Wrestling

P3460 Trying is out, doing is in.

/ DVH

Following Christ is not about trying hard to find the will to do what He said … it is about doing it. I hear so many sincere people telling me that they are trying to please the Lord but it’s too hard. Trying means you are simply attempting to do something — in other words — trying includes the possibility of failure. To DO something means you launch yourself out into the action hoping God Himself will catch you. Don’t try — DO.  Don’t try for instance, not to gossip, or criticise others, close your mouth! Let’s not let any immediate feelings of impossibility or failure discount your ability to do what He said.

So we don’t try not to watch movies that create anger, or access sensuality in us – turn them off.  It’s dumb to allow the wrong kind of thoughts to sit in your head. Those things are leading you down an inevitable pathway, to all kinds of stuff that will steal your peace and make you hate yourself for failing. We can’t fail – Jesus did all the work for us! He conquered sin and death. That’s love. Let’s remind ourselves daily, how much the Lord loves us. Did you wake up today? 🤪 That means God believes in you. You have another opportunity to choose to change – some people didn’t wake up. Make the time to sit with Him and let His endless unconditional love minister to you, then go out and do what He tells you to do.

Let’s look at Matthew 14, and what happened to Peter, as he learnt that God can and will make a way! Verses 18-30:  “As soon as the meal was finished, He insisted that the disciples get in the boat and go on ahead to the other side while He dismissed the people. With the crowd dispersed, He climbed the mountain so he could be by himself and pray. He stayed there alone, late into the night. Meanwhile, the boat was far out to sea when the wind came up against them and they were battered by the waves. At about four o’clock in the morning, Jesus came toward them walking on the water. They were scared to death. “A ghost!” they said, crying out in terror. But Jesus was quick to comfort them. “Courage, it’s Me. Don’t be afraid.” Peter, suddenly bold, said, “Master, if it’s really You, call me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come ahead.” 

Peter didn’t just ASK for help … you and I can’t just stand there waiting for Jesus to come and fix things – there’s no active faith in that! Faith has substance, in other words you can see it. Instead, Peter acted on what the Lord said! Jesus said, “Come,” and Peter actually had to climb over the edge of a perfectly good boat, and start walking on the water. That’s faith! That’s what it looks like. Faith is obedience in action. Peter kept his eyes on Jesus and kept right on walking. He only failed when he took his eyes off the Lord. Keep your eyes on Jesus! … BTW, failure is not the end of the world because Jesus took that to Calvary too.

Here’s my advice: find out what the Lord says about that thing that you are struggling with, and act on it! Do something. We are only failing in some areas because we are leaving the things we need to do ourselves, to Him. We are not puppets, He will not make us. He will show us the way and help us, but we will have to decide to act differently, and then do something about it, using our faith. If you have trouble with swearing, stop. Seriously. Don’t believe that voice in your head that tells you, you can’t. YOU … “can do all things through Christ Who strengthens YOU.” So when you feel weak, ask Him for strength, and … whack your hand over your mouth!

I’ve learnt to do stuff like that all the time. If the Holy Spirit tells me to do something, then I start moving – despite the fact that I know I can’t do most things easily – it has now become an automatic response. Especially when I get grumpy. We all get angry sometimes, but the thing is … don’t stay there, ask the Lord to help you. Our faith is meant to be operating all the time. It is not just an emergency stop button on a runaway train. It’s the way we live now. ”For in Him we live and move and have our being.’  As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are His offspring.’” Acts 17:28. 

We are wrestling with our own will when we feel like we can’t do this or that. Jesus died so we don’t have to do anything anymore. Now we have the freedom to choose. Just because we don’t like some choice or other, that does not invalidate the fact that we actually have one! Let’s turn that around, when we want to do something we know is bad for us, other people can’t stop us. That’s what our will looks like in operation. We simply can’t live a life of faith, and indulge ourselves at the same time. Nor can we say to the Lord: “Thy will be done …” in our prayers, when we know full well that we only do what He wants, when and if, we feel like it! … Did you notice that word ‘feel?’ 

The real struggle is against our own flesh. Our will has survived thus far because we gratify it through the stuff we’ve done that we ought not to have done – so stopping it is bound to be a wrestling match. Let me put that another way — neither of us will probably want to participate in this wrestling match. It is so-oo much easier to just give in to our feelings. Plus this sort of scenario is usually accompanied by loads of angst and temptation. After all, we don’t live in a blameless holy society! Someone else will have done something to set us off. The point is … Jesus is bigger than anything we face, so we put Him in charge, and step out onto the water of change even though it seems like it will not be pleasant and we don’t feel like it.

