How To Lead Well | Hope Carpenter (feat. April Osteen Simons & Lisa Osteen Comes)

But I am so glad that y' all are here. You know, nothing formal in this room. I just want you to know how much I love you, how much I celebrate you. You know, ministry is tough. Not just ministry. Life is tough. How many mamas do we have in here who could say amen? Life is tough. How many wives do we have in here? Yes, all that life is to tough. But, you know, I don't know anybody in life where everything's perfect. Do we have anybody in here who has the perfect life, perfect husband, perfect children? Right. Your. Your bank account is exactly where you want it. I mean, everything is just great. I don't know anybody. And I have met so many people in our 30 years of ministry, from the smallest church to some big churches and all over the world, and never met any of them who did not have a problem. The problem is we don't talk about it. And we pose perfect. And we want to walk around and act like just because we've got pastor or pastor's wife or minister in front of our name, that we've got it all together. And, you know, our family's perfect and our devotional life is perfect. Perfect. And you know, we are in love 247 with our husbands and everything's just great. And that is not true. We don't talk about it. We don't talk about our real lives. And there's this. This pressure on us to perform. There's this pressure whether we. Somebody's putting it on us or whether we. It's false expectation. But we do. Don't we all feel that pressure? Pressure that whoever it is that we're leading, that we need to pose perfect. And we can't show our withered hand, and we can't talk about where we're struggling, and we can't say when we're frustrated and we can't say the S word that ends in the T that has high in the middle. Now, I know most of y' all in here are so much holier than me that you never even want to say that word. But I want to say that word a lot. And I'm getting more holy like y', all, and I don't say it as often as I used to. But where we get messed up in leading, I believe, is when we are trying to hide just who we are and our normal life and what we struggle with and what we go through and our frustrations and. And our weaknesses. And I believe because I know, because I've been down this road the last nine years that that God wants to use all that. God really does want to take everything that we go through. Isn't there a scripture about that? Something about Romans 8:28? Sort of, kind of, you know, that he uses all things in our life and not just the good things. He uses all things, right, for our good and for his glory. Do you know nothing in God is wasted in your life? Nothing in your life, if you are in Christ, is wasted. He wants to use it all. And we're going to talk about that today. I've got some sweet, sweet, sweet girls up here, some of my precious friends that God has so blessed me with. April and I met several years ago and just came to my conference in California, and we just fell in love. And then me and Lisa met several years ago and just reconnected again this year through my book. And we're always there supporting their little brother, their little brother Joel. Y' all ever heard of him? So we love him so much. And so God has just joined us together. And I'm so grateful for the relationships that God has brought in my life. And they are going to bless your life today, y'.

All.

