Surrender

P 3205 A Clear Focus.

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“We look away from the natural realm and we focus our attention and expectation onto Jesus Who birthed faith within us and Who leads us forward into faith’s perfection. His example is this: Because His heart was focused on the joy of knowing that you would be His, He endured the agony of the cross and conquered its humiliation, and now sits exalted at the right hand of the throne of God!” Hebrews 12:2 TPT.

If that scripture doesn’t move our hearts toward total surrender then I don’t know what will! The idea and actuality of  “…knowing you would be His …” is something none of us have earned or deserved. Even our desire to follow Jesus, wholeheartedly, or not … comes from the One Who birthed our faith on a cross, as He hung there dying. The thing is, I’ve noticed many Christians act like dying to self is an optional extra. It isn’t. 

Because we have been born again. and made the choice to participate in the obedient act of baptism — all that is a declaration of our intent to die to self. Now, day by day we live out that intention by monitoring and adapting our own choices, with His help. It may be a choice, but if we choose not to die, we won’t produce fruit. “Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies …”  Many Christians live in this nether world. They feel like failures because they can’t produce the stuff, and yet they long to please their Lord with all their hearts. Because they don’t know what comes AFTER baptism.

It is only when we choose to focus on dying to self daily, that we will find the new life Jesus talked about all the time. Every time we say ‘no’ to self and ‘yes’ to Him, we are choosing to die, and His spiritual fruit of self-control begins to build and grow inside us. It takes a while for a nub on an apple tree to grow a fully mature apple. But the thing is – that apple doesn’t leap on and off the tree during the process! It clings to the tree because the apple tree provides the nutrients for it to grow. Jesus said in John 15:4: “Remain in Me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.”  Let’s choose to know what Jesus said, thought, and did — because that is now the source of His life in us. We live as He lived, through our own freely-made choices, because we trust Him.

Clinging to Jesus is the only way we can grow. What He did at Calvary and in His death, has out-of-this-world  power to overcome, in it. “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.” Matthew 28:16. In this particular scripture, the Lord had already conquered death, defeated the devil and his minions, and now He is returning to hand over the reins to His disciples. We don’t participate in the power of God by simply claiming it, we operate in the power of God by believing what He said and acting on it. Our decisive death to self opens the door to living differently. We will not misuse Christ’s power when we learn about the cost, personally! 

His power has been given to us, and is available to us, to appropriate. So now we can leave being selfish, self-centred, and our uncaring self, behind – and grow into lovers of Jesus, who would gladly die for Him and others! Now we choose to daily walk as He walked, in humility, with His love for His Father guiding His every step. Jesus treasured His fellowship with His Heavenly Father. So He made hard decisions, against Himself, and His preferences, in order to walk with His Father, and bring heaven down here to earth.

Every step of faith we take, under the Holy Spirit’s guidance frees us from the chains, distractions and tyrannies of this world. Don’t let the words, death, dying, unselfish etc. put you off. We don’t do any of this in our own  strength, our obedience flows as we choose His ways. We grow there, one choice at a time. I read the bible, and I can see what God wants for me, so I just do what He says! This process may be progressive, but it was never designed to be static. Progressive, forward movement is part of the deal. We participate in growing fruit by clinging to the vine, that is Christ, and through that we learn how to live a life of Love.

“For we reach the goal of fulfilling all the commandments when we love others deeply with a pure heart, a clean conscience, and sincere faith.” 1 Timothy 1:5. It’s the way we love, that affects our hearts. The pure heart, clean conscience and sincere faith comes AS we learn to walk with the Holy Spirit. In the beginning, it seems like trial and error, but as we keep choosing Him and keep walking with Him, we discover that loving others starts to flow. Whenever we say or do something dumb, now we will want to immediately repent. WHY? Because we are walking with LOVE Himself and He is a joy to walk with.

The more you walk with Him, the more you want to walk with Him. Our focus changes from ‘me and what I want’to seeking ‘His kingdom and what He wants.’  I no longer have to make myself witness it begins to leak out of me. The other day I grabbed a lady’s hand and just started praying for her – and I didn’t even ask her permission! I was half-way through praying when I realised, I may have committed some sort of human faux pas! In those moments He’s just as real to other people as He is to you. Let us steadfastly, devotedly, and clearly focus our attention on the things that last.  Bye. 👋

P 3178 Our thoughts.

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Most despairing attitudes start in our thought-life. However when we take the time to pay attention to what we are thinking, we can exchange those thoughts for Who He is and how much He loves us! His love is the only constant thing this world has! It is a matter of choice, not a matter of proof. Do we believe what He says or how we feel. The more we know what the truth is — the bigger our opportunity is to be blessed, because we have come to know personally, intimately, a greater reality. 

