We have so much to be grateful for:

Even before I got pregnant I knew that we have a lot to be grateful for, but since getting pregnant I am just so much more aware of all the things I’m grateful for, and I’m not lying to you, but my prayer life has changed to mostly praising God and thanking Him for all the blessings we receive from Him.

Every single day I thank God for our pregnancy and our baby. I cannot tell you how much I love being pregnant, and to feel our little boy kick, how much I love him already and how much I’m looking forward to meeting him. Last week at the water birth class there was one lady that said she absolutely hates being pregnant and she is so glad it’s almost over. I can honestly say that I don’t have that problem at all; as a matter of fact it is difficult for me to understand it, because it’s been such a wonderful time for me. I am so grateful that I’m not in her shoes…

Yes, I’ve had most of the symptoms and sometimes I didn’t feel well, or sometimes I have pain, but it doesn’t affect my joy. I still remember the constant nausea and fatigue of the first trimester, and I remember I wasn’t able to do much during that time, but I would willingly do it again and again, just for the joy of being pregnant. I know I’m going to miss being pregnant once our baby is born, but we will definitely try again!

I am also so grateful for the wonderful husband that I have. He is so attentive, and loving and interested in what’s going on in my body and with our baby, and he just loves to have his hands on my baby bump to feel our darling little boy move and kick.

I just know he will be an awesome, wonderful dad. A lot of the time I think he will be a better dad than I could even dream to be a mom. He just loves our nieces and nephews and he takes time to play with them every time we see them, and they absolutely adore him! I just cannot imagine how he will be with our boy – if he is so good with children that isn’t his, how wouldn’t he be with his own! I know he will not be a distant dad, or someone who’s job is more important than his kids, or more interested in his social life than his kids, I know he will make our little one the most important part of his life.

Then most importantly I am so grateful to God, for being there and helping me, guiding me, comforting me and blessing us so richly! We have had some really incredibly difficult years behind us and only when I turned to God, did it feel like I was able to cope, to overcome, to get hope and finally to have our dreams realized. And even now He is still there giving me strength, health and joy, even though we are still going through a difficult time.

The other day I realized that this has been the best and simultaneously the worst year ever. The best because I got pregnant with a healthy baby and we will give birth to him, but the worst because I had to lose my mom. But thanks to our Almighty Lord He is giving me strength and He is helping me to not just concentrate on the sadness, but still experience and enjoy all the wonderful stages of this pregnancy.

I am also incredibly grateful of how much I’ve grown spiritually, and that my idea, or concept of being a child of God, a Christian has changed. I see God so very different than even a year ago, I know Him so much better – I know He loves me unconditionally, that even if I disappoint Him, His love for me won’t change, and that He doesn’t want to punish me for every wrong thing I do – it’s not necessary anymore because the punishment has already been borne by Jesus. I have no more guilt and condemnation hanging over me, making me feel less of a Christian, or a bad person, because I’ve been made righteous by Jesus, and yes, I know I don’t deserve it, but it’s already been done, so I can just as well accept it! God wants me to receive it! And the same goes for everything else that’s been covered by the atonement. Like health and healing, deliverance from evil and prosperity.

The way I feel from day to day has changed – from being sad, and feeling lonely and that nobody understand my pain, to being happy, and joyous and expecting just good things to happen from now on. I cannot tell you what a burden has been lifted from me. God has changed me so much and I am so grateful! When I think of all these blessings, I just feel like bursting out in tears of happiness (and I often do)…

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Taking responsibility:

Last week Saturday I went with 3 other people on a street outreach.  What we do is go into the inner city of our town and hand out tracts, Bibles and speak to people in the street and try to help those who need help.

We came across some people who were in terrible circumstances and referred most of them to the shelter in our town that is managed by a group of churches from different denominations.  It is from this same place that we have the feeding scheme, they hand out food packages, there is an overnight shelter for the homeless, facilities to bath and wash your clothes, they hand out clothing and blankets to those who are in need of it, they shelter women and children who need to get away from abusive family members and they have people who draw up resume’s and they try to find work for all the resume’s they have.

