The Word of God

P 3494 Start from the right place — His Grace.

/ DVH

“Even if the mountains were to crumble and the hills disappear, My heart of steadfast, faithful love will never leave you, and My covenant of peace with you will never be shaken,” says YAHWEH, Whose love and compassion will never give up on you.” Isaiah 54:10 TPT. God’s love is not limited … but our time here is.

“Do not yield to fear, for I am always near. Never turn your gaze from Me, for I am your faithful God. I will infuse you with My strength and help you in every situation. I will hold you firmly with My victorious right hand.’” Isaiah 41:10 TPT. He will help us to flow in His Grace.

“Don’t be obsessed with money but live content with what you have, for you always have God’s Presence. For hasn’t He promised you, “I will never leave you, never! And I will not loosen my grip on your life!” So we can say with great confidence: “I know the Lord is for me and I will never be afraid of what people may do to me!”” Hebrews 13:5-6 TPT.

Aren’t these scriptures great? If we choose to read the Word of God like a love letter, which has been made complete with loving personal instructions, we can be utterly blessed by it. Loving eyes see far more than scared, nervous ones … … or even constantly distracted ones! Distraction is a big deal today. It is no longer strange to see people flick flick flicking their phones trying to find something that interests them. If we take that attitude over into reading the bible, we will get bored quickly. Even the language used in it will defeat us.  

Let’s choose to start from His Grace, and never lose the kind of gratitude that acknowledges we are nothing without Him, because He is everything to us. Religion can often be part-time — but GRACE cannot. Grace is a living thing that accomplishes far more than we can ever imagine. Let’s choose to see His Grace like the tide, flowing in and out. It flows in to us, and with our permission, back out toward others. That tide is lovingly relentless in it’s quest to saturate human beings with the kind of loving Grace that bears all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

There are times when I can get pretty snarkey if someone pinches a parking spot, or pushes ahead in a queue! That kind of response started in the garden and flowed out onto Cain and Able. It’s sin. The truth is, my negative response to someone else’s thoughtlessness is sin. It shows that I still don’t understand that God’s Grace goes where it wants to go — it is not hindered, or restricted by my prejudices. No matter how many verses of scripture we can find to prove our point! Walking in Grace is facilitated by walking in His love, and we can have it all! 

Let’s daily, minute by minute, buy up the days, because our time on earth is finite and precious. And let’s choose to be obedient, pushing aside our reluctance to engage with strangers, or even family members. Grace flows beautifully when we make God choices. We can stop up that God-given flow with revenge, indifference, anger and unbelief … not to mention guilt. Entering into it is so simple – we simply stop thinking about our lives as our own, and start living them for Him. That is not just for the few keen ‘spiritual’ people who seem to find it easier than we do.. It’s for all of us. 

Father God will never give up on us, but we can short-circuit our progress in our life of faith by believing our sin is greater than His sacrifice. Or we can tell ourselves that we simply must say thus and thus, otherwise that other person will never get the point. That kind of vigilante attitude is not the way the Lord wants us to operate. That person who irritates us, is the vehicle we step into and discover how far short we are from Jesus, God’s glorious ideal. That person is our friend because they show us what is truly inside us. Let their attitudes be their problem. We just need to keep following Jesus, listening to Him, obeying Him.

He sent out His disciples to heal the sick and raise the dead and preach the good news that God’s kingdom had arrived. It was good news — not a list of everyone else’s sins. I suggest we use the energy that is needed to maintain anger and disappointment to propel us forward into giving away God’s Grace. It’s our job. We take that Grace in and then we pass on all the forgiveness, acceptance and love we’ve received from Him, to others. Please be encouraged, this is a learned skill!

We don’t have to love someone’s behaviour to love them. God loves us, and our behaviour stinks sometimes! Jesus saw beyond the sin to the trapped person who needed an opportunity to get free from it. Sin is a prison. It won’t let you think about anything else, whether it is your sin or their sin, it just rumbles about inside like concrete in a concrete truck. However, the Holy Spirit can soften our hard hearts when we ask for His help. That other person’s heart isn’t our business.

Other people’s sins can trap us into a cycle that seems never-ending. That’s why Grace is needed. Grace, by it’s nature is not earned or deserved. But it blossoms and creates new life when it is given to someone who doesn’t deserve it, as we use our faith. However, if WE keep reacting the same way, we are continually going to get the same annoying response! Grace changes ME first, and it opens the door to God’s Way of thinking. Grace keeps silent when it has a LOT to say.

I urge you, don’t keep what you have been freely given bottled up inside, give it away. Let’s start from the right place, releasing His Grace to those who don’t deserve it anymore than we did. Bye. 👋

P 3486 Jesus is the gift that keeps on giving.

/ DVH

One of the biggest mistakes we can make today, is to allow our own thinking to justify us … instead we need to ask the Lord to help us to see our situations with His kind of clarity. As I see it, Christians seem to vacillate between: “Oh, I am such a bad person” … OR … “I’m trying, I’m doing my best!” That last one sounds like a great answer… but the truth is –  why would we try and try to do our best, when Jesus’ best is available to us? That’s just nuts! 

But as we walk with Him, listening to Him, on purpose — we will discover a whole other way to live. Let’s acknowledge that we might make mistakes— but we should never plan to misuse His Grace. Walking with Him is the entire focus of walking on the narrow way – He is the narrow way. We enter into His kingdom … the one we are told to enter into first! Meanwhile, repentance hasn’t fallen out of the book, it is still there, Jesus Himself taught about it. So is repairing any damage we may do to others. Denial is also a foolish way to try to live a life built on GRACE. It’s the truth that sets us free.

