Weekly Devotion

Excuses are a part of our daily life. Some are better at making excuses, whilst others find it difficult to make some as they want to please everybody. But at some or other point in time we all made an excuse, especially if it was something we didn't want to do. Whether we told the truth with the excuse is another story, but let's leave that for now. We are all used to making, as well as receiving excuses from people. So even when the Lord, our Heavenly Father, asks us to do something, our natural inclination is to make an excuse, especially if it is something that requires an effort from our side. We are mostly in a comfort zone and it requires a real effort to get out of it. Most of us find it much easier to wallow in our comfort zone and complain about it and make a quick excuse whenever the Lord wants us to stand up and get out of the zone we are in. I am sure you have noticed it at work, at home, at school, wherever you are, people enjoy complaining and very few stand up and actually do anything about it.

Moses also made excuses when the Lord called him. He was a shepherd in the wilderness, caring for the sheep of his father-in-law and had no prospects of a better life. We already had a look at Moses' life in the previous devotions and I think it is safe to assume that Moses must have made peace with his life, but I cannot imagine that he was blissfully happy. And then one day the King of the Universe appeared to him and announced that He had a wonderful mission for him to embark on. He had a better life for Moses planned. A life of greatness. There was a way out of his situation. And what was Moses' reaction? Excuses. Not one, but four to be exact.

In the first place Moses used the excuse that I think will be the first one for all of us. I think most of us would easily be able to identify with it. In essence Moses' excuse was 'Who am I? Why would anyone listen to me? I am not one of the religious leaders or one of the leaders amongst the Israelites. I am a nobody. Why on earth did You choose me? I am sure there must be someone better for the task.'

Wow, isn't it just amazing? Thousands of years later we do exactly the same thing. We immediately act as Moses did and look at ourselves in the flesh and see what the world sees, a nobody. We rarely, if ever, look at ourselves as the Lord sees us, a somebody who can make a difference. The Lord will never give you a task if He doesn't think that you are up to it. The big step begins within ourselves. We need to identify and see ourselves with God's eyes. It is very difficult for us all, but the rewards are priceless. Look at how well Moses did his job in the end. He is beyond doubt one of the greatest men that ever lived. But what would have happened if he remained looking at himself through his own eyes and not with the eyes of the Lord? He would have stayed in his comfort zone and he would have died there in the wilderness, never experiencing the joy of fulfilling God's purpose for his life.

But first let's go back to his excuses again. Can you remember what the Lord's response was when Moses gave his first excuse?

Exodus 3:12: 'Then God told him, "I will be with you. And this will serve as proof that I have sent you: When you have brought the Israelites out of Egypt, you will return here to worship God at this very mountain."

Isn't it reassuring? The King of Kings and the Lord of Lords will be with you! He will be with you every step of the way, helping you in every regard. You simply need to take the first step. He will direct your paths from thereon. You only need to trust in Him. It is as simple as that.

Lord Jesus, please help us to trust in You. Please help us not to look at ourselves, but to look up to You, because we know You will always be there. Amen

Shalom. Welcome back. The story of Moses is teaching us more than I anticipated. The more I look into it, the more I see hidden messages from God. I am quite excited. So let us continue and look further into the life of Moses. We ended last time where Moses was a shepherd in Midian, caring for the sheep of his father-in-law. Moses probably had no real future prospects for his life, and most probably accepted his life as it is. But then the Lord intervened.

One day Moses was caring for the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, deep in the wilderness, close to Mount Sinai, the mountain of God, when he saw a roaring fire in a bush. This bush intrigued Moses as the bush did not burn up, it simply continued burning. It never burned up, because it was not a real fire, but it was the Lord attracting Moses' attention.

Now if we simply look at this passage we can learn two things. The first thing is that the Lord interestingly enough appeared to Moses close to Mount Sinai, where Moses in the near future would meet the Lord and present His ten commandments to plus minus two million people (a daunting prospect for anyone I might add). Now I am just thinking, I am sure Moses would never in his wildest dreams have ever thought that he would stand on Mount Sinai with the Lord and present His laws to His people (remember Moses had a problem with speaking, we will get to that later). Moses must have seen Mount Sinai on several occasions. I mean he has been caring for these flocks for 40 years. I am certain that he must have gone to Mount Sinai on other occasions.