These two seemingly opposite things, like hardship and blessings can co-exist. Pain, heartache, and sorrow, can be present at the same time as our knowledge of Who He is and how much we are loved by Him. Open the bible and find a scripture that helps, and then hold fast to it.  His love is always greater than the circumstances. When these things fall upon us, we need to learn to insist, purely for our own good. The Lord Jesus outweighs the things that come against us to try to drown us in our problems. He is bigger than anything we might face. Yelling ‘help,’ helps me! And no, I don’t always do that out loud!!

When we are under any sort of duress, we need to deliberately read the bible to remind ourselves of His kind of love. At the moment when you feel you can’t – you must! His love is so good, so faithful, so steadfast, that as we read, we will come to a place where we feel the darkness recede … don’t stop there, keep going. The enemy is pushing you, push back! If we fall into something testing or tormenting we know that He will help us. He says so! The Holy Spirit, the One Who comes alongside us, will kiss us back to life again. This is when our faith in God’s goodness has an opportunity to grow. Jesus died to give us that choice!

Faith needs to be tested otherwise it will not have depth. There is a stronger kind of faith that has been tried and tested and come through all kinds of difficulties with even more gratitude and worship. I know people who have this kind of faith. All kinds of hardship are actually fertile ground, fertilised by our surrender and our active faith that He is bigger than anything else. Being tested, and pushing on, can only deepen what we already know about Him! We cannot trust the Lord completely until what we believe has had our beliefs tested and shaken, so that all the unbelief falls off. Then we’ll discover that He is more than able to keep us.

If we choose to continue to follow and submit to Him even when we feel we cannot find our way—we will get through whatever is shaking our world, and come out of the other side – whether the situation changes or not.. Let’s make the immediate choice to look up and see that dear face of His so close to us. He knows all about pain and suffering and sorrow – personally. He understands it is hard – personally! At the same time the Holy Spirit will comfort us, and teach us that we can rely upon the very real fact that He will never leave us or forsake us. 

The Lord is closest to us whenever we feel devastated and alone. We have His promises. The question is, do we believe what He says, over and above what we can see with our own eyes or hear with our own ears? Hebrews 13:5b,6. “Never will I leave you;  never will I forsake you.” So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my Helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?” Did you see what that verse says? ‘So we SAY with confidence …’  At this point I start speaking to my soul, like the Psalmist told us: I tell my soul to ”… hope in God!” (Psalm 42:11.)

Now let’s look at James 1:2-4 – “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colours. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.” James says that the thing we often desperately want to wriggle out of, is a GIFT. Because under pressure we are forced to face what we lack! When you know what you don’t have, you can target it with repentance and scriptures. Start by identifying what you are feeling: ‘I’m angry;  I’m afraid;  I’m jealous;  I am in despair.’  We no longer need to be afraid to diagnose the places in our hearts that lack — Jesus died for that lack. All we are doing is working with the One Who was sent to help us through!

Finally, we begin to realise that there is even something greater at stake than our immediate sense of comfort or peace of mind. That is God’s Kingdom blooming and blossoming in us. Hebrews 10:35-36 “Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.”  Don’t choke in the hard bits – press through – grab hold of Jesus and hang on!

His kingdom will begin to be revealed through your life, simply because it is our destiny to bring the kingdom with us. The gospels are not some sort of fairy story with a happily ever-after ending. They end in the death of the HERO. But – His resurrection ushered us into a whole new kind of world. His world has love in its centre and it is filled with hope and faith. OUR world has things in it that can be stolen or broken, but His kingdom is an incredible storage unit, we can deposit our precious families etc. with the Lord, where this world can’t get at them.

Our thoughts are so important, they can turn the ship of our lives into the wind, to be moved by our beloved Holy Spirit – HE knows where we are going and what we will need to get there!  Bye. 👋

P 3094 Let’s smell good!

/ DVH

“God always makes His grace visible in Christ, Who includes us as partners of His endless triumph. Through our yielded lives He spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God everywhere we go.” 2 Corinthians 2:14 TPT. I mean … WOW!! How about that! Jesus made US, you and I, a part of His endless triumph! Then Paul goes on to say: ‘We will smell like Him to other people, just because we live for Him, know Him, and talk with Him.’ Devotion to Jesus has many forms. Mary released the smell of her devotion to the Lord, it was sweet nard in an alabaster box, she poured it all over His feet. The disciples left everything and followed Him everywhere. 

