I previously spoke about how the world speaks of reaching certain goals in order to be happy, but I am here to tell you that it will never leave you satisfied. I noticed that some people that are idolised in this life are not truly happy, I have listened to songs where they are questioning what next. I believe it is an amazing thing to have goals and aspirations for your life, but what happens after you have reached that specific goal? You start to write down new goals that you want to achieve. There is nothing wrong with that however, that should never be where your source of joy and happiness derives from because those things will never leave you satisfied. Recently, I achieved a goal of mine that I have had for years and although I was extremely happy and grateful to God about it. I found myself asking what’s next. 

It was in that moment when I thought to myself – its only God that can truly be the source of my happiness. A lot of us are in situations where we have dreams and goals to reach and that is amazing, but we should never neglect the fact that those things should never be your source of joy and happiness. Anything is capable of leaving you, but God will never leave you – it says in Hebrews 13:5 (ESV) “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you”. Other things may disappoint us or make us feel unfulfilled, but God is the only one that promises that he will never leave nor forsake us and I will put my trust in the one who promises to never let us go.  

The question that I will leave with you here is – are you truly satisfied with only God?

The definition of the word ‘happy’ according to google means “feeling or showing pleasure or contentment”. When you think about true happiness, what does it mean to you? When do you feel like you are your happiest? This is a question that I am currently asking myself everyday as I am getting older and reflecting more on my life. I went through a period in my life where I wasn’t happy with myself, I tried so hard to distract myself with social media, getting a new hobby, hanging out with family and friends but I just wasn’t happy. I was in a state of feeling discontented with my life and when I started to evaluate what was going wrong in my life it was my relationship with God that I felt was crumbling. I wasn’t fellowshipping with God, and it had an effect on how I felt everything was going on in my life. I realised at that time that it is only God who can make me truly happy. No matter how many people I surround myself with or what I do its only God that can fill that hole. I felt like my life was crumbling because I was not prioritising my relationship with God and everything to me felt like it was falling apart.

The world tells you that you need all of the external things then you can be happy or that we need to achieve a specific goal then we can be content but that is a lie. I’m not saying that we should not have goals and aspirations but it becomes a problem when that is your source of happiness. It will always leave you wanting more every time, it’s a good thing to dream and have goals but the dilemma lies in when you start to believe that only those things can satisfy you. I have seen people who seem to have it all but are still not happy and still not satisfied with life and it leads them to a state of striving – striving for things that will truly make them happy.

That is why in the bible it is always emphasised to delight in the Lord (Psalms 37:4) it tells us that those who are happy are the ones whose God is their Lord (Psalms 144:15). The bible informs us about these things and how to gain true happiness and how to be content in life.

Father Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to receive a revelation from you and I pray that our source of happiness will always be based on you. I pray that we look to you to provide us the happiness that we truly need. Thank you Jesus.

I am celebrating one year of being saved and I wanted to share with you 12 things that I learned in 12 months.

The first thing that I learned is that I find my worth in Christ and in nothing else but Christ. This is something that I am constantly learning about. It is so important that as Christians we do not try to find our worth in people, money, relationships because it is so easy to fall into that trap. One thing that I have realised that these things never fill you up so you spend your time seeking for something that will never satisfy you and before you know it you find yourself seeking for more but remaining empty.

God is the only reason I am breathing; I mean that is obvious but one day this thought came to my mind that I depend on God for everything including the things that I don’t even think twice about. We can’t function without God and something that we are blessed with every day, it is a privilege for God to breathe his life unto us every day.

Intentionality with God starts with you! This is something that I had to come to terms with, yes God wants a relationship, and his arms are always open to us but we also have to put effort in. You have to make that decision to surrender to God because our God is such a loving God, he is never going to force you to do anything. You can pray for strength and ask God to help you when you may not feel like it but at the end of the day it is up to you to make that choice. I told myself that the times when I don’t feel like spending time with God is when it is absolutely imperative that I have to spend time with him that day. If we are not intentional with God, it would be difficult for you to progress in your relationship with God.

