written by Stephan Joubert
You’re only as good as your last move on the chess board of life. Rugby players are assessed on Mondays based on their game the previous Saturday. Preachers are evaluated based on their last sermon. A writer’s most-recent book determines his success. Ditto for an actor’s performance in his latest movie. This is not the way things should be. We should give each other more chances than just the last thing we did. The latest controversial thing someone did should never overshadow all the good things that he or she has done, especially not between friends.
We can’t live with such short-term memories when it comes to the integrity of others. We shouldn’t dare write each other off or move each other aside based on something that didn’t impress us. The Lord’s love causes us to always start over and afresh with each other. We should believe and expect the best of each other as 1 Corinthians 13 teaches.
[read more…]
written by Stephan Joubert
You’re not a victim of your emotions. You can live thankful every day. You can have an “attitude of gratitude” lifestyle. How? Well, here’s a few pointers:
a. Choose to live every day proactively in the Lord’s good name, never reactively. Refuse to constantly react to everyone and everything. You don’t have to have an opinion about everything under the sun.
b. Don’t get dysfunctionally attached to strangers. Don’t allow bad drivers or criminals to fill you with anger. Detach yourself emotionally from negative people. Don’t allow them to pull you down to their negative level.
[read more…]
written by Stephan Joubert
“We must be witnesses for the Lord.” How many times have you heard that? Indeed, but for some people it means that they have the right to give a monologue about their faith whenever it suits them. But what if such “testimonies” mostly do more harm than good? Can believers continually get away with excuses that one has to suffer for the Lord when others take them on about their rude and insensitive “testimonies”? If, on one side, it is true that we have to give testimony of our faith, then it is also true on the other side that we have to give testimony of all the wrong ways in which we are witnesses to the Lord. Jesus taught us to be careful and wise. We don’t automatically occupy the moral high-ground in every conversation. We need to earn the right to be heard through our discerning way of life before God and others.
written by Stephan Joubert
When we are challenged by new ideas, opinions or ways of seeing the world, we often give up current beliefs and learn new ones. Obviously, unlearning is very difficult — otherwise the world would have been a totally different place! It requires the realization that our mental models are deficient or in need of serious updating. Then we have to change or adjust them, which, in turn, implies dismantling our present world and replacing it with a new one. We now have to make sense of a confusing array of new information, impulses and objects. Through a process of continuous learning, new mental models are built inside us to make sense of our world in a fresh new way! But unlearning is critical in this regard. “If we don’t learn to deconstruct the models that shape our worlds, we may have a very difficult time in creating new ones. The old worlds will keep coming back to haunt us.” (Jerry Wind & Colin Crook, 2006. The Power of Impossible Thinking. Transform the Business of your Life and the Life of your Business, Wharton, p. 162).
In order to relearn to live a life saturated in God’s grace, we need a quest. We need a new way of doing life in a grace-based relationship with God and others that will provide ultimate purpose, direction and passion in our lives.
[read more…]
written by Stephan Joubert
Followers of Jesus aren’t automatically the happiest people in the world. The same applies to those of other religions. The happiest people on earth are apparently those of Iceland, followed closely by Denmark — that is if you believe the research of the World Database of Happiness in any case. According to research among 144 of the world’s nations, the most unhappy people at present are those in Tanzania, followed by the citizens of Zimbabwe. The happiness of South Africans is ranked somewhere between number 61 and 65 on this happiness-list.
Happiness has to do with quality of life for most people. The problem with this area-based understanding of happiness is that the very happiness can disappear like an early-morning mist as soon as outer circumstances change. Just observe what happened in many first-world countries after the economic collapse that started in 2008. Many people’s happiness was blown away through the back door in an instant.
[read more…]
written by Stephan Joubert
You are what you watch! Watching television isn’t always just a good time-killer. It forms your thoughts. It shapes your humanity. No wonder that television addiction is pointed out by social experts as one of the biggest inhibitors of our psychological health and adaptability. It changes too many good people into couch potatoes and robs them of their creative thoughts and active participation in life.
[read more…]
written by Stephan Joubert
Much of our lives are spent in auto-pilot mode. We live detached lives. We constantly plan for tomorrow and save up all our energy for that big somewhere on the other side of the rainbow. This auto-pilot lifestyle leads to a highly structured, routinized way of life. In many churches you’ll also see this happening with all those well planned programs and religious events, but with no spontaneity or passion. No wonder so many people in church and elsewhere experience stagnation, fear and anxiety. They feel spiritually empty and numb as the world around them becomes more and more dull. They become bored, cynic and skeptic. Nothing excites them any longer. Not even God can surprise them because they have already planned his next moves, renewals, revivals and his final return in the finest detail.
We need to attune to every moment God grants us in curiosity, openness, acceptance and love. In this way, through our constant awareness of God’s graceful presence, a deep sense of compassion will be nurtured inside us through his Spirit and begin to flow out of us to others around us. The distance between God and us and between ourselves and others will be crossed time and time again as we become more aware of God’s grace.
[read more…]
written by Stephan Joubert
Is faith primarily about my own spiritual growth — my own deepening, and my inner battle against sin? Or does faith stretch wider than such personal matters? Does faith affect my daily relationship with others? Does it make a practical difference to the way I treat a waitress or servant, and how much I tip them? Or how I address the person at the supermarket pay point? Does my faith in Christ attribute to my level of concern with polluted water sources, or the fact that the earth is being heated up by poisonous gasses? Does it make a deeper impact on the world and other people’s lives than simply my attendance at bible studies, gatherings, or sermons in my own congregation? If not, then it’s about time that my faith gets relevant in the real world. What does all my piety help if it only makes me a better person, but no one get’s any benefit from this? Then I’m missing the point.
written by Stephan Joubert
I once read an interview with the well-known South African boxing referee, Stanley Christodoulou. When asked what the greatest compliment was that he received as a referee, he referred to a world title fight that he handled in the USA. After the fight, he relaxed at the hotel’s restaurant. Someone with whom he struck up a conversation asked whether he watched the fight earlier that evening. For Stanley Christodoulou it was the best compliment imaginable that he as referee was so “invisible” in the ring that this spectator didn’t even recognize him.
I think as followers of Christ we must become just as invisible. People recognize us far too easily on the church foreground. Worse still, we sometimes stand in the way of others so that they can’t see the Lord. Our church infighting, theological debates that’s front page news daily, and our inability to love each other, are sight blockages. Let’s get out of the way.
[read more…]
written by Stephan Joubert
Experts say that one of the biggest dangers staring modern society in the face is our endless consumer mentality. Too many people are like bottomless pits that need to constantly satisfy the one desire after the other… and then today still. Tomorrow is way too late, because tomorrow there’s already a new CD, cell phone, automobile, or set of clothes that need to be acquired. How true wasn’t this in the festive season just past? It was barely over, and people descended on every possible sale like vultures to buy even more. Our closets are taking strain. Our houses are stacked, and still the end is not in sight!
Tragic that the abundance of things became the measuring stick for success in our day. But the question still remains: When is enough enough? One can walk around in only one set of clothes at a time, and drive around in only one car at a time. Are the lives of consumers truly filled with peace when they have all the right things on their name? No, because I suspect they are still drinking at the wrong well. Living water is found elsewhere — at Jesus’ well of life. His type of water gives life eternally.
