Pressing into God

P 2835 A little Christmas gift from me.

/ DVH

““Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”” Matthew 11:28-30 MSG.

I laughed when I read this scripture today, because I put it at the bottom of yesterday’s blog, and it just seems to be following me around – I had better pay attention!  First of all, I think this version is such a sweet one because it is so accessible. It accurately diagnoses the things that cause us to lose sight of what Grace looks like – tired, worn out, fed up with religion. And it doesn’t just diagnose, it also provides sound spiritual medicine! Win, win.

Religious rules are easily learned and quite easily applied — but in my opinion, they do not further productive relationships, particularly spiritual ones. In fact I think religious rules can make you excessively watchful and very cranky about somebody else blatantly breaking them.You can become more like a policeman than a loving participant. The presence of any type of threat does not produce good fruit. It is like a child obeying its parents purely because it knows if it doesn’t it will receive a thrashing. 

Conversely, God’s love brings out the very best in people. So when we have someone who is a thorn in our side, we know we have a person that can be used by God to teach us this God-given, God-kissed skill. But first we will need to choose to die to looking after me, and what I want!  Yeah. You just knew there was a catch eh? We talked about forgiveness yesterday, so we will take that as a given, but we can’t just focus forgiveness, we must move on into pressing into God.  That’s because people do dumb inconsiderate hurtful things – A LOT. Sometimes it can seem like that is their gift to society … when I know people like this, I quite often want a refund! 

I try to be real when I write this blog. So if I recommend something, it is because I have tried it and I know it works, but it only works with HIS help. I’ve checked that out, I can’t do any of this stuff without Him! I want to qualify those remarks by saying, I don’t think I was ever a ‘Lone Ranger’ type. I need my hand held and someone nice to teach me, and the Holy Spirit always does that.  Plus I’m pretty sure I’m the kind of person who seeks shelter in a storm rather than braving the elements … BUT … I know I am also quite opinionated, and I can fly off the handle when I think something is unfair or unreasonable. It’s hilarious isn’t it? I hate people being unreasonable but I can easily become excessively unreasonable about things when stuff doesn’t suit me! There’s a lesson in there somewhere. 😳

The Lord Jesus is giving us brilliant spiritual advice in this verse. Don’t go to your Mum, or Dad, or best friend, or your spouse – go to HIM, first. There are lots of great reasons why we should do this- here’s one: “In His presence there is fullness of JOY.” The secret is to seek Him no matter how we feel, because although the Lord sometimes plays ‘hide and seek’ to draw us closer to Himself, the bible reassures us that we will find Him! The bible is truer than our knowledge or experiences – or lack of them. We can’t measure His book by what we know, or even don’t know. God’s Ways work best when we take His Word over whatever is going on around us. And “help” is still a great prayer. 

If someone said they had left you a million dollars, wouldn’t you at least get in touch with the bank to check it out? You know you would! Everything God says in His book is accessible when we apply our faith. Faith means we can’t see it, but because of the veracity, stature and nature of the One Who said it, we believe it anyway – we believe it enough to act on it. Believing is more than agreeing. If you never go to the bank to get your 1,000,000 dollars it will stay in the bank forever, waiting for you to claim it. God has given us a measure of faith, it’s OURS.

Almighty God knows everything there is to know about rest. The bible tells us He did it first. He rested from His labours on the seventh day. Why? I dunno! As an example to us?? I know He wasn’t tired, because He does not grow weary! That’s also in the book!! The more we know and deliberately act on His word, and seize every opportunity that comes our way, the more the truth of everything the Lord has said begins to resonate in our hearts. Learning to rest is a great place to start. God’s word will stay a theory if we never ever check it out. 

Our personal faith deposit from Him, will continue to sit in the bank unused, until we get desperate, or the ceiling falls in. Unfortunately, when bad things happen to us, that’s actually a lousy time to start practicing faith. When life gets hard, our spiritual hearing aids stop working. Panic sets in. In the above scripture, Jesus is encouraging us to walk with Him and work with Him – absolutely nothing in that sentence is passive. My Christmas gift to you is to exhort you to start acting on what you already know. Bye. 👋🎁

“What good does it do for you to say I am your Lord and Master if you don’t put into practice what I teach you?”Luke 6:46

P 2700 Let’s keep our eyes on forever.

