THE ARCHITECH AND THE BUILDER, MY FIRST SERMON.

This week I decided to share with you one of the coolest things I got to do this year! My Pastor saw something in me and my growth that he set me a challenge to preach at my church before the year was up. Of course I jumped at the challenge, my goal this year was to say yes to God and not fear, because I have quickly learned that if God puts you in a situation that aligns with His will, He will always see you through because He will never set you up for failure! Of course I had plenty of ideas of things I wanted to cover, but ultimately I prayed over it and let God lead me. With the support of my Pastor I decided I wanted to cover the topic of faith and God’s faithfulness. So as the year is coming to a close, and as we reflect on the madness that seems to be following us into the new year, I think this is a great time to share this with you. I hope that it will instil a renewed faith and strengthen you to hold on in these difficult times! This is gonna be my last post of the year, as I take some time to get my life together for this Christmas. See you all in the new year and God bless you for reading and following this little old blog! Get your cup of tea or coffee and get comfortable, this is gonna be a long one.

I read a book this year by Jackie Hill Perry called “Hollier Then Thou” and the question she asked was this “do you realise how we live is the evidence of what we believe about God?” instantly my mind was blown because I had never thought of it like that! What we believe about God is directly linked to our faith! But what is faith exactly? HEBREWS 11:1 “NOW FAITH IS CONFIDENCE IN WHAT WE HOPE FOR AND ASSURANCE ABOUT WHAT WE DO NOT SEE.” To simply put it, faith is acting like God is telling the truth! But how do we know that God is telling the truth?….TRUST! How we trust God and what we trust God with is a good indicator of the depth of our relationship with him! Now we are all in a relationship with someone, whether it’s your partner, friend, family or a work colleague. We all have different levels of trust in these relationships. If we use your partner as an example, when you met them you didn’t instantly trust them with your life, you got to know them over time, you learned about what they liked and disliked, you learned each others love language! It’s through taking that time to get to know them you learned their character and they became trustworthy! So it’s exactly the same with God! Through our relationship, the more time we spend with Him and get to know his true nature, we understand his character, He becomes reliable, He becomes trustworthy! This is what makes our relational Father so good! We already know that God can not lie, it says so in HEBREWS 6:18, so we can trust and believe that God is telling the truth! So now we can put it into action, proving our faith so that we please God, as it says in HEBREW 11:6 “AND WITHOUT FAITH IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE GOD.” We live in a society that says “to see it, is to believe it!” but God is telling us “to believe it, even if we don’t see it!” That is faith!

Faith is measured by the steps of our feet, not by our feelings. We can sometimes forget our feelings are not facts, as we already know our hearts can be deceitful! The society today is all about doing what you feel without consequence, if you feel like a cat today and a dog tomorrow the culture says yes! Do you! live your best life! The culture makes our feelings fact, which is dangerous, because its no longer based in truth! So to walk based on what we “feel” and not by faith in the integrity of God’s word which is truth makes no sense! Many of our faith based decisions go against our feelings and gut instinct! It’s important to really understand what it means to have faith, so what better example to use than Abraham!

HEBREWS 11:8-10 “BY FAITH ABRAHAM, WHEN CALLED TO GO TO A PLACE HE WOULD LATER RECEIVE AS HIS INHERITANCE, OBEYED AND WENT, EVEN THOUGH HE DID NOT KNOW WHERE HE WAS GOING. BY FAITH HE MADE HIS HOME IN THE PROMISED LAND LIKE A STRANGER IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY; HE LIVED IN TENTS, AS DID ISAAC AND JACOB, WHO WERE HEIRS WITH HIM OF THE SAME PROMISE. FOR HE WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS, WHOSE ARCHITECT AND BUILDER IS GOD.” When God called on Abraham to leave all he knew, his family, all he had, his home, all his comforts, Abraham was 75 years old! (how comforting to know that God will use you at any age!) Abraham didn’t question God! He didn’t say ” sorry God, now is not a good time, this doesn’t fit in with my plans” instead he “moved”, he acted, because he knew God’s plan is always better! Remember faith=action, and action is obedience! God made all these promises to Abraham, He promised to make him into a great nation, to bless him, to make his name great, he would be a blessing, and all who blessed him would be blessed, all who cursed him would be cursed, all people on earth would be blessed through him (this includes us!) he would have numerous offspring, too many to count, and like him they were all promised land! God gave Abraham a look at the building plans of his future, and at 75 years old Abraham believed it!

