Today, March 13, 2010, over 19,000 pounds of baby food will be given away by our church. Thanks to the help of donors across the United States and abroad, Moms Against Hunger and Role Models Of America, organizations that we are proud to be involved with, we have received a truckload of baby and toddler food.
With the increasing unemployment and recession that has hit California’s Central Valley so hard, we want to be a little light that comes and eases the burden of families with infants. The response has been tremendous so far and we look forward to being a blessing! This is what ministry is. I’ll post some pictures of the results tomorrow! In the meantime, pray for us that we are able to touch the lives of many.
There is an addiction going on in the church. It’s not talked about much because up until now we were trying to keep it on the down low. We didn’t want people to know about this dirty little secret. Yet, Christians are being lured into it at alarming rates. It spreads quickly and before you know it, you’ve caught this insidious addiction. It’s called spiritual pornography or SP.
If you answer yes to two or more of these questions then you may have SP.
I attend church pretty much every Sunday.
The church is well staffed and so I don’t participate in any ministry per se.
I don’t belong to any of the small group studies.
I don’t attend special services.
I don’t know the names of at least 10 people at my church.
I believe volunteers at church are just trying to kiss up to the Pastor.
I don’t have any more time to offer other than attending Sunday service.
I attend to see what everyone is wearing.
The symptoms of SP mimic that of its worldly counterpart, Internet Pornography or more widely known as IP. Like IP just watching other people stimulates those with SP. Like IP people with SP have a problem with intimacy and it’s just easier to watch others participate rather than do the work to develop intimacy. SP makes you become apathetic to the body of Christ and you prefer to sit in the pew. People with SP never speak about their faith and are closet churchgoers. SP causes insomnia as the only place people with SP can sleep is at church while the Pastor is preaching.
Now researchers have developed a cure. It’s called Get Off Derriere. In proven studies GOD has been shown to stop all symptoms of SP making you once again experience the full life you were called to lead. In a recent clinical study, when taken daily, GOD was able to remove all symptoms of SP leaving people in a more peaceful state.
Side effects may vary; check with your Pastor if you should experience any of the following symptoms as a change in dosage may be required:
Butt is permanently glued to the pew
Your apathy causes you to forget to take your daily dose of God daily
Laziness makes movement impossible
Don’t suffer any longer with SP. There is a cure!
GOD
*Brought to you by the Trinity Lab Corporation. TLC – it’s not just for Sunday’s anymore.
Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, 16 your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.
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From time to time, I hear the phrase “I was a mistake”. I just want to tell you today that you were not a mistake. You are God’s creation and he formed you, wrote your story, gave you your parents, knew the year you’d be born and gave you a mission to be fulfilled before the foundation of the earth. So before Genesis 1:1 you were created. The word says you were in God. Just as a thought is in our mind or a baby is in a mother’s womb, God has implanted in your DNA a memory of a future. God planned you. He breathed his plan into you as he was shaping you.
camille allen
Maybe your mom has always said she got pregnant accidentally or maybe your dad made hurtful statements about how he had to marry your mom but you were not for one moment a mistake. God knew your father would have sex with your mother, even if it were one time. That one time was your opportunity to make your entrance into the world. It’s true. There are no accidents and no coincidences in the your design and birth.
There is only one you. You were put here with a mission on your heart to fulfill. There is only one person in this whole world that has your fingerprints, your DNA, your personality, your talents, your attributes. No one else can fulfill your mission in this moment. You are the only one. If you don’t fulfill your mission then it goes unfinished in this time.
The reason why so many people cry out for Jesus’ return and the reason why he doesn’t answer that call is that the mission that we were sent to do has yet to come to pass. So it isn’t time yet. What has God given you to do? If you can’t remember you need only to sit down and ask him. Prayer, for those of you who don’t know how, is simply dialogue. So a simple, “God, I don’t know what my purpose is, can you begin to reveal it to me so that I can begin to walk it out?” Just with that prayer God will begin to let you know what you are called to do.
What happened to your dreams? Well remember when you were a child and you felt that there was nothing you couldn’t do? How many times did you tie a towel around your neck and pretend you were Wonder Woman, or maybe that was just me!
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How many times did you play school, house, store? How many times did you grab the hair brush and sing?
Well those dreams are still in your heart. They have however, been squashed by words spoken against you. “Quit being silly.” “Quit showing off.” “Wonder Woman is not real.” “Girls can’t be doctors.” “Would you please quit singing? You’re driving us nuts!” “You’re not pretty enough to be a model.” Those words spoken carelessly over your life were not from God and so they aren’t valid.
