From Powerless to Powerful

For this month’s Hey You, our theme is “Revolutionary Power”. Join Pastor Sarah as she spearheads a night of encouragement and soul care. If you’ve been feeling powerless lately, this message is tailor made for you.

Dear Lord,
Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week.. Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Did I take you back with that song or what?
It’s so funny. I don’t know why they allow me, who knows?
You know, nothing about singing to choose some of the worship songs.
But when we were talking about this month’s theme and we were just trying to really set an atmosphere for what God wanted to do through hate you.
I just felt break every chain specifically, that part about there’s power in the name of Jesus.
And I feel like we need to be reminded of that power because there are so many different other names floating around our world, the name of our destiny, the name of our purpose, the name of our anxiety, the name of our dreams, the name of who we need to be connected to and what we need to do.
Our bank account. Everything has a name, but there’s something about being reminded of the power in the name of Jesus that reminds our spirit and our soul about who is in control of it all.
And so I am just so thankful for the opportunity to worship, to share with you in that worship because I’m just like you, I’m on a journey and I’m navigating the different names that are being introduced in my life and the different circumstances and situations that are constantly happening.
And it’s something peaceful about knowing that with all of the names that we have to keep up with, of all of the responsibilities that we have to keep in mind that there’s something about the name of Jesus that just calms the storm, eases the anxiety and allows us to have peace.
And that’s what my prayer is for you. Not just peace though, because we are talking about revolutionary power.
So I want you to have peace and power.
And I’ve been praying, praying about what it means to be powerful.
It’s so funny when we first started this theme, I was just thinking about you all just really moving into position and for you to really step into a place of ownership and confidence in what God has for you.
And I feel like if I can be transparent for me this year, that all of those things are happening, but I don’t feel powerful.
Like I feel like I’m moving in purpose, I feel like I’m moving in destiny.
I feel like I’m gaining confidence but powerful doesn’t feel powerful if that makes any sense.
And I don’t want you to miss the moment where you are full of power, but because you don’t feel it the way you think that you’re gonna feel it.
You miss it all together I dare say that the moments you feel the most powerful are probably a lie.
It’s the moments where you feel like maybe I don’t exactly have it all together, but I’m gonna do it anyway.
Those are the moments when you’re most powerful because you’re open and you’re aware and you’re going with the flow.
So I wanna, I wanna talk to you about what I’ve been praying about my subject for those of you who are like, I’m, I’m a note taker or I wanna be able to find this later on youtube.
I want you to jot down from powerless to powerful, from powerless to powerful.
Write that down if you, I feel like this is a message you’re gonna want to rehearse in your spirit over and over again.
Turn with me to John 19 verse five through 11.
I am in the new King James version.
My text begins, you know, I got my childhood Bible here because it brings me comfort just for context for those of you who haven’t had an opportunity to read this whole chapter before we got here or you don’t know the Bible like the back of your hand.
Like some of the people Jesus has been turned over to Pilate.
Pilate is the Roman emperor of the time who is going to ultimately be the one responsible for whether or not he is put to death after Jesus has performed his miracles and gone from town to town preaching the gospel, healing the sick and raising the dead.
This is a moment where we don’t see Jesus in the same way.
We see him when he’s breaking the fish and the five loaves of bread, we don’t see him in the same way that we see him spinning on the man’s eyes so that he can see again.
This is a version of Jesus that is powerless.
Pilate is in control of his Destiny says, then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns in the purple robe and Pilate said to them behold the man.
Therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw him, they cried out saying crucify him, crucify him.
Pilate said to him, said to them, you take him and crucify him for I find no fault in him.
The Jews answered him. We have a law and according to our law, he ought to die because he made himself the son of God.
Therefore, when pilot heard that saying he was the more afraid, he was more afraid.
Pilot, the one who has power, pilot, the one who can make decisions is finding himself in a position.
Even when he has power to feel afraid.
That’s a word for somebody already position does not mean that there will be an absence of fear.
If you think that when I finally get in this position, when I finally have control and autonomy over what happens in my territory, then I will no longer feel fear.
But right here in this moment, we’re learning a lesson from pilot.
And that lesson is that you can be in control of a territory and still be afraid, still be unsure about what it is.
I am supposed to do position does not guarantee that you’re always going to walk with confidence, but that was for free.
Therefore, when Pilate heard that saying, he was the more afraid and went again into the pre and said to Jesus, where are you from?
But Jesus gave him no answer. Then Pilate said to him, are you not speaking to me?
Do you not know that I have power to crucify you and power to release you?
Jesus answered, you could have no power at all against me unless it had been given to you from above.
Therefore, the one who delivered to, delivered me to you has the greater sin. I wanna read that again.
You could have no power at all against me unless it had been given to you from above.
Therefore, the one who delivered me to you has the greater sin.
I wanna focus most of my message on that last scripture because it gives us insight into how Jesus even in this powerless moment, understands the different powers that are at work in this circumstance that he’s in spirit of the living God.
