Transcription
[Music] To come to pastors and leaders conference, I think the most important thing is to find out that you're not alone. The relationships that you build here, people that come from different backgrounds, from all over the place. I could feel the anointing, literally, the moment we walked into the building. Tears falling from my eyes. It's a heart issue. It's a life changer. You need to be here. You don't want to miss it. Come see for yourself.
I want to admit that I might have a difficulty getting through this text. The reason being is, I feel such a pull for this word tonight that I have no idea what the Holy Spirit is going to do. But what I do know is that somebody has been praying for this word. And so, I am elated to stand in service and to impart unto you some spiritual truths.
We're coming to the close of a very difficult year, of a trying time. The decade did not enter in lightly. It came in arrogantly, with a lot of problems and with a lot of pain. And so, it is not a mistake that the Holy Spirit chose the scripture from Exodus, because simply put, it means to come out of. But that's a good place to stop. We all shout about coming out, but Exodus is not complete until you go in. So, you can't just come out, you also have to go in.
And so tonight, we are talking about, as Bishop put it on Sunday, that you cannot get down from. The Bible says this, Exodus, the 12th chapter. I'm reading it from the English Standard Version, just so it can be simple for our reading. And if you'll indulge me, I need to read the first seven verses. And I promise to put this text into context and contemporize it for us tonight and meet you right where you are.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, "This month shall be for you the beginning of months." In other words, He was giving them a new beginning. "It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, according to their father's houses, according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons." I need you with me tonight and say, "God is not going to leave anybody out, including me." Oh, I wish I had a church tonight.
"Your lamb shall be without blemish." Yeah, your lamb shall be without blemish. "A male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month. The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight, at the darkest moment, at the darkest hour. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lentil of the houses in which they eat."
If you will, I wanted you to get a little focus on verse seven, because I'm preaching right out of that space. I'm preaching right out of that space. I skipped a little bit of verse four. It's okay. Read it back. Go back and read it for your edification. But I want to preach right out of this space. Verse seven: "Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lentil of the houses in which they eat."
Tonight, I want to talk with you about the last night in Egypt. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for this opportunity to receive a word from You. Father, without a word, how can we live? The word is the only thing that separates soul from spirit and discerns the intentions of the heart. So, Father, I come today as a yielded vessel, asking, pleading, that You speak such a word that not just changes our very nature, but causes us to be conformed to the image of Your Son, Jesus, that we might be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Touch every heart, not only in this room, but every individual watching to all the digital outlets. Touch every heart so it might be open to receive this word. Anoint every ear so that they can hear what the Spirit has to say to the church. I thank You in advance for what You are about to accomplish, and when You do it, we'll give You all the glory, all the praise, and all the honor. In Jesus' name, if you agree, go ahead and shout amen. You may be seated in the presence of the Lord.
I want to talk with you tonight about the last night in Egypt. Masterfully, our Bishop brought us into a moment on Sunday that declared we were at an inflection point. An inflection point, as he so eloquently described, is a strategic point at a period of time where you have to decide how you're going to respond to disruptive change. In other words, you have a choice in the matter to determine whether or not you're going to believe the upward pace that God is about to put you on, or if you are going to give way to the limiting beliefs that we so often fall prey to. As he talked about this and described this, he was describing that it can no longer be business as usual. That when God decides to take you up, that's the end of it. I'm going to say it again: that when God decides to take you up, that is the end of it. The only people that can stop you from staying up there is you. The enemy certainly cannot do it. I'll prove it to you. The Bible says in the book of Isaiah that no weapon formed against you shall be able to prosper. We quote that and shout, but if we really understand it, God was speaking through Isaiah, and the Lord said through Isaiah, the reason it cannot prosper is because whatever comes at you, I made it. There's nothing in the earth that has been created that the Lord does not have His DNA in. Everything in the earth that has been created, God has His finger on. This is why no weapon formed against you is able to prosper.
Now, in all honesty, it forms, and sometimes it really does feel like this joker is prospering. Oh, you're not going to talk back to me. Sometimes we come against hardship and difficulties that make us believe that what God said is going to happen, it's not going to come to fruition. And therefore, we begin to capitulate, to give in, and to honor our circumstance more than the promise that God has given us. And so, we have to understand, there comes a moment when God brings you to, uh, I want to use the word "season," but it's not aptly put, because really, what I want to say is a dimension where God brings you to a place where you have such a degree of freedom that the stuff that used to have you bound no longer has the power to pull you the way it used to pull you. Whatever it is you have been struggling with, I need you in this very moment to look it in the face and say, "Today is the last night that I deal with that." Whatever it is, it could be financial, it could be a relationship, it could be mental. Or who am I talking to? Come on, somebody. You have to get it down in your spirit right now, prophetically, and declare, "Today, tonight is the last night I deal with that." I don't hear nobody. It's not enough for me to say it, you got to say it. You got to square up right now. Get that mental picture on your mind, on the canvas of your imagination. And whatever it is, you ain't got to tell me your business. You ain't got to look at your neighbor and say what it is. You know the hell that you've been fighting. You know the demon that you've been fighting. You know the difficulty that you've been fighting. You know the mental mindset that you've been fighting. You know the depression that is real that you've been fighting. You know the anxiety that is real that you have been fighting. But I need you in this moment to make a prophetic declaration and say, "Tonight is the last night I deal with that."
