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My ACTS statement on race. Red & Yellow, Black or White, all are PRECIOUS in God's sight. Jesus loves...

 
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Post My ACTS statement on race. Red & Yellow, Black or White, all are PRECIOUS in God's sight. Jesus loves... doyle
LORD, GIVE US GRACE ABOUT RACE

Not sure these days if Indians like being called "Red" or if Asians like being referred to as "yellow" in skin tone. The little children's chorus of years ago,
was about compassion for ALL, not intended to be insensitive, but times do change and sensitivity does too. So, if those terms are offensive to you, lay it on me. Why would anyone ever want to speak to or about anyone in a disrespectful way?

The word "My" in the heading, is purposely used because there is no attempt here to speak for all who serve as Moderators, viewers and posters. This is my opinion and you are completely welcome to agree, disagree or completely ignore. To be my friend, there is no requirement to agree with me on everything. Just be nice. I'm fragile Smile.

One of the great missionary journeys I have experienced was with the incredible G.W. "Bill" Wilson. Bill was a doer. He dreamed, he planned, he prayed, but then he set out to do it. That dynamic Brother knew how to get things done regardless the city, country or continent where he was ministering. Bill Wilson, a Church of God minister, was one of the great men I had the honor to meet and minister with, I miss him continuously.

Bill invited me to go along on his effort to train hundreds of ministers in Uganda, Africa. At the time, there was a civil war going on in Uganda. It was dangerous but Bill said, "Let's go anyway. The people in trouble need the encouragement of Christ we bring."

Landing at Entebbe airport was eerie. Uganda was where former national boxing champion Edi Amin came to political power. We are told he then killed over 250,000 of his own people to stay in power.

THINGS YOU DON'T HAVE TO PRAY ABOUT
Right away, Bill stood before hundreds of people at the meeting; all of them African except for a handful of us. His topic was, "Things You Don't Have To Pray About."

A. You never have to pray about who your parents were; what race you are. That decision was made by God for you. Since people have no control over that, it doesn't make sense to put them down about it. Neither your parents nor Grandparents had a choice in that either.

B. You never have to pray about into which country you were born. I was born in America, but that does not make me superior to anyone else. At this time, being born there does at times offer me more opportunity than people born in other countries. But that is a governmental problem, not one of personal value. NOBODY is of more value to God that you.

The Bible says, "Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons (shows no partiality) but in every nation he that fears Him and works righteousness, is accepted with Him" (Acts 10:34-35 KJV).

If you are accepted by God, no other person has the right to think less of you than God does. lf some person thinks less of you because of where you were born, it will take God to change the darkness of their heart.

The UNIFYING factor for us all, is the love of Christ. The Bible says that those who love the Lord, are commanded to also 'Love your neighbor. as yourself.' We who love the Lord also love His children regardless their race or nationality.

C. You never have to pray about how tall you will be, about how big or small your feet will be and on and on. BUT MOST OF ALL, you never have to pray or wonder if God loves you. Then Bill set how to share Scripture about the love of God; about how He sent His "only Son" to die on the Cross in our place. He told how Christ rose from the dead and now "Sits at the right hand of the Father full of grace and truth."

WHAT WE DO NEED TO PRAY ABOUT. Ask God to forgive us of our sin. Ask God to create in us a clean heart. Ask God to open doors of opportunity to minister to others. Ask God to give us boldness. Ask God to give us compassion for the lost.

LORD, GIVE US GRACE ABOUT RACE. Racial issues are a big topic now as they have been even before the Declaration of Independence in 1776. As far as Actscelerate is concerned, I have mixed feelings about how it is discussed here. The door to my heart is wide open to your wise counsel.

While ACTS viewers have the right to discuss the situations going on in the country now, WHAT WE DO NOT WANT is vicious comments about individuals or their race. None of us are good enough to look down on others.

When Jesus gave the Great Commission, it includes the phrase "ALL THE WORLD." "GO YOU (One-third of God is 'Go)' into ALL the world and preach the Gospel..." That includes every nation and race; no exceptions.

WE DO NOT WANT this board to be dominated by racial postings. We do not want race to dominate the Board. There is plenty of that everywhere else.

One poster has been warned, and banned for three days because of his insistence in making that his primary topic. He has been given another chance but as kindly as possible, this is once again fair warning.

As a little white boy growing up in mostly white churches, almost every Sunday we children sang, "Red & Yellow, Black & White, ALL ARE PRECIOUS in God's sight. JESUS LOVES ALL the children of the world." I still feel the same way.

Doyle
writedoyle@gmail.com
404-933-1373
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Last edited by doyle on 8/11/20 12:38 am; edited 2 times in total
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Post 2/3rds of God is "go" Aaron Scott
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6/23/20 2:31 pm


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Post Carolyn Smith
Race is definitely an area we need grace in. And there's so much division in the world and on the net, we need a place where we can have a reasonable discussion. That doesn't mean we all have to agree, but as it's been said, we should be able to "disagree agreeably." I've personally made a decision in my life to try to step away from the drama, because I've had about all I can take at the moment.

And still, these hard conversations need to happen. We need to be able to step "across the aisle," so to speak. We need to stop shouting our opinions and be able to speak openly about what's happening. Otherwise, what is the point of a discussion board?