We just invite your presence, we invite your presence because we recognize that in your presence, there is power, power to heal power to confront power, to bring clarity, power, to bring focus power, to remove distractions and depression, power to breathe.
And I thank you God that that’s exactly what you’re giving my sisters that in this moment they are receiving your presence.
And as a result, just one more drop of power, power they need for their lives, power they need for their destiny.
I thank you God that we get to do this together, pour into me and then into the overflow.
May they receive in Jesus name? I pray amen.
One of the things I love about woman evolve is that it’s an opportunity for us to have girl time, right?
And I get to tell you what’s happening in my world and you can drop me comments and chat and tell me what’s happening in your world.
I’ve noticed that as the world begins to open up again, that my work has also increased and with my work also increasing, I’m back into this battling of mom guilt.
Now we call it mom guilt because there is this idea in our mind that we need to be there for our Children 24 7.
But we also need to make sure that we are in purpose in fulfilling the vision that God has for our lives.
And we also wanna make sure that we’re making them coins because sometimes we gotta feed those Children.
And by sometimes, I mean, they like to eat three times a day, sometimes 4 to 6, depending on how hungry they are and balancing.
All of those things can be challenging. But I know those of you who aren’t even moms can relate.
You got friend guilt, you got daughter guilt. You got sister guilt.
I was talking to my therapist about experiencing mom guilt.
Well, no, I was talking to my therapist about being stressed and I was telling my girl like, listen, I am overextended.
I don’t know what to do.
I’m making the girl’s breakfast and lunch in the morning and, and it’s not just sandwiches for some reason.
It’s got to be fried rice, right? It’s got to be more than just a regular.
It’s gotta be quesadillas with freshly chopped bell peppers and bacon inside of it.
Like I’m doing the most and I can’t stop doing the most. Help me.
I just go to my therapist like here, help here I am. Help me. Ok.
And we get to talking about overcompensating and why am I overcompensating?
And you know, they weave all these things back to your childhood.
And now here I am as a grown woman sitting in my therapist office also as an eight year old girl, thinking about all of the times when I maybe wanted my mom while she was working, thinking of all the times where my mom was traveling and I wanted her there with me and she says to me, so let’s go back to that time Right.
And she’s like, when we go back to that time, I want you to tell me how much time did you need from your mom?
And I was like, well, that’s simple. All of her time. Like I wanted all of her time.
And she was like, and at what point did you have an encounter with reality that helped you to understand that what you wanted in that moment was not realistic.
Otherwise, in other words, what she told me is that there is an eight year old version of myself who was making a demand on how I should mother because of what she felt she should have received.
That eight year old version of me was teaching me how to be a mother.
So I had to make a decision in that moment and that decision was what is gonna be most important to me as I raise these Children.
Of course, I wanna be present and I wanna be there for them, but I don’t wanna overcompensate so that I can satisfy an eight year old who felt like she didn’t get all of the time that she wanted.
There is power in learning to see things properly.
The power that we experience when we see things properly helps us to understand whether or not what we desire is realistic or not.
Sometimes we have these unrealistic desires that are ultimately based in a version of us that had an unrealistic expectation at the time.
Can we go deeper when your perspective grows up?
There ought to be a shift in how you process what once was.
So when your perspective grows up, you recognize that though, you wanted, maybe the dad who took you out for ice cream every weekend and took you to the park to swing that.
There was a version of him that never received that and therefore, could not give it when your perspective grows up.
You recognize that you can’t just eat all of the carbs and lose weight.
At the same time when your perspective grows up, you realize that you literally have to pay bills or they will like turn your lights off like you wanna make all of the money that you can make, but you don’t wanna pay any bills.
But perspective growing up teaches us that some of the things that we want are not necessarily possible and that is hard work.
You know why it’s hard because while those examples may sound fluffy and lighthearted, what about those moments where what we want is to not experience grief and yet we realize that not everybody’s time on this earth is guaranteed.
What we want is to live forever.
But yet we realize that even our own lives have an expiration date.
What we want is to learn to love again.
But we also realize that that means I’m gonna have to open my heart again when your perspective grows up and you realize that life is not just gonna be so easy and come together in a way that makes you feel powerful and confident reconciling that is devastating somebody watching right now.
And you know, all too well, the devastation of having your perspective grow up before you were ready.
Maybe you learned at an early age that not everyone has good intentions.
Maybe you learned at an early age that the very people who are supposed to protect you don’t just not protect you, but sometimes end up abusing you.
It’s a violent thing when your perspective grows up before you’re ready.
I’ll tell you one of the things that I am reconciling now, even in my thirties is that when I was 13 and I got pregnant with my child, the doctor told me literally at 13 years old, you may not live when you have this baby, pushing this baby out to full term means that you may have to choose between the baby or you.
And though they said that at 13 and I had my child and he lived and I lived, there’s this fear of death that has been hanging over my head since I was 13 because I had to process at an early age that life could happen and you could die before you’re ready.
Your perspective growing up.
