Archive - December, 2009

Friendship

December 21, 2009 in Challenges with 0 Comments

Last night I had to look back at the past year, and just see all the blessings the Lord has placed on our lives, and this is only by looking at the friendships He blessed us with.

A year ago, me and my wife had no real friends. People that we knew we could call upon in hard times, and people that knew they could do the same.

We had friends, but it felt like it was all conditional friendships. You had to be willing to do certain things to really be accepted into the group of friends.

When we joined our current church, we really prayed to God to give us real friendships. The type of friendships you usually only read about in books.

One thing I can say it the God really came through in a BIG way on our prayers, and all we can do is say thanks and really try and give as much as possible back to God for all these blessings.

To all our friends, you all know who you are, I love every minute I can spend with you guys, just being myself, and also being able to cry and laugh together. May we all sit around in the old age homes one day, and talk about these days we had together, and may God bless each and every one of you beyond your wildest dreams.

The joys of giving

December 20, 2009 in Challenges with 1 Comment

Ok, I know, I have been slack with blogging the last 2 weeks. I have to say sorry for it, since I have been a bit lethargic due to end of the year syndrome, and slacking in all spiritual things in my life.

Yesterday, while walking to the car after dropping my wife and daughter off at the airport, for them to go on holiday so long, with me following on Thursday, a guy came walking up to me.

I could see in his eyes that there is a huge hurt in there somewhere, and you could also tell that he is really not comfortable to walk up to strangers.

In any case, it turned out that he was released from prison that morning, and he needed to get back to Port Elizabeth. Correctional Services gave him money for two thirds of the money he needed to get home, and now he needed to get the rest of the money somewhere.

After listening to his story, I really felt compelled to give him money, and I had enough cash with me to give him more than half the money he needed. He almost started to cry. He further told me that people has sworn at him and said terrible stuff to him, just because he has been to prison.

Needless to say, I drove away with a smile on my face.

However, this morning in church the pastor read 1 John 3:16-17

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?

Listening to this, I was really shocked at the reactions this man was talking about that other people had towards him. After feeling this, however, God started to speak to me, and really just opened my eyes to what I could have done for this man.

It was within my powers to give this man all the money he needed to get home, and some more, without it being almost a hassle for me. I did not pray for him, while standing there, I did not take the time to maybe get some more information about him, and maybe to follow up with him in a couple of days, to try and find out if he got home alright, etc.

I know this was not God telling me I should have done this, but Him teaching me to be more open to these things the next time I get someone like this crossing my road.

I praise the Lord for just giving me this little piece of teaching among everything, and I really pray that God will bring someone like this across my path again, before Christmas, just so that I will be able to spread some of the Christmas joy to someone less fortunate than me.

Awesome Prayer

December 17, 2009 in Challenges with 0 Comments

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O God, I have tasted Thy goodness, and it has both satisfied me and made me thirsty for more. I am painfully conscious of my need for further grace. I am ashamed of my lack of desire. O God, the Triune God, I want to want Thee; I long to be filled with longing; I thirst to be made more thirsty still.
Show me Thy glory, I pray Thee, so that I may know Thee indeed. Begin in mercy a new work of love within me. Say to my soul, “Rise up my love, my fair one, and come away.” Then give me grace to rise and follow Thee up from this misty lowland where I have wandered so long.

From A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God (Camp Hill, PA: WingSpread, 2007).

Fearless, The Review

December 15, 2009 in Challenges with 3 Comments

WhFearless_covery do we go through life with so much fear?

Why do we fear the things we fear?

We fear the mundane things, we have no control over in life, and we fear the material things the world has told us to fear.

In his new book, Fearless, Max Lucado takes all these little fears we have in life and replaces it with the one healthy fear to have, the fear of God.

Max Lucado takes these little fears like, the fear of not mattering, and the fear of running out of materialistic things, and goed into scripture to show us why we as believers should not be afraid of these little things in life, as God has already covered all of these.

If God would care for a little bird, and provide for it, how much more would He care for us as humans, created slightly less than himself, but in His image.

Do yourself a favour, get yourself this book, and study it. Start fearing God, in a  healthy way, and start trusting on Him to provide for your everyday needs.

