The Rainbow Fire of God's Promised Land

I have a passion, to share with the people of Africa the blessings of a vision God showed me when my family and I were flying over the continent to move to Cape Town. The closest I've come to illustrating that so far are in the photos above. Well,that's not exactly true. I spied a painting my friend Janice Van Cronkhite had begun and put away when I was in her basement in April of this year. The way Janice painted the clouds and the firey rainbow that was coming out of them jumped out at me! I could hardly contain myself and told Janice about the vision. She told me about a phenomenon that occurs rarely and that's what she had attempted to paint. At a conference a few days later Janice painted the continent of Africa under those clouds and put her own personal/spiritual touches to the vision I'd shared. She often attends conferences where she paints during the worship time. We at Blood N Fire refer to this as spontaneous combustion, when Blood N Fire worshippers in Atlanta got together to paint, create, write and worship the Lord under Holy Spirit's anointing. To view the results of the way Holy Spirit empowers Janice to paint go to www.jvcartworks.com.

My heart was to hang that painting on the wall in our home that the vision would literally declare what God had spoken to me about Africa. This morning God began to reveal so much about the vision, the painting but more importantly relationship.

Someone recently asked me, "So what have you been up to in ministry?" While I scrambled for the short concise summary another person in the room replied with..."refugees." I remarked to Ned on the way home, "I hope that isn't all they think we do." Ned replied, "That's what you wrote about last in our newsletter." We've had several emails asking us to write out what it is we actually are doing so that our friends, supporters can tell others about us. Sooo I wrote out some specifics, our goals, passions, dreams. Let us know if you're interested, we'll send you a copy. Email us at bnfrsa@sentechsa.com

Ned and I feel somewhat alone, like the odd man out, in ministry. We don't look like the other ministries around Africa, we don't do the large evangelistic outreaches we used to do. God has called us more to one on one relationships and to gather as family in community as they did in Acts 2. But we are very under the radar, so to speak. To get to know us and what we do requires getting together with us. John Wimber coined the phrase, "come and see." Over a cup of coffee and or a meal, we talk, pray, encourage and share to really get the full expression of what God's called us to do. There isn't a formula or manual which you could follow really, other than go to the poor, preach the good news, set the captives free. But God has revealed this to us in a fresh new way. Outreaches are great ways to publicly meet practical needs of a community. But God requires us to take his love a step further, to invite the lonely into family, to invest our very lives in their lives. The mass evangelistic outreaches we used to do in Atlanta provided the introductions and from there we had a warehouse to invite the poor, homeless and rejected to come worship the Lord daily. Eventually we even gave the sanctuary where we met on Sundays as a home for them. We became so busy trying to meet the needs we had less and less time to develop the personal one on one stuff, including our own relationships. God speaks in Revelation to the church saying, "I know your deeds ... but I have this against you, you've forgotten your first love." We read those words afresh when we moved to Cape Town. This morning the dawn came over my marble head when I read the notes in my Discipleship Study Bible regarding Deuteronomy 6:25: "And if we are careful to obey all this law before the Lord our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness."

In the notes: Righteousness (Hebrew tsedaqah) is the comprehensive term describing proper relationships. Wow! "Living in the social order created by God's commands brings a person in proper relationship with God and the community. Obedience is not legalism carefully maintained in fear, but a relationship properly nurtured in trust, gratitude and love."

Moses to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 7:6: "For you are a holy people. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the people on the earth to be his people, his treasured possession." Going on to chapter 8, vs. 6: "Observe the commands of the Lord, walking in his ways and revering him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, vines and fig trees... where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing... Be careful you don't forget the Lord,... when you eat, build fine houses... your hearts will become proud and forget the Lord who has brought you out of slavery in Egypt. He led you through the vast and dreadful desert that thirsty, waterless land with venoumous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave manna to eat in the desert, something your fathers had never known, to humble and to test you so that in the end it might go well with you.

Vs. 17: "You may say to yourself, 'my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.' But remember the Lord, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers as it is today."

