Transcription
Uh, okay. So, the mission. How's everybody doing this morning? Good. Cody, how you doing? You didn't respond, so I'm assuming not good.
Uh, always I'm always curious. It's always spiritual. Everything, all of it is always spiritual. And whenever he pits us against one another, it's always to try to take us out of position. He wants to divide. He wants to separate. He wants to pit one person against the next person so that I get inside myself. So I choose myself again. And then there's division in the people. And it's so good because this ties into the mission. You know there is no mission without unity, right? Like this is the truth. We are the bride alone. You're not. Like like so you have you have two different perspectives in scripture. You have sunship and airship, right? We are the sons adopted by by the blood back into the garden. And we are sons. We are favorite sons. We are chosen sons. Jesus says he was the first of many brothers. That means we are brothers with Christ individually in all alone. You're sons, heirs, and brothers with Christ. You get that part? Collectively, we're the bride altogether. And so, collectively, we have a mission. And then individually, we have a mission. But our individual mission means nothing if we don't have unity with other believers. Because our individual mission can never be successful. Because in Ephesians 4 it talks about and we'll go into it uh it next next Monday I think the five-fold right how we work together as one to fulfill these things. What is the overall mission? Is to see the the saints built up to the fullness and stature of Christ Jesus. And so what does that look like? What is the mission given collectively? Look at well, let's look at some scripture first. Let's pray. Father God, right now I speak the name of Jesus, Jesus into this room, Lord God, that every racing thought, every emotionally tied process that's consuming us that has to leave and flee. It says where one will put a thousand to flight, two will put 10,000 to flight, Lord God. And I believe there's more than 10 men in unity in this room right now in the name of Jesus. Father God, I pray for focus and function, Lord God. I pray that we are intentional about understanding what we are called to do and be for you, for your kingdom, and for your glory, Lord God. And the only way to do that is to get out of me. Lord, I thank you for these men, every single one of them. I thank you for the process that is full of tribulation. I thank you for a process that is full of hardship. And I thank you for a process that is full of suffering. Because in that, you build great men. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
To understand our our individual mission I believe is is Isaiah 60 and to to understand our mission in unity is Isaiah 61. And our individual mission for me is clear, right? It's always going to come back to Christ in me, the hope of glory. It's always going to point back. If everything doesn't point back to Jesus, I don't think that it's exactly what we're supposed to be. Because the judgment and the way the world is reconciled, the way it's made whole is only through Christ. Even if if you're looking at the things that don't add up about somebody, the only thing that makes it add up is Jesus. You read in scripture today about the sacrifice and the suffering of the cross, right? That he was a man of suffering. Yeah. Isn't that what it was in Oswald? And to identify and understand what he did on the cross. For me, I have to identify and understand that God is a God of wrath. And thank God he brought Christ into the mix. And it's a place where forever throughout time, he pours his wrath out. So that all of us, everybody say all. All are brought back into the fullness of creation. The fullness pre-apple. The fullness of creation to rule and to reign like it was always intended to tend the garden. And in that garden, it's a supernatural thing where as we sow and as we pour out and as we lay down our lives, everything around us increases. Everything around us is multiplied. But in the midst of it, because we still have a fallen world, there's suffering. And we endure it for the joy set before us, just like he did. Yeah. Everybody agree with that? Okay.
