Willie Pollard - The 9th Inning

Interesting little story which compares Christianity to a baseball game...definitely worth the time and these guys are doing a good work! They are on youtube under sdmemorylane and do old-time Gospel music.

Working behind the Scenes

There once was an elderly gentleman who was a very good shoemaker. He had wanted to become a minister but the way had never opened up. He was the friend of a young divinity student; and when one day the young man was called to his first charge the old man asked of the young preacher a special favor...In a nutshell his request was to always make the young mans shoes when he went into the pulpit. The young minister agreed and the old cobbler spent the rest of his days making shoes for the young man. The moral to this story? Sometimes the greatest work done for Gods kingdom is done behind the scenes.

Monastery on a cliff (joke)

There was a monastery perched high on a cliff. The only way to reach it was by riding in a basket, which several monks hauled up to the top.

The ride was steep, and to those who visited, it was terrifying.

One visitor was extremely nervous. Halfway up the ascent, he saw that the rope holding the basket was a bit frayed. He frantically asked the monk next to him how frequently the rope was changed.

After a brief silence, the monk replied, “Whenever it breaks.”

God Story #9 (Prayer Foils a Bank Robbery!!!)

A woman at a check-cashing store in Indianapolis had a rather unorthodox way of foiling a potentially dangerous (and fatal) situation. She used prayer. When Gregory Smith, a 23 year-old male, attempted to rob the store and pulled a gun on clerk Angela Montez, Ms. Montez's first reaction was to start praying. At first taken aback, then the robber began crying. He explained to Ms. Montez that he was an ex-servicemen with a young baby and could not find work. "We're going to be homeless," he said. "I've tried everything." Eventually, he reached into his pocket and the clerk became frightned beause he thought she was going to be shot. However, he said "It's okay" and emptied the chamber and gave her all the bullets. After talking and praying together for about 40 minutes without any disturbances, Smith allegedly left after taking $20 and Montez’s cellphone. The next day Smith turned himself in after his mother had seen him on T.V. and urged him to do it. An awesome story indeed, and we should pray for that criminal to become a Christian and to get on the straight and narrow.

Two wrongs don't make a right but two Wrights made an airplane! (Quote of the Week)

I heard that quote of the other day and just thought it was really neat. When you do the right things then the right things will happen for you. Too often in my life I had to learn this the hard way. Reliance on God, Dedication, determination, perseverance, and the like will help you to become the person you need to be and to find what you are looking for in life.

Letting inmates keep cats as pets

Although this story isn't necessarily Christian in nature, it is still a good story regardless. Indiana State Prison has been, for some time now, letting inmates keep cats as pets and the officials there are quite surprised by the results. In many cases, the inmates morale is much better and fights, assaults, and other general acts of misbehavior are very starkly down. Kudos to Indiana State Prison for their out-of-the-box thinking. Perhaps this is something that other prisons should adopt as well.

God Story #8

When one reads about the Apostle Paul in Acts and how he was converted, one truly does believe in the miraculous. An important thing to remember is that there are conversion stories in this day and age that are just as powerful. Michael "Bull" Roberts is a former Canadian drug lord with one such testimony. Christian Week recounts his story:

BRAMPTON, ON—The extravagant wealth and power former gang member Michael "Bull" Roberts had as one of Canada's wealthiest drug lords reads likes a fantasy. But the road which led him there is the stuff of nightmares.

"I grew up in a very abusive home," says Roberts, who cuts an imposing six-foot, four-inch, 450 pound figure. "My father was a very strict man, very hard. I was bullied at school, and then at home I was physically and sexually abused."

Roberts ended up in foster care. After witnessing his foster father's murder, Roberts hit the streets. Within months he was a "full blown drug and alcohol addict" with a long list of trafficking and assault charges.

When some acquaintances overdosed, police charged Roberts with three counts of first degree murder. At 16 Roberts was tried as an adult and found "criminally insane." He's lost count of how much time he has spent in prisons and mental institutions since then.

When he joined a gang, Roberts says he finally found a "family." A meteoric rise through the gang's ranks followed.

"I became one of the wealthiest drug lords in Canada," he says. "I had stables, boats and every kind of ride you could think of. I was distributing cocaine and crack all over Alberta. I was turning over millions of dollars a week."

But last summer, a partner sent 30 men to kill him. After a cruel beating, Roberts was left for dead, his knees, legs, arms, hands and skull broken. Permanent spinal cord damage means he still walks with a cane.

After his gang ties prompted a release from hospital, Roberts found himself alone in a hotel room facing the news his home had been burned to the ground.

