We all have things that we’re good at and things that we’re not good at. We all have strengths.
We all have weaknesses. And let me tell you something.
It’s good to know what you can do, but it’s even better to know what you cannot do.
And don’t make a fool out of yourself.
Spending your life trying to be something you’re not to prove something you don’t even have to prove.
How many of you have one of these tonight?
Take your Bible and hold it up. Okay? Or your phone or whatever it is you’re
using. I’m still trying
to get used to the everybody looking at their phone for a Bible. You know what?
I I’m a word person. The words in here have changed my life.
They’ve changed me. Yeah. And they’ll change you.
The word is the absolute truth of god.
John Eight says if you continue in my word, you will You will know the truth and the truth will make you free.
Amen? How many of you love the word?
How many have made your mind up?
You’re gonna stick with the word no matter what. Amen. Why don’t you be seated?
We’re gonna have some word tonight.
I think you’ve already had a bunch of word, but we’re about to have a little bit more.
Hey, ladies. Did you know that they have opened up a new store in New York City.
Anybody heard about the new store in New York City? It’s called the husband’s store.
And you can go there and shop for a husband.
There are six floors in this store.
You can only visit each four one time, though.
And each floor you go up, the value increases.
You may choose any item from any particular floor, but you cannot you can go up a floor, but you cannot go back down.
There was a woman who went to the husband’s store to find herself a husband.
On the first floor, the sign on the door read, these men have jobs.
That sounded good. These men have jobs.
Four too says these men have jobs and love kids.
Floor number three said, these men have jobs, love kids, and are extremely good looking.
Wow.
She thought this is sounding pretty good, but I’m compelled to go on to the next floor.
Well, she does go to the fourth floor and the sign reads, these men have jobs, love kids, are drop dead, good looking, and they help with the housework.
Uh, mercy me. She said, I can hardly stand it.
Still, she said I’ve gotta go on. She went to the fifth floor.
These men have jobs, love, kids, or drop dead, gorgeous help with the housework, and have a very strong romantic streak.
But she couldn’t stand it.
She decided she had to just find out what was on floor number six.
Floor number six said you are visitor thirty one million four hundred and fifty six.
To this floor, there are no men on this floor.
This four exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please.
A men, amen, amen, amen, amen, amen.
Alright. You wanna do one more? You want one more little funny before I start.
Maybe being not so funny. We’ll see. Nine words that women use.
And men need to really understand these words.
The first one is fine.
How many of you ladies can do it? Fine. Okay.
This is the word that women use to end an argument when they’re right and you need to shut up.
Fine. Five minutes.
Now if she’s getting dressed, that means a half an hour.
Five minutes is only really five minutes.
If you’ve just been given five more minutes to finish watching the game before you’re supposed to help with housework.
The next word, a very important word, nothing.
What’s wrong, honey? Nothing.
This is the calm before the storm.
This word, nothing means something And you should be on your toes.
Arguments that begin with nothing almost always end with fine. Go ahead.
This is a dare not permission. Do not do it.
A loud sigh.
This is actually a word, but it is a nonverbal statement that is very often misunderstood by men.
A loud sign means that she thinks you’re an idiot.
And wonders why she’s wasting her time standing here arguing with you about nothing.
For the meaning of nothing, refer back to number three. Number six.
That’s okay.
That’s okay. This is one
of the most dangerous statements that a woman can make to a man.
That okay means that she wants to think long and hard before deciding how you’re gonna pay for your mistakes.
Amen? Thanks. A woman is thanking you.
Don’t question it. Don’t faint. Just say you’re welcome. I do wanna add in here a clause, though.
This is true. Unless she says, thanks a lot.
That is pure sarcasm, and she is not thanking you at all.
Do not say. You’re welcome. Because if you do, that will bring on, uh, whatever.
And whatever is a woman’s way of saying, whatever happens, I am not going to be happy.
And number nine. Don’t worry about it. I got it.
Just just don’t worry about this. I got it.
That’s another very dangerous statement, meaning that there is something that a woman has told a man to do now several times.
But is now doing it herself because he never did it.
This will later result in a man asking Honey? What’s wrong?
