TD Jakes - How to Deal With Everything Changing
Holy things are not human things. Holy things are not human things, and, uh, I think you’re going to receive a blessing from this in your life and in your spirit. I’m going to pray that God opens up your understanding. Get a pen, get a pad, get your Bible, and get ready to seriously get down. I’m not preaching; I’m not hooping; I’m not trying to get you excited; I’m not trying to make you dance. I’m trying to get you rooted and grounded in principles of truth that will help your life. Holy things are not human things.
Father, in the name of Jesus, open up the understanding of the person who says, «I can’t remember, and I can’t retain.» Open up the understanding of the person who can’t read their Bible on their own, and it doesn’t make sense to them. Open up the understanding of the person who is grounded in the word of God, but they’re looking for a deeper sense of revelation and truth. Open up the understanding of ministers, pastors, elders, and leaders so that we can not only serve milk but also serve the meat of the word. In Jesus' name, we pray. Shout amen right where you are. I don’t care if you have neighbors; shout it anyway!
Okay, we’re going to the book of Genesis—that’s where everything started. It’s called the Book of Beginnings. We’re going to be in Genesis chapter 15, verses 7 through 18. As you turn to it, I want you to understand that what I’m really after is to set you into a deeper understanding of the Passover. That’s what I’m really after—a deeper understanding of the Passover. Because when you understand the Passover better, you understand Calvary better. You understand the price that Christ paid for your redemption, why He paid it, how He paid it, and what it meant.
I’m starting all the way back in the book of Genesis, and I really could go back to Genesis 1 to start, but I’m going to go to Genesis 15 because it really starts getting good there. This section that I’m going to be talking about, I call it «the contract.» Now, people every day say, «I’m afraid to do business with this person or that person. I’m afraid to let someone have a piece of my company. I’m afraid to develop a partnership. I’m afraid to get a deed of trust. I’m afraid to invest in a piece of land. I’m afraid of doing this or that.»
Don’t be afraid—get a contract! Because when you get a contract, you have a legal document that clearly and specifically lays out what you get, what they get, how they get it, when they get it, and what to do if there’s a dispute. All of that should be written out in the contract. A handshake is a wonderful thing, and a word of promise is nice, but the Bible says the giving of an oath or contract is the end of all strife.
I hope to get to it if I can over in Hebrews. God said, «I notice that the custom among men is the giving of an oath is the end of all strife.» Finding no one greater than myself to swear by, I swear by myself that my word is true: surely, blessings I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply thee. Think of that! God would give you a contract swearing that He’s going to bless you. It’s not just that you have His word on it; you have His contract under it. He says, «I swear, I’m going to bless you.» You might need to hear that tonight: «God said, I swear I’m going to bless you.»
And it goes all the way back to God dealing with Abram in the book of Genesis, chapter 15. Abram is getting old; he’s 100 years old when he has his son Isaac. He’s getting up in age, and there are some things that God’s going to do for him that he won’t even live to see regarding his descendants. I believe that the blessings of the Lord are generational; they pass down from generation to generation. I believe I’m walking in the blessing of my parents and my grandparents, particularly my grandfather, of whom I’m named after, who was murdered at 22 years old. I was astounded when my uncle looked at me and said, «I think God gave you more life because He gave my father less.» His father died at 22. He was named after me, and here I am at 62—born on the day my grandfather was murdered. But God seems to have a way of passing blessings down, and I pray that the blessing of the Lord not only blesses you but also passes on to your children and to your children’s children.
Every decision you make is going to affect generations after you’re gone—positively or negatively. My mother decided she liked West Virginia; my father was just supposed to be there for a temporary job. My mother liked the mountains and decided to stay, and I was born up in those hills. It affected how I came out; it affected the trajectory of my life. So every decision—if you change churches, if you change jobs, if you go back to school, if you accept Christ—all of those things are going to have an indirect or direct outcome and effect on your family in some way. It’s going to shift them.
If you get married again, in some way it’s going to shift them. If you get divorced, in some way it’s going to shift them. And you need to keep that in mind: you’re not just thinking for yourself. You’re not just living for yourself; you’re not just giving for yourself—you’re giving for generations to come.
