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2024 PERSERVERENCE

Your practical, inspirational resource

for supporting your spiritual walk.

 

Our theme for 2024 is Perseverance and we will focus on how we sustain in the midst of what’s to come this year.

Bitter partisan divides have deepened over the past few years and the rhetoric has become extremely dangerous. While it may be difficult to remain calm while reading the daily paper or watching the TV news; don’t be distracted or deceived. If we stay within God’s will for our lives everything will work out for our good.

Gods Will is in our best interest. We can be sure that the best way to seek our own self-centered interests is to be entirely God-centered. In this paradox, godliness and the self-life meet. Or, as Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life will preserve it” (Lk 17:33). 

For 2024, let’s avoid the political noise and negative discourse that is kicking into full gear. As children of light we must PERSEVERE this year because we are more than conquers. 

 

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The Journey 2022

THE NEW BIRTH

BORN AGAIN

 

 

Your practical, inspirational resource

for supporting your spiritual walk.

 

 

Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature, old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

2 Corinthians 5:17

 

 

2022 will be the year we present Jesus, “straight no chaser.” Politics, race, culture, nor social location will dictate the truth of His Word. The key which unlocks all the promises of God is this – Jesus taught that a man must be born again. The New Birth is a necessity to being saved. Through the New Birth you come into the right relationship to God. The New Birth is necessary before you can claim any of the benefits of the Bible.

 

The New Birth is not: confirmation – church membership – water baptism – the taking of sacraments – observing religious duties – an intellectual reception of Christianity – orthodoxy of faith – going to church – saying prayers – reading the Bible – being moral – being cultured or refined – doing good deeds – doing your best – your political affiliation – nor any of the many other things some men are trusting to save them.

 

“. . . Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”

John 3:3

“. . . Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”

John 3:5

“. . . Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”

Matt. 18:3

“. . . Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish”

Luke 13:3,5

 

 

My prayer for you this year is that you realize the enemy seeks to divide and destroy us. Don’t allow him to win. Love your neighbor as yourself.  Blessings

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#neverforget

 

I received a response from a reader of the last newsletter, who we will call “John”, that confirmed my comments about the psychology of victimization:

 

“David, what is the mission you have been called to…to get back at a few thousand worthless dead white men who wrongfully hurt generations of slaves and near slaves…or to further the Message of Christ? Doing both is incompatible with the latter and is promoting hate, division, and tribalism.”

 

Victim blaming comes in many forms and is often subtler and more unconscious than the perpetrator recognizes. As a general rule, Americans have a hard time believing that bad things happen to good people. People tend to default to victim-blaming thoughts and behaviors as a defense mechanism.

 

There’s just a strong need to believe that we all deserve our outcomes and consequences irrespective of the inputs. This desire to see the world as just and fair may be even stronger among Americans, raised in a culture that promotes the American Dream and the idea that we all control our destinies.

 

Holding victims responsible for their misfortune is partially a way to avoid admitting that something just as unthinkable could happen to you—even if you do everything “right.”

 

The Bible tells us, “[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).

 

Blaming the victim is an unfortunate instinct among some conservative evangelicals. A recent poll showed that Christians are more than twice as likely to blame people’s challenges on a lack of effort than on difficulties beyond their control.
  • Franklin Graham blamed Hurricane Katrina on “orgies” in New Orleans.
  • James Dobson blamed the Sandy Hook school shooting on the nation’s tolerance of gay marriage and abortion.

 

The hashtag “neverforget” was used all last week as we remembered the 20th anniversary of 9/11. A horrific event where America lost 3,000 lives. We remember and never forget in hopes that the past actions will inform choices of future actions. We remember because the lives lost were someone’s wife, husband, brother, sister, mother, and father. In other words our family, friends, our loved ones.

 

In “John’s” comments, there is an assumption that bad actors against People of Color are a thing of the past. And we should forget the past and move on. He and others fail to see that what is and has been experienced is deep and personal to People of Color as history is repeating itself.  At the center of most actions against People of Color today are, again, White individuals who publicly profess to being Christians.

 

When sharing this story with a friend, she asked the question, “Why are we simultaneously encouraged to ‘move on from the past when it comes to other great American tragedies, like the genocidal erasure of Indigenous peoples, or the horrific violence against Black people from chattel slavery through Jim Crow?” She followed with, “Selective memory, in this case, is easy to explain on one level. Tragedies we externalize and blame outsiders allow us to keep this country’s historical violence against people of color at arm’s length. It also allows us to maintain a narrative of American exceptionalism and American innocence.”

 

If “John” had taken the time to first get to know me, rather than responding from a position of assumed privilege, he would have learned that I, as a person with long-term, loving relationships with many White friends and family would never promote hate and division.

