Prefer

P 2540 Our new life is OURS – right now!

/ DVH

Learning to walk in the Spirit is not like learning French! There will never be a better time to begin than … right here right now. We cannot achieve unity with Christ Himself in our own flesh, which is why we must choose to die daily. This means that we need to get used to saying NO to our flesh and YES to His ways, and those choices are often minute by minute. His new life in us = the Holy Spirit + our choices + follow through.

That new life will be activated inside our own personal relationship with Him – the daily, moment by moment fellowship we share together … Every day we need to break bread with Christ. That means we take His Word, pray over it, ask for help to understand it personally, and then we deliberately go and obey Him.

Other people can’t give us this, it is something that we must choose to prioritise for ourselves, with the Lord’s help. Today our world concentrates on getting what it wants by its own means. Remember, mankind was organised and clever enough to build the tower of Babel. I urge you not to give into being hurried, or pushed when it comes to reading His book. The church itself has wanted to push God’s people into a pure devotion to God that can only be gained by personal spiritual investment.

Father God reveals Himself through His word, intimately and personally. This is because our new life in Christ is about faith… and our relationship with Him, our obedience, is the stepping out in faith place! The only person who can walk that way IS ME. The way it works can be explained to us, but if we do not personally start taking faith steps, as He leads us, then we will end up back in the flesh. And sadly, the flesh will not profit us. Our flesh’s end-game is the glorifying of MAN. We will stop enjoying God and start ticking boxes.

The Lord gives us revelations because these interactions are part of intimacy – that’s why your revelation may not benefit me at some particular moment in my life. Because … He’s speaking to you! Whenever God shares His secrets with us, He is sharing Himself! Not every prophecy spoken in church is for the whole church – first and foremost it is for the speaker to digest and gain fresh insight and understanding for themselves. Otherwise it can be just another fresh load of instructions loaded onto backs that are already breaking!

Father God has always meant for us to discover Him afresh, every single morning, it is like the manna the Israelites gathered every day. In that time when we shut out the world, and listen to the things He speaks to us through His Word as if He were speaking them to us personally. Otherwise we simply end up following rules and hoping that will do. The flesh cannot give birth to the things of the Spirit. We need to seek Him, and go after the things He is revealing to us. It is meant to be a happy engagement between us and Him as He patiently teaches us His Ways.  

At the same time, we cannot tack Him onto, or into, our already established lives – He is now our life. ‘For me to live IS Christ to die is gain.’ Just as the Lord chose us, and called us to be His people, in the same manner we need to choose, prefer, and defer to Him. This means we will deliberately eliminate the things He points out to us – with the Holy Spirit’s help. Our flesh will lie to us. It will tell us we can’t do thus or thus because … we are too weak, too sick, too busy, too preoccupied with the business/busyness of this world. Sadly, if we are not aware, we can get so busy maintaining our little lives, and our own agendas, that we leave the Lord out and relegate Him as an add-on.

However, whatever our attitudes or thoughts, the truth is — we are now dead. So we have no other agenda but His. This is why we need to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow Him. That personal cross is illustrated by the things in this life that will pull at us and demand our attention to the point where Christ becomes secondary – instead of primary. It can be people, or occupations, or leisure past-times. To walk by faith we will have to fight fear, guilt or blame to prioritise Christ. “But the]Helper (Comforter, Advocate, Intercessor—Counsellor, Strengthener, Standby), the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name [in My place, to represent Me and act on My behalf], He will teach you all things. And He will help you remember everything that I have told you.” John 14:26. He is always on STANDBY!

Sometimes I think, we have what we believe backwards. We fight for healing, or freedom in order to better serve Christ, but if the Lord is not building that house, then we are labouring in vain. It is not that God wants us to be sick, or infirm or in prison! It is that He does not want sickness etc to occupy all our thoughts. We can end up wasting our allotted time chasing answers to human problems when Jesus Christ Himself proved that HIS PRESENCE IS THE ANSWER. Wherever He went sickness, demons, infirmity left. EVERY SINGLE TIME. His new life is now ours, right here, right now.🙌

P 2369 We cannot legislate unity.

/ DVH

Unity comes from an overflow of love, compassion and respect for the other guy. Instead of constantly rehearsing what divides us, let’s try to find common ground. Sadly we now have 45,000 denominations!! Look, as long as the other person you are talking to believes Jesus Christ is the God-sent Son and Saviour of the world, just let go of other things you don’t agree with and find things you can agree on. Jesus is Lord is a good one!! 

Seriously. We can lose opportunities for reconciliation by being pedantic. Telling the other guy where he is wrong will shut down a conversation faster than the bullet train in Japan travels between Tokyo and Osaka. Just let love loose – love is about focusing on the good. I don’t mean we have to agree with everything, but our POV doesn’t have to collide with someone else’s in the name of straightening them out. One of the best things to do when conflict arises is to ask if you could pray together. Come before the throne in Jesus’ Name and let the Holy Spirit do what He does best … sort things out. 

We do not put enough faith in the power of the Holy Spirit to change US as well as the world. Sometimes I don’t think we put enough faith in Him to sort out our lives! That’s why we start meddling and throwing in our own good ideas. Remember the garden. “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was delightful to look at, and a tree to be desired in order to make one wise and insightful, she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband with her, and he ate.” Genesis 3:6. Eve used her own wisdom and initiative to decide what was right. Look at how that turned out!

