In the book of Exodus, chapter 1, we read the story of a difficult situation the Israelites are in.  They have grown into a mighty nation and the Pharaoh had become afraid that they would overpower the Egyptians.  It tells of the slavery they found themselves in and of a plan to kill the sons of promise, by killing all the baby boys born to the Israelites.  God promised Abraham a mighty nation as his inheritance and Pharaoh was trying to stop God’s plan from coming to pass.

In Chapter 2 we are told the story of the birth of Moses, how his life was saved and how he was raised in the courts of Pharaoh, the enemy of his people.  When he becomes aware of the injustice against the Isaelites,we see how Moses tries to help his people, by taking matters into his own hands.  He kills an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite, thinking that no-one saw, but when it becomes apparent that he was seen, he flees Egypt.  Later we will see that he lived in the desert for forty years, tending his fater-in-law’s sheep, before he is revealed as the redeemer of his people.

Let’s read verses 23 to 25 from chapter 2 in the Message version.  “Many years later the king of Egypt died.  The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out.  Their cries for relief from their hard labor ascended to God:
God listened to their groanings.
God remembered his covenant with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob.
God saw what was going on with Israel.
God understood.

God knew and He was not caught by surprise.  He was already at work, preparing for their release.  He had a man ready to lead them out of Egypt, only the man himself still had no idea that he was the one.  Father God had planned everything at the begining of time – a redeemer for the Israelites, one that would lead them to the safety of the land promised to them.  God knew that his chosen people would find themselves in trouble, and he had intervened to save the life of Moses.  God had also sent him into the desert to prepare him for the task ahead.  Now all that was necessary was a meeting between God and Moses – a revelation of the call and ministry prepared in advance.

In the same way, we find ourselves enslaved by our enemy.  We are slaves to addiction, to religion, to heartache and self pity, to name a few.  We have an enemy who recognises that we have the potential to be great – and the potential to be a great threat.  We have an enemy that will stop at nothing to kill us and destroy our inheritance.  Our enemy does not play fair and our sons and daughter are also targets.

But God, in His almighty gracious and merciful way, have also prepared for us a Redeemer. When we call out to  God, He hears our groanings, He remembers his covenant with us, He sees what is going on in our lives and He understands.  Psalm  103:14 reads “For He knows how weak we are, He remembers that we are only dust”.

We have a Redeemer, who was tempted in the desert for 40 days, like we are tempted, and came out victorious, in the power of the Holy Spirit.  A Son was given to us who is more than able to do what He was called to do – heal the sick, raise the dead and set the captives free.  We have a Saviour available to us that would lead us through the desert we call home now, all the way to the heavenly kingdom promised to those who overcome.  He had gone before us and have prepared a way for us.  We have been set free from our captor and been given authority over everything in heaven and on earth, we never have to pass through death, we can walk straight into our eternal inheritance – all we have to do is follow Jesus.

If you find yourself in a desert today, where you feel dry and alone, look around for a burning bush. God is waiting to meet with you, He longs to spend time with you.  He is waiting to show your geat and marvelous things, waiting to reveal your call and destiny to you, so that you can also labour with Jesus.  He is waiting for you to call out to Him, He remembers His promises to you and through Jesus He has made a way for you to come home.  We have a home prepared for us and God is also waiting, He remembers you.

Everything around you might be telling you that He has forgotten you, that He does not see your pain, that He does not care about your troubles.  But none of that is true.  God is not a man, that He should lie and in Jesus every promise made in the Word of God is yes, and amen.  When He promises never to leave us, nor to forsake us, He does not lie.  In Isaiah 49 verse 15 and 16  we read  “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will never forget you!  See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”  Go on, go talk to Him, He want to hear all about it.

Today I have an encouraging word for the church of Jesus Christ…a word from Jesus Himself, to encourage you to perservere and to overcome.

