Tribute to William Franklin McCorkle, my father- in-law. . .

This morning I am just finishing the arrangements for my father-in-law’s funeral. What a loving powerful man of God he was! Not only was dad my father-in-law but he was also one of my most powerful mentors and closest friends. I knew him my entire life and his influence was always there. I spent one of my summers in my undergraduate training doing an internship with him, lessons learned that summer have been with me my entire life and ministry. There are many things that come to mind as I reflect on his life but one that stands out is “faithfulness”. He was ever faithful to his God, wife, daughter, grandchildren and entire family both blood and fellow Jesus followers. No matter what life threw his way he just kept going and serving God and loving people. Always loving people! How can anyone pretend to be in ministry and not love people! There is a quote from one of my favorite authors that  says so much to me today, “God gives us the boat and the oars, but tells us, ‘it’s up to you to row.’ Making ‘positive acts of faith’ is like training this faculty; it is developed by training, as the muscles are developed by gymnastics.”  – Carlo Caretto in Letters from the Desert

His life was a lifestyle of living faith and loving people! As a Bible translator for many years he was know in Ghana as “Doli Yisa” “Follow Jesus”. He is now in the presence of his Lord dancing with Jesus and praising the Father with the multitude that followed Jesus because of Franklin’s life and love.  I will always miss him as I miss my own father, yet we live with the legacy of men who loved God with all their hearts and left us with that example of strong, determined leadership and faithfulness to their Lord and Savior!

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

Look for Baba John on Face Book as Bishop John Goodwin and on Twitter as  http://twitter.com/#!/BabaJTG

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

Secrets of the Kingdom Economy. . .

“The Kingdom Economy is not a new teaching on biblical economics. It was part of the plan God gave Moses for the nation of Israel. Today, instead of application to one nation one people, we will see the Kingdom Economy established worldwide. We are experiencing a restoration of God’s system of economics to the marketplace.”  Paul L. Cuny “Secrets of the Kingdom Economy” Destiny Image 2011

“If the love of God is not evident in our lives, we may be a part of the institution, but are we a part of the body?”

“As leaders we often find ourselves feeling very lonely, yet He has given us the confidence we need to keep going forward!”

What is it that we can skim off the surface and see as the main point? Clearly “the glory of Christ”!

I consider myself to be a Jesus follower but at the same time I am a bishop in the church. How do we balance this out? How do we get to the heart of the matter?

For many of us, the understanding of kingdom economy was restricted to “tithes and offerings”.  This is an essential component, but the Kingdom Economy is much more vast in scope and broader in application to our day-to-day lives. His economic  system must be established in the marketplace to bring about the Kingdom Jesus spoke about.

“10 For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; 11 but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, 12 a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year. 13 ‘And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, 14 then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. 15 And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be filled.’ “  (Deuteronomy 11: 10 – 15)

This describes the beginning of an entirely new culture for God’s people.

What is unique about this moment in history is that the Lord was also promising His people an unprecedented level of involvement in the economics of this nation.

We must learn how to pay attention to the Details!

“In this new land, God would personally attend to one of the most important elements of agriculture: watering the crops.

1) The former rain.

2) The latter rain.

3)This is necessary for the crops to reach full potential.

Restoration of the Partnership

To live productively in this Kingdom Economy today requires a change of thinking on our part as well.

Two Kingdoms

Two Worldviews in Conflict

Goals and Objectives

“If we live in the Kingdom of God, then we must come under His Lordship and operate by His principles as they are laid out for us in Scripture.”

“God wants His people to be distinguished today by their integrity, humility, and power.”

“He causes us to prosper, not for our sake, but for the sake of His Kingdom.” Deuteronomy 8: 18 says:  “And you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who gives you power to get wealth, that He may establish His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.”

 

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

Hope! One of the keys of our journey with God. . . a key part of the treasure. . .

One of the most important characteristics of human nature is to hope and recognize signs of what might be beyond man’s present knowledge. Hope stimulate us to search for the unknown world both physical and spiritual. Man’s ability to hope penetrates human objectives towards the unknown cause. We then respond with hopeful expectations. Hope is one of the three cardinal virtues of the Christian treasure on which the entire Christian structure and enterprise depends. Those virtues are Faith, Hope and Love which shape the religious and moral principle that must be reflected in our Christian living.  I Peter 1b says, “By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”. We see the sacredness of hope in Hebrews 6:18b – 19 “Hope set before us . . . this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine”.

Our walk with Jesus is based in so many ways on that “hope”. Let us always walk not only as people of faith but also as people of hope!

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

As followers of Jesus what do we have left if we have no “faith”?

“Faith”, the term itself invokes all kinds of reactions. Just because someone is a person of “faith” does not mean they are of the same “faith” as you or I may be. Is our love and respect for them based on their “faith” being the same as ours? How do we as leaders handle that difference and does our friendship imply endorsement? We can and must be loving and diplomatic even when we disagree. A few years ago I was sitting at a restaurant table with a group of Classical Pentecostals (my friends) and they were making jokes about those in the “faith movement” that were very condescending and cruel.  I had been silent for a long time and finally spoke up and asked them a simple question. As followers of Jesus, what do we have left if we have no “faith”? Even in the same “Christian” faith community we often have great differences. Our hope really lies in our learning to come together as “People of Faith” and  beginning to share our love of God and His love of us with each other. I suspect we are not nearly as far apart as we may think. especially if we are of the same “faith”!

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

Do you have “dust bunnies” in your life?

