The question

Molweni tout le monde in Duitsland!

Today I want to tell you about a seminar that I attended last weekend. The topic is a bit sensitive - and I'm sure that many of you who read this will probably not agree with me or what I was taught in certain things. So take it like this: It was more like a teaching with chances of personal things/ oppinions/ experiences/ statements in between. It basically reflects what I HEARD - in which way it will influence me or my lifestyle is not 100% clear to me yet. I write it in English because it was done in English and I don't feel like translating all that stuff into German now, it's too much and too "high". I hope you don't mind...

The seminar was called "The Question" and was fascilitated by people from different churches, like Bosko for example. It was them who "recruited" me actually. I thought I would not know anyone there, but, to my surprise, Juanita, Sebastian, Dali and Anton were also there. THE question is focussing on "who am I" and "where am I going" - whereby us girls were taught apart from the boys. By the way, I was one of the oldest attending the seminar... We attended the seminar in the N. G. Kerk (typical Afrikaaner church) in Onrusrivier - that is somewhere between Sandbaai and Vermont on the way from Hermanus towards Fisherhaven. We sat there for 14 hours in total, which makes it obvious how exhausted we were on Saturday evening... Therefore I will just briefly try to resume what we were talking about, leaving out a lot. And I'm only talking on behalf of women!

Basically we were talking about who do we allow to tell us who we are and what impact does that have in our life. There are only two "things" that even can tell us who we are: That is either God or the "K.O.D" (the so called Kingdom of Darkness, which is basically equal to the devil). Both always use other people to tell us who we are, and - surprise - most of the time we allow the K.O.D. to answer THE question, instead of God. The K.O.D.'s answer is always negative, trying to destroy us and to curse us, creating a gap between us and our family (in the first place); the answer will always be a lie. It will tell us "you are stupid, ugly, worthless, not valuable, etc." God's answer to THE question is always positive, trying to comfort us and to bless us; the answer will be the truth. He will tell us "you are beautiful, you are precious, you are unique, you are clever, you mean everything to me, etc."

We girls/ women often ask THE question, for example when we go for a date. We ask "Do I look good?" "Will he like me?" "Am I ok?" etc. But most of us would do the mistake of taking this question to THE man instead of to God. THE man might give us the answer we are looking for but can only comfort us for a short term before the K.O.D. would use him, telling us THE lie, whatever - that is the moment he'd break up. A girl indeed wants to be taken into an adventure by a man - not be the adventure for the man. She wants THE man to fight for her, but when she is "only" his adventure, she will end up fighting with him.

A girl also needs the blessing of her father. The K.O.D. uses this very often to curse the girl by taking away the father (through divirce, death, ...). Every girl has a destiny, given from God, which she is to fulfill and no one else can. A father actually holds the key to unlock a girls heart through his blessing, THE truth, to reveal her destiny, to let her become a woman. If a girl never receives a blessing from her father - that could be an OK for going on the first date with a certain man, or an OK to do an important step in her life - she will never be free, always feel like the little girl, not knowing what her father thinks of her. But therefore she also has to ask THE question and don't let the K.O.D. answer it.

Coming back to THE man and why we should keep ourselves pure for THE man we are going to marry: Almost every girl has a match of a man, and God will bring them together. On that day we want to say "I love you with all my heart". But if we "mess around" with a lot of men before, we won't be able to do that. Imagine our heart to be a piece of paper. When we commit ourselves to someone, we will glue our heart to his heart (imagine glueing to papers together). But because this is not THE man, we will separate (imagine taking apart to papers sticking together - no paper will be the same again, I lose a part of mine but will keep a part of his). If that happens a lot, the day I meet THE man I will say "I love you with all my heart" but can only present him the last frazzle that is left (imagine the paper...); and the start could not be worse...

What I took out of this seminar is that I let the K.O.D. answer THE question quite often, especially as a teenager. But I also know (now) that the K.O.D. tries to attack my identity and I will link it to an issue. That is why an issue (such as what time must I come home) must be discussed separately from my identity. If in such a quarrel I let the K.O.D. answer the question, I hear "you are unable to take care of yourself, that is why you must be back at ten", I hear my mother for example undermining my identity as a wonderful person. The consequence would be that I dishonor my mother in letting the K.O.D. call her "mean" or whatever. Instead I have to honour my mother and maybe hate the issue. When the issue is solved, there won't be any trouble with my mother. So I decided to always try and separate issue and identity and not let the K.O.D. use me, meaning me dishonoring others.

I also think that I received a lot of blessings from my father, which I think is very fortunate. It kind of all made sense to me...!

The last thing we talked about our name. God gives everyone a name with a purpose. By knowing the meaning of the name, your destiny is also revealed to you. This what I was told about my name - Leonie:

It is originally Latin and means Lion, Lioness. The spiritual connotation is courageous spirit, saying that I am a woman of courage. I was given a scripture, but I don't have it in mind. Regarding my destiny, it was said that in a (figurative) war I have the courage to fight in the front line. Obviously I will be hurt more than those behind me, but it needs a royal appointment to be allowed to fight in the front line. God gave me this privilege and the courage to do so, so that I can become a leader of leaders.

That doesn't sound too bad, does it? I can see certain things that already apply to my life, however, so it doesn't seem to be so wrong... So I want to say to my parents: Thanks for giving me this name!