Living in Victory

Asking God what He wants for us can be dangerous. We create an illusion of what we think God has planned for us and then losing out on what God had initially planned.

In Cairo we worked on a ministry farm called Think and Do, we had coffee with the man who started it and he told us a little story which made a big impact on me: One day a father and his 6 year daughter went to buy groceries. When they came to the till, the friendly teller offered the little girl a big jar of sweets, saying she could take a whole handful. The girl thanked him and held out both her hands, but not reaching into the jar for sweets. The teller paused and then stuck his own hand in and took a handful out and placed it in the girl’s hands. On the way back her father, still intrigued by his daughters’ reaction, asked her why she didn’t take the sweets herself. She gave him a simple answer: My hand is much smaller than the man’s hand, thus I could only take a small portion compared to the teller using his big hands to give me so much more than I could have taken myself.

Looking at this story in God showed me how many times He had wanted to provide and bless people. Ignorantly we reach into His blessings and take everything we can, not realising that not only does He want to bless us, He can give us even more than we could ever manage on our own if we let Him. “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you Hope and a future.”

God wants to bless us more than we think; the problem is that in our minds we cannot fully grasp what He wants for us. We pray for God to provide and the moment we see a glimpse of something we take it with both hands and then praise Him because we survive. We don’t wait for God to bless us with even more. Imagine waiting a while longer and then receiving the full blessing that God had in mind, imagine the praise of living in abundant victory compared to the praise of just surviving. Both is praise, wonderful and glorifying to God, but the testimony of trusting God enough to give us the blessing is so much more rewarding than to grab part of the blessing God had in mind for us.

I saw this in my own life in the past few weeks: In Israel we searched for God at all the ‘Holy sites’ and I really felt my eyes opening to previously hidden scriptures and little revelations. We spent hours in the Bible comparing and just experiencing previously misread verses. God blessed us with hours of discussions about biblical history. In Egypt we had a little middle-of-the-year holiday next to the Red sea in a place called Dahab. We relaxed there and had time to think about the previous country and what God wanted to tell us, we had time in our crazy schedule to search for God in peace and quiet, being rejuvenated and overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here I realized that even in Israel where we searched for God in scripture, I grabbed every hint of a revelation or something which opened my eyes a little bit more and took it for myself. In Egypt I waited patiently on God and in that time I was overcome by the Spirit, even more than in Israel where I was reading a lot more scripture and searching for every little piece of revelations. God opened His hand and I was swimming in blessings.

In the few days we rested there, some guys took a scuba diving course. Someone in South Africa then sponsored me to join them. It was here where God just showed me again that even though I may be able to provide for myself, by taking that diving course, He wants to be my provider in everything, not only to survive but to live in abundance and victory!

I can only thank God for what He has done in my life and I only hope God will reveal a little bit more of His amazing Love for you through these testimonies He has blessed me with.