Rehearse

P 2624 Take positive action.

/ DVH

“Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone you will presently come to love him.” (CS Lewis.)

God said that like this, in Colossians 3:2-10: “Set your minds on things that are above …(!!!That’s where the real action is!) “… not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ Who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.

In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator….”

… “  (12-14) “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”

So here’s my question — WHO gets all this nifty, but really nitty, gritty, hard stuff? We do! You. Me. US! This means I can’t sit about on my hands praying fervently that the Lord will change me … while I keep on doing the stuff the bible says DON’T DO! This is a really good time to remember that the Lord put Jonah in a whale (!!) to get him back on track. So if you wanna be rebellious, then you’d better stay away from SeaWorld!

Seriously, this stuff is a no-brainer. We need to take what Jesus said and make it our great AIM to leave the ugly stuff that will tangle us up and make us fall over, behind us. If you are a fighting person who gets bad tempered at the drop of a hat, then whack your hand over your mouth and vacate the premises. And don’t come back until the urge has left you! Our mouths get us in so much trouble – sadly, I have learnt this truth the hard way. What we say, or sometimes refuse to say … is responsible for so many bad things. If we choose to abuse someone else it will escalate – and unless you are talking to a door, then that other person will retaliate!

No-one wins in an argument. Even if you think you’ve won you’ve lost! When we bad mouth or abuse someone else, we are deliberately walking away from the Lord and empowering the Old Self. Jesus won’t interfere, He wants us to take responsibility for our own behaviour. Honestly, I don’t care what they said — what am I going to do about it? We must stop expecting the Lord to supernaturally intervene, and work on changing our own hearts. HE WILL HELP US but He will not do it for us! Nothing else matters but being with Him.  So put away the things that are going to drag us away from loving Him, worshipping Him, following Him. We cannot serve two Masters. Jesus said that in Matthew 6:24. 

For those of you who are related or married to somebody who loves to pick fights, or someone who gets irritable easily … stop blaming them, and quit engaging with the argument. I don’t care how wrong they are – what is the kingdom of God worth to you? Sadly, for some people it is worth less than their own opinion. We want all the power in the world so we can move mountains, but we cannot deal with the mountains of disapproval, criticism and lust in our own lives? Good luck moving that other mountain Jesus spoke about, if you can’t control YOU.

Start speaking love and approval to the other person. It is extremely hard to argue with someone else who keeps telling you how terrific you are, how valuable you are. It is not lying – that person is valuable to God! When we are angry with someone, we rehearse their faults – why not rehearse their good points?! Life is not a competition, it is not about who wins or loses. It is about life and death. Yours, theirs and the people around us. We’ve been put here to shine His light into a dark place —- not to increase the darkness! Lastly, revenge belongs to the Lord, so do yourself a favour and don’t get in His Way.

Jesus said this verse nobody likes, remember? (Matthew 5:29)“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for. thee that one of thy members should perish, and. not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.” Imagine what we would all LOOK LIKE if we took that verse seriously! 😱 We need to choose to participate in positive actions with His help. Lastly, “Love your enemies …” — because at the very least you will drive them crazy!

Bye. 👋

P 2394 Releasing His Grace.

/ DVH

Forgiving someone is simply the starting place for the process of releasing Grace into a sinful atmosphere. We ask the Lord for His Grace, and then we release that God-given Grace toward the person who has sinned against us or offended us. This is a deliberate act, using our faith. Most of the time we probably won’t feel like doing it immediately – but immediately is definitely the best time! 

However, I’ve found that the memory of whatever happened to me, can come up again and again. So I need to release His Grace again. I don’t have to forgive again, I just need to release more Grace toward that person. We step into the flow of the Holy Spirit and, living with His Grace toward us, we don’t step out again. Grace is like air, it comes in and goes out.

When we go to the cross and confess our sin of judgment or whatever, and repent, we are reminding ourselves that the cross of Christ is our source of endless eternal Grace. No matter how hard I try, I cannot forgive someone who sins against me, in my mind, or even my feelings. I need to use faith to do it. I ask the Lord for His help and then I deliberately pray and release that person from my judgment. I know I personally have a tendency to steer clear of people who hurt me. That’s not GRACE … it’s avoidance. BTW, the more you hold resentments against others the more skilled you will become at finding fault in them.

Now if I think about a bad thing that has happened, EG …’they did this, but I didn’t deserve it’…and ruminate over what happened, then I can easily rehearse myself back into the same state that I started in – or even worse. Instead I must go back to the cross, and Him ask for His Grace, and repent for digging up someone else’s sin. This needs to be a daily habit, because some bad attitudes sneak up on all of us, and we end up 200 kms down the wrong road without even noticing it! We need to acknowledge other people’s sins, then forgive them, and start releasing Grace every time we think of them.

We have been saved to be His GRACE dispensers. That’s what healing is – God’s Grace toward the sick. It’s what wisdom is, it’s what the power of God IS. We embrace the companionship of the Holy Spirit and cherish Him by our obedience. Grace is God’s unmerited favour over our lives, and His people can release that power toward others by forgiving someone else who doesn’t deserve it. Jesus set that example. But we cannot manufacture this stuff without humbling ourselves and admitting our need of it, first. Grace is heaven’s currency.

