Healed

If I ever doubted that God healed, which I surely did - I no longer doubt this.  Last week Tuesday, God totally healed the pain I had in my side. Here is what happened.

For just over a month and a half I had an intense pain on my right hand side, it got so bad all I wanted to do was vomit. After a week of the pain I went to the doctor who gave me antibiotics, these did not help. I then went to another doctor for a full check up and a second opinion. She sent me for an ultra sound, which picked up nothing. Everything looked normal, so she sent me to a gynae. She did an internal scan, which also showed nothing. The final diagnosis was that the scar tissue from my appendectomy was rubbing on my colon. She prescribed tablets for me to take, which helped a little bit. She also wasn't sure if this is what was the problem and the only way to tell for sure was for them to do an operation. I was like no, especially since they don't know for sure what's wrong. I was left feeling sceptical of doctors when all they did was send me to more doctors for more scans - which all cost a fortune only to be told they're not sure what is wrong.

After anther two weeks of pain, David and I decided to fast and pray about it and I went to Healing Rooms for prayer. While I was there, Rose was like this is spiritual and Annie was like we must pray and God will give us discernment. While they were praying the pain in my side got worse, but it was different. It was less acute and more burning.

Rose got a picture of something like an octopus holding tight onto me, so they kept praying and then all of a sudden I jolted/stumbled and Rose flew back. We stood around looking at each other asking "what happened" and Annie said, "you were healed". After this we all started praising God. It was MOST awesome.

The next day my side was super itchy and when I told Annie about it she told me that it's a sign of healing. Since last week Tuesday there has been no more pain whatsoever.

I know God healed in the bible and I've heard testimonies of people where God has healed them, but until now I never believed and was super sceptical when it came to God healing. I can no longer say this... God totally can heal you.

xKx

Where's your focus at?

Over the last while I've picked up on something among some of my Christian friends that has got me asking where are they putting their focus when things get tough, as well as when they are away from their connect group/mentor/church community when things get tough. Prayer requests get sent out asking that we pray they resist temptation, Facebook chats have similar requests and have statements of, "I feel far away from God because I'm not meeting with other Christians", Facebook status imply the same thing. After noticing this for a couple of months now I started wondering where are these people looking? To God when they are faced with temptation, or life is a bit stormy or if they are looking to other Christians.

I think that it is important for fellowship, doing life together, building each other up and loving and caring for people and being loved in return  which comes with being apart of a community. I also think that it is very important to be apart of a community where you can learn how to love, be loved and to be built up. We are called to be apart of a community Hebrews 10:25 "Not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near." God wants us to meet with other Christians, to share with them, be encourage and to encourage others, but he also wants us to lean into him when things get tough. 

Matthew 11:28 says "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." This is Jesus telling us that he is the one to look to when we are burdened and he will give the rest that you need. Yes, your friends and community can encourage you but you need to lean into God and trust that he will see you through this, he will give you the ability to face the temptation. It says in 1 Corinthians 10:13 "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind and God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it." I've experienced this in my own walk with God, when I've been tempted to give into the feelings of despair when life is tough or when something seems better but is so wrong and I've chosen to look to God, he has been faithful in helping me out and also giving me the peace that is needed in the situation.


In conclusion... I think it's important to be open and vulnerable with your community, to ask them for prayer and encouragement when you're struggling but you also need to look to God, you need to rest in him and trust that he will help you resist all temptations, to bring  you joy and to sustain you.

Your community can only build you up, encourage you and pray for you.. God can bring you what you need in the situation.

Kx

Lean into Me

The past few weeks have been pretty rough for me, and subsequently David as he's walked this with me and had to deal with my grumpiness, tears and mood swings as I worried about what was wrong with me as we went to the doctor a hundred times and then my parents both ending up in hospital because they were sick.

During this time, God really has been my comfort and source of joy - especially when I forgot to worry and actually looked to Him. During these times and my quiet time there's been a general thread of God saying, "lean in to me" and "I've got this". Sometimes I'm a bit slow on the uptake or letting it really sink into my heart, but today I actually got it during my quiet time, which had to be on the bus because I went to sleep after my alarm went off instead of getting up.

 This morning I was reading Psalm 64 and verse 8 - 10 stuck out to me, "Come and see what the Lord has done, the desolation's he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”

While I sat there thinking about what I read, I let my thoughts dwell on Gods power. He is powerful enough to stop wars he can break things, set things on fire. If he is that powerful - way more powerful than man, the surely He is in control of everything around us. I thought about this, I doubt who God is so much, I doubt His plans, I doubt how He can heal and how He really is in control of everything - but when I read something about His power like I did this morning, it kind of woke something up in me, something that I think had gone to sleep for a little bit. 

