"As I have already said, our number one goal should be to develop a close, intimate, personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Being in continual fellowship with God and learning to obey Him in all things will make you happier than you might ever imagine. Since God is Life, how can we hope to enjoy life apart from Him?" (Joyce Meyer, Making Good Habits Breaking Bad Habits 14 New Behaviors That Will Energize Your Life) Good, enjoyable relationships start with God who is love and expand to self and other people. "Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me" (John 14:6 New Living Translation Bible.) 1 John 4:10-11 Amplified Bible says, "In this is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (the atoning sacrifice) for our sins. Beloved, if God loved us so [very much], we also ought to love one another."
Desmond Tutu and Nomalizo Leah Shenxane married on July 2, 1955. Almost 6o years later they are still married and still loving and enjoying God, each other and other people. Desmond Tutu is also involved in helping to free from a Chinese prison Chen Kegui, husband of Liu Fang, father of the little boy Chen Fubin and nephew to Chen Guangcheng, who is the blind, human rights activist who exposed forced abortions and forced sterilizations practiced as part of China's one-child policy and is continuing to work to end China's one-child policy and other human rights violations. Tutu writes about Chen Guangcheng in a June 21, 2013, Huffington Post article "Chen Guangcheng: Has NYU Bowed to Pressure From China?", "Chen Guangcheng has been one of the most outspoken of the Chinese dissidents abroad, taking a public stand against Chinese human rights violations, including the abominable practices of forced abortion, imprisonment and enslavement of religious minorities, and the unthinkable execution of prisoners for the harvesting and sale of their organs. He is also charismatic, intelligent, with a wonderful story -- a self taught lawyer who defended villagers against corrupt officials, who before gaining fame for his escape from house arrest was known ... in the villages as the "barefoot lawyer.""
When Jesus Christ lived on earth, He had a variety of relationships. Wherever He went, He sought to make people's lives better now and forever. What are some of the ways people are better off for being around you? Write to:
Michele F. Jackson
P. O. Box 2106
Woodbridge, Virginia 22195
Follow Michele F. Jackson on http://www.Twitter.com/Michelelove30.
Showing posts with label activism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label activism. Show all posts
Monday, July 29, 2013
Thursday, June 13, 2013
Enthusiastically Inclusive
When African American slavery was legal in America it was evil. At the time other evils were legal too. One of those evils was that women of all races could not vote in America. Some were active only in the fight against slavery. Others were active in the fight for equality and other goodness for both African Americans and women.
Some people limited their activism to slavery because of ignorance. God wants us to have a comprehensive understanding of the Bible. The things that we do not know can cause us and others harm. God is concerned about all people.
Acts 18:24-26 New Living Translation Bible says, "Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, an eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well, had arrived in Ephesus from Alexandria in Egypt. He had been taught the way of the Lord, and he taught others about Jesus with an enthusiastic spirit and with accuracy. However, he knew only about John’s baptism. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him preaching boldly in the synagogue, they took him aside and explained the way of God even more accurately."
Priscilla and Aquila were a wife and a husband who were creyentes (believers). They worked together to share a relationship with God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ and God the Holy Spirit with many people. When Priscilla and Aquila encountered Apollos they didn't get angry with Apollos because of his limited understanding. Instead they loved Apollos and shared with him more revelation of who God is.
Apollos accepted the Word of God delivered to him via Priscilla and Aquila. Apollos also became a leader in the early Christian church.
How do you view people who have a different understanding than yours? Write to:
Michele F. Jackson
P. O. Box 2106
Woodbridge, Virginia 22195
Follow Michele F. Jackson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/michelelove30.
Priscilla and Aquila saw potential in Apollos even though he wasn't a part of their worship group initially and had less understanding of the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13:7 Amplified Bible says, "Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]."
The Chinese invented the fishing reel. Priscilla and Aquila weren't afraid to fish for Apollos who was different from them. God wants all kinds of people in His kingdom, and He wants us to continuously grow in our understanding of who God is and what pleases Him.
Some people limited their activism to slavery because of ignorance. God wants us to have a comprehensive understanding of the Bible. The things that we do not know can cause us and others harm. God is concerned about all people.