Transformation occurs when we walk in, and value His Grace for us, and through us. Instead of making our own needs our priority. If we choose not to participate in the flow of His Grace we are actually holding other people captive, because God gave us the power to release them into His hands. (John 20:23)… That power is designed to flow through us. We become acquainted with the power of the Holy Spirit when we live this way – we can’t, or won’t live this way of ourselves, but when He is in charge, we can.

Personally, I can’t live the life I currently have, without utterly relying upon the Holy Spirit and His Grace. Most people I know don’t think about stuff the same way I do. We simply do not gather information the same way. God’s way of Grace is the great undergirding that brings us all together. Outside of His Grace I know that I am probably going to get clunked upside the head by someone, or something or other, and spend a week trying to simply stand up again so I can keep on walking with Jesus. I’ll probably tread on someone else as well! And, if I am not paying attention to what matters, I will fall right out of Grace into judgment. Then judgment picks up resentment and that leads to bitterness.

The good news is Christ overpaid our debt so we have a limitless supply of Grace. What do I mean by that? Let’s start with the obvious. I don’t mean that we can do whatever we like, and live however we want to, ignoring God’s wishes and His instructions in the bible! That is treating God’s costly Grace, disrespectfully and irreverently. We have more than enough Grace to give away, not to horde or misuse for our own agendas, pettiness or deliberate sin.

His Grace received into my life is the beginning of a production line. It produces the kingdom of God in me, and releases His kingdom toward you.  It facilitates a better relationship between me and God, and me and you! Grace washes us both clean, so we can live God-conscious lives instead of sin-conscious ones. Part of the function of this Grace production line is that it becomes the new way we live, as we practise it. We automatically release it to others, and that Grace flowing into and out of our lives, continually washes us. It is much harder to be proud when you know that without His Grace you are sunk! 

Finally, Grace produces gratefulness. It is an equaliser. Everybody needs it. It will produce the kingdom of God in our lives, if we choose to live and walk in it and work with it. Here’s a huge clue that might help you, so you can step into the flow of God’s Grace – if you roll your eyes, or grind your teeth when you see someone – you need His Grace to help you. Releasing undeserved Grace to others gives us balance, we know full well, at any minute we will need it too! 👋🏻

Romans 12:18: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.”

P 2219 Hope is a wonderful thing!

/ DVH

To continue with what I wrote yesterday, I wanted to mention the importance of hope today. “There once was a shepherd with a hundred lambs, but one of his lambs wandered away and was lost. So the shepherd left the ninety-nine lambs out in the open field and searched in the wilderness for that one lost lamb. He didn’t stop until he finally found it. With exuberant joy, he raised it up, placed it on his shoulders, and carried it back with cheerful delight!” Luke 15:4-5. TPT.

In my immediate family, we have “lost sheep” – people who no longer follow Christ. Some ran away grumpy, on purpose. They got cheesed off because the Christian life did not turn out the way they thought it should.  And some just kind of meandered off not looking where they were going. Sheep are dumb – they don’t know what is good for them, they can be so busy eating and meeting their own needs, that they forget about the Shepherd and how much He loves them … until they get into trouble.

As you already know, I rarely include someone else’s thoughts in my blog, but I read this prophetic exhortation, and I thought it was worth including today. Many of us have one or more individuals in our families that have gone away from their faith in Christ. This excerpt was such an encouragement to me, I hope it encourages you too. 

I Hear His Whisper … THE PRODIGALS WILL RETURN. “I am calling home the sons and daughters who have forgotten Me. You will see a waterfall of love and mercy bring My children from afar. I have walled them in. They haven’t roamed as far as you expected. They are never outside of the boundaries of My love, and I have never left their sides. I know how to woo the hearts I created. They cannot find what they need outside of Me. In My mercy, they will be restored with fresh passion to seek Me and to know Me.

Dry your eyes, and with a hope-filled heart, look with eyes of faith. The lost ones are coming home. Your delight must be in finding them and loving them back into wholeness and dignity. You will remove loneliness from their hearts. You will see them restored. Even within your family, there will be healing and grace as I recapture hearts and ignite their longings for Me. Love well. Forgive completely. You will see the restoration you’ve prayed for. My will shall be done in their lives.” by Brian Simmons and Gretchen Rodriguez.

I loved this prophetic word, because it is all about what God is going to do for us, but it includes an exhortation for US to prepare our hurt, disappointed hearts, to receive the ones who broke our hearts back again. Those who have been lost to us have been lost for many reasons. Right now is the time to deal with our side of everything that happened. “Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.”(Ephesians 4:31) 

It has taken me a long time to absorb the fact that I can add to my own struggle with others, by what I say.  If I choose to continually rehearse someone else’s sin over and over again, it may seem like a form of self-protection. Plus it seems like you are reminding yourself of what happened so you don’t fall for the same guff again! But the reality is, my self-talk can also cement someone else back into a place that no longer exists for them. That attitude, that action, only exists in my own memory. Personally, I am not who I was even last week – or last month – or last year! God is changing me, daily and boy do I need it! Let’s not colour in tomorrow’s miracles with yesterday’s half-dead felt-tipped markers. He’s doing something new. Hold on, it’s coming…

The Lord is going to do what He has planned to do so quickly, that we will be astonished. So we need to prepare take the time to search our own hearts and minds now, with His help. Let’s start thanking Him for what comes next, and remember – you and I could have easily been the sheep that wandered off. None of us are exempt from the seduction of the spirit of stupid, in this funny old world of ours. Cultivating hope is a wonderful thing. 👋🏻