Trusts

P 3096 something to think on.

/ DVH

“Give God the right to direct your life, and as you trust Him along the way, you’ll find He pulled it off perfectly! He will appear as your righteousness, as sure as the dawning of a new day. He will manifest as your justice, as sure and strong as the noonday sun. Quiet your heart in His presence and wait patiently for Yahweh. And don’t think for a moment that the wicked, in their prosperity, are better off than you.” Psalms 37:5-7 TPT. 

These verses are a great summation of how faith works. They help you to experience all that the Lord has for you as you surrender your whole life, and then begin to obey the stuff that is already in His book. Useful tip! Please don’t excuse yourself by saying “I don’t do that.” That’s leaning on your own understanding — ASK HIM instead. At the same time it is not good to skip over any apparently hard bits, instead it is important to take them to heart. I keep going back until He gives me an answer.

Most of my answers come when the Holy Spirit brings another verse to my mind and it clarifies the first one. Then ask Him – “What would You like me to do about this Lord?”  I have met so many people who are stuck right there agreeing with the bible but dismissing their own responsibility to change. Perhaps their thought is: “I’ve prayed about my sin, I confessed it. Now changing me and my unfortunate attitude is up to God.” I put “stinky attitude” but most people don’t like to go that far.

Leaving changing our core values up to Him is like shouting into the wind.The Lord expects us to do something about those attitudes, and He is happy to help us. To start with: He loves the interaction that takes place when we choose to engage with Him over these seemingly small things. He will tell us what to do, and help us as He tells us how to do it.

Look, I am going to be blunt here – you and I are not babies who sit about bleating: “I can’t help it, and God hasn’t done anything about it so it’s not my fault. After all I prayed!” That’s like nailing one foot to the floor and wondering why you are going round and round. We blame God because we think we did all we could, by praying. Do the opposite on purpose! Remember Zacchaeus? This man overpaid to make up for his sin. Excusing yourself is called evasion. I know people who say: ‘Jesus paid for my sin’ –YEAH! He did! But repentance is in the book too! … Repentance involves fruit. If you want fruit – this is how you get it!

My advice is to read His book with the idea that we will “hear” something to help us every single day, then we act on it. I have learnt, over and over again, that the Lord is often doing something behind the scenes …  somewhere I didn’t even think about. He is doing something else – every single time. This has become so predictable, it is amazing. If you want eyes to see and ears to hear this is how you get them. Stick yourself under His heavenly bible-microscope and ask questions. Don’t give up or use avoidance because you don’t have enough time – press in. Words are cheap, actions speak louder than words.

However, acting in faith on what He tells you to do can be hard. The bible says:“let the thief steal no more!” Now that person needs to find another way to earn a living because stealing is out! Jesus told a lot of people to go away and stop doing whatever it was that got them down the hole they had fallen into. You and I aren’t glove puppets – He will not make us change our behaviour. The Lord loves to come alongside us, to help us fix whatever it is, with His guidance and wisdom. He loves the interaction that happens as we learn to rely upon Him step by step – yes I know I already said this! 

It works like this: Pray! Ask for His help to identify any problem. Then ask Him to show you how He wants you to fix it. If someone else is involved, then pull up your big guy pants and go and ask for forgiveness. Explain to them you have been praying about this fault but you did not know you were asking amiss. You thought that was the way this stuff was done. Their response to your humility is their problem, you are working on your own spiritual life with the Lord. Faith grows when you use it to overcome your own weaknesses. 

Waiting patiently for some whose faults are driving you batty, can be incredibly irritating! But that response is our cue to ask God: “Lord, what log is in my eye that is obscuring my view of what is really going on?”. This is how we will discover the stuff we need to prayerfully do about ourselves. We are not meant to live this life irritated. Irritation is the opposite of learning to live in love. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” We all know where that scripture is! 

The Holy Spirit knows the steps each of us need to take to get us to this place in Corinthians! My steps won’t be like yours, because we are different. But He promises to counsel us with His eye upon us, and He will. There is absolutely nothing like doing God’s Will God’s Way! All sorts of glory comes down. My insides get so happy I just want to do some sort of little dance on the spot! I don’t, of course, because I can’t dance for toffee – but I yell a lot instead! “Praise You Lord!” When we pray about this kind of stuff we are touching the eternal, and allowing Him to be the focus of our lives. That is definitely something to think on. Bye. 👋

P 2689 We gotta get in the flow and go, go, GO.

/ DVH

Today I thought it could be useful to follow up yesterday’s blog and revise what unending love looks like: It is clearly explained in I Corinthians 13:1-8. We can’t know if we have it, or even if we are pursing the right thing, if we can’t recognise it!!  First of all, unending love is a love that just won’t quit!  Look we can analyse the word love, by saying this means this type of love, and this one means that …until the cows come home … but His love is experienced as we further His kingdom.

The point is for us to operate in the flow of His Love, and until we start stepping out in faith and practicing that, we will only know Him with limitations. When we act on our faith we step into the flow. Our God is a God of action. Read the book! To serve Jesus and others, we must take risks – on purpose. Every risk we take won’t always produce fruit, or a happy experience. But when we walk with the Holy Spirit, walking the way Jesus Himself walked – we are totally relying upon the Holy Spirit to take us through. As we do that we will get to know Almighty God in a unique way. Intimately. We literally walk a mile in Christ’s shoes!