For the woman’s response referred to number three, which is Nothing.
Amen.
It’s good to laugh in the house of god. Amen.
Well, I want to thank everybody for having me.
I was here two, three, I don’t know, some years ago, but
The bishop is persistent.
He keeps at what he wants until he gets it. Amen?
I wanna talk to you tonight about what to do when god does not pick you.
Wow.
What to do when god does not pick you?
Well,
in Psalm thirty seven verses one through three, which I’ve been preaching on a lot lately.
The Bible says do not fret yourself over evildoers for they shall soon be cut down like the grass.
Now that doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to be happy about them being cut down.
It’s just thought I’d throw that out there.
But it’s just prophesying what will happen to evildoers if they don’t turn around.
So bottom line is is if you love god and you’re called according to his purpose, People really cannot.
They might temporarily take advantage of you or they might temporarily mistreat you But sooner or later, god’ll get it away
from them. And if he has to bring it through
a thousand people, he’ll bring it back to you, multiply it many times over. Amen?
Psalm thirty seven verse three says trust in the lord and do good.
It does not just say trust in the lord.
It says trust in the lord and do good two distinctly different things.
And I love that verse because I think that many times people forget the second part.
Well, I’m trusting god. Well, what are you doing?
We need to trust god and do good.
And I think do good has two different parts to it.
I think doing good is being obedient to god, doing what you believe that he tells you to do, And I also think that doing good means just being good to people.
You know, that Christians are supposed to be good to other people.
We’re supposed to encourage and edify and lift up and smile at people and make people happy and help people and give people some of our money if they need some of our money.
Come on now.
And I still think that
we have a long way to go in learning what I believe is one of the biggest spiritual secrets in the Bible, and that is that you overcome evil with good.
I said you overcome evil with good.
Whoever it is you’re mad at for whatever they did to you, you’re not hurting them at all.
You’re only hurting yourself. I said, you are not hurting them at all. You’re only hurting yourself.
Why do you wanna spend your life mad at somebody that’s out having a
good time and don’t even care that you’re upset?
But if you trust god and do good, The best thing you can do when you’re hurting is gonna be a blessing to somebody else.
Come on.
I said the best thing
you can do when you’re hurting. Is gonna be a blessing to somebody else.
Fret not yourself over evil doers.
For in the end, they shall or soon, they shall be cut down like the grass.
Trust in the lord and do good.
You know, god
does not have the same plan for everybody. He’s got a good plan for everybody.
But god does not have the same plan for everybody.
And it seems like that two people can do the exact same thing right.
This person’s obeying god. This person’s obeying god.
And this person seems to get one type of reward or response from god.
And this other person seems to get like a totally other response from god.
Let’s think about Noah for a minute.
In Genesis chapter, nine versus twelve and thirteen, we see that after Noah obeyed god and he built the ark, and he went into the ark, and get everything that god asked him to do.
And when he came out, god gave him a sign to seal a new covenant with him, that he would never again destroy the earth with water and that sign that he gave him was a rainbow.
I’m sure that after being in that arc for that long, with all those I can’t even imagine what that smelled like.
Just imagine. I’m sure that he needed a rainbow.
And some of you could use a
rainbow day right now too. You know, I’ve never heard anybody say, oh, look at that stupid rainbow.
I mean, everybody likes a rainbow. And, boy, if we get a double rainbow look
at the double rainbow, and some of you are like, Yeah. I’m due for a double rainbow.
Well, what if god doesn’t give you a rainbow?
What if he gives you what he gave Abraham?
Abraham also was a man who obeyed god. Made a lot of sacrifices.
Genesis twelve says that god called him to leave his home and his family and everything that he was familiar with, and go to a place that I will show you.
God didn’t even tell him where to go.
I mean, really god?
You want me to walk away from everything, and I don’t even have one little smidge of a bit of evidence of what’s gonna happen next.
How many of you hate
it when god’s telling you to let go of this? But he won’t
Anybody ever make that statement? I just feel like I’m being pulled apart.
Well, here’s the thing when you try to hold on to this while you’re trying to.
Take hold of that. So you gotta, whoop. Let go.
