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A Sermon on Transformation Through Renewed Thinking
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Reliées par le texte biblique ou par des thèmes communs.
A mindset is a set way of thinking that gives a prison or paradigm to how you see everything in your world and in your life. Some call it a worldview; Paul of Tarsus called it a stronghold. A mindset can serve goodly causes—it can serve God or it can serve the enemy.
In Romans 12:2, after calling us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, Paul tells us we must renew our minds and be transformed into the likeness of God. The word transform comes from the Greek word metamorphu—a combination of meta (to go beyond, to see beyond) and morph (to change, to transition). Paul is inviting us to an unprecedented transformation of our person, which will also transform our agency as we intervene in a broken world.
Mindsets are dangerous because they are suited to eternal varieties, but they are also suited to various dispensations. If you take the wrong mindset that may have brought you as far as it can, you have to be certain that mindset is not going to take you where you need to go.
Consider Blockbuster, Polaroid, Blackberry, and Kodak—all once-dominant companies that failed to upgrade their mindsets for a digital world. They tried to function in a new ecosystem with an old paradigm. The same principle applies to your life: that old mindset will not work at the next level of you and your agency.
As God perfects His church and brings her to climactic moments of her evolution, He will change mindsets. He's not going to revise the covenant—it's already there. But He will give us clarity on the covenant so that we embrace it in such a way that it causes mind shifts into new mindsets, giving us the capacity and competence to move into dimensions we never thought possible.
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One prevalent mindset in the church is that we must make heaven. But listen: I am not trying to make heaven. I am properly aware and truly conscious that I am seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:3). When Jesus was raised from the dead by the spirit of glory, God raised me and you up in Him because He took our identity, became our substitute in death, in burial, and now in resurrection. We are raised to sit with Him in heavenly places.
Because you are conscious of this, you will not be trying to get to heaven. Rather, because you are a citizen seated in heaven, you are here to bring heaven to earth—in standards, in culture, in atmosphere, in power, in principle.
Our country will not get better until the church understands her mandate and her mission: bringing heaven to earth. We're all busy trying to get to heaven while the enemy takes over the seats of government, power, and industry. He's taken over every sector because our sense of mission is to get to heaven. This is not what the first church preached. The early church preached: "Bring heaven to earth."
Our Father in heaven—You're not on earth, and You have no business with earth except through Your proxies. When He said, "Let us make man in our image and in our likeness, let them have dominion in the earth," He did not include Himself. He licensed those who indwell Him to be His agency. He will do nothing here except He has our agreement.
That's why we cannot blame Him for what's happening in various states or in wild things happening in the world—because God is not in charge. We are in charge of the leasehold. My landlord cannot visit my house unless he gets my permission. He owns the freehold, but I am the home owner.
As it is in heaven, so let it be on earth. Let Your kingdom come—not through His visibility, but through yours. He wants to work through your visibility to do heaven on earth.
Number One: Accept that outdated mindsets cannot work on the next level of your new life.
Isaiah 43:18-19 says: "Remember not the former things neither consider the things of old. Behold I do a new thing. Now shall it spring forth. I will make roadways in your wilderness. I'll make rivers run in your desert." Where you never thought anything powerful or good could happen, God will make it happen beyond your imagination.
Wayne Dyer said it this way: "Change the way you look at things and the things you look at will change."
Number Two: Decide to change your mindset right now for soundness with the revelation of truth.
Be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2). I propose to you that your mindset has brought you as far as it can take you. It can take you no further. Otherwise, you'd already be there. The change that's coming to your life—that makes you a brand new person, astonishingly enamored by God and the way He operates—will come because you got a mindset upgrade or a mindset change.
Number Three: Start renewing your mind now.
How you set up your business back then is not going to work now. There are things we did 30 years ago, 25 years ago, 20 years ago in House on the Rock that will be outdated so soon, so quickly, that you might be left behind like Blackberry, Polaroid, Blockbuster, and Kodak.
Megachurch is about filling the building with people. Metachurch is about taking the message to the whole world—to your business, to your sector, to energy, to government, to every single nook and cranny. We're not building cell fellowships as much around house fellowship. We're building them around professions, around what we be and what we do. That's where real transformation will take place for our country.
This means you and I are going to have to make real commitment to personally spending time in the word of God—not just being able to cram scriptures, but understanding the scriptures you read. The Ethiopian eunuch could read but he couldn't understand. He needed an interpreter. And there are fivefold gifts specifically for that purpose: to know the word and then to show the word.
