Test

P 2574 That time factor, again.

/ DVH

I have been reading in 2 Samuel, and while I was reading it, I was reminded again that there was a time factor involved in establishing David as a King over Israel. There were many battles, many hardships and great losses between God’s choice and David being crowned king. That victory didn’t happen overnight. My point today is this: before David actually became king, in God’s eyes He was already His appointed man for the job! Samuel anointed David to be king as a YOUTH … even before he fought Goliath.

BUT, there was a very long period of time between those two events —- between the anointing and the actual appointing. 14 years, some people say. Yet this man was always God’s chosen man for the job. In this illustration we can see that time is not always the biggest factor in God’s Ways! The time between what God says and does, and it happening, can be longer than men are happy to talk about. We must not take things into our own hands, even when we know we heard what He was telling us.

My next question was why? Why was that time factor allowed? A whole lot of good men died during that time. I came to the conclusion that time can often clarify our motives – good or bad. Yet in that large passage of time, David grew more and more loyal to the king, despite Saul’s persecution of him. This illustrates that David’s best qualities were enhanced through that longer amount of time. If we think this life is about enforcing the kingdom, we are in error. David was tested about his beliefs and true motivation, and he had an incredibly honourable attitude – even to his own hurt. As the king in a powerful role, David was going to need some of the things that obedience, pressure and time bring out in a life – in order to fulfil that role, well. 

The other thing I thought about relates to us. Today we like to have an idea and bring it to fruition almost instantly. Yet it is apparent in the book that the Lord likes to take His own time! He has an appointed time for things to happen. Read Ecclesiastes 3! Even when we look at Calvary, there was a time period between the Lord Jesus’ death, and His resurrection. Then there was more time between Him revealing Himself to His disciples and His ascension into heaven. After that there was even more time between the ascension and Pentecost! Forty years to make an 11 day journey – those Israelites could not go in … they were not ready! When I notice stuff like that, I like to ask why.

My thought was that the Lord God seems to regard time in a different way to the way we see it. That made me wonder if we could give up on the things He tells us He is doing, too soon. Simply because it appears that the Lord is not meeting our timetable. Instead of pressing on in to learn perseverance, maybe we lose heart? What could we miss out on, when we push things along for the sake of convenience etc. instead of waiting on Him? Are we drawing the wrong conclusions, based on our needs, ideas and agendas? Time sometimes passes and then – we see a suddenly.

We all know that the Lord is never late, and the bible says, His timing is always perfect. Maybe we would manage things better if we stopped putting our own expiry dates on our ideas and hopes, and start asking Him what HE thinks. Then we need to take the time to wait for His answer. He’s never in a hurry so that  ‘hurry hurry rush rush’ thing that often happens is most likely not HIM! The devil pushes us — but Jesus leads us. He’s the Shepherd and He goes out in front!

It is not good to let our circumstances dictate our responses. Despair destroys faith. Holding things loosely allows Him to be in charge. Even if things seem pressing, it is better to continue to hand them over to the Lord and wait for His response. There is a little story about a persistent woman in Luke 18:1-8 …  “And will not God bring about justice for His chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will He keep putting them off?”I think this story beautifully illustrates our Father’s character, it is not just about getting our prayers answered by bothering God until He answers us! By all means ask and keep on asking, but I recommend handing things back over to Him after you do it.

Ephesians 6:18: “Pray in the Spirit at all times and on every occasion. Stay alert and be persistent in your prayers for all believers everywhere.” James 5:16: “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” 1 Thessalonians 5:17: “Never stop praying.”‘Never stop praying’ could also mean don’t give up too soon!

The lack of an immediate answer does not mean that the Lord has not heard us. Our confidence, our faith is in the fact that He ALWAYS hears us and His timing is perfect, so now we are waiting for Him to guide us through things. The time factor is not the criteria, David could have legally seized the kingdom, everyone knew he was the chosen one. Instead, he chose to endure persecution and hardship as well as honouring the Lord’s principles over a very long time. Time can be an important factor, even in difficult situations. We will need eyes to see His answers even more than we need the answers. Bye. 👋

P 2499 Our yes works in every circumstance.

/ DVH

Fear is one of those ghastly things that tries to batter many of us daily into submission. It starts out for me, by painting pictures of disaster in my mind, and hammers at me from every corner that God does not care. Then it tells me that He is not going to help me because I don’t deserve His help. All of that is a lie! 

God is love! We all need to have complete confidence, no matter how things look, that our GOD IS also GOOD. Plus – it also goes without saying that He is not the author of fear. However, any one of us would be foolish if we underestimated our enemy. satan knows our weaknesses and he plays on them. The safest place to fight that battle is to live this life yielded to Jesus … no matter what else is going on. When we yield to Him we are saying ‘yes.’