Now let’s look at what His unending love IS NOT. It is not a tool to showcase our spiritual abilities. As our precious sister Heidi Baker often says: “the way UP is DOWN.” I pray ‘lower still Lord’ as often as I remember to do it. I realise that I must willingly humble myself, and understand that any enemy attack is an opportunity to take me to a lower place. A place where if He doesn’t help me I’m sunk. We all need to be stretched to become bigger.

Meanwhile, it goes without saying that I tell satan to take a hike, but in front of our Holy God I humble myself. Like Paul said: “not that I have already accomplished that but I press ON!”  In my mind this means that maybe I’m not good at it but I’m not going to stop my pursuit of Him. I want to know Him. Not just in the “gee I feel blessed today” moments, but to know Him so well that I will always rely upon Him.

Over to the verses above:“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship THAT I MAY BOAST, but do not have love, I gain nothing…”

We need to know His love to practically combat the temptation to become important in this world’s eyes – that temptation comes because we want to feel good about ourselves. But the above Graces are His gifts, they are given freely to us, for us to freely bless others. Without His active Love these wonderful gifts can be corrupted by our own needs to be seen and appreciated. Next the Apostle Paul tells us exactly what God’s love looks like:

“…Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails …”

If we want His kind of love we are going to have to put away this world’s self-centred idea of love.The sad truth is, the world’s way of thinking means I need everything working out for my own benefit, to prove to myself that He loves me. Instead the Lord and I get to share an experience of His love in action upon someone else’s life. We are the designated pipeline that delivers the Holy Spirit’s grace, and grace and love flow as we draw on those things to further His kingdom. Love takes risks, grace facilitates it. The more you go the more it flows.

That stuff we call love down here on earth, doesn’t have the substance or the stickability to survive this world’s despicable onslaughts. But His love is unstoppable! Unfortunately my human love falls in a heap most of the time when someone hurts me or life gets hard. That’s how I know I need to keep pressing toward the mark. I will have to pursue this kind of love, and repent when I miss it!

Colossians 3 also has a fantastic love description of His love in verses12-14 “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

This scripture shows me that I must PUT these things ON by choosing to actively use my faith. Just like Peter did when he stepped out of the boat, onto the water! Faith is an action word. It exhibits God’s glorious qualities in places that have never experienced them. Living like Jesus did means taking risks for other people’s sake, using my faith to rely upon the Holy Spirit to help me. We gotta get in the flow and go, go, GO! Bye 🥰

P 2629 Going from reading into transformation.

/ DVH

“He has rescued us completely from the tyrannical rule of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom realm of His beloved Son. For in the Son all our sins are canceled and we have the release of redemption through His very blood.” Colossians 1:13-14 TPT.

Lemme ask a curly question … if we need rescuing, and SomeBody has already done it …then what keeps going wrong?? This is the bit most of us get stuck on – mainly because we often don’t feel any different. Especially if we have been provoked by other people or circumstances. The change we need to make, is about the way we treat the Lord and other people, despite our circumstances— even when under pressure. I’m not talking about hiding the fact that painful, hard things things exist, I’m talking about finding out what the Lord says about any particular situation, and walking through them His Way.

Our finite brains are not the most reliable guides, especially if there is a barrel load of feelings tied to some thoughts! In the academic world E = mc². That’s called knowledge. Hilariously I had to ask hubby if I remembered that formula correctly because I learnt it like, 60 years ago! I also have learnt, from experience, that my knowledge has become faulty over time. So, what if I embark upon a new way to live and I exchange my old thoughts and reactions, FOR WHAT GOD HAS SAID? That’s when I enter what Christ has already given me – His kingdom. We must move on from the concepts into the reality of living HIS way.

If I replace what I’ve learnt, or what I think I know with scripture, plus relevant matching actions, then over time that means I will automatically start to reference things that float through my head, by what HE SAID in the book. I believe that’s what this scripture means:  “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2. By doing we end up testing out God’s will for ourselves. 

Here’s another verse:  “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5. WE do it. He will help us but we do it! We refuse to entertain anything that contradicts what He has already told us in Person, through His word. Here’s yet another from Isaiah 26:3:“You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You.” This is the kind of “work” we are engaged in now. We become vigilant to any thoughts that are contrary to the revealed will of God in the book. We live now to please Him. Here’s my last verse that explains this ongoing battle: Romans 7:23:“But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”

My body and its functions have a memory. For instance, when I think about some food, I can remember its taste. In some circumstances, I might remember fear, danger or disappointment. Those things can rule, cloud, and limit my faith if I am not prepared to put aside what I think I already know, in favour of what God has already said. The important bit is to wait upon God and find OUT what He says! We don’t just need to hear a Voice, we need to have what we hear validated by what we are reading, or have read in the bible previously. 

satan taunts us. he tells us we can’t be different because – we are still feeling, reacting, and responding the same way we always did. Feelings aren’t FAITH. We need to learn to defer to God’s opinion, not our own, and that will take time, patience and persistence. When we don’t act on what we believe, we are undermining the very thing God gave us for transformation – living faith. True faith has evidence – it has actions that match up with our belief system.  We are going to have to actively restore the balance we will need in this new life of faith … by knowing what God says even more than the data we’ve been collecting and collating all our lives. Then we go on to choose to ACT the way the bible says.

