Guided By the Holy Spirit, Open To The Spirit, During the Holiday Season

For all those who celebrate the great holiday of Thanksgiving, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving! I'm getting ready to host my family and some of my sons' friends. One of our guests will be coming from England so it will be special! She is  coming for a long weekend to visit my sons' fiance, and we've invited her, of course.

In addition to that I am preparing for a talk I will give during Advent. This is a special talk for me because I have never spoken about this topic before or even thought too much about it. So why would I chose this topic especially during the holiday season with so much to do?.....I could of expanded on a topic I've done many times in Advent but this year would be different. I didn't know that when I agreed to give a talk during Advent, (which I am doing for a second year in a row), that my talk would be entirely different. The reason is, this year I was given the title of the talk and the topic by the Holy Spirit. Sounds a little strange....I would imagine you think it's strange. You see, God's word as we believe, as Christians is living and active, it should be transformative as well. As Christians, we should be open to the movement of the Holy Spirit, so if the Spirit does move in our lives, we should be thankful for that and not hesitate or be too surprised.......Well, at first I have to be honest I wasn't thankful because it was a lot of work to prepare for this talk and actually I'm going to finish it today because I want it completed before Thanksgiving. And at first, I was perplexed because it was very obvious that God's word "spoke" to me and this was the topic. So now that you're curious and wondering what the topic is, I'll tell you. The topic of my talk is about the Reign of God. The Scripture verse that "jumped" out at me at a Bible Study talk was, "The Kingdom of God is at hand." I knew in that instant I would speak about the Reign of God but still wasn't sure where to go with it....that kept me up one night as I tried to discern that. But it's all OK now, because the talk is mostly written, I got through it, today I will put the finishing touches on it and present it next week.
That's my story. Once again, Happy Thanksgiving!
NJA

President-Elect Trump Make Good on Your Promise To Rebuild Inner Cities

One promise that I heard President-elect Donald Trump make in the early morning hours, after winning a stunning and close election was to say he was going to rebuild American inner cities. I was sleepy, like most Americans who stood up to see the election results but I didn't miss that.  He has the know-how to do that. Poor people who live in inner cities deserve better, they deserve decent housing, playgrounds, good places to shop and good schools. The children and teens in our inner cities have suffered too long with a a lack of good opportunities, part-time and summer jobs, and decent community centers where they can have access to after school programs, sports programs, tutoring,  life coaches and mentors as well as positive role models who can inspire them (and keep them away from temptations and vices  that can ruin their lives).
I hope President-elect Trump can do that for our inner cities, for the young people who deserve good opportunities so they can realize the American dream and believe in themselves.
Let's see if he makes good on that promise and lifts all Americans, so that all people have a chance to climb the ladder of success and realize the American dream.
NJA