Spirit

P 2243 On your mark…

/ DVH

Start TAKING FAITH STEPS. Seriously, if we keep sitting around in our ordinary little lives, no wonder we are disappointed. Perhaps we once went to a meeting and someone told us we could aim for the moon!  And then, in the everydayness of this life, the enemy took us out with discouragement, disappointment and despair – I call those things the three D’s. They will grab you around the throat and throw you on the floor, weeping because you think you’ve failed. We only fail, when we fail to try! Every single thing we do in faith, no matter how big or small, or hard it is, brings Glory to God! That’s what we are here for, to glorify Him in the face of opposition.

Faith is always needed. We exercise faith when we cross a road! The God kind of faith is about stepping out and doing that thing the Holy Spirit is quietly prompting us to do. Maybe we have bills to the sky and we are tempted to stop tithing or giving, “just until we get past this hard bit.”  Or… when we ask our neighbour if we can pray for them. That’s really using our faith. Faith is not a theory, it’s an action. All of the fruits of the Spirit are verbs, action words. If you can’t find His fruit in your life then you are probably not meeting opposition – with faith. It is good to remember, that when His fruit is eaten by someone else, it nourishes their spirit. 

I want you to think about NOT living by faith, for a moment. Do we really think satan is going to leave us alone if we do nothing? What would you do if you were the bad guy? Would you soothe the people with the power to change the world off to sleep and distract them until they run out of time? The bible is clear, our side wins in the end. It’s not the end yet guys. Don’t fall asleep bored, or join the rat race striving to get bigger better brighter things!  Get up and fight for the people God has all around you.   If we are always preparing, or recovering from our past, we will never get to GO! Go anyway!! Limping if you have to.

We’ve been brainwashed to think that winning means we come out on top all the time! That’s a fairy tale. When we decided to follow Christ we chose to follow SomeOne Who knows all about a higher purpose. Christ served God’s higher purpose, and when we live by faith we actually can’t lose. Our God always has a bigger plan! Read Hebrews 11 – many people actually died knowing they couldn’t lose. Initially it even looked like Jesus lost – however His death opened a door for us that cannot be shut ever again. We are not living this life we live for visible success.  We have eternal eyes.

We are no longer our own, we’ve been bought with a price … I l💖ve this scripture!! …”You were bought with a price [you were actually purchased with the precious blood of Jesus and made His own]. So then, honour and glorify God with your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:20. How do we glorify God with our BODIES? That doesn’t just mean we toddle off to church or bible study or sing loudly. We glorify Him by living this new life we have been given for His purposes, not our own. Jesus is our example of how our new life works. 

Father God planted His Holy seed, Jesus Christ the Righteous One, into this earth – and you and I, we are part of Christ’s harvest. But His harvest isn’t meant to stop with us … look outside your door … there are people everywhere with no hope. Today, right here, right now, we have the hope of the world living inside us! So what are we going to do about it? Faith is not pie in the sky when we die. Faith is our new way to live. Galatians 2:19-21 “For through the law I died to the law SO THAT I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

God asked us to live this life here in such a way that we bring a taste of His heaven to the people around us. We give them beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy for mourning – love for hate.That’s what the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control does. It brings a taste of heaven here. Our primary mistake is that we think it is meant to be easy. Dying to yourself while you are still alive isn’t easy. However, we are not alone as we step into this new faith dimension. The Holy Spirit will help us.

You know if you have ever joined a gym, or started an exercise routine, your muscles screech at you when you first start. When we start using our faith muscle it will be hard, because our faith has been frozen over by a lack of movement. But the more we use it … the more supple and stretchable it becomes. Faith is made to grow – and that kind of growth will demand our growth too. Ready? Set? Go!! 👋🏻

P 2230 Our shield is our protection.

/ DVH

“But You, Lord, are a shield around me, my glory, the One who lifts my head high.” Psalms 3:3 NIV. “But in the depths of my heart I truly know that you, Yahweh, have become my Shield; You take me and surround me with Yourself. Your glory covers me continually. You lift high my head.” Psalms 3:3 TPT.“Above all, carry the shield of faith so that you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. ..” Ephesians 5:16-18.

