Showing love to those that need love.

April 30, 2010 in Challenges with 5 Comments

I am struggling a bit with putting this into practice.

A friend told me last week that I am to her love, in the way that I interact with other people and such, but for me it is not so. I tend to struggle sometimes to rather not make a sarcastic comment, because it might hurt someone, and yes, I fail quite a bit at this.

I also know part of my calling in this world, and by the way, it is part of yours as well, is to show God’s love to the people around you.

Now, I have this other friend that finds it impossible to find God in his life lately, and every time I have some kind of conversation with him around this, it simply breaks my heart that I am not able to show him God’s love.

So how does one do it?

It seems to me that every time I try to show love deliberately, I fail big, but if I don’t think about it, somebody comes and tell me stuff like I told you before.

This is just one incident like this, and I sometimes loose heart myself because I am unable to help this friend of mine, which I struggle to handle.

So, how does one show love deliberately?

Nothing is impossible for God

April 29, 2010 in Challenges with 4 Comments

Last night, me and my wife finally got time to watch Facing the Giants, yes I know we are behind the times, but bear with me.

While watching the movie, I continually caught myself thinking that they are pushing the workings of the Lord just a tad too far for me. Come on, how can all these things happen. The underdogs win the state football championship, and on the same night, the coach, after earlier finding out he is sterile, heard he is about to become a father.

This morning, as I got up, and got ready for the day, I felt like the Holy Spirit telling me that I must stop having such little faith. I mean, if I have the faith of a mustard seed, I will be able to tell a mountain to go jump in the ocean and it will happen, so why can’t God decide to bless a team and a family so much that the human mind can’t comprehend it?

Well, in the end, I could do little else but to ask forgiveness for my lack of faith.

Later in the day, I remember I have a CD in my car about a testimony of a person, that I don’t know the name of, that was literally resurrected on the morgue table, as the doctor was getting ready to do an autopsy. This CD has been in my car for more than 2 weeks already, but I have not listened to it yet, but I soon realised why, because I had to learn this mornings lesson, before I could really appreciate the testimony of this person.

Praise be to God, and may we all have the faith to believe for great miracles in this world.

Nice

April 28, 2010 in Challenges with 4 Comments

nice

–adjective,nic·er, nic·est.

1. pleasing; agreeable; delightful

I read a blog post on The High Calling Blogs site last night which got me thinking in such a way that it has been occupying my thought the whole morning up till now.

This blog post commented on that we as Christians sometimes feel we always need to be nice, but in a leadership position it is sometimes a problem. It immediately came to me that we as Christians was not called to be nice, but to love our neighbour, after we love God with all our hearts. Nothing in there about being nice.

I truly believe the commercial image we have of Jesus is completely wrong. Movies and books have painted Jesus as this complacent nice guy with blue eyes. Always talking softly with the people around Him etc. But if you actually read your Bible, you will find Him chasing people out of the temple with a whip, and talking pretty much straight up to the Pharisees.

Do you think Jesus was ‘nice’ with the people when He chased them out of the temple?

I think NOT!

He did it in love yes, by teaching them that the temple is a place of worship and not of trade. He had to speak harshly to the Pharisees to get them to see the issues with their views on religion.

Loving someone doesn’t always mean that we have to be nice. If I had to be nice all the time to my daughter, she would run amok in the house, and in the end she would learn nothing. I have to teach her in love, which sometimes means that she needs to get a spanking or a time-out.

We need to get away from always trying to be nice, and start to get back to what Jesus commissioned us to do, and that is to show love, even if it means we sometimes need to not be nice, and be straight forward and harsh.

The High Calling Blogs

April 27, 2010 in Challenges with 670 Comments

Why did I start to blog?

I started this blog, because I entered a journey with God, where He wanted to challenge me in ways that I have never before been challenged.

After going at it for a while, I realised that it does not help me much, if I sit alone in a corner writing these things, with only a small group of people reading about my journey, but I realised that I can bless other people with what I am learning from the Lord on this journey.

