Preoccupied

P 3441 We carry His Presence …

/ DVH

…and that is a privilege. This life is not meant to be a drudge, slogging on from day to day, only to get up the next day preoccupied with the same problems that occupied our thoughts yesterday! Or perhaps something new pops up and that takes over. 

We can be kept so very busy trying to get to a place where we can obey what He asks us to do, that in the end, we do nothing. Instead we are always waiting. Always in transit but never arriving. The minute we said “yes” to Jesus, the things of this world became secondary. Our primary goal now is to love and serve Him and others. Let’s actively learn to let Father God take care of us. He will look after ‘matters concerning us.’ I spent years trying to figure out which bit was my bit and which bit was His! Finally I thought … “You have the lot Lord, I can’t manage this juggling at all, I keep dropping things.”

Let’s be clear: when I finally realised what DEAD means I did more than just have a thought, I actively took my life and its problems, and prayerfully handed it all over to Him and then I refused to pick them up again. My problems were often people, and the way they had treated me. So I gave up my right to be protected from people who didn’t care a hoot about how I felt, and started practising Love, I chose to change my focus from making them happy to loving them. I was rotten at it and I needed His help. Love does not mean you have to give in. Love means you listen to Him – FIRST. Let the Lord draw your boundaries.

Now, I take my thoughts captive and hand them back to Him. If I end up ruminating over something or other, then I repent and give it back to Him, and ask the Lord to redeem everything. We cannot afford to live in partial surrender. We will spend most of our time trying to figure out which bit is His and what’s ours! Total surrender is the only way to go, otherwise we can be distracted from our main purpose.

Jesus reminded us of that purpose in Mathew 22:37-40.“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

We need to remember our God-given purpose. Love Him first, then love others. That’s because we can’t actually love others unless we meditate on how much He loves us! We are His disciples, we distribute the bread that has been broken in His hands and we give it to the hungry all around us. He was broken for all of us.

If the Holy Spirit had not come at exactly the right time, the disciples could easily have wandered away, and maybe set up their own ministries based on what they saw Jesus do, around them and through them. They too needed the power of God to fall on them. The Holy Spirit released in them the same clarity, courage and purpose Jesus  had. When you read the Epistles etc you don’t hear the Apostles talking about how this or that difficulty occurred last week. Their focus is on Christ, crucified, dead, buried, and resurrected. 

They didn’t care if their parents smacked them too much, or someone bullied them, or stole their money etc. They had better things to do! All this prayer for healing of our inner selves can waste a perfectly good life. Stop living in the past. Be like those 10 lepers!  They were totally healed as they went. Thank God for what He has already done in you, and keep asking Him for more. Then go out and love on other people. Ask Him to help you recognise in yourself anything that could distract you from His primary purpose of loving God and others. 

Back to the Lord’s disciples. It would have been easy to walk about grandly despatching this snippet of information, and passing on this new revelation. If they did that they would have become a brand new breed of Pharisee, Sadducee or Teacher! We don’t need labels, or chains of honour, we need the Holy Spirit. Forget ministry, that will overtake you when He is ready. Those twelve men could have sat back and said, “We were His friends, we saw Him do incredible things.” And lived off that for the rest of their lives..

But they didn’t. They were the ones who had walked with Him and talked with Him and learnt from Him … and He said …“GO!” … So they went. They sought out lost people who didn’t know what Christ had given them, and they daily gave away what they had. They died living that way. 

It makes me want to weep. We sit in our comfy houses in the Western world, and drive our nice cars to church, and pray that Almighty God will make our lives happy and the lives of our families happy. And when they aren’t the way we think they should be, then we pray for Him to make the trouble go away. HE is the centre of the Universe … we aren’t. We aren’t even a blip on the Richter Scale. 

We’ve been given the privilege to carry His Presence with us wherever we go. Leaving the Holy Spirit behind, ignoring Him and His directions is incredibly risky. One day we could wake up and think: ‘maybe the bible isn’t true, maybe it is just an old book with sweet metaphors about niceness.’  People do not often lose their faith in one gigantic explosive event, it is more likely they will lose it little by little and walk away. It’s called compromise. Value His Presence and His love for you, and others, daily. Bye. 👋. 

P 3171 Love Himself is the conqueror!

/ DVH

Have you ever noticed that Jesus was an immediate Advocate for people who could not speak for themselves? His defence of the wounded, scarred and sinful people is such an example to us. In the Gospels we see Him heal, teach and deliver people, but He also countered the criticism that battered them. There are many instances of the Lord intervening on behalf of someone who quite literally didn’t have a leg to stand on! 

Meanwhile, Jesus didn’t pay attention to their sin – He simply poured out God’s loving acceptance onto those people the world rejected, and He presented them with the truth. The truth itself can change lives. Jesus spoke to the sick, lepers, prostitutes, thieves, and law-breakers, people with multiple marriages etc. … all those people that His society rejected.