 

In my writing, I reference issues with passages that compel God’s people to confront their uncomfortable realities of sin and brokenness in our world. My entire platform is about unity in the body of Christ. My heart’s desires are those of God’s heart, to treat everyone with dignity and live out Scripture as an example to a watching world.

 

It is painful and exhausting to always make conversations about the uncomfortable treatment you have experienced, as a person of color, feel comfortable and not offend anyone.

 

History is informative to the potential of future actions.  If we sanitize or ignore history, we are bound to repeat it. And we don’t have to go back to slavery. Let’s start at 1944; the compounding effect of the GI Bill will be inclusive of every living person. The financial crisis has never ended in black neighborhoods. Generations of families have been torn apart because someone looked a certain way. Communities became redlined and the path for highways connecting suburbs to cities. And schools needed to be created to protect the little White girls from the “overly sexual” Black boy.

 

What that timeframe showed us were patterns of behaviors repeated from slavery’s view of people of color. Today, we continue to see the patterns of behavior that continue that mentality.

 

Patterns of behavior identify our sinful nature and true beliefs. Some want to select sins they feel don’t challenge them and forget Romans 1:29-31 sins. The need to control people, the belief of superiority, assuming we are better than others, deciding who belongs in our neighborhood, and supporting false narratives about a group of people (lying) fall into the Scripture’s list.

 

We tend to think like the Disciples who wanted to prioritize the commandments. Scripture teaches us that when Jesus heard them prioritizing, He instructed them to focus on loving God and loving their neighbor as themself. Everything else would take care of itself.

 

When we love the people and hate the sin, love, grace, and mercy are at the forefront of everything we do or say. It’s not a political agenda but can sometimes be seen as political when biblical truths are antithetical to one’s political views and self-interest.

 

I speak to people’s actions through the lens of Scripture. It’s because I love you that I lift up areas that the enemy has convinced you are “ok” or “not that bad.” I want us to get our truth back.

 

I will summarize the original comments with the words of David Leong, “Christian memory dares to imagine a place where swords are turned into plowshares, and the lion and the lamb dwell together in peace. Christians long for a time when people no longer study war, and the most vulnerable among us are more than an afterthought in our rearview mirror. To realize this vision in the present will require us to reimagine our selective memories and recover a sense of collective history. If we can face who we have been and who we have become, we may begin to see our past and ourselves in a new light.”

 

Rest in the promises of the scriptures and know that God is in control. Whatever uncertainty lies ahead, can all fall at the feet of Jesus.
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Christian Division, Real or Racial Motivated?

 

 

Americans are asking, is the country too broke to move forward in closing its divide? The country is at a critical juncture which presents a prime opportunity for the Church to help communities discern the country’s most divisive issue head-on, so every Christian can ”sing from the same hymnal.”

 

My children, we should love people not only with words and talk,
but by our actions and true caring.”
1 John 3:18 (NCV)

 

Today, so much emphasis is placed on self-interest that we can be blinded to the dangers and cost of getting our way. The perilous pursuit of self-interest, I believe, lies at the root of many of our problems in the Church, in culture, and in politics. We want to shape the world to our ends. Here’s a perfect example. Recently, I heard a pastor on the radio say, “you only need to love people by telling them the about gospel. Anything else is a false prophet.” That belief is just outright antithetical to the Bibles teaching.

 

Charles Taylor, in Sources Of The Self: the making of modern identity wrote, “We’re saved through the self-giving of Christ then we hear Christ saying: take up your cross and follow me, lose yourself to find yourself, don’t live for yourself anymore, but live for God and your neighbor. That’s a problem for most.

 

What we need in our society, which is producing self-actualizes, self-asserters, is millions of people who’ve been shaped by the self-giving of Jesus Christ, who say: I’m a Christian because of Jesus’ self-giving, and we’re able to say therefore I live for God and for my neighbor, not necessarily for myself because I’ve got everything, I need in him.”

 

If racial division is a shallow political wedge issue to you, you probably won’t read further. If this is just another way to ignore the “Imago Dei” to satisfy your need to be better than someone else, then you probably won’t read further. But if, as a Christian, you want to understand, “how do we move forward,” you will continue reading.

 

The history of this country has become extremely controversial. Understanding our history can help us make current choices that are considerate of every human being. Finding where things went wrong or right helps to reimagine how things could go right in the future.

 

On the one hand, we believe Americans have the highest moral ideals. On the other hand, modern culture shows us that all moral value is socially constructed and subjective. It becomes easy to bandwagon divisive ideas that support your interest.

 

One such idea is CRT, which has attracted the ire of conservatives, who critique the theory as anti-white and anti-American. But while many Republican legislators are trying to ban the teaching of CRT in public schools, they struggle to give even the broadest definition when asked actually to define CRT. When public school administrators are asked if they are teaching CRT, their answer is “no, we are not.”

