Hangin' with God

God created the everything in it

2009-06-10T16:07:00.000+02:00

God created the world and everything in it. All of it was, and is good. It was spectacular and it still is spectacular. His people were the pinnacle of his creation, created in his image. But his people became corrupted and began to destroy this good creation. Eventually God was like, “No this can’t go on. I’m going to end this and destroy the world with a mighty flood. But instead of destroying all in the world, he decided to start fresh with a good man. That good man was Noah. So he killed everyone and started fresh. However, people once again became corrupt. He had however promised Noah that never again would he destroy this world. So he then chose another good man to get his people to love and obey him, not to sin. He gave them the law and the law told them that they were doing things that were wrong. To these same people to whom he gave the law, he also gave a promise, a promise that through them he would come and rescue his people from their affliction. That good man that he started out with was Abraham, a man of faith. And then he gave the law to Moses and the prophecies of the coming of the saviour to many people throughout the following generations.

Because these people, the descendents of Abraham, were to carry the banner of God, they needed to reflect God in how they acted. That is why they were given the law – so that they could be told “this is how God is”. People who could not live up to the law were often ‘done away with’ or taught a tough lesson through hardship. God needed his people to look like him as much as possible if they were going to bring to all people the saviour. God had to take a hard line (at least to us it seems a hard line) with people so that he could be properly reflected as the God that he is – all love and no sin. Because the people could not keep to the law, because they could not perfectly reflect the God in whose image they were created, he said they should offer sacrifices to Him – let blood be shed for the blood that has been shed. This was to keep the people humble and help them to remember that he is God, and not them.

When God told the people that he would send a saviour, the descendents of this man called Abraham thought they were going to be saved from their affliction from other tribes and adversaries. But God had something else in mind…

He didn’t send a warrior king to kill and neither was the saviour sent to save only the descendents of Abraham, namely the Israelites. He instead sent his Son, a part of himself – God in human form. And he sent him so that all of God’s people, all people from all nations would be reconciled to God.

Jesus came as an example, to show once and for all what God is like and how he looks.
Previously God had showed himself through the beauty and perfection of his creation, the glory of what he had created and its amazing working together in perfect order and harmony.
Then people became corrupted and he further revealed himself to them through the provision of the law, through showing himself to some elected righteous men, through the power of his blessing on the people who obeyed him, and through the destruction of those who defied him.
And then finally he sent his Son as the ultimate revelation of himself. “Here I am” is what Jesus’ life said about God. Jesus was the mirror image of God himself. He came to show how a child of God looks when not corrupted by sin. So too did he tell people about what God is like and how he feels about sin and what sin really is.
So Jesus was the finest example of God and this example backed up how God had already revealed himself to the world through the glory of his creation, through his law which taught of love, through the blessings to the righteous and the destruction of the unrighteous.

But that is not all – not only did the Son come to show God to people in the most real and understandable way, but God also decided he wanted to bring an end to this sacrifice business.

“Right’” he said. “My son, created in my image, a reflection of me, who is without sin, is going to die as a sacrifice for all the sin in the whole world. What does that mean? It means that what I told you is true. He is the saviour you have been waiting for. He has saved you from the greatest affliction of all, an affliction far greater than sickness or hunger or war. He is going to save you from the affliction of…death. Sin leads to death for you. I don’t want anyone to die – you are my children. So my son is going to take the whole world’s sin onto him and he shall die the death of all the people in the entire world – past, present and future. The wages of sin is death – you sin, you die. He has not sinned, therefore he is a pure white lamb who can offer his life as a sacrifice, because being without sin, death has no claim on his life. I will die for your sin. I will die. But at the same time I will show that even in death because of sin, my love cannot be defeated. I cannot be defeated. I will conquer the power of sin and its ability to take life. This life I will bring too to those who have already died.”

And so Jesus was crucified and he rose from the dead and went to show himself to the people. “Look, I am alive! Sin had the power of death, but I have shown you now that I have power over death. Sin could not conquer me – not even all the sin in the world. I took all the sin in all the world – past, present and future. And I beat it. The battle is won, it is finished.”

That all sounds good but I find myself asking Jesus what this all means for us; and this is what he says:

“Well, firstly it means that all that have died and not heard about me will be shown who I am and will be told what I have done for you all. I want all people. I created every person in the world and I want them all to be with me in heaven. Because you see, you were condemned to die because this horrible thing called sin made you unfit for my kingdom. Sin is the antithesis of love – anything that is not love, is sin. I am love and therefore cannot be with sin in my kingdom, but I still wanted my kids. So what was I to do? I had to somehow conquer the sin in you, conquer the consequences of not being perfect in love. So now you are fit for my kingdom, because of what I have done for you.
I created this world so that you and I and all people could enjoy love and beauty together. I created you to share with me in love, aesthetic beauty, diversity and freedom. I wanted you to have all these things. Unfortunately you were deceived by the evil one and this perfect world became not-so-perfect. It is sick and infected – it is a beautiful sick world.

You were going to die, only having known this beautiful sick world. And that would be a shame for you never to know how I intended it to be, sin free. You would have asked yourself, “what is the point of all this?”
The only point would be that you should enjoy this life on earth as much as possible. But all that enjoyment would amount to nothing if sadly you would die at the end. But you don’t have to die. You can be with me in heaven one day. This evil and sin will be banished from our presence and never again will it infect us again or cause us harm. Then you will see how life was meant to be. You are going to spend 1000 years on earth first without any of this evil. You will be able to run and play and hang out with me and enjoy creation and infinitely enjoy and share in the multiplication of my love. Then I am going to wrap it all up, and you will come live with me in a new world, in heaven. And that is going to blow your minds! That is going to be forever, and every day will be better than the previous one.

You will worship, respect and love me because you will fully know me. You will obey me too. And I shall delight in you as my children. Everything we do shall be in love – my love for you, your love for me and our love for one another. All of it together will glorify me and my love and it shall be great.

Now remember what I have told you. I urge you to remember, because the evil one is still around and he is going to try and stop you from accepting what I have told you. Remember it by continuing to meet with your brothers and sisters and encourage one another and remind one another of my great plan. I want you to do this so you don’t get led astray by the evil one. He can cause your life to be far less that what it can be if you allow him to distract you by taunting you to pursue money and women and status and pleasures of the flesh. These things are not in the pursuance of love. Don’t chase after these things because there are better things to pursue in this life – you just have to trust me on this.

And now you may be asking what this means for your lives.
First, I have saved you from death. So you can have peace to know that you will not die, but you will be with me in heaven one day. You will rule with me in a perfect world one day. So know that if things don’t quite pan out in this life the way you hoped they would, that there is another life waiting for you.

Secondly, I have opened the way for you to know me. I will leave my spirit here with you. He will be your friend, guide, comforter, soul mate and teacher. This will serve a number of purposes. One is to give you a little taste of things to come because my spirit living in you will satisfy your desire to know me. You may not know it, but you all have a raging desire to know me – that’s how I wired you. So now through my spirit living in you, you can know me. Just ask him to come live in your heart. My spirit is also my power. I have chosen not to take you out of this world because I have my reasons, which you will not fully understand, but are perfect. Also, I have given you life on earth; I don’t want to now take it away! Life is a gift; even life in a sick beautiful world is a gift. I know that there are bad things and sad things that happen here all the time but it is ok. That is why I have given you my spirit – he gives you the power to overcome the bad things and sad things in this world. My power in you is great enough to overcome anything. So use my power. He will guide you and he will help you – you just have to ask. He will give you all you need so that you may have joy and peace inside even though on the outside the earth is sick and infected.”

“But what about those people that haven’t heard about you?” I hear myself asking.
Jesus replies, “Don’t worry about them. I will send someone to go and tell them, or I will tell them myself.
My mission now is to tell the whole world what I have done for you – those that are already dead and those that are still alive.
I want you to be part of that mission. You can decide if you would like to be part of it. I will not disown you if you choose to pursue other things in this life, because remember those are sins and I have died for them too. But let me give you some advice – this is the greatest thing you can do with your life. Trust me on this one! Spend your life in love – allow me to love you, love me back, love other people and tell them about what I have done for you all. This is the greatest thing you can do with your life. I encourage you to try it and see. As my son Solomon told you in the book of Ecclesiastes, the pursuit of worldly things will not satisfy you. They will make you happy for a very short time, but that will soon wear off and you will be left feeling empty again. These things are not enough to make you happy, to fill the hole in your soul. So come and take part in my plan to tell the world that I have reconciled it to myself. Remember that it is my plan, so you don’t have to stress about it, or get angry and frustrated when things don’t work out. Don’t try be me, just be part of my plan – I take full responsibility for how it works. It is a good plan and you will be happy you chose to pursue my purposes for your life. If you choose my ways, you will look back on your life and be happy, for it will not have been spent on meaningless pursuits. And I know you all crave meaning. That is another thing I wired you to desire. So just trust me and try it out.

I care about you; so listen to me. It makes me hurt when you don’t listen to me because I want the best for you. If you don’t take part, I will find someone else that will and my plan will still come to bear. My plans are greater than your disobedience, so don’t worry about that. But know that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. You don’t have to struggle to find people who are crying out for me, people who want to hear what I have told you and people who are ready to believe; people who are ready to be loved. They are everywhere! I have wired people so that they will be unhappy when they are without me, but when they find me they will rejoice because they will know that they have found what they were looking for. So go and enjoy the task I have given you and enjoy being part of something great and eternally worthwhile.

“But God, if we don’t chase after the things of this world, like money and career and women / men and nice things, then what will we eat and drink and how will we survive? Who will take care of us? We are taught from so young to pursue these things so we can look after ourselves, now you are telling us to not go after them. What’s that all about?”

God says: “I know that you need these things, I know that it is part of life to eat and drink and be clothed and have a partner and a job. I know it better than you because I created you! I made you to need these things. Now think about this: I came all the way down from heaven to live on earth, be crucified and rise again so that your soul could be saved. Do you not think that I would be able to take care of you having food in your stomach and clothes to wear? Look, there are many people who die of starvation and other such reasons. You fear the same fate, so you spend your lives storing these things up for yourselves so that you will never starve. But wake up my children! Don’t you see that you are worse off than the poor child that starves to death? You are worse off because your souls are starving – you spend your lives filling your grain stores and your bellies, yet you have neglected your hearts and your souls!

If you choose to lay down your lives for my sake, for my purposes, for my plan then I will feed you and clothe you. I will. I have told you I will and I am a God who you can trust.
I want to reiterate what I have told you because I know you struggle so much with this.
There are 2 main reasons why I don’t want you chasing after these things in this world:
1. There are better things, much better things, with which to fill your minds. Those things are the words I have spoken to you, many of them recorded in the Bible, being part of my plan to tell everyone what I have done for you, and growing in love for me and for others. This is the real good stuff! Why go scratching around in the dirt for plant roots when there is an oasis of fruit and meat a little way down the pathway? Trust me, this stuff is far better.
2. You will start to stress and worry if you chase after these things. You will miss out on my best for you. Remember you are all my children. I came to save you, and I did save you, from death. You are mine again – I made you and then I bought you; twice mine. I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you, not to harm you. I also know that I love you and have your best interests at heart – doesn’t what I have already done prove that to you. I will never leave you, nor forsake you, nor abandon you. I know the time and the day that I will call each and every one of you to come and be with me in heaven. I have set that time. Don’t spend your life trying to postpone the time when your life on earth will end, and neither should you spend your life worrying ‘if you will make it’ to the end. Just trust that how and when you go is my choice. All you have to do is trust me and obey me. Your worry will not add a single hour to your life. A life of worry is not the life I came to give you. I promised life in abundance, so if you want it stop worrying, start trusting in me and come and be part of my plan. It saddens me when people waste a perfectly well looked-after life on trying to look after it more, to build up more of a safety buffer. I am all the safety you need.

Another thing I don’t want you to worry about it what other people are doing. Don’t judge others because they may not be living in perfect obedience to me. No one on this planet lives in perfect obedience to me, so remember that. Yes, my example is the benchmark, but if others don’t quite make it then you are not allowed to judge them for it. You yourself are not hitting the mark either, even though you believe in me. Remember that I died for those people too and they will also have an equal opportunity to know me. They have been saved by me too. Tell all people the truth, tell them what I have done for you and encourage one another to grow in love, not in sin, and to grow in relationship with me, because that is best for all of us. But do not be hard on them and don’t judge them. If you really have a heart for them to know me or to know me better, then pray for them and I will send my spirit to work in their hearts.

But you are not allowed to judge them. I’ll tell you why.

Firstly, it breaks people down when you judge them. Judging brings about a change of behaviour, but not a change of heart. People feel guilty and hurt by judgement. Rather encourage and build people up. Secondly, judging people causes you to spend so much time on worrying what other people are doing and trying to make sure they do what they’re supposed to, that you forget about yourself. You miss what I am trying to tell you and grow in you. You do yourself a disservice as well when you judge people. So don’t do it. I have commanded you not to.

Don’t take other people’s sin personally – it is not your responsibility to change them. That is my responsibility and I will do it in my own time and in my own way. Your responsibility is merely to love and to pray and tell the truth.

