[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Way Community Church Podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our mission is to show people the way to life with Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: My name is Darahal and I am the pastor of the Way Community Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you would like to join us as a member or if you simply need prayer or if you want to worship through giving, you can find the links and the transcription of this podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we will continue our series and the emotionally healthy spirituality study, and we're going to look back in order to look forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: We want to spend time looking at two biblical characters, one man named Joseph and one woman named Esther, and we're going to consider how their family histories did not prohibit God's future for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to encourage you to follow along the transcript of this podcast, grab your Bibles, let's study God's words together.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know it is our custom to start out of our ceremony time reading God's Word.
[SPEAKER_00]: But today we will read as we move throughout.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to encourage you to grab two passages really quick.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I'm going, you can go ahead and be seated.
[SPEAKER_00]: We will read to start.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to grab Genesis chapter 50.
[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis chapter 50, you may be seated in the presence of the Lord of Yahu.
[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis chapter 50.
[SPEAKER_00]: and Esther chapter four.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us are still playing back in our mouth.
[SPEAKER_00]: How he's shown up every time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, and let your father hear your praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not in a rush.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go ahead and bless his name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holy Spirit of God, remind us of what we forgot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Remind us of what we forgot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bring to the front of our minds, what life trying to push to the back of our minds, keep on reminding us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you remind us that the key is connected to how you moved in the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we turn our attention to your word, open our hearts as we have this conversation about.
[SPEAKER_00]: The past and our families and the future and our destinies.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are grateful to sit in this sacred space with you and with each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: May you be glorified and may these are people we had to find in Jesus' name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Amen.
[UNKNOWN]: Amen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to continue our series entitled Are You Ready to Heal and today I want to talk with this thought in mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: The past is key to unlock the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: at Sanford University.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was working on my doctorate back in 2019, 2020, 2018, 2019, and I received many assignments that challenged me deeply.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was early on in the doctorate program while I realized that this experience was going to be more than just intellectual stimulation.
[SPEAKER_00]: This really was about spiritual formation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That God was using this experience to humble me,
[SPEAKER_00]: and to make me more like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was one of Simon I was given that really blew my mind, and it was called a dinner ground, let the church say, a dinner ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've never done a dinner ground, essentially what it is is, it's a family tree.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just a family tree of who was born before me, and who was born after me, who was born with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a family tree that traces the threads of the good and black bad in your bloodline.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a family tree that reveals what's beneath the surface, and it forces the one who's doing the geneagram to have to have conversations they may have never had before.
[SPEAKER_00]: questions that you've never asked before, and to see how you will uniquely need God's grace because of the thing in your family tree that can stop you from the future God has designed for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I remember working on a young, on a genogram, and I think what's probably dential is, I was already planning to preach on this two months ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now here I am, the morning preaching about my genogram, in ten of the people who would be on my genogram,
[SPEAKER_00]: Not just me and Ebony and I are three sons, her mom is here, her brother is here, one of my sisters is here.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad is here, my bonus mom is here, my uncle is here, all of them would be in awe on my gender realm.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what it reveals is family patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that you can discern how you will uniquely need the grace of the Holy Spirit of God to help you become the person that God has called you to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what it does is it helps us to appreciate that it's not possible to access my future if I don't have a good hold on my past.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I know that,
[SPEAKER_00]: And our salvation, I know that in our desire to be more like the Lord, that we want to forget those things which are behind and press to the mark of what lies ahead.
[SPEAKER_00]: But forgetting what's behind doesn't mean losing grip of what shaped me is means letting go of what we're trying to stop me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes we're going to have to go deep into our family histories in order to unlock our destinies.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ralph?
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to look at this picture of this door.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is emblematic of each season in our life, where the future beckons us to walk through into another space we've never been.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you notice, the door to the future is closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is locked.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the only key you can use to unlock it is the key from the past.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which means if I don't do the necessary work to heal from my past at some point, what I'm running from will stop me from progress.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the past is key to the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a major key.
[SPEAKER_00]: You may face a new door in every season that requires you to revisit the same key from the past to open.
