It’s Your Responsibility

By Melissa Shaver

-  When you pray for healing, do you really want your prayer answered?
Do you think it cruel for me even to ask? Before you question my questions, think about what is required of you if you’re healed.Several weeks ago, I prayed for healing. Not from physical illness; I prayed for emotional healing—the internal handicap that keeps me from my full, God-ordained potential.

Immediately, I felt God lovingly question my prayer.

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God turned misery to ministry with the vision for MannaEXPRESSOnline

“Reveal deep and secret things to me about my life, dear Lord!”

This was the desperate plea in my heart as I checked into a hotel in DeSoto, Texas, early in the morning of June 22, 2006. I paid for three days but was prepared to stay more. My Bible, a notepad, a bag of toiletries, and a fierce determination to hear from the Lord accompanied me. I declared a three-day dry fast – no food, no water. Like Jacob in the Bible, I wasn’t going to let the Lord go until he blessed me with the solution to the problem I came with.

Something had happened in my personal life the night before that grieved me beyond my ability to cope. I was at my wits’ end emotionally and mentally. A tide of frustration, mixed with bitterness and anger, was threatening to engulf me. I knew something had to give way or I would retaliate. Either I drew a line or permitted the line of life to draw me into a contorted shape. The time for a change was now.

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What Is That To You?

By Melissa Shaver

I remember a time in my life when God prompted me to tell someone about Christ. A family friend and I sat outside after dinner one night catching up in conversation after years apart. We picked up right where we left off, talking over each other in excitement as we recalled our childhood experiences. Though we looked much the same, we had matured—graduated from college, found successful jobs, engaged in serious relationships. Pretty soon the light, superficial chatter turned to a more serious discussion about life goals, family values, and partners’ living arrangements. Within minutes, it was obvious that we approached life with radically different perspectives.

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Those flowers are needed now not when it is time to go 6ft below

By May Olusola

When the Bible says, “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee,” it is not joking.

Imagine for a second that your father and mother had not come together and produced a precious soul like you. No matter what the circumstances, thank God for your parents, respect them, and definitely give them their flowers while they are alive and not when they are about to be lowered six feet under.

I’ve walked in the shoes of what I’m preaching about, and that’s why I confidently encourage others not to make the same mistake. Having lost both parents, I know what I’m talking about.

The month of May is famous for honoring mothers, and the month of June comes shortly after and fathers are honored. My question to you is how many times do you honor your parents? Once a year? On Mother’s Day or Father’s Day?

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Bible Girl – The new paradigm for prosperity: home pedicures and leftover pizza

left over pizza

By Julie Lyons

We named it, we claimed it.

We bound devils and loosed riches, stomped our feet and waved our fists until we were sweaty and hoarse and a little ridiculous.

We stood by our mailboxes and ripped open our bank statements, looking for “supernatural blessings.”

We went in debt for McMansions and Escalades and 10-button suits, all in the name of faith and the expectation that God would launch us bigger, wider, deeper, greater into the new paradigm, the next level, the higher dimension.

How’s that prosperity stuff workin’ out for ya?

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Arch Bonnema – Christian Entrepreneur and Philanthropist

By Julie Lyons
Arch Bonnema’s mission couldn’t be plainer. It encircles the towering ceiling of his McKinney home, inscribed in gold letters: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress…”

Though Bonnema, 56, has launched several successful businesses and played an important role in the early success of the film The Passion of the Christ—he purchased all of the seats in Plano’s Cinemark Tinseltown 20 for opening day, and gave away the 6,000 tickets—orphan homes are the focus of his time and money today. Since 1991, he and his wife, Sherry, have tithed a minimum of 50 percent of their finances and work hours to missions, including their own ministry, My House. They’ve partnered with longstanding local ministries in Uganda, Kenya, India, and Ethiopia to build orphan homes centered around churches and to staff them with widows, explicitly following the words of James 1:27 etched inside his home.

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Iris Liang – From Wall Street to Alleviating Poverty

By Lauren D’Avolio

Iris Liang was brought up to do it herself, never to take a handout.

Her parents were raised in Communist China at a time when religion was forbidden. They came here to live out the American dream, sending their daughter to an Ivy League college, where she was expected to follow in their footsteps of hard work and upward progress.

“I grew up with a really works- and merit-based mentality,” Liang says. “My parents came to America to get me the American dream. That meant if you worked hard enough and got a good education, you could climb the ladder and get to the upper middle-class lifestyle. They sacrificed a lot to get me here.”

Then her lack of religion failed her, and she found herself in desperate need of God.

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