Otherwise we can end up spiritually, living like we have to clean our house in order to get ready for professional cleaners! Boy is that a waste of time, angst and energy. Why try to do the job yourself when it has already been done and paid for? This shows a distinct lack of faith in what Jesus has already done. Let’s get this straight once and forever OK? We are all sinful people. There is no worse sinful, or mostly good sinful people, who occasionally do the wrong thing. There’s just sinful! The people who captured the Lord’s attention were the ones who were prepared to go after Him, and admit their faults, then humble themselves. 

That woman who crawled into a dinner party to wash Jesus’ feet with her tears etc. most likely crawled past the men who had used her in the past! And the woman at the well ran back into the town that could easily have housed her previous four husbands in it! These women did not care what others said, they had found something worth more than position, or ego. Real life. Those Pharisees who turned up their noses and got legalistic with Jesus, had the personification of their rules right in front of them. Yet they yelled at Him for showing mercy because He healed the sick on the Sabbath.

However, the sinner on the cross next to the Lord, saw an opportunity and he took it. This opportunity is always ours to take. Life is short – live for Jesus right now, and keep on doing it day by day. This is an odd thing – the worst sinners often know how to repent better than we do. I sincerely exhort you, please don’t let your pride keep you from bonding with the One Who died to save you. Humbling ourselves helps us with true perspective. It hones our focus. It helps us take His … “…yoke upon us and learn from Him, for He is gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and we will find rest (relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for our souls.” Matthew 11:29. (Alterations mine.) 

Did you get that? Rest comes from being yoked with Jesus. Walking with Him at the same pace He is going, following His leadership. It doesn’t come from looking inside, it comes from looking at Him, and making adjustments with His help, wherever necessary. Looking inside only muddies the water. We can end up blaming others for our behaviour or endlessly berating ourselves. Neither of those things are profitable. However, the Word of God on the inside is designed to guide our daily thoughts. That’s what renewing our minds means. We exchange our POV for His POV!

The Lord made His participation in that process clear in John 12:49: “For I did not speak on My own, but the Father who sent Me commanded Me to say all that I have spoken …” And in John 5:19,20 we see that He had guidance in everything He heard and did. “Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all he does. Yes, and He will show Him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed.”

The church is living below the standard Christ Himself set and MET. He has already empowered each one of us to meet that standard. We simply need to totally depend upon the Holy Spirit to lead us. Press in, and remember, that our Lord is not a vending machine. Up until now, we’ve been following rules – not a Person! Now we follow Him, just like the disciples did.

He LIMITED HIMSELF so we can follow Him. Living and dying to self, like Jesus did, is possible. Many people have followed the Lord down that same pathway of dying to self and being resurrected into a new life — while they were still here on earth. Their testimonies to His Grace in action in their earthly lives, are filling up the praises of angels and saints in heaven. 

That’s what happens when you seek His kingdom first. He adds a whole lot of things to us as part of the package. He’s the glorious gift from God that keeps on giving and giving and giving. Hallelujah! Bye. 🙌.

P 3473 Have extra-fit faith!

/ DVH

“We can get so busy looking at the waves that we forget to look at Jesus!” My daughter said that to me the other day, and I thought it was so accurate. Having faith that works matters. Otherwise, when the roof falls in … and nowadays the roof can quite literally fall in on anyone … that’s when we hit despair and start spiralling down. Our faith resources can be depleted by everyday difficulties, and we become disappointed and disillusioned because our faith is not in God … it is in what He is supposed to supply.

That’s when those waves start looming and we start sinking – because we are looking in the wrong place. Our faith is not in walking on water, or getting whatever we need — our faith needs to be in Jesus’ ability and His willingness to help us. We can nearly drown if we don’t prayerfully assess how fit our faith is for the mountain we are facing, or if we try to do whatever it is without our eyes on Him.

We can totally miss what Father God wants to give us, when we take our eyes off Him. When Jesus said “COME!” — it was the whackiest idea any of the disciples had seen thus far. But Peter was so enamoured by the miracle of Jesus on the water … that he wanted to do it. Jesus could have said: “Your faith isn’t up to this Peter” — because it clearly wasn’t — and Peter and 11 other men would have missed out on seeing what faith in action does. IT TAKES A RISK. God won’t stop you or I from trying, just remember to ask Him if you are up to the answer to that prayer you keep on praying. If the answer is ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ then ask Him to help get you fit for it.

A number of years ago the Holy Spirit told me to learn to lean on Jesus and not on my own understanding. I think Peter failed because he knew more about the ways of the wind and the waves, than he knew about the power of God! It is so easy to be distracted by the things we think we already know. We end up making those things our yardstick and fail to remember that God’s ways are higher, more sure, more reliable than ours.

At one time, Jesus made wine out of water … BUT WE make wine out of a whole lot of effort! We can get so distracted as we think about how a miracle will help us, that we fail to realise that faith grows as you exercise it. Our faith may only be little (a mustard seed) – but it must be IN HIM, and not just in the answer to our prayer. Peter wanted to do what Jesus was doing to prove that it was really the Lord. “Lord, if it’s You,” Peter replied, “tell me to come to You on the water.” His faith was not engaged in God’s matters, it was engaged in proving something.

Our faith is designed to grow as we stretch it daily. We can’t live an ordinary life doing what we want, and expect to grow miracle-working faith! Our enemy will fool us into thinking we are failing in our faith, because some things don’t turn out the way we prayed they would. But the truth is, are we learning to lean on Him, or are we still independently minded? Will we trust God more the next time, or less? Human beings like to categorise things – God has a WAY, not just a category. We need to know His Ways.

