I read this and immediately thought about my nieces and unwed spiritual daughters.  I post for them.

Current movies, books, television shows and magazines are full of impressions and suggestions about sex. We have examples all around us of couples engaging in pre-marital and extra-marital sex. There’s no way around it — today’s culture fills our minds with hundreds of reasons to just go ahead and have sex outside of marriage. But as Christians, we don’t want to simply follow everyone else. We want to know what the Bible says about sex outside of marriage.

10 Reasons Not to Have Sex Outside of MarriageReason #1 - God Tells Us Not to Have Sex Outside of Marriage

In the seventh of God’s Ten Commandments, he instructs us not to have sex with anyone other than our spouse. It is clear that God forbids sex outside of marriage. When we obey God, he is pleased. He honors our obedience by blessing us.

Deuteronomy 28:1-3
If you fully obey the LORD your God … [he] will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come upon you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God … (NIV)God has a reason for giving us this command. First and foremost, he knows what’s best for us. By obeying him, we trust God to look out for our best interests.  

Reason #2 - We Won’t Miss Out on the Blessing of the Wedding Night

There’s something very special about a couple’s first time. In this physical act the two become one flesh. Yet it is more than just physical oneness — a spiritual union takes place. God planned for this exclusive experience of discovery and pleasure to happen only within the intimacy of marriage. If we don’t wait, we miss out on a very special blessing from God.

1 Corinthians 6:16
Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.” (The Message)

Reason #3 - We Will Be Spiritually Healthier

If we live as carnal or fleshly Christians, we will seek to gratify the desires of the flesh and live only to please ourselves. If we live this way, the Bible says we cannot please God. We will be miserable under the weight of our sin. As we continue to feed our fleshly desires, our spirit will grow weak and our relationship with God will be destroyed. Complacency with sin leads to worse sin, and eventually, spiritual death. Romans 8:8,13
Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live … (NIV)

Reason #4 - We Will Be Physically Healthier

This one is a no-brainer. If we refrain from sex outside of marriage, we will be protected from the risk of catching sexually transmitted diseases. 1 Corinthians 6:18
Run from sexual sin! No other sin so clearly affects the body as this one does. For sexual immorality is a sin against your own body. (NLT)  

Reason #5 - We Will Be Emotionally Healthier

One reason God tells us to honor marriage and keep the marriage bed pure has to do with baggage. We carry baggage into our sexual relationships. Memories from the past, emotional scars and unwanted mental images can defile our thoughts and make the marriage bed less than pure. Certainly God can forgive the past, but that doesn’t mean we’re free from the baggage that can linger in our minds.

Hebrews 13:4
Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. (NIV)

Read more here

My hubby has been a little under the weather lately. He’s been working hard and sometimes it just gets the best of us. Yesterday night after work something happened that started a tearfest for me at home. What exactly happened? I call it Man Love. A new believer at the church we attend Raul is a musician my husband met there and they’ve connected but its more than the musical thing-a-ma-jig. Something is happening.

He called my husband yesterday just to say hi, Hiram mentioned that he was still sick. Do you know what this guy did? No, of course you don’t that’s why I have to tell you Raul said “What! You are sick! I’m going to the store right now and get you something that always works for me.” And some other stuff about this honey and some other substance very popular in Cuba.  When he came over, he had two little boxes of medicine and made my hubby take it in front of him. We all stayed talking for at least an hour or so. When he was leaving my husband went to walk him out and since it was raining, Raul pushed him back so he wouldn’t get wet! (So as not to get sicker!)

So what is the big deal? WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL, that was man love produced by God’s love MAN! What I loved about it is that men have a VERY hard time showing affection and on top of that, this guy had to go to Miami to do something. He went OUT OF HIS WAY to stop at the store, buy medicine (who knows how much money he had for the week?) and came in the pouring rain to make sure my husband got it.

Listen, things like that touch me because being Jesus with skin on, getting out of your comfort zone to show someone love, swallowing pride to share with someone what they mean to you is the very thing GOD wants us to do for each other as the body.Man Love, God’s love. Wow.

Raul is the 2nd from left. What a sweetie and he’s new to the Lord! You see we can learn from baby believers too!

Seems friendships are among the things most Americans want out of life. The Barna Report today wrote “There were six specific conditions that at least three-quarters of all adults identified as being very important elements in their ideal life. Those included having good physical health (listed by 85%), living with a high degree of integrity (also 85%), having one marriage partner for life (80%), having a clear purpose for living (77%), having a close relationship with God (75%), and having close, personal friendships (74%). ” Read more here.