They are the Osteen sisters, but they are normal human beings. They are just normal human beings. They poot. They have to brush their teeth. Can you believe that? They have to squeeze in their pants. I don't believe that. I mean, I do not believe that. I told them earlier, I said, if y' all don't start eating, y' all ain't never gonna look like me. But they are normal people. Let me ask you a question. As a child, do you ever remember a time that you were in a car headed to church and you got in trouble, or you and your brother or sister started fighting and they had to pull over and start. And everybody's crying and yelling in the car and screaming and hollering. But then when you get to the church, they're like, now dry up your face. Now stop that crying right now and put a smile on your face and go into children's church and praise the Lord. Now be good. Now, don't act like that when you get into church, right? Just deal with it. So all of us have had a time like that, right? What about as an adult on the way to church? Have you ever argued with your husband? I mean, just letting them have it. I mean, you so mad at them, you could spit nails. You want to take your fingernail and claw right down their face. I mean, you're so angry. You ever had one of those times going to church yeah, but when you got there, what you have to do, suck it up, buttercup. Because you're an elder. Because you got to go in there and teach Sunday school, right? You gotta get in there and get on the praise team and lift your hands and praise God once again. Straighten up. Fly right. Put a smile on your face. Go serve. But in the natural. You are dying inside. Ever been there? Yes, we all have in life, but especially in ministry. Constant demands to serve and to pour out and to do for others. While we are limping along in life. We're bleeding, right? Bleeding while we are leading. You ever been there? I have. I did, for many, many, many years. Felt like I was dying on the inside. So where do you go? What do you do? Who do you talk to? Who do leaders talk to? How do we get help? Where's our safe place? How do we handle our own insecurities, our own secret sins, our own frustrations, our private pain? How do we deal with all this then? Could there be a divorce? Children on drugs publicly? An unwed pregnancy? God forbid. That's your child? Yeah, I had two of them. Yeah, sure did. Affairs. It's overwhelming. Let me read you this. When you've been groomed to be compliant, confrontation in any form is uncomfortable. Because you were never taught that you have the right to say no. In fact, you were taught that you can't say no. The sense that you are deserving enough to set your own boundaries has been stolen from you. Many people react by burying their feelings of no and become people pleasers. Every one of us in this room have had that load to bear, to carry. People pleasers, performance, orientation. So how do you do this thing called ministry? How do you do this thing called leadership? But how do you do it and be well? Because we've got to do it. It's our call. We're all called to lead somebody. But how do you do it and be well? How do you do it and be whole? That is. That is what we want to talk about. How do you go the distance? How do you do it for life? I've been doing this 30 years. Some of you been doing it for 15, 20, 10, 30, 40, anybody? Been doing it for 40 years? Leadership. 40 years. 40 years. 50 years. But how do you do it and go the distance and do it healthy? Listen, I don't want to end my life and be bitter and be angry and hate my husband and hate church people. You know, I would be a great Christian if it wasn't for church people. They try my nerves. They all Think they got an opinion about what I'm supposed to wear and where I'm supposed to go and what I'm supposed to eat. And I mean, you know, I would be a great Christian. What about you? If it wasn't for people? And we all have different stories. We all have different backgrounds. We all have different upbringings. We all have different DNA. We all were raised in different parts of the country. And believe it or not, all of that matters. All of that forms who we are. We are all a sum what we've been raised in. Your parents, your grandparents, your culture. We're all a sum of that. And we go into adulthood with all carrying all of that with us. And then we're supposed to go into ministry and leadership, and we're supposed to do it well, and we're supposed to do it healthy. But we're so unhealthy. We're so unhealthy because of the way that we were raised. Listen, even doctors will tell you this. Doctors will tell you how many of you ever played sports or did sports in high school? What did they make you go do first? They made you go get a physical. They would check you out to see. To see if you were physically able to do this exertion of activity. Doctors will even tell you, you cannot run a marathon. You can't exert yourself if your heart is not well. So how do we think that we can exert ourselves in leadership and do this thing if we are not well? First we have to admit, I'm over here struggling. It's okay. It is okay not to be okay. You do not have to be perfect to lead. Did you know that? That's right.

That's right.

But I think the key is not to stay there. We all want to be healthy. We all should want to love our husbands. You know, marriage is not supposed to be tolerated. It's supposed to be celebrated. That's the goal, right? The goal is to love the job that we're in. The goal is to love the ministry. So how do we get there? We've got to get our heart right. We've got to get healthy. So two things, two things that will change all of that is identifying and uprooting the old. Number one. Identifying, uprooting the old. And number two, rewiring in the new with the word and healthy boundaries and relationships. Healthy boundaries and relationships. So to stop all the madness, we've got to stop saying, well, I'll be okay, I'm good, I'm resilient, I'm strong, right? That's called pushing the minimize button on your pain. That's just acting like it doesn't matter. And it does matter. Look at your neighbor and say, your pain does matter. Say it to your next neighbor.

Your pain does matter.

