Do You still love me?
PS 36:7
“How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God!
Therefore, the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings.”
Being married is a great blessing. It is the greatest blessing that the Father has given us, because in marriage we discover so many truths about God’s passion and love for us as His bride.
Marriage is also not without its own challenges and in this also so many lessons that can be learned if we are open to it.
Jacques and myself have been married for just over 10 years and I can safely say that I have been blessed with a husband that understands forgiveness and love like nobody that I have ever met. I know that he loves me even when I make the biggest mistakes, but like everything else in life our marriage also has to endure so many different challenges. Recently we have been enduring a few such challenges and somewhere in my heart I lost sight of his love for me. This caused me to take offense when offense was not given and to push him away and not being able to feel his love for me where I normally feel safe. My husband’s love is where I normally find comfort and strength to endure anything that life can throw at me but when I remove myself from his love and acceptance, I find myself lost and alone and without courage to face anything. When I choose to believe that he doesn’t love me or choose not to forgive him and remain in anger then I place myself in a place where I cannot see his love for me, and I separate myself from his strength to fight alongside me. Instead I find myself fighting against the very one meant to be there to defend me.
It is only when I choose to remember that he is not my enemy and if I can let go of my own pride and embrace his love and believe in His love for me that I can be his bride and find safety and strength in his love and care for me. He can then again fight alongside me and give courage and strength when I fall short.
Like so many things in our marriage when I think about this, I can clearly see how God is trying to teach me His character and heart.
You see the enemy is determined to separate us from the love of God. He uses so many things to try and convince us that we are not covered by God’s love. He deceives us and makes us question our bridegroom and His ability to fight for us. It is a very subtle attack and we don’t even notice that he is doing it. When we face ongoing challenges in life, unanswered prayers, disappointments and situations that we do not understand with every such a situation there is a possibility that the enemy is sneaking a little doubt in our hearts that God has abandoned us or that He does not love us. Without realising it we start to move away little by little from his protection and care for us. Without realising it our hearts become cold and we lose faith in the very One that can protect us and fight on our behalf. We become so involved and tired from the battle and before we know it our hearts are hard and abandoned.
What to do with such a heart broken and disappointed and completely engrossed in the lies of the enemy? Return to your fist love. The only way out is to break through the lies of the enemy and allow your heart to once again be taken captive in the love of God. To believe in His love for you. When you find that place of love and acceptance He can once again bring you the comfort that you need and surround you with His embrace.
Your circumstances might not change, and your struggles might still be there, but you will not be alone in your fight. When you lose sight of His love you lose hope but when you return to His love, He can do miracles on your behalf.
It is such a subtle way of attack because it is not doubting God’s existence but rather His love for you.
God is sovereign and we are His bride. We might not understand His ways and we might not know when relief or deliverance will come but when we rest in His love, we find the strength to endure.
So, does He love you? Yes, His love for you never goes away. The challenge is to stay close to His love even through the toughest of days so that He can bring you into a place of safety and rest in the midst of the storm.
There is no place on earth where I feel safer and more protected than when I allow Jacque’s love to penetrate my heart and his arms to enfold me. This is a very real illustration also of our Heavenly Father – when we allow our hearts to once again believe in His love for us then we can find our rest in Him and be free from the yoke of the struggle. Even if the struggle is continuing, when His love is real for us, we have renewed strength.
In the Wilderness – Little by Little Faith
Is there really a purpose for the wilderness that so many of us find ourselves in. When we followed God out of Egypt wasn’t it to be free and always experience that freedom? I suppose this might have been the questions that was causing havoc in so many of the minds of the children of Israel.
And also for us today we often wonder why do we find ourselves in the Wilderness. Where is this promised land that we thought we were moving to.
What happens in the wilderness? God brought His people to Mount Sinai to teach them Who He is. To show them how to serve Him. To break down their enslaved mindsets and to show them how to conduct their lives within the freedom that they have now been delivered into. He shows them Who He is and gives them the promises of how He will lead them and protect them if they walk in His ways and follow His voice.
Here they learn to serve Him out of choice and not enslavement. And they learn to trust Him as their God.
Here they are called to become His children and to put their faith in Him so that they will be able to conquer their enemies and stand against opposition and finally inherit the land which they were called to inherit
God gives them the promise of His protection and warns them not to follow their own desires and ways. Not to be mislead by the gods of others but to become His people so that He can be their God.
Ex 23:20
“I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared.
