Kingdom Conscious Reality

Greetings beloved reader! If you’re visiting again from an email notification, it’s lovely to have you once more. And if you’re only stopping by, I hope you pick up something useful for the journey ahead. If you’d like to be informed about future blog posts as soon as they hit the ‘net, be sure to subscribe to the blog at the end of this post.

And now moving onto the reason for today’s post. As you can judge from the title, I’ll be sharing stories from times the Word of God became so real to my circumstances, it became alive! I was inspired to write on this topic while writing other posts on the Bible; Read the Bible as a Christian and How do I know that the Bible is true.

Following both these posts I believe it’s so important for me to display in my own life how the Word of God isn’t just true but that it is also active. I pray you may truly be blessed and be moved to remember times in your life when small miracles happened. I say ‘miracles’ because isn’t it just bizarre how a book written a couple thousand years ago can resonate so intensely in our spirits. Sounds like a miracle to me. I’m also hoping to reignite or put some fresh sparks onto my own flame as I am going through a not-so-smooth patch. But without further ado, let’s get right into it!

Psalm 105v12-15

This encounter with God happened only a little bit after my big turn to God, in the January of 2022. I had gotten baptized not even 2 months before, I had turned 16 and was going into a very important academic year. It was going to be a great year. My mother and I were out running errands one morning which led us at to a government facility. A single trip with no more that 4 hours dedicated to it became half a day of tears and mental and emotional wounds.

Out of respect for my family I am deciding not to share the sensitive details of the experience. Mainly how it affected me and how God’s hand reached out to me.

If you have read my testimony you would remember that I’ve grown up in an all female household and unfortunately this day was a day when this was a great disadvantage. My mother and I found ourselves under an unforgiving and cruel hand of injustice. We were stifled and, honestly, left without any reasonable hope all around us. Life as we knew it could’ve changed forever on that day. I felt the most terrifying lack of safety I’ve ever felt in my entire life.

We got back to our house and I remember I had my Bible out on my desk from that morning. The same Bible I had turned to when I realized that my life was headed for destruction without God. Lifting it up, I split the book open at random and allowed for a passage to select itself. As I looked down at the Bible, my gaze fell on Psalm 105v12-15 : When they were but few in number, few indeed, and strangers in it, they wandered from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another. He allowed no one to oppress them; for their sake he rebuked kings: “Do not touch my anointed ones; do my prophets no harm.”

At that point I didn’t even have a real understanding of what God’s protection was, but in that instant I knew it was all I needed. This scripture warmed my heart as it gripped the sever reality of the situation. We were two females without anyone to speak for us(few in number). We were treated as foreigners (strangers) who were not deserving of dignified treatment. And to add, at that point we had moved a total of 4 times in 5 years so it did feel like we were wandering from place to place. And to know that God was watching over us and rebuking our oppressors, saying “Do not touch my anointed ones,” truly felt like He was holding me.

These verses still have a special place in my life to this day. Is it still difficult to understand and accept God’s protection over me? Yes. But this moment is a reminder that He has proved to be faithful, because as unfortunate as it was, we had to return to that place on the same day. But God was watching over us. It was scary and harmed me mentally, but what the enemy had planned for evil, God is using for good.

If all else was amiss in my eyes, the fact that I randomly opened my Bible in distress [which isn’t the best way to approach scripture] God still used it to speak directly to my turmoil. I personally have full conviction that the hand of God is too heavily pressed on this experience for me to sum it up to coincidence. So we can’t blame on chance.

1 Peter 2v10

This special encounter with the Holy Scriptures was during my final year of high school, right around the middle of the year. I was already stretched so thin during that year. Between school work, school leadership duties, service at church and extracurricular activities, I was severely burnt out. And I truly credit this to a lack of wisdom and pride, but I’ll explain that soon. The midyear school holidays came around and the first week was the annual Adventure Bible Club(ABC) at the church, which I had served at the previous year and was eager to do it again. This is where lack of wisdom is highlighted, because the week after the Bible Club week, I would have to be in Durban for another week for cheerleading national championships.

What a disaster.

The championships were finalized months prior to me finding out about the Bible Club. I was so torn but I decided to do both. This is a little bit of a complex story because cheerleading was an unsurendered part of my life, yet God still showed me mercy concerning it. I hope to be able to elaborate on that in another post but for now we’ll leave it at that.

So there I was, at 4am on the Monday morning if ABC week setting out to help wherever I could. It wasn’t long before I realized that I was not serving wholeheartedly. I only ened up being able to join the team for 3 days that entire week, and that inconsistency was harmful. On the second day of the week I had a retinal migraine which usually indicates an imbalance in my body. By the middle of that week I began realizing that I was in over my head. I had taken up too much responsibility.

