Emotional Growth
The vision of our ministry is that “We spread the message of Christ to encourage emotional, economic and spiritual growth”. As I began to reflect on writing this blog I realized that in order for us to spread the message effectively, we as a body must first work on these things in our own lives. Though the vision has three main areas of growth, the first area is directed towards emotional growth.
Topic: Family emotional growth: Speaking with someone about their father family issues:
My father was absent for most of my life…..Talk about a bomb dropped in my life! Boom!! Even while writing this I feel a struggle on the inside…the struggle of being angry at him, of thinking how terrible of a man he is for doing the things he has done, of thinking that he is going straight to hell for what he did.
Then in some strange twilight zone way, now that I am older, he wants to call me and talk to me like none of that ever happened. Is he dying? Is he trying to make up for time lost? Maybe he is so high that he really doesn’t remember all the things that he did. ( Relax _____ and breathe…..)
I remember thinking all of these things above asking God if I had to speak to him or could I just ignore him and not have to build a relationship with him. God clearly answered back “_____, what if you were the only person that was able to show him, Me, through you?! …..To that, I replied something like’ come on God, surely you could use someone else. He is too close to me …and God said “Do what? Love him? Understand that all men sin and fall short of the glory. To love your enemies even when you don’t want to.
I was quickly reminded that spreading the message of Christ involves being like Christ and allowing Him to show himself through us so that other people can see His light in us and are drawn to Him, I was reminded how as terrible as I think my father was or is, Christ was beaten, mocked, and publicly and humiliated and killed. Through all of the pain of what others were doing to him, He still asked the Father to forgive them because they did not know what they were doing. WOW!!! If I am to be like Christ am I supposed to forgive those who do evil to me even unto my own death? The word says yes. Matthew 5:44 says “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you”.
Topic: Racism today in our churches and out in our communities: How can our emotions affect the body of Christ and how are we to spread the message (gospel) of Jesus Christ as Saints of God. Our churches and communities are made up of various groups of people, cultures, and beliefs. UKCF desires to share our church vision and help all members of the church and communities to understand how to correctly apply it and run into 2018 with a clear vision.
Scripture: Habakkuk 2:2 NLT: And the Lord answered me and said, write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.
In 2017, I have seen and heard of hidden racism to extreme outward racism. Hidden racism-Confronting persons of color in a store and accusing them of things that are out of order; and not offering the same qualified person of color the open job. Extreme outward: Active participation on racism, verbalizing racial slurs, to writing out racial graffiti. Hopefully teaching on our vision brings to life real situations and how to handle them.
Yesterday, I was looking at a video on facebook. A man saw an elderly couple come out of a gas station store He had reached out to help an elderly couple in trouble. The elderly came out of a gas station store and while the couple was walking out of the store, the wife fell. That man immediately went to the couple and found the woman had no pulse, so he began CPR. The husband started yelling racial slurs at the man who came to help them; N____, get away from my wife. Sir, your wife will die if I don’t help her. The husband continued with the racial slurs; N_____, I said get away from my wife, I don’t care and I want you to get away from her. The husband, asked if the store clerk had anyone else to help his wife. There was another couple that came to see what was happening and heard the husband shouting the racial slurs. The man shouted to the other couple to call 911 and neither the couple nor the store clerk tried to stop the man from giving CPR even though the husband continued to ask for others to take this man’s place to help his wife. Immediately, my initial emotions kicked in: I went from sadness to anger and for a brief moment, I said to myself, I wouldn’t help this nasty man, but God… then I thought of how I would apply what Bishop has taught us.
Emotional Growth:
I bring this message to its conclusion: I am glad that I am at a church that teaches on real life issues and the application of the word to resolve those issues.
Sister Pamela
