A couple of hours ago I heard the sad news that Enock formerly of Cross Movement passed away earlier today. He was just 35 years old.

His explosive evangelistic lyrics were among the first to draw me to Christian hip hop early on in my Christian walk. Let us pray for his family at this difficult time.

Some of my favourite lyrics from him below, the first from the song “House of Representatives”:

Gospel activist

advocates

of salvation · preparin’

for the invasion of Christ

the Body-snatcher

who will soon to come rapture us

a Kodak moment won’t capture this

miraculous event our final call is repentance

No moon, no star, no crescent

we give reverence

to presence of the Maker of the heaven’s and the Earth

who places is first

who can match the worth of the great I AM?

who blows on man and turns him back into sand?

God’s Lamb, the God-Man

with the hard hand

turns to ruin

the wicked and subdues them

rescues them who pursues Him

renews them

who’s tuned into the communion

of divine union

it’s no illusion

it’s the Most High rulin’

God ‘n human

Jesus, no man can stand next to

to whom all respect’s due

All hail Ixous

And from the “Human Emergency” CD, I loved the track he did called “Remember”:

His name is Jehovah El Gabor
A.k.a. the God of war, God of flesh
Who could tear you to pieces like carnivores
The blessed, majestic one who’s glorious
Was known to other nations as notorious.
Cause of His terrible acts
Battles didn’t last a half a days length
Not the way the Lord God parade strength.
It didn’t make sense
How he’d crush his enemies
In His mercies have the strongest man
On bended knee.
Relentlessly, exposing human shame
Making a mockery of human fame
The consuming flame
Showering brimstone, men thrown,
Cause they refuse the one seated on gem stones

Enthroned with power and majesty
It was tragedy to face God’s armies
The result was casualties and pillage
But men had to feel this holy spillage
On who’s god was the realest.
The God of Israel be the illest.

CHORUS(2x):
Who owns cattle on a thousand hills?
Who can slay any army on the battle field? The Lord (x8)

VERSE(2):
Peep His splendor ya’ll
Wave the white flag, surrender all
To the one who makes top contenders fall.
Snatching crowns off kings
Cutting short their off springs
He’s shocking,
More than what a thousand volts brings
Ask the king of Egypt
How deep is the ocean floor
Ask Isaiah about when he saw the Lord
Ask king Neb who put him on all fours
To eat with the beats until his pride was no more.
It’s clear, We don’t know who we’re dealing with here.
For years He’s taken fools and filled them with fear.

Jesus, the underdog is Judge of all.
Keeping tabs on the deeds of men like number logs.
When the Son strikes watch thunder fall
And cut asunder all
Who rejects the one who makes the winter spring and the summer fall.

CHORUS

VERSE(3):
Reject Christ you’ll regret it
Truth is what your getting
Off is how we set it
Off is how we let it
Narrows the path I travel
The ways been made clear
The father’s given supervision
To his children like daycare.
Serenade the one
Who I revere like Paul
But the redcoats ain’t coming
It’s God the Son coming through
With His glory thundering
He’ll cut asunder men spill the blood of men
For the love of sin
And the rejection of the blood covering
Which is through the new covenant
All hail the God ruled Government.
How much are Jewels worth?
They can’t match the true worth of the new birth.
Bow to my God and Creator of the Universe.

In the UK, October is Black History Month. Children and some older students will be learning about Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, the Civil Rights Movement and so on. Over the years I’ve heard (false) accusations that Christianity is “the white man’s religion”. Here’s a great resource to counter such claims: www.blackapologetics.com. While that hasn’t been updated recently, there’s still a lot of useful information on the likes of the Five Percenters, the Nation of Islam and other groups.

By the way, I’ve never understood this: I’ve encountered a black people who have converted to Islam and changed their name to an Arabic one, yet say that I have a slave name? Huh?! If you wanna be “pro-black” and change your name to an African one, then cool. I have no problem with that. But changing name to an Arabic one, when they made slaves out of Africans too? Okay… Anyway one thing that I love about biblical Christianity – we’re to conform to the image of Christ, not to some earthly culture.

On one hand I’m glad that he won’t be preaching his false teachings over here, on the other hand when Mr Hinn and his ilk come over it does prove to be useful for those who use the opportunity to preach and hand out tracts outside the event to warn those who are going in to see him…

Read the story here.

