Month: December 2017

Merry Christmas: The reason for the season…

23.12.2017

Author katiem

Remember, this season is a season of great joy, celebrations, family, friends, and presents. But it is also for some, a time of great sorrow, tribulations, loss and loneliness. Whichever end of the scale you find yourself, remember the reason for the season. In that remembrance, you should find hope or gratitude in the season.

This time of year, we celebrate because, where darkness loomed, a great light appeared to drive out the darkness. And it was said of Him, the great light of the world, that the administration of your life will be on His shoulders and because of this, of the greatness of His administration on your life, peace will follow you if you allow Him to govern your house (Isaiah 9:6–7).

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas!

©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2017.

WHAT IF: The plague that starved the coward…

22.12.2017

Author katiem

There was once a man who had a thousand reasons to pursue his goals, and a thousand not to pursue them—but in the end, he chose not to, and lived with the plague of “what if.”

The melody in his head of “what if” crippled him to do nothing throughout his life, and left him haunted with the question – the question that now could never be answered. His life was a clock that could never be unwound.

What if – the cousin of “should have, could have, and would have”—the terrorist family of doubt, specialising in using fear as a weapon, and causing the Stockholm syndrome in which the act of avoiding is irrationally justified to be better than the act of doing. In reality, the weapon (f.e.a.r) in its true sense is merely “False Evidence Appearing Real.”

The “what if” plague has existed since the days of old and brought destruction to the Israelite grumblers and doubters (Numbers 13 & 14). The Israelites were promised the land flowing with milk and honey, but to get to the land, they had to explore the land and defeat its inhabitants.

Twelve spies were sent to explore the land, and out of the twelve, ten spies, despite knowing that God was on their side, chose to see themselves before the opposition as nothing more than tiny grasshoppers and, irrationally concluded that the opposition were giants. They told themselves that the conquest would be impossible, and gave up.  But the two remaining spies, Caleb and Joshua, saw themselves as the giants and the opposition as grasshoppers because they knew that they had the greatest weapon on their side, God (1 John 4: 4 says, “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you, than he that is in the world”).  Caleb and Joshua would not listen or agree with the negative report, so when the ten spies said it was impossible, Caleb silenced them from delivering the negative report (Numbers 4:30). In their eyes, the report was merely the opinion of the ten spies, and that opinion was not a fact.

The question “what if” will always rear its ugly head – “What if I try and fail?” But the same can also be asked in the positive, “What if I try and succeed? What if the glass is half full and what if the glass is half empty?” Seeing the glass as half full divides the leaders from the followers. To live with the plague of “what if” is like the lion that saw itself as a grasshopper and dared not to explore the jungle for his meal. Like the Israelites, we must overcome before we can achieve. Our adversities may seem like giants from afar, but if we get close enough, we will find that our biggest hurdle was only grasshopper.  Silence the negative “what if” and you will silence fear in your life. In the long run, the ones that live “Oh well, I tried” lives, are those who have no regrets. They learn and grow from their experiences to become better people for it. The coward that lives plagued and haunted with memories of “what if” will always be left the same as when they started, or worse.

As William Shakespeare said in Julius Caesar, “A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once …”

©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2017.

RELATIONSHIPS: The one who completes me…

19.12.2017

Author katiem

It was the morning when he woke up and realized that he did not know the woman whom he slept next to anymore, that it was time for a change. He gently tapped on her shoulder and as she roused from her sheepish demure, he said, “Honey, I don’t know who you are, anymore.” Her heart sank, but there was truth to his words. She replied, “I don’t know who I am, anymore, either.” They exchanged a long, wistful gaze—but they found no semblance of the people with whom they fell in love years ago.

After 10 years, the endless, eclectic sprawl of ups and downs throughout their relationship seemed to fade away, as they became total strangers, sitting in silence, doubting the longevity of their marriage. Once upon a time, they could finish each other’s sentences for hours. Now, even simple conversation felt stale. The answer for all of this was simple: one of them had lost their identity.

