Kingdom Conscious Reality

This post is a retelling of the events in my life before Christ(BC), when Christ became known to me and my life now with Christ. Basically, the story of God in my life. I pray that you will be encouraged, seeing the How God has been so merciful and gracious to me.

I just want to start by saying that my walk with God did not begin on the day of my repentance. God has been in my life since I was a thought in my heavenly Father’s mind, and I believe that to be true about you as well

Before Christ:

I won’t spend too much time explaining my early childhood memories. This is not because they’re not important, but because there is just so much that is worth dissecting that it makes my brain itch.

My childhood seemingly had nothing wrong with it. I was born and bred in Soweto and lived there untill I was 9, with my grandmother and my mother in a single room house. I always had food to eat, clothes on my back and a place to lay my head. My physical needs were always taken care of. During those years I was primarily closer to my grandmother as she was home more often, while my mother was working to support us. It’s worth mentioning that my grandmother connected me to a church from very young. I remember attending the children’s ministry group while the adults stayed in the main hall, but I don’t remember grasping very much about the gospel.

In that environment I was in, I was exposed to many things and realities that children typically can’t handle nor understand. Fun fact is that I am Swati-South African, which for me meant having more than a few differences from the other children. I didn’t really fit in, and as “pick me” as that sounds, it’s the truth. On the natural scale my childhood was a happy one, but unfortunately, because of a lack of emotional support, I developed a pseudo emotional intelligence.

By the grace of God, my mother moved her and I from the township to a quaint little suburb. This move was a difficult one. Enrolling in a [great] new school at the begining of grade 4, in a new environment, with new people around, a new home and nothing familiar at all. Loneliness and rejection crept into the cracks and slowly began perverting my view of the world around me. Bullying is the unfortunate tale of many children and it is a part of mine. It didn’t look like being slammed into a wall or having my books thrown on the floor. No, no. It was the subtle joking about appearance or a blunt segregation during lunch times. And because of the way humans are wired, I wanted revenge for everything. I wanted a big comeback so I could show the world, my small world, that I didn’t deserve to be rejected so harshly.

With my primary school years taking place in the midst of an uneasy living situation, I turned to school for comfort and a sense of identity. I became very manipulative and calculating (some would say observant). I had become so good at appearing to be someone I wasn’t, so I could fit in with almost any group of kids. This got me into many sticky situations with the girls around me. By grade 6 I was willing to do about anything to get a little bit of attention and traction, and this willingness was most available to boys. I began experiencing attention from boys that fit into the gap of a fatherless upbringing so well. It was all just so confusing and my behavior expressed it.

Around this time I started attending a small Christian youth group on Friday nights. All for the wrong reasons might I add. To hang out with and make more relevant friends, to get a boy’s attention and build my epic comeback story. My time and experience at this small church was just so distracted that whatever I did learn about God I also managed to stifle with my thirst for what was pulling me away from God. This is how I know for certain that sin doesn’t discriminate. Young or old, it is always eager to devour and rule over us (Genesis 4v7). I had experienced things no child is meant to experience, and become rebellious in my heart. Blatantly rejecting my mother’s and my grandmother’s guidance.

I started highschool still strongly determined to pave my own way. My secondary schooling began at an All-Girls school then transferred to a Co-Ed school half way through my first year. I had lost all sense of the word ‘identity’, all types of perversion and rebellion were justified in my pursuit of ‘happiness’ in my life. Even after moving high schools, I was still making the same mistakes. My 9th grade year collided with the global shutdown due to Covid-19.

When I met Christ:

I had not directly heard anyone preach the gospel to me. Apart from hearing about the character of Jesus back in children’s ministry (which I stopped attending in grade 3) and the youth group I attended briefly, I was clueless. But there came a point when I just knew that the things I was doing and the way I was living was not good. I knew there was a God and I was certain that the way I was doing things was not pleasing to Him. The weight of the emotional burden that I kept on carrying to all these sins was also not getting lighter. After spending the whole quarantine period in a miserable cycle of sin, loneliness and what I know now to be depression, I came to the end of 2020 just so hopeless.

There came one night in the December of 2020, and I found myself crying my eyes out and pleading with the pain in me to stop. I had an old, hard-cover bible my grandmother had given that sat in a desolate corner of my room. I tried opening it and reading from Genesis to Revelation a few times in the past (unsuccessfully). Some nights I slept with it under my pillow when I was a little scared of the dark. But that night I took it in my arms and just hugged it and prayed through the tears: “God, please help me! I can’t do this alone, please help me!”

I remember I sleeping really well that night.

Looking back now, I see how serious the Lord is about bringing us to Himself. When I went back to school the next year I slipped back into my old ways, even though it was [surprisingly] harder. There was a small disagreement I had with my friends. That small disagreement was a way God had created for me to get out of my old ways by choosing to be honest and removing myself. But my old ways were just so natural to me, that I didn’t think I needed a way out. I missed the opportunity.

In my grade 10 year I was actively trying to change my ways. Reading the Bible, telling girls I didn’t wanna gossip anymore, trying to lie less to my mom, trying to work harder in school etc. I just had a desire to be less like the girl I was before. But like the Lord said, “the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26v41). I was still stuck seeking validation from popularity, friends and boys.

Untill finally…God shook the ground of my old foundations and my house came CRUMBLING!

