Walk of Faith

Be careful what you ask God for, He just might answer, and it's probably not going to be in the way that you think, in your time frame and you will probably not be ready for Him to do what He's gonna do anyway, simply because you prayed a prayer which is in line with His perfect will. I'm not talking about the “I need a parking place” prayer here, this is the kind of prayer that changes lives...

Denise and I prayed one of these prayers a little while ago. Something along the lines of "God, we feel called to create stuff, but we're stuck in the rat race and can't get out. You know that when we get home from work we're so tired and there is no creativity left, so God, please make a way to get us out of the insane lives we have gotten ourselves into so we can do what you've called us to do"

Sound like a safe prayer to pray? NOT ON YOUR LIFE !!!!!

Denise was a estate agent for a year. During the week, when I got home she was generally on the way out the door and in order to spend time with her, I would usually go with, and often we would get back at 8 - 9 o'clock at night. On the weekends we would run the entire weekend. I found I would go to my job for a rest, and since my job is anything but restful, you can only imagine how nuts things were. So we had no life for a year and a bit. We prayed about this and felt like God was saying to leave, but we were having a big problem with that. Eventually, Denise's boss called her in and asked her to leave. It was a personality clash in a lot of ways, It was not that Denise wasn't a good agent, actually she was more her best agent. Add to this the fact that Denise doesn't smoke and her boss chain smokes, actually, we're surprised that she hasn’t' gassed herself yet. Anyway she expected Denise to sit in the office and be a team player when everyone else was smoking and she wasn't. So she used to work from home and the boss didn't like not having control over her. Denise was her best signing agent at the time, but since we realise there are principalities at work and never a war against flesh, the attitude toward Denise worsened. Denise was having trouble with the word we received from God to "Jump so he could catch her" and the following scripture backup gave to us as we were trying to make this drastic move. How many of you know that you better be very sure God has told you to leave your current employment before you actually do? So Denise asked God for a sign. A week later she was asked to leave. Apparently her boss was panicking that Denise would leave her, so she wanted to do the dumping. Initially it was great, we had our sign, but Denise was still left with the emotions that come with being told to leave your job. Anyway, we know in our hearts this was of God.

So she has been out of work for a year now, and we have been living off of credit cards. For those of you reading this - warning!! Don’t try this at home !! It's not a wise way to do things. Anyway this is what we did and started praying like mad for God's will for us, including should Denise go and get another job. We felt no, we got words like jump and I'll catch you etc. So we prayed and prayed. We are big time into healthy eating and began to feel like there is a way for us to make money in this.

We began to feel God was nudging us to open a food business. We had our chiropractor telling us that we mustn't tell her about it, we must make it for her. We also had a word from a friend of ours who really prays and hears from God that we must start a business. What do we know about running a business? Nothing. No problem, do it anyway. So we started a business called Life Foods making healthy take away foods for those too busy to eat healthy.

Running a business was not in our plans for our life, we want to do creative things, how does this fit? I don't know, but it's the way God is pointing for now, so we go with it. Will it give us our free time? I can only trust that somehow it will. I mean business is busy - right? Well God knows.

Anyway last week we were in fear about this whole faith mission and just wanted confirmation that we are on the right path so we went to our pastor for advice. "Get a job, and like yesterday" was his advice. This left us in so much confusion and fear, and it felt so wrong. Not that we are not open to anything God is saying, if get a job is the next step then we are ready and reporting for duty. So after a terrible weekend, where we prayed like mad, just to overcome the insane fear, confusion and hopelessness, we came to the conclusion that God is saying we must go with the business and run. If anything, it helped to kick our butts into getting real and we also realized the fear of losing what we are standing for here is greater than the fear of it not working. I then did an update of our finances and it's totally scary. We need a huge amount of money each month to be able to pay back the debt we got ourselves into by not trusting God to supply our needs after Denise left her job. We were in so much fear, but prayed like mad only to find that God doesn't seem moved. He's like go for it and trust me. We have leant about asking people for their opinions, especially when we are asking for advice out of fear, and not by instruction from God. The only problem with that is no one seems to be at this level. So it's only Goddie and us. He has been encouraging us left, right and center so we go on.

Watch this space for a good report !!

My Words to Stand by You

God gave me these words to put to Stand By You - The Pretenders. I really encourage you to listen to the song and read these words as you go. Oh, and get some tissues, I know I needed them.

