Climbing Out of Pain and Disappointment | feat. Pastor Havilah Cunnington

Hello, friends and family. So glad that you are here for our Wednesday night sermon right here on YouTube, Facebook Live. However you joined us, I'm so glad that you're here. I have a special surprise for you tonight. One of my friends, Pastor Havilah Cunnington, who is also one of my women's conference speakers. You're going to get a message from her tonight just to whet your appetite for what the unique conference has in store. So sit back, call somebody. It's going to be so good. I believe it's going to be life changing. So don't move.

It is an honor to be with you tonight. I am Havilah Cunnington and it's already been a good night. Yeah. How many of you are left over from the youth conference that are still here from our awakening? Awesome. Okay, great. How many of you got. It was amazing. I got to see so many reports from that and I'm so proud of Pastor Tom and the team that pulled that off. Incredible, incredible things. And we just pray that every heart stays awakened. Every life is changed. And I just think about my own encounters at youth camps and conferences and I had so many prophetic moments that changed me forever. And it was such a big deal. How many of you had those moments that were so life changing. And I believe God really speaks to us in moments like that. So I'm proud of our team. And it's good to be here. It's good to be home. My husband and I oversee and director. We're the directors of moral revolution here. So we oversee the sex ministry. Cause we're having it. And don't be jealous. I love you, honey. And so my husband is here. I have two kids in the. Two boys that are here and then two that are in. In the. They're being babysat and. And so it's good to be back. We actually have been on the road. We were in Colorado and then we've been on Sacramento and. And different places. Anybody from Colorado that are here? All right. It's a good place to be. There is. It's God's country there. I really do feel like God's about to move in Colorado. It does have something that's there besides hunting. I know that you guys have that thing going for you and fishing, but it really does have. There's something really special going on there. So I definitely want to attest to that. But anyways, pull out your Bibles if you will, to the book of James. It's good to have. My parents are here in the house as well. I love them always. Partially because they gave me birth and I have to. And partially. No, I'm teasing. And partially because they are godly. They love the Lord and they've raised me up in the things of the Lord which have great value. I'm glad that five of us believe that has great value. So tonight my message is a unique message. And my message is entitled Climbing out of Pain and Disappointment. And I think that maybe a little bit of what we prayed for at the end of worship and where we headed in worship had a prophetic grace because of what we're gonna hit on tonight. And my thought a little bit and what we have done for the last 20. I actually celebrate 20 years of ministry this year. And my thought often is that people love the Lord. They wanna do what's in their heart to do. They really want to encounter his presence. But when they come against disappointment and pain, they don't quite know what to do with it. When they believe for things, they hope for things. They trust that God will do something and he doesn't necessarily do what they would hope that he would do. They don't know how to process it. And oftentimes they run from communities of the church. They run from even God himself. They don't. They can't sing songs like what a Good, Good Father because it's painful. And I think if we don't quite know how to deal with disappointment and pain, we won't last long. I don't think we will have longevity. Because the Bible says that out of the heart our life happens. And if we don't know how to manage our hearts well, then we don't know how to manage our life well. And no one can pull you out of pain. No one can pull you out of disappointment. There really is an internal work of the Holy Spirit that has to happen. And no one knows your story. No one knows what happened to you. No one knows what was said to you. No one knows the memories that happened to you. No one knows exactly how you're managing internally, whether there was something that was a big deal on paper or whether it was a little deal on paper. No one quite knows what's happening on the inside of you. And so no one knows how you're living it out. And so oftentimes we can fake it until we don't make it anymore. And we will many times disappear in disappointment and pain. And what I would like to see is that we learn to live in a way that is whole body, soul, spirit, that we learn to go after these Areas of our hearts that we would climb out of pits of pain, if you will, and learn to grow. And I believe tonight that I have an anointed word and that I say that in faith. I believe that I'm anointed to teach you how to get out of pain. And I believe that the Holy Spirit has given me some divine direction to lead you out of pain and disappointment. That you will not the next year like you have, and the things that have kept you will not keep you anymore. And that the spirit of God is gonna come in on the inside of you and work with you to co labor in your life to teach you how to do this. And the book of James gives us some major insight into this reality. It shows us that we are not alone in this. That no matter how isolated you feel in your story, no matter how isolated you feel in your pain or disappointment or C R A P, there is something that's happening. That the truth is we're all going to face things. And so the book of James tells us this and it teaches us this very, very clearly. It says this in verse 2. It says, consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith