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All Things Are Possible To You

 

 

“But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”
1 Corinthians 6:17

 

No one argues with the Scripture which says, “. . . with God all things are possible” (Matt. 19:26). Yet the same New Testament also says, “. . .  all things are possible to him that believeth” (Mark 9:23).

 

Are these Scriptures equally true? Could one be a statement of fact and the other a misconception? A falsehood? No! Both statements are fact.

 

All things are possible to him that believeth. It helps me as I drive down the road to say that. Whatever this year holds, I know You hold me. Nothing is impossible for You! It helps me when I face a seemingly impossible situation to say aloud, “All things are possible to him that believeth. And I believe.”

 

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You Are One With The Master

“But he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”
1 Corinthians 6:17

 

The believer and Jesus are one. Jesus said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches . . .” (1 John 15:5). When you look at a tree you don’t think of the branches as one part. You see it as one – as a unity. All who believe in Him are one with Christ. Our spirits are one with Him.

 

How are you demonstrating this unity in today’s divisive environment?
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You Are A New Creature

“. . . but though our outward man perish,
yet the inward man is renewed day by day”
(2 Corinthians 4:16)

 

In the New Birth, our spirits are recreated, our bodies are not. It is in our spirit where all things have become new. We still have the same bodies we always had. There is a man who lives inside the body. Paul calls him “the inward man of the heart” (1 Peter 3:4).

 

This man is hidden to the physical eye. No one can see the real you – the inward man. They may think they do but they only see the house you live in. You are on the inside looking out. The same thing is true with the people you know; you’ve never really seen the real man on the inside.

 

When a man’s house is decaying, the real man still lives. The real man never dies. It is this inward man who is born into the family of God, who is in perfect union with the Master.
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You Are A Child of God

 

No truth in all the Bible is as far reaching as the blessed fact that when we are born again into the family of God – God the Father is our Father. He cares for us! He is interested in us, each of us individually, not just as a group, or as a body, or a church. He is interested in each of His children and loves each one of us with the same love.

 

Get acquainted with your Father through the Word. When you were saved, you were born into His family as a spiritual body. Babies in the natural must eat natural food to develop and grow. The Bible instructs the children of God: “As newborn babies, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby . . . “ (1 Peter 2:2).

 

It is in the Word where we find out about our Father, about His love, His nature, how He cares for us, and how He loves us. He is everything the Word says He is. He will do everything the Word says He will do.
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Do You Know The Reason For The Season?

 

We are in the season we pause with our family and friends to celebrate the blessings of the past year. We have come through difficult times, and as Christians, we know it is because of the grace of God. Our belief in Jesus Christ and what His Word says has transformed our life. And when we mess up, He has already paid the price, and we are forgiven. His forgiveness is not an excuse to continue sinning. When we slip, He understands. When we practice sin, we must reassess if we really believe in Him and His Word.
 

Do you have a roof over your head, clothes on your back, and food on your table? Sure, you may have worked to buy those things, but who gave you a body and a brain? Deuteronomy 8:18 tells us it is God “who gives you the ability to produce wealth.” So, let’s not forget from whom all blessings flow.

 

I was taught that he who controls the diameter of your thinking also controls the circumference of your possibilities. And relative to this season, the narratives of the holidays have not been designed to focus you on the real reason for this present season.

 

My family worked hard to dispel the Thanksgiving narrative because the origin story of the friendly dinner between Native Americans and Pilgrims that’s often told in school — is inaccurate. Native Americans describe the holiday as a “National Day of Mourning.”

 

The actual origin of the national holiday dates to Abraham Lincoln. On October 3, 1863, he called for the country, “in the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity,” to set aside the last Thursday in November as “a day of Thanksgiving.” The Times published his Thanksgiving proclamation on the front page and several times subsequently.

 

And the Christmas holiday is also a false narrative of a fat guy in a red suit. The overarching theme of Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Christ and is one of the Christian high holidays. But the celebration of Christmas has become a mixture of pre-Christian, Christian, and secular traditions.

 

Christmas trees are widely associated with the Christian holiday, but their origins are far from the Christ-worshipping standards they represent today. Christmas trees began as a pagan tradition as early as the fourth century C.E. European pagans were primarily responsible for dressing their homes with the branches of evergreen fir trees to bring color and light into their dull winters. But pagans weren’t the only people to do this. Romans also used the branches for decoration during the festival of Saturnalia, which took place from December 17 to December 23 in honor of the god Saturn.