Peter had faith. He climbed out of that boat … against years of personal knowledge and experience. I think He simply needed the Holy Spirit’s input to put his faith into action and keep it there. This man didn’t just take His eyes off Jesus, he transferred his faith to what he could see and what he already knew. The task was bigger than his faith, and his personal knowledge about where he was standing, overcame him.

Getting extra fit faith is not the same as spending a fortune on gym membership and regularly going there to build up your strength. That’s all about what you can do. It’s the wrong direction for eyes of faith. Eyes of faith look at Jesus not our puny muscles. Let’s look carefully at what He said and did: “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God ..” Romans 10:17. Our faith grows as we get to know Him through His Word.

We must stop trying to manoeuvre God into doing this and that, and become intimately acquainted with what He wants and what He doesn’t. The faith to move a mountain starts and is strengthened by knowing the One Who made that mountain, not by looking at bulldozers and explosives or how high, wide or deep that mountain is!

We learn to exercise our faith by living daily for Jesus. When things are easy, and the water of our lives is still and steady … OR when this life is riotous and the water looks like a washing machine in full cycle. When hard things happen, let’s pray – give it to the Lord and wait for further instructions. If that takes time, then we relinquish it and walk away, and leave it with Him. Safe in the knowledge that we are merely spectators, not the main event. 

Having extra fit faith means everything we do revolves around that faith. We hold nothing back because Jesus held nothing back. If Jesus wouldn’t do it, then we won’t do it either. Faith is the substance of Jesus Himself, kissing our prayers, as we choose to learn to daily trust Him with our whole life. Bye. 👋

P3448 Danger is present when we choose to love.

/ DVH

“For Yahweh is always good and ready to receive you. He’s so loving that it will amaze you— so kind that it will astound you! And He is famous for His faithfulness toward all. Everyone knows our God can be trusted, for He keeps His promises to every generation!” Psalms 100:5 TPT. The biggest temptation we will ever face is not about having a happy life – the biggest temptation we face, daily, is whether we choose to believe our GOD IS GOOD and FAITHFUL … or not.  Any other attitude is dangerous. This points to the very heart of Who our Father is. 

Now before we move an inch further, I want to say … The Lord is so faithful, loving and kind, He deserves every single bit of our thanks, praise and worship, forever. But when stuff happens around us, and to us, it can become so easy to doubt His goodness, faithfulness, etc. Doing that undermines our faith. Doubt yourself, your friends, your life, what you hear, your family, your circumstances, but do not ever doubt God’s goodness.

I know the concept of His kind of love is far above our understanding, but that’s the bit of the kite of God’s Grace we totally need to hold onto. I strongly urge you, don’t ever let go of Who He is – His goodness – no matter what is going on in your heart or around you. I’ve found that when I focus on what I think I need, my knowledge of His goodness toward me, fades away. Like that kite I mentioned, it climbs up so high, I can barely see what is written on it. God Himself has promised us grace, grace and more grace. (James 4:6).We will have it when we need it – ask.

This is why we read and soak in the bible. It daily reminds us of His loving kindness, which is so much better than this life can be. It is also very helpful to read the bible looking for descriptions of Who He is, How much He loves us, as well as the things that position our hearts to be in communion with Him. We were made for that. Let’s enjoy Him now, and appreciate His love now. In our hard times a sacrifice of praise is a worthy gift for our King.

However, there is always a danger for us to simply fit the Lord in, around the edges of our already busy days. Or we can take up our time with Him, with lists of prayer requests. But the bible tells us to … “Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise: be thankful unto Him, and bless His name.” Psalm 100:4. So much depends on our responses to His instructions, and I choose to treat those things as a to do list! I follow the verses looking for things to do, or things to say, or not to say -then I act on them. 

We already know that love, is an action word, not just a noun. God loved, so He gave. And Jesus laid down His life. He healed the sick. Raised the dead. He taught the truth. He lived to serve His Father’s will. All action words. Now we are alive, right here, right now, to do the same things He did. We choose to love our enemies and those who despitefully use us. We don’t love them because they are loveable, because that would be masochistic! We do it because Jesus Himself told us to treat people this way.

If we take our Heavenly Father and faith out of our own daily lives, we won’t have anymore power to overcome the things of this world, than the-people-who-don’t-know-Him yet. Why are we surprised when all kinds of people do terrible things? “Without God, (as in all of mankind!), none of us can do anything.” We need Him to lead us out of temptation, into loving those careless people around us who have no idea how to live in love, and it’s our job to be a witness for them.

The danger we face every single day is that we will read what He said, agree with it, and then DO nothing about it. That’s when our faith becomes dormant, because we only use it to ask for the things we think we need or want. I understand when desperate people pray for healing – I need healing too. I too have been in impossible relationships that nearly destroyed me. But if Jesus came to our house in Person, I would not say: ”Why was I not healed, or delivered, Lord?” I would put my face on the floor and worship Him, and all that other stuff would fade away.

The things I need to remember are things like these: “The righteous person may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all; …” Psalm 34:19. “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us. In Him we have placed our hope that He will yet again deliver us,..” 2 Corinthians 1:10. “We are hard pressed on all sides, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; …persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.” 2 Corinthians 4:8-9. This life is a blink. A hiccup in the passage of time, only made boring or heartbreaking by the way mankind approaches it!