Obey His voice for My name is in Him, My angel will go before you
Do not bow down to their gods
You shall not serve them or do according to their works
But overthrow them and break down their sacred pillars
So you shall serve the Lord your God and He will bless your bread and water
And I will take sickness away from the midst of you
I will send my fear before you”
He also gives them a very important message to hold unto so that they do not become discontent or down cast and desert Him when they do not immediately see their deliverance.
“I will not drive out your enemy before you in one year lest the land become desolate and the beast of the field become too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you until you have increased and you inherit the land”
God calls us to have a faith with patience. When we receive the promise of God most of the time we want to inherit it all at once.
We do not understand why God doesn’t open up all the doors and clear the path for us all at once.
We need to learn to trust His timing. To understand that He knows more than we do
Do not follow other gods or make your own plans when you feel that God is moving too slow.
Keep believing in His timing and follow His pace to bring you into the fullness of what He has prepared for you.
Can you be content? Can you trust that the Father knows the beginning and the end. Can you keep on following Him even if it feels like it is only Wilderness out here.
Use this time to discover Him. To hear His voice and to learn how He wants you to change so that you can be transformed into His image and grow strong enough to rule alongside Him in your promised land.
The wilderness is not a punishment but rather a chance to grow into intimacy and knowledge of the God that delivered you and seeks to have you as His own.
Shema – Why Egypt? …Concluded
Exodus 13:17
Then it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, “Lest perhaps the people change their minds when they see war, and return to Egypt.” So God led the people around by way of the wilderness of the Red Sea. And the children of Israel went up in orderly ranks out of the land of Egypt.
After so many years of slavery one would think that God would help His children go to the promised land by the shortest way, but here we read that He did not lead them by the shortest way.
What could the reason possibly be for this great God that could so easily take them straight from the slavery, give them victory over the Philistines and directly into the promised land? God said “If they see the threat of war they might return to Egypt so He lead them through the wilderness.”
Who appreciates the wilderness? Who sees the reason of the wilderness? Who doesn’t question God’s presence in the wilderness? From Slavery to wilderness – it just sounds wrong – shouldn’t it be from Slavery to freedom entering the promised land?
But who of us can really understand the will of God? Who of us can really understand His ways and His heart? Was He trying to punish them by taking them the long way around instead of letting them settle in the promised land?
By no means, no!!! His heart was not to punish them or make them suffer any more than they already had. When we know God and trust Him with our lives we come to realise that everything that He does is for a reason. Many times we do not understand these reasons – we might even disagree with what He is busy doing. But having committed our lives to Him we declare that we will follow even if we do not understand, we pledge to trust beyond reason and beyond understanding because we know that He is our God and our Father and He is bigger than anything that we might know or think about. He knows the way ahead.
Did He leave them in the wilderness?
Exodus 13:21 & 22
And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night. He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people.
He was there, He never left. By day He covered them with a cloud and by night He lit the way by fire.
The quick and seemingly easy way that we want to travel is not always the way that God wants to lead us, we have a choice. We can either follow Him or we can follow our own wisdom.
1 Corinthians 3:18 & 19
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
In the wilderness God was very present with them and His voice very clear.
Exodus 14:4
Then I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that he will pursue them; and I will gain honour over Pharaoh and over all his army, that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord.” And they did so.
Pharaoh decided to pursue the children of Israel but God warned them beforehand so that they could prepare their hearts with faith at the knowledge that God was going to deliver them. But even after receiving the warning of God they still became afraid and doubted that God will deliver them and be their Saviour.
Exodus 14:13 & 14
And Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall see again no more forever. The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.”
God delivers us out of bondage but it takes obedience for us to move out of “Egypt” – the place of fear and entrapment. Once we are out of “Egypt” and our enemy pursues us we have to stand in faith and not fear so that He can completely deliver us, not only from the place of our past slavery but also the mindset and stronghold of our past slavery. He wants to completely destroy our enemies in our presence so that we may see and experience His deliverance and protection.
Many times we might feel that God leads us into Egypt and we do not understand why, but there comes a time that God brings us out and delivers us again and completely destroys our enemies that has held us captive.
He fights on our behalf and he gives us freedom from our captivity.
Much love
Jacques and Chanelle Nel Israel
Shema – Why Egypt? Continued…
Ex 6:2-4
2 And God spoke to Moses and said to him: “I am the Lord. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name Lord I was not known to them. 4 I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were strangers.
