Transcription
Please put your hands together for Pastor Joel Tubman.
[Music] Can we bless God for our Bishop? Come on, First Lady Pastor, we want to thank God for you! Everybody, come on, bless God for each other! Can we do that? Those online, let's bless God for each other!
[Applause]
Uh, uh, is this the city where they have leprosy or not? I don't know—it's not here, okay. So, okay, join hands. Oh, all my friends say, "Amen." You got leprosy up there? What are you doing? I said, "Well, Jesus healed it everywhere He went."
So, I want you to take 30 quick seconds just to ask the person to the left or to the right, "What is it that I can pray about for you?" Then do that.
Let me tell you, before I was sitting in that seat, typically the way God deals with me prophetically is through feelings. I feel it first. Bishop was talking, and then I felt this overwhelming sense of sadness, a hurt. The Lord told me there are some people in here that are very sad, and they're doing a good job covering it up; that's what we do.
I said, "But I want you to call that out for them because we're going to pray for that emotion that's overwhelming right now for you, and we want to lift up your spirit." As we pray out loud, your spirit's going to start to shift. That's why I don't want you to pray silently; I want you to pray out loud. One, two, three, come on—that's it! That's it, come on!
[Music]
Somebody's getting power from there; come on!
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That's it, come on!
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That's it, come on, come on!
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
Ten more seconds!
[Music]
Glory to God!
[Music]
Hallelujah! Come on, come on, come on! Somebody's spirit’s being uplifted right now. We break the stronghold of sadness over your life—one that you can't even enjoy church this morning because your head is hung down. But we break that this morning right now in the name of Jesus; you will have joy, unspeakable joy, and it is full of glory!
Right now, we give you glory; right now, we give you praise. Come on, clap your hands in here! Come on! Open up your mouth and celebrate! Come on, open your mouth! Open your mouth; come on, help somebody!
[Music]
Open your mouth and release praise in the house! Come on!
[Applause]
Stay down. Come on, come on! It's not for you; it's for somebody else. Somebody else can't push it out; you push it out further!
Hallelujah! Glory! Hallelujah! Our praise for my brother; our praise for my sister! I’ll give you glory, God, to intercede. They don’t have it right now, but God, I'm going to praise you till that thing breaks off of them. I'm going to praise you till the shackle falls off!
Hallelujah!
[Applause]
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
God, we give you glory; God, we give you praise. God, we bless you.
Oh, glory to God! Hallelujah!
[Applause]
[Applause]
I want you to just touch two or three people and say it with your voice: "Be happy, be happy, be happy, be happy, be happy!" Glory to God! Be happy! I don’t care what you’re going through—be happy! I know it’s difficult in some of your seasons right now, but be happy! Reach down in your core, find it somewhere, and be happy!
Hallelujah!
[Music]
Whoa! Hallelujah! Glory to God!
[Music]
[Applause]
Before we take our seat, can we give God a hand clap of praise just because of who He is?
Hallelujah!
[Music]
Because I believe in the prophetic, I believe in the word of knowledge, and I know there are people online and there are people in this room that needed that. If that was you, raise your hand. Look at that! Come on, let’s listen! Come on, come on, come on, come on! I wish I knew the—uh, what’s the guy’s song? The guy that’s over Louis Vuitton now, what’s his name?
Well, y'all acting like y'all don’t know who he is! I wish I knew who—oh, "Happy!"
I don’t know it. Y'all know it? Play it!
'Cause I'm happy!
I want you to say, “If you’re happy, come on and say it one more time!”
[Music]
Come on again!
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Come on!
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Come on!
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[Applause]
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If you're happy, give God glory!
Be seated—boy, that thing felt good to me right there! You put that organ on there to try to church it up—oh my God! Whoever is not happy and they’re mad about that—they're already in hell.
I want to thank God for our Bishop and how he's been teaching. God was dealing with me about going two different directions, and I needed to really hear from him to understand which way to go, and I still wasn't quite sure even though I had sent some information to the team.
But I want to deal with a topic that you've subliminally and kind of been dealing with. It's a very practical thing called "Improvement." Very simple word—everybody shout out "Improvement!" The "me" is large in the sentence because we need to be improved. No matter where we are, no matter what we are economically, no matter where we are in the world, no matter how good our marriage is, how good we parent, or how much education we have, we all can be improved.