So the individual mission. So this is for you individually, for me individually, for all of us individually. It says, "Arise and shine, for your light has come and the glory of the Lord rises upon you." See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the people, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Listen, can you see that right now? And I don't doubt. Listen, everything going on with Iraq or Iran and Israel, I don't know if y'all caught wind of the news, right? We bombed Iran this weekend, but Israel's been bombing them for a week or so. But the truth is in '79, I don't know if you knew this, but pre-1979, Iran and Iran was Israel's greatest ally. Greatest ally. They shared technologies. They shared educational platforms. They shared medical uh uh advancements. That was their greatest ally. Did y'all know that? That's when and then the Ayatollah, he rises up. There's a a huge uh uh what do you call it? A rebellion that occurs and then Sharia law has been in place since '79. I guarantee you in 1979, everybody's like, "Jesus is coming back. Iran is now against Israel." You get it? Don't sweat that stuff. It's so far outside of our realm of influence. Don't let it impact you. But right now, there's deep darkness here. Deep darkness in this room. You understand? Listen, whenever Patrick looked at my flesh rises up when he looks at me, 'cause I know he's frustrated and he's got to be mad at somebody because this process is hard and he don't want to be here and his wife reached out to him and that was probably a hard phone call, too. 'Cause listen, women know about us. Nobody else does. Forgive my language. Mark the time. Leave that for video. 20 minutes in. But you know what I'm saying? And so like it presses us into a place because the enemy wants to cause division and then this thing and that's a dark place 'cause now I'm upset with everything that's giving me hope and victory and I'm uncomfortable again 'cause I have I'm full of this opinion and it listen and it always starts and ends with me. If you can get to that truth, you'll find freedom faster. Amen. In the midst of you being upset, irritated, or frustrated, if you can get to the place where the only thing that'll change everything that you're frustrated, irritated with, or or uh upset with is you denying yourself. That's the only thing that'll fix and change it. And so, in that moment, you deny yourself. You take you out of it. It doesn't matter what they said, what they did, how they're going to treat you. None of that matters because we live by a different set of principles. Then you'll actually find real freedom again. And if you look at the history of the place, I promise this place is going to give you the best that we can. That that if you stay in position, it'll get better. Y'all hear my testimony. It doesn't mean everything gets uh, you know, Skittles and rainbows, but but there's joy in it. You know what I'm saying? Like there's hard stuff you're still going to go through 'cause if he suffered, we're going to suffer. But through that suffering, listen, that's the darkness, in the midst of my dad getting cancer, in the midst of Curtis, in the midst of my wife being able to not speak or talk and the only thing that would come out of her mouth was, "Thank you, Lord." That's the light that shines upon you. That's the favor of the Lord that hovers over you. In the midst of those hard moments, in the midst of I should punch him in the mouth, because there's things people do that deserve a violent response, but based off what we say we believe, it's in those moments that the light shines. You get it? It's in those moments. It doesn't mean that the darkness isn't there. We are looking for this great darkness covering the earth. And this is the truth. Your earth right now is only about as big as this city block. You get it? If you can learn how to be intentional about bringing the light here, about letting his favor rest on you in this place, then your influence is going to grow while you're in this place. The earth that you have influence over will grow based off the people that you communicate with, the people we go out and serve, the people that we go out and do work for, the employers that you go to work for. That influence, that light that you cast, you go from a lamp on a table to a city on a hill, and you're casting light over the whole thing.
In the midst of all of the things that I've been going through, uh, I've been encouraged every day by something new. There was a guy that I know that's influential in the city. He said, he was telling somebody else, he said, "You notice how whenever Lee first opened, the whole city was against him. And now the whole city is behind them." And it wasn't about me. Like they're not behind. They're about behind us, right? I just represent us just like you just represent us. And to be intentional about the small piece of earth that I can shed light upon if I can get out of my pride, my arrogance, and my ego. To know that there's always going to be a deep darkness there. I have to understand it. But this is the thing. The the dark never overcomes the light. The light may retreat. It may be dark in this room and I turn on a light and the darkness flees. It's a principle that is there. It's spirituality. It spiritually it goes the exact same way. And but if I turn the light off, darkness invades. If I have a candle walking through a dark room, everywhere I go is illuminated. If I have a flashlight, everything is illuminated that I illuminate. It's the same principle. You are that light individually. You are the light. I I don't know if anybody's ever been to Flagstaff, Arizona. Flagstaff, Arizona is a home of like the like Hubble, I think Hubble's telescope and uh they have zero light pollution. It's the craziest thing you've ever seen. Flagstaff is a little bit bigger than Abilene and when you're driving in from West Texas where there's absolutely nothing, you can see the lights from Abilene from about 50 miles out. When you get close to Flagstaff, you can't see them until you're in the city. And even then, they have shields so you can see every bit of the stars above you. And it's so amazing. It's just amazing how the light is shielded. And I always think about that reference of of of us being a light on a hill. We were never meant to