Trust

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 3426 Dead is the new way to live. 

/ DVH

In Galatians 2:20, Jesus reminds us what this life is really all about. Paul said: “I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

This getting-dead process can be challenging sometimes. So the reality is, I choose to die to what I want, over and over again. Here’s what that means practically. Someone says something I think is provocative, so I ask for the Holy Spirit’s help, and I say nothing. Despite how provoked I feel, the Lord Himself will give me that soft answer He talks about from Proverbs. I’m just doing what Jesus told me to do, ‘turning the other cheek.’ If people cheat me and they lie to me, I pray a blessing over them until I mean it. In other words, I let the Lord Jesus fight my battles for me. It’s up to Him what happens to people who behave like that, He knows more about them than I ever could.   

This means I have deliberately chosen to live this life dead to what I want, and alive to what He wants. Let’s be clear, I am not talking about being mostly dead, or I wish I was … dead. What I mean is – I’ve chosen to die to the way I used to think about, relate to, and treat other people. Now, I owe them LOVE and I use my faith to trust Father God to help me with that. He clearly told me “that vengeance is His.”  Here is the Good News part of the gospel. Because of Jesus’ resurrection I don’t have to stay dead — now I have a new way to live, right here, right now. TODAY – and the power to do it.

Of course I will need the Holy Spirit’s help to live that way. But He won’t do it for me. I’m not a puppet, I’m a person who makes a choice.. I take a step of faith, and the Holy Spirit helps me to move forward. When I refuse to be angry back at someone else, He gives me something sweet to say to them, that helps to diffuse their anger. Meanwhile, you can’t pick a fight with a dead person, because they won’t say anything back. You could yell at them, if you want to, but … you’d be wasting your time. You’d be better off shouting into a black hole.

Each one of us has to choose to die to what we want, and come alive to the reason Jesus brought us here. But once we do, our thinking begins to change and we start to think like He does. Then the Holy Spirit helps us to use our God-given faith and hope in His goodness, to live a brand new way. It’s the way Jesus lived. We all know His plans are good for us, that’s also in the book! I’ve decided to trust what He said more than I trust what I can see going on around me. We choose to come alive to Christ and His Way of living and leave our past behind us, when we die to self and live for Him.

It is not humility when I say on this blog that Jesus helped me with this and that – it’s a fact. If I try really really hard to be what He has already given me for free, well — that’s when the trouble starts! I begin to lose my sense of His Presence with me, because my excuses for my own bad behaviour fill the air around me! The only Person Who can resurrect a dead person is Jesus. When He does that He makes them sweeter. Trying to resurrecting yourself and hold on tightly to being right, is a waste of time and energy. Whatever we try to do by ourselves doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. We will just wear ourselves out doing it, as well as becoming jaded, and losing hope. Give up. Die to self.

It is easy to tell when I have wandered off and given up living for Him – I want my own way. Day by day living His way is always a choice. Sadly, I can get offended before the poor schmuck with their foot in their mouth has finished their sentence. I am not at all nice to be around, especially if I try to change myself. I get mad at other people because they annoy me and they want their way. The safest, sweetest place to live, is to live this life using the faith He gave me. Then my priorities change. My focus needs to be on what He did. Not what I have or haven’t done. Like I said yesterday, “nothing can ever separate us from God’s love” — we have proof of that. Jesus died to make that statement eternal.

Many Christians cheerfully sing 🎵 “We are here for You, Jesus…”🎵and then everyone goes home and lives this life we have been given, for themselves again – often using heaps of energy to be ‘nice’ to people who aren’t ‘nice’ to them. Day by day, we are so focussed on our plans, our lives, our ideas, our success, our happiness, our money … plus our wellbeing. That isn’t the deal… not the one in His book! The deal is — He died for us — so now we live for Him. Meanwhile dead people don’t have aims, or opinions.

We don’t have to sit around, impassively, waiting for this stuff to fall on us. We need to aggressively choose to live this life of LOVE He provided for us and act it out. We take faith steps, and take up this new life He has given us. Let’s run, and choose to use our faith to do things His Way, for His kingdom’s sake. And read and re-read His book, daily refreshing our memory about what He has already said.

Choose to live a life of Love, it’s the outworking of our inward faith. Dead is the new way to live – because the Lord’s kind of new life can only blossom and bear fruit in dead people, who choose to live this life, His way. Bye. 👋

P 3422 The bible.

/ DVH

I think the version of the bible is less important, to me this book is a springboard into hearing from Him. It’s His Word and He can take His Word and touch our hearts however He chooses to. The Lord makes a lot of statements in the bible that sound wonderful, but unless we choose to act on them, as the Holy Spirit brings a verse to our minds — we can easily forget them again.