You don't get drunk on wine unless you spend a lot of time at wine. You can't become intoxicated with God unless you spend a lot of time in His word. Your word is not limited to the Bible, but it will always remain consistent and consonant with the Bible. You have to know how to have a conversational relationship with God—because that's what transforms your life.
The word gives you pictures of who God is, how God is, and what God can do in your life. This God is amazing. He's wonderful. He's Counselor. He's mighty God. He's everlasting Father. He's Prince of Peace. He is so omniscient that He's never thought of anything He didn't already know. He's never been given an equation to answer that He didn't already have in His back brain. He's never been anywhere that He wasn't already there before He got there. He's never wanted anything that He didn't already possess. He's never had to count anything because He is uncountable.
According to the Nicene Creed, He is indivisible. But can I add something else? He cannot be added to. He cannot be subtracted from. He cannot be divided because His number is not a number—it is infinitum. That means if you try to divide infinity by the largest number you can find, it will still be infinitum. If you try to multiply infinitum by the biggest number you can find, it will still be infinitum.
If you try to add to God, you can't because He's already seen it at the place you cannot find. If you try to subtract from Him, He hasn't lost anything, because if He gives it to you, where have you put it? You still put it in His domain.
If you begin to understand what He's like, what He does, how He is, you're really beginning to understand what you are like—because you are a partaker in the divine nature of His omniscience, of His omnipresence, and of His omnipotence. That means if there's a mandate He gives you, you have the power in you to do it. If there's a mission He sends you on, you have all it takes to make that mission happen.
Number Four: Comply with Romans 12:1 and 2.
Stop conforming to the world system and start conforming to the kingdom. You don't want to only have people in your life with whom you have common history. What you want in your life is people with whom you have common destiny. Otherwise, historians are going to keep dragging you back to a yesterday that you are so done with.
Humans are the most socially keen species in the mammalian family. This means that what you think about me can affect me if I allow it. How you see me and what you say about me can deeply affect how I see myself. My worldview is affected by the circle in which I am in.
That's why He tells us: "Do not walk with the ungodly nor stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of the scornful. Otherwise you'll be like the chaff which the wind drives away. But instead meditate in the book of the word, the word of the Lord. Day and night you shall make your way prosperous."
You'll be like a tree planted by the rivers of water. You bring forth your fruit in your season. Your leaf shall not wither, and whatever you do, God will bless with success. A tree is planted and it grows gravitropically downwards to connect with soil, moisture, and nutrients—and it's going against resistance to get there. But interestingly, it also has a phototropic dimension of growth. As much architecture as you have in the branch, stem, stalk, branches, and leafing, there's an equal architecture under the ground in the rooting system.
Think about building your foundation before you build a big building. Watch who you hang with. They are a prediction of where you're going. The people you are most comfortable with will tell us where you are going. That means you systematically have to change your circles.
Show me a man who walks with rich men, and he will become rich. Show me your companion of fools, and I'll show you an idiot. The wise hanging out with you will make you wise.
Today is a call to review your mind's way of thinking, especially as to how you make decisions. Get onto God's page. Get onto the same page that God is on. Come onto His wavelength. Why? So that you can see what He sees.
So that you can hear what He is saying, not what He said. So you can see how He sees you. And you therefore then have to refuse to accept how other people have offered you their opinions about you.
People will form opinions about you over something that happened in your life two years ago, one year ago, six months ago, five years ago, or something you did to them or they did to you that offended you. And as a result, they conclude and put you in a label box and say, "This is how you are." And if you are not careful, you accept that definition about you—and God gets upset because that definition did not originate from the manufacturer. Only God can tell you who you are. Nobody else has the right of defining you.
That's why to be off God's page, to be away from the frequency God is broadcasting on, is to do heaven and creation so much despite, because you're refusing to be you.
How do you see yourself? Because who mama made you to be may not be who you are supposed to be. What your school did to you and shaped you to become may not be what God wants you to become. Where you are and who you are, what you can do, is defined only by God.
Sometimes you may not know who you are or what you can be or what you can do or what kind of favor you have from the invisible world and what kind of favor you can gain from this world—because you simply haven't come to know who you are.
Don't define yourself by what you've gone through. Certainly don't define yourself by what you are going through now.