Max Lucado has taken this topic of fear, so prevalent in the times we are living in, and replaced it with God. He placed God in control of our fears, and we all should read this book to get back on the track.

Acts

December 10, 2009 in Challenges with 0 Comments

serve

Listening to another Podcast from Mark Batterson at National Community Church in Washington DC, on Chapter 2, the early church, I got inspired by the title of the book of Acts.

What does this title mean to you?

Is it just another title of a book, or does it tell you something of what the Christian Church should look like?

The message I got from this sermon I was listening to, was that we need to do. Jesus didn’t come to earth to speak to us, He came to earth to die for our sins. He came to DO!!!

So, the challenge for today is how are we going to DO for the world? We must step out of our comfortable churches where we get served and start serving…

Christmas

December 9, 2009 in Challenges with 1 Comment

christmas

Due to me having ‘bloggers’ block again, I am posting a writing from Louis Brittz on Christmas. In many ways he expresses what I feel toward Christmas in the modern day, but his ending really got me just now.

Christmas, christmas. What to say?

If it weren’t for the vast splotches of red everywhere I guess I’d be O.K.

This is an unchangeable fact of life: Red is the base colour of Christmas. And it insults my sense of good taste. Red is the colour of fire engines, stop signs and matadors. It says danger! Stop! Anger! It’s also the hue of measles, pimples and other wortlike growths. Do we need a whole season clothed in it? Stuffed up men dressed in it from top to bottom, on every corner of every shopping mall?
Whole department stores transformed into fever factories? How is this supposed to make me happy?

And if it weren’t for the Christmas bells I could cope.

I’m not from Switzerland. I’m not a goat or a cow. The ringing of a high-pitched bell doesn’t loosen the hidden merriment deep in my soul. To me a bell means that it’s time to go to class. That there’s a fire warning somewhere. That I must leave the significant things I’m doing to go wash up for dinner. That I must get out of bed! It’s a disturbing sound. It’s too high, too shrill, too clear and too piercing. It’s a javelin stuck in my inner ear. Satan’s arrow, I’m sure. It’s the blinding flash of white light behind my left eye before the headache settles in.

In fact, it’s the exact opposite of the warm, gurgling sound generated by an electric guitar played through a tube amp. If that doesn’t sum it up for you, you’re lacking in paradigm and I weep for you.

And what’s up with the fascination with snow? Where did the idea of a white Christmas come from and why is it so romantic?

Snow works great in pictures. Pretty and pristine. But that’s a lie. Up close it’s filthy, wet and horrible to drive on. And very, very cold. In truth I’m a bit biased (and maybe jealous?) because I’m from South Africa. Christmas for us is a sundrenched day at the beach. Dreaming of a white Christmas in South Africa…could get you thrown into prison. (Please consider our political history).

Oh, and then there’s the floral paper with bows on them that we wrap our too-expensive gifts in.

Floral paper.
Bows, for crying out loud.

What is this, the Seventies?

And woman in church who sing too high. Why is it at Christmas that all the woman sing too high? Why are Christmas songs so written that they almost always support a piercing soprano harmony? Is this the enemy’s way of keeping musical people out of church at Christmas? Should I consider spiritual warfare?

…So I don’t celebrate Christmas…or do I?
Of course I do.

I’m not enough of a non-conformist as to abstain. I’m not Ebenhaezer Scrooge!
I have a family after all, and this is such a great family time. And what harm could be done, I ask myself, in celebrating Christmas with the rest of the world? It’s such a non-violent thing. If it has an aura, I can only imagine it pink. Peachy, rosy, soft and warm…what ever.

I’m just really glad that Christmas doesn’t originate from the Bible like the real Christian celebrations. That God didn’t tell me to do Christmas or He’d frown upon me and smite me. Because then I’d have to go all out for it. As you can imagine, I’d have to really dig deep and I’m afraid the well might be found dry.

Oh, but I’m happy for the kids! For them Christmas is the most splendid time of the whole year. Gifts, food, merriment, more gifts, more food. And a general license to do some things that they would never get away with during the rest of the year. And for the same reasons I’m happy for us grown-ups. We get a semi-Christian-like festival filled with wonder, amazement and a touch of magic. We get the excuse to make contact with our inner child and say to it “Come out to play.”

