Satisfying God

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

Light a candle for the Holy Spirit, let His figure be the one invited person we’d hope would come, show up to cover us with His presence, illuminate our lives, giving direction, showing where we need correction and peace. We need Him here, always, stroking our lives, making us whole and holding us captive with great fear, an awe of His presence, His likeness, His coming near to us, helping us. He’s the Helper, if we let Him. He’s our guide, if we choose not to do this on our own. He’s our shield, protecting us from us and others. He’s Lord, leading us down righteous pathways, the place we belong.

He’s calling us, in whispered songs and we hear the melody floating above our heads, in our heads. We long for and like the words, but they are too simplistic to us. We want better, want more than what He sings. We bring our requests through ignoring the songs, refusing to sing the lyrics, hum the tunes in our hearts. Our dark, dry souls can’t see and are thirsty. Our candle is quenched, and we have snuffed our sight. We are not satisfied satisfying God.

This is His request: Be satisfied satisfying Me. This is the great challenge of my too often discontented soul, the strong black woman one who always wants more and so little of that has to do with God. I yearn through faithfulness and obedience, putting the spiritual above the physical, to be satisfied by satisfying God. Yearn with me. Joy with me in bringing joy to God.

The Valentine’s Day Gift

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

Each time I was pregnant, I craved burgers. I devoured patty melts my first go around, Wendy’s double cheese burgers my second go around and White Castle burgers with my third pregnancy. While I had a great love affair with burgers, I declare I wouldn’t want my husband to try to woo me with a burger, even though this is what White Castle is encouraging.

Did you see this ad? While I commend the fast food chain for capitalizing on broke people who like sliders and people who just want to show their loved ones some love, I just don’t think White Castle is special enough to give as a Valentine’s Day gift. White Castle is something you crave in the moment, get in the drive through when you’re in a hurry, buy when you can’t afford something else or grab when you don’t feel like cooking. White Castle just doesn’t seem special enough for the special person in your life.

The more I thought about how I would feel if my husband took me to White Castle for a Valentine’s dinner, I thought about how God, our first love, feels when we give Him the spiritual equivalent of a White Castle dinner: When we only read our bible when the moment hits us, only say a couple of words to Him as we rush out the door, or go to Him when nothing else has worked or when there’s nothing else to do. While these are probably not the pattern for most of us, I’m sure we have been guilty of at least one of these at some point in our Christian walk. I know that I, trying to balance all that strong black women are expected to balance, have given God some White Castle love. Yes, we all have extenuating circumstances, like perhaps sickness and caring for a new baby, but when we constantly let life get in the way of our fellowship with the person who gave us life, we have to make some adjustments, including planning better so God gets our very best.

This Valentine’s Day I want you think about how you plan to upgrade your gifts to God. I’m not necessarily talking about giving more money to Kingdom work, though some of you may need to do that. If you’ve been giving Jesus White Castle burgers with your time and talent, I want you to figure out how to give Him filet mignon. I want you to give Him whatever your best is. And as you know, He is worth every ounce and then some.

Read what an exSuperwoman is doing with her gifts this Valentine’s Day at Confessions of an ExSuperwoman.

Friday Feature: Free Flowing

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

It’s so easy to give up after trying hard at something and not seeing the results you expected. I know. I’ve done this in trying to improve my digestive health. The change in eating certain foods, the increase in enzymes and even more water just didn’t seem to be working for me at one period. I finally realized that more water and fruits and vegetables for me meant more than the average person. My major increase helped, but I was still having a bit of sluggishness until I discovered that I needed to do the following to keep my colon free flowing:

Avoid mucous-forming foods

Drink room temperature beverages

Drink 32 ounces of room temperature purified water

Drink a freshly squeezed juice or vegetable drink

Drink a hot beverage

If you are on the quest for better help, please don’t give up. Sometimes we strong black women think we have too much going on to work so hard on an issue like digestion. After all, we’ve dealt this long with a sluggish system; we can survive, some of us might think. But you don’t know this. God gave us everything we need for life and godliness. Taking care of our bodies in every way we can gives us life and helps us to be godly because we are honoring our bodies, the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the Holy Ghost, God Himself, deserves the best. We should give our best whenever and wherever we can.

