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

No one makes it out alive anyway

Good evening friends

As I write this I'm in a bath filled to the brim with water, imaginary bubbles and I have an imaginary drink in one hand and my beloved blackberry in another... I just got in from having supper with friends

A friend of mine called Bokang arrived from Botswana on friday to see Oprah at the University of the free state and she's leaving tomorrow so we decided to and catch up for a bit... A few of my other friends who I hadn't seen in a while were going to hang out so we decided to join them...

So right now I'm sitting here in this warm bath - which is getting lukewarm with every word I type and I'm just reflecting on the great weekend that I had...

On friday Rong (another friend of mine) and I went to the waterfront to eat out at Mcdonalds and then to exclusive books to read introductions and prologues of books in order to decide which book was the best... Not judging a book by its cover but by its introduction... After all, didn't someone say: a good book should have you at "once upon a time"... If no one has ever said this before then I give you permission to quote me.
So the award for best intro went to "Resident Alien" by Rian Malan (which, by the way, is on my birthday wishlist)

Saturday was spent paying bills (or at least trying to before I realised that I woke up after the banks closed)... In the evening I attended a function held by ABASA (Association for the advancement of Black Accountants in Southern AfricA) to celebrate CA(SA) students who hAd just qualified... I rocked up at the do a bit late, but I had fun all in all - even though my hair was held up by pins so small that even sneezing would have been a fashion mistake... The theme of the evening was: what role does the accounting profession play in the year of job creation... One of the speakers answered the question very shortly and sweetly by saying: it starts by making a small difference - by helping to make sure that the Spaza shop next door to you turns into a supermarket!!!
All in all, a great night of shoulders rubbed with many Greats and Greats-to-be in the Accounting profession.

My sunday morning was typically spent at Grootvlei prison ministering in song to the inmates, and as always, I came back humbled and blessed and in awe at what God is busy doing in this beautiful country of ours.
Sunday afternoon was spent on a date at Braza having coffee and good conversation about South African politics.. And then straight to church again for the evening service.
Ps Clive was preaching... A powerful service that deserves a post of its own so look out for that.

And then Bokang and my other friends all went to Spur for a nice student special supper - guitars and all...very "soothing" environment as a friend of mine put it...
Bokang and I shared tears and laughter in the midst of that crowd and we caught up on a year and a half's worth of conversation - what a great night.

And now here I am, shivering in my now cold bath... Thinking: sometimes letting your hair down is okay... To forget about all the study work awaiting you, or the work that your boss asked you to do over the weekend. To forget all your troubles and all your fears... To just embrace the best that life has to offer... To hang out with loving friends who will remind you that: You are not alone!!! To smile, to laugh and most importantly to love without fear...
To allow yourself to not take life too seriously, because when all is said and done, like my friend Mariam said: No one makes it out of life alive anyway!!!

God bless you and have a great week.
LK