Men Praise God

Men Praise God

This past weekend I had the privilege to attend a gathering with other men to praise God. This happened at a farm called Mispa just outside Windburg in South Africa.

We had the privilege to hear some great truths from professor Johan Malan. A great Christian with much wisdom and knowledge of the Word of God. All the topics that he discussed have relevance in everyone’s life.

Topics like,

• The devastating results of slavery.

Let’s sum up the different types of slavery.

Idolatry, Sexual sins, Slander, foul language, anger outbursts,

addiction to alcohol and other drugs, Thuggery, Lies,

The binding power of negative emotions.

Yes these are all forms of slavery. Here are a few verses to help you to be free of your own form of slavery.

John 8:36, Gal. 5:1, Gal. 4:9-11, 1 John 1:7, Mat. 10:37, 1 Cor. 7:23, 1 Cor. 6:10-11, Rev. 21:8

• The prerequisites of being a disciple for Jesus.

You cannot just say “I’m a christian” and then sit back and let life go past. You HAVE to BE a disciple for Jesus. (Mat. 28:19)

How to be a disciple.

You have to be born again in Christ. (2 Cor. 5:17, Rev. 3:1, 15-17)

Winner against the self. (Gal. 5:16-17, Ef. 4:22, Luke 9:23, Luke 14:27)

Filled with the Holy Spirit. (Luke 24:49, Col. 1:9, Act. 1:8; 4:31; 13:52)

Be willing to serve. (Ps. 39:5-6, John 9:4-5, Mark 16:15, Act. 9:6; 17; 20)

Win souls for Jesus. (John 20:21, Mark 16:15, Prov. 11:30, Dan. 12:3, 1 Pet. 2:9, 2 Pet. 3:9, Rom. 1:14-15)

Go out and make disciples. (Mat. 28:19, 1 Cor. 12:13, 1 Cor. 1:14-17, Heb. 4:15-16, Mark 10:42-45)

Resist the devil. (Col. 1:13-14, Ef. 6:10-12, 2 Cor. 11:13-15, 2 Tim. 4:2-4)

Guard against all risks. (2 Cor. 1:8; 11:24-28, 1 Tim. 1:18-20, 2 Tim. 2:17-18)

Warn the wayward ones. (John 8:32; 36; 16:8)

Wait on God. (John 15:5, Ps. 27:14; 33:18; 130:6, Jes. 40:31)

• The war between two kingdoms. (God’s Kingdom and that of the devil)

There’s no doubt in my mind who the winner of this war is, Jesus won the war on the cross of Calvary already. We just have to accept it in faith.

These are just a few topics that were discussed and it’s very relevant to all christians everywhere.

Needless to say the weekend gave me a better understanding of the Word of God and I have grown in faith.

Here are a few pictures of Mispa.

[Show as slideshow]

My Prayer for every brother and sister in Christ.

Dear God,

Speak to everyone and open their hearts. Give them Thy armor to guard them against all evil.

Help them to speak only the truth of Thy Word. Heal their pains and still their fears.

Give them the opportunity to praise Thy name and gather souls in Thy name.

Forever more.

In Jesus name.

Amen.

Where the Bible and the big bang meets.

This question is asked the world over every day. But how can we answer it. More importantly, how can we answer it without bringing God into the picture. Well… We cannot answer it without the Word of God.

Without the word of God the beginning of the universe is pure speculation.

If not all, then most scientists will tell you all about the big bang theory, about how the universe came to be out of a big explosion and how the universe expanded out of that explosion and keeps expanding to this day.

Read more on the big bang theory at the following places.

site 1: The Big Bang
site 2: Wikipedia Big Bang
site 3: The Big Bang Theory

But that’s all it is, a THEORY. They have zero evidence to back up their findings. The scientists might disagree with me on this, but they still don’t have any substantial evidence and hard proof that they are right. So it remains a theory without hard facts.

That means that there has to be a higher hand that moved to create what we see today in the cosmos. Nothing can come out of nothing. There has to be someone who have the power to put this event in motion

Let’s assume the scientists are correct and the way they describe the beginning are in a way correct, then there had to someone who had pushed the big red button to begin the process. Or more correctly spoke the Word to start it all.

That someone is none other than God the creator of all things.

Let’s read from our Bible (The Word of God), how it all came to be.

New English Translation
Psalms 33: 6

6: By the LORD’s decree the heavens were made, by a mere word from his mouth all the stars in the sky were created.

English Standard Version
John 1: 1-5

1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2: He was in the beginning with God. 3: All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4: In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5: The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

English Standard Version
Psalm 147: 4-5

4: He determines the number of the stars; He gives to all of them their names. 5: Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; His understanding is beyond measure.

English Standard Version
Hebrews 11: 1-3

1: Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2: For by it the people of old received their commendation. 3: By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

Let’s not forget the favorite passage of Genesis.

English Standard Version
Genesis 1: 1

1: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

What more do we need to believe and know that these are the only facts that needs to be known.

Let’s recap a bit. If the big bang theory is true for the scientists then God as the one that pushed the button to begin it, is the fact behind the theory.

