The Faceless Ones

God’s Thought’s to Me

“For he has not ignored or belittled the suffering of the needy, he has not turned his back on them, but has listened to their cries for help.” (Ps. 22;24, NLT)

“I was sick and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.” (Mat.25:43(b), NLT)

Introduction

Today I am so honored to introduce my friend, Joy Lenton. She is a very special lady who suffers from ME/CFS and arthritis.

Joy is a mother and wife to her husband, Phil. She used to work as a nurse before becoming chronically ill.

Joy and her husband live in Norfolk, United Kingdom. To visit her blog, just click on her picture. Thank you, dear friend, for blessing me by being a guest at my place. Over to you.

The Girl with Light in Her Eyes

Sadly those who are too sick to work have to contend with issues of shame. In a society where we are “framed, boxed, categorised, sifted, found wanting in society’s eyes” as I wrote about in the poem here, we experience deep frustration at being pigeon-holed and stigmatized.

It all impacts our lives adversely, affecting our relationships and connections with others.

On the rare occasions when I am alone downstairs in the house and have to answer the door during a late morning/afternoon/evening period in my night-clothes, wearing  bed-head hair, a dazed, sleepy expression and a veneer of embarrassment, …

…I either say nothing (for such a state is normal to those who know me) or mumble something like, “Please excuse me, I’m unwell today” to those I don’t.

Then I hasten to close the door as fast as possible to avoid curious stares from neighbours or passers-by who may wonder what they are seeing.

I just want them to understand I am sick rather than lazy. Does it always take a stick or wheelchair to convince people we are ill?

As someone who used to be thought of as attractive, took a fair amount of time and trouble over her appearance, sought out clothes to enhance and suit my figure, it is a far cry from those days to be where I am now .

I am almost permanently pyjama-clad due to the time I spend resting in bed or too exhausted to make the effort required to get up and dressed,  and I’m far too weary to let it worry me as it would have done before.

I have a body that doesn’t walk like it should, lists and comes to a halt after a very short distance, is riddled with and swollen-jointed by arthritis, sinks wearily under M.E fatigue.

I have a face marked by the effects of over 20 years of chronic illness, exhaustion, pain, medication-taking, as well as the natural ageing process. I feel ashamed of my appearance at times. It doesn’t reflect how I feel on the inside.

Though I’m far busier these days trying to work on the inner beauty that endures and cannot be taken away. To feel ashamed just for being ill is an additional burden we don’t need. And, yes, there are other areas of shame that have a great impact on relationships.

One of those is having experienced childhood sexual abuse. To have precious innocence taken and adult things pressed on a mind and body too young to understand them is a horrible thing indeed.

Those of us who have experienced it feel that we not only carry a huge scarlet letter ‘S’ for shame hanging around our necks, but have it imprinted on our very souls.

Many who carry this shame stigma also carry a burden of emotional trauma, often leading to mental and physical illness, whereby the acid accumulation seems to leach into our very frame causing deep emotional/physical pain and disorder.

It can take a great deal of time, wrestling, prayer, struggle, pain, counseling, and much Holy Spirit input and help to work through the devastating legacy it leaves us with.

Full emotional healing cannot be rushed. So why share these things? Aren’t they meant to be private? Well, yes, and no.

The minutiae of how people deal with these issues is something for them to work out individually and together as a couple. But the sadness and frustration they cause is something to make known if it will help even one other person to feel less isolated and alone.

Actually, it’s the hiding, shaming and embarrassment that keeps us from feeling understood or getting the support we need.

When your daily life experience lacks most of the defining vestiges of normality, it tends to reduce life to a drive to appear normal in the midst of personal chaos. And to a drive to see lives changed, with health and wholeness restored….one day.

In our image-obsessed society and culture, all of us who fail to manifest the perceived ‘norm’ ideal can be left feeling totally inadequate and shamed. Much depends on where we place our worth and value and where others do too.

“We are “normal” in God’s eyes when we demonstrate endurance and long-suffering, when we keep looking to the unseen things. This is the normal Christian life” ~ Joni Eareckson Tada ‘Daily Devotionals’.

Let me reassure you, my friend, we are ‘normal’ right now, even when our lives and bodies may feel anything but, no matter how well or badly we function, no matter our level of disability. Man looks at the outward appearance but God looks at the heart.

If, in naming and discussing these issues I can bring a greater degree of clarity, understanding, empathy or practical solution-finding to the mix then it will have been worthwhile.

We need to speak out. To air our concerns. To make invisible illness visible. To open up a forum for discussion so that others who suffer like-wise (and those who may follow after) will be assisted to live as fully and freely as God intended.

For God the Father is not ashamed to call us His children who are restored, whole, beloved, precious and beautiful in His sight as He looks at us through the lens of Christ our Lord and Saviour.

Much love and sweet blessings xx

Mia

Unlocking Mysteries

God’s Thoughts to Me

And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:19, NLT).

It is time we find the Resurrection Stone, and discover the “key” to these religious mysteries, to interpret the gospel as it was intended (Resurrection:  The key to understanding the gospel – James Fowler).

