Theory

P 3319 Human beings are so fickle!

/ DVH

I was reading Psalm 74 yesterday. Some of the Psalms are almost a litany of complaints against the Lord, which seemed to be the Israelites’ automatic response to a lot of their immediate situations. Meanwhile I was captured by the attitude of the writers. These complaining attitudes also exist in Psalm 44, (74), 79, 80, 83 – and finally Psalm 89. That attitude is there throughout practically every book of the Old Testament. It led to tension and practically no trust! It seems to me that we often have no real knowledge of Who we are dealing with….

Almighty God Himself put the Israelite people where they were – He even gave them someone else’s land. (Read Abraham’s story) Meanwhile, He’s Almighty GOD so He can do that — after all He OWNS the earth!! … Just saying is all. Yesterday hubby gave a lovely aboriginal lady one of our coffee books, and she was talking about what she believes. The Lord asked me to write something at the beginning of the book we gave her. What He said to write really impressed me: “This is the great Southland of the Holy Spirit.” It’s always good to remember we own nothing. Ownership is an illusion.

Back to the Israelites, they wanted an easy road. Don’t we all? We try to figure out God’s ways and get all excited because we think we have worked out a way to get Him to do – this and that … And if we just do this — (pray lots, pray the right prayers, hold up the bible and remind Him of what He said in it, read the bible all the time, or join a worship group/intercessors group) — then He will do that. And we collect facts to back that idea up! Rots of ruck on that thought.

If we read the bits we don’t like much, we can discount that theory. The Israelite people saw Almighty God as SomeOne Who was in their lives to fix things. Like the temple;  or their enemies;  or this or that captivity;  or their unhappy lives;  or even their lack of fine cuisine! They seem to have no clue that God is G.O.D… unfortunately that also meant they had no real ongoing fear of the Lord! Eventually they made a huge list of rules to keep God happy and hoped that would do.

Father God is not a sugar-daddy, or our own personal assistant, or even Father Christmas! He is the Almighty all-knowing, ever-present, everlasting Father of us all and He owes us nothing! We are here to learn that we owe Him everything – including every single bit of our loyalty! It seems to me that this attitude of privilege is not just restricted to our current generations, it’s been an ongoing attitude, off and on, inside and outside the church for thousands of years.  

Bad things have been egregiously attributed to His Character. Like calling disasters “an act of God!” with absolutely no regard to our personal contributions to our own fate! The Lord has given us FREE WILL, and we often respond to Him like we would to the wrong order supplied by McDonald’s! “Lord, why haven’t You fixed this and that in my life? Don’t You care for me anymore?” … OR … my personal UN-favourite …”Isn’t my life hard enough?” What a whiny group of spoilt fuss-pots human beings can be! We throw blame around like confetti, nattily avoiding responsibility

It’s a testimony to the Lord’s great Grace that He doesn’t drown us all, like He drowned everybody but Noah and his family.  Now there’s a cautionary tale we seem to want to forget! But God made a promise and HE doesn’t break His promises. His promises REST on WHO HE IS not how He feels. Seven people followed Noah onto that ark… before the flood came. They did more than just receive the Word of the Lord, they acted on it.  I wonder what can He do with our undivided affection, attention, trust, obedience and loyalty?

Let’s not underestimate the value of our own faith. Somebody else may be watching you, while you are following HIM. Sadly, we can often be fickle and whimsical in our devotion to Jesus, turning it on and off like a tap. However, He is always there for us. Let’s remember that Almighty God has forever on His mind. Bye 👋.

P 3296 Choose to Love.

/ DVH

“Those who are loved by God, let His love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of Him. The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love. The light of God’s love shined within us when He sent His matchless Son into the world so that we might live through Him. This is love: He loved us long before we loved Him. It was His love, not ours. He proved it by sending His Son to be the pleasing sacrificial offering to take away our sins. Delightfully loved ones, if He loved us with such tremendous love, then “loving one another” should be our way of life! No one has ever gazed upon the fullness of God’s splendour. But if we love one another, God makes His permanent home in us, and we make our permanent home in Him, and His love is brought to its full expression in us.”1 John 4:7-12 TPT.

Father God’s Love is not a theory or a lovely idea, it is the reason you and I are still here. Love can be voluntarily learned under the Holy Spirit’s tutelage – and we are here to learn to love those who treat us terribly, ignore us, hate us, or speak against us. Why? This very process is what forms Christ within us. As we co-operate with the Holy Spirit and the Word of God – we will learn to recognise what His love looks like. This means we are getting to know Him and His Ways. His love is not like this world’s love. God’s love is not indulgence, it is our pathway into holiness. 

So when we respond badly to our circumstances, we need to repent and repair things. However, every time we choose to follow the Holy Spirit, and we use our faith to respond differently — the Spirit of the Living God transforms us from the inside OUT. Suddenly we find we are walking with the Lord and it is easy. It is important to recognise that we are wasting our time fighting for our rights – dead people don’t have rights! The bible tells us to “RECKON ourselves DEAD to sin and ALIVE to righteousness.” Romans 6:11. 