produces what? Perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. Let's pray. God help. Amen. The Bible says that all of us will face trials and tribulations. We will all face pain. We will all face disappointment. And then it has the audacity, it has the boldness to say that the pain and trials and tribulations are going to make our faith complete, which I think sounds totally ridiculous until we begin to understand really what God had in store all along. And I think we're going to learn a little bit about this. Turn to Genesis chapter 37 and we're going to kind of walk this through. And I promise that you're going to get a lot out of this. Genesis chapter 37 talks more about this story, explains the story of Joseph. It explains about this young boy who is his father's favorite. Now I have a house full of boys. Is anybody from a house full of boys? We don't buy a lot of toilet paper, but we buy a lot of band aids. Do you know what I mean? Okay, Come on, don't look so spiritual. You're like. That doesn't. Come on, relax, all right? We have a lot of boys. Every time we hear these stories in the Bible, I can just imagine our house I can imagine our boys. I can imagine brothers. I can imagine beatings. I can imagine underwear. I can imagine capes, lightsabers. I can imagine just a lot of things that are sometimes good and sometimes a little bloody. But I can imagine it all. And I can imagine, imagine this father has this son and he is his dad's favorite. I mean, this Joseph comes out and he is his dad's favorite. Now I don't like the fact that he's his dad's favorite. I don't like the fact that his dad picks him as a favorite. But somehow Joseph comes out and all of a sudden he is his dad's favorite. Everybody knows it. And let me just say this, which has nothing to do with this message. If you flaunt your favor, you will stir up strife. That was so good. I'm going to say it again. If you flaunt your favor, you will stir up strife. And so Joseph had no maturity to realize that the people around him were seeing a gift on his life. And so he was flaunting his favor. He was shoving it in his family's face. He was using his gift and everybody was getting very annoyed by it. Listen, I don't care how gifted and how graced you are, if you can't carry it with humility, nobody wants to hear it or not for very long. And so sometimes you might be the smartest person in the room, but if you're the only one cheering yourself on, it's short lived. And it does stir up strife. And it causes people to not want to hear what you have to say, even if you're right. And so there's a part of this story where Joseph comes in and his brothers are. They're so angry, there's such a spirit of strife that they get to a point where they want to kill him. They're so angry. And I'm telling you that's this is like every normal, you know, like this isn't just a story out of a fairy tale book. This is real life. And they want to kill him. And we kind of jump right to chapter 37, verse 18. And it says here they saw him coming at a distance. And the brothers have gathered together and it says, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him. And then one of them says this, here comes that dreamer. I think it's interesting that he was labeled even as a young man. How many of us have been labeled even before we knew we could be labeled? How many of us have had things said about us before we even knew they were said about us. And then he says this. And they said to each other, come now, let's kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns. And let's say a ferocious animal devoured him. And then. Listen, listen. You can hear it out of their hearts. And then we'll see what comes of his dreams. And then we'll see what comes of his dreams. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the ornate robe that he was wearing. And they took him and threw him into the cistern. And the cistern was empty, and there was no water in it. They threw him into a pit. They threw Joseph into a pit. They said, here comes a dreamer. They labeled him and they threw him in. Well before he was of age. Well before he knew what was going on. And the reality is lives. Listen. Just listen to me for a second. This is very important. Many of us will land in pits of pain well before we reach adulthood. Many of us will land in cisterns, places of pain and darkness well before we reach adulthood. And we don't know what's happening. But we will have to manage pain. We will have to manage fear. We will have to manage. And I say manage because we want to be delivered from it. But in the beginning, we're going to have to go into places. Where we don't know what's going going on. We didn't know that this was going to happen. And we come to a place where things happen to us well before we knew it was going to happen, well before we knew we were of age where we could fight back. You see, there are four ways we land in pain well before we reach adulthood. Just tell me if this sounds familiar. The first way we land in pain oftentimes is we land simply because of childhood. We don't get to pick our moms and dads. We don't get to pick. If our mom was too young to have us, we don't get to pick. If our dad didn't want to be with us, we don't get to pick. If our mom was selfish and she wanted it about her, we don't get to pick. If there was abuse in the home, we don't get to pick. If the environment they gave us up and they didn't even want us, we don't get to pick. And. And so oftentimes we're already trying to survive. Early on, many of us are like Joseph's. We. Early on, we didn't want to be a favorite. We didn't know this was Gonna happen. But we land in pain. We already are surviving. We already are fighting. We already are in a place at a young age, and we are in a pit of pain before we even reach adulthood, before we even come to church, before we ever sing a song.