That’s hard work, especially when it makes you feel powerless because after all, isn’t that what makes it challenging?
It wouldn’t be so difficult for my perspective to grow up.
If my perspective growing up made me feel more powerful.
But there are moments when your perspective grows up and when that perspective grows up, it actually makes me feel powerless.
What do you do? When the person I thought I could count on, I can’t count on anymore.
Now, I feel powerless. What do I do when my world gets so much bigger than me?
And I can’t facilitate everything that’s happening and I feel powerless.
What do we do with these moments when we feel powerless?
That’s the one I, what I wanna talk to us about today because there is something powerful about being able to see things properly.
And when you see things properly, we’re talking about perspective here.
That’s how we know that we are in relationship with God.
Not because what we see initially, we can trust, but because we go through the hard work of allowing God to change our perspective.
God wants more than anything to change your perspective.
When God changes your perspective, it’ll change the way you see yourself.
When God changes your perspective, it’ll change the way you see your past.
When God that changes your perspective, it’ll change all of the projections that were placed on the inside of you because those projections change your perspective.
But God says, I wanna reverse what was projected so you can receive my perspective and you gotta realize that this is work reversing what was projected so that you can receive God’s perspective is work.
It’s the kind of work that not everyone wants to do.
But it is the only type of work that we must be married to because there are all types of projections changing our perspective.
The projection of you can’t do this. The projection of you’ve never seen it done before.
The projection of this is gonna take you out the projection that you’re gonna be lonely forever.
The projection that you can’t be happy whole and single, the projection that the only way to be fulfilled as a woman is to get married.
The projection that the only way to be fulfilled as a woman is to have babies.
There are projections that have been placed on us that have changed our perspective of ourselves and now we are dealing with fragmented perspectives.
There’s a woman in the Bible, her name is Deborah.
Deborah was the only female judge over the Children of Israel.
And my belief is that God placed her in a position of power because she knew how to see things properly.
As a judge. She had to wait, she had to determine and evaluate what was happening amongst the people and make a decision.
God trusted her with that position because she knew how to see things properly.
And I feel like someone needs to understand that your next promotion is gonna have less to do with your connections.
Your next promotion is gonna have less to do with your education and everything to do with how you see things properly.
If you want power, you gotta start with your perspective because the power is in your perspective, it is not in your position, it is not in your connections, it is not in your family lineage.
It is not in the school that you went to. It is not in your bank account.
And that is good news for somebody who’s watching because you didn’t come from the right family.
You didn’t come from the right connections. You didn’t come from the right bank account.
But I feel this prophetically that God is gonna bless people because of their perspective, not because of their connections.
And if you would lay down your perspective and say, God, show me what to do in this season, God show me what to do in this field of technology.
God show me what to do in business.
God show me what to do with these feelings that keep coming up in my chest.
God, I have a goal, I have a destination but I may not have the right perspective for where you wanna take me.
If you would lay down your perspective, God would give you strategy for the season you’re in, in Deborah New how to lean into God’s perspective.
In judges four and five, we see that she was postured in such a way that she knew what to do with what she saw.
It’s not just that she understood God’s perspective and was able to stay in that position of power because she had a connection to God.
She also knew how to act on what she saw. Oh my God.
That’s good to me already because we are seeing so many different things coming our way.
We’re on social media constantly being visually stimulated. We’re on Tik Tok being visually stimulated.
We’re in our world being visually stimulated. But how often are we asking God?
What do you want me to do with what I saw?
Have you ever been on the road and see maybe someone who is experiencing housing insecurity and when you see them, that something about their face just stands out in your mind.
And you’re like, I don’t know what to do with that.
That is when I begin praying because I believe whole heart heartedly that things don’t just stick out in our mind in a world where we’re constantly taking in people.
We’re constantly taking in interactions when something stands out in our minds.
When you see something, you gotta be able to ask God, what do you want me to do with what I saw when we see Deborah in judges?
My girl is a bad girl. Ok?
She calls on the commander of the army and she says, I saw something. Did God, did God not say?
Did God not say that you were supposed to go into battle?
Did God not say that this is what needed to happen in order for you to go into battle.
And this is how you’re gonna do it.
She knew who to call, she knew what was gonna happen when she called him because she did the hard work of making sure that she also ask God, what do you want me to do with what I saw?
You saw so many things growing up.
You’ve seen so many things in the last two years, marriage is falling apart, friends, losing their peace, losing their joy, business is falling apart.
But when is the last time we ask God, what do you want me to do with what I saw?
Because if we ask God these hard questions, God will give us strategy.
What I love about Deborah is that she doesn’t just stay connected to God for the vision, right?
She doesn’t just say God give me a vision for my life.
And once she became a judge, she stops depending on God.
But judges four and five demonstrates for us that even when she continued to be in relationship with God, that she continued to go back to ask him.
What am I to do with what I saw now?
Even when she saw victory, she wrote a praise song to God.
Even when she was about to prepare for battle, she had a moment of connection with God.
