Love Your Enemies

Friday my son Yordon walked into the house looking tired and complaining about his foot hurting, as a parent I have learned to read my children's faces and their body language. I stopped my counseling session with a client and asked my son to come forward. I informed him that he hadn't told me everything. Yordon took a deep breath and said it was nothing. I ask Yordon to tell me what was the nothing. Yordon said on his way from home another schoolmate  called him Nigga, my heart fell my client was speechless. I asked my son what did he do when this kid said it to him. He said he smiled and walked on, I asked Yordon why, he said you told us Dad years ago that a Nigga had nothing to do with pigmentation but is a person who has no self respect or dignity for self or others. I smiled and said  yes I did. He said he already forgave the kid because knew this kid was ignorant didn't understand what he was saying.


43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you (Matthew 5:43-44).  Love your neighbor the word does not say love them only when they say things that I can bare, love them only if they are kind to me first. No when people do harm to you,  say harmful things against you, give it God for is able to bear it. Please remember that our Savior was spit upon punched and hated and murdered, he told us that the world would hate us too. We are told that if we are to be worthy of the death we must take up our crosses and follow Jesus. Love your enemies, for we remember we were once an enemy of Christ.

An Imaginary Pre-Christmas Conversation between the Father and the Son.

An Imaginary Pre-Christmas Conversation between the Father and the Son.

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Scriptures to read: John 3:16-17,  John 14:6,  Isaiah 53:2-12

Well Son, are you ready?

Yes Father, I am ready.

You know it won't be easy Son.

You will have to set aside your royalty.

They will reject you.

Mistreat you.

Abuse you.

Finally, they will kill you.

And when all of their sins have laid upon you, I'll have to turn away.

Father, we've discussed this...We both know that there is no other way.

If there was...but there isn't.

This is the only way to take back what is ours from the Fallen One.

And there's just too much at stake...

Not to do this.

I love the fallen ones too much...

To leave them in their fallen state.

You are my Son...

And I am well pleased with You.

Go forth and do My will.

I am pleased do this.

For I love the fallen ones too much also....

To leave them in their fallen state.

In Christ our Lord,

Don 

Keep your eyes on God

Stop listening to lies of the devil, when he tell you that God does not care about you and that he does not love you. That what is happening because God is punishing you. Many people are convinced they are too bad for God to help, or they have problems that are too big for God to handle. They seem to have more faith in their inability than they do in God's ability. They seem to have more faith in the problem than they do in God. This happens when we focus on the problem, instead of looking to God who is the solution. As long as we focus on the problem and let it consume our attention, we will have faith in it to defeat us. Ask Peter what happen when he took his eyes off of Jesus,  its take you step out on faith and walked toward Jesus. Do you really think you got here by yourself, remember foot prints in the sand, that one set of foot prints was Jesus carrying you, and Jesus would not bring you this far to leave you, so don't you give up on Jesus when he didn't give up on you.

18. While we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Forgiveness is not for the other person

                     


 "And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses."
 "But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses." (MARK 11:25-26 ).

Your spouse cheated on you, you were abusedYou must forgive others. No matter what they have done. Maybe your parents or family members hurt you as child. Maybe even someone from the church hurt you ,what do you do??? Get revenge? Carry the burden? God ask you and I to forgive those who harmed us. Forgiveness is not for other people but for your benefit. To not forgive hurts you both physical and emotionally, you can end up with high blood pressure, stress, depression etc. Refusing to forgive is like swallowing poison daily. It will destroy you. Jesus said we should forgive when we stand praying. So we don't have to wait until people apologize. Nor does forgiveness require a long time. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It is a decision to quit holding something against someone. When we forgive people we must release them and forget it. You may think it is impossible to forgive someone who has hurt you. With God it is possible. He never asks us to do anything that we can not do, plus Jesus is with us always and  If we bring it to the cross and lay it at his feet. 

Suffering through to get your blessings

Christians often live in a imaginary world where they believe that if its God will  it will be a smooth straight path with no troubles in between you and your blessings. Like the brother whose believing that God going to provide him with a job someone will come knocking on the door asking him to come work for them. Instead of him getting off the couch and looking for work his pastor told him to name and claim it.  Then there is those sisters in the church that believe God  going to deliver  her new husband to her Saturday up in the club. Well let ask the Israelites if that was true for them, or did they have to be line with God's plan  before they got the blessing??? They had to fight the giants in the land to possess what God said was already theirs. The promised land belonged to them already because God had given it to them. But it was still inhabited by others (including giants), who had to be driven out before they could enjoy the promises of God. How is your faith???? God said and  you and I must by faith believe it.


 Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you;
 but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy (1 Peter 4:12-13).

