Spiritual Maturity - Bishop T.D. Jakes

[Music] glory to god get your bibles and go to genesis chapter 21 verse 2 through 12. tonight we're going to talk about spiritual maturity managing my faith and my fallacies spiritual maturity helped me to have equilibrium help me to be able to balance myself bring me into spiritual maturity the bible said make your moderation made Known unto all men the lord is at hand spiritual maturity is as much about balance as it is about anything else and how you manage your faith and your fallacies and hopefully before the night is over you will i will

prove that we both we have them both we like to think that there are people who make mistakes and there are people who don't make mistakes but even the most successful person makes mistakes Even the most spiritual person makes mistakes missteps bad judgment listening to the wrong advice partnering with the wrong person hiring the wrong contractor moving into the wrong position dating the wrong person i'm not gonna look at nobody dating the wrong person yeah yeah yeah you thought it was god and then you realize you ate too much Pizza and had a dream and

you followed the wrong come on somebody come on genesis 21 2-12 when you have it say amen now listen at the word of god and listen real closely there's so much going on in this text i don't even know where to start so we're going to pick up right in the middle for sarah conceived and bear abraham a son in his old age But watch this at the set time of which god had spoken to him he didn't mean for him to have it any sooner and abraham called the name of his son that was

born unto him whom sarah bear to him isaac and abraham circumcised his son isaac being eight days old as god had commanded him and abraham was a hundred years old when his son isaac was born unto him my god i don't know if i want no baby at 100 Jesus i'm i'm just saying i'm just having to let me praise the lord anyway and sarah said god have made me to laugh so that all that here will laugh with me and she said who would have said unto abraham that sarah should have given children suck

for i have borne him a son in his old age and the child grew And was weaned and abraham made a great feast in this in the same day that isaac was weaned and sarah saw the son of hagar the egyptian which she had born unto abra which she had born under abraham mocking wherefore she said unto abraham cast out this but wait how did this story go bad so quick we were at a party one minute and now she's putting the woman out and her baby in the next verse Ain't like crazy one minute

you're dancing for joy and the next minute you're opening the door to tell her to get out and take her child with her wherefore she said on abraham cast out this bondwoman and her son for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son even with isaac and the thing was very grievous in abraham's sight because of his son and god said unto abraham let it not be Grievous in thy sight because of the land and because of thy bondwoman in all that sarah has said unto thee hearken unto her voice for

in isaac shall thy seed be called can you say amen let's pray spirit of the living god bring this word to life tonight as we teach and as we touch it as we begin to understand what you have in store for us in jesus name amen you may be seated so before i get into the text i want to Talk about faith and fallacies when i talk about faith you can't talk about faith and not talk about abraham because abraham is called the father of faith abraham is called the father of faith abraham believed god

and it was counted unto him as righteousness abraham believed god in such a way that he became the friend of god the friend of god he was so close to believing god see when we don't believe God we insult god's character to suggest that god has promised something and can't do it or won't do it is to suggest that god is a liar and abraham believed god in such a vivacious and powerful and profound and prolific way that he became the friend of god now the bible defines faith as the substance of things hoped for

the evidence of things not seen and then it goes on to talk about Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of god so that things that do appear were not made from things that do appear saying to us that the visible starts in the invisible that they in that the tangible starts in the intangible that everything that you see and everything that you receive started out in the spirit world before it manifests in the physical world and we know that Is true because every stitch of clothes you got on started

out as an idea every vehicle you drove started out as an idea before it became a drawing on paper before it entered the manufacturing stage it started out with a thought all of these pews started with the thought this carpet started with the thought so we need to give a lot more attention to our spiritual self because we must understand that Everything starts on the inside and flows out healing starts on the inside and flows out you receive it in your spirit before you receive it in your body the baptism of the holy spirit starts

on the inside before it comes out you can't overflow a vessel that's not filled come on somebody and when god starts feeling you it's happening on the inside And after a while it overflows on the outside and you get outer evidence of an inner feeling and the indwelling of the holy spirit and it starts on the inside believe it or not somebody's being filled right now somebody's being filled right now and it may not manifest on the outside immediately but once your cup overflows you can't hide on the outside what overflows on the inside can

i get a witness and hear somebody and so we Understand about faith we understand that faith that we are called to walk by faith and not by sight and so we are not looking at the things that are seen for the things that are seen are temporal and the things that are not seen are internal are eternal when it comes to fallacies it's a different thing because it's not so much a bible word and i want to take a moment and define fallacies fallacies is a noun a plural noun fallacies a Mistaken belief especially one

based on unsound argument for example the notion that the camera never lies is a fallacy or it could be a failure in reasoning which renders an argument invalid for example craft exposes three fallacies in this approach in other words when you start talking about fallacies fallacies deals with faulty reasonings misleading or unsound arguments the Potential for fallacy which lies behind the notion of self-esteem is an example so a fallacy is something that you have a conviction about that is not based on a sound decision okay it may or may not be a sin but it

can be a fallacy it can be bad judgment it can be a faulty concept a faulty notion a faulty idea and so fallacies stand on one side and faith stands on the other and i can see both of them happening in This house i would have hated to live in abraham's in abram's house abram lived in a house with two women that's the first problem one of them is his wife and the other one is his situation and it's not a side chick because he is not a righteous man it is a side chick that

