How to Use The Power of Your Free Mind

"I have found that, to make a contented slave, it is necessary to make a thoughtless one."
Fredrick Douglas


Do you realize that your power to think whatever you choose is one of the most God like traits you have?  I treasure hearing my own thoughts so much that I can almost not bear needless noise or confusion or chaos.  I've got to deal with it of course, but I now know that I have the power to deal with it.  I can choose or refuse my mental focus.  So can you.


You're reading my words by choice and for a reason.  Why are you reading?  Is someone forcing you to read this blog?  Of course not. And no one is forcing me to write you.  I'm writing you  because I'm sharing with you my honor of my hero Fredrick Douglas on the last day of Black History Month. I want to inspire you as he is inspiring me to be as free as God wants us to be.


We're both freely thinking, as freely as God Himself thinks.  This is the power of your free mind, the power to be like God.


Can anyone make God think what He refuses to think about?  Or does anyone deceive God?  What would that mean?  It would mean someone could make God think that He is something that He is not.  But God says boldly, "I am who I am."


And you are who you are, if you accept that God is who He is.  This starts in the power of your free mind. 


So how do you experience this power today, right now, in whatever you are getting ready to do?


Focus on one thing:  A spiritual mindset.


Choose a "fixed mental focus that predetermines your interpretations and responses to situations." 


That's the definition of "mindset" I found in dictionary.com.  It's the best definition of mindset I've ever read. 


The Apostle Paul says this about mindsets, "Those who live in accordance with the Spirit set their minds on what the Spirit desires." 


So let the desires of the Spirit predetermine your interpretation and responses to every situation.  Define life by what the Spirit wants, and respond to everything based on whether it fulfills His desires. You interpret life by what the Spirit desires, and you respond accordingly.


Your friend calls you in deep depression because he may lose his job.  What does the Spirit want you to say to your friend who is in need today?  Your spiritual mindset makes you interpret your friend's need by the Spirit's desire to meet that need, and you respond to your friend based on what the Spirit desires for him.  The Spirit is showing you how to comfort your friend, and you follow the Spirit's desires.  This was "predetermined."  This was your spiritual mindset.


How does The Spirit desire you to respond to an insult from a coworker?  Your spiritual mindset, which is the source of the power of your God given free mind, will predetermine your interpretation and responses to the insult. You know that the Bible says, "Bless those who curse you, bless and curse not," for example.  So your spiritual mindset has predetermined that when someone insults you, you will not insult them back. 


Your interpretation and responses are predetermined by YOU.  This is the power of your free mind. Nothing will force you to act or react.  It all starts with the power of your free mind. 


You're already using it while you're reading my words.  You are already experiencing the power of Fredrick Douglas' discovery of overcoming slavery. 


I'm convinced that this freedom of your mind and my mind is the real issue of Black History Month and all I've been reflecting on.  Slavery in this country and every country is the enslavement of minds to shackle the will.  If you stop thinking about who God is, who you are, and who our real enemy is--the devil himself, you will be a slave to Satan, sin, and Satan's system, and things will be worse than the worse days of African Americans in this country, or of those who are still oppressed in this world. Your plantation will be your own darkened mind.  What could be worse than being a slave in your own body?


Use the power of your free mind to choose a spiritual mindset.  Have a fixed mental disposition that predetermines your interpretations and responses to every situation.  Choose this fixed mental disposition, or ask yourself this question in every situation: 


"What does the Spirit of God desire me to say or do?"

Now What? (The Destiny of the Free)

"I have the right to do anything," you say--but not everything is beneficial. "I have the right to do anything"--but I will not be mastered by anything.  1 Corinthians 6:12


Black President.
Black businesses.
Black movies and talk shows.


Do we even need Black History Month?


Or the word "Black?"
African-American?


Now that we're free, now that we've overcome, now what?
Did we need a common "enemy" to have unity and destiny?


Only if we see slavery in this country as something merely historical and not spiritual.


I'm convinced the cruelness of white slave masters was literally demonic.  That this country had a cloud of demonic mindlessness ruling it for a time.  Demons ruled America.  Sin is slavery.  Satan the first sinner. 


