The Source

When I was in my late teens my uncle bombarded me with self-help books: how to win through intimidation, Al Koran's philosophy on psychic techniques to make money; metaphysical affirmations that spiritualists use, Christian Science and Positive Thinking of Norman Vincent Peale, and success recipes galore, Napoleon Hill's exhaustive hard cover volume of Laws of Success from which the popular paper back was taken, How to think and grow rich; naturalist health text books, and many other types of self advancement books which he gave me to read, sometimes ten at a time, because I am a fast reader, to change my way of thinking.
I did read all of them and then one day, I took them all back to him and said, 'I prefer to stick to what I read in the Bible for a foundation for the rest of my life.'
'Suit yourself,' he said and packed the books away, one by one, in his bookshelf.
He ended up being divorced several times and left the ministry for a while and got involved in all sorts of businesses. He sold all the churches which his father, my grandfather, had built up to start his own denomination and moved to America with his one son.
Then in Australia, when Nola and I worked as worship leaders in the largest Charismatic Church in Australia at that time, the pastor forced me to attend a self-motivational course which all his staff members had to go through. He listened to the motivational tapes all day long in his car. And he built a lot of that stuff into his sermons on Sundays.'I can run this church without the Holy Spirit and no one will ever notice it!' he boasted.
The CEO of the motivational company asked me a bit about myself and then when I saw his stiff leg protruding from behind his desk I inquired about it.
'This is what your God did to me. I was a Methodist minister and I struggled to make a living just like all of you do. And then I was in a car accident and they put a steel rod into my leg. Now I can't walk properly. I left the ministry and started this business. I can make you famous and rich. I have made your pastor famous and rich. I can make anyone famous and rich!' he boasted and mentioned the name of a famous hair dresser in Brisbane and a famous tennis player in Australia that epitomized his success theories.
Suddenly I got up and said, 'I do not need your course, thank you, I prefer not to get anything from you.' I walked out. He screamed after me and told me I would never make it without him. He called me some names which I prefer not to repeat. He was a bitter and a twisted man and I didn't want his influence in my life at all.
Outside, when I got to my car, I raised both my hands skywards and made a vow: 'If the Holy Spirit cannot make me successful in what I have to do, I want no other help!'
I stuck to my vow through the years. I have now preached and ministered in 61 nations in 27 years and we have helped to plant and establish scores of churches. We have produced many LP's, tapes, CD's, Video films and DVD's, books, manuals, bible school material, life skills courses and life coaching manuals which have been distributed through many countries. We have produced musicals, held great concerts and trained more than a thousand people in our bible school.
Perhaps it is not 'rich and famous' but it is a life well spent so far and I hope to continue doing so as long as I have breath. I made a vow when I was 19 years old, on a snow covered hillside outside Leimbach, near Zurich in Switzerland, that I would serve God and humanity as long as I was spared and kept healthy.
The Bible has been my main source of inspiration all these years and I have trained many, many people how to hear from God from an Open Bible.

Roger Federer's thinking process

Roger Federer was surprisingly knocked out of the clay court competition in the second round by a 40th seeded player. The post match interview had him scratching his head trying to explain this strange phenomenon.
'It becomes so easy to win that one forget just how hard it is to dominate this tennis circuit. But a loss is perhaps just what is needed to wake you up again. When you keep on winning you stop thinking about how you are going to play and take things for granted. You do not think of how to play agains the next opponent and then something like this happens. You have to check your thoughts and change your thinking in order to win again.'
Notice how many times he referred to 'think'. There is a key here. How man thinks; so is he. Every action has been pre-meditated, good or bad. If you can think through something and think strongly enough, it will bring the required result.
There are the uncontrollable issues that you just have to accept as they come your way, but having clear thoughts about what you do is very important, if you are the world's best tennis player or not.
The apostolic injunction is to continually renew your mind with the Word of God - to begin to think the thoughts of God. Jesus rebuked Peter for thinking the thoughts of the flesh instead of the thoughts of God. Later on Paul tells us to learn to think about things that are 'above' and not 'beneath'.
There is an elevated thought life that rises above the things that want to drag you down all the time. It is a controlled thought life that leads to a life of self-control.
Roger Federer clearly told us all that it is important how we think about things in our life. The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. And the small rudder that determines the ship's course is like the tongue that controls our lives.
It is good to take some time off to just think through issues and determine which course to take or which thoughts to allow or disallow.
Clear conceptual thinking is something very valuable. We have to learn to excerice our minds, just as we excercise our bodies and learn to excercise our spirits as well. But that is another story all together...

