Wednesday, November 30, 2011

...Faithful Jesus...


"Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, '“The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him."
The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him,
to the one who seeks him;
it is good to wait quietly
for the salvation of the Lord."
Lamentations 3:22-26
Sitting today thinking about a lot of different things and waiting on God to make a career move for me and thinking about several different projects that I have been working on I stopped by one of my sister Hanna’s Facebook page and this verse from Lamentations was there and it made me start to think, wonder and meditate on the faithfulness of God, so I would like to share some thoughts with you today.
In 2 Chronicles 35:25 the prophet Jeremiah who said “uttered a lament for Josiah” is believed to have written the five poems of the book of lamentations. These poems are all expressions of deep grief over the fall of Jerusalem. Like a mourner giving a eulogy these laments are intended to express a loss and in this case the loss of a nation. The latter half of chapter 3 implies that the purpose behind Lamentations graphic depictions of sorrow and suffering were to produce hope in God whose compassion is “new every morning” (Vs. 23) & whose faithfulness is great even to a people who have been condemned for their own unfaithfulness.
When you and I reflect on our own sin and the trouble of being hostile towards God for continually making mistakes and treating others bad out of selfishness we ought to be lamenting over the death of Jesus daily because of what he had to do on the cross in order to rescue us from deaths final judgment. It should also make you appreciate how faithful God has been to you and how undeserving you are to be adopted into his family.
Granted there are a lot of things in life that suck: bad relationships, lack of financial stability, horrible parents, lack of job opportunities, loneliness, sadness, death, disease, poverty and this list goes on. But throughout all of those things God has been faithful to you because he has promised if you trust him then your reward will be eternity in heaven. If I could change a lot of things about my life I would past and future I would try to change things but here is the solid thing I can stand on. Because Jesus died for my sins and has been faithful in keeping me to himself I will see him one day for myself in heaven. With all the misery that life brings, heavens brings undeserved joy and I want it for myself. So how every your feeling today remember God is faithful and new is his compassions every morning.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

...Can You Hear Me...


In thinking about the importance of fatherhood in the black community today and the importance of being a father and using your parenting skills on your children it has lead me to thinking and researching about the severity of the emotional and physical damage that takes place on a child and how as a culture we don’t appreciate the responsibility to be a parent.

At one point in American history millions of black men where stripped of their responsibility to raise their children when they where separated from their families during slavery. These men who valued their families and wanted to be apart of their children’s lives where taken away from their sons and daughters never to see them again. Their hearts where broken because they knew that their children would be forced into slavery and not only that but they wouldn’t have their father to guide them and help them deal with a difficult life.

We have a society that doesn’t punish fathers for being absent in their children’s life we tell them to pay child support and that’s enough. The value isn’t placed on raising your child and being present in their life rather it is if you pay your child support. I hope you can see the difference in that. And most of the time the little pay that is suggested by the court system is ignored.

We have become a society that has buried its morals and have bankrupted our children emotionally and spiritually because of our lack to be present and responsible to the children that we create. We sell them to the public school system rather than instructing them ourselves. We surround them with falsehoods that are sold as permanent when really the things they value should be eternal.

When appreciating where we have come from and the struggle of the people who came before us and what they endured I know they would be highly disgusted with our society and the lack of value we place on our roles as parents today. We murder our children through a legalized mass holocaust called abortion, we equate the value of time with our children to a check enforced on us by a judge, we allow a government ran politically machine to endocrine our children with philosophies that have hurt our society, we don’t value what black male slaves died for. They died to marry their wives and to have a family, they jumped over a boom in hopes to makes themselves feel special since the government didn’t recognize their love and now as black men when don’t think about marriage and respecting our women we thinking about not having a “Babies Mama”. These men fought for the family, they fought to just be allowed to be with their families and now we as a society have given up. If our child is having a problem we send them off to be taught how to behave from total strangers rather then parenting toward their individualism.

The men who came before us, the society of unfreed men who fought for freedom and for their children would be ashamed of us today. The graves are weeping for failed marriages, aborted children and fathers who don’t show up for their own. And to be honest with you the excuses have to stop. We can’t blame the children rather we must blame the lack of parenting. You don’t have to know everything to be a parent just show up and be present and give unconditional love and your best advice in the moment. Yes you will look back and say maybe I should have done things a little different but don’t look back and not be there.

For those who marched, for those who died and for those who wanted to be present but where separated from their families may we all as a society today hear your cries, see your blood and remember your pain that we may turn this tragedy into a victory.

Thursday, November 24, 2011

What Is Your Jesus &?


In Jeremiah 16 we can summarize it up by saying this: God gave Jeremiah a difficult task that had to be accomplished for the glory of Christ. Jeremiah is told not to marry and have a family because of the terrible future that is in store for Judah. He is told not to mourn the deaths of friends. He is not to take part in any feasting. He is to spend his life speaking words of condemnation on the sins of the people. He is to let the people know that their generation will only see and experience death. It is not surprising that the people who hear these words shun Jeremiah and leave him isolated and alone.
In the simplest form we can see that God has commissioned him to an unspeakable task. God says to Jeremiah DON’T FALL IN LOVE and not only that but no sexual encounters with a woman for you all the days of your life and when you go through life your going preach a message of condemnation for the people sins and their going to isolate you so your not going to have any friends and the friends you do have don’t even mourn their deaths because of their sins.
Can you imagine what that must have felt like for Jeremiah? We get so caught up in worldly pleasures and wanting God to bless us with material positions when really what we need to do is to seek the Glory of God. Jeremiah was ok with the task that God had given him because his soul was satisfied in God alone. His feasting was in God, his relationship and intimacy was with God and he enjoyed himself in God. He was given a mission and a task to forsake all worldly pleasure and to preach what God had told him to. We as people need to “break up with our egos and love God more”. We should not desire the things that are suppose to make us “happy” but rather we should desire and seek after eternal Joy and that is only found in a relationship with God.
We must be determined to pick up our daily cross, abandon our own lives, and seek whatever God is calling us to do. This life can’t be about you and I but rather it must be about God and what he is calling us to do. My prayer for myself this next year is that I would get over my goals, ambitions and my own way of thinking physically, mentally and emotionally and that I would seek havens joys everyday and not my own.