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When most people think of bikers, they think of rough looking, scruffy, hell raising men and women dressed in leather clad. These bikers can be intimidating to look at and gangs like the Hell’s Angels and Mongrels have had their stories made into countless TV shows and movies. While this grizzly type of a biker is a stereotype, there is a growing segment of the biker population who may still look scruffy and wear the leather, but these men and women are different, they are Christians.

Many of these bikers have always been Christian, others became Christian after years of partying had landed them in rehab where they found their higher power, and others became Christians in prison as a result of prison ministry.

Since bikers come from a culture that is territorial, loyal, and mainly patriotic and known for their all night parties, many bikers feel embarrassed at many mainstream churches because they feel they don’t fit in and may be the subject of ridicule. As a result of this, there are biker friendly Churches and Ministries popping up around the world.

Today, there are Christian biker organizations with chapters that cover the globe. One of the larger organizations is the Christian Motorcyclists Association or CMA. The CMA’s main purpose is as an outreach ministry, but not exclusively to the motorcycling community. The CMA’s noble mission is “To inspire their leaders and members to be the most organized, advanced, equipped, financially stable organization, full of integrity in the motorcycling industry and the Kingdom of God”.

CMA has partnered with three other ministries which are the Jesus Film Project, Missionary Ventures, and Open Doors to spread God”s word across the world. In 2006 alone, CMA donated $681,044.00 to each of these three ministries from money raised at their Run for the Son fundraiser.

Another big Christian biker association is the Christian Biker Missionaries or CBM. CBM is a non-profit organization based out of one of the motorcycle capitols, Daytona Beach. Their missions is “To Spread the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the biker community by recruiting, placing, and supporting biker missionaries in the field to bring hope to the highways.”

Christian bikers are international. An international association is the International Christian Bikers Association, or ICBA. The ICBA organizes special biker rallies and runs and are also active in prison outreach ministry.

There are also websites dedicated to serving Christian bikers. Christian Bikers Online is a site dedicated to helping Christian bikers to stay in touch while online. They like to think of their site at a cyber club house. At their site you will find a forum, gallery, dating system and resources for Christian rallies and rides.

There is no doubt, Christian bikers are a growing movement. They can be found in your local church, on the road, at rallies and around the world. They have a noble purpose to save the souls of their fellow bikers.

So next time you see grizzly leather clad biker, don”t be too quick to judge. That biker may just be your brother in the Lord.

The author is publisher of the Online Christian Shopper Christian biker clothing and jewelry Web portal.

Approximately two thirds of physical illness can be traced to a psychological cause. Millions of Americans, addicted to antidepressants and other drugs, are seeking relief.

The problem is that relief never comes. Drugs only treat the symptoms. They aren’t the cure. They don’t provide healing.

Psychological causes often include a lack of forgiveness or refusing to grieve a loss. By holding onto past hurts, we’re only putting ourselves in bondage.

Forgiveness and grief are never easy. I should know; I carried around unnecessary baggage for years. The problem is when we refuse to forgive, we are creating baggage in our lives, and we will carry this baggage as long as we refuse to let go of it.

This “baggage” can become so burdensome we miss out on what’s really important in life. It leads to anger and resentment, and this anger and resentment poisons our lives, affects our health, and keeps us from having everything we were meant to have in life.

Nelson Mandela once said, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies”.

Holding onto unnecessary anger, resentment, and hatred only leads to more pain, more baggage, and no opportunity to live a life of meaning and purpose.

Don’t believe me? Take a good look at the Middle East.

There is a solution though. By learning to grieve our pasts, and then forgivine, we can break our bonds and find the happy, meaningful, and abundant life we all deserve.

The first step is to understand grief.

Regardless of the loss you’ve suffered, whether it’s a relationship, a job, a family member, or anything else, you need to grieve. Grief helps you accept your loss. By accepting your loss, you can let go of the pain.

Often your loss will be associated with other people, and often your loss is the result of hurt inflicted on you by another person. Sometimes we are responsible for the hurt and allowed it to happen; other times, in the case of a crime, it’s simply something we have no control over. Without forgiveness, we can never be free, and that’s the next step.

Once you understand the grief process, it’s time to move through the stages. By moving through the stages of grief, then you can begin to heal.

When two of my grandchildren died in the course of five weeks, I was angry at God, at the world, at all the unappreciative parents who got to keep their children, at all the bad people who seemed to have it easy. After all, I’m a good person. My family is full of good people. My daughters are wonderful people and shouldn’t have had to suffer such a terrible tragedy.

The Bible says it rains on the just and unjust. Bad things happen to good people. That’s life. Whatever God’s purpose in the whole situtation, He wasn’t being arbitrary. He wasn’t picking on me or my family. He has a reason. Like Job, I just didn’t know what it was. I will probably never know. I can live with that now.