As Christ’s followers, let’s learn to live with the possibility of danger and trouble landing on us, pressing up against our faces and hearts until we feel we are going to die … but we won’t. That’s when Jesus says to us:  “Now, you are ready to learn of ME!” So we pick up His yoke, and find true freedom. Feelings come and go, depending on whether we get what we want or not, but ‘The Word of our God stands forever.’ Isaiah 40:8.

“For we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about our trouble in [the west coast province of] Asia [Minor], how we were utterly weighed down, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life [itself].” 2 Corinthians 1:8. The Apostle Paul knew, first hand, how very dangerous choosing to love others can be. Bye. 👋.

P 3430 Choosing Him over me.  

/ DVH

“Beloved friends, what should be our proper response to God’s marvellous mercies? To surrender yourselves to God to be His sacred, LIVING sacrifices. And live in holiness, experiencing all that delights His heart. For this becomes your genuine expression of worship.” Romans 12:1 TPT. And the Amplified version: “Therefore I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies [dedicating all of yourselves, set apart] as a living sacrifice, holy and well-pleasing to God, which is your rational (logical, intelligent) act of worship.” It is the only intelligent, rational thing to do.

Singing, dancing, psalms, hymns all flow from that place of true surrender— where we daily choose to give God our all and then live that decision out, minute by minute. But what people often settle for as true worship, can be a happy exercise in cheering US up! God has angels that can sing more enthusiastically and joyfully than we can. He has beings we can’t even imagine, and their sole purpose is to fly around the throne proclaiming … “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Three choruses of “Lord I give you my heart” ain’t gunna cut it unless we go away and act like we sing.

Let’s look at Ephesians 5:19: “Speak out to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, offering praise with voices [and instruments] and making melody with all your heart to the Lord, …” Singing is a way to worship Him, but true worship begins with surrender. Listen to Jesus worshipping His Father by presenting His Body: “Saying, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but [always] Yours be done.”” Luke 22:42. And then Jesus allowed Himself to be manhandled and brutalised by thugs. Living for Jesus in everything we do and say, plus presenting our bodies as a living sacrifice is total and true worship. Let’s just remember that when we sing, we also get a benefit, we feel better! But, when we present our bodies without any reservations, we are truly worshipping Him.

If we only focus on our vocal participation in worship we have missed the best bit, which is … laying our lives willingly down for His sake, not just on Sunday morning, but every single hour of every single day. BTW, this is not something we can fudge. Father God knows our hearts, and He knows what our intentions are. How do I know that? Well … I’ve been tested on it. It doesn’t take that much trouble in my life to reduce my enthusiasm for His Ways. This is why we need the Word of God to slice between the way we think, and what we intend to do. I can’t speak for you, but I know I can say all sorts of stuff when I feel good! To truly worship Him, we need Him to enlighten us and reveal the things we hide from ourselves. Trouble does that beautifully.

However, because of His great mercy, wanting to do it, preparing to do it, is the same as doing it, in His eyes. Abraham was totally prepared to sacrifice Isaac – he raised the knife to kill his son on that altar. And the Lord said: “Stay your hand …” This is what our Father is like, He understands we are dust, however our faith needs to mature. The safest place in all the world is in the centre of God’s will. The thing we don’t like about that sentence is that the centre of His will can be a place we don’t want to go, because we know what is waiting for us there! We get to die. To choose His way above our own and leave behind our excuses. Let’s remember that He calls living like this ‘living sacrifices.’ Just like Jacob, we could walk away with a limp! 

Worship is about what it says in Song of Songs … “I am my Beloved’s [garden] and my Beloved is mine! He feeds among the lilies [which grow there].” It’s intimate, sacrificial, joy-filled and personal. Our wonderful Heavenly Father is so worthy of our total surrender and worship! Meanwhile, the centre of God’s will probably won’t be the centre of this world’s attention! Good thing to know.

HE planned for us to be here – right here, right now. For some people, who have faced years of rejection, you may need to write that down and stick it somewhere where you can read it, often. Almighty God not only accepts you, He wanted you so much He provided for you to be with Him forever, and it cost Him everything He held dear! I love a whole lot of people … but forever is a huge amount of time! HE is so good, He has provided us with the consistency of His ETERNAL love, in an inconsistent world. Our current world-view declares people are IN one day and OUT, later that afternoon.

The Lord doesn’t change, despite how inconsistent we are. Listen to what He says to the Israelites who cleared off and left Him! “I am God—yes, I Am. I haven’t changed. And because I haven’t changed, you, the descendants of Jacob, haven’t been destroyed. You have a long history of ignoring My commands. You haven’t done a thing I’ve told you. Return to Me so I can return to you,” says God-of-the-Angel-Armies.” Malachi 3:6,7. Because He is true to His own nature, He did not destroy them – He withdrew His Presence. What a tragic thought – to be asked to live in His Presence and chose to walk away like they did!

True worship is about us doing more than singing or saying we are living for Jesus, it’s choosing Him over me. Bye. 👋

P 3428 A soldier does what he is trained to do.

/ DVH

“Since Christ, though innocent, suffered in His flesh for you, now you also must be a prepared soldier, having the same mind-set, for whoever has died in his body is done with sin. So live the rest of your earthly life no longer concerned with human desires but consumed with what brings pleasure to God.” 1 Peter 4:1-2 TPT. These kinds of choices are part of our suffering for His sake. We deliberately choose to give up what we want to do, and we yield to what He sent us here to do. It’s a total change of focus. But we can’t live like this by ourselves – we are wrestling against principalities and powers, we need our Commander-in-chief leading us, giving us His Grace every step of the way.

