MyBaltimoreSpirit - Spirit 1400 Baltimore's Home for Inspiration » Grace Hour

3 Tips For Spiritual Gifts

Grace Hour — Fri, 07 May 2010 14:37:46 +0000

Via Elev8.com 1) Every person you see, you should give a gift to. Whether it be a compliment, a plant, or a blessing. This will create love and joy to you and to those around you. 2) You must allow yourself to receive whatever gift the world has to offer you. Embrace the gifts of nature’s wonders. Accept gifts from others, in the form of material objects or simply nice words. 3) You should always remember to be caring, loving, affectionat... Read more..

Before Venting About Your Man, Consider This

Grace Hour — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:43:03 +0000

Via Elev8.com

Over the years I have had many women take me into their confidence regarding their marital woes. Before that, as a child, who spent a great deal of time with her mother and consequently her mother’s friends, I have heard an earful about the multiplicity of shortcomings of men, particularly husbands.

Proverbs 14:1 (New International Version)

“The wise woman builds her house, but with her own hands the foolish one tears hers down.”

Years ago, after studying a book by Shaunti Feldhan called, “For Women Only: What You Need To Know About The Inner Lives Of Men,” I had cause to reevaluate the manner in which I not only speak about my husband publicly, but also how I talk about him in my head. The author did an excellent job of explaining that even seemingly “harmless complaints” (if such an animal exists) can find their mark in a husband’s heart if delivered poorly. The end result being that a woman tears down with her words, the very human being she has pledged to love and honor.

Any human being, who has consistently been on the receiving end of stinging criticism, is bound to get worn down over time. When a wife consistently points out her spouse’s flaws, he can begin to feel as though nothing he does is good enough for her. From there it is not a big leap to conclude that since there is no pleasing her, why bother to try? After all, it is not like she will notice anyway. When she points out his flaws to others, particularly in the form of proclamations at dinner parties, ministry meetings, or very loud cell phone conversations in church parking lots, a wife runs the risk of destroying her man’s credibility with others as well. There are more than a few men who are met with sideways glances and fake smiles from new acquaintances because their reputations precede them, thanks to wifey.

This is not to say that if a wife is experiencing problems in her marriage that she should not seek help or confide in someone. In fact the opposite is true. It is, however, crucial for a wife to wisely seek out someone who can actually “help” and in whom she can “confide.” If a woman has one or two girlfriends who have her best interest at heart, whom she considers wise, who will commit to praying privately for her, and who do not gossip, she has an invaluable resource for comfort and accountability.

Sometimes, however, marital problems are too complex or too close for friends to be able to give objective, useful insight. In such situations, it is wise for a woman to seek out a neutral third party, who can assist the her in getting to the root of the conflict. Therapists, counselors (both lay and professional), pastors and their wives, and intercessors can be excellent people with whom to discuss marital problems. Many churches have all of the above on staff for their members and for the community at large.

The point is that discussing marital woes should take place in a private setting, where conversations can be kept confidential. For the believer, it is also necessary that any person in a position to give advice, be familiar enough with God’s word so as to be able to offer biblical accountability.

It is natural to experience conflict in all relationships. This is doubly true in marriage. There is, however, a proper way to confront in love. Sometimes the nearness of a spouse makes his faults that much more obvious. Still, many women come into married life so broken from past relationships with other people in their lives, such as parents, siblings, classmates, bosses, boyfriends, or ex-husbands, that they can mistakenly label an unmet need in themselves as a fault attributed to their husbands. Sometimes what wives perceive as shortcoming is really just a husband’s inability to meet a need that he was never designed to address. It is crucial to know the difference. If the believer can look to God to be God and to meet her spoken and unspoken needs, then she can free her husband to be what God designed him to be – a gift.

Turning to God first to meet all needs is a process and requires a significant amount of introspection. Before verbally attacking, berating, or criticizing her husband, every wife should consider first what she really hopes to gain by hubby’s improved behavior, and go to God to meet that need first.

Be blessed Family!

Written by Sheeri Mitchell for Elev8.com. Follow Sheeri on Twitter! or visit her on Black Planet.