What I am trying to get to is that sometimes we are seeing the same thing/person/place for several years and we never in our wildest dreams think that something good can happen with this person or at this place/thing. For example you have been trusting the Lord that your husband would give his life to Jesus and become a devout child of the Lord, but as the years passed by you begin to doubt that it ever will happen. Maybe you are feeling that you are in the wilderness looking up at the Mountain of the Lord (His Promises) and you have long lost hope that His Promises will realize. Or it could even be that you have seen a place, it could even be a promotion, for a number of years now and you have lost hope that something would ever come of it. Or you maybe have a dream and have seen others living it, but you think that your chance has passed to ever achieve it, for example you are too old or you don't have the right qualifications to achieve it.

Now I tell you today that the Lord is at Mount Sinai and He is telling you that He is ready to help you to realize your Mount Sinai. He tells you not to lose hope. It is in front of you. You simply need to take the first step. He wants you to trust Him and allow Him to work in your life. Spend time with Him and listen to what He has to say. It may be a soft whisper now, but the more time you spend with Him the louder the voice will get and you will know exactly what to do.

The second thing we can learn from this piece is that the Lord attracted Moses' attention to the bush. He didn't simply appear to him (even though He has done that several other times in the Bible), He knew Moses and He knew how to attract him. He knew Moses would find it interesting. Now isn't it the same for us? The Lord knows you better than you know yourself. Don't you think He will attract you through your interests/hobbies to guide you into what He actually wants you to do?

Now one example out of my life is that there was a new lady at work. She worked in the same Department as me, but I seldom saw her as she sat in a different row of offices and we never really came into contact. Now I am fond of jewellery and so I found out that she sold some costume jewellery. I liked some of the jewellery that she had and decided to support her and buy some of it for Christmas. When I went to fetch the jewellery we started talking and I found out that she organized events for young women and she volunteered to help me with my book launch, plus she really motivated me to listen to the Lord and follow my dream. It was such a wonderful experience. She has a lot of contacts and can organize a big event for me. Now if I didn't see the jewellery I would never have talked to her (except for an occasional 'hello' and 'goodbye') and I would never have had my book launch. The Lord knew how to attract my attention and force me to speak to her! And He wants you to know that He knows how to attract your attention too. All you need to do is to keep your eyes and ears open. It might be today.

Thank you Lord for making time for us. We are so glad that You know what is best for us and how to attract our attention to Your Will. Help us believe in our dreams and help us to rejoice in You every day. The Joy of the Lord is our strength. We love You Lord. Amen

The Lord wants to use you, no matter where you are or what you are doing! I am not insinuating that all of us go into ministry and work full time for the Lord. But there where you are at the moment, listen to His Voice and listen carefully to what He wants to tell you where you are. If He tells you to move, move, and if He tells you to change, change and if He tells you to stay and make a difference in people's lives there, do it. Whatever the case may be, listen and obey. There is a great treasure awaiting you.

Another important point that I want to make before going further, is: do not ever look at yourself with your fleshly eyes. That is what I did before starting with this website and writing my books, and the Lord sternly reprimanded me. The Lord sees the potential in you, don't ever degrade yourself. All He is looking for is obedience, nothing more. As the saying goes, 'Do your best and God will do the rest'. Now let's have a look at a few biblical characters and how their lives turned out after  the Lord called them. Let's start with Moses.

You all probably know how the story of Moses started. The Pharaoh of Egypt became alarmed at the rate that the Israelites (their slaves) were multiplying. He was scared that they could start a revolt against them in the near future. So he ordered that all the newborn boys should be killed directly after birth. Now it was in an atmosphere such as this that Moses was born. He was a beautiful boy and his parents tried to hide him from the evil Egyptians. They could only do it successfully until he was three months old. His cries could probably have been heard and therefore they couldn't hide him any longer. His mother decided to place him in a little basket and put him along the edge of the Nile river (imagine the heart ache of his mother!!).  But as the Lord would have it, one of Pharaoh's daughters came to the side of the river to bathe and heard poor Moses' helpless cries.  It broke her heart and she adopted him as her son.

Now let's halt the story there for a while. Moses was adopted by a princess of Egypt and therefore received the honor of being a prince. He must have had a royal life. He was raised to believe that he was part of a superior race and that they were much better than the Israelites. He was famous, rich beyond believe and never had to lift a finger to do anything for himself. An absolute dream life according to worldly standards.  He could have minded his own business and stayed there forever, enjoying the riches off the land, while his blood family was suffering. Most people would have stayed in their comfort zone, but Moses had more in him. He wanted to help.

Now his way of helping brought him into deep trouble.  He saw how the Egyptian soldiers mistreated the Israelites and forced them to work very hard. Now as a prince he would most probably have been trained by the Egyptian military, which was the most sophisticated army in the world at that stage. He seemed to be a good fighter, because without any trouble (it seems) he killed and buried an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite.  Pharaoh quickly heard what happened and must have known where Moses' real sympathy lies and he plotted to kill him immediately. Moses heard what happened and fled into the wilderness of Midian. Once there, he rescued some girls from shepherds harassing them at a water hole for their flocks (again he must have been a good fighter as he rescued them on his own). The girls were so grateful and invited him to their home. There Moses stayed and became a shepherd like they were. He married one of the girls, Zipporah and had children with her.

