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Be patient 2.0

Today, God told me to surrender everything to Him again.
It is so easy to build little walls that protect our most intimate thoughts or dreams. But as time goes by, the walls start growing and separating us from Him. We start believing lies about ourselves and blaming God or others for the separation we experience. 

The way I believe we can break our walls is by surrendering everything we are (and wish to be) to Him. Thereby, we avoid so many sources of suffering like selfishness or ignorance. 
Surrender, however, doesn’t mean that we then are His slaves who have to do everything He tells us to. It means much more that we allow our Father to work within us and through us. He didn’t give us dreams to erase all of them in our minds after we surrender. But He wants what’s best for us and our neighbors. 
Today, He spoke to me through Romans 13:14 about surrender:
“Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh”

Often His timing is so different than ours. I learned that His timing is always the best and that patience is a key in trusting God. 

 We live in the “now” but try to think about and see the future. Our Father, however, lives outside of time and still wants to be in relationship with me right now! Isn’t that wonderful?

My vision and dream for these coming two months of outreach phase is that people get healed, be transformed and really experience the Holy Spirit. 

  • I would like to preach the Gospel on the streets, not having to fear what others think about me. 
  • I would like to see people rising from the dead. 
  • I would like to build relationships that last into eternity.
  • I would like to see orphans finding their Father who loves them abundantly. 
  • I would like that others can see the love of God through the unity we have as an outreach team.
  • I would like to see heaven touching earth. 

I know that I can do nothing by myself. But I know also and I proclaim this over our outreach in Costa Rica: Through Christ all things are possible!
He told me that the only thing He asks me to do is:

  1. Love Him, be in relationship with Him
  2. Love my neighbor as myself

BE PATIENT (or: how I surrendered my plans again to my heavenly Father)

Today, the Lord told me something about patience. 

Because I’m going to take a lot of pictures in the future and because I started a new adventure (NYDEGGER STUDiuS: website, instagram), I want to take my photos and videos in a good, “professional looking” quality. Because the only camera I own is my iPhone 6 plus, 8mp, small sensor camera, I was thinking about and planning to buy a new mirrorless camera. Mirrorless cameras are perfect for my plans, because they offer amazing image quality in a small, lightweight package and use inter-changeable lenses, which open new worlds for the creative traveler. 
My weapon of choice finally was the Sony alpha a6000 with two lenses (16-50mm kit lens and Sony 50mm 1.8 prime lens) with many extras such as additional batteries, a case, storage cards… 
I added the 50mm because it is extraordinary in depth of field and in low light situations (two points that would really separate this from my current camera). The price on Amazon was 1400 $. For me, this really is a lot of money and I knew it would be a very big step. But I wanted my pictures and videos to look better than just the average “point and shoot” type of. The following days, I adjusted my choice and kind of found peace over the situation. Some days of prayer passed and I knew more and more that I was going to make the purchase. 

Today (literally before I pushed the last trigger of buying the camera) I was praying again and said to God: “If You really don’t want me to buy it, You have to tell me immediately. I thought I was on the stronger point. What could go wrong? The chances that He really tells me not to do something were very small to me. To my astonishment, He really spoke into my decision when I opened a random book (Ecclesiastes) at chapter 5. 

The scripture said that wealth doesn’t bring joy, possession doesn’t satisfy us. I was impressed but still not doing the step in trusting my Father completely. 
Later, I was praying again, because I really wanted to buy this camera today although I had a strange feeling about it. I opened a random book (Ephesians) again in chapter 5. In verse 18, I read that we should fill ourselves with the Holy Spirit instead of getting drunk on wine. Even though this already spoke to me, I wanted more confirmation:
So I opened again a random book at chapter 5. This time it was Deuteronomy 5. 

What could speak more precise into my life as the Ten Commandments? We have to honour the Lord as our only God. Especially verse 33 hit me: 
“Walk in obedience to all that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live and prosper and prolong your days in the land that you will possess.”
What do I have to do to prosper? Right: Obey the Lord! He told me over and over again that I can trust Him and that He will provide in the right time. I asked the Lord in my spirit: “Are you really sure?” I got no immediate answer and so I kind of hardened my heart again as Pharao did. I just couldn’t believe it. I asked myself questions: What would I do on outreach without a camera? Why doesn’t God allow me to do this? Deep in my heart I still knew that God was right. I just couldn’t let it go yet. 

It took me about half an hour and one scripture more to finally surrender. Again, I randomly opened Galatians and of course at chapter 5. 
Verse 24-25 say:
“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
Which scripture fits better to my problem than this? I have died my sinful desires and passions and let the Spirit lead my steps. Having the passion for photography and the desire to shoot good images isn’t per se sinful. But I knew I gave this “idol” way too much space and I didn’t worship God alone. I knew this wasn’t an accident. I’ve never had so many scriptures opened randomly (but every time chapter 5) speaking so clearly into my life. But God had to do it this way because He knew that this nut wouldn’t crack at the beginning.
He is so patient and later in the evening He challenged me through Psalm 37:7-9 and Psalm 27:14 to be patient and trust in Him. 
I finally agreed with my faithful Father and as a symbolic act I deleted my whole Amazon shopping cart.
Here I am, waiting for the LORD to do whatever He desires. I’m believing in miracles (again) and know that I have a Father who provides even in the “small” things of my life. 

Halleluja

NYDEGGER STUDiuS

The story of NYDEGGER STUDiuS startet way back when my brother, Noah, and I created a small video for our church. We didn’t know how to call it but we knew that we want to include something that connected us. So we used our family name.

In Switzerland, we speak Swiss German, a language very close to German, with countless slang words. Today, but especially at the time we created our name, the word “iu” had a lot of purposes for us and our friends. In Whatsapp, we were using it more frequently than any other word. Some meanings of iu are: “yes, yeah, cool”.

Because we were creating videos, we included “iu” into “studios”.

So, thats the short story of our name.

During the last year, we created a music video for a friend’s dance crew. Shooting took us two days and editing some couple more hours.
For a long time, we didn’t do anything special together. He kept filming his trampoline-, springboard- and parkour-videos. In the meantime, I took some pictures of nature, experimenting with my camera. But I never really put effort into this passion.

Here I am, doing a DTS (Discipleship Training School) in Tijuana, Mexico. For mor information, visit: YWAM San Diego / Baja

On June 23, the whole DTS Team will leave Mexico and fly to Costa Rico for our outreach. We will listen to God, build a home for a family in need, we will go to prisons and preach the Gospel, we will distribute Bibles …

Basically, we’ll do the Great Commission that Jesus gave us in Matthew 28.

One “job” I’ll have in this outreach is being a photographer, which means that we as a team have a picture of every place we went, every ministry we did…

My passion of taking pictures flourished again. If I do something and take responsibility, I want to do it the best way.

I know that I don’t have the experience in photographing as others do and I don’t want to compare myself to them. I believe that God has created Man in His image and has a perfect plan/dream for everyone of us. So I’m not ashamed if my start as a blogger, photographer isn’t as glorious and professional as someone else’s.

I just wanted to create a platform where I can share my passion and see what God is going to do through this time.