“It’s another day’s journey, and I’m GLAD! I’m glad, I’m so glad! I’m so glad to be here!” These are the words to a well-known song in Black churches all across the country. On this the first holiday in 2010 hopefully people of all races, nationalities and religions are willing to celebrate God’s goodness and express great appreciation for another day’s journey He has provided us all.
This is especially true as we turn to the local and international news and see images of war in the Middle East, and earthquake devastation in Haiti. When we consider how blessed we really are – our personal problems and issues seem quite trivial compared to the real suffering others are going through around the world.
As we pause for a moment in acknowledgment of this great American hero, please leave a comment and name 1 thing how you believe Dr. King changed your life personally, and/or name 1 thing how he impacted the world. What is Dr. King’s most significant contribution to you personally?
Allow me to start this off by saying as a young child growing up, I was inspired to see a Black minister not only preach the sacrificial and unconditional love of God, but we saw him practice what he preached even to the point of being wiling to die for it.
Some of my old seminary instructors who were also Black unfairly ridiculed and criticized Dr. King for ‘leaving the pulpit’ and getting involved in civil rights/social issues, and even had the gall to say that because he died in the process of helping garbage workers – that Dr. King died in disgrace.
It is these same seminary instructors who were trying to impress upon us young ministers that our first obligation is to God, and that if we were going to be preachers in God’s church- never leave the pulpit because this is what can happen.
Believe me when I say this, those particular preachers/seminary instructors paid dearly – not so much for what they said, but because of the judgmental and carnal mindset they held which led them to say such ludicrous things.
For the record, I never accepted what they said because I knew the scriptures were very clear on the fact that the thrust of Jesus’ ministry was not in the temple – but in the streets amongst those whom the religious leaders of that day deemed ’sinful.’
In those days, we were not allowed to voice opposition or even comment during class because as students, we were taught to sit and receive what was being taught. That’s that typical ‘pecking order’ mentality that some senior preachers like to put on junior preachers because they are more concerned about the ‘lower’ preachers obeying them than they are about them obeying God – (a whole other topic!!)
While some students got chewed up and spit out for disobeying this rule, the Lord allowed me to hold my peace and He told me to watch and pray. I did just that, and over the years God enabled me to observe the rise and the crash and burn of those preachers’ ministries.
Some of them slipped off into modernity, others into iniquity and God revealed that He fired certain ministers without them even knowing it. Now that’s a bad place to be – like the mighty Sampson – to believe the power and presence of God is with you when indeed He is not!
I’m not saying they are bad people, just lost in their theology. What they didn’t grasp and were actually teaching against was the fact – that like God Himself, Dr. King was not a people-pleaser; he was no respecter of persons, and whoever needed help, he was willing to do his absolute best for them as God laid that burden to do so on his heart.
Ministers are not kings or celebrities, and God’s people in the Church don’t belong to them. We are God’s servants who serve God by serving His people for His purposes and not our own, according to God’s design and not the expectations of ANY man. And we especially can’t afford to look down on anybody for the life they lead because that’s a boomerang we don’t want coming back!
Though Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. be physically dead, his life of Love and personal sacrifice still speaks: “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh. Hebrews 11:4″
A Christ-like Servant
Dr. King was a man with faults just like the rest of us, yet that which he did for Christ lasts forever. I pray each of you stick to the convictions God has placed on your heart no matter what the religious naysayers say, because the persecution and ridicule they put on you will all fade away in the end and they will end up LOOKING UP at what God is doing through you!
Many Blessings Abound To The Faithful!