Okay, if you haven’t found Genesis by now, I’m just going to pray for you. Genesis chapter 15, verses 7 through 18: «And He said unto him,» being Abram, «I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give thee this land to inherit it.» And he said, «Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?» Because he’s an old man, he says, «How do I know that this is going to stick?» And He says, «I brought you out of Ur, which is Mesopotamia.» The interesting footnote there is that He’s subtly reminding Abram that he was a Gentile, and out of his loins, God birthed the Hebrew, and ultimately, the Jewish nation out of the loins of a man who was a Gentile. There’s a miracle right there!
God calls those things that are not as though they are because He has the power to make them become whatever He said so. God starts a race out of the loins of a man who was not that race and perpetuates that ethnicity—bringing it forward as His chosen people. But He starts with a man from Mesopotamia and says, «Get out of that country and away from that kindred. I’m getting ready to do a new thing in you!» Glory to God! I don’t know who that’s for, but sometimes God has to shift you to bless you—to get you out of territories and get you onto new ground so you can start and your descendants can be blessed.
So He says, «I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give thee this land to inherit it.» And he said, «Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?» And He said unto him, «Take me a heifer of three years old, and a she-goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtle dove, and a young pigeon.» And he took all these and divided them in the midst and laid each piece one against another, but the birds divided he not.
Now, he took all these animals; he had to gather them; he had to bring them. You have to understand these animals have value. Abram lives in a bartering system; it is not so much that they always deal with gold or silver. They certainly didn’t have cash or cash apps; they didn’t have American Express or Visa cards or things like that. But they used these goats and animals to trade for things that they needed. For him to take them, slay them open, and lay them out before God was a sacrifice that many couldn’t afford—many couldn’t sell them, many couldn’t make wool out of their coats, and many couldn’t eat them. He offered them up as a sacrifice before God, and he split them open.
He took all these, divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another, but the birds he did not divide. When the fowls came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away. When the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him. He said unto Abram, «Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years. And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation, they shall come hither again, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.»
And it came to pass, when the sun went down and it was dark, behold, a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between those pieces. In the same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, «Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the Euphrates.» This is God entering into a contract with Abram. There’s so much I want you to see about this.
Here’s a big hint about God: number one, God is proactive, not reactive. He has determined the end from the beginning. He’s not making up the script as He goes; He’s not going through the year and saying, «I wonder what I’m going to do next year?» I’m not sure about five years from now. God knows what’s going to happen 400 years from now. He’s already got the plan laid out; He’s just sharing the plan with Abram because Abram is getting old. Abram has seen part of the fulfillment of the promise but not all of the fulfillment of the promise, and he needs to know that God’s word will last longer than him.
Now, watch the language, because there are some hints in here that are very important. Number one, in order for him to get the secret of the future, he had to sacrifice. Sacrifice is important. God told him to take a heifer that was three years old, a she-goat that was three years old, a ram that was three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. He took all these and divided them in the midst and laid each piece one against another, but he did not divide the birds.
When the fowls came upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away. It’s very interesting—there are all these dead animals spread out. This is a massacre. Three of this, and three of that, and three of the other—twelve different types of splits—and then the two turtle doves. He laid them all out, then the two pigeons, but he didn’t split them. Can you imagine the blood? Can you imagine the blood? These are living animals that have been sacrificed, split in two, separated one from the other, leaving an aisle in the middle. There’s blood absolutely everywhere!
You see the fowls coming down—the fowls are coming down on the carcasses. It says no doubt vultures or some other type of carnivorous bird is flying down, and Abram is fanning them away all day long. He’s fanning them away like Risper, if you remember, fanned away the buzzards from eating up her sons who were hung in the Bible. He’s fanning them away like that, but God puts him to sleep.
What do I get out of that? Abram’s working. Abram’s working. Abraham is a patriarch of faith. He has stepped into the grace of God. It will not be by works, lest any man shall boast. Abraham will not get to brag about this and say, «Had I not fanned all the fowls away, they would have eaten up this sacrifice. I wouldn’t have this contract with God.» God put him to sleep because this battle belongs to God.
