Uphold

P 3240 Come up higher.

/ DVH

Sometimes we can become so earthly-minded we are no longer of any heavenly use. It seems to me that the church has become distracted by the cares and worries of this world. At the same time, it kind of looks like we expect Almighty God to enter our world and meet our needs here and now — He already did that. The thing is, He has higher priorities and I don’t think that it is His priority to make sure His kids have a cushy life.

Let’s take what the bible says seriously, and start making investments and withdrawals, using that book as our guideline. Then we can begin to bring His kingdom down here where the truly needy live. Truly needy people are the people-who-don’t-know-Him-yet! Personally, I think telling people Jesus died to make them rich and prosper, is an abomination! 

None of Jesus’ disciples settled down into living in a grand house, in the ‘burbs, with everything they needed on tap. Instead they hit the road, and trusted Jesus to meet their needs. BTW, I am not saying, sell your house, go and sit on the curb and wait for Jesus to come back, but I am saying  – He is our priority. His agenda is now our agenda. We have given our lives to Him, so we can’t afford to let this life dictate what happens to us, through us and around us. 

As kingdom people, our destiny is to bring light and hope into the darkness. We may have to punch a hole in the darkness sometimes. The author of the book of Daniel punched a hole, and it took a while for the answer to come. Yet this man kept waiting for the Lord to do what He loves to do for all of us. Redeem the situation. Jesus loves to redeem situations, as well as relationships. It’s faith that gives us the impetus we need to pray, and keep on praying as we wait for Him to answer.  

Sometimes a believer’s problems can be a wrong attitude. Especially when we want to use God to make this life, our own earthly life, better. This world is a sewer. You can’t see the kingdom of God in a sewer, unless God Himself called you in there! This means we can’t afford to steep ourselves in the gunk that goes on around us – we need to soak in the Word of God to stay clean! We are called to be IN this world and not OF it. That means this world is not alive in us.

We can use our spiritual energy up by trying to praying our way out of this and that. But the bible says we are already more than conquerors, because of what Jesus has done. Let’s focus on that instead, and deliberately make sure all our relationships are based on the kind of love Jesus gave us. And when things are difficult, and “stuff” happens – while we are in the middle of it – let’s look for someone we are there to help, to witness to, to care for.

We seem to have given up on fulfilling the Great Commission. Sadly, we’ve become so involved in human affairs, we’ve forgotten our mandate. My advice is this – tell the Lord your needs, and choose to walk with the Spirit of God. Our faith is not designed to be like a credit card that is whipped out for use when we need it. Our faith is like an atmosphere that surrounds us. We live there, in good or bad seasons, we choose to focus on our glorious God being in charge. We comfort ourselves that He is doing what He set out to do … we just can’t see it yet. So we pray for steadfastness in trials and the ability to rest while He’s doing whatever He is doing. It is going to be for our good, we just can’t see it yet.

The Body of Christ is here to be salt and light — to lift everyone around us up higher, by the way we regard others. It is not lying to speak to the good in someone else who has been anything but good to you! It takes faith. We have the power to speak things into being – ask the Lord to show you what He sees in those people. Let’s stop rehearsing other people’s sins, and start looking for why they are here, and speak into that… … encouraging them into those things. 

In the last century, my age group made a mistake, we started exalting ourselves. Telling ourselves that we were  this or that and quoting verses from the bible to prove it to ourselves and others. It was a lot of hot air. Forget being the head instead of the tail – Jesus is our Head! I do not care if I am a toenail in the Body of Christ, I’m just glad to be included! Jesus is the only One Who is all this, AND that. We are here to encourage and bless and uphold others. We don’t need to big note ourselves spiritually. 

What stands us out in this world needs to be His GRACE and LOVE operating in us and through us. Let’s  decide what kingdom we want to live in, here and now – HIS kingdom is the Higher Place, living like He lived. We dare not call ourselves successful unless we are living to help others, because loving one another has become our priority. Let’s put our prayer, faith and energy into that. Bye 👋.

P 3056 Please don’t postpone participation.

