The right move

Lately I have been having trouble with muscle knots in my shoulder blade which have lead to excruciating headaches, some worse than the migraines my body sometimes gets, and even those are less problematic these days. I have tried a stack of stretching exercises, heat bags, massage and any other idea I could to get rid of them, but with no success.

Today for some strange reason I tried a simple move of just pulling my shoulders forward, not up or down or in circles. Guess what? It seemed to somehow hit the spot and do the trick, and walla, no headache. I suppose only time will tell if this is a permanent solution, but I am hoping it is.

That made me wonder, are there simple moves that we can make in our spiritual lives that can make a difference? I think there are. Can you steal a few minutes to read a devotional in the morning before you head off to work, maybe with the kids at the breakfast table? Can you read a quick scripture during the day, maybe while your lunch is warming in the microwave? Can you offer up a song of praise or worship while you are washing the dishes? I am sure you can and all these little things could add up to a whole day of being Christ centred.

It really is the little things and not necessarily the big things that we do on a daily basis that add up to real spiritual growth. So I encourage you today to let those little moments become precious and special.

Respect the rule book

It is my opinion that a particular team that shall remain nameless lost their match due wholly to a serious lack of discipline and respect for the rules of soccer and not necessarily because they were out played. In the end however, I feel the better team did win.

Lack of discipline does not only plague sports teams. It affects us in our office environment as well. It is often the case that certain people drag a team down with negative behaviour and in the end everyone suffers.

Likewise our spiritual lives can be plagued with undisciplined behaviour. I do hear you say, “ but I thought God was all about grace?” Yes, God in His mercy shows us grace and forgiveness in our times of failure, but He will never divorce this from the consequences of our bad behaviour. If you have committed a criminal act, you will still need to face the law.

So how do we balance grace and law? By remembering the price that Jesus paid for our salvation and responding in gratitude by living our lives according to God's principles. If you know in your heart that this is an area in which you have transgressed, then remember this too. God will forgive you when you confess your sins to Him, so step up to the throne of grace and receive your forgiveness and remember Jesus words to the women caught in adultery, “Go and sin no more.”

Closest to Friday

As a kid I once heard someone say that Thursday is the best day of the week as it is closest to Friday and furthest from Monday. That used to keep me fired up for Thursday's and then Friday was a breeze. As I have grown older though I have found that Monday through Friday just feel like one very long day.....

Time just moves at a different pace when you are older. Our fast paced world just feels like it moves to quickly. I've always wondered what it must be like for God, He has no time restraints. A day to Him is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day.... confusing to our limited understanding of time.

With that being said, I cannot imagine what God must have felt those hours on that one Friday when Jesus hung on the cross for our sins. For God that must have been torture knowing that His Son's death would be the defining moment in Earth time.

When next you feel tired and unable to keep your head up, know that God is intimately aware of how you feel. Hang in there!

Bootstraps

I've been talking a lot recently about the challenges that life throws at us and how we need to guide our attitudes to bring us to a place of strength. Well sometimes that means that we are going to have to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and encourage ourselves. We cannot expect somebody else to do that job for us, it is our responsibility.

David knew that all too well for he tells himself:

• Bless the Lord oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name.
• I lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence comes my help?
• Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.

But what do you do if you don't even have the strength to bend down and grab those bootstraps?

Sing:

Come, Holy Spirit I need you,

Come Sweet Spirit I pray,

Come in thine strength and thine power,

Come in thine own gentle way!

My own journey of blogging started with a desire to encourage myself to see the good things in life, so today I encourage you, to look your circumstances and declare,

“It is well with my soul”

All to play for

These final matches in the group stages of the world cup are so very interesting. In some groups it is all but decided and all the loosing teams have to play for is pride, more like the salvation thereof. In other groups the scores are so tight that it is only certain for one team while the other three have to duke it out and hope that the other match ends in their favour. What a dicey situation to find yourself in.