Why? Where did it start that. That what we go through doesn't affect us. You ever had a Nerf ball? Your kids ever had a Nerf ball? This is what the definition of resilient is. You take a Nerf ball, you punch it, you squeeze it, you step on it, you sit your big butt on it, bonk. And the Nerf ball flattens it. But when you get up from that nerve ball, what does it do? It goes right back. Okay? That's what resilient is. So that's not what we are. When we get stepped on, when we get punched, when we get stabbed, when we get sat on, when we get overlooked, when we get neglected, we don't bounce right back to healthy. It 100% affects us. Your brain is like just water in ooey gooey. It's like jello, and it's malleable, and it changes. What you've been through has changed you. Have you ever made the statement, I wasn't like this until. I didn't feel like this until I went through a divorce. I didn't feel like this until the church split. I didn't feel like this until. See, what we go through changes us. So today we're going to get honest, and we're going to talk about it, all right? The taboo about pain and painful moments and hurtful moments. So you heard me say, I got these wonderful girls up here. The perfect Osteen family is what they are. The perfect Osteen family. So April Osteen. That name is known worldwide. Right? And your life's been perfect, I'm sure. So share. Do you have any painful moments in your life for people to bust all their bubbles about y'? All?

I do. And far from perfect. And thank you for having us. It's great to be here. You know, I think what you're saying is so important because not only have we been raised pastors, kids, but, you know, I'm the youngest. Lisa's in there, too. I won't say she's not the oldest, but anyway, we came from a little bit of experience, and when my dad passed away in 1999, we took our family, my little family went to Dallas, and we started a church. And, man, it was just great, you know, but getting there, I didn't know how to start a church. I Didn't know how you found the money to start a church. I didn't know how you found the people to start a church. I mean, I was freaking out. I was at a safe place, and I had to leave everything I knew. And it was scary. It was hard, but God.

So they didn't pay all your bills?

No. Somebody told me that my mom gave us $5 million, and I called us and said, did you give us $5 million that I don't know about? So people were trying to attribute to the success of the church. But anyway, this is what happened. Pastor Hope is that we had a great church. We struggled. I mean, building a church is hard. Sheep bite. You know, somebody gave me a word. My dad's best friend that led him to the Lord. Sam Martin, called me back into the room at Lakewood before we went to start this church. And his prophetic word to me, I was ready for something great. Thus saith the Lord. Sheep bite. I thought, is that all you got? I want something else. I want a better word. I didn't know what he meant. But then I started a church, and I realized what he meant. Anybody have sheep that bite? And so anyway, not to just have to deal with that, but, you know, and that's a constant. That's a work in progress. You got to keep your mind strong on that, keep your spirit strong. And I will say before I get to the end that we learned from my parents that the most important mission field is your family, and you can save the whole world, but, man, if you lose your family, what good is it? And we saw parents that took time for their family. My dad put, I think, Friday on his calendar. Don't mess with Fridays. That's my family day. We felt just. We felt more important than the church. I did. I felt more important than the ministry. I felt like the best thing that ever happened to my parents. And that's just how they made us feel. But Fast forward to 14 years pastoring this great church that I thought was great, just like you think your church is great, and a bank comes and pulls the church from us. So we'd left everything. Everything I knew had five kids at the time, left with four kids, had one more to populate the church. And, you know, all of a sudden, everything's gone. And you know what? It was thriving and didn't understand it. And it was hard. And people's number one question. I don't even think you know this. Are you embarrassed because of who your family is?

Wow.

Because, in other words, they're Saying, because you're such a failure and it's a flop, are you so embarrassed? And I thought, no. My biggest supporters are my family. They would have done anything for me. You know, if I was doing something wrong, they'd slap the snot out of me and then get me back on track. But they love me. It's not a conditional. If your church grows, we love you. If it doesn't, we don't.

That's right.

So I didn't run from my family. I ran to, you know, they supported us there. I didn't understand it. There's things in life we just don't understand. And, you know, I had my questions. God, why is this happening? I love this church. These are my peeps.

I love them.

You know, it was just great. But this one thing just changed the course of my life. I realized I had my family, didn't have the church. 104 acres, 460,000 square feet of church that we didn't even know what to do with all the stuff. And I felt this. April, you can no longer stay mentally or emotionally where you left physically months ago. You want me to say it again? No longer stay mentally or emotionally where I left physically months now, years ago, instead of going back and saying, you know what? That was so painful.