Acts 18:24-26 New Living Translation Bible says, "Meanwhile, a Jew named Apollos, an eloquent speaker who knew the Scriptures well, had arrived in Ephesus from Alexandria in Egypt. He had been taught the way of the Lord, and he taught others about Jesus with an enthusiastic spirit and with accuracy. However, he knew only about John’s baptism. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him preaching boldly in the synagogue, they took him aside and explained the way of God even more accurately."
Priscilla and Aquila were a wife and a husband who were creyentes (believers). They worked together to share a relationship with God the Father, God the Son Jesus Christ and God the Holy Spirit with many people. When Priscilla and Aquila encountered Apollos they didn't get angry with Apollos because of his limited understanding. Instead they loved Apollos and shared with him more revelation of who God is.
Apollos accepted the Word of God delivered to him via Priscilla and Aquila. Apollos also became a leader in the early Christian church.
How do you view people who have a different understanding than yours? Write to:
Michele F. Jackson
P. O. Box 2106
Woodbridge, Virginia 22195
Follow Michele F. Jackson on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/michelelove30.
Priscilla and Aquila saw potential in Apollos even though he wasn't a part of their worship group initially and had less understanding of the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13:7 Amplified Bible says, "Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]."
The Chinese invented the fishing reel. Priscilla and Aquila weren't afraid to fish for Apollos who was different from them. God wants all kinds of people in His kingdom, and He wants us to continuously grow in our understanding of who God is and what pleases Him.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Awaking a Sleeping Giant
Frederick Douglass started out as a slave named Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. When he was hired out by his slave master to work in a Baltimore, Maryland, shipyard, he met a free-born, African-American woman named Anna Murray. Bailey and Murray fell in love.
Galatians 5:13-14 Complete Jewish Bible says, "For, brothers, you were called to be free. Only do not let that freedom become an excuse for allowing your old nature to have its way. Instead, serve one another in love. For the whole of the Torah is summed up in this one sentence: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”"
Murray used her freedom and finances to help Bailey get his freedom. Using money that Murray gave Bailey and another friend's borrowed identification papers, Bailey escaped from slavery in Maryland to New York, which was considered the "grand station" of the Underground Railroad. In New York Bailey met from African-American Abolitionist and Author David Ruggles.
Later Murray left Maryland too. She met Bailey in New York.
Reverend James W.C. Pennington, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New York, was born a slave in Maryland who later escaped to New York. Pennington earned a doctorate of divinity from Heidelberg University in Germany and had the honor of marrying Frederick Bailey and Anna Murray.
Together the married couple left for Massachusetts where Bailey changed his name to Douglass to escape slave hunters. In Massachusetts Douglass met William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist and newspaper publisher of The Liberator, and began his own career as an abolitionist. Douglass became a speaker, writer and activist. He wrote books and published his own newspaper called North Star, which is also the name of a newspaper I wrote for and edited in high school and the name of the star runaway slaves used while traveling the Underground Railroad to freedom.
Douglass' North Star's motto is "Right is of no sex--Truth is of no color--God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren."
Douglass spent his youth in slavery and forced silence about slavery's evils. As an adult he spoke. A Dutch proverb says, "Sooner or later, the truth comes to light."
Like Douglass' slave authorities tried to keep him submissive and silent, Chinese authorities tried to keep Chen Guangcheng submissive and silent. Guangcheng became internationally known for filing a 2005 law suit against a local government for forced abortions and forced sterilizations practiced as part of China’s one-child policy. Guangcheng's lawsuit was rejected, and he was placed under house arrest in Shandong, China, with guards surrounding his house, his cell phone service cut off, Internet access blocked and bright lights shinning on his house at night.
Tejas is the name the Spanish gave to the area that became the US state of Texas. The Spanish chose the name based on a Native American word for "friend."
Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer who wears dark sunglasses because he is blind, had friends help him to escape from house arrest in April 2012 and to enter the US embassy in Beijing. A deal was worked out between China and the United States; now Guangcheng lives in New York with his wife, Yuan Weijing, and two children.
