You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: Matthew 15: 7

“There’s a war going on outside no man is safe from; you can run but you can’t hide forever from these streets that we done took you walking with your head down scared to look you SHOOK”. I lifted those lyrics from Mobb Deep’s classic Survival of the Fittest and when I thought to include them in a message about God I thought about how many might view that as taboo. I mean these fellas are talking about surviving on the streets; rap songs riddled with gun talk, crime, poverty, and despair. I remember sitting in Bible study school around the time Juice came out; they were teaching us about the broad and the narrow path. These lyrics are definitely reflective of the broad path. SO WHAT!!!

Listen to their words, you can flip them and place those same words in our churches, our homes, these lyrics are reflective of the state of a desperate people, quite possibly spiritually depleted. This thought came to me on the heels of me talking about pimps in the pulpit the other day. I thought to myself “Ced, are you coming at the Lord’s church”. If so, what gives you the right! So there’s a war going on but I think it’s a spiritual war, I think we are warring within ourselves and we are warring about how to worship.

Nothing I am about to write is an absolute, it is merely based upon observations that I have made and others have relayed to me. When God asked us to spread his word do you think it meant only to a selected few, only to those who are right in front of our face? Nothing else in life is that easy so why would his word be that easy, only spread in the confines of the sanctuary as my brother David put it. There’s a war going on outside and its real; our morals are being corrupted, our people are dying. Look around the globe; natural disaster and famine are destroying entire cultures while we sit inside praying, or preaching to the choir rather.

Something in me for the last year has been telling me that something new is about to happen. Our spiritual self will be challenged; we can no longer only depend on the word Sunday morning, or continue to fellowship amongst the church during the week. Jesus was out spreading the word, not passing judgment but giving knowledge. If there was ever a time when non-practical ways were needed the time is now. No longer can we turn our siditty spiritual noses up at the drug abuser, the drug dealer, and the promiscuous girl because the truth is if you weren’t that person you had your own cross to bear. You may have done so in private but don’t front like you’re too good now. Walking with your head down scared to look, your shook, shook that maybe someone might learn what you’ve done. I know I am, some of my dark moments are just that; dark and I do not want to be reminded of them but maybe we have to be reminded of them to be free of them and to fulfill our promise to God, to spread his word. Peace and Grace be unto you!

If I didn’t define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people’s fantasies for me and eaten alive. - Audre Lorde