The scriptures are given to us to be life and health to us — food for the weary soul. Let’s look at Jeremiah 31:25 TPT: “For I will refresh the weary soul and satisfy all those who have given up on life.” Here are a few more versions. Amplified bible:  “For I will [fully] satisfy the weary soul, and I will replenish every languishing and sorrowful person.” The King James version: “For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.” Last one, Easy-to-read version:  “I will give rest and strength to those who are weak and tired.”

So looking at all that, what can we do when we are full of sorrow, tired and weary? We’ve learnt that we need to REST and be REFRESHED by the fact that God has given us His Word. He will help us find answers. He will take care of … whatever it is! What the Lord is doing is far beyond our scope of our limited imagination most of the time. His timing is totally perfect, but it simply doesn’t always scratch where we are itching, when we are tired and sad. But He is still doing something.

I think the secret is this – don’t pre-decide how the answers to your prayers will look. When we do that, we can utterly miss His answers to our prayers. Resting on what He says in the book, is our faith at work. Fussing and fretting about what we can do about things when we are already worn out, is a misuse of our God’s freely given resources. Take a big breath, look up and give it all to Him and wait for Him.

The Holy Spirit is our primary resource and His Word is our reference book. If we start looking at other people, and comparing or judging what’s happening to them, we are living under the misunderstanding that we are all supposed to be in the same spiritual place at the same time. We aren’t. We learn His ways by walking with Him individually. This is the God who makes enemy armies fearfully run for their lives, when no-one is actually there!  What one verse means to me, may not be what it means to you.

It is so important to value the cross. Every now and then go back to it in your mind, and remember what He did for you. What He did then, He is still doing! And don’t forget that empty tomb either. Our faith is founded on these events. The bible teaches us how to live and respond to difficulties, based upon a war that has already been won. He won it for us.

If we don’t feel ‘fully satisfied,” like Jeremiah said, then don’t blame yourself, someone else or even the Lord. Instead ask for eyes to see what He IS doing. He’s God … He can do trillions of things at once. Maybe we are missing what He is actually doing because we are too busy meditating on our unhappy circumstances. Let’s choose to be singleminded about these things. Focus on what His book says. That’s a skill we can cultivate, and it involves trust. For our faith to be real it has to be tested. The bible tells us how to face and move through those tests.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” James 1:2-4. 

This verse reminds us that God is always doing something. At the very least, He’s testing our faith in His goodness. He wants us to know that when our faith is tested we are developing perseverance. So we decide to rest. That means we stop trying to figure it out by ourselves and just WAIT. We are on God’s assembly line and our tested faith will produce perseverance, but we need to hold fast to what He said in the book. Let’s allow Him to finish what He has started.

We are faithfully waiting and looking to see God’s goodness in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13) Sometimes we can miss the answers to our prayers because the Lord is doing something so much bigger than we could ever hope or imagine. The thing to remember is that we are also doing something, when we choose to trust Him and His Word, instead of running about like a headless chicken. The Lord says: “That trouble is the exercise that will strengthen our faith muscles.”

The bible is a spiritual document. That kind of thing is often hard to read, but we are so blessed … we have the greatest Lawyer ever, praying for us, helping and teaching us. He understands the law and He operates freely in GRACE. This means He knows how to plead our case for us. Let Him. Bye. 👋

P3402 Move from plodding into yielding.

/ DVH

“Let me emphasise this: As you YIELD to the dynamic life and power of the Holy Spirit, you will abandon the cravings of your self-life. When your self-life craves the things that offend the Holy Spirit you hinder Him from living free within you! And the Holy Spirit’s intense cravings hinder your self-life from dominating you! So then, the two incompatible and conflicting forces within you are your self-life of the flesh and the new creation life of the Spirit. But when you yield to the life of the Spirit, you will no longer be living under the law, but soaring above it!” Galatians 5:16-18 TPT.

Paul just said that better than I ever could. Yielding is a dynamic approach to the Word of God. We don’t have to have some sort of passive, informal laissez faire attitude.. We have the Holy Spirit and His book – They are always right!  However, I just want to try to break this stuff down a bit so it is more accessible. If anyone has things in their life they think can’t do without — then that stuff is distracting us from our purpose. I ask Him: “Lord in this area of my life why aren’t You enough? I know You are, the bible says so! But something inside me is pushing me in the wrong direction. Please reveal it to me.” I don’t want head-knowledge to push me into places, where He personally wants to lead me.

We need to remember, that the Lord in His infinite wisdom, sees our sincere efforts toward obedience, and He undergirds us. Our God got His hands bloodied and broken while He cleaned up our lives. He knows our hearts, and our want to – is as good as – we did it. However, we cannot afford the luxury of continuing to return to the same captive place over and over again. The enemy waits for us in those places of temptation and memories of wrong doing. 

Let’s keep on pressing on, facing Jesus and the cross – pushing away those temptations and replacing carnal thoughts with His ways and His way of thinking. Our ‘want to’ counts, because we can be assured He will help us, but that isn’t the final step… Faith comes next! I have sat with Him said: “I don’t want to do this, but I will do it anyway. Please help me to do this without making the other person feel awkward.” It’s called trust – we learn to trust Him as we let Him take care of whatever it is, and bring us through to a new place. And then we begin to take faith steps.

