Daily Devotional – 7/23/18 “What are you doing with your now? “

I know it’s been over a week since I’ve written a devotional. Well, life happened. If you don’t follow me on social media, my uncle passed away. It has been one week today and although his passing was unexpected, it is well with my soul. See, what I have come to realize is … life will happen. You can prepare for it or it can be without warning but life will happen. My question to each of you, what are you doing with the time you have? Please understand, I am not meaning this to be a somber devotional but I really want you to take a moment and reflect on this question. What are you doing with your now? Are you living in regret? Are you living with a ‘somebody’ you’re praying will one day be your soul mate yet you know deep down they aren’t? Are you trying to fulfill an assignment God has told you to let go of? Are you still in the place of turmoil God has clearly removed you from but you will not release because it’s comfortable? Are you still aligning yourself with people who keep using your gifts for their benefit? What are you doing with your now? You do get that today could be your last day, right?

Beloved, I don’t know about you but I am trying to live my best life, according to God’s will for me. I am trying to live the best of my now because I was once succumbing to the darkness and I no longer wish to visit it again. I am only offering the best of me because I know what the least of me feels like and it doesn’t feel good. I’m living my now, to the best of my ability because I know what it looks like not too. This is why I don’t entertain foolishness and why I will not argue over meaningless stuff. I don’t accept every invitation. I don’t go to every celebration. I don’t even approve every friend request because my “NOW” is sacred. Why? Because my now is counting on me to survive. So, please don’t feel bad if you are not included in my now. I don’t mean any harm but you may need to fix yours and then we will revisit to see if you fit into my later. What are you doing with your now? “Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. James 4:13-14”

Daily Devotional – 7/12/18 “Be an example!”

I shared this two years ago and it’s the same word needed today so let me see how I can re-put this. Re- meaning, once more, afresh or anew. Here goes … If you don’t have anything fitting to say, please hush and have a seat. There! No need to change it. If your dialogue doesn’t help, hush. If your speech doesn’t add significance to the silence, shush. If your two cents doesn’t had value, save it because we are in the midst of time that has need of some real and righteous examples of leadership. I’m sick of seeing the flashy cars and jewelry when most of our youth and young adults can barely read, write and sign their name. I am sick of the conferences where we shout for hours but our youth are still being slaughtered at the hands of other youth. I am fed up with the same stale revivals and banquets. Ma’am/sir, I am all for your child being fresh from head to toe but do they know Jesus? I have no problem with you buying your children the latest Jordan tennis shoes but can they balance a checkbook. Yes ma’am/sir, you can eat out every day of the week but can your child cook, if it came to it? Does your daughter know she’s favor and worthy of being a wife and mother instead of a side chick or baby momma? Does your son know he’s royalty and destined to be the head of a household instead of baby daddy or inmate of some correctional institute? Does your child know the importance of their signature, social security number and credit score? Have you instilled in your child the value of their name?

Let me make something plain here. I am not just fed up with what I see because I got two teenagers at our house, right now who’d choose to sleep in than attend worship and who’d rather try it for themselves than listen. So I stepped back because my grandma always told me, a bought lesson is better than a taught lesson. This means, I have allowed them to make mistakes, on their own. Yet, it doesn’t stop me nagging them neither does it stop me waking their butts up on Sunday morning. I get it, this generation looks lost but it does not mean they are. They can still be saved if we are willing to save them. This is why I keep talking even when it seems like they don’t listen. This is why I don’t portray who I am not. When I accepted my call to ministry, I vowed not to be dressed up and so holy that I couldn’t relate to others around me. I am who I am and I want my life to reflect that. I am not perfect and I don’t act like it because I recognize that my nieces, nephews, cousins and etc. are looking at me; even when they don’t say it. What am I saying? The bible shares in Titus 2:1-8, “You, however, must teach what is appropriate to sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God. Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good. In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned, so that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us.” In other words, be an example that’s pleasing, a role model worth being modeled after and a mentor commendable of the title. We need it, more today than we did yesterday.

Daily Devotional – 7/11/18 “What has happened?”

I don’t know if you are familiar with the gospel singer, LeAndria Johnson and if you have heard her rants on last week (she has since issued an apology to those she offended) but in her videos, she angrily says, “F Christianity and F the church.” Some people fired back at her use of the F bomb and other curse words while others agreed and encouraged her. Here is my take on this … Her delivery was wrong but she had some valid points. See, her outcry wasn’t against God but against the politics of the church. While she spoke from a place of hurt and anger, she should have waited until she calmed down to get her point across, in a much better way. Yet, I am left to ask, “What has happened to the church?” By church, I mean people who claim to love and follow God. I’m looking and He is not pleased. Please understand, I am NOT perfect but I have some questions. Why has fame and fortune overshadowed going and making disciples? Why has being on the latest conference overshadowed saving souls and offering Christ? When did it become about custom suits and tailored made dresses? When did the amount of members become important and not deliverance? Why has rebellion become popular? And before you say it hasn’t, look around. You can have a pastor who is removed from his/her assignment of shepherd, due to his/her actions and instead of getting clean, they simply start another church. When I say getting clean, I am speaking of anything that keeps them outside of God’s will.