So let's recap.  Moses was an Egyptian prince who had a royal life, who fled because he murdered someone and now he was a shepherd in the wilderness who had to do everything for himself. A shepherd, I might add, that he was raised to despise because they were lower class people. Moses must have been depressed. I mean think about it, you had everything your heart desired and now you had nothing. And to top it off you were now doing a job you hated and despised. Plus he must have had nightmares for murdering the Egyptian. No matter what the cause, I think it still tugs at your heart if you murdered someone. It is against God's moral law (even though the ten commandments were not given yet, each person knows in their being that killing is wrong). 

Moses must have thought his life was over. I am almost certain he never expected anything big to come from his life. He must have thought that he will simply carry on like this till the day he died. He spent 40 years in Midian tending the sheep of his father-in-law (not his own sheep I might add, he had nothing). Now Moses died at the age of 120, so 40 years were a third of his life! It is a long time for anyone.

I will go on with the story next time, but for now I want to ask you something. Have you ever felt like Moses? For example:

My life is going nowhere.  There is no big future for me. I have lost everything, I cannot cope. I wish I could turn back the clock to go back to my comfortable living. I have done something terrible and would never be able to mean something to the world because of what I have done. I have worked my whole life to make someone else rich. I have a meaningless job. I hate my work. I have no family, parents, brothers or sisters, I am all alone. The best part of my life is over, I would never be able to start over now.  I have no reason to continue living. I am a nobody. The Lord doesn't care about me.

Have any of these questions ever entered your mind? I am sure at some stage in everyone's life a person might feel like this, but I want to encourage you. This is not the end. The Lord has a plan. He had a big plan for Moses and He could have one for you too.

Lord, please give us the courage to press on and to wait on Your perfect timing and Your perfect plan. We have gone astray, but we will faithfully wait on You, to make something of our lives. We love you. Amen

As I already said in the previous blog, sometimes the Lord calls us to do something and the choice to obey is up to us. I am not simply talking about big life changing things. It could also be something small. You see most of the time the Lord tests us with small tasks and if He sees that He can trust us with the small things He will give us a bigger task the following time. For example my son's nursery school teacher regularly lends some of her books to us for my son to page through in the afternoons after school. Now if we didn't look after these books or worse yet never returned those books to her, do you think she will lend it to us again? I don't think so. In the same way the Lord tests our faithfulness with small tasks first, before the bigger ones follow. Now let me give you an example from my life where the Lord gave me a small task to do and I didn't obey immediately.

In my second year of working I listened to a song from one of my gospel CD's. It was a different version from 'Amazing Grace' and I loved it. Every time I listened to it in the car I would start moving around and singing along. Now I must say I did a bit of dancing at that time and every time the song came on I envisioned doing a dance on that song and I had a very strong feeling in my heart that the Lord wanted me to perform a dance on that song in front of our church. Every time I brushed off the feeling, as our church was very big and they only allowed the best of the best to perform anything there. Yet the feeling remained. No matter what I did, I couldn't brush it off. It went on like this for months and after a while I must admit that the feeling did begin to fade. Almost a year after first feeling that I should do a dance on that song I truly started to feel guilty. The voice had faded, but I convinced myself that the Lord was very disappointed in me because I didn't listen. So I decided to take the step and work out a dance. Now I was a coward and didn't want to do the dance on my own, so I asked three of my friends to join me. They agreed and in our three by four meter kitchen we practiced the dance (it was a very difficult task in such a small space I might add!).

But finally we were ready.  I bought matching tops for us and I approached the church and asked them if we could come to perform the dance for them. I told them how the Lord heavily laid it on my heart. They said that they would need to preview it first. The following week in between all four of our work schedules we managed to go and show them the dance. They didn't say much, thanked us for coming, said they would phone us and left. I was a bit disappointed, but brushed it off and decided to phone them a little bit later myself. That same Sunday in church after the sermon, a lady came to the front and performed a dance on exactly the same version of 'Amazing Grace'. Not even by a different singer, it was exactly the same song. I couldn't believe it. I went green with jealousy and thought that it should have been me on the stage! I even went so far as to think that our dance and choreography was much better than hers. Immediately the Lord stopped my evil trail of thought and said: 'I did ask you more than a year ago to come and perform the dance. You were hesitant and waited far too long. I had to get someone else.' I went cold. He is right. I took way too long to respond. I actually just organized the dance to clear my conscience, as the Lord's voice has long stopped calling. Even worse I was not only late, but I didn't have the guts to do it alone, even though the Lord asked me to.

