The Price of Bondage

Many have said I can do bad all by myself.  I have said and done so on both counts.  For certain I was good at was being bad all by myself.  Alone I shouldered the price of bondage.  You know, bondage is the one place the poor have no credit limit and I was running up a hefty tab. Hopelessness, lost dreams, depression– I had it all with instant access.  The more I had the more there was waiting to be given until I was buried in a sea of bondage debt. My platinum reward points total added up to fear.  I had enough points to travel the world but I was so afraid even of my own shadow. (No Peter here.) How could I be a source of light?  Bondage taxed my mobility with compound interest.  How could I trust myself to put one foot in front of the other and step towards success; step towards freedom?

It’s funny but mostly sad how one can be in bondage, have debt yea high, and people still give them things.  I mean, one can receive and endless supply of “things”, but have nothing to give one-self but being good at being ‘bad all by myself.”  How high the price of bondage wondering how life would have been had I not walked it alone bad all by myself.  What if I had faith the size of a mustard seed?  What if I had gotten out of the boat and walked on the water towards Jesus?  What if I had surrendered my life to Him when given a chance?  Instead I chose to be bad all by myself and leave Jesus hanging there on the cross waiting for me to say yes.

Matthew 11:29-30, John 3:17-18, John 19:30

Stone Pillars

She raises high her torch on an island by the bay

Thousands go to see her, each and every day.

Via boat I once passed by and do admit

She has a presence, albeit, somber and still.

An altar made of stone; hopes and dreams

Never to fulfill.

 

The words of a scarcely known poet are enshrined there

Here they are in case you are amongst those unaware:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses

Yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse

 Your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless,

Tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

 

Emma Lazarus’ words are now famous and well read

Despite the namesake they can’t lift anyone from sin

or being dead.  I offer you a Man who stands at your door

and knocks, by whose breath is true freedom.  His perch is

not a pedestal surrounded by a polluted bay.  His is a throne

placed at the right hand of the Father. He is the water,

a well-spring whose words are life and true.

Listen with your heart and know when He speaks

He speaks to you. “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,

and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me:

for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest for your souls.”

You see that woman, that national icon,

she can take but never give the refreshing

of the soul, salvation and life.  Except through Christ Jesus

How can one truly live?

 

You are the light of the world

Not some pillar of stone raising a torch; you!

Let your light so shine before men,

That they may see your good works and

Glorify your Father which is in heaven.

 

Alas liberty shall not be represented by a pillar of stone

It comes by one Man, One Lord, our God and Him alone

Listen I say, to the words He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor:

He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives,

And recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty

 them that are bruised, To proclaim the acceptable

 year of the Lord.” Do you have ears to hear or are they, too,

like pillars of stone and dead?

 

The world has an abundance of stone pillars

Sadly enough the body of Christ does too.

The last days draw ever so near

 we know this to be true.

Who will stand and exalt the name of the Lord?

Will it be me or is it you?

Where I Am Today

Every once in a while I take a look back to see how I wound up where I am.  I was particularly thinking about my Monday class at Melodyland School of Theology.  Sure it’s a tremendous amount of knowledge gained but even more so I am constantly reflecting on my life as a Christian and building a deeper relationship with Christ due to the resultant understanding.

I was listening to one of the CDs the instructor recorded about prophets.  It was a good teaching that went along the lines of what I had been taught previously and in many ways much deeper.  Anyway the instructor mentioned she was part of the fruit of Kathryn Kuhlman's ministry.  She mentioned that although Kathryn Kuhlman did not personally  mentor one on one, she was mentored through that ministry as a young believer.

It took me back to when I read the book “God Can Do It Again” by Kathryn Kuhlman maybe about four or five years ago.  I was so excited about God's ability to heal through people I was nearly beside myself.  I wanted to meet this person who had such a strong gift of healing.  I tell you I was so excited that when an acquaintance of mine whose young relative was found to have a brain tumor sought prayer via Facebook I couldn’t respond quickly enough to tell her about the book I had read and that she should get in touch with this person God used so mightily.  I prayed for the child as well but I just knew the answer to her prayer was that extraordinarily anointed woman of God.  I had no idea at the time that Kathryn Kuhlman had gone on to be with the Lord decades earlier! So yeah, I was as big a noob as they come.

