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Part 11 of 19
The Courage to Commit, Volume Two: I Got the Keys
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God is blessing us in this season, and many of us are shifting from "God, give me a blessing" to "make me a blessing." This is the principle of generosity and the principle of partnership.
Lord, put me in a position where I am the answer to what somebody has been praying about.
If somebody is praying about a bill, give me so much that blessing them won't even hurt me. If somebody's praying because they're outdoors, give me so many properties that blessing them won't even impact me.
Your past struggle was the approval process for the miracle you're going to be to somebody in the next season.
Mike and Mason's testimony won't be Miles's testimony. Xander's testimony wasn't Mike's testimony. By the time later children came along, things had shifted — they don't share the same struggles the older ones had. Even in spiritual sons, this principle holds: what could only be done virtually during a pandemic can now be done physically, in person, as things come full circle.
Then she stopped having children. (Genesis 29:35)
That's the whole text for today. We're in the midst of a series called The Courage to Commit, Volume Two: I Got the Keys.
A heart that's willing to give leads to a life that freely gives.
What I believe about me often determines what I believe about God. Often we are limited in what God says and believes about us because we have insecurities in ourselves. We're trying to walk in what God has promised, but the problem is not that we don't see God right — we see ourselves wrong. We are saved but insecure.
God was placed in our life to be a mirror. He made us in His image, but we've chosen to make certain things a magnifying glass. Instead of seeing ourselves in Him, we magnify what we don't have and adopt insecurities when we should have been secure.
God did not simply create us to maintain, but to multiply. Often we're settling for addition when God created us to multiply. Sometimes the foundation of your multiplication starts with addition — you can't judge someone for not immediately producing fruit, because sometimes God wants to see if He can trust you with a little before He trusts you with a lot.
When we mismanage the miracle, we forfeit God making us the blessing — because with mismanagement, you'll always need a miracle.
The stages of God's movement, illustrated with three signs:
Trusting the wrong people will make you worse; trusting the right people will make you win. It's not worth winning without trust. Often we are in trauma because we trusted the wrong people, places, and things — and sometimes we get saved but never learn how to rebuild trust. So we say "God, save me," but we struggle with God leading us. He's our Savior but not our Shepherd.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
When He becomes your Savior, He pulls you out of a thing. When He becomes your Shepherd, He levels you up and sustains you so the thing will never be an issue in your life again. Many of us keep going in cycles because we've been saved but never made Him the Shepherd.
Some partnerships are birthed — natural, spiritual, sometimes physical connections you don't know how you ended up in; they were destined. Others are bought — not with finances, but with a price. Something was sacrificed so two people could be in covenant. In the Old Testament, whenever there was a covenant, there had to be a death, a sacrifice, a cost.
For the relationships you're fighting to keep that don't want to be kept — was this birthed or bought? If it was bought, sacrifice happens on both levels: you have to sacrifice something, but the other side has to receive it. Some frustrations in partnerships happen because you're sacrificing something the other side isn't receiving — or you're connected to someone who, like in Malachi, is offering God (and you) unacceptable sacrifices.
My gift will change others, but my character will change me.
Who you choose to be in your life will either be an asset or an assault. We cannot get life right if we keep picking wrong. The most important aspect of building our life is the selection — the picking. The most spiritual thing we do every day is pick.
In the 1984 draft, Houston took Hakeem Olajuwon first. Portland, picking second, chose Sam Bowie. Chicago, picking third, took Michael Jordan. If Portland had picked Mike instead of Bowie, their backcourt of Mike, Clyde Drexler, and Terry Porter would have been unbeatable. But one organization made a bad pick, and Chicago became Chicago because Mike ended up there.//
Whenever God wants to deliver a place, He picks a person:
You're so worried about people picking you, but fitting into their crowd may make you default on God picking you. Half the hell you're facing right now isn't because of people's preference — they can't stand the fact that you're God's selection.
I'm God's pick. Out of everybody in my family, He picked me to take us to another level.
Maybe your ex didn't pick you. Maybe your family didn't pick you. But God picked you — when you were at your lowest, when you were depressed, He picked you.
Even being picked by the wrong hands means you'll never become what God called you to be — so there's reason to be thankful even for the labels and people who overlooked you. (Even industry labels passed on opportunities before doors eventually opened.) Even if you're picked, but picked into the wrong hands, you'll never become what God called you to be.
You cannot replace a bad pick with good prayer.
No matter how hard Portland prayed, Sam Bowie was never going to be Michael Jordan. Prayer doesn't fix the pick. Sometimes the fact that someone didn't pick you isn't a reflection of your value — it's a reflection of their vision. Sometimes it's not that they can't see you; it may be that God is hiding you, because if they saw the treasure you have, they would abuse or misuse it. Be thankful for being hidden from people who would mismanage you.
