Relatives

P 3259 Family business.

/ DVH

I honestly think that some of the hardest things to wrangle are the things that are happen inside our families.  Those things seem to press right up against your chest, like they are trying to smother you and stop you from breathing. The bible acknowledges this kind of pain. These are the places where our faith can be severely tried and tested. On the plus side, they are also the place where massive growth occurs. 

Psalm 27:10 NLT:“Even if my father and mother abandon me, the LORD will hold me close.” Jeremiah 12:6 NIV: “Your relatives, members of your own family—even they have betrayed you; they have raised a loud cry against you. Do not trust them, though they speak well of you.” 

It is not good to get stuck by other people’s sins. Instead we need the Lord’s help to focus on the solution! Let’s turn Psalm 27 around. ‘The Lord will hold me close, even if my father and mother abandon me.’  Father God wants to help us into a bigger place where HIS LOVE REIGNS, so we can love those who despitefully use us. Love is not about feelings, it is about our choices.

However, the people we love deeply, are also the people who can hurt us the most. Sometimes our families can use fear, anger, intimidation, neglect and threats of harm, as well as threats of expulsion and rejection, to try to control our adult decisions. It is better in these times not to focus on what is coming at you, instead focus on how much the Lord loves you. Plus His assurance that HE will not abandon you.

It is a basic human need to feel loved and appreciated. Even tiny little babies can die when they do not experience nurturing and love. Emotional abandonment is a terrible thing. But it is good to remember, even with all this going on – you are a sinner too. It is never good to focus on “them” and “us.” We are not victims – we have our Saviour to guide us. But breaking away from family demands can be difficult. These are the people who taught you from when you were a baby. Whether they were neglectful, smothering or abusive does not matter – the love one feels for someone this close, is much more than superficial.

I believe this kind of love is based on human need. So, Jesus Christ is our ONLY Answer. He is fully God and man, and He lives to love and pray for each one of us. Read what He said in the bible, as if He were there with you talking TO you! And remember, Jesus’ family didn’t always understand HIM either! In reality we cannot expect the people who broke us, to fix us!

There can be a tremendous sense of betrayal when you struggle with your family. But I don’t want to comment on other people’s sin, otherwise that becomes the centre of our focus. Trust me, the only Person worthy of every single bit of our focus is Jesus. He cannot, and He will not ever abandon us or punish us like other human beings will. Instead He took our punishment for us. That means, He volunteered to be abandoned, misjudged, rejected, and punished, both physically, emotionally, and mentally. He was utterly despised for our sake.

In any times of family rejection, I want to encourage you to continually go back to the well of righteousness the Lord died to provide for us – and drink from it. Being righteous in His eyes is not the same as being right according to this world’s standard. Our righteousness with God has been given to us. In this world, human righteousness is earned by behaviour. 

It is best to activate your faith, and turn whatever the bible says into action. It looks like this: when a family member is treating you badly, pray and ask for the Lord’s help. Then make a firm choice to forgive them, and then, give that burden to Him. Deliberately put your thoughts about that family member, aside. When memories pop up, allow yourself to grieve, but don’t stay there. Give everything back to Him again, and choose to trust Him to fix it. Now you need to REST in the fact that He has heard you, and we are ‘persuaded that He is able to keep those things/people you have entrusted into His care.’

Put hurtful people down at the foot of the cross – it is our symbol of redemption. Leave them with Him! All the worry, tears, and anguish in this world can’t make someone else understand you, or love you, or give you what you need. However! Our God can do anything but fail! The secret is to keep walking with Him. Don’t look back, just trust Him to take care of all of it.

At the same time, limit set what you choose to do around these people. Don’t cut them out of your life, unless your life is in physical danger, but do set limits. Ask the Lord to help you with it. Finally, please don’t let bitterness or spite get hold of you, because that stuff will muddy His living water, and you will get lost in the mud! 

Let your glorious Redeemer, redeem your old life. Losing your earthly family because of your spiritual beliefs in Jesus is a terrible thing – however, Jesus will help you to survive – and eventually thrive. Praise Him! Bye. 😢

P 3219 A different kind of fasting.

/ DVH

Isaiah 58:5-11: “Is this what I want—this doing of penance and bowing like reeds in the wind, putting on sackcloth and covering yourselves with ashes? Is this what you call fasting? No, the kind of fast I want is that you stop oppressing those who work for you and treat them fairly and give them what they earn. I want you to share your food with the hungry and bring right into your own homes those who are helpless, poor, and destitute. Clothe those who are cold, and don’t hide from relatives who need your help. If you do these things, God will shed His own glorious light upon you. 

