Sit

P 3475 Pause, remember … and reset.

/ DVH

“God, You’re such a safe and powerful place to find refuge! You’re a proven help in time of trouble— more than enough and always available whenever I need You. So we will never fear even if every structure of support were to crumble away. We will not fear even when the earth quakes and shakes, moving mountains and casting them into the sea. For the raging roar of stormy winds and crashing waves cannot erode our faith in You. Pause in His Presence” Psalms 46:1-3 TPT.

When I read this today I realised that the last 4 words are the key to the first 79 ones! “Pause in His Presence.” What does that mean to you? To me it means when ‘the stuff’ is flying about so rapidly I can hardly breathe, my very best first response is to stop … and stand in His Presence. Why? Because those first 79 words remind me of Who He is and how much He loves and cares about us all – every single minute of every single day!  Those last four words show us how blessed we are. We can be in His Presence anywhere. Doing this will remind our spirits to defer to His ways.

Wherever you are reading this blog today, now is a good time to stop … and just stand or sit, in His Presence. Remember, it says pause, it doesn’t say ‘you must spend three hours.’  Anyone of us can pause for a few minutes, just long enough to slow your breathing and look into Jesus’ dear face. This is one of the best habits we can cultivate. We will momentarily block out the immediate, and focus on the eternal.

Our world may be groaning and griping all around us, but Jesus is not fazed by it. He knows what comes next. “He knows the plans He has for us – the ones that give us a hope and a future.” What we focus on gets bigger. When we focus on Him, He gets bigger than the problems, especially when we take a moment to renew our trust in Him.

Everything seems to be spinning around so fast sometimes, it is hard to keep up with what is going on. However, when we go and stand with Jesus and look up at Him, the noise, the fear, the challenges and the heartache come into perspective. These things come, and they go … Jesus always stays the same. His loving face toward us will not change.

The Lord Jesus’ love does not change, that’s why we can trust it. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases …” Our ineptitude in spiritual matters will not change His response. His love continually comes toward us. You are taking a moment to be with SomeOne Who truly understands humanity. And as you pause, please remember, despite what is going on around you, He’s the same Jesus Who loved you so much He died for you. Just let that soak in … then go back to your day. 

He is praying for you right now, right where you are. He prays perfect prayers. Pause and remember… ‘His goodness in the land of the living.’ ‘He is with us to give us His abundant life.” Those promises are not only about earthly things, they are about forever things. Like love, joy, peace. We can have peace with God because Jesus came here and made peace for us in His own Body, with His own blood. He will not take it back … “He demonstrated His love while we were still sinners….”

Troubles come and go, but our God’s Word remains the same. Your version of the bible may be a little different than mine, but it is still His Word to you today, right where you are. Pause, remember how much you are loved. He loves us when we first wake up and we haven’t even done anything yet! This love is not the kind of love that keeps score, because Jesus is not interested in Himself, He came here for mankind. We are His joy. The Lord looked through the pain He suffered and saw US. It is His greatest joy to facilitate our relationship with our Heavenly Father.

Let go of all those bad, unhappy feelings, because they will cause you to stumble. Just cling to His truth and remember … the God Who made the Universe loves you. As we take a moment to pause in His Presence, we will begin to realise that these afflictions we are going through are momentary. They simply seem endless while we are in the middle of them. Remember, disappointment and despair do not come from our Heavenly Father, God. That’s the other guy. Resist him and bring all those busy thoughts captive, and just take the time to breathe. 

These moments belong to you and the Lord, whether you are on the train, in your car, on a bus. Wherever YOU are HE is there. You and I both know that the Lord has asked us to keep no record of wrongs, because Jesus Himself doesn’t remember our wrongs! In your pausing, remember to let go of any hurtful or bad things — just like you would let go of a balloon and watch it float away. Those things can’t hurt anybody when we let them go! Jesus understands … let that be enough.

We pause, remember, and reset, even if it is just for a few moments on our way to somewhere else. Stand in His Presence and watch the worries, cares, and seismic shifts jostling you, simply melt away. God’s got you, your family, and this world. Like Jesus said to the wind and the waves: “Peace, be still.” So let’s take any opportunity to quiet our hearts in the middle of life’s bustle and strife… and pause in His Presence, remember and reset. Bye. 👋. Thank you Jesus!