[SPEAKER_00]: The best way to handle the past is what church to heal from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my question to you as your pastor and brother in Christ is this, are you ready to heal?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because you cannot control what happened to you, you can't control if you can heal from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our thing for this year is ready and our thing verse is first Peter 3, 15, and our concept for the years that God develops readiness through repeated obedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so my argument is that there's a connection here me now between spiritual obedience and emotional or psychological healing, the two go hand in hand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that the trauma from our families can be the obstacle that stops us from obeying God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I can't get over that, get through that, he will from that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It can limit what God had desire to do in my future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter Scazero says that this way, and he emotionally helped his spirituality, the cost of ignoring the impact of our past on our present life is costly.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's desire for us to leave our families is similar to the desire he had for the Israelites to leave Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: The great problem, of course, is when our families invisible scripts are contrary to Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when the family commandments pass on to us are so deeply embedded in our DNA that we cannot even discern the difference.
[SPEAKER_00]: The result can be what you're all treasured.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it would be tragic for you to not access the door to your future, because you refuse and courage to heal from your paths.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a tragedy.
[SPEAKER_00]: This quote is from the emotional health and spirituality which is a study we'll be doing together as a church in August and we'll look at seven pathways that we'll have to walk towards becoming emotionally healthy in our spirituality.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first pathway that we walked on last week was to know yourself that you may know God.
[SPEAKER_00]: the point in which Alicia helped us to appreciate that knowledge of self and knowledge of God go hand in hand, that I cannot truly know God if I don't know me and I cannot truly know me if I don't know God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, we're going to consider what it looks like to go back and order to go forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then next week, I'll be glad for us to have a conversation about what it looks like to journey through the wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: these are three of the seven pathways, and in doing this, going back in order to go forward, we're going to look at two people in the Bible who both had family issues that they had to overcome in order to access their future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, whenever we consider biblical stories, my desire is to not just use men in the Bible, as an example, but also to use women in the Bible, as an example.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm gonna use two people, we'll look at two people today, biblical case studies of their life and how their families could have stopped their futures.
[SPEAKER_00]: But because they had healed to a point that they could trust God, they would then able to access who God was designing them to be, regardless of their family dynamic.
[SPEAKER_00]: The man we're going to look at is Joseph.
[SPEAKER_00]: His story is in Genesis chapter 50.
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman we're going to look at is Esther.
[SPEAKER_00]: Her story is in the book named after her and we'll look at chapter 4.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph ultimately became the prime minister in Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: the second most powerful man in the most powerful nation in the known world of his day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Esther ultimately became the queen of Persia married to the most powerful man on earth in her day in her time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But their stories, their families, their past, their histories, could have stopped that future.
[SPEAKER_00]: if not for divine intervention.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so as we listen to these two stories, both Joseph's and Esther's, we'll have to make a few applications in our own light.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the first application we're gonna have to make.
[SPEAKER_00]: To recognize the iceberg in you from your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing about iceberg is, is more underwater than a ball of water.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all of our families have put as it were an iceberg of selfhood in our hearts.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not what you see that could affect you is what you don't see.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we wanna be aware of the iceberg in our own lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we don't wreck the ship of our futures on the iceberg of our issues.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I mean, Rev, Peter Scazero says that this way our families are the most powerful group to which we will ever belong.
[SPEAKER_00]: each of our family members or those who raised us through childhood has imprinted certain ways of behaving and thinking into us.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's an iceberg there.
[SPEAKER_00]: The next layer of application is that we got to discern the good that God intends.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to hear me.
[SPEAKER_00]: God intended good by putting you in the family he put you in.
[SPEAKER_00]: or egg meat off this pulpit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, wherever you ever know what you're talking about, cause you don't know my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: But guess what?
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't know my family, even.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what I'm saying is not to you, it is to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, believe it or not, intended good by putting us in the families he put us in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we want to be able to discern what God's good intention was in the middle of all that was not good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the last application is this, I want to challenge us to make the decision to do the hard work.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could not choose our history, but we can choose our healing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you want to be healed from your history, so you can access your future, is going to require a hard work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the church say hard work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when I say hard work, I don't want you to think effort, I want you to think you did this.
[SPEAKER_00]: on Pentecost Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now let us not miss that is the Holy Spirit who is at work in you, both to wheel and to do according to God's good pleasure, but yielded this is my effort.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hilling is God's miraculous power in my yield, and it's y'all picking up what I'm putting down.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so let's look at these two stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna start first with Joseph's story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we're gonna look at Esther's story.
