Yesterday Today And Forever Ministries

Haven't even left and the fun is started already!

Mike Calvo — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:28:00 -0500

Well, it’s official! My flight has been canceled but have no fear! The Lord has open a door for me and given me favor by providing an alternate flight that will take 27 instead of 22 hours but, will actually land me in Uganda at exactly the same time if I would have gone through New York. I will be flying through Seattle. Please pray for Jacksan and me as we fly starting at 8:20AM. I’ll keep everyone posted as we progress. Stay tuned here for audio maybe even video as we embark on a new adventure with the Lord!

God Is Raising An Army! Will you join me?

Mike Calvo — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 14:57:10 -0500

I have been invited to the 16th Annual Prayer and Transformation Camp: AfriCamp’11. AfriCamp is a place where those who are thirsty can come and drink of the rivers of Living Water and seek the face of God. It is 10 days of seeking and teachings, and concludes with several days of prayer and fasting at Prayer Mountain for All Nations.

held January 12-21, 2011. The meetings will be held partly at Hotel Africana, Kampala, Uganda, situated in the heart of the city, and partly at the Prayer Mountain for All Nations, Seguku, Uganda (Entebbe Road).

I have never requested financial support of any kind for a mission or teaching trip however, this one is going to be kinda costly and the Lord has required me to step out in faith to raise funds. . I am believing the Lord to provide the approximately $3000 it will take for me to experience this encounter. Will you partner with me?

For 16 years, AfriCamp has gathered Christians from all nations who desire more than to just hear about God and revival; they are passionately committed to seek it and live it! It is a gathering of those passionate for God who thirst for Transforming Revival. The goal of AfriCamp’11 is to equip an army of people to carry revival wherever they go.

though personal revival is crucial, it is not enough to transform our nations. Revival comes when the manifestations of the powers of darkness are broken or weakened and the Holy Spirit is allowed to gain control over territories and people, bringing a greater manifestation of the Kingdom of God.

At AfriCamp’11, delegates will be exposed to the dynamics of revival and then be practically led to apply them so they become a reality in their lives, families, communities, churches, governments, businesses, media, and other spheres of influence in our lives.

No revival can come without the breaking or weakening of the powers of darkness over an area. Therefore, during the conference, the manifestations of the powers of darkness in our nations will be exposed so that we will be able to break them efficiently and irrevocably. We will see in parallel the life and mission of Christ, and how to allow the Holy Spirit to gain control over us and to be set apart for Him in order to become an Army of the Lord.

I invite you to stand with me and pray for the Lord’s guidance as I seek His purpose and support for this trip. While I will ask all of you to pray, I know that times are tight and it’s the holiday season. Please do not feel obligated but prayerfully consider how you can support the ministry the Lord has birthed in my family and me. As of this writing I have purchased my ticket and I am awaiting on raising funds for hotel and meals. God has continued to confirm, through various methods, that He is sending me and that this will be a life changing event for my family and me.

The email address for prayer requests or to send Paypal donations is mike@mikecalvo.com. You can read about Africamp at
http://www.worldtrumpet.com/missions/africamp-11-infokit.html and if the Lord leads you, join me on this life changing trip.

Blessings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and I look forward to your response.
—In His Service
Pastor Mike Calvo
Yesterday Today and Forever Ministries

Lack Of Sight Doesn't Mean Lack Of Vision - ACB Mid Atlantic Keynote 11-06-2010

Mike Calvo — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 10:27:00 -0500

The Mid Atlantic Regional ACB Convention 2010 was held in Baltimore November 5-7, 2010. I was honored to be chosen as this year’s keynote speaker for the banquet. I hope you like it. Please feel free to post comments and hey, if you want the rantings of a blind man at your event, drop me a line.
Enjoy!

File Download (52:03 min / 48 MB)

My Reason For Thanksgiving

Mike Calvo — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:26:00 -0500

Be sure to check out the recording that is a part of this post. Feel free to share it with those you believe will be blessed by it!

“And Jesus answered and said, What would you have me do for you? The blind man said, Lord, that I might receive my sight. And Jesus said to him, Go your way; your faith has made you whole. And immediately he received his sight, and followed Jesus.”
Mark|10:51-52

Have you ever wondered what happened to the people after Jesus cured them? Let me share my story. It is the story of a blind man who had his eyes opened—not the eyes that look out on the world, but the eyes that look inward at my soul.

I will remember that moment forever. It was a Thanksgiving day. I was sharing Thanksgiving with the woman and children who had once been my family. My wife and I were divorcing. I had hurt her and my children in so many different ways. We were at the home of our minister. He had invited the entire flock to join him in Thanksgiving and, though we came in separate cars, from separate houses, I was sharing Thanksgiving with my family for the first time in quite a while. It was during that celebration that I was touched. The Lord reached out and touched me and in a flash I saw my entire life up until that moment – all the hurt I had caused. The people I had led astray. The anger I had let control my life. The many times Jesus had reached out to me and I had turned my back. I saw it all and I felt the Lord’s message that this was the last time. I could open my eyes and see or forever be blind to God’s love.

