Tag Archives: Lil Wayne

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Lil Wayne Almost Become a Christian Rapper & Other Reasons Why Christians Should Never Stop Evangelizing…

lil-wayne-book

Hello World,

I recently read an article about Lil Wayne’s new book Gone ‘Til November: A Journal of Rikers Island in which the prolific rapper chronicles the eight months he spent in jail in 2010 as a result of gun charges. According to the USA Today article “Seven Things We Learned from Lil Wayne’s ‘Gone ‘Til November,'”

4. He considered turning to Christian rap… briefly. 

In addition to a landslide of fan mail, Wayne also received a compelling letter from a church, urging him to use his artistry to spread the gospel. And for a moment, Wayne considered it. “I would truly have the power of having pop culture turn to God,” he wrote. “I would have straight killers in church every Sunday.”

But later on, the rapper said he had an epiphany that he was where he was supposed to be in his artistic journey — at least for the moment.

Although, Lil Wayne ultimately decided not to become a Christian rapper, I applaud the church that 1. paid enough attention to pop culture to know that Lil Wayne was in jail (0r even who he is) 2. took his salvation seriously enough to reach out him at what probably was his lowest point…And although he may not have turned his life over to God at this point, a seed was obviously planted and God can make it bloom in His own time…

It was a joyous occasion in the A when Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane who had served three years in an Indiana federal penitentiary was released earlier this year…I wonder if any church or any individual Christian thought to reach out to him for Christ when he was locked up…I certainly didn’t…

So wanna know a secret? I’m not big on evangelizing…I’ve been around Christians all of my life, and I became a Christian when I was a teenager but the evangelism piece has always scared me…I remember times when I was a kid I would go along with my father and a group from the church who would knock on doors and tell people about Jesus Christ. I enjoyed that mostly because I liked to see how other people lived, and I enjoy people watching so it was an opportunity to see people up close in their natural habitats so to speak…I think the last time I did that I was in my early 20s….but I would be hard pressed to do that now…I’m not shy about the fact that I’m a Christian but as far as saying the words, “Have you considered giving your life to Jesus Christ?” or something similar doesn’t roll off my tongue so easily…I will give you an example why…

I remember once in my early 20s, I said something like that to a girl who I met in the gym. She was a kind of popular underground singer in Atlanta but she seemed to be going through some things at the time and I told her how the Lord was working in my life. Incidentally, I told her how I would never go to this one concert venue The Tabernacle (Check out a post I wrote about The Tabernacle – Should Beyoncé and Jay Z Have Bought a Converted Church Mansion?) in the A because it used to be a church and how a place that had been dedicated to uplifting the Lord was now being desecrated….Well, the devil is busy because shortly after that conversation, I was given a free ticket to see Jill Scott, one of my favorite artists, at the Tabernacle, and you know I went…Chile, that singer just about the first person I saw up in there…my testimony on behalf of the Lord was literally shot to hell…

All of that to say, I’m not a holy rolly type of Christian…I enjoy much of the secular world, and I enjoy the Christian world too…Thank God my husband is the same way…We kick it on Saturday wherever we find ourselves and we kick it in church on every Sunday too…I remember when I was a little girl telling my parents that if every day would be Sunday in Heaven like that old gospel song “Walk Around Heaven All Day”suggests, I just want to stay here…LOL…They laughed too…I pretty much know I don’t always live up to the ideals I profess although I’m much better than I used to be…and I don’t cloister myself around Christian culture either, but that is another discussion for another day…

But despite my ability to navigate the secular and the saved worlds, every morning, I get on my knees and worship God in prayer because knowing Him is my only salvation. As the old saints say, He is my rock and my shield…And in His word, He says…

“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

So even though I can be a hypocrite and I will never be the type of Christian who wants to be in church every day, I’m going to open my mouth (and not just write) and tell somebody (and they don’t have to be famous either) about Jesus sometime soon…

Any thoughts?

 

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Did You Hear About the Pastor That Was Fired After Attending a Rick Ross Concert?!

Hello World

When I read this story on Americapreachers.com “Pastor Fired After Attending a Rick Ross Concert,” I knew I had to blog about it…Apparently, the deacons at Mt. Salem Baptist Church in North Carolina discovered that the youngest pastor in their 109-year history, Pastor Rodney Wills, 26, attended a Rick Ross concert on a Saturday night. The next morning he showed up at church only to find that his parking sign and his name on his office had been been removed…OUCH!