Good.

Good. Father. We're in a place where we don't know what's going on. Second place we often end up is our personality. Don't look around. And personality, I mean, you actually might have had a very abrasive personality growing up. You might have been unique. You might have had a different uniqueness to growing up. You might have had a different sense of humor. You actually might have had a high intellect in your home, and your family didn't have a high intellect. And you weren't sure. You just didn't fit in. Maybe you were one that you just, you know, everybody, your family wanted a girl and you were the boy, or maybe they wanted the opposite or, you know, or whatever it was. But oftentimes our personality can alienate us. We're growing up in a school. We weren't accepted or whatever it was. And we oftentimes can be in pain because we don't quite fit in. Now, listen, this is very important that we identify these areas because we're gonna talk about walking out of pain and disappointment. If we don't know where the pain comes from, we won't be able walk out. And so oftentimes, our personality, we may. You know, I remember I grew up and I had a twin sister, and she was the lion, the lamb, and I was the lion. Well, that sounds really great. Until people are like, you're the loud one. We always see her first, and we always hear you first. Well, that's funny until you've heard it 25,000 times. And eventually you begin to resent the fact that you're. You have volume. You begin to resent the fact that you're not like the quiet, cute girls, you know, that don't talk. You begin to resent the fact that maybe you're not like everybody else. And so you have to recognize that pain and go, wait a minute. Something's not right. Another area that we land oftentimes is relationships. It's not maybe our families, but it's other people. It's coaches. It's junior high. Can we just get free from junior high? Amen. Come on. Someone just got free in the back. They're weeping. Come on. Right? People in our relationship, someone said something to us. Someone ridiculed us. They mocked us. I remember there was one time When I went to camp, and I remember this girl and I went into one of the cabins and we were talking, and we were talking about one of the girls who was three years older than us that hadn't developed yet, which was not very nice of us. But we were in there, we were talking about this girl. She's 15. She hasn't developed yet. We can't believe it. And all of a sudden, she walked out of the closet getting dressed, and she had heard everything we had said. And I still have pain thinking about what we had said about that girl in that closet. And she walked out and said, I heard everything you said. Is there anything else you'd like to say? And we apologized, we cried, we did everything we could. But relational pain. I know we caused her that day pain. Thirdly, oftentimes it's physical pain. Some of us dealt with physical issues. We grew up. We had physical issues. You know, I tell my story often. I had learning issues. I did not. I wasn't a good reader. I didn't have good comprehension. I couldn't read my own handwriting. And I wasn't going to medical school. That was an issue. And I, you know, I wasn't. I wasn't good at all of that. That was an issue for me. It made me different than everybody else around me. And when you are in high school and junior high, you want to fit in. You want to slip in. You don't want to be different. You don't want anyone to recognize that you are different. And the fact that you have to spend five, six years being different isn't fun. And so realizing that, that's pain. And so Joseph has the same story, and he ends up in a dark place. You know, I love what's often said in our environment, but pain has a voice. And the voice says, do whatever it takes to make it stop now. And if we don't recognize that in our own. Come on, in our own makeup, we will do things like look at porn every night to get rid of pain. We will go and hang out with the wrong people every night to numb pain. We will. We will do whatever it takes to just try to find some solace and try to find some. Go what's wrong? Because there's undealt with pain. And we will try to get real, rid ourselves of pain. And we have to realize that. Listen. The Bible says through trials and tribulations, we will have a complete faith. But oftentimes. Listen, listen. Tell me if this sounds familiar. Oftentimes when we are in pain and heartache we don't always get delivered at the altar call.

That's so mean.