On April 9, 2013, he testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee On Foreign Affairs about his family's and other people's persecution in China and other ongoing human rights abuses in China. Guangcheng gave Congress a list of 130,000 Chinese officials involved in forced abortions and forced sterilizations.
Since China's one-child policy was implemented in the 1970s more than 336 million babies have been killed by abortion; that's more Chinese baby boys and baby girls have lost their lives to abortion than the combined total population of the United States of America and Australia. In America since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion 55 million American babies have been killed.
Guangcheng's house arrest in Shandong, China, meant that he could not leave his house and people couldn't come to him. During this time Actor Christian Bale tried to visit the activist to publicize his plight, but was prohibited by plain clothes Chinese security.
Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times with others attempted to visit Guangcheng when he was under house arrest. Jacobs was met by a man who swatted at his car with a broom and called for back up who detained Jacobs. The security back up took the reporters' camera and deleted their images. When Jacobs was driving out of town, he was followed by a car with the license plate covered over by paper.
Guangcheng's nephew, Chen Kegui, has been in jail after using knives to fend off local officials who burst into Kegui's home after Guangcheng's escape.
Chen Guangcheng said, "Recently, many friends and neighbors who I have been in touch with by phone have been taken into custody by the authorities for questioning. They have been threatened and made to describe what our conversations have been about," (January 29, 2013, Reuters article entitled "Blind dissident urges global pressure on China over rights" by Paul Eckert.)
When asked about having regrets on speaking out about forced abortions and forced sterilizations in China, Guangcheng told Anderson Cooper of CNN through a translator, "I have no regrets."
During an April 8, 2013, George W. Bush Institute interview Guangcheng recommended that Americans listen to various Chinese media to learn the ways that freedom of speech, the right to vote and the right to protest are missing in China and human rights violations are being committed.
A Persian proverb says, "Opportunity should be grabbed."
Chen recommended that once people are informed about the situation in China they can show support for life, freedom and human rights by wearing dark sunglasses like he wears, blogging or something else according to ability.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese forces that bombed Pearl Harbor bringing World War II to America, says about the attack, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve" (Japan Enchantment of the World.)
What are some ways to stand up for life, love and liberty?
Galatians 5:13-14 Complete Jewish Bible says, "For, brothers, you were called to be free. Only do not let that freedom become an excuse for allowing your old nature to have its way. Instead, serve one another in love. For the whole of the Torah is summed up in this one sentence: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”"
Murray used her freedom and finances to help Bailey get his freedom. Using money that Murray gave Bailey and another friend's borrowed identification papers, Bailey escaped from slavery in Maryland to New York, which was considered the "grand station" of the Underground Railroad. In New York Bailey met from African-American Abolitionist and Author David Ruggles.
Later Murray left Maryland too. She met Bailey in New York.
Reverend James W.C. Pennington, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of New York, was born a slave in Maryland who later escaped to New York. Pennington earned a doctorate of divinity from Heidelberg University in Germany and had the honor of marrying Frederick Bailey and Anna Murray.
Together the married couple left for Massachusetts where Bailey changed his name to Douglass to escape slave hunters. In Massachusetts Douglass met William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist and newspaper publisher of The Liberator, and began his own career as an abolitionist. Douglass became a speaker, writer and activist. He wrote books and published his own newspaper called North Star, which is also the name of a newspaper I wrote for and edited in high school and the name of the star runaway slaves used while traveling the Underground Railroad to freedom.
Douglass' North Star's motto is "Right is of no sex--Truth is of no color--God is the Father of us all, and all we are brethren."
Douglass spent his youth in slavery and forced silence about slavery's evils. As an adult he spoke. A Dutch proverb says, "Sooner or later, the truth comes to light."
Like Douglass' slave authorities tried to keep him submissive and silent, Chinese authorities tried to keep Chen Guangcheng submissive and silent. Guangcheng became internationally known for filing a 2005 law suit against a local government for forced abortions and forced sterilizations practiced as part of China’s one-child policy. Guangcheng's lawsuit was rejected, and he was placed under house arrest in Shandong, China, with guards surrounding his house, his cell phone service cut off, Internet access blocked and bright lights shinning on his house at night.