I don’t know why this happened. It doesn’t matter now. What matters is what I chose to do with the situation. I chose to grieve. I chose to let go. I chose to believe that for whatever reason what happened could be turned for good.

What I thought wasn’t rational. I know that. Grief does strange things to people, and any time we experience any kind of major change, we have a grieving process to go through. I grieved. I made peace.

The process isn’t over after grieving.

The next step is to understand what forgiveness is and isn’t, and why it’s so crucial that we do it.

Forgiveness isn’t about saying the other person is right or what the person did is OK. It isn’t. Forgiveness is about recognizing the other person’s wrong and deciding to let go of this wrong so you can move on with your life.

I forgave the one person I had never forgiven before: ME.

I finally woke up one day and realized the reason I couldn’t forgive was I blamed myself for what happened to my daughters. Because I was powerless over their choices, I thought maybe there was something I didn’t teach them, or something I should have done to help them avoid the situation altogether.

That’s the hardest part about forgiveness: wondering what we did to make the situation happen in the first place.

It’s always easier to forgive others than to forgive ourselves. Being perfect is tough. Actually, it’s impossible.

Learning to love ourselves as we are is the first step in learning to love others. Jesus told us to love our neighbor AS ourselves. By loving others, then we can love God. By loving, we can learn to forgive. By forgiving, we can leave the wreckage of the past behind and step forward into the life of our dreams.

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Isn’t learning that a woman is pregnant with an unborn baby one of life’s most beautiful events? Pregnancy is a time when mom and dad share a marvelous task to bring their child into the world feeling appreciated and wanted. And this miracle starts even before conception begins.

Yes, before conception begins. Prior to the sperm cell and egg cell joining each other for a life long journey that commences in the mom’s womb. An infant’s right to life is born when parents start thinking about having a child.

A famous cellular biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton, Ph.D, wrote an evolutionary volume, “The Biology of Belief.” In his book, Dr. Lipton contends that the parents’ love and intention before “the twinkle danced in mom’s eye” affect the well being of an unborn infant.

This is how. Researchers discovered a link between a fetus’s health and the support well being, and mood of its parents. After conception, a fetus develops and grows. The degree to which the baby develops is related to the attitudes of the parents. Positive loving attitudes - positive infant growth. Fearful, unhappy attitudes - sickly child.

An unborn baby senses the feelings, thoughts, and actions of its mother. Since a baby’s father can affect the baby’s mother through his actions, feelings and thoughts, the dad also affects how a baby develops. Scientists have shown how a baby absorb steroids like cortisol from its mother, when mom experiences high levels of fear and anxiety.

When stressful times occur, the stress hormones in the mother’s bloodstream pass right through the unborn infant. This has a negative change upon the developing body of the baby. Italian researchers observed a fetus jump inside its mother, when an argument between parents used harsh, loud words.

Every human being grows and develops the same way. An umbilical cord in the mother’s uterus connects the baby to its mom like a lifeline. Oxygen, blood, nutrients, vitamins and everything needed to grow and be healthy flow to the baby through that cord. The umbilical cord consists of three strands - two arteries and a vein, surrounded by Wharton’s jelly. Second by second, every minute, day after day for nine months, the line line of the umbilical cord connects mom and baby with health and life.

A pro life way for moms and dads to bring emotional and spiritual health to their baby is through the three strands of faith, hope and love. These virtues are a lifeline for the unborn baby’s healthy development. The three strands of hope, love, and faith help parents relate to each other better.

Faith is the first strand of the spiritual life line. Mom and dad receive the gift of faith from God. Parents unwrap this gift when they believe and trust each other and that God is present to them and their unborn infant.

Dads and moms use the second strand — hope - when they persevere and endure the nine, long months of pregnancy. Parents envision and hope their child as healthy and growing up to contribute positively to life.

The third and most important strand is love. When the parents draw upon God’s love for them, they can love each other and pass their love to their child.

Pregnancy has its difficult moments: body pain, uncertainty, changes in moods and habits. Moms and dads can work through those times by being kind to each other, finding joy in the present moment, witnessing the miracle of new life forming within them and trusting that everything will turn out well.

Moms and dads deliver the three strands of virtue to their unborn baby through a spiritual umbilical cord. The right to life of the unborn infant is healthy in emotion, mind and body. The life line of three strands of faith, hope and love connect parents and child to God and each other.

Married for more than 24 years, Dave Pipitone advocates the use of encouragement, kindness and love in lasting and meaningful relationships. To learn more about how to care for an unborn baby’s welfare, visit www.my3strands.com.

