Spill The Beans

It’s been ages since I last blogged. There were so many things and events that happened that I could write about, but for some odd reason, writing became such a drag to do but it’s good to be back.

So yesterday I found out I had not been shortlisted for a bursary I had been interviewed for. Instead of reacting like any normal person would, you know, feeling really down, not wanting to really talk to people and wanting to be in your own space till you could face life again. Nope, I just had to talk excessively, making fun of people and just talking a whole bunch’a nonsense. When I woke up this morning, I realised that I have a problem with showing my emotions, being vulnerable and open with people. I don’t like people see me seriously break down and most times I do a pretty good job at it. I put up this façade which suggests that I am strong and can take anything that comes my way or at times, that I am not moved by the maybe sad circumstance I’m currently in. Hiding pain or sadness is pretty easy, but sometimes it comes at the cost of those I make fun of which is really not cool at all. But we all know that something always happens behind even the façade that we use to push people away or to not let anybody in and I started to wonder if that was how I was with God.

There’s nobody who knows you like the One who created you, not your mother, not your dad, you husband, best friend, no one and I started to realise that sometimes we tend to react to God the same way we react with people we relate to or have relationships with such as family and friends. Guess we also forget that unlike our earthly beloveds, God sees everything you go through and He knows how you feel about anything and everything that goes on in your life, even those things you don’t want people to see about you, He knows all about that. As much as we should really try to be open with people and allow ourselves to be truly ourselves even when things aren’t going great, we should be even much more vulnerable with God about our feelings and stuff we go through that maybe we don’t want other people finding out about.

When I was young, an intimate relationship with God was something that was totally foreign. God was not someone you could converse with about your everyday life, or randomly talk to while you walking in the streets like you would with a close friend who you really respected, or someone you shared your deepest feelings with. He was to be feared and treated like the Man upstairs who’s out to get everybody, handing out free tickets to hell for all those who sinned. That is not who God is! Our Lord is loving, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and quick to forgive. He is relational. He fully understands and sees where you are and should be in control of the situation if you genuinely handed Him that control key or accepted Him not only as Saviour but His Lordship as well. He wants you to engage with Him about everything that goes on in your life, good or bad, all of it. He did not create you to love you from a distance, He wants to be closer than anyone who you consider to be close to you. This is why putting up facades even in your relationship with God is well not really relational of me or you if we are Christians who claim to love and be in an intimate relationship with God. We cannot hide anything from Him so we might as well spill the beans about whatever it is we are going through to Him.

What I also realised is that, the closer we are with God, the more our relationship with God is reflected and plays a huge role in our relationships with other people, and the closer we are to other people than we are with God, the more those relationships fashion or mould how we relate to God so needless to say, your relationship with God is really important and should never be neglected, no matter how low and abandoned or prodigal you may feel, even in those seasons of your life, talk to God about where you are and be honest about it, you know, some genuine microwave prayers here and there. The more you relate and engage with God about your life and your personal life, the better you able to relate to other people in a functional and relational way.

#TherapySessionsWithGodAndMyself  

Titled: Let Your Love Be Exalted

I wrote my first song in my first year of varsity thanks to one of my besties. She wanted us to write songs for an event we were going to host as Harvesting Hearts. I believe that is where my love for writing began. I did not write much when during teaching blocks so most of the songs I wrote, i wrote when I was home, usually after much reflection about my life and moments that had been inspired by God.

Needless to say, writing the first song proved to be a difficult challenge because I had never written a song but I am glad that challenge led to a desire and passion to write songs. Not a lot of people know that I write songs. I dont even share most of the songs I wrote with my friends, only did so once out of the 10 or so songs I have written so far.

At first I used to think long and hard before I wrote a song and while writing the song and it got to a point where I just started to allow God to influence my writing. I started meditating on things God had brought me out of, His love, how good and gracious He is. After allowing God to influence my thinking as a songwriter, it started to be a little easier to write because I expressed bits and pieces of God in life. My songs started to sound less recited and much more real.

I now love writing songs and whenever a melody comes, first thing I look for is my phone so that I can record that melody or even a line before I forget it and then continue working on it. But I am still learning because there's always room for development. The song posted below was written after I read something that I had written that reminded me of God's unfailing love. It's truly amazing how much God loves us, how He continually shows us His love each and everyday even though somedays we fail to see it. Its amazing how He loves people like me who mess up all the time, who deny Him, who seek Him when it pleases them. Which reminds me of what I learnt from my connect group today, that I need to choose to seek Christ continuously, on a day to day basis, not just when it's convenient for me to do so. Sometimes loving God may prove to be challenging especialy with the countless flaws we have as people, hence it's only our fixing our eyes on Him and how He loves us that we can get back to the path of loving Him with all our hearts, minds, and soul. One of my Pastors once said God does not base He's loving us, or blessing us, or being faithful to us, or being gracious to us by our love for Him because it is fickle but He does all the above based on His love for us, a love that is unfailing because that's just who my God is, LOVE.

