It is sad that we can not apply that child like imagination and belief as grown ups. We have a terrible drought at the moment. It is so bad that we currently have water restrictions. Little Matthew must have heard me when I told my friend that none of my lilies bloomed this year because of the drought. In his innocence he told me that I must not worry, he will ask God to”send some rain for the flowers. “Tomorrow God will water the plants mom.” He did he prayed for rain, nothing else just rain. According to the weather forecast today is suppose to be sunny and warm. It is cold and raining.

I wish that I could believe in God the way my child does. They believe unconditionally. I find it very unfortunate that as we grow up we start to loose our unconditional belief. Maybe this is why we find it so hard to manifest the life we so desire. We always want proof of everything, and we always and only believe things when we see it. Yet Christ told his disciples that we need the belief of children.

Maybe we must learn to believe like children unconditionally. There is enough proof in the world around us to show that there is a power higher at work here. We need to get in touch with our inner child and start believing again without any doubts. Maybe then we will manifest the lives we so desire.

This whole experienced made me realize how Abraham must have felt when God asked him to sacrifice his only son Isaac to God. For so long Abraham and his wife could not have children and then one day God promised Abraham that he will bless him with a great offspring. God gave Isaac to Sarah and Abraham, because that was Abraham’s greatest wish in life to have a son, and yet God then asked of Abraham to sacrifice that child to Him.

Being a parent I can just imagine what Abraham must have thought, and how he felt. I was very upset just thinking of my son having to go to hospital and not having him around for the night. Abraham had to sacrifice his son. But instead of fighting or arguing with God, Abraham obeyed. He packed the donkey and took his son and they left. Abraham was willing to give his most valuable possession to God. When Isaac asked his father what they were going to sacrifice to God Abraham replied that God will supply.

We so often ask God to help us when we are in need, but are we willing to give back to God for all the blessing we receive on a daily basis. We so often think that being religious and serving God is lame. We blame time for the fact that we go to bed without reading our Bible or saying a prayer. We hardly have enough time for ourselves or our family let alone serving God on a daily basis. My friend laughs at me when I talk about going to church. Yet this is all God asks from us.

We get upset when our prayers are not answered yet we are not willing to give God the glory and time He deserves in our lives. God blessed Abraham with a great offspring because he was always on his post ready to serve God.

What are you willing to give God today?

 Her book awakened a new spiritual urge amongst the human race.  Everybody admitted that there is a higher power. Someone greater than ourselves. We just have to ask and truly believe and everything we desire will come into our lives. I am sure a lot of us have tried and tested this theory. For some it was a success and maybe for others it turned out to be not all we expected it to be.  Is it because we failed in our beliefs?

What is belief? According to the dictionary to believe is to know that something is true. I like to replace “believe” with the word faith. Because if you have faith you don’t have to see something before you believe it. Faith is a deep inner feeling that one can not really describe.

Faith is not only about our religious beliefs, although we like to link faith with religion, it has an impact on our everyday life. The problem is however that most of us do not have true faith in God anymore. We so often pray for something to happen in our lives and upon amen we rely on ourselves to solve the problem instead of waiting for a reply from God.

We so often hear people say miracles do not happen anymore like they used to. Is this not maybe because we rely so much on our own abilities that we forget about the power of God and his abilities.

It is hard to believe or have faith in a God that we cannot see. Yet God does reveal Himself to us every day. I know that science has got an explanation for everything that goes on in life, but if we look deeper and we actually start looking through the eyes of true faith we will soon realize that everything around us is proof that God exists even science. For God created everything that  science is discovering today.

I just think that we are blind to God in this modern day and age. We are so reliant upon ourselves, and our own abilities to create and manifest that we don’t see eye to eye with God. One thing is sure that there is an urge for deeper spirituality in this modern time we live in. Maybe we must stop looking for rational explanations and just start believing in the greatness of God around us.

There is just one little snag, unfortunately no one can make us happy but ourselves. Your happiness is in your own hands. Now I know there are a lot off people who disagree. People often think that God is responsible for their happiness or that happiness is something you get from you friends and family. 

They are the people close to us and the ones that hurt us. God, well He let bad and good things happen to us that determines our happiness. Unfortunately that is not true. God gave us talents, emotions and decision making abilities.  The most important thing that we receive is free will. The will to make decisions about our lives and our happiness.

If you are in a work situation where you are very unhappy, and you want a way out, you might have prayed about it and asked God to give you a way out. Yet, you feel like He is not hearing you, because you have not yet found another job, or that promotion that will help you out of your missery.

I know we cannot just pack up and leave our jobs when we feel like it, because we have to provide for our children and families, but we do have a God given ability to change our situations. If you are unhappy in your work situation, ask yourself why? Why are you doing the work that your doing? Is it because of the money, the perks, the status that comes with it, or is it just a job to have one.