During this past week we have felt that the Father has further opened up His purposes and plans for us during the recount of Egypt, as we continued to read through His word. We started with Exodus 6.
In verse 3 he said “I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty but by my name, Lord I was not know to them.”
Could it be that God used Egypt to be know to His people as a covenant God – I am the Lord.
To change the fact that they only knew Him as an Almighty God but also allowed them to know Him as a personal God, one Who wanted to know them and be known by them.
God’s desire is for us to know Him, not just as a mighty God that creates and judges but also as a personal God that delivers and cares for and protects His children.
God gave us a free will and His desire is for us to use that free will to enter into a personal relationship with Him so that we can know Him as a covenant God.
What is a covenant God?
A God that not only makes promises but also brings to pass that which He had promised.
Verse 7 “ I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”
The children of Israel went from knowing about this Almighty God to knowing Him and seeing His presence as He went before them in a cloud by day and a fire by night.
Could we endure our Egypt to allow God to bring us to a place where we would also know Him as a covenant God in our daily lives? Will we allow Him to reveal every aspect of Himself to us as we face these challenges that seem to shake our very belief and existence?
Much love
Jacques and Chanelle Nel Israel
Shema – Why Egypt?
For the past couple of weeks we have been wrestling with the question of why God allowed His children to go to Egypt in the first place. Once before Isaac wanted to go to Egypt because of a famine in Genesis 26 and God clearly instructed Isaac not to go but to dwell in the land that He had given him.
However in the life of Jacob He encouraged him to go to Egypt with a promise of blessing them and multiplying them.
Genesis 46 – I am God, the God of your father, do not fear to go down to Egypt for I will make you a great nation there. I will go with you to Egypt and I will surely bring you up again.
Years later however they became enslaved by this very nation that He allowed them to go to. None of it made sense to us. Honestly if He knew that they were going to become slaves why not just leave them in the land that He had given them.
We still do not have the answer to this question but listening to Gerrit explain the Torah portion Shemot we did gain a new perspective on something.
God called Moses to go back to Egypt after he had finally left it behind.He called him back to go and deliver a whole nation from the grasp of slavery and captivity. To show His people that He is their God and to bring them out of bondage.
God has a bigger plan He has a Devine purpose in which each one of us has a unique roll to play. Obedience and willingness are keys to walking in this path that He had created us for. Not one of our lives is an accident or mistake, we are called to be a member of His team to bring to fulfilment His works.
Last night while reading to the children we read out of James 1 where he discusses the whole concept of undergoing trials. Trials that produces faith and patience. But he also mentions that when undergoing trials we should ask for wisdom and it will be given to us, but when we do ask we should do so in faith without doubting for he who doubts is like a wave at sea driven and tossed by the wind and will not receive anything from the Lord. He says that a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
We might not understand the why or the what of our everyday struggles but what we do understand is that we have to trust in the Who that created us.
So we guess that while we do not fully understand the recount of Egypt we realise that there is always something bigger at play than what we can understand. God does however invite us to ask for wisdom in such times so that He can reveal to us what He is doing.
We trust that God will bring each one to a place of peace in the midst of their Egypt.
Much love
Jacques and Chanelle Nel Israel
Shame – Take Courage!
In Matthew 14:22-36 we read how Yeshua’s disciples were on the sea and how the boat was tossed and battered by the waves because of the wind that was against them. Yeshua went to them walking on the sea and the disciples saw him walking on the sea and they were terrified and said “It is a ghost! and they cried out in fear.
But immediately Yeshua spoke unto them saying “Take courage, it is I! Do not be afraid!”
So many times in our lives we face situations that “speak” to us! What is the first thing we do?… We fear… instead of having faith… May we take courage in our situation not to fear but have faith!
Well, Peter took a bold step of faith just after crying out in fear and he said to Yeshua “…if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.”
Yeshua said to Peter “COME!” and Peter got out of the boat and he walked on the water and came toward Yeshua.
But when he saw the wind he was frightened and began to sink and he cried to Yeshua “SAVE ME”.
The moment when Peter looked at the circumstances, he feared… How many times in our lives do we step out in faith, but the moment when we have challenges, we want to fear… Doubt wants to fill our hearts. Take courage, do not be afraid. Let us learn from this not to look at our circumstances but to look at the One who gave us the Word to “COME”.
