A poem to the true woman

     If someone would have told me that there was no beauty on this earth i would believe them. My old mind would struggle to see through the dusty pictures in my head called memories where heartache not only made a home but became the landlord itself.

      If someone would have looked me in the eye and told me love was dead, my old mind would have believed them. Reminiscing on days where my heart would tiptoe in the chambers of love so as not to awake it before its time and when i eventually woke it i would blame it for waking up and toss it away to share a trash can right where my dreams of love lay. Fast forward several years of being introduced to tears that only men know, those that trickle down a centimeter per hour slowly mourning the death of my old mind, rest in pieces. I begun to rethink my stance and rework my dance in preparation for the day one would tell me that love is dead and i would jump at the chance to defend and make amends for the time my perceptions would twist and bend because of a healing i craved to run to while facing a dead end until one day, somebody told me David, love does not exist. 

     They told me real women were a thing of the past, a myth only reserved for books like Ruth and Esther and how all they do these days is pester. In that one moment, i could feel my flesh, the same flesh i thought was dead and gone trying to rise and sound a horn and burst in affirmative but i felt held back. My spirit couldn't let me as i envisioned sistas in my church toil and pray, bruise their knees each day, grow their spirits, face process in the ovens to get their daily bread and instead of moving their bodies form a body submitted to the head. I could picture my mother teach me to be a good man to prepare for a great lady, to be a man not just of my word but his word. Right then my spirit burst forth and begun to proclaim, sista, you who are smoother than the sounds of jazz and blues, yes you sista who when they try to chain your womanhood i watch your spirit refuse. I see your eyes that have stared down tornado's yet your gaze quells the most tempest of seas in the hearts of men. 

     Who else is known to have the grace to walk slow and think fast, love strong and outlast they may call you an out cast because the man came out first but Adam is the only man to have come out without your birth and all other men including your haters all came from you and without you would have no worth. They may tease your emotions but only when a man wins them over will he say he is qualified for unrivaled promotion.  

Obscure men define you as socialites and video vixen but you are the social light pointing to the one that is risen. Your groom, he who loves you so much he had to break from that tomb and as a result only you woman can raise life by hugging and enveloping purpose in your womb.

  

     Do not despise yourself oh mothers of the world, you who nurture nature never neglecting new life, light, love, loyalty all make up your DNA, they may say what they say about looks, shape, hair and worth but without you woman there is no unblemished church. You are the pillars of the house, 

You are a healer, pealing away shame from wounded and broken men after battle has strangled our hope, 

Beauty wrapped in the Holy Ghost, you are not lesser because you came from mans rib cause see man had to act fast because if he didn't all of nature would have called dibs.

So arise as the queens as you are, the best part of the story and with your pores flooding out eternal glory. No one messes the woman, fine and divine with a garment of righteousness as it's the trinity that dresses the woman.

     We the men who have been delivered are like quivers, arrows that shoot truth to the hearts of those who doubt you, you are worthy. No amount of Nicki Minaj or Rihanna flossing flesh can compare to the beauty you hide under a fully covering dress. See yes love was dead it bled went 40 days without being fed was tired and weak but still led then laid its life instead of screaming YOLO instead and in the very same fashion of action it resurrected to show love was more than an emotion but a person and from the bottom of our heart and the one rib remaining, we covenant to love you in a world where love is in training till the day we are glorified, from husband to wife, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters in this life, till we both graduate to be one bride in Christ.

LOVE AND SURRENDER: THE SIGNATURE OF SERVICE

     For God so LOVED the world that He GAVE His ONLY begotten son that whosoever shall believe in Him shall not perish but shall HAVE eternal life.

     When someone has something they love and you are in desperate need of it, a situation so dire if you do not have this possession in their hand you will die, what do you think they would do? The answer is intricately knitted in the verse we all know, John 3:16. No one can love like God. God knew the power inherent in His son to bring deliverance, restoration, reconciliation, reconfiguration and eternal life and He did not hold Him to Himself but sent Him where He was needed, to a fallen, degenerate, separated, erroneous and dead people: you and I. Nobody can love like God. He not only loved, but He surrendered. 

     In my radio show yesterday I asked a question that I did not know would break my heart to the extent it did. I asked, if someone you know had a terrible past (but now lives a life that you bear witness God has changed and restored) wanted to spend the rest of their life with you, would you accept them as changed despite the stigma that may come with it? Majority said they would refuse to. To love, surrender and trust in the work of God through His love not only in us but in others is not only important but is compulsory as well. It is what won us over in the first place. Remember the allure of undeserved love and an eternity spent with one who saw past our deepest flaws and shortcomings, the moment we experienced the beauty of mercy?  Well, the very same power of love that was shown to us when we wallowed in the pit of sin is so hidden many never get to see it in us. 

     The toughest decisions in this world are those that need one to love and surrender.  Many times we are excited by the appeal of doing exploits but we forget that to know God, is to know Him intimately, to see and be immersed in His nature, to be saturated until we naturally and automatically leak it forth. Once we are, the biggest exploit we can do with the help of the Holy Spirit is to daily subdue our flesh with all its pattern, opinion, desires, rights, ‘validities’, intents, configurations and expressions to the autocratic slaying power of the cross to deconstruct every morsel of who we are so as to be who we were created to be. The biggest exploit we can do involves the biggest surrender we can make: to fully give and be given to God in utter sincere relationship, to be fully His to use for His purpose in unraveling His love, His way.

