Weakness

P 2377 Whether we can pray in tongues, or not …

/ DVH

… that’s OK! The Holy Spirit is already praying for all of us and His intercession is the very best there is!! “And in a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness. For example, at times we don’t even know how to pray, or know the best things to ask for. But the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super-intercede on our behalf, pleading to God with emotional sighs too deep for words.” Romans 8:26 TPT.

AND …!!!  The Bible also shows us that JESUS prays for us. Romans 8:34 says that Jesus “is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” In 1 John 2:1 we read that Jesus is our “Advocate with the Father,” and from Hebrews 7:25 we learn that Jesus “always lives to intercede” for us. We will never ever meet anyone kinder, more loving, more accepting and more gracious, than the Lord Jesus Christ, and our precious Holy Spirit. They both pray for us constantly because They want us to win – in this life!! In the above Scripture Romans 8:26 it says the Holy Spirit gives us power in our weaknesses. Don’t be ashamed to feel weak. Don’t hide it – hiding it means you will miss His power working on your behalf!

In our lives, some sorrow, some suffering, some disappointments are too deep and painful for words. I’ve been there. You simply don’t know how to pray, and you wish somebody would pray for you. You can phone a Christian friend, which is always a good thing to do, or even weep until you feel a tiny bit better – but this is where the bible stands alone. It reminds us we already have TWO SomeOnes!! And what’s more these two beautiful People know how to pray, and what to pray, and they don’t stop to go shopping or have a cup of tea either! You might just like to sit still and think on that one.🧐

SomeBody is always praying for you and I right now, even better than we could pray for ourselves. (That’s what “always lives to intercede” means.) SomeBody totally gets you, even if you can’t explain yourself properly. All the little tiny bits of our day to day lives that seem quite irrelevant to others, but they contribute to the whole miserable mess you feel you are in. You don’t have to feel alone – They are right here, with you, right now!  Jesus and the Holy Spirit are both holding you up, standing up for us all, pleading to the Father on our behalf. 🙌 We’ve got Friends in very high places!

The Lord Jesus loved mankind so much that when He left He sent the Holy Spirit back. We are not alone. Don’t let your feelings win – He is with you! The exceptionally marvellous bit, is that Jesus walked this earth so He knows the kind of stuff that comes at us. The Holy Spirit helped Him to overcome – so They both know how this thing we call ‘life’ works.

I love that word in Romans …. ‘super-intercede.’ Boy! That’s intercession on steroids! They come to help, to bring us power to overcome the very things that want to destroy us and our faith. The Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit are both reminding the Father and our enemies that we belong to Him now. We don’t belong to the kingdom of darkness anymore – we are people of the light! We have this fabulous legal representational team in the throne room – right now. 

They are our God-kissed authentic legal team and They are fighting for us all the time, because our enemy speaks human fluently. (Genesis 3:1-24;  Matthew 4:6) Jesus Himself said in John 14:30: “I will not speak with you much longer, for the ruler of the world (Satan) is coming. And he has no claim on Me [no power over Me nor anything that he can use against Me]; …” I mean, what a relief! Our legal team is totally incorruptible! Woo-hoo! And they are FOR us …!!!

The thing is, most people will stand up for you if you are proven to be right, but if you aren’t, then human beings have the habit of leaping off into judgment. Often they bail out on you. That’s when Jesus steps up into the throne room and lets the enemy have it with a great Bible-based legal argument, and at the same time, the Holy Spirit comes alongside US and prompts us that it is “time to repent and fix things here.” He says things like: “pray this, bind that, loose this other thing.” 

He shows us how to fight, because we can lose our way under pressure. And the one thing the enemy loves to put us under, is pressure. If you take the time to read the above verse in Matthew 4, you will see Christ was under enormous pressure – 40 days fasting from food and water, and satan pressed home his advantage – to no avail. We can easily lose our way if we mentally delegate things as being stuff only SomeOne like Jesus can do. He died, went to hell, bashed up the enemy and came back more alive than anyone was ever before. He did all that so we can win!

Ask yourself, why would the perfect, sinless Son of God need to go through all that? He had no personal need to do it. HE DID IT FOR US. We are not victims – we need to stop being blind to the power of God within us to overcome. The body of Christ has two incredible Intercessors praying for us, right at this moment. Take a minute. Thank them both for praying for you, gratitude is like the needle on a compass – it returns our hearts to ‘true north.’ 👋🏻

P 2355 Meekness is not weakness.

/ DVH

I believe the body of Christ has yet to discover the true value of meekness. The One Who rules the world and also made it, was led away by wicked, jealous men and yet He said nothing. He also said nothing when they beat Him mercilessly, and shoved a cruel crown of thorns into His head. He even gave His hands to the men who nailed them to the cross. God’s will was more important to the Lord than His own, even when it involved torture.

