Creflo Dollar — Standing Against the Spirit of Strife
Proverbs 10, verse 12, and verse 12 says this, read it out loud with me. "Hatred stirreth up strifes, but love"... hatred stirs up strife, it stirs up strife. And any way that hatred is being presented, it's gonna stir strife up. But, here's the part I want you to get as a believer. "But love covers all sin."
You can see a guy acting like a fool, and you can make a choice, either I'm gonna allow him to put strife in my life, you know, I'm gonna accept strife from that situation, or I'm gonna choose to allow love to cover all sins.
I had a guy on the talk show a couple of weeks ago who, at 15 years old, got a 40-year prison sentence because he was in a store and a guy walked past him and brushed his shoulder, and he saw it as disrespect, so he and his partner went out and beat the guy down, threw him in the street, and when the guy stood up, two cars hit him and killed him, and they were charged for that murder.
So, at 15 years old, he was charged as an adult, put in adult prison at 15 years old. And just trying to figure out how'd he get there, and he set there, and he says, "I cannot believe that I allowed just that little brush to ruin my whole life."
Let me tell every man this, a man who cannot control his emotions is the weakest man on the earth. You cannot allow your emotions to just ruin your life like that. Well, he got turned on to the word of grace, he started watching our broadcast in prison, and started reading the books, and his life changed. Well, the judge was going to retire the next day, and before she retired, she released him after, I think it was 13 years that he had served.
Okay, so it looks like he's going on, but now, the day he was getting ready to get out, he was stabbed 56 times. He had three minutes to get to a doctor before he drowned in his blood. He survived that, now, at the age of, I think, 30-something, he is now witnessing to young men and telling them how not to get angry and allow their strife...
Now, I had an opportunity to ask him a question, I says, "Well, how do you think you got there?" He says, "I didn't feel like I was valued. I didn't feel like I was loved." You know, when people don't feel like they're valued and loved at home, then they'll do anything and go anywhere to try to achieve that. They'll start searching for significance. And so, if going out and robbing somebody can make 'em feel like they're valuable to the cause, then that's what they're gonna do.
Let me tell everybody, every household, every parent here, man, look at your kids and value them, love them, tell your daughter's they're beautiful, tell your sons you're proud of 'em, hug on them, kiss them, because that is the missing substance to a whole lot of things that are going on. Because if they don't get that, they'll be filled with hatred, they'll be filled with strife, and as a result of it, they'll go out and do something stupid because they're searching for value, they're searching for love, and we can do that, you can do that.