In simple silence you can sense God streaming in your soul. Silence uncovers His voice. God’s not dead! He’s ever active in your heart. Listen!
When you have a hurt-attack, call on the Great Physician–the living, resurrected Jesus Christ.
God is looking for a group of people who will fully embrace Heaven’s agenda, pushing personal preferences aside. (See the Lord’s Prayer.)
Why settle for simply seeing the Golden Globes when Christ wants to give you a glorious new heart of gold?
What good is the best dressed body, if your heart is a mess?
The 2014 Golden Globes even included hate speech from Jacqueline Bisset: “The people who’ve given me &#@!, I say — like my mother — what did she say? She used to say, ‘Go to hell and don’t come back.’ However, however, however, my mother was not entirely me.”
Since Jacqueline Bisset brought up the subject of hell, you should know that no one needs to go to hell. No matter how messed up our heart is, God can change our heart and save us from hell, if we surrender to the living, resurrected Jesus Christ and begin to daily follow and obey Him.
Although he claims to be an atheist, Ricky Gervais got it pretty close to right at the 2012 Golden Globes: “You don’t need to thank everyone you’ve ever met or members of your family, who have done nothing. Just the main two – your agent and God.”
Would you like to know more about Black History. Here are my Top Ten Blog Posts about African-American history:
10) Negro Spirituals — A Message We Desperately Need
9) America’s Forgotten Freedom Fighters
8) Some Americans Suffered An Atrosity
7) Was Jesus Whipped In America?
6) Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Septima Clarck, & Miles Horton in Monteagle, TN
5) Am I Related To Heroic Runaway Slave, William Simms?
3) Why A White Guy Digs Into Black History
1) Accepting Black History Into American History
(And one bonus blog post: 12 Years A Slave — 12 Blogs On Slavery)
Check out my book: Off the RACE Track @ https://amzn.to/2tUMAP2
Perhaps we miss out on much wisdom in the average church service, because only one person is permitted to speak week after week.
We can all learn from anybody; not just from experts or professionals. Maybe during a church service, we should take the time to listen to anybody prompted by the Spirit.
If a friend, a relative, or even a stranger, in spite of anatomy, proclaimed his arms to be wings and boldly declared that he is a bird; I’d still be nice to him. I wouldn’t be mean to him, and I sure wouldn’t “hate” him.
However, I wouldn’t agree with him. Would you?
Perhaps our 21 Century culture needs to step back from some of the rhetoric of accusing each other of “hate” and recognize that disagreement does not define hatred. In our contemporary society, we will always disagree with and maybe even disapprove of certain aspects of each others lifestyles, but we don’t have to be unkind to each other. True love is greater than mere agreement.
People living in our 21st Century culture of constant interactive media, need more than a passive, authoritarian, spectator church service. Maybe they need engagement and participation!
Perhaps a church service needs to be more than a Sunday morning love lecture. Maybe it should be a group of people interactively living out love with one another.
Check out The Salvation Army Berry Street where ordinary people minister to one another as they show and tell what God has done, 10:45 am. Sun., 225 Berry St., Nashville 37207.
PC (Participatory Church) is awesome!
PC is awesome!
PC (Participatory Church) allows the living, resurrected Jesus Christ to actively fulfill His role as Head of the Church — not just be a figurehead.
PC (Participatory Church) fulfills the words of Jesus: “For where two or three gather in My name, there am I with them,” (Matthew 18:20) by letting His Presence be actively demonstrated during church services.
PC (Participatory Church) lets ordinary people obey the Holy Spirit during the meeting and say and/or do whatever He tells them to.
PC (Participatory Church) builds loving, heart-felt community.
PC (Participatory Church) releases spiritual gifts in our midst.
PC (Participatory Church) creates a sense of awe like in the early church: “Everyone was filled with awe,” (Acts 2:43).
PC (Participatory Church) develops a strong hunger for the Bible in everyday people as they search the Scriptures to learn more about what they are experiencing in church meetings.
PC (Participatory Church) changes lives and develops passionate, mature Christ-followers.
PC (Participatory Church) literally fulfills this Scripture: “But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, ‘God is really among you!'” (1 Corinthians 14:24-25.)
The principle of PC works like this: When water is released to flow into a dry, thirsty land, life begins to flourish. When the living, resurrected Jesus Christ is released to freely flow in church meetings, spiritual awaking flourishes! PC 4 me!
Experience PC at The Salvation Army Berry Street in Nashville, Tennessee — Sunday mornings at 10:45 am and Tuesday nights at 6:00 pm — 225 Berry St., 37207.
My wife and I lead a participatory, sermon-free, non-traditional Salvation Army corps (church) called Berry Street Worship Center, located in a low-income neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. Our daughter went to high school at St. Cecilia Academy, a Catholic girls’ school in Nashville.
Once she invited two nuns, who were her teachers to come to Berry Street and share how they first encountered God. I was standing at the door with a young fellow from the neighborhood. When he saw the nuns getting out of their car, he asked me: “Who are those ladies in the durags?” I explained to him that they weren’t wearing durags, but that they were Catholic nuns wearing habits.
As the meeting began, ordinary people shared testimonies, Scriptures, words of encouragement, gifts of the Spirit, etc. Finally we asked the nuns to share. One of them told the story of St. Dominic, the founder of their order. The second one shared how she had a personal encounter with the living God while she was a college student and how it radically transformed her life.
It was an awesome time together, full of joy, love, and celebration. When people love God and put following and obeying Him as their first priority, that overcomes all division and makes us one!
If you are in the Nashville area, come visit us on Sundays at 10:45 am., 225 Berry St., 37207.
