Introducin' by Enock of Cross Movement (RIP)

The following is a song is one hip-hop song that absolutely floors me almost everytime I listen to it. From a writer's perspective I am absolutely AMAZED at Enock's talent and use of wording and internal rhyme schemes. Not to mention these lyrics aren't just thrown together for the hopes of making it rhyme and sound cool, but these lyrics FLOW! Also personally while hearing this song, I can't help but worship the powerful, yet loving God of the universe. Check out the attached video to listen to the song (Facebook readers: look out for the link)

Lyrics courtesy of CrossMovementRecords.com

Chorus:
Introducin’
The Lord Jesus The Christ
The Author and Finisher of All Life

Verse 1:
We brings the ruckus when we uplift the gift of salvation
It was He who came through forty-two generations
Logos invasion
to planet Earth through virgin birth
the last Adam had come to reverse
the works of the first

He became a curse to become a cure
the blood poured made sure
that he who enters by the door
will be eternally secured
What shall I render?
surrendered lives are due to Him
in due time the True Vine reconciled humans
to the divine union of the Father
Hearts are altered to the altar
He died for all walks of life
He’s the Lord of all cultures
Perfector, Resurrector, all life is His
Sin-disconnector
Eternal-holder
of the sceptor of righteousness

praise comes from his numberless
fleet
the sovereign King,
all things are placed under His feet
The uncreated, incarnated creator of all creation
is to be celebrated in all occasions (Why is that?)
‘cause He’s the glorious, victorious Victor
with the greatest victory of all history
peep the unveiling mystery
of the Chief Corner-stoner, the atoner
we present to this world the most generous Blood donor!

Verse 2:
Unto us a child was born, a Son was given
to be given into the hands of wicked man
and like a lamb to his shearers the Sin-bearer was terribly beaten
spit upon
crowned with thorns scorned by the heathen
still breathing?
They stripped Him, Cat-of-nine whipped Him
What sin have they found in Him?
for four-hundred Roman soldiers to be poundin’ Him
surroundin’ Him with mockery
Them not havin’ eyes to see
He fulfilled every prophecy to the lower case "T"
at the cross the cost was paid
a door was made
no more barricade
between God and man
Peace was made by the blood of the Lamb
that was shedded
I’ve been reconnected
to the Creator who is the Resurrected
Savior, who is the only accepted Mediator
unlike those that claim to be
The fact still remains to be
the Son of God broke my chains and bore pain for me.

‘cause when no one else did, He died
so I can live, so it’s not I that lives
but Christ that lives
within my quarters
worthy is the captain of the bloodsport
whose blood bought us
His love caught us
when we were in sin at every hand
He broke heavy bands, when he took
a taste test of death for every man

Come and see
we’ve found the One
He’s the bright and Morning Star
‘cause everything revolves around the Son
He’s omnipotent, omniscient, self-sufficient, pre-eminent, co-existent, never distant
the divine Thriller, the Blood-Spiller
the void-Filler
the Peace-be-Stiller
the Sin-in-the-flesh-Killer

The livin’ agua
the never endin’ saga
Aleph and the Tau
Eternal Father
Infinite with all might whose shinin’ bright
with all light
Jesus the Christ
the Author and Finisher of all life!

God's Healing Touch

This post is one I think will be appropriate because I just came from a service where they were laying hands on people believing that God would heal them. There were no immediate manifestations of healing tonight, but the man who was praying over people was encouraging them to keep the faith in Christ and to keep trusting that He will heal them. That's what this post concerns. By the way, this is another one of those posts that is a reminder to me. It seems to be a common theme lately....

Now before I get into this, I need to make a disclaimer. If you read these following words and think that I am "such an amazing person" and "an inspiration", I humbly say thank you for your encouragement, but I will remind you that the amazingness and inspiration that I have is a blessing from Christ. It is not my talent that I have achieved through hard work, but a blessing from God out of His love and grace for me. So do me a favor after you read this: don't thank me, thank God.

Last summer I needed a breakthrough. I was a few days away from leaving for ministry at a summer camp and I could barely get out of bed. I was getting hot and cold flashes, my mind was racing, I was physically weak and my neck was in such pain that I couldn't even turn my head without wincing. I was getting no more than four hours of sleep a night too.

My neck was hurting since my last physical therapy visit, and I called them for another one but they were all backed up with appointments and couldn't see me until Thursday morning, two days before I was leaving. I went to the doctor about my hot and cold flashes and they told me that I may have lyme disease. For some strange reason though they decided not to test me, but told me to wait until Thursday and if it didn't get any better and then I would come in to get tested. Like I said before, I was leaving for camp on Saturday. I didn't have time to deal with a lyme disease test! I needed a breakthrough!

