Identifiable differences....

I-dent-if-i-a-ble

Diff-er-en-ces

Like when you eye something in your mind

That settles the charisma in ya

This man knew the same culture

Same sculpted lens

But his worldview screams

That he's an individual

We grew up in the same ends

Same friends

Asian rule was blatant up in Sparkhill 

Where we saw the same things

Same park swings

Same corner shops, same sins,

Same robbing chocolate bars

Cus of decayed spends

Saw some brothers had pay

So the gain they'd sport

Others living on scraps 

Man they were greatly poor

We saw Tupacs

Single moms lacing up the bootstraps

And round the corner Will Smiths

Gaze and yawn

Some on the housing

Some with the graceful doors

Some with graffiti on their walls 

Didn't care at all

And some of our hearts were openly depraved

Open to the raise

We got drawn in

Through smoking sim'lar haze

And we would bar it madly

No worries

Just to slap on a new era cap

And fake like in heart we're yankees

But my mind is on the pea

His is on the family

And I be checking out the mama's

While he clings to Daddy

It wasn't always so

But there was a switch in purpose

The same life change that

Known to make a bredrin nervous

Cus he's a different person

And it bears a mark on me

He is a different version

From them one's with hearts of greed

Know I'm a heartless feen

And I got the scars to prove it

He tell me comes to church

But I say my heart's on music

And I will try one day

He doesn't half pursue it

In the end he lets up

Cus I ain't on the pastor movements

But in my heart I'm dying

And this is the biggest difference

You walked right to the altar

I can't even grace the building

My worst fear of all in life

Is the Lord's rejection

But I can't come to him at all

Because I know I'm sinnin'

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My child wisdom's what you need

Through the misconceptions

Seems like a maze at times

And that voice is real and pressin'

'Rejection is your portion

You got a dad who never wanted you

And others told your mom

She should accept abortion'


That voice echoes and

You bargain with deceitful lies

That you have to swallow up

The harsh realities of life

And 'cus your uncles run the street

You have to be that guy,

That got a few babymothers

But you'll never see the wife,


And when you speak, if they don't accept you

Then that will wreck you,

Cus you're yet to see

You're a chosen vessel my hand assembled

A vessel's just a cup

But when they drink from you

These men don't know your worth

But still they see in you there's something special


Brother don't run from me,

Just because my peeps imperfect

Because it's sinful men the King expects

To fill the churches

I'm talking mystical

But I will be a father to you

And don't believe the lie

I made you and will give you purpose

A deeper reality.....

It's so interesting. I've written two blogs already this month and somehow if feels like I haven't written any. Time moves slow and much seems to have happened in the last 10 days. Life is always bouncing from situation to situation.

It's so easy to think, especially when you write, that you have nothing to share when you pick up that pen. You can feel tempted to speak about what everyone else speaks about, because you see no value to the world in your own experience. The truth is, even if there's no value in your words for this ever changing world with its frittering fancies, your words have value to God, and when you write them down honestly they can help you to see who you are, where you are, your strong points, your weaknesses, areas in which you can relate with others and what makes you different.

No one will live the life you live. No one will feel the experiences you do in exactly the same way, but the guarantee is when you share your experience someone somewhere will relate. Someone will be encouraged by what you have to say and the way you see things. Someone's perspective will be changed by what you have to say. Someone's life may even be changed by what you have to say....

It's amazing how God can work through what we discard as nothing at times.

A few hours ago I watched this interview with Kendrick Lamar where a broad range of questions were thrown at him. One in particular was why he changed his moniker from K dot to Kendrick Lamar. He said,

'When people heard K dot, they was like...the kid is dope, he could rap but....who is he? You know what I mean. That went on for years. Just another cat in the street that can rap good, right? So I was like you know what. I want people to know who I am as a person and what I represent. So I woke up one morning. I said, 'Look, the best way to start it off is, get with me. My name change, my real name. Something my mother been calling me for years. And this is who I am and I'ma start putting it on records....(it) transcended where I'm putting it on records and it represent me and people accept it, 'cus they can relate. And that was just a mindstate. I felt like, what is an artist if they don't know who they are, the biggest people (that) you felt like you could relate to their story....?

To be real. Why is it so hard. To break out of that shell and accept ourselves for who God made us to be.

We are not clones. We are not just knock offs without value so we have to aspire to be the next Jay Z, the next Russell Simmons, or the next Obama. We don't have to erect religious idols either saying we'd love to be this Christian leader or that scholar. We were fearfully and wonderfully made, and that should be enough.

