ChosenFast.com

Learning the science behind addiction frees us from judging, condemning and shaming the alcoholics and addicts in our lives.

Trusting the unchanging Word of God, living daily by the power of His Holy Spirit and keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ comforts us, strengthens us and allows us to detach with love and live in peace even in the midst of heartbreak and chaos in our lives.

Read more on Science + Faith: Learning to live in peace in the midst of addiction…

When I invite friends over for dinner, I neither begin nor end the meal with a sermon, testimony, song or an invitation to “get saved.” Usually, someone prays and thanks God for the food. But a meal with friends is a meal with friends, not a religious service.

Read more on Tonight’s menu: Spaghetti, salad & salvation…

Homeless friend: “If we was perfect, Jesus wouldn’t be here in the first place.” W/Audrie, being encouraged in faith by one who lives by it.

CARA MICHELE FORREST

I’m a Jesus follower, proud momma of three and advocate for the homeless.

I do street outreach to the homeless with the StreetWatch team. We help homeless and hungry people get what they need. (Why do I do it? Read this…)

Read more on Bio…

Thank you, Lord, for a consistently generous donor who is helping StreetWatch do more to help the homeless! Bless him for his faithfulness!

I wrote about the guys on the block (and more) for the News & Record: “When there’s nowhere to go,” by Michele Forrest; published Sunday, Nov. 1, 2009.  It’s online here, and reposted below:

On the block. Image credit: Michele Forrest / ChosenFast.com

My ministry partner, Audrie Keen, and I provide a street outreach to the homeless in Greensboro, and we’ve made a lot of friends along the way. We eat together, go to church together and have cookouts. Sometimes our homeless friends stay with us. We visit formerly homeless friends in their homes.

When we say “homeless friends,” we really mean friends.

Two Friday mornings ago, we visited “The Block” at Lee and South Eugene streets. It had been 11 days since my last visit, when we’d talked about the artistic bench installed, then removed, from along the new stretch of the Downtown Greenway in that area. Neighbors said the bench attracted drug addicts and prostitutes.

The guys on The Block dismissed that notion. One said: “The problem is not as serious as they say it is on the news. And the bench has nothing to do with it.”

Read more on When there’s nowhere to go…

WHY CARE?

“Why do you do what you do?”

I follow Jesus, and He says to care for the poor, homeless and hungry.

It’s not a suggestion.

He says that when we care for “the least of these,” we’re caring for Him. I tell people, “You want to see Jesus? Go to the street. You’ll find Him there. I did.”

Read more on Why do I care?…

From Jon Acuff:

Booty, God, Booty.

The archives don’t go back far enough, but I think that this is exactly the kind of idea that Billy Graham launched his ministry with when he was coming up. It makes sense too because Christians really like “Booty, God, Booty.”

Read more on Booty, God, Booty…

My ministry partner took this photo at the entrance to the Greenway, near the block. Image credit: Audrie Keen

Two days ago, I wrote about “the block” at Lee and Eugene Streets being empty. The block is a long-time gathering spot where folks, many of them homeless, are known to loiter and drink. A friend, who catches a bus just down the sidewalk, had contacted me to tell me that police had cleared everybody out.

Read more on Did it take a Greenway to clear the block?…

image credit: Bettina

According to tradition, this is how an Eskimo hunter kills a wolf.

First, the Eskimo coats his knife blade with animal blood and allows it to freeze. He then adds layer after layer of blood until the blade is completely concealed by the frozen blood.

Read more on Licking the knife…

Yesterday, I got a call about a homeless man in Greensboro who was sleeping in a barn. There was no room at the shelters for him. And the owner of the barn wanted him gone. I had no answers for the caller. I prayed for God to make a way — because He is the way.

Read more on A barn and a stable and no place to sleep…

24-7 Greensboro: A week of non-stop creative prayer in and for the city of Greensboro.

November 1st-8th, 2009  at 853 S. Elm Street (Spring Garden Community Church).

» Much more at the 24-7 Greensboro blog.

Read more on 24-7 Greensboro…