 

So what is it? CRT was developed in the 1970s and 1980s by legal scholars, attempting to explain why even after civil rights legislation was passed, racial inequalities continue to persist in the ’60s and beyond.

 

Not everything that critiques racism or thinks critically about racialization is critical race theory. And for those beginning to think biblically about racial identity and how race interacts with faith and theology, the list below offers some helpful places to start. These resources are NOT a part of CRT. They unpack a history that, at the time of their publication and before the historical revision process began, everyone agreed.

 

All are bound to make you consider the complexities of categorizing people by their race and how the consequences of those categorizations continue to manifest themselves in politics, media, health care, education, economics, and our churches.

 

If all this sounds complicated and abstract, I’d agree. But simple answers to the complex questions of how we form a more just society will not be sufficient in imagining new ways for humans to live into God’s beloved community.

 

After, you have read these resources, you can know for yourself the differences. Thinking critically about how beliefs about differences in pigmentation affect how you interact and treat people is normal history.

 

1. Race: A Theological Account. By J. Kameron Carter (Oxford University Press, 2008).

 

“Race: A Theological Account is an initial installment in filling this significant lacuna in modern knowledge about how the discourse of theology aided and abetted the process by which ‘man’ came to be viewed as a modern, racial being,” writes Carter in the prologue.

 

2. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. By Willie James Jennings (Yale University Press, 2011).
“Indeed, it is as though Christianity, wherever it went in the modern colonies, inverted its sense of hospitality,” writes Jennings. “It claimed to be the host, the owner of the spaces it entered, and demanded native peoples enter its cultural logics, its ways of being in the world, and its conceptualities.”

 

3. Redeeming Mulatto: A Theology of Race and Christian Hybridity. By Brian Bantum (Baylor University Press, 2016).
“The interracial or mulatto/a body is the site that unveils race as a tragic illusion,” writes Bantum. “The tragic, so often accounted to mulatto/a peoples as a bodily inferiority or a profound loneliness, is instead seen as the necessity of negotiation within multiple worlds that refuse them or which they themselves refuse.”

 

4. Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being. By M. Shawn Copeland (Fortress Press, 2009).
“Since the radical and expedient subjugation of a people to demonized difference in the fifteenth century, all human bodies have been caught up in a near totalizing web of body commerce, body exchange, body value,” writes Copeland in the introduction. “Taking the black woman’s body as the starting point for theological anthropology allows us to interrogate the impact of that demonization in history, religion, culture, and society.”

 

5. Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. By Kelly Brown Douglas (Orbis, 2015).
“Stand Your Ground law signals a social-cultural climate that makes the destruction and death of black bodies inevitable and even permissible,” writes Douglas in the introduction. “It is this very climate that also sustains the Prison Industrial Complex, which thrives on black male bodies. Most disturbing, this stand-your-ground climate seems only to have intensified as it continues to take young black lives such as those of Renisha McBride, Jonathan Ferrell, and Jordan Davis.”

 

SOURCE OF BOOKS: Josiah R. Daniels, assistant opinion editor at sojo.net.

 

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Utilizing God’s Wisdom

Keep my soul, and deliver me;
Let me not be ashamed,
for I put my trust in You.
Let integrity and uprightness preserve me, 
For I wait for You.
Psalms 25:20-21 (NKJV)

 

Culture and politics have conspired to arrest integrity, honesty, and concern for the wellbeing of the other. God requires us to obey Him, not man.  The story of Esther, Joseph, Daniel, and the Book of Acts demonstrates self-interest is never to the exclusion of loving my brother, sister, or neighbor as myself.

 

The presence we are to have in the culture
 is not manifesting as the Creator designed it to be.

 

If ever two powerful forces were needed to preserve us in these times of God’s exposing humankind, they are integrity and honesty. The psalmist asks for these to protect him step by step.

 

Honesty makes us learn God’s requirements and strive to fulfill them. Integrity—being what we say we are—keeps us from claiming to be honest while living as if we do not know God. Honesty says, “This is the Shepherd’s way,” and integrity says, “I will walk consistently in it.”

 

How do we walk honestly and consistently? By knowing what God instructs us to do or not to do.

 

“These six things the LORD hates,
Yes, seven are an abomination to Him:
a proud look, a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
a heart that devises wicked plans,
feet that are swift in running to evil,
a false witness who speaks lies,
and one who sows discord among brethren.”
Proverbs 6:16-19 (NKJV)

 

These seven detestable sins provide a profound glimpse into the sinfulness of man. Those sins are in a unique manner provoking to God and are hurtful to the comfort of human life. These things which God hates; we must hate in ourselves; it is easy to hate them in others. Let us shun all such practices, watch and pray against them, and avoid, with marked disapproval, all who are guilty of them, whatever may be their rank.