Buzz Lightyear

I met Buzz Aldrin when he came to Johannesburg many years ago. I had to accompany Marli Kelly on the pinao. She was asked sing a song before Buzz spoke. I sat next to him on the platform. His wife and daughter was with him.
The first thing I noticed was his funny shoes. He explained that all the men who went to the moon returned with some physical defect. 'We're not made to walk on the moon,' he told me. The arches of his feet sank permanently and he had to wear specially built up shoes.
He wasn't a believer on the way to the moon but after that experience and on the way back he changed his mind. 'There has to be a God if you see how beautiful the earth is from space,' he told me.
My grandmother on my mother's side saw a vision in 1965 of a man in a cumbersome white suit walking on the moon. He was wearing a helmet. We laughed at her and sometimes even mocked her as we watched the full moon rising.
'There's Ouma's man on the moon!'
In 1968 my granny sat at the kitchen table of my Uncle in P.E. listening to the radio anouncing the first landing on the moon. Neil Armstrong's famous words came over the air from outer space,'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind!'

They named Buzz Lightyear after Buzz Aldrin. The comic character always goes beyond existing borders: to infinity and beyond!

Buzz told me about the extreme tests they had to go through to eliminate all the hopefulls until they only had a handful men left over to select the first team to walk on the moon. They had to be made of the right stuff. They had to be able to handle extreme pressure. If you make the wrong decision up there you destroy the mission and the men who are with you.

J. F. Kennedy said, 'you ask, 'why go to the moon?', and I say, 'why not?' We choose to go to the moon!'

I remember those days. There were some old folks who refused to believe it was happening. They said,'it's a capitalist trick of the Americans!' Just like the guy they found in the jungle who was still fighting the war in Borneo 32 years after the war had ended!

Bob Dylan sang, 'The times they are a changin',
ccome gather round people wherever you roam,
and admit that the waters around your head has grown
And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to be here is worth saving
And you better start swimmming or you'll sink like stone
For the times they are a changin'

A prophet in song, Dylan, for surely times have changed, incredibly. And those who do not change with it, fall far behind...in business, education, electronics or church...especially church...they want to continue as if their rituals are everlasting...and the times have already changed!

Buzz is a comic character to today's kids - to me he was a real hero.

