Under pressure

P 3250 Stay poor in Spirit.

/ DVH

“Strong to overcome. From Prayers on Fire, written by Brian Simmons and Gretchen Rodriguez.                                                     “Every trial is a divine opportunity for our character to grow. It’s a chance for us to discover how truly faithful Jesus is and how strong we are when we’re fastened to His love. When our faith is tested and fear looms in the shadows, we can reach for the Light and He will come.

Trials are a launching pad for our glorious transformation. Though the enemy creates them to take us out, Jesus shakes things up and turns things around. Ironically, trials become things we can be thankful for. If it weren’t for them, we’d never know how faithful He is. If our love was never tested, we’d never truly know how devoted to Jesus we are. To discover His power, there must first be a need for it. To relish the joy of laughing in the face of adversity, there must be an enemy to laugh at.”

“Jesus, teach me to fight my battles from the posture of confident trust and perfect peace. Help me to remember that the safest place to be is in the warmth of Your glory, where the flames of praise are ignited by Your nearness. Your love casts out every fear and fills me with confidence.” Amen.

My thoughts: some Christians have such beautiful insights it blows my mind. I don’t often read this particular site, but hubby receives regular input from “Encounter God” The Passion Translation. As you know, I’m not big on including things, but this particular piece really challenged and spoke to me personally. Boy there is nothing like the truth to sort out your motivation. In this case my trials can show me how faithful Jesus is. 

Sometimes difficult things continue for a while. Unfortunately, they don’t just disappear on command! Aligning our hearts is one thing, steadfastness under pressure is entirely another.  And we never know which way anything is going to go, so we must be prepared to hold fast under pressure. That takes practice. I must say, I am learning that the Lord is not only stretching our faith to grow our faith, He is also revealing His goodness to us through the tough times. He knows better than we do, how far we can go. That’s called trust. 

The following scripture tells me who Jesus is —it comforts me better than someone else’s words can … Isaiah 42:2-4a “He will not cry out or raise His voice, nor make His voice heard in the streets. A bruised reed He will not break and a smoldering wick He will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice. He will not grow weak or discouraged before He has established His justice on the earth….”

Instant comfort! Our part is to believe what He says and hold onto it, by reminding ourselves that He’s good and He’s looking after us. Then we deliberately give the whole situation to Him, and only do whatever He tells us to do. The we leave it with Him. Don’t try to figure out an answer or oppress or berate yourself for being human and hurting, instead allow yourself to rest in Him. He already won that battle you are fighting! Learn to rest.

Matthew 11:28-30 says: “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  We are bathed in His comfort, as we read and believe His book. The Old Testament or the New Testament – it doesn’t matter! If we actively listen to what the bible is saying, and act on it, treating the scripture as instructions, we will begin to learn His Ways.

So first step – we need His Rest. Our own rest can be kind of seasonal, it comes and goes with whatever is currently going on. Taking up HIS yoke means we are choosing to learn how to respond, from Him, our Personal Counsellor. We don’t ignore trials, we face them leaning on His understanding and we follow what Jesus said or did. We can do this without fear because of Who He is and What He has already done for us. I put what I think aside. This is not the time to figure out someone else’s POV, it is the time to let go. Our ways are complicated, His are EASY.  So, if it is complicated it is not His Way! If what is happening is heavy and it is burdening me, I haven’t entered into His rest yet.

I only do whatever He tells me to do – if He says fight, I fight. If He says rest, I rest. We are not fighting against other people! Our warfare is against principalities and powers and Jesus already beat them. He has a plan for you and I to get through things. So I pick up my frayed feelings and mentally walk away, and continue to thank Him for helping me. His desire is to reshape my thinking so I trust Him more. I love the line in the “Encounter God” inclusion that says: ‘To discover His power, there must first be a need for it.’  It’s OK to be needy! 

Our God always cares about the needy no matter what the need is! My best advice comes from the Beatitudes:“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3. I am learning to stay poor in Spirit!  And I refuse to be satisfied with the things I think I know — otherwise I know I will stop moving. I just keep going back and back to Him. There are people who fall over and can’t get up again, because their ‘system’ isn’t working anymore. I don’t have a system, I just rely on Him! 