All that to say this 1) by divine providence I am a beneficiary of the fruit of Kathryn Kuhlman’s ministry. 2) I should not doubt the gift God has placed in me. The same Holy Spirit that dwelled inside of Kathryn Kuhlman dwells inside of each of us.  For the longest time my first response to a crisis had been to go get someone else. Unfortunately at that time the person I wanted to go get was long gone!  It was very difficult for me to break the “go get” habit and replace it with the “tap in” habit- very difficult. Now my goal is to “stay in.” As in stay in the Spirit.

There was a particularly trying time for my family and me when people were seemingly, well they actually were, dying right and left on both the maternal and paternal sides of my family. While making an effort to go get someone to pray for me- for us, I heard Holy Spirit speak plainly to me that I was trying to reach out to everyone but Him. I about froze in my tracks I tell you the truth. I then heard the words “you were created for such a time as this.”  I followed up on those words by reading the scripture in Esther 4:14 they pointed to and thought, in my noobness, that my family was set to be destroyed! I read the chapter in its entirety and then some for context remembering Esther interceded for her people and they were spared.  Who is better to speak to God for me but me? In this case He told me straight out!

I begged God for mercy and to spare my family.  What happened was He gave me peace and understanding about things. There were no timely platitudes; just truth and the wisdom of God. Did family members stop dying? No, but Holy Spirit helped me deal with the overwhelming sense of loss. I was forced to draw closer to Him in a way that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I would have continued to rely on people first and use God as a backup plan of sorts. The implication was if they couldn’t get through to Him on my behalf then I would try.  He was breaking me of deferring to others because of personal doubt and insecurity.  Others have a place in my life. It is just not first. That is the Lord's position.  In that season of time He broke from me the tendency to idolize people and put them before Him.
Back to Esther.  I recently learned that it was not simply because Esther was so beautiful and perfumed in sweet smelling oils that she was able to save her people.  It was because she was one of God’s chosen.  The cleansing ritual she underwent was part of her anointing process.  God anoints His kings- in her case, queen. Her physical appearance was secondary to her character.  That’s what God saw despite the fact we tend to focus on her cooking and beauty that got the king's attention.  We should have been focusing on what got the King of kings attention! That nugget of revelation came front the fruit of Kathryn Kuhlman’s ministry. That being said. I am exactly where I need to be; where the Lord leads me.

How is Your Spirit Filled?

By the Holy Spirit it was brought to my attention how I tended to casually read through scriptures where unclean spirits were cast out by simply assuming they were demons or devils.  It’s not a terrible assumption but then the question of what an unclean spirit looked like arose and kept nagging at me.  With the world being what it is today the first analogy that formulated in my mind was that of the recent police shootings.  I had to think of the net effect each incident had on my spirit.  Sure enough the latent image of an unclean spirit began to manifest.

With each report of an unarmed victim of a police shooting I felt just about every emotion mentioned in Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. As a result, I especially couldn’t resist evil speaking or lashan hara which Wikipedia explains: Speech is considered to be lashon hara if it says something negative about a person or party, is not previously known to the public, is not seriously intended to correct or improve a negative situation, and is true.  In my case it didn’t matter if it was true or not; my spirit was unclean. 

How else might an unclean spirit appear?  Perhaps in the form of a person filled with hatred or the opposite of Matthew 5:44, one who harbors un-forgiveness (Matthew 6:15, Ephesians 4:32), fear (Matthew 10:28, Luke 12:5, 2 Timothy 1:7).  All of the above are indicators of an unclean spirit.  That’s not including a person filled with worry or the cares of the world (Philippians 4:6), or depression (Nehemiah 2:2). 

1Corinthians 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.  Those scriptures would appear to describe the various ways a person can filled with unclean spirits. 

