What The Cross Means To Me?
I give an honor to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for the opportunity to speak with you today. I pray that by sharing what the cross means to me it will enhance your faith as well as an opportunity for you to understand my life.
I was born here in Long Beach, California. My mother was never married to my father. However, my mother did marry a man that would beat her, keep us in a room, and make sure that my mother suffered for any wrong she did. I saw what hatred looked and smelled like as I tasted fear as a kid. My mother’s husband tore us apart mentally, emotionally, and painfully.
Due to my mother’s inability to care for her children we became wards of the state. My brother, sister, and I had to go into foster homes. This is where I learned to rebel. This is where I learned that love meant to be pushed away, abandon, mistreated, and abused.
As I became older, I hated. I dwelt with personality issues because I was too afraid of the real me. I was afraid that if anyone saw how hurt I was inside they would mock my weakness. But I was weak. I was alone. I wanted attention. But the more I wanted love I got hatred either by my peers or what I told myself.
Out of so much rebellion, fighting, and getting kicked out of schools-I would go to jail on November 16, 1994. I was 14 years old. Within jail, I would learn everything this world had to offer. I learned to lie better, think faster, hate myself more and condemn anyone for crossing me. I spent 10 years in jail. Ten years I can never get back. Years that many of you experience with friends, family, and just being a teenager I will never get those years again.
Yet, my pain wasn’t over. January 6, 2012 I was shot in Chicago, IL. I was wounded in the right leg. The bullet did not break a bone but destroyed an artery that runs to my ankle. I was given a risky operation that I could have lost my leg because of the infection and blood clog I received.
So, what does the cross means to me: It means that our Lord found favor in me. It means that I was given a chance, after chance, even if I rebelled, slandered, hated, and was bringing myself faster to an earlier death-God still found favor in me. Even through my darkness, my ignorance, my God saw something in my heart that I never could see.
Yet, he looked passed all that I have done by forgiving me: Because in Luke 23:34 he says “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” He for gave me in my ignorance and blindness. He for gave me for running to lies instead of the truth. He for gave me for being the nail that penetrated his wrist. He for gave me for being the whip that scared his back from years of mockery and deceit. Even though I blamed him questioning my trust in him saying “If you are the son of God do something about my pain when I failure to realize his cause for dying, he still for gave me.
So as you take part in communion today brothers and sisters, I urge you to remember 2 things. 1.) Why Jesus died on the cross for you? And 2.) How he delivered you from darkness? If you are visiting with us for first time-I ask you to look within yourselves and question your salvation. Are you still sleeping on the bed of worldly pleasures decaying slowly in your slumber? Or were you awaken by the words that were spoken making a decision to get with someone and study bible?
Because for me, it’s Galatians 5:1 where the bible says
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourself be burdened again by a yoke of slavery
May God be the Glory
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