He will heal you; your godliness will lead you forward, goodness will be a shield before you, and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind. Then, when you call, the Lord will answer. “Yes, I am here,” He will quickly reply. All you need to do is to stop oppressing the weak and stop making false accusations and spreading vicious rumours! Feed the hungry! Help those in trouble! Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you shall be as bright as day. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy you with all good things, and keep you healthy too; and you will be like a well-watered garden, like an ever-flowing spring.”

In my opinion Almighty God makes it perfectly clear, in passages like this one, how to walk with Him. Here’s another interesting one from another prophet, Micah 6:8:“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Our spiritual wellbeing, and our spiritual health, relies upon our choice to do things His way. God is quite simply not into alternative theories. He has laid out His own eternal plans, plus He has written down His interactions with other men and women just like us, for everyone to see and for us to notice and obey. 

If someone asks me, ‘what should I apply myself and obey? Well, Isaiah 58:5-11 keeps me pretty busy! So do the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. PS they are called the BE-attitudes because we are to live like this, personalising His instructions into our lives. Jesus doesn’t waffle on making ridiculous, ostentatious, new age remarks – He simply taught. Everything He said and did in the New Testament was teaching. Here He is teaching us how this new life we have been given works — what it looks like in action.

In the past in our home, we have had a procession of people – mostly young people – who had nowhere to live. Their relevant adults threw them out, so we simply applied Isaiah into our lives and made room for them. Now we choose to help other people who do the same thing we did, only they do it on a grand scale. We don’t act like an organisation when we do this stuff, because we are not. People get quite puzzled that we are not ‘official’ in what we do. To me helping others is just normal Christianity. Our first response to people in trouble is: “how can we help you?”  

Meanwhile, whether the other person is a Christian or not – what’s that got to do with anything? We can’t afford to be selective … Father God wasn’t when He picked us! Despite current theology none of us is any prize …Yet He is so amazing because we are all prizes to Him. The value you put on another human being can change their life. It will most certainly change you! If we only take care of those people who care about us, then we are more concerned about our own comfort, than obedience.

We look after our family, plus we help others – that’s the mandate in this scripture. Once, in a major city, we were walking down the street and a young man was sitting on the pavement with a sign that said: “I‘m starving.”Who could walk past that? It was a busy city and loads of people never even saw him. Someone might say:  “What if he’s a drug-user? It isn’t good to give them money!” Quite right! But you can go buy the guy food and a drink! I don’t have to solve his problems, but I can help him a little even in a small way even if I am just passing through.

Another time, an elderly gentleman was huddled in a doorway, it was so cold. He had a thin little jacket on, pulled tightly around him. The wind was freezing, whistling away … I was cold and I had a jumper, a coat and scarf on! Hubby gave the man his pseudo-suede coat, some food vouchers and we prayed for him. Hey, if you want to open doors, this is the way to do it. Help them. We prayed for him and told him how much Jesus loves him. He told us he’d never had a coat like that one before. That’s when I teared up then, because the coat was not all that good, but … it was warm. 

If you want to know Jesus intimately, then do what He did when He was here. Put God first. Then choose to see what He saw, hear what He heard, look at what He looked at, without judgment – help the ones He helped.

In this fast-paced life today it seems that we think we can’t ever have enough money, because the line for enough, always moves away from us. However, it is good for us to do what we can. Things like, treating other people with kindness and respect, no matter how they look or smell! The poor, the downtrodden, the weak, the disenfranchised are far more likely to listen to what Jesus says, than the supposedly comfortable people who are spending their lives making money and collecting things.

Father God has clearly told us in Isaiah what sort of fast we need to participate in. He even tells us He has chosen it. The next move is ours. Bye. 👋

P 3014 On our trip.

/ DVH

Today, I just want to tell you one story – it’s about a single family. While we were on the road, we heard story after story of dreadful hardship, and it was overwhelming each time. BTW, all the government agencies are totally swamped, the need is so great. By the time we got to our last stop, we were so tired. We went to that destination to drop blankets and food into a men’s shelter. 

As we drove into our accommodation, on the right hand side of our cabin, there was a family. They were packing up to leave. They did not have a car, or even suitcases – everything they owned was in a series of medium sized plastic containers, and they were moving and stacking them away from the unit door. These containers each had labels on them with a person’s name on it. The Lord spoke to my heart and said: “These people are homeless – they have nothing, and nowhere to go.”

It transpired that the managers of the place had given them 4 nights to stay there for free — it had been so bitterly cold they took pity on them. But now this nice couple were caught because they didn’t own the facility, they managed the property for someone else and their employer would not have been happy that they let them stay for free.The family was quite literally moving on and they had nowhere to go. We started to pray. We didn’t even unpack, hubby went to talk to the father. 

