Tender mercy

P 3312 Staying in the river!

/ DVH

“Believe in ME so that rivers of living water will burst out from within you, flowing from your innermost being, just like the Scripture says!””  John 7:38 TPT. Great scripture! … I love to watch things on YouTube that many people might think are a bit boring. Every morning we put on one of those supposedly, sappy Christian music videos, that feature pretty pictures of nature. They can stream away for like 11 hours. And then I just let that stuff quietly run, so I can be engaged with my blog, bible reading, prayers and thoughts. You might like just plain silence!

I’ve personally found I’m far more likely to recognise His ‘rivers of living water’ when I am not distracted by other noises, or things that fly past on the TV screen trying to capture my attention! Meanwhile, I’m incredibly blessed and grateful that my time is my own, and how I spend it is up to me. Many people reading this don’t have that kind of freedom. But I think the secret to staying in the river of God begins with staying aware of Him and giving Him my attention. Have you ever watched a well trained sheep dog? The dog never takes its eyes off its Master. Meeting with Jesus is the place where we can ‘let it all hang out,’ because He knows our junk anyway!

Today, I want to talk about the importance of spiritual breathing. Living this new life the way God Himself has designed it, is a natural process with no striving involved. It’s just as natural as breathing IN and OUT. After all we do that without even thinking about it – unless we have some sort of disease or obstruction – we just do it!  “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 3:12-14. 

Jesus has taken hold of my life for a reason, He will help me find my real life in Him. I am greatly cheered up by the fact that the Apostle Paul, who wrote most of the Epistles — who was, some say, taken up into the 3rd heaven  — told us, he hadn’t arrived at that goal yet! This means that the best bits are still out in front of each one of us. However, just because this goal can seem unattainable, that doesn’t mean we should give up on aiming at it! It simply means we are in the best company, so I shouldn’t give up I should press on! He is now my focus.

Pressing on involves dogged dedication. So does finding out,  knowing and liking the same things the Lord likes! Plus doing whatever Jesus would do in any situation. All that takes focus, time and energy. To do this we need to sort out our priorities. Is it to be God – or the washing first? Jesus has to be more real to us than the people around us. Be assured that I don’t always get it right, that’s why I keep pressing on. However, I have learnt over the years that when my heart is pointed in His direction, the Lord is incredibly loving and tolerant of my muddles and misses, and ‘He makes my paths smooth.’ 

His infinite patience lovingly watches over us. He despatches angels to catch us when we fall, or fail. He can redeem everything and anything. “Who redeems your life from the pit and corruption, Who beautifies, dignifies, and crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercy;…” Psalm 103:4. In other words, to the Lord, human beings are not just a hobby, or a pastime – we are the focus of His attention and affections. Let’s not relegate Him to the back burner as SomeOne we call on when the ceiling falls in. He is our refuge, not our emergency standby. 

“But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9a. What does that scripture mean when we are talking about the River of God? I think we can often put an accent on one bit of scripture over another, and in this instance that means we will be skipping over the best bit. The River bit. The bit that says: ‘My grace is sufficient for you…’ that is the important bit. His Grace is always enough! We just need to return our focus to Him when distracted, and GRACE WILL BE THERE.  Instead of looking into our hearts and seeing our inner cupboards bare and bankrupt—choose to look into Jesus’ eyes and heart, and see the abundance He has for you. We dare not try to manage the weakness we see in ourselves without looking at the greatness of His Grace toward us. Despite our whimsical feelings, we are not poverty stricken!

His power is made perfect in our weakness, but we can’t afford to be distracted by those weaknesses! Instead,let’s pray that He will give us the Grace to comprehend the incredible POWER that was released through the cross.  Our weaknesses cannot stand in the face of that power. Let’s not focus on the negative, let’s focus on Jesus and what He already did. The only thing that can negate His power from releasing itself into our situations, is our decision, or choice, to believe that our badness can possibly be bigger than His goodness!