Langston Hughes creates a past experience into a true to life drama of guilt, deception, and grief, in “Salvation.” He reveals the story of how he was forced into receiving Christ by his peers, relatives, and preacher. Helpless and alone, he struggles against overwhelming odds. After a long-winded sermon the children of the congregation are asked to come forward and accept Jesus.

Instead of moving forward, Langston waits for the Lord to come to him. When nothing happens, Langston goes forward anyway just to please his aunt and the church. In the end be is not only grief-stricken, but has Lost all belief in God.

Group pressure forced Langston into doing something that was totally against his good judgment. When Langston’s friend Westley went forward the pressure increased twofold. Not only was he exposed to the persuasion of the church, but he realized that if Westley did it, it might be admissable. A similar situation might be Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

When Adam saw that Eve had taken of the fruit and was unharmed, he too ate of the tree of knowledge. Westley certainly hadn’t been struck dead, so why not give in to save further trouble? If he didn’t get saved everyone would turn against him. In a sense the congregation became his God because they pushed him into going to the platform.

The author gains the respect of the reader by telling the story from his point of view and in his own voice. He tells the story truthfully as accurately as he can remember it.

The highly vivid descriptions of the church, the preacher, and his aunt, help keep the momentum of the story rolling. Langston provides the main character an audience and the reader a bit of human excitement. He recreates the true drama of facing an opposing force without any outside help.

Although Langston Hughes believed in the reality of Jesus, he was deceivingly forced into doing something completely against his will. He fooled everyone by making an insincere decision. His emotions and feelings come out in the end of the story. Langston could hear himself thinking during the ordeal and he knew that he was alone. His final decision was based on what was sufficient for the congregation, not himself.

“Salvation” is an awesome portrayal of what true salvation is all about. It is a heart decision, not just walking down an aisle. It was Keith Green, the Gospel Artist, who once said: “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian, anymore than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger.” Endquote!

It is my sincere desire that those who don’t know the Lord who read “Salvation” may understand what it really says in I John 1:9: If we confess with our mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in our heart that God raised him from the dead, we shall be saved.”

Notice, confession is from belief in the heart, not out of peer pressure or submission to what everyone else wants you to do. I sincerely believe “Salvation” by Langston Hughes makes those who have merely walked down an aisle, not because they wanted to find Jesus, think twice.

When one truly finds Christ, it’ll be from the heart, not from anything else…

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The records of Jesus’ prayers constitute a priceless document of one perfect being expressing himself to another.

Though Jesus must have been involved in prayer all the time, all we have in the Bible is six prayers of Jesus.

There are three kinds of prayers, and we know for sure that the mortal Jesus was involved personally in two of them. The three types of prayers were:

a. Personal prayers, offered by an individual in seclusion.

b. Public prayers, where one person acts as the voice of the group.

c. Set prayers, offered up only in connection with sacred ordinances, such as the ordinances of the temple.

Jesus taught us how to pray in public, and we know that prayer as “the Lords Prayer”. “Lead us not into temptation”, “Give us today our daily bread”, etc, are givaways that it is a public prayer.

There is not one single mention of first person in singular, showing that it is, in deed, a public prayer.

But we will not look at the public prayers of Jesus in this article. We shall look at the two privately uttered prayers that we have in writing.

We do have a couple of private prayers that was uttered in public, but we must consider them as teachings of the crowds, and testaments to the history of man, as much as personal prayers.

The two genuinely personal prayers that we have access to are his intercessory prayer, offered shortly before he entered into the Garden of Gethsemane and his heart-rending plea to his Father that the cup, if possible, would pass him by.

The intercessory prayer we appear to have in its fullness, but Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane must be but a fragment of the entire prayer (remember that there was time enough for the disciples to fall asleep).

Why do we have one prayer from A-Z, and only a fragment of the other prayer? In order to answer that question there is one thing we must realize.

Since Jesus was all alone when he offered up these two prayers, there was no-one present to record them for inclusion in our Scriptures. If no-one was present to record the prayers, how come we still have them today?

In order for us to have access to these two prayers of Jesus today, God must have revealed the content of them to someone who was worthy to view these holy moments, and who could be trusted to accurately record the occurrences.

No doubt, this trusted man was a prophet, seer and revelator. This prophet was obviously permitted to view and record the entire intercessory prayer of the Lord, and recorded it to our benefit.

The content of this prayer is doctrinally important, since it declares how the Father and the Son are one, and that every believer can become one in the exact same way.

There is no room for a dissection of the entire prayer in this article, but it can be found in John 17: 1-26.

Whether the prophet who was invited to view the personal prayers of the Master was permitted in his revelation to witness the entire suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane we know not, but it is clear that only a small portion of Jesus’ prayer was public domain;

“And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt”. (Mathew 26:39)

Perhaps the words of the suffering God were so poignant that we could not bare to hear them.

