Transcription
Don't be afraid to make changes. Don't think that if you make changes, Ishmael and Hagar are going to die. I got a well they haven't even seen yet. You don't have to live in this chaos. Your mistakes and your miracles are cohabitating in the same space. You still need the courage to change.
God is getting ready to blow your mind. He's getting ready to do something that you thought it was too late for, that you gave up on, that you thought was impossible, that you are so aware of your vulnerabilities, that you think it can't happen to you. God is getting ready to blow your mind. And all of those counterfeit substitute Johnny come lately solutions that you put into place, you ain't going to need none of them because through your own body, through your own gift, it's not going to come through the evangelist you bring in to preach. It's not going to come in through the revival. It's not going to come through all them conferences y'all have it and can't get nobody to come to. That's not going to do it. It's going to come through your own mouth. Stop giving Hagar the job of having your baby. Nobody can have your baby but you. God said out of your body. Oh, somebody come get me, Sarah. I feel the Holy Ghost. God said out of your own body. You going to push this baby out. You going to push it for yourself. I don't know who I'm talking to, but slap anybody you can reach and say push. It's coming out of you. It's coming out of your belly. It's coming out of your spirit. It's coming out of your bowels. It's coming out of your guts. It's coming out of your anointing. It's coming out of your power. If you stop being trifling and push, you ain't going to be able to have this baby while you drinking a milkshake. You going to have to push. Slap your neighbor and say, "Push."
Wait a minute. We got four people in this tent. And this is the challenge of growth. Here it is. My God. Here it is. The challenge of growth is when you designed it at one stage and now you're in another stage and now you're in a stage that you don't need when you started in your first stage. But you can't let go of what you started in your first stage because you're committed to it. And the challenge is Sarah never thought that Abraham would become bond to the bond woman. She never thought they'd be giggling over dinner. She never thought that they'd be winking at each other. She never understood soul ties. She never understood that there's no way that you can keep laying with somebody and not become bond to them. That you can't hear their dreams and their hopes and what would you have been had you not been in Egypt and what would you have been if you had not been a maid and he listened at her dreams and he listened at her tears and he listened at her fears and he was bond. He was bond to the bond woman. And she didn't see that in the plan. She only saw that she could have a baby, but she could not see that she could have her husband.
And now Abraham is bond to the bond woman. And by the time Hagar, by the time Sarah realizes that this tent is a mess, and let me talk to you a minute. I ain't worried about your church being great. I'm not too worried about your business being great. I'm worried about your tent being great. But it's a tent. I got to sleep in it. I got to eat in it. I got to carry it around in the hot desert. I got to put it up and take it down and put it up and take it down and put it up and take it down. And Abraham's problem is that the tent is getting crowded. Jesus Christ. And I just wanted to ask you how crowded, how crowded is your tent? Have you got too many people with conflicting agendas living in your tent?
And God says to him, "Hearken unto the voice of thy wife." And he takes one bottle of water. Now Abraham is rich. And Ishmael is his son. And Hagar is his concubine. And he gives her one bottle of water and a few loaves of bread and turns her over to God. And the problem with you God player is that you are responsible for everybody. Everybody who was in your life, everybody who is in your life, everybody who's ever going to be in your life. And you wonder why you're exhausted. You have got 50 people in your tent right now that are sufficient that could take care of themselves that you think you're helping, but you're really hurting. Because the more you take care of them, the more crippled they become. And they'll never stand up and be who they were created to be. As long as you solve every problem and fix every door. Y'all ain't shouting as good as I'm preaching, but I'm going to preach anyway. Who am I helping in this place today? He gave her one bottle of water and a couple of biscuits and said, "See you." Not because he wasn't compassionate, but because he knows that you cannot raise God's child. God has to raise his own children. God has to make a way for his own children. God has to show himself strong in his own children. Suppose he'd have given her too much bread and too much water, God would have never spoke to her. But where Abraham let up, that's where God stepped in. And you are standing in the way of your people having an encounter with God. You're such a big mama. You're so busy taking care of everything. No wonder your child don't pray. She don't have to pray. All she got to do is text you and you fix everything. God said, "Get out the way. Step aside. Move over the corner." God wants to show himself strong. But they got to be in the desert to find God. They can't find God if all they can find is you. If you know God's talking to you, give him 30 seconds of crazy praise.