Every single thing they owned was in those plastic containers.They also had a tent, and had been previously camping by the river, but it became too cold for them to continue to do that, because the two youngest kids were fairly small. The little girl was about 4 or 5, and still in nappies. the other child about 6 years old. He had a fishing pole and he was practicing casting about, presumably hoping to catch fish. The Lord said: “He is trying to help.” 

Hubby quickly ascertained that they had called some relatives for aid, but they were uncertain anyone would come because their extended families were as financially strapped as they were. Then he told the father that we were giving away blankets and food and asked if they needed anything? The father nodded and told hubby he would take 2 blankets and we also gave them all the food we had for the men’s shelter. Hubby queried the man gently about only taking 2 blankets, and only then he said 4 would be better. 

My dear husband emptied his wallet to provide them with some money, because they had no funds at all. He prayed for them, and hugged the wife, who was weeping and weeping. The little girl was attracted to him, she kept wanting to shake his hand. We’d bought a cute stuffed toy, as a gift for someone, and the Lord indicated it was to be given to her. She was so excited about it, and carried it around.. I’m pretty sure there weren’t many stuffed toys in their boxed belongings! 

We asked them what else they needed etc. and then we went off to the shops to get things like milk and nappies. Plus we also managed to replace the food and blankets we were originally taking to the men’s shelter! Then the little family went and settled down outside to wait. Their husband informed mine that someone was coming along to collect them all … eventually.They had a teenage boy with them who had attached himself to the group. He had just lost his mum, and this sweet couple, who already had a lot of things to deal with, took him in. 

Before we left them, hubby gave the younger children little books. Their mother started reading to them about Jesus right away. The Lord was quite clear with us, He told us what we could do, and what we could not. So we just did what He said, and prayed – lots. Because we were just passing through, we could not solve their entire problem.

The money hubby gave to this family was not spare. We couldn’t afford to buy all that extra stuff either — but almost immediately, somebody put funds in our account and God provided for us – and them! Plus we were also able to witness to the manager and his wife and commend them for their generosity. The family was gone the next day.

Nobody sets out to be homeless, without a job or money, but life happens to all of us. “But You, O God, do see trouble and grief; You consider it to take it in hand. The victim commits himself to You; You are the Helper of the fatherless.” Psalm 10:14. “Rich and poor have this in common: The LORD is the Maker of them all.” Proverbs 22:2. Bye. 👋

P 2897 Peace is our portion.

/ DVH

“And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in Me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in Me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!””John 16:33 TPT.

We cannot survive 21st Century living without His peace.  Injustice pops up everywhere like wild mushrooms, all across the world. Peace is an inside job. Everything around us will try to steal it away. This week we have had a procession of endless, skilled tradesmen parading, banging, clumping, etc. right through our house. We discovered mould in one of our least used rooms. It’s a long story and not worth repeating here. One of my mum’s brand new hearing aids has grown legs and walked away, plus our daughter and grandson are moving in about a month. And our next trip is in 16 days. Not to mention all kinds of malfunctioning arms, legs, heads, backs, knees …a-n-d … we are both preaching this Sunday! 🤣

None of us can afford to rely upon good, positive circumstances to help us feel peaceful. We already have peace within us because the King of peace resides within us. That peace will thrive in an atmosphere of faith as we believe and act on what the Lord has said. It gives us confidence so we can face whatever comes at us from the world around us. Christianity is an ongoing relationship with the Man of peace, Jesus Christ. We learn to live in His peace as we watch and study Him, because He didn’t just teach us what to do, He showed us how to do it, by the way He lived! “Keep turning your back on every sin, and make “peace” your life motto.Practice being at peace with everyone.” Psalms 34:14 TPT.

We need to remind ourselves that we are foreigners, ambassadors of Christ, living in a foreign land where peace is now either enforced or ignored, or labelled impossible. Unfortunately, peace cannot be legislated, otherwise our freedom to choose His way, goes right out of the window. To me that means peace is always OUR choice to pick up or put down. It means we learn to bend with the winds of change and opposition, not just strive to be in control and stay rigid. Peace comes with a great cost to the people who are living any conflict. 

Sadly when there is no positive choice made, there can be no true peace, because the ‘machinery’ of our lives returns to a habitual default setting of agitation and worry. Yet Jesus Himself chose to live at peace in a society that hated everything He stood for, He had no home, His relatives opposed Him, His church leaders wanted to kill Him, He was surrounded by needy people … yet He had true peace, all the time, because He chose to walk with the Holy Spirit and obey His Father. 

The people who lived around Him were superficially content to live within their religious rules, and often those rules actually opposed or destroyed peace for many of them. Rules carry within them the possibility of failure – true peace doesn’t see failure as the end of the story. The Lord was not affected by people’s approval or disapproval, He carried out the things He did by choosing to reflect His Father’s will. He wasn’t looking to win a popularity contest then, and He still isn’t. 

