Wrestle

P 3216 Obedience is not an optional extra.

/ DVH

Being obedient is the best way I know to walk with the Lord, and it can prevent a whole lot of confusion. I discovered that I needed to purpose in my heart to simply choose to be obedient. I’ve learnt to read the bible, pray and meditate on it and — do what it says. At the same time, I’ve found as I focus on loving other people, suddenly a whole lot of stuff that I needed, was added unto me along the way. “We have come into an intimate experience with God’s love, and we trust in the love He has for us. God is love! Those who are living in love are living in God, and God lives through them.” 1 John 4:16.

I believe that the depth and purpose we desire to love the Lord, appears when we intentionally, continually apply our dedicated obedience to His Word. Father God doesn’t need our mental agreement with whatever He has said, Jesus and the Holy Spirit agree with Him and that’s a majority right there!! This is what Jesus said about obedience in John 14:15-17. “If you love Me, you will obey My commandments. I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper Who will be with you forever. That Helper is the Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it doesn’t see or know Him. You know Him, because He lives with you and will be in you.”

The Holy Spirit is our Helper, and Jesus specifically asked the Father to send Him to us – to help us to obey the Father. At the same time, the Lord expects us to treat the Holy Spirit with reverence and respect. The Spirit of God is gentle in His heart, like Jesus is, and we need to respect that He will not cannonball all over the place, or even push us along. He clearly knows what truth is, and it is unfortunately quite evident from the above scripture, that a lot of the time, we do not! 

My favourite times with the Holy Spirit happen when He shows me what the truth is, in whatever scripture I am reading. It’s like someone turns the light on when I’ve been sitting in the dark trying to puzzle out what God wants to say TO ME.The precious Holy Spirit will not show us His heart, or what He wants from us, or even share His secrets with us, if we have no desire to be obedient. What would be the point? 

Let’s look at Jesus’ own personal lament over man’s lack of willingness to live their lives close to God. It is recorded in Matthew 23:37, where He says to Jerusalem:“How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!” Have you ever tried to cuddle a child that didn’t want to be cuddled? They are all wiggles, arms and legs and cranky with it. That’s what I think about when I read Matthew 23. God wants to love on us, but we want to hold ourselves far enough away from Him so we still have a say. Or we try to wrestle ourselves out of His grasp, as we go as close as we dare to — but no further.

Here are some more specific scriptures about being obedient: 1 Peter 1:14 “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance,…” Acts 5:29: “But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.” Psalm 1:1–2: “Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night.”  What we think about matters. The problem seems to be this — when we think about obedience long enough — if the change in our life is going to be hard, we postpone it, or try to go around it. 

Human beings keep their minds busy, trying to figure out this life so we feel more comfortable. So we problem-solve. Many times our minds will keep on returning to the difficulty, trying to figure out another answer, because we don’t like the one we have! The Lord has taught me to give things to Him. He told me to put every problem down, at His feet, and refuse to pick it up again. I give my problems to Him and He carries them for me. 

Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.” That burden we worry about all night might never happen, and even if it did, what can we do about it? Our King promises to intervene and teach us how to get through things, AS we learn to rest in Him.

Years ago, I kept getting stuck on the way other people I knew were living. What I thought they should do. All that stuff meant I was not meditating on God’s goodness to me! Instead I was whining, grumbling and complaining because my feelings were engaged in things that weren’t anything to do with me. At other times I wanted someone to help me, but I wanted them to do it my way. I didn’t want to consider God’s answers in case I was convicted of sin and I needed to change my attitude. I blamed those other people, because they wouldn’t change their way of doing things, and … make my life easier for me!  Yeah, you heard me! Oy vey!

Luke 6:46: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”  I kind of think I might know why we do this… we want all the lovely benefits—but not the training in righteousness. We want a maid, or a butler, or a personal trainer following us about doing the hard yards for us. Jesus did all those the hard yards for us, long, long ago. But now, today, we must enter into the battle of all battles with our old self! The battle to think like He does! 

