Msindisi Monthly September 2009

P.O BOX 1481,
VRYHEID 3100,
KWAZULU NATAL
SOUTH AFRICA
+27 (0) 728311008
+27 (0) 723843786

msindisi@gmail.com
salv.di@gmail.com
http://morielkzn.googlepages.com
http://msindisi.googlepages.com

Well Hlobo(summer) has arrived here. I can see that our solar shower will be used for cooling off once the temps start to get really high.

Our hut feels more and more like home now. Salvi has put up a secure clothes line for Di. Once we have secured a section of the garden from cows and chickens it will be great to start the planting for our veggie garden. We have sown a small piece of lawn in front of our home to help keep the mud down to a minimum for when the rains come and have used the wonderful supply of rocks around us to make paths and walk areas. The mud is incredible here, I can see why they used it for there huts. It is a clay soil that builds on itself. Our shoes end up being platforms like something out of the 70’s. It is near impossible to try and get it off once it has dried. Hence the paths and grass!!!!!

Early august we were given the opportunity to travel to Eshowe to listen to Chris Scott. The bible study that we go to on a Wednesday night in Vryheid offered to take us so after Jacques cooked us a wonderful breakfast on the Braai we all headed off. This was a wonderful time for us to meet other believers in the area and for Phumulani to get outside teaching and encouragement. The drive there was amazing as we drove through all the sugar cane plantations.

Our home had its first visitors for a meal. We have met a lovely family who we are getting to know. Jonny, the Dad speaks Zulu very well and sells milk and chickens to the community. His run goes past our place so we get our fresh milk from him. We had met Kim, his wife, earlier in the year when we first arrived in KwaZulu. She was running craft classes from the auction yard. They brought two of their three boys so between us all there were 7 people for dinner. It was a wonderful night of sharing in stories, laughter and God’s word. Kim arranged for us to share with a women’s prayer group in Louwsburg. This was a time of sharing our testimonies and stressing the need to study the word as more and more false teaching is being bought into the church. After sharing we were asked if we could run a bible study with 2 ladies and there husbands and another young lady wanted to attend. Tuesday night was decided to be the best night. We will take turns having the studies in each of our homes. We started last Tuesday and Salvi shared psalm 1 and about the importance of abiding in the word and having the word abide in us. Phumulani came with us and was made to feel welcome. We are praying that the group will continue to seek the truth of the word and continue meeting together. We truly feel that the Lord has brought us across Jonny and Kim’s path for the purpose of encouraging them to seek truth and they also feel the same way. Kim wants to burn her deliverance stuff that she has and that is a wonderful start. The young girl asked if we could just stick with the word in the meetings. But that meeting saw Jonny having to contend with grass fires, which meant Kim turned up much later and the girl had some emergency to deal with.

We visited the local children’s home in Vryheid one Wednesday called ‘Inkululeko’ as orphans are very special to God’s heart. They have been running since 2002 and have 3 homes in the community which are very well organised. We visited each of the homes and it was lovely to meet all the kids.(To Pam and the Aussie knitters we were able to give some of your jumpers to the new babies.Many thanks.)

Salvi had a hard work after sharing about “the trials of our faith” at the wed night group in Vryheid. That week he had to live it, as everything seemed to go wrong that he endeavoured to do. It was almost funny to watch but not so funny when it’s happening to you. However the Lord was faithful and he came to peace about the whole situation. He continues to faithfully go out and preach the word, run the bible studies and teach through the book of James on a Sunday and continue in his theological studies with KEDS. He is thankful to a couple of people in supporting him in these studies through donation of books and other ways. He is just finishing his third module of his certificate course. He has been given four module’s exemption which means he only has three more modules to do, plus a bigger module on Biblical Hebrew and he will have completed his certificate level.

The Saturday Bible study had 2 extras this week. Salvi has started a series on the first principles of Hebrews 6: 1 – 2. We continue to pray that people will get into the Word so they will not be so easily led into false teaching. One of the ladies that are studying with us (we actually meet in her home) is called Lindiwe. She has always had a heart to learn about God and attended the ladies bible study that Sophie did with Celani. But she always struggled with turning away from ancestral spirits. She goes to a local church but the pastor there has taught them teachings that resembled the Word of faith teaching. But having a desire to study the word, she asked us to start a study with her. Celani testified on Sunday that Lindiwe was going up to a Kraal to attend a ceremony to please the ancestral spirits. She decided to pop into Celani’s place to ask whether it was ok to do that. Celani shared that it is important that people know what you believe and that you show them that you don’t go with those practices. As a result of the conversation Lindiwe went back home and didn’t bother with the ceremony. Praise God. Please pray for her. The ancestral spirits are such a strong hold in these communities and it is a huge them to pull away. Her husband is a pastor in the Zionist church and though he is a nice and dutiful guy he may be angry about her refusal to go to the ceremony.