These things are Christ’s life illustrations, they show us we need the Holy Spirit’s help all the time, because He knows the way through whatever this life throws at us. There will always be a temptation to retaliate strongly to injustice and cruelty. And … there are also times we respond passively, underhandedly, by trying to control things. That’s not meekness. A meek person accepts God’s will and His timing – no matter the personal cost.  

The word MEEK means “quiet, gentle, and easily imposed on. It is a companion to submission and having a submissive heart.” Bad things are going to happen to all of us, we can’t avoid them, but to have a heart like Christ has, that means everything to a meek person. Bill Mounce, who is a biblical Greek expert, defines the Greek word praus – translated meek or gentle – as: “the positive moral quality of dealing with people in a kind manner, with humility and consideration.”

At the same time meekness doesn’t see someone else’s sins, mainly because it isn’t even looking for them! The whole purpose of this grace is to find out what the King wants, and do that! Anything else is white noise. A meek person will deal with themselves no matter what the other guy is up to, because they take what Jesus said personally, so they remain humble and always available for change. 

Meekness starts and is perfected in our relationship with the Lord, first of all. Accepting His will for my life helps me accept whatever He does with yours. Our God totally believes in each one of us because He sees us one of us through the filter of the cross, but we must not abuse that filter for our own purposes. Instead a meek person is grateful – that Jesus would stoop so low to make us acceptable – that provokes submission, and service to others in them. 

I decided that this would be a good time to say that meekness is a fruit of the Spirit!! In the bible in 1 Corinthians 13 it is called “long-suffering.” In today’s society meekness is the total opposite of what we are being taught is … our rights!!  We discard this particular Grace at our own peril.  When meekness is rejected as weakness people become narcissistic. They say thing like: “My rights and needs must be met so I will take them by force if necessary!” A person Who is meek is more likely to care about your rights than their own.

However meek people are not passive people, they have simply made a decision that walking with the Holy Spirit is more important than anything else – including their so-called rights. A submissive meek heart can be cultivated under the Holy Spirit’s guidance, leading and correction. “All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, ‘God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.” 1 Peter 5:5.

There are times we can mistakenly think that those niggly little seemingly incidental, unimportant disobedient things we do, have gone away. But in reality they’ve actually turned us inch by inch away from the path He’s put in front of us UNTIL WE CAN NO LONGER SEE THAT PATH AT ALL. It is up to us to keep our relationship trimmed, full of oil and ready to ‘go” when the bridegroom calls for us. Meekness lies down that pathway of clarity, humility and obedience. Independence is a luxury we simply cannot afford. We need Him and we need each other.

Jesus Himself said – in the Beatitudes: Matthew 5:5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Meek people have great faith. They believe that life can be changed by utterly surrendering to the King, because they have learnt there is NOTHING this King cannot do with totally submitted yielded vessels.  👋🏻

P 2354 CULTIVATION matters …

/ DVH

We need to pray, then ACT as well, that’s the cultivation. And that is the hard bit. The power to overcome comes after using your faith. However we often do it like this: “Dear Lord please help me with my quick temper,” Amen. Sadly, we’ve learnt to walk away, literally not looking back, because, after all, we’ve asked Him for His help;  and it says in the bible to ‘ask and keep on asking’ — so if He hasn’t answered that prayer then maybe we need to just keep on asking! Tell yourself over and over again – He is looking for us to ACT in faith. In this instance by shutting up and dealing with our own emotions and asking for His help! God is looking for ongoing, involved, relationship. 

Of course we also understand that the Word says we are to be slow to anger – and every time we read stuff like that in the bible we probably feel bad, but if we pray another quick prayer then that should sort of cover our end of it! After all, we know for sure that we are praying His will and now it is up to Him. And if He doesn’t fix it then maybe He understands that we just can’t help it!

Yeah. HOWZAT working for ya? It does not work for me at all. All I know is that many of us use our inability to humanly change stuff, as an excuse to dismiss anything we don’t like or we can’t face about ourselves. We avoid the issue. BUT!! NOW WE HAVE THE HOLY SPIRIT. And He’s here to help us do wa-ay more than participate in miracles, speak in tongues, and multiply fish and bread! HE’S HERE TO PREPARE THE BRIDE!! Working in co-operation with Him is the best way to facilitate our total transformation – not just feeling good after being prayed for when we fell on the floor!  

Lying to ourselves, or pretending stuff is not a problem for US with regard to our faults – (we all have them) – cements those things further into our lives. Meanwhile, bad luck about anyone else who happens to live with that stuff and US doing it!!  Plus we will totally miss out on working with the Lord personally, in ways we can see for ourselves. We can see what He can and will do in our hearts when we stop pretending we don’t have any faults! There is nothing like suddenly finding you have strength in an area where you know had none – as in … bupkis, nyet, nil, denayda! 