Using our faith is using our shield – whether it is for protection from attacks, or we are attacking our enemy, the shield of faith is an essential piece of spiritual equipment. I was taught to put on the whole armour of God as a younger Christian. So I faithfully prayed that I would somehow, by osmosis, have all that equipment, if I just said those verses in Ephesians 5 out loud every day. 😳 In the past my problem was that I wasn’t actually using my faith – I was using the scripture like an incantation.

That had a positive side, it meant I actually memorised all that scripture!  I had the theory, but not the practical. For this armour to work in our lives we desperately need the practical. We all have w-a-y too much theory.  God’s word is practical.  In order to use this shield, we need to keep it next to us on our arm, and live aware of it. I shouldn’t have to hunt about for my shield – it belongs on my left arm. The sword of the Spirit is in my right hand. When something bad comes toward me that shield is the first thing that needs to go up, followed by the Word of God out of my mouth. 

Everything else in that list of weapons in Ephesians depends on my shield. It REMAINS on my arm.  It is a metaphoric shield, but a very REAL STANCE. I stand in the position before God that Jesus died to give me!  And I use self-talk to remind myself of what He did for me – I bring that up from the well of scripture I’ve hidden inside me. Personally, I paraphrase those scriptures all the time!  Like I said it is not an incantation but a relationship with SomeOne Who helps me. I am also using my shield whenever I pray, ‘help, help,’ because I’m looking to Him to come to my aid and help me. This shield is always about USING my faith that He will look after me and help me.

It is an offensive weapon not just a defensive one. Faith is about the way we regard our relationship with Almighty God – it’s about sonship, who He says WE ARE to Him. The shield of faith is also the defensive weapon we use to repel the enemy’s darts of accusation, bitterness, confusion, resentment, sorrow, slander etc. This means we’ve made a quality decision to rely upon His Word and not our feelings or man-made solutions to any situation that attack us. 

Misunderstanding of the way to use God’s word has been the downfall of many God-fearing Christians. They don’t understand how to USE the Bible as a shield.  Reading and agreeing with it is the BEGINNING, but we have to go past the beginning into the practical – by applying what it says to the way we think and act. That’s called renewing your mind. So a verse comes into my mind and that becomes my faith sword to use against the stuff that is swirling about inside and outside. I use it until the attack stops, but I don’t put it down. My faith shield stays on my ARM ready to use.

Every other piece of armour in Ephesians relies upon using our shield – our faith. EG: I get an opportunity to talk about how much I love Jesus and so I tell the other person what I know about Him. That’s the shoes of the Gospel of peace. Those shoes bring peace, because His Gospel is all about peace with God. They help us walk through our days. Maybe I let some bad situation bubble away, instead of going to the other person to fix it. Now I have let my sin go from my mouth or thoughts, into my heart. That means I don’t have my breastplate of righteousness on, anymore – because it covers my heart. Repent and fix it. Nothing is worth losing that breastplate. People have lost their salvation because they didn’t look after their breastplate. 

Our faith is the overall spiritual protection we use to shield us from all the enemy’s fiery darts. We don’t just say this stuff or agree with it  – we live this way. And if we forget, then we repent, fix it  and go back to living that way again. It takes practice. A soldier has to practice how to learn to accurately shoot a rifle. The shield of faith is a learned process that we refuse to give up because our faith is the protection God has given us against the stuff that happens in this life – it helps us MOVE FORWARD.  👋🏻

P 2224 Growing fruit.

/ DVH

Today, I want to use the fruit of patience purely as an illustration for growing the Lord’s kind of fruit. People say all the time, ‘have patience’ – like it is something that we can conjure up all by ourselves. I just want to say – if we already have it, then the Lord wouldn’t need to give it to us. Duh! 🙄 It is so obvious that our human patience and His spiritual patience, are two different things! His fruit and our ‘try harder’ are not the same! Godly patience endures all things and it grows inside our hearts like everything else He gives us – by investing in it. It involves my desire to co-operate with Him as well as being prepared to change and challenge my own mindset, at inopportune times.