I don’t want any of you to be involved in sin because I can see and I know how it destroys, even though it can no longer take life. It still destroys love. So pray for others and for yourselves and I will send my spirit to help you overcome this sin.
So don’t judge people for they are no different to you. You may be experiencing life more abundantly than them because of their sin or disobedience to me, but that is no reason to judge them. Remember that I died for them as well as you. They are saved by my death just like you have been saved. Just take it easy on them especially your loved ones. No one in this world is perfect and neither should they be. Where they are in life is where I have allowed them to be so that my work in their life can be brought to completion. Don’t stand there barking orders at people for the way they are living their lives – just speak the truth to their ears and then pray – I will take the words from their ears to their hearts. You cause way too much pain and stress on yourself and them when you bark orders. They are safe with me, just like you are. They may be doing things wrong, but so are you, and in all cases I have everything under control. I know how I am working in their lives. I have them right where I want them, not perfect, but on the path to realising they need more of me.

One last thing I know you are struggling to understand: if I have died for your sins, past, present and future, then why do I tell you to no longer sin?
It is because I love you! I don’t want you to do these things because I want the best for you. Sin hurts and destroys and is generally not good for anyone or anything. So please don’t sin, for your own sake and for the sake of others. The less sin there is in you, the better your life will be. Love should replace the sin in your life, and then you are really living it!
The other risk is that the sin will grab hold of you so tightly that you are not prepared to let go of it and believe in me.
You can go ahead and carry on in sin. I died for those sins too – you will never be able to commit enough sins to fall outside my grace. They are all paid for. And you will be with me in heaven one day as long as you continue to believe. But you would have not enjoyed the life I gave you to the full, because your life will be full of the heartaches and pain that accompanies sin. It’s for your own good, for me and for others that you don’t sin.

Learn what you can from the lessons of others and what I tell you, but know as well that you will also learn many, many lessons yourself, and these lessons will only become revealed to you once you have messed up. That is fine, so don’t stress about making mistakes. I don’t want you to mess up, but I also realise that through those experiences you can learn valuable lessons and grow through them. Don’t fear failure.
This is what I meant when I told you the parable of the men who were each given some talents. Two of the men receive 2 and 3 talents respectively and go and invest their talents and return double to the master and he is pleased with them. The third man is too afraid to invest his one talent, for fear of losing it, so he buries it in the ground. When the master comes, he gives back only one talent and says that he knew the master was a hard man and so didn’t want to take the chance of ‘messing it up or losing the money’. The master is furious and takes the one talent from him and gives it to those that have more.

I didn’t mean this parable to teach people to work hard. I told the parable to show you that you should not be scared of me. It’s supposed to teach you that you need not be afraid of losing what I have given you – your talents; your life. I don’t want you to be afraid of living your life for fear that I will punish you for not doing with it what I asked you to do. I have given you something to use, a life to live. Now go and use it! Yes, learn from my word, my spirit in you and the lessons of others, but don’t fail to live it for fear that you may mess it up. So I say again that you must go and use it. I will be with you to help you. I will, by my power, multiply your efforts. Like I did when I fed 5000 people on 2 fish and 5 loaves.
You see, each person has been given a certain number of talents, a measure of life. Some have 3 talents, some have 5 talents and some have one talent. That is how I made you and I have given to each person according to my will. I have limited each and every person in certain ways, because of good and loving purposes. So if you have one talent and your brother has five, do not covet what he has, for you have both been given according to my provision for you. Neither do I want you to fear losing the little that you have. And neither should you try and show the world that you do in fact have 5 talents. Accept what I have given you and go live it! If you spend your life coveting what others have, fearing losing the little that you have, believing that what you have is not good enough for me or if you spend your life pretending you have more than I have given you, then you will miss out on multiplying the life I have given you. Spending your time on these things is like burying your talent, your life, for fear of losing it.

You will make mistakes and you will lose a lot of the time, but if you continue to seek my guidance I shall ensure that you never lose it all. I will show you how and where to invest your life. Don’t be scared of me – I’m going to help you take this life of one talent and multiply it. Don’t you see that the important part of the parable is not how much each one received, but rather what they did with it? I am on your side, but I can’t help you invest it if you hide your life in your pocket and if you are not prepared to place a bet.
Remember these things:
1. You cannot gain your life unless you are prepared to lose it, to let go of it, to risk it by investing it elsewhere. Don’t clutch onto your life, worrying that you will lose it. Give it away wisely and you will see – some wins, some losses and as you go, you’ll get better and better and the returns on your life will start compounding and they will become massive. The talents I’m talking about is the gift of life I’ve given you – don’t be afraid to lose it. I am telling you to throw caution to the wind and lose it for my sake. I have given you R100 in a casino and told you to go and play the tables. This brings me to my next point.
2. I am going to help you. My spirit is with you all the time. I know you are not always going to listen. And sometimes I will allow you to go and play and lose. There may be many reasons for me allowing you to lose, but I will never let you lose everything and if you continue to follow me, you will make it all back and much, much more. So remember that no matter how much you lose, all is never lost. It will not always be easy; you will not always be winning, especially in the beginning. So don’t become paralysed or disheartened when you lose because it is all part of the plan. Just continue to seek me and the more you do that, the better you will hear my voice and the more you will win. But while you are seeking me, you have to keep playing. Note though that on this earth you will never get to the point where you are always winning, where you always bet on the right horse. But I will always ensure you make back your losses and more in the long run, if you choose me. So please remember this because I know you will struggle with this – don’t give up and don’t put your life in a little box and bury it under the ground. Throw it out there.

Here is another analogy – the farmer sowing his seeds.
Run through the fields and spread the seeds I have given you! As time goes by I will start moving and directing you to specific fields, but there is no point in me showing you where the good soil is if you’ve never learned to sow. The problem with you guys is you want to run through all the fields and inspect which ones are best for sowing, then go back, collect your bucket of seeds and begin to sow in the best areas. I am afraid that is not the way I work. You want to do this because you fear some seeds will fall on poor soil and not grow. You see yourself as down one seed if it does not take shoot. And by the time you get to run through all the fields, your life is over and you’ve planted nothing. You cannot go back and do it again. That is why you have to do it first time around. I therefore urge you to live your life; and at the same time seek my spirit’s guidance through prayer and listening.

Here is the truth – many seeds will fall on poor soil and not take shoot. You will try many things in life – relationships, friendships, studies, sports, ministries, goals, careers – and many of those seeds will not take shoot because they fell on poor soil. Don’t wallow in self pity wondering why something didn’t work. It didn’t work because I allowed you to plant that seed in poor soil. But listen to me, continue planting and sowing, because soon you are going to sow a seed that will produce a crop 100 times what was put in.
In life you may get down to your last handful of seeds, but I will never let you run out. All I want you to do is sow.
Different people in life struggle with different things. Some of you struggle to put your hand in the bucket and throw the seeds on the ground, while others are eager to dig in and scatter the seeds but they don’t listen to me when I tell them where to throw and where not to throw. Make sure you do both – sow the seeds and listen to me. Don’t spend your life crying over the handful of seeds you planted that never took shoot. Keep going! And you will see that I will lead you to rich soil and when you plant there, one seed sown will reap a crop 100 times greater! Don’t be short sighted so as not to see this. And remember always I will never leave you, nor forsake you. If you get down to your last handful of seeds, I will ensure you throw it right. And from there your crop will grow and your bucket will soon be overflowing with seeds again. You have to sow your seeds no matter what. You have to listen to me no matter what. Which do you struggle with?

Don’t be scared of me. I am with you. I love you. I do allow bad things to happen to you or allow you to go wrong, but it is never more than you can handle. Also I always bring more good out of the bad things than bad, for I overcame bad on the cross. I came here to help you; I am here to prosper you. You won’t prosper unless you listen. Neither will you prosper unless you use what I have given you. You may say I am a hard master. I am not. That is a lie. That is why my spirit is with you – to guide you in your endeavours. I allow you to get things wrong, how then can I judge you for it?! So if you find yourself sowing seeds on a path, where nothing will grow, don’t beat yourself up about it. Just sow and just listen to me. I will not disown you for sowing on the pathway and I will not be angry. I use my power and love to pull you along. Sometimes you just don’t listen to me, and this can continue for many years. In this case I will speak louder and louder until you hear me and then you will eventually realise that you have been doing it wrong. Then you will look for answers and you will find me. I will lead you to good soil and you will plant there and those crops will increase 1000 fold. I will ensure that your crop, once it is started will abound and you will have far, far more than you had at the start.
I never told you not to make any mistakes. I never told you to fear spending years of your life planting seeds on a path where they won’t grow. You fear too much my wrath but my wrath is not for you. You are my child and I am here to stand right next to you and watch you as you go about your life. And when you are ready to listen then I will speak and show you what it is I want you to do and where I want you to go. You do not have to plant every seed in perfect soil. I am a farmer and I am teaching you how to be a farmer. A farmer sows seeds. When he is young he cannot tell which is good soil and which is bad soil, so he plants everywhere.

Only through these years of planting, with season after season of experience, does he learn where is good to plant. You are still a very young farmer. You do not need to know where is the good soil just yet. Just listen to me when I speak, know my voice and obey me. Then just cast your seeds far and wide and use the seasons of your life to learn. You are not missing out and you are not wasting your life or your talents. Wasting your talents is when you don’t use them. Wasting your life is being paralysed by fear not to live it. Just be prepared to roll with me, even when I allow you to go wrong, because this is important time of learning. You do not have to get it right from the start. I may lead you to plant on a pathway to teach you something.

I have a plan for you and it is perfect. The fields in your life plan will not always be full of rich soil, but their use in my plan is perfect. So don’t freeze there and not plant. Plant, and if there is no crop, then so be it. Learn from it and move on. I would hate for you to spend your life trying to decipher my voice and you’ve never cast a handful of seeds. That is what I don’t want for you. I know that you struggle a lot with this because you want a perfect record – you want to look back on your life and say you scored a return of ten times for every planted seed, while other people only got an average return of 5 times. But you have only planted one handful of seeds.
As much as you want this impeccable record, that is not my way. I would rather you have a return of 1.1 times but you’ve planted 100 million seeds. Be wary of pride because you have done better than everyone else. I love you, now go plant! If I tell you to go and plant everywhere, then how can I love you less if your yields are low? I told you to plant and I foreknew you were not going to get good yields. So no, my love is not dependent on your yields. My love for you is secure. Nothing can separate you from my love. My love is even secure if you don’t plant, if you do get paralysed by the fear of messing up. But come on, I am urging you to have a better life, a great life and this is the way to do it. I know you want to, you are just scared. You are scared of messing up so big that I will not love you. That cannot happen, it is impossible. You are scared of not making the most of your life. But I am all about making the most of your life according to my own ways. You do this because you are paralysed by the fear of not knowing what to do. But don’t be scared. Your life will return a great deal not by always knowing what to do, but rather by just doing it. There will be many, many droughts in-between and you will not know when they are coming. Do not try and predict the droughts. Just plant, and if you get caught in a drought then learn from it.
All I am saying is don’t be afraid of messing up. You will mess up in the short term. But in the long term it is impossible to mess up for I will prosper you through the bad times. All those little R100 mess ups will pale in comparison to the R1bn return you will have at the end.

Listen and plant. You struggle to plant. So plant. Try different things, play different tables. I am always with you and will never let you do something I don’t want you to do. How will you ever know the good soil from the bad if you haven’t seen both? So go and see all there is, and in all places, plant. Go where I tell you and if I don’t tell you, and then know that where you are is just fine.

Who am I?

2008-12-11T10:09:00.000+02:00

How dare I. How dare I. How dare I call myself a son of God?

How dare I do anything with my life but lie flat on my face and beg for mercy from God. I have rebelled and sinned against Him and for that I deserve to be wiped out, to be destroyed, banished to an eternal hell, burning in a lake of fire, crying out in pain without anyone to hear. That is what I deserve. I am filthy. I am dirty. I am useless. Who am I to think that God even remotely needs me for Himself, for anything?
Only by God’s mercy am I alive now, only by His mercy am I sitting in this chair now without being obliterated. He created me an eternal being. I chose to follow Satan and my own selfish desires. For that I deserve death and pain and hardship and all that goes along with assuming I am better than Him and don’t need Him, that I am more important than God. Who am I to think that I am a righteous man? I am evil and sinful, rebellious and arrogant, proud and disgusting. I should be forever banished from His presence and obliterated by His anger and wrath and judgement. That is what I deserve. Who the hell do I think I am? Who am I to be proud of being good? Who am I to say that I love God? I don’t have any idea what love is. I am full of lust and selfishness, judgement and sinfulness. If a rich man throws some coins to a beggar, does the beggar love Him, or does he grovel at the rich man’s feet only to save his own life?

I am selfish yet I profess to love God. I wish I loved God. But I don’t love God. I don’t love Him because I don’t have the ability to do so in my own strength, in myself. I only profess to love You because I know that You can save me. I know that I am dead without You and dead without Your mercy. Only by Your mercy am I still alive and not burning in hell.

No longer can I fool myself into believing that I really love God. I don’t. I love myself more than God. I am the prodigal son – only to return to my Father’s house because I am hungry and living in a pigsty. I am beginning to realise I am nothing.