Many of us have gone from trusting Him, into trusting what we’ve learnt about Him – we’ve stopped being poor in spirit and became satisfied. And yes, there IS actually a difference. Bye. 👋

P 3131 Don’t give away your peace …

/ DVH

… to anyone! Cherish it. “And everything I’ve taught you is so that the peace which is in Me will be in you and will give you great confidence as you rest in Me. For in this unbelieving world you will experience trouble and sorrows, but you must be courageous, for I have conquered the world!”John 16:33. Peace is a Person, Jesus! He’s the Prince of peace – Who brings with Him a stable unfettered state of mind, so we can serve God and focus on what matters to Him.

What drags us away from the kind of peace that Jesus is talking about here – is the ordinary stuff that is unrelenting, and it flies at us daily. “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not LET your hearts be troubled or afraid,“John 14:27. We now have the power to not LET things get to us. Most of us deal with stuff every day. Kids don’t pick up their toys, or they disobey, or they talk back. Bosses have agendas, and many times they can have unrealistic expectations. Spouses don’t always understand what we are trying to tell them. 

We need to recognise that when human beings are living under pressure they say and do stupid, careless things!I Ask the Holy Spirit to – ‘Please help me to learn to live in peace – under fire!’ Jesus will teach us, as we read His Word, day by day, so we can have the inner resources to combat the thief. We all know where our help comes from! Our reality does not exist outside the Lord Himself. His Words in our heart comforts and upholds us, particularly as we choose to cherish and act on them. God has us in His care, and He knows what He is doing.

Those God-words from Him to you, daily, are powerful, they will pull down strongholds in our lives, when we let them. Don’t let your perception of yourself, or even your family history,  limit you. Now we are in a new family, a new kingdom. We can do things we’ve never done before because of HIS GRACE in us. Throw away family traits – unless they are Godly. Peace is an inside job. Let’s stop excusing our own shortcomings and face them squarely, instead. A lack of peace inside, is an indication that we need to pause and ask the Lord to show us what has caused our peace to leave … and then fix it.

Sometimes we lie to ourselves by soft-soaping the scriptures – like the one that says Jesus understands us in our weaknesses – Hebrews 4:15. Of course He does! That is why He is the perfect High Priest! But we can’t rely on excuses and continue to tolerate the very things that take our awareness of His Presence away from us. Which means we must face the truth and the consequences that our attitudes have had in our lives and the lives of others. Then repent, repair and move on because these things steal our peace away.

Let Jesus protect you. Be wise when you relate to difficult people, but always be prepared to be open and honest about yourself and your failings. Say: “I’m so sorry but I don’t cope with things like that. I need the Lord to help me, please pray for me.” Hiddenness can lead to a loss of peace because the Holy Spirit loves truth and unity, and when we hide ourselves to save face, or protect ourselves- He quietly leaves. No peace there then!

My next point is – over-thinking things, which can lead to anxiety and stress. So many times I have tossed and turned instead of happily sleeping, while I’m trying to figure out a good way to approach a difficult person. Or trying to think up ways to manage a hard day that is rushing at me. My advice is to give these things to Him, then leave them alone. At first it feels neglectful, because we are so used to worrying out answers to problems!

However, now we are engaged in peace maintenance, so we let the Prince of Peace take care of everything that clutters up our minds. “You will keep in perfect and constant peace the one whose mind is steadfast [that is, committed and focused on You—in both ]inclination and character], Because he trusts and takes refuge in You [with hope and confident expectation].” Isaiah 26:3.

Busyness is a thief – yet sometimes we can’t help but be busy. Jesus Himself was often busy! Crowds came and came, demanding this and that. Unfortunately the cares and worries of this world demand everybody’s attention. Mark 4:19 says:“… but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.” Peace can be choked out by worry. I’ve found it extremely helpful to let go of these things by naming them, one by one.

We can think of prayer as taking many hours, and we know we have no time. But the truth is He already knows what is bugging you and HE wants to help you. Sooooo many times I have discovered He has a better way to carry out what must be done than I have. Remember, in the bible, we have two instances of Jesus Himself helping fishermen to FISH! We have given Him our lives, so we need to let Him organise them. That does not mean we do nothing, but it does mean we will enjoy His company through the day. 

Prayer is an attitude of surrendering our hearts to Him, deferring to His wisdom. It isn’t always WORDS. Think of the Lord Jesus as SomeOne Who is glad to be an intimate part of your life, SomeOne Who wants you to do much more than slog through your busy days. He wants to be with you. Imagine that – the Perfect One longs for your company.  His Presence within us is our peace.  Let that peace be your umpire. Bye. 👋

P 2963 Quick sand.

