Religion

Divine Coverage

THE POWER OF DIVINE COVERAGE IN ECONOMIC TURMOIL

By Marcia Morrison, Ch.E., Wharton MBA

Prophetess Marcia Morrison

As the economy experiences major challenges and downturns due to skyrocketing oil and gas prices, a plummeting housing market, turmoil in the financial services industry with banks and mortgage companies striving desperately to survive, multiple consumer products companies and airlines filing bankruptcy and/or closing by the day, foreclosures on the rise with people loosing their homes in masses daily, food prices escalating to monumental levels, US-based firms relocating key productions offshore to improve cost effectiveness through cheaper labor and other operating costs, the unemployment rate mounting as a result of all of the above; etc., many are wondering “What is the solution? Is there an answer to these catastrophes? Just how bad can this really get? Is our nation in trouble? How long can we last with conditions spiraling downward as they are?” What’s more, in addition to all of this, we have a milestone task before us as a nation to elect the next president who will either lead us into an era of much-needed shifting and change or who will facilitate further, more intensified turmoil. According to some economists, the state of our nation is simulated to that of the time of the Great Depression of the 1930’s which was quite similar in context to the critical issues we as a people now face.

However, if you study the history of the Great Depression, although conditions were tumultuous for most, it was conversely a time of great opportunity for others who had an eye to see beyond the circumstance at hand. Many businesses and new markets emerged, generating unique opportunities for success. This is directly analogous to the time when God sent plagues to the houses of the Egyptians as judgment upon Pharoah, commanding him to release the children of Israel from bondage so that they would be free to serve their God in a land of their own. Although the plagues hit the homes of the Egyptians, the children of Israel were not at all affected and were in the midst of the plagues and judgment themselves, but were exempt from them and not adversely impacted according to Exodus 7 – 12. As a matter of fact, when the firstborn of the Egyptians had been slain by the death Angel and Egyptian citizenship was consequently on the decline (Exodus 12:12, 13, 23), the Israelites were producing more babies (Exodus 1:11, 12) and their population was on the rise. What is the point being driven here? When God is in control, it does not matter what environmental circumstances you face. Those whom God covers are steadily blessed and productive. Victory is your ultimate end because the Lord covers His people under the shadow and safety of the Almighty, and we are inoculated and immunized against destruction because of this great covering. Yes, we may and will pay more for oil and gas like everyone else given that it rains on the just (i.e. the righteous) as well as the unjust (Matthew 5:45). However, a thousand shall fall at our side and ten thousand at our right hand, but ruin will not come nigh the people of God and those upon whom the Lord places His divine hand of protection (Psalm 91:7). Are you covered by divine insurance? This insurance is not the kind you pay for via monthly premiums, but it is supplied by grace through faith in God (Ephesians 2:8). If State Farm, Prudential, and other insurances companies want to cover you, what do you think God has in mind for you in a season of turmoil when earthly companies are struggling for their own survival? But God has a company of angels positioned to have charge over you to guard and keep you in all your ways (Psalm 91:11) – if you have divine coverage. He offers peace that passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7) when those not protected under the ark of safety are worried, nervous and frightened about their future and how they’ll make ends meet. The Lord promised to supply all of our needs according to His great riches in glory (Philippians 4:19) because the cattle on a thousand hills belong to Him (Psalm 50:10). This is not term insurance, but an eternal pavilion under which we are firmly guarded because in the time of trouble, the Lord hides us from destruction (Psalm 27:5). And heaven will never experience an economic downturn, for there is no shadow of turning with God (James 1:17) as God never changes.

As we consider our own individual financial status and personal economic position and as we hopefully study our budgets to handle our money and other resources in a frugal manner, one thing that is most needful in the midst of all that we currently face is expressly this: We must not neglect in parallel to consider our spiritual position and condition. We must assess whether or not we are bankrupt in our inner man and if in fact we are in desperate need of a deposit in our spirits. What is the economy of your spirit? We must devise our own spiritual and emotional checks-and-balances system to determine if in fact our account has a positive balance from which to draw in the time of need. We need a spiritual support factor to help us make it through the rough terrains of life. Now is certainly a time of spiritual thirst and need among the masses evidenced by a cry in the wilderness for a refreshing and a guidepost from hungry hearts – hearts of company executives critically concerned and yearning for business success while afraid of hostile takeovers by competitors; hearts of single mothers concerned with singlehandedly caring for their children and households without support; hearts of company employees wondering if the pink slip (i.e. layoff) is coming any day; hearts of spiritual leaders and pastors concerned with keeping the church doors open because contributions are down and the support of the ministry has been directly affected by our country’s economic mayhem.