God made me beautiful, perfect, in His image according to His will and purpose. He made me. He made me. I belong to Him. And then I rebelled. I pushed away the Creator of the whole universe. How dare I.
I pushed away the Creator of the universe, something for which He should have crushed me under His fist, with one blow. I am bad. I am rebellious. I wronged the King of the Universe. I have broken the law of the entire universe, the number one law to obey the King of the Universe. How dare I even stand before Him? I stand there, arrogant, still justifying myself, still deceiving myself into believing that I am good, that I love, and that I am righteous. I should be on the floor begging for Him to spare my life.

I am the prodigal son. I was born into The Royal Line, born into the Family of the King of all the Heavens and all the Earth. As soon as I could I told the King that I was leaving and He must leave me alone because I am better off on my own and I am good enough without Him. I was arrogant and proud and believed in myself. I took His money and squandered it. Then I got so desperate and hungry and wanted to save my own life. So I go back to the King and I beg Him for a place on His staff. Not even that do I deserve. I don’t even deserve to set foot on His property. I deserve to be banished and told never to come back. I deserve to go and rot with the pigs and die a miserable, undignified death in that filth and dirt.
But He invites me in and calls me His son again. It makes no sense to me.

Now don’t for one second act like or think that you have come to the King begging for mercy because You love Him. You don’t love Him. I don’t love God. I love my life. I love myself. I care only about myself and I will do whatever I have to do to save myself. Even my correct actions, coming back to my Father’s house, are to save myself. My actions are selfish. It’s all about me. I hate that about myself. I hate that. But it is who I am. It’s all about me. My life is all about using whatever I can to save my life. That is the truth. But God, I want to love you. I don’t know how and I can't do it. But You can teach me to love You. I will only be able to love You if You place Your love in me for You.

I came back to God’s house because I was hungry and needed food, but then I told my Father that I came home because I love Him.
So not only am I a rebel, a deserter, a hater, a thief, a runaway, a fool for wanting and wasting my inheritance and wanting that more than my Father’s love, a beggar coming looking for food, a selfish bastard for caring only about myself, but I am a liar too, for even after doing all these utterly disrespectful things to the King of all Heaven and all of Earth and all the Universe and all of Everything, I have the audacity and unrepentant attitude to lie to His face and tell Him that I came home because I love Him. What a liar.
And still He takes me back. He takes me back knowing that I am lying flat out to His face. I don’t understand how or why He takes me back. I don’t understand how or why He does it.

I can't understand it. I wonder how I would have reacted. I think I would have shot my son. I would have punished him so severely and made him pay back everything he took and make him pay penance for his disrespect and rebellion. I would have made him pay, big time. That again shows my sinfulness – how I would react so much differently to Him.

This is God we’re talking about here. God. God who holds a million galaxies in the palm of His hand. God who holds the universe in order. He keeps the universe in order. He built the universe by speaking it. He can destroy it just by thinking it. Or just destroy it. He can do what He wants.
He is a great big elephant bull and I am a pathetic little ant. He doesn’t need me. I am nothing compared to Him. I don’t deserve to be in His presence. I don’t deserve to know Him. I don’t even deserve to think about Him. I don’t deserve to come to Him, to call on Him and I certainly don’t deserve to claim that I know Him or claim that He is my dad.

I don’t deserve to know Him. I don’t deserve to talk to Him. I don’t deserve to expose Him to my putrid and revolting stench and filth. I don’t deserve to have Him save me and I don’t deserve to call on His name. What I deserve is death and pain and punishment and justice for my rebellion and evil nature.

I don’t deserve to even think about Him. I deserve nothing from Him. I deserve death. I deserve what I asked for – being overwhelmed, fire, pain, being unfulfilled, fear, despair and death; eternal separation from God, from love, from good, from the Creator of all things, from my Father. This is what I deserve.

Nothing in me deserves anything more than the worst, most horrible scenario and violent excruciating punishment. That is what I deserve.

How dare I think that I can sing songs to God and about God? I should stop kidding myself. I can't save the world. I can't save myself. All I can do is beg for mercy and hope that the King spares me.
I should stop kidding myself that God needs me, that I have any power over His heart, that I am worthy in any way.
I can't save the world, I can't save myself. I need saving and the only thing that can save me is if the King decides to save me. I need His mercy.
I have nothing.
I am nothing.
I am filth.
I deserve the worst.

He is God. He can do what He wants. He can destroy everything just by thinking it. He can bring pain and suffering on me. He can strike me dead with one blow. He strikes my country or the whole world dead with one blow. And doing so would not fall outside of justice, because that is what we chose, what I chose.
He is God. I don’t even deserve to write His name on this page or to speak His name. I am not worthy of that. My very nature brings dishonour to His name.

I don’t even deserve to praise Him. He doesn’t need my praise. He is God either way. He is God no matter what. He can do what He wants to punish me for my rebellion and sin.
Do no forget His greatness.
Do not forget who you are dealing with here.
This is God. I don’t deserve to say His name. I should spend my life flat on the floor with my face buried in the dirt, begging for His mercy and apologising for my ways.
He can crush me with one blow. Just remember that. This is God. This is God.

But I have come back to Him out of necessity to save myself and He has invited me back with open arms. I should spend the rest of eternity grovelling at His feet for accepting me back home and feeding me, because to grovel at His feet would be better than spending the rest of eternity living in fire, pain, anxiety, fear and anguish.

Have mercy King, please have mercy. Please, I beg of you, have mercy.

Not only have I lied to Him, but I have lied to myself too. I tell myself that I deserve to be invited back, that I am entitled to it, because I have ‘turned from my sin’ and because ‘I have repented’.
I haven’t fully repented until I say the following:
“God, I came back to Your house because this is the last place that I thought of where I could get some food. It isn’t because I love you. I don’t love you. There is no love in me; none. There is lust to satisfy my own desires and to look after myself, but no love.”
That is the truth. That is my repentance.

I am a grain of sand in the desert and God is a mighty wind that blows.
I am an ant and He is a great elephant bull.
I am a speck of dust and He is the entire universe.
Who am I for Him to care about me? To be even remotely bothered with anything I have to say or do? I am a complete and utter non-entity, a nothing in His life of being God. How dare I think that He delights in me or loves me because of who I am?

He doesn’t save me because of who I am, or because I am so salvable, or because He needs me or because all He has ever wanted is to know me.
He saves me because He is God and He decides to save me. Period.
How dare I think that because He saves me, there must be something good or desirable about me? What possibly could the God and King of the whole universe find in me that is desirable?
The only thing desirable in me is what He has created, what He has formed in me.

I am a filthy beggar living on the side of the road and He has come and bathed me and dressed me in crisp new clothes, not because I do so deserve.
It is only because He decided it. He decided it. Why? I don’t know. Why does He love? I don’t know.
Why does He save me – the most evil and wretched of all the beasts on this tiny, dying planet? Why did He decide to take me back and spare my life, so that I can live in a comfortable house for eternity? Why? Why? Why?

I don’t know. It is not for me to know. All I can be thankful for is that He decided it. I am lucky. What is for me to do is to stop talking trash and lying to Him, others and myself, saying that I am good and that I love Him?
I am not good – I am the most sinful dirty and rebellious of all His creation.
I don’t love Him – I just do what will save my life, what is best for me.

My first sin was to run away and rebel. My second sin was to come back to His house and tell Him, myself and all other people that He invited me back because I have something special and because I love Him.
There is no good in me outside His goodness in me.
There is no love in me outside His love in me.
So then how can I take any credit for His love and goodness in me?

Saying all this is true repentance. I admit it God! I admit all these things – things You knew all along. You knew them and still You didn’t crush me with Your hand, like I deserve.
How can You not be so angry to wipe me and this sinful world away? I don’t understand you.
I admit it. I speak it. I profess my second great sin out loud.

No matter how much I admit it, how much I say sorry, or how much I thank you, it doesn’t change the fact that You had already done it long before I started trying to bring You my pathetic gifts and offerings.
I have nothing that You need or want. But God I say it because I need to be honest with myself and with others, and with you.
I admit all these things.
I am bad, You are good.
I am selfish, You are love.

God, for what it is worth, I am sorry. I beg You to have mercy on me and not to banish me from Your house. Have mercy please. Thank You that You have taken me in all my filth into Your mansion and dressed me in an Armani. Thank you. Have mercy.
I only came to You because I was hungry, and I lied to you, telling You I came because I love you.
What do You deserve?
You deserve a lot more than I could ever bring. You don’t deserve my praise, because my praises are tainted with impure intentions and motives. You deserve perfection and love. These things I cannot give to you, because they do not reside in me. I am not love. How can I credit myself with loving you, when the only love in me is from you?

So what can I do? Nothing. There is nothing that I can do. Absolutely nothing. I cannot save myself. I cannot justify myself. I cannot redeem myself. I cannot rid myself of the sinful spots all over my soul.

What can I do? Nothing. Once a prodigal son has turned from his Father and left, will he return? No. He will only return when he is so hungry and desperate that this is the last place where he can be fed.

So how do I make sense of all this? What am I to do with this life?

I should spend the rest of my life grovelling at His feet, with my face flat in the dirt, begging for His mercy, thanking Him for His mercy and living in the shadows, hiding myself from His face. I should do that.

Is that what He tells me to do?
I deserve to be banished to an eternal hell.
If not that, then I deserve to die.
If not that, then I deserve to spend my life grovelling at His feet, begging for mercy.
If not that, then I don’t know.

But He doesn’t make a slave of me, nor does He make me pay back my squandered inheritance. Sometimes I think He has been too kind to us.

He kills the fattened calf and prepares a feast for me. He calls me His son and embraces me. He is happy that I am back and an heir and child of His. I am embarrassed because I don’t deserve this. I am embarrassed that I don’t feel better, more thankful. I am embarrassed that I don’t love this person who loves me. I am disgraceful.
But He has taken me back into His house.

Does He need / want / expect me to do anything in return for Him giving me life?
Need – no.
Want / expect – I don’t know.

“God I just realise how helpless I am. I am helpless to provide You with anything that should warrant You taking me back into Your house.
Then I started thinking about how I can justify and make up for what I have done and for what You have done for me by taking me back. I must work hard and know You and love You and love others.
I think that if I do that I will at least earn a little bit of my keep. But not even that will do. Don’t try justifying being in Your house by doing things, because it isn’t enough.
That is like a murderer bringing a single jelly bean He scrounged off the floor to the person whose son He just murdered. It makes no difference to what you have done. It in no way justifies or makes any better what you have done. It is not enough. It will never be enough. I will never be able to earn my keep in my Father’s house. Why?
Because He doesn’t need anything from me. He doesn’t need my money, He doesn’t need my labour, He doesn’t need my love, and He needs nothing from me.
All these things are nothing to Him. Therefore I am totally helpless, one hundred percent at His mercy for salvation.

So then is it only for my own good that I obey Him and love Him?
It is for my own good. I was created to honour and love God, and to keep all His commandments. That is for my own good. God loved me and saved me because of nothing that I am. That follows on – nothing that I do in the future will justify Him saving me. I can never repay the debt that was paid for me. If I tried my best and lived the perfect life from this moment on, I would not even pay one percent of what I own my Father.

So He can't want that. He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t need my sacrifice. I need my sacrifice. I need humility. I need this to make my life better.
Us Christians, we are such liars, such hypocrites. We think we are better than others because we’ve given our lives to God and because ‘we love Him’.
We don’t love Him. And we haven’t given our lives for any other reason than to save ourselves. We realised we were hungry and we came to be fed. And now we work in the fields to justify our debt forgiven. But we are only kidding ourselves. The problem is we are lying to God and even though He knows we are lying, He still does not banish us. Even the lack of sincerity in our hearts does not turn Him away from us.
I tell you a man who tells his Father he works for Him because he loves Him although he does only for his own good is just as bad as the child who tells his dad he doesn’t love Him and chooses to be lazy. I am no better for being a ‘good Christian’, so stop thinking that you are.

We Christians are just like the rest of creation – prodigal sons. We are all prodigal sons. They just haven’t got to the point of starvation yet where they return to their Father’s house because they can get fed there.

The only reason I am a Christian is because I’m trying to feed myself and look after my own life and I have found where I can be looked after.

So:
We weren’t worthy to come back.
Neither can we ever repay the debt God paid for us.
So stop believing it and stop trying
So then what do I do?
Realise that I am alive only under His mercy and His grace.
Realise that He has the power to wipe me out whenever He wants and nothing, absolutely nothing, I have ever done or can ever do will save me from Him wiping me out if He chooses to do so. Nothing. Nothing is or ever will be good enough.
Jesus I tell You all this now, not because You didn’t know it, but because I didn’t know it. I want to stop lying to You because it is eating me up inside and I can't go on like this.

All I can do and should do is live my life as You intended. You intended for me to be in relationship with You and intended for me to be in relationship with others, You intended me to declare Your glory by the way I live my life, You intended for me to enjoy the earth and everything in it.

What will happen if I don’t honour you? From a salvation perspective, nothing. Nothing will happen because I haven’t been invited back home on the premise that I should honour you. But it will make my life better and the lives of others better, because they will see Your love and goodness in me.

So God I am sorry – not that saying sorry will make a difference because You saved me before I said sorry.
And God thank You – not that saying thank You will make a difference either, because You saved me before I said thank you.