Praise to God.

Thank You Lord God, for everything that You have created and still creates in the universe. God, You are immeasurable, You are great beyond comprehension.
How small am I compared to You. You named me and love me just as You named every star and love it. For that I thank You Lord.
Amen.

Related articles

• Why is the big bang theory just a theory (wiki.answers.com)
• Through the gates. (godsprettygarden.com)

crucifixion

Hi friends.

You know, since I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal saviour and king, things started to happen in my life.

I always wanted to hear God’s voice and have been struggling to hear Him, because I did not know how to listen. But God is working in ways we cannot imagine.

A few weeks ago, during Passover, at church, the service was all about the crucifixion of Christ. Some of the children of the congregation made up a play, depicting the crucifixion and needless to say, it was beautiful and touched the hearts of everyone. At the end of the play we all stood up and sang a song of praise called “Wooden Cross”.

It goes like this.

“There was a wooden cross, my saviour nailed to a wooden cross”

While we were busy singing, God Spoke to me, yes He spoke to me.

He gave me a message for someone else in the congregation who had some problems in his own life. I’m not going to relay the whole message here, but the first part, I think, do need to be told to the world.

That same blood of Christ, that flowed on the cross at Calvary, are the best water that anyone can hope for. It cleans all your past sins.

That was the most wonderful thing that happened to me in my life. Not the fact that God spoke to me, but the fact that He used me to relay an important message to someone else.

At that moment I did not know what the message would mean to that person, but he did. And it was wonderful to see his eyes light up and his spirits rose. He “A BIG man” hugged me and cried like a baby. Actually, we both cried.

God is wonderful. All praise to Him.

I promised God that when I hear His voice, I would go and shout praise to Him from the highest places so that everyone could hear it. The highest place I can find is this place “The Internet”.

THANK YOU GOD, YOU ARE WONDERFUL !!!

ALL PRAISE TO YOU !!!.

Friends, I ask you, no, I plead to you, please accept Jesus Christ as your personal saviour, because NO ONE can get into heaven except through Jesus Christ. NO ONE will see the glory of GOD, except through Jesus Christ.

My prayer for today.

Thank You God, for everything that You do in my life.

God please continue to use me as You see fit.

Amen

Until next time friends, God bless.

Brought to you by BibleGateway.com. Copyright (C) . All Rights Reserved.

armor (Image from WikiPedia.com)

As promised in the previous post, I will tell you about the armor of God.

What is the Armor of God?

The Armor of god is the spiritual Armor God gave you to encase yourself in, to protect you from spiritual attacks coming from the evil one. It also help you to fight back when these attacks happen.

The best place in the bible to get all the reasons to use the Armor of god is in Ephesians 6.

Ephesians 6: 1-12 (King James Version)

¹Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.

²Honour thy father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise;

³That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth.

⁴And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

⁵Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;

⁶Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart;

⁷With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men:

⁸Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free.

⁹And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.

¹⁰Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

¹¹Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

¹²For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

The Armor consists of:

• The Shield of faith.
• The Sword of the Spirit.
• The Helmet of Salvation.
• The Breastplate of Righteousness.
• The Belt of Truth.
• The Sandals of the Gospel of Peace.

Read on to discover the Armor in all it’s glory.

Ephesians 6: 13-17 (King James Version)

¹³Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

¹⁴Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

¹⁵And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

¹⁶Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

¹⁷And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

I must give you the whole of Ephesians 6, because you have to see it in the whole context.

Ephesians 6: 18-24 (King James Version)

¹⁸Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

¹⁹And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

²⁰For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.

²¹But that ye also may know my affairs, and how I do, Tychicus, a beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord, shall make known to you all things:

²²Whom I have sent unto you for the same purpose, that ye might know our affairs, and that he might comfort your hearts.

²³Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

²⁴Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.

You need prayer to prepare yourself, to grow closer to God, to grow in Faith and to strengthen the Armor.

In future posts I will go into more detail about the use of the Armor of God.

The prayer today.

Father

You are so great and gracious. I hove no words to express my love for You. You know my love for You when You look into my heart.

Father

I thank You for giving us Your Armor, I thank You for teaching us how to use that Armor.

Without You, we will be nothing. Without You, we cannot exist.

We thank You for Your unselfish love and grace towards us.

Amen.

Good vs Evil

It’s been a while since my last post. I apologise for that, but all will get clearer when you read what I have to say.

As I journey on through this pretty garden of God which is called life, I became aware of the constant battle between Good and Evil. Should I rather say, The constant attacks that the evil one is staging on the children of God.

Once you have become a child of God, you will get these attacks. They are all geared to get you to turn in your, now, good ways and follow the evil one. Notice, I said, you will get these attacks. This is a given not an option. These attacks can take on any form. You must see them for what they are, what fruit they bear. Do they bare the fruit of discord, anger, fear, hate, etc. Anything that is negative and can be associated with evil.

Now, why did it take me so long to post here..

These attacks came to me this last couple of months. The evil one has gone all out on me. I mean, he did not stop and  every attack got stronger every day. Yes it was daily and sometimes multiple times a day.