REFERENCES

Daniel 11:32b but the people who KNOW their God shall prove themselves strong and shall stand firm and do exploits [for God]. 1st John 4:8 He who does not love has not become acquainted with God [does not and never did KNOW Him], for God is love.

1ST CORINTHIANS 13:1-2 AMP

1ST JOHN 4:7-12 AMP

ALL IN THE HANDS OF GOD

     Psalms 95:1-7- Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song. 3 For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. 4 In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. 5 The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. 6 Come, let us bow down in worship,  let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; 7 for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.

     Yesterday was quite a tough day for me. My mind had become a battle field again and i was left alone with the enemy within but i am glad that i had the strongest of weapons with me: the word of God. I locked myself in the Studio and begun to pray and read the word of God, the same word i once received in utmost joy knowing the redemption i had found. I went back to the very same word that i knew carried life and indeed, in the darkest moment of the day, the light shone forth. The words of Psalms 95:1-7 soothed me. It started with a reminder that we are united, and we will never be alone: Come, LET US sing for joy.... Many times it seems as though it is 'You there, come and sing for joy' but the beauty of this is that as much as salvation is a singular affair between man and God, relationship, fellowship and communion are best expressed with another.

     My mind went on to to be further engulfed by the beauty of God's word in verse three that He is the great King above all other gods, including the thoughts that wanted to find root in my mind but what was the most astounding thing to me was the arena in which all these things happen: in the hand of God. The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. This here addressed where i felt i was drowning in the sea of despair, screaming and nobody could hear me, trapped not only at sea but in the proverbial 'wilderness' but truly if the sea and the dry land are in His hand, then doesn't that mean that regardless of my circumstance, i am still in Gods hands? It had failed to fully register in my mind and heart that even the worst moments we go through in life still go on not outside in a hidden place far from the Holy hand of God but they are at play in His hand. Such is the security we can have in our King.

     I don't know what you have gone through or what we may face today but one thing is for certain, we are in the MIGHTY hand of our King and you are still his. 'For He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care,' Those words are real and we can believe them today. So LET US come, Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. 2 Let us come before Him with thanksgiving and extol Him with music and song. 3 For the Lord is the great God, the great King above all gods. 4 In His hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to Him. 5 The sea is His, for He made it, and His hands formed the dry land. 6 Come, let us bow down in worship,  let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; 7 for He is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under His care.

Don't be afraid to dream

You can come as you are with all your broken pieces and shameful scars, all the pain in your heart you can bring it to Jesus, you can come as you are. Those are the lyrics to the song come as you are by the band Pocket Full Of Rocks. Sitting here and listening to that song paints a clear picture of where both my head and heart are but unlike the band, it's my soul that feels full of rocks.

I am quite the dreamer and shamelessly so. I love waking to see the sun rise, to listen to soulful music, to write music and poetry. I love to speak and to encourage and to facilitate conversation. Many conversations go on in my heart that my ears would banish if they managed to escape. On days like these, some things make painful sense. I have never battled thoughts of failure like i have in the last month.

This makes sense. I have a passion for people, those who see themselves as failures, worth less or even worth nothing. My heart bleeds for them. Who knew that i would battle the very things that i encourage others to attain to? I know God did. I am a firm believer in following not just your dreams but waking up and living them out. I do not believe that a human being should be defined by the money they make, where they live, the cars they drive: i believe these are simply add ons that come when dreams are not only dreamed but lived out with the right partners beside the dreamer. I believe in this life being a journey to a beautiful end but what happens when we begin to lose sight of the 'beautiful end' and even worse, fail to see any end?

'All i want is for you to be a successful man,' said my father this morning as i told him about the wedding date between my fiance and i. The context is, he knows i am a dreamer and he knows this world has a tendency to kill dreams and desire especially when they are bigger than the dreamer. How many people followed a deeply ingrained dream regardless of the voices that said they could never do it, most times their voice being in the mix? I know many, we have case studies of them, we praise them in articles and in lectures but are so fearful to be them. When did we stop dreaming and being a people who hope and envision and love the future as a blank canvas instead of a cluttered one full of rules, regulations with neither mystery nor color? Since when did i have to fight everyday to not dream?

It seems a time has come and is now here where dreams are caged and the worst enemies to our dreams are ourselves. Battling to shelve dreams does not kill the dream, it just gets passed on to a dreamer that will fight for their dream. Ever noticed that every job is one man's dream? What about yours, mine? Not that we should not have a job, but what happens to following a dream that has not necessarily been applied yet? Do we let it doe or follow it, nurture it, fight for it, pray for it, cry for it, work for it and then impart it? I guess i know how so many dreamers feel when they bury their dreams and the only people at the funeral are their mind and heart.

I am a dreamer. I am a writer, a poet, a speaker, a lover, an orator, an encourager, and most importantly a son of God and my God never lets his desires die. He says that His word will never go back to Him without accomplishing what He sent it to do. What if He sent a dream to you that you are so afraid to see rise up? Do you think it will go back to Him? No. He believes in what He has deposited in us to do. David, won't you believe it too? Dear [insert your name] won't you believe that He who started a good work in you will be faithful to complete it? He will. It is His pattern, His nature and His desire, that His word will find fertile ground ground and He will water it to completion. Till your dream, through pain, tears, joy, rain and discouragement. If your dream does not scare you to grow due to its greatness, it will limit and stagnate you due to its mediocrity.

Don't be afraid to dream.