[SPEAKER_00]: From Joseph's story, we wanna make this faith declaration.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is this.
[SPEAKER_00]: My treasure is family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Won't stop God's wonderful plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my
[SPEAKER_00]: Do what you need maybe I do know your family my treacherous family won't stop God's wonderful
[SPEAKER_00]: reveals that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph was born into a treacherous family.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the 11th of 12 sons, and he was born into a polygamous family dynamic where his father, Jacob or Israel, had four wives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph, the 11th of his 12 sons, ended up being his favorite because Joseph's mom was his favorite wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can imagine the human dynamic in a home set up like that is already built to break.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph, not only was favorite by his father, and that favorite was so perfusive, it was so obvious.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jacob Denning tried to hide it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He didn't do anything to try to make the other 10 brothers who olden in him feel just as loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: He favorite Joseph in front of everybody and rubbed it in their faces.
[SPEAKER_00]: He made Joseph a coat that was multicolored, and it was tailored to fit Joseph perfectly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And wherever Joseph went, it was a sign on the outside
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, to make matters worse, Joseph was not only favorite, he was also immature with his favor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, he didn't know how to live under the weight of daddy picking him, plus the glory God was showing him without being a brat to his brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had them mature into learning, you can't tell everybody your dreams.
[SPEAKER_00]: But as he relayed dreams to them, that he will one day rule over them, it was a sign of his immaturity, putting in the faces of his 10 older brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: These dreams he was having on top of the fact that daddy loved him in the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: So those 10 brothers conspired together to block his blessings.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what they did was they saw that little brother coming when they was like, look, he come now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I bet he come and I hit it try to see what we do so he can go back and snitch.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at that dreamer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell you what, let's kill him and see if his dream is coming to pass then.
[SPEAKER_00]: Little did they know they started my God who can resurrect the dead.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's another summer for another day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they bring them out and instead of killing them, they sell him in the slavery, take his coat, dip it in blood, and fake his death.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here he is now a slave in Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: He works for a man named Potiful, who's a powerful government official.
[SPEAKER_00]: Potiful says, you can have anything in my house, but one thing, you came dip your finger in my honey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk about his wife.
[SPEAKER_00]: Josa, cool, he was a young man of integrity.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Potiful's wife was not a woman of integrity.
[SPEAKER_00]: She saw the young man, she thought he was good-looking, and she wanted a taste.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she tried to lure him into a rendezvous from which he ran and because she was so embarrassed, she lied and said that he tried to rape her.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he ends up in jail on false accusations for over 10 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that moment, could you imagine trying to play this sermon to Joseph and telling him why he's sitting in jail?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, treacherous family can't stop God's wonderful plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in this situation because my family is treacherous.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people I trusted to love me the most actually hurt me the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was vulnerable, they took advantage of that vulnerability and somebody looking to me right now like a ray of all need Joseph's story because I got my story.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is people in your bloodline, people who share your heritage, people who come from the same stock you come from, people who have the same last name, you have who have hurt you the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the treachery in your family's history has created a womb so deep that the trauma seems insurmountable.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I say, Lord, show me how you remind me, how you showed up every time, while in the back of my mind, wondering why you didn't show up and stop my family from selling me in the slave.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all that happened, God miraculously elevates him to become Prime Minister of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_00]: And while he's the second most powerful man in charge in Egypt, look at what happens in Genesis Chapter 50.
[SPEAKER_00]: Genesis 50 verse number 15, it says when Joseph's brothers has seen that their father was dead, they said, what a Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong, which we did to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they sent instructions to Joseph saying, your father commanded us before he died saying, this is what you shall say to Joseph, please forgive our beg you, the offense of your brothers and their sin, for they did you wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now, please forgive the offense of the servants of the God of your father.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wept when they spoke to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 18, then his brothers came and fell down at his feet and said, behold, we are your servants.
[SPEAKER_00]: Joseph said to them, don't be afraid.
[SPEAKER_00]: For am I in God's place?