HEBREWS 11:10 “FOR HE WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THE CITY WITH FOUNDATIONS, WHOSE ARCHITECT AND BUILDER IS GOD.” Abraham’s focus was on what was from above! How many of us can honestly say the same?! It’s so easy to get caught up in the here and now, what we have and what we don’t have! The culture we live in tells us we don’t have enough, we shouldn’t be content, we should look for more! But look at Abraham, he left his comforts, his familiarity, to live in tents like a stranger in a foreign country, all because he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God! Abraham had a 25 year wait before he saw a small part of God’s promise come to pass, but still he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God! That is some wait! 25yrs is a long time, that kind of wait can cause one to doubt if God is still faithful, you have to have a lot of faith to stay hopeful for that amount of time! But the waiting period is important! The waiting is where we are refined! Where we grow spiritually! It’s where we are often tested, where God is making sure we are ready! It took 25 years for Abraham to be ready to come into his promise, and in that time Abraham lied about his wife being his sister, not once but twice for self preservation, and he had a baby outside his marriage, all of these occasions happened when Abraham took his eyes of God’s providence and timing, a cautionary tale for all who try to control what God has planned for them! It’s fair to say that Abraham wasn’t perfect! But during all those ups and downs God remained faithful to him and Abraham never stopped looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God!

Often in life we come to a crossroads where we don’t know or even understand where God is taking us, sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t so bright! But if we only focus on what we can see and overlook the spiritual, we will become discouraged! Remember God is spirit, and that is how He operates at times! We are not meant to know God’s every move! We are not meant to understand his timing and how he operates! Those are the mysteries of God, to know all will make us God, and there can only be one God! Remember one day is like a thousand years to God, so how we understand time will never match up with God and His time line, we need to be ok with that! This is why He is so pleased when we move in true faith! Don’t become so practical that you stop believing in God’s promise! Yes, you also have a promise! Some of you might be in your “Abraham” wait, but just know that as God is preparing the promise for you, He is also preparing YOU for the promise! So focus on THE BUILDER, THE ARCHITECT! Don’t get caught up in the worldliness of society, because worldliness is just the exclusion of God! Don’t exchange your eternity with your father for a few “good” years on this pit stop called earth! Look beyond what this earth has to offer you, and remember God is the architect of opportunities in your life! He is the foundation and builder of your future! Trust in your Father, He doesn’t lie! Seek him more and see what that mustard seed of faith can do!

ROMANS 4:16 “SO THE PROMISE IS RECEIVED BY FAITH. IT IS GIVEN AS A FREE GIFT. AND WE ARE ALL CERTAIN TO RECEIVE IT, WHETHER OR NOT WE LIVE ACCORDING TO THE LAW OF MOSES, IF WE HAVE FAITH LIKE ABRAHAMS. FOR ABRAHAM IS THE FATHER OF ALL WHO BELIEVE.”

NAVIGATING OLD FRIENDSHIPS WHEN YOU ARE A NEW CREATION

This is a sensitive topic for me, and I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide my words on this. The dynamic of friendships differ for most people, maybe you are a person who is never lacking in that department, or maybe you’re a person that struggles in making long lasting connections. I remember my mum would always tell me how I was lucky when it came to my friendships, I always managed to find true connections, where her experience was much different to mine, even now in her late 50’s she still struggles! I have never taken my friendships for granted. I have kept a small tight circle of friends who have known me for over 10 plus years. That’s a lot of trust I have built up over time, and if you are like me, an introvert, I struggle with letting people “in” (because of the lack of trust on my part). I always went through life expecting disappointment so my expectations were always low, I know that’s not the best way to go into relationships but it was how I protected myself, the wall I built kept me safe! This system of mine had never let me down, and I had the friends to prove it!

So the moto for most of my 30’s had been “no new friends!” (thanks to Drake lol) If it ain’t broke don’t fix it! I’ve relied heavily on my friendships, they have meant everything to me. This group of special people has seen me transition from girl to woman, they have literally been in the trenches of life with me and have seen my worst and greatest moments. They have always been the ones I cry to or want to share with, the ones I had so much in common with, they knew me and I them! So what happens when you suddenly have this experience that has changed the fabric of your being, and the friends you want to share with, the friends that always GET you, suddenly feel so distant, for the first time in years you feel misunderstood! That was literally my experience when I first came to Christ! In ways if I am completely honest it still is at times, I just deal with it differently now.

2 CORINTHIANS 5:17 “THIS MEANS THAT ANYONE WHO BELONGS TO CHRIST HAS BECOME A NEW PERSON. THE OLD LIFE IS GONE; A NEW LIFE HAS BEGUN!” This was hard for me to accept at first “the old life is gone” I don’t think I really understood what that meant! Here I was clinging on to the old me, and what the old me meant to the dynamics of my friendships! I was having an identity crisis. I was still trying to be CERISE, but the old Cerise others had grown used to, not the new Cerise who’s identity is now in Christ and not her friendships! The funny thing was I hadn’t even realised I had assumed an identity in my friendship circles, it was coming to Christ that revealed how deep that rabbit hole went. Nothing is more unsettling than feeling displaced, not knowing were I fit in really messed with my mind. I can’t explain it, but I felt self conscious about how my friends were viewing me, whether they consciously were aware of anything, I FELT that they were treating me differently because of my faith. It sounds bizarre I am sure, and really I know that a lot of that was coming from me, but I couldn’t help but start to feel like an outsider!

