Winter Graduation

Just a quick post to announce that it has happened!!! Yesterday we had our second set of trainees graduate from the full time training in Pretoria (FTTP). How wonderful!!! It's wonderful to see what the Lord has been doing in South Africa, and that He opened a training center to allow even more Lovers of the Lord to be trained. Two saints from South Africa graduated, one saint from Georgia and another from the UK.

Praise the Lord for what He is doing on the earth!

Below is some pictures I took during the graduation (please excuse the poor quality)

The trainees busy with their presentation 

A feast waiting for the guests

Desert

Saying Goodbye

Our group meeting last night was a bit different than usual in that we had to say goodbye to some of the saints that will be migrating. It was very special to fellowship with them and enjoy the Lord with them before they leave. I am however sad because I got built up with the sister that is leaving and now she is moving very far away. But it is also important to remember that God has a desire, He desires to have a corporate building that expresses Him. I am not denying that I am humanly sad because of the situation, but it is important to see the bigger picture, to put everything in perspective.

I am the kind of person that would avoid a certain situation to prevent being hurt but the Lord is showing that to be built up with others is crucial, we must be built up together in the Lords life and in His Spirit in order to be His body. We cannot be individualistic we must be built up with others to become the church, the house of God. Without the building up of the members there will be no building, how can a building be formed if the stones are not build together? It is not possible, it will only be a pile of rocks, and what use is a pile of rocks? In the same way the saints must be built up together. We must be built up.

It is so good to be built up with the saints, I definitely encourage everyone to ask the Lord to build you up with someone in your area. I used to be a bit scared of being built up with someone and then they move away or I get hurt or become vulnerable... I really like to be in my comfort zone. But the Lord is showing me that it is very good to be built up, even essential, and if that saint moves away then it is also good, because now the Lord has the opportunity to build me with other members. We can ask the Lord to make us more flexible and buildable in this way, and the Lord will be faithful to supply us more with Himself, because in reality He is the true flexible and buildable one, He can be built up with anyone, and the more He increases in us the more we will be able to be built up in His life and in His Spirit, and then His hearts desire can be satisfied.

I will leave you with some pictures from the time we had last night...

Singing some hymns together

Some sweet fellowship with the saints

The saints are the excellent!

Just gain Him

I have to admit that I was a little stressed about this year, I knew that this would be one of my most hectic years and what I was really scared about was fading out of the church life, that I would only focus on my studies and would have no time to spend with the saints and also with the Lord.

But the Lord is so sweet! He is the shepherding one! He keeps drawing me with everything that He is! The fact of the matter is that there will always be things to do that keep us busy and are unpleasant, but in the midst of all the things the world throws at us we can have sweet fellowship with the Lord. In busy times we can learn to experience the Lord in a very sweet way. Praise the Lord that the heavens rule!  We will always be in environments that contain all kinds of discouraging things, this is why we need to know that the heavens rule, these environments are used to perfect our faith so we can be useful to Him. The most important thing that has been pointed out to me concerning my response in a unpleasant and stressful environment is just to eat Him! How wonderful if we can gain more of Christ during these times, we just need to eat His words!

One of the ways to eat His words is by pray-reading, this is very easy and super enjoyable. All you have to do is take any scripture in the Word and pray over the words in that section or verse or even a part of the verse. The Word says that all scripture is God breathed (2 Tim 3:16), so by musing and praying over the words in the Bible we are taking in the very breath of God. How wonderful that we can take God in by praying in His words. This is such a supply especially if you do it in the mornings.

You can really take any verse, but rather than just taking my word for it feel free to try it out for yourself...any time of the day, by trying it out you yourself can experience how nourishing the Bible can be.

Recovery Version Bible

This year has been going by so fast, its been hard to touch down before the next lot of things come by, but I wanted to share with you a post I recently enjoyed on the Recovery Version Bible. Personally I enjoy this version of the Bible allot, I enjoy reading from it daily, using it for studying the Bible, singing and pray reading. 




