Dr. Winfrey is a Hip Hop scholar, and holds a doctorate degree in Clinical Psychology. She has a ” have a lifelong relationship with the Hip Hop culture” She grew up in a  racially mixed town outside of Louisville, Kentucky and “received messages from all sides that rap was BAD. This always hurt me, because I loved the culture so much, and I wanted the rest of America to recognize the genius of it. I made a vow early on in my high school career, to speak out about the positive aspects of rap music, which I did in the classroom, and at the church I grew up in, Gilt Edge Baptist Church. ”

H.Y.P.E. was born out of her lifelong love of Hip Hop, and desire to uplift Black youth. “It has been an honor and a blessing to talk to professionals about H.Y.P.E., and even more so to work with youth using the H.Y.P.E. curriculum. The overwhelmingly positive feedback I have received has been so encouraging, and it is my ultimate goal that H.Y.P.E. will be implemented everywhere there are Black youth whose voices need to be heard. ”

For more on Dr. Dia  visit www.letsgethype.com!!

Spiritco1.com, the ultimate in Christian internet radio, announces the addition of the Ask Sister Faithful Christian advice column to their line-up.  The primary outreach vehicle for Sister Faithful Ministries, Ask Sister Faithful is touted as a Dear Abbey for Christians.  As a venue for people to ask questions about the issues impacting their daily lives Christian life, Ask Sister Faithful reaches those who appreciate practical biblically based solutions to today’s tough problems.  Dispensing advice with a distinct gospel flavor, Sister Faithful brings a special brand of Christ-centered biblically sound guidance to the internet.

Through the vehicle of Sister Faithful Ministries, founder Minister Andrea White, uses the practical application of scripture to address the complex issues of modern living.  As a columnist, preacher, and motivational speaker Andrea is able to share the message of faith at conferences, workshops, churches, and seminars.  Andrea delivers a timely and relevant message to a people hungry for an encounter with the Lord and seeking answers to their personal dilemmas.

As a member of the American Association of Christian Counselors, Andrea serves as an advocate for professional, biblically based counseling services for individuals and families in need.  Through her writing and speaking Andrea strives to help the people of God find emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual balance. Everyone can benefit from her inspirational, faith-driven messages.

Here’s a brief introduction to Sister Faithful:

Dear Sister Faithful:

I’m attracted to my brother-in-law. I know its wrong to covet my sister’s husband, but I can’t deny my feelings.  I love my sister and don’t want to hurt her. What should I do?

Covetous Attraction

Dear Covetous:

Temptation is something we all deal with and must learn how to manage.  The good news is that God will give us the help we need!  Submitting to God, releasing your will to His, can open the pathway for Him to empower you to resist the ploys of the enemy. In the interim, avoid being alone with your brother-in-law.  If your feelings towards him continue or deepen, recognize that you may have to tell your sister. The positive side of confessing your feelings to your sister is that the enemy will be rendered powerless over you. The accuser has no power over truth.

If you do talk with your sister, start the conversation with prayer (you will definitely need the blood of Jesus to cover the conversation)! Your sister probably won’t like hearing that you are into her man, but she would like it even less if she came home one day to find you and her husband in bed doing the adult version of the stanky leg!

To hear the Ask Sister Faithful column, visit Spiritco.com starting on Tuesday, March 9, 2010.

Due to the overwhelming response to my article, “The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Twitter Success,” I knew I had to follow it up with something big. So, I put together a 20 page e-book to help beginners, advanced users, and experts alike in maximizing Twitter for their business. So, today, without further adieu, I present to you, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Twitter Success E book!

In it you’ll learn:

* Learn what Twitter is
* Why it’s Popular
* How to Find Followers
* How it Works
* Tools to Help You Do Your Best Tweeting
* My Secret Weapon to Marketing on Twitter
* Tips on Growing Your Network
* The Secret to Sales Success on Twitter
* How I got over 700 visits to my blog from Twitter Alone
* And More!

No scams, no gimmicks, nothing to sign-up for . . . it’s absolutely FREE!

So, what are you waiting for? Download it today!

http://www.rodkirby.com/archives/2546

to your success,

Rod
–
Rodricus Kirby

Author, Success Coach, and Consultant

Editor-in-Chief | The Success Center

The Success Center – http://www.rodkirby.com
Twitter – http://twitter.com/rodkirby
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/rodricus.kirby
Linkedin – http://www.linkedin.com/in/rodkirby

Anitra is mama to two sweethearts, and has been married for 15 years. She has a Master’s Degree in Elementary Education, a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology, and has completed courses at Masters International School of Divinity. Anitra combines her passions for writing, teaching and encouraging women, while blogging at If Mama Ain’t… (because if mama ain’t right, things can go terribly wrong) and The MamaZone (where you’ll find great T.I.D.B.I.T.S to make your mama-life easier).  She has participated in various capacities of ministry for the last 17 years and has recently written If Mama Ain’t Planning 2010, a printable devotional planner.