is brought in the house at sarai's request as a surrogate more than a side chick and they didn't have artificial Insemination in those days so they had had relationship and intimacy and it was his wife's idea where are the women like that today i don't know none of them i don't know maybe one of them's here and not many women that'll bring a woman in and say i tell you what you borrow her for the weekend yeah that that that wouldn't go down real well in fact it's so bad now that they say What's she

looking at you like that for that girl don't want no prayer you know oh god can you imagine living in that house that girl don't want no prayer she don't want jesus i saw her you already got can you imagine the tension in the house with these two women sharing this one man and hagar gives abram something that sarai could not she gave him a child and that's what she was supposed to do That was her job that's what she was asked to do by his wife and there is a reason for that it is

hard in this western culture to understand this eastern tradition but it so happens that she burst him a child called icemail we often say ishmael but the correct pronunciation is actually i smell and she has this child to him called i smell and she has ice mail and icemail grows up and it's cool and it's fine and It's wonderful and everything is going just according to how sarah planned it because since she could not have a child and since they were getting old she wanted to be able to make sure that he had a child

and everything is going good she never understood when she made the choice that the time was going to come that god was going to bless her to conceive sometimes our impatience leads us to fallacies Because the lord doesn't move when we expect him to move in the way that we expect him to move in the time period that we have allotted him to move i hate to tell you this but god does not work on your time clock he works on his own time clock in his own good time dot god does not work according

to the trends of the time or the cultural expectations in which you are surrounded god moves when he gets ready to move And god wanted to get the glory out of this and in order to get the glory god had to wait until everybody was shut down her factory was shut down y'all know what i'm talking about his factory had cobwebs the bible said his body was good as dead and it ceased to be with her after the manner of women my grandmama would say she'd gone through the change when it was totally impossible she

get Night sweats and and waking up to bed is wet with sweat and all that kind of stuff mood changes and she's gone through all of that and it is now totally impossible for her to be able to conceive god says oh goody goody goody gonna get it now it's the time to do it i waited till you couldn't [Applause] i waited till you couldn't so you couldn't praise yourself for this i waited till it was impossible for you I waited till it was ridiculous i waited till all human efforts and biological equations had completely

been shut down so that it would have my signature on this miracle as long as you are able to do it on your own don't ask god to do anything you can do for yourself when it is impossible with men it is just right for god and when it's just right for god god moves into that position Of calling those things that are not as though they were somebody right now it's never too late for god to move i don't care if you're in the fourth stage of cancer i don't care if you're in the

eighth stage of cancer if god gets ready to raise you up he will raise you up i have seen life leave the body and the paramedics pronounce people dead and god wake them back up again y'all don't hear what i'm saying i mean back When we used to have church the old-time way god would wake them up again and shock the medicine called professionals and shock science and do the impossible and wake them up in their right mind because nobody is god but god and nobody can do the god types of things that god does

except god but sarai in her need to fulfill a promise that she was unable to fulfill has now gotten hagar who is an egyptian slave to be a surrogate mother and this Is the first biblical reference to a surrogate in the scriptures it may not be the first in history but it's the first one in scriptures and it had it came with a blessing and it came with the problem it came with years of tranquility but then after a while things that are built feliciously and things that are built erroneously and things that are built

on bad wisdom and bad advice eventually come back to bite you Oh i'm preaching i'm preaching good right now how many of you have ever made decisions that worked out good for a while and later on it came back to bite you and it's much easier and much more fun to get into trouble than it is to get out we pick up the text at a time with that which sarah never expected to happen that which she had laughed at that which she had said was impossible suddenly Happened and she was with child can you

imagine how happy she was to be a 99 years old and pregnant walking around at big bear and kroger's in the grocery store with her stomach all stuck out so yeah or how proud he was coming behind and talking about yeah that's right that's right on his cane that's right there don't don't let the cane fool you baby don't let the cane fool you don't let the cane Fool you and god has been good to me glory to god hallelujah can you imagine can you imagine testimony service when i think of the goodness come on

brothers y'all know what i'm talking about when i think of the goodness and all he's done for me my soul cried out hallelujah when people say that you don't know what the hallelujah about abraham was hallelujah because god had done it again He had resurrected that's all i'm gonna say about that he he had resurrected he had so resurrected abraham's body that abraham's body stays resurrected throughout the life of sarah and he marries again and continues to sire children in it way into his old age god hallelujah before there was cialis before there was viagra

before there was anything like that there was the holy ghost power that quickens that which was dead Now he had to he had to resurrect abraham's body and when abraham's dead body produced the seed and hit sarah's dead womb it quickened it and brought it back to life again and there's some significance in that because when jesus was to come later he would say i am the seed of abraham so he literally shot jesus into the womb of mary and it quickened it and brought it back to life and the old woman's belly started swelling

she started Getting a mask on her face and started vomiting because when jesus comes into a situation he will bring it to life again jesus never said i can resurrect he said i am the resurrection and the life he that believeth on me though he were dead yet shall he live now we got a problem because that which she had given up on just happened that which she thought she had timed out of just occurred and and see anytime somebody chooses you Based on a need they will only want you as long as the need

