Keep the Faith Now

"But all these things that I once thought very worthwhile, now I've thrown them all away so that I can put my trust and hope in Christ alone. Yes everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have put aside all else, counting it worth less than nothing, in order that I can have Christ, and become one with Him, no longer counting on being saved by being good enough or by obeying God's laws, but by trusting Christ to save me; for God's way of making us right with Himself depends on faith, counting on Christ alone. Now I have given up everything else, I have found it to be the only way to really know Christ and to experience the mighty power that brought Him back to life again, and to find out what it means to suffer and to die with Him. So whatever it takes, I will be one who lives in the fresh newness of life of those who are alive from the dead. I don't mean to say I am perfect. I haven't learned all I sho...

So watch yourselves. “If a brother or sister sins against you, rebuke them; and if they repent, forgive them. Even if they sin against you seven times in a day and seven times come back to you saying ‘I repent,’ you must forgive them.” Luke 17:3-4 (TNIVB) "The Kingdom of Heaven can be compared to a king who decided to bring his account up to date. In the process, one of his debtors was brought in who owed him $10,000,000! He couldn't pay, so the king ordered him sold for the debt, also his wife and children and everything he had. But the man fell down before the king, his face in the dust, and said, Oh, sir, be patient with me and I will pay it all. Then the king was filled with pity for him and released him and forgave his debt. But when the man left the king, he went to a man who owed him $2000 and grabbed him by the throat and demanded instant payment. The man fell down before him and begged him to give him a little time. Be patient and I will pay it he pled. But his cr...

"It is the thought-life that pollutes. For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts of lust, theft, murder, adultery, wanting what belong to others, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, pride, and all other folly. All these things come from within; they are what pollute you and make you unfit for God." Mark 7:20-23 (The Living Bible) What is global warming? Global warming is when the earth heats up (the temperature rises). It happens when greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrous oxide, and methane) trap heat and light from the sun in the earth’s atmosphere, which increases the temperature. This hurts many people, animals, and plants. Many cannot take the change, so they die. Global warming is doing many things to people as well as animals and plants. It is killing algae, but it is also destroying many huge forests. The pollution that causes global warming is linked to acid rain. Acid rain gradually destroys almost everything it to...

"Listen, all of you. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for the happiness of those who curse you; implore God's blessing on those who hurt you. If someone slaps you on one cheek, let him slap the other too! If someone demands your coat, give him your shirt besides. Give what you have to anyone who asks you for it; and when things are taken away from you, don't worry about getting them back. Treat others as you want them to treat you. Do you think you deserve credit for merely loving those who love you? Even the godless do that! And if you do good only to those who do you good is that so wonderful? Love your enemies! Do good to them!" Luke 6:27-33,35 (The Livivng Bible) Blacks During the Holocaust The fate of black people from 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation, and in few cases to persecution. After World War I, the Allies stripped Germany of its African colonies. The German military stationed ...

"I want to remind you that in the last days there will come scoffers who will do every wrong they can think of, and laugh at the truth. This will be their line of argument: "So Jesus promised to come back did He? He'll never come! Why as far back as anyone can remember everything has remained exactly as it was since the first day of creation. They deliberately forget this fact: that God did destroy the world with a mighty flood, long after He made the heavens by the word of His command, and used the waters to form the earth and surround it. And God has commanded that the earth and the heavens be stored away for a great bonfire at the judgment day, when all ungodly men will perish. But don't forget this, dear friends, that a day or a thousand years from now is like tomorrow to the Lord. He really isn't really being slow about His promised return, even though it sometimes seems that way, But He is waiting, for the good reason that He is not willing that any should p...

"Come back we beg of you, O God of the armies of heaven, and bless us. Look down from heaven and see our plight and care for this your vine! Protect what you yourself have planted, this son you have raised for yourself. Strengthen the man you love, the son of your choice, and we will never forsake you again. Revive us to trust in you. Turn us again to yourself, O God of the armies of heaven. Look down on us, your face aglow with joy and love, only then shall we be saved." Psalms 80:14,15,17-19 (The Living Bible) The Azusa Street Revival was a historic Pentecostal revival meeting that took place in Los Angeles, California, and was led by William J. Seymour, an African American preacher. It began with a meeting on April 14, 1906, and continued until roughly 1915. The revival was characterized by ecstatic spiritual experiences accompanied by speaking in tongues, dramatic worship services, and inter-racial mingling. The participants received criticism from secular media and Ch...

