Our miracle boy is here!

Just a quick post from the birthing centre to say that our son, Gian Lucca was born last night, 26 Dec, at 23h18 via c-section. Not the birth that we planned, but at least we are both doing well and that is the only important thing.

He weighed 3,43 kg and measured 53 cm.  His names mean gift from God/God is gracious and bringer of light.

We are totally in love and awe!  Praise the Lord!

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What a Wonderful, Glorious day!

Why is this a wonderful, glorious day?  To quote the angel who brought the message of Jesus’ birth to the shepherds:  Luke 2:10-14  (KJV):  “¹⁰And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.  ¹²And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Today we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, who humbled Himself, gave up His Godliness so that we can participate in all the benefits of the atonement.  What are those benefits?

1.   Financial prosperity:  2 Corinthians 8:9 (KJV) says that, “⁹For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”
2.   Healing:  1 Peter 2:24 (KJV), it says, “²⁴Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.” And Matthew 8:16 -17 (KJV) it says, “¹⁶When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: ¹⁷That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.”
3.   Deliverance from demonic oppression, depression and evil:  Galatians 1:4 (KJV) that says that Jesus “gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world,”
4.  And last but not least, salvation and the forgiveness of our sins:  Romans 5:8-10 (KJV) “⁸But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  ⁹Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.  ¹⁰For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

Please know that all of this was freely given by Jesus, we can accept it or reject it.  It is available already – the full price was paid a long time ago.  God loves us so much that He gave His only Son, so why don’t you accept what He has sacrificed Himself for?

All of this was done, because God loves us so much:  Romans 8:31-39 (KJV):  “³¹What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?  ³²He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?  ³³Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.  ³⁴Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.  ³⁵Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  ³⁶As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.  ³⁷Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.  ³⁸For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, ³⁹Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Merry Christmas to all, I wish all the blessings of God upon you over this Christmas time and for the new year of 2012!

With love from, Marion, DH, little baby, Shumi, KT and Nandi!

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Today is our due date!

Wow, our due date is here, finally, but it doesn’t feel as long as I thought it would when I tested for the first time early Sunday morning on the 10^th of April.  According to several websites, I see that 5% of babies are born on their due dates.  So statistically the chances of our baby coming today are slim.  The midwife thinks he will come on the 26^th or the 27^th.  That prediction was made before she checked me, so I think she calculated it on their personal statistics, not on our specific circumstances.

I saw the midwife yesterday, and before the appointment I wanted to ask her to do a stretch and sweep, but I totally forgot to ask that!  DH’s sister went with, since she is visiting here at the moment, and we were talking about so many other things, some of it questions she had, that I completely forgot to ask!  I’m not too upset about it though, since the feeling of urgency for our baby to be born has passed.

I thought about it and I think I wanted him to be born about a week early so that all of the family members who are going on holiday could still see him, and I hoped that DH could spend as much time with him as possible, but DH is only going back to work on the 9^th of January, so there is still plenty of time.  Almost all of the family that are going on holiday have left already, it’s only my cousin J who still needs to go on Saturday morning, so it’s too late now.  Our baby can just as well come now whenever he wants to…

Our baby was very relaxed again yesterday with the appointment, and we could see it in his heartbeat, it varied between 127-137 bpm.  He did give the midwife one little kick though.  She could feel that there is still plenty of amniotic fluid surrounding him and she said that my placenta should still be healthy as long as I regularly feel our baby move around, which I do.  The intensity of the movements is just not as strong most of the time, because things are getting cramped in there.

Our baby’s head is nicely engaged, but my bump measurement is bigger again, and combined with my weight gain of 700g (9.5 kg gain over my pregnancy) in the past week, indicates that baby had a growth spurt in the past week.  But I think some of the weight gain is also due to water retention because my feet have been swollen a lot more since this past Sunday.  Apparently that is caused by the fact that our baby’s head is putting pressure on the veins coming up from my legs.  The midwife recommended that I take tissue salts 9 & 11 for the swelling.

I also had a good Braxton Hicks contraction and the midwife was extremely happy with that, so it seems the raspberry leaf tea and the tablets are doing their job.  My uterus is getting plenty of exercise before I go into labour.  I must say I got one very sore and a few more slightly sore contractions later during the day and the evening.  I also had AF like back pain for most of the afternoon and the evening, but I went to bed and this morning I feel nothing except the painless BH contractions again.  But I’m seeing it all as a good sign that things are slowly but surely moving along.

My urine sample was once again perfect yesterday, no glucose at all, so I really think my breakfast was the problem when I ate the muesli and yogurt, and I had the honey in my tea.  She even complemented me on the fact that she could see I was drinking plenty of water.  My blood pressure was also perfect so the midwife said that I am extremely healthy and that I definitely have a very low risk pregnancy – not bad for an “old chick”!  And I know a lot of doctors love to use age as an excuse for a pregnancy being high risk…

It’s incredibly hot here again, so that is the worst for me, combined with the fact that my feet are so uncomfortable due to the swelling and the fact that I can’t sit comfortably anymore due to all the pressure in my pelvic area.  Otherwise I feel fine and totally happy to still be pregnant.  I’m savouring the last few days.  I know that I still have some freedom with my time and what I want to do, when I want to do things so I will take full advantage of that while I still can.

