Understands

P 3130 The beginning of Wisdom.

/ DVH

“If you consider yourself to be wise and one who understands the ways of God, advertise it with a beautiful, fruitful life guided by wisdom’s gentleness. Never brag or boast about what you’ve done and you’ll prove that you’re truly wise.” James 3:13 TPT. “To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit,…”1 Corinthians 12:8. “Those who are wise will shine radiantly as the sky at midday. And those who turn many to the way of righteousness will shine brightly as stars for all eternity.” Daniel 12:3 TPT.“The beginning of wisdom is: Get [skilful and godly] wisdom [it is preeminent]! And with all your acquiring, get understanding [actively seek spiritual discernment, mature comprehension, and logical interpretation].” Proverbs 4:7.”The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Proverbs 9:10.

Proverbs shows us the importance of having the Lord’s wisdom, and when it says “fear’ it means reverence and awe. A deep respect for Our Holy righteous Father, puts us on the road to understanding His ways. Proverbs also states to get His wisdom you need to make it your first priority and realise you need it. Human resources and information feature a lot in this world we live in, accumulated knowledge is the big deal thing today. And of course, now we have the internet and Google! Not to mention Wikipedia. Ho hum.  

But the bible tells us that even though Godly wisdom is the thing to have, without understanding and mature comprehension we won’t know what to do with it. Boy, I could have saved myself a heap of angst if I had taken that concept seriously! I kept trying to teach my kids wisdom when they didn’t understand a thing I was saying, and most of the time they didn’t care to either. Wisdom has to be sought, and earthly knowledge is not the same as God’s wisdom.

God’s wisdom is prompted by the Holy Spirit. Kids learn to parrot off all kinds of stuff at school, but they have no idea what to do with it. They need spiritual application to make use of their knowledge. That’s why they need parents to help them to put theory into transformative actions. Knowledge without application looks great on a resume, but it won’t help you balance your budget!

Wisdom identifies what to do and a word of knowledge shows us how to do it. They are both God-given GIFTS—Proverbs makes this clear, so that means we can, and should ask for these gifts. “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.” Matthew 13:43. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. As an earring of gold, and an ornament of fine gold, so is a wise reprover upon an obedient ear.” Proverbs 25:11-13. Wisdom corrects our course and reveals the Holy Spirit within us to others.

Wisdom will give us ears to hear what Jesus is saying, when others can’t even hear Him. It is like a spiritual hearing aid – it takes the unclear and makes it clear. In Matthew, did you get the subtle reference to choice? If you have spiritual hearing …then make sure you use it! These spiritual gifts diagnose an anticipated outcome and wisdom knows the right way to go about it. Remember, Almighty God knows the beginning right through to the end. Knowledge identifies and wisdom applies.

We ALL need His wisdom. This world is too dark and too tricky to live our lives without it. Wisdom can see the lie hidden between two truths. At the same time, knowledge and insight will often know where God’s truth applies. When I need it, the Holy Spirit gives me part of a verse, but it is up to me to look it up and follow that thread. ‘Knowledge is about knowing facts, whereas wisdom is about having the insight and discernment to apply that knowledge correctly, often revealing what action to take or how to respond.’  Google.

I have found that wisdom means you know something that you cannot possibly know with your intellect. It is not cleverness that figures things out—this God-given gift is something that drops into our heart or mind, often unbidden. Before it happens you may not even be concentrating on the problem. Suddenly the answer is in front of you, and then His wisdom says: ‘Do it like this.” It helps us avoid error. 

Many times we were about to go somewhere and the Lord said to us: “Wait!” When it came to the time when we would have been elsewhere, much too far away to help — a text came through and we were asked to help someone, because an emergency situation had come up. The word of Wisdom was ‘wait.’ I have also found wisdom can help me discern when things are a bit ‘off.’ I’m pretty naive in my personality and so the Holy Spirit often kindly protects me with His Wisdom.

Recently somebody called us and used the conversation to  clone our voice. They asked for this and that, but my spirit rose up and said – quite violently – “Hang up and phone the bank.”  The person on my end of the phone was not thrilled, but they trust the Lord, so they politely hung up. And lo and behold, somebody had tried to access our funds. Because the Holy Spirit helped us, we were recompensed immediately. We changed our passwords on the same day! I found reading the bible asking the Holy Spirit to help me, led me to these three gifts. I began to know His voice. I went out and obeyed what He taught me at that time.

