Transcription
So grateful that you're here today. I'm starting a brand new, uh, series today, and, um, something that God put in my heart. I've never preached on this topic before. I'm sure I've preached on these scriptures before, as long as I've been doing it. You know, I've, I've been all over the Bible several times. But, um, I told him, I said, "I want to talk about how to turn, turn a thing around." And they sent me back this graphic with a world that's upside down. Vulnerable moment right here. Put your accolades, accomplishments, education, and success aside. How many of you have ever had something in your life and you desperately needed to turn it around? Okay. The rest of you, I'm going to have an altar call for lying. [Applause] [Music] If you hadn't had anything you needed to desperately turn around, you just keep living. You just hadn't lived long enough yet. I know what it is to have a family situation that I needed to turn it around. 2010, um, I don't know how I wasn't here then. I don't know how it affected the Silicon Valley. Uh, I was from the East Coast. Lots of manufacturing jobs that left. Uh, in my church, um, 52% of my congregation lost their job. We lost 48% of our operating revenue in six months, and we were teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. 22,000 members, and we were on the, I mean, on the edge. I know what it is to go to God and say, "I need to turn this around." I remember giving an altar call for people who needed a job, and they would, nobody left in the seats. Everybody got up. I know what it is maritally to be at such a low place. I'm like, "God, if, if, if you don't turn this around, there's nobody else that can."
So number one, I look back. I started surveying my life. What did I do? Um, 'cause I don't come in here and preach sermons. I come in here with things that I try to help you with life. That's my goal. I hope you get in a spot and you can literally retrieve things you have heard in this building and put them to work for you and employ them on your behalf. I was in my office. I've got books everywhere. In my East Coast office, uh, we lived there 30 years. Our, the home that we have there, I got books everywhere. Uh, I got books everywhere over my office at home here. I got books all over this office. I put new shelves on the wall hanging books. I got boxes of books that I never even unpacked from moving over five years ago. But I was going through the other day, and I saw something through the glass of my, my little shelf, and it said, "31 Steps to a New Beginning." I said, "Man, I don't remember reading that one." And I pulled it out, and I couldn't put it down. I finished the whole book right there on the spot, and I have marked it up in yellow and pink and red and blue, and I've drawn arrows and connected dots. And so I want to talk to you the next few weeks. I literally want to give you the steps to a turnaround. Let me have another vulnerable moment. How many of you have something right now you say, "Pastor, I got some things going on right now. I need these things to turn around in my life. They're headed in the wrong direction." See, look around you now. 60, 70% of the people in the building. So that lets me know I'm on the right track. It's going to be some teaching. There'll be some days we'll come in here and shout real loud and run laps. There'll be some other ones, it's going to be really intense. Uh, but today, I just want to lay the groundwork of the number one thing you need to understand to turn a thing around. Amen? Can I have a few minutes to do this? Are you excited about it? I'm excited about preaching it. It's brand new. I've never preached this before, ever. So I didn't go get one and redo it. This is brand new stuff. And so I want to talk about it here in the next few minutes. Guys, go to Galatians chapter 6:7-9. Galatians 6:7-9. Amen.
