Dirty Laundry

Romans 3:21-23

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.  For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (ESV)

My wife can tell you that one of my worst habits is to leave my dirty clothes on the floor of our home office.  This obvious lack of self-control to not put dirty clothes where they belong creates a burden that could easily be eliminated. Before long, there are articles of dirty clothing scattered all throughout the room.  I can see dirty socks, t-shirts, and shoes in very odd places in a very cluttered space.  Primarily, I will spend the bulk of time in this space, and before long without picking up my things the room can began to be covered in my own aroma.  It is so easy to develop these unhealthy habits.  At first, it’s as innocent as a misappropriation of God’s word towards a selfish ambition or something we see as small. But soon enough we have a load of clutter scattered all over our thoughts which cause us to clothe ourselves in garments not washed through the Word of truth.  When we don’t develop a healthy habit of placing truth and lies where they belong, we can begin to believe in falsehoods.  There are so many falsehoods that arise when we attempt to live for Christ outside the guidance of His Word.  This begins to affect the way God has revealed himself, because we adopt ideas from culture that have never been blessed by God.

Bringing unbiblical ideas to the worship of God has always been at the core problem of humanity.  This was a pivotal reason God gave Moses the Law.  The people of God had a problem of looking at every other culture around them and sought to borrow customs that seemed healthy but were not.   In fact, what the chosen people of God didn’t realize was that their God was the very standard they looked for in others.  They brought uncleanliness into an unflawed system.  Which brings us to Paul, who attempted to follow the same pattern set by his ancestors.  The Pharisees and Sadducees were masters at adding to the law of God.  There interpretations of what God said and meant was an endless diatribe of bondage to God’s people.   But Christ was sent to fulfill the law of God and transfer his record to our own.  Paul knew all too well that he could not earn his own righteousness. Those that believe now possess the righteousness needed for a relationship with God.  This truth is foolishness to the world around us, because we are taught to believe that we need to strive hard for everything that we can as to show others how hard we worked.

May we never fall into the trap of bringing the dirty laundry of the world into the beauty of the Gospel.   And may I also remember to put the dirty clothes where they belong.

Photo by Muhammadtaha Ibrahim Ma’aji on Pexels.com

Faith and Trust

The Christian life never promises that every detail of every moment will be known and safe from storms. It takes a measure of faith and trust. Most of our lives we place our trust in our abilities, skills and talents.  We even sometimes live by a constant schedule or routine to avoid the mystery of the unknown.  But God’s not going  to completely reveal all the scenarios that will transpire within this venture of life and godliness. There are so many variables. We should expect risk. Faith is taking a first step towards the future glory being revealed in Christ Jesus. I’ll never be able to make myself completely comfortable, but I’ll always know who knows about tomorrow, today.  And he holds our hand leading and guiding us through each day.

I’m the Biggest Hypocrite!!

I’m not afraid to say I admire the bravery in artistry of Kendrick Lamar.  I would absolutely agree that his language makes me cringe and I don’t find it very edifying at times.  But his grasp on the human experience towards his audience is spot on.  As I understand, being a guy from a rural town in Louisiana.  I don’t fully grasp the insight of a kid from the streets of Compton.  The mean streets for me are ones with dirts roads, but I digress.  I admire his fearlessness in how he uses wordplay.  If you listen to some of his music you hear the battle between good and evil, especially in his album, “To Pimp A Butterfly.”  Which leads to my title from a lyric in his song, “Alright”.  We all wear a level of hypocrisy on our sleeves.  Most of us lead lives that don’t exactly match up with the way we would want to live.  A growing and faithful Christian soon recognizes without help, we are hopeless without our Savior and his church.  I am the biggest hypocrite, however we worship a bigger Messiah.  When I focus my attention on his life and sacrifice on our behalf I forget about my lack of commitment or divided affections.  He solves the problem of my hypocrisy.

The question in my mind begins to be.  How might we lead a more confessional life? I firmly believe that each of us has a marred display of the image of God within us.  Somewhere within, we all yearn to be on a righteous and right path but we settle for the sloppy seconds that the world brings our way.  Our hypocrisy lies in the fact that we don’t constantly and consistently confess our sins one to another.  We don’t trust one another.  And this makes us dependent on our own ineptness to change.  What if God knew that not just apart from him, but apart from the church we can do nothing?  As an individual, I am the biggest hypocrite in 2016.  But as I join with the church of God, we display the glory of the one that has conquered our hypocrisy and made us whole.  I might admire Kendrick Lamar, but there is a far better example ahead that is full of grace and truth.  Jesus would agree that “we gon’ be alright,” because even more so we are redeemed, set free and delivered from the power of the enemy.