"Don't be impatient for the Lord to act! Keep traveling steadily along His pathway and in due season He will honor you with every blessing, and you will see the wicked destroyed. For the goodman, the blameless man, the upright, the man of peace, he has a wonderful future ahead of him. For him there is a happy ending. Psalms 37:34,37 (The Living Bible) The life as a slave was extremely difficult. I would like to share some of the conditions of a slave's life. Every year, slaves usually received maybe one or two shirts, maybe one or two pairs of pants , one jacket, one pair of socks, one pair of shoes, an overcoat, and a hat. The food slaves usually received were cornmeal, salt herrings, and eight pounds of pork or fish each month for food. Their place of residence consisted of houses which were usually wooden shacks with dirt floors, but sometimes these houses were made of boards nailed up with cracks stuffed with rags. The beds were collected pieces of straw or grass,...

"Everything is appropiate in its own time. But though God has planted eternity in the hearts of men, even so, man cannot see the whole scope of God's work form beginning to end. "And I know this that whatever God does is final, nothing can be added or taken from it;" Ecclesiastes 3:11,14a (The Living Bible) "I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in a mud hut in a village near Umtata in Transkei South Africa on July 18, 1918. His father was the Tribal Chief of Thembuland and after his father 's death, the young Rolihlahla became the Paramount Chief's ward to be groomed to assume high office. Howeve...

"Beware that you don't look down upon a single one of these children. For I tell you that in heaven their angels have constant access to my Father." Matthew 18:10 Brown vs. Board of Education In the early 1950's, racial segregation in public schools was the norm across America. Although all the schools in a given district were supposed to be equal, most black schools were far inferior to their white counterparts. In Topeka, Kansas, a black third-grader named Linda Brown had to walk one mile through a railroad switchyard to get to her black elementary school, even though a white elementary school was only seven blocks away. Linda's father, Oliver Brown, tried to enroll her in the white elementary school, but the principal of the school refused. Brown went to McKinley Burnett, the head of Topeka's branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and asked for help. The NAACP was eager to assist the Browns, as it had long wa...

"Law and order have collapsed," But the Lord is still in His Holy Temple; He still rules from heaven. He closely watches every thing that happens here on earth. He puts the righteous to the test; He hate those loving violence." For God is good, and He loves goodness; Psalms 11:3a,5,7 Many people wonder at the crime wave sweeping over our country, at the horrible murders committed by young bandits, and the cold-blooded taking of life by the men and women of this generation with white skins. Strange they do not seem to realize that this is simply a reaping of the harvest which has been sown by those who administer justice..... Ida B. Wells, 1917 Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women's rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. She stands as one of our nation's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy. She was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi in 1862 and died in Chicago, Illinois 1931 at the...

"Stoop down and reach out to those who are oppressed. Share their burdens, and so complete Christ's law. If you think you are too good for that, you are badly deceived. Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with people closest to us in the community of faith." Galatians 6:2-3,10 Have you ever sent a loved son on vacation and had him returned to you in a pine box, so horribly battered and water-logged that someone needs to tell you this sickening sight is your son lynched?" ----- Mamie Bradley, mother of Emmett Till In August 1955, a fourteen year old boy went to visit relatives near Money, Mississippi. Intelligent and bold, with a slight mischievous streak, Emmett Till had experienced segregation in his hometown of Chicago, but he was unaccustomed to the severe segregation he encountered in Mississippi. When he showed some local boys a picture of a white girl who was one of his friends back home and br...

"Thankyou for making me so wonderfully complex! It is amazing to think about. Your workmanship is marvelous and how well I know it. You were there while I was being formed in utter seclusion! You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day for my life before I began to breathe. Everyday was recorded in your Book! How precious it is, Lord, to realize that you are thinking about me constantly! I can't even count how many times a day your thoughts turn towards me. And when I waken in the morning, you are still thinking of me!" Psalms 139:14-18 Samuel Ringgold Ward was born into slavery in 1817 on Maryland's eastern shore but fled as a child with his parents in 1820 to New Jersey and soon relocated to New York in 1826. Once settled, Ward's parents enrolled him in at the African Free School. After he left school, Samuel Ward worked as a teacher and developed a keen interest in abolition. In his early 20s, in May 1839, he became licensed to preach the gospel by t...

