Train

P 3514 Things we can do to grow our faith.

/ DVH


Proverbs 11:25 TPT: “Those who live to bless others will have blessings heaped upon them, and the one who pours out his life to pour out blessings will be saturated with favour.” AMP: “The generous man [is a source of blessing and] shall be prosperous and enriched, And he who waters will himself be watered [reaping the generosity he has sown].”

Good morning! Let’s get into today’s thought …Hubby and I have been, financially speaking, living by God’s grace and allowing that life of giving to develop our faith for many years. We have learnt that this verse in Proverbs 11, in any version, is an excellent guideline. Using our faith and finances for the Lord’s purposes has stretched our faith in all kinds of directions.

I am mentioning this today because living by faith seems to be a huge step, and while many Christians aim at going to heaven, not quite so many aim at using their faith, here and now! Our faith can be suitably stretched and instructed when it comes to finances. Everything we have been given is for sharing with others….

So here we go again, with the same thought in four different verses. Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38: “But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.” That verse is in the bible four times. Repetition means pay attention! I have said on a number of occasions that the most practical way to step up into living by faith is to give. Money helps us live, and giving by faith outside of our human limitations, as Jesus leads us, stretches our faith.

We’ve also met a number of quiet givers over the 20 or so years we’ve been travelling for Jesus and giving away bibles. They have taught us so much about giving! These brothers and sisters are rarely seen, they give in secret. Jesus loves that idea – it’s in Matthew 6:1-4. These undercover brothers and sisters support others and don’t care if they get recognition or not. They simply love to give and help, as they trust Jehovah Jireh to provide for them. The truth is hubby and I couldn’t possibly do what we do without givers … but this is not my reason for writing about this subject today. I am not looking for your money!

My point today is that giving … no matter how strapped for cash etc you are… is a fantastic learning curve when it comes to practising faith. Tithing is great …do it. The pastor needs to live somewhere, he kind of enjoys EATING … plus his family may need transportation. However, I’m talking about giving above the tithe, because it is a way to love others. Give sacrificially. It has helped our faith grow when we’ve given, even when we didn’t have any spare finances. Can I be honest? We’ve found that there never seems to be any spare money! When we give sacrificially our faith becomes costly, and giving provides a great opportunity to use it for other people’s good, and our faith to grow.

When I talk about this subject I have had all kinds of lovely people explain that they don’t live this way because they can’t give cheerfully. See 2 Corinthians 9:7. Boy what a cop out that is! My advice is that anyone can learn to whack a smile on their face, grit their teeth and give their money, time, and help to … the Lord Himself. ‘Whatsoever you do, do it as unto the Lord.‘ The people we help are not the end of the line, they are the means God uses to teach and train us. When we do things for them, we are doing it for Jesus.

Almighty God uses our finances to diagnose what is really important in our lives! Money, or even the lack of it, makes a terrible god. Our God is a generous God – we can’t out give Him. Father God fed ALL the Israelites supernaturally in the wilderness … not just some of them, or the ones that were more obedient. If we want to be like Him then we will also need to be a generous people, guided by the Holy Spirit, helping others.

Loads of lovely Christian people flunk this test. BTW, God tests us – it says so in James 1:2-4! He tests and disciplines us. Hebrews 12:5-6 and Proverbs 3:11-12. Yet another excruciatingly popular subject. Back to giving. Giving is like breathing air. It provides us with opportunities to grow our faith. If your faith is down in the dumps and you are longing for a breakthrough, start by blessing other people. When we do that we are acting like Jesus did in Mark 1:21-38. The Lord had little money, but this passage shows us what Jesus did with His time, over the course of just one day.

James 2:14-17 says this: “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”

Yeah, I know, bring that up! This is what James advises us to do to exercise our faith. Let’s not practice dead faith by doing nothing! James is giving us good advice. Faith needs to be exercised or it flattens out and stops moving. My last point today is this: “without faith it is impossible to please God,” see Hebrews 11:6. So cultivating faith is a great asset that will help us in other areas, including pleasing our Heavenly Father.

We exercise our faith when we believe that He is, and He is a rewarder of those who diligently … did ya get that? … diligently seek Him. It has to be worked at. Sharing our finances is one of the things you and I can do to grow our faith. Bye. 👋.

P3502 “Train up a child …”

/ DVH

After yesterday’s blog I thought I was done with this subject, but the words — “train up a child…” kept rolling about in my heart and mind. I already had something I had planned to write on but when the Lord gets insistent, it is up to me to listen — so here goes …

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when they are old they will not depart from it.”  It seems to me that those two words, should go, are a key for good parenting. I have three adult children who are now very different people. There are still a few things they have in common, and praise God for His Grace, their faith is one of those things! However they all express that faith differently. Now they have embraced personally, for themselves, the same values that they were taught as babies..

I noticed these two words – “should go” – many many years ago, and I realized that because each child is an individual, a precious gift from our Heavenly Father, so there is a way He wants them to go. And a parent’s job is to prayerfully discern what that way looks like and guide the child accordingly. Parents have been given the often unrecognised job of teaching children to respect Him, them, and others, and to live this life aware that their life has meaning – simply because Jesus gave it to them.

Parenting is not just about having children, it is also about raising them to respect the Lord’s will. We are responsible to teach them about these things toward Almighty God and others. They don’t just need to know you pray — they need to see and hear you pray. And it is the same with reading the bible. They need to see parents pour over God’s Word, struggle with it, and write things down. Parents cannot afford to give away their responsibility to teach them. That generic grey world that many of us have embraced regarding faith, is not FAITH.