I was so confused. Why couldn’t I commit fully to both of the physically strenuous and time consuming things? On one hand I really wanted to serve at the church, I just didn’t want to be absent. On the other hand I knew the physically demanding aspect of the week that was to follow. Why was it so difficult to accept that it was probably best that I rest for the ABC week, so I would be ready for championships? It was torment inside my mind and heart. I just didn’t understand.

This led me to a time of reflection. I had to ask myself why I was so adamant on being everything to all. I soon realized the pride in my heart. This pride made me want to be a part of the ABC week so that I would get recognized. I wanted to be needed. Just going through my Journal entry from that night, I am so shocked at how vividly I remember the entire experience. From there, I then started thinking about the reason behind the hunger to be involved. I was afraid of being discarded, being forgotten. And that was a tough one to swallow. How it was so easy to allow pride in, in order to combat rejection and fear.

That night I was reading on 1 Peter 2 and I came to verse 10: “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had received no mercy, but now you have received [God’s] mercy.” The verse almost jumped out from the page and into my conscience.

Following the shame of realizing I dishonored God by serving Him with a prideful heart, this verse soothed me. Letting me know that even though I had been forgotten, discarded, and left out in the past, it was no longer my reality. That now I was God’s own possession, and that I no longer had to live out of lack, but out of the abundance of His mercy! Wow! I remember crying as I physically felt the weight leave me.

It’s also worth saying that I wouldn’t have known that what I held in my heart was pride, had I not learnt the humility Jesus walk in and called us to walk in as well. In saying this I am highlighting 2 Timothy 3v16-17. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. The Lord corrects us through His word.

John 15 and Ephesians 1-3

This is the most recent encounter and it changed the entire trajectory of this year. At the beginning of 2024 till about the middle of the year I was caught up in a very weird place in my walk with the Lord. Though I was growing, I was growing in a way that was killing joy in me. Think of it as the growth of an ingrown nail.

At the end of 2023, I recieved a wake up call that I wasn’t taking God as seriously as I should be as a Christian. According to Matthew 6v33, I was not putting God first. It was almost as if it was everything first, then God. And when I realized this I was devastated by the disappointment I felt. In turn, I allowed for this disappointment to turn into a fear. And this fear ruled over me.

I want to clarify that there is a difference between the fear I am speaking of and a holy, revenant fear. A holy fear is a fear that moves us to want to be close to God, to walk with Him in the light and to obey Him because He is God. It leads us to pour out our lives as an offering that is pleasing to Him. The kind of fear I lived in was not a holy fear. Guilt, self-righteousness and pride worked hand-in-hand with this fear. I believed that I could do things in order to prove that I was deserving of the gift of salvation which is in direct opposition the Ephesians 2v8-9.

Eventually I began to crumble under the weight of all that I arrogantly took on. I realized that I was actually so far from God and I was trying to do life on my own but for Him.

The one thing that always made my stomach churn during those months was the word obedience. Terror filled my heart everytime I thought about the consequences of the inability to obey or blatant disobedience. And we’ve seen in the Bible that there are consequences. But I feared the punishment of sin more than I loved God.

An older sister in Christ stepped in and helped me to see that I had strayed away from the gospel and was relying on my own power for salvation. So then I had to stop and ask for God to correct my distorted views because they were stopping me from seeing God as He truly is. I began reading and studying the gospel of John. Chapter 15 of John blew my mind away. The words of Jesus spoke to the hardness of my heart and breathed life into me again. The language is not of a heartless tyrant who demands burdensome things of his people. They were words of a loving King who wants for His subjects to have His joy! Not rules and regulations.

Verses 10 and 11 read:”If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

My hearts eyes were enlightened to the truth that God desires we should abide in His love because it brings Him glory. And we abide in His love by obeying His commandments. But that ultimately, the commandments God gives He gives so that we would have joy. My friend, not just any joy, this is His joy! This is echoed in 1 John 5v3: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.”

Love God with everything you are. Love one another.

I also began reading Ephesians and the truths found in the first 3 chapters have changed my life. In the Christian movie ‘Overcomer’, the lead is told to read the book of Ephesians and discover all that God has done for her. We see her completely transformed and I can see that change in myself as well. I have never been more eager to walk with God, now that I see all that he has done for me. Joyful obedience. This is something I thought was impossible. Yet here I am. (P.S I literally used to cringe at people who claimed the promises of God gave them new life…ain’t that ironic.)

Well friends, that’s all for today. Again, may you be blessed by today’s post. I hope we interact again soon. Till next time, keep your mind stayed on our King, and live your life conscious of His kingdom. What a beautiful reality it is.