Baltimore’s Hope

Baltimore, you hurt my soul. The one thing I have learned over these past few months is that it doesn’t cost a thing to make a difference in someone’s life. It doesn’t cost a thing to tell someone you are cheering for them. It doesn’t cost a thing to tell someone you believe in them. It doesn’t cost a thing to tell someone there is hope. It doesn’t cost a thing to tell someone about the love God has for them. It doesn’t cost a thing to pray for or with them. But we don’t.

 

We don’t go out in the inner city and tell those kids we are there for them. We don’t go out and tell those kids who had no choice in the situation they are in to tell them there is hope. We don’t go out and encourage them and show them the love God has for them. We don’t do it. Why?

 

We believe it’s someone else’s job. God appointed special people for it. But let me tell you, do you know how much Baltimore would be different if we put down our pride and took up our cross and followed him into where he cries out? If we laid down our lives to better those around us.

 

There are lost people everywhere, all around us. But my heart breaks for those kids in the city most of them are unaware what they are even going through. Their normal is our nightmare. Yet we expect their outcome to be the same as ours.

 

You have no idea what they go through. I haven’t even gotten past the surface and all I want to do is cry out to God and ask why. There is hope. We are the hope. We are the ones God called to love this city. Love cannot be poured out if it is not poured in. We can make a difference. You can make a difference.

 

I love my church because we have a ministry in East Baltimore. We have the light of Jesus shinning. But they can’t change the city by themselves. They can’t share the gospel with every kid in the city. But He doesn’t just call his church to his kids, he calls you and me to give hope and to show love to these kids. He calls all of us. If we all put the plow to the ground we can give hope and show love to these kids and start to show them a better a future just by taking time out of our schedule, embracing them and encouraging them. 

Non-Believer to a Believer

I opened my journal this morning and I just began reading from the beginning. This journal started Aug 2nd, 2012. A month before I found Jesus and almost 2 months before I accepted him as my Lord and Savior. Here’s what it reads:

“Today is Aug 2nd, 2012. … I want to start a new chapter in my life and I realized writing is really what I miss. I think I miss everything about it. It calms me, it makes me just fell good. Maybe it’s because it’s someone who doesn’t talk back and judge me and I can unfold all my secrets to. Someone who will always be there for me. Apparently, it is time for a new chapter in my life. Okay, so when is this man going to walk into it? Seriously.”

That entire entry can be summed up into the Man that did walk into my life a month later. It was a prayer that never left these lips, but left from a tip of a pen of a non-believer.

The next few entries were “secrets” or rather sins that just was confessed on paper. But the next entry was right before I met Jesus.

“Nothing. I have nothing, I feel like nothing. Nothing at all” (Undated)

I was depressed because I felt like nothing, unworthy, abandoned, I felt unloved. On the 22nd of September was my next post and it was about finding a great church home, one that I felt I was searching for even as a non-believer.

On October 28th 2012, God answered questions.

“…It was time for life to start. This is what I’ve been struggling with, with my faith, who is Jesus? Why is the Holy Trinity considered one person, one thing? Today my questions were answered. No, not by the sermon but by God speaking them into me. My mind is so clear right now. This is my awakening. I don’t know what He has in store for me, but I am willing and ready for it. Today I handed over my soul. Today I begin to live as Jesus as someone not afraid of faith, not afraid of judgment. I live for Him today, not me.”

After that day, I started writing my notes from the service and then have a reflection page after that. Sometimes it was 3 pages, sometimes it was a paragraph. All I know is, my Aug 2nd “prayer” led me to Jesus, it led me to a life that was unthinkable, unimaginable.

“In Christ I am loved. In Christ I am not alone. In Christ I am me.

Loving Life,
Tanya “