YOUR ASSIGNMENT EXPELS THE DARKNESS

In the first creative act of God He said, "Let there be light." And then God gave light an assignment. He called the light Day, day was the assignment that God gave the light. And light has been fulfilling its assignment every since. Like the light that fills the universe and gives us energy that causes us to live everyone of us has been given an assignment. We were created to do what God has called us to do. And when we operate in our assignments we are living as God intended us to live.

The creation of light was God's answer to darkness which always existed on this planet. The fulfillment of your assignment is God's answer to the darkness that prevails in our world. The darkness that I refer to is not the physical darkness that governs the night, the darkness that rules most of the day at this time of year but I am speaking of a more pervasive form of darkness.

All around us is spiritual darkness. It exist in our communities, our schools, our governments and sometime even in the houses of worship where many gather weekly. People live in darkness because they live lives of misery. How many people got up today and got dressed and went to a job that will leave them miserable at the end of this day? How many people are trapped in relationships with people that leave them feeling miserable. They are living in the darkness of misery.

How many persons have bought the lies of the enemy. Lies that tell them that God doesn't love them and they are too far beyond His redemption. Lies that condemn them and tell them that God will never forgive them for what they did. Lies that tell them that they will never be successful, never prosper and never live an abundantly happy life. Any time a person accept a lie as truth they are living in the darkness of lies.

Your God assignment is the answer to the darkness in this world. As you embrace the call of God for your life and walk out that call daily you become the force that expels darkness from the world.
How do you know what your assignment is? First you have to have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the way to God.  Second you have to submit to the Holy Spirit in your life. The Holy Spirit reveals your assignment. He speaks to your heart and then confirms through others what God has gifted you to do.

Your assignment will always answer the question, What can I do to make things better? What solution do I bring to the problem? What can I do to empower people?

You were born to drive darkness out of the world. What are you waiting for?     

THERE'S TREASURE INSIDE OF YOU

Hello everyone. I hope that you had a phenomenal week. I know that I did. I was on vacation this week. Last weekend I was in my hometown of  Cleveland Ohio to celebrate with my family the 90th birthday of my grandmother Lottie Mitchell. It is an incredible blessing to have my maternal grandmother in my life. Being in her presence is evidence of God's goodness resting on her life. My grandmother has been an great influence in my life and I count her as one of the many gifts that God has given me.

This past week I sat in presence of God and listened to Him speak to me concerning the present and future. On my drive back home from Cleveland I drove through the Blue Ridge Mountain, what a testimony to he creative genius of God, meditating and worshipping God. This entire week has been one of rest in the presence of God as I reflected on the seasons that I have passed through and am currently in.

I wanted to write a blog yesterday but I didn't have anything to write. And so I rejoice that the Holy Spirit deposited this word in my spirit to write here today. I believe that these words will really motivate you to take some time to discover what God has planted in your heart that is now ready to come forth.

Do you know what treasure lives inside of you? Are you aware of the value that has been placed inside of you by God? Have you ever taken inventory of the wealth that lives in you?

If you don;t know what I'm talking about I want to give you the five-fold treasure that lives in you.

1. Purpose: You were created in the image of God to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion in the earth. These descriptions are given to us in Genesis 1:28. Every human being on the planet Earth was given this purpose. And even though our image was broken by sin in Jesus Christ we have a restored image to accomplish our purpose. Your purpose is the treasure in you.

2. Vision: On my Wednesday's blog I talked about living with Vision and so I won't repeat myself here. But I will say that the Vision in you is treasure because it is the gateway to your future. Purpose is who I am to do what I was born to do. Vision is what I see to do what I was born to do. Your vision is the treasure in you.

3. Ability: God placed Adam in the garden to tend it and keep it. God gave Adam a place where he could demonstrate his ability. God put Adam in an environment to succeed.  God has given each one of us a place to demonstrate our ability. It can be your home, your job or business, your church or your community. Ability has to have a place to express itself. Your ability is the treasure inside of you.

4. Intelligence: God gave Adam intelligence. Genesis 2:19 says that God brought every animal to Adam to be named. God gave Adam an opportunity to express his  intelligence by giving him a situation and then watched how he handled it. Intelligence is the ability to find solutions to any matter. God challenges our intelligence not by what we know but by how we are able to answer situations. Your intelligence is the treasure inside of you.

5. Recognition: When God brought the woman to Adam he immediately recognized her. Adam knew who she was. He knew that she was created for him. Adam had what I call INTUITIVE RECOGNITION. Adam knew who the woman was although God never said who she was. There are times when you don't have information but you know when God is bringing someone into your life for a certain purpose. You perceive that God is bringing someone into your life for a divine connection. Recognition not only applies to people but it also applies to situations. Recognition is the treasure inside of you.