And trust yourself completely to god. That’s scary.
But people who are willing to do that are the ones really who become the world changers.
And so after Abraham had done what god told him to do, and, actually, I want us to to read Genesis twelve, the first three verses, because it it’s actually really very exciting what god said to him.
Now in Iran, the Lord said to Abraham, go for yourself for your own advantage, away from your country, from your relatives and your father’s house to the land that I will
show you. So he’s asking him to do a very hard thing, but
he said, this is for your good.
Do you know when god asks us to do hard things, it’s not because he wants to just sit back and watch us suffer.
It’s always for our good. I said it’s always always. Always.
Always
for our good. And
I will make of you
a great nation. And I will bless you with an abundant increase of favors, and I will make your name famous and distinguish And you will be a blessing dispensing good to others.
This is isn’t this sounding good?
I mean, I think
this is sounding pretty good. Abraham’s kinda like, uh, this this might work out really good.
And I will bless those who bless you, who confer prosperity or happiness upon you, and I will curse him, who curses or uses insulent language toward you And in you, will all the families of the earth be blessed.
Alright. So now god is ready to seal his covenant his agreement with Abraham.
And if we look at Genesis seventeen just a few pages over, versus nine, beginning in verse nine.
And god said to Abraham as for you, you shall therefore keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you, throughout their generations.
And this is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your posterity after you, every male among you shall be circumcised.
And you shall circumcise the flesh of your fore skin, and it shall be a token or a sign of the covenant, the promise of the pledge between me and you.
And he who is eight days old, among you shall be circumcised.
Every male throughout your generation, whether born in your house or bought with your own money,
From any foreigner, not of your offspring.
And he goes on and on and on, everybody had to be circumcised.
Circumcised means a cutting away of the flesh. Now here’s what I wanna know.
Why did Noah get a rainbow?
And Abraham got a circumcision.
I am not liking this. God, that is just not fair.
Hello, ladies. That is just not fair.
I’ve been believing you god for so long to get married,
and she’s already been married three times.
And and you might not say it out loud, but you’re thinking, and she’s not nearly as godly as I am.
We just don’t do good with the fair thing.
But I can tell you that the greater God is going to use you
Now, don’t don’t get me wrong. God used Noah.
He was an awesome man of god, and god really used him.
But Abraham was used in a much greater way.
So Noah got the rainbow. He did
his job here. Have a present. But Abraham had some stuff
He had some stuff. Anybody got any stuff?
He had some stuff that needed to be cut off.
Come on.
Because god had a greater plan for him.
You know, I was grumbling to the lord one time about how it just seemed to me that he just wouldn’t let me do hardly anything.
And you’re always you can do this. You can do that. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.
And I saw other people, people in ministry doing those things, people serving god doing those things, but And so
I’m like, I don’t understand Don.
And this is what the Lord said to me, and maybe somebody here tonight needs to hear this.
Look Joyce. You’ve asked me for a lot. Do you want it or not?
Have you asked god for a lot?
I wonder who’s in here that said, god use me to change the world.
Oh, honey. Honey, honey. Honey. Let mama counsel you.
Use me to change lives.
Or how about this one?
Jesus, I wanna be just like you. Oh, My goodness.
I surrender home.
Oh, we love to just get the goosebumps in church.
Lord, have mercy.
You gotta get something in here tonight that
you can take home with you because the
truth is you gotta go home.
And I can’t promise you that any of the ugliness at home is gonna look any better when you go back than it did when you left it.
But I can promise you that you can be different.
You can be different.
Thank you You know, in Genesis twelve,
when god was reading all that great stuff to Abraham. Well, I’m gonna
make, I’m gonna make your name famous, and you’re gonna be rich, and you’re gonna have this, and do that, and you’re gonna have favor, and you’re gonna end up being a blessing to everybody.
To me, it was kinda like, if you go
out and you buy a puzzle.
We always buy it based on the picture on the box.
Come on.
Six thousand piece puzzle. See, you’re smart.
You know where I’m going. And that boy, that’s really pretty. Awesome.
So you take that dude home and you get your puzzle table out.