In my opinion we only know we need His fruit, when we can see with our own eyes that we don’t have it!  Spiritual poverty is a great diagnostic tool of the stuff we lack. Don’t let pride, lukewarmness, or even feelings of inadequacy, fool you into missing out on the blessing of being transformed. Transformation starts in our minds, first. We need to change the way we think. Spiritual patience is one of those things that flow out from His Love in us. But the human version of patience consists of stretching ourselves beyond where we think we can go – and then announcing to the world that: “I ran out of patience, I don’t have any left.” That usually happens when we think someone else has gone too far! The fruit of the Spirit cannot run out. It is eternal. 🧐

If we already think we are quite spiritual enough, then that can cause all kinds of other problems … mainly for everyone else who happens to live around us! Under-developed unripe spiritual fruit tastes terrible – just like normal under-developed etc. etc. fruit does! 😖 I’ve found the best way to handle my own inadequacies in a whole lot of spiritual areas – is to treat this life as an ongoing learning experience. I have settled in my heart that I have not, and will not arrive, all done, all perfect, until I see Him face to face. I have chosen patience as my illustration today, because we can easily see we haven’t got it.

At the same time the best thing is to refuse to make excuses for our own bad or unwise behaviour. We are aiming at fruit, not just flowers, and that involves engaging with the process. Jesus death and resurrection has already empowered Christians to live a totally changed life – right here, right now. Recognising our humanity without excusing it, immediately releases us from the pressure to try to BE what the book says we already ARE. We rely on the power of HIS WORD. We live our lives co-operating with the Holy Spirit – today – this minute! And we are learning to live by His Grace alone. Let’s all leave ‘trying harder’ behind! Speaking for myself, I was awful at it – I don’t have the stamina for it.

God breathes His fruit into our own tree of His life in us, as we co-operate with Him. Co-operation with the Holy Spirit is like following a guide through a maze – you never know what is going to come around the corner, but our daily experiences with Him remind us that He knows where it is safe to put our feet etc. Impatient people … OR people who rely upon human patience … and then call it spirituality … get cranky at you. They often get cranky at you quite quickly. Now there’s a diagnostic tool! The result is, you feel like a dunce, a failure. Anybody who robs you of the fact that you are accepted by the Lord Jesus, is stealing your birthright, whether it is accidental, or not. Forgive them, pray for them, and then go back to leaning on Him.

When we feel inadequate – and I often do – my first port-of-call is to go to the Lord and ask where I have given my enemy, satan .. ground in my life. There is some place I am believing a lie, either because I was lied to, or I chose the lie over what God says in the book! Repentance is the answer to that one! I am allowed to learn. But, sadly, continually postponing change is a sign of rebellion. It simply means I have given rebellion a much nicer name to help ME to feel better… I called it hurt feelings, or other people’s provocation. 

Nobody can keep us from the love of God, but sometimes we need a larger revelation of His love than the one we currently have. Ask for it! The fruit of the Spirit grows from His flowing sap of love in my life – whether it is patience, kindness or long- suffering etc. I exhort you to actively ask for a greater revelation of His love, because we all need it. And He promises, in the book, to supply OUR needs. 👋🏻

P 2215 Time to remember we are all human, and shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

/ DVH

I had a very difficult day yesterday. My blog site went down, because there was a problem at the server’s end, and it took most of the day for it to be restored. Computers! They are great … until they aren’t!  I, of course, lived up to everything I say here – and … promptly panicked, and got ratty at the server. 😢 I’d like to say I have an excuse because I was not notified about the extensive IT work on the site… but I’m not real sure about that one – I think it was more a case of looking at who I really am, under pressure! 

Today has been a day filled with identifying and making all kinds of adjustments, and not all of them were happy ones. It isn’t a lot of fun peering into your mirror/bible and finding you aren’t the very nice person you hoped you were. Sometimes I think I should wear an under construction sign on my forehead. Sigh. I was extremely anxious, and then alternatively, ticked off at the IT guys. There was not a lot of praising God going on at my end, and I wasted most of my day fussing about it. When it got to nearly 4pm and the site still wouldn’t load, I gave up all hope of ever being able to post my blog that day. Of course, that was the exact time when everything began to work again, so I could finally post it! My sincere apologies for any inconvenience.

Don’t you hate it when you find out who you really are, when you are under pressure? It’s like one of those pop quizzes they used to give you at school – and there you are with egg on your face, and nothing you can do about it either! You know you are winding yourself up, but you just can’t seem to stop. It’s much easier to make good decisions when everything is going well!  But the real test is when things aren’t going well at all. The young customer service person helping me was very helpful to me, and far nicer than I deserved – I wasn’t rude, but I wasn’t happy either!