“So above all, guard the affections of your heart, for they affect all that you are. Pay attention to the welfare of your innermost being, for from there flows the wellspring of life.” Proverbs 4:23 TPT. 

P 2996 Outer space is yelling at you!

/ DVH

“God’s splendour is a tale that is told, written in the stars. Space itself speaks His story through the marvels of the heavens. His truth is on tour in the starry vault of the sky, showing His skill in creation’s craftsmanship.” Psalms 19:1 TPT. Today, we are going to do some pausing to contemplate … off we go …!!

Every now and then it is good to take yourself outside at night, and just look at the stars. And if it won’t wreck your life, or your nightly routine — take your kids too! We all love to watch fireworks, but God Himself has the kind of splendour that is on display almost every single night of the week. Looking up at it opens up our eyes to His incredible creativity. He decorated that sky just like he decorated this earth …for His glory and for our benefit, then He declared everything He made “good.” That’s a really big statement from our God, Who is the ultimate definer of GOOD.

Here’s a fun fact:  the world has a new telescope – the James Webb Space telescope. It is floating about in space above us, and it can see much farther than the old Hubble could. It recently saw a large cluster of what appeared to be brand new stars … Yay! It turned out, on closer inspection to be a cluster of galaxies just like ours! Doesn’t that just blow your mind. It blew mine. 

Sometimes I think the thing that separates us from those ants which are always scurrying about, is the fact that God did not come to earth to save the ants! Did you know it says in the bible:“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have set in place, what is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that You care for him? You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour. the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is Your name in all the earth!…” Psalm 8:3-8. It is good to stop and consider what God Himself has made. This kind of pausing is good for us.

Moving on, but still star-gazing …“And the Lord brought Abram outside [his tent into the night] and said, “Look now toward the heavens and count the stars—if you are able to count them.” Then He said to him, “So [numerous] shall your descendants be.” That’s some kind of promise! Have you ever thought about the fact that we, you and I, are sons and daughters of Abraham? God fulfilled, and He is still fulfilling His promise to that patriarch in each one of us,  until Jesus comes back. Here’s another fun fact:  Abraham was not alive on the earth to see that promise fulfilled! And yet there are times when we complain to the Lord because He doesn’t get us a parking space when we need one. 🙄  Sometimes we can be easily distracted by trivia.

It’s called perspective, and we need to deliberately stop what we are doing and get some.  Maybe we can sit and look at the clouds roll by in our lunch break, or watch rain drip off leaves on the trees. Perspective ushers in balance. There have been terrible things in your life and mine that seemed like they were going to end us! The ceiling fell in, or someone did something unthinkable, and we could feel life draining everything out of us.. 

But, here and now, we are sitting  – with me typing, and you reading this dumb blog … teehee – and we are still going. We survived whatever that horrendous thing was, even though it seemed insurmountable at the time. Sometimes things really aren’t as bad or permanent as we think they are  — all we need to do is look at the bigger picture instead of what is happening within our own little tiny frame.  And yes, I do know that sometimes when you stop to smell the roses you can get stung by a bee – or you find that very pretty rose has no scent whatsoever … but nevertheless, pausing is worth it. 

We need to give ourselves permission to pause. And take off all those hats we force on our heads. Maybe we could assess how many of those hats actually belong to us! I have found when I’ve done this, that many of the hypothetical hats I wear, are there because I don’t want someone else to be angry with me, or I feel obligated to put on a Christian face and do the right thing! Now there’s some dumb motivation!! Here’s a thought: that means that somebody else, other than Jesus Himself, is controlling me. It means my faith in His ability to protect, comfort and help me is slipping.

Romans 8:9 states,“You, however, are not in the flesh but are in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ.” Have you noticed that the Holy Spirit is never in a hurry, but He is always right on time? Especially when you take the time to look at whatever happened to you retrospectively. SomeOne Else will be up tonight watching over us, no matter what is going on around us or outside, while we are sleeping.