Many don’t realise well known people struggle with their self-worth too. A lot of these people are slaves to public opinion, positions and possessions. But Jesus came to free us from all that, so we could find our true value…in him.

Today I watched two rappers named Akala and Lowkey do separate Fire in the Booth sessions with Charlie Sloth. Akala was very good at presenting his views on society, how history and books should affect us and how we shouldn't just fall into the stereotypes. Lowkey's strength was wordplay. After hearing Lowkey freestyle on BBC Radio I looked into myself and felt really challenged.

'This man can freestyle so good', I thought, 'but he doesn’t promote what I believe in. He's of a different faith group to me'. Immediately I started looking for his weaknesses. The demon of envy had come up behind me trying to lock me in a chokehold. Then wisdom and revelation spoke. 'There will always be someone better at something than you. But the answer isn't to jump into their arena of giftedness and try to be the best in that area. The answer is to stick to your lane and be who God called you to be'. Slowly Envy skulked away and I was free to appreciate this man's gift, and understand there also was a lane for me because God had carved it.

God's carved it, so I have a race to run. Time to find inspiration, whilst running my lane and being true to who he's made me to be.......

Sometimes.....

Sometimes I do really stupid things

I wish I could change but times gone and I can't go back

Sometimes I fall into the slums of despondancy

And it's really hard to climb back out again

So for a while I just linger there

Sometimes I feel like what am I doing here

My life seems worthless and days seem to trickle by with no impact

Sometimes I behave cowardly

The truth in my mind but it fails to make the journey down to my lips

And the result?

I deny another person that opportunity to gain their freedom

All in all I'm a human being, a fallen human being

And i need someone to bring me back to my feet when nothing else has the strength

That's why I trust in God

I may fail many more times

But he will always see me through

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Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me......

- Psalm 23

Priorities......

Today I'm just gonna write and see what comes out.

I'm tired. Tired of wasting my time, giving myself to things that don't matter. I'm 25 now and I don't know how long I'll have on this earth. God  has my days planned out, but it's up to me to utilise them well. I know I spend way too much time on facebook, way too much time drifting online from site to site. Too much time messing about in the house or not doing anything particularly. All in all, I spend way too much time on things that won't matter in eternity or even in 5 months! My mind has already kicked back into gear so I guess that's my little rant over, but truthfully I think I'm at the stage where God's calling me to prioritise.

I've embarked upon a barbering course due to finish in May. At the moment this is my focus. Other things such as learning guitar, listening to music, writing music, church meetings, work, volunteering, visiting people and from tomorrow, gym time are staples in my life, but the barbering sticks out as what God would have me focus on at this particular time. However, in terms of watching the tutorial videos, practicing cuts and doing homework, I don't believe I'm at the place I should be.

Why? Well the main reason is that I've been making the staples the focus and neglecting what should have been sought first.

Now I'm the type of person that writes a plan and forgets it in a week. I've written quite a few plans on how I'm gonna get through this course, then tied myself to them but they've all gone to dust. I find it quite hard to stick to a schedule and often leave behind the schedule at a point and end up giving my time to other things. My life is quite a random life and the only patterns of order I have is because people have drilled into me a focus at a particular time. In other words I stuck to them because I was accountable and they eventually became habits.

Quiet times, reading my Bible, guitar practice (which is developing), going to lessons are such habits which have been instilled into me. I guess there are some things which I have etched into my life as habits because I felt it was needed. Things such as my 'almost' daily walks and finishing books by reading 'normally' a chapter a day are such learned habits I pushed for without outside accountability. Guess that proves it is possible for me to learn habits when I feel they are needed.

I don't know why some things I stick at and some things I forget and don't. I think it's important to have stickability, and when it's something set in stone, official or something I'm seriously held accountable to be doing (like going to work for example) I often will stick with it. But when it's not, I can easily forget and when I remember, time has slipped away and the zeal has flagged. I don't do well with vows and tying myself to things in promises because I often fail at them, and then I just feel worse.

I think the best times I learn habits is when I'm accountable to others in a serious way. Where it'll affect me or someone else if I don't do them and I can sense the pressure of that. Other times are when I sense an urgency that I need to learn this habit and my passivity is no longer acceptable, so I do learn it.

Whoever reads this, please pray to God for me. I have two months of this course left and it's important that I do learn to prioritise in this particular case. And that sooner rather than later......