I want to talk about the last couple we came across just before we went home.  They were both elderly, but how old exactly is difficult to say because they really looked bad.  Like beggars, or bums, but they were not entirely homeless.  They live in a wooden hut in the back of what was once a normal stand with a house on it, but the house has been converted into a commune and a lot of small rooms have been built on the stand and there must be at least 20-30 people living there, if not more…

I came to them a bit later than the rest of our group as I talked to a young boy of about 8-9 years first, but when I came closer all I could hear was a lot of screaming, shouting and swearing.  All coming from this couple and they were shouting at the other 3 people of our group. 

“I don’t want to hear anything from this God of yours!  I don’t believe in God!  God is not good, how can He be good if He caused the Tsu.nami in Ja.pan!”  They kept shouting things like that, on and on.  Eventually I was able to get a word in edgewise just to say it wasn’t God that caused all these bad things.  That got their attention, when I said it was all caused by the devil, the man started shouting louder again.  They were upset and mad at God for being in their terrible circumstances.  They were blaming everybody they could think of for the situation they were in, God, the president, the government, us, Christians in general, everybody except themselves.

It was obvious that they were drunk.  The man more than the woman, and it was just before noon.  Eventually we were able to talk a bit with the woman, but the man kept on swearing and shouting.  We women just ignored him, and the man in our group said later he was standing there praying silently.  We asked the woman if she knew about the feeding scheme as they said they were hungry.  They did, they were there once, but they are mad because they say one of the men who volunteer there said he would pick them up and bring them every day as they think it’s too far to walk as they both have problems with their feet, but he never came.  I don’t know what the situation was, I know this man, I haven’t spoken to him about it, but I cannot imagine he would promise that as he is not there every day.  He is a business man who volunteers when he has a chance.  The other days of the week he attends to his business. 

After speaking to this woman for a while one of the ladies with us (H), realized she knows this woman.  H has been helping out the people in our inner city for years now and it was her idea to start the shelter, and with the help from some other people and different churches they were able to get it started less than a year ago.  She was involved with other Christian organizations years ago and this woman used to work for one of these organizations that used to hand out food packages to those in need.  She was fired though because she stole the food packages and sold it to buy alcohol.  This woman did not admit this, H told us about it later.  She and H talked about people they used to know and we eventually left promising to bring them food and some shoes.  H took it to them about 30 minutes later.

All afternoon I kept on thinking about these people.  They were in a terrible situation, I agree with that, but they weren’t the worst off I have ever seen.  Both of them receive a small state pension, and they should be able to pay rent for the wooden hut with it and buy some food and clothes at least.  I have seen a single mother with 2 children live in similar circumstances, and the only income she received was the same small state pension, that this couple earns, but because she is one person she gets half of what they do, and with that she had to pay rent, buy food and clothes for 3 people, and pay school fees.

The husband kept shouting at us, “Why don’t you go buy me some bread, I’m hungry!”  He is expecting others to give things to him.  He doesn’t ask, he demands, and I wasn’t with when H took them their food and the shoes, but I wonder if he even said thank you.  They live about 1 kilometre from a place that will give them food and clothes for free, but they do not make use of it, because they refuse to walk there.  I looked at their feet, and to tell the truth I could not see much wrong with them, except for them being dirty… 

They have an income, their rent should be less than half of their income and they should be able to afford food, but they are hungry, and drunk.  The closest shop that sells alcohol is further away than where we hand out food, and I wonder how they get hold of their alcohol.  It seems alcohol takes preference above food and clothes. 

It may sound like I’m being judgemental here, but I’m not – I’m stating what I saw and heard.  My heart aches for these people that they are in this situation, but the thing that is the worst for me is that it is all so unnecessary.  They don’t have to live like that, but to change it they will have to stop blaming everyone else and start to take action and responsibility for themselves.  We can try to help them, but somewhere they must try to help themselves too.