Sometimes we try to replace God's principles with spiritual practice — you cannot replace bad decisions by shouting. Everything you do in life is a pick. When you get paid, you pick tithing or keeping it — you can't choose not to honor God and then fast asking God to fix it. If you pick to shoot somebody and get caught, intercessory prayer doesn't change the pick — it might change the penalty, but you can't determine how God moves in response to a bad pick.//
Spiritual disciplines don't trump bad picks. Pray before you pick — prayer should help you pick, not ease the pain from constantly making bad picks.
Picking is like an elevator: a pick will either take you up or down. Up is an asset. Down is a bad pick that brings a weapon into your own house. Most people feel stuck in the elevator called life because they've made picks that took them down.
Today's topic: Pick Yourself Up. My goal this week is not to tell you what to pick, but to help you learn how to pick. In today's text, we meet a sister suffering because of a pick she didn't even make — a mother having to recover from a bad family pick.
Jacob has a crush on Rachel. Rachel has a sister named Leah. Scripture describes Rachel as beautiful, while Leah had a good personality. Jacob sees Rachel and says she's everything he ever dreamed. But there's a difference between the two sisters: Leah could produce something — Rachel looked good, but she couldn't birth anything. Rachel had the look but couldn't multiply.
Jacob asks Laban, Rachel's father, for her hand. Jacob's first pick: Rachel. Laban says yes, but Jacob owes seven years of labor for her. The wedding comes, the honeymoon happens, and Jacob lifts the veil to discover it isn't Rachel — it's Leah.
So we see a good pick from Jacob, but a sneaky pick from Laban — the principle of partnership gone wrong. Jacob approached Laban wanting Rachel; they entered into an agreement to work seven years for her.
Jacob asks Laban for Rachel's hand — that's his first pick. Laban agrees, but says Jacob owes seven years of labor for her. The wedding comes, the honeymoon happens, and Jacob lifts the veil to discover it isn't Rachel — it's Leah.
So we see a good pick from Jacob, but a sneaky pick from Laban. This is the principle of partnership gone wrong. Jacob rolls up on Laban wanting Rachel; they enter into an agreement — seven years of work to get her. He goes as hard as he can to get this girl. He has a honeymoon, and evidently he'd had some wine, because he's so lit — or the room is so dark — that he doesn't recognize he's with the wrong woman until it's over.
So what happens? He's now suffering emotional trauma because his partner was a sneaky pick. Half of your trauma isn't even your pick — it's the picks that the people you were connected to made. And what's crazy is Jacob's name literally means deceiver, trickster — and Laban pulls the same trick on him.
Sometimes you have to be careful when applying the principle of generosity in the wrong direction, because just as you can reap a blessing, sometimes we have to be honest that we may be reaping bad decisions. Now Jacob feels deceived, when all his life he's been deceiving his brother. He can't cry victim, because he's getting a taste of his own medicine. Some of you are finally having to deal with what you've been making people deal with. You can't cry victim when you've been victimizing.
So Laban agrees to also let Jacob marry Rachel. Jacob is now married to both sisters, but he only loves one. This leads to our text — although Rachel was beautiful, it was Leah who could produce.
"When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive." (Genesis 29:31)
This sister is able to conceive not because she has favor, but because God looked at her and saw her pain. God sees two females — one beautiful, but Leah beautiful in his sight too. God does not see ugly and pretty, because he made both of them. But God says, "I'm going to let you give birth to something" — not because you're favored, but because I see how much you're going through.
Some of you are being arrogant, like God is letting you do what you do because you've just got it like that. Sometimes God lets you do what you do because he looked at you and said, "Ain't nobody going to love them. Ain't nobody going to support them. Ain't nobody going to hold them down. So the least I can do is give them the ability to produce something."
Let's look at this closely: she was not loved — by whom? Not by her husband. Not even by her father, who gave her away knowing this man didn't even want her. Father issues, jealousy, sister issues, husband issues — she was not loved. She was rejected.
Sometimes man's rejection becomes God's selection.
When I was rejected by who I wanted, God gave me what I needed. But a baby didn't fix everything.
Why didn't God just lay it on her father's heart to send her back so Jacob could just have Rachel? Because there was something God needed out of her. If Leah doesn't have babies, we don't get the tribes. If we don't get the tribes, we don't get the lineage that Jesus comes from. So Jesus was birthed from a lineage of a sister who wasn't loved by anyone in her family. Why do you think his ministry is to restore love? Jesus is the fruit of rejection that became the seed of acceptance for those who had been rejected.
Her being rejected, used, and abused was bigger than her.
