Our Hope Centre offers emotional, mental, and spiritual support to individuals, couples and families through no-obligation, donation-based counselling, and various courses. Take a look at what’s coming up in April, and make sure to sign up for the course that suits your needs.

Our Hope Centre offers emotional, mental, and spiritual support to individuals, couples and families through donation-based counselling and various courses. Read on to see what’s coming up, and make sure to sign up for what suits you and your family.

An excerpt from How to Pray by Pete Greig

Joni Eareckson Tada: When the spotlight doesn’t shine on you 

Joni Eareckson Tada was a fun-loving, active seventeen-year-old, enamoured by the world around her and charmed by the opportunities life held for her. She went to the beach one day in the summer of 1967 with her sister. Diving into the bay, she misjudged the shallowness of the water and tragically broke her spine. For more than fifty years she has been paralysed from her shoulders down. 

Joni cried out to God with complete faith for healing. ‘I followed every scriptural injunction: I was anointed with oil, I went to the elders, I confessed sin. I would call my friends up on the telephone and insist, “Hey, the next time you’re going to see me, I’m going to be on my feet. Have faith with me, believe with me.”’ 

But the healing she longed for didn’t come, leading her into depression, battling suicidal thoughts and religious doubts. On one occasion, Joni attended a healing meeting. As she watched Katherine Kuhlman preach, and listened to people share testimonies of healing, she became aware of a spotlight centred on the corner of the ballroom where healings were taking place. Her heart began to race with hope-filled adrenaline. In her own haunting words, ‘the spotlight switched to another corner, and I was getting more excited, thinking that maybe the spotlight will come and hit the wheelchair section. But it never did.’ It never did! What to do when the spotlight doesn’t shine on you? When it feels as though certain prayers never get answered – at least not the way you want them to be? 

Joni’s disability is the consequence of a fractured spine between the fourth and fifth cervical level vertebrae, having dived into shallow water at Chesapeake Bay. It wasn’t a spiritual attack – it was not God’s war. Her injuries are tragically consistent with the laws and principles of God’s world. But why has he not healed her? Wouldn’t that be an incredible testimony? I think Joni would say that it has been God’s will to bring comfort, hope and advocacy to millions of people – many of them disabled – through her testimony of unhealing. She still believes that she’ll throw another rock into the swamp one day, pray another prayer and walk out of her wheelchair healed, but it may not be this side of heaven. And so, in the meantime, she continues to pray Christ’s painful prayer of relinquishment: ‘Abba Father, everything is possible for you … yet not what I will, but your will be done.’ After years of wrestling with God, Joni can somehow say, ‘this paralysis is my greatest mercy.’ 

God uses suffering to purge sin from our lives, strengthen our commitment to him, force us to depend on grace, bind us together with other believers, produce discernment, foster sensitivity, discipline our minds, spend our time wisely, stretch our hope, cause us to know Christ better, make us long for the truth, lead us to the repentance of sin, teach us to give thanks in times of sorrow, increase faith, and strengthen character. 

How to Pray 
A simple guide for normal people 
by Pete Greig 

Help our community ensure all our children can worship in one safe space on Sundays.

“I will give thanks to you, LORD, with all my heart; I will tell of all your wonderful deeds.”
– Psalm 9:1 NIVUK

Spring is coming, and we have so much to be grateful for!
God is consistently so good, and what better way is there to reflect on His goodness and welcome the new season than by celebrating as a community? Here’s what you can expect from this year’s Spring Celebration.

June Snayers recently shared some of her story with us and what she is grateful for about community. Growing up as a timid young girl with a tattered self-image, June’s blossomed into one of our church’s beautiful bold women’s discipleship leaders. At age 54, she has been married to her husband, Clarence, for almost 35 years. They are blessed with four children and three grandchildren.

A Hatfield member for 34 years and a pastor on our team for 13 years, June shares a heart-warming story of how she found love, acceptance, restoration, and purpose in our community.

She recalls, “Shortly after we married, my husband and I met Nati and Tertius de Kock, our area pastors at the time. They saw our leadership potential and appointed us as assistant community group leaders. That’s when our relationship with them developed. Under their wing, Clarence and I grew from being assistants to community group leaders, shepherds, then shepherds of shepherds and eventually pastors in the church.

“When I met Nati, I had such low self-esteem and no sense of dignity. I felt like a failure, and her affection drew me out of that space. She pulled me out from hiding at the back of the crowd, loved, and listened to me. Her adoration and belief in me were so beautiful and intense that I could not help but grow and mature under her guidance.

“She was honest and straightforward with me, which helped me grow. It was what I needed. She knew me very well as I stuck very closely with her. I would hear her tell stories of how she did things and imitate her. She taught me to speak love to my children and to listen when they speak. She advised me about setting their sleeping rhythms and honouring my eldest child by letting him sleep 15 minutes later than his siblings and giving him more spending money than them. He would then feel respected and hold that space as he grew up. This was all new to me as I wasn’t raised that way.