But I must say we have tried everything we know to try to hurry things along a bit since last week, but none of the “tricks” we tried seemed to work.  We have tried to BD quite often, I have been walking quite a lot, but since the fall, DH doesn’t want me to walk at the gym or in the streets anymore, as I fell outside the gym right after walking for 30 minutes at quite a  fast pace.  So I’m doing my walking in shopping malls now, but not as often as I would like to.

I refuse to try the castor oil, that sounds like a horrible experience, and the midwife warned against taking or eating things that might give me diarrhoea as she thinks it would make me too weak for the labour experience, but also it’s not a good thing when you want to give birth in water, since the water will have to be changed and the bath cleaned should one have an “accident” in the bath.

I’m taking raspberry leaf tablets now too and I’m still taking the evening primrose oil capsules, some evenings I use two vaginally, since I’ve noticed that I’m leaking oil when I go to the loo on my many trips during the night.  The midwife said it’s ok to do that.

Sorry TMI following:  Speaking of going to the loo many times, sometimes it feels like our baby is using my bladder as a trampoline.  What a weird feeling!  I might feel ok one moment then suddenly I have the urge to go to the loo, and then a split second later that feeling is gone again.  If he moves around a lot it feels like, “I need to pee… O, no not anymore… O, now I need to pee again… No not anymore…”  On and on like that.  I have also had times when I was sitting on the loo, squeezing out a few drops and suddenly baby moves and it squirts out, and when he moves away again, it’s back to drops again.

I don’t mind any of this really; I am still in such awe that we are so close to having our own baby.  I promise you that there are days when I think back to the beginning of the year or last year and I cannot help bursting out in tears of joy and being so grateful for our baby, and then I just cannot help praising God.  I really am still so amazed at His goodness and how almighty He is.

Yesterday we were married 15 years and 3 months.  We started TTC around our 3^rd anniversary.  So we have been waiting for our baby for 12 years and 3 months.  12 years and 3 months! No amount of trying on our own ever even closely resulted in a pregnancy, and so many FS’s tried to get us pregnant with 8 IUI’s and 3 fresh IVF’s and 1 FET.  Ok, the last clinic I went to did manage to get me pregnant, but then I miscarried.  The odds of me having a live baby from IVF at the age of 40 was 5%, and then God gave us this incredible miracle!  I got pregnant on my own, naturally after taking only Folic acid and evening primrose oil capsules for months.  No other medication – no treatment from any doctor.  I used ovulation prediction sticks and I made sure we BD’d around ovulation time.  That is all, and off course I believed that God would heal both DH and I and that he would make me pregnant and this blog is proof of that.

Wow!  Absolutely amazing to me…  Praise the Lord!  He is good and NOTHING is impossible for Him! Thank you Jesus!

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Grief and Special Dates:

Last night I couldn’t sleep again after waking up for one of my many visits to the loo.  I was thinking about Christmas time and how the last couple of Christmases have been difficult.

Last year we went away, basically I felt I had to flee town, because the due date of our lost babies was approaching fast and I just knew I couldn’t cope being at home, celebrating Christmas and pretending all is fine, when I felt like I was dying inside.  The problem was one can’t flee from your thoughts and emotions and it was still hard, because I didn’t think about it before, but there were lots of preggie bellies on the beach and also lots of moms with tiny little babies.  Right opposite our campsite was one family with a little baby and also at the campsite next to us.  There were still a couple of times when I just felt like crying my heart out, but I couldn’t because there was just no privacy anywhere.

The year before that was also very tough over Christmas time, because we found out in the beginning of the month that our 2^nd IVF had failed, and about a week later my mom announced that she might have uterine cancer.  Another tense week or so later and the cancer was confirmed and my mom was booked for an emergency hysterectomy.  She was still in hospital on Christmas day and we had to visit her there in hospital before getting ready to host the Christmas party at our house for my in-laws and my dad.

This year I was certain it was going to be a good Christmas, when I found out I was pregnant and our due date was just 3 days before Christmas.  Little did I know that my mom would not make it to Christmas.  Now, even though we are so excited about our baby coming, I just cannot forget about my mom and I am filled with sadness and grief that she will not be here to share this joyous time with us.

And it’s not just that.  My heart aches for my dad, because a couple of days after Christmas, on the 28^th it would have been my parent’s 43^rd anniversary and on the 16^th of January it would have been my mom’s 64^th birthday.  So there are a lot of important dates coming up, and with each one of those we are reminded of the fact that my mom is not here anymore.

The big issue here is that I don’t know if I can be there for my dad, like I would want to be, when our baby is born.  I had hoped that my sister would take him away with her on holiday, so that she could be there for him, but her MIL had a stroke about a month ago and they actually need to be there for her now.  So they are holidaying close to her MIL’s place to hopefully spent as much time with her as possible, but also to sort some of her stuff out, because the doctors said that she cannot live on her own anymore…  I know my poor sister is also taking a lot of strain, dealing with her grief over my mom as well as the issues with her MIL, who isn’t the easiest person to get along with since she had the stroke.  She just won’t co-operate with them at all, she is incredibly stubborn and doesn’t want to listen to reason…

My cousin J, who has really been such a huge rock, especially concerning my dad, by being there for him too, is also going away to visit her family, so I guess, I’ll just have to juggle it somehow.  Fortunately my MIL has really been such a star, by also including my dad in a lot of the family activities, and I am really grateful for that!  But I keep wondering what will happen should I go in labour on Christmas day or a day or 2 before and I can’t spend time with him, because we might still be in hospital…  I don’t want my dad to spend Christmas on his own…

I know I shouldn’t worry about things like that – it will all sort itself out.  We don’t know when our baby will come, and it may not even be a problem at all.  I think I felt a bit overwhelmed last night.  I realized that we are almost left alone here, and the only people to support us with the baby will be my MIL, DH’s sister and his granny, and all the responsibility for my dad rests on my shoulders.