Like the blind man in the gospel, I received my inner-sight and followed Jesus. I stopped living the life I had been living – a life in the fast lane, with drugs, money and power (mostly it was about power). I made peace with my family. My wife and I struggled to make it work and finally divorced, but not in anger and I built a bond with my children. I found a new purpose. A vision of how I could put the talents God gave me to use so that perhaps, just perhaps, I could help some kid like me, faced with the same choices I was faced with as a blind teenager, banging hard against an establishment that said, “Brother, if you want to be equal, you have to be three times as good.” I could do something so that teenager might be more inclined to make better choices than I made because he didn’t have to be three times as good. He just had to be as good as he or she could be.

When I called my vision, “SAMNet (formerly Freedombox),” I had that moment in mind. Because that was the moment I was suddenly free. God had set me free from a prison of my own making and He had given me the opportunity to set others free.

The vision has two parts. One part, System Access Mobile or SAToGo for short, is a barrier buster in the form of a screenreader that can be delivered to any Windows computer anywhere in the World via the World Wide Web absolutely free. When I was in high school I was at the mercy of other people: counselors, special education people, teachers and administrators to get me the things everyone else had. I mean simple things like books. Books in Braille had to be ordered a full year in advance. When those people failed (and they often failed), I failed. And their message was, “That’s just the way it is. You blind people have to work three times as hard because the world isn’t made for you. It’s made for people with eyes.” Serotek’s products remove those kind of barriers using the power of what I believe is the most important communication medium man has yet devised – the Worldwide Web. SAToGo makes it possible for any person, blind or low vision, , computer genius or new users, to access the PC on an equal basis. Where once there was a barrier of isolation – a high curb, now there is a “curb cut” with a gentle slope. SAToGo says, “We got you there just as easily as the next guy. Now you make good use of this freedom.”

The technology is not complex. Yet it took God’s touch to let me see the path and the Lord’s guidance to find the people; people like Matt Campbell our “beast in the basement” who set aside any need for immediate financial rewards and dedicated himself to making this vision a reality. That was a lesson too. Where before I carried the ball myself on every play, the Lord gave me the patience and the trust to hand off the ball to a great team of people that make up Serotek today who could do many things better than I could do them. It was humbling yet richly rewarding because SAMNet is not just mine, it is “ours.” And that was a new word for me. But it’s a word I’ve come to love.

The second part of the vision was to look at the why’s of discrimination. Oddly enough, some of my inspiration came from the dark side I lived all those years. There are just a few “cultures” where a blind man is treated as an equal. One is the music culture. Another is the drug culture. In both cultures you are just another supplier or another consumer. You either got it or you don’t. I could function as an equal in the drug culture because I could deliver as good or better than the next punk. I could function as an equal in the music culture because I could deliver an audio product that people wanted. Nobody had to make special allowances for me. And they weren’t likely to. If you were a drag on the party they’d just terminate the relationship, one way or another.

But what I saw there was the simple economic facts of life. If you represent a viable market, people will go out of their way to do business with you. You can see it in my home town of Miami with the Cuban culture. It was not so long ago Cubans were just immigrants, consigned to slums, given only the most menial jobs and largely ignored by politicians, merchants, and government bureaucrats. Today we people of Cuban descent are one of the most powerful political forces in the state. We shape elections. Businesses go out of their way to court our patronage. The barrio is a market.

The second part of my vision was to do for blind people and others with disabilities what the Americans with Disabilities Act can never do. Our award winning online community System Access mobile Network or SAMNet for short (formerly the Freedombox Network) is about helping this community to become a powerful economic force by making them “accessible.” Today, if you want to sell something to blind people you are hard pressed to find a way to reach enough of them to support a business. But SAMNet brings people together as a community where merchants can reach them and sell them goods and services. And interestingly enough, as we Cubans found out here in Miami, when businesses see you as a viable market they start to treat you with respect. Suddenly you don’t have to work three times as hard to be equal. You start out equal. Then, when you work three times as hard, well perhaps you reap the extra rewards of that extra work.

For me the rewards are already far greater than I could have hoped. They aren’t huge financial rewards. Those may come someday or they may not. It doesn’t matter that much. But because the Lord saw fit to lift away the scales from my inner eyes and let me see the true depths of my soul, I have the reward of inner peace. I have come to understand forgiveness – a forgiveness so large that Jesus could forgive not just me and my puny arrogance, but those who killed Him. How could I hold anger in my heart against the people who had acted against me, many out of ignorance rather than malice, when Jesus could forgive his assassins? And when you let go of anger and forgive, you discover peace.

I have the reward of a new wife and loving family. I have the sure knowledge that the work I am doing is good work. It is work in service of the Lord that will hopefully lead others to the lord.

We blind folks appear any number of times in the Gospels and in the Old Testament as well. One of my favorites is Matthew 15, verse 14.