Priestly Prattle

The word “hieroglyphics” is a Greek word that means “sacred” or “priestly carving”. For more than a millennium, from the year 500 BC to 1822 Egyptian hieroglyphics were considered to be a secret code of priests and the key to unlock these mysterious writings was feared to be forever lost.

Until 1799 when some of Napoleon’s soldiers found the Rosetta Stone near the mouth of the River Nile. The same inscription appeared on this stone in three different languages: Egyptian hieroglyphics, Egyptian demotic and Greek.

The Rosetta Stone

But it took the Frenchman, Francois Champollion, 23 years to discover the key to unlock these mysterious writings. In 1822 he translated the symbols and the mystery of hieroglyphics was something of the past.

From as early as I can remember, I was a member of some or other Christian Church, but I was still lost in darkness and didn’t really understand what the gospel was truly about. I was well into my thirties when I first heard about our need to be born again through the sweet Holy Spirit.

Not unlike most of my contemporaries, I knew an awful lot about the gospel. I paid lip service, celebrated and paid homage to the gospel instead of the God of the gospel without ever really knowing or understanding what it was all about.

To say that the Scriptures were a lot like prophetic-apostolic hieroglyphics to me, is nailing the truth right on the head. I used to read everything I could lay my hands on, trying to find the key to unlock the sweet mystery of the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

I was as blind as a bat and lent out my itching ears to a lot of priestly prattling of quite a few deceived teachers and blind guides.

But my ignorance proved to be no problem to our Pappa and in His usual gentle, patient way, He had to use nearly a full bucket of mud to open my spiritual eyes to the simple truth of Jesus. The simple truth we have made a monstrous complexity of!

Suffice to say that for a long time I was happily falling time and time again over the stumbling block, our dearest Lord Jesus, the Cornerstone of our salvation.

I valiantly got up again after every fall, nursing my wounded ego for a while, dusting off my behind and then tried again from scratch.

Until the Rock of All Ages reminded me. “Anyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone it falls on (Matthew 21:44)”.

When enough was enough, this Stone kindly fell on me, broke me into many pieces and took my legs from right under me through my illness. Gone were the days of my “self” being able to get up again and again.

This became extremely difficult and I had to hoist the white flag in surrender. I knew I needed to start building cautiously on the only Cornerstone through all the ages.

The Master Builder gathered all my broken pieces and glued them all together with His tender love and gentle discipline until I was just a fragile jar of clay with many cracks to allow His Light to shine through.

When one is blessed with a disabling disease, your time of dancing when the religious folk played wedding songs and crying when they played funeral songs, has passed.

I realized that I was not able to carry this burden of Fm/CFS on my own and I was soon knocking earnestly on Heaven’s Door.

True to His wonderful promise, He soon opened the Door to His Kingdom and gave me a wonderful key. This key unlocks the secret of our Resurrected Lord living His Resurrection Life in and through us.

Once we truly realize our need to decrease like John did and we fill up and straighten the roads of our hearts for our King of Glory to enter, we come to know the joy of denying ourselves daily to experience the life in our Pappa.

Through the above-mentioned article of James Fowler, I discovered the Resurrection key; the key to unlock the glorious gospel of Jesus.

Scales fell from my eyes and my heart soared like an eagle that has been released from years of captivity in the prison of religious jargon.

Many Bible verses that used to scare the living daylights out of me, became beautiful flowers in the garden of my heart. The Gardener, none other than the Holy Spirit cultivating flowers with the sweetest nectar to feed my thirsty heart.

The will of our God is one example of the secrets He revealed to my stubborn heart. I used to go on many a wild goose chase trying to determine the specific will of our Pappa for everything pertaining to my life; totally ignoring the sacred gift of common sense that doesn’t seem to be common anymore!

This glorious key unlocked many mysteries of our Pappa’s Kingdom and opened the doors of many prison cells where I was a captive for many, many years; a prisoner of the cruel jailer called Fear!

In my next post, I would love to invite you along a few of the roads to freedom our Pappa has led me and few mysteries He lovingly revealed to me.

Much love and sweet blessings.

Mia

The Feisty Philistines

God’s Thoughts to Me

He did this to teach warfare to the generations of Israelites who had no experience in battle. These are the nations: the Philistines (those living under the five Philistine rulers)… (Judges 3:3a, NLT).

All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
Just another blunder
Just another lousy call (Pink Floyd, The Wall)

A Brick in The Wall

In 1979 the rock band, Pink Floyd, released a rock opera, The Wall. It was a huge success and made the top of the charts worldwide.

The opera was written by the group’s bassist, Roger Waters, and was a protest against rigid schooling in general and the boarding school system in the United Kingdom in particular.

The Apartheid Regime in South Africa banned the whole album in 1980 and no radio station was allowed to play the song, Another Brick In The Wall. Supporters of a nationwide school boycott adopted this song in their protest against racial inequalities in education.