I think it’s because their situation was so bad, and how much their lives that have been messed up, that made me see how we give power to the devil to do bad things to us.  It’s not so easy to see your own mistakes.  It felt like my eyes were suddenly opened and a lot of things that I have learnt just suddenly came together.  I could see clearly how these people’s sins, their attitude, the words they say, their actions, their drinking, their unforgiveness, their fear, strive in their lives, how all of that gave power to the devil and how they allowed the devil to do a lot of bad stuff to them. 

All they think off, is that God is doing it all to them.  They don’t know God and that He loves them, but that is something I have learnt.  God just wants what is good for us; He wants the best for us.  God loves all of us, so much, that He paid the ultimate price, so that we can come to Him.

John 3:16 (NIV):  “¹⁶ For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV):  “¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

They don’t know that God does not punish us, because Jesus took our punishment upon Himself on the cross.  They don’t know that God is not like a human parent – who is fallible.  Humans punish each other, to teach someone a lesson, but God does not work that way.  God does not even allow bad stuff to happen us, we allow it!  That is what they did – by her own actions this woman lost her job, and probably by their own actions of drinking they also can’t get another. 

I wrote a post a while ago about fear and how that give the devil power to do things to you.  But we give the devil power in other ways too, like I mentioned earlier.  God has given us the 10 commandments for our own good, not just because He wanted to impose rules on us.  All of those commandments are there for a good reason.  So the reason God does not want us to sin is because it is bad for us.  Through sin we allow bad things to happen to us.  It not so that God can punish us when we sin.  

Even other things like forgiveness are there for you and not for the other person.  If you have an unforgiving heart you do yourself damage, most of the time the other person doesn’t even know you are mad at them!  Jealousy and envy make you feel bad, it eats into you and can make you a nasty person no-one wants to be around.  It doesn’t do any harm to the one you are jealous about, unless you act upon that jealousy.  But most of us don’t act upon it – we just let it simmer inside us. 

I still haven’t worked out exactly how it works in my own life.  I don’t have all the answers yet, for instance, I still haven’t figured out how I gave the devil the power to kill our babies and cause my miscarriage, like I said it’s not so easy to see your own faults, but I do realize that it must have been my fault.  I know it’s not God’s fault because God wants to bless me and love me.  I have learnt so much about who God is and what He wants for us, that I know it cannot be Him. 

Actually the opposite of what I’ve told you is also true.  If we live obedient lives it cannot go bad with us. 

Colossians 3:12-15 (NIV):  “¹² Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. ¹³ Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. ¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.   ¹⁵ Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.”

Deuteronomy 28:1-4 (NIV):  “¹ If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.    ² All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God: ³You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.    ⁴ The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock— the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.”

Psalm 91:9-15 (NIV):  “⁹ If you say, “The LORD is my refuge,” and you make the Most High your dwelling, ¹⁰ no harm will overtake you, no disaster will come near your tent.   ¹¹ For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; ¹² they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.  ¹³ You will tread on the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the serpent.  ¹⁴ “Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him; I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.  ¹⁵ He will call on me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble, I will deliver him and honor him.”

Isaiah 54:17 (NIV):  “¹⁷ no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me, declares the LORD.”

Psalm 37:4 (KJV):  “⁴ Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Now, don’t you rather want what the last 4 scripture’s promises?  I know I do, and now since I’ve seen this situation, it’s much easier to resist temptation.  I just think of the bad things I might be allowing, and the blessings I’ll be losing out on…

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The things we say, but shouldn’t:

Lately I have been listening a lot to what people say in general about infertility.  I’m not just talking about the “fertiles” that have opinions on infertility here, but also actual Christians that are infertile.  It even reminded me of things I have said myself, out loud to others, or even in prayers to God.  And I realised that we are being extremely unfair to God.  He is blamed for a lot of things that is not His fault.  Mostly it is because I have learnt so much lately and my eyes have been opened to a lot of lies that we believe.  I want to try to explain to you with examples, so that you will hopefully also get some understanding and revelation about these things.

