Transcript
[NO TITLE] This morning as I was reading my daily bread during my devotional time. The chow bell went off I didn’t go, I get fed in. The title was “Failure is not Fatal” there was a brief narrative about prime minister Winston Churchill “Hitler knows that he will have to break us… or lose the war… Let us therefore brace… and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire lasts for a thousand years men will still say, This was their finest hour! Then I here guys comeing back from the morning chow talking about nine people were killed in church during a prayer meeting. I don’t own a t.v. and there was talk of revenge and it was racially motivated and the church is’nt even safe. Then some one yelled that is was on the wall a radio show talking about it. (Now I got headphones) So I tuned in and they were talking about how can you go to church with this guy still out there and now the church isn't safe. One female speaker said to keep the faith, faith is always there but you just can’t feel safe. Everyone was saying or having the same thought. Later in the morning he was apprehended praise the Lord! However my mind knows there are many more out there and what was being spoken troubled me. Jesus said in Matthew 24:9- “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake.” Brothers and sisters in Christ do not let anything separate you from Christ. They killed Jesus, they beat Jesus, they mocked Jesus. Jesus said to us in John 15:20- “Remember the word I said to you. A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted me they will also persecute you. Before I was saved I would have died for less the Lord saved me in prison. A dope dealing, gang banging, drug addict, my third state bid after almost ten years in the system. Everything that I was doing was in opposition to God breaking all his commandments, judgements and statues. The word tells us if you are not with God then you are against God. I have family that is in the church and they would say “come on to church with me.” My reply would be I might catch on fire, my first arrest was at eleven years old me and my friends jumped a kid over popsicles and we were charged with assault. At thirteen I started selling crack and working drug spots we used to call them gates. I was in Juvenile detention, jail, lock up, prison, box, I’m on restriction right now. No commissary, no phones, no packages until the end of August. More than twenty years of my life has been spent in those streets. I hear brothers playing music on the gallery one song “It’s all about the money, It’s all about the money” or I hear dudes playing “Baking soda! Baking Soda! I’m in love with the coco!” I understand when I was seventeen on the greyhound bus headed to a small town with about four or five ounces a semi automatic handgun. Fresh from head to toe a pocket full of money. Not a care in the world my only thoughts was on the money I was gonna make, I’m high just blew two blunts before I left. Now I can see the deception, cocaine causes death, it destroys people, ruins neighborhoods. Proverbs 1:19- “So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain; It takes away the life of its owner.” You dedicate your all to this life style, I know I did I’m doing sixteen years for sales and possession. And in prison I kept up with my same behavior, then I read Ecclesiastes 5:16- “And this also is a severe evil just exactly as he came so shall he go. And what profit has he who has labored for the wind?” All the hustling is for nothing because I can’t hold on to it, it means nothing. This is coming from Solomon the wisest and richest man of his time, he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines like the song says he done seen it all. You hustle risk your life and put money away to just give it to somebody else. My pride wouldn’t let me let go I was planning to push heroin since it’s in, and my mind was there hard, until God came in my life and keeping up with the Joneses was over. Ecclesiastes 4:14-15 “For he comes out of prison to be King. Although he was born poor in his kingdom. I saw all the living who walk under the sun; they were with the second youth who stands in his place.” The Lord called me in a dirty nasty cell, without nothing, no food, no girl, loss of all my privileges. And still don’t have anything but my faith in God as read the book of Job that is all I need. Jesus has commanded us to love one another even our enemies; John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” Jesus called us his friends, John 15:14-15 “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known to you!” In closing, I would like to say that God is real and nothing happens without Him so don’t worry about people attacking the church. They are Christians have always been martyrs. If you will give your life for your kids, wife, mother or your block/hood then you can sacrifice for the one who sacrificed for your sins and gave you eternal life. We are safe in the house of are Father no matter what, the adversary is trying to stop the church. He can’t he has already lost that war when Jesus rose from the dead.
