I love to express what I feel called to say. Writing helps me to open up my heart and do that. I hope that what I write helps you in some way. I hope it makes you think, encourages you, or inspires you. If it challenges you or if you disagree, I hope you know that I respect your right to have a different point of view.
Jesus commanded His disciples to “Go and make disciples of all nations . . .” So what can activate the nation-changing power of God? Are there any discipled nations in the 21st Century? How can a nation be discipled?
Can the traditional church-service system of one human voice, heard Sunday after Sunday, in a nation’s church services, change a nation? There are historical examples of one person’s preaching being used to start a nation changing spiritual movement (Wesley and Whitefield in England for example), however, much of their preaching was done in various outdoor locations (openairs).
But what about the same person, giving a talk aimed at the mind, Sunday after Sunday, to the same group of people in the same building? How is that working in our nation and in the other nations of the world? Is it doing what the early Christians did — turning the world upside down?
Obviously not. Nowadays the world is turning the church upside down as the contemporary church seems to be eagerly embracing, sanctioning, and even ordaining the anti-biblical views and methods being promoted by modern-day media and society.
Perhaps the inability of the church to disciple the nations is tied to the ineffectiveness of our humanly organized, programmed, and controlled Sunday-morning, church-service operating system. What if we adopted the biblical church-meeting operating system?
This operating system is not based on man’s programming and/or control, but on God’s-voice. It is based on Mary’s command in John 2:5, to do whatever Jesus says. It is based on I Corinthians 14:26 that says: “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.”
Perhaps, in our age of declining church attendance and church influence we should give up what isn’t working and begin to meet according to God’s-Voice Actived Operating System. Perhaps we should put aside our human programming and control and let God direct our church meetings.
Life-transforming discipling breaks forth when we allow God his rightful position as director of His church meetings. If you would like to see GVAOS in action, come to 225 Berry St., Nashville, Tennessee, 37207, on Sunday mornings at 10:45.
What turns a person from a Sunday bench warmer into a spiritual reformer? That’s a good question.
Fortunately there are a few individuals in most every generation who are inspired to take the Gospel from the pew to the do. For those people, the Bible is not a lecture book, but a dynamic, new-lifestyle instruction manual — Basic Instructions for a Better Life Experience.
As a manual, the Bible is designed to train a person to engage in practical, hands-on application of knowledge (rather than merely dispensing details). The Bible does not present facts to learn as much as simple steps to follow: “Go and sin no more,” “Bless those who curse you,” “Consider others better than yourself.”
Of course, the Bible’s steps are quite uncomfortable and challenging. They are very difficult to follow without a lot of help. That’s why, as believers, we have a guide inside, the Holy Spirit, to coach us, mentor us, and empower us to get up and actually do the things that we have heard while sitting in the pew.
Are you part of the few who do? Or are you sitting with the off-duty crew watching from the pew?
Come, experience a place where everybody is welcome to be “a doer of the word and not just a hearer,” where people are welcome to read a Scripture, share an insight, give a testimony, say a prayer, flow in a gift of the Spirit; all as the Holy Spirit directs them:
What is wrong with believing that the Universe has a Creator–an intelligent designer–that it didn’t just happen as a result of time, chance, and “natural processes”? Why is the idea of a personal Creator considered “unscientific,” “religious,” “out dated,” or even “ignorant”?
If I am exploring the wilderness in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and come across a the remains of a cabin, no one will call me “unscientific” beacuse I believe that cabin had a creator–that it didn’t “just happen” through millions of years of forest debris. Yet my belief that the glorious design of life on earth had to have a Creator is frequently attacked today. What is the difference?
What is wrong with believing that there is such a thing as “right” and “wrong”– that morality is a reality and not just a human invention? History proves that without morality societies eventually crumble into chaos. Our own personal experiences show that human lives lived contrary to morality create painful negative emotions and various degrees of misery and self-destruction.
Yet today, people who believe in historic moral absolutes, are considered old-fashioned, prudish, or even mean-spirited. How can our generation suddenly throw out the moral views of the vast majority of mankind over thousands of years?
What is wrong with believing that sex is more than an animal instint–that it is a holy act designed by God for one man and one woman to share exclusively the deepest human intimacy in a life-time bond of exclusivity, faithfulness, and commitment? Yet today if someone says they believe that sex is for marriage only, they are treated like they are from Mars.
What is wrong with believing that profanity is offensive, immature, and adolesent language? Why should references to feces, crude sexual intercouse, damnation, urination, the place of eternal torment, and the disrespect of the name “God” be sprinkled in our public language like 12 year-old boys trying to sound “grown up”?