I have quite a bit of notes, so I’m going to flow different this time than the other times that I've come, so take out your devices and take these because these are downloads from the Lord.
When you look at the story of creation and how God creates the world, it is more than just this beautiful picture of how God created the solar system, the water—it is improvement. The text actually says that this place was without form, without void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.
The Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters, and so everything that God spoke into it improved it. Light made it better; water made it better; air made it better; animals made it better. Everything that He did made it better. Everything that He called it—everything that Adam called it—still had the power to be sustained to this day.
There’s one created being that chooses whether or not it wants to function in its calling, and that’s us. Cows are still cows; horses are still horses; sheep are still sheep; birds are still birds. But man has figured out a way to become whatever he wants to become. He has become she; she’s become he—now, that's not the topic of the text.
But just to show you that we have our own path that we've decided to detour away from what God has called us to do. Everything is doing and functioning—the bears are functioning in their proper place; the bears are doing what they're supposed to do; the birds are doing what they're supposed to do; the fish are doing what they're supposed to do— but it’s us that choose to do what we want to do. Some of us are in the will, some of us are out of the will; we do what we want to do.
And so as a direct consequence, each generation follows the previous generation, and then a pattern has been preset. The new generation has to figure out what they feel versus what they see from this generation and that generation.
So even improvement itself becomes challenging because of the pattern that I'm using to improve myself. I may be using a pattern for somebody that has chosen to do something completely outside of the will of God, and I’m using them as my pattern to improve myself—versus someone on this side who is using the will of God to be everything that God has called him to be. I'm using them as my pattern.
So even improvement itself has its own challenges as we vacillate back and forth, simply just trying to become better.
The word "improvement" simply means this—and you can write all these down—to make better, to achieve better, to develop your mental capacity by education or experience.
To make better, to achieve better, to develop my mental capacity by education or by experience.
Now, as a former football coach at a Division One level over 16 seasons, my job was to develop men and women to be their best self through performance and through personal development.
But one of the things that I've learned over the years now that I've gotten older—because I started that when I was 27 years old—is that the Kryptonite for men is that we value performance over personal development.
Now, women do too; society has forced women to desire personal development because of how men fail to do their job. So the pursuit to be a performer becomes everything. I want to perform; I've got to perform; I've got to perform; I've got to perform; I've got to perform!
And if a man doesn't perform well, then that man is judged by his performance. He’s not a good man if he doesn't make a certain amount of money; he’s not a good man if he doesn’t dress a certain way; he's not a good man if he has certain challenges. There are some issues we can deal with, but there are some issues we can't, and because he has more of those that we can't deal with, he's not a good man.
So his performance is judged, and this causes that man to live a traumatic life. The same thing for the woman. Performance-based.
The end goal is for us to be personally developed as well as performance-based. Development will cohesively come together, and we can really be something fabulous in the world. But here’s the problem: you don’t get popular for being good. Good gets you a pat on the back; performance gets you a raise. Nobody talks about the good guy ever!
Since I was a kid, nobody cares about the good guy. I watched girls in junior high and high school, and I watched the same thing. My mama told me the same thing. She said, "Boy, it's the same thing; there ain’t nothing new under the sun." Women fall for the bad guy; they love him! I don’t understand it!
[Applause]
Bad guy—don’t get mad if you wore the shoes of the bad guy; it's okay, I did it.
Okay, bad guy, bad guy! Girls like the bad guy. He’s stirring up trouble in school; he is the center of attention—he’s the bad guy!
Then you got little John sitting over in the corner with a pair of glasses on, tape in the middle of his eyes—he’s a good guy. Good grades; nobody likes him!
But here’s what happens. If you keep living—those of you that are young—the good guy starts making good money!
Good guy’s got good credit! Good guy's got no baby mamas! Good guy is a virgin, so you get to teach him everything!
[Applause]
Good God loves you so much; you ain't got to ever worry about good God cheating on you because he knows he's good!
Good God has a house in America; got a house in Europe; got a house! Good guy’s got it going on because good God evolves over time.
He had a big head; he was skinny, and then the next time you see him when he's 21, he’s completely different. Good guys show up 6'2," 240, and you’re like, "Oh my God! Where were you when I was in school?"