Who’s the bigger success Tiger Woods or Jack Nicholas?  Lebron James or Michael Jordan?  Who is better the Patriots or the Steelers?

All of these questions are completely subjective.  Depending on how you choose to evaluate them will determine which one you pick.  No one had ever seen anyone do the things that Michael Jordan did, no one has ever seen a talent like Lebron do the things that Michael did at such an early age.  It’s hard to compare.  Yet, we do it every day.  And the system we use to measure these “greats” is really the only key that determines who is “better”.

I’m afraid that the same thing happens in the American church.  We’ve defined success by using a filter of who has the biggest church or the prettiest building.  Who has the nicest car or gives the most money?  All of these are factors we use to determine if people are a success and if a church is a success.  This has created some major problems in our church structures and subsequently in the lives of the people who attend our church.  Now that being said, I do think we need a measurement system.  Some churches are don’t quite measure up, others are just phenomenal.  I’m all for measuring and measurements, however, the question is how do we measure the success of the church?

Discovering Purpose
To find answers on how to measure success we need to discover what the purpose of a thing is.  If you don’t understand the rules of basketball, it’s hard to tell how good a player Lebron is.  The same goes for the Body of Christ.

So let’s take a quick look at the New Testament Church.  Let’s back all the way up to Jesus.  Jesus had a 3-year ministry.  He lived to be about 33 years old, but was only in ministry for 3 years.  During those 3 years, he had one focus; train the disciples.  He spent every waking moment, and quite a few sleeping moments, with His group of revolutionaries.  He didn’t come to heal everyone; he didn’t come to turn the world upside down.  He didn’t come to make all the blind to see or all the lame to walk.  Instead, he came to train 12 men.  Everything he did for 3 years revolved around training His 12 apostles.

Yet today in the church, we look to see how many people we bring through the doors, how much money we have, or even sometimes how many people are being born again and we interpret that as success.  Those things are GREAT!  But they don’t automatically mean you are a success in what God has called YOU to do.  Think about it this way, if a man is leading a giant church with thousands of people, but God actually called him to a remote village in Africa, he may look like he has success, but his success isn’t true success.

That’s the “distant” version, yet how many of us look at our lives and compare the success of what we are doing based on society’s “standards” of success and not God’s standards of success.  I want a big church, I want a church building that reflects the awesomeness of God, and I want to be considered effective by my culture, but none of those things means that I am a success in God.  I have to measure what God has called me to do against the results that I am getting.  If He sent me to the twelve and I spend all my time trying to take care for the 5,000 then am I really a success or am I just spinning my wheels trying to be like everyone else.  Let me say it again, I want churches to be big, I want churches to get people born again, I want to see churches that influence their territory, however I don’t want them to measure success by those things, but to measure their success against what God has called them to do.

Let’s stop trying to be Michael Jordan and just be Lebron.  Let the pundits and professors analyze and criticize… but you be you in Christ.  Define success as God has defined it for you!

DAVID COKER is a 1985 Rhema Bible College graduate, the founding apostle of Gateway Believers Fellowship in Carnesville, Ga. He is the founder of Breakthrough Apostolic Ministries Network (B.A.M.) He can be reached at www.gatewaybelievers.com.

As I start this inspiration, I am not sure if this is about going after your dreams, or lost dreams. Here we are already in March, time flies. All those ideas we had about a New Year and a new decade seem like a long time ago. We are back in our routines and instead of being enthusiastic about today, we are looking forward to better weather. We are no longer focused on losing weight, or quieting smoking or the other 100 promises we made to ourselves.

What happened to all great ideas we had about change?

What happened to our dreams?

As we were getting ready to enter this New Year it didn’t matter if we declared resolutions or not, we still dreamed. We have had dreams our entire life about a better life. We have seen ourselves healthier, wealthier and happier. We traveled, loved and were loved while we had adventures in life. In our dreams, our bodies were in amazing shape and full of energy. We created success at work and had wealth. Dreams…

Go to a mirror and take a good look at yourself. What have you done differently in these last two months? The New Year began, January and February are history, and what is different in your life today? Did you follow through on any of your resolutions? Are you closer to your dreams?

