Supernatural power

P 3087 Mercy.

/ DVH

“How blessed you are when you demonstrate tender mercy! For tender mercy will be demonstrated to you.” Matthew 5:7 TPT.  Oh, let us thank the Lord for that!! This is the kind of verse that can slide by our understanding, yet most of us have needed mercy from someone else at some stage or another in our lives. The Holy Spirit has mercy on us simply because He is merciful by nature. He is not winking at sin – He will convict us the minute we give Him a chance! But His loving kindness immediately welcomes us back into true fellowship when we turn around, face our faults, confess and repair things. 

At times, anyone can quite easily excuse their behaviour like this: ’They did this evil thing and that awful one and it was unforgivable.’ There are times when we seek and search for a short-cut to get us through the things we think we cannot bear, and we forget God has given us the power to overcome sin and the devil. That’s why it is essential to remember that Godly attitudes and actions have nothing whatsoever to do with our feelings – they run on our choices.

However, when we demonstrate mercy to someone else who does not deserve it — we are deliberately stepping out of darkness into His light. In His light we can see what is really going on. We will remain blinded by darkness when we choose to not forgive or hold a grudge. If I stay in unforgiveness, or I refuse to extend mercy to someone else, my emotional reactions or responses have blocked my ears and eyes to that other person’s need, because my own judgment got in the way. 

The dictionary explains that mercy is: “compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.“  It says this about grace: “this word is commonly translated as “favour,” which means acceptance and goodwill regardless of whether we’ve earned it.” Those two things are not the same! Mercy goes beyond grace. It loves the unlovely. To do that we must recognise who WE really are, without Jesus.

And that particular point is the reason why a lot of Christians have been shot in the foot and they keep going round and round. Because we forget who we are without Him, and we leave Him behind when we step into unforgiveness and refuse to extend mercy. We start to think: ‘God saved us, but I wasn’t all that bad in the first place, after I don’t deliberately hurt anybody.’  Come again??

We have been saved from sin, and it’s power, because we needed it .God does not have gradients for sin. Ever since the garden of Eden human beings were born in sin, and we dare not trust our own un-renewed hearts.. Eventually, what’s really in our heart will find its way out! We cannot afford to make our own assessments about who anyone is … until we’ve lived this life squashed so tightly into a corner and we feel we cannot escape from it, we will have no idea how we will react. I dunno about you, but I’ve wished people DEAD! I know I’m a sinner, but mercy came to me and drew me back to God, when I had no excuse! And if He ever His took grace to change me and His undeserved mercy back… well … bye bye me!! 

However, when you have a hole shot through your middle by someone else’s sin, those kinds of God-honouring thoughts rarely come up. Some people just won’t quit being mean!  So we are going to need the Holy Spirit’s supernatural power, grace, mercy, plus His strength to continue to give them what He has given us for free. Outright undeserved mercy opens doors that appear to be nailed shut. 

In reality what we think is happening, is probably not what was actually happening. That other person who hurt me was not acting against me – they were simply acting FOR themselves. In other words, there was no intention to do harm. It did not come into their decision making, instead they were self-absorbed. If you do not know you have a Guardian Who is on your side — you will probably mount your own guard and fire away!!

Maybe we think someone like a wife basher or paedophile, a rapist, or a murderer, or a thief is beyond our help. So we choose to withhold grace and shut up our heart of mercy. We think they deserve to get whatever they get, for the way they have acted and the choices they made. I am not making excuses for anybody’s actions — all I want to say is that the person with the greater sin needs the greater mercy. In that moment, I can choose to give it to them. Good place to remember we didn’t deserve what Jesus gave us either.

I like this verse: “But whoever has the world’s goods (adequate resources), and sees his brother in need, but has no compassion for him, how does the love of God live in him?”  I John 3:17. People can be needy because they are spiritually poor! We must continue to sow grace and mercy everywhere and remind ourselves that judgment belongs to the Lord, He is the One Who knows all things and sees all things – not us. He will have mercy and compassion on whoever He chooses. We all deserve hell! Mercy is grace that goes beyond forgiveness, instead of punishment, it ushers in the power of God. Bye. 👋

P 2492 The power in our choices.