He teaches us in this verse that rest, which is a part of peace, is also our portion. It is OURS. We learn to rest when we choose to put aside our own opinions, and feelings, and aim at His Ways, with His help. As we do that we are mirroring Jesus’ own relationship and trust in His Father. Father God made the supreme effort for us, to come here and reveal His will in Person. God Himself stopped being remote, and hard to access, instead He walked the roads of Israel and its surrounds. Jesus was assimilated into this world so well, that some people identified Him by where He lived as a child. He was known —as Joseph the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. 

If you and I have no peace, then we have somehow left Him out, or left Him far behind us. His peace within us is present to saturate the atmosphere around us. But if we lose our peace, then we need to return humbly to the Source of all peace, Christ, and ask Him to help us live in harmony with Him, and His ways again. When trouble and difficulties bash on our doors or seep into our lives, those things are not a statement about our personal efforts or lack of them. Instead they are simply the result of living in a fractured, unredeemed society. It means we have forgotten who we are and WHO He is! The answer is not to condemn society, instead we are to flavour it … with His qualities.

Peace is a Person. We walk in peace, when we choose to walk with Him. If we revert to our old ways of thinking, then we simply repent and start walking with Him again. Walking with peace means we do not have to carry our own burdens, we turn them over to Jesus and ask Him to deal with them, us and the situation. Peace is our God-given birthright, freely received – part of our inheritance.  Jesus said:“Peace I leave with you, MY peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” John 14:27.

Jesus gave it to us, so now we have it, just like salvation whether we feel like it or not. Bye. 👋

P 2831 The place of satisfaction.

/ DVH

The Christmas season can bring family time sharply into focus, because Christmas itself came into being from what appears to be a perfect family unit. Let’s briefly look at Mary, Joseph and Jesus. Mary was pregnant-before-marriage, so she had to hide her pregnancy from her neighbours. Joseph, her soon-to-be husband was instantly installed as a step-parent to SomeOne else’s child – imagine how much Almighty God trusted that man! The tiny family were poverty-stricken, instantaneously homeless because of targeted persecution, and refugees to boot. God placed His precious Son into an ordinary family with its share of harsh difficulties.

My point is chasing perfection is a thankless task. Perfection does not exist outside of Christ Himself. Satisfaction comes from the Lord. However, as we are daily being perfected inwardly by what Christ did for us, I’ve noticed that everybody else changed along the way! Except they didn’t. Now I’ve woken up to the fact that my personal view of other people has changed, because I have started to see others through His eyes, and boy are His eyes kinder than mine!

The absence of loved ones in this season can make Christmas a very hard time. I have a grown daughter who lives 1800 kms away from me, and I don’t see her or her family, including my eldest grandchild at all. Hubby rarely sees his family either … we’ve chosen to live in another state! We try to make the effort to bridge the gap so we can see both sides of the family, but even when we do, there never seems to be enough time to catch up. Sometimes it seems like you’ve barely said “hello” and you have to say “goodbye” again.

This situation has given us an opportunity to be inventive about how hubby and I share His love and our love with our resident families. At the same time,  we are very acquainted with the kind of sadness that sits on you when you miss people who are so special to you. There is also the yearly fight about whose parents should we visit this year? Whose turn is it this year? Not to mention those people who will face Christmas alone. At the same time, a number of important people in our lives have died, and Christmas definitely seems to be the time of year when you think of them and miss them. One day God Himself will wipe away all our tears.

Here’s what I’ve managed to learn about this season as life has rolled along —“Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep.”Psalm 127:1-2. Boy I wish I had taken those two verses to heart every Christmas for most of my adult life!! In my efforts to see everyone years ago, and do the right thing, I just did whatever my hand found to do, but I didn’t ask the Lord what He thought about my ideas! Dumb.

Inverted logic is a really stupid way to live one’s life. By that I mean thinking … “Well, I can’t see any harm in me working hard to make sure everyone’s Christmas is great. Other people are going to be blessed, so this can’t be a bad idea, God will like it.” Like I said – it’s dumb! It can quickly lead to exhaustion! Today, more than ever before, we need to be doing whatever we see Him doing. So my advice to others is this: skip that turkey, ham, Christmas pudding and cranberry sauce if cooking them means your Christmas is frustrating. Before you jump down the very deep, labour intense hole of making everyone’s idea of Christmas appear – ask Him what He thinks instead!! Otherwise you will end up exhausted and in no shape to share your faith, hope and love with the people you love dearly.

So today, here’s my testimony about how I’ve learnt not to do Christmas. For us now all that fancy specialised food is no longer important. We are just grateful for the opportunity to see the people we love and take the time to bless them. I’ve learnt if you are going to labour then make sure you labour over something God Himself is building, not just something that upholds the kind of stuff that doesn’t last. In years gone by, I know I tried desperately to bring a child’s idea of a fairy-tale dream about a perfect family to life. Like that worked!! I alternatively tried harder, year after year, and so I constantly had a lousy Christmas! At the same time, I got annoyed at the people who didn’t help me.

