The foundation of love

Wow, it's 2012... I cannot believe it has taken me so long to write my first post for the year. This time I decided that I would wait a little while and let the unfolding of 2012 guide me in terms of what I should be focusing on this year, and since Christmas day I have been meditating on the subject of love.

On Christmas eve, my younger sister and I had a serious fight, I mean it got physical, and I actually thought that it would turn out to be the fight that ended our relationship. Not that we had never had a fight before but, for the first time, I felt like I would never speak to her again.

A few weeks later she is visiting me for the weekend and we are having the time of our lives loving each other. I really found this amazing. That you can love someone so much that no amount of bad words exchanged and fighting done could ever get between the bond that you share.

While I was reading the bible in the past few weeks, I came across many scriptures that spoke not only about the love between God and man but also of love amongst ourselves as brothers and sisters in Christ.

The most amazing love of all is the love that God has for us as human beings, that He gave His only Son to be crucified for our sins!!! We do wrong against Him and He takes it upon Himself to redeem us, simply because He loves us!
What's even more amazing is that God requires of us to love one another with the same love that He has for us.

While it might have been easy for God to decide that He would send His Son to death for our salvation because of His capacity to love beyond human understanding, it is a bigger challenge for us to honour His request that we love one another because we are weak in nature. However, it is not impossible because God also says in His word that our weakness is His strength. And therefore, if allow God to take over our lives, we find that it is easy to love our fellow human beings.

Last night, God challenged me with this:
  The gift of friendship is more important than the question of who is wrong and who is right!!!

This made me realise that the relationship that I have with the people in my life ought to be of much more importance than the problems that we are going to face together.

So, as I begin the year of 2012, I choose to begin by building on the foundation of love.
This means that love has to be on the forefront. That everything I do should be motivated by love.
The plans that I make and the vision that I have for my life should be birthed out of love and nothing else - a love for life, a love for people, a love for my country, a love for my family, a love for myself and most importantly a love for God.

And I challenge you to do the same, to begin 2012 on the right foot, to start with love in mind.
If you were thinking of letting some of your friends go, do it because you truly believe that it is what's best for the both of you, and if you were thinking of beginning new friendships, do it because you are motivated by love.

This is love, that when we feel we no longer have it in our hearts to love, that we lay it down before God and allow Him to teach us to love again... when everything else fails (careers, studies, plans etc) then all we have left is love and the people that love us.

lots of love
Likeleli

11 Lesson learned in 2011

1. When you make God the foundation of your life, and you entrust Him with everything that concerns your life, then NOTHING can move, shake, break or kill you!!!

2. We never ever stand alone...there's always someone vouching for us, cheering us on to get to the finish line. we can't afford to give up on ourselves!!!

3. there are no shortcuts to any place worth going, and there's no easy way to develop good character... dreaming allows you to begin with the end in mind, but living is what happens between the beginning and the finish line. BE A DREAMER, but even more than that, BE a LIVER OF LIFE!!!

4. Some things in life can wait...the race is not against the clock -but everything has a time and an appointed season...like my dear mother once said: time is not a speedway between the cradle and the grave...so be patient, it will get you places!!!

5. Never underestimate the power of prayer: pray before the battle, pray during the battle, pray after the battle and pray during a time of peace, pray in every season!!! never ever cease to pray!!!

6. Family is a gift from God, no matter how bad things get, never give up hope on your family. Love them, pray for them, talk to them and talk with them!!! No one will ever be perfect, but love them any way!!!

7.  Even when things are not going that well in your life, celebrate with the people in your life that have something to celebrate, do not forget to pray for other people to prosper as you pray for your own prosperity... God is able to bless us all!!! He won't give your blessing to someone else!!!

8. The love of true friends speaks for itself... it is seen in truth and honesty, loyalty, sacrifice and most importantly time!!! trying to be a best friend to everyone only results in you spreading yourself so thin that you can't even be a good friend to one person!!!

9. People that are willing to walk your spiritual journey with you are for keeps...cherish them and pray for them too!!! thank you to my homecell for a great and interesting year!!!