Man. Okay. What have I done?
So we start with the easy stuff. We get all the straight edge pieces.
Come on. Let’s start with easy stuff.
Let’s do the easy stuff.
So you get all the straight edge pieces, and so now you have this outline.
You still really don’t have anything, but
And then it’s like there’s like,
I don’t know, a thousand blue pieces.
A thousand pieces of blue sky.
And after about three weeks, you are so fed up.
With putting together blue sky. Come on. And we got some people here tonight.
You are like, fed up with blue sky, and you’re like, you’ve had blue sky till you just like I cannot do the same thing anymore.
God over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
So then maybe you go to green grass.
And there’s two thousand pieces of that.
A dream comes to pass with much business and painful effort.
That’s ecclesiastes.
I’m not making it up. And painful effort.
None of us have the time for me to stand here and tell you what it’s taken to
get from where I started. To where I am.
We don’t have I don’t have that much time left to live. To tell you that.
And nobody really knows, but you and god.
What it costs you, if you’re gonna fully and completely, do the will of god because you’ll be judged and criticized, and people will not understand you, and people are gonna be jealous of you,
and they’re gonna be critical with you, and you’re gonna be disappointed.
And sometimes you’re gonna be disappointed with god, and there’s gonna be all kinds of things that are not going to be fair as far as looking at them in the natural, and you just want a rainbow.
But you keep getting a circumcision.
And then, you know, it wasn’t just Abraham that got circumcised.
Everybody had all the men had
to get circumcised. I don’t think
he was probably a very popular guy.
And sometimes even the people that are gonna work with you and be around you and help you and whatever god’s called you to do.
Then they’ve gotta all get circumcised.
You know, sometimes you’re just like you’re waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.
You’re just like, God, I know I’m ready. I know I’m ready. I know I’m ready.
And one time the Lord told me,
he said, yeah, you are ready, but he said, all
the people that you need to aren’t, so you’re gonna have to be still and wait on them.
You can’t do it by yourself.
And then, you know, there’s those pieces that You just fed up with this thing.
And so you’re just like That’s going in there.
I don’t care if this fits or not.
You know what I’m talking about. Amen?
But let me tell you
something Sometimes there’s those pieces in your life that just don’t make any sense.
And you can’t find any place to put it.
You can’t find any place in the picture that you feel like god showed you, the picture on the box, You can’t find anywhere to put that piece.
It doesn’t make sense. Why god? Why? So you have to just set that piece aside
and just pry over that piece.
Ladies, we live life forward, but we understand it backward.
We don’t understand everything that happens to us. Do we?
But it will fit. Romans eight twenty eight But now here listen.
All things work together.
Each thing may not be good, but when you get them all together.
And see, we’re we’re still waiting some of us for some of the things to come together.
Amen?
But I just wanna tell you from experience and what I know from the word of god, and I know that people try to cheer you up with this stuff all the time, but I mean it with all sincerity.
God is faithful. And what you don’t understand now, you may understand later.
You may never understand it. But just because something hurts, that doesn’t mean that it’s bad.
And just because something hurts, that doesn’t mean that it’s not god.
The amplified Bible in Proverbs talks about sanctified experiences.
That we have with god.
There are things that we go through that may look like they’re bad, but they’ve been sanctified by god for our spiritual growth and our character building and testing
the testing of our faith. Let me tell you something.
We can shout and holler in church all we want to, but we don’t know what we believe until it’s tested.
You don’t know what you believe until it’s tested.
And those tests are important because they put
the devil in his place, and they give us confidence.
And they make us strong. They make us strong.
You know, when we don’t get what we want and somebody else gets what we want.
Oh, honey. It is hard.
One of the ways that god deals with us, believe it or not, is he will let somebody else get what we want and make us watch.
And then tell us that we have to be happy for them.
Now that’s the killer right there.
So I’ll tell you
a couple stories to kinda get it into practicality for all of us.
And this is so funny now when I think about it.
Back in the seventies and eighties, boy having a fur coat was like a big status symbol.
And if you could march into the church with your fur coat and sit on the fur coat row,
Am I right?