What’s been happening...

Thought I’d check back in. A lot has been happening but I’ve been enjoying it so much I’ve forgot that there’s wisdom in writing it down to make sense of it and to be able to refer to it in months to come. So here goes…

Honestly, music has come back into my life in a big way. I think it all started with listening to Lecrae’s mixtape ‘Church clothes’. A few days before that, God had been speaking to me about music in particular. I was absolutely shocked at what he was insinuating. For so long my mind has been turned away from all music that wasn’t specifically by a Christian artist containing strong Christian themes i.e. exclusively talking about Christ, God and Salvation and Sanctification. Even lately my mind has been turned off of music altogether, realising though I get hyped when I listen to rap, that’s all it really seemed to be……a hype. If I’ve been listening to any music in my spare time over the last year, it’s been mostly Abimaro and the free or the Gospel Jazz podcast. 

Now all of a sudden God was breaking down my barriers and messing up the way my mind has been conditioned after so many years. He was changing my attitude towards music in general.

Now for the last few years I’ve had a real kind of fear based relationship with any music not explicitly Christian because of thoughts that it could contaminate me. Thoughts that it could send me back into the same thought patterns and cause me to follow after the same things. I’ve struggled with hearing non-Christian music in shops, in lessons or just generally around, especially music containing expletives or lustful, worldly and sexually provocative lyrics. It would do my nut in and often I would pray in tongues or seek some other kind of refuge.

But the truth is as I follow him and trust in him, he delivers me from evil and all the wickedness around me. My trouble comes because I know there is evil or corruption in much of the music. God’s made that very obvious to me. Though I realise it’s not necessarily in the instruments, not in the synthesisers, not even necessarily in some of the drum patterns…….in other words not in the objects themselves, it can be in the hearts of those who compose the music, and some use such tools to spread wickedness. Some sacrifice their beats to idols or work with people who have already sacrificed their music to their gods and this affects how it impacts the people. 

Through recent scripture reading I’ve been learning about spiritual food, including music. I’ve realised the truth is that there is no God but one (though people claim to sacrifice to other gods) to whom belongs everything on the earth and ‘an idol has no real existence’ (1 Corinthians 8). But saying that, we can still provoke God to jealousy by giving ourselves to things he is not cool with.

For example......I can’t now choose to be involved in idol worship saying ‘I know an idol doesn’t really exist so I’m just playing along and taking part in it with a mind that knows the truth’. Whether I know the truth or not doesn’t make a difference if I let someone else believe that the truth doesn’t matter and give my co-sign to their sinful acts as kosher. By partaking, I’m still involving myself in sacrifice to demons and making a third party believe I’m down with it. I must do all that I do to the glory of God, not causing offence to those brothers who are weaker in these areas as I once was (Romans 14), nor leading pagans to believe I’m down with their practices and even willing to join with them in it. Our knowledge must not be used to harm another’s faith or to passively or consciously commit idolatry (1 Corinthians 10).

I think it was last year that I heard of a group in the 70’s who used to ‘partake in sex acts with the lost to show people God’s love for them’. Obviously that is blasphemy to most people and utter foolishness to those in the truth. Yet we bow to the idols of envy, selfishness, sensuality, worldliness and many other things just in the hope of becoming more seeker friendly and having people identify with us. Sometimes it’s just because we like these things. They appeal to our flesh. We enjoy when Nicki Minaj or Lil Wayne encourages us to use sex in a way which God finds offensive all in the name of relating with others or enjoying what others enjoy. In this way we lose our saltiness (that which makes us different from the world) and on a sad note, we hurt God. Though we can listen to all things and all things are allowed, all things are not beneficial. A tip is to check the content of songs we listen to against the rule of the benchmarks given us in the Bible. Is the music good? Is it beautiful? Is it true?

Some non-Christian’s articulate music which is amazing and ministers deep into us. Music which glorifies God because it make us think of beautiful things, of his goodness, the creativity he has given to men, the truth he has set inside all of us, even though we are fallen and don’t reflect him as we were made to. Sometimes the impact is so much we have to thank God for the experience. 

Now I’m not saying God doesn’t work out of the box sometimes. Sometimes God wants us to hear an artist’s music and what they speak about for particular reasons. Not to enjoy the glorification of sin but maybe to understand where someone is at. We’ve gotta let God lead but it’s important to use our discernment in these matters.