Headwinds by Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts
Headwinds by Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts
Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts preaches “Headwinds” at The Potter’s House Dallas.
acts 10 verse 19 jesus has already ascended to heaven and his disciple peter is on a mission to go into all of the parts of the world and when we find him in this text it’s an interesting encounter he’s going to have with cornelius who is the gentile and traditionally because of peter being jewish he would not have engaged with the gentile yet god has given him a commandment to do something outside of his comfort zone and at this particular part in the text we’re about to to really have an encounter with.
cornelius’s servants who were sent to gather peter and and some of his other friends if you will and go back to cornelius’s home to to witness in acts 10 and 19 it says while peter thought about the vision the spirit said to him behold three men are seeking you arise therefore go down and go with them doubting nothing for i have sent them then peter went down to the men who had been sent to him from cornelius and said yes i am he whom you seek for what reason have you come and they said cornelius the centurion a.
just man one who fears god and has a good reputation among all the nations of the jews has divinely instructed by a holy angel to summon you to his house and to hear words from you my subject if i may for today is head wind headwinds headwinds headwinds headwinds for those of you who are unfamiliar it’s when a plane is taking off and they don’t fly in the direction of the wind they fly against the wind and as i was preparing for the message i said god what is this this headwinds thing and he told me that there.
are people in the church who have been feeling like their life has been this whirlwind like it’s just one thing after another and and i need them to know that when their whirlwind collides with a mighty rushing wind that a takeoff is inevitable that i am creating a wind in your life so that when you encounter my spirit at the exact moment that you do you’re going to recognize that i was really just propelling you into the promises that i already have over your life this is this is the final note the final check.
before taking off the final check before taking off much like where we find peter and cornelius in the text and so spirit of the living god fall in this place fall in this place as only you can do it’s not enough for me to just be up here speaking god i need you to stand up inside of me i need less of me and more of you god these are your precious people whose lives and purposes depend on hearing from you god this is not about being cute this is not about being entertained this about changing and transforming lives so god.
i asked that you would consume this place as only you can do that there would be a wind blowing in this room and as it blows demons would tremble oh god generational curses would be broken i’m asking that you would do that thing that you do when we are gathered in your name and we demand that we not leave this place the same god we need you we need to hear from you we need to receive from you we need to be transformed and covered by you so god i submit myself fully to what you have already predetermined this moment to be.
and i ask that you have your way in jesus name amen recently um i celebrated a birthday and uh my husband uh y’all just i love the potter’s house like you was born i’m so glad she was born [Applause] i i was celebrating my birthday and my husband um he planned like this big surprise thing and so it was really incredible and i had no idea what was going on really you know um some men aren’t really good at surprises like totally but their heart is in the right place and so i went along with it and to a.
certain extent i didn’t know everything that was planned and so he um took me out to dinner and and then he rented this convertible which i think was less about my birthday and more about him it’s like they’re you know like convert yeah sure okay so so we’re in the convertible and and we’re driving and we’re in san francisco and and he was like baby can i take the top down and and see he had to ask because you know the way my hair is set up it’s um my hair is uh flexible it’s um it’s uh it it.
you know sometimes it’s like planted like a tree by living waters and then other times it’s removable and it’s all right we’re family i know i’m not judged here [Applause] and so he didn’t know exactly what was happening in that moment with the hair and so he knows that the convertible could cause a bit of an issue and and you know i wanted to be sweet he’s planned all of this and so i go husband you know what you know just yeah sure we can take the top down you know because i wanted to be like his.
girlfriend you know i didn’t want to you know sometimes you gotta be girlfriend sometimes you got to be a wife you know and i wanted i wanted to be his girlfriend you know yes let’s take the top down and you know and i prayed because on that particular day if my hair was not totally removable because i tacked it down in such a way that’s all right guys it’s okay and so he takes the top down and as long as we were driving in the direction of the wind things were fine it was actually perfect because it would.
hug [Music] [Applause] but then we got lost and he made a u-turn and that’s when i learned about headwinds because it was real breezy you know and for a minute i was enjoying it because the hair you know the air was like rushing through my hair and then and then i realized if the air is rushing through your hair your hair is not on anymore so so that’s not good at all you know it’s probably be my last time speaking for a while but that’s all right don’t tell bishop kill the live stream so um i realized that headwinds when you are.
flying or driving or running or swimming in the direction of the wind it can be problematic because there’s a certain level of resistance when you’re in the wind there’s a level of resistance when you’re running you run slower when you’re running against the wind when you’re swimming it’s more difficult when you’re against the wind literally when you’re in a boat and you’re in you’re propelling against the wind it slows you down it’s problematic to be against the one the only time.
that it’s not problematic is when you’re about to take off because there’s something about the conflicting winds coming up against one another that one thing has to take off but there’s something about the perception we have to have about the wind and the intentionality we have to have when facing the wind that we realize i’m not running against the wind i’m not swimming against the wind i’m covered in such a way that even when wind comes in my direction all it can do is take me off to another.
dimension of who i am to another level of who god has called me to be i’m not afraid of the wind because i recognize that i can make the wind work in my favor because i have a wind that’s stronger than any whirlwind that’s going on in my life and when your wind collides with his whirlwind something has to happen something has to happen something has to take place i’m not just in this thing on my own have you ever realized what it’s like to have backup when you thought you were in something on your.
own and then you realized out of nowhere that there were people who would be there for you that god would send people right where you needed them i thought i was in trouble i thought that this thing was going to push me back i thought i was going to take one step forward then 10 steps backward but then there was a win that pushed me and propelled me where i was supposed to be and so when we find peter and cornelius in the text god is creating these winds he’s creating these winds it doesn’t look like winds it looks like.
issues and struggles and problems it doesn’t look like anything good necessarily is going to come out of it but but god had a divine plan but in that moment no one knew what god was up to and man if only we could know if only we could know god what are you going to do with this it looks like a mess it looks like i’m losing that child it looks like the marriage isn’t going to come out on the other side lord what are you it’s not that you don’t trust him you just wish you would just he could just.
give you a preview if you could just give me a hint if you could just give me a hint about what’s on the other side of this cornelius is a roman soldier he’s a centurion he’s got honor and respect within the community and he is god-fearing which sounds like a good thing but as i was studying i recognized how difficult it was for him to be god-fearing in rome at that time because at that time there was idolatry and the greek gods played a major role in religion so this idea of having one god and certainly the god.
of jewish people at that time seemed a bit like an oxymoron he was a god-fearing roman soldier who would learn to live life on a bubble because he wasn’t quite roman because he didn’t serve the same gods that the romans served but he wasn’t quite jewish because though he served the jewish god he could not be accepted into the jewish faith but he became comfortable living life on living life on a bubble not quite one thing but i’m not quite the other either and he was in an environment that was.
not conducive to what was in his heart which i know is not like anyone in the room i know no one in this room has ever been raised in an environment that wasn’t conducive to what god placed in your heart you’ve never had to work in an environment that wasn’t conducive to what was in your heart you’ve never had to be in a marriage that wasn’t conducive to what was in your heart have you ever had your heart have the passion for one thing but nothing in your environment celebrated it people where i’m from.