/ DVH

Someone recently challenged me about how anybody can continue to do kind, loving things for people who are deliberately not sweet to us. To start with, if we do not tackle this kind of situation with our faith, we will fail. This scenario needs the Lord’s supernatural power, not willpower. This person asked me if I was asking them to lie – because they did not feel kindly toward the people involved, and they would be lying if they took the path I indicated. At the same time they thought that perhaps they were giving the person/s involved permission to stay the same, and keep on being horrible to them. First of all, we need to remember our flesh will complain at us – it doesn’t want to die.

Mine complained at me, yesterday, at 4.00 am! I couldn’t sleep because I needed to get up and make some notes about my thoughts. Hubby chose to get up with me, and I felt very guilty for depriving him of sleep. But he said something really interesting regarding the very early hour. He reminded me of this story: Jesus came walking on the water to the disciples while they were rowing their arms off in the middle of a huge storm, in the fourth watch of the night. Apparently Jesus doesn’t think 4.00am is too early!

The Lord actively encouraged me then, through my husband, despite my tired body, and despite my feelings of guilt – hubby is as tired as I am most of the time! He could easily have been grumpy at me for waking him up way too early, but he chose to respond lovingly, to support me. Feelings can be grossly overrated and motivated by other circumstances, or previous attitudes that are yet to be redeemed. I think that God wanted to teach me something. When I talk about choosing to love others who are unkind to us, I am simply repeating what the bible says. Actually, I personally hardly ever want to … “do good to those who despitefully use me!’  I do those things and follow His word as a choice. We are challenged daily with choices.

Christianity is full of these seemingly ordinary choices, to say no to ourselves and yes to Him. I love walking around with Jesus helping me, so, for me, it is not a hard choice. Hubby chose to walk with the Lord at 4.00am and that led to him reassuring me from the bible. He was blessed and so was I. If we make the wrong choices, it definitely becomes much harder to step away from those choices and go back to following Him. In those moments we will have to fight our own feelings and thoughts.

We may have to choose to suffer by making those hard choices … SO GRACE CAN BE RELEASED. Grace is undeserved by its nature, so releasing it must be motivated by our Love for Jesus and His Ways. However,His Grace changes everything! It enables us to see things that were not seen before. When you or I get into a bad situation with someone else, somebody is going to have to release grace – which is undeserved favour – in order to de-escalate that situation. We cannot do this kind of thing without the Holy Spirit helping us, and giving us His Word and His Grace. The thing is we will often feel nothing – OR still be very angry at the other person. It’s a sacrifice – you will die to self when you do it.

When we choose to love the people who aren’t loving us, we are entering into the Kingdom of God, and living by His edicts – instead of by this world’s ideas. That choice ushers us into a different arena. Now the things of this earth fade into the background, because something far more wise and powerful has come on the scene. I have found when God explains Himself it blows my mind. For example, for years I have looked at those two men hanging beside Jesus, dying on their own crosses and thought – ‘ Well, at least one of them was saved.’ But then the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said: “TWO men were saved but only ONE responded to Christ.” 🤯 God thinks differently than we do!

I was also reminded by the Holy Spirit that Jesus did not want to go through with His sacrifice. (Dare I say He did not feel good about what was going to happen?) We have an example in the garden of Gethsemane where He makes it very clear He did not want to go ahead with His appointed assignment. But He carried it out, and He let other people do to Him what they did, because of the greater good. Love was going to win – it always wins! This was, quite simply, the only way to redeem us. The innocent had to suffer.

We are given opportunities every single day to suffer for LOVE’S SAKE. Life is about those daily choices! We can enter into transformation in those moments, as we choose to believe what the bible says, over how we feel or what we think. Here’s what I’ve  learnt — 4.00am feels way too early to be awake …but when God is in it, suddenly it is not too early. Continuing to love others when they are spiteful or mean to me, often feels wrong. But the reality is, it is a CUE to release the Grace God gave me when Christ died in my place. That choice changes our view of what is really going on. Bye.👋