This verse is a magnificent thought, but a terrifying one as well. It is like a spotlight showing up the places where what we think – is different from what we do. In other words, it is easy to say we do this stuff, but can we actually live it? My only answer is “yes” we can — simply because Jesus did it first … but … we cannot do it alone! We’ve been empowered, by Christ’s death into living this life a new way. After the Lord Jesus died, even the disciples wrangled with their feelings of loss, and yet they went back to what they knew … fishing! Human beings without the influence and leading of the Holy Spirit can be loveable, but dumb as a rock when it comes to spiritual things. Those things won’t fall on us, we must go after them. His grace will help us. 

When I was a young Christian, I noticed that there was a level of commitment in a few people that I didn’t seem to have. It was as if there were some sort of line in my mind that I would walk up to, then I’d look over into the other side of it and it all looked too hard for me. So then, I’d walk back to where I came from. That line was called — a total commitment to Christ. I wanted His life in me, but I wanted my own ideas for my life too. I wanted to  ‘make my own choices’ – to be a Christian when it suited me, and walk away when it didn’t. My perception of His benefits  was all about me, instead of Him. Maybe that’s why Psalm 103:2 tells us not to forget His benefits!

I had plenty of friends, rabbits and relations who were quite happy to explain to me that my ideas about Christianity were nice .. but surely I didn’t have to take the whole thing quite so seriously!  And that was the beginning of an odd period in my life where I did the hokey pokey. I put one foot over the line, then took it back, then the other foot  … if you have ever done the hokey pokey … you get it. In the end I became double-minded. I got to the stage where I finally agreed with others. that I should coast along, do nice things when I felt like it – yet I could still be angry with the people who were mean to me, because I couldn’t help it. After all they’d been truly awful and they should know better! I succumbed to ‘poor little old me!’ Self-pity will wreck our faith in a heart beat.

At the same time I was told I had a “virus,” year after year and a lot of people prayed for it to be healed. But it wasn’t healed … because it wasn’t actually a virus! It turned out I needed a liver transplant. Meanwhile, I was in every healing line I could get into, and yet I still got sicker. Then something else unthinkable happened, I was divorced. I knew what the bible said, and I knew what Jesus said … and yet it happened anyway. The ambition to die for Jesus’ sake, fell in the dirt, I couldn’t do it. If I stayed inside that marriage, I would die.

I totally knew I had broken ‘the rules.’ I loved Jesus, but trying harder became impossible, I was too ill. I knew nothing about walking by faith, not by sight. Even though I had carefully memorised the verse! I didn’t actually understand what the New Covenant meant, except in vague terms that definitely didn’t apply to me anymore – because now I thought I was doomed to hell. Folks, religion kills. It murders your faith and it will take your life. Put it down. I exhort everyone reading this to ask the Lord to teach you to walk by faith, otherwise our common enemy will use your circumstances against you.

Even after the transplant, they couldn’t tell me why my liver was so damaged. It just was! Eventually I learnt that a simple very common blood test would have diagnosed what was wrong with me. I didn’t drink alcohol etc. so the medical profession didn’t think to give me the blood test. However, God in His great mercy, didn’t let go of me, just because I let go of Him. He’s like that! This advice in 1 Peter 4 is so incredibly important. Living our lives for Jesus is not an alternate way … it is the only way. God has given us a totally new way to live, step by step, little by little … He calls us to fall in love with His goodness and follow Him. He paid dearly to give us His grace to do it.

I think sometimes, we’ve had our eyes fixed on the wrong application of His principles. In the following verse from Hebrews the Lord is telling us about HIMSELF – not how to get what we want from Him!  “But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for He that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” (11:6) We’ve used our faith for years hoping to make our lives more comfortable, telling ourselves God wants us to be healthy and happy. But it actually says … He rewards those who chase after Him and the result is … WE WILL PLEASE HIM … He doesn’t have to please us … He’s GOD!

Take my advice and decide to live your life as good soldier of Christ – don’t wander in and out like I did. Leave behind the ‘stuff’ you’ve picked up along the way. Make that choice. Bitterness, anxiety, and disappointment doesn’t belong in our brand new heart. Neither does lying, hating others, abusing or hurting people. Whatever your excuse is for staying the same – it’s a lie.

A good soldier does exactly what he is told to do, no more, no less. We have been given a wonderful Companion in our daily journeys, He knows how to strategically get us through our battles – don’t leave home without Him.  We need the Word of God, plus GRACE. Bye. 👋

P 3400 You clean fish after you’ve caught them!

/ DVH

In the church today we seem to have forgotten that WE are now the Holy Spirit’s temple. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit Who is within you, whom you have [received as a gift] from God, and that you are not your own [property]?” 1 Corinthians 6:19. Just because we can’t always feel Him, see Him, or hear Him, that doesn’t mean He is not with us. But it can mean we are not making Him welcome or walking with Him! Like I said a few days ago, we can still choose to tune Jesus out when it suits us, and then we cannot hear Him properly to serve Him. Sound familiar?

The Lord promised us that He would send the Holy Spirit back to us, and He did. Now we are no longer our own “… for God bought you with a high price. So you must honour God with your body.” 1 Corinthians 6:20… Now our lives are to be spent serving the Lord… He gave His life for us, and now we give up our lives serving Him. At the office, on the train, in school, at our house, wherever we are … now we are servants of the Most High God and we don’t get Mondays and Fridays off! Death to self is not just a Sunday way to think, it’s an all day every day, every minute of the day lifestyle. Whatever we do now, we do it with all our hearts as though we were doing it for Jesus Himself – because we are!

