Spiritual strength

P 3429 GRACE is not an optional extra.

/ DVH

It is often so easy to focus on our needs. The need to be well, or have enough money, or a job, or a house, or even the right spouse to serve Him. When what we actually need is His Grace for wherever we are – right here, right now! Jesus Himself didn’t have any of those physical things and it didn’t bother Him — His food and drink was to do the will of His Father. Paul wasn’t impressed by the fripperies of this world either, and if you look at all the disciples, they didn’t think they needed anything BUT JESUS.

I know about a number of missionaries who don’t have most of the kind of things that we take for granted. However, they don’t feel poor. Actually they’d rather walk with Him, than rely upon stuff. The Lord Jesus gave us His grace when He died for us, now, Grace is the vehicle we step into, and we never ever step out of again!  Because our aim is to follow Him, we choose to apply ourselves to learn this truth. We literally cannot do anything without Him. Salvation is not just asking Him into our lives and walking away, clutching our free ticket to heaven. Grace is the ticket that takes us all the way there. That ‘ticket’ cost our loving Saviour His life.

By now we have learnt that choosing to love anyone is incredibly powerful, and it is even more powerful when we begin to understand the cost of that kind of choice. Our choice to follow Him blesses the Lord Jesus’ heart. We, and millions of other people, who have gone before us, are His reward for all His suffering. I don’t think human beings have the capacity to live the way Jesus did, and maintain it, without the Grace of God freely flowing through their lives.

It takes Grace to love someone who feels so entitled to focus on their own happiness than anything else around them – they see this world in a childish fashion. “What’s in it for me?’ It can be remarkably easy to give up leaning on the Lord, because the spiritual things seem too hard. That’s the point. They were always going to be too hard. Our quest is to choose to learn to love, live, move and have our being in Him, and His Grace helps us achieve that, one step at a time.

‘Grace needs to be viewed not just as a one-time pardon, but as an ongoing spiritual strength, that helps people change and serve others.’ (Google) Loving others in our own strength will eventually produce a conflict of interests, and most of the time, it’s likely that my own interests will win! That’s when Grace Himself leaves, and we are left with ‘me’ in all my selfish glory. Conversely, I can easily get puffed up by how sacrificial I am, even when you clearly don’t deserve it. I can also probably be misled by hardship — but His Grace is God’s gift to me, to lead me into His Ways.

It is, unfortunately, comparatively simple to keep trying to control the world around us, without being a good steward of what lies within. I am of the opinion that we can’t do anything lasting, or eternal, without His Grace. True grace is eternity that has already come, or been invited, into the here and now. Let us not  forget the first few lines of that well known passage in 1 Corinthians 13, “The fruit of the SPIRIT …”   We will fail in our quest if we fail to realise that it’s HIS fruit that will be manifested in our lives. As we learn to co-operate with Him and ask Him to grow it – we will need His Grace to endure and keep on loving others.  

That fruit will be automatically and systematically nurtured as we choose, minute by minute, to stay attached to the vine. Jesus’ Grace holds us there – on that sometimes uncomfortable spot that challenges us to die to what we want. That takes these things out of the realm of what I can do, and puts them squarely into the Kingdom reality of what Jesus has already done. You can’t have both – self interest is not the same His interest, no matter how carefully we use pretty, spiritual words to make it sound better. In those moments, let’s choose to remember that Jesus didn’t care if He impressed anyone with His spirituality or not. Most of His praying was done in secret! 

We don’t need to explain Grace to participate in it. After all, His Grace saved us when we were already sinners. His Grace came and found us. Our job is to give grace a HOME. We were too stupid to ask for it, we definitely didn’t deserve it, so we won’t always recognise it when it comes our way. Nevertheless it is there. Our ignorance, or wilful disobedience, does not negate what God freely gave us. His Grace is the sap that facilitates the fruit of His Spirit to grow in our lives. I can try to change myself until I am blue in the face, and I might even outwardly change my behaviour. But I cannot change my heart. It will deceive me. 

The Grace released by what the Lord Jesus Christ did is far more powerful than we can imagine. Because of it, we need to live our lives gratefully. Grace saved us and it sustains us. We cannot outgrow our need for His Grace in our lives. Grace acts as a moving vehicle, it runs on our faith, and carries us past our perceived limits, into a new way of living. It is an unearned gift that holds us steady, moves us forward, and changes how we see our flaws. The bible shows us what to do and Grace helps us do it.