arises when the need arises the feeling changes come on you need to watch people who fall in love with you while you're afflicted because they're drawn to your pain and that's good as long as you're hurting but when you recover all of a sudden the pain was the only thing you had in common and when you recover all of a sudden They are jobless because they only wanted you as long as you were afflicted come on y'all don't hear what i'm saying and and sarah only wanted hagar as long as she couldn't but the problem

is now she can somebody shout now i can that's a game changer once i find out that i can do what i thought i couldn't do that changes who i want around me that changes what i need in my life that changes how i interact with people that changes my expectations that changes Everything around me because now i can type on the line now i can the thing that they said i'd never be able to do the thing they said i would never be able to have the places they thought i'd never be able to

go the degree they said i'd never be able to have somebody say now i can that's the power of this text the power of this text is that god has reversed it he has turned it around the tail has become the head that means god has Reversed the entire situation and what was impossible with men is now possible with god are you following what i'm saying and you you begin to wonder where where this idea originated with with sarai to take advantage of this egyptian slave as a surrogate and i began to study the code

of hammurabi when you study the code of hammurabi this is not a scripture this Is not a bible this is a historical understanding about language when you study the code of hammurabi you begin to understand that the code of hammurabi was developed in mesopotamia and it was some of the early writings that concern things like marriage it concerns the marriage of an attitude which is a priestess attached to a temple who is not allowed to bear children in this code these are some of the first laws that were ever Written in the code of hammurabi

and when you read about it it says her husband has the right to take a second wife but if she wishes to forestall this she can give her husband a slave in the world of near of ancient near east a slave woman could be seen as an incubator a kind of womb with legs now it is no mistake that the code of hammurabi was developed in mesopotamia And abraham and sarah came from mesopotamia the bible calls it er but the old testament er is the new reality of mesopotamia out of their old culture there is

this lingering idea that this is not a hebraistic law this is part of the code of hammurabi now let's go deeper into this in the code of hammurabi they use kunuia form clear form is a logo syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the ancient near East the script was in active use from the early bronze age until the beginning of the common era it kind of looks like hieroglyphics it's the kind of content that's that you would see in egypt it is named for the characteristic word shape impressions latin kunis which

form its signs that you had to draw in order to be able to write writing did not exist cuneiform was originally developed to write the sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia the modern day iraq along with egyptian hieroglyphics it is one of the earliest writing systems so we've got writing is growing and being developed at this time the ability to write the ability to translate verbal language into writing is something we shouldn't take for granted we must understand that there was a time that there was no language that could be written so History if you go

back far enough becomes oral more than written in the ancient antiquities of time we see etches and drawings on k on caves that begin the first dimensions to develop a written example of an oral expression the code of hammurabi is an example of that and up until recent years had never been discovered but archaeologists had dug down and found the code and in the code it kind of reinforces this idea Having come from the same place that abram came from and from the same place where sarah came from when god tells abram to leave thy

country and thy kindred he left his country and his kindred but no doubt his culture goes with him oh you didn't hear what i'm saying it is possible to leave your country and your kindred and still hold on to your culture and so even though he has left a Polytheistic uh uh form of religion an idolatrous form of religion and heard the voice of god jehovah call him out and call him out from his people and out from his country there's still a residual culture that affects his thinking and her thinking and backed in a

corner and shoved to the wall her old traditions start to manifest in her decisions that sounds a lot like us no that that even sounds a lot like the Children of israel who have been slaves for 400 years and they left egypt but egypt didn't lead them and when they got ready to build an image of what they thought god looked like they built an egyptian image because the influence of the egyptian culture they could not escape just because they crossed the red sea they left the country they left the people but they had trouble

divesting themselves of the culture how much of Your old culture is still lingering on you today shaping your value systems shaping your choices shaping your apparel i never will forget being in kenya and uh and we had doug wales out in kenya and and and and there were two tribes that had been fighting uh over water in kenya and one of the when we got ready to do a reconciliation service because we dug a well one of the tribes got up on stage And they started singing and they started swinging from side to side and

started clapping and they started singing i remember thinking so that's where we got this from see when you go back far enough some of your inclinations your proclivities didn't just start with you they are inate to where you came from and they travel down and they become organic and natural to you without you even being conscious of it that's why culture is Important to understand your culture so that you can separate your culture from your christ oh y'all don't hear what i'm saying to you and so it is understandable that all of all of this

is rooted in mesopotamia all of this comes out of the same region so her reasoning is a result of where she came from how much of your reasoning is a result of where you came from if you came from poverty how much of Your reasoning is affected from the poverty impoverished surroundings that you came from now you may not be in poverty any longer but your judgment may be being fed by the time that you were your values how you handle money how you handle resources there's a certain mentality that comes with poverty that that

tends to lean away from things like investment because you've been without so long that when you finally start having you don't Really know how to handle money and when you get people who don't have money some money the first thing they do is spend it and the second thing they do is spending and the third thing they do is spend it and the fourth thing they do is spend it and the fifth thing they do is spend it because they didn't come up in a house where they talked about investment they didn't come up in

a house where they talked about life insurance they didn't Come up in a house where they talked about annuities they didn't come up in an environment that gave them a strategy for the success they prayed for so it is possible to have a success that you can't handle oh you all hear what i'm saying how much of your behavior is a direct result of where you came from what you think about men what you think about marriage what you think about relationships what you think what is normal to you may be Affected by where you

