strength

P 3082 I AM your oasis.

/ DVH

“Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to Me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis.” Matthew 11:28 TPT.

When I read this verse today the thing that hit me right between the eyes was that Jesus said: ‘I AM your oasis.’He didn’t suggest going on a 4 week cruise, or going to some spa, or theme park or even a Christian conference of some sort – the Lord says HE(!!) is our oasis. We have been misled by our feelings to think that Jesus only goes to conferences or turns up for revivals – He’s IN US – we take Him with us wherever we go! Ya might want to sit and think about that for like a millennium – I know I did – OK so it was 60 seconds … you caught me. 

You know I think we can be really bad at comprehending what the Lord is saying, most of the time. We either overstate it to the point of fanaticism and make it into rules, or we ignore it and hope He won’t mind. We can be so lax with our obedience that we only participate in extending our faith for minor things – like finding a car spot when we need one – or asking God to help us with our day. He wants to BE our day!!

He’s not an add-on. Faith steps are about things we can’t easily do by ourselves — and maybe we kind of step really quickly around things like submission, which is also a faith step. It’s like we think these things are beyond us … so we hope the minimum participation will do …”After all, Jesus knows I am weak!” That’s why He wants you to call on Him to be your strength. We go through this life trying to avoid problems or pray them away, He wants us to confront them with Him!  He longs to be our oasis.

It seems we have yet to work out that His motivation is not just to bring relief, but to usher in permanent change. Transformation of our hearts. Maybe we are hoping the Lord won’t notice because we are embarrassed with our lack of engagement with the things that matter … well guess what?? He knows, because the same Heart that tenderly watches over you, pays attention to everything else. Some problems can be solved by simply changing the way we live. Please do not misunderstand me, He is not watching over us to catch us out in our sins or errors. Instead He patiently waits and watches for us to turn our heads, even just a little bit in His direction – because He knows a better way. 

There is an easier way to live this life we have inherited from Him. But we will have to humble ourselves and submit to Him in order to fully participate in it. Everything in our world’s current view of modern reality suggests submission is not a good thing. Children don’t have to submit to their parents, wives don’t have to submit to their husbands, and nobody has to submit to anybody else’s agendas — unless they pay them well! Submission seems to be a bad word — but that word actually means we have a primary mission which takes priority over other things. Seeking His kingdom is primary – then other things get added on!

It is no wonder that we have left God’s Kingdom behind, it’s because His kingdom is a theocracy, not a democracy. Let’s daily remind ourselves that Jesus Himself submitted to His Father’s will. Sadly it seems that unless human beings can see that it BENEFITS them, they don’t give those ‘other things’ He wants to add into our lives very much attention. So many Christians have cleverly found and featured all the me-first benefits … because the bible tells us“to forget not all His benefits…” I am not sure this response is all He had in mind! 

Off-loading our burdens onto Jesus seems to be a gigantic benefit to me – but we will have to relinquish our anxiety, worry and fear at the same time. Personally, I can’t think of anything better than handing my awful pile of nasty impossible stuff to Him. However, what does He mean by – I am your oasis? An oasis is a place of water in a desert, or a place of refuge in a crisis — or even a place of refreshing. When you view that word this way it begins to make sense. The Lord is not talking about using His Presence like we would drop off our dry-cleaning and return to find everything neatly pressed and clean …He means in this life His Presence is our dwelling place.That’s an AIM – not a suggestion.

I like Ephesians 3:16-19. These 3 verses are great to meditate on because they show us what we are aiming at. 

“I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.”

Being filled to all the fullness of God is another AIM. We need to remember ..these verses are a prayer … the Apostle Paul prayed it for the church at Ephesus. But the Holy Spirit Himself not only inspired it – He preserved that prayer in the bible for our benefit. Paul is praying for US too – every time you read it say Amen! And please –  read it a lot. Now we need to use our faith to believe that Christ actively dwells in our hearts, and we need His power to understand what we have been given! It is not enough to say ‘yes’ — we have to DO yes!

Then our roots go down, so deeply into His love we cannot be moved. This is how and why the saints of old gave up their lives and were martyred. They didn’t do it for an ideology, they did it because they had been internally changed, forever!! His Presence in our lives is our OASIS. Bye. 🥳

P 3076 Road building.

/ DVH

“And how blessed all those in whom You live, whose lives become roads You travel; They wind through lonesome valleys, come upon brooks, discover cool springs and pools brimming with rain! God-traveled, these roads curve up the mountain, and at the last turn—Zion! God in full view!” Psalms 84:5-7 MSG. 

“One day spent in Your house, this beautiful place of worship, beats thousands spent on Greek island beaches. I’d rather scrub floors in the house of my God than be honoured as a guest in the palace of sin. All sunshine and sovereign is God, generous in gifts and glory. He doesn’t scrimp with His traveling companions. It’s smooth sailing all the way with God-of-the-Angel-Armies.” Psalms 84:10-12 MSG.