BTW, this does not mean we are not supposed to have any feelings, it just means our feelings are not supposed to be in charge of us anymore — Jesus is now. How do you think the Lord endured the cross? “Saying, Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but [always] Yours be done.” Luke 22:42. Faith is not faith if we only believe things in our heads. Faith is faith when we let it change our behaviour. That will mean some wrestling matches. The upside is we will stop blaming other people for what we do, and start to take responsibility for our own choices. We don’t want to be the bad people, we want other people to be in that role. The truth is we are ALL bad, and … “It’s by Grace we have been saved, not because of works lest any man should boast.” 

The glory of Jesus and what He did for us, is that He gave us the Holy Spirit Who wants to help us to obey. Obedience is a wonderful smell to God, it is better than a sacrifice. Along with the Holy Spirit – Who gave us the power to obey our Father – we also have in writing, what the Lord likes and what He doesn’t. Feelings don’t come into it. I never feel like saying sorry when I am angry and I know I am wrong – how about you? Let’s ignore how we feel, and obey what He said. Nobody is making you or I choose to indulge ourselves — those feelings of helplessness and powerlessness are simply not true. The bars on the jail you have painted yourself into are not there anymore. Take a step of faith – you will walk right through them.

What I think I know about myself is not all there is to know, there’s more. Father God made me, and He knows me, and what I can do, I can choose to trust Him over my feelings. We will fail to use our faith when we don’t believe what He said, instead of what we think about ourselves. Trying is out, doing is in. Bye. 👋.

P 2809 Keep pressing on!

/ DVH

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39. The Apostle Paul really had a handle on something that we need to pick up and wear as a permanent garment! Nothing can take us away from the Love of God. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. His love has been freely given to us, because of what Jesus Himself chose to do for us.

Real love gets down in the dirt … then it writes something in that dirt that shames everybody else present. The people who are standing there, waiting to throw rocks at someone else! Jesus did that. Love dismisses the naysayers and critics because its source is from the sternest, boldest, most magnificent, strongest place of all. The throne of God Himself. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ, plus the infilling of the Holy Spirit, has made that kind of strong, powerful love, available to us.

So why don’t we have it? I mean seriously… we both know we don’t!  All we need is a hard couple of days and love leaks out of us like we are a sieve, and we end up wondering what we did to deserve this next heartache. Sadly I think sometimes we settle for a NICE attitude and hope that will do. Nice and pleasant seem easier …it means  we can make up a bunch of rules and stick with them, and after a while ‘nice’ becomes a habit which seems like love … until it is severely pushed by life’s circumstances!

God’s love on the other hand, in difficult times, can seem a bit ethereal. We need to walk with the Holy Spirit minute by minute to know what His thoughts on love look like. I do know His love is about way more than feelings. It means I give Him my trust and obedience, and I choose to follow His instructions no matter if my world is collapsing around me. I probably won’t end up responding the same way in every single situation – even if those situations are identical. People and their needs are not identical. 

And the Holy Spirit dearly loves people! Every single time He gets an opportunity, He sweeps them up into His arms and loves on them. It’s His all time favourite thing to do. That’s why He lovingly heals, delivers, and gives each one of us wisdom and insight when we ask for it. It’s because He deeply loves people. He is intimately involved in the things that concern us. He knows exactly what we need and why, He also knows when we need it. Plus He knows what is not good for us. My immediate response when things go bad is to want to escape from the bad … like yesterday!! But I know with His help, I can learn to live His way.

In this busy life it is too easy to forget that Jesus is our role model. I bet He would have wanted to come down from that cross from the very second He was nailed to it!  The pain would be excruciating!!  He is God – He had options! He could have come off it at any second, But He chose the painful way of obedience. God’s love is accessed by faith and it operates through our deliberate, intentional choices. His love actually makes hard, unpleasant choices. It is not weak, it constrains us to push toward good. 

His Love also chooses to love people who simply don’t deserve our approval, let alone our begrudging affections! How we feel fades into the background, when we choose to learn to walk in Love, because what He wants is far more important to us … and that takes over. We are no longer limited into escaping from pain – instead we understand that pain often speaks the loudest. TIME is also factor in our personal growth.“There’s a time for every purpose under heaven …”

Here’s another great scripture: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”Galatians 4:4-7. God’s timing is perfect…we need to gird up our loins and wrestle our feelings of desertion and not being loved by Him, into submission. Praying, reading the bible, joining in with fellowship — all these things give us courage to continue under pressure.   Each one of us, despite our personal feelings, were born again to be His Sons and Daughters — and we all know that sons and daughters have responsibilities!