But this didn’t stop us young, teenage South Africans from the late seventies to listen to this album and to come to our own conclusions about the message of the song and the inequality in the education system.

The problems this album was addressing were actually much wider and much more serious than we would like to admit, for the whole world is lost in darkness and chaos and is under the control of the evil one (1 John 5:19).

I have often been overwhelmed by my finite smallness in comparison with a big, wide world. The only solution Satan offers for lost humanity, is to deceive us into thinking we can decide for ourselves what good and evil are.

As a result, we came up with “human rights” which have been a total failure world-wide, for man is totally addicted to power.

Too often the rights of a single individual is denied for the greater good of a group. No wonder the “unimportant, forgotten ones” feel like nothing more than bricks in the wall the rich and powerful are building on a very shaky foundation of human rights.

We have fallen prey to an enemy we do not even recognize, but who nevertheless has been with humanity since the beginning of time and with the Israelites in particular after they entered the Promised Land … the Philistines.

But man has not been created to have rights; we have been created with the need to be loved by our Creator, to love Him in return and also love one another.

Any right we think we have apart from the love of our Pappa will only result in another form of power struggle and puts the emphasis on the idol called “self”.

The name, Philistine, means, “wallowing in self” and according to Wordweb, “wallow” means, “to indulge in to an immoderate degree or to give oneself over to”.

The Philistines were an aggresive tribal group living in the south-east of Canaan and were Israel’s most formidable, feisty enemy and they battled against them even in the time of King David.

We all know the story of Samson and Delilah and how he eventually, after being their prisoner for a long time, killed many of them at a feast in their temple. Who can ever forget how valiantly David as a shepherd boy killed their giant, Goliath.

Please allow me to suggest that the five lords that were ruling these formidable enemies, represent five aspects of the self-life!

We get General Self-Pity with a whole bunch of troops below him like Privates Self-Loathing, Shame, Rejection, Despair, etc., etc.

Another high official in the Philistine army, is Colonel Self-Depreciation with his own bunch of underlings called Captain Self-Condemnation and Corporal Worthlessness.

Not to mention Major Self-Importance with his subordinates, Sergeants Boastful, Braggart and Windbag. Last, but not the least, we get Sergeant Major Self-Indulgence and the millitary attaché, Captain Self-Pleasure

We all have our own bunch of stinking Philistines in our hearts in all their different, delicious forms and flavors. They were not only a great formidable foe in the time of the Israelites in Canaan, but are still today.

It has never been easy to defeat them and they have the nasty habit to pop up again and again. I know I have to be on the look-out for especially those nasty critters, Rejection, Shame, Self-pity and their whole enchilada.

Someone else  may not have a problem with my enemies, but may have another bunch of Philistines to battle e.g.  that sly fox called Arrogance and his sister, Pride.

Only last week I was in a fierce battle against the Philistine army of Discouragement, Hopelessness and Self-pity when my illness almost overwhelmed me and I felt locked up  in the dark dungeon of despair.

I knew I was totally helpless, but for a day of two, I still valiantly tried to overcome the enemy with what I thought the grace of my Pappa. But without any success. My enemy was ready for serious combat and I was so weak.

I battled until I remembered that I was trusting my own skill, albeit empowered by grace. Only as I felt the hyena sinking his mighty teeth into my flesh, did I remember to turn around and run to our Lord Jesus.

When we have to battle this enemy in our hearts, let us not be foolish and think that we can defeat them on our own, for we simply cannot.

Let us submit to our Commander-in-Chief and resist this mangy pack of hyenas. These spiritual enemies can only be defeated by the sweet Holy Spirit.

Let us remember His words, “Do not be afraid! Don’t be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God’s” (2 Chronicles 20:15). Let us run to Jesus and Him alone, for He is our Conqueror.

Much love and sweet blessings.

Mia.

The Shulamite and the Foxes

God’s Thoughts to me

Catch all the foxes, those little foxes, before they ruin the vineyard of love, for the grapevines are blossoming! (Song of Songs 2:15, NLT).

Fox Hunting

Through the years I have been walking with God, I have often been harassed by the little foxes from the Song of Songs. They have been so persistent with their gnawing and pestering of my thoughts.

I realised the time was ripe for me to chase and catch these little rascals. Little did I realise how cunning these creatures could be! I started to plan my battle strategies on how to fight and conquer these hard-to-destroy-grapevine-loving cute little pests by doing some research.

My expert advisors, the Bible scholars, seemed to agree on one thing, at least. These, not so little foxes, represent all the false preachers, prophets and teachers of a different gospel.

Our Lord Jesus warned us, ” On judgement day many will say to me,’ Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’ But I will reply,’I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.” (Matthew 7:22-23, NLT).

My advisors nearly convinced me through the letter Paul wrote to Timothy, ” Now the Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some will turn away from the true faith; they will follow deceptive spirits and teachings that come from demons. These people are hypocrites and liars, and their consciences are dead.” (1 Timothy 4:1-2, NLT).

But I knew, although these gentlemen were spot-on with their analysis, this battle, for me, had to be fought on a much deeper level; on the only battleground my enemies were able to destroy; my heart and soul.

