Unlocked

My heart is to encourage the church to hold fast to what God has said, because God does not lie.  Whatever promises He’s made to us, will come to pass.  As we press into God and pray and trust Him for a miracle in our country, we will see that miracle, we will see Him change the tide.  We have seen it once before, and this is no different.

               UNLOCKED

As a child, I had a desire to be a missionary. I was always fascinated by the missionary stories and slide shows of visiting missionaries at our church.  My parents hosted missionaries in our home at times, as we were growing up.  I come from family, on both my mother and father’s sides who came to South Africa from Europe as missionaries.  I am also named after my mother’s best friend who was a missionary.  My parents have always been involved in ministry and we were practically raised in the church.  As a teenager, our youth group would hold all night prayer meetings and it was wonderful praying with other young people who had a heart for God and for seeing people saved.

Prayer has always been a part of my relationship with the Lord – I would talk to God while walking to my music lessons or riding my bike, I would talk to Him about my fears, my hurts, my joys – everything.

As I went through life, I realised that being a missionary does not necessarily mean going to a foreign place and ministering to people of a different culture, such as going to India or Ethiopia.  I learned that you can be a missionary in your own country and or culture, sharing Jesus with people in the place where you live.  I made peace with that and God opened doors for me to be involved in various areas of ministry over the years.

Growing up, I was the dancer and pianist and my sister was the artist – in fact all 3 of my sisters took art lessons and are talented artists.  In my early twenties, the Lord opened the way for me to be in full-time dance ministry – I loved it – I taught at our church, ministered, went on outreaches, participated in street marches and more during the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.  Over the years there have been seasons of being involved in dance ministry and seasons of not – either being in the workforce or being a mom.

Yet, I sensed that there was more, and I really believed that God had called me to more than that –  I am not just a dancer, there is so much more to who I am – like there was something hidden inside, waiting to come out.

When I had my children, the Lord told me that they were my mission-field.  It has been a wonderful journey with them of imparting, leading and teaching them in the ways of the Lord.  And, I have grown and learned so much from them too.  The more independent they are becoming as teenagers, the more I am learning to step back and trust that that which I have imparted to them, will carry them as they make their relationship with the Lord their own.  It was in this time that my prayer life grew and became a far deeper intercessory time.

So, I have had a deep sense in my heart that there was something more and was just waiting on God to unlock it in my life.

About 10 years ago, I wanted to paint something special for each of my children, as the Lord had given me one word for each child when they were born – my original idea was to just paint the words.  My dear sister, an art teacher, bought me acrylic paints, brushes and canvasses and told me to “have fun” and experiment – I have yet to paint on those 4 canvasses because, they need to depict the words in a way that will be meaningful to each child, but they opened the door for me to take the leap and begin to experiment and learn.

In 2010, we moved from Bellville to Noordhoek, and it was then that got to paint my first painting – I bought a canvas and painted The Fruit of the Spirit Tree.  The Lord told me to paint His Word so that my children would see it – and so, I, untaught and totally experimentally did just that, using my favourite tree in Noordhoek Common as my subject matter. I painted a tree and wrote the nine fruits of the spirit in its branches, then hung it up on a wall in my house.  Over the years, I painted a few other pieces too, each one depicting a passage of scripture or a verse, and each hanging where we can see it and be reminded of God’s word.

For the past 4 years, I was blessed to take art lessons once a month– sporadically – with a wonderful teacher who has the same philosophy as my sister “have fun”, and who has taught me to use various mediums.  She also has a wonderful phrase that she loves to quote, which often comes to mind – “walk free, sister”.  It was here that I let go of the fallacy of “perfectionism” and embraced my own expression in what I drew and created.

I would not call myself an artist, maybe I am more what they call, “a creative”, because I do enjoy creating things that have meaning and expressing myself in and through arts and crafts.  I guess, I have learned to just have fun! 

At the end of 2019, I told the Lord that it would be nice to have a full-stop – a complete break from everything.

Having three teenagers and an almost 12 year old, made life very busy, especially when you are home-schooling, and then you have all the extra-murals plus all the activities and interests, and you are driving them all over the place, not to mention everything else that you need to do too.

It was an extremely busy life ….