People need to train to be a rocket scientist or a marine biologist, because realistically speaking, they will need help to achieve those goals. Parents need to actively and interactively teach their kids as they go about their normal lives. As we embrace His guidance, to the extent that His teaching is completely and honestly visible in our lives – we will have something solid to stand on. Children need to see as well as hear.

Meanwhile, there are no expert parents because nobody else has a child like yours! And it is your task to ask the Lord to show you the way you need to specifically teach that child, His ways. God’s ways give us a comprehensive overview on how to approach this life. His Love needs to be experienced as well as spoken about. The Lord taught me that each child has a destiny in Him, and its parents have a huge influence on the way this child regards itself, even when it becomes an adult.

Sin is a part of everyone’s DNA until Jesus transforms us. However, when His sacrifice is applied into our lives, that takes us out of this world’s kingdom and introduces us into God’s kingdom. We are then spiritually reborn. Children can do this from an early age, one of mine was four, and even as an adult they have never faltered in their faith.

Parents need to pray together and pray with their children allowing everyone to participate. One of the best things we can teach our children is to relate to, and rely upon God’s guidance. The other is to be honest with them, and tell them you also struggle with the things that happen. We are not looking to give them perfect faith – we want to give them living faith. If kids don’t understand we are in a war, they will be swamped by what this world spews all over them. As parents we hope to become the home plate they can always gladly return to, no matter what happens.

In those early days the Lord told me what to do and how. This was back in the days when children were smacked. I literally had to teach myself to raise my kids from the scriptures, because my own parent’s style had been oppressive, aggressive, and my view of parenting had been drastically skewed by those experiences. It was tempting to simply do my best to avoid the very clear mistakes my own parent had made. The Lord kindly straightened me out, by explaining that if I did that, I was actually living in judgment of what they had done. So I repented.

It has always been astonishing to me that the very words I hated as a kid could come out of my own mouth … sigh … but they did. So I voluntarily entered a phase of forgiveness toward my parent, as I learnt that a child’s hatred can be powerful. I was not outwardly disobedient on purpose, but back then I was a seething mess of anger, hurt, resentment and rebellion inside. Eventually I withdrew from the offending parent to punish them, because they hadn’t treated me the way I thought I needed to be treated. I had to turn around and go back, under His instructions.

As a child, I thought that parents automatically knew how to be parents, they always seemed so sure of their actions, as well as strong and powerful. But when I became a parent I quickly found out that they don’t! Deliberately avoiding previous hurtful mistakes simply leads to new and different ones. Instead that stance becomes a judgment on your own parents and their parenting style. Our best choice is to live in a place of giving away Grace.

Ask the Lord to reveal to you and your spouse which way He wants each and every child you have in your care, to go. And let’s always focus on the fact that Jesus provided for everyone’s sins once and for all. No matter what happens, praise God, there is always redemption. Thank you Jesus! Bye. 👋.

P3501 Setting the cadence.

/ DVH

Exhibit 1:”Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6. Yeah I know, that’s every parent’s favourite scripture. First of all I am going to refer you to Jesus, because I am pretty sure this is how He was parented, and secondly, I want to remind you that this verse is in the bible. I think the lack of application of verses like this one, is where a great deal of our civil unrest and angst comes from. We only seem to do the bits in the bible we like, and throw out the bits we don’t … Maybe, sometimes we think we are now more enlightened than God! Moving on to a hypothetical child …

Let’s call our mythical-everybody-knows-one-of-these-kids … Johnny. Please remember, little Johnny will grow up one day — and BIG Johnny will become a force to be reckoned with!  But for now he runs about nursery school, or kindergarten, pushing other kids over, pinching their crayons or stomping on whatever they are doing, and he causes chaos. The person in charge of the group takes Johnny to one side and explains that behaving like that is being a bully, and she says: “We do not bully others here do we Johnny?” Johnny could care less, because he knows full well she is powerless to stop him. This is all so tragic! Johnny has the possibility of a better self, but he is being steadily corrupted by his unredeemed self. He needs to be taught.

Exhibit 2. “Do not withhold discipline from the child; If you swat him with a reed-like rod [applied with godly wisdom], he will not die.” Proverbs 23:13. We know that the kindergarten teacher said what she said because: this is all she is legally allowed to do. She can’t discipline that kid because she could be charged with child abuse! Plus it is not part of her job to teach Johnny relationship skills. So little Johnny goes back to persecuting other children and refusing to come and do quieter things. The only thing that is going to stop little Johnny at this stage, is a horse tranquilliser! Eventually, a worn-out mummy comes to pick up her darling boy. She already knows exactly what he is like, she has two other kids and he makes the whole family’s life miserable. She can’t stop him either. If she smacks him she can go to jail.

So she smiles at the nursery teacher after ‘teacher’ explains that Johnny has not been on his best behaviour today and sighs. ”Yes,” his mummy says. “I guess Johnny is going to be a leader one day.” (Move over Attila the Hun!) We need to know what we are aiming at when we raise children. A truly great leader is a self-disciplined person. He knows how to lead others, but his ego is NOT the size of a planet. A bad leader subscribes to the theory: it’s my way or the highway. Personally, I think this is why we have so many megalomaniacs running our world. They only know how to give orders, they can’t take them! Remember the centurion with the seriously ill servant in Matthew 8:5-13?

The problem with our little mythical Johnny, is that he thinks running roughshod over the top of everyone else is his right, because he has the stronger personality. When he grows up if people bug him, he eliminates them. You won’t find the fruit of the Spirit hanging off his tree – his tree is full of bottles to ward off evil spirits. There is one of those people in the bible – his name was Saul. And get this … SAUL was the people’s choice! The descendants of those people went on to kill the Lord of all glory, because He saw right through their religious ways to the heart of the matter – which was a lack of personal submission to God Himself. Our children need to recognise our God-given protection and authority; and parents are obliged to exercise it. It is necessary to teach kids obedience.