 

The legend of Santa Claus can be traced back to a monk named St. Nicholas in Turkey. St. Nicholas gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside, helping the poor and sick, becoming known as the protector of children and sailors. Today we focus on 28 days of shopping madness where if you can’t afford to buy gifts or don’t receive the latest, your life is unfulfilled.

 

In the early years of Christianity, Easter was the main holiday; the birth of Jesus was not celebrated. In the fourth century, church officials decided to institute the birth of Jesus as a holiday. Unfortunately, the Bible does not mention the date of His birth.

 

Pope Julius I chose December 25. It is commonly believed that the church chose this date to adopt and absorb the traditions of the pagan Saturnalia festival. First called the Feast of the Nativity, the custom spread to Egypt by 432 and England by the end of the sixth century.

 

Christmas in the twenty-first century is a mixture of various cultures that have shaped how we think of the holiday season today. So, skip the worldwide commercialization phenomenon, skip the fat guy in a red suit, skip fretting over decorating, skip focusing on food, and skip worrying about the right gifts.

 

Let’s focus on preparing our hearts to celebrate our Savior’s birth by reflecting on the hope, peace, love, and joy that Jesus brought to the world.
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The Black Church Is A Spiritual Virtue

 

 

“Back then, Black churches were a small piece of peace.
Church was a world where, even with its imperfections,
the offer of equality and common humanity was the sustenance needed to make it through the rest of the week
in a society that deemed them less than human.”

 

Today you will read the “heart cry” of Dante Stewart that encapsulates the hurt, pain, and disappointment of many. As you read this, prayerfully consider how we bring unity to the body of Christ.
Guest Author: Dante Stewart
I can remember when it first happened — when my dungeon shook and my chains fell off. I had recently gone through a horrible experience and felt there was nowhere to turn, no one who could give voice to my ache, my pain, and my rage.

 

I feared that many wouldn’t understand.

 

At the time, I was immersed in White evangelical church life. I had been the one selected to lead a group through John Piper’s Bloodlines because the church wanted to be more “diverse.” I was probably the first black person to preach there.

 

That usually came with a badge of honor — the “first” usually means you’re breaking barriers (or so I thought). Then Trump happened. Then the shootings of unarmed black people. Then … the white responses in the church I was in.

 

I was confused.

 

“How could they be around me and my wife and say this about black people?”
“How did they not know us?”
“How could they believe this?”
“Why aren’t we speaking about this?”

 

Confusion compounded by the employer who used my abstention from the National Anthem as an opportunity to lecture me on NFL protests and oppression.

 

Confusion compounded by the colleagues who said, “there’s no need for Black History Month,” and another, “there’s no such thing as black theology.”

 

Confusion compounded by another colleague who reported me for inappropriate touching after I side-hugged her while bidding her a good weekend. Maybe at that moment I forgot all the lessons my mom taught me about being careful around white women. Did she know that they see her as innocent and me as a danger? Maybe she believed the lie that Amy Cooper believed: that her whiteness is a weapon to keep a “n— in his place.”

 

And then my confusion turned to rage as the comments continued.

 

“You are losing the gospel.” 
“I’m not racist.” 
“You’re a social justice warrior.” 
“I have black friends.” 
“All lives matter.”
“Black men need to stop killing black men.”
“It’s a sin problem, not a skin problem.” 
“Jesus came to change hearts not societies.” 

 

Black rage in an anti-black world is a spiritual virtue. Rage shakes us out of our illusion that the world as it is, is what God wants. Rage forces us to deal with the gross system of inequality, exploitation, and disrespect. Rage is the public cry for black dignity. It becomes the public expression of a theological truth that black lives matter to God.

 

Rage is the work of love that stands against an unloving world. Rage is the good news that though your society forgets you and works against you, there is Someone who loves you and believes you are worth fighting for.
⠀

 

If you’re more concerned about the responses of black rage than you are about a system that justifies and rewards black death, you don’t love black people — you just love when they stay in their place. And that’s not love, that’s hate.

 

So, I wept — I wept because I felt so powerless, so vulnerable, so unloved, so hated.

 

In “A Letter to My Nephew,” James Baldwin wrote:
Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority, but to their inhumanity and fear.

 

His words hit me with the sort of mercy, a grace as if Almighty God was speaking, when he wrote, “You don’t be afraid. I said it was intended that you should perish …”

 

But I did not. We did not. We are still here. It was at that moment that a fire came over me. It was then that my dungeon shook, the chains of fear fell off, and the bones began to rumble, and the sinews that made flesh black began to come to life. It was not just the question, “Lord, can these bones live?” No. It was, “Lord, where will these bones go?”

