A NEW YEAR

NEW PERSPECTIVES

It’s always great to spend the festive season with friends and loved ones. In this season we give and receive gifts, and catch up on the “year gone bye”.

A time of warmth, happiness and great food…

Of course we know that Christmas is in essence a Catholic feast, based on distorted historic calculations, which has grown out to be a mass consumption hype.

Yet every chance we get to praise or to uplift the name of Jesus Christ should not pass us by. So after a somewhat tumultuous year, my wife Marjolein and I decided to celebrate Christmas in the company of the church at our home. Some pictures will follow on FB soon.

“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Then you will call upon Me and I will listen to you.

And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will find by you, says the Lord …”

Jeremiah (29:11-14)

The promise of God recorded in the book of Jeremiah is often quoted as a “feel-good” message. But isn’t great to know that God thinks about everyone of us? And that His thoughts are thoughts of peace, to give us a future and a hope?!

The second part tells us the condition to receive the promise. It says: “when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you”.

In the past time I felt God testing the heart of His church rather than just testing her actions. A time where the “why’’ is more important then the “when” or “where”. The motivation exceeds the cause.

It’s time where God asks us “do I (God) still capture your heart?”.

1 Sam16:7 “But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

It was said that David was a man after God’s own heart.

A murderer, who did almost everything that God forbade, yet God defines him as “ a man after My own heart”.

This paradox of crime and yet a passion after God is expressed in Psalm 51:1-2, and in psalm 51:10-11:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Do not cast me away from Your presence,

And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me”.

It shows me that David, yet far from perfect… was real.

Many Christians however are fake. Coming to church with their church face on, yet their hearts is divorced from the heart of God. And we all have our imperfections, yet God loved us before we were living right.

We like to think of ourselves as “almost perfect”, yet if we are honest with ourselves we still need a lot of grace and nothing we do or have done can ever earn or deserve God’s everlasting love. (Read rom 5:8) Yet it’s great to know that He loves us unconditionally, with an everlasting, unstoppable, eternal love. Yet God desires our heart completely (Read Ex20:5)

We wish you and your loved ones a faith filled and powerful 2014!

And encourage you to pursue God wholeheartedly as He unfolds His plans in your life!

Greetings

Nsongo & Marjolein