Revelation 3:7 – 13  is a letter to the faithful church.  Philedelphia is the only church that received no rebuke, but received encouragement and a beautiful promise from The Lord.
It reads like this:
“To the angel of the Church in Philedelpia write:  These are the words of Him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David.  What He opens no-one can shut, and what He shuts no-one can open.
I know your deeds.  See, I have placed before you an open door that no-one can shut.  I know you have little strength, yet you have kept My word and My Name.
I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars – I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.
Since you have kept My command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth.
I am coming soon.  Hold on to what you have, so that no-one will take your crown.  The one who is victorious I will make a pillar in the temple of my God.  Never again will they leave it.  I will write on them the name of my God and the name of the city of My God, which is coming down out of heaven from My God; and I will also write on them My new Name.  Whoever has ears, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

 Who is this speaking to us?  Who is the one making a promise to the ones who overcome?  The One who is true, He who has the keys of David.  Jesus –  He who is to be trusted above all else.

What is He saying to us, His church?  Jesus says that He sees our hard work, He notices our service and now He says to us, see what I have done for you…I have opened a door before you that NO-ONE can shut.  I don’t know about you, but this encourages me.  No matter what things look like in the natural, Jesus opens doors for us and no man or demon can shut it again.

Jesus is aware of our struggles and He comes to help.   He sees our hearts, that we use the little strenght that we have to serve Him and He loves that we do this.
Jesus also promises to expose the pretenders amongst us and to promote us.  We can rest in  Him – He will protect us from impostors and He will raise us up and honor us before them.  This means that we can concentrate on worshipping our Lord and we can trust Jesus to purify His church.

 Another promise we have is that of a reward for keeping the Word of God in patience – a promise of safety in the dangerous times to come, but also a warning that we will be tested.  We can be confident that we can do all things, through Jesus who will stengthen us.  This confidence in our Lord will keep us in the dark days that we know are about to come.  We cannot escape the trials that we will have to face, but we can be confident that we will be saved.

Jesus is giving us fair warning – He is coming.  God says “I do nothing without warning my prophets” and from all over the world we are receiving the same message – prepare yourselves, Jesus is coming.  He is also warning us that it is possible to loose our crown.  We have to value and guard it.  We have been running the race diligently, we cannot but persevere until the end.  Satan wants to steal our glory and wants to stop the kingdom of God from manifesting on earth and we have to be on our guard.

We have to remind ourselves that Jesus is our Bridegroom, who promised to come back for us.  He is coming back for a spotless and blameless church.  We should never forget this and we should commit ourselves to preparing for His arrival.  Not only should we prepare our own hearts, but we should be encouraging each other to be ready to receive Him.  Let us commit ourselves to be clay in the Potter’s hand, to be open to receive correction from our Heavenly Father and to allow the Spirit to lead us into all truth.

To the overcomer Jesus makes a promise of a prominent place in God’s house.  What a day when we come face to face with our Father, to hear Him say ” well done, good and faithful servant”.  So let us persevere, let us run the race to the end, looking to Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.  We can indeed do all things through Jesus Christ, who gives us strength.

Today, when The Lord sets before us an open door to testify about His goodness, let us testify.  If He set before us an open door to teach or preach, let us be faitful in it.  If today The Lord opens a door for you into the mission field, go through it.  He who is Faithful and True will go before us and He will reward us for our diligence in due time.

I like to get things right.  One of my favourite sayings is “if you are going to do something, do it well”.  My walk with The Lord is no different – I want to get it right.  Not because I strive or because I have any delusion that I have anything to give in exchange for the favour of God, but because I understand that before I was even born, God had a plan for my life.

When we truly grasp what Jesus had done for us at the cross, how He gave Himself to bring us into right relationship with the Father our perspective change. It is only when we grasp the incredible impact of Jesus’ death and the implications for us, that we can begin to see the bigger picture.  Jesus’ life on earth was never about Himself, and our lives are not about ourselves.

When we begin to understand the heart of the Father, how we existed in His imagination long before we ever saw the light of day, we begin to see that we live for something and Someone far bigger than ourselves.  Even the most self-centred, narcissistic person could not love themselves as much as the Father loves us and the Word of God tells us that that we cannot even imagine what the Lord has planned for us.  1 Corinthians 2: 9 says:  “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind have conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love Him.”