How many of you have experienced that? Come on. Have you ever been desperate? God, I need something right now. I'm coming. Give me the prophetic word and the person next to you gets the prophetic word and you're like, God. I was right. I wore. I did everything I wanted the healing. And the person who wasn't even there got the healing. They were watching Bethel tv. And I drove. I drove three hours and sat in the room. Come on. The person who wasn't even cute got married. Come on. Come on. Yeah, I know you're not laughing because it's you. No, listen. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know that part of you that you go and you go, I want the encounter and it doesn't happen. And this is what James Chapter One is giving us. Listen, listen. This is so important. James, Chapter One gives us hope. It says this so clearly. You see, James Chapter One says that when you persevere, you build faith. Because oftentimes God will not meet you at that moment. Because God doesn't want to meet you at the moment of crisis at that altar call. Because he doesn't want to build a moment where you have to get to the same place again. So he will build a history of digging you out at 1am in the morning when you get on your face in your bedroom way more. Then he'll meet you when you drive somewhere and go to an altar call. Listen. Because he wants to put tools in your hand so you grow up in God and you're not dependent upon an environment. And so God. Listen. This is so important for our generation because we are so experiential and we want God to do something right now. We want. Come on, give it. Give me, give me, give me, give me. Come on, do something right now. And God's going, listen and tell. Listen, this is so. Okay, here. Let me just break it down for you like this. There are two types of people in the world. There are very, very cute pregnant women. And there are us. Come on. There are adorable little basketball women, and then there are us. Can anybody just wave at me? Who are the us in the room? Right? So I remember the first time I got pregnant. The only reason I knew I was pregnant is because my face told me. Is anybody like that? Like, my face just. I was like, I'm pregnant. My face told me. You know, it was like ba, bam, like right there. And when I got pregnant with Ben, I thought it would be really Glamorous. You know, they have these beautiful pictures of pregnant women. And don't worry, I know I'm a girl preaching like, is this gonna be a girl thing? It's okay. Calm down. And that's how you got here. It's okay. That's how you got here. It's all right. And so I remember when I first got pregnant, I gained, I think, 40, I don't know, probably 40 pounds. Maybe 50. Well, who's counting? And the bigger I got, the months that went on, the more pillows we added to the bed. Every month we added a pillow. And I finally went out and bought this pillow. It was a body pillow. We named him Philippe Phillipe came into bed with us. And so I would. I would. I was. I got to the point where I had such bad heartburn. Does anybody have really bad heartburn? I would go to Costco and I would buy the. The family size heartburn medicine. It's the Zantac. You know, the 150 pills. I pop two of them. You're only supposed to have one. I would pop two of them. I would walk to my fridge in my moo moo. If you don't know what a muumu is, it's a piece of clothing that has no elastic. That's the goal. No elastic on your body. My hair was pulled back, and I would walk to my fridge, I would pop my pills and I would walk to my fridge, and I had my Mylanta in the fridge. Because you have to have cold Mylanta. You can't have warm Mylanta. Does anybody have Mylanta? You know what I'm talking. It's gotta be cold. Cold. And I would walk with my big belly, my beautiful, beautiful belly. Don't laugh. And I would walk and I would take my swig of my Lanta and I would get into bed with my seven pillows and Philippe and I would have one, like three, two, three. And pretty soon there was a point in my eight months of pregnancy. Ben decided to have a talk with me, you know, as every husband does. You know, he had been thinking about it and wined and dined me that night with pot pies and pizza and. Cause there was a point when I would actually call in pot pies to claim jumpers, and I would make him go in and get it. And so anyway, he said to me, you know, I've been thinking about it and I'm just curious, do I need to be in the bed with you, or do you think I could sleep in the guest room? Because it doesn't really feel like I can fit. You can't say that to a pregnant woman. I said, there is room for all of us because we were all there in the beginning. We're all going to be there at the the end. You, me and Philippe. We're gonna do this together. Ben was very gracious. So we ended up having a child. And so it was not glamorous. It wasn't glamorous. My pregnancy was not glamorous. Did I say that? And it got to a point where when I got pregnant, every time, which, you know, every time we would hug, I would get pregnant. We had four babies in five years. So you can imagine. Hugs, kisses, Jacuzzis. And so we. So anyway, we ended up getting pregnant. And there was a point where we just realized that we had this amount of time that we were gonna have to power through. Actually, he was going to have to power through more than me, but. But this was what it was going to look like. Like we were going to have to do this. I was not going to be the glamorous basketball mama. I was going to be the mumu wearing Mylanta, swigging seven pillow girl in the