The bible says in Psalm 121:3-4:“He won’t let you stumble, your Guardian God won’t fall asleep. Not on your life! Israel’s Guardian will never doze or sleep.” We need to remind ourselves that the Lord Himself has got me! He will not let go. So this life that presses in on us, actually doesn’t rely upon you, it relies upon Him, and His faithfulness and He ain’t moving! Give yourself a break, and start to inhabit a life that makes room for thoughtful  pauses …maybe there are times we just might hear outer space yelling at us! 🤣 Bye. 👋

P 2980 How to be really blessed!

/ DVH

“Let me emphasise this: As you yield to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life. When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit you hinder Him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the new creation life of the Spirit. But when you yield to the life of the Spirit, you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it!”Galatians 5:16-18 TPT. 

The verses above are probably one of the best explanations of how our life in the Spirit works. What I see when I read the above scripture is that we are in a war, right here, right now. Every morning we wake up to war, and war even disturbs our sleep at night. We are not warring against flesh and blood … His book tells us that. No! We are in the battle of our lives to fight apathy, disinterest and disengagement. All those things that are thriving all around us. The ugly stuff that has now become humanity’s way of life. In order to escape it, we must break away from the somnambulism that surrounds us, and take God’s ways seriously.

This world has taught us, day by day, that those things we don’t like are either too hard, not fair, too energetic or just plain boring. We have become incredibly used to being pacified and entertained. If we do not take the bible to heart, we can end up conforming to some advertisers’ fantastic image of who we could be and forget what we already ARE! Human beings are brilliant creatures, created in His image. Yet we sit passively inside our our little boxes, made of ticky-tacky and we’ve all come out the same! (Malvina Reynolds 1962) Let’s not waste this life we have been given simply learning about how to die to self — let’s be brave and jump in! Almighty God will catch us.

Do you know what is incredibly sad? Unredeemed people are currently setting the pace for the church and they are making a huge profit doing it. It seems like we’ve decided there are things that we simply cannot live without!! The unsaved living around us have chosen the cadence, plus the speed of this march toward death we are all on,  and off we go … following the greedy Pied Piper down funny little predesigned rabbit holes into oblivion. We simply must begin to contribute more into the society around us. Lost people need a guide, and God picked you and I. And I am just as inadequate as you feel!

Sadly, our children have become so used to being pacified and entertained that they simply must have the latest … whatever it is! Some of the most potentially brilliant minds in this world have been lulled off to sleep with ghastly music, false gamer finishing lines, bright flashing lights and lots of …loud. Many people are scared of silence, and they are seeking peace in all the wrong places. This is exactly what Paul is talking about in Galatians. Our flesh is wasting away the most important war of our lifetime—the time we have been given by God to be fruitful for His Kingdom. 

That time is being frittered and whittled away by all the useless stuff that has now become part of our everyday lives. The future of everyone around us is at stake, yet we are widely inactive — watching fictional human beings get swished down the drains in movies about death and destruction. We’ve become totally desensitised to the idea of human life as precious and important, because hedonism is being portrayed as great fun, a harmless goal. We seem to have forgotten how much we are loved, how much it cost Him to save every one of us. 

I still maintain that we can’t afford to sit about and wait for the ‘right’ feelings to fall on us. Actually, I think it is going to hurt for each one of us to abandon the cravings of these superficial life-styles we have all embraced. We’ve told ourselves we were “just fitting in.” But the real truth is we were scared of our God-given mandate—and fear won! All the other human beings all around us don’t know any better, mainly because we’ve been so inactive waiting for the pastor or the evangelist to do all the work. Maybe we decided that Christianity’s not all that palatable in this world — after all people could get offended with us. Who wants to hear about – denying yourself, every single day, and dying to self?

Hmmm … … Do I hear the sound of a drain gurgling away somewhere in the background, and millions of voices crying out: “please, somebody save me,” as they circle that awful drain one last time? Don’t worry …  it’s OK. Just turn the TV up a little, and tell little Andy to “please take that dreadful noisy game up to your room, I’m trying to relax here.” … Well, thank goodness that desperate sound is fading even now …because so many people are giving up waiting for help to come …  Bye. 👋 

“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on His law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season…” Psalm 1:1-3a. 