"All I wanted was revenge," Roberts says. "But I was so broken I couldn't even get myself to the bathroom. I fell on the floor and [wet] myself. I spent hours there. I was in extreme physical pain and emotionally spent.

"That was my breaking point. I just snapped. I just couldn't fight no more. I looked up at God and said, 'Fine! You win! I'm done!'

"I just kept praying to Him out of anger, and the next thing I knew I was asking for forgiveness. I said, 'Please, God I just want to feel love!' I just burst into tears. I cried for hours on that floor.

"I really feel like God came into the room that day. I really felt like I was forgiven. I told Him I'd give my life to Him. I'd let Him run it His way."

Through the yellow pages, Roberts found the name of a local pastor who then put him in touch with pastor Ted Brown of Kennedy Road Tabernacle in Brampton. Roberts arrived in Ontario a few weeks later with "nothing but a pair of pyjama pants and a t-shirt.

"My first meeting with Mike was pretty intimidating," says Brown, referring to both Robert's size and the tattoos covering him from head to foot. "Mike is still rough around the edges but…I've seen a man who struggles with unforgiveness—toward the people who hurt him and who he's hurt—learning to forgive."

Roberts now writes the church's "Behind the Walls" prison newsletter. He also talks to school and church groups.

"I've taken Mike with me to meet with some young men who are close to being in trouble with the law or have already been charged," says Brown. "Mike speaks clearly and patiently to them hoping to direct them on the right path.

"I believe Mike has impacted lives for the kingdom, and in the days and years ahead, he'll impact many more."

Roberts says, "I could go back tomorrow and be that drug lord again, but I've given up all those riches because I want to be with God.

"I know where 'the beast' in me was created—and now I have my heart back. God gave me back the heart of a child and the dreams I had as a kid."

We Could Learn a Lot From...

The Children's Miracle Network
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One of our local convenience stores recently started selling Children's Miracle Network stickers for donations of $1, $5, or $25. After reading up on the Children's Miracle Network and some of the things that they are doing, I was glad to see the walls of this store being filled up with these stickers of people's donations.

Some info:

*founded in 1983 by the Osmond family and John Schneider (played Bo Duke on the Dukes of Hazzard)

*raises more than $250 Million dollars each year. The funds are then provided to a network of 170 hospitals to help provide for the needs of the children who are patients there.

*Funds are raised mostly through the use of corporate partners, such as Walmart, Dairy Queen, Domino Sugar, Phi Mu, Church's Chicken, Zeta Beta Tau, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi and Marriott Hotels to name a few.

This excellent organization exemplifies the biblical concept of "when you give you do it unto me" (Matthew 25:40)

Remembering 9/11

Ministering to the unemployed

Because of the state of this economy, there are a lot of people who are unemployed. These tips won't necessarily help you find a new job, but they will help you keep a positive attitude along the way to finding a new job.

Affirmation 1: Put yourself in a state of gratitude. Thank God for everything, even if it's just for a beautiful day.

Affirmation 2: If you are a Christian or other religious person, always be reminded that God is with you.

Affirmation 3: Remember that God wants you to find a job and will help you to find it. Pray for your job situation.

Affirmation 4: Be on the lookout for Messengers. These are people or events that come your way to help you in your process of becoming employed once more. Have a clear picture of the next job you want and get it in writing for yourself.

Affirmation 5: Remember to bless and love others. It does say in scripture to love your neighbor as yourself, so put that into practice. It will also help you keep a positive attitude.

Affirmation 6: Use your talents.

Affirmation 7: Have people pray for you. One can never have too much prayer in their lives including you.

NOTE: this is only a very abbreviated list. For the full article, go to http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Prayer/2009/05/Seven-Great-Affirmations-for-the-Unemployed.aspx?nlsource=10&ppc=73871&source=NEWSLETTER&utm_campaign=Inspiration&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_source=NL

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Theologian, Man of God

As we approach the 70th anniversary of what would become World War II when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 we would do well to remember Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was indeed a great theologian and even more importantly a great and principled Man of God.

Indeed, from a very young age, Mr. Bonhoeffer had a strong desire to enter the ministry. Expected to follow his father into psychiatry, Bonhoeffer surprised and dismayed his parents when he decided by age of fourteen to become a theologian and later a pastor. When his older brother told him not to waste his life in such a "poor, feeble, boring, petty, bourgeois institution as the Church", 14-year-old Dietrich replied: "If what you say is true, I shall reform it!"

Bonhoeffer did indeed go into ministry and become a theologian. He held several teaching posts in America; one was in the Harlem area as well. He held a teaching post at Union Theological Seminary in New York and several teaching posts in his native Germany as well.

