This is a testimony so close and dear to my heart...
So anyone who knows me will know how much I love music, and just to sing out… well, my friends in South Africa might think I´m shy about singing in public… and my team here sometimes wish I would just shut up, but God has done so much in my life, and I´m not able to keep it for myself anymore!
The first time that I heard God´s voice audibly was when I was 18 years old, and after that God gave me the gift of singing and playing guitar, but sadly, like one of the servants who hid their talents, I hid mine from the world. After a good friend of mine died, I found refuge in music, dealing with emotions in a different way, and slowly I found my own identity in music. God kept placing me in situations where this talent could grow, and it did – and I got prideful about it. This beautiful gift God has given me had become an idol in my heart, and when He took away my opportunities to sing, I rebelled and blamed it on Him and I didn´t even want to pick up my guitar for a whole year. This was when I was 20 years old. But then I realized once more that this gift wasn´t given to me to find my identity in, this gift was given to me to glorify the One who gave this talent to me. So when I was 21 I gave my music and all my dreams back to God, and He was able to use me in various places, to praise His Name. Well, I still had a lot to learn, for in all the time I sang, I never realized what it meant to have a heart of worship. I always thought worship was just the singing, well, like so many times, I was wrong.
When I applied to do global challenge this year, I was scared to bring along my guitar, for the guitar itself still was very precious to me, and I was scared to trust God in protecting it for me. For some reason, we tend to think that God is like humans sometimes. Because I was always scared to trust people in my life because of many rejections in the past, in my heart I also believed that God would let me down somehow – but God is not like man. He doesn´t tell you one thing and do another, but He is the only one we should trust and find our refuge in. So I arrived in Jeffreys bay and met the team … and they all could sing. It´s like God blessed our whole team with amazing voices… and the first thing I wanted to do was step back, because the devil whispered to me that I´m not good enough… I won´t be able to make the cut.
But when we arrived in Chile, I was suddenly put on a stage and told to sing… and I was never so scared in my life. Thank God they were Spanish, so they wouldn´t know when I miss the notes or words. After each service I would ask the team how the worship was, finding approval in what they thought about it, and never asking God what he thought. Two months passed before I was put on a stage again, and in that time God began working in my heart, to focus on the reason I am able to sing: to glorify Him! In those two months He gave me another amazing present – a sister with the voice of an angel. Marguerite and I sang wherever we went, and there were times when my own voice really sounded boring to me if I didn´t hear her voice next to me. When we were in Panama, we led the worship together with keyboard and guitar, and the Holy Spirit moved in the church and a man was healed. For the first time I didn´t ask anyone how the worship was, for I know it glorified God and that was enough.
But this is not where the story ends. In Guatemala we dealt with a lot of personal issues, and I discovered that there was a demon (spirit of rejection) in me that always searched for the approval of people. So once that thing got chased out, I was allowed to be me. I didn´t need to convince the voice in my head that I´m good enough, for the voice was gone. I could worship God with everything in me. The devil saw this breakthrough… he was losing, so he attacked again… his tactic: to split the worship team. When we were in Belize, there was a big festival, and Marguerite and I planned our set list for the next day. Suddenly I realized that something was wrong with my guitar – through all the travels and hitch hiking, one of the cables inside snapped. We were in a very expensive country in a little village, so fixing it would be impossible. That voice I thought would never return again whispered to me: ´God is going to take away your music again´ and for a moment, I believed it. I couldn´t practice and walked outside and cried out to God. A man in the church brought me another guitar and we were able to do the worship the next day. As we began singing, the anointing of the Lord was there, but then, there was suddenly a communication error, and the devil attacked us right there. He attacked us on our worst fears. Marguerite was supposed to start singing, but she took too much time to start… well, in my head. The fear of trusting people returned, and I did what I always do – protect myself and do it on my own, so I began to sing the song instead. And then I didn´t hear her voice singing with me, I looked around and she was sitting on the ground, and it was as if I could hear what she was thinking. I saw the rejection in her face, and then my other worst fear kicked in – doing the wrong thing and then being left alone because of it. For a whole day we didn´t speak to each other… which was so strange because we are permanently on each other’s sides. And then I heard the other side of the story. That by me beginning that song, she was attacked on her biggest fear – to be rejected and she thought that I thought she´s not good enough. We cried together on a hammock as God healed us from our fears, and we realized the devils tactics… he will always try to split apart what God has put together. But nothing can split what God has put together – we just have a hard time remembering that God did indeed put the things together and it wasn´t something we tried to put together on our own.
Later on in Belize I learnt that Marguerite could in fact play guitar, but my constant search for approval made me blind for my dearest friend´s amazing talents. I asked God to show me my heart, and it was deceitful and selfish. I cried out to Him to change my heart, and right there on a balcony in San Pedro, Belize, He healed my heart. For the first time I could trust again, and I could leave the worship of the Sunday night in the very capable hands of Marguerite. You see, this is what rejection does… it tries to control everything, it doesn´t trust, it thinks only of itself and it blinds you to see the amazing worth in others, for rejection is never pleased. And then God did an amazing thing. We were serving a church on an island in the Caribbean, the last place you´d think you´ll find someone that fixes guitars. But right next to the church there lived a man who fixes guitars, and he told me that he would fix my guitar for free. There are so many times when we limit God, thinking that He won´t be able to fix our problems. He is able to do much more than what we ask… but when we ask for things, we should first seek His kingdom. He doesn´t care about the electronics in my guitar, he cared about the rejection in my heart. Fixing electronics is easy, but making me realize what is in my heart and me choosing to change it, well that is the hard part. He allows situations to show us our hearts, it´s always our choice to change when we really see the truth… or to stay the same and fix our problems with even more problems.
God has done so much in my life through a simple thing like music. I have learnt that worship is a way of living, and not a song or an instrument… it´s the constant living to bring glory to God, in every single thing we do. I thank God each day for using people, like Marguerite or the rest of the team to show me what is in my heart, and if my heart is pure. It´s so strange to be able to trust people with things that are dear to me, but without even realizing it, it already happened. The first time I realized that something did in fact completely change in me, was when I allowed Marguerite to cut my hair. I would never have done that. Ever. But God works in ways we will never be able to understand. Some things just can´t be explained, just lived. Love leads the way, love trusts, love hopes, and love is the only thing that can break every power of darkness. For God is love.