And then came the completely unexpected … LOCKDOWN …

So, lockdown for me, has been just that – a full-stop – and more than that, it has been a period of time that has launched me into a new direction and the beginning of a culmination of God’s work in and through my life.

I shared my story with a friend the other day and she laughed and said, “So, it’s your fault we’re in lockdown?  You asked God ….”

I had time to think … to just be … to hear … to stop.  Full Stop.

I had a lot of time to pray for our country, asking God to help us and expose anything that was not of Him and release His spirit in South Africa.  I was able to complete two prophetic paintings that I had begun earlier this year about things the Lord had shown me about my life, personally.  One of my prophetic pictures I had painted was a lighthouse, as the Lord told me that I am to be a Lighthouse. 

At the beginning of June, as I prayed, I wrote this in my journal – “I sense that something is about to give way in the Spirit realm.  Breaking open.  Release.”  The Lord gave me a picture of South Africa with chains around it, but the chains were breaking, and I just felt so impressed in my heart to paint it.  I printed a colouring map of South Africa on a sheet of paper and painted it as the Lord showed me to do it and wrote the verse in Psalm 107:14  “He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke their chains in pieces” and a prayer “Break the chains of slavery over this nation, Lord.”

I thought “well this is lovely” and took a photo of it and shared it with some people who are close to me.  Then, I wondered what to do with this picture – I could put it up on my wall, but it’s just a little A5 page with a picture on it and I would have to frame it.  So, whoever comes to visit me will see it. 

I decided to ask the Lord, “Lord, what do you want me to do with it?”

And He said to me, “Post it on Facebook”, which I did, simply sharing it with my “friends”.  Some friends asked if they could share it and I said they could, thinking, that is awesome I hope they will be encouraged by what the Lord showed me.

Two days later, the Lord gave me another scripture and told me to write it inside the map of South Africa and so I did, and I posted it too.  The next day, He gave me another verse and told me write it in the map, but this time to give it some colour. Each day, He would lead me in what to do, sometimes I would get a picture for the next day or for a picture yet to come.  It was like a dance – me following the Lord’s lead as He guided me through this unknown territory.

In that time, the Lord impressed on my heart to take my father’s poem that he wrote a few years ago, “South Africa, Bow!”, and paint it.  I knew I had the poem somewhere as my father had asked me to set it to music when he wrote it.  I asked the Lord to show me where it was that I had put the poem and He lead me to my music basket at the piano – there was the poem with the chords I had written in my sheet music folder.  I spent the next few days painting the poem as the Lord showed me what He wanted me to paint.

It was during this week that the Lord began to speak to me about South Africa and the missionary roots of my family here.  He asked me if I would commit myself to South Africa and choose it as my mission-field.  He also told me that I would need to close the backdoor that I had kept, to go to other countries if I did this.  I responded to Him with a heart of surrender that His will be done and that, yes, I would commit myself to this beautiful country of my birth.

This led to my 5^th post, and my 2^nd picture of South Africa – a Lighthouse shining, with roots anchoring it into the land, inside the map of South Africa.  “Put down your roots.  You are here for a reason.”

As of writing this, tomorrow will be 7 weeks (49 days) since I started on this journey, and almost on a daily basis the Lord is giving me His heart and the truth in pictures of South Africa and truths from His word.  Every picture has a map of South Africa on it and words of encouragement, straight from the Word of what God is saying over South Africa – prayers over South Africa, declarations over South Africa and a call to put our faith, our trust and our hope in Him.

It got to a point about 2 weeks ago that I felt that God wanted me to do something more with my pictures – not just share it on my Facebook profile, but to actually share it on a page dedicated …. specifically for South Africa and to include prophetic poetry and pictures and artistic expressions of God’s heart for our country from others who have been carrying His heart for our nation.  So, I messaged a friend I have made on Facebook who is a wonderful prophetic artist and poet.  She encouraged and walked with me on the journey and we started a Facebook page called “Expressions of Prayer and Worship”- prophetic prayers, decrees and declarations over South Africa. 

My heart is to encourage the church to hold fast to what God has said, because God does not lie.  Whatever promises He’s made to us, will come to pass.  As we press into God and pray and trust Him for a miracle in our country, we will see that miracle, we will see Him change the tide.  We have seen it once before, and this is no different.

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