 

The Churches influence sits at the center of the cultural conversation.The current debate – is America controlled by the sensibilities of the few, or MSNBC, or Fox News? And where does that leave politicians, or the media, in the struggle for power in America? Pew Research results point toward a political competition that now revolves less around individual policy disputes than the larger question of whether America’s direction will be set by the predominantly White and Christian voters who have historically wielded the most power or by an emerging America defined by both religious and racial diversity.

 

The consequences are actions of self-interest at the expense of the Gospel witness. Grace, mercy, forgiveness, gentleness, kindness, and the Fruits of the Spirit move to the background.

 

The “American Identity” concept continues to weaken, or maybe clarifies, the Christian witness to a watching world. The churches’ support or silence to the divisive madness has an enormous influence on the actions of people. The Church must demonstrate lived morality and Biblical principles as a way of life because the role of lived faith is the only way to effectively live out the Great Commission.

 

Culturally, gender roles and the rise of People Of Color have pushed the affluent to believe they are being “put upon”; even though their wealth continues to multiply. The less affluent view it as a “loss of status,” believing they must be viewed better than others to have self-worth. Politicians frame it as if you are “being attacked,” and they need to protect you. Evangelicals view it as needing to use force and laws to help God “do what He does”; as if trusting God’s plan is not good enough.

 

The results the world sees are:

 

  • masking voter suppression as the need for election security;
  • elevating the Works of the Flesh over the Fruits of the Spirit;
  • individual freedom of choice implemented as a desire to control the choices and actions of others;
  • denying historical events that can help create a better future;
  • promoting conspiracies that put peoples lives at risk;
  • protecting the unborn is more important than nurturing the born;
  • labeling people through the use of derogatory and divisive language;
  • providing religious cover for moral squalor;
  • and support of “all men are created equal,” except people of color.

 

When people see believers lives in conflict with each other, they assume we have nothing to add to the moral conversation. Whoever claims to be in him must walk and live as Jesus did. Those are not my words; they are Jesus’ words in First John.

 

We are to take God’s wisdom and apply it to human issues; that’s how we show we know how to utilize God’s wisdom.
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Finding Our Way Back . . .


 

“Over the last 72 hours, I have received multiple death threats
and thousands of emails from Christians saying
the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard
toward my family and ministry.
I have been labeled a coward, sellout, a traitor to the Holy Spirit,
and cussed out at least 500 times.”

 