bed waiting for you at night to turn the TV on. That was me. And that was okay, you know, but there was a point where we realized, listen, listen. When I had my son, our son, they were mine for a little bit. When we held our first boys, Judah and Hudson, Grayson and Beckham, there was such a moment of pure joy. I mean, there was something that I felt when I held our boys. I felt like nothing compared to the whole world. Everything was a tinge of. Could there be any disappointment? Not with a child. It was so beautiful. When we held our sons. I mean, the whole world stopped. And it was like, this baby is mine. And I don't care whatever the world is doing, I don't care if there is a world war, you know, three going like, this is my child. I will catch up with you tomorrow. This is my baby. I have worked so hard for you to get here, and it was well worth it because history told me that we were gonna get through it. And see, this is the promise of James, chapter one. Listen, listen, listen. This is the promise of. This is the glory of building a history in God. This is why you walking out every time you get mad and have a hard time and walk through pain and wish somebody would pray you through it. And every time you hope somebody would drag you to church and walk you, you know, well, come back. It's worth it, you know? Come on. No, no. Every time you stick it out and say, I'm gonna build a history here with you, God, I'm gonna walk through with you. Tell me what your truth is. Tell me what your promise is. I'm not leaving. I'm gonna. I'm gonna dig my hills in. I'm gonna take another swig of my Lance. I'm gonna buy a bigger moomoo because I'm having this baby. Listen, there's something about. Listen, listen. This is leadership. This is how your faith gets sure. This is how you build a marriage. This is how you build a ministry. This is how you build character. Is because you say, I am not leaving this place. I am building an altar before the Lord and who God has called me to be. And this is what. This is how you deal with pain and disappointment. You know, how you don't run. I love you. I love you. I love you. But if you have not experienced pain and disappointment, stick around. We're guaranteed. The church is full of messed up people. We love God. But you're gonna get people that are gonna do crazy things because they love you and they don't know how to love you. Well, sometimes. But the truth is, is that if you. If you don't run, the spirit of God knows how to get to you. And when you least expect it, he knows how to deliver you. In the moment when you. When you don't know how to deliver your spirit, he will come and speak to you. And the Bible says that he will walk with you. And even though you walk the valley of the shadow of death, the Bible says he will not deliver you from the shadow of death, but he will walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death. And we've got to get off this reality that says somehow you're doing something wrong because it's hard. You know, I spent too many years in the church believing that because it was hard. I just had to build my faith a little bit more and things would get easier. I'm not talking about a habit or addict. I'm not talking about things that we battle because we're learning through consequences. I'm talking about. Listen, the Bible talks about that we are not made to live here. We're made to live. We are made for another place. And so we're not made to absorb everything that's going on. And so we have to give ourselves grace. Can you give yourself more grace to realize that the pain you experience. Experience is hard, but not to give up on yourself. But to say, I'm going to actually walk through this, and I'm still going to be here. See, the reason your faith is complete is because you build history. And so what once held fear over you no longer holds fear over you. See, when Ben and I had our first argument as a married couple, I went, oh, no, this is rough. Like, I hope we. I hope we didn't. I hope this is okay, you know, I hope that, you know, this is not good. I hope people, this is normal, you know, but once we have gone through. We had two arguments in our marriage. The second one, when we go through things, I can say, you know what? I have faith we're gonna be okay. Because through history builds confidence. This is what it's talking about in the Bible. Your faith becomes complete because you have a history of walking through things. So when you face trials of many kinds, don't give up, because it builds faith to persevere. The reason you haven't received what you have been promised is because you haven't persevered yet. And you will. And as you persevere, you'll get it in time. So perfect fear. Fear goes away. No longer bound by the what ifs, no longer bound by the what if. So I love how the message version says it. It says, consider it a sheer gift, friends. When tests and challenges come from all sides, you know that under pressure. Listen, your faith life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. I see your. Okay, listen. So don't try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you may become mature and well developed, not deficient in any way. Trials and tribulations actually cause us to become deficient if we don't stick it out. So here's what I want to talk about for a minute. The book of John gives us this beautiful story of this man that became stagnant in his pain. It's one of my favorite stories in the book of John, chapter five. You can turn there if you like. But I love this story because this man