I know when I first told my friends about my new found faith, it was met with mixed reactions. No one could understand the reason for this change, they assumed I was on this journey for the attention of a guy! I was deeply offended by that assumption, although looking back I could see why they might have come to that conclusion. I was offended because I thought they knew me better than that, and me changing in such an extreme way for the attention of a man had never been my style! The strange thing was that through all the years of our friendship we had never really discussed religion, to be honest I had no idea of what my friends believed! Religion is like talking about politics, you don’t know who supports what out here! Because we never had these conversations I guess its fair to say that they never knew the stirrings in my heart to know who God was. God wasn’t a priority to me back then, so it didn’t matter that we didn’t have those kind of conversations, I guess its evidence that me and my friends kind of saw ourselves as the masters of our own universe.

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I was the girl drinking the most at the party, handling my drink like the best of the men. I was the cocktail maker, or as I preferred to be called, the mixologist! I got the people pumped up, the vibologist (new word alert lol) I was the one that had to be funny, crude and rude! I was the one who had all the bad date stories that kept people entertained, the one who shared all the weird sexual encounters. I was THAT girl in my social circles! So going from that to THIS was a shock for all. I still wanted to be the “FUN” friend. I didn’t want to be so different that my friends stopped viewing me as THAT girl, I felt safe as THAT girl, I was familiar and comfortable in that identity. The pandemic couldn’t have happened at a better time for me, I really needed that break away from the norm, the distance from my social gatherings! This helped the Word take root in me, I had less things to distract me, I had nowhere to be but alone with God! JAMES 1:22 “BUT DON’T JUST LISTEN TO GOD’S WORD. YOU MUST DO WHAT IT SAYS. OTHERWISE, YOU ARE ONLY FOOLING YOURSELVES.” I can easily say that the pandemic allowed me to be a doer of God’s Word! I spent most of 2020 buried in my Bible, I was taking a lot in. So by the time the world started to open up a little, the social gatherings started again, and now I felt this pressure to revert back to the old me again. I was so worried about pleasing people and making everyone feel comfortable around me, I was really torn between even attending events at times! I hated having to explain my reasoning for not being the old Cerise, simple questioning felt like I was being attacked, I felt like I had to be on the defence all the time, so it almost felt easier to just assume my old position! I realise now that my friends just didn’t get it, they were not on the same path as me, they genuinely wanted to know! So for the first time in our years of friendship, we stopped finding common ground.

In the book of Acts it says all who believed had all things in common, and it’s more than just sharing the same love for food, or music, or style of dress! Our core moral beliefs make up a big part of us! We can usually all agree on murder being wrong, stealing, things of that nature, but when we dig deeper and go through our beliefs with a fine toothed comb this is where the major differences start to appear. This is when I realised I stopped having as much in common with my friends anymore. It’s a strange feeling, because once upon a time we pretty much agreed on every single issue! Having conversations was like a gauntlet, I could easily get swept up into it all, showing up as the old me! Even now, I have to be mindful of my words because its so easy to fall back in to old habits.

What changed things for me, and what helps me navigate these relationships to this day was realising that I was no longer living for the approval of this world, or my friends. I seek God’s approval first! He has to always be first! No compromise. I had to accept the new me! I had to look at the old me, and see the broken girl, bound by strongholds, always looking for validation from the wrong people, the sad girl who hid behind her smile, who didn’t have purpose or know her identity or her worth! Once I admitted that was who I was, I was able to bury her and be reborn in Christ! It was then I stopped feeling like I was missing out on things, because truth is I am not! Those things that used to pull me in before no longer call my name, and the reason is because I had to spiritually build myself up, the desires fell away when I armed myself spiritually! Don’t forget we are in a spiritual war, sometimes we forget about the unseen realm, but it is real! When we come to Christ, we have to remember that we were living under the influence of the enemy, for he is the spirit in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. To really be free of his power we have to build ourselves up in the spirit, by reading God’s word and applying it. Usually in the early days of our walk we don’t consume enough food for the spirit so we find it so difficult to deny our flesh. We need to understand that to deny our flesh is to be obedient to God!