According to a New York Times columnist, this is the beginning of a Facebook post by conservative preacher Jeremiah Johnson. On January 7, the day after the storming of the Capital, Johnson had issued a public apology, asserting that God removed Donald Trump from office because of his pride and arrogance, and to humble those, who had fervently supported him.
Strife and division is at an all-time high within Evangelical Christianity and within conservatism right now. As I mentioned in the last issue, misdirected pulpit rhetoric can lead to dangerous outcomes. Evangelical pastor Tim Remington preached, ‘I rebuke the news in the name of Jesus. We ask that this false garbage come to an end. It is lies, communism, and socialism. It threatens us to engage in more violence in the days ahead.’ Evangelist Franklin Graham compared ten GOP members to Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus after they voted to approve the president’s second impeachment.
Juxtapose this to Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, who delivered a prayer at the Trump inaugural, telling his congregation last Sunday, ‘We must all repent, even the church needs to repent.’ He and many others have been shaken to the core by the sight of a sacrilegious mob blasting Christian pop music and chanting ‘Hang Mike Pence.’ Beth Moore, a prominent evangelical speaker and author tweeted, ‘I don’t know the Jesus some have paraded and waved around in the middle of this treachery. They may be acting in the name of some other Jesus but that’s not Jesus of the Gospels.’
Pastor Tony Evans sums the dilemma this way, ‘What we are seeing today especially among Christians is us building walls against one another because of government. We’ve allowed government to divide the church and that is an agenda from Hell. We’ve made government God or made it bigger than God because it can do something God wouldn’t do.’
“There is no virtue in absolutism.”
Worshipers seek an escape from the tensions of everyday life by attending church (virtual or in person). Yet, today politics is as great a challenge as the pandemic. People hear the themes always covered in the church: poverty, sacrifice, mercy, and justice differently. Now your view on abortion, guns, taxes, and how we should distribute the costs and benefits of healthcare to have a flourishing society is on everyone’s mind. It is hard to explore nuance and depth in the Bible’s message of love.
“People’s political persuasions are taking precedence over any other spiritual commitments,” said Dean Inserra, senior pastor at City Church Tallahassee, Florida, an evangelical church. “We’ve had people leave the church because, in their eyes, I’m too woke, and we’ve had people leave the church because I’m not woke enough.”
Not only have politics affected attendance, but the pandemic also broke the habit of showing up every Sunday. ‘The polarization is worse, and people aren’t going to church right now,’ said another pastor. ‘Based on what’s going on, nobody knows who’s coming back.’
Protestant Christianity takes the view that, “Using the name of Jesus to justify subjugation of people of color is immoral, unjust, dangerous and inexcusable.”Additionally, they are facing their own challenges these days relative to “loving the people, but hating the sin” in addressing gender choices, right to life, and levels of support for those in need.
Then there are the Christian politicians who are dividing conservatism. For example, Bible tweeting Sen. Marco Rubio trying to straddle the line for political expediency said there was “nothing patriotic” about what was occurring at the Capitol during the violence. A few hours later, he voted the Electoral College count wasn’t valid. The central issue of this controversy was that black and brown people’s votes don’t count. It seems he is willing to devalue his families Hispanic, immigrant identity for voter favor.
South Carolina Republicans issued a formal censure to U.S. Rep. Tom Rice to show disapproval over his vote in support of the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump stating, ‘He told us he voted his conscience. These people did not vote for him to vote his conscience; these people voted for him to support us, our district and the president.’ What’s interesting is the States creed is, ‘I will never cower before any master, save my God.’
Has Evangelical Christianity betrayed the commitment to the truth, moral character, the Imago Dei, and the Sermon on the Mount? This potential betrayal is not a theological phenomenon; its ideology developed from the strongholds of self-interest, superiority, self-absorption, and a belief that their group is being polluted by the “other.”
Has Protestant Christianity lost its ability to love and forgive those who hate them; as God has forgiven. Forgiving someone for not valuing your existence is not easy. The offense seems so egregious, it cannot be forgiven. The strongholds of pride, bitterness, and vengeance poison the soul. Yet, on the cross, Jesus cried out, ” Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Forgiveness takes great courage and it reflects the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ.
The weapons in the Christian conflict have become intimidation, verbal assault, death threats, violence, real and rhetorical in pursuit of pure power. The Bible teaches us the weapons of a Christian’s warfare are different from the world’s weapons of warfare. Our weapons have power from God that can destroy strongholds, people’s arguments and every proud thing that raises itself against the knowledge of God. Strongholds are the inner turmoil we face, not other people. It is self-idolatry for anyone to think they can create their own truth based on how they “feel.”
Today would be a great day to come to Jesus Christ in repentance and faith. Strongholds rob us of peace, separate us from God, steal our joy and destroy our witness. Strongholds, by design, build walls of separation. Let all our fears, biases and beliefs, like Jericho wall, come tumbling down. There is compassion for those who repent and restoration according to God’s promise. Through trust in Him, not people, politics, or power we can find our way back.
“Father, we ask as a church for your forgiveness for the extraordinary delight that our church has taken in humiliating others. Help us to remember other people come from different perspectives and have had different life experiences. It doesn’t mean they’re horrible people. We pray, Father, that as a church, we demonstrate love one to another and find our way back to You.”
SOURCE: nytimes.com, How White Evangelical Christians Fused With Trump Extremism, January 2021; damemagazine.com, Is the Media Ready For The Next GOP Gaslighting?, Allison Hantschel, January 2021; Newsweek, Franklin Graham Compares 10 Republicans Who Voted to Impeach Trump to Betrayal of Christ, Jeffery Martin, January 2021; sun-sentinel.com, Trump ignites war within the church, David Brooks, January 2021; www.deseret.com, Religious leaders call for peace amid election turmoil, Kelsey Dallas, January 2021; apneas.com, In voting to impeach, SC’s Rice acknowledges political risk, January 2021
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Where Do We Go From Here . . .

The iphone camera has exposed the painful reality and experiences that people of color have been shouting about for years. Those of us who have been in the trenches for decades fighting racism in America wonder how long the soul searching will last. There is a system, and then there is individual bias. There are structures that perpetuate racism and then people who give in to that system. We eventually will need to move beyond the rage and began to think about what’s next? To determine what we can do as a group and as individuals to change the conditions of hearts and minds. The Church must step up to lead change in communities; following the footsteps of Jesus and stand in unity surrounding the things that matter to God.

 

Christians commanded to “Love the Lord your God. . . and to love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s challenging to love others well if you don’t love God first. But loving God is only half of the story. His love needs to transform the way you view yourself. When you see yourself the way God sees you, you can love others the way God loves you. 2 Cor 3:18 teaches, “You become what you behold.” We must open our eyes to see what to do. Because when all is said and done, more has been said than done.

 

I once heard Vernon Jordan use an analogy of tearing down an old building to replace it with a new modern and useful one. He said that “the wrecking ball that knocks down the building takes only hours, but the clearing of the debris takes much longer.” How do we clear the rubble?  By implementing cleanup crews against injustice, hate, apathy, and economic imbalances. We pick up the weapon of truth, the recognition of courage. The Church can embrace the responsibility to clear the rubble.

