The Gang's All Here
We have faced this turmoil within ourselves presently. ONe names another a gang member and eruptions occur.
I think we have defined gang as a loosely put together object that denotes crime and passion and struggles for power, yet
should we each look at our very own lives what we very well might be inclined to see is that we each have these attribuites
and these occasions to sin willingly.
It aches within to know the places that I came from, to know that when I talk with and respond to those
wondering the reason why they can't see my activities as their own strange or even going so far as to call it deception. It
aches to see the gang riding for the life of its breed so deeply within me and before you say I am out of line or say that
I am out of my gourd or that I am in need of a fair amount of rest examine yourselves.
We all have a deep instinct and tendency to reach out for number one. I have found in my own life in the
last years that this instinct to survive is buried so deeply in a place that no shovel I dig with can penetrate the soil there.
I t worries me to a frazzle that I may look a little off to some and a little holy to others bwecause I still struggle to
be waht God calls me to be. I am sure that you have similar concerns in your own life and maybe in your journey with God Himself.
LEarning of different individuals and their behaviors, their languages, their hopes, their dreams, their
fears, their shames, it takes a part of ourselves to do so. HElplessly I sit and ache and break in that place right now as
I write these words. I know that God is faithful, but God is not as faithful to me as He is faithful to His own Word. I am
the apple of God's eye as are you and all around you, even those strangers right now to God's love and mercy and benefits
and kindnesses and yes even to God's call to sufferings.
Despite this I can never assume the place of God's Son, His Hijo, His Bin, His Ibn, Jesus Christ. Issa is
how the Muslim faith says the name Christians are taught is above all names that are named in the heavens and on the earth
and under the earth.
Suffering...likely to be something that we all can say a little about. A term that we can identify with
because life here in this skin we have is not easy. they say love the skin you are in, but what when that love is falsified
as we are presented around other people, as we are parading in front of eyes that we know will carry a message back that we
have almost fell or just flat out dived into that place of shame and of personal torment. Some hold that hell is the torment
that is felt when life is just unbearably heavy always weighing one down from the cradle to the grave. SOme hold that struggle
is life long, that wrassling is life long, that conflict is life long and the joy they have is purified strangely through
some intoxicant that denies the sight of God's own eyes. THe Muslim Faith have one name of God that decribes God as the Preserver.
The Preserver.
What does it mean to be preserved. Foes it mean that we are waking around on life support, still breaking,
praying our rest new? Does it mean that we are hopeless and that relief isn't even held in the unwrapping of that one called
Savior atall? Oh yes, we have seen and heard tell of so many countless saviours. So many that we have become nubed to the
words of JEsus the Anointed One.
A wise man walking to find redemption in Christ Jesus his very own has commented on being anointed in the
last week several times. THis wise man holds that one must be anointed to accomplish the despair of what appears to be unaccomplishable.
I don't know if that is a word but they put ginormous in the dictionary with Webster's words so hang with me for a moment
please. Sometimes we go into situations knowing how big our God is, how powerful our Christ bond is, how the Holy Spirit is
our ace boon coon, how tight our technique for surviving is. Many of us pray and then gain pride instead of joy because it
seems that pride lasts longer and brings us more influence than joy. We can't see the decay because pride hides itself as
success. We feel like we are really truly succeeding, yet pride has blinded us to the right ways, the unperverted ways, the
pure ways of truth. Pure and truth in the same sentence, heaven help us all.