So this is what caught my attention about the text. God said to Abraham, "Don't let it be grievous to you." And it was the word grievous. And then when I, when I focus on the word grievous, when I think of grief, I think somebody has to die. But there are a lot of us grieving without caskets. We are grieving over the death of what we had in mind. We are grieving because our life did not turn out the way we expected it to turn out. We're grieving because who we expected to share it with is no longer by our side. We're grieving because how we imagine things has been terminated and we have been stuck in a state of grief. And as long as you are grieving, you can't be creative. As long as you are grieving, you cannot be creative. Let me, let me hurry up and finish. As long as you are grieving, you cannot hear God. As long as you are grieving, you cannot discover yourself. As long as you are grieving, you don't have the courage to stand in the power of his might. And the Lord told me to break the spirit of grief off of this room today. I don't know who you are, and I don't know if you got the courage to have the spirit of grief broken off of you, but I curse the spirit of grief. Everybody who needs it broken, jump up on your feet. I curse the spirit of grief. I curse the spirit of depression. I curse the spirit of heaviness. I curse the spirit of loneliness. I curse the spirit of despair. I curse the spirit of anguish. I curse the spirit of trouble that's standing in your way and shutting you down. I curse it right now. I release the spirit of creativity. I release the creativity of opportunity. I release the spirit of passion that's about to burst forth in your belly. I release the power of enthusiasm. I release fresh ideas, fresh concepts, fresh relationships, fresh doors open. I release prosperity. I release peace. I release power. I release fortitude. I release staying power. If you receive it, holler at your boy.
Now you got to understand this. The tent is crowded because Abram's mistake and Abram's miracle are living in the same place. And the truth of the matter with you is your mistakes and your miracles are roommates. And how can I have peace when every time I expect the miracle to turn the corner, here come the mistake looking me in the face? And this, as I close, is my favorite part of the text that God is so much love. So much love that he says, "I will not suffer that which is born of the flesh." In Galatians it says that which is born of the flesh to inherit with the seed of the promise. But I will even take your mistake and make a great nation. They didn't hear me. Let me try y'all. I will take your worst mistakes and I'll make all things work together for the good of them that love the Lord. And I will bless you. And the only thing I'm asking of you is don't be afraid to make changes. Don't think that if you make changes, Ishmael and Hagar are going to die. I got a well they haven't even seen yet. But I can't show them the well if you can't make the changes. The problem is people never give people room to change, to grow, to evolve. And even though we are Christians, we are the world's best at alienating people over what they did before. And it takes courage to correct or to change course because if he changes course, what will become of Hagar? Where will Hagar go? Where has the ring of Isaac's flesh gone? Hagar is cast into the wilderness. And when God comes down, God does not talk like Sarah. See, sometimes sisters, you can be right about what you said, but wrong about how you said it. You said, "Cast out the woman, the bond woman and her son." God comes down and says, "I know Ishmael is your seed." Understanding is important to bring about change. You can't just look at it from your perspective just because you don't have no skin in the game. Abraham has skin in the game. Ishmael is his son, too. See, until we take responsibility for the mistakes we made, we cannot change course. As long as you push it off and act like it was just them and you tell the story where you are always the hero, this woman would have never been in Abraham's life. You brought the woman into his life. You came up with the strategy of them sleeping together. You told him to have a baby. You made this woman your slave and made her sleep with a man that she never picked to sleep with. And now it's all blown up in your face and you want to act like it's his fault. But what is amazing about the text is God comes down and says to Abraham, "Hearken unto the voice of your wife's Sarai." Because the woman is right. Even though she said it wrong, she is right. And what is happening here is correction. Now I'm almost finished. In order to have correction, you have to have the challenging responsibility of trusting God to handle our mistakes. God says to Abraham, "Leave Hagar to me. I know Ishmael