has been sitting at this pool for a long time. Jesus comes on the scene in the book, in the chapter five, in verse five. And Jesus comes on this scene, it says this. There was a great number of disabled people who used to lie. The blind, the lame, the paralyzed one who was there had been there for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been there in his condition for a long time, he asked him, do you want to get well, sir? The invalid replied, I have no one to help me. Into the pool when the water is stirred. While I'm trying to get in, someone else goes in ahead of me. Jesus said to him, get up, pick up your mat and walk at once. The man was cured. He picked up his mat and walked. The day on which took place was the Sabbath. So listen, Jesus walks on the scene. Everyone is sitting around this pool. And when the water is stirred, the first person who touches the water is healed. This man has been here for 38 years. I love this story because could you imagine what this guy, how set up this man is like? I could just see him with his tent and his water and all the people around him. And Jesus walks up and he says to the man, do you want to get well? Now, if I had Jesus walk up to me and ask me this question, I would be very offended. Could you imagine being sick? And Jesus comes and you've been sick for 38 years. And Jesus walks up to you and says, would you like to get well? And the man, instead of saying, yes, I would like to get well, he gives two excuses that I often find in a victim mentality. It will tell you if you are dealing with a victim mentality and struggling with pain and disappointment right now and will never get free from it. This will read your mail right now if this is what's going on. The first thing he says to him is this. He says to Jesus, I have no one. I have no one. You see, the first part of pain and disappointment, the first area that we struggle with in pain and disappointment is isolation. No one has ever experienced this before. I'm the only one who's dealing with this. I'm the only one that's ever had this happen to me. No one can relate to me. No one can hear me. No one can get to me. And this is what this man has been saying to himself for a long time. This is the narrative of which he's been saying to himself. You see, a lot of us, I love us as the church, but I think a lot of us say this often, which is oftentimes we say, I have no one. And, you know, there's a. I feel like this was often in my own life as a young woman who was serving the Lord. I mean, I was a single woman who was. You know, I've told my story. But at 17 and a half, was called in the ministry. My twin sister and I would travel. We would travel three weeks out of the. Out of the week, and we would speak up and up and down Northern California and Mexico, and we would speak and prophesy, which. I have a few words for a few of you tonight that I'm excited to share. But we would go and prophesy and we would do these things, and it was exciting when you're young. But as it goes into 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, there's a part of it where the enemy loves to rob us and cause us to wonder if we're the only one who's staying pure. Come on. Are we the only one that wants to serve God? Are we the only one that wants to actually do it? Well, are we the only ones in our family that's ever. Are we. Are we always gonna deal with this? And I think we have to get that lie off of us. Listen, listen. There is always going to be men and women that love God and are going to partner with you. You may not have them next to you, but they're in the world and they are running the same race as you are. Listen, there are people that are on the. You might go, well, it's only at Bethlehem. That's why I'm here. No, no, no, listen. We travel all the time and there are armies all around, right? There are people all around that are serving God, going after God. And, you know, sometimes. Listen, there are times when God will not actually lift people up because he's leaving them in anonymity, but to leave them at a place where they can actually grow and not have all that limelight and all those people watching them. And you may go, I'm the only one. Well, maybe God is keeping you in private so you can grow in character. And maybe God is not allowing you to have a worldwide platform yet, because he's allowing you to practice and to grow and to have relationships and community and build a life so that when God does give you a place where you can reach the world in a greater way, you're not caught up in trying to figure things out and kind of blowing your life up, where people are getting picked off by your mistakes. But you've been able to build a foundation where they can say, wow, you're actually a person who does what they said they would do. And you're a person that actually lives out what they would say. Because to be honest, the church is oftentimes called the most hypocritical place in the world. And so my suggestion is live as hidden as you can, meaning, don't hide your light, but live in a way that you can spread your light without trying to be seen so that you can actually deal with the things that need to be dealt with without having people watch you deal with it. It's very important. It's very, very important. And it will allow you to not do things when it's too soon or too premature. I have no one. You gotta get that lie off of you. There are people that are raising their kids to love and serve the Lord. There are people that are asking, that are actually setting up environments where