Christmas is when I retreat into my head, look at the whole shebang and think: “If only I never grew up.”
But then, I feel like that most days.

Jesus,
I’m sorry that I’m such a partypooper. That I have to be so adult, morose and “real” about everything. Sorry for shattering the postcard-picture that gleefully romantic people have of a very happy season. I concede that Christmas is cool. You were born in a manger, which is a very special place to be born for a human. You were born of a virgin, and I don’t think it had ever happened before. Nore has it happened since. There was that very special star, the shepherds, the wonderful gifts that wise men brought, bad old King Herod who tried so hard to get at you…It’s a pretty amazing story and it deserves to be told. I can even imagine that You’re behind the whole Christmas-hype. How else would we get the whole non-Christian world to sing carols with your name in and be reminded that the Word became flesh and they called you Jesus?

And at the barest,most basic minimum, every person ever born should get to have a birthday. On this earth, what we call Christmas is as close as you will come.

Extending you basic Faith

December 8, 2009 in Challenges with 12 Comments

jesus-cross

What is your basic faith? Is it believing that God created the heavens and the earth, or is it believing that Jesus died for OUR sins on the cross, or is it simply believing that everything happened by chance and there is no eternity waiting for us?

If your basic faith is the last one, I want to commend you, in really having great faith, as this is a bigger stretch of faith for me, than having faith in a Creator and an Omnipotent and Omnipresent God.

To really believe that we humans, and other animals, have just happened form nothing, and to be passionate about it, really is amazing to me. How emotions, and all that goes with it, could just happen. That the drive that all of us have in us, is just because…

I have great faith in the fact that God created everything. That I am not here by accident, and that God really has a plan for my life, which He is already putting in place. By having this faith, I want to extent it by doing what Peter tells us in 2 Peter 1:5-9 (The Message)

So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.

By doing this, I really want to develop and grow in my relationship with God. I want to be able to get up in the morning, and tell the person on the street corner that Jesus loves him, and pray for him, and be able to, confidently, lead that person to the cross, and give him/her eternal salvation.

I want to be able to take my musical talents, and be able to play to people in such a way, as that they will want to know what is different in me. I want to be able to bless people just by playing music.

A guy in our worship team came to me one day, and said that me and my wife brings healing through our music that we make, and I want to start seeing that. Not just play and be recognised, but to start making a difference for the kingdom, by using my talents that God gave me. To live my calling, and to be able to lead people to the cross.

I believe that we all have a certain thing that God gave us, that we need to use for His glory, to lead the unsaved to the cross. Let us all go out, spend time with God, and hear from Him how we are going to be able to do these things with our talents, and let us change the world one day at a time, through the power of Him that gives it to us.

We can do it

December 4, 2009 in Challenges with 609 Comments

positive

I have been listening to the Hero sermon series from NCC (National Community Church) for the last couple of days, and this morning I was listening to a sermon about Caleb.

Now most will know his name, but he basically lived in the shadow of Joshua. However, he had the best attitude of all the spies that was sent into the Promised Land, and had a belief greater than what he could see in the physical.

Numbers 13:26-29 (The Message)

They presented themselves before Moses and Aaron and the whole congregation of the People of Israel in the Wilderness of Paran at Kadesh. They reported to the whole congregation and showed them the fruit of the land. Then they told the story of their trip:”We went to the land to which you sent us and, oh! It does flow with milk and honey! Just look at this fruit! The only thing is that the people who live there are fierce, their cities are huge and well fortified. Worse yet, we saw descendants of the giant Anak. Amalekites are spread out in the Negev; Hittites, Jebusites, and Amorites hold the hill country; and the Canaanites are established on the Mediterranean Sea and along the Jordan.”

From this section you can see that the scouts had no hope of being able to capture the land with their own power. In the very next verse, Caleb steps in

Caleb interrupted, called for silence before Moses and said, “Let’s go up and take the land—now. We can do it.”

What would happen in your life, if you started to take up a ‘Can Do’ attitude. To start to look at life with faith, and knowing that with God on your side, you can do anything.

We tend to get caught up in the fact that we, as people might not be able to do something, and then we forget that God is always with us, and the He is all powerful.