I hear people consistently talk about the things they want to accomplish in their lives. We all want to lose weight, get in shape, make and save more money, get ahead, quit smoking and more….or do we?

Here is the dirty little secret about these broken promises: we don’t really want to keep them. The real reason we don’t accomplish our goals is because we don’t do the work. We want things to simply “happen” for us just like in our dreams. Except that life doesn’t work that way. There are no magic solutions, but dreams do come true.

Yes, dreams do come true. The reason why we don’t do the work to make our dreams come true is because we don’t dream the right way. We only dream a part of the story and that part is always the end.

Imagine you have a book in your hand. By the end of the book the character will have gotten through the obstacles and be in the place we want to see the character wind up in; however, we start at the beginning. We start at the beginning because we want to go through the struggle with the character. It is how the character deals with the journey that is interesting to us.

It is the struggle and the work that is always inspiring to us. We have shows on TV where people lose weight week by week. We don’t want to skip all the weeks of work to just see them at a lesser weight with pictures of what they were before. We want to see them go through the challenge and adversities, it is their work that captures our attention.

There are shows where a love interest is picked. There again, we are not interested in watching a show of who they picked without the rest. We want to see the weeks go by and the good and bad connections, the disappointments, the pain and the joy. We want to see every part of the story.

A person’s wealth or success is not very interesting by itself. The story becomes interesting when you hear that the person came from a tough situation and overcame it. Bill Gates and Steven Jobs not graduating college and how they made it and their struggles captures our imaginations. The founders of Google working out of a garage and stories of this nature are what we want to hear.

Henry Ford and his success is what we read about, not the generations after who followed, because how he created the success is more interesting to us than how someone continues it on. We don’t walk in at the end of a movie, we want to see it all. Imagine watching Rocky standing up at the end of the fight and not all he went through to get there, would that be interesting to you?

However, when we dream for ourselves we dream ourselves in great shape, in love, with money….instantly. When it requires struggle, challenges, going through obstacles and hard work, we get disillusioned. We get disillusioned because we just dreamed the end story for ourselves and get frustrated when it doesn’t happen like that.

Your character has a complete story to live, don’t rob your character of the journey. Start living your dreams today and embrace the complete story. Just like we are not interested in end stories alone, we also would not want to watch the beginning of a story over and over. That is how we live our lives stuck at the beginning repeating it over and over.

Start dreaming in complete stories and start living your dreams today. As you go through your journey, all the parts are part of your dream, not just the end of the story. When you dream in complete stories you are living your dream every day and you are working towards creating the life changes you want. It is the struggles, how you get through the obstacles and the work that makes your life interesting. It is the journey and your willingness to move forward towards creating change that determines the quality of your life and your character. Start living your dreams today.

However, I have great news for you. If you decide to make positive changes in your life, you can! I have even better news, change can be very simple.

The first is this: make a commitment to put the effort into getting what you want. New Years’ is not the only time you can make a resolution. Resolving to make a change is something you can do at any moment, so long as it is done with a commitment with real intention and determination.

Do not let another two months slip by! Two actions and two months from now you will be on your way to a new place in life.

Post written by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits

Consider what you give your attention to each day. It’s a precious resource, & determines the shape of your life.

This seemed to strike a chord with many people, who I think are feeling overwhelmed these days. Our attention is being pulled in too many directions, leaving us feeling overloaded, distracted, chaotic, spread thinly, without focus.

There are a million blogs, people, services, media, competing for our attention. Our attention is limited, and valuable, making it one of the most precious resources we have.

The world wants that attention. Only you can decide where it goes.

And it does determine the shape of your life: what you pay attention to becomes your reality. If you watch and read the news all the time, you will become obsessed with the latest crises. If you watch and read about celebrities, your life will revolve around them. If you socialize on social networks all day long, this will become your world.

If instead, you choose to give your attention to work you’re passionate about, that you feel is important, that will change your life and the world in some small way … this will become your life.

If you choose to give your attention to your friends, family and other loved ones — really give your attention to them instead of only half-heartedly while also checking text messages and emails and other updates — your life will be rich in many ways.

And so I urge you to reclaim your attention.