There have been a lot of grass fires over the month, as farmers want the new grass to come through for feed. Phumulani’s cows have been found miles away from home as they have wondered off to look for food. It always speaks to me of the Lord and how he will burn away that which isn’t of Him so His new growth can come through in our lives. And like the cows we should be prepared to walk or travel long distances so that we get the feeding we need in Gods word. For those who have tried to call Salvi and failed to get through, he has had huge problems with his phone and for some reason it does not pick up any signal. Gary, who is a part of the Coastal Assemblies Vryheid Fellowship, has lent Salvi his phone and so you should now be able to get through. Let us continue to serve the Lord wherever God has placed us, rejoicing and giving thanks in all circumstances. Thank you for your emails, phone calls of encouragement and your prayers and support.

God bless
Salvi and Di

The Faith Of Abraham

Abraham was nothing when God picked him out. He was not naturally great. It was God who blessed him and multiplied him. He had nothing to boast of before God. But on the contrary Paul tells us in Romans 4: 3 that Abraham’s righteousness was credited to him because of his faith in God. Paul takes this from Genesis 15: 6. But Acts 7: 2 (ff) tells us that God called Abraham when he was living in Ur of the Chaldees, before he lived in Haran. He told Abraham to leave his country and his relatives and to go to the land that God would show him. Abraham obeyed, but he obeyed partially. He left his country but not his relatives. He went with his father’s household to Haran. It was when his father died that God called him again in Genesis 12: 1 – 3 and told him to leave his country, his father’s household and his relatives and to go to the land that God would show him. Abraham obeyed but again he obeyed partially. Although he left Haran (probably named after his late brother), and although he left his father’s household, he still took one of his relatives with him; his nephew Lot. It was not until Lot and Lot’s servants had departed from Abraham to settle in Sodom, and it was not until after Abraham had delivered Sodom and Gomorrah that God made the covenant with Abraham that we call the ‘Abrahamic Covenant’. It shows us the patience of the Lord! How often are we like Abraham? But God understands. He takes us at the point that we are at and then He leads us on. But Abram had either discounted or had spiritualized the promise that God made in Genesis 12, where God said He would make Abram into a great nation. Abram was going to fulfill it himself in his own cleverness because he had appointed Eliezer, his servant, as his heir. God contradicted him and said that one from Abram’s own body would be born and he shall be heir. And then the scripture says in verse 6 “Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

This is the verse that Paul quotes from and this verse teaches us a handful of things about Abraham’s faith.

Firstly it tells us that Abraham’s faith was informed. It was informed and it was informed by God’s word. It was not Abraham’s imagination. He did not sit around doing mantras, or thinking about what he would like to bring into being. He did not visualize it or confess it. God spoke it and Abraham believed it.

Secondly, and this is linked to the first point. Abraham’s faith was objective, i.e. it was placed in something. He did not believe in the power of his own faith. He did not have faith in his own faith. He had faith in something far greater than himself that was powerful enough to bring the promise to pass.

Thirdly, Abraham’s faith was relational. It was placed in a person, namely God. It was not placed in a force or in a law. God is a person and as such He has feelings, intellect and a will. Thus God can make decisions. Therefore we cannot treat Him in a way that thinks that if we press the right buttons then we can get the right results. As Francis Schaeffer wrote in his excellent book, ‘True Spirituality’, “We can never deal with God in a mechanical sense, and we shouldn’t deal with him on a merely legal basis, though there are proper legal relationships. Our relationship with God after we become a Christian must always be centrally a person-to-person relationship.”

The minute we think we can snap our fingers at Him, then we dishonour our Creator and Lord and therefore we derive our fourth point.

Fourthly, faith is subservient to God. It accepts whatever He says and willingly submits itself to the will of God. Abraham had to lay aside his own ideas concerning Eliezer being heir. He had to lay aside his own will and fully accept what God said without manipulating it to serve his own agenda.

Fifthly, Abraham’s faith was effectual. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Simply put, Abraham’s faith resulted in righteousness being credited to him.

Sixthly, Abraham’s faith faced up to reality. He had been given the promises of God in his calling but he still had to face the fact that he did not have a son and God had to do something about that if the promises were to come to pass. He asked God what He would give him since he had no son and one born in his house would be heir, the servant Eliezer. He did not reject fact that there was no son as negative confession but knew that faith had to deal with the realities of life BUT from the knowledge of a personal and powerful God.