I’m a word person. I love the Word of God, but today I’m also talking about the way words are put together. For me, words paint pictures in my mind. They take ordinary things and endow them with the Holy Spirit’s thoughts and beauty. We’ve travelled along a lot of roads – bumpy ones, dusty ones, gliding highways and roads with beautiful scenery, as we take bibles all over Australia. So I feel like a little bit of an expert on roads.

In the first part of Psalm 84:5-7, the words take me into our car,  winding our way through beautiful scenery, watching for what will appear when we get around the next bend. I dearly love to go on roads I’ve never been on before. Occasionally as we’ve travelled along, we’ve taken a side road – just to see what was at the other end! The picture at the bottom of this blog show you what we found at the end of quite an ordinary road. It was surrounded by cane fields. (Lucinda,Qld.) 

However, the bit in this Psalm that captured my heart is the very first verse. “And how blessed all those in whom You live, whose lives become roads You travel.”I would love to be a road the Lord travels upon to reach out to others. The kind of road that takes people from living in the same old same old, into the bright fresh land of daily discovering Jesus. I pray that other people can see Him in me, and enjoy the view, and maybe they will want to know Him for themselves. We can often think about witnessing as speaking etc. but enjoying Who God is, in the middle of this crazy upside-down, often scary life, can be the greatest witness and worship of all!

This Psalmist values God’s Presence more than the supposedly fine things this world can offer us. I’ve sat on a Greek Island, and their beaches are very pretty.  The sea around those islands, is the most beautiful colour. But the writer tells us that they would rather be scrubbing God’s floor, than be in any place of this world’s natural beauty. Anywhere our God IS, is a far more beautiful place than this world can offer.

I love to sing and worship, but I also love to sit and listen to worship as well. Listening to worship lifts my heart and thoughts above this often cranky old world. We all need that refreshing, so we can keep God’s highway in our heart OPEN. Worship makes us bigger inside, and more open to whatever He wants to do next, and it also positions our hearts to hear Him. The thing is, I don’t just think of worship as singing, or playing an instrument. I see it as a life-laid down, together with the way we love others. Surrender, is worship to me. 

Jesus travelled along a lot of dusty roads as He ministered, and distances never seemed to matter to Him. He sometimes went off the beaten track for just one person. He saw broken roads all around Him. His whole life was a highway into the Father’s heart, for mankind to travel on. Now that’s worth pausing and thinking about! 

In another version it says the first verse like this:“Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) is the man whose strength is in You, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.”It is our strength and belief in God’s goodness, when we are under the pressure of highway creation, that makes our road solid and straight. This highway is not just a theory, it can make our lives with Christ accessible – but like any highway, the road to Zion comes at a cost. This cost exists, because quite beautiful, even seemingly useful things – that do not seem to be harmful – have to be removed from our lives if we are to become His highway.

There are times that I can see the precious Holy Spirit with His front-end loader, bulldozers, excavators, and graders, asphalt makers and road rollers continually rumbling along through my life, under the Lord’s watchful eye! All that equipment working on us is represented in our lives as situations, or other people. We all have difficult people who become implements in His hands —they are used by Him to make our road straight and strong and available to God and others. Road making is intense! It requires co-operation with the Lord, and a vision for a better, more available, ME.

We all want the King of Kings to travel down our highways so that other people can come out of the roadblocks and broken highways they are living in. Road building is a worthy calling. Bye. 👋

P 3070 The person who knows they cannot lose is not afraid to die.

/ DVH

We need to stop thinking that using our faith only means moving mountains, healing the sick, raising the dead, or talking to someone else about Jesus. Of course those things matter. But actually, controlling my temper also takes faith. I need faith Jesus’ ability to help me close my mouth and quieten my heart! My internal default position needs to learn from Him how to live in love. Otherwise my faith will fade away and I will wonder why it is weak. Romans, Galatians and Hebrews all say: “The just shall LIVE by faith.”

As I said yesterday, we learn faith incrementally. What I mean by that is, faith grows, it hardly ever just falls on you! When it falls on you it is the gift that 1 Corinthians 12:9 talks about. But we have been given spiritual equipment and we must use it daily. And at the same time, we are learning to walk in faith and die to self. You may have a job, or a family, but you are permanently His kid, His representative in this world. This new life Jesus died to give us, takes dedication and time. We actually begin by taking daily faith steps, so that if we need to fight Goliath we will run at him!

Chasing off devils is great, do it – as He leads you. But allowing His Grace to flow through each one of us in these chaotic, difficult times, is about daily walking with Him. Very few people receive the gift of faith, it simply rises up within them. Most of us need the fruit of self-control far more than we realise. BTW, self-control is a fruit, not a discipline. Jesus wants to grow His kind of fruit. David ran at Goliath. That guy was huge, but David’s faith was bigger! He had already experienced what God could do through his life. Later on he was able to maintain a good attitude toward Saul, because he kept continually building the faith he already had, by his daily choices.

We are growing fruit at the same time as we learn to use the gifts. Otherwise we will lurch along like Frankenstein – in the Spirit one minute, and in the flesh the next.  All Frankenstein had was dead flesh, and electrical input! But we have the glorious Holy Spirit Who made us in our mother’s womb!! He was Jesus’ Personal Helper and the Lord sent Him back to help us. The Holy Spirit knows our weaknesses and flaws, and He wants to help us walk us through this life filled with His power and grace for others. 