Oh
Why look so glad
When your heart cries out
From deep inside

Don't
Be ashamed to cry
Let your pain come through
Don’t be afraid to hide this from me too

Let my love fall on you
Don't shut me out no more
Nothing you confess
Can make me love you less

I'll stand by you,
I'll stand by you
I will never desert you
I'll stand by you

So
If you're mad get mad
Don't hold it all inside
Come on and talk to me now

Hey
What you got to hide
I see it all inside
And I’ll love you through

When you're standing at the end of yourself
and just can’t go on
Let me come along
I’ll help you fix the wrong

I'll stand by you
I'll stand by you
Won’t ever desert you
I'll stand by you

Take me into your darkest heart’s place
and I'll never mistreat you
I'll stand by you.

And when when the night falls on you baby
You're feelin' all alone
You won't be on your own

So, where have I been?

To those who have missed me since my last posts, thank you very much!! It's great to be appreciated.

We have had no internet for 4 months, basically South Africa is going through a power shortage because the new government (then again over 10 years into democracy, I suppose they're not so new) failed to plan for new power stations and we have had a development boom in recent years, and now we are in a situation where there is not enough power to go around. So the wise guys that be decided on "load shedding" a system of organized power failures for a few hours a day twice a week. The only problem with load shedding is that the power stations cannot handle this and so one of them blew up the other day leaving us one short...

We also have a "New South African" policy of black empowerment, and at the risk of being completely, politically, incorrect and blunt, this basically means that we replace all the whites in the jobs with black people. This system doesn't really consider the qualification standard of the person they are bringing in for the job in question, the point is to reverse the unfairness of the previous government and make up for the apartheid years of suffering. In most cases we have people trying to do a job they are very clearly NOT qualified to do. The point is to place the black man in the highest and most prestigious positions possible as quickly as possible, and due to the lack of education backing them up it usually means no choice but to keep the white man doing the actual work below the high powered guy. In other words it means that the black guy gets a high powered position while the white man below him continues to do the actual work, including his own work while the top notch receives the glory and fat paycheck. This company that supplies our power has been no different. I suppose all this being the result of the reaping of the previous governments bad decisions and the current governments lack of vision and need to comfort their continued pity party from the past. Neither being correct, and the desperate need for a Godly order.

So back to our power stations, basically the new guys have absolutely no idea how to build or fix our old failing ones, we hear that it's going to take 5 years to dust and sweep and get them going again, but the Chinese can build a brand new nuclear power station in a year. Call the Chinese ... but no....

So back to how all this effects our little world.... Our internet was basically a small business providing a wireless internet service but his access to the net was run through different points around town and if any of these points were load shedding, we had no internet, which was more often than not. So he went broke... Anyway, we now have a new and improved ADSL and its working great!!

Well now you know where I’ve been. So what has happened in these last 4 months? A lot. It’s been very busy and not much time to focus on worshiping the Father. This is a very sad state for me especially when He said to me that that’s what I need to do. So much for obedience… We have had some other good things happen though, our pastors at church have really been preaching up a storm and it’s been about getting the body getting into line, emphasis being on growing up and unity. Basically, it is time the church begins to resemble the "without spot or wrinkle bride" Jesus would like to return for. Prayer is the order of the day, and many people have left because they don’t like the heat. I feel a definite change in the atmosphere at church, people are becoming more aware of each other and friendlier. This is a great thing because the attitude around Johannesburg has been one of “Stuff you Jack! You're on your own and if you get in my way I’ll ride you over!!” and sadly this has been the same within the church too, not only specifically our church but church in general. Yet we are supposed to be the examples.

So Christian people who are changing this attitude is a good thing. We also held an "Apostolic and Prophetic Conference" recently and it confirmed that we are not alone in what God is revealing prophetically to us as a body, our nation and eventually world wide. I really have to say that things are changing for the better in a spiritual sense, and I'm expectant of how it will eventually manifest in the natural. Almost to the point where I am really inspired to go and join the band, because the focus has changed, but..... that decision is not up to me..... It’s firmly in God’s hands and I made a deal with Him that HE needs to tell me to join and then confirm it through someone else.

Our pastor recently spoke on our lives being like a triangle where the bottom tier is personal leadership, the middle is public leadership and finally you get purpose leadership. Jesus spent 30 years developing his personal leadership, 3 years in public leadership and 3 days in purpose leadership. It makes a lot of sense to me and I have wanted to argue the point because I just want to get involved in my purpose leadership now, but the more that I have looked at it, I have to humbly admit he’s right. God will never let me get to purpose leadership when my personal leadership is a mess and I can’t handle it. Character is developed in personal leadership. The results affect your public leadership and eventually you get promoted to a place where your purpose leadership can come into play. I just hope I’m ready and get more than 3 days at it.