Nigerians are in a vulnerable moment. We cannot go back to being who we were in the 60s, in the glory of the golden years, and we cannot yet go forward into the 2030s and 2040s when it will be one of the greatest countries on the face of the planet. So we're in between. We're no longer who we were. We're not yet who we are going to be. And in that vulnerable moment of transition, that's when you have to get your mindset right with God.
Even if it's not on the macro level of nations amidst nations, but in your life where you are, just because the country is going through economic downturns and all hell is breaking loose everywhere—that nothing is affordable anymore, inflation has taken on athletic feet, and now we're dying slowly without even recognizing it—don't let that define you.
You define yourself how God sees you. God calls you His beloved. He says you are more than a conqueror through Christ His son in you who strengthens you. He says you are the apple of His eye. Another way a writer puts it is you are the zenith of His creation. He calls you His bride, the one He treasures above how He treasures Himself. He says that you are kings and priests unto Him through the power of the blood of His son.
He declares concerning you: You are above only and not beneath. You are the head and not the tail. He says that you are the son of God. As many as believe upon His son, to them He gave power to become the sons of God. Again He said in another place: "The scripture cannot be broken. You are sons of the most high. I have said ye are gods."
Again He said to Jeremiah: "Don't tell me that you are only a child. You will go to whosoever I sent you to. Because whilst you were in your mother's womb I shaped you and formed you. And I already pre-ordained you as a prophet—not to a nation, but to nations. And if you ever tell me that again, I'll show you something. I'm going to be with you to deliver you. Don't be afraid of anybody's face. Don't be afraid of what anybody can do to you. Be afraid of me. I'll deal with those who think they can deal with you. Because anything you say, Jeremiah, it is going to come to pass."
And there's a Jeremiah or greater than Jeremiah in this room sitting on your shoulder, because that was an old covenant prophet. You don't have God coming upon you—you have God living inside of you. And if He gives you something to say, He's not trying to frustrate you to say something that isn't going to come to pass. He's trying to initiate you inspirationally into your future, an attraction that is magnetic, so that you will certainly get there.
God will entice you by showing you your future. He'll send a preacher to start telling you what is possible. In fact, nothing is impossible to those who believe what God is saying to them.
Mark 11:23-24 says: "Whosoever shall say to this mountain, be thou removed and cast into the sea, and he does not doubt in his heart, but believes that whatever he says, he shall have—is going to happen. Therefore, whenever you pray, whatsoever you desire, believe that you receive it and you shall have it."
Desire is the most powerful force that you can have at work in your heart. When God gives you desire, what He does is give you things that you ask for and you get the new car. You start dancing about it. That's delight. Then you get the new house and you start dancing. That's delight. Then you're 27 and you got a great job and now you're about to take a wife. You've done the ceremonial steps, and now you're excited. You're dancing about it.
God says, "I only gave you those things to teach you how to delight first of all by delighting in what I give you. But now I want you to delight yourself in me. Then I will give you the desires of your heart." Of course, that doesn't mean I'll give you what you desire. I'll give you what to desire. And desire is always the evidence of something that is planted in your future that you haven't got to yet. But if you make it to that point in your future, you will seize what God has planted there.
Eye has not seen, neither has ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for them. Why did it not enter into the hearts of man? Because man thought it was too good to be true.
So it never conceived as a vision in his heart. But God says, "I will make sure it conceives, because whatever I have prepared for those who love me and are called according to my purpose, I will reveal it to them by my spirit."
Where does He act on? Your imagination. That's the same place the enemy acts on your imagination. And when the enemy puts imaginations of doom and gloom, God replaces them by putting imaginations of glory and greatness of your nation, your country, and your role in your country.
Desire comes often through the affirmation of parents and authorities. Joseph was a great boy. He was supposed to have been born first if Laban didn't throw a slide on Jacob. But as a result of Jacob being set aside by his father-in-law, he married Leah. Leah was not the plan. But God embraced it because He needed to proliferate the descendants of Jacob.
Joseph was born at the right time to have the toughness that comes from being in a polygamous family, so that he could be tough, well-baked for the nature of his assignment and his calling. When Joseph is born, he is number 11—number one on another level. Whilst his two sons, Ephraim and Manasse, were sent to lead the brothers of Joseph.