Tejas is the name the Spanish gave to the area that became the US state of Texas. The Spanish chose the name based on a Native American word for "friend."
Guangcheng, a self-taught lawyer who wears dark sunglasses because he is blind, had friends help him to escape from house arrest in April 2012 and to enter the US embassy in Beijing. A deal was worked out between China and the United States; now Guangcheng lives in New York with his wife, Yuan Weijing, and two children.
On April 9, 2013, he testified before a subcommittee of the U.S. House Committee On Foreign Affairs about his family's and other people's persecution in China and other ongoing human rights abuses in China. Guangcheng gave Congress a list of 130,000 Chinese officials involved in forced abortions and forced sterilizations.
Since China's one-child policy was implemented in the 1970s more than 336 million babies have been killed by abortion; that's more Chinese baby boys and baby girls have lost their lives to abortion than the combined total population of the United States of America and Australia. In America since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion 55 million American babies have been killed.
Guangcheng's house arrest in Shandong, China, meant that he could not leave his house and people couldn't come to him. During this time Actor Christian Bale tried to visit the activist to publicize his plight, but was prohibited by plain clothes Chinese security.
Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times with others attempted to visit Guangcheng when he was under house arrest. Jacobs was met by a man who swatted at his car with a broom and called for back up who detained Jacobs. The security back up took the reporters' camera and deleted their images. When Jacobs was driving out of town, he was followed by a car with the license plate covered over by paper.
Guangcheng's nephew, Chen Kegui, has been in jail after using knives to fend off local officials who burst into Kegui's home after Guangcheng's escape.
Chen Guangcheng said, "Recently, many friends and neighbors who I have been in touch with by phone have been taken into custody by the authorities for questioning. They have been threatened and made to describe what our conversations have been about," (January 29, 2013, Reuters article entitled "Blind dissident urges global pressure on China over rights" by Paul Eckert.)
When asked about having regrets on speaking out about forced abortions and forced sterilizations in China, Guangcheng told Anderson Cooper of CNN through a translator, "I have no regrets."
During an April 8, 2013, George W. Bush Institute interview Guangcheng recommended that Americans listen to various Chinese media to learn the ways that freedom of speech, the right to vote and the right to protest are missing in China and human rights violations are being committed.
A Persian proverb says, "Opportunity should be grabbed."
Chen recommended that once people are informed about the situation in China they can show support for life, freedom and human rights by wearing dark sunglasses like he wears, blogging or something else according to ability.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese forces that bombed Pearl Harbor bringing World War II to America, says about the attack, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve" (Japan Enchantment of the World.)
What are some ways to stand up for life, love and liberty?
Saturday, February 2, 2013
Pro-Woman, Pro-life
For part of the lives of my grandmother, Mildred, and my great-grandmother, Pearl, in our great and glorious country of America women did not have equal rights with men. A time existed in America when women could not inherit family property, pursue schooling, get a divorce or vote. They were generally paid far less than men to do the same job and were severely restricted in the types of jobs and businesses they could have. Proper female professions were typically limited to teacher, nurse, farm help, factory worker, mill girl or maid.
Yet in spite of all these impediments, inequalities and injustices, contrary to some of today's feminists, the women's movement started out pro-woman, pro-life. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, passionately-in-love wife married 47 years, mother of seven, women's-rights activist and abolitionist, was both pro-woman and pro-life. In a 1873 letter to Julia Ward Howe, the originator of Mother's Day, Stanton writes, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."
Six of Stanton's children were planned; the seventh was not. She supported birth control, but not abortion linking abortion to infanticide. The seventh child was born to Henry Brewster Stanton and Elizabeth Cady Stanton later in life when Elizabeth was 44. She could have gotten rid of the "mistake," but instead of abortion, she chose life for their child.
Abortion and infanticide have an historical and present-day link. Jill Stanek was a registered nurse in the Labor & Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. She discovered not only were abortions being committed there, but babies were being aborted alive to die without medical care.
