The Long Way Up

A father plays a major role in the lives of his children. An understatement? An overstatement? Well, whichever your preference, it's a true statement; one that has been poorly heeded, greatly ignored, or severely missed out. Anyone can biologically sire a child -- we got a lot of that going on these days; but to be a father in every sense of the word is, for sure, such a tall order, which is why many men -- for several varying and valid reasons -- opt out of their responsibilities. One such responsibility inherent to the paternal role is the privilege of representing the Heavenly Father to his children. This wouldn't be much of a stretch if men, to begin with, had an existing relationship with their Father in Heaven growing up, and have spent their season of singleness practicing being God-conscious in whatever form of relationship they had with other people. But sadly, that isn't the case most of the time. So, whatever a man learns during his bachelorhood he usually carrie...

Since the dawn of human history, mankind has always had the inclination to want to know as much as they can about many things… important things… everything! There seems to have always been an insatiable hunger to attain awareness pertaining — and even peripheral — to whatever exists under the sun, occurs on the earth, and eludes logical explanation. In fact, in centuries of human civilization, the accumulation of cognizance has always been equated to the aggregation of might, and those who have gained vast amounts of awareness have more often than not inclined toward brandishing and wielding information to their own advantage and success. The old adage, ‘ knowledge is power ,’ has — for better or for worse — been proven true time and again throughout history. One does not even have to look into recorded historical facts of how Adolf Hitler’s knowledge of the theory of evolution and ‘the survival of the fittest’ led him and the Nazis to discriminate, segregate, and terminate thousands o...

You are enough You do not need the superfluous trappings of fame Or the glare of a spotlight zeroed in on you You do not need thunderous applause to prop you up Because once that's gone, silence is all that's left You are enough You do not need people to hang on to your every word Or have droves at your beck and call; what for? You do not need the backing of the masses Just a few who truly want to walk and run with you You are enough You do not need to always be in control, or at all Or to know every single thing that happens around you You do not need to have your say in every situation Sometimes innocence and ignorance truly lead to bliss You are enough You do not need the fattest bank account in Zurich Or have five villas in Panchgani or Tamtattouchte You do not need to run after Aston Martins Because you are much more inestimable than that You are enough You do not need to have the highest paying job Or the m...

I don't demand much from people, if I do at all. I'm typically easygoing and really not hard to please once you get to know me. Anger doesn't come as easily to me as offense does, but even then a subsequent response comes as a carefully thought out proceeding. I do not hastily respond when I am angry, as I prefer to weigh my words first before launching them from my mouth because once they're spoken, there's no taking them back. So when people come at me with repeated disrespect and condescension, I think it is but fitting that I put my foot down and speak my mind, especially when blatant disrespect is done repeatedly and in the presence of others. Never mind that I'm a pastor; that part can be disregarded, as far as I'm concerned. But if the other party can not, will not, or does not have the capacity to exercise good discretion, extend basic honoring to another human, and express respect to a fellow believer, I would most likely be provoked to g...

The imagery of dark-skinned Africans bound hand and foot by iron chains, shepherded into big wooden ships by their pale-complexioned captors, taken to distant lands as merchandise sold to the highest bidders, put to hard labor against their will without any compensation, and suffering abuse and injustice from cruel task masters may be a long-forgotten visual aid of the atrocious nature of human slavery, but the essence of it has lost none of its potency. We may not all be bound by chains, but we are all bound by something, whether we admit it or not. We are all tied to at least one thing that we either refuse to let go of, or another that refuses to let go of us. We may live in a day and age where blatant enslavement seems to be a thing of the past, but we are in fact living in a world where slavery -- in its so many varied forms -- is still in full swing. Cha-ching! Some of us are bound hand and foot by the chains of financial and material pursuits. We gain the whole wo...

It's really hard running into people with a very fixed, one-sided view of things that are very intricate and multi-faceted. Really hard! I can't understand -- if we're feeding off from the same source material and being taught by the same teachers -- why some people still choose to cling to a piece of the pie and insist to everyone else that their piece IS THE WHOLE PIE! This is probably the reason why the body of Christ is as fractured as it is today: too many people upholding one biblical truth and taking it to the extreme... mowing down other truths AND PEOPLE in their wake. I once taught about this during one of our services, echoing what I have learned from my pastor (and from other pastors online and off) that there is a danger in going to extremes when it comes to scriptural principles. The Word of God is so rich, so powerful and so full of many beautiful facets of spiritual life that fit together to make a whole. Human as we are, we have a tendency to p...