Mission in South Africa

Day 000: Back in Australia

Lina — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:54:04 +0000

I finally have the opportunity to write something on this blog concerning my calling to Africa and now my return back home. It was a strange feeling waiting at the airport. My whole year had been about waiting and there I was, unable to contain my frustration concering the estatic slowness (hyperbole!) of the ticking clock, though someone could have sworn that the seconds hand was moving at normal speed, I was convinced we were frozen in time.

I have never been a patriotic person, but I turned to my plane partner and asked him (complete stranger) whether he would sing; “I still call Australia home” when we landed. Marijke all of a sudden fell into a deep sleep at this point and the guy just gave me this silly grin. I know. But QANTAS played the song non-stop. I think I might have been in a hypnosis. Forgive me, I did not know what I was saying.

When we finally landed in Australia I felt like a war veteran. lol. My hang luggage had broke and I was dragging it behind me, totally ignorant that the strap was like, over 2 metres long. Picture it, two meters, me dragging my feet like I was walking through sand, and my massive Australian flag that a friend sent to Africa to remind me of home had set itself free and was flapping losely from a pocket out the side. I walked past a whole lines of guys who were grinning and I said; “The road is long, war is tough.” They thought it was funny. Let them laugh at me, lol… I just wanted sleep.

I met my Mother and almost cried. Almost. She looked so tired, so old. So fed up with this life.
If only she knew Jesus – He could make her burdens so much more easier.

A day later I met my church family. My heart was thumping constantly all night! My spirit was refreshed and I realised I reallly do love these people. With all of my heart. I might even die for them, to protect them from harm. They are all so special to me. My shame of previously shaking them from my thoughts, not seeing them as important as they have always been, stayed with me all night. I heard fearful stories of people and their walk with the Lord and it was wonderful, that the same God who restored my faith, has continually worked in the lives of my people. I returned, and I found faith. Some small, some big. But Jesus was in all of it. Praises and blessings to Him! A toast…

So, 1 and a half weeks being back. I have no idea where my ‘life’ is heading. I’m excited, paranoid, happy, sad. But there is one thing that has remained constant. I feel firmly planted on the rock, though I know there will com trials that will be able to put a deep fear into my heart and test where I desire my feet to be planted… but wow. Constant joy. The joy of the Lord will be my strength. Though there was whispers from the enemy through the mouths of the people I love, telling me that I am not acceptable as I don’t follow the worlds standards, I know I have done a good thing. Not because of me, but of Him. He called me there, like my salvation. All I did was say, “Yes Lord, yes.” If an outcome of that is to walk into Australia again with nothing but my suitcase, then so be it. If it means no Babylon… Ok, Ok, exageration. If it means no…. strongholds, no troves of my horded treasures, then I am super-pleased. It will make it easier to see and hear my Lord that way….

Weaknesses have been there, straight off the mark. Two days to be exact. Temptations I am very familiar with. Wow. There is no rest for us in this earth. Come Jesus, come….

Your prayers and your love have been constant. This is to my family. To those who know the Lord…. I always knew you were praying for me. I love you so much. Praise to Yeshua… He has kept us this wonderful, working building… in which He dwells.. every stone having its place. To those who don’t know the Lord, I know you try so very hard to love me the way you see fit and I love you for that. You know I do. x x x

My guitar won’t tune…. Procrastinations are wonderful. Sometimes. lol.

Can I summarise? I am unsure…. What has the Lord done, primarily? He has used me to take the burden off Dave and Lyn through teaching the children. It is a massive burden. I was able to share with them my life, my testimony, my family and extend their vision of the church body. They know they have brothers and sisters everywhere praying for them and upholding them. I encouraged them to always do the same.

Secondarily, he has continued to renew my mind and was able to do so so fast through my environment. He called me to place that was like a desert, spiritually as well as geographically. I was striped bare, of everything I had and I was ashamed of what I saw. I thought I had gotten ‘better’ through my years as a Christian but it was like boot camp. Boot camp because it was intense work and God did not stop. He really used this year to drive me to a compulsion, to a desire to run even with burdens on my back, cramps in my legs… weights on my shoulders, in my heart… mental tiredness… physical tiredness….

He taught me that there comes a time in every Christians life when you will really be put to the test. It could be numerous times, actually. Will you stand? Will you fight to follow Christ? How much do you love him? Yes, and be afraid that you might not be able to, because you won’t. I had to constantly scream, pray, fall on my knees and talk to God. When I didn’t I almost fainted in this race to follow Jesus.

God bless. x x x

Day 318: May I please request the prayers of a righteous man?

