Marquetta speaks....

I was driving one morning to work and on that particular morning the traffic was very heavy. So I decided to take another route to work. While driving, I saw a building that caught my eye. I had to take a second look at this building. It wasn’t anything special about this building, but it made me take another look at it. The building was located within a store front outdoor shopping area where all of the stores connected to each other.  The second time I looked at the building I noticed that it had the name of a church. The writing was not big nor did it have a church look or feel to it. Then I heard in the spirit that God is placing spiritual hospitals throughout the world. These locations will not be easily detected and they will not have the outward appearance of being a church.  I then began to ask God what was He doing? He shared with me that the church as we know it will not be able to handle the masses of people who God is ushering into His kingdom. The chu...

A young lady named Sandra bravely shares her mother’s story of how her mother overcame her painful past through the art of sewing…… It was the week of my mother's birthday. She was turning 56 years old. I could tell she wasn’t feeling good that week. She had worked so many long hours at work and had been complaining of severe back pain. And the phone calls….so many prank phone calls. My dad had come home one night and demanded that mom and I come downstairs. He had this crazy look in his eyes. I knew something was not right. He began to tell us that he knew that we had been prying into his private life and that we should stay out of his business. He was talking about the phone calls his mistresses were making to momma.  He was yelling and screaming and making threats to us that if we did not stay out of his private life that he would have to put an end to it. Mom was sitting down listening to all of this while trying to tell him that the women had been calling her.....

Driving home from work, Sandra looks at her watch nervously and says to herself, “I’m late again”. “I wish my boss wouldn’t hold such long meetings especially when it gets closer to the time we should being getting off”. She is going over in her head all of the things she has to do before she goes home…stop by the grocery store, pick up John’s pants at the seamstress, and get Andy from the babysitter. Sandra says out loud, “ I can’t be late again. I just can’t be late again”. After a long day at work and making all of her errands, she finally makes it home. Mike, Sandra’s husband is waiting quietly in the kitchen as she walks in. Quickly Mike knocks everything out of Sandra’s hand and then he pulls her to the floor by her hair. Sandra screams out, “You promised you wouldn’t hit me again!”   This is a living nightmare for so many victims of abuse every single day. For some individuals, it is a never ending cycle that is repeated over and over again. When abusers pro...

Many women who have come out of abusive relationships are asked this one daunting question: Why did you stay? My mother was asked recently why she stayed in an abusive relationship for 43 years. Her answer was amazing to me. She said she stayed for many reasons and that she believed that when people get married they should honor their marriage vows come hell or high water. Well she endured many days and nights of hell until it became a matter of life or death for her. My mother is a very strong Christian woman that looks for the good in everyone she meets. She told me once that looking for the good in people “helps you understand the bad parts about them”. Needless to say she was always believing and looking for the good in my father which lead to 43 years of hoping to see the good in him. It only got worse as the years passed by.  There are many reasons why women stay in abusive relationships year after year. All of the reasons are legitimate to a victim of abuse. I...

Are you feeling like you have tried everything you could possibly do to move ahead? Have you prayed many nights for long awaited changes to take place in your life? And are you still finding yourself in the same place you started, seeing little to no change at all? For those of you who said yes to these questions….this word is for you today. I remember one time I was going out of town on business for a training. I had already made the necessary arrangements for the trip which included booking the hotel, flight, and renting the car. I had planned everything out prior to the trip. When I arrived at the location to pick up my rental car, there was a delay, or you can say a small problem. They did not have my rental ready. They had overbooked the rentals for that day. This was very frustrating for me because I was on a tight schedule. To add to the madness, I had to wait around for 30 to 40 minutes for them to straighten everything out. I then asked for a manager to assist with ...

Have you ever tried to look for a well laid out plan or blueprint to help you along the path of life? You tried to look at this person or at this particular community for guidance to lead the way or to help you determine which step to take next or even if you are going in the right direction. Well me too, until I got a huge revelation of who I was. One night I had a dream about traveling to an unknown city. Laid out before me was a blank life size map. This map was a very unique map. It only had enough information on it to guide me to my next destination. The crazy thing about this map was that I had to actually step onto the map to receive my next set of instructions or directions. Once I took the first step another set of instructions was given to me. When I didn’t take a step I noticed that there were no next set of instructions given to me. Only when I took the next step I could then see the next steps I should take. When I awoke from this dream I began to immed...

A month ago I gave several steps in an article that I wrote called “A Time of Healing” that victims of abuse can take in order to begin the process of healing from being abused. For those of you who are coming out of an abusive situation, I want to continue sharing thoughts and steps of how to continue the healing process. Abusers guilt: Stop carrying the abuse guilt around. Let the guilt go. Many times people who have abused individuals will make their victims feel as though they should feel guilty for leaving them. Some abusers may try to use tactics such as saying that they are going to kill themselves if you leave them. They may go as far as attempting suicide to get the victim to return to them. Don’t fall for this tactic! It’s only a ploy to get the victim to come back to them.  Prison of not forgiving: One of the biggest steps to healing from past abuse is learning how to forgive the abuser. This is also the hardest step for some survivors to do and often can...

Have you often wondered why your life has been full of trials, testing, and yes some downright knockout painful moments? Good news, you were in training to become a “heavy weight”. I recently did some research on some of the most famous heavy weight boxers and wanted to know what set them apart from the others. It all boiled down to their training in preparation for the big fight. Let’s begin with Rocky Marciano the “Brockton Blockbuster” who was the only heavyweight champion to retire undefeated, ending with a perfect 49-0. Despite being just 5-11 and roughly 185 pounds, Marciano used his fierceness, resilience, and “Suzy Q” right hand to more than make up for his size deficit. Marciano’s secret for winning consisted of a number of factors , all of which came naturally to him. He loved to train. He ran 5 miles every day, 365 days a year, up and down the steep hills around Brockton, Mass. He’d sprint up; sprint down backward, forward, with 30-pound weights on his shoes. ...

The other day I ran across one of my old 2010 journals. While reading some of the things I wrote my eye caught a particular journal entry. It was an entry for the month of August 2010. In that month of the August journal entry, I wrote about David and his son Solomon; a passage in the Bible from I Chronicles chapters 22 and 28 . I was encouraged to share this journal entry from 2010 with my readers at this specific time. To describe what I was hearing in my spirit I first must give a quick overview of what was going on in chapter 28 . During that time David had called a meeting with all of the most important people in Israel. David then stood up and made an announcement to the people that he had wanted to build an house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord and he had begun to make plans to start building this mighty temple. But then he told the people that God told him that he could not build this temple due to the fact that David was a man of war and has shed bloo...

Handpicked     I don’t know about you but this week was a really hard pressing week for me. In the middle of this crazy week, I heard the word “handpicked” . I thought to myself, what in the world am I hearing. I know what the word is but I was wondering why I was hearing this word in my spirit. I began to look up the definition of the word to gain more understanding and it soon became clear to me. The word “Handpick” means to select carefully with a particular purpose in mind. To select personally.   Sometimes in life we all go through pressing hard times and you may have asked yourself, why me Lord. Especially when you look around and see everyone else doing better than you.  Could it be that you are “handpicked” and carefully selected by God for a specific purpose in mind. If you look at individuals who are selected personally for a job or an organization; these people are very special and are at the top of their game. Thes...