I was right there in the corner. You weren't thinking about me, and you know what? I’m not thinking about you!
[Applause]
Now that seems funny, but the truth is that happens generation through generation through generation through generation. So your personal development will eventually catapult you or cap you.
And the capping is not just from the traditional do-bad; the traditional he did wrong, he went to prison—not talking about that bad.
The capping that I'm talking about is that you don't open yourself up to people to help coach you into a new season of your life. You cap yourself because you’ve got nobody speaking into you. You cap yourself because you’re so private.
There’s nothing wrong with being private, but you’re so private that you don’t have any of the vantage points. You don't understand what it looks like from over here, and you don’t understand the power of collaboration.
You don’t understand that maybe being a part, playing a small part in something big can move you financially into a whole other tax bracket. But because you want to be everything in something small, your money stays small.
When for a season, you can take a portion and jump into something large and let it grow over time, and before you know it, you've improved your money, you've improved your mind, you've improved your status, and you’ve grown because you're playing the long run.
If you’re in a circle where everybody's playing the short run, you’ll always be living check to check, man to man, woman to woman, miracle to miracle—when you should be living by principles by now.
Your principles have stated how you’re going to live, and your improvement is based off of how you adhere to those particular principles. If I'm teaching, shout "Hallelujah!"
Now, performance plays more than being good. But here’s the deal—write this down: your improvement should cost; your improvement should cost.
Write this down: it’s going to cost what you can afford to pay. It’s going to cost what you can afford to pay but not afford to miss! Not afford to miss!
Now too many of us have missed what God has for us because we choose not to improve, for whatever reason that is—whether you think you know it all, whether you think you've already arrived, or whether you think that you're going to be embarrassed because people think you should already be there.
At some point, you should forget about all of that and humble yourself to a place and find somebody that’s already living the life that you want to live—somebody that’s already doing what you want to do.
Bring yourself to sit at the feet of that person.
Now, here’s the issue with that because that person is already at the top of the food chain; they may not receive you so quickly. So don’t get upset because that person doesn’t turn around and respond to you in the DMs or respond to a text message.
You gotta pay the dues to get there! You got to pay the dues to get there! So sometimes you’ve got to follow who follows the guru. Then go to that person and work your way to them because they are the gatekeeper to the guru.
Once they realize you’re not there just to take, but you’re here because you want better, then they will see that you have paid the price for improvement and you don’t just want to be given a free slate; you want to work for it.
Have I got a witness in here right now? Somebody say, "It costs!" Come on, shout it out loud, "It costs to improve!"
So you can’t afford to miss what can be because you refuse to be what He called you to be.
That is what happened to the children of Israel in the Book of Numbers. All they had to do—He sent 12 spies to go look at the land. He says, "Call men that are leaders amongst the tribes and send them for yourself to go look at the land." That’s all He told me to do.
"Go look at it! Go look at it. Tell me what it looks like. Go look at it! Tell me what the land is like. Go look at it and tell me what the people are like!"
That’s all He said. If you get a chance, be courageous enough to grab some fruit from it and bring it back to us so we can see it.
They stayed gone for 40 days. While they're gone for 40 days, something happens. These men were powerful enough to be chosen, but yet when they got over to see what they saw, the power that they had wasn't enough to keep them because whatever it is that they saw changed how they saw themselves.
Are you hearing me?
So the Scripture says that when they got back, ten of them brought a bad report. What is the bad report? The bad report was, "When we got over there, the people were great." That’s the bad report!
"We saw children of Nephilim or Enoch—well, there were giants! We saw them over there."
The Bible says they brought back this fruit, and the fruit cluster was so big that they had to have two people carry the fruit to bring it back into the wilderness.
Now, number one: you’ve been in the wilderness where there is no fruit and then God allows you to have grapefruit to bring back to a place where you haven’t seen any fruit in a long time.
So they bring back fruit and they drop the fruit off, and then they tell the man, "We can’t go over there because when we saw them, we saw ourselves as grasshoppers." Then they said, "And they saw us as grasshoppers."
Well, where does the Scripture says that they interviewed them to see what they saw? They never interviewed those people to say, "What do you think about me?" It was about what they thought about themselves!
Because the spirit of comparison came upon them when they walked into the room!