When hospital leaders said that they would not stop, Stanek went public, eventually got fired for her outspokenness and has become a national figure in the effort to protect both born and pre-born infants. Her written testimony was included in U.S. Congressional debates on the Born Alive Infants Protection Act which became law on August 5, 2002. The Born Alive Infants Protection Act protects live aborted children from infanticide.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton authored the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments which sought equality for women. The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments reads in part, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness . . . The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyrant over her . . . In view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half of the people of this country . . . because women do feel themselves aggrieved, . . . we insist that they have immediate admission to all rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."
Stanton joined with Susan B. Anthony to author the three-volume History of Woman Suffrage. Together these friends of 50 years were not just motivators they were movers. They fought for women's rights with many other women like Sojourner Truth. Although it was illegal for women to vote in America in the 1800s, Anthony cast her vote for president on November 5, 1872. She got arrested for it on November 18, 1872. Anthony says, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." The Bible agrees. Acts 5:29 New Living Translation Bible says, "But Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than any human authority." God does not favor men over women. Galatians 3:28 Amplified Bible says, "There is [now no distinction] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
God also says through Solomon in Proverbs 22:6 English Standard Bible, "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." While Anthony did not marry or have children, Stanton married and had seven children, but both died before women had the right to vote in America. Harriot Stanton Blatch, Stanton's daughter, and Nora Blatch, Stanton's granddaughter, continued to fight for women's right to vote. Despite beatings, imprisonments and other persecutions, women obtained the right to vote in America through the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
Yet in spite of all these impediments, inequalities and injustices, contrary to some of today's feminists, the women's movement started out pro-woman, pro-life. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, passionately-in-love wife married 47 years, mother of seven, women's-rights activist and abolitionist, was both pro-woman and pro-life. In a 1873 letter to Julia Ward Howe, the originator of Mother's Day, Stanton writes, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."
Six of Stanton's children were planned; the seventh was not. She supported birth control, but not abortion linking abortion to infanticide. The seventh child was born to Henry Brewster Stanton and Elizabeth Cady Stanton later in life when Elizabeth was 44. She could have gotten rid of the "mistake," but instead of abortion, she chose life for their child.
Abortion and infanticide have an historical and present-day link. Jill Stanek was a registered nurse in the Labor & Delivery Department at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois. She discovered not only were abortions being committed there, but babies were being aborted alive to die without medical care.
When hospital leaders said that they would not stop, Stanek went public, eventually got fired for her outspokenness and has become a national figure in the effort to protect both born and pre-born infants. Her written testimony was included in U.S. Congressional debates on the Born Alive Infants Protection Act which became law on August 5, 2002. The Born Alive Infants Protection Act protects live aborted children from infanticide.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton authored the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments which sought equality for women. The Declaration of Rights and Sentiments reads in part, "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness . . . The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyrant over her . . . In view of this entire disfranchisement of one-half of the people of this country . . . because women do feel themselves aggrieved, . . . we insist that they have immediate admission to all rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."
Stanton joined with Susan B. Anthony to author the three-volume History of Woman Suffrage. Together these friends of 50 years were not just motivators they were movers. They fought for women's rights with many other women like Sojourner Truth. Although it was illegal for women to vote in America in the 1800s, Anthony cast her vote for president on November 5, 1872. She got arrested for it on November 18, 1872. Anthony says, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." The Bible agrees. Acts 5:29 New Living Translation Bible says, "But Peter and the apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than any human authority." God does not favor men over women. Galatians 3:28 Amplified Bible says, "There is [now no distinction] neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."
God also says through Solomon in Proverbs 22:6 English Standard Bible, "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." While Anthony did not marry or have children, Stanton married and had seven children, but both died before women had the right to vote in America. Harriot Stanton Blatch, Stanton's daughter, and Nora Blatch, Stanton's granddaughter, continued to fight for women's right to vote. Despite beatings, imprisonments and other persecutions, women obtained the right to vote in America through the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Know Your Place
Some full-time parents say, "I don't work." What a negative confession!
Nonprofit work is just as valuable as work for profit. Imagine if Mohandas Gandhi said, "I don't work," because he was an activist of love and non-violence in the quest for India's independence from Britain and to remain a united country.