Christmas is a celebration – it needs to be shared by all, from the youngest to the oldest, otherwise we are over- stressing some people and exhausting them, as well as perpetuating problems that are not necessary. If you had asked me all those years ago I probably would have said: ‘I like doing all this work, I love blessing people’  More fool me — because, to be truthful, I actually didn’t. Other people’s thank-yous never seemed to scratch the itch of my enormous need for appreciation. I worked so hard, yet I couldn’t wait for it to be over!

Instead I badly wanted to be sitting with everyone else chatting like they were, while they were waiting for me to get all that food ready. The lies we sometimes tell ourselves!  You know, some pain is unconsciously self-inflicted, and it can lead us into anger toward the very people we are meant to be serving. And, at the same time, that pain will steal away our PEACE! Take the time to ask the Lord what He wants you to do this Christmas. To be brutally honest, I’ve learnt that I need to stop being so proud that I can’t ask for help.

I loved my kids so much, I wanted them to have a happier life than the one I had. It took me years to see that even that statement was judgmental toward the people who had cared for me and raised me. If we want to bring about real change in our lives we will need to target the root of the tree of dissatisfaction, not just the leaves. The leaves on that tree can easily be the inconsiderate, sometimes selfish and self-centred sinful people around us. 

Most people cannot love us the way we want to be loved. They are busy trying to manage their own lives – so catering to our needs  will not register on their richter scale. Without Christ and His Way of living, this world is doomed to continue to seek out something that is not real. This life is depicted over and over again by the media as an over- idealised, irrational dream. Perfect love simply does not exist outside of what Christ did for us. We must start with Him, not our feelings or needs, and throw away the pretty fairy-tale dream of what family is supposed to look like.

Family are the people who voluntarily stay when the world falls on you, whether they are relatives or not! Christmas can be a time of pain, unless we are prepared to throw away our own unrealistic plans and take the time to discover His. The Holy Spirit will carry us through every single bit of the loss, suffering and disappointment we face, into a brand new place, the place where whatever He wants — we want. That’s the place of satisfaction. Bye 🌲.

P 2829 God bless us all, everyone!

/ DVH

There’s an old saying – you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. The wonderful thing about Christmas is that we are often forced to confront the people we’ve managed to cleverly avoid all year! Christmas is a fantastic diagnostic tool. 🥳  I’ve found, in the past, that if I thought really hard, I could come up with great reasons as to why we will be unavailable to do the extended family thing. Things like ‘the kids are sick’, ‘my spouse is over-worked and about to have a nervous breakdown’, or … the very least popular one … ‘we’ve decided to have our own holiday this year. Just a quiet one. Sorry!!‘

I do, however, have a word of caution regarding this practice, if your kids see you regularly avoiding people for whatever reason, then you ARE actively teaching them something. Especially if you have lived that way from when they were little to when they are big! You are teaching them that they don’t have to confront the things they don’t like. 🧐 It is a sad fact that kids absorb so much more of what we do, than what we say. Obviously dangerous-to-children people must be supervised or avoided, but at the same time, I learnt that we need to show our kids, by example, how to still love others even when they hurt us or behave badly. You do that by your own actions. And if you mess up, say so. I’ve said so many times over the years.

Back to my point: Christmas with the rellies. Hmmm… so now you have run out of worthy reasons, and you are there, shuddering, or clenching your fists in anticipation of yet again having to talk to Mad Cousin Max. He always manages to hit every button inside you, and smirks at you while he is doing it — because picking on people and finding their weaknesses is his hobby. His all time favourite thing includes jumping up and down on the button inside you marked “failure.” He’s so good at it, or bad at it, that you started praying about managing him last January!! 

The thing is, Max has no clue that people’s responses to him are directly linked to the way he behaves. He thinks he’s a fun person – a stirrer! At Christmas, we have an opportunity to speak God’s life into Max. So I’ve learnt to pray so the Lord can help me find something good about dear old Max, and speak into that, instead of just winging it on the day. Avoidance leads to disaster!! This man doesn’t need our disapproval – he badly needs God’s love and as you are there, you are possibly the best source of that love that poor sod has. However, if Max thinks he is a Christian … then all bets are off! I’m joking OK? …I’m hopefully using humour to make a point – love perseveres.

Let’s look at what Jesus did in a sticky family situation. You will get even more insight if you read from Mark 3:20 …But here’s Mark 3:31-35. “Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call Him. A crowd was sitting around Him, and they told Him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for You.”“Who are My mother and My brothers?” He asked. Then He looked at those seated in a circle around Him and said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! Whoever does God’s will is My brother and sister and mother.”