This means that the way we regard the situations life flings at us, is what really matters. We can do what we’ve always done,  smile politely and say ‘that’s OK’ … but we know it isn’t!  We can avoid the person hurting us. Or we can sit about feeling sorry for ourselves and throw a pity party with our friends … OR … we can take His word and do what Jesus would do. 

The Lord Jesus saw satan for what he is – he’s a deceiver. A big bag of whispers, wheedles, half-truths and lies. he will tell us we can’t possibly do what God wants because that means we will be giving in. Then that other person will win. But we have the power within us to yield to love, not because of our own self-effort, but because of what Christ died to give us. This life is not about who wins and who loses – it is about learning to love like Jesus does. 

Let’s spend a moment thinking about all the people you have trouble loving — and see those people as neon highlighters. They highlight what is really inside us. Actually, that’s often why we get mad at them! We can all appear sweet and caring … until somebody pokes the bear!  BTW, we need to encourage each other into doing good works, not into losing our tempers. Love is not mushy, self-serving, or simply getting along with someone who is difficult. Love is an ACTION word. It’s a verb not a noun.  A noun is the name of something, a verb is something we do. We may not FEEL any love, but we choose to DO what love would do. 

Love is our first responder attitude to someone else’s hatred, fear, or rebellion. We start with love, we continue in love (Hebrews 13:1);  and we finish with love. (Proverbs 17:17). Love is not meant to be the default setting on our personal radar, it is a way to live. We need to go to love asap, and stay with it. Why?? Because LOVE always wins, it cannot fail! (1 Corinthians 13:8). Just don’t touch that dial in the middle of whatever is going on! Keep trusting Jesus. The Holy Spirit can walk us through any place of temptation, we don’t have to be afraid of it. (Psalm 23).

We didn’t just receive God’s acceptance and forgiveness, for all our sins, we also received an inheritance. Read the gospels and pay particular attention to the bits Jesus says. Conquering seemingly impossible things, is what our inheritance looks like! It’s what His kingdom looks like. If we could be like Jesus in our own strength, then He would not have had to die for us. When Jesus died, He didn’t leave us money, because we don’t need money – God Himself promises to supply our needs! 

So tell Him what you need, and if you need to love someone, ask for it! Then step out and act in faith like Peter did when he walked on the water.  We inherited the Lord Jesus’ propensity and desire to love the unlovely! Love can and will conquer all – just don’t let go of it and drift off into thoughts of spite, bitterness or revenge.

The Holy Spirit has a way through every difficult situation we find ourselves in. Our biggest trap is we have already learnt this world’s responses. Some of our responses are even automatic, because we’ve honed defensive weapons to protect ourselves—and when we feel threatened, we go straight to them. We’ve been deceived by our enemy into thinking we must work at it and solve things. But God promises to help and protect us. So in order to experience His help, we will need to lay our defensive devices down, and remind ourselves that here and now – “…our God is our protection and with Him we are safe, He protects me like a shield.” (Psalm 18:2.) 

We can learn, with His help, how to ‘identify the things that so easily trip us up‘ (Hebrews 12:1) and instead pay attention, and throw our lives into living like Christ did. The reality is, when we resort to sin, we aren’t trusting Him to look after us, and that’s when we need more of His love. Study His love. See for yourself what God’s love looks like, then choose to love with His love instead. Our choices rule our lives. Bye for now. 👋

P 3288 Life attracts more life.

/ DVH

Here’s a dumb but logical thought:  dead things don’t move. The life that was in them, has been extinguished. You and I, will pass through death. However, it’s a doorway not a brick wall. We simply move on… to somewhere SO MUCH better! God’s Love for mankind is written down in BIG impactful words in John 3:16;  Romans 5:8: 1 John 4:16;  Romans 8:37-39. The thing about the Lord is this – what He says He means!

While we are on this earth, here and now, for some of us waking up alive is a faith statement we make every morning! And some bits of me are harder to wake up now. When I was younger I didn’t even think about moving my body — I just did it. Now I approach any kind of moving with a modicum of caution, and a boat-load of human history. However I am not about to wail on about how getting older means getting creakier! Instead, today, I want to talk about spiritually moving and how essential that is in our living faith. His life in us encourages others to believe. We were reborn spiritually, when the Holy Spirit first breathed His life into us.

So, right now, we have life in us the way this world understands it … and His new life in us … but many other people don’t understand the difference … yet. This world should be able to see that kind of life too! Here’s James, who talks at length about the way we are to live this new life we have been given. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”  James 1:23-25. One of the best ways I know to keep our faith a living faith, is to share it with someone else!

James is teaching us that this new life we now have must be expressed. It needs to be seen, and be conspicuous. This might be a good time to repent of getting angry at those people in your church who would preach salvation to a donkey, if God said to do it!  We might get angry with them because we are convicted by their actions! But then we feel guilty because we feel like we can’t do what they do. We may not be called to preach to people, but you and I were called to exhibit faith by our works, as well as our words. “Faith without works is dead!” (Also in James.) That’s dead dead – all dead, no sign of life – DEAD!

