Running on Empty

I have surrounded myself with many friends yet I feel so alone. This has been a hard time for me. In the past I could reach out and hold God's hand but now I feel even He has left the room.

A friend sent me a letter this week in where she wrote:
"...I will always remember that you were the first one welcoming me with a big teddy bear hug when I first came to BBC. It meant a lot to me. Back then you struck me as fully trusting the Lord day in, day out and as the last person who would turn his back to our Lord..."

I am holding my hand out for Him to take me by the hand but it seems that I am all alone. I have felt so alone only twice in my life before. Alone, so alone. The first time was when hidden suppressed memories of atrocities committed against me as a child came flooding back when I heard that my brother was been searched by the police for questioning for the same type of crimes. Alone, so alone. And the last time was when I found out my spouse's plan to leave me for someone else. I found myself staring down a lift shaft all alone. The only thing that stopped me that night was the thought of letting my son down and him being raised by the other man.

Both times I eventually found solace in God's arms and my friends that surrounded me. Now I have reached empty but still find myself hurtling downwards out of control. As in the past, I've reached out for God's hand but this time it is not there. He has promised never to leave me nor forsake me so I know, yes I know that He is still here with me but now is the time that I need Him to take me by my outreaching hand.

Yet why do I still feel so alone?

I want to believe there is more to this...

I have lost my religion long ago and found God. We had an awesome relationship walking and talking. It felt real. But now I have seemed to have lost Him somewhere. Life has sort of taking a different turn on the path we were on. I have surrounded myself with friends yet feel so alone. I ask the question how my family situation can bring glory to God.

Am I dead?

My brother in-law phoned me this morning because last night he had a dream about me, it wasn’t good and now he is concerned. In the dream he phoned Carol and asked for me. She replied that I was dead. And now he is phoning to find out what’s going on. I didn’t know what to tell him. Was I dead is the question. Was I dead literary, dead to Carol or dead spiritually. I feel dead inside and I don’t know what my future will hold. I am finally at the cross-roads which I saw in the distance over a year ago when my life crumbled around me. Holding onto the pieces of my life which I felt was the Christian thing to do, I literary inched to the place where I feel dead to the world. Can I still stand tall with decisions that I feel have to be made? Can I still stand with God, knowing that this will hurt Him? Or do I turn my back and walk away. A number of friends say that I must think about Carol and Matthew but does this mean I must stay miserable just to give them myself to them. I am just being selfish to think about myself for a change? I actually don’t know if I should be writing this down, maybe one day when I write my memoirs.

Annus Horribilis

It has been a long time since I was posting regularly on this blog. Last year was my annus horribilis, the year when my life became unravelled. I won't mention the circumstances of my falling apart to protect others around me. But I found myself in the early hours of Monday morning 12 July 2009 at the top of an open lift shaft with nothing left to live for. With everything around me shattered, I felt so alone. The only thing that stopped me crossing over was the thought of my son without a dad or even worse somebody else.

I felt like God had deserted me and I was all alone. But God sent some good Christian friends over just to comfort me and help me see the wood from the trees. I had to learn to stand against all that was coming up against me. But the real lesson I learnt was that God had not left me as I felt He had. He was always with me. I was so deep in grief that I could not feel His presence but He was holding me up all the time through it. My friends that God surrounded me with opened my eyes to see that my circumstances was passing through God's hands first. All I could do was put my head on God's lap and cry. I had to start on a journey to learn to love again, unconditionally.

It has been a long journey since then and it is still a long way to go but God is walking every step with me along the way. My annus horribilis is behind me, glory of God is ahead. Thank you to all my friends who encouraged me alone the way. It was the comments in my post "Good people don't go to Heaven, forgiven people do." that made me think about writing again.

God will turn the horrible year into something that brings Him glory. AsAaron Shust's song goes:

To God Alone

Can You take me by the hand
Can You use me as I am
Break me into who You want me to be

When the time is finally right
Will You open up my eyes
Show me everything You want me to see

This life is not my own

To God alone be the glory
To God alone be the praise
Everything I say and do
Let it be all for You
The glory is Yours alone
Yours alone

Take the offering I bring
You want more than what I sing
Can I give You every part of me

Turn these pennies into gold
Take this life I call my own
Until I'm running after Your heart

I'm needing to let go

To God alone be the glory
To God alone be the praise
Everything I say and do
Let it be all for You
The glory is Yours alone

We will rise, and we will fall
But You remain after all
You're glorious and beautiful
You're beautiful

To God alone be the glory
To God alone be the praise
Everything I say and do
Let it be all for You
The glory is Yours alone
The glory is Yours alone
Yours alone
Yours alone

Smith Wigglesworth's challenge

“Live ready. If you have to get ready when the opportunity comes your way, you’ll be too late. Opportunity doesn’t wait, not even while you pray. You must not have to get ready, you must live ready at all times. Be filled with the Spirit; that is, be soaked with the Spirit. Be so soaked that every thread in the fabric of your life will have received the requisite rule of the Spirit – then when you are misused and squeezed to the wall, all that will ooze out of you will be the nature of Christ.”