/ DVH

One of the quick sand traps we can fall into as we learn to walk with the Lord, is that we can get stuck regarding sin. We try to explain things away. When we focus on what we think happened and why — that’s when a ‘sin’ focus takes over and we stop thinking like we are children of the King. My advice is in all situations, focus on the Lord. Dismissing our sin is like stepping into quick sand.

What we intently look at, has a tendency to grow larger, and we need the Lord to be larger than the dumb stuff  other people do. Focussing on the cross and everything He chose to do for us, produces clear focus and gratitude. I’ve found that ‘self’ will lie to you. It is not interested in dying … because it is afraid it will cease to exist if it dies. But death to the ‘old’ self is always the desired outcome. We can only LIVE for Jesus to the extent that we are prepared to DIE to self.

Otherwise we will start explaining why we did this or that, trying to justify ourselves. Let’s just level the playing field shall we? “ALL have sinned!” This means we can’t possibly justify ourselves – all means all!  Don’t fight humility or give self any credence, confession is the answer to sin. Renewing – or changing your mind – means our focus will change as we focus on His thoughts not ours. Otherwise we are trapped, but the minute we confess our faults – that trap flies open. Sin is a deceiver. It wants us to identify with it instead of leaning on and relying upon what Jesus did for us. The reality is, sin can no longer hold us, it can only take hold when we believe its lies.

Trying to justify ourselves means that we have been tricked into giving away the ground that Jesus died to give us. The efficiency of our enemy’s trap depends upon the personality of the individual person. For many people, He can grab them because of an underlying sense of guilt or shame. This means that we haven’t yet totally grasped what we have been given. Jesus Christ gave us His justification, His stature before God. We have it credited to our account. God gave us something that we could never do for ourselves – for free. But it cost Him everything – that’s the kind of wonderful God we serve! 

This what what this incredible exchange was all about – Jesus took our sin and gave us His holiness, His righteousness. To walk in those things we need to treat other people the same way He treated us. We were His enemies! We were against everything He stood for. We need to do this generously. Unselfishly. Not just the people we like, but even our known enemies. Now we are free to choose to follow Him down the road of sacrificial love, compassion, kindness etc.

The Christian life is about choices. It is often about choices that need to be made under pressure. Jesus chose to be a servant. So we choose to follow Him and live the same way He did, with thanksgiving and obedience. Our day-to-day choices provide us with a mirror – they show us how much faith we are living in. When we choose to give into our flesh, ourselves, our old nature, we are empowering our old life. That old life no longer has any power over us – we can only enliven it by giving it our allegiance. It is a mirage, a memory, a shadow of what was. We will find the attitude or actions that seem to imprison us, actually cannot hold onto us when we begin to use our faith to walk away from them.

The more we have indulged our flesh the harder the enemy will fight for us to return to that life. he never stops tempting us, because Jesus Himself said: “… in this world you will have trials…” When we are tried, by self-interest or difficult circumstances, our true self comes to the surface where it can be identified and dealt with. Instead of excusing that behaviour as ‘only human’ or ‘normal under the circumstances’ — we need to own how we’ve reacted so we can walk away from it, back into the freedom Christ has given us.

Then with the Holy Spirit’s help, we begin to take our renewed mind’s faith-steps away from the things that drag us down and step into our new life, our new identity, in Christ. We are now who He says we are. This means instead of giving you a piece of my mind, I give away His PEACE to you instead. Instead of punishing you because you don’t suit me, I choose to love you. Loving you is not giving you permission to continue to hurt me, instead it gives YOU a chance to know what unconditional love looks like!

The reason I can forgive you or you can forgive me is because of what Jesus did for both of us. We are standing on the same ground. Our issues are not people, our issues are attitudes and subsequent actions.“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment.” Matthew 5:21-22a. See? Attitudes matter!! Anger is clearly out of God’s order. It’s not just a bad day, or a stinky attitude, or a suitable response to someone else’s sin, to warn them off.

We know something that the other person may not know – He died for their sin too. Sin, or holding onto resentment or bitterness, or shame or guilt, is like stepping into quick sand. We will drown and smother our burgeoning faith. Our best combat attitude is to continue to renew our mind, and act on what we read. Then we begin to think about this life like Jesus did. We ask for His help – and use our faith to be obedient. Bye 👋

P 2886 Confidence.

/ DVH

We can have confidence in the Lord, because He is always with us. 1 John 5:13-15 says: “My purpose in writing is simply this: that you who believe in God’s Son will know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have eternal life, the reality and not the illusion. And how bold and free we then become in His Presence, freely asking according to His will, sure that He’s listening. And if we’re confident that He’s listening, we know that what we’ve asked for is as good as ours.”