So I would say that the main thing that has happened in this time is God has really been working on our personal leadership part and Denise and I have had our butts royally kicked through the experience. We have had to change, and I can really see the changes in us and our attitude, it’s really evident when I look at Denise these days. She has grown, and is really blossoming into a beautiful lady that I’m even more proud to be married to. I suppose she can see similar changes in me, but you don’t really notice it yourself. It is my belief that if we get ourselves lined up right, eliminate sin (anything that displeases the Father) God can really bless us, and we are praying big time for this process to happen, for God to sort us our and set our feet on the right path so we can really make a difference in this life where it counts. I don’t really like my job and see it as a waste of time. I want to do something that counts into eternity and I have wondered how this is going to come about. I have almost hated the word business (which is a big buzz word around our church, lots of focus on business people etc.) So, as you might already know we have totally changed our diet since I suffered a panic attack a few years back, we also desperately need a new way to make money. So we have been praying for direction which has become a major one these days, and it feels like God is saying we must start a business. It started with our chiropractor telling us that she really doesn’t have the time to hear about or study this health thing on her own, but we must make it happen for her. She and the rest of Jo'burg just don’t have time to eat healthy and fast food is the order of the day even though they all know it’s unhealthy. So she has practically begged us to please provide her with the "good food" and said she is willing to pay us big bucks to do this for her, she claimed that she is ready to be our first customer.

The idea seemed good, but we were still doubting, and wondering how or where to start with all of this. We really wanted more confirmation that this WAS indeed the way God is leading. Then a new guy at church (an expat from Zim, trying to make a new life for himself and his familyin SA) that we have prayed for once or twice told us that while he was praying for us he felt that we must start a business and just needed to tell us that and that he would continue to pray for us as we walk this road. So here we go, our attempt at getting out of the rat race that we all live in, and you know what they say about it...even if you win, you’re still a rat… Never a truer statement than right now, not just in our city but all over the world. We are both far more creatively driven, and don't buy into this consumer driven lifestyle. We desperately want out of it, I mean, how do you get creative in this mess. JHB is really a busy, I would say mini New York type lifestyle, minus the class of course. There just is no quality of life anymore. So this may be the start of a new life for us, we are hoping and praying for this business to succeed and grow to where we can employ some help and eventually have others running and managing it for us to a degree, therefore freeing us up to explore the creative path we both feel our hearts are called to. It's not that we are not passionate about eating well, and educating people in this area, it is just that it is seperate area of passion for us, and there are deeper things on our hearts than healthy food and cash flow. So that’s the plan, I will keep you posted on where it takes us.

The other night Denise and myself got together and we just worshiped God a bit. It has been a rough week and we both felt miles away from each other and our Father. It was great because God pitched up really quickly and in a big way. It was so refreshing and restoring to hang in Him. Especially since the last few months have been hectic and distractuin driven. We also went on a hike into the Drakensburg Mountains recently and slept in caves, it didn’t go quite as planned, but that’s another post. The long and the short of it is, that it took us a month of running around to source and buy equipment as cost effectively as possible, since this was a last minute decision. We priced every hiking shop we could find to get the best deals etc. It took up a lot of our time, and then we barely got down from the mountain only to hit the ground running again. We feel like we haven’t stopped for 3 months now feel depleted in arears, especially our time with God. So we are really looking for a break to get calm again and focus on what God is telling us to do. This feels like a very crucial and strategic time, and we don't want to miss Him for anything. This week has already gone slightly nuts so hopefully the weekend and next week will be better. I suppose it's all about prioritizing, working on it.

So that in a nut shell is our life for the past 4 months. It has certainly been interesting !!

Talk again soon

NOT ALONE.....

I'LL STAND BY YOU - Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders
Oh
Why you look so sad
tears are in your eyes
Come on and come to me, now

Don't
Be ashamed to cry
Let me see you through
Cause I've seen the dark side, too

When the night falls on you
You don't know what to do
Nothing you confess
Could make me love you less

I'll stand by you
I'll stand by you
Won't let nobody hurt you
I'll stand by you

So
If you're mad, get mad
don't hold it all inside
come on and talk to me now

Hey
what you got to hide
I get angry too,
Well I'm a lot like you

When you're standing at the crossroads
And don't know which path to choose
Let me come along
Cause even if you're wrong

I'll stand by you
I'll stand by you
Won't let nobody hurt you
I'll stand by you

Take me in into your darkest hour
And I'll never desert you
I'll stand by you

And when
When the night falls on you baby
You're feelin' all alone
You won't be on your own

I'll stand by you
I'll stand by you
Won't let nobody hurt you
I'll stand by you

Take me in into your darkest hour
and I'll never desert you
I'll stand by you
I'll stand by you
Won't let nobody hurt you
I'll stand by you
Performed by

Thank you God for standing by me as only you can in this time

Days After

So my last post was a bit depressing, but it was good for me to realize all that I shared. So I haven't really touched the guitar much since then and I've still been contemplating what now? Not really sure but I've seen a lot of examples of people trying to make it on their own, blogs about subjects like 'is a guy who can sing and play the guitar automatically a worshipper?' Examples of people doing this with no great results and it's like Goddie is saying that unless I have Him in it, it's a waste of time. So I feel a little like Jacob wrestling with Goddie over this issue and I'm bound to lose. Great!!

