Reveal

P 2664 On seeking God’s will.

/ DVH

Romans 12:1-2: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

So did ya get that? Changing our minds to think like the Lord does, by reading and obeying what He says — opens the door to discern what He wants. Meanwhile it is not just about thinking differently, it is about letting that different thinking affect our actions and reactions. Presenting our bodies to Him means WE are no longer in charge of what happens. We can always pray and ask Him for a different outcome, but the way to truly worship God is to give Him our bodies … and let HIM decide! Um, do you need a cuppa tea and a biscuit to cheer you up yet? There are a whole lotta people who won’t like that previous thought.

When we live this way, at the same time, the Lord will use our circumstances to reveal our own hearts to us. We test His will out, daily by the way we are choosing to live now. If what we are doing falls on it’s head — then it wasn’t God! BUT! … If bears good fruit it was! Meanwhile if we keep getting the same bad result over and over again, then there is no doubt about it … not. dead. yet! It’s no good blaming other people, or whatever – a transformed mind doesn’t look for things to its own advantage – it looks for God to get all the glory, and it continually chases love.

James, one of my favourite authors, helps us in Chapter 1:5-8: “If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, Who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you. But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.  Such a person is double-minded and unstable in all they do.”  All we need to to do, is to ask for His wisdom and believe He wants to help us through whatever is going on.

There can be times when we will mess up our ability to receive from the Lord – through our own disobedience, cemented attitudes, or insistence that we are not at fault, somebody else is!  Remember, James is talking about receiving Almighty God’s wisdom. You and I can easily short circuit receiving the very thing God wants us to have by the way we respond to it. We are no longer like the rest of the world … independently minded. We are not meant to be a people whose made-up god puts a big tick on all our ideas. We serve the ever-living, always present Almighty God – He runs this show! 

Human beings love systems. BUT, when we look at the Ways of God, He’s not like that! In the bible we can clearly see that every single situation needs a fresh revelation. For example, King David did not fight every one of his battles the same way, because God sent him out with different instructions each time. This man knew how to seek God to find out what came next. He was not interested in strategies that he could repeat at will whenever he went into battle. Sometimes the Lord gave him a strategy before the battle, and sometimes God said: ‘Go! I will be with you!” In other words although a rock killed Goliath, the next time David needed a different plan, he sought the Lord to get it.

This is why I have spent so much time writing about how to receive, hear and obey the Lord. Because there is no system that we can use to make our lives more comfortable… and still serve Him! The mandate is upon us to get to know God and His ways for ourselves. Our pastors can preach until they turn blue. If we do not follow up what the man of God says with our own prayers, and then look for ways to be obedient – all we will get is double-mindedness. That looks like a bit this: “Oh, I think what pastor said here was good but I don’t agree with this and that … I think this instead …”  

Good on you! Yay for you! But you just lined yourself up to be double-minded. Ask the Lord what He wants you to know and do, personally, from what was said. Here’s a good clue —-if whatever was said annoyed you then it’s a certainty that there is something there you need to learn, about yourself, others, and the Lord Himself!  Our personal responses are our personal diagnostic tools.  Anything less than learning more about loving Him, or how to love others – plus how to die daily, is pure advertising. Those are the sort of trimmings that make our lives look good from the outside. 

There is one attitude that will help us along our way … and that is this … we daily lay down our own right to choose our destiny and, simply follow Jesus. That’s what the disciples did, when they sought His will.. When He left them, they sat about and waited like He told them to ,,, because there was no alternative plan B! Bye 👋

P 2555 Boldness/ confidence.

/ DVH

Boldness and confidence are both initiated and fostered by our personal relationship with the Lord. Let’s look at Hebrews 4:16 “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” The place to foster confidence in our relationship with the Lord, is in the throne room – in our intimate one on one, time with Him. This is the place where God freely gives us mercy and grace and the will to live new lives. Our desire to walk wholeheartedly with the Holy Spirit will lead us into His new life. 

Yielding our will to His, means we have chosen to learn to love Him through participating in His processes. Selfishness falls off when we love for what we can give, not just for what we can get! Some people believe we approach the Lord only to worship Him. YES! Please always do that! However, our primary reason to be with Him, is simply because we enjoy His company, His POV. We have fallen in love with the wonderful God we are coming to know, day by day.

Boldness and confidence are fostered by intimacy. There is no presumption, instead this precious intimacy becomes so important to us, we start to loathe the idea of any separation. That POV motivates us over and over again. I don’t believe that pretending to live in His love and grace can do that. satan knows each of us well enough to fling something at us and our self-effort will collapse. I know very little in this area, but I can say this, the more you seek the Lord for Himself, the more He will reveal Himself to you. Sometimes there are some questionable things that people have told me God said or did, and my heart jumps up, unbidden, and says: “No! He would never act like that!”  I think that’s a little part of what confident intimacy looks like.