We don’t seem to have any real answer for people who sin today. Now it seems our society has legislated the world to be quiet and call sin normal, instead. However, the Lord Jesus didn’t pay any attention to behaviour – except the behaviour of the so-called religious. He always went to the person who was trapped in sin or sickness, and He went round their baggage and touched their hearts. The reality of His love saved them. 

I just want to briefly mention that Jesus interacted and loved on Judas right up until the moment when that man betrayed Him. Now, let’s look at what He said at a dinner party at Matthew’s house – 9:10-13. “While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew’s house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with Him and His disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” On hearing this, Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”He sought out the sinners!

I think He saw both sin and sickness the same way— as the things that spoil God’s wonderful creation … US! He still wants to touch everyone around us – through us. Unfortunately, we are the ones, the people in church, who are preoccupied with sin. We gossip about it, fuss over it, and lecture it, and think about ways to get rid of the people who do it. Our answer seems to be – if you can’t be like ME then you can’t belong here! Jesus is the Answer, and the Answer is always bigger than any question!

When someone goes fishing, they don’t expect the fish to jump into the boat and be already gutted, scaled and cleaned! That happens after the fish are caught. We have put so many rules in place any people who, for one reason or another, live with sin, find it intimidating to come to us. Especially as 83% of couples cohabit before getting married, and one in three people have an unhealthy attachment to alcohol and one in twenty Aussies have a substance abuse problem! One in three Australians have also cheated or considered it, with 20% admitting to having cheated on a current or former partner. One third of all marriages statistically, will end in divorce.

When the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet start being drawn into our churches, we will know for certain that they are looking for very real answers – because they have very real problems! Jesus died for everyone’s sins, but in our churches, we can often turn our noses up at other people’s lifestyles – because we don’t do that kind of stuff. How realistic is that? He cares for and upholds the lives of all men and women – it’s their sin that needs dealing with not the people. Sin was taken care of at Calvary – our job is to give them that good news! Maybe through adverse appetites and previous experiences (without Him!) they have been trapped by their own desires and lifestyles. Now we tell people – ‘you don’t have to live like that anymore, let me introduce you to the Answer.’

I have another question to consider today: are we taking His exhortation to show mercy as a suggestion, or embracing it as heaven’s way to live? Holiness comes from our chosen proximity to Him, not from following rules. Rules point to sin, and sin is the thing that Jesus dealt with! God’s been panel-beating me for 50+ years and I still keep finding snarky nasty thoughts and attitudes that don’t belong in His kingdom! Here’s an idea: why don’t we drop the whole “them and us” attitude and instead let’s all just be human beings who need His Grace! I’ll give it to you, you give it to me and we will all get along together. Maybe we could have a dinner party like Matthew did, and invite those people-who-don’t-know- Him-yet. Now where have I heard that before?

At the end of the parable of the wedding feast, these words occur… “The lord said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.” Luke 14:23. When we find people being drawn into and coming into our churches and gatherings because they feel compelled to come, we are standing on the threshold of something incredible. But, every single day our job is to give people a taste of His unconditional love – even those who are unloveable, unwilling to change. Or maybe even sometimes they are impossible to know! We all need it. Let’s stop telling the ‘Wind’ where He needs to blow and stand ready to be blown over by Him ourselves!!

Bonus buy: Loving difficult people changes us! That’s why it is good to bless those who despitefully use you or persecute you. Those people often reveal ourselves to us, and we don’t deserve His love anymore than they do. Jesus, and His love, will always be everybody’s conquering hero! Bye. 👋

P 3103 Historical faith!

/ DVH

Our faith is meant to be living, it carries us from day to day. We look at trouble and say to Him: “How are You going to get me out of this mess please Lord?” Prayer, is walking around aware of Him, it is not meant as a last resort. It is as natural as breathing. We refuse to toss what we believe out of the window, just because things get rough or we get disappointed. This new life we’ve been given is not lip service, it is the thing that nurtures the biggest part of us. Our spirits! Every single day we too, are writing His story into our world around us. Let’s look at Luke 24:13-35:

“Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.  As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognising Him. He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked Him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”“What things?” He asked.“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He WAS(!?!?!) a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 

The chief priests and our rulers handed Him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified Him; but we had HOPED that He was the One Who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find His body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said He was alive.Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter His glory?” 

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning Himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if He were going farther. But they urged Him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So He went in to stay with them. When He was at the table with them, He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him, and He disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

This is a big chunk of scripture today, but I put is here because I want to talk about how easy it is to let our faith become historical. Faith from yesterday is not the same as the faith we use today. We are growing fruit, and we really need personal intimate times with Jesus Himself, otherwise – like these two men – our day to day sadness can overcome the fact that, HE LIVES!! Jesus explained to these men that all the prophets had pointed toward Him, and these old saints foretold that the Messiah would die. These two men had already relegated the Lord Jesus into their history. BUT … He was present – right there, with them!!

