2013: The Best year of my life!

2013: The Best year of my life!

At the end of 2012 a friend and I went to Botswana to hear what God had in stall for us for 2013. I basically felt God spoke to me about His Kingdom that cannot be shaken. I was all fired up for the year and thought that absolutely nothing could go wrong! We are rock solid rooted in Christ! Till I came home...

A week after I got home I lost all sources of financial income, I lost friends, I lost ministry things and God knows what else! All I could remember was that I was rock bottom instead of rock solid! God shook me to the ground! I had no support from friends or family and was "forced" to put all my trust in God. Luckily I didn't take too long to figure this out so I surrendered quickly to what He was busy doing. Jesus wanted me, and He wanted me still at His feet. It was quality-time time for us! I love it when He does this. My flesh hates it, but the rest of me absolutely loves it! You feel like a "drop-out" sitting at home with literally no money, but another side of you feel so special that God Almighty will stop at nothing for me. He loves me and adores me and loves my presence! Isn't this the most amazing thought anyone could have???

During this quite time God spoke a lot to me. He almost overloaded me with revelations! Direct revelation from a living God! He taught me about relationship with Him and how does it look in the day to day life. Simple example, if you're married or in relationship with someone close, family or friends, you ask them how their day was. You sit and you talk about everything that comes up. Sometimes you just sit down in silence, but enjoying each other's presence. Simple stuff like this started making sense for me! God desires a relationship like this with me!!!!

My problem was that everything I do must have an agenda. There must be a vision or a goal in everything. Now this is Biblical in many aspects, but not here. A (stupid) example is when I saw a lady sitting somewhere, I could never just greet her. My reason being, why must I? What will this lead to? I created scenarios in my mind that I thought would happen and then I just left it. This I could do in split seconds! What I've learned is that relationship has no agenda. It is simply based on love. If you greet someone, nothing needs to happen! It is a simple thing, but the freedom that I received when I discovered this truth, was massive! I no longer put agenda on my relationships, so I have no need to manipulate to achieve or experience disappointment when "failure" occurs. I can just love people unconditionally with no purpose but relationship!

Here in Pretoria, my home city, I work fulltime with Aflame ministries. (www.aflame.co.za). This also started early 2013 as the Lord laid it on me and Henk's hearts. I was ministering left and right and everywhere, but I was on my own in terms of, I didn't do it under the name of a ministry. I felt in my heart I needed to either start a ministry or to join an existing one. I went to Henk for another meeting, and afterwards he asked me if I want to become part of Aflame; just a hour after I considered it for the first time! So I was pretty secure in my heart God wanted me here at Aflame. We do outreaches locally and internationally, we have a school of supernatural for people that hungry for God, we help with a church in Woodlane village (An informal settlement in Pretoria East), and we do whatever God leads us to! Visit the website for more details.

Aflame for me is a solid platform to minister from and learn about God as much as I can. In the spirit it is also a lot safer to be part of a family. I believe God made us to be part of the body of Christ, and not to be Rambo lone rangers. So to be part of Aflame opened a lot of doors for me and created many opportunities for me to be a greater asset in the Kingdom.

Apart from Aflame, I also work with people that need deliverance, especially with the occult and freemason  movements.  For some reason I keep ending up in situations where these things are present and I have gladly accepted it as part of my calling. This has been so for the last five years! Most of the stuff that I deal with I cannot mention yet to the public. Let's just say I've seen and dealt with things that I had no reference for! And I know the average guy on street also has no idea these things even exists!

I am writing this for a specific reason. All my support suddenly disappeared out of my life after my Botswana visit. I went looking for help at other ministries, but no one could or wanted to help me. I was "forced" to rely 101% on my Lord Jesus. I prayed and seeked His face, and He answered! He told me my answers and breakthrough lies in the spirit and that I must help these people in the spirit; not in the soul! I agreed totally what Jesus said but it didn't take long for me to realize that I had no idea what this meant! And so a lifelong journey of one year so far (as I'm typing this) and counting, started where it is me and Jesus on this road of my life and where He is teaching me more and more about Him!

February 2013 was the month where I turned 30. Everybody started asking me in January what were my plans for my thirtieth birthday. I didn't have an idea and I didn't actually care much, until Jesus asked me this very same question the one day! I was in the shower spending time with Him and talking to Him as I always do when He asked me. As He asked me, a song started playing on my tablet. It was Mervis. I interrupted Jesus talking to me and said wait Lord, it is time to worship! I said to Jesus now just smiling at me; Lord, what if me and my friends that loves to worship come together and worship you? A night not about me or my birthday, but a night where it is all about You! The first 30 years of my life I messed up, will You take the next 30 years and make something of it Lord? This will be my gift to You! This was my prayer to Jesus whilst in the shower, worshiping my King!

Then the answer came back very quickly! He just said yes! Phone Mervis and arrange it! Jesus was busy bringing my dreams back to life. I threw all my dreams away and they were dead to me. I got out of the shower, did my things and phoned Mervis. Now those of you who don't know him, Mervis is a famous Gospel singer here in SA. He sings songs from the heart as He worships Jesus in the most intimate way. So phoning Mervis is phoning this big celebrity guy and asking him to worship at your birthday party. This is not something that I would normally do or even consider possible! But God said it, and that settles it! So long story short, I phoned Mervis and he agreed. He drove from Cape Town, dropped his family and then came to worship with us not expecting a cent for it! I've met many celebrities, but Mervis is one of the people that I have the greatest respect for in life. He truly lives out Jesus to the world!

