Amani took the last, loud slurp of his drink. “Sorry about that, folks.” He walked toward the kitchen as though all was well.
Mark stood frozen, his face twitching. He hissed at Sharla, “Is he serious?”
Sharla smacked her lips once and tipped her head toward the kitchen area. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” She couldn’t have planned a better setup to let Mark witness first-hand how disrespectful their son had become in recent months.
She watched proudly as her husband dropped both his preacher hat and his father hat and slipped straight into you-don’t-know-who-you-messin’-with mode. Some might have called it thug-mode or even street-mode, thanks to Mark’s background. Whatever, Sharla didn’t care. If it put the fear of God—or at least the fear of his parents—back into Amani, she would gladly be Mark’s sidekick.
Together they approached their son, who was calmly chowing down on a burger at the table. Mark removed the burger and the fries from the table and handed them off to Sharla, who set them on the island. Mark grabbed one leg of Amani’s chair and forced the boy to face the seat Mark took right next to him.
Though Amani was still trying to play it cool, Sharla could tell that the jerking motion had rattled her son.
“Dad, you know this is just like when Jesus got lost and his parents didn’t know where he was for, like three days,” Amani reasoned in his most intellectual tone, wearing a nervous grin.
“Be quiet,” Mark ordered.
Amani gulped.
Sharla crossed her arms and stood behind her husband. She stood perfectly still, but inside she was dancing. She had to give credit where it was due; Mark looked darn good sitting there getting ready to go in on their son. This whole scene was straight sexy.
How long has it been?
Mark leaned forward and locked his eyes on Amani’s. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you. I don’t know why you’ve been talking back to your mom. And I don’t know what’s made you think you can talk to me like I’m one of your friends. But you betta get yourself together real quick and remember who you are and what kind of parents you’re dealin’ with ‘cause if we have to have this discussion again, it won’t be this nice and neat.”
Sharla resisted the urge to add, “Yeah!” after every sentence.
Amani’s gaze darted to his mother. She kept her poker face intact.
Amani dropped his head and grumbled, “Yes, sir.”
“A little louder,” Mark commanded.
“Yes, sir,” Amani spoke clearly. “Can I leave now? I’m not hungry anymore.”
Mark dismissed him with a nod.
In one motion, Amani scooted his chair back, tore away from the table and took off for the front door. “I’m gonna walk around the block, okay?”
“A quick walk,” Mark permitted.
“What the heck is that supposed to mean?”
Amani slipped away.
“Mark, go get him,” Sharla could barely murmur. Felt like her throat had cinched closed.
Mark laced his fingers and hung his hands between his knees. “No. Give him his space. He’s got a lot going on inside. He’s been telling us he wants to meet his birth family, Sharla. Looks like it’s all coming to a head.”
“Okay, we can put the whole birth family issue aside right now. You can’t just leave him on the streets,” she feared aloud.
“Yes, we can let him walk down the streets of the Honey Ridge subdivision alone, Sharla. Nothing’s gonna happen to him. He needs some time to think. They warned us about this, remember, when we attended those adoption classes.”
Yes, she remembered. Yet, she’d filed those cautionary speeches and case studies in the “It won’t happen to me” category. Hadn’t God punished her enough already by making it impossible for her to give birth?
“He needs counseling,” Sharla snapped to a solution. “We all do.”
“In the infamous words of Sweet Brown, Ain’t nobody got time for that,” Mark declined.
It was Sharla’s turn to wonder if Mark was serious. She caught the hint of humor on his face as he stood. “You think this is funny?”
“Babe, I’m just trying to lighten the mood.” He placed both hands on her shoulders and gently massaged the knots forming in her muscles.
As much as her body wanted to give in to Mark’s comfort, she couldn’t shake the idea of her son walking around aimlessly, even if it was only four in the afternoon. What if the cops stopped him? What if a delusional neighbor thought Amani was trying to break in somebody’s house, like Trayvon Martin?
She grabbed her purse and keys. “You coming with me?”
“No. I already told you he needs to blow off steam. He’s probably going to walk to the park and pick up the next basketball game. He’ll be back.”
“Whatever. He’s hurting and he needs someone. Since we obviously can’t depend on you, I’ll have to do it myself.”
Chapter 7
His first real opportunity to seclude himself and get in God’s face didn’t come until Wednesday. For one thing, his attitude was bad until Tuesday night, when Sharla finally gave in to his sexual advances, probably out of a purely primal urge. Mark had gotten so desperate he simply took it however she would give it, but quickies weren’t his preference.
Sex was definitely on the list of things Mark wanted to put on the prayer list in this quiet hour. Along with Amani. And New Vision. And Sharla, period. Not to mention his message for Wednesday night service, which was only hours away.
Mark had made it a point to dress down that day. Denim, a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt and a Kangol 507 cap. He unlocked the suite, secured the door behind him, then entered the sanctum of his office.
