Hi Everyone
I went to church tonight. Now that’s not something new for me, I love going to church, but tonight I went to Moreleta Park NG Kerk.. I never thought I’d ever end up in an “NG Kerk” again in my life, but God has been talking to me again in the last week and especially in the last two days. He showed me so many things about myself. Things I was blind to or things I never thought existed. One of those things was an old “grudge” against the “NG Church”. It’s the church I grew up in and it’s where I got my Christian fundamentals. But it’s also the chruch that turned it’s back on me and caused me to turn my back on God.. Sure I still had a choice, but I was so angry with God and with the church.
So I got saved in October 2010 and since then God filled me with joy, a happiness that was better than anything and He took away all my pain and all my suffering from the past. Or so I thought...
This last week I found that I am not as strong as I thought. I still need a lot of work and that’s the reason why God wanted me here in Pretoria. Maybe He’s got more in store for me, but for now He wants to work with me and get to know me. Last week He showed me half of the story. When I wrote about how we should tell Him everything about ourselves. This week He showed me the meaning of it. The meaning of really opening your heart and soul to Him.
So as I said God took away the pain and suffering from the past and in the last year He showed me many things including a lot of miracles and He also saved my life from almost certain death.
But the “honeymoon” is now over. Now He is really going deeper with me. It’s like being butchered to the bone and exposing every single thing about myself to myself and to Him. The pain of the past might be gone, but have I really dealt with everything?
Sure, many things really is gone. God delivered me from a lot of things in my past, but I found that there are still one or 2 things that I have to admit to myself and to God before He can take it away.
One thing being the old “grudge” against the “NG Kerk” and tonight God delivered me from it. At first I felt that I should have rather gone to a charismatic church tonight, but when we started to sing, the words of the songs made me reallise that this is where I need to be tonight and when God’s plan comes together it’s just amazing as the message was so relevant, but besides that, the best thing that I can take away from this experience is that I don’t have any problem with the “NG Kerk” anymore. I realised that I judged a church because of my bad experience, but I could see how they touch many lives and in the process gives glory to our Father. They might have a few different rules and most of them are “man made”, but I could feel God’s presence and that is not “man made”. I think I know God well enough to recognise Him when He shows up and He was definitely there, sitting on the open chair next to me.
I think the one message I have tonight is something that you’ve heard before. Don’t judge. Don’t judge the church and don’t judge the people. Everyone is different and everyone has a different way of believing, but we all serve the same God and that’s the most important thing. Do we all have a personal relationship with God? That is not deteremined by the church you go to, that is determined by you and you alone.
The other message I have relates to my previous blog post.
Getting to know God on a very intimate level.
So I spoke about my “grudge” against the church, which is now gone. Just please know that the word “grudge” sounds so harsh and since I’ve been saved I didn’t really hate the church, I was delivered from hate, but I still had this small thing somewhere deep inside that I didn’t even know of.
Now God also showed me a couple of other things that I didn’t even know of but became very apparent this past week. Now I must say, the way God showed me these things is just amazing.
He first made me face my weaknesses by events that occurred this past week. He didn’t come to me in a dream and pointed out a few things that I need to repent off and then I’m fine. He showed me these vulnerabilities in real life. So I had a very hard time facing them and then, this weekend, after I’ve dealt with it all in the wrong ways and after I screwed up, yet again, He showed me the meaning of it. When you think you figured something out, thats when you have to realise that you just explained the obvious and that you are nowhere close to the root of the problem. God came to me and showed me the roots of these “issues” that I had. I can now give all of these things to God as He reveals them to me. Now something I also realised is that we are never going to be perfect in this life. There will always be things underneath the surface, but we should not stop digging and we should not stop talking to God about it. He is the only doctor who can really take away all the bad and heal you. I saw a bumper sticker tonight reading: “Stay healthy... walk with God” .
I am not going to mention everything He showed me as this is a blog and my relationship with God is as personal one between me and the Father, so sorry, no details, but the point I am trying to make is that I want to reiterate what I said last week...
You have to be honest with God. Remember that He already knows everything, but it’s only when you tell Him about all your pain and all your weaknesses that He will start talking to you and show you how to go about it.
A personal relationship with God is a 2 way interaction. It’s not a monologue. Tell Him what scares you, tell Him what hurts you. Tell Him about your fears and your weaknesses. You have to give it all to Him. Everything. Only then will He take it away, but you have to take that first step.
God heals. He fills us with joy and He gives us a new life. Do you want it? Do you accept it?
Something I will share tonight that God showed me is His tremendous love. Now I thought I had experience His love in the last year, but in this past week God showed me how much He really loves us. I don’t think we can ever explain it, but just think of it this way. Would you give up your son?
Easy question? No. You would never? Would you give up anyone that you care about? Would you let them die if you had a choice? Would you even be able to look at them while they suffer? All of us has lost loved ones. Maybe just an aunt or a grandmother, but we had to stand at the grave, watching the coffin lowered into the ground. It’s right at that point where it usually hits me that hardest. That realisation that it’s over. It’s the end and you will never see that person again. The only thing you have left is memories and overtime this will also fade away. It breaks your heart and you never really heal from it. We go through years of mourning and sometimes we find something to fill that gap, but even 20 years after you have lost someone to the grave, you could still feel something is lost when you look at a picture or when you are remind of a specific memory.
Now just try to think how much pain God had to go through to give up His Son. Remember that sadness and pain is emotions that God created because He can also feel it. He knows exactly what it means. Just think how much it must have hurt Him to give up His only Son.
Now let’s go further... How much do you need to love someone to give up your Son for them?
Just imagine how much God loves us that He gave His Son and watched Him being tortured, being humiliated and watched Him die on a cross. What would you do if you had to see your son go through all of this? Would you not get angry? I think some of us would instantly go mad and end up in a mental institution.
But God loves us so much that He endured the pain of the death of His Son for us.
In John 17:23 Jesus prays to the Father:
”I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”
So God loves us as much as He loves Jesus.
Can we even begin to understand what this means?
That God loves us, you and me, useless sinners and pittiful beings as much as He loves Jesus.
I challenge you this week to still pray to God and open up to Him, but also to sit and think about His love for a minute or 2. Just sit in silence and think about how different things would have been if not for God’s infinite love.
Blessings and joy for the week:-)
B
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