Rico Sharp argues that partners should stop naming men by their failures and instead consistently call out the potential they could become. Using biblical examples like Abram becoming Abraham, he says speaking someone's higher identity into existence can reshape how they see themselves and change their behavior.
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So there's this verse in the Bible, Romans 11:29, that says, call those things that be not as though they were. You know about that, right? That's like decreeing and declaring something that you want to happen before it becomes what you want. That's speaking it and saying it until you can see it manifest and come to fruition. But let's go a little deeper. Let's say now you got a man in your life, whether that man is your husband, Your fiancé, boyfriend, father, brother, son, uncle, grandfather, nephew, friend, co-employee, or what have you. And let's say that they are going through some stages and phases in their life where they are not living up to their potential. They are not living at the level that you want them to. They're struggling in some areas of their life. Maybe they're struggling with drugs. Maybe they're struggling with homosexuality. Maybe they're struggling with alcohol. Maybe they're struggling with just being lazy and don't want to work and get get a job. Maybe they're not responsible. Maybe they're not owning up to their responsibilities and being accountable for, for their actions. Maybe they're just totally just checked out right now, living in the streets, going about some, some things they shouldn't be about. Maybe they're involved in crimes. Listen, you get frustrated because you care about that man and you know that that man has the potential to do better. You get angry and you get upset and you want to file for a divorce or you want to leave him. Or you want to have him arrested, or you want to kick him out of the house, and you want to give up on him, and you want to just walk away because you're tired, you're stressed, you're frustrated. He's taking you down, he's burdening you down, he's upsetting you, he's cheating on you, he's doing all these things. He's, he's yelling at you, he's raising his voice, he's cursing you out, he's threatening to hit you. Maybe he did put his hands on you. He's doing a whole bunch of things he shouldn't do. Listen, apart from you being frustrated and apart from you just wanting to get out of this situation, Have you considered this right here? And I'm going right back to Romans 11:29. Call those things that be not as though they were. Have you considered calling him what he's not until he becomes what you call him? What do you mean by that? What I'm saying is, if you always call a man and addresses him by the things he's done wrong, then he'll always do those things. He won't get any better. If all you do is scream and fuss at him and gripe and complain because of his downfalls and his shortcomings, then what you're doing is you are highlighting his weaknesses. You are highlighting the things that he does wrong. You are highlighting his dysfunction. And that's what he hears. That's what he sees. That's, that's what he, that's what he thinks about. That's what's on his mind. That becomes his thing that dwells in his head even when he's laying down at night trying to sleep. Call him not by what he did, but call him by what you want him to do. Address him not by his mistakes. Don't address him by his problems, but address him by his potential. See, what women do is you guys look at us and you guys look at us and judge us by our patterns, but what you need to do is judge us by our potential. You call out our mistakes, but you need to call out our ministry. Stop calling that man a dog. Call him a king. Stop putting him down and beating him up. I know you're frustrated, you're hurting, you're crying, and I understand that. But you married us. You, you, you, you, you befriended us. You got in a relationship with us. You gave birth to us, right? We're yours. We're in your life to stay. Whether we're on top or on the bottom, we're in your life to stay. Whether we're doing good or bad, we're in your life to stay. Whether we're doing right or wrong, we're in your life to stay. Can you divorce us? Yes. Can you walk off from us? Yes. But are you giving your all when you walk off and you divorce? Are you quitting the problem or are you creating another problem? Are you substituting one problem for another by walking off? So back to the point. Call us by our potential. Don't look at us and only address us When you're frustrated with us. Look at us and address us when— address us when you're fascinated by us. When we do something right and you like it, when we do something good and it blesses you, when we do something on time, when we do what you ask us to do, when you can see improvement, call us by who we are in our potential, not by who we are in our problem. You have to see the king in us. You have to see the gift in us. You have to see the potential in us. You have to see the domineering man in us. You have to see the lion in us. You have to see the leader in us, the protector in us, the provider in us. You have to see the change in us. You have to see who we have in us in terms of potential and call us that. Look, here's an example. Don't call us Abram. Abram means an ordinary man. Call us Abraham, which means the father of many nations. Don't call us Saul, which means a persecutor. Call us Paul, which means an apostle. Don't call us Peter, which is just a fisherman. Call us a stone, which means a foundational man. Don't call us by the things we've done. Don't call us Jacob, which means a schemer, a supplanter. A trickster. Call us Israel, which means a prince with God and one who has favor with man. Call that man what you want him— if he's a crackhead, don't call him a crackhead. Tell him he has a ministry of deliverance for people who are bound by addictions. If he's a homosexual, don't call him a homosexual. Tell him he has a ministry To people who are struggling with homosexuality and crisis identity or identity crisis, right? Call that man by what you want him to do and by what you want him to become. If you gotta do it with tears in your eyes, do it. If you gotta do it frustrated, do it. If you gotta do it angry, do it. Tell him who he is. We need to hear who we are. We We need to be coached. We need to— we need for you to extrapolate from on the inside of us the potential that we have. We need to know that you believe in us because sometimes we beat ourselves up so bad that when you come along, all you're doing is throwing dirt on top of the hole that we've already dug for ourselves. The reason that we're not in a grave right now, it's not that we didn't put ourselves in a grave. The reason we're not in the grave is because you haven't thrown the dirt on top of us. But when you come along and you beat us up and you badger us for our mistakes and for our repetitious acts, then you're throwing dirt on the grave that we've already dug for ourselves. We need you to speak life to us. We need you to do like Jesus did and come to our cave and say, Lazarus, come forth. We need you to call us forth. We need you to take on the ministry and the assignment Of being that helpmate, somebody that helps us to meet the standards and the requirements and the obligations in the ministry and, and the assignment that God has placed upon our lives. That's what we need from you as, as, as our women, as our fathers, as our mothers, as our sisters, as our friends, as our brothers. We know we're struggling. When you tell us about our struggle, you are not— Shining light on the situation. We know what we did before you found out. What we need you to do is become a voice in our ear and an echo in our mind that even when we're walking away from you because you're frustrated with us, we can go off in a corner and think about what you said and hear your voice reverberate in our minds. Call us out of The situation we're in, call us out of the lifestyle that we're in. We hear God's voice, but we can't touch God, we can't see God, we can't feel God. We can see you, we can touch you, we can feel you. You say, well, God's voice should be enough. In many cases it is, but in some cases it's not. Come on, let's be real. In some cases it's not. We We need to see you. We need to hear your voice. We need to feel your arms around us. We need you to walk up to us with a, a rag and wipe the tears and wipe the dirt off and tell us that we are somebody, that we can still maintain a life of progress and a life of success. We need you to tell us after a downfall that we can get back up. Call us who you want us to become and watch us become who you call us. If you dress a man Address a man by his his his mistakes and his failures and his faults and his and the things he does wrong. That's what he's going to always do because that's what he always hear from you. That's what you're beating into his mind. That's the that's the reverberation in his head. But if you call that man by who you want him to become and by the potential you see in him, watch that man transform. Watch him like a caterpillar. Spin a cocoon around himself. He may be gone for a little while, he may be absent for a little while, he may check out for a little while, but when he comes out, he's going to come out as a new creation. This is Rico Sharp. I hope you got something. And listen, do what I say, and one day you're gonna thank me for it. Life is what you make it, and so is that husband. So is that father. So is that son. So is that dad. He is who you call him to be. Call those things that be not. Call that man that be not as though he were, and watch him become who you call him. I felt power in that.