This led me to search for communities that shared my values, and would help me to grow as a blogger/writer.

I eventually came across The High Calling, and am pleased to say, that I have now joined their community, and I am looking forward to spend time integrating and learning from and with the community.

Keeping the dream

April 27, 2010 in Challenges with 3 Comments

Do you dream?

Do you have a God given dream? A dream that you know was placed in your heart by our Father, and that you must realise before you die?

Do you have something that drives you to do certain things to make that one thing happen eventually?

Well I have one, one I realised was a God given one only recently, and I also know that it is going to take me some time to actually get to a point where I can live out this dream, due to financial implications and time constraints, etc.

But the problem is, I know this dream will only get to be realised in about 5 years’ time, so what do I do to keep this dream alive, since satan’s best weapon is to steal our dreams, which in turn will break our hope, and he in turn hopes that it will make us doubt in our Father and His promises.

Since my dream is HUGE, in the sense of time and money, and I KNOW that I will not be able to do it for a while still, so I need to do small things in the meantime to keep this dream going and growing.

My dream is to travel Africa with a Land Cruiser, and to minister to the orphans and widows. God also told me that this ministry will not be funded by a church, and the funds will mainly come from myself and some sponsors along the way.

Now, the implications is that I can get caught up in making the money through me and my fathers’ business, and forget about this dream, which is exactly what satan wants, but I have some contingency plans in place for this.

One, is to go on small outreach trips, with different groups, when and where the chances appear to do this.

The other plan is to have a group of brothers and sisters, keep me aligned with this dream, and have them pray for me about this on a regular basis, and be accountable to them in order to put the things needed in place to make this dream happen.

So, what is your dream, and what are you doing to keep this dream alive?

On being good and being saved

April 22, 2010 in Challenges with 15 Comments

It is easy being a good person in worldly terms.

It is easy to help the poor, because you feel like it is your obligation to do so, since you have more.

But is it always easy being a good Christian. Meaning, to be the good person, and to live out the ethics etched in your heart by the Word of God?

To always give to the less fortunate, and to take care of the widows and the orphans, without pass? When the street vendor walks past your car window, to greet him friendly and say no thanks, or to ignore the person, or to swear at them, which we see way too often.

God has challenged me to in time move my ministry to the African Orphans out there. To go and do upliftment trips to the orphanages up there in big and dark Africa, and to stop sitting on my hiney, at the comfy church building where I can take, take and take a little bit more. To move away from the institution called the Church, and to move into a Jesus like life. To go spend my time with the unsaved, and to love them. Not preach to them, but only to love them. show them that there is still someone that cares, and to stop judging them. To stop asking the question to the prostitute of why she is doing what she is doing, but to start to understand that she does not want to be there, and she has forgotten what it feels like to be loved, and then to show her that love. To hold her in my arms, without expecting ANYTHING, and I say again, ANYTHING, from her.

I find it that we as Christians find it way too easy to sit in church and our cell groups, saying to each other what we must do and asking what we can do, but how often do we really go out and do something? And why do we need to make it an event to show love to the “DIFFERENT” people out there? Why can’t we start to make it part of our lives, and really start to live that way, and move away from all there little rules we have created within our organised religion, which Jesus even despised of the Pharisees. We need to get back to reading the Bible, and not other books written by people. These books might be good, and they might teach us a lot, but really people, too often we take what a person wrote in a book, or on a blog, above what the Bible tells us.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27 (NIV)

The Meeting

April 21, 2010 in Challenges with 2 Comments

So for the last year, year and a half, I had this need within my soul to have a personal meeting with my Father. Yes, we have been talking to each other, and there has been prophesies etc, but nothing like what happened on Friday evening.

For the last couple of weeks I had this nagging feeling that I must make an effort to go to the Mighty Men Conference with my friends, and not stay home as I planned on doing, due to Reuben being born. Luckily for me, God placed the same thing in my wife’s heart and I was able to go to the conference.