The fact is parents say some stupid things to their children. We all do and we all feel bad afterwards but the fact of the matter is we’re human and we all fall short of the goal sometimes. You though, you beautiful creation of God, you are masterpiece. You are more valuable than the most expensive thing on earth. God took his time with you. He made you perfectly, even though you look in the mirror and hate the shape of your ears, you have to just smile and think, ‘God made those’. You are not a mistake. You were fearfully and wonderfully made. So in this moment take a moment to hear those words that wounded you from your childhood and made you feel worthless for the last time. Hear them clearly and then ask God to make you forget them forever. They no longer define you. They no longer hold any meaning to you. You are supposed to be here. You are designed for this moment in time and there is none like you. There is an old song that we used to sing in church and we sing it to God. However, you are formed in his image so it also could apply to you. Today listen to God’s voice sing it to you. It goes,
There is none like you. No one else can touch my heart like you do. I could search for all eternity long and find there is none like you.
The tyranny of the urgent is something that holds us back from accomplishing those things that are really important. For years I’ve wanted to write a book but there was never time to sit down and just write. Too many things in my life were urgent and the importance of writing had to take a back seat to just trying to get through the week. That is, until I learned the secret that I am going to share with you. The secret of setting aside the guilt and tyranny of the things that I THINK are urgent and just spending some time each day doing what’s important. To me it was taking the time for writing a little at a time.
You see there are always urgent things to do. There is always going to be things that seem like they can’t be put off another day but there are important things that God is calling you to do that are actually more important and those things believe it or not supercede those urgent things.
What does tyranny mean? The American Heritage Dictionary defines tyranny as this:
A government in which a single ruler is vested with absolute power.
1. The office, authority, or jurisdiction of an absolute ruler.
2. Absolute power, especially when exercised unjustly or cruelly: “I have sworn . . . eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” (Thomas Jefferson).
3. Use of absolute power.
4. A tyrannical act.
5. Extreme harshness or severity; rigor.
Wow! So we see that tyranny is a government that is exercised unjustly or cruelly. Well, I know that I live in the Kingdom or government of Christ. That means that if I succumb to the tyranny of the urgent I am submitting myself to an authority that deals unjustly or cruelly with me. Therefore, the tyranny of the urgent is sent not by God but by Satan to upset the Kingdom in my life. To simplify it further the tyranny of the urgent takes the important things in my life away. The result is that I never reach my full potential because I am running around like a chicken without a head.
It all makes sense! Now it makes it clear why you can’t read your bible without distractions, why you can’t pray without distractions, why you can’t sit and listen to a friend. It shows that the tyranny of the urgent has stolen the important things and has divided your mind. The bible is clear in its statement that a divided mind is unstable in all of its ways (James 1:8). In other words, it doesn’t stand on solid ground. Instead it wobbles. No wonder we wander around in circles accomplishing nothing.
It’s not easy to focus on the important when the urgent is constantly coming to mind but you can do it! It means simply becoming aware of those things that are taking time away from what you have been called to do. You may want to run home to watch your favorite TV show but maybe God has placed a person who desperately needs to speak to you about a problem. The TV is urgent, the person is important. It means we must sometimes do those things God has called us to do over those things we’d rather do. Ultimately it’s about which Kingdom we are submitted to, the tyranny of the urgent or Kingdom of God and those things which are important?
Michael LeBoeuf, author of The Millionaire in You says “Winners focus; losers spray”. I love this because it’s so true. Winners focus on a goal. Which is why vision is so important. You’ve got to stay focused.
What does it mean when he says, losers spray? We all have the friend who dates many people but isn’t looking to settle down. I know someone who is so good at the serial dating that he buys them all the same gift at Christmas so as not to get him confused. Yes, one year they all got Coach purses, another year leather jackets. He has given them each a different date for his birthday so that each one could celebrate, to be honest I don’t know if the birthday I have is for real either. He is very careful to call them all the same pet name. He is not looking to be a winner in the relationship department. He is spraying many targets thinking when he is ready one may hit. This method would be a complete waste of time if his goal were to score a relationship.
It’s the same concept with our job, business ideas and personal goals and yet, so many times we get scattered. We lose focus and go off in a different direction, spraying our resources of time and talent and money in a variety of directions. The one thing I know about winners is they stay focused. Remember Michael Jordan the king of basketball? Then suddenly he decided to spray his talent and play baseball but he wasn’t good at baseball because his gift and focus for so long had been basketball. We all wanted him to be great at baseball but it wasn’t happening that way.