We had an amazing night of worship on my birthday and I had the privilege for the first time in my life to take communion with my father and mother together! I cannot help but wonder what profound effect this birthday had on my life. I believe this changed everything, forever! Giving my next 30 years to Jesus ruined my life forever so that I can gain His life; the life that He dreamed for me since the beginning of time. By far the best decision in my life!

Another story about the dreams that happened in the beginning of the year is that I went to friends' house for a braai. The one guy who was there asked me to help him with a dream he had. I told him what I thought, and then God changed his life forever! His testimony is his own, but what I can say is that he started hearing Gods voice and he and Jesus did more than amazing things together! He is the brother of the friend that I was visiting, but now he too is a great friend! Some time later we then had a braai at their house again. Just before he went home, he showed me this huge box standing at the door. He told me that it is mine. I knew this guy had financial difficulties at this time, but here in front of my eyes stood a life size telescope! And not any telescope, a fancy one that has a computer that can turn itself towards a star or planet that you wish to view. I couldn't believe my eyes! This was one of those things that just was to good to be true! The reason God told him to buy this telescope for me was because He was busy resurrecting my dreams again. When I was a child and the teachers or whoever gave me a pen and paper to draw something, I only drew the sun and our nine planets. It was my favorite thing to do!

To summarize 2013, on the outreach side, I went on eight international outreaches during the year, where my maximum in previous years were two and that happened only once! I visited Zimbabwe three times, and I also went to Namibia, India, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Malawi. During the year I started playing DJ at a very good friends' wedding venue, De Haven Oost for some sort of income. The ministry also blessed me financially. This paid for some petrol and my cell phone monthly, but for the rest I had no income. So the year was hard financially but I never lacked! Then since June, July I started going on regular outreaches; two weeks at home and three weeks out. It was a extremely busy time for me! I didn't have time to DJ so I couldn't "work" for any money. At one stage I calculated I went through over R100 000 in less than three months. All my outreaches were paid in full and my personal finance was the best it has ever been! So I realized that when I work, I barley survive, but when I obey Jesus, I have abundance! This doesn't make any sense to my logic! But to my faith, it is a massive blessing to have experienced! 

The people that I minister to here at home have never looked so good! Their relationship with Jesus is absolutely amazing and they are head over heels in love with Him! Jesus showed me ways to help people not only with their problems and pain of the past, but also, and more importantly, boost their relationship with Him. I have more testimonies in this last few months, than the previous four years together! As I stated earlier, God told me that the solution lies in the spirit.

So early January 2013 I "coincidently" bumped into a man I barely new. I've only seen him at church before. We were in Montana to the north of Pretoria. We talked about the new year and what God was saying to us. He told me he teaches people to go into the spirit and he has big classes here in Montana. Montana was a bit far for me so I suggested that he must come to Pretoria East and we can arrange a venue easily for him. He said I must mail him and that we can talk, but he was willing. An hour or two later he phoned me! In the meeting he just entered as we parted ways, he learned that he no longer had the use of the venue in Montana. So here in one moment, God answered my prayers by sending me someone to help me, and He helped Chris to find a new venue and family!

Throughout the year this concept of in the spirit took shape for me. In India I received a massive key for this! And now, by introducing people to Jesus and by guiding them to surrender their pain and fears and everything to Him, many people have since received massive breakthrough in their relationship with God. Again, no agenda, just pure relationship with our loving God. And He does 99% plus of the work! I literally only guide the people by giving them pointers and to do the introduction. Jesus does the rest! This has been the sole reason for the overwhelming success I've experienced in the "counseling" ministry.

Simple principles of our Faith, suddenly became more clear to me. God's love leads to repentance, not my finger. God is love! Jesus is patient, Jesus is kind. He does not envy, He does not boast, He is not proud. He does not dishonor others, He is not self-seeking, He is not easily angered, He keeps no record of wrongs. Jesus does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. He always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Jesus never fails.

I can continue this post forever with what happened during the year. But although all of this is extremely great and I am forever grateful for everything God did; none of what I mentioned so far is the reason for me saying 2013 is the best year of my life. I know God is love. I've experienced His love many times before and I know that I know He loves me. I can quote Scripture that says that He loves me. But now, at the end of this year, when I quite down and I think about the year and I want to say that God is love, I can't. My eyes get moist with tears of overwhelming emotion and my heart shatters open in front of a God who truly is love. We get so use to this truth that it loses value to us. But this one truth, that God is love, is the only truth that the world needs to know. His love is just indescribably beautiful and very overwhelming.  My relationship with God found deeper levels than ever before. I have learned more about Him in the last year than in my entire life!

The people that came to me for help, became my teachers. The outreaches and what we have experienced, became my teacher. All in all, the Holy Spirit Himself truly now is my greatest Teacher! And He uses whatever He can and wants, to teach me more about my God. The only question is, am I open enough to learn from any place and any person, regardless of my personal opinion?

The weird thing for me is that I didn't spend too much time reading the Bible, in the sense of reading chapters and chapters on a daily basis. I love the Bible and everything in it. I believe everything it says. I believe that we need to know Scripture and that we should be able to know what the Book says; BUT we do not worship the Bible. The Bible is 66 books combined as one. Our God inspired the writing of these books, but He is not limited to it! He is much greater! The Bible cannot save us; only Jesus can! He longs for a direct, personal relationship with each and every one of us. The question is, how will we respond when we realize that He truly loves us? Suddenly my prayer life changed, my personal time with the Lord changed, and everything in my life changed!

2013 is the best year solely because of my personal relationship with a living God. By getting to know Him better by any means possible, my life can never be the same again. I can now truly and honestly say that Jesus is alive! And as I am typing this, I can already say that my title for this post is no longer that relevant! 2014 is looking even better!