She continues to make sure that I am not just posture to receive vision, but I’m also postured to receive strategy and I’m postured to give reciprocity.
There’s something powerful about us staying in the seating of reciprocity in our relationship with God.
Because reciprocity says that God, I don’t just want the vision. I also wanna thank you.
I also wanna tell you about the outcome. I wanna tell you how the outcome changed.
What I saw about myself. I could do a better job of this myself.
Sometimes I get up here and I’m so nervous to speak and I don’t know what I’m gonna say and God shows up in a mighty way and I kind of like fist bump Jesus when I’m, you don’t even see it.
But I just be like fist bumping Jesus when the thing is over and that fist bump is like God, you showed up.
But there could be a praise, there could be a praise party that happens in my spirit, a praise party that happens in my car where I thank God about how he showed up where I thank God about the comments where I thank God about the people who were connected in that moment.
And that, that is one of the things that we have to do is we have to make sure we stay postured for reciprocity and strategy in our relationship with God because God, I don’t just want your vision for my life.
I don’t, don’t, I don’t want you to just be a genie that I rub and you give me this big goal and this dream that is beyond me.
I wanna be in relationship with you. I wanna understand what is the posture, what is the heart?
What is the spirit that I need to possess for the life that you want me to live out?
And Deborah does that because at the end of the day, she trusts God’s objective.
When you trust God’s objective, when you trust God’s goal, when it’s all said and done, then you stay connected to God even in the moments of war, even in the moments of battle.
Because I trust God’s objective. I trust that God’s goal is good.
I trust that God’s goal is to get me to a, to a place of no harm.
That God’s goal is to get me to a place of completion. That God’s goal is not to break me.
That God’s goal is not to hurt me.
That God’s goal is not to lead me more fragmented than the person who broke me in the first place.
I trust that God’s objective is to put you back together. I don’t know who you are right now.
But I just, I just wanna prophesy because your, your relationship with God has been under attack because you no longer trust God’s objective.
And how could you not be in a position where you feel betrayed after all that you have experienced?
But I wanna prophesy to your spirit, even if your mind is not ready to hear it.
You can trust God’s objective. I wanna prophesy right now that God’s objective for your life is for you to be whole.
That God’s objective for your life is for you to not have to betray yourself in order for you to make yourself feel good.
That God’s objective for your life does not include poison. That God’s objective for your life does not include betrayal.
It doesn’t include all of these different things that we do when we feel powerless.
God’s objective for your life is still intact. Even when man’s prerogative taints God’s objective.
If you could remove a man’s prerogative from your experience, you would see that God’s objective is still good.
But oftentimes God’s objective is hijacked by man’s prerogative.
Now, I can no longer trust God’s objective or at least I tell myself I can no longer trust God’s objective because of what man’s prerogative did.
But when you allow man’s prerogative to hijack your trust in God’s objective, you only hurt yourself because at the end of the day, man is gonna go on and be man.
But God’s objective is the one that is gonna get you to a place of healing is gonna get you to a place of wholeness.
And you’re gonna have to find a way, even if it’s just a little bit to trust God’s objective.
If you can’t trust God’s objective with the big life picture, then I dare you to trust God’s objective with just today.
That’s why Jesus says in the model prayer, give us this day our daily bread, sometimes trusting God’s objective is a daily thing.
God. I trust that you gonna get me through this day, God.
I trust that you gonna get me through this meeting God.
I trust that you’re gonna help me to show up in the way that I need.
Show up and little by little, we’ll see that, that mustard seed of faith becomes so powerful that it can move the mountain of grief that’s been standing in your way, it can move the mountain of depression that’s been standing in your way.
The mountain of insecurity and uncertainty that’s been standing in your way because I trusted God daily.
I trusted God’s objective to get me to a place of good.
When I find Jesus in this text, he’s having to hold on fast to God’s objective.
You’ll remember that when I started this, that this is not Jesus as we know Him.
This is not the all powerful calling all of the multitude to him.
This is not the Jesus that we see performing miracles.
This is a Jesus that from the outside looking in looks powerless.
Can we talk about this for a minute?
Because it’s one thing to have never had power, but Jesus had power.
Jesus had position. Jesus had influence.
Jesus wasn’t worried about where he was gonna lay his head or who would attack him when he laid his head down.
Jesus was moving in protection and peace and power.
He looked so powerful from the outside looking in that not even the sauces or the Pharisees could determine how they were gonna get him.
But Jesus goes from being powerful to in this moment from the outside looking in and maybe from the inside looking out to powerless.
Have you ever been there in a moment where you felt full of power, full of creativity, full of strategy, full of everything that you needed for the moment you were stepping in and then life happened.
You can’t even pinpoint when it happened.
But all of a sudden I went from powerful to powerless to feeling like my destiny is in the hands of someone else to feeling like my outcomes are in the hands of someone else.
I don’t feel like as supported as I once felt, I don’t have the disciples with me.