be shielded. I think what we're taught to walk in as Christians leaves us kind of like Flagstaff, Arizona. There's zero light pollution, but we're supposed to invade. What? You look confused, Malcolm. All right, you have one eye open. It says, "Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn." In that, listen, in that, I believe, what I truly truly believe is that there's going to be city leaders that come to you. There's going to be people of influence that come to you and say, "How do I get what you got?" because they have and that's how our influence is going to grow. You you understand what I mean? Like I believe that about us as well. Like uh individually, I think that you begin to go to a church and you have what's called hunger. If you keep this, if you hang on to this and you actually have hunger for the Lord. Yes, Lord. If you really want to grow in what you've gotten here, listen, half y'all are just going to want to go back to normal or get or get some tail and and you're going to look don't y'all see it face to transition the sidetrack? I don't know. I do. I mean, I've been doing this for a while, so I see it every single cycle. No matter how many times we caution, no matter we have rules again. This is what I find is a joke. Uh the women that come around and the men, listen, they're so I can't wait until my next Monday because I'm going to have a whole teaching about the the idiot that believes that if they couldn't fulfill the commitment here, what makes they think them think they could fulfill a commitment there? 'Cause that one's way harder. A commitment in a relationship, in a marriage is 10 times harder than this place. You have to way decrease. You don't get. Listen, a grown man has three pair of shoes. Don't you know that the ones you work in, the ones you hang out at home in, and the ones you relax in? That's just a that's a whole another message for you if you got small kids. Now, I don't have small kids in the home, so I got a few more parent shoes than that. You know, just basic responsibilities. You understand what I mean? Like, it ain't about me. It's about what I have to do. It's about them. How many people in this room have got kids? Those are the shoes you should be worried about. How many things happened to you? How many people influenced you whenever you were growing up? You might want to start thinking about the shoes they're wearing.
Says, "Lift up your eyes and look around you. All assemble and come to you. Your sons come from afar and your daughters are carried on the hip. Then you will look and be radiant. Your heart will throb and swell with joy. The wealth on the seas will be brought to you. To you the riches of the nations will come. Herds of camels will cover your land. Young camels of Midian and Epha and all from Sheba will come bearing gold and incense and proclaiming the praise of the Lord. All Cedar's flock will be gathered to you. The rams of Nabboth will serve you. They will be accepted as offerings on my altar and I will adorn my glorious temple." Look, unless I focus very intentionally about becoming that light, nothing else will come into play and I focus on what I'm going to get by it, I'll never get the generosity it'll take to contain it. The only way you get to hang on to everything God's going to give you is to be able to give it all away. And if I ever change my mindset from that, I'll never be able to hang on to it. Listen, you are a He says that Christ is the king of kings. What does that make you? No. No. If he's king of kings, what does it make you? A king. Listen, a king has direction and purpose. A prince is waiting to figure out what he's supposed to do. What? Well, yeah. But king, if he's king of kings, it makes us kings. But to be kings, we have to be taught to reign and rule. We got to be able to handle the responsibility of what it looks like. Listen, kings don't walk around with money in their pocket because they have access to everything in the kingdom. They don't have to. They're worried about territory and the people that they serve. That's what it's supposed to be. They're supposed to be servants of the people. And in that to take care of that many people, the kingdom grows, right? To be able to do all those things. Listen, people I I don't understand theology and I didn't grow up in the church, but people always navigate the prosperity gospel. Y'all hear me say this a thousand times. I had more money than you can imagine before I came to know the Lord. I lost it all obviously, just like all of us did, but I'm more prosperous now than I ever was then because the peace that I have outweighs any tangible item. No matter how much cash money or bank account I had, I never had enough. And I only felt rich when my house was full of food because I was stuck in a poverty mindset because I was a broke kid. So I'd have a pocket full of money, but it only when I filled the house full of groceries did I feel rich. God wants to increase the your capacity to receive based off you being a light. As you go from that table to the hill, you need to shed more light. And in that, it takes radical generosity. It takes the ability to meet people's needs. He wants to use you to do that. But he's got to trust you with yourself first. He's got to trust you with your ability to keep your own word first. How are you ever going to keep your word to a God you can't see? If you can't even keep your word to the man next to you, how are you ever going to fulfill the commitments that you've have with your family if you can't even fulfill the commitments that you made to us for a year when we took you at your most broken and lowest and gave you everything? How are you ever going to mature past the place of adolescence if you don't surrender and submit and fulfill those obligations? Because you're just living in your dad's house again. Just so you know, that's what this looks like. We're trying to bring you from the age where you emotionally got stunted whenever you started using to a place of mature masculinity. You understand? Do you see it? Kind of. Just kind of see it. What it looks like. It doesn't mean anybody's less. It means that we all and we all should at one point be able to look around this room, look in every single eye, and say, "Equal mighty man of God." And then in that place of unity, go forth.