On Being at Home

In my youth, I don’t recall being as curious about the world and what’s hidden.  However, as an adult it’s fascinating to unearth the truth behind what’s often referred to as norm. Who defines the norm anyway?  They have obviously never delved into the intricacies of the complexity of humanity.  In my limited understanding of being, I have discovered that we all in our own way are trying to find “Home.”  I could get all like “The Wiz” and quote that verse, “When I think of home I think of a place where there is love overflowing.”  But I don’t really think that applies with this particular writing.  Rather, I’m more considering home as a state of being.  And how we all strive to be at home.  We look for home internally, within our culture, or in our ethnicity.  Or we look to find home externally within the world around us.  Even more, those of us that commit our lives to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ find it difficult to sometimes coexist  in home spaces that aren’t allowing our growth. As those of us that seek to escape the trappings of being disconnected from God, I would confirm that all other striving except for striving after Christ is futile. The Christian that repents of their rebellion fights against the notion that being fully “at home” is achievable on this side of life.

Merriam-Webster describes at home in three different categories.  Firstly, it says that being at home is where we are relaxed and comfortable: at ease.  This definition implies that this is where most of the “real you” is unleashed.  Secondly, it states that being at home is being in harmony with the surroundings.  This illustrates that there is a oneness with our immediate state.  And thirdly, being at home is being on familiar ground.  This relates in my estimation with a likeness of that which is familiar or similar to our origin.  I would imagine that the only non-divine human beings that understood being at home would be Adam and Eve. Genesis tells us that they are the first of mankind, and before their disobedience they experienced uninterrupted community with the Creator of the universe.  But we all know what happened and ever since their act of treason humanity has struggled internally, and externally with home.

The Fall of Man ushered  in a new identity of homelessness in a world that was originally created for comfort, harmony and familiarity.  According to legendary Evangelist Tom Skinner, sin has separated man from God, man from his brother, and man from himself.  Apart from God, we will always carry a sense of striving after home, but never quite make it there.  However, as we discover Jesus and he reveals more of himself to those that have been forgiven of sin. We will unearth our real home in him, and  become comfortable, in harmony with His creation, and familiar to his indwelling Spirit.  That’s probably not half bad for a wondering homeless beggar.

Pen to Paper

Pen to paper organizes letters to words and phrases of emotions buried deep.

Feelings bottled up that can only materialize through this exercise of expression in writing.

Pen to paper brings life to the thoughts and musings of the mind.

How therapeutic when rightly executed?

These magical mutterings of memories rushing through the fingers down the pen to paper.

They bring healing to the imaginative soul as it translates meaning and creativity.

How painful the absence of pen to paper?

A person without access to express the complexities of his or her voice can be a dangerous being.

Silence can be a slow certainty of unfulfilled dreams and expirations.

Freedom comes through pen to paper.

This freedom to fully embrace your own uniqueness is a wonderful healing agent.

 Can you be free?

~jteverything

The Seed of the Church

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2001). (Mt 5:11–12).

Radical Islamic Terrorists have been growing in power and influence in recent years.  And the world is beginning to see the fruit of its labor in a growing number of attacks and deaths all around the globe.  However, as they gain more power and influence they are aiding Christianity in the only effective church growth model prescribed by Christ himself, persecution.  In the words of Christ, “Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.”  Let’s be clear, I consciously understand that I am a American citizen and with this birthright I am endowed with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  And so, I have allowed my American citizenship to lead me in a misunderstanding  of my heavenly citizenship.  Jesus has never modeled for those that would follow after him a life of ease, comfort and peace.  But instead, the spread of the gospel of Christ may very well cost us our lives, and liberty.  The American side of me relates well to the outcry of my fellow Americans in that these renegade scoundrels must be brought to justice for their crimes against humanity.  In fact, there is a part of me that would like our government to retaliate in kind to this injustice.  But this morning I awoke with the words of Tertullian a second century theologian, ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.’  The church from its earliest inception required a blood sacrifice by its founder Jesus Christ.  This same church continued century after century to grow through persecution and trial.

I became apart of the family of Christ as a teenager.  But as a teenager, I never imagined what the gift of Christ in me had done to my being, and my livelihood.  In college, I was introduced to a discipline of studying God’s word and the Christian world opened up in a whole new way.  My mentor in college encouraged me to read, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and remember the sacrifice made by other believers so that God’s gospel would spread.  This recent beheading of Coptic Christians in Egypt is a wake up call of sorts.  My life verse is Philippians 1:6 which states, being confident in this very thing that he who begun a good work in you is faithful to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.  This work is not just about us individually, God saves that we might spread his salvation.  My friend posted on Facebook about how when a dandelion’s head is cut off that sends a thousand more into the world.  I prayed that the seed of death from my brothers in Egypt would erupt in a harvest for Christ unlike never before.  Let’s be frank, persecution of the church has never ended.  And I thank God for the freedoms that I have in America.  I don’t think that we will ever get to a place where we don’t mourn for those that have lost their lives, but we must also rejoice that the church is continuing to spread because Christ is still actively working in the lives of Christians.

JTeverything

Meaningless Dialogue

Have you ever had a conversation that seemed so important, and you think about it later and it made absolutely no sense?  In fact, the whole of the dialogue was a waste of useful time that could have been spent doing something meaningful rather than pontificating on nonsense.  Just me….okay.  I’m a work in progress, and I understand that about myself.   But it’s equally disheartening when I see another adult spend a lifetime on propagating meaningless ideals with the intent to distribute.  It makes me sick.  What you ask? The intent to convince people that without our invaluable knowledge on things the show won’t go on.    We all have value and different skills that can enhance one another.  That’s the beauty of humanity.  However, pride has always been the overarching poison that hinders our progress.  Our hunger for domination and power is like cancer that abnormally divides one another into factions that fight for positions rather than against our opposition.