Now, everybody knows this scripture. But when I, I was growing up, your parents and grandparents would quote this over you because they was trying to get you to behave. So, you know, I always thought God was going to take this scripture and he was going to do his best to get me any moment he could. But I need to break it down for you a moment. So let me read it, then I'm going to go back and break it down. "Do not be deceived. Don't believe something that's not true. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that will he reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the spirit will of the spirit reap everlasting life." What is he talking about? Your actions, your decisions. Remember, I told you there are three things that are seed: your offerings are seed, your words are seed, and the decisions you make are seed. You plant them today to determine your tomorrows. Are there things from the outside that can come in that had nothing to do with your cycle of sowing and reaping? Yes. But you know what? If you created the problem, it's up to you to turn it around. If somebody else created your problem, it's up to you to turn it around. Oh, I lost everybody on that one. Don't you sit around and wait on anybody to fix you. Don't you dare put your emotional health in somebody else's hands, ever. That's right. Everything that I've done to myself, it was my responsibility to change it. And everything somebody's done to me, it was my responsibility to forgive them, take my power back, and change that. [Applause] Too. No victims in this room. Come on! I'm giving you your power back today. I ain't going to sit around and wait 25 years for somebody to apologize to me. I'm going to forgive you and turn you loose. You're not going to have that kind of power in my life. [Applause] "And let us not grow weary while doing good." Why is it he don't say doing bad? Nobody ever gets tired doing the wrong thing. But when you're doing the right thing, you always have a headwind. You're always swimming upstream. "Don't grow weary while doing good, for in due season." That's the toughest part of the scripture that I just read, is to know that there's a time attached to your change, and you can't change that timetable. God has that timetable. He is in charge of the times and seasons of life, and you can't grow weary in doing the right thing while you're waiting on your harvest to come up. "For in due season, we shall reap." It's going to happen if you don't lose heart. So, Lord, bless your word in Jesus name, and everybody said, amen. We talked to each other here. So tell your neighbor, "Here we go. Neighbor, here we go."
Let me go back to those scriptures one by one and just break them down and, uh, kind of lay the foundation for where I'm heading. Galatians 6. Yeah. Let's start with the first one. "Do not be deceived." Pardon me. "God is not mocked." For whatever somebody say, "Whatever, whatever, whatever." A man sows, that. What is that correlation with whatever? So whatever it is that you put in the ground as a decision that you make, expect that thing to come back multiplied. A seed never produces a seed. A seed produces a harvest of seeds. Okay? There are some seeds that create cycles. If you planted some tomatoes out on your back deck, and you got some tomato vines, during the fall, those things are going to wither up and die. You have to do it again next year. But if you got some orange trees in your backyard, those things are on a cycle. So sometimes you're planting orange seeds, things that will show up in your life routinely in different seasons. And sometimes you're planting a harvest that'll just show up one time and never revisit you again. Y'all right? Okay. If you're planting a seed that's going to create a cycle, you better make sure it's the right one. Okay? "Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that shall he reap." Listen to me, okay? This is not really preaching. I'm going to go heavy into teaching this verse. Mocking God would be for you to be able to get something out of it that you didn't put in it. Do not be deceived. God will not be mocked. Whatever you put in it is what's going to come back. Okay? The tech world would call it cause and effect. The religious world, or irreligious world, will call it karma. God calls it sowing and reaping. So there are decisions that I make today that do not have immediate effects, but I am creating tomorrows. You have to live with that in mind. I know everybody talks about being present in the day and present in the now. I'm all about that. But you also have to be a person that lives knowing that every word, every deed, everything that you do today will have a result that you will live in tomorrow. So if I want my tomorrow to be different than my today, I got to start doing something different today. If I want a different tomorrow, the difficulty to this verse is, if you are living in a harvest