The bible says they had been prevented from seeing Him. However, I do think they recognised His hands as He broke the bread, because they had seen those hands do that before! Here’s my little opinion. They were in the same position that this world is today – Jesus had become part of history. They thought of the Lord in the past tense. The Lord wants us to live by faith today – present tense! Faith IS… the substance of this new life we have with Him, and head knowledge is no substitute for the reality of His Presence with us.

Jesus indicated to the disciples that He was going to continue to walk on … and the men had to ask Him to stay. Daily, we need to recognise He is always with us, so let’s ASK Him to stay with us, and watch out for the things He will do. The Lord is actively looking for the hungry, those who want to be with HIM. He needs our YES! Let’s refuse to be distracted by the stuff that flies around in our daily lives, and remember that the Lord is our everything. Nothing will make sense without Him.

Jesus knows humanity, personally and experientially, as well as our penchant for mediocrity. We need to choose to move on into the next phase of our faith lives with Him. We must go beyond our daily commitment to pray, or read His Word, into daily depending upon Him and His deliverance from sin and evil. These two disciples had walked, talked, eaten and watched and listened to Jesus constantly. But, they did not recognise Him because they were not expecting Him! There must be expectancy in our faith. These men thought He was dead and gone.

We can fall down the same hole that swallows our faith because the Lord doesn’t appear to be with us. Especially when we pray and the answer we want does not happen. In our own daily lives we can become preoccupied with day-to-day mediocrity and we forget our main purpose – His will is our main purpose. He is always alive within us. If we have no answer to our prayers, then we need to hand whatever it is over to Him, and ask the Lord to reveal to us what He wants us to do next. We can get so tied up in making our lives comfortable, that we forget that we are a people with a mission. 

Christians love to pray for revival, but revival starts with ME … being obedient to what He tells me to do. Let’s not settle for historical faith! Every minute I postpone doing what He says to do, is a minute of my life I am wasting. Our obedience to Him, will usher in personal revival. Bye. 👋 “Here’s what I’ve learned through it all: Don’t give up; don’t be impatient; be entwined as one with the Lord. Be brave and courageous, and never lose hope. Yes, keep on waiting—for He will never disappoint you!” Psalms 27:14 TPT

P 3081 Priorities.

/ DVH

My title today seems to be the catch cry of this world we live in, people are practically lining up to take over our priorities: “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think He’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do His best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way He works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how He works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.”Matthew 6:33 MSG.

Isn’t this a lovely version of this scripture? Here’s another version of the same scripture, from the Good News bible: “Instead, be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what He requires of you, and He will provide you with all these other things.” This verse reminds us that priorities are important. It is my belief that we have accidentally let our own personal human priorities take precedent over God’s Kingdom business. Now here is my third version of the same verse from Matthew: “So above all, constantly seek God’s kingdom and His righteousness, then all these less important things will be given to you abundantly.”

The secret to this verse is highlighted for me with the words “less important.” Which leads me into assessing how important God Himself is in my life. Is He more important than whether the sun is shining or not? Is He more important than what’s for breakfast? Is He more important than my job? Giving God first priority means we will discover a whole other way to look at everything around us. I think Jesus picked flowers etc. as an illustration because that stuff is beautiful, but fleeting.   

God is a giver, He gives us … Himself, His Son and …time. Time to worship the Lord. Time to say that thing you always meant to tell your spouse. Time to say I love you, you are my friend. Time to be glad to have somewhere to sleep and something to eat. Did you wake up today? Me too! 🤣 That means that God has given us another day. Some people didn’t wake up this morning, but we did! What are we going to do with this day? I truly believe the focus we choose is the thing that steers us from day to day. Our God is not thundering from Mount Sinai — He is whispering inside our hearts. When He is our focus He tells us clearly that we don’t have to worry about anything else. Well, there’s a blessing! “This is the day that the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

I am learning not to project my time into tomorrow, otherwise I start to worry what I will do about this and that, and usually those worries are fears, not real things. My point is this:  I don’t have tomorrow … I may leave here and wake up there overnight! I think that’s why the Lord told us: “so do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Matthew 6:34. Lately some of my days appear to have a fair share of difficulties, so that means that I will deliberately have to choose to put all those worrisome things down, simply because He told me to do it.

God made flowers, plants, trees etc and we know that He looks after them, but the book says —He loves US MORE!! Let that sink in a bit. He called you, by your name, you are not a minor member of the faceless crowd to Him. You are special to Him simply because you are you. His heart is sooo big it is more than big enough to take ALL of us IN. When we worry about tomorrow or what might happen, it means we’ve forgotten that His thoughts are always toward us. It’s kind of insulting really. We often lose our time to something that is not worthy of our attention. He made everything around us, and He will not forget us. We need to actively remember WHO HE IS and how much He cares for us.

