When you are God conscious, God minded, you are governed by the first true and pure love. This love is without condition or emotion. It is love, that keeps on giving and LOVES YOU no matter what or who you are. No status, richness or colour can define this LOVE.

"See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him."

1 John 3:1, NIV

The day I gave myself to Christ.

The Lord Jesus, was given to you and me, by a Father who loves us. A living sacrifice, bearing all our iniquities’, so that we may have life and live in abundance. Imagine giving your child as a sacrifice? Or giving up something that you hold dearly? Are you willing to give up your flesh, to live in the spirit?

The year was 2013 all it took was one word, to change our lives forever. A kind of love word that is gentle and ignited my very purpose and reason of being. My then trials and tribulations were seemingly without course and direction and yet they were my greatest test of all my years of existence.

To give you a little history, in December 2009, hubby got retrenched when the company he was working for at the time moved offices to Durban. In April 2010, I got retrenched from my then employment. The life we once knew had evaporated in a space of 5 months. If you had told me before then that R30.00 can feed a family of 5 I would have laughed in your face. But it did feed my family and my experience during that period made me appreciate the value of money and sacrifice.

Our youngest son was 8 months old at the time and still on the bottle. Fortunately for him we used it more like a silencing food. For a time anyway. I remember the crying sweetness in his voice when he asked me for his nene bottle after his formula had run out. Looking at him with eyes drowning in tears, I answered, “No nene bottle my baby”. “Ma put tea, in my bottle then…” We didn’t even have sugar for the tea either. At that very moment I wished the earth would open up and swallow me whole.

My husband developed kidney failure and it got so serious that whenever he went to the bathroom, he would pass blood in his stool. All he could do in the anguish and pain was to rub his sides and call out to me. At wit’s end, I would plug my ears with my fingers and hope to fall asleep quickly. I had no idea how to comfort him.

If you think you now know how deep the abyss of my life was, you are only getting started.

Our three sons, including the baby, and boys contracted a skin infection that looked much like chicken pox but wasn’t. It itched and when they scratched as kids would, the infection spread. The infection was so severe that it ate through the epidermis of the skin, until the fatty layer underneath was exposed. So the register of infection in my family stood as such: 1^st son was infected from the corner of the eye to cheeks. 2^nd son was infected from the inner ear to the neck and part of his face. Baby had it at the back of his legs at the knee joint. My husband was infected from the nose to the face. We all looked like a family of burn victims. We did not have money to go to the doctor, all could think of was the myriad of methods I could use to end all of this and take my suffering children with me.

Where there is no faith, there is fear. Desperation will even let you eat sand…

When we had reached what I felt was the edge of the earth, all it took was one word from Pastor Victor, who came to our home with his very pregnant wife. It was late afternoon when they came to tell me GOD loves me, loves us. I will never forget that day. His exact words were: “If you want change, give the Lord Jesus one chance, just one chance, but give Him your all.”

My family and I took the pastor’s advice and gave the LORD JESUS just one chance, and have never looked back since. The poverty, the hunger, the infirmity, the desperation and general despair are nothing more than distant memories. I wish in this life for you, dear reader, that you give the Lord Jesus Just One Chance to change you and the world around you, like He did ours. And may the Holy Spirit that is my comforter, comfort you as well in your time of hopelessness.