I can't imagine how difficult it must be to try and play your own match, all the while wondering what is happening in another game being played at the same time. The uncertainty surely can't build any confidence, yet you have it all to play for and you have to deliver your best.

They say art imitates life, but what I love about team sports is that they really do depict real life situations and there is so much you can learn from people's behaviour while they are on the field. Those parallels cross over easily to our spiritual lives too.

There are certainly times in life when things are uncertain. In Ephesians 6 Paul gives us clear guidelines as to how our behaviour should impact our lives. Although he is speaking to servants, this is relevant to so many areas:

Eph 6:5 Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;

Eph 6:6 Not with eye service, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;

Eph 6:7 With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:

Eph 6:8 Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.

Eph 6:9 And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

Let us keep our heart and mind in focus knowing that as we do all things unto Christ, that our reward will come from God and not from men!

No map or GPS

He had no map or GPS to tell him where to go. No road signs and certainly no highways or paved roads. The only thing Moses had as he lead the children of Israel out of Egypt was the word of a God he met in a burning bush. “BUT”, I can hear you say, “he had that cloud by day and pillar of fire by night.” You are right about that, but the truth is that even though Moses had these spectacular miracles to guide him, he still did not have at his disposal what we have today.

You see today we have the benefit of thousands of years of scripture, recorded and preserved in tact. In those scriptures we have we have thousands of years of wisdom recorded through the peoples lives that are depicted within the hallowed pages we admire. What we also have is an understanding of each of these peoples personal experiences as they grew to know God and nothing Moses had to guide him could compare to that.

If you are facing dark and troublesome times, take heart, God is near! Draw strength from scripture and draw strength from your personal connection and relationship with God.

Caught with a rat

Yip, you guessed it, my little monster got up to mischief again.  He has on two occasions now brought home small mice.  This got me worried as to where he could have gotten them from but I has my suspicions.

You see during summer with our heavy rainfalls one of our boundary walls had collapsed from flood damage but I did not know the full story.  In replacing the wall the builders had left open a small section to allow the water to come through without the pressure.  The hole had a metal grid and I thought for sure that my cats would not go through there.

I was wrong!  On Friday I arrived home early and Honey wasn't home.  On a hunch I thought I'd go and investigate the wall area.  Sure enough as I came closer, out popped Honey with a big meeooooow!  As I peeped through the grid I found his mouse supply station, a big drain pipe opening.  I made haste to close it up with some gardening gauze.

Morale of the story?  When life brings you a mouse there's a hole that needs closing.  Restated spiritually, when sin creeps in there is a spiritual hole that we have left open for the devil and we need to take action to stop him!

Time to get rid of that mouse.

Gertrude says

2010 had Paul the Octopus.  They claim that 2014 will the year of some Turtle dude, but I'll tell you who will be the real 2014 World Cup oracle, her name is Gertrude.

Who is Gertrude?  Gertrude is my German Fräulein alter ego.  This year Gertrude is predicting that it will be a Germany Vs Holland final and her bets are on Germany to win.

This all brought me to an interesting thought.  It is usually when I'm most stressed that my sense of humour really kicks in.  I suppose that's my coping mechanism, but it can be more than that.  God gave us a sense of humour for good reason.  Use it to not only brighten your day but to lift up the spirits of those around you.

Ugggh grey

There are many beautiful things about winter on the highveld, but driving to work in the morning and seeing a smoggy greyish brown dust rise over browned out trees can just leave one feeling a little uuuggggh!

That being said there are always ways to make life a little brighter and simple ways that you can make your home feel cozier. Try boiling up a few spices. As the aroma wafts through the house you'll sense the relaxing effect they have on you. Light a few candles, just because and not due to load shedding (tee hee). Even having a hot bath while listening to some gentle music can all aid in lifting one's mood.

