POINTING FINGERS

WARNING: THIS IS A SECULAR POST

    I have recently been reading about the dismal performances of our young black men in schools across America. I have a problem with this because the blame is totally misplaced. I'm about to get really unpopular here. The professional critics would blame the schools and teachers. However, I'm going to go Bill Cosby and put the blame where it squarely belongs: ON THE PARENT(S). There, I said it! The school only has your child for 7 hours a day. What are you doing to ensure your child succeeds in school? Are you reading with them from a young age? Can you read YOURSELF? Are you instilling in them the need for a good education, that succeeding in education is NOT "acting white". Are you giving them positive role models to emulate ?Ok here comes the argument, "well there aren't many in the Black community" blah blah blah!!! STOP MAKING EXCUSES!!! Get over the rappers, ball players and gangsta's, and look to talented authors, actors with character like Denzel Washington, Hill Harper.  If you are a single parent you can still make a difference even working 2 and 3 jobs. Are you faithfully performing well on your job? Do you set a good example to your coworkers? Or do you just show up and act like the boss should be grateful you came?! 
    If you are a single parent, are you giving the impression to your children that its better to lay on you back and pop out( or be a sperm donor for) babies year after year, stay illiterate and ignorant,  and the the government take care of you forever, or are you picking up a meaningful book, trying to add to your math skills, looking diligently for work, no matter what kind of work that it is ($7/hour is better than $0/hour). Are you speaking correct English in your house or are you lost in the devastating grip of Ebonics?

    The school system is not going to raise your child. Show up to parent teacher conferences. If you cant show up, call! Fight for your kids. That means when your kid cuts the fool, you discipline him/her accordingly and don't take their side in wrongness. It is 2010, people.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!

IS YOUR LINE BUSY?

1 THESSALONIANS 5: 24 (AMP): Faithful is He Who is calling you [to Himself] and utterly trustworthy, and He will also do  it [fulfill His call by hallowing and keeping you]. 

   As I was reading this verse for another study I'm currently doing, I was awed by what God began to show me in this verse. First of all the word "calling" jumped out at me. Ok, Jo, so what? Notice, if you will this word is in an active tense, inferring that this "calling" is constant and ongoing. This must mean that God calls us beyond the salvation experience, beyond the baptisms of water and of the Spirit, to a constantly evolving life changing, life challenging "call". A persistent wooing, if you will, for more of Him, in as many facets of His gloriousness that we can stand Him giving us!! WOW!! The next word that caught my eye was Faithful. Of course, if we have had any experience with the Lord at all we know He is totally utterly faithful, even when we are not. Scripture tells us this (2 Tim. 2:13). However, this scripture in 1 Thess. tells us that He is faithful in calling (wooing) us and HE will do it (the calling on our lives). AMAZING!! So often as Christians, when we receive  the call of God for our lives, we desperately try and work that calling out in our own strength and abilities, but the scripture says that GOD fulfills the call!! All we have to do is trust that His is trustworthy and sanctify ourselves to the work He has assigned us to do!!!
Can you hear His voice? Or have you drowned it out with the cares of the world? Are your hands trembling with new excitement, new joy to do His will as He fulfills His calling in you?

    Many of us are in a place of "newness" or unfamiliar territory in our walk. Even those who have walked in their callings for years are at a transition within their calling!! Whether you've walked with God for ages, or you've just begun this life, He's doing something totally new, totally different in you. You can't articulate it, it may seem like you are totally losing your mind, but trust that this is God. He is taking your life and giftings to a totally new unheard of , uncharted dimension in  Him! Remember he tells us in John 10 that His sheep know His voice and a stranger they will not follow.  If you have never read the book The Master's Call by Dennis Cramer, I would strongly urge you to curl up and read it at least twice through!

Its awesome and wonderful and all in the faithful, trustworthy hands of our Lord!!! Enjoy this wonderfully, mind blowingly awesome  "wild ride in the Spirit" with God!!

PROMISES IN A STORM

I was riding back home down I-95 a few weeks ago when a serious thunderstorm came up. When I say serious, I'm talking huge hail! Now normally I don't drive in a hail storm, but this time I was going to try as I was really close to home and very tired. So I continued slowly on my way, praying and singing as is my wont whenever I drive alone. I watched cars slow down, pull over and stop. I continued on. When the storm let up a little bit later, I looked to my right and a gorgeous rainbow was on that side of me. On the other hand the sun was shining blindingly bright! I began to rejoice right there on 95N!! God chose a hailstorm to remind me of His word. That whenever we are in a storm, and the temptation is there to stop and be overtaken, God reveals His promises, and they are STILL yea and amen! We can continue through the storms of life because the Son is always shining His glorious Spirit down upon us so we don't have to walk fearful in any situation!!