I'm trying to tell you is that your breakthrough is that close. We're going to work tonight. Don't worry. We're going to work tonight. What I'm trying to tell you is that your breakthrough is that close. And there are three things that God gave me to say tonight. And I'm going to say them not in succession, but I'm going to say them under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And the first thing that God told me to tell you tonight, in the introduction, before I even get anywhere, what the Lord told me to tell you tonight, and if you're watching online, I want you to hear this: "You are always coming out." I'ma let the Holy Spirit do His thing. You were always coming out. You were scheduled to come out. You were destined to come out. You had a reservation to come out. You were always coming out. So what convinced you that you got to stay in? The devil is a liar. And his brother and cousins and them. Y'all are saying that to me up in here. You were always coming out. I want that to sink, marinate down in your spirit. I do not want that to be a trite statement that we pass over and trivialize in services like these because you're trying to catch up with what the, what I'm saying. But just hold on to that right there for right now. Park right there and realize, you were always coming out.
It was always going to happen. It was ordered of the Lord. It was promised by God. And God is not a man. I could stop right there and not go a step further and preach no more tonight, because people will disappoint you. They'll let you down. They'll keep you waiting. They'll be conniving. They'll shuck and jive. They'll never do what they said they were going to do. But God is not a man that He should lie. That means He cannot do it if He doesn't. He can't be God. You were always coming out. Just let that sit right there. You were always coming out. This is not a shock or surprise that you're going to make it. When you don't realize that your breakthrough, your departure, your freedom, your liberation was promised and scheduled, oftentimes you hold on to the memories that come from prolonged seasons of difficulty, and you stop believing in the possibility that you can come out. Your language changes, and you start talking with a deficit narrative, as if your situation is fixed, as if it has that much power to keep you where you are. And when you begin to speak with deficit language, it becomes very easy to pass that along in all of your conversations. And so, instead of saying, "I'm about to go after this," when someone else articulates their dream or their idea, your immediate response is, "Be careful." Because now you no longer believe in the possibility of not only your dream, but somebody else's endeavors. And so you start talking with narratives that suggest things are never going to get better. And therefore, your language is coming from your mindset. "As a man thinks in his heart, so is he." And so you begin to think this way, and you begin to talk that way. And I know I'm talking right because you're quiet.
You're quiet. It is not our experiences that make us or break us. It's our interpretation of them and the language that we use when we talk about them. And so, because we use deficit language, that is defeated before we can ever discover a pathway to victory, then the memory of the experience is also defeated too. So you never get to use your memory as momentum. Come on, we're going to work tonight. Stay with me. I'm going somewhere. I'm going somewhere. You start using your memory as misery, and every time you tell the story, it's worse and worse and worse, to the point that you add stuff that didn't even happen.
That's why Jeremiah said, "I have to recall to my mind, therefore I have hope." Watch this. It is because of the Lord's mercies I have not been consumed. In other words, God is the author and finisher of our faith. But you are the narrator of your story. So when you start talking about your story, you have to see the mercy in the memory. That not only did you survive, but you start looking around and go, "Wait a second. I'm still here." Come on, who am I talking to tonight? You need to look at yourself and say, "Wait a second. I'm still here." After all the hell I had to go through, after all the difficulty I really faced, I'm on the right time, at the right place, in a moment where God is about to take me to a whole 'nother dimension. And I am suffering from survivorship paradox. The paradox of survivorship is when you can no longer transform your pain, but you continually transmit it. And you give it to your children and your children's children through your language. "Mama, I want to go to college." "You better go get a job." Well, y'all quiet. They're here tonight. Y'all quiet. "I'm gonna start my business." "I don't know about that. The average business fails in the first couple of years. I don't know if you're gonna make it." That's the paradox of survivorship, because you're surviving, you're too afraid, too fearful to go into the next phase or the next dimension of your exodus. God does not want to just fix your life, He wants to make your life whole. He doesn't just want to bring you out of something that you've been struggling with, He wants you to be so far removed from that thing that you got to recall to your mind what even happened. So if I can then figure out, if I can just distill for a moment, that it's not the experience that's breaking me, it's my interpretation, then I can find the opportunity in my regret. Now, don't look at me funny. To have regret is a human experience. There is nobody in this room right now, regardless of your age, that do not have a regret. If you are a toddler and two years old, you regret putting your finger in that socket. You might not be able to articulate it, but I promise you, in your brain, you went, "Don't do that again." You have to find the opportunity in your regret. Come on, let me work this thing tonight.