If you are unhappy at work because of your boss that is always in a bad mood and picking on you, maybe you must not look outwards for a solution but look inwards. We cannot all like each other but there are ways for us to get along. Jesus once said look for the log in your own eye before you look for the splinter in your brothers eye, and I like to live my life by this. 

Charity does begin at home and in most cases I found that if someone makes me unhappy I look at my actions and change them. Most of the time I am the one that makes me unhappy by the things I do and think. I personally have the bad habit of always thinking that people don’t like me or that they are angry with me and yes this makes me very unhappy. It was only once I started looking inwards to myself that I realised that I dont like myself and that I am upset with myself. That is why I experience this from the outside as well.

Once I started changing my mindset the people around me changed. I know change is not easy and it is very hard to admit that you might be wrong. 

The great secret about true happiness lies within us. We all received talents. Thing that we are great at and things that we enjoy. These talents determine who we are in life. Most of us however ignore our talents. 

When I went to university I had to work to pay for my studies. I decided to study law. It is a job where you can make a lot of money. That was the thing that motivated me. Meanwhile I was doing very well in my job because what I was doing at that stage was aligned with one of my talents. I love creating things and I was in a job where I could be creative and technical, but I did not make money. 

I quit my job and started working in court. This was the worst time of my life. I was very unhappy in my job, I did not get on with my boss and my colleagues, and I never seemed to enjoy the work I was doing. Yet I was doing what I was qulified to do. It was only when I faced retrenchment and I received work at a high school as a teacher, that I realsed that although I was not making a lot of money I was always happy. It was a talent that I received and I was good at it. I then became a teacher and did not regret one day of it.

I am not saying that it is wrong to make money, but you can make money and be very happy in life when you do the work and live the the life you are made for.

Our Talents makes us who we are. When we are good at something we enjoy it and we thrive on it because we succeed. We succeed because we received the manual for our success at birth when we received our talents from God.

True happiness involves the full use of one’ s power and talents                                                                         – John W Gardner

If you find yourself unhappy in life today, are you are doing what you were born to do?

Most of us don’t even know that we have such a thing, but let me tell you this much – we all have one. Now I am not talking about us keeping dirty little secrets from our partners. I am talking about all the grudges we hold against each another. The worst thing about having an argument is that we always drag all the baggage of the past into it.

This becomes so bad that we end up separating because, I do not want to live with someone that constantly reminds me of the mistakes I made in the past, especially if I asked for forgiveness and that person told me that they forgive me.

The reason we do these things is because it hurts us and no human being like to be emotionally scared. There is nothing in this world as bad as emotional abuse. We all do it all the time and every day. Ever heard the expression hit him where it hurts? People know that if they really want to tick me off they must say something about my children or my weight; because those are the things I am most sensitive about.

One thing that we must understand about the past is that it is a done deal. There are so many people that loose their chance on true happiness because they dwell on the past.

One of my friends has a really terrific girlfriend, she is everything he ever wanted in a woman. There is just one very small problem. She was married; there were no children however my friend is devastated and very frustrated in this relationship, because she always compares him with her ex-husband. I know why she is doing it, she got hurt and she is trying to avoid that pain. Because of this hurt she is now loosing a great boyfriend.

All of us do that. We carry a big bag of the past on our backs that is so heavy. We walk into the future all bent forward and not able to see all the great opportunities that surround us. The sad thing about this is that we carry this baggage and we cannot do anything to change it.

The secret about forgiveness is it has to start with ourselves. We cannot forgive ourselves for the things we did in the past yet we expect God and others to forgive us. We keep on reminding them about it because we remind ourselves about it so often. We cannot change the past. The only thing about the past that we can take into the future in our memories and we cannot change memories.

True love forgives each other without keeping a record off all the bad things that happened in the past. The past is behind us and there is nothing we can do about it no matter how hard we try and how tight we hold onto it.

We all live for success. If we did not have success or the will to succeed in life, things will be pretty boring. We all define success in diffrent ways. Some people measure their success in monetary value. It is about the car you drive and the house you live in that determines to if they are successful. For others it is about how fast they can reach their goals that makes them successful.

No matter how we define success it keeps us going. I feel good if I achieve my goals and reach my dreams. It is a wonderful feeling when I drive past people and they look at my car or when they make a remark about the lifestyle I am living. It is a wonderful feeling.

There is no feeling like worthlessness. When we fail we feel like we are nothing. We do not tell people that we didn’t reach our goals or that we could not cling that big business deal that we boasted about awhile ago.

To be successful is not wrong at all but there is something greater than success. The fact that we can all be significant. The difference between success and significance is the focus. 

It took me a long time to realise that there is more to life than just being successful and making a lot of money. I had the oppertunity as a young person to be very successful, I made good money in my job, travelled the world, but I was not happy. My sole purpose was about me. Years later when I started teaching , I realised that there was more to life than just success.