We all need to choose to take responsibility for our moods. Save the depression for something worthy of the effort. I'm not demeaning negative emotions but I know that I often say “I'm depressed,” when what I really mean is I'm tired, I'm sad, or I'm just frustrated. Naming our emotions correctly and dealing with them can really help us gain more balance and feel calmer.

Red card

Blow me away, excuse the pun! I cannot believe that we are so early into this 2014 world cup and there have been 3 red cards that I know about, so with the odd hours for us here in SA, I'm sure I might have missed one.

How can any player be so selfish as to put their own personal needs to win a ball ahead of the team, sure they may say they are taking one for the team, but this early on all they are doing is weakening the team for future matches to be played, and there are still plenty.

Do we ever throw our faith under the bus? Oh yes we do. We watch that porn movie instead of changing the channel, we get involved in destructive conversations that destroy people emotionally, we are untruthful with people leaving them questioning our honesty. Yes, we all do at some point throw our faith under the bus.

So how do we recover? Do your time out and learn from the lesson, and come back with a true commitment to focus on the team. Which team would that be? The team of brothers and sisters that we have in Christ, for when one of us fails, we all hurt and if one of us succeeds and is raised up, to God be the Glory!

Let us lift up our brothers and sisters in Christ and pray that the family of God will stay strong and loyal to His Name!

Colourful spectacle

As the world cup opening ceremony parade fills the television screen with scenes of beautiful colour, dance and acrobatics the joy of the moment is tangibly felt. The costume details and colour are truly amazing. What a celebration of the beautiful game!

Contemplate this. Praise and worship are supposed to be the same. The forms in worship should celebrate life and God in there full but sadly today much of the joy and celebration of these arts are lost. So what are these forms you ask?

The clapping of hands is a symbol of marching in battle and declaring our victory over Satan. Raising hands is a symbol of surrender to God and a longing to be touched by Him. Waving arms and the waving of flags are symbols of God being our chief in battle and that His banner of protection over us is love.

When we celebrate these forms in worship we bring God's presence tangibly near.

World cup fever

T minus 24 hours and counting........ the 2014 soccer world cup is here and I couldn't be more excited! Oh the memories and goose bumps as we remember back to our very own world cup held right here in South Africa in 2010. This was a few months before I started blogging but oh how I wish I had been writing back then.

With the opening match being right in my own back yard at Soccer City in Soweto, Johannesburg was a buzz like no other. From the moment I stepped outside my home until late that day all you could hear everywhere were vuvuzela's blowing. Everybody had flags on their cars. The whole of Gauteng stopped work in time to allow everyone to go home and watch the opening match. So Brazil, you are in for a treat of humongous proportions.

With the same joy that we celebrate sport, let us rejoice and shout praise to God! He is the ultimate king of kings and Lord of Lord's and He deserves our praise and honour more than any sport event ever could.

Go Jesus! Go Jesus! Shooo...... Go Spain, Go Spain!

Click-a-tee-click

A colleague joked with me today that I type real fast and that she would have liked to learn typing from me. That made me laugh as I regaled here of the tale of the time my grandfather got upset because I was going to drop doing typing as a subject at Tech in favour of doing Computer Practice.

It took quite some convincing by my father that in today's world computer studies would be more advantageous than continuing to learn typing. I can only imagine my granddad's confusion, after all in HIS day girls all became secretaries.... tee hee! Don't worry grandpa, I think I can still muster up something close to 35 words per minute, all while being an ace on the PC.

I marvel as I think back to the early 90's where floppy disks were the norm and stiffy disks for data storage were just so wow! Now even toddlers are playing on computer tablets and smart phones. While technology may change and the methods we use to spread the gospel are more dynamic, the message of Christ's love will never change.

Jesus still died on an old wooden cross for our sins and paid for our healing with his stripes and that is a message we should never stop bringing to our dark and lonely world!

Triggers

I was reminded this weekend that grief can take a lifetime to manifest and a lifetime to deal with. We are all unique so our emotions deal with grief differently. Those emotions can be accessed at the strangest time and through the strangest triggers.