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen to his humility.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the second most powerful man on earth and he says, look, I know I got a whole lot of power but you know who I'm not, I'm not God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other Lord has raised me up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could do whatever I want to do to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But,
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I in the place of God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 20, ask for you, call a Spade of Spade of Spade.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you did was wrong, you meant he will against me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God meant it for what church.
[SPEAKER_00]: He discerned God's good, even in a treacherous family.
[SPEAKER_00]: God meant good to bring about this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: The present result to keep many people alive.
[SPEAKER_00]: So don't be afraid, I'll tell you what, not only am I not gonna get you back, I'm gonna actually take care of you and your kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: After all he'd been through, he can make the declaration.
[SPEAKER_00]: My treacherous friendly won't stop guys wonderful plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's why, because sometimes, you got to have the same conversations over and over again.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want healing, sometimes it means you got to talk about the same stuff, with the same people you already talked about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because one act of treachery can create a trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: So deep that you got to talk about it every season or so.
[SPEAKER_00]: to make sure we're still free from this.
[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta revisit it one or two times every so often to make sure we're really over what we're over.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why am I saying it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because now that their father has died, the brothers forgot about everything they talked about before.
[SPEAKER_00]: When Joseph first revealed himself to them, look over the Bible says, this says in Genesis 45, 15, when Joseph first revealed himself and he kissed all his brothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: and wept on them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And afterwards, his brothers did watch all, so while we talking again about what we already talked about, why in chapter 50, do we have to have the same conversation we had in chapter 45?
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, it told y'all in chapter 45 when I kissed you and we talked that we was good, but now that daddy did, you want to make sure we good, good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because sometimes the death of a key family member cannot just bring grief over the one we lost, but it can restart the strife among the ones who are still living.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now we gotta go back through this whole thing again because y'all don't believe I really forgave you the first time I told you, I forgave you.
[SPEAKER_00]: But Joseph displays that his true father was not Israel, his true father was God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at God, that's my Heavenly Father dictates the way I handle my earthly family.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's a major key, family secrets, may require multiple conversations to help heal feelings of guilt and or woundedness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because what would make the brothers think, now that that is dead, he gonna get us back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Guil, let the church say guilt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it not our families that calls us the most guilt?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it not wounds from our upbringing?
[SPEAKER_00]: Stuff we did, the stuff was done in the us that causes us to most guilt.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes the guilt can be so strong, we gotta have the same conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Over and over again, just to make sure we good for real, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm gonna talk to those in a room who tied a half in the conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: Why, Reverend?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not just them who need it, you need it, too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you gotta make sure that the Kiti O Pass is still ready to work the next time the door to your future is closed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whatever in your pass, you not willing to revisit, will be the main key you need to open where God wants to do in your life next.
[SPEAKER_00]: Preach their home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to work today.
[UNKNOWN]: We're going to work today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody ask me how I know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know because, probably 10 years ago, it was Father's Day, and my brother called me, and we were talking to him, he was like, man, we were talking about what was gonna get out of there for Father's Day, and my brother was like, man, you know what you should give that for Father's Day?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, tell me, he was like, you should tell that that you forgive him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, I already forgive him, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I told him, I know I told him, me.
[SPEAKER_00]: myself, forgive you, forgive your daddy, call my dad and follow his dad, just want you to know, I forgive you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And after all these years, my dad is almost 60, even though he don't look like it, I'm almost 40, even on a look like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just don't look at the gray in my beard.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time we talk, every so often, he just reminds me, he loved me, and I remind him, I love him.
[SPEAKER_00]: because you gotta keep that key working and make sure it's nothing from yesterday that's gonna creep into today that's gonna stop us from going into tomorrow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, not only do we have to have a same conversation over and over again, we also gotta replace blaming them with thanking God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The key to my healing, the access to my healing isn't how I shift what I do with my energy about what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying what happened went wrong because they acknowledge it actually, the apology was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: The issue is they just lied and said, Daddy said this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, but before Daddy died he told us to tell you.
[SPEAKER_00]: that we did wrong, it was evil and we sined for give us.
[SPEAKER_00]: They use all the right words, the problem is they use the wrong name.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you know where somebody in your life you need to apologize to, don't use somebody else name to give the apology you owe.
[SPEAKER_00]: When it's time to apologize, I need you to use two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you ready?
