Choosing Life Part 1
Sunday Morning Worship Service
Speaker: Bishop Claude R. Alexander, Jr.
Title: Choosing Life Part 1
Scripture: Psalm 55 NLT
Of the 49,000+ suicides committed in the US, 80% of those are male.
The age adjusted rate of suicide among non-hispanic black males is 14.6% for every 100,000 people.
Age 15-24, suicide is the second leading cause.
Among the key factors cited are:
systemic racism and minority stress
childhood adversity and trauma
mental illness and substance abuse
access to lethal means/firearms
economic hardship and community conditions
lack of culturally competent mental health care
isolation and lack of support
exposure to violence and incarceration
disrupted family ties
How can you want and choose to live when you feel like a shrinking dot and everything around you is growing larger and larger and weighing heavier and heavier?
When God is everything, you’re able to see God in everything.
The call to maturity in God is moving beyond seeing God as a means to everything to seeing God as being everything.
Psalm 139: 1-12
'You have searched me, Lord , and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord , know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. '
Choosing life when you’re overwhelmed requires you to get real with yourself
Get real with God about everything
Get real before others
Getting real is the first step to getting free.
Look for God to be real in everything and for everything.
When you make God everything and see God in everything and get real with Him about everything, you can trust Him to answer you for everything.
Get rid of the weight.
Church Website: https://theparkministries.org
The Park Church exists to extend the Love, the Life, and the Lordship of Jesus Christ to every person, in every way, in every place, and at every time that the opportunity is given.