Now, here’s my story. My middle child had her 2nd birthday, and stupidly … as only a mother would … I decided to ask all the little ones from her Sunday School class to come to a party. Most of them were really sweet. They just played, made a mess and smeared cake on each other. But this one kid ran about shoving all the other kids over, taking away whatever they had decided to eat, and thumping people. Then he did the unthinkable. He bit my eldest child, who was 4, on the arm … and left teethmarks!

Ya, don’t do that at my house and live! I did not think, or pray, or anything! I picked the little darling up by his arms and marched him into a spare bedroom and plopped him firmly on the bed – I freely admit I was quite fiercely spoken with him. I said: “We don’t do that here!” And added: “Don’t you dare move!” I turned around shut the door and marched back to the party. Then I put magic cream and a bandaid on my own little one’s arm – she was still wailing – and the party continued.

A while later the mums started turning up to collect their little ones. Then I saw his mother coming up the driveway, and I remembered him. Glancing about the room and I could see he was not there, so I went back to the bedroom where I had left him in and I opened the door … And lo and behold … he had not moved. He had merely tipped over sideways and gone to sleep. 🤣

I told his mother, what had happened and she laughed and dismissed it.“He’s always doing things like that,” she said. I was aghast, because after all, she’s the one in charge! Plus she knew what was going on, and had not done anything about it. I want to finish my little story by saying that being a parent has been vastly underestimated. Parents set guidelines in place for their children’s future lives. I urge you, if you are a parent, don’t let your children set the cadence, you do it. Bye. 👋 “Our children are the arrows we aim into the future.”

Genesis 18:19; Deuteronomy 6:6-9; Deuteronomy 11:19; Joel 1:3; Psalm 78:1-7; Psalm 103:13: Proverbs 3:12; Proverbs 1:8-9; Proverbs 20:7; Proverbs 29:17.

P 3432 Let’s pay attention to who He says I am. 

/ DVH

“Nor to give importance to or occupy themselves with legends (fables, myths) and endless genealogies, which foster and promote useless speculations and questionings rather than acceptance IN FAITH of GOD’S administration and the divine training that is in faith in that leaning of the entire human personality on God in absolute trust and confidence)—Whereas the object and purpose of our instruction and charge is love, which springs from a pure heart and a good (clear) conscience and sincere (unfeigned) faith.“ 

1 Timothy 1:4&5: Let’s look at this bit: “…the divine training that is in faith in that leaning of the entire human personality on God in absolute trust and confidence).” Love comes out of allowing God to train us in Christ’s Ways using our circumstances and we respond with our faith. Now let’s ask one of those pesky questions: what, or who do I lean on when life gets uncertain and unstable?

Today I want to encourage you to think about leaning your entire human personality on Him and, at the same time, aim toward trusting and having confidence in His Way of doing things. Leaning on Him means if He moves we fall over! This can be one of those great things that stays a theory. In our minds, we say: “Yes Lord!!” But when He asks us to actually ‘do good to those who despitefully use us’ … well, that’s a whole other ballgame. All that we are must lean on Him!

At the same time we can easily have a skewed opinion of what it looks like to be in ministry. We don’t have to be on a platform to be used – His grace works anywhere! But whatever we do, we need to have His fruit bursting out of it. His fruit is the proof that we are learning to love with His love – not just what we think. There needs to be an accompanying harvest to those theories in our lives. 

This is how faith expresses itself. Theories don’t change lives, actions do. I’ve been in places and situations that looked impossible, but Jesus saved us and helped us to get out. I’m not saying I liked it when that stuff happened, I’m saying that bad things give us opportunities to stand still and watch Father God do what He does best – love everyone, all at once! I’ve had to learn it is OK to be a person who doesn’t know everything. I know I can’t do anything in my own strength, it never goes the way I planned it – I found that out by figuratively falling on my head.

For instance:  the possibility of me learning to weight-lift, or run, skip, hop, kayak, or bicycle in a 100 kms marathon is now remote. Even suggesting that I jump out of a perfectly good aircraft (why would you!) — is well beyond my scope these days. That’s not laziness, btw, that’s just disability, age and a certain amount of respect for gravity! I watch people older than I am do these things and I don’t feel bad. I think: ‘I am stretching myself in a whole other direction … spiritually.‘ Trust me, that is just as intense and difficult as the physical stuff.

If I am going to train for something, then I want to train myself to walk in holiness and righteousness before the Lord. I already know anyone can have access to these things because Jesus gave us HIS righteousness etc – BUT! … those things can be easier said than done. Which is why we need to use our faith, especially as we live in everyday land! He really did give me these things and I need to act accordingly. If you are going to aim at something, aim high … … but I’m still not going to leap out of a plane, parachute or not!!

Here’s another verse. Hold onto your hat! “For the time being no discipline brings joy, but seems sad and painful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness [right standing with God and a lifestyle and attitude that seeks conformity to God’s will and purpose].” Hebrews 12:11. This is how we get righteousness, holiness, and conformity to what He wants. God’s love, the fruit of the Spirit, etc. these things have already been given to us. Done deal! Now we need to walk with Him and submit to the discipline those things will bring into our lives. Think of those things as being like my parcel at the post office. It’s already here within reach, all I need to do is go and claim it using my faith that the PO hasn’t lied to me. 