Every Generation

Every Generation
Mike & the Mechanics sang a song, ‘Every Generation blames the one before…’ and then tells how he tried to communicate with his own father but just wasn’t able to ‘ In the Living Years’.
I heard this song the first day after my own father died. It made me weep. I sat alone in a hotel room in Bloemfontein and sobbed. I missed my father. His death came suddenly. I had read a scripture an hour before he died: ‘go ahead without me, I am an old man and I will just make your journey cumbersome.’ An hour later my mother phoned me and said, ‘Boetie, don’t get a fright, but your dad passed away this morning.’
We were all going to East London as a family for a holiday to watch Aje, my first son, play cricket for Northern Transvaal Primary Schools in the Perm Week. My dad greeted him at the airport when he received his Provincial colours.
That is the last time we saw him here on earth. It was sad. I remember going to my parent’s house and he was already taken away to the mortuary. My mother showed me where he laid. She was busy in her bathroom and he was in his, shaving. Then he gasped for his breath, three times, and she heard him collapse. When she opened the bathroom door he was lying on the floor with his head on the ledge of the shower. It happened in three seconds. In three seconds he exchanged the earthly for the eternal realm. He stepped over from this life to the life hereafter. Death was the doorway for him into another world.
I drove back to our home in 57 Marais Street, Brooklyn, Pretoria (now Tswane) that we rented from an old farmer. I decided to go for a morning swim. As I dived into the cold pool on that warm summer’s day, 12th of the 12th 1989, I felt the coolness of the water release the heat in my body and as I came up out of the water I said goodbye to my father: ‘Goodbye Oupa!’ I released his spirit to leave the earth – that’s how I felt.
It was not difficult for me to bury him. I had to conduct the service in Alberton Apostolilc Faith Mission Church hall and in the graveyard I threw the last sand on his coffin. My sister cried a lot. For some reason she wanted my golden Cross Ballpoint Pen and I gave it to her, but she dropped it into the grave onto the coffin. I let it go. It was buried with him in his grave like the old Pharaoh’s took their golden wealth with them into the pyramids.
Before he died he told me, ‘I have no regrets, my son.’ Few people can say that. He also used to say, ‘if you want to die by faith, you have to live by faith.’ Something else he was known for was a saying, ‘born once, die twice; born twice, die once.’ This referred to the second death which is an eternal separation from God. If you are born again by spirit and water (John 3:3-5) you will once experience the physical death and not the spiritual death.
I miss my dad. We had our misunderstandings, but in the end we loved one another to overlook the differences and accept each other as we are. He was a militarist and a planner; I am an artist and a non-conformist.
Every generation has its differences. He grew up in the depression years and during two world wars. He knew what it was like to rebuild lives after devastating wars. Every penny counted. I grew up in the Hippie Revolution and went to university in the Woodstock year, ’69. Long hair and floral shirts, bell bottom jeans and high heel boots…wasn’t what he wanted to see in his son. And then I became an actor…the worst nightmare for a pastor in a Pentecostal Church!
But later on I became a missionary and he used to listen to me preach – differently – and even made some notes which I have with me today.
God bless his heart for all he did for me and for all he was: he was a simple man and kept a middle of the road existence, no fancy cars or clothes. He saved what he could and left some money for my mother to survive on. We inherited a small amount eventually that helped us along the way.
He gave up a lucrative business career and sold his brass and iron factory in Alrode to use the money in the full time ministry to subsidise us as a family for the salary was small and the pension hardly enough to buy bread and milk every day! He gave up his life for the Gospel’s sake, and for that I highly honour him. Few men of his calibre would have done the same. But because he was in the ministry, like both my grandparents and my uncle, I entered the mission field and my son Aje is now the 4th Generation preacher! We might not be wealthy factory owners, but we have a wealth hidden in the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is our riches!

Incredible India

I saw something I will never forget: a cow stepping up to the counter in a street shop and being fed rooties by the shop owner, one by one, chewing them like chewing gum!
The cows lie in the middle of the road: a black and white cow on the black tar and white markings of the road in the heavy late afternoon traffic in Chennai - and everyone drove around it!
Then I also saw cows rummaging for something to eat among the rubbish piled up on the side of the road together with some threadbare stray dogs.
And baboons playing on the steps of the hotel - completely unafraid of people.
I saw mountains high, covered with tea plantations on either side, as far as you can drive with the car. Who on earth drinks so much tea? The English?
And I saw shrines everywhere on the most unexpected places - with priests waiting for your offering.
I saw every man with a white smear on his forehead.
What is that? I asked.
Cow's dung. The priest mixes it with ash and puts it on the forehead as a sign that the man visited the temple. They wear it with pride.
I saw an old man pick up cow's dung to take to the temple. Compensation from the priest, perhaps.
I saw moustaches that belong to the old colonial age on doorkeepers: the more prestigious the hotel, the larger the sergeant-major handle bar moustache!
I saw Mahatma Ghandi everywhere, statues, busts, head and shoulders, paintings, T-shirts, book covers, restaurants.
I saw the motorised riksha's and travelled in one with Yve, my daughter, who accompanied me on the mission to India.
We travelled by train through the night from Tirupur to Chennai and back again after a few days. The age old Indian train: fuller than full, curtain and bed affair, dirty toilets, or actually no toilets, just a hole in the floor!
And they sell curry on the train - like everywhere else.
But the curry we tasted was delicious, it was delicate, it was exquisite, it was divine and the different breads, the rooties, the parata's and the wonderful spices and sauces, the freshly squeezed juices ranging from watermelon to coconut, mango to melon, berry to grape fruit, paw-paw to banana the never ending freshness of fruit to tantalize the palate of the weary traveller.
And the congested cities, the ancient villages, the narrow mountain passes, the risky crossing of a street with hundreds of 50 cc mopeds charging at you!
And all the hooting - every car has a sing on the back - honk please! And they do and they communicate that way: it means, I'm coming through, it means, I am through, it means, thanks for letting me through! It means watch out! It means hello! It means there is another car coming! It means I am turning off now! It means goodbye! Hooty is a national language, to say the least.
And everyone plays cricket everywhere on each and every available space.
And the people are really friendly, everywhere, without expecting a tip or anything else in return. It is genuine friendliness.
And the tilting rolling heads from side to side meaning I agree, I agree! The more they like what you are saying the more the head rols from side to side.
I saw pilgrims, barefoot, carrying heavy idols as punishment, travelling alone or in groups until they reach the temple where they will pay their vows.
I saw signs saying 'Bollywood movies are shot here'.
I saw sunsets sublime, sunrises like an artist's palate, I saw the sun reflect on a lake, I saw the moon from our window, I saw colourful sahri's, dohties, and I saw innocent children run free; I saw great poverty and I saw great wealth; I saw streetsweepers accepting their role in this life graciously and I saw proud businessment swaggering into hotel lobbies; I saw faces that will remained engraved on my memory stick forever, with wrinkles and lines and piercing eyes that burn into you telling you what has taken place for thousands of years in a moment's glance...
Ah, India, a land of mystery and a land of beauty, a land of contrasts and a land of deep sorrow, yet silent joy.
Will I go again? Who knows. I hope I will. India is Incredible.