I have one of those nasty questions nobody likes to answer. If you or I were taken into a court of law could we be convicted, with clear evidence – of knowing and loving Jesus with all our heart, soul, mind and strength? Stephen was. (The book of Acts) His reward for his boldness was that he was able to see into heaven just before he got there!  The Lord does not ask us all to be Stephen. You get to be you, and I get to be me. But whoever we are, we can, and must both obey what the bible says: 

“We must quickly carry out the tasks assigned us by the One Who sent us. The night is coming, and then no one can work.” John 9:4. “For this reason He says, “Awake, sleeper, And arise from the dead, And Christ will shine [as dawn] upon you and give you light.” Ephesians 5:14. Here’s a song to ponder on, from a man who lived what he believed. His life was short, but fruitful, and his legacy continues to this day. Click here for some of Keith Green’s lyrics they will blow the dust and fluff out!  https://genius.com/Keith-green-asleep-in-the-light-lyrics

In the book of Matthew, chapter 25, the parable of the ten virgins shows us clearly that we need to be prepared for any eventuality. We can’t just slough off our responsibilities. We are His kids, so we can’t afford to do nothing. Jesus weeps over the millions of people who are falling off the cliff of this life into the next, and they don’t know about Him and what He did for us. Please don’t fool yourself with the idea that this kind of work is for someone else. Complete strangers ask me how I cope with illness in my life? I tell them I can’t, I have to lean on Jesus all the time!  I don’t have to have a clever answer to trick them into wanting to follow Him – I HAVE A TRUTHFUL ONE. They also ask hubby why we give away things to the poor, and he tells them that Jesus sent him!

We don’t have to convert or convince others, that’s the Holy Spirit’s job, our job is to speak, or act, or do something that shows them that our faith is not a theory!  ‘What if I get it wrong?’ Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and go again. Absolutely nothing enlivens our faith more than using it! Faith made those five  virgins provide more oil than it seemed like they needed at that time. Everybody fell asleep that night, but the ones that used their faith had provision for the delay. Moving is a sign of life, otherwise the church appears to be deader than a dodo. Who wants to go to a dead church? But His life in us attracts more life. Bye. 👋

P 3227 Choosing to live in the good.

/ DVH

“For we remember before our God and Father how you put your faith into practice, how your love motivates you to serve others, and how unrelenting is your hope-filled patience in our Lord Jesus Christ.” 1 Thessalonians 1:3 TPT.

Deliberately taking the time to remind ourselves to take to heart the good things, can help us to walk through  difficulties. Especially when the bad stuff just keeps on coming! Even if the bad seems to outweigh the good, when we turn our heads to see the blessings of God, our vision of His life in us expands. We start to see that what seems bad, can actually ‘work together for our good.’ That verse stops being theory and becomes real.

It is also useful to give the Lord permission to poke us in the heart when we are cranky with someone, and ask Him to remind us of the lovely things this person may have done for us. We also need to ask Him to show us what He sees as good. If He calls it good, it’s good, remember?? There are times when I get angry at someone and I can’t remember a good thing they ever did. But that’s because I’m angry with them! It’s about me not them! 

On the other hand, if we do love someone just because we are commanded to – sheer obedience – then we may miss out on the greater good. The greater good comes from loving others because we can see God’s goodness in them. That’s called spiritual sight! With people we don’t particularly like, that can take practice and spiritual eyes! Remember, we want to speak God’s language – He came here to learn ours. Even though in some people, this kind of goodness may be like the stuff that gets hidden way, wa-a-y back … at the back of the fridge, where it’s easily forgotten. My advice is to clean out the fridge regularly, you never know what you might find back there that’s good.

Let’s begin to see the Lord at work, for our own spiritual well-being. Pressing in helps! Critical, unhappy hearts misinterpret what they see. I’m talking about taking the time to notice, even if that good is infinitesimal in our eyes. It can still transform the way we look at the things that happen around us. It is easy to move on too quickly from appreciating someone’s else’s effort when they make it. It is a mistake to see kindness as something we deserve. We will always get kindness from the Lord, but other people don’t have to give it to us, no matter who the heck they are, or who WE are. Allowing cynicism to guide us is deadly. 

Christians expect so much from our leaders, without understanding that they are just human beings like us and they can make mistakes. The way we treat our companions when they have made a mistake or sinned, is an indication of our attitude toward redemption. It also shows us our level of kindness. Our job is to help people get rid of their earthly burdens, not find extra ones to tie on their backs just because they did something we don’t like! Here’s an interesting ‘heads up’ – the things we excuse in our own lives can really annoy us when someone else does it. Hmm, I think I’ve heard that before: “logs and specks’ wasn’t it??”

The subtext to this particular subject, kind of goes like this: “If I can make all this effort then why can’t you do it?”This kind of thinking is one of the best diagnosis of “running on works” I’ve seen. The next step from there is to make what you think a law in your own mind and then, bingo bongo, you suddenly have religion. That stuff is particularly poisonous to the things of the Spirit. One of the most useful things I have learnt, is that everyone else is not on the same learning curve I’m on. They serve God first, not me. Thank the Lord I am not in charge … imagine the mess!! 