And for those out there who haven’t come home, all they have to do is call on You and they will be saved, because as Paul says in Roman’s “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” You are amazing. I don’t understand you, Your love or Your forgiveness. But thank you.

You don’t need my honour or my praise or my love. But You ask for it. I don’t know why, but You ask for it.
I know that it is good for me, but I don’t know if or why it is good for you. Does it make You happy to have me come back to you?
Yes! Luke 15:12-32 shows that. It makes You happy. Not because I am so wonderful, but it is because You found something that You lost, something that is dear to you. It is because of Your great love.

So it is for us to have life in abundance that we should love and honour you. And it is for others to see life in abundance and be drawn to You so that You can celebrate having found another lost sheep.

This just seems all about me – my salvation, my life in abundance, my happiness. I feel selfish, I feel like even though I am trying to love and honour my Father, I’m doing it for my own good and for the good of others.
True love would be doing it for the good of God only.
Is it to His benefit to have me back? Really?
I feel like my faith is selfish, that it is all about me.

“God I want to love you. Please teach me and help me to love you.”

But I guess that is what love is about – it is not all self serving, yet neither is it all self-sacrificing. Love’s very nature is to benefit all those that partake in it. And so when I love God it will be good for Him and for me and others. And similarly when God loves me it is good for me and others, but also it is good for Him.

I guess the Bible says that God delights in us, that the righteous man finds favour in His eyes, that He rejoices when one sheep is found, when one more person comes home.

“God I feel like I should lay on my face my whole life and beg for mercy. I can't imagine deserving anything more than that. All I can imagine is that. I feel guilty that I should run free, talk to You and enjoy Your blessings, because of my sin.
I guess this is where trust comes in, because You say:
As far as the east is from the west, that’s how far You have removed our transgressions from us.
Nothing can separate us from Your love.

You paid the ultimate price for me. Now I feel like I should pay You back. But I can't, because I will never be able to pay it back. But You did say that I can release others of the debt they owe me. That I can do.

And I should love You with all my heart, mind and soul.
I should love my neighbour as I love myself.
I should seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness.

The heavens and earth declare Your glory
I was made to declare Your glory.
A fish swims, a bird soars, a cheetah runs, a human loves – loves You and loves themselves and loves others.
That is our declaration of Your glory.

How do I love You God?

Love is:
Patient
Kind
Rejoices in truth
Always protects
Always trusts
Always hopes
Always perseveres

Love is not:
Envious
Boasting
Proud
Jealous
Rude
Self seeking
Easily angered
Keeps records of wrongs
Delights in evil

I have realised that love is for me, others and God. I guess that is the thing about love – it serves everyone. When you try serving only yourself, you lust and you end up hurting God, yourself or others in your pursuit of your desires.

But love is about getting what you want while God gets what He wants and others get what they want. So I can never get away from the self serving element of love and that is fine. That is how God created love to function. So I must not assume that if I am getting something good out of a situation that I do not love. Rather the acid test is whether I am getting what I want while God gets what He wants and others do too.

I need to accept the self-serving element of love. The bible says that it is not self-seeking, but it is self-serving, as well as serving others. One cannot escape the fact that love is nice for the person who acts in love as well as the one who receives. And this must be part of the reason why we love – we would not love if it was bad for us.
Yes maybe it is uncomfortable and tough at times, but we carry on loving because we know it is good for us and others.

Loving others is about making them feel better but also about making ourselves feel better through the love we experience ourselves when we love others.
Loving others makes them feel good.
And God enjoys it when we love Him and He enjoys the benefit we experience when we love Him, others and ourselves.

So to answer my earlier question: “Should we love God for Him, us, or others?”
The correct answer is all of the above.

So why does God ask us to love Him if He doesn’t need it?
Well, why did He ask for lambs to be slaughtered as sacrifices? It was not because He needed it.
It was to keep us on track and it honours Him before other people.
God created us to be in a love relationship with Him and with others and He enjoys that, delights in the multiplication of His love.

I can go along fine without love in life, but I would rather not because it is just so cool when you’re being loved and loving back. It is the most awesome feeling ever.

I get irritated with this mindset that God needs us Christians to lift His name on high. He doesn’t. He is God and it doesn’t matter what we do. It doesn’t make Him any more or any less God. He doesn’t need us to sing songs or evangelise or any of that ministry stuff. He could click His fingers and have the whole world bowing at His feet and worshipping Him. He could change every person’s heart just by thinking it. He doesn’t need us. So we should not for one second think that we are central to God’s plan. God is central to God’s plan. Jesus is central to God’s plan. The world doesn’t need a saviour; the world already has a saviour. The world has already been saved.
Similarly, I can't stand these references to God’s army. Who is God’s army? And who are they going to fight? Satan? Why fight someone who has already been defeated? Evil? Wasn’t evil also defeated? Jesus just came here to earth and was like, “OK, you’re dead. You lose. And Satan lost.”
The battle has been won. It is finished.

Just because the loser gets to run around the stadium for a couple of hours after the battle doesn’t mean he hasn’t lost. He lost and Jesus won. And there wasn’t even a battle. Jesus just said, “I win” and He won. He roared, the Mighty Lion of Judah roared and the universe trembled and submitted to Him.

So if the world is saved and God doesn’t need our love, then what are we doing here?
I believe we are learning how to love. We are dirty, lustful, rebellious and self-seeking beings and we need to learn to love before we spend eternity with God.
Also God likes it when we love Him so it is good for Him too.
And, it points others to Him by the love that we show for one another.
So we are here to learn to love and grow in love. Love for God, and others and ourselves.

It’s like what Matt Brewer said to His colleague who couldn’t understand why he was so loving to her. He said, “Well God loves people, so I love people.”

There is no love outside of God.

I honestly feel like I love myself more than I love God. But I don’t think that is extraordinary because we need to learn to love and when we first come to Him we don’t know how to love and that is where the journey starts. I think maybe I am a little harsh on myself, but I guess it is only in being brutally honest about our shortcomings are we able to bring them into the light and deal with them. I know that is not the way it should be, but at the moment it is.

However, I do want it to be the way it should be.

“So Daddy, Jesus my Redeemer, Almighty Yahweh of all the heavens and the earth whose name I am not worthy to speak but for Jesus atonement, my prayer to You is that You would work in me and transform me into a man who:
Loves You with all my heart, mind, body and soul and loves my neighbour as I love myself.
Further, reveal Yourself to me. Reveal to me Your love. Reveal to me Your greatness. Reveal to me Your glory, Your grace, Your power and Your mercy. I want to understand.”

I go back to the story of the prodigal son:
I ran away to satisfy my own needs by lust
I came back to God because I could not do it on my own and I was hungry
I lied to His face that I had returned because I love Him
He accepted me back nonetheless and called me His son, threw me a party, even though I deserved none of this
I have come clean about my selfishness and impure motives for returning to His home
I now want to get off the treadmill of making sure I stay within in the boundaries of salvation

I know that the purpose of my life is to learn to love and to glorify God by living a life of worship and obeying Him.
The point of all this is not that He needs it, but rather that I need it, others need it and He enjoys the love.

So my next question is: “Do I need to continue doing or being something in order to retain my salvation?”

My dad told me that nothing can separate me from His love. As long as I want it. I do want it.

The almighty God has called me His son and said there is nothing I can do, expressly or accidentally that will make Him cast me out. He will never, never, ever cast me out. According to Him I will always be His child. He will never turn His back on me. Never.
Anytime I need Him or want Him, He will help me, save me, be there for me. He will always be there. As He says, “all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
Because I guess that if you are prepared to call on Him, you must believe in Him. You would not call on someone you didn’t believe in.

So how do I believe in Jesus? How do I become saved?
First, believe in God and that Jesus died to save me
Second, profess it verbally.

I have done that. So I am saved. I believe the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. I believe a lion can kill me. I believe exercise keeps me healthy.
And I believe Jesus is the son of God, that He loves me, that He died and rose again and because of Jesus’ sacrifice the Father has opened His arms to accept me back and said I don’t have to pay back anything for what I have done. I believe I can come home and not be judged.
He said, “You can never pay back what you owe me, but because I love you so much, I will pay it for you. By My love you are free to come home. By My love only.”

So I have come home. Now what? Can I do what I want? Yes. Because nothing is too great to separate me from the love of my dad. No matter how lazy, disobedient, proud or negligent I am, nothing can separate me from my dad’s love. Nothing will get me banished from His house and nothing will make Him turn His back on me. Nothing.

Only one thing: If I expressly choose to leave my dad’s house. This has been a fear. What if God leads me to wrong Him or turn on Him and harden my heart, like He did with pharaoh? What if He has pre-destined me to be that person?

Well, what I have realised is that, firstly, if I am that person, pre-destined to harden my heart against the Lord and be banished to eternal hell for it, then there is nothing I can do about it.
Further than begging God to not let me be that person, there is nothing that I can do. So there is no use worrying about it. I can't change it if God has pre-destined that, in the same way as I couldn’t change the fact that He saved me before I asked. I cannot change God’s mind about me. What I can do is choose Him though. I cannot allow my concern over whether He chooses me to determine whether I choose Him.
I cannot change how God feels about me. If He has pre-destined me to harden my heart against Him and renounce Him, then I am powerless to that. I cannot change it so I must just accept it. Remember I am at His mercy anyway. All I can do is beg for mercy and ask that I not be that person.

The second thing is that if I look at my life and my heart, it does not strike me that I would be the man to harden my heart. I may sin and I may expressly disobey Him, but to my heart overall does not strike me as one which is hardened.
My desire is to know God, to please God, to love God and for Him to love me and heal me. That does not sound like the desire of the man who has hardened His heart. I know that sometimes things happen in the future that cause people to renounce their faith and turn away from Him. And that could happen to me. But I must remember that nothing that happens will ever separate me from His love and nothing that I ever do will cause Him to turn His back to me.

“God, my prayer is that I am sure there are areas of my heart that are hardened to you. But I am trying and I ask that You would have mercy on me for these hardenings and sins of which I am not aware. Forgive me for that. But I do feel that I try as best I can to be soft of heart with You. Please continue to work in my heart so that it would be humble and worshipping and believing before You. And please don’t ever let me go, no matter what happens in the future and how bad things get, don’t let me renounce you. Fight for me. Fight so hard for me that I don’t turn on you. Don’t let me turn from you. Holy Spirit I need You to help me not turn from You. Please help me.”

I am scared that I will denounce God sometime in the future or turn from Him. But I should remember that peter denied Jesus 3 times but He ended up leading the church. I guess that just shows that God allows us to mess up and denounce Him and still He gives us chances, as long as we come back.
So if it happened to Peter, it can surely happen to me. I may deny Jesus, get lazy in faith or disobey Him. But that does not make me lose my salvation or get me ‘kicked out the house’. The only thing that will get me kicked out the house is if I choose not to believe any longer and declare it out loud – if I say that Jesus is no longer my saviour and if I say that God is not God and I don’t want to live in His house.

Now the fact of the matter is that this is a real possibility. Not a probability, but a possibility. I guess that what one needs to do is:
Pray that Jesus will never let me go and fight fiercely for me.
Remember that He goes and finds the lost sheep
Think how absurd it sounds for me to denounce my faith. I would have to throw away half the books I own, both my Bibles, 10 years of journals, my Christian music; I would have to stop being friends with all my Christian friends, who are my closest, stop going to church, cell group, counselling and other ministry, stop tithing, break up with my Christian girlfriend, stop believing God made us, never ever pray, no matter how dire the circumstances, stop thanking God for the earth and creation, stop believing Jesus died and rose again for us, never think about God, never look at life from God’s perspective, stop journaling and writing.
I cannot imagine life without Jesus, God and faith.
Decrease the likelihood of denouncing Him – hold on tight to the Lion of Judah, pray, read my bible, maintain my Christian friendships, not allow any sin to get a grip on my life, hang out with God, ask Him to heal me, grow in love, minister, fellowship, be accountable.
If I do these things it will build up support around me – internally and externally.
Think about my wife. I would never turn my back on my family or my wife. Also if I was happily married for 20 years and suddenly lost my wife, it would be tough because ‘I knew her’ and so if I know God it will be far less likely that I give Him up.

So there is a possibility this might occur but I need to have faith that all the above will get me through the rough and doubting times. And I need to keep working at it, so that I won't turn on Him. I may disobey, make a mistake, deny Him, expressly sin, but never turn away and not come back. The others are all forgiven. Even if I am not sorry and my heart isn’t right I can ask Him to change my heart. Don’t feel guilty about a sinful heart, just ask Him to change it and He will.

One last thing on this matter is that I look at 1 person out of 1000000 who renounce their faith and I extrapolate that to myself. I need to get some perspective – what about the 999999 who remain in the faith?
When heartache and pain come, remember to go to God. Sometimes the pain drowns out the truth and that is when people turn away. So go to Him with your pain and share it with Him and your Christian friends.

And remember that those that renounce their faith could well have only had a relationship with the church only, the organisation, and not with Jesus because a real relationship with God should not be that easy to give up, because you have experienced the companionship as I have.

A Father will fight for His child.

