New

"See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." Isaiah 43:19

We have now officially stopped AGAPE Photography.

Yes, you are reading this right. I only stopped the photography, not AGAPE 4 Life.

In 2021, I had already changed the name from AGAPE Fotografie to AGAPE 4 Life.

Why?......

I had started my own photography business in 2010.

It started as Dhammika.nl and later changed into Dhammikafotografie.nl

Since my divorce in 2010, God has worked so hard in me and in my life, my heart, and my thoughts.

He has changed my mind so much. That is too much to talk about right now.

But in that early period, just after my divorce, I wrote studies on relationships, marriages, healing of the soul, and discovering who you are.

I felt a new desire to do something about all the broken relationships and to let this merge with my photography, but….

God had other plans.

In 2018, I started giving workshops and training sessions and asked God for a new name for my business to merge the photography and the training.

In October 2018, the word Agape (unconditional and giving love) suddenly came to me, and I knew immediately that this word had to be for my business. However, I also knew that with this name, the focus would be on the training sessions, but at that time, I did not yet feel the need to let go of photography. Therefore, I continued with what I was doing and changed Dhammika Fotografie to Agape Fotografie. Slowly, the activities changed, the name was changed to Agape 4 Life, and I received prophecies from others—words from God—which I already knew in my heart, but which confirmed the direction we needed to take.

Why the change?

Since 2021, we have changed the name Agape Fotografie to Agape 4 Life, because we received a vision from God that has very slowly become more and more visible between 2015 and today. In 2015, I developed a desire to strengthen relationships and to be there for “the brokenhearted,” or for anyone who has been disappointed in love in their life. In their relationship with parents, family, or partners, or perhaps even by friends.

A disappointment can severely damage your soul, your emotional life, and your emotion center, causing you to protect yourself, develop negative thought patterns, or even unconsciously build walls around your heart.

At Agape 4 Life, we believe that God is pure love and that His kingdom is built on love. We also believe that love has been under attack from the very beginning and that the kingdom of darkness is out to cool our love and to steal and destroy our faith in love. And when we look around us, we see that darkness is succeeding very well. People who no longer believe in love, people who are distracted from any form of relationship by ever-increasing work pressure or by constant distractions to make time for our relationships. Children who have distanced themselves from the connection with their parents, brothers and sisters who never see each other again, marriages that are broken. Not to mention all the wars or threats of war around us.

Why does God allow that brokenness if God is truly love?

Love is always a choice, and never an obligation.

And true love is always lasting.

God created us with a desire to have relationships, and especially to have a relationship with Him, but He also wants us to seek Him, find Him, and choose to live WITH Him.

People give the strangest excuses so they don't have to search for God. They blame God for all the misery in the world, and yet, at the same time, they do not believe in God.

But God says that He wants to be your father and that He wants to take care of you and help you with everything, and at the same time He wants you to compare your relationship with God to a relationship between a man and a woman;

A relationship between a man and a woman can be very beautiful, but when you start telling your partner that you don't need him or her, that you want to do everything yourself, or that you would rather have someone else or don't believe in him or her, all hope for love is destroyed.

But as soon as you start asking the other person questions, openings appear. You begin to open your heart to other thoughts.

When you ask questions, give the other person the space and silence to answer.

You will be surprised what happens when you start asking questions.

That is how our relationship with God works as well…

Do we want him to help us, do we want to spend time with him, do we believe in Him?

If you want to get to know him, start by asking God questions.

A few weeks ago, a profetic group I am in, (none of us knew each other) went to ask God the following question; we asked God to show us an image from the past of one of the others in the group.

One woman told me that she had a vision of a little girl who was lost and looking around searching for her parents.

I was stunned. No one could know this, only God.

When I was little, our family and another family we knew went to the Biblical open-air museum in Nijmegen. We were with a group of twelve, and at a certain point, I looked around and saw no one anymore. I felt sad and very alone. I searched for a long time, and after a long wait, I found them again.

When that woman mentioned this memory, God let me know that on that day a thought, a lie, was planted in my mind, which I have held onto myself for the rest of my life and have come to live by. Every time I felt alone, when family, friends, or partners abandoned or disappointed me, I told myself that lie again—that no one finds me important, likeable, or interesting—and I came to believe this and live accordingly. I didn't dare to be myself, didn't dare to speak to anyone, didn't dare to ask questions (didn't even know how to communicate), and I always kept in the background, thinking that people would rather see me go than come. I was rejected and abandoned so often, and on top of my adoption, my soul, my emotional center, became quite damaged because of this. This feeling of rejection was so strong that it held me back from growing and fully living.

God has protected me all these years, preventing me from building walls around my heart and allowing me to consistently build relationships and friendships. However, due to thought patterns in my mind, I didn't really know how to handle my emotions whenever I experienced disappointments in relationships. I didn't know how to express anger and sadness and always shut down completely.

By now, God has freed me from the power of rejection, and instead of feeling rejection, I now see the rejection in others and learn to communicate better.

God showed me how to communicate better, how to open myself up in dependence on Him to approach people myself and ask them a question, to initiate communication. Previously, I asked God to let people come to me and to lead our conversations. And He always did that, and He always wants to do that, because He loves us, knows us, wants to help us, and knows what we need.

And if any of you lacks wisdom , let him ask God, who gives generously to all and makes no reproaches, ... James 1:5

By now, I have grown to the point where I ask God to show me which people I may reach out to, resulting in such beautiful, deep conversations that you normally wouldn't be able to reach on your own.

About 10 years ago, God gave me a vision, to show His love and to help others discover this love in its full depth, widt, and height.

A year ago, a prophet was preaching in our church and asked who wanted to receive a prophecy.

The quiet, withdrawn person inside me said to God in my thoughts: “I would like to receive a prophecy, but I am not going to ask for it.”

The prophet walked through the hall and prophesied about two people, and on his way back to the stage he said: “Okay, just one more then, because it’s so much fun.” He walked back and I followed him with my eyes. He looked at me and said, “Oh, how nice, you’re looking at me, would you like to receive a prophecy?” And to my “Yes, please!” he began to tell me that I may ask God for anything. That there is a well-known proverb: children who ask, receive. Yes, in the Netherlands we know that children who ask are skipped over, but children of God, who ask God, receive. I knew immediately that God was referring to the fact that I had said I did not want to ask for a prophecy, and that in the future I may ask God for anything, and speak aloud whatever I want, and that I will receive it.

The prophet continued by saying that God had given me a vision and that I would bring together different people with different cultures to work out this vision.

With this, I received confirmation that the vision I had was not my vision, but God's vision.

And these words became the starting signal for me to develop the received vision.

By now, Agape 4 Life has completely stopped photo shoots for almost a year and are fully engaged in new developments. Currently, Agape 4 Life still primarily focuses on individual guidance, care and support, but in the background, we are also working on developing care and day activities, training courses, connection weekends, and conferences.

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