I find this kind of stuff that I can’t personally change, even with super hero effort – often … like ten times a day … and that’s on a good day! That’s when I remember that I am up for cultivation. In the story about the vinedresser and the vine (John 15:1-5) we get some clues about how God cultivates us. He prunes some things and gets rid of others completely. (Matthew 7:19-23); (Luke 13:6–9). 

John shows us in his parable about the vine that the Lord prunes for more growth, and eventually for fruit production. We can all totally rejoice about that – because this world needs more GOD-fruit. We must remember that our God is always so careful and mindful of our potential – so He will not remove stuff that has within it the potential to bear fruit. This means if a branch etc. disappears — then we didn’t need it. Bear in mind the fruit that eventually comes from the pruned bits is the Holy Spirit’s fruit and His fruit lasts.

Fun fact to remember, if something gets chopped off then it was going nowhere. There is no point in mourning it, we are better off rejoicing because these scriptures show us that He has a purpose in all things and we need to trust in His purposes! Conversely, if something quite weak and wobbly still remains, then He intends for the sap of His Spirit to strengthen us, because ‘His strength is made perfect in our weakness.’  So we now have an opportunity to experience His provision and power personally, for ourselves. But first we need to recognise what is actually happening – and let HIM help us.

Finally, fruit production needs fertilisation, water, sunshine and clearing away any weeds that spring up around the tree. Obviously we are fed and watered daily by His living Word. Simply reading the book without applying what it says into our lives does not water or fertilise our fruit tree. We also need to take the time to bask in the sunshine of Who He is, and what He has done for us – not because we want or need something, but because we need to be near Him – just like our ‘tree’ needs sunshine. 

The weeds around our tree are our responsibility and they can come from a lot of places. Weeding is part of cultivation, and ignoring weeds means our little tree will be malnourished. We can get some weeds by authenticating behaviour Jesus would not authenticate. And if someone is unhappy with you about this or that fault, remember – whatever that thing is – it is holding up fruit production. Time to ‘confess our faults’ and aim for humility – I tell myself ‘everybody else has to do this stuff so why not me?’  Plus it is totally worth it to walk around with Him.  👋🏻

P 2270 Believe in the God Who saved you – and say so.

/ DVH

One of the ways we can take ourselves out of the flow of God’s Spirit – is by forgetting what He said in the book. It does not matter who we were, or who we even think we are now – giving our lives to Christ is the great equaliser. Christ is now our standard, and what He did, the only criteria. Forget about impressing God and others, the good news is – EVERYBODY FAILED! He gave us all a free pass – now we can breathe the free clean air of undeserved forgiveness.

Talent and merit, ability and appeal are the coins of this earthly realm. They are only supernatural when they are in in His hands. It is good to take our human talents and invest them in His kingdom, always bearing in mind that what you have invested may not come out with the dividend you had in mind! His plans are bigger than ours, His ways are bigger and wiser than ours. We simply need to obey, but the results are up to Him.

The Lord loves to take the people that nobody wants, nobody cares about, and use them to bring about His purposes. Why? Because “His strength is made perfect in our weakness.” This is the best news ever. The bible is living proof that He can take a nobody and use him to lead millions of people across the desert, when the guy was a registered murderer. He can make another adulterous murderer a king, and then tell the world that He loves this man’s heart. He can take deliberate disobedience and save a city, despite his own prophet’s motivation. We must never think we are too hard for God. 

I don’t care what people told you at school or wherever, about any other ability you have or what you think you lack – GOD WILL ALWAYS HAVE THE LAST AND FINAL WORD. Christians have let other people’s opinions and ideas about who they think we are, dictate our role in God’s plans. Our ability to rely upon Him is the only factor worthy of interest because that will increase our ability to serve Him. 

Unfortunately, over the years, we’ve each developed a hypothetical list of things we can and cannot do, plus things we should and shouldn’t do. The pity of this is we’ve learnt to discount whatever Almighty God says about us and what He has put in us, and measured it against the yardstick of consensus. Jesus said “the first will be last, and the last will be first..” That’s just a small example of how extremely different His criteria is! 

There were many potential kings in Israel, men who had the talent or the charisma to motivate and lead people … yet the Lord chose a young shepherd boy who had the mind- numbing task of looking after sheep.The thing was, David did that to the best of his ability. He took the task in front of him and gave it his all for God. And he used his spare time to write some of the most beautiful words in Christendom. 

Jesus Christ laid aside His own reputation for US – it is time for us to do the same for Him and let Him dictate what we can and can’t do. It’s not what we know, it’s Who we know. We each have a part to contribute in His incredible plan. I truly believe nobody can do your bit better than you can. Telling yourself ‘I don’t matter’ is discounting God’s ability to move through you.

When we oppose ourselves, we allow other people’s opinions, and even our own, to challenge what God has said about us. We are not failing because we lack ability, we are failing because we lack belief in HIS ability to hold onto us. Some of the time that is inverted pride. We don’t want to be embarrassed, instead we want to kind of glide along, in the shadows, hoping somebody out there, will ask us a question – rather than directly speaking to people from our hearts about what we know about Jesus, personally. 