Some of you are working real hard trying to keep something together that you have to turn over to God and let God do it. I told some of our staff the other day, «In these two months that we have been shut down and streaming online, it’s been amazing to see how much of what we were doing God didn’t need. God can do whatever He wants to do. He can do it on camera; He can do it on the screen; He can do it in your house; He can do it in the sanctuary. He can use you; He can choose not to use you. He’s God; He’s still in control. And as much as we want to help, as much as we want to be a blessing, and as much as we want to fan away all the vultures that are coming against what we perceive to be our work, our labor, our house, our ministry, our job, our car, our kids—it is vain, the Bible said, for you to rise up early and lay down late at night. The Lord giveth His beloved sleep. This battle is not yours… The battle belongs to God, and Abraham went into a sleep.
But that is not what struck me the most. It’s one thing to say that he went into a sleep when the sun went down; a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and lo, a horror of darkness fell upon him. It almost sounds like he’s gone, as if he’s dead. I mean, it’s a horror for the Bible to say it was a deep sleep and that a horror fell upon him. And when he was completely out of the way, that’s when God took over and started talking to him. Wow! When he couldn’t hear, when he wasn’t working, when he wasn’t swinging, God started talking.
Are we too busy? Are we so occupied fending off the buzzards, protecting ourselves, and fending off the fight with the haters, responding to the critics, and doing this and that? If you said that, I heard it. Are we too busy trying to do stuff that if we would just rest in the Lord, would He not speak to us and reveal to us His plan? Rather than us protecting our sacrifice, sometimes we’re so busy safeguarding what we have that we don’t even understand what God has for us. This is not about what Abraham has in it; this is about what God has for him. The cost of admission was sacrifice, but he could not pay for the Word of God; he could not protect the Word of God. God put him to sleep so the blessing would break out in his life. This is going to get good!
And He said, „Abram, know of a surety that your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs.“ Now He starts out telling Abram, „I have given you this land, but after you’re gone, something’s going to happen. You’re going to have to leave this land, and your children, your seed, will be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them four hundred years.“ Listen very closely to these words: they’re going to go through a period of digression. Just because God is in your life, and just because you have a covenant, just because God’s given an oath, doesn’t mean that you won’t go through a period of digression.
But don’t allow the digression to become so entrenched in your spirit that you believe the digression is your destiny. It might be a setback, but it’s a setup for a comeback. You have to understand it might be a setback, but it’s a setup for a comeback. Sometimes God has to give you a setback to redirect you, to shift you, to change you, to prepare you, or those around you for what He’s about to do in your life. And that’s how you prove that He’s Lord in your life—not just when things are going up, but when things are going down. He said, „I’m going to send your children into a land that is not theirs. They’re going to be afflicted while they’re there. They’re going to stay there not for the weekend, not four months, not for a year. They’re going to be there four hundred years, but afterward, they’re going to come out with great substance.“
Now, He doesn’t name what land it is in this particular text, but He’s talking about Egypt; it has to be Egypt. No question about it; it has to be Egypt. Abram goes to sleep, literally right now he sleeps spiritually; ultimately, he’s going to be dead. And when he dies, he said, „This is what’s going to happen after you die, ” so that when you get ready to die, you will already know how things are going to go. Look at God sharing secrets with Abram. It’s important for you to understand the power of those secrets. If you go to Psalms 25:1-14, I’m going to come back to this in a moment, but if you go to Psalms 25:14, the Bible says, „The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him, and He shall show them His covenant.“ Do not misunderstand; to fear means to reverence God.
When you respect God, when you honor Him, He will let you know secrets. The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him. He called Abram „friend.“ He let Abram in. You remember in the Gospel of John, chapter 15, when God said, „Henceforth I call you no longer servants, but I call you friends, for a servant knoweth not what his master doeth.“
One of the signs that you know you’re a friend of God is that He starts to let you in on secrets, and he let Abraham in on a secret because the secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and He shall show them His covenant. That doesn’t mean you should tell everybody, because sometimes when you tell people what God told you, they’ll try to kill you for it. Ask Joseph. They’ll try to destroy you for it, but that doesn’t mean that God won’t still bring it to pass in your life. You might save yourself from being thrown into a pit and spending some time in Potiphar’s house, sold to the Midianites, lied on, put in jail, and you might be able to go straight to the palace if you didn’t tell all your business all the time. There’s a reason they call it a secret.