Over to God’s equipment in Ephesians 6:10-19. 

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armour of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.

Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.  In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests …”

We usually start out talking about God’s armour by naming the bits. Great! Do it. But Paul’s actual exhortation begins with verse 10!“BE STRONG IN THE LORD AND IN HIS MIGHTY POWER.” Can you see how much that verse changes every other verse in this scripture? Paul goes on to explain why it is essential to begin with verse 10 … we are going to come up against demonic authorities and they have power and authority in this world etc. We train for the bigger fights by dealing with our own flaws and foibles – the ungodly stuff that is holding us back. That happens one faith step at a time. It is just plain stupid to fight with the guy who has your back in the battle!

This life is not a cake walk. It is an eternal struggle between the forces that control this world and the Kingdom of God. We all know Who won …but wisdom exhorts us to be prepared for the battle. All we need to do is stand our ground, and the enemy will fall to Jesus’ power. This is why we need to be daily concentrating on how to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. We can learn to overcome the Goliaths that occur, by participating in our day to day battles and dealing with our own flesh.

The verses that follow verse 10 explain HOW! Know God’s truth – inside out, upside down, backwards and frontwards. Read it, sing it, say it, study it, refer to it, obey it, and defer to it. God’s sovereign act of Grace is our only righteousness. Always be prepared to be the one who ushers in peace. This means we are at peace with God and our fellow man on the inside of our hearts. “Owe no man anything but LOVE.” And always keep the cross ever-present in our minds and heart. The cross is our sign of ultimate victory!

Our faith needs to be strong – we have to know that no matter how things look – God has not run off and left us at the mercy of some evil thing or other. Bad things happen, even to God’s kids:  but the person who knows he cannot lose is not afraid to die. This is why we give our faith a daily work out. So when temptation, or a challenge comes, we will have Godly skills, stamina and strength. Bye 🗡️. 

P 3047 Let this sink in.

/ DVH

“Yahweh is my best Friend and my Shepherd. I always have more than enough. He offers a resting place for me in His luxurious love. His tracks take me to an oasis of peace near the quiet brook of bliss. That’s where He restores and revives my life. He opens before me the right path and leads me along in His footsteps of righteousness so that I can bring honour to His Name. 

Even when Your path takes me through the valley of deepest darkness, fear will never conquer me, for you already have! Your authority is my strength and my peace. The comfort of Your love takes away my fear. I’ll never be lonely, for You are near. You become my delicious feast even when my enemies dare to fight. 

You anoint me with the fragrance of Your Holy Spirit; You give me all I can drink of You until my cup overflows. So why would I fear the future? Only goodness and tender love pursue me all the days of my life. Then afterward, when my life is through, I’ll return to Your glorious presence to be forever with You!” Psalms 23:1-6 TPT. 

Here’s a thought — how about you sit yourself down with a big mug of tea or coffee and let this beautiful Psalm soak into the places in your heart and mind where you feel exhausted, beaten up, or maybe, not good enough! Our place of rest is always in His love. Like the needle on a compass always points to north, our hearts need to return to HE LOVES ME. Do that. Sit there, breathe, and say to yourself slowly:: ‘Jesus You love me.’ Don’t get sidetracked into what you have or have not done right recently. Start with Him loving YOU – and then, thank Him for it. 

The God of the Universe knows our names. He calls each one of us by name. I have relatives who probably can’t remember who I am – but Almighty God knows me, inside and out! Why? He chose too! If that doesn’t make you want to jump up and down — then take a breath and stop and think about it. Our God is a personal, engaged Father, Who is never too busy for His kids – He knows exactly where we are and what is happening to us.

On we go…There is no place in this Psalm that talks about Jesus bopping me on the head because I’ve been a disobedient sheep. Yes, He has a rod and a staff – but He has that to thump anything that comes at me trying to destroy me. That’s what our Saviour is like! Loving, loyal and … there for us. There are times I can almost hear the Holy Spirit cheering away when I am wrangling with some situation or other, and He’s calling out: “That’s it, you’ll get there … keep going!” That’s what ‘for me’ means to me – He is on my side, cheering me on.. 

Just recently I mentioned that my nearly 98 year old mother is dying. Hubby read this Psalm to her the other day. Why? Because everybody needs to know that God is not mad at them. They need to know that He loves them dearly – all the time, that’s why. We are aiming at passing on His love to her, while she is launching her tiny little broken ship off into the incredible deep waters of HIS ENDLESS LOVE. I want her to see that His love is so deep, so wide, and far, far greater than any other love a human being ever hoped for or imagined. 

There are people who might become afraid of the part of the Psalm that reminds us that we will walk through a dark valley. But the best place to focus our thoughts is on the fact that He is there with us. Instead of bursting your boiler fighting fear – concentrate on the truth! In order to fully understand any lie we are believing — we need to study the truth, not the lie. You might like to think on that …

Being loved so faithfully by SomeOne so amazing needs to be our specific focus. When we live this way, the whole bible truly becomes Good News, not just a book filled with instructions. People need good news! “God is not mad at humanity, SomeBody Else took the punishment for all of us” — that truth is far more than just good news. It is FANTASTIC NEWS … especially when this life keeps pushing and poking at us.

