a second, that the Lord will let them down! When I saw this today, it totally blew me away. My faith wobbles badly when ordinary every day stuff doesn’t turn out the way I hope it will, and yet Paul and Timothy are in total fear of their lives but they figure if the opposition kills them then the Lord will resurrect them if that is His purpose! 

You see when we read stuff like this, it is easy to think: ‘oh that’s just an exaggeration he’s just laying it on a bit thick to make his point.’ Except that he isn’t. When this man speaks, or when he writes one of his many letters, he is doing that from the Presence of the Holy Spirit – God Himself. You don’t fiddle about with exaggeration there. Almighty God is not an add-on in this man’s life – living for Jesus IS his life! So much so, that Timothy is living that way as well. This young man has been so influenced by God Himself – he risks his own life alongside Paul.

When I look at this kind of faith and then I look at mine … there is a big gap. Sigh. However, one of the things I can remember from when I was a much younger Christian was people of all ages telling me: “You don’t have to be that serious about it all!” Apparently no-one ever told Paul that! This book has been written for our correction and reproof – which probably means we are going to bump our heads on what it says, often!  And we also may find a glass ceiling over us when we want to press in and know the Lord better. But that can provide us with fresh insight into ourselves and God’s Ways. It becomes a new beginning place, not a place to give up.  

Moving on … finally in verses 10b to 11 “as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favour granted us in answer to the prayers of many.” Suddenly when people tell us that they are praying for us, life can take on a whole new dimension. Prayer is powerful. I know we all know this, but most of our lives today are fraught with overwhelming difficulties – like Paul and Timothy were. You and I may or may not die because we love Jesus – but our faith can easily perish when it does not become passion and devotion – like Paul’s faith was.

We cannot afford to read the bible like a book of suggestions, or discard bits when they don’t seem relevant or  they seem to be setting the scene for what comes next. Everything written in this book has the power to change our lives and the way we relate to God. We do not want to water down the power of God to save us from ourselves. In today’s world, where anything goes, we need this kind of passionate commitment more than anything else. Bye. 👋🏻