/ DVH

The bible tells us to “… above all, guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are. Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for from there flows the wellspring of life.”Proverbs 4:23. When I watch over my heart I am watching over who I am and what I produce!

Sometimes the hardest thing to watch over is our own heart. From my limited experience, other people often tread on someone else’s heart unknowingly. However, whoever started whatever has happened, if someone is offended, it means that there is something we both need to look at..Sadly, we can mistake somebody else’s motivation for evil intent, when the truth is this:… a whole lotta people are just big dummies, (like me), and they talk without thinking.

It goes without saying that forgiveness is the key that opens the door to understanding and reconciliation, but we all have people in our lives who are repeat offenders. So today I want to talk to the offended as well as the offender. Have you noticed how easy it is today to take offence? My first bit of advice to the one who is offended, is that forgiveness will require resolve, it will take self-discipline. There’s a happy thought! However, this is how we mature, and grow the fruits of self-control and patience…  by hanging on firmly to the VINE – true forgiveness is in that vine.

So we: “…set our mind on the things above.’ Colossians 3:2. Most growing points in our lives are a matter of forgiveness. The thing is, people aren’t doing whatever they did AGAIN – if we really forgave them in the first place! There may be some times when we read this bible stuff and say to ourselves, “yeah, yeah, great thought, but how do I do that?” I wish I had some snappy whizz bang methodology, that took care of our instant responses – but I don’t.

Here’s my advice for the one offended. My experience in this area of forgiveness has come down to two words – DO IT.  Don’t expect to feel good about it – just do it. Deliberately, and with great resolve, take authority over all the mean, niggly things you want to say to that offender, and ZIP IT. 🤐 When Jesus hung there silently on that cross for us. He gave us the power, by what He did, to shut up when we desperately want to put someone else in their place or comment on their behaviour.. 

Seriously, don’t give into your feelings for a minute, because you will find yourself circling the plug-hole going down for the last time! The bible says SET your mind because sort of kind of hoping the conflict will magically go away, will not work! Let me clarify this – we are changing an internal mindset in our lives, and doing that is not easy. Mindsets change when we consistently ask Him for His help,  use our faith, and keep our anger to ourselves. I say to myself: “I wanna be like Jesus and this is the Way to get there.” People who have no self-control haven’t totally realised what He gave us when He died for us. We already have forgiveness – LEARN TO SHARE. Read Romans! The more we die to self the more we gain!

Transformation takes hold when we find we can say something positive to the person who is jumping all over our last nerve. The bible says: “Bless those who curse you, do good to those who despitefully use you.”  Look, we are not talking about a walk in the park, we are talking about pressing into God until you forget what you were mad about! It IS hard! Hullo!! I say to myself at this point: “Oh there’s that thing that I am not going to remember, because it is a trap sent to distract me!”  That scripture from Colossians is not just a nice thought – it is an essential part of victorious Christian living! Why would we hand our enemy a loaded gun to shoot us? Disarm the gun.

Now to look at the offender: If something is your fault. If you opened your big mouth and hurt someone else and they tell you what you did … then don’t make excuses, and don’t give endless explanations… simply APOLOGISE. Humble yourself. You are not the judge of what hurts someone else! Actually we are not the judge of anything — read the book. Ask what you can do to make amends. People can easily forget that “I’m sorry” is not what the bible says. It says repent. Repentance involves humbling yourself and taking responsibility for what you did. Hurting someone else IS a big deal, because we don’t live by this world’s standards, now we live by His! And He clearly tells us not to make each other stumble.

Offending people is a big deal! I’ve met many people who say they are sorry, but they don’t go that one step further to usher in reconciliation. The aim of repentance is reconciliation. We need to remember that in this Christian life our hearts belong to Him. Father God takes this stuff seriously – it cost Him His life!  When people are mean to you they are being mean to His child. This means we need to pray for them!  Christ’s ministry is all about love and reconciliation, and that is our ministry now too. To live this way, it will help us to keep our eyes on forever, instead of just the here and now. Bye. 👋