Just as the body needs natural food and the mind needs psychological nourishment (i.e. knowledge, intellectual stimulation), our spirits need spiritual food (i.e. the Bread of life which is the Word of God – 2 Corinthians 9:10) to sustain us as God did Elijah (1 Kings 19:5 – 8). Given that our current generation is in need of spiritual guidance for soundness of mind and instruction on what to do in today’s environment, it is evident that true discipleship that leads to real next dimension spiritual power to facilitate natural successes is most necessary. To assist in addressing this need and to provide spiritual deposits, Morrison Ministries is hosting Discipleship Classes to teach powerful principles that will undoubtedly help launch you to your next dimension, ensuring to bring your spirit to a positive balance on July 10 – 12, 2008 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida at the Hilton Deerfield/Boca Raton where the local host ministry is Lawanna Strowbridge Ministries International, Inc. Class topics will include: Spiritual Check-up: How Healthy Is Your Spirit?; The Death Walk; Brokenness; Ministry Gifts & Callings: My Assignment In The Kingdom; The True Prophetic Anointing; Tapping the 3rd Realm to Operate Out of the Divine, business related topics, and more. Undoubtedly, there has been a cry from the masses for Word-based spiritual instruction, and Discipleship is among the responses to this earnest cry.

For more information about Discipleship, please contact Morrison Ministries at www.morrisonministries.com, info@morrisonministries.com or (732) 940-3787.

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In Tension with the Quest for Power

In Tension with the Quest for Power
By Dedrick Muhammad
www.ips-dc.org

"I can no more disown him [Rev Jeremy Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother…These people are a part of me."
-Barack Obama, March 2008

    Things sure do change in a couple of months. The applause was deafening for Barack Obama’s speech on race in Philadelphia when he made the above pronouncement. Yet when Rev. Wright says that the critiques of him in the corporate media were truly attacks on the Black church, Wright is lambasted for blurring criticism against him into attacks against others. Does anyone see the hypocrisy here?

    I am sure few in the media do. CNN and MSNBC were falling all over themselves talking about the courage and pain it took for Barack Obama to distance himself from his pastor. How does it take any type of political courage to distance oneself from a pastor of Black Liberation Theology that refuses to hide his respect for Minister Louis Farrakhan or back down from his condemnation against United States armed aggression throughout the world? Maybe this is the same type of political courage it took for Barack Obama to not attend the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King for fear that it might make him look too Black. Or maybe it is the courage he exemplified when he commented on the verdict that found three police officers not guilty of any criminal charges for shooting at a group of unarmed Black men 50 times, "The judge has made his ruling, and we’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down." Barack then went onto say that "resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and counterproductive." So the violence of shooting at unarmed Black men 50 times is not deemed totally unacceptable, only forms of Black anger to this injustice.

    Dr. Cornel West, a long time student of Black Liberation Theology and one of the most respected intellectuals today, said of Barack’s refusal to attend the memorial honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, "Martin Luther King Jr.’s deep commitment to unarmed truth and unconditional love can in no way be subject to strategies for access to political power. Hence, I have a very deep disagreement with my dear brother, Barack Obama – in this case, commitment to truth is in tension with the quest for power."

    I voted for Barack and I still hope he becomes president of this nation. I love all the Youtube songs and rocky animation supporting Barack’s campaign. But we can’t be blind to the politics as usual routine that Senator Obama is engaged in. Are we supposed to believe that after 20 years of attending Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church that boldly states it’s commitment to Black Liberation Theology, a theology with strong roots in Black Power and the theology of Malcolm X, that Barack had no idea that his pastor’s theology would be considered radical by most of America?

    Senator Obama, please come to your senses. You are not going to win the working class White vote in Indiana or anyplace else even if you change your name back to Barry. You might say now that Rev. Wright is not the same man you met 20 years ago, but is he the same man you secretly prayed with last year in a basement because you were afraid to pray with your pastor in public. Senator Obama, you are better than this, even if America is not. You wrote a brilliant book titled after your former Pastor’s sermon "The Audacity of Hope." I hope that you find the audacity to stand in public with the Black Liberation tradition that so clearly has been inspirational to you, but from which you now sacrifice in your quest for power.

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The Obama-Wright Divorce

The Obama-Wright Divorce
By William Jelani Cobb, Dedrick Muhammad, Glen Ford and Roland S. Martin
May 1, 2008, 11:10

Jeremiah’s Failed Crusade
By William Jelani Cobb
www.jelanicobb.com

    If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Jeremiah Wright has just been awarded a construction contract. And that’s the best case scenario — in light of his weekend blitz of media appearances there are many doubting that Wright’s intentions were benign. Assuming they were, the reverend’s appearance before the National Press Club highlighted his naive belief that he could redeem his reputation by talking to the same people who were responsible for distorting it.

