Pastor Leo Colon's Blog

Tag: IHP

  • Ferguson: We Need to Pay Attention

    no-tie-head-shot.jpgGrace and peace be unto you. Today, I wanted to speak to you for a moment concerning the Mike Brown incident in Ferguson Missouri and what we should glean from this moment. A few days have passed since the announcement that no charges would be filed by the Ferguson County district attorney as a result of the determinations made by the grand jury. Nothing about the incident can be applauded by any righteous person. Although, there are some obvious observations that have been made that are important and should be made.

    Firstly, Mike Brown may have been a felon by any tangential observer. He had just committed what is called a strong arm robbery (maybe). I say that because the video is not, as of yet, conclusive. Which means, he should be in jail and not dead. Secondly, by the admission of the police department, the robbery was not the reason for the stop. Thirdly and maybe most significantly, the reason for the uproar is because there is no equal treatment here. Just this year, you had a litany of examples where police have waited out felons with guns, so not to hurt these white men (with Guns), yet Mike Brown is gunned down in broad day light, with no gun. There is a different metric, seemingly that police use when the suspect is black. We understand this.

    Beloved, I have a problem and I must admit, we are to blame for some of this. I contend that we are not paying attention. When you live in a town, such as Ferguson, with 67% African American, 29.3% White, .5% Asian, .4% Native American and .4% other races, (Wikipedia, 2010 Census), there should not be an almost exclusively white city government, a nearly exclusively white police department or a white District Attorney.

    Is it possible to have white qualified officers and people in that city government? Of course, and there should be. My contention is, we ought not be so disengaged that we allow this to be the way our cities are run. What we need to do is form and follow a plan that would ensure that this never happen again. By this I do not mean, that we never have another white police officer kill another unarmed black suspect, that would be wonderful, but what I do mean is that we should never see it done and have city government give its approbation for this. We should never have a district attorney do his level best to avoid an indictment as oppose to letting the chips fall where they may. We need to pay attention to our cities and care who we elect. We need to make a big deal about voting in every election.

    Another thing, we need for those brothers and sisters in Ferguson to join the police academy. We are able to police our own community and do it well. We need those brothers and sisters who are fed up with the treatment of African Americans in that county to do what is neccesary. Sometimes, we behave as if it is way more important to criticized, and loot, than to solve. We are not paying attention. If we pay attention, we will elect responsible people to city goverment, have way more people of good conscious in our police force and make a point of knowing that the people we elect are qualified to hold office. Pay Attention!

    Yours Because I am His,
    Leo Colon
    pastor@ihpfwc.org
    http://www.ihpfwc.org

  • Don’t Operate In Fear

    20110106-120344.jpgThis blog is really one of the takeaways from the message at In His Presence Family Worship Center on Sunday. Let’s consider the text,  just for a few moments:

    Matt. 14:26 When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost!” they said, and cried out in fear.

    One of the issues we found in our study of this text is that when Jesus walked on water toward these disciples, they were in the midst of a terrible ordeal, and their fear was actually legitimate. Remember, at least five of these original twelve disciples were fishermen. Meaning these were professionals with a boat, yet the simple instruction, “go to the other side of the lake” was a major problem. Now I did go into detail in the message and the podcast is posted (www.ihpfwc.org),  so I won’t rehearse it here, but the real issue is that these men were frightened. They were scared for their lives, and it is in this construct that they saw Jesus.

    What have we seen through fear, that was meant to deliver us, and caused us to run away from it. We often will fear, the very thing that can help us get where we’re going. Anytime we try to receive instruction from anyone, including God, we tend to get the message wrong because we look at it, hear it, from the position of fear. What should help us, we flee from because we operate in fear. Now, I do not want to leave any of you with the impression that we will never have reason to fear anything. Life is real and so are many of the problems, but don’t operate in fear. Fear should be a momentary emotion that you never make a decision from. Never commit to anything, while operating in fear. If you are in fear, stop, then listen. We should not even listen to our loved ones in fear. Jesus who is the very fabric of deliverance looked like a ghost, because they operated in fear. Before, Jesus gave them hope, he gave them instruction and the instruction was, “fear not”.

    What could you do this week, if fear was not the focal point of your actions. What promotion could be yours, if you did not fear? What milestone could you achieve if you did not fear?
    Determine, I will not operate in fear! Watch this week change for the better because you did not operate in fear. Take on the challenge of this week in boldness.