[SPEAKER_00]: Use your own name and use all your words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't apologize on somebody else's name.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I hurt my son, I can't go to my son to say, your mama said, I need to come apologize.
[SPEAKER_00]: You was your own name, and hear me use all your words.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't say unspecifically, and then apologize vaguely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we both remember what you did to me, don't give me a vague apology and then ask me is there anything else specific?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, use all your words.
[SPEAKER_00]: We was wrong, we sinned, it was treacherous, forgive us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that moment, Joseph replaces blaming them with thanking God and watch what happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: They bow before him and its manifestation of the dream in Genesis 375.
[SPEAKER_00]: that your brothers will serve you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that moment, God has exalted him above his family, and he had a decision to make.
[SPEAKER_00]: He could either be small and step on the head, or he could show just how he was, which he did.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you said, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not in the place of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: You meant evil.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna call a spade a spade.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not gonna call wrong, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not gonna call right wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because you're sorry, don't mean it wasn't wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: We gonna have an honest conversation, but I'm not gonna get even with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we noticed is this, major key, even if God exalts you above your family, respond differentiated, not elevated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if God exhausts you above your family, respond differentiated, not elevated.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you mean, Ralph, respond as a unique person in a family group, not as somebody who's above the rest.
[SPEAKER_00]: His brothers bow before him, and he said, you know what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm healed, I'm differentiated, I'm separated from that trauma.
[SPEAKER_00]: My isness is not affected by what you did to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's healed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we can talk about tomorrow because we honestly spoke about yesterday.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's going to be hard to talk about tomorrow if we can't honestly talk about yesterday.
[SPEAKER_00]: You picking up what I'm putting down?
[SPEAKER_00]: So what we see in Joseph's life is this that my treacherous family does not stop God's wonderful plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then number two, what we'll learn from Esther's life is that my makeshift family doesn't undermine God's wonderful plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because some of us, our family dynamic one, treacherous.
[SPEAKER_00]: Others of us, it was just makeshift.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was kind of all thrown together.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But that don't undermine God's wonderful plan for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because God can still do something wonderful in your future, even though the family you came from was just all over the place.
[SPEAKER_00]: Esther ends up quaint a Persian.
[SPEAKER_00]: Esther is fatherless because a father died, motherless because her mother died, homeless because her country lost a war and she became a prisoner of war in Babylon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And none of that stopped God from elevating her to become queen of Persia.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if all of that made her have a sense of imposter syndrome or unwarradiness.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or to start my ramp, here's what I'm saying.
[SPEAKER_00]: To make this declaration of faith, that my makeshift family doesn't undermine God's wonderful plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means I need to appreciate the way God filled in the gaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a broken family dynamic, there will be gaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the choice I have to make is, do I get mad at the ones who left the gaps
[SPEAKER_00]: She is fatherless, that's a gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Motherless, that's a gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Holdless, that's a gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at what the Bible says about Esther and Esther 2 verse 5 through 7.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says there's a Jew who uh, Esther chapter 2 verse 5 through 7.
[SPEAKER_00]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a Jew at the Citadel in Sousa, whose name was Mordakai.
[SPEAKER_00]: The son of Jaya, the son of Shimiyada, the son of Kish, of Benjamin, verse number six, who had been taken from Jerusalem with the exiles who had been deported with Jackania, King of Judah, who never considered the King of Babylon, had deported, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse seven, he, Mordakai, was the guardian of Hadasa that is, who church Esther, same person.
[SPEAKER_00]: His uncle's daughter, for she had no way, father or what, mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is her cousin, but now he got to be like a daddy, because she'll have a daddy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She'll have a mama, and she'll have a home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is that important?
[SPEAKER_00]: Look what the next verse says.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, now the young woman was beautiful or form and face.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: That mean her body was teet in her face called Never The Cleaner.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the Bible's thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It could have just said she was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, a form, and just in case you would wonder it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So imagine her vulnerability.
[SPEAKER_00]: She furtherless, she motherless, she homeless and she gorgeous.
[SPEAKER_00]: which makes her vulnerable as a foreigner in another land.