Have you ever stopped to consider — this is bigger than me? You will have your challenges, but at a certain point, when you're standing in the room by yourself and everyone else has walked away, you've got to shout, this is bigger than me.
How do you know it's bigger than you? Because you wouldn't have picked it. It's bigger than me when it was placed on me, not picked by me. This is why Jesus, looking into the cup, says,
When I praise God, I'm not just praising — I'm picking. I'm saying, "God, I need you to pick up my depression and release more joy. I need you to pick up my anxiety and give me some more peace." I dare you to begin to praise God to pick some stuff up.
What Rachel does is make a pick on what she's focusing on. When she had the first baby, she looked to a man. When she had the second baby, she looked to a man. When she had the third baby, she looked to a man. But when she has the last baby, she chooses to look differently. She said, in essence, "Instead of giving you the authority to determine how I feel, I'm going to look to the one who will grant me the strength to pick."
Every time Leah had a baby, she thought Jacob would finally love her because of it. But she discovered can't nobody do her like Jesus. She stopped picking the right things for the wrong reasons, and she stopped expecting the right things from the wrong people.
Sometimes your pain comes from who you decide to pick.
Leah lived in a culture that did not allow her to make her own picks — her father picked for her. We often reap unnecessary damage whenever we avoid the process of discovery.
You improve the quality of your pick not just by hearing from God, but by looking at yourself. Without wholeness, I cannot discern between God's assignment and my ambition.
Oftentimes we're trying to rush into picks, and God is saying you can't skip the season of discovery. We're trying to pick everything we want someone else to be when we don't even know who we are ourselves.
Discovery, in other words, is discovering who you truly are and what God has called you to do — simply put, it's when I find myself. If we're not careful, we hear "discovery" and think it means investigate them. No — investigate you. Because you always pick based off of how you see you.
Most men don't even go after the woman they could actually have because of how they see themselves — they think, she'll never be with somebody like me. Even with the building we're in now, people kept telling me, "Don't try to get that building, that'll never happen — you don't see black churches on this side of town." But you're not going to define me based off of a norm.
Someone watching today is going to send a text and say, "We got to break up — it's not you, it's me," and really mean it, because you're going to discover you were trying to make them your God. You're going to discover there were some things in you that needed to be developed more before you picked.
A call to something is not the same as readiness to execute.
Oftentimes we confuse God's calling with God's calendar. Just because he's calling you doesn't mean it's the same time you need to go and do what he's calling you to do.
Defining speaks to self-awareness, situational awareness. Without awareness, you'll always live in deception. We make commitments blindly because we haven't defined it before we committed to it.
Wrong definitions will lead to wrong destinations.
Sometimes you end up at the wrong destiny because you never gave yourself the right definition. If you're in a relationship, define it. If you're in a season, define it. Oftentimes we don't know what the destiny of something will be because we never took the time to define what it is.
Defining moments birth the gift of awareness. Leah desired affection from Jacob while lacking awareness about herself. Without self-awareness, we will live in self-deception.
What do you need to define now so that you don't end up at the wrong destiny later?
Even though Leah became a mother, birthing children, she never developed emotionally from her childhood. Leah had to develop through experience, not education. Experience is an effective teacher, but it should not be the preferred teacher.
I shouldn't have to go through trial and error if I'm connected to somebody who can educate me. Experience is the hardest teacher, but not the best teacher. When I sit at the feet of somebody who's been doing this for 20 years, they tell me in 20 minutes what it took them 20 years to learn. What do they give me? Speed.
You don't have to make yourself a headache going through mistakes — skip that, go straight to speed. Stay right where you are as long as you can, save as much as you can, don't give people titles too fast. Experience will cost you time and tears.
I want to challenge you to develop in three areas:
Develop your mindset. Many people will always fail because they lack emotional intelligence. That will be the downfall for most people, because if you cannot think while you're hurting, you will always self-sabotage. If you get mad and pop off, we can't trust you with anything.
An angry man or woman is like a city without walls.
Show me somebody who cannot manage their emotions and I will show you a gate that is always open — and if the gate is always open, you can't determine who comes and who goes. So developing your mindset isn't just reading books — it's being tested and found worthy.
Develop your ability to be mentored. Notice I didn't say find a mentor — I said develop your ability to be mentored. Having the right mentor will give you the education without having to pay the tuition. Some of us are in debt right now — not financial debt, but emotional debt, mental debt, spiritual debt — because we had to develop through experience since we lacked the ability to be mentored.
Even standing on this stage, no matter how long I've been doing this, when I sit under your leadership I'm always going to ask, "What do I need to improve?" because I want to have the capacity to be poured into. If you find the right person but that person can't tell you anything, what is it going to profit? Great people don't waste their...