There was a revival service at a church in Groton with an evangelist named Jason Westerfield. I went to the service Tuesday night and was desperate for God to heal me. I spent the whole night at the altar begging God for a breakthrough. Jason came up to me too and was laying hands on me, praying that God would heal my neck and everything. He told me to move my neck and asked if it was any better. I moved it and winced. It wasn't. I left that night feeling absolutely discouraged.

I carpooled with my friend Dave to the service and I voiced my frustrations to him in the car. "Why wasn't God healing me?" I said to him.
I don't remember what the exact words that Dave said were, but they were something along the lines of "Steve, do you believe God can heal you?"
What Dave was saying to me in the most loving and blunt way he could was that I wasn't trusting God enough to heal me. It was true. I had doubts like crazy. I didn't believe that He could heal me. I wanted to believe, but I couldn't. I went to bed again that night, once more having no more than four hours of sleep as my mind was racing and I had hot and cold flashes all night long.

All day the next day I was lying down at home on the couch in my living room wrestling with my thoughts. Dave called me again to check in on me and asked me if I was going to go back to the church again that night. The revival services were a week-long affair and they were having another one. I told him honestly that I didn't want to. Dave then told me honestly that I should get off my butt and go. I rolled my eyes and said I'd think about it.

As I hung up the phone, I sighed. I realized Dave was right. I looked up to the ceiling and said, "God I'm having a really hard time believing this whole healing thing right now is true."
My eyes went over to my Bible. "I guess I'll start from the beginning..."
I picked up my Bible and placed it in my lap.
"Hi God, I need You."

That night I decided to go to the revival service. It was a real leap of faith for me to even go because I didn't know where the church was, I was really physically weak, and Dave couldn't carpool with me over there because he was caught up in something else and would meet me at the service later. So I drove there using Mapquest directions and made it there okay.

The service that night was really long! It started off with roughly an hour of intense prayer, then it went into worship, which was another hour. Then after that, Jason preached a message for ANOTHER hour and there was MORE worship! When he finished it was getting late and I was getting very weak. I could barely even sit up in the pew anymore. How was I supposed to make it back home? I then prayed silently to God that He needed to heal me tonight, otherwise I wasn't even going to be able to make it home.

Finally, Jason decided to do some prayer for healings. This was it! He had people come up who needed it and then assigned other members of the congregation to lay hands on them. I had two guys come up to me and ask me what my problem was. I told them my whole story about my pains, my weakness and how I absolutely needed a breakthrough. So they laid hands on me and started praying. I was so desperate at this point that I started kneeling on the ground and weeping. As they were praying for me, I was almost convulsing. It was pretty crazy, but like I said, I was desperate. I didn't care about how I looked or anything. The only thing I cared about was God breaking through to heal me.

They asked me to move my neck and everything. I did and it still hurt just as bad as it did before. We all kept praying for God to break through and give me His healing touch. Jason then took a glance at his watch, saw it was late and decided to wrap up the service. I was still weak and in pain, but I felt a little better. The service wrapped up, I said my goodbyes to people and I left.

God gave me just enough strength to get home, go up three stories to my apartment into my room, put on my PJs, collapse on my bed and fall asleep. That night was the first night in a long time where I slept more than four hours. I actually didn't wake up once until roughly 7:00 in the morning. My physical therapy appointment was at 9:00 so I had to get up and going. As I got up I realized that I was a lot better! I didn't feel physically weak at all. My neck still hurt a lot, but I actually felt normal again.

At the physical therapy appointment, I told the therapist what the problem was with my neck and how tense it was. He then did a series of extensive massages on it, which really hurt a lot, but after he finished my neck was 100% better!

God had healed me! I was shocked at God's goodness and provision. It was the first time ever in my life that I had received a healing like that from God. He knew how much I doubted, being an ex-Christian Scientist and all (NOTE: For more information on Christian Science, visit ChristianWay.org), but He still met me where I was at in my doubts and healed me. It was an amazing experience.

I told this story for two reasons. The first one was for me, because I needed a little bit of a reminder of God's healing touch. The second one was of course, for you. I know a lot of people who don't follow Christ for whatever reason, but try to be all "intellectual" about it, and avoid their brokenness by asking me theological questions. Questions are good, don't get me wrong, but sometimes instead of questioning you have to just jump in and trust that God will catch you.