Where’s my mirror? Let me see that mirror!
Spirit of comparison! Somebody say, "Comparison!"
I need a mirror!
Comparison is not a bad thing—always! Sometimes, if your heart is in a good place and you've been coached up very well, you need comparison to understand what you need to tweak.
You need to look at somebody that’s doing it well and say, "Okay, I see what they're doing." But if you’re not ready, you can’t scroll down everybody’s pages!
I know y'all don’t want to hear what I’m telling you, but part of your depression is what you’re looking at in your phone. I can’t believe I’m not there yet! I can’t believe I don’t have it yet! How does He bless them?
You’re not in control of how God blesses others! Sometimes He needs to bless them for you to get up off your laurels and say, "If He can do it for them, He can do it for me!"
[Applause]
The interesting thing, if you look at the book— I believe, uh, what is it—James? You remember James? What is it, chapter one? Come on y'all, this is a Bible church! Y'all supposed to tell me!
Let me find it. I believe it's James chapter one—is it 22? Yeah, 22 through 25. He said it like this: "Do not merely listen to the word." That’s what he says, alright?
He says listening to it will deceive you! If you merely listen to it—he says, "Do what it says!"
He says, "Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in the mirror. When you look at yourself, what do you see? Is the only thing you're caught up with what it looks like?
Because if that’s the only thing you see, then when you turn around, you will forget what you saw! You will have to fish for people to remind you of what you saw.
You change your dress code so you can look good for them; you change your attitude so you can be sexy for them—when you should have just listened to what the Word said, did what it said, and see how sexy it is to obey God!
Oh, I wish I had a witness in here to see how wonderful it is to just sit in the presence of God—not just hear it, but start doing what the Word of God said.
He said, "If you just sit here and look at it, eventually you’ll walk away and you will forget! Now, watch what he says: Immediately you're going to forget because it is the doing that constantly resources the hearing!
But here's what's interesting—come here, boss man. I know you're probably security, you rocked up and all this stuff. Now, he’s bigger than me!
Now here's what happens: you know I’m overweight. I’m about 20 pounds overweight. I look in this thing, and while I'm by myself I feel pretty good! But then when somebody like him comes and steps in the mirror... not only did you forget what you look like, you see what somebody else looks like!
And so the only thing in your mind is not about what you saw on yourself; it’s about what he has! It’s about what God has done for him; it’s about he’s done to put the work in!
And you’re so messed up over what he looks like you forgot to just do one simple thing—do what it says!
Oh my God! Do what it says!
So simply this is this: when you do what it says, the mirror don’t matter! You know why the mirror don’t matter? Because you are the mirror! It don’t matter!
So everywhere you go you constantly see yourself! You’re improving financially, you’re improving in your marriage, you’re improving in everything that you do—because you’re doing the Word of God!
So when you do the Word of God, no longer do you have to worry about looking in some mirror to remind you! People see God working in you!
Thank you! Y’all give him a hand! Thank you!
So, the first thing I want you to write down, or the next thing I want you to write down: if I'm going—the perfect place for you to improve yourself is to know that you were made very good!
That's so basic, but yet so hard for some people to get! If the Bible says that He made mankind, and then He looks back and He looked at it, and He said it was very good—if you can rest on that, don’t work on that. That’s your problem!
Don’t work on being very good; rest on the fact that He’s already called you very good! Then very good becomes your base, and then everything that grows from that grows up from very good!
So everything that you start doing—the foundation, the pattern of who you are—is God, not culture! Culture doesn’t tell me who you are! Culture doesn’t tell you what to do! What does God do?
Look at somebody and tell them, "God does!"
When we can get back to listening to what God said, then the church can create the culture for the world! But because we don’t listen to God, we've got to see what the world says first to try to compete with the world, when God gave us dominion over the world!
I wish I had a witness in here! You don't have to listen to the world to find out what to do! You should be telling the world what to do!
[Applause]
In the Old Testament, the kings would talk to the prophets before they did anything. "What has God said? What does God say?"
The world has shifted; times have changed. Now the church is saying, "What is the world doing?" And the only way that changes is for this generation to wake up and realize that you were made very good, and you don’t have to change what He already said was good!