Most millionaires who didn’t inherit their wealth did so because they had focus. They had tenacity and a belief in their goals. If you are saving to buy a house then don’t spray and go out and buy a new car. Get a goal in mind, stick to it and don’t lose focus. Want to change your marriage? Then focus in on it and make a successful marriage your goal. Read the books that will help you, change yourself first instead of pointing a finger and don’t go listening to this friend and that family member and that other co-worker. Focus. Write this quote down somewhere, it’s important. Winners focus; losers spray.
I got these statistics from Latina Magazine but you need only to look in our backyard to see that they are being generous when it comes to our city.
51% of Latinas get pregnant at least once before turning 20. It’s twice the national average.
8.26% – Latinas have the highest teen pregnancy rate in America compared to 2.67% of whites.
One-third of 9 to 15 year old Latinas cited pregnancy or marriage as the reason they dropped out of school.
22% of Latino kids ages 16-24 were not in school in 2005 and it’s double the percentage of African Americans at 10.4%. That equals 1.4 million kids.
36.5% of recent immigrants skip school to go to work.
38% of Latinos ages 16-19 work.
34.4% of Latinos who dropped out in 2006 said they dropped out to work.
49% of Latino kids attend the poorest schools and 56% attend the largest schools. These schools offer very little in the way of advanced courses, which makes it hard to get entrance into universities.
45% of schools serving Latino kids have advanced courses and 74% of girls want them.
So what’s up? From my vantage point as a 45 year-old Latina, I see a few problems. One is that there is an inferiority complex in Latino culture and I am not sure where it comes from. We are a proud people so that may be an issue when it comes to getting some information. Ignorance is why people don’t achieve bigger things; they just don’t seek out a better way. Maybe they feel that a menial job is good enough but according to Latina the average high school drop out makes $22,000 a year. That’s below the poverty rate and hardly enough to support a family. Get a married couple making an average of $44,000 combined and while it may look a little more decent in household income that leaves the dilemma of who is at home watching the kids? While other immigrant families come here and within a generation has turned their circumstances around Latinos still have not done so.
The second is expectation. While I see very strict upbringing with a strong emphasis in education in an Asian home or a Middle Eastern home, I do not see that in a Latino home today and have never seen an importance put on education in the average Latino home. Our response to our children’s behavior is to look dumbfounded and throw our hands up in the air. We don’t expect a great deal out of kids. We criticize White America as being too permissive but in some cases we are worse. The emphasis on education simply has to change if we are going to work to change statistics. There has to be an expectation set in your child from the day you bring them home from the hospital. The expectation needs to be not IF you go to college but WHERE will you go. Not IF you will make something of yourself but that you WILL make something of yourself. Not everyone is college bound but every able body person in the world needs a job! Welfare creates slaves and a narrow-mindset. We must overcome obstacles and move forward.
For some Latina girls it’s a mixed message. Go to college, is what the education systems tells us, and make something of yourself but don’t leave your culture and marry outside of your ethnicity is what our culture says. The problem with that is that boys drop out of high school in bigger numbers and the number of men doesn’t even come close to the number of women graduating from college in any ethnicity. So the message is get an education but don’t come back too smart that you won’t be able to find a nice Latino man to marry.
In short, what we need are mentors. We need solid Latinos who will give back to those youth who just lack supervision for the most part. We need to set the example and show them that there is a better way. Yes, it takes time, I mentored a youth who struggled with home strife and gang affiliation and it meant going to speak to her school counselor each week with phone calls to the school in between our meetings. We did get this youth graduated from high school and off to a technical college. It must become the normal thing to graduate from high school and from college. It must be that the first generation of immigrants set the groundwork for success for all future generations and every generation that follows must do better than the last. Our faith as followers of Christ is to follow the example of Jesus. Jesus said that we would do the things he did and greater still. That means, we train up the next generation we are in charge of to do all that we do, and greater still. We have got to look beyond our circumstances and quit looking for government bailout. We can do it by changing our mind and changing our world.