It was.

But now I go back and say, man, that was a great church. Man, I had the best time of my life. So I realized in the midst of all the turmoil and all the questions and all the haunting and what did we do wrong? And how could I have made things better? You know what I'm going to pick up? I'm going to dust off these little leather pants right here, and I'm going to keep moving forward. Because guess what, Life. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to fail. And sometimes you're going to fail big. Aren't we? We're gonna fail big time. But that doesn't disqualify you. You just gotta keep moving forward.

What about you, Sister Lisa?

Sister Lisa, how are you doing, Sister Hope?

I'm good.

Thank you for having us here. And by the way, you know, I reconnected with Hope because I read her amazing book. And if you haven't read it, you need to get it. Oh, my Hope, I just thought, okay, this is the way you do it. You know, when you have hardships, you just have to go through the process, the process of healing, restoration, admitting failures, whatever. And I just thought, if everybody. So many believers, I'm sort of getting off, but so many women Men in the church, they fall and they get hurt and they get away from God and they feel so isolated from the church and, and you know, we're supposed to pull these people in and say, let's do the process. Let us help you get back on the mend instead of shaming them and guilting them. And I think maybe God is just saying to some of us today, you got to do the process. You got to go through the process yourself. Maybe you're hurting, maybe your church is split, maybe I don't know what you could be going through, but. But God will take you through the process if you will allow Him. He doesn't want you to hide. We got to forget this thing about being perfect. As ministers and pastors, wives, there is no one who is perfect except Jesus. You will never be perfect. I will never be perfect. I will make mistakes. You will make mistakes. You will go through terrible things. You may not have been expected in your life, but God will bring you through everything you go through if you will walk with him through the process.

You know, Lisa, I put something on my Instagram, I think it was yesterday. If you cheat the process, you'll have to repeat the process because it is, it's cyclical, the things we go through in our life. God's wanting to teach us something, he's wanting to show something, he's wanting to use something. Like I said earlier, God doesn't waste anything, anything in our life. And so could it be that what we're going through is just refining us and making us pure and making us sweeter and making us kinder and better? But if we're not willing to go through the process, we're going to have to. We're cheating the process. So he's going to make us go through it again until we take the exit exam. You don't get to the next grade, right? You have to take an exit exam to see if you know the material, if you've mastered that part, so that he can elevate you to the next part.