Obedience is not an optional extra, it’s the narrow way mentioned in Matthew 7! It is designed to reveal His heart to us, and our hearts toward Him. Living for His sake is always a choice, but it is also part of our ongoing salvation. Bye. 👋 

P 3088 On being human.

/ DVH

Never forget you are a human being – Almighty God doesn’t!! “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death, and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”and my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust in Your unfailing love;  my heart rejoices in Your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for He has been good to me.” Psalm 13.

We can all have days, or weeks, or sometimes even months like these! Times when it seems like we are all alone, and we appear to have been forgotten by God. Faith is our in-built God-detector. As we use that faith despite the mess we are in, we will begin to see signs of His loving kindness all over our lives. It wouldn’t be called FAITH if we could be certain about it all the time. There are times when even though we know He is not absent, our feelings become bigger than what we know to be true.

I know what it is like to wrestle with my thoughts and struggle to break through to a more peaceful, victorious place. When we feel like God has deserted us, it is way too easy to turn our focus back onto whatever is going on inside us. Sadly, that way we can eventually sink into despair. You can hear those thoughts from Asaph in the above Psalm. This life can be hard and cruel, many things happen to us that are outside our control. 

Even though our primary desire is to be a joyful, song singing, obedient and prayerful, worshipping person of God, we will always need to learn more about how to use our faith to get through stuff. Those times can be both enriching and hard – all at once. They seem to pull us toward despair, especially if we think that we are supposed   to have everything together, and remain cheerful all the time! That’s a lie that will lead you and I into striving, because we can never reach that goal without Him. No matter how we feel, our God will never desert us.

Day after day when I read what these men wrote, I am greatly comforted by the truth that is exposed by what is in the Psalms. They took the time to write down their blessed happy feelings – as well as their  “I’m not coping, let’s brain the bad guys” ones. There are times when my own thoughts betray me, and I can’t figure out why! Let’s not to mention other people, whose feelings, and interpretation of what is going on in life often leave me spinning. The blessing in reading the Psalms is that I will come away from them feeling more normal, if not a bit reassured that my humanity has value to God Himself! He left this stuff in His book!

How can I ever manage to learn anything, almost in spite of myself? Glad you asked that. The Holy Spirit, the-greatest-of-all-time-Leader and Editor, left these grumpy, sad Psalms IN. That whole vibe of – “couldn’t we just kill those people and tell God they died?” – is not what you expect from the bible! It’s astonishing. Many other books in the Word are about mankind’s interactions with God. But here is a whole collection about the human heart, and feelings – warts and all! When the Holy Spirit did that, He left room for us to be real and learn.

At the same time, we can all be kept so busy with this life, that we forget our sin is paid for, so we don’t have to let it master us any more. The problem is that we have well-established old pathways, and they fool us into thinking they still have power over us. However there is no greater force in this world than love: “it hopes all things, believes all things, bears all things.”And our God loves us LIKE THAT. Meanwhile, we don’t only need help, although we do! … We need personal SUPERVISION. And the Holy Spirit is brilliant at it,  His vigilance is without peer, His promptings gentle but firm.

Human beings can become insecure, especially if our proposed ways of thinking and being are unrealistic to the very real level of our faith. Some stuff we want to walk in may be currently a great theory, but we can’t quite put it into practice — especially if we don’t get answers immediately! BTW, don’t take your faith back, hang on to Him and don’t let go  Our help is in the Name of the Lord – God will sort stuff for you. Father God allows us to be stretched to help us grow and rely more completely upon Him. God Himself is our safe place.

Our part is to daily absorb His Ways, and, with the Holy Spirit’s help, then we consistently apply the things He shows us. In the end we need to remember, we are day by day, rewiring our brains! “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12. This is no small task, thank God the Word of God is powerful!  

It is important to know the path to take in times of ease, or when difficulties arise, and the Psalms show us other people struggled too. God’s path means that over time, we will learn to use our faith as a full time way to live – because it is not just meant to be emergency relief in times of strife. Feeling helpless in the face of trouble and difficulties happens to all of us. These Psalmists help us remember that it is not a sin to be human. Our God is always with us no matter how much we’ve wandered off!  Bless you 👋