If you or I were in a car that has spun out of control, the best news we could ever have is that the person driving the car is an expert. The Person Who is helping us with this life is our Resident Expert! Don’t send Him away because you think you want to choose some dumb temporal thing that won’t matter in the light of eternity. Instead, call out for help.

Our Shepherd is with us to comfort and help us. His rod and staff whacks our enemies but those weapons comfort us. Jesus looks after His sheep. He stands between us and our enemies, joyfully, willingly – every second of every minute, of every single day of our lives.

We don’t actually belong in this world anymore, because we’ve been born into another kingdom. We belong to Him, and He will come to get each one of us when this life is over. I want to leave you with this last scripture: “Let your character [your moral essence, your inner nature] be free from the love of money [shun greed—be financially ethical], being content with what you have; for He has said, “I will never [under any circumstances] desert you [nor give you up nor leave you without support, nor will I in any degree leave you helpless], nor will I forsake or let you down or relax My hold on you [assuredly not]!” Hebrews 13:5.

Our God does not lie —the Lord Jesus IS my Shepherd, every single day. Let this sink in – as He was with Moses and Joshua and Abraham – so He is with us. Bye. 🐑 Baa!

P 3039 You gotta dig to find gold.

/ DVH

“How enriched are they who find their strength in the Lord; within their hearts are the highways of holiness! Even when their paths wind through the dark valley of tears, they dig deep to find a pleasant pool where others find only pain. He gives to them a brook of blessing filled from the rain of an outpouring. They grow stronger and stronger with every step forward, and the God of all gods will appear before them in Zion.” Psalms 84:5-7 TPT.

I find the Psalms are such an enormous comfort in this life! There are times that I simply cannot cope with some stuff. I need Jesus, and the precious Holy Spirit. And if you think that sounds pious or something …you would be wrong! The Holy Spirit’s Presence comforts me, and whispers things I need to hear into my heart, when I am angry. Like:“Why not suffer wrong?….” Jesus can say that to me because He lived His life that way long before I was ever born! 

When things get difficult, or I’m tired, or I have had a series of unlovely events that were not my fault — that is when I can get tetchy. Suddenly I can’t hear Him clearly. And yes, there are also times when I can hear Him fine — but I still get cranky anyway. That’s the time I know I made a choice … it was the wrong one …but I know I definitely made a choice! 

This life to me, is a battlefield, and there are seasons when we end up in the firing line. The thing is, it is not good to beat yourself up when you fall off the wagon, and you end up needing to deal with your own temper – as well as whatever caused it to flare up! Sadly, that response can add to an already difficult situation. Rules don’t help me then, they are too easily discarded. Instead I pray:  “Please help me Holy Spirit!” I have found He is so utterly dependable –  He always answers that prayer. Take a pause and a deep breath, so you can let Him help you through whatever is happening. 

The bible says this in Proverbs 25:28: “A man (a person) without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” It is way too easy to put self-control right down the bottom of the list of things that we know we are going to need. Other spiritual graces sound so much sweeter …but self control is an important key to everything else. This is the digging part of Psalm 84:5-7. We have to dig down into what we already know about Him, to help us withstand what is going on externally. 

After a while, like the Psalmist says, we also need to cultivate and develop a habit of going to Him first. Even when all you have is a desperate cry for help! That choice is ours. We have to choose to believe He will answer us. But whether we feel His Presence in those moments or not, He is always with us – that is where He promised to be!  It’s in the book. Sooner or later we all hit the very difficult wall that says — “do we believe our experiences, or lack of them — or do we believe in Him because of Who He is, and what He said?’

That’s what Lordship is. It is the place where the rubber hits the road and we choose to go His way instead of ours. That’s also the place where we will need to start digging deeper. Eventually our tears and heartache will create a pool that can comfort others. Finding our strength in Him takes perseverance. And when that Grace is cultivated within us, it will produce His fruit, in its season. Holiness isn’t what we eat or drink or do – holiness is in Him.The more we trust in Him and put our faith on the line, the more we will end up walking like a child of the King. The Spirit of God within us, rises up to help us.

Some people think of Grace as something that comes upon them. That is not true. We stir it up from within us, we don’t pray it down. Listen to this:  “Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He replied to them by saying, The kingdom of God does not come with signs to be observed or with visible display, Nor will people say, Look! Here [it is]! or, See, [it is] there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within you [in your hearts] and among you [surrounding you].” Luke 17:20-21.

You and I, together with entire Body of Christ, are the display case of the kingdom of God for the rest of this world. Yeah, that’s kind of a bit daunting isn’t it? We will allow this kingdom to grow within us as we choose His ways over ours. And let me tell you, in  my experiences, those opportunities will always come at the most inopportune times!  

Maybe somebody just jumped all over your feelings, or a pet theory and then …watch out … what you can potentially display is either His kingdom, or your own bad temper! Yes, you have a reason to be angry, yes you may want to strangle the offender, but if … at that moment … you ask for His help, and pause, and pray, and then you will be empowered to give a kingdom response.

