04/14/25 OPPORTUNITIES AND OBLIGATIONS

04/14/25 OPPORTUNITIES AND OBLIGATIONS

When the ship leaves the pier, it is too late to get onboard, whether it is the rapture or death. It also includes many opportunities that God gives us in our personal journey. The words of Whittier can be quoted here:
"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest of these:
'It might have been.'"

This can include opportunities concerning relationships, vocation, health, education, economics. Even some of the seemingly unimportant choices of life can have life changing ramifications.

Some wrong decisions can be corrected immediately, others can be corrected soon afterwards, others can be corrected much later in life, and some cannot be corrected at all.

Decisions have consequences, some of which are graver.

Don't allow your, "right," to choose, keep you from accepting your responsibility. A "non-choice" is a choice. Responsibilities lead to both obligations and opportunities. It is better for Christians to focus on them as opportunities. Remember, God says that Christians should count it all joy, even, when we encounter various kinds of trials. Our difficulties result in victory when we deal with them with Divine power, wisdom and enablement. Minor choices often impact major issues later in life. Finding and following God's will is essential to a life of purpose, productivity, power and purity. And the sooner we walk in the light and in the Spirit, the better it will be for us.

More somber and sobering still are the words of Jesus when referring to those who reject His salvation and Lordship over their lives,

Matthew 7:23
23 And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.

The sooner and the more consistently you choose obedience, the more likely you are to finish the course which God has assigned to you. Success is a lifetime accomplishment. We are more likely to finish our course if we are faithful in trusting and obeying as a daily reality in our lives.

04/11/25 MINISTRY BY HI-TECH

04/11/25 MINISTRY BY HI-TECH

Recently I had my laptop, and my desktop give me major problems. A very kind Christian brother got my desktop back in service, then my laptop went on strike. The restored desktop kept our online ministry going, Praise the Lord, and it gives us a much better and more conducive ministry setting than before.

I had been realizing for some time that I needed to upgrade my computer system. Though my old laptop might do fine with some technical expertise, I have now purchased a new, 2 in 1, 13.3-inch, 16 GB, 1 Terabyte, for working at home or out in the field.

Praise the Lord. Special thanks to Martha for urging me to have the tools I need, and thanks to those who helped me decide and to find what I need, also thanks to those who generously support this ministry financially, even from their limited income.

My computer is a major tool in my studying and proclamation work, locally and afar.

04/11/25 IT IS NOT SCIENTISM

04/11/25 IT IS NOT SCIENTISM

No matter the fancy excuses, people who support men being in women's bathrooms and locker rooms are perverts and dangerous.

04/09/25 SELECTIVE BIGOTRY

04/09/25 SELECTIVE BIGOTRY

Where was all of the outcry for decades when untold numbers of previous elected officials were robbing Americans and selling us out to be financially enslaved to the rest of the world (friends and foes).

One Congressional member boasts (Ebonically), "we done picking cotton," which I guess is how she worked her way through two college degrees to become a lawyer. (She must have missed English classes). I don't know how much cotton she picked, but it was more honorable than PICKING POCKETS of American taxpayers.

04/06/25 MONEY GRABBING

04/06/25 MONEY GRABBING

Even if President Trump uses his office (as previous Administrations did), to grab money, the difference is that other Administrations get money from Americans, but Trump gets money for Americans.

Up to this point, he is trying to restore American wealth rather than steal American wealth.
The upheaval should be about the robbers who got wealthy on the backs of law-abiding citizens.

04/05/25 CIVILLY, CORDIALLY AND COMPASSIONATELY

04/05/25 CIVILLY, CORDIALLY AND COMPASSIONATELY

To love people means treating them civilly, cordially and compassionately, even when you disagree with them, and disapprove of their beliefs and behavior. It does not mean allowing them to abuse you or your family or your church. God gives us ways to deal with destructive people.

I have friends and family who have chosen a different spiritual path, but I still value and enjoy a pleasant relationship with them. However, I refuse to let anyone use our relationship to feed their warped ego. I still love them, but I won't sacrifice myself or other people to placate the selfish actions of hateful and hurtful people.

Love sometimes means exercising legitimate discipline, such as force, restraint, punishment, denial.

When it is not legitimate to impose discipline, and the abuser continues to injure, endanger, oppress, offend or violate you or other people, then it is legitimate to disassociate and distance yourself from them.

Love does expose us to injury, but it does not make us the willing victims of evil, abusive and destructive relationships. Even when we cannot end or escape another person's abuse, we are not required to accept or pretend that we have a good relationship, or that the victimizing is acceptable.

A good and a healthy relationship is a two-way street. Controlling, self-centered and abusive people impose their views and hatred and their will on other people. They won't allow anyone to disagree with them.

Separation is up to them.

04/02/25 SOME OF MY EARLY YEARS

04/0/25 SOME OF MY EARLY YEARS

This is a photo of a post card, which shows the Orton Court and Restaurant in Leland, North Carolina. My dad managed this business in the early 1950s; therefore, this was one of my many childhood homes. I had already lived in at least three houses in Morehead City, North Carolina, parts of Los Angeles, California (Hollywood Hills, Glendale, and Chevy Chase communities) and Rutherglen, Scotland, and we would soon move to Miami, Florida, where daddy would manage a different motel, and then back to California again.

I was in the first grade, and I lived like a little king. When I would get home from school I would walk into the restaurant and order whatever I wanted and the waitresses, often high school girls, would bring it to my table. I also had my first job, delivering ice water and newspapers to the motel guests. (They would tip me.) I was one of those working kings.

There was a Lawn Jockey statue in the middle of the complex. I would go out there, put an arm around his shoulder and talk to him, as if he was a real person. I would tell folks he was my brother. Okay, so I don't seem to have been very bright, but neither had I been taught to be a racist. I know the thought of this statue will trigger the Liberal Social Justice Warriors, but y'all need to chill out. Not everyone in the South was brought up with bigotry, and there was racial bigotry everywhere, contrary to Yankee ignorance and propaganda.

We lived in a house on a hill behind the motel. It was there that I imagined a make-believe friend, who was as small as my thumb and rode a make-believe horse. When our family moved back to California he went with us, riding his tiny horse outside the car, through the Texas plains and Mojave Desert.

I understood that the statue was not my actual brother, and I knew there was no pocket-sized cowboy riding a horse, and I knew that Santa was only real in the realm of make believe, but I did know Jesus personally, from the time I was three years old and asked Him into my heart. In fact, it was at the age of three that God called me to be a preacher. Jesus and my call were never imaginary. And remember, my childhood did not include an evangelical Biblical Christian influence.

Oh, by the way, the powder blue Plymouth in the photo belonged to my uncle. He probably stopped by while stationed at Fort Benning, in Georgia. He was in the U.S. Army Tank Corp during the Korean War. I mention the car because many years later, after I turned sixteen, he traded me that car for my bicycle. He was married at the time and had a couple of little children. I drove that car to and from WCHS, sometimes carrying others with me (including Little Raymond, Cornwallis, Ida Francis and maybe my cousin Tana) in 1965.

Well, enough of memory lane for awhile.