Soli Deo Gloria!

This has become the theme music for my life!

even though i can’t see
and i can’t feel your touch
i will trust you lord
how i love you so much
though my nights my seem long
and i feel so alone
lord my trust is in you
i sur­ren­der to you 

so many painful thoughts
travel through my mind
and i won­der how
i will make it through this time 

but i trust you
lord it’s not easy
some­times the pain in my life
makes you seem far away
but i’ll trust you
i need to know you’re here
through the tears and the pain
through the heartache and rain 

i’ll trust you 

every­thing that i see
tells me not to believe
but i’ll trust you lord
you have never failed me
my past still con­trols me
will this hurt ever leave?
i can only trust you
no one else like you do 

i can
i will
i must
trust you 

i will
trust you 

i’ll trust you
i will

god will make a way 

What Doc­trines Are Fun­da­men­tal?, Part 1 :: Grace to You.

How can a Chris­t­ian deter­mine which doc­trines are essen­tial and which are not? 

To begin with, the strongest words of con­dem­na­tion in all the New Tes­ta­ment are aimed at false teach­ers who cor­rupt the Gospel. There­fore the Gospel mes­sage itself must be acknowl­edged as a pri­mary point of fun­da­men­tal doc­trine.

But what mes­sage will deter­mine the con­tent of our gospel tes­ti­mony? Let’s turn to Scrip­ture itself and attempt to lay out some bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples for deter­min­ing which arti­cles of faith are truly essen­tial to authen­tic Chris­tian­ity.

I moved to a new home in Feb­ru­ary and in my pack­ing, came across The Pur­suit of Holi­ness by Jerry Bridges. I KNEW I had it, but had for­got­ten where I put it. When I got into my new space, I placed the book and the accom­pa­ny­ing study guide in a place where I could NOT mis­place it. Now, I’m dig­ging in.

In the pref­ace, Bridges says:

…the pur­suit of holi­ness is a joint ven­ture between God and the Chris­t­ian. No one can attain any degree of holi­ness with­out God work­ing work­ing in his life, but just as surely no one will attain it with­out effort on his own part. God has made it pos­si­ble for us to walk in holi­ness. But He has given to us the respon­si­bil­ity of doing the walk­ing. He does not do that for us.

We can­not say we’re Chris­tians if we take no actions toward con­form­ing to Christ. There are things that WE must do (or not do) in striv­ing to attain holi­ness. Funny thing is, I rarely (if ever) hear Chris­tians talk about being holy, liv­ing holy lives, or pur­su­ing holi­ness. It’s as if once God saved us, we think we can wear HOLY across our chests like a super­hero. I don’t hear much talk about what being holy looks like in every­day life. More often than not, it’s “God knows my heart!” or, “I’m still grow­ing in that area!” But no talk about how to tackle our sin­ful issues and con­quer them by God’s grace. Bridges says there are two rea­sons for this:

1. We don’t want to face up to our respon­si­bil­ity. We pre­fer to pray to God for vic­tory when we know we should be act­ing in obe­di­ence.
2. We do not under­stand the proper dis­tinc­tion between God’s pro­vi­sion and our own respon­si­bil­ity for holi­ness. We strug­gle with what we’re sup­posed to do and what we’re sup­posed to rely on God to do.

When the word pur­sue is used in ref­er­ence to holi­ness, it sug­gests two things: First, that EFFORT and DILIGENCE are required. A pur­suit is not a pur­suit at all with­out EFFORT and a com­mit­ment to see­ing the pur­suit through. Sec­ond, this pur­suit is a task that will last our whole lives. It does not end. We will never attain per­fec­tion in this life, but we have to keep striv­ing for it until we breathe our last breath. We strive to con­form to the will of God in one area of life…and surely he’ll reveal our need for holi­ness in another area. We will ALWAYS be pur­su­ing holiness…that is, if we’re com­mit­ted to fol­low­ing Christ.

And that’s just a part of the pref­ace, ya’ll. LOL

Going on through­out the book, we’ll dis­cover what holi­ness is, what our respon­si­bil­ity is for liv­ing a holy life, why we strug­gle so hard to defeat sin,and what God has pro­vided to help us over come it.

GOOD STUFF! If you don’t have the book, get it. But even if you don’t, I hope you’ll keep read­ing as I go through it.

I’d love to know your thoughts so far..so reg­is­ter and leave a com­ment. I know reg­is­ter­ing is a pain, but it cuts down on spam…and I HATE SPAM!!

“The mass of Negroes, par­tic­u­larly in the South, still breed care­lessly and dis­as­trously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from the por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion lease intel­li­gent and fit, and least able to rear chil­dren prop­erly,” said Mar­garet Sanger, founder of Planned Par­ent­hood Fed­er­a­tion of Amer­ica.