Jesus did everything that needed to be done to set us free at Calvary. Now we faithfully and progressively change our minds to think the way He thought. This means we don’t have to be ruled by our appetites and fears etc. anymore – we’ve moved away from our old location of fear etc. into a new place. We’ve been born into a new kingdom and it has a new way to live. Like that scripture above in Colossians says, we no longer have to live the way we used to. 

SomeBody paid our debt — and now we must clear out the closets of our old way of thinking and replace those things with Godly thinking. SomeBody – the Lord Jesus Christ! – freely gave us the power to go from reading the bible into doing what it says = transformation. Now we need to go out and act on what we read. Dying to self means we refuse to be led about by our appetites and needs, instead we live to serve and obey what our King says. Bye. 👋

P 2459 Run after something worth running after …

/ DVH

“Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope, and love—yet love surpasses them all. So above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.” 1 Corinthians 13:13 TPT.

Paul suggests in the scripture above that if you want to run after something then run toward something worthwhile — like love. In other versions of the bible, this verse says …PURSUE love. I like that. Chase after love because it is worth chasing after. We will always need to chase after love however, because with some people, it seems like it is always too far away, plus we are not perfect yet! That’s great BTW, that means we are ‘poor in spirit’ and the poor in spirit inherit the kingdom – at those times we need the kingdom!  Sadly some human relationships are often full of surprises, nasty ones. We are going to need the Holy Spirit to be our full-time coach.

Before we start, here’s a great thought to help us focus and praise God – GOD’S LOVE IS ALWAYS RUNNING TOWARD US! Back to the verse, it says if we are going to run, we need to run after knowing, and living in HIS kind of love. Forget human affection – that disappears quickly in conflict. How do you aim at His love? First of all, remember Love is a VERB not a noun. It is not just an attitude, it is an action. It is see-able! It does something good.

Now let’s look at a metaphoric illustration. You are running alongside somebody you know, and everything is going well, … Then they — we both know it’s always them, it’s never me — say or do some dumb thing, and you’ve lost your stride.  And bit by bit, the rhythm we had together is suddenly broken. Now they are nowhere near me at all and we don’t agree about anything. I’ve lost my peace, patience, and eventually my temper… usually in that order!

What happened? Perhaps I stumbled over something they said or did, or maybe they didn’t say something I needed to hear. Or vice versa. Whatever! The rhythm we had together is now lost. However, the point of pursuing love is not about running …it is the fact that you were running together. There is POWER in ‘together!’ Sadly we can end up brokenhearted when we no longer have the same aim as the other person. However, I am not powerless.  I can always aim at love – with, or without them. The result is the same. I don’t need them to love me back, or even treat me kindly, because God’s love follows the Holy Spirit and His kind of love runs on GRACE not performance. 

Further, the bible says: ‘Love bears all things’, so, in those hard moments when we cannot bear what is going on — we will actually need His love helping us to do more than resolve conflict. People are always impacted by God’s Love. Human love is tainted by need, but God’s love is highlighted by the fact it is unconditional.

What to do? Apologise! Yeah, I know, I didn’t do anything. But apologising clears the air, and repentance lets in grace. And grace makes room for the other person to come to terms with their part in what happened. You see the point is not to instantly arrive at agreement, the real point is going straight back into running toward LOVING LIKE HE DOES. Whether the other person comes or not!

When we are pursuing this kind of love we cannot enter into a brawl about who was right and who was wrong, be-cau-se … we cannot get to love, by that route! That route will end up in a bigger argument. The way to pursue and arrive at running after love is to give up your idea of how things are meant to happen, and start running after the Holy Spirit. We need His help. We do this despite how unkind the other person has been toward us. 

BTW, loving someone with God’s love does not mean we utterly approve of everything they are doing. LOVE AND APPROVAL are two different things. God’s kind of love is supernatural. We always need His love flowing through us, and we access it by obeying what the Holy Spirit prompts us to say and do. Now we stay under the instruction of the Holy Spirit – we don’t give in to our own temper or hurt feelings.

At the same time, we are going to need our faith and hope to kick in to help us to keep on running. I ask the Holy Spirit for ALL those things, plus loads of Grace – because Grace saved the world!  Meanwhile, God’s love is accurately described in the bible and HIS Love always looks like this …”Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. So the reverse of these things is a good indicator that we are not walking in love … if we are impatient, unkind, envious, boastful, or proud etc.

Obviously aiming at love means we are going to die to self. But that is fantastic be-cau-se …”greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.” If 1 Corinthians 13 is to be part of our daily lives then we must pursue love and obey the Holy Spirit. He will take care of our attitudes and actions. Plus we are also acknowledging our own poverty of spirit. Chasing after His Love means we are running after something worth pursuing. Bye. 🥰