So, I fired my clever, highly esteemed advisors and asked our Lord Jesus to be the Commander-in-Chief of my whole life; a position He gladly wanted to fill since forever, and to show me the best plan of action against these potential soul destroyers.

At the time King Solomon wrote this beautiful song, vineyards had protective walls built around them against all the unwelcome visitors. The foxes would dig holes in the vineyard, spoiling the roots of the vines, gnawing and breaking the tender, little branches and leaves.

These gluttonous, little creatures were not interested in the flowers, they wanted the juicy grapes, especially when they were young and tender. Then my ever-so-romantic mind’s eye caught sight of the Shulamite and her King! To be specific, the love relationship between the two.

It is a relationship of love; not a doctrine, teaching, a charismatic speaker nor all the things we associate with the modus operandi of the modern church scene. The foxes are those great and little enemies and adverse circumstances that threaten to gnaw and destroy their blooming, tender love!

I knew it was time for me to take stock to discover how many of these little foxes I allowed to freely roam and destroy the vineyard of my heart. I knew I had no means to fight against these formidable foes.

But I remembered that only our Pappa God is mighty to save, I recalled His words, “Listen all you people … ‘Do not be afraid! Don’t be discouraged by this mighty army, for the battle is not yours, but God’s.” (2 Chronicles 20:15, NLT).

My heart jumped with joy when I realised our Lord Jesus was my Knight in shining armour and together we made a mean team, just like Lancelot and Lady Guinevere. He was more than able and prepared to destroy this foe that was preventing my heart from producing the delicious fruit of love and trust, He so greatly desired.

Together we first had to identify and destroy this big army of little foxes’ commander-in-chief, Brigadier-General Work-To-Earn-God’s-Love. What a despicable liar this one was! We overcame this fellow easily, once I allowed our Lord Jesus to counteract his lies with truth.

Once he was slain, his whole army of well-trained soldiers started to crumble. Lieutenant Good Works and Sergeant Shame put up a good fight, but quickly raised the white flag when they saw my Commander-in-Chief! Their whole platoon of privates soon followed suit; private Guilt, private Condemnation, private Rejection, Anger, etc., etc.

Of their once mighty army, only a few mercenaries remained, but I knew that as long as I didn’t willingly hire their services, they would leave me well alone. They know the battle belongs to the Lord and that makes them tremble with fear.

Our King of kings destroyed all their shelters of wood, hay and stubble. Now, if I just spy one of them on the horizon, I run to my Strong Tower and Place of Refuge, into our Lord’s loving embrace.

We daily encounter many of these nasty little foxes and foes who want to lock us in shackles of despair. We have to fight many battles and it can be downright horrible, but as we allow the sweet Holy Spirit to teach us how to abide in our Lord Jesus, we only need to submit to our Pappa and resist the evil ones!

As we live in His Love, moment-by-moment, we can confidently say with Paul, “Neither death nor life, neither angels or demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow-not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.” (Romans 8:35).

Living life is a fine balancing act in a world lost in chaos and darkness, filled with many foxy foes. Let us therefore fix our eyes on our only Commander-in-Chief, our dearest Lord Jesus.

Hugs and sweet blessings

Mia

Linking-up with

Please check my Tea Time and Link-Ups page for the blogs where I link during the week.

This is an edited repost from the archives.

Desert Snippets

God’s Thoughts to Me

Then Aaron took the gold, melted it down, and molded it into the shape of a calf. When the people saw it, they exclaimed, “O Israel, these are the gods who brought you out of the land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:4, NLT).

Egyptian Gold

The saying goes that it took the Israelites only a few days to leave Egypt, but they had to wander the desert for 40 years before God finished uprooting all the stubborn roots of Egypt from their hearts.

The ancient Egyptians had 8700 gods and after living in Egypt for 430 years, we can just imagine how much they have been influenced by the Egyptians and their useless religious ways.

It is therefore no big surprise when they wanted to revert back to the familiarity of a god they could see when they felt lost in the desert. They longed for the security of the familiar streets of hell they knew so well!

We are all well acquainted with the story of how the Israelites became impatient with Moses for staying too long on Mount Sinai. They pestered Aaron until he built them a golden calf from the golden earrings they brought from Egypt.

I used to shake my head in exasperation and disgust at the stupidly of these people, while silently patting myself on the shoulder, believing I would never be so shortsighted and foolish!

How could they think for a moment that their golden-earrings-turned-golden-calf was able to lead them out of Egypt? Preposterous, to say the least!!

But our Pappa knows me best and showed me how I used to wander in my own desert for a long, long time. He showed me all the mountains I loved trekking around numerous times before He could lead me further.

He opened my eyes to see how often I cried for the fleshpots of Egypt when the going got tough and the tough seemed to have no plans to get going!

He showed me the many times I saw the wonderful, luscious grapes of Canaan in my mind’s eye, but turned back. It took Him quite a while to usher me across my Jordan into Canaan … into the life of our Lord Jesus.