 

I needed to give voice to God’s action in the black experience, our suffering, and our resistance. I needed to bear witness to the struggle for our freedom. I needed to give voice to being both black and Christian. I did — and I never looked back.

 

James Cone said after the Detroit rebellion, “I could no longer write the same way, following the lead of Europeans and white Americans.”

 

And don’t we feel this? With white racial paranoia. With Trump. And now with black suffering in COVID-19, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. Terror. We saw the responses to the cries of our people as many of our women, children, and men became hashtags. They praised “black forgiveness,” called us to speak of love, when their people gave us death. Our people’s blood cries out from the ground.

 

What does theology have to say in the black freedom struggle today? What does faith say in the face of black death? What is good news for black people in America’s racial caste? Cone was right: “I had to find a new way of talking about God that was accountable to black people and their fight for justice.”

 

I am black; I am Christian. We have been through hell in this country — and we’re still going through it. But I too am America; this is my country. Being black in an anti-black world becomes the greatest spiritual, moral, and political task of each generation.

 

The journey has been long and a struggle for many of us — trying to speak of Christian faith and being black in America — but it is also empowering. We know that we come from a long tradition of black people who refused to accept the tragic belief and practices of white supremacy — the belief that we are second-class citizens, that we deserve exploitation and punishment, that we deserve disrespect and death, that we must be respectable and cater to the demands of whiteness. No. We will not.

 

Many will believe we have exaggerated the scope and depth of injustice. That’s okay. We’re fighting for hope, we’re fighting for love, we’re fighting to live. This world as black people experience it is not the world as it should be. All of us must give voice to the hope of a better day. There’s no other way.

 

To love, to struggle, to fight, to pray, to embrace, to remember — these become our sword and shield. To protest violence against black people is a spiritual virtue, moral obligation, and political practice. In a world that wounds the souls of black folk, it represents the Spirit of God at work resisting the evil of white supremacy and murder with impunity. It’s holy work. Through rage and heartbreak, we work. Until we are free, we can never rest.

 

SOURCE: Sojourners, Black Range In An Anti-Black World Is A Spiritual Virtue, May 29, 2020

 

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The Toxic Source Of Inconsistency

Dr. I. David Byrd

 

An expected result of teaching God’s Word is demonstrating, distinguishing, and defending what we teach. In other words, live what we teach and teach what we live. 1 Corinthians 11:1 says, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.” The great commission’s high calling is for believers to serve as a Godly example by living out our walk with God.

 

As the world “waxes worse and worse”, we must ponder – is our witness is losing its impact. If people listen more to what we do than what we say, the central question becomes, what are we doing that is driving the world away from the Church? Research shows people are leaving the Church in record numbers. What are they saying to us. Could they be telling us that they are not interested in being a part of what they see from the Church? What attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, or patterns of behavior are we projecting that have become our strongholds and turns people away? Once separated, the enemy has the opportunity to plant all kinds of false truths in their minds.

 

Some believe coercive force is to be used to restrain other people’s activities. Jesus demonstrated that proximity and the Word’s power are more than enough to change humankind’s hearts. Three examples of this:

 

In John 4:4-26, Jesus brought the Samaritan woman at the well to repentance using the Word and demonstrating to those ready to stone her that they too were sinners in need of grace.

 

In Mark 7:24-30, when the Syrophoenician came to speak to Jesus, the disciples dismissed her, labeled her, and advised Jesus to send her away. Yet, Jesus took the time to talk with her. And because of her faith, her daughter was healed.

 

In Luke 24, Jesus responded on the road to Emmaus by using scripture – “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” The Bible says they responded, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

 

The Word is enough to transform hearts and minds on its own. It doesn’t need our coercion, legislation, force, dominance, or judgment to help it. The only help it needs from us is to tell people about it and let them see us living it. Besides, we can’t put anyone in heaven or hell anyway. Only God can provide saving grace. When we come to this knowledge and understanding, our personnel theology will be an example of Christ to this wayward world.

 

I still believe the Church can be the example of Christ.

 

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Is Your Commitment To Capitalism or Christ?

