Thoughts.

Don’t complain about the way god answers your prayers.

Life Application

Mike Cope wrote recently:

"Edith Rodriguez, a 43-year-old mother of three, couldn't get help in an emergency room at an inner city hospital in LA. So she called 911 and was rejected. People around her saw her struggling, and no one did anything. She died waiting for help."

"Is this a parable?"

When I boil down the bible it comes down to one word, love. When I think about what we are instructed to do and how to live our lives it comes down to one word, love.

Love all the people around you because God loves you. Love people you don't know and love those who you do.

I think if we stopped bickering over issues like abortion and gay rights and spent time loving people reguardless of the decisions they make this world would be a lot more caring.

"Whatever you do to the least of my brethren, you do to me." (Matthew 25:40) I wish someone knew that for Edith Rodriguez.

Beauty and the Beasts

Today I had to go to the DMV. Everyone knows the patience it requires to wait in a seemingly endless line but the lessons I learned today will forever impact me. As I waited in line two girls in there 20’s were behind me along with their father. They were extremely loud and boisterous as they talked about getting drunk as soon as they were done here. They talked about how they got plastered the night before with their father and a slew of obscenities continued to be expelled from their mouths as the words echoed in my head. They talked about the countless times they drove drunk and the parties they can no longer remember.

I began to wonder why, why would anyone choose to live this way? Do guys find it appealing? I know for a fact that it was about the biggest turn off for me. I wondered what they are trying to cover up. Are they upset with their place in life and decided that if they mask it all with drugs, drinking and partying it will disappear long enough for them to deal with it? I have never understood behavior like these girls were speaking of. This has never been my battle in life. I thought about asking them to please keep it down or to at least choose different language. About the time I mustered up the confidence to do so, I noticed that beneath the beast of self mutilation these girls were expressing, beauty was blossoming right before my eyes.

There was a young girl who must have just turned 16 in the DMV with her father who was in his early 40’s. The father sat in his chair with a smile that only a parent would know. His daughter passed her driving test and as she smiled as she entered the door giving thumbs up, the father glowed. His child was becoming an adult and today daddy’s little girl got her license. His smile was so infectious that I forgot all about the girls behind me and their behavior. I stared in his eyes and I saw love. I saw a love that only a parent would understand. I saw a love that says you can wrong me but I will love you because you are my child and I am your father. In that moment I understood that though his daughter would go on and someday get married and raise children of her own, this moment in time was the moment she saw what a fathers love is.

The father never said a word but the look of love in his eyes became infectious to the entire line. Soon, everyone in the line was smiling ear to ear and congratulating her. No one cared about the two girls in the back any more, we were more then happy to share the celebration of the father and his daughter.

The bible says that love has the power to conquer a multitude of sins. Today for the first time in my life I understand exactly what that verse means.

Grace?

Grace? Huh?

I am not sure I understand the concept of grace.

Why is it that the harder I try the more I beat myself up when I don't do what I should do. Paul said the very thing I should do I keep trying to do but I cannot seem to do. I truly am at war with myself.

The more I try to be a Christian the more I fail. It seems that when I don't try I beat myself up and when I do try I fail constantly. I really don't think that God wanted us to beat ourselves senseless; still I try to understand where the medium is.

I read about people who give up everything and give it to the poor, I read of the acts of faith that astound me yet I cannot seem to do that. Christianity has become about my struggle with sin rather then sins hold on humanity. It is as if there are two people battling out their dominance inside of me. One knows what to do and the other lives for his own inhibitions and self-centered wants. Far too often the later wins the battle.

I do not believe that being a Christian means years of personal torture. I feel that far too often we subject ourselves to this feeling of hurt, pain and frustration because we see the model in which we are to follow (Christ) and still we cannot hold a candle to the light he has shown. I spend far too much time beating myself up for not being a part of the church yet cannot bring myself to connect on the level I need to. This leads me to question, what is grace? How can we accept grace yet not cheapen its gift.

Far too many times I witness the concept of grace being taken for granted. Maybe the question is not what is grace, but how can I respond to grace? It is much like the feeling of having this massive debt you owe a bank. This debt is far too much for you to pay and one day your bank calls and tells you that the debt has been paid in full you own nothing. When my debt has been cleared from the bank it would be foolish of me to keep putting myself in debt following the same habits, yet this is my realization. Each day I wake I put myself in debt knowing that my benefactor, my father Jesus will come and wipe it clean.

This concept releases Christian culprits entirely and teaches them that if we just believe on Christ and ask forgiveness nothing we do will be held against us. That is not how the world works, that is not how we are taught. We are taught for every action there is a consequence. This is what I cannot wrap my mind around grace.

AMAZING Article!

The following is an article on CNN.com by Roland Martin. Mr. Martin Thank you!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/04/martin.jesus/index.html

"When did it come to the point that being a Christian meant caring about only two issues,­ abortion and homosexuality?

Ask the nonreligious what being a Christian today means, and based on what we see and read, it's a good bet they will say that followers of Jesus Christ are preoccupied with those two points.

Poverty? Whatever. Homelessness? An afterthought. A widening gap between the have and have-nots? Immaterial. Divorce? The divorce rate of Christians mirrors the national average, so that's no big deal.

The point is that being a Christian should be about more than abortion and homosexuality, and it's high time that those not considered a part of the religious right expose the hypocrisy of our brothers and sisters in Christianity and take back the faith. And those on the left who believe they have a "get out of sin free" card must not be allowed to justify their actions.