10. Ntate Nelson Mandela (& his fellow comrades) was wiling to die for freedom because way before '94 he had found freedom within himself, that's why he believed that it was a cause worth fighting for.Your dream has to be alive within you, even before the rest of the world can see it manifest...because when days are tough, the dream will keep you going!!!

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·      11.   gold has to go through the harshest conditions to be made pure and of great value... life will test you, it will burn you, melt you and change you... and it's okay!!! whatever you go through in life doesn't define you, all that matters is the finished product!!! hold on, God is with you throughout the whole process!!!

Thus says the Lord

I couldn't sleep tonight, the heat is just too much to bear. So I decided I should read a little scripture to make the best of my time, and I came across the story of Elijah and Elisha in the first four chapters of 2 Kings. (please read them to get a good idea of what is going there)

It's an amazing piece of scripture, and what stood out for me were the following verses:
 2 kings 1:16-17 the he said to him, "thus says the Lord: ...therefore you shall not come down from the bed to which you have gone, but you shall surely die". So Ahaziah died according to the word of the Lord which Elijah had spoken.

2 Kings 2:21-22 Thus says the Lord: I have healed this water, from it there shall be no more death and barrenness. So the water remains healed to this day, according to the word of Elisha which he spoke.

2 Kings 3:17,20 For thus says the Lord: "You shall not see wind, nor shall you see rain, yet that valley shall be filled with water so that you, your cattle and your animals may drink"...Now it happened in the morning, when the grain offering was offered, that suddenly the water came by way of Edom and the land was filled with water

There's a few more of these kind of verses in the 4 chapters, and what I saw was that, without a doubt, whatever God says will be shall be.
In John 1:1-3, 14 we understand that the foundation of the world was built on the word of God:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made."
And the Word became flesh (Jesus) and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Furthermore, Isaiah 55:11 reads: so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to Me void.
But it shall accomplish what I please
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

WOW!!!

What awesome knowledge to understand the power of the word of God.
God has built everything that we have come to know on His word. He said, and it was - even at creation (Genesis 1)

The Bible is full of things that God said, His word in pure form and I think now that we understand what power there is in His word, we can begin to declare His word in our lives and in the lives of the people we have been called to reach in order to see it become alive in all of us.
We can even begin praying for our countries, for Africa, for the world, for our leaders... just by declaring what the Lord has already said, making it specific to our lives!!!

There's one specific scripture that I declared throughout the year, which made a huge difference in my life...Psalm 32:8 "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go. I will guide you with My eye"
Every time I felt I needed direction, I would loudly remind God of this promise that He made through His word, and I would ask Him to lead me as He has promised. And then I would continue to blindly follow Him. I applied this to my studies, my job, relationships. As a result I found myself within His will, and even when I went out of His will He always led me back to where I was supposed to go because I continuously declared His word in my life. He had to honour it.

I am grateful to have a God who honours His word above everything.
I am grateful for Jesus Christ, who is the Word in flesh!!!
I am grateful that the word of God will not return to Him without having established what He has sent it to us to accomplish.

"this Book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night. That you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success"
Joshua 1:8

Inspire-d: Living the Gym Experience

Inspire-d: Living the Gym Experience: So, today during my session at the Gym, while I stopped to catch my breathe in the middle of a killer exercise, I happened to look around a...

Living the Gym Experience

So, today during my session at the Gym, while I stopped to catch my breathe in the middle of a killer exercise, I happened to look around at everyone else in the gym, just to see if anyone was looking at how I was not coping!!!.
I quickly scouted the room hoping and praying that I wouldn't see anyone looking in my direction and shaking their head at how much of a hard time I was having (even getting a little irritated with myself for missing gym for 3 days last week).

While looking around, I realised just how busy everyone else was with their own "thing", not even having time to waste looking at me or to even care what I was doing... and then a thought struck me: this is exactly how life is supposed to be...

Life is very much like Gym, where each person has his/her own Gym programme (purpose) that has been designed for that specific individual to enable him/her to reach the goals that they have set for themselves - be it to lose weight, to gain muscle or to just maintain their current shape.
Furthermore, the programme that one person is going to use to, for example, lose weight, is not necessarily the same one that another person will use to achieve the same goal, because everyone is DIFFERENT (age, health, height, amount of weight to lose etc).