Perhaps such a moment is too sacred to be had among the children of men, who will not shun to make light of the most sacred of things.

Perhaps we should rejoice that the words of that pivotal moment never could become part of “The Life of Brian”.

Arnold Ahlstrom is a Scripture-Sleuth, which is why he is building the site http://www.jesus-explained.org. He completed his Masters research in Psychology at the University of Lund in Sweden. Figuring out the How’s and Why’s, and sharing it with others, makes him truly happy.
Read more about the prayers of Jesus at my website which is at http://www.jesus-explained.org/jesus-prayer.html

Evangelism has moved in the last 20 years from being a monologue (one-sided conversation) to a dialog (two-way conversation.) There are people all around us who are receptive to spiritual discussions and open genuine spiritual guidance. George Barna sites, “That 62% of American adults consider themselves to be not merely religious, but deeply spiritual.” This means that there is more than a 50-50 chance of getting into some type of spiritual conversation with people who travel in and out of your life. Learning to engage people in a meaningful, spiritual dialog is critical for a spiritual leader.

Here are four ideas for increasing the spiritual conversations in your life:

1) Make It a Priority

It is important for a leader to think strategically about their conversations throughout the week. If you don’t plan it or make room for it, the likelihood is that it is not going to get done. I agree with Brian McLaren’s statement, “We should count conversations rather than conversions, not because I don’t believe in conversions, but because I don’t think we’ll get many conversions if we keep emphasizing them.” The number of conversations you have is directly related to the number of conversions you will see happen over a year. In coaching church leaders we use the 3 by 5 rule. If leaders are going to be serious about connecting with people they need to uncover at least 5 new contacts a day, equaling about 35 a week, which will lead to 3 “sit-downs” for a meaningful conversation.

How many contacts does it take for you to get a meaningful sit-down with a person?

2) Pray for Opportunities

I remember praying one morning, “Lord, it has been a while time since I led someone to you. Open the doors and show me who I need to speak to today.” As soon as I finished praying that prayer a man walked over to me and said, “Doesn’t that book (my pocket Bible) get old after a while?” which I replied, “It gets better every time I read it. Would you like to read it?” He took the Bible and began reading it. This resulted in a number of great conversations that eventually led to him and his family to attend our church and embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior.

When is the last time you asked God to open new doors of opportunity for you?

3) Get out and into your community

All too often we are so isolated from the world in which you live. Look at your calendar and see what fills your week. I encourage church planters to think about tithing their time to community service and interaction. As a planter I put in 60 plus hours a week. This meant about six hours a week out in the community like playing in a noon basketball league on Tuesdays and Thursdays or coaching my children’s baseball and football teams. My week could be filled with serving on various community committees within the school district or through the Chamber of Commerce. It could also involve attending community events or joining professional groups like Toastmasters International. I could easily fill up my six hours a week.

Opportunities abound when we get out into our communities. Jon Cawston, a church planter in Plainfield, IL., joined a local entrepreneurial networking group. After a couple of months of being in this group, he was wondering why he was there and was feeling out of place. Then a crisis took place within the group and he discovered that he instantly become “the chaplain” of the group which led to spiritual conversations.

Can you imagine all the spiritual conversations that could take place if your staff and leaders were encouraged to tithe their time to community service and interaction?

4) Establish routines and cultivate relationships

Beyond the tithe of your time in your community I encourage leaders to establish routines and patterns so that you build relational presence with business owners and servers. Think strategically about all your interactions and pray that you can be a redemptive influence within that social network. A couple of tell tale signs of this is, “Do people know your name?” or “Do you know peoples names?” Reggie McNeal loves to ask his servers, “I am going to pray for my meal and I always pray for my server. Is there anything I can pray for you specifically?” I can see this really working as you cultivate relationships and move them from the mundane to the spiritual.

What places do you frequent in your community?

Jesus, Paul and James used the analogy of the farmer when it comes to spiritual leaders patiently sowing, working and cultivating the work of the gospel. When it comes to engaging in spiritual conversations you need to have an attitude of a farmer, faithfully working and cultivating your community. The first two suggestions deal with the leader’s attitude, the next two suggestions deal with putting leaders in a position for engagement.

I learned a simple lesson over twenty-five years ago from an old missionary who said these words to me, “Gary you can’t serve God where you are not!” That statement helped me move away from dreaming about future ministry to engaging myself in the daily personal ministry right in front of me every day.

Gary Rohrmayer has a unique focus in mentoring leaders within God’s mission. He is a sought after personal coach for pastors, church planters and missional leaders. He specializes in the areas of spiritual formation, church multiplication and church health.
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