And so, when we have come to the place of this scripture, it should not be lost on us that we have come into it in the middle of the story. To be honest, really, in this particular plague, which is the 10th plague in Israel in Egypt's encounter, we're entering into the scene after God did a whole bunch of things. That's already been nine plagues that has preceded this. And now, all of a sudden, we're on the 10th plague, and the Lord is about to do something that deals with the memory of Israel. Moses is the prime example of what God is about to do, because when we discover Moses having an encounter with God, it is when he's in the wilderness, on the backside of the desert, tending Jethro's sheep, that he sees a bush that's burning and it's not consumed. A bush burning in that type of heat, it's not an uncommon thing, that's normal. The unknown thing about it is that it's burning, but it's not being destroyed. And so it peaks Moses's curiosity to go look for God in a place that he normally would have never looked. As a matter of fact, he didn't even know that he was looking for God, but he found out that God was looking for him. You can be so destitute in your memory that you have settled for an experience that God never designed for you to live. But because you have settled into that type of wilderness and became okay tending sheep rather than tending God's people, He had to come look for him. Not your neighbor, say, "God's looking for you." He's looking for you. He's looking for you on your job, in your house, in your cubicle. He is looking for you. He is hunting you down.
God asks Jeremiah, "What do you see?" He said, "I see a rod blooming." And blast me. He said, "You have seen well, for I will hasten after My word to perform it." God is looking for you because He has something for you to accomplish, something for you to do. And Moses is having this encounter and this experience. And when he finds out that it's the Lord, the first thing that God tells him is, "Take the shoes off your feet." Why? Because the place that you're standing on is in another dimension. This is holy ground. And I don't want you to think that you are about to walk in the dust of disappointment that you have walked in for so long. You're about to have a different walk now. I need just a few sanctified folk in the room to look at somebody and say, "I'm about to have a whole different walk because this God encounter is about to change my destiny."
I gotta get out of this cause I'm just in the intro. I gotta get it. I feel the anointing of the Holy Ghost. Somebody shout, "My whole walk is about to change!" I used to walk busted, but I'm about to walk blessed. I used to walk angry, but I'm about to have the peace of God that transcends all understanding and guards my heart and mind in Christ Jesus. My walk is about to change. God changed this entire walk. Moved him back to the horrible memory of what he was trying to escape, making him face some of the worst mistakes of his life, because God wanted Moses to find the opportunity in the regret. What do you mean, preacher? What opportunity in regret? Solomon said it this way in Proverbs 13:12. He said, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." But when, not if, can you get that up for me on the screen? I want everybody to see. I want everybody to see. I feel the Holy Spirit, and I'm going to take my time. I'm going to wait on the Lord. I'm going to wait right here because God's about to do something on this scripture. It's just a scripture, but He about to do something on the scripture. I can feel the Spirit riding on this word. The Bible says, "Hope deferred," Proverbs 13:12. Can you get that up there for me? Proverbs 13:12. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick." But when, y'all tracking with me? Proverbs 13:12. Can you get it up there? Anybody? Anybody? Anybody out there? All right, you got it in your phones at least. Get in your phone so you can see. "Hope deferred." Here we go. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes." King James version says, "but when the desire comes." Not if, but when. Not when the destination comes, when the desire comes, it is like a tree of life. Regret makes you lose your desire, and desire makes you lose your passion to go after the things that God said that you can have. And so Solomon said, "If you defer your hope, it is going to make your heart sick." So He reminds us that when your desire comes back after a prolonged season of difficulty, then what you had in your heart is going to be fulfilled. I need somebody to understand that you are about to get your fire and passion back. I know I'm talking to some fatigued people. I know I'm talking to some people who are out of it, but you are about to get your desire back. Not if. Stuff you left on the back burner, ideas you laid down because of the circumstances, dreams you wrote down. I know I'm talking to somebody five years ago, and the Holy Spirit has been bringing it back to your remembrance and saying to you, "I'm still gonna do it." There it is right there. That was the second thing the Lord told me to tell you tonight. He's still going to do it. Whatever it is He promised you, He still. I wish I had a church. He's still going to do it. You are not out of time. You are not out of options. You are not out of resources. You are not out of the game. God is still going to do it. Just find somebody who is tracking with you, who is in the same realm of the spirit with you. Get eye contact and say, "God's gonna do it for me." Is He gonna do it for you? If you find somebody that's looking lethargic, just shout over to him through your mask and say, "God is still gonna do it for you." Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My God, my God, my God, my God. You let the difficulty defer your hope, and where there is no hope, there can only be hypervigilance. So you're looking for something, it's just not positive. So now you're looking for the next shot in the arm, now you're looking for the next blow, now you're looking for the next calamity, instead of the next opportunity. You've had so many shots, blow after blow after blow. Maybe I'm talking to one person. Shot after shot after shot. Failure after failure. Disappointment after disappointment. And you're saying, "God, I tried. I tried to believe You. I tried to trust You. I tried to hold on, but I am tired."
