Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Tuesday 08/31/2010)

Purposed In Heart…

Proverbs 23:7 (Amplified Bible)

⁷For as he thinks in his heart, so is he. As one who reckons, he says to you, eat and drink, yet his heart is not with you [but is grudging the cost].

This weekend was one of those weekends where I knew going in I had an enormous amount of things going on. As the week progressed I dreaded the thought of having to run around all weekend, because as the week progressed it seemed like more and more things kept popping up and going wrong, although they may have seemed little to some they were still there none the less. On Friday afternoon I had about hit my wall with some things and wanted to shut down, and go take a nap and forget about all that had gone wrong, and wake up Monday morning to start a new week. I felt myself in that place and I dragged myself upstairs out of the path of everyone else in the house and lay across my bed and said a silent prayer. I had in those moments allowed my thoughts to overwhelm me and take me to a place where I was not confessing, “I could get through too, this too shall pass, or this is only a storm,” all I was seeing was everything that had gone on and everything I still had to get done. On Saturday morning I woke up before the sun came up and began to pray, asking God for strength and courage to get all that lay before me done. In that moment I felt my help…I mapped out the day and started to move, not giving thought to what had been behind or what lay ahead, only thinking that I had task to get done, people to see and places to go.

We do not realize how powerful our mind can be. It is and can be the very thing that drives the rest of us. It can make or break our day and our attitude. It can cause us to send out subconscious messages about our abilities or lack thereof. It can tell our heart to love or not to. It can cause us to be depressed or to be happy. The mind is so powerful it even has control over our bodies and certain thoughts that it produces can make us physically ill. This is the reason why you hear, doctors sometimes say, it is all in your mind, they are not off, there are times when illness does begin in the mind. This is why it is so vitally important to get our heart and mind right. Our thinking can quickly go from a passing thought to something imbedded in our hearts that takes root, grows, and fuels us one way or another on the positive or the negative side. I was having a conversation with a friend the other night and we were discussing being hurt in relationships, and we concluded that if we allow the hurts of the past to become something we are focused on and think about often it will be impossible to move on, because that pain will be the feeling that our mind tells our heart is waiting for us any time we enter into that type of relationship. It is important that we purpose in our hearts to do all we can to stay positive, stress free and focused on a God that has made us victorious and more than an overcomer. If we our focused on a God that promised to never leave us or forsake us and knowing that if He goes before us He is more than the world against us, we understand He has already given us the victory, we would understand that all we need to do is think on that and do what we have to do to get the job done, not through our strength and power but His!

Isn’t it time to deal with our thoughts? To deal with the very heart of whom we are? Our ability to do or not to do lays in what is in our heart. If we say we can’t we can’t, if we say the day is going to be bad, trust and believe it will be, if we say the circumstances are overwhelming they will be. But if we think on the goodness of Jesus and all that He has done for us, we will understand that whatever may be transpiring is but a temporary state of affairs and that God (as He always has) is going to bring us out. That He will give us enough grace to make it through and to accomplish just what needs to get done, in the time it needs to get done. If we can think ourselves happy we can be happy, but it will all depend on what we decide is purposed in our heart to see, say do and react to. Let your heart remember that we have the ultimate source of strength, power, love and ability and His name is Jesus!

Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day ( Monday 08/30?2010)

Today’s Devotional Written By A True Survivor: Tracy Koweh (soon To Be Dixon)

Back Him Up.......

Job 13:15 (Amplified Bible)

15[I do it because, though He slay me, yet will I wait for and trust Him and] behold, He will slay me; I have no hope--nevertheless, I will maintain and argue my ways before Him and even to His face.

Today's message in the music comes from T.I. and Keri Hilson's song "Got Your Back". The first half of the chorus says: "I got your back boy. We were high. We were low. But I promise I will never let you go." Last week I received a call that I thought would have just destroyed me. Then on top of that I watched a devil get away with close to murder when all the facts were in place to bust them out.

I was confused and even upset with God for a moment. After all the praying, trusting and believing I did how could the enemy win again? I didn't know what to say or how to even face some people, but I told God I'd be different this year. I told God He could depend on me in this season, in the highs and in the lows. In the victories and when it seemed I had been defeated. When I understood and more so when I didn't.

There's a song that comes on the radio almost every morning and it says: I've never seen the righteous forsaken. I joked with Shane that they just hadn't met the right righteous folk yet, because including myself I knew of some true Christians that were being beat down from every side. I know some men and women hanging on by a shred of faith to stay in this thing, but though He slay us, yet will we trust?

Today as we begin another week, let us make sure we have God's back, the way we want Him to have ours. We want Him to wake us up after holy days and after hell ones. We want Him to still bless after we tithe and after we don't. But when the table turns, we only want to praise Him for the blessing, the open door and the YES. Having someone's back means being there, even when you feel backed into a corner. Trust that even when it doesn't look right, God is still working it out for you!! He got your back, do you have His?

Words Of Encouragement (Friday 08/27/2010)

Instilling A Legacy, Pt II…

Psalm 127:3-5 (Amplified Bible)

³Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. ⁴As arrows are in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. ⁵Happy, blessed, and fortunate is the man whose quiver is filled with them! They will not be put to shame when they speak with their adversaries [in gatherings] at the [city's] gate.