Obviously I have asked the Lord to redeem the situation I found myself in, but the fact that the blog was about the fruit of the Spirit when my OWN fruit appears to have been attacked by nasty little fruit flies was not lost on me!  It became extremely clear to me that I should not have one face for the brethren, and another for the people I meet in the supermarket or – customer service! That’s called hypocrisy. Sadly I have observed it is much easier for me to get cranky at others than I would like. There is no excuse BTW – I’m just plain cranky.

Unfortunately at those times it is also so-oo-oo easy to see other people’s mistakes rather than identify my own! It is also pointless to pray about our faults and leave them to the Lord to fix – He won’t do it for us. We must confess our faults to one another … and then stay alert for opportunities to change our responses.

It took an obscure movie on Brit Box to alert me to the fact that the only interaction I will have with some people on this planet will be brief – so I’d better make it count for the Lord’s sake! I personally think it is quite sad when we wear one face in church and another in public. That irony is not lost on me. Living a dual life can actually lead to self-deception, plus excusing our own behaviour over and over again … and eventually … complete avoidance of the need for personal change. 

Confession seems to me to be the best way to neutralise this kind of situation. There is nothing like sunshine on mould to get rid of it. But first I took a good long look in the mirror. I listened to Sir David Suchet reading the Epistles of Paul. Listening to that convicted me. I learnt once again, that people can only give you opportunities to find out what is really inside. It ain’t their fault when it accidentally pops out! Reality rush! 😬Meanwhile it is far easier to sort yourself out, than it is try to change their responses. Now that’s a real lesson in frustration. 

Time to remember, yet again, what James said in Chapter 5 verse 16 “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”  Feel free to pray for me dear reader! “Dear Lord may I never forget Your mirror is my friend.”  Amen.👋🏻

P 2207 Let our words be with demonstration of His power!

/ DVH

Oh! The danger of defining the Lord by our own particular theology! Pray for wisdom, and the mind and heart of Christ in your life, because we have all become stuck in powerlessness, and we often lack His wisdom. The Pharisees in the parable below lived their lives esteemed as the resident experts. The problem with being a resident expert is you can eventually start to believe your own publicity. Moving on…

…to Matthew 12:24-30.“But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.” Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If satan drives out satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand?

And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. “Or again, how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can plunder his house. “Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters.”

We are sometimes very happy to use our minds and logic to define what God means or what He wants. That is a waste of our time! Jesus didn’t just talk, He demonstrated God’s power. But if we go inside many of our churches you’d be forgiven for thinking that all He did was talk! I urge everyone reading this to get real revelation, for yourself, from the book, and start participating in the power of God. Personally, I think that logic will eventually kick faith out of the window because it is a poor substitute for living, loving, kingdom-minded saints who demonstrate the power of God and don’t just talk about it.

Did you notice in this scripture that Jesus knew their thoughts?! That’s what supernatural living looks like – inexplicable miraculous things happen! At this time, Jesus is announcing the truth, and refuting the Pharisee’s logic and lies with a demonstration. There is always a danger that we will cling to our belief and traditions and miss what God is doing NOW – unless we remain humble and teachable.

Most people hate absolutes. Jesus said in those verses above in Matthew: “Whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters.” There you go … now there’s an absolute! Someone in my family believes in Jesus, but not enough to follow Him. They are not ‘with Him, so everything they do, scatters.’ There is no lasting legacy from their lives because they are sowing into the wind. Permanence, together with a lasting legacy, takes a total commitment, not just a mental agreement with what Jesus said. Even the devil believes in God! James 2:19.

In the Gospels, Jesus shows us the way to make the kingdom of God available to others is by living it out in front of them. He was criticised and critiqued by the Pharisees for delivering some poor sod who was held captive by the devil. But this how you make God’s power see-able! “And my message and my preaching were very plain. Rather than using clever and persuasive speeches, I relied only on the power of the Holy Spirit.” Paul said this in 1 Corinthians 2:4. 

Talking about Jesus, or even arguing with other people, no matter how cleverly we do it, will not help the-people-who-do-not-know-Him-yet to embrace His kingdom. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit…” (John 3:6). Our minds find security in what we think we know – unless Jesus is allowed to cut away the stuff that is hindering us, with the sword of His Spirit. Like the bible says in Hebrews:“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”The Holy Spirit doesn’t just want to win an argument – He wants to win the person!

