So Close

Spinning tunes spitting knowledge - I worked my dream like it was my college
Believing lives would change - not knowing it wasn’t always for the better
Thought it would last forever - turned on a dime like stormy weather
Winging by like a butterfly out of reach - no time to say goodbye to each
Unrequited dream, evaporating like steam, bursting through each seam

I came so close.

Believing the dream would never die - turn on the tube and I’d say hi
Suits and ties and teeth and flare - who would’ve thought baby boy was there
Soared so high - like that airplane toy in the sky only to find the landing
More demanding than the flight could ever be - how could I not see it coming
Day turned to night no light - not even dusk or a dawn

I came so close.

Hearing the strains of tunes unwritten - caught up bemused musically smitten
Eighty-eight keys at full attention– fingers and thumbs in melodic distention
Just a simple song was all I wrote - haunting lyric note for note
The symphony played at half past seven - strings lifting me to lyrical heaven
I missed my return flight - to find myself ascended after the song had ended

I came so close.

In love I fell though not the first - ill prepared my best was the worst
My progeny all waited to see - what would become of them and me?
When the storm insensible swirled within - churning, yearning, burning sin
Peace elusive, dysfunction the storm - sane was crazy and crazy the norm
Beyond the scope of paternity – I accept what won't change in eternity

I came so close.

No shedding of tears no weak regret – Love let love and let love let
And even though it whispers my fate - I hear but cannot reciprocate
Longing, knowing, living, hoping, wanting, needing

I came so close.

I thought I heard a distant call - to challenge hearts to rise not fall
And in the doing I missed it all – I prayed and asked and knocked and saught
I tried and planned and worked and fought – only to find it was all for naught

I came so close.

Ask me was it worth the ride - to have loved and lost and laughed and cried
I would have to answer in direct reply - without a doubt I’ve found supply
To be miscast and misunderstood – an acceptable price cause it’s all been good
Would I do it again, would I risk it all? - to chance to slip to trip or fall?

No sunshine without first the night - No victory without first the fight
No purchase without at the first a cost - no crown without at the last a cross.


I came so close

Can You See Through Me?

“For God Who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts so as [to beam forth] the Light for the illumination of the knowledge of the majesty and glory of God [as it is manifest in the Person and is revealed] in the face of Jesus Christ (the Messiah). However, we possess this precious treasure [the divine Light of the Gospel] in [frail, human] vessels of earth, that the grandeur and exceeding greatness of the power may be shown to be from God and not from ourselves.”

2 Corinthians 4:6-7, The Amplified Bible

"The thing that you want to hide is the thing that He (God) wants to use. You gotta testify.”

Gospel singer John P. Kee

"He sang as if he knew me in all my dark despair - and then he looked right through me as if I wasn't there."

Killing Me Softly, Roberta Flack

My wife and I listened to a one and a half hour "sermon" yesterday on sexual immorality and promiscuity by a nationally prominent minister. After all the hyperbole, big words and flowery examples, the popular preacher never 1) called out the root of the problem, 2) gave his own testimony of how he (a divorcee for 10+ years) coped with struggles, challenges and failings, or 3) challenged people to change. He just preached a good sermon, using eloquence, homiletics, hermeneutics, apologetics and histrionics without hitting the bulls-eye - sin.

This morning, Cozette and I watched a ten-minute video clip sent to me by my son, Pastor Darryl Ford II, in which Nate Larkin transparently showed us his scars, failings and frailties. We saw and heard the voice of Jesus shine and beam out of his life like a lighthouse beacon. Isn’t that the point of ministry, after all?

This year there has been a rash of prominently known ministries experiencing divorce, primarily (but not exclusively) due to adultery and fornication. As a three-time divorcee, I’ve made horrible mistakes, decisions, and know enough to not throw stones or judge. Had I confronted my own issues as Nate did, I would have spared my family the pain of divorce. I’ve spent the last twenty or so years dealing with my moral failure, as have my children, who have been saddled with the fallout and baggage of my failings.

Why do we support and applaud ministries who have no accountability? When do we reject style and seek substantive ministry that pierces the heart and changes lives? When will we take personal accountability, casting off our costumes of religious personas and come as we are, presenting the broken fragments of our lives as receptacles of God’s grace and mercy?