that is distasteful, you got to sow a different seed. All, all the while you are tasting the vinegar of your tough situation. So I would ask people who look like they arrived at places and don't understand how they got there. "Well, I just don't understand. I'm so alone. I'm just alone all the time." Well, are you friendly? That sounds simple, doesn't it? You have no idea how many people have terrible attitudes, terrible personalities, they're not nice to anybody, and they isolate themselves all the time and cannot understand why they're alone. Well, there's a series of seeds you've been sowing that have created that outcome that you do not like. Okay? "Why do I always attract this kind of person in my life?" Okay, there's a reason for that. There's certain seeds that you sow. There's certain signals that you give. There's certain words that you say that invite and magnetize that kind of person into your life. The problem is, you've got to be able to sow blessing seeds while you're broke. So it's been sometimes when I didn't have four quarters to rub together to buy me a Coke, that I had to give. Oh, come on, come on, come on. You got to follow me. I told you it's going to sting a little bit. Okay? There's a story in the Bible of a widow during a famine, and she was going, she had one little, little thing of oil and some meal, and she was going to bake one cake, and her and her husband were going to die. Okay? She was a widow woman, responsibility for something. There's no more food. So God sent a prophet to her. Okay? Knocked on the door. She opened it up. She said, "We got this meal, we got this oil. I'm going to bake a cake, and me and my son are going to die." Boy, what an outlook on the future. And the prophet, how dare he? How dare that preacher said, "Bake one for me first." The prophet did not need her cake. God sent that man to her for her to start a process because she has lack. So out of that lack, she has to change her seed and be generous. So I have to be generous in a moment where I have the least I've ever had. And when she baked that cake and gave out of her lack and sacrifice to the man of God, then the bake, he said, "Go get vessels. He could get vessels. Borrow vessels. Get all you can get." And she started pouring all, and the oil just kept pouring and kept pouring and kept pouring. Why? Because her cake was a seed for a harvest that would last throughout the whole famine. Do you know how difficult it had to be for a mother who's trying to keep a child alive to understand God is trying to give her an opportunity to create a process that whatever she sows, she'll reap? If you sow in this moment, you'll eat meal and have oil for an entire famine. He didn't need her food. She needed his process. I know it's tough. [Applause]
So can you go out and meet people when you're lonely? See, when we're lonely, what do we want to do? We want to have a pity party, close the blinds, put on the blues music. You know what do we do? We keep sowing the seed of our present harvest, perpetuating our next season, and ensuring that the harvest remains the same. And what you were only supposed to be in two or three months, now you've been in it two or three years. This law puts the power of change back in your hands. Amen. This is the foundational law to all turnaround. Everything I'm going to teach you in the coming weeks hinges on this. That God said, "You have the seed to change your tomorrow." But while you have a distasteful harvest, can you plant a different seed? Next week, I'm going to talk about how to use your pain. Don't miss it. How do you unpack your pain and how do you use it? Okay? Pain is one of the greatest motivators for change of anything in the whole world. A lot of people just get bitter and get angry out of pain. Pain is a great motivator. And when pain, when you learn what to do with pain, don't ever, ever waste [Music] pain. Don't ever waste it. It's a precious command 'cause pain is a master teacher. Master teacher. Woo! I feel this thing. Y'all feel that? Okay. So I can't get something out of it that I don't put in it. God would be mocked. His laws of the kingdom of sowing and reaping would be mocked if you could get but never give, if you could reap but never sow. So if there's going to be any time in my life that is fruitful, then there's going to have to be a time that is seedful. Okay? So what do you not like about your present harvest? Okay? Second question. Okay? What are you sowing to change it? I'm going to say that again 'cause I got no love from y'all when I said that. What do you not like about your present harvest? And what are you doing during this harvest to ensure the next one is different? Because the power is in your hands with this law right here. God gave you that power. Can I keep going a little bit deeper? Okay. Look at your neighbor and say, "It hurts, but it's good for you." Tell them, "It [Laughter] hurts."