P 2824 Hanging on by a thread …

/ DVH

I found this picture the other day and I my first thought was this – if I can identify with what it says… maybe someone else can too. Here’s a few lines in a song from a great movie – The Fighting Temptations, that sum up how hard life can be from day to day.

“I used to wake up some days And wish I’d stayed asleep ‘Cause I went to bed on top of the world Today the worlds on top of me. Now everybody’s got opinions  But they ain’t been in my position That it breaks my heart when I hear what they have to say about me, yeah Seems like I always fall short of being worthy ‘Cause I ain’t good enough – But He still loves me (but You still love me, Lord) I ain’t no superstar The spotlight ain’t shining’ on me ‘Cause I ain’t good enough (oh, no) But He still loves me…”

Not every day turns out to be a day when we will knock the proverbial ball right out of the park and end up on a high. There are days, that the stupid ball machine malfunctions and every ball lands on your head. I have those days and I have the bruises to prove it!  Meanwhile I’ve learned a thing or two along the way of desperation… It only seems like that kind of day/week/month/year is endless. Sorrow and suffering weigh us down, and they seem to slow down time. Plus emotional, mental or physical pain can render us inactive. 

People, in their efforts to help, may tell the suffering person to ‘cheer up, get over it, it will all be OK.’ But in those dark moments they may as well be speaking another language — because they sure don’t know how to speak the language of pain! I have found there are people who are decidedly unhelpful when it comes to difficult circumstances  — they would rather preach happiness AT you, than come and sit WITH you. Then the sufferer gets to forgive those cheery Charlies for their ineptitude, on top of feeling like they’ve been run over by a truck.

Pain is nobody’s friend, and nobody in their right mind stays deliberately in a bad frame of mind and heart – not when they know the Lord. Nobody gets depressed, temporarily or not, on purpose!  Some people have either forgotten their bad times, or they have a grand happy solution that simply will not fit into your situation. “Just do this and all will be well,” they say. Yeah, yeah, great. Hmmmm. “Please go away now, my ears have stopped working.”

It is a good thing to try to limit your exposure to these happy enforcers, especially if they annoy the living daylights out of you. They seem to have an endless barrage of utterly useless thoughts .. like: “There are many people so much worse off than you are.” And how, pray tell, is that meant to help me? Should I feel sorry for them, as well as struggling to breathe? Christians do struggle – this life can be terribly hard! Sin is still rampant in this world and we have an enemy who wants to target us whenever he can. That other guy does not want us to believe and stand up! he wants us lying on the floor counting the ceiling tiles. 

Now let’s look at the fact that when Jesus said: “Cheer up” …  the power of God was present in His Words to overcome the situation! We need to remember sometimes it can be impossible to cheer-up without supernatural help. Sadly there also times when any one around us can lack compassion for someone who is suffering. The thing is, life itself is weighing this person down, and they are drowning in their own sorrows. These things are real … not over exaggerated or imagined! Personally at those times I pray for truck-loads of MERCY for that other person. You know, sometimes there is more to be gained by living through those dark moments, than there is by escaping.

Sadly, sometimes the way we feel about people we don’t like, or someone who has deliberately hurt us, when they get sick or hurt etc., those reactionary thoughts are a fantastic personal diagnostic tool. Our immediate responses can take the inner temperature on the condition of our hearts, and whether we should repent or not. Those unsympathetic symptoms we feel, mean we are going to need lots of His GRACE right alongside MERCY and compassion, ASAP. I like to remember that the bible says God will supply all our needs, so I ask for what I need …which is mercy, grace and compassion.

The woman in the bible with an issue of blood had the right attitude for recovery from her pain. She just kept right on pressing through the crowds to grab at His hem. Meanwhile, imagine the noise, the dirt, plus the feet nearly stepping on her! She had to crawl to get her answer! We have this kind of power on someone else’s behalf — to crawl through the noise and heartache to bring healing and comfort. Kindness and understanding are the vehicles that can transport someone out of their negative focus and into His Love. We can always go to God on their behalf.

There are times when anyone can end up feeling spiritually flattened by their circumstances, as if they are hanging on by a thread. In those times if we cannot press through to grab at the hem of His garment, then we will need the Body of Christ to intercede for us. Human beings always need grace, mercy, peace, kindness, patience etc. far more than anything else, we need those things for ourselves, and others… Bye. 👋


“For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, But My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, Nor will My covenant of peace be shaken,” Says the Lord Who has compassion on you.”Isaiah 54:10.