The Lord wants to turn those weaknesses of ours into strengths, so this is how we fight our battles … we refuse to entertain the things our enemy insists will be an outcome of some situation or other, and start to concentrate on what the Lord Himself says about Who He is, and what He says about us – IN THE BOOK. The bible is the most fantastic sword ever, it has His wisdom in it, and on it, and this book adapts and becomes appropriate in any kind of situation. 

The thing is – at the same time the Holy Spirit will also use that sword to change our mindset. Using His sword and holding fast to Him to deliver us, actually transforms our minds. It is like this: something happens and we are tempted by those circumstances to think that God does not care about us. So we ask the Holy Spirit for scripture/s, then we aim that scripture at satan – just like Jesus did in Matthew. Lastly, we insist that His word is truer than how we feel, or the things that are coming against us. 

Our King will put a sword in our hands and then that word comforts us, and it tears UP/down the enemy’s lies! We will gain trust as individuals as we see our glorious King acting on our behalf. Our minds need to be infused with the reality that nothing beats King Jesus. Our aim is not about getting some specific outcome – the real answer is no matter what happens – He’s got this. We know that He will WIN whatever happens!! He already won 2,000+ years ago! The wisest course is to surrender every bit of the trouble, and hold onto WHO HE IS.

At the same time, the Holy Spirit is using that sword to separate us away from the thinking patterns we’ve formed in our lives – the things that have convinced us that things are never ever going to change. Our Father is always waiting for our cry of help, no matter how feeble that cry might seem to us. He is always with us to deliver us. If we are not delivered on the spot, then that means one of two things. The first is He knows that by stretching your faith, it will grow.

“Be assured that the testing of your faith [through experience] produces endurance [leading to spiritual maturity, and inner peace]. And let endurance have its perfect result and do a thorough work, so that you may be perfect and completely developed [in your faith], lacking in nothing.” James 1:3-4. This stretching of our faith produces the kind of endurance that will stand in any circumstances. No athlete can run a successful race if he does not build up his stamina. We need to learn from the Holy Spirit to use the difficult things as opportunities to build up our spiritual stamina. Meanwhile, inner peace is not too shabby, thank you Lord!

To get a test-i-mony sometimes you have to go through a test! None of us can avoid growing! That is why we need to seize every single opportunity to push through how we feel, then finish off the fight with the circumstances, and our feelings, by quietly waiting to see what He will do in our behalf.  Waiting is part of the Lord’s process. It renews our strength and helps us get a different view of what is going on. 

The second thing is that these places are where we get to be like David who knew, from experience, that God was going to back Him up. We must ‘taste and see that the Lord is good’ – for ourselves! … and stop just taking someone else’s word for it. Our biggest problem right now is this – in the past, this life has loomed larger than our experiences with our God’s Grace and Mercy. We’ve been babies expecting someone to pick us up and soothe us … but right here, right now we are learning to reverse this error. NOTHING IS BIGGER THAN GOD and as we yield to Him, we leave Him room to move. We want His will His way!

Sometimes we pray for deliverance from evil, but Father God is giving us an opportunity to grow, to go deeper. We need to be able to discern the times, even in our own lives. Even if we feel weak and helpless, you and I are on our way to victory!! God promises to renew our strength and … I am sooooo never going to get sick of saying this … “His strength is made PERFECT in our weakness.” WIN-WIN! 

As Christians if we stand still – we stop to fight the good fight in our head… We don’t have to run away… because our side already won. The greatest gift we can give the Lord is our availability, and satan wants to scare us out of standing in our God-given place. Let your yes to Him be continuous. 👋🏻

P 2397 There is a WAY to walk.

/ DVH

“In light of all this, here’s what I want you to do. While I’m locked up here, a prisoner for the Master, I want you to get out there and walk—better yet, run!—on the road God called you to travel. I don’t want any of you sitting around on your hands. I don’t want anyone strolling off, down some path that goes nowhere. And mark that you do this with humility and discipline—not in fits and starts, but steadily, pouring yourselves out for each other in acts of love, alert at noticing differences and quick at mending fences.” Ephesians 4:1-3 MSG

Don’t these few verses in Ephesians really nail the issues facing us all? Firstly we need to find our road, then we walk … and then, well, I’m sorry Apostle Paul, but some of us aren’t UP to running … so we take the car! … But … good thought! 🚕 Meanwhile, if we happen to think what OUR pastor says is tough… reading the bible is revolutionary.