~ matter of the mind challenge ~

1. View the video on this link: http://iamsecond.com/#/seconds/Nate_Larkin/
2. Pass the link on to everyone you know.
3. Challenge yourself to a new level of transparency/honesty/repentance.
4. Don't eat spiritual garbage; demand accountability of pastors and other ministry sources.
5. Leave a comment on my blog – I’d like to hear your opinions/reactions.

Unless and until each of us are transparent before God and with each other, the smudge of our lives will blur the perception of who Christ is to the world, which is all the Christ the world will ever see, hear and know.

Thank you Nate. Thank you DJ. Thank you Jesus.

A Guide For Global Leadership

All I Really Need To Know

All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten is a book of short essays by Robert Fulghum, first published in 1986. I thought to re-publish an excerpt here for your reading pleasure. I added one. Can you guess which?

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
Pray.
Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

The Brilliance Of A Gift

While writing today I wanted to hear Stings’ “Fields Of Gold.” After his version was over, another version popped up. I clicked on it and discovered a gifted artist singing her version. Her voice touched my heart in a compartment long forgotten. As I worked on my project, I toggled back and forth to YouTube, where I listened to song after song from her, each seemingly more heartfelt than the one before. As I listened to her amazing voice, I was struck by how gifted she was, yet I’d never heard of her. There she was, her words and melodies chanting the hauntingly familiar refrain of a long lost friend.

Of her, ABC News said, “The world did not discover her talent, nor hear her voice. There was a quality in her voice that would make you cry.” She shunned the spotlight, was shy, and never sought fortune or fame. She just wanted to share her gift.

As I clicked the fourth or fifth YouTube clip of her, I saw a scroll of words, and I knew there was more to this story, and to the reason her voice drew me like a moth to a flame. The scroll told the story of her life and death. She succumbed to cancer in 1996 at the age of 33.

Gifts are amazing, because they verify their own authenticity without necessity of a second opinion. Hers is a gift I won’t soon forget. As I listened, I became challenged at the necessity to be a responsible steward over those gifts God has given me. I’ve often said to my wife “Honey, I don’t want to take my gift to the grave.”

Mama said, “Life at it’s longest is too short, Son.” Before you know it, minute’s hours and day’s months have become year’s decades. If we’re not careful, the dust of procrastination will cover the diamonds of our brilliant gifts, and before long, opportunity will have given way to inactivity and regret.

We all have at least one gift. Let's all blow the dust off and share them with the world.

And to you, Eva Cassidy, I say a posthumous thank you. Though I missed hearing you in person on earth, I hope you'll sing for us in Heaven.

I Always Been Glad

A Tribute To Jean Etta Ford

My Mama sent me a birthday card some years ago, and for the first time I saw age beginning to creep into her razor sharp intellect. Her once flawless penmanship showed signs of a shaky hand, lines once symmetrically perfect now resembling limbs of an autumn tree. Words once precisely inserted as though typewritten now occasionally slid below the lines. In the birthday card she sang my praises, and there it was – the first grammatically incorrect sentence I had ever seen my mother write in over forty years. “I always been glad that you were my Son,” she wrote. I was struck by the error, because Mama had always been such a gifted and talented writer.

I never gave a thought to the illusion of perfection that Mama was to me. Precise in all her faculties, abilities, insights and functionalities, most loving kids don’t think of their parents as vulnerable. At the top of their game, parents know everything, solve every problem, provide every need, and protect from every harm. But there it was. She was still her sharp, keen-witted self, but that was no slip of the pen. It was God’s way of letting me know that however imperceptibly – Mama was getting older. Then came other signs, like driving as though the speed limit on the freeway had been reduced to 15 mph. Or repeating herself. Initially I rebuffed these occurrences as accidental, but then she slipped and fell, injuring her hip. Then came the stroke, which didn’t leave the normal paralytic signs, but affected that part of the brain which converts thoughts to words. Mama knows exactly what she wants to say, but cannot construct the words in her brain into intelligible sentences. A prisoner to her own neuropathology, words, thoughts, ideas, impressions and opinions trapped inside a vibrant, expressive, resourceful and insightful mind cannot be expressed. She writes incessantly, filling yellow pads with disjointed thoughts, some of which can be interpreted by my siblings. Yet she puts together thoughts and still tells me of her undying love for her children. She doesn’t always get our names right, the order of things or who did what, but that grammatically incorrect line in that card told me more than she has been unable to say these past five years. Grammar doesn’t matter. Love covers.