Dr. I. David Byrd

 

“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb,
but the darkness of the womb?”   Valarie Kaur

 

 

If capitalism works, more people would have achieved economic security as the stock market continues to go up. Capitalism’s premise is that wealth will trickle down to make life better for everyone. The U.S. reports the lowest unemployment in 50 years, rising incomes across all races and job levels, a stock market that continues to reach historic highs (even with the recent volatility sparked by the spread of the coronavirus), the low-interest rates, and a GDP that has been expanding.

 

Juxtapose that against a possibility of a terrible second or third coronavirus wave. A delay in the discovery of a vaccine, a potential constitutional crisis in the election in November, runaway inflation, the prospect of higher taxes to pay for the stimulus, a more significant trade war with China, social unrest, or the dozens of other risks that seem to be bubbling just below. In July, CNBC reports that 32% of Americans couldn’t even pay their rent or mortgage. And according to Newsweek, U.S. billionaires got $583 billion richer since mid-March. Over 30 million Americans can’t find a job despite efforts to become gainfully employed.

 

Was that a political rant? No, that was showing you our need for the dependence on Jesus and not humans’ idols. No ideology is going to last; only the Word of God is eternal.

 

If our history tells us that economic scarcity can lead to violence, then let’s create a system in which more people can access economic success. I read an article from Anand Giridharadas about his interview with Senator Chris Murphy.  They concluded, “America does have a law-and-order problem, but it’s nothing new. And the nature of that law-and-order problem is being the most violent country in the rich world. And the genesis of that violence isn’t Black and brown communities rising up against friendly, overwhelmingly white suburbs of Minneapolis. It’s America, from the founding days of the republic, committing to an economic and political model that made violence a daily, systemic necessity. In short, those fighting to make America less racist are not our law-and-order problem. America’s real law-and-order problem is and always has been racism. The conversation continued with Senator Murphy stating, “This reckoning we’re having with our past is necessary, but it also comes with real consequences for one of the few threads of fabric that unites the country. As we all retreat to our corners, as we all get our information from different sources with different spins, our founding ideals and founding mythology are among the few things that we have left in common. Now, we’re not even sure what that mythology is.”

 

America has destroyed all nuances around American racism. It is now there, in the open, for everyone to see. The result has been to draw a lot of other people out into the open. Unfortunately, even dialogue by religious leaders is coarser and more hateful than ever before. This is antithetical to the Word of God and promotes the sin of self-interest and not the mission of the gospel.

 

Choose ye this day who you will serve. “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

 

 

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Where Do We Go From Here . . .

The iphone camera has exposed the painful reality and experiences that people of color have been shouting about for years. Those of us who have been in the trenches for decades fighting racism in America wonder how long the soul searching will last. There is a system, and then there is individual bias. There are structures that perpetuate racism and then people who give in to that system. We eventually will need to move beyond the rage and began to think about what’s next? To determine what we can do as a group and as individuals to change the conditions of hearts and minds. The Church must step up to lead change in communities; following the footsteps of Jesus and stand in unity surrounding the things that matter to God.

 

Christians commanded to “Love the Lord your God. . . and to love your neighbor as yourself.” It’s challenging to love others well if you don’t love God first. But loving God is only half of the story. His love needs to transform the way you view yourself. When you see yourself the way God sees you, you can love others the way God loves you. 2 Cor 3:18 teaches, “You become what you behold.” We must open our eyes to see what to do. Because when all is said and done, more has been said than done.

 

I once heard Vernon Jordan use an analogy of tearing down an old building to replace it with a new modern and useful one. He said that “the wrecking ball that knocks down the building takes only hours, but the clearing of the debris takes much longer.” How do we clear the rubble?  By implementing cleanup crews against injustice, hate, apathy, and economic imbalances. We pick up the weapon of truth, the recognition of courage. The Church can embrace the responsibility to clear the rubble.

 

We have reached a tipping point where Christian leaders are posting to social media that they now want to listen to the pain and listen to the issues people of color are facing. Jesus first listened, engaged in conversation to understand the change needed, and then changed the conditions of the individuals and the community. That third step is the  “miracles” because it took great faith to execute. That is the step that will be the most challenging and require the self-sacrifice that Jesus calls us all to make. It’s the cleaning up of the rubble. Those that are affected have made their message clear, “if the social structure doesn’t care about them, why should they care about the social structure.” When you devalue someone’s experience because it is not your reality, their anger and actions are in direct proportion to their experience.