If one person is ashamed and out of order, it affects others negatively. If Gandhi became ashamed and out of order and decided to leave activism to join a British, corporate law firm, then perhaps while he was making himself rich the quest for India's independence might not have been victorious on 8/15/1947, more partition might have occurred and because India was smaller she might not be the world's largest democracy today.
Before God created the earth, God planned for Gandhi to do what he did. Gandhi, the unashamed activist, inspired other activists like Martin Luther King Jr. If Gandhi didn't show that love and nonviolence could be effective against evil, then perhaps King wouldn't have used it, and African Americans today would still be mostly the poorest of the poor having to go to Colored Only places.
Confusion of purpose is from Satan. People sometimes become confused because of the love of money. 1 Timothy 6:10 Amplified Bible says, "For the love of money is a root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have been led astray and have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves through with many acute [mental] pangs."
Money is not evil. The love of money is evil. Money is a tool for ministry and other things. God gave some passion and purpose to make money, so that they have the means to do good by giving away much for the betterment of people and keeping more than enough for an enjoyable, excellent life for self and family. 1 Timothy 6:17-19 Amplified Bible says, "As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be proud and arrogant and contemptuous of others, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches, but on God, Who richly and ceaselessly provides us with everything for [our] enjoyment. [Charge them] to do good, to be rich in good works, to be liberal and generous of heart, ready to share [with others], In this way laying up for themselves [the riches that endure forever as] a good foundation for the future, so that they may grasp that which is life indeed."
Your office hours aren't 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.? If you are in the place God planned for you, celebrate. God designed the body of believers to be diverse. While we have the same head, Jesus Christ, everyone is not the same. It pleases God to make people African, European, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, working all different kinds of assignments at all different kinds of hours and with different abilities. 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 New Living Translation Bible says, "The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit. Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part."
Take pleasure in your place. Cooperate with God to stop those who try to knock you out of it.
Nonprofit work is just as valuable as work for profit. Imagine if Mohandas Gandhi said, "I don't work," because he was an activist of love and non-violence in the quest for India's independence from Britain and to remain a united country.
If one person is ashamed and out of order, it affects others negatively. If Gandhi became ashamed and out of order and decided to leave activism to join a British, corporate law firm, then perhaps while he was making himself rich the quest for India's independence might not have been victorious on 8/15/1947, more partition might have occurred and because India was smaller she might not be the world's largest democracy today.
Before God created the earth, God planned for Gandhi to do what he did. Gandhi, the unashamed activist, inspired other activists like Martin Luther King Jr. If Gandhi didn't show that love and nonviolence could be effective against evil, then perhaps King wouldn't have used it, and African Americans today would still be mostly the poorest of the poor having to go to Colored Only places.
Confusion of purpose is from Satan. People sometimes become confused because of the love of money. 1 Timothy 6:10 Amplified Bible says, "For the love of money is a root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have been led astray and have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves through with many acute [mental] pangs."
Money is not evil. The love of money is evil. Money is a tool for ministry and other things. God gave some passion and purpose to make money, so that they have the means to do good by giving away much for the betterment of people and keeping more than enough for an enjoyable, excellent life for self and family. 1 Timothy 6:17-19 Amplified Bible says, "As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be proud and arrogant and contemptuous of others, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches, but on God, Who richly and ceaselessly provides us with everything for [our] enjoyment. [Charge them] to do good, to be rich in good works, to be liberal and generous of heart, ready to share [with others], In this way laying up for themselves [the riches that endure forever as] a good foundation for the future, so that they may grasp that which is life indeed."
Your office hours aren't 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.? If you are in the place God planned for you, celebrate. God designed the body of believers to be diverse. While we have the same head, Jesus Christ, everyone is not the same. It pleases God to make people African, European, Asian, Hispanic, male, female, working all different kinds of assignments at all different kinds of hours and with different abilities. 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 New Living Translation Bible says, "The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ. Some of us are Jews, some are Gentiles, some are slaves, and some are free. But we have all been baptized into one body by one Spirit, and we all share the same Spirit. Yes, the body has many different parts, not just one part."
Take pleasure in your place. Cooperate with God to stop those who try to knock you out of it.
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