I still love my friends, I still cherish them! I just live for God now, something I never did before! Sometimes I have the fear of being reminded of who I used to be, I don’t want to be in a situation where someone calls my past behaviours out. But I realise that’s a fear I don’t need to have, everything that happens is to give God the glory! Yes I might of used to be THAT girl, but now I am just a testimony of Gods enduring love! Hallelujah! As much as I love my friends I know that things are always going to be a little different as we walk different paths in life! But I know that God will use me to plant seeds, I don’t need to be one of those Christians trying to evangelize everyone that comes into my path, not in a way that alienates them. I know that my new life is meant to show and glorify Christ, His light that lives in me is meant to allure them to want to know more. MATTHEW 5:14-16 “YOU ARE THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD-LIKE A CITY ON A HILLTOP THAT CANNOT BE HIDDEN. NO ONE LIGHTS A LAMP AND THEN PUTS IT UNDER A BASKET. INSTEAD, A LAMP IS PLACED ON A STAND, WHERE IT GIVES LIGHT TO EVERYONE IN THE HOUSE. IN THE SAME WAY, LET YOUR GOOD DEEDS SHINE OUT FOR ALL TO SEE, SO THAT EVERYONE WILL PRAISE YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER.” I pray that my light shines for my friends to see. I pray that they will feel the call and answer the way I did! But whatever their journey may be, because its a different journey for all of us, I hope they know that even though they might not share my zeal or beliefs the fact that they never stopped being there for me, even when they didn’t understand me the same, I will always be grateful that they tried and loved me anyway! I guess this post is a reminder to love your neighbour as yourself, even if they are non believers! Christians are too quick to turn their backs on non Christians (well some, not all) and it’s left a bad taste in the mouth of others! Remember to always ask yourself this “what would Jesus do?!”

DO YOU UNDERSTAND GOD’S LOVE FOR YOU?

This week I had a deeper revelation of God’s love for me that absolutely wrecked me and brought me to tears! Of course when you become a follower of Christ, you are told about how much God loves you because He sacrificed His one and only Son for us, I mean who out here would sacrifice like that for you out of love? We might go a step further and call someone crazy for doing such a thing! But really anyone who has a loving, nurturing parent knows that without hesitation they would give their life for their child! Well we have the ultimate parent who did just that for each and everyone of us! So yes I grasped that notion that God loves us, but to be honest its been a concept that has been floating on the surface, mainly because I think I have issues with accepting true unconditional love, deep I know, but the Holy Spirit is revealing so much I didn’t know was there! I am reading the Bible and getting free therapy sessions from my counsellor! I am being refined, really made a new and it is a long process but I know it is so necessary to my walk. Sometimes we don’t even know how much we have hidden until we truly dig deep within ourselves! I can’t say I would ever truly fathom how deep God’s love runs for us but something hit me while studying the Book of Ephesians this week.

I think its fair to say I was left truly humbled and feeling unworthy, a feeling I don’t think I truly comprehended before! Please do not mistake me for being arrogant before God, never have and never will! I always humble myself, WE must ALL humble ourselves before God! But something clicked today about how God SEE’S me that took me to another level of humble. I realised that the disconnect came from how I view myself! I realised that I don’t see myself through God’s eyes, the vision I have is flawed, this is why the idea of God’s unconditional love for me wasn’t really penetrating the way it should! I really couldn’t comprehend it for myself. It’s funny because I will be the first to tell YOU God loves you with conviction, but I noticed that I was skimming past the notion when it came to myself! This revealed to me I have a heart issue, well I should say the Holy Spirit revealed to me that I had an issue with the posture of my heart. We have a God who is a searcher of hearts and minds, so if something is not right trust and believe He will show you. The great thing about all of this is that I would of been still unaware of this issue if I hadn’t of picked up my Bible! This is why I will always say PLEASE READ YOUR BIBLES! If you want to experience true change, growth and Knowledge, it will come from God’s word, the source! The revelation for me was “maybe I don’t love myself the way I should?” I know we have all heard that saying ” if we can’t love ourselves how can we love anyone else!?” or something to that same affect. There is a definite truth to that I believe, because if I was made in the image and likeness of God but somehow have a problem with myself, it made me think how that had to have a knock on effect with how I receive God’s love!?! When we truly receive or understand why God loves us and how much He loves us, we experience a change within, and our hearts are bursting with joy! It promotes a change in our spirits and now our eyes and hearts are focused on Jesus, and what we focus on is what we emulate! So it’s fair to say we start to become more consecrated and Holy!

Now I know that feelings of unworthiness is advised to keep you humble, even the Apostle Paul refers to himself as undeserving! EPHESIANS 3:8 “ALTHOUGH I AM LESS THAN THE LEAST OF ALL THE LORD’S PEOPLE, THIS GRACE WAS GIVEN TO ME: TO PREACH TO THE GENTILES THE BOUNDLESS RICHES OF CHRIST” But even in his unworthiness and his acknowledgment of it, he doesn’t let it cripple him from doing what God has tasked him to do, he seems to accept God’s love, God’s grace, and get straight to business sharing the Good News, seeing his position as a privilege to serve! The problem with me or with us as a body of believers is that we can sometimes let that unworthiness stop us from doing what we have been called to do! Sometimes we can have trust issues that run deep from dealing with the disappointment of people. We become so jaded by this world we live in, when someone does anything for us we become suspicious, asking “why?” instead of just accepting a good deed with gratitude and moving on! This world has sold us a lie on love. When you think about it, it’s not surprising being that satan rules down here, and he is ALWAYS going to give us a perverted version of God’s way. Down here people do things for others disguised as love, but wait with expectation for you to reciprocate, because if you don’t then they get to remind you off all the things they did for you, and the things you don’t do is how they measure love. Down here love is love, meaning we all get to do whatever we like and nobody can tell you otherwise because that is not deemed as loving! (let me not get too carried away there!) But God say’s to us ” I love you despite of yourself, I love you because I made you, I love you even though you do not get it right all the time” and most importantly we can not skim by this “This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9.