During this time, a friend made the comment that God had a special meeting planned with me at Mighty Men, but whatever that meant was a mystery to me at the time.

OK, so fast forward to Friday evening…

Getting to the arena where the conference is held, me and my friends sat down, and all of a sudden I was alone. I was unaware of anybody around me, and I started to have this amazing feeling come over me that something big is on the way.

The next thing I know, somebody is hugging me from behind, and just repeatedly saying, “I am SO glad that you made the effort to come here”. After this, God started to tell me that I must not partake in any of the consumer part of the weekend or the woo-waa, but to really focus on Him, and only Him. Yes, Angus Buchan was the person dellivering the message, but God WAS the Message.

So, needless to say, this was an intensely emotional experience, and the rest of the evening was a bit of a blur of fervent prayer and just conversing with God, and not really hearing anything of the message being delivered that session.

For the rest of the weekend, God answered some other questions for me that I had, with regards to my ministry I need to be in, and how I am supposed to carry on about achieving that, but that is something for another post.

I thank the Lord for the friends/brothers He placed in my life, and that I know they will be with me every step of the way from here, even if it might sometimes be a slow and difficult walk, but we will get to the end , where we will see the rewards of our labour.

MMC2010

April 15, 2010 in Challenges with 2 Comments

So, tonight we will be leaving for the Mighty Men Conference.

This is an annual event held by Angus Buchan on his farm in Greytown, KwaZulu Natal.

Last year there was about 200 000 men present, and they are expecting around 400 000 men this year.

This must have been a highlight in my year last year, mainly due to 2 specific friendships that started there, and have just been growing ever since. We will be going together again this year, along with 13 other men, and I pray that God will come and meet each man at the level of his expectation this weekend.

I was not planning on going, since my son was born only 3 weeks ago, but God started to press it on my heart that I must go, and me and my wife, both at the same time made the comment that I must go, by means possible.

God came through, in that Reuben is healthy and strong, which makes it possible for me to go this year, and I just know that He has a specific meeting with me planned this weekend.

I would really appreciate it, if each and every one of you can pray for me and all the other men that are going with this weekend will have a special meeting with the Lord, and hopefully this will bring about change in our country, if 400 000 men are willing to take on their cross for the Lord, to make South Africa the country God has planned it to be.

Confused

April 12, 2010 in Challenges with 3 Comments

I read this passage yesterday, and it has been confusing me since then.

Maybe I am over analysing it, but please, if some of you learned people can explain this to me I would really appreciate it.

Mark 12:24-27

Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”

What is confusing me, is what happens to the marriage as an institution in heaven? If we are like to be lifted up to be like angels, would we not care that we were married on earth, or had kids?

A wee bit of randomness

April 9, 2010 in Challenges with 3 Comments

So, I am sitting here, thinking that it is about time I write another blog post for Unsafe Challenge, but for the life of me, I really do not have a clue what to write about.

I have a couple of things going on in my head, but they are all slightly random, so I am going to list two or three of them, and maybe you will feel compelled to pray with/for me for some of this, or maybe I can point you to a resource that might be of benefit too you.

  • Life is great with little Reuben that was born last week Monday, 29 March 2010. He is doing great, and is growing by the minute.
  • His little sister loves him to bits, and can’t get enough of her new ‘Boeta’ (Afrikaans for brother)
  • My wife’s family needs serious prayer, her step-father had a major operation last week, and he is in critical condition. We are all praying for a miracle, in order that God’s name can be exalted through this.
  • I watched this documentary last night called ‘Missionary Positions’ about xxxchurch.com This really was great to see, since I have heard about them, and read some blogs from some of the people that work with them. What they are doing is AWESOME, in my opinion. Maybe you are struggling with a porn addiction, or maybe you know of someone that is struggling with it. Jump over to their site, and get some of their tools available there that will surely help you in you struggles.

So there we go. I could probably do a post on each of those topics, but I just don’t really know what to write in them.

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