And church folk can't be honest about being tired because, "I will bless the Lord at all times." Praise God. Man, I'm tired. I barely made it in here tonight. And the only reason I made it is because I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really needed a word from God. So, so, so, so, God says, God says, "Don't defer your hope, it'll make your heart sick." But when the desire comes, oh God, oh, I don't, I can't stay here. When, if you, if you just track with me, when the desire comes, not when what you're hoping for happens, but when you just get the desire, it's a tree of life. As soon as you get your desire, something is about to start growing. Something is about to start flourishing. Something is about to start happening. As soon as the desire, I feel that desire is falling all over the room, and your heart is starting to unwind and unravel, and the hardness of it is cracking and falling off. And you'll start realizing that God promised me something, and I let hardship and difficulty make me stop believing. My God. Can we go a little deeper? The reason I don't defer my hope is because faith in and of itself has very little to do with what you believe, but rather has a lot to do with who you believe in. The power of faith is the object of faith. Have faith in God. So God, then, is the object of my faith. The reason I believe is because of Him. So His character is the substratum of what I stand on when I say, "God, I trust You." So to trust Him, I have to know His character. And if I know His character, then I know that He is not going to let me down.
Somewhere along the way, you forgot that He was Jehovah, and Jehovah simply means "I am that I am." I'll be whatever you need Me to be. If you need healing, I am Jehovah Rapha. If you need victory, I am Jehovah Nissi. If you need peace, I am Jehovah Shalom. Somewhere along the way, you forgot He was El Elyon, that He's omnipotent, that He's omniscient, that He is who He says He is. You forgot His character and His nature because you were having faith in what He promised more than having faith in who He was. And so, as God uses Moses to have this encounter, He now brings them down to use him for the entirety of Israel, because He wants to show them too that you got to find an opportunity in your regrets. That the label that regret has placed on you is not a life sentence. Regret lays the foundation that builds up the immunity to change. So when God says, "I'm about to do a new thing," you start looking for all of these new stuff to show up because of your regret. You now have an immunity to how He's going to do it. He didn't say, "I'm going to make new things." He said, "Behold, I make all things new." So you're looking for new things instead of for looking what you already have, where you already are. And God's saying, "I'ma show you how to take what you already got and use it in a new dimension." Oh, Lord, have mercy. Come on, we still got a lot of work to do. We still have our work there.
And so, so, so, this, this thing, it gets deeper. Regret is sorrow or remorse over something that has happened or that we've done. Regret can also be a sense of disappointment over what has not happened. Oh, put a pin right there. Such as regretting wasted years, missed opportunities. And this is a universal human experience. This is not to point you out to feel shameful. Sinatra said, "Regrets, I've had a few, but then I did it my way." The problem with that statement is, when it comes to walking with God, you can't do it your way. And so, how do we disrupt regret by seeing the opportunity in it? We can use the moments that we wasted to say to ourselves, "I'm about to disrupt this habitual pattern that has caused the same outcomes in my life that I've had a hard time breaking out of." And so the only way to do that is to be self-critical, but not self-cruel. It's okay to say, "I messed that up. I missed that right there. I got to go back and tweak that. Maybe I should have read that at length. Maybe I should have got down into the fine print. Maybe I should wait a little longer before I get into the relationship with this person." Before that happens, but, but maybe I can look at the decision without having the shame or the guilt of what it cost in my life, because that's now feedback and data for me to say, "Okay, my life looks like this when I'm going up and down, and I'm making these decisions when I'm going up and down." Because whatever you do habitually will always have the power to defeat what happens occasionally in your life. So if an occasion comes for you to have increase, but you habitually squander the increase, then what you do habitually will defeat the occasion. I know, I know, I know. It gets better. It gets better. It gets better. It gets better.
So how do we undo the patterns that we are attached to? How do we get out of our loyalty to our mistakes? David gives us a key when he said in Psalms 51, "Have mercy upon me." Mercy is the key to getting you out of your pattern of dysfunction. You're not in here with me. David said, "Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving-kindness; according to the multitude of Thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions." I wish I had help. Blot them completely out. Make sure there is no record of it. I know I did it, but I don't need the record to show that I did it. So I need Your mercy to blot out what I did, because what I did is not who I am. I'm ready to be different and to do things differently. So he says, he says, "I'm just going to read the scripture." He says, "According to Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. Wash me, wash me thoroughly for mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." I'm not trying to get away from it. I know what I did. I did it. I did it. I did it. I did it. Y'all not in here with me. Look at somebody and say, "I did it." Yep. I did it. I did it. I did it. I didn't trust them. I didn't lean on them. I didn't depend on them. I did it. I did it. Yes, I did. And he said, he said, "Watch me now." He says, "For I acknowledge them, and my sin is ever before me." He didn't say my sin was ever before God. He said, "My sin is ever before me." I keep bringing it up when the Lord has thrown it in the sea of forgetfulness. I keep bringing it up. Oh, y'all not talking back to me. I'm gonna come over here, talk to somebody right here. It's, it's not God, it's me. I keep bringing this stuff up because of regret, remorse, sorrow, and it's disrupting my flow, and I can't break the pattern because I keep giving it life. And so he says, "This is good right here. It's feeding me." "Against Thee, and Thee only, have I sinned." Oh, I need you to look at somebody and say, "This ain't none of your business."