We also cannot give somebody else’s witness. Seriously, what pastor Big-Bucks, and Elder Knows-Everything, says is not your witness. What He say is. What you’ve seen is. How do you know Him, what happened to you? Millions of people have gone to hell on our watch because we don’t like the way Brother Motormouth at our church gives his witness or testimony and we don’t want to even sound like that guy! He may just be seeking attention, but that’s not our business. It is the biblical content that matters. Remember, we have the best Helper ever – the Holy Spirit. 

We dare not discount ourselves by our lack of experience or eloquence, or the fact that we are a scaredy-cat. The whole of heaven is behind us, they believe in us. Despite our flaws – which seem like a very large boil on a very small nose … we need to start believing IN God in us, He’s the hope of glory, we are not… Everybody breathe a collective sigh of relief! Get rid of who you are not, and start on focusing on Who He is and who He says you are. 

Sometimes I truly think we have become so good at depreciating and discounting ourselves, and calling that humility … that our enemy stands back and  says to his cohorts: ‘nothing to do here boys, this one doesn’t need any help from us!’  Believe in the God Who saved you … He knows His plans for you! 👋🏻

P 2246 The Lord gives great advice.

/ DVH

When everything goes wrong – stop! And give yourself some breathing space. Seriously. Unless somebody is drowning or bleeding to death, it is good to just take a chill pill and send up a help help prayer. He knows everything, so He is our greatest asset!

I asked the Lord recently when I was very sick, what can I do about this illness? Now what I actually meant was – ‘What can I do about this interruption to my life… so I can keep on doing what I always do?’ The Lord said this to me: “You are not respecting your body. When it says stop, LISTEN. I got tired and sat down – read the book! You need to take a step back and let yourself recover, before you charge on pushing yourself to do something you can’t do without hurting yourself.”

That sounded like really good advice to me. It is not that I am crazy about work or whatever, because my life hasn’t allowed me to do much of anything, anymore. To be honest with you, I think what really happens is that I’m hoping that if I distract myself enough, I will feel better faster. That’s when I saw that I was actually relying on distraction as the answer, instead of Jesus.  After that ghastly thought, I repented, and then I asked the Holy Spirit what He thinks the answer is, instead. 

“My strength is made perfect in your weaknesses…” He said. “Which do you want more? A solution or My perfection?” I was speechless. 😳 Then I went and looked up the scripture, and lo and behold, it says…“My grace is sufficient for you, for …” – are you ready for this(?)  –  “… My power is made perfect in weakness.” His Grace is all I will ever need, so why try harder, when what I need, at the very beginning of anything I do, is His Grace? Look, I know this scripture. OK? I know it because I need His strength a lot!! But I had not seen it in this light before. By keeping on going when I really should lie down and rest, I was interfering with receiving His perfect strength.

If we want a perfect solution then we need His Grace. It’s funny how we can read the scripture and understand what it says – and sometimes even lean on what we think it is saying … and still miss the point. What the Holy Spirit was actually asking me, is this: “what will you SETTLE FOR?” I realised that I was settling for the lesser blessing. I took that verse to mean that when my strength ran out, I could ask Him and then He would take over.

I had a daring thought! What if I just started OUT by telling Him I’m weak and then give everything over to Him? Instead of bursting my boiler trying until I couldn’t try anymore … What if I gave up… right away? Why not start everything I do with Him? Right at the beginning! By that time I really did need to sit down and rest and reflect for a while. New thoughts do that to me. 

Then I told the Lord immediately, that I really can’t do anything, anymore! I mean why give God the big things when the little things are the stuff that steal your peace? My list of stuff I really can’t do, is endless. And just in case you are thinking to yourself that you are able-bodied and you can do practically everything by yourself … think again. Do you want to be “strong in the Lord and the power of HIS might?” Or do it yourself and get exhausted and frustrated. Do you only give up when it gets too hard, and then ask Him to take over? Why not ask for His help all the time. Trying is exhausting, and we all need the Holy Spirit like AIR.

Here’s the really big thought He left me with. I still haven’t got my spirit around this one yet! Jesus knows how to suffer, He did it perfectly, for us. Now I’m really bad at it. I just try to ‘suck it up buttercup’, for His sake, as a good witness. I wonder what would happen if I exchange my weakness for His Grace and strength in that suffering? The Holy Spirit’s advice was so timely, today. I saw that I need His help because He can help me do all things! Maybe I’ve been reading this stuff upside down and He just turned it right-side up. I’ll let you know about that. 🤗

P 2241 Now where did I leave my peace again?