The Trinity have provided everything we will ever need, because They want mankind to permanently benefit from Calvary. 2 Peter 1:3 says this:“Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.”

Our confidence in Him comes, as we live this life, His Way. And glory to God, His Way is clearly spelled out in His book! The Lord is gracious and compassionate, He does not want us to wander about not knowing how dearly loved we are. People who feel unloved can sometimes make really bad choices. But now we are HIS people, the sheep of His pasture – bless the Lord – He’s the GOOD Shepherd! Sin is a confidence stealer – it creates double mindedness. 

Here’s something from James! He says this in Chapter 1:2-8 “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colours. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way. If you don’t know what you’re doing, pray to the Father. He loves to help. You’ll get His help, and won’t be condescended to when you ask for it. Ask boldly, believingly, without a second thought. People who “worry their prayers” are like wind-whipped waves. Don’t think you’re going to get anything from the Master that way, adrift at sea, keeping all your options open.”

When is the last time you said: “Oh Goodie gum-drops, here’s another test for my faith, now I can grow more!”  Me neither!! That shows us that there is a space between how God sees this life, and how we see it. What I say is more likely to be:  “Oh no! Not again!” Hubby had to tear up the carpet in our spare room on Saturday, because rain somehow got in  – 1st test!, and it thoroughly saturated it in one corner, wrecking said carpet. The 2nd test was that Hubby had to pull it all out of the house— using his bad back … etc.! Mission accomplished, carpet out, all we have inside now is damp concrete. Job done! Hah! I think not!!

I dunno if you looked out of your window and saw it rain the other night but it rained where we are. Not just a little drizzle either, it poured down. Guess what! Enter the 3rd test! That dead carpet is now at least twice, if not 3 times as heavy as it was before! Well Y-A-Y!  Hubby has to somehow get it from the back of our house to the front for the council pick-up. Fan-blooming-tastic! At the same time, he needs to pack, and sort, and organise stuff to get both of us ready to board a plane quite soon. Now he has to organise dead carpet … and wait for it … also find and fix the leak in the roof! It just gets better-er and better-er! Can you hear me cheering yet? Nope! Me neither. I’m praying instead!!

Life happens – usually without our permission. And living a grace-filled, kind and loving life with other normal human beings around us, definitely does not mean we will have a care-free, trouble free time. I’ve found it can mean the opposite – stuff happens. But we don’t obey what Jesus said because our lives are always brilliant, and we will get some kind of a reward, we do what we do because HE SAID SO. Our reward is knowing that obedience, plus asking Him to help us keep our cool, narrows the gap between God’s way and ours. 

The Lord wants to help us, so He suggests: “Why not do that like this?” And so you do what He said, and lo and behold, it works! That’s the time for a party! You get to see Him work on your behalf. Our world stops being about other people’s God-encounters and starts to be about OURS.

Actually, in order to get saved from something you have to be held captive by it! Did you see what Peter said? We will escape from the lusts of this world, by choosing His way, and then we get to participate in that life that is in God, Himself. That definitely will give us confidence to continue. Remember David facing Goliath? He reminded himself that God had helped him kill a lion and a bear, and then he ran at that giant bully knowing God was with Him. 

As we obey the Lord, we get a personal history with Him. His story becomes our story.

That history of deliverance, and testimonies of His Grace get bigger than the nasty stuff this world throws at us. This is where we get all our confidence from, by watching Him help us, as well as work on our behalf. James is not telling us that trouble is our friend, he is saying it is both a diagnostic tool and a pathway to know the Lord better. “And if we’re confident that He’s listening, we know that what we’ve asked for is as good as ours.” Amen and hallelujah! Catch you later …  👋

P 2757 Flowers ain’t fruit!

/ DVH

We have a large mango tree in our backyard, and it has grown heaps in the last couple of years. Now its taller than our house. However, last year there were hardly any flowers on it, and what was left were little nubs of potential fruit, that got blown off by some high winds. That large tree gave us about 12 mangoes. Boy were we disappointed. Especially after feeding it, watering it, and protecting the fruit from the birds of the air who think they have a right to eat anything and everything. Stupid noisy minas. Grrrr. 😖 Where was I again? Hah! Growing fruit … hmmm.