Almighty God always wants us to be confident in Him, especially in His goodness and goodwill toward mankind. His book the bible becomes powerful for us individually, when we take His instructions personally and act on them. Our precious Father doesn’t want us to live in any fear, at all. He sent His perfect love in the form of a Man, Jesus Christ, to show us, in Person, that He loves us. Christ is our source of spiritual life.  Everything in this New covenant is voluntary and our participation and obedience are the result of our passion toward the Lord.

Let’s clarify that. The size of any disobedience is not the issue, the attitude of our heart toward whatever it is – will be the thing that comes between Him and us. Openness needs to prevail, and, in turn that leads to true openness with each other. Confidence in Who He is and how much He loves me will actually release incredible freedom. However, that freedom is never carte blanche to be nasty and use His agonisingly hard-won Grace against Him or others. 

Our Heavenly Father, God, is not a legalist. He took care of every single legal indictment against humanity at Calvary. We didn’t just escape punishment, because of what Jesus did, at the same time we inherited Christ’s status before the Father. We were given Christ’s FAVOUR. That includes the ability/power to resist the devil and overcome the stuff he throws at us, con-fid-ent-ly!

The Lord is not looking for us to tick boxes and get everything right, He’s looking for us to genuinely rely upon Him to help us to do the things He asks us to do. Leaning on Him and His power and wisdom is our birthright – that birthright makes us rich in incredible things this world simply cannot buy. As we live that way we will see Him work on our behalf and gain more and more confidence in the One we love, because what we believe is based on personal knowledge of HIM. We don’t have to live bewildered powerless lives, because we have been given the power to walk away from temptation and to live lives that bless, help, and bestow Grace everywhere. That’s our inheritance.

Boldness and confidence are also not about shouting or being forceful. Sometimes it means we simply stand our ground, quietly. Firmly insisting. We need to learn to recognise and resist the devil’s wiles, and horrid suggestions of hatred and bitterness. At the same time, we simply cannot afford to let our enemy con us out of what is now our birthright, by bringing up stuff that we’ve done wrong or things we omitted to do at all! Our enemy keeps lists of wrongs  – WE DON’T – neither does our Father. We fix the things we can, with repentance and humility, and own our own bad attitudes. Then we go on to pray confidently for the grace to continue our walk totally reconciled with Him and others. 

Personally I just keep telling myself: I need mercy so I’m going to give it away! I keep on sowing grace because I know I am going to need it every day, all day! Our boldness and confidence comes from our knowledge of Who He is, what He is like, and real-life, personal, intimate revelation of His goodness as we walk with Him. 👋

P 2378 Forget about winning lotto …!

/ DVH

… most Christians have incredible riches they have never even accessed. We have a Saviour. 🙌  He is the perfect substitute for our sins, He gave us His righteousness, so now we have His kind of access to our Heavenly Father’s attention. Now we give Him back our lives for His purposes. Our Heavenly Father has given us so many incredible things, including spiritual gifts to bless others. We have a book filled to the brim with stories about other people who dared to walk with God, despite their fears … so we can see for ourselves what God did in them and through them. Our God is not far away, but near to those who seek Him … and Jesus made seeking Him possible.

Our Saviour, died to give us healing, wisdom, strength, patience, kindness, goodness, etc. every single day. We are a blessed people! He provides for our needs, He comforts us with His comfort which knows no boundaries – including race, creed, and theology. He doesn’t judge us, but looks at us with understanding, kindness, mercy and grace through human eyes. Almost everything ever recorded about Christ is about Him gladly interacting with people! Because of Jesus – we are the people who are blessed to know what Father God, His Love and His kingdom are like. That’s what makes us rich. We don’t have to guess, or hope, or imagine – we have a BOOK full of His thoughts!

The next time someone says to you, what does Almighty God look like? You can tell them – HE LOOKS LIKE JESUS CHRIST.  Point the people who don’t-know-Him-yet to the gospels in the bible. Tell them to look at how Christ treats human beings – that’s what the Father is like. This is why hubby and I give away the four Gospels. The bible is a large daunting book to someone who doesn’t-know-Him-yet, and a lot of the language used is old-fashioned and unclear. Plus it’s a really BIG book! We want others to experience the Lord’s heart toward mankind. Then they can see Jesus in the gospels, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, teaching them God’s ways, talking to people, answering questions.

In those gospels we see Christ is single-minded – everything He says is to explain His Heavenly Father and how His Kingdom works – in terms that ordinary people can understand. He shows people how to relate to God. He talks to farmers, fishermen, religious people, homemakers, and children. He talked to everyone with the same purpose, He wanted to reveal and clarify His Father’s love. The Father’s love is the greatest treasure this world has ever seen – and Christ came here to illustrate it, in and through His flesh. People do not know about this treasure, they think the bible is all about rules that they can’t keep … BUT the bible is a fantastic spiritual gift for everyone.     