I don’t have my friends following behind me. I don’t have my mother with me in this dark chamber.
I don’t have anyone else in, in the room with me.
As I take these lashes as I take these whoops, I wanna talk to somebody who’s been taking some whopping that no one can see.
I wanna talk to someone who’s been taking some lashes that no one can see and no one can see what’s happening down on the inside of you.
But if we could see, we could see that you were in one of the most powerless moments that you have ever been in and there was no one else around but you, which would be ok if you spend a lifetime, feeling powerless, it would be just another day.
But for someone like you, this is difficult because I’m used to feeling powerful.
I’m used to feeling like I have it all together.
I’m used to having a dream and the next step and the next plan and you wanna talk about revolutionary power in a time where I feel powerless.
This is where we find Jesus in the text.
He’s at the, he’s at the hands of someone else when we feel powerless.
When we feel like Jesus must have felt in this moment, the only thing we want is to feel powerful again.
Let’s talk about the things we do when we wanna feel powerful again, the things we drink, the people, we lay with, the things we have to smoke or shoot up what we have to eat, what we have to starve what we have to cut just to feel anything besides powerless.
I chose this moment in the text to talk about revolutionary power because we cannot talk about revolutionary power unless we talk about the moments where we feel powerless because in order to become powerful, we must overthrow the government of feeling powerless.
And Jesus is about to overthrow the government of feeling powerless. But first, he must survive feeling powerless first.
And if he’s gonna survive feeling powerless first, he’s gotta stay in this sacred tension that takes you from powerless to powerful.
The tension from powerless to powerful is sacred.
You can’t tell it’s sacred because it’s so dark.
You can’t tell it’s sacred because it’s only you in there.
And if someone else was in that dark room with you, they would tell you this is a sacred moment, but no one else is in there.
But Jesus, but Jesus offers his life as an offering to us so that we can learn that in the sacred tension of powerless to powerful, that you can feel isolated.
But you gotta withstand the tension because God’s plan for your life doesn’t always make you feel powerful.
Sometimes God’s plan for your life makes you feel vulnerable and makes you feel endangered and I mean, endangered what it feels like to be an endangered human where I don’t know what the phone call is gonna say when I pick it up, I don’t know what the email is gonna say when I pick it up.
And yet this is all a part of God’s strategy for jesus’ life.
He says, I, I’m gonna use that which is endangering you.
I’m gonna use that which is coming up against you to ultimately get you to a place of ultimate power.
But you can only get to that ultimate power.
If you withstand the moments where you feel powerless, you cannot do this without Jesus, you cannot do this without someone going ahead of you and making your crooked path straight.
You need to be in relationship with Jesus because Jesus is gonna show you how to revive those powerless moments.
Jesus stays in the tension because Jesus knows that the breaking of his body is producing glory.
He knows that if I stay in this tension when it’s all said and done that God’s gonna get the glory out of this.
That’s some kind of faith. That’s some kind of perspective to have in the middle of persecution to say that when it’s all said and done, I believe God’s gonna get the glory and sometimes you gotta prophesy in the same secret attention from powerless to powerful that God’s gonna get the glory when it’s all said and done.
It may be dark and no one may understand it, but God’s gonna get the glory when it’s all said and done.
It may be trouble right now and I may be wounded, but God’s gonna get the glory when it’s all said and done.
I may have my very friends betraying me.
I may have the very people who are in charge of me coming down on me and making me feel less than.
But at the end of the day, God’s gonna get the glory.
God’s gonna get the glory, not just out of the situation, God’s gonna get the glory out of me and because I trust that God’s gonna get the glory out of me.
I gotta be like Jesus and I gotta hang on in the tension because I’m gonna tell you something.
There is this quote in this saying that we love to say, but it’s not necessarily true.
We tell people all of the time that if it doesn’t kill me, it’ll make me stronger.
But Jesus is a living testimony that it may kill me and make me stronger at the same time that it may break my heart to go through it and make me stronger at the same time that it may kill who I used to be while producing who I’m gonna be at the same time.
Just because it’s killing me. It doesn’t mean that it’s not making me stronger.
It just means that it’s killing a version of me so that the stronger version can come forth but don’t be fooled into believing that if I don’t feel strength and strength is not on the way, sometimes you gotta feel the death before you feel the strength.
Sometimes you gotta feel the washing away before you see the baptism.
You gotta experience the moments in your life where I am both being killed on one side.
My hopes for what I thought would be killed on one side.
My desire for where I thought my life would be is dying, it’s dying and I don’t feel powerful.
This idea of my timeline is dying. I can tell I’m behind.
So don’t tell me that if it doesn’t kill me, it’ll make me stronger because I am witnessing the death of my dreams.
I’m witnessing the death of my stability. I’m witnessing the death of everything I’ve ever known.
But you gotta also know that Jesus came before us so that we could also see that it can kill you and make you stronger at the same time.
That’s somebody’s word and I want you to type it in the comments if that’s you.
I want you to say that’s me, that’s me, that’s me. There’s a memorial service going on.
