My wife and I recently managed to snatch a few days away. It was a much needed break for both of us. I managed to book a few nights at the cottage we spent our honeymoon in in 2003. It was an amazing experience for me.

The last year’s events have been draining for both of us. Her illness and my having to deal with the changes in our lives have had an exhausting effect on us, and we needed to recharge. I managed to book the time off, and was able to contact the owners of Boggomsrus, the cottage in Boggoms Bay we honeymooned at.

I love little wooden cottages by the ocean. They give me a sense of God’s presence in a way that only that environment or being alone in the mountains does. We visit a small private nature reserve called Jongensgat, just outside Stillbaai when we can. At that cottage there is no cell-phone reception or TV. Boggomsrus is a bit different in that there is a TV, but the village was almost totally deserted – we saw precisely 1 other person there the whole week.

After we got home, my wife went up to Namibia without me to visit her grandmother. I spent the week she was away caught up in my own thoughts. I don’t generally do well alone these days. My sleep pattern went to pieces and didn’t manage to get back on track until she came back a week later.

The time alone gave me a chance to sit and listen to God in a way I don’t get to do very often. I realised how important it is to really take time to stop and listen. It started while we were away. One afternoon while she was sleeping I sat out on the deck, watching the sun set and listening to the ocean quietly breaking on the beach below us. It was quite cathartic. After the sun set, the stars began to come out. In the evening the sky was totally clear and the entire Milky Way was visible in a way I never saw in the Northern Hemisphere. It was incredible – like all creation was singing praises to it’s creator. I could understand why the ancient people were drawn into worshipping the creation, but more importantly I felt like I had an insight into Jesus’s motives for seeking solitude when He went to pray.

The Chinese say the sound of the wind in bamboo is like the whisper of God’s voice. I get the concept. I could feel His presence and join in the praises being sung by creation. The sound of the ocean, the sparkle of the galaxy. I understand what Jesus said when He told the Pharisees that if the people stopped worshipping the rocks would worship. It makes sense. Alone we get to experience the wonder of God’s own creation singing to Him. We can quiet our heart and listen to Him sing back.

Alone time is an essential tool. We have the opportunity when we’re alone to wait on Him in a way we can’t during the bustle of normal life. Jesus withdrew from the crowds to spend time alone with His Father. If He needed to, then we need to as well.

I’ve been having a lot of thoughts recently about sex. Not in the World’s way, but from how the World’s thinking has permeated the mainstream Christian life.

Over the last few years I have actually heard leaders in local churches state that there are worse things you can do than sleep with your girlfriend. And they said this in youth services, youth groups and I’ve heard it from individual counselling sessions too.

Comparing this attitude to Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth there is a massive difference.

“Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not! Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For “the two,” He says, “shall become one flesh.” But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.
Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:15-20)


We get this teaching that our bodies are the Temple of the Spirit, but we skip the part often about how to keep it clean. Everywhere we turn today there are images of a sexual nature around us. Walking through the local stores almost every magazine that is not about country life or re-decorationg carries a picture of a girl, usually in little or no clothing, and boasting how to improve sex, increase endurance or prolong orgasm. Even Christian magazines are not always immune from the pictures, although the articles, usually, are less explicit.


The attitude of the World is clear. Sex is normal in any encounter – and the answer to infections is not abstinence but condoms. If you don’t experiment sexually then you get branded as wierd. A colleague from my work who is married recently showed me a photo she’d found online and asked me if I’d “tap” the girl in the picture. She was horrified when I said I wouldn’t consider looking because I was married.


Now I’ll admit I’m not perfect, and as most men are visually visually wired – and I’m no exception – I have to work at not seeing things sometimes. Summer is often a difficult time for me as the outfits women are coerced into wearing by fashion designers are smaller each year, and the women as a result show more and more of themselves. It is put forward as their “right” to wear what they want. There is no understanding that there are consequences for exercising those rights. Men have a responsibility to themselves to behave appropriately under all circumstances, but the World will tell us that it’s impossible to do other than your hormone’s drive.