The true meaning of the love of God!coming from someone who really suffered with shame and guilt growing up I never really understood the love of God. I always thought that I needed to do something in return for God to love me and that mindset always pushed me away from God because I believed that I was not worthy. However, God has been teaching me in the past year the true meaning of his love which is that I don’t have to do anything for him to love me. The popular verse John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” God does not love us because we do something for him or because we follow a protocol, but he loves us just the way we are, we don’t have to prove anything because he loved us before we even loved him. 

What it means to surrender your life to God.This was hard for me especially during the times when I told God that I would change my ways and surrender to him only to find myself back at square one. Totally surrendering to Christ is not comfortable it means that you have to unlearn somethings, you have to subject yourself to God. Jesus is a perfect example of what it means to totally surrender to God, when reading about Jesus’ life I realised the way he communicated with God the Father – he constantly surrendered to him. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus said “My Father! If it is not possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine”. What I love is that Jesus knew what was about to happen yet he could have easily made a decision not to go through with it anymore but he was so surrendered to the Father that even in his suffering he was able to put aside his wants to follow the will of the Father.

Not every instruction from God will be in your comfort zone.This one hit me pretty fast, when I first got saved God would tell me to do certain things that was wayyyy out of my comfort zone and to be honest there have been many times I have been confused as to why me. God is so awesome that he sees the things that we don’t see (Isaiah 55:8) and he knows that if we continue to stay in our comfort zone then how would we be able to grow and try new things. Even if you feel like the task that God has given you is too hard remember that God will not leave you to figure it out by yourself he will help you along the way so just put your trust in him.

God is an intentional God! I will forever stand by this. Have you ever looked back on your life and said wow everything just aligns? sometimes as we are going through things, we are not able to see the full picture of what God is doing. One of my favourite bible verses is in 1 Corinthians 13:12 “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything completely, just as God now knows me completely”. I remember growing up and I didn’t understand why a lot of things in my life were happening and many times I lost hope, but it was all for a reason. As human beings our knowledge is limited so we may not see an end to what we are going through but God always makes a way. Even if you feel like you may have strayed away from God’s will, he is so merciful and faithful that he will work everything out for your good and in the end, he will be glorified.

There is nothing like condemnation in Christ. I spoke a bit about my experience with shame and guilt when I was growing up and what I now know is that if it is condemnation it is not from Christ (Romans 8:1). He will never condemn us and that is a lie that the devil uses to push people further from God, but Jesus will never die for us so that we could still feel shame and guilt. We are able to feel convicted and that is from God because everything is supposed to bring us closer to God and not further away from him.

No matter how much you don’t want to forgive someone, you have to! This is something that a lot of people struggle with in our generation, many people don’t like the idea of forgiving people who hurt them. I used to think of myself as a forgiving person until God started to reveal to me that there were people that I still needed to forgive, it is so easy for someone to think that they have forgiven someone when all they have really done is to stop caring and I’m not saying that all you should think about what the person has done to you 24/7 but I understand that forgiveness comes with forgetting a situation and still loving that person regardless of what they have done to you.

Christianity is not peaches and cream!  Before I came to Christ, I had this idea that everything will be smooth sailing as soon as I gave my life to Christ and boy was I wrong. I found myself questioning a lot and it is not easy but the only thing that keeps me going is Jesus. it’s the fact that I could be having a horrible day and I read the word and it gives me peace. In John 16:33 (another one of my favourite verse) Jesus says “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”. This bible verse gives me peace that if Jesus Christ overcame the trials and tribulations when he was on earth so can I and it gives me strength to carry on even when I want to give up.

God wants a relationship with you! I am an advocate for this, sometimes people feel like they have to hide themselves when they get into God’s presence, but God desires a relationship with us. He doesn’t want you to just tick boxes, but he wants to talk to you, he wants to know about your day, he wants you to tell him what has been annoying you. Trust me, God cares even about the tiniest detail and I always say that God is the only one that does not get annoyed at me when I babble on and on because he loves me like that. Talk with him, laugh with him don’t reduce spending time God to only in your secret time but include him in your everyday life. 

