Category Archives: Apologetics

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Encounters of the Spiritual Kind…

Hello World!!!

Insert Laura Ingalls and Nellie...

I’m fresh off taking my 9-year-old nephew to the V-103 “For Sisters Only” event yesterday…When I first asked him to hang out with his 37-year-old aunt, he was actually excited…until he discovered where I was taking him…As we walked around in the throng of women perusing vendors selling weave products, jewelry, clothing, etc.,  he declared, “They weren’t lying when they said for sisters only.” Then I felt bad…I guess I shouldn’t have taken the boy down there, huh?…It was a sneaky thing to do I admit…I had asked my boyfriend to go too, and he said, “No.” And then he added,”I don’t know any guys that have ever gone there.” I hope I haven’t scarred my nephew for life…Anywho…

Sooo on to the topic of the day…Have you ever tried to go incognito as a Christian? I do from time to time…Not that I’m ashamed of being a Christian or anything but sometimes I want to keep my thoughts to myself and let the events of the day or night unfold unfettered by my world view…Maybe my last sentence doesn’t make sense but I think it will as I continue to write, so continue to read on…So a few weeks back during my L.A. vacay, a friend and I went to a bar one night in Manhattan Beach…Since both of us are kind of homebodies, our intention was just to hang out for a bit so we could say that we hung out in L.A. past midnight and get back to our hotel room within a couple of hours or so…sad, I know, but true…so we put on some print dresses believing that we were going to a kind of neighborhood bar on par with the bar at Bennigan’s or something…we had inquired at our hotel about such a place and thought we had dressed appropriately…We.were.wrong…

As the cab sped away behind us and we walked up to bar, which was on the bottom floor of another hotel, we realized that we may not get past the proverbial “velvet rope” and that we could be stranded…In fact, the guy, looking like “Suave Dave” in his thin black suit, stationed at the front door, literally started looking at us from the soles of our shoes to the crown of our heads…I guess we didn’t make the cut…We weren’t swank enough to hang out with the posh crowd downstairs and he motioned for us to go upstairs with the more casual crowd…It was all good though…Upstairs was an open air bar with a pool in the center…And we still felt like “country goes to city” in our print dresses plus everyone else was white…not that I’ve never been the only black person in a crowd of people different from me before…but let’s keep it real…but when you are in a closed in space with people who are different from you for whatever reason, you never know what the result could be…Just ask my nephew about “For Sisters Only!”

Soo, I’m taking too long to tell this story…let me speed it up…Although I have a man and my friend is on a man fast, no one wants to be the girl in the bar or the club that no dude steps to…And we were afraid that would be the case as no one could probably see past our “Little House on the Prairie” print dresses and my flip flops that I have worn as shower shoes at the gym…(Really, looking back, I was wrong for venturing out past 9 p.m. with some flip flops anyway — particularly at my age…)

But lo and behold, a guy steps to my friend and starts chatting her up and it’s obvious from the animation in his eyes and voice, he is actually interested…I guess in support of his boy, his friend steps to me and starts making conversation…but I sense in his demeanor and tone that he is merely being polite…It’s all good though…as I said, before, I gotta man…As we start talking, it’s clear that dude has some mula…now, keep in mind that I had made a decision to not wear my “christian suit” so I was letting dude talk without saying anything real about myself…Anyway, he told me that he lived on a house on the beach and that he was the president or something like that of some Internet company…Yeah, he was braggin’ a bit but I sensed that he was telling the truth…He told me his boy was from the East Coast and was visiting him for the first time in L.A.

So dude, who looked to be about my age, explains to me that he is bored with his current career and would like to explore developing a Web portal though which different people could find out about different charitable organizations across the world and give to support them…Well that was cool enough that he said that, right? So he asked me what charitable organizations did I like…I muttered, “CARE, World Vision, etc.” I was still drying to maintain my look of “disinterested cool.” Then the heavens opened..well not really, but dude’s eyes expanded and he said, “Are you spiritual or religious?” Inside, I was like, “Man, I’m trying to be incognito…” But the Holy Spirit said, “Share.” So I said, “I guess I’m both…” In less than an hour, dude told me how he wanted to make a difference with his life, how he grew up Catholic but stopped going to church and how L.A. was so fake…I was like, “Really.”