their kids are praying for the sick and believing God. And they're setting up prophetic environments. And we see it all the time when we travel. I know that there's people in here that are leaders, that we see it all the time. This is not just a one hit wonder. God is doing something on the face of the earth. And everywhere we go, we meet people that are stepping out, that are writing books, that are, that are touching people that are evangelizing. I mean, this is a movement that is never going to be silent. The Bible talks about it. This is a, a movement that will not go until this, till Jesus comes back, this will continue to burn. And we get to be a part of this. And so we don't have to worry. You are not alone. You get to join the movement. You are not the movement. I love you. You are not the movement. You join the movement of Jesus. Jesus is the movement and we join him. Secondly, is this the second thing he says to him is, but someone else always goes ahead of me. And this is the second lie that we often face, is that we always believe that someone is getting it more than we are. How do you know that someone didn't contend as hard as you've contended? How do you know that you don't need this part of your story? You know, how do you know that this isn't the right timing for you? You know, sometimes I feel like I've said this often, but we need to break the demonic time clock of the world on us. This is when you get married. This is when you have kids. This is when you get a career. This is when it looks like you peak. This is when you should work out. This is when, Come on, can we just, like, we need to stop with all of that and say, God, you have my time clock. You have my life in your hands. And part of that, all of that is, listen, we, we don't want to end up empty. We want to end up in the hand of God. And what is good for you may not be good for me. You know, your story is not my story. And when I compare my story with Your story is when I start to get mixed up and when I start to compare. My story is when I start to add things and I start to date the wrong person. Come on. I start to try to go to the wrong school. I try to figure things out and I start to go, wait, wait, God, what are you saying over my life? What's the gift on my life? What's the grace on my life? We've been saying this a lot, but stay in your own lane and get out of mine. Stay in your own lane and get out of mine. And don't try to jump in carpool to hurry up. Come on. You need to be in your own lane, going at your own pace. God has your life under control. You have to have a core value. Listen, listen. God sees you. He knows you. If you work out of anxiety, if you work out of maneuvering and navigating, and if you work out of manipulating and trying to make sure people see you, and you work out of trying to make sure that you are the greatest and the latest and the most relevant, you try to be the coolest and the thinnest and the. And the most what? Stop. If you do that, you will wear yourself out. The spirit of God is the most attractive thing on your life. Listen, you. You. God is. You want the anointing on your life. You want the anointing on your life to carry on until you leave the earth. You don't want to be this, well, I'm trying to be the court star. We are not trying to be the coolest movement. Jesus is the coolest movement. We want to carry his likeness. We want to carry his presence. We want to be relevant to the world in a real way because we, what, owe the world an encounter. We want to give them an encounter. We are not trying to be the greatest. We're trying to show the greatest, which is him. And so if we have to get that part of that off of us, and the more I'm in this, the more I realize we. We've got to be able to say, this is my timing. This is my world. Other people might get ahead of me and touch the water. When it's. When it's my time, I will touch the water. And when it's my time to have a promised land, it'll be my time to have the promised land. And when it's my time to write the book, I'll write the book. And when it's my time to have the family, I'll have the family. Doesn't mean I won't step out doesn't mean I won't. It doesn't mean I won't keep persevering. But it does mean that I won't compare. And it does mean I won't get caught up in envy. And it does mean I won't get sidetracked in comparison. And it does mean that I won't sit back in apathy because I've compared myself into fear and anxiety and disappointment and unbelief and sit back and say, well, you got to work this out, God, because I'm not gonna do anything now because everyone's got what I don't have. God is not going to listen to you because you whine. Whining doesn't get God's attention. Faith does. And so you're going to have to talk to yourself and say, God, I admit it. I'm discouraged. I got a little pain. I don't like this. But I can't give people what I don't have. And if I have a discouraged and a depressed spirit, then that's all I'm going to impart. And I can't do it. I gotta get it off me because I have a long journey ahead of me. Jesus said something to him. Do you want to get well? You know what Jesus was saying to him? Do you want your power back? He could have said, you're well. But instead he looked at the man in the eyes. I could see him, and I'm taking my liberty. But I could see Jesus. Listen like he does to so many of us right now. The spirit of God looks at us. Look at me. I love you. I'm gonna mom you for a minute. Cause I can. Look at me. The spirit of God is looking at your life right now and the areas