And during all of these thoughts I just kept thinking that I really, really wish my mom was here to celebrate this wonderful time with us instead of us mourning the fact that she is not here.  I’ve dreamed of the day when we will hold our own baby in our arms for so very long, and now it will be marred by sadness.

A little while ago I actually realised that I was angry with my mom – angry that she had to die, and would not meet her first grandson, angry that she couldn’t believe for healing or that she couldn’t fight the disease.  Fortunately I realized that was totally unreasonable of me, and then my cousin J told me something that had us both in tears.

She said that while we were in hospital with my mom, during one of the last few days, I felt our baby kick and I told everyone so.  Cousin J, was rubbing my belly and talking so excitedly about our baby and then she looked over to my mom and she saw such incredible sadness in my mom’s eyes.  She thinks that my mom just knew she was dying and that she was going to miss out on so much, and that made her sad.  I didn’t see this, I don’t even remember the moment, but then I realised that it is so unfair that I was angry at my mom, off course she would have wanted things to be different too!

I want to post a picture of my mom.  It was taken by my MIL at my MIL’s 60^th birthday party in June 2007.  Long before my mom got sick – so she still looks healthy here and that is the way we all want to remember her.  It was this photo that was on the pamphlet we had at her funeral.

I miss you so much mom…    I so wish things were different, and that you were still here with us…

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39 Weeks Pregnant:

Gosh, this past week my patience has been truly tested.  I really hoped this baby would come.  And then I realized that there is nothing I can do to make it happen, I can just as well relax and enjoy the last bit of my pregnancy.  But it was not easy to come to that decision.  I’m not even sure why I wanted it so bad – I think it’s just excitement, the fact that I cannot wait to meet our baby.  It wasn’t so much any pregnancy symptoms, because they have been ok lately – I have had times when I was a lot more uncomfortable, like during the heat wave we had a couple of weeks ago.

By Monday morning I was searching the internet early signs of labour and even reading up on as many birth stories I could in the hope that I would recognize some signs that would indicate that labour was near, but unfortunately that was not the case.  Those signs that I do have, like the Braxton Hicks contractions for instance, don’t mean that labour is imminent.  So it seems it can still take a while, and that was why I decided to try to relax about it, because I realized that I was driving myself crazy…

It reminded me a lot of being in the 2ww and trying to find any symptoms that could indicate that I was pregnant, but just like the 2ww there is nothing definite and there is not much one can do, except wait it out.

This week was actually a good week for my body – I really felt quite good.  I think the overcast and rainy weather earlier this week helped a lot.  I wasn’t so hot and uncomfortable, but I’m still really tired in the afternoons.  It’s just difficult to take a nap, almost every day there is something that disturbs me and wakes me after about 30 minutes to maybe 45 minutes.  I sleep quite well at night though, so I can’t complain that I don’t get enough sleep.

I’ve been having more Braxton Hicks contractions again; some were a bit painful, but not too much.  I’ve been getting some slight pains in my lower back, almost AF like, but as soon as I get excited and think maybe this is it, it goes away again.  I’ve also had some cramps in my intestines, but no diarrhoea (since that is a good sign that labour is approaching), and then I’ve had some stabbing pains in my lower abdomen again and in my vagina.  Also I can feel our baby’s head in my pelvis and it is getting really difficult to bend that area, and getting in and out of bed has been difficult.

I must say I’ve been blessed throughout this pregnancy.  I didn’t gain much weight, even though I ate pretty much what I wanted to when I wanted to, I have no stretch marks at all, only a little swelling, no varicose veins, no haemorrhoids even though I’ve been constipated most of the time, or any of the other nasty pregnancy symptoms that women normally get.  The few issues that did came up, were easily resolved, like for instance my low lying placenta and the gestational diabetes scare.  All I can say is that I know it’s due to God’s blessings, for I knew from the book Super.natural Child.birth that it was not necessary to have that, and I in fact confessed and believed that I would be spared from all the common pregnancy problems.  So Praise God!  All the glory must go to Him!

I had my check up again today – all is once again well.  My weight is up 8.7 kg’s from the start of my pregnancy, I once again had no glucose in my urine, but I did have some ketones, but that was probably due to the fact that I was a bit starved before I had lunch, and I had lunch not long before I saw the midwife.  My blood pressure was again a little low, but still normal for a pregnant woman.  Baby’s heartbeat was between 131-137bpm, and I think he was sleeping, because for a change I did not feel him during the consultation. Our baby also has the hiccups quite frequently now – a couple of times a day I would say on average at least 3 times a day.  The midwife said that he can come any time now or be late, and I so wished she could be more specific, but off course she cannot.

Our baby boy has been very active for the last day or so.  So much so that it was difficult to get to sleep last night.  But that is totally fine with me, at least I don’t have to worry about him…  Speaking of worry, I fell on Tuesday.  That was quite a bit of a scare.  Fortunately I fell on my hands and knees and not on my tummy, and fortunately I could feel baby move afterwards, so I wasn’t too worried.  But it’s still not something you want to experience during pregnancy.  The worst thing is I have a skinned knee.  I feel a bit silly with a knee like that – I mean little children’s knees look like that not adults!  But the midwife says that baby is well protected so usually they are more worried about the moms than the babies.