Oh, y'all trying to play me up in here. Come on, look at somebody and say, "What I did ain't none of your business." Ain't got nothing to do with you. "Against Thee, and Thee only, have I sinned." Thank You, Holy Spirit. Stop letting people keep you attached to what you did. And done this evil in Your sight, that Thou might be justified when Thou speakest, and be clear when Thou judgest. He says, "Behold, I was shaped in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." I've been wrestling with this a long time. Come on, we're about to break through in here. We're about to break free. I've been wrestling with this a long time. Has anybody in this room been wrestling with something a long time? And you are vulnerable enough in this moment to say, "Tonight is the last night." If you're online, and you've been wrestling with something a long time, tonight is the last night. He says, "Behold, Thou desirest truth in the inward parts." I'm giving you your key right here. And He says, "And in the hidden parts Thou shalt make me to know wisdom." Oprah said it best: "Turn your wounds into wisdom." The way that you're going to make sure you transform your pain and not transmit it is that you got to turn everything you went through through the wisdom experience, so that you realize, "I've been there, done that. I ain't falling for that mess again. I've been down that road." And when the thoughts come, I capture those thoughts, and everything that tried to exalt itself against the knowledge of God, I got the power to pull that thing down. Oh God, I gotta purge me with hyssop, purge me with His up, and I shall be clean. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness. Change my deficit language by changing how I hear, so I no longer hear negativity, I only hear positivity, because faith comes by hearing. Come on, stay with me. I'm going somewhere. And He says, "Watch this." He said, "Watch this." He says, "That the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice." What? He's gonna make my broken places become a place of praise. He's gonna make my brokenness so blessed that I'll praise Him for it. Oh, I don't have nobody in here. I ain't got nobody. What? He's gonna take the place of my most vulnerable pain and make it such a place of victory that, as my grandmothers would say, "When I think about the goodness of Jesus and all that He has done for me, my soul cries out." That's a good place to shout right there, and you missed it. That's a good place to give God praise right there, and you missed it. He's going to take the parts of my life that are the most vulnerable and make them a place of victory, so that the broken bones, they rejoice. Are you getting this? Watch this, watch this. I'm almost there. Watch this. No, I'm not almost there. I'm lying, but I'm gonna get there. Here we go. Watch it, watch this. He says, "Hide Thy face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities." Here we go. "Create in me a clean heart." Creating me a clean heart. Create in me a clean heart. Don't, don't give it to me, just, but create it in me. It's so dark, it's so black, but You can take out the heart of stone and put in a heart of flesh. Create in me a clean heart, and then renew a right spirit within me. There's the problem. My spirit wasn't right because I forgot that I was a spiritual being having a human experience. I started believing that I was a human having a spiritual experience. So I started to try to do instead of simply be. God made human beings, not human doings. So you got, oh, I just said a thing, and you dismiss it. So you got so caught up in what you're doing, what you're doing, what you're doing, what you're doing, what you're trying to do, what you're trying to accomplish, what you're trying to get done. And that's okay, that's all right. I understand it. But you forgot to just be. You forgot that there's a promise that's layered on top of your life. Ah, come on. I got to get to where I got to go. I got to get to where I got to go. And so He says, "Cast me not out of Thy presence." Don't take Your Holy Spirit from me. "But restore, restore, restore." There's some restoration in this room right now. Restore, restore unto me the joy of my salvation, and uphold me with Thy free spirit. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and uphold me with Thy free spirit. He said, "Then I will teach transgressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee." In other words, when You get done fixing all of this and making it whole and bringing me into wholeness, there are some folk that are assigned to my life that I am about to convert because You cleaned me up, and You created in me a clean heart, and You got me right in my spirit, and now I'm ready to take action and move forward. Can you just nudge somebody with your elbow with your mask on and say, "Everything is about to change for you. Everything is about to change for you."
And so, once you see the opportunity in your regret by realizing that God can create in you a clean heart and renew a right spirit within you, you then start leaning into your resilience. Come on. So just go with me. Go with me. I'm going somewhere. I'm gonna bless you. You start leaning into your resilience. Somebody shout, "I'm resilient!" I'm resilient. I'm resilient. I'm resilient. Resilience is very important because resilience is the thing that's gonna help you understand that everything that you've gone through were lessons that you had to learn. But that you're learning needed to be continual. This is not just about your education, but about your learning. Education, most people can acquire, but learning has to become intentional. And realize it can happen anywhere. As a matter of fact, intelligence, it cannot, it cannot, it cannot, it cannot be earned, but discerned. You have to realize that you got the goods, and you got what it takes already down on the inside of you. Somebody shout, "I'm resilient!" I'm resilient. Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness, or it is the ability of a substance or an object to spring back into shape and not lose its elasticity. Look at somebody, say, "I'm resilient." I'm resilient. I'm resilient. The problem with your resilience is you think that you're about to bounce back. Look at somebody and say, "I got good news for you." I got good news for you. You are not about to bounce back. Because when God takes you up, He doesn't cause you to bounce back, He causes you to bounce beyond where you were. Somebody shout, "I'm resilient!" And the reason I went down is so that I can go up to a place that I never get back to where I was. Oh, I wish I had a church in here. Somebody say, "I'm about to bounce beyond anything I could ever imagine."