The trick is not to deny your emotions from surfacing. If we deny our feelings they will simply be buried again only to resurface at a later stage. When we acknowledge our emotions and allow them to come to the fore, we have an opportunity to deal with them and maybe even get closure. I say maybe because depending on the level of trauma they may need to be dealt with over several moments or experiences.

If you find yourself in the same boat that I've been in these last few days, take heart. Once we allow our soul to fully feel the grief we will be given the strength to release it and receive comfort and strength from the Holy Spirit. Remember Jesus promised us that “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

A little reminder

If you are feeling a little sorry for yourself, you're not alone. I was thinking to myself, “Ag, If I stopped writing nobody would notice,” but I know that would not be the case. If Google Blogger has taught me anything it is that you never know who could be reading your blog and you have no idea to how many countries the message could travel.

Another important thought was that, what if your message is the only gospel someone would receive today? With that thought I know we are all in the same boat. What if that hug you gave a friend, or a smile you gave to a colleague was something they desperately needed just to make it through the day?

We all need a little reminder from time to time that we are a city on a hill and that people do look to us for hope in the desperately dark times we find ourselves in with the global economy today. Are you going to join me in turning your eyes to Jesus and letting His love shine through you?

They grew

I was right! Nature will do anything it can to bring forth life. Well okay, I did pick my trusty flower friend the nasturtium's but I've never planted sweet peas before and they both sprouted, winter and all.

You see there are just certain laws of nature that cannot be defied, God planned it that way. As much as it is true for nature the laws of sewing and reaping are true in life as well. If you sew strife, you will reap strife. If you sew lust and destruction, you will reap lust and destruction.

Thankfully the positive converse is also true. When we sew love, we reap love. When we sew kindness and patience we reap that in abundance too. The most awesome part about this is that when we do good with a heart that is pure and desires to serve God we will reap abundantly above all we could ask or imagine.

Amen! Are you ready for God to do great things in your life? Then step up and be a blessing and wait and see what God will do for you!

Embracing my vegan self

During lent this year I decided to fast red meat. I wanted to see if I was in any way ready to possibly consider going vegan on a permanent basis. The trial went well although there were some hick ups, but for the most part it was an amazing experience and bore fruit both spiritually and emotionally.

At the end of lent I pretty much went back to normal, but over the last week, I found myself struggling once again to consume meat and it just felt awful. After much thought I decided to give my body what it wanted and that was more meat free meals. I'm certainly not saying I'll never eat meat again but I think for the most part my diet is going to be predominantly vegan.

This really made me wonder. Does the way we eat reflect on our core values or is simply a learned behaviour? I think it is so much a learned behaviour that most people never ask the question, so where did questioning my dietary behaviour being for me? I'm not entirely sure when it all started but I know I have said before that if it wasn't for biltong I would have become vegan a long time ago (gives you a clue how much I love biltong, tee hee!). I know that when I first started working on the herb garden I had said I wanted to live life more organically. It feels like this next step is a natural progression towards achieving that goal.

Is it possible for us to live our spiritual lives more organically? I believe we can. Our faith walk should be a natural outflow of who we are and embracing all that God has created us to be. Living our hopes and dreams and having the faith to step out and make those big moves when required to do so.

Are you ready to live your spiritual life more organically?

Hurting

This weekend wasn't my best. My body did a nasty on me and I have pretty much been in pain for most of the weekend. I do know that this is a temporal reality. At some stage the pain will dissipate and I'll be able to get back to normal.

All of us at some stage will experience the human condition of feeling emotional pain and we will realize that this can be far more debilitating than physical pain. Physical pain can be seen but in many instances emotional pain is hidden, or so we think.

The most important thing we should do as Christians is not to judge and to supply as much love and support as we can, for we do not know when the pendulum will swing in the other direction and hit us the same way.

If you find yourself hurting, my thoughts and prayers are with you and I pray that God will give you peace, strength and wisdom.