Wow! What kind of God is He? He remembers, never forgets, never forsakes us, but remembers the promise he made to Abram who was declared righteous by faith! So I went to Genesis 15 to see what being declared righteous by faith meant. To get the gist of what's just happened you need to check out chapter 14 where Abram finds out his relative Lot had been taken captive when the kings came up against Sodom and Gomorrah. Chapter 14:10: Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits and when the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled some of the men fell into them and the rest fled to the hills. When Abram recieved the word of his relative being taken captive he called out the 318 trained men of his household and pursued as far as Dan. At night he divided the men to attack and they routed them; pursuing as far as Hobah, north of Damascus he recovered all the goods and brought back his relative and his possessions together with the women and the other people. The kings allied with him and came out to meet him in the place called the valley of the kings. Melchizedek, King of Salem brought out bread and wine. He as the priest of the Most High and he blessed Abram: Blessed be Abram by God Most High. Creator of heaven and earth. And blessed by God Most High who delivered your enemies into your hand." Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

The King of Sodom said, "Give me the people and you keep the goods." Abram said no. "I have taken an oath that I will accept nothing belonging to you... so that you will never be able to say, 'I made Abram rich.' I will accept nothing but what my men have eatn and the share that belongs to the men wo went with me- to Aner, Eshcol and Mamre. Let them have their share."
What a great tithe message! Wow! You know what I like best, though? God alone was glorified. He kept his promise to Abram and Abram trusted in it. He didn't put his hope in anything else. I'll bet he could have put that stuff to good use, too! After this in a vision God said to Abram:

"Do not be afraid, Abram; I am your shield, your very great reward." Abram replied, "O Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless and without an heir other than my servant?"

The Lord replied, "This man will not be your heir but a son coming from your own body will be your heir." He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them... so shall your offspring be."

Abram believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. God also said, "I am the Lord your God who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." Abram said, 'how can I know that I will gain possession of it?' The illustration of what happened next so sovereignly showed me how we doubt. We get discouraged because we cannot logically explain what God has said or done. The thing is, as God has said, "My ways are higher than your ways." We cannot understand or begin to explain or justify why God does what he does! Who was Abram that God would make such a promise? And who was he that he should ask God, "How can I KNOW this?" We know Abram was called 'friend of God.' We know about this thing between them called relationship! Remember how it was earlier described to us? Living in the social order created by God's commands brings a person in proper relationship with God and the community. Obedience is not legalism carefully maintained in fear, but a relationship properly nurtured in trust, gratitude and love.

So God instructs Abram to get a heifer, goat and a ram along with a dove and a young pegeon. He got them, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds he didn't cut. Birds of prey came down to eat the carcasses but Abram drove them away. As the sun set he fell into a deep sleep and a heavy dreadfulness came upon him. God said to him, "know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own. They will be enslaved and mistreated 400 years. I will punish the nation they serve as slaves and afterward they will come out with great possessions." On that day God made a covenant with Abram and said: "to your descendans I give this land, from the river of Egype to the great river Euphrates- the lad of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Ladmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebushites."

We choose when God speaks, commands, and/or declares in our midst. We either believe wholeheartedly, or doubt. Division/doubt ultimately steal our promise as the 'logical' birds of prey come to eat it or we can drive out the doubt in our hearts and believe as Abram believed. Granted, he did ask, 'how can I KNOW this?' I think like us, he wanted with all of his heart to believe so sought from God how to drive out fear and doubt. This is surely the answer for us, to fall on our knees, trusting Him to deliver us, to believe He is our shield and our very great reward.

Freedom's Just Another Word

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose
Nothing don't mean nothing hon' if it ain't free"

I awoke with these words on my mind this morning. Hadn't thought of that song or Janis Joplin since I was about fifteen and doing an oral report on her life. My mom thought I'd lost it, crossed over the edge into the world of drugs, just because I decided to do my report on Janis Joplin. Funny, the only reason I chose Janis was because we could dress up to look like one of the characters we were reporting on. I thought it would be cool to come to school in jeans and a floppy hat with my hair frizzed out everywhere. Little did I know what the song was about or really much about Janis' life until that report done around 1973. This isn't about Janis Joplin, it's about freedom. What is it? Janis and Kris Kristofferson said 'it ain't nothing if it ain't free.'

What's really free? There are sale specials: Buy one Get one free! But that's not really free! You had to pay for it, you just paid half price. Freedom as we know it in the U.S. still costs, doesn't it? So what is free? Life, the life Christ died to give us that we might have it in abundance. Even though we believe in him, we struggle to put our faith and trust in a being we cannot see. We aren't sure He will make the same decisions we make which makes it harder to trust. Yet, He made the decision to come down from heaven and die for us to show us the way to eternal life. Do you think that's only about the after life?