Here’s a pretty obvious fact – we actually need to see and acknowledge the good, in order to remember it. There’s those spiritual eyes again. In my opinion we cannot afford to live this new life in Christ without them. Ask Him! But be prepared for your new eyes to work on you first when you look into the mirror of His Word! Meanwhile, let’s give the Lord permission to reveal ourselves to ourselves, otherwise we will just keep running around and around, with lots of hot angry air, but accomplishing nothing and going nowhere. 

The Lord has something that you can be, or do, that I can’t, and it will be memorable. You may have noticed when Jesus speaks to some people, He sees them through spiritual eyes, right into their character, even though He has never met them before. “Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward Him, and said of him, “Here is an Israelite indeed [a true descendant of Jacob], in whom there is no guile nor deceit…” John 1:47. We all need this kind of sight! In this modern age, we have worked much too hard on reading the bad in people – it’s a form of self-protection. It almost goes without saying that ‘our God is our protection and with HIM we are safe.’

Remembering, and noticing the good in others becomes a skill. We all need it. Have you ever heard someone prophesy over someone else and say things like: ‘You are a mighty man/woman of God.’ Really?? I wonder what their family thinks? At that moment God is speaking to what’s good right and profitable, and our minds need to dwell on those things too for our own spiritual health! Bye.👋

P 3215 Eternity starts now.

/ DVH

“Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in His eyes.” Romans 12:2 TPT.

What we think about affects how we handle our days, and so this transformation process is a progressive thing. The more we act on what we believe, the more our thoughts become tied into what the bible says. Eventually this process produces an automatic response in us, and in the end, transformation is seamless, and we don’t even notice it is happening – now we are too busy falling even more in love with Jesus. 

I hate to rain on anyone’s parade, but the biggest problem many people have is that when they read what the bible says, they agree with it, maybe even smile because it is so accurate …but THEN –– they don’t take the time to find out how to apply what they’ve read, into their everyday life. Application is the key that opens the door so we can participate in His kingdom. Let me put it this way, the language of the Lord’s kingdom is faith – we don’t need faith to do what we can already do! We need it so we can participate in the impossible!! And change can seem impossible.

OK, let’s look at some verses. The bible says: “Blessed are the poor in spirit …” Matthew 5:3. In order to ask for help you need to know that you need help! We must recognise that knowing we are poor in spirit is not a bad thing! Doing nothing about it, however, is not good. God says we are blessed when we live aware of this reality. Poverty of spirit looks like this: you can see what is required is beyond your own ability to change yourself. We need His help – this is a good time to remember that we already have it! Just don’t wait to feel like you have it. Step out in faith.

Now, I want to look at another scripture and it’s about holiness. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Matthew 5:8. This means we make a quality decision to choose to become aware of where we have not lived in purity of heart, and talk to the Lord about it. Then we repent and repair things. At the same time, we need to be real and aware of the kind of pressures we live under in today’s society — ghastly thoughts tormenting us don’t make us a bad Christian, it’s what we DO about the torment that matters. 

Part of transformation is the realisation that just because something exists in my life now, that does not mean God is not dealing with it. It also does not mean He likes it or wants it!  Timing is a key factor in God’s Ways. Let’s remember that Jesus never let what was going on around Him sway Him from His God-appointed ministry. I picked purity today to look at, because in today’s atmosphere it is impossible to remain pure without His help! 

Jesus’ devotion to what His Father wanted was His priority – so we also need to continue to assess our priorities. Because we follow Him, purity needs to be our priority too. Jesus answered His enemy’s remarks with God’s Word, because He already knew what the bible said. The Lord has the right word to give us when we are attacked too. However, we can quote scripture up one side of the hill and down the other. Remember, we will always need His help! We need a specific word from Him, for us, at that moment … ‘an apple of gold in a setting of silver. ‘

When our aim is to hear from God about whatever He wants from us, sometimes we will have to wait. He is not at our beck and call, we are here for Him. Our Father knows what stretching does for our faith. He will never postpone His answer to hurt us, but He does want to see growth in our character and hearts. Often all we want is a short cut that shows us the way through these learning processes quickly. Most of us are ‘allergic” to difficulties – not hardened to them. (See Isaiah 42:10) 

Let’s look at another scripture that I think ties in well with the one above: Psalm 24:24:4-5: “He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.”  So what do we ACT on? We need to watch what we say, and be careful to be truthful. 

Here’s another one: “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.”  Philippians 1:9. Loving others has to be a tangible, seeable, thing – not just a theory. And our knowledge of what is excellent also requires our participation but the bible has lots of suggestions! So we need to step away from things that will contaminate a pure life. 

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8. Discipline in our thinking helps, and that part is up to us. Our Wonderful Father does not just say, ‘don’t do this,’ —instead He says: “DO, DO THIS.” 

He is always preparing us, helping us to live in His Presence. He is not just interested in us living with Him in eternity, down the road when we are dead. ETERNITY STARTS NOW.  We will all be pure of heart in heaven because we will be changed to be like Him. It’s what we do TODAY that’s important.. Bye.👋

P 3130 The beginning of Wisdom.