Obviously rebellion dropped in, and of course her husband didn’t even run it by his brain – he just did what she said for peace! (Joking) 🤪 That kind of peace, BTW, giving our agreement to shut somebody else up, is not true peace. True peace happens, and unity begins, when both sides agree because they want to, because maintaining love is more important. In that place there is no coercion. Silence isn’t in the answer either – it’s a beginning, but we are aiming at LOVE not just an absence of sound. We must not aim too low!

All Eve shows us is how easily we can be led astray, away from peace directly into blame. Meanwhile sometimes I think we consult one another because we don’t want to be bothered waiting on God… He can take too long. Hmm… maybe He takes a while so we can calm down and reflect instead of reacting! That would be His Grace in action. Perhaps He wants us to choose to die to self out of love, instead of an absence of conflict! How do I know that? I’ve done it! I’ve given up my power of choice and compromised. PS it never works. Our hearts can’t be right when we disagree and then lie about it. Duh! 🙄

That is why I started memorising verses like: “Why not suffer wrong?” 1 Corinthians 6:7. Because the minute I start to straighten you out – I’ve stepped out from under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and I’m back leaning on my own understanding! You know, some people are so committed to their own POV, they would exercise their free will even if their entire house was on fire but they weren’t ‘ready to leave yet!’ 😱 Learn to yield. First to God and then to each other.

True unity can’t come under a dictatorship. The fault is not just the people disagreeing – it is that people need to pray together more than they talk AT each other! We cannot maintain our agendas …  things founded on fear, or rebellion – in the throne room. Sorry to repeat myself because I know I’ve said this before, Isaiah was a prophet who turned to JELLO in the throne room. He spoke for God all over the place, but when he was confronted with God, he knew his place — ON HIS FACE! 

In the Presence of the Lord any disunity disappears. I have been known to  have heaps of opinions – until I get in there. We are handling disagreement badly if our aim is to get the other guy to think like me, because I know I am right. If people can’t see pride in that sentence they need Holy Spirit glasses and they also need to pray heaps more. 

Unity matters to God. He’s got the best unified game going in the history of the Universe. Not only does the Trinity agree – They PREFER one another. We need to set our aim higher. Unity is about love, and what the Father wants, not about what you or I think. 👋🏻

P 2321 I read the bible for MY benefit.

/ DVH

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.” James1:22-24 NIV

There is this movie I quite like called ‘Take the Lead.’ In it a retired ballroom dancer decides to start a program for drop-out disinterested kids, and this man teaches them ballroom dancing after school instead of them doing detention. The group of kids he teaches are of diverse cultural backgrounds. 

There is only one white guy and he is a genuine redhead so he is really really white. Another white person, a girl, decides to join this culturally diverse group. There is a brief exchange between the existing red-headed group member, Kurd, and the newbie white female dancer.…Caitlin. He resents her upsetting the balance of the group. 

Kurd : ‘We don’t need any more white bread tourists seeing how the other half lives. We don’t.’ 
Caitlin : ‘White bread?!! Excuse me, do you even OWN a mirror?’ 

I love that line, mainly because I think it needs to be said out loud regularly, in Christian settings. We are wa-ay too enthusiastic and quick to point out to the rest of the world what’s wrong with them. We can draw up a list of things these people simply must not do in a heartbeat, about their sins, actions, and reasons why they will go to hell. My point is that …our mirror is for our own use. We actually OWN a mirror! And we need to use it.ˆThe bible has enough exhortations about change in it to keep all of us busy for the rest of our lives … and then some. BTW, I don’t look in that mirror TO SEE YOU … I look in it …TO SEE the real ME … more clearly!

If I am reading the bible to find ways for you to change, or to learn how to cleverly persuade you to change your behaviour, especially where your behaviour impacts mine – I’ve missed the point. I need to be thoroughly engaged for myself in this process, and that means I’m learning about my faults, not yours. There is no such thing as proxy faith – the only person the bible applies to, is me. 

However I can encourage you, using scriptures. But if we try to sugar coat what we want to say by wrapping up any criticism in nice stuff – then we are only fooling ourselves. And the other person involved will quite quickly S-U-S-P-E-C-T. This is where church division comes from, trying to shove my revelation and my POV off onto others. Even if we think we are helping God get what HE wants! His book is still for my growth. 

Let’s let God open doors for us and stop shoving our shoulder against those doors and blaming someone else for what comes next. We need to learn from the Lord Jesus how to take the lower seat. That’s what ‘the Word become flesh’ means. King David shows us clearly that God has a plan, but He doesn’t always stick to a timetable that suits us.The best thing we can do for others is to pray, and prefer. 

This means we pray and then we continue to prefer the other person in love. Romans 10:12. “Be devoted to one another in love. Honour one another above yourselves.” This life is not about me being righter than you. Any righteousness I have, and any you may have, ALL of that comes from Christ. Here’s something further to chew on:

“All things are legitimate [permissible—and we are free to do anything we please], but not all things are helpful (expedient, profitable, and wholesome). All things are legitimate, but not all things are constructive [to character] and edifying [to spiritual life].’ 1 Corinthians 10:23. 

Until we take verses like these seriously, instead of just holding on tightly to the ones we like – we will not grow UP into the fullness of Christ, our Saviour and Bridegroom. Exercising self-awareness helps us to achieve whatever the Lord wants, so I read the bible to change me.  🙏 Bye.