In this week's Feast in THE WORD Gathering, after listening to each other's testimonies, the Holy Spirit showed us how the enemy tries to turn our blessings into curses.  For example, the home that God supernaturally provided for me...the enemy attacks my finances making it "appear" that I don't stand of chance of making it---BUT THE DEVIL IS A LIAR--my home was and STILL IS A BLESSING FROM GOD.

 

The Holy Spirit used each of us in attendance to speak God's direction into our lives for this season:

1.  If you take care of God's business, He will take care of yours. 
    Philippians 4:19 And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

 

2.  Pray, "With You, God, I can do it and I WANT to do it!
     Mark 10:27 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."

3.  Keep Focused!  on Jesus  -- not on the problems, or finances, or anything or anyone other than Jesus Christ.

From there, the Holy Spirit gave us Matthew 14:23-36.  We were also directed to continue to embrace in our own lives what Jesus did BEFORE the miracles took place.  That fellowship with His Father...our Father...that connectedness...we MUST have in our own lives.

Lord, I pray that this summary be a blessing to all who read it and especially THE WORD that is cited throughout--specifically given to us by our Comforter, Teacher, and friend--The Holy Spirit.  Thank you that YOUR WORD does not come back void In Jesus' Name.  Amen.  So Be it!

 

Isaiah 55:10-11
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.  (NIV-New International Version)

Together

I have a vision.
You have a vision.
When you and I become one,
we will be the totality of THE vision conceived in the mind of God
and given life before we were born.
With longsuffering and grace,
He continually saved us from ourselves
in order to bring us to Himself
and now one to the other.
Together, we will move mountains and men!

© 2004 Stanice Anderson, www.stanice.com

Feast in THE WORD Gathering 10/27/04

In this week's Feast in THE WORD Gathering, after listening to each other's testimonies, the Holy Spirit showed us how the enemy tries to turn our blessings into curses. For example, the home that God supernaturally provided for me...the enemy attacks my finances making it "appear" that I don't stand of chance of making it---BUT THE DEVIL IS A LIAR--my home was and STILL IS A BLESSING FROM GOD.

The Holy Spirit used each of us in attendance to speak God's direction into our lives for this season:

1. If you take care of God's business, He will take care of yours.
Philippians 4:19 And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

2. Pray, "With You, God, I can do it and I WANT to do it!
Mark 10:27 Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."

3. Keep Focused! on Jesus -- not on the problems, or finances, or anything or anyone other than Jesus Christ.

From there, the Holy Spirit gave us Matthew 14:23-36. We were also directed to continue to embrace in our own lives what Jesus did BEFORE the miracles took place. That fellowship with His Father...our Father...that connectedness...we MUST have in our own lives.

Lord, I pray that this summary be a blessing to all who read it and especially THE WORD that is cited throughout--specifically given to us by our Comforter, Teacher, and friend--The Holy Spirit. Thank you that YOUR WORD does not come back void In Jesus' Name. Amen. So Be it!

Isaiah 55:10-11
As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. (NIV)

Tell Me: A Poem by Stanice Anderson

Quiet

Quiet. What is quiet but what is not heard? But in my soul, quiet has a voice, has a sound. It sounds like contentment, love, forgiveness, and mercy at 10 decibals beyond what can be heard by any ear. Quiet sounds like the russle of Jesus robes as He wraps His arms around me on a night when sleep is hard to come by and hope seems like a distant memory that I hope will be once more--but not tonight. Quiet eases itself around a past chocked out by the grace of God. Quiet needs no TV or music blaringly drowning out the sounds of regret, remore, hate, fear, and down-wrong-not-right rebelliousness.

Quiet is a tear gliding down an all too familiar trail on my face--warm, wet, and tasting of salt as it steals for the base of parted lips. I turned and crawled, waddled, walked, ran, leapt towards Jesus' awaiting arms and found the way home. Quiet is allowing myself the freedom at last to be who God intended me to be. Not so quiet, an artist, eccentric by nature, excitable, and beautifully bold. Given the keys of life, I reclaimed what a hard life stole from me and allowed God to restore what the locusts had eaten.

Quiet. Home is quiet and the boogieman is dead.

On Being You?

A BET.com moderator suggested that women 50+ share with younger women, “what you have learned on being you.” This is what I am learning:

On being you? God had me in His mind to create me long before I was born. He had a purpose and plans--wonderful marvelous plans for my life. Plans for prosperity and not disaster, plans to give me a future and a hope. So long I tried to be something and someone that I was not. Trying to fit into people’s view of the me they thought I should be. Trying to please an abusive mother, and a well known but most-times absent father. Raped at age 14, I was determined to take this and every secret of my life to an early grave.

