Truthful

P 2721 God does not have favourites.

/ DVH

Galatians 2:6-8: “As for those who were held in high esteem—whatever they were makes no difference to me; God does not show favouritism—they added nothing to my message. On the contrary, they recognized that I had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been to the circumcised. For God, who was at work in Peter as an apostle to the circumcised, was also at work in me as an apostle to the Gentiles?  James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised.”

Today I thought it could be good to ask ourselves, do I recognise the supernatural Grace God has given to you? I’m not talking about those nice noises we all make at church, where everyone is kind to everyone else because it is expected. I’m talking about supernatural GRACE – that incredible gift from God that we all need and the thing we are to freely give away to other people. The kind of grace that surprises everybody – even YOU! There is a place for every single person in the Body of Christ, differences are not insurmountable. 

For that to happen we may need to stop playing those games many of us play week by week. The things that project a ‘nice polite’ image… Sometimes we forget that we are actually standing before GOD – Who knows all things and sees all things, so there’s no real point in hiding who we are! When we meet together at church we do it to honour Him, not just swap man-made brownie points. Church is the time to remember that Christ’s death at Calvary released more GRACE than this world, and all the people in it, are ever going to need. Grace swirls around each of us like a hurricane, waiting to be recognised. We have His acceptance because we belong to Him – we don’t have to work at being impressive or trying to look incredibly spiritual. Even though we are a people in process.

The more we realise that in this life everyone needs His Grace, the more we will live aware of what we have and give it away to others. Which makes pretending to be someone nice and happy and perfect all the time … very tiring!  Plus it is a total waste of time!!  It’s a bit like a pear I ate the other day, it looked wonderful, but its skin was like leather and it tasted awful. Here’s a thought – what if someone takes a hypothetical bite out of you, what will they get? What do we do when someone else is mean to us? Do we suck it up and laugh it off, or go away and hide from them, or care enough to honestly talk about it. Or have we learnt to show GRACE. The real kind.

Meanwhile, when the bible says: “All have sinned ..” it means ALL. The people of God are on His conveyor belt of transformation, collecting the things He died to give us, as we are processed by His Word. Pretending we are Miss, Mr or Mrs extremely Nice Person is a waste of everyone’s time – especially ours! Let’s remember, that our time here is finite. I know people who dread going to church because they think they don’t fit in. There are others who get jealous if someone else gets all the attention … 

…And there are others who think they can only fit in if they are always agreeable. Sadly there are also some people who listen and nod at church, and then … they go home and behave exactly the same way they did last week. That kind of hiding stuff is NOT NECESSARY. The actual point of sermons is to open our eyes about change and transformation. So maybe we will want to absorb the truth, instead of pretending we already know? To get there, we need to ask for and absorb His Grace, and be truthful with ourselves. Let’s throw away all those endless excuses and try honesty instead.

Unless we understand that we are all equal in the Lord’s sight, it can be easy to feel unacceptable – other people’s attitudes can be scary. God does not play favourites, after all He didn’t spare His only-one-of-a-kind-Son. If ever there was an opportunity for favouritism that was it! This means He is big enough, wonderful enough, and incredibly intensely in love with us enough, that He can include everyone, and He is not diminished by it. We are allowed to learn to overflow with His love, instead of being plastic. 

Think of church and the body of Christ as an opportunity to actually give and receive His endless capacity for love and acceptance – and honour each other’s gifts.  Maybe then we will begin to comprehend what Jesus bought for us. The King of all Kings died to give us a safe place – despite our sometimes differing theologies. That’s what the Apostle Paul knew. He knew there was a place for everyone, and everyone’s gifting in God’s eyes and he honoured others.

There are no tiers of importance in heaven – Jesus is all in all.  Down here we are all recipients of His great Grace that we all don’t deserve. Let’s think on that today, it will definitely get our own personal grateful going. Bye. 👋

P 2500 Whatever occupies your thoughts will rule you.

/ DVH

“An elder, talking to a child, says, “I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is fearful, vengeful, envious, resentful and deceitful. The other wolf is compassionate, loving, generous, truthful and peaceful.” The child asks, “Which wolf will win the fight?” The elder responds, “The one I feed.”’ A Cherokee Indian proverb.

It’s kind of a no-brainer really, whatever we invest our time, money, and energy in, rules us. Oh, the futility of allowing ourselves to be pushed about by our anger or appetites. The worst thing ev-er is when someone you trust does something dumb … they are, after all, human beings (!)  … and so you feel betrayed. That’s when what happened starts rolling around in your mind – maybe it even stops you from sleeping. “How could they do such a thing? Didn’t they know that would hurt me? Maybe they even meant too …!!!???”

It seems that perhaps we are starting to build a case against someone else. Meanwhile satan stands at our elbow happily chucking those kind of thoughts, plus reminding us of other ones about that person – even the things we forgot …into our memory bank.. A-n-d, we are grumpy so we refuse to shut the gate to those thoughts because …we’re feeling sorry for ourselves. We’ve been deeply wounded and wronged. It isn’t a misinterpretation, an accident, or a whoopsie – someone actually wounded us. What are we going to do about it?

Unfortunately, then it becomes easy to start what I call – the opinion poll. The opinion poll is when we begin to tell others about what happened to us. We probably start that process out in kind of a sweet-ish, sad way, after all we don’t want others to think that we are bad people! But pretty soon, the sweetness goes out of the window and we are pulling the other person apart like they are a loaf of bread and we’re hungry. Now we really have a case against them because … OTHER PEOPLE AGREE WITH US that they treated us badly!  Maybe you get my drift – you’ve bin there and dun that yourself. No? Lucky you! For those of us who have acted that way … in these moments we are feeding the wrong wolf and doing that will devour US and gobble up our faith.