FYI Jesus just enlarged His family to include US. The Lord was not paying anybody back because they said He was possessed by satan, or out of His mind … … see … other people have a Cousin Max in their family too!! Instead He simply included everyone present in His statement. He had been previously preaching to a bunch of people, and He simply continued on with it…despite the interruption from His earthly family.

The Lord persevered with a higher truth, and He used that opportunity to make a deeper point. He told the crowd present: “Anybody who does the will of My Father is My family.” Amazingly Jesus was not drawn into other people’s accusations, He simply went straight to the greater good, and then He returned to ministry for those present. He was there to do His Father’s will, so His Father’s will came first.

One of the ?? joys of Christmas is getting gifts you will never use, from people you-don’t-like-very-much in the first place. The whole, smile and lie your head off routine. At the same time you are prevaricating all over the place, you are trying to remember where the nearest Op shop is… even before you’ve left the party! The thing is, at that moment when you’ve torn off the wrappings, and ended up with lime green, yellow, blue, black and hot pink, argyle socks, is the moment when love can overcome and prevail. I can’t tell you what to say, because I will be way too busy thanking someone else for some dreadful book I’d never want to read… like … EVER!

People who give us opportunities to be grateful for inappropriate gifts are another diagnostic tool. It may mean that the other people don’t know us well enough to buy something we might like … BUT! Maybe … just maybe … that’s because we have been hiding from them for years!  Jesus loves Christmas! But not because it is His birthday, I kind of think when you get to be over 2,000 years old birthday’s don’t matter much!! He loves families and restoration. Let me leave you today, with Tiny Tim’s favourite blessing … “*God bless us all, everyone.”  Bye. 👋

*A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

P 2827 Make way for the road builders!

/ DVH

“A thunderous voice cries out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way for Yahweh’s arrival! Make a highway straight through the desert for our God! Every valley will be raised up, every mountain brought low. The rugged terrain will become level ground and the rough places a plain.” Isaiah 40:3 TPT. In this verse Isaiah describes our every day task for Jesus’ sake. He does it beautifully, accurately and passionately. 

Not everyone likes the Passion Translation, so here’s the Message bible as well,  just because it also says it beautifully. “Thunder in the desert! Prepare for God’s arrival! Make the road straight and smooth, a highway fit for our God. Fill in the valleys, level off the hills, Smooth out the ruts, clear out the rocks. Then God’s bright glory will shine and everyone will see it. Yes. Just as God has said.”

You know, you and I are glorified rock removalists…road builders!  Our job is to get rid of anything in front of other people as they make their way toward God. Not to mention the odd stone that we could also fall over that is in our own path!! We must deal with those things that make people stumble. What do I mean by stumble? Well, Auntie Mary can’t get over Uncle Pete’s infidelity. That’s a big one! They need forgiveness and reconciliation.

Or someone has deserted one of their kids because this kid has done so many bad things nobody can count – so now they’ve disowned them. These people need the Prince of Peace. That’s a big boulder! Maybe your neighbour’s dog keeps doing his business on your lawn. That’s kind of pebble-sized, but highly annoying when you go to get your paper and find that stuff with your slippered foot … even little things are sometimes trip-worthy because they niggle at you.

So we pray because as rock removalists we have been given authority to speak to mountains – so a rock is nothing to us! Maybe your attitude to your spouse is antagonistic, or absent, or whatever!! Part of your job is to repair the breach. ←That just means fix stuff – preferably when it happens. The bible says: “…you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.” Isaiah 58:12 …so we get to prayerfully fix things around us that are not working, particularly relationships. You know, I think Isaiah picked up a lot of marvellous stuff when he made that trip up into the throne room. 

As an aside, over the years I have heard people talk about an experience, or the feelings they had when the Holy Spirit came and touched them. Unfortunately, I have hardly ever heard anyone talk about the Lord pointing out sin, or changing their hearts! This has always made me wonder…because I know that the Holy Spirit doesn’t come to do nothing. Maybe the person missed the point. Back to road building …

Here’s a few more. We all know there are people we like to avoid … now there’s an easily-tripped-over rock.🎁 It’s nearly Christmas!! 🎁Yay! What about all those relatives you haven’t seen since last year? You know, the ones you aren’t looking forward to seeing this year? Leaving things unattended to makes a big PILE of rocks instead of a little one, and Jesus is very clear … He wants no rocks at all, thank you!! These verses are part of our job description. We’ve erroneously thought Isaiah was only in the bible to give us loads of comfort verses. Wrong!