came from if you were raised in a house where there was a lot of violence violence may be normal to you and if people are too nice to you you may irritate them on purpose to provoke a response that is familiar and then complain about what you provoked because that is normal to you or you might inflict punishment on somebody because that was the model that you came from and it affects how you express rage frustration aggravation it affects Everything about you based on where you came from now the bible says any man being christ

he is a new creature he is a new creature but you can still have old ways and be a new creator you ought to hear what i'm saying i i know you don't know anything about heaven old ways but you can have old ways and be a new creature and not even understand it it can drive you towards success it can make you an uh a workaholic it can cause you to do things That you wouldn't do because it's not what you're going to it's what you're running from what causes some people to be more

intense than other people because they're running away from something that they never want to see again which causes you not to have balance in your life because you're so busy trying to get away from what you think is horrific that you overdo what you're going to do because you were so affected by where You came from because you never want to see that happen again in your life if you can understand what i'm talking about hold your hand up wave at me make some sort of sign so you understand how sarah reverts back to this

ancient mesopotamian ideology and there seems to be some reference to it in scripture because even when god promised abraham to bless him he said i'll bless whatever is born in your house so the culture of the times Lends itself to creating the quagmire of this situation that has erupted in abraham's life in such a dimension that now we find ourselves in a situation it was fine at first somebody said it was fine at first say it again watch out for making decisions in the early stages of any situation because almost everything starts out fine at

first if marriages were as good as weddings Everybody in the room would be married it was fine at first oh when you first took the job everybody's so nice everybody treats me so good they're so kind they're so loving everything starts out fine at first that's why the bible said judge nothing before its time but judge the righteous judgment you got to be patient before you judge you can't say for sure somebody you just met who they are and how they are because you you may not Have met them yet you may have met their

representatives but over time they will drop their mask and show you who they really are it takes time i want you to understand that patience has to have its perfect work in your life it takes time to know people it takes time to know people it takes time to know organization it takes time to know yourself i'm going to go a step further you are still learning you Oh no bishop i'm 40 years old you are still learning you read my lips you are still learning you i'm 50 years old yeah you are still learning

you because life keeps changing and stages keep changing and you knew yourself your 20 year old self but you're not that anymore and you got to see how you react to 50 because who you are at 50 is not who you were at 20. that's why marriage is a miracle Because you pick somebody now for then when i got married i was 24 years old i didn't know who i would be by 64. i had no idea who who i would be at 64. and so it has to be it can't just be a roll

of the dice it has to be a god divine thing to pick somebody who can move with you and flow with you throughout asia it's the difference between having little kids and having kids who want the car keys that changes everything so don't write any books about parenting when you Got a five-year-old i for one will not be buying the book i don't want to read it if you have survived being having a child at best 30 i might want to talk to you but until you have survived adolescence aggravation frustration humiliation been fussed out

been cussed out been through trials and tribulations ran down to school on your lunch break got back to work late trying to understand things That are going on defending somebody that you know is guilty oh you're not going to say nothing to me it takes time don't write no book on parenting don't write no book on marriage if you've been married three years it takes time for you to figure out how to stay together through different stages it's a difference between a parent whose biggest problem is to make sure you brought the bottle and you

got the blankets and you got the Car seat in place from somebody whose kid just took the car i ain't gonna look at no particular person in case you're in here right now you gotta survive all of that to understand it's a difference between being married to somebody when they're young and you're laying on the beach and you got sand all over your body and your biggest job is to put some tan protection lotion on them and somebody who's going through menopause Or somebody who's going through midlife crisis and there he is with gray hair

and a red sports car with the top down and the music turned on and he's playing hip-hop you got to survive all these different stages and ages and twists and turns and it's not what you're running to it's what you're running [Music] from almost everybody i know who is Inordinately successful is running from something they put in long hours they work extra hard they work when other people say i'm going to take it easy you don't understand why you're driven you are driven by the thing behind you somebody got a getaway spirit in here right

now i got to get away i got to get away i don't want that to ever happen to me again i don't ever want to be that vulnerable i don't ever want to trust Anybody like that again i don't want to ever be dependent on anybody else again so the thing that drives you isn't it funny how bad things can drive you to good things [Applause] but if you're not careful it'll drive you so far that the good thing will go bad because it'll drive you over a cliff that you should have stopped at because

you're still running from ghosts where are my real people at i want to Talk to some people that want to keep it 100. you so busy trying to pick somebody that's not like your old boyfriend that you pick somebody he's not like your old boyfriend but he's you swapped the devil for the witch [Applause] your last one was too aggressive and this one is so passive he won't even go to work you fix the old problem but you created a new problem Because you are driven by where you came from do you hear what i'm

saying to you sarah is sarai is driven by where she came from and it leads and affects her decisions and it causes her to have fallacies and ultimately it seems to work out at first and and and hagar bursts a child for her call ishmael and ismail is called ajmel which means God will hear god will hear this egyptian woman who comes from an idolatrous background names the child and she is an egyptian woman who has now named the child i smell in reference to abram's god god will hear later on we will see where