Our earthly father may have been absent, busy, or just absent minded. He may have been switched on most of the time – or off. Those sad facts cannot override the fact that God is always ON and He is always interested in every single detail of our lives. When He mentions flowers which are transitory things, He is saying that nothing is too small for Him to care about. If it happens to YOU — He cares about it. I’ve found it is healthy to live each day I am given with eternity in mind. I think that’s what Matthew 6:33 is about.

However, God is not our head housekeeper, or a concierge, He isn’t with us to facilitate our lives and run them like clockwork! Emmanuel means God with us, so we are never alone. Maybe nobody else knows that we spend our days weeping over our heartaches. Or maybe soldiering on regardless – numbing our senses to cope with the pain that this life continually produces — but He knows. He does not want His precious people starved of love and meaning in their lives. That’s why He came here. 

Taking care of our day to day priorities can squeeze out the very life of God within us. Before we know it we are treating Him like an obligation, or, even worse … SomeBody Who is too hard to relate to. If that happens, go back to reading the Gospels and watch the way Jesus treats people, how He interacts with them. He is our priority because God made us His priority. Bye.👋

P 2751 Stop and smell the flowers …

/ DVH

unless you happen to get hay fever … then maybe you should just look … from a distance … preferably with a mask on! 😂 Meanwhile there are a plethora of hay fever tablets nowadays, supposedly fixing that problem. 

I sometimes sit and watch other people when I am out. They rush about, doing this, wrangling kids, checking off things on a list, plus catching up with that. I came to the conclusion that we should watch our little children more. They can have fun just swinging their legs, sitting on a seat! Tiny children don’t have timetables. From the minute they wake up until they finally shut their little eyeballs in sleep – all that is on the agenda is fun fun fun fun fun. And if you are lucky you might just get food in as they run about. Forget changing their nappies – it’s catch me if you can!!

Jesus said some fantastic things about the way we need to live to thrive, not just survive! Matthew 6: 25-33 (Luke 12:22-32) “If you decide for God, living a life of God-worship, it follows that you don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or whether the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the birds, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, careless in the care of God. And you count far more to Him than birds.

“Has anyone by fussing in front of the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? All this time and money wasted on fashion—do you think it makes that much difference? Instead of looking at the fashions, walk out into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They never primp or shop, but have you ever seen colour and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them.“If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think He’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do His best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving.”

Rushing about fills our lives with noise and stuff – the things that don’t last. The practicalities of this life can get in the way of our daily “God awareness.”  We can easily elevate these everyday things into places they don’t belong. If I could go back in time, I would rush back to the time when my kids were little and I saw this world through their brand new, highly delighted eyes. I enjoyed watching them – the wonder of their discovery and fascination with everything. Of course I also greatly appreciate that back then … I was their hero! … I was also ready for a stretcher at the end most days.

Sometimes I think we are so intent on escaping from this world, through entertainment etc., we’ve lost our wonder. The dictionary says wonder is a feeling of amazement and admiration, caused by something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar. I can run with that. Ask yourself when was the last time you just stood still and watched the sun rise or set, or you watched a flock of birds wheeling through the sky? If Jesus said we should take note of these things then … we should take note of them. Those words are not just advertising or pretty things He said to fill up the page!!  

Try to stop regularly to smell the flowers, or sit still and watch the grass grow … without rushing to grab the mower!! That stuff is good for human beings. I often recover my peace in those moments. It has flown away because I got too tense over something I cannot possibly solve. And I recover my peace simply by looking at nature.

Even when you have kids, it is good to remember that not everything is a correcting, or teaching moment – allow them to teach you to slow down. Laugh a lot, and look around. Some things in this world are beautiful … just because they are!  Did you know that there are 400,000 species of flowering plants? You will if you get hay fever! My point is that all of that beauty came out of our God’s creativity. One of the ways to get to know Him is to be observant.

If you are struggling to have a quiet time, then give yourself 15 minutes every day, to watch this life continue to thrive all by itself, without you adding a bean to it. Don’t pray, don’t stuff the word into your already busy brain, breathe. Then after that, you can pray and read!  Having a peaceful heart is the best way to live this life. Most of the things we struggle with come from a lack of peace. An internally peaceful person spreads that peace around them wherever they go. That is our birthright. Father God’s got us and He will not let us go. “He that keepeth thee will not slumber…”

The last thing I regularly like to do is to enjoy silence. There is so much noise around us – everywhere we go! In a lift, in the shops, even in the public toilets!!  It’s hard to think. Silence is good for the soul. Give yourself the gift of silence and … stop and smell the flowers… 🌼 We were not designed to constantly rush about seeking the stuff we cannot keep, ignoring the very things that God provides for free. Bye 👋