What is wrong with believing that the union of a human sperm and a human egg creates a human being and not a blob of tissue? Many Americans sincerely believe from the depths of their hearts that there is absolutely no difference between killing a human being before birth or after birth. Why is having a heart-felt belief in the sanctity of human life considered mean-spirited instead of very compassionate?
What is wrong with believing that life is much more than the pursuit of money and material possessions–and that greed and the unlimited personal consumption of the world’s limited resources is selfish and destructive to both the planet and to millions of human beings who have not been able to make a “living”?
What is wrong with believing that violence and war can never create a just world, even if that war is done in the name of justice and patriotism? What is wrong in believing that Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were right and that their method of sacrificial love and non-viloent direct action really works, if given a chance?
What is wrong with believing that capitalism alone will never bring social justice–that some people have been so beaten down by society that they will never be able to change their life without someone who is better off to befriend them and to demonstrate unconditiional love to them? That people need a hand instead of a hand-out–heart-felt friendship instead of the left-overs of a rich society?
What is wrong with believing that the color of a person’s skin has absolutely nothing to do with his/her character, ambition, morality, or the quality of neighbor that he/she would be? What is wrong with believing that skin color means nothing more than eye color and that the concept of “race” is nothing but a man-made idea to created by Europeans to justify the cruelty of human slavery and completely outdated and useless after emancipation?
What is wrong with believing that every human being has increadible potential and needs only to be personally loved and encouraged by others in order to begin to live a better life? These are my beliefs. Why do I feel like a great many people in our society believe that there is something wrong with me? Just wondering.
Would you like to experience something really out of the box — something non-traditional, creative, innovative, free, spontaneous, exciting, and surprising? Then you need to check out Nashville’s most unique church.
This place is different! Power packed! Spirit-led! Multi-racial. A church where people enthusiastically share what God is doing in their lives; actively pray with one another; and see God transform people’s lives in front of their eyes.
This is not a typical Sunday morning meeting. It begins at 10:45 with passionate praise and worship and then the meeting is open for people to participate as they feel led by God. Every week is different. No one watches the clock (in fact there isn’t one in the chapel). We meet until the meeting winds down.
There is a popular book called Colleges That Change Lives. Somehow the college that changed my life — The University of Tennessee Martin — is not in the book.
UTM was 50 miles away from my home and the only college I applied to. Little did I know when I started there in the Fall of 1969 that before the end of that first school year, my life would be changed forever by something with a corny name — Dorm Devotion.
One night a week a group of strange people met in the lobby of my dorm, Ellington Hall. Everybody called them Jesus Freaks. I was determined to stay away from them and succeeded until the Spring of my first year there.
Then, for some reason, I stopped in the lobby and listened to one of their meetings. And Jesus got hold of me. Almost overnight I was hooked on Bible reading. I began to hang out with those Jesus Freaks and they became some of the best friends of my life.
We were like family. We prayed together, laughed and cried together, encouraged and supported one another, and shared with each other how God was working in our lives.
We had no official leader. We were all equal. Our Dorm Devotion consisted of singing praises to God and enthusiastic testimonies. Sometimes our meetings would be attended by 150 people. We saw dozens of our fellow students transformed and set free by Jesus Christ.
Some business men from Union City, Tennessee got to know us and began to take some of us on Lay Witness Missions. We would go to a Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, or other type of church for a weekend. We would take turns sharing how Jesus Christ had changed our lives.
By Sunday morning the altar of the church would be full of people repenting and asking Jesus into their heart. We went on Lay Witness Missions in Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Tennessee.
In our Martin group, nobody asked about denomination. We were so focused on loving Jesus, loving one another, and sharing the Gospel with others, that we had no time to debate doctrine.
When I graduated and left, I was shocked to discover that our experience at Martin wasn’t the normal Christian life — that it was very difficult to find that kind of Christian environment. Ever since then I have longed to recapture the Christian community that I enjoyed at Martin. I’ve never been able to be satisfied with anything less.
I moved around the country looking for it. I went to seminary and pastored churches trying to reconnect with a vibrant, powerful, passionate type of Christianity. All the time since leaving Martin, I’ve never stopped longing for the level of shared Christianity that I experienced there.
At the University of Tennessee Martin I was infected with a life-long passion to see the Living God daily manifesting His power and Presence in a group of my fellow human beings. This past year I have come closer to that dream than any time since I left the college that changed my life.
God is doing some amazing things at The Salvation Army Berry Street Worship Center at 225 Berry Street in Nashville, 37207. If you would like to experience Nashville’s most unique church come visit us on Sundays at 10:45am.