So sin is really the issue of slavery.  Being mastered by anything or anyone other than God is the reality of the slavery of sin.  This means the civil war is not over.  The ultimate war is over, because Jesus died for all sin and for every sin.  He is our emancipator. 


The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only true Emancipation Proclamation. 


Unlike Lincoln's emancipation, The Gospel of Christ is enforced by the Spirit of Christ.


Satan, his system, and sin, are destroyed in the life of those who are born again.


In Christ we are "more than overcomers."  More than conquerors. 

These are the Words of God:

This is our Emancipation Proclamation of Salvation:

Whoever sins is a slave of sin.

The soul that sins shall die.

But God commended His love for us that while we were sinners, Jesus died for our sins.

Our old self was crucified with Christ, our bodies of sin destroyed, we are no longer slaves of sin.

We have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God.

Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one's slave, whom you obey?

If you abide in my words, you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.  Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Now what?  What is the destiny of the African-American Christian?


To realize that slavery was and is sin, and that sin has not come to an end. 


Resist sin or be slaves again.  Do not use your freedom to indulge your bodies or self centered minds.  The chains, shackles, and lynch mobs are gone.  But not the devil and demons who were behind them.  Slavery was demonic.  Read the autobiography of Fredrick Douglas, or just think about the evils done to the Africans who came here.  There is a stench of hell behind the history that is monstrous.  It's still here.  Satan seeks slaves even today.


Though "all things are now lawful," all things are not beneficial.  Though you have no earthly slave master, refuse to be mastered in mind, emotion, or will.  Remember the African American National Anthem, especially these words:


Lest our feet, stray from the places our God where we met thee. 
Lest our hearts, DRUNK WITH THE WINE OF THE WORLD WE FORGETH THEE!


Many of us are drunk with the wine of this world.
We have forgotten who delivered us. 
We have forgotten our ancestors.
We submit to sin as our masters.


Right now, resolve to be free from sin.  Choose to the Spirit of God as your Master.  Refuse any and every other master. Resist every mastery except the leading of God's Spirit.  This is the destiny of those who are free.

The Only Hope For the Black Community (What I learned At Morehouse College: Part 3)

At Morehouse I used to think Black people had to "stick together."  Establish our own businesses.  Never marry outside of our race.  Build up the black family.  I hesitated to marry my Lucy because she is white. I told her this from the beginning.  But she wasn't the beginning of what changed how I saw Black community, because she wasn't the first white woman I considered being with.




The first white woman I considered being with made me think about what I wanted to be as a black man.  I liked her because she had everything I liked in a woman.  But the woman I had imagined was black.  That was a given.  I never considered being with a white woman.  Especially after Morehouse.  So I thought it through:




What is my issue with being with a white woman?


1. What would "The Brothers" think?  Here I am, having changed my name to Olatunde, and marrying white woman. Would they consider me a "sell out/uncle tom step and fetch it?"  I didn't care if they did, really.  I knew I wasn't a "sell out." 




2. What would my mother and aunt think? They had gone through so much during the 60's, and black women were regarded as inferior in beauty to white women.  Would they resent me?  I wanted to honor them, but I knew being with a white woman didn't dishonor anyone, in my community or any other community.




3.  What did I THINK?  Really?  She had everything I LIKED.  I'm the one that's going to be with her, not my Morehouse Brothers, not "the Black community," not my mother or aunt.  Me. I thought about it and decided that I didn't have an issue with interracial dating, but I chose to focus on being with a black woman.  I chose this because it seemed best for my mission at the time, to restore honor to my people.  "My People."  Who were my people?  Or were they really "My People?"  Then the final question, the life changing question, came to me. 




4.  WHAT DID GOD THINK? 


It is written, "From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.  God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us." Acts 17:26-27




In these verses, "nations" has to do with ethnicities.  God established their histories and geographies.  Why?  So that they all may seek and find the God who is near all of them, everyone of them, as they are.  This is what God thinks, but it wasn't what I was thinking.  My people are really God's people, and I have to think about us as He does.  So how does He think of us?




