How I see myself will influence and affect the way I live, run my family, career, finances, friends, hobbies, public and private interaction, perform in Church and relationship with God. Would you say you have self-esteem or self-love? Reading yesterday’s Note helps us understand that once one enjoys God’s grace in salvation, that person will […]
Have you ever been a lone voice? Be it in the market place, place of education, home, family, friends … and things are said that you don’t agree with or support, do you make your voice heard? Or … do you keep quite. Rightly or wrongly, when I believe something is wrong I voice my […]
I was rather exhausted after returning from Margate, KZN yesterday. I packed up on Thursday night and got to bed around 12.30am and struggled to sleep. When the alarm went off at 5am, the last thing I wanted was to “rise and shine”, but since it was Friday and we needed to return to Pretoria, […]
All too often we have people serving in the Kingdom of God who tend to play the field. They might even be leaders who behave in the Jekyll and Hyde way. You know the story … its one man not two. The moral message of Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and […]
Few people understand what “counselling” means or requires. Some think that counselling is them spending an hour or more in the company of the counsellor (normally the pastor, but it could be the youth leader or another Church Leader), offloading whatever is on their hearts, which at times is a one way dialogue. Others again […]
You will recall I mentioned that the pastor and congregation at the Church in Laodicea were “self-deceived”. As we progress I would like to share a true story. Without mentioning the names concerned, I knew a person who was a reasonably good cook. His specialty was to make “Bisto Steak” as he called it. The […]
When it comes to their deeds, children tend to have “tunnel” vision. By this I mean that many children are unaware that their parents have a greater “peripheral” vision and are able to see far more than the children think the parents are able to see. Parents tend to be aware of just about everything […]
We introduced the theme of self-deception yesterday because in a spiritual manner there was this invisible banner hanging over the front door of the Church at Laodicea that said: “The Church of the Deceived”. Maybe another invisible banner would be: “The Church in the Grey Zone”. I had a Church Council member for many years […]
It is one thing to be deceived by another, but to deceive yourself must be totally blind. Self-deception comes in many forms and shapes. Allow me to draw you to a few of these … (a) I can believe I am better than another or others. Maybe I am able to do some things better […]
Unless you are a top athlete, you don’t run the Comrades Marathon for a win, a place in the top ten or even a silver medal. Naturally you want to improve your last years’ time, but your game plan is to finish the race. This Marathon is known as one of the toughest ultramarathons and […]