All These Things...

All These Things has moved!

Rev. Mike — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:54:10 +0000

Click here to get to updated site: All These Things…

Thank you for visiting!

Rev Mike

Changing Our Viewpoint

Rev. Mike — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:46:37 +0000

Sometimes when we look at life, we think that things are never going to get better. We feel like this is the way things are always going to be. We see our lives as a still picture; a permanent snapshot whose 4 X 6 dimensions are a life’s sentence without the chance of parole. I have to admit that I have had more than one episode of the snapshot mentality in my life. You know the words: “Well, I guess that this is just my lot in life,”. But my prayer is that my viewpoint changes as well as my situation. I can remember working at a job that paid very little money. I had been constantly looking for another job and not having any success at all when an amazing thing happened to me. My mentality changed. Instead of feeling sorry for myself like I had been doing, I decided that I was not going to be defined by my current situation. I decided to change my snapshot mentality to a panoramic mentality.

You know what a panoramic picture is, don’t you? It is a different viewpoint from the snapshot point of view because you can see more of the entire scene. This is because the panoramic picture shows more. It’s like God’s viewpoint. We typically look at our lives from a snapshot point of view. It’s kind of like the picture on the left. God always looks at our lives from the panoramic point of view (picture below). God is looking at the total picture of our lives: where we came from, where we are now, and where we are headed to. We need to do the same. Don’t just focus on where you are right now. Look at where God has brought you through. Think about all of the things that you have survived and all of the things that you have accomplished. Then try to focus on the future. Think about what you are going to do. Even if you don’t know exactly where you are going, understand that you are not confined to a snapshot life, but that you are destined to fulfill all of the things that God sees as your destiny. Focus on His panoramic view.

both pictures taken by David Bergman of the United States. Website credit is gigapan.org

THANK YOU!!!

Rev. Mike — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:54:53 +0000

I just want to say thank-you to everyone that has looked at the blog, left a comment, or said an encouraging word to me about it over the past 6 months. I am blessed because of you.

Love ya

Rev. Mike

Christian Rapper of the Week: Sho Baraka

Rev. Mike — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:45:03 +0000

According to an article I found on Wikipedia, Sho Baraka was born in Canada,lived a few years in California, and now resides in Texas. Great lyrics and very easy to understand what he is saying. Enjoy.

(video courtesy of Reach Records)

Encouraging the Valley From Inside the Valley

Rev. Mike — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:39:37 +0000

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
(23rd Psalms, 4th verse)

Those words of the 23rd Psalms have been used by people to comfort others for years. But sometimes, we find ourselves in a peculiar position. Sometimes we are the ones in the middle of a valley experience. We are walking through the valley and trying to be strong in the Lord and life is kicking our butts. Then guess what happens? We run into someone that needs to be witnessed to. Or we run into someone who needs our help. How can you help someone when you need help yourself? By the grace of God, I have found myself in this position before. I was in a terrible spiritual state and I had someone tell me that I was a blessing to them. This totally took me by surprise. How can I be a blessing when I am weak? I have realized over time that my spiritual struggles place me in a position of vulnerability. And that vulnerability allows me to be available for God’s use.

I don’t know why yet, but when I am going through a rough patch in life, God still allows me to minister to people and help them to go through. I guess the reason why is because our valley moments make us focus on God. When we focus on God, then we are not looking at our situation. People have drawn inspiration from me simply watching me live my life through the good and bad moments. I’m not saying this to brag, my arrogance is only in the Lord. But I am saying that I am a better instrument for God in my weakened state because I am actively seeking Him for an answer. You know the old saying: Don’t be afraid to ask a question in a classroom because someone else might have the same question. The same thing can be said of God. You could be seeking God’s guidance about something and the answer you receive might be just the thing that someone else needed to hear. I have had people tell me that I was an inspiration to them on a couple of occasions. I notice that this often occurs during my darkest hours. I truly believe that there is a connection between my weakened spiritual state and my ability to be that vessel of encouragement. How does this help you? I hope that you will see that you always have the opportunity to help someone get through their valley situations. But the opportunity is greater when you are in the valley with them. This is because you are both walking together through the valley and you can gain strength from each other… and from God.

Peace and Love
and Happy Father’s Day,

Rev Mike

Christian Rapper of the Week (Lecrae)

Rev. Mike — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 04:36:33 +0000

This is something new that I’m going to try. I have always been a rap music fan. But, I’ve got to tell you that it is getting difficult to be a effective minister and still listen to secular music. So it is with a great deal of pleasure that I present to you some of the best and brightest in Christian Rap. I will try to introduce a new Christian rapper to you every week. Bear in mind these artists have been out for quite some time. But I am just beginning to learn of the exceptional talent out there. The first one that I will present is LeCrea. The title of this song is “Don’t Waste Your Life”.