There’s a funeral going on for how your life used to be for the plans you thought you would have.
But I’m telling you that there’s also a rebirth happening that on one hand, there is a death, but on the other hand, there are labor pains that on one hand, it feels like persecution.
But on the other hand, there is promotion and when you stay in the tension from powerless to powerful, you get the rebirthing that emerges.
The brand new version of you and this version of you is powerful and this version of you doesn’t question God’s objective.
And this version of you maintains your faith.
But right now in this moment, powerless, powerless is what it feels like.
Jesus found a way to protect the power of his spirit.
When he looked the most powerless from the outside looking in, I got protect my spirit.
This is not just a weapon against my bank account, this is not just a weapon against my family.
This is not just a weapon against my purpose or a weapon against my city.
This is a weapon against my spirit.
Because if I lose my spirit in this moment, if I lose my trust in God’s plan in this moment, then I’m gonna lose it all.
But you gotta learn how to lose without losing it all.
And the only way that we lose without losing it all is saying, but at the end of the day, you can’t have my spirit.
I’m reminded of job in scripture. Yes, I had to bury some people.
I never wanted to say goodbye to, but I still wanna try and protect my spirit in the middle of it.
How do I protect my spirit? I acknowledge what has polluted my spirit.
I acknowledge that right now, there is an enemy in my gate. There is an enemy in my camp.
And every day I wake up trying to chase that enemy out of my spirit.
I’m chasing that enemy out with prayer. I’m chasing that enemy out with therapy.
I’m chasing that enemy out with every book that I can read with every message that I can lay a hold of because there is an enemy in my camp and I am not gonna die with that enemy in my spirit.
I’m not gonna keep showing up in this marriage with this enemy in my spirit.
I’m not gonna keep pouring into others while there’s an enemy in my own spirit. Spirit of the living God.
I’m praying right now for whoever is under the sound of my voice that wherever there has been a preach, wherever there has been a betrayal that the spirit of God would dispatch angels in the name of Jesus, that you would dispatch angels to their spirit, God, that you would dispatch warring angels and that they would push back darkness and they would push back despair and they would push back suicidal thoughts and they would push back depression.
Because at the end of the day, God, you put a spirit of life down on the inside of them, you put a spirit of peace down on the inside of them.
And God, we invite your spirit to take up space where there is an enemy in our gates.
We serve an eviction notice on anything that is in our life.
Anything that is in our spirit that is trying to make us believe that this revolution cannot happen, trying to overthrow the place that we have declared as sovereign.
The Kingdom of Heaven is here in my heart, the kingdom of Heaven is here in my home.
The kingdom of Heaven is here in my mind and wherever there is an enemy trying to overthrow that government, God, we give you full authority, God, we give you full power, God we give you full rein to overthrow whatever that government is, the government of insecurity, the government of second guessing we give you full power, revolutionary power to take over that area of their lives, to take over that area of my life where an enemy has invaded.
What I love about Jesus in this text. First of all, he’s so smooth with it.
Pilot is trying to charge him up trying to get him to be subject to him.
And Jesus says, I know exactly who is in control and who is not in control.
I know the role you play.
I know the role they played and I know that God has got a plan in the midst of it.
All, I wanna break that down for a moment before we close because I want you to be able to understand like Jesus does in this moment how you withstand the tension of powerless to powerful Jesus understands that the predicament is the middle man right here in the verse 11 of this text where Jesus says to Pilate, he says to him, you could have no power at all against me unless it had been given to you from above.
Therefore, the one who delivered me to you has the greater sin. Jesus recognizes that this moment.
He, he foreshadows it before he’s even in the custody of Pilate.
He understands that this is the uh this is a means to an end.
This is a tunnel this is a tunnel that I’ve gotta go through. Somebody’s going through a tunnel right now.
And I want you to know that it is a tunnel and not a cave.
There is an exit at the same time that there is an entrance. This is not a cave.
And I want you to understand this because when you’re in the tunnel, there’s gonna be some moments where there are no lights.
When you’re in the tunnel, there’s gonna be some moments where you feel like I don’t know where the end is, but I want you to know that God does not lead us into caves.
God only leads us into tunnels and let jesus’ life serve as an example that even tunnels have an end date.
And Jesus recognizes when he enters the tunnel that I’m gonna come out on the other side.
He sees the predicament as the middle man. I don’t know what your situation is.
I don’t know what darkness you were facing, but I want you to have the perspective that this is just the middle man that’s good to me.
And I don’t know who else that’s good to.
But I just want you to understand that I’m learning that this war, this uncertainty, this stress, this overwhelmed is a tunnel.
It is a tunnel that is meant to produce a version of me that allows me to stand up to the moment that I am that I’m in this moment is a transaction.
I’m gonna read it like I wrote it in my note.
The moment is a transaction meant to yield a more intentional focused healed version of me.
Vulnerability won’t kill me. Because this moment in my life, this predicament where it feels like all hell is breaking out this moment where it feels like people are against me.
