Prompts

P 3442 Keeping our love ON.

/ DVH

One way or another, I have spent a great deal of my time in hospitals. I am not saying that to gain sympathy, it is simply true. Meanwhile I don’t like them. I feel like someone is going to pop out of the ether, and decide I need this ghastly test, or that. Or maybe some super keen doctor will sentence me to four hours of waiting in a chair. While I try not to mind my life being whittled away by people in white coats. Yeah, I have a bad attitude. The Lord reminded me this morning that sick people go to hospitals, “the fields are white!” He said. “I need more energy Lord,” I said!

Remembering to keep our love ON can be difficult at times, especially when we’ve spent a lot of our lives living the other way. Here’s what Jesus said:  “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.’ Matthew 7:13-14. Yeah, I wish He hadn’t said that too … but He did. The narrow gate needs to be sought and found – it isn’t like the yellow brick road, wide and obvious!

The people who travel this narrow road study LOVE. How it works, what it looks like when we do it. The Lord has said some tough stuff in the scriptures, but when I look at the way I’ve chosen to live in the past, I am so grateful for His wisdom – I need to hear it! It wasn’t that I didn’t try to obey Him, but I know I gave complaining equal footing in my life. A grateful heart is a fantastic blessing, in the list of blessings God has given us. Let’s stop searching for the fake gold of this world, and start digging for the real treasure … Jesus Himself.

However, we will have to fight any Goliaths that have taken up residence in our lives. Those things that bellow and hurl threats of doom and despair at us, and others, through us. He yells that he will kill us, our friends, our families, plus everyone we love, to create fear. Love can’t flourish in an atmosphere of fear. We must trust the Lord to take care of us. David ran at Goliath, but he left his big brothers up on a hill hiding behind rocks! His brothers had a problem … but David didn’t! His faith in Almighty God saved an entire nation that day.

The thing I love about this young man is that he believed in the God Who was with him, when he faced Goliath. We are so much better off than David was, we have the same God IN us. That thing that we think we can’t possibly fight, we don’t ever have to fight it alone. He will be with us. He promised, so let’s choose to believe Him! David was no more alone on that battle field than WE are. Jesus told us that He has given us His power, and we need to believe Him and act on it. Then we can go to our enemy’s camp and take back what he has stolen from us. 

People spend time praying to become everything the Lord God means for them to be. I want to add that it is also good to pray that we would identify and throw off all those weights the enemy has been laying on us since birth … “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” Hebrews 12:1. WE do that, God doesn’t do it for us – He does it with us!

We may not feel like we can outrun the Goliaths of this world, but we can definitely learn to outwait them. BTW, “outwait” is a verb meaning to stay longer than someone else, or to wait until a bad event or time finishes.” Perseverance is a vastly underestimated Grace. It comes directly from the fruit of “patience, faithfulness, and self-control.” We have eternity on our side – satan does not, and he knows  it! If we do not faint in our journeys with Jesus — we will win. Don’t look at problems as forever things, once we give them into His hands who knows what He will do with them?

Doing the things we hate is another form of worship, as we do them “as unto the Lord.” Let’s face it, without the Holy Spirit’s help, none of these things are actually appealing. They are easy to read, but it is much harder to motivate yourself to do it. We want to raise the dead and heal the sick, and have a ministry, etc. But Jesus wants us to be bullet proof — He cares about our hearts first. And Paul gave us a list of things that we need to remember to wear. So as we put on the full armour of God, we put on those things are illustrations of the new way we’ve chosen to live now. This is how it works:

‘Always speaking HIS truth;  remembering we have Christ’s righteousness as a gift to clear our path;  at the same time we are always ready to share the gospel;  and our faith guides us and prompts us to act. Together with the knowledge that Jesus died to save us and now we have the Holy Spirit with us.’ Let’s embrace active cultivation, through our own personal choices, and make room for the growth of the fruit of the Spirit. As we “…put on love, which binds …(all the other graces) … together in perfect unity.” Colossians 3:14. We can’t be patient, kind, self-controlled etc. without LOVE leading us. 

Doing things we dislike is a challenge, but there are so many riches that are already in place, waiting for us to draw upon them. So let’s focus on the Lord and His blessings, not our feelings.. Our faith when it is active, will give all these things, substance. They become evidence in our lives of His Presence.  The answer is simple — don’t take your love off … Jesus’ love is always on! Bye. 👋

P 3113 How it works.