(video courtesey of Reach Records)

Click the link below to see how biblically correct this brother is.

http://www.lyricszoo.com/lecrae/dont-waste-your-life/

Peace and Love

Secrets From God

Rev. Mike — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 02:52:49 +0000

Did you know that God gives us secrets? I don’t mean secrets like “I have ten bodies buried under my house” kind of secrets. I mean secrets about His promises for our lives and for the lives of others. I mean secrets about our destinies. In the book of Genesis (Chapter 37:5-11), Joseph received a secret from God. God shared Joseph’s destiny for him when Joseph was only seventeen years old. Joseph simply did not do a good job of keeping his secret. He bragged to his brothers and even his father Jacob that they would all bow down to him. Joseph was simply revealing the vision that God had given to him. And the vision was absolutely correct. His brothers and father did bow down to him later on in the book of Genesis. But Joseph was nearly forty years old when it happened! It took many years for Joseph’s secret to come true. But it did come true.

I’ll give you another example of God’s secrets that hits a little closer to home. I had at least two different people receive the vision of me becoming a minister before I actually understood my calling. One of the people was my brother. The other person was an old friend from high school. My friend actually told me about their vision for me. My brother kept the secret to himself. My brother received the vision four years before I actually accepted my calling. This lets you know that God had my destiny planned for me before I even knew about it. Looking back on that moment in my life, I realize that God did give me clues about my destiny. I wasn’t ready to receive all of the information, so God didn’t reveal everything. But as I continued to grow in wisdom and experience in God, I could see my destiny take shape before my eyes. Why do you think God gives us a secret? Here’s a couple of ideas:

1. God may give the secret about you to someone else because you are not ready to receive it. If we knew everything that God had planned for us, we would probably go running in the other direction! God has to prepare us to receive our destiny.

2. The people in our lives are not ready to receive the secret. This is the opposite of number one. This happens a lot with churches and Pastors. Sometimes God gives an individual a vision for another person or a group of people before he reveals it to the others. This is because He uses the individual to help prepare the person or persons before the vision comes true.

3. God may give us a secret to keep us going. You may be going through a rough patch in your preparation process. Sometimes the rough patch makes you want to give up. God will reveal a bit of your destiny or someone else’s destiny to you in order to motivate you. The revelation of the secret encourages you to hang in there until the destiny is completely fulfilled.

The wonderful thing about receiving a secret from God is that it is never a horrible secret or a dirty little secret. It is always a blessing that will eventually come to pass. And when it does come to pass, everyone will be blessed by it. Has God given you a secret? Hold on to it. Let it mature inside of you. It will be a wonderful blessing when it comes into existence. Peace and Love, Rev. Mike

Feeding Your Spiritual Body

Rev. Mike — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 00:47:47 +0000

I walked up to a couple of my co-workers the other day as one of them was telling the other how he did not sleep well the night before. It appears that he watched the entire “Godfather” trilogy on TV, and spent the entire night dreaming that he was either killing someone or being killed by someone. I couldn’t do anything but laugh at him. I laughed because I had a similar experience a few years ago. The only difference for me is that I watched both “Goodfellas” and “Casino” back to back and had nightmares about “whacking” people the entire night. For those of you that don’t know, these are all extremely violent movies dealing with the mafia and organized crime. There is a lot of shooting, and lot of cursing, and a lot of bloody deaths. My co-worker and I suffered the exact same fate from watching too much of the same type of movie. Five hours of exposure to any stimuli can get into the subconscious mind and cause one to imagine or dream some really crazy things. Once they invade our dreams, the can seriously affect our ability to get a good nights sleep. This is the equivalent of eating piles of unhealthy food and drinking too many soft drinks and feeling sluggish the next day. If we consume too much of the wrong things in our physical body, we will experience physical discomfort. In the same way, we have a spiritual body that can be affected if it is not fed correctly.

How can we feed our spiritual body incorrectly? By exposing it to too many unhealthy things in this world. Now, just so you don’t think I’m just talking about you, I will give you examples of things that I need to cut back on doing because they can mess up my spiritual body:

too much TV and Internet
too much secular music
engaging in gossip and slanderous conversations

All of these things can affect my spiritual body and cause me to lose focus on what I should really be doing. What I should be doing is focusing on those things that help to strengthen my spiritual body. Those things are:

praying and asking God for guidance
reading my Bible
being a servant to others

These things can help my spiritual body to grow stronger and be the weapon that God needs me to be. These are things that I constantly need to work on for myself. What do you need to work on? Let’s look back on the day that we have just experienced. Have you fed your spiritual body healthy things today or have you fed it junk food? No matter what your answer, the good news is that you can spend the rest of today focusing on finding good things to feed it. This is not to say that you have to completely give up all your favorite shows on TV. It just means the you should be aware of how much you are taking in and how that can affect you. So lets all try to monitor what our spiritual man is taking in. And, let’s both try to eat a little healthier from now on. I’ll do better if you agree to do better as well. Promise? Me too.