Now that we're at that, I'm gonna read the next one because this is who we're supposed to be in unity. "The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me." When I say me, I mean us. Do you understand? "Because the Lord has anointed me," not me, us. Listen, this is the deal. You carry an anointing that I won't carry. And I carry an anointing that you won't carry. But if we can operate like a body, the only thing it says in scripture that sets the captives free is the anointing. Do you understand? So we need in greater measure the anointing. We need to understand anointing. We need to understand when somebody walks in the room, we need to be able to see what it is they carry so that if what the room needs is what they carry, we can get out of the way so that they can be effective and people will be set free. Amen. Because the whole desire should be to build up the body to the fullness of stature of Christ Jesus. So, we need to be aware of anointing and not get in the way of it because my role or who I am or what I'm called to do. I should be able to see it and say, "I need to take a step back, see what God's building and see if I'm what's causing the disruption and be able to take a step back and grow in the place where I am effective." God wants to use you where you're most effective and me where I'm most effective. And he wants to use us together so that we're fully effective. Says, "Because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim the good news to the poor." Listen, the gospel to the poor. And when it says poor, it means poor in every way. But more importantly, I was a poor man even whenever I had wealth because I never had peace or joy or patience or love or kindness or goodness or self-control. "He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom to the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the joy, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair." Everybody that didn't feel good when they walked in this room, which one of those fit you? Which one of them fit you? Be honest. Did you have uh did you have mourning? Were you mourning the loss of anything, even if it was your old life or your sleep patterns or whatever? Was it uh this a spirit of despair? Did you feel like everything was hopeless and you would never get back to where you were?
Says, "They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor." It takes the choice of the greater things to remove the I, the me, and the my. You've got to remove it. It's got to be gone. You got to try and it's about trusting him. Everything you wanted in greater measure and things you don't even know to pray for is what's in store for you in this life. It's just what it is. I know. I experience it. Men of God that I know that I'm surrounded by experience that. And and the trick is to never reach in to try to get what you're going to get, but to just wait for the Lord. And it's like a bowl that you're holding with a fountain that pours in. It just fills up your bowl and then overflows into the next ones. And that's what it looks like. Everything you could ever want to imagine. The truth is you don't even understand the differences in what you want and what you need. And so you're trying to a lot of guys feel desperate because nothing they want ever happens but all of it would kill you and the Holy Spirit loves you. I can't understand sometimes why I don't have Elliot and Ruby back in my life. But I trust that God has a greater plan than a vision and he protects me or them. And I don't have to understand it. I just have to be in the process because I want to be in the flow of God. I want to be listen, I can't be an oak of righteousness unless I'm planted by the water. And I just don't ever want to be far from the water. Does that make sense? Because I don't even understand how to do most of this stuff. I just get up in the morning, know I got to seek him, go to the gym, come back, try to get on my face before him. He gives me a revelation that I feel like I should have got six years ago. And I see myself in it. And I get to weep for him. I get to pray. I get the Holy Spirit will come in and touch me and give me a burden for people, which is so foreign to me. And I'll start to cry and pray as I'm praying over certain people. And it's this thing where I have conscious contact with him and where all of us have the ability to have conscious contact with him. We have access.