UPDATE: Wyclef’s Charity Responds To Haiti Donation Controversy

Grace Hour — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 15:55:19 +0000

From Gawker:

Hugh Locke, Yele Haiti’s president, says donors can be assured that their money will be well-spent. “I’m confident that anybody who gives money to Yele Haiti for emergency relief can be sure it will be used effectively. We may be a small organization, and there are handicaps. But there are also efficiencies.” Locke says the foundation has already allocated $1.5 million for an airlift due to leave Miami early next week, and is in the process of seeking bridge financing to raise more money as it waits for donations to hit its account.

RELATED: GIVE HAITI QUAKE RELIEF

He dismisses the delay in online donations as a matter of days, and says he’s already taken steps to speed them up. As for text-message donations—that money never hits the account until the person who sent them pays their cell phone bill weeks later, a circumstance that affects charities large and small alike.

“We’ve got a team of 15 people on the ground in Haiti, and a warehouse, and contacts with people in the neighborhood,” Locke says, repeating Yele Haiti’s extensive experience getting food out into dangerous neighborhoods for the UN’s World Food Program after Tropical Storm Jeanne in 2004 and the 2008 world food crisis.

He says the organization’s relationships and knowledge of Porte-au-Prince make it better suited, in some cases, to get relief into the neighborhoods than larger organizations. And he says that the established charities that have sought out Yele Haiti for collaboration—including the World Food Program and Americares—wouldn’t have done so if it couldn’t actually get the job done. “They came to us,” he says, “and not the other way around.”

Click here to read more.

————-

[2:56 p.m. - 1/15/2010] – Only $1 In Every $5 Of Wyclef’s Yele Charity Goes To Haiti

From TheSmokingGun:

The Haiti earthquake has already triggered hundreds of thousands of donations to musician Wyclef Jean’s charitable foundation, which expects to raise upwards of $1 million a day in the disaster’s wake.

However, Internal Revenue Service records show the group has a lackluster history of accounting for its finances, and that the organization has paid the performer and his business partner at least $410,000 for rent, production services, and Jean’s appearance at a benefit concert. Though the Wyclef Jean Foundation, which does business as Yele Haiti Foundation, was incorporated 12 years ago–and has been active since that time–the group only first filed tax returns in August 2009.

RELATED: GIVE HAITI QUAKE RELIEF

That month, the foundation provided the IRS with returns covering calendar years 2005, 2006, and 2007–the only periods for which it has publicly provided a glimpse at its financial affairs.

Click here to read more.

ALSO:

From Gawker.com:

There’s no doubt Wyclef Jean — who has raised $1 million since the Haiti earthquake — wants to help his homeland. But a look at his personal foundation’s finances raises questions about whether it’s wisely managing the donations it’s collecting.

The Smoking Gun took a look at the finances of Yele Haiti, the foundation Wyclef Jean founded to help his homeland—and it’s ugly. Jean founded Yele Haiti in 1998, according to TSG, but didn’t file any tax returns until five month ago, in August 2009. And the returns filed so far—for 2005, 2006, and 2007 only—reveal that Yele directed huge sums of money to commercial entities that Jean and his business partner Jerry Duplessis own stakes in.

The most eye-popping expenditure is $250,000 that the foundation paid in 2006 to Telemax, S.A., a Haitian television company that Jean and Duplessis own a controlling interest in. The payment for “airtime and production services” appears to have been related to a telethon of some sort that Yele Haiti produced in the country—its chalked up to “outreach”—and amounts to one out of every five dollars that the foundation took in that year. The return claims the fees were “below market” and constituted the “most efficient” way for Yele Haiti to conduct outreach.

RELATED: GIVE HAITI QUAKE RELIEF

Click here to read more.

Roland Martin: America Needs “Marriage Counseling” Over Race

Grace Hour — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:02:31 +0000

Washington Watch’s Roland Martin spoke to a panel about what dialogues about race have been looking like since the election of Barack Obama. While one white activist firmly stated, “We are NOT in post-racial America,” he agreed with Roland that continued conversations on this topic are necessary and healthy.

WATCH it here:

Catch this week’s FULL episode tomorrow at 5pm & 11pm on TV One!

ALSO:

Have something you want to share with Smokey or Roland? Submit your video questions and comments HERE!

