Our Walkerville Adventure: October 2015

I can't believe it's been 4 months since my last post... 16 weeks, where did that go?? In fact, it reminds me of another 16 week period i spent skiing in Austria at the end of 2003, and some important lessons and big decisions that came out of that trip in particular. More about this in part 2 though.

So, what lessons and decisions am i talking about this time round? Wasn't relocating our family onto a farm 50km's south of Sandton a big enough decision? Apparently not. In fact, it actually reminds me of a saying I've used many times in the past... You can take the farmer out of the eastern cape (or almost any other province from that matter), but you can't take the eastern cape out of the farmer. And so it goes with me...

Security

I guess moving to a farm in the south wouldn't be complete without a breach in safety at some point, it just seemed that our breach came sooner than we'd expected! And so, as is now the case in almost every suburb and township in SA, a generous local removal service, transported my 2 bikes and a box load of tools, to an unclassified location (generous, because they were happy to do so free of charge) one Sunday morning. Jokes aside (although we can never really afford to stop joking in our country), D and i weren't laughing at the time, and you can get more on this from D's last blog post.

What was interesting for me however, was my knee jerk response. No, i did not get a gun, despite one of the unwritten rules of the south being (I'm sure), that a man without a gun and a dog is no man at all. What i did however do, was go into overdrive about trying to get our landlord to try fix our faulty electric fence, try get some tsotsi (criminal) eating dogs, and try install as many outdoor and indoor beams as we could afford. Please note, the emphasis being on the word try... Because as of today, we still have a broken electric fence, no man eating dogs, and not a single beam to boast of! And here was the lesson God has was teaching me... You don't really know what you trust in, until the squeeze is on, or said better by Robert Mckee;

“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure - the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature.”

Ouch! So what i need to add, is that at the very outset of our move to the farm, in fact i think it was day 1 for Dannean, and a couple days later for me, God gave us both a picture of a warrior angel having been posted on the roof of the house we are renting - coupled with a promise that no one would enter our house who was not welcome (more on God's promises below). It only then dawned on me, when my last ditch attempt at trying to get the beams installed failed, that maybe, just maybe, i was up against a force a wee bit greater than my or any tsotsi's best efforts. God was making it painfully clear, that He was the last person i was consulting on the matter of household security, despite Him having reassured us of our personal safety prior to the incident.

In my subsequent conversations with the Lord, it became increasingly clear that i had a pretty big trust issue, and we all know how healthy any relationship is without trust right? Fast forward today, and there have been no more breakins, probably because there's nothing else to steal at this point (ha-ha), and while i will be taking the necessary precautions with my workshop area in due course, the house on all accounts, remains God's property and problem - something i like to think i have come to terms with (but suppose I never really will know - until the next squeeze that is).

The Business

Leading on from the breakin, the latest developments in the motorized bicycle(less) business, are as follows... Remaining with good old Robert Mckee's quote above, it wasn't long after the security squeeze, that the identity and purpose squeeze kicked in. The what squeeze? Ok, let me explain... For anyone who has known me more than a couple hours, it's pretty easy to figure out, that I'm a relatively simple guy, with relatively normal guy issues. The 2nd question (after your name) you'll probably get from me (upon meeting), will almost certainly be, 'So Pete, what do you do'? This is basically man code for, who are you, how do think, what can you do, and how much money's in your bank account? In the majority, (disclaimer) if the chicks compare their waist lines, the guys compare their skills and influence. So, it really shouldn't come as a surprise to me, that the next lesson (in pretty rapid succession) should be that of, who exactly is Sean when he has no business or prospects? (i.e. no bikes and no money to do anything about that). Ouch!