The concept of self-regulation when it comes to our sex lives has been laughed at. Young men seem to believe that because they spent money on dinner they are entitled to sex in return. 

The World’s views are insipid. They act inside like a cancer, eating away at the fabric of our self until they leave us hollow shells of what God intended us to be. We can treat the cancer by using the Word to overcome it. Our lives can be transformed, or they can be conformed to the World.

Personally, I want to make a difference.

If you didn’t know from the titles recently, I’m a big fan of Bruce Wilkinson. I’ve been reading some of his books over the last few months, and recognising the Truths in them.

In particular, I’ve been reading 2 of the “dream-giver” series. The original, and also the one for couples.

My experiences in the last 10 years have many of the aspect of Ordinary’s life. I left my familiar country, travelled to a new place, enduring trials, experiencing victories and hardships and trying to grow closer to God through all of it.

Recently, well about a year ago actually, I’d started to feel a tug to move on again. My writing was a bit stalled, so I started this blog, and I’d finally completed the degree I’d grown comfortable studying for.

My wife and I started planning the year, what we wanted to do and where we wanted to be, and we pushed off. Immediately, we hit Wasteland. Problems and little issues started cropping up, and then we hit the Giants. To be more accurate, Giant.

We’d been planning many things for 2011, and what we ended up with has pushed it all backwards. I’m not going to go into all the details now, but the highlights have been losing health and financial security. It’s been nearly a year, and we’re still fighting them both.

But God has been good.

But God has been Faithful.

“But God”

Those 2 words have sustained me over the last year.

Joseph said them to his brothers. The sentiment is echoed through the sufferings in the entire scripture, Old and New Testament. “But God”.

The disciples were bailing water from the boat, But Jesus slept in peace. The friends berated Job, But God restored him. Saul persecuted the Disciples, BUT GOD broke through religious mindset.

Giants spring up everywhere. The spies went into the Promised Land and reported they were there. Joshua and Caleb waited 40 years to say “BUT GOD” and claim their inheritance, the only ones who saw slavery and fullness of deliverance.

Peter points out that “your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5,8). He’s a giant in many ways, but the authority he has is limited to what we give him. We can fight this giant by simply submitting to God and setting ourselves against him. He’s a toothless old cat, and we have to climb into his mouth and allow him to chew us.


It’s a hard reality, but our authority to overcome the giants really is as simple as that. In his books, Bruce Wilkinson has Ordinary slay the giants with nothing but a feather. Jesus said we just need faith as a mustard seed to prevail.


I’m still fighting giants, but I’m learning all the time. We all need to.

I realised recently I’ve been stuck.

I get caught up in a concept, or a paradigm of thought.

In 2 Kings 7, there is the most amazing illustration of God Blessing a paradigm shift. Picture the scene: the city has been under seige so long the people have resorted to cannibalism. They are completely surrounded by perhaps the most powerful army in the world. At the city gate sit 4 men. Rejected by society, bodies being eaten away by an incurable disease, these men sit and wait for death.

Then one of them shifts the paradigm.

“Now four men who were lepers were at the entrance of the city’s gate; and they said to one another, Why do we sit here until we die?” (2 Kings 7:3)

They get up and go out to the Syrian army. Their reason? We’re dead anyway, what more can the enemy do to us?

The last few days I’ve been mulling this thought over and over. “Why not try?”

The lepers tried, and they brought news back to the city of its salvation by God. Peter tried, and walked on the water to Jesus. The shift in paradigm can change our lives.

Short tonight, maybe. Hopefully a dynamite package.

Why not try? The worst that can happen is you end up where you started.

Just recently I’ve been thinking a lot about what really draws me away from God. I realised something in my musings. The big stuff generally pushes me to Him. When I see a lion I know I’m in danger, so I turn to the One who can shield me from it.