"I am the light of the world. So if you follow me, you won't be stumbling through the darkness, for the living light will flood your path. You are truly my disciples if you live as I tell you to, and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." John 4:12,31 Sojourner Truth was born in 1797 on the Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh estate in Swartekill, in Ulster County, a Dutch settlement in upstate New York. Her given name was Isabella Baumfree (also spelled Bomefree). She was one of 13 children born to Elizabeth and James Baumfree, also slaves on the Hardenbergh plantation. She spoke only Dutch until she was sold from her family around the age of nine. Because of the cruel treatment she suffered at the hands of a later master, she learned to speak English quickly, but had a Dutch accent for the rest of her life. She was first sold around age 9 when her second master (Charles Hardenbergh) died in 1808. She was sold to John Neely, along with a herd of sheep...

“If a tree is cut down, there is hope that it will grow again and will send out new branches. Even if its roots grow old in the ground, and its stump dies in the dirt, at the smell of water it will bud and put out new shoots like a plant. All my days are a struggle; I will wait until my change comes." Job 14:7-9,14 Born Frederick August Washington Bailey on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Douglas escaped from slavery in 1838. He was soon recognized in the North as a speaker of unusual power, and his famous Narrative was published in 1845. As the editor of numerous journals, he was among the first to urge free blacks to take up the Union cause. After the war he was an advocate for the Fifteenth Amendment and women's rights and served as minister to Haiti from 1889 to 1891. Many may not know the full history of Haiti, but at one time it was a very prosperous and Christian based country , until others came to rule under evil tactics. Frederick Douglas at the age of sixtee...

"We know what real love is from Christ in dying for us. And so we ought to lay down our lives for our Christian brothers. Little children, let us stop just saying we love people; let us really love them, and show it by our actions. Then we will know for sure, by our actions, that we are on God's side,"........ I John 3:16,18,19 This month we celebrate Black History, our blog for the duration of February will be a tribute to all those who fought the fight for equality, not for African Americans only, but that all men be treated just and equal. Harriet Tubman, born Araminta Ross in March of 1822, was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in ...

"But when you follow your own inclinations your lives will produce these evil results: impure thoughts, idolatry, jealousy, anger..... "But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives He will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control;" Galatians 5:19-20,22-23 Paul writes in Galatians 5; "I advise you to obey only the Holy Spirit's instructions. He will tell you where to go and what to do, and then you won't always be doing the wrong things your evil nature wants you to do. For we naturally love to do evil things that are just the opposite from the things we want to do; and the good things we want to do when the Spirit has His way with us are just the opposite of our natural desires. These two forces within us are constantly fighting each other to win control over us and our wishes are never free from that pressure. But when you follow your own inclinations your lives will prod...

"Beware then of your own hearts, dear brothers, lest you find that they, too, are evil and unbelieving and are leading you away from the living God. Speak to each other about these things every day while there is still time, so that none of you will become hardened agaisnt God, being blinded by the glamor of sin. For if we are all Faithful to the end, trusting God just as we did when we first became Christians, we will share in all that belongs to Christ." Hebrews 3:12-14 Beginning the Christian life does not give the assurance of its completion, so we must continue in our commitment to share in Christ. It is our duty to continue to encourage with another to stay in the race. Heart to heart I speak to you today that now is the time to hear God's voice, the scripture says never forget the warning, " Today if you hear God's voice speaking to you, do not harden your hearts agaisnt him, as the people of Israel did when they rebelled agaisnt Him in the desert. Th...

Do not be deceived: Bad company corrupts good morals. Be sober-minded as you ought, and stop sinning; I Corinthians 15:33-34 Come to your right minds and return to a more balanced way of life, wake up and get control of yourself. "Besides this, knowing the time, it is already the hour for you to wake up from sleep, for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed". Romans 13:11 We are social beings, we live in and by society. There is evil company in the social world and an instinct that is in evil company to corrupt. Evil is a self continuing power, those who have yielded to temptations become the tempting of others, for in most of us there is a susceptibility to be corrupted. If you know anything about fruit the grape for instance, if there are one or two rotten grapes it can corrupt the whole cluster leaving you with a bunch of bad grapes. Observe the stop sign ahead, don't be deceived. Let's not think we can live righteous keeping bad c...