This is the next thing that I need to remember – that a Father will fight for His child. Just like dad said that if I became a drug addict, he would come and find me and drag me out of there and fight for me. He would fight for me and do what is best for me, as hard as it may be.
And Jesus says that He is the shepherd who goes and searches for the lost sheep – He is always coming after us.
I pray that God would fight me for me, because I am sure that it is ourselves that are the major obstacle to coming back to Him.
Furthermore it is the truth – and if you know the truth it is a lot harder to start believing lies. That is why I am asking God to tell me the truth.

Life is not a tightrope. Jesus knew before that we would make mistakes and defy Him and fight Him; and He knows our impure motives, our lies and our deceit. But I guess that is why Jesus came in the first place – because God knew that we could never be good enough to save ourselves.

Think of the scenario of you being stuck in a drug house in Hill brow, about to be killed. You call out to your dad, “Dad, please help me!”
He comes immediately, pays the money you owe and takes you home. Then what?
Well you can go back to that place. You can keep going back and He will keep coming to get you out. He will keep coming and will never leave you there to die.
But neither will He keep quiet. He will begin to speak into your life and tell you what you are doing wrong – the conviction of the Holy Spirit. He will not keep quiet and He will not leave you there. He will even come when you are not even calling. He will not help you to feed your addiction, because God is not a co-conspirator in sin, but He will go and work in all areas of your life to try getting you back – especially if you have called on Him to save you.

Will He leave you alone? Yes. If you tell Him to. If you say, “God, get out of my life. I don’t want You to come here anymore and I want You to leave me alone. Just leave me alone.”
I don’t think He will give up without a fight, but He will honour your choice and not interfere where He is not wanted.

So then you go back to your ways and get into trouble again. If you call out to Him again, will He come and save you? Yes, He will! Why? Because nothing can separate us from the love of God. Nothing!

The problem is not that we never call out, it is that:
We are too proud to call out.
We don’t understand the extent of His love.
We are too stubborn.

All we have to do is call out to the lord and we will be saved. God is not going to say, “You called on me only to save yourself and you have an impure heart so you don’t qualify.” Or “you pushed me away once too many and now I am going to leave you there.” Just as Jesus says we must forgive our neighbour 7 times 77, do you not think that is at least the standard with which He forgives us? As I write this I am blown away by His forgiveness.

When you read of this kind of love, it makes you want to say but no you have to do this and you have to do that. Why? Because it is taking advantage if we just go on sinning, we are taking advantage of God’s love. And it is not right. But then I look at my life and I am sure that we can all look at our own lives and say, “but hey I am also taking advantage of God and His love – I have not lived a perfect life since being saved and neither has anyone else!” but that is the whole reason Jesus came – because we do take advantage! But His love is bigger than our sin, and it is bigger than our ongoing sin, our defiance, our disobedience! It is bigger.

Now I am not saying we should continue sinning, but I am saying that if we do, we are covered by His love! He doesn’t kick us out of His house! But you can bet that if we live in His house and we sin, He will discipline us to make us more like God’s kids should be; help us become better people.

God says, “All who come to Him, for whatever reason, will be saved.”

So what does God ask of us in order to reside in His house?
Well first you have to believe in Him and His house.
Then we have to want to live in His house, or at least come home.
Then we just have to not renounce Him or say ‘I don’t want this or You anymore” or leave of your own accord.

And then?
And then you do nothing
All you can do is be prepared for the Holy Spirit which now lives inside you, to speak to you and change your life.
Be prepared for Him to speak to you words that will change your life if you take them to heart.
You see, your lifestyle post salvation does not determine whether you are saved or not. You have called on Him and He has answered. You are saved.
You may not want to change, but God does want you to change, and does want you to be healed. So as long as you are living under His roof He will not be quiet.

Understanding all this sets me free – it makes me focus on trust. Trust that I don’t have to remember every single rule and keep driving myself to secure my salvation. It is about trusting that through seeking Him, He will change you.

Now it says often that your faith is represented in your works. You see now the major problem with this statement is that we try to take a short cut and just do the works, thereby proving our faith. But know that it is possible for works to live without faith, but faith cannot live without works. Although that is a relative comparison itself, because I know many people who believe but they don’t believe enough for their faith to have an impact on their lives, for it to be seen in their works, but it is there nonetheless. Now is that faith, faith? I think so. But only God can decide that – in other words I am saying that I don’t think that if your faith is not backed up by works that you are not saved. I think you are. I think you have done enough to admit the truth about heaven and hell and who God is, but not enough to have a major impact on your life on earth.

But it is possible to perform works, without believing in God. I know that I always felt like if I wasn’t doing works, that God would look and say, “sorry bud, you haven’t been living out your faith and so you don’t have faith so you don’t cut it.” but that is not the case, because even when I was doing works to prove my faith, I was still no more or less saved. Why? Because it has nothing to do with me doing anything that I am saved. It has got to do with a choice God made to save me and it has to do with a choice I made to believe that He saved me. That is it. The rest is all about the journey. Even if you start the journey but never, get past mile 1, you are there. The rest for me is how far along this journey of learning to love and have faith I get. But no longer do I have a drive to take this journey because I am scared that if I stop I will get kicked out the car, but it is now about learning about my dad, growing in a relationship with Him, learning about love and becoming the son that He has called me. Revelation: God calls us sons before we become sons through our faith or our works.

So now I can go work in order to love, draw near to Him and attain life in abundance. I don’t have to work to ‘justify and prove my faith.” God doesn’t tell me to prove my faith. He says all I have to do is have faith in Him and declare it. I don’t have to prove it. I must declare it, which I have done, but I don’t have to go on proving it throughout my life, proving that I still believe. I do believe and that is it. Sometimes I believe more than other times, but I still believe. Or I should rephrase that and say at some times I am more obedient in my faith, but it doesn’t change the fact that I believe.

Come now, is this really going to happen – living with God but locking yourself in your room and blocking your ears? Yes! It happens all the time!
So many of us are ‘saved’ in that we have accepted salvation, saved from hell, but are never ‘saved’ of our pain, hardship and struggles, because we go lie in our room in our dad’s house, close the door and block our ears. Or we go around looking at what our brothers and sisters are doing. I just realised something – judging others is bad for our wellbeing. Not only because it makes us act in an antagonising way to others, but also because we spend our whole lives trying to see what is wrong with others, and in so doing we deprive ourselves of the opportunity to see what is wrong or hurtful in our own lives and then to bring healing to that. We are depriving ourselves of the healing God has for us by focusing on others faults the whole time. You cannot do anything about the faults in others, but you can allow God to do something about your own faults – as long as you are prepared to find them, bring them into the light and deal with them.

So if we go lie in our rooms, will we still go to heaven? Yes. God is always our Father and that doesn’t change no matter how horrible you are as a son. Only if you say you don’t want to be His son anymore and stop believing it, will you no longer be a son. But as soon as you call He is there again to take you back. He is always there, ready for your call.

Being a bad son, being a son who doesn’t obey, being a son who avoids His dad’s voice is still a son. He is just an unhappy son. He is just a son who is not experiencing life in abundance as God intended once we are saved. He is just a son who will not know the joy of life, freedom or relationship with their Father and the Creator of the universe. But He is still a son. He is still a son, and no less worthy a son than a good son, for a good son is also not worthy.

That is why I believe the message of Christianity should start on the message of healing of hurts, power to conquer sin (which leads to hurt), forgiveness and acceptance.
It should start with calling on Him.
It should be about being set free.
This should happen before being told about, “doing His work or trying to be good.”

We should not sell ‘being a good Christian’ as an imperative to one’s salvation, to prove one is a Christian. The two are unrelated issues. We need to sell that ‘God wants to heal your pain and give you life in abundance.”

Romans 10:11 anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame
Romans 10:13 everyone who calls on the name of the lord will be saved

Has God comforted me in my pain, allowing me to comfort others and point to Him to find comfort?
Yes I have come searching for healing and truth and have found it through:
Theophostic prayer ministry
Meeting with my mentor
The men’s conference

I guess the difficult thing is how long it takes for healing to come. I have been struggling with anxiety for over 2 years now. But I know that I will eventually be healed completely and through the healing of this wound, I will be able to authentically, honestly and confidently point people to Jesus.

The information I give to people will be first hand information and not second hand or ‘I heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend…”

I think as well God has used all this to show me how vital it is for me to remain close to Him and seek Him fervently. I think if I had sought Him more fervently from the start, I would have been further along in the healing process.
But also I should have rested in Him when He was calling me to rest. I am looking forward to rest.

Can I trust God – to lead me into life in abundance on earth and for the safekeeping of my salvation?

There is and has always been a certain amount of doubt in whether I can trust Him on these most important matters. I feel like I need to constantly be taking stock of where I am at and what I am doing wrong.
I think half is because of fear and half is because of pride.
Fear because until now I have believed that I will be doing something so wrong that it will get me thrown into hell.
Now introspection and reflection in themselves are good things, but not when they’re fear driven. I think though that now I have learnt, and need to begin practising in my life, that there is nothing I can do that will get me thrown out of my Father’s house.

It is kind of like what Ray said to me – when David Beckham is playing soccer, He just plays. You cannot stop in the middle of the game to make decisions and evaluate the best option. You just have to go with what you decide in that split second. Sometimes you go the wrong way or make a bad pass. But that will never get you kicked off the team. You see I am on this team and I will never get kicked off. Because God doesn’t pick players based on how good they are. He picks them based on His willingness to be on the team. If you want to be on the team, you’re on. You don’t have to be a good player; you don’t have to train or exercise or even run. You can just stand on the field watching as the game passes you by, or you can even sit on the bench.
But why be on the team if you aren’t going to play? By all means we can not play if that’s what we want, but it is nicer to play.

When you’re playing it is not the time to be stopping and making decisions. Just play. If you mess up, you’re still on the team. Even if you don’t try and have a bad attitude, you’re still on the team. As long as you want to be on the team, you’re on. So just play. Yes, be aware when you play, but PLAY!

The time to work on your game is at training. Also there are sessions with the doctor to heal your injuries. At practice you sharpen your skills and learn how to make the best decisions in certain situations. The more you practice, the better you play and the more you enjoy it. But no matter how well you play or how much you practice, the only reason you are on the team is because the coach has said you can play if you want – it has nothing to do with how well you play.

So the reason for playing is for your enjoyment, the enjoyment of others and of the coach.

The second reason why I have doubted this is because of pride.
Pride because I always want to be seen as the best player on the team. I want to feel important.
I guess I also always have believed that I am better than other people on the team because I am a better player and because I train harder and can score goals etc.
I guess though that when I realise that no one cares how good I am and it makes no difference to my status on the team, then there is no incentive to be the best or to look down on others as being worse players than me. Then I can just focus on playing and enjoying it, getting to know my team mates and listening to the coach.

Pride and fear – life’s biggest thieves.

A Story of what has been doen for us

2008-03-11T14:41:00.000+02:00

The story you are about to read may be a difficult one, but please
continue reading until the end because there is great revelation to be
taken from it.

My apartment in Buenos Aires is 14 blocks, or a 25 minute walk, from
the office. Every morning and afternoon I walk past a street person
who 'lives' on the pavement outside a church. This person, who I think
is a woman only because she doesn't have any facial hair, is hardly
distinguishable as a human being. She has grimy, matted hair, wears
the same filthy clothes every day, has an horrendous hunchback, and is
just terribly dirty; I don't think she has had a proper bath in
months. The stench is so nauseating that I have to hold my breath when
I walk past her. She sleeps on the sidewalk and surrounding her is her
collection of rubbish – bits and pieces of wood, boxes, plastic bags
and old carpets. Whenever I see her she is sitting, hunched over, in
the dirt, on the cold concrete. Sometimes when I pass by she is luring
some pigeons into a box with some bread crumbs, obviously trying for a
moment to have some kind of company. Other than the abovementioned,
she does nothing except sit.

After witnessing this tragedy daily, I ask myself the question, 'is
this what God wanted for this person to do with her life? What a waste
of a life, this is not the way it was meant to be – to be so lazy and
dirty and broken. She should be out there learning and working and
living and growing.'
And then it struck me that all humans, because of our sin, must appear
to God like that person looks to me – filthy and repulsive and not in
any way doing what we should be doing with our lives. Wow, that is a
tough pill to swallow.

But here is the revelation. Just as that woman is not fit to be
invited into Buckingham Palace to have tea with the Queen, so too are
we not presentable enough to come into God's house or His presence and
dine at His table. Our sin has made us detestable, filthy and
nauseating to God. But He didn't leave us there; he made a plan to get
us off the street – His son Jesus.

To continue with the analogy, as long as we are willing, Jesus comes
and takes us off the street. He takes us to His Father's house – a
great big mansion in the country, surrounded by perfectly manicured
lawns, dotted with century-old trees. There He soaks us in a bath for
2 hours, scrubbing every part of our bodies. He shaves us and cuts our
hair nice and short and brushes out all the knots. He clips our
fingernails and toenails and flosses and brushes our teeth. Once our
bodies are clean He dresses us in a tailored Armani suit and a thick
white cotton shirt and a silk tie. He puts soft thirsty socks and
brand new Italian leather shoes on our feet. And then He takes us to
dine with His Father in the dining room.