His Grace runs to meet us when we mess up. It lifts us up from the dirt and grime into a bigger place where we see how much He loves us, far more clearly. It gently washes us clean – again – and it holds us fast in His love even when life tosses us around like a leaf in a storm. We need His Word, plus His Grace, to help us apply it in our lives, all the time. God’s Grace is not an optional extra it is an essential oil, perfuming our lives. Bye. 👋

P 2834 Clear out the cupboards.

/ DVH

In order for our lives to be transformed, God has given each one of us so much help. We have His book. Full of the Lord’s dealings with others. Plus the ongoing Presence of the Holy Spirit. Who is always active to remind us of what our Father has said.

However, when I want to follow the Holy Spirit, that means I am going to have to learn how to WAIT for His answers, and learn to trust that the Lord knows what’s going on.  At the same time I will need to believe that Almighty God is bigger than any of my immediate problems. I need to choose to change my behaviour, as well as my reactions, to facilitate and undergird my new belief. I cannot enforce that decision I’ve made upon you — because you need to learn for yourself! This means I will be stretched even further because I’m not living in a vacuum. 

Living this way is part of God’s ongoing process for us. It isn’t always easy, but it will teach me patience and perseverance, and draw me closer to Him and the Way He thinks. As I digest how He thinks, by doing what His book says, I will need His help – right from the minute I open my eyes every single day. Meanwhile, Father God doesn’t want me to learn  how to wait just because He likes to take His time … actually the bible says that ‘He is quick to answer us…’Father God wants me to learn how to wait, because I will renew my spiritual strength and because of that, I can resist any temptation to give up easily. We have His book full of His Ways to use as a prayerful reference point.

Today, I want to look specifically at something difficult that Jesus said. Matthew 18:21-22 gives us a tough illustration.“At that point Peter got up the nerve to ask, “Master, how many times do I forgive a brother or sister who hurts me? Seven?” Jesus replied, “Seven! Hardly. Try seventy times seven.”  When I read this I chose to do the Math – that means every 2.9387755102 minutes in a day, if someone were to sin against you or I, over and over again, the Lord is saying to us – we still need to forgive them. Let’s round that number up to someone sinning against us every 3 minutes, all day. It is easy to see His point when we do the Math! Nobody would want to forgive someone if they sinned against them that often and consistently. I’m pretty sure that the person sinning against us might even run out of the energy to sin with those numbers!!

Jesus went on to tell us a parable that we all wish we hadn’t read – the unforgiving servant. Personally I don’t think that the Lord’s point is even remotely about how many sins and how often – Jesus was telling Peter if he wanted to be forgiven then he needed to have his reference point changed. It’s not about numbers … because of His Presence in our lives, we are changed. It was all free to us but it was incredibly costly to our Lord.

Through these verses I believe the Lord wanted to show Peter that human beings cannot forgive others without God’s help, and oodles of His GRACE.  Jesus was exaggerating to illustrate His point. He became sin — so we can become the righteousness of God. We were given forgiveness for free from the Lord, but it was incredibly costly to Him. Now we give it away to others for free, but will cost us, just like it cost Him. Our gratitude expresses itself in showing mercy to others, when they don’t deserve it either.

One of the things that can definitely hobble us spiritually from acting like His kids, is our unwillingness to forgive the way we’ve been forgiven. People sometimes say that they can forgive easily, but they can’t forget. Personally I think if we can still remember what happened, that will probably have the worst effect on our forgiveness factor! Those two things can’t go in the same equation, because one shoots the other one in the foot. So why am I writing about this today? Because some of us are going to have families descend upon us as we move toward Christmas. Family can, and often does more damage than anybody else. 

Our families don’t always consist of beautiful Godly people who always get it right. After all, WE belong there, and that fact alone just plain ruins that idea! Jesus is saying to us we need to live a lifestyle of forgiveness… and let past hurts and injuries go. Why? Because the greatest power on earth is released when we forgive, it’s GRACE. Some of Christ last words spoken from the cross were: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do…” When He said that … God’s Grace started raining down upon the earth out of all proportion to whatever would be needed for all time.

Grace moves mountains. It heals the sick, it restores our souls, it changes our circumstances. It opens up things that have been shut down and left to fester, so they can heal. Grace is the AIR of His kingdom. We can’t afford to count how many times that dumb person we know did whatever they did – because when we do that we step out of Grace, and literally stop breathing in the Spirit. God takes no pleasure in our grudges. So we need to clean out our spiritual cupboards asap. Then we will be amazed at how differently we can view the people who are around us. We all need to: “learn the unforced rhythms of Grace…” Bye. 👋

P 2758 Perspective.