If you can come in and sit on the fur coat roll with all the other fur coat that prove that
you know how to believe god for stuff.
My faith is working. You see this fur coat. God, lord help us.
And, uh, Tommy, I believe in god for a fur coat.
I mean, I I did the whole fourth dimension thing. I saw it in my eyes.
I knew the color. I mean, I, you know, The four laws of faith, I had it.
I claimed it. I named it. I saw it. I believed over.
One day, my doorbell rang, and it was a girl that
that I loved with the love of the lord, But I don’t like her.
Fair of fact, she annoyed the living daylights out of me.
I love you with the love of the lord. Whatever that is.
I’m still trying to figure out what that is. And she had this huge box.
She was so excited. She said, you are not going to believe.
What somebody gave me?
In my house, she brought it to my house.
My fur coat.
Somebody gave her a fur coat, and she was not nearly as spiritual as me.
I even tithed on my birth day money.
I was so spiritual.
I fasted till I almost died.
I mean, you understand I was misministry, spiritual.
Now I honestly thought they had to deliver it to the wrong house.
Because she lived next door to me.
Well, I tell you what, when I saw that box, When I saw that coat, everything
I mean, I was mad at her. I was mad
at god. I was I was
I was just like jealousy and rage and resentment.
Come on.
Uh, praise the lord. Oh, yeah.
That oh, that’s really pretty. Oh, yeah.
I’m thinking, god, if you don’t get her out of here, I am gonna kill her.
You have got to make her leave.
Well, see, here’s the thing. I’m like, oh god.
I wanna go all over the world.
Preach the gospel to every creature, and I just I wanna be like you, Jesus.
And so the last thing I needed was
a fur coat.
That was the last thing on the earth, on the planet that I needed.
What I needed was circumcision, and pruning. And I needed god to deal with me.
And I needed to get rid of the jealousy. And I needed to get rid of the resentment.
And I needed to have right motives.
We want god to work on the outside and he wants to work on the inside.
And when the inside gets right, it’ll make its way to the outside, and all of these things will be added under you.
Well, I had kind of
a little epiphany the other day. Because I finally got a fur coat.
Actually, more than one. I had people were giving me fur coats.
I had,
you know, so I had fur coats.
But I had the The the only one that I kept is in the
basement hanging in a closet.
And, you know, people don’t even wear them anymore.
And She and and it was hanging kinda lopsided on the hanger, which made it look really pitiful.
So I the closet door in the basement was open where we keep some extra stuff.
And I happened to see this fur coat hanging over in
the corner, kind of sort of
in the dark kind of crooked on the hanger, and I thought
It just like it brought back all the stupidity.
And, uh, the childishness of what I thought was important at that time.
That was not important at all. But I had to live life.
To then look back and see how utterly ridiculous it was.
Come on.
Give God a big praise. Well, see, The fur coat piece of the puzzle when my friend got my fur coat,
and she’s not nearly as spiritual as me. I did not understand that.
So I had to set it aside over there somewhere.
And actually, I mean, I got it before, but if nothing else, last week, when I looked in the closet, man,
that piece went right into place.
It was like, oh, yeah. God. You gave it to her. Purposely,
And you made me watch because you were after something in me.
That had to come out in order for me to be here where I’m at today, Come on now.
You’ve asked god for a lot. Do you want it or not?
I said you’ve asked god for a lot. Do you want it or not?
Then it’s not gonna be all rainbow days for you.
The apostle John had a little nicer word for it.
He called it pruning. In John fifteen.
If you don’t bear fruit, you’ll be pruned away, cut off, trimmed off.
And if you bear fruit, you will be pruned so you bear richer and more excellent fruit.
So I got the revelation early in my walk with god.
You’re pruned if you knew and pruned if you don’t.
So we might as well just ask for the version that’s gonna do us some ultimate good somewhere down the line.
Amen?
Trust god and do good.
Your
church has two hundred people for the last ten years, and
a new guy comes to town and has a thousand people in four months.
And you get stuck sitting next to him at the leaders luncheon.
Where he spends the whole time telling you all about his church.
And then when you leave, god tells you to send him a generous offering.