For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain

We in the Home Circle started going through Philippians and in chapter 1 we find these words "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain". Wow, these are deep words just to utter and never to understand them. As for me do I really understand these words and what they actually mean? How would I feel if I come to a life or death situation?

Today I was shocked to get a message from my cousin in Durban if my brother had been shot. I was grappling with these words "to live is Christ and to die is gain" when I got the message. Wow talk about a shock to the system. I quickly phoned my brother and he told me that it was the first time he heard about it. I messaged my cousin back that we are trying to keep it a secret and may his soul rest in peace. That should teach her to mess with me.

It is lightly that we take these words "to live is Christ and to die is gain" but do we mean it. I mean really mean it. In other words do we understand these words when we say them?

God's Word translation puts it as "Christ means everything to me in this life, and when I die I'll have everything". This sounds a bit easier to swallow than to say "to live is Christ and to die is gain". But I don't think it is all sugar coated easy. How often does ourselves get in the way of God and when things don't go our way how easy it is to question God.

A few hours before Jesus died for us He said to His Father "Not my will be done, but yours". Not easy is it knowing that you are about to take all the sins the world upon His shoulders.

If we not ready to die for Christ, then we are not ready to live for Christ.

Thou Shalt Be Free

Three thousand five hundred years ago God gave us his rules to live by from a mountain in the Sinai desert. These rules aren’t conditions of a relationship with God but a confirmation of one. The first four rules are about honouring God and putting Him centre of all. The next six are about honouring the people around us. It is about liberty and equality of all. Everybody is on an equal footing because we are all made in God's image.

In the final part of The Sinai Code series, Thou Shalt Be Free, Andy tells us that God took His people out of Egypt and at Sinai raised them up all on the same level. They were slaves no more. In God's nation He did not want any king to rule but with Him at the centre. This was a hard concept to understand for the ex-slaves and soon they begged God to allow them to have a king. They threw out equality to have what they thought is more liberty

In 1776, America tried to get back to what God had in mind at Sinai. I think America did a good job with liberty and equality under God but now they seem to have lost the plot and think they can go it alone without God. They are trying to weed out God from every aspect of daily life.

No God in schools.

No God in work.

No God in church.

Two other countries also changed the world with their throwing off the shackles of kings and queens. In 1789 saw the French Deists sweep away all authority and turned to the rights of the people under a supreme being. God had to step aside to liberty and equality. Closer to our time but still eons ago, saw the Gnostics change mother Russia in 1917 when they threw out God along with the Czar. Both countries were noble in their end view but with no God at the centre they too missed what God had in mind at Sinai.

America who is battling to have both liberty and equality at the same time surprised me at the inauguration of Barack Obama when Rick Warren prayed over the nation. But it doesn't surprise me when America cried foul when he used the name of Jesus in his prayer.

Almighty God
Our Father, everything we see, and everything we can't see, exists because of you alone.
It all comes from you, it all belongs to you, it all exists for your glory.
History is your story.
The Scripture tells us, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one."
And you are the compassionate and merciful one. And you are loving to everyone you have made.
Now today, we rejoice not only in America's peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time, we celebrate a hinge point of history with the inauguration of our first African-American president of the United States.
We are so grateful to live in this land, a land of unequalled possibility, where the son of an African immigrant can rise to the highest level of our leadership.
And we know today that Dr. King and a great cloud of witnesses are shouting in heaven.
Give to our new president, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility, the courage to lead us with integrity, the compassion to lead us with generosity.
Bless and protect him, his family, Vice President Biden, the Cabinet and every one of our freely elected leaders.
Help us, O God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all.
When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us.
When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us.
When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us.
And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches and civility in our attitudes – even when we differ.
Help us to share, to serve and to seek the common good of all.
May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy, and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet.
And may we never forget that one day, all nations, and all people, will stand accountable before you.
We now commit our new president and his wife, Michelle, and his daughters, Malia and Sasha, into your loving care.
I humbly ask this in the name of the one who changed my life – Yeshua, Isa, Jesus [Spanish pronunciation], Jesus – who taught us to pray:

Our Father,
who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil,
for Thine is the kingdom and
the power and the glory forever.
Amen.

Liberty and equality for all under one God is what God has in mind for us with our many problems and imperfections.

We shalt be free.