Reasoning

P 2762 Who are we listening to?

/ DVH

“There are… times when I spend so much time listening to the voice of reason, I’ve forgotten to listen to the voice of LOVE.” (A line from ‘Call the Midwives.’) What a great thought-filled thing to say! I think it sums up an attitude that easily prevails in our society today. Our logic, our reasoning, can overcome our devotion to living a life of love – if we are not paying attention. We have received God’s love and His blessings freely. He commands us to give to others – freely.

We can easily talk ourselves out of doing whatever God says, when reason takes over. God says: ‘Go and see your neighbour they need help.” Reason says:  ‘I just saw my neighbour the other day and they looked fine to me!” Well now, would you look at that?! Everything is all sorted and I didn’t have to embarrass myself, or move an inch. I can still keep on watching the footie or tennis!  I might even pray for my neighbour, which is a good thing, but are we letting good, take the place of best? Or maybe, our reasoning has diminished our love for the Lord and others.

People call loving the unlovely or giving as the Spirit leads us – risk taking. Yes. There’s no doubt about that – it certainly is! But there is a far worse risk we take when we choose to wholeheartedly live this life, the only one we have, ignoring the needs of others. Love looks like something! It is concrete. To a starving person it looks like a bowl of rice. Sometimes we would rather distract ourselves with something else – something we think of as more fun, rather than choose to live this life, the only one we have, loving others. And it actually doesn’t matter what kind of person that other person is, because otherwise we are using our reason to stand in judgment.

Here’s a way to show love that we can sometimes try to avoid. Jesus showed us how love and generosity works. Mark 12:41-44.“Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling His disciples to Him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

Giving from what we have left-over, or what we think we can afford, probably won’t stretch our faith – love, on the other hand, gives sacrificially. If we are not prayerful about our own inner attitudes, we can end up limiting our love and subsequently our giving, because … reason says our need must come first. ‘We need money to pay bills, and school fees, plus we need a bigger car etc. God understands that we can’t afford to give any more than this.” 

This little widow woman in Mark 12 had learnt a great secret. She wasn’t selective in her devotion and she wasn’t just giving to the treasury, she was giving to God Himself. I think that’s why she gave all she had!  Colossians 3:23&24: “Work hard and cheerfully at all you do, just as though you were working for the Lord and not merely for your masters, remembering that it is the Lord Christ who is going to pay you, giving you your full portion of all He owns. He is the one you are really working for.” Your boss does not pay you, now you and I are living this life for Christ, and He gives us our daily bread. Our choice is what are we going to do with it?

In this bible story, God Himself, Jesus Christ, sat on a seat and commented on the way people approached giving. Galatians 5:25 TPT.“If the Spirit is the source of our life, we must also allow the Spirit to direct every aspect of our lives.” That’s a very big word at the beginning of that scripture. IF!! If God Himself is our source, then money – or the lack of it, or even plenty of it – is not the issue. REASON IS. We can end up thinking very hard when we are trying to figure out what is reasonable for us. I think the god of reason is greatly underestimated in the church today. That sneaky little devil knows how to stop us from doing many things by comparing what we do, with others, or using the words ‘fair and reasonable’ all over the place.

We desperately need to live in a place where His LOVE prevails, not reason. If I invest in something or someone else, I just sowed my heart into it.“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,…”Matthew 6:21. Christ invested His whole heart in us, unreservedly. To the point where our own questionable priorities broke His heart … and then He died. If we are not attentively prayerful, we can easily let reason drown out love’s still quiet voice. Bye.👋

““The one who faithfully manages the little he has been given will be promoted and trusted with greater responsibilities. But those who cheat with the little they have been given will not be considered trustworthy to receive more.”Luke 16:10.

P 2177 Keep stretching your faith.

/ DVH

Matthew 14:17-19 “And He commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, He blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to His disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.”

In this story of the feeding of the 5,000 all the disciples could see was the lack – their faith was limited by their own understanding … however Jesus was about to stretch their faith! After all, in the natural, there were only five loaves, and two fish found amongst all those people. Tee hee – obviously the people at that kind of meeting didn’t come prepared with tea, coffee and snacks! However, the food everyone ate, came from an earthly, insignificant source, but it was given freely.. and in the end it was supernatural bread and fish. So was the sermon, BTW, that sermon is still feeding and challenging mindsets 2000+ years later! Meanwhile, if you want to spiritually authenticate a sermon – maybe multiplying the food will help! 😂

The thing I see from this incident about the boy and his lunch, is this: very little in the hands of our mighty God can always become more than we can ever comprehend!  Which means people like you and I can see miracles too. He was a very ordinary little boy – but he had the faith to offer his lunch. I think our greatest oppositional difficulty sometimes comes from our own personal head knowledge. We are taught to value what we know from school, uni etc. The thing is, in the SPIRIT earthly knowledge isn’t worth bupkis. Earthly knowledge has to take notes and write books!  But ordinary people can live this way – it doesn’t take this world’s knowledge to multiply bread – it takes faith in the One Who multiplied it!

“But the natural [unbelieving] man does not accept the things [the teachings and revelations] of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness [absurd and illogical] to him; and he is incapable of understanding them, because they are spiritually discerned and appreciated, [and he is unqualified to judge spiritual matters].” 1 Corinthians 2:14 AMP.

The Holy Spirit takes the things we cannot possibly know, and explains them to us in words that we can understand. Reading the bible does not depend on head knowledge. I think it was written for all kinds of people who have connection to the smartest Person ever! The Holy Spirit speaks every known language and some unknown ones! He can translate His meaning into something important each and every individual person can understand – even in a huge crowd. He goes around our heads and touches our hearts.

I think most of the time we can be too clever for our own good, and we end up explaining away holy things and we ignore others, because our educated idiot-boxes think they know better! The bible is full of people who put faith first. The disciples thought you couldn’t feed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish, and they were wrong. 

This, BTW could be the reason the Lord was so unhappy with these men later that day, when they started to talk about bread, out in a boat in a storm. Jesus wondered where their faith went because they went back into human reasoning! We are all supposed to live by faith – faith isn’t wish thinking and it often includes stuff we know nothing about. That day the disciples acted in faith when they distributed the bread and fish … then they went back to reasoning and went into fear over a storm! Big mistake. 

Many times it is way too easy to cancel out the ‘God’-factor, and start reasoning about how to solve stuff, because I am looking at whatever is going on around me … instead of praying over it first. Learn to ask the Lord what HE thinks. Because … “the natural mind doesn’t understand the things of the Spirit..” Duh! That’s why we need to pay attention to His life in us. You can call that life whatever you want … born again, new life, making a decision for Christ, becoming a disciple – whatever. I don’t care what it is called – our spiritual life is about a new way to live and see this life! The real question is – who is in charge of your life? You or Jesus?

Our old life requires us to figure everything out using the resources around us. But His new life in us blows our minds over and over again. Renewing our minds through reading the bible is the only way to learn how to think like He does. Changing our minds won’t just come through simply memorising stuff from the book, but that won’t kill you. It’s called ‘hiding His word in our hearts so we won’t sin against Him.’ A renewed mind also doesn’t come from rushing about claiming this and that – that leads to us telling Father God what He should do.  A renewed mind comes from reading the bible, and walking with a PERSON Who knows everything. So we only do what we see Him doing. This will mean we all need more stretchable faith.  👋🏻