Unapologetically Apostolic

I woke up this morning with a thought in my mind that I couldn't shake. And it just keep going and growing in my head. I'm going to try to express my thoughts here. I woke up thinking about seeds and planting, so naturally my mind went to the parable of the sower. Matthew 13:1-9 says "The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.  And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying, Behold, a sower went forth to sow;   And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:   Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:  And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.  And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them:...

As I sit here in the quiet of the early spring evening, just listening to the silence and pressing to hear Your voice. Softly, the wind is blowing a light breeze as the love and laughter of a family gathering encircles me. I press closer and lean in. The only thing I hear is the words of a song ringing back in my spirit: "Word of God speak. Let it pour down like rain. Open my eyes to see your majesty. To be still and know that You're in this place. Lord let me stay at rest on Your holiness. Word of God speak."  I have sat and reflected on the words spoken that night, I cannot stop thinking about what I felt in that moment. How do I put into words the explosion that literally felt like a volcano erupting within me from a single word? A single touch?  At this point, I really wished I could recall everything Bro. Knowles said that evening as he prophesied but I can't.  I do know that it was a freeing word. Since that night, I feel as if I  have been shot out of a bow. L...

As I drove into work this morning, the sunrise painted an absolute masterpiece across the canvas of sky that sprawled before me. The dark midnight blue surrounded by the violets and indigos as it lightened into the reds, pinks and oranges before seeing the golden yellow of the sun. The clouds appeared as little wisps of the artist's brush or quick daubs to make the puffy clouds and to add depth.  As I beheld this beauty, I was taken back to almost 25 years ago. I attended a non-denominational church then that had a very large college and career group. Part of that reason was we had folks come in from a great number of churches in the area for our Monday night services. Through this, I was able to meet a young man named Tyson. To know Tyson was to love him. He had that type of personality you were drawn to. But outside of knowing him "at church", I knew nothing about him. Didn't know where he was from, where he had went to school, you know, the facts. Then came that fa...

A little over nine years ago, I sat down and started writing out what was supposed to be my testimony. I titled it "Patchworked and Pieced Together: A story of God's love and redemption.   But as I wrote, the story quickly became less about what God had done in my life and more about how jacked up my life had been. Oh, I told about how God had delivered me from the obvious sins in my life. I shared how I had been delivered from a homosexual/lesbian lifestyle, from alcoholism and drug addiction, all the while still caught up in other addictions and lifestyles.  At the time of writing, I began to focus on the who, why, what, how and when of every wrong that had ever been done to me in my life. I started at the beginning when I was conceived, the rejection of a father and then the unknown birth (my mother was told she would have a big boy yet delivered twin girls. I was a surprise to everyone, Dr's and nurses included). I allowed words that were exclaimed by a sur...

In just a few short months, I will turn 49 years old. I have spent my life gaining knowledge. It didn't matter what it was, I wanted to learn everything that I could.  This desire for knowledge has helped me in so many ways. It made me strive to learn all that I could at my places of employment.  Whether that was at McDonald's, to Mazda- Toyota to now at my current employer, I would read, try and do all that I could to be the very best that I could. This desire to be the best has helped me to move up in areas above my peers. However, this has also been detrimental in ways. I pushed in ways that rubbed the wrong way. I hurt relationships and friendships to get to what I felt was the top. But, today as I was sitting at work working on a Bible study, I learned something that I should have learned a long time ago.  I remember several years ago, I was trying to draw a picture of how I was feeling at the time. I drew a head without a face crammed full of books on many subjects....

One thousand, eight hundred and twenty-five days. Forty-three thousand, eight hundred hours. Two million, six hundred twenty-eight thousand minutes.  This is the amount of time that has passed since I made the best decision I have ever made.  This is the 5 year anniversary of the day that I was baptized in Jesus name.  For forty-two years, I had lived my life of walking an aisle to take a preacher by the hand to say that I needed "saved" or I needed to rededicate my life to Christ. If I wasn't taking them by the hand, I was hitting my knees at the altar talking to God and begging Him to let me "feel" something, anything.  Each time I would do one of these things, I would feel better for about the length of time it took me to take the man by the hand or kneel down to pray. I longed for more but never knew what the more was that was missing.  There's an old contemporary Christian song that said "There's a God-shaped hole in all of us and t...