Now, that’s a heavy statement! You may not think it is, but that is a heavy statement! Because most of the traumatic issues that are happening with our youth today are that they don’t think that they are enough!
But I’m telling you, you are more than enough! The way God created you, you are a conqueror! The way God created you, you have so much power in you, so much anointing in you—you just don't know who you are yet!
But if you can do what the Word says, you will come alive in your classroom; you’ll come alive in your job; you’ll come alive online! And people will say, "Who is that?"
And you’ll tell them, "I’m a part of the Kingdom!"
What kingdom? The kingdom of God! Somebody shout, "Hallelujah!" If you're part of the Kingdom of God, just look at two or three people and say, "I’m a part of the Kingdom of God!"
[Applause]
Write this—the problem...
Oh, I got to give you this! Let me give you this. Let me back up! There was a connection between who we are and what we think—write that down!
There’s a connection between who we are and what we think! We may do completely opposite of who we are because of exposure and/or ignorance!
Okay, write that down. That’s very important! The problem with this is that you can become great at what you repeat—even if you’re repeating what’s not like you!
Okay, keep writing. Whatever you’re repeating, you are perfecting!
Whatever you’re repeating, you are perfecting!
So you could be doing something completely out of the realm of what your future is and who you are—a part of your life—your people group, your family, your brand, your logo, your crest—who you are.
You’re completely outside of it, and you can get into a repetition that you train yourself to do something outside of what your family does, outside of what the Kingdom of God is; and you can become great at it!
And you can get paid with it, and the problem is you get so great at it that it’s almost impossible to walk away because it’s going to change your lifestyle.
It’s going to change your people group! It’s going to change how people look at you—all because you got great at what you repeated.
This is why you have to be careful about who you connect with and who you grow up to see what God has for you! Because what will eventually happen... you’ll grow up like the ten out of the twelve!
And the ten come together, and the whole destiny becomes thrown off because ten got on the same page. Ten got on the same page; two got off the page, and two said we’re more than able to take it! Ten said we can’t take it! Who won? The ten! So everybody suffered!
And everybody had to walk one year for each day! That’s how they ended up walking forty years because they made a decision that what they saw was greater than who they were!
All I was thinking about, Pastor Joe, is if God sends me somewhere and there’s great opposition there, that only means one thing: I must be great enough to handle it!
Because why would He send me that? Now the text says, “I’m going to give y’all that land.” That’s the part you’ll miss!
"I’m going to give it to you!" So if I'm going to give it to you, that means you don’t have to come up with a down payment for it. You don’t have to get no co-signers; you don’t have to find nobody; you don’t have to change your credit score!
That means the way you are right now, just like the way you are—what I said, that was very good? I’m going to give it to you in that status.
But when they got there, they didn’t think they were good enough! My question to you is, what have you talked yourself out of because you didn’t think you were good enough?
You didn’t think you had the right degree; you didn’t think you had the right pedigree; you didn’t think you had enough experience, and you went over there and talked yourself out of a new level when God said, "Just go look!"
I didn’t tell you to say nothing to nobody! I didn’t tell you to make no friends! I didn’t tell you to turn him into a girlfriend or her into a boyfriend! I said, "Go look!"
Tell somebody, "Go look! Go look! Go look! Go look!"
If that person won’t even look at you, just slap 'em up and tell them, "I need somebody to look at me!"
[Applause]
Go look!
I’m trying to prophesy you! Go look at the house you want! Go look at it!
Go look at it! Go look at it! Go look at it! Go look at it!
Go look at it! Get on your phone and scroll through and look at the place you want to spend your next vacation. Go look at it! Go look at it!
Don’t let the price talk to you! Don’t let the people talk to you! Just look at it!
[Applause]
The reason why I love that is because if the Scripture is true, eye has not seen, ear has not heard! Glory to God! You gotta get yourself prepared to see the goodness in the land of the living!
Somebody shout, "Hallelujah!"
[Applause]
Go— that thing’s come alive in my soul right now!
Be seated!
Don’t look at it and then look at your bank account!
Don’t look at it and look at what you don’t have! Quit calling yourself a grasshopper! You’re not a grasshopper!
You’re bigger than that! That’s your word right there! He just told me to tell you—tell somebody right now, "You’re way bigger than what you think!"