Here is a picture of the injured knee:

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The spiritual world and the physical world:

Here is some more from the teaching of An.drew Wom.mack that I started yesterday:

“See God has already given, but we look at our experience – well, so and so died, it couldn’t be God’s will to heal everybody.  See here is the problem – most people interpret God’s word by their experience.  They say, “Here is what God’s word says, but here is what happened!”  What is the answer?  Well, they come up with all kinds of things.  “Maybe it wasn’t God’s will.  Maybe God says no.”

God will never say no to something He’s already said yes to.  2 Corinthians 1, I believe its verse 26 says, “All the promises of God in Him are yea and in Him amen unto the Glory of God.” That means they are all positive, they are already yes, anything God promised you when He says that it’s His will that you be in health and prosper even as your soul prospers then God has already said yes to that.  You don’t have to wonder whether God is going to say no.  It’s not God saying no, God said yes!

But here we’ve got a conflict – every one of us can probably see examples in our life where God’s word promised us something to the best of our knowledge, we did what God said, and we didn’t see it come to pass.  How do you harmonize the 2?    Well you start with the scripture that I used this morning, Romans 3:4 says, “Yea, let God be true and every man a liar.”  You can also put in there, let God be true and your circumstances be a liar.  Don’t interpret God’s word by your circumstances; interpret your circumstances by God’s word.

If you’ve got a circumstance that says, “well, I asked God, I believed with all of my heart, and yet it didn’t work…”  The natural conclusion is therefore, “it doesn’t work for everyone.  Not everybody gets healed.  It isn’t God will for everyone to be set free.”  That’s the natural conclusions.  You need to change that, you need to go to God’s word and say, “Can I find a scripture that says that God doesn’t heal every time?  That it’s not God’s will to heal?”  If you can’t find it, then you tell your circumstances that they are wrong…  Amen!

Here is an explanation of this:  There are 2 worlds, there is a spiritual world and there is a physical world, and most people aren’t really aware of the spiritual world and what’s going on in the spiritual world, but it does exist.  As a matter of fact the spiritual world created this physical world that we see.  It says in Hebrews 11, “We understand that the worlds were created by things that are not seen.”  It didn’t say things that don’t exist, they do exist but they aren’t physical.  Everything physical was created by something spiritual.  There is a spiritual reality for everything physical we see.

There is a whole spiritual world out there – did you know that the Bible says that there are angels assigned to each one of us?  Everyone of you have angels that are with you constantly, for your own protection, and I personally believe that in the Old Testament there was a 186 000 angels assigned to one person and if that is so, then what we’ve got makes that look like nothing in comparison!  According to 2 Corinthians 3, every one of us must have hundreds of thousands of angels to our disposal.

Now if you take hundreds of thousands and multiply it times the number of people in this room, then this room is crowded, Amen?  We’ve got all kinds of spiritual things in here but you don’t see it, and most of you, if you don’t see it you don’t think it, and you don’t believe it and you don’t know it exists and therefore you don’t draw on it.

Look at this in 2 Kings 6, this is an example of what we are talking about, this is Elisha, he was the successor to Elijah.  Elisha was a mighty prophet of God and the king of Syria was fighting against the Israelites and every time he would go down and set a trap for the king of Israel, Elisha would be told by God, and he would tell the king of Israel, the King of Israel would send spies out there and they would find that it was true and he would escape.  After a few times of this happening the king of Syria says, “one of us is a spy for the king of Israel.”   One of his servant girls, it was a captive that they’ve taken out of the land of Israel said, “it’s none of us, but there is a prophet in Israel that tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bed chamber.”  When this king heard that, he decided that he is going send his armies down and that he would capture Elisha.  So here is the story of it in verse 13, it says, “Go and spy where he is so that I may send and fetch him, and he was told, in saying, behold he is in Dothan, therefore send he forth horses and chariots and great hosts, and they came by night and encompassed the city about and when the servant of the man of God was risen early and gone forth, behold an host encompassed the city with horses and chariots and his servant said unto him, ‘alas my master, how shall we do?’”

That’s old English for saying, “Man, what are we going to do?”  And then he panicked – he saw these armies and he knew why they were there.  And look at Elisha’s answer.  He said, “fear not for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.”

You know if you don’t understand that there is a spiritual world, and that it is real and it exists, just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it don’t exist.  Now if you don’t understand that, people would think that Elisha lied.  See a lot of people when it comes to confessing the world of God and saying, “By His stripes I am healed,” and any idiot can look at you and tell that you aren’t healed, Amen?  I mean you look sick, you feel sick; you act sick, anybody can tell that you are sick!  You’re just lying!  It’s just positive lies!

I don’t know if any of you have ever been taken to task for confessing the word of God when it didn’t look so, well, see people who would believe that way would say, “Well, Elisha lied!” He said that there were more with him then there were with the enemy.  And yet you could look out there and count the enemy by the thousands, 1000, 2000, 3000 and here Elisha was saying, one, two…  Amen?  And there was more with him than there was with the enemy?  How do you explain that?  The answer was, that there wasn’t more physically but see in the spiritual realm there were more.

It says in verse 17, “Elisha prayed and said, ‘Lord, I pray that you open his eyes that he may see.’  And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man and he saw and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire around about Elisha.”  Praise God!  He was speaking the truth.  A person that says that it is a lie to say that you are healed, when you don’t feel healed, what that means is, you’re only looking at the natural realm.  The only thing that you consider to be true is what you see, taste, hear, smell or feel – you’re 5 senses.  And if that is what you consider to be facts, then yes it’s a lie, because according to your physical senses there are times that you speak that you are healed and you don’t feel healed.