she is out in the wilderness and she's about to die and the bible said that god heard The cry of the baby god will hear it's a prophetic name be careful what you let people call you be careful what you adapt to be careful what you let people call you because it has prophetic inferences to it little did she know when she named him god were here that that crowd that baby would lead to her deliverance because it wasn't so much her cry that god heard it was the cry of the child and god said

i heard the cry of your child and god were here i came To tell somebody tonight that god will hear you i don't care how far in the desert you are i tell you if you make your bed in hell god is there if you take the wings of the morning and ascend to the uttermost parts of the earth god is still there if you get behind the door and laugh god will hear if you murmur in your own head god will hear if you think in your own mind god will hear the bible says

that he is a discerner of the thoughts and the intentions of the Heart there is nothing that you think that god can't hear so don't sit there with your holy self and your nose up in the air trying to be important that impressed me because i didn't hear what you thought but god heard what you thought and if you aren't dirty and your life had been dirty in your mind god talk to me somebody god will hear there's none good but the father there's none righteous but the father no not one not the bishop not

the elder not the Butcher not the baker not the candlestick maker none of us none of us are that righteous if you get in our head we'll all lose our position [Applause] how many people in here are glad that your mind is not on a loud speaker you can't even trust your mind to be on a loudspeaker when you're in church cause you have to reel your thoughts in even in the house of god you have to cast down imaginations even in the Service of god you have to capture your thoughts even in the spirit

of god you can be worshipped in one minute and think something crazy the next and you don't even know where it came from and look around and wonder did anybody hear what you thought because if somebody next to you heard what you thought they wouldn't even ride home in the car with you i smell god we're here There is a prophetic power over this child even though he is born through a fallacy and a failed attempt a human effort to bring to pass the promise of god there is still a prophetic utterance over his life

god will hear just because you're not the one doesn't mean you're not a1 oh god i'm talking good tonight just because you're not the one doesn't mean that you're not a1 the problem with this generation that we're living in now Everybody wants to be the one out of eight billion people on the planet you want to be the one so you don't mind who you step on who you step over who you step across cause you think there's only room in god's plan for one person but i came to serve notice on you god has

a plan for your life you might not be the one but you are a one you are the apple of his eye you are chosen of the lord god has a destiny for you to fulfill and stop fighting over one chair because god Has other sheep that are also of this foe them also must he bring and you don't have a franchise on the favor in the hand of god i smell god will hear ice ice ice ice in the old testament it talks about eyeshadow i will call thy name no more balaam but i

shall call it isa that's a converting moment when the Prophet married the prostitute she changed the name from baal to aisha she had found i shall ishmael isaac all of these are references and utterances that have god in it later sarah will have isaac meaning isaac i god has made me to laugh i smell god will hear i will call thy name i shy god dwells amongst us God is in it all i say god is in it all ismail means god will hear look at genesis 21 18 through 21 for just a minute genesis

chapter 21 verse 18 through 21. am i teaching good tonight this is what god says about israel up lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand for i will make him into a great nation then god opened her eyes and she saw a whale of water and she went and filled The skin with water and gave the boy a drink god is taking care of abraham's mistake in the wilderness oh somebody ought to shout me down right now because you made a mistake and you think god doesn't care about it but god

will take care of your mistakes as well as your miracle and god cared for ismail and wouldn't let him die in the wilderness and god was with the boy and he grew up he lived in the wilderness And became an expert with the bowl he lived in the wilderness of paran and his mother took a wife for him from the land of egypt history will teach us that icemale will go on to have 12 sons he will have 12 sons isaac is the promised seed he will only have two jacob and esau but his abraham's

grandson jacob will have 12 sons And those 12 sons will become the 12 tribes of israel look at look at abraham's tree the branch on one side is coming up with hagar's ice male and on the other hand something just sprouted out of the dead room of sarah called isaac and another branch is growing later on when sarah is dead he will marry katera and another branch will come out no wonder god said you will be the father of many You will be the father of many you will be the father of many many nations

came out of the loins of one man and he was significant to god and his life is just reaching the apex of significance at a hundred years old give yourself some time calm down quiet yourself both sons were circumcised look at genesis 17 10-14 both sons were circumcised Circumcision was a covenant that god made with abraham and abram and his seed as a sign of the covenant it is not the covenant it is the sign of the covenant so i smell has the sign of the covenant just like isaac does this is my covenant which

you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you every male among you shall be circumcised you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins and it shall be a sign of The covenant between me and you 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 money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised so shall my

covenant be in your flesh and everlasting covenant Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people he has broken my covenant are you with me it's amazing to me when we pick up the text we're dealing with us with a circumcised isaac at eight days old and an ishmael who has been circumcised and ultimately Uh sarah is going to ask him to put the bondwoman out and her son which is a circumcision the removal of ishmael is as much a circumcision as the cutting of

his flesh this whole text is circumcision are you hearing what i'm saying to you in every case we are seeing flesh being cut away and cast off put out the bond woman and her son the circumcision in the family Every male child should be circumcised there's circumcision in the body and god is into circumcision what have you cut off lately cutting off certain things certain people certain situations is not the covenant but it's the sign of the covenant this is an equal opportunity chance male and female we all got some cutting to do write that