Using the Hebrew word for unclean found in Strong’s Concordance, tame (taw-may), we see there are three striking ways on can be unclean: sexually, religiously (idols), or ceremonially by touching the dead.  Granted we don’t often come into contact with dead bodies but we do comingle with those who are spiritually dead or unrighteous.  Are we not warned by Paul not to keep company with such people in 1 Corinthians 5:9-11?  For those not continually renewed and strengthened in Christ those associations can adversely impact their spirits making them unclean.

The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear? (Proverbs 18:14) How easily we wound our spirit with what we allow into our gates and by words, thoughts and actions.  Is it not possible then that an unclean spirit can be an open door for the spirit of infirmity?  Luke 13:11 speaks of the woman who had a spirit of infirmity for 18 years who was “bowed together and could in no wise lift herself up.”  Once the spirit of infirmity takes hold we, like that woman, can no wise lift ourselves up. 

When reading Matthew 10:1 one can discern the relationship between unclean spirits and all manner of sickness and disease.  Which begs the question to be asked, How are you spirit filled?

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)

 

MURDERED OR MARTYRED?

 

It is hard for me to put into words how I feel about the recent shootings of nine people who were in a Bible Study at Emanuel A.M.E. Church.  Something disallows me to feel saddened although it is quite sad what happened.  If I could ascribe an emotion to it the closest one would be anger but even that is a stretch.  I dare not call it hopeless resignation although I do believe the atmosphere and tone within this country as of late has been conducive to such an act of violence against blacks.  Whether being killed in isolated incidents across the country or in groups the overall devaluation of certain lives in this country has become commonplace and has given birth to the slogan ‘Black Lives Matter.”  Certainly they do.  All lives matter and we must be careful not to esteem some more than the others. 

There seemed, to me, to be an undertone that, perhaps, the lives lost in that church mattered more than, say, the lives of Trayvon Martin or Eric Garner and countless others because they were in prayer and not perceived as thugs or having a spotty past.  Like I said I think the deaths of some have created an atmosphere that black lives are targets across the board. 

Before I could further entertain such thoughts I heard Holy Spirit speak to me about what is really at stake.  I heard him speak that God will not be mocked.  21-year-old Dylann Roof was there to mock God.  He was there like a wolf in sheep’s clothing in an attempt to prove that God cannot save those who worship Him.  He was there in an attempt to mock those who believe and trust in God.  He was there to scatter the sheep– not just in Charleston, South Carolina but throughout the body of Christ.  He was there to suppress the word of the Lord very much like the crucifixion of Jesus was meant to be the end of what Jesus stood for and preached. 

What the devil didn’t know then and doesn’t know now in the person of Dylann Roof is precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. (Psalm 116:15)  Like the recent martyrdom of the 21 Coptic Christians by ISIS those nine Christians killed here in the United States died as martyrs worshipping the One true living, Almighty God.

They are absent from this life and their bodies but present with the Lord.  Instead of mocking God, Dylann Roof confirmed His word in 2 Timothy 3:12 Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution and nothing shall separate them from God’s love.  They have achieved the ultimate victory; to die with a worship on their lips.  Instead of disgracing them he has bestowed upon them God’s honor. 

He also awakened the body of Christ as a whole and has reminded us to watch and pray.  Surely we are in the latter part of the last days and the sons of God are called upon to decide without a doubt whether they are with God or if they are His enemies.  With tribulation some will fall away from the faith.  The good thing is more will take a stand and the Gospel of the Good News of Jesus Christ will spread like a wildfire and even more than the devil counted on will catch the flame and burn ever hotter for Jesus Christ.

Jesus Loves You

For most of this month I've been grappling with what to write beyond the title of the next post.  I'm positive it's a good title, 'In Search of Doubt" but the good words to accompany such a title led me all over the map.  Have you ever had that happen to you in the midst of writing?  Maybe it's for another time.  Yes, another time will have to do. 