Teaching is not always about just giving children the foundation and the knowledge that they will need for the future. It is also being there for them as an advisor and sometimes even be the parent. Being in this position I realised that there is nothing in life more satisfactory than knowing that you could do something for someone else that meant something.

The best part is that it does not matter if they don’t say thank you for what you have done because their reaction is already the greatest reward. 

Being significant is not about me.  My focus moves me to what I can then do for others rather than what is in it for me, and once you realise this you will become what Einstein said – not a man of sucess but a man that lives for others.

On facebook they had a quizz recently asking how do you want to be remembered………… I want to be remembered as someone who made a difference.

We are all born for love. There is nothing nicer than the butterflies and that on cloud number 9 feeling when we fall in love. The sad thing however it never seems to last. I am sure we all know the saying “Love is blind, but marriage is the eye opener” and if we look at the divorce rates this must be so true.I love going to the golf club for inspiration, because this is the place where the big guns clinch a business deal or where husbands complain about their wives.

The funny thing is they always seem to think that their wives changed when they got married and that she is now trying to change him. I am sorry to say this ladies, but in most cases that seems to be true. We are trying to change each other, because I want him to be like me and he wants me to be more like him. Our differences then end up in arguments and sadly in most cases divorce or breaking up.

There are those people that say a good relationship is about giving and taking – a fifty/fifty partnership. Can I be honest if you are only willing to give 50% to a relationship don’t even try and have one. There is a lot more to a relationship than a 50/50 deal.Love is about giving everything not just 50%. It is a 100% commitment. We are all unique people in our own right. We all have different personalities, we were brought up differently, different cultures, languages, morals etc. Being in a relationship means that we must take these things into account.

Love is all about being patient. No matter how many times you have to ask him to put the seat down, if you truly love him this little irritation, which might seem like a big deal, can become a nod of the head and a smile on the face. I know some men who get irritated when their wives ask them to fix something and they want it done now. They might not feel like doing it right now. Most woman nag. Its in the blood but you will soon learn how to deal with it, when you truly love her. And as a woman you will understand that constant nagging doesn’t solve a problem it just makes it worse. Be patient he will fix that toaster if he wants toast for breakfast. He will pick up the doggies mess when he steps in it.

We do get irritated with each other but true love changes the irritations into patience rather than anger. And this is not just applicable to our husbands or wives, but it is also applicable to our children. I know I am a mother too and I often get so irritated with the kids that I can scream, but I never act in anger. Believe me I do get very angry with them, but I will never act as if I hate them.True love is not about me but about the people I love. Their needs and happiness becomes your focus point. And no you do not have to loose your own personality. You can still be you who co-exist in a great unit of love.

I always ask myself if I was on the receiving end what would I want the outcome to be. Would I like it if I got a jar against the head, or be beaten so that I have to hide for a week. If my answer is no I change my reaction until I get a positive reaction to the situation. By putting myself into his shoes and trying to see the situation from his eyes I have managed to change numerous disagreements into calm discussions and great results for both of us.Arguments are ugly and in many cases unnecessary.

I have been married for five years now and my husband and I never had a huge argument. We have plenty of disagreements but because I am his main focus and he is mine we end up making life wonderful for each other. Together with true love comes trust. Trust your own choice for allowing that person into your life, and making him or her your partner, because if you cannot trust your own choices how can you trust your partner’s. Soon the small things that seemed like the end of the world to you at first becomes rather insignificant when you look at it through the eyes of love.Let me tell you a secret – accept one another for who you are, as unique people with your own identities and personalities and habits that co-exist in a unit together.

God showed us true love through Jesus Christ. He gave up his own Son for the people he loves.

As a child we often use to imagine that we were someone or something in life. We use to pretend and play for hours that we were either doctors or lawyers or teachers, you name it we were it. I for some reason always pretended to be a teacher. I use to take all my reading books and handed it to my pretend class. I use to mark their work with a red pen, I set tests and all the things a normal teacher would do in their daily lives.

As I grew up however all this pretend play became a distant memory and later disappeared. I matriculated and started studying law, but for years I was very restless, both in my studies and the work I was doing. Something was missing. The company I worked for went under and we all lost our jobs. I was devastated. I had a lot of study debts to pay and no work. In a desperate attempt to see if any good will came from it, and to keep me busy I offered my service to the church to collect the monthly donations and contributions from the people. I ended up at a ladies house who changed my entire live. She was the Head of Department of the Afrikaans Department of the School where I became a teacher a few months later.

She set up an interview for me with the Headmaster. I was very scared the first time I stood in front of a classroom of children, but deep down in my heart I suddenly remembered what I use to do as a child. I dared to pretend I was playing school again. I ended up teaching there for almost seven years at that school from that day forward. All because I unpacked my dream.