Let us start and be more positive, taking on a ‘Can Do’ attitude, and I promise you that life would just start to feel a bit more breezy.

Not of this world

December 3, 2009 in Challenges with 12 Comments

baptism

How many times a day do we just wish that the people around us, would accept us and love us?

How many time a day we just do something, because the people around us do it?

I am quite often guilty of trying to fit in, because it is the easy thing to de, but Jesus is pretty clear about this.

John 15:18-19 (The Message)

“If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me. If you lived on the world’s terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God’s terms and no longer on the world’s terms, the world is going to hate you.

Pretty harsh, to know that the world is going to hate you, isn’t it?

Why do we do it then? Why do we follow God, an proclaim to the world that He is the salvation and the way?

This answer will probably differ for many of us, but for me, it is because I only need the love and acceptance from one person, and that is God. For a very long time in my life, I was an ‘Sunday’ Christian. Going to church, and playing in the worship band, but to get the sine for being on stage, and to impress with my talents. I went to church, because my family went to church.

Only after the birth of my daughter, did I really come to grips with what it means to be a Christ Follower. Now, all I want to do is serve, and be Jesus for the poor and the needy, to help the widows and the orphans.

I pray that all of you reading this, will also get to that point, if you haven’t reached it yet, where you can stand up boldly before the world, and proclaim the name of Jesus.

Another scenario from scripture that I really like around me becoming less and Jesus more is in John 3

John 3:27-30 (NIV)

27To this John replied, “A man can receive only what is given him from heaven. 28You yourselves can testify that I said, ‘I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him.’ 29The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete. 30He must become greater; I must become less.

Throw in the towel

December 1, 2009 in Challenges with 3 Comments

throwtowel

NO, not that way. Let us read John 13 and take it from there

John 13:1-17 (The Message)

Just before the Passover Feast, Jesus knew that the time had come to leave this world to go to the Father. Having loved his dear companions, he continued to love them right to the end. It was suppertime. The Devil by now had Judas, son of Simon the Iscariot, firmly in his grip, all set for the betrayal.

Jesus knew that the Father had put him in complete charge of everything, that he came from God and was on his way back to God. So he got up from the supper table, set aside his robe, and put on an apron. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of the disciples, drying them with his apron. When he got to Simon Peter, Peter said, "Master, you wash my feet?"

Jesus answered, "You don’t understand now what I’m doing, but it will be clear enough to you later."

Peter persisted, "You’re not going to wash my feet—ever!"

Jesus said, "If I don’t wash you, you can’t be part of what I’m doing."

"Master!" said Peter. "Not only my feet, then. Wash my hands! Wash my head!"

Jesus said, "If you’ve had a bath in the morning, you only need your feet washed now and you’re clean from head to toe. My concern, you understand, is holiness, not hygiene. So now you’re clean. But not every one of you." (He knew who was betraying him. That’s why he said, "Not every one of you.") After he had finished washing their feet, he took his robe, put it back on, and went back to his place at the table.

Then he said, "Do you understand what I have done to you? You address me as ‘Teacher’ and ‘Master,’ and rightly so. That is what I am. So if I, the Master and Teacher, washed your feet, you must now wash each other’s feet. I’ve laid down a pattern for you. What I’ve done, you do. I’m only pointing out the obvious. A servant is not ranked above his master; an employee doesn’t give orders to the employer. If you understand what I’m telling you, act like it—and live a blessed life.

Reading this, and understanding what washing feet meant in Jesus’ time, a chore for the lowliest servant of the household, this passage starts to take a whole new meaning.

According to this passage where Jesus says that if He doesn’t wash Peter’s feet, Peter won’t be able to be part of what Jesus came to do, and that is to SERVE.

We as Christians need to start getting out, and getting sweaty for Christ. We need to start serving people, ALL people. Especially those that would never expect to be served. The orphans and the widows, the needy and the sinners.

Jesus never served in the well off places, but He went into the slums of the times, and ate with prostitutes and tax collectors.

I challenge all of you, and myself, to start putting a towel around our waists and to start serving. Especially over this Christmas period. Why don’t we try and get one demographic of people needing service, and go out and bless them with what they least expect. Let us go out, and preach the name of Christ, and IN the name of Christ, to the people that need to hear it the most.

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