MY STORY (“LITTLE”): MY TESTIMONY

MY STORY (“LITTLE”): MY TESTIMONY

“Life is far too important to be taken seriously.”

“You can’t have a testimony without a test”

Submitter’s Note (Prologue):

A bit of background…so that you readers “out there”can see where I’m coming from (not Mars hopefully!. I’m not particularly “religious, as I didn’t receive a “churchy” upbringing in my former home, the  “Christian” country of  “white” South Africa in the fifties and sixties,  However, I’m way more “spiritual (“we’re all spiritual beings on an earthly journey”…or is that the other way round??)”

My family lived by basic good values and the “Golden Rule: Treat others as you’d like to be treated…. and taught me those principles. My dad give me his very old Bible (that he’d been given by his dad) at a young age and dad said that it served to comfort him through the war years (incidentally he was an eye- witness to the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck: “There are no atheists in a life-boat”). My dear mother was a truly free spirit who was very interested in Indian teachings (philosophy), particularly Krisnamurthi and Gandhi and devotedly studied their teachings,

Over the years all the family  (including extended) become followers of Christ (“rather religious”), regularly attending church, except for “the resisters” mom and I. Mom because she said the church used “mind control”  and the religious dogma contradicted her basic Eastern Krishnamurthian beliefs . I too found  the “churchy people” I knew way “too straight” (no judging now, craig!), as throughtout my life I seemed to collect ” an assortment of odd-bod eccentrics”  (instead of stamps and bottle-tops!). Still do, by the way!

Many many years later (after some dear friends had continued praying for me that I’d ever “see the light” (they never gave up hope on me) *, after yet another life-crisis (my life is one long ongoing one!), my life was transformed.

On a trip back to the “Beloved Country”, South Africa to see my very ill dad in 1995 (as well as seeking ideas to write yet another book on the NEW country, I questioned my dear sister, Glenda and her Kiwi-born husband, Steve on why so many South Africans had the Christian faith. Glenda  replied “Craig, we need something to hang on to, something to hope for… on which we can pin our faith.”  And when I asked ‘what is Christianity’and ‘What Do Christians believe?’, she replied

“It means having a relationship (living) with God!”

Spooky??

I couldn’t understand those words at the time (she could have been “speaking Martian to me”)… yet a seed had been planted in my little head!

* I had often made jokes about Christians: ones like

“When was motor racing first mentioned in the Bible?

When Moses came forth in his triumph”?

“Jesus saves at the Trust Bank”, “Moses shoots, Jesus saves”, etc

*

However, I had taken a few tentative first few steps on the road to becoming a “free-spirited, thinking follower of the teachings of Christ”. Hopefully not a “goody-goody Mr Two shoes boring Christian” (I couldn’t be that anyway – no matter how hard I tried as I’d lost the other shoe on my crazy European travels in my “wild”youth). So mom and I had great discussions on how Christ’s teachings were very similar to the teachings of Buddhism. It wasn’t religion , but a CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS… which is what transforms lives!She and her church friends prayed for my dad and he got better….although my own life was in pieces, shattered, like Humpty Dumpty (that’s a simile, by the way). On reflection, I realize I had become “way too serious” and feeling so alone here in provincial New Zealand. I was trying to do far too much on my own with the weight of the world on my shoulders (narrow).

Now with “a relationship with God’ (which is the basis of Christianity), I realise everything in my life has somehow led me to this point. Though for so many years, I’didn’t know about God, nor know God, God DID know all about me and cared deeply about me. The Ultimate Source, Ground of All Being  had a plan for my “little” life. I just had to be led by Infinite Spirit to find it for myself.

I don’t attend church (though one of my very good friends is a pastor at a local church and have many great discussions with other good friends, some very religious “fundamentalists”, including “the Prophet”)… but read widely on “spiritual mattters”, including studying other religions (fascinating to me, as I look for common ground between them). I really love studying the human mind mind , the “last unexplored frontier” and the “overlap between the mind and the spiritual dimension.

OK enough of me and my background in this field and what has led me to this point in my life…and on with this piece…

PS: Sorry about all the i’s (“eyes”) in this “self-centred” piece of writing. Please forgive the author in a spirit of reconciliation!

*

TESTIMONY

These are the verses from the Prophet Isiaih read out by my good friend Bruce at my baptism at Mangapa Church in Gisborne in 1996… when I was in the deepest valley.

“I will lead the blind by ways

they have not known,

along unfamiliar paths

I will guide then:

I will turn the darkness into light before them

and make the rough places smooth.

These are the things I will do;

I will not forsake them.”

“Here is my servant,

whom I uphold,

my chosen one

in whom I delight;

I will put my Spirit on him

and he will bring justice

to the nations.”

– Isiaih 42

and

“Fear not,

for I have redeemed you;

I have summoned you by name,

you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;

and when you pas through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.

Since you are precious

and honoured in my sight,

and because I love you.

Do not be afraid.”

– Isiaih 43       *

Now many years later Bruce, his lovely wife Colleen and I can laugh and wonder how God has really “worked miracles” in my life in the intervening years. Even though I no longer attend formal church and Bruce and Colleen have been in the UK for an extended period doing great work in reaching out to “marginalised” people.  Such a lovely couple and very dear friends (and X calls them  “my only normal friends”)

* Incidentally the words from Isiaih 43 were also read out to me by my sister, Glenda’s “church family” from Cape Town on my traumatic visit to South Africa in October 1995 (a bit more on that period of my life coming up)

#

Remember that the first and greatest commandment to the Israelites was : “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”, which is a pre-requirement to the second:“Love your neighbour as yourself”.

