What do you have to remember?
It’s important that you have something to remember, something on god’s resume that you know that you know that know that he did for you.
And it tells you that if god would do that, he can do this.
If he could drive by the red sea and bring me across on dry land, then he can fight you off.
He can deal with their Malachites and the hittites and the gerbersights and the gerasites God does certain things so you will have something to remember, a point of reference to which you build your life upon, and you stand on it.
And you say, I’m not sure about this, and I’m not sure about that, but this one thing I do know.
This is in. You’re gonna lose everything.
You won’t come out of this. You’re not smart enough.
You’re not bright enough. You waited too late. You should have started younger.
Those are the kind of voices that we all live with.
For me, our ministry was growing, We lived in a nice house, nice house we’d ever had, driving a nice car, living from paycheck to paycheck, making it, every night.
I lay down the night after she goes to sleep. I hear the voices.
Those voices are the kind of voices that stop you from buying into your own life.
Stop you from enjoying the good times and believing that they will last.
The anxiety and the pressure and the strength that it took to get from where you were to where you are doesn’t go away, so so you don’t really believe it’s yours.
You’re driving it, but you don’t really believe it’s yours, and you’re scared to relax and really rest in whatever it is or whoever it is.
Because everything else went away. Maybe this will go away too.
We talk about faith for bad times, but, but you also need faith in good times to actually believe the goodness of god is not going anywhere.
To silence the voices, that keeps saying you’ll never make it.
You’re about to lose everything. Fear gets in your heart.
See, see, I know what it’s like to be poor, and I know what it’s like to be without.
And I know what it’s like not to have dinner for my kids.
Returning to that, that the idea that that could happen is terrifying.
And the enemy always has some sort of tool or memory or situation that he uses to terrify you even though the good times are here.
And and and the dream is there, the blessing is there, and the goodness is there, but there’s always this haunting nagging.
Defiance. This says, don’t you relax? You’re not worth it.
You don’t deserve it, and it’s not going to last.
Resting in what god has done.
Is often more difficult than receiving what god has done to rest in it.
To believe that it will last.
To believe that you will last, that love will last, that that that life will last, that that good times will come that things will be better.
It’s difficult because of the voices.
And you are what you eat, and the voices are the food that feeds your faith or fear.
So if you want to change your diet, you can change your outcome.
But you have to stop talking to yourself the way you do.
Because if you continue to talk to yourself the way you do, you will always be where you’ve always been.
It is what you say within yourself that heals you.
The woman with is your blood said to herself, If I can betouch to him of his garment, I’ll be made whole.
There was no scripture to validate that.
She can say she wasn’t quoting due to Ronny or new numbers or anything like that.
It’s just something she said to herself there was no doctrine around it.
We’ve never seen that happen before, but she said to herself, if I can be touched to him of his garment, I’ll be made whole.
Wow. And, although, while she was crawling, she kept saying, over and over again, if I could just touch, if I can just touch, if I can just touch her, if I can just touch them with the girl, and without Jesus’ permission.
And without the support of the disciples, she creeped up on him and snatched a miracle.
Snatch it because of what she said Yeah. To herself.
Yes. You see those voices that say what you can’t do, what you can’t have, what can’t be what’s not gonna last.
What’s not gonna work is how the enemy polarizes the promises of god in your life.
And it takes word to combat word.
That’s why when Jesus was in the wilderness and Satan was throwing word at him, he was throwing word back.
And what we in the city.
I’m blessed in the field. I’m blessed in my uprising. I’m blessed in my down setting.
I’ll be blessed into my old days. I’ll be blessed when I’m an old man. My grandchildren will be blessed.
My body is blessed. My body is my mind is blessed. My head is blessed. I got this.
I can handle it. I can do it. Bring it on. Here it is.
That kinda talk saying that to yourself drives back the other voices of negativity that we all have creep up behind us and tell us that we’re not capable, and we’re not competent, and we’re not gifted enough, and we’re not good enough, and we waited too late, or god is punishing us.
To talk back to those voices, shuts the enemy down.
The pressure I was going through I was causing because the pressure I was going through was coming from the things that I allowed to reverberate in my head.
And I’m wondering if there are things going in your head right now that are stopping you from living your best life because you will not silence them by speaking back.