is your son. I will make of him a great nation. But you can't take your mistake and your miracle and put them all in the same house and make it work. There has to come a cutting away. A cutting away. You can't change course if you can't cut. You can't change course if you can't cast out. And the challenge is to trust me with the collateral damage. Who am I preaching to? Trust me that I don't need you to take care of Ishmael. God says, "My grace is sufficient for your mistakes. My grace, my grace, my grace, my grace is sufficient. You don't have to live in this chaos. Your spirit has been in a state of constant disruption because you won't change course. And I don't want you to live in this constant chaotic stressful environment of fulfillment because your mistakes and your miracles are cohabitating in the same space. All I need from you is the courage to change course. If you don't change course, you're going to mess up your destiny. If you don't change course, you're going to mess up your future. If you don't change course, you're not going to be in the place you need to be to become who I created you to be. If you don't change course, you're going to spend the latter years miserable because you won't own up to your mistakes and acknowledge that you were wrong and you won't fix it. And all the dancing and all the shouting and all the giving you do over top of it will not take away from the fact that you still need the courage to change course. Who, who, who in here needs the courage to change course? You know what they say, the definition of lunacy is to continue to do the same thing expecting a different result. You can't be the woman you want to be and the woman you used to be at the same time. You cannot be the man you were created to be and the man you used to be at the same time. And you know that now. But the problem is you just can't bring yourself to change course because of all the people that it would hurt for you to change. And how long will you make those people more important than your destiny? God said, "Turn them over to me." Oh, God. I'm talking to somebody. I'm talking to somebody. I don't know who it is. I'm See, the Lord sent me here to loose somebody this morning, to liberate somebody this morning. You've been in bondage. You can't even be your best self. You can't do your best work. You can't be who you were created to be because you're stuck in a situation that you helped to create and you're guilty and you feel guilty and you overcompensate because you're guilty and you're in this situation because you're guilty and you're stuck because either way you move somebody's going to get hurt and if you don't move it's going to be you. Lift your hands up and say, "God, give me the courage to change course." That means I might not get to say everything I want to say. That means I got to hold my peace sometimes. That means sometimes I got to bite my lip. That means sometimes I've got to learn another discipline. That means sometimes I got to bleed. But if I have to bleed to be better, I'm willing to bleed. I'm willing to bleed a little while to be better for a long time. See, I realized that if I didn't have the surgery, the pain would never go away. And if I had the surgery, I would have pain for a little while, but eventually the pain of recovery will go away. See, circumcision hurts real bad, but it doesn't hurt real long. Putting out the bond woman hurt real bad, but it didn't hurt real long. And you got to decide, are you willing to have a little momentary discomfort to be where you are called to be? Or are you so concerned about the disruption that your change creates that you're willing to be a prisoner in your own life the rest of your life? That's what this text says to me. That's what I get out of this text. That's why this text is important to me. Because every time I ever made a change, somebody got hurt. When God called me to come to Dallas, somebody got hurt. In West Virginia, there are people who don't like me now. I've been here 25 years and they still mad. There are other people that accept it and they're glad about it. They see it, they get it. But there are some people that just simply refuse to get over. And I had to decide, am I going to spend the rest of my life honoring your expectations of me? Or do I get to live my life the way God called me to live my life? You leave when you want to leave. You come when you want to come. You miss church when you feel like missing. But if I'm not here, you say, "I came to church and you wasn't there." Don't I get to be a person, too? I'm I'm going to break your chain today. The chain that ties you to living up to other people's expectations all of your life. The chain that circumvents you from reaching your destiny and your purpose so you can go ahead and fulfill what God created you to fulfill.