/ DVH

“If you consider yourself to be wise and one who understands the ways of God, advertise it with a beautiful, fruitful life guided by wisdom’s gentleness. Never brag or boast about what you’ve done and you’ll prove that you’re truly wise.” James 3:13 TPT. “To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit,…”1 Corinthians 12:8. “Those who are wise will shine radiantly as the sky at midday. And those who turn many to the way of righteousness will shine brightly as stars for all eternity.” Daniel 12:3 TPT.“The beginning of wisdom is: Get [skilful and godly] wisdom [it is preeminent]! And with all your acquiring, get understanding [actively seek spiritual discernment, mature comprehension, and logical interpretation].” Proverbs 4:7.”The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Proverbs 9:10.

Proverbs shows us the importance of having the Lord’s wisdom, and when it says “fear’ it means reverence and awe. A deep respect for Our Holy righteous Father, puts us on the road to understanding His ways. Proverbs also states to get His wisdom you need to make it your first priority and realise you need it. Human resources and information feature a lot in this world we live in, accumulated knowledge is the big deal thing today. And of course, now we have the internet and Google! Not to mention Wikipedia. Ho hum.  

But the bible tells us that even though Godly wisdom is the thing to have, without understanding and mature comprehension we won’t know what to do with it. Boy, I could have saved myself a heap of angst if I had taken that concept seriously! I kept trying to teach my kids wisdom when they didn’t understand a thing I was saying, and most of the time they didn’t care to either. Wisdom has to be sought, and earthly knowledge is not the same as God’s wisdom.

God’s wisdom is prompted by the Holy Spirit. Kids learn to parrot off all kinds of stuff at school, but they have no idea what to do with it. They need spiritual application to make use of their knowledge. That’s why they need parents to help them to put theory into transformative actions. Knowledge without application looks great on a resume, but it won’t help you balance your budget!

Wisdom identifies what to do and a word of knowledge shows us how to do it. They are both God-given GIFTS—Proverbs makes this clear, so that means we can, and should ask for these gifts. “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” Matthew 13:43. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear.” Proverbs 25:11-13. Wisdom corrects our course and reveals the Holy Spirit within us to others.

Wisdom will give us ears to hear what Jesus is saying, when others can’t even hear Him. It is like a spiritual hearing aid – it takes the unclear and makes it clear. In Matthew, did you get the subtle reference to choice? If you have spiritual hearing …then make sure you use it! These spiritual gifts diagnose an anticipated outcome and wisdom knows the right way to go about it. Remember, Almighty God knows the beginning right through to the end. Knowledge identifies and wisdom applies.

We ALL need His wisdom. This world is too dark and too tricky to live our lives without it. Wisdom can see the lie hidden between two truths. At the same time, knowledge and insight will often know where God’s truth applies. When I need it, the Holy Spirit gives me part of a verse, but it is up to me to look it up and follow that thread. ‘Knowledge is about knowing facts, whereas wisdom is about having the insight and discernment to apply that knowledge correctly, often revealing what action to take or how to respond.’  Google.

I have found that wisdom means you know something that you cannot possibly know with your intellect. It is not cleverness that figures things out—this God-given gift is something that drops into our heart or mind, often unbidden. Before it happens you may not even be concentrating on the problem. Suddenly the answer is in front of you, and then His wisdom says: ‘Do it like this.” It helps us avoid error. 

Many times we were about to go somewhere and the Lord said to us: “Wait!” When it came to the time when we would have been elsewhere, much too far away to help — a text came through and we were asked to help someone, because an emergency situation had come up. The word of Wisdom was ‘wait.’ I have also found wisdom can help me discern when things are a bit ‘off.’ I’m pretty naive in my personality and so the Holy Spirit often kindly protects me with His Wisdom.

Recently somebody called us and used the conversation to  clone our voice. They asked for this and that, but my spirit rose up and said – quite violently – “Hang up and phone the bank.”  The person on my end of the phone was not thrilled, but they trust the Lord, so they politely hung up. And lo and behold, somebody had tried to access our funds. Because the Holy Spirit helped us, we were recompensed immediately. We changed our passwords on the same day! I found reading the bible asking the Holy Spirit to help me, led me to these three gifts. I began to know His voice. I went out and obeyed what He taught me at that time.

Don’t rush – wait for your Teacher. Learn to listen and you’ll grow patience along the way, and then do your best to obey – because Christians need HIS WISDOM. ‘Ask and keep on asking, go after it, you will find it!’ Bye. 👋

P 3056 Please don’t postpone participation.

/ DVH

“Learn what it means to do what is good by seeking righteousness and justice! Rescue the oppressed. Uphold the rights of the fatherless and defend the widow’s cause.” Isaiah 1:17 TPT.

It is easy to think some sort of great faith will fall on us if we pray enough. But as Isaiah says here – our faith is something we learn by participation – hence the word “learn.” Participation is more about personal action. Prayer and giving are good, but the church at large seems to avoid confronting difficult issues. We don’t like to mix with people who are ‘not like us.’ We like the theory, but doing something personally is a bridge too far.