Slaveholder propaganda is still circulating in America in the 21st Century, even in the black community. Here are three examples:
1) A few years ago a black man I had never met stopped his beautiful pick-up truck beside me as I was standing on Natchez Street in Franklin, Tennessee. Almost the first thing he said to me was, “You know, we black people are under a curse.” “What?” I asked. “Oh yeah,” he said. “God cursed us in the Bible.” This guy looked prosperous and was very intelligent and articulate. And yet he debated with me (a white guy) for twenty minutes, that blacks were cursed by God in the Bible.
2) A white church I formerly attended once had a Somali guest preacher and choir. The first thing this African man said when he stood to preach was something like this: “You know, we black people are under God’s curse.”
3) A prominent black preacher, who is a friend of mine, gave me a copy of a book he wrote. In that book he states over and over again that all black people have a Biblical curse on them.
Where did these folks get the idea that blacks are cursed? It is nothing more than slaveholder propaganda. As white Americans imported Africans for slavery, they felt compelled to justify their wicked behavior and turned to the Bible. By distorting and twisting Genesis chapter 9, verses 20-27, they developed the so-called “curse of Ham.”
Slave holders proclaimed that the descendants of Ham were the Africans and that they all shared in the curse and were supposed to be enslaved by other races. Let’s set the record straight! In his book, The Black Man–Cursed or Blessed?” COGIC author, Scott A. Bradley says: “I began to read these scriptures in Genesis Chapter 9 and through much prayer and study I find that there is no such curse of races as we have been told for centuries.”
If you read this passage you will see that Noah got drunk one day and was physically exposed in his tent. One of his sons, Ham, came in and “saw the nakedness of his father,” and told his two brothers. The brothers, Shem and Japeth, backed into Noah’s tent and covered his nakedness. When Noah came to from his drunkenness he realized “what his younger son had done unto him.”
Then Noah said: “Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” Please notice that a hung-over Noah spoke this “curse” and not God. Also note that the “curse” was on an individual, Canaan (Ham’s youngest son), and not on Ham nor on any of Ham’s descendants besides his youngest son, Canaan. Bradly points out that “Noah did not have three races of sons.” Indeed, there is absolutely no mention of race or color or black people in this passage, yet it was used for 250 years as an attempt to Biblically justify the enslavement of Africans.
No one knows for sure, who today are Ham’s descendants. But whoever they are, they are not cursed. The best explanation I have ever found for this passage is that after Noah woke up from his drunkenness, he realized that Ham had molested him. Then when he said: “Cursed be Canaan,” he was describing Canaan’s situation more than cursing him. (Notice he did not say “I curse Cannan,” but instead stated that Canaan was cursed.)
If Noah had wanted to speak a curse on someone wouldn’t he have cursed Ham, the person who did the act, rather than the innocent son? Canaan was probably still a child and would be living with a father who was a molester and that is a cursed situation for any child.
This passage in no way either states or implies that God put a curse on black people! How can it? It never mentions color! A hung-over Noah, not God, is the one who says “cursed.” The statement is directed at one person only, Canaan, and not toward any group or race of people!
The list of Shem, Ham, and Japeth’s descendants that follows this chapter never mention either race or a curse on a particular group of Noah’s descendants. Bradley says: “From the sons of Noah came the table of nations, not the table of races as some believe.”
Conclusion: The “curse of Ham being on black people” is a complete and total falsehood. Truth is, there is very strong evidence that the founders of ancient Egyptian civilization were black. If so, then the foundation of western civilization was established by blacks.
It is sad that the falsehood of the “curse of Ham” still lingers in America. Yet it was officially preached by “the church” and officially taught by the government from 1619, when the first black slaves arrived, until the 1960’s when “church” and state took away their official support of this falsehood. After 350 years of propaganda, it is not easily gotten over.
I encourage you to examine this passage of scripture for yourself. Set aside what you have been taught and read it as it is. Does it say “God cursed black people?” Be honest. Then read “John 3:16.” There you will see that God so loved the world (the people, not the real estate) that He gave Jesus for us all! Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight!
To learn more, search for: Off the RACE Track book.
A true alternative lifestyle does not just change the object of one’s lust from one gender to another; it overcomes the power, control, and addiction of lust.
We hear much about alternative lifestyles nowadays. Yet the greatest alternative lifestyle is seldom mentioned. Perhaps that’s because this lifestyle isn’t about self-fulfillment, but about self-sacrifice. It’s not about self-focus, but about self-denial.
The Christ-style lifestyle is based on the life and teachings of Jesus. In this lifestyle you don’t casually coast along with your cravings and compulsions. Instead, you count the cost and deliberately deny your destructive desires.
