Did you know the following facts about South Africa?

• South Africa has the 27th biggest economy in the world, with a Gross Domestic Product of US$254 billion (World Bank).
• South Africa accounts for almost 25% of the GDP of the entire African continent, with an economy more than twice the size of the
second biggest – Algeria. (World Bank).
• Gauteng is South Africa’s smallest province but produces 34% of South Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (Stats SA).
• The black middle class grew by 30% in 2005, adding another 421,000 black adults to SA’s middle-income layer and ramping up
the black population’s share of SA’s total middle class to almost a third. Between 2001 and 2004, there were 300,000 new black
entrants to the middle class (Financial Mail).
• South African power supplier provides the fourth cheapest electricity in the world.
• Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto is the biggest hospital in the world with 3200 beds and 6760 staff members.
• Durban is the largest port in Africa and the ninth largest in the world.
• Since 1994, 500 houses have been built each day for the poor and 1,000 houses per day have received electricity.
• Seventy percent of South Africa’s population is urbanised.
• Our population is set to stabilise at around 45 million people for the next 20 years.
• The number of tourists visiting South Africa has grown by 188% since 1994, from 3 million to 8.4 million in 2006 (Department of
Environment and Tourism)
• The Singita game reserve was voted the best hotel in the world by the readers of a leading travel magazine (Conde Nast Traveller)
• South Africa hosts the largest timed cycle race in the world (the Cape Argus Cycle Tour), the world’s oldest and largest
ultra-marathon (the Comrades Marathon) and the world’s largest open water swimming event (the Midmar Mile).
• South Africa will become the first African country to host the Soccer World Cup in 2010 … and the first country in the world to
have hosted the Cricket, Rugby and Soccer World Cups.
• South Africa houses one of the three largest telescopes in the world at Sutherland in the Karoo
• South Africa is the first, and to date the only, country to build nuclear weapons and the voluntarily dismantle its entire nuclear
weapons programme
• The South African oil company Sasol has established the only commercially proven oil-from-coal operations in the world.
• Our learner to teacher ratio has improved from 1:50 in 1994 to 1:34 in 2004
• South Africa is the only country to house an entire floral kingdom (fynbos), one of only 6 on the planet
• Afrikaans is the youngest official language in the world
• South Africa has the world’s largest deposits of gold, chromium, platinum and manganese
• The only street in the world to house two Nobel Peace Prize winners is in Soweto. Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond
Tutu both have houses in Vilakazi Street, Orlando West.
• Cape Town has the fifth-best blue sky in the world according to the UK’s National Physical Laboratory

(All of these facts are easily obtainable and can be read at www.sagoodnews.co.za).

These wonderful stats help to change people’s perceptions about this country. Yet, the most powerful aspect of any country and its greatest wealth is found in the fact that God has a plan and purpose for us.

That purpose may not necessarily be found in all of these facts, but it is found in listening and hearing His thoughts for each one of us living in this country. It is probably here where the greatest challenge for us is found, because we are bombarded with stories and horrifying news extracts everyday that so easily confuse our thinking and loyalty towards the place where God has put us. Yet, in the midst of all of this, the Holy Spirit wants to share His wonderful thoughts with us about the reason for each one of us being here at such a time as this.

In the Book of Acts we read the following:
“And He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all towards Him to fulfil that!“- Act 17:26-28.

It is so easy to just turn our ears towards the voices around us to impact the state of our hearts towards our nation. But, we need to act responsibly, eagerly open our ears to His voice and let Him determine the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward Him and find Him. Yet He is actually not far from each one of us, for “In Him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, “’For we are indeed His offspring.’

God has therefore established the places and the times where we should live. We ought to inquire of Him about this and not from our friends who have moved elsewhere in the world or the immigration statistics. Paul says here in Acts that we find our identity and purpose in Him by understanding that He has determined a place and a time for us to live from.

I am very confident that once we ask God about His perspective for this nation, that what we hear will be so different from any of the opinions we have read in the daily newspapers. It is actually becoming a life and death issue for us to hear His voice on these matters, although many of us may never relocate to another country. Our state of mind is going to depend on what we hear from Him. Many are only still living here because don’t have the means to move. Many people are bound by such fear and hopelessness that they are actually not really living anymore, just ‘surviving’.

God wants to set us free by us hearing His thoughts and us aligning our hearts and attitudes accordingly. There will always be those that God calls from one nation to another in His plan to establish His Kingdom, but primarily we see God keeping people in a specific country for a Godly purpose. We must find this and passionately pursue Him in order to please and honour Him first. And this is true in whatever country we may find ourselves, God has put us there for a reason and we have a responsibility towards Him to fulfil that!

It is so easy to just turn our ears towards the voices around us to impact the state of our hearts towards our nation. But, we need to act responsibly, eagerly open our ears to His voice and let Him determine our footsteps. Like Proverbs 16:9 says, “A man’s heart plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps”.

Let us allow the Lord to direct our steps at this very crucial time in South Africa where so many are giving up when looking at all the issues we are currently facing. Let us rather be dreaming again about the future of this nation than screaming in great frustration about the things that we know should be changing. As people of God we may be the only ones that will live with this hope if we hear from Him. If we refrain from listening who will? Who will then proclaim what He believes for South Africa?

Let us humble ourselves before Him again as thousands did and consequently witnessed one of the most incredible miracles ever in South Africa, before our first democratic elections in 1994. It is time again, in the history of this nation, where God’s people need to acknowledge their need for Him and not lay the responsibility before the politicians. Rather cry out for His grace upon this beautiful land and dream His dreams again. His plans are to use us to declare His praises through whatever difficulty so that people may look at us and believe in Him. Our response at this time as South Africans may be so crucial for others to come to an understanding of who this wonderful God is. I have recently had the privilege of learning this from some amazing followers of God in Zimbabwe where they have chosen to believe God rather than listen to the reports of the world and base their hope for their nation on what others have to say.

Come on, let us not be so concerned about our own well being, but start dreaming again. Dream that He really still is in control of South Africa and that we will be able to walk in His footsteps of touching hearts and changing nations!