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.

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.