Don’t rush – wait for your Teacher. Learn to listen and you’ll grow patience along the way, and then do your best to obey – because Christians need HIS WISDOM. ‘Ask and keep on asking, go after it, you will find it!’ Bye. 👋

P 3108 HE is our strength.

/ DVH

“The extraordinary level of the revelations I’ve received is no reason for anyone to exalt me. For this is why a thorn in my flesh was given to me, the Adversary’s messenger sent to harass me, keeping me from becoming arrogant. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to relieve me of this. But He answered me, “My grace is always more than enough for you, and my power finds its full expression through your weakness.” So I will celebrate my weaknesses, for when I’m weak I sense more deeply the mighty power of Christ living in me. So I’m not defeated by my weakness, but delighted! For when I feel my weakness and endure mistreatment—when I’m surrounded with troubles on every side and face persecution because of my love for Christ—I am made yet stronger. For my weakness becomes a portal to God’s power.”

Sooner or later everyone’s faith comes under pressure. But the knowledge is not revealed to us to torment us, as Paul explains here in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. Paul is telling us pain has a purpose! God reveals things to us even through pain, so we can work with Him on the gaps in our knowledge of Him and errors in our faith –  together. He will not leave us even when the ceiling falls in. The Lord allows things to help us to learn about our multifaceted blessings. And He wants us to learn to wait for Him. We are not waiting for the solution, we are waiting to hear from Him. Jesus knew how to wait!

There’s nothing like trouble to send desperate people to their knees. Or sobbing on the bed in despair when we can’t find the way out – and we want it to stop, NOW. In those times, ask yourself, can I go one more step? I don’t project the misery I feel into the future, because the thought of endless suffering is devastating. The more we press into what we already know about Him personally — the more about Him and ourselves, we can learn in difficult times. Our God does not cause suffering! He’s a faithful, good, good Father Who wants us to grow up into the fullness of Christ Himself. He is leading us, step by step, into a new, bigger place – just as surely as He led Abraham and Moses into the Promised land.

Whatever we are experiencing can give us a fresh revelation of what Christ voluntarily did. He too, suffered despair, loneliness, loss of love, loss of understanding, depression, anguish, grief and sorrow. He was all alone in Gethsemane, as well as on that cross. And He suffered in ways we cannot imagine. We have a Saviour Who was“… was despised and rejected and forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.” Isaiah 53:3.

Jesus suffered everything He suffered, for us – He can show us the way through it. This is what Paul is talking about. He had grown strong enough in His faith to receive correction, and adjustment to his own faith, as well as renewing his thinking. He thought he needed to get out of the thing that was tormenting him, but God graciously granted Paul the understanding that this too was yet another place he could learn to lean on what Jesus did!

Obedience is everything …but we’ve made UNDERSTANDING into everything instead. 

Paul saw purpose. He realised all that knowledge God had downloaded into him, could cause him to be arrogant – and arrogance short circuits Grace! So he chose to endure the harassment of pain and suffering because God showed him there was a benefit – immediately – as well as on the other side! You and I have limitations. We can only stretch so far, some can stretch further than others, but we all have limits. When we reach the end of ourselves – God is still there! His power to overcome is still there! Take a deep breath, tell Him you love Him and you know He won’t let you down. Faith acts, it speaks!

It is a good thing to know that you can’t do … whatever it is … because GOD IS RIGHT THERE WITH YOU IN THAT WEAKNESS. Instead of trying to wiggle out of it, ask Him to help you stay the course, and learn how to trust Him more. Most of the time, I have discovered this sort of ‘adjustment’ is hardly ever about some other person’s actions against me. It’s about me. Maybe I have been blindsided by a wrong belief, or I have not comprehended the fullness of what Jesus died to give me. Let’s remember we all need endurance, we are in a race! By all means tell the enemy to GO! But remember, to ask the Lord: “What’s this about Lord?”

If I can’t endure what is happening to me, that means I am not complete in my faith in that area. Think about Jesus being there, right now, holding your hand. He is praying for you, so is the Holy Spirit. He wants to remind you to learn to rely upon His strength, instead of your own. Maybe you can’t do this – but He can! Don’t look for a plan all laid out and downloaded from heaven – instead take one small faith step at a time.