1.  “I know/believe God can make me pregnant, I just don’t know if it’s His will.”  I was really guilty of this one.  I have said it myself, I might even have blogged it, and I’ve said it many, many times in my prayers.  “God, I believe in miracles, I believe you can do amazing wonderful things beyond my imagination, but I don’t know if it’s your will for me to get pregnant or have children…”  When I did the Divine Healing Technician course Curry Blake explained it very nicely, and was I convicted!  If you have a child (Sorry, not an ideal example for this blog!) and that child wanted something from you, let’s say a toy, or a bike – how would you feel if that child said to you:  “Mom, I know it is in your ability to give it to me (you can afford it), but I don’t know if you want to…”  Parents want to give their children everything they want, because they love them.  If it’s at all possible you would do everything to your ability to help them, it is never a question of whether you want to or not and it is actually very insulting if your child should imply that you don’t want to…  It’s the same with God – we are insulting Him when we say:  “God I know you can give me a baby, but I don’t think/know if you want to…”  We say things like this because we don’t know God, and we don’t know what His will is.

2.  “It was God’s will that I had to be infertile, to teach me something.”  Here is the same mistake again – we don’t know what God’s will is, otherwise we would not say things like this.  Also God does not teach us by letting us “suffer”, or by letting bad things happen to us.  I want to quote Dr Fr.ed Chi.lds from his book:  Are you ready for your healing, pg 194:  “It is inaccurate for anyone who has suffered a debilitating accident, serious disease, or tragedy to say, “God did this to teach me something.”  God never uses sickness, disease, or bodily deformity to teach or guide His people.  God has given His Spirit (Holy Ghost) and His Word to instruct, correct, rebuke and guide His people.  Since all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and who are called according to His purpose, He can certainly use tragedy as an opportunity for His Spirit and Word to teach us.  However, that is much different than God doing bad things to teach us.  God does no evil.  John 16:13 (NIV) is one witness that God uses his Spirit to teach us.  “¹³ But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”  2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NIV) is a witness that God uses His word to teach us.  “¹⁶ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, ¹⁷ so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

3.  “God had to break me/my will, so that I could conform to His will.”  This is once again a statement from someone who does not know God.  God will not break you.  God will not hurt you.  It’s the devil that hurts, and breaks and destroys…  God will not stoop to the same level as the devil to accomplish anything in your life. Here are some scriptures that describes who God is:  1 John 4:8-10, 16 (NIV):  “⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  ⁹ This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.  ¹⁰ This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.  ¹⁶ And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.”  1 John 1:5 (NIV):  “⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”  Psalm 92:15 (NIV):  “¹⁵ proclaiming, The LORD is upright; he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”  From these scriptures we can see that God loves us, so incredibly much that He sacrificed His Son for us, and that he has no wickedness or evil in Him so he cannot hurt us.

So what is God’s will about having children?  One of the first commands God gave Adam and Eve after they sinned in the Garden of Eden was:  Genesis 1:28 (NIV):  “…Be fruitful and increase in number…”
Exodus 23:25-26 (NIV):  “²⁵ Worship the LORD your God, and his blessing will be on your food and water. I will take away sickness from among you, ²⁶ and none will miscarry or be barren in your land. I will give you a full life span.” 
Deuteronomy 7:13-14 (NIV):  “¹³ He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land— your grain, new wine and oil— the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land that he swore to your forefathers to give you.    ¹⁴ You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor any of your livestock without young.”
Deuteronomy 28:1-4 (NIV):  “¹ If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands that I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth.    ² All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God: ³You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.    ⁴ The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock— the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.”
Psalm 113:9 (NIV):  “⁹ He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children.   Praise the LORD”

Psalm 127:3-5 (NIV):  “³Sons are a heritage from the LORD, children a reward from him.    ⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth.    ⁵ Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate”

Psalm 128:3 (NIV):  “³ Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your sons will be like olive shoots round your table.”
1 Timothy 2:15 (NIV):  “¹⁵ But women will be saved through childbearing— if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.”

So do you see that it is God’s Will for us to have children?  Most of these scriptures are also found in the Old Testament so that means it is Old Covenant scriptures – if it was God’s will under the Old Covenant is definitely His will under the New Covenant!