Now I am not saying that that one dance would have changed my life if I had listened to His calling or that someone magically would have seen me and offered me some kind of a life changing opportunity. But what I do know is that that would have been nice to perform in front of the congregation in honor of His Name and I know today that it was a test to see if I would be obedient. I truly believe that the Lord would use you (and me) more and more for His Kingdom and His Name if you would be obedient to His calling. And the benefit to heeding His call? Peace in your life that you are doing what you are placed here on earth to do. The void in your life would be filled with the glory of the Lord, the void that no material blessing can ever fulfill. You will be happy. Are you ready to listen?

In the next few blogs I will discuss some of the familiar biblical characters and how the Lord used them.

May your ears be open to hear Him call. May you spend enough time with Him to hear His heart beat. May you know what He wants you to do with your life. Amen.

I am truly excited to share with you the wonderful things that God is going to reveal to us. I don't even know what is going to come of this blog or what I am exactly going to write to you, as each word is truly going to be led by the Holy Spirit. So to tell you the truth, I am just as excited as you are to find out what the Lord plans to tell us!

The Lord has truly pressed it on my heart to start with this website and follow His leading (For quite a while now I might add). I have delayed and delayed, with all sorts of excuses. You know how we are as humans, if something more than the ordinary and the 'required' is expected of us, we prefer to have an excuse or two as to why it isn't appropriate at the moment. Anything from 'I started work again and am extremely busy', to 'My baby is getting teeth and I didn't sleep well for the past few weeks', to 'Why would anyone listen to me anyway? Who am I?'  Yes the excuses came rolling in! And would you believe it if I tell you that even though the Lord was talking to me specifically, I was looking at what He was doing in other people's lives instead, rather than doing what He tells me to do.  I even had the nerve to be envious of people working for the Lord and using their websites to His glory. Whilst I didn't even make the effort to spend enough time with Him or even do what He tells me to do.

Until one day when He said to me: 'Enough is enough. Either you continue with your life as it is, or you start doing what I require of you.' Again my answer was 'But Lord why would anyone listen to me? Who am I that You would want to use me? I am not famous, I didn't get a gold medal at the Olympics, and I am not outrageously clever nor am I a beauty queen. I am a nobody in the eyes of the World.' And do you know what His answer was? He said: 'Ilze, I know exactly who you are, even better than you know yourself. I have known you even before I created the world. I see you with all the potential and gifts inside and I have a purpose for you. Stop looking at everyone else. Stop looking at what I am doing in their lives. That is actually none of your business. Look up to Me and listen to the plans I have for you and listen to what I want you to do. I have orchestrated the universe to work alongside you to bring a message to the world. All of nature is waiting in anticipation for you to start. Everything will work alongside you. All I need is your willingness to do as I ask. Leave the rest to Me.'

So here I am, starting with this website. Who can argue with the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth? Who can ignore His call on your life? Who even wants to try? Moses tried to get out of the call that the Lord had on His life. He used every excuse he could think of. But imagine if he didn't heed to the call of the Lord and turned his back on Him. I wonder how his life would have turned out. Where would he have ended up? The Lord would certainly have found someone else to lead His people, I have no doubt, but where would Moses have been? He would have missed the most wonderful, awesome experience of working alongside the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings. He would have missed the most incredible encounters with God, where the Lord even called Moses 'His friend' and allowed Moses to talk to Him face to face. How awesome that must have been! And Moses would have missed it all if he didn't obey the calling of the Lord. I am going to talk about Moses and the lessons from his life a bit more in my following blogs.

But for now I simply want to leave you with one question to think about: Has it ever happened in your life that you know that you know that you know that you must have done something and you didn't? (I am obviously not talking about something irresponsible or against the Word of God) Have you ever thought what would have happened if you would have done it? Think about it, next time I will share a story from my life where I didn't do what the Lord wanted me to do. All I can tell you now is that after that incident, I learned a big lesson. The Lord wants to use you (yes, He wants to use everybody!), but if you refuse, you will still go to heaven (of course I assume here that you are a newborn Christian), you will still have an okay life, but you would have missed something extraordinary!

Lord, please help us to learn to listen carefully to Your Voice. Help us to block out all other noises which hinder us to hear Your tender Voice talking to us. And above all Lord, when we do hear Your Voice and when we do know what You expect of us, please give us the courage and the strength to obey.

We love you Lord. Amen