And, you know, there's so many things that I've gone through, but I'm just going to go back to when I was in my early 20s, because, you know, I grew up serving the Lord since I was three years old, in a great family, married out of college, you know, just to what I thought was the greatest man in the world. And within two years, he served me divorce papers and really didn't just. It was all sort of a mystery, weird type thing. And I was bumfuzzled. I was so hurt. I didn't even know what to do. I didn't even know what to do. I came back home and all I did was cry for six weeks. I was embarrassed. I didn't want the church to know we had just had a wedding two years before. I just felt disqualified. I felt called to the ministry. I thought I'd be a pastor's wife. But, you know, I just. Back then I thought, well, I'm already a woman, and now I'm a divorced woman. And, you know, how am I ever gonna, you know, get through this one? And so in my hurt and in my shame, I just sort of recluded and isolated. And that's what the enemy wants you to do. He wants you to hide it. He wants to keep it in you, to keep inside your pain. But what will happen, it will fester in you. And it will affect your body and it will affect your mind. And so we. We can't isolate ourselves. And my dad, he finally said, lisa, you gotta go to church. Because he said, the people will love you. They will pray for you, and you can't just stay at home. And I knew he was right. You know, I'd gone to church all my life, but, you know, I was wrestling with all this guilt and all this shame. And so anyway, I did go to church. You mentioned to the church. I had gone through this divorce, and I needed prayer. And, you know, it was just the opposite of what I thought. People came down to the altar, they prayed for me, they loved on me. And from then on, I could begin the healing process. And from then on, people would say to me, hey, Lisa, I'm praying for you. Hey, Lisa, you're going to be okay. And so, you know, I finally realized I didn't have to be ashamed because I simply went through a terrible pain and hurt. I needed to allow God to bring the healing and to bring restoration. And then in all of that process, you know, it was just a process of time that God healed me in so many different ways. Talking it out with people, praying it out with people. And then people began to come to me and ask for prayer for their situations, Going through divorces, and some couples for their marriage. Cause they were struggling. It's like, what in the heck is going on? You know, why would you ask me? I just went through a divorce, you know, but what I did is I just said, yes. I just said, yes, I'll pray for you. Yes, I'll talk to you. And soon. You know, we were meeting on a Tuesday night to pray. And Then I realized I needed to sort of share the word of God with them, you know, share the word of God, what I was learning in this process. And then all of a sudden I began teaching the word of God. And we saw all these marriages healed and restored and we saw people healed and restored. And one day my dad said to me, he said, lisa, you're preaching out there, come preach for me in the main service. And so I'm telling you, the process will bring the healing, but it will also bring you to your purpose. And I had no idea. I felt totally unqualified to pray for other people because of what I had gone through. That seemed embarrassing to me, but I stepped out and I said yes. And let me tell you, ladies, just because you're going through something doesn't disqualify you. It doesn't change who you are. It doesn't change your authority that you have in Christ Jesus. And so you can still heal and help other people. You can still walk through the process and work on yourself, but you can help other people now. You got to have the balance there. You gotta have the balance, you know, I mean, hope you had to go away for a while. Do whatever it takes. The other day, I had been through a trying situation in the last five months or so and I realized I was so stressed and I wasn't being myself and I realized something's not good. I'm emotionally off. I'm not good. I'm not in a good place. And I didn't even want to say it out loud, but I would to my husband. I'm not in a good place. I can't explain it, but I'm not in a good place. And so then once I called April and I told her I was telling her about something, I just burst out crying. I'm not a crier, I don't cry very much. But anyway, the rest of my family does. And so they think I'm hard hearted. So that's so funny. So when I cry, I'm bad when I cry. And so I.

You gotta have a family when you cry.

And so I started crying and I said, I can't take it anymore, I can't take it anymore. And I realized I gotta get help. I've gotta do something about this. I've gotta change my schedule, I've gotta work on my mental health, I've gotta work on my emotional health. I gotta go out and have some fun with my girlfriends. I gotta go take some trips, I've gotta. I had been pulled, I've Got a shop. Yeah, that's right. Hallelujah. And whatever had been pulled out of me, I was going to have to fill my tank again. And I'll just tell you right now, one of the first things I did is I found a counselor because I wanted to talk to somebody. Now I have friends, I have family I can talk to. I have a best friend and I can tell her anything. You can't just talk to anybody. But I just thought I need more than that and you know, just to be able to release what is this I'm feeling? What? Why? What have I done to myself? I've emptied myself too much this time. And so I just say all that to say, admit when you need help, don't be ashamed and make sure, like Pastor Sam Chan said, that you're okay physically, emotionally, mentally and in every way so that you can be better for your family and be better for your church.

You know, I have to just say, this just happened. And that was so good, right? This just happened during Dr. Chan's session. And I was so grateful to him. I just love practicalness. And when he was talking about emotionally, I am all into that emotion since I've been through what I've been through. I know how much you need it. But you know the one thing he asked us to write under each thing and I put on mine me time. And I shut. And Ron was looking, he was trying to be all nosy at my stuff and so he was looking over at mine and I went like this and I said me time. And he said, oh, like that. And you know, that took a lot of gut. I had to swallow hard to say that to him because he says to me that I am his, I help him emotionally, I am his decompression time. But sometimes he pulls on me. And so for my emotional health, I need to get away from. And I had to be okay to say that and I had to be honest. Something that simple that we might have to have a conversation about tonight. He's probably gonna pull me aside and want to talk about me time. But I'm not talking about going out and doing something stupid. I'm talking about I would love to have two days in a hotel by myself in pajamas and not bathe or shave or brush my teeth, eat whatever the heck I want to eat without him looking down his self righteous nose at me when I order fried things. That's what I mean. Just a decompression, a quiet asleep when I want to sleep time. I never do that. For me, I can't tell you when I've ever had that time. I need it so bad. But just to be honest, to have the courage enough to say to them, it would be healthy for me to have some time away from you. Nothing about you really, just. It's about me.

