Change
A broken attempt; but the real thing!
The most and greatest love like no other from man is only found in the church…Yes I just said that…The most amount of failed love also abounds in the church though, and unfortunately this misfiring of true love and the subsequent hurt caused is then misconstrued as Christians not loving well and the church or mankind’s attempt at being the church rather, not being a loving one; this leading to often even hurt Christian’s themselves saying that there is more love in the secular world, and amongst secular circles. This though, is exactly that; ‘a misconception’ which is simply not true…The church only fails much because it attempts much in its reaching for the highest obtainable love, that of God…The secular attempt is one of a lower form of love; a counterfeit at best, leaving one with a temporary ‘feeling or sense’ of being loved and being able to love, when in-fact it is just easier to attain as the bar is not very high, with the figure or model of love being man and not God. So the higher love that us as the church attempt to strive toward is simply more difficult to reach and therefore there is a higher failure rate; the higher the goal, the greater the effort, and therefore also the greater the chance of temporary failure…But if we continue to push for the higher goal of God’s love it is exactly that, only ‘temporary failure’, on the way to obtaining the real thing if we all will just hang around long enough. This is kind of like an athlete who trains and is in it for the long hall even though he / she knows the hurt involved in the process…The short term hurt and disappointment of man trying and failing on the way is surely worth it if it’s on the road to the long term possibility of true love (God love); rather than the short term obtaining of a sense or feeling of a form of love, but long term, never truly obtaining true love (God love) at all.
So let us all come in together and love together whilst we demonstrate the grace toward another to also fail together, rather than standing divided outside whilst entertaining a lesser love and never truly being satisfied…
Brothers and sisters, love your brothers and sisters who fail you, as you likewise hope they will still love you when you fail them. The cross is after all a love sacrifice poured out for all those who had both failed themselves and one another; and more than that failed the very one who was unconditionally sacrificed and poured out for the atonement of that very failure and betrayal…
A change in our Full-Time Prayer Missionary Capacity
December has always been a time of the year when we look back, take stock and assess where we are at as a family. This past December was no different. We were now in a position were both Jean-Michel and I had taken on extra responsibilities at Masson Music as one of our teachers had resigned in August, we were full-time involved at the House of Prayer, we were home-schooling 2 and a half children (Hadassah goes to day care 3 times per week), we were involved in other ministries such as assisting with worship at New Life and Metamorpha, Nicole was involved in Cherished (ministry that helps people caught up in the sex industry) and we often found ourselves being asked to help with other ministry related activities such as counselling, recording, etc. Jean-Michel also felt like his was neglecting the worship songs and studio that God had blessed us with, having not had worked on them the whole of 2022. So we spent the first part of December seeking God as to how things in our lives needed to look going forward as we were constantly exhausted and we felt like we were starting to neglect family time in order to fit everything in. What initially sparked this conversation was that Jean-Claude was going to start going to school at Laerskool Taalfees for Grade 2 in 2023; unlike Trinity, we felt home-schooling was not the right fit for him and he was constantly asking to go to school. We looked at our schedule and realised there was no time to drop and fetch him from school and many of our House of Prayer commitments overlapped with these times.
After much prayer and consideration, we made the decision to step down from our full-time capacity at the House of Prayer and rather serve in a part-time capacity. We felt like there were a few things we couldn’t neglect; number one being family time, but also Masson Music which we believe God has intrusted us with as in fact a primary ministry focus, realising that we would be going into the tenth year of Masson Music being in operation and through everything (Lockdown, our neglect, etc), God has always blessed & preserved the music lessons…Specifically in December when we did the year-end progress recording of all our students, we were reminded what a great impact we are having in the lives of our music students both young and old.
Subsequent to our decision, in 2023 Masson Music has already grown tremendously and we are grateful. We are now enjoying working as a family on Masson Music while still being involved in other ministries (for example: New Life, Metamorpha and Cherished) and projects (for example: Recording Bonnie-Jean’s new worship songs, Recording Jean-Michel’s worship songs, etc). Jean-Michel also spent most of December in studio working on his worship songs.
Our time as full-time prayer missionaries was an incredible dose of God’s grace, being afforded the blessing of spending hours in prayer and worship weekly; it has deeply impacted us as a family. We grew so much during this time and we felt like we were given invaluable tools for life, with intimacy with Jesus as the foundation. Moving forward, The Witbank House of Prayer remains our family and spiritual covering.
Prayer Requests
- That our impact on Masson Music students will have eternal value.
- Protection of our health, relationships, and finances.
We would love to pray for you, so please feel free to send us your prayer requests.
Thank you very much to every financial partner who has sustained us along our journey…we are grateful.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read our newsletter, we really appreciate your support.
If there is anything in this newsletter that you have questions about or would like more information about, please contact either of us via WhatsApp.