So the part that took my breath away in the book of Ephesians, and mind you I have yet to properly finish it, even though it is a short book there is so much to edify the spirit, I am going through it with a fine toothed comb! Earlier I mentioned how God saw me, and how it was different to how I saw myself. Well it’s Paul revealing the mysteries of God’s plan through Christ that humbled me. Let me see if I can break it down for you.

YOU are IMPORTANT! Let me start of there. You might look at your life now, and not feel much optimism about where or what this life has to offer you, but let me help you understand the way it clicked for me. Before God created the world He had a plan for YOU! He loved you so much He chose you, because He knew you already! Take a moment and let that set in…. Now His plan for you was to be Holy (EPHESIANS 1:4), and the Hebrew word for Holy means to be set apart! But set apart from what? Well if this was his plan before the world was created the only thing I could see was that He set us apart from the Angels, as that seemed to be the story less talked about when we think of the fall of satan which we know happened before God created the earth! Now stay with me here because it was reading further that solidified that idea for me! Because of man’s fall from grace with Adam and Eve, we were spiritually dead because it has become our nature to live in disobedience to God, we live to follow the desires of our flesh, doing what “feels” right at the whim of our sinful nature! EPHESIANS 2:2 “YOU USED TO LIVE IN SIN, JUST LIKE THE REST OF THE WORLD, OBEYING THE DEVIL-THE COMMANDER OF THE POWERS OF THE UNSEEN WORLD. HE IS THE SPIRIT AT WORK IN THE HEARTS OF THOSE WHO REFUSE TO OBEY GOD.” Imagine living under the wrath of God because of our disobedience! And even though we lived this way God still planned a way for us to be reconciled to Him! That is love, a love I will never fully realise, because usually when people do me wrong consistently my response isn’t to find a way to reconcile. But God being so full of grace saved you through Christ! He purchased your freedom with the blood of his only Son, because He knew that was the only way you could draw close to Him, the only way your sin’s could be forgiven so you could have eternal life and gain a seat with Him in the heavenly place through Christ! Because of your belief in Christ, you are saved by the grace of God which is a gift, and this has nothing to do with all the good you have done, so that you can not boast! (EPHESIANS 2:8-9)

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So as unworthy as we may be, God still wants to redeem us! So even now as believers in Christ, when we let that feeling of unworthiness start to cripple us, its this knowledge of God’s love for us that should have us back on task like Paul! EPHESIANS 3:10 “GOD’S PURPOSE IN ALL THIS WAS TO USE THE CHURCH TO DISPLAY HIS WISDOM IN IT’S RICH VARIETY TO ALL THE UNSEEN RULERS AND AUTHORITIES IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES.” Remember when I talked about being set apart from the angels? Well this was the verse that solidified it for me! Doesn’t that blow your mind, or is it just me? When you believed in Christ you became part of one body (the church) You received the helper, the Holy Spirit, who was sent to lead you, blessing you with all the gifts of the spirit which come from the heavenly places, this is the sign that you have been purchased through the blood of Christ and a sign you will receive your inheritance that was promised from God! You gain God’s wisdom and it is shown through all the good things you do which He planned from long ago! And all this wisdom you show is just to display the multi faceted God you serve! And like a body we all have different functions, and your function may not look like your neighbours, your function may even seem minute, but its not because nothing about God is minute and nothing about God is unimportant! And all of this is to show these unseen rulers and authorities in heaven the richness that is God because they would never know this about their creator without YOU! I swear I had never looked at it like this before! This is the fun part of being a new believer, it’s learning all these things that let me know the character of my Father, it’s the deeper understanding of all that Jesus Christ has done for me!

I am gonna end with Paul and his prayer for the people of Ephesus, a prayer for spiritual growth for us all! I pray that you who reads this, God will empower you with inner strength, I pray that Christ will truly make a home in your heart, so that your faith will keep you grounded in his peace so that you will experience his love for you “And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is.” Ephesians 3:18

HOW DO WE KNOW WE ARE REALLY SAVED?

So this wasn’t what I planned to talk about this week, but life happens and sometimes God presses on your heart and you have to listen and respond with a YES. A lot happened this week, I had a scare with my mum which as you can imagine wasn’t fun, although we know that we are not immortals and death is guaranteed, it still doesn’t make it any easier to deal with! I am happy to report that my mum is alive and well, praise Jesus! But this led to an interesting conversation with my mum about her salvation! As you know I haven’t been on my faith journey for long, and I am still a new Christian compared to some, but my mum sincerely accepted Christ this year through faith and faith alone! Let me give you a little back story.

