Window

P 2718 A testimony and a lesson.

/ DVH

Just recently, in our stay in Cairns, we were mooching about in our accommodation, praying and talking about what we should do next. Then the Lord spoke to us and this is what He said: “There is a window open right now, for you to give bibles through it – GO!”  So we left right away.

My hubby had already listed all the known caravan parks, but the Lord, in His Grace, had organised that our seemingly random list was actually in some sort of order. We discovered that fact as we went from place to place  Long story short, our GPS is obviously behind in its updates … aren’t they always? … and the entry to the first caravan park was via a difficult, very convoluted process that was not on GPS map. We quite literally went back and forth on different roads to get in. Not a great start there!

By now …  because we too occasionally subscribe to the theory that these things are supposed to be easy (!)– we were beginning to doubt we had heard the Lord correctly at all!  However we decided to press on. As we eventually arrived at the first park on our list, someone else was checking in. The paying customers are always a priority, so hubby stood by with his hands full of bibles and waited … and waited  …. and waited … so He could speak to the elderly man behind the counter. Eventually this man took the new customer off down into the park and called out to hubby that he would be back soon.

His definition of soon and ours seemed to be quite different! After a lo-ong wait hubby started to feel that this guy was never ever coming back, so he returned back to our car, and we prepared to leave. Then the elderly man suddenly appeared, hobbling away and he called out to hubby, “I’m free now.” Well … they had a lovely time chatting away, and hubby gave out bibles plus a word to him as well as one of his paintings and a compass. This older man was very encouraging about what we were doing. Up until then we pretty much doubted that we had heard the Lord at all. Or maybe something had happened and that window we thought we heard about had slammed shut!

The next place was miles down the road. It was one of those parks that never take bibles – it’s against their policy. But hubby rolled up his sleeves and went in. It transpired that they had 106 units and they would have taken 106 bibles. All the bibles we had! In the end we had to limit what we gave them to 40, as we had other places to go. Another lovely friendly conversation about Jesus ensued and two more bookmarks found a home. Moving on again, we were en route to another park on the list when we spotted one that was not on the list. This park had barbed wire all around the outside of it. Things didn’t look too hunky dory, but hubby went in anyway. He had a lovely, fun conversation with the owner and that park took bibles too. You can never tell who will and who won’t.

After that, we went back to our list and drove about and found the next park on it. They had already been given bibles recently by someone else – PRAISE THE LORD!  But hubby was able to give the receptionist a bookmark. Then he spoke to a young man sitting outside in the rain and offered to give him lift, but the man was waiting for a cab. So hubby gave him a a Nick Vijucic book to read while he was waiting. We thought we had finished with our window, and we started to head for our accommodation … when we saw yet another caravan park on the other side of the wide main road, so we had to do the whole U turn thing to get to it. It was an NRMA park, and they also do not ever take bibles … but they did this time…!  And hubby gave away a bookmark again.

To sum up, by obeying what the Lord said, we went to 5 caravan parks and gave away over 110 bibles, not to mention paintings, bookmarks, a Nick book, and one compass! I said all that to illustrate that sometimes it can be difficult when we choose to obey what He says. Hubby and I might have easily given up at that first park. But then there would have been no conversations about the Lord, and we could have come back to where we were staying extremely disappointed, because ‘we misheard the Lord.’ 

Yesterday I talked about ADDITION. In order to distribute these bibles we had to ‘add’ virtue, (that is the sort of excellence that means what it says) to our existing knowledge of what we already know about the Lord. And to that we needed to add temperance (self-restraint). Then we added godliness – ‘what would Jesus do?’ – to that, and followed it up with brotherly kindness. (That elderly man was slow because he was OLD!)  At that point we added in charity, which means love. And that’s great because we were aiming at love in the first place!

We’ve learnt that following Jesus can be wonderfully whacky and productive, all at the same time. When we started out we had no idea where that word from the Lord would lead us – but we sure learnt perseverance from it! Bye.👋

P 2256 Move!

