SGIM

23/01/2022

Discipline and Sacrifice:

Discipline is a difference maker in dreams becoming reality. We see this in a few ways throughout the Bible. We see an example of Jesus beginning His ministry with the end in mind. He was always disciplined and he was ultimately willing to be the ultimate sacrifice. He knew the reward would be worth it all.

We are encouraged in Galatians 6:9 to not grow weary in what is right. In fact, we're shown that eventually there will be a reward for our discipline. So what we learn is that sacrificing something now is difficult and sometimes painful, but there is an incredible reward. There are seasons of discipline and there are seasons of reward.

Discipline, sacrifices, and rewards look different for each of us. Hebrews 12 teaches us three things about discipline that apply to all:

God disciplines those He loves, so we are encouraged to endure hardship as discipline. If you are facing difficulties, discipline or hardship, the good news is that it's a reminder of God's love for you. God loves you so much! It is also a learning opportunity.
Similarly, God has a purpose for discipline: so we can share with Him in Holiness. In the middle of the mess, it's hard to see a way out, let alone a purpose. There is so much purpose! God is strengthening you, teaching you to depend of Him, He is demonstrating His faithfulness. Let the lifter of your head be your defender!
Lastly, God rewards discipline. The reward is knowing Jesus, spending our lives on earth with Him, and that leads into all of eternity enjoying Jesus fully! It was for the reward of joy that was set before Jesus that helped Him to endure the cross. So don't give up! Keep going. It's so worth it.
When I had a dream of graduating college debt-free, it took a lot of discipline and sacrifice. As an extrovert and people person, I recognize how much fun living on campus is. Powerful friendships and life-long relationships are made in college. I also know what it is to make sacrifices to pursue my dreams. Along the way, there are sacrifices you need to make and either way there’s a price to pay. For me, I chose a little less social life during my college years and lived at home to save money. I believe this was worth the reward of graduating debt-free and being able to pursue dreams.

Discipline may call you to a season of sacrifice in your life. Remember today that the reward from God is so incredibly worth it!

Prayer: Father, I embrace the process of discipline in my life. I am willing to sacrifice anything and everything you ask of me. Here I am, offering my availability to you. Thank you for the great lengths to which you go to show your love for me! I am so blessed to be called your child!

20/08/2021

Do I Understand How Big God Is?

God always wants more for us than we want for ourselves.

Jesus said we would do greater things than He did. If we believe Jesus is who He says He is, and we take Him at His word, why shouldn’t we expect to see the things that happened in Scripture happen in our time? Why wouldn’t we believe God can start and grow a movement like the church the same way He did in the book of Acts? What’s stopping us from asking God to transform entire communities? Why can’t we believe God will perform modern day miracles?

Most of the time, our biggest obstacle is us. Maybe we’ve stopped dreaming. Or, maybe we’re refusing to share our dreams out loud because we fear that God’s reputation might be at stake. God’s reputation is fine. It’s our reputation as leaders that we fear taking a hit. The dreams in our hearts were planted by God who loves us!

God is so much bigger than our greatest fears or obstacles! It’s good to celebrate the past, but that should never stop us from anticipating the future.

The day we stop following the dreams God has put in us is the day we allow ourselves to go into cruise control. When our biggest desire starts to shift from seeing God do great things to making everyone as comfortable as possible, we know we’re losing sight of how big God is.

Fight the urge to maintain the status quo. Instead, do everything possible to advance the cause God placed in your heart. Stay focused on what could be rather than what has been.

What's Next:

What is one impossible thing you want to see God do in your ministry, your job, or your community?

Are you celebrating the past more than you are anticipating the future?
What’s one decision you need to make to advance your cause and stay focused on the future?

07/07/2020

DON’T SAY “YES” IF HE SAYS “NO”

God has endless mercy for us if we’ve chosen the wrong way in spite of His warning, and He can still get us back on track when we turn to Him. But isn’t life easier when we listen and obey Him the first time? Getting out of His will is always painful!

I knew one woman who really wanted a horse, but her husband didn’t. He knew about the work and expense involved. They didn’t have a lot of extra money at that time, and they also weren’t home a lot.

But someone offered to give her a horse, and she took it, in spite of a nagging in her spirit that she shouldn’t, and in spite of her husband’s veto. She didn’t ask the Lord about it either – because she knew He’d say no!

Well, it turned out badly. Daily feeding and exercising the horse became a huge burden with their busy schedule, and it ended up needing a lot of veterinary care, so she missed a lot of work staying home to meet the vet and care for the horse. That put pressure on her at her job. And the whole thing put terrible financial pressure on them, not to mention her relationship with her husband. She had dishonored him by overriding his wishes, and that stood between them as a bone of contention.