I recently wanted to share something with someone who would just listen to my ramblings. I couldn’t tell my wife because she would want to fix what didn’t need fixing. Nor siblings, who covet opportunities to instruct the “baby boy.” Then it dawned on me for the first time in five years… I thought I no longer had Mama to turn to. Listening was one of her best qualities, though her insights were timelessly on-point. But I can still talk to her – and she still listens with an ear that seldom if ever judges, a heart of limitless compassion, and a spirit with a special connection with God. I don’t need her to give answers anymore. She lived a life replete with answers to questions I didn’t even know. I’ve deprived her of the gift of listening. Sorry Mama – I’ll do better.

And so from Patsy, Butchy, Carol and Judy, Peter, Terry, Keith and Darryl:

I Always Been Glad That You Are Our Mom

Love Forever,

Darryl

Opportunity Is Often Hidden In Adversity

Take A Chance

“I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all.” Ecclesiastes 9:11

Whether an athlete, soldier, wise, rich, brilliant, or educated, God appoints a time and opportunity for us to be successful. Without this opportunity our natural ability means nothing. Bishop T.D. Jakes speaks of such an appointed opportunity as the reason for his successful ministry, when a seven-minute excerpt of one of his sermons aired on TBN at the exact moment TBN’s President Paul Crouch was struggling writing his autobiography, “I Had No Father But God.” Crouch turned on the TV when Jakes was preaching. His message gave Crouch inspiration. Crouch then called for Jakes to preach on TBN, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Harland Sanders was a sixty-five year old retiree. When he received his first Social Security check in the amount of $105.00, he knew he had to get out of his rocking chair and do something to earn some real money. Harland’s mother taught him how to cook her incredibly delicious fried chicken when he was a child, so he opened up a restaurant and started frying chicken, and the rest, as they say, is history… ever heard of KFC?

One of Colonel Sanders’ employees was Dave Thomas. Dave was an adopted child. He began working when he was just twelve years old. The journey of life introduced him to various personalities and opportunities that helped him to build his own image in short span of life. When Dave Thomas was just thirty-five years old in 1968, he was already a millionaire. In 1969 he decided to open a fast food restaurant, and named it after his daughter, and the rest as they say is history… ever heard of Wendy’s?

~ matter of the mind challenge ~

1. Think about the way you think.
2. Move from unhealthy to healthy thinking.
3. Don’t stop dreaming – get started doing.
4. Let the sun of possibility burn out the clouds of negativity.
5. Ask God to tell you who He made you to be – then become that.
6. Stop trying to blend in – God made you to stand out.
7. Be comfortable in your own skin, warts, zits, scars and all.

I don't know how many appointed opportunities you've had, but I've made up my mind I'm not missing anymore - that's the reason I started this blog, the reason you're reading these words. God gifted me to write, so guess what - I'm writing, being faithful to my gift and trusting Him to be faithful to His word. So what's your gift(s)? Are you faithful? Are you working toward the fulfillment of your gift? Jakes preached to goats and rabbits when he couldn't preach in churches. Sanders turned adversity into opportunity. Thomas left the orphanage behind and built an empire on his daughter's name.

Lose Excuses - Find Purpose - Fuel Passion - Live Dreams

Are you up to the challenge?

The Prescription For Answers To Prayer

Communication With God

2 Chronicles 7:14 is probably one of the best known and recited passages in all of the Bible, right up there with the 23rd Psalms and The Lord's Prayer. Most often it is recited or quoted as a prayer, but in fact it is an answer to prayer. 2 Chronicles 6 sets the scene, when while dedicating the temple, King Solomon prays a "cover all the bases" prayer. His prayer is very specific, so much so until God answers specifically in Chapter 7 according to what Solomon prayed in Chapter 6.

Prayer is simple, not complicated; an easy unrestricted way to talk to the Creator of the Universe, one-on-one intimacy with a loving, caring God who longs to be involved in all our matters. Talk to your best friend every day? Parents? Husband? Wife? Kids? Well, talk to the One who created the people you talk to - you'll be amazed at His responses.

We often confuse prayer with mental ascent, which is just thinking thoughts, musing and mulling over things that have happened or will happen, helplessly hoping for the desired outcomes or resolutions without applying any force for change behind them. That is not prayer - it's wasted energy.

