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Your faith is only as strong as your last battle you overcame.

I submit to you, oh Lord. All of my ways. Whatever comes will come. Whatever cards I have won’t matter as long as I have you. As long as you are there to help me. I can’t do this alone. Everything I have achieved to this day was due to your goodness. Your love, Your grace.

These were the words I proclaimed last night. We were gathered at church for students that had a worship evening prepared for us. Even though they can be seen as young and inexperienced the Lord spoke that night and His Spirit flowed.

Though I felt overwhelmed with countless things, feeling like a constant failure at life at who I am and what I do I realised what was most important: My relationship with God. It’s impossible to please everyone and impossible to be perfect. We are all sinful. Everyone at some point in our lives will let us down.

But not God.

Not our Father, who is perfect. Ever-present. We can only serve God or man, but not both.

No man can serve two masters: for either he. will hate the one, and love the other; or else. he will hold to the one, and despise the other, Ye cannot serve God and mammon. – Matthew 6:24

Going back to my very first statement. We all face challenges. Sometimes they become so tough they become battles. You end up going through a process that brings you either closer to God or further away. Right now I feel at breaking point but that’s where the faith comes in. Where it truly gets tested. If I succeed in maintaining belief that this too shall pass my faith will grow.

I’m not saying that we should sit back and have hope all will end well. We need to give our side as well; but we are not alone. He can guide us through it all. Give us the wisdom to go through. He is the perfect counselor.

If you have a huge task that lies before you the first thing you need to do is have hope and pray, then the answer will come. Sometimes very quickly, other times maybe not so much, but the faith that it will all work out in the end.

Blessings to all.

We did it!

Our first excursion that my friend and I planned went according to plan.

If you read my blog “Finding the one” written about 2 weeks ago you might remember me saying one needs to challenge oneself in order to grow. I have just done that and I am going to share just a little bit of what we did.

Now this first excursion the two of us had was not in any way daunting nor for one second did we get anxious. It was rather just to get the ball rolling so to speak.

The first idea we had was to go hiking at a mountain called Lady Slipper. Sounds scary right? Probably not. The thing that made it interesting was that we were planning to do it at night. That plan then become challenging for multiple reasons so we decided to make it a simpler hike.

There is a place close to where my friend stays that is situated at the very top of our town and it had a water tower so the view would most likely be breathtaking.

We decide to go for it just before sunrise. It was a very pleasant evening with the occasional breeze.

We didn’t know if it was safe to go. We weren’t even sure how to get there and of course we didn’t know if we were allowed to go. But who cares…

Long story short we made it to the tower and we got to see the sun set leaving a beautiful array of colours over the horizon.

We did actually see a few people drive past us but strangely enough we were unnoticed. I know now we probably shouldn’t go in the person’;s property but for a view like this I’ll be willing to do it again.

That is honestly quite a difficult question. And I guess in some ways if you have money or at least want it then to a certain extent it is ruling your life.

The question arose a while back but I wanted to think about it myself for a while and maybe get some facts together and make a good blog post. Unfortunately I haven’t really made an effort so I guess while making this post I’ll do some investigation.

I was talking to a colleague of mine while we were working together that day and we started to talk a little bit about giving and how exactly you “should give” (Guess I can make a post about that too). He eventually stated that right now money doesn’t rule his life even though he is not a multimillionaire, in fact, he was not so well off. But he is making it.

Now whether or not that is actually true doesn’t matter. But I could honestly not say the same without a wavering doubt. I don’t even have major expenses, no sicknesses, no one that relies on my monthly income; yet I still worry about where my money goes.

And as someone who believes that God can make miracles happen I still hold onto the little that I have and have misplaced faith that He can’t give me so much more.