Here’s how:

1. Limit your friends. Not real-life friends, but social network and blogging and forum friends. Not that these can’t be good relationships, but having too many makes them meaningless. And each friend will take up a little bit of your attention — when you read their updates, click on their links, reply to their messages, look at their photos, and so on. The more you have, the more attention they’ll require. Limit them to just the essential.
2. Limit your feeds. Blog subscriptions, newsletters, other updates and news subscriptions and so on. Limit them to a handful of essentials, and let the rest go. The more you have, the more attention they require.
3. Limit your communication time. Going into your email inbox? Just give yourself 10 minutes to read, reply, delete, and get out. Going to do Twitter? Give yourself 5 minutes. Seriously, set up a timer. Don’t let these things take up all your attention.
4. Give up on news. It’s a never-ending cycle. And if you’ve paid attention to the news as long as I have (I’m a former journalist), you know it’s all the same, year after year. Unless your job depends on it, the news is usually a waste of your attention. Let go of the need to stay updated. Even if your job does depend on it, keep it limited.
5. Be brief. Write brief emails, tweets, updates, blog posts. With some exceptions, of course. But make brief your de facto. Read more.
6. Give your attention to the important. This is the crucial part: choose what you give your attention to, and do this choosing carefully. What is important to you? Writing? Photography? Design? Coding? Creating a new business that helps others? Your kids? Figure this out, and give this the majority of your attention.
7. Become conscious of your distractions. Once you’ve decided to focus your attention on the important, become more aware of distractions as they come up. Make note of them, and as you get the urge to be distracted, learn to pause, breathe, and return to the important.
8. Surround yourself with the positive. If you want your life to be positive, let the positive have your attention. This applies to blogs, people, projects, and more.

Yesterday I visited a wellness center in an effort to stimulate my recovery from a nasty chest cold. Upon filling out the admission form, under occupation I wrote, BEING ME. I had never thought of it before and right away began to feel better.

Since hitting the sheets on Monday night with a painful cough – likely brought on from surfing in a broth of viruses after a storm – I spent a lot of time in bed, pondering life, grateful for the high’s and with whom I’ve shared them. Its in these times of weakness I wish I could gather a posse of ex-girlfriends to surround my bed and shower me with wellness – assuming their minds aren’t currently consumed with wishes of my unfortunate death. Of all the love I’ve known, I’m present to how just a hint of any of it can brighten my day. And so it does.

No matter when we crossed paths, your love is still very alive in me. Whether you were my babysitter, my school teacher, my couple’s skate partner, my prom date, my medicine woman, my co-collaborator, my cook, my thief, my lover, or my wife – I get that you are an incarnation of the one and only divine mother – the ultimate lover – and in knowing that I am in constant supply.

And while this current revolution IS indeed feminine, I am not excluding the men. For every playground runt, soccer captain, or high school knucklehead that gave me a hard time, there was the cry “I want love” and we shared it. Every man declares and achieves his own masculinity it seems, but not without mentoring and measuring up with other men to get there. We look out for each other – All sons of the same mother – and I am your brother.

I am but a leaf on the outer branches of a much larger organism, connected by an even larger root system cleverly expanding under ground. Because the roots are hidden, we are fooled into thinking we are separate. But the fact that there is a life force that breathes in and out of us all – a force that carries music, ideas, and love in and out of our hearts and minds – I am certain I am you and you I. Therefore, I ask you think in terms of wellness today for I’d much prefer to be singing. To heal me is to heal you, too.

And while the metaphysics freak me – it is possible that the best thing to come from being under the weather this week is that I now know how to identify my favorite film genre.

Thanks to NetFlix there is home for 80’s and 90’s era SciFi/Inspirational films to flourish. Movies like Cocoon, Batteries Not Included, Explorers, Phenomenon, K-PAX, A-I, Wall-E, and ET all make my heart sing as has been proven this week in bed with my cats. Perhaps it’s because the use of other worldly creatures and the escapism of space-based-cinema-story helps us to see more clearly and overcome our limiting human conditions. This is perhaps the case. But I also really like puppets.

-Devlyn Steele

A tradition in my family I grew up with is taking walks. We took walks after meals, we took walks on weekends, we took walks or hikes traveling. Taking walks has many positive effects of which one is, you never know what you might discover.

I remember one spring weekend day where after a big lunch we set out for a walk in Central Park. I was 8 years old and always excited about going on our walks. We never had plans or a destination. It wasn’t about going to do anything other than a walk. As children we didn’t need to bring our ipods, cell phones, or video games, the walk was enough entertainment. Ok, we didn’t have those things then, but all the same, I am sure my parents would not have allowed us to bring those on our walks.

So we set out from our house, parents, kids and faithful dog. Our dog was a beautiful German Shepherd who was very loving and playful, but also very protective of the family members.  She wouldn’t like it if while we were walking that too much space separated us. Like a sheep dog, she would try and nudge us all closer together so she could keep an eye on all of us.