Created in God's Image

Created in God's Image.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Scriptures to read: Genesis 1:26-27, Matthew 12:50, John 8:39-44, 2 Peter 3:9, John 1:11-13

We as human beings (both women and men) are creatures who have been created in God's image. (See Genesis 1:26). But are we all God's children by “default”? According to the bible, no we are not all God's children. Who are God's children? (See Matthew 12:50 for one scriptural definition, according to Jesus Himself.)  And how do we become one of God's children, if we aren't sure?  Well, whoever receives Jesus and believes in His name have now been given the right to become children of God.

Now... since we are all created in God's image, how should we treat our fellow human beings?  We should treat them (both those who are saved and those who are unsaved) as people created in the image of God...with as much respect, honor and dignity as we can. You can never tell how that will affect that unsaved person...be they your family doctor or the homeless person who is down and out. For our Lord isn't willing that any of those created in His image should perish, but that all should come to a saving knowledge and be granted the gift of repentance. God just might choose to use one of us (the saved) to water a seed in that unsaved person who hasn't yet become a child of God. And in time, that seed might mature and the person be saved. When it comes to the unending power of our Lord, you just never know.

In Christ our Lord,

Don 

God is God all by himself He is not Allah

Does God care what we call Him? Do Muslims and Christians worship the same god? The God of the Bible is not Allah, and Allah is not the God of the Bible.

For some time now,many non Christian groups have suggested that Christians s adopt new names for God. One denomination went so far as to affirm names like “Giver, Gift and Giving” in place of the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” to be used in worship. Feminist theologians have demanded that masculine pronouns and names for God be replaced with female or gender-neutral terms. But to change the name of God is to redefine the God we reference. Changing the name of God is no small matter.  When Moses said what God shall I say sent me, God answered Moses, “I Am who I Am” (Exodus 3:14) Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations” (Exodus 3:15). We are to use the names God has given for Himself, and we are to recognize that God takes His name seriously because He desires to be rightly known by His human creatures. We cannot truly know Him if we do not even know His name.

Christians must keep this central principle from the Bible constantly in mind as we consider some of the most urgent questions we face in the world today. We must certainly have this principle in mind when we think about Islam. An unlearned  bishop in the Netherlands suggested that Christians should call God “Allah” in order to lower theological tensions. He also argued that calling God “Allah” would be commonplace in Christian churches within a century and that this would lead to a synthesis of Islam and Christianity.


Muslims do not speak of God as their heavenly Father. In the Islamic faith, Allah is not only a different name for god; the deity it designates is far more impersonal than the God of the Bible. Father—the very name that Jesus gave us as the designated name for use in prayer—is a name that simply does not fit Allah as depicted in the Quran. Furthermore, Muslims claim that Allah has no son. This represents a head-on collision between the God of the Bible and Allah is a monotheist god.  Yet Jesus Christ tells us that if we have seen Him we have also seen God for the two are one.

 Muslims deny that God has a son, they explicitly reject any Trinitarian language therefore making Jesus a liar, which I do not believe Christ was a liar.  Islam denies what Christianity takes as its central truth claim: the fact that Jesus Christ is the only begotten of the Father. If Allah has no son, then Allah is not the God who reveals Himself through the Son.

Islam teaches that the doctrine of the Trinity is blasphemous. But the Christian faith is essentially and irreducibly Trinitarian. The Bible reveals that the Father is God, that the Son is God, and that the Holy Spirit is God. Jesus is not merely a prophet, as acknowledged by Muslims, He is God in human flesh. This is precisely what Islam rejects.

The Trinitarian language is the language of the Bible, and it is essential to Christianity. Indeed, the Christian faith points to Christ and announces that we can only know the Father through the Son. Confusing the God of the Bible with Allah of the Quran is not only a mistake, it is a dangerous distortion of the Gospel of Christ.

The Trinitarian nature of God is embedded within the Great Commission. Jesus tells His disciples to go into the world and make disciples of all nations and to baptize them “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Christians are those who bear the names of God even in our baptism, and those names are Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Which one are you? Goat or Sheep

Which one are you? A goat or a sheep?
Why then do you look and act like the goats aka( the world), you place your face down and eat from the trash and the raw sewage of these world.  While telling other sheep aka (the children of God) your doing this in order to minister to the goat, really!!! I mean really!!! Years ago I  sat at a Southern Baptist pastors convention and listen intently on how we guard our sheep from goats who might enter the church to disrupt the church. But the reality is now the sheep have gone out after the goat and sadly many of the goat think that we are goats too, simply because we eat from the trash aka  (sin/sewage). Lie to yourself while laughing at your co-workers sexual jokes, lie to yourself and tell yourself your a sheep yet you do not eat from the green fields the good Shepard endeavors to lead you into.  Tell me do you know which you are any more goat or sheep cause the goats can't tell anymore, you eat the same rotten garbage that they eat and seem to love it.   How many goats have lead to the green pastures???  We are so supposing to be set apart a unique, as we are the children of God, so if the world loves you then how are you a follower of Christ??? He told his followers that as the world hated him it would also hate all those that take up their cross and follow Christ.