Here are some other versions of the same verse. “But thanks be to God, Who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of Him.” NIV. “In the Messiah, in Christ, God leads us from place to place in one perpetual victory parade. Through us, He brings knowledge of Christ. Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation—an aroma redolent with life.” MSG V14-16.

Our Lord Jesus has been captivated by us, by our total surrender to His will, even when sometimes that was done through copious tears and clenched teeth! Yielding our will to His can be hard but our perfume of yieldedness contains myrrh – it is a bittersweet smell – and He knows and loves it.

Because of everything our Lord did for us, now we in turn, reveal and release Jesus’ sweet fragrance to Father God Himself – it benefits everyone around us wherever we go. We don’t set out to do it, it simply happens because of our proximity to Him. His life flows from Him into us, and from us to others. Now that is a really good reason to deal with enmity. All those things that drive schisms between the members of His body. If we are careless or rebellious we will begin to lose our sweet Saviour smell! 

His fragrance thrives on, and exponentially expands with true UNITY. And our unity bursts with His life! It is His beautiful oil of true harmony flowing between us. Oneness is essential to being able to move into all the things the Lord has for us. “How can two walk together unless they be in agreement?” Amos 3:3. Oneness is the vehicle that allows Jesus’ fragrance to be released. The Father, Son and the Holy Spirit are one, and Jesus made it clear, that our priority is to protect and keep unity alive between us.

If we wanted to make any perfume, we’d need a distilled fragrance taken from flowers, carefully mixed and layered together to make a pleasing smell. Then those flowers are crushed, and that fragrance is introduced to an emollient. This is either an alcohol base, or an oil one. The Holy Spirit is the Glorious OIL that carries the fragrance of Jesus out into the community. He wants to be the only perfume that we release, so we can enrich the lives of those who are around us. Not to mention anyone else who crosses our path. We have all probably experienced the sensation of walking down the street and following someone who is wearing perfume.

You know, each of one of us could wear exactly the same perfume but it will have a slightly different result. It all depends on who is wearing it, because our individual body chemistry affects perfume. In the same way – you and I will spread abroad the sweet smell of our depth of interaction with the Holy Spirit. Each one of us will be a bit different to someone else, but the underlying glorious smell is always Jesus!  He makes us smell so good to others because we have chosen to make Him our treasure. 

BTW, please let us remember that the Holy Spirit knows how to handle His own oil – He does not need us to pray it up or down! That’s treating Him like a commodity, rather than a Person. He is also our Treasure. It is His joy to see us delighting in our Heavenly Father’s loving approval. We, however, need to be vigilant and aware of our own shortcomings, because sin interrupts the flow of whatever He is doing. However, it is truly a tragedy when we make God’s gracious gifts into rules. Of course we need to be pure vessels of beaten gold to contain the glory that belongs to the Lord! BUT! Rules stop the flow of His oil, because rules lead to striving. So when things get tough, just remember, we are His chosen vessels, and yieldedness comes at a cost.

Some of us have been stinky selfish nitwits for a very long time! That’s ME not YOU, of course. Selfishness stinks and it ain’t pretty. It doesn’t matter how we feel, or even if we want to yield or not, we need to yield to His will His way, simply for obedience’ sake. Feelings can be overrated and we end up chasing them, instead of running after Him. The purity of doing whatever we do, with all our hearts – as though we were doing it for Him – cannot be underestimated. Obedience ushers in fresh revelation. Jesus did not want to go to the cross, but He obeyed His Father because He utterly trusted Him. I have found my attitude changes after I obey. 

In order to be His sweet fragrance in the world around us, we will need to meditate on everything He did for us. We are free because He paid the cost to give us freedom. Now we need to daily cling tightly to Who He is, and what we know about Him. The Holy Spirit wants to help us with that, so we can smell good! 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 3066 Position yourself to catch the Wind.

/ DVH

“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. I believe the secret to this verse is in the words: ”if you TRULY want to follow Me.” 

This thought is repeated in Luke 9:23-24 TPT: “Jesus said to all of His followers, “If you TRULY desire to be My disciple, you must disown your life completely, embrace My ‘cross’ as your own, and surrender to My ways. For if you choose self-sacrifice, giving up your lives for My glory, you will discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will lose what you try to keep.”

We often look at our actions, we don’t often look at our aims, desires or wants. So we can quickly feel broken-hearted when we know we’ve failed the Lord. Especially if we revise the things that miss the mark. Those self-accusations won’t help us to follow Him. If you and I think we have messed up too much, we will start to AVOID Him, not follow Him! 