CHECK YOUR BREAKER BOX

"Some of us had power outages and some still do not have power yet, so continue to pray for each other."
    This is a quote from our Eldership regarding the situations during the recent snow storms. However, as I was reading this message, a thought hit me. Can it be that what is modeled out in the natural is a sign of what is true in the Spiritual?  As a church, we've come through a wonderful time of fasting and intimacy with God. Its been about three weeks. How is your Power holding up? Has a switch been thrown to the  OFF position in you? Are you still marveling in what God spoke and is still speaking, or has the TV, internet and other things silenced His voice? Remember God didn't reveal all of what He has in store for us during those 3 weeks. Some things he was silent about and is waiting to see if we will continue to "pant" hard after Him. Did we merely follow a regimen because we were told to do so or is our desire for God greater than a mandate from the pulpit. Are we still "breaking every yoke, sharing our bread (the Word of God) with the hungry (the lost and dying), and have we stopped hiding from our own flesh?" (Although after being cooped up with my family, I think they have seen enough of me for a while!) In Daniel 10 vs 2, Daniel states that he was in mourning 3 full weeks. However, in verse 4, scripture states :And in the four and twentieth day (24th day)..." Daniel wasn't satisfied with merely 21 days. Look at verse 12: the "certain man" of verse 5 speaks to Daniel: "Fear not Daniel: for from the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard and I am come for thy words." Have we become impatient like the children of Israel when Moses failed to come down from the mountain and returned to our idols? Can we press into God still until the "certain man" of the Spirit of God begins to "come for our words" and we begin to understand the vision both personal and corporate that God has revealed and also our place in it?
   If your Power is out, run to the Breaker Box of God and flip that switch back to ON!!!! For those of you who "do not have power yet" Dial up our Power Company (Jesus) and remind Him of His word in Acts 1:8 and Acts 2 1-4 and 16-17 that that you too can flow with mighty power in the Holy Ghost!

SNOW DAY THOUGHTS

    We are currently snowed in under 25 inches here in the Washington Metro area. One of our Deaconess' asked how we would be spending our Sunday as everything is closed. Well, I have a few bibles and I have a computer. While my son digs me out, I'll have a service online!

    I watched everyone bemoaning the fact that nobody will be moving anywhere unless they have a plow attached to their car for the next few days. A scripture came to mind. Philippians 4:11-13 {AMP}: Not that I am implying that I was in any personal want [ to my ICOG family, remember we were warned my Pastor several weeks ago to prepare so we wouldn't be in want], for I have learned how to be content (satisfied to the point where I am not disturbed or disquieted) in whatever state I am. 12) I know how to be abased and live humbly in straitened circumstances, and I know also how to enjoy plenty and live in abundance. I have learned in any and all circumstances the secret of facing every situation, whether well-fed or going hungry, having a sufficiency and enough tospare or going without and being in want. 13) I have strength for all things in Christ who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who  infuses inner strength into me; I am self sufficient in Christ's sufficiency].

    Learning how to adapt and be content in circumstances means that you have been through circumstances. Going through circumstances causes us to become amazingly resilient. Through God's grace and mercy, we toughen as He takes us through. 1 Thess. 5:16 commands us to REJOICE evermore and verse 18 again commands us to GIVE THANKS in everything. So as you dig out your cars, give thanks. There is someone who wishes they could dig their car out or wishes they had a car to dig out. As you cuddle up to your annoying family members, give thanks. Someone lost a loved one and wishes they had one more time to cuddle. As you gripe because you are stuck in the house, remember the homeless who wish they had a house to be confined to.

   One more thought. A friend and I were in conversation this week and she commented on the fact that the snow was a good thing because the "air needed a good cleansing to remove the viruses" Trust God that what He allows in the natural, he also performs in the spiritual.  Are we willing to cause a spiritual blizzard in prayer so that the viruses of the enemy can be destroyed?!!!

GOD'S DIET PLAN

This month's blog is a bit late due to the fact our church has just come out of a 21-day fast and time of consecration. This was a wonderful time of drawing closer to God and hearing clearly from Him without the distractions of internet,TV and phone, as well as doing the Daniel Fast for food. At the conclusion of the fast, we were all commenting on how good everyone actually looked. According to scripture in Daniel 1:15, when Daniel and his friends completed their 10 day diet plan, they actually looked finer than those who had eaten the king's dainties. One question that kept popping up was "How much weight did you lose?" As always in the natural there is a spiritual side to this question that I want to pose to you. In Hebrews 12:1{AMP}, we are told to  "... strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us." In this scripture we see that we are told to "strip off and throw aside". There is no thought given to beg Jesus to come and do this for us, the onus is on us!  As one of our ministers marveled that she had lost all of her baby weight, so we too must lose all of our "baby weight" in the spirit. Hebrews. 6:1 declares "Therefore let us go on and get past the elementary stage in the teachings and doctrine of Christ (the Messiah), advancing steadily toward the completeness and perfection that belong to spiritual maturity..." As we move forward in 2010, we are expecting God to do awesome things.  Do not go back to the familiar things  that beset us and weighed us down and made us ineffective as saints of the most high God. Maintain the spiritual diet and exercise plan that God has laid out for us as we press toward the mark (Phil. 3:12). Cast off the doubt, the low self esteem, the pity party the blame games.  God's diet plan is this: Ezekiel 3:3 "And he said to me Son of man, eat this scroll that I give you (the word of God) and fill your stomach with it. Then I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth." Dress yourself in the best (Romans 13:14) and begin (or continue) the exercise plan of God (John 9:4). Hallelujah!