I don't. I think he meant for us to have abundant life here on earth. I'm not on the same page with Creflo Dollar concerning prosperity. I believe God meant for us to live this life abundantly. To live as Christ lived, to follow the examples of the heroes of faith we find in the Old and New Testaments. How? Achieve, acquire and advance? Or humble oneself and serve one another; love one another and care for one another's needs.

Is it really foolish to consider this kind of lifestyle? Check out Psalm 133:

How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity
It's like the oil that runs down the beard, down Aaron's beard and upon the
collar of his robe. It's like the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing,
even life forever more.

In a dream I reached out to help someone who was imprisoned. I went incognito into the prison, posing as a policeman and obtained the release of the prisoner into my custody. We walked out of the prison and across the border of the country and onto a plane. Seated on the plane while it was flying an amazing rainbow like the aurora borealis came into view first on the outside of the plane then literally inside the plane.

I pondered that dream for a number of years. I believe it's about extending my hand to the poor, needy, rejected and despised and rejected ones. Oh, you don't fit in that category? Well maybe you are like me in the dream, required to stretch out your hand to help another? It's the place God bestows the blessing! Even life forevermore! Try it, you'll like it!

The Community Called Blood N Fire, RSA

God sent us to Cape Town, South Africa seven years ago from Atlanta, Georgia where ten prior years we served the poor , homeless and addicted. We’d journeyed from being lay leaders to assistant pastors at Atlanta Vineyard Christian Fellowship, leading small groups and leaders of small groups to discovering God’s compassion and love for his people in the books of Nehemiah and Acts. We sought and served the poor in the inner city of Atlanta as there were no poor in our church. Our goal had only been for part-time Saturday outreach. It was not our intention to build relationship but only to provide food, clothing, prayer and extending an invitation to get to know Jesus. God seemed to have something for everyone, including those he'd sent to the poor! Pretty quickly our part-time Saturday outreach grew into full-time ministry and a church! Simultaneously while we were helping birth Blood N Fire my husband, Ned, and I attended our first Tres Dias retreats. God began building community in our hearts through our retreat weekends and the weekends we spent serving the people on the streets. We never imagined we’d sell our home, leave corporate America to build community first in the inner city of Atlanta amongst the poor and then in District Six, Cape Town, South Africa and the nations of Africa.

God began to reveal His plan for rebuilding family in community through the displacement of 60,000 people in District Six . Having served the poor on the streets of Atlanta, helped countless formerly addicted, homeless men and women get their lives back with Christ coupled with our experiences in the Tres Dias Community we felt very capable to begin building family in community in Cape Town and the nations of Africa. So we were very surprised when he began putting his plan to work in our very own little family!

Jesus modeled relationship with His Father through the twelve he called to himself. He shared his very life with them, teaching, training, and imparting all to them. Through a similar model we’ve begun to experience true evangelizing in today’s world more intimately and eternally through one on one relationships- and smaller communities called family. We’ve arrived at this conclusion via Holy Spirit’s leading as we spend time investing life in about twelve people at a time. We invite them to pray and discern also with whom God might be calling them to share the Christian life of community. We value greatly our Tres Dias Community experience, from the introductory weekend retreat to the forming of reunion groups whereby God surely sets the lonely in family. We believe we are truly living out our Fourth Day through the ministry called Blood N Fire which we've come to realize is more a lifestyle. We continue to minister to the poor and homeless but in a more relational way, taking the model of Jesus' twelve even to the streets weekly visiting, counseling, feeding, teaching, praying and reaching out to others in need of family. There are numerous reasons why folks in and around Africa have fallen out of family- through Aids, poverty, alcoholism, drug use and even more simply not understanding God's intent for His people to function as a family.

We want very much for our 'twelve' family to experience the Tres Dias Weekend experience and to introduce this concept as the powerful tool it is in building relationship with the Lord and others in South Africa and literally all of Africa. Ned and I see relationship as more than a mass evangelization tool that directs people into churches. We see it as a serious and holy resource the Lord is using today to invite people into His Kingdom, where he can continue to develop that relationship, equipping and enabling them to go forth and make disciples in all the nations. Dr. Keith Phillips wrote in his book The Making of Disciples: "The great commission is not about making converts but investing life with those whom God has brought you into relationship." Community is the true Acts 2 experience explicated.

