2016: Reflections & Resolutions

Helloo there!

I hope you had a lovely celebration and are super duper excited for 2017! I am slowly loading my excitement bar and simultaneously downloading my thankfulness bar 😊.

God was good to me, my family and friends in 2016 in so many ways. He has provided us with family unity and laughter, great friends, good health, finances, jobs... you name it! He did it! And I am grateful for these two highlights:  I GOT ENGAGED! and am FINISHING MY MASTER'S DEGREE (bye bye university! hehehehe) and also for my FRIENDS! Mehn, I love my friends especially my sister! They have taught me so much about life! They have built me up in so many ways and encouraged me when I was low. God has used them to mold and shape me. So much to be grateful for! God is good, all the time!!!

 As good as 2016 was to my family, it wasn't all cherries and roses mainly but not only, because my sweet Mbuya (grandmother) passed away. We didn't see her death coming, it happened so fast but still we are thankful for her life. She was an amazing mother and grandmother who is dearly missed! I thank God that my parents were settled in Zambia when it happened. He moved them from Suriname only two years ago. I thank Him because we got to spend time with her and to enjoy her. She was an inspirational believer, a role model to me and others and I believe she is enjoying herself in heaven right now!

Although we are already in 2017, I encourage and challenge you to still take some time aside to reflect on 2016 month by month if you haven't, both the good and bad events and to be grateful. A friend of my recently told me something very profound, "In the night sky, the stars shine and glisten, radiating like diamonds in the sky. There are treasures in the night. Dark times are not to be feared, they have their treasures too."

With the ending of one year and the beginning of another comes: RESOLUTIONS! We all want to be or do better in some area or other in our lives.  And that's good. It's good to want change for the better. I usually write up a list of things I want to progress in spiritually, physically, emotionally, academically ... and review it now and then. I actually need to work on taking more time to review. Nevertheless, one very important thing I learned last year is that lasting change starts and continues with the Spirit. You can't do it without Him. If you want to grow in some area, or if you are not sure of which areas you need to grow in; ask God and He will show you and help you mature in it. Start, continue and end with Him. When you fail, don't beat yourself down, get up and try again. Never ever give up!

 Goodbye 2016. Hello 2017!

Relationship Series Part 3: Pursuit

I am so sorry for the late post, the last weeks sINCE my last post have been hectic. The first semester will be ending soon and assignments keep coming 😢 BUT anywhooo, better late than never they say 😉

“When was the last time you enjoyed meaningful time alone with God, time so good that you didn’t want to leave? -Francis Chan

If I was asked this question a month ago, my answer would have been a sad but true “a long while back”. Today, I can answer with that it was with something like last week, or yesterday and sometimes this morning. I am not yet at that point where I can say that every day I find it hard to leave God’s presence but I hope to be there one day. I am seeking, I am pursuing God. I will continue to do this for the rest of my life. My hope is that I will pursue Him every day and that He’ll draw me deeper into Himself. I hope to continue to cultivate intimacy with God every day for the rest of my life. That I'll continue to grow.


I don't know where you are in your journey of faith maybe you relate more to my past, or present or future relationship with God. Whichever it may be, I want you to know this: you are not alone.

1. God is with you every step of the way
2. Other believers are in a similar situation/season/phase
3. We have people physically and spiritually cheering us on (Heb. 12)

So with that being said, don't give up, don't loss focus; He who started a good work in you will complete it. He is faithful.

Blessings x

Blessings

Relationship Series Part 2: Unsatisfied

I am not satisfied.

I am not satisfied with the level of intimacy between God and I. 

I came to realize this about a month ago, and although I am in a better situation than I was then, at the moment I am still unsatisfied. My number one new year’s resolution was “more Jesus, less of everything”, how did I deviate from such a beautiful desire? How did I end up in this state of lacking intimacy? 

I wish the answer to such a question was simple. But alas, it isn’t. However, despite the complexity of it all, I realized that the main reason was that I had not really sought God. I had not pursued Him. Yes, I was active in church, I had my daily quiet morning etc. I did all this but missed God. I honestly don’t know exactly how someone can miss God but I did. And I think it’s because I was too busy with school, work, university, church and an LDR. So I concentrated on getting stuff done and not really on Who I was doing it for or why I was doing it. I was going through the motions, trying to keep up with things without having to sacrifice something. But the truth is, I did sacrifice something and that was my intimacy with God. I also resorted to know about God from others and not from Him. I had spent most of the year sitting at His feet but not really listening to Him. I listened to myself or to other resources: friends, books, blog posts, sermons…you name it but I shut my ears to only voice that is worth listening to and that is His. 

