Transcription
You must understand that life has a way of taking you through perilous times, transitions, and traumas. Adversities, crisis, good days, and bad days. I don't care how clean you live and how righteous you are, you're going to have trouble sometime.
Life has a way of being its own schoolmaster, and over a period of years, without any college classes, courses, books, or tapes, life will teach you something. I can remember being around the old folks, and some of them hadn't gone past the fifth grade or the sixth grade. They spoke broken English and didn't know a verb from an adverb or an adjective, but they had a hidden wisdom because after you lived a long time, you wise up a little bit, just by virtue of staying here on the planet, of surviving good days and bad days, of seeing the sequence of life. You soon learn that life has its own pattern and it has its own rhythm.
If you are a connoisseur of life, you observe all things. You learn from all people. You learn from all life's events, and after a while, you start drawing conclusions. When you start drawing conclusions, you draw them not for the benefit of judging other people, but you draw conclusions in the hopes that you might begin to understand what life is all about.
I will never forget going to the Jackson State Hospital when my father was terminally ill, the final moments of his life, Jackson, Mississippi. He was down there, uh, being tested, had gone through all types of kidney, uh, problems and renal failure and heart had weakened and body had just gotten worn. And I walked in the hospital room to see him, and he said to me, he said, "Son, by the time I figured out what life was all about, it was time to go." Shortly after that, he died.
And those words haunted me the rest of my life because I walked out of that room saying to myself, "I've got to figure it out quicker than he did. I can't spend my whole life trying to figure out what it's all about and then finally understand it and die. I've got to understand the, the pattern and the methodology of what life is all about." And so I began to, to draw up some things on paper and, and different things that I explored and different things that I tried in life. Sin and debauchery, I said, "I tried that, but that wasn't it." And I, I dabbled in this, but this wasn't it. I smoked a cigarette, but that wasn't it. Got some liquor, but that wasn't it. I slept with somebody, that, that wasn't it. I, I got a little money, but that wasn't it.
And I started marking things down, trying to understand what is it all about. I don't mind telling you, I tried a whole lot of things before I started drawing any conclusions. A lot of people like to act like they've never done anything or never tried anything, but I searched through a whole lot of things before I got to Jesus. I'm not talking about church. I've been in church all my life. I'm talking about Jesus. There is a distinct difference between knowing church and knowing Jesus.
Finally, you begin to understand. I've got to get down to the conclusion of the whole matter. I've got to understand what is going on. And I began to understand that life operates in cycles. It operates in cycles and stages and seasons. It, it goes full circles. There are sequences of events, and it depends on what cycle of life you're in, what you're able to do. And if you don't understand cycles, you'll miss your blessing. You only have a certain time period to do anything, and you have to do it in time. That's why the Bible warns us, uh, "The day you hear my voice, harden not your heart." You don't have time to spend years contemplating your next move because you are only able to do it in a certain season, in a certain time frame.
Well, let me give you a, uh, blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law does he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of waters that bringeth forth fruit, not whenever he gets ready to, but he bringeth forth fruit in his own season. You, you, you've got to catch the cycle. You've got to do it in season. You can't, you can't do it in the winter of your life. You can't do it in the autumn of your life. You got to know when it's time for you to do it, and you've got to flow with that cycle because if you miss that turn, life has to go all the way around again before you get an opportunity to be that effective again.
If you ever understand that, it will cause you to change how you deal with people because people and what they say will cause you to miss your season. And if you understand that, you have to wait. You can't just do God's work, God's will, God's, God's empowerment anytime you want to. You have to do it in season. And if you fool with people, you'll miss your season and get stuck in a holding pattern, and you may have to wait five years, six years, seven years, ten years before you get the opportunity to get that kind of release again.
Tell somebody, tell them, "It's my turn." That means when I, when I recognize it's my time to get a breakthrough, it's, excuse me for being radical. I, I might do, I might even do like the woman with the issue of blood and start crawling through the crowd. I might scream like blind Bartimaeus. I might do something radical because I don't want to go through this cycle again. Most people got a miracle in the Bible, they got it because they move quickly. All over through the Bible, it says, "Make way immediately, straightway, suddenly." You have to move right then. One man sat by the pool 38 years because he kept missing the cycle. The Bible says at a certain season, the angels came down and troubled the water, but he was too slow to step into the water, and he had to wait a full cycle before that anointing came to do that again.
The reason some of you are frustrated right now is that every time God gets ready to bless you, the enemy sends something in your way to cause you to miss your turn, and now you got to go full. The reason some of us are so radical, and I know we get on your nerves, we shout too loud, we dance too hard, we, we stand up and you can't see around us, and you're trying to look real important because you got a few members in your church, and we keep jumping all over top of you, but it's because we don't want to miss our cycle when it's our turn to be blessed.
Touch your neighbor and tell me, "You might better move out from beside me tonight, 'cause I can tell your image is important to you. You might better move from around me, 'cause this is my moment, and I got to have it."
The galaxies operate through cycles. The heavenlies operate through cycles. The seasons operate through cycles. Mating operates through cycles. The human body operates through cycles. There are cycles in the spiritual realm, cycles of blessings and cycles of pain. And anytime you're going to alter destiny, you've got to break that cycle. If you're in a state of blessings, the reason the enemy wants to tempt you with sin is because he wants you to do something to break the cycle of blessings in your life. Have you ever got in a cycle of blessings and just everything you touched, God blessed it? Everything you did, God blessed it. Everywhere you went, God blessed it. Everything you applied for, God blessed it. Everything you said, "I wanted," God blessed it. And the enemy hates for you to get in a cycle of blessing. He'll send anybody, any word, any discouragement, any fear, any frustration to break your cycle of blessing. He wants you to come outside and play. He wants you to have a temper tantrum. He wants you to become hysterical, 'cause he wants to break the cycle of blessings in your life. But that devil is a liar. That devil is a liar.
Look at Genesis 1 and 11 for just a moment. I'm going to show you a couple of passages of scripture, and I'll be out of your way.