At the same time, we won’t always notice when we are being hindered by something, Have you ever said to someone else: ‘I can’t hear the Holy Spirit the way you do, what am I doing wrong?’ My next question is — ‘who am I mad at?’ I mean, who makes my teeth clench, and I react to them like I just heard fingernails down a blackboard. Who can’t say a word right around me because they set me on edge? Deal with that. Forgiveness is not a feeling – it is a GOD TRAIT. When we haven’t got access to it, something is blocking the flow between us and the Holy Spirit.

“For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” Matthew 6:14,15. Forgiveness is not an optional extra that depends upon how dastardly the deeds were against you — unforgiveness puts us in opposition to God Himself! In this modern world, our minds and emotions have been let loose to wander, plot and plan. There are times we can’t hear God, because we’ve wandered onto this world’s wavelength, not HIS. And because we are spiritual people, the enemy will hiss lies into our ears, telling us things that are not true … but they seem true at the time.

The time to yield hardly ever comes up when I feel ready. You and I have been invited to a ‘come as you are party.’ We come as we are, honestly and truthfully, and leave His Presence with a brand new vision of a different way to live. Yielding to His will His way makes it easier to accept the difference. Otherwise doubt creeps in. If I am in doubt then I check things out with my spouse, and if necessary, also my pastor, because they both watch over my soul.

Plodding along playing ‘hit and miss’ with our faith, means we can get frustrated and give up really easily. This world is like being in the middle of a fire-fight, with bombs and machine guns blazing away all around us. We will always need the quiet steadfast love, experience and kindness of Jesus, to keep us sane, safe and moving forward. If you have ever followed anyone you will know you have to keep your eyes on them, or you can easily lose them in a crowd. My favourite question to ask myself is this —’what is Jesus doing right now?“

Here’s a thought: He is not likely to be screaming at the kids, or that guy who just pinched your car parking spot. If we happen to be screaming, then we need to take a breath and stop, we’ve lost our peace. Don’t concentrate on who pinched it! Concentrate on yielding to Him so you can get it back! Ask for the Holy Spirit’s help. I am learning to stop in the middle of a sentence when that sentence is not going to be profitable. A-n-d …. sad to say … at other times I stop in the middle of a sentence when I forget what I started out to say, because it is another senior moment! Getting things right is not our aim, our aim is to stay firmly fixed and grounded within His love. (Ephesians 3:17.)

The Lord loves to helps us, we can always have His input. Plus the blueprint for our own lives will come more clearly into focus. Moving from plodding to yielding is costly. We will have to give up our idea of immediate answers, in favour of learning to wait for His ways to be revealed. However, plodding along does not usher in joy! As Christians we are blessed to create the atmosphere around us, we don’t just plod through it. Yielding to Him opens this world up to Who He is.  Walk with the Holy Spirit – the flesh will fade away. Bye. 👋

P 3362 Grapes anyone?

/ DVH

It can be so helpful as we are learning to abide in Christ, to read what He says in a number of different versions of the bible. As I have said many times, it is not the words on the page – it is what the Holy Spirit wants to do with them, in us, as we let Him use them to touch our hearts! He wants to open the eyes of our hearts, which have become closed off and darkened by life’s difficulties, broken promises, and lost dreams we’ve had that have not reached fruition. Here is the same verse in three different versions.

John 15:1-3:“I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer. He cuts off every branch of Me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing He prunes back so it will bear even more. You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.”MSG.”He breaks off every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and He prunes every branch that does bear fruit, so that it will be clean and bear more fruit.” GNB. “Any branch in Me that does not bear fruit [that stops bearing] He cuts away (trims off, takes away); and He cleanses and repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit, to make it bear more and richer and more excellent fruit.” AMP.

To be fruitful we need to be open to pruning and shaping. The Holy Spirit is the One Who knows our story from beginning to end so He’s a safe Person to do it. That’s what staying connected to and being a part of the Vine means – daily we choose to trust in His faithfulness, no matter what is going on around us. It’s not just about growing fruit, instead it is an illustration of our place in God’s plans. He does all the work, and we relax (rest!) and simply stay connected to His Spirit in us. We learn to obey Him and daily value that connection above everything else.

We don’t have a grape vine at our house. Sadly I have been put off all vine-like plants, because we bought a Wisteria. I fell in love with the beautiful flowers that hang down and smell so sweet, but … they only bloom for about ten seconds!  I didn’t read about the fact that Wisterias are a big pest that are trying, bit by bit — with their delicate little innocent tendrils — to take over the entire world! Forget aliens – at our house we have WISTERIA!