To help pay for the overflow room he now has to build because his church is growing so rapidly.
And everything in you is going, oh, what?
Do you hate me? But when you obey god, When it hurts so bad, you feel like you just cannot stand it.
I said, when you obey god, when it hurts so bad that you feel like you just cannot stand it.
That’s when you become dangerous to the devil.
Amen?
And the pain doesn’t last forever.
I tell you when I look back at what I went through. Oh my god.
I mean, I was abused by my dad and so I had, oh, I mean, you talk about dysfunction.
I mean, I was the queen of dysfunction.
And I mean, even well, it’s too long of a story to try to get into, but
when I look back at everything that I
went through. And I am so happy now
I am so peaceful.
I am so blessed My kids are saved.
I’m my husband and I Dave’s over here. Stand up Dave. Dave and I’ve been married almost fifty years.
Yeah. Dave’s been a gazillion women’s meetings.
We’ve been married forty eight and a half years.
Man, I tell you when him and I first got married, I mean, if you even tried to tell me anything fire shot out of my eyes.
And not would it would it be?
I wouldn’t be stretching it to say that I’m a submissive wife. Would I? See?
I am.
Dave knows what I’m called to do, and he blesses me in doing it.
And it’s obvious that, you know, I’m woman, but
I’m not his teacher. I’m his wife.
Hey, man.
And that’s where women get mixed up when they wanna be used by god.
They start thinking now that everybody’s teacher And everybody’s boss, because they’re anointed now.
Amen.
One of the main reasons why our ministry has had such longevity and why we’re being able to help so many people is because things are right behind the scenes at home behind closed doors.
What happens if you write your book and it sells twenty five thousand and a friend of
yours writes one that you don’t even like, and it sells
a million
copies. Your friend gets the promotion at work that you wanted and believe you deserve.
Your friend loses thirty pounds walking and drinking lots of water.
I remember a girl telling me that one time.
She lost a little weight. And I said, oh, how’d you lose weight?
She said, I just started walking and drinking a lot of water.
And I could starve for four months
and lose two pounds.
Well, she must just have a fast metabolism and you feel like yours is in a coma.
Can we, once and for all, start working toward being completely free from competing with one another and comparing ourselves with each other.
We do it in the church over spiritual gifts and everything else imaginable.
Well, I should be singing in the choir. My voice is a lot better than yours.
And, oh, no, no, no,
no, it comes. And you know what?
Really, when you get right down to it, What difference does it really make?
What we’re doing as long as we’re serving god? And living for him.
Now I’ll admit, you know, I got
a few years on me now, and the longer you live, the more you realize how stupid some stuff is.
So that that is a great benefit.
Of living a while and getting a little bit older. Because then you can look back.
And
by then, most of your puzzles put together, there might be a few pieces missing, but you you got most of it.
You’re understanding most of it, you know, it’s coming together.
But boy, am I a lot smarter than I was when
I was forty two and fifty and So many things that were so important to me then.
Just don’t mean anything to me now. Amen?
Were you gonna get down to god’s business or What’s the point?
And and we’re gonna we’re gonna have a
turnaround And instead of telling god what he’s gotta give us every day
to keep us happy and saved.
Well, god.
If I don’t get a breakthrough, I just don’t think I can hold on.
What we’re gonna do is
we’re gonna turn around, and we’re gonna say, God, from now on, I wanna know what you want.
I just wanna know what you want.
And no matter what it costs, I want you to give me the grace, to be obedient to you because I love you.
There’s nobody like you, and I can do without a whole lot of other things.
I can do without a man. I can do without a fur coat I can do without a promotion.
I don’t have to sing in the choir, but I cannot do without you.
I’ve got to have you.
And not a little bit of you, all of you. Amen?
God, you do what you want to in my life.
And and this is what I pray.
And god, if you have to tie me to the altar,
no matter how much I kick and scream, I’m making the commitment right now.
I wanna go all the way with you.
And when I try to turn back, don’t let me, your will be
done. In Earth as it is in heaven.
I don’t wanna be unkind, but I just wanna say that I am just so fed up.
Was selfish, self centered, whining Christians.
