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!

He has the water that we need!

I Just got back home after the prayer meeting and some much needed fellowship. A prayer meeting is so sweet, whenever I feel dry and discouraged it always helps to pray with the saints. I receive some much needed watering at every prayer meeting I go to. And tonight this watering was topped of with some sweet fellowship. My spirit is revived after this wonderful time with the Lord and saints. 
This reminds me of the water that the Lord spoke of in John 4, He has the water that can take away all our thirst. In our daily life we continuously need to drink water to survive, I can't drink all my water for the next month today, I need to drink water every day to stay healthy and alive. In the same way we need to drink the water that the Lord has every day to have a healthy spirit. Luckily this water is freely available, we can drink this water by calling on the Name of the Lord, pray reading a verse, praying, or fellowshipping with the saints. After tonight I feel refreshed, my spirit had a good drink of the water of life. How wonderful that we don't need things of the world to quench our thirst we just need Christ. Praise the Lord He is the source of the water of life and that He freely gives to all who come to Him. 
There is a wonderful hymn on this chapter in John that can be found at http://www.hymnal.net/hymn.php/ns/347 , which is definitely worth a read.

His fresh speaking...

I enjoyed something we touched in the sisters bible study today on campus.
John 3:34 " For He whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for He gives the Spirit not by measure."
How wonderful that we can receive the Spirit in abundance! and John 6:63b speaks some more on the 'words' mentioned in John 3:34. John 6:63b "the words which I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." The words mentioned here is the rhema word, this is the instant speaking of God. The Spirit is embodied in His words. When we receive His words by exercising our spirit, we get the Spirit, and we get Him as the the Spirit without measure! I also enjoyed to see that in John 3:34 it is because of the bountiful Spirit that Christ spoke the words of God, and the wonderful thing is we have the Spirit in us without meaure. When we touch the Spirit we touch the instant word of God. In Mark 13:11 we see that the Spirit can speak for us, and when the Spirit is speaking for us we speak the words of God! Mark 13:11b "do not be anxious beforehand about what you should speak, but whatever is given to you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who are speaking, but the Holy Spirit." Praise the Lord we have the speaking Spirit in our spirit! Lord praise You for the speaking of the Spirit, let us keep turning towards You moment-by-moment and receive Your fresh speaking. 

Celebration Meeting in Pretoria

This is a short post just to share about our celebration meeting. The celebration meeting was today, students from Pretoria, Johannesburg and Roodepoort came together to share their portion of Christ. 
This is a very sweet time where we speak our enjoyment of the past 6 months to build each other up and nourish one another with Christ. 


1 Corinthians 14:3 "But he who prophesies speaks building up and encouragement and consolation to men."
1 Corinthians 14:31 "For you can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged."
I enjoy these two verses very much, we all can speak in the meetings, it is good for us to stand up and speak something, even if it is a short word, because the speaking is for the building up of the body. Lord open our mouths to speak.


After today's meeting I am truly encouraged by all the students and how much they love the Lord, O Lord Jesus we love You! I was so exited to see how many students had a portion of Christ to share! Praise the Lord He is moving on the campuses in South Africa! 
Two students also got baptised today after the meeting, praise the Lord! I pray that there will be many more. 
Lord move in South Africa! Gain more ground in this country for the building of Your body.