Here's Joseph and his father recognizes this as a special boy because he has an imagination—the first source of hope to the renewal of the vision that was given to the patriarchal fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. For the first time from amongst the 12 boys, somebody's talking about the future. He's talking about the agricultural kingdom bowing to one of the surrogates of Jacob.
Our future is in agriculture. Write that down. Our future is in agriculture, this country. Agriculture is not the only aspect of diversification. You live in the middle of what can be the continent's biggest bread basket. We should be selling bread to the United Kingdom and to all of Europe. They don't have what we have, and we don't need GMO. The sun is our own GMO. We have all it takes in this equatorial sun to be the biggest bread basket in the world.
The father takes a coat of many colors and puts it on his son Joseph. This was a sign that he is the next king in the family. It was an obvious statement, profound and prolific, to his brothers and to himself. His brothers hated him the more because of not just his dreams, not just his vision, not just his imagination, but now also because daddy has endorsed this boy.
That coat had many colors as evidence of multitasking competence, diversity of gifting, diversity of competence, diversity of capacity—the ability to minister to all types of countries, kindreds, kith, tribes, and people of different diversities. This is the same coat that came upon Jesus when the spirit of God landed upon him.
If you keep running with nobody, guess what? You're going to become a nobody. I'm releasing a coat of many colors on the Joseph company right here at House on the Rock this Sunday morning. And my instruction to you is wear your coat. Don't be scared of what they'll say when you wear your coat. Don't be scared of how you start talking big, because the coat is going to invoke some big speech, some future talking.
Wear your coat, my friend. Dance in it. Dress up in it. And swagger in it too. It's your coat. Wear it. You are multi-talented. You are multi-competent. You are powerfully favored.
Another way God invokes your sense of desire is He does things for you. David was pushed out to the back—backwards like a scapegoat. A conversation David didn't hear was going on between God and the prophet of the land. And God told the prophet, "Stop talking to me about that boy. I have found for myself a king in the house of Jesse."
The fellow was 16 years old. The prophet goes there and because his mindset defines king like what Saul looks like, he sees Eliab walk up and he says, "This guy looks like a king. He must be the king." Mindset. Even the prophet had a mindset problem.
Mindset will not work here in your new life. Know that. That mindset will not work with the new you. It may work with the old you, but the old you has gone as far as he or she can go in the prospects of God's prophetic propositions into your life. And if you stay with that old mindset, you are absolutely going to end up going on a wilderness wandering like the Israelites did when they're only 11 days away from their promised land.
They get through seven who got the interview before David. They got the application before David. They were the ones brought by their father. And they all looked like kings. The only picture of a king was Saul. And Saul was no longer a good king. God's picture of king is going to look very different from what Saul looks like.
They get to the end of the line. He says, "Isn't there anybody else? Not one of his seven brothers could remember him. They were not even thinking of him. How can he—that boy from a strange woman—be better than all seven of us?"
The prophet says, "Man looks at the outward appearance. I weigh the heart." Before you choose another king, what is in the heart? Does he have a strong heart? Can he fight giants? Can he fight lions? Can he fight bears? Does he have administration? Can he restore the tabernacle of David? Can he bring administration to a place where every single cabinet office is aligned?
David walks in in front of all the people who said he was a nobody and treated him like a joker. The prophet said, "We will not sit down until the next king comes." And they gave him the king's meat—the part of the cow that he sacrificed. It wasn't for Jesse, nor Eliab, nor any of the brothers. It was for a boy, 16 years old. God is trying to tell us something about the next generation all across the Bible.
Raise your children to be kings. Raise them to not run away from this country. Raise them to recognize that Nigeria is the inheritance that they are meant, like Joshua, to distribute to the teeming hundreds of millions of Nigerians.
Do you know that in 20 years Nigeria will be 400 going on 450 million people? That's calamity if we don't get organized now. God has to do a quick work in this country.
David gets an introduction to the new David. The prophet says, "This is really the guy I want to point at you. It's really you." And David gets an introduction to the new David. "I came to pour oil on your head. Not the oil you can see with eyes or touch with your fingers, but an oil that will make you start seeing pictures of who you are. Not who time says you are. Not who Nigeria says you are. Not who your uncle or your auntie or your hater friend says you are."
Jesus enters His ministry fully and goes to the synagogue to teach. He thinks He's going to read a text and teach from it, but He doesn't see the text. He sees a woman who was bent over 90 degrees and could in no way lift up herself. So all she could see was down. She couldn't see up. She hadn't had eye contact with anybody in years.