Lost in thought, as I often am, this thought struck me, "I'm sure I lost the will to live a long time ago and one of the reasons I haven't dropped dead yet is an equally strong will to prove myself wrong." So that's where I'm at today; actively proving myself wrong.  There's probably a hint of proving others wrong, too, but that's not really a priority.   Truth be told those others are merely whispers in the wind that have little bearing on my direction.

Not far behind that thought was the memory of a conversation I had with my nephew, Timothy.  Yesterday he was sharing with me some of the things he has been learning in church.  The most significant thing he told me was Jesus loves you.  A simple truth from the mouth/heart of a four year old babe.  He spoke to me about John the Baptist and how Jesus lives in your heart.  I must admit things got a little weird when he told me that while you sleep God opens your mouth and puts your heart inside but, hey, he's four!

He wasn't concerned about doctrine.   He didn't even know the full story of John the Baptist... but he got me out of my head and concern over how I might share the Gospel.  Everyone has their theory, you know?  Jesus loves you that's the Good News.  Like I said, simple truth and delivered at the exact time I needed to hear it.  Everyone needs to hear it.  The circumstances of life will change on a dime but the truth that Jesus loves you never will.

Jesus loves you.

That's the best thing I could ever write for this blog- Jesus loves you.  Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, it is high, I cannot attain to it. (Psalm 139:6)  Maybe that is the search for doubt- the too wonderful knowledge that Jesus loves me.  The fact that I cannot attain to it doesn't change the fact of the truth of His love. 

Jesus loves you right now as you are.  Receive it.  Believe it.  Accept it.  As I type I am telling myself deal with it!  Now that I think about it, there's nothing to prove.  Jesus proved it all on the cross- His love that is and by His resurrection the proof is living in the hearts of men today.  It's not my will that matters anyway but His absolutely does.  His will is being manifested in me and through me as I yield to the words of a four year old,  "Jesus loves you."

Indeed He does. 

Jesus loves you. 

I Witness

 

You say that Jesus is coming back, my question to you is when?

I don’t believe in your God and won’t hear of that again.

After all there’s Mohammed and Buddha, even Karma.

Why is your Jesus the Way? I won’t get left behind

I simply choose to stay.

 

Does God truly exist?

How about me, myself and I; that trinity

(That hell bound tryst)?

Go away with your Christianity.

It sounds to me like insanity.

What kind of God lets good people go to hell

And whoremongers live to tell?

 

I have my own rational, logical mind.

I do as I please.  I hold my head up high.

I refuse to get on my knees and beg for mercy

You Christians are just thirsty (and judgmental).

 

What darkness?  I can’t perceive it.

The world is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow;

Nothing but sin and sorrow.

It is what it is and it is and I is… me.

 

You speak of resurrection but not of insurrection.

People today are being martyred for the very God you proclaim.

Why should I not, for myself, make my own name?

This God you believe and the way, the truth, and the life I cannot perceive.

I refuse to get on my knees or beg for mercy or be forced to choose

Your God for a life I might lose to die by the sword.

No, way! I refuse to climb on board Noah’s ark,

The Ark of the Covenant or your Kingdom of God government.

 

You say that Jesus is coming back my question to you is when?

Say what again? The oceans that once overflowed the land

Are now held back by His hand.  I’ve gone to the beach for years

To lay on the sand and watch ships sail on leftover judgment

And people swim in and surf on God’s own tears?

The waters still recede and soon there’ll be none left.

There’ll be nothing left to drink but drought, destruction, and death?

 

I can no longer hold my head up high and await the thief in the night!

Hell awaits my arrival but then again heaven does too.  You say He went

Away to the Father to prepare a place for you? While there is still yet time

I can get on my knees repent and beg for mercy?  In my soul there’s been

A hunger for the Lord and for His Holy Spirit I’ve been thirsty.  It is what it is

And it is and I is… thirsty. 

 

The world is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow

But so is God and soon there will be no more time left to borrow,

no more left over judgment but present day wrath.  No more oceans

to hold back only hell’s fiery bath.   He comes not to bring peace but a sword

Like a thief in the night.  And God said let there be Light.

 

Copyright 2015 Brenda Howard