Early 20th-Century Black Schools Restored As Landmarks In South

Grace Hour — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 17:19:20 +0000

From the NY Times:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Until 1923, the only school in the largely black farm settlement of Pine Grove was the one hand-built by parents, a drafty wooden structure in the churchyard. Anyone who could read and write could serve as teacher. With no desks and paper scarce, teachers used painted wood for a blackboard, and an open fireplace provided flashes of warmth to the lucky students who sat close.

This changed after a Chicago philanthropist named Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears, Roebuck, took up the cause of long-neglected education for blacks at the urging of Booker T. Washington, the proponent of black self-help. By the late 1920s, one in three rural black pupils in 15 states were attending a new school built with seed money, architectural advice and supplies from the Rosenwald Fund.

“It was a big step up, going to a school that was painted and had a potbellied stove,” said Rubie Schumpert, 92, one of nine siblings who attended the Rosenwald school in Pine Grove — and one of three sisters who went on to college and careers as teachers.

If the desks and textbooks were hand-me-downs from white schools, at least there were real blackboards and rough paper for writing. If there was still no electricity, columns of windows maximized the natural light.

Today, this hard-used wooden building, which narrowly escaped demolition, is one of several dozen Rosenwald schools being restored as landmarks — newly appreciated relics of important chapters in philanthropy and black education. The schools were a turning point, sparking improved, if still unequal, education for much of the South, historians say.

Click here to read more.

How To Handle The Post-Breakup Blues

Grace Hour — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:04:55 +0000

(From yourtango.com)

If there’s one thing that redeems the terrible process of breaking up with someone, it’s the transformation-rich recovery period that follows.

Don’t get us wrong: Breakups are a sad, sorry business, and even the cleanest ones entail some kind of annoying consequence or follow-up, like adjusting to an empty bed or having to return that awesome space heater he left at your apartment. The key to making the most of your breakup is engaging in life-affirming activities: little things that will empower you start over and set out into the great unknown (singlehood—eek!) with courage and resilience. Resist binge-drinking, rebound guys or ex sex, and consider these fun post-breakup activities instead:

1) Vacationing

Breakups are stifling, and there’s no reason to sit around your house, marinating in everyday reminders of your ex, when you can be climbing the Great Wall of China or sipping mimosas in a European villa. If you’re afraid of vacationing alone, bring a friend. If anything, you might meet a handsome stranger who can further distract you from what’s-his-face back home.

Does a relationship age gap matter?

2) Chopping off your hair

It’s clichéd, we know, but the beautiful thing about breakups is that they provide you with a handy excuse for indulging in all kinds clichés for the sake of recovery. Makeovers help you start over by serving as a physical reminder that you’ve made a commitment to move on and change for the better. Remember how cute Reese Witherspoon’s breakup haircut looked after her divorce from Ryan Philippe? Get thee to a salon, long-tressed one! Just remember to let your stylist handle the sharp tools—haircuts are fun, but you don’t want to go down the Britney Spears route.

Click here for more

Dating resolutions for 2010 that you should keep

10 Signs That Your Dating Relationship Is Unhealthy

Grace Hour — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:06:04 +0000

The following article is for any single, dating adult reading this today, who one day plans to be married. It is my hope that this will challenge you to re-evaluate the manner in which you approach relationships.As I approach my seventh-year wedding anniversary, and after working for several years in ministry with college students, as well as young adults, there is one thing I have come to know for sure:

We (as believers) have really messed up this whole dating thing!

It is amazing how so many twenty-something and thirty-something believers have aligned their values and perspectives regarding relationships with that of today’s mainstream culture.

Now at the risk of sounding like a broken record, since there seems to be a new book on Christian dating emerging every day, I decided to take a different approach.

The following is a checklist I compiled to help someone you know discover whether or not they are in an unhealthy dating relationship.

I call it The “We’re Just Talking” Checklist.

If you (I mean someone you know) has a dating relationship that shares more than three of the following ten warning signs, it may be time to get some serious help.