Let Your Love Be Exalted
Verse 1

Unfailing love
How can this be
You gave Your life
As ransom for all
You bore our sin
And you took our place
Forever let Your love be exalted

Chorus
Be exalted in the earth
Let Your grace Lord redeem lost souls
And Your light God shine in all the earth
For all You've done oh Christ we exalt You

Forsaken by
Your very own
But still you showed
The greatest love of all
You paid the price
That I should've paid
Forever let Your love be exalted

Chorus

Bridge

We exalt You oh God
Lord we lift Your name on High
We declare Your unfailing love
In our lives Lord Your love we lift

Chorus

The Beauty of Friendship

All our lives we've had people we share almost every moment with. People that love us for all those things that say "me" and even those things about us that irritate the world out of them, but they still love you nonetheless. Don't get me wrong. I am not talking about acquaintances nor people who pretend to be your friend, I am talking about genuine real friends who tell you the truth when you dont want to hear it, friends who have your back no matter what, friends who know the deepest things about you, friends who are there for you whenever you need them, even when you dont. Friends who rock up at your place and head straight for the fridge without asking because their home is your home. Friends who not only give you advice but know when you just need to be listened to. Friends who'll never let you think less of your self but encourage you to be the best that you can be, the you God created to be.

Friends with such qualities are really rare jewels. Rare in the sense that true friends seem to have some weird compatibility even though they are different and its not with a lot of people that you find this compatibility. I never chose to be in some of my friendships, I chose to stay in those friendships because when you find a good thing (like my friendships with the friends I have now from both high school and varsity), the best thing you can do is never let go of it because finding, making or staying in really good friendships is not easy at all. As human beings , we all have dynamics that will eventually clash with other people, we have values, morals and standards that we uphold as individuals and to find other individuals who believe in what you believe is undeniably challenging to some extent. It's even much more difficult to find friends who are people after God's own heart.

I have been blessed with friends who love me for me, who genuinely care about me, who look out for me, who are not afraid to tell me the truth when i need to hear it, who are forever there for me, friends with whom i may not talk with for a while but when we meet up its like we just saw each other yesterday. Friends who have always kept it real with me, who never pretended to be perfect but have always been genuine and honest. I thank God for my friends and that He gave me friends who know Him and love Him. I have learnt a lot from my 911's (second to Christ of-course) and to all of them, Tshephi loves you to the core my homies!

Still Working On It

I wrote this song while at very dark season in my life. A season i never thought I'd ever see come to pass. A season were God felt much more real as an idea than as real as the air I breath. But in all that i was going through at the time God made me realise that its in those times that He's closer than we think He is. And so Lord, thank You for all that You brought me into and out of, that Your grace has always been sufficient for me and that in my weaknesses Your power was made strong. I'll forever be grateful for Your unfailing love.

Only You

Verse 1
Stuck in the darkness
My heart cannot see
I'm probing around to find my way

Lost in the forest
Can't find my way back
I'm calling out Jesus can You hear me

Chorus
Lord I'm seeking Your face
Desperate to see Your light
That will lead me back to You
Only You can restore me
Only You can revive me
Only You can love me back to life
Only You

Feeling so empty
My souls seems dried up
Will the rain ever come again
Will you fill me up and Quench away my thirst

Chorus

Lord I'm seeking Your face
Desperate to see Your light
That will lead me back to You
Only You can restore me
Only You can revive me
Only You can love me back to life
Only You

Bridge

Lord I know You hear my cry
And I know that Lord Your hand will pull me out
Let your Love Lord and Your grace set me free

Chorus

I Will Wait For You

Today I decided to watch Jannet's poem from P4CM called 'I will wait for you'. I brought this big gun out because I felt like that girl who's so single its sad. Funny how at that moment the reasons I chose to leave the relationship I was in about a year and some months ago and thus become single were quickly forgotten. Which made me start to wonder why a woman's greatest desire is to have a man that will love her, protect her, treat her right and so on. Even we Christian women desire to have someone who'll fill up that "position". What is it that makes us want to have all that I have mentioned? Is it because we are lonely? Or perhaps it's because that's just how God created us to be? What is it about the presence of a man in a women's life that she'd be willing to go through a lot to keep a man who clearly is not God's best for her, a man who's words may lead the female mind to think that she's loved, yet his actions deny the very love he proclaims to have for her. What is it about a man's presence in a woman's life that clouds her judgement and makes her refuse to see what is evident but rather choose to see what "you guys don't see what I see in him?"

Maybe my previous questions may have some people say that it looks like I am painting the male species black. That's not my aim, its just me questioning the kind of love that a woman not only voices out but lives out to a guy who does not know Love hence cannot love her the way she should be loved. When a woman loves, she loves for real and I guess all the guys who may be reading this may say that this statement holds much more truth to it when it comes to guys I perhaps its true. What I have realised though is that untill a woman is fully content with and believes in the love that Christ has for her, like most people say, she'll go looking for that which only Christ can give her.