Nothing can ever stop God from loving you! This is something that I have been recently learning. There is nothing you can do to stop God from loving you absolutely nothing! Sometimes we give ourselves too much credit thinking that what we have done is going to stop God from loving us we need to come to an understanding that nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:35-39). When I think of that it makes me fall more in love with God because I don’t have to prove anything to him, I don’t have to act a certain way I can be myself and God loves me as I am and that is truly comforting. 

Love you all and most importantly God loves you!

The secret place, the most important place to me (Psalms 91:1) It was where the holy spirit started to reveal the importance of worship to me. In my previous posts, I explained my journey with realising the importance of worship. I would have never been aware of that if I had never spent time in the secret place. When I started my journey with Christ, I did not understand the importance of dwelling in the secret place all I did was surface level things. That is not bad at all but as I started to grow, and I desired to go deeper into understanding more about God – that is where a lot of revelation came from. Dwelling in the secret place can look different depending on your relationship with God, it’s a personal thing and it is important for our growth with God. This is where the holy spirit revealed my heart to me concerning how I was worshipping him, I realised that a lot of my worship stemmed from how I was feeling instead of who he was. However, the more time I spent with God, the more I understood that I could not worship based on my emotions alone because my emotions do not take away from who God is. 

The secret place is where you build your worship, I noticed the reason I struggled with worship was because I didn’t know God was. How can I spend such an intimate time with my father if I have no clue of who he is and what he means to me? I knew who Christ was to other people and I thought that I could worship God based on people’s relationship with God but that never sustained me. My worship did not come from a revelation of intimacy but from feeding off other people’s revelation of God, so it did not come from my heart. I didn’t worship God because I truly loved him or because I knew that he loved me, but I worshiped him because someone told me what he did for them. Although, that is amazing – God wanted me to know him for himself. In the secret place is where I knew who God was to me, that’s when I knew that he was my father, my best friend, the best encourager, and my biggest supporter. I now worship because I know who he says he is and who he is to me! Once I grew in intimacy with my father is when I grew in worship.

Father, I thank you for who you are! I thank you for continuously pouring into us and for always opening our hearts to receive from you. I pray that we grow in intimacy with you and that we truly know and experience you. In Jesus’ name. Amen!

It took me this year to realise that serving is an act of worship and if I can be honest, it has been a struggle for me. I could not see how it could equate to worship, but I started to understand that serving is an act of worship because it is an act of surrender not only to God but also to people (1 Peter 4:10 NLT).  When you are serving you are not doing for your own gain, but you are doing it for God to be glorified and to be honoured in what you are doing (Colossians 3:23-24 NLT). I believe that it is a reason why God gave us gifts, as serving is not only limited to one thing – you can serve by being in the choir, you can be in the teaching team etc. these are all ways you could serve in your church. 

When it comes to serving in church, it has been a weird journey for me because I used to serve in church when I was younger but when I got older it became like a chore to me. I could not understand why it was something that we should do. I told myself that if you are coming to church that is fine and I did not want to put myself out there, I’m not saying that it is bad to just come to church but serving was something that the holy spirit put in my heart so many times. However, I had the wrong perception of what serving was going to be like and if I had served back then I would’ve been doing it for the wrong reasons – which is to be seen and that is when it shifts from an act of submission to being the centre of attention. I didn’t want the responsibilities of serving in church, I saw the sacrifice that people put, and I didn’t really want any parts of it. Now that I am serving, I find joy in it not because of anything, other than the fact that I love Jesus and in any way that I could give glory to God I want to do it. Even in this time, I’ve understood that in serving you do not do it by your own strength and that you should not leave God out of it, he still wants to be a part of everything that you do. 

