Is God greater than our pain? Yes! Can God do all things? Absolutely! However, none of these Biblical facts are able to minimize or dismiss painful circumstances, the lost of a spouse, a child, mom, dad, a best friend or so on.
Come on brothers, it is not a violation of your faith to accept that you are hurting! Also, stop mocking pain and tears. In John 11:35 the Bible gives us the shortest Bible verse of all, “Jesus wept”. Even as Jesus knew He was going to resurrect Lazarus, He still wept. Why? He identified himself with the pain of the people. Don’t tell me Jesus wept because of the lack of faith of the people. If that were the case, Jesus would have cried for his own disciples all the way to the cross. He would have cried when they doubted Him, when Peter denied Him, when Judah betrayed Him and so on. Those were more dramatic examples!
We live in a time when our churches don’t know what to do with pain. One large group focuses on all you can get (The prosperity Gospel) and the other focuses on doing. They place your call as the absolute most important thing in the world. So they fix everything with, “I must pursue the call of God in my life, no time to cry, no time to feel pain, no time to identify with nobodies pain either.”
The reality is that Jesus connected with and continues to connect with people’s pain, and He tells us to do the same. The Bible put it this way,
Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15 (NKJV)
Beloved, it is ok to cry!
An independent thinker with a profound call to see the orthodoxy of the church and passion for Christ manifesting together. Angel was born in Brooklyn, New York in April of 1968, he was raised on the beautiful island of Puerto Rico where he earned his B.S. degree in Sociology with a minor in Education from the Inter American University in San Germán in 1991. That same year he moved to Jacksonville, Florida. After working construction jobs for a year and learning the English language, his first job working with foster-care children in the capacity of youth care worker was with Jacksonville Youth Sanctuary in September of 1992. With JYS he was promoted several times as group home supervisor, legal caseworker, and program director.
While in Jacksonville, Angel studied a couple of martial arts styles. After earning his black belt, he became the founder of Good Fight Ministries as he used martial arts as an instrument to preach the gospel. In 2004 Angel was selected Martial Arts Instructor of the Year for the State of Florida and in 2005 Angel was inducted in the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame where he also received the Christian Spirit Award. In July of 2005 Angel accepted his call to pastor a bilingual church in Winton, NC where he served for a couple of years. Five months later he lost his first wife to cancer in December of that same year. This initiated a deep valley of suffering in his life, a mountain of costly mistakes and the embracing of lifestyles of sin that are well documented through this blog.
In August of 2012 Angel moved to Fairbanks Alaska with his wife Rayette Casiano and six children who are now adults. In Alaska, Angel continued his social work-related career and his ministry of preaching, teaching and writing. Angel is the author of two books, Hope for the divorcee: Forgiving and Moving Forward and 7 Banderas de Esperanza: La Bendición de Yokdzonot.
In January 8th of 2020 Angel and his wife moved to Arizona. On June 8th 2021 Angel started his home church, not as a starting point, but as a closer way to how the church is suppose to look like according to Scripture.
angelcasiano.com 