I have a close relationship with my mum, we talk practically everyday, we have a great friendship! So during my coming to Christ my mum knew everything, she was very supportive and encouraging! Through me God was reaching out to her, he was transforming her and she didn’t even realise! My mum had always believed you had to be perfect to come to Christ (this was bad teaching she experienced in her life having a brief encounter with Jehovah Witnesses) it was this belief that kept her away from God! She felt unworthy, and I remember her always saying “I need to get my life together first.” God used me to show her that He wanted her as she was, and that nobody would ever be perfect! As we all know covid happened, so a lot of plans had to get put on a shelf as the whole world shut down. I had initially hoped to get baptised in 2020 but that wasn’t possible so I put that on hold along with the rest of my life, I just used that time to continue to learn about Jesus and the goodness of God, sharing everything with my mum. During that time I prayed for her, asking God to soften her heart and to help her come to know Him!

God’s timing is always perfect! There is a good reason why I didn’t get baptised in 2020, God was still doing work in my mum! I got baptised in June 2021, and the week leading up to my baptism I prayed like I had never prayed before! I was going through my own feelings of unworthiness, the enemy was desperate, he was doing everything to sway me from my decision! That week I asked God to do something big on the day of my baptism, something so big that I couldn’t deny it was Him moving! When I think back on that time I laugh at the audacity and boldness I had to challenge my Father in that way, but My God is loving, full of grace and mercy, He understood my heart and what I needed at that time, and our God always gives us what we need! Jesus told his disciples “I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.” (Mark 11:24) so that’s exactly what I was doing, I was believing with my whole heart that something would happen on that day! When the day of my baptism arrived I was excited, nervous, happy that my mum and brother were gonna be there to experience an important day of my new life. That morning as I was writing my testimony in preparation, my phone rang, I looked and saw my mum’s name on the screen, my first thought was she was calling to say she wouldn’t be able to make it (she suffers with arthritis, so sometimes she isn’t mobile) I answered the phone and she was tearful and emotional, of course I was worried thinking something had happened! I asked what was wrong? and her words were ” I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I woke up emotional and in tears, I am gonna bring extra clothes with me!” of course I was confused, and asked what did she mean bring extra clothes?! that’s when she said “I wanna get baptised!” I think that’s the first time I was truly overwhelmed and speechless! I told my mum YES!! God had answered my prayer, He had done something so big that I couldn’t deny him! That day me and my mum got baptised together! A day I will never forget! There is so much more I can say about what happened on that day but that isn’t the point of this post, I am showing you how she believed through faith, nothing more than pure faith! EPHESIANS 2:8-9 “GOD SAVED YOU BY HIS GRACE WHEN YOU BELIEVED. AND YOU CAN’T TAKE CREDIT FOR THIS; IT IS A GIFT FROM GOD. SALVATION IS NOT A REWARD FOR THE GOOD THINGS WE HAVE DONE, SO NONE OF US CAN BOAST ABOUT IT.”

I remember sharing that verse with her before she got baptised, and I believe she truly received it because she came to Christ in confidence that no matter what she was doing with her life, God still wanted her! This kind of reminds me of the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-9) I really encourage you to read it if you haven’t before, but a basic summary of it is about how the Word affects us, whether it sticks to us, or it is snatched away from us (this is a very basic summary lol) My mum had forgotten that she was saved by grace, she had reverted back to her old way of thinking! So when her mortality was challenged this week and she considered life and death she believed that she wasn’t saved because she wasn’t doing any “works”, she hadn’t attended church for a couple of weeks and she wasn’t picking up her bible, she even admitted that she was having what I like to call “imposter syndrome” where you feel like you don’t belong. That’s when I realised the word had fallen on the surface, it had not taken root!

The thing we need to understand about this walk of faith is the adversary is very real! When we choose Christ and become children of God, he hates it! He starts to throw everything at us to break our spirit! He lies to us and tells us we are not worthy and God doesn’t want us! He is so desperate to corrupt our hearts and have us back in a life of sin, a life of death! We start to feel so under attack it can become very easy for us to reconsider the narrow road and exchange it for the wider more treaded path! But think of it this way, if you had thirty more years guaranteed on this earth, but after the thirty years are up you have eternity to contend with, what would be more important to you? thirty years or eternity? Would you trade your eternity with Jesus at the throne for thirty short years of a somewhat comfortable life? I know what I’m choosing! An eternity without Jesus is something I don’t even wanna think about! The Bible warns us of all of this, God show’s us in many ways the kind of afflictions we can be subjected to as Christians, but the great thing about the Bible is it tells us how to overcome it all! We just have to pick it up and read it! EPHESIANS 6:11 “PUT ON THE FULL ARMOUR OF GOD, SO THAT YOU CAN TAKE YOUR STAND AGAINST THE DEVIL’S SCHEMES.”

