Phone Call Outta Nowhere

I can tell God is getting ready to move in a big way. Today we got a call from a potential prospect for the business. He found out about us on the internet and decided to call us. Hopefully he'll become a customer, but I am thanking Jesus anyway!!!!

Also, in early morning prayer today Pastor Joe had us confess Deut. 28:1-4 and Psalm 91 over the church.

I began the consecration today by reading John 3:16 and John 15:5 and just praising and worshipping God!!!

2010 Prayer Requests

My 2010 Prayer Requests

1. CLOSER RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST
* Continue to pursue Jesus in prayer, worship, and in Bible reading

2. NEW HOUSE
* Fully furnished, debt free

3. NEW CAR
* Paid off, fully loaded, debt free

4. FAMILY BUSINESS PROSPEROUS
* Returned of signed contracts
* Ability to find a high rate of clients
* Ability to quickly enter at least 10 new markets this year profitably

5. MY BOOK PUBLISHED
* Get my book published

6. Start my own non-profit
* Begin laying the foundation for my non-profit organization

40 Day Consecration

I've been lazy in maintaining my commitment to regularly updating this blog. However, I am giving it a renewed effort and will document my progress in my relationship with Jesus Christ. Tomorrow we will begin my church's 40 day consecration which is a time of fasting and seeking God's face in prayer. This year's theme is "God is our sufficiency". I will be fasting fast food and sugary snacks for 40 days as my sacrifice for the consecration.

Day Three

Yesterday was good. I believe God gave me some ideas regarding advertising for our business and I had an opportunity to evangelize to my cousin. I also feel more peaceful and less worried about how things are going to turn out because I know my life is safely in the hands of God.

Today, I started with an hour of prayer and then read the first four chapters of the book of James. The passage that stuck out was "draw near unto God and He will draw near unto you." I'm praying that this happens to me as I continue the 30 day challenge.

Day Two

Yesterday went well...remain in prayer throughout the day and I noticed a job opening to be a community organizer that would be right up my alley. The job pays 13 dollars an hour with benefits and is something that can hold me over for the time being. Time will tell whether God revealed this opportunity to me or not. I also exercised and ate only two meals as I continued my midnight to noon fast until we get some customers.

I started today the same. Woke up for an hour of prayer at 5 am and read a couple of chapters of from the book of John. So far so good.

My 30 Day Challenge!

Today, Tuesday, October 6th, 2009, I am starting my new challenge. For the next 30 days I will let me inner spirit man take over. This will entail an hour a day each morning allowing him to pray to God, reading the Bible, and worshiping the Lord. Over the course of the next 30 days it will be interesting to see what happens. I am doing this because it seems to me that my inner spirit man can communicate better with God than I have lately, so I am giving him a chance.

The Rewards of Obedience: The Prodigal Son from Another Perspective

The prodigal son is one of Jesus’ best known parables in the Bible (Luke 15:11-32). A son takes his share of his inheritance and then goes to a far off land only to squander it on revelry. He realizes his mistake after losing all of his money only to become a beggar in a time of famine. He returns home to tell his father to no longer call him his son, but the father warmly embraces him and throws a big celebration for him because “he was lost and is now found” (Luke 15:32b).

This parable is commonly told as a moral for forgiveness and repentance. I agree with this assessment especially since the parable of the lost son comes at the end of the parables of the lost coin (Luke 15:8-10) and the lost sheep in Luke (Luke 15:1-7). However, I believe that this parable has another nugget of wisdom to be gleaned from it. I think the parable of the prodigal son is also a moral on the rewards of obedience.
In the parable, the father’s oldest son was working the field only to hear the music and dancing back home. He returns home to see what the people are celebrating only to discover the party is for his younger disobedient brother. The older brother becomes very angry at the fact that his younger brother disobeyed his father, but his father threw the disobedient son a huge party while the older one never had one.

Throughout the commotion, the father urges his son to join the party, but he refuses. The older son told his father, “Look! All these years I’ve been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours who squandered your property with prostitutes comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him (Luke 15:29-30).” The father’s response in verse 31 is very revealing: “’My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours (Luke 15:31).”

In my opinion, this much overlooked verse reveals the vast benefits of remaining obedient. Since scholars extrapolate this parable to also mean God’s larger forgiveness for us when we repent, I believe this very same parable can be extrapolated to show God’s rewards for us when we are always with Him. This rings especially true in a time when many “new age” Christians view the Bible as an al a carte line where they can pick and choose what they want to believe. Therefore, they become worldly Christians, but always contend that they are saved due to God’s grace and forgiveness.

This may be true, but these very same people are also missing out on the great rewards that God has offered them. Just as the prodigal son blew his great reward on prostitutes and nonsense, some Christians blow God’s rewards in favor of conforming to certain elements of the world. Therefore, I urge you to follow the example of the older son and “stay with” your Father so that you will inherit everything He has for you.