We won’t perceive His blessings when we are constantly asking God to bail us out of whatever it is we are stuck in. Trust me, I’ve tried that. It will take as long as it takes, and then finish so suddenly you will have your mouth drop open like a goldfish! But don’t just lay down like Father God is an ogre and you have no power to escape from His dealings. Talk to Him about what He wants you to learn about yourself, the situation, His Grace, and loving others more freely. God understands how vulnerable FLESH is – He put it on and came here! 

Bye.👋

P 2646 “Hope thou IN CHRIST!”

/ DVH

Hope is a sign our faith is healthy. If we are feeling hope-less then our situation has overcome our awareness of how Mighty God is! That’s bad. It’s bad, like not breathing is bad!! It means there is something we need to fix, first with the Lord, and then with others. Other people can be stumbling blocks – especially the ones who see no need to change, or they think they can’t, because they were just born this way! Christ knows how to walk with difficult, dumb people – He did it for three and a half years!

Here’s a revelation – everything God made is good, so if it is NOT good – then it’s NOT God. To clear that up we need to start with ME not the other guy. But sometimes the difference between not good and good is simply time! Just saying is all …

… The truth is clear, we can hang on to resentment, bitterness, anger, lying, hatred as much as we want to, but those things’ll drown ya! You end up snarling and snapping at others. It’s dumb to be lying in the muck and mire when SomeBody paid for you to live an overcoming life!

You know, I think that Covid did more than make a whole lotta people very very sick. It stole some people’s hope! We gotta watch out for that. Hope is our anchor. Hope holds us steady when the waves of this life get too big for us to cope. Actually, when a boat slips it’s moorings or loses its anchor, it floats away! Hebrews 6:19 says: “We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, …””  Hope anchors us into God!! Remember, we hope in what Christ is doing, not in our circumstances changing.

Jesus Christ is our hope anchor. What He did for us, and what His death gave us, anchors us into Almighty God’s kingdom. Jesus took us into the Holy place by what He did. Now we have Him as our priest praying on our behalf, before the throne, and that never ends. The Lord God Himself provided the ultimate Answer – Christ! And He is ever-mindful of our humanity. We are so blessed to have a Saviour Who is God and also a human being – He understands how tough this life is.

Sadly we sometimes forget what we’ve been given and we wander off into the wilderness, wondering where God went. Bleating: “Why is He not looking after me – He promised He would look after me?!”  In those moments we have become imitators of the Israelites in the wilderness… remember, the Good Shepherd always goes after a lost sheep! The Lord always looks after His own, He just has a different timetable than ours. That difference is meant to help us with patience and perseverance, not introduce doubt.

“There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!” Romans 8:8 MSG.

When we lose sight of our anchor, our hope – Jesus Christ the HOPE of all mankind – we are forgetting who we are now. We do not have to grab, grasp, scheme, scream and connive to make life work. Now we trust God and let go of our own ideas, and pay close attention to His Word. His word is our strong fortress, our hiding place, our comfort, and our defensive position. Otherwise, we are running the risk of forgetting Who we belong to! Our strong hope is in what Christ has already done.

“But as for me, I watch in hope for the LORD, I wait for God My Saviour; MY GOD WILL HEAR ME.”Micah 7:7. We remain confident that if the answer we were hoping for does not happen, then we remind ourselves that our God has heard us and HE HAS A PLAN. That’s our anchor. Hopelessness takes over when we concentrate more on the problem, than on our ever-present, always loving, constantly praying for us, Saviour. Our problem being solved is a temporary relief –instead we need to refocus on Christ Himself,  He is the Answer. “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”BUT!!! …“We can do all things through Christ because He strengthens us.”