The consequence of our lack of understanding of our new life in Christ means we can end up trying to fit Jesus in around the way we used to live. Except for one fact, our old man died when we said yes to Jesus. At the same time there are Christian people right now, sincere precious saints, who are trying hard to serve God in their own strength. Sometimes they have the appearance of good or they fail secretly. Then they feel bad … and eventually they fail again. Where we are failing the worst is that we don’t understand, when He died, WE DIED. When we asked Jesus to save us we left our old lifestyle, our way of thinking being and doing behind us. Now we need to become best friends with the Holy Spirit. If He likes it, we like it. If He doesn’t then we don’t either. 

The more we apply the Word of God to this world’s injuries, and sinful activities in our lives, the more power we will have to follow Him. We simply can’t do that in our own strength. Even if we succeed in producing the outward appearance, we can’t change our hearts. However, because of God’s great GRACE, we do not have to do this alone. The Holy Spirit has been given to us to help us – to remind us. To ‘buddy’ us through the process of putting down all our old ways and picking up God’s new ones. I want to warn you, in my experience, that is not an easy thing. Mainly because we’ve begun to think that we already know who we are, so change/transformation is like peeling off your skin inch by inch.

I said all that to say this:  on this last journey we met two very different people, but they both had one thing in common. They had been thoroughly rejected by the Body of Christ so much so they didn’t dare go to church, nor did they associate with Christians. So whatever transformation they are supposed to undergo, became null and void under the attacks of seemingly virtuous Christians. Gird up your loins you ain’t gunna like this one bit …

,,, One person was a homosexual trapped within a lifestyle that offered them a perverse form of love. For some desperate people the wrong kind of love is better than no love at all. This young man cried and sobbed when hubby was kind to him, because he was so used to being rejected by the church. We don’t have to approve of this person’s behaviour to love them. Often we reject people simply because we don’t know how to display the love of God with power, we are not displaying Who He is into the world around us! And yes, I’ve read the book, I know how the Lord feels about homosexual behaviour. “Some will be snatched from the fire.” Jude 1:23.

The second person is a divorced lady, whose father is a pastor.  She had been thrown out of her family, her church, her Christian friendships for getting a divorce.  Divorce is not contagious, people, its a choice, sometimes made under terrible pressure. Her entire family no longer speaks to her, or associates with her. The Holy Spirit loved both of these people. In order to set prisoners like these people free, the people who actually want to love Jesus but have no power to stop what they are doing …  the church must stop eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and stuff ourselves full, daily, with the fruit of the tree of LIFE!

We’ve become like the Pharisees etc. We keep rejecting the lepers and the so-called unclean ones, but our churches are the only place ANYONE can get clean. People come to church to get clean! We need the power of the Risen, Resurrected Christ to help them. We were all sinners, every single one of us. We must stop judging the people who seemingly have HUGE sins against our supposed little ones. And start having compassion on those people who are trapped by satan’s lies telling them: ‘that this is who they are, and they can’t be any other way.’ 

None of us know who we really are, or what we are capable of doing until we are tested. I found that out the hard way. Read the book and take particular note of the things you want to gloss over. Have you ever wished someone dead? Have you ever looked at someone else’s spouse, family, house or job and wished you had them? Have you ever put Almighty God on a shelf because you were busy and asked Him to “please wait over there?”  Have you ever lied to make things easier?

It’s time to display the works of God through love and deliverance, not judgment and avoidance. We only get to clean the ‘fish’ after we’ve caught them – because then they will know for themselves, they are unclean. We didn’t know we were unclean until the Lord’s purity began to work on us. It’s called conviction. Bye. 👋

P3385 Don’t let fear knock you out of the ring.

/ DVH

“So we can confidently say,“The Lord is my Helper, I will not fear, what can man do to me?” Hebrews 13:6. That’s one of those rhetorical questions nobody likes. That’s probably because most of us could give quite a list of stuff man can do to us. But I wonder if we know, just as thoroughly, how much God has done for us, right here, right now? Time for revision. 

This verse tells us, He didn’t just save us, He also enables us. “And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” 2 Corinthians 9:8. Notice the predominant word “all.” Now let’s look at 1 John 4:18 it says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear involves punishment. The one who fears has not been perfected in love.” 

Begin by revising how much God’s perfect love has given you, personally. Yes, He saved you, and yes, He has helped you – thank you Lord! But there’s more … read the bible. Go through your journals. A journal can help you revise what He has already done for you spiritually, physically, and mentally. After all that revision – go and find someone who needs His love and love on them. The action of loving others uses faith, which releases more faith. Faith fights fear, so use yours. Go and spread the love He has already given you around. Start SINGING!! “Sing for joy to God our strength …“

Moving on to Psalm 55:22 MSG bible: “Pile your troubles on God’s shoulders, He’ll carry your load, He’ll help you out. He’ll never let good people topple into ruin. But you, God, will throw the others into a muddy bog, Cut the lifespan of assassins and traitors in half.” And we think video games are blood thirsty! The point is, God’s always with us even though we may not feel it. The bible says it, we believe it, and that settles it.

Actually, it is far more accurate to say: We’re with Him!  Don’t look at the size of the things coming against you, look at the  power of our God to get you through. Read and reread the book! Sometimes we are viewing this life through the wrong lenses. Let’s not borrow someone else’s glasses, let’s ask the Lord for HIS. His eyes see the things we don’t. (Ephesians 1:18)

2 Timothy 1:7 “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline.” What a way to identify the Holy Spirit!! Anything short of this verse means we are messing about in the wrong spirit. Never forget we are all in a battle, we live in enemy territory, and we don’t belong here.