Here are some scriptures that have helped me escape from that sticky web.. “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” Matthew 7:2.“Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10. “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”Philippians 4:8. Right here we have the diagnosis and the cure.

Now is the time to give up rehearsing someone else’s sins and start looking for the good in what happened – before you go down the plug hole and lose several days, weeks, months …?years? … to something not worthy of even 10 seconds of your time. No, I am not nuts … at least I hope not! 😶 But the person who wounded us has exposed a chink in our spiritual, mental and physical armour. They found that chink for us. It was probably accidental, BUT, whatever … it is still useful! Some attitudes are sneaky, they stay hidden. It is absolutely brilliant when somebody else exposes those things for us, whether they found that attitude on purpose or not. It gives us a chance to see what is going on in our own hearts. 

At this point it is tempting to simply repent, and forgive the other person, as well as actively remembering not to ruminate over the incident. BUT! In my experience ignoring revelation about who we really are is dumb. We all have our weaknesses, and if we can stand back with the Holy Spirit (LOVE HIMSELF), by our side, and let Him show us if there was truth in what was said or done … we will gain something to be thankful for!  At the same time, we can ask the Lord to heal that actual wound He helped us uncover, so we can feed the ‘good wolf,’ some good food. Somewhere in the past, we probably believed a lie and we needed the Lord to expose that lie and … heal the wound. 

My point today is, whatever occupies your thoughts rules you. Hubby said that like this to me yesterday: ‘Let’s pretend someone hates the colour brown. They won’t wear it, can’t stand it, avoid it, and actively dislike others who like that colour… Those people do not realise that BROWN is now ruling their lives, it has become their god.’  I laughed heaps, and because it was such an accurate scenario I was inspired to pass it on. Yeah. Now there’s more food for thought! 👋🏻

P 2342 Learning to catch the wind.

/ DVH

This morning I thought about three different scriptures I’ve read recently that touched my heart … but none of them seemed right for today’s blog. Some days I have no idea what I want to write about. So it was utterly amazing that I came up with three extremely different things on the same day! You’d think that gave me heaps of choices… but NO! … not one of them seemed right. In the end I gave up trying to bam a square peg into a round hole and wrote this instead.😂 

We can get so intensely fixated upon a task that we forget: “His yoke is easy and His burden is light.” My immediate response to that thought is – if it ain’t easy then it ain’t God! And today, with those three different thoughts, none of them were simply right for now! We are not bull-dozers, we follow the wind. His Presence is in that task, and He lifts the weight or the burden for us. 

Today I want to talk about the similarities between writing this blog and witnessing. Facing a blank page is daunting, knowing that tomorrow total strangers are going to read it, and hopefully understand what you have written. And facing a total stranger and talking about your faith is also very challenging. You feel you must get it right or you will fail the Lord, and mislead that person so badly you will put them off Jesus forever. 😱No pressure of course!!  But that moment also clearly diagnoses that we are trying hard again. We do what we do because we love people, there is no pressure.

So here’s what today’s lesson showed me – when I feel the weight of responsibility to get whatever I am doing right – then I need to back up and …WAIT. I am waiting for Him to prompt me, or until I see an opening I can drive a Mac truck through. I’m waiting for HIM, I’m not waiting for feelings, I’m waiting for some sort of clarity. Sometimes that could be just one word so I go with that. I could look at someone and see anger, or sadness, and I ask them how they have been doing lately. These things, unfold, sometimes one sentence at a time.

Meanwhile, I figure things like witnessing probably will be scary because I am dying to my carefully cultivated life of self-preservation!! In these past few months I’ve noticed an opportunity to talk about what I know about Him, with strangers, a number of times. Those people asked me questions. I like that, it seems way easier than being obedient when He asks me to bring up something He gives me to say.  At those more difficult times I have a clear choice to obey or not …and I don’t always make the right one! Just being truthful …😶

Witnessing is not a rigid thing, it is fluid. In the past few weeks, practitioners in the health profession have asked me what I write about in this blog. I figure they are checking me out, since I fell downstairs quite badly, and they want to make sure my marbles aren’t scrambled, or broken or lost! The first time I simply told the person that it is a Christian blog and then they asked all kinds of questions, and I answered them as clearly and carefully as I could. We had a lovely talk together, and then we went back to my health again. The next time the new person asked exactly the same question and I thought ‘here we go again!’  Except we didn’t. They said “Oh, OK,” and they went straight back to asking health questions.

‘There is no system.’  Seriously, witnessing is a ‘fly by the seat of your pants, always relying on the Holy Spirit’  kind of thing. The Lord is always in charge, and right after His leading, comes the other person’s curiosity. Our job is to remain a safe place for them to ask questions. We are planting seeds, not restructuring their lives! Be prepared to stop in the middle of the most intriguing opportunity ever, to let the whole conversation slide. Even though you might badly wanna shout: “Dag-nab-it we were nearly there!!” We must leave it to Him to turn that conversation around again – if He wants to.

The Holy Spirit is gentle, HE Leads, He does not push – so no shoving please. He is the wind, we are just weather vanes turning to and fro as He blows on us. That’s all for today, maybe I will write about those three things I mentioned another time. Who knows, I’m just trying to catch the wind.👋🏻