Is God against a black man marrying a white woman?  Against mixed children?  And what does all of that mean any way?  Bible genealogies don't focus on phenotypes from what I can see.  Black and white are not the dividing lines of people groups in this world by any stretch of the imagination.  God sees us as coming from one man, or one blood, from whom he made all of the nations. Who is the one man we all came from?  Noah.  And from Noah's three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth, all of the ethnicities exist.  They were brothers.  Relatives. Yes, they separated into their different lands and cultures.  But they were together, from the same father.  Do you think Noah's family was white, or black, or yellow, or whatever?  I don't think so.  In fact, we probably wouldn't be able to classify them at all by the racial standards we use today.  (click HERE for part 4)

The Only Hope for the Black Community (What I learned at Morehouse College) Part 2

The Morehouse freshmen were simply outside talking.  Yet what they discussed were deep things I'd thought my whole time in elementary school and high school.  Depths of thought about spirit, soul, body, the universe, life, blackness, truth.  I had never met any people in all of my schooling as genuinely intelligent as these young black men, from all over the united states of America. And we, at Morehouse, we a majority.  We were not in "D Group." In fact, I realized what D Group was for the first time in my life. 


I realized that black students were being defined by their willingness to conform or assimilate.  Not that the one black girl in A Group was a sell out, any more than I was a sell out in B Group.  But I noticed the "D Group" black people simply didn't care about what the school wanted them to be.  They resisted acting like they were "supposed to act." And how was that?  Docile.  Controllable.  But they were also defined as less intelligent because of this. Yet they didn't care!  If they had gone to Morehouse, they would have been the leaders of student government.  Morehouse would have shown them who they really were, like it showed me.




Before Morehouse, life was white, and white was normal.  After Morehouse, I saw blackness as it is:  One of the many reflections of God, who alone is the standard for normality.  I saw myself, a black man, standing before the true and living God, dark skin and all, music and drums and deep intelligent black thoughts.  I saw my people as a group so large and diverse and profound that to call us a minority is crazy.  I met the most talented and intelligent black men in the Morehouse Glee Club.  To this day, I've never met any group of people more intelligent than my Glee Club brothers. Intelligence.  I keep using that word because I remember taking cross over classes in Georgia State, and I remember a white woman looking at me and saying, "You're very intelligent." 


Read those words. 


They are a compliment right?  At face value, of course.  But her tone, her look, her vibe made me feel she was kind of shocked, or that my "intelligence" was rare.  I knew now that she was the ignorant one, and I felt sorry for her.  She had been missing all of her life what I had missed:  God's reflection in Africans.




But what is this reflection really, especially when it relates to the hope of the Black community?
(click HERE for part 3)

The Only Hope For The Black Community (What I Learned At Morehouse College: Part 1)

"I have the right to do anything," you say--but not everything is beneficial. "I have the right to do anything"--but I will not be mastered by anything. 1 Corinthians 6:12


We're free.
We have overcome.
God was on our side.
What now?


I asked myself these questions as a student of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.  Being there was the very best experience of my entire life because it exposed the lie of my elementary and highschool education.


I was always a "minority" in my classes.  There was A Group, B group, C Group, and D Group. A Group were the smartest kids. D the dumbest kids.  B the smart.  C the average.  There was one black girl in A Group.  I was in B Group with maybe two other blacks.  C was a mix, and D was almost all black. Throughout my life I had an unquestioned assumption that white students were smarter than blacks.  Looking back, there wasn't any proof of this at all, other than the groupings, and the assumption of "majority/minority," or normal/abnormal. But one day I had a revelation about this that began my journey to reality.


I was making up comic book heroes from my head and it hit me:  Even when I made up comic book characters, they were all white.  Do you see the craziness in this?  White people were in my head as make believe characters.  I had NEVER imagined, from my own head, a black character of any kind in my entire life.  I was in the 6th grade when I realized this.  Or when God showed it to me, because there was no reason it came to me right then.  But why wouldn't this be the case?  All the shows I watched at that time had only white people on them.  My favorite book was Peter Pan.  My imagination was white. 


Then I thought, "I can see that white people are beautiful, but can they see that black people are beautiful?" You have to remember, this was in the 80's.  A time when blacks with lighter complexions were seen as more attractive than darker blacks--and this was by black people themselves.  There was "good hair," meaning like white people's hair, and "nappy hair," meaning the kinky hair of some Africans.  All of these assumptions were mine from elementary school until Morehouse College. 