What would take people two minutes to traverse in walking footsteps could take her ten or fifteen minutes. She was faithful. She came to the synagogue. She was faithful. And she's done this week in week out, month in month out. She's done it for twelve years, for eighteen years. She's not just lost her youth—she's lost her times and her seasons.
I want to tell somebody this morning: the years you lost, you're not only going to get them back, you're going to get what you lost in those years back. If you lose keys to a car, you don't only lose keys—you lose access to the mobility that the car affords you.
But the Bible says that He saw her. It didn't mean He saw her condition alone. He saw everything in her history, in her pain, in her trials, in her tribulation. He saw her. I want you to know that your Father—He sees you. He sees everything.
And He asked her to do one important thing: He asked her to come to Him. If you will come to see Jesus and look beyond the pastor and the preacher and look at Him and His history—His history will become your his story.
She makes her way there. It must have been difficult. She was an eyesore to all the people who were around. But she made it there. And He told her something about herself, something about her identity that she did not know she was.
What did He say to her? He said, "Woman, you are loosed." He told her something she was—that she didn't know she is. And therefore, she didn't capitalize on who she was because she didn't know who she was. She was somebody about to get back her feminine dignity, her womanhood, her pride of place.
And it was about to happen. And He knew that if He didn't touch her, but only spoke it to her, she might not get it. And so she came to Him and He said with an affirmative voice: "Woman, you are loosed." Not "you are going to be," but "you already are."
David, you already king. You just aren't wearing the throne yet.
If you are the king and you don't know it, if they ask you to sit in that chair, you won't sit there. If they tell me that I am the king and they take me to the palace and they tell me sit in that chair, I'm not likely to sit in it because I didn't know who I was. I was seeing myself through the eyes of big brothers. And big brothers most generally don't want you to rise.
And she found herself that day and he put one hand on her and she transformed. She lifted up herself. The Bible said immediately, and she was made straight.
I love to praise God over what He can do. But I actually like to praise God more about the things that He cannot do. The Bible says in two immutable things, it is impossible for God to lie.
One day I was on carpets in South Miami looking for things I had no business looking for. And God told me, "You will be my minister." Forty-one years later, it's all history.
We like to praise God for what He can do. That's good. But I also like to praise God for some of the things that He cannot do. One of those things is that He cannot lie. And Moses questioned the promise. God said, "I'm going to do it." Moses said, "No, come and sign at the lawyer's office."
So He took him to the lawyer's office, which is where God and man were to cut covenant. They would draw a figure eight and dig a gutter, take three parted halves of animals that were sanctified for sacrifice. And then two men would walk between the parts and pledge: "If I don't keep my promise, let me be like these parted halves."
And this is the covenant that God agreed to cut for Abraham. But He would not cut it with Abraham. He would cut it for Abraham. Abraham set it up and the vultures start coming and he's busy shooing them away until he gets tired and falls asleep. Your greatest blessing will come when you are resting.
Whilst he's asleep, the Bible says that a smoking torch and a burning flask—God the Father and God the man, this is before He was born of a woman, the pre-incarnate Christ. They walked through the parted halves together. And they cut covenant. God cut covenant with God. But one side of God was God the man. So that man could benefit from the covenant of God the Son, the pre-incarnate Christ, being cut with God the Father.
The covenant was cut on his behalf between God and man. And the man who cut covenant with God was God the man, Jesus Christ, before He was incarnate. So Abraham had nothing in the cut, but he got everything from the cut.
If God says that this thing is black, then because of two immutable things it is impossible for God to lie, the power of the Godhead will go into action to make what He said come to pass at its appointed time. That thing would turn black.
I was a drug addict. But God called me His minister. At the appointed time, within months, I became His minister. I went to watery land that was swamped. And God told me, "This is where you will spend the rest of your life in a temple, in a cathedral." Fast forward a few years, it's a reality today.
Something is about to happen in your life when you start celebrating some of the things that God cannot do. And the one I emphasize today is that He cannot lie.
Surely they will gather against you, but they shall be broken in pieces. Bank on it. Believe it because God cannot lie. They will speak the word against you, but it shall not stand. Bank on it, believe it. But because God cannot lie. They will take counsel together, but it will not come to pass. Bank on it, believe it.
All things work together for the good of them who love the Almighty and are the called according to His purpose. He will turn it in your favor. Bank on it, believe it because God cannot lie.
