RISE…STAND TALL

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” And, “If the eye be wrong, the whole body is wrong.”

Lord, please help us with these imperfections of humanity that, despite the many adverse circumstances of life – and all our shortcomings, we can still stand tall in adversity and glory in your presence, in your through faith in Christ Jesus.

Children of Promise, get educated…Education is the currency of our time, the roadmap to success, and the greatest weapon of warfare for the under-privileged, because it allows you to redefine your self-worth and your net worth, opens doors to parts unknown, adds new steps to the height of the platforms on which you can stand, removes barriers that you’d otherwise never be able to breach, and tears down strongholds that’s been set in place with intent to keep you in compliance, complacency…insufficiency and dependence.

Nine out of ten times, if you find someone whose storyline begins with flair, it ends with fizzle, because more often than not, the only time you can hear God’s voice, is when you are at rock bottom, because then the pomp, circumstance, and pretense doesn’t matter – what matters more than anything else is the need to be right again – to rise from the desolate place to which you have fallen. That is why the way to the palace leads through the wilderness, a cave, or a pit, the way to restoration leads through a pig pen, and the ruler of a kingdom first have to tend sheep, because the way of the cross leads home – for the race is not to the swift, and neither is the battle to the strong, but to those who endure to the end. So, we have to go back to the days of shoveling coals to find our own diamonds, because if you find a diamond that doesn’t look like a coal that means that someone has already been polished, and you can rest assured that it is only a matter of time before that person will come looking for it.

The world is not going to meet you on your terms so you might as well cut the drama and find out what you need to do to meet the world on its own terms. I discovered a long time ago that this thing, called life, is bigger than anything I can muster up on my own; so I decided that rather than mess up a good thing, and my life is a good thing, I might as well send it back to the maker for maintenance. It’s like Joyce Meyer says, “If you got a Ford car, why would you send it to Volkswagon when something goes wrong with it? You’ll send it to Ford. Why? Because since they made it, they would know the complexities of the car, and what needs to be done to fix it.” That is why when our car, or any manufactured thing, is broken beyond our understanding, the first thing we do is return it to the maker. The same should be true with all the elements of human existence. Well, that’s all that God is expecting of us. That when the circumstances of life are more than we can manage, rather than take a high dive off a short pier or a long walk off of a short plank, we Rise, stand tall, and turn the situation over to him, because he knows what needs to be done to fix it. He doesn’t want us passing it off to Joe Shmoe, aunty Mary, uncle Felix, the soothsayer, the do-gooder, or the obeah man. He also doesn’t want us to blame baby Sally, cousin Suzie, or the fogies, tell Peter, Paul, James and John, hang Judas, borrow from the Andersons to keep up with the Jones, or rob Peter to pay Paul. He wants us to bring it to him – in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving – believing that whatsoever he promises he is able to deliver; wheresoever he leads, he is able to protect; whatsoever he permits, he is able to out-perform; and that “the effective fervent prayer of righteous man availeth much.”