One thing that I can say is that money is not ruling my life, but there is not a day that goes by that I do not think about it. What has helped me though to not freak about where my money goes is budgeting. I make my own income and expenses list and over the months I have altered it to my desires. It does help when you go shopping or eat at a restaurant because then you know more or less what you can afford. Budgeting has also helped me to spend it wisely and I am now able to invest, save money for future adventures and even have some left over to store in case something goes wrong.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” – Matthew 6:21. It is impossible to serve God and mammon, meaning material wealth associated with greedy pursuit. Some believe one can have both, the money on earth and God in heaven but that is not the case. Do not exhaust yourself going for the wrong things because in the end it will not be worth the time and effort.

Too many people spend money they earned..to buy things they don’t want..to impress people that they don’t like. –Will Rogers

Waiting for something whether it is something big or small is common for all of us no matter the circumstances. It is even common in the bible. Jacob waited 14 years before he could marry the woman he loved. Joseph waited in prison roughly 2 years and 13 years total in the house of the eyptions before he was delivered and Moses was in the desert for 40 years in hiding. Then another 40 years spent with the Israelites in the desert.

One of the questions you need to ask yourself however is this: Is it a time for action or a time of patience?

If it is a time for action then go for it. Sometimes God is waiting for you rather than you waiting for Him. Not everything in life falls onto our lap just by waiting. It may be a big fear of yours but that’s what it’s going to take: Courage.

But that may also be a foolish thing to do because God is in fact testing your patience, growing your patience. You may be in a situation where you are being treated badly at work etc.

It’s difficult but God could want you there to make a difference, to wait for the right time, to wait for His time. If you stay patient and do what you can with what you have you may realise it isn’t that bad. A lot depends on your attitude.

Maybe a few months extra of waiting won’t seem that bad if you compare it to Moses in the desert.

You gave your life to Jesus so you might as well give Him your time.

For many people there comes a period where the workload becomes a lot more strenuous than the rest of the year. You really have to graft in those times, sacrifice a lot of other things just to hang on and still you are exhausted, still you feel that you are on your last breath.

But the project is not done, you still have work to do, but you simply can’t. So how do you carry on? How can you replenish that must needed energy of yours?

Recently I felt that I needed to read Samson, in the book of Judges, maybe it’s because I’m growing out my hair so I can now relate to all the problems he would have. Anyways, reading Samson has given me a revelation of how to get that extra energy, and it doesn’t revolve around growing out your hair.

Now to those of you who may be a little rusty on the history of Samson, or have just never heard of him: Samson was an Israelite who was born to rule over Israel and be the protector against the Philistines. He was not just a regular man but rather someone with superhuman strength.

But there was a catch.

No razor may ever touch Samson’s hair or he would lose his strength. Long story short the Philistines found out his strength through Delilah, a woman from the Philistines that Samson loved. The Philistines cut his hair off and captured him, mocked him and made a fool out of him.

Samson had nothing left, his power was gone. He was sorrounded by Philistines and there was nothing he could do. He was hopeless. He was supposed to be the shining light amongst the Philistines but was instead the fool.

Samson knew what his duty was and he never gave up. It was then that he cried out to the Lord for strength. The Lord responded to Him by giving him the strength back. Samson broke through his chains and then pushed the two central pillars holding the building they were in and it let the whole building collapse with all the Philistines that were in it including Samson. That day he killed more people than all the other times over the years combined.

Last week I was exhausted from everything going on and the weekend that was ahead would include a lot more hardwork. I had nothing to give but there was still so much to do. When Samson’s story came up I realised that I too can have that renewed strength to push through and endure what lies ahead. It sounds silly to mention but I think often we don’t do it or we feel that it’s not going to work, but it does!

That week with the little sleep I had I was able to stay awake and sometimes feel full of energy. It wasn’t a very sustainable thing to do but for the time being it was enough.

I hope that none of us have to be in that situation of Samson that you give your life to a cause but you will be faced with times where it is guns blazing. Then you will need that inner strength. That extra boost that only God can give you.

Just cry out to the Lord and see how He can renew you.