That’s what grows that fruit we are always on about. Growing fruit is vastly underrated. However to grow a fruit tree, like a lemon tree, or a cherry tree – you will have to dig deep. You have to make enough room for the roots to expand and grow. We have to dig to produce His fruit! It  is eternal, it’s golden, it’s forever. So we gotta dig out the weeds of our old life and let the tree He plants in us grow!  Bye. 👋.

P 3013 Our God is incredibly generous.

/ DVH

When the Lord comforts us, He is also giving us something we can pass on to someone else who is in need. Almighty God is so incredibly, over-the-top generous, He doesn’t only give us what we need, He gives us more than enough, so we have plenty to give way!!

“All praises belong to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. For He is the Father of tender mercy and the God of endless comfort. He always comes alongside us to comfort us in every suffering so that we can come alongside those who are in any painful trial. We can bring them this same comfort that God has poured out upon us.” 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 TPT. I’m a conduit, a channel. You are one too – all of God’s children are conduits of what He has given us.The secret to thriving in His Ways is not to own anything! I don’t just mean that literally, I mean whatever we have is always available to help someone else. Time, love, compassion, faith etc… as well as practical things.

We give away what we have already been given, because sharing is now part of our new nature. We don’t have to squirrel stuff away for another day, because we already know that:“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness.“ 2 Peter 1:3. As the bible says what we have is: “…pressed down and running over…” This means we will always have more than enough! We simply have to be flexible and divide between our needs and wants. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1. God loves His kids. Each one of us is precious to Him – He covers, guides and protects us.

We get comfort from Him, through other people, and through His Word, plus other people’s prayers for us – and then we give it away. I have found that right along with comfort we also get “hope” when ours has started to wobble and get wonky under duress. The next time something dastardly happens to you, instead of hunting about trying to find Him, just remind yourself that He is right next to you. The bible says that like this: “He ALWAYS comes alongside us …” That means we can bank on it. Don’t feel around to see if it is true, remember Peter — he got out of the boat and stepped onto the water, and LET GO, and then he did the impossible. 

Believe God is with you because He is. If your difficult situation has not gone away, then He knows that together you and He can get through it. Ask Him to show you the way through. Some things are meant to be endured with patience because that’s how you get the fruit of long-suffering love. We cannot afford to consult our feelings when the ceiling of our life just fell in. Our feelings will react. It’s normal.  Read the book – Jesus had feelings! But … they were not in charge of His responses. 

The society we live in makes feelings way more important than they ought to be. In years gone by people elevated the brain. It seemed that knowing stuff was going to help us through any crisis. Information proved to be a dud, because our knowledge kept changing along the way! If we elevate our feelings over our faith we are missing out on His generous flow of wisdom and comfort that constantly comes our way. God wants us to win. Everything He has done is to help us win in this battle called ‘life.’

We are the people of His Spirit, so feelings and knowledge take a secondary place in our lives. They are still there – after all we are not stoics, beating our feelings into submission! We simply relinquish how we feel and whatever has happened, to the Holy Spirit. Jesus told us to pick up and wear the yoke He wore. His yoke was obedience to His Father in every circumstance. He saw the “Yes” of God and He saw the “No” and the result was the same – He continued to glorify God. We simply can’t afford to let our feelings stay in control of our lives or reactions. Cry if you have to, yell if you have to, but yell out to God for His help to walk through whatever has happened. 

We have been exhorted, with His help, to grow suitable, sustainable fruit… the fruit of the Spirit called “self-control.” That fruit grows in good times and in bad, as we ask for His help to watch over our inner lives.. As we yield our will to Him, and follow His instructions from the book, we prepare the ground for good fruit. Fruit takes time, so we need to be ready to persevere. That allows His fruit in us to ‘set.’ The very first year our mango tree appeared to have fruit, it got all these happy little nubs on it and we got so excited … fruit at last … then they all fell to the ground! The fruit had not set – it had not been successfully pollinated. God will pollinate our feeble attempts at faith, with more faith, because He is generous!

Our knowledge of Who He is, and the Way He does things, needs to be established in an ongoing fashion in our hearts, otherwise we will continue to flounder about like a fish out of water. We were born for this life. He chose us to be His, before the foundation of the world. Did you get that? He picked us to be His children before there were trees, stars, oceans, dry land, good food to eat! And Father God is incredibly generous, He will give us everything we need for a Godly life. So we can complete the works He sent us to do. If you don’t got what you think you need, then you don’t need it! Believe in your Father’s generosity – He believes in you. Bye. 👋

P 2994 Love = great grow food!

/ DVH

“I continue to pray for your love to grow and increase beyond measure, bringing you into the rich revelation of spiritual insight in all things. This will enable you to choose the most excellent way of all —becoming pure and without offense until the unveiling of Christ.”Philippians 1:9-10 TPT.