where you have not had any power. You can't. What? Do your dishes. Come on. You can't. You can't change the world if you can't overcome your dishes. Come on. I love you. Some of you want to change the world, but you can't. You can't change your washer, dryer. Come on. Like, I love you. But these are the little things, right? We test the small things to see if we can be built for the big, right? We grow, right? I love you. You're like, is that really? I don't know. Okay, you'll have to clean it up later. But listen, do you want your power back, Jesus? The spirit of God always asks us. You see, the choice is always left in our hands. The spirit of God always gives us a free will. And he says, would you like your power back? Would you like to participate with your will? Would you like to say, yes, I would like to get free. You see, God, we can't sing and ask God, get me free, but not activate our free will to be free. Like, I love you. God is not going to deliver you from habits of sin because you sang worship songs. You're going to have to activate your will and say, I am not going to live like this any longer. I'm going to delete their number from my phone. I'm not going to show up at their house at 11:30 at night because they just want to talk. And I know what they want. Come on. I know some of you are like, well, we're just grandparents. It's okay. There's other people in the room. It was your time back then. It's okay. Remember, Remember, okay, You have to decide who you want to be. It gets as clear as that, like, I love you. You're gonna have to decide who you wanna be because your kids and your grandkids will get you. You don't have to be who your parents were. You don't have to be who your mom and dad were. You don't have to be who your relatives were. You get to be who you are. And the spirit of God wants you to be the best you are. The spirit of God wants you to be fully whole, spirit, soul and body. But you have to make a choice to operate with the spirit of God. And the spirit of God will not make you be something you don't want to be on the inside. And so you have to participate. You have to say, God, I'm going to read the books. I'm going to write the scriptures out. I'm going to memorize the scriptures. I may have to get a little professional help. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do what I need to do because I want to break the cycles that once held me bound. I'm not going to be bound anymore. I'm not going to be held back anymore. I'm not going to believe these lies anymore. I'm not going to be exhausted, burned out, addicted. I'm not going to party on the weekends and praise on Sundays. I'm not going to be that person anymore. I'm going to be different because there are people waiting for me on the other side. And it's not probably my grandchildren. You see, there's something, there's a conviction that has to happen in our spirits. I love you, but you are the hope. You are the hope. And so spirit of God looks at you and he says, are you going. Are you going to get your power back? And then Jesus says something to this man that I just love. He doesn't say, you're well. He doesn't say, you know, touch the water. He just says, would you get up? Pick up your mat? Get up and pick up your mat. And I could just see myself look at my boys. And I would just do that. Get your mat. Pick up your mat and do it. And I think there was a little bit of Jesus that was like, if you're really okay, then do it. Come on, let's see it. I think the spirit of God does that to us. Not in a mean, but in like a. You can do this. It's in you. I think the spirit of God looks at us and he says, let me see it. Come on. You want to change? Let's see it. You want to be different? Come on. Because, listen, you can't do it on your own. He wants to help you, but you have to make the first move. Always. It's always your move. It's never his move. What I mean by that is he already made his move. He gave us the cross, he gave us the spirit. He gave us all of that. It's our move to receive it, and it's our move to accept it. And it's our move to step out and be it. That's as simple as that. Some of you, I love you. You have been bound for 50, 15, 20 years with the same habits. And God wants to break it off of you. He's looking at you and saying, 38 years, sweetheart. 38 years, you've been like this. And you don't have to be like this anymore. You don't have to stop by the drugstore tonight. You don't have to do this anymore. You are gonna get free tonight. You see, we just believe here at Bethel that the Spirit of God can encounter your life in a profound way. And when you participate with him, he loves you so much that he wants to come and encounter you in a profound way. I'm just fully confident you go, well, how do I. How do you know? Because we see it all the time around the world. The spirit of God wants to set you free, break off family things, and you go, well, what about walking things out? You'll walk it out. When you leave this room tonight, you'll walk it out, and you'll walk it out tomorrow, and you'll walk it out the next day, and you'll walk it out the next day and we'll see your true colors.

I told you. Wasn't that amazing? She's a powerful anointed speaker. Pastor, minister. Listen, ladies, if you don't have anything to do, go to hopecarpenter.com and get registered for the unique women's conference right around the corner. I can't wait to see you in either Greenville, South Carolina, or San Jose, California. Gonna be amazing. I love you. God bless you. See you next time.

Come like river.