Back to the quote... 'The greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the characters essential nature'. And so the choice i have had to make (not want to make), has been to do nothing about the business, other than to wait. What? That sounds pathetic right? Are you really just going to roll over and die that easily? Yes. And here's why... Because Godly (not worldly) character is only really formed from a single starting point, and here it is;

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. - John 12v24-25

Having just finished a book on humility by Andrew Murray, I can assure you the timing thereof was no coincidence, because as Andrew Murray puts it; 'To die to self, or come from under its power, is not, cannot be done, by any active resistance we can make to it by the powers of nature. The one true way of dying to self is the way of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God. This is the truth and perfection of dying to self, for if I ask you what the Lamb of God is and means, must you not tell me that it is and means the perfection of patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God?'

Thank you Andrew for my Sunday school lesson, because it came as no surprise to me, that of all the virtues, patience, meekness, humility and self will, are the 4 i probably rank the lowest in! So what to do? What of the motorized bicycles? What of the very purpose of moving out of the city in the 1st place? Good questions... A wise man once said, 'If while drowning, all you're able to clutch at is straws, rather try and find the boat you fell out of in the 1st place!' To take the wise man's council, here is the promise that God gave D and I as we stepped out of our proverbial boat 6 months ago;

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living! Wait (have patience) for the Lord ; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait (resign your will) for the Lord! - Psalm 27v13-14

So here's the lesson... When (not if) God calls you out of the boat, and tells you (like he did Peter) to walk upon the water, remember, he's not calling you out of the boat to walk on water, he's calling you out the boat to come to and become like him. Take my advise when I say, don't mix the 2 up, because it makes all the difference in understanding what God is doing in your life!!

A Promise

As mentioned above, God gave us a promise before our move down south, but for those of us who are wondering how exactly God gives these 'promises', allow me a moment to back up. Let's be honest, how do we even know it's actually God in the 1st place? How do we know it's not just our self will making up what we want to believe? Good questions... So here's a layman's attempt at trinitarian theology. God, the real GOD (as it is written in the Torah), is 3 persons in 1 - Father, Spirit, Son. By faith we believe that this 3-in-1 GOD takes up residence within the human body, in the form of His Spirit. God's Spirit and man's spirit essentially become one new spirit (hence the well covered and often abused phrase - you must be born again my dear!).

This new spirit also gives you an 'updated' set of faculties, in particular the ability to 'hear' and 'see' God at work. The primary and most reliable way to hear and see God, is to read the bible. And so, when I talk about this promise that God gave us, i am referring to an email i received from a friend of mine, with the previous scripture (Psalm 27v13-14) in it. More than that however, it came at a critical juncture in our lives last year, when we we're trying to decide if we were actually going to risk it all (by all i just mean my job and occupancy of our flat). The thing is, when my 'born again' spirit read that email, it literally felt as if God was shining a light down from heaven and saying, this piece of scripture, this promise, is from me for you (and your new future). I hope this makes some sense to anyone who was wondering if we simply eat too much pizza (and hence have funny dreams) in our house!

There's something else God is also teaching me about promises... And while this sounds relatively counter intuitive, it's actually pretty biblical, in fact so biblical, that God decided to use it as the ultimate test for the man he used to give birth to His own people (the nation of Israel). You see, when God asked Abraham to take his 10 year old son (Isaac) up the mountain (to sacrifice), God wasn't only suggesting to Abraham that he didn't have a problem with killing his son, He was also saying that He didn't have a problem killing off the very reason, the very dream, he had given Abraham in the 1st place... A dream that Abraham would be the Father of a nation, a multitude of people (starting with Isaac) as many as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on the beach. So what's the lesson here?

God is that secure in himself, that He really doesn't have any problem coming across as a raving mad, murderous maniac, because he knows He isn't, and He doesn't need any friends.

He's also crazy enough to risk being rejected by the very man whom the future of the entire nation of Israel hinges on! What? Why would God risk it? Here's what I think... Because God was allowing the father of our faith, Abraham, to set a standard of what God finds acceptable and righteous. So then, should we as Abraham's spiritual children, be surprised when God allows us to face the self same test, where the very promise that you know God has given you, is the very thing that He asks you to put on the alter of sacrifice?! No, because it's only when we give the promise back to God, that He knows we will use the promise for His glory, and that's when i believe we have our breakthrough (and get what God always promised he'd give us in the 1st place).

