Unobtrusive

P 3519 There are two kinds of wisdom … 

/ DVH

… heavenly and earthly. When I write this blog, my aim is not to have people agree with me. Instead my hope is to inspire others to talk to Him, as well as talk to each other. Pre-digested food doesn’t help our spiritual health. There is nothing like fresh manna daily. So we daily read His Word to get a glimpse into His wisdom! James himself mentions that there are two kinds of wisdom. That gives us the opportunity to look at the Lord’s wisdom carefully, so we can identify it.

James 3:17-18 TLB: “But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure and full of quiet gentleness. Then it is peace-loving and courteous. It allows discussion and is willing to yield to others; it is full of mercy and good deeds. It is wholehearted and straightforward and sincere. And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of goodness.”

I know the bible seems to use an excess of words – descriptive ones and sometimes seemingly irrelevant ones. But I’ve found that every single word that comes from God’s heart, sweetly burrows its way into my heart and it will profit me – if I let it. It is so easy to look at the tasks that are in the book, and do them and think that’s that! But actually I think the Lord loves the communication between Him and us, far more than us gathering info, or doing tasks. To the Lord, us listening to Him, and us talking to Him, are just as important.

I truly believe we can be transformed by this simple daily interaction. The Lord’s unconditional love is life-changing. But unless we keep looking into the mirror of His Word, or we will end up going about our day forgetting what we actually look like! Even being near Him saturates us with His all-powerful love, wisdom and goodness – whether we feel something or not.

In order to partake of His wisdom we need to know what it looks like, and bless God, James is giving us a clear description of His wisdom. Sadly we all know what man’s wisdom looks like too, that stuff is everywhere. Books, TV, radio etc. When I turn the TV on, something or other blathers at me full volume, and my brain almost melts! But the Lord’s wisdom is so gentle, we can easily miss it. Yet we need to be able to identify it, or we will ignore what He is saying to us. He won’t force what He thinks on us, our involvement in this process is purely voluntary. He doesn’t want us to miss the truth in what He says when we hear it. This world is not like Him, and it is easy to see the difference.

The Lord’s wisdom is gentle, peaceable, pure, polite, not argumentative, and He loves peace. Our Father is kind and unobtrusive, we can ignore His voice when He calls us to Himself. It is easy to hide behind: “I don’t really feel like that today,” OR “I’ll catch up tomorrow … I’m busy Lord.” The verse in James shows me that He cares so much about my life, and my freedom. But He will not interrupt me, I will have to choose to ask Him to help me. And the result of Him speaking to me, will bring me peace, not turmoil.

The Lord doesn’t use a multitude of words, He speaks directly to the point. What He says is so powerful it produces incredible results. In Genesis our Father’s response to darkness was —-“Let there be light.” No waste of words there! On another occasion He said in Malachi to the Israelites; “Your words have wearied Me.” So rattling on, mouthing platitudes, pretending to relate to Him won’t impress Him – He would much rather we were honest.

Almighty God does not mind if I ask Him questions! I ask Him things all the time. I was raised around adults so getting a word into a discussion was pretty fraught with danger back then. Seven year old kids only think they are smart! But the Lord is not like that at all. He is quite happy to explain how things work. I literally never had a father, so talking to one is a really big deal to me. The ones I knew as a child were absent, scary and only saw me when I did something wrong — that didn’t help much.

But I have discovered that the Lord is always so kind to us even as we walk with Him. Because of these glimpses of His wisdom, we learn how incredibly inadequate human beings are. We may be great at stuff that is inspired by cleverness, but we are not good with the kind of purity He has. His goodness and wisdom are like flashes of lightning when we stumble across them. Because of that, I think that the worse kind of temptation we face is not necessarily sin…

Most of us want to avoid sin like the plague. but in my opinion the worst temptation we face all the time is the temptation to believe that He is not good and He won’t be good to us. When we take His goodness as our standard, then whatever happens cannot distract us. We know that He’s good, so what He does is good and pure, it is destined to transform us. Jesus Himself told us that He came here to give us abundant life! That’s our benchmark. Our Heavenly Father does not have any secret agendas. James clearly tells us here in this passage, that the Lord’s wisdom, is wholehearted, straightforward and sincere. And we have it in writing!