That felt good to get that out.
I mean, I was one for god knows how long.
And it just isn’t pretty.
Verse nineteen, but he said this to Peter to indicate to him what kind of death he would die.
And then he said to him follow me. Now verse twenty, This is so stinking good.
But Peter’s turned this is Peter’s response to what Jesus just said
to him. But Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved.
That was John. And this is the book of John that John wrote.
And John refers to himself in the book that he wrote over and over and over as the one whom Jesus loved.
Now I know enough about Peter’s personality because I’ve got it
to know that he wanted to knock John’s lights out.
So Peter right away turns to Jesus and says, what about John?
It’s kinda like, is he gonna suffer too?
Come on.
You know, so times, if we’re not really all that crazy about somebody, and we’re going through a rough time and they’ve got it easy, boy, is that annoying?
And then I love this.
Samuel went to anoint a new king, and all of the brothers were brought in, and none of them were right, weren’t right, weren’t right, weren’t right.
Then they finally brought in David.
And you would have thought that Samuel could have taken him aside privately, so as to not hurt the other brother’s feelings.
Don’t it make them feel bad that they’ve been rejected?
Oh, I love this. This is why I do
this because I have so stinking much fun preaching.
Verse thirteen. First Samuel, sixteen thirteen.
Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed David in
the midst of his brothers. Put him that little scrawny sheep keeping baby brother, sat him right in the
middle of all of them that had been rejected and poured
the in morning oil on him. Made him king and made them watch. Come on.
Come on. Maybe you’re having to watch somebody else right now, but someday you’ll be anointed king and somebody else will have to watch.
Let’s even put it better than this.
Many of you are already anointed to be king, but you have to realize that David did not wear the crown for twenty years after he was anointed.
He spent those twenty years in caves running from a crazy man.
Boy, I can see you guys are about to wear out.
I better
bring this to a close. Okay. One one final thought here. Rachel and Liam.
Have you ever had any sibling rivalry?
Where you ever the kind of fluffy cyst that had the skinny sister.
Oh, my gosh.
I see situations like that all the time. One sister is so sweet.
She just drips sugar when she opens her mouth. She
forgets to eat. The other sister lives in the refrigerator.
Okay.
Well, let’s let’s get to this.
In Genesis twenty nine, There were two sisters, Leah and Rachel.
Jacob loved Rachel, but Leah was the oldest and He got stuck with her, had to work seven more years for Rachel.
But the thing the Bible says, which is amusing to me, is that Leon had dull weak eyes.
I think that’s a real godly way of saying.
She just flat out wasn’t very pretty.
Maybe even downright ugly. I don’t know.
And and in the same verse, Leah had dull weak eyes, and Rachel was beautiful.
Okay, man. Now listen, listen, listen, listen, because this is so good.
But one of the things that, uh, so eventually, Jacobs got both of them, his wives, and one one of the things that was extremely important to women then was to be able to have children and an heir for the bloodline.
And so the Bible says that Leah gave birth to seven children, and Rachel had to watch And she never had one during that whole time.
Now later, she did have two. But years and years and years. Okay.
She had the sparky eyes.
But she didn’t get the babies.
Leah had the dull weak
eyes, but she got
the babies. Let me tell you something.
Whatever you don’t have, god will give you something else to make up for it.
Come on now. Whatever you don’t have, god will give you something else to make up for it.
And here’s what I’ve come to. Everybody gets something, and everybody doesn’t get something.
I can preach but I cannot sing.
I can manage a worldwide organization But I tell you what, even my stick people when I
draw them are scary.
We all have things that we can do and things we can’t do.
We all have things that we’re good at and things that we’re not good at.
We all have strength We all have weaknesses. And let me tell you something.
It’s good to know what you can do, but it’s even better to know what you cannot do.
And don’t make a fool out of yourself, spending your life trying to be something you’re not to prove something you don’t even have to prove.
Come on. Give god a praise. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
So what do you do when god doesn’t pick you?
You trust him. And you say, God, I know that you will never do anything unless it’s gonna work out for my ultimate good.
And I’m not in this with
you god to get what I want.
I’m in it for what you want.