As we learn to cultivate patience, and wait on the Lord, we will renew our strength. We are given the energy to rise above our problems and keep running the race. We are enabled to keep on walking without fainting. Holding onto hope stretches our faith so the next time we use it, we become aware that our faith has grown. We must keep a watch over our hope, it is the warning light on the overcoming dashboard of our lives. We do not have to live downcast lives …”SOUL, HOPE THOU IN CHRIST!”👋

P 2437 Kindness without measure …

/ DVH

“God’s love is meteoric, His loyalty astronomic. His purpose titanic, His verdicts oceanic. Yet in His largeness nothing gets lost;  Not a man, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.” Psalm 36:5-6(MSG) Why on earth would anyone follow someone else? I mean seriously! Our God’s love is bigger than anything we can imagine or think. He is out-of-this-world loyal to every single human being, and none of us will ever earn it or deserve it. His purposes and loving kindnesses are so huge and comprehensive that they are beyond all our imaginings, and our wildest dreams.

And … He never ever loses sight of even one of us, every minute of every day, all day, every day. Our Father even knows when an ordinary little bird falls to the ground! All this is because Jesus Christ came here in human flesh and lived among us. Now human beings cannot say that Almighty God does not understand humanity. He understands from within what happens when we are happy, sad, embarrassed, hurt, crushed or we feel humiliated or can’t cope … and He does all that, even better than we can, imagine that! SomeBody Who knows you better than you know yourself. 

In my lifetime I have had several occasions to look at the things I’ve said, or done, and wonder: “Where the heck did that awful stuff come from?”  Yet Father God knew those things were in there, inside my heart, long before I found out. He never excuses my sin – the precious blood of Jesus covers me. We are all naked before Him without any excuse, and He took the most precious Person He has, and covered all of us. Father God does not wink at any sin … He doesn’t have too, He legally and legitimateIy took care of it. Personally, I am so greatly impacted by His incredible kindness toward me, because I know it is so totally undeserved.

In my lifetime so far, I have been appalling to other people. When situations pressed me hard, what was hidden inside came outside! Despite knowing Jesus and doing and saying all the right things for years – those things did not comfort me when I was so incredibly sick I might die. Instead I was angry, because this life hadn’t given me an opportunity to feel loved, fulfilled, or happy. Under that overwhelming, internal pressure, things like hatred, disgust, rage and indifference to other people’s pain came out of me so strongly it scared me. That’s when I knew, that I knew, that I KNEW … that I do absolutely really need a Saviour. I looked hard at myself and I didn’t like what I saw. And I had been saved for years. God was good to me – He showed me my real self.

But I also saw, in a fresh way, that our God is incredibly loyal to us. The bible is filled with real-life stories about people who severely tested His loyalty  – in the Old Testament and the New. But He consistently and constantly extended Grace to them, He allowed them to learn. Those few verses in Psalm 36 above remind us that He is not just a kindly old man in the sky, who remembers us at Christmas and maybe on our birthday … Or even SomeOne Who only loves us when we do well. No! Now I know in person: “The Lord is on my side, I will not fear. What can man do to me?”Psalm 118:6. 

Listen to this verse, it will blow your mind: “But, as it is written, ‘What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him’ – these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:9 NRSV). Thank you Lord for the Holy Spirit.  Without His Presence with us, and within us, as He opens our eyes and ears to God’s endless possibilities … we might faint, or fail along the way. I very nearly did, but He caught me. And in time He stood me up again on my wobbly legs and taught me how to walk with Him in Spirit and truth. Not just lip-service and angst and entitlement. You know, when you think you are already a pretty nice person – Grace and Mercy do not mean so much to you.

BUT the bible says: “God sheer mercy and grace:  not easily angered,He’s rich in Love.”  Psalm 103:8. WOW!  Again, Almighty God’s never ending love is our personal proof that love overcomes everything else. Because of my own experiences, I do not understand why Christians don’t cherish mercy and grace more. After all, most people want it for themselves when they know they are doing something awful — but I just don’t get why we don’t readily give His mercy and grace away to other people. Christian or not. It seems we’d rather hang onto the bad things … more. satan sure does mess with our minds.

Here’s a news flash for anyone reading this blog today — and this means you! HUMANITY DOES NOT DESERVE MERCY AND GRACE …no matter how nice we think we are!! Like EVER. Oh, but there is a fountain, that bubbles and bursts with Jesus’ life that constantly flows over us … That fountain of life, grace and mercy cost Father God everything He held dear. But in His heart He gained so much more, you and I. Speaking for myself, I know now, personally, that I am not worth it! But boy am I grateful. Bye. 🤗