The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and He shall show them His covenant. Let’s go back to Genesis for just a minute, and „Thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace, ” right after He told him that his great-great-great-great-grandchildren are going to come out of everything He took them through with great substance. You need to underline that verse because God doesn’t take you through tough times for you to come out of it with nothing. If God saw fit to take you and secure you in a strange place, make you subservient, and take you through tests and trials, it means that afterward, you’re going to come out with great substance. That’s what He promised them: „And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation, they shall come hither again; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.“ He said, „In the fourth generation, they’re going to come back into what you’re in right now.“ So when Abram was offering up that sacrifice, it wasn’t just for him; it was for his descendants. It was a deed of trust for this property; it was ownership. It was a contract. It was an investment, and Abraham was setting his descendants up.
Oh God! There are some things that God has put in your spirit: visions, ideas, concepts, and businesses that are going to set your great-great-grandchildren up. I just don’t know who I’m talking to, but I believe I’m speaking clearly right now. There are some moves that you’re making right now; it’s bigger than you. It’s bigger than your retirement; it’s bigger than when you get old. It’s bigger than the college education for the kids; it’s changing the trajectory of your family. It’s breaking generational curses; it’s turning things around in your life, lining things up so that they can function differently. There’s a reason God moved you from where you were. There’s a reason God is shifting you from where you wanted to be.
There’s a reason God put you in a new atmosphere and exposed you to new ideas. It’s not just about you; it’s not just about the paycheck; it’s for your children and for your children’s children. Who knows? If he had stayed where he was, whether he would have had any children or not. Maybe they would have been killed; maybe they would have been destroyed. When God does something, He does it because it fits into His plan and purpose. For we know that all things work together, all of them work together for the good of those that love the Lord, who are the called according to His purpose. All things— the good and the bad, the shifting, the uncertainty, and the discomfort— it’s all going to work together for the good of those that love the Lord, who are the called according to His purpose.
I hope you get that in your spirit. I hope you understand that God is up to something good. I hope I can teach well enough to drive the dark clouds away over your life, and that ominous feeling that you keep having when you lay down at night, and that discomfort you have with indigestion, anxiety, rashes, and that breathing disorder. I hope that the faith of God’s Word would give you the kind of confidence that it’s going to work together for the good— for you, for your children, for your grandchildren, and for your great-great-grandchildren.
Oh my God! You should see how many people are sitting in this chair. If this chair falls over, my father is sitting here; my mother is sitting here; my grandparents are sitting here; my great-great-grandparents who were slaves are all sitting here. I am the sum total of all of them. The things that they fought for, I inherited. I reap the blessings of the people who went on before me, and so shall my children and my children’s children walk into new doors and dimensions only because we came first.
And it’s true about you. You don’t know that sometimes the enemy isn’t fighting you about you. He might be fighting you over what’s going to happen in your daughter or your son. He may be fighting them over what they’re about to inherit. The enemy knows that God has a plan. God has a plan; this is a 400-year strategy. Some of you don’t have a four-day strategy; God has a 400-year strategy of how things are going to work out. Nothing surprises Him. Oh, you don’t know what happened to me when I got into Egypt! Lord, it didn’t go right! It started out good; it was good for about the first thirty years, but then after that, all hell broke loose, and we ended up enslaved. He knows all about it, but afterward— after you’re going to come out with great substance. Paul says it this way: „These light afflictions, which are but for a moment, work for us a far more exceeding weight of glory. For we look not at the things that are seen, for the things that are seen are temporal; the things that are not seen are eternal.“
Let’s go deeper with that: the things that are seen are sensual; they appeal to our senses. I can see it; I can smell it; I can hear it; I can touch it. The things that we look at, not at the things that are seen, for the things that are sensual are temporal. The things that are spiritual are eternal. So while you’re praying about all this sensual stuff, God is bringing about a spiritual thing that’s going to outweigh every sensual thing. There’s a difference between sensual and sexual. Every sensual thing, everything your eyes have seen, your ears have heard, has not even begun to imagine what God has in store for those who love Him, but it has been revealed unto us by His Spirit. God’s Spirit has a plan in place for your life. Stop stressing. Go to bed. Stop stressing. Be at peace; God’s got this. He put Abram in a deep sleep.
I want to go back to that deep sleep. He put him in a deep sleep to say, „I don’t need you; I’m going to do this without you.“ That means that this is a covenant, but it’s not a bilateral covenant, because a bilateral covenant would be between two people. It is a unilateral covenant; it is God in covenant with Himself, and we become recipients of a covenant we had nothing to do with. Abraham was asleep, and God was still putting together promises for him, his children, and his grandchildren. My wife and I did estate planning; we made a will.