You shall have whatever you say. So says the word of god.
You shall have whatever you say. If it’s betrayal, you shall have whatever you say.
If it’s a life without love, you shall have whatever you say. It doesn’t just work positively.
It also works negatively You shall have whatever you say. She touched him and she was made whole.
And he says, Who touched me? Which means he’s oblivious to what’s going on.
This is all happening in her head.
The whole thing happened in her head and the lord who is on missing, ask a question.
Who touched me? And the disciples wanting to be important to answer him, said, everybody touched you.
He said, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. That’s not what I’m talking about.
Everybody around me don’t touch me. Everybody around me don’t touch me. You’ve been set.
Everybody around me don’t touch me. Just because you’re around me don’t mean you touch me. Somebody touch me.
Somebody touched me, and she came out from the crowd’s chiefest league and said, it was me.
It was me. She got a miracle. Wow.
Jesus wasn’t looking because of what she said to herself.
That’s what I want you to see, and stop letting those other words question.
When I say excellent, you say excellent.
Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. The problem is We all said the same word. Come on.
But we don’t all mean the same thing. Come on.
Because what you call excellent, what I call excellent may be 2 different things based on the lives we’ve lived, the things we’ve experienced, the places we’ve been exposed to, Our ideas of excellence may vary drastically based on how we define excellence.
The problem with the English language is that it is limited to interpretation.
So how do you know when say I love you that I mean what you meant when you said you love me.
So we’re having a conversation, and I’m making an assumption that your love is my love, and it may not be at all.
Or we’re planning a banquet, and I and I have made an assumption that your excellence is my excellent, and it may not be at all.
Because the reality about it is your definition of excellent rises no higher than your level of exposure.
Whatever you’ve been exposed to, that becomes the new paradigm of what excellence is to you.
And it shifts from day to day.
And the hardest thing in the world is to have a conversation with somebody and all you have to use is words.
Because I’m not sure that you mean what I mean Yeah. When I say excellence.
I’m not sure that you mean what I mean when I say love.
I’m not sure you mean what I mean when I say loyal.
I’m not sure you mean what I mean when I say her.
Because all we have is words.
The reality is we have to make up in our mind that whatever our definition of excellence is, it’s called change.
It’s gonna get higher. It’s gonna get broader. It’s gonna get better.
It’s gonna be different. Or it’s gonna go down.
And a lot of it depends on who you hang around.
And what you’re exposed to, there are people that take you up, there are people that bring you down, They bring you down to their level of excellence.
That’s what that’s what a job description for a hater looks like.
The job description of the hater is to bring you down to the level that they are on.
So that while they’re trying to pull you down, I’m trying to get up.
And if I’m going to get up, I have to know that there’s gonna be a cost in getting up.
Gonna have to put my back to it else and not gonna happen.
God wants somebody to work with him and give what it takes to make it happen.
Is it worth it? Absolutely. I do not want to die.
Let me explain. I I I was born in between 2 dead babies.
The baby before me died, the baby after me died. I was raised by a dying father.
And I do not want to live my life and die.
And at the last moment of my life, ask this question, wonder what would have happened if I’d have pushed a little harder.
I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna get down to the end of the road and and wonder what would have happened if I had a bushed a little harder.
I don’t want to wonder that.
I want to get down to the end of the road like Paul and say I fought a good fight.
I kept the faith I finished my chords.
And now later for me as a crowd of righteousness in the head, I don’t wanna get down to my last breath and wonder what would have happened If I went back to school, if I took a course, if I worked a little harder, if I change the way I dress, if I change the way I talk to people, if I forgave somebody, if I release somebody, don’t wanna wonder about nothing because that is excellence.
Excellence. It’s a come out with the conclusion. I have no regrets.
I have. No. Request.
The wine he is producing is greater than the pain you are experiencing.
And if you allow him to take you through the when he says excellent, and you say excellent, they will mean the same Okay.
The dying words of the thief on the cross was remember me.
The words of Jesus at the last supper is as often as you do this, you do this in remembrance of me.
What does remember me? Remember, re put back together again?
Re member me. Yeah.
When we remember what god has done, that becomes the foundation on which we build our lives.