This moment where it feels like life is against me is just a middle man.
That’s why you gotta wake up every day and maybe the situation hasn’t changed.
But you recognize that this situation is on assignment. This situation is a servant. This situation is a middle man.
You’re just doing what God needs you to do in order to produce the version of me that I am becoming.
So I’m not going to allow this situation to take center stage in my life.
I’m gonna allow this situation to produce in me, the glory, the suffering of this present time is not worthy to be compared to the glory that is being produced.
And that means that if I would stay in the tension of the suffering, that suffering is just the middle man.
That grief is a middle man. That divorce is a middle man.
That pain is a middle man. That shame is a middle man.
That shame is trying to make an exchange with you.
It’s trying to make a transaction with you so that you can be a different version of you.
And this version of you is more alive than you’ve ever been.
And this version of you doesn’t take moments for granted. And this version of you is not afraid of vulnerability.
And this version of you dreams out loud, out loud.
And this version of you says, if I can survive that, then it doesn’t matter what comes my way.
This version of you is strengthened by the middle man that is presently producing suffering.
He sees the circumstance, the predicament as the middle man. Jesus also sees his audience.
I was torn about this because when I first started studying, I thought to myself that he saw his enemies as his audience back in verse 11, right?
He says that I know exactly who delivered me to you and they have more sin on their hands than you do, right?
That was my bionics version of the Bible because I didn’t wanna go back to reading, get read the whole Bible.
You’ll find it like P T says, but he understands that Pilate is not his enemy, but he also recognizes that his enemies are his audience.
How many of us are guilty of making our, our enemies, the main focus, not just our enemies.
I’m gonna say the audience in general because he also had supporters out there.
And sometimes when you have enemies and supporters in the audience, it’s difficult to not begin playing to the audience.
Imagine yourself going to a play, you paid money to go to the play. You didn’t go back to Broadway.
Broadway is open in New York. You didn’t pay your money. You didn’t came out there to see Hamilton. Ok?
You got to be in the room where it happens, right?
You sitting on the stage, you watching Hamilton, they come out there and they looking at you and you’re like, wait a minute, I’m just the audience.
You’re supposed to be performing for me.
When you see your enemies and your supporters as just the audience, you will no longer play to them, you’ll come out and you’ll do exactly what you have been designed to do exactly what God has intended you to do because you recognize that my only responsibility is not to play to the audience.
My responsibility is to make sure I’m saying the right lines.
My responsibility is to make sure I got the right blocking my responsibility is to make sure that I’m moving when I’m supposed to be moving.
I don’t have time to play to the audience. I got a real purpose.
I don’t have time to play to the audience. I got real glory.
I’m trying to lay hold of, I don’t have time to play to the audience.
I got a real generational curse. I’m trying to break. I don’t have time to play to the audience.
I got a real heartbreak. I’m trying to heal from.
If you would stop playing and performing for the audience, then you would see that at the end of the day, your greatest creativity, your greatest use of energy is connected to showing up as who God has called you to be God.
If you give me the words, I’ll speak it. God. If you give me the steps, I’ll take them God.
If you give me the strategy, I’ll move in it because I am not waiting for the audience to tell me what to do next.
I’m waiting on you to give me the word.
I don’t want the applause more than I want to be in alignment.
I don’t want the I told you so more than I wanna be assured that you told me and I performed, I wanna be obedient and that pursuit of obedience helps you to categorize your audience properly.
The last thing that Jesus saw that was so revolutionary that helps me to understand who we have to be in the moment.
If Jesus was just surrendered, surrendered to God’s objective, he protected his spirit.
He recognized that the predicament was there to produce the glorious, the most glorious version of him.
He didn’t allow himself to be distracted by the audience and he didn’t let praise distract him from his mission.
We experience a revolutionary power when we dare to show up in life, the way that Jesus did, which means that we have to be willing to pray a bold prayer.
I prayed this prayer in the car this morning when I was driving in, I said, Jesus teach me, teach me Rabbo nine.
They call him. That means teacher.
I know you as my Lord and I know you as my savior.
I know you as big brother Jesus, the one who went ahead of us.
But right now I’m in a moment in my life where I need you to teach me, teach me to withstand feeling powerless.
Teach me how to walk in power in the middle of feeling powerless, teach me how to withstand the killing and the strength producing.
That’s my prayer for you.
So we talk about revolutionary power in women’s history Month.
Think it’s fair to say that not every woman who made history had a relationship with Jesus, but if you are drawn to this ministry and you were drawn to this message and you were drawn to my voice.
For some reason, I want you to understand that if you’re gonna make history, it’s because the Jesus in me and that Jesus in you, it’s gonna allow the powerless version of ourselves to become students.
And Jesus is gonna teach us what it means to make history in our own world.
God, I wanna be the first person in my family who does this. God.
I wanna be the first person in my family who finds a way to wholeness.
I wanna be the first person in my family who has this nonprofit that helps the community.