 

We have reached a tipping point where Christian leaders are posting to social media that they now want to listen to the pain and listen to the issues people of color are facing. Jesus first listened, engaged in conversation to understand the change needed, and then changed the conditions of the individuals and the community. That third step is the  “miracles” because it took great faith to execute. That is the step that will be the most challenging and require the self-sacrifice that Jesus calls us all to make. It’s the cleaning up of the rubble. Those that are affected have made their message clear, “if the social structure doesn’t care about them, why should they care about the social structure.” When you devalue someone’s experience because it is not your reality, their anger and actions are in direct proportion to their experience.

 

White Evangelicals often have differing views of the Gospel than people of color. The cultural causality tools used to provide context may account for the differing theological views:

 

    • Freewill individualism that minimizes and individualize the race problem as ones on fault;

 

    • Capitalism that despite years of politicians insisting otherwise, the laws of economic gravity have always run in reverse. Opportunity doesn’t trickle down, it cascades out and up;

 

    • Ideologies that further self-interest over the good of the group;

 

    • Economic productivity that the only long term solution to poverty comes when people have skills and discipline to get economically productive jobs and keep them;

 

    • Choosing to ignore the institutionalization of racialization in economic, political, educational, social, and religious systems. Often thinking and acting as if these problems do not exist;

 

    • Moral vision based on people needing external structures or constraints in order to behave well, cooperate, and thrive;

 

  • A belief in relationalism founded in the personal determination of “who is my neighbor.” Believed to be spiritually and individually, not temporally and socially based.

 

The challenge to everyone is to live like Jesus. Cleaning up the rubble will require us to consider the needs of others. To overcome not being comfortable talking to people of other races. To move from evaluating everything in terms of potential threat or benefit to the self, and then adjusting behavior to more of the good stuff and less of the bad. Therein lies the miracle; the change of heart that leads to a shift in thinking that results in a change in actions.

 

The solutions are not a call for you to be ashamed of the past nor a call for you to say racism is wrong, but it is a call to take specific actions. It’s no longer acceptable to say you believe in equality but act in ways that perpetuate inequality. To stay on the same path, you either lack the courage to take action or don’t care.

 

To the small, medium, and mega multicultural churches, this is a heartfelt call from a place of love and request for a more racially unified church that no longer compromises what the Bible teaches about human dignity and equality. The images used in worship and preaching must reflect the diversity of your congregation.  Jesus and the angels with blonde-haired and blue-eyed who came from Africa portrays a false narrative. The pictures of those in need of service always being people of color is misleading. Diverse leadership is not starting/expanding campuses into communities of colors and installing a Pastor of that ethnicity while maintaining a white decision-making structure at the main campus.

 

We violate God’s intention for the human family by creating false categories of value and identify based on identifiable characteristics such as culture, place of origin, and skin color. We first have to be reconciled meaning, I have to feel and see dignity in you, not just accept you because the Bible tells me to or because it is comfortable. Seeing dignity does not come by overlooking differences through emphasizing a shared human identity that ignores race. We transcend racial differences in the context of our primary identity as one in Christ.

 

To use the words of Divided By Faith, “The choices and actions that people make to deal with racial divisions do matter and can make a difference. Good intentions are not enough. But educated, sacrificial, realistic efforts made in faith across racial lines can help us move toward a more just, equitable, and peaceful society. And that is a purpose well worth striving toward. That is the message of the Gospel.”

 

Heavenly Father, we need you at a level that is beyond the ordinary. We need you at a supernatural level because you have allowed it to be clear that we have human limitations. So we cry out to you for wisdom, knowledge and understanding. 

 

In Jesus’ name. Amen
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A Prophetic Pattern

 

Today, Pastor Mike Evans provides us a challenge for standing in the gap for other. Isaiah, Esther, Nehemiah, and so many more heard God’s call and took a stand. Today, God is calling once again…but that raises a vital question. When God calls, who will answer? Those who have the heart to obey regardless of the cost. The prophet Isaiah was one such man. In his day, God’s people were in a desperate spiritual condition. Their king, Uzziah, who had once been a good man dedicated to following God, had violated the law and been judged as a result. His death created a power vacuum at a time when the kingdom was surrounded by enemies and danger lurked on every side. At that moment, Isaiah was given a vision of God’s power and majesty—a reminder of the help that was available to the Jewish people if they sought God’s face. But there needed to be a go-between, someone to speak to the people for God. Isaiah heard God’s call and volunteered for duty. He said, “Here am I; send me.” Notice that he did not ask God to find someone else to take on the challenges of the job. Isaiah was willing to step up and take responsibility to stand for God’s Chosen People.