Choosing to love the unlovely, ushers in growth.However, this will not be a happy little ‘walk in the park’ — it will cost us to learn to love the people who have hurt us, ignored us, and despitefully used us. Especially those people who did it on purpose! That’s the dying to self bit. In the flesh I may want to tell the whole world about the mean things that person did to me. I also want to vindicate myself, as well as give myself valid reasons to live this life as an emotional cripple! That’s called a side benefit BTW.  If I blame ‘you,’ or ‘them,’ then I have no responsibility to change. I can point to other people and say it is their fault I am like this. My sins, errors and missteps become sad, a result of someone else’s unkindness, not my own choices.

Adulthood will not fall on us. Hopefully sooner rather than later, we must choose to grow up and face this life from a mature point of view. Maturity is not about voting, or being able to drink alcohol, or get married. True maturity is taking responsibility for my own actions and responses to whatever has happened to me. Otherwise I am still allowing the person who hurt me to control my life. My own personal choices can take me out of that place of weakness, and place me firmly into God’s place of strength. 

This is why Paul is praying for the Thessalonians to “grow and increase beyond measure.”  Greater offences need even greater measures of love. Instead of sloughing off my responses in my situation onto whoever hurt me … now I stand up, make a choice and let Him take control of my destiny. Because now my aim is no longer just to survive—now I want to learn how to thrive within His unconditional, eternal love.

Living in love, which is the way the Jesus Himself lived, expands my capacity to take more and more of His life, and His ways, IN. If I want to be an overcomer, I must first of all learn to overcome the unnecessary things that tie my life into this world with cords of distrust, anger, bitterness and hatred. Choosing not to excuse my behaviour goes a long way toward changing it. We all know 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 well, but here’s a very different reverse, self-centred view of what Paul said: … 

“Love is not patient because you need to love me! I’m broken, and you can’t expect me to fix my own broken places. My love doesn’t have to be kind because I need people to be kind to me, and my needs are more important than yours. My kind of love is jealous, because I can’t stand for you to get more of anything than I do. At the same time, I’m needier than you! My love totally needs to boast because it makes me feel important and I need to be important, because I have good things inside me that will amaze you, if you would only co-operate with me and treat me kindly. 

Why shouldn’t I talk about you? You don’t appreciate me! When I am seen and appreciated I will be a much better person. Of course I get angry with you, you are constantly showing up my bad side, and I hate you for it. I have lists and lists of things you have done to hurt me. I need to keep those lists! They are my protection against letting you get near me in case you hurt me again. I love it when someone else is mean to you the way you have been mean to me – maybe it will teach you a lesson! 

The truth is what I think and say it is. Because I’ve been hurt, now I have lots of insight into other people’s faults. Why should I protect someone else? I don’t trust other people, they are just out for themselves. My kind of love doesn’t dare hope, it is always scared disappointment is heading my way – again. And my kind of love is too tired to persevere with anything or anyone. Nobody does that for me, why should I do that for them?”

Let’s all pray that this person never ends up in charge of anything!! … Sh-a-ll we? Amen! You know what was really scary, I wrote the above perverted version of 1 Corinthians 13 … so easily. Yikes! None of us can afford to go down that road, we’ll fall into a ditch. Here’s a huge tip to help us on our way — stop waiting for other people to love you and start actively loving them.

Real Love, the God-kind of love, helps us choose His very best way through all kinds of situations. It gives us insight into our own faults and the things that will make us stumble and fall. We simply have to ask ourselves regularly, “Is this love?” And if it is not, then we repent, go back and fix it. That’s not hard to remember! God has a way for things to be done. As we live in His love and give it away to others, we will find we know what He wants us to do. And when we are challenged by love, remember, the result of that challenge is growth. Bye 👋

P 2977 Every promise in the book IS mine!

/ DVH

Here’s a great clue, if we sit about waiting for this promise or that to fall on us, maybe it won’t … or …maybe it will, but it probably won’t always happen the way we think it will!  The promise was never meant to be our focus – HE IS. Every interaction with Almighty God needs to strengthen and stretch our knowledge of Him.

Our God doesn’t like systems. Tell me one time He did the same thing twice! He does, however, repeat what He has said. Someone checked it out and the phrase “fear not” is in the book 365 times! How cool is that? One for every day. Everybody loves God’s promises! Me too. But I’ve also noticed that some of His promises are conditional. Isaiah 26:3:“You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in You.” Obviously cultivating a trusting, steadfast mind will reap a more a fruitful situation…  As you can see, it is good to do more than just read the words!

Over to Nahum 1:7: “The Lord is good, a refuge in times of trouble. He cares for those who trust in Him.”  He’s always the place to go when things go upside down, that’s when we deliberately choose to trust in Him, and hold on! Psalm 84:11: “For the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord bestows favour and honour; no good thing does He withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”

OK. First things first. Because of what Christ has already done for us, we are now regarded by our God as blameless. So this promise is for us. If you lack something you’ve asked for —instead of thinking about God as withholding things from you — or questioning whether you are blameless or not — turn it around. If I haven’t received the thing I prayed for then it is probably not good for me. Let it go!! We are not the best judge of what is good for us – He is.

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”The first place to check when you feel like fainting is where or what have you put your hope IN. Sometimes we accidentally hope in people, or circumstances and those things definitely can’t deliver what God just said.