Even though I have been a member of a church all my life, I still didn’t know Jesus. My heart was empty, starving and yearning to know this strange God. I needed to experience His love which was not much more than a mystery to me at that stage.

One day, out of sheer frustration, I took my Bible and read that wonderful verse, “All that the Father gives me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out” (John 6:37).

As I used to battle rejection issues most of my life, my heart rejoiced when I saw the words about not being cast out!! Glorious light and joy flooded the darkness and despair of my heart.

I realized that although I have been a diligent church member for many years, I have never gone to Jesus personally.

I could only fall to my knees and cry out to Him that I was coming to Him and Him alone. I was in awe of this Jesus who didn’t speak the only language I knew so well: rejection!

I thanked Him for the assurance that I would never be sent away like a dog with its tail between its legs, when being rejected was about the only language I knew!

That was my Red Sea moment! But little did I realize that this was only the beginning of my journey to Canaan. I had my own treasure chest filled with lots of Egyptian gold and silver and a heart overgrown with the weeds of this world.

I didn’t take long for me to realize that the love, joy and peace I heard of so often, were still very absent from my heart and my eyes started lusting after the familiarity of Egypt!

Very soon I forgot my days of slavery and all the tears I cried when I sat down at the rivers of Babylon!

Very soon I complained about my monotonous diet of manna and I longed for the fleshpots of Egypt! How I missed the false security of belonging to a religious church, of finding my worth in a set of theological doctrines, of not thinking for myself and just gobbling up everything that was dished up onto my religious plate!

How I missed that wonderful gooey feeling of singing the beautiful gospel songs on the great rhythmic beat of drums. I soon forgot how I cried out to Pappa when I was a slave in Egypt.

But, I knew there had to be more to life than the empty futile striving, forever trying to be good enough to be loved. I was tired of empty rote practices of piety.

I was tired of being told to cry when the religious elite played funeral songs and to dance when they dished up wedding songs! (Matthew 11:17).

Like Abraham who trekked into the unfamiliar, I also set my face like flint and travelled into the unknown, never alone, for the Rock of All Ages was and always will be my constant companion!

Much love and sweet blessings.

Mia

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The Shepherd from Heaven

God’s Thoughts to Me

He will feed his flock like a shepherd. He will carry His lambs in His arms, holding them close to His heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young (Isaiah 40:11, NLT).

He Feeds Us

Today is the beginning of the International Fibromyalgia/ME Awareness Week. Although research is only in its infancy, we look forward to progress and perhaps a breakthrough in the near future.

Due to unbelief, many if not most sufferers, received very bad and hostile treatment from the medical profession.

But at least we are finally beginning to be acknowledged as human beings with a real and quite disabling disease.

Isaiah 40:11 reminds us so wonderfully of how well the good Shepherd from heaven takes care of mothers and their children.

He cares for the broken ones, the weak, the sick, the unimportant, the unwanted and the rejected of this world. They only need to come to Him.

When my son, Simon, was in Grade 11, we had to buy text books for Grade 12 when the Grade 12 pupils were selling their old books second-hand at a much lower price than new books.

I recall the week when we had to pay about R600 (around $67) for two text books as well as payment for the initiation camp for the following year’s Grade 12 learners.

It was in the middle of the month and we were stone, cold broke with only a few pennies we had to rub together in any case. Yet, I knew I had a Pappa who promised to take care of all our needs.

The morning the payment was due, we still had not received our Lord’s provision, but I assured my children that the money would be paid before the end of the day.

When they left for school, I had a serious talk with my God, reminding Him that today is D-day and we still were empty-handed (or rather empty pocketed).

He told me to go to the ATM, and of course I stubbornly had to argue a bit, for the previous day when I checked, I was taunted by a big, round zero. Oh, those trust issues!!!!

At the word of our Lord, in the famous Peter style with the fishing nets, reluctantly, off to the ATM I went.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I found that double the amount we needed was paid back to us from the Receiver of Revenue. We were overjoyed and my children’s faith grew with leaps and bounds.

One would think that I was now cured of my stubbornness. Oh no, not this one. As a Fm/CFS sufferer, I had my fair share of unbelief, rejection and neglect from doctors, church people and also family and friends.

To such an extent that I landed up in the proverbial pig pen; not because of my foolishness, but because I had no one to care for me when I couldn’t take care of myself. Nobody believed that I was really ill.

But I was never alone. I could hear my Pappa screaming in my pain and suffering. Faithfully He was working in His normal mysterious ways to perform His wonders in my life.

The shepherds of ancient times would break the legs of the lambs that constantly wandered away.

Then he would set the leg and carry the lamb on his shoulder until the leg was healed. After that the lamb would remain by the shepherd’s side for the rest of its life.

Pappa knew of my stubborn propensities to be a master performer to earn everyone’s love and approval.

With my religious mindset, I just could not believe that I already was loved and accepted by our God.

Because of His amazing love, He did what the shepherds did with their stubborn, wandering lambs. Allowing Fm/ME in my life, He “broke” my legs.

