Martin Luther King Jr. , the Christian beyond the pulpit.

Hi Folks,

It is my pleasure to introduce guest writer Hilary, a giant with the pen and a strong believer who will also play a huge part in some major changes that are about to come to Holyebony. Stay tuned as exciting things are planned for this year. In the meantime, enjoy his reflections on Martin Luther King day. 

Martin Luther King Jr. , the Christian beyond the pulpit.

by Hilary Afeseh Ngwa,  http://afeseh.blogspot.com/

 As we pause at this time of the year to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr, a man who might have been small in physical stature but in many ways towered intellectually and morally high above the average person, I am touched by how he brought his pulpit Christianity to his life without the boundaries of Church buildings. 

Daily Devotion: GOD will make a way

Happy new month!!

The title of this post is also the title to one of my favorite songs actually. It might be old school, may be out of fashion, but its like comfort food. I always fall back on it.

Here it is with lyrics for whoever does not know it:




Great song!!

But do you know where the inspiration for the original lyrics came from?

Particularly the bridge "By a roadway in the wilderness HE leads me, rivers in the desert will I see?"

Its from one of my favorite verses:

Isaiah 43:18-21

¹⁸ “ Do not remember the former things,
Nor consider the things of old.
¹⁹ Behold, I will do a new thing,
Now it shall spring forth;
Shall you not know it?
I will even make a road in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert.
²⁰ The beast of the field will honor Me,
The jackals and the ostriches,
Because I give waters in the wilderness
And rivers in the desert,
To give drink to My people, My chosen.
²¹ This people I have formed for Myself;
They shall declare My praise.

Isn't that powerful? Rivers in the desert. A road in the wilderness - a way where there should not be a way!

Its like those movies - actually I caught the last few minutes of NCIS last night - where the bad guy had his knife to a victim's throat and was just about to slice it. She had given up hope, he thought he had won, and then from out of nowhere, shots ring out, at the very last minute. Suddenly the bad guy is dead, the 'almost victim' is safe and the officer who showed up is a hero.
I think they got inspiration from Isaiah 43 too.

There are many examples in the bible of GOD showing up to be the hero when all hope was lost - we have Joseph in prison, counting his pet roaches, wondering if life would ever change; we have David, wandering in the desert, wondering if he would live long enough to ever be king; we have Moses, set adrift on the Nile, his mother scared to death that he would not live long enough to see his first birthday; we have Esther, appearing before the king, terrified that he would say "off with her head!!".

They all fulfilled their destinies through very dramatic circumstances. I like to think of GOD as the original scriptwriter. And he does it better than all these Holly/Bolly/Nollywood peeps anyways! LOL!

GOD will make a way. Have a blessed day.

Ciao.

Daily Devotional : Fear

I have always thought of fear as a feeling. Because you know, something goes wrong, or you face some uncertainty, and you feel afraid - right? Then I had an experience with fear that went above and beyond a feeling. You know how it is - you are thinking about the situation, worrying, worrying, you go to bed, worrying. You finally fall asleep. But then in the dead of the night, when all is quiet, this 'thing' wakes you up. Its not just worry - its raw undiluted fear. It starts to speak to your mind at that time, and oh, the things it says! Tells you what a miserable failure you are. Tells you how you will not make it, tells you how your situation is irredeemable. Tells you how insignificant you are, how worthless you are. Grinds your self worth and self esteem into the mud. Hmmmm! If ever you are able to go back to sleep, you are discouraged at best, at worst you are terrified! Then I understood - fear is a spirit. Its a devilish, insidious, dark, twisted spirit. And you have to deal with it, the only way you deal with spiritual things - by the word.

When you are being tormented by fear, worry, uncertainty, loss - the unknown, uncertain future, know that you are not alone. GOD is with you. And you have the tools to deal with that horrible spirit.

There are a few major tools to use:

I) Speak the word. There are a few bible verses to use. Shout them out to that spirit. It knows authority when it hears it. It will back off, it has no choice. Which verses?

I Tim 1:7
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind

That is the most common, and frankly effective one. Personalize it. claim it. Say it, believe it. I refuse to own this fear! It is not mine. It is not from GOD, so I reject it. GOD has not given me a spirit of fear!! Hallelujah!!

Instead of fear, go read some verses that remind you of the power and character of GOD Like

a) Psalm 27

and

b) Isaiah 43: 1-7

II) Music: I am a melancholic, a deep feeler - ( if you have no idea what that means, you need to check out the book spirit controlled temperament by Tim Lahaye). I identify really well with the biblical David, because dude knew how to encourage himself in the LORD (I Samuel 30: 6)

How did he do that? With psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Even on days when prayer is hard, there is nothing like a great song with uplifting lyrics to lift your spirits. Nothing at all.

SO try this:




or this:



or even this:



Yes, Whitney Houston. That song can only be a prayer! It has gotten me through many a hard day believe me!!

I am not going to lie, I have a catalog of "songs for the night" (Psalm 42:8), and one day I will share them with you - music so powerful that it literally lifts you up from the depths. Good music - its an amazing tool for spiritual strength!


III)Pray. Pray as much as you can - it can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be. GOD always hears you. HE will never leave you, HE will never forsake you. HE will always love you.