I love the following scripture because it knocks the idea that only a certain type of person will be found by Jesus! It also shows how engaged and caring He is. “Then the master said to the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges and urge and constrain [them] to yield and come in, so that my house may be filled.” Luke 14:23. Elsewhere in Isaiah it mentions “…bring the homeless poor into your house…” I’ve found that superficial caring attitudes fall off under pressure. Maybe that’s because the people in the highways and byways won’t always be sweet people!

In some versions that scripture in Luke uses the word: “Compel…” Does that sound like a pretty gold-edge invitation that says something like: “Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth would like the pleasure of your company on this special occasion blah blah blah…”  Rhubarb. It seems to me a lot more like a couple of bouncers at a nightclub compelling disruptive participants to leave. It sounds like force.

There are people who are employed to take help the poor, infirm and needy, unfortunately most of the time, they are not paid enough to care, on top of helping! But choosing to walk in Jesus’ compassion definitely will improve our spiritual life and attitudes. From my own experience, I know that helping the poor puts my faith under the kind of pressure – where “nice guy” falls off v-e-r-y quickly. Suddenly I can see where all the leaks in my spiritual life are! Most Christians want to look like sweet people – but how much substance do we actually have? What if a homeless person wanted to camp outside your house?

Maybe the reason we like to stay within our comfort zones is that we will quite quickly find out who we really are! However, poor people are so desperate, they couldn’t give two ripe bananas about how other people feel. Instead they will bop you on the head and probably take the ripe bananas!! Hubby once had someone threaten to slice him into bits because he told that person, politely that they couldn’t have what they wanted.

Here’s a fun story from the ark:  Many years ago, we worked with the homeless. It was exhausting, challenging and not a whole lot of happy happy joy joy. BTW, the word fun is not in the bible – JOY is in there though. Joy is supernatural, fun is quite transitory. Anyway … local warehouses and big businesses helped us out occasionally with our outreach, by giving us donated goods. Mostly outside the use-by date.

On this particular day someone had donated a large square pallet full of spray-on cooking oil. I distinctly remember thinking to myself that this stuff was probably not going to be all that useful to people who didn’t own a bed, let alone a frying pan!! Anyway, our lunch guests usually rushed through the doors immediately they were opened, because they were hungry. Most of them never had breakfast. Then our pastor would greet them and they’d line up ready for a hot meal. 

On this day, our guests had to pass a pallet that was chock full of a double layer of cans of spray-on oil. I looked away for a moment … and when I looked back … every single can was gone! Tada!! … And I never even heard a sound. Instead there was just one little plastic lid still wobbling away in the middle of the pallet! I laughed so hard. There was no sign of a can amongst our guests, or peeking out of anyone’s rucksack either.

Compelling people who are this desperate, into the kingdom, is not going to be a walk in the park.“Nice” just won’t cut it – we are going to need His compassion! At that time, we also had a regular guest who didn’t wash. It’s hard to wash when you have no home! I thought he also had Tourette syndrome. Well, between the cursing and swearing and smell, everyone else left him alone. None of our other guests would even sit with him at lunch time. We met that man again, years later at another church. He was in a nice suit, he no longer stank, and his language was fine. He even owned his own car! To top it all off, he was a deacon! 

We don’t know what God will do when we choose to love on people! Please don’t pass by any opportunity to participate with the poor, needy and infirm – you’ll find them on the highways and byways! They will expose your heart and probably break it … all at the same time! But you will definitely end up participating. Bye. 👋

P 3042 The real and the unreal.

/ DVH

As Christians we dare not live our lives in religion. We have been reborn to live permanently in the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection – together with all He died to give us. This attitude needs to be present, daily. The Holy Spirit will correct us with His eye on us, then we pray and then we yield. Living with a metaphor – a concept, a mere picture of the truth – means that we will find our metaphorical faith is tested a whole lot, because it does not have its roots in the reality of what Jesus already did!

At the same time, we cannot afford to have untested faith. Otherwise, how will we know whether what we believe is real or a theory? When tests come, and they will!…The first thing to do is check with Him that He is giving us an opportunity to practise what we preach. Then we prayerfully accept the Holy Spirit’s guidance and help, and go forward into doing or saying whatever it is from His point of view. If I haven’t got a clue – I make use of His reference book – the bible.

Cultivating a quiet spirit within, is essential. It can be difficult, but it is not impossible. I know the world around us is like a brass band at full volume, but living in the awareness of the stillness of His Presence will help us triumph over everything else that comes our way. Jesus lived this way – He was peaceful inside despite the outside circumstances. The difference between the real and the unreal, is easily diagnosed by its fruit – agitation or acceptance.

Likewise, giving up on people just because they are not responding to us the way we want them to, is self-centred. You and I don’t have the only way – Jesus Himself is the Way! What we need in awkward moments, is a word of knowledge, or a word of wisdom, or a revelation from our King about how we interact with that person. Here’s a helpful hint:  spiritual things don’t always come with a huge angel and a trumpet! His Voice inside us is so discreet, so gentle, we can miss it.  But there is a way to check out your own hearing— love knows how to be quiet and let the other person speak. Many times we are actually dealing with our own fears and insecurities and projecting them onto someone else. 