“And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

My father, bless him, used to always believe that others led me into evil. But the truth is, I was the leader. As it says in Matthew, I was the “physically” blind leading the “morally” blind and I was truly leading those who followed me not just into a ditch but into the abyss. I like to think that now, with the vision God has given me, I am still leading. But now I am leading people to a place in the light. A place where they can be free to make their own choices. Where they won’t have to work three times as hard to hear the Lord’s message and hopefully find the same gift of inner sight he given me.

And there is this message from the Gospel of John.
“And as he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?
Jesus answered, Neither did this man sin, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”
John|9:1 -3
I sometimes think blindness, itself is a mission – a gift from God, not a curse. Isn’t that a strange thought? But in my entire life I have never cursed my blindness. Blindness has never made me feel less than equal. Other people have tried hard to make me feel less than equal and there was a time in my life when I raged against them for their ignorance. But the blindness is simply there. It is what I am. And it could be that it frees me from visual distractions and allows me to better focus on the work God has for me. I hope that people will not pray for me to see as they do, but rather pray for me to see as God wants me to see, in the spirit. Pray that the works of God might be revealed in me not by suddenly giving me eyes that work, but by helping me understand, live, and share the vision. The Serotek vision that both gives people access and makes them accessible.

Serotek Corporation :: My company that provides adaptive technologies for the blind and visually impaired
SA To Go :: Powerful Fre online screenreader! Get full access to Microsoft Windows 7, Vista and XP operating systems, and use all your favorite Windows applications for productivity, entertainment, and much more.
System Access Mobile Network :: includes audio tracks of described movies, thousands of Internet radio stations, personalized news, podcasts, books, music, voice chat, blogging, your own web site, forums, email,Use with System Access or any other screen reader you prefer.
The SeroTalk Blog and Podcast :: A podcast and interactive blog on the accessible digital lifestyle, produced by Serotek, the Accessibility Anywhere people
My Twitter Page :: Follow me on Twitter!

File Download (36:54 min / 17 MB)

H.A.L.T.

Mike Calvo — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:17:00 -0400

Hungry, Angry, Lonely and Tired are four situations in our lives where we need to be very aware that the enemy is out to use this area against us.

H.A.L.T. :: These are the Scripture notes for this teaching. To print them simply use the print feature in your browser.

File Download (46:39 min / 21 MB)

Riders On The Storm

Mike Calvo — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 17:36:00 -0400

Well as I continue on my crazy summer of travel for work, here is a Bible study we just did on the storm. This is perfect as it is thundering outside here in Orlando Florida where I live. Some really cool Revelation in this one. I hope it’s a blessing to you.

File Download (55:07 min / 25 MB)

The Believer’s Covenant, Identity, and Authority in Christ

Mike Calvo — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:27:00 -0400

The Believer’s Covenant, Identity, and Authority in Christ :: These are the Scripture notes for this teaching. To print them simply use the print feature in your browser.

File Download (49:11 min / 23 MB)

What About Your Atitude

Mike Calvo — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 12:07:00 -0400

Your attitude can seriously hinder your faith walk. You can spend years in a stagnant faith walk because you are moving horizontally through life instead of vertically in your relationship towards Jesus. With God everything is increase. If you aren’t seeing this in your life then a Spirit lead and honest examination of your attitude must be undertaken. Have no doubt that a bad attitude will most certainly effect your faith walk.

EPHESIANS 4:23 and that you be renewed in the spirit (attitude) of your mind,

What About YOur Attitude? :: These are the Scripture notes for this teaching. To print them simply use the print feature in your browser.

File Download (55:14 min / 25 MB)

Under the Influence Of Others

Mike Calvo — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:08:00 -0400

This was a really great study in the book of Nehemiah. My son Michael blessed us with his reading this week. He is out of UCF for the summer and hanging out with dad. It’s a bit of a long one this week but I am sure you will be as blessed as we were.

I will be out for a week on business. During the summer we are a bit more laid back because we are a small group and people are on vacation and such. Keep checking back here to find when a podcast is posted. We will return to our normal weekly podcasts after August 19th.

Blessings.

Under the Influence Of Others :: These are the Scripture notes for this teaching. To print them simply use the print feature in your browser.

File Download (79:41 min / 37 MB)

Be On The Alert

Mike Calvo — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:51:00 -0400

LUKE 21:36 “But keep on the alert at all times, praying in order that you may have strength to escape all these things that are about to take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Prophecy is being fulfilled before our very eyes.

•Petulance and famine in Africa
•Floods and earth quakes in Japan, Indonesia and even in the United States
•Wars and roomers of Wars, from Iraq and Afghanistan to Africa and the Russian Satellites

How much more do the people of the earth have to see before they realize that the end is drawing closer each day?

Be On The Alert (Luke 21:35) :: These are the Scripture notes for this teaching. To print them simply use the print feature in your browser.

File Download (68:12 min / 31 MB)