Can I say something there?

Yes.

Just because you need a break doesn't mean you're broken. So you got to get that in your head.

What about the church people? How do you pull talk to them? I mean, things you've learned in ministry, you've been in ministry your whole life. You've watched your mom and daddy do it. Some people in here are first generation pastors, wives or leaders. They didn't have a model, you know, they didn't have a model. What did your parents, how did they handle issues with church people?

I'll let you go first and then.

I'll follow it up. Okay?

Okay.

Well, I just wrote down a couple of notes on this because I wanted to be very careful some of the things I said, but I thought about different things. You know, my mother lost all of her friends when she and my dad left their denominational church because they received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. And she tells me, to this day, all my friends left me. They wouldn't have anything to do with me anymore. But you know, she had to let go of that. And they started Lakewood Church 62 years ago. And so God brought great purpose and destiny out of that. And so on the other side of that, God had great things. But what I'm saying, it was hard for her. It was hard for something that she talks about still today. Sometimes people leave your church mad. You know, that's happened to us. Sometimes there are church splits that are just wrong. You know, they're just wrong. Sometimes people criticize you, leave your church. Sometimes they write ugly things under your post like we talked about last night. And I remember, I'm just trying to give you some examples. I remember one man in our church, he had been there for years and we loved him so much. And he wanted a meeting with me. And I did not expect this, but he just let me have it and he just told me the two or three main things. This was years ago when my dad was the pastor that he was frustrated with about our church. And they were minor things, they weren't even that big. And I just, I just thought in that moment, you know, I'm going to keep my mouth shut, I'm going to listen to him and I'm going to honor him because he's been here a long time. And so I just let him talk. I let him get it all out because he was angry. And then I just simply said, sorry you feel that way. I'm so sorry you feel that way. We love you. We don't want you to leave the church. You know, And I just had to show him grace. I just had to show him grace. I told him, go see my dad. Make sure you tell my dad what's going on. You know, we just want to keep in touch with you because he wasn't going to change his mind. But you know what? That was hard. That was hard when some people just want to, you know, vent on you like that. That worked out good. It doesn't always work out that good. But I remember I had a good friend on the church staff who just one day quit talking to me. Didn't talk to me for months. I didn't ever know. Well, I finally found out why. It was something real stupid. You know, it's always, yeah, but I can look back, you know, when that happened, that's when God brought my best friend into my life. So he was, like, closing that relationship. But anyway, I just. I was thinking of things that. That we've learned over the years. I've seen Joel or my parents do, and that is this first. You know, you do have to release it. You have to acknowledge it hurts and you have to release it. And you need to talk to someone and, you know, let God help you through that. But another thing, just practically speaking, is don't air out your dirty laundry in the pulpit. Yes, I think that's. Don't handle problems like this in the pulpit. You gotta do these kind of things behind the scenes. You don't want to do a lot of talking about it and preach to your people about things like that. I heard a woman the other day just reaming out her church because they had. Somebody had hurt her and she was being so strong and ugly. I just thought, oh, my goodness, that is not the way to handle your situation.

That's not what Joel would have said.

That's not what. That's right. Or my dad would have done either way, because they taught us that you just have. Sometimes you have to.

You just gotta love people.

