At the start of 2013 God gave me the weirdest word to help guide me through the year “I will teach you to dance through a storms” He said, now; I am a pastor by trade so I have read enough of the bible to know that the correct thing for God to say to me would have been “hey Lwela am gonna teach you to sleep through storms” I am not a big fan of storms and I was pretty sure when I got the word that the storms symbolised hard times, I am not a big fan of hard times either, and well if you know me you’ll know that dancing is not… well lets just say am better at other things.
But it was the word of the lord for me and I was excited to explore it to its fullness. Needless to say 2013 came and the storms came! left, right and centre even from the top man! There was literally no place to hide but being the awesome Christian that I am I obeyed the scriptures concerning storms “I slept through my storms” pretending that that when I woke up they would all be gone and the sun would shine again and I’d dance (well not literally dance) but the sun never came and depression set in and…. (Well thank God for discipleship)
Anyway it’s the end of the year now and the dust has settled the storms have passed and the sun is shining ever so brightly. So I picked up my journal and started writing “God where were …….” Before I could finish the sentence tears overwhelmed me because He is so true to his word. Yes the year was rough like He promised but I had such a great adventure in him. I literally danced through a storm. I didn’t realise it at the time but when everything was falling apart around me he was busy taking me deep into Himself.
Back in June I was in a mall in cape town and the presence of the Lord came over me, I was with a good friend of mine Dawid (a crazy evangelist) needless to say miracles broke out at the mall and people got healed. A group of construction workers had just finished their shift and were packing their stuff into their car. I got a word knowledge about a knee pain, went over to the guys and prayed for the guy who had knee issues (Yes our God healed him) the rest of my time in Cape Town was filled with God doing amazing things.
When I got back to Joburg I got invited to come speak about the Holy Spirit at a youth camp in Pretoria. I did warn them that Holy Spirit has a way of doing interesting thing that might not be kosher, but the leaders were so hungry for a move of God that when I started praying for them, God showed up in crazy way to fill their hunger. I looked around and this calm and reserved youth meeting had become what I can only describe as “chaos” people crying as they felt God touch them for the first time, some laughing, others..Well… I don’t think there is a word to describe what they were doing.
In the midst of all this craziness I was told that one of the ladies at that meeting had lost full mobility after I prayed for her. So they want me “the man of God who obviously knows what he is doing) to come pray for the lady again. I walked over to where the lady was and asked her what was wrong. She told me that she felt weak and she could not feel her legs so we carried her to a quieter place. I then did the smart thing… I asked the Holy Spirit what to do. He told me to tell her to close her eyes and wait for him. Immediately after closing her eyes she had a vision where Jesus appeared to her in the vision and healed her of a lot of emotional wounds after which she regained full mobility.
Sometime after that Siphokazi and I took a bunch of students from UJ on a mission trip to the University of Venda (Siphokazi is a campus pastor at His people Church) God did awesome things in Venda and you would have to interview the different people that went there to get the full picture of how awesome God is. On one particular evening we invited students at Univen to come watch a movie with us. What we didn't know was that one of the political parties on campus was hosting a rally in the venue opposite our movie venue. One of the ladies on the mission named Thobeka had prophesied over one of the political leaders of that party. So when he heard that we were next door he brought his friend to be prayed over. I prayed for his friend and gave him an accurate word of knowledge (when God tells you stuff about other people)
The guy was so shocked that he went and told his friends who then came and formed a queue waiting for me to pray over them, there were about 20 people waiting for prayer. What freaked me out were the details God was giving me about these peoples’ lives, like how one guy had just become a dad a month before. I was shocked but realised how much God wants to be involved in peoples’ lives.
When we were in Venda we also did a treasure hunt (finding the people that God describes as his treasure) for the treasure hunt I got paired up with a lady named Makgantse (best word to describe her would be: different) she felt God wanted her to find a lady who was pregnant, standing under a tree, next to a tractor, so we went to campus looking for this lady. We were super excited when we found her but we were shocked at how welcoming she was to a bunch of strangers who felt God had told them to come pray for her. When we asked her why she was so welcoming, her response shocked us…….. She told us that; that particular morning she had had dream that we would come and pray for her, she had never met either of us before.
Yes that’s the year I had, when its dark find the light, mourn if you have to, cry when it hurts, but never let a good storm go to waste, learn to dance through it.
Thanks to Mpho and Allan who were there for me when I was not there for myself