But see, one of the keys to walking with the Lord is recognising that you’ve got to walk in the spirit.  There is a spiritual world out there; there are spiritual realities you can’t prove in a test tube.  How do you know what spiritual realities are?

I mean if you want to see the physical truth, if you want to see if your hair is combed, you go look in a mirror.  I have no idea right now if my hair is combed.  I hope it’s combed, but you know I can’t tell by my 5 senses.  I have to look in a mirror and I’ve got to trust what I see in that mirror.  How do you know that mirror is telling you the truth?  You’ve never seen the top of your head, all you’ve ever seen is a representation of it, a reflection of it, you don’t know….  “Well, I’ve seen a reflection, well, I’ve seen a picture…”  You have to take by faith that what you are seeing is true.  Well, see the Bible says that John 6:63, “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.”  God’s word says that this is spirit, this is true.

What you read in the Bible is what spiritual truth is, so if you want to see if your hair is combed you go look in a mirror, and if you want to see what your spirit is like or if you want to see what is happening in the spirit then you hold the Bible up and look at it and whatever it says you just believe it.

The Bible says that Elisha had angels and chariots round about him and the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 3 that, “What they had, had no glory compared to what we got.”  It says in Peter that, “They were longing for the day that we live in because what we got is so much better than what they’ve got.”  If Elisha had angels and chariots round about him, praise God, I’ve got at least as many as he had and more round about me!  If he was able to take an entire nation captive with the power of God, then praise God I can do the same thing.  There is a whole spiritual world that exists out there.

You know our sister that got born again this morning, praise God for seeing her today, I was talking to her before the service, and I said, you’ve now got Jesus living in the inside of you and the same works that Jesus did you can do also (John 14:12).  You can do all of these things.  She was just looking at me kind of stunned!  That’s the truth – she’s now got God Almighty on the inside of her and as much as she can renew her little peanut brain – I’m not speaking specifically about you – all of us have a little peanut brain – and as much as we can renew our little peanut brain, we can receive this life of God in the inside of us.

But see one of the things that limit it, is we only think in the physical realm.  We say the Bible says, “Ask and you shall receive,” “I asked and I didn’t receive…,” well how do you know?  “Well I didn’t see it!”  Just because you didn’t see it, does that mean God’s word isn’t true and that God didn’t do it?

I want to propose to you – and a lot of you never thought of this, that God can answer your prayer and you don’t even know it.  Because see, God is a spirit, John 4:24 says, “God is a spirit and those who worship him must worship Him and in spirit and truth.”  Did you know that when God answers your prayer He doesn’t give it to you in a physical form?  He gives it to you in spiritual form…  If you ask for finances, finances are material; do you know what God will do?  He will release the spiritual power that it takes to produce those finances into your life, and He will always do it.  If you ask, you do receive.  God gave it.  If you seek, God will give it to you.  God is faithful; God always, always, always answers everything.  If you prayed for healing – God gave you healing, but He gives it to you in spiritual form.  And God’s operation independent of you ends in the spiritual realm.

God is not the one that is going to manifest it into the physical.  Do you know what does that?  Faith!  Hebrews 11:1, “Now faith is the substance,” substance is talking about physical tangible reality. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  Faith brings into physical tangible reality things that already exist in the spirit.  Faith doesn’t make things happen in the spirit.  They already happened by God’s grace, but your faith brings what God has accomplished into physical reality.  Is everybody following that?  God answers your prayers, but God gives it to you in your spirit and then your faith brings it from the spirit into the physical realm.  So if you’re praying for healing, God releases healing into you, but that don’t mean that you are going to see healing, unless you believe, unless you know how to co-operate.  Faith brings spiritual things into physical form.

An example of this is like radio.  Do you know right now we are using radio for you to hear me?  This microphone is a wireless radio, that’s what it is.  It’s broadcasting the signal over there and it picks it up and is broadcast over the speakers, but did you know that there is more than just this radio signal in this room?  There are literally dozens of radio signals and television signals in this room.  If you say, well, I don’t believe it, why?  Because I can’t hear it?  That doesn’t mean that they aren’t here!  That just means that you aren’t very smart!

There are things that exist beyond your capability to comprehend them with your physical natural ability.  You can’t hear radio and television signals even though they are in here and they are loud.  Do you know why you can’t hear them?  Because they are broadcast at a very high frequency, a frequency that is outside the human hearing range.  But they are in here and those signals are just as loud as this signal that we are tuned into.  There are many signals in here but the difference is that you can’t hear them; they are out of your range.  But they are here and they do exist and it is a physical, tangible reality.  But what happens is you get a receiver that can hear those things and it picks out an individual signal.  It can choose which signal it wants, it picks that out and then it re-broadcasts it, it demodulates it down a number of octaves and re-broadcasts it in a range that your ear can hear and that is the reason you hear me instead of all of the radio and television signals, but did you know they are also in here?

It’s just like God. God answers prayer, God will give it to you, but many people they don’t even know that God’s answered their prayer.  They aren’t able to perceive it, they aren’t able to get it and they aren’t able to put it down into the realm where they can perceive it and operate in it in their physical realm.  So they say, well, God didn’t do it.  Well, see the radio station is faithful.  The radio station – the signal is here – but whether you tune into it, turn it on, get it to the right frequency, whether you know how to make that thing work or not, has nothing to do with whether the power has been generated and whether the signal is released.