With such tender care and love, He gently set it as well and carried me around His neck until I was healed of my stubbornness and insecurities.

I have learned how good it is when my Beloved Shepherd Himself feeds me with the milk of His love… His grace … His life and compassion.

Fm/CFS has taught me how to always walk with our Lord and never ever to leave His side again.

Even though we suffer greatly at times, I am so grateful for the wonder and joy of walking daily with our God … for the privilege of living in His Loving Embrace.

Love and sweet blessings

Mia

We all have experienced how our Lord has provided in miraculous ways. Please, share His goodness with us!

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The Rooster Crowed

God’s Thoughts to Me

“Then Peter denied it again, and immediately a rooster crowed.” (John 18:27, NET).

It is Never Too Late

I am delighted to introduce you to my husband, Andre. He has graciously agreed to write a guest post. Thank you, so much! Over to my Dearest:

My wife, Mia, asked me to look for a photograph that speaks to me spiritually. I immediately thought of the rooster that crowed when Peter denied our Lord the third time.

What is really significant to me is the way Peter reacted when he realized Jesus’ prediction came true! In Luke 22:62 (NLT), we read that Peter left the courtyard weeping bitterly!

Can you imagine how Peter must have felt? He just denied his best Friend, the Man he spent three years with travelling the length and breadth of Israel.

They virtually lived in each other’s pockets as the saying goes. Was Peter not considered to be the leader of the disciples? Yet, at crunch time he could not speak up for Jesus, he denied Him.

Proud Peter failed and the first one to realize it, to his credit, was him. Did he not boast a few days earlier that when everyone runs away, he will stay with Jesus? He did stay for a while, chopping a guard’s ear off when they came to arrest Jesus!

This seems quite brave, but he denied that he knows Jesus, not once or twice, but three time! Proud, impulsive, boastful Peter. Once again, pride came before the fall.

In my language, Afrikaans, we have a saying: “Spyt kom altyd te laat.” Roughly translated it means that remorse always comes too late.

Fortunately for Peter, he did not deny an ordinary Man! He denied the Lord of lords and the King of kings in Whose book, remorse is never too late.

Just a few days after Jesus’s resurrection we find them on the beach of the Sea of Galilea. When Peter realized it was Jesus, he did not even wait for the boat to dock, but jumped overboard and swam to shore!

After they all had breakfast, Jesus asked Peter three time if he loves Him. Peter was hurt that the Lord had to ask him the question three times. He kept on saying that Jesus knows the answer. Did he remember the cock that crowed?

However, after the third time that Peter answered that he loves Jesus, the Lord simply said, “Follow me” (John 21:19, NLT). This is the epitome of forgiveness!

I mean, here is the man that denied Jesus and He asked Peter to follow Him and to look out for His followers. How many of us would’ve done that? Peter was once again restored.

I also deny my Lord daily, whether I want to or not! Life happens and before you know it, you have scolded a colleague or bad-mouthed the boss. Is that not the same as denying Jesus?

Are we not supposed to love our fellow-man? Should we, as folks who have been rescued from the pit of hell, not live as an example to the rest? This is how we think.

But, we have a Spirit that convicts us. It does not condemn us, but simply reminds us in a gentle way that we have sinned.

We don’t need a rooster to crow. This gentle conviction gives us the opportunity to go back to Jesus, ask for His forgiveness and His love will overcome everything!

It is never too late for remorse in Jesus’ world! Trust Him.

Blessings

André

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The Scabbanger Club

God’s Thoughts to Me

But His mother told the servants, “Do whatever He tells you” (John 5:2, NLT).

It is to divide between what is us in fallen nature, and what is Christ, and to get rid of the one to give full place to the other! (T Austin-Sparks).

Water, Wine and Merriment

Onwaba, the Day of Her Baptism

I have a little 5 year old friend. We have been blessed to have Onwaba and her grannie staying with us the last few years.

Onwaba has a great sense of humor. When she does something funny, she is a funny bunny.

But when she is just plain stupid she calls herself a scabbanger. She is quite chaffed with herself for creating this big word.

Onwaba’s sense of humor is just a chip off our Lord’s dear heart. I can just see Him grinning as he looks down at the human race, all honorary members of the Scabbanger Club.

When Jesus and His disciples attended the wedding at Cana, He must have been a bit amused, as well as filled with compassion, for the predicament of the poor bridegroom.

To run out of wine at your wedding was a major faux pas that would cause them to be the latest scabbangers in town until someone else messed up worse than them.

We all know this parable where our Lord Jesus helped the poor groom out of his scabbangerish predicament. But He did much more than merely turning water into wine.

Our Lord never allowed an opportunity to pass without confronting and exposing the uselessness of the Jewish religion; actually, any religion for that matter. It only has the ability to bind us in chains.

He did so in this parable by using the empty clay pots that were used for the ceremonial, legalistic cleansing, instead of the empty wine jars.

