”For better or worse, I am in this for the long haul.” Those are the words i heard during my quiet time with the Lord, “not even death can do us part.” 

If there is one thing I have learnt over the year is that God speaks to us in a language we understand, love is a language I understand very well, I study it, I am fascinated by it and because our Father knows this He said this to confirm how personally He knows me. Jesus knows me Dzo 😀 .

That alone deserves a blog post, because I can’t imagine a more beautiful form of expression of love than when the God of the universe takes the time to relate to you in a way that will make sense to you. He is a God of the details (uyanaga). Now back to my topic, He continued to say: “if you can trust that your husband will try his best to keep his vows to you when he is just a man, how come you can’t trust Me to keep My word?

Jesus’ covenant to me cost Him His life, so if that is not commitment I don’t know what is.” To me this was a declaration that said there is absolutely nothing He will not do for me. This put me in official “selah” mode, I thought about how wonderful Sweet-One is and how I know without a shadow of a doubt that he will not hurt me or at least not intentionally. But as awesome as he is he has hurt me before with his words, his behavior, his tone…you get the idea right he is not perfect.

Here is God asking a valid question; “he is a man with faults but you trust him not to let you down. And here I am your first love the only Man who has never let you down but yet I still come short when it comes to earning your trust. “ I was convicted and immediately stopped having the doubts.

Let me give you some context, my Thando had hand, foot and mouth disease, Phopho diarrhea and something else, I found out I had an ovarian cyst, Sweet-One didn’t get two of the possible bursaries he applied for to do his MBA and my brother was stabbed and due to his involvement with  the wrong group of people. I think you get the picture, things had been, all less than ideal from my end, spiritually I’m doing great I’m obeying God’s call for me to wail and intercede for whatever he lays on my heart. But here I am dealing with attack after attack, so I started feeling overwhelmed and tired.  And this whole week He had been talking to me about how this battle is not mine but His and I need to remember that so I don’t walk around defeated.

So Jentezen Franklin puts it this way, “the size of your God is determined by the size of the challenge it takes to discourage you, your God is only as big as what discourages you”. If it is sickness then you are reducing him to the same size as the diagnosis.

This statement made me think of Matthew 11 verse 28-30 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

In simple terms if you are carrying a burden that is wearying you out it is by choice, being stressed about a situation you have no control over just steals your joy for today. The reality is even when you walk around burdened that won’t cause the situation to change but praying will. Chances are when you pray you will feel lighter and hopeful, you will have peace and most of us put ourselves against our challenge instead of putting God against the challenge. One person who understood this very well is David, when everyone was running in fear he said ” who is this uncircumcised Philistine defying the armies of the Lord?” David understood that God will defend his Name, he knew His God was bigger than Goliath.

I know I am not the only one who sometimes thinks if it is to be then it’s up to me, especially when it comes to our families, we can’t be objective and hand it over to the one who is bigger than the circumstance you are facing. Yesterday during prayer He reminded me that not only is He in it for the long haul, He is committed to my success too, so I can trust Him to finish what He started in me. I was reminded of a time when I believed without doubting. I recalled a time God answered my prayers for my family, He reminded me when He told me He was assigning me “go work at the National Treasury”,when a prophecy came I was going to get married in 2013  and when He told me to pray to avert a crisis and He came through, I can go on and on. In other words His track record speaks for itself. HE HAS NEVER FAILED ME.

I want to challenge you to write down all the times He came through for you when you trusted Him and not in your own strength. People fail us from time to time but we still choose to trust again. The enemy knows that when you are discouraged half the battle is won because it is hard to command sickness to go if you don’t believe that He is going to heal you. You pray differently when you are encouraged. Don’t recall only what He did for others but what He has done for you, David saw Him fight the lion and the bear hence his conviction was personal. The good news is that the fight is fixed, we know how this ends – WE WIN.

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” 1  Corinthians 10 verse 13

Make time to read His vows to you in His word because faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. Just because you are going through your worst doesn’t mean He is not there, these times are a platform for God to show off His power. People who pray also face difficult circumstances. For how else are we going to know that God answers prayer if we never have anything to pray for?

He is in it for the long haul, and not even death can’t do us part.

Nothing can separate us from the love of the Lord.