I found out about Morehouse from my highschool science teacher.  He took me to see the Morehouse College Glee Club, and I knew where I was supposed to be.  The discipline and masculine African power was everything I was looking for.  I knew it. I was going to be a Morehouse Man.


I sat in King's Chapel in darkness and silence.  Then "The Brothers" walked on the stage like Princes. Serious.  Focused.  Surrounding the freshmen class on all four sides were upper classmen, all in suits, serious and focused.  One of the brothers on the stage took the podium and the microphone:

Speaker: "You have arrived."

Wall of Brothers: "Welcome to the House."

Speaker:  "Many are called but few are chosen."

Wall of Brothers: "Welcome to the House."

Speaker:  "You are not here to play, to dream, or to drift."

Wall of Brothers: "Welcome to the House."

Speaker:  "You have hard work to do, and heavy loads to lift."

Wall of Brothers:  "Welcome to the House."



It was the most impressive thing I had ever seen in my life. Ever.  I wanted to be like them.  But the real revelation came much later, the one that destroyed everything I'd experienced in my life so far as a Black man. (click HERE for part 2)

The Only Hope For the Black Community (What I learned at Morehouse Colledge: Part 4)

What does all of this have to do with the only hope for the Black community? 


For me, years after Morehouse, though I'm again a "minority" in many situations, I no longer see myself as a minority at all.  The world is not a white world where all of the imaginary people in my head are white. I see my people as God's reflections all over America and the world.  But I also see them as God's people, who reflect Him in so many ways that it can only be expressed in the Kingdom of God.


THE ONLY HOPE FOR THE BLACK COMMUNITY IS TO TAKE IT'S PLACE IN THE KINGDOM OF GOD. 


In God's kingdom we will all be who we are ethnically.  We won't become hazy spirits with no history or physical distinction.  I will be just as African in heaven.  Jesus is just as Jewish there as He was here.  I no longer focus on "the black community" in the way I used to at Morehouse.  Because in heaven there will still be nations, ethnicities, and cultures.  But they will all be made one, in union with the Son, under the rule of His kingdom.  Heaven will not be segregated. But it won't be America either. It won't be a "melting pot" where there is no room for "hyphenated heavenly citizens."  In fact, I believe we'll be even MORE ethnically distinct in God's Kingdom  than we are right now on earth. 




Until then, let God's kingdom come.  Let God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, for my people the Africans, God's people, for whom Christ died.

The Truest Calling of African-American Christians

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the mountain top of his dream and saw me, my white wife, my seven children, together.  He saw me without fear, ready to kill any  Ku Klux Klan member in the name of Jesus and by the power of the Spirit who comes near me to kill me for loving Lucy.  Dr. King saw an African-American president.  Love him or hate him, agree or disagree, the day President Obama became president changed my entire view of this country. I felt like I was in a different world.  Or I saw a glimpse of one.  A glimpse of King's mountain top.  A glimpse of my people's destiny.

Why did we come here?  What was the purpose of the tragedy of our lost history, identity, ethnicity?



All of my life I've wanted to know what Paul knew in the scriptures.  He knew He was a descendent of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin.  I know I am a descendent of Ham, but I don't know my tribe, my clan, my homeland, my culture or language.  And even if I found out, I'm still a leaf fallen from a tree.  I wouldn't even know which tree.  All would be lost for me and my identity if Christ Jesus, My Lord, didn't save me.

He gave me a new identity which encompasses my lost identity.  If it ever was really lost.  I decree that it wasn't.  I am a son of Ham.  It's obvious.  Perhaps the biggest deception of Satan is that slaves lost themselves to white masters and their redefinitions.  But who made Ham?  Who made the West Africans who came to this country?  Can Satan take away what God formed for His glory?

A prophet told me at the beginning of my journey: 

"The struggle is not to be black, but to be like Christ, and in being like Christ, your blackness will come naturally."


Natural blackness.  God likeness in my blackness.  Without even trying.

What is the truest calling of African-American Christians?

It is to show America the truest freedom: 

The struggle is not to be Americans, but to be like Christ, and in being like Christ, America will be what it should have been.  Not a place that destroyed those who were here before, nor a place that enslaved those who came after.  Not a "New Jerusalem."  Not the richest country in the world.  But a beacon of liberation that only comes through Christ's salvation.