Oh my God! You’re way bigger! Your name is in another country right now; you don’t even know it!
Your name is in somebody’s boardroom right now; you don’t even know it!
Your name is circling around somebody right now; you don’t even know it! You’re worried about what you look like?
I didn’t tell you to look at yourself! I told you to look!
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!
Somebody praise Him right there! Let’s praise Him right there!
[Applause]
Write this down! Write this down: to perfect who you’re not and never discover who you are is one of the greatest travesties to live with!
Write it down!
To perfect who you're not and never discover who you are is one of the greatest travesties to deliver!
How do we know that to be true? Because God told Moses, "Everybody that went over there and came back, they'll never see it!"
The next generation will—He says, "So they’re going to die in the wilderness."
So they walked 40 years without discovering who He made them to be! That is not what you want to spend the next 20, 30 years of your life doing—walking around because you refuse to do what the Word says.
You’re just addicted to listening to it!
"Oh, I gotta go hear me a word!"
"Oh, I got to go hear Bishop Fernandez!"
"Oh my God, I gotta go hear the Word!"
But you’ll never try it!
You never do it!
If you don’t try it, then you’ll be a junkie just listening, and you’ll never try!
You always gotta hear a word from him on Instagram!
You always gotta hear a word from him in church!
At what point do you take what you heard, put it in your spirit, and start doing what He said?
[Applause]
Would you stop? You start changing! You become what the Scripture calls a walking epistle, read of many people!
Start looking at you, and when they really sit down and hear your story, they’ll be completely surprised.
"You so dope!"
"I sure did! You had multiple women pregnant? I sure did! I was an absolute mess!"
While you were over there talking about me and gossiping, He was healing me!
[Applause]
Corey!
"I was a thief! I was a robber! Oh yeah, I went to prison!"
You did all that?
Yeah! And while you were over there gossiping and talking, you’re still making $30,000 a year and I make $30 million a year!
And I'm saved, sanctified, and full of the Holy Ghost, man!
So keep your mouth off people that are trying to evolve into what God called them to be because they might be your boss!
[Applause]
That’s why you have to improve! And if you improve—improvement is a healer!
Improvement heals what people have tried to stab! Talk about your cuts; you put your name all over the public!
All you gotta do is just improve!
It's improvement! Work on being better! Let them time your deliverance!
"Oh, 30 more days! He'll be back to it!"
"Oh, he’s got 30 more days! He’ll be back to selling! He’s got 30 more days, he’ll be back out there in the club!"
Let him keep timing you! And every time they get to 30 days, tell them, "Reset your timer! Reset your time! Reset your time! Reset your time!"
Just keep on walking!
And sometimes you gotta walk past the people who birthed you into this world!
Sometimes you gotta walk past the people who babysat you!
Sometimes you gotta walk past the people you rode the school bus with!
Sometimes you gotta walk past the people that you paid their rent!
Sometimes you gotta walk past everybody that was connected to you, and you gotta have a face like Flint!
Haha!
So I’m improving! Somebody shout, "I’m improving!"
Let me tell you something about getting better! The truth is getting better hurts!
Getting better doesn’t feel good! I don’t know who told you that!
You know, “I’m getting better!”
No, getting better hurts!
Because you have to strip away everything that you depended on, everything that you were connected to, everything that you fell in love with in that mindset!
And you gotta stand up and account that! And then change it!
And when you tell them you're changing, you may go back and forth. That back and forth starts turning into a routine!
[Applause]
See that's the truth, these church people don’t want to tell you that!
It was in and out and in and out and in and out! Because when you had a real past, a real past that was productive, sometimes you get addicted to it!
And the church don’t give you nothing to satisfy what you had!
So you’re over here on Sunday morning!
[Applause]
And then you come back over here and sit down for service, and because you don’t try the Word, you forget!
And it’s the man that has forgotten that deals with the forbidden!
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Getting better hurts!
And let me tell you something—it hurts people that you love!
Just because you were wrong, that doesn’t mean that what you feel is wrong.
You just were out of the will of God!
But everything that you connected to over here is actually feeding you!
He was feeding!
And the only reason why you’re over here anyway is because it was feeding you!
And so when you get better, you’re letting go of what was providing a need—for filling a need—loneliness, finances, companionship, collaborations of all kinds!
