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by Calven Celliers What has become increasingly real to me over the past few years, is that the longer I walk with Jesus – through both the highs and lows of life’s experience – the more I dislike religion. In fact, I’m growing to really dislike it. To some that may sound shocking, but before you think I’ve lost my marbles, please hear me out. My greatest heartache and concern, is that we as Christians can go to church every Sunday, and follow all the rules but never truly follow Jesus. All too often we cheapen Christianity to behaviour modification, conformity to a moral code, following an extensive list of do’s and don’ts. That’s religion! That sounds more like the Pharisees modus operandi than it does about Jesus’ example. Jesus didn’t come to make us religious. As I read through the Gospel’s I have come to see that Jesus’ greatest opposition wasn’t the world, the heathens or the lost, it was the religious people. Those who look down their self-righteous noses at the very ones Jesus came to seek and to save. Christianity was never meant to be a religion. Religion weighs people down by making them think they need to follow a bunch of rules and rituals to try to please God. It teaches that you have to earn your way into God’s good books, which is actually impossible. None of us could ever be good enough to earn a place in heaven, which is why religion is so exhausting, frustrating, and hopeless. If you’re a Christian, and I’m assuming the vast majority of the audience reading this blog are, then I expect you have heard this all before. But, if you’re anything like me and most Christians I know, you struggle to let this truth penetrate your heart and permeate your day-to-day life, and your experience of God. Grace is a gift most of us don’t know how to receive. We’ve been so inundated with the earthly systems of give-and-get and work-and-earn that grace is a concept few ever fully grasp. There is something about us that wants to earn our own salvation. But consider what the apostle Paul had to say in his letter to the Ephesians – “8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2: 8 & 9NIV) There again, I assume you’ve read that many times before, chances are you could probably quote a paraphrase of that very verse if required, but has it penetrated your heart and permeated your experience? In other words, is it real to you?  Jesus came to free us from the futility of religion and to offer us something so much better — a real relationship with God. Through that relationship, we can learn what grace really is and how it plays out in both our relationship with God and other people. As a pastor, who interacts…

by Graham Mol I can remember a distinct time when God became real to me. In many ways the beginning of New Harvest in 2000 was also a beginning for me in encountering the Lord in a real and tangible way in my life. Growing up in a Christian home I had always known about God and certainly believed in Him, in a child-like way. At a Sunday School camp I remember "giving my life" to Jesus as I was moved to tears while the song Shine Jesus Shine was sung at one of the meetings during the camp. Yet it was when I was a teenager that I went from knowing about God to actually getting to know Him personally. I remember having my mind blown at our first youth gatherings at NHCF. It felt like I had graduated from Bible Stories to proper Biblical Theology 101. There was so much more to being a believer that I did not know. Through the lessons and times of prayer and worship God started to show me what being a disciple is really like. I am forever grateful for the role that our temp youth pastor, Christy, and then official youth pastor, Laura, played in modelling for me what it means to truly follow Christ. Thursday night youth fellowship meetings were the highlight of my week, I was so hungry to know more about the Lord, to spend more time in worship, allowing the Holy Spirit to minister to my heart. There have certainly been significant moments in my journey with the Lord. Wow moments, stern moments of being disciplined, tender moments of love and healing. Yet as I look back on my life up until this day I feel that there is one verse that so accurately describes my relationship with God: The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness." (Jeremiah 31:3) God's love for me, expressed through godly people in my life and most purely in Christ's sacrifice, has enfolded me my whole life. Even when I did not realise it. Yet what joy it was when I first realised the depth and richness of His love. What blessed assurance it was to be called a child of God. I will never forget what it felt like when God became real to me. The wonderful truth is that He loves you with the same everlasting love. He is drawing you with His kindness. If you have yet to experience the reality of His love, to have the eyes of your heart opened to His presence, my prayer is for that day to come soon. In the words of Paul: I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together…

by Caryl Moll Some of you may have read my previous post “I first encountered Jesus” where I share the story about how God became real to me before I even knew He had. (click HERE if you wish to read it)  The reality is that I had a very isolated childhood on our family farm. Being the ‘laat-lammetjie’ (late child) of the family, I was very much left to my own devices while my parents worked hard to support our family. I was aware of God’s presence during those times as I explored the vast bush and landscape. Even as a small toddler, I had an imaginary friend, ‘Tanya’, who today I believe must have been one of God’s angels. Tanya’s presence made me feel ‘whole’ and I can still remember sharing an imaginary cup of tea with her on the front lawn. The farm was my Eden. Nothing else mattered. It was an era of my life where I felt pure, innocent joy when I ran through the fields with my hands outstretched. So you can imagine how it felt when, at the tender age of 12 years old, I was sent off to boarding school. This was to become my new life. It was like being placed in a foreign land with unfamiliar social norms and structures. The only personal space I had was my own bed where I slept (there were 10 kids in a dorm) and even that was subject to ‘inspection’ by the prefects. Punitive measures were taken if our living spaces weren’t up to their standards – and then we were prohibited from going home at weekends. We were only allowed out to go to church on a Sunday (a 4 km walk there and back), to the shops on a Friday, and on weekend leave (once a month – if you behaved!) To say that I was unhappy with my lot in life was an understatement. In response, I applied myself to achievement – academically and extramurally. It was the only way for me to experience some kind of acknowledgement that I mattered in this world. Achievement became my substitute for love – a distorted thinking, I know. But the more I achieved, the more my parents celebrated and the more my friends seemed to accept me. Love distorted! Deep down, I felt an overwhelming unhappiness. I was lonely and miserable and pined for the occasional weekends where I could go back to the farm. Even then, though, my farm friends (the worker’s kids) had grown up and moved on. It was a time of emotional isolation…but ironically the brink of a new beginning. It took two years before God became ‘real’ to me. I remember one Sunday night lying on my bed after spending the weekend in the hostel. Some of my friends had gone on a church camp. (I couldn’t afford it). They arrived back at the hostel in a bus and you could hear the noise before they entered…