The Lord’s kind of discipline teaches us His Ways. We can read about those things in the book, but sooner or later we have to respond to them. That’s the discipline part. We pray, and then we do the very thing that seems alien to us. Sometimes it can even seem ill-advised! We turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, love those who won’t ever love us back, and obediently follow Jesus, and the path He took before us. Here’s a little clue that will help us on our journey. When we do things His Way, we leave our ways behind.  

We are not all the same. Your idea of love might not look like my idea of love, which can lead to conflict between us. Try asking your spouse or your kid what their idea of love looks like – it’s mind-blowing. But HIS LOVE is the standard, not mine or yours. Let’s aim at loving others with His Love. The bible clearly tells me what that love looks like in 1 Corinthians 13. And Colossians 3:14-17 tells me what I need to put on, in order to wear it. However, I have to start with my faith! It takes a great deal of faith to shut-up when you want to shred the person who is attacking you.

Let’s choose what Jesus bought for us at Calvary, and put those seemingly impossible qualities on, using our faith to do it. I step into WHO HE SAYS I AM. Final thought: How am I going to move mountains if I cannot change my behaviour and let Him transform my character? I need the Holy Spirit’s help! By the way, when the bible says trained by discipline, it isn’t a suggestion. Bye 👋. 

P 3231 Stepping out in faith.

/ DVH

All of us meet people that are here in our lives one day, and gone the next. Living for Jesus means that we need to live this life prepared to spin around, and change our plans in a heartbeat. For some people we meet, we could be their only Christian contact, so let’s be alert to His leading. Sometimes strangers are more prepared to listen than friends.

Here’s one example of why it is good to talk about Jesus to people you barely know. Up until the age of 25, to my knowledge I had not met a Christian who had the life of God in them. According to Google, who apparently knows everything (!?!) this means I had met between 10,000 – 30,000 people. And not one of them impressed me with their own living faith. Faith that showed. Nobody talked about Jesus personally. He seemed to be an out-of-reach deity that we had to answer to, one day. A woman I barely knew, told me Jesus was alive and He wanted to know me.

Since then, in all the years of loving and serving Him, I’ve met heaps of religious folk – and let’s be clear about it – they were all lovely people. People with principles. People who went to church weekly… but hardly any of them stood out as someone filled with the life of Christ! What I noticed was this, those people who did stand out, did what He told them to do. They lived the kind of life He would. Jesus wasn’t only their Saviour – He was their Lord! Sometimes we skip that ‘Lord” part when we invite people to come forward to the altar. We forget to tell them they are giving their lives away. Making that kind of choice clear takes this huge decision out of head knowledge, into heart knowledge. 

Anyway, I attended the lady’s church, and I did so with happy anticipation. From my perspective, these were the people who knew Him. They had known Him much longer than I had, and I couldn’t wait to hear their stories. Sigh. They looked at me like I was from Mars whenever I talked about how meeting Jesus had changed  my life. It seems to me that this kind of sleepiness, has slowly been overcoming many of us who are attending  church. We’ve ended up as passengers. People who got onto the train with the destination of heaven in mind, but they know nothing about running the train.

Fortunately, our Lord wants to take us all on a journey, moving what we learn from our heads, into our hearts. Otherwise we end up leaving things like witnessing to evangelists, or we settle for asking people to come with us to church. Jesus never once asked anyone to come to the synagogue with Him! He simply proclaimed God’s love was Good News. Sadly we often leave proclaiming the good news to the pastor… because that’s what he’s paid to do! …And yes, I have heard that said, and similar comments.. 

However, if no-one dares to sound the alarm, or we don’t care to listen, we will keep on doing the same old, same old, until we leave this world. Consistently expecting that someone else will do what we’ve all been asked to do. Signing up is one thing, going out watching and listening to Him, is entirely another.

The way to totally transform our lives is to live our lives His Way! That’s in the book. This one decision — the action of complete and utter surrendered obedience — plunges us into a place where we need to rely upon His strength, goodness, wisdom, and loving kindness, because we’ve learnt our own resources aren’t working. The Lord is kind, the Holy Spirit will take us gently through His learning processes. He has never asked me to do anything He did not prepare me to do beforehand. Let’s be clear, I don’t always like His lessons, but I have definitely come to appreciate what they do for me, inside! 

These situations don’t appear in my life with big signs on them that mark them as ‘lessons.’  Instead I’ve found that the action starts by deliberately making a choice to do something He asked me to do. Today, I thought I’d give some ideas from my own life. —  I’ve found I am so much more willing to do a hard thing, after the Lord has taught my heart to be obedient in the little things… Like not telling someone what I think of them, when I am annoyed to the point of anger. Or perhaps I feel I am to give away funds I could personally use. Or I read the scriptures – and one word, one phrase or one verse jumps out at me, then I pray and ask Him to show me how to put it into action. 

At the same time we need Him to help us to be alert to every contact we make – some people are only in our lives momentarily. Hubby and I have had countless opportunities to speak openly and honestly to people who were never going to be a permanent or even a temporary part of our lives. Ships passing in the night, some people would call it. We were once driving a long distance, delivering bibles, and we stopped, randomly – so we thought – at a service station, to break up our journey. We decided to have a hot drink and sat at a table outside. 

An older couple asked if they could join us. After a brief conversation, during which we explained we’ve delivered bibles all over Australia, they asked if it was possible for them to buy one from us. They had no idea about where or how to buy a bible. We happily gave them one, and some simple things to help them to read it themselves. After that… they went north and we continued going south. We arrived as they were leaving! But I believe that when we choose to yield to Him, God personally arranges our steps. 