The Script for the New Year

Here we go again!
The New Year has begun. It is 2010. Things have increased with a speed, as Nola says.

When you take a horse out of the stable it is sluggish and you have to spur it on to go on a trot. But when you have reached the end of your excursion and turns its nose around to go home it suddenly receives renewed energy to get back to the stable!

Amazing how the finishing tape spurs runners on to put in their best effort.
We tend to slow down at the end of a year and to pick up speed at the start, don't we. We need to learn how to pace ourselves. We need to know our own rhythms. We cannot keep track of other people and what they are doing.

We cannot run the race of faith without patience. Patience is the stabilizing force that keeps faith upright. Telephone poles used to have strong iron cables to keep them upright. Today they seem to stand on their own, but they do have some kind of re-inforcement.

Let us look on the bright side of life as we start out. There is someone up there watching over us.

I watched Paul Newman many years ago playing Rocky Marciano in a black and white movie that also had a cameo role for Steve McQueen. It is a kind of feel good movie. You feel a few feet taller when you walk out of the cinema. Then I saw Zabriskie Point and felt horrible when I walked out: there was something that made you feel like destroying property. Movies have a great effect on life. So does TV. But the most important visual imagery should be on the inside. The movie you have of yourself.

Each one of us has a movie. We play the starring role. We recollect things that happened to us and we tend to settle with the image projected about us by others. But deep thought and accurate words about ourselves can actually change the movie script. We have an amazing ability to write our own script. We can choose the scenes. It is a divine ability. We can help others to create a better movie for their lives by speaking encouraging words to them and by building them up rather than breaking them down.

We have to learn to ignore and spit out all the negative information we receive from those who mean us harm. Just like a computer security is set to remove all the spam mail and all the junk mail without any effort, so we have to build a positive stronghold of faith within ourselves to cope with all the curve balls life throws at us. We need to be able to handle all the unfair criticism, all the jealousy and envy, all the hatred and all the pain.

We overcome by faith and faith works by love. To love is to be patient and kind and show goodness and mercy to others. You are patient with the one you love. You speak kindly to those you love.

God is patient with us. He is longsuffering towards us. He waits for us to understand His lovingkindness. He does not reject us when we make mistakes. He does not treat us according to what we deserve. His goodness leads us to repentance. He could have been severe but instead he reveals his love to us. That amazes us. We sing 'Amazing grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I'm found, I was blind but now I see' with the songwriter who was a slave trader and experienced God's mercy when they faced a storm on the high seas that threatened to destroy their vessel. When they made it safely to the shore, he wrote the song that describes all our experiences outside of God's love and care.

When we begin to rewrite our own movie script of how we see ourselves in the light of God's love we see the picture changing before our very eyes! And then we can love others because we have experienced God's love.

May the New Year bring the desired changes in all of us to the betterment of others and to the greater glory of God, as Mike Wood, my Aussie buddy likes to say.

