Hello beautiful woman of God.
May the Lord grant you strength to endure.
Hardships are not meant to kill us but to make us stronger.
Hang on to God, for when we are weak He is stronger.
Hang on to God for the struggle may seem like forever
but its just a little while longer.
A fine Gem needs to be go through roughness so that it shines the best.
Hang on queen, its just a test.
I pray and I pray that in Christ you may find rest.
We may be squeezed but not crushed.
We may be stressed but not hopeless.
I know by God's grace you can stand the test.
From the softness of my heart I'll link arms with you.
From the love of Christ within me I stay praying for you.
So keep hanging on to Christ and you'll soon get through.
I am the fruit of the loins of a fallen preacher. I was conceived from an illicit premaritial union.
I was born on a May day. I don't know if I was supposed to be a mother's gift.
Soon after my birth, my father took custody of me. At times I was raised by my father, other times I was raised by my grandmother.
My grandmother is a woman of faith. She would always be singin praises to her Jesus. She would be always quoting bible scriptures or speaking of wisdom found in the bible.
I was put in her charge, so for all intents and purposes, I was her thirteenth child. Grandmother raised me rather mechanically, but with no cruelty nor malice.
When punishement needed to be met out, she did so with grace, ease and no anger. To grandmother coporal punishment was just a necessary duty that needed to be performed when needed.
Grandmother also dragged me to church, even against my will. In the book of Romans chapter 8 verse 28, it says "all things work together for good to those who are called..".
Being raised by grandmother is one of the biggest blessings in my life. I later thanked her for taking the time and correcting me when I needed it,
and I even thanked her for the corporal punishment because now I see the benefit of it all.
When my grandmother was not raising me, my father was. It was difficult, I was moved around like difficult baggage.
I seemed to be a hindrance to my father's relationships and affairs. Those were the most difficult times for me.
These times created some deep wounds and hurts. I hold no anger against my father and I have forgiven him and asked forgiveness of him.
In the previous paragraphs I attempted to lay some groundwork as to the genesis of the man called Seth. There was another event in my life which impacted my life greatly.
Before speaking of this event, I have to speak of my father's culture. In my father's culture there is a spirit called "machismo". In this culture the more women a man fornicated with the more of a man he was.
Women are just servants and playthings. The ultimate macho would have a loyal serving wife and several extra marital affairs on the side. This is what being a man meant.
At about the age of 8 I was molested by an 18 year old woman. At that time I thought this was normal, this is what being a man was all about. I was now a man.
I did not understand the damage this machismo spirit and this molestation would have on my life until many years later.
My father remarried and now his new wife had the curse of trying to raise an already grown boy.
My stepmother did all she could, but her knowledge and understanding of things were limited. At times I would be left to my own devices.
I was never good at getting girls, I was never good with having friends. So I would always retreat into my world of depression, hurt and fantasy.
In highschool I did well in English,French and History even though I hardly ever did homework.I would also pass the tests with ease. I didn't care about school because I felt noone cared about me.
I wanted an escape from all my troubles and at the age of 17, I joined the United States Marine Corps. Having joined The Marines, I now felt motivation to pass high school.
I thought The Marines would be an escape, but there was no escaping the mire and muck of the troubles within me. In The Marines I discovered how to medicate with alcohol, marijuana and Lysergic Acid Dyethlamide (LSD).
During the weekdays I would be a marine and on the weekends. I would be going to parties with pink hair and earrings. At these parties I would languish for hours in a state of enebria, drowning blissfully in the euphoria
of music and drugs.
I was honorably discharged from The Marines (by God's grace), and I went to New York City in hopes of making it in the music industry. All I found in New York city was failure after failure after failure.
There was a knowing inside of me, a cognizance that it was God pressuring me to come to Him. One day walking across Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, New York; I said "I'm going to follow Jesus". From that very moment I felt different, all desire for alcohol and drugs left me immediately.
I later answered the altar call at a small spanish church in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan in New York City. Sometime afterward after being moved in my spirit by God to move, I moved back to my hometown of Rochester, NY.
