Msindsi Monthly – April 2009

NUMBER: 57 APRIL 2009

PO Box 1481,
Vryheid 3100,
KwaZulu Natal,
SOUTH AFRICA.
TEL: +27 (0) 72 831 1008
EMAIL: msindisi@gmail.com, salv.di@gmail.com
MORIEL KWAZULU WEBSITE http://morielkzn.googlepages.com
PERSONAL WEBSITE: http://msindisi.googlepages.com

Acts 8:3-31 “Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ And he said, ‘Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?’ And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.”

Well the month has finally arrived when we are heading off to start the new work in KwaZulu Natal. Salvi has been at Ebyown for the last three years and Di for the last 2. It has been a strange feeling moving out of the plot and into Allen and Sue’s place. Salvi has stayed here twice. First when Dave and Lyn lived here and then now with the Wells. And the experience really goes to show that it is not the bricks and mortar that shapes a home’s identity but the people that live within it. We are using this time to visit friends and say goodbye before we head off into the field. It has been quite relaxing the last few days and we thank God for it. We are also grateful for the people whom God has used to bless us in many different ways and encourage us to press into the Lord and press forward in the work that He has for us to do. Thank you for your support in letters and prayers and your involvement in our lives.

Our friends Aaron and Erin got married in the UK and we have seen the wedding video and they are much in our thoughts. We pray that God will richly bless their lives together as they follow Him and obey Him. It was such a blessing to see how happy they were together on that day.

Today proved to be the last day that we attended Aletheia and we were released with the laying on of hands and prayer. Zak was also inaugurated as Pastor and Dave officially stepped down. Dave preached a wonderful message about new beginnings and how we need to be guided by the Spirit and not by the flesh. What is of the flesh will fail and that is why prayer is so needful. We have been encouraged by the words and challenges of a few people and the message that comes through loudly is to be obedient with what God has given us to do now. And that is all we can do. For Salvi, this has brought back memories of times before the mission field, wondering what God’s will is and realizing that God hasn’t called us to be obedient to a will that He hasn’t yet revealed to us but only to what He has already shown us. And if God’s will in a particular ministry has not been revealed to us yet, we have the revelation of the Word of God and we must be faithful to that vision. God doesn’t primarily want us to know about Him (though that is important) but He wants us to walk with Him day by day.

We have had the pleasure of being surrogate parents for a week. While the Royles were at the wedding we looked after their kids. They truly were a blessing to us and provided us with a lovely goodbye to Ebyown through their obedience and helpfulness to us. It was a pleasure having Lina and Marijke’s company and it was good to work as a team with them; they did school with the children in the day and Marijke also did the children’s medicines.

Saying goodbye to people is always hard. There were a few tears at Vita Nova, and we have committed to visiting them whenever we visit Gauteng again. The same is true for the people on the settlement. In fact we are so glad that we caught up with Winnie (mother of a couple of the girls who come to church) because it is highly possible that when we next visit they might have moved to Heidelberg. Her phone had broken down so it was good to make sure she had our phone numbers. We will see Lorraine again before we go but it was with sadness that we had to say goodbye to her Gogo. We have a couple of more Bible studies with Morne and Vicky before we go and it will also be sad to say goodbye there. Salvi will not have finished his series on first principles but neither will Morne have finished Revelation. We also said goodbye to Salvi’s Hebrew class. One of Salvi’s class members, Tony, invited us to visit his church group in Johannesburg “Truth Ministries”. Salvi led the worship and the pastor there preached a cracking message on pressing into the Lord and not leaving the Lord.

Next week we visit Elijah Ministries and look forward to hearing the message and catching up with friends. One of the congregants has done short-term missions with us in KwaZulu twice and she has given Sunday School material for us to take with us. In June we are looking forward to the visit of Caleb Massey and friends for a short term mission trip to the church and mission work there. Salvi used to work alongside Caleb and his wife in KwaZulu. It will be good to have him in KwaZulu again for a couple of weeks as we never officially laid hands on Phumulani to set Him apart to the Lord for the pastoral ministry of the flock there. As Caleb invested most of the discipleship into Phumulani’s walk and ministry it seems only right that Caleb should be there to do it. Around the same time Jacob Prasch should be in South Africa and we are hoping that we can take a couple of days to visit Gauteng if our hut has been finished by then. It is important that we start building the hut once we get there so that we can pick up whatever materials the local builder will need; and also the builder if needs be.

At the end of June, we also hope that Salvi’s good friend Joe can visit us in KwaZulu as he is visiting South Africa with his fiancée. When we move down to KwaZulu we will have a couple of friends from Randburg meeting us there and helping us transport building materials. Riaan has much experience in the building trade and will be able to advise us on a few things as we seek to get our hut built. They used to live around the area and have a love for the place which is a lovely experience to share with them. This is the first lot of short term missionaries that will visit us and we hope that God will lead more in the future as we increase the capacity to house them.

