The Breaking Before the Blessing - Touré Roberts

8:50 Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. And I feel like we're in a morning season right now. You went from a morning MOU season to a morning... those who sow in tears it's your mother shall reap in joy hallelujah see you was I'm just letting the Lord have his way but you was weeping but you didn't let your weeping keep you from sowing yeah yeah you was weeping but you got up anyway and you kept on praying and you kept on standing and you didn't leave your post and you didn't leave your assignment. You were there crying, tears streaming down your face and the Lord said those who sow in here shall reap it. Good morning!

9:46 It's turning in your favor. It's turning in your favor. Let me just prophesy for a minute. Oh, no, I got to teach. I got to teach. I got to teach. It's turning in your favor. It's turning in your favor. Turning in your favor. Turning in your favor. The devil was lying to you. He told you you wasn't going to get out of this. But look at you right now. Still standing. Oh my God, I feel the Holy Ghost. Hallelujah.

10:22 Hallelujah. Hold on. Hallelujah. There's one thing you got to know. I talked about times and seasons, right? But guess who holds times and seasons in his hand? Before you even went through it, watch this. Your deliverance was already on God's calendar. It was already scheduled. am I sure hallelujah hallelujah I guess I probably didn't get my own personal full praise out yesterday when that breakthrough came but maybe God wanted me to get it in here so we can come together let us make a joyful noise together hallelujah hallelujah I will bless the Lord at all times and his praises shall continually be in my mind.

11:17 Come on, let us magnify. I feel the Holy Ghost. There are about a hundred people and you are getting ready to break out. I hear God saying, expand, expand, expand. It wasn't for nothing. Just tell somebody, it wasn't for nothing. It wasn't for nothing. It wasn't for nothing. Turn to somebody else and say, double for your trouble. Double for your trouble. Double for your trouble. Hallelujah We gotta learn how to catch something Catch it Come on somebody The preseason started yesterday Come on somebody And if you're gonna play in the game You gotta learn how to reach up and catch something Come on somebody Where are my wide receivers at in God's house?

12:19 I'm getting ready to throw you a pass. You gotta catch it. Way in the balcony! Catch it! 패fal Rex Don't wait till the end of the message. Get in that ready, ready position. I'm looking for about 19 wide receivers. I don't care if I gotta jump high I'm gonna catch that thing I dare you to throw it in my direction Yes sir Hallelujah I wish Michael Irvin was here.

13:33 You get the ball anywhere near him And he'll catch it Okay, alright Family In my ship That's who we have to be in the spirit We gotta be like Michael Irvin Jerry Rice I like cuff because I'm from LA Just get it anywhere near me And I'll grab it I gotta teach Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

14:31 Catch it. and don't let the enemy strip it from you the words that you get today catch it and don't fumble it catch it and run on down the road with it catch it and score Come on! You better come on! Hallelujah! Come on, Pastor. Come on! You got it, Pastor. You got it! Okay.

15:03 All right. Hallelujah. Okay. All right. This passage of Scripture, this passage, I sure do. I sure do. This passage of Scripture, for me, is one of the most powerful and insightful passage of scripture in my estimation in the whole bible because it is one of the rare places where god reveals in hindsight what he was doing when you didn't have sight I would love to get into the history of it I'm just not doing that I'm going for it today just study it on your own Deuteronomy is a book that is many things one of the things it is is it's a farewell letter of instruction and revelation to the children of Israel as Moses is making his way on off the scene.

16:28 And he is basically taking them back into the history of his time with them, from them being delivered out of Egyptian bondage, them coming out of Egypt and going into the wilderness, and ultimately what was in store for them. So he's speaking about what happened in the past. He's speaking about the moment that they're standing in and what would ultimately be their portion if they did the right things. But one of the things that's powerful about this particular passage is it's one of the rare places where God reveals to his people, watch this, what their difficult season was all about. in other words while they were in it they did not know what god was doing and they struggled because they did not know what god was doing but god tells them in this rare place after the fact they say hindsight is 2020 he tells them after the fact what he was doing and let's look at it really quickly he says in verse 2 he says and you shall remember the lord you shall remember that the lord your god led you all the way these 40 years in the wilderness but watch this so that was the what but here he gives the why to humble you and to test you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments and know.