Pure is a trigger word in so many senses. It triggers a rubberband effect in that it brings about the higness
of its title. Like the phrase "holier than thou" does. The term pure also brings great despar and desparation because we perceive
a highness that we cannot possibly reach because of a ceiling rent placed on us to always serve sin. are we serving sin with
a minimum monthly payment? Can we even see that Christ Jesus is battling for us in intercessions and pleadings for His Father
Eternal God Almighty to spare our lives despite our stumblings often, despite our blatant outright perversions and imaginations
readied to be acted out in reality, despite our frequent flier miles to that place where lust is the crutch. Lust does not
only mean looking at a woman's breasts or at a man's genitals. Lust does not only mean wiating for the right oppportunity
to gain advantage by backstabbing one you or I may have called acquaintance. I hear several references to aquaintances being
those who we hold at a slight distance because we don't want them close enough to us to matter. Seems like this has been the
acceptable relationship that we pursue with Jesus CHrist in mind. Or maybe we look at the tenets of a cut buddy, a friend
with benefits, and if we really look closely into the distance of our souls, we very well may see that this is what we have
reduced JEsus too. Could it be possible that we have found JEsus as that breast or colon cancer, that rectal cancer, that
goiter, that leaking gland, that vomiting stomach, that curdled liver, that trembling and faltering kidney and we have sought
ot cut Him away from us altogether. No more dealings with that ailment. Many do see Jesus Christ as a n ailment, an infectious
disease only remedied by the separation of Him from us and so we determine to go as far as we can into sin that God might
just say Forget this kid! This isn't worth My time or My resources; they don't want and reallydon't deserve any of the
least of my blessings. Here I am showering these big not enough room to move blessings into their cramped closets of wickedness
and they go farther into wickedness. What in HEll do they want? They want pleasures ever more and fullness means responsibility
greater than right now sothey shrug and say Naw man, got the wrong one. Don't do that fullness thang. I'm straight with my
current situation. And God says, Look at you al broken up and busted up from this spiritual AIDS strand and its much worse
than AiDS because this rides in every part of your DNA. God is fed up with us all because we take advantage of HIm, play HIm
like a punk or a prostitute, tkaing His services and cutting out on the check. God says that we are to give our bodies as
a living sacrifice to Christ Jesus. Wedon't want to hear that, got to much us living to do first. We are saying to God God
you can get on the organ donor program for my lifeand when I am finshed with these eyes You can have them, when I am finished
with these ears that hear gossip and gibberish then You can have them, when I finish with these legs then You can do with
them what You please, when I am through with the hands and these fingers then You are welcome to them. We play GOd cheap everytime.
We say He is a Keeper, that God is a Refuge in the time of Strom and when the storm comes by we are grabbing breskis and getting
drunk, we are grabbing up needles and shoving heron and cocaine and lighter fliud and whatever else into our veins. We wait
for the right time to cross God knowing that HIs mercy cannot destroy us because we have heard so many times that God loves
us and is allforus, but GOd is getting pissed off. Yeah I said it.
God is getting pissed off!
Dios is getting pissed off!
Allah isgetting pissed off!
We are not where we are supposed to be. It does matter what people see. We say it doesn't but GOd is determined
to get us to see that it matters. Why didn't you get that job? Could it be because you didn't see the bossman that God has
mentioned your name to before you were even called in for that interview, and that bossman had a heart prepared to bless you
because God instructed so and the bossman found youretiring for the night with a well known prostitute? Could it be because
the bossman saw you looking at internet sites that were not meant for your eyes to behold? Can it be because you were cursing
up and down the street sideways and back again and the bossman couldn't see how in heaven;s name he could find any trustworthiness
in you? We reap what we sow. Notall of our sowing has been badly done, but a good majority of it has very been so done. We
have to not only watch what we do and say, but we have to come to that place where we can learn to trust in God for the largest
and smallest things and all the things in the middle of the two portions. Paul, I believe, says with food and water let us
therewith be content.
Man what?
I ain't trying to hear about no food and water and therewith being content. I am not even supposed to be
troubled with that right now because I am too young to find so much seriousness in my life. OUr lives are more than food and
water, our lives are faith walks, hope walks, peace walks, prayer walks, trust walks, weeping wwalks, bruising walks, ripping
walks, shattering and breaking walks and some occasions that we see as discriminatory and awful are the very places, the very
stroms, the very broken levies, the very discrepancies in the sidewlaks of this life, that God has designed because of Christ's
sacrifice for sins to be forgiven us that will create opportunites that prosper us and bring to us good.
Oh how I pray that we see that two scriptures come to life in us so dramatically this week, this month,
this year:
"God is working through all these things to bring about your good at all times,"
and
"It is finished, cried Jesus Christ from that pinnacle, that highest pint of suffering, holding all the
world's sins on Him as he awaited approval by His Eternal Father God for entrance back into His redeeming, remaking, reconfiguring,
reconstituting presence."
God is with us through Jesus Christ and if you don't yet know Him as your personal Lord and your personal
Savior then we introduce you right now to He who holds the strengths and the waterings and the relievings of this life because
He lived this life. You must know that Christ Jesus lived His life differently than any other ever could because He lived
only to bring the highest pleasure to His Eternal Father God that no one could fully see besides Him.