If you simply must have this gorgeous plant then my advice is that you plant it in a very large pot in the middle of a gigantic slab of concrete. AND WATCH IT VE-RY CAREFULLY. It loves to roam about when you are not looking. It needs careful pruning, because it has a mind of its own … a little like people, really. Back to the Lord’s illustration about grapevines. Grapevines produce fruit… unlike my wisteria which simply makes loads of leaves and some very pretty flowers once or twice a year.

This illustration Jesus gave us about a grapevine is not just some random word picture, it is a complex and beautiful thing that clearly explains what Christ is still doing for us in our lives. By choosing His ways over our own, we are choosing to stay attached to what He has already done for us. This will allow His love and truth to flow through us, it will correct our growth, help us to be strong and grow in the ways HE wants us to go. We will stay connected to His very life in us. 

We start ‘abiding.’ “IF you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” John 15:7.Our prayers will change, our aims will change as we let His sap influence and nourish every part of our lives. But if we become distracted and disconnected, we can become like my very beautiful wisteria, lovely to look at, but it wanders around aimlessly choking out the life of other plants. Without attachment to Him, you and I will become fruitless. However, the Master Vinedresser won’t cut us off the vine, He will prune us. Thank You Jesus for Your Grace.

Otherwise we can easily wander far away from His purposes, and end up where we shouldn’t be, because we have neglected to let His sap flow through us, and produce healthy cells that will promote His spiritual life in us. They will, of course, at the right season, produce His fruit. Nonetheless, He will still prune us! Pruning is not the same as chopping off dead lifeless branches that need to be thrown away, it is a necessary discipline that facilitates further reproduction. Like my wisteria, all those signs of life need to be channelled into producing something that is tamed and beautiful – all at the same time.

So things, people, situations in our lives, can and will change. And at the time, it seems like the end of the world … but it isn’t. It is the Lord doing what He promised He would do. Making us more fruitful. Father God is not just interested in just a couple of handfuls of nice sweet grapes, HE WANTS A HARVEST! And just like a viticulturist or vinedresser knows exactly where to cut the new growth back and prune off the branches that are going nowhere — God Himself knows where and when to remove things in our lives that are going to hinder our fruitful production. 

So when a door to something you love closes, I want to encourage everyone today to start thanking Him. The Holy Spirit is our Vine Dresser and He has our best interests in His heart. Pruning means He is active on the Vine, and we will see the benefits. I have watched the Lord take people I dearly loved and thought I really needed out of my life. And at the time there was much wailing and groaning going at my end! It was a bit like finding out our errant wisteria was merrily flourishing inside our roof and under our house! Not. Happy. Jan! 

But afterward, I saw that some people took up my time because they saw me as their source of comfort, and visa versa, I saw them that way too – not the Lord Himself. It was in everyone’s best interests for them to be taken away … so we could both learn His ways from Him. If we want others to eat His sweet juicy grapes, then we need to pay attention to the process that will foster His kind of growth. We have to learn to abide and trust Him. Bye.👋

P 3358 More of Jesus.    

/ DVH

Colossians 1:3-8.“Our prayers for you are always spilling over into thanksgivings. We can’t quit thanking God our Father and Jesus our Messiah for you! We keep getting reports on your steady faith in Christ, our Jesus, and the love you continuously extend to all Christians. The lines of purpose in your lives never grow slack, tightly tied as they are to your future in heaven, kept taut by hope. The Message is as true among you today as when you first heard it. It doesn’t diminish or weaken over time. It’s the same all over the world. The Message bears fruit and gets larger and stronger, just as it has in you. From the very first day you heard and recognized the truth of what God is doing, you’ve been hungry for more.”

Have you eaten too much of something you like, but you kind of still kept on going? Yeah me too. Maybe you’ve binge-watched something on Streaming? Yeah me too. Well today have I got news for you! I found something you can indulge yourself in that isn’t fattening or mind numbing – the quest for more of Jesus! 

People say this all the time, and we might easily feel like an inferior Christian, because that thought never even crossed our minds. My question today is: what does it actually mean?  We can say a whole lot of Christian-ese words sometimes, without any bible verses or experiences to back them up. So what does wanting more of Him look like? 

I can remember being so in love with my hubby that I would go long distances to spend five minutes in his company. Hmm. I would still do that, but I might need some personal assistance nowadays! He’s still the nicest person I know …  well, most of the time. I think more of Jesus means, at the very least, that I will want to spend more time with Him getting to know Him. I actively ask and look for the Lord in my day. When I see Him, I thank Him!

I’m just going to let that sit there while we both think about it. That’s because spending more time with Him means we need less time for us to do the things we have cultivated in our lives to relieve stress, and fear, and help us to cope. Yeah. I’m just going to leave that one there too …

I think more of Jesus is like falling in love. Ad when life gets difficult, we approach those things with Him as our Saviour, Lord and Friend. Then we choose to appropriate what He said He has given us, using our faith. That means WE DO SOMETHING. It’s an exercise of our will, and we accept whatever comes at us, because the bible tells us He filters that stuff.  If I need something, He will provide it – if we don’t, then He won’t. We live to make love our aim, because Love is His language, and that means we are looking at life through His eyes.