Jonathan had taken the initiative to meet with a bereaved family on Mark’s behalf as they made preparations to funeralize their loved one Friday. Not meeting with the member’s family might lead to a nasty letter via email, but Mark couldn’t run on “E” anymore. If he didn’t get some time alone with the Lord, he wouldn’t be any good to anybody, least of all the people who leaned on him in troubled times.
He’d planned to have words at the funeral, though, to make up for it.
Therein laid the first issue Mark wanted to bring before God—being there for all these people. Sixteen hundred adults and their families was a lot of people to shepherd, not counting the sporadic members. What would happen when they had 2,000? 4,000? 6,000? What if they grew faster than he could manage?
Mark kicked his feet up on the couch in classic psychiatrist’s-chair position. He selected the “Worship” playlist on his phone and listened as Bishop Paul Morton, Smokie Norful, and Crystal Aikin filled the atmosphere with praise. The melodies seemed to push the sense of worry right out of the room as Mark meditated on the words of each song.
Next, he lowered his knees onto the floor and assumed a prayer posture before the Lord. After thanking God for Jesus and salvation, Mark’s concerns rattled across his lips as though they’d been bottled up, waiting to expel themselves from his mouth. “God, I don’t know what to do. The ministers want to move forward, but I don’t think this is what You want. Sharla’s acting like…well, you know. Amani’s going through his teenage adopted child phase; I guess that’s what they call it.”
Following a good thirty minutes of talking to God as though one might talk to his best friend, Mark sat up on the brown, suede couch and took out a notepad and his Bible, waiting anxiously to receive guidance about his concerns. He also opened the Bible search app on his iPad to search for scriptures that might shed light on the things he’d mentioned.
Sitting with the Father in this special time reminded Mark of why he’d become a pastor in the first place. He loved God. Loved His Word and wanted to share the good news of Christ with people. And on that note, the divine lesson began.
Mark grabbed his tablet and scrolled back through the messages he’d preached over the last month. Though some had indeed been downloaded from the internet, he had to admit that even the sermons he�
��d managed to scrape up on his own were void of the essential Element of the gospel: Christ.
He’d preached on success, self-esteem, overcoming your haters, letting go of the past, and a number of other subjects people could have just as easily heard at a business seminar. But as he read Romans 10:17, he recognized a gap. He read the verse aloud again from the NIV. “Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.”
Where was Christ at New Vision—other than tacked on at the end of every sermon with the invitation, the call for new members, and the benediction?
“Forgive me, Lord,” Mark uttered to the Master. Without a doubt, he knew what He’d preach that night, Sunday, and for however long the Lord wanted him to stay on Christ, he would.
Mark waited for another prompting from the Spirit about the other matters bothering him that morning. He prayed again. He worshipped again. He put his nose to the carpet and begged for guidance, but just as quickly as the Father had started class, He’d concluded it.
These were the kinds of lessons Mark disliked, the ones where God showed him one faith-required, blind step at a time what to do.
Mark sat back up in his chair. “God, why? Why won’t you just tell me what I need to know? Isn’t that what You said in Jeremiah thirty-three and three?”
In frustration, Mark turned to the verse. He would put God in remembrance of His word and, hopefully, force His hand to give an answer quickly. “Says right here, ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’”
No sooner than he’d read the NIV, he got the urge to tap the verse into the tablet’s Bible app and read it in the New King James version. The word “tell” was translated “show.”
This complicated things, of course. A search of the original Hebrew said “shew” which had several meanings, one of which was “make known”.
Mark didn’t like the sound of “make known”. He didn’t want one of those long, drawn-out life lessons that could only be understood retrospectively. He didn’t want a trial-filled testimony. All he wanted was some simple answers. Was that too much to ask? Step one, step two, step three, and BAM! It was done in Jesus’s name.
All this “shewin’” was for the birds.
And yet Mark knew there was no other way. No other perfect way. It would either be God’s will or Mark’s made-up, bootleg plan which would fail miserably and lead him right back to God’s will. He could do this the hard way or the easy way.
“I surrender, Lord.”
Though Mark hadn’t gotten exactly what he’d wanted from God, there was no mistaking the joy that had flooded his heart after submitting to whatever it was God had in mind. This joy, which the Word had promised to believers through Christ, was the subject of his message Wednesday night.
Typically the mid-week crowd was an older, more studious group. They came with Bibles in hand after long, hard days at work to press in for a refill through the praise team and to hear a message from Mark that would give them another boost for the last half of the week. Yet they sat there and stared back at him the way he might expect from the second service Sunday crowd.
It was no secret that at almost every church with more than one service on Sundays, the early crowd is the serious crowd. They’re older, traditional, they’re established so they have more money.
The second crowd came in still smelling like the clubs. If they hadn’t been out all night dancing, then they’d been up all night with small children. This was a younger group with less to put in the collection plate, but they were much more forgiving toward program diversions and much freer with their praise.
Mark sometimes altered his sermons for this youthful crowd the way a good teacher differentiates her lessons to meet her students’ learning styles. He couldn’t go too deep too quickly with second service or he’d lose most of them.