There are two kinds of wisdom, the wisdom that dazzles us with razzamatazz and the wisdom that comes down from above, from ‘the Father of lights.’ James 1:17. It illuminates Who He is and who we are to Him. Bye. 👋

P 3147 Walking with the Holy Spirit.

/ DVH

Romans 8:5-9b “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you..”V5(NIV) “Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires.”

The battle over whether we daily live and walk with the Holy Spirit is first fought in our minds. Quite simply, the secret to walking with Him means we can’t even think about continuing to walk accomodating our flesh. When you and I gave our life to Jesus – He took it. It’s a done deal. Now, by our choices, we daily step out of this world’s way of thinking, into His Way of thinking.

The Holy Spirit loves to glorify the Father and the Son. That’s more than church or preaching or singing! It’s the way we live now. Walking in the flesh sadly comes naturally to us, after all, we’ve been doing that all our lives! But walking with the Holy Spirit requires hard choices. Cheer up! He knows you better than you know yourself. He knows what you can and can’t do – He will “let you learn at your own rate.”

There are some people who think that they have to be super-spiritual to walk with Him, or have some kind of supernatural encounter, or they need some special spiritual gifting! None of that is true. When we welcome Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit – we can’t be born into God’s Kingdom without HIM. Now we need to value Him, more than we value what we or others want, or think or feel. If we go about our days only doing the things we feel, or want, or we think we need —we are ignoring His input. He has a WAY for us to do those things that will give Him a channel to impact the people around us. The more we ignore Him, the less we will hear His voice saying:“…this is the way, walk in it whenever you turn to the right or to the left.” Isaiah 30:21b.

The Holy Spirit wants us to personally know Him, His voice. He came to be with us, to stay. This is how I think that works – when we choose to live this life mindful of Jesus and His Word and we take His word seriously, and obey what He tells us – we are walking with the Holy Spirit. The word mindful means your mind is full of Him and His Ways. Our ability to perform does not come into this – His ability to keep us, as we lean on Him, does. It is another way to look at our lives – which are now HIS. This is how we die to self.

It’s all about priorities. When we look at Jesus, our Heavenly Father, and the Precious Holy Spirit as add-ons to everything else in our lives, that is all They will ever be. But when we take our commitment to Christ seriously, and live each day with our spiritual antenna up, watching and waiting for anything that He might ask us to do — we will see His kingdom come …all around us, as well as in us. Honestly speaking, we cannot afford to hang onto our nasty attitudes, bad temper, lack of generosity toward others, cold-heartedness etc. and expect to walk with HIM! He loves people more than we can possibly imagine. Jesus has invested Himself in mankind!

Sadly, we’ve accidentally made a club mentality out of something that was intended for everyone. The Holy Spirit’s Way is living like Jesus did. He lived for the Father’s will. He “only did the things He saw His Father doing… He only said the things He heard the Father saying …”Now we too need to allow the Holy Spirit to flow through us, by yielding to God’s Ways.“How can two walk together unless they are in agreement?”That’s when we become a channel for His love to flow through.

Let’s think of other people, no matter what they believe, as people Jesus loves. He loves them so much He died for them. Now He has appointed and anointed us to be His witnesses and representatives, alert to what He wants, as well as the needs of others. We can’t afford to only love the people we like.

The bible is our guide and governor, under the Holy Spirit’s tutelage. This book daily shows us what God wants from us. We are alive in this world to demonstrate His word, His kingdom, and we’ve been given the honour of revealing His love to others. Let’s choose to see things through His eyes. Ephesians 4:17-18:“So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.”

Every single time we say no to something the Holy Spirit brings up with us, we are hardening our heart against HIm. The Holy Spirit is gentle, mild, and unobtrusive, so He will quietly step down, and we will not even know that He is gone. I don’t care if you are the best preacher in the country – how’s your heart doing? The state of our hearts is our business, and we need soft hearts. We have been destined to live this life alive to the Spirit, walking with Him and yielding to His wishes, just like Jesus did. Bye. 👋