Hubby and I have to carry 8 chair raisers when we go on the road, because modern chairs seem to be made for three year olds to use as a climbing frame… Or for people with much younger knees. Not for older people whose knees are mostly ageing nicely. Older people have knees that go “Snap Crackle and Pop” like Rice bubbles. We carry these chair raisers because getting me out of low set modern furniture is like watching Captain Ahab try to drag Moby Dick out of the water. 🐋 It’s. Not. Pretty. 

We also carry heaps of pillows with us, because most places don’t have that many, and I currently need to sleep almost sitting up. I used to sleep on my right side until …  …🤕💥!!! In our travels over these 17 years, we have found all sorts of amazing, hard-as-a-rock beds! Piously, I sometimes remind myself that Jesus Himself slept by the road …then my evil twin self reminds me that He was 40 years younger than me at the time!  

We carry more water in our car than the local dam, because I can’t drink tap water without getting some bug or other. Yes, I use my faith, and yes I’ve tried drinking the tap water 🙄… a-n-d … previously I’ve gotten Giardia, as a bonus buy! So now we use avoidance, because Flagyl antibiotics ain’t fun, they create other worse things. Immune-compromised people have to learn to compromise, and God didn’t make no stupid people!

The first thing we do when we get to our destination, is pray and ask the Lord what He wants us to do for Him where we are. Amazingly, time and time again He tells us separately, what He wants us to do, and then when we share … it’s the same! That gets me every single time. 🙌

The manager of this establishment, a young lady, was delighted with the butterfly keychain we gave her. And hubby gave her two of his pictures – she also took bibles. We had a lovely conversation about her finding a guy like the one in hubby’s painting … the picture is above. Apparently this surfer appears to be her type. And as she said … you never know…?? Meanwhile, a surfer in a red T shirt? Good luck with that —-that’s like sticking a sign on saying ‘free shark bait.’

After that we settled in, and later, as we were having a shower … the toilet exploded. Well… it didn’t really explode … but it did a good job of trying! It started spraying and belching its contents all over the room, all over the floor and up the walls. I was in the shower at the time and for some reason … it must have been the Lord .. we both found this sight hilarious, as we took shelter and watched… Until we had a brain-wave and put down the toilet lid! The splatter hit the mirror four feet away!

The plumbers on the bobcat digger outside, had done something dumb to the plumbing. And our unit, and the one next to us, were affected. The poor manager was so upset because she had distinctly told them not to DO anything to the pipes. Fortunately… neither of them were surfers with long hair in a red T shirt. It seems there are slim pickings for cute intelligent guys in this town! 😱 Meanwhile that smell definitely lingers …

The way to walk with the Holy Spirit, is to take faith steps. And yes, sometimes things will test your faith.  These steps come one at a time. You say yes to going when He asks you – that’s step one. You pray and make plans, and wait for His input, that’s step two. You go prepared to bless people however He says – step three. And then stuff happens and you face some test or other – that’s step four. And, step five, you tell fear and grumpiness to go take a hike! And the last and final step is give thanks you weren’t sprayed with toilet water! There’s a WAY to walk.👋🏻

P 2349 Faith is to be generational..

/ DVH

“If your faith remains strong, even while surrounded by life’s difficulties, you will continue to experience the untold blessings of God! True happiness comes as you pass the test with faith, and receive the victorious crown of life promised to every lover of God!”

James 1:12 TPT.

Today, sadly, our society has become people of the immediate. We are addicted to instant answers, instant gratification, instant provision and instant success. When things don’t happen immediately it seems as if we are in danger of losing our faith. The bible doesn’t talk about stuff like that …it talks about eternity, eternal consequences.

Our list of priorities are askew because God isn’t first or last or even in the middle of our list. HE OFTEN ISN’T ON THAT LIST AT ALL. The truth is we all get the same amount of time in a day – it’s the one thing we have in common. And no matter how young or old we are, we will all run out of time eventually! We’ve forgotten that TIME is a gift, to be cherished and used wisely.

But those pesky day to day things press in on us, so we can easily get caught up in the immediate. So this kid has to go to football practice, and that one is off to gymnastics, and the other one is off doing heaven knows what with their mates. We, however, are breaking our necks to the point of exhaustion, because we also have to make sure we work, so we can pay the mortgage or the rent, plus the fees for the football and gymnastics, as well as provide the little darlings with the right clothes to go schlepping about with their mates! 

I think that we have passively taught our kids how to keep themselves busy and distracted, so successfully, it has become hard to get their attention for something really important. Like God’s will, and what He wants.  Instead they have been hardwired into indifference about other people’s pain, by their exposure to various types of media. 