African-American Christians, you bear witness. 

Remember the God of our weary years.

Why God Delivered African-Americans From Slavery

I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.  I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high. Leviticus 26:12-13


Why are the descendents of African slaves in this country?  Notice I didn't say "African-Americans."  After all, some believe there are no hyphenated Americans. Just Americans.  Only British history worth remembering.  All other history and ethnicity must blend.  Simply American.


Yet the erasing of name, history, and identity is the first step to slavery.  Believing the lie of originlessness.  So I resist the devil that he may flee from my ancestry.


I ask again.


Why are the descendents of African slaves in this country?


It depends.




If these descendents of African slaves remember and walk with the God who set them free to be what He made them to be, then we are here as a testimony, and all should bear witness thetrue  God who walks among us just as He walked among the Israelites. The true God is the God of the Africans in this country, and we too are His people.


The God of Ham and of Abraham delivers from oppressors. The Almigty freed Israel so they were no longer slaves to the Egyptians.  And The Most High freed my people so that we are no longer slaves of the British who considered themselves superior. The Most Holy broke the bars of our yoke and enabled Africans in this country to walk with heads held high, just as He did for Israel.  God shows no favoritism.


So to my people who believe in the Lord, the descendents of African slaves, those who have been set free by Christ and Christ alone, we were delivered to be witnesses of true liberty.  And this is true liberty:  God walking among us as our God, and we who trust in His Son walk with Him as His people.

Why Remembering African-American History Isn't Racist

I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.
Deuteronomy 5:6


It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1




In high school a white friend of mine said these words to me, “You know I saw a black boy kissing a white girl and it was disgusting.”
I said one word in reply, “Why?”


Do you know what he said?


“You’re trying to make me a racist.”
And my friend didn’t talk to me for about a week.


Interestingly enough, I didn’t really think anything about what my friend said. I didn’t think he was or was not a racist. That’s not what was going on in my mind. I should know. It’s my mind. The scriptures agree when it says, “no one knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man who is in him; in the same way, non one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”
When I asked, “Why?” I actually wanted to know what he found disgusting about a black boy kissing a white girl. But he said I was tyring to make him a racist.


Now how could I do that? He was the one who said he thought it was disgusting for a black boy to kiss a white girl.  But I, who only asked "why," was “making him a racist.” This was in highschool, where I was voted home coming king; later that year I and a black girl were voted prom king and queen.


I remember a controversy about the prom, something to the extent of a “white court” being put in place...but this is not the real issue.


Racisim is the issue.
According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, racism is “actions, practices or beliefs, or social or political systems that consider different races to be ranked as inherently superior or inferior to each other, based on presumed shared inheritable traits, abilities, or qualities.”


Racism is a sin against God the Creator and against His creatures made in his image and likeness and glory. Every person, boy and girl, man and woman, culture and ethnicity, reflect God in some way. For one creature to assume superiority over the other is to assume equality with God, who alone knows how each of His creatures each reflect Him. Yet even all of this is not my issue.


Here it is.


I’ve never thought of African Americans as “victims” of “the white man.” I’ve never thought of “the white man” as “the devil.” In fact, my whole focus has been my own history, which of course involves slavery. My ancestors in this country were slaves. I remember and honor them. I also remember and honor the ones who never came to this country as slaves, my original people and culture and land. Some assume my home land is inferior, third world, backwards, etc. Yet I can honestly say I have never cared what racist or non-racist thought about me, my ancestry of slavery, or my home land.


What I do care about is a satanic lie: That simply to remember my history means “I’m trying to make some white person racist.” Again, in remembering my history, I’m not thinking about “the man.” I’m thinking about the God of the weary years of my ancestors. I’m thinking about my grand parents, my mother and father, my heroes who made the way for me to be with a white woman without being lynched, and for people to see that my children are not ‘disgusting” because they come from a black man kissing a white woman.


Some feel like the mention of black history month, race, Africa, etc, has to be said in a whisper. They feel like African-Amercians are hyper sensitive race card players. Again, these people don’t bother me. I have the same question for them that I had for my friend in highschool: Why?