I know you have heard us speak a lot about the ministry that God has blessed us to be partners in. It is because of the unique move of God in this place that learning, revelation and expansion comes, not effortlessly but with greater ease. Our Bishop is truly a Spiritual Father; he not only models a father spiritually but does it in the natural to those and for those who have lacked that vital connection with their own fathers. He is no respecter of person, gender or age. Last Sunday the spirit of God lead him to have an alter call, as He was ministering to those at the altar, the Lord lead him to a young lady, which we later found out was seventeen years of age. This young lady never knew her father and never received a hug from him. Before he hugged her as a surrogate for all the hugs she had missed from her father, he took her to school. He told her how a young man that steps to her should be treating her, he went so far as to tell her that a man should always place you on the inside when walking away from traffic. It was amazing to watch this young lady’s life be transformed by those moments he spent with her as a father. Although not her biological father her life was visibly changed forever, because in those moments he became the father she never had!

Men are you changing the lives of your children? Are you taking moments to teach them the valuable and irreplaceable lessons of life? I have a very dear friend who was relaying a time spent with his son, teaching him and training him about his clothing and the way he wears, his clothes. He says even at eighteen years of age he will not allow his son to go out of the house, with his pant sagging off his behind showing his underwear to the masses. I have another friend who is a widower and he is there each and every day with his children, school functions and every night he is loving them and tucking them into bed, teaching them the value of a father even in the worst of times and heartbreak. I have single fathers that I know that make no excuse for not being in their child’s life regardless of the relationship with the children’s mom. They make it their business to be there teaching and leading, guiding and protecting, providing and loving them. Our Bishop was speaking on the relationship of fathers and their children and he referred to the scripture above, children are the arrows and the father is the archer. The child will only go as far as that archer will pull pack the bow and aim it and release it. A mother can never do the job and duty of a father. Fathers missing in action are causing this generation to seek wisdom in all the wrong places and for them not to know what to expect from a man that comes into their lives, or how to become the man they need to grow to be. Fathers are supposed to be the first insight a child has of God. This is one of the main reasons our children are running from God or do not know how to get to Him, because of the bad images that some fathers have betrayed before them, or they have never guided them to God, because they were not there to model that behavior before them, or they lived a life that sent a mixed message or drove their children from the very presence of God.

Daddy where are you? Are you present in your child’s life, loving them, guiding them, teaching them, training them, and pointing them into a future that is bright and will inspire them to be the difference in the future? Daddy are you teaching your daughters by your actions, words and the way you live, what she should be looking for in a man the one that she will share her life with? Daddies are you teaching your son, how to treat a woman by the way you treat his mother and other women in your life? Men have you model God so that He is easy to find for those children entrusted in to your care, have you taken the confusion out of whom He is and where He can be found, or is the path unlike because it is unclear to you? It is time to Man Up and be the father that God planned before the foundation of the world, one who is a reflection of God’s love and God in the earth for our children!

Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Thursday 08/26/2010)

Instilling A Legacy…

Proverbs 29:15 (Amplified Bible)

¹⁵The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left undisciplined brings his mother to shame.

My children and I spend a lot of time together for a variant of reasons, some of which people have not always understood, but I had to come to grips with my responsibility as a parent many years ago, realizing that God entrusted these two individuals to me and I needed to do what was right by them and pleasing and right in His eyes before all others. But I have learned over time that spending time with them was not enough, that it was important for me to instill in them certain disciplines, and certain values that could carry them and create in them a standard by which they live. You see I learned long ago that discipline is more than just the rod of correction it is teaching them by example, by conversations, open dialogue and hands on training. But it is by no means allowing them to become the adult in the house with more responsibility than I have. I am still the one God ordained to be the Mama!

My mother and my grandmother instilled in me a sense of discipline, they taught me how to cook, clean, genuinely care for people, work hard, to dream but they also instilled in me a pure love for God. As the mothers in my life there was never a question of love for me, yes we had chores in the house, but they showed us the way. They were not just screaming, hollering, and demanding of me, before I was ever released to do a chore they had shown me how to do it. They were not busy living their own life and leaving me to figure it out. Time was their greatest gift. They gave me their time, their talents and most of all their prayers. I will never forget the days when my grandmother would pull a stool up for me in the kitchen, so I can have an impromptu cooking lesson. Those times were precious and instilled a love for cooking, a sense of accomplishment, and not hatred. But I remember my Grandmother and my mother rising early in the morning to pray and going to church and being the same beautiful people that they were at home that they were at church. They showed me who God is and modeled God in front of me. They never did anything that would cause me to be undisciplined in the area of worshiping God and realizing what I was created to do. These women took moments out of their lives to teach me and to instill a legacy of love and God into my life. I was blessed I did not just have them, I had my Godmother, women in our neighborhood and my Aunts that disciplined me in many areas and gave me tools for life, they taught me strength and to be a survivor but the thing they did more than anything was show me the way as a daughter, a woman, a good person and a Christian, who not just spoke a conviction, but lived it.

How many of us as mothers or as women are taking a moment to do what God wants us to do which is minister to our youth, our children. Are we instilling a legacy into them, are we showing them the necessary skills to be Godly, men and women, mothers and fathers, students, co-worker, co-laborers in the gospel? Are we teaching then to be men and women that dream big, but have courage and convictions that affords them to live in a way where God is evident not just in the four walls of the church but everywhere they go? Are they young people that value themselves and value God and really know Him, because we have shown them? Are we taking the time to show them, lead them, and model in front of them what a real woman should look like, a Godly woman a woman of discipline and morals and conviction. Are we showing them who they should be becoming or who they should be trying to marry? When we look over our shoulders are we seeing young people who have been touched and shown some things that can change their very lives or have we been so busy living that we forget to instill life in those lives entrusted to us? Are our children being left to themselves, unguarded, undisciplined by the mothers in their lives (whether biological, spiritual or otherwise) or are the women that they so desperately need to show them the way, missing in action, or just refusing to report for duty? We have a duty as women of God not to leave our children undisciplined, left to themselves because surely they will bring shame upon us if we do!