A great article with a different perspective on church planting. I liked it because it was real. I liked it because in real church planting life most things don’t go like the “books” say they will. I liked it because he choose healthy family life as opposed to overworked, stressed out, dysfunctional family life. We did the same. We don’t regret it at all. Like him, we believe we could pastor again but we are not in a hurry. And if, by chance, that doesn’t happen we are ok with that too. But know this, we realize that we pastor anyway, we just don’t have the title, the church staff, or the compensation.  What we do with people in all that we do is a role of shepherding but now we do it without the stress of paying rent, figuring out who will do worship, having five of our seven days taken up by “ministry”.

What am I saying here? Serving the Lord through church ministry is awesome. But in EVERY role in the church, sometimes we need to do an evaluation to make sure the role is not more important that the role God requires us to keep healthy…that of a family relationship. This is why Paul said “don’t get married” aside from the sexuality part, he also meant the ministry part. Some people think that climbing the church ladder is the only important thing. No, having a closer walk with the Lord so much that His spirit permeates the areas where you are is the most important.

I could say alot about this…but it will be pages long. Just check out the story here.

too fast!

Let’s learn from Joseph’s story. Here Bishop Millicent Hunter, a past CEFL speaker shares a sermon on the danger of sharing your dream too soon!

As some of you know (if you’ve been reading my blog for some time), I’ve been on on a quest to understand relationships but very specifically girlfriends. This started after my first “real” crisis in life, after the birth of my son, Daniel Jeremiah (DJ). You see, when I went through that very dark journey and I almost lost it, it was the very few girlfriends I had cultivated a relationship with that got me through that ordeal. Even while going through the craziness of my drama with my son and afterward, I still made time to meet with these girls and talk about the things we were learning regarding friendship…lifelong, still with you till you die kind of friends. It’s been an interesting journey as we have all been through so many transitions but we’ve survived each other and our friendships still thrive.

One thing I never was too crazy about was superficial friendships. I wasn’t too into the surface stuff. Not because I wanted to get deep as soon as I met you but because I felt in that period of time, I didn’t have time for people who didn’t understand me and my ways. However, as I continued to grow, develop, mature and reflect, I realize that superficial is ok and Leonard Sweet mentioned this in his book, 11 Indispensable Relationships You Can’t Live Without. I realized these superficial friendships could just be the fun ones, the shopping ones, the let’s go for coffee ones, the let’s get our nails done together ones, etc. No one person will fulfill everything for you so its good to have friends in various categories. Did you get the book I recommended already? Come on get it already!

Yesterday I had a friend I haven’t seen for a few years since I left NYC come over. She’s a beauty inside and out but as we chatted yesterday over dinner, my spirit leaped and I realized I should have stayed connected to her more. She is just lovely, her spirit is uplifting and she’s real which if you know me, you know I can see through your “tiring to be real” — you gotta be really “real”. LOL. Well, as we shared about our journeys and learned that we are BOTH on this path to understanding female friends more, I was really blessed with her presence. Her mom was there also (who I just met) and we were all yapping away on the importance and need for friendships so God can do His thing in us. You see friends “can” be mirrors and if they realize their role in your life and vice versa it can be incredibly life transforming.

More to come after I eat dinner!

I don’t know about you but do you believe things will get better in the world? I don’t. The only “better” I think we’ll have is the promised 3 years of peace and bliss when the Antichrist comes to power. I know most people don’t even want to talk about these things, it isn’t popular and it sure has a way of emptying churches, which is why many pastors don’t preach end time messages…usually because there are “other” important things to talk about. Now, while I agree that there are other things that are important, I don’t agree that those things are “just” as important. Why? Because where you and I will spend eternity is probably the #1 thing we should decide upon, yes, because its our decision whether to believe or not.

So with eternity in mind, with my understanding (albeit limited) of what I believe to be true in the Word of God, I don’t expect political candidates to mirror my beliefs on most things. If they did, they would not get elected. Now, after all these years of a Bush presidency we see that voting based on what “a person says they believe” doesn’t mean a hill of beans anyway. This time around, I support Obama’s candidacy for President even though he runs as a change agent but his track record shows he’ll probably stick with the policy that ok’s abortion. I read this article this am and while I think it makes very valid points and I am a against abortion as birth control, I wonder what he’s thinking?

Does he want us to vote republican? Does he want us not to vote at all? Does he want us to unite as Christians (good luck on that one) and raise our collective voices to demand an independent candidate (next time around) that represents our beliefs? I don’t know but I just don’t expect political candidates who expect to get elected in a world that is progressively getting worse to believe as I do. Even before this election, I’ve always seen the political progress and the actual choosing of a candidate to be “choosing between the lesser of two evils”. And we already know that the popular vote ‘really doesn’t get someone elected’ don’t we? Hey some even believe there is a secret society “illuminati” running things.

On Obama’s way to the Presidency he did make history as the first African-American democratic nominee for President but what else do we expect from him?