Thus, my journey began to be accepted by anyone and everyone—to get someone to love me and keep me safe. I turned to people to define who I was--especially men. The kind of men that lived on the fringes and edges of life. Hustlers and other self-proclaimed gangsters. I only meant to wet my feet...but they pulled me in. The "go-go" lifestyle with it drugs, fine cars, and shimmering clothes became a way of life—even for a once "good girl" like me. Everything I said, "I would never do...” I did. Until the “me” that I once tried to be was unrecognizable—even I looked with disdain at my own reflection in the mirror. Black and crusted lines of needle marks trailing down my neck, wrists and hands. Sleeping on a filthy mattress on the floor. Showering, when necessary, in an attempt to clean the degradation, loneliness, desolation, and hopelessness grafted onto my life, like extra unwanted layers of skin.

One time, I was found in my office more dead than alive. Having overdosed on heroin, I flat-lined three times in the ambulance. According the paramedics, each time the resuscitated me I whispered, “I want to live.” While God spared my life, I continued to shoot, smoke, and snort drugs even while in the hospital for three months. No matter how bad I wanted to stop using drugs, I could not stop.

But one desperate night, while looking at a handsome man on TV giving his testimony about once being a heroin addict but that Jesus changed his life—feeling defeated and at the end of myself, I rolled over onto my knees and prayed, "Jesus, help me like you helped that man. Forgive me--live your life in me."

Through an arduous but wonderful journey to wholeness that started that night while watching the 700 Club, I am clean and free from the bondage of addiction for over 19 years. God has shown me—through every struggle and triumph since then—the “me” that He birthed me to be. An artist whose canvases are filled with words--spoken and written. A singer who never believed her notes were pure enough because they didn't sound like someone else's—but so they shouldn't—each note that I sing is flavored with me. A good and tender mother who cherishes the son, whom I had abandoned during my addiction but graciously gave me another chance, never stopped loving me and loved me until I could love myself. A daughter who doesn’t have to fill her daddy's shoes because God's got a pair just for her—that she was born to fit. A daughter than can forgive her mother—and move on. A bodacious black woman who's eccentric but so it is and so should it be. A new grandmother who hoped this day would come as proof that the generational curse has been broken.

And above all, I am a daughter of “I AM THAT I AM” who learns daily to learn to love the me that God sees. "...Wonderfully made." An "apple of His eye." "Like a tree planted by the streams of water which yields fruit in season, whose leaf does not wither. Whatever she does prospers."

And so on being me? I’s free now! Free to be the “me” that God birthed me to be. If not now, when? If not me who?

Isn't It Amazing?

Isn't it amazing how when you are obedient in what God gives you to do—no matter how large or small the task—He freely gives you whatever is needed to carry out the task? Then, as if that's not grace enough--He infuses that act of obedience—with His Resurrection Power, wrapped in His Unceasing Love, and Unleashed by the Holy Spirit. Thusly so and only then are hearts touched, hope leaps forth, destinies are changed, and eternal rewards are indelibly imprinted in God’s Book of Life—not only the recipients; but also, the doers. Therefore, Chosen Ones, as the Word instructs us, “let your light so shine among men (as in mankind) that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in Heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

Musings of a Grateful New Grandmother

Those of you that read, my book, I Say A Prayer for Me, met my son, Michael, at 8-years-old within the pages. Now 28-years-old, he is a Morgan State University graduate. He, too, is a writer and Founding Editor of YARDstyle Magazine (“A New HBCU Tradition") is free to students on 75+ Historically Black Colleges & Universities. Most recently, he became a father. My first grandbaby, a glowingly beautiful little girl, also named Michal (a different spelling than her dad) was born in June.

I weep tears of joy, even as I type, at the thought of her. I weep as I think of such a generously kind God who has blessed me and mine beyond measure. I weep as I think of the countless prayers that I have lifted up to God on behalf of my “grandbabies to come” long before my son was even old enough to have children.

Michal is ever changing and still quite the stunning one. I recently shared photos of her with my friend since childhood, Omie (who you also met in the book), and she wrote me back..."Lord have mercy she favors YOU. She's such a cutey."

Although I don't quite see it...it was good for "Grandmoms" (since my son calls me "moms") to hear. Generations of genes on both sides are there. As with him—as with me. It's amazing isn't it…the creative power of God?

It's like He loves us so much, that he wants to perpetuate us here on earth as well as in heaven. Us there with Him eventually (with new immortal bodies that will never wear out) and remnants of us here. I sit at my computer today—humbled and in awe of the amazingly everlasting love of God.

After all that has been said and done in my life, God still allowed me to live to see the day that I can say, “My name is Stanice, and I am Michal Zoë's grandmother.”

Photo: Stanice and Michael (Then)

Me and my son, Michael (Then)

Photo: Michael and Michal (Now)

Michael and his daughter, Michal (Now)