What has happened? You have people, still doing the work of the Lord, who He has snatched the anointing from and the only reason they are still being glorified is because of their name and you like their method of preaching. Yet, if you were to really listen to their messages, when you are not in flesh, you’d quickly hear there is no oil. This is why most of their messages is throwing shots at their ‘enemy.’ Get out of your flesh! Do you not see that a lot of our youth and young adults are missing from the church because they can’t get any nutrition from the teaching? Most of them are longing for God and all they get is a twenty-minute sermon of your whoop and taking Jesus to the cross. They are hungry for God yet leaving worship slayed and not delivered. What has happened? When will you stop preaching these feel good messages of promise (milk) and teach about the sacrifice, the suffering, the stretching, the strengthening and the salvation (meat)? Because these are all the things we have to go through to get the promise. This is why I don’t want to worship with perfect people. I want to worship with those who have some scars and some testimonies of how God delivered them from addictions. I want to fellowship with some folk who has a criminal history yet now declaring they’ve been changed and live it. I want to worship with some folk who don’t brag about what they have but boast about what God has done. I don’t want to rub elbows with the rich and famous but I will share the altar with the righteous and favored.

Daily Devotional – 7/10/18 “How accurate is your reaction?”

We see the news stories, we read the social media post and we even hear about what happened to someone we know and reaction is usually what you would have said or done. But how accurate is your reaction? I mean, how do you know what you would do in a situation, you’ve never been in? How do you know how you’d react, if you’ve never come face to face with danger? Don’t you know fear has the power to paralyze you? I get it. The bible says God does not give us a spirit of fear but baby flesh is something else. All you have to do is get woken up, in the middle of the night by a strange sound or let someone walk up on you when you aren’t paying attention or have a gun stuck in your face. You don’t know how you’ll respond so stop speculating on what you’d do in a situation if you’ve never been in it. Stop offering your advice on something you know nothing about. In other words, hush! Because it is easy to say what you would do, when you are on the outside looking in. But how accurate is your reaction? Sure, you’ve experienced grief but you can’t tell a mother, who has lost her only child, how it feels when you haven’t. Losing a parent is different from losing a sibling, losing a sibling is different from losing a spouse and losing a spouse is different from losing a child. Grief is grief but there are different levels and if you haven’t experienced, firsthand, what someone is going through, HUSH!

Yes, it’s easy to say you’d leave an abusive spouse if you have never come face to face with a monster who looks like your husband or wife. Of course, you can say how fast you’d leave somebody who cheats on you, if you’ve never been cheated on by a man or woman who you love with all of you and willing to give another chance. It’s easy to say how you’d deal with someone who has mental issues until that person is a brother, mother, sister or father. You can say, you’d walk away from a fight until it’s your life on the line. You just don’t know how you’d react. Maybe you will react differently and maybe you will not but you don’t know until you’re faced with the same situation. So, please, stop judging people who have made decisions you might not have made. Your faith may be stronger and wider than theirs. However, the bible says in Romans 14:1, “As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him, but not to quarrel over opinions.” Do not make people feel bad over the choice they had to make while in the middle of a situation. Do not judge folk over what they did when anger was consuming them. Do not condemn those who make a mistake. Bible says in Romans 15:1, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” And if what I’ve shared isn’t enough, just remember this … It may be me today but it could be you tomorrow so be mindful of how you react to my reaction.

Daily Devotional – 7/9/18 “God’s Garage!”

A friend posed a question to Facebook yesterday asking, “Why are you really going to church?” I replied as honest as I knew how because I can remember, just a few years ago, when I was going to church but church wasn’t in me. I was going through the motions of looking religious because it was what I was used too but I was leaving worship with everything but religion. I would get up on Sunday and dress the part but I wasn’t living it. I’d sing in the choir and serve in positions but there was nothing genuine about my praise. Now though, my thoughts and actions have changed. It didn’t happen overnight and neither am I perfect but I had to change. Why? Because I wasn’t being true to me, let’s not even talk about what I was doing to God. But then one day, I woke up tired of suffering and playing. Now, today, when I go to church; I treat it as my routine checkup in God’s Garage. See, I have come to realize that going to worship is like going to a mechanic’s shop and unlike getting your oil changed every 3000 miles, it’s getting your oil renewed every 8640 minutes. Yea, going to worship is to make sure you have the right amount of ‘living water’ so you don’t overheat. Going to worship is checking to make sure all of your parts are working properly so you don’t give out, on your way. And going to worship, allows you to fellowship with others who may not be in pristine condition like you are. You know how you sit in the dealership’s waiting area? Worship is God’s Garage waiting area. While you’re there, you can chat with others who are there.

When you do, you may find somebody who is at their wit’s end and you can offer hope. You may connect with somebody who is fearful of the work that is needed to get them right but you can offer hope because you know the mechanic personally and you can testify of His work ethic. You may even talk to somebody who is thinking about changing their mechanic but you can offer hope because you’ve been where they are and walked in their shoes. You can offer hope because you’ve been utilizing this mechanic’s shop for a while and His work speaks for itself. Why do I go to church? To make sure my oil isn’t low and if it is, to get it topped off. Why do I go to church? To make sure everything is at the level it should be in order to work effectively. Why do I go to church? To give hope to somebody who may be struggling with paying what it cost to the mechanic. This is why God’s Garage poster of ‘Please Come Again’ says, “And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus. By his death Jesus opened a new and life-giving way through the curtain into the Most Holy Place. And since we have a great High Priest who rules over God’s house, let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water. Let us hold tightly without wavering to the hope we affirm, for God can be trusted to keep his promise. Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near (Hebrews 10:19-25).”