Lord have mercy. My God. I feel this thing in here. There is a bounce beyond your limitations. There is a bounce beyond your financial situation. There is a bounce beyond the difficulty that you face right now. You are about beyond it. I know depression had a hold, but the Spirit of the Living God is about to break that thing off of you to the point that you don't even recognize your own joy. I wish I had somebody in here. You are about to bounce beyond. Come on, Holy Spirit. Come on, Holy Spirit. Somebody shout, "I'm bouncing beyond!" Now unto Him who was able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all that you ask or think. This is not a bounce back. This is a bounce beyond. Oh, somebody need to tweet that. Somebody needs to type that right in the chat. Somebody needs to say and declare, "This is not a bounce back, baby. This is a bounce beyond." When I come out of this, I'm not bouncing back. Oh God, who am I talking to? I'm bouncing beyond where I was. I am on my way up, never to come down again. Is He helping anybody? And so, when you understand your resilience, you realize that half of learning involves unlearning.
So there are some things I have got to unlearn. There are some mindsets I've got to unlearn. There's some deficit language I've got to stop using. I have to narrate my story. To narrate means to have a recount. To narrate means to have a recount. That, that means that when you tell your story, you have to recount it. And where you thought you lost, you didn't lose. Deficit language only sees things as lose or win, and it's a false dichotomy. You ain't never heard of a win-win situation. I'm teaching good tonight. Look at your neighbor and say, "You are in a win-win situation." Somebody online say, "I'm in a win-win situation." The reason I'm in a win-win situation is because my God can't lose. I wish I had somebody in here. And if God be for me, then who can be against me? I'm in a win-win.
So now we enter into the text. The text says that the Lord instructs Israel. Yeah, all that was introduction. I did all that to get you here.
The text says that the Lord comes to Moses on the last night in Egypt and says to him, "This is going to be the beginning of months for you." He changed their entire calendar. Let that sink in. He took them off of man's time and shifted them to His time. He took them out of chronos, chronological time, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and He says, "I'll shift you to Kairos time." Kairos time is where God operates in opportunity. When Jesus was going to visit the disciples after telling them to go to the other side, the Bible says He walks out and He's walking on the water because He was walking in opportunity. He was operating in Kairos while they were in Chronos. See, in the chronological timing of things, it looks like you're not going to make it. But the Bible says that Jesus, this is just an antidote, the Bible says that Jesus was going to pass by them because they failed to learn the lesson of the loaves. He wasn't stopping because He was hoping that they would get the lesson. So He put them in a situation to learn. Your situation is not a life sentence, it's so that you can learn who your God is. Okay, so, so, so, all right, let me leave that alone. So, so, He shifted their entire calendar from a Gregorian calendar to what is called a sacred calendar. And so the Jews operated on a sacred calendar. Well, they had all these festivals and feasts. Three times in a year, they had to come before the Lord. And He kept shifting how they did things. The first time He did it was in their house. But once they started coming out of Egypt, He moved it from their house and told them that everybody has to come to His house. But where we find ourselves in the text is where the Lord is talking to them about their house. Now, this is 430 years of bondage that was all predicated on what God promised. God promised that this would happen. Oh Lord, what do you do when the promises of God cause you a lot of problems? God promised to Abraham, "I'll make your name great. I'll make you the father of many nations." And while He was talking to him, it got dark, and Abraham saw a glimpse of what we're talking about, that his people would go through a protracted season of difficulty so long that it would take 430 years to get them out of it. It doesn't matter how long it takes, God is still going to get you out of this. 430 years of bondage and oppression. And Pharaoh and Moses are having conversation back and forth. And Pharaoh had said that I ain't never going to talk to you again. He said that down in chapter 10. He said, "I ain't never going to talk to you again. This is the last time we're going to meet. This is the last time we're going to talk." And God says to Moses, in chapter 11, "Go back and talk to Pharaoh." He said, "I want you to go back and talk to him. As a matter of fact, I am going to harden his heart." So when Moses walked into the room, it wasn't like he didn't know that Pharaoh was going to say no. And so Moses walks into the room, and they're having a conversation after Pharaoh said, "I'll never talk to you again." And they start talking about this moment, and Pharaoh makes a decree that every firstborn child in Israel shall die. And by his own words, he cursed himself. And so God says to Moses, "Here's what I want you to do. After tonight, everything's about to change." Jesus. "After tonight, you will no longer recognize your life. After tonight, you will see this place no more. After tonight, the chains and the whips and the lashes and all the hardship that you have endured will not be in your memory." As a matter of fact, "I'm gonna heal everybody before we leave." I wish I had somebody in here. I wish I had somebody in here, because the Bible says that "not one of them left that were not healed." But this is not where I want to preach about. There's something deeper in this text that we overlook. And here it is: The instruction that "every man takes a lamb according to his own house." This is important. The reason the Bible