In these brief moments in Matthew, Jesus is giving the Pharisees an opportunity to re-examine their idea of truth … be-ca-use … the Truth was standing right in front of them demonstrating LOVE with power.  Ask yourself some hard questions today. Is my life fruitful? Can other people see the kingdom of God being manifested through me? Am I living a life of laid-down love for the people I love, plus the people I don’t know? Or do I just give others a good argument to prove my POV? Do I pray for the sick to be healed and the captives to be set free? That mind stuff is a dead-end street. However His Love through us divides the rubbish away, and cuts straight to the truth. 

Jesus demonstrated the truth in front of their eyes, while the Pharisees left the poor demonised man captive! Just because it makes no sense to me or my personal theology – that doesn’t mean it is wrong – perhaps it is what Christ is saying – today. To me! 👋🏻

P 2177 Keep stretching your faith.

/ DVH

Matthew 14:17-19 “And He commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, He blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to His disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.”

In this story of the feeding of the 5,000 all the disciples could see was the lack – their faith was limited by their own understanding … however Jesus was about to stretch their faith! After all, in the natural, there were only five loaves, and two fish found amongst all those people. Tee hee – obviously the people at that kind of meeting didn’t come prepared with tea, coffee and snacks! However, the food everyone ate, came from an earthly, insignificant source, but it was given freely.. and in the end it was supernatural bread and fish. So was the sermon, BTW, that sermon is still feeding and challenging mindsets 2000+ years later! Meanwhile, if you want to spiritually authenticate a sermon – maybe multiplying the food will help! 😂

The thing I see from this incident about the boy and his lunch, is this: very little in the hands of our mighty God can always become more than we can ever comprehend!  Which means people like you and I can see miracles too. He was a very ordinary little boy – but he had the faith to offer his lunch. I think our greatest oppositional difficulty sometimes comes from our own personal head knowledge. We are taught to value what we know from school, uni etc. The thing is, in the SPIRIT earthly knowledge isn’t worth bupkis. Earthly knowledge has to take notes and write books!  But ordinary people can live this way – it doesn’t take this world’s knowledge to multiply bread – it takes faith in the One Who multiplied it!

“But the natural [unbelieving] man does not accept the things [the teachings and revelations] of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness [absurd and illogical] to him; and he is incapable of understanding them, because they are spiritually discerned and appreciated, [and he is unqualified to judge spiritual matters].” 1 Corinthians 2:14 AMP.

The Holy Spirit takes the things we cannot possibly know, and explains them to us in words that we can understand. Reading the bible does not depend on head knowledge. I think it was written for all kinds of people who have connection to the smartest Person ever! The Holy Spirit speaks every known language and some unknown ones! He can translate His meaning into something important each and every individual person can understand – even in a huge crowd. He goes around our heads and touches our hearts.

I think most of the time we can be too clever for our own good, and we end up explaining away holy things and we ignore others, because our educated idiot-boxes think they know better! The bible is full of people who put faith first. The disciples thought you couldn’t feed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish, and they were wrong. 

This, BTW could be the reason the Lord was so unhappy with these men later that day, when they started to talk about bread, out in a boat in a storm. Jesus wondered where their faith went because they went back into human reasoning! We are all supposed to live by faith – faith isn’t wish thinking and it often includes stuff we know nothing about. That day the disciples acted in faith when they distributed the bread and fish … then they went back to reasoning and went into fear over a storm! Big mistake. 

Many times it is way too easy to cancel out the ‘God’-factor, and start reasoning about how to solve stuff, because I am looking at whatever is going on around me … instead of praying over it first. Learn to ask the Lord what HE thinks. Because … “the natural mind doesn’t understand the things of the Spirit..” Duh! That’s why we need to pay attention to His life in us. You can call that life whatever you want … born again, new life, making a decision for Christ, becoming a disciple – whatever. I don’t care what it is called – our spiritual life is about a new way to live and see this life! The real question is – who is in charge of your life? You or Jesus?