Did you know God has answered our prayers?  Anytime any of you have ever prayed for anything based on God’s word and you prayed in faith, God gave you your answer, but He gives it to you in a spiritual form, and whether you get it into the physical and whether you see it, is not dependent on whether God answers your prayer, it’s dependent on whether you can receive from God.  Amen?  That is important.

When I saw this, what it did – you see I had experiences in my life, like this girl I was telling you about that Jamie and I saw die, that really affected me.   And I guarantee you I had problems with it.  And I had a decision.  Was I going to get bitter and say, “God why didn’t you do it?”  Or was I going to hold on to, “God, you are faithful, You didn’t miss it, we missed it.”  I had a choice to make.  I just chose to believe that, “God I believe you answered our prayers, I don’t know why it didn’t work and it took me about 3 years before I began to find out some of the reasons why.

Every one of you have had instances where you have prayed or are in the process of praying for something and you haven’t seen it manifest yet.  You’ve got a decision to make.  Are you going to say, “Well, God why haven’t you done anything yet?”  The Bible says, “You’ve got to believe before you receive when you pray,” not when you see it, but when you pray.”

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Some explanations of common misunderstandings:

Recently I listened to An.drew Wom.mack’s teaching on How to receive a Miracle again and I realized there are some awesome explanations in there of things that are often misunderstood by Christians, and that it will help a lot of you who are still waiting for your miracles.  It was also a useful reminder to me, I must admit…

“Mark 11, this is where Jesus cursed the fig tree and the fig tree dried up from the roots, the next day the disciples saw it, they were amazed, and they asked Jesus about it and this was His reaction, Mark 11:22, “He answered and said unto them, have faith in God, for verily I say unto you that who so ever shall say unto this mountain…,” who so ever, that means that this applies to every person in this room, “Who so ever shall say unto this mountain, be thou removed and be thou cast into the sea, and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that those things which he sayeth shall come to pass, he shall have what so ever he sayeth. Therefore I say unto to you what things so ever you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them and ye shall have them.”

This passage of scripture’s got so much in it that we can teach on this for weeks, so I’m just having to hit a couple of things but one of the points I wanted to show you here is verse 24, He says, “what the things you so ever desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall have them.”  You’ve got to believe you receive now and then you shall – future tense – have it. That future tense may only be a second, a minute, a week, a month, but you got to believe right now. You don’t believe when you see it, you’ve got to believe when you pray. Now that is so simple, and yet this is where a lot of Christians stumble.

I’m teaching on how to receive a miracle from God and I’m just teaching a lot of it out of experience as I’ve dealt with people. What is it that hangs people up? And do you know most people, when I pray for them and lay hands on them, by the time they hit the ground, if they feel healed, then they are able to believe. Most people can maintain faith for 5 seconds, but the problem is when you pray and you walk out and you haven’t seen it manifest. 99% of even spirit filled, tongue talking word type people, have their faith just to start decreasing fast as soon as they don’t see a manifestation. Most people struggle with it.

And see the Bible says that you’ve got to believe that you will receive when you pray and then you shall have it, so what I want to share with you tonight, are some simple things, explanations, again I want to make this point, that the word of God and the kingdom of God is based on laws. There are rules, there are ways that things work and you don’t have to be ignorant of the things of God.

Paul said, “I’d not have you to be ignorant concerning the things of God,” in Ephesians 5, yet most of us are ignorant. Ignorance is a breeding ground for unbelief and for problems, there are answers to things, and there is a reason why you pray sometimes here and it’s only here before you see a manifestation.

What I’d like to explain tonight is why sometimes there is a period of time in between when you say “amen and there it is.” That’s the terminology Jerry Seville uses. There are things going on – if you understand this it will take away anxiety, it will take away worry and care and frustration, it will help you to stand and be able to believe and it could make a big, big difference in your life.

Look at Matthew 7, this is a familiar passage of scripture that everybody knows and doesn’t believe. It says, “Ask and it shall be given you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” This is an awesome promise in God’s word. Did you know honestly, if tonight we were just acting like we were brand new, like we have never heard this scripture before, or if this concept had never come to you, and if I was here speaking, “Thus sayeth the Lord, ask and it shall be given to you,” did you know most of you would say, “that’s too good to believe.” That would be hard to believe. This is an awesome promise, and yet most Christians know this, you can quote it, we sing songs about it yet we don’t believe it…

Do you know why? It’s because I asked and I didn’t receive, I sought and I didn’t find, I knocked and it wasn’t opened to me, and so we arrive at this problem – here is what God’s word says, here’s what my experience says… How do you harmonise the 2?

Most of us say, “I don’t understand and we just lose our excitement, our authority in the word of God and you wouldn’t sit there and openly say, “well I just don’t believe that scripture,” but in practise you don’t expect it to work like that, and we will develop an elaborate systems of doctrine to explain why it doesn’t work and religious systems come out and say, “well, not everyone that asks receives.” See the next verse, verse 8 that says “everyone that asks receives…” That’s not true! The Bible says that “everyone that asks receives,” but this person asked and they didn’t receive…

I remember a good example of a very good friend of Jamie and I, had leukaemia and I was with her when she died, and she believed God to heal her. She stood up and testified at one of James Robinson’s meetings, with over 4000 people that God was going to heal her and I mean it shook us when she wasn’t healed. We prayed for her to be raised from the dead for a long period of time and it’s a long story but I mean, we believed the best we knew how, and if you would have been there you would have thought that this girl believed with all of her heart, when she was dying she said, “It’s got to be soon… It’s got to be soon…”

She was expecting God to heal her at any moment, yet she strangled on her own blood as she haemorrhaged, and you look at that and you see that and I can tell you what her father’s reaction was. He came to me and he said, “Well, I think we were wrong. It couldn’t be God’s will to heal every time or she would have been healed.”