" By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

Which Jesus do you serve

Yes your right this one is a repeat , so which Jesus do you serve the one who still hanging on cross in some churches??? Or perhaps the one who surely will not send you to hell because your  have done some good deeds. Or maybe the Jesus you serve says go forth and win souls for the ministry and you will earn your way into heaven.  Which Jesus do you serve??? Me my Jesus left glory and came and died for a sinner like me, because you see my good deeds were in the sight of God nothing more than a minstrel rage that was taken outside the camps and barred. Jesus gave sight to blind and had issue with the church of that day just as I do with the church of this day, for they were blind just as todays church is. We are the children of God not the children of the world, when the last Christian leaves the church please bring the Word of God with you.



Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Ephesians 5:1-2)

 The call to imitate God is a call to separate ourselves from the world though we may be in but not of it  (Ephesians 4:17-19) and how we have been made new (Ephesians 4:20-24) and then gave us specific ways to do that (Ephesians4:25-32).

Our call is to live with the same love that Christ has demonstrated.  Jesus laying down his life for us, was first of all an expression of his love for his Father. Jesus did it, not only because of his love for us, but because first of all he loved the Father and this was  the Father’s will. This ‘life of love’ is not to be something we do to make ourselves feel good or appear good, it is to come out of and be an expression of our love for God Himself.  When John says, “We love because he first loved us,” (1 John 4:19). The first thing we need to do in the Christian life is become utterly convinced of God’s love.

On Sunday they raise their hands to heaven and declare that it is Jesus that they serve.
Then why do we look so much like the world?
Did you know that the wheat and the tare, the world can't tell which is which and quite frankly neither can I. So I pose the question again, which Jesus do you serve?

My Savior bleed and suffered and died and rose again for a sinner like me. My Savior, was a friend to friendless, He remembers the forgotten ones among us, Which Jesus do you follow?
 Which Jesus do you serve?
Is it this picture of the American dream that you chase after? Is the prince of this world who you serve or did you miss that part when you decided you want fortune and power?
If Jesus was here would you walk right by him or cross over to the other side of the street?
Would you even recognize him or have time to speak to him?
Pretty blue eyes and curly brown hair and a white complexion Michael Angelo version of Jesus ,is that the Jesus you serve? My Savior was battered and bruised for my sins, did you miss that part? Sometimes I ponder do we really understand what the price he paid for us?
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they understand and they know My Savior. So which Jesus do we serve. is it the one whom we pray to bless us with great wealth? Or the Jesus who said
blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness?
 So who do you serve? The one whose promises are like shifting sand?
Marine says it God , then country and the marine Corp, what comes first for you?
My Jesus would he be accepted in your churches today? All bloody and bruised with no shoes on his feet, would we want him sitting next to us?  He was not rich he didn't have a pillow to lay his head upon. Today my Jesus would look like a homeless man or perhaps we would see him as mentally insane.
He spent His time with criminals and those that are considered the least among us. Did you know he had a heart for the poor, so which place would  He come to eat Sabbath meal at your house or among those that were forgotten by society?
Its time we decide which Jesus do we serve but I'm not sure we understand what that means to be like Christ,
Jesus said to live like HIM, love like HIM but then does that mean we must be willing to die for HIM as he died for you and I???
Can we be Imitators of Christ? Can we live like our Savior?  Which one do you want to be ? I turned on the TV set today and heard a man preaching Jesus wants to make you rich and that he never intended for us to be poor.  Is that the Jesus your seeking??? Heard a pastor say that his Jesus says that we should never be sad. Yet my Jesus wept when heard his good friend was dead. So which Jesus do you serve?  I know that I want to be more like my Savior and less like me.  I want to be an imitator of my Savior what about you????

Do you have love for those who hated you like Jesus did

 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, hoping for nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and evil. 36 Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful (Luke 6:35-36).

If you call yourself a Christian know this your heavenly father loves the sinner, but not his/her sins. If God can let it rain on the saved and the unsaved then should we not also show love. Now if your flesh this is an impossible request of us. Which is why daily we must be in the word and praying daily for us to die more to self and become more of Christ and less of Wills for I'm from my birth a sinner saved by grace, which is the number reason why I must have grace and mercy for others because Jesus showed me grace and mercy instead of what I deserved which was hell. While we were yet Jesus enemy He came down and showed us the greatest love ever he died for us.  I'm also reminded that if I do not show those who harmed me mercy and forgive them, how then can I ask God for the same.

If God is love and we are the children of a loving Father should we not also demonstrate love also???

Are you ready

Are you ready???
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up.(2 Peter 3:10).

Like the Master who left his servants work to do, what have you done with the talents the Lord gave you??? Let every man and woman while it is day be about our father's business for Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior shall return and each of us must give an account for what he have done. Not just your pastor or your deacon, or your bishop, or your Sunday school teach but all of that are true Christians were given the great commission, which was to proclaim the gospel to all those who would listen.  What shall the Master do with those servants that finds not busy doing the work he left them to do. When your work is tested shall it stand the test of time???