More of Jesus also means our value systems will become  like His, and our hearts will break for the things that break His heart. Because Jesus lived to please His Father, and we like being around Him, so we will choose to live that way too. Our needs and wants become secondary; we pray, ask, then we leave it with Him. He’s God He can do anything. If someone provokes us or pokes us in the ego – what will come out of us automatically is a help prayer.

All of those things are great aims!! But like the Psalmist says: “Such knowledge is too lofty for me to attain…” Psalm139:6. My translation to that bit of this Psalm is — we can’t possibly do this stuff and not exercise our faith. We need His help, because change happens one step at a time, but we begin with the firm knowledge that what Jesus did is already complete.

We no longer have to live like other people, the Lord has given us His word that He won’t leave us. He will also provide us with a way to get out of whatever dumb thing we’ve gotten into. Our minds and emotions, become secondary to His Word, because they can fool us into thinking that reacting the same way we always did, means we have not been changed. It’s a lie. Jesus did everything that ever needed doing on the cross. So we choose to use our faith to apply what He did, once and for all, into our own lives, now. 

There are times we can get stuck because our convenience wins over what Jesus said, but we know that repentance restores our relationship with Him. There can also be times we haven’t done the things we know He asked us to do. How can we learn to trust in Jesus, and want Him and His ways more, when we choose to be a slave to convenience and time?

This is the real point of today’s blog. I think we fail because we live in a fast-paced society where time is a thing to be used … … not savoured. So let’s look briefly at the consequences of not using our time well. We will probably stay in the same place spiritually, going up and down, always waiting for God to make the difference, when He already did! We allow His truth to be merely a reminder, instead of a prompt for change.

According to Colossians Chapter one, more of Him also contains a whole lot of thanksgiving! Actually, the bible says we shouldn’t stop giving thanks, no matter how we feel. So we need to practice thanking Him that He is in charge, even when it looks like He’s not! Now there’s something to go on with. Remember that’s not lying, it is lining ourselves up with His Word, instead of being led around by circumstances.

Paul thanks God for the growth of the faith of the Church in Colossae. He can see it because it is seeable. We go on and on about answered prayer, but what about Jesus’ prayers?? Paul himself has heard about the things that are happening in that church. God’s Word grows spiritual fruits, and that fruit is visible, not a euphemism. Wanting more of Jesus means we recognise the difference between what God says, and what is seeable and actually true in our lives. Visible fruit is proof of more of Jesus in our lives.

The believers in Colossae used their faith that what Jesus said He did, He did. They staked their lives on it. We need a whole lot less of ‘spooky filter’ Christianity and more fruit! More of Jesus signifies that we choose to obey what He asked us to do, and we get to see the results and so do other people. Bye.  👋

P 3355 What love can’t do.

/ DVH

Love can’t be an obligation, because when it is, it loses its power! Love won’t make us do anything – we must choose to apply ourselves and obey. I hear such lovely people – sincere saints – they are so sweet … yet they keep praying AMISS! They think they are being honest, but God’s kingdom coin of the realm, is LOVE. The only truth is HIS truth. 

People pray: “Dear Lord, please help me to obey You and love this or that person” Amen. Great prayer, sweet prayer… useless prayer! If I have just offended you, then please forgive me! But this kind of prayer is evasion. We wipe our hands and say: ‘Well, I’ve prayed, and now it is up to Him.’ Then we keep on doing the same old same old, grizzling behind people’s backs, listing their faults, keeping hatred alive. And we wonder why nothing changes. 

The kingdom of God does not work like that. Read the book. We are the people that His Son made free, and when we voluntarily give up that freedom to bless someone else, despite their behaviour toward us, we are acting like His kids. His kingdom will flourish within us. ‘I want to’ is not the same as ‘doing.’ It’s wish praying. Real prayer has legs, feet, arms, hands and heart. In order to SEE a difference, we must BEHAVE differently. 

We can’t know what loving our enemies looks like unless we choose to love those who despitefully use us. Loving our enemies is not about being fake … it is about stepping out in faith and living like Jesus said, despite our feelings. While we are concentrating on what others are doing our own hearts are at risk. Personally, I have found the way I treat other people changes the way they respond. But I must start from poverty of heart, and then do whatever He tells me to do. Love can’t and won’t make us. Almighty God will sometimes offend our minds to reach our hearts. 

Let’s look at Jonah, God told this prophet “Go to Ninevah.” Now Jonah had a fatal flaw, he hated Ninevites so he said “No!” And off he goes, on his …‘I’m running away from God tour’ – and he ends up on a ship that’s going to sink in a huge gale. He’s asleep at the bottom of the ship. There’s probably not much conviction there yet … eh? This is where Jonah begins to turn around, and God starts to teach him something …  Jonah’s NO! has consequences on other people’s lives! He is God’s man, the pivoting point. The crew of the ship will drown right along with him because of his disobedience.