We set a will in place in case something happens to me, and they say I didn’t have a will— they lied! I do! I have a will; I have estate planning. I left things to my children, to my grandchildren, to my family, but they weren’t there when I made the will. They weren’t there when I made the decisions; they didn’t sign the will. I signed the will. They become the recipients of a will that they weren’t even present when it was ratified. That’s what it means to be an heir— an heir of salvation and purchased by God. You weren’t there 2000 years ago when Christ was crucified on the cross, but you inherited it. You’re an heir of salvation; you’ve been purchased by God; you’ve been born of His Spirit; you’ve been washed in His blood. This is my story; this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.
Let me read on. And it came to pass that when the sun went down and it was dark, a smoking furnace and a burning lamp passed between those pieces. That smoking furnace and that burning lamp is God in covenant with Himself. It was the custom of the times that if we were to do a deed of trust, we would split these animals, and you and I would walk through the blood and swear that we were going to transfer the deed. God walked through it by Himself. Abraham becomes the recipient of a covenant that he never walked through. All this is heavy, but this is some good stuff. You have to understand that salvation is of the Lord, healing is of the Lord, the blessing is of the Lord, deliverance is of the Lord, increase is of the Lord. You don’t have anything to do with it. Take all that air out of your chest; stop looking down your nose at people. Whatever you’ve got, you didn’t do it yourself. God walked through this; you became the recipient of something for which you did not labor. „I will give you houses you didn’t build; I will give you vineyards that…“
You didn’t grow; you can’t take credit for the blessing. I am God, and I am going to do it for you. In that same day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, „Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates.“ And Abraham’s going—you know why you sleep? Because it’s not by works, lest any man should boast. It is by the grace of God through faith. That’s why you sleep; that’s why God does things about you without you, so that you can’t take credit for it. That’s why God didn’t let a rich uncle die and give you the money—so you couldn’t take credit for it.
That’s why God didn’t want your friends to meet your needs, so that you would get up and pray, serve, and praise Him. This is God’s doing. You have a covenant with God. A covenant is a contract; it’s a contract. It’s important that you understand that you have a contract with God that affects your children and your children’s children. And Abram was asleep; he wasn’t fanning away buzzards. He didn’t earn it; he didn’t work for it; he just received it. He is an heir. It is a unilateral contract of which Abram is the recipient. That’s why in the New Testament, when you get to the New Testament and the apostles are laying hands on people, they keep saying, „Receive ye the Holy Ghost! Receive ye the Holy Ghost! Receive ye the Holy Ghost!“ Because when you’re an heir, all you have to do is receive. Hallelujah!
You don’t have to fan any buzzers; you don’t have to beg for it; you don’t have to worry about receiving the Holy Ghost. That’s why when Jesus was walking around and found the lame man, He said, „Wilt thou be made whole?“ You don’t have to work for it; all you have to do is receive it. There are some things that God wants you to receive that your mind, your flesh, and your will say, „Oh no, I’m not ready; I don’t deserve it; I didn’t earn it; I didn’t work for it; I can’t do that; I haven’t been trained for it.“ No, no, no! God didn’t ask you anything about your degree; He said, „Receive it!“ My God, if you get that, and I don’t teach another word tonight, if you just get that and you never hear me again, you could live the rest of your life off of that word right there—receive it! Receive it! Receive what God has for you! Receive the blessing!
Stop doubting it. Stop questioning it. Stop pushing people away. Receive it! Receive a better life! Receive peace! Receive joy! Receive wholeness! Receive a sound mind! You don’t have to earn it; stop trying to think yourself into it or make yourself do it. No, no, no, no, no! Just receive it! You’re the benefactor; you’re the beneficiary of a covenant, the recipient. If something happens to me right now, my kids don’t know what I left for them, but the lawyer’s going to call them on the phone and call them down to the office and say, „He left you this, and he left you that, and he left that to this one and that to that one.“ All they have to do is receive it. And when Jesus died on the cross and ushered in the New Testament, which is a new covenant, all you have to do is receive it.