What went down here is my worst nightmare…I am a real Christian. By that I mean, I have trusted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior…I pray about just about everything…I read the Bible pretty regularly although I could probably read longer passages… You can find me in church every Sunday morning (although late…) I attend Bible Study…I pretty much do what is expected for Christians…but I also am probably not the traditional Christian in that I have some “worldly ways” I guess…I’ve had a life-sized poster of Tupac Shakur on my office wall since I was in my ’20s…I don’t have an iPod, but if I did, you would hear anything from Yolanda Adams to the Geto Boys…And there is more I could share, but I won’t…the point is…I’m not nor will I ever be a holy roller..All that being said, I do recognize that when you have increased responsibility for whatever reason (whether you’re in the church or in the world), you have to conduct yourself differently…For example, I am a teacher at L.A. Fitness, this means I must be fit…This means I have to be more fit than the people I teach…One of my biggest pet peeves is an out-of-shape fitness instructor!  And the Bible addresses this principle too…

“Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” James 3:1

I asked my father, Dr. Denzil D. Holness, who has been a pastor of Central Christian Church in Atlanta for over 30 years, what he thought about it. He agreed that the young pastor did not make the best decision, but the deacons should have talked to him first before unceremoniously firing him without talking to him and giving him a second chance…However, I forgot to tell my father that the pastor had been spotted at a Lil Wayne concert nine months ago by some youth and young adults (Sidebar question: I wonder if these youth and young adults are members of Mt. Salem Baptist Church? If so, how are they going to tell on the pastor if they are there themselves? Hmm…)

Now that I’m a Christian author, I must admit I am more careful about my actions because the devil is real…Even though you may have innocent motives, he has a way of twisting situations to make you look guilty…I don’t think there is anything wrong with enjoying rap music as a Christian, but maybe, you should give up certain environments where some rap music is played because the situation could be misconstrued…

To sum it up, I feel sorry for the pastor, but I understand the actions of the deacons…And at the end of the day, all thing work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose…If this pastor has been called by God to be a pastor, God will use this situation to grow this young man up…I can say stuff like this now since I will be 40 years old next month…YIKES…Did I just say that?

Any thoughts?

 

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Random Ramblings aka I didn’t have a topic but bear with me…

Hello World!!!

As I stated in my title, I don’t have a specific topic, but that’s okay…I think you will be entertained by the random collective of thoughts that have entered my mind lately…at the very least, you will feel sorry for me and perhaps leave a comment to make my day 🙂

1. Just to get it out of the way…What grade would you give President Obama on his first 100 days? Uh duh, if you compare him to our former president, that would be a high “A!” However, financial guru Clark Howard, who truly seems like a nice man, has criticized the Obama administration for its continuing involvement in bailing out GM. Yesterday, he asked his listeners what they want to happen with GM since we are now part owners of the company through our tax dollars…

2. Do y’all think the Craigslist killer’s fiancee had any idea that her man sought the erotic services of women on Craigslist not to mention what he did to them once they hooked up…To be fair, the medical student who had planned to get married in August hasn’t been convicted of the crime, but all of this has got me thinking…When you’re in a relationship with someone, can you really be completely fooled by that person…I mean you may not know that you’re man has a gambling problem for instance, but you wonder why he disappears so much…I briefly dated this old, married man in college…Of course, I was unaware that he was married and once I discovered that, it was over…But even before I discovered that, I could tell he was lying about his age…If you and your girl both sport Jheri curls in your high school prom picture, you were not born in the 7os….

3. A subscriber to this blog (yes, I actually have a few subscribers) said that she notices that black men (and she is black) don’t bother to hold the door open for her and other women while white men or men from other cultures do…she asked me to write about this phenomenon so I decided to pay attention and see if she had a point…I noticed that some men do and some men don’t, but I didn’t notice that one group was any more likely to hold the door open for me…what are your thoughts?

4. Would you think less of a Christian person if you saw him or her get tipsy at a party every now and then? Is it wrong for Christians to drink period? A little champagne never hurt anybody…

5. Should the “swine flu” be called the “Mexican flu” in deference to Jewish people and Muslims?

6. Is it possible to really fall in love more than once in your lifetime?

7. I will have an extended post about this next month, but in the meantime, what do you think of pre-marital sex for Christians? Is it really that bad? Is it just an antiquated Biblical notion clearly not meant for people who have waited well into their ’30s to get married…(Stop looking at me…)

8. Were y’all aware that Rev. Al and Warren Ballentine will be back on the radio in Atlanta as of today? However, their programs will now be broadcast on AM rather than FM…on 1380 WAOK to be exact…that’s good news! It’s soo not true that black people only want to listen to R&B all day long as a radio exec recently told me.

9. Is anyone else a fan of Lil Wayne? I know he seems crazy, but in some sort of impish way, he is cool to death…

10. Does size really matter? If your man presented you with a little bitty engagement ring, what would you do? This was a hot topic discussion among my girls a couple of weeks ago…I don’t have to have a huge rock, but semi-huge would suffice…I would rather have a nice house than a huge rock…But TRUST and BELIEVE, that does not mean I would be happy with a simple gold band…Would it be okay to go behind his back and exchange the stone if it was too small…Steve Harvey was talking about this topic as well…Have y’all read his book? What do you think?

Any thoughts?

P.S. Doesn’t Lil Wayne look like somebody’s baby boy desperately trying to be hard in this pic? Goodness, maybe I’m maternal after all…And I also included a video for his song with Babyface, “Get Too Comfortable.” Face can make anything sound good…