4.  “God works in mysterious ways.”  God does not work in mysterious ways.  We have a Bible to teach us how God works.  We need to read it and learn from it and then nothing will be hidden or mysterious to us anymore.  It says in Matthew 13:11-12 (NIV):  “¹¹ He replied, The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them.  ¹² Whoever has will be given more, and he will have abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him”

5.  “God’s timing is perfect.  We need to wait on God.”  Please read the following on God’s timing and on Waiting on God.  There is not much more I can say about it except that I think it’s more a matter of God waiting on us than us waiting on Him.  He is waiting for us to claim our inheritance, to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and to stop being victims…

6.  “God gives and takes away.”  If you read Mistake #1 from Common misconceptions from the book of Job: you will see how that statement is completely wrong.  It’s a verse that is often misquoted from the book of Job.  Let me quote from that post:  “God adds and multiplies, Satan subtracts and divides.  God is not a taker, but a giver.”  Let me prove it with some more scriptures:  James 1:17 (NIV):  “¹⁷ Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”  Psalm 84:11 (NIV):  “¹¹ For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD bestows favour and honour; no good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”

7.  “I/you am/are being punished for something I’ve/you’ve done wrong.”  What could you have done that is so terrible that you have to be punished with infertility?  And why are other people like drug addicts or prostitutes not punished like that?  Because it is not a punishment.  Look at the blind man Jesus healed in John 9:1-3(NIV):  “¹ As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.    ² His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?    ³ Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.“  Another example:  Luke 1:5-7 (NIV):  ⁵ In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.    ⁶ Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly.    ⁷ But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren; and they were both well on in years.”  I love this last example – It is so apt – even though they were “upright in the sight of God,” Zechariah and Elizabeth were barren, so it was not due to punishment… 

8.  “They say children are a blessing from God.  Then why am I not being blessed?”  I believe it’s not a matter of not being blessed, but rather a matter of your blessings being stolen from you.  In John 10:10 (NIV) it says:  “¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”  I’m sure if you looked at the scriptures above about God’s will for us regarding children you will see that children are definitely a blessing from God, unfortunately we don’t always receive those blessings, but we cannot blame that on God!

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I am mad!

For those of you who are wondering how I am; I am not sad anymore, I am mad!   Wednesday night while I was sleeping, I suddenly woke up and remembered an article I read in the Joy magazine of July 2010 a while ago.  It had to deal with healing and I thought I would look it up in the morning.  The heading of the article is:  “the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy” John 10:10a.  Immediately I was mad.  Why, because I realized that the devil, who is the thief, is trying to kill Shumi and that he killed our babies and that he has stolen a lot from us over the years.  Suddenly I had this feeling of being fed up – fed up with everything and that I don’t want to him to steal, kill or destroy anything from us again…

So in the article it says that this father who lost his son to cancer was given a copy of “The Di.vine Hea.ling Tech.nician” a Jo.hn G La.ke Minis.tries training manual, and I goog.led it.  The first thing I opened up was a free course about “The Di.vine Hea.ling Tech.nician”, and that’s what I’ve been up to since then, listening to the teaching of Cur.ry Bla.ke about healing, but it also covers a lot of other stuff.  Please do yourselves a favour and make some time to listen to it.  Here is the link.  Please, please listen to it, it will change your life!

I must apologize to you all, I only realized after listening to this teaching that I’ve believed a lot of lies and I’ve shared some of those lies to you, as if they were fact.  That’s why some of my posts have been removed, and there is probably some more that will be removed.  The last thing I wanted to be was to be a false prophet, but some lies have come through and I need to rectify that!  Some posts will be edited and put back, but I think some need to be deleted permanently.

If you are wondering what I’m talking about, I’ll give you some examples:  I have always believed the lie that it has not been God’s will for me to have children up to now.  Even though I’ve read that it’s a lie in Jackie Mize’s book “supernatural childbirth”, I still believed there must be some plan or purpose of why we don’t have any children yet, and why I had to have my miscarriage.  That’s not true!   Sickness is never a punishment from God, and as the World Health Organisation has classified infertility as an illness I include that in the term sickness!  Those were the excuses I made because it was the only explanation that made sense to me!   It was a coping mechanism, and I know a lot of other people are also in the same situation, and I don’t want them to be deceived anymore either.