You are entering into a journey where those around you will not understand your decision right here and
right now and even for the rest of your life. You will not always know for your own self how your life is eve at any point
different. You will see fears that you felt were buried. You will hear your own weepings many nights while what seems like
joy is going on on the rooms all around you.
You will shatter and have to present those shatterings to others all around you as evidence that you are
trusting in a Savior named Jesus Christ whom you have determined to call your own. Many many times you will be alone and fear
and despair anddepression and lust will come and try to wing you back into the arms of the old lovers that you have left.
I am not talking of the old lovers who live down the street or are a phone call away, but I also speak of the old lovers that
caused you to develop sneaky habits and cunning ways.
Jesus Christ came to set you free and this is your get out of jail free time. Ther are some around you right
now who have just left the jail without the authority's signature on their paper, but you will be leaving this jail called
sin free because of the name, the signature, of Jesus Christ the Anointed One branded on your soul.
You will be known as Jesus Christ's slave and not many will even look at you as the servant trying
to always please the one responsible for the freedom stood in presently.
They will laugh at you, but you are able to take it even when the tears come because God is an ever present
help in the time of trouble.
Your life is God's main priority because HE repsects His Son Jesus Christ's decision to hold Him up
in the middle of the crowds that only wanted to cast Him away.
God shall protect you and HE shall provide for you always, all the days of your life.
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Lord, I am a sinner. I have failed to find any other way to know peace and joy andrespect and victory. Many
fears live inside me and many times I don't even feel it is neccessary to show the world or even You my many many hurts.
I am pierced with the bullets of many sorrows because I have desried riches and wealth, and who hasn't,
but I need a lasting peace, a lasting propserity, a lasting joy, and I can't get it from these circles that I am running in.
No one offers me anything lasting and I heard of You. Something in my spirit, way down in a part of me I haven't felt in a
long time called me to fall on my knees and to cry out for Your public and private assistance in my life.
I am not perfect and I am guilty of trading pride and painting it up and trying to make it look exactly
like joy and I am tired of my rewards being only more shattering and decayiong and ripping. I can't live for the cheers of
the very ones who might shoot me or cut my throat or speak of me behind my back as soon as I leave.
I need You Jesus to come into my heart even though it is stretched out so wide by the many lusts I havenetertained
and produced children with. I see the baby despairs coming up right now. I see the baby lacks coming up right now. I see the
baby fears being birthed right now. Isee the baby prides and the baby lusts and the baby envies and the baby oppressions coming
through the womb of this present life right now.
So, I am trusting You Jesus to come on in my heart an set up shop and help me to be a G for You. Help me
to have courage in the times of adversity. I need a courage that I cannot produce. Help me to have You as my first priority
and as my often referenced example. Help me to grow even in the stroms where I want to break all around me even men, women
and children.
Help me to know that You are my Savior, my Lord, my Hope, my Peace, my Shield, my Victory, my Bank, my Employer,
my Parent, my Doctor, my Lawyer, my Teacher, my Lover, my Pusher, my Bringer of Comfort by introducing me to the Comforter.
God, I need You to guide my life into newness and into peace.
Thank You Jesus.
I believe in my heart that God has raised You from the dead to pray hard for me to be able to maintain even
right here. I call You Lord Jesus right now in this place. Hold me close until You complete me. Complete Your work in me,
Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
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We pray for you because your life is longing t be nourished. You can';t see yet what God has in store for
you. You can't see yet how God has already blessed you marvelously and beyond all comprehension.
You want to play the game and God is trying to tell you, to share with you, that He is holding all the cards.
No, God has not stacked the deck against you. God has reclaimed the deck(the keys of death and of hell and
of the grave) by sending His Son Jesus Christ to shed His life for you that you might know how close God wants you to become
to Him. You are worth every ounce of God's love, worth every ounce of Gods mercy, worth every iota of God's peace, worth every
inch of God's longsuffering. You shall bear children in this place because that is God's great plan.
God's great plan is that you be fruitful and multiply and there are so many more ways than being filled
with a man's sperm to produce children. Your fruit of rightness in all situations shall remain strong and vibrant in this
land. Praise God from whom all blessings flow for your decision to follow Him as HE leads you into His vision of eternity.
Keep your hand in the Lord God's hand and you will be fine.