Now let’s recap what our truth is: God is with us, and He will help us. We do not need to be afraid of someone else’s face. When I was little, and I did something my parent didn’t like, I would see ‘the unhappy face!’ However, our Father’s face always says: “I love you so much, and I am here for you. Let’s do this thing together.” He’s not just sending you out – He’s going with you!  The same God Who helped Abraham and the Lord Jesus is going with us.

We were not designed to carry burdens in this new life Jesus gave us. Part of that new life is freedom. Freedom means I can refuse to accept the weight of whatever is going on. I still get to fix whatever He tells me to do, but I am obedient, under His instructions, and the weight of what the Lord says I need to do, will not drown me.  I can stand still and see God Himself work on my behalf – I just have to learn to leave my clock behind. Our God doesn’t do timetables, and He does not fit in with ours. Instead, He does PERFECT TIMING. There’s a difference. 

If Father God did not give me a spirit of fear then what the heck am I doing with it? Why am I entertaining these thoughts? Jesus was teaching His disciples God’s Ways, in Luke 11:10, 11.“If your little boy asks for a serving of fish, do you scare him with a live snake on his plate? If your little girl asks for an egg, do you trick her with a spider? As bad as you are, you wouldn’t think of such a thing—you’re at least decent to your own children. And don’t you think the Father who conceived you in love will give the Holy Spirit when you ask Him?” 

Jesus is using these illustrations to demonstrate the fact that God is wa-a-y more loving than we are. Because our Father is like that, we can, and should, always expect loving help from Him, not trickery. Good outcomes. Trickery comes from the other guy. We will have to fight our feelings; they can come at you roaring, or even in insidious whispers, telling you God has left you and He doesn’t care.  Fear is a shadow on the wall of the reality of Christ IN us.

Let’s fight for what matters – it’s OUR peace, and Jesus paid dearly for us to have it. It’s called ‘renewing your mind.’ We have the Word of God to remind ourselves our side already won! We may live in a war zone – but Jesus already won this war. Don’t let the enemy knock you out of the ring. Bye 👋.                                                                             ”Dear Lord, I thank you that I can come to You always for any reason. I’m grateful that when I pray to You, You answer me. Help me to come to You at the beginning of my fears and anxieties instead of waiting until I can’t stand them anymore. The quicker I come to You the better. You want to free me from ALL my fears. Help me look to You for help all the time so that I can be radiant with Your joy. In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen.”

P 3299 fall in love with God’s word.

/ DVH

“When You speak to me, I devour every word. Your word brings me such boundless joy. The endless delight of my heart is in knowing that Your beautiful name is attached to me, O  Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies.” Jeremiah 15:16 TPT.                   “But those who embraced Him and took hold of His Name He gave authority to become the children of God!” John 1:12.

I treasure the people God put into my life who have taught me to love His Word. Their passion for the bible ignited a fire in my own heart that still burns to this day. The thing I have observed over the years is that if I get lax and do not treasure His Word regularly, even the bits I have kept close to my heart seem to melt away, quietly, unseen. Suddenly it seems I can’t remember even the things I knew by heart. 

The bible says: “I have hidden Your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You.” Psalm 119:11. God’s word treasured, will keep us from sin … the kind that is accidental, or done on purpose. His Word is our yardstick. Taking any verse out of context, is dangerous. Do I get it right all the time? … Nope! The only thing I can say for sure, is that I know the Holy Spirit is right every single time. Human beings, not-so-much. The bible itself says: the Word of God is like … “an apple of gold in a setting of silver.” 

Father God loves to speaks things into being. In other words, whatever He says to us is not only possible, it’s a true word for us. However, these words are a teeny glimpse into our future, not a signed certain certification. We are still responsible to prayerfully steward and centre that word we were given upon His written word and maintain our obedience. I often urge people to hide His Word in their heart …but then I say, ‘don’t start selling T-shirts, yet!’ I have sadly seen too many dear people wander off into lah-lah land thinking they had already attained what was said to them. Prophetic words are future-centred. They are something we nurture, not run with. 

However, I confess I dearly love it when people give me scriptures, because then I can put what was said into a context and pour over it with the Holy Spirit helping me. His Word is my joy. These precious words are the  things that are our Heavenly Father, our beautiful Saviour and the Holy Spirit are daily speaking personally to us.  Some days those words are desperately needed, simply because they contain so much comfort. God’s comfort is far bigger and more comprehensive, than the comfort of a friend or a relative. His words have power in them, so we need to receive them and prayerfully act on them. Lastly we are so blessed, we fall over ourselves thanking Him.

One word from God can change the way we view a situation – things can go from hopeless despair, to joy – just because the Lord said something about it. We are told to hide His Words in our heart, in Psalm 119, and hold tight to them. However, it is not our responsibility to help God make them come true. Rather they become our reference point as we move forward prayerfully, carefully. Many times, with other people supporting us. God’s Word is a map, leading us on, letting in little brilliant shards of His light, plus exposing new attitudes, and things to conquer, helping us to find a better version of ourselves. At the same time, there is always more of Him to know, and love.

Loving His word means we are treasuring Him, and because the Holy Spirit wrote it, we have a sure foundation we can stand on. However, it is essential we do more than believe what we are reading. Let’s read it actively looking for something to do, looking for the places where we can pray and ask Him to help us change an inner attitude or action. Please don’t excuse yourself from obedience. That is a fatal error, and we cannot afford to be sidetracked by things like this. We put our feet firmly on the road of obedience, and watch and see what He will do with that singularity of purpose. The power of God’s word to comfort us will wash over us as we simply read, but the power of transformation lies in doing what He says – and not just when it suits us!