Next Sunday, we will also be celebrating a Passover meal here at Allen and Sue’s. This will be from a messianic perspective out of liberty and not compulsion. We believe that there is much benefit in Jewish feasts and Torah observance (as biblically prescribed) even though these things are not necessary for salvation and not compulsory. Mosaic Law and the Law of Christ is similar to the relationship of good friendship or engagement to marriage. Friendship, or engagement, is not the same as marriage or as intimate as marriage but it retains a value in and of itself apart from marriage. So Mosaic Law and the covenants do not bring salvation or sanctify us but, for the Jew, Paul says that there is still much benefit in it because it signifies a relationship that God had with the Jewish nation. And in a feast like the Passover we see Christ foreshadowed. The Passover is a great teaching tool because it is a multisensory occasion. We not only hear about the deliverance of God’s people but we literally taste the bitterness of it. We see the candle light and the red wine flicked onto the table cloth symbolizing the plagues and leaving a small stain on the cloth. We see that the bread that is broken is buried and is later redeemed as the afikomen. Thus we realize that the bread that Jesus used to symbolize His body not only spoke of His death (though that is primarily what it speaks of but also of His resurrection. We believe that this celebration will be a joyous time and a blessed one as we remember Jesus.

Please remember you can visit our website to see what we will be doing and where we are going. http://morielkzn.googlepages.com . We welcome any feedback and will try our best to answer any question.

While in KwaZulu, we will only have internet access once a week when we travel into Vryheid. There is cell phone coverage where we are but sometimes this can come and go. If you text and our reply to you is slow this may be the reason so please just try again.

May God bless you and may His peace be with you as you follow Him.

Salvi and Di

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Devotional 8

TEXT: Ephesians 1:18-19a

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe.”

I was once pastored by someone who was a terrorist before he got saved in jail. While in jail God led him to forgive someone that punched his son and broke his kid’s nose. After forgiving the guy God gave my pastor a revelation and that revelation was that my pastor had really become a Christian. I have a friend who was speaking to someone about the return of Christ, when He will come with His holy ones, and God told him, “You will be there.”

These stories may not seem profound. The revelations from God in both of these stories do not seem a big deal. To my pastor we may say, “Of course you were saved, the Scripture says that if you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth you will be saved, of course you are a Christian!” To my friend we may say, “Of course you will be with Jesus, the Scripture says we will rule and reign with Him, of course you will be there!” But these two people claimed that God showed them these things specifically. But these are things that we can all know simply by reading the Word.

Of course we know these things, but that isn’t the point. The point is that God revealed it to them. Revelation from God will never contradict God’s Word. Instead it will increase our understanding of it; not only increase our understanding of it but also our appreciation and wonder of it. Sometimes the wonder of truth can be lost in the mental possession of it as a fact. The Bible contains lots of information about both God and us in it and it is necessary to know and understand these things. People who despise knowledge about God in one sense despise God.

The Corinthian church had knowledge and no love. However, Paul did not criticize them for having knowledge but rather praised them for it. But knowing facts is not what God has called us to. He has called us to walk with Him. He wants us to commune with Him and know Him intimately. The revelations above were simple and basic but the information was only a part of what these people experienced. They also experienced the wonder of it, too. A scientist may know the molecular composition of a flower but a child may be affected by the beauty of it and marvel. Romans 1:21-23 shows us that a lack of gratitude and honor of the Lord leads to idolatry. We will only be faithful to that which we worship and we will only worship that which we admire.

The verse above to the Ephesians was written to a Church that didn’t have doctrinal or moral hang-ups. They weren’t carnal like the Corinthians or accommodating a false gospel like the Galatians. They didn’t have those issues and because they were grounded in right doctrine and living godly lives Paul wished them to have revelation about their future glory. But the Word of God already explains to us something of what this future glory will be like. The Ephesians only needed to read Paul’s letters and mentally digest it in order to gain some understanding of what this glory will look like. Such study, hard graft study, is necessary but an intellectual appreciation of the inheritance will not make the difference. They needed God to open the eyes of their hearts to know it.

When Paul speaks of God’s power towards us who believe, he refers to it in terms of surpassing greatness. This shows me that not only Paul knew that God granted power but he marvelled at how great it actually was. In Jn 7:53-8: 1, when the Pharisees had debated whether Jesus could have been the Messiah, and they rejected Him, it says that everyone went home but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. The Pharisees and officers had done their theological theorizing for the day but then it was home time and they went back to their own lives. Jesus went to spend time with His Father in heaven.

“It is not information that changes a man. It’s revelation that changes him.”- Pastor David “Packie” Hamilton.