Resurrection

P 2236 What is your foundation like?

/ DVH

“Everyone who hears My teaching and applies it to his life can be compared to a wise man who built his house on an unshakable foundation.” Matthew 7:24 TPT.  Every now and then we need to look closely at the things we believe, and deliberately revise our foundations – the things we stand on. Sometimes we have accidentally added stuff into that foundation that will not bear the weight of what is to come. We need the Word of God itself and what Jesus Christ intentionally did for us – to be our firm foundation. It is way too easy to have added in some exciting new doctrine, or even something we were specifically taught years ago by somebody we admire. God’s word does not change – but fads, spiritually speaking – come and go.

We need what we stand on to be stable. So trouble should not change what we believe, nor should it steal from us, permanently. Our Heavenly Father, graciously gives us further revelations about what He has already said in the book, to enlarge what we already know and believe. But those things are not given to replace our true foundation … Christ and His complete work. However, revelation often extends what we believe into a wider place. (Isaiah 54:2) There is always room for more of Almighty God. 

Unfortunately, we can start building our lives on peripheral doctrines that are presented by teachers within the wider Body of Christ. These things can be very popular, from well-known teachers, or people who have large churches, plus already established ministries. It is a good thing to want to grow and develop spiritually in our own lives, but we need to take care what we devour. We eat from His book not just from someone’s else’s thoughts, no matter how appealing they are – or how many scriptures they have cobbled together to prove their point. 

Take this blog. My aim in writing this is to encourage the reader to learn to rely upon the Word of God – the bible, and the Holy Spirit – input from other believers is secondary. I would never suggest that anyone blindly follow me because, like everyone else I don’t know much – I definitely know I am not “done” yet! I could spend hundreds of lifetimes and still not absorb everything the Holy Spirit wants to teach me. His knowledge is simply that incredibly vast. The only Person Who is worth following slavishly is the Holy Spirit, and what He has said is … in the book. So we need to take the time to revise whatever is currently being taught, under His guidance. Life can be difficult, and some teaching seems to be a short cut to maturity. In my very limited experience there are no short cuts.

Just because the Lord has kissed gifts within any church, that does not mean the speakers or leaders are infallible. Any one of us can be sincerely wrong. This is why it is essential that we don’t just swallow things willy-nilly because we happen to like what is being said, or even if it seems to appeal to our hearts. We need to test out the spirits – (1 John 4:1-6). Many sincere people have been led astray simply because they followed a personality in lieu of Christ Himself. People are easier to follow because we can see them! 

For example during the Charismatic movement we rediscovered that God loves to heal us. That is true. At that time you couldn’t walk into some churches, without being told that it isn’t God’s will for us to be sick. I agree, the bible says so. However, that scripture is balanced out by many others including:  “…there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” … If any teaching about healing condemns us, then it is not firm enough to stand on. Conviction and condemnation are two very different things! And Christianity is not a competition to be won because of what we do or don’t believe. Whatever leads us into despair, that thing is making our foundation faulty. Instead give those thoughts to the Lord, and pray over them. Then study that subject in the bible for yourself until it becomes part of what you have personally absorbed – part of you.

We need to test the spirits, and balance is an important part of sound doctrine. (2 Timothy 2:15) So instead of blithely “liking” this person or “that church” let’s just fall in love, over and over again, with the bible and the Person Who wrote it.  The above scripture in Matthew 7 specifies that we need an unshakeable foundation – not just an appealing one. Christ’s life, death and resurrection are our unshakeable foundation. We need to build on top of that. So every now and then we need to go back and pull out anything that shakes our faith in Who He is and how good He is. If our faith is resting on whether some revelation or not is true or not – then we may need some spiritual renovations. In our humanity, we can desperately need something else, an answer, an idea, more than the Lord Himself. 

Anything that places itself above Jesus has to go. HE IS ALL WE WILL EVER NEED. 👋🏻

P 2234 Dead, dead, dead, dead, DEAD…BUT…

/ DVH

Over to Paul. “My old identity has been co-crucified with Christ and no longer lives. And now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the Anointed One lives His life through me—we live in union as one! My new life is empoweredby the faith of the Son of God who loves me so much that He gave Himself for me, dispensing His life into mine!” Galatians 2:20 TPT.

Are we looking to our own strength to fix ourselves or “looking to Jesus Who is the Author and Finisher of our faith!?”  So what does that phrase mean? It means Jesus Christ did not just die to get us a free ticket through the pearly gates. He died for our total transformation into His spiritual likeness as well as our restoration into real fellowship with our Heavenly Father. Now, in this life.

Here’s a question for you:  if we expect heaven when we die …. then shouldn’t we live now, today, expecting He will use our everyday circumstances to constantly renew and transform us, through our relationship with Him?  Otherwise, how do we think that transformation will happen?? By osmosis?? Somebody is going to have to die and Jesus already did …now it is over to US.