“BUT the fruit produced by the Holy Spirit within you is divine love in all its varied expressions: joy that overflows, peace that subdues, patience that endures, kindness in action, a life full of virtue, faith that prevails, gentleness of heart, and strength of spirit. Never set the law above these qualities, for they are meant to be limitless.”Galatians 5:22-23 TPT. Did you get that? The life and health of any tree is the reason we can produce good fruit. Our mango tree must have had a tummy ache last year or … it was a bad weather year for mangoes. Sadly we can’t use that excuse for spiritual fruit!

The thing is, this year I totally refuse to get excited about fruit any more, even though this year our tree is covered in mango flowers. So what happened? Where did my enthusiasm go? I learnt something. I learnt flowers ain’t fruit! Some fruit trees have masses of beautiful flowers everywhere, they smell so pretty … spring is in the air, the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the bees are buzzing away around each little flower. and the whole idea, at that moment that there may be no fruit from that tree is far far away … 

The Lord Jesus had that happen to Him once. He was hungry and went to a fig tree that should have had fruit on it but it had none. (Read Mark 11:12-25) So the Lord used that tree as an object lesson for the disciples. We should pay careful attention to that little story. I’ve heard people speak about it in sermons — they said that this bit means that, and that means this, and the tree is the other thing … on and on…  Do you know what I think? I think if our trees/lives have no fruit of the Spirit, then we better look hard at our tree and find out what’s ailing it! 

Simply because fruit trees are meant to produce fruit. And we know that the Holy Spirit living within us will always want to produce His fruit. So what does no fruit mean? I think I’ll just leave you to think on that, I did. Long and hard!  You know we can comfort ourselves by the fact that our lives have produced pretty blossom flowers that smell so lovely – but! … Ya can’t eat the flowers! Well, you can … but I wouldn’t – there is not much nourishment there. 

There are many people living around us today who are eager to take ‘a bite’ out of us, just to see what our fruit will taste like, how we will react. Think about it. Some clown cuts in front of you and your precious kids in your car, in traffic, and you have to slam on the brakes and tell the kids to hold on. What kind of reaction does that invoke in us? Do we say unprintable things and curse the idiot who did it? Or do we bless the young man – let’s be fair, it is often a young man with little sense, who thinks he is a racing car driver … So. Do we bless him with wisdom and common sense so he won’t kill himself or someone else? Hmmm. Probably not.

Moo-ving on … Some pretty young thing pushes in front of us in the coffee shop and turns and gives us a dazzling smile and she says; “you don’t mind do you? I’m in an awful rush.” And you stand there, smile back and say .. “of course not.” Meanwhile you are thinking: ‘You are not the only one with a busy day lovey!’ Or other things I will not mention… 🤬 And there we are, wearing a fake pasted-on smile. That’s not real fruit by the way, its wish-fruit. We just made plastic fruit. That stuff falls off the minute you shake the tree and it tastes like plastic be-ca-use … it’s … plastic!

The point is – fruit can’t be faked. It’s either real or it isn’t. And the faked stuff is inedible. So what conclusion can we come to? We need to ask ourselves what actually comes out when I am under pressure? That is what is actually INSIDE my tree – it seems I lost my connection to the sap that flows from Jesus along the vine. Now, I can’t blame you for that, because no matter whatever is inside me, the truth is I let it stay until it got good and rotten and expressive. 

To bear good fruit we need to value the Holy Spirit and His ways and, as I said a minute ago, we can’t manufacture good fruit. Farmers grow fruit, and manufacturers churn out the plastic stuff! That’s why the bible says: “The fruit of the SPIRIT is …’ It’s His fruit in me, not mine. It is also what Jesus meant when He talked about abiding in the vine. Here’s the cruncher … without the sap of the Holy Spirit flowing through us, we can’t manufacture fruit at all … Our pretend, isn’t worth a hill of beans, and flowers ain’t fruit! 

We gotta go to the tree, our own tree, and see what is stopping us from letting the sap of the Holy Spirit flow through us. We need to ask ourselves questions. What are we hanging onto that grieves the Holy Spirit? It doesn’t have to be too much TV etc. it could just be a lousy attitude that we won’t let go of! Honest repentance starts the fruit growing again, and watering our lives with the knowledge of His unconditional love for us, plus feeding ourselves on the bible by doing what it says – all that grows fruit. Christianity is not a club, it’s a lifestyle, and fruit takes time to grow. Let’s get rid of any blockages to fruitfulness with His help — be-cau-se… …flowers ain’t fruit, they are simply po-ten-tial.  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. 👋