I Wonder About Love

Posted on February 9, 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

I wonder what would happen if we learned to love others as we love ourselves.
If we didn’t constantly remark, “That’s their life. They have to make their own decisions.”
If we had in mind that our words could change others for the better, leave them happy and whole, together.
And what if we took a stand, a dare even, to help those who couldn’t help themselves, didn’t know how to help themselves?
What would this world look like?
Maybe less bitterness and pain, anger, sickness and hate
Perhaps free from the need to take a place or a pill or have a procedure peddled to us that risk our health, our very lives, and fatten the peddlers’ pockets

What if….?

Think about that.
Act about that, in your own God-given way.

Five Choice Lies

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Rhonda J. Smith

When we hurt and the pain is so deep and the memory consistently fresh, we may choose to live in the grey, that space that blurs the definitive. We want to say yes to help, knowing saying no completely shuts us out from the possibility of help and healing. We live in the grey, the place of self-medication by suppression, an alternate reality we hope will protect us from more pain. In the grey we believe we delay the consequences that come from the yes and the no.

Not because of hurt or pain, some of us live in the grey just because it’s easier that way. I’ve seen this with church folk, those who seek to blur the lines of what Scripture says about abortion so they don’t have to toe the line. They are pro-abortion (pro-choice), not because Jesus is but because they say He is based on his compassion. A classic case of this comes from a sermon listed on the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) website. The sermon used Mark 5:21-43 to justify why Christians should support women who get abortions, both their choice to have one and healing for them after they have had one.

Yes, without a doubt we should help post-abortive women in their healing process but in no way do I believe Christians should encourage women to have abortions, except perhaps in extreme circumstances. Mark 5:21-43, the story about the woman with the issue of blood, show Jesus’ compassion to heal a woman in pain for 12 years but in no way support a woman’s right to kill. Nonetheless, RCRC attempts to create some grey to dwell in.

Following are statements taken from the sermon that help to lay the foundation for what I call five choice lies:

Statement #1—“As Christians who strive to follow Jesus, we can and must be both compassionate and pro-choice.”
Lie #1—“Jesus was pro-choice which means he would support us choosing abortion.” But Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second [is] like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Matthew 22:37-39). To love God is to obey Him (John 14:15) and he says choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). And to love our neighbor as ourselves is to love the child in the womb as we love ourselves because the child in the womb is the closest neighbor anyone can have.

Statement #2—“In the 60s, horrified by the injuries and death suffered by women around the country due to illegal, unsafe abortions, religious leaders responded as people of faith and conscience must. Reverend Howard Moody and Arlene Carmen organized the first Clergy Consultation Service in New York City, a network of clergy who agreed to help women gain access to safe abortion providers.”
Lie #2—“It’s better to provide safe abortions so women won’t seek back alley ones.” This is the same notion as giving clean needles to drug addicts and condoms to sexually active teenagers. A safe wrong and an unsafe wrong are both wrong. Romans 13:10 tells us not to do wrong to a neighbor and verses 13 and 14 end the chapter by telling us this: “Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (emphasis mine). We are never to provide support for people to commit sin.

Statement #3—“[A] fertilized egg is potential life but not actual life. These Christians hold that the life, health, freedom, and moral agency of the pregnant woman are more important than the potential life in her womb.”
Lie #3—“We cannot scientifically tell when life begins.” This may be okay for non-Christians to say and believe, but Christians who believe the God of the Bible shouldn’t even try to use this one to support having an abortion. Most pro-life advocates believe life begins at conception. The makings of a fertilized egg are the beginning of a baby’s life. But I would add that biblically, life begins even before the womb, in the mind of God. In Ephesians 1:4 God says he chose us BEFORE the foundation of the earth. We were alive to God before we manifested in the earth.
Lie #4—“A woman’s freedom supersedes the life of the unborn child.” 1 Corinthians 10:23-24 says, “‘All things are lawful,’” but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.”

Statement #4—“Without Roe, life for American women would be thrown more than 30 years in reverse, returning them to the days when women could not fully control the number and spacing of their children. Without Roe, women will be forced to carry fetuses to full term – even when those fetuses have no brain, no limbs, no heart.”
Lie #5—“Abortion is a viable birth control method.” Family planning is something that families should decide together, but death should not be a viable means to help women regulate “the number and spacing of their children.” “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13).

The grey might numb the pain or even the guilt but what’s left is a trail of darkness and deception that is hard to flee.