Our battle is not against flesh and blood, it is a spiritual one, against the powers of this dark world and the forces of evil! I know that may sound like a movie and the reality of it can invoke fear, but we have nothing to fear if we turn up to the battle fully equipped! God gives us the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit (which is the word of God) all while our feet our fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace! We have everything we need to slay our enemy, we are capable, we have the authority in the mighty name of JESUS! The enemy doesn’t want us to know this so he keeps us distracted so that we don’t arm ourselves the way God intended us by picking up our bibles! The enemy lies to us and makes us think we have no power, this is what keeps us in bondage!

The thing is we are all on our own journey’s, and they may all look a little different! We all arrive at our own revelation at some point, and that is ok because that is what shapes us, God uses it all to give Him the glory! But these are the last days, so please do not be asleep and miss our Lord all because you wasn’t prepared! You believed and received so you are saved! But that is only the start of your journey! God is calling you to seek Him, He wants to do so much in your life, He chose YOU! He knew you before He sent you into your mother’s womb! He loved you from then! That is a long time to love someone! And through it all, even when you were not perfect, and even now when you knowingly do what you shouldn’t He never stopped wanting you, His hand was always outstretched to you! When you start to move, when you put that faith that caused you to believe into action, watch Him move mountains in your life! You will start to experience Him like you could never imagine! Get to know Him, pick up your bible and discover how good He is! Whatever the enemy is throwing at you right now, trust and believe it is only for a short time, once you start to learn your true identity in Christ, you will have the power to overcome and the enemy has no other choice but to flee! I say this all with my mum in mind but this is for anyone who may be feeling weighed down! God is calling you! But will you answer?…..

THE CHURCH IS NOT A BUILDING….IT’S YOU!

First let me start off by saying Christians are not perfect. Did you catch that? Let me say it again for the people in the back, CHRISTIANS ARE NOT PERFECT! Ok now I’ve got that out of the way I can move on. That took me a while to grasp myself, for a long time I assumed Christians were meant to be perfect people, holding themselves to a standard that us mere mortals could never achieve! I thought “CHURCH” was this building where all these perfect people came together to praise God and look down on all the unsaved people who weren’t apart of this members only club! When that is your view of church, it doesn’t sound that appealing does it? So it’s no surprise that I never saw myself as a church goer. I can count the times I stepped foot in a church in my life on one hand (before I came to Christ) Like I said before I had urges to know God, but unfortunately the one time in my adult life I found myself attending a service, I left feeling unmoved. I remember feeling that everyone was fake and the only thing that seemed to matter to these people was who was wearing what! I never expected church to feel like a fashion show, or a parade of wealth that didn’t seem to give any glory to God! Nobody seemed particularly welcoming and I left feeling like church was full of hypocrites! Imagine Monday through to Saturday your neighbour Mary or John from up the street supposedly being Christians, but nothing about their daily lives reflected a Christ like nature, they weren’t loving to their neighbours, they gossiped about everyone, they only helped themselves, but come Sunday morning they were the first arrivals at service?! When your expectations of church involve the word “perfect” when you meet the John’s and Mary’s you can’t help but feel the idea of church is pointless and not worth getting up for. That’s definitely how I felt about it, I was one of those people that said “I don’t need to go to church to praise God, I can do it from my home” But I didn’t say that because I really knew what I was talking about, remember I had no biblical knowledge at that point, I just used it as a way to validate my reasons for not getting up early, and I found other people just as clueless as myself to strengthen my opinions, talk about the blind leading the blind!

So imagine my surprise when two months into confessing my allegiance to Jesus that I felt the Holy Spirit moving me to find a church! At first I tried to ignore that pull, but you can not ignore God, which I learned very quickly! The more I continued with my Bible study the more I was convicted that I NEEDED a church! Ultimately what I was really craving was a sense of community. My coming to Christ wasn’t your typical story, I had built relationships with fellow believers that lived overseas! It was ok when it came to the odd Whatsapp call or message but I still felt lonely and isolated. Having friends but feeling lonely is a trip! All my friends I had here were not religious, or not believers. 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17 “THEREFORE, IF ANYONE IS IN CHRIST, THE NEW CREATION HAS COME: THE OLD HAS GONE, THE NEW IS HERE!” When you accept Christ and allow the change that comes with it, it’s impossible to stay the same person! You naturally start to feel the need to be around people who have the same core beliefs and things in common (That’s another blog post cause we need to discuss how hard those changes can be)

People make up a community, people make up a church, church is community! Church wasn’t designed to be just something you “Do” on a Sunday, church wasn’t meant to be something you do in a list of things, which really is just you doing works to secure a place in heaven, to avoid eternal damnation. How many Christians have you come across that actually believe if you don’t go to church that means you are not saved? I’ve heard people say that they have been told this! These same people who are quick to tell you about your salvation might feel righteous because they attend church every Sunday but all week they live in the spirit of unforgiveness and pride, but you’re the one with a salvation problem! The minds of some baffle me! EPHESIANS 2:8-9 “FOR IT IS BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED, THROUGH FAITH- AND THIS IS NOT FROM YOURSELVES, IT IS THE GIFT OF GOD- NOT BY WORKS, SO THAT NO ONE CAN BOAST.” So now we know that your attendance at church is not dependant on your salvation, lets talk about why we should go to church.