Not so with the little things.

I try to sort out the little things myself. It rarely turns out well.

Jesus said much the same. He looked at the priests and leaders of the people weighing them down with unmanageable burdens. Spiritually they gave a thousand pebbles to every person and told them to start juggling. If one pebble dropped, then go to Hell, directly to Hell, do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect 200 talents.

Jesus cut through that, and completed it. Not only by not dropping the pebbles they allocated Him, but by collecting ours as well.

I was reading one of my favourite books last night. “Six Hours One Friday” by Max Lucado. I have such respect for this man. His writing has inspired me for 20 years. I’m on my third copy of this book, having read the first two so many times they fell apart. His writings tug my heart 20 years after I first came across them. I heard Mike Yaconelli read a part of this very book at Greenbelt in 1991. The illustration of Jesus arranging to have his hands nailed open to prove he would always accept us haunts me and inspires me.

Re-reading it, I was struck by what draws me away. The little things. Rats and mice. Non-essentials. Wind and waves.

I remember seeing a painting of Jesus walking on the water when I was young. Just taking a stroll across the Sea of Galilee. It only hit me recently that the painting was wrong. In the painting the sea was a flat calm. Jesus walked through the storm to the sinking boat. Peter got out and walked through the storm until he realised what he was doing. But he couldn’t walk on a flat, calm sea. The wind and waves were incedental.

Rats and mice scavenge. At first you don’t notice the nibbles, then one day you realise how much has gone. In one of the “Death Wish” movies from the 1980’s, Charles Bronson’s character likens the local villains to cockroaches, pointing out that once you start, you need to wipe them out completely or they come back. Jesus said the same of demons. They are insidious. Apparently in a major city you will never be more than 2 meters (6 feet) horizontally from a rat or mouse, yet we rarely see them.

I became aware I had a mouse in my study a few years ago when I heard it’s rustling behind my bookshelf. The alarming thing was less the presence of the rodent, and more the fact that it had built an entire nest there, using my own books and papers as nesting material. Insidious. Naturally, I took the necessary measures to dispose of it. I let Sam, my insane 3-legged dog, into the room. 10 minutes later, no more mouse and one very proud dog!

In this instance, Sam represents Jesus to me. I couldn’t find the mouse. It was destroying my things a little at a time, and I let it happen. Sam hunted it out once I invited him to, and that mouse will never be back. Jesus has done that for us. He presents himself to us and awaits our permission to take care of the situation. We tend to let Him deal with the big issues, or we pretend to. Trust is built on foundations. To really fight the lions, tigers, bears and Goliaths in our lives on a spiritual level we must start by battling mice. Before Cancer hits, we should trust implicitly for acne. Before acne, trust for something smaller. Once the foundation is strong, the trust comes naturally.

My resolve continues. I still face battles, but one at a time, and my heart is fixed. No matter what, I will serve Jesus with all I am, and all I have.

So 2012 is finally with us. After the attacks of 2011 my family has endured I welcomed the new year with open arms.

As I think I’ve mentioned in previous posts here, whilst I absolutely believe Healing is part of the atonement Christ bought for us, and it’ not an optional extra, it’s an absolute Right, it’s also something that takes time to walk in fully sometimes. To that end, I still battle some chronic issues, which I make no bones about. Once I began to appropriate the Truth of walking in Divine Health things began to change. I had to get glasses every year because my eyesight was deteriorating. In the last 5 years it has not changed at all – at a time in my life when things normally start getting worse. I battle type 2 diabetes. My sugar control is far from what it should be, but there has been no damage to my eyes or kidneys as a result of the illness. God has been amazing in His Faithfulness to me.

Last year’s attacks came insidiously through attacks on my wife’s health. Diagnosis followed diagnosis, each worse than the last. This year has started differently.

