Threatened

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 3002 Win, win.

/ DVH

There is one kind of work that we cannot avoid. It’s the work we need to do with ourselves, our responses to difficulties. We do not have to do this work alone, we have the Holy Spirit’s guidance and help. Unfortunately, the more we postpone surrendering our faults and foibles to the Lord, the more ingrained they will tend to become in our old nature. So we need to recognise those behaviours, and throw off the old way of thinking, and put on His new way of thinking instead. We must learn to put the deeds of our flesh to death – God won’t do that for us. He already provided a permanent solution!

“For if you live according to [the dictates of] the flesh, you will surely die. But if through the power of the [Holy] Spirit you are [habitually] putting to death (making extinct, deadening) the [evil] deeds prompted by the body, you shall [really and genuinely] live forever.” Romans 8:13.

When we realise that there is something, some attitude that does not fit in with the bible, and we need to change,  we need His help — that’s the best moment of true honest response. There are times we hope that the Lord hasn’t noticed those things, or hope they won’t matter, and so we continually choose to live with whatever it is. Hmmm… good luck with that idea!  The reason I know this is because I have tried to excuse some stuff and failed! If God brings it up, and we see it, that means it is the right time to deal with it.

We are often challenged because familiarity has a great appeal … especially if our attitude is just a bit off. But eventually, if we choose to keep after Jesus, even that useless lie wears off … and then those little things we have hidden away, start to leap out and niggle at us. Then someone says something that seems so pointed we feel like everybody else knows about our dumb attitude and that they are staring at it! Hopefully, that is the time we go on a little quest to find out what the Lord has got to say about these things. 

First of all we need to pray and acknowledge our sin — a lack of patience, long suffering, self-control etc. Then we go to His Word, and voluntarily start reading what He says, looking for answers. We are about to use our faith. Many times I have specifically researched about a subject that I’m concerned about in my own life, just to see what Jesus has to say about it. But there are other times I continue to read wherever I’ve been reading day by day, and I have faith that I’m going to find the answer that I need, as I simply keep on reading! These are the times when what I need will just jump off the page and almost bite me. 

But at other times the Lord says to me: “Did you see that?” And I’m like .. “see what?” and He says: “Read it again.” And I’m like…”huh?” (I told you I’m dumb!) And He says:“You missed it, go back and read it again.” And then, most of the time I understand why He stopped me and told me to reread what I was reading! I get so excited I’d probably bail up the postman and tell him what the Lord just revealed to me.  I think people often can’t receive revelation, because they don’t persevere. Actually, sometimes things happen at the very moment you want to give up and ignore the whole thing.

The next step is obviously repentance, then finally, transformation. Transformation comes when I recognise where I am wrong or sinful and I ask Him to help me. I say things like: “You might have to put a big sign on this new thing you have shown me Lord, because I’m bound to forget, or get distracted, or miss it.”  Most of the time I’ve discovered that what I find can be something that’s been there for ages and I think that kind of behaviour is just ME. It’s often something I do to make other people ‘back off” when I feel threatened.

However, when the Lord puts His finger on something, there is enormous wisdom to be had, if you don’t excuse it or just pass it off as a one-time mistake. Instead pray over it and ask Him to show you how you can apply that scripture into your everyday life. The only other thing I can tell you about that, this is the place that often requires humility. And it can also require loads of personal honesty.

I need to be prepared to put aside my idea of my personality quirks, in favour of who the Bible says I am, and that can create a conflict. It is a very difficult thing to confront yourself and realise that you have been indulging something inside you that God would describe as ‘not good.’ Nobody grows through concept and principle, we grow through humility and application.“How does this apply to me?”

The only other thing I want to mention that may be relevant — is this — in order to change the habits of a lifetime I may have to confront whatever behaviour He has indicated, a number of times, and take the same stand each time. I have become increasingly aware that the most wonderful thing about change, is that Holy Spirit is always with us, helping us, and so we end up with a testimony! Suddenly a new world opens up in front of us, many times on the back of that very transformation, because the Lord has very generously given us fresh revelation. 

If any verse of scripture leaves you questioning whether you need to do something about it  or not, my advice is to err on the side of caution and pray over it anyway. When sin is dealt with there is no shame, except the kind of shame that bumps into our pride. Win, win. 👋 Bye.