When Jonah realises he is the cause of the situation, he selflessly volunteers to be thrown overboard. This has a huge  impact on the crew – they all get saved. Two things worth noting here:  we can mess things up so badly it looks like we have ruined other people’s lives. But our Saviour is a Redeemer and He works everything together for good. When we act according to His purposes, He releases His kingdom. He cares about everyone’s lives, even the people we don’t like, who have hurt us badly. God doesn’t take sides – He only has one side …HIS! His side is pure, right, just, and wise.

Now let’s look at Jesus Who tells His disciples to “Go and heal the sick, set the captives free, cleanse the lepers and raise the dead.’ These guys don’t know up from down, and the Lord just told them to do something they know they can’t do. They’ve seen Him do it, but that’s different. We can’t love other people without Him helping us any more than we can raise the dead. It’s ALL faith! The Kingdom comes wherever the King is welcome. What did the disciples have to do? They had to do more than pray – they had to GO and DO what Jesus said. He gave them a job, and they had to go and do it. Our ‘job’ is to love others, including our enemies.

Everything rests on how much we trust Jesus’ WORD. We show Him we trust Him when we live this life the way He told us to. And when God says to forgive people, it’s not a suggestion, He’s teaching all of us HOW to enter into His Kingdom and LIVE THERE. We can’t just pick and choose what we want to do. In His Kingdom, people don’t hold grudges. Unforgiveness, disobedience and rebellion cannot inherit the kingdom of God. 

Repent, ask Him to show you what you need to DO, and obey, and then leave it with Him. It’s a choice. It is not about giving other people permission to sin, and it is about not letting their sin cause a response in us. If someone in your family of origin, or friends  used to beat the living daylights out of you, or abused you physically, or derided you with words – you probably won’t much feel much like loving them. We can’t afford to act on our feelings. Almighty God is always doing more than one thing at a time. While He is transforming us through our obedient actions, He is also reaching into someone else’s life because our obedient actions release HIS GRACE.

Acting on what the King says ushers in His kingdom. Love can’t make us choose to change. We need to yield to the Lord and act. Let’s choose His Way, and cherish it – it won’t just fall on us. We simply can’t wait for the Lord to do what He has already told US to do. Our faith has to have biblical action. We get a pure heart when we choose to have our old ways renewed, but He won’t make us- it’s our choice. Bye. 👋

P 3347 What can I do?

/ DVH

What can I do? We can all see our role in God’s plan as essential. Because the Lord loves people, our main focus has to be outward, toward people. Praying and giving are both great – do it! But remember, now you and I are His temple, we take Him with us everywhere we go. So interacting with others is our goal, we dare not live solitary, individually based lives any longer. Christians need to live their lives looking outward. 

My daughter-in-love teaches Religious Instructions in a local school. Her little group of multi-denominational RI teachers have had to lobby to stay in the school they minister in. They fight yearly, for the right to teach these kids. Not with bats, rocks or guns, but with loving insistence, and perseverance. Children are the church’s future, they are arrows we fire into a tomorrow we may never see. There are at least two generations in our country that know nothing,  or very little about Jesus.

It is extremely important to use the bible wisely – not like a literary weapon to wallop people. The book is a healing balm, an overflowing ointment that excels at providing human beings with our Father’s love. It helps us gain wisdom, and learn how to love others. It is filled with His life, and more life! It isn’t a bat or a club. Battering people with God’s word makes them angry, and afraid of it. And if they know about the Lord, they blame Him for all the bad things that happen. 

The people in this world don’t know God is good. I don’t know about you but I still find myself on every single page. It is a powerfully underestimated living book. The Holy Spirit speaks through it. It is a book about the goodness of Lord and His Ways and it is our joy to make His Word available to other people, as well as demonstrate what is in it.

So, let’s recap a bit, we could teach RI, or Children’s church, or produce plays, lead singing groups, etc. but whatever it is, please don’t limit yourself to doing these things only inside your own church. We need to be visible, yet we are starting to look like an independent nation in the middle of our societies — instead of the sweet flavour of God. Churches can seem so intimidating to people who have never been inside one – the people inside know the rules – but strangers can be frightened by what we may do next!  

It is good to remember, that the Body of Christ has all the spiritual H20 — and everyone outside Her is slowly dying of thirst! Let’s deliberately make plans to get the Water of Life, and His Word, outside our churches and into our local communities. We cannot influence others unless we are face to face with them, loving on them. What we do is a response to His love toward us – He came here ‘while we were yet sinners.’ So because we know His love and we love Him, our Christian faith should never slide onto the back burner of our minds. After all, we’ve never left His mind! When our faith slips into the background, it can quietly leave, and we won’t even notice. That’s a tragedy. 