Despite no change in my general health, my doctor added a new medication to my collection. For the first six weeks it was great. No side-effects, lower blood sugar levels and generally improved health on paper. Suddenly two days ago, my left foot swelled up and my leg up to the knee. No pain, just this swelling. It seems this one is a side-effect of the new medication. It comes and goes, subsides and fluctuates. No problems regarding medical tests, just this ludicrous swelling in my legs.

It started to come out just after I made the decision I mentioned in my last post. My decision to draw closer to God. My attitude to change my attitude and all the decisions I’ve made. The point is, it feels like a direct assault. My heart is set, and my mind is fixed. I still don’t know how things will change, but I am set in my resolve that I will draw closer to Jesus from this point on, and that I will do everything in my power to prevent myself from limiting Him in my life.

I have decided to cut myself off from the past. To burn the bridges that would allow me to retreat to a “safer” place, which is actually just a place of familiarity where I was being dominated by the Enemy so subtly I didn’t see it. Bruce Wilkinson wrote a wonderful series of books about the Dream Giver. They are parables of a man named Ordinary who lives in the Land of Familiar who is given a dream. They spoke to me in a new way, and I re-read them regularly. I don’t ever want to go back to the land of Familiar. The journey Ordinary goes through is hard and he is tempted to turn back, but every time he has the temptation, the Dream Giver himself sends someone to help him.

Familiar is not safe. It is a place that drains life from us, but the people around us will try to hold us there. To leave is truly terrifying, and the battle for the movement is hard, but set your face like flint, turn away from familiar, and let God Dream through you.

So 2011 has finally come to an end. I can’t say I’m sorry to see the end of it from a Human perspective. This year has been an incredibly challenging one. My wife’s illness, the loss of our business as a result, moving jobs 3 times in 2 months. All this takes a heavy toll on the spirit.

But at the same time, there has been amazing Blessing through the assault.

Objectively, I have seen God come through in many ways for us. My wife’s initial diagnosis and consequent immediate prognosis was an immense body-blow. The doctors basically telling us if the treatment failed she had at most six months. The treatment would not show a significant change – according to them – for a minimum of 3 to 4 months. The turnaround was nothing short of miraculous. Whilst a full healing has not yet happened, the original prognosis was totally overturned in less than 2 months. Now, physically anyway, she has a good prognosis. We are still learning to live with the issues that have arisen, but it’s not immediately life-threatening now.

Our finances have been decimated by the illness. We lost our business and there have been some massive financial expenses incurred, but we have seen incredible provision. As our situation became more and more dire, we found ourselves needing legal counsel. God opened the door for us to have advice from one of the top lawyers in the country working our case and refusing to take payment from us. He provided jobs for me where I didn’t think of looking initially, and then opened the door for me to find a job in one of the top companies in South Africa as a mono-lingual, white, male, foreigner. On paper it looked like I would not be able to be considered for a post, but God can make a way where there is none visible.

Through this, my own health suffered a little to start with, but as I was forced to lean more on God, He has sustained me. I was diagnosed with diabetes in 1999, yet despite poor control of my blood-sugar levels I have not had any of the problems medicine says I should have had. Recently, my blood-pressure has become better controlled and my sugar levels have improved despite no change in my habits. God has and is protecting me and healing me at the pace I allow him to.

That’s the key. It’s the pace we allow Him to work. Ephesians 3:20 & 21 says “Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, ²¹ to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (NKJV) He works at the pace we allow Him to. Our actions and inactions can limit how God is able to move and work in us. The Israelites limited God. In Psalm 78, it is recorded “How often they provoked Him in the wilderness, And grieved Him in the desert! Yes, again and again they tempted God, And limited the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember His power: The day when He redeemed them from the enemy”. By not keeping what God had done in their lives at the forefront of their minds, they got distracted by the surrounding problems and limited God’s ability to help them. Jesus was limited in His home town by the people’s lack of faith. Peter took his attention from Jesus and began to sink as he walked on the water.

