Wednesday 15 June 2016

The Bible


God take us back!


God take us back,
2 the place we began the simple pursuit
of nothing but You
The innocence of a heart in Your hands …
oh God take us back,
to an unswerving faith
in the power of Your name
A heart beating for Your kingdom to reign,

a church that is known for Your presence again

Thursday 9 June 2016

Broken hallelujah's

How many of our relationships are in ruins… perhaps it is your marriage-  once a solid fortress, but now only the ruins of a once safe place. Maybe its your relationship with your children….  Or even worse… your relationship with Jesus.

Hopefully, for a split second, I caught your attention and with it came the realization I was actually talking to you.

“Still a song of adoration will rise up from these ruins

With my love and my sadness I come before You Lord. May heart’s in  thousand pieces, maybe even more. Yet I trust in this moment. You are with me somehow, and You have always been faithful. So Lord even now when all that I can sing is a broken hallelujah, when my only offering is shattered praise, still a song of adoration will rise up from these ruins and I will worship You and give You thanks. You have given me much more than I deserve - How could I doubt Your goodness, Your wisdom, Your grace?

Lord hear my heart at this painful place, when all I can sing is a broken hallelujah when my only offering is shattered praise … UNTILL I rise up from these ruins

Friday 3 June 2016

KEEP ON keeping on


A wife’s prayers for her husband have a far greater effect on him than anyone else’s, even his mother’s. A mother’s prayers for her child are certainly fervent. But when a man marries, he leaves his father and mother and becomes one with his wife (Matthew 19:5). They are a team, one unit, unified in spirit. The strength of a man and wife joined together in God’s sight is far greater than the sum of the strengths of each of the two individuals. That’s because the Holy Spirit unites them and gives added power to their prayers.

This oneness gives us a power that the enemy doesn’t like. That’s why he devises ways to weaken it. He gives us whatever we will fall for, whether it be low self-esteem, pride, the need to be right, miscommunication, or the bowing to our own selfish desires. He will tell you lies like, “Nothing will ever change.” “Your failures are irreparable.” “There’s no hope for reconciliation.” “You’d be happier with someone else.” He’ll tell you whatever you will believe, because he knows if he can get you to believe it, there is no future for your marriage. If you believe enough lies, your heart will eventually be hardened against God’s truth.

In every broken marriage, there is at least one person whose heart is hard against God. When a heart becomes hard, there is no vision from God’s perspective. When we’re miserable in a marriage, we feel that anything will be an improvement over what we’re experiencing. But we don’t see the whole picture. We only see the way it is, not the way God wants it to become. When we pray, however, our hearts become soft toward God and we get a vision. We see there is hope. We have faith that He will restore all that has been devoured, destroyed, and eaten away from the marriage. “I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten” (Joel 2:25). We can trust Him to take away the pain, hopelessness, hardness, and unforgiveness. We are able to envision His ability to resurrect love and life from the deadest of places.

We each have to decide if you want your marriage to work, and if we want it badly enough to do whatever is necessary, within healthy parameters, to see it happen. We have to believe the part of your relationship that has been eaten away by pain, indifference, and selfishness can be restored. We have to trust that what has swarmed over us, such as abuse, death of a child, infidelity, poverty, loss, catastrophic illness, or accident, can be relieved of its death grip. We have to determine that everything consuming us and our spouse, such as workaholism, alcoholism, drug abuse, or depression, can be destroyed, We have to know that whatever has crept into our relationship so silently and stealthily as to not even be perceived as a threat until it is clearly present — such as making idols of our career, our dreams, our kids, or our selfish desires — can be removed. We have to trust that God is big enough to accomplish all this and more.