/ DVH

Losing our peace is a bad thing. To be honest with you, in the Western world, I am not sure we value inner peace from the Lord enough! Losing it is like opening the door to the bad guys and saying: “Come on in, and bother me with heaps of stuff that is not always true, because I want to live in anxiety, bitterness, turbulence and agitation!” Meanwhile if you turn that coin over you will suddenly discover if you actually have any of those greeblies I mentioned above – guess what? YOU LOST YOUR PEACE. Time to go and find it again!

Let’s start with what the bible says. Peace comes from and through Jesus Christ – however it is not a cessation of hostilities or trouble. Peace comes from the inside of our heart – out. Because we now have peace with Him – nothing else can disturb us. John 16:33 “I have said these things to you, that IN ME you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”Yeah, not so much with me liking the tribulation part of that verse(!) 😳 – But we can definitely have peace in the middle of any kind of terrible situation that can plague us in this world – because His peace is spiritual peace. Spiritual peace can be lost – by embracing the problem, and not the Saviour. (Help help!)

Jesus explains to us that the peace He brings doesn’t look like this world’s idea of peace. Anyone who has lived in a country where there is war, the threat of war, or even internal ructions of any sort, knows that this world’s kind of PEACE is not permanent. It often depends on the actions of others. But in John 14:27 it says: “Peace I leave with you; MY peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. LET not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”We can refuse to be drawn into all the guff going on around us – because we know the end of the story! This kind of peace needs to be embraced, appreciated and allowed to flourish. Treat peace as a priority, because a lack of peace is a slippery slide that often leads into doubt and unbelief.

Isaiah 26:3 says “You will keep us in perfect peace, when our mind is fixed on You: because we trust in You.” The biggest snare that leads to losing our peace is that our mind is not fixed. Renewing our minds daily help fix that problem! 😂 We are probably not trusting in Jesus, ALONE.  If we lose sight of our Saviour, and focus on our troubles instead – peace starts to become a vague idea, instead of the place we live in, internally. We might even blame other people for stealing it from us.

In those moments we need to drag our minds away from blame or trying to fix things ourselves. Or even going from one person to another, trying to find a solution. Peace came from Jesus and He can restore it for us. It gets reestablished inside us, first. Then the peace that is established inside us, affects everything outside us. So we do whatever we can, and then turn everything over to the Lord. Christians need to value their relationships with others above everything else but the Lord Jesus Himself, because anger etc. will rob us of our peace. 

In order to wrangle our emotions in desperate or difficult situations we will need His strength. ‘His strength is made perfect in weak people.So – admit your weakness! Pray – “I can’t, but You can.” In 1 Peter 3:11 it says: “They must turn from evil and do good; they must seek peace and pursue it.” Peace does not fall on us – we will have to treat it like a lost treasure and go after it. When we lose our peace, the first place to go is the cross – then PRAISE GOD! We go to the tomb!!

We need to value His peace. It’s a gift as well as a fruit. Romans 12:18 says: “If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” Sometimes it is just not possible to facilitate real reconciliation with someone else. Our job is to manage our end, not try to micromanage everyone else. This means all we can do is to restore our end of the relationship, and make sure we have arrived back at LOVE. Love is not about feelings, it is about being prepared to die for the other person!

Lastly, other people cannot steal our peace – but really motivated ones can give us loads of opportunities…!! 😂 God bless them! However, the reality is – we actually have to give up or relinquish our peace in order to lose it. It’s a choice. My advice is that we need to go back through the day in prayer, and revise what happened where, and with whom. Then repent for not valuing something so precious. Admit you lost it.

To sum up: if you are mad… you’ve lost your peace. If you are scared … you’ve lost your peace. If you’ve mislaid your hope that God is with you, helping you … you’ve lost your peace. That which is lost can be found again. 👋🏻

P 2212 It’s OK to be a weak people! I recommend it!

/ DVH

2 Corinthians 12:9-10 “But He (Jesus) said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Our new life in Christ HINGES on these verses.

I think this is one of those oxymorons in the bible that kind of muddle and mess with our minds. It seems to be saying: ’Let us be glad about being weak because then Christ can be strong in us?’ Huh? How does that work again?? It works and relies purely on the power of His Grace. Christ’s death released so much grace and power it not only saves us, it can utterly transform us – from the inside out. But we have to LET it – and letting it means giving up before you even start, or turning it over to Him when you realise YOU can’t do it. It means unconditional surrender.

We need to learn to deliberately lay down all our escape plans, clauses and subclauses, and decide to live our lives helpless without His help and input. Jesus totally relied upon the Holy Spirit and we need to learn to rely upon Him too. But first we need to admit we cannot possibly be spiritual in a way that is acceptable to the Lord – without His help.  If we want His perfect power, then you and I need to start from our utter weakness and live there!