In Verse 31 we read, “Immediately Yeshua extended His hand and caught him saying to him: O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
I want to encourage you today to stand in faith on the promises of the Word of God that He has given you, renew your mind with His Word, His promises, fill your mind with the Word and see how HE WANTS to do a MIRACLE for you!!! Do not doubt HIS WORD.
How did Peter get back to the boat? Yeshua extended His hand to Peter and I believe he walked back to the boat.
Yeshua wants to take your hand today in the midst of your storm. He is extending His hand to YOU… reach out and “take” HIS HAND.
When they came into the boat the wind ceased. He wants to give us HIS PEACE in every situation.
Then those in the boat worshiped Him saying, “Truly,You are the Son of God.”
Let us worship Him for who He is and let us run this race of faith with our eyes fixed on Yeshua; the Author and Finisher of our faith. May we all learn how to trust and believe in Him, to know that He will do what He has promised.
Martie Nel – Jerusalem
Shema – Heed to God’s Voice
In the recount of Cain and Able in Genesis 4 after they both bring a sacrifice to God and only one’s sacrifice is accepted, the countenance of Cain is angry and fallen. God asks him why, and warns him that if he does well he will be accepted but if he does not do well sin lies at his door and it’s (sin’s) desire is for him but he should rule over it.
God comes to Cain and warns him that he should be mindful as his soul is in danger. Cain does not heed to God’s warning and chooses that anger guides his actions and then kills his brother. His punishment is to be a vagabond on the earth ( someone who dwells aimlessly without purpose) being cast from the presence of God.
God’s desire is for us to hear Him, to heed to His warnings so that we may do well and be accepted. He desires to be our everyday God who can walk with us and guide us through life’s difficulties into a life of abundant victory.
Lord, be my everyday God. Life is full of choices and opportunities. But all of them do not lead to life. Some of these choices and opportunities lead to death, maybe not a physical death, but certainly a death to your spirit. The only way I know how to choose life continually is if I make these choices based on my closeness to You. If I am in Your presence I can heed Your warnings. If I live my life with my ear close to Your heart I can do things from Your perspective instead of doing things and making choices from my own fleshly failed emotional state. For so long, Father, we as Your Bride have loved You with our lips. So long, we have purposed to life only a partially dedicated life. Help us Lord to be a people who will head to Your warnings because we know Your voice. Let us see the sin lurking at our doors because our eyes are following Your gaze. Let us be a true Bride, one that refuses to leave the side of her Bridegroom.
Jacques & Chanelle Nel – Jerusalem
Shema – Moses – The story of Pesach
During the Pesach holidays our children requested that we would read through the story of Moses. Every night we would read a few chapters to them.
Once again the word of God came to surprise us during the reading of this powerful story to reveal to us something new and unseen.
For so long we have only thought the story of Moses to be about the great deliverance of the children of Israel. One miracle after the other in which God came to demonstrate Himself as their God and set them free from the bondage that they were under. This in itself is a powerful message. But for us during this Pesach the story revealed something more. Not just a message of deliverance but also a message of calling.
God hears His people groan and remembers His covenant with them. (Ex 2:24)
Ex 3 – Moses is between the people of Midian busy attending to His father-in-law’s flock. When Moses came to Horeb the mountain of the Lord the angel of the Lord appears to Him in a flame of fire in the midst of a bush. Then Moses said I will now turn aside and see this great sight. When the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God Called to him from the midst of the bush.
God revealed Himself to Moses only when Moses turned His eyes to look at this burning bush, and when God saw that He turned to look and give attention He called out to Moses.
Moses, Moses and he said here I am (Ex3:4)
I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – in these words God established Who He was.
I have seen the oppression of My people and I have heard their cry, I have come down to deliver them and bring them to a good and large land. – in these words God reveals His heart and plan to Moses.
Come now therefor and I will send you – and then finally after God establishes Who He is and what His desire is He calls upon Moses to come and act in obedience and faith beyond his own fear to be an instrument of deliverance for God’s people.
Moses then asks Who am I and God answers I will be with you.
Gods calling of us has nothing to do with who we are but rather everything to do with who He is, what He wants done and whether we are willing to step beyond our fear knowing that He will go with us. Most times it is much easier to stay where we are and pretend that we did not see the burning bush. But God shows us that if we will come He will be there with us. If we will dare to listen and obey He will use us mightily.
What would have happened if Moses hadn’t turned his attention towards God and obeyed – would his life just have remained ordinary? In his listening and obeying he became a man who saw and knew God. A man who lived in abundance to experience the supernatural power of God.