And I really want to know the answer. Not to prove anyone a racist or not. But because I have a mind, and when I hear something I don’t understand, I ask why. That’s it. I’m free to think.


Contrary to what we’d like to think in America, we do still have a long way to go. We think we have to be “the same” to be together. We don’t embrace differences, God given differences, as a blessing to each other. We think these differences in history and ethnicity equals racism. In the mind of many Americans, differences must mean superior and inferior. Only sameness is equality.


When someone says, “When I see you, I don’t see color. I just see a man,” they don’t realize that I want them to see my melonin, my thicker lips, my style of hair. God made these. They need not be ignored. Yet again, I’m not concerned with whether this person sees me or not. God sees and loves how He made me.  So does Jesus and His Spirit.


And in heaven, where every ethnicity will be seen, it will be clear that heaven is not America, or Africa, or Asia alone. Every ethnicity will be there, and our Jewish Savior will be there, still a Jew, not a democrat or republican American. We may be suprised at how non-American or African or Asian Jesus is.


Why is remembering African-American History not racist? 
Because it is African-American History. 


Did you catch that?


Some people can't even think of Black History Month without thinking about White Racists.  But it's not "White Racist History Month."  My history is not focused on the whips and lynching, but on the God who gave my ancestors the power to resist slavery.  My focus is on the God of my people, just as Israel remembered the one who freed them. 


When ignorant people speak of "white history month," or simply see no need for a Black History Month, I wonder if they will ever see 09/11/01 as irrelevant. 


I wonder if they expect the Hebrews to change their minds and forget the holocaust. 


God wanted Israel to remember the deliverance of His people from slavery.
I too will remember the God who delivered and empowered my people. 
If you find this racist, ask yourself:  Why?

If I Were A Slave: A Tribute To My Redeemer and Ancestors (4)

Jesus replied, "Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin."  John 8:34

 

Now we come to the essence of slavery:  Ownership.

 

Who owns you?
Who defines you?
Who determines what you do?
Who is your master?

 

We as Americans, Christians and Non-Christians, like to think that we "are the masters of our fate;" we "are the captains of our souls."

 

But we don't realize that sin is a slave master.  We don't realize the heinousness of what we do when we sin. 

 

I'll show you.

 

Alex Haley wrote a book and did TV series called "Roots."  There is a scene in roots that is the very essence of this entire blog series for me.  It is the scene that I saw in high school that caused me to ask myself the question I presented to you:  If I were a slave, what would I do?  But more specifically, what would I do in Kunta Kinte's position?

 

If you've never watched this scene in Roots, it involves a African man named Kunta Kinte who is being whipped within an inch of his life.  Why? His master wants Kunta to renounce his name, to renounce the name Kunta Kinte and accept the name "Toby."  At the point of death, in answer to his master's question, "What is your name?" Kunta whispers, "Toby."  Chicken George, a slave and friend of Kunta, holds "Toby" after this severe beating and says, "You are still Kunta Kinte."  With tears Chicken George comforts Toby...

 

What would I have done in the same situation?  The Spirit led my mind to a time before my ancestors to the time of three Hebrew boys and a king named Nebuchadnezzar.  Israel was commanded to renounce their god and bow to Nebuchadnezzar.  Out of a nation, three refused to bow, even at the threat of being burned to death.  What was the difference between these three and Toby?

 

The Spirit took me to Peter, who said he would never deny Christ, never deny his Lord.  But he did three times.  Yet there came a time when Peter died the death of his master, hung upside down on a cross. 

 

This was a time when the early Christians were in the same position as Kunta, and the same as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego:  Renounce the name of Jesus, and bow to the name of Caesar.  Because in Rome it was declared, "Caesar is Lord."  But in the church it was proclaimed, "Jesus is Lord."  There cannot be two lords, two emperors, two kings. Christians must renounce Christ to live in Rome, or they will be crucified, eaten by lions, cut in half, burned at the stake.

 

Some, like Kunta, and like Peter, denied the name of their true Lord, and thus their own names. But others, like the three Hebrew boys, and later like Peter, accepted death instead of denying their Lord.

 

What made the difference?
What would have made the difference with me?