BTW, I am not talking about indulging the flesh with things like polishing off a large packet of potato chips or a whole chocolate bar! That may well be a weakness but it is not the only weakness that Paul is talking about here! The weakness Paul means here, is the lack of willingness, or motivation to live this life we have been given, differently. It is the weakness that shows up in our flesh and attitudes, when somebody treats us badly, or life squeezes us tightly and everything starts going wrong. It’s about dying to self at those times when we want to give in to our old self, and do and say, whatever we feel like! That’s called living by your own strength and it is not only over-rated –  living that way has no real Holy Spirit power in it. 

Well, for me to continually live out what these verses say, I follow Him … straight down onto my knees! Then I tell the Holy Spirit I want to obey Him, but it’s too hard and I’m not going to lie to Him! This is where my all time favourite word motivates me. Nevertheless … I’m gunna give in to You anyway Lord. It’s where I ask for His strength and admit my utter weakness, plus my lack of motivation and I ask Him to help me. So, what’s the difference between making yourself – or praying first asking for His help – and then still doing whatever it is anyway? After all you still end up doing whatever it is you don’t want to do! Well, NOW, I am leaning on Him not me – I gave up on MY strength when I asked for His help. Then I tell Him I am so sorry I didn’t want to do whatever it is, I get up, blow my nose, use my faith and go and do it.

You see to collect this particular promise you have to start with ‘I can’t’ and sometimes … ‘I am not sure I want to either!’  Speaking for myself – I can’t – a lot! So I give up – A LOT.😂 I can’t shower myself, dress myself, give myself energy, eat anything I want, sleep well all the time, or even make myself something to eat or drink. Most of the time I have just enough energy to do whatever that day requires. And some days I run out early. (I usually make no sense at all after that!) And on other days I just plain don’t even want to try. So then I hope that being sick and disabled is an excuse He will accept. Fat chance! Those are the times that the Lord likes to blow my mind by asking me to do something utterly impossible without His help. And, low and behold, I can do it after all. 😳 “… But because you say so, I will…” Luke 5:5

Meanwhile, strangely enough, I actually consider myself extremely blessed, and fortunate. God has given me a learning curve that is pretty steep at times, but that curve has actively demonstrated to me that my ability to perform, is ZERO. I learnt to rejoice in my weakness. I discovered His strength really IS made perfect in weak people – because I ARE one! With the Lord I can do anything, without Him I can’t even tie my own shoes. What a blessing this life is! I feel very sorry for other able-bodied people who have to wrangle with the reality of this verse, because they are hindered by their own human talents, strength and abilities – including the ability to push themselves … and I am not. Bye… 👋🏻  Hang on folks…  Easter is not over …Sunday’s coming!!

P 2173 The way through to love.

/ DVH

Recently I realised that my inability to love some of the difficult people I know is actually a weakness in my character. Well yay! Boy did I get happy! 🥳 🎉!! No, I haven’t lost my mind – I think I actually finally found it again. The renewed bit anyway. You see, I remembered something from the bible. My bible says – ‘His strength is made PERFECT in my weaknesses.’ The Apostle Paul struggled with this, yet he says in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10. “when I am weak then He is strong!”  Plus it says to ‘rejoice’ or ‘take pleasure’ in our weaknesses! The greater the resistance to change, the more potential I have to build up strength … 

A lack of love in me reminds me that I have an opportunity to throw myself upon His strength, His mercy, His Grace, and all I need to do is to let Him help me. The Holy Spirit won’t sovereignly just take over and do it for me, I have to resist the devil for myself, and draw near to Jesus. Now, with His help, I have positioned myself to become a channel of the Holy Spirit’s love toward that other person. I simply need to follow the His prompts, step by step. Plus I will probably have to do quite a bit of ‘holding my tongue’ as well! That’s when I ask for His Grace.

My husband shared this thought with me the other day, about hearing the Holy Spirit. He said: ‘If we can hear the enemy, inside our heads, accusing us and reminding us of our faults etc. – then we can most definitely hear the Lord of ALL telling us He loves us and guiding us into His ways!’ The bible says our enemy accuses us ‘day and night before the throne of Grace.’ However, the One sitting on that throne IS THE GREATER ONE! Ya might want to think on that for a bit! Moving on …

If we choose to want to see His good in difficult situations, or ask Him to show us something good in them … that is when we cultivate looking through His Eyes of Love. Because: ‘Love hopes all things, believes all things etc.’ Nevertheless, we can’t do that repairing and restoring work by ourselves – we always need Him! When His Presence becomes more important than my opinion and hurt feelings, I am in a prime position to overcome what comes AT me. When we set our hearts to see the good in situations, that’s when He helps us, and we will start to see other people the way He sees them. Looking at sinful humanity through the Lord’s eyes is life transforming. Jesus is incredibly compassionate …

Then I need to remember that the Lord dearly l❤️ves Me, and His love is not based on my performance it is based on His own Character. Whenever I feel rejected and unaccepted, that’s when I can easily react, instead of acting in faith. His new life inside my heart will remind me from His Word, how to give away acceptance in the face of rejection. I always have the power to change my responses, but I need to use my faith to access that power. I have to put down what happened to me, and how I feel about it, and deliberately ask Him for His eternal viewpoint. 