I've mentioned on here before that my church merged with a black church three years ago, and my pastor is black. He is the kindest, gentlest man, and he loves all of us like we are family. We are a multi-cultural church family, and he doesn't really talk about race, but he encourages us to love, honor, and respect the other cultures in our church. We have all tried to educate ourselves on the various cultures and participate in them. We've had two quinceaneras during that time, and we all helped celebrate with these young women into their culture's celebration of young womanhood. They came to our church when they were toddlers, so it has been a beautiful thing. We've participated in the district functions that celebrates in a more traditional black culture style. My pastor has a burden to reach the lost, and we don't care what race/culture that is...everyone is welcome!

But the last few weeks have also served to allow us to see that some of our Black brothers/sisters are not always been treated fairly in life. When I hear of a Black pastor who has been stopped by police in his own driveway and had to prove he really lived there, and then be told, "Well, now I know where to come if there's any trouble around here" by the cop...something isn't right. I am not against cops...I hold them in high regard, but some things in our culture need to change, so we need to find out as Christians - what can we do to affect change?

Does it hurt our hearts that people are being treated unfairly or are we only concerned about how it affects us personally?

I think we can do a better job at handling this, by God's grace! Please respond to Doyle's thread...c'mon now, not everyone at once!
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Post I’ll probably regret this, but here goes.... FLRon
For the 1st 22 years of my life I lived far outside the ark of grace and mercy. I received no Bible training as a child, unless you count the three times I went to church/Sunday School as a small boy.

Unbeknownst to me as a child, my entire family was racist. My father’s side of the family came from the South and had nothing good to say about Blacks or any other “non-American” peoples. My mother’s side of the family were Italian immigrants who for reasons I was too young to understand hated Blacks. As a matter of fact, one of my uncles was fond of saying the “only good n**** was a dead one”. I had another uncle who was proud of having killed a Mexican because he was a Mexican. This was my learning environment growing up as a child.

It was expected that I would share the same views as my family and so I did, that is until at age 23 I accepted Jesus into my life as Lord and Savior. Like every new Christian, I loved everyone. Including other races. This cause me no small amount of grief from my family, including my own mother who essentially disowned me for nearly 10 years. Seems that though she claimed to be Christian(Roman Catholic), our views were very different in how others should be treated.

Later in life I had the great fortune to go to work for an Asian automobile manufacturer, and it was there that I was totally immersed in cultures far different than my own. I was forced to work alongside people of Japanese, Pakistani, Indian, African, Chinese, and several European cultures. As a matter of fact, because of the nature of my work, I probably saw more of these people than my own family as I worked long hours and travelled quite a bit with them.

Do you know what this experience taught me? It taught me that people from every culture can be incredibly generous, kind, and loving. It also taught me that people from every culture can be mean, hateful, prejudiced, and downright despicable.

In other words, people are the same no matter their ethnicity. It also taught me to look at people through the lens of Scripture instead of only through my own narrow-minded eyes when working with people so different than I was. Once I understood just how precious these different people groups were, it gave me a completely different perspective on just how much God loved this world that He would give his only Son to die for it.

The old Sunday School song was right all along: all are precious in His sight. The end of racism begins at the foot of the cross, and I will believe that till my last breath. Instead of remaining largely silent on the issue of racism, I believe the church should be loudly proclaiming to the world that the answer is in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Focus groups may well be beneficial to society, however any group that doesn’t point to Jesus as the answer is simply applying a band-aid to leprosy.

My 2 cents, if it’s worth even that.
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Post Re: I’ll probably regret this, but here goes.... Carolyn Smith
FLRon wrote:
For the 1st 22 years of my life I lived far outside the ark of grace and mercy. I received no Bible training as a child, unless you count the three times I went to church/Sunday School as a small boy.

Unbeknownst to me as a child, my entire family was racist. My father’s side of the family came from the South and had nothing good to say about Blacks or any other “non-American” peoples. My mother’s side of the family were Italian immigrants who for reasons I was too young to understand hated Blacks. As a matter of fact, one of my uncles was fond of saying the “only good n**** was a dead one”. I had another uncle who was proud of having killed a Mexican because he was a Mexican. This was my learning environment growing up as a child.

It was expected that I would share the same views as my family and so I did, that is until at age 23 I accepted Jesus into my life as Lord and Savior. Like every new Christian, I loved everyone. Including other races. This cause me no small amount of grief from my family, including my own mother who essentially disowned me for nearly 10 years. Seems that though she claimed to be Christian(Roman Catholic), our views were very different in how others should be treated.

Later in life I had the great fortune to go to work for an Asian automobile manufacturer, and it was there that I was totally immersed in cultures far different than my own. I was forced to work alongside people of Japanese, Pakistani, Indian, African, Chinese, and several European cultures. As a matter of fact, because of the nature of my work, I probably saw more of these people than my own family as I worked long hours and travelled quite a bit with them.

Do you know what this experience taught me? It taught me that people from every culture can be incredibly generous, kind, and loving. It also taught me that people from every culture can be mean, hateful, prejudiced, and downright despicable.

In other words, people are the same no matter their ethnicity. It also taught me to look at people through the lens of Scripture instead of only through my own narrow-minded eyes when working with people so different than I was. Once I understood just how precious these different people groups were, it gave me a completely different perspective on just how much God loved this world that He would give his only Son to die for it.

The old Sunday School song was right all along: all are precious in His sight. The end of racism begins at the foot of the cross, and I will believe that till my last breath. Instead of remaining largely silent on the issue of racism, I believe the church should be loudly proclaiming to the world that the answer is in the shed blood of Jesus Christ. Focus groups may well be beneficial to society, however any group that doesn’t point to Jesus as the answer is simply applying a band-aid to leprosy.

My 2 cents, if it’s worth even that.


Well said!
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8/1/20 12:17 am


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