Father Lord, I want to thank you for who you are, I want to thank you for the revelations that you provide us with. I want to thank you for placing gifts inside of us, I pray that anyone who has yet to recognise the gifts that you have placed inside of them that you open their eyes and their hearts. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

I can’t speak about worship and not mention David, so I started to study a bit about David and the way he worshipped God. The google definition of worship states it is “the feeling or expression of reverence and adoration for a deity”. David’s life was a true embodiment of that and you could see in the way he lived his life, he was not a perfect man and he was aware of that. However, he was a great worshipper and that’s one reason I believe that God named him a man after his own heart (1 Samuel 13:14). He devoted his life to worshipping God and acknowledged God in everything that he did, he did not hold anything back – he laid it all out to God. As believers, I think we could all take something from the way David worshipped God.

What stood out to me the most was the way he loved God, David hated the things that God hated and loved the things that God loved – he truly made his life a living sacrifice unto God. There was an intimate relationship with God and David – this made it easier for David to communicate with God openly with how he felt. A lot of us bottle things in and personally when I hid things from God in the past, it affected my worship to him – I couldn’t be free, I couldn’t cast all my worries to him, I couldn’t lay it all down to him in my worship because I was guarded. I guarded my heart and things from God, when God knows me inside out, he knows me better than I know myself.

A key thing I learned from studying a bit about David’s life was to worship God with everything inside of me (Psalms 63) and to let go and let God. David was someone that truly understood God and God’s way and wanted to know more – he knew his identity in Christ and you see this, he was not afraid to tell God when he was worried, when he was happy, when he was excited. He expressed every part of him to God. He was so free in Christ that his wife despised him for it – in (2 Samuel 6) David rejoices because he brought back the Ark of God the bible said that “David danced before the Lord with all his might, wearing a priestly garment” (2 Samuel 6:14) David did not care about who was there, he worshipped God with all that he had – he was overjoyed with the return of the Ark of God. He wasn’t looking at what people were saying. However, his wife was ashamed and in verse 16 it says that “she was filled with contempt for him” she wanted to place a restriction with how he worshipped God, she was ashamed at his worship because she believed that a king was not supposed to be composed in the manner David was. She was too focused on how he looked to people.

How many of us are so restricted in the place of worship so people do not think we are weird? I used to be like that, I tried to control my every move when it was time to praise God. That is selfish because God is worth so much more, God gives us all of him so why can’t we give him all of us? let us be free in his presence – let us give our all to him. He deserves it. 

Father Lord, I thank you for the opportunity to be able to worship you, let us understand what it truly means to worship you, give us the grace to be free in your presence and to remove any restrictions because you deserve it.  In Jesus name, Amen.

Thank you, Jesus.

I have discovered new ways that I am able to worship God and I love it. God opened my eyes, he showed me that I can worship him by just thanking him for what he has done – I know that it sounds obvious but that was how narrow my perception of worship was. I believed the only way to worship God was to sing worship songs but there are so many ways you are able to worship God. Something that I started to do was to write down things that I either love about Jesus or things that I thank him for and every time that I would write it down, I noticed that I never ran out of things to write. It was a way to reflect on the things that God has done for me – it helped me to be grateful to God and it has significantly helped me in my worship. It is so easy for us to forget the things that God has done for us and the grace that he has given us, and it can affect the way we worship him. For me it was hard for me to worship because I was in a place of ungratefulness, I let myself to forget God’s mercies over my life and when I was worshipping him I did it out of a place of forcing myself but when I started to write the things that I love or that I am thankful for. It brought me to a place of fellowship with him. 

Another way to worship God is the obvious one which is singing to God – I have started to become intentional with this. For instance, if I am singing that God is a way maker, I’m doing it because of his revelation to me that he is a way maker and me knowing that he has brought me out of situations where I thought there was no way out. Even blocking out thoughts and focusing on God because he deserves it because I noticed that when I started to worship God, that was when I started to think about what I wanted to eat or remembering how someone spoke to me that day. I had to come to a realisation that when I am doing this, I am shifting my focus from God to my own personal needs when that time should be all about him. Don’t limit yourself on how to worship God – he would honour your worship if you have a sincere heart and you are giving him all the glory (Psalms 66:17).

