REINHILD NIEBUHR

VIRTUAL REALITY VS SUPERNATURAL REALITY – With Netflix gearing up to launch Netflix House spaces in the USA, in addition to virtual reality experiences where YOU can be the lead actor in your favourite series, humankind has found another way to ESCAPE REALITY and live in a dreamworld… Why not pursue REAL-LIFE SUPERNATURAL EXPERIENCES instead?

While I certainly am not naysaying the incredible entertainment value of these and other innovations we are already engaging with in our daily lives, I do want to share the lasting PEACE and JOY that comes from spending time in SUPERNATURAL relationship with God, our Father in Heaven, our Brother and King Jesus Christ and our friend, guide and comforter, the Holy Spirit!

Living in FAITH means that we understand what it involves to WALK ON WATER… if not physically, then certainly spiritually speaking.

But it is where the material is transformed through the SUPERNATURAL in our relationship with God, that truly MINDBLOWING experiences and results happen – IN REAL TIME, in the REAL WORLD, not in the fake, termporarily entertaining quick-fix of a dopamine rush.

Let me explain once such experience. Actually, two.

I have been blessed with SO MANY, that sharing all of them would take the rest of my life… and they’re ONGOING! But here is this story:

In December 2008 the global economic crash had a direct impact on the deep rural, educational Lutheran nonprofit organisation I am serving: without any warning the revolving overdraft facility of the organisation – which had been a critical lifeline to tide the monthly cashflow over during waiting periods for new scholarship donations or school holidays, when no income was received from paying students – was suddenly stopped by the organisation’s bank, with NO warning!

A new donation amount had just come in, which was going to cover the payroll and running expenses of the last two months of the year – when routinely very little income could be expected from paying students. However, the grant amount we were expecting was just enough to cover the overdraft facility amount and so the bank just took the full amount and closed the overdraft facilty – on the day of the organisation’s Year-End function, just when all employees were expecting their monthly salary in time for Christmas!

I had been expecting these funds and had communicated this to the team, so we were all looking forward to having a stress-less holiday period after another challenging year fighting at the fore-front of spiritual warfare. This organisation has been sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the students living in the boys and girls hostels operated by the organisation – many of whom requiring scholarships to enable them to live there, so that they may successfully complete their high-school education.

This particular year, I had arranged that – as part of the Year-End function – we would all climb the beautiful Simakade mountain as a teambuilding exercise, in order to enjoy the lovely green summertime view into the distance, as a way to envision the upcoming New Year.

So there we were, employees and international volunteers alike, all walking up the hills forming the foot of this formidable mountain – about 80 people in total. I had brought my cellphone along, to be able to call the bank to confirm the transfer of the international grant which we were expecting. The bank’s Forex division confirmed that the funds had indeed been transferred to the organisation’s account. Great news! I signed into the banking app and was of course rather perplexed that the balance showed only a few Rand…

I called the bank and the Client Relationship Manager broke the news: because of the global financial crash, the South African Reserve Bank had asked the Treasury to enforce a policy that all nonprofit organisations were to be marked as ‘risky borrowers’ and that as a result NO credit was to be afforded to them any longer. This meant that the bank was then forced to reset their credit management systems, which had automatically resulted in the shutdown of the revolving overdraft facility of the organisation – which had been in place for many years before already! All this happened with ZERO prior communication from the bank.

Can you imagine yourself in my shoes: I had to immediately call all team members together on that mountain – and this of course included the international volunteers present – to break the difficult news to them… wiping all excitement and holiday spirit away with this one sentence: no salaries could or would be paid today!

I won’t share the fallout in terms of personal attacks on my integrity that I had to deal with… let me just say that I sent a BIG WHY? to our Father in Heaven… Yes, this was just another spiritual attack, not just on the organisation, but also on me, personally, on my integrity, on my ability to lead the organisation, on my trustworthiness… I was experiencing hell on earth… the worst being the deep concern for the families of the organisation’s employees, who had worked hard for their money and now had to face a rather un-Festive Season…

The team went back to the “Mission House”, where a year-end barbecue had been prepared as a “thank you” for their hard work of caring for the students during the past year. Most were so disappointed – their unhappiness being further fired up by the international volunteers who launched personal attacks on me (How could you?!!) – that they took their meal as a ‘take-away’ to share with their children at home… what was intended to be a ‘team-building exercise’ became a complete failure in terms of building team morale…

I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to reason with bank officials at head office on the telephone… to no avail. It was Friday and the weekend offered an opportunity for ongoing prayer and scripture reading, which of course caused me to RECONFIRM my TRUST IN GOD and admonished me to be JOYFUL and GIVE THANKS in all circumstances! It required SUPERNATURAL power to do so, but Holy Spirit is FAITHFUL and by Monday I was aready to face the world again – sort of.

We had released all team members for the holidays, except the security staff, who had to look after the property of the organisation throughout the holiday period. My husband and I went to the office because he needed to collect some papers. I honestly didn’t have the energy to talk to anyone, so I remained in the car. To my frustration – just because I knew I couldn’t give any good news as yet – in the rear-view mirror I saw the Security Guard on duty walking up to the car to talk to me… I reluctantly opened the window, expecting him to ask the dreaded question: when will I get my money? But instead, he lifted up an old Bible to my view – it was torn and tattered from reading – asking: “Could you please let me have a new Bible in the Zulu language? My Bible is busy falling apart!” I almost broke into tears! Here, I was thinking that his main concern would be money, but his deepest desire was for a NEW BIBLE in a language that he could understand! What an object lesson in FAITH!

I responded: “God knows that you need a new Bible. I have no doubt that you will get it soon!”

We left for Wakkerstroom, where my mom lived, en route to Pretoria, where I had planned to go in person to the bank to see if I could move any mountains to gain access to the grant monies that had been received and disappeared… As we dropped in for coffee, before the long drive to the city, I told my mom about the security guard’s request for a Zulu Bible. “Oh”, she said, “my friend Anna just bought two copies, so I had ordered them for her, but she said that she only wanted one for her housekeeper and that I could give the second one to anyone who wanted it.”

PRO-VISION from Heaven! My mood was TRANSFORMED INSTANTLY! This Zulu Bible served as a REAL-WORLD reminder, that God works in SUPERNATURAL WAYS and that he has GOOD PLANS for us – no matter what obstacles the evil one throws at us.

But that is not the end of the story! While driving to Pretoria, I received a phone call from an old consulting colleague of mine, who is working in academia. At the time he was working at a South African university, which had invited me the previous year to submit a research grant application to compare my youth development programme at the organisation with their community development work done by the university. I had completely forgotten about this grant application which I had submitted on his request. And now – when money was needed desperately – he called me, saying: “I have a cheque for you.” I was already in the car driving to Pretoria and he – a VERY BUSY individual – was travelling to Pretoria the next day… God had coordinated our schedules!

It was TRULY SUPERNATURAL! The outcome of the story: yes, we had to wait IN FAITH, but the funds from the research grant were enough to not only cover the cost of the research, but also to cover the salaries of the organisation for two months… ALL GLORY TO GOD!!!

What is the moral of my post today? Just like you have to MAKE TIME to disappear into the entertainment world and experience VIRTUAL REALITY, I encourage you to MAKE TIME to spend living in CLOSE RELATIONSHIP to God and experience SUPERNATURAL REALITY! No subscription fee required! Jesus Christ has paid for ALL OF US already.

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