PASTOR’S CORNER: We will overcome someday

The word “overcome” means “to get the better of in a struggle or conflict.”

This is us as a people — a people that have come through struggles, as we conclude Black History Month. We believed that one day we as a race of people would get the better of our struggle, conquer it and defeat it, and that life for us in this world would one day be better. Being the underdog and having struggled, our ancestors believed by faith that life for them or their children one day would get better. And I’m here today as preacher prophet this morning to say that it surely has and will get better right here on earth if indeed, they and we are Christian believers.

Though a lot of them did not live to see it here on earth, and some of us will not live to see it here in the fullest, some of us will surely see it. You heard that right here. We will overcome someday. Now the world’s mentality of victory or overcoming anything means to have the upper hand in this life. It’s a conquest, to have the final say to be on top of the world, and your enemy under your feet. Anything less to them is not victory.

But in Christ Jesus this is a guarantee. We win simply by following the example and teachings of Jesus Christ. Love your enemies, do good to them that abuse you, pray for them that despitefully use. Martin Luther King Jr lived by these principles and teachings during the Civil Rights movement and it worked. That’s why there’s a statue of him in Washington D.C. You don’t win your enemies by fighting fire with fire. You win them by loving them and praying for them. This is how we overcome.

But you know, to look at some of our young people today you wouldn’t think that we as a race of people will overcome; to look at some of them, you would think that we are going backward. We are seeing teenage pregnancy at an all-time high; more homes with no fathers in them; and single mothers trying to do what God intended for a mother and a father to do together.

Whenever there is no father in their God-given, God-appointed role, the home goes array, and when the home goes array, the community goes array, and when the community goes array the society goes array. In fact, Black fathers are the missing link between whether the society grows or whether it declines. I’m speaking truth to power because the truth will make you free, according to John 10:10.

It’s not other races keeping us back, demoralizing our communities. We are doing a good job of that ourselves. Violence demoralizes a community and takes the very life out of it. When young girls choose to have children with no husband and live on the system rather than get a degree and wait until they are married and ready to have children we are in a decline because the children suffer the most.

When our ancestors and some parents sang “We shall overcome someday,” they were rightly protesting for their right to vote. They were protesting their right to go to any university of their choice for higher education without somebody blocking the doorway. They were protesting their right to sit anywhere on a public bus and not have to get up for someone of another race. They protested the fact that they were held back by a society in which they paid taxes just like everybody else but could not sit and eat in a public restaurant, or drink from a public water fountain.

Some of our ancestors stood up so that WE could sit down! They had every right to protest.

But what are we protesting?

It’s not anybody’s fault that our community is the way that it is and that our children. This generation is shooting up and killing one another. Black-on-Black crime is at an all-time high. That’s nobody else’s fault. My people we can go to any college university of our choice. Nobody is standing at the door blocking us from entering. We can be doctors, lawyers, teachers, architects, policemen and entrepreneurs because our young people do have some brilliant minds, but until they use their brains instead of a gun we will not overcome!

We can eat in any restaurant, drink from any fountain, sit anywhere we want to on any bus and don’t have to get up for anybody! We can vote from any precinct and for who we want to. There is no more slavery and I know we live in an imperfect world, a world where sometimes the justice system is flawed, where some judges don’t honor the oath of office that they took, a corrupt system.

But, there is coming a day, when there will be a perfect justice system not in heaven but right here on earth. In Revelation chapter 20 after the seven-year tribulation period has ended and the antichrist has been defeated by Christ and cast into hell (Revelations 19:20), Satan himself will be bound up in the bottomless pit for a thousand years. It is then that Christ will reign for 1,000 years on earth. Christ will rule, permitting no injustice or sin (Revelations 20:1-6). There will be peace on earth among men and animals (Isaiah 11:7–9 and 54:13–14). We will truly overcome someday.