Our time away this time has been fun-filled with all kinds of medical difficulties. However, hubby and I both know personally, from experience! … That … ’we can do ALL THINGS because He will and HAS strengthened us.’ And He’ll do it again tomorrow too! We are about to go out and talk to people again, and we know we can’t, not without Him helping us. Knowing or thinking you can’t do something doesn’t negate God’s will in your life – it ACTIVATES it. 

Humanity’s destiny has always been to be restored into the image of God, like we were in Genesis …”let us make man in Our image …” In that garden of His provision, Christ Himself is our living breathing example of what God’s provision looks like. It doesn’t look like a Lear jet, or a posh house, or a fancy car, or expensive meal, it looks like the ability and the desire to love others the way Jesus did when He was on this earth. He gave His life for us, so now we can have His power to give our lives for others. And we get the power to overcome through obedience. 

Adam and Eve did not have to plant that garden … it was planted for them … their job was to look after it, to manage it. It was already established for them. I said all that to say this: GOD ALWAYS DOES THE WORK for us, but… we still have work to do. We must look after what He has given us. We need to be protective of it, by listening to the Holy Spirit, reading His word, and following His instructions.

When sin overcame mankind Jesus came to take our punishment. He came to restore our relationship with Almighty God back to the one Adam and Eve had in the garden. And we get that inheritance, which is rightfully ours, by sheer obedience. We need to manage what we have been given. This life, right here, right now, is our garden, how we manage it, matters. We may not feel anything – we simply need to live this life the way He wants us to live it – knowing He promised to help us win.

Genesis shows us that God wanted to be with humanity, but we were tricked into wanting our own way to get there. satan virtually said to Adam and Eve: ‘You will become like gods, if you eat that fruit. God is keeping something from you.’ Sin is appealing for a season … and then the consequences turn up! Unfortunately, we didn’t just want fellowship with God – we were tempted to be like God. When God told that couple they would die – it was more than a literal death – mankind’s relationship with Him died too.

Long ago, satan wanted to be like God and that’s why he got chucked out of heaven in the first place. Now he is busy trying to make people into his own image! he wants to hurt our Father, by taking away His Beloved Son’s BRIDE. The Holy Spirit is not leading us to die to self because He’s mean, or a party-pooper!  He’s teaching us these things so we can escape from satan’s lies …  “Jesus said: “I AM the Resurrection and the Life, the one who believes in Me will live even though they die.” Dying to self is the only way to escape from satan’s lies and truly LIVE. 👋🏻

P 2213 That tomb!!

/ DVH

John 20:1-2 “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.  So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put Him!”

11-14 “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put Him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.” 

In my opinion, Mary was not expecting to meet Jesus, because she thought He was dead. Every single story about God, mankind, and death in the bible shows us humanity’s responses and reactions to disaster and total desolation. We give up. We cry a lot. And then we mostly sit in the dirt, railing at God. At the time of the morning of the resurrection, people’s individual responses show us how easily human beings wander off into faithlessness, hopelessness, despair and unbelief and fear.

Grief is normalised in Ecclesiastes 3, and in the Beatitudes, but the men and women who walked with Jesus show us that despite the fact that they were warned in advance – human beings don’t cope with death. We can have our little theories and happy thoughts, but … just wait until those theories are tested!  Death seems final. Nobody expected His resurrection.

Even though the Lord told His disciples, in person, that He would rise again. Maybe their old religious thoughts got in the way. Not one of them said: ‘But, hang on a minute, the Lord told us He was going to die, and He would rise from the dead. So maybe this is that. Let’s not lose hope?!’  Every single one of them got stuck in loss, fear and grief. Not to mention they were all locked in the upper room to keep the bad guys OUT. To them, Jesus was dead and those who thought they saw Him were nuts or deluded. In the end a couple of those men went to check out Mary’s story for themselves. And one of them was a hero and went in … and the other waited outside.

Meanwhile total unbelief emerged toward anyone who actually saw the Lord in person! This shows me that it doesn’t matter what we think we know, or what we hear, or what we seem to believe – if we do not deal with it, unbelief and fear take over pretty darn quickly. But to the disciples, the tomb was a tomb and there was a blooming great rock in front of it, plus Roman guards. Meanwhile I never did figure out how Mary thought she was going to move the rock to get in for those burial rituals! That’s the thing with graves – they look permanent and they can steal away your hope.

Jesus predicted His death to His disciples on at least three different occasions. (Mark 8:31-33, 9:30-32 and 10:32-34.) But I’m not really sure the disciples actually heard Him. To be honest with you, I have often wondered whether they were totally attentive and listening to Him in the first place when He said it!  Yet they all saw Lazarus, who was dead 3 days, come out of his tomb, very much alive just a short while ago. It seems to me that the disciples were utterly shattered by the events that put the Lord Jesus in the tomb in the first place. That, plus the fact that they all ran away at a crucial moment.

I have come to the conclusion that there are times when we only hear what we want to hear.  And bad news ain’t it! I’ve also learnt how easy it is for despair to throttle the daylights out of you. Sigh. Christ’s tomb was empty, and the disciples had no idea how to deal with that either. They were still mourning the loss of the new way of life they had found. However, the kindness of Almighty God in that moment is glorious. Christ comes to them in Person, He sounds just like He did before He died.