Most importantly, however, was the stands he took against the evils of Nazism. He was one of the founding members of a covenant with other pastors called the Pastors Emergency League, which was to resist the Nazi-sponsored state church. They later would establish the Confessing Church, which did basically the same thing as well. After a brief stint in London, Bonhoeffer would establish an underground theological seminary for those wishing to enter the Confessing Church. Unfortunately, his teaching credential with the University of Berlin was revoked in 1936 as he was deemed an "enemy of the state". Bonhoeffer's efforts for the underground seminaries also included securing the needed funds, and he found a great benefactor in Ruth von Kleist-Retzow. In the dire times that he found himself in, his former students and their wives would take refuge in her Pomeranian estate and Bonhoeffer himself was a frequent guest. By August 1937, Himmler outlawed the education of Confessing church pastoral candidates and In September 1937, the Gestapo closed the seminary at Finkenwalde and by November arrested 27 pastors and former students. It was around this time that Bonhoeffer published his best-known book, The Cost of Discipleship, a study on the Sermon on the Mount in which he attacked "cheap grace" as a cover for ethical laxity and preached "costly grace".

Bonhoeffer spent the next two years secretly travelling from one eastern German village to another to conduct "seminary on the run" supervising of his students, most of whom were working illegally in small parishes. He was banned from Berlin by the gestapo in 1938. It was at this time that Union Theological Seminary in New York extended for him to come back to the states, which he did for a brief time. However, Bonhoeffer felt that he had made the wrong decision. He wrote to fellow pastor Reinhold Niebuhr: "I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the recon­struction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people...Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security."

After arriving on the last scheduled steamer to Germany, he continued making brave stands for his underground seminary and churches. He would eventually pay the ultimate price and be executed on April 9, 1945.

I believe that this man was greatly used of God. There was one account from one of the camp doctors on the date of Dr. Bonhoeffer's execution that is particularly telling: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer ... kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”

The Painting of Georges Rouault (3 of 3)

Here is the third and final installment of Georges Rouault's paintings of the Christ figure.

The Painting of Georges Rouault (2 of 3)

This is the second installment of Georges Rouault's paintings of the Christ figure. Enjoy!

The Painting of Georges Rouault (1 of 3)

I'm going to devote the next few posts to some of the works of French painter Georges Rouault, who lived from 1871-1958 in Paris. He is noted for his unique portrayals of Christ.

We Could Learn a Lot From....

Charles Stanley
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For those of you who may not have heard of Charles Stanley, he is has been a long-time pastor of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta and is the founder of In Touch Ministries. He is not a perfect man, as no one is, but his insights into the Christian faith have helped countless people in their growth and maturity. Several of his quotes include the following:

Only God knows fully what is required for wholeness because only God knows fully what it means to be whole, perfect, and complete. Only God knows what is missing in our lives because only God sees the total picture.

All of our needs are secondary to our need to accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, to be born again spiritually, and to live in right relationship with God our Father.

True contentment lies not in having, but in knowing---of knowing that you are accepted, loved, forgiven, and valued in spite of what you may or may not have in your hands or surrounding you.

God wants a walking-and-talking relationship with you. Your appearance, your status before others, and your performance matter little to God. He is concerned about the state of your heart and your innermost desires for eternal things.

Shirley Goodnest and her daughter Marcy...

I read a really interesting article written by Max Lucado recently. He was discussing the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and the ministry it performs to Christian believers every day.

When you place your faith in Christ, Christ places his Spirit before, behind, and within you. Not a strange spirit, but the same Spirit: the parakletos. Everything Jesus did for his followers, his Spirit does for you. Jesus taught; the Spirit teaches. Jesus healed; the Spirit heals. Jesus comforted; his Spirit comforts. As Jesus sends you into new seasons, he sends his counselor to go with you.

God treats you the way one mother treated her young son, Timmy. She didn't like the thought of Timmy walking to his first-grade classroom unaccompanied. But he was too grown-up to be seen with his mother. "Besides," he explained, "I can walk with a friend." So she did her best to stay calm, quoting the Twenty-third Psalm to him every morning: "Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life..."

One school day she came up with an idea. She asked a neighbor to follow Timmy to school in the mornings, staying at a distance, lest he notice her. The neighbor was happy to oblige. She took her toddler on morning walks anyway.

After several days Timmy's friend noticed the lady and the child.

"Do you know who that woman is who follows us to school?"

"Sure," Timmy answered. "That's Shirley Goodnest and her daughter Marcy."

"Who?"