What he was saying was, she believed with everything she had. Well it looked that way, it really did and I guarantee you that at the time she died I didn’t have an answer. But I told people, I said, “look, God’s word promised that it was His will to heal her” and I said, “I don’t know what happened but God doesn’t lie. It was God’s will to heal her,” and I said, “maybe she missed it, maybe I missed it, maybe her family missed it, maybe all of us missed it, something’s wrong but it wasn’t God that was at fault. It was God’s will to heal her and I had people get mad at me, I had people reject me and it was 3 years before I found out what was wrong, but man, it was a miracle we got as far as we did!

God’s healing was in her body! It was supernatural and we short circuited it, we didn’t understand anything about how to walk in faith and we just allowed the devil to beat us on that one. Some of you are saying, “Well, that is terrible that you could do something that would actually cause a person to die.” Brothers and sisters it’s just the truth. You can go out here and fall asleep at the wheel and you can kill somebody. You do have responsibility in the kingdom of God. There is responsibility for us to believe God and God just can’t violate all of his laws.

Sometimes we think, “Then why didn’t God come down and intervene?” Because there are laws put down and God observes His own laws. He’s bound Himself by His own word, that’s gone out of His mouth when He says, “You have power to heal, if you don’t use that power to heal it’s not going to get done!” Again, people don’t like that. I had a Baptist pastor come to me one time and we were talking about this one girl that needed to be healed. He said, “Look if God wants her healed, she is going to be healed whether you or I pray for her or not.”

It’s not so. God’s will does not automatically come to pass. The Bible says in 2 Peter 3:9, it says, “God isn’t willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” That is God’s will, but is every person going to come to repentance? No, because they have a choice in the thing, and also we have the responsibility to preach the Gospel, it says in Romans 10, “How can they believe if they don’t hear? And how can they hear except somebody preach the gospel.” Man, there is a responsibility on us. There are people dying and going to hell that were ordained, God loves them, He’s provided for them and yet, they aren’t going to receive because they didn’t hear.

People don’t like that so we make theology see, we just change our theology to fit the situation so that we will feel good but the truth is, God’s will doesn’t come to pass perfectly. Amen? I hope I’m getting you to think. Some of you are looking at me strange. “You mean God’s will doesn’t automatically come to pass in my life?” People preach the sovereignty of God, which I may be stepping on your religious toes right here… Sovereignty literally means independent, such as the United States is independent, we have declared our independence from Great Britain, and so we are now a sovereign nation. That means nobody dictates to us, but does that mean that we are without control, that we are without laws? No, we’ve got laws, there are restraints, we’ve got a constitution that dictates what this nation is like, but nobody else wrote it for us, it is not imposed upon us by somebody else, we wrote our own constitution. We’ve got limits but they are self imposed limits.

When we say God is sovereign people will say that, “well, you never know what God is going to do. God can do anything He wants to, God may do it this way one time, God might do it that way, God can do anything. If God wanted to he can come down and just heal you, whether you believe in faith or not!” That is not so! God has bound Himself by His word; I used that scripture this morning, Psalms 89:34, He said, “my covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that has gone forth out of my lips.” When He says, “You resist the devil and he will flee from you,” that means that if you don’t resist the devil, he won’t flee. God cannot rebuke the devil for you. And it’s wrong is you are saying, “O, God get the devil off my back,” God can’t do it. God gave you authority over the devil; you’ve got to learn what God’s given you. You’ve got to start exercising what God has given you. It’s not God that’s letting the devil run roughshod over you, it’s you that’s letting the devil run roughshod over you…

We are the ones that need to be turned on! God is not the one that needs to get stirred up. It gets me about intercessors today man, they’re just in there shaking God’s cage until He does something, “God, move, move!” God is not the one that we need to get motivated. You don’t need to beg with God to move in the Denver area, God wants to do something – He is trying to rattle your cage! To get you going! So much of our intercession, 90% of it is trying to motivate God to do something, God is more motivated than you are! You don’t have to pray for God to send a revival, God sent it 2000 years ago, what you need to do is get in there in the line of fire, amen, let some of it rub off on you, and God flow through you…”

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38 Weeks Pregnant:

Wow, I can’t believe we’re at 38 weeks…  I am so ready for this baby to come now.  Every day I hope that it is soon.  The main reason is because DH is off this month and I would love it if he can spend as much time as possible with our son, before he needs to go back to work.  He has no choice in this matter – if it was up to him he would still be working right up to when baby comes, but unfortunately he is forced to be off now, and they will expect him back at work early January.

I am really getting uncomfortable and sore now, and sleeping is becoming an issue.  It hurts to turn around from my one side on to my back and over to the other side.  Sometimes I can feel baby in my pelvis and then he would complain if the new position is not comfortable for him.  Once again the heat is also getting to me – although we sometimes have an occasional cool day and then I’m so grateful for that!

