Created for a Purpose – It Starts with God

The purpose of life is far greater than personal fulfillment, peace of mind, or even happiness. It’s far greater than family, career, and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by His purpose and for His purpose. The Bible says, “In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind.” (Job 12:10) (NIV).

You were made for God and life is about letting God use you for His purposes. The Bible says, “So letting your sinful nature control your mind leads to death. But letting the Spirit control your mind leads to life and peace. (Romans 8:6) (NLT).

You could reach all your personal goals, become successful by the world’s standards, and still miss the purposes for which God created you. The Bible says, “If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.” (Matthew 16:25). It is all about becoming what God created you to be.

God has provided us with the Bible to explain why we are alive, how life works,  what to avoid, and what to expect in the future. The Bible says, “Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan.” (Ephesians 1:11)(NLT)

You were made by God and for God and until you understand that, life will never make sense. God’s motive for creating you was His love (Ephesians 1:4).

God was thinking of you before He made the world. In fact, that is why He created it. God designed the earth’s environment just so we could live in it.  We are the focus of His love and the most valuable of His creation (James 1:8).

So from this day forward, fulfill your purpose. Put God first.

 

Help R&B singer get discovered - Classified Ad

Help R&B singer get discovered - Classified Ad

Are You Responsible for the Violence?

“It Takes a Village” Philosophy

No man, woman, or family is an island. But in these days, community isn't always what it is needs to be. We'd all like to think we live in a place where people care about others -- where people are willing to help when things get tough, where it's safe to let our children play around outside. Unfortunately, this is not what most of us experience. Instead of community, we find estrangement; we are attacked by crime; hoping for a better life for our kids, we encounter gangs and drugs and gunfire. People often retreat behind closed and double locked doors and try to ignore their neighbors.

Parents spend less time with their children than ever before, and this can have a big effect on how children develop to be responsible as well as how they develop other positive characteristics. If parents aren't around to help develop children, they can develop bad habits.

Today, the “village” appears to be non-existent. Each adult made it their responsibility to correct us if we needed to be corrected. Even the adults who didn't know us still made it their job to discipline us, protect us and tell on us. There are people who have been living on the same block for years who never speak to each other.

If the breakdown of communication in the village isn't bad enough, with everything foul and indecent going on in the world around us, there are still some folks who hand the duty of child rearing over to the streets.  Something is very wrong in our neighborhoods right now and it goes way beyond the epidemic of our children being killed by stray bullets any time you can type your address into a website and find more child molesters than school teachers in your area.

As parents, we get weary because we work overtime, some of us are single parents and some of us are overwhelmed by our addictions and afflictions. But, some of us are just plain selfish. Parents, some of us don't realize if we don't put positive energy into our children and we leave it completely up to the village to raise them, we're not guaranteed favorable results because a lot of the residents of the village are not trustworthy.

But in the end if you don't stay true to your children and make time to be a positive role model to them, you will be forced to cope with the potential problems that can arise and the problems are not hidden from the village. On any given night, you can watch the news and hear a report about a young person who has taken an innocent life and handed his troubled existence over to the appropriate authorities.

African Americans, Facebook, and Twitter

African Americans and Social Sites

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, minorities are not only gaining access to the Web, but are doing it without necessarily having to access a desktop or a laptop. When it comes to social media, minorities are not only using it at a higher rate, but we also have a different perspective on how we engage with the technology.

Compared with white cell phone owners, blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely to use their mobile devices to text message, use social networking sites, use the internet, record and watch videos, make a charitable donation via text message, use email, play games, listen to music, use instant messaging, and post multimedia content.

Seven out of ten African Americans use social networking sites in comparison to six out of ten whites with a quarter of blacks online using Twitter. So what exactly are we doing online?

Youth are using some form of technology at an early age. It is our responsibility to teach them how to use this technology not only for socializing and entertainment, but also as a business tool. The same device used to post the happenings in the hood, updates about their social lives, and gossip, can also be used to put in applications for jobs, research colleges etc. It can also be used to inform each other of employers hiring and other opportunities to further each other economically.

It was refreshing to read this comment,  “But as an African American man, I am also staked highly in what goes on in the Black community. So this was very compelling to me to see that young Black people weren’t just using these sites to meet for dates and keep up on the goings on in Black entertainers’ lives. But also as a tool to further consciousness, grow business ventures, and bounce ideas”  from William Huston, H2 Communications, one of the few African American social media management companies in the United States. I personally hope this is a concept that will become widespread among African Americans.