The moral to be learned in this story is that you should never lose your identity in a relationship. If you lose sight of yourself, you run the risk of losing someone else. All too often, we are told to find someone who completes us. This message is peddled non-stop in popular culture. But, the truth is, God created you in his image, perfect and complete, separately as male and female (Genesis 1:26–27, 31).

God introduced the partnership when He saw that man alone would not be as fruitful than when he had woman by his side to be his helper. “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18)

And while the word says that “… a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24), it does not infer that couples ought to lose their identity, or that one person ought to relinquish their power to the other. Rather, the very essence of the statement is emphasised for the couple to move together as a unit, thereby creating the partnership to help each other grow.

Finding someone to complete you means that your relationship will never be complete. Instead, find someone who complements you. You are already complete on your own. Finding someone to complement you will help the both of you work together and grow. Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 says, “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.”

Searching for someone to complete you gives them power that is not theirs. They did not create you. God already completes you, and that Power is His and His, alone. Yielding power to someone else makes them your puppet-master. They will control your emotions, and heaven forbid, if they leave you, they will leave you feeling fractured. Your identity should be found in God, who created you in His image. Accordingly, your identity should be in the following order:

  1. First and foremost, you are a son/daughter of the Most God; and then
  2.  You are a husband/wife; and then
  3. You are a father/mother; and then
  4. You can become everything else.

If you place your identity in God, you will always find peace in the midst of any storm. Jesus emphasises this sentiment in John 15:5, where He says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me, and I, in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Through Jesus, you will always know your role in any relationship, and have the patience and grace to build a foundation that will never wither within any storm. We are but broken people that cannot complete ourselves, and therefore can never complete another. With our flaws, we complement each other, and that is the foundation by which God has graced us.

©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2017.

TIME: The sixth hour of darkness…

03.12.2017

Author katiem

When the story of your life is not adding up, the wheels are falling off, and your now does not match your vision – how do you get your now to line up with your destiny? They say to have a little hope when the storm is pouring cats and dogs on your life and pounding you with its brutal force… but what is hope? How can you contain hope when every day is like yesterday and yesterday is the nightmare that won’t stop stalking you? Hope is said to be an expectation or desire that events will turn out for the best, but how can you hold on when you’ve been doing so, and the only thing you seem to be left holding on to is the darkness? When darkness came over the land, He cried, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken?”…

This is the Man who had hope in the garden and even said, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not my will, but Yours be done.” Never once did He cry “God why hast thou forgiven.” In the garden, when the darkness crept in, He held on more tightly to the light and prayed even more earnestly that His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44). The first hour on the cross, He smiled. He could see the purpose and end result. The second hour, He meditated. He needed to focus on the end result. The third hour, He prayed. He needed to readjust His grip.

The fourth hour, He encouraged Himself. He reminded Himself of the promises and the destiny that He saw before the first hour. The fifth, He wiggled a little…But at the very last hour, the sixth hour, He couldn’t hold on anymore and cried the cry! If Jesus couldn’t see past the fifth hour when He was in flesh, how can we possibly see past the fifth hour? How can we be expected to see beyond mountain before us? We can’t. And that’s why Jesus had to die the way He did.

Day one, it was dark and He died. Day two, there was no hope. But on day three, He rose and brought with Him the keys to death and took the power from Satan. When He rose, He became the hope that never fails. Hope is Jesus. He was forsaken so that we would never feel forsaken if we call on Jesus. Hope is Jesus, knowing that the same Spirit power of God that raised Jesus from the dead, lives in us. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, He will give life to our mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within us.

For even when Jesus was in the flesh, God gave Him angels to minister to Him and He felt better. And when He died, God personally saw to it that we would have a hope in Him, who would rise to be unshakable. Hope is Jesus, that your situation may be dead today with no hope that it will revive tomorrow, but the third is coming…So knowing what we know about the One who died on the cross for us, we don’t have to go through the first two days as though we don’t know how the movie will end.

Hope is Jesus, who went before us into the darkness in order to reverse our ending so that it would favour us. Jesus has already played out the final ending of your story. You’re just on day one; day three is coming.

©Katie Mliswa and MomentsbyKatie.M, 2017.