"Put It On My Back" Interview at 90.9 FM

My Struggle

Wassup Family,

It's been a lil minute so let's jump right into it peoples!!!! The past few weeks I've been really struggling with being content with where God has me. I've been looking at my financial situation and been thinking and planning on every scheme in the world to come up! Literally it's been a EVERYDAY battle for me the past few weeks. Everyday I struggle and battle and then God encourages me for that day and the next day it's on and poppin again! I struggled with scriptures like 1 Timothy 6:6,

"Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment"

and scriptures like Proverbs 15:16-17,

" Better is a little with the fear of the LORD, than great treasure and trouble with it. Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it."

Or scriptures like Psalm 37:16 or Proverbs 16:8 for that matter. To make this a little more personal let me give you a little background of myself. I am a man that lives totally by faith! In every sense of the word!!!!!! God takes care of my family LITERALLY! I dont make the kind of money to support a family of soon to be 6, in fact I live by off of 4 dollars a day. Really...... If I lived in India or other impoverished nations I'd be well off, where most of the people in those nations live off of 2 dollars or under a day. But I'm not... I'm in the U.S. of A where things are totally different..... But in the midst of this I live a life that is well provided for, people always say how God is their Jehova-Jireh (which they say means the Lord is my provider, but it really means the Lord will see to it) But I TRULY know HIM as this in a very deeep and personal way. He sees to ALL our needs and to some of our wants as well.

So what's the issue? Living by faith is extremely HARD!!!!!!!!!! It's no cakewalk peoples!!!!!! It's simple and easy to just have money in reserves, or in the savings and not to have to trust God to provide in every situation. And a lot of times I want that easiness and comfort but God has been saying uh uh, I have you where I want you. I was reading an essay one day though and God spoke to me through it. He showed me my feebleness and lack of trust in His provision and providence. A quote by John Yoder that stated,

" Jahweh has always taken care of us in the past; should we not be able to trust His providence for the immediate future?" 

This quote rocked me and my "lack of trust" and it encouraged me for that day (lol)......... But again I battled with it a couple days later and a turning point came last night for me as I was looking at a once prominent christian turned secular rapper from Houston Texas. In the 90's he was used by God to turn many to Christ and to make many strides in Christian rap and now he is a secular rapper talking about the money girls and everything else. And he spoke about how he started making all this money doing christian rap and unknowingly drifted away from Jesus and began to depend on the money. And lo and behold he is where he is now. That sealed the deal for me! I don't want to end up where he is at, so I prayed that if God wanted me to stay in the place I'm at I would love to. I know that right now I'm TOTALLY dependant on Jesus (which is what He wants) and I don't put it pass myself that if I had more money I wouldn't trust in Him like I do.

So, I'm content in that God is in control and I'm where He has me. And I'm soaking up other scriptures as well that God is using to minister to me with like these:

"Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity

   than a rich man who is crooked in his ways." (Proverbs 28:6)

" A rich man is wise in his own eyes,

   but a poor man who has understanding will find him out." (Proverbs 28:11)

And my prayer today is that of Agur: "Two things I ask of you; deny them not to me before I die: Remove far from me falsehood and lying; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me, lest I be full and deny you and say, "Who is the LORD?" or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God."

In Jesus Name

God is dope,

Amen

"Certified" Performance by Dooch aka Hope Boy

Watchin Me By Dooch aka HB

THI'SL - I HATE YOU - MUSIC VIDEO (UNCENSORED VERSION) @THISL

I Don't Know it All

What up family,

I hope all is well with you all at this current time! God is Dope yo, and although we shouldn't need to be reminded of that we almost always need to be! Frail, helpless, miserable human beings we are! I'm grateful that God is mindful of that! Psalm 78:39

Anywho Let's get it peoples!!!!!!! God has provided me with a great team that surronds me, brothers and a sister that Love God with ALL their heart and who have a desire to serve others and they are VERY missional minded! One of them is my brother who was a missionary overseas for 13 years! He is really a blessing in that God is using all that He poured into him to pour into me. I'm learning sooooo much of what to do and what not to do through him. It's truly a blessing to be walking with and learning from him.

Now, the thing is this, he's a white country boy who's 30 years older than I! (No offense brother! Love you!) and I'm a hood dude. And he has frequently stated how he would have never thought he would be doing ANYTHING that involves rap! But praise God that he has a heart for God because as longs as it promotes the gospel and reaches the lost he's down with it! But lately I've been seeing myself get kind of aggy, irritated or frustrated with some of the stuff he has suggessted or asked me to do.

For instance, we are putting a project together for his missional organization and he asked me to give him a copy of ALL the lyrics to the songs. Mind you, I don't type my rhymes on the computer, so I had to go through all my songs on the cd and type them up. But my feeling was, "man he's doing too much. That's unneccassary. People aint gonna pop the cd into their computer and read the lyrics. He buggin."

Another thing was he suggessted that we put together a certain kind of booklet for kids in the hood (I don't want to let the cat out of the bag!). And my response was, "thats wack, kids aint going to want to read that! They could care less, he doing too much blah blah blah." But I didn't mention any of this to him, it was all stuff that I was wrestling with internally and talking to God and my wife about. I didn't want to be prideful so I would talk to God about it, then my wife (or vice versa) and my wife would always be like, "it won't hurt anything. And it's worth looking into." So I would then give my feelings to God and humbly submit to what was asked or suggested.

And one night as I was praying and pondering on some things God smacked me and said to me, "You don't know everything. How do you know I won't use this?" And that stopped me in my tracks and humbled me, especially because I had a similar incident like this months ago when I first met this brother. A lot of us were doing mulch at our church and I was working with 2 guys I knew and 3 or 4 I didn't. So one of the guys I knew just kept telling the other guys about my testimony and what I had going on in the inner city etc etc. And I was like, "why he talking so much, I don't even know these dudes etc etc." And lo and behold one of the guys who he told about me was this brother and we have put in extensive work since then. God has used him mightily in my life and in the life of my ministry. So that day I was humbled like, "dag! I'm saying dude was talking too much and God was using that the whole time!!!!!!"

So, I truly humbled myself in repentance and confessed that I don't know everything and that I would really take in his as well as other peoples suggestions and the like And I had a meeting with the team a few days after to confess it to him and the whole team. It wasn't a big deal to him but it was to me. It was a BIG lesson learned.

God is able to do over and above, beyond all that we think and/or imagine. More so HE is able to use anything! Especially what we think HE can't use. In fact He loves using the weak and foolish things to confound the strong and wise things! Read it yourself:

1 Corinthians 1

27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.

Now, in no way am I saying that my brother or his ideas are weak and foolish, not by a long shot!!!!! And I do know the proper context of this so don't stone me (to all my biblical scholars and theologians lol)! But it's a principle here, and that principle is this:

God uses not what we think HE should use or even what we think HE HAS to use to reach the lost or make something happen. He would rather use something that makes NO SENSE at all so that NO ONE can get the glory but HIM!

I don't know it all, neither do you. I don't know know what God wants to accomplish, HE let's us in on some of it but not to all of it. So my encouragement to you is to humble yourself and to accept counsel, look into what they say really. It doesn't mean that everything is something you have to do, but really look into it with a humble posture and be open. It can't hurt anything! (S/O to my wife Tiesha! Love ya!!!)

Proverbs 11:14

Where there is no guidance, a people falls,

   but in an abundance of counselors there is safety

I know I was all over with it today, but cstch the principles people!!!!!!

Until next time (LORD willing)

God is dope,

Israel