With all of this treasure in us why are we not living at our full potential? Why are we not living incredible lives? Because the treasure inside of us has been buried by all the junk inside of us. The treasure has been buried by years of fear, doubt, unbelief, mental limitations and sociological messages. To discover the treasures that God has deposited in you you have to go dig for it. You have to reject everything in you that says to you what you can't do and you have to keep digging until you reach what God has placed inside of you. And then you bring the treasure to the surface by speaking it, meditating on it and doing it.

I pray that you find everything that God has deposited in you. Everything that God has placed in you is the keys to live an incredible life!

WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU EXPEREINCE

The idea of having a vision that would transform my life and create a future was first introduced to me in the mid 90's when I read THE POWER OF VISION by George Barna. George challenged me to believe God for bigger things that would change the church that I was pastoring and affect the community in a profound way.

As I got older I started to embrace this concept of Vision not only for the churches that I have pastored but also for myself and for my family.  I embraced the belief that having Vision meant that I had a future. I had a mental sketch that was formed in my mind that was calling me to a destiny that was unlike my present and my past.

Whenever I meditate on the Vision for my life, my family, the church that I pastor and my business it stirs something in me. It gives room to my inner voice that says all things are possible when you believe.

Everyone needs a vision. Vision is the foundation of the incredible life that God wants to have. Everyone needs to be a part of a organization that has vision. Everyone needs to be a member of a family that has vision. Vision empowers, encourages and elevates.

The second time that God spoke to man God invited man to have a vision. When this revelation came to me I determined then that I would never again live without vision. The first time that God spoke to man is given in Genesis 1:28. God told male and female to take dominion over the earth. And the second time that God spoke is given in Genesis 1:29 He said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food."

Let me repeat this. The second time that God spoke to the human race He said to them SEE. After mankind was equipped and called to establish ownership over the earth then mankind was called to embrace vision. Where God has set you to rule, oversee and complete God has also set you to see what He has given you and for what purpose.

Because we don't see where we have been set we don't experience the results of what we see. Your vision calls you to see the provisions that God has placed in your view. Your vision calls you to recognize the potential of what is before you. Your vision makes the place where you are significant and meaningful. Your vision reveals God's purpose for what He is inviting you to see.

Can I make a suggestion to you that I am totally convince will change your life if you follow it? I hope you said yes. Spend the rest of this year, there are seventy three days left in 2011 and accept God's invitation to SEE, to receive the vision that is going to take forward in 2012.

First take a look at what God has set before you. What ideas keep coming to the forefront of your mind? What plans keep rising up in your imagination? Who is in your life that God has set there to help you move forward with your vision?

Second, identify the potential of your vision. What does it have the power to do? What will change because of your vision? What impact will it have on others?

Third, look at the place where you are. Is this where God wants your Vision to manifest? Are you committed to staying there until the vision comes forth? Are there limiting situations that would keep your Vision from growing and expanding? Will you have to move to bring your vision to pass?

Fourth, know the purpose of your vision. Why does your vision exist?

I pray that you will hear God say to you today SEE! 

LIVING AFTER FAILURE

As much as I hate to admit I have failed I have had those experiences where I didn't win. I have experienced the feelings that followed being beaten either by a person; of course I was a child!. or by a situation.

When you have failed in an enterprise that you had so many hopes that it would succeed because of your time, concentration and energy the emotional feelings of failure can be as traumatic as watching a love one die. In a sense failure is like death. Because when failure becomes your reality something in you does die. It may be your hope. Your vision. Your plans. It could be a relationship or a business.

I've never dealt well with failure. Many years ago I wrote my first novel. It was the year that my son Quincy was born. The novel was autobiographical as I drew comparisons between myself and the protagonist in the novel. He was a teenage boy who fell in love in a girl. The boy was a Christian, the girl was not. In a desire to be with the girl the boy compromised on what he believed. Months later the girl broke his heart and the boy spent the rest of his high school years pursuing meaningless relationships. (That really does describe my high school years).

A year after writing that novel I secured the services of an agent. He spent an entire year trying to get me a publishing contract but he didn't close the deal. The day I received my manuscript from the agent I conceded that my first novel was a failure and I didn't have a story worth publishing and I didn't write anymore for more than ten years.

My reaction to that failure was to walk away from the novel and the desire to see it published. I decided to cut my losses and move on. I didn't believe in fighting for what I believed in and what I dreamed could be.