Imagine a world without Christmas

For many years we did not celebrate Christmas just to break the hold of the religious traditions on our lives: forced to give presents no one really appreciates, forced to buy a Christmas tree and decoration, with a star at the top or an angel dangling dangerously until its fall to the earth eventually when one of the grandchildren run into the tree; the endless Christmas Carols all sounding the same every year; the pageants in the church hall with actors cloted in pyjamas and bath robes and towels around their heads, the girls fighting about who should play Mary this year, the baby doll Jessu with the stark eyes staring into space; the cardboard donkeys and the wise men who do not understand a thing about astronomy; the shepherds who never know where to kneel and the angels on the staircase anouncing peace on earth and goodwill among men until we hear the news on TV again; the well wishing and the forced joyous celebration, tapping every ounce of religious experience out of every Christmas service; the endless choirs robed like angels, sweating in the African heat, the silent unspoken wish for a white Christmas in South Africa; the old folks that wear Santa Claus outfits in the summer heat; the bells of reindeer, the smells of the roast; the Jews and Muslims making a killing out of the Christian spending, coming up with novel Christmas gifts every year and the record producers who force their stars to make yet another Christmas Album for profits sake, Amen.
Enough already...the pagan practices of the tree and other decorations, mixed with the consumer magic of Father Christmas in the shopping centre, the Christian faith that Jesus was born from a virgin, the National Geographic and History channels on TV trying their utmost to disprove the fact with all their theories and scientific nonsense...
But after all said and done, imagine a world without Christmas...at least people thinki about Christ once a year. No, maybe twice. The other time would be at Easter.
So a baby Jesus and a suffering Saviour on the Cross is non-threatening to all the other religions of the world and even atheists and agnostics put up with it.
In a sense, Nola, my wife is right: Christmas and Easter are the final Christian outposts in a world gone crazy.
There is always a movie on TV about the Nazi's and the British not fighting in the trenches on Christmas day, but having a game of football and sharing their chocolate bars and cigarettes and hidden whiskey with each other...just for a day. Tomorrow we kill each other again!
Christmas being one of the last Christian bastions, we need to reform our thinking about it and at least compose a few fresh Christmas Carols of our own that would really be a joy to all the world. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas is after all not a hymn to sing in church!
So, we changed our approach and held our first ever Christmas service in our reformational church in Cape Town again in 2009.
It was wonderful - because of our long lay off we have shed all the unnecessary religious trappings of tradition and discovered uniquely fresh reasons to celebrate the miraculous birth of the Son of God.
As a friend of mine indicated: He left no tangilbe evidence behind once He left the earth, but He left us His Name. Joseoph and Mary's obedience to call Him Jesus like the Angel instructed them to do, ushered His name into the earth so that we who believe could use that Name in prayer - and not like Hollywood only in swearing and cursing because they try to discredit that wonderful name...
Christ was born in Bethlehem, in Judea, yes, 2000 years ago, and it is good to remember it, but when someone accepts Christ's sacrifice for their sins, and He becomes their Lord and Saviour, they are born again, or Christ is born in them and thus we celebrate the birth of Christ all over again!
Nola sang a new Christmas hymn in a prophetic way and we'll have to listen to the CD to learn it for next year! It was glorious and powerful and we soared in the spirit like eagles on the upwards drafts of heatwaves, lifting us higher and higher until we lost touch with earthly ways of celebrating Christmas. It was a whole new experience!
I preached about Paul's message to the Galatians: my little children for whom I labour again to see Christ formed in you...an apostolic take on the Christmas story!
(It should all be on our website soon: www.harvesterchurch.net)
And there was great joy in our dancing while we worshipped - and we celebrated the joy of knowing Jesus Christ and having fellowship with each other as children of the Living God. The peace we experienced passed our understanding because we were made right with God through faith in Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross of Calvary! What a joyous Gospel! What a way to celebrate Christmas - His Name is our greatest gift that we can still share with each other today!
Merry Christmas to all who read this blog, then, and a happy New Year to you all - from a different perspective, I hope.
I really couldn't imagine a world without Christmas...when that happens, when they take away Christmas from the calender, it is time to leave the earth and look for the new heaven and the new earth Jesus promised to go and prepare for those who love Him and look for His return.