He Has the Last Say-So!

When I was pregnant with my son, I was feeling condemned but I also felt overwhelming change on the horizon and the uncertainty of my future concerned me. There was a song on the local gospel station by an artist by the name of Kim Rutherford called "Last Say So". I was concerned but comforted by the lyrics that said "Our God stands alone and He takes care of His own." It goes on to say "He allows things to run their course, have no fear. God is in control." I knew that my life was such a mess that something had to give and I could feel it. I just prayed that God would protect my two beautiful babies and me. Little did I know that within a matter of 10 months I would be in a homeless shelter with my two children. I was by no means where I should've been in my relationship with the Lord but I had this confidence: that no matter what God would not forsake us! Others, including family members, friends,church people had forsaken us but I had an unexplainable peace. I first became homeless in central Ohio and I figured that anytime my children and I could be without a place to call home in a city where I had so-called friends and family members (who were in actuality nothing more than relatives, I'll elaborate in a later post)that it was time for us to leave. I had spent some time in Southern California in the early 2000's and longed to return. I longed for years to return there to live and raise my children. It was such a strong desire that I actually felt like there was a magnet in my chest that was drawing me in that direction.

So on what I thought was a whim but was actually the Hand of God, I called my dad who didn't raise me and who had never been dependable or reliable on any level.
My parents divorced when I was 5 or 6 years old because my father simply decided that he didn't want to be married anymore. But he ran from paying child support to the point that for a full seven years of my childhood my mother, brothers and I didn't know if he was dead or alive! However, for some divine reason I called him because I knew he had relatives in Southern California and although I didn't know these people, I figured that if I could just get a helping hand from someone, anyone then I could get on my feet and be successful. I had no doubt about that. Well, he said he had a niece out there and he wired money for me and my kids to leave and go out to California. We got out to California and we lived with my dad's niece, my cousin for three months and then she kicked me out and we ended up in a shelter in Southern California. I could've broken down and wallowed in self-pity but I understood one thing, God had me and that I was being made. This was my "boot-camp" experience to make me a true soldier for Christ.

For too long I had made the horrible mistake of just settling. My motivations were all twisted and messed up. I spent years trying to please other people never realizing until this "boot camp" experience that people will never be pleased and that God's plan and purpose for my life is wrapped up in Him and honoring Him with my life not trying to please people especially close family members. If I had never gone through that experience I would probably be dead or crazy! Because I was leaving so far outside of God's will for my life that I could've easily been destroyed by the poor choices that I was making. I probably even deserved death and destruction, Oh but God! My Abba, in His wonderful, infinite mercy spared my life, my mind and kept my family intact through all of it! And guess what? It's not over! I'm still being made but I am so grateful for His grace and mercy that saw me through that experience of being a homeless, single mother. We have a home now, thank God! I have a car and a job that I love and two beautiful, healthy children and it is all thanks to God! It compels me to seek Him even more! I can not more effectively articulate just how much I love Him! He brought me through what was one of the lowest points of my life. I now understand that regarding everything else that concerns me, He has the very last say so! Not people, not situations, not circumstances (I know this isn't proper sentence structure but...) absolutely nothing outside of Christ determines my worth, my purpose and most of all my reality in Christ!

I'm in tears now and I feel like shouting! I just might get up and do little dance but be abundantly blessed!

Mediocrity hates greatness...be great and let the haters hate!

God is Faithful & You Can Certainly Trust Him...

But that's not the question! The question is are YOU faithful to God and can He trust YOU to trust Him? Can He trust you to be faithful after He answers your prayers and blesses you? Can He trust you to cling to Him with the understanding that He is the True and Living God who delivers you and who will supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory through Christ Jesus? People are always talking about trusting God, even me! But God has never done anything for you not to trust Him. Can you be trusted to do as you have been mandated which is to love your neighbor as you love yourself? And to do to others what you would have them do to you? God is faithful and He is bound by the honor of His name. The name that is above all names! But what about you? Is there any honor in you?

