on forgetting and remembering...

It keeps coming up in the things I've been reading lately: we are forgetful. We're always forgetting things. We set reminders for the smallest thing - to go somewhere, to meet someone, to buy something. We forget where we put our keys and our glasses. We forget what we ate for lunch yesterday. Some may argue that this is because we don't need to remember it. True, but what about the things we should be remembering?

God warns us so many times in the Bible about forgetting Him and what He has done. This was the problem with Israel: they so easily forgot what God had done to bring them out of Egypt and all the miracles He did in making food fall from the sky every morning - seriously? But when things happen repeatedly, they become normal and lose their wonder and beauty. How often do you even notice the beauty right outside your window? For some of you, it might not be that amazing, but in Cape Town, we have Table Mountain right there in the middle of the city with the ocean right there too. Yet days, even weeks, can go by without me marveling at the beauty of what God has made. It's quite literally an elephant in the middle of the room that is being ignored.

I think maybe this is why in Phil 4:6, we are told to tell God what we need and thank Him for all He has done. Ok, so that seems like a simple statement, and we might be tempted to pray something like this: "God, I need x, y and z, and thanks for everything". But if you were really to thank God for EVERYTHING He has done... woah! I don't know about you, but I've seen and experienced God doing a whole lot in my life, not to mention everyone else around me's lives, and then He also made the world...

In grade 4, we had a thing called a 'gratitude journal', where each week we had to write down 5 things we were thankful for. Often someone would forget, but it was so easy to do last minute: there's always at least 5 things you can be thankful for, no matter how crap life may seem. I have clothes to wear. I have clean clothes to wear. I have more than one pair of clean clothes to wear. I have a laptop. I have internet. I have a house to stay in. Now these may seem like little things, but God is all about the little things too. If you look at all the ways that you are blessed, the ways you aren't seem a whole lot less.

Back to forgetting... We need to remember, or else we'll forget. God told the Jews to tie His word to their foreheads and to their door posts - so they would see it in front of them all day, and would be reminded of it whenever they walked in or out of their home. This is why they built alters - as reminders of what God had done, and so they could pass the story on to the next generation. Psalm 78 is a beautiful example of this, reminding the people of the importance of learning from the past and telling their children of God's faithfulness and what He has done.

There is this story of a village where they suffered from insomnia and slowly started to lose their memory as a result. One of the guys realised what was happening, and didn't want to forget, so he started labeling everything, and then wrote instructions for what they were for. At the entrance to the village, they had the name of the village, and a sign that said 'God exists'. This may seem like something sad and almost pathetic, but it's really a story about all of us. The only way we learn is by repetition and constant practice. We have to continuously remind ourselves about important things. Brushing your teeth may seem like the most natural thing ever, but try doing it with your other hand - it's not as easy. So often we forget who God is and what He has done. We need to remind ourselves daily that He even exists, and also of His nature and character.

When God made His covenant with Abraham and promised Him thousands of descendants, He used two different metaphors: that He would have as many descendants as the stars in the sky, and at another time, as the grains of sands. God gave Abraham visual reminders for the day and night, so that when feelings of doubt came, He only had to look at creation to be reminded of God's promise.

I found this on the Axiom page (christouraxiom.com), and I cried the tears of my Beloved as I realised how far we have fallen:

Robert Benson tells the story of a four year-old girl who was overheard whispering into her newborn baby brother’s ear, “Baby”, she said, “tell me what God sounds like—I am starting to forget”.

How far have we come and how much have we forgotten about what God sounds like? We need to practice listening and hearing His voice, so that in the storms of life, we can pick it out amongst the chaos. We were made for intimacy with Him, but we forget and so easily stray to do our own thing, that we don't hear the desperate cry of our Beloved for us to come back to Him.

In 2 Chronicles 7:14, God says that "if my people who are called by My Name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land."

May you open your ears to hear and your eyes to see that the LORD is God, and that His unfailing love and faithfulness endure forever. I pray that He will remind us, and that we would make a conscious effort to remember who He is and what He has done for us, for He has done so much!

about eternity...

So eternity has always been something that has pretty much freaked me out more than anything else. I don't often admit to it, but it has been my biggest fear. I know that this is ridiculously stupid and unspiritual of me - to fear the thing that is the selling point of many Christian messages: "believe in Jesus so you avoid hell and get an eternity of heaven instead!" I guess that's something I should be excited about, but from what I'd heard about it, or rather not heard about it, I honestly wasn't all that excited. I was scared, because to me, eternity was a boringly tedious, never-ending church service in a shiny place floating in the clouds somewhere with a huge throne up there somewhere with everyone bowing down before it in some sort of hypnotic trance... yeah, not exactly something I could relate to and not something that I was looking forward to experiencing - forever!


There were times when we'd have a Holy Spirit party, and I'd experience the amazing joy of being in God's presence, that this idea did become more appealing. Once I'd been in God's presence and felt Him so personally and tangibly, the idea of that forever seemed a little more manageable and appealing. But there was still the idea of nothingness and emptiness, where everything is God and God is everything, and we're just there, staring at Him forever, probably not even knowing who is standing right next to us.

That is one thing that I'd kinda hoped for - being able to meet people like Moses, Abraham, Elijah, Mother Teresa, and cool people like that so I could hear stories about their lives, but then I'd chide myself for being so unspiritual. There'd be no time for conversation: we'd be too busy staring at God in our hypnosis of worship. Don't get me wrong, God is perfectly awesome enough for us to just stare at for an eternity and get bored, but that isn't always the most appealing thing...

