Quiet time

P 3472 Don’t leave Him out – He wants in!

/ DVH

Lately it seems to me that we have become so busy creating things ourselves and making money, that we have forgotten the simple pleasure of enjoying everything the Lord has made. Ambition is often applauded in today’s world, but I think contentment is far more valuable than that or money. You have to learn how to be content – Paul tells us that. And at the bottom of a lot of sin today is the sad state of … deliberately leaving God out. Even Christians. We relegate the Lord to Sunday, and a ‘quiet’ time, but true contentment comes from knowing Who is in charge here – every moment, every single day. 

It is important to give the Lord His place, and if we don’t, then repentance is the best way back. Sometimes the pride of life overtakes us, and the idea that our best is not ‘good’ enough, can be difficult to swallow. But the truth is, unless we totally lean our lives, unreservedly, unashamedly and wholly on what Jesus Christ did for us — we are wasting all our energy and passion. It becomes incredibly easy to repent when you realise you haven’t just done wrong – you ARE wrong!  As Christians we do our best to avoid visible sins, and that can fool us into thinking we are getting things right – those thoughts start us on a downward spiral into works and pride. Gratitude is the best attitude. And genuine repentance, keeps us under the blood of Jesus.

In this life, we need the Lord … every single second of every single day. I am not intimidated by that thought, it blesses me. God knows the way I should go, I can trust Him. We are so fortunate to know Him. Blessings are not a sign of His approval, they occur simply because He is a generous Father and He loves to give.

The bible says so “ … so that you may [show yourselves to] be the children of your Father who is in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on those who are evil and on those who are good, and makes the rain fall on the righteous [those who are morally upright] and the unrighteous [the unrepentant, those who oppose Him].” Matthew 5:45. 

God is good to everyone! We are His ONLY because of what Jesus did. If you are far from Him, and still breathing, then it is never too late to turn around and go home to your Heavenly Father. Jesus is a Saviour – He saved us from ourselves and our idea of what is right and wrong. It is time for every single one of His children to come home. It doesn’t matter how much dirt you’ve accumulated along the way – Jesus’ blood washes all of us clean.

Repent. Fix whatever you can, but come home. Your Father is waiting at the gate, looking down that road you ran off on. He has prepared a celebratory garment for you to wear and He wants to throw a huge party —- simply because you are irreplaceable to Him. Ask Jesus and the Holy Spirit to help you leave behind the pigpens of this world, and go home. The Lord wants to help you, you just need to ask … and then start taking faith steps.

We don’t have the power within us, without His help, to overcome our passions, proclivities and preferences. Like Adam and Eve we can easily be deceived by satan, and self-deceived into thinking that the Lord approves of what we are doing, or have done. Repentance means turning around and going the other way. That’s hard. It takes a huge effort to shake off the dirt of this world, because it thinks self-promotion and self-importance are the pinnacle of this life. People’s idea of right and wrong changes with political climates and popularity.

The church has made a god in her own image when she moved away from what the bible says, into popular opinion. Human beings have fooled themselves, believing that what we know today, and have experienced, goes far beyond what God planned when He wrote the bible. We think we are bigger than God Himself … until something goes wrong and we can’t fix it!  What we are saying is this: Almighty God is old-fashioned, we are now smarter than He is, and we know more than He does. That is blatantly untrue …when we are dead and gone we will be forgotten — but His Word remains forever.

We’ve all been saved by the Grace Jesus Christ extended to each one of us, when we didn’t even know, or care that He did it! All WE could do, was acknowledge what He had already done. My prayer for all of us is that every single day is filled to overflowing with the knowledge that:  you have never been more loved than you are right here right now.. 

Never ever doubt that you will be joyfully received by God. However the past needs to become the past. We are now living in a time of Grace, and Almighty God has postponed judgment in the hope that all of us who need to do it, will turn around and come back home. Those who have known Him and those who have not, yet. Grace does not smile on our faults, it has covered them with the most expensive substance known to mankind… Jesus Christ’s BLOOD! Please don’t leave the Lord out of your life, He wants to be IN everything. Bye.👋.

“Beware that no one distracts you or intimidates you in their attempt to lead you away from Christ’s fullness by pretending to be full of wisdom when they’re filled with endless arguments of human logic. For they operate with humanistic and clouded judgments based on the mindset of this world system, and not the anointed truths of the Anointed One. For He is the complete fullness of deity living in human form. And our own completeness is now found in Him. We are completely filled with God as Christ’s fullness overflows within us. He is the Head of every kingdom and authority in the universe!” Colossians 2:8-10 TPT.