    Let’s be clear: Wright has been wildly mischaracterized and defamed. It’s a natural instinct to respond to the kind malice that has been directed at him for the past six weeks. You see a fire, you want to throw water on it. But this situation is more akin to a grease fire, which means that you have to respond to it in a way that runs counter to your instincts. Instead, Wright opened the faucets and the flames have spread far beyond their original boundaries.

    In the wake of his appearance you heard disparate rumblings that are growing into a chorus of condemnation. The difference is that these jeers are now coming from Black people. He started out with the enmity of misinformed Whites who knew him only through the manipulated sound bites that had been looped ad nauseum (but which were, until now, dying down.) But now he has done nothing to diminish their scorn and has gained the contempt of a growing number of Black folk who feel that he has single-handedly ruined our chance to have a Black president.

    That perspective isn’t accurate, but it is increasingly common only a day after that appearance. Writing in The New York Times, Bob Herbert accused Wright of vengefully sabotaging Obama with the press conference yesterday; Errol Louis in The New York Daily News gave Wright the benefit of the doubt and said that "he couldn’t have done more damage to Obama if he tried." I received an email from a friend who referred to it as "black-on-black crime" another speculated that he was secretly on Hillary Clinton’s payroll. And then there are the innumerable crabs-in-a-barrel references cycling around the internet. I’m not prepared to say that Wright was out to destroy Obama’s candidacy (though that may well be the outcome) but it was entirely predictable that people would draw that conclusion.

    It has to be unspeakably difficult to hear oneself lambasted and defamed for weeks on end but Wright entered that conference with a flawed agenda: the commercial media exists to exacerbate controversies, not defuse them. The degree of truth in his words was nearly irrelevant; what matters is the way in which those words would inevitably be consumed, filtered, repackaged and distributed. If the media operated on the basis of people’s good intentions we would have far more mutual understanding and they would have far less money. This might have been minimized had Wright called Roland Martin, Ed Gordon, Gwen Ifill and done a roundtable of responsible black journalists or even stopped after the Bill Moyers interview he did days earlier. But in addressing the National Press Club the reverend was like a man who had lost $10 to a card hustler but decides to play again in an attempt to break even.

    Wright was also likely buoyed by a false confidence in his own communication skills. He is a brilliant preacher but a podium is not a pulpit. He has spent the last 36 years in an arena where people literally say "amen" to your opinions, one where your credibility is virtually unquestionable. But at the press club he was talking to journalists, people who are, by definition, skeptical and start with the premise that if someone in public is talking, there’s a good chance they’re telling a lie. Anything Wright said was grist for the machine. He was playing an away game without recognizing that he lost home field advantage the minute he left his pulpit. Anything he said beyond "Jesus loves you" would be used against him.

    It’s been argued that Wright felt Obama threw him under the bus with his Philadelphia race speech, but a moment’s reflection would reveal that those words constituted anything but a political stiff-arm. In Philadelphia Obama offered as subtle and daring a defense of Wright as he could have and far more than any other politician would have given in the situation. (Jocelyn Elders and Lani Guinier were dispatched by Bill Clinton for offenses far, far less damaging than Wright’s video clips have been to Obama.)

    The irony is that less than 24 hours after the press club debacle, Wright got to see what a real denunciation looks like. Obama has been painted into a corner, in large measure a victim of his own attempt to place Wright into context. It looks all but certain that Wright will be looked at by a large segment of Black America as the man who tried to ruin a dream. It will be a vast distortion of Wright’s distinguished legacy but it’s what people will believe.

    And, as any one of the media in the room could have explained at The National Press Club, perception is reality.
  

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AFTER THE FALL

Perth Amboy, NJ (BlackNews.com) – We just can’t seem to forget what occurred when we were children, or when the marriage dissolved and when our parents left home. In fact, 34% of women surveyed out of 500 remember a shameful experience from their past according to the Portman Group related to sexual assault and drunkenness. After the Fall (Destiny Image, August, 2007) written by author and pastor, Dr. Donald Hilliard addresses such issues of shame. Dr. Hilliard goes on to say, “We never seem to forget the marks of abuse that remain unseen, ‘when we were molested,’ when we went bankrupt or when our sin was uncovered.”

No matter what your social sphere, whether it is cultural, familial, political or economical, everyone has experienced personal shame in one shape, form or fashion. It is true. Both in public vocations and private relationships, we have experienced disrepute, despair, depression, disease or dysfunction. Quite frankly, most folks hide their shame. We hide our personal failures that afflict our conscience. However, while these life experiences often blindside us they should not determine our lot in life.

Webster’s dictionary defines shame as “a painful feeling of guilt for improper behavior, etc. dishonor or disgrace.” As we look at ourselves in the mirror today, we notice that there are far too many of us who possess unlimited potential, possibilities, and promise, but regrettably will never come to know the fullness of our future because of shame. “The power of shame is such that is locks us into a closet,” states Dr. Hilliard. “Even a closet of our own mind.”