Meanwhile, that is not what He is saying here. Our wants and desires matter to Him. But it is LOVE that is meant to lead us into the place of obedience. Forcing ourselves, creates resistance. I think this means we need to change our primary focus – don’t look to other people for that kind of love, look to Jesus. Then BE the person you need others to be to you!  Read His book like a love letter. Go to the Lord and tell Him that you want to be close to Him, that you long to make Him your heart’s primary desire, but your flesh is weak. Tell Him you need His help. Then let the Holy Spirit be your Personal Coach and follow His instructions – they are in the book.

There are things that make us feel guilty – whether the guilt is real or not. But until they are confessed and dealt with and put aside …we can easily rationalise away the real issues and start fighting the Wind…literally! A kite doesn’t try to fly – it simply positions itself to catch the wind! The Holy Spirit is the wind beneath our wings.  I may not need what you need right now. I may need His loving discipline, but you could need a hug! Christianity is not ‘one size fits all!’ 

We have a Saviour Who personalised everything He did and said as He ministered to individuals. He didn’t go digging around in the coal cellar of people’s hearts, He accurately touched the sore spot in there, and then put His love and truth in its place. When a dumb thing came out of someone’s mouth – He addressed it. The secret to living a day-by-day Godly life, is check out internally what we are aiming at. If I choose to follow Jesus, then I will put down anything else that stands in my way.

Jesus is telling us here, that we cannot follow Him and still live a selfish, greedy, angry life. Those things do not work together. Walking in Love is the Answer. He lived His life showing us the way to follow Him. But the Lord will not beat anyone up because we are not dead to ourselves. And if we analyse our every thought and move that will just take up our precious time. Instead we need to be thanking Him, for all He has done and Who He is. It’s about our focus and our focus must be His love FOR US.

He has done all of the work, all the heavy lifting. In these scriptures He is saying… to achieve what we want, death to self is the only way. He’s pointing to the direction we simply must take. We can’t step into what He has given us through guilt, reprisal or condemnation. He loved us, walking right into death and then He went through that into a new life. That action has given us unfettered access to His heart. The Holy Spirit will lead us, and help us for free, we simply need to let Him have His Way. It takes faith. Jesus has told us what the results will be if we choose to live this life not following Him. 

Because of what the Lord did, we cannot afford to let condemnation strangle us anymore. Kick it off. Tell those thoughts you want to follow the Lord — that filthy snake can’t lead you anywhere but down the drain! Love is our Leader now. Jesus knows we are weak. OH!… but He is so strong! He can get us through anything, including our own weaknesses. He’s with us, as one of us. He is our Friend that is closer than a brother. And He has sent us His most cherished Helper – the Holy Spirit. He created each one of us. He knows what needs to be changed and when it needs changing. 

Whenever love prevails, our responses will be different. When we feel empowered, and safe;  His acceptance and Love gives us room to grow, without pressure. The decision to follow Him is difficult because it means we don’t call the shots anymore. But we are giving that power over to SomeOne Who put up His hand and said: “I see those sins My brother or sister committed, It’s all real. It hurt and destroyed other people. But kill Me instead of them. LET THEM LIVE!!” 

The Holy Spirit wants to guide us through any potholes, pits, and mudslides of this life, into a new way to live. Catch the precious Wind of Love and start your adventure with God Himself. Bye.👋

P 3061 Please don’t waste His light.

/ DVH

Ephesians 1:18:“ I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people,..” What the heck does that mean? It means   that a spiritual person can see a glorious spiritual reality that a natural man cannot. We can place great value on the gifts of the Spirit, on the infilling of the Spirit, on receiving from the Spirit. We do this like those ‘experiences’ outweigh the reality of daily walking with Him! Walking with Him here on earth is our highest calling.

When you and I gave our lives to Christ, He came to live in us. The idea that Jesus would live in our hearts without the Holy Spirit makes no sense. Actually, God Himself as a revelatory, creative Being came to live inside us in the Person of the Holy Spirit. He knows the way ahead for each one of us. 

What we need to do is to acquaint ourselves with the ways of God, so that we treat Him like the priceless treasure He is! He’s right here, with each one of us every day. He wants to teach us, personally, as well as corporately. Whenever we live our lives choosing to do things according to our will – the Holy Spirit will quietly leave. But He does not leave us permanently – He strives with us to get our attention.

When I look at you through a slave’s eyes, what you do or don’t do, suddenly matters to me, because it affects me. When I am operating in the flesh, I can misunderstand your motivation, and become disgruntled or unhappy with you — if your behaviour is my yard-stick. But when Jesus is my yard-stick, I have been given the God-given grace to see YOU through His eyes. This means I can have mercy. I can give you grace, I can die for you daily, because I can see what He can see about you. 