As you would know, after reading the previous posts, I dedicated this blog to God. The evil one did not want me to continue with it, mainly because through this journey I grow closer to God and stronger in faith. My family recently started to get more active in our church community. My wife is the main coördinator for the spiritual gifts ministry of our church, my son is one of the deacons in the church. I am busy building the new website for the church. All these activities became the staging ground for the evil one’s attacks. We, as a family has gone through emotions like anger (to each other), fear (for failing in our duties and activities), listlessness (not wanting or having the drive to do our duties), discord (arguing and not listening to each other).

These are all fruits of evil and through the grace of God, we saw it in time and began to do battle against the evil one. We got ourselves encased in the armor God and started to pray for the Lord’s guidance and help defeating the evil one. Every day we had to go through the same sequence. We had to literally chase the evil one out of our home and lives.

Thanks to the grace of God the evil one is now banished from our lives and we can go on from here to live our lives as God intended. This is not to say the attacks will not return, but now we are more ready to face and battle them and to be victorious.

If you are wondering what the armor of God is, I will explain it in the next post.

My prayer for today.

Dear Lord.

Thank you for being my Father and Abba.

Thank you for giving us your word, so we may learn from it.

Thank you for giving us your armor and the ability to use it to protect us against the evil one.

Take everyone on earth in Your hand and keep them safe from harm.

Open everyone’s hearts to accept that You alone are our salvation.

Your grace cannot be measured by our standards, for that we thank You.

Amen.

God's Pretty Garden

Who is God.

That’s easy. God is the creator of heaven and earth and all things in it.

What is God.

This is a bit more difficult. God is a lot of things.

He’s a Creator, a King, a Warrior, a Leader, a Healer, a lover but above all, He’s a tender loving Father.

How do I know this?.

Well, it is in the bible in numerous places. And He told me himself.

Blasphemy, you may shout, but consider this.

In the old times ( old Testament ), man worshiped God through the priests of the time. The priests had to ask for forgiveness and blessings for man and then bestow that forgiveness and blessings upon man in God’s name.
Then God sent a miracle by name of Jesus to us. Jesus are God’s own begotten son through Mary and He lived like the incarnation of God Himself. Jesus’ ultimate goal on earth was to bring the Holy message to man and to pave the way to the Kingdom of God and be able to commune with God Himself.
Jesus did just that.

But then Jesus had to die.

WHY ?

So that man can commune directly with God. When Jesus died the curtain in the temple was torn.

Read

Matt. 27: 50 Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost.51 And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;

That was the last stepping stone or paving brick that Jesus has laid for us to commune directly with God. Isn’t this wonderful. We can and must talk to God and more than this we CAN and MUST listen and hear God’s voice.

He want us to hear and talk to Him, He want us to Love Him, He want us to follow Him.

He gave man the ability of free will and choice. He want you to choose him. Who will you choose. I chose God.

Come take the first few steps with me and God. Listen to Him while he tells you He loves you and want to be loved by you.

My prayer.

Loving Father.

I only ask for the ability to let Your love for mankind shine through me with a light so bright it must blind everyone to sin. And the warmth of that light to be so warm that everyone would be warmed to Your love.

Amen.

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• You Probably Won’t Want To Read This (pastorpaulvbsblog.blogspot.com)
• Costly Grace by Jon Walker {Preview} (momblognetwork.com)
• The Solemnity of Christ the King (trustinjesus.wordpress.com)
• Phil Wickham – True Love (keepinghiminfront.wordpress.com)

scenery

Through the gates. The gates to God’s Pretty Garden.

Let’s all take our first steps inside and revel in the presence of God.

What better way to start this website than to praise the Lord.

Psalm 23.

Psa 23:1  A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
Psa 23:2  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
Psa 23:3  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Psa 23:4  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Psa 23:5  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Psa 23:6  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Taken from the King James version of the Lord’s Word.

Image via Wikipedia

What is God‘s Pretty Garden?

Well.. The best answer would be.. Look around you.

What do you see ?.

That’s God’s Pretty Garden. The world through each person’s eyes. Even if you sit inside 4 walls with no windows, you will still see God’s Pretty Garden. Just open your eyes to the beauty of  what God created around you, may it be a flower, even your favorite pen ( you may say “my pen is man made”, but it’s still God inspired. ).

Why God’s Pretty Garden ?.

Why not ??

I love everything that has to do with God. He is my first and foremost mentor. This website is not created for religious fanatics. It’s created for everyone that knows God and for those that want to know God. This website is for people who want to have a deeper spiritual knowledge of God.

Most of all, This website will be to show everyone how easy and fulfilling it is to walk and talk with God and to HEAR God speak directly to everyone.

Through this site I hope to open people’s eyes and hearts to the fact that God loves them and He want them to know Him intimately. I want this site to be a gathering place for everyone who want to walk with me and God.

Dear God.

Bless this site and everyone that come here to be in Your presence.

We open our hearts to Your love. Be with us, let us hear Your voice. Let us understand Your will and live by it.

Amen

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