P 2857 Fads, and fancies.

/ DVH

Some clever person has decided, for whatever reason … pick one … WHO knows? … that if the Lord wakes you up at 3.00am, He wants to talk to you. O-k-ay. Maybe the Lord wakes them up at 3.00am to talk to them – I can’t speak to their experience, nor yours for that matter. But trust me … when I wake up at 3.00am I am not thrilled. All I wanna do is go back to sleep! I love to talk to Jesus, but not-quite-so-much at 3.00am. 3.00am means I’ve probably had just enough sleep to stay awake until I have to get out of bed. When I wake up at that hour, I quite often can’t go back to sleep again.

Meanwhile, imagine what an idea like that does to a young working mother, or a mum who has her hands full? Maybe she just got her baby/toddler back to sleep? Many a night I’ve sat in a rocking chair, soothing a cranky child, rocking away, praying for people. That’s why I can see these women at 3.00am, with toothpicks holding their bloodshot, sleep-deprived eyes open, saying … “Who the what now?? This kid is going to wake up again in a few hours… Go away … tell your nice theory to someone who gets plenty of sleep!” Sometimes human beings say the dumbest most thoughtless things. Never let anyone but Jesus write on your relationship with Him. You are you, and those other people who do things differently are not-you.

Meanwhile at 3.00am I have noticed that every single idea that pops into my sleep-addled brain is fantastic! I immediately know how to change my life, or save the world. I think I have a reason for that phenomenon – I am sleep deprived! Sleep deprivation does weird things to the brain. We all think we are a genius at that hour. Actually I woke up at 3.00am this morning and I wrote this blog. Yes, I talked to the Lord, and prayed for everyone I could think of, and I ended up even more awake trying to solve problems that weren’t mine in the first place! 

That’s when I remembered Samuel was once awake in the middle of the night because the Lord wanted to talk to him. He was a kid at the time and he woke up confused too – he didn’t know it was God talking to him. (See 1 Samuel 3.)  Eli had to straighten him out. You know, that nice man didn’t even ask the wide-awake kid to go and fetch him a glass of water … you always need one when you wake up early … he just gave the boy wise advice, and then he rolled over and went back to sleep. Smart guy Eli, grossly underestimated in the realm of wisdom. 

Sometimes, Christians can have FADS. In my lifetime I have seen lots of them, they come, they go, because eventually somebody throws more light on this theory or that revelation. The bible says: ”I will arise right early, I will awaken the dawn…” Psalm 57:8. But I’m left wondering if that is the same thing as making yourself wake up at 3.00am! If the Lord wants you, He will call you. It is my hope that this fad is short-lived. And yes, I know that we all need a quiet time with Him, but that’s for you and Him to work out. Just talk to Him. He’s always there.

It’s like fasting: the bible says that the Lord chooses the fast we are to participate in. (Isaiah 58:6-11.) I can still remember when fasting was a fad, people fasted to make God do things. Fasting is a supernatural event, we are led into it by the Holy Spirit – it is not a dietary or problem solving aid! Our Father loves us so very much, and we don’t have to make Him do anything. Sometimes I think people fast because they don’t like NO!

Just recently a doctor discovered that my bones are showing the effects of age, which doesn’t surprise me because I have had them for a while. He had three wonderful remedies to cure this problem, and they all had ghastly side-effects. The first one caused oesophageal spasms, the second gave flu-like symptoms because it is used in chemo-therapy and the third one causes necrosis of your jaw bone. Strangely …I said no thank-you to His interesting options. He was a bit miffed, BUT … not every suggestion or revelation  you hear about or receive, no matter how insightful, is actually helpful to your life.

Now, if the Lord happens to wake you at 3.00am to pray … DO IT. Please!! Some saints gladly give up their sleep time to intercede for the rest of this planet – they pray for His kingdom to come, and I personally praise the Lord for their diligence. But please do not join in this jamboree just because someone said it and it sounds like a deeply spiritual thing to do. Something that just might get you what or where you want to be.. Use your faith to believe that He loves you and loves to talk to you …at any time, instead. 

I know, there are people who are in desperate situations and they need the Lord and His input — but we must remember that He actually wants to talk to us. He is not a sadist thinking up ways for us to torment ourselves just so we can hear from Him! He does not require us to jump through hoops to impress Him. We need to use our faith, not performance. Let’s not blithely subscribe to every fad and fancy that floats on by. 

BTW the book also says this: “In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat—for He grants sleep to those He loves.”Psalm 127:2. Amen. 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 👋