If you wake up one morning with a stranger in your bed and it’s your husband (or wife), if you experience a silent withdrawal from one another’s lives that severs all emotional connection, if you sense a relentless draining away of love and hope, if your relationship is in so bottomless a pit of hurt and anger that every day sends you deeper into despair, if every word spoken drives a wedge further between you until it becomes an impenetrable barrier keeping you miles apart, be assured that none of the above is God’s will for your marriage. God’s will is to break down all these barriers and lift you out of that pit. He can heal the wounds and put love back in your heart. Nothing and no one else can. But you have to rise up and say, “Lord, I pray for an end to this conflict and a breaking of the hold strife has on us. Take away the hurt and the armor we’ve put up to protect ourselves. Lift us out of the pit of unforgiveness. Speak through us so that our words reflect Your love, peace, and reconciliation. Tear down this wall between us and teach us how to walk through it. Enable us to rise up from this paralysis and move into the healing and wholeness You have for us.”
 
[Stormie Omartian]

Wednesday 1 June 2016

'n Man se verraad


My man vind die Here, neem ‘n besluit om Hom te volg en vir die eerste keer in die grootste gedeelte van my menswees, voel ek veilig.
Veilig dat my huwelik veilig is. Veilig dat my man die Here se aangesig sal soek wanneer groot besluite geneem moet word. Veilig dat wanneer hy besluite neem wat ek nie mee saamstem nie, ek tog sal onderdanig bly omdat ek in hom glo. Glo dat hy my belange altyd op die hart sal dra en my ten alle tye sal beskerm.
Elke keer wanneer ons in die kerk is, oor die Here gesels, by bidgroepe bymekaar kom, op aanbiddingskampe is, word my man vir my net mooier. Wanneer hy sy hande uitsteek na die Here en hom aanbid kan ek my oë nie van my man afhou nie. Dis sooo mooi. Ek is verlief daarop om te sien hoe verlief my man op die Here is. Hoe hy Hom aanroep en aanbid. Sulke oomblikke is in my geheue inge-ets en ek neem ‘n besluit dat wanneer donker wolke bokant ons dreig, ek dit sal oproep en daarin gaan staan totdat ek druppend vol van genade daaruit kan tree.
En toe ‘n donderstorm met geweld bokant my uitbars, onthou ek niks van my goeie voornemens nie en voel dit asof ‘n weerligstraal my van my voete af ruk.
My man het ‘n verhouding met ‘n ander vrou. ‘n Ouer vrou. Hoe gebeur dit? ‘n Ouer vrou? Ek het myself in ‘n maalkolk van vrae ingedink, totdat ek dronk geword het van al die heen en weer in my soeke na antwoorde. Was dit eerder van wyn – daaruit kan ek nog van nugter word en my vinger op druk.
Ek is vir die wolwe gegooi. Die verwoesting van sy verraad ruk my hart aan flarde. Hoe kon my mooie man wat die Here so liefhet, so afdwaal dat hy met ons, met my, kon dobbel?

‘n Ouer vrou? Die naakte waarheid is net te veel – ek besef ek het gefaal.
Ek is geweeg en te lig gevind. As vrou, as sy maat.
Ek het te besig geraak met my eie dinge en nie ag geslaan op die rooi ligte wat helder rooi flikker terwyl 'n storm aan't broei is nie. 
Hoe las jy iets wat gebreek het sonder blywende skade. Hoe droom mens weer van vooraf.
Ironies hoe mens vir jare aan iets bou en in enkele sekondes kan alles aan skerwe lé.
Ek moet uit hierdie donker gat uit kom. Ek moet erens asem skep, my longe vol suurstof trek en my hartkloppings stil…doef-doef is al wat ek in die doods-snikke van die nag hoor.
Doods-snikke. Ek wonder of ek in staat is om te glo iets kan uit die dood uit opgewek word – as jy nie eens besef het iets is dood nie.
Ek kry myself weer bakhand staan voor die Here. Verlee en verdwaald. Kaal gestroop van voorgee.
Met niks anders om aan te bied buiten ‘n gestroopte hart soos ‘n land na oestyd…
 
Ek rig my oë op na die berge…my hulp sal van die Here kom wat hemele en aarde gemaak het
dis my hoop
dis my geloof
dis my redding

a prayer for my daughter