Because I love Jesus, what He chooses to love, I love – now, your behaviour becomes inconsequential. And if we get snippy at each other we are reverting to the flesh. The flesh will not and cannot profit us, spiritually, These fleshly attitudes mean our God-given, Heaven designated Helper will leave, because I have chosen “my way” over “His way” and He will never take away our choices. He quietly waits for us to notice that He has left.

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”Joshua 24:15. Day by day our choices matter. Christianity is not a part-time religion, it is an all or nothing one! Winning this war depends on our daily choices, our willingness to surrender everything that matters to us, to Him. When we live like that, we are demonstrating our faith that our God is a good God and He will not do us harm. Our eyes are enlightened to see beyond the here and now.

We dare not waste the daily light God sends us through His Word. I exhort you to take those things you read every day to heart, and act on them. They will be essential on the next step of your journey with Him. Bye. 👋

P 3055 Don’t wait – move!

/ DVH

“This is why the Scriptures say: Things never discovered or heard of before, things beyond our ability to imagine — these are the many things God has in store for all His lovers. But God now unveils these profound realities to us by the Spirit. Yes, He has revealed to us His inmost heart and deepest mysteries through the Holy Spirit, who constantly explores all things. For we did not receive the spirit of this world system but the Spirit of God, so that we might come to understand and experience all that grace has lavished upon us. 

And we articulate these realities with the words imparted to us by the Spirit and not with the words taught by human wisdom. We join together Spirit-revealed truths with Spirit-revealed words. Someone living on an entirely human level rejects the revelations of God’s Spirit, for they make no sense to Him. He can’t understand the revelations of the Spirit because they are only discovered by the illumination of the Spirit. For Who has ever intimately known the mind of the Lord Yahweh well enough to become His counsellor? Christ has, and we possess Christ’s perceptions.”1 Corinthians 2:9-10, 12-14, 16 TPT.

I wish I had understood some of these wonderful truths sooner – so I could have jumped joyfully into the ever on-going journey of full and total surrender – earlier! Instead of merely standing on the edge of it, dipping my toe in and out, hoping that would do. The only thing I got from dipping my toe in, was a truck load of reasons why total surrender was not for me. I became too engaged with the things of this world. My bad!

Sometimes I think the Body of Christ has been so disillusioned by the previous whole blab it and grab it theological movement, our disappointment has led to us standing afar off from the Lord. We are a bit like the Israelites. When Almighty God appeared to be unmanageable and scary, that’s when they told Moses: “You go up the mountain, we’ll stay down here.” Yet, we know darn well it is still our choice to stand so far away. Every now and then, some brave soul makes a bold stand to trust God for this and that, … and when, or if what they pray over doesn’t happen, disillusionment sets in … again!

We’ve seem to have forgotten it’s the thief who comes to steal kill and destroy. And even worse! —- We have forgotten that God is good ALL THE TIME. Let’s learn to look for the good no matter how bad things seem. Instead of wagging the Spirit’s school of learning about God Himself, we all need to sit up front and learn. Just because you or I feel let down or deserted by Him, that does not make what we feel the truth. Let’s stop, read and reread what He has said, and reinforce the wonderful things we know about Him and His Ways. I’m praying for brave souls to step up, and step out, and go on to live in and love on unsaved countries. Our country is an unsaved country! Here I am God send me!

Today I want to lay down a challenge to everyone reading this. There are glorious things about our God that we know nothing about. Those things exist now, and they are there for us, if we just ask. Instead of feathering our own nests, let’s be about His kingdom! Those strategies and secret things are needed right here, right now. I’m not talking about the kind of prayers that will make me more comfortable, because something bad has happened. I’m talking about the kind of lay-your-life down praying that turns the world on its head. These things are not only glorious, they are there to be taken – merely for the price we are prepared to pay to go and get them!

(Isaiah 55:1-6) 

Oh, where are our heroes of the faith? I have known some precious people of God in the past 52 years, and over those years I have seen some of these people persevere and press in, despite their circumstances. Praise God for their faith! But I’m so tired of the same old, same old, slog we participate in daily, week by week, paddling our broken canoes up the fantastic, enormous wild river of God’s love and provision. We need to step up, stand up, and ACT, by participating in what He is doing — instead of hiding away in our little hidey holes of supposed safety and security. 