Teaching was in my blood the thing I was made for but it took me a long time to realize it. Life had to first walk a different path with me to prepare me for my greatest reality.

None of our dreams are too big to become a reality, but for some reason we stop dreaming when we reach a certain age, and then fall into a rut. We become scared of our dreams, when actually they are the things that guide us in our childhood.

Most of us however pack our dreams away and never look at them again. Then we ask ourselves why are we unhappy. This because we don’t follow our inner guidance that was given to us a children.

We don’t do the things we are talented for and we don’t use the gifts God gave us to make us successful in our lives here. Everything that you see around you today was once a dream of someone who was not willing to give up on it.

Reach out and unpack your dreams and live the life your were meant to have.

On my way back home from golf I noticed the man again. He was standing talking to one of the security guards, and that is when I noticed the printing on his T shirt. I suddenly knew why he had my attention from the start. This man was carrying a remarkable life story with him throughout the country. A story that made me think and one that I would like to share with you.

The young man is Jaco Swart. He was a professional black-water tubing guide, until a very fatal day. In March 2000 their party was on an ill-fated kloofing outing in the Storms River gorge. A flash flood washed  away the party to their death, but Jaco managed to cling onto a tiny ledge just above the raging water. He had a badly injured knee and was stranded on the ledge for 27 hours before he was rescued. While Jaco was holding on for dear life waiting to be rescued he made a promise to God, that if he survived this terrible ordeal he would do a long and tough hike as a sign of gratitude.

Jaco started his journey in Cape Town at the V&A waterfront, before heading down the Cape Peninsula, past Camps Bay and around Cape Point. He will continue his way up the coast of South Africa until he reaches the border at Mozambique. He will then turn inland towards Swaziland before heading to the boundary fence of the Kruger National Park. He will then continue north to the mouth of the Orange river, and from there head back home to Cape Town. I would like to appeal to all South Africans out there. If you meet this extraordinary young man along the way please assist him with something to eat or any donations . He is out there being a true pilgrim for God.

 I cannot help but think what do we do to say thank you to God for all we have in our lives. Some of us might say that we never turned around at death’s door step. My live is pretty ordinary. Well think again because although God might not have saved your life in an extraordinary way on one specific occasion that changed your direction. He is doing it every day by granting you another day to live your life.

Every day is a gift of life from God.

What do we do to say thank you for that gift?

Have you ever noticed that when we grow up we often maintain the same type of lifestyle our parents had. A lot of the time when you look at people and you look at the way they live you will see that their parents had the same lifestyle.  I know a lady whose parents got divorced when she was young. She is now also divorced and she lives exactly the same type of life her mother had after she got divorced. It is almost like this big cycle is repeating itself over and over again.

Our lives reflect the things we believe.  We often go to university because our parents believed that in order for us to be able to get a good job we must study hard and go to university. Entrepreneurship and creativity was never really supported. We all follow this road and find ourselves frustrated in the work we do, just because we believe that one cannot get a good job if you are not educated. I take myself as an example. I hated studying, I loved nature and the outdoors and I am extremely creative, but instead of supporting my creativity and my love for drama and acting I was always told that one cannot make a decent living from that.  There are only a few lucky ones and I am definitely not on that short list. So what did I do, I went and studied law. I was frustrated and nothing in my life seemed to have worked out, I got rebellious, annoyed and frustrated, because I was not aligned with my purpose in life. I had great talents for the entertainment industry but I never took the opportunity to use it, because of certain beliefs I shared with my parents.  I was living my life in the wrong direction.

It was only when I met my husband that with his help and the grace of God that I found the courage to explore and change my beliefs. Today I am living the life I always dreamed of. I am not making a lot of money, but I am living my dream. This all happened because I realised that for me to find my purpose I must follow my dreams, even if that meant that I had to change my beliefs.

We all believe that we are here on earth to serve a certain purpose, however a lot of us wonder what that purpose is.  This however is not a question that goes unanswered; the answer lies in the creation. God created us in his own image, for fellowship with Him.

That is why we are here on earth, and that is our purpose.  God created us so that he could spend time with us, and visa verse. Throughout the Bible there is proof that God is involved in the lives of man. He interacted with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and he sent Jesus to earth to prove His love for us. Man is created with a body, a soul, a spirit, a mind and a free will to make decisions for or against God. God does not force us to believe in him or his existence it is a free choice that He gave us.

I know that it is very hard to believe especially because we cannot see God or that is what we think. I admit I grew up in a Christian home but this did not mean that I knew God. I know of God but I don’t necessarily know God personally. It was only when I made the deliberate decision to learn more about God that my eyes opened and I started seeing God in everything around me.

Having faith is seeing God in everything even in the disappointments that cross our roads to prepare us for bigger and better things.

Faith in God is spreading your wings and trusting that the wind will be there to carry you.

Faith In God has no limitations.