Our old life requires us to figure everything out using the resources around us. But His new life in us blows our minds over and over again. Renewing our minds through reading the bible is the only way to learn how to think like He does. Changing our minds won’t just come through simply memorising stuff from the book, but that won’t kill you. It’s called ‘hiding His word in our hearts so we won’t sin against Him.’ A renewed mind also doesn’t come from rushing about claiming this and that – that leads to us telling Father God what He should do.  A renewed mind comes from reading the bible, and walking with a PERSON Who knows everything. So we only do what we see Him doing. This will mean we all need more stretchable faith.  👋🏻

P 2144 The Faithful One.

/ DVH

“We all experience times of testing, which is normal for every human being. But God will be faithful to you. He will screen and filter the severity, nature, and timing of every test or trial you face so that you can bear it. And each test is an opportunity to trust Him more, for along with every trial God has provided for you a way of escape that will bring you out of it victoriously.” 1 Corinthians 10:13 TPT

Our God is so faithful, HE LOVES US … whatever happens to us is not proof of His love or even a sign that He is angry with us. He put all His anger on Christ. He loves mankind because He says so – in the book! Here is one of my favourite verses: “If we are faithless, He remains faithful [true to His word and His righteous character], for He cannot deny Himself.” 2 Timothy 2:13. 🥰 Unfortunately we can be faithless, often … and we are!  What makes you and I the same as everyone else in this world, is the blood we all have coursing through our veins. Colour, size, age, sex, race and religion none of that matters because we are all human. Human beings assess things by performance, but we dare not assess the Lord that way. We must learn to take Him at His word! 

The above verse tells us the Lord God Almighty IS always faithful – let us pray that we will begin to understand just how faithful He is! Just like our blood is a part of humanity we have in common, His faithfulness is a part of Who He is!  He is faithful through and through. Those qualities we sometimes think of as passing human characteristics, are permanently, FOREVER, HIS! Love, joy, peace, etc – these things are not whimsical, or seasonal, or subject to change with Him – our God is always the same. Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” And Malachi 3:6: “For I am the Lord, I do not change; …” 

We need to do more than nod our heads or even say Amen to verses like that. They are not just there to cheer us up when we feel down. They are there to reveal His heart. We must start living our lives treating whatever He says, in the book, as the truth, because it is. HE CANNOT CHANGE. When we try to elevate humanity up to His level, we are running the very real risk of lowering His status down to human standards. Jesus is God, and He is like us – but Almighty God is like no-one else.

And I’m just going to let that statement sit there by itself because we must do more than simply agree with it. We need to start living our lives depending on how permanently dependable He is. Our lives have become more and more unstable because the things we’ve stood on – or gave our attention to – started to wobble. Misunderstanding the Lord God’s motivation means we are in danger of attributing Him with our human characteristics. Even though Christ came as one of us – He did something human beings cannot do – He was purity Personified. After that He chose to become sin. In these matters we cannot trust our own understanding. The mysteries of our God are beyond our understanding … and that’s a good thing!  

We need SomeOne wiser, kinder, more loving, and more committed to us, than we can ever be to each other – otherwise we are sunk. We will all be stuck in a rut of trying to be better people and failing. Whether I like you or not, or you like me or not, we need to start to know and see each other after the Spirit. “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.” 2 Corinthians 5:16. In other words I begin to see the Holy Spirit active in you, and you see Him active and working in and ON me. That will not happen when we spend our time trying to impress one another with our spirituality. Rather it happens as a byproduct of working together for a common cause as we submit to His ways. 

When we actively look for and take particular notice of the signs of His faithfulness in our lives, and store all those things in our hearts –  like a squirrel stores up nuts for the winter – we will begin to know one another after the Spirit! The power of God is not a reward for good behaviour, or super spirituality. As we let the Holy Spirit develop who we are, we will be transformed to look like Jesus. Jesus didn’t have to try to do this or that – HE JUST DID IT. It is time to deliberately transfer our trust, from what we think, see and know, into simply trusting in WHO He is. 

We must put aside the prayers of “please fix this and that thing, or everything that matters to me Lord” and start to pray: “Why am I here Lord, what is Your purpose for my life?” Whether you or I are the head pastor or the janitor – all those things are up to Him. The things that are weighing heavily on each of our hearts will be: “…ADDED UNTO US … as we seek His kingdom FIRST.” He cannot be anything else but faithful to us, and He is looking for us to be faithful to Him in the midst of a faithless generation. 👋🏻

P 2142 Some verses from Romans 8.