/ DVH

I woke up with this thought jiggling about in my brain, so I had to get up to write it down. “When you have confidence in the power source, you do not have to pray for the tool to work.” Let’s look at that sentence through a less than perfect illustration:  Every time you get into your car to go out, maybe you pray about safety etc. but you don’t have to pray that the car will work. You expect your car to work. You put in the key into the ignition, turn it and away you go. (Let’s just pretend that everyone’s car works OK – it’s an illustration, right?)

I cannot put any faith in myself to transform me. I must lock my faith onto the One Whose passionate desire is to see me changed. The same faith that saved ME, will change ME!  Our feelings or experiences sometimes will lead us astray, they say: “God won’t help me, He can’t change me.” Why do we feel this way? Because we are looking at the car, (myself), not the power source – the Holy Spirit! (Romans 12:2) We can lose our hope and faith, simply because this world is anti the things of God, and bad things happen to us and we think we can’t change our responses. 

Suddenly we are sad/mad/grumpy/tired and the people around us are not co-operating with our desire to walk with the Holy Spirit. They don’’t want to provide us with a serene peaceful atmosphere. They are not supposed to, we are the ones who yield to Him and give Him room. (Ephesians 5:18-20) This is why we spend time with the Lord Himself, and read His Word. The bible is fuel for the power of God to flow through us. It will clean out the spark plugs, and keep our whole engine CLEAN. (Acts 10:15) Focus on the connection, not the outcome.

Maybe at your house some mornings, one kid can’t find his shoe, and another is still being prodded into getting out of bed. Serenity comes from within us, because HE IS our peace!  And then that peace flows out from us into the world around us. It won’t come from circumstances, it comes from within us. So if the kid won’t get out of bed, etc. we can still be at peace, because our surroundings have nothing to do with our day. We know the Peaceful One, He lives INSIDE us.(John 16:7) We talk to Him and ask Him how to deal with this kid. You and I are in a process of learning to trust the Holy Spirit – HE is the source of the power to overcome.  

Back to my car illustration: You don’t have to feel like your car will start, you know it will. Even a little fuel will start your car! Despite our outward circumstances—His power is ignited when we obey because we love Him and value His Presence. And we will gain confidence that His ways are higher than ours. That’s when we can develop confidence in His work in us because we have done it over and over again. Practice helps confidence. 

The Holy Spirit wants to be our constant companion, He does not want to leave us, even though we can be wilful and become deaf to His promptings. (Romans 8:9) All we need to do then is to repent and ask for His help. The bible clearly tells us He will be with us and He will help us – we simply use our faith to grab hold of what His book says. Then take a breath, and act like He would, using our faith. We co-operate with Him. 

We don’t have to flog ourselves to death trying to be something God has given us for free. That’s just dumb!  The question is not: ‘can I do this?; The real question is: ‘Do I believe He will help me?‘ (Psalm 46:1) He’s the power source. YES He will… because we have His promises in writing! Don’t focus on the lack inside you, focus on the abundance in Him. Christ died to give us His power to overcome this world. That power is so strong it brought Him victory over death, He came out of the grave and His word tells us He will help us.

Jesus tried several times to warn His disciples about the stuff that was going to happen to Him – they didn’t believe Him, or even try to store those thoughts up in their hearts – maybe because they didn’t like the thoughts! That led to their faith failing them. (Mark 14:50) Let’s stop looking at our immediate circumstances, and pray for eyes to see what He is actually doing. We will find more faith than we ever thought possible, when we stop trying to fix ourselves, and simply engage with the Holy Spirit at the moment of impact. Choose to change your response and act like the power to change is there, because it is – His book says so! (Acts 1:8)

We do not have beg or plead with God to help us, His Word tells us that we can have confidence in Him.(1 John 5:14) We choose to believe what He says, over what we think or feel, and then we act differently. Testing situations are never about: “can God help us? ”OR: “Will God help us” HIS power to help us is already here! The Holy Spirit came to earth over 2,000 years ago. HE’S now HERE, and active on our behalf. My faith is in the One Who made those promises. That same faith that saved us, has the power to change us. Turn the key, the power is already there.