When we went away this last time, the people we met thanked us so much for coming and bringing aid, they were very grateful. But we also had a number of people who are working for the government with very little support because the needs have increased exponentially — they thanked us over and over again with tears, simply because we came. “I was in prison and you visited me.” Matthew 25:36.They were blessed because they felt we were showing solidarity with them in their bottomless coal-faced interaction with individual heartache and pain.

Prayer should be the beginning of anything we do but let’s remember that Jesus prayed on His own time. He publicly and privately ministered wherever He could. This world has become so incredibly busy, it seems we are all afraid of losing what we have. So we work harder and harder in order to maintain a lifestyle where God is a PS, and not our main purpose. Our trust in His provision for His children only seems to show up when we lack stuff.

I have always thought that buying a bunch of single gospel  booklets – see above – to give away when we can. Most of the people we talk to on the road, haven’t ever read the bible. We have even had some of them ask us: “What’s a bible?” Being generous to strangers gives them an opportunity to learn about His love for them. We give away individual gospels and they cost around $A2.50 each. The real point is to give others something to hold onto to remind the person God loves them. What can we do? Live the life Jesus died to give us. Bye 👋. 

“But how can people call for help if they don’t know who to trust? And how can they know Who to trust if they haven’t heard of the One who can be trusted? And how can they hear if nobody tells them? And how is anyone going to tell them, unless someone is sent to do it? That’s why Scripture exclaims, A sight to take your breath away! Grand processions of people telling all the good things of God! But not everybody is ready for this, ready to see and hear and act. Isaiah asked what we all ask at one time or another: “Does anyone care, God? Is anyone listening and believing a word of it?” The point is: Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.” Romans 10:14.

P 3330 Jesus is the Hero not us!

/ DVH


2 Corinthians 3:4-5: “Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Our life is now, today, not tomorrow. Tomorrow literally never comes. So, today our life is about relinquishing our own personal power, and gratefully receiving His power into our lives to help others and overcome sin. Now there’s a big thought! The Holy Spirit is our Resident Expert in all things spiritual, which is why we choose to defer to Him, even if at the time, it makes no sense to us. Obviously the bible is our yardstick in all things, but learning to practically trust the Holy Spirit is essential if we want to walk with Him.

In the Lord’s kingdom we are children, His children. He loves our obedience – especially in the face of our own logic. I’ve learnt over time, that things will eventually make sense, and we will learn patience in the process… bonus buy! I wish I had the space here to recount the times I have badly messed something or other up — and then, when I realise my sin, I repent, and ask Him to redeem the mess I made. Some of the most brilliant answers to prayer I have ever seen, come from those moments! Don’t be afraid of getting things wrong as you walk with Him – Jesus is a Redeemer.

The Lord’s wisdom and clarity are astonishing. When I am writing this blog I often can’t think of a good, clear, simple way to explain many concepts that seem exceedingly complicated to me. I don’t just want to write my ideas here, I like to do my best to write things that will give other people insight into Who the Lord is. So I pray, and He literally hands me the sentence I couldn’t find.

Often a particular sentence, a word, or a phrase pops up and I know it didn’t come from me. It suddenly drifts through my mind and as it does that it occurs to me that isn’t the kind of thought I would have. Even when I get stuck reading the bible, I ask Him to help: “I just don’t get that Lord. Would You mind explaining it to me please?” And He does.

Reading the bible without the Holy Spirit is tedious and boring, reading it with Him is like slowly unveiling a puzzle as it fits together. “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know Him better.” Ephesians 1:17. We will never understand His Word with our hearts, if we simply analyse it with our heads.

I’ve been reading the bible for over 50 years so I guess I am familiar with the overall gist of it. But I still need the index every now and then to find stuff! I know what I am looking for is in there, somewhere, but I often dunno where! Thanks Google. However, I also know it is His thought when it simplifies something that seemed so complicated that I couldn’t understand it at all …

One of the most frequent things the Lord says to me as I read His Word is this: “What doesn’t it say?” Here’s another one: “What would it look like if i did what it says here?” Man I love/hate that last one. I love it because He is going to show me something about Himself I haven’t seen yet, and I hate it because I know that somewhere, somehow, I’m going to end up taking a risk. Believe it or not I am not a risk taker by nature. 

I once went to Niagara Falls, but I skipped going over them in a barrel, the second I looked at them! Man that’s a whole lot of water!!  No risks for me! I am often aware that I’m not other people’s taste when it comes to speaking – because I’m too blunt, but I don’t much care if I hurt your feelings to reach your heart. Yeah I hear the irony!! I totally love the Body of Christ, but my first priority is that I want Jesus to have the  reward of all His suffering. We can be part of that reward for Him when we value what He says above what we think and act on it.

I have definitely fallen in love with the way Jesus thinks about people. When I have trouble with someone I ask Him to help me to see them through His eyes. People are His favourite subject, no matter how they look, or what we think is wrong with them. He doesn’t SEE race or creed, He sees people who need His love. Our Western selfishness and sense of entitlement is tragic. We scrimp and save and work so hard for the things that do not last. And we can easily ignore the eternal because it doesn’t jump up and down and demand our attention.