/ DVH

“Learn what it means to do what is good by seeking righteousness and justice! Rescue the oppressed. Uphold the rights of the fatherless and defend the widow’s cause.” Isaiah 1:17 TPT.

It is easy to think some sort of great faith will fall on us if we pray enough. But as Isaiah says here – our faith is something we learn by participation – hence the word “learn.” Participation is more about personal action. Prayer and giving are good, but the church at large seems to avoid confronting difficult issues. We don’t like to mix with people who are ‘not like us.’ We like the theory, but doing something personally is a bridge too far.

I love the following scripture because it knocks the idea that only a certain type of person will be found by Jesus! It also shows how engaged and caring He is. “Then the master said to the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges and urge and constrain [them] to yield and come in, so that my house may be filled.” Luke 14:23. Elsewhere in Isaiah it mentions “…bring the homeless poor into your house…” I’ve found that superficial caring attitudes fall off under pressure. Maybe that’s because the people in the highways and byways won’t always be sweet people!

In some versions that scripture in Luke uses the word: “Compel…” Does that sound like a pretty gold-edge invitation that says something like: “Jesus Christ, the Lord of heaven and earth would like the pleasure of your company on this special occasion blah blah blah…”  Rhubarb. It seems to me a lot more like a couple of bouncers at a nightclub compelling disruptive participants to leave. It sounds like force.

There are people who are employed to take help the poor, infirm and needy, unfortunately most of the time, they are not paid enough to care, on top of helping! But choosing to walk in Jesus’ compassion definitely will improve our spiritual life and attitudes. From my own experience, I know that helping the poor puts my faith under the kind of pressure – where “nice guy” falls off v-e-r-y quickly. Suddenly I can see where all the leaks in my spiritual life are! Most Christians want to look like sweet people – but how much substance do we actually have? What if a homeless person wanted to camp outside your house?

Maybe the reason we like to stay within our comfort zones is that we will quite quickly find out who we really are! However, poor people are so desperate, they couldn’t give two ripe bananas about how other people feel. Instead they will bop you on the head and probably take the ripe bananas!! Hubby once had someone threaten to slice him into bits because he told that person, politely that they couldn’t have what they wanted.

Here’s a fun story from the ark:  Many years ago, we worked with the homeless. It was exhausting, challenging and not a whole lot of happy happy joy joy. BTW, the word fun is not in the bible – JOY is in there though. Joy is supernatural, fun is quite transitory. Anyway … local warehouses and big businesses helped us out occasionally with our outreach, by giving us donated goods. Mostly outside the use-by date.

On this particular day someone had donated a large square pallet full of spray-on cooking oil. I distinctly remember thinking to myself that this stuff was probably not going to be all that useful to people who didn’t own a bed, let alone a frying pan!! Anyway, our lunch guests usually rushed through the doors immediately they were opened, because they were hungry. Most of them never had breakfast. Then our pastor would greet them and they’d line up ready for a hot meal. 

On this day, our guests had to pass a pallet that was chock full of a double layer of cans of spray-on oil. I looked away for a moment … and when I looked back … every single can was gone! Tada!! … And I never even heard a sound. Instead there was just one little plastic lid still wobbling away in the middle of the pallet! I laughed so hard. There was no sign of a can amongst our guests, or peeking out of anyone’s rucksack either.

Compelling people who are this desperate, into the kingdom, is not going to be a walk in the park.“Nice” just won’t cut it – we are going to need His compassion! At that time, we also had a regular guest who didn’t wash. It’s hard to wash when you have no home! I thought he also had Tourette syndrome. Well, between the cursing and swearing and smell, everyone else left him alone. None of our other guests would even sit with him at lunch time. We met that man again, years later at another church. He was in a nice suit, he no longer stank, and his language was fine. He even owned his own car! To top it all off, he was a deacon! 

We don’t know what God will do when we choose to love on people! Please don’t pass by any opportunity to participate with the poor, needy and infirm – you’ll find them on the highways and byways! They will expose your heart and probably break it … all at the same time! But you will definitely end up participating. Bye. 👋