I also know many dear saints who have been broken by their circumstances, and yet they bravely limp on. But there is a much harder step forward than even maintaining what we have, and it comes from the men and women who know His heart and pray and act on it. No matter what the consequences are.The best things, the most glorious things, are still in front of us, but we will have to put down our ideas of a normal life, and step into the unknown. He’s there, waiting for us. Let’s remember that 11 other men remained in that boat when Peter stepped out of safety into the impossible!

Many generations today chase youth in their attitudes and activities – everybody wants to keep fit. What about spiritual fitness? His ways are so much better than the ways of this world. It’s time to stop hoping somebody else will answer His call, and go ourselves! We need to move. Whether we take our faith to the office, our schools, or some foreign country – if we do not use that faith for more than our own personal gain – we will lose it. Bye 👋

“Yes, remember your Creator now while you are young, before the silver cord of life snaps and the golden bowl is broken. Don’t wait until the water jar is smashed at the spring and the pulley is broken at the well.”  Ecclesiastes 12:6.

P 3050 Let’s say what He tells us to say.

/ DVH

Acts 8:34&35. “And the eunuch said to Philip, I beg of you, tell me about whom does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else? Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this portion of Scripture he announced to him the glad tidings.”  

My point today is this: when it comes to sharing with people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet — the bible is not one-size fits all. For a very long time we have presented people with John 3:16, or Revelation 3:20, and now those verses have become a tried and true method of presenting the gospel. They are great verses! But we have so many illustrations in the bible we can simply ask the Holy Spirit: “How would You like me to talk about Jesus to this person Lord?” 

Philip preached the gospel to a eunuch, and the man was saved on the spot because of the book of Isaiah. Stephen started with Abraham! Peter once preached something Joel had said. In another instance, multiple salvations started with a couple who decided that lying to the Holy Spirit was a good idea … and they both dropped dead. Anybody want an outreach that starts with people falling over DEAD?? This is an example of  what the fear of the Lord looks like. It starts with recognising that we are dealing with Almighty God, not the local council representative. Our Heavenly Father can’t be deceived.

Moving on … Jonah impacted the lives of a boat-load of sailors when he was walking in disobedience. A terrible storm ceased instantly as they threw him overboard, and that sight cut the sailors to the heart. The Apostles walked in signs and wonders which impacted the whole of Jerusalem. God knocked Paul off his horse and rendered him blind. I like that one … because the irony does not escape me! That man was already blind …he was continually persecuting the Church!

Who and what turns a human being around? The Holy Spirit does – HE’S THE WIND. It’s quite windy outside my house today. I can go outside and shout and scream fit to beat the band, but I cannot make the wind do anything. The wind goes where it wants to go. Jesus said this:“The wind blows where it wishes and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it is coming from and where it is going; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”John 3:8. 

We need to learn, now more than ever, to listen to the precious Holy Spirit and trust Him and the Way He does things. Repentance and humility are always a help with that. We are blessed. All God-inspired ideas come from Him. But if we are not careful we can end up using them and reusing them like we are reading from a text book. THE HOLY SPIRIT NEVER RUNS OUT OF NEW WAYS TO GLORIFY GOD! 

Here’s a big thought from the book of Revelation … chapter 4, verse 8: ”…Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night they never stop saying:“‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, Who was, and is, and is to come.”I asked the Holy Spirit about these creatures and this was His reply: “These beings need that many eyes to take the Almighty Father in. And every time they fly past the throne, they see something new, something glorious that they have never seen before, about Him, about Who He is.Their praise will never run out.”

Sin doesn’t exist in heaven, because sin would not be comfortable there. It’s a Holy Place. The Father and His love fill everything, because He IS everything! Heaven is filled with truth, light, love, peace, joy etc. Sinful people react to those things one of in two ways, probably because these options are polarising. They either reject it and Him, immediately – or they are awe-struck and move toward His light. 

There are many people who admire their own way of thinking, and they do not want to surrender to love. It isn’t fear that stops them. Instead, it is a lack of interest, hatred and many times it’s plain old rebellion.The message of the cross seems simplistic and foolish to some people. They find the things of God beneath their attention, they would rather cling to their sin than change their ways. But billions of others have simply been hurt by this life, or they have never known what real love looks like. Whatever the response is – we choose not to differentiate between people. Instead, we present what He tells us, how He tells us, to the people He sent us to.

Our job on this earth is to proclaim Him and fulfil His mission for our lives. We are to present the solution to sin and death – Jesus Christ. The bible is our tool, and now we use it to share Jesus with others. We are here to proclaim and demonstrate the good news.. But people won’t be able to choose if we do not follow the Holy Spirit’s leading and say whatever He tells us to say.