~ matter of the mind challenge ~

Are you looking for:

1. Vague unfocused answers from God? Pray vague unfocused prayers.
2. Occasional results? Pray occasional prayers.
3. Answers? Pray specifically, focused, unceasing, faith-filled prayers.

Mother Teresa penned this prayer, which now lives on after her death:

The fruit of silence is prayer
the fruit of prayer is faith
the fruit of faith is love
the fruit of love is service
the fruit of service is peace.

I pray to rise from elementary personal needs and desires to impacting mankind with a:

1. God-centered life larger than any limitations
2. Spirit unfettered by chains of carnality
3. Hope higher than the tallest doubt
4. Soul whose focus is reclaiming lost and dying souls for the kingdom of God.

What's your prayer this day?

The Missing Ingredient

What If You Expected The Best In Every Area Of Your Life?

I spoke with a friend today who's having the same types of family problems with two different daughters-in-law. I asked her to examine the situations and look for the common denominator. After painful self-examination she admitted that she had projected her belief system and manner of doing things upon them, and got the same results, namely rejection, conflict, verbal altercations and unhealthy relationships with her sons. She measured them by her own standard of excellence, which is faulty. I encouraged her to pray, meditate, seek out, speak and expect the best from each relationship, and repair the damage created by her illusion of perfection.

The Only Person You Can Fix Is You

When surprised or threatened, our fight or flight mechanism kicks in, preparing the body for perceived life-threatening situations, taking resources from such as the digestive and immune system and dumping cortizol into the bloodstream to fuel the immediate muscular and emotional needs in order to avert the perceived threat. This leads to the immune system being depressed, leaving us susceptible to disease.

You'll notice I stress the word perceived, because whether or not there is an actual threat, our physiological reaction is the same. One wise sage once said, "Some of the worst things I have ever feared in life have never happened." Since our brain produces defenses to ward off perceived danger (whether real or not), it can also unlock the limitless potential of faith in our lives through daily prayer. Unfortunately we spend more time investing our energies in unproductive pursuits incapable of impacting our most important issues, namely producing a healthy and productive spiritual future and destiny.

The missing ingredient? Intentionality. On-purpose praying designed to paint the picture of our future using the brushstrokes of the word of God spoken out of our mouths with the fuel of faith. In my earlier example, my friend must not critique failings and flaws, but pray for God to reveal His best in her for them, stepping back from the day-to-day conflicts they have with her sons, and minding her own business. She agrees. Want to break the cycle of faulty thinking and fractured living?

~ matter of the mind challenge ~

1. Pray constantly.
   
2. Expect the best in every situation and circumstance.
3. Get rid of every weight and sin that gets you off track.
   
4. Thank God for everything (food, clothes, work, issues, health).
5. Feelings and emotions have no place in developing spiritual agendas.
6. Don't allow circumstances to affect expectations.
7. Read & meditate over the word of God daily.
8. Speak God's word over your plans aspirations, and future.
9. Transform your thinking - Renew your mind - Conform to the Word.
   

Tomorrow's Matter Of The Mind: The Biblical Model For Answered Prayer.

The Message Of Water


I ran across an article on the research of Dr. Masaru Emoto, and his book, "The Message from Water." Emoto presents factual evidence that human vibrational energy, thoughts, words, ideas and music, affect the molecular structure of water, the very same water that comprises over seventy percent of a mature human body and covers the same amount of our planet. As I read the article, I found some of his conclusions resonate with biblical teachings, though not apparently intentional. His evidence? Pictures taken of crystallized water before and after speaking or attaching words to the water. Please follow the link http://www.life-enthusiast.com/twilight/research_emoto.htm. The pictures are nothing short of fascinating.

How many times have we all forgotten to bless our food, or say thank you for a kindness shown? I can recall times when I felt a strong urge to say something to someone, but thoughts of propriety and not wanting to invade another person's space stopped me, thus missing an opportunity to impact that person's life positively.

Each word spoken, whether for good or evil, has a tangible, measurable, and observable impact upon our environment, circumstances, surroundings and interactions.

~ matter of the mind challenge ~

1. Bless your food/drink/shower/bath
   
2. Say thank you
   
3. Be nice to people
   

As for the spiritual significance of water? Not enough room here to discuss it, but trust, Emoto's tapped in to some eternal truths we can all benefit from.

On the next issue - What if you proactively expected the best of your self in every area of life?

Be sure to be true to yourself.
Those who matter won't mind.
Those who mind don't matter.