The bible says… “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord …” Psalm 37:23. When we live like the verses we read are true – He makes them true in our lives. My own life is proof that incidental encounters can change lives! However, not everyone we meet is our God-appointed assignment. That’s why faith is required. Stepping out, even when it is not anticipated, can open all kinds of interesting doors. Bye. 👋

P 3165 Learning to be satisfied.

/ DVH

“I’m not telling you this because I’m in need, for I have learned to be satisfied in ANY circumstance. I know what it means to lack, and I know what it means to experience overwhelming abundance. For I’m trained in the secret of overcoming all things, whether in fullness or in hunger. And I find that the strength of Christ’s explosive power infuses me to conquer every difficulty.” Philippians 4:11-13 TPT.

Trouble can train us – if we will just choose to listen to Him and trust in Him. We cannot afford to waste our energy running about like headless chickens looking for an exit. May I suggest that we use our energy going after Jesus instead? He’s always the Answer! Let’s learn to recognise and accept the Lord’s correction and  discipline. That stuff isn’t always fun when it is happening, but it is sent to train us in righteousness, and peace, as well as leading us into a real, viable, lively fellowship with the Holy Spirit. His correction and discipline helps us sort out our motivations. People love to hear things from Him that they want to hear, but will we listen to what we don’t want to hear?

Today many human beings think correction and discipline are bad things – which is why we have decided that smacking children is a no-no! Unfortunately, now we are reaping the whirlwind …and so are the poor kids! I’m not talking about randomly whacking your kid simply because you had a bad day, and YOU are out of sorts. I am talking about the careful and thoughtful, considered hand-of-reason being applied to the seat of learning. Kids need to learn how to monitor themselves, under your loving supervision. And with some children, saying “stop” won’t do it! Life has penalties. If you pinch a car you go to jail. It is better to teach little Agnes or Angus how to restrain themselves, when they are small. However, I admit some do learn quicker than others!

Discipline when it is too strong, and it is done for the wrong reasons, can let the enemy in and have an adverse effect. Things like: “now you have ticked me off,” are not the right reason to whack your kid. That’s because at the bottom of that sort of discipline it isn’t about monitoring the kid, and leading them into making better choices. Instead, the reality is, you are trying to create a carefree, easier, happier environment for you! The point of discipline is to learn to monitor yourself – your own behaviour – with God’s help. So prayer needs to accompany discipline – pray with your child, teach them to repent. Model it in front of them. The bible is clear, discipline and correction are part of God’s love in our lives. They are His wisdom entering into our lives through our circumstances, lovingly exposing where the enemy of our souls can get at us. 

On that loving note, just to clarify another thing: God doesn’t make anyone sick. He does not and will not “send’ sickness to us to teach us something! However, He will take all that bad stuff and make it work together for our good, as we let Him do it! Bad things happen because satan is loose – he hates people. So if you blame yourself for illness, then you may have fallen right into satan’s cleverly laid trap. Our God loves to reason and interact with us in every aspect of our lives … He especially loves it when we talk with Him, personally. So we need to turn to His love and wisdom, and ask Him what this or that is all about, and always pray for healing! 

Whether we receive healing on the spot or not, is far less relevant than our ongoing attitude toward Him. We can’t afford to let a lack of healing stand in the way of real growth. Holiness has the smell of sacrifice on it. In the past when the Israelites wanted to restore their relationship with God, the Jewish people had to have a specific beast or bird killed, and then it was burnt — skin, feathers and all! If you have ever been to a tannery you will understand that it wasn’t the sweetest smelling BBQ in town! Let’s stop thinking that God only likes what WE like, otherwise we are shrinking Him down to our size — and that’s BAD.

If we choose to look at the Lord through the eyes of fear, we will find there is plenty of that to go around! In the Old Testament, there is the odd example of God smiting someone. But King Hezekiah once turned his face to a wall and prayed for deliverance from a fatal disease, and God heard his prayer and the king was given more time. Time to change his ways, perhaps? Let’s stop looking at prayer as a one-stop-shop and start looking at the Holy God we are talking to!! Maybe He has more than one thing going on at the time, and because we are mortal we simply don’t get it. 

I have learnt to be satisfied with praying about any situation, so I give it to the Lord, and then I leave it all with Him. This one action has created trust in me. Like I said: sometimes God is doing something else! After I have prayed, I walk away. And if I happen to get caught up in thoughts like: ‘what if’ or ‘maybe this or that,’ then I give everything back to Him and walk away again. What I am saying is this: ‘I trust you Lord to have the best answer and I am not going to mess around trying to fix something I can’t fix.’ If He tells me to repent of this or that, I don’t argue, I repent. If He wants me to apologise and make reparation, I do that.

He’s Almighty God and I believe He has the very best answers for me. I don’t always understand them …but my mind is like the size of a speck of dust in comparison to His infinite wisdom. When it comes to smarter than me – HE WINS! Let’s learn to be satisfied, and then release things, to Him. Then we can watch what He will do when we yield. We just might learn to be content, no matter what. Bye, 👋

P 3158 Red and yellow flags.

/ DVH

Sometimes in my daily life, I notice the same or similar situations, happening over and over again — so I asked the Lord to show me what and why. He explained to me that we need to stay on the alert for things that seem out of place, when they happen repeatedly. Especially if each time they are about about a similar subject. This repetition can indicate we are ignoring something important. For instance, if you suddenly get a whole lot of people who are rude to you, we can easily think it is enemy attack, but there are times when Lord allows these things because we need to practise forgiving those who trespass against us!