I had been in girl drama before, I was no stranger to it. But what happened in my grade 10 year is so significant because it felt like a personal ‘attack’ on everything I had built my life on, I lost all security and identity I had forged. I sincerely thank God for that experience. He, so lovingly, yanked me out of that situation because I now belonged to Him and He had different plans.

A little bit before the time of this epic turning point I began attending a small youth group in the area I lived (different to the one of my primary years). And I was able to see God for the first time, even though my understanding of Him was so limited. I often say that at the time, I had an “I have to have it” mentality, like a collector at an antique furniture store. I had to have this Christianity, it was just so beautiful. The people were kind, accepting, joyful and so loving. I wanted to be like them. I know now that Christ is not an accessory that we get to put on, but that we follow Him and we must deny ourselves (Luke 9v23). And how faithful God is to correct us.

My life with Christ:

From mid-2021 God started doing incredible things in my life and in my heart. From the time of that big falling out with my friend group, I wanted to isolate myself. I truly didn’t want to let myself recieve good things. I wanted to be punished for what I had been in the past. God spoke to me in that space through the most unlikely character, the friend I had wronged the most. She said: “God said it’s not good to be alone. Look what He did in the garden with Adam and Eve.” That could’ve been nothing else but the goodness of God reaching out to me!

I found a community of people who loved Jesus and who were willing to love me. I had never had that. People who I didn’t have to feel guarded around. God blessed me with 2 ladies who are still my closest friends today. We would leave school in the afternoon and go sit on some person’s lawn and have Bible studies once or twice a week. We would pray, read the Word and even dance before the Lord on the street, making ourselves jokes in eyes of many.

At the youth group I was attending on Friday nights and Sunday mornings, I began forming really loving friendships and relationships. A true blessing. I was recieving discipleship in the cell groups we were divided into. I had a space to laugh, to confess my sins, to recieve prayer, to be loved and to love. It was so wonderful for me to see the hand of God in the social sphere of my life because that’s the place where I trusted myself the least because hurt so many people. I was afraid to get close to people. I remember actually referring to myself as somewhat of a social hazard. And I know now that that was a lie from the enemy, planted to keep me in isolation.

In my school life I also had a miraculous break through. I excelled academically, culturally and as well as in the various student leadership roles I volunteered for. I was never great at sport but I also did well in that area. I’m convinced it was miraculous because I wasn’t doing anything different in those spaces, my mind was just constantly going back to God. I don’t know how else to explain it. God made the difference. In October of 2021, I was invited to step into youth ministry leadership, where I still currently serve the Lord and His people.

On the 5th of November 2021, I got baptized and proclaimed the faith.

Fast forward to 2022 and I’m still just falling in love with this new way of living. It was an academically intense year. I still struggled with many of the sins of my past and the guilt of sin. Because the human nature is so weak, it became very easy for me to remove my eyes from God, His holiness and His love and to rather fix my gaze on all the gifts He had blessed me with. The friends, the freedom(my mother trusted me more, so she loosened her grip), the achievement and the spiritual gifts. These things all become idols in my life, and I was just so ignorant to it.

I was still writing a comeback story, forgetting that I had already come home.

Convictions about the posture of my heart were being set before me by the Holy Spirit and it felt like torture because I didn’t know what conviction was at that point. I once wrote a poem about how even though my life was now Jesus’, my mind and heart were still so filthy and it ate me up. I wanted to be pure but it felt impossible. This is mainly because I was neglecting reading and meditating on God’s Word. I wish I had prioritized getting to know God more!

But God is faithful. (1 Thessalonians 5v23-24)

I had allowed all the things God had done for me and all the rejection I experienced to shape the way I knew God instead of allowing Him to be God. To teach me who He was. 2022 was a fight to do as much as I could so I would be who God wanted me to be. I had strayed from the truths in Ephesians 2v8-10, spending so much time outside of the house. Filling my time with so many things that weren’t necessarily bad. I was just putting them before God in my heart.

2023 on the other hand was my final year in high school. I don’t know how it works in other places but here in South Africa, the Matric year is notorious for leaving many beaten up and wounded. Surprisingly, however, it was a much simpler year for me. I was now seeking to make my heart pleasing to God. I was so ready to be wholly devoted to God and seeking Him FIRST by the end of that year. It was difficult seeing how selfish I could be even with God Himself and I was discouraged. But then I was encouraged, knowing that God would help me. Being convinced that He was [and still is] sanctifying me.

My prayer was [and is]: “Let it be real, God I’m ready.”

Jump to right now. 2024. I’m relearning the Lord, so to say. On an adventure of time with God. Knowing that God, who began the good work within [me], will continue His work untill it is finally finished on the day when Christ return(Phillipians1v6).

The gospel of Jesus Christ:

God created a perfect creation, He created man so He could dwell with them. When sin entered the world, we were separated from God’s good and perfect design, and from His presence. But God, in His grace and mercy, sent His only Son Jesus Christ to redeem humanity. Jesus, who is equal with the Father and is God, lived a perfect and sinless life while walking in the very bodies you and I have. He gave His life away as a holy and living sacrifice for our sin. Three days later, the Father raised Him from the grave and He defeated sin’s power, thus creating a new covenant. A covenant of grace, that allows for those who believe in the Son of God and His sacrifice to be made right with God! Hallelujah! Romans 10v9-10 NLT
[9] If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. [10] For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.

https://bible.com/bible/116/rom.10.9-10.NLT

This is the Good News of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It has not lost its power because Jesus is alive!

Untill next time, beloved reader, may God be with you.

Here’s a quick poll I’d really appreciate you answer.