2 Corinthians 4:1. Since God has so generously let us in on what he is doing, we’re not about to throw up our hands and walk off the job just because we run into occasional hard times. 2. We refuse to wear masks and play games. We don’t maneuver and manipulate behind the scenes. And we don’t twist God’s Word to suit ourselves. Rather, we keep everything we do and say out in the open, the whole truth on display, so that those who want to can see and judge for themselves in the presence of God. 3. If our Message is obscure to anyone, it’s not because we’re holding back in any way. No, it’s because these other people are looking or going the wrong way and refuse to give it serious attention. 4. All they have eyes for is the fashionable god of darkness. They think he can give them what they want, and that they won’t have to bother believing a Truth they can’t see. They’re stone-blind to the dayspring brightness of the Message that shines with Christ, who gives us the best picture of God we’ll ever get.
5. Remember, our Message is not about ourselves; we’re proclaiming Jesus Christ, the Master. All we are is messengers, errand runners from Jesus for you. 6. It started when God said, “Light up the darkness!” and our lives filled up with light as we saw and understood God in the face of Christ, all bright and beautiful. 7. If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives. That’s to prevent anyone from confusing God’s incomparable power with us. 8. As it is, there’s not much chance of that. You know for yourselves that we’re not much to look at. We’ve been surrounded and battered by troubles, but we’re not demoralized; we’re not sure what to do, 9. but we know that God knows what to do; we’ve been spiritually terrorized, but God hasn’t left our side; we’ve been thrown down, but we haven’t broken. 10. What they did to Jesus, they do to us – trial and torture, mockery and murder; what Jesus did among them, he does in us – he lives! 11. Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us. 12. While we’re going through the worst, you’re getting in on the best! 13. We’re not keeping this quiet, not on your life. Just like the psalmist who wrote, “I believed it, so I said it,” we say what we believe. 14. And what we believe is that the One who raised up the Master Jesus will just as certainly raise us up with you, alive. 15. Every detail works to your advantage and to God’s glory: more and more grace, more and more people, more and more praise! 16. So we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without his unfolding grace. 17. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. 18. There’s far more here than meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever. -“The Message”
Gal 5:22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23. gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. NIV
Gal 5:22. But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard – things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments,23. not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. “The Message”
Gal 5:22. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23. gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. NKJ
Gal 5:22. But when the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23. gentleness, and self-control. Here there is no conflict with the law. NLT
I looked up this passage in various versions to see if I had it right. In all the versions there is no reference to “fruits of the spirit”. Yet, time after time we as followers of Christ are taught to think that the Holy Spirit brings fruits (plural) and he doesn’t, he brings FRUIT-ONE FRUIT.
You see, it would be strange if God compares us to trees which bear multiple fruit since other living trees He created don’t bear a variety of things. An apple tree bears apples. To go even further with this thought process an apple tree doesn’t even bear a variety of apples. A Gala apple comes from a specific tree.
So we are to bear a fruit. When you bite into this fruit, or when a person sees our life it should have aspects of all the flavors, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. To be missing an ingredient throws the flavor off. We’ve all met and have been that follower that is just not right. It neither taste complete or looks complete. To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be well-rounded in the flavors. If I’m impatient then it throws off my gentleness and possibly my faithfulness. If my love of something is excessive then it throws off my peace and self-control and what happens to my joy?
Better yet, let’s examine ourselves to make sure we are bearing Holy Spirit fruit. If kindness is lacking then it means that in that area of my life I have not allowed the Holy Spirit to really do his job in that area of my life. It means that in that department I have released my life to God. If I can’t be faithful then it means I still think I know best. So no matter how many of the other flavors I have going on, my fruit is still not mature, ripe for the picking or tasting as it should.
I live in orange country. If an orange is ripe and ready, farmers pick it and send it to market to be bought by consumers who love the taste of a sweet citrus fruit. If an orange on that same tree mind you, is a little smallish, greener or never quite got to where it was supposed to be, it is picked and sent to a factory to be made into orange juice. Each fruit on that tree got the same shot at growth. Some matured and some didn’t. So what fruit are you bearing? Are there any ingredients that aren’t being added in the correct measure?
Click here to read a very good article about a child’s perspective on stepmothers. Here’s an excerpt:
Everyone’s heard of stepmonsters: those evil second, third (forth?) wives who cruelly shuffle stepkids off to the sidelines and compete for their dad’s attention. This isn’t about them. I’m talking about stepmoms in crisis who are really trying to make it work. They all wonder why, after knocking themselves out for their 21st century Brady Bunch, they still end up with stepkids who treat them like they are auditioning for The Little Rascals Reality Show. On top of that disrespectful drama, toss in an already frustrated stepmom overhearing the little darlings bandy about the dreaded stepmonster jab one too many times – and snap. Off goes the wedding band, pop goes the Xanax, and out come the tears.
Pastor Susan 