It is like the Holy Spirit is our lifeguard and we have wandered off and we are now swimming outside the flags. Things get difficult when you swim outside the red and yellow flags. Those flags, those interruptions to His flow in our lives, are there for a purpose. Father God loves us – He doesn’t want any of us to drown! Meanwhile if you ever see a double RED flag, then stay out of the water! That’s some useful free lifesaver advice. Even if whatever it is you are doing seems harmless, take notice of the Holy Spirit’s absence, or His kiss upon your day, and stop and ask Him why. When He isn’t kissing something we need to stop moving ahead.

We must recognise, with His help and guidance, to learn to value the kind of obedience through the suffering that denies itself. We deny ourselves, pick up our cross and keep right on following Him no matter how we feel! Father God has a reason for His discipline and chastening, and it is not about punishment. It is about His loving provision for whatever is coming next. He is training us. We need to yield and allow His fruit to grow in the middle of that difficulty. This is clearly spelled out in Hebrews 12:6-11.

“For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.” If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons. Furthermore, we have had human fathers who corrected us, and we paid them respect. Shall we not much more readily be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live? For they indeed for a few days chastened us as seemed best to them, but He for our profit, that we may be partakers of His holiness. Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.” 

Correction to any course of action is present in our lives to train us. I’ve found, in those times, that things seem to  go on repeat – because we haven’t fully embraced obedience yet. Our God is good He will not let us move on into the next part of our growth, unprepared. Meanwhile, even these things are not always about us, sometimes it is about the damage we will do to someone else if we continue down the wrong road. The Lord forgives us whenever we ask Him to, but we are not on a desert island, other people live around us! We must never forget we are His agents of unconditional love and peace to this crazy world. That means we will be tested on what we think we know, because other lives are tied to ours!

Testing times are about testing our faith in His goodness and compassion and care for us, despite our circumstances. 1 Corinthians 10:13&14 says this in the Passion translation: “We all experience times of testing, which is normal for every human being. But God will be faithful to you. He will screen and filter the severity, nature and timing of every test or trial you face that you can bear it. And each test is an opportunity to trust Him more, for along with every trial God has provided for you a way of escape that will bring you out of it victoriously.” Our way through any test is to believe in His goodness, His personal oversight, no matter what is going on! And then we need to keep on thanking Him for loving us so much that He is teaching us with His eye on us.

I haven’t lost my mind, it’s in the book. Father God is not against us having a life, but He is against us wasting it on the stuff that will not last … and there are times when we all do that! If you read the story of Jonah you will see that God led that man step by step to the place of obedience – Jonah’s feelings about the subject did not matter. Father God had His own agenda – He wanted to save Nineveh! We must rest in the fact that He is wisdom itself, and we are just like Ruth, gleaning whatever wisdom we can around the edge of our own little paddock – looking at our circumstances without complete clarity. But if our purposes and sensibilities cross what He wants done, then I’ve learnt, our purposes and sensibilities will go straight out of the window!

Just like when we swim at the beach — there are yellow and red flags in this new life in the Holy Spirit, they are not threatening flags, they are protective flags. They tell you where it is safe to move forward. When we ignore the Holy Spirit’s red flags in our own individual lives, we are deliberately stepping out and away from His protection. He will wait for us to wake up to our error, repent and turn around. The Holy Spirit has been given to us to help us do everything the Lord brought us into this world to do. It’s incredibly dumb to step away from SomeOne Who only wants our good!

Our God disciplines and tests the people He loves, for their benefit. He wants us to share in His holiness. Those God-sent ‘flags’ are in our lives for a purpose. Things only get harder if we ignore them. The secret is to stop, wait, consult the Holy Spirit, and don’t proceed until the sea is calm again and the flags are green. Bye.👋

P 2993 Holy Spirit breathing – in and out.

/ DVH

“For athletic training only benefits you for a short season, but righteousness brings lasting benefit in everything; for righteousness contains the promise of life, for time and eternity.”1 Timothy 4:8 TPT.

One of the things that I love about this verse is anyone can do it.  You don’t have to be physically fit or train for 5 hours a day. Being trained by righteousness simply takes faith and dedication. The only thing that will stop any of us from living this way, are the choices we make. However, if we continually make the wrong choices it is like sticking our fingers in our ears and ignoring what the Lord is saying to us.

This option for spiritual fitness is available to all of us, because of what Jesus did for us. Ignoring the Holy Spirit is dangerous – so we need to train ourselves to listen to Him. When I don’t want to do whatever He asks me to do, I ask for His help to do it, then I do it anyway, using my faith. My job is to let God live in me and through me, just like Jesus did and the Lord Jesus gave us His own ability to do whatever God wants from us.

Romans 5:15-17: “Yet the rescuing gift is not exactly parallel to the death-dealing sin. If one man’s sin put crowds of people at the dead-end abyss of separation from God, just think what God’s gift poured through one man, Jesus Christ, will do! There’s no comparison between that death-dealing sin and this generous, life-giving gift. The verdict on that one sin was the death sentence; the verdict on the many sins that followed was this wonderful life sentence. If death got the upper hand through one man’s wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, absolute life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?” 

We need to grab hold of what the Lord has already given us with both hands and not let go, using our faith. Instead of believing we are ‘not good’ at spiritual things, and keeping a record of our failures – or the disappointments we’ve experienced when we’ve prayed and the answer we wanted did not come. To increase our faith we meditate on Who He is, what He gave us, plus things we’ve seen Him do through us and in us. This is how we train ourselves to walk in faith with Him – we take note to encourage our hearts.

We all know Jesus succeeded in what He set out to do, so that’s where we look – not at our failures… but at His victory! He was perfectly righteous with God and His death and resurrection gave us the power and right to:“act in accord with God’s divine law.”  So any sin is to be owned, repented from and walked away from. The very word repent means ‘turn around and walk in the other direction.’ Our aim is to maintain God Himself living within us – just like Jesus did. Then, by actively choosing to live in His Grace – His way of acting and thinking – our response to this world will be unconditional LOVE.