You and I are always able give grace away, because we also need to constantly go to the cross ourselves to receive His grace for our own stinky sinful attitudes. We live this life of faith in a place of utter gratitude, this means I can give away love because I already have His love shed abroad in my heart. Love looks like the cross – and the cross is a place of suffering – you die (to self) there. 

In those moments when we choose to die to self and say nothing – or even proactively extend kindness;  we are refusing to bow down to our own limited understanding. Instead we seek His greater wisdom. It helps me to remember that the other people involved may not be following the Lord’s heaven-made script at this particular unhappy moment in my interaction with them. This is actually my moment to learn …but it may not be theirs.🤗

We don’t always have to like this process – nobody wants to walk with the Lord through the valley of the shadow of death! And dying to self is a form of death. Think about this for a minute, do you need to find God? He is always in that valley! The 23rd Psalm tells us that He is there to comfort us. Let us remember He suffered at the hands of mankind too! 👋🏻

P 2119 What comes out when the pressure comes on?

/ DVH

Human beings can be quite clever at hiding stuff, from themselves … as well as others.  Like Jesus showed us in John 7:37-39 “On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to Me and drink. Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this He meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.” … If we want rivers of His water flowing in our lives … then  we have to stop building dams to protect ourselves, or diverting His streams of life away from the purposes of God into our own purposes. This water goes through us to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. LET IT FLOW.

I realised a number of years ago that I could be ‘nice’ and fool people, even the people around me … but Almighty God sees my heart, and I can’t fool HIM.  Now, despite the fact that I can lie to myself and get away with pretending I am a nice person … who I really am comes out when I am squeezed tightly by life’s pressures and difficulties. HOWEVER, I am here to say today, do not give up on yourself, and definitely do not give up on Him! “But…”you wail, “I pray all the time about my bad temper, sarcastic tongue, petty stinky attitudes  plus rebellion, pomposity, resentment and bitterness I feel inside, and God hasn’t done anything about it SO… perhaps it doesn’t bother Him!” (Yeah right, telling yourself that won’t change anything.) 

You can tell yourself that, but you and I have read the book, and we all can see instantly in there that’s not what He is aiming at! I now understand that nothing happens to me, or around me by accident. The Lord allows circumstances into my life so I can acknowledge my sin, then repent, and repair things and ask for His help to change. THEN!!! …Then I gird up my loins and deliberately start taking faith steps. I’ve pray this – “help help “ all the time. Why? “The Lord is close to all who CALL on Him, yes, to all who call on Him in truth. He fills the desires of those who fear Him: He hears their cry and saves them.” (Psalm 145:18) My advice is we need to be truthful and admit our faults.

I’ve learnt that there is no use blaming other people for your response. Your response is your responsibility. Saying nothing is better than letting stinky dangerous stuff fly out of your mouth. “But I mean what I am saying at the time!” Yeah, we all do, but what is said in anger cannot be easily repaired. The thing is, someone has  threatened us, and we use our words to push back at them. At that moment we are deliberately telling that other person something they don’t need to know about themselves. Their bad attitude, if they even have one, is their responsibility – not ours. Our aim is to spread love, and our opinion about someone else’s behaviour or thoughts or actions isn’t something they need to hear from us. BTW, if you poke the bear serves you right if it bites your head off! 

Our words are meant to HEAL not hurt. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Ephesians 4:29. (The dictionary says: LET is a verb (used with object), let, let·ting. to allow or permit:)  “But I have a foul temper!!” Hmmm.. Thank you so much for telling me that, I will do do my best to avoid YOU! 🤣 We do not have to feed our weaknesses by indulging them. Instead, we can learn to actively transform who we are with His help. The Lord Jesus has done all the work at Calvary, now we get to live out what He did IN FAITH. The only power satan has over us is the power we GIVE him. Faith, however, is the substance of things hoped for …” We give our faith substance by acting on what we believe, in spite of our feelings or circumstances.

So when my mouth wants to vomit bad stuff over someone else, I take a great big breath and pray ‘help help.’ And if doing that doesn’t stop the flow, then I excuse myself and go be by myself until the Lord and I have a strategy – and that strategy never includes hurting the other person. The Power of God can only flow through us to the extent that we let it work ON us. Ya might want to read that sentence again, I know I need too!  Stop looking at what the other person said, and look at what you are saying. Our speech needs to build up and help others, not shatter them.

“His strength is made perfect in our weaknesses.”  When I am weakest then I am strong in Him. We get strong in His Might … using our faith. Faith has substance, we learn that when we use it.  We don’t get zapped there, we WALK there deliberately, on purpose, using our faith. Jesus did it. He went up a mountain and prayed, then He spoke things that were going to help His disciples to rely upon the Holy Spirit when He came. We need to stop reading the bible for benefits and start reading it for our ways to become His ways. What comes out when the pressure comes on is what is already IN there. Change and transformation require co-operation, if we want His rivers of living water flowing through our lives.