In 1939, Sanger cre­ated the “Negro Project,” in which she enlisted the ser­vices of black min­is­ters to share her solu­tion to the prob­lem: con­tra­cep­tion, ster­il­iza­tion and abor­tion. “The most suc­cess­ful edu­ca­tional approach to the Negro is through a reli­gious appeal,” Sanger wrote. “We do not want the word to get out that we want to exter­mi­nate the Negro pop­u­la­tion, and the min­is­ter is the man who can straighten out that idea if it occurs to any of their more rebel­lious mem­bers.”

Yet, black women get a higher per­cent­age of abor­tions than any other race. THEN, black folk wanna com­plain about how “we” are under­rep­re­sented. Think about how many black folk we’ve killed in the womb since abor­tion became legal over 30 years ago. WE DO THIS TO OURSELVES AND THEN BLAME OTHERS FOR OUR PLIGHT. Insan­ity.

HT: Lashawn Bar­ber

The fol­low­ing rep­re­sents the prob­lem I have with the major­ity of “gospel” music: THERE IS NO GOSPEL IN IT.

So, in the heat of anger (unnec­es­sary anger at that), an ex told me that I was uppity, on a high horse, and not really black.  That was 2 years ago. I broke up with him soon after that ridicu­lous con­ver­sa­tion.

Guess who’s try­ing to get back? 

I’m not angry with him, but I don’t want any parts of dat­ing him. And Lord for­give me, I have not for­got­ten those com­ments.

Besides, if my son doesn’t want you to know where we live now…we prob­a­bly don’t need to be dat­ing. LOL!

Peo­ple always tell me that I’m a good mom. I never really thought about whether I’m a good mom or not; I just know that I try to be. A friend sug­gested that I write about how to be a good, sin­gle mom rais­ing a good man in the cul­ture that we live in now. (Thanks, Stacey!) I def­i­nitely have ideas on how to do that, and since I’ve been doing it for over nine years now, with some good results, here we go. I’m going to list them here, and in future posts, deal with each item. This is by no means a com­plete list, nor do I con­sider myself an expert on the sub­ject. If you agree/disagree, reg­is­ter and com­ment. If you have some­thing to add, reg­is­ter and com­ment. If you just wanna co-sign, reg­is­ter and com­ment!

1. Get to know your child! When I was preg­nant, I dreamed that I’d have an adorable, fat-cheeked, laid-back and agree­able (like me!), son. How­ever, my son proved, from the womb, that it was def­i­nitely a dream. He was adorable and had the fat­test cheeks ever.…but laid-back? agree­able? NO SIR! How­ever, one of the best things about being Julian’s mom has been get­ting to know who Julian is…even if I get extremely frus­trated at times!
2. Have a goal in mind for your child. For the first half of my preg­nancy, I thought I was hav­ing a girl. While I am not the most girly girl on earth, I looked for­ward to play­ing with dolls, buy­ing cute clothes and other girly things with my child. How­ever, my boy showed proof of his man­hood in my 6^th month of preg­nancy when he couldn’t evade the ultra­sound any­more. At that moment, I made a vow: My son would NOT be like the males I’ve encoun­tered in my life. My goal is to raise him to be a God-fearing, God-HONORING, MAN. Par­ent­ing Julian is cen­tered around that goal, and I keep it in mind in every­thing I do con­cern­ing him.
3. Intro­duce your child to Jesus as EARLY as pos­si­ble. Julian is very used to going to church. That’s a good thing. But going to church, in and of itself, doesn’t make much of a dif­fer­ence unless one knows Jesus Christ. I began a con­cen­trated effort to talk to Julian about our faith when he was six years old. And it was at that time, dur­ing a dis­cus­sion about the Ten Com­mand­ments, that God showed my child his sin. As I explained what the com­mand­ments meant, it was like a light went on, and Julian said that he was sorry for break­ing God’s Law and he won­dered what his pun­ish­ment would be.….and he repented and believed Jesus Christ for his sal­va­tion when he was six years old. I’m con­vinced that I’d be deal­ing with a very dif­fer­ent lit­tle boy if that had not hap­pened.
4. Take advan­tage of ANY sup­port you get. I may be sin­gle, but I don’t do this alone. I have a great sup­port sys­tem of fam­ily and friends that help me with this par­ent­ing thing. Sup­port is not just finan­cial either. My brother pro­vides a great male role model for Julian and spends time with him often. My friends babysit for me on the rare occa­sion that I go some­where with­out him. My mom and dad do too much to even talk about. I couldn’t be the mom I am with­out my fam­ily and friends.
5. Last, but not least, PUT YOUR CHILD FIRST IN YOUR LIFE. I am all Julian has. He needs to feel secure that he is my pri­or­ity, and I make sure that he does. Too often, sin­gle moth­ers want to pur­sue their own inter­ests at the expense of their chil­dren. How­ever, if you’re going to raise healthy kids, that should never be done. Once I got preg­nant, my life was not my own any­more. It’s all about the boy. That’s not to say that I don’t have inter­ests, because I do. But my son comes FIRST. He knows he’s safe and secure with his mom. He knows mom will always take care of him, sup­port him, and defend him. So he’s a kid with NO wor­ries. Happy and care­free. As he should be.