God is pouring out new wine in a new wine skin, but He's always been doing that. He has always gathered his people to meet with him at his appointed time not when they choose to squeeze in the time. We see a marked difference in the world today when it comes to defining relationship with God. A large majority of the world has been raised to believe God is met primarily on Sunday mornings and special holidays. Fewer people are making the time for the special holidays, Sundays, and/or other times that God might speak, let alone desire to dwell among them. When Jesus told them to not leave until the counselor came, the book of Acts says they were all together in one place, praying and seeking the Lord fervently for how Holy Spirit might come. Ned and I see this as an invitation not to watch for the day when Jesus might choose to come back but to walk out the relationship with our Father daily that Christ’s death has reckoned for us. Holy Spirit was sent to connect us with our Father. We believe this happens more than once a week in a large congregation. God is very interested in personal, one on one relationship with us. We believe He also moves in relationship through us to others in relational ways and this then becomes the basis with which he builds community among us. We believe this community is the family God sets the lonely in, that leads the prisoners forth as referenced in Psalm 68 but also Isaiah 61.

Through the book of Nehemiah we’ve discovered God’s passionate heart to reconnect and rebuild his people anew. We’ve spent seven years walking, praying and “inspecting the wall” as Nehemiah did. Prayerfully we’ve been building relationships with those whom God has called to rebuild Cape Town; South Africa and the nations of Africa.

We believe God’s heart to set the lonely in family, to reconnect and rebuild family in community expresses itself through Blood N Fire as spiritual family, fathers and sons. We are not biological parents to all our spiritual children, nor is every person we are in relationship with a son or daughter, some are our brothers in Christ.

We are not interested in taking the place of people's existing families; all the more, we pray to be an extension of grace to the families God brings alongside, as it is written in Nehemiah when the gates were rebuilt family by family thereby rebuilding the ancient ruins and the places long devastated.

While atop Table Mountain February, 2,000 God showed us a patch of brown, dead land at the foot of the mountain. That was the place he had called us to go! How? Why? For What? Entering the District Six Museum we wept. On the floor lay a hand drawn map of a previously vibrant community where black, white, rich, poor, Jew, Muslim, and Christian alike lived in community. The words of Isaiah 61 flooded our hearts. But where were the captives of District Six? The community had been physically demolished, yet there on the floor lay the hearts of families, sons, daughters, uncles, aunties, mothers, fathers, friends and neighbors. Apartheid had separated what God had put together in community. And then we knew, God had called South Africa and literally all of Africa, ‘the last greatest place on the earth’ and here is where he would begin the rebuilding. We said, ‘let us begin this good work.’

Psalm 133
How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity.
It is like precious oil poured on the head, running down the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard, down upon the collar of his robes.
It is as if the dew of Hermon were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forevermore.


Blood N Fire, RSA expresses that vision through:

"Twelve" gatherings at least weekly for a meal, worship and a time of sharing in the presence of God together as a family. Each individual is encouraged to meet with his/her own ‘12’ weekly as well.

Green Market Blood N Fire Fellowship meets Tuesdays, 1 p.m. at Green Market Square for prayer, fellowship and sharing in the presence of God on the side of the market at the benches nearest Sylvia's Hair Braiding Stall.

Family gatherings where all the ‘12s‘ meet for worship, prayer & share the presence of God together as a larger community.

Master’s Academy of Fine Arts meets Saturday mornings for school age children, with a vision toward glorifying God through excellence in the Arts.

Annual trips into the nations of Rwanda, Uganda, and around South Africa have been made and relationships established. We've begun building relationships in Congo, Kenya, Botswana, Namibia, Angola and Zambia; as well as to further build on relationships already established in Rwanda & Uganda.

We visit the poor, pray for the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked and encourage others to follow Christ's example. As Christ did, we also invite others to go with us as we visit the poor, reach out to the homeless, etc. And we invite others to pray with us for those we encounter along the journey. Whether attending someone else's prayer meeting, conference or dinner at a restaurant; being instant in season, aware that the Kingdom of God is at hand always. God is glorified as we step out by faith even into the other nations, going to make disciples, laying hands on the sick, feeding the hungry, hugging the child who's left alone or the widow in need in Rwanda, Uganda, DRC, Kenya, Zambia or any of the other nations of Africa and the world God leads us to visit.

Blood N Fire, RSA is also part of a larger international community. Ned and Susan are co-founders of Blood N Fire with David & Janice Van Cronkhite in Atlanta, GA. See the website: www.bloodnfire.com


Ned & Susan Hill
Blood N Fire, RSA
16 Cypress Road
Newlands 7700
Cape Town, South Africa
082-681-6601, 072-408-9460