Let me deal with that last part a little bit more. I was going to skip that, but I don't need to. Ah, man. I got so much. It said, "He who sows to the flesh reaps corruption. He who sows to the spirit, life." What is he talking about? Seed. He's talking about that makes decisions. If you make decisions that align themselves with the laws of God, those decisions are going to be life-giving to you. They're going to breathe life back into you. The flesh is contrary to the spirit. The flesh basically is talking about doing it your way. And he says when you sow to your way, it reaps corruption. That word corruption right there, the actual word is deterioration. There are very few decisions that have instant results. Most of them set in a process of decay, and you just begin to spiral downward in that area of your life until you initiate change. Okay? Let me show you [Music] something. Most people don't wake up and say, "I think I'm going to wreck my life today. I just want to wreck this totally, something so bad I can never recover from it." People don't do that. But I've heard thousands stand at altar and say, "How did I get here?" My feet facing that exit. Okay? Okay. This is a 90-degree angle. Most people don't do this. If they're on the straighten era and they're trying to do things the right way, they usually don't do this. But they'll do this. Ready? 10 degrees. Okay? 10 degrees. And keep walking. And then a year later, they say, "How did I get here?" Because you had this one little place where you pivoted and said, "You know what? God, I got this." And then if you don't turn that around, but you just let time keep going by, then all of a sudden, if I pivot a little bit and keep walking for an hour, I'm going to be five miles away from my target, just because I shifted a little bit. And most people make little bad decisions. I'm not getting no claps 'cause I know I'm all up in your pantry and your closet. Little, we justify them. We talk ourselves into them. "Well, if I miss it this time, it won't [Music] hurt." "Well, you know, I've been doing this thing pretty regular, so if I don't." It's just the little ones uncorrected that bring the most distasteful harvest. And then people look so confused at the calamity. The problem was, you made a little decision, but you kept walking, and you never turned around and changed it. Okay. 2 Samuel chapter 9. Am I doing all right? Give me about 10 more minutes. I'm going to last. Explain. Say this with me. Say, "The power, power is in my hands to turn this around." Okay? Now, let's start building. 2 Samuel 9 is the story of David. The book of Samuel is David's rise. Okay? Saul was the first king of Israel, and the Bible says he did evil in the sight of the Lord, so God removed him. At the age of 12, God sent the prophet Samuel, who wrote the book, to anoint a 12-year-old boy king. 12 years old, anoint him king. And the book of Samuel talks about how he rose, about his rise, and the power. You remember the guy, Goliath? Goliath is a part of this rise. So let me tell you how David got in Saul's house. There's so much here, y'all. David, now Saul has rejected God, and the Bible says he's being tormented by evil spirits. He can't sleep. So the Bible says that David played a harp. He also wrote almost all the praise songs in the Bible in the Book of Psalms. David played a harp, and the Bible says that when David would play the harp, those evil spirits would leave Saul. So Saul hired him part-time when he would be ready to go to bed to come in and play so that the torment would stop. Oh, my good. So David's got a part-time job as a little boy inside the palace, not knowing that the whole time he's there, he owns the thing. Oh, sometimes all God's got to do is get your foot in the door. Could it be that the place God's got you part-time, you own the whole thing and you don't even know it yet? He's playing a harp in a palace, and the palace is his. Oh, there's so much there. There. So I ain't got time to unpack that. Just touch your neighbor, say, "You never know what God's got." You never know. You never know. Don't ever despise the day of small things. There's a big opportunity in every little thing. He's just in there trying to help the king out for an hour to go to sleep, and the, he's playing in a palace that's his. So during this time lapse, there's this guy, Goliath, a Philistine. They're at war with Israel, and they have this giant, this war machine, and nobody wants to fool with him. Well, here comes David. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? Here comes David. And we all think that David was just such a good, just a God-fearing, loving man. Let me tell you something. David was reward-oriented, just like everybody. David walked up and said, "Who is this dude down here mocking you and your God?" And they said, and he said, "What does the man get who fights him?" He said, "Well, he don't ever have to pay taxes again." If you're in California, that's a good [Applause] deal. I love this place, but they love their taxes. That's a good deal. Then he said, "And you get the hand, the, uh, King's daughter's hand." He thought about that thing. A lifetime of no taxes, and you get the King's daughter. So he goes back there and starts putting on armor. The armor don't work. He can't fight in that armor. That ain't his stuff. Don't you ever go fight the devil with somebody else's stuff. You go fight him with your stuff. I don't care if all you got is a rag and a rock and a sling. Don't you try to use somebody else's relationship with God. You go against your enemy with your own. I feel like preaching this thing today. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Ah! All you got is a rock and a rag, but you better use that thing. Hallelujah! So he goes up, he slays the giant, and everything with David and his boss Saul is fine until that. And then the Bible says that when they were marching back into Jerusalem, victors, that the maidens were leaning over the balconies, and they were singing this song: "Saul has slain his thousands, but David has slain his tens of thousands." Saul heard that, and all of a sudden, the boy who was a friend has now become a target. The Bible says he would literally chunk spears at him, trying to pin him to the wall and kill him. That's a hostile work environment. Some of you think you got a bad supervisor, that's a bad work environment right there. Okay. He has to leave. He made friend with Saul's son, best friend Jonathan. Jonathan helped him escape. He went into a cave called the Cave of Adullam. The word Adullam means "the place of the squeeze." And the Bible says he was with 200 people who were broke, disgruntled, and in debt. That's a circle of friends right there, isn't it? That same 200, read later in your Bible, it became David's Mighty Men. Whenever you get put in a cave with grumps, make sure you leave with them. Like you, you don't become like them. Are you powerful enough to change a disgruntled cave? He rose to power at war against Saul, and his friend Jonathan dies. So David is standing there, and look at what he says. Second, "Is there anyone who has left of the house of Saul that I may show kindness?" Wow. Guy was trying to kill him, and now the family's dead. He said, "Is there anybody left 'cause I'm going to honor them, even though they didn't honor [Laughter] me." Look, what did I tell you? If you do it, you've got to change it. And if they do it, you've got to change it. "Is there anyone who's left of this house?" Verse two. "And the servant of the house of Saul, whose name was Ziba." And they called him to David. The king said, "Are you Ziba?" He said, "At your service." Verse three. "Then the king said, 'Is there not still someone of the house of Saul to whom I may show the kindness of God?'" And Ziba said to the king, "There's still a son of Jonathan who is lame in his feet." So the king said to him, "Where is he?" Ziba said, "Indeed, he's in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, in Lodebar." The word Lodebar means "no communication." So he's running, he's scared. His royal family is dead. He's crippled, and he can't walk. And so he cuts off all communication. "Then King David sent and brought him out of the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lodebar." Next verse. "Now when Mephibosheth, that was his name, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, had come to David, he fell on his face, prostrated himself." And David said, "Mephibosheth." And he said, "Here is your servant." Verse seven. "So David said to him, 'Do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness for Jonathan your father's sake, and will restore to you all the land of Saul your grandfather, and you shall eat bread at my table continually.'" Then he bowed himself and said, "What is your servant that you should look upon such a dead dog as I?" The king called Ziba, Saul's servant, and said to him, "I have given to your master's son all that belongs to Saul and all of his house. Give me five minutes. I'm going to set you up for next week."
Now, I started off with the first law of telling you that the power is in your hands, and there's things you can do to yourself. And now you got the power to bring yourself out. Whatever a man sows, that shall he reap. Okay? Let me say something right here. Life is choice-driven. You can mess up the little decisions and have little bumps in the road because of it. But there's something that I call, it's just me, I hadn't read it anywhere, I call them destiny decisions. You can't choke when you have one of those. You don't have but four or five of them in your whole life. A destiny decision don't happen every Thursday whether or not you're going to wear a red outfit or a blue outfit. That's not a destiny decision. Destiny decision is, "Do I marry this guy?" Destiny decision is, "Is it time for us to move to another state?" Those are life-altering decisions that commit the next 10 or 20 years of the trajectory of your life in a certain direction. You cannot choke when those decisions come. And Deuteronomy 28 says, "If you hearken to the voice of the Lord this day to do and observe all these things which I've commanded you, all these blessings." But then he goes, read the rest of the chapter tonight. Then he starts the other thing. "But if you do not hearken to the voice of the Lord this day to observe and do all these things, right? Then all these curses." God doesn't curse people. The blessing and the curse is built into the law. The law can bless you or the law can curse you. Gravity is keeping you right now from floating through space. It is working on your behalf. Some of us, it works a little harder than others, depends on how many hamburgers you eat. Amen. But gravity's keeping you from floating to Jupiter. But if you decide you're going to take gravity and jump off this roof, it's going to, the same law, it's going to break your legs. That's the way this law of sowing and reaping works. The blessing is built in the doing right, and the spanking is built in. God doesn't spank you. For instance, you don't have to tell your kid but one time, "Don't touch the stove." If they obey you, you'll never have to tell them again. If they disobey you, you'll never have to tell them [Applause] again. Because if I obey, pain-free. If I disobey, pain. It's built in. It's built in. Okay.