down we all got some cutting to do in order for us to receive the Promise of god we've all got some cutting to do and we've all got some bleeding to do and we've all got some pain to bear because because cutting off that which you are connected to is painful so in our texts there is pain there is a party and then there is a pain in our text language is growing genealogies are growing Nations are growing and god is pruning there is a continual ongoing pruning in your life that does not stop it

is highly unlikely to live a life void of poor judgment or fallacies that's what i want you to see the second thing i want you to see is that god's grace is broad enough to offer a plan for your fallacy while his Greatest providence rests on your faithfulness i'm telling you that god can get the glory out of your humanity as well as your holiness god said i'm gonna make a great nation out of ice mail he's not the one but he's still a one and i'm going to make a great nation out of ice

mail and that nation today is called arabs And the arabs are descendants of ishmael and they have become a great nation and a warring people and god bless them to survive to this day and yet they were not the one but they were still a1 you've got to make peace with your fallacies so that you can walk into your faith and your destiny a separation is often required when your Fallacies mock your faithfulness there is a rumbling in this house because for a while your fallacies and your faithfulness can live together under the same roof

but eventually your fallacies will begin to mock your faith and this is what's happening in this text they were cool they were having a party ishmael isaac has been weaned abraham Throws a party they were all having a good time to survive with sarah looked out the window and she saw her mistake mocking her miracle i wonder how many people in this room have had your mistakes mock your miracle oh it's getting quiet in here as long as i'm looking at isaac everything is fine but you look out the Window and you know that ismail

is making fun of isaac that ismail is making fun of isaac and it's all in your house anytime you have inconsistencies eventually one will mark the other and at some point along life's journey you got to put one of them out in order to be whole in order to have peace In order to have tranquility in order to have unity there comes a point that something that is mocking something that god has promised you has got to go that's what's happening in this text the the jesus says of his father he says i am the

vine he are the branches in in john 8 chapter 1 and my father is the husbandman or he is the vine dresser or he is the gardener and there is nobody in that text that Doesn't get cut every branch in me that beareth not fruit i cut it away every branch in me that beareth fruit i cut it that it might bring forth more fruit no branch escape the cut there's not a person in this room that can escape god's knife there's not a person in this room that won't have party one moment and pain

the necks do you hear what i'm saying How could this switch from one verse to the other they're having a party they're having a celebration isaac is weaned until sarah looks out the window and she begins to see the mockery in her own life this is the catalyst of change when you confront what is mocking your destiny the real lesson here is the promotion of patience it is it is understanding that letting Go of your fallacies is painful and problematic but it is also the real lesson here is the promotion of patients if sarah had

only waited she wouldn't have had to deal with this fallacy now abraham is in a crisis he is in a crisis because now his wife has asked him to put out his son his son who he knows not the son he just had the son he's grown up with he wants him to cast out she wants him to cast Out the bomb woman and her son and abraham ain't hearing it he's not hearing it he's not hearing it and an argument has broken out in the house because abraham told sarah you must be tripping he

wouldn't have been in the house if is this what i said this is jake's version of the bible he wouldn't have been up in this house in the first Place if your mouth hadn't made this decision to bring him in now you're going to turn around and change your mind in the middle of the story it's a good argument it's a true argument but it's not right oh god can i go deeper it can be true and not be right it is true that sarah sarah is reversing her own idea it is true but it's

not right how do you Know it's not right because god said hearken unto the voice of thy wife sarah which i have given you sarah is right but the problem is they are asking abraham who has waited until he was a hundred to have a child while all of his brothers and all of his family and all of his kin people are having children he has nothing to show for a hundred years and you know how it is when you get Something after not having something for a long time and now they want to take

it from you now you're ready to you come [Music] because when you've waited a long time to get something and now you got to give it up it is difficult it is painful it is hard And it takes faith it took faith for abraham to submit to the voice of god to hearken unto the voice of a woman who got him in the mess in the first place now y'all know you will change your mind can you feel the tension in this text can you feel the marital discord in this text abraham is the father

of faith and he's having trouble in his marriage because He is sick of sarah this is the part of the bible that we don't teach these are our spiritual parents our covenant parents the patriarchs of all that we embrace as faith are having marital problems they're having a fight they went from a feast to a fight from a party to pain but they still stay together [Applause] Can you stay with somebody that you have a right to leave oh y'all ain't gonna talk to me let me go back home y'all not ready to talk to

me i i i can imagine what's going on online y'all are not ready to can you stay on a job that you have a right to quit [Music] can you stay because god put you there can you stay because you're called there can you stay because your destiny is There can you work it out because god is about to do something amazing in your life is there ever a time in your life that god gets bigger than your feelings oh y'all not gonna talk to me let me try to is there ever a time in

your life that god gets bigger than your fear i hear you dance i hear you shout i hear you speaking time but the moment something gets on your nerves you are out of there abraham is standing with a woman whose Advice has created a problem and her cure has created pain abraham who didn't flinch at cutting the foreskin off of his penis is going crazy about putting away his son men back me up i have never had a day in my life that i thought [Applause] you cut my fingernails or something like That you cut

my toenail you cut my hair don't you bring that knife over there because i'm not hearing that cause that's gonna hurt abraham didn't flinch at that but at putting away his son now we got a problem but abraham's problem was also abraham's practice y'all ain't ready for me tonight abraham's problem was also abraham's practice God allowed him he said hearken unto the voice of thy wife i want you to get used to giving up your son stay with me because by the time we get to genesis 22 when god says take now thy son thy