I then started thinking about "Be still and know that I am God" This verse has always been my favourite verse of all time. Reading it again reminded me that it's okay to just be still, stop worrying about the world and to just lean in to God and let him take control of everything. He definitely is powerful enough to do so.

I'm going to try and focus on leaning into God instead of worrying about everything. I may not get this right, but I'm going to try to readjust my focus.

xKx

Honey Tasting at The Overberg Honey Company

On Saturday David and I stumbled on a pretty epic experience. His dad told about this place in Stanford where you could buy honey for cheap so we thought that we would try it out. When we arrived at The Overberg Honey Company the sales person asked us what  type of honey we wanted and we were like, "the normal kind". She the offered us a chance to taste honey.

 

 

We tasted seven different types of honey, (apple, citrus, creamed, fynbos, bluegum and two others). I was surprised by how each honey tasted different and how they each had a distinct flavour. My favourite two were the apple and citrus honey's.

 

After our tasting we were given a min tour of the factory and the whole honey process was explained to us, before showing us a hive and the different cells found in a hive.

 

It was really informative and I will definitely be going back there for some more honey the next time Dave and I head off to Franskraal for the weekend again.

 

 

 

xKx

A wedding under R70 000.00

When David and I sat down to plan the budget for our wedding we soon realized that we would need to do something really simple and low budget, as we did not have as much money saved up for our wedding as most weddings cost. Our final budget for our wedding was R48 000.00 and our final spend on our wedding was R46 107.57.

Admittedly we were blessed by David's parents who paid or my dress and veil, our table wine, lawyers fees and flowers which would have added a lot more to our wedding fee. I added this prices onto what we sent and we still came to R68 000.00 - which meant that our wedding was still under R70 000.00.

How did we do this?

I think this was possible because we involved our family, friends and community. We did a lot of DIY stuff - Pinterest is great for ideas, as well as creative people you know. I remember explaining to someone what I wanted as our table centre and two weeks later she sent me a picture of exactly what I wanted. All we hat to supply was paper and sticks - found in the forest.

Another way to save money was to look at idea from an objective point of view, which can be hard when it's pretty and you REALLY want it, and ask your self it's really necessary. It's true, there is a lot of "fluff" that makes weddings expensive and to be honest... your guests won't notice, remember or care if there are no chair covers or draping from the ceiling. These were the hard decisions for me to make, because I wanted ALL the pretty extras but Dave and my maid of honor was firm and eventually I saw sense in it.

God also helped us stay in budget as we planned our wedding. When Dave proposed we both knew this was what God wanted and we also knew He would provide for our wedding. There were many moments when we wanted the big things, but the quickly remembered the purpose of our wedding and that was to have it focused on God. That was what really mattered... and to share what God was doing our life and the next step of our journey with the people who meant the most to us and who we were close to. Yip, we didn't invite the world... just our close friends and family. It can be hard to cut people off your list, but everyone doesn't need to be invited.

Dave and I have been married for 2.5 months now and in hind sight I'm really glad we didn't spend tons of money on our wedding. It was perfect with what we had because it was all about spending the day with people who mean the world to us and having a God focused ceremony and reception.

xKx

Jehovah Jireh

Over the last few months my eyes have been opened to see God as our provider, Jehovah Jirah.

God provided for every single aspect of Dave's and my wedding in ways that we couldn't even imagine. We had a really small budget, but he provided for every single cost we had. This just made me think of the parable of the ten servants found in Luke 19:22-27;  https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+19%3A11-27&version=NLT. I remember when God told me to start saving for my wedding, I use the word "my" because back then I was still single and God was like, "start saving for your wedding". I was like ok, I don't fully understand but I listened and started saving as much as possible at the time. When it came to actually planning and paying for our wedding, God just poured out blessings on us because I never squandered the money God was providing me with, but had saved some of it.

 Besides our wedding, where it's easy  to see Gods provision. Another easy place see Gods provision is how He provided for everything we needed for our little housie, as well as the house itself.  That's easy to see, but I'm really beginning to see how God has been providing for every small thing that comes along in our day to day life.

 David and I try to budget and we have a plan, but we also have surprise expenses that you can't really budget for - but God has made it  possible to afford all of this. I saw this clearly last month. I took unpaid leave for our honeymoon, which made last month REALLY tight because it's also birthday month for my friends. We had presents to buy, dinners and lunches and events to go to every weekend and some were pretty expensive, but God provided for all these events and the presents. He provided the petrol to go to the events, as well as everything else we needed to pay for and buy last month. When we got to the end of the month, I was blown away how we still had a little bit of money left even though we thought we were going to run out of money.

This leaves me sitting back going, "WOW, God is great!"

xKx