The link to this post is: 
http://www.stefanmisaras.com/recovery-version-bible-why-i-love-it/ 

This post is definitely worth reading 

Two things that touched me in the midst of my exams

I've been out of action for a while now, sorry about that, but here I am to share something I have enjoyed in the midst of my exams. 
Two things touched me the past 2 weeks:

1) The shepherding of the saints; I have been studying at the home meetings, it is so sweet to be with the saints even when I have to study while they are busy in the  meeting, and also studying at the sisters house when my flat gets a bit to quiet for me, there is something nourishing when I am with the saints. It helps me allot to just hang out where the saints are.

2) How very close and enjoyable the Lord is during the exams, the truth is that in busy and stressful times the Lord didn't go anywhere, He is still with me in my spirit, I just have to contact Him. The aim is not to get out of the situation but to bring the Lord into the situation. During the past 2 weeks I have realised that I can take everything to the Lord in prayer, and when I say everything I mean everything;, I can tell the Lord when I am stressed, I can ask the Lord if what I am planning for the day is according to His will, I can even ask Him to help me focus while studying, and those times when I just can't remember a answer in the exam, even though I memorised it, I can ask the Lord to help me remember my work and to be my peace. Praise the Lord we can bring everything to Him, if we really bring everything to the Lord in prayer we can learn to experience Him in every aspect of our lives! 

Your word is sweet unto my taste

I love the Word of God! How wonderful that we have the Word of the living God! The Bible isn't just some stories of history, dead letters on a page that we can read for inspiration. No! the Bible is the very breath of God! 2 Timothy 3:16 tells us that all scripture is God-breathed, how amazing is this! 
In my experience I have noticed how easy it is to come to the Bible in a religious way, reading it out of duty rather that coming to the Word to touch Christ. In John 5:39,40 the Lord said "You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is these that testify concerning Me. Yet you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life." We can come to the Word in a dead way, we can read the Bible and completely miss the Lord, this is terrible, and is not a good experience, instead we should come to touch the life in the Word, to touch something of Christ. I have experienced how easy it is to go back to my default setting of searching the scriptures without touching the Lord, out of myself I keep trying to read the Bible in a different way and by doing this I fail time and time again, but praise the Lord His life is in me! Out of myself it is difficult but by allowing Him to work in me and to bring me to His living and wonderful Word I can touch my Lord! He brings me to His Word every day and He nourishes me with all the riches it contains. I have realised how wonderful His Word is, every page is filled with nothing but Christ. 
A practical way to touch the Lord in the Word is pray-reading, you may wonder what this is; it is exactly what it sounds like; praying what you read, we can pray the Words of God back to Him, this is very sweet and enjoyable. There is a good booklet on pray reading that helps explain it, if you would like to read it just follow this link 

Why are you here?

Recently I went through a dry patch, or rather a huge desert according to my experience. I didn't understand what was going on, why was it so difficult to touch the Lord in this time. In this dryness it was so easy for me to pull back and not share my enjoyment of the Lord, even if it was just a little, also to pull back from the saints and fellowshipping with them.This resulted in a vicious circle, I'm in a dry place, don't want to share, no new water can then flow into me because I'm not allowing the water to flow out. And soon enough there I was dry and feeling sorry for myself. We are channels, if we want new living water to flow into us we need to flow out to other people. How convenient to try and blame this dryness on others but the truth is 1) No one wants to spend time with someone that is sulky and refuses to share what they are going through, have you ever tried to convince someone to open up to you when you know they need to talk about what's going on, and they just refuse to, this is really hard and after a while it's a unpleasant situation for others too, and 2) why are you really here?
Last night I finally opened up to a dear sister about what I was experiencing and she asked me a valuable yet simple question; why are you here? This question though so small exposed my motive. Why was I in the church life? Was I here to make friends? To social? OR was I here for Christ and nothing else. The thing is, if we are here for a reason other than Christ we will most probably leave because of that reason, for example; if I am in the church life because of a sister being nice to me and including me in everything, if my motive for being in the church is that sister, I will probably leave because of an offence with that sister.
Our motive should be Christ and nothing else, for this to happen we need a vision, we need to pray and ask the Lord to give us a vision for His body, for Zion. When our vision is right our motive too will be right. Praise the Lord He is faithful and true!