Restoration of Faith Ministries - Thomaston

11/26/2025

07/18/2025

🗣 NOT TODAY!

07/12/2025

https://youtube.com/shorts/65l-inxF7J0?feature=shared

06/23/2025

Listen!!

5207 likes, 604 comments. Check out StreetPoet_1125’s video.

06/19/2025

🙌🏾👏🏿🙌🏾

The Other Serenity Prayer Inspirations

04/02/2025

Day 3 - He Gets Us: Jesus welcomed women.
To be a woman in Jesus’ day meant you were invisible.

Outside your home, no man was allowed to talk to you. In the temple, you could observe holy happenings, but never participate. Your witness didn’t count in court, you couldn’t receive an inheritance, you were never taught to read. Your opinion didn’t matter.

Jesus broke the chains that held women in bo***ge. He taught anyone who would listen and even welcomed women to walk with him as followers (scandalous). Some of his closest friends were women (unprecedented). He never flirted with them, mansplained, or patronized them. Jesus refused to treat women as inferior in any way but took their questions seriously and respected their needs.

Nobody did that for women in the first century and rarely in centuries since.

Every time Jesus mentioned, touched, taught, or talked to a woman, he raised the cultural tide. He applauded both Jewish and Gentile women for their grit. He noticed the quiet, faithful things women did—even an elderly widow putting pennies in the collection plate. He praised women for wanting to learn. He engaged them in stunning conversations about important matters. He pushed back cultural restraints and invited women to thrive.

Even more intensely personal, look at who Jesus helped. The woman who had been with another woman’s husband, dragged to stand almost naked in a crowd of accusers. The pr******te who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears. The woman living with a man, after five other husbands. People whispered (loudly) about these women’s reputations, focusing on their sexual indiscretions, but Jesus looked deeper and saw their souls. He offered them forgiveness, wholeness, and peace with his kind words and gentle touch.

Brave women, all of them. Call it intuition or insight, they just knew Jesus was everything he promised and they let him help them out of the messes and heartbreak they found themselves in.

Likely, they had their share of funny and touching behind-the-scenes stories to tell. They loved Jesus because he first loved them. They showed up in the places and times when it mattered most—especially at his death when the other followers hid in fear.

And just like he sees you and knows you, these women meant a great deal to Jesus who notoriously redefined the rules to give them dignity and welcome. He called them out of the shadows and into lives of influence and impact.

He must have meant the world to them.

04/01/2025

Day 2 - He Gets Us: Jesus made friends with his enemies
You can tell a lot about someone by their choice of friends.

If you invited Jesus over for dinner; he came. We read in the Bible about five times he accepted invites and twice when he invited himself--both times to eat with tax collectors and social outcasts.

People on the fringes felt comfortable with Jesus, and it made the pious folks feel totally uneasy. They hated how Jesus loved and defended the underdog. Why would he even associate with them?

It’s true; the average person just liked being with Jesus. His friends included the unlikely mix of Roman centurions, a few religious leaders, pr******tes, and people struggling with leprosy. Among his friends were those outside the “socially acceptable,” too--including children, women and people of other races. Those considered “outsiders” were the first to call Jesus their friend.

Throughout his life, Jesus led the protest against the walls that divide us and the absurd qualifiers some say make people “worthy” of our attention, respect, or company and others not. Jesus didn’t just lead the dialogue in the defense of those different from us, he got angry, and stayed angry at every sign of injustice and discrimination. He then proposed a radical reversal.

How? He made friends with his “enemies,” those of all ethnicities, classes, genders, and nations. He made friends with people just as they are and let himself be known just as he was, too. Authentic. Trust-worthy. The kind of friend we all long for.

03/31/2025

Day 1- He Gets Us: Jesus shook things up
When you turned on your device just now, it likely flashed today’s date. No matter what you believe about Jesus, his life split history into two—the years coming before him (b.c.) and the two thousand plus years that have followed him.

If you’ve wondered, why should it matter who someone is from two thousand years ago on the other side of the earth? What difference does it make to me?—that’s a great question.

Who is the real Jesus? He's been portrayed by miscellaneous groups in every generation. To answer that question, it helps to go to the source.

In his day, Jesus’ enemies accused him of enjoying himself too much at parties and hanging out with the wrong people. They feared him because he challenged the norm.

Look closely and you’ll see Jesus was...

Fearless; never backing down from doing what is right.

Vulnerable; allowing us to get close enough to know him.

Compassionate; entering into our pain.

And what makes his invitation to us all the more meaningful is that his world was as mean-spirited and divisive as ours today. Long before COVID, fear and other contagions were also viral. Yet, Jesus stepped into people’s space, bringing the anxious, comfort, the sick, healing, and joy to everyone who welcomed him in.

Jesus...he showed up. He sat across from people at the dinner table and wept at family funerals. He invited people to know him. He taught them how to live in a dysfunctional world (his was, too). His words weren’t just radical for the first century, they’re still extreme today.

No one cares like that. Except he did. He insisted on human dignity, that every person matters.

No one teaches like that. Yet the change he ushered in still reverberates today.

The way Jesus called out the toxic religious and political systems turned history upside down. He’s a radical in any decade—which makes him a worthwhile model to live by today.

But how?

Let’s explore his life together...He came to show, not just tell. Match his words and his actions and you might be surprised at what you’ll find.