"My mom reads about them every day in the Twenty-third Psalm. She says, 'Shirley Goodnest and Marcy shall follow me all the days of my life.' Guess I'll have to get used to them."
You will too. God never sends you out alone. Are you on the eve of change? Do you find yourself looking into a new chapter? Is the foliage of your world showing signs of a new season? Heaven's message for you is clear: when everything else changes, God presence never does. You journey in the company of the Holy Spirit, who "will teach you and will remind you of everything I have told you" (John 14:26 NLT).



You see, the Holy Spirit has a very, very important ministry. The Holy Spirit convicts unbelievers of their need to become Christians, convicts believers of sin in their lives, and intercedes for the Christian when he or she prays. Thanks be to God for sending His counselor the Holy Spirit!

Omarosa headed to Seminary!

Wow...I just read that Omarosa is now heading to study at a United Theological Seminary in Dayton, OH to become a Pastor. Known for her villianous ways and antics on reality T.V. shows, she has more recently been a goodwill ambassador and has done work for the homeless and poor in Haiti. According to Ivan Hicks, the school's associate dean for African-American studies, this reputation she has for both good and bad will help her as a minister because people will be able to relate to her. It's interesting that she has chosen this route as I myself did not even know that she was a Christian. However, we must remember that God has used many imperfect people before and can use the "foolish things of this world to confound the wise." (1Corinthians 1:27) I wish her all the best and my thoughts and prayers go out to her.

Unwanted Children in the World

Our earth has well over six billion inhabitants. When you consider the magnitude of such a large population, it could be easy to doubt whether one baby is as valuable as the other. While I don't usually post on such hot button issues, we as human beings need to consider that the attitude that not everyone is equally important is the WRONG attitude, and I believe that we need more programs encouraging adoption instead of abortion. Consider the following scenarios:



1. A minister and his wife, who live in extremely modest conditions, discover they are expecting their fifteenth child. Considering their poverty and the excessive world population, is this baby needed?

2. A young man is victim to a number of terrible health problems, and his wife has tuberculosis. Of their four children, one is blind, one has died, one is deaf, and one, like his mother, also has tuberculosis. Now the woman finds out that she is pregnant again. Surely this is an unneeded baby, is it not?

3. As the result of an awful rape by a white man, a thirteen year-old black girl is pregnant. If you were her parents, would you recommend that she endure the risky and emotionally traumatic pregnancy to bring the child of a rapist into the world?

4. In the midst of a society where sexual propiety is regarded as essential, a teenage girl is pregnant. Her betrothed knows that he is not the father of the baby, and he will share in her condemnation if he does not reject her. Does the world need this baby?


Now, all of these situations are very, very difficult and heart-wrenching situations. Can you imagine what each of these individuals must have went through and how much sleep they lost at night? My heart truly would go out to these people, and abortion definitely could be one of the options in each of these situations, but is it the BEST OPTION? If we take a closer look at each of these situations, we would realize that abortion is not always the best option. In scenario #1, if abortion is used, we have just terminated the baby who would become John Wesley, one of the greatest evangelists of the eighteenth century. In the second scenario, we have just deprived the world of composer Ludwig von Beethoven. In scenario #3 we have just lost Ethel Waters, who will inspire millions as a truly great gospel musician. And what of the fourth scenario? Well, in scenario #4 we have just deprived the world of our Lord and Savior Himself, Jesus Christ.

I believe that there is a place for abortion, and I do not believe that violence such as what happened to George Tiller is the option either. However, I do believe that abortion should be a last resort and adoption should be encouraged in every circumstance possible. God bless all of you, and good night.

Looking Heavenward (Joke)

The temporary Sunday School teacher was struggling to open a combination lock on the supply cabinet. She had been told the combination, but couldn't quite remember it.

She went to the pastor's study and asked for help. The pastor came into the room and began to turn the dial.

After the first two numbers he paused and stared blankly for a moment.Finally he looked serenely heavenward and his lips moved silently.

Then he looked back at the lock, and quickly turned to the final number, and opened the lock.

The teacher was amazed. "I'm in awe at your faith, pastor," she said.

"It's really nothing," he answered. "The number is on a piece of tape on the ceiling."

Thanks for the ice!

The other day I was shopping at Alco, which is a chain of lesser-known discount stores. A woman that I have known only casually came up to me and proceeded to hand me ten dollars. After seeing the look of confusion on my face, she said "Ice, Vaden. You got me some ice last week, and I appreciated it and I am paying you back." I was surprised because I just barely recalled the incident but it brought home for me something very interesting. Once again, I feel validation for living a way of life where you do good for others. It's very cathartic, It's very Christian, it's good karma, or it's just a good thing to do...whatever you call it, your life is a lot more fulfilled if you look out for the other person and their needs as well!