Training yourself to live in a Godly fashion takes dedication to living aware of Him. However, our continuing response to God’s faithfulness can also deliver us from all kinds of evil. Dying to self, and living for Him means we choose to value Him above everything else. We lean on what He has given us. Jesus died and gave us His ability to live differently, we enter into that gift by using our faith. Just like we expect the bank to have our money when we make a withdrawal, we make faith withdrawals by ignoring our feelings and inclinations and obeying Him instead. We will encourage huge spiritual deposits into our lives by spending time with Him.  

Athletes train for years, to achieve goals, they employ self-discipline, plus a singular focus to achieve what they want. We also need to have just one focus, pleasing Him! If we live our ordinary everyday lives putting to death those things that will only give us temporary relief or pleasure, in favour of making Him Lord, then our joy increases. The more we want what He wants, the more He will give us opportunities to use our faith, and choose His Ways over our own. It seems impossible simply because we are so used to indulging our flesh. 

The Lord loves the secret place. He does not want us to see time spent with Him as a duty, rather it is a privilege and provision that Jesus willingly paid for, to give us an incredible kind of togetherness. An athlete rehearses their skill to improve it, but instead, we practice looking to Him daily to be our ever-present help — all day every day. This hones our focus, our total faith-driven reliance upon Him to be there and help us. 

Knowing what the Lord likes and wants, occurs as we read the book, then we do what it says, and use our faith to obey what we’ve read. As time passes we begin to carry His secret place within us, everywhere we go.  It’s like breathing: valuing Him and spending time with Him is IN… and going out and sharing what He gives us is breathing OUT. Athletes need good breathing as well as fitness … so do Christians! We also need active faith. As we learn to hear His voice and do whatever He asks us to do, we will learn Holy Spirit breathing. Bye 👋

P 2727 This is our way forward.

/ DVH

Hubby sent me this lovely bit of writing the other day and it was so sweet I wanted to put it here, today. It’s from: “I hear His Whisper”:.. and it’s called – “Kindness reveals My nature.”

“When you act toward others with a heart overflowing with compassion, you are living out the very heartbeat of My mercy. When you line your life with kindness, you cannot miss the blessings of My kingdom. Your return will be great when you live a life of generous love.

I tell you the truth: acting in love toward others may sometimes feel like the greatest sacrifice. However, when you train your heart in generosity, you purify your motives. I delight when you reflect My magnanimous love by choosing to extend mercy to others. Self-defense won’t get a person very far in life, but look at the rich lives of My beloved ones who live to benefit others. 

Rather than seeking only to fill their own bellies, they freely give to others in need. Model your life after the generous rather than the stingy, and you will live in the beautiful blessing of a clean conscience. Look to Me whenever you need grace to empower your choices. I will always help you!” written by Brian Simmons

Hebrews 13:16 TPT:“We will show mercy to the poor and not miss an opportunity to do acts of kindness for others, for these are the true sacrifices that delight God’s heart.”

I love it when I read something that exhorts me to live this life to the full and it shows me how to walk with Him. Bonus buy … isn’t it wonderful that things like this delight His heart! To be honest, I’m sick to death of long winded theories on how to be a better Christian, and things that have never seem to work out for me. I can’t seem to stay the prescribed course, and then I fall on my head and get disheartened. Sigh. I’m always glad for the person who wrote the book etc. it just doesn’t seem to be my thing. My memory ain’t what it used to be, so I forget what I’m supposed to be doing almost immediately. Cultivating kindness and generosity suits me better, because it isn’t hard to remember and it has a powerful effect!

I have noticed that different sorts of lives have different handicaps. For instance, I can no longer do the sort of things that other people take for granted. But I also know that others are handicapped by busyness and their essential activities as they try to press forward into their high calling in the Lord. Some people are handicapped by their home circumstances — they have parents or children, or spouses or friends that don’t support their Christian POV. Some are trapped financially. I think that we all have difficult lives in this modern world. Today’s special thought from Brian Simmons is a great example of how anyone can live this life for His sake, even when there are other things making their lives difficult … simply by living generously.

We can also choose kindness – and when we do so we are revealing the Lord’s own nature. And the bonus bit is that we don’t necessarily have to have a speaking gift! Generosity speaks its own language. I love this kind of over and above giving because the Holy Spirit has taught us personally about the power that lies in unexpected kindness through giving. I find it opens doors that we can’t see, in other people’s hearts. We’ve both seen people who are very restrained and quite formal, suddenly divulge all sorts of info about themselves in response to something or other we did. 

Today I want to talk about the ways I’ve noticed kindness can transform things that seem to be rock solid. Being kind as well as generous is an incredible way to bless others and open up hearts – ours, and someone else’s too. First of all, we can actively choose to be kind, loving and forgiving, when we know that the other person is expecting a totally justified rebuke. This sort of kindness is incredibly powerful. It can be tempting to take advantage of a situation where one person has done something damaging, and we are on the wrong end of it. But when we are generous with our love, forgiveness and kindness, we can be used by the Lord to usher in change into their lives. Kindness opens doors.

It can give energy and hope to the weak. Whether the person is weak in spirit, or mind or body, it energises others when we treat them with respect and love. At one time we saw a severely disabled man on the street. He was unable to control many of his bodily functions. His carer was a charming kind man, mopping up for him with a loving touch. The carer was so happy to chat to us, but I must confess that we wanted to talk to the person in the chair! The disabled young man’s whole bodily demeanour indicated that there was nobody home, but as we spoke to him – his face came alive. He couldn’t speak, but his eyes shone. It was almost as though he responded to the love and said: “You can see me!” We told him we could see how brave and courageous he was, and we prayed for help and healing from the Lord. We kind of floated away from that interaction much more blessed than the young disabled man was! 