I would like to say that I managed to get my Bible out of my purse and read a few scriptures with him in the middle of the bar but that is not what happened…Leaving my huge purse in the hotel room was probably the only fashionable decision I made that night, and I don’t carry a Bible in my purse anyway…Instead, we had a real conversation and I came out as a Christian…

I don’t know what will happen to dude…Maybe I can find out from my girl…The guy that chatted her up asked for her number…I would like to think that when that guy got home from the bar, he got on his knees and prayed to know Jesus…But I can’t call it…but at least I was faithful, albeit reluctantly, to declare the name of Jesus…And maybe as he keeps having encounters of the spiritual kind, dude will stop chatting up  fake girls in the bar and have a real relationship with Jesus…

I think Jesus was proud of me in my print dress and flip flops…

Any thoughts?

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Who created Cain’s wife and other questions the Bible does not answer…

kinda funny depiction of Adam & Eve...

Hello World!!!

As I said in a previous post, my Bible study class is reading the book of Genesis and apparently, we will go through the entire Bible over the course of several months…

Since I grew up in church, I have read passages in probably most of the books of the Bible over the course of my lifetime, but I’ve never gone through the Bible from start to finish. I’m sure that I will learn volumes although my parents made sure that I had a solid Biblical education along with my academic education.  But I must admit, there are some lingering questions that I’ve had over the years that never seemed to be answered to my satisfaction.

And now that my class is going through the entire Bible, I’m sure those questions will resurface. One of those questions resurfaced during a telephone conversation I had over the weekend. And I had to admit, I didn’t have the answer. It is clearly stated in Genesis that Adam and Eve were created by God. The couple had two sons, Cain and Abel. It is also mentioned that Cain had a wife….well, who created that wife if only Adam and Eve were created by God? Hmmm…something to think about, huh?

Also during the telephone conversation, I was asked why Jesus Christ was called Jesus Christ when the letter J was not existent at the time Jesus Christ lived on earth….I asked my Bible study leader the answer to that question last night, and he said, I think,  that Jesus’ name was originally Yeshua and was translated to Jesus by the Greeks…I plan to ask him to explain that answer in more detail when I go to Bible Study tonight, God willing…

The ages of people in the Old Testament has also puzzled me. In Genesis 5, it is stated that Methuselah, a descendent of Adam, lived to be 969 years old. Shoot, Adam lived to be 930 years old. I didn’t attend Bible College so I pose this question to Bible scholars – Were years determined differently than they are today? If not, it is very hard to believe people lived for hundreds of years when in modern time, humans are blessed to live for even 80 years….

I’m sure more questions will be raised as I continue to study the text and discuss it with the people in my life. But the truth of the matter is that belief in the Bible itself, no matter what the passage, is an exercise in faith…I mean if some random man came up to me on the street today and said, he is the saviour of the world, I would gingerly back away from him and hope he did not chase me down the street. And if one of my girls told me she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit although she was a virgin, I would talk about her behind her back to my other girls. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen… I know what that sick boy’s father meant when he said to Jesus, “Lord I do believe. Help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24) And Jesus healed his son right then. And this Bible verse below also applies to the situation.

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” Hebrews 11:6

Because God is God and we are finite creatures, I imagine there will be questions that will not be answered while we are here on Earth, but I do believe that God will answer those who earnestly seek answers. Aside from all of that, I believe in Jesus Christ, Yeshua, Jehovah, the Prince of Peace, the only Begotten Son, Messiah, the Great Shepherd, the Amen, the Ancient of Days, the Alpha and the Omega and on and on because I’m seen Him at work in my life and in the lives of those around me…

How can I explain the answers to countless prayers…I cannot except I have in faith in God…And how is it anyway that I can get down on my knees and say words out loud in the air or inside of my head and God hears and answers…And how is that sometimes as I sit in church I can feel this joy that wells up inside of me so much that it spills out of my eyes in the form of tears…I cannot except I have in faith in God…and how is it that I’ve known people healed of all sorts of addictions and disorders that threatened to kill them…I cannot except I have faith in God…

I cannot explain the Holy Wars or why people in the name of Jesus have managed to commit crimes against humanity. I cannot explain why some church folk are more judgmental and nasty than the average person walking down the street on any given day. I cannot explain why people have used the Bible to enslave others. I cannot explain why a pastor would flashy a phony badge intending to impersonate an officer when he was stopped for speeding. Ridiculous! Human beings are fallible , Jesus Christ isn’t…

Any thoughts?