When The Father sees us clean and smart and beautiful, He says to
Jesus, "You did a great job of getting him cleaned up". We sit on
engulfing leather chairs at a solid oak table, drinking red wine from
crystal glasses and eating tender meat and soft vegetables with silver
cutlery. After dinner He leads us to a room in the house and says that
it is mine, to stay forever, if I want. The suite has a breathtaking
view of the countryside, with a king-size bed, chunky white carpets, a
mini bar, unlimited room service and a home entertainment centre. I
get to meet new friends in the rooms next door; people just like me
who were taken off the street and given all this for free.

Although we are now clean enough to live in this mansion, we still
speak like the street dwellers that we once were, and so we begin to
study the book that is left on our desk in our rooms, The Bible.
Furthermore, we talk with our new friends and learn from them how to
live in this house, and the best part is that all we have to do is
push a button and The Father rushes to our room to talk with us and
encourage us and enjoy life with us. And as we obediently do these
things, our minds, thoughts and words become cleaner as well and they
begin to mirror our appearance.

He also gives us something to do in the house, some kind of job or
task so that we don't sit around all day and get bored. We are
encouraged to tell our old friends from the street what we have here
in our new home and they are welcome to come too, for there are many
rooms that are still empty.

I feel like through seeing this person on the street, God showed me
how filthy I was because of my sin, how unworthy I was to even set
foot in His pristine mansion; but then how Jesus came to me, washed me
up and gave me a new life in the mansion. Only because of and through
Him do I have this opportunity of living a real life.

It is important to know just how much Jesus has done for us, in giving
us life. I don't think we can fully comprehend it, but I hope this
story helps you to understand it a little better, like it helped me.
Finally, could you ever imagine going back to live on the street in
the filth and stench when you have lived in the mansion? I could not
when I think of it in this analogy, yet in real life I still go and
spend time on the street – I guess it is because I take for granted
what I have been given.

I hope this inspires you to not go back to the dirty sinful ways of
living on the pavement once you have lived in the luxurious mansion of
our Father.

Be blessed, make music, seek Him always
NS

The pursuit of happiness

2008-02-10T18:13:00.000+02:00

I recently had a discussion with a friend on mine, one which is topical for most young people. How hard should I work? How much time should I invest in my career? Some argue that we should spend more time with God, while others say that by spending time working, we are using our talents that He gave us. Each one of us needs to come to a find the answer ourselves through purposeful study of the Word and through the conviction of the Spirit. But here is an illustration that may help put it into perspective.

Have you ever had that feeling where you are “in the zone”? Sportspeople call it “flow”, where you are performing your skill and everything just feels so easy, you almost have an out of body experience as you watch yourself. And it is beautiful to watch.
All we do should be for the glory of God. If you are using your skill to further your own kingdom and desires, then you will never experience this feeling of flow and are missing the point of our life on earth.

Imagine you are a singer. Most people you know say that your voice is the most powerful and perfect singing voice they have ever heard. You love to sing. You use your voice to sing praise to God. And Jesus is The Conductor. When you sing, you feel like you were born for this, that nothing else matters. The singing illustrates you living out your life in pursuit of His approval.

When at church you stand with others and sing in a choir. When you have prayer time in your own silent space, you sing alone. But it is in the bulk of life that you sing neither in church nor in the silence of your own home. You sing in the crowds. When you sing, you stand on a small round stage, which is elevated about 3 metres above the ground. A short way ahead is Jesus, on a slightly higher stage, conducting and guiding you in song. All around and below you, as far as you can see are millions of people. They are all shouting and making noise and laughing and generally causing chaos. These are the people of the world, making a lot of noise.

And so you sing. You look at The Conductor and you sing in that perfect voice of yours. It isn’t easy, because the crowds are making so much noise that often you can’t hear yourself sing. You wonder if anyone can actually hear you. But The Conductor calls out and tells you that He is listening and you should continue singing to Him, and not to worry about the noisy crowds. So you carry on singing. As you continue to sing, one by one the people in the crowd turn and look at this incredible voice, and they see you looking to the conductor. They in turn look at The Conductor and eventually they are drawn to sing too, and they are also placed on their own stage overlooking the crowds.

You are up there, singing and just having the most incredible time as you continue to look to The Conductor and steadily more people join you in song, and your combined voices begin to drown out the noise of the crowds.
You experience flow.

As you’re singing, below to your left a group of people start fighting over something and tugging at one another’s clothes. Suddenly you notice that these pockets of squabbles are occurring all around you. You then see the reason. Some people are going through the crowd and randomly throwing out prizes – holidays to exotic locations, gold and silver, designer clothes, great big houses, instant fame and physical beauty. The people are no longer looking at you or The Conductor, but are now mesmerised by the desire for the prizes. There are not enough prizes for everyone, and so the fighting gets fiercer and fiercer. People work harder and fight more to get a piece of those prizes. They organise themselves into little groups that work together to get some of the prizes. When you see these things your first reaction is to take your eyes off the conductor and say “I want a prize too! Maybe I should go down there and fight for a piece of the action. If I work real hard and get in with the right crowd we can get a nice share of what is distributed. And many that are singing on stage do this.”

But the conductor calls to you and says, “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendour was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry saying, ’what shall we eat?’ or ‘what shall we drink?’ or ‘what shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first His Kingdom and all these things will be given to you as well.” Matt 6:28

You hear and you continue to look to The Conductor and sing. And as you sing, He begins to bless you with all the things that the people below are fighting over. Still you don’t take your eyes off Him or turn to your blessings for your fulfilment; instead you continue to look at Him, thank Him; sing for Him.

Don’t let the evil one lead you astray in this world by pursuing things that don’t have everlasting value.

Note: this story is a parallel for me of how we end up chasing the things of this world when we should be chasing after God. I am not saying that we should not work hard, because we should.
But there is a difference between
a) working hard and pursuing Christ and
b) working hard and pursuing the things of the world.
We all know in our hearts which category we fall into. In the end it comes down to faith; believing that we can solely pursue Him and He will give us all we need in this world.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion for Christ
NS

Which way, which way?

2008-01-03T11:00:00.000+02:00

I am about to embark on a journey, a journey that will consume my whole life on earth. I am standing in a foyer with three doors in front of me, while holding the Bible. I have the Bible open and am reading it, looking for answers as to which door I should go through.

Each door has a peephole through which I can look, and I can see a glimpse of what there is to see behind that door. I can see as far as my eyes will allow, but beyond that is the major part of the journey, which I cannot see. I can choose which door to walk through, and each door opens up to a journey. I can go back and forth between these journeys, but if I return to a previous journey I must start at the place where I left off. I have no idea what the journey will be like once I pass the part to where I can see through the peephole.

I walk up to the first door and I see worldliness – drunken debauchery, drugs, promiscuity and money. I know that is not what I want and don’t even think about going on that journey. I don’t like the look of it now and I know that it will not get any better; in fact it will just get worse.

I walk up to the second door and behind this door I see the path of God. I see a path of sacrifice to the Lord, of service, of obedience, of love. A path of placing Jesus number one in my life no matter what. It does not look particularly interesting or glitzy and glamorous at this stage, but as I read the Bible I realise that it tells me that this path will only get better and better. This journey is a long term investment. If I look back after 1 year, or 5 years, I will not be that impressed by my progress. But if I look back after 10, 20 or 50 years, I see that it just keeps getting better and better, that the longer I go on, the more my investment grows exponentially. The further I get on this journey the better it gets, and so the key is to get on it as soon as possible and stick with it so that I can see the long term benefits as I go. This is the “best is yet to come” journey. All of what I know of this journey is what the Bible tells me, that if I stick to it, it will be the best and will continue to get better as I go further.

Behind door number three is the lukewarm journey. I see exciting things, pretty things and happy things. They all look good. None of these things are necessarily evil or bad, but they are not necessarily all good either. Things like a fancy car, beautiful people, a beach house, fame, success and money. I can still live as a Christian – read my Bible and pray and go to church but deep down I know that this journey is one for my own instant gratification. I know that the things of this journey will not last. But I don’t care, because right now they are satisfying my desire and they are not intrinsically bad, so therefore I am able to still practice my religion. My car will get scratched, beauty will fade and the success will be short remembered.

I know that I should go through the second door, because the Bible tells me so. It also tells me that God will give me the desires of my heart and satisfy all my needs.
But I want the things behind the third door, just for now. When I get bored of them, which I know I will, then I can go back and go through the second door. How do I choose door number two now and not live with the struggle of wanting what is behind door number three? How do I sacrifice what the world has to offer me and go for what the Lord offers me and not constantly want for that?
One word – faith. It’s what God calls us to do – to follow him to a place that may not make sense to us, or may not be what we want right now. That’s faith – walking a journey that we’ve been told is best for us, even though we cant see it now. Only by taking the step of faith, and persevering will we eventually reap the exponential benefits of the journey. It's a big call, but then so are the rewards.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion for Christ
NS

Of rocks and sand clods - part 2

2007-12-10T11:49:00.000+02:00

“And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Matthew 16:18

What is most interesting for me in this passage is Jesus’ choice of words to describe Peter, the man who is chosen to be the first great leader of the church – the rock.
One of the most distinguishable characteristics about a rock is that it is the same irrespective of the environment in which it finds itself.
If you find a rock in the mountains, it is a rock.
If you then put it in your pocket, it is a rock.
If you take it home and place it on your windowsill, it is a rock.
If you then take that rock and throw it in your swimming pool, it is still a rock.

The point I am trying to make here is that a rock is a rock no matter where it finds itself. And for this very reason Jesus was able to use Peter on which to build His church on earth. Because Peter was to be the rock, he was to be courageous and stable, unfaltering and consistent in his ways.
Jesus didn’t say, “on this chameleon I will build my church”, because the job of building His Kingdom is not something that can be done by one who is planning to spend his life on earth blending in to his surroundings.

What can we take out of this for our own lives?

Often in life we find ourselves in situations where we don’t necessarily want to be – it could be working a boring job or living in a city we don’t like or just being somewhere we don’t want to be. What we need to practice in these times is that the place where we are should not determine how we live our lives. If we live in a corrupt country, we should not become corrupt, if we are in the company of gossipers, we should not take on their behaviour in order to fit in. If we work with people who are bitter and angry, or resentful, we should not become like them.

Instead we should be the rocks, unwavering in our behaviour and attitude toward life, irrespective of the place in which we find ourselves. In these times we should seek God’s Word and apply it, no matter how difficult that may be, because that is what it means to be a rock.
We must expect God to allow us to be in these testing situations, so that our qualities of being a rock can be galvanised and strengthened through us practising what His Word teaches us. Remember this when you find yourself somewhere you don’t want to be – instead of complaining about it, use the opportunity to re-enforce your rock qualities.

On a final note, chameleons will fit in on earth, but rocks will fit in in heaven – we might as well start practising for eternity.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion for Christ
NS

Of rocks and sand clods - part 1

2007-12-05T08:41:00.000+02:00

One day a man was sitting on a muddy river bank. He was enjoying being out in nature, allowing his thoughts to wander.
He picked up a smooth, black pebble, played with it in his hands and then tossed it into the flowing stream. Through the clear water, he saw the pebble sink quickly to rest on the sandy riverbed.
He then scooped up a small handful of wet soil and tightly squeezed his hand shut. He opened his hand, re-positioned the sand with his thumb and forefinger and squeezed his hand shut again. He repeated the process until he was satisfied that he had formed a solid ball of soil. This too he tossed into the water, but unlike the pebble, it broke up into the thousands of little individual sand particles it was before. The particles drifted and scattered in all different directions.

I think the contrast between the pebble and the sand clod is a great analogy for us to test what it is in life that holds us together.

The sand clod is where many of us find ourselves – we are held together by external things; things of this world. We rely heavily on the things of the world to keep it all together, to be happy; to be stable, functional human beings. A comfortable job, a safe car, companionship with friends, a love relationship. Some or all of these things become our number one and we rely on them for our emotional wellbeing. They are like the man’s hand that holds us together. The problem comes in when we leave that man’s hand, when we get thrown into the river or we are dropped on the floor. We break up into a thousand little pieces. We realise the hard way that the things in which we placed our trust to live a great and fulfilled life are uncertain and unable to really bind and galvanise our lives into something that is sustainably unbreakable. And then we spend months and sometimes years picking up the pieces of our life that lie scattered all over the riverbed.
I am not disputing the fact that these things are important, because they are important. I am questioning how important they are to us in relation to how important they should be according to God’s Word. A pretty good test is to write down in order of importance what you could least afford to lose, or what you could not bear to think about losing. Your job? Your wife or girlfriend? Your social group? Your car or house? Your physical appearance? If anything on your list is above your relationship with Jesus, then that is a pretty good indicator that you place more of your wellbeing in that than in Jesus.
The question many may ask at this stage is, “but how can I enjoy these blessings and good things if I don’t value them or don’t look to them to be my strength?” and “wont I lose them if I don’t make them number one?”
The answer to this question is firstly, that these things are all blessings from God and we are to enjoy them, but if they become more important to us than Him - if these things take preference over Him in the way we live our lives - then we are idolising them, which is sinful.
Secondly, all these things are going to fade away, be destroyed or lost. And when we do lose them (because it is but a matter of when, and not if, we lose them) then how will we deal with losing the thing that we feel we cannot afford to lose?