I've been reading this book "Desire" by John Eldredge that has been kicking me in the butt about a lot of stuff - seriously, if you can get hold of it, read it. It's amazing and so refreshing and inspiring and freeing. Over a couple of chapters, he touches on what eternity will be like, offering a different view than the one I'd always thought, but hoping wasn't true, probably because eternity is built into my heart (and all our hearts), so we know when we see it and when it's not quite right.

Something I've always had a problem with is the view that the world will self implode and be completely destroyed and obliterated by God before Jesus will come again. So that's all good and well, but if that's the case, then what is the point of us being here? To just save people's souls - fire insurance to avoid hell? If that's true, then why don't people get zapped up as soon as they accept Jesus? As God's ambassadors, I believe that we are here to establish and build God's Kingdom on earth, now. We're doing this in anticipation of the return of the King. If this is true, then there is a purpose to us being here, and the King won't come back until His Kingdom is established. Then He will come and set it in order, taking account of what has been done, of who was faithful, and rewarding them according to what they have done with what they were given. God is not a God of destruction, He is a God of restoration. So it makes much more sense for Him to restore the earth, rather than destroy it and make a new one. Maybe the 'fires of destruction and judgement' are metaphors describing the purification and renewal that will happen, when God will get rid of all the bad, and restore the good to it's perfect condition - to the fullness of glory as it was intended to be. This goes for all creation: the earth, the plants, birds, animals, fish, and us.

We were made in the image of God. At the point when this was said, all we have recorded of God is that He created the entire universe. He is creative. We were made in the image of a creative God - we were made to create and rule with Him, to govern this earth. If you put a blank sheet of paper and a vast array of art tools before a kid, they will immediately go about making a work of art. Do the same with adults, and they'll wait for specific instructions and make excuses that they're 'not artistic' or other nonsense. As kids, our instinctive nature is to create. As we grow up, we're told not to and our creative instinct is suppressed until we cease to believe we are creative and artistic at all. We all are, it's just expressed in a whole lot of different ways.

The people who are the most fulfilled and have the most joy are those that do what they do, not out of obligation, but because they love it. Dorothy Sayers says, "work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do". We will spend all of eternity doing what we love with no limitations or restrictions, because we will be ruling and governing creation with God, in His presence. So from that perspective - that our life now is our training ground for eternity, there is so much freedom with what we do. Taking an unending future into account, deciding could look more like this: "So, I'm going to be living forever, so if I don't get this done now, then I can get to it later". How ridiculously freeing is that??

It blows my mind, yet gives me that amazing sense of peace in my spirit that is saying, 'Yes! This is what I was made for.' Even if it doesn't make sense, it does somewhere inside of me. That sense of eternity built into me agrees with this because it is what I long for - to create alongside the Creator, doing what we both love, for all eternity. This throws such a different light on what life now is all about. The pressure is released, because you have all of eternity to do any and everything you want to do.

Like with Queen Esther, God says to us, "Tell me what you want. What is your request? I will give it to you, even if it is half the Kingdom". He says in Psalm 2:8, that we only have to ask, and He will give the nations to us as our inheritance. In Psalm 37:4, He says that if we delight in Him, He will give us the desires of our hearts.

What are the desires of your heart? What do you truly long for? If our delight is in Him, those things are God-given passions, and when we long for what God longs for, we can go after it together, working side by side at what we love.

I pray that God will bring out those desires in us, and will guide us to a place of  intimacy with Him where we are able to dream with Him about what we truly long for and want to do. God, open our hearts to dream again. Awaken our desires for the things of You - those parts of You that are uniquely in us. Draw us close to You, so that as we delight in You, You will give us our hearts' desires. Thank You that we have all eternity to discover the depth of who You are and how You made us like You.

trust in Him...

"Trust in me" was a phrase that started off as a joke on our Brazil outreach, but it's actually become something that God is continuously reminding me of. I actually had 'Trust in Him" written on my hand for over a month, and it was an amazing reminder every day, because I had to keep re-writing it, and others would ask me about it.

It really doesn't make sense why it's so hard to trust God, because He is the only stable, eternal, unchanging one in the entire universe, seen and unseen. Any and everything else will let us down at some time. God is the only on e we can truly rely on, because He truly loves us unconditionally, and He works everything for our good.

Why would I not trust Him? Because I've been hurt in the past and let down by people, and project those disappointments onto God, when He is nothing like us. He remains faithful, even when we are unfaithful, because that's who He is, and He cannot be what He is not.

These are the lyrics from 'Nothing I hold onto' by United Pursuit Band:

i lean not on my own understanding, my life is in the hands of the Maker of heaven
i give it all to You God, trusting that You'll make something beautiful out of me
i will climb this mountain with  my hands wide open
there's nothing i hold onto

This is my heart's cry, as I learn what it looks like to trust God with all I am, because I know He is trustworthy, and will catch me when I fall. He will lead me along the best pathway for my life. I choose to trust in Him.

I pray that He will lead you to a place of trusting Him out of love, not obligation, that He would teach you how faithful and loving He is, and that He would pour out His love on you. May He overwhelm you with His presence and change you from the inside out.