After moving to Rochester, I found me a small spanish church , this is what I was used to. After 2 years, through a series of bizarre happenstances, I started attending catechism at Faith Temple. Somewhere in the middle of me attending catechism,
God literally delivered me from the small spanish church I was attending. After getting delivered from that small spanish church I started attending Faith Temple. At Faith Temple I grew spiritutally like never before. It was by leaps and bounds that I have grown.
Eventually with some biblical counseling, I got delivered from sexual addictions. I also got delivered from many hurts of the past.
So this is who I am and who I was. I have come a long way and yet I sense I have a long way to go.
"I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus" Phil 3:14 (KJV)
She calls me on the cel
"look at the sunset", she says with radient joy
looking so happy so beautiful so free
she knows the joy of sharing God's work
with others
perhaps not realizing that
she herself has been exquisitely created
from her strawberry blonde hair
to the ebulient joy that exudes with ease
I rise the next morning
thanking God for my job
thankging God for my vehicle
thanking God for the day
and now as I contemplate
I thank God for godly friends like you
that remind me of God's amazing
treasures
At the airport seeing my dear friend walk away
There we stood
Ethiopian, South Africans, Americans
Male and Female
At that moment it didn't matter how diverse we were
It didn't matter what gender we were
We were there .. sharing a common emotion
Sharing the pain of our dear friend as she departed from our midst
Perhaps to never be seen by our eyes again
Seeing our sad state , with puppy dog eyes and streams of tears careening down our cheeks
I thought ....
How often do we feel for others
Is compassion now a thing of the past.
We often so become cocooned in the comfort and busyness of our daily lives that we often fail to stop
and think of others
Many of us , including myself, have at times become so apathetic that we dare not witness
We dare not reach out
Oh America America the land of the comfortable
Here I was .. weeping along side Africans
We are so distant from other cultures that to me it was strange to see africans weeping as I wept
We are so distant we fail to see and feel the humanity of others
What can we do to not be so apathetic ? What can we do to not be so compassionless ?
The only answer I can muster is ..
Let God break our hearts as my heart is now broken seeing my dear friend depart.
As I was preparing for The Church Drama .. I was praying. My prayer got intense, passionate, I started weeping.
I was weeping for the masses, the unsaved.
I was weeping because too many in our city streets are dying and dying without Jesus.
Are we so wrapped up in our own world ?
Is the roar of our daily lives supressing the sighs and cries of those who see no hope.
Those who see no way out, but the wrong way.
I find myself so insulated from the hurts and needs of our city.
I come to church and all is well and happy and good.
But there are needless blood being spilled in the hood.
Lord Jesus I know not what to do with this burn inside.
Give me boldness and wisdom.
Change me.
Use me.
Help me to hear and help me to know what to do and when.
Lord Jesus use me.
Send me.
I want to preach with boldness even to the rasta
I'll spit it in finnish "pyhan hengen voimasta"
meanin' power of God's spirit
I wanna preach it so all can hear it
I want change to come to the nations
so I make passionate invitations
to taste and see God's goodness
by Christ blood you can seen life with newness
I'll even spit it in Chinese "Yeshu ai ni"
Speaking of the Jesus that has love for you and me.
Jesus the Christ can set you free.
Jesus, You're the first one I turn to when I have a question or a problem. And now it's so much easier than before. You're the one I look to, the one I want to hear from, the one I want to be with all the time.
Thank You, Jesus, for the privilege of being able to walk closely with You by faith. Thank You, Lord, for faith. Thank You for the power of Your Spirit. Thank You that You guide each of us through our lives. Thank You that You love us each individually.
Cast your burden on the Lord [releasing the weight of it] and He will sustain you; He will never allow the [consistently] righteous to be moved (made to slip, fall, or fail).
- We all carry so many cares and concerns. - God wants to help us by carrying the things that are a burden to us. - This may include worries, anxiety, cares, concerns, stresses and pressures. - You don't have to carry these things alone.
Set My Words before you--post them on your walls, set them by your bed, carry them in your pocket--for My Words are truth and life. Absorb them, listen to them, talk of them, think of them.