18:10 That is the statement right there. He tells them. He reveals to them. And if he reveals it to them later, that meant that there was some sort of profit in him not showing it to them while they were in it. Oh, we're going to have a good time today. And for us, it speaks to how sometimes there are things happening, perhaps in your life right now that what you can't see is God doing something behind the scenes and it may not make sense now but there will come a time in your life where it will track with me and so so you know people ask me sometimes they say you know if you had to tell your your younger self one thing there's one thing you'd have to tell your younger self or if you had to tell the younger generation, if there's this one tip you would give them, one thing you would want them to understand, what is it?

19:07 And I would be like, oh, that's simple. I would want them to understand the reality of life's unfolding. That life unfolds. That it, you know, we can get stuck in a moment not realizing that there's another fold coming. Are you tracking with me? There's some of you in here right now and you feel like you've had nine lives. Holler at me if that's your testimony You feel like man I've had You feel like a cat you know what I mean They said the cats you know But I would tell them Life unfolds That's why you can't quit That's why Paul says in Galatians You know be not weary in your well doing For in due season you will reap If you don't faint Because your life is almost like It's like an accordion It just keeps on unfolding And as long as you've got breath there's another fold coming. Are you hearing the words that are coming out of my mouth? And each time an unfolding takes place, you look back at something that you thought was the worst thing that could ever happen to you, and you realize that it was the best thing that ever happened to you. Anybody ever been there before? Oh my God, that seemed like it was so, but I couldn't be, watch this, I couldn't be me if it wasn't for that.

20:24 Oh, I feel this. And that's why regret is demonic. regret is demonic now i'm not saying that you shouldn't you know be remorseful for for things that you've done i'm not saying that but there's a difference between remorse and regret regret watch this has no redeemability in it yeah regret is regret is ah i can't that happened and I cannot get it back. And so watch this. So you live with this scar of loss, irredeemable loss, and there's nothing about the gospel that speaks to irredeemable loss. That is anti-gospel. So what we have to do is we have to, watch this, oh, I hope I can say this right.

21:23 You have to transfer, watch this, You have to transfer regret into investment. Oh, you're about to catch it in just a second. So you've got to translate. You've got to say, okay, I can either regret that this happened or see it. What? No, no, no. What is that? I can either regret this thing of the past or see it as an investment in my future. Oh, God. My podcast, the called podcast for leaders and entrepreneurs, the episode actually is dropped right now. And I'm talking about money and multiplying money. Because money is meant, the first thing you need to do when you get some money is not spend it, it's think about how you're going to multiply it. But anyway, I talk about how in times past, I have made some mistakes with money. and I can either regret those mistakes or thank the Lord for the lessons.

22:24 that those mistakes were made on one level and see it as something that's going to produce a harvest for me on the next level. So if you wasted thousands, if you see it right, that's an investment to produce millions in your life later. Oh, I wish somebody would catch what I just said. The enemy wants to keep you in dead things Everything in your life is working toward an incredible plan Which means if you're still alive God is still increasing Anyway, so the unfolding The unfolding That's the revelation in that portion of Deuteronomy 8 That things are yet unfolding Now, let's talk about the wilderness for a second, because I always thought that the wilderness was punishment. Because you've read it before, that the promised land was a much shorter distance.

23:31 There was a shorter track to the promised land than the track the children of Israel ultimately took. and somehow, you know, in my ignorance, in my nevitae, I thought, well, if there was a shorter track, then the reason why they had to go this way and they were in it so long is because they were rebellious or God was punishing them. And that's only partially true. It's only partially true. The reality of it is they have to go through the wilderness. Watch this. Because they weren't ready to go, come on, they weren't ready to go to the shorter track. You study it, it talks about it in, I believe it's in Exodus, one of them, it says they weren't ready because the Philistines were there. And because, watch this, they were underdeveloped, that they would have gone in there and then returned back to Egypt. So the wilderness was not a punishment, the wilderness was a place of development. Now you might say, what about the 40 years