The Lord Jesus did not just emerge from that grave ‘alive’ like Lazarus did! He was filled with so much Grace and power, He instantly saved the world! That included those Who believed before He came and all those who came afterward. The Grace He gives us is without limit. We need to cherish it with every part of us. The river of God is always available to us, so let’s jump into His love and grace, and stay there on floating on our backs. If we fall out of the river, then we need to jump back in again. 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 2633 We all need comfort and love …

/ DVH

“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.

So many of us are struggling in one way or another in these difficult days, so today – let’s pray together: “Precious Holy Spirit, please be with the lonely, suffering, the broken and those who are in pain. Jesus please make Yourself real to them in a brand new way. I pray that whenever they open the bible, the scriptures they read will fly straight into their hearts and bring them such overwhelming comfort. I ask You to help them to draw even closer to You, in their sorrow and suffering, so that they constantly feel protected and loved. Please bring their brothers and sisters around them to offer Your comfort and help, in Your precious Name, Amen.

When stuff happens to me and it starts to sink my little ship, I go straight into the Psalms and dig in!  But today I found these two verses in Corinthians and realised I was limiting myself, by staying in the Psalms. So I looked up comfort and love instead. What a wealth of stuff there is in our bibles! Now here are a couple of references that really helped me. Psalm 23:4;  Psalm 27:1;  Psalm 145:18-19; Isaiah 41:10;  Matthew 10:29-31; Matthew 11:28;  2 Corinthians 4:16-18 and Colossians 1:11. As you can easily see, a couple turned into a lot! 

My advice is to read these verses over and over until they slip down from your head into your heart. Your heart will remember far more easily than your head, and they will surround and comfort you in the dead of the night when no-one else is awake. There is no sad like the sad at 3.00 am and you can’t sleep. Life seems incredibly dismal when you have pain in your body or soul. However, we gotta give the Holy Spirit stuff to work with, so that when we are overwhelmed: ‘He can lead us to the Rock that is higher than we are!’Psalm 61.

There is a hidden blessing in suffering — it builds something inside us. And it makes us more open to care for someone else who is not doing well either. Over the years I have learnt to recognise pain by looking in someone else’s eyes. I don’t think it is a spiritual gift … well maybe it’s discernment… whatever! Lately, everywhere I look I see pain. I can’t even watch the news. How newsreaders can read about such terrible daily suffering and still smile beats me.

The wonderful thing about our Heavenly Father, His Son Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is — They are non-partisan and not prejudiced against anyone. Holy pure Love flourishes between Them like an ever-flowing fountain, and we are incredibly blessed to be splashed and washed over and over again, in the fountain-overflow of Their love. When your body is tired and aching, a shower or a bath is great – when your spirit and emotions are overwhelmed we need to be soaked in, and splashed with His love for us.

Think about this – our God actually loves those who hate Him. Just think about that as an example of His unending Grace! Think about the people you know who have deliberately walked away and could care less about coming back to Him. Yet He still goes after them. I pray for those people that God will give them a revelation of how marvellous His love is. Until time is no more, our wonderful God will chase after ALL His kids. Each one of us matters to Him, and, speaking personally … some of us are kind of a bit strange – and that’s an understatement! 

Our Heavenly Father pays attention to every bird that falls to the ground. That made me wonder just  how many birds die every single day all around the world? So I looked it up…tens of millions of birds die every single day and He sees each one fall. Now here’s the glorious, hang-onto-this-info-with-both-hands bit — we know that HE CARES SO MUCH MORE FOR YOU and I, as imperfect as we both know we are.

The point is we need to let Him comfort us, instead of trying to buck up and stagger on, pretending everything is alright. My advice is to just sit in a puddle of your own tears on the floor and tell Him everything is NOT alright, and it won’t be alright until He helps you. And then wait for His peace to fill and still your heart. We need His comfort and love to surround us, all day every day.

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” … “Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 4:7 (I found another one!!) Bye.👋