/ DVH

Some people, in the past, have said that I’m a bit prophetic. Hmm I don’t know about that! However, yesterday, in my mind’s eye, I could see time like a large wall, stretching backward and forward. In this wall I saw a window. It was a large window but the scary thing is – it was slowly closing. I believe this window is called the window of opportunity. 

Meh! Ask the Lord about that for yourself.“And if anyone longs to be wise, ask God for wisdom and He will give it! He won’t see your lack of wisdom as an opportunity to scold you over your failures but He will overwhelm your failures with His generous grace.” James 1:5 TPT. He straightens out my theology all the time!

Back to my point: what with Tsunamis, 9/11, Covid, the war in Ukraine, earthquakes, monetary markets crashing, food and medical shortages, plus various other awful things happening;  these things have polarised the world and affected everyone on this planet. It seems to me that nobody feels really safe anymore, because we have quite regularly experienced worldwide destructive events in an unprecedented fashion. 

However, this also means that the church all over the world, has a huge opportunity, because the people-who-don’t-know-Jesus-yet are ready for something real. And we are incredibly blessed because we know that Answer, personally. And, right here, right now, it’s our time to shine with the light of heaven, Jesus Christ. It is remarkably easy to put your light under a basket when things are overwhelming. But our time to live His way – I believe, is here and now. We must stop sort of squashing Jesus in, around the edges of all the fun things we can do, and live up to our Master’s faith in us. He is our place of safety.

I know that I know, that this is the time to start taking our Christian lives VERY seriously. We must stop thinking that going to church Sunday by Sunday is all there is, and take the faith that Jesus died to give us, and use it. If we do not start to use it, I am deeply concerned that we will lose it. As I said before, these are unprecedented times with unexpected and terrible pressures. That’s when the pressure to survive becomes more important than anything else, and real active faith goes on the back burner. The thing is, we need our faith now more than ever, because the enemy is distracting us away from our true God-given purpose.

Let’s believe and act on what we talk about. Hubby and I have been out there, where people are, and we know they are ready for something real. Like James, said, we need to show forth our faith by our works. Obviously I mean the kind of works that originate in His heart and are led by the Holy Spirit. It’s time to prime the pump of obedience. Sadly, because we’ve had a lot of unknown factors recently  – we are all a bit wary of more bad things happening – so we’ve kind of bunkered down, waiting for the storms to pass. But they haven’t. Praise God, it has opened the hearts of the people outside our churches, instead!

So what happens when we decide to take a risk and to talk to family, friends, and strangers about Him? We could get to look like a goose … and in my case, that wouldn’t be the first time!  Many people have crashed and burned in their desire to bring glory to their Master, Jesus. When we do that we are in some really great company … like the people who have gone home before us! It’s also time to face those things in our lives that we would rather ignore and hope they will go away. Our faults, our flaws, our generational, soul-destroying stinky attitudes and actions!  The Lord Jesus is absolutely excellent at putting broken Humpty-Dumpties together again. So true active repentance is the order of the day as well.

Getting this stuff wrong, ironically … is good. It is like a cleansing fire, it burns away all the dross that this life has accumulated. Pride disappears, so does fear. Instead, living for Him and obeying Him humbles us and sends us to our knees. This is not the time to sit back and look at our hypothetical barns, (Luke 12:16-21). We can’t afford to relax, or maybe even plan to build a new one! Our time has come. And we need every single one of us active and ready to obey Him. We all have a part to play in His plan. There is simply nothing like seeing the light of illumination come on when you are talking to someone who does not know Him. 💖

The alternative is to try to wait the bad times out, promising ourselves when things get better – then we will try to follow Him. There is another kind of trap that says that we will obey when we are more informed. It doesn’t work that way. First we obey and then we learn of Him. Stepping out is putting on His yoke. This yoke is not about Him blessing me while I am going in my direction, but it means I am following the lead oxen – Christ – and going in His direction instead.  Submitting to change, no matter how settled we are, or how old or young we are, stretches us. It’s time to wake up and stretch. Move it or lose it. 👋🏻