But since then I have learned how to live after a failure. I have a different mindset now than I did then because I've still had some failures but what I know now is that you can have a new season after a failure and you can even have a new beginning after failure. This is what I have learned:

1. MINIMIZE THE EVENT AND MAXIMIZE THE LESSON: After you've gotten over the hurt of your failure stop concentrating on what happened. Give yourself a couple of days to reflect and mourn on what happened and how it affected you, then take a seat, take a breath and review what you learned from your failure. Take my word for it, the lesson is greater than the failure. If you can extract a lesson from your failure than you can turn your failure into success!

2. RECOGNIZE THE CAUSE OF THE FAILURE. When my first novel wasn't published I made myself believe that I was the failure. But it wasn't my failure, it was the agent's failure. I blamed myself for someone else inadequacies and that caused me to stop writing for more than a decade. In taking a look at what caused the failure you should rightly take responsibility for what you did to cause it but then you should refuse to take responsibility for what someone has done.

3. KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS: Sometime we fail because we try to do too much on our own. We try to execute plans that we are equipped to carry out. When you recognize what you can't do then you will seek the help of others. You will seek the help of those who are skilled in areas where you are not. We often fail when we don't have a team. When we don't have support. Failure is often the result of pursuing private concerns without partners. Everybody who wants to win needs somebody who can help them win.

After you've failed you can live again. Let the words of Psalms 73:26 challenge you. "My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever."

Life after failure is living where you trust God to give you the strength to continue on. I didn't do that after my novel wasn't published. I sought meaning in other things. I replaced my calling to write with my pastoral calling. I was in God's will, because he had called me to be a pastor  but I wasn't in God's perfect will because a big part of my destiny was in my writing. Every now and then I would sit at my desk in my office at the church and the desire to write a story would speak softly in my spirit. But I wasn't strong enough to seek God for His strength to empower me to do what I was born to do.

And then living after failure is knowing that God is your portion. If you didn't receive what you wanted then you have to recognize that God has assigned you something else. And sometime we find that something else after failure. Because God is your portion he has a place for you. He has a plan for you and he has people for you.

Confucius said, "Our greatest glory is not in ever falling, but in rising ever time we fall."

Today I am including the link to the free chapter in my novel DO YOU WANNA BE MADE WHOLE? http://www.bernardboulton.com/books/dywbmw_excerpt.html  In this chapter two characters in the story are trying to find life after they experienced failure in their marriage. Read and enjoy if you haven't haven't already read this novel.

 

ARE YOU LIVING YOUR DREAMS?

What makes your life incredible? What sets you apart from every other person that inhabits the planet earth? It is your dreams that are formed in your imagination. A dream is the outward expression of your hope. It is the seed from which your future springs. It is a goal that you must reach to have something that you don't have.

Last week the world mourned the passing of Steve Jobs. Steve had a dream to produce a personal computer. With $1300 he started Apple. Today we have the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, all the results of Steve Jobs dreams. Your dreams are the gateway to your future.

God gave a dream to Abraham. The Almighty found Abraham in the country of his ancestors and showed him another land and then God told Abraham that I want you to go and live there and I will make you a great nation. A couple of hundred year later God gave a dream to the great grandson of Abraham, his name was Joseph. God showed him that he would be a great man. God is the giver of dreams. Matter of fact this incredible planet that we live on called Earth is the result of one of God's dreams.

Your dreams are what puts passion in your life. It is the energy that causes you to rise every morning ready to live and pursue what God wants you to experience. Your dreams are what gives you focus in the midst of distractions. Your dreams rescue you from living a mediocre life.

So I want to tell you today. DREAM! If your dreams have died resurrect them. How do you do that? Start talking about your dreams to your dreams. That's what I said, talk to your dreams. There was a prophet named Ezekiel who God sent to a valley that was full of dead bones. Those dead bones are your dreams that were slaughtered and decimated by your pursuit of an mundane existence. God asked Ezekiel can these bones live? And then God told Ezekiel to speak to the bones. Ezekiel did what God told him to do and something miraculous started happening. The bones started to move, a sound was heard from the bones that were dead.

That's what you have to do with your dreams. Start talking to them. Start telling your dreams to live again. And then start speaking your dreams to those whom you love and trust. Write your dreams on paper and place them on the wall of your house. Write them down on a card and keep it in your wallet or purse. Pull it out several times a day and take a minute to meditate on it.

Then develop a plan to make your dream happen. What do you need to do to make this happen? What resources do you need to make your dream happen? Whose help do you need to make your dream happen? How long will it take to make your dream happen?

And then you pursue your plan daily. Give yourself daily and weekly goals and monthly goals. At least once a week spend a hour with yourself or with a team if you need one and evaluate your progress.

Ask God to give you a mentor. A person who can teach you in the area of your dream and can reduce your time to see the manifestation of your dream.