Overcoming is the result of our deliberate choice to obey His Word under any and all circumstances. Now we read the bible to learn how the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit act, and what They value. The bible is not a list of instructions, it is a list of prompts! Obedience will open the floodgates that disobedience erects.That is how it works. Bye. 👋

P 2459 Run after something worth running after …

/ DVH

“Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope, and love—yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.” 1 Corinthians 13:13 TPT.

Paul suggests in the scripture above that if you want to run after something then run toward something worthwhile — like love. In other versions of the bible, this verse says …PURSUE love. I like that. Chase after love because it is worth chasing after. We will always need to chase after love however, because with some people, it seems like it is always too far away, plus we are not perfect yet! That’s great BTW, that means we are ‘poor in spirit’ and the poor in spirit inherit the kingdom – at those times we need the kingdom!  Sadly some human relationships are often full of surprises, nasty ones. We are going to need the Holy Spirit to be our full-time coach.

Before we start, here’s a great thought to help us focus and praise God – GOD’S LOVE IS ALWAYS RUNNING TOWARD US! Back to the verse, it says if we are going to run, we need to run after knowing, and living in HIS kind of love. Forget human affection – that disappears quickly in conflict. How do you aim at His love? First of all, remember Love is a VERB not a noun. It is not just an attitude, it is an action. It is see-able! It does something good.

Now let’s look at a metaphoric illustration. You are running alongside somebody you know, and everything is going well, … Then they — we both know it’s always them, it’s never me — say or do some dumb thing, and you’ve lost your stride.  And bit by bit, the rhythm we had together is suddenly broken. Now they are nowhere near me at all and we don’t agree about anything. I’ve lost my peace, patience, and eventually my temper… usually in that order!

What happened? Perhaps I stumbled over something they said or did, or maybe they didn’t say something I needed to hear. Or vice versa. Whatever! The rhythm we had together is now lost. However, the point of pursuing love is not about running …it is the fact that you were running together. There is POWER in ‘together!’ Sadly we can end up brokenhearted when we no longer have the same aim as the other person. However, I am not powerless.  I can always aim at love – with, or without them. The result is the same. I don’t need them to love me back, or even treat me kindly, because God’s love follows the Holy Spirit and His kind of love runs on GRACE not performance. 

Further, the bible says: ‘Love bears all things’, so, in those hard moments when we cannot bear what is going on — we will actually need His love helping us to do more than resolve conflict. People are always impacted by God’s Love. Human love is tainted by need, but God’s love is highlighted by the fact it is unconditional.

What to do? Apologise! Yeah, I know, I didn’t do anything. But apologising clears the air, and repentance lets in grace. And grace makes room for the other person to come to terms with their part in what happened. You see the point is not to instantly arrive at agreement, the real point is going straight back into running toward LOVING LIKE HE DOES. Whether the other person comes or not!

When we are pursuing this kind of love we cannot enter into a brawl about who was right and who was wrong, be-cau-se … we cannot get to love, by that route! That route will end up in a bigger argument. The way to pursue and arrive at running after love is to give up your idea of how things are meant to happen, and start running after the Holy Spirit. We need His help. We do this despite how unkind the other person has been toward us. 

BTW, loving someone with God’s love does not mean we utterly approve of everything they are doing. LOVE AND APPROVAL are two different things. God’s kind of love is supernatural. We always need His love flowing through us, and we access it by obeying what the Holy Spirit prompts us to say and do. Now we stay under the instruction of the Holy Spirit – we don’t give in to our own temper or hurt feelings.

At the same time, we are going to need our faith and hope to kick in to help us to keep on running. I ask the Holy Spirit for ALL those things, plus loads of Grace – because Grace saved the world!  Meanwhile, God’s love is accurately described in the bible and HIS Love always looks like this …”Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. So the reverse of these things is a good indicator that we are not walking in love … if we are impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, or proud etc.

Obviously aiming at love means we are going to die to self. But that is fantastic be-cau-se …”greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.” If 1 Corinthians 13 is to be part of our daily lives then we must pursue love and obey the Holy Spirit. He will take care of our attitudes and actions. Plus we are also acknowledging our own poverty of spirit. Chasing after His Love means we are running after something worth pursuing. Bye. 🥰