What might seem like a blessing can turn out to be a curse if we decide to do something God says no to. Don’t say “yes” if He says “no”! That’s just called disobedience, plain and simple. Jesus said it this way: “Anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand” (Matthew 7:26 NLT). Let’s determine to listen to God and obey Him.

So those two ways are how to get out of the will of God – disobedient decisions we ourselves make, on purpose, in direct opposition to the Lord’s leading. Everything else is just us seeking Him, listening for His voice, endeavoring to hear and obey Him, and walking it out. God can do anything with a heart that says, “Father, I want to obey You. Thank you for leading and guiding me.”

Don’t be so afraid of making a mistake that you don’t make any kind of decision at all. He’s got your back – you can trust Him to lead you when you earnestly seek His will.

Was this plan helpful to you? It was adapted from my book “How to Make the Right Decision Every Time: 10 Keys For Finding God’s Direction.”

18/06/2020

As One Thinks...
Proverbs 23:7 says, “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (NLV). In other words, what we think will be evident in our outward attitudes and actions. This means that our thoughts are nothing to take for granted. Our perspectives and thoughts hold the power to determine our attitudes and also our tomorrows. Fortunately, we get to choose what our tomorrows look like, one thought and one day at a time. In the words of Norman Vincent Peale, a popular minister and author, “Change your thoughts, and you change your world.”

True joy and a positive attitude come from the choice to change your thoughts, not from a problem-free life. So, sweet friend, let today be the first day of your new optimistic life. Let it be the first day of a fresh season of life where you begin living a life of optimism, seeing the glass as half full instead of half empty.

You are not alone in this battle. We can either give up or God-up, and when we God-up, He always shows up. As we sojourn through this book, we’ll be unpacking three God-filled strategies that we need to put into practice in our daily lives if we want to transform our thoughts, feelings, and lifestyles:

1) Notice negative thoughts.
2) Reject negative thoughts.
3) Replace negative thoughts.

Scripture reinforces the importance of these three steps: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor. 10:5). If you’re like me, you’ve always known this instruction was important but never really understood how to follow through. How do we take our thoughts captive and then change our lives? Well, we’ll be exploring just that as we move forward in this journey toward optimism and joy.

As you read, I pray that God will open the door of your heart and help you begin to let your faith be in control of your mind so you can take back your thoughts. If you are ready to be rescued, God is ready to pull you out of the muck of negativity and discouragement. My hope is that when you get to the last page of this book, you will find yourself on the shores of a breathtaking place you didn’t know existed—a beautiful land where a positive mind and an optimistic heart thrive.

05/06/2020

Ha se kganye!!!

You are hereby notified that there won't be services taking place at church till further notice. You are requested to still continue praying at the prayer times stated in the letter below and read the scriptures provided until you are given another direction concerning church services. We love you all and you are always in our prayers. Shalom!🙏

Kind Regards
Pastoral Office

30/04/2020

Proclaim the Excellencies of God

The purpose of our work is no different than the purpose of our lives, namely to glorify God in everything we do (1 Corinthians 10:31). “Glorify” is a word we throw around so much that it can become difficult to define. As John Piper says, to glorify God simply means to “reflect his greatness” or reveal his character to others.

So, if the purpose of our work is to reveal the Lord’s character to the world, what exactly are his characteristics? The Bible describes God in many ways, but it is his character of creative excellence that is perhaps most visible to us. You can’t stare out at the Grand Canyon and not marvel at the masterful work of God. You can’t go to a zoo without appreciating the creative supremacy of the Creator. And you can’t take a baby by its hand and not stare in wonder at the excellence it takes to make millions of cells form together to create life. As we saw in yesterday’s passage, God’s character of excellence also shone through in Jesus’s life on earth, with his contemporaries marveling that “he had done everything well.” We worship the preeminent God. A perfect God. “Excellent” is far too trite a word to describe the God of the universe. But it is the closest we as mere mortals can hope to understand and attain.

As God’s children, we are called to be image bearers of our exceptional Father. In Ephesians 5:1, Paul instructs the Church “as beloved children” to “be imitators of God.” Commenting on this passage, theologian Andreas Köstenberger says, “How should we respond to God’s excellence? In short, we should seek to imitate and emulate it...As God’s redeemed children, we are to strive to be like God. This, it appears, includes striving for excellence.” John Piper puts it this way: “God created me—and you—to live with a single, all-embracing, all-transforming passion—namely, a passion to glorify God by enjoying and displaying his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.”