So now we come to a part where we got a guy who's been handed a situation, and he was the cause of none of it. Totally different situation. These are what make people bitter. When I get myself in a mess, I want to kick myself. But I'm not bitter, I'm just trying to find a way out. But boy, when somebody else gives me a mess to clean up, when I'm connected to you and you create a mess for me, and I didn't want the mess, I got a message. I preached on New Year's about 10 years ago called "I Didn't Sow for This." When you're dealing with a harvest and you're like, "Wait a minute, God, I didn't sow for this." But somebody you're connected to did. I know I'm preaching. Everybody won't say it, but somebody over there just said it. I know I'm preaching. I'm going to quit. I know some of y'all really want me to quit this one really bad. Okay. Mephibosheth is sitting there. This was not something he sowed for. And I'll go into the parable that deals with that probably next week. And he's lame in his feet. If I took you back several chapters earlier, I think this chapter three or four in Samuel, the Bible says that Mephibosheth had a caretaker while he was a young child in the king's house. And a day of war came, and said that the maiden made haste and grabbed him, and when she grabbed him, she dropped him, and from that day forward, he was crippled. Now it has followed him all the way into adulthood. Okay? So now he's in a new place, a palace. He's been delivered from Lodebar and brought to the palace, but he's in a new place with an old problem because he's been delivered, but he's damaged. When people get saved, they're delivered, but they're damaged. All that stuff is still in there. You can't unknow what you know. How did he get? Because somebody he trusted dropped him. How many adults are paralyzed in life because somebody they trusted dropped them? So now he's in a beautiful place with a terrible problem. "I've been delivered from where I was, but I cannot get what has happened out of my head." Okay. He's lame in both feet. He's sitting there now, folks. I want you to catch the imagery. I'm trying to land this plane, but there is a banqueting table in the palace of a king. I can't even imagine. I've seen movies of what that looks like, but it looks like to me, kings, they feast. And he's laying on the floor calling himself a dog. Okay? How do you turn that around? How do you take, "I trusted them, and they let me down, and the scars have followed me all the way till now," and you need to turn around? There are some things that you will be in charge of having to pull yourself out. But there are other times God will send a Ziba. [Applause] We talk about all the time knowing who don't need to be in your life. The flip side of that is you need to know who God has sent to your life. Because sometimes there's some people knocking on your door that you're rejecting, and they're right under your nose, and you don't see them, but they've been sent to your house to help bring you out of your lameness and out of your paralyzation and bring you to the house of the palace where you can be restored to what is rightfully yours. Every once in a while, I can walk out of my trouble by myself. But there's a hand or time or two I needed someone to take my hand and pull me along the way and help me get back to the place God wanted me to get. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Shout! [Applause] [Music] Amen. Ah, imagine he's laying in Lodebar, all communication cut off. He can't run for himself. He can't fend for himself. There's an assault against his family and his bloodline that's trying to kill every one of them. And he gets a knock at the door, and he didn't think anybody knew where he was. Boom, boom, boom. Who is it? Ziba. "I don't know any Ziba. You don't know me." But I know [Applause] you, and I've come to pick you up and carry you because you're in a place so low you can't walk yourself. I'm going to carry you back to the place God wants you to be. Somebody get on their feet and give God five seconds of praise in this building. Turn around, tell three people, "Whether it's you or somebody else, you're going to turn this around. Whether it's you or whether somebody helps you, you're going to turn this thing around." Hallelujah! I feel the presence of God in this place. Let's take that praise up. Let's take it up a little bit. You are coming out of somebody. Shout, "Turn it around! Turn it around! Turn it around!" We're just getting started. Is it too tough, or can I keep preaching like this? [Music] This may be a very, very useful series for some people. The steps to a turnaround. A 180 in your life. Hallelujah. May the Lord bless you. May He keep you. May He make His face shine upon you. May He establish you and give you peace. In Jesus name. Your pastor loves you. You go out there and you have a great week, and I'll see you next week, and we're going to get into this thing deeper. God bless. Have a great day. [Music] Oh. [Music]