Lina — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 15:22:18 +0000

This is a simple entry.
My Father has kept in close contact with me while I have been working in South Africa. Our relationship has definitely grown since I shared with Him a major lesson that I learn’t from God. Forgiveness. I wanted him to clearly understand what I was saying – that is that I could only forgive him because the Lord had given me forgiveness. I explained that I couldn’t really give what I didn’t have and that is sadly, the state that most of the world is in.

My Daddy knows about God. I share about God with him at times but mostly pray that as the Lord moulds me and makes me more and more like Christ everyday, my strongest testimony of what God can do will be spoken through my life. He owns the Word of God (bible) and I have shared with him the importance of truly knowing the Lord. Watching him go through exactly what I went through before I gave up trying and accepted God for who He said He was is hard.

Words are passed – but God’s name is in them. Regardless, I am pleased about this much. Can you please pray for my Daddy, I love him very much and want him to come to a full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ and Saviour. I know that he doesn’t understand what I say at times and to him it is stupid and foolish. But He doesn’t know what He is saying – truly. The same God who loves Him and is giving him a chance to come to Him is the same God who will judge the living and the dead one day – and then in His Justice will rule that those who chose not to know Him will be condemned to Hell forever. If my Father knew this, truly in His heart – then He wouldn’t say the things he is saying.

So, please keep him in your prayers.
I believe that those we are oceans apart, God is bigger than that. He can bring people so close and I thank Him for this chance to share Him.
For His glory.

Thank you. May His grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.

Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving; – Colossians 4v2

I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, – 1 Timothy 2v1

Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. – James 5v16

Day 242: Whom Shall I Fear?

Lina — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:31:41 +0000

What do I fear?

My biggest fear? That people don’t like me for who I am. This becomes an even bigger problem when my strivings, agendas, purposes, whatever you want to call them, are driven by this fear. I find myself quickly becoming unhappy in my stride and though the reason is unknown to me at the time, I feel somewhat ‘wrong’ in my spirit.

I thank the Lord that he perseveres with me because I am a slow learner. I do believe if I was in the Word everyday and coming to meet my Lord at a place every day to just be with Him I would realise this things more quickly and won’t suffer so much for it. But once again, praise Him for His faithfulness.

We are Christian, so we do KNOW the Lord. But I am starting to think more and more about really KNOWING Him. We know Him in that we believe on Him but knowing someone truly is also trusting in them. Having a relationship with them is the only way you can know them better. But the relationship I am talking about with God isn’t a magical Santa Claus type relationship. God is the only one we should fear in this world. Not our earthly masters, not our enemies, not anyone.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” – Psalm 27v1

You can’t make yourself fear the Lord because that is not how it works. Your heart needs to be in the right place for this to happen. But you can choose to not fear other things. In my situation, I can chose to not fear what men might think of me and in doing this I have the ability now to step to the Lord for all things. To learn from him and let him enable me to overcome this fear.

In doing this I will learn to fear the Lord. He guides me in all truth and He does this for a sinner, an unworthy person such as me who still, in His salvation, deserves Hell. But He sees it fit to make me a son of God.

Whom shall I fear, then?

Credibility

Lina — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 10:48:43 +0000

He who permits himself to tell a lie once;

finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time,

until at length it become habitual.

He tells lies without attending to it,

and truths without the world’s believing him.

Thomas Jefferson

The fear of the Lord

Lina — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:12:51 +0000

Personally, I continually wonder why I fall into the same old sins. I pray and I pray for the Lord to deliver me from them, but continually I fall into them. Of course, by His grace I have had deliverance and with some of my old ways, He has taken them already from me. But it has been revealed to me, slowly but surely, that it is the fear of God that IS the beginning of all wisdom – and wisdom is what gives us discernment and the ability to know what is right and wrong and then, to chose right.

I was trying to ‘gain’ the fear of the Lord, when I realise now it is a state of heart. Do you revere Him, or do you make his nature unbalanced in your own eyes causing his graciousness and mercifulness to out-weigh his justice and righteousness?

I just want to simply share what the scripture says about the fear of the Lord.
I will leave it to the reader to gain a better understanding through prayer, the Holy Spirit and going to the word to for a deeper study.