However before ordinary people can understand the death and resurrection of Christ, they need to know that ‘love looks like something’; so we believe in helping others, praying with them and for them, as well as telling them in person how much God loves them. We don’t care what they believe, our desire is for them to experience the love of God first-hand, through us!  Now, as Christians WE have also become His treasure. It is our job to feed the hungry, heal the sin-sick souls to follow Him. We encourage the down-hearted, show the lost the way home and tell people this life can have incredible meaning. 

Righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit – all these things are intangible, but totally heaven-sent riches. We are blessed to be a blessing and that blessing is not about earthly gain – it is about giving away heart happiness and contentment in spite of difficult circumstances. As well as His love which is like a spring of never-ending water. Human beings must stop thinking that blessings from God are about God being in a heavenly service industry. Prayer is not a way to place your order! It is privileged communication with the God of the universe. He provides for us, just like He provided for Adam and Eve in the garden, but our relationship with Him is about FAR more than provision.

Lastly, everywhere Christians go, we get to wear HIS ROBE. That robe is about humility. We lay our lives down for others because He laid His life down for us. You don’t get any richer in this life than that, no matter what a lotto jackpot is worth. Some of the richest, most blessed people I know, hardly have two beans to rub together. And if you happen to be hungry they will throw the only beans they have into a pot to feed you! Now that’s really rich! Bye. 😊

P 2352 Pause with me and think on this.

/ DVH

“Go ahead and give God thanks for all the glorious things He has done! Go ahead and worship Him! Tell everyone about His wonders!” Psalms 105:1 TPT. Today I just want to mention some things that I thought about. Of course, primarily, we worship and thank Him that  He did not spare His precious Son, for our sakes! 

Down below I’ve put a picture of the moon. That beautiful orb reminds me that He put it there to be a guardian light in the darkness of night. That thing that took man four days to reach is something He simply spoke into being! I find that I need to take the time and make an effort to appreciate the things He has done  … even the way He decorated this world for our benefit. You gotta stop and look at it to love it!

At the same time I love meeting people. He made so many interesting ones! Human beings are incredibly interesting, we come in all sorts of shapes and sizes … well ….unless you are under 40 then apparently you are only allowed to be skinny with perfect skin and a perfect shape. Anything else quite obviously needs fixing! And if you are over 40 then middle-aged spread supposedly takes over, so you are only good as a money dispenser and a personal chauffeur. For people over 65 the attitude appears to be: “How come you are still here, I thought you’d be DEAD by now!” 😶 

Sometimes we forget that everything we can see HE made. It seems to me that criticising the ‘art-work’ to the Artist is like, a bit rich … whether it is a bull ant or a grumpy person. Hubby and I have a wonderful time meeting all sorts of  people. I highly recommend making the effort to talk to strangers. Hubby simply takes the time to say ‘hello’ to someone else. In the supermarket aisle, at the check-out, in the car park, on the street. He treats people with respect and kindness and that opens doors for communication.

We’ve found that new people widen our perceptions and horizons. When you appreciate others and you are interested in them;  supposedly ordinary, apparently drab, non-famous people come alive and they ✨ sparkle ✨.  I would go so far as to say that some of the most beautiful people I ever met did not have facial symmetry, perfect hair, or a body to die for. Some of them had bodies that were totally out of their control, but the beauty of their spirits outshone everything else. This stuff that our society values doesn’t matter to the Lord, He doesn’t see beauty the way we do. Check out 1 Peter 3:3&4.

Maybe it hasn’t occurred to us that the God who made butterflies, sunsets, hummingbirds, waterfalls and roses — also made — maggots, flies, cockroaches, buzzards, manx cats and the stinky corpse flower! The diversity of our world and all of humanity is a huge reminder of how creatively awesome He is. We worship our God simply because He is worthy, and everything else comes a far distant second to that. Meanwhile, making a GOD “after our own image” … is absolutely terrifying! Some of us aren’t all that nice. 

The Lord literally has to remain beyond our comprehension and that is part of His glory! A God we can sum up and explain is not the amazing Being Who is described in the bible. I exhort all of us to embrace the mystery, the wonder of Who He is and His unique ways and enjoy whatever we manage to glean and capture in our hearts about HIM.

Jesus Christ went totally outside of our rationale all the time. He kept offering new perspectives with a wisdom that astounded other people, even when He taught. He ignored the things that others expected from Him. He healed supposedly ‘unworthy’ people. Jesus used all of His circumstances as an opportunity to reveal His Father’s heart and will toward us. We are to be like Him and also take every opportunity to reveal His heart to others.

We must give thanks for Who Father God is, acknowledging that He is worthy of our praise and honour and gratitude. Let’s pass ON this news to anyone who comes our way and tell them what we have personally seen. So that ‘everyone who has breath can praise the Lord.’ And the very best way to do that is to take a risk, ask for His help, and stand back and watch Him move. 👋🏻