You gotta love people. You gotta let them go. Just let them go. They want to leave. Just say goodbye and bless you on the way out. And this door, 10 more people will come in. And so. But anyway, another thing is, I really believe, like, Hope you mentioned this, but you have to have a trusted friend that you can really talk to. And I mean, this is my opinion. I like it when it's somebody outside the church, preferably if you're a pastor's wife, somebody outside the church, because then you can freely talk to them. There's no bias. It won't backfire on you. I remember y' all remembered Kenneth Hagin and his wife Aretha. Hagin told me one time, she said, lisa, don't get too close, too close to people in the church. She said, you have to be careful about that. And she said, I don't even go shopping with people in the church. And I thought that was real interesting, but I understand what she meant now. You have to be very careful who you talk to things about and who see what you do personally every day in your life. Because not everybody can handle that. Not everybody can handle what you do, what you buy, what you're going through. You know, they can't handle you venting about the church and somebody else. And so I just pray that y' all have good, close friends that you can talk to, or just go down.

The road to the Catholic Church and just go sit in the little thing and just tell it all, tell it all.

Get up and leave. We are going to be pushing into St. Mary. Just bless you. Just let him bless you. Oh, that's funny. Let's see. I was going to say one other thing. Sorry, I. No, no, no, no, no, no. Oh. I was going to say this. Don't take it so personal when people, you know, the church is a family. Just. It's a unit and it's the family, the body of Christ. Well, you have your own family. Do y' all get along all the time? Do y' all say things that you wish you didn't say? It's a family. And so you can't take things too personal. I used to take. It hurt me when my son, he's so strong, he'd just say what he wants to, and it hurt me. And he just one day says, oh, Mama, get over it. I'm not really serious. He said, you know, and I just took it so serious. But I don't think you can take it personal. Sometimes it's an attack of the enemy. Sometimes it's just people just don't have the right attitude. But you gotta let some of that go and just trust you're walking in the right place. And God will help you in what you're doing. Don't step back cause of what other people say about you because they criticize you. Keep walking in Your place.

I think one thing my dad used to say is people have their right to their opinions, but you have every right to ignore their opinions. He used to have file 13. He put everything in there. Every bad letter. That's before emails. And you have to realize Satan's greatest fear is your tomorrow, if he can. So take you out today through one bad comment, one person leaving, one person getting mad, one person writing bad things about you. If he can steal that joy, he's still in your strength. You got to keep your focus and say, I know this is not good.

Listen, the saying goes like this.

If you hang out with chickens, you're gonna cluck. If you hang out with eagles, you're gonna soar. You need to find your eagles, hang out with the eagles. Keep going. Keep face forward because there's too many distractions. Don't worry about all that stuff. Know what your goal is and go towards that goal.

You know, one thing I learned a long time ago is this. You know the scripture. Don't let the sun go down on your wrath. And the reason being is because if you deal with your heart quickly, it doesn't have time to get in there and fester. Every night, I do this. I do this. Nobody has to know I'm doing it. I don't do it publicly. My husband don't even know I do it. But I do it personally while I'm laying in the bed and I say, God, show me my heart tonight. Show me if there's something that got in there that shouldn't get in there. Show me if he said something that hurt me or if I read something online that hurt me or offended me or a convert. Whatever it is, Lord, show me my heart tonight so that I can deal with it, so I can pluck it up easily. You know, when you. When you go into. I don't know about y', all, but I had to pull weeds when I was a little girl. Hated it. And so. But I remember if you did it regularly and the smaller the weed, you could take just these two fingers and you could go down and just ploop. But if you waited and let it get bigger and spread out and the root get deeper, it took so much more work to pluck it up out of the ground. It's the same way with our heart, if we will deal with our heart every single night. Yeah. You say you may have a right to be mad. No, you don't. The blood is payment enough. Just as much as you want the blood to cover your sins, the blood covers their Sins. How often do we want mercy, but we want others to pay. We want quick mercy and grace, but we want God to get them, right? I mean, I have dream dreams of running over people in an SUV and then backing up and doing it again to make sure their legs was broke. But I don't want that done to me, right? So every night, I have made a practice of saying, God, show me. Let me take a heart inventory so that it can be plucked up so easy, God. So that it don't get in there and fester. And I'm not a sour, ugly, mean. And it comes out in what I do and what I say. I want to be a pure vessel that you can flow through God, because I want to honor you with my life. So if you can make that a practice every single night of doing a hard inventory, we don't have much time. But let's talk about God's Word. God's word is medicine. It is. It's just medicine. And it will rewire your brain. It will clean you. It will transform your thinking. And our thinking is where everything starts in our life. You'll go where you think. So you gotta have God's Word to rewire your brain and to clean your brain. So, April and Lisa, the very last thing, talk to us, encourage us. How do we use God's Word as a weapon? How have you. You were born in a faith church. You cut your teeth on faith. What were you taught? What have you learned over the years about using the Word?