Father Lord, I thank you Lord for your mercies. I pray that God reveals to us more ways that we can worship him, and I pray that you shift any distorted perception that we have on worshipping you. In Jesus name, Amen.

Today I want to speak about what worship means to me and this has changed over the past few months. If you asked me this question in the beginning of the year, I would not know what to say because I didn’t understand the concept of worship. I only did it because I knew it was something that I had to do not because I had a desire to. However, if I was asked the same question today, I would say that worshipping God for me means to be humble and vulnerable before him with no restrictions. I had to come to terms with the fact that I cannot control everything especially something so sacred as worship – God does not want my restricted worship he wants me to be free in his presence. It was so hard for me to put my walls down because I am such an overthinker and I love to plan everything but that does not work when you are in the presence of God. How can I expect God to move in me during worship if I am in my head all the time observing how I am worshipping or if i look weird? Once I started to allow God to take over then all restrictions were shattered.

Worship for me is not confined to singing worship songs in church. It includes making my life a living sacrifice to God – in Romans 12:1 it is written that “And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead to you to give your life your bodies to God…Let them be a living and holy sacrifice – the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him” meaning that you cannot only give your all to God when you are in church but every second of your life needs to be a worship to God.

What does it mean to make your life a living and holy sacrifice to God? For me this means being devoted to Christ in everything that I do. I cannot say that my body is a living and holy sacrifice unto God when I am doing things that I know displeases him, when I am not giving my all to Christ and this took a lot for me to understand and if I am being honest it is still a process. Although, I am not perfect and I make mistakes I understand that my life is not my own and in everything I do I have to glorify God. I believe this could mean different things to each person. What does worship to God mean to you? What does it mean for you to give your life as a living sacrifice to God? Share in the comments or you can share it with me on social media.

Father Lord, I thank you for the opportunity for giving your children to read this and I pray that their lives would be a living and holy sacrifice to you. I pray that they gain an understanding on what worship means to them and most importantly what it means to you. In Jesus name, Amen!

For a couple of months now the holy spirit has been speaking to me about worship and what it truly means to worship him, for many years I had a narrow view on how to worship God and I realised that my perception of worship was distorted. I had limited myself on how to worship him and what I deemed was acceptable unto Christ. It is crazy because I have always been someone who liked to sing and I was somewhat involved in the church, up until I went to university but I lost the passion to worship because I believed that singing was the only way I was able to worship him.

During the pandemic, God started to work on me and he began to shift my perspective not only on him but also on the way I worshipped him. It wasn’t the easiest thing for me because I had to unlearn a lot of things that I had been accustomed to for years. John 4:24 (NLT) says that “For God is spirit, so those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” however, the holy spirit revealed to me that I was worshipping him out of a fleshly place. I was focused on the outward things such as the way I looked, I even struggled with wanting people to see that I was ‘worshipping’ God by lifting my hands in the air and singing the lyrics to the song out loud. I think about that time and I honestly just cringe, I concentrated on how I felt after the worship or how good the worship leader sounded, I relied on the songs, instruments to feel God’s presence not knowing that God’s presence was already there.

The questions that I had to ask myself was – are you worshipping God to satisfy yourself or are you worshipping God to please him and him alone? and it was simple I was not, I only worshipped when I felt like it and I noticed that it started to become a me thing and how I felt instead of realising that worship is not about me at all but it all about God. I have question for everyone, what habits do you need to unlearn regarding worship? What does worship mean to you and what God has revealed to you in this season?

Father Lord, I thank you for your children and I thank you for what you are doing in their life in this season. I pray that you give them a deeper revelation of you and they understand what it means to truly worship you. If there are habits that are not of you that they have been accustomed to regarding worshipping you I pray it is revealed to them and you give them the grace to unlearn it in Jesus’ name Amen.

If you have any questions you can reach me through social media.