You are the head and not the tail. Even though it does not yet appear so, bank on it, believe it. Stop shaking because God cannot lie. You are a billionaire, and it's no longer a hard thing. Even though you can't count one million naira on top of another million naira, you better bank on it. Believe it because your God cannot lie.
With His stripes, you were healed. It doesn't matter what the doctor has said in your diagnosis. Bank on what God has said. Believe it because your God cannot lie.
Eye has not seen, neither has ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of those whom He has prepared it for. But the spirit of God is about to reveal your future and the next level of you to you. Bank on it. Believe it because your God cannot lie.
You have some difficult things in front of you, but the word of God says God is able to do exceedingly abundantly far above all that you ask or think according to the power of the gospel at work within you. Bank on it. Believe it. No more shaken. God cannot lie.
Whosoever believes in his heart when he speaks to the mountain and says be thou removed and cast into the sea and does not doubt in his heart, he will see his mountains move. You better bank on it. Believe it. Stop shaking with fear and know that your God cannot lie.
When He declares to you that you are above only and not beneath, friends, stop shaking. Stop fretting because sooner than later you too will discover that your God cannot lie.
When He declares to you that there's no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel—there's nothing that they can do to frustrate your life from the heavenlies. He's the one who frustrates the tokens of divers and he makes babblers run mad. You better believe it. Bank on it.
He shall bless your bread and your water and use it to take disease from the midst of your house and your family. You better bank on it, believe it, and know that your God cannot lie.
Your latter end shall be greater than your former end. Your expectation shall not be cut off. If it is the word of God, you might as well bank on it. Believe it, and know that your God—He cannot lie.
That the same God who did it for Jacob, He'll do it for you too. Even when they threw you into a pit, you're coming out of it alive. They put you in slave chains, you're coming out of it on top. They put you in Egypt—you entered at the bottom of the ladder, but you became the top of the crown. You better bank on it, believe it, and know that your God cannot lie.
When He says you have this treasure in earthen vessels—that the excellency of the power will not be of you, it'll be of God within you—you better bank on it. You're carrying much more than you are aware of. You are much more than you know yourself to be. There's much more to you than you actually see yourself to be.
Now you are a billionaire. You are a multi-billionaire. I don't know who it's for, but in the next seven months, your life is going to change so significantly that you too will know of a truth that your God is Jehovah. He's not a God who can lie.
If He tells you something, it will come to pass as He said it because His power will protect His integrity. My God cannot lie. My God cannot lie.
The doctor said, "I can't help you with this disease." The lawyer said, "I can't bring you out of this one." But we have an advocate with the Father who cannot lie. If He said it, He'll make it good. If He spoke it, He will bring it to pass. Everything on earth will pass away. The stars will lose their shining, but the word of God is forever settled in heaven, and it will soon find settlement in your life.
Your God—He cannot lie. Samson, your hair is going to grow back and you will destroy more in your latter years than you did in your former years. If you believe it, shout it: "I believe it. I'm banking on it. My God, the El Shadai, the Adonai, the Elion, the Elohim, my Jehovah Maddesh, my Jehovah Shama, my Jehovah Gyra—He cannot lie."
Number One: Pray that God will give you vision of your future and give you desire for the fulfillment of that future. There are things waiting for you in your future. Pray that God will give you vision, conviction about your future, and desire for that future.
Number Two: Pray that God will give you vision of the best version of yourself that He defines—how He sees you. He sees you exactly how He sees Christ. Because of the blood of Christ, when the Father looks at you, He sees Christ at his highest epitome. And that's how he treats you once you believe that is how He sees you.
Whilst you're at it, also under number two, you have to believe that you have abounding favor upon your life. That means favor that will pick you up from the bottom of a pit that haters threw you in. That means when slanderers came against you, they will have to eat their words because God will turn what they meant for evil around for good and for His greater glory.
There's nowhere that hate will put you that the special favor of God will not lift you out of, and you come out of it with experience that if God before you, who can be against you?
Number Three: Pray that you will have the mindset to dismantle all the psychological architecture that ties you to your past and to the people of your yesterday. You have the wherewithal to dismantle it. You have to delete some numbers. You have to cleverly dissociate yourself from certain people who are primitive in their thought without being offensive to them. You still love them.