“I remember Nati calling me and explaining that I can do all things through Christ who is in me and that I can love and serve God’s people. At that time, I did not know this about myself because I was raised being told that I was stupid and never good enough to do anything.

“I went from being shy and unable to speak because I felt inadequate to being who I am today. Now I know that I am the beloved of Christ; I am restored, renewed, revived, and a child of the Most High.

“I’m blessed to call Nati my spiritual mom and friend, and I will forever honour God for sending her to me. I am who I am today because of her seeing and investing in me. Through the way she modelled God’s character to me, I became the best mom, wife, and child of God. I am grateful, and now I can invest in women like me.

“I want to encourage you reading my story that you are good enough and can do everything through Christ who gives you strength. You are His beloved, and He is yours.”

June’s story is one of the many beautiful stories of people who found love, hope, healing, and restoration in our community. We are each made in God’s image and, through the finished work of Jesus in us, can reflect the Lord’s character to those around us and help them tangibly encounter God.

Is there somebody in our community, at work, or at school that God is asking you to notice and love? May you be encouraged by Nati and June’s story to extend Christ’s love in our community and beyond.

***

Do you have a story of faith to share? Send us an email at talktous@hatfield.co.za, and we’ll contact you.

Missionaries is one of the three main streams that your Faith Promise pledge supports.

These are people called from Hatfield to different parts of the world and missionaries from abroad who serve within the Tshwane municipal area. We also frequently have outreaches, which form part of the Hatfield Initiatives, where teams travel locally and internationally in partnership with our missionaries.

On a recent outreach to Namibia, the outreach team witnessed God’s power to transform in many ways. Bryan, who was part of the team, shares a testimony of one experience they had …

“Going back to this Himba village, where I had been two years before, I noticed that the pastor did not look too well.

“She was sitting on the ground holding her head. When we got to the prayer and ministry time, we prayed specifically for her for healing and a new filling of the Holy Spirit. God came on her and touched her in an amazing way. Afterwards, through the translator, she shared with us that about a week before, she had walked up to her church clearing and asked God to come and heal her both physically and emotionally. She then had a vision of some foreigners standing around her and praying for her and that she got healed. With great excitement, she shared with us that, as we prayed for her, it was exactly the vision she got that day. Her faith literally pulled down the presence of God and her healing.”

With Faith Promise season upon us we’ve been gearing up to open the door for you to see just how important your giving is, and how far it goes. Faith Promise is a fund to which our community gives in faith to bring real change across the street and across the globe. There are three streams that Faith Promise supports: Hatfield Initiatives, Partner Ministries and Missionaries.

One of the families in our Missionaries stream are Deidre, her late husband Theunis and their twin boys Johan and Hosea. They are one of six missionary families that are being supported by Faith Promise. Based in Zimbabwe for over twenty years, they have been instrumental in reaching young people who have lost hope due to the prevalent circumstances in Zimbabwe.

They answered a call and need in their Chegutu community by starting the Shanduko Transformation Project in 2015. The project includes discipleship and skills development training courses that allow young people to experience the Father Heart of God, while learning skills like carpentry, farming and sewing. The Shanduko Transformation Project recently completed its 33^rd class cycle and many of the students have started small businesses and are now employed after having completed the training.

Deidre, who has been continuing with this ministry since Theunis passed away,  shares how incredible it’s been to watch the students transform and mature as the classes progress. She has seen hope return to them as they each discovered that they are not alone, that they are loved by God, and He walks by their side.

Some testimonies that have come out of the project:

“When I first came to Shanduko I was blind and didn’t realise it. I was addicted to drugs; I used to drink alcohol with my friends whilst my parents knew nothing of it. After Pastor Botha taught us about alcoholism I stopped taking alcohol and drugs.”

“My life has been transformed through the Transformation course. I was not able to forgive, but through the lessons we were taught on forgiveness, I made a decision to forgive.”

“First I want to thank God for giving me the opportunity to come and study at Shanduko. I was taught about identity and now I know who I am.”

“I used to live in fear, but after we were taught about fear my life really changed and I am now living in faith.”

“I wanted to study law but I had lost hope. I Joined Shanduko in class 4 and I was taught goal setting. I told Pastor Botha and he prayed for me and later someone offered me a scholarship and I am now studying.”

Deidre testifies to seeing God transform these young people’s lives and she says, “It was so powerful to see God transforming them and renewing their minds as they received the word of God and applied it to their lives. Their testimonies were remarkable, and God did a deep work in every student.”

Thank you Hatfield! Your giving touches so many lives, brings hope, and makes it possible for thousands of people to experience the love of Jesus in a practical way.

Find out more about Faith Promise and how to contribute here >> and have a look at more encouraging stories of faith in our blog >>.