After the servants filled the pots to the brim with water, the master of ceremonies gave some to the groom. They were all amazed at the superb quality of this “bubbly” wine and that, only being served near the end of the wedding feast.

The new wine symbolizes the new covenant wine of Jesus’ own life; ever active, dynamic, full of joy and spiritual blessings, replacing the old dirty water of the purification vats of the law.

Jesus’ command to the servants to fill the jars to the brim, shows us the abundance of His provision. There is no short supply in heaven. Unlike the water of religious cleansing, the new wine of His life never runs dry. As we allow Him to restore sight to our spiritual eyes, we become aware of the empty futility of filling the jars of our hearts with religious water of self-effort to clean our consciences and to find favor with our Pappa.

This new delicious wine is only served in abundance when we come to Him and learn how to abide in Him. It is way above and superior to the wine which we drank before.

Some modern-day Pharisees, in defense of abstinence, try to explain this new wine to be diluted grape juice, while others are calling Him a drunkard and a glutton, finding fault with His social life! Preposterous!! Mary told the servants at the wedding to do just as Jesus told them to do. They had the common sense to do just that. Something I used to be in short supply of.

I have been a scabbanger without an iota of common sense for a time. I labored so hard, trying to wash my dirty feet, hands and face with my own brand of religious soap and water.

Yet, with such patience and wisdom our Pappa allowed me to be refined in the refiner’s fire of suffering. He didn’t burn away only the stuff He considered bad and left and refined the good. Not at all!

Paul informs us that there is none who is truly good; not even one who seeks the Lord  (Romans 3). If it was not for His prevenient grace, none of us will ever be able to even think one right and true thought about our Pappa. Only He and He alone is good.

He burned away everything pertaining to my scabbangerish self and replaced it with only Him and His new Life. This didn’t happen without a lot of complaining from my side.

But, He enabled me to realize that giving Him free reigns of my life, was the greatest gift of love I could give myself. He dared me to be brave enough to truly love myself by allowing Him to burn away all the dross of the flesh.

I am immensely grateful that He opened my mind and understanding to the uselessness of the legalistic purification methods of washing with religious soap and water. He gently showed me another way … a better way. Oh, the joy when I was able to hear, listen and heed His still small voice asking my hand in marriage … asking permission to fill my heart with the new bubbly wine of Himself.

Much love XX

Mia

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Freedom in Captivity

God’s Thoughts to Me

For the Lord is the Spirit, and wherever the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17, NLT).

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5:1, NIV).

My Freedom Manifest

During World War II, Corrie Ten Boom and her family helped many Jews to escape the Nazi Holocaust.

The Ten Boom Family

They were arrested in 1944 due to an informant. Corrie, her father and her sister, Betsie, were imprisoned in Ravensbruck, a Nazi concentration camp.

Only Tante Corrie survived and in 1953 her book, A Prisoner and Yet, was released where she shared their suffering and torture.

Despite everything she went through, she was released with her soul free and her mind intact. She found the secret of living free in our Lord Jesus whilst being a prisoner in the worst of prisons.

Corrie Ten Boom

I have to confess that I am an experienced jailbird. For a long time, I have been a prisoner, imprisoned in the narrow confines of my mind. Lies were the jailers, torturing me relentlessly.

Unlike Tante Corrie, I was free in the eyes of the world! Yet, my heart was captured in many dark prisons of self.

Self-contempt and his brother-in-arms, self-condemnation, were trampling and destroying the last tatters of self-respect I was clinging onto for dear life.

I was well versed in the language of abuse, but instead of unmasking this monster as the fiend he really was, I internalized all his lies.

I labelled myself as the perpetrator and considered these cruel, murderous words, my own fault and my just reward for being such a detestable person. Yet, I could never pinpoint my behavior that caused this treatment.

I did my utmost to placate the violent temper of the one who was slowly killing me with verbal bullets instead of loving me more than life. I soon learned that for survival, silence was the name of this game.

When I was at the bottom of the pit of self-contempt, I turned to alcohol in an attempt to lessen the pain of rejection.

It is one thing to be the innocent recipient of such abuse, but quite another to believe the lies that you deserve nothing less.

I knew I was walking a very dangerous road of self-destruction, but truth be told; it seemed preferable to being jailed in the prison of my life. But my love for my children compelled me to look for a better way.

So I turned to God. Or rather; I became very active in organized religion. I tried to find answers in a myriad of religious do’s and don’ts. It was no surprise that the biggest don’t was , ” Thou shalt not DRINK!”!

My mind was completely veiled by a burqa weaved of the finest silk of deception and religious lies. No wonder I was totally powerless to overcome anything destructive in my life.

I was trusting my non-existent abilities to keep laws and another set of laws and then another set of by-laws!! I was doing hard labor in this prison of religion and before long I was chucked away into the worst of worst kind of imprisonment: solitary confinement.

If ever there was a brutal crowd of cruel jailmasters, it was the Scribes and Pharisees throwing stones of condemnation and shame.

I hoped to find help and support amongst these people, but experienced the worst kind of abuse one can think of: spiritual abuse.