I wanna be the first person in my family who establishes the kingdom in this realm.
I wanna make history for my daughters. I wanna make history for my sons.
I wanna make history for my community and I cannot do it unless you teach me and I cannot do this without your power, combining with my weakness and producing great glory.
I wanna pray with you. I want to pray for someone who’s been feeling powerless.
Specifically, you’ve been feeling like powerless is the end.
You’ve been thinking to yourself, maybe I should pack up my toys and go home, maybe being powerful.
Maybe it’s overrated man.
There’s something about seeing Jesus in this moment once full of power and now still powerful but not as powerful as we’re used to seeing him because the power is being produced in him.
I believe that that same thing is happening with you.
And I just wanna ask that you would allow me to pray over those moments in your heart, those invaders in your spirit that they would have an encounter with Jesus in the darkness, an encounter with Jesus in the dungeon, an encounter with Jesus in the middle of the pain.
And I know that most of the time when we pray, we pray that God would rescue us, right?
God, rescue me from these feelings, rescue me from this pain, rescue me from this disappointment.
I’m sorry, but that’s not gonna be one of these prayers.
This is a prayer that would allow you to withstand the tension.
I don’t see it, the tension of feeling powerless so that you can experience what’s on the other side.
I don’t know who you are, but I just want you to know that suicide is not the answer.
I want you to know that ending it now is not the answer.
If you end it now, you’re gonna be cutting the story short before God can get you to the other side before you can see the power connected to the next moment.
And I know you’re in pain and I know you’re hurting and I know you’ve been cutting and I know you’ve been drinking and I know you’ve been doing all of the things because you feel so powerless.
But I want you to know, first of all, you can get help.
I want you to know that you don’t have to bear this on your own.
A stranger may be easier to talk to than the people within your own circle.
But I want you to know that you are worth having expression. You are worth speaking up. Your life matters.
It matters to me, it matters to God. That’s why you’re here.
But I know feeling powerless is hard and I know being a victim of your circumstance is hard and I know being a villain in your circumstance is just as hard to.
But I want you to know that you have not ruined your life that if you are still here it’s because God says I can still get the glory out of their life and this will not be your end.
I thank God for this message that is coming to you right on time because God is letting you know that I hear you.
I see you. I’ve been listening to those prayers. This is not the end for you.
I wanna pray over you and for all of us who may feel powerless, maybe we’re not in that space where we feel like I want to end it all.
But we wish that it would all end.
We wish that this pain would be over this stage of our life would just come to an end.
God. I thank you God. I thank you that your intentions are good God.
I thank you that I have seen in my own life and in my own history that when I take my hands off of it, when I stop trying to usurp my objective over your objective, and I just let things play out and I only focus on my spirit that things have a way of just working out, that you go ahead of me, God.
And I’m thanking you that I’m in a moment right now where I need to be reminded again, that your objective is more powerful than my objective, that your plan is more powerful than my plan.
And my friends who are watching God, I feel like they’re in that moment too.
And So God, we offer our lives, our spirit, our heart, we lay it at your altar, at the altar of our home, our car, our office, wherever we are, we call it holy because this is the place where we’re making a sacrifice.
God, here we are discouraged.
God, here they are powerless, abused, terrified and tormented.
But God, you sent a word tonight, you sent a word meant to meet them right in that moment.
And God, we just pray that you would allow the Holy Spirit to comfort them, that they would cry out in a way that they haven’t cried out in a long time.
But this time when they cry out God, that they would experience your comfort, that they would feel your love, God, that they would feel the knowing that I am not by myself and that there are other people who have been here before and God, you were no respecter of person.
If you saw them through, you will see them through to God.
We vow to you in this moment to do a better job at protecting our spirit, God.
And we vow to do the work necessary to make sure that we can get our spirit back to a place of purity and wholeness.
God, if it’s forgiveness, give us power to do it.
God, if it’s releasing the pain of the past, God, give us power to do it, God, because right now we feel powerless and we feel isolated God.
But we know that through it all you are producing great glory, God.
I thank you that you’ve been waiting for this moment where we were to run to you and allow you to be our defender, allow you to be our protector.
We receive your love, we receive your objective, your plan, we receive the anchoring peace of your spirit and God, we thank you for those who are watching and maybe they don’t know who Jesus is.
Maybe they have many teachers but none as powerful as Jesus God.
I just believe that they’re gonna accept Jesus as their only teacher.
And as they accept Jesus as their only teacher, God, I thank you that the floodgates are gonna be open to them, that they’re gonna experience life in a way that they’ve never experienced it before because they finally got the teacher who can teach them in the way that they need to hear it.
And God, I thank you.
There is nothing that we have experienced that you have not allowed Jesus to experience.
And because Jesus experienced it and also got to a place of glory.
He can teach us how to experience and get to a place of glory as well.
Thank you God for this time together, for this fellowship and for this sisterhood.
Thank you that I don’t have to do life on my own.
I love these women and I love you in Jesus name. I pray amen.
You got to.