says "according to his own house" is because, like the Egyptians, the Israelites started to live the same way they did, and they completely lost their distinction. So now a problem is coming in light of a plague that is going to have to cause every Israelite to have a distinction. Not just Israelites, but anybody who takes the lamb or goat. I don't have time to talk about that, but any person. Even if your house was too small to even afford the lamb, you were to go to your neighbor, and they was going to hook you up. In other words, nobody left behind. And so the instruction was, here we go, to take this lamb and to sacrifice it. And He told him that, "I want you to take the blood and put it on the doorposts and on the lentils." Have you ever wondered why? How is putting something on my door going to stop it from coming in my house? It wasn't about simply protection from death. It was about re-engineering their memory. 430 years of operating like their captives, they started to live like they lived, not simply serving other gods, but they started to believe that eternity like the Egyptians believed in eternity. So when you study Egyptology and you begin to understand that when they built their buildings, architecturally, they built most of their buildings out of mud brick, because those homes represented something temporal. Even if you were affluent, the majority of the house was still built out of mud brick. However, when you were going to die, they built those out of stone, like the pyramids, because they believed that eternity was going to meet them on the other side, and they wanted their names to live forever. And so they equated eternity to their architecture, and they started dying with all of their stuff and burying themselves with all of their stuff and mummifying themselves because they thought that eternity was going to greet them on the other side, and they wanted to be in full tact, full shape, completely whole, with all their stuff. But they didn't know you couldn't take it with you. And so in Egyptology, when you look at a home of an Egyptian, inscribed on the top of their house was a word, usually their name. The Israelites started to do the same thing. They went from living in tents to living in the same type of dwelling places as the Egyptians, and they started to carve their name. And the only
Architectural exception of a mud brick home, which was the door post and the lintel because it was the only thing that could be made out of stone, which represented eternity. The rest of the house was made out of mud brick. So when God told the Israelites to put the blood on the doorpost and the lintel, He was saying, "I want you to smear the blood over your name because your name is going to be written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and your eternity is through My salvation." Oh, I wish I had 10 or 20 folk in here that understand the words that are coming out of my mouth.
The blood was over their house to re-engineer their memory of who they was and give them back their distinction. [Applause] Whoa, glory to God! Did you hear what I just said? So the instruction that God gave them was to say to them, "Put the blood over the name of your house." I dare you right now to just plead the blood over the name of your house, whatever your name is. I dare you to go ahead and plead the blood over it right now, over your children and your child. You're not in here with me; y'all are missing me tonight. Over your children and your children's children. I, they just say, "I plead the blood over my family, over my babies, over my money, over my stuff, over my home, over everything in it." Because the Lord was trying to show them that this is about covenant. This is about covenant, and I'm going to do this thing through My blood. Oh God, Lord have mercy! Lord have mercy! Look at somebody, say, "That's worth the price of a mission right there." Y'all trying to play me up in here. That is worth the price of a mission right there. [Applause]
That the blood was put on the doorpost and the lintel so that I could realize, watch this, the covenant, eternal purpose of God. So I don't lose my distinction. I am not bound; I'm free. I am not broke; I'm blessed. I am not the tail; I'm the head. I am not my God; I am not last; I'm first. For the first shall be last, and the last shall be [Applause]. We're losing our distinction. Are you getting this? We're losing our distinction. And because we're losing our distinction, the Lord says, "No, you can't do that because I always have a people picked out." Now, prophetically, God is doing something uniquely special in this house. Please don't miss this. It's so unusual and unique and distinctive, and you are connected to it. And when Bishop declared on Sunday that there is an up that you cannot get back down from, he was talking about distinction. [Applause] When people look at your life, all they're gonna see is up, and they're gonna have to try to figure out how did you get up there? I don't know, but there's something distinct about what God is doing in my life. It's not based on my marriage, but it's based on His mercy. I wish I had somebody in here. It's not that I did it; I didn't do it on my own. It's just...
And so, the last night in Egypt, God re-engineered their memory and their mindset to cause them to stop regretting and to start being resilient. And to realize that your resilience is going to cause you to see that this is not a bounce back, but a bounce beyond. And once you realize that, you've got to eat whatever you're going to eat in haste because the moment you start thinking you're going to stay here, Pharaoh is going to say, "Take all the stuff you need to take and get out of here." Not only am I going out and up, but I'm going out with a pace and a speed that's unprecedented. Look at your neighbor and say, "I'm going out quick, baby. I'm going out quick." So I gotta eat it in haste because everything is about to change real quick in my life. I gotta get busy. I gotta get going. I gotta get moving because God is on the [Applause] move.