Likewise, in life, we all have a different purpose, different goals, different visions... and it only makes sense that we function according to different programmes. And even in situations where we might share the same goals (for example: my flatmate and I both want to qualify as Chartered Accountants and we both want to get married and have beautiful families), because we are so DIFFERENT (study patterns, age, values and belief-system)... we will both get there, however the road that we will have to take to get there will be totally different. I might have to put in more effort than her in my studies, she might get married earlier than me and so on!!!

So while I was in the gym, I started imagining what it would be like if people in the gym started competing with and comparing themselves to one another (like people ussually do in real life)... Imagine I see a girl lifting heavy weights and I feel like I have to prove myself to her and to anyone else watching, and I go and start lifting the weights with her - can you imagine how big I will be after a few weeks of doing this... and can you imagine how much I would have deviated from my main goal of going to the gym (which is to simply build up energy to run marathons)... would I even be able to run my marathons with such big muscles???

So why do we do this in our lives? why do we constantly compare ourselves to other people, and copy their way of doing things even though we know that we are DIFFERENT, that we have different values and different goals in life!!!

Sure, we are all meant to succeed, but according to our own programmes. NOT according to the programmes, time-frames and definitions (of success) of other people.

So the next time you see someone succeeding at what they do, remember this blogpost... and just congratulate them and wish them well further on. DON'T start comparing yourself to them... we are all in different journeys... and we should all HAPPILY live the gym experience!!!

What God sees - for women!!!

Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror and wondered: what does God see when He looks at me???
Do you know that He sees a daughter, a princess (for He is the King), a woman of great magnitude, a lady, a woman of integrity, a woman who never compromises her worth just to please a crowd or to excite men... God sees us as beautiful, queens who deserve nothing short of the best Kingdom!!!
Isn't it time that we all aligned our view of ourselves, with the way God sees us... isn't it time to look at ourselves and see ourselves exactly as He sees us.

Have you ever stopped halfway through calling yourself stupid to ask yourself: what does God whisper to me every single day. Do you know that God calls you holy, He calls your body His temple, He calls you a proverbs 31 woman!!!
Isn't it time that you spoke to yourself the way God would speak to you, isn't it time to be more gently with yourself, to practise kindness on yourself, to whisper words of love to yourself, because you are a woman of God... a woman for God!!!

We are worth so much more than this world gives us, worth so much more than how the media potrays us. We are worth so much more than anyone can tell us...
Ladies, we can begin by seeing value, not only in ourselves but in every woman around us. Because we are truly God's girls and He loves us soooo much.
it's time, ladies, that we loved ourselves as much!!!

I love you, i value you, i care about you and I wish you all the best in the journey of self-discovery!!!
You are born to shine!!!

Enlarge your BOX!!!

have you ever felt like you are stuck in a box? that you are limited within the confines of the path you chose to take, by the decisions you have made in the past when you didn't know better.

Have you ever felt boxed in by your career? your relationships? your environment? that everything was just too limiting???
well, guess what??? everyone of us is stuck in some box or another. When you start off at work, you are stuck in the box of routine, doing things over and over and over until you get tired of them.

The most important question is,however: what do you do when you reach your peak, when your box is no longer enough to contain you, your dreams and the vision that you have for your life.
Do you simply settle for mediocrity, which is really just being good enough to get by... or do you make an effort to enlarge your tent, to increase the capacity of your box??

i believe that it is very rare in life that you have to do something as radical as changing a career path, relocating or totally re-structuring the plan you have for your future. Many-a-times we just have to get up and change our view of our current situation/circumstance in our lives.
As long as there is growth in our lives, there will always be a need to change the size of our box... a need to develop even beyond our own limitations.

So if you currently feel like you are stuck in a box, i suggest that you take a step back and analyse what it is that makes you feel stuck, and then ask yourself this question: what can i do about it???

"You are in the exact place in your life that you're suppose to be. Be present. Excel - right where you are"
                                                                                                                                     Thami Ngubeni