The Sabbath

One of my key resolutions with our move out of the city, was to hit the reset button on how I spent my time, or more specifically, what I spent my time doing. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that i had time management issues, on the contrary, i prided myself in needing less sleep, and getting more things done than most people. No, the real issue was what i wasn't getting done. For example, i liked to think that the most important things in my life, those things that carry the greatest weight in my life, were the things i was spending the most time on. But this was not the case at all, in fact, the exact opposite was true.

In all honesty, an objective look at how i spent my time, would in a court of law, reveal very little more than a person who's entire existence revolves around work, and in particular managing people, deadlines and goals. What then consumed the remaining waking hours of my day, was a 1 hour 'quiet time' (most weekday mornings), 80 minutes in the car (to and from work), 90 minutes playing and bathing the kids, another 90 minutes of work (email catchup most evenings), 1 night bible study a week, 1 night 'date night' a week (Dannean was lucky if I lit a candle), nicely rounded off with a proliferation of social events and activities on most weekends, and lastly sprinkled with an occasional Saturday outreach and of course Sunday church.

The only problem with all of this was... well everything, because at the core of who I liked to think i was, who we are is inextricably linked to how we spend our time, i had become a living example of the 80/20 principal gone wrong (i.e. 80% of my time being spent on 20% of the things that matter most to me).

Fortunately, this 80/20 principal situation wasn't only bothering me (or else I don't think much would have changed), so when the Spirit gently whispered to me a couple months back, that I needed to revisit my time allocation, i was very grateful for the reminder to do so. What i hadn't counted on, was just how wide God was about to open my eyes regarding how much we have lost as a result of not taking a Sabbath rest... Fast forward today, and i have over the past 3 months dedicated my Fridays (to a Sabbath rest), in order to do the things i always knew i should be doing, but never made the time to do so.

I call these my 5 F's, but I got them straight out the bible, so there's nothing fancy here. What is however new, is that I know dedicate every Friday to these 5 things alone (in 1 form or another). I'm not religious about it though, so if something else important (and it needs to be pretty important) pops up, i have the freedom to deal with that too. There is obviously a cost to count in this regard, as it's 1 less work day a week, but we've got our budget, and I've got my targets. On the upside however, let me say that I have never felt the pleasure of God more, or heard his voice clearer (I think!), than I have over the past 3 months. Obviously, living on a farm with huge amounts of space, beautiful scenery and fresh air helps, but I don't think that on its own is enough - not even close.

So, whether we like it or not, time is the ultimate test of our affections, purpose and motives. It's also a bit like our education system, in that you have to step out of the box to stop it being your master (more on that in part 2). Included here below are the previously mentioned 5 F's which form the framework for my Friday schedule;

Delightful abiding (Fuel)

Is my God love tank full?

Knowledgeable obedience (Fight)

Am I studying the word and actively seeking how to move more in the spirit?

Intercessory prayer (Fire)

Am I spending strategic prayer time in advancing the Kingdom?

Sacrificial serving (Friendship)

Am I continuously sharing the love of Christ with those in need?

Dedicated discipling (Followership)

Am I strategic and intentional in my discipling of others, as well as being discipled myself?

That's it for part 1. Can you tell i haven't blogged for 16 weeks?! Part 2 will follow shortly, but my hope as always, is that something (anything!) in what i share would encourage you in your journey of faith and life. I also always like to end any post with an invitation to come and visit us anytime on the farm. It's always better to share / discuss these things face to face anyway - so you are welcome!

Lastly, I've included some fun pics below from the past few months on the farm...

LOVE.

The annual mulberry bush bonfire on the farm next door

Our family (23 year old) landi (aka the samel - from school days), transporting the kennel for the dogs we imported from the farm next door (pic below). As I shared, God wasn't about to let me off the hook that easily, and we quickly had to pass them on after they unsuccessfully swallowed Jake (our Jack Russell) on 2 occasions!