The Friend

Fun Fact:  Did you know that African-Americans represent over 40% of the U.S. Prison Population?  Did you also know that African-Americans make up only 12% of the U.S. total population.  Let's crunch some numbers: Estimated people in America: 313.9 million people (2012) Estimated African-Americans in America: 38,929,319 (2012) THIS MEANS AFRICAN-AMERICANS ACCOUNT FOR 12.6% OF THE TOTAL U.S. POPULATION U.S. Prison Population: 2.2 million people are currently in jail.  This is by far the worlds leading number of people incriminated in a country. How many of these people are African-American? 40% of the U.S. Prison population is made up of African-Americans (non-hispanic blacks) Also if we were to take a look at the demographics of CAPITOL PUNISHMENT in the states of California and Texas: CALIFORNIA (73.5 percent White) (6.6 percent African-American) 742 total killed, 269 Black, 257 White, 179 Latino, 12 Native-American, 25 Asian TEXAS (80.3 percent White) (12.4 percent African-Americ

Being a Christian can be equated to two lovers getting married and then beginning the real task of living together. There is the euphoria where love is fully found for the first time and a man and a woman have now entered into a new life together. It could modestly be equated to fully witnessing your first spring or catching your first taste of the cold morning dew. We as the Bride have exchanged our vows and promised to be faithful to One Husband. Though, while we conceptual ly may have understood, we did not realize then how strenuous the process of dying to oneself would really be. We now begin the process of riding ourselves of all selfishness (all the while failing miserably) and seeking forgiveness for our wrongdoings, daily. Like the perfect Husband He graciously forgives us and continues to lead us with life-giving leadership but we struggle with accepting that He still perfectly loves us in spite of ourselves. Daily, He affirms us by noting how wonderfully made w

This idea that "God is love" and "God is present in all people" is a very post modern thought that many of us have been raised in. The problem with it is that it assumes that our cultures definition of love and God's definition of love are the same thing but they inherently and completely different. People imagine a God that creates but does not have sovereign authority over our lives, that God do es not judge the righteous and unrighteous on HIS pre-determined scale, and that God that does not hold the sins of the people against them. People assume that since God is love then love must mean that He A:Condones, B:Supports, and C:Encourages actions that are not of Him. We have redefined sin to mean that if WE don't think something is morally ok then God must not think it is therefore the person who commits those crimes deserve death (the aurora shooter for example). But when our culture does think something is morally ok (homosexuality, gay marr