Approaching the park was exciting as you could see lots of people coming and going from the exits. As you entered, you felt as though you left the city and emerged into a new world.  Walking in the park on the weekends was fun, as they shut the park drives from car traffic allowing pedestrians to walk freely. On warm sunny weekend days people were all over enjoying the park with many different types of activities, Frisbee, biking, sitting, reading and more.

As we walked, you would hear different types of music and see an endless variety of people. Although we had taken this walk many times, it always looked different and you would always see new things. It bonded us as a family as we shared adventures. On this particular day, we would discover that there was a mountain lion in Central Park, who knew?

We were walking along the road through the park in the east 70’s when all of a sudden our dog who always stayed behind keeping on eye on us took the lead position. She then crouched down in attack mode shoulders high and head low taking very slow steps forward. I thought that there was another dog coming and that she was getting ready to fight as she start to growl in a low hum. We couldn’t see another dog or anything else and we were very confused as to what got her so upset when she lunged forward parking and growling at something we had never noticed before, a statue of a mountain lion in an attack position on the rocks above.

My father then had to pull her hard as we laughed because she was not buying that it was a statue, it was very funny. The statue is called “Still Hunt” by Edward Kemeys. Some say it is a panther, others say it is a mountain lion, which in reality are two different names for the same species. It is located on East 76^th street and ominous in a black-bronze configuration on the rocks  peering over ready to attack.

Although we had walked by there many times, if it were not for our dog, we might not have ever noticed it. Those walks filled us with adventures and taught all of us kids to be active, exercise and be curious about the world. So many of our walks are memories I carry forever and a tradition we all continue in our own lives. Get active in your life, we seem to think that exercise is about going to the gym or laboring, when a walk can do the trick. Walks will get you out of the house, and allow your brain to breath. Walks will help with depression, temper, anxiety and release stress.

We often look for big answers when simple things can be just what the doctor ordered. Walks are truly amazing. Next time you can’t think of what to do, get out and take a walk. Walking with family, friends, or alone, you are getting exercise, exploring, and when with others, bonding, while doing you a world of good. You also never know what you might discover. Who knows, there might be a mountain lion waiting for you.

Dear Sister Faithful:

My family was recently involved in a car crash that left my younger sister paralyzed from the waist down.  She has recovered well, but doctors do not think she will ever regain the use of her lower limbs.  We are all still in shock about the accident and trying to assimilate what happened.  My problem is that I was the one driving the day of the accident.  I keep reliving it and wishing I could have done something differently.  Every time I look at my vibrant, young sister trying to struggle with her wheelchair the guilt just eats me up.  I have started to avoid visiting my parents because I don’t want to deal with my sister’s loss and my responsibility for it. I have prayed about this but I just can’t seem to forgive myself.  What should I do?

Guilt-Ridden

Dear Guilt-Ridden:

Sometimes the hardest person for us to forgive is ourselves.  You must move to a place where you can let go of the guilt before it consumes you and seriously impacts your familial relationships.  Since what happened was obviously an accident, there is nothing to be gained from blaming yourself.  You did nothing intentionally to cause the accident to happen.  Meditate on this truth, you are already forgiven.  God knows your heart (Proverbs 21:2; Luke 16:15), and He understands your motives.  He knows that you did not deliberately do anything to hurt your sister. 

Make sure that your family, including your sister, is aware that you love them and are truly saddened by what happened.  Stress that it was an accident and that you never expected that it would happen.  Having this discussion will help you find out how your family feels about the accident and confirm what they already know, that this was something that you had no control over but feel strongly about.

If you continue to be burdened by guilt, don’t keep it bottled up inside.  Talk to someone about it.  Whether you talk to your pastor or a counselor, make sure that you are addressing your feelings.  Getting over the after-effects of a major accident takes time.  Your sister was not the only one wounded that day. Allow yourself time to heal.

When you get to a more emotionally comfortable place, focus on helping others.  If you feel passionate about people with physical challenges, then maybe you could do some volunteer work in an area that would help them in some way.  Your sister and people who have similar issues need people willing to advocate on their behalf.  Learning about and fighting for the rights of those with physical disabilities (even in small ways) can help you feel as if you are contributing to making things better for others.

Meditative Scriptures: Psalm 86; Romans 8:1; Revelation 21:4

Do you have a question that you would like Sister Faithful to answer online?  Email your questions to ask@sisterfaithful.com.  To submit your question anonymously, visit www.sisterfaithful.com.