Peace and Love,

Rev. Mike

My Week In The Hospital (Room 316)Part II

Rev. Mike — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:31:11 +0000

This is a continuation of the post that I made a couple of weeks ago. I was talking about being in the hospital and walking the halls of the third floor. I was realizing that although I needed to be in the hospital, I was not in danger of getting any worse. I was doing what I was supposed to do. That is, I was staying attached to my IV (I named it Joey), I was drinking plenty of water, and I was going to the bathroom every 15 or 20 minutes because of the IV and the water. So I was getting better with every passing day. But because I was in the hospital, and I was not in danger any longer, I had plenty of time to think. So I walked and thought. As I went into the cancer area every day, I would go to an area that I began to call the sun room. It was an area that was about 10 feet wide by 20 feet long. There were three doors in it. One door was the door that I always used as an entrance to the area. The other two doors were locked and marked Employees Only. I assume that they would take me into the secret lair of the hospital. The room was large enough to contain two sofas and three large windows. If you looked out of the windows, you had a lovely view of I-35 and the latest construction going on at the hospital. I have to tell you that I hated that room for two reasons:

1. It was the dead end road on my hallway highway.
2. It was at least 15 degrees hotter in that room than any other area on the floor.

Nevertheless, I still visited the sun room on a daily basis, spent about two minutes in there, and immediately turned around and walked out. One particular day when my wife came to see me, I started getting restless again and told her I wanted to take a walk. She decided to walk with me. So we did my usual route. Down the hall to the ICU area, take three left turns, up the hall to the other end of ICU, take three more left turns, through the double doors back to the main hall. From the main hall, you walk down to the cancer ward and take a right. Go through the double doors and walk down the hall to the end. At the end of the hall is a left turn only. After the left turn, you go through the final set of double doors and viola! You are in the sun room. Now you must remember that I take this walk about three times every day, so I have already decided that I will spend my usual two minutes in there and go back out. But since my wife was with me, she asked me to sit down for a while so that we could relax outside of my room. She immediately liked the sun room because it was an open space. I gave her one of my looks. She told me she liked in there and wanted to sit for a minute. So I lay down on one of the couches in the room and she took the other. As I lay there on my back, I noticed something that I had not seen in about four days. Laying there on the couch I could look out of the window and see the sky and the clouds. I had never stayed in the room long enough to notice. Because my wife made me stay in there, I was able to see the clouds and remember what it was like to be outside. It was a wonderful feeling. For a moment, I was not in the hospital attached to an IV. I was lying on my back, bathing in the sun. I never would have experienced that moment had it not been for my wife. I told her later that I never liked that room until I went in there with her. For the rest of the week, I would go visit the sun room and look out the window. But instead of looking at the highway and the construction, I made it a point to look up at the clouds. And every time I did, I remembered my wife and the beautiful blessing that God has given me in her. When was the last time you looked at the clouds and remembered God’s blessings in your life? Why don’t you try it today? You never know what you might see.

Peace and Love,

Rev. Mike

I Don’t Have Any Salt! (Lessons From Room 316)

Rev. Mike — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:03:48 +0000

It was Thursday of last week and I was sitting in my hospital bed. I was so annoyed, I didn’t know what to do. It was not that I was upset about being in the hospital. I had already come to terms with what my situation was and accepted it. No, I was angry because I was looking at some unsalted green beans on my plate. This was the second day in a row that I was going to have to deal with some bland tasteless veggies. And I was upset about it. Earlier in the week I noticed that the vegetables never had any seasoning on them. I tried to make due by pushing them around in whatever sauce I could salvage off of the main entree. But on Wednesday and Thursday there was nothing to push the vegetables in. So I was annoyed. Luckily for me, the young lady that brought my tray to me was still in the room serving my roommate. I decided that I’d had enough. As she was walking toward the door, I summoned her back to my bedside. In a polite (but firm) voice, I asked her if it would be possible to have some salt for my vegetables. She looked me square in the eye and said, “Sir, you are on the reagular diet. Your salt is in the package there on your tray”. I looked down where she was pointing. There was a small package that held a straw and a napkin. I don’t use straws so I had never examined it before. I picked it up and flipped it over. On the other side of the napkin were three little packets. One was sugar. One was pepper. And the final one was… wait for it. Salt! Needless to say, I felt foolish. But I only had myself to blame. You see, I had never asked for salt before. I could have been enjoying the salty goodness of my vegetables all week long and I did not because I had simply failed to ask someone.

There is a biblical lesson that I learned from that moment. In James 4:2 it states, You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You do not have, because you do not ask God (niv). I had sat in my bed, day after day, and silently complained to myself because I had no salt. Up until that final moment, I had not thought to ask anyone for help. I also never actually looked for any salt on my tray. I just assumed that what I wanted was not available. Matthew 7:7-8 states, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened”. How many times do we Christians walk around upset over things we don’t have only to discover later that the very thing that we wanted was available for us? Even worse, it was right there within our grasp the entire time. But we neither asked for it or looked for it. I could have enjoyed my food even more if I had asked for some salt earlier in the week. It is a lesson that I pray will stay with me from now on. As we go through our days, let us remember to always ask, seek, and knock. Ask God to guide our lives, seek His face, and knock on the door of humility. I use humility because sometimes my pride will not allow me to ask or seek. This lesson was a blessing to me. I hope that you will find it to be a blessing as well.

Peace and Love,

Rev. Mike