I also got into contact with my friend Adolf who is a brilliant drummer. His wife Adri played bass and put it down when they had their first child who is now 7. Adolf also got really frustrated with not really having a mission in music and was considering giving it up, but lately has found a spark again and been playing etc. So he joined a bunch of guys who are starting a new Afrikaans church and when we spoke, he said he would talk to the guys and see if I could come and play too. We used to gig like this and it was always great fun. I suppose I got my hopes up and if you remember from previous posts, Goddie said a definite "NO" to me joining my own church band which was an issue to get through, so here is a casual opportunity to go and play with a band, something of which I haven't done in years, and when I spoke to him earlier this week, he said that he had convinced Adri to come and play bass again, and he has told the band leader about me, who is also a guy that we played with in a previous gig, and he said no, it's too far to travel and it's not my kind of music. Like I care how far it is, I have withdrawal symptoms here and hey it may not be my music style, but I can fake it!!!

So its really like Goddie is cutting off my every attempt to play with anyone and I'm really questioning "what now Lord?" I know there is something He has for me, so that's not the issue, the issue is what and how do I begin. Should I be trying to contact a brilliant guitar player I know who has a studio and ask him if I can come and learn mixing and producing from him, go to guitar lessons etc, or just do nothing.

I've kind of been shying away from actually picking a guitar up myself, but strangely I have played twice and just played kind of a nice rhythm and got totally into it and all of a sudden I sensed Goddie’s anointing there. I'm not even worshiping Him, not even really talking to Him about this, but He pitched up. That did stuff for me.

Ever feel like you are building a puzzle and the main big piece in the centre of the picture is missing? Nothing is complete without it.......

Well it feels like God has just said He has that piece....

New years revelation

The second half of my army experience was a very lonely one for me, as I was the only Christian along with a bunch of sinners whose only ambition in life as to see how much they could drink in one night. They would spend the night in the bar so I had the dorm to myself and I would sit with my guitar and worship God until His presence was so strong on me that I couldn’t hold the plectrum anymore, or get my fingers to make chords and that point I would lie back in His awesome presence. I have fond memories of this.

Fast forward 17 years. For someone who is digging his guitar our and dusting it off, warming up my figures and trying to remember the chords of all those old songs. I have been playing at home church and really having a hard time with the people there who don’t really seem to care about worship. It really makes me feel like I’m wasting my time with them. I am trying to decide if I should even go back to this as it’s really off putting. That’s a side note however, the main point is that I feel within myself that things aren’t what they used to be and I have really been struggling to get into worshipping the Father again like I used to. Just by myself. I loved it and now it feels like a real drag…

So we arrive to just a few minutes ago when I’m sitting on our upstairs balcony in the cool of the night playing guitar and trying to make it sound good. I played around just trying to get a tune that sounds nice and then went onto an old worship song and sung that. It was at this point that a revelation hit me. I think I totally suck!!! This is my core belief and it’s affecting everything I do concerning music. Like God’s blocking his ears or something - I think not. No wonder my hearts not in this. No wonder He’s not into it either. It’s like I’m giving Him a 99c gift and I know it’s cheap. Ouch!!

So what is the offending cause of this all? Musical excellence – a nasty one. I’ve heard of him before when God told me that He hates it but I never saw it in me like this. It’s strangled every bit of freedom I have within me because I have this notion that I’m tired of being this strummer boy and want to play better, more like the pro’s, don’t have the time to practice all day so what’s the use but I’m certainly not the old Steve just happy to strum away to a song. I want to make it sound great, have a full band playing along (I'm tired of paying alone) and inspiring myself to worship with a full heart. It’s this striving that has grounded my worship to a royal halt!

So now what?

I know God has said I must just come to Him and worship and believe that He can make up the excellence that I need and crave. To do this I’m assuming that I now need to get over my need for this excellence and learn just to worship Him like before. Which brings me back to being happy to just strum again and like it…. So how does one do that?

My Dad and I

This is my Dad and I at the top of Table Mountain.