Jesus is eternal life

John 10:10, ESV: (Jesus said) “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”

John 14:6, ESV: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

John 20:31, NIV: But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 17:3, NIV: Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

1 John 2:24, NIV: As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father.

How to live by the Spirit

How to live by the Spirit.

Step 1

Actual believe the Holy Spirit is living in me, because Jesus died for my sin,

by purposefully  drawing on,  living off,  and focusing on

Him inside me.

Daily. Hourly.

Ideally Powerful

Let my thoughts be beautifully wise and powerfully profound, easily understood and entertaining, hilariously ironic and iconic… in a word: witty. Why this prayer? Why this desire?

Like the attractiveness of a woman, recognisable to all with eyes to see, so is the brilliance of intelligence. Oh, but if only there were glasses for the intelligently shortsighted. And how shortsighted we are, therefore ideas that are truly brilliant require deep courage, humility and passion to inspect them up-close. We don’t want to miss great ideas, because of laziness or pride. Great ideas are always like inventions… like the car… history changing. They are always rebellious, because they are new, different and revolutionary, like democracy in its dawning day. Great ideas are considered heretical, insulting and arrogant; the prideful will try to destroy them, the cunning will try to steal them, and the poet will just repeat them in fancy word play. The pen is still mightier than the sword; the blog has the power to bring down governments. One sentence – one catch phase – can change a culture, which changes everything. Ideas are like viruses, but the thought police don’t have a vaccine for ideas. The best way to kill the idea is to kill the body. The idea lives on. Only a ‘dictatorship’ fear can slow the spread of an idea for a time, until the fear of never truly living becomes greater than the fear of dying… only then can we live free. Just as a virus marches to kill the body… truly important ideas are ideals that are willing kill to the body in order for the ideals to spread to other bodies. Nelson Mandela was willing to have his body killed for his ideals. In the end his ideals changed a country and history, and his ideals live on even though his body is now dead.

But I am just being a poet, repeating the same old ideas in fancy words. Oh, but the desire within to be ground zero, patient one, to be the source of the virus of a brand new disease, dis-ease, discomfort with this brain washed culture, destroy the old status quo, the old myth, with my new epiphany, the new logic, the new common sense of a new culture, that truly, the new is better than the old… making my idea a landmark of mankind’s history. To be a thinker who brought value to all by words. Why? Because, just like God said in Genesis, “Let there be… and there was”, so throughout history men have said, “Let there be, and there was”. Let there be freedom of speech, let there be equal rights, let there be no more slavery… these declarations are like the dawning sun, they gave light to us all… although dark places still remain. Let us declare… they are fighting words. Martin Luther King, the king of declaring, changed the world with these words: “I have a dream!” Is it not these dreams that make the waking worth living, the fight worth fighting? Is it not the challenge itself that makes achieving the goal worthwhile? Is not the journey the best part? Is not history a history of speeches and commands, “I will, we will, you will!” Did not Winston Churchill save England from Nazi rule with words… words that of course inspired action – action to fight? History really is a volume of great biographies. Bodies may die, but ideas/ideals live forever.

Let us catch the ideals of equal rights and justice for all, the fight against poverty, and a better life for all. Let us be like Thomas Edison, who after each failed attempt to make a viable electrical light bulb, told himself and the world, “I am one step closer to achieving my goal” – and changing the world.

The Test

I wrote this in the worst time of my life:

”I can’t explain how I feel; I have never felt like this before.

Sadness and anger mixed with hope. I have moments of clarity and days of confusion.

I have insulted God instead of worshiping Him.
I have doubt His love, goodness and power and even if He exists.
I have wondered if the Bible is a book of lies written to simply make us doubt.
And yet I feel God’s presence and the words “I am God and you are not. I do what I please… you must love Me with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and all you can expect to receive in return is suffering on this earth.” (Mark 12:30, John 16:33) and that message seems to give me more peace than any message I have heard before. Like Job, I stand before God, I wish I could say he looks like Santa Claus but He is a whirlwind, a tornado of terror, a hurricane of horror, a Father of love (Job 38:1, John 3:16). Like Job, I say though He slays me, yet He is my only hope (Job 13:15). Truly God works in and through all things for good. (Romans 8:28) Truly the testing of our faith is more precious than gold (1 Peter 1:7), because knowing God is worth it.

I now have complete faith in a powerful God, and complete doubt what to expect from Him.”

I think this must be preached more:
“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.”(1 Peter 4:12 ESV)

Right now I feel more peace with God and about God than ever before.

The Kings of Life

I have been thinking about the ‘tree of life’ a lot. It’s a difficult subject because the Bible just throws the picture out there. In Genesis, just from a casual reading it seems like an actual real physical tree with actual real physical fruit that gave life. In a sense every tree that bears fruit, apples, oranges, bananas and pears, are all trees of life because they give us food that we need to live. We need to eat food to live; if we don’t eat we die. But God gave other trees for Adam to eat the fruit of. So the tree of life was a special tree. The other trees gave the physical body ‘life’, but the tree of life gave the human spirit real life, because after all the real life is spiritual life and the real you is the eternal you. This explains why the tree of knowledge of good and evil did not kill Adam and Eve physically, but spiritually. So in the plain reading of Genesis there once was an actual tree that gave spiritual life.