A lot of people seek their better half, a person who completes them, but you see that's where we get it all wrong. Who ever we marry was not created to complete us, but to complement us. Look at most of the relationships around you or rather married couples. Most of these couples consist of individuals who may have certain common interests but are totally different characteristic wise; a quiet shy man usually goes for that woman who's quite outspoken, people who are outgoing tend to go for the reserved. All these characteristics in the other complement our own and in a way that beautifully amplifies our personality which makes us both stand out in that relationship. Its very sad when you see people in relationships where instead of amplifying each others personalities, people are rather dragged down and left to feel worthless. Why a lot of women believe that when a guy emotionaly or physically abuses you that's him loving you, I realy don't get, maybe it's because I have never been in that situation. But that can absolutely not be the truth! For any man to be capable of loving a woman the way she needs to be loved, I strongly believe that that man has got to have an intimate relationship with God. How can you know what love is when you don't even know who Love is? The one who's able to show and reveal to you certain things about your complemetary other that no other man knows which will ultimately aid you in loving her the best way possible. This is why I refuse to date a guy who does not know God.

Apart from all that I have mentioned, there's also the question everyone struggles to answer when it comes to their complementary other; who are they? It could be a man you randomly met at a wedding, a service, in the TV room, in church, varsity, high school, through friends, or even that friend whom you've overlooked because "bad hot-looking boys" were too irrisitable but yet has still waited on you to finaly see that he's that guy that God set apart for you. But at the end of it all, you'll never know untill you ask God to clearly show you and I mean clearly because most times, especially us women, we tend to let our emotions make our decisions for us and not God's peace. We tend to get way ahead of ourselves due to our impatience and we date guys we should have never dated because we just could not wait on God. For most of us this has proven to be a very unfortunate error leaving us with a lot of regrets.

Trust you me, the best thing you can do is wait on God. And as you do, don't think that you'll get that prince in knight and shining amour, all perfect and flawless. That's a deception you dont want to have. A man is not a super being who's void of faults. So whoever God brings your way, when He does, accept him for who he is with all his flaws and those things he does or habits he has that irritate you. He's not perfect, neither are you, but both of you are there to help see the other become that person God has created them to be, a masterpiece in the eyes of God.

Worship in His Presence

There's nothing beautiful like being in God's presence and being embraced by Him. Worship for me is moments in my life whether during church or in my room or while walking to class that I'm reminded of God's love, who He is. It's also moments where God speaks about things I have been crying out to Him about, where He reminds me of who I am and not what I think I am. Worship is where I am most intimate with God. I love that even though there may be multitudes of people its just the 4 of us. Some of you may wonder why 4 while some might have already figured it out, but anyways Worship is not meant to be restricted or limited to a place, time or anything else. Like I said, I sometimes worship God while walking to lectures, one of my mentors experienced his greatest moments of worship walking down a street where he stopped, kneeled down and just worshiped God while passersby starred. Some people worship God while doing their laundry. It really does not matter where or how you Worship Him. What I am trying to say in between the lines of everything else I have said, God wants to be part of our everyday life. A lot of people have put God on hold for Sundays, when disasters strike or when they hit the jackpot and thank God in a passing moment. It's very sad how even we as His children tend to sideline Him thinking that by seeking God in moments that seem great is much more important than those moments that seem insignificant.

Many of us are closer to our friends, families, complementary other (as I'd like to call them but in lay man terms husbands and wives) than our first love, the One who created us, who knows everything there is to know about us. We fail to see God's desire for Him to be our closest companion; the first we always think about when something happens, the first we ask advice from when we faced with difficult decisions, the first we call upon, the first we seek above everything and anyone else. He wants us to draw nearer to Him because by doing that you allow Him to be nearer to you.

I used to think that worship was singing songs and lifting my hands and crying at the thought of His greatness and love, but that's only one of the ways we can worship God amongst multiple other ways. It was when one preacher said that worship should become our lifestyles that I started thinking about what other possible ways there are but then I realised that in everything that I do, as I acknowledge God and do what ever i am doing as though I am doing it for God and not man or meditate on Him, at that very moment I am worshipping God.

I also realized that so many things hinder us from worshiping God in Spirit and in truth and with all that we are but I find the most common hindrance of our worshiping God is our fixating on everything that we have done wrong, whether years back or just the previous day. It therefore shows a misconception that needs to be destroyed, that we have to do right and be right before we can worship God truthfully. It also shows another misconception that our actions determine how and when we worship God. See worship should not be based on what we've done but on who God is and what He's done. This validates for me that worship can be a form of repentance and an aid to helping us to change our mindsets and making Christ our stronghold to help us conqueror our temptations and falling back into sin.

In closing, take time out to just reflect and meditate on God. That's worshiping Him and its in moments such as worshiping God that we find fullness of joy because in those moments, we are at his feet, in His presence.

Tshephi

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