I’m still becoming the person that God has fashioned.  But I don’t want to spend my life, being my own cheerleader.  Meaning is in the eye of the beholder, I get that.  But there is action that must take place beyond our love of our own sound.   Bob Goff wrote a book that is entitled, Love Does and he was right.  When other people are important to us a wonderful thing takes place, service.  And this is a gift that we can all give one another.   I know I’ll have many more sessions of meaningless dialogue.  But my hope is that it would never define me.  My service to others will.

JTeverything

Lost and Found

I’ve had the privilege of growing up in the 80’s and 90’s in rural Louisiana.  If you knew me personally, you would know that this is a huge statement coming from a person like myself.  But I would admit that growing up in a small town where everyone knew one another had its blessings and its curses.  One blessing that was apparent in my observation was that I never had to assume what was and wasn’t important about  my blackness.  And as a black person, Black History Month was extremely important.  My school, my church, my community celebrated the history of Blacks in America so well that I thought that this was normative behavior.  As a young student during this month,  I felt included in this land of the free and home of the brave.   We participated in educational programs at schools and similar programs of inspiration and enlightenment at church and we were so proud of our heritage in this one single month.

This same thread continued into college.  I was black, and proud.  However, there was one slight difference.  This wasn’t normative behavior, in fact there where individuals that felt this month was useless.   This is when I began to question my loyalty to the ideals of Black History.  Did I feel marginalized?  Did I really need a month to instill pride in my identity?   College was a place that I began to explore more deeply the black American experience, except now I was in a predominantly white environment.  Being a part of organizations like NAACP Collegiate Chapter, and Black Student Union, I somehow thought I needed to apologize or dumb down the knowledge that actually got me to college in the first place in the presence of my white friends and classmates.   The closer to graduation I came the more lost I became.  (In my heritage, I must interject. )

Today, I must admit that I most humbly live the life of a urban dweller.  I am constantly weaving in and out of different cultures that I don’t often reflect how I have somehow morphed into a different mindset.  I have a renewed passion for Black History Month, even though I work in places that don’t necessarily throw open the door to discussions on the matter.  But how I make it important to my life and ministry matters.  Funny thing I’ve learned along the way, this post is mostly about my feelings and learning.  It’s not really that important as it pertains to the history.  Many people that came before us had more than themselves to think about.  The founder Dr. Carter G. Woodson was concerned that many blacks would never know the heritage that linked them together.  He was determined to educate, liberate, and encourage another generation.  Also, this month doesn’t belong to black people.  It belongs to America.  We all need to become apart of this time to remember the achievements of a few that benefited the many.  Am I black and proud, sometimes.  My lostness wasn’t in and through my blackness per se, however I have been found in Christ to be a reporter that proclaims the whole truth about humanity, about God.  And often, it’s wise to proclaim a full story so that its author can get the glory.

Where did the last year go?

I was just thinking after a day of meetings, Where did my year go?  2014 has come and gone, while I’m still scratching my head about what actually got accomplished.  Mostly, I think that I’ve been quite productive that I have missed the fact that my year has ended and a new one began.  But the reality is that I always seem to think about the time when I could have done this or that, but didn’t. I’m not much for New Years Resolutions (proof in just reflecting on last year), but I do want to make this year count.  My resolution of sorts is to zero in one what matters the most in my life.  I’m not putting me first.  I’m not looking out for number 1, but instead I want to swim against the current.  God grant me the courage to serve others this year.  It is truly in service to others that I can discover myself.  And recover my year, which is not about me but others.

JTeverything

Bring on the Son

The truth of Christ is life, even in the face of danger. He is the Son of the Most High, and God incarnate. The incarnation is news of a fulfilled truth. His life was prophesied in Isaiah, and came to fruition years later. Sometimes in Christ danger lurks, but darkness can never win. His birth is testimony of impending danger as Herod decreed that all young males be killed. But we must remember that we are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus, because he has conquered.
God calls for men to come to Christ in such a way that no one can deny that it is him. But when it’s raining your sight is blurred and the vision that you once thought led you towards right and wrong is hindered through the drops of rain we call tragedy. But if there is anything that I’ve learned in life is that rain must fall and it needs to but after the storm has passed the sun will always come out. Darkness, no matter how thick it seems cannot coexist when the light comes. God’s light always exposes the darkness of tragedy that he has allowed for the furtherance of his fame and his glory. It’s not about us, we are merely the instruments used to adorn the glory of God in this world. This world is very dark, but it is an illusion. In this dark, cruel, dismal, decaying world there are deposits of light reflecting the Savior, and they break forth in displaying the glory of the Creator and soon all God’s elect will be gathered and light will prevail forever over darkness. I yearn for that day. Come Lord Jesus Come, Bring on the Son.