But the Wednesday night group was a faithful mixture of people who presumably cracked open their Bibles more than once a week. Mark wasn’t used to the blank stares facing him now. Why would joy in Christ be such a hard concept for this bunch to grasp?
Mark racked his brain for another verse to make the message come alive. “Let’s turn to Romans chapter fifteen. Here Paul speaks of the joy that even the Gentiles have in Christ. This joy is not necessarily the kind of joy that makes you smile because you and I well know that a smile can be a cover-up.”
He scanned the audience, finally landing on the small, practiced smile laced with impatience set on Sharla’s face. Mark believed that God Himself had planned for him to speak those exact words as his eyes met Sharla’s, because he suddenly felt the depth of his wife’s suffering deep within his own heart. Though he couldn’t put his finger on the source of her pain, he felt it the same way Jesus must have felt when Mary wept at his feet because her beloved brother, Lazarus had died.
Something in his beloved Sharla had died, too. How could I have been so blind?
Disturbed by the revelation, Mark struggled to resume his train of thought. “Where were we?”
“Romans fifteen,” they mumbled.
“Y’all give the Lord a hand praise,” he stalled as the church responded obediently. He quickly scanned the chapter again, trying to find his place. God, help me.
“Amen, let’s read verse thirteen,” he decided. “‘Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.’”
They mumbled in agreement, as though these words alone weren’t enough to rejoice about. The very idea of God filling His people with hope and joy and peace was completely amazing to Mark once he really started thinking about it. “Did you hear what I said, church?”
A few, “Amens,” squeaked through the silence as roughly four hundred people sat waiting for him to say something extremely interesting.
He tried again. “Don’t you see? Christ has given us His joy for our pain, His joy for our sufferings, His joy for our lives. He gave us all of Himself on the cross. So you see, we’re not waiting for a blessing. Jesus is the greatest blessing we could ever receive.”
“Make it plain,” from a man to his left.
“Bring it home, Pastor,” from a familiar voice behind him, Reverend Jackson.
Make it plain? Bring it home? The comments, which were probably meant to encourage him, actually ticked Mark off. If they didn’t want to hear about Jesus, what did they want to hear?
Mark decided he’d conduct a little private experiment. He grabbed the microphone from its stand, which was Robert’s cue to start backing him up on the organ. “You see, church, Jesus died on the cross to set us free.”
“Mmmm hmmm,” they agreed.
“Free from sin and shame,” he continued.
“Yes.”
“And now that we’re free…”
Robert hit the keys once.
“We can be all that he called us to be.”
A few people in the audience stood to their feet. “Preach, Pastor.”
“I don’t know what kind of problems you had. I don’t know what your Daddy told you, what your Auntie prophesied over you, what kind of notes your teachers wrote in your little manila folder, but I’m here to tell you—you are somebody!”
Several of the deacons got up, crossing their arms and shaking their sanctified heads.
“I don’t care if you rode the long bus or the short bus…if you had to walk to school with holes in your shoes ‘cause there was no bus…it does not matter where you come from, what matters is where you’re going!”
They were with him now! Clapping, standing, waving their hands and cheering him on.
“All you got to do is believe,” Mark roared.
“Yes!”
“Believe!” he roared again.
They echoed, “Believe!”
“Believe that you can be anything you want to be! You can have anything you want to have! Nothing is too good for you!”
�
��Yes!”
“And what do we as saints of the Most High believe in?” Mark thrust the bulb of his microphone toward the crowd and then read as many lips as possible. Of the six or so he was able to see, none of them mouthed the same thing.
“I say what do we believe in?” He repeated the question and tried again to get a handle on their responses. This time, the word ‘yourself’ could be clearly heard.
Though Mark couldn’t possibly have read everyone’s lips or heard everyone’s response, he was one hundred percent certain that none in the sampling of responses he had heard came near God or Christ.
“Sit down,” Mark said, fanning a hand for them to take their seats.
Robert mistook this as a signal to rile them up on the organ again. He took off with a fast beat and led the church on a three-minute praise party. Out of respect for the fact that God is indeed worthy, Mark didn’t stop them.
He stood there and watched as God supernaturally lifted the veil from the faces of some of the most dedicated members of New Vision. They jumped, they hollered, they yelled out—but for many, it wasn’t praise. It was pain.
My God.
He’d seen that same scene play out hundreds, maybe thousands of times, but that time, Mark’s eyes and ears perceived the massive uproar differently. The people were desperately waiting for a blessing, eagerly waiting to receive the carrot-on-a-stick breakthrough that would bring them the joy and peace he had just tried to convince them they already had in Christ. If only they believed.
In those moments, Mark realized that in obedience to preaching the gospel, God had shewn him New Vision in a new light. The question at that point was what God wanted Mark to do about it.
Chapter 8
Sharla used to enjoy the monthly First Ladies' Fellowship founded by Lady Candace Gibson of The Way Church. Candace freely welcomed every woman whose husband was in ministry— whether he was actually a pastor or not. When Mark had opened New Vision six years earlier, that group of women had been Sharla’s life preserver.
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