I hope the new immigration rules won’t affect genuine preachers of the word though…

For those of you who may have little or no idea about Benny Hinn, check out the links from LetUsReason.org, ApologeticsIndex and Equip.org

I can never tire of listening to Mahalia Jackson, here’s a clip of her singing one of my favourite hymns, Just a Closer Walk With Thee:

The Christian life is about glorifying God, and in this video Paul Washer teaches some very important and pertinent points regarding marriage. It was definitely something that I needed to hear!

As you can see, my user name  is NaturalSystah. If you’ve not seen the About Me page, it’s because I am a black woman who has chosen not to use chemicals to straighten her hair since 1997.

Some of you may think “What’s the big deal?” Others may be thinking “Uh-oh” as this can still be a touchy issue for many. For the lowdown, I heartily recommend Nappturality.com as a resource for natural black hair. I loved the post by Jean at The Virtuous Woman blog on embracing our God-given beauty and thought that I’d better get on with publishing this post! This is one huge topic that I think is just part of the bigger problem relating to perceptions of external beauty, which is of course highly subjective. There’s big bucks to be made from making people feel that there’s something wrong with how they look and that’s not going to change any time soon.

It’s interesting to me though, that the black pentecostal church in particular was known for frowning upon straightened hair as being somehow worldly. Nowadays natural hair is in the minority in the ones I’ve been to. I’m not sure why or how that shift in opinion happened, but I wonder if the prevalence of many women preachers and gospel artists wearing straight weaves made it seem okay? (side note:  I’m not sure I can recall any black female gospel artists with natural hair?!)

I got to thinking that there have been quite a few parallels in my life between my walk with the Lord and my having natural hair. Check it out:

• Both Biblical Christianity and natural hair are often misrepresented and are surrounded by many myths, far too many to list here!
• I experience freedom in Christ, the Son has set me free indeed! Having natural hair has freed me in many ways too.
• There are many who give up on the faith or on natural hair, either because of ignorance or lack of support/ostracism.
• I’ve been ridiculed for being a Christian and yep, having natural hair
• There are people whose lifestyles can indicate that they may be a false convert, and I’ve wondered about those who have eschewed chemicals, state proudly that they have natural hair yet regularly fry their hair with heat and it’s rarely seen in a non-straight style…
• I’ve been called judgmental because of my faith, and also for having fairly strong opinions about natural hair (which I might add, I don’t give unsolicited but I will correct untruths when I hear them – whether about the Lord or natural hair) – my faith and my views on hair are unpalatable to some…

I didn’t get too much grief about my hair growing up, but I do remember hearing people say that it was a shame that I didn’t inherit my dad’s “good hair” (good hair = straight or wavy, anything but nappy or “picky”, the Afro-Caribbean pejorative term for kinky textured hair). To my shame I deeply resented my hair and gave in to the chemicals when I was about 14 or 15.  I loved having it straight and wouldn’t entertain the idea of having it any other way until I turned 20 and started questioning many things I was doing in my life. I wondered why it was ok for the relaxer to go on my head yet the stylist had to wear gloves? And I slowly began to see that there was nothing inherently wrong with my hair, I was just ignorant as to how to treat it. Now I realise that my hair texture is not “bad”, not even problematic, it’s how the Lord designed it to be.

At first my peers thought I was going mad, especially when I cut out the relaxed hair and had natural hair only 3-4 inches long. It did make me giggle inside though when I saw a few of them wear the same canerow style that I had though Incidentally, the Lord saved me a couple of months after that haircut and He’s been working on me both inside and outside, praise Him.

HT: Tony Miano

Here’s a review from Tim Challies on the book “Glory Road“, it sounds like something I’d like to check out as one who is a relative newcomer to the doctrine of monergism. It’s a collection of testimonies from ten black American church leaders regarding how they came to embrace the doctrines of grace.

“Go, and sin no more.”

I grew up listening and dancing to a lot of Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 music. Loved the videos,  like much of the world did.

I felt sad when hearing of his death, and sadness for what his life had become. I shed a tear watching the memorial programme this evening (apart from of the ecumenism and worship of MJ), I can appreciate that those people lost a brother, friend, son, father.

This sobering video below though, puts it all into perspective for me: the king of pop must now bow to the King of kings.:

“And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment;” – Hebrews 9:27