[SPEAKER_00]: So she needs a cousin to be like a daddy to cover her.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Texas when her father and mother died more than God took her in as his own daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could you imagine being Esther?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking about before she became queen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Could you imagine filling the weight of having no bloodline
[SPEAKER_00]: No siblings, no parents, no home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Esther was with the Bible describe as an orphan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let the church say orphan.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know we know what the word orphan means, but I want to press upon you how important orphans are to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exodus 22, 22 says, you shall not oppress any widow or orphan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do the ornament 24, 17.
[SPEAKER_00]: You shall not pervert the justice due to a stranger or a way and orphan.
[SPEAKER_00]: James won 27 pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our god and father is this to this it who church?
[SPEAKER_00]: The fatherless mat matter to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The motherless matter to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And because she's an orphan, now her family dynamic becomes makeshift.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to look at what this word makeshift means.
[SPEAKER_00]: or a substitute constructed from whatever materials all they're living.
[SPEAKER_00]: She'll have a real family.
[SPEAKER_00]: She got and was left over from all the trouble she is faced.
[SPEAKER_00]: So now God got to take whatever's available to make her family.
[SPEAKER_00]: She'll have a mother, she'll have a father, she'll have no siblings, she'll have no home, but she got a cousin.
[SPEAKER_00]: So God says, I'll tell you what I'm gonna do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna use your cousin to make you a temporary daddy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a feel in the gaps by my grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know you have to make sure family if you got a cousin who was more like a big sibling.
[SPEAKER_00]: an uncle or an aunt who helped support a single parent, a grandparent or a guy parent who became your primary caregiver or a non-biological parent who loves you just as much or more than a biological word.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's some makesher family where God by his spirit will raise up somebody whose job is not to do, to do the job that need to be done to give you the grace, only God can give you is there anybody in this house who's grateful for the way God filled in with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So here's my question, whom has God used to feel some important gaps in your family history?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who has God used?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who did a job that a one day job to do?
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's a major key, and I need you to take a deep breath of false sadness together, breathing, breathing out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here we go.
[SPEAKER_00]: God uses imperfect people to feel gaps left by other imperfect people, so be grateful instead of judgmental.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what you're saying, God is, my real family is imperfect, and the gaps created there,
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when I think back over my history, when I'm tempted to judge, I should just be grateful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, y'all, I'm preaching my own life.
[SPEAKER_00]: This ain't just, Esther's story is mine too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you all know in part my,
[SPEAKER_00]: my story born to team parents raised by a single mom my dad who's here this morning he went to the Navy four days before I was born so I was born July 1st, 1986 he went to the Navy I've lived June 26th or 27th, 1986 right my dad had to leave me to love me right but I didn't get that revelation the 20 years after the fact
[SPEAKER_00]: The temptation is when you start realizing your story to try to make judgments.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the problem is you working with half information.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your misjudging those who left a gap not giving them graceful being imperfect and not grateful for the people who stepped in the gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what's amazing about the hand of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have had mentors who stepped in at times in my life that have helped me tremendously.
[SPEAKER_00]: Marlin Andrews is my first mentor at the Boys and Girls Club.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why I started the club today.
[SPEAKER_00]: God use that man to save my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mala Andrews, Darrell Samus who's going to glory, Simon Blown, who is a Jew, lawyer I used to work for, and now we became friends, Milton Campbell, who was my youth pastor, Craig Oliver, who was my pastor.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are some of the men guy used to feel the gap.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the grace of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything I thought I learned from them all they did was make me just like my daddy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got him a tool to a point and heal enough to respect the fact that the gaps I thought was created really gave space for grace to creep in and for God to work a miracle that I could not understand until by and by.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that anybody who can give God a praise what I've said?
[SPEAKER_00]: The even if it didn't feel good, I'm grateful for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm grateful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Y'all, my dad goes to the Navy.
[SPEAKER_00]: He takes a picture in 1987.
[SPEAKER_00]: His friend Marvin took a picture of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't show it in church because it's, yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's cool, but it's not appropriate for church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Last year, we are driving to my Uncle Rocks Beach House, me and my family.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom randomly texted me this picture of my dad that I never seen.
[SPEAKER_00]: The back of the picture said to my son, I love you, dated 1987.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad sent me a picture when I was one year's old that I didn't see until I was 38.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I have spent 38 years judging him, I would have missed the fact that I was loved, I just didn't know it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes it takes time for you to see today what was already in the work story yesterday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there anybody?