Every page of After the Fall seems to continue to go one step deeper cutting away at all that callus that has become the hiding place of shame until you are free from its damning affects on your soul. After the Fall promises to offer the rejected individual, whether sacred or secular explicit examples of how God restores a person to complete wholeness and recovery from shame. Dr. Hilliard talks about learning to live in the grace of God after receiving it. Learning to walk in it daily as the Bible talks about. Hilliard says, “we fear our sins or shortcomings have seemingly forfeited the position that God had for us.”

Many seek escape from shame desperately seeking to hide their identity or preserve some measure of their dignity. They are caught, accused and paraded in front of the public eye with no place to run. The saddest part of this picture is that so many lose their way over something God has already forgiven.

To really understand shame the way it is described by so many, you really have to experience it for yourself. But the real question that is, who hasn’t?

After the Fall is available for purchase now:

RELEASE: September, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7684-2496-6
PRICE: $15.99
SIZE: 6 x 9
BINDING: Softcover
PAGES: 128
CATEGORY: Self Help

FOR INTERVIEW INFORMATION & BOOK SIGNINGS, CONTACT: Scott Spiewak at 425-678-8750 or sspiewak@freshimpact.com

For further information or speaking and preaching engagements please contact:
Min Simone Hankerson – Executive Assistant to Bishop Hilliard
Cathedral International
205 Smith Street
Perth Amboy, NJ 08861
732-826-5293 Ext. 1132, 732-826-5449 Fax
www.thecathedral.org
http://public.donaldhilliard.com/index.php
www.myspace.com/donaldhilliardjr

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FAITH and FAT

HOW THE FAITHFUL CAN STOP FEEDING THE FAT EPIDEMIC

New Book, “Diets Don’t Work, But Jesus Does”, Solves Weight Loss Woes for People of Faith

Bookcover

Author – Shannon Tanner

Before and After Photos from Women Who Completed the Program

Los Angeles, CA (BlackNews.com) – With the upcoming October 15, 2007 release of her new book Diets Don’t Work, But Jesus Does, faith-based wellness expert Shannon Tanner is making an astounding claim — diets will NEVER work for people of faith. This bold statement is backed up by research professors hailing from leading universities. According to a study by Purdue University, more than 65% of church-goers are overweight or obese, with Baptists being the heaviest.

“As Christians, we are supposed to have the answers to all of life’s challenges, we shouldn’t be the ones feeding the fat epidemic,” states Shannon. The book challenges the entire premise of the secular weight loss industry, declaring that it is essentially a 46 billion dollar industry that thrives on failure. Diets Don’t Work, but Jesus Does was written to solve the weight loss woes for people of faith who are tired of being trapped in this costly diet cycle.

Through Diets Don’t Work, But Jesus Does, Shannon teaches the same biblically based principles from her groundbreaking “Body Temple Wellness” workshops that have helped thousands of Christians overcome disordered eating and poor health since 1994. In addition to learning how to shed unwanted pounds, readers will also get a personal view of Shannon, who herself struggled with obesity, a severe eating disorder, and food addiction. After losing 73 pounds (which she has kept off for over 10 years) and gaining insight on how her journey could help others, Shannon began to develop a wellness program that teaches a practical and workable solution to how faith wins at weight loss.

“Churches in the African American community have tended to focus on what they deemed as ’serious sins’. Who really cares about an extra two plates of fried-chicken, collard greens, macaroni and cheese and peach cobbler?” comments Shannon.

But with John Hopkins University predicting that by 2015 nearly 75% of the entire nation will be obese, and with 80% of African American Women over 40 — the churches largest supporters – already overweight, the church is coming full circle in realizing the need to incorporate weight loss and wellness into its life giving messages. Diets Don’t Work, But Jesus Does introduces this message to a nationwide audience, with the hope of producing immediate and permanent weight loss results and lasting spiritual renewal in its readers.

Diets Don’t Work, But Jesus Does can be purchased online, www.ShannonSpeaks.org, or www.Amazon.com. To book speaking engagements or media interviews, contact Dana Taylor at 323-754-8549 or info@ShannonSpeaks.org.

About Shannon Tanner
Shannon Tanner is a motivational speaker, health advocate, natural herbalist and life-coach with more than 15 years of experience as a leader in the Weight Loss and Wellness Industry. Shannon has studied herbal medicine for over fifteen years and is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Naturopathy/Master of Herbology at Trinity College for alternative medicine. She is a founding partner of Body Temple Wellness, an organization focused on bringing a message of health, weight-loss and wellness to the Black Church as well as the body of Christ at large. She is the author of two books on the subject of weight loss and emotional healing. She has worked in both the Christian and secular counseling worlds and has helped hundreds of men and women break the bondage of food addiction and the cycle of chronic emotional, physical and spiritual dis-ease.

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