/ DVH

The way we live our lives now, is explained in Romans. Today I’ve highlighted some verses in Romans 8, starting with verses 3-4: “For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” 

The reality is, that each one of us needs to progressively learn how to walk in a manner that does not dismiss, alienate, or send away the Holy Spirit. 🕊 HE. IS. OUR. FRIEND. OUR COMPANION. And like Jesus, He is gentle, unobtrusive, and lowly in His heart. It is a sad thing if we continue to live in the flesh, when we’ve been reborn into a new life in the Spirit. We cannot make excuses for not living in this new life, that Jesus died to give us. It was, after all, free! The bible is the Manufacturer’s instructions – we need to read it looking for things to do for others, things to teach us about His Ways.Things to direct our focus away from this world, into learning about His focus for mankind. Our main priority now, is to stay connected with the One Who is here to help us. Obedience will keep us connected.

Sin isn’t just about murder, or running away with your receptionist or swearing!! It is also about not forgiving someone from your heart. (Matthew 18:35) And guess what? The Holy Spirit knows our hearts … so we can’t hide our stinky attitudes under the heading of: ‘Things I have to do, but I haven’t got around to them yet!’ Plus, good luck hiding unforgiveness under the rug of: ‘I’ve been too busy.’ 😶 When we think like that it tells the Holy Spirit His Presence is not all that important to us. He. Will. Leave. And we are NOT GOOD without Him.

Our task is to find out what He likes to do, and start doing that. So with His ever-present help, we follow His leadership into Christ’s footsteps – because the Body of Christ is going somewhere. However, we cannot begin our journey of faith without continually taking faith steps. We will get to know the Holy Spirit when we cherish Him and obey what He tells us to do. If it is in the book and we are not doing it, then we need to change. Our God is for us and wants to be constantly with us, but He cannot walk with us, if we do not want to be with Him enough to lay aside all the things that weigh us down. These things are clearly explained in the bible – obedience is never an optional extra.

Our awareness of sin is lessened the further away we go from His Presence. But our awareness of other people’s sin heightens when we’ve wandered away from listening to Him. The secret is to let the Holy Spirit govern our lives and show Him – by doing whatever He asks us to do – that He is the greatest desire of our heart. Compromise is our enemy. On to Verse 5: “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.” 

This new way to live is about focus, and the Holy Spirit will help us focus on Who He is, and what He is doing in our lives right now – as well as our part in what He is doing in this world. Read the Old Testament, and watch what happened when ordinary men and women obeyed Almighty God! This morning I was typing this, and He said: “Eat your breakfast, it is going cold.” So I ate my breakfast, and guess what? It was going cold. I have seen, with my own eyes, the amazing things that He will do with obedience. Start by repairing broken relationships, and begin to use the time you have been given well.  Human beings often do useless stuff that whittles away the God-given time we have. 

BTW, when the Holy Spirit talks about rest in the bible, He is talking about us resting in everything He has already done for us through Christ’s sacrifice. And there are things in this life that He will do through us – but if we don’t do them, then they won’t get done. We have the power to give away forgiveness to those who don’t know it is available.That’s a BIG responsibility. We are, after all, ‘co-labourers with Christ.’

Like verse 5 says, our flesh does not please God, so we dare not rationalise the things of God away. Verse 6: “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.” Let’s turn that coin over shall we? Who or what is in charge of us and our minds? That’s what governed means. It is when the Holy Spirit calls to us – so when we are reading the bible and one verse catches your attention – then stop. Treat it just like He is speaking directly to you. Give Him your attention. He loves it when we give Him time. Ask Questions. Look up other verses that relate to whatever it is. Prayerfully look for ways that verse applies to you.

Lastly, Verse 8: “Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.” Why not? Because He is a Spirit!  We are now born again spiritual beings who temporarily have bodies. We were always going to die before we met the Lord, but now we leave here and go to be with Him. Living this life with an awareness of the Holy Spirit makes sense. Obedience helps our spirit man to grow and mature. My flesh can easily be obsessed with what makes me temporarily happy! But because of Christ, my spirit man is now attached to the Holy Spirit. I need to continually make Him welcome, by obeying the last thing He asked me to do. 👋🏻