And then He rebukes them because they didn’t believe each other. Why didn’t the majority believe the few? Perhaps that is because I can only believe what happens to ME. I probably think to myself, ‘that’s nice for you’ – if I hear a story about something fabulous happening in your life. But this is where the rubber hits the road – this is how we know we are not yet transformed, or living our lives by faith in the Son of God.  

On this Easter Sunday morning, we need this fantastic resurrection story because OUR OWN FAITH NEEDS TO BE RESURRECTED. We have let it languish in pits of despair, disappointment and dread and hidden it in tombs. We have to come out of our spiritual tombs and start living that resurrected life – right here, right now. I wonder if the Lord would say to some of us: “Where is YOUR faith?” 

All around us, this world is living without hope. Today of all days … please, please … tell someone who doesn’t know it, that …”Jesus Christ is alive, HE IS NOT DEAD.” 👋🏻

“My heart and soul explode with joy—full of glory! Even My body will rest confident and secure. For you will not abandon Me to the realm of death, nor will You allow Your Faithful One to experience corruption.” Psalms 16:9-10 TPT

P 2155 Some interesting stuff I’ve noticed.

/ DVH

The Holy Spirit loves to point out our errors in thinking. He does it to expose, reveal and explain our own hearts to us – because God’s book says that ‘our hearts are deceitfully wicked above all else.’ In other words we are probably so afraid of what we will hear that we don’t speak the truth to ourselves – even when no-one else is around! One of the problems I’ve noticed that I have, is that my still-being-renewed-mind sometimes lies to me. Seriously. It tells me stuff to keep ME feeling comfortable. It reassures me that everything I did was OK – and the bad thing that happened was all that other person’s fault not mine! 

My mind does not easily want to change. It wants to feel loved, petted, and reassured – it wants to live in a false sense of security. I have to exercise my will over it, even to entertain the possibility of looking at my own mistakes. Otherwise I will continue to read the bible putting mental ticks on what it says, and nothing will change in my heart or actions. I might even try hard to come up with the right behaviour, but without any acknowledgement of sin that is pointless.The blood of Jesus is the only remedy for sin! In the end the result is that I stay the same. My ego hides my faults from me. 

My mind also says that doing something dumb won’t matter, just this once. 😳 As a matter of fact, when it is left unchanged, my mind continues to excuse my own behaviour and points out and accuses yours instead. It keeps me so busy concentrating on what you said and how you hurt me, I CAN’T SEE MY OWN FAULTS.  So my un-renewed mind allows me to protect myself – at your cost. I need an outside guideline that is fixed, so when I am inwardly defending my own actions, I have something concrete in front of me to correct me. Tada! Enter the bible. 🥳 That book has the power in it to change ME – inside and out.

However, when I read His book like I already know and agree with what it says in there – I missed the point. The bible is a mirror for my mind, will and emotions and actions. Instead of looking at it and thinking: “Boy that’s interesting…” or …“Wow look at that!” I need to read it like it is a searchlight revealing who I am, PLUS who I AM NOT! I need to read it through the eyes of repentance, that’s when the power in His book becomes apparent. It is not a historical book – or even a reference book. It was given to us, to do what it says, and it diagnoses our need for transformation.He uses His book to correct us with His eye upon us. DAILY.

Every single one of us deserves hell without the blood of Jesus, so let’s settle the argument of what is right and what is wrong right here and now. The bible immediately shows me where my thinking and actions are awry – I simply need to sit down with the Author and put my fear of being wrong or exposed down – because this Author wants what is best for me! When I hear from the Lord from His book, I can take what He says in there, to the bank – it’s an anchor for my soul. 

I can believe what it says, above what I think or feel. The bible does not excuse my behaviour. It exposes it in reality. Then it makes it clear, that AS I obey Him – now I have the capacity to be bigger than I was before, because of what Christ already did for me. I am not supposed to ignore or hide my sin anymore, I just need to confess, acknowledge it and co-operate with Him, for change. I don’t have to be afraid to be honest about my faults, I don’t even have to be afraid if you see them. I simply repent and start using the faith He already gave me to ACT differently.

Meanwhile, I have never ever heard the Lord say to me: ‘Just let it rip, tear that person apart. They deserve it.’ 😶 When I hear stuff like that junk inside my head I know it’s not coming from Him. Duh!🙄 I’ve also learnt that I do not have to be afraid to confess my faults to you, or even someone who hates me … because they have faults too! Remember, confession is the beginning – change happens when you start to act in faith. Do what He says. 

We all have a responsibility to this world we are living in to put others before ourselves. An un-renewed mind will not like living that way, instead it wants to know … when is it my turn? We are currently living in an age of self-preservation, the truth is not popular. Dying to self, rather than hurting others, is not popular. I’ve learnt that following Jesus all the way to the cross has power in it. It is called the power to overcome. That kind of faith transforms a life. There is always a resurrection after we die to self – we rise again changed. 👋🏻