The Fear of the Lord…

Is to hate evil (Pro 8v13)
Is to hate pride (Pro 8v13)
Is to hate arrogance (Pro 8v13)
Is to hate a perverted mouth (Pro 8v13)
Is the beginning of wisdom ( Pro 9v10)
Prolongs life (Pro 10v27)
Causes you to walk in your uprightness (Pro 14v12)
Shall produce strong confidence (Pro 14v26)
Allows children to have a refuge (Pro 14v26)
Is a fountain of life so that one may avoid the
snares of death (Pro 14v27)
Does not cause turmoil but the lack of it does so (Pro 15v16)
Is the instruction for wisdom ( Pro 15v33)
Produces Humility (Pro 15v33)
Produces Honour (Pro 15v33)
Keeps you away from evil ( Pro 16v6)
Has the reward of riches, honour and life ( Pro 22v4)
Is to be lived, always (Pro 23v17)
And the person who fears is worthy of praise ( Pro 31v3o)
Is a blessing (Psa 112v1)
Is a clean thing (Psa 19v9)
Endures forever (Psa 19v9)
Will cause the desire to ‘persuade men’ (2 Cor 5v11)

There is so much more to add! Have you any to add? Please write them in the comment box.. I would love to see them. I hope this was a blessing. It seems it is time for fellowship now so I am off.

Grace and peace to you,
Lulu. (It seems the SA nick from the kiddies, lol)

Day 212: Blessed Assurances for the troubled heart…

Lina — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 07:15:08 +0000

Here are some biblical assurances for the Christian with a troubled heart. Times are getting darker and darker, as the light of the Lord makes it clearer that we are in the last days. Still, let your heart not be troubled and lean not on your own understanding. There are promises that God has made us, that should assure us and give us peace in these times.

Glory be to God on the highest who holds the universe together by His word, and peace to His people on earth.

The part of scripture where I will be getting my devotional is from John 13v36; 14v1-31.

Assurance 1: You are going to heaven. (John 14v1-6)

What is heaven?
- A Kingdom
- A Country
- A Home for God’s children
- A place where our Father lives
- An inheritance
- Jesus is there preparing a place for us
- It is better than any eye has ever seen or any ear has ever heard
- Place of great joy and happiness
- There will be no sickness or death there
- The only way to heaven is to know Jesus Christ

Your assurance is that you will go to a place where you will live with God forever. There is no longer a fear IN death and what a wonderful joy and peace that brings to a believer.

Assurance 2: You can know the Father now. (John 14v7-11)

The type of know here is not to just know as a fact. It is a deeper kind of knowing. It is to trust and depend. It is to have a relationship with the Father through Jesus the Son.

Jesus was claiming to be God here. “If you have seen me (and know me) then you have seen the Father (you know the Father)”

Your assurance is that you HAVE seen God. Jesus has given us that blessing, to be able to see the face of the Father and not die, but live – through His atoning sacrifice.

Assurance 3: Privilege of prayer. ( John 14v12-15)

Jesus promises that whatever you ask in His name, He will do it – to the glory of the Father. Of course, this excludes that prayer for the spiffy car, or the glorious home you have had your eye on. But rest assured that it is because God wants to bind your heart to Christ’s – to make your will His will. He knows what you need, He knows what you want – and His aim, for lack of a better word, is to glorify His name in the whole of the earth and He delights to use you to do it.

Effective prayer is prayer that is prayed in Faith because claiming a truth demands faith. Love and obedience are very much part of effective prayer because it allows us to pray what we know will show His Name for what it is. Holy, Sinless, Glorious and always true to who He is. God.

Our assurance of prayer is a blessing. We must use it correctly and always pray what we believe Jesus would pray, know that out of that will come an abundance of joy and blessing… even though now, we might not see past our trials and tribulations. Learn to walk the footsteps of our master.

Assurance 4: The Holy Spirit (John 14v16-18)

- Is called a ‘Helper’ and ‘The Spirit of Truth’
- Has been given to us as a marker, to know what is truth and what is error. All things that the Spirit leads you in, when checked with the word, will confirm what you already know and even exalt that Word of God, giving you a better understanding and knowledge of it. Making it ‘real’ to you and not just a fact you have learnt. The spirit will always lead to the truth (Jesus, who is God’s living word.)

- Is a helper, a comforter. We sometimes think that a comforter is someone who coddles, nurtures another – like a mother to a child who has skinned his knee and so very near tears…. There is nothing wrong with this kind of comfort and it is actually very important. But after the fact, a mother who is comforting her child will give them the ability to deal with the problem, to allow the child to stand on their own two feet so that next time they hurt themselves, they have the strength of their Mother’s words to move past it. Weak analogy, but it is what the Holy Spirit does in our lives. It continually points us to Jesus our Lord, giving us strength to deal with our trials, and pointing us in the direction in which to fix our hope.

The assurance of the Holy Spirit is a great one, and I have not done it justice. But in reading the scripture again, I felt very, very blessed in this one thing that really stuck out for me. The Holy Spirit is an assurance that you will not be left an orphan.

Jesus is coming back for YOU.