    Yours Because I am His,
    Leo Colon
    pastor@ihpfwc.org
    http://www.ihpfwc.org

  • Love God with Sincerity.

    no-tie-head-shot.jpgA while ago, in one of my devotions, I came across a truth that inspired me. The scripture reference is Eph 6:24. 

Eph. 6:24 Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen. 

Grace be with all them that love our LORD Jesus Christ in sincerity.

    The word sincere was the focus of the authors of my devotions attention. He wrote this:

    “A Roman artist named Titus was commissioned to carve a statue of the emperor. He did a good job, and at the unveiling everyone was amazed at the striking resemblance of the statue to the living emperor. Every feature was carved to perfection.
    All went well as the statue was displayed in public until the summer sun began to bear down. Then suddenly the nose fell off. When the statue was inspected it was discovered that although the rest of it was carved out of marble, the nose was made of wax.
    So Titus was banished from Rome in disgrace, and a law was passed decreeing that from then on all statues of the emperor were to be made without wax.
    The Latin words for “without wax” are sine cera. From those words we have derived the English word sincere.”

    ”

Excerpt From: William L. Banks. “Daily Manna.” CLC Publications. iBooks. 
This material may be protected by copyright.

    A few observations:

    The Apostle Paul is pronouncing Grace, (may God give you all the things you don’t deserve) but only to those who love Jesus in sincerity. Meaning you love Christ without wax. What that means is that my love for Christ needs to be that which can withstand heat.  The heat of everyday life. The heat of depression, the heat of peer pressure, the heat of discouragement.  I cannot be the kind of believer that only loves God when the weather is such that comfort is the assumed, but my love for God needs to go through some things and discover that my love is made from marble. There is no wax there. 

I don’t want my love to fall off when trials come, when it gets hot, when trouble comes. I want to my love to withstand extremes. When its hot, it’s standing, when its cold it’s standing. If you don’t like it, it’s standing. My love for Christ needs to be one that is sincere. “Sine Cera”with out wax. How is your love for Christ?

     

    Yours Because I am His,
    Leo Colon
    pastor@ihpfwc.org
    http://www.ihpfwc.org.

     

     

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  • Oil for the Light

    no-tie-head-shot.jpgToday’s devotional, my Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening Devotional, was so powerful I just had to just copy and paste in it’s entirety. I pray that you are blessed by this. I promise you, I will be preaching one day soon, but sometimes, some things don’t need commentary. I was blessed. I hope you will be to.

    August 28 (Morning)

    “Oil for the light.” —Exodus 25:6

    My soul, how much thou needest this, for thy lamp will not long continue to burn without it. Thy snuff will smoke and become an offence if light be gone, and gone it will be if oil be absent. Thou hast no oil well springing up in thy human nature, and therefore thou must go to them that sell and buy for thyself, or like the foolish virgins, thou wilt have to cry, “My lamp is gone out.” Even the consecrated lamps could not give light without oil; though they shone in the tabernacle they needed to be fed, though no rough winds blew upon them they required to be trimmed, and thy need is equally as great.  Under the most happy circumstances thou canst not give light for another hour unless fresh oil of grace be given thee.
    It was not every oil that might be used in the Lord’s service; neither the petroleum which exudes so plentifully from the earth, nor the produce of fishes, nor that extracted from nuts would be accepted; one oil only was selected, and that the best olive oil. Pretended grace from natural goodness, fancied grace from priestly hands, or imaginary grace from outward ceremonies will never serve the true saint of God; he knows that the Lord would not be pleased with rivers of such oil. He goes to the olive-press of Gethsemane, and draws his supplies from Him who was crushed therein. The oil of gospel grace is pure and free from lees and dregs, and hence the light which is fed thereon is clear and bright. Our churches are the Saviour’s golden candelabra, and if they are to be lights in this dark world, they must have much holy oil. Let us pray for ourselves, our ministers, and our churches, that they may never lack oil for the light. Truth, holiness, joy, knowledge, love, these are all beams of the sacred light, but we cannot give them forth unless in private we receive oil from God the Holy Ghost.

    C. H. Spurgeon.

    Yours Because I am His,
    Leo Colon
    pastor@ihpfwc.org
    http://www.ihpfwc.org.