It says, "They will rebuild the ancient ruins and restore the places long devastated." You know, that's what we're called to do as men. "They will renew the ruined cities that have been devastated for generations. Strangers will shepherd their flocks. Foreigners will work their fields and vineyards. And you will be called priests of the Lord. You'll be named ministers of our God. You will feed on the wealth of nations, and in their riches you will boast. Instead of your shame, you will receive a double portion. And instead of disgrace, you will rejoice in your inheritance. And so you will inherit a double portion in your land. And everlasting joy will be yours." That's us. If we can ever get to a place of unity, that's us. You know, we can't get there without unity. We're not going to be able to get there without unity. It's just not going to happen unless we're together as one. It's not going to happen. We got to be able to trust and believe and then move in it and do it and we will always have enough according to need.
Malachi 4:5 and 6 says this. It says, "See, I'll send the prophet Elijah to you before the great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the hearts of the children to their parents, or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction." Look at what it looks like in our generation. How easily we rebel from our parents and how quickly a parent abandons their child. Think about it. I did it. Every man in this room abandoned their family. It's just what we did 'cause we were in deception. It doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you lost. And now you're found. Now you have the ability and capacity to love and love your family and choose them first. You should rejoice in the fact that now you know instead of trying to hang on to some form of pride that says, "No, I did love them." No, you didn't. Because you always chose you. That's not what love. It says love never seeks its own. It literally means if you ever chose getting high or going out partying over your kids and over your wife, that you never loved them. That's what it means. The good news is we love because he first loved us. If in this place you receive the love of the Father, now you have the capacity to love them. And in 1 Corinthians 13:4, it identifies what that is. And it specifically says love never seeks its own. And at this point, you start seeking him and you'll realize you don't need so many shoes, that they need shoes that you don't want them to have the wounds that you have that makes you think you need so many shoes because they got some nice shoes. And so they're not in competition. They just get to be kids. They're not looked at or laughed at because they don't have a dad because you're now there for them. You get it? I believe that right now the spirit of Elijah is upon you. Look at this place. Turning the hearts of fathers back to sons and sons back to fathers. I see your dad that comes in, right? And you pick him up every time you see him. You get it? Sons to fathers, fathers to sons. The it's the trickle over is beginning to happen with women. Look, be praying for Elijah. Be praying for Major Elijah right now. For the last 5 years, uh he's honored this place and he's lived up to it. And one of the things we prayed for is like every all of it, look, everybody here wants a wife. Some of you may have a different proclivity, but for the most of us, like we want to have the fullness of life, right? We want to have a wife. We want to have kids. We want to see what that's like. Everybody? Yeah. That isn't different from staff. The the the one of the things with uh Major Elijah is that uh he knew the Lord his whole life and he was married and they went into their addiction and then got divorced for what happens when you go into your addiction. And over the last several months, we've been praying about it and praying about it, praying about it, and that that first wife is just on his mind. And they communicate and she's always after him and he can't stand her, right? Or strike that from the record. But it's not that he can't stand her. It's just those wounds of the past. You know what I mean? We began to pray last week, God, if it be your will. And God started showing up in scripture. How many times she's overdosed and hadn't died because in Job, he couldn't kill the wife either because he said you can't kill Job. And Elijah is alive and so is she. And then he started seeing in scripture where because he divorced her, he left her out there alone. And we had other people start praying about it last week. And then on yesterday morning he went uh to Beltway and heard Randy Reese his story. Randy spoke here last Monday and he's on our board and he's a he's a really good man of God. And so yesterday he called me afterwards crying. He said, "Hey, I'm going to get Tabitha 'cause I wouldn't let any man I know stay in the situation she's in." And so he went and picked her up and all of her stuff from Dallas. And this morning he's checking her in uh to get a little bit of help. And then we're praying into what God's going to do. I believe for radical deliverance. I believe that every bit of what he has, every bit of what he's been given, if they're one flesh, she instantly has access to if their hearts are softened and not hardened and he'll open that place. And so, you need to be praying for that. God is a God of restoration and we we just don't understand what it looks like.