As the word says:

Phillipians 4: 6-7.
6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

IV) Seek help:

Never be afraid or ashamed to seek GODly counsel. We were not made to walk this christian walk alone. Sometimes all you need is somebody to pray with you and you are able to see things from a christian perspective. Seek a GODly person to talk about your fears with and to pray with. Afterall, a problem shared is a problem solved!


Have a wonderful, fear free day.

GOD bless you.

Are there jobs Christians should not do?

So, after my posting on dance, I am sure some of you took a look at the costumes and the erotic nature of some of the dances, and thought, hmmmm, I dunno about all that! I have a very good friend who would walk past the TV when some of those dance shows were on, mutter something about skimpy clothing and erotic routines and walk away in disapproval. And although I love the shows, I am not sure that even if I had the talent and the body for it, that I would either dress like that, or dance like that, just because it would make me intensely uncomfortable!

So, while there are activities that we happily watch and are entertained by, are there jobs that are off limits to Christians? And are we hypocrites if we watch, but do not participate?

There are three main jobs that I am particularly wondering about:

a) Models
Do you remember Ms. California and her comment on marriage being between a man and a woman at the Miss America contest? If so, you will recall that she soon found herself in the center of a maelstrom, as less than “sanctified” pictures of her in varied states of undress suddenly surfaced. She was labeled a hypocrite for her topless pictures, to which she responded:

"I am a Christian and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos," Prejean said in a statement. "The photos of me taken as a teenager have been released surreptitiously to a tabloid website that openly mocks me for me for my Christian faith. I am not perfect and I will never claim to be perfect."

Here is video that summarizes the entire saga.



So are Christianity and lingerie modeling mutually exclusive? Can you be a worship leader on Sunday, and a Victoria secret Angel on Monday?


b) actors/actresses
I am a real fan of the African movie phenomenon (that is another topic entirely!), so I have been out of the loop with Hollywood for a while. Therefore, a few months ago, I decided to try to catch up. So, I went and borrowed a whole bunch of movies and had a movie marathon all by myself. One of the movies I started to watch was “Shakespeare in Love” – thus described:

Shakespeare in Love won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actress (for Gwyneth Paltrow) and Best Supporting Actress (for Judi Dench). It was the first comedy to win the Best Picture award since Annie Hall (1977).

Source

I was astonished to find that the movie was basically soft porn – lots of full frontal nudity by Gwyneth Paltrow, and plenty of inappropriate sexual references. As open minded and liberal as I consider myself to be, I could not watch it to the end. It has almost become a job requirement nowadays that if you consider yourself a serious thespian,you must be able to do some kind of love scene, which requires different stages of undress. Many of the recent best actor/actress awards at the academy awards have often involved nudity and/or sex scenes on the part of the actors involved . Most notable are Halle Berry in Monster’s ball (2001) and Kate Winslet in The Reader (2008).

And its not just a Hollywood thing. African movies have stepped up their game with regards to sex scenes as well. The love scenes in the following:

“the Perfect picture”,



and

“30 days”



among several others are pretty wild by African standards. They are some of my very favorite movies, but I was surprised by the intensity of some of the love scenes.

For "The Perfect picture" love scene, I had to hit the ff button. I was like – dannnnnnngggggggg!!

c) Dancers

Then there are dancers: Much as I love the Latin American dances, I am not sure that I want anybody I am not romantically involved with touching me like that. And as for the professionals, no part of their body is sacred. For instance, watch this Mia Micheal’s routine:

Note: the dance starts around the 2:25 mark.



While she is a fabulously talented choreographer, I am not sure that it is appropriate to have someone's hands all over your butt like that. I don't care what the context is - it just feels wrong. But if you are a dancer, you cannot tell your choreographer that you don't like the butt dance. You do as you are told - period!


We could also talk about some types of entertainers and the pressures they face to sell sex (Beyonce, Britney, Christina, etc), some athletes (female beach volleyball anyone?) and so on.

I have given this issue some thought, and I have concluded that there are certain professions where you have to think of your body as the tool of your trade. Writers have words, painters have brushes and canvas, musicians have their instruments, models, actors, dancers and entertainers have their body. They use it in whatever way they feel is needed to pass their message across – whether the message is to sell lingerie, or to communicate desire. You cannot excel in some of these professions if you have inhibitions about your body, or think of some areas as untouchable. I understand that.

Here is the question though: Does this lack of body inhibition requirement contravene the bible? Is inhibition a christian attribute?

And this verse;

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

Does it imply that we need to be inhibited?


This is how Kirk Cameron interpreted this injunction as an actor in the movie Fireproof. His approach generated a great deal of interest in the secular press:

In Kirk Cameron’s new movie, “Fireproof,” he has to kiss the actress playing his wife. That was a problem. Cameron will not kiss any woman who is not his wife.“I have a commitment not to kiss any other woman,” the former child star of “Growing Pains” told Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford Monday on TODAY in New York. o get around the conflict, the filmmakers employed a bit of movie magic, Cameron explained. They dressed his wife, actress Chelsea Noble, like the movie’s female lead and shot the scene in silhouette. “So when I’m kissing my wife, we’re actually husband and wife honoring marriage behind the scenes,” Cameron said as Gifford and Kotb melted from the romanticism of the moment.

Source

Video here:

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So, is that the way it is supposed to be? Have we gotten used to sin in the guise of entertainment? And if we say – I would never, ever do that, or I would strongly disapprove if my child wanted to be in any of these professions, are we hypocrites if we watch?

Please weigh in.

Ciao!