The Christ-style lifestyle manifesto is The Sermon On The Mount (Matthew chapters 5-7). This lifestyle is tough, challenging, and requires total commitment.
(As a chicken and a pig were walking along, they saw a sign that read: “Ham And Egg Breakfast To Raise Money For Needy Children.” The chicken said: “Let’s go in and make a contribution.” The pig replied: “For you it is a contribution; but for me it is a total commitment.)
The Christ-style lifestyle is so extremely alternative that those who dare to seek to live it are guaranteed to be persecuted. Even our “tolerant” society speaks out against it.
The Christ-style lifestyle is not about church attendance, doctrine, religious ritual, or theology. It is about giving the direct control of your life over to the living Jesus Christ and allowing Him to live in and through you. It is about following and obeying Jesus — actually doing what He taught and what He says in the real world. Of course, this is never fully accomplished, but is an ongoing, lifetime growth process.
However, in spite of the cost, the Christ-style lifestyle is very rewarding. It provides meaning, purpose, a daily challenge, excitement, comfort, strength, love, intimacy with God, inner peace that passes understanding, joy unspeakable, and rivers of living water that flow out from the depths of your soul.
If you would like to meet a group of people who are seeking to live the Christ-style lifestyle together in community, come and visit The Salvation Army Berry Street Worship Center, 225 Berry St., Nashville, 37207. Experience support group type meetings on Sundays at 10:45am.
I ran into former Senator Fred Thompson in the airport in Washington, DC once. I handed him a copy of my book: Your Sperm Won–Experiencing Your Value As A Championship Human Being. I said: “Senator Thompson, I’d like to give you a book I wrote. It is about self-esteem and about how difficult it is for everybody in America but senators and actors to feel good about themselves.”
Mr. Thompson gazed at me for a moment with a dramatic look on his face. Then he said in his actor voice: “Even they have trouble with that.”
Wow! It is not easy to feel good about yourself. Even Senators and actors have trouble doing it.
But it can be done! You can feel good about being you! It is hard work. Most of us tend to try to fill our need for self-esteem with money, activity, popularity, drugs, music, noise, sports, and on and on. But until you like you; until you like yourself. Nothing else will give you peace.
But how can we like ourselves when we, deep down, know we are not what we should be? God’s grace! God’s love! God’s mercy! God’s forgiveness! God’s strength.
“Over my head I hear music in the air, There must be a God somewhere.” –Negro spiritual.
Those words were written and sung during the most difficult of days, a time of great oppression and evil — a time of bondage, of fear, of violence, of economic deprivation, of disrespect, and of despair. Somehow, as they suffered from man’s inhumanity to man, our African American forefathers were able to discover and to express a strong hope in God.
“Over my head . . .” The American slaves had to look beyond themselves to find hope. Their mind and their emotions told them that their situation was hopeless — that their life was nothing but meaningless drudgery, suffering, and injustice. In order to survive, they had to look up, over their head, and get a different perspective. They had to tune their heart to hear “music in the air.”
Although human beings have a sense of the eternal, an awareness that life is more than breathing in and out, many of us get so caught up in our personal pursuit of pleasure that we don’t hear the eternal music. Pain, however, can wake us up to truths that are over our head — beyond our intellect. It can cause us to hear melodies of mystery and meaning that bring insight and understanding.
“There must be a God somewhere.” That revelation gives us Someone to hold on to. And even more, it gives us Someone to hold on to us — a rock, a strength, an unshakable security — even in the midst of our struggles.
The American slaves found deep strength and comfort in the powerful truths of their abusers’ religion. They heard the events of Scripture and discovered that the holy and loving Jesus Christ, Who rescued the Bible people, was still alive in their day and willing to reveal Himself in comfort to the despised and the downtrodden. That’s why they sang. Negro spirituals declare that God will come and help us if we cry out and seek Him with all of our heart.
The Salvation Army Berry Street Worship Center is Nashville’s participatory church. The Sunday morning meetings are conducted more like a support group than a church meeting with each person free to share testimonies, Scriptures, praise reports, insights, gifts of the Spirit, and prayer requests.
This type of church meeting is hard to describe to someone who hasn’t experienced it. However, here is an acrostic that attempts to describe Berry Street.
B-Beautiful
E-Exciting
R-Real
R-Raw
Y-Yearning for God
S-Spiritual
T-Thanksgiving
R-Reaching out in love
E-Encouraging
E-Engaging
T-Tweetable
Come experience Berry Street for yourself — Sundays at 10:45 / 225 Berry Street /Nashville /37207.