Unbelief will sink us. we need to focus on Him and let Him guide us through the next 12 months. Yes, 2011 was a tough year. 2012 can be, and I believe will be, a year when we see things turn around in a huge way. I am committed to changing how I think and to stop limiting God so much in my life. It won’t be easy, but with His guidance it will happen.

God Bless, dear readers. And a Happy and Blessed New Year!

Ok, so it’s not an original thought for an entry on Christmas Day. I don’t care.

2011 has not been my happiest year. There have been some major upsets during the year, two in the last week.

In the end, the Spirit of Christ inhabits the day we call Christmas, and every other day. He infuses each and every moment to the level we allow Him to. I accept that this year I have limited God. Even today, I have limited how much He can give me. The Blessing He longs to lavish on each of us are beyond our dreams. His dreams are bigger than ours. His thoughts beyond ours. His desire to give to us far greater than ours to receive.

We hesitate to ask Him for things, yet He longs to give to us, just as a human parent loves to see the delight on their child’s face as the gift exceeds the request.

This New Year, 2012, (and what’s left of 2011) I’m resolved to be like Jabez. I will ask of God, and expect Him to answer. I don’t want to be wealthy or famous particularly. I enjoy my quiet anonymity for the most part in this world. But I want to be where God wants me to be. I know that means changing my thinking, and I know it may take time, but I resolve to place fewer limits on God from now on. I want to live in everything He has for me, and I want those I love to see that in their lives too.

Happy Christmas, dear readers. May God Bless us indeed, enlarge our circle of influence and territories. May His hand be with us, guiding us, and let us cause no harm.

It is a sad indictment of the Catholic Church that Daniel Avila has been forced to resign following his article “Some fundamental questions on same-sex attraction” was withdrawn by The Boston Pilot.

It took some doing to find a copy since the article was deleted by the paper just a couple of days after it was published following pressure from Gay Rights groups, but I managed to eventually. The article suggests, to the horror of the Gay community, that God might not have made homosexuals homosexual, but that sin may actually be a product of the Devil.

Something conveniently avoided by organised religious bodies these recent days seems to be the concept of sin, and its causes. It’s odd really, considering that their business is the forgiveness of sin.

This man, Daniel Avila, had conviction enough to write an article stating that “God does not cause same-sex attraction.” The Boston Pilot initially had the conviction to publish it. Unfortunately, a little pressure made both retract.

In Genesis 19, God sends two Angels to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and to save Lot and his family. Lot is an honourable man, and rather than hand the two visitors he has taken into his home over to be raped by the town he offers his own daughters to them. They blind the townspeople and lead Lot and his family out of the town to protect them from the Judgement about to be levelled there.

The people’s sin, however, is not homosexuality. I had never thought about it until 1990 when I heard Tony Campolo speak at Greenbelt Christian Arts festival in the UK. He raised an interesting point: the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was that homosexuality had become the norm, to the point that it was no only accepted, but expected. They had removed the concept of God’s laws and replaced them with their own lusts. God brought judgement on the cities for this. Lot maintained the courage of his convictions at this point. He failed later, but in this one point he stayed the course. Lot’s wife looked back. The implication is more profound, however. The inferrence is that in her heart she never left the city. The pillar of salt she turned into may be literal or figurative, but she died just the same because of where her heart was.

The world today is in turmoil. As Christians, we need to have the strength to not only say what is right, but to stand by it, even when it is unpopular with lobbyists and pressure groups. Sin is always a path to death, emotionally, spiritually and even physically. We die daily. We need to be as Paul wrote, so that for us living is Christ, and dying is gain. We need to focus on Christ so much that the fear of man’s wrath and what it can bring is rendered void in our lives.

I accept that not everyone will agree with me and my opinion. But I will stand by it. God declares through the scripture in the Bible that homosexual acts are sinful. Old and New Testament alike share this conviction. If you don’t like the rules laid down by God, take it up with the one who wrote the rulebook.