What has happened has happened. I lost those opportunities to cultivate intimacy with God. But there is still hope, now I know that sacrifices have to be made and I’ll need to say “no” to certain things and say “yes” to some amazing time with God. Cultivating intimacy with God requires time, it’s something we need to fight to maintain, it doesn’t always come easily but it sure is worth it. The Bible says God wants to be known by us: He says we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart. And it also says that what we sow we shall reap. If we seek Him, we shall find Him and if we sow in some good quiet time alone with God, we will reap a harvest of intimacy and transformation.

At the moment, I am fighting.

 Some days I win, some days I lose. I long for the days when I’ll win continuously. I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, and I don’t want to give up knowing what I know-that the Lord is good indeed. My walk with God isn’t meant to be some mediocre journey. The Bible is full of people, like David and Moses, who had such intimate relationships with God, and man, weren’t their lives adventurous! You and I can have that too! And don’t forget, there is no magic formula to cultivating intimacy, but it does require that you open your heart to Him. Share your dreams, hopes, fears, worries…share EVERYTHING and LISTEN to Him speak. And if the going gets tough, don’t hesitate to ask for His help.

Blessings 💖

😊Check out this beautiful song:Kari Jobe-The More I Seek You

😊 Verses mentioned in text: Jer. 29:13, Gal. 6:7-10, 2Cor. 9:6

→ There is no magic formula for hearing from God. There's no checklist that will guarantee a message from the Lord. Still we can cultivate a relationship with God that creates room for dialogue. When we know someone well, our conversations move to greater depth and intimacy as we share our joys and fears with them... Just as we deepen our relationships with others theough spending time together and dialoguing about things that are important to us, so we can get to know God better by spending focused time with Him.

 - Melissa Spoelstra

Relationship Series Part 1: Eggshell

I suppose I can say that I grew up in church. I remember going as a kid and I continued to as I grew older. I was surrounded by Christianity not only in church but in school too. So, what I knew about God was mainly from Sunday school, youth group and school. My knowledge and understanding of God developed more in Suriname and Belgium between my late teens and early twenties. In this time, I began to understand God and the Bible more. God was no longer this far-off person and the Bible was no longer “that-book-that-I-couldn’t-understand”.

However, despite this progression, my life was not completely surrendered to Him. Sunday belonged for God and the rest of the week belonged to me. There was a disconnection between the girl who sat in church and the girl who swore and went clubbing until the wee hours of Sunday morning. I thought I could enjoy the best of both worlds but that was a lie from the very pit of hell. I blended in with other church folk externally but was empty on the inside, like an egg shell without it’s crucial internal components. Although I could fool others, I could not fool God. Christ was not the centre of my life.

It’s only by God’s wonderful mercy that I got out of that pit. He placed people in my path that planted seeds of truth that led to my liberty. 

I wrote this post to remind and warn that being a church-goer or in an open relationship with God isn’t real Christianity. The devil wants us to believe that it is okay to love both world and God; that we don’t need to choose one or the other. But that is such a big fat LIE! You can’t have the best of both worlds because you’ll love one and hate the other (Matthew 6:24), and loving the world is enmity with God (James 4:4). Choices have to be made, all or nothing choices. God wants all of us not just some of us. We are to love Him with everything that we are: all your heart, all your mind, all your strength and all your soul. 

So maybe you were once like me, and well I thank God that He got us out of that pit! Maybe you are in that pit now, if so, don’t lose hope! He got me out, He surely can do it for you too. All you need to do respond to His call for surrender and daily pick up your cross and follow Him. It doesn’t mean you won’t fall, you will but you’ll get up each time (Proverbs 24:16). 

Blessings

Relationship Series Coming Soon!

Hi there!

I am doing a relationship series!!! 🙌🙌🙌🙌

 In these posts I'll be focusing on the relationship statuses I have gone through with God. I have been wanting to write these for a while and was encouraged by a post by a friend, Jessica Starks! Please check out her post here what's your relationship status?. It is a great way to get you thinking as you wait for my posts. I hope and pray that the posts will help your reflect on your own journey: where you have been, where you are and where you want it to be in the future! The series consists of three posts each dealing with the above mentioned themes: past, present and future.

Hope to see you next week, when the first post is published!

Blessings ❤❤❤