Will you receive it? Will you receive a better life for yourself? Will you receive joy, contentment, peace, and power? Will you receive prosperity? Or do you think that’s for them and for those people next door and for those people over there and for those good people over here? No, no, no, no, no, no! Abram, receive it! You sleep through it! I’m going to give it to you and to your children, to your crazy great-great-grandchildren. They’re going to be the benefactors of something that they didn’t even hear the contract, but they’re going to receive the benefit of it. That’s what He’s saying here; He said, „I’m going to give you such a blessing that is too big for you to receive; it’s going to have to pass down to your descendants.“
Can you imagine God giving you a blessing so big that you didn’t have room to receive it and it had to pass down to your descendants? And despite all the trouble they went through, and despite all the trouble you went through, God still brought it to pass! Doesn’t that make you want to jump up and shout? Doesn’t that make you want to say, „I am the seed of Abraham“? Doesn’t that make you want to rejoice in the God of your salvation? It does, if you receive it. It doesn’t, if you don’t believe it; it doesn’t do a thing for you if you don’t believe it. It won’t lift you up one hour if you don’t believe it. You can click me right off if you don’t believe it; you can go on and watch TV if you don’t believe it; you can walk away from the screen if you don’t believe.
But if you believe it and if you receive it, the stuff I’m talking about is the stuff that makes champions, that makes kings, and makes warriors; it makes people victorious. If you receive it, it’s yours. Abraham woke up rich; he woke up to everything. He woke up to land that wasn’t his before. He woke up with a clear blueprint for his destiny. He woke up with it, and sometimes I think that’s better than stuff. He woke up with an understanding. In all your getting, get an understanding. To wake up with an understanding is a big deal because his life is crazy and it’s weird, and strange stuff happens. Sometimes you don’t know what’s going to happen next, and that uncertainty is stressful. But Abraham didn’t wake up with any uncertainty; he woke up with assurance. He woke up with an understanding. Nothing good or bad surprised him because he had been with God.
If you’ve been with God, He’ll let you know some things. He’ll let you know there are some parents out there who already know some things your children are going to go through; you already know it. You can see it coming down the track; it hasn’t happened yet, but you already know it. You look at your grandkids—little woody booties, so cute, bless your little heart—but you can already tell certain little things; you already know it. Abraham woke up with a knowing.
Oh God, let me have a knowing! Let me have an understanding! Let me have a sense of what you have in store for me so I don’t waste years and decades of my life fanning away stuff that doesn’t matter. Abram was busy fanning away things that had nothing to do with his destiny. Not one of those fowls he was swinging at could stop the covenant of God from coming to pass. And I want you to hear me today because sometimes we’re putting our energy in the wrong place. We’re so busy trying to fan away what doesn’t matter that we miss what does matter. And God said, „Go to bed!“
Not only go to bed; go to sleep. Not only go to sleep; go into a deep sleep! Because I don’t need your talent; I don’t need your skill; I don’t need your friends; I don’t need your contacts; I don’t need your degree; I don’t need your education; I don’t need anything you thought I needed to bless you. When I get ready to bless you, I will bless you anyway! I cannot tell you how many people came up who could sing better than other people who became world-renowned singers. I hear them singing and doing albums and doing projects and being on stage, and everybody’s screaming, and there are people back here frying fish in the back of a church who could sing you under the table. And I say, „Lord, how did you put her on stage when this woman back here frying this catfish could sing the paint off the wall?“ And the answer is, „It’s not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, ” saith the Lord.
I bring up one and I take down another. It’s not your talent; it’s not your intellect; it’s not your pedigree or your background; it’s none of that. It is the sovereignty of God that controls the whole thing. And God has made a covenant, and He’ll make bad sound good; He’ll make weak sound strong; He’ll make poor look rich. When God gets ready to bless you, He’ll change the ear of the hearer, the eyes of the beholder.
When God’s got something for you, He’ll make them choose you because He’s sovereign. Will you receive it? Will you receive it right now? Can you receive it in the middle of a pandemic? Can you receive it without a job? Can you receive it without a husband? Can you receive it without a wife? Can you receive it without credentials? Can you receive it without any signs of it? Can you just receive it? Can you just wake up and receive it? Can you wake up and receive it without arguing and saying, „Lord, I’m going to need some proof; I’m going to need some signs“? Can you just receive it?