Recently I was working on my desktop computer and kept having problems with the mouse. No matter what I tried it just got worse. I even scanned the entire system for various viruses, etc. to no avail. Finally I happened to pick up the mouse to check the power and discovered a well entrenched “dust bunny”. One quick flick and it was gone into the waste bin and suddenly the mouse was working again!

We often allow the dust bunnies in our lives to stop the connection with our Source of Power and direction and we simply cannot communicate with Him any longer. It is so simple and easy to clean it all out and let Him bring us back where we need to be.

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

“Faith” in God. . .

“. . . now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.” I Corinthians 13:12.

“Faith” in God presupposes two distinct questions. One concerns belief itself, which engulfs the total personality of man. The other concerns the very existence of God. These two questions have to be addressed by us all as leaders. It really is first things first! We must personally settle the questions regarding the ability of man to believe in God and the reality of the existence of God. As men we often feel inferior to what we know we could be yet we sometimes seem to lack the capacity to believe. We live in this place of incomplete knowledge of God despite our desire to completely know. This in itself is a forerunner of coming to complete knowledge of God to come in Eternal Life.

Our faith is based on this unerring knowledge of God, even in part, as a blessing that guides our spirit and destiny toward salvation and protects us from being prey to all kinds of “superstitions and false teachings”. Let us come to full “faith” in Him as stated in the Nicene Creed:

+Nicene Creed+“We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in being with the Father. Through Him all things were made. For us men and our salvation He came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the Virgin Mary , and became man. For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate; He suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day He rose again in fulfillment of the scriptures: He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, He is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.”
My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

That thou mightest know. . .

Luke 1:4, KJV “That thou mightest know the certainty of those things, wherein thou hast been instructed.” We can best summarize our teaching as followers of Christ into three categories; Faith, Hope, and Love.

Dogmas or doctrines grow out of Faith in the light of the wholeness of the Divine Revelation we are given, that is Scripture and Sacred Tradition. Worship is the outgrowth of Hope and our morals are the outgrowth of Love.

Understanding our limitations as humans in both the intellectual and spiritual realms causes us to need to study each of these separately and then we can put it all together. To understand and apply the parts of Faith to our lives makes it necessary to examine both Tradition and Scripture. This must be done carefully and methodically lest we go astray fro the way of Christ. We want to be careful how we handle truth as it comes to us. Far too many have mishandled truth and ended up with untruth, thus deceiving many. I the next few issues I will be examining some of these for us to consider.

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

Illusions and leadership. . .

“The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.” from The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen.

How is it that we think so highly of ourselves that we would even dare to lead those out when we have never been in their shoes, sometimes as leaders we become so accustomed to being the ones with the answers that we often fail to see the shortcomings of our own advice.

Lord, may I ever be aware of my own frailty and lack of knowledge and wisdom. May I lean even more heavily on you as I deal with the realities of others lives.

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

Lord, are you really with me? Have you ever asked this question?

Lord are you really there? Are you with me, I thought I knew you, now I search for your presence. Have you gone through a time in your walk with Him, as a leader of others, yet you had to go forward based only on your past experience and faith that He is still there? This experience has been called by many through out church history as the “dark night of the soul” and yes if you follow Him long enough you will experience it. What do we do now? Is He really there?

Yes, He is there! Constantly contending for you soul and for your life here. Sometime we depend far too much on feeling God and not on trusting that His Word is true. Feeling His presence is by far the most wonderful of all experiences, yet He needs to know that you are willing to continue. Someone once commented to me that what I was doing was showing them what the “courage to continue looks like”. Perhaps I am still struggling with that comment, yet there are those times when it takes a certain courage to continue because we have heard God in the past, we have seen His provision and protection, yet today we need a new dose of faith. Yet where does faith come  from, it comes from Him! Let me assure you that He is here now, He is there now. Whatever test of faith you may be going through as a leader be assured that He is with you now, whether you can feel Him or not.

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!  

Lord, truly I need your loving grace more today than ever!

Lord, truly I need your loving grace more today than ever! That should be the cry of every leader. To truly lead we must have His grace demonstrated in our lives daily, or more accurately constantly, it must become our lifestyle. Once again Henri J. M. Nouwen has spoken to me in this aspect of my own journey. In A Cry for Mercy he says, “I need your loving grace to travel on this hard road that leads to the death of my old self and to a new life in freedom. Lord, dispel my mistrust and help me to become a trusting friend. Amen”

Can I do that? Today I can honestly say I am not always sure. Yet as the journey goes on I find that my trust in Him does increase and that my effectiveness as a leader increases as I allow Him to order my steps and direct even my words.

Impatience to see what we believe is to come to pass, sometimes we hear from God because we are visionaries, yet the patience to wait on His time keeps us in constant tension over what we see and what is in front of us. There is more to come on this as I process my own journey with Him today.

My love and prayers are with each of you as you journey with Him today, Baba John

The Apostolic Embassy to the Nations is “A place of prayer, service & apostolic empowerment.  Mentoring world leaders for the 21st century!”

The strategy of the APOSTOLIC EMBASSY TO THE NATIONS is to mentor men and women into their destiny through Scripture, Spirit, Sacrament and Service.  This is being accomplished through regular times of prayer, worship, training and ministries of service to the community and the world.  THE EMBASSY is a launching pad for Apostolic Ministry.

If you have been blessed by these simple writings you are invited to support the ministry of Baba John by making a PayPal donation to lifecareministries@hotmail.com by going to www.paypal.com and entering your payment information to lifecareministries@hotmail.com

May God’s richest blessings follow you all the days of your life!