Rock removalists get to remove boulders! The fun part is they get to blow them up with God’s word and Spirit-led prayer. Don’t be discouraged BTW, some of those blooming big rocks take a lot of spiritual dynamite, but Jesus told us that we can tell any mountain to go jump in the sea, so serve that thing in your life with notice and tell it “ready, steady .. JUMP!” And keep pointing the dividing sword of God at the situation, speaking redemption, peace and reconciliation as well. 

We all want to do cool things, things that everyone will notice, but real rock removalists like to do things unseen, in their prayer closets. How many road builders have you stood and watched lately? That would be … like  …NONE? That’s what I thought. It’s a job that looks boring and repetitive and seems to accomplish not much that is visible.. Do remember those road builders the next time you are travelling along a nice smooth highway! Remember, roads connect A to B… otherwise people get lost.   

And can I just mention that we do not have to be ‘nice’ to the devil? Rudeness is wasted on him, but we can definitely let him have it when we pray! True road building authority isn’t about yelling – it’s about knowing who you are. We must remember what we are here for, because we are walking along pitching rocks off roads … because Jesus Himself is going to walk along those roads. That’s the point of a clear road. It’s for people to walk on it without falling over or falling off, or turning back because they are discouraged.

BTW we don’t throw those pesky little rocks away, we use them to fill in the holes. We smother them with prayer – which is the best glue ever – and flatten out and fill the holes in people’s lives. The things that lack the Love of God — it never fails. Bye. 👋  More on this subject tomorrow.

P 2630 The false cloak of invisibility we need to lose.

/ DVH

Today the Lord spoke to me about a problem that is reoccurring in our churches — mainly because the Body of Christ has wilfully remained ignorant of the side effects of our actions and attitudes. Sometimes we pray and pray so faithfully, but we are not responding to the Lord with FAITH in action for the things we are praying ABOUT. We must be prepared to put feet to our prayers, otherwise we are not expressing our faith fully. There is no room for compartmentalisation. If God tells me – then it’s my job!

We need to get up from prayer and go on to engage with the difficulties He has indicated. Then we use our faith to do those things the way He says to do them. I know it can take faith to pray, I know that first hand – but I also know that the Lord wants us to take what we believe and act on it. Otherwise the enemy of our souls can steal away our hope! Plus we become unaccountable for our mistakes and missteps – if we are unfortunately praying amiss. Outside of our own personal, intimate conversations with the Lord – we need to initiate action after prayer, prayerfully.

Sometimes when we are put into difficult situations, we need to say: “I’m sorry, I can’t do that, it’s wrong. It’s against my beliefs and what my God tells me to do.” It’s time to stand up, not hide. It is not good to stand silently by and say nothing. I’m not just talking about witnessing here, I am talking about following our prayers and beliefs through with actions. At the same time when we pray for someone to be helped then we need to be prepared to be His hands and feet and help them. Maybe we should take the time to go and pray with the people we are concerned about.

Societally we are being pulled apart into categories —even in families, some of the members don’t always know what their close relatives are doing. As a body, we are often only superficially related to each other … perhaps by using social media accounts. These things allow us to have impersonal PC opinions, as well as superficial ones. Things that we can say freely on paper, but we actually don’t LIVE them out in our daily life. We need to take the time to be accountable. Accountability has all but disappeared because we don’t know enough about each other to expose the way we really live in our own homes. Embarrassment and shame causes us to hide from each other. Hidden sin is dangerous. DEADLY.

Christians are designed to stand up and be counted as His disciples, and that means we will automatically become accountable, as well as visible for our actions. Instead of being “found out,’ we need to “confess our faults!” We need to be honest about our sinful behaviour: “confessing them to one another so we can be healed.”(James 5:16) The bible says:“They will know we are Christians by our love.” (John 13:35.) How can that occur when we only talk about superficial things?

I can’t see privacy being of paramount importance to the early disciples. Transparency flourished. Just look at Ananias and Sapphira. What happened to them came out of a lack of transparency. That incident created holy fear amongst the believers. Nobody wanted to lie to the Holy Spirit, EVER, after that!! And a good thing that is too.

When we keep on living our lives like this world does, we are pulling on lampshades – so we won’t offend people. People need the light!! And you and I have it. There’s always room for gentle, loving disclosure, we don’t have to whack others over the head with our belief systems! However our lives still need to be visible in our communities and homes. The way we live behind closed doors matters. 

God challenges me about that all the time. If hubby and I disagree He says: “Are you going to leave that there? Go and fix it.” Purity of heart matters to the Lord. It is not about getting things right, it is about constantly going back and beginning again until we have mastered the skill of following in His footsteps – always with His direction and help. My own resolve to change melts like butter when opposition comes up – but with His help, I can stand still and stop fighting for my rights and yield to Him.