God loves them.Ask yourself: ‘why would I annoy or hurt someone GOD loves and expect it will be alright?’  He loves the world, remember? Personally, I would not like to have to explain to the Lord, why I thought brow-beating somebody else was a good plan. Jesus didn’t do it, and neither should we. Our aim is to respond with Grace, Love, Kindness and Peace, and those precious things are enough to keep us busy! Positive things can create teachable moments.

In John 20:11-18, it says:“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put Him.” At this,she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking He was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him. Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward Him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!”

Human beings can be so distracted and disturbed by our current circumstances, that we miss Him when He speaks to us  As you can see, from this scripture, Mary was absolutely overwhelmed by grief, and consequently she was unable to see the Lord when He was right in front of her! It is good to ask the Holy Spirit to keep us alert to whatever the Lord Jesus wants to say to us.  

The thing about Mary in this scripture, is that her faith was at an all-time low, and she didn’t expect to see Jesus again. He was dead and gone in her mind. And if He wasn’t in the tomb, then where could He possibly be? The unreality of the situation channelled her thoughts in a specific direction — to a human answer. Somebody must have done the unthinkable and stolen His body!

If I get bewildered or I am full of despair, then I stop and I refuse to move. After that I go back to the beginning and start to pray all over again. But if my thoughts are still as clear as mud, then I put everything down at His feet, and ask the Holy Spirit to take care of it – until I am led, by Him, back into clarity again. Hearing from God is our birthright, it is not a test. It takes faith, but every single one of us has been given the ability to hear our Shepherd. After all, we are His sheep, the people of His pasture!  

Let’s not underestimate the value of PAUSING. Pausing gives me a chance to catch up with what He is doing. It steadies my personal human reaction, and takes me into His space – where there is no panic, no timetables … only Him. Our faith has been carefully designed, by the Holy Spirit, to be active and real, every single day. If we find we are mistaken, then we need to prayerfully replace the unreal with the real. Bye. 🙏

P 2951 Grace is an overlooked GIFT.

/ DVH

First we forgive ……then we walk it out. Yeah. Forgiveness is a piece of cake … in theory! Living it out has terminal repercussions – you will have to die to self! Saying “I’m sorry” and “please forgive me” is hard. Especially when the other person is wrong. They hurt you, it was real, and right now, your heart is limping.

Saying we are sorry, without accompanying actions, is tokenism. It is not Grace – true Grace has the power of God in it. The point of entering into forgiveness with someone who has truly hurt you, is not just about them -Jesus made that incredibly clear. When we hold on to grudges against other people we are hurting ourselves. We need to introduce the possibility of restoration. Unrestricted Grace does that. Grace is the gift we give ourselves, as we give it to someone else. Meanwhile, people’s reactions change when animosity leaves the room.

We can spend so much time telling ourselves “we are right and that other person is wrong” and forget that we are ALL under the same banner of redemption. Reconciliation is what Jesus did when He took away the punishment for our sins, forever. He reconciled mankind to Himself. This means HE DOESN’T HOLD GRUDGES. He has chosen not to remember our sins, and clearly told us to treat each other the same way. 

If we pretend to forgive, or even withhold forgiveness for one reason or another, we are short-circuiting His heavenly transaction and the possibility of redemption is not complete. It is a process – it can take time – so we just keep pressing on. We need to tear up and throw away those carefully hidden lists we have against people who have deeply hurt us … sometimes over and over again. You know the enemy lies to us and tells us that those nasty little lists of someone else’s faults are protecting us. What a rort! Love doesn’t keep a list of wrongs. 

Unfortunately, it is incredibly easy nowadays to label those lists as “things I need to be careful about with So and So, or they will hurt me again.” Even if we hear ourselves thinking ‘they have done to me again,’ that means we forgot to throw away the original list! My advice is, tear the list up and burn it, but write PAID IN FULL, BY THE BLOOD OF CHRIST across it before you are done! In true forgiveness there is no AGAIN … Jesus doesn’t have an alternate book of life with things against US written in it!

He took His own blood and scrubbed our pages clean when we confessed our sins and asked Him to save us. Now all we have is a blank page, covered in His blood. Hallelujah! What’s more, when we confessed our sins to Him, plus other people, He took that list of our sins on Himself, and washed us clean with His Grace and His Word.

His Word is the greatest washing machine ever known to man! Even the sins we don’t know about at the time, are cleansed simply by digesting what the Scriptures say. His Word can wash out even the memory of wrong. We do this step by step, day by day…using our faith not our feelings.

Meanwhile, it is often likely that the other person will not change, because they may not be taking sin as seriously as we are! But we are now living in the freedom that comes from Grace … and they are not. So when the thought of whatever happened between you and that other person, pops up in your memory bank, take it captive. Find a scripture with His help and throw it all into the heavenly washing machine.

We no longer have to be suspicious of what that person says or does, because now we’ve handed our case over to our Lawyer, Jesus. That happened when we chose to enter into His Way of forgiving others. This means the Holy Spirit will fight for us, releasing His Grace to be quiet, or even genuinely kind, in those moments when we feel provoked by that other person.