Matthew 28:19-20 says this. It says, "Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age." The mission is summed up so clearly. Sometimes, listen, sometimes we can't, we need more understanding. That's what the Isaiahs are about in this teaching. We need a little more clarity, right? What does it look like? You're supposed to be a light on the hill. He's equipped you with every single thing that you need to fit in the place where you will be the most purposefully used by God if you say, "Here am I." And to what end? It's so that we make disciples of all nations to bring them into the fellowship and into the body of the bride because alone we are sons, kings, and heirs, brothers to Christ himself, but in unity we are the bride of Christ. You know that reference means we were taken from Christ when we were created. It doesn't say that in scripture, but this is what I know about what it does say in Genesis. It says that God searched the world after he created all the creatures for a companion and a helper of man. And then out of man, he took the woman. And so if we're referenced as the bride to Christ, that means out of Christ is where we've come in him. Therefore, it says it over and over and over in him to enter in him. In him, in him, we have to be have a revelation of Christ, who Christ is, who Christ is in us, who we are in Christ, and then and only then we'll have a revelation of what it is for us to be a bride because it's out of him we're formed as a bride. How do you how will we know that you're his disciple? Huh? Say it again. How you love your neighbor. How you love one another. It says they'll know you're my disciple by how you love one another. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. We have to be known as a disciple before we can make disciples. The only way we're recognized as a disciple is how we love one another. Anybody got anything? We got about five minutes.
What if his drive does that make us the rib? I don't I'm not going to get too ridiculously detailed in it. I think that the rib is how what he took and multiplied and formed the body. And I can tie some weird science and crap to that and how God expands things. But the truth is it's the essence of I think more I think it's like the the a woman isn't made up specifically of the body although the body does define the female gender but it's the spirit and characteristics of femininity that makes a woman a woman, right? It's a combination of anatomy and personality, spirituality, whatever you want to say. What um I was given this uh God spoke this to me about I've always prided myself for being a good dad, good father, always from always there for my kids. And um I remember when I I cheated on my wife, I didn't think anything about anything about me in the moment. And you know, when I had to deal with it, I was like, man, I let I hurt my wife. I cheated on my wife. I couldn't have loved my wife. But in the same breath, I believe that I still was a good father. And I feel like in the moment I I realized that the two me trying to separate the hurt of hurting her and not them was actually one and the same because I was hurting my whole family by the actions that I did in that moment. As much as I said I love my children, what I did was not love to her or them. And you know as we were coming down you were just talking about love. I just think for me in that moment uh of it was me. It was selfish. There was no love for my whole family and could have destroyed the open. So for me, my testimony really speaks to people that never knew Jesus. So whenever I say there's no way you loved your family, it's 'cause I didn't know Christ and I didn't have a relationship with God. So before that, I know I was incapable of. Now somebody who is knows God and knows the love of God and knows Jesus, I believe that you have the capacity to love your family. But then we make mistakes and grace because sometimes he just needs you to teach you what grace is for men that are going to stumble. And the what's the best example to teach someone who judges others? Have them walking out. That's just what it looks like. So some of you may have known the Lord and may have been engaged with your family and then you chose and you backslid. It is what it is. My testimony targets men who did not know him. So that's the good thing about having multiple teachers. If that's may if that caused condemnation or for you to question that if you knew if you truly knew God, truly knew Christ, then I believe you have the capacity to love your kids. I just know before I knew them, there was no way I had capacity to love them. Anybody else?
What does denying myself look like practically in this in this program? To deny myself means it means very simply whenever I'm going to choose something in selfishness, self-seeking or self-centeredness, I don't. That's what it looks like to deny myself. I deny the I, the me, and the my. That's it. Everybody does, bro. Look, you you're always going to it's always going to happen. Last week when I was whenever we burned this stuff and I prayed, uh I've been thinking about it a lot because I wanted to forgive my we're actually still married, but my ex for being unfaithful. Uh, but I've been thinking about a lot this week. I was unfaithful. She doesn't know that. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. Listen, we we lead they only go where we lead them. True. But listen, you and you could have never been with a woman but stayed on video games 19 hours out of the day and led her to the same direction. They only follow where we lead. So the truth is, man, I can't believe she did that to me. She only went where you you led her. I I did it first. What? So I got Oh, sorry. So I got a quick testimony about like this message is so beautiful how Jesus and the other day I prayed for Major Life. I prayed for him. I don't really know, you know, my leader like that. I prayed for him and after I I should have asked him, hey, you need to pray for anything. I just prayed for him, but I felt like the prayer wasn't really that connected. So, I asked I said, I like after I got to convers I feel God's connection, but I want testimonies. Yeah. Like pray for my kids. That today he got to meet his grandson for the very first time yesterday and everybody too. I've been praying for your app. Yeah. And then this puzzle that I got figured out been speaking to me majorly, but I mean I just got to stay. That's it. That's the key. Thank you. Anybody else? Nothing. Nobody.