Father’s day for a long time was a sad day for me. You see my dad left my mom when I was 2. She suddenly came home after a hard day’s work to find herself cleaned out of furniture with a 2 year old to care for. Yeah, my biological dad was a heck of a guy. Just so you know he was also a “Christian” who by day was a barber by trade and by night was a preacher. Somewhere along his journey he got into drinking and would abuse my mom. She still has a slash on her arm from one of his barber’s tools. Like I said, heck of a guy. Years later, I heard he was in Puerto Rico working for a Christian organization called Hogar Crea which rehabilitates people who are substance abusers. I also heard he remarried and I even got to see a picture of my half sister who looks remarkably alot like me. But I never again reconnected with him. As far as I know Elizier Delgado is dead. Father’s day for a very long time was a sad day for me for I never really got to know the love of a dad. That was until…

I met Jesus. Wow, what incredible love and to know that nothing would separate me from his love, that nothing I could do could make Him love me less. That was a love that still intoxicates me till this day. A little of what that love is like is documented in this presentation of “A Father’s Love Letter”. The great thing about our heavenly dad is that He is not like my dad. Maybe your dad is/was great and I rejoice with you. But if I had to accept God’s love for me based on my own personal experiences, I would have had a hard time (note: that is why preachers need to include this reality when they preach, not everyone loves their dad, had a great dad, or even had dad around). An article that takes this further is here.

But of course, I don’t want to end this post on a sour note! I want to celebrate my man, my honey, Hiram. When I walked down the aisle with this man, I knew he would be a great dad. What I wasn’t prepared for, what I didn’t expect was that he was be an exceptional one. I wrote this article in 2005 about being a dad versus being a father, I want to post it here because it still says what I want it to say. My husband is both dad and father. Not all Latino fathers fit the stereotype. I am so grateful to God for the man I have. What I never had, my children do and for that I give all the glory to God and all my love to my husband.

I feel like I’ve been crying most of the weekend! Wait, I HAVE BEEN CRYING most of the weekend! I stayed up last night watching shows sharing about Tim Russert and I just kept crying. The more I knew about him the more I cried. I found that as more and more people shared about him, the more I realized this man touched people around him. He left a legacy. He left a hole that no one will be able to fill. Even in his death, his life was speaking to people. I thought for a moment, I would love for my life to speak even after I am gone too. That is why everything we do has consequences and they impact those around us whether at that moment or after we are gone. I cried myself to sleep.

I woke up this morning very grateful to God for the things I have. Namely my family who I love dearly, a roof over my  head, whatever I had in my fridge, and love.  Every day we wake up is another opportunity to share love with those dear to us. I was so grateful to have another day to show it.

It was one of those chill Saturdays and we had a movie marathon but the one that made me cry yet again was The Bucket List. There were many things we could absorb from this movie but the one that stood out for me the most (without spoiling anything) was the impact human beings can have on each other when they just drop the bull, the desire to impress and become vulnerable, share their story and live the precious present!

You know if there is anything I am sure about at this age its that before you know it years have gone by and we haven’t even lived. Most live for others and the opinions of those “others”. Most never live for God and his opinion of them. Lately, (you would think I was dying or something) I’ve been thinking alot about legacy, the rapture, the last days, relationships and my personal destiny.  I guess it is better to continue to reflect on those things now then when it may be too late i.e. a death bed.  I am so grateful to God for giving me this very mushy heart of mine, for letting me feel people’s pain, for helping me see beauty in simple things, for keeping me in check when I want to walk away from the hard work of friendship to avoid pain and truth.

Man I gotta say I love who I am right now. As me and Hiram cried watching this movie, we also laughed as our son said “you guys crying again!” My hubby said, “you got very emotional parents!” I rather yell from the mountains that I love someone than go to my grave holding that information in because I wanted to look cool! I rather risk the pain of hurt and rejection and cry in the darkness of my bedroom than never allow people who I may come to love or who could love me in my life.

Right now life is difficult for alot of people. It isn’t easy. There never seems to be ENOUGH. Enough rice, gas, money, love, patience, kindness, understanding….but we can make a choice to be sunshine for a moment to those around us. What does it cost us? Nothing. But to the person that comes in contact with us, it could mean alot.

In the end people, nothing matters but knowing God, living for Him and showcasing His love in the daily things we do. I am not perfect in this regard but I am aware that all things will pass away one day and thus, I strive to be more like God, to have God do His work in me, to not waste time on the details that sometimes still away our joy.

These are my random thoughts this Saturday night.

by the news that Tim Russert died today. As I watched the news with my husband today as we ate dinner, I actually cried. I didn’t know him personally of course, but after someone has been on TV for so many years, you come to feel like you do. I cried because I know a family and his friends are mourning today. I cried because when there is a death, I usually think of those I love and pray that they stay as long as possible, then I grimace because I know it isn’t up to me but to God.

I pray for his family today that they are given peace. I don’t know if Mr. Russert knew the Lord. I hope he did.