Was this ‘tree’ Jesus? Jesus said He is the true vine. Jesus said He is the Life and the Resurrection. The ‘tree of life’ was in the centre of the Garden of Eden. Just as Jesus should be the centre of lives and hearts.

So why the mystery around the ‘tree of life’, why does the Bible just throw it out there without much explanation? If God wants to teach us something as important as spiritual life, why is he so vague? “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out” (Proverbs 25:2 ESV). Simply put the searching for truth separates the men from the boys as the saying goes, but to use the metaphor of the Bible this separates the kings from the slaves, the rulers from the ruled. So what does God want us to found out? What are the questions we should be asking in order to find the truth, when it comes to the ‘Tree of Life’?

Was it a real (physical) tree in the Garden of Eden? Is it a real tree described by John in the book of Revelation? Is it just a symbol? So what if it is? Does it matter thinking about such things? “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls is wise” (Proverbs 11:30 ESV). Now here is the right question. Are we being the tree of life to others? Is Jesus, the true Tree of Life, living inside us, so that when people look at us, are they captivated by Jesus?

Trying to Save Yourself

In 2002 on a Wednesday, I prayed a prayer and it was answered in the most amazing way. I was thinking about Mathew 16:25. In the verse Jesus said to his disciples, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” The Greek word for “life” can also be translated as “soul”. This verse seemed a mystery to me, so I prayed to Jesus to explain it.

Usually God takes a while before He answers my prayers but that same night I had a dream. In the dream, I was part of a group of missionaries. The mission leader had decided that we should to go a Christian-killer’s house. Our plan, or should I say, the leader’s plan was to tell him the Gospel- that Christ died for our sins, was buried and on the third day was raised from the dead. To top it off, he wasn’t home so we let ourselves inside.

So I found myself in the kitchen of man who would kill you as soon as he found out that you were a Christian. As I sat unhappily on a chair, I was thinking about what Jesus said, “But when they persecute you in this city flee to another.” (Matthew 10:23). So I reasoned, “This is not dying for Jesus… This is committing suicide”. As I thought this I looked up at the leader. He was standing and I could kind see this glow around him, as he said, “I have never felt the presence of God like I do now.” He was full of joy, totally happy to die for his Saviour. That just made me feel even more miserable and added guilt to my bag of emotions. Then I woke up.

So I went on with my life as usual: work, sleep, and church. A Friday or 2 later (I can’t remember) I was invited to a 21st birthday party in Northcliff, Johannesburg, a 45 minute drive from my house (most of it on the highway). So I borrowed a white Toyota from my stepmother, and made a weekend of it, visiting friends and family in that area. On the 15 of September, that Sunday, I visited my brother and his wife who lived near there.

Late in the afternoon I told my family that I wanted to go. My sister in law asked if I could stay longer and I said that I couldn’t because I was tired. On the drive home after about 40 minutes, in the dark, I looked and saw two cars in the on grass island in the middle of the highway. They didn’t have her hazard lights on so I didn’t slow down. Suddenly I saw something large lying across the fast lane, right in front of me. I thought, “What is; was that!”

My right front tyre burst. I had no knowledge or experience on how to drive a car at 120 km/h (75 Mph), the speed limit, with a burst tyre, so I lost control of the car. I did a 180 spin towards a large truck in the slow lane. Before impact I thought, “I am going to die!” So I screamed for help, “JESUS!” (By which I meant: please forgive me for all my sins and receive me into heaven).

I smashed into the truck. I saw the car getting damaged. My head snapped left to right. I closed my eyes… According to the truck driver the car kept on spinning around and around, smashing into the truck repeatedly. He was worried that I would go under the wheels of the truck and get crushed. He braked and pulled over. According to me I opened my eyes a second later. As I put the car into first, I saw that the whole front of the car was smashed. I pumped the gas, hoping the engine still worked. The car moved a few feet, and stopped. It was enough to get the car into the emergency lane. It was all over. Immediately a paramedic ran up to my car. I said, “I’m fine,” and thought “how did you get here so quickly”. The car was written off.

What had happened was a man had walked in front of a car and was run over. That car pulled over. Then another car run over the man and also pulled over. By the time I rode over him he was already dead, according to the police. His body was totally mangled. Over an hour later the cops could not found the man’s head and even asked my dad to look for it.

When I finally got home I phoned a friend and told him the story and that my neck was sore. He replied, “It will be worse tomorrow,” and I thought, “Dear Jesus, no!” The next morning my neck was fine. I went to a doctor for a check-up and the doctor said that I had a concussion and that’s all. So I was book off worked for a week and got the holiday I had been praying for.

I soon realised that the dream explained, “but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” The accident explained, “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it.” Now I know that we all are going to suffer and die no matter what, but we can choose to do it for Him or for ourselves.