We know the story. God takes them out of that place at night, and the Bible says that the Israelites were favorably, was favorably treated by the Egyptians because God made the Egyptians favorably disposed to them. There is about to be favor on your life like you have never seen it before. You ain't even going to know why they're being as nice to you as they are being. You're not even going to understand how that door opened up, but it's about to open. For the Lord will bless the righteous, and with His favor, He shall surround them like a shield. Get ready that everywhere you go, you're walking in a shield of favor, and stuff that normally would take you out, it's just gonna bounce off of you because you are protected by the blood of Jesus Christ. Somebody said, "I'm about to walk in favor that I never walked in before." This is my exodus. This is my coming out. This is my last night in Egypt. This is your last night in Egypt.
And there's one last thing that God told me to tell you. He said, "Michael, tell my people that not only am I bringing them out, but I'm bringing them to the edge of what they will no longer experience." For when the Israelites got to the Red Sea, come on somebody, you know the story, but let me just preach just a little bit here. When the Israelites got to the edge of the Red Sea, the Bible says that Pharaoh decided to get his chariots and to hunt them down. Look at your neighbor and say, "That was all a setup." There was a reason that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. There was a reason that God filled him with regret because regret makes you do stupid stuff. When God told Pharaoh that he was going to have to let his people go, Pharaoh said, "I ain't going to do it." But he had to do it, and he hardened his heart to the point where he decided to chase after them. He did it on purpose, and God made him do it. Why? Because God knew He was bringing His people to the edge of experiencing something that they would never experience again. In other words, the enemy that you see today, you shall see no more. Look at your neighbor, say, "Stand still and see the salvation of God."
When God moves in your life in this moment, all you've got to do is wait. Your fatigue is about to drop off of you, for they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall man up with wings as eagles. They shall walk and not get weary. They shall run and not think. Slap somebody, a high five, and say, "I got walking to do. I got running to do. I got stuff to do." My God, I feel the Lord in here. The enemy that you see today, you shall see no more. This is your last night in Egypt. Somebody shout about it right there. Somebody give God praise for it right there. Somebody exalt His name right there. This is your last night in Egypt.
Egypt is not represented here as a geographical location. It is not the country, but rather the mindset, the patterns, and the habits that have held you down for so long. But this is your last night [Applause] in that mentality. This is your last night operating from that pattern. This is your last night struggling with that habit. This is your last night in Egypt. You are not going into 2022 with the patterns, habits, and mindsets that will keep you down, but you are going into 2022 with the patterns, habits, and mindsets that's gonna take you up. So let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus. Stop thinking it robbery that God is asking you to sacrifice. These people were in bondage for 430 years, and God told them, "Give me a lamb." "I'm broke. I'm poor. I'm tired." And God said, "No, but if you want this to be your last night, I need you." That's always sacrificing. [Music]
What are you willing to give up to go up? What are you willing to let go of to go up? Are those habits that wonderful to you? Are those patterns that powerful that you can't look at your mistakes and stop being loyal to them and say, "I have to shift my mindset. I have to shift my language. I might have to shift my circles, but I'm tired of being down here. I, I can't keep operating like this, up and down, up and down, up and down." I understand there's going to be some ebb and some flowing. I get that. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the inconsistency that you've had in your life all because of the regrets, because you keep remembering it wrong and you won't recount the story, so you keep counting yourself out. Can I tell you, whoever counted you out failed math? They can't add. They don't know that one can chase a thousand. [Music] Two could put ten thousand to flight. If we continued on that same line of math, three people gathered together concerning anything would chase a hundred thousand things. Four people, it would grow exponentially to a million things. There are more than four people in this room. There are more than four people watching online. What would happen if we collectively said and declared it together, "This is our last night in Egypt"?
I don't know what Egypt represents to you. I don't know what mindset or what pattern or what habit that you need to break to come out of and to go into what God has promised you. And the enemy that has constantly had you bound, see no more. God wants to take you to the other side of what He has promised. Even if it took 430 years, God is faithful. And right now, I know there's somebody in this room saying, "Pastor, you were talking to me. I've had habits. I've had patterns. I've had mindsets that weren't healthy, that stopped me from moving forward. It caused me to not see God's goodness the way I know He's been good to me. I've held suspicion in my heart of the goodness of God." But tonight, you can determine, as God has already told you, this is your last night.
To come to Pastors and Leaders Conference, I think the most important thing is to find out that you're not alone. The relationship that you build here, people that come from different backgrounds, from all over the place. I could feel the anointing, literally, the moment we walked into the building, tears falling from my eyes. It's a heart issue. It's a life changer. You need to be here. You don't want to miss it. Come see for yourself. [Music] You.