Bending is completely impossible now and I cannot pick up stuff from the floor anymore.  It feels like I’ll hurt our baby, especially the part that has descended into my pelvis.  Fortunately DH can help me with those things.

I saw the midwife again today, and all is well.  No glucose what so ever, not even a trace, so she said she is proud of me and I was also very happy to hear that.  Blood pressure is also perfect once again, but I lost 200 gram in weight.  Total weight gain now is 8.1kg. Fortunately that is not a problem.

Baby was also doing well; he had once again a good varying heartbeat from 129-141 bpm.  DH and I have been laughing at him a lot, especially in the evenings.  He moves around so much and he makes the weirdest movements that one can see from far.  DH even made a video of it on his phone.  Sometimes it feels like he is trying to claw his way out of my tummy, and at other times it feels like he is trying to crawl deeper into my pelvis.

The Braxton Hicks contractions feel less and less painful too – I wonder if it has anything to do with the raspberry leaf tea and evening primrose oil capsules I’ve been taking since last week.  The midwife sounded surprised to hear that, so I don’t think it’s a common occurrence.  It makes me worry a bit that it will delay labour…

I’m so tired again these days!  Yesterday I had a 3 hour nap in the afternoon!  It feels like I can’t get enough sleep.  Our midwife says it’s a good idea if I do get as much sleep as possible since I will need the energy when I do go into labour.  She says most ladies go into labour at night and when they haven’t had a nap they tend to be too tired to labour through the night, so at least I have that as an excuse when I feel that I’m too lazy!

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New Hobbies:

I’ve heard that some people nest in the late stages of pregnancy, but I think I’ve passed that stage a while ago.  Our baby’s room was thoroughly cleaned weeks ago, along with all the clothes, blankets, prams, car chairs, anything baby related, even if it was new, it was cleaned.  The carpets throughout the house got another good scrub, even though we had them washed when we moved in, in August.  All the curtains were recently washed, so what to do then?

Well, we started an organic vegetable garden when we moved in, and we’ve successfully harvested a lot of spinach, 3 different kinds of lettuce, parsley and now our tomatoes are starting to ripen.  We also have some fruit trees in the garden and we got a lot of apricots, so I made apricot jam, and enjoyed it so much that we got a few bags of prunes from DH’s brother’s tree and I made prune jam too, and I’m also planning on making some fig jam, as soon as the figs on my MIL’s tree starts to ripen.

Here are some pictures:

Apricot and Prune Jam

The jam in this picture is about half of what I made, a lot has been given away already to family members and even some poor people who don’t have much…  I’m sure they will appreciate something sweet on their bread.

Tomatoes

Spinach, Parsley and the not so successful Brocolli

Newly planted Lettuce and Strawberries

Not all the vegetables were a success – the beetroot was a complete failure, so far it looks like the broccoli is also a failure and I got a few leaves from the rocket, but that was also not very successful, so we’ve taken those out and planted new lettuce.  I tried to grow some things from seed, but that didn’t work, due to KT carrying the pots around and digging holes where I planted the seeds.  Those were mostly chillis, and herbs like parsley, coriander and basil.  I also have some red onions in the garden, they are still small and I’m not too sure if they will grow either.  So we aren’t very successful yet, but we are learning!

It is a lot of fun and I like knowing we are eating healthy food from the garden with no pesticides or other crap on it.  I think I’m turning into a real hippy…

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Baby Shower #2:

I had my second baby shower this past Saturday, organized by my cousin J, with mostly my family. There weren’t a lot of people, I think because of the time of the year. She’s been trying to get as many people as possible together since the beginning of November, but every weekend a lot of them had other plans, but in the end it was fun and great to see those that could come.

There were some sad moments though, because it was held at my dad’s house, and almost everyone at one stage or another made a comment about my mom, and the fact that she wasn’t there. So in a way it was quite difficult too. See it was the first time most of the family came to my dad’s house since my mom passed and it was emotional for them to be there, and off course when they got emotional we also got emotional…

When I say “my family”; I actually mean my mom’s family, since all of my dad’s family still live in the Netherlands. My mom came over to South Africa from the Netherlands when she was 10 years old with her whole family. Her only 2 sisters went back, but all 5 her brothers and their families live here in South Africa. Of her 5 brothers, 2 of them and their wives were able to come and one of my cousins was also there. Her sister’s husband also came, although this cousin had a work function and couldn’t make it.

The other guests were my sister and her kids, my dad, my parents in law and my cousin J, but they were all also at the first baby shower. We once again got some lovely presents, and quite a few small things that we still needed, and some really adorable clothes for our little boy. I think that we are totally prepared for our baby to come now!

Today we bought our first Mo.ther Na.ture nappy, a locally produced eco-nappy, for our baby. One can order a whole set over the internet, but it’s quite expensive, and DH is worried about the fit, since he’s heard of so many of the people we know who prefer a specific kind of disposable nappy and they all prefer a different brand! So we bought one nappy and one waterproof cover, and after our baby’s birth we will try it and see how it works, and if it works I will order the whole set. There is no rush, since I got quite a lot of disposable nappies as presents, at my baby showers especially, so we will have time to decide after our baby is born.

DH is also a bit sceptical about the practicality of using the washable cloth nappies, so this is going to be a test. To see if we like the fit, but also to see if the extra work involved with washing it is worth it for us, or if we should consider maybe buying half a set and doing the cloth nappies at specific times, but also using the disposables at the other times…

This is what it looks like:

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