Psalm 139 is a wonderful Psalm.  It tells us that we were fearfully and wonderfully made.  Fearfully means with great respect – The Lord fashioned us with utmost respect and He planned every day before we were even born, because we were all created with and for a purpose.  Yet we place little value on our days.  We waste hours, days, even years of our lives, going after things that will never bring us any closer to being who and what we were created to be.  I realised that this was true for myself and I started to on a journey to find out what it was that The Lord has imagined when He created me – a journey more frightening and more rewarding than any I have ever been on.  What an adventure we go on when we surrender to The Lord’s plan for our lives and how wonderful as His plan starts to unfold before us!

The Word of God is an amazing map – it leads us step by step and gives us clue after clue as we read it with Holy Spirit as our guide.  We never really arrive – we simply go from glory to glory, as Jesus promised us.  So I find myself again, asking The Lord “where to from here”, and “what do You need me to do next Lord?”  My spiritman is always whispering to me to go deeper, search higher and before long I find myself working in my own strength, because I really want to please my Father.

In times like these, where I am so aware of my humanity and how far I fall short of the glory of God, when I really want to know what He requires of me,  He reminds me of Micah 6: 6 to 8
“What can we bring to The Lord? What kind of offering should we give Him?  Should we bow before Him with offerings of yearling calves? Should we offer him thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of olive oil?  Should we sacrifice our firstborn children to pay for our sins? No, o People, The Lord has told you what is good, and this is what He requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

Our Father does not require expensive gifts, huge sacrifice or hard labour.  He simply wants us to love what He loves – righteousness and mercy and He wants to walk with us, in a love relationship. He wants us to come into agreement with Him – that’s what it means to be humble.  He is saying “I am holy, you be holy, I love mercy, you extend mercy, I am your Father and I want to walk with you daily and we respond “You are my father and I will walk with You.  How beautifully simple.

When we respond to Him in this way, He takes us with Him as He goes about His business – reconciling a broken and lost world to Himself.  He takes us on one amazing journey after another, and He allows us to experience His love and His grace and His blessing as we work alongside Him.
How wonderfully easy it is to just follow Him, as He leads us on on by His Spirit.  Let us make up our  minds to do what is right, to show mercy and walk humbly with our God.

The struggle for freedom is a universal struggle.  Through generations, in all cultures and in many parts of the world we have had and still have, freedom fighters.   People who disregard their own comfort and their own safety and security to fight for freedom for themselves and for their countrymen. In the country of my birth, arguable the most famous freedom fighter, Nelson Mandela wrote his biography…Long walk to freedom.

Teenagers live by it, people are prepared to die for it.  We also see this struggle for freedom in our homes and our churches. This is also not new.  Often, when these brave souls appear in the church, they are labeled “rebels’.  The ones who dare to go against convention, against the norm and status quo of tradition or church policy.  These are the ones who are not satisfied with the answer “because that’s how it has always been done”.  It is indeed a long walk to freedom for most of us.

Jesus is the best biblical example of this kind of rebel.  He fought relentlessly against convention, against traditions of men and against every spirit that would keep people bound up.  In Luke 11 we read the story of Lazarus, the friend of Jesus who died and was brought back to life after Jesus prayed.  In verse 44 Jesus says to the disciples, after Lazarus walked out of the tomb “Unwrap him of the grave clothes and let him go free”.  This has always been the Father’s heart for His children.  The we would not be entangled by grave clothes, but that we would be free.

This intention for us is clearly expressed in the Word of God.  2 Corinthians 3:17 says:  “Now the Lord is Sprit and where the Spirit of The Lord is, there is freedom.  Galatians 5:1 tells us that it it for freedom that Christ has set us free, therefor we are not to subject ourselves to slavery again.