I'm excited for you as you find the dreams that is resident inside of your imagination. If you need more help I have written a report  titled RELEASE THE DREAM IN YOU AND LIVE AN INCREDIBLE LIFE. You can have this free gift when you go to my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pabernardboulton and visit my welcome page where you can click on the report. And please LIKE me on my Facebook page.

I'll be praying that you find your DREAMS!  

THE CLOCK IS MOVING, ARE YOU?

I have had a long and productive week. But the first week in October usually is a very busy for me. It is busy because I have been preaching at the Beulah Baptist Church since Monday night. In an era where most churches revival are held for three nights or less, Beulah under the leadership of the Rev. Jerry Wilson continues to hold their annual revival for five nights.

I started preaching yearly at Beulah in 2000 when I was the conference preacher for their Men's Conference. After a few years doing the Men's conference Pastor Wilson then asked me to preach the Church's annual revival and I've been doing it ever since. It has been an incredible blessing in my life to go to this church every year. Beulah is a loving congregation and Pastor Wilson is one of my best friends in the world. I am extremely proud of him and the great job that he is doing at Beulah after 20 years as their pastor. And alongside being pastor of Beulah he is also serving as the Moderator of the Cedar Grove Missionary Baptist Association, an association of over 50 churches in North Carolina. As moderator Pastor Wilson is a visionary and he's calling this mighty army of churches to rise to it's God given capability as kingdom people.

The first three nights of the revival I preached a series of messages on Living under an open Heaven, Getting an vision under an open Heaven and Receiving Provision under an Open Heaven. If you are interested in getting these messages on CD let me know. I really believe that they will teach you the principles of living under an open heaven which is living in the supernatural presence of God where heaven fills our lives with the goodness of God.      

Today is Friday October 7 and we have eighty five days left in this year. A week and a half ago I informed you that I was resolved to work on and finish the projects that I was lead to pursue this year. God is giving me grace to do what  I need to do to finish. Since Oct 1st I have been writing my second novel, which is a sequel to my first novel DO YOU WANNA BE MADE WHOLE?. The story is shaping up quite well. The characters are coming to life and one of the main characters is slowly moving toward a relationship with Jesus. Another one of the main characters is also moving toward danger. I have high hopes for my second novel REST IN A WEARY NOVEL.

As I have been praying for direction the Holy Spirit is giving me direction about my teaching schedule for New Mine Creek for the year 2012. 

And I am focused on completing some business concerns that must be completed by December 31st.

I hope that this blog will encourage you to finish what you need to finish before January 1, 2012. You an do it if FOCUS and then PERFORM. Maybe you don't know what to do or what you need to finish then in that case ASK GOD FOR HELP! When you pray, according to 1 John 5:14-15 God hears you and God will give you what you ask for.

So the Clock is moving, are you?         

DAVID vs. GOLIATH; Pittsylvania Board of Supervisors sued by ACLU over Prayer

A few weeks ago the Danville Register and Bee reported that the ACLU had filed a lawsuit against the Pittsylvania Board of Supervisors because the Supervisors opens their meeting with prayer that specifically acknowledges Jesus Christ. The lawsuit accuses the Board of Supervisors of promoting one set of religious beliefs over others.

The lawsuit comes as no surprise to the citizens of Pittsvlvania County because it had been previously reported by the Register and Bee that the ACLU had sent a letter to the Board threatening them with a lawsuit if they did not immediately stop praying in their meetings. In response to the threat from the ACLU hundreds of citizens filled the chambers of the Board on Tuesday September 6 to support the Supervisors decision to continue praying in spite of the threat from the ACLU.

As dismayed as I am by the actions of the ACLU against the government in the county where I have lived and pastored for 9 years, my dismay has turned into acrimony toward the hypocrisy of the ACLU. This same group who has championed a secular agenda to remove God from the public venue. This same group who has threatened Christians and Christians across America is currently DEFENDING THE RIGHTS OF MUSLIMS TO PRAY IN SCHOOL.

That's right. I read this shocking news on WWW.BLACKCHRISTIANNEWS.COM It appears that Muslim students were not allowed to pray at the Carver Elementary School in San Diego and the ACLU has threatened the school district with a lawsuit for violating the constitutional rights of those students.

So in a world ruled by the ACLU it is alright for Muslims to pray to Allah but Christians can't pray to Jesus. That's right in the eyes of the ACLU Islam is okay but Christianity is not.

You may not live in Pittsylvania County Virginia but if you read this blog would you join me in praying for the right to pray for Christians in South Virginia. Please pray that God will give us victory in Pittsylvania county against this repressive organization that has positioned itself against all patriotic Christians in America.

This is the fight of David, the Board of Supervisors against Goliath, the ACLU. I believe that the prayers of the righteous will produce God honoring results.