As we celebrate Holy Week, our focus is on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But aren't we also to recommit ourselves to live more like Jesus? Did Jesus spend his time focusing on all that he didn't like, or did Jesus raise the consciousness of the people to understand love, compassion and teach them about following the will of God?

In fact, I've grown tired of people who pimp God. That's right; we have a litany of individuals today who are holy, holy, holy, sing hallelujah, talk about how they love the Lord, but when it's time to walk the walk, somehow the spirit evaporates.

An African-American pastor I know in the Midwest was asked by a group of mostly white clergy to march in an anti-abortion rally. He was fine with that, but then asked the clergy if they would work with him to fight crack houses in predominantly black neighborhoods.

"That's really your problem," he was told.

They saw abortion as a moral imperative, but not a community ravaged by crack.

If abortion and gay marriage are part of the Christian agenda, I have no issue with that. Those are moral issues that should be of importance to people of the faith, but the agenda should be much, much broader.

I'm looking for the day when Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Joyce Meyer, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, James Kennedy, Rod Parsley, " Patriot Pastors" and Rick Warren will sit at the same table as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Cynthia Hale, Eddie L. Long, James Meek, Fred Price, Emmanuel Cleaver and Floyd Flake to establish a call to arms on racism, AIDS, police brutality, a national health care policy, our sorry education system.

If they all say they love and worship one God, one Jesus, let's see them rally their members behind one agenda.

I stand here today not as a Republican or a liberal. And don't bother calling me a Democrat or a conservative. I am a man,­ an African-American man ­who has professed that Jesus Christ is Lord, and that's to whom I bow down.

If you concur, it's time to stop allowing a chosen few to speak for the masses. Quit letting them define the agenda.

So put on the full armor of God because we have work to do".

Mr. Martin, I said it before and I will say it again. THANK YOU. This is what Jesus is about; this is why I give my life, my passion and my work to spreading the true news of Christ.

AWESOME!

No Room for Hate

No room for hate

What would this world do if there was no room for hate?

What would so many Christians do if there was no one left to hate?

Hate drives wars, fuels disunity, ignites riots and inflames wickedness. It seems to me that it is human nature to hate rather then love. Doesn't it seem so easy to you to discuss a persons flaws then to complement their character? Isn't it so easy to criticize then to complement? It seems that at the fabric of our existence we have this innate nature to think and act on evil.

I often wonder if this is the reason the book of Genesis was written and told for centuries to fellow Jews. I wonder if the stories in Genesis were written to explain humanities fundamental fixations on lust rather then love, sinning rather then sanctifying. I wonder if the story of Adam and Eve was there to help the human mind understand that before humanities current state there was a state in which we walked with God under the conscious mind of peace and tranquility, then came a great understanding that there is not just good in the world but a force that drives good into the dark recesses of oblivion; evil. Upon knowing this, I wonder if mankind replaced peace with hate, selflessness with selfishness and love with murder.

Even if the goal of the first few chapters of Genesis is to let mankind have a glimpse of the origin of our selfishness it doesn't answer any of the questions that would arise. How do we rid ourselves of this nature? How does one seek holiness and righteousness above the being of who we are? And most of all, why would we want to seek these things? These questions strike at the core of why we hate. I believe that when we do something not inline with our nature we take on the nature of God. For instance: when you spend time with the poor helping out in a shelter or providing for the needs of others you take on the very nature and being of God. We deny what we want and seek to give without expectation or seeking any reward, that is the nature and being of God.

If there was no room to hate what would this world look like? If we pushed away the evils of poverty, bigotry, slander, self aggrandizement, self promotion and greed, I think this world would look a lot like heaven.

Hate and love are separated but a chasm that cannot be breached unless you take the road not many want to follow.

Family Guy gets the last words:

Spiritual Poverty: A Global Battle

Material poverty can always be solved by material things. The unwanted, the unloved, the forgotten, the lonely, this is much greater poverty.

We live in a culture that has raised the veil of blindness to issues that effect masses of people. We prefer to live in our small social bubble rather then walk in the shoes of those who cannot afford shoes. We are ever present of the latest movies and hottest songs on the radio but we fail to see the greatest poverty in the world today is right outside our doors.

The need for acceptance, the unloved, the lonely, the down-hearted, the forgotten, the unwanted, these are the ones who suffer from the greatest poverty the world has known. These people's hurt cannot be fixed with material possessions the poverty they suffer from is much deeper, it is a spiritual poverty. We live in a culture that is quick to judge the exterior of a person then understand the interior of a person.

We fill our minds with hate, anger and bitterness and cause a type of poverty that leads to death. Did you know that suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. Did you know that 50% of all marriages in the America end in divorce? These two examples all have one thing in common, hopelessness. The victims of suicide feel hopeless, and failed marriages end in a lack of hope. To give hope and love you fight against the very nature of the world today. We know this because we know ourselves when we say it is much easier to insult then to build up, it is easier to hate then to love, it is easier to criticize then to complement.

Material poverty is killing millions of people across the world; spiritual poverty is torturing billions daily. You don't need to look far to find people suffering from spiritual poverty, you need only look out our front door. Each of us has a story in which the fabric of our lives has been written upon and etched into its woven thread you find strands, broken and frayed from abuse, insults, anger and malice.

We all hurt, we all bleed, we all cry, we all suffer from the very things that can destroy so many of us. Today we take a stand against the neglect of so many needs that people have. We are called to be inclusive with our love. We must not turn a blind eye to the needs that we all have, we must learn to love. It is in this very act of love that we will find true happiness and fulfillment.