 

Today, God is once again looking for men and women of courage and faith to answer the call and stand in the gap for the sake of the gospel. Will your answer be “Hineni”? It is time for us to stand in the gap. And I believe with all my heart that it is time for us to receive the signet ring of heaven’s approval and authority so that we can see God’s power on display in every part of our lives.

 

Heavenly Father, There is so much need in this world today. Lost jobs, a lack of food on the table, decreasing availability of medical assistance, rising violence, financial greed. Help us to be the ones willing to stand in the gap for the sake of the Gospel. As this world waxes worse and worse, let us be the ones who will demonstrate your love though our lifestyle.

 

In Jesus’ name. Amen
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Pulling Down Strongholds – Part IV

 

Today, we close out Strongholds with special message from a mentor and friend Pastor Max Ludaco, Teaching Minister at Oak Hill Church in San Antonio, Texas. He is a best selling author including his latest book Jesus: The God Who Know Your Name which has been one of our past recommendations. He reminds us that this sermon, preached in the past, is still relevant today. You will be blessed by his insightful message.

 

Does one prevailing problem stalk your life? Where does Satan have a hook in you? Some are prone to cheat. Others quick to doubt. Maybe you worry. Yes, everyone worries some – but you own the national distributorship of anxiety. Perhaps you are judgmental. Sure, everybody can be critical, but you pass more judgments than the Supreme Court. What is that one weakness, bad habit, rotten attitude? Where does the devil have a stronghold on you? Ahh, there is the word that fits–stronghold–fortress, citadel, thick walls, tall gates. It’s as if the devil has fenced in one negative attribute, one bad habit, one weakness and constructed a rampart around it. “You ain’t touching this flaw,” he defies to heaven and he places himself squarely between God’s help and your:

 

– explosive temper – fragile self-image
– voracious appetite – distrust for authority

 

Seasons come and go and this Loch Ness monster still lurks in the watery lake bottom of your soul. He won’t go away. He lives up to both sides of his compound name: strong enough to grip like a vice and stubborn enough to hold on. He clings like a bear trap; the harder you shake, the more it hurts. Strongholds: old, difficult, discouraging challenges.

 

The term stronghold appears at least fifty times in the Bible. It commonly referred to a fortress with a difficult access (see Judges 6:2; I Sam. 23:14). When King David first saw the city of Jerusalem, it was an old, ancient, cheerless fortress inhabited by enemies. No wonder it was twice called a stronghold (see II Sam. 5:7,9).

 

The Apostle Paul uses the term to describe a mindset or attitude.
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh (for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the casting down of strongholds), casting down imaginations, and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ; and being in readiness to avenge all disobedience, when your obedience shall be made full.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6 ASV)

 

We do not grit our teeth and redouble our efforts. No, this is the way of the flesh. Our weapons are from God. They have divine power to demolish strongholds. Isn’t that what we want? We long to see our strongholds turned into rubble, once and for all, forever and ever, kaboom! Maybe it’s time for a different strategy.

 

Have you asked others to help you? Everything inside you says: keep the struggle a secret. Wear a mask, hide the pain. God says just the opposite: “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed” (James 5:16 MSG). Satan indwells the domain of shadows and secrets. God lives in the land of light and honesty. Bring your problem into the open.

 

I know a young couple who battled the stronghold of sexual temptation. They wanted to save sex for the honeymoon, but didn’t know if they could. So, they called for help. They enlisted the support of a mentoring, understanding married couple. They put the older couple’s phone number on speed dial and asked their permission to call them, regardless of the hour, when the temptation was severe. When the wall was too tall, they took the tunnel.
Maybe it is time to get drastic. I had a friend who battled the stronghold of alcohol. He tried a fresh approach. If I ever saw him drinking, he gave me, and a few choice people, permission to slug him in the nose. The wall was too tall, so he tried the tunnel.

 

One woman counters her anxiety by memorizing long sections of Scripture. A traveling salesman asks the hotels to remove the TV from his room so he won’t be tempted. Another man grew so weary of his prejudice toward non-whites, that he moved into an ethnically diverse neighborhood, made new friends and changed his attitude.

 

“God’s power is very great for us who believe. That power is the same as the great strength God used to raise Christ from the dead and put him at his right side in the heavenly world.” (Eph. 1:19, 20 NCV).

 

Ask for help. Get drastic. Try a fresh approach. Who knows, you may be a prayer away from a breakthrough.