However, forgiveness has nothing whatsoever to do with ACTING! Instead, it has everything to do with giving your active permission for the power of God to help you find your way through the enemy’s traps. We don’t just need His Grace, we must rely upon it – it is the power given to us by Christ to help us overcome.

And if the other person doesn’t change right away, their ignorance, or refusal cannot turn back the power of the Grace of God that has been released into their lives because of our decision to forgive them. Just don’t let any disappointment with the slowness of this process take it back in an off moment. NOW WE STAND. We’ve done everything we can and we stand still and watch what He will do.

We have chosen to apply what we know into our day-to-day lives in a concrete way. That’s how we digest it, it is what ‘walking it out’ – a day at a time, sometimes a minute at a time – means! Grace is an overlooked gift! Bye. ✞

Matthew 18:21,22.“Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”  Ephesians 2:8,9. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

P 2949 Only follow Jesus.

/ DVH

Feel free to show me one place in the bible where God ever blessed a theory. Yet in today’s Christianity – we follow people’s theories all over the place! That is the sin of the Israelites … they wanted a god they could understand and describe, and so they made a statue. At one time Almighty God allowed Himself to be resident within a box … but no box can contain Him.

The Universe cannot contain OUR GOD …  it is still expanding!! Almighty God is so generous to so many ordinary human beings. He gives one of His choice servants a revelation and we immediately embrace it, because brother or sister everybody-knows-their-name said so … and we know that they hear from God … so they must be right! Now we start following a teeny tiny little sliver of all the possible knowledge about Him, instead of the Great and Mighty God we serve. Could we please try to remember that Gideon ended up serving up an ephod and the Israelites worshipped that? We must stop making pronouncements about Him, and go back to wonder and amazement. 

People get so excited, we have bookstores full of things that our generous God has taught the authors. That’s why there are like 195 books on forgiveness, and most of what is in each one of them is different. When we catch a glimpse of Who He is, now we think we know how to describe Him! We are like blind men trying to describe an elephant, each of them from a different vantage point. Good luck with agreeing on that! The thing that we don’t seem to understand is that each of these precious revelations are just a splinter of Who He actually is. That splinter may be truth, but it is NOT all of WHO HE IS. 

Our God is eternal! It will take eternity to even just begin to understand Him. His character, His beauty, His glory…. sigh…When I think about Him I run out of words, really quickly. Language cannot contain Him. Maybe that’s why He gave us tongues in the first place! Because of His Grace, He has chosen to contain Who He is within a book. The bible. The bible is like a compendium, every word in it leads to even more revelation. It  is not just a book, instead it opens our eyes to Who He is – over and over again. The Holy Spirit once changed my life by highlighting the word “let.” 

We were reading the Word together one day and the Holy Spirit asked me:  “Why do you skip over the little words? The bible is not about speed reading. I’ve told you clearly in Matthew 4:4: “…Jesus replied, “It is written and forever remains written,‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by EVERY word that comes out of the mouth of God.” “Do you think everything God has ever said is recorded in His book? What about His conversations with Moses or Abraham or what He said to His dear Son Jesus, when They spent time together?”  

You know, that was the day I finally found some wisdom, and I shut my mouth and listened instead! I learnt that the bible is a trillion, billion, gazillion books, in just one paragraph! The Holy Spirit isn’t just wise – He IS Wisdom, Personified. Forget all the terribly clever men and women you’ve ever seen in writing or heard speaking — they can only tell you what they’ve seen… the things that He told them. I’d like to say that I saw Him as He looked at me when our conversation came to an end — but I didn’t see a Person – I saw nothing. But something inside me expanded, as He whispered: “BIGGER STILL…”

Trying to decipher God’s ways by reading all the books in a bookshop is like trying to empty all the oceans, a teaspoon at a time! Good luck with that! I’ve read the bible so many times I know some bits off by heart, yet I didn’t memorise them. They became part of me as I learnt to act on what it said. You can’t tell me God is not generous … I KNOW He is. However, I’m pretty much a dud at believing for healing, my worldly experiences have outweighed my faith so much that disappointment grabbed me by the throat and tried to drag me under. I don’t expect to stay there – my faith is in Him and I know He is a healer.

Our God is so good … “A broken reed He will not break [off] And a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish [He will not harm those who are weak and suffering]; He will faithfully bring forth justice.” Isaiah 42:3. My faith is right there, with Isaiah, in His Character. I know He’s good.

This is why I encourage people to not only read, or listen to what Jesus has said, in the bible, but to DO it. Even after the Lord Jesus left us, He kept on talking through Peter, John, Luke, Matthew, and Paul – so when I’m reading the Epistles I hear Him. Jesus’ advice to each one of us is this … and His own mother, Mary, said it: “Whatever He says to you, DO IT.” The subject or size of the miracle does not matter. This was the miracle of water into wine, something utterly irrelevant. That shows us that He will bend the rules for the ones He loves. It was not His time — but He did it anyway. 💕 

Studying the bible is not like studying science. First of all, we have our own Personal Tutor, and in the Gospels, we have God’s only Son as our human, physical example of how to walk with God Himself. Follow Jesus — most of the New Testament was written by the few men who did. Bye. 👋