 

White Evangelicals often have differing views of the Gospel than people of color. The cultural causality tools used to provide context may account for the differing theological views:

 

    • Freewill individualism that minimizes and individualize the race problem as ones on fault;

 

    • Capitalism that despite years of politicians insisting otherwise, the laws of economic gravity have always run in reverse. Opportunity doesn’t trickle down, it cascades out and up;

 

    • Ideologies that further self-interest over the good of the group;

 

    • Economic productivity that the only long term solution to poverty comes when people have skills and discipline to get economically productive jobs and keep them;

 

    • Choosing to ignore the institutionalization of racialization in economic, political, educational, social, and religious systems. Often thinking and acting as if these problems do not exist;

 

    • Moral vision based on people needing external structures or constraints in order to behave well, cooperate, and thrive;

 

  • A belief in relationalism founded in the personal determination of “who is my neighbor.” Believed to be spiritually and individually, not temporally and socially based.

 

The challenge to everyone is to live like Jesus. Cleaning up the rubble will require us to consider the needs of others. To overcome not being comfortable talking to people of other races. To move from evaluating everything in terms of potential threat or benefit to the self, and then adjusting behavior to more of the good stuff and less of the bad. Therein lies the miracle; the change of heart that leads to a shift in thinking that results in a change in actions.

 

The solutions are not a call for you to be ashamed of the past nor a call for you to say racism is wrong, but it is a call to take specific actions. It’s no longer acceptable to say you believe in equality but act in ways that perpetuate inequality. To stay on the same path, you either lack the courage to take action or don’t care.

 

To the small, medium, and mega multicultural churches, this is a heartfelt call from a place of love and request for a more racially unified church that no longer compromises what the Bible teaches about human dignity and equality. The images used in worship and preaching must reflect the diversity of your congregation.  Jesus and the angels with blonde-haired and blue-eyed who came from Africa portrays a false narrative. The pictures of those in need of service always being people of color is misleading. Diverse leadership is not starting/expanding campuses into communities of colors and installing a Pastor of that ethnicity while maintaining a white decision-making structure at the main campus.

 

We violate God’s intention for the human family by creating false categories of value and identify based on identifiable characteristics such as culture, place of origin, and skin color. We first have to be reconciled meaning, I have to feel and see dignity in you, not just accept you because the Bible tells me to or because it is comfortable. Seeing dignity does not come by overlooking differences through emphasizing a shared human identity that ignores race. We transcend racial differences in the context of our primary identity as one in Christ.

 

To use the words of Divided By Faith, “The choices and actions that people make to deal with racial divisions do matter and can make a difference. Good intentions are not enough. But educated, sacrificial, realistic efforts made in faith across racial lines can help us move toward a more just, equitable, and peaceful society. And that is a purpose well worth striving toward. That is the message of the Gospel.”

 

Heavenly Father, we need you at a level that is beyond the ordinary. We need you at a supernatural level because you have allowed it to be clear that we have human limitations. So we cry out to you for wisdom, knowledge and understanding. 

 

In Jesus’ name. Amen
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Can We Just Talk?

 

Dr. I. David Byrd, December 1, 2019
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt,
so that you may know how to answer everyone.”                 Col 4:6
Civility dies when you give up the right to have dialogue without trying to destroy the other person. The starting point for repairing our fractured country is how we interact with others.

 

First, our conversation should be an instrument of grace even to those who we don’t think deserve it. Paul uses the word “grace”, which most often refers to unmerited favor for those who are ill-deserving. Paul anticipating our sinful nature qualified this phrase with “always”.

 

Second, our conversations should be seasoned with “salt ”. Salt makes meat acceptable to the discerning palate and is a preservative that draws out bad organisms that can cause meat to decay. Once salt loses its chemical properties it is of no value. If the “flavor” of our conversation is saltless we are useless to God, of no value in bringing out people’s best tendencies and preventing their worse.

 

  • Deliberately seek to influence the people in your life by showing them the unconditional love of Christ through good deeds (Matthew 5:13)
  • Demonstrate the counterculture to language that demeans, degrades, divides and leads to societal moral decay. (Mark 9:50)
  • Witness to unbelievers being well prepared and focused on building others up according to their individual needs with purity of motive. (Col 4:6)

 

What a privilege God has given us to be in dialogue with others. Use it for God’s glory. It’s the evidence of the call upon our lives.

 

Father,
Your Word tells us we are to be a people set upon a hill; bringing light to the darkness of this world. Help us to live out the grace you provided to us. To not withhold conversation from anyone You put in our path.

 

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

 

Thank you for allowing me to speak into your life. Hey, spend a few moments of quiet time discovering your personal application of what you just read by clicking this link  myTime with God