Some of His promises are applicable because we are engaged with His Kingdom – but all of His promises are activated by faith. Our faith in His goodness is the first place our enemy attacks. Faith gives the Lord’s promises substance …even if we can’t see it yet. However, if the Lord were to put out a guarantee brochure … it would say that He reserves the right to stretch our faith whenever He can see it is the right time to do it.

Accepting His will, His Way, makes complete sense to me. It means I am engaged in building His Kingdom. Trying to build the kingdoms of this world appalls me. Those kingdoms are all about money or power. It’s not that I don’t care about these things, it is more about the fact that money etc. is always coming and going – there is nothing permanent about these things. God’s Kingdom is permanent – eternal … like … forever. Now there’s a plus! So whatever we do in faith for His kingdom, as He leads us, lasts forever.

The bible tells us in Isaiah 43:2: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.” When things get outrageously difficult – HE WILL BE THERE, even if it feels terrible – HE WILL BE THERE.  That’s the promise. Our focus needs to come away from the water, river, fire and flames, and instead we choose to focus on HIM. If we keep on checking to see how that threat is going… we are moving away from our faith in Him, and our fear of being burned or drowned can overtake us instead.

Focus is everything. He wants to be the centre of our focus, our reason to live. Why? Because it is the safest place for us to live. Jesus showed us that. The Jews tried to kill Him before the time for His crucifixion came around and they couldn’t do it. They talked about it … which gave that spirit of murder, power. But they could not kill Him … until it was the fullness of God’s timing … Almighty God has a time for every purpose under heaven, but it won’t always make sense to us. That’s why we need faith.

It is also why we must read His book diligently for ourselves.  Nobody else’s words should take priority over what He says. Chase Him! People have no idea how much fun our God is. Often we simply try to use Him for our own deficits, ambitions and comfort … instead of simply enjoying Him.  Believing in His goodness and mercy IS worship when you are in pain or trouble. God’s love is pure, holy and not self-centred. Everything that happens to us is under His loving gaze. If He allows it, then He will see us through it.

Sometimes the hardest thing to learn is to be real with Him. Remember, Father God listens to our hearts, not just our words. By all means ‘ask and keep on asking…’ And remember HELP is a prayer!! Every promise in His book is mine … because they are HIS promises … and He keeps His promises. He’s the best Father ever. Bye. 👋

P 2973 My Strength and Song.

/ DVH

Isaiah 12:1-6: “And you will say in that day, “I thank You, God. You were angry but Your anger wasn’t forever. You withdrew Your anger and moved in and comforted me. “Yes, indeed—God is my salvation. I trust, I won’t be afraid. God—yes God!—is my strength and song, best of all, my salvation!” Joyfully you’ll pull up buckets of water from the wells of salvation. And as you do it, you’ll say, “Give thanks to God. Call out His Name. Ask Him anything! Shout to the nations, tell them what He’s done, spread the news of His great reputation! “Sing praise-songs to God. He’s done it all! Let the whole earth know what He’s done! Raise the roof! Sing your hearts out, O Zion! The Greatest lives among you: The Holy of Israel.”

This scripture is a wonderful example of someone enjoying Almighty God and all He has done for each one of us. This is our true destiny – to enjoy God Himself. And that’s not just worshipping Him with songs etc. Sunday by Sunday either. Daily being grateful, and noticing whatever He does lifts our hearts like nothing else. I love that Isaiah is realistic, he does not pretend he is perfect. Instead, he features what God does about his imperfections.This guy’s whole perspective has changed, he is so soaked in joy for all God has done for us, he’s dripping all over the carpet!

I love it in the Old Testament when people say stuff they cannot know, purely because they are under the influence of the precious Holy Spirit! Jesus Christ is all over these verses. He’s the reason we, the Gentiles, can stand and sing our hearts out – because He came and changed the whole game-plan. Just stop reading for a minute and ask the Lord to help you to pull up a couple of buckets full of the joy of your salvation. That will help you more than reading what I am waffling on about. You know, sometimes I think we don’t have a song because we have our lives so organised there is nothing to be delivered from!

These verses in Isaiah remind me of Moses’ and Miriam’s song. I can’t put it here in full because it was a huge spontaneous song that just flowed out of everyone, as they gave thanks for Who He is and what He did … in front of their very eyes!  Exodus 15. They broke out the tambourines and just let it rip! After all they had seen the sea standing still and they walked on the bottom of the ocean! Water standing still is in the bible a few times, its in Exodus 14;  Joshua 3:16;  Psalm 89:9 … the thing is: God had already pushed aside the water away from the land underneath, all the way back in Genesis 1:6-7. And people wonder where fossils found on land come from. Duh! Read the book!

I think I’m going to be stuck all day singing Miriam’s song in my head… there’s so much joy in it. (Pity I haven’t got a tambourine at hand!) I don’t think we know anything about rejoicing in the Western world and I’m not sure we’ve met JOY yet either…We need joy! He’s always doing things for us. That’s the kind of wonderful God we serve!! Always caring, ever-present. Isaiah understands the idea that God’s plans are long-range and he acts accordingly, expectantly. His faith level is off the charts as the man says: … “ask Him anything.”!!