In contrast, if we look at a pebble, when the man picks it up it is already in a solid, unbreakable state. It does not require his hand (anything in this world) to make it whole or complete because it is so already. It is a rock because it is held together by a mixture of chemical bonds and particles on the inside. It’s strength comes from being held together by the layers that form around its core. For us, this core translates to our hearts and spirits. If our hearts are firmly rooted in our relationship with Jesus, if it is Him from whom we draw strength, if He is what we rely on to hold us together from the inside, then no matter whether we are in the hands of the world or we are tossed into the water, we are held firm by what is inside - something that can never be taken from us. The Holy Spirit within us.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion for Christ
NS

Global Warming

2007-11-28T13:57:00.000+02:00

How does the threat of global warming apply to our lives as Christians?
We are called to be the salt of the earth, and that means we are also responsible to look after the planet that we have been given.

I recently watched the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and it awakened me to the fact that if our generation does not do something about global warming, and do it now, we will not have a world to show our children.
I seriously suggest you watch the movie: a brilliant documentary, free of bias and very informative.
The truth of the matter is that we are in a dire situation; this is true and global warming is happening. But we can make difference. Please do not think that you cannot make a difference, because you can. All it requires is for you to be aware of the issue, to change a few little things in your life, and to tell your friends to do the same.
The movie shows how we can actually reverse the process of global warming if we all pool together and become energy-saving conscious.

Even more reason to get conscious about this is that SA is in an energy crisis which is not going to be resolved for another 5 years. Therefore, unless we make the change, the frequency and extent of power cuts is going to continue rising. It is poor form that Eskom cannot supply our energy needs, but unfortunately the earliest this issue can be rectified is post 2010. So instead of complaining, let’s try and cut our energy consumption down to limit the number of power cuts we will have to face in the future.

Here is a list of things you can do to make a difference:
• Watch the movie and tell others to do the same
• Replace the lights in your house with compact fluorescent lights (CFL’s) which use 60% less energy than normal bulbs
• General electricity saving tips – turn off lights in rooms you are not in, only boil the amount of water you need for tea/coffee, turn your geyser down slightly, use electricity sparingly.
• Plant trees everywhere. Trees absorb CO2, and a tree is a cheap and aesthetically pleasing way to curb global warming. A tree costs only a few rand and can radically reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. See www.arborday.org for more ideas
• Use a clothes-line instead of a tumble dryer
• Recycle!!! (Paper, plastics, glass)
• Eat less meat, thereby reducing the demand to hold livestock, which have very high CO2 emission levels
• These and more tips are available at http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/whatyoucando/index.html

If we all just do a little more and encourage others to do the same, we can make a difference. If you don’t believe your small contribution makes a difference, watch the movie – your mind will be changed!

Be blessed, make music, live with passion
NS

The Sunset

2007-11-21T13:00:00.000+02:00

One summer’s evening, ten friends sat watching the sun set over the calm blue ocean. For six of the friends the sunset was the most beautiful thing they had seen – they just enjoyed the fading of the yellows into reds, oranges and finally into the purples, pinks and blues of dusk. They marvelled at the incomparable magnitude of the vast expanse of water, and the seagulls that hung above it, unshaken by the ocean’s devouring stature. They sat for hours just enjoying it.
The other four people were not that impressed by the sunset. They didn’t find anything particularly beautiful or enticing about it.

Has the sunset failed the other four people?
I think in this simplified scenario it is easy to see that we cannot say that the sunset is in any way ‘guilty’ of not delivering on its responsibility to provide that good feeling one expects when watching the sunset. The sunset is what it is; it is absolute and does not show itself differently to individual persons. Rather the reason some people see its beauty and others don’t, is because of the way those people perceive the sunset. In other words what eyes do they see it through? It is the state of mind and spirit of each person that allows them to have either a positive or negative experience of the sunset.

If the sunset does not hold any power over the people to find enjoyment in it, then surely the same should apply to everything in life.

We all complain – about our jobs, about our friends, our financial situation, but have we ever stopped to think that the magnitude of our problems could be due to our perception of those problems and not necessarily the problems themselves? If it is due to our perception, then surely we have the power to choose how we see those problems.
We can either see them as challenges that God will use to the good of those who love Him, or we can see them as afflictions that bring pain to our lives.

So how do I look at the proverbial sunset and see its beauty? How can I change my perception so that I can enjoy what I see? The answer begins and ends in Jesus taking first place in your life. When Jesus is number one, we see the world through His eyes and realise that the power lies in His presence in us and not in the things of the world.

The challenge is to look at our own lives and see if there are things that we don’t appreciate and enjoy, things that frustrate us and things in which we cannot see the good. We need to stop blaming the other person and the situation, look into ourselves and see how God wants us to change our perspective of what is happening.

You can’t see the good in a situation, until you see the God in it.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion
NS

Interview with Rick Warren

2007-10-18T15:54:00.000+02:00

In the interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, Rick said:

People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell,
life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God
wants us to be with Him in Heaven.
One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body--
but not the end of me.
I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of
years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God
wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity.
We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't
going to make sense.
Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just
coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one.
The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than
your comfort.
God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your
life happy.
We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life.
The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.
This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the
toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer.
I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark
time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that
anymore.
Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like
two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good
and something bad in your life.
No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad
that needs to be worked on.
And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something
good you can thank God for.
You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems.
If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness,"which
is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid
of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others.
We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of
thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for
her.
It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her
character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a
testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people.
You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life.
Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For
instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million
copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.
It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with
before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or
for you to live a life of ease.
So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety
and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide
what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72
First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our
lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases.
Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the
church.
Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan
to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor , care for the sick, and
educate the next generation.
Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I
started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able
to serve God for free.
We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity?
Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or
am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)?
When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if
I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love You
better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more
interested in what I am than what I do.
That's why we're called human beings, not human doings.
Happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD.

Time with God - Part 2

2007-10-10T09:23:00.000+02:00

Before the days of chainsaws and modern technology, men would cut down trees with either an axe or a manual saw. The work of cutting down trees was manual and very physical. Hence lumberjacks were usually extremely well built with strong bodies, strengthened by the physical nature of their work.

Do you think lumberjacks go to gym, to work out after a day’s work? No, because they don’t need to – they get so strong and keep so fit because they are doing gym all day.

Last week I wrote about how vital it is to take some time out of every day to spend with God, reading the word, praying etc.
But the 30 minutes or hour you spend with God in the morning or evening is not enough. If we want to be strong and continue growing in faith and hope and love, we need to be like lumberjacks. We need to be working out throughout our day, being in constant communion with God.
This is something much easier said than done – it is common to hear people say, “I go through the entire day not thinking about God once, but I just don’t know how to bring Him into my day.”

I wish there was a standard formula, but I don’t believe there is. However, here are some ideas of things we can do to keep us close to God and ensure that He is involved in the ‘whole of life’:

• Share your thoughts with God – God wants to know us, and He wants us to share our lives with Him, no matter how insignificant we may think our thoughts are. We all think throughout our day and these are great opportunities to share with God. For example: If you are thinking about how happy you are, tell God how happy you are and thank Him for that; if you are worried, share that with Him and ask for His protection.

• Pray – prayer does not need to always be in a quiet place with your hands together and eyes closed. Pray while driving to work, while walking to the shops, while remembering a friend – say a quick 10 second prayer whenever you have something to pray about.

• Fellowship with other Christians – hang out with other Christians. “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another” Proverbs 27:16

• Love your neighbour – Our mission on earth is to spread the gospel, but also the love of God. Be sure to notice situations where someone needs help, and then act – situations like this help us grow in love and help us to better understand the love with which Jesus loves us.

• Tell people about Jesus – The power of the Holy Spirit is released through us when we tell people about Jesus in His power. Personally this is one area that I find most intimate with God when it happens.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion
NS

Time with God - Part 1

2007-09-26T09:24:00.000+02:00

Mark 1:29
“That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. The whole town gathered at the door, and Jesus healed many who had various diseases…Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.”

Jesus Himself showed that no matter how busy He was or how late He had worked the previous night, time with the Father is the most important part of our day.

I have never been great at fasting but recently I decided to fast for three days; from sunrise to sunset and drinking only water. Interestingly enough, I didn’t receive any special wisdom, knowledge or spiritual revelation. But what I did realise was how utterly useless I am if I don’t eat. The first day was not too bad, because I had made sure I ate well the day before, but by the time I got to day 2 and 3 I was struggling. I battled to perform at anywhere close to my optimum while exercising and even small everyday tasks required a monumental effort. But the area where I suffered most was in my relationships – I just did not have the energy to make an effort to love people, to be kind and to make conversation. I quickly became irritable and just wanted to be left alone.
I thought to myself if not eating food had such a big impact on my life, especially my relationships, how much more do I suffer when I don’t receive my spiritual food? I would never think of missing breakfast, whether it’s a bland piece of toast or a delectable English breakfast, and if I did I would have a big brunch or lunch. To go a whole day voluntarily without eating is just too crippling.

Now we need to see that if we are not getting our spiritual food, we are even more incapable of functioning in the loving way God wants us to than if we just skip a day of meals.

The problem is that we get used to being spiritually hungry and therefore don’t know what it feels like to be full. So we just stay hungry. The only way to be filled is to be in constant communion with God. And constant communion starts with a daily quiet time. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that by going to church on a Sunday and cell group on Wednesday that that is enough of God for the week. You wouldn’t choose to eat a meal only on Sundays and Wednesdays, so why do it with your spiritual food?

Take time to spend time with God every single day – pray, chat to Him; listen to music, read your Bible or another Christian book. Do it for an extended period of time and really see how your view on your life begins to change, and how your relationship with Him grows.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion
NS

The Farm

2007-09-20T13:43:00.000+02:00

A successful and very wealthy farmer had twin sons, Michael and Steven, and they all lived together on the most incredible farm. Their farmhouse stood up on a hill in the centre of the farm, with a big wraparound porch that allowed one to look out over the land for as far as the eye could see. To the west the farm was bordered by a ridge of mountains and one could climb the ridge and look out over the thousands of acres of farmland. Looking down from the ridge, the crop squares below alternated in colour – dark and light greens, soft orange and pale brown – like a giant homemade quilt, broken only by the solitary farmhouse standing like a sentinel in the middle of the lands. Far in the distance one could see the grasslands dotted with brown and white cows, majestic horses and chickens pecking in the sand. The farm was everything one could ever imagine.

The farmer absolutely loved the farm and farming. Every day he would wake up before sunrise and head out for the day. When his two sons were old enough he would take them out with him. Even though both boys hated getting up while it was still cold, Michael loved being out on the farm with his dad, but Stephen could not muster up the strength to wake up. Every day the farmer would try get Stephen out of bed, but he would just roll over and tell him to go away.

Without much more the farmer could do, him and Michael would set off before sunrise and climb to the top of the ridge and drink coffee from a flask as the sun rose. Then they would go down into the fields and get to work ploughing or harvesting or irrigating, depending on the season. They would fix fences and build new barns. They would inspect the health of the cows, collect the eggs from the chicken pens and groom the horses. They would drive in the farm vehicle listening to music, laughing and joking, talking and sharing. Sometimes they would head over to the neighbours where, over a hearty farm lunch, they would talk about all kinds of things from farming to sport to weather and news around town. In the evenings they would climb the ridge again and just sit quietly and watch the sun dip below the other side, saying nothing but hearing everything. Michael and the farmer loved their days together.

At night they would come home and sit around the table for dinner, the dinner they had worked hard for all day. While they had been out on the farm, Stephen would only get up late in the day and then lie on the couch watching TV. Despite Stephen’s laziness and lack of passion, the farmer would sit at the table and invite both boys to come and sit with him for dinner. There they would talk about their respective days. He would ask Stephen what he did and how he was and what he was planning to do tomorrow. “I don’t know, same as today, I guess.” When dinner was done they would all play a board game or play some music on the piano, and when it was time for bed, he would tuck them both in, say goodnight and tell them both he loved them more than anything else in the whole world.

I believe this story illustrates God’s love for us. It has been given and there is nothing more that we can do to gain any more love, or lose it, because we have it all already. Whether we spend our lives lying on the couch or being out there living it, He does not love one of His children more or less for that – His love is not dependent on our actions. He still allows us to live in His house and share in His Kingdom. Rather it is that we are missing out on the joy of living an exciting beautiful life on earth with our Dad.
So the moral of the story is that we need not be killing ourselves trying to work for our Father’s love – we have it already through the sacrifice Jesus made for us. But if you do choose to spend your life lying on the couch – by not enjoying the world He has blessed us with, knowing Him and our brothers and sisters and being involved in ministry – know that you are missing out on the life on earth that He wants us to have.

Let’s go out there and live life with our Dad, not because we have to, but because we want to.