Assurance 5: Our Father’s Love ( John 14v19-24)

If you love Jesus and keep His commandments which means even when you slip, as we all will, you get back up again in repentance because in your heart your desire is to serve your Master, it is proven that you truly love the Lord – and the Father has a love for you.

What an assurance, that even when the world is against you, your Father is for you, with a love that can not be measured.

Blessed is he who is spoken evil of and cursed for His name’s sake… for great is their reward in heaven.

Assurance 6: The Gift of Peace (John 14v 25-31)

The world has a kind of peace but their peace is fleeting. Their peace comes and it goes, almost as unexpectedly as the wind. That is because their peace is based on circumstance. When things go well with them, they have a peace. But as soon as things go bad, as it most assuredly will, their peace is shaken and since they have nothing to cling to for safety, they will be carried away into darkness. – cursing the God who called them to believe in His Son.

The peace of the Christian lasts forever. This is our assurance; that Jesus died for our sins, He rose again according to scripture and on a day allocated by the Father, He will come again to judge the living and the dead – AND His kingdom shall know no end. Our peace lies in Jesus Christ and though we have not seen him, we walk by faith and not by sight. By grace we have been saved and through God proving without a doubt who He is to us personally, we believed in Him and He granted us a peace in our hearts from that day – that as long as we run the race until the end, Jesus is our Saviour, our Lord and Redeemer and that all the assurances listed above shall be ours as an inheritance… until the end…

And even more.

May Grace and peace be yours for always, in the fullest measure.
Please remember, that as the day draws near cling even closer to the Lord Jesus, not becoming bitter or even despairing, knowing that these times only mean that we are that little closer to seeing our God.

May that bring you the greatest joy. Knowing that soon and very soon, we are going to see our King.

In Christ alone,

Lina.

Our Vegetable Garden Project

Lina — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:37:04 +0000

The Old Garden

The New Garden

New Rocket Seedlings

Transplanting Seedlings

Planting Seeds

Day 135: Natural Born Imitators.

Lina — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 14:17:09 +0000

This will be short, as I don’t know how much I can really write on this. But I have been listening to a couple of sermons on Eternal Life. One of them was based on the 1st letter of John. What struck me was how much John talks about love. Love is like, the centre of our lives. Well, this would be true since God is love. This made me a little sad though because I started thinking about my life and how easily I fall and stumble. How easily I turn back to my old ways. We are Peter’s. All of us. But Jesus does not abandon his sheep… he brings us back to the beginning to restore us. Though, I am a little ashamed because sometimes I find myself… well most of the time I find myself simply imitating others around me and just when I think I am doing something because God’s will has been revealed to me and I am simply obeying it, I realise that I am simply copying what others believe to be right.

It is not bad to imitate good behaviour but I believe it can be dangerous when you don’t have a close relationship with your Father God… and you don’t take everything back to him because it could become unclear when you are doing his will or simply mimicking others. Ask His will. Ask for His guidance and help. I am afraid you will end up like me… guilty and disturbed that while my decisions where alike fellow brethren, they could stand in their Lord and I easily faltered, drawn back to my old ways.

I simply want to encourage us to seek wisdom and understanding as a fine jewel… seek to truly know our Father God and His mystery which is Jesus Christ. For us to question our agenda and motivation to our decisions. Why do you help others? Why do you do certain things? Is it because you love your Lord, or because you know how a Christian should act and you are simply imitating that.

May we stand firm on the Rock,
Lina. x x x

Day 127: Update on Jacob Prasch

Lina — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 18:17:42 +0000

As you might have heard, some days after Jacob had left us to preach at another venue, he fell terribly ill and had to go to a hospital in South Africa. What exactly happened I am not sure but it was serious.

We have been continually praying for Jacob, that the Lord will bring him back to full health. At this current time, he has been transported back to the UK and is now resting at home.

He has been saying that what happened to him was a blessing in disguise, as he was close to returning to the UK and if what happened to him happened on the plane, the Doctor’s were not sure if he would make it.

Please continue to pray for Jacob’s condition. I am unsure how he is going at this time, but let us hope in the best.

x x x

Day 126: The Council of Job

Lina — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:26:24 +0000

I have been reading the book of Job and probably will be reading it many more times. I like the scientific side of it, wonderful that such an old piece of scripture can reveal so much about Creation. Only God. Though I get this feeling that Job would reveal alot also about the friends we keep and how to give and recieve good council…

If any of you, my brethren, have any insight to share that you have reieved while reading the Book of Job, I would very much like to hear it… please share.

Hope you are all doing well. You are in my thoughts always and I can’t wait to see you all again.

Lina. x x x