My Native Inspiration!

ERIC MOORESATURDAY, MAY 14, 2016

Six years ago while sitting in my home church in Knoxville, TN, I was reflecting on my trips around the
world-Africa twice for a month each, India the most recent, South America twice, Mexico, Canada, and all
over the US and I asked the Lord this question out loud. When am I going to get to minister to my people
referring to the Native? (My ethnic root system contains Cherokee on both sides with a Scotch- Irish/Welsh
mix.) The Spirit replied,Im glad you brought that up! Do you know what the Native blood inside you cries
out to Me every day? I said, No, but I bet You are about to tell me! He said,It cries, Tell me the full
Gospel truth!
The next week I was on the Cherokee reservation with a friend picking up trash for a Cherokee lady in the
middle of the road that had fallen out of the back of her Jeep Grand
Cherokee SUV. Six years later a team of us are bringing the message
of Divine Healing to the Cherokee on the tribes fairground site;
underneath a canopied outdoor amphitheater seating 3,500 people!
Since that conversation with the Lord 6 year ago, I went on my own
personal Trail of Tears from Murphy, NC to Tahlequah, Ok. Some have
said the original Trail of Tears began at the doorstep of every
Cherokee that marched West instead of the launch site at Blythes
Ferry just outside of Dayton, TN. Mine began when I moved away to
Florida and then the Midwest where Ive been the last 2 years. It was
my intention to minister to the Cherokee only until my eyes were
open to the plight of so many other Native peoples. In my travels
since 2010, I have been on, around, or through over 100 Native
American reservations many of which resemble a third world country
in terms of socioeconomic opportunity, abuse, and depravity. It
shocks me to see us as a whole flying over the folks in our own back
yard to help people a world away. I don't believe we should neglect either! Ive always believed God is the
God of both and rather than either/or. What I mean is yes; reach out to the nations of the world, but
equally so, remember the 567 nations within our own continent!

Above right is a picture from Calhoun, TN that states prior to 1838 one side of this river
is the USA and the other is the Cherokee Nation and passports where issue by both to
travel back and forth between them.
I think we forget that the America we know today was not always here. In the picture above in Calhoun, TN
prior to 1838 one side of the river was the USA and the other the Cherokee nation and passports where
issued to be able to travel between both! Talk about a paradigm shift! What was it like looking at the world
around you just 178 years ago? To put that in perspective, at an average life span of 80 years that was
just over 2 people back from whom you are today! My great, great, great grandmother was alive in her

mothers womb in 1838 when 2 nations existed on either

side of a river just 30 minutes from her door step!

Mary Price my great, great, great Cherokee

grandmother from Sequatchie Valley, TN
Listen to her story in 1906 from her and my great, great
grandfathers application to the US government for
reparations to the Cherokee for lands taken in the
1830s:I first learned of my Indian blood at school. My
father and mother never said much to me about it. I
have been told that I was three quarters Cherokee by
the Indians. I have always been recognized as being part
Cherokee. None of my ancestors went West with the
Indians as they left this part of the country. My mother
told me that my grandfather, William Mansfield, was a full blooded Indian and he lived the life of an Indian
making baskets and hunting and fishing. My father, Norman Mansfield, was a minister of the gospel and
preached to white people. (He was generally called the Indian minister.)
Isn't it ironic that God has raised me up these many years later to minister his Gospel as He
did my great, great, great, great Cherokee Indian grandfather Norman Mansfield!
Giving honor to whom honor is due is always a God thing. And we must ask ourselves are we doing
that in this country. Recently, I spoke at a mens prayer breakfast in Spring City where it was suggested by
the pastor that their ancestors had stolen the Cherokee lands. If that is in the psyche of clergy, men and
women sensitive to God and His Holy Spirit, 180 years later isn't that saying something? Isn't that the
moral consciousness of a nation before its Maker?
Who will repair the breach? Who will bind up the broken heart? Who will go, as Isaiah heard and
went? Who will weep between the porch and the altar for the relationship between two people groups? You
might say you are tired of hearing about something that happened so long ago that you had nothing to do
with, and you might be right. But ask yourself, if its there to do, isn't it worth doing?
We are looking at the soul of a people who suffer needlessly. Because if they could hear the spiritual
truth of Christ that would lift them to a higher plain of life. I know we no longer know each other according
to the flesh, but that doesn't mean the world doesn't identify them that way. And aren't we supposed to
meet them right where they are becoming all things to all people so as to win some?