 

©Max Lucado, September 2015
used by permission
Heavenly Father, I thank you for the ministry of Pastor Lucado. Help me to be drastic in my actions as I breakdown the strongholds in my lives. This body of mine is your temple. Satan you are trespassing on my Father’s property and in the name of Jesus whose I am and whom I serve, its time for you to go!!!
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Pulling Down Strongholds – Part III

In Part II, we unpacked how this pandemic may be exposing our financial strongholds. Today, as we are all dealing with pain, loss, grief, and suffering we explore from a new vantage point how our beliefs about the poor and food insecurities can become a stronghold. The apostle Paul defines strongholds as “speculations or lofty things raised against the knowledge of God. It is any type of thinking that exalts itself above the knowledge of God, thereby giving the devil a secure place of influence in an individual”.

 

Again, and again, individuals and communities have demonstrated that the worst situations tend to bring out the best in people. In every moment of darkness, there are countless moments of small gestures of compassion and connection that allow people to show who they are, how they want to live, and what matters to them. Shawn Donnan and Reade Pickert reported, “just a four-minute drive across the lagoon from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club, and ten minutes from the Palm Beach outposts of Chanel and Louis Vuitton, Howley’s diner has become an emblem of America’s stark new economic reality. The kitchen staff at Howley’s has been cooking up free meals for thousands of laid-off workers from Palm Beach’s shuttered restaurants and resorts. The rows of brown-bag lunches and dinners are an early warning that the country’s income gap is about to be wrenched wider as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, and the deep recession it has brought with it. Palm Beach is one of the richest counties in the country.

 

Even as much of America is fretting about supermarket shelves depleted of their favorite cereal brands and toilet paper or the logistics of curbside pickup from favorite restaurants, a brutal new hunger crisis is emerging among laid-off workers that has begun to overwhelm the infrastructure that normally takes care of the needy.”

 

Unfortunately, a large portion of the middle class are now experiencing the long food lines; and its not the grocery store lines. They are in food distribution lines faced with a predetermined choice, long waits, and the shame of having to depend on someone else for sustenance. These people aren’t lazy, on drugs or unmotivated. Circumstances have created havoc in people’s lives, yet it’s easy to understand their plight. They are our neighbors; they are just like us. We should be willing to assist them.

 

Donnan and Pickert further presented, “The surge in demand is not just in Palm Beach. Food banks have recorded increases in requests for assistance as government-ordered lockdowns have started to bite, prompting employers to lay off staff. Food insecurity was already a chronic problem in many U.S. communities. Across the U.S. 14.3 million households were short of food in 2018.”

 

Everyday life has become a struggle — not just finding food, clothes, or diapers, but finding the money to pay for them. The pre-existing problem of food insecurity is exploding as more and more without work have come to depend on various types of support organizations. A second wave of job loss is hitting those who thought they were safe. The middle class is, or are, a few months away from becoming part of this group mostly defined as “the poor”.

 

Our guest speaker, Jeremy Everett wrote in the Dallas Morning News, “Too many of our views about the causes of hunger in our nation are made up of one anecdotal experience, Facebook posts, or our favorite news source. Rarely are our opinions informed by actual research, a comprehensive biblical view, or proximity to the problem.

 

“In Matthew 25, Jesus lays out our responsibility: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” 
Here, what matters is whether a person has acted with love and cared for the needy. These acts are not just “extra credit” but constitute the decisive criterion for judgment. The calling of the faithful is clear: Feed the hungry and you will live. Unfortunately, we have scapegoated the poor to justify not living up to our calling. To scapegoat and push the poor out of our minds, we’ve had to dehumanize them. We have worked hard to classify the poor as lazy, to divide them as deserving and undeserving. We have developed theologies of prosperity to lift those who are rich in order to demonize those who are poor.

 

Thus, we’ve decided that it is morally defensible for some children to have an abundance of food while others have nothing in the fridge. We can just blame the parent for being lazy or entitled. This is antithetical to the Scripture we read in Matthew. After all, the accused in Matthew are the ones that did not see the hungry and give them food. The ones that did not provide shelter for the stranger. Instead, Matthew calls us to not only see the hungry as humans, but to see them as Jesus.”

 

Maybe. . . just maybe this is an opportunity for everyone to gain an understanding, through a lived experience, the struggle to acquire food when things are out of your control. Maybe. . . just maybe we are experiencing a season of great spiritual awakening. Maybe. . .  just maybe this is a chance to see the poor as Jesus sees them. Maybe. . . just maybe we will have a little more compassion for the least, the lost and the last. Maybe. . . just maybe if we can come up with $2 Trillion in welfare to rescue those we can justify as in need; our view of justification can become Biblical for those we can’t justify due to our strongholds of thinking of our self more highly than we ought.  In an effort to keep me humble my mother use to always say, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”.

 

God, we need You. Oh how we need You. You are our first defense, our righteousness. Our lives have been turned upside down and we search for answers. At times we lose our way and forget that You asked us to think of others more highly than we do of ourselves. Break strongholds in our lives. Help us to be examples of You to a wondering world.

 

In Jesus name we pray. Amen