Human beings are very busy fighting for their rights today – everyone is militant about something! The earth, women’s rights, children’s rights – God’s wisdom is not in any of that. He sees individuals not corporate agendas! We already know the outcome of this earth, Jesus is going to roll it up like an old carpet!  We are told to submit to one another  – one sex is not better than the other! These earthly ideas do not leave any room for dying to self – they profit us nothing! Christians must not hide, or have private lives, we’ve been saved to take this stuff PUBLIC – not by being argumentative or disagreeable but by being loving and open.

Maybe we are ashamed to take things public because we are not living this life the way Christ said. This world already thinks Christians are hypocrites because we don’t live up to what we say — sadly instead, we’ve let judgment rule, to protect our own little world. We need to lose that cloak of invisibility and become transparent. Everybody’s faults were paid for once and for all!  That’s called THE GOOD NEWS. Remember ALMIGHTY GOD MADE HIMSELF VISIBLE WHEN HE SENT HIS SON! Bye. 👋

P 2387 God calls us His riches.

/ DVH

“I pray that the Father of glory, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, would impart to you the riches of the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation to know Him through your deepening intimacy with Him. I pray that the light of God will illuminate the eyes of your imagination, flooding you with light, until you experience the full revelation of the hope of His calling —that is, the wealth of God’s glorious inheritances that He finds IN US,His holy ones! I pray that you will continually experience the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available to you through faith. Then your lives will be an advertisement of this immense power as it works through you! This is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted Him to the place of highest honour and supreme authority in the heavenly realm!” Ephesians 1:17-20.

Did you know that because the Lord has all of us in His family, He considers Himself wealthy? He doesn’t care if you and I are fat, skinny, short, tall, good looking, extremely spiritual, or not. The bible says He counts US as His wealth. Now that’s something worth thinking on isn’t it? It shows us His heart toward us. I’ve prayed that God would illuminate the eyes of my heart for myself for years, because I know how easy it is to be distracted by this world and become as thick as a plank to the deep things of God. But everything we have ever needed or wanted we will find in Him.

We human beings concentrate on what we will gain from Him loving us, but we need to pause and look hard at what He says HE has gained, because that information is a sliver of insight into His Ways – Who He is. His incredible generosity. Before we were ever His adopted children, He looked at us with love and saw every single bit of our true potential in Him and He claimed US as His inheritance. Father God sees Himself as rich simply because we are His family. I find that astonishing! Especially because I know many people have been rejected and reviled by their earthly family. 

Today, the things we think make us as human beings rich, are mostly material things. In the Western world we accumulate ‘stuff’ a lot – it makes us look quite wealthy. Perhaps we are monetarily rich, but spiritually poor because our worth is measured by accumulation and achievements. But our God has chosen to love us simply because we are His family. If you and I are looking for acceptance, incredible acceptance flows freely from His throne.🙌

Paul is praying here in Ephesians for all of us, that we would understand what we have that was freely given to us. Sad to say, human beings can get so stuck in the things we are not – that we forget the most important thing of all. We are His and, it is only by His Grace that we know it. He chose us. Our worth is not in money, but in the fact that SomeOne so incredible – dearly and tenderly loves us. We have His love, and grace upon us … that very fact will take us into eternity. We’re loved and cherished by the One Who made the world, then He went further than that and saved us … then He went even further than that and He owned us … He claims us as His relatives. His kids. How amazing is that?

I think that realising and appreciating what we have already been given helps keep us content in a discontented world. Discontent rumbles around this world daily … my team won, your team lost. That guy got a promotion, I didn’t. That kid got great marks, I didn’t. Maybe this is why so many people have gotten into huge debt. Discontentment with the norm grabbed them and they want to escape it and prove to themselves they are special.

We are special because we are special in His eyes and that doesn’t change. Father God hates sin, not the man He made. We are made valuable by the fact that the God of all the Universe loves us. The value of the price He paid, is an indication of the depth of the love He has for us. When Jesus Christ died as a MAN, He gave us all worth.  

My point is this: fancy all of us working so hard to get something we already have! All of mankind is made in His image. You and I were His idea! I believe this is why the eyes of our hearts need to be DAILY enlightened. When we get saved, we are incredibly grateful for it … but then, for some reason, we do not park there. We move on. All I want to say today is – go back to the place where you first understood His salvation and stay there. We must have an appreciation for His sacrifice, not with our heads but with our hearts.

There is a part of us that needs to continually gaze at God’s love hanging on that cross for the world to see – and not stop doing it. It is a good thing to relive our gratitude for what He has given us, every single day, and enjoy our new found love in Him as it grows. It is in the light of the cross, where our real place in this world and the next is made clear. We don’t have to be special to this world’s eyes, we are God’s riches because we are the saved ones. “Oh, what manner of love the Father gives that we may be called the sons of God!”  We are His chosen riches and I pray we all know how very rich we are because of all He did for us.. Bye 👋🏻.