only son isaac to the mountain to offer it up it has become easier for abraham to give up isaac than it was for him to give up ishmael he said i've been through this before and if god took care of ishmael god will Take care of isaac so now he takes isaac to the mountain and he doesn't stagger at the promises of god because the promise led the problem led to the promise talk to me a minute in here talk to me a minute in here abraham said i'm used to cutting off stuff i cut

off my flesh i cut off my ishmael and if you ask me for isaac you can have him too and he told his servants me and the lad are going yonder to worship but some kind of way god is going to get us out Of this if he took care of israel he'll take care of isaac i survived the cutting of my flesh i survived the cutting of my first son and i'll survive the cutting of well y'all don't hear me daddy i see the knife and daddy i see the wood but where is the

sacrifice don't worry about it boy god himself shall provide the sacrifice your faith comes out of your experience with god and little by little abraham is growing up [Applause] he's growing up through the things he's suffered he is learning obedience through the things he suffered he's learning endurance through the things that he suffered and by the time we get to the 22nd chapter which is just another chapter away abraham has gotten good at saying yes to god even when it hurts is there anybody in here that's gotten better at saying yes to god even when

it hurts or is god Just a god of your convenience and a god of your good times and a god when things are working out and a god when you agree with him you say yes but when it draws blood you back away that's why the book of hebrews said you have not yet resisted on the blood you've got to be god's child even when it causes you pain even when it draws blood even when it hurts your feelings the promises of god are sure the promises of god Are sure he will say surely blessings

i will bless see and multiply i will multiply thee the promises of god are sure say it with me the promises of said again say it again now that's praise that's praise when you compliment god's character when you brag on his integrity when you trust him in uncertainty when you praise him in the middle of pain When you give him the sacrifice of pray when you believe him even when you're hurt when you believe him even when you're frustrated when you believe him even when it doesn't feel good when you believe him even when you're

living in a situation that is below what you want it to be when you believe god even when your flesh is saying leave this crazy woman and walk out the door and i'm not talking about hagar i'm talking about sarah i'm sick of her and her bad advice Cause now she wants to hurt me again and yet god said wait wait go back and hearken to the voice of thy wife the woman is right i want you to practice giving up your son your problem is your practice can i go deeper i was they gave

me my first church it was in montgomery west virginia at that time and i think even now montgomery had One red light in the whole town so you know how big that was you blink and you were out of montgomery and i had to drive about an hour or so to even get to the church and i was working a full-time job and it wasn't a church it was a building and the building wasn't the church it was a hole in the wall and i was preaching my heart out and preaching sunday mornings and sunday

night And teaching wednesday night bible class and had to be at work at seven in the morning and the church was not growing and the church was not developing and i was teaching everything i knew i was teaching on the tabernacle ever since i was a teenager i was teaching moses tabernacle the tabernacle of david the temple of solomon i was teaching eschatology i was teaching christology i was teaching everything i knew how to Teach to about five old ladies and two little kids and a big service was 40 people and if we hit 100

it would have blown our mind we had to put out chairs and i thought god eventually it took me a while because at first i was grateful to just be there at all but eventually i got tired of preaching to a handful of people and people were making fun and they were laughing at me and they were Calling me the boy preacher i didn't realize that my problem was my practice what you may be wrestling right now it may only be preparation for what god is about to do in your life and stop being so

frustrated because it's not working out this is not the recital it's just a rehearsal and you know the choir don't look like the choir when they come to rehearsal they don't have on the rose when they Come to rehearsal they don't have their hair done and their black dress with the pearls around the neck when they come to rehearsal and so don't be so upset about what you're going through your problem is your practice let me prove it to you in scripture the bible said if you can be faithful over a few things i will

make you ruler over many and so i was faithful for 10 years Preaching to less than 100 people to prove to god that i would preach even when the numbers were down i couldn't even imagine preaching in a building like this i couldn't even imagine preaching to the crowds that i had preached too late later i would preach to a million people in uhuru park in the middle of kenya but at that time i couldn't get a hundred but i was practicing and if you're faithful over a few things god will make You rule over

many i don't know who i'm preaching to right now your business might be failing you might be struggling to keep the doors open but don't you doubt the promises of god weeping may endure for a night but joy is coming in the morning your problem is practice a few more quick points and i'm done god's promises transcend your circumstances all we pray about nowadays is our Circumstances give me our lord how sick it is i died i don't feel good they have my feelings they don't respect me get me out get me out and god

has given you a promise and all you pray about is the circumstance the second thing i want you to get out of the class tonight is that walking with god often includes contradictions faith on one hand fallacies or another promises on this side problems on that side the greater the promise The greater the problems new levels new devils if you cannot run with the footmen how shall ye contend with the horses so god has put you in a foot race and you ready to faint and yet you told me you could outrun the herd how

you going out run the herd and you can't outrun the footmen i'm telling you that god will test you Before he promotes you i'm telling you that he put moses in the desert and let him practice his miracles with nobody watching so that when moses got before pharaoh he was good at his tricks he said let me show you something you think your magicians are bad let me show you something that magician threw down their rod it turned into a snake he threw down his rod it turned into a snake and ran their snakes off