Some times I want to ask people – what the heck did you want to have children for? … The experience?? If you did that then boy did you get gypped!! As I see it, our children are the seeds we sow into a future we may not see. Let’s hope we produce a crop of decent human beings that care about more than the ozone layer! Part of raising kids is to teach them how to manage their own thoughts, attitudes and emotions, while they are wading through this life’s share of difficulties. Instead our generation has chosen to protect them from reality. We’ve taught them that owning your own home and having a great holiday is all there is.

Sadly, most young people today probably won’t see their parents go to homeless shelters, to distribute food and clothing. We’ve protected them from the sad and difficult realities of this life. They don’t see us fast and pray either, or press into God to see what He wants us to do. They may see us plant trees, so we can all continue to breathe, or take stuff to the recycling depot – but have we taught them how to cope with this life’s everyday hardships? Have they seen us turn to God first? Do they watch us pray over things?

You can teach your family about faith and how it works, or you can SHOW THEM how your faith works, in front of their own eyes, when you help and care for others who are struggling. Today, real active, fruitful faith seems to come into the same category as sex – we’ve abrogated our own responsibility and left the work to someone else or handed them a book! Why should children’s church have the sole responsibility to teach your kids to give? We’ve learnt to ‘outsource’ everything – including learning about God. Does your family see you with a bible or facsimile in your hand? When is the last time you prayed with, or for your kid when they hit some snag or other at school?

Future generations must learn that troubles and hardship are normal in this imperfect world of ours. This life is always going to be difficult – it is full of people who all want to do their own thing – but because we all inhabit the same planet,  we are all doing our own thing in a limited space. Kids need to learn about faith more than they need to know how to get tickets to some pop concert or have a well-known brand of sneakers! We must remember that our character reflects our faith levels.

Life is not only difficult, people can be downright impossible, but they can also be instrumental in challenging and growing our faith – and all our kids need faith that is real.. “Your faith will be like gold that has been tested in a fire. And these trials will prove that your faith is worth much more than gold that can be destroyed.” 1 Peter 1:7. What we believe must be shared with the generations that are coming after us – it looks to me like they are going to need it! 👋🏻

P 2267 About worship.

/ DVH

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” This means what HE wants, trumps what I want, every single time. Romans 12:1. My body has been a real pest lately, it’s aching in all sorts of places, not to mention the place I know I hurt when I broke my upper arm. My thinking processes have also kind of wafted away into the ether, clouded by pain drugs. Just as an aside, taking drugs that fog your brain humbles you – trust me.

The above scripture from Romans talks about being ALIVE whilst you are being sacrificed. So far I am not liking my limited experience in this area very much! Worshipping God in this way is challenging, to say the least. And it seems to be catchy. Currently, my dear hubby hardly sits down, and as he is still recovering from surgery with his hand, we both bear a striking resemblance to a pair of muddle-headed wombats. Being a living sacrifice is not as romantic and golden, and gloriously other-worldly, as it’s cracked up to be. So what does all this have to do with worship? The point of being a living sacrifice is that you have lost control of not only what your destiny is, but what comes next.

And then I thought of something…if I’m dead, whilst I am still alive, then what happens to me NEXT is also not my responsibility, it’s His. So now I’m praying when some new unfounded joy turns up, that the Lord will please help me to discover some new revelation about Him. Meanwhile, if Jesus needs my bashed up body, then that’s OK too. At the moment I keep find new places I didn’t know hurt…bumping down the stairs frontwards will do that to ya. But now it isn’t hard at all to hand my body over to Jesus, cos I don’t feel all that precious about it any more …😂   …And I thought growing old was not fun.   

Back to my point … this particular process only hurts if you stop at partially dead, you have to go all the way to ALL dead. That’s when you don’t give a darn. Plus this kind of permanent worship is a series of decisions, sometimes made minute by minute. 

Nowhere in this blog today am I going to talk about lustily singing songs and waving of arms, dancing before the Lord – no smoke machines either! Instead, there’s a lot more, “Praise the Lord anyway … ow!” Worship is about giving Him the only thing I actually really have to give: ME. True worship means I show Him what He is worth to me. 

I have come to two conclusions: I can complain my head off and feel miserable and make everyone around me miserable, or I can present my body, such as it is, look at Him and say, “I have no idea how You are going to get me out of this, but You will, and I’ll get a testimony out of it while I’m at it.” People love testimonies, that’s because testimonies make this life sound easier. However smarter people than me have figured out that in order to have a testimony, first you have to have a test!

Worship is settling the matter of Who’s in charge here, and I found out that it’s NOT me! Don’t we all hate it when our tidy plans, neatly wrapped little lives start unravelling? But we can still worship by giving up our right to complain, whilst stuff like this is happening. Almighty God does not need us to tell Him how special He is, He’s got loads of beautiful beings around the throne doing it better than we ever could. But that tired, pained little voice crying out for the umpteenth time always turns His head. Read the book.