Got this from Pure Church. It’s writ­ten by a fel­low named Skip Moen:

I believe that God is the sov­er­eign ruler of all cre­ation.

I believe that God is a God of order, not con­fu­sion or chaos.

I believe that God is com­pas­sion­ate beyond mea­sure, faith­ful to a fault, mer­ci­ful and for­giv­ing.

I believe that I am lost and hope­lessly ruined with­out His daily inter­ven­tion and inter­ac­tion in my life.

I believe that the sys­tems of this world lie within the power of the evil one who unfail­ingly pur­sues the destruc­tion of all of God’s cre­ation, includ­ing me.

I believe that reliance on human effort, human think­ing and human willpower aligns me with the sys­tems of this world and places me within the power of the evil one.

I believe that my own expe­ri­ence con­firms my total inabil­ity to res­cue myself from destruc­tive choices.

I believe that I am addicted to my own agen­das, mood-altering behav­iors and self-sufficiency.

I believe that Yeshua died on the cross to redeem me from the power of sin that would oth­er­wise dom­i­nate and con­trol my life.

I believe that Yeshua alone can set me free from this slav­ery to self and sys­tems.

I believe that Yeshua calls me to a bap­tism of death in order to destroy self-sufficiency and system-addict think­ing.

I believe that until I sur­ren­der com­pletely to His will and lord­ship, I will fal­ter in every attempt to live a life pleas­ing to God.

I believe that dis­ci­ple­ship is the invi­ta­tion to become a vol­un­tary slave to the will of Yeshua and the plan of the Father.

I believe that God desires my devo­tion to Him above all else and He will tax the far­thest star and the last grain of sand in order to help me express that devo­tion.

I believe that obe­di­ence is more valu­able than knowl­edge.

I believe that the will of the Father is man­i­fest in the midst of suf­fer­ing, afflic­tion and hard­ship because these are the prin­ci­ples of king­dom redemp­tive work.

I believe that God pro­vides for His chil­dren, lifts them from afflic­tion, grants them peace and joy and pre­pares them for pur­poses beyond this life.

I believe that God’s path of right­eous­ness is clear to those who are led by the Spirit and trust in His Word found in Holy Scrip­ture.

I believe that I must live by every word from the mouth of God, eschew­ing all temp­ta­tions to rely on my own under­stand­ing, efforts and abil­i­ties.

I believe that I am called to emu­late Yeshua, accept his path, iden­tify with his suf­fer­ing and expe­ri­ence the power of his res­ur­rec­tion.

I believe that God is trust­wor­thy regard­less of all my cir­cum­stances and that He will not fail to bring about what is best for me.

I believe that oth­ers should see Yeshua in the con­duct of my life.

To this end, I declare today a com­mit­ment to act only under the direc­tion of my Lord and God, leav­ing behind any con­sid­er­a­tion of the world’s mea­sures of suc­cess and any attempts to deter­mine my own agen­das for life. I real­ize and acknowl­edge that this com­mit­ment will require my total depen­dence on moment-to-moment inter­ac­tion with my Lord. Today and hence­forth, I am a slave of Yeshua the Mes­siah.

Signed _____________________ Date ____________________

Holy
Holy
Thou art holy
Holy Thou art God
Thou art

Wor­thy
Wor­thy
Thou art wor­thy
Wor­thy Thou are God

For angels bow before thee
Heaven and earth adore thee
Angels bow before thee
Heaven and Earth adore thee

Holy
Holy
Thou art holy
Holy Thou art God
Thou art

Wor­thy
Wor­thy
Thou art wor­thy
Wor­thy Thou are God

To receive
Power, Riches, Wis­dom, Strength
Holy Thou art God

To receive
Strength, Honor, Glory, Bless­ings
Holy Thou art God

You shall
Reign, For­ever, and ever, and ever
Holy Thou art God

Receive
Glory, glory, glory, glory
Holy Thou art God
Thou art God
Thou art God
Thou art God
Thou art God
Thou art God
Thou art …
God

You are Alpha and Omega
We wor­ship you our Lord
you are wor­thy to be praised

We give you all the glory
we wor­ship you our Lord
you are wor­thy to be praised