 

• Peter trusted in himself, in his own resolve to be faithful to Jesus.
• Kunta's focus was on his own name, so in the same way, he trusted in his strength.
• But the Hebrews trusted in the God of Israel, who could deliver them, but even if He didn't, God is God, not Nebuchadnezzar.
• And Peter, at his crucifixion, focused on the Lord whom He had seen risen and ascended.
• The early Christians who died in gladiator rings, on crosses, and on stakes of fire, focused on the one who died on the cross for them.
• The slaves who died instead of renouncing their names, focused on the truth:  God alone names you.

Naming is an act of ownership.  Jesus said sin enslaves.  So each and every time we sin, we renounce Jesus' name, and thus our names as Christians.  When we sin, we focus on ourselves and not on Jesus.

The first name we must renounce is our own self centered desire.  The name we never should renounce is the name of our true master:  Jesus Christ.  If we trust in His name of Christ alone, we will never lose our names as Christians to anyone.

What would I have done?
I don't know.






But what I hope I would have learned to read the scriptures, that I would have read about Peter's denial, and that I would have assumed that I would have done the same thing as Peter. 




I would hope to have asked Christ to help me not deny him as Peter did, to not renounce my name as Kunta did, but to be willing to die in a fire like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, rather than renounce the name of the one true God, my one true master, the only one with the right to name me. 






Peter's denial was a possibility.  So was Peter's death for his Lord at the end.
My denial of my name was a possibility.  So was my death instead of denial.




Jesus alone would have made the difference for me.


click HERE for part 5

If I Were A Slave: A Tribute to My Redeemer and Ancestors (2)

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."  John 8:31-32

Slavery is an issue of reality.  Many of my ancestors didn't know the truth of who they were and where they came from.  They were born into a false reality where Africans were inferior, less than human, ugly and stupid and cursed by God to serve white people in this country.  A satanic reality. 



And who would tell them different? Who would tell them the truth that would set them free to be what God made them to be?



Only those who know the truth can tell the truth.  Only those who know the truth are free themselves.





The slave and the slave master were both deceived by the truest slave master, Satan himself. They both believed a lie, deceived like their first mother Eve. 





But there were those who were like their first father Adam, those who were not deceived.  These chose to resist or embrace the lie, to keep the truth from those who lacked it, and to embrace slavery by becoming slave masters themselves. 





Some whites knowingly and willingly used Christianity to embrace slavery.
Some blacks knowingly and willingly became "overseers" of their brothers and sisters.





But other whites resisted, becoming abolitionists, on the front lines or behind the scenes.
And other blacks led slave revolts, took beatings and lynching while resisting, and taught themselves how to read.





The issue for whites and blacks was the truth that set them free.  Jesus was the truth that set both free, if they accepted His words as reality.


click HERE for part 3

If I Were A Slave: A Tribute to My Redeemer and Ancestors (1)

"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free..." Luke 4:18


Imagine me whipped until the skin on my back peeled.  Or imagine me sold on an auction block, never to see my wife and seven children again.  I've always wondered what kind of slave I would have been in Macon, Georgia, the home of my ancestors, who suffered unimaginably for me.  What kind of slave would I be?  A "revolutionary?"  A compliant servant?

There is no way for me to know scenarios of imaginary history for me.  I can only know what kind of slave I would have been by what kind of slave I am right now.

To whom do I belong?
Who owns me, defines me, and determines my actions?

Jesus, my Redeemer, the one who set me and my ancestors free in this country, He alone is My Master, and I His willing slave. 

Many of my people have forgotten the "God of our weary years."  We rejected one slave master, but never accepted the other.  The same is true for the white people who came to this country resisting tyranny.  They rejected the King of England, but didn't accept the King of Kings. 

Both, white Christians and Black Christians have "strayed from the places" where we met God. 
Both, white Christians and Black Christians, "drunk with the wine of the world," we've forgotten Christ.

Neither of us, therefore, are "true to our God, or true to our native lands," the land of our ancestors, or the land that was stolen.

A prophet once said these words to me, words that defined my life:

"The struggle is not to be black, but to be like Christ, and in being like Christ, your blackness will come naturally."

Christ sets me free, gives me my lost African Identity, and releases me from the truest slavery.


click here for part 2