Somebody smarter than I once said, “Christians should be either coming out of trouble, crawling through trouble, or falling into it..”  At this stage if I could find ‘trouble’, I’d do the unthinkable – I’d throttle it! It’s funny how quickly we can go from “Praise you Jesus, welcome Holy Spirit, what a wonderful Father” to “Help! Still stuck Lord!” That’s because worship is about Him, not us. It always has been, it always will be. So if I want to truly worship it starts with “I surrender”, and “I give up,” and then rushes into the arms of a Saviour Who knows about pain and suffering, firsthand. Bye. 👋🏻

P 2236 What is your foundation like?

/ DVH

“Everyone who hears My teaching and applies it to his life can be compared to a wise man who built his house on an unshakable foundation.” Matthew 7:24 TPT.  Every now and then we need to look closely at the things we believe, and deliberately revise our foundations – the things we stand on. Sometimes we have accidentally added stuff into that foundation that will not bear the weight of what is to come. We need the Word of God itself and what Jesus Christ intentionally did for us – to be our firm foundation. It is way too easy to have added in some exciting new doctrine, or even something we were specifically taught years ago by somebody we admire. God’s word does not change – but fads, spiritually speaking – come and go.

We need what we stand on to be stable. So trouble should not change what we believe, nor should it steal from us, permanently. Our Heavenly Father, graciously gives us further revelations about what He has already said in the book, to enlarge what we already know and believe. But those things are not given to replace our true foundation … Christ and His complete work. However, revelation often extends what we believe into a wider place. (Isaiah 54:2) There is always room for more of Almighty God. 

Unfortunately, we can start building our lives on peripheral doctrines that are presented by teachers within the wider Body of Christ. These things can be very popular, from well-known teachers, or people who have large churches, plus already established ministries. It is a good thing to want to grow and develop spiritually in our own lives, but we need to take care what we devour. We eat from His book not just from someone’s else’s thoughts, no matter how appealing they are – or how many scriptures they have cobbled together to prove their point. 

Take this blog. My aim in writing this is to encourage the reader to learn to rely upon the Word of God – the bible, and the Holy Spirit – input from other believers is secondary. I would never suggest that anyone blindly follow me because, like everyone else I don’t know much – I definitely know I am not “done” yet! I could spend hundreds of lifetimes and still not absorb everything the Holy Spirit wants to teach me. His knowledge is simply that incredibly vast. The only Person Who is worth following slavishly is the Holy Spirit, and what He has said is … in the book. So we need to take the time to revise whatever is currently being taught, under His guidance. Life can be difficult, and some teaching seems to be a short cut to maturity. In my very limited experience there are no short cuts.

Just because the Lord has kissed gifts within any church, that does not mean the speakers or leaders are infallible. Any one of us can be sincerely wrong. This is why it is essential that we don’t just swallow things willy-nilly because we happen to like what is being said, or even if it seems to appeal to our hearts. We need to test out the spirits – (1 John 4:1-6). Many sincere people have been led astray simply because they followed a personality in lieu of Christ Himself. People are easier to follow because we can see them! 

For example during the Charismatic movement we rediscovered that God loves to heal us. That is true. At that time you couldn’t walk into some churches, without being told that it isn’t God’s will for us to be sick. I agree, the bible says so. However, that scripture is balanced out by many others including:  “…there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” … If any teaching about healing condemns us, then it is not firm enough to stand on. Conviction and condemnation are two very different things! And Christianity is not a competition to be won because of what we do or don’t believe. Whatever leads us into despair, that thing is making our foundation faulty. Instead give those thoughts to the Lord, and pray over them. Then study that subject in the bible for yourself until it becomes part of what you have personally absorbed – part of you.

We need to test the spirits, and balance is an important part of sound doctrine. (2 Timothy 2:15) So instead of blithely “liking” this person or “that church” let’s just fall in love, over and over again, with the bible and the Person Who wrote it.  The above scripture in Matthew 7 specifies that we need an unshakeable foundation – not just an appealing one. Christ’s life, death and resurrection are our unshakeable foundation. We need to build on top of that. So every now and then we need to go back and pull out anything that shakes our faith in Who He is and how good He is. If our faith is resting on whether some revelation or not is true or not – then we may need some spiritual renovations. In our humanity, we can desperately need something else, an answer, an idea, more than the Lord Himself. 

Anything that places itself above Jesus has to go. HE IS ALL WE WILL EVER NEED. 👋🏻