P 2573 Godly advice for the sleepless.

/ DVH

From the book! “I lie awake each night thinking of You and reflecting on how You help me like a Father. I sing through the night under Your splendour-shadow, offering up to You my songs of delight and joy! With passion I pursue and cling to You. Because I feel Your grip on my life, I keep my soul close to Your heart.”Psalms 63:6-8 TPT.

Man, those psalmists knew how to write. However, it seems like they didn’t sleep so good all the time, even back then!  The Holy Spirit must have helped them with their attitudes, because the things that are written in these psalms are wiser than the ways of men. There is no greater ambition than for us to live to praise and enjoy Him, at any hour. Today I was up at 4.30 am writing the blog … at about 6.30 am I started to wish I had stayed in bed. My brain feels like it is melting. I do wish I could write beautiful stuff like that psalmist did … he’s inspiring.

Here’s some of my less-than-spiritual advice for free — unless you are single and live by yourself —bursting into song singing to God in the middle of the night may not work out well for you! Somebody else… maybe even a bunch of somebody elses … could wake up and be less than enthralled by your singing! My advice is if you have to sing, then don’t sing loudly, or take it elsewhere … like into another room! I try to toddle off upstairs when I do the early bird routine – hubby needs his sleep, he works hard.  We can see that Jesus went away from His disciples to talk to His Heavenly Father. Apparently they weren’t like Joshua, who stayed talking to God longer than Moses did!  Moving away from those who can sleep is called appropriate public relations behaviour –  anybody with a lick of sense knows you don’t poke a bear when he is sleeping.

But in those moments, in the middle of the night, I sit and quietly read the scriptures to set my heart firmly back on Him. So often nowadays, this life squeezes us so tightly, sometimes it feels like we can’t breathe. Even the bible can seem to be impossible to grasp, especially when you feel like you have fallen down a deep deep hole and His love and light is hidden from you. That’s when you PAF … Phone A Friend. Seriously. But!! Not between 12.00am and 6.00am!  You might find out your friend’s smiley face is wearing thin at that hour. Most of all take the time talk to the Lord, despite how you feel. He’s your Dad and He’s always UP and happy to hear from you! “He that keepeth thee does not slumber.” Psalm 121:3.

Sadly, for me, and about a zillion other people in this world, that word ‘Dad,’ has little or no meaning. But I’ve seen enough Dad-like qualities in the godly men around me to get a picture of what a great father looks like. Plus Jesus talked about it too. Almighty God is the greatest of all fathers. He’s where Fatherhood comes from!  His book gives us a lovely picture of what a great father looks like. Here’s Matthew 7:9-11.“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!”Good verse to think about at 1.00 am.

Our Father will not lie or try to deceive us. When He says something He means it. Our task is to believe what He has said, even though sometimes in this world, other people are trying to sell us something. I’ve found that many people lie because they want something, or they have something to hide or lose. When we are sleepless, or down, because of life, or something someone else said or did — we need to remind ourselves that our God does not lie. HE has nothing to hide and He doesn’t have agendas. Everything He says is the truth. ‘There is no shadow or turning in Him.’ This simply means — because HE IS THE LIGHT … good luck finding anything dark anywhere near Him.

Our current world provides us with poor images, those things are not good to think about at 1.00am. This world is used to double-dealing, double-talking flam-flam artists who pretend to be one thing when they are really another. Deception often flows through our streets like water. Think about a simple thing like watching a movie. Movies are all about people lying to themselves …and to each other … and to YOU, for a living. And we pay them heaps of money to do it!  We’ve gotten so used to living with these things that we think of them as harmless. God is truth,  and we already know that ‘in Him there is no shadow or turning’ –so anything that is a lie is not from Him. And yes, I watch movies too! But I think that some movies are definitely not geared to help us sleep!