When you decide to walk away because now you realize the will of God for your life, it will hurt everything that you said yes to over here!
And the truth is—because I'm talking to somebody right now, you're listening to me—you don’t want to hurt these people because these people were good to you when them people were talking about you!
Yeah, you can clap about that!
When you walked out of the church, or you walked out of a particular race relationship where those that were in Christ weren’t quite Christ-like with how you walked away, then you become connected to the world!
But the world loves you! They care about you, and they walk with you!
And then when you decide that you have the revelation of improvement and the revelation of how to get better, and you have to turn around and say, "I can’t do this anymore," your heart’s still tied to that!
That is the truth of denying yourself, taking up your cross, following Him because you’re having to crucify all those relationships that pull you out of the will of God!
And now you’re walking by faith the Death March trying to understand your future!
Are y'all with me still? I know I'm over time, so give me just two quick seconds. Write this down: we are made and unmade by ourselves and our thoughts!
We are made and unmade by ourselves and our thoughts!
Now I’ve gone over my time; alright! I had to do this another time.
Write this one down: the second point is that you were made to work with God!
Piano, you can play softly so they know I’m telling the truth!
The third point that you can improve is to respect those in your life that place a demand for you to be better!
Respect those in your life that place a demand for you to be better!
I’m sorry I ran out of time, but that’s my fault! I was enjoying myself here!
[Applause]
Well, how many of you know you can improve?
Hey, let’s stand on our feet real quick, ready to go! If you know you can improve, I want you to make that space your altar right there where you are.
I’m not going to ask you to come down—stay right there where you are! And wherever that space is, I want you to see yourself actually improving in your mind, okay?
And then I want you to pray from that place. It’s a different prayer; it’s a prayer of thanksgiving.
This is how you’re going to pray: you’re going to pray by faith! Okay?
When I count to three, I want you to do that thing right now: one, two, three—come on, right there!
Come on, come on!
[Music]
That’s it!
[Music]
That’s it! Ten more seconds!
[Music]
There are people in your life right now that demand better from you.
Whether that’s your mother, a mentor, a friend—you know your pastor does it—demands better for you.
It is your job to dig down into your core and find honor and respect to actually open up about the part of you that needs to be improved!
If you don’t like your life, change it!
If you don’t change it, you’re going to stick with what you have!
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We had people that got saved this morning.
Now I want to just deal with those of you that will tell the truth: I went back on God, but I'm ready to come back to Him!
I don’t know if you’re online; I don’t know if you’re in this room, but if that’s you, just lift your hands!
There we go! Come on, lift it up high so I can see it!
There are many of you in this room, those of you that have been riding with Christ.
I want you all to give these people a hand!
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All of us do it together—lift both hands.
Father, we thank you for the opportunity that you have given us to worship together today.
[Music]
We are returning back to you!
You’ve never left us; you’ve always been right by our side.
And today, we're making that trip back to you!
We’re rededicating our lives, and I thank you for these brothers and sisters that are in this room that have said—we're interceding on the behalf of these and those that are online.
Father, we thank you now for what you have done and for what you're getting ready to do in our lives.
We declare improvement in every area of our life!
We're going to move and thrust forward these last few months of the year, and we're going to set the standard for the next one!
We’re not waiting for the new year for a miracle; we’re going to walk in it in this season right now!
Change is going to hit our house! It’s going to hit our careers! It’s going to hit our children! It's going to hit our children's children!
And we’re going to set the standard for the next generation!
We give you glory, and we give you praise in Jesus' name!
Clap your hands and give God glory!
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
We’re getting ready to walk out; Bishop’s coming.
But I want everyone to get a change seed in your hand! I want you to get a change seed!
I want you to sow into your own change! That’s one of the things you’re going to have to learn.
Even when you get a mentor, sow into their life as appreciation for taking the time to deal with you!
So everyone in this room, I want you to get a change seed in your hand, whether you give by technology or whether you give through an envelope physically.
I want you to get a seed in your hand! Whatever that seed is—I'm not telling you what to give today; this is not that kind of message.
But it is for you to look introspectively: What is it that I want to put in the hand of God to show Him that I appreciate Him and I'm grateful for Him?
Bishop, amen!
Can you put your hands together and thank God for us too? Amen!