Now a house is not a foundation, and nobody can live in a foundation.
But it has to have a foundation in order to be a house.
And I’m not suggesting that your life begins, ends, and all through the middle is nothing but Jesus Jesus Jesus.
Because you gotta take out the trash. You gotta brush your teeth. You gotta comb your air.
You gotta get your nails done.
You gotta get your feet, uh, or you’re gonna cut your blankets when you’re laying in the bed at night.
All of that happens. But I am saying that god is the foundation.
When god delivered the children of Israel, of Egypt, he did it as a foundation for them to remember.
And all through the old testament he says over and over again, am I not the god who brought you out from the Red Sea?
Am I not the god who brought you up by my own hand and my strong-arm?
It becomes a point of reference to which you face the future remembering what he did in the past, remembering it, putting it back together again, again, and again, and recreating it as a point of reference to fight from, to stand, from, to, drive from, to, to preach from, to teach from.
What do you have to remember?
It’s important that you have something to remember, something on god’s resume that you know that you know that you know that he did for you.
And it tells you that if God would do that, he can do this.
If he can drive back the red sea and bring me across on dry land, then he can fight you off.
Can deal with the amalekites and the hittites and the gerasites.
God does certain things so you will have something to remember a point of reference to which you build your life upon and you stand on it and you say I’m not sure about this and I’m not sure about that.
But this one thing I do know, you have to know this. You have to know this in your knower.
You have to know this when your girlfriend didn’t know when your prayer warriors don’t know it, when your children don’t know it, when your mama doesn’t know it, something that you know that you know that you know becomes the catalyst against the trials, against the traumas, against the sleepless nights, against the virus, against the crisis, against the times that we’re living in, we have been living in the most perilous times that we have seen in a 100 years.
We are living in a time where nearly 700,000 people are now dead from something we can’t even see.
We are fighting an invisible enemy, and that enemy has friends that has created trauma and distress until we are overwhelmed even when nothing else is going wrong just the feeling that other people are going wrong gives us a certain degree of stress and trauma.
We how do we stand up against this unseen foe we fight right now.
Of course, we need to do everything we can to protect ourselves from the virus but I’m not just talking about the virus.
I’m talking about your mind. I’m talking about your emotions, your will, your spirit, your fight, your drive, your tenacity, your sense of normalcy, your courage to get out of the house, your courage to get out of the bed, the courage to continue when there’s a threat.
Requires that there’s something about god that you have to remember.
For the children of Israel, it was the blood of the lamb that was painted on the doorposts.
And Death Angel passed by and said when I see the blood, I will pass over you It was walking out to the Red Sea and hearing 600 chosen chariots coming with failure of chasing them down.
Saying I’m gonna get you back. He was gonna get them back, but let me tell you a secret.
He was also trying to get back the wealth they’d taken.
For the wealth of the unjust had been laid up for the Jazz.
And they had borrowed all the gold and all the silver, and they had broken the GDP of Egypt It wasn’t just the slaves he wanted.
He wanted the money by. He wanted the jewels. He wanted the gold. He wanted the silver.
He wanted the things that the Tabernacle would actually end up being built by.
He was trying to get it all back. He could’ve got some more slaves anywhere.
He was trying to get what they had borrowed.
They had borrowed the whole e economy of Egypt was running through the Red Sea. Yes.
For the wealth of the injustice laid up for the child.
And when god brings you out, he brings out enough for your children.
The Bible says that god put so much wealth on them that their children had to carry on their backs the wealth that god placed on them.
I want the kind of blessing that affects my children and my children’s children and my children’s children’s children.
I I I want my grandchildren to blow kisses up my picture when I’m dead and gone.
I want them to be able to say if it hadn’t been for that old man, I’d have never been able to go to college I had never been able to get a job.
I had never been able to work for Google. I had never been able to work for Xerox.
I had never been able to preach the gospel. I would have never been able to do it.
I want that for them.
So I have to have something to remember that I can count on that won’t break.
And I wanna ask you, what do you remember when life get hard? When things get tough?
When friends get few, there ought to be something in your life that you remember God brought you through or brought you from or brought you out of that feeds you.
That is the foundation that makes you to rise above the crushing and turns grape juice into absolute wine.