God didn’t create us to be lone ranger Christians! Our Triune God who is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, designed us to be in relationship with Him and others! It’s no coincidence that the whole Bible or law is summed up to this, love your neighbour as yourself! (GALATIANS 5:14) When Covid hit in 2020 and lockdowns were implemented, I felt the church was truly tested, churches had never closed their doors before and we were tasked to think outside the box so that we could still find ways to do community worship. I realised then that church was more than a building, here I was watching online services on a Sunday from the comforts of my bedroom, technically in attendance but the feeling was definitely different. Congregations gathered in outdoor spaces, like public parks in some countries, they had their whole services like this, not enclosed in brick and mortar but they were still a church! What made the church was the congregation! The church is the body of Christ and Jesus is the head of that body! The body is made up of believers of Christ, and Christ is the head, the One that leads us! (EPHESIANS 1:22-23)

Think about YOUR body, every part of your body is functional and has a purpose, some parts would have more impact on your life if they were to stop working than others but every part is just as important! Now if we transfer that analogy to the body of believers that make up the church, the body of Christ, that should tell us that we have a responsibility to be more than just church attendees, we all have a role to play, and its not exclusively just for the pastors, church leaders and worship teams! As believers we know that the Holy Spirit lives within us, He distributes gifts to us, and we are called to use these gifts, whether it be the gift of healing, wisdom, words of encouragement to build faith, knowledge, or prophecy to name a few, we are called to use them to edify the church, and these same gifts help us to share the Gospel! So our presence when we attend church should be felt, we should be active members within our churches, and when I say active I mean taking part in fellowship with each other, reaching out to other members, building relationships. If we all operated in this way, when someone new shows up on a Sunday, we would naturally make them feel welcomed, showing them what church is really about, giving them a feel of what community is meant to be, now church becomes something you look forward to, not something you numbly experience.

Life is hard, but life is even harder when you accept Christ! So why would you want to do it alone? We need a community of believers who we can come to for wisdom, counselling, encouragement, knowledge, a place where we can communally worship and honour God and really sit in his presence, not like we can’t sit in His presence on our own but there is something powerful about being in a group of people all calling out to God and praising his name, it really changes the atmosphere of the room! This world is designed to lead us astray, to make us question our faith, it’s very easy to let culture infiltrate the standards that God expects us to hold true, we start to compromise ourselves, then instead of walking like Christ, we start to live like everyone else and the light that Jesus called us to be starts to dim, our views start to become worldly and worldliness is just the absence of God! Once we start down that slippery path it becomes very easy for us to fall away from the faith, because the moral of the story is we need a community, we need our brothers and sisters in Christ to keep us on this narrow road which is not easy to tread! This is why WE NEED CHURCH!

Like I said before we are not perfect, the bible tells us in 1 JOHN 1:8 “IF WE CLAIM TO BE WITHOUT SIN, WE DECEIVE OURSELVES AND THE TRUTH IS NOT IN US.” So bare that in mind when dealing with your fellow brothers and sisters. I know there is a lot of church hurt out there, and there is a lot of unsavoury stories when it comes to the history of some churches, but to me that is just confirmation that perfection doesn’t exist, only Jesus can hold that title! I urge you to find your community, it makes such a difference to your walk. Since I found my Church it has really become a family to me, don’t be mistaken, I prayed over finding a good church, every time I went, my prayer was always for God to plant my feet firmly at my church if this was where He called me to be! I listened intently to the word given and made sure it was God’s word (the importance of Christians knowing their word is also another blog post I need to explore) In no time God ushered me into my church and I am now a part of my worship team, even a few weeks ago I had the privilege of giving my first sermon/word of encouragement, which still baffles me to this day! God has really been present in my life and he is definitely present in my church! I have grown so much more in my faith because of my church, I definitely wouldn’t have experienced the growth I have without it! We need Church like the sick need the hospital, we can bandage ourselves to a certain degree at home with our first aid kits but if we want true healing we need our doctors, and hospitals are where we find them, we need our check ups from our GP’s! So think of the church like going to see our GP for a weekly check up, or think of Church like going to hospital because we are sick and need heart surgery, and our surgeon is King Jesus! Just like we can’t do without hospitals, in that same way know we can’t do without churches!