“For the Anointed One has sent me on a mission, not to see how many I could baptise, but to proclaim the good news. And I declare this message stripped of all philosophical arguments that empty the cross of its true power. For I trust in the all-sufficient cross of Christ alone.”1 Corinthians 1:17. Bye 👋

P 3044.

/ DVH

“Jesus said to all of His followers, “If you truly desire to be My disciple, you must disown your life completely, embrace My ‘cross’ as your own, and surrender to My ways. For if you choose self-sacrifice, giving up your lives for My glory, you will discover true life. But if you choose to keep your lives for yourselves, you will lose what you try to keep.” Luke 9:23-24 TPT. 

These verses mean our lives have been whittled down to one important choice – will we live this life we have been given for Jesus’ sake? Or will we continue to choose to try fit Him in around the edges? I’ve noticed that dividing our time between what we want and what He wants, never ever works. What I think and want takes over.

In my opinion this particular choice needs to be presented to anyone who wants to give their life to Jesus – right at the beginning. After all, the Lord’s exchange rate goes right through the roof – we get His loving goodness for our sin! And this type of total surrender should be mentioned before anything else – we need to make it clear that people are giving their lives away.

We are not selling cars, holidays or houses – we are by His Grace, consistently revealing the One we know, to the people-who-have-not-met-Him-yet. I don’t much like the idea of total commitment coming later, as an after thought. In my mind, this needs to be the only thought. This is the choice! I live for me OR, I choose to live for Him. When I mess that up, He’s there helping me back onto my feet again. He’s Almighty God, He gets to make the rules, that means – I follow Him. 

Jesus loves to do great exploits and He wants to do them through all of us. That means we will talk to other people about what we’ve personally known about Him. He isn’t just helping the people on Youtube or the enthusiastic souls who make podcasts or write books. He will help all of us. But our faith levels need to increase. 

The Lord wants to do whatever He wants to do in your life … with you;  through you;  in you – to help others. What He does for us, every single day is so incredible — the sun came up where I live this morning! How about you?! Every single Christian has testimonies about how God’s glory has transformed their lives. But we can become so enamoured with this worlds’ razzmatazz and hype, we miss what He is doing! There is no need at all, for us to ever shift from Him being our central point of focus, because that’s the place we stand on.

We choose to view everything else that happens to us through what He has done. Even our calendars are founded on two abbreviated terms that take Jesus birth as a pivotal date. B.C. means before Christ. AD means Anno Domino(latin) — it means in the year of our Lord… We count time by Jesus’ birth!  Apparently some people have come up with a PC version, but I gave that the flick. If I listen to them I am a descendant of a short-sighted amoeba! Yeah right. Rhubarb.

What Jesus is saying here in Luke 9, is that none of our lives will reach their fullest meaning and potential outside of a totally committed life. God is good, we will always have a choice. So we can self-govern if we want to — but then our responses can be limited by our personal experiences, our intelligence, and opportunities. Deception floats about this world like pollen on a windy day – unseen and dangerous. But when Jesus is our catalyst – the sky is the limit. Let’s remember that this world has no knowledge of what real love looks like and everyone’s lack hurts other people. Love is NOT a feeling, it’s a choice.

The key to the passage in Luke is the word truly. “…If you truly desire to be My disciple…”  That means commitment is going to be needed, whether we feel like it or not. That stance takes bravery! Christianity is not a try now and buy later scheme, it is an all or nothing one. As a matter of fact, I think trying now and buying later is downright dangerous. Many people have decided to try Christianity – and in their view, when God did not met with their untaught irreligious expectations, they dismissed Him with a wave of their hand. They explain that they’ve bin there and dun that and they’d like to keep their options open!

Of course you can ‘try’ Jesus, but please be aware that you just put a giant target from His enemy, on your back. Everything that can oppose you will! Jesus cannot be an optional extra – He has to become the point of our lives. When we give our entire life to Jesus, He takes it. In return, we begin our journey into eternal life, right here, right now. We do that against a backdrop of imperfection, in ourselves and others. That’s why the light in us shines brightly – the darker it gets in this world, the brighter we will shine.

Eternity is not ‘pie in the sky when we die.’ It is perfectly expressed, here and now, by a life lived in faith, following Jesus wherever He takes us. We bring His kingdom down here, by the way we walk, talk, think and act. We can’t psyche ourselves into that kind of stuff – we need His help. And He is always with us, in the Person of the Holy Spirit. All means all. Jesus Christ gave His all, so now we give Him ours. Christianity is not a part-time thing – it is a life-time commitment. Selah. Bye 👋

P 3010 Who benefits? Us or His kingdom?