Often times, and it is quite ironic, we jack things up on our own or we defy God by the choices we make and then when all hell breaks loose we want to blame God! How silly is that? You mess things up but somehow God is to blame? Yes, He is omnipotent, omniscient, and all of that but what are you? Who are you? Whose are you? To whom do you belong? The beautiful thing about God is that He graciously gave us the will to choose, so if your choices are out of sync for His plan and purpose for your life then that is a "you" issue, simply meaning, you are the problem not Him! God will allow it to work for your good if you let Him otherwise you'll be stuck in life's inertia and thereby sentenced to a life of mediocrity. Who wants that? The Lord said in Revelation that He will spew the lukewarm out of His mouth and mediocrity is nothing more than being lukewarm! Mediocre people are also miserable people. I knew that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life as a miserable, mediocre person so I made a conscious decision about 6 years ago that some changes had to be made. My life had become a train wreck! But I knew that the mess I was in was a mess that I created and I had to get my life right especially since at that time I had my daughter. Certain events in life will help you to progress and grow if you allow them. Becoming a parent inspired me to get my act together because I didn't want to mess up my children's lives. As it is being homeless for two years with them in tow was difficult enough to watch them live through. But I was the the reason we were homeless, I depended too much on other people and not enough on God. If I had put my trust in God instead of putting my trust in people I am certain that homelessness and poverty would've never become a reality for me and my children.

Stop questioning God and check yourself out. The whole purpose of life is praise and progression. You were created to be a vessel of praise and worship unto God, in EVERYTHING you do and in all that you are! Secondly, if your life is not a journey of progression but rather you have gotten in one place and camped out there then you are not progressing and you are either stagnant or regressing. You are here in this world to become a better person than you were yesterday, last week, last month, last year. If you can genuinely, in your self evaluation say that your life has not changed and that you are the same as you were five years ago and you're still making the same mistakes that you were making five years ago, it's a problem somewhere and the problem is not God! What are you doing with the gifts, talents, abilities and resources that God has given you? Where are you in your relationship with Him? God did not create you to be a victim so if anyone external to you is the reason why your life isn't where it should be, you need to grow up and accept responsibility for what you're doing to contribute to the problem.

Finally when we stand before God one day to be accountable for the deeds that we have done in our bodies, He's not trying to hear how your mama neglected you; your daddy abandoned you; you were poor; you didn't have the advantages that someone else had. He's just going to simply say "Depart from me. I don't know you!" Because no matter what you are or have been going through The Word clearly states that NOTHING can separate us from the love of God! So if you separate yourself from the love of God based on the bad choices that you made that seemed good at the time but didn't work out or because you wanted what you wanted and God didn't bless what you wanted (because He knows what you can handle and probably had some far better thing in store for you), now you're angry and disappointed but You didn't have the strength, fortitude and courage to trust and wait on God; you don't have the right on any level to get mad at God. I know that from experience! I wasn't suppose to be a single mother but because I went my own way, I am raising two beautiful children who deserve a father, as a single mother. God didn't do that, I did! When I became homeless, I couldn't blame God. I knew that my train wreck of a life could only be made right, by giving up and relinquishing everything that I am to Him and trusting Him to work things out! But it shouldn't have taken such a mess for me to get my act together. I knew better but I was too comfortable in the state of misery that I was in. The Lord even revealed to me just before it happened that I would have to stop just allowing life to happen to me but I allowed fear and complacency to send me rock bottom. But when I woke up in a homeless shelter with my two babies; out in the rain with my two babies; hanging out in the park with my two babies because we were homeless and could not go back to the shelter until the evening, I somehow acquired the supernatural faith to believe and know that God had better things for me and my babies. My situation was self-engineered but I knew that God would use it to put me where I should have been all along in my relationship with Him.

I know that we live in a pass-the-buck society. No one is to blame for anything. No one is responsible for anything anymore. It's always the devil, society's, the media's, the church's, our mother's, our father's, or God's fault and we have become such a cowardly society of victims that it is just all too convenient to lay the blame at the feet of anyone and everyone else but us! What a shame! You have been given power, authority and dominion in the earth and over your flesh through the Holy Spirit. We have access to the mind and Spirit of the Most High, True and Living God, there aren't anymore excuses. So now what are you going to do with what you just read? I am praying that you will allow Christ to work out in you whatever He needs to so that you will be the person of excellence and greatness that He has created you to be. Be blessed and know that this Word is as much for me as it is for you!

Mediocrity hates greatness...so be great and let the haters hate!