Kindness like Mr Simmons mentioned above also shows up in generosity. God will always repay us when we give to unselfishly to others. That’s because HE is where kindness comes from – so we are mirroring Jesus’ example. The truth is, we’ve noticed you can get blessed by paying attention to the way the Lord repays you! I know someone who used to make up boxes of food for people in their congregation who were doing it tough. They’d fill a basket or a box with the kind of things that these folks could not afford, plop the box on their doorstep, ring the bell — and run away … like naughty children ringing a doorbell and escaping before being caught! 😂 Someone hid around the corner to watch the response. They said doing that was so much fun, and they highly recommended it for unexpected excitement and joy. 

The bible clearly says: “it is more blessed to give than to receive:”(Acts 20:35) and our task is to personally prove that scripture is active and effective! I know it cuts away possessiveness and the desire for more stuff we don’t need! Human beings can get so caught up in their own terrible circumstances, or this or that bit of dreadful news, we can forget God has a plan and He has given His kids the power to change things. We may not be able to change the course of a war, but we can pray and intercede for those trapped inside one. 

Kindness and generosity are powerful weapons in our spiritual arsenal of God’s ever-increasing love and mercy. I believe this is our way forward into reaching the world. Bye. 👋

P 2432 In order to understand some things …

/ DVH

… we will need to look at them, standing on our head!!!.… Most Christians go to church to receive, and there’s nothing wrong with that! They go to worship God, receive fresh revelation, get prayers for help and transformation, and maybe a special experience. When we are all together, we have a collective faith. I know this is probably a new thought to some … BUT … despite the fact that I dearly love going to church – I don’t particularly want to borrow YOUR faith all the time, I want my own fully-functional faith!

Almighty God gave us all a portion of faith, and I want to use mine for His glory, under His direction. Along the way, I’ve learnt that using my own faith helps me grow, spiritually. Your faith is great and it holds me up — but YOU live far away, or you have a habit of going on holidays when I might need you! I love it when my Church family pray for me, and I have seen wonderful things happen because others have used their faith to believe for a change in my life. I will not ever stop doing that because we are all designed to be a part of each other. I have also seen incredible things in terrible situations when just one person has added their faith to mine. 

However… I will stay a baby in my faith if I never learn to use that God-given faith for myself. I realized a number of years ago, that I need to stop being a passenger, and begin to use my own faith under the help and supervision of the Holy Spirit. It’s my job to develop what I’ve been given. ““Jesus, undeterred, went right ahead and gave His charge: “God authorised and commanded Me to commission YOU: Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then  instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you. I’ll be with you as you do this, day after day after day, right up to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 MSG.

Well, that’s pretty clear! I’ve been saved to serve Him. And His special love is people, so if I want to live out this life as a Christian, I’m going to have to change. Obedience to His Word is not an optional extra that depends on the day of the week, and how I am feeling. satan can throw enough icky situations and feelings at all of us to keep us busy until the Lord comes back! While I am in this world MY time is HIS. My own faith needs to be used, because I will go places you will never go. Everybody who has been born again was given this command by the Lord. This means that we are going to have to stretch, and do things we don’t much want to do, because our new life has new responsibilities.

Many years ago. I had to have some major surgery. Directly across from me in another hospital bed, was a young girl who was sobbing, clearly terrified. I had already been given my pre-meds for this op, so my task was to lie still and let the meds do their work. But this girl is over there, crying her eyes out. So … I hopped out of bed and trundled over to ask her if she is OK? She is clearly NOT OK! She had stepped on a needle and it went right through her toe and she was there to have it taken out.

I had a choice. I could go back to my own bed, shut my eyes and go into sleepy-time or … pray for her. I opted to pray for her. As a result when the doctors came for me for my op, I was bright eyed and bushy-tailed and …awake. The doctors had to over-medicate me to anaesthetise me, and under that anaesthetic I had a terrible hallucination. Let’s skip that part. That young girl, however went home unafraid, with her toe fixed. My point? Obeying Christ is costly. We don’t always end up with sunshine and roses and somebody singing “nearer my God to thee” sweetly in the background!

We must stop thinking this life is a party that culminates in heaven. We are living in enemy territory. Stuff happens. Phillip had to strap on his Nikes and run after a chariot! Peter and John were off to a prayer meeting when they met someone who needed their help … and the authorities were not thrilled with them. Paul and Silas were severely beaten up and thrown in the clink. But that meant that they got to talk to a Philippian jailer. Now let’s put this in a full context for these men – Jesus had already died and He was resurrected … plus the Holy Spirit had come … BUT … they suffered anyway. We’ve been erroneously taught that if we have trouble, we are doing it wrong – what if trouble means … we are doing it right!

It is our job to tell others what we know. Not speaking is like walking past a house on fire and not trying to help the inhabitants to get out of danger!  Even a brand new Christian can give away what they know of God through their experience of Him – whether they know exegesis or not! We have as a group of people, spent so much time getting ready to do evangelism, or practising praying for healing, or giving prophetic words, or going to conferences etc. that we’ve become INSULAR. Christianity is not an insular faith – we simply give away what we have — and what we have didn’t happen 50 years ago. God and I did stuff yesterday.

Christians aren’t designed to fit in, they are meant to stand out!  And sometimes you quite literally have to stand on your head to understand what happened and why it happened like that… but you can’t always explain the eternal! 👋🏻