I think that one of the biggest things I've learned is that the words that we speak become the house that we live in. And so what we say matters. We talk to ourselves more than we talk to anybody else. So we got to talk to ourselves like it's someone we believe in. We got to get up and cheer ourselves on. I mean, we're. I don't know about y', all, but I don't have a cheering section traveling with me.

No.

You know, sometimes you need somebody to see, say, hey, you can do it. Why not make that person you? So one thing that I do, and this I was taught. You know, Daddy wrote a book, confessions of a Baptist Preacher. I had no idea that those were declarations, but get up and talk to yourself like you matter. And don't go by what you see. Don't speak what you see. Speak what you want to see.

Yes.

It's not about what's staring you in the face. It's about what you believe. God designed you to be God.

I thank you.

That's what faith is. Father, I thank you that today's going to be a great day. I thank you that you're going to do the exceedingly, abundantly in this day. I thank you that this is a day that you've made and I'm going to rejoice and be glad in it. I thank you that my kids are a blessing and not a curse. Amen. I thank you that I have favor that surrounds me as a shield. I think that you'll do the exceedingly, abundantly in my life today. I think that as I walk, you're sending forth your word to heal.

Yes.

I thank you that I have the mind of Christ. I thank you that I have the heart that is receptive and aware of people in need. Help me be the hands and feet of Jesus. So I just encourage you to use the Word, not as something that we just say because it's rote. Really believe it, blab it and grab it. Yeah, don't do that.

It's life.

It's real. You know, when I witnessed my mom doing this, when she got healed of cancer, she was speaking health, but yet she looked like death. So I know there's power in our words. If you don't believe it, just try it out. Try it out for 30 days and see how it transforms your life.

It is powerful.

Yeah, it is. You know what? My dad. I'll just borrow this from my dad. Because you have the Word of God in you. There's a miracle in your mouth. You know, you have the Word in you.

You speak.

Speak that word out and it comes to pass. You create. The Bible says I create the fruit of your lips. Everything I think about that I have today is because I read the Word, I stood on the Word, I prayed the Word of God, and I declared the Word of God. And when it looked like it would never come to pass, I still read the Word, I prayed the Word, I declared the Word, and I pray. I have three children after eight years of infertility because I read the Word, I prayed the Word and I spoke the Word. I was healed of a crippling disease because my parents read the Word, they believed the Word and they prayed the Word of God over me. I was supposed to be in a wheelchair. Everything I have in my life, I believe God for a husband. You know, God gave me this wonderful husband, and my husband is. We've been married 31 years now. And. Amen. But it's because I believed God that God would give me a husband. And so the Word is everything. I could not live without the Word. You cannot live without the Word. In this world, what we are living in, in any world we're living in, you cannot live. You have to have it in your heart daily. You have to read it, you have to make. Meditate on it. As Pastor Ron said, you gotta go a step further and you have to obey the word of God. But you have the potential to speak miracles out through your mouth. There's a miracle in your mouth, and you may have some needs right now. And I just encourage you to get the word of God in you. And listen, don't give up on it, girl, until it comes to pass. Because God's word will come to pass. It will will prevail. I love that word that says, the word of God grew mightily and it prevailed. It will prevail in your life as you hold on to the seed of the Word of God and you don't let it go.

We don't have much time, and we have so much more we could say. And I'm so grateful that they took time to come be with us today.