From these passages we can come to two conclusions:  Where there is no freedom, there is no presence of the Spirit of The Lord.  When He comes to us, freedom comes with Him.

The second is that we are to value our freedom, the freedom Jesus bought at such a costly price.  We cannot submit ourselves to bondage again – not to the bondage of the law and to the bondage that comes with sin and definitely not to the bondage of religious tradition.  In chapter 2 of his letter to the Colossians, the apostle Paul warns us about being strangled by the rules and traditions of men.  In verse 20 and 21 he tells us:  “Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to this world, do you submit to its rules? Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!

What Paul is saying is that we are no longer subject to the laws and traditions of men.  In Colossians chapter 3 he urges us to put to death everything that has to do with our earthly nature, our love for rules and regulations, of man-made traditions, our love of the carnal.  He reminds us in verse 3 that we have died to all of these and that we are now hidden in Christ – the ultimate freedom.

In Matthew 23 verse 13 to 15 is the account of a very harsh criticism Jesus had of the teachers of the law and of the Pharisees.  Jesus says to them: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees!  You hypocrites!  You shut the door of the Kingdom of God in people’s faces!  You yourselves do not enter, neither do you let those enter who are trying to!  Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees!  You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are!”

Jesus goes on to proclaim woe after woe on the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, calling them whitewashed graves with dead bones inside.  Jesus is really serious about this!  In verse 26 He tells them to clean the inside of the cup, then the outside of the cup will be clean too.  Sadly, many of us are doing the same, trying to keep the inside clean, by submitting the outside to a thorough scrubbing.

Laws, rules and regulations will never make us holy – only the love for Christ and the resence and power of Holy Spirit  will stop us from becoming slaves to sin again.  Let us today invite the Spirit of The Lord to come and clean us on the inside, to bring true freedom to our spirits, our bodies and our minds.  Let us rejoice as we see how the freedom Jesus paid for brings with it the desire to be holy and righteous and how we grow in freedom and holiness as we walk with Him.

God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! Ephesians 3:20 Msg

How do you verbalise the most amazing, life-changing experience without using cliches? Four very excited people made up “Team Ignite” and left Perth mid- August, expecting some miracles. True to form, God did more than we could ever imagine, guess or request. Having heard testimonies of blind eyes seeing, deaf ears open and sickness healed, we expected The Lord to move, but when we prayed for a little girl who had just arrived in hospital with a broken arm and leg we started to understand how much we underestimate our God. Before our eyes her tears dried up and within minutes she was moving said arm and leg – The Lord had healed her broken bones before the doctor could treat her!

More miracles followed. One lady had her operation cancelled as The Lord had healed an open wound, making surgery obsolete. Then there was a lady, paralysed from head to toe…not any more. Jesus came for her too and now she has mobility in arms and legs. I can go on and on, telling story after story of miraculous healings, some spontaneous whilst the word was being preached, other instantaneous after prayer, some progressive. Our God is still in the business of restoring. Returning to the hospital after we prayed for the sick on the first day and finding the children’s ward deserted was such a thrill.

During a weekend-long outreach in Eratap village God opened the heavens above us and send rain. This might not seem as something out of the ordinary, if it wasn’t for the fact that the village had run out of drinking water and the local witchcraft practitioners had tried in vain to make it rain. Our Father showed Himself mighty on behalf of His children and as a result of the rain, many souls joined the family of God.

I can carry on for some time, recalling story after story, testimony after testimony. You are forgiven for thinking we are special in any way – it is our Jesus who is the Healer. All we did was turn up! After a number of days, we decided that “Team Ignite” needed a new name – the “Ignited Team” was born. How wonderful to be a part of what The Lord is doing, to be chosen to bring hope and joy, to ignite a passion in people and have your own soul filled with Light and Love. Miracles do happen, they happen often and they happen to people like you and me, if you only believe. Can I dare you to imagine, to dream, to request and to dream wildest dreams…

Welcome to our new blog.

Nicky will now be able to update this with ease and you, the reader will be able to get updates on a fairly regular basis.

 

-Anton