Our mouth is not a DRAIN for our emotions. 👋🏻

P 2109 Transformation is the way ahead.

/ DVH

I had an interesting thought this morning about – 2 Corinthians 12:9 says: “My Grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Gird up your girdle Gertie, it’s gunna be a bumpy ride! So why don’t we share our weaknesses more? Yeah you might like to think on that for a month or nine!! As HE is strong where I am weak – then where’s the shame in being weak? All I gotta do is ask for help and the Holy Spirit is right there. Instantly. I may not feel Him – but I know that He is close to the broken-hearted … so … He is there!!  Then when I pray for help maybe using my faith means I will believe that He wants to help me even more than I want to be helped.

It seems to me that we avoid displaying the very thing that the bible says will empower us with HIS power! We try so hard day after day, to keep the wheels turning, hiding our weaknesses, as well as trying to maintain a sense of normal? When the reality is, we can’t do anything eternal and lasting without Him. Christians all around the world climb out of bed daily and try to present a good picture of the benefits of what we believe, everywhere they go. JESUS IS THE BENEFIT FOLKS. He didn’t come to earth so we could try harder – He came to save us from sin and ourselves! So why are we so scared to death to admit that we can’t hack it on our own? Do we really need to have other people admire us so badly? Does envy lead to saving faith?

Perhaps somebody asks us: “how are you today?” And we paste on a fake smile and reply: “fine thank you, and how are you?”  Christians constantly do their best to present themselves as perfectly adequate people who are coping…. WHY? Why do we lie to ourselves and others? Here’s my little theory. We feel if we don’t present a good picture we will be letting the Lord down. You know, FYI, being officially sick can almost be a relief in one way – because you don’t have to pretend anymore.

Back to my point, are we so scared of judgment? Or feeling inadequate, because we are supposed to be bright shining stars for the Lord? Maybe we are protecting His reputation? Except He made Himself of no reputation for our sake – so that’s kind of a waste of time and energy. I just want to say to anyone reading this today – ‘It really is OK not to cope all the time!  It’s OK to struggle with difficult people and situations. It’s not just OK … it’s actually normal.’ Because ‘without HIM we can do nothing’  We were not designed to be the all-singing all-dancing Jesus ad. He does perfectly well by Himself – He has the Holy Spirit at work all over this earth! We are here to point to the Answer and WE are not the Answer – HE IS.

So here are some quick thoughts I came up with to explain why we hide our faults from each other: a/ we don’t know how to access Grace. b/ We don’t know how to give Grace away! Jesus said in the verse in 2 Corinthians HIS GRACE IS SUFFICIENT. because that is where HIS power is. I think the reason we pretend so much is because we know very little about living by faith. We get Grace by using our faith not trying harder.

Speaking for myself I always thought of people living by faith as missionaries, or really holy special people who chose that lifestyle. Boy was I wrong!  People rarely choose this lifestyle – it usually lands on them – often from a great height! The way you learn to live by faith is to be needy, and if you’ve got no money in a world that uses money – guess what?? You’ve just become needy!! I know people who live this way but they didn’t choose it – it chose them. 

Here’s the true secret to living a happy Christian life.: transformation is not an optional extra – it’s a survival skill! Ya might want to Selah that thought. 

If by any chance, anybody else out there has become tired of pretending to be ‘fine thank you’ – then we are all going to have to let Him use our ugly, difficult circumstances to expose all our inadequacies. Those nasty little things we don’t ever want anybody else to know because then they won’t like us, or – we won’t like us. Or – maybe the Lord won’t like us!  How about instead of hiding them- we admit them. The bible says: “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed….” James 5:16. It doesn’t say hide them under a rock and hope nobody notices. Unconfessed sin leaves us open to enemy attack.

God was good to Jonah and he had his problems. That man was prejudiced and opinionated, not to mention a racist. The Lord was good to Gideon and he needed more proof than a prosecuting attorney. He was good to Job who thought he had it made and didn’t know that everything he had came from the Lord in the first place! He was good to Moses and David who murdered someone. God was good to Elijah who was the super spiritual guy of his day – Elijah ran away and hid. The list goes on. And now …here’s the GREAT NEWS. We can read all about the men and women of God and what He saw as faith, in a wonderful faith chapter in Hebrews 11.  

The Lord praises every single one of these people, and some of them were definitely not perfect – they made huge mistakes. BUT! The Holy Spirit speaks about each of these men and women of faith with great love. Our faults, when they are transformed by living in His Grace, are testimonies to His loving kindness and glory.  We all might want to think on that with the New Year coming up. Bye. 👋🏻