However, this psalmist has the sense when he wakes up at some ridiculous hour of the night, to respond to God with praise and worship. He meditates on God’s goodness, instead of making his worries bigger by thinking about them. Nor does he think about that cute little maiden he saw last week in the temple! He remembers what the Lord has already done and he gives thanks. This man is giving us sound advice. In the middle of the night when we have any worries, we need to hand them over, and go after Jesus. Try praying for people who need to be saved – satan is glad to let you nod off when you do that!  

I also like to remind myself, that even though I know I can be faithless, my Heavenly Father cannot!  BTW, FYI, I do not expect you to be Him — if I want to see what my Father looks like then I look at Christ – He’s a sure thing. The most wonderful miracle of all miracles happened a couple of thousand years ago – God came here to reveal Himself to us, personally.  And that’s plenty to think about today or tonight … or in the middle of the night when your brain is UP and you wanna sleep! Bye zzzzzzzz. 👋

P 2333 Be planted in the place He chose for you.

/ DVH

Psalm 1:1-3 “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take, or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on His law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.”

These first three verses sound impossible, especially in the dim, spiritually nasty light of the world we live in. “Get thee to a nunnery” springs to mind. Maybe we all need a cloistered place to hide in, filled with like-minded people. Oh that’s right, that’s called church! 😳So should we all go and find a desert island??

My point is this – is the Psalmist saying avoid this world? I don’t think so. Walking in step with the ungodly;  standing still in a spiritually dark place;  or sitting down with people who think being a Christian is a load of stupid bunkum is dangerous, because doing these things involves influence and choice. We ignore what this Psalmist says at our own peril. 

This kind of careless living leaves us open to our own reasoning and logic, not to mention loads of people-who-seem-to-be-much-smarter-than-me. Most followers who walk away from Jesus do not reject Christianity overnight, they just kind of slowly drift away. Sometimes they feel let down by the church, or they lack the ability to fit in. They have not grasped the reality of what Christ actually did for us… or maybe they were never told in the first place.

Instead they’ve ended up with a hybrid gospel — ‘Jesus saved me, but … now I have to work hard to meet a standard that seems impossible to me.’ The Grace that Christ’s death and resurrection released has not been fully explained to them, so it cannot be appropriated by faith and action. He died to give us His Grace to successfully change the way we live – one step at a time.

I am of the opinion that simply telling people Jesus died to save them is not enough information. When they come to know what Christ did for us, if we are not careful we leave out an important part of the whole Gospel. In our anxiety and enthusiasm to ‘get people saved,’ we don’t talk about COST. Jesus died to save us and all that is absolutely totally free … BUT … it will COST us everything. We will have to die to ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, etc and live for Him now! 

Our old way to live is now gone – it went to the cross with Jesus. WE LEFT IT THERE WHEN WE LAID DOWN OUR SIN, once and for all.  His death released the power for us to live this life differently .. now we live using our faith! The day we are born again is the beginning of a whole new life and it is up to us to choose to live this new life from now on – every single day. 

Dying to self is not an optional extra. It is essential —because we cannot participate in this new life, without daily shedding the old one by dying to self. We must actively get rid of the old one, our old way of thinking, being, doing and living. We have entered a process. The Gospels and the Epistles are full of explanations about how this process works. Our new, born again, spiritually alive man rises from the dead.

Now we choose, with the Holy Spirit’s constant help, about WHERE we are to walk, stand and sit. And what we will do in response to other people’s sin against us. The result of this new life is a blessing, because it is our true identity now, our destiny. Because of our total life change, His word in the bible is essential, so it becomes our delight. Now, daily, minute by minute, it provides us with our Master’s voice. What HE thinks. In this book, He tells us how He sees thievery, murder, coveting, lying, idolatry, cheating, etc. etc. He knows that those things take us away from our pure devotion to Him. They rob us, because they possess us and our thoughts. 

They are traps and snares that steal away our love for the One Who gave up everything to save us. When we cherish what He said, above what we think, or feel, or think we need, we are planted by a stream that supports us in our daily lives. The Holy Spirit is that never-ending stream. Fruit naturally occurs, because we’ve been planted somewhere that is conducive to growing fruit.

JESUS CAME HERE TO SHOW MANKIND THERE IS A BETTER WAY TO LIVE and He lived that way in front of our eyes to prove it can be done. We need to allow the Lord to plant us in a place of His choosing – that is where we will prosper. 👋🏻