God will too, because He loves His kids.

This was a long post. If you made it here, thank you for reading. Now thank God for His unconditional, never-ending, undeserving affection that He has for you!

Peace,

Steve

Emanuel Lambert, Jr. --- Da' Truth

"In light of a moral discretion in my personal life, I will be taking a sabbatical from my music ministry and teaching upon fulfilling my current commitments to work with my pastor, church and restoration team...I ask your forgiveness as I work towards reconciliation." -Personal Statement from Da Truth on his website.

"It is with tremendous sadness and humble disappointment that Cross Movement Records must inform you regarding the suspension of the promotion and forwarding of the artist, minister, and ministry of Da Truth, a.k.a. Emanuel Lambert Jr., due to recent findings of moral failure in his marriage." -Official Statement from Cross Movement Records

When I first heard about what happened to Da' Truth a few months ago, I was speechless. He was an artist I had a lot of respect for and have looked up to. It also broke my heart because this was the second artist off of Cross Movement Records who fell to this temptation. The first was William Branch a.k.a. The Ambassador, one of the founding members of the Cross Movement. The label also did the same for him. I could only imagine how much that label was struggling.

What broke my heart even more was that as this news came out, so did the details. According to Cross Rhythms, Da' Truth wound up having an affair with gospel artist Tye Tribbett's wife after trying to council and restore their marriage...which was struggling because of the same issue. I hope and PRAY that this isn't true. Tye Tribbett to this day has not made any official statement concerning the issue, so for all I know it could be a rumor.

Da' Truth's new album The Big Picture came out this past year, and I was amazed with how deep the album was. It definitely is his best album to date, both musically and lyrically speaking. After I heard the news about what happened though, for some reason, I couldn't listen to the album anymore. A few weeks ago I picked it up off my shelf and looked at it. I was just disgusted at the fact that for all I knew he could have been in this act of fornication while recording the album. I couldn't listen to it. I immediately put it back on the shelf. I didn't know if I was ever going to be able to listen to the album again.

However as time went on, I was feeling a tug in my heart to just listen to the album again. Finally, today I picked it up off the shelf before leaving for class and put it in the CD player in my car. As I was driving to school I was listening to it. The album was so deep musically and I started feeling God's spirit move in me. Every song turned into a burden to pray for my dear fallen brother; that God would humbly restore and heal the damage he had done. The burden got even heavier when I got to the song, "Tree to Tree", which actually featured Tye Tribbett. Those two were not just co-artists in a song, they were good friends.

When Da' Truth gave thanks in the album booklet, he said this about Tye Tribbett: "Thank you for your unrivaled passion & heart for Christ. You're an inspiration & I'm excited about what God is doing in our friendship." When I first read that, it made me pray harder for them. Oh, I pray that there will be a day when those two artists come out on stage together as brothers, freely forgiving one another for their wrongdoing.

And God will. The amazing thing about the God I serve, the God Tye Tribbett and Emanuel Lambert serve, is that He freely forgives His children for their wrongdoing. He not only does this, but He breaks our chains and cleans us up.

Isaiah 1:18 says, "Come now, let us reason together," says the LORD. "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool" (NIV).

As I read that verse, I picture God's loving hands picking up a soapy sponge and cleaning up my messy and soiled body. Oh, how many times have I betrayed and hurt the God who loves me so much, and then over and over, God cleanses me. He not only cleanses me, but He restores me. He picks me up, dusts me off, and lovingly encourages me to keep going. If I won't go, God picks me up and carries me.

My, what a loving God I serve. God can restore. God will restore.

Lord, I pray for Mr. and Mrs. Emanuel Lambert and Mr. and Mrs. Tye Tribbett. I pray for a restoration of their marriages and their friendship with one another. I pray that through this it would become stronger. I pray for all parties involved; that they would forgive and support these broken people. Nurse all broken hearts in this situation, Lord. I hope and pray for the day that Da' Truth will be back in music. May it be in Your time, Lord, not his. Thank You, Lord for Your continual love and grace. In Jesus' name, Amen.

I'm going to close this with the closing lyrics from "Tree to Tree" by Da' Truth and Tye Tribbett. The song is all about imagining what would happen if they could go back in time right before Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to show them what would happen if they did. Here's the excerpt:

"Every temptation’s a tree, and since you ate from that tree,
Sin and death is in you, sin and death is in me.
But hold up, off in the distance I see a whole 'nother Tree,
and the Man that is on it is dying for you and for me.
Why did you eat from the tree?"

God bless,

Steve