I call it by another name, the rape of the heart. The rapist, to my mind, was none other than our dear Lord Jesus!

But a still, small voice kept beckoning me on another journey; a journey to freedom … a journey to truth … a journey to life.

Our Lord Jesus started clearing my mind of all the inroads of lies and redeemded me from its destestable father.

This is the first time I am able to lift the veil of shame and offer a peek into this sector of my life where I was a prisoner of alcohol. Nothing I tried could enable me to stop this terrible addiction!

When I came to the end of all I could call “me”, I fell to my knees, telling our  Pappa that if He didn’t heal me, I was going to be a drunkard for the rest of my life. I got up and never drank again. I didn’t even experience any withdrawal symptoms.

Sharing this is still awkward and it still hurts at times. But I have received grace upon grace to not only forgive myself and the perpetrators of the abuse against me, but our relationships have been beautifully restored to wholeness in Him.

With a grateful heart, I want to bring glory to our Pappa for the freedom that can only be found there where His Spirit reigns … the freedom Tante Corrie experienced when she was a prisoner and yet.

Much love and sweet blessings

Mia xx

The End of The Fig Leaf Fashion

God’s Thoughts to Me

He died for everyone so that those who receive His new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them (2 Corinthians 5:15 , NLT).

Christ is writing a letter in you each day,
The message, that is Him, must be true,
‘Tis the only Jesus men may see
The life of Christ expressed as and through you.
(Author unknown)

A Letter Being Written

Sigmund Freud spoke of a childish king, reigning in the hearts of SELF in the Kingdom called ME.

He wittily labelled this little pompous tyrant ruling in our hearts, “His Majesty, The Baby”. I would like to add another childish ruler, Her Majesty, Queen Self.

These two tyrants used to hold the reigns of  my life. Queen Self fought valiantly to retain her crown and the throne of her Kingdom of Self.

She was smartly dressed in all the latest fig leaf  fashion of religious teachings she embraced with such delight.

Whenever she read Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, she used to think that serving her God was just business as usual, albeit with another emphasis.

Her thinking told her that God Almighty is so good and aloof that she dare not approach Him without being the best performing religious artist of all times!

She loved titivating and dressing-up in her law-keeping Sunday best before she considered herself worthy enough to go to her Pappa.

The monarch reigning in my heart, drove me like a slave, forcing me to build with bricks of straw like the Israelites in Egypt thousands of years ago.

Just like the Pharaoh in the time of Moses, she didn’t provide any straw for she was convinced that “I” was perfectly able to do everything necessary to build her Tower of Babel as well as producing the building material!

I totally misunderstood the meaning of Paul’s words and was convinced that living for Christ only meant working hard to ensure that I stay on the narrow road of life once I had been saved by grace.

Yes, Her Majesty, Queen Self was convinced she could safeguard her redemption through the deceptive lust of her flesh to become righteous on her own steam.

We often see the lust of the flesh just as those overtly sinful deeds like murder, rape, corruption and the like.

Yet, the other side of this coin, includes all those deceptive, noble, good religious deeds we are so fond of doing and are so proud of.

I was being chained in captivity to the Western theological mindset which is very scared of allowing grace to function freely and unrestrained in every individual believer.

This kind of reasoning considers the freedom of grace quite a risky, dangerous business. Something at best to be avoided at all cost.

I imprisoned the sweet Holy Spirit in church structures … I encased Him in my understanding of the Scriptures … I relegated His redemption to a judicial courtroom in Heaven.

So I had a cupboard full of the most beautiful religious robes made of self-effort; all in different colors and styles, according to the newest designs of the religious fashion houses.

My valiant efforts to be noble, humble, truthful and righteous, adorned me with garish fake jewelry, glittering like the brightest rubies and diamonds!

This selfish lady expected our Lord Jesus to revolve around her needs and wants.  She never spared a thought for the possibility of living for Him alone.

Doing that would certainly rob her of her kingdom’s false security by allowing her life to revolve around the Son of Heaven.

She was so wary of the rays of His love shining bright and beautiful from His glorious countenance into the cold darkness of her heart.

But, my stupidity posed no threat to our Pappa. Through the teachings of men like James Fowler and Michael Clark, He dethroned that despot.

That cruel monarch reigning over my life with his iron fist of deception, keeping me chained to the slave of self.

Of course I never succeeded in covering those two lackeys, shame and guilt, who endlessly pestered Her Majesty, Queen Self, with terrible accusations of worthlessness, fear, rejection, self-condemnation and the whole enchilada.

Our Pappa offered me a new way, a new robe, a new heart on which He writes the Gospel of Grace and Love.

He taught me the wonderful freedom of living for our Lord Jesus by allowing Him to live His life in me, as me and through me.

He destroyed all my filthy rags of SELF and gently clothed me with the Beautiful Robe of His love.

He covered all my shame with His blood that purchased my freedom from the kingdom of the evil one … He paid the ransom for my redemption from Her Majesty, Queen Self.

Much love and sweet blessings xx

Mia

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