In other words, we glorify God when we imitate his character of excellence and in doing so “proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Peter 2:9). We live surrounded by darkness in a world that is desperate for something excellent and true. There is perhaps no more influential “sphere of life” for us to shine the light of Christ than in our chosen work. When we work with excellence, we have the great privilege of glorifying God and proclaiming his excellencies to the world around us. Go forth and do your work with excellence today!

30/04/2020

Excellence in All Things

One of my favorite descriptions of Jesus comes from Mark 7:37 where it says “People were overwhelmed with amazement. ‘He [Jesus] has done everything well.’” As followers of Christ, this passage should give us great pause. As those seeking to imitate Jesus in every way imaginable, can we say we are doing everything well? Can we say we are doing everything with excellence at work and at home?

The fact is that all of us have areas of our lives where we are falling short of Jesus’s excellent standard. I think this is truer today than ever before. Why? Because now more than ever, we believe the lies that we have to do it all, be it all, and have it all. We are overcommitted, overwhelmed, and overstressed, making a millimeter of progress in a million directions because we fail to discern the essential from the nonessential in our work and in our homes. This is a recipe for mediocrity, not excellence, and I would argue the problem is epidemic in the Church today.

Why should we care? Because anything less than excellence falls short of the standard we Christians have been called to. In 1 Corinthians 10:31, Paul writes, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” The late great pastor Dr. James Kennedy used to paraphrase this passage, calling his congregation to “excellence in all things and all things to God’s glory.” That is the standard we are called to.

There are many good reasons to pursue excellence in all things, especially in our chosen work. Excellence in our vocations advances our careers, makes us winsome to the world, grants us influence, and can lead to opportunities to share the gospel. But none of these good things should be the primary motivators for us as we pursue excellence in our work and the other roles God has called us to fulfill in our lives. We pursue excellence for a much more fundamental purpose—because excellence is how we best reflect the character of Christ and love and serve our neighbors as ourselves. In other words, excellence is our most everyday form of ministry. As we will see over the next two days, it is through the ministry of excellence that we glorify God and love others well through our work.

20/03/2020

22/12/2019

Amen

22/12/2019

Don't miss this service

2019-Year of manifestation of the sons of God-history shall repeat itself!

You are all invited to this life changing all night service on the 31st of this month. You will not leave the same way you came in. You are delivered!

!

21/09/2019

Supernatural Week.
Ha se kganye

24/08/2019

Why should we worship God?

Isn’t it a comfort to worship a God we cannot exaggerate? —Francis Chan

The reason we worship God is because He is worthy of it. He is worthy of our worship, every single second of every single day. Everything that has breath was created to worship God.

On any given day, we often direct our worship toward something or someone that did nothing to deserve it. Only God is worthy to receive glory, honor and power, for He is the Creator of the Universe (Revelation 4). We should hold God in such high regard that we adore and cherish Him above all and before all. But in order for us to truly be able to worship God, we must know Him, or we must at least begin the lifelong quest of doing so. God’s Word, the Bible, is full of information about the God we serve. The Old Testament chapters in Psalms are infused with truths about Him, His character, and His ways. Here is just a glimpse into who He is according to many of them:

He is our Father, our God, our Rock, and our Savior. He is our Sun and our Shield. He is mighty, and established forever like the moon. He founded the world, He created the north and the south, and He rules over the surging seas. Our God is robed in majesty and armed with strength, and He is exalted over all nations. He fashioned the ear and formed the eye, and He determines the number of stars and calls them each by name. He does not treat us as our sins deserve, nor does He repay us according to our iniquities. He has compassion, He will not slumber, and He is big “G” God, greater than all little, so-called “gods.”

That is who our God is, and He is forever worthy of our reverence, adoration and devotion. His character is profound. His actions are remarkable. His sovereignty over the universe is unfathomable.

As Christ followers, let’s dedicate our lives to worshiping the only One who is worthy of it. For the next five days, we’ll focus on five ways we can worship God:

We worship through music.
We worship by adoring Him.
We worship by serving His people.
We worship by trusting His heart.
We worship by surrendering our will to Him.
This list is not exhaustive; it’s just a springboard to help teach us to live a life of worship.

Reflect

Read through Psalm 98 and declare it to your God as you do.
List three character traits of God from Psalm 98 (or any other Psalm), and offer your worship to Him.
Write down any revelation that God speaks to you through today's Bible reading or devotional.