/ DVH

Sometimes the bible jumps right out at me and wallops me ‘round the ear-hole. Those modern language versions mean I can’t hide behind the thought:  ‘what the heck does that mean? Oh! Never mind, I’ll get to it later.’ So hang onto your socks because this next verse is a doozy. “Keep in mind that we who belong to Jesus Christ have already experienced crucifixion. For everything connected with our self-life was put to death on the cross and crucified with Messiah.” Galatians 5:24 TPT.

Did ya get that? You might want to read it again. Yeah. It really does say that. You and I, we are already DEAD. My selfishness;  my inability to care about how you feel;  if I am rude, uncaring and unkind to you;  all that may seem to be alive – but in His Kingdom reality — it’s already dead. My choice to yield to His will makes the difference. Now, I can bring His kingdom into this world, using my faith and my choices. How do you like them onions?!

There are all kinds of attitudes, actions, lifestyles, and supposed realities in this world, that we can choose to live in —  ‘the wide and extremely varied world view where anything goes and we don’t much care about what happens to anyone else.’ The ‘I am never going to have enough ideology,’ or the ‘I’m stuck! I cannot possibly change who I am because this is who I am’ theory. And then there is living in His kingdom, here and now, where we live for Jesus no matter what it costs and LOVE RULES.

In His kingdom we are no longer susceptible to sin’s power. Jesus sent us SomeOne to help us – the Person He sent to help us overcome our penchant for sin – made the world. He can certainly lead us out of sin! It’s the Holy Spirit, BTW! He is Christ with us now. We can choose to obey God. We can choose to love, to care, to engage, to die for others  – He gave us the power to choose to die to our own selfishness. Because of what Jesus did for us – we have been given a choice – we can live His way, our own way, or this world’s way. But Christ’s way is the only WAY that brings eternity down here. “On earth as it is in heaven …”

However, there is also a default place we can live… and sometimes I think most of us end up living there. That’s the place where we really want to please Jesus, but we know we are falling short and making mistakes over and over again. We try and we try, then we fail, and with each failure comes more condemnation. The answer to this problem is at the beginning of this scripture. ‘We are already dead.’ Living this life dead involves exercising our faith. We choose to believe the bible! We live our lives now, like the way we use to live is gone. It’s in the past because of what Jesus did for us.

Like I said, our choices can work by default. When we don’t choose the Lord’s Ways, and we give in to whatever stupid thing we feel we simply must do… that default position means we are allowing satan to drag us around. he can torment us and lie to us that God won’t love us anymore and we are a hopeless case. But when we read the bible, we eat the kind of food that gives us spiritual strength to manage whatever stuff comes at us in a day. We remind ourselves that our debt has already been paid, as we worship the Lord, and we live our lives gratefully serving Him.

When we start out trying to make Godly/kingdom choices, our responses might be weak and wobbly and a bit on the pathetic side. Why? Because this is a new way to live and we aren’t used to asking Him to help us. The person we were before is used to being in charge, but now we are living in and for His kingdom. Let’s be clear, in His kingdom we own our sins and confess our faults, and we repent and deliberately repair things. 

The moment we chose to follow Jesus we give up our right to choose where we live, where we go, who we marry, what we have and what we don’t. We died. Dead men have no rights!  Every self-centred thought and action on our behalf went on that cross, it all landed on Christ. He bore the weight of it all. Enormous things and small ones. He willingly gave that incredible gift of God’s forgiveness, to mankind. Now our part is to give ourselves to Him, every single day, living the way He has chosen for us. 

We have given up the right to live like the people around us. However, we don’t serve Him as slaves – that is people who have to live this way to please Him. What Jesus already did for us pleased Father God! Now we serve Him voluntarily. He died voluntarily and we choose to die to our old lives – voluntarily. Here’s another scripture to chew on: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If you truly want to follow Me, you should at once completely reject and disown your own life. And you must be willing to share My cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to My ways.” Matthew 16:24 TPT.

Following Jesus Christ isn’t about making this life better –  it is about whether I am willing to die to what I want in my life, every single day. Jesus has already paid for our sins – our sins are no longer the problem. The problem is the kingdom we are choosing to live in. That’s called perspective. Bye. 👋