Keep it simple. The mission is simple. Get to know him. And by getting to know him, you reflect his image. And then you lay down your life. And in that, you take part in his sufferings. You don't have to look for his sufferings. It ain't going to be at the end of the cat of nine tails. You know what I'm saying? It's going to be simple. It's going to be going through something and having to endure based off what you say you believe. It's going to be somebody cussing you out and trying to fight you and you're not fighting them. That's going to what the suffering is going to look like. And as you can handle the little stuff, you'll grow into the you'll go from the minor to the majors. That's just what it is. Don't overcomplicate it. Stay focused on him. Read the book of John as many times it takes for you to absolutely without a doubt know that you have an encounter with Jesus. You will if you read it as many times as it takes back to back praying to take part in his sufferings until you undeniably have an encounter with Christ. I promise it will be undeniable. You'll know mine happened January 19th, 2019 at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I'll never forget it. Most people that I know can tell you exactly where they were and the exact time and date. Not saying everybody, but most people I know, they can tell you it happened here. Boom, boom, boom. This what it was. Pursue him. Get to know him and and and then don't worry about don't worry about everything else. Just reflect him in the small spaces. Be quick with your amends. If you know you lost your temper, you know you said something fly. Just be quick to say, "Hey, forgive me. I'm working on myself." And don't make an excuse for it. I didn't mean to do that. I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't mean to talk trash. I didn't mean to hurt your feel. Whatever it is, just that the quicker you get with that, the more mature you're going to get. Even if they if you think they don't deserve it, make your heart clean.
So, check it out just real quick before uh so we got a bunch of changes coming July 1st and they're going to affect some of y'all, some of y'all they won't impact that much. Uh, one of the major changes is, uh, clinical will bleed into phase two for six weeks, but it'll be in the morning time. It'll be completely separate, but it'll be in the morning time. And then you'll still get what they're getting in phase two, but you'll only get it for six weeks. Uh, we'll have a new schedule posted. It also impacts our Fridays. So, Friday for phase one, you'll have four uh, four classes. It'll change up first. It'll change up PT. We'll go to PT Monday, Wednesdays, Fridays. We'll do drill on Tuesdays and march on Thursdays. And then on Fridays, you'll after you have PT, you'll have uh construction basics, construction safety, financial management, and a cooking class. And it'll be you it'll be six six teachings that'll repeat themselves. Phase two during those Fridays will have uh HVAC basics, electrical basics, plumbing basics, and we'll get you your OSHA 10 so that you'll actually have your OSHA 10 certification coming out of phase two. Uh or going out coming out of that first six weeks of phase two in into phase three. Uh, so just just so you guys know and we're trying to make all of these changes effective July 1st. So other than that it shouldn't change or impact and then everybody in phase three will instantly go into job placement. What phase two? Yeah. You won't get any of that. You won't get any of that. Then you don't need another one. You'll still sit through it. That just means we don't have to pay for you. So, what about you? That's Yeah. No, we're not going to do that. We're going to try. It's got to be the same. It's got to be templated. Some of it, you know what I mean? There's going to be the 70 to 80% of everything we should we do should apply to you. That means there's only going to be 20 to 30% that doesn't. You know what I mean? What? So, there's no more service work. No, there'll be service work in the afternoons and then phase two always serves in the afternoons. So, we just won't do the house thing or university place in the mornings. We'll do it in the afternoons. Yeah. So, we'll march on Thursday, right? Yep. March on Thursday mornings. Uh there'll be sign in sign out sheets for a lot of different classes. Now, you won't get pulled in phase two anymore to go work. It's just not what we're going to do. Phase three, we'll instantly start doing job placement. Uh, and so those are the those are the big changes that will be happening. Anybody got any questions other than the questions that I got asked?
All right, Father God, I thank you for these men. I pray that they have a greater revelation of who you are and who they are in you. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.