Isaiah has been to heaven, before the Throne, and his perspective is now clear, it is not clouded by this world’s troubles. But, because of what Christ did for us, the bible makes these things clear to US in Ephesians 2:6 MSG:“It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose His temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, He embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on His own, with no help from us! Then He picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.”

Right about now we should all be searching for a tambourine! Father God has done so much for all of us it blows my mind, over and over again. I can’t believe His intentional devotion to someone like me. I know I deserved hell, yet in His great mercy He provided — A WAY.  A way for me to know Him and live with my heart already in heaven, even if my feet can sometimes be still stuck in the mud and muck of this life. When pain haunts me – and it does sometimes – I can look toward Him and be radiant.

This is what being seated in heavenly places is all about. Isaiah experienced it and he was not the same afterward. You and I may not have his experience, but we know the same God he knows and …  ‘our God never changes.’ He’s not mad at you and he’s not mad at me, even though we fall over and fail Him. This is why Paul said: “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”Philippians 1:21. This man was in prison in Rome when he wrote those lines. But he knew the Beautiful One in Isaiah 12:1-6, and this is why I think he said: “… nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:31.

🎼“I will sing unto the Lord for He has triumphed gloriously the horse and rider thrown into the sea. The Lord my God, my strength my song, has now become my victory!…”🎶 Bye. 👋

P 2966 What God did FOR us.

/ DVH

What I write here was never meant to be a list of do’s and don’t’s — if you have read anything I have written as formulaic, right now …I’m asking for your forgiveness. Please don’t get stuck in trying harder – it leads to frustration..

Our God is looking for a people who will not leave obedience, teaching and passion to the pastors;  or evangelism to the evangelists and missionaries;  or kindness and compassion to the ministry of healing!! He has called each one of us, and He wants us all in the middle of what He is doing, now – today! Our love for Jesus is what motivates us. It holds us by our hearts into somewhere that we probably wouldn’t choose for ourselves. It holds us firmly into His Love no matter what.  We dare not abuse it.  As His plan unfolds in front of us we won’t ever want to be anywhere else! 

I want to be real with you. There were things that I found I’d tolerated in my heart that I thought I couldn’t help having there. These were terrible things that other people did to me when I was vulnerable and couldn’t do anything about it. Finally, I realised that I didn’t need healing —instead— I had to remove the stumbling blocks I had allowed to remain inside my thoughts, and start living the way He told me to do, using my faith, daily. Starting with true forgiveness, that lets loose grace and unconditional love.

All of this happened to me, with no signs, no wonders, no big voices from heaven – I just had to decide to obey  – cold turkey! Now, I agreed with the bible, I knew it was truth, but I didn’t always obey it because I thought I had good reasons why I didn’t have to, why I couldn’t help it. So if what He said didn’t seem to be true for my life and experiences, and if I didn’t feel anything, and nothing changed immediately, that meant I was OK. That’s error, it’s not faith. 

I am writing these things for those people who are sick of feeling like a deceitful failure. They smile at church, say and do all the outward right things, but they are using their own strength. They haven’t acted in faith upon what He has said because they are waiting to feel like they can! In my experience, the feelings come later … much later! The good news is the Holy Spirit knows the way through anything. And He will help you, sometimes by reminding you of something Jesus said.

Would you believe, I actively dismissed some of what I read in the bible, as not applying to me? My safety was not in HIM, its roots were in deception. Do you ever see disappointment toward you on His face? If you do, that’s a demonically-inspired mirage. WE are the love of His life! He gave us a book full of instructions and the Holy Spirit, Who will make each instruction personal when we ask Him to do it. Do you know that in His eyes you can’t fail? He has already done all the work for us!!  We just need to stay honest with Him and others, and fix the mess we make as we walk with Him. Peter did that. He blew things all the time, BIG time. 

Jesus continually remembers the cross, and what it did for all of us! My job is to identify with Him the way He identified with me. Now I live like He would, obedient to our Heavenly Father. And I repent and repair things when I’ve messed up. We can’t just pray God will fix us and stop there, hoping He will eventually do all the work for us. Be-ca-use …Jesus already did everything for us and we obtain it by acting on what He said using your faith. Do the thing that scares the daylights out of you first. You will really see Him help you when you step out on a limb.

It’s time to use our faith, believing that what He did worked…and it’s out there waiting for us to claim it by acting on it!! Then we will make our faith bigger than our feelings. Sometimes Christianity consists of so much spiritual talk that we forget the work is done. That’s because it is not just meant to be heard, it’s like your credit card, it has to be activated. Jesus made stuff easy to identify — don’t steal, don’t hate, don’t covet your neighbours 100 foot catamaran, cute spouse … etc. follow Him. 

Knowing what attitudes are dangerous should be clear to us, but Christianity is not a test that we pass or fail. Jesus took that test for us in His name and HE PASSED, once … for everyone.  Our God wants us to move on beyond repentance into the bigger things He has for us. We need His love shed abroad in our hearts’ much much more than we need lists of do’s and don’ts. Bye again. 👋