1. You and your date talk more on the phone / or via email than you do in person.

2. The only time you spend a considerable amount of time together is at night.

3. You continue to refer to your date as your brother / or sister (in Christ) in public.

4. The Lord has begun ’speaking’ to only one of you about marriage.

5. You feel embarrassed to show affection in public / yet amazingly free in private.

6. Not one friend or family member knew about your relationship until after your first fight.

7. You begin to try to define together what the ‘technical definition’ of having sex is.

8. You offer to pay each other’s personal bills. All the time.

9. Breaking up has become a common ritual.

10. You spend the night at each other’s home. Sorry, marriage has its privileges.

I actually had a few more to add to the list, but I figured this may be enough for now. However, one of the biggest indications that a dating relationship has become unhealthy is when the two involved are afraid of placing a real label on their relationship.

Labels (whether some would like to use them or not) help define things.

They describe openly the contents of what may be hidden from plain view. When believers refuse to place a real label on their relationships, they lessen the importance of making a true commitment to one another, and sooner or later, the relationship they care so much about has no true identity.

Some of false labels couples use today like “We’re Just Talking”, “We’re Just Kickin’ It,” or my all-time favorite label, “We’re Just Friends,” often are used because one of the individuals involved may not yet be confident about whom they are dating, or worse, that they are afraid of experiencing rejection should the relationship not work out as they planned.

When properly labeling and defining your relationship, you not only insure that it is aligned with the will of Christ, but you also insure that your intentions with each other are pronounced.

Pronounced (according to Webster’s Dictionary) means to be strongly marked. Relationships are something to be proud about, not embarrassed about.

I encourage you today (sorry, I mean that other couple you know who needs this) to begin pronouncing your dating relationship in the sight of God and others. The more you begin to pronounce your relationship today, the more you both may be ready for the greatest pronouncement of all one day…

…Husband and Wife.

(For more ramblings and writings by Milan Ford, visit ThePewView.com)

Where To Meet Men In 2010

Grace Hour — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:01:37 +0000

While you’re scanning the crowd at a sports bar, your next date may be in hot pursuit at Bed Bath & Beyond. We convinced single dudes to divulge their pickup plans.

(From cosmopolitan.com)

1) MASTERING THEIR DANCE MOVES

“I once signed up for salsa lessons. Being in the class not only helped my footwork, but it also allowed me to be myself with the ladies…and show off my moves. I didn’t even have to think of any corny pickup lines because the class gave me an instant in.” —Jerry, 29

2) TAGGING ALONG ON TOURS

“When I lived in New York City, I used to ride the cheesy double-decker tour buses in hopes of picking up single out-of-town girls. Whenever I travel, I always want to meet locals, so I figured the bus patrons might be easy to get a date with. I figured right.” —Dave, 2

Does a relationship age gap matter?

3) CRUISING HOME-DECORATING STORES

“I’ve gone shopping for bath towels just because I know girls like to shop at those kinds of bed and bath places. I even went as far as to linger by the checkout line with two different-colored towels just to ask a cute girl if she thought they matched. It totally worked. And I have, like, 35 bath towels now.” —Kenneth, 29

Click here for more.

Moving in with your boyfriend: How Soon Is Too Soon

Don’t Believe The Hype About Black Love

Grace Hour — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:34:26 +0000

Via Essence.com

If you look around and have no examples of beautiful Black love in your life, I dare say that it says more about you than it does about Black love.

Lauren Lake writes…

Don’t believe the hype. The statistics will tell you that Black love is practically extinct; that Black men and women can’t get along; that Black men won’t commit; that the more successful a Black woman is the less likely she is to be married. These kinds of stats will drive even an optimist to plan a pity-party alone with the Patron. Note to self: statistics are not laws, prophecies or decrees, nor can they predict your destiny.

If you use media portrayals, music videos and reality television programming as your visual measuring stick regarding the state of Black love and marriage, it’s not surprising your perspective is bleak. Face it, you’ve been bamboozled.

Read the Full Story

Is Love at First Sight Possible

Grace Hour — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 17:50:17 +0000

Via Oprah.com How fast can you really size up a partner? You walk into a party and head for the bar. Suddenly someone is beside you, offering to get you a drink. You begin to talk. Almost immediately you're struck by the eerie feeling that you may have just found Mr. Right. But that's crazy, isn't it? Or is it? Can a pers... Read more..