Paul says this kind of stuff so beautifully in Philippians 4:12&13: “I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” I’m still learning … especially not to complain when things aren’t easy.

As I am typing this today, I know He has something for you to do, that no-one else can. That’s why you are here. Please don’t let searching for fame and recognition take up your precious time. Be you, and let Him have His way in your life, you will fall in love with how gentle and kind He is. We need to quit hero-worshipping anyone else but Him!

Once when I was back-slidden I ended up talking to a junkie about the Lord Jesus. He said: “I know you love Jesus because I can see Him all over you.” This dear muddled up young man was wrong. The Holy Spirit was all over me because He loves that man and He quite simply can’t help Himself – He will use a donkey if that is all that is available. Jesus is the Hero, not us. Bye. 👋

P 3276 Jesus is our life now.

/ DVH

We live “… in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;  through glory and dishonour, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors;  known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed; sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” 1 Corinthians 6:6-10.

Paul carefully describes the way we are to live …from our core … out. I know the immediate response to reading something like this is to distance ourselves from it, by making excuses for our private, secret personhood, or past  circumstances. But our lack of obedience, cannot excuse us — nor does our inbuilt ineptitude for spiritual things. That’s because all transformation takes, is surrender. This is a quality decision you refuse to back out of. The thing is we can’t keep any sin like a pet, feeding it, sheltering it, and making room for it. 

We have given the Lord our lives, so we don’t belong to us now. We died! So we do not have to have those things imprisoning us anymore. We have gained His life and it has been designed to flourish in us. No matter what mess we have made of our lives – nothing is too difficult for Him. Meanwhile it is dangerous to project how we feel NOW, into the future …because feelings shift and change. God Himself and His Ways are the only certain things we can afford to embrace, because they are written down in His book!

We can try to live in both worlds but that pathway of self-control is an illusion. The truth is everybody is “fine” until something incredibly hard happens. We simply can’t hold onto the things Christ is offering us, and still have this world at the centre of our attention. We need empty hands! Grace is free but it was incredibly costly. Our love for the One Who paid such a price, demands a response — and our response needs to be total surrender. Partial surrender does not work. Trust me, I’ve tried it. You will make yourself a target with so much time-wasting guff, you can barely keep your head up above water.

Jesus has taken every single sin and burden off us, when He embraced those things upon Himself on the cross and took our punishment for them. We cannot atone for our own sin, now we live as grateful recipients of His Grace. Praise Him over and over again for the incredible Grace His death released that day. It was over abundantly more than we could ever hope or dream. Yet we cannot begin to attain anything like 1 Corinthians 6 without the Grace of God thundering through our lives, transforming the way we think, act, and speak. And we need to allow Him to do it.

Let’s choose to be all in, now and forever. That’s a quality decision that we will choose to honour for His sake. Not because Christ will reject us – He won’t – this side of judgment day. But because sin is slippery, uncontrollable stuff that seeps into our very thinking. It will come out of our mouths when life squeezes us tightly. It will slowly but surely lead us away from the very Person Who saved us.  The bible says in Galatians 2:20:“I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”

The reality is, we simply must choose to become alive to Father God’s Ways. And then start by using our faith  and acting on those choices. It’s a done deal —Jesus took us all to the cross with Him. Now we choose to live — daily, minute by minute, honouring that decision by following His Ways with all of our substance. If He wants us to give, then we give. If He wants us to pray for others, then we pray for them. If He wants us to go live somewhere else, then we do that. If He wants us to speak, we speak. And if He wants us to be silent, then we are silent. His Grace is available to those who want Him to help them. We are ruled by what we embrace.

Our God promises to meet all our needs … so we don’t want to go about demanding our rights. We gave them away when we said ‘yes’ to Jesus! Now, we choose to submit to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ God’s Holy Son. And WE CAN TRUST HIM. We will never ever deserve what He did for us, even for a nano-second. Our grateful, obedient response means that we choose to follow His instructions in the Bible, because we have ingested the way He thinks, rather than the way this world does. 

He has becomes our reference point — not our own comfort. How can we do this? We choose to live with forever in mind, as we honour God Himself with our obedience. Jesus is our life now. We are still in this world, but we are no longer a product of what this world thinks and does. Now we follow the One Who produced life, life, and more life. Bye. 👋 

“So then, prepare your hearts and minds for action! Stay alert and fix your hope firmly on the marvellous grace that is coming to you. For when Jesus Christ is unveiled, a greater measure of grace will be released to you. As God’s obedient children, never again shape your lives by the desires that you followed when you didn’t know better. Instead, shape your lives to become like the Holy One who called you. For Scripture says: “You are to be holy, because I am holy.” 1 Peter 1:13-16 TPT.