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The devil made me do it…

Hello World!!!

Can you believe it? It is almost the third month of 2009 already…It seems like it was just yesterday that I was in our nation’s capital celebrating the inauguration of our 44th president! To God be the Glory…

But y’all know that to every yin, there is a yang. So if there is God, there must be the adversary also known as the devil…I love thinking about God…well sometimes I don’t like thinking about God actually – particularly when it comes to something that I want to do when God has clearly told me that I shouldn’t do it…But I really never like thinking about the devil…just thinking about the adversary and his wiles make me scared actually although I know that God is infinitely more powerful than His adversary…but I’ve discovered that to not think about the devil is to give him more power because he exists…yes, he does…

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour. 1 Peter 5:8

My father says that one of satan’s best tools is convince us that he is like the tooth fairy…that he is a figment of our imagination and doesn’t exist at all…that way he can wreak havoc in our lives and we don’t even know the source…if you don’t believe me, think back to when you have tried to do right…whether it be attending church on a regular basis, getting up every morning to have devotion, praying each day, having a testimony, etc…Didn’t it seem that there was some force that tried to prevent you from accomplishing your goal? I think that force is the adversary…

I’m an obsessive thinker…at any given moment, the same thought will be traveling through my mind over and over and over again…sometimes when I have experience this, it’s just me being me I think…but sometimes, when the thought is destructive and leads me into constant worrying and fear, I think that is a thought planted by the real evildoer (Thank God, we have ushered in change!!!)

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.    2 Timothy 1:17

This is a verse that I say to myself over and over again when an obsessive thought whirs in my mind…There are several verses in the Bible in which God tells us it is not His will that we worry and be in fear…Here is another verse that calms me down…

 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him,  and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:5-6

Because I know the Father, He is constantly leading me, and I can trust that He is leading although I have no idea where I am going…Here’s another way of looking at it…In my finite human wisdom, I can’t possibly know everything and everybody and whether this person or that person intends to hurt me or not…but God does…and IF you have given your life to Him, He has got your back….and your front and your sides and over and under you for that matter…surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…Praise Jesus!

My favorite apologist, C.S. Lewis, wrote a fictional account of a demon and his apprentice and the ways they tried to influence a newly converted Christian man to do wrong…think of the whole angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other shoulder scenario. I read “The Screwtape Letters” some years ago, and it is a brilliant depiction of what could be going in the spiritual dimension.

I don’t know much about the Minister Joyce Meyer, but I have been reading about her book, “Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind” on the Internet…I found an excerpt of the book in which the struggle of a married couple is described. The devil planted destructive thought patterns in each of their minds based on their individual backgrounds, personalities and fears, and their marriage was suffering as a result…Of course, that was the adversary’s goal…

In fact, I sometimes gage whether I am in the will of God by how much opposition I experience in a particular situation…A few years ago, I wrote an article about the book, “The Prayer of Jabez: Breaking Through to the Blessed Life,” by Bruce Wilkinson. I even met the man. Although it was a religious article, I wasn’t working at a religious publication. Anyway, my boss was…well to put it nicely – let’s just say we didn’t get along…While she was reading through the article, she yelled at me from her office, “When you pray the Prayer of Jabez, do you pray for a new boss?” She cackled after she finished her statement…I am saved, but a few choice words ran through my mind (let’s just say one word rhymed with witch)…And then she gave me a hard time about the number of sources I had in the article and other stuff…it was opposition for sure…but the article was published as God intended…

Anyway, I could say more, but I won’t…

Any thoughts?

P.S. One way to defeat the adversary is to praise God…Here is one of my fave praise songs!!! This a great song for when you’re “going through.”