We can easily think of giving our whole lives to Him, at an altar, or in a special time of fasting and prayer – but our demonstration of inward yielding needs to be worked out daily in our lives. Father God is looking for fruit, and you can’t get fruit from a picture in a book. We have to grow fruit, day by day – by watering, fertilising, weeding.  Loving His Word, immersing ourselves in it, helps us to see what He wants, and then that Word provides the impetus for us to go ahead and act on it. 

We also have Jesus’ Name and we have been given authority to use it for other people’s good. When we pray in His Name, we are not just using some formula to ensure that God will pay attention to what we are praying —we use His Name because we understand the power of that Name. Heaven and earth bow to His Name!  After we have allowed His power to work IN us, then we will experientially know that it truly sets people free, because it set us free. We use His Name because we know Him, and He knows us. 

Acts 19:15: “And the evil spirit answered and said, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”   We are on a journey to intimately know the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. When we use the Name of Jesus with the same authority His disciples did, we are expressing deference toward Him.  Lastly, falling in love with God’s Word means we know who we are and Who our God is. Acts:17:28 says:  “For in Him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also His offspring.” Bye. 👋

P 3217 This book is alive!

/ DVH

“God has transmitted His very substance into every Scripture, for it is God-breathed. It will empower you by its instruction and correction, giving you the strength to take the right direction and lead you deeper into the path of godliness. Then you will be God’s servant, fully mature and perfectly prepared to fulfil any assignment God gives you.” 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit  and life.” John 6:63. ‘For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12.

Today’s blog is about the sort of expectation we can fall into, because we mistakenly believe God has to fit in with our agendas. Over the years my hubby has found that he can often interpret the meaning in other people’s dreams etc., it goes with his name. He explained to me yesterday, that people can sometimes have an attitude that the Lord is obligated to answer them. 

So here’s a slightly exaggerated illustration: “God has talked to me about this problem 10 times, in my dreams. And a stranger gave me some confirming verses. What do you think I should do?” Hubby cracked me up with this answer: “Ten times?!!! Go right now, this very minute, and do what He said! What do you want, an angel with a trumpet?!”  How many signposts do we need??

How many times does the Lord have to speak to us before we obey Him? I know that there is a kind of paralysing fear about stepping out into faith – it’s normal. We are scared of being wrong, and so the enemy attacks us. We think things like: ’But what if I do what the Lord says, and nothing happens, or, even worse … something BAD happens.’ That’s easily fixed! You say: ‘I’m so sorry Lord. Please forgive me for messing up. Would You help me with it? I got it wrong. Please will You redeem it?’ 

Then you repent to anyone else involved, and repair any relationships wherever it is necessary. Humility never killed anyone – it’s good for us! When you are done repenting to Him and others, and repairing relationships, then you give Him whatever it is, and leave the rest to Him. Go home, lie down, have a big cry and then blow your nose… then get up and get on with your life. 

People say: “If only I could just get a word from the Lord for my situation …” Let’s think about this, the New International Version contains approximately 728,000 words, the Amplified has 820,980 words. Choose any bible you like and go for it. Our God is so incredible His life inhabits every single word. It is not like reading Charles Dickens! Father God doesn’t do background, or character depictions, or scene descriptions – every single solitary word in His book has power in it.

And those words don’t have to be big incomprehensible words either. The Holy Spirit has taught me so much through just one little word “let.” Three letters that changed my life. “Let this mind be in you …” “Let us make every attempt to enter that rest …” “Let us love one another…” “Let us throw off everything that hinders us …” ‘Let us not become weary in doing good …”  You get it… … Trust me ‘let’ is a very BIG little word.

I’ve learnt many times that the Lord wasn’t doing some things, because I wasn’t giving Him permission to do it in whatever way suited Him! He had something for me to learn, and sometimes He had an even greater blessing if I just followed Him in faith. Here’s another made-up illustration: Let’s say I wanted a new car, but I found out through prayer and reading the word, that He wanted me to give my old car away first. So my prayer asking for help with a new car could remain unanswered, because I have an agenda. I am not yielding to Him, and praying for His Will His Way. 

We can’t be in charge of what we think we need, like we can give a chemist a prescription. But, spiritually speaking, we must choose to put God in charge of our needs – that way He gets all the glory! We live on His timetable, not our own. If you didn’t decide to die to self when you were baptised, or nobody told you that was what baptism is all about — then make a quality decision to do it now!  And ask for His help to live this way. You know, some of the Apostles made a living to support themselves, but they did not have two careers – they simply served God first, whatever they did. Putting the Lord first is a sensible response to His generosity toward us. And if things remain unclear, then ask for wisdom, and keep right on reading the bible. 

Please, don’t get stuck on ‘what hasn’t happened,’  move on to ‘what do you want me to do now, Lord?’ Some things happen as we are going along in the way the Lord leads us. “He(Abraham’s servant) said, “Blessed be the Lord, the God of my master Abraham, who has not denied His lovingkindness and His truth to my master. As for me, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brothers.” Genesis 24:27. This servant had no idea how to go about what His master Abraham told him to do. But God met him as he stepped out and tried to do what he was told. He was simply obedient.

“In the beginning the Living Expression was already there. And the Living Expression was with God, yet fully God. They were together—face-to-face, in the very beginning.” John 1:1. Jesus is God’s living expression of His Word, that’s how powerful God’s Word is. His book is alive. Bye. 👋

I have discovered this sweet little series by REAVO. This one seemed appropriate for today. (Two minutes 39 seconds)