I’ve found this helpful, when I have prayed the same prayer 100 times and there appears to be no answer — I start asking the Lord to show me what HE wants. He and I could be experiencing a conflict of interest, and as His interest is more important than mine … I may need to talk to Him about it. Always bearing in mind that He is not with us to serve us – we serve Him. His disciples died serving God’s plan. That means they put their own interests in this life to one side, and had a completely different life than the one they had planned for themselves. 

The glorious thing about this arrangement is that we will actually fall more deeply in love with the Lord as we watch Him at work in our lives – or even in someone else’s life. His love is REAL – we need to keep pressing on to experience it as a part of our daily lives.It is not a doctrine or a theory. It is worth living and dying for – Jesus thought so. Bye. 👋

P 2275 It is essential to practise mercy.

/ DVH

“So we must both speak and act in every respect like those who are destined to be tried by the perfect law of liberty, and remember that judgment is merciless for the one who judges others without mercy. So by showing mercy, you take dominion over judgment!” James 2:12-13 TPT

The reason the phrase mercy triumphs over judgment is often accurate, is that the human mind leans toward the side of justice. Do the words; ‘that’s not fair’ ring any bells?’ Look, if someone pinches your parking spot, then you can easily lean on mercy, but, if someone pinches the car or burns down our house most of us could easily tip over into judgment! The severity of the sin against us can create harsher responses. Unfortunately unforgiveness is deadly, it’s a no-brainer. Repentance clears away our guilt, but it does not take away the need for reparation and restoration.

The thing about Mercy is it has to become our permanent state of mind, not just something we try to find on the spot when something bad has happened. When things happen, our emotions become engaged, and we are more likely to go with how we feel at that moment, instead of leaning into being merciful. 

Memorising scriptures is a great way to know what the bible says – but the very best way to change our hearts for good is to continually choose the harder thing and do it. Doing what the bible says takes God’s Word out of the realm of knowledge, and puts it firmly into the place of our own experience. Other people will benefit from our learning curves but the main benefit is to US. That stretching, the feeling that you can’t bear whatever is going on any longer, is normal. Don’t  believe what you feel, instead, pray for help and maintain the new merciful attitude.

I am not saying that letting Mercy triumph is an easy thing to do. As a matter of fact I think it’s probably one of the hardest things … like, ever! But we are not just simply learning a way to live – we are giving the Holy Spirit room to transform our hearts. This means we have an opportunity to change or  soften our hardened heart… by believing His word to the point where we act on it. A changed heart has no problem with mercy. This person knows from experiencing His grace when they’ve needed it, that growing and changing can be painful. Plus they understand the principle of giving away what they need. 

The Bible says: “Cast your bread on the surface of the waters, [be diligently active, make thoughtful decisions], for you will find it after many days.” Ecclesiastes 11:1 Amp. This means that we will often give away what we need over and over again before we see any change in our response, but remember – God is no man’s debtor! Now if we are still actively hostile inside our brain two days later … eventually that bubbling pot of anger and resentment will boil over!  Often it is at some poor schmuck who said the wrong thing at the wrong time. We have all the grace and power we will need to overcome the things that come at us, or even the things that are already inside us – simply by practising His word as He reveals it to us. Hallelujah!

Human beings see things in terms of big and small.  To the Lord sin is not something big or small – it’s the thing that separates us from Him. It causes us to hide from Him right when we need Him the most.  When Jesus died for our sins He utterly cleared away the pathway between us and sin – we don’t have to sin any more. We need to remember this verse: “If we sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanses from all unrighteousness.” 

In the old Testament when Rebecca gave birth to twins, the twins were wrestling inside her for supremacy. That’s what happens inside us – either in our minds or in our emotions or both. The new you – that is who you are now in Christ Jesus – is now inside you. But the old us, our old habits and indulgences are wrestling against the person that God wants to release. This fight is ongoing, we don’t just fight against what the enemy throws at us, we are fighting our old ways of thinking, being, and doing with the Holy Spirit helping us.

Just because something is hard that does not mean it isn’t God’s will. We are in a wrestling match daily, sometimes minute by minute to make the choices Christ would make … Dying is hard but it is extremely powerful!  👋🏻