God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. He did not hate them. He continued to love them, but He denied them access. So you can deny access without withholding your love. There are some people very close to you that deeply hurt you, and you have to start denying them access. Otherwise, they will shape how you see yourself and how you think about yourself.
Your challenge is to still love them, but you don't have to give them access to your inner sanctum. Wear your shield, wear your armor around them. Be guarded.
Number Four: May God shift you into new circles that represent your future, have walked in your future, are examples of your future that you can easily learn from. Pray about it. Don't just rush into it. Pray about it. Show me who my new circles are. Show me my next level and my next destinations by bringing me into tune with people from my future.
Help me to know how to court them without looking like a psychopath. Help me to bring service to them and value to them so that it's a two-way street that they will appreciate my potential, my possibility, and I'll be able to learn from them and be grateful for them.
That is hugely critical. That is absolutely most important. If you work on those things in prayer, when they come around, you'll notice them.
I just wanted to come by and tell you something important: Don't let the enemy hide the best you from yourself. Don't let him do that. I wouldn't be here if I allowed him to blind my eyes about me.
I used to understand vision, but I didn't enter into much of it until I had vision of me. You need vision of yourself if you're going to be able to take on the vision of your future. Otherwise, when God shows you your future, you will shrink from the future, feeling: "I'm not big enough. I'm not strong enough. I'm not good enough to handle this."
And the truth is that you're not wired to see yourself. So it always has to be somebody else helping you to affirm and assert who you are. And you cannot trust that responsibility to just anybody.
The Bible says in the book of Jeremiah that He will give you shepherds after His own heart who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. And one of the things you must understand is not just your future—you've got to understand you.
If Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did not understand who they were, they would never have stood in the face of the king and said, "We won't bow respectfully." They would not have gone into the fire knowing that God would deliver them. They were certain that because of who they were, their agency would make the God of Israel become the God of Babylon in Nebuchadnezzar's time.
That's the reality. And that's why they were there. And their ministry would not just be prophetic words. It would be God's defensive protective action upon their lives, so that they would have to ask them: "Who is this your God? Let your God alone be the God who is worshiped in Babylon."
It has to happen. That means you and I are going to be tested. The test will become even more severe. It will be challenging. And one of the things we all have to do—you have friends in high places—you have to start talking to them. They won't like you for it. They will punish you for it. But every time they punish you, God will break them in pieces. Every time they lift a hand against you, it may not happen immediately, but He will shatter them.
As long as you're standing authentically on what God has asked you to do, and we're not saying be rude. That's not the way to be God's prophet. Never. I never see where Daniel was rude to the kings of Babylon or the kings of the Medes or the Persians. I never see where Joseph was rude to the Pharaoh. They stood their ground. They were diplomatic but they were poignantly powerful in their speech.
Show respect where respect is due, but respect God more and tell the truth.
When Samuel anointed David with oil, David was so loaded with oil that he was expecting the royal Uber to come and carry him to the royal palace to put the royal crown on his head and put the royal seat underneath him. But it didn't come. But the one thing that was different—he took that royal ruling anointing back to the bush. And he now would become what is required of kings: champions to protect his sheep.
He was an expert at protecting the sheep of his father. And it was a transferable giftedness where he would take that gift and transfer it into protecting, leading, and administrating the sheep of his God, the nation of Israel.
Fishermen to fishers of men. It's the same skill. One uses nets that work to catch fish, and the other uses networks of men to catch men—to catch systems, to capture industries. And you have all that working inside of you.
You define yourself how God sees you. God calls you His beloved. He says you are more than a conqueror through Christ His son in you who strengthens you. He says you are the apple of His eye. He says that you are kings and priests unto Him through the power of the blood of His son.
You are above only and not beneath. You are the head and not the tail. He says that you are the son of God. Meaning as many as believe upon His son, to them He gave power to become the sons of God.
He declares concerning you: You will complete that building. You will start it. You will finish it, and it will not suffer fire in Jesus' name.
Money always follows vision. Provision means for the vision. God, He cannot lie. Wherever you have vision that is authentic and sent by God, even those who have vision that was given by God but don't know anything about God—He sends money to them. Money runs away from blindness. It runs to vision.
Don't let the enemy hide the best you from yourself. Have a wonderful week discovering the new you. The best version of you is about to show up. Tell a neighbor: "Neighbor, neighbor, keep watching this space. Because the new me is about to show, and you won't recognize him or her because you've never seen him or her before. I'm just being introduced to the new me."