[SPEAKER_00]: The story is like my story, where you can be honest about the fact that God, I'm grateful to even though it didn't look like how it should have looked.
[SPEAKER_00]: You love me still the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mighty God, we serve.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you gotta appreciate the way God filled the gaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: And on this pinnacle Sunday, it's the Holy Spirit, who fills these gaps.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be in them, don't believe that misfortunes don't make us on a state.
[SPEAKER_00]: If Esther is sitting there, she's fatherless, she hummus, she motherless, and she is completely alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: She could have been mad that God let her be born, when he did, where he did.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, why would you let me be born in a time like this?
[SPEAKER_00]: Born to a family like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: She could have felt like her life was a mistake.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know I'm talking to a room for the people and people online who have made the false conclusion that because you face misfortune, that means you are a mistake.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't allow your mistakes to add up to the conclusion the misfortunes to add up to the conclusion that you'll mistake.
[SPEAKER_00]: She had many misfortunes, but she was right on time for divine destiny.
[SPEAKER_00]: God used his fatherless, motherless, homeless woman to become queen of Persia to deliver his people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was more the car who filled in the gap that helped her discern the hand of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, look at extra chapter four verse number 14, I'm almost done.
[SPEAKER_00]: For if you keep silent more than God says, at this time, liberation and rescue will arise from the Jews, from another place, and you and your father's house, only who he talking about, because our father's house don't exist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Will perish, watch this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And who knows, whether you have not a 10 royalty for what church such a time, how can a mistake be right on time for such a time?
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't judge our story, if you ain't got to, such a...
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us think we're on the state.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's because you haven't seen what God is going to do with your story yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: You think you were born at your own time, born to the wrong people, born in a wrong place.
[SPEAKER_00]: When the truth is, you were born at the right time, in the right family, in the right place, and you may not understand it until such a...
[SPEAKER_00]: Peter Scazero says, emotionally healthy spirituality is about reality, not denial or illusion.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is about embracing God's choice to birth us into a particular family, in a particular place, at a particular moment in history.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to be grateful for the fact that sometimes I'm so distracted by my misfortune that I need somebody to step in to help me see the hand of God in my future.
[SPEAKER_00]: More to God saying, look, don't be distracted by what's behind you, heal from that, so you can walk into what's there front of you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You became Queen Motherless One, you became Queen Fatherless One, you became Queen Harmless One, so you could become Deliverer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which one are you gonna identify as?
[SPEAKER_00]: Motherless, Fatherless, Harmless, or Queen, and Deliverer?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that anybody who's grateful for the fact that my make sure family won't undemone?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm done y'all, here's our actual item.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everybody in here, I want to challenge you this week to do your own dinner gram.
[SPEAKER_00]: You like, Rav, I don't know how to do a gym gram.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got a Google don't you?
[SPEAKER_00]: You got artificial intelligence, don't you?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't you do your own gym gram.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: Three generations ahead, one generation beneath, both sides.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do a general grant.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ralph, some people on my general grant, but I might need to talk to our dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Acts are holding a spirit of giving you insight for where it's no human being to give it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ralph, the do my general grant, I got a call somebody I didn't talk to in years.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm praying for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't let the difficulty of completing the general grant
[SPEAKER_00]: make you stop because there's freedom when you get it done.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do a general, and don't just do a family treat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at the family patterns.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at the weaknesses, the strengths.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at the sense, the bad decisions, look at the good decisions, and then pray to God for the grace to overcome and walk into who He is designed to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to leave you with this thought.
[SPEAKER_00]: There aren't any pre-Genergrams, none of us come from perfect families with perfect parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most parents did the best they could with what they brought with them into her daughter.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what gaps is in my grandparents' life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what gaps is in my parents' life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the family that used to have gaps, NAS, fielding.
[SPEAKER_00]: My son graduated the other day.
[SPEAKER_00]: My son, instead of having two grandmothers, now he got three grandmothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of having two grandmothers, he got three grandmothers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mighty God, weease.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm praying for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if the day was tough, but I pray that you can get freedom from your pants.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you can unlock your future, a man's arch, and make it a little to hang up a praise.