God does not want us to suffer, He does not want us to be infertile, He does not want disease and illness for us, not just the Christians, but for every single human being on earth!  Sickness and disease comes from only one source and that is from the devil.  It is not there to teach us anything or to make us better people, it has one purpose and that is to destroy you…  God has nothing to do with it!  We are living in ignorance about our rights as children of God and because of that ignorance we do not live according to the promises made in the Bible.

Promises like:  Genesis 1:28 (NIV): “…Be fruitful and increase in number…”

Psalm 113:9 (NIV): “⁹ He settles the barren woman in her home as a happy mother of children.”

1 Peter 2:24 (NIV): “²⁴ He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.” (Note: have been healed – It happened 2000 years ago – you are already healed, you must just not let the devil have any hold on you anymore)

Galatians 3:13 (NIV): “¹³ Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

James 4:7 (NIV): “⁷Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Mark 11: 23-24 (NIV): “²³ I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.    ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

2 Timothy 1:7 (NIV): “⁷ For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline.”

Isaiah 54:17 (NIV): “¹⁷ no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me, declares the LORD.”

We have this image of Jesus as someone that is always peaceful and meek, but that is completely the wrong image.  He is at war against the enemy and his forces, and we should be at war too.  We cannot lie down and accept any attack against us; we must stand up for ourselves and fight back!  We cannot allow any more attacks against us and we must go out and fight the battle on behalf of Jesus Christ!  That’s why it’s good to be mad, then you are in a better frame of mind to fight the battle!  Who is with me?  Who is also fed up and mad and willing to join the battle?

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Am I infertile due to sin in my life?

Have you ever wondered whether you are being punished for something and that that is the reason you are infertile?  For many years I thought I was being punished and I wracked my brain to find out what sin could have caused it.  I was constantly begging for forgiveness for my sins, but still no pregnancy, no baby…..

There is nothing wrong with confessing sins, and sometimes bad things can happen as a result of sin.   I am also certainly not without sin either, but what I’m trying to say is that I am very conscious of sin in my life and I try to confess it as soon as I realize I am doing it.  I also realized that we all have sin in our lives, yet not everyone is infertile.  It was just obvious that even though I confess my sins regularly and I try not to sin at all (but I must confess I’m not too successful in that area), I was still not pregnant.  Sin was also not the only aspect in my life that I tried to rectify simultaneously, but I’ll get into the other areas in the other blog entries that I’m planning to write.

John 9:1-3(NIV):  “¹ As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.    ² His disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?    ³ Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus, but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. “

I must have read this before, but one morning while I was doing Bible study I suddenly saw the words: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, said Jesus”.  Suddenly I realized that I might not be infertile due to something I, or one of my forefathers did wrong.  Maybe God also wants to display His Power and Might through my life? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Luke 1:5-7 (NIV):  ⁵ In the time of Herod king of Judea there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah; his wife Elizabeth was also a descendant of Aaron.    ⁶ Both of them were upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly.    ⁷ But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren; and they were both well on in years.

It’s the same with the story of Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth.  It says that they were both “upright in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commandments and regulations blamelessly”.  That means that their infertility was not due to sin in their lives.  It was surely a miracle for Elizabeth to get pregnant at her advanced age, and God had an awesome plan for their child:

Luke 1:14-17 (NIV):  “¹⁴ He will be a joy and delight to you and many will rejoice because of his birth,    ¹⁵ for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He is never to take wine or other fermented drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth.     ¹⁶ Many of the people of Israel will he bring back to the Lord their God.    ¹⁷ And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous— to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

So I guess the lesson I have learnt from this is that:  it might not be due to sin that I haven’t been able to get pregnant yet.    Maybe He also wants to show what a miracle it would be for me to get pregnant, to such an extent that nobody would be able to dispute it.

I must just trust in Him and keep my eyes on Jesus….

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