Falling

2007-09-13T09:39:00.000+02:00

White knuckles and the beads of sweat
Are not because of the heat
But rather of the need to hold on
To that which I can only get from the Son

The sun that the back of my neck burns
Is not the friendly one for which on summer days I yearned
Rather it spikes me with searing needles
Wearing me down and calling my fate sealed

The sun welcomes the cumulonimbus
That brings rain which further reveals my weakness
The drops at first are cool
But soon my body shivers to the cold of the broken scattered pool

No longer have I energy to hold my fingers in their curl
On the rock crevices that I grasp like an expensive pearl
Slowly I allow gravity to pry open my grip
With it my heels drop below my toes and I slip

Now that I’m in the air falling
I wonder if it’s too late to be calling
I open my mouth and try as I can
But fear delivers a silent scream

Again I try but still there’s no sound
If only I’d called for help but I was too proud
Now death is only a second away
And all I can do is silently pray

Whether it will make a difference I cannot say
But with no audible voice it is my very last grace
I pray for the Son to save me
Before I hit the ground and die silently

The Son He comes but doesn’t catch me
Rather brings before me and makes me see
My refusals to ropes that were offered
All along though pride and arrogance is what I preferred

He tells me that the help was Himself
Trying to save me from myself
But I was too good and too great
To accept help from any other state

Before I hit the floor
He tells me the decision to end it all
Was mine by not choosing His hand
And now as I fall He can’t reverse my choice to make this the end

Darkness falls and the colour black is in my sight
Then I’m standing looking into a bright light
It’s the Son and He’s calling
Now that I’m no longer falling

He says that although I chose to die
He heard the call to be saved that I cried
And He answered by saving me
With Him, to eternal life, blissfully.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion
NS

Am I good?

2007-09-05T08:43:00.000+02:00

All my life I was gripped by the fear that I was not good. Having been an over achiever from very young, I never knew what it was like to lose. I excelled at everything that I attempted. Even though this was a good thing in many respects, I believed my achievements earned me the love of others (even though they loved me unconditionally).

I then carried this belief into my relationship with God, feeling that even though I had been saved by Jesus’ sacrifice, I still had to ‘be good’ to receive that gift. But also it brought me pride, because generally I felt I was good enough in comparison to other Christians to earn my love from God, so I was safe. But as I moved from school and university and the complexities and challenges in life compounded, I realised that I couldn’t be the best at everything anymore – work, relationships, friendships, family, exercise, God, sport, hobbies – it just became too much. My whole world began to crumble, for the thing in which I had placed my self confidence – my goodness – was in fact proving to be impossible to sustain. So I worked harder and harder to be better, but I couldn’t keep up.

I had to do the only thing that was left to do – realise that I was not in fact loved for my achievements, that the only reason I am loved is because Jesus is love and therefore He loves. It is all about Him and His love. No matter how good I am, He cannot love me more, because He loves me completely already, and no matter how bad I am, He doesn’t love me less.

To do this I had to acknowledge that it was not me that was good. I was always terrified of doing this because if I could not say that I was good, then where would all my confidence go? But therein lies the point – my self confidence was placed in something that was not everlasting, and fast approaching its sell by date. And so I had to say I am not good. But Jesus is. He is perfect in place of me, so I need not be perfect. And the contrary happened to what I worried about – that I would lose all my confidence – I gained all my confidence. Now I was living out of love, living to enjoy him and the people around me and the world he has given us instead of constantly working to keep my love. And suddenly I wanted to do good, not because I needed to be good, but because I was just so stoked to be alive and to be looked at as a perfect human being, because God looks through Jesus when he looks at me.

This poem portrays that change:

Goodness
NS

Do good, they say
And good I do
You are good they say
And good I am by what I do

I walk in pride
With goodness on my shoulder
With my head held high
I see not to people I am colder

The wall shows cracks
I choose not to see
I ignore these signs
Of the faltering goodness in me

My weakness it shows
More each day
No longer can I believe
That being good is my forte

With my wall gone now
Truth looks me in the eye
And I agree for the first time
My own goodness is but a lie

To failure’s onslaught I wait
Ready to quit
But along comes goodness
The real one, or is it?

Jesus He tells me
That goodness is He
And the goodness in me
Is His gift for free

Goodness I receive
By the grace of the Giver
And I see for the first time
I am good in my Saviour

The freedom that comes
Is due to the reason
That goodness no longer
Is mine only for a season

And I look to the heavens
I give thanks and I sing
For with His free gift
No longer a failure,
but the child of the King

Do good He says
And good I do
I am good He says
And Him good, I believe is true

Be blessed, make music, live with passion
NS

Claiming the victory

2007-08-29T10:21:00.000+02:00

On the cold winter’s night when Ricardo arrived at the camp below Mount Visamunes, he knew that this was his last hope of healing. As a teenager, he had developed a rare bone disease that caused his bones to deteriorate day by day; and which would eventually leave his skeleton so fragile and brittle, that even small bumps would result in breakages. He had seen the world’s best doctors and specialists, begging that one of them could cure him.
They all told him the same thing; there was no cure and he would be lucky if he celebrated his 25th birthday.

Now 22 years old and desperate for anything that could save him, he found himself at the only place that still offered a glimmer of hope. Mount Visamunes was believed to be graced with a lake on the summit that was filled with water rumoured to have medicinal properties, which could heal the sickness that threatened to prematurely end Ricardo’s life.

The next morning when he awoke he stepped outside and looked up at the mountain that towered above him. As he gazed up at the snow capped summit, he realised that he had travelled half way around the world to be here and now he was only a few hours trek from healing. He bubbled with excitement at the prospect of once again running around with his friends, riding a bicycle, or just dealing with a punch on the shoulder without being admitted to hospital.
By now most of the camp was beginning to wake, and all around him Ricardo saw people with the same condition as his, although they lacked his enthusiasm and excitement. He walked over to a man who was sitting on a rock under a tree, with drooped shoulders and his eyes downcast to the patterns he was scratching in the sand. “Hi there. Are you also here to climb to the lake and be healed by the magical water? Is it true that there is healing up there?” he asked.
The man gave a wry smile and replied, “You’re obviously new here. Yes there is healing to be found in the lake; instant healing. All one has to do is make it to the top and drink the water. But getting to the top is unlikely, if not impossible. I have been here for 2 years and still I haven’t made it to the top. It is just too difficult.”

Ricardo could not believe what he was hearing. “But we are so close. Just a few hours walking and we can be cured of this terrible disease, ready to start living!”
The man was now becoming irate at his naïve enthusiasm, “You don’t understand boy. The path is difficult to follow; there are wild animals that can eat you, snakes and scorpions that sting and bite you, thick thorn bush and strong winds that can blow you off the mountain entirely. You would be risking your life by climbing.”
Ricardo thought his final comment somewhat ironic, but decided his efforts were futile. He continued making his way through the camp where everyone he met echoed the sentiments of the first man; there was healing at the top of the mountain, it was just too difficult to get there. After a few hours, with his enthusiasm and hopes of life destroyed, he too went to sit on a rock and scratch in the dirt.

Shortly thereafter a man walked up to him and asked him if he was new here, a man that didn’t have the same look of defeatism in him. Ricardo replied that he had arrived yesterday but that he knew now that there was no way he was going to make it to the top. The man pulled Ricardo to his feet and looked him in the eye, “Listen to me boy, don’t believe what these people have told you. Everyone here sits around feeling sorry for themselves because they believe they haven’t the strength the climb to the top and get their healing. I was just like them. Then one day someone told me about the guide that waits at the foot of the mountain. He knows the way, he carries weapons to fight off dangerous animals, a machete to cut through the bush and is strong enough to hold you up when the winds come. I went to him and followed him to the top. Make no mistake, it was tough and without his help I would never have made it, but I continued walking and eventually made it. Come I’ll take you to him”. The sparkle returned to Ricardo’s eye.

They arrived at the foot of the mountain where he met the guide who was overjoyed that he wanted to make it to the top. They began to walk, and as the walked they talked and joked. The going got tougher and Ricardo’s legs began to ache and his lungs began to burn. The guide let him rest and then encouraged him to continue going, helping him along all the way. They came to a place where the bush was thick and dark, and there were hundreds of evil looking eyes. He could hear hissing and growling. A ferocious looking dog leapt out and snapped at him and that was as much as he could handle. He turned to run back. “Don’t go yet, I’ll protect you,” yelled the guide, “you can go back now but there is no cure down at camp. We can make it to the top, together. Just trust me; I’ve done this many times before.” Ricardo slowed, stopped and then returned. The guide walked beside him, chopping away the bush and fighting off the animals and killing the poisonous snakes lying in the path. Ricardo was terrified, but he continued to walk. When they came out of the bush they were hit by gusting winds, the guide grabbed Ricardo around the waist and held him firmly, and they continued together. They came to a rocky section where Ricardo tripped and broke his ankle and was so tired that he fell down to the ground and began sobbing. “I’ll never make it. It is too difficult. You brought me up here to die. I was safe at camp where there was none of this horrible stuff and now I’m going to die.” The guide told him that he could go down at any time, but there was only a few hundred metres to go. Once again, to his credit, Ricardo got up, threw one arm over the guide’s shoulder and hobbled up to the top.

There his eyes feasted on the most beautiful place he had ever seen. Lush green vegetation alongside the banks of a crystal clear lake that reflected the brilliant blue of the sky. He just flopped into the water, clothes and all. He drank and drank until he thought his stomach would burst. And then he walked out, he stood on the banks and saw his ankle was no longer swollen. The guide gave him a punch on the shoulder and congratulated him for making it and nothing broke. Ricardo was healed! He jumped in the air, he ran into trees and threw stones into the water and jumped off rocks. He was alive again! He looked at the guide and said, “If it wasn’t for you I would never have made it. Thank you. I have to go down and tell the others about this place and tell them that you can get anyone to the top.” Together they ran down the mountain, to tell the others the good news.

Verse: 1 John 5:4,5
“…for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."

What we can learn from this story:
• No matter what struggles we have in life – An addiction, tumultuous relationships, past hurts, financial problems or any sin – God promises us that the battle has already been won. We don’t get to the top of the mountain and then have to fight a dragon; Jesus has already slayed the dragon. Healing awaits us at the top of the mountain; we just have to go get it
• The Holy Spirit is our guide in getting to the top and we don’t have to do it on our own. He shows us where to go; he protects us from all evils and threats. We just have to trust in Him and His supreme power.
• The journey is not easy, and we need to work hard and endure some difficult and testing times to get to the top.
• Believe in the victory that Jesus has won in your life and begin the journey with Him to go and claim your prize!

Be blessed, make music, live with passion
NS

The best is yet to come

2007-08-22T09:13:00.000+02:00

This weekend one of my good mates got married. It was the most incredible wedding I’ve ever been to – God was everywhere. During the service, while sitting in the broken shade of a willow tree under the warm African sun, I got the most incredible sense of God’s power in the place. Everything just felt so right; it felt like this is how things were meant to be. This is what He intended marriage to be when He created it: the union of two of His children, deeply in love with Him firstly and then in love with one another; making a commitment to walk, together, with Him, for eternity. It is really hard to imagine that anything between two people can be more perfect than a marriage centred on Christ. There was something unexplainable about the love and raw Godly power that permeated through the place – God was pleased, I have no doubt.

But besides that I want to share with you what the pastor spoke about – that the best is yet to come.
Have you ever wondered why a relationship to which you've committed doesn’t have the same kind of future excitement as the memories of the past?
Or do you dream about past experiences and people, wishing for it because you will never have that again?
Do you worry about getting older, looking in the mirror wishing for your youth?

He told the story of Jesus at the wedding.
In short: The wine at the wedding runs out, Jesus is asked to help a brother out, so He tells them to fill some jars with water and He turns the water to wine. Easy as pie.
A servant takes a glass of the wine to the master of the banquet who, heartily impressed, says to the bridegroom, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” (John 2:10)
The most awesome thing about this is that the best is still to come when we are walking with Jesus. If things are bad, they can only get better and if things are good, then they can also only get better.
Paul confirms this when he writes, “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.” (2 Cor 4:16)
Bottom line: as earthly humans we are wasting away. We are fading flowers, there is nothing we can do to stop our aging or that our heyday on earth comes and goes before we know it. But if what we care about most is our relationship with Christ, then the fading of our minds and bodies is nothing in comparison with the renewal that takes place inside our hearts and spirit, every day, through the power of the Holy Spirit. And the best part of it is that we are going forward…toward the best times of our lives…always…when we place Jesus number one.

Every now and then you hear a couple who has been married for 40 or 50 years and when asked how they did it, they say that they love their spouse more today than they did 40 or 50 years ago. I never could quite understand that, how can you love this person more – all old and wrinkled and unable to do cool stuff – than the person he/she was when they were young.
But now it all makes sense; love is something that grows over time, it’s something that is inside. And Jesus fills us with the ability to love. As we walk with Him, we are renewed daily – it's like every day the old skin is peeled off to reveal a new fresh skin below – more able and stronger to love and enjoy the good times ahead.

Be blessed, make music, live with passion
NS

The Serenity Prayer

2007-08-14T16:03:00.000+02:00

Recently a friend gave me this: The Serenity Prayer. Most people know the first verse, but there are a couple more to it, and this is in fact where the meat of it lies. Enjoy!

The Serenity Prayer
Reinhold Niebhur 1926

God, grant me the serenity to
accept the things I cannot change
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference

Living one day at a time
Enjoying one moment at a time
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace

Taking this sinful world as it is and not as I would have it
Trusting that You will make all things right as I surrender to Your will

That I may be reasonably happy in this life
And supremely happy with You in the next