he picked up the snake It turned into a rod again he stuck his hand into his bosom it came out with leprosy he stuck it in again it got healed he poured out water it turned to blood but moses had been practicing tonight we're talking about spiritual maturity creates patience in you that you are willing to wait and wade through contradictions removing the contradiction takes as much faith As receiving the promise it took faith for abraham to do what he did not want to do and put out his son and by the way i believe

that abraham was born to the bondwoman come on talk to me somebody that this is not just a laboratory exchange of fluids done in a test tube abraham has spent some time with hagar and you know about pillar talk And you should never talk about what you want to be and what you would do with your life and how you grew up where you came from and now this is a ripping of his flesh and it is most painful because he's born to the bottom one which is part of the reason sarah sarah wants her

out of there because i was foolishness enough to believe that she could incubate my baby and not my man That's stupid and now they're in a situation where abraham has to have faith to cut away his flesh again life is a series of losses no shouting tonight life is a series of losses in order to gain you got to lose in order to walk you had to fall in order to be healed you have to be Sick in order to prosper you got to go through pain for every ying there is a yang for every

north there is a south for every east there is a west nobody gets away without bleeding everybody is going to have some tears before this life is over stop being jealous of people who look like they haven't been through anything there is no way for you to have everything and not go through anything the only way you Can have anything is to go through other things you are not the only one in here bleeding you are not the only one in here lonely you are not the only one in here sore you are not the

only one in here who has suffered loss if your savior suffered loss this spiritual maturity requires that you face with the same grace the loss as you do the win One moment he's partying and the next moment he's in pain one moment he's happy and the next moment he's in an argument ain't that just like life one text can take the smile off of your face one phone call and you would have to leave the room one incident could change everything in your life god is a righteous judge god is merciful if we repent god

knows how to fix our fallacies and Yet build our faith there are people in here who have made some bad choices but god wants to fix them stress often comes when our lives are too complicated and in order to detox from the complication you gotta let some things go what are you willing to send away to bring peace to your life This deep there's too much stuff going on under the same roof which creates stress and depression paul said i was pressed above my measure and beyond strength so much so that i despaired of life

itself while i was in asia he left some things are too much for you you have got to develop the ability to save when things are enough Enough is enough something has got to go because my destiny is being mocked by my history as i close tonight i'm talking about spiritual maturity and i'm telling you that while abraham's tree of nations was growing abraham and his faith was growing at the same time that ishmael was growing isaac was also growing And we are also growing and you know you're growing as you deal with the inconsistencies

of faith and fallacies and maintain the integrity of staying through it all as i closed tonight i was watching uh this man he he was paralyzed he had some sort of disease and the only thing he could move Was his lips and he had to talk through a computer and he was going to die and they said when when when you start to get really really down toward the end do do you want us to resuscitate you he said yes and i thought to myself why would you want to be resuscitated nothing works nothing moves

nothing is going your way you can't go To the beach you can't go to the party you can't make love you can't have fun why would you want to stay he said life is so precious that i want to experience the whole thing i will take no shortcuts every breath he gives me [Music] i'll take it because life is the most precious thing I have ever known and he talks so much about the preciousness of life that i dropped my head because here i am standing on two good legs with two good feet and a

strong body and a reasonable portion of health and strength clothed in my right mind and this man who can't move a muscle or turn his head or or chew his own food This man who is sucking his food through a straw still thinks life is precious and suddenly i realized he was more mature than i was he had learned to value what i am taking for granted spiritual maturity will stop you from leaving when things get tough abraham could have left sarah ran off with hagar And changed the course of destiny but god had a

plan for him that required that he endure pain sometimes and pleasure sometimes and disagreements sometimes and inconsistency sometimes i'm not saying to stay in a situation where you're being abused and being raped and being molested and all that kind of crazy stuff but i'm talking about leaving over burnt toast and leaving Because she don't he lost his job and leaving because she can't cook it leaving because they get on your nerves you are you're not worshiping god you're worshiping you our ancestors made dinner out of yams they had no refrigerator they covered the yams with

leaves and fed the neighborhood my grandmother raised 23 children off of yams and peas And greens and you're sitting in air conditioning saying i can't make it and yet you are filled with the holy ghost and i love the way we dance and i love the way we shout and i love the way we praise god but i'm wondering when are we going to grow up up means that you glory in tribulation because tribulation work is patience Patience patience and patience experience and experience hope but we are in the generation of i want it now

and i want it fast and i want it quick or i quit [Music] you cannot become the father of many nations until you learn how to stand Until your branches grow to their full capacity let's stand to our feet tonight there may be somebody were you blessed tonight i don't know why god had me teach this but somebody in here does i don't know who needs this but somebody in here did it maybe somebody in our virtual community that has experienced a touch of the holy spirit right now And you're tired and you're annoyed and

you're frustrated and you want to walk away and maybe god sent this word to you about spiritual maturity so you could manage your faith and your fallacies and understand that this your problem is your practice by the time i got to dallas i was ready to practice the pastor because being in west virginia raised me i could stand tribulation i could stand Storms things that would have made other people walk away from this ministry in this city i passed through it like it wasn't nothing because he had trained me in the desert he had called

me in the wilderness he had taught me how to preach to pain and preach through turmoil [Music] you