From Mark 12:28-31,

Now fifteen or so years later, so much has changed in my “little” life. After being in the depths of the valley of life those long years ago, I feel daily inspired by the Holy Spirit and ask Jesus for a triple helping each day (thanks, my good friend, Lindsay, the “Prophet”) . My relationship with God through Jesus is more real than ever before since I started out on the journey nearly twenty long years ago. And everything flows from that … “a peace that surpasses all understanding”

Daily I renew my relationship with God and my faith through following Jesus’s commandment (most important of all):  “To love the Lord, your God with all your strength, heart, mind and soul.”

“Ask ANYTHING in My name so that the Father will be glorified through the work of the Son… and I will do it.

– John 14:13,14

So I thought I’d try that, test the teaching some years back. Crazy?? I didn’t ask God for riches and fame. I asked Him to make me successful as a writer by making some small difference in the world through impacting and empowering as many people around the world as possible . Seemingly impossible from a small city near the bottom of the world with no friends, no contacts in a foreign country. Still I just did what I could do, daily writing diligently on the net and trusting. And one day I hope to deliver this testimony, this true story of my own journey to encourage those in the “pits” of life…without hope.

As former US President Richard Nixon once said so eloquently: “Only when you’ve been in the deepest valley can one know what’s it’s like to stand on the highest peak.”

Yes, those moving words have great significance for me. As I’ve been there too in a very dark period, some chapters of my rather eventful life. I don’t want to “go there” in much detail here (that can perhaps be a book in itself!), as it was such a traumatic time of bad memories – relocation from my beloved country of South Africa, marriage break-up, losing nearly everything, life savings in a scam… and being devoid of hope.  Yet as Gandhi said: “in the midst of darkness light exists.”

“I don’t know the future, but I do know Who holds the future in His hands.”  I just know that this writing path is my calling, my “life mission”.

My last “little” message: No matter how dire your situation (and mine really was pretty bleak and I had nothing to offer Him, but myself and TRUST that things would eventually work out. So said some Christian friends and family in South Africa.

Yes, Jesus DOES have the power to do ANYTHING… to transform any life, YOUR life…for good , just as He did with mine… stilling the stormy waters as the tiny boat got tossed about like a cork in the vast ocean that is the maelstrom, the whirl=pool of life.

My life was transformed ..but ONLY when I relinquished control (not that I had any as events in my life had spiralled into a dizzying descent of destruction… and anyway I had no other choice, but to hand over to my “co-pilot”

So if my life could be rescued, so can anyone’s, YOURS!

“Fear not,

for I have redeemed you;

I have summoned you by name,

you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,

I will be with you;

and when you pass through the rivers,

they will not sweep over you.

When you walk through the fire,

you will not be burned;

the flames will not set you ablaze.

For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour.

Since you are precious

and honoured in my sight,

and because I love you.

Do not be afraid.”

– Isiaih 43       *

Finally remember the words of Jeremiah 29:11

“‘For I know the thoughts that I think towards you’, says the Lord. Thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you future and a hope.”

So make your plans, your dreams big enough for God to fit in.

God can dream a bigger dream than you can ever imagined for yourself”

“Lord, Expand my horizons, my sense of possibility for all the rich promises you have in store for me”

craig (as inspired by the testimony of Joshua Graham on The Hour of Power TV program and his book ‘Dark Room’

7th (“lucky”) Sept in the year 2012

“In the midst of darkness light exists.”

PS:

“The truth is anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done and even greater works, because I’m going to be with the Father. You can ask for anything in my name and I will do it, because the work of the Son brings glory to the Father. Yes, ask anything in my name, and I will do it.”

John 14:12-14

“If I can throw a single ray of light across the darkened pathway of another;
if I can aid some soul to clearer sight of life and duty, and thus bless my brother;
if I can wipe from any human cheek a tear,
I shall not have lived my life in vain while here.
If I can guide some erring one to truth, inspire within his heart a sense of duty;
if I can plant within my soul of rosy youth a sense of right, a love of truth and beauty;
if I can teach one man that God and heaven are near,
I shall not then have lived in vain while here.
If from my mind I banish doubt and fear, and keep my life attuned to love and kindness;
if I can scatter light and hope and cheer, and help remove the curse of mental blindness;
if I can make more joy, more hope, less pain,
I shall not have lived and loved in vain.
If by life’s roadside I can plant a tree, beneath whose shade some wearied head may rest,
though I may never share its beauty, I shall yet be truly blest –
though no one knows my name, nor drops a flower upon my grave,
I shall not have lived in vain while here.”
– Anonymous

Today, don’t just try to make a living… try to make a difference

What seemed an impossible dream to me fifteen years or so ago has somehow materialised far far bigger than I could ever have imagined… and in spite of the very difficult circumstances I found myself in, have had quite a bit of fun along the journey, this “unexplored path”.

So I recently asked the Father what’s the “most impossible” thing I could ever ask for

Peace in the Middle East???  Ha ha!

Possible???

A glimmer of hope…perhaps???

Let’s see what happens and have some more fun along the amazing journey …”the road less travelled”!

ONE DREAM ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS

The story, the never-ending story of life continues…

A NEW DAWN, A BREAKING DAWN

“just another dreamer”

 “Life is God’s novel. Let him write it”

– Isaac Bashevis Singer

“Just as history is sometimes known as ‘His story’ , life itself is God’s novel; so let God, the Ultimate Source, the Ground of All Being write the very best, never-ending story of possibility, that is your unique journey down the river of life.”

– craig (as inspired by the words of Isaac Bashevis Singer)

PPS

For other blogs on my journey of faith see
https://sharefaith.wordpress.com/my-journey-of-faith/