/ DVH

“We can demolish every deceptive fantasy that opposes God and break through every arrogant attitude that is raised up in defiance of the true knowledge of God. We capture, like prisoners of war, every thought and insist that it bow in obedience to the Anointed One.” 2 Corinthians 10:5 TPT. 

If we take what Paul has said to the Corinthian church seriously, we can see that the Christian life is not meant to be a walk in the park, whistling as we go! There’s a lot of demolition and active transformation that needs to happen in an ongoing, everyday fashion. I believe the New Testament shows us how we can change, what we need to change, and why we should change! The ‘when’ is easy — NOW! If you ignore some behaviour and hope it will go away, you are deceiving yourself. Whatever we hold onto holds us back!

Paul faced a lot of criticism along the way, even from the people he ministered to. Some times people who are very sure of what God has said to them, can appear to be arrogant. It is easy to mistake arrogance and enthusiasm for the anointing of God. Arrogance is when I talk to straighten you out because I already know. It puts me up and brings you down. Encouraging you as we journey together, means I stretch out my hand to you, whenever I might be a help. However, the speaker must always remember: 

“A word fitly spoken and in due season is like apples of gold in settings of silver. [Prov. 15:23; Isa. 50:4.] Like an earring or nose ring of gold or an ornament of fine gold is a wise reprover to an ear that listens and obeys. Like the cold of snow [brought from the mountains] in the time of harvest, so is a faithful messenger to those who send him; for he refreshes the life of his masters.” 

Our God-given place is to continue to live in, and acknowledge our ever-present need for more of His Grace. And we cannot carry that out well if we choose to hide from the very people God sent to help us! Even if they are painful! Honesty with ourselves and others is paramount. I am not talking about being negative, I mean that we are all on the same journey, and none of us have arrived, so pretending we are doing well when we know we are not, is called deception. 

Most people are afraid of correction. They are afraid to admit they can’t perform well, and then they can quickly get caught up in self-effort. It’s a never-ending pattern — trying hard to meet the mark, and failing. The reason I gave that particular method up is because I was a total wash-out at changing myself, I had too many flaws and not enough hours in the day! I have learnt to suspect that my feelings are not a good guideline to where I want to go. However, whatever the Lord says will stand forever — what I feel can be changed by double chocolate ice cream and a piece of cake! 

If someone comes from the place of “I know and you don’t” then they are not yet in a place of humility. That’s a flaw just like any other, often born out of insecurity. As Jesus’ beloved fiancee we need to live in the place of humble surrender, permanently, simply to facilitate the right attitude when we speak to others. I am not just talking about lip-service … we can all say we surrender. But the reality occurs where the rubber of my life hits the road of obstacles and hardship. Or when this life squeezes us so tightly it actually exposes the truth. Life has a very bad habit of doing that! We are afraid to be real because we have not comprehended exactly what Jesus Christ did for us.

More mature people can share with others those things they have learnt along the way, but we had better make sure we are putting what we say into practice ourselves. Even if it looks to us like we will become vulnerable, because we often get it wrong! Like my favourite verse says: ‘Not that I always achieve that aim, but I sure am pressing on!’’…  “ ‘I can’t help it’ doesn’t cover anything … only the blood of Jesus does that!’

“If we [freely] admit that we have sinned and confess our sins, He is faithful and just [true to His own nature and promises], and will forgive our sins and cleanse us continually from all unrighteousness [our wrongdoing, everything not in conformity with His will and purpose].”  Our new life doesn’t rely upon us, it relies upon Jesus and what He did. Our aim is to support one another, as we walk forward …together. There are no losers or winners in the Christian life – only participants. 

Sadly, there are many people who think they can still have this AND that error, or bad habit in their lives, and it doesn’t make any difference to their level of commitment. People can be deceived into thinking they can make excuses for ungodly attitudes, and still follow Jesus. As soon as self-deception enters the ring, human beings will be KO-ed out, because we have become double-minded. The point is we cannot abuse the blood of Jesus, which is an incredibly precious thing, to excuse our unwillingness to learn and be transformed. And that’s a life-time goal not a one time event! 

Whatever we say at the altar, needs to be followed up with prayer and deliberate choices. This life we have chosen is not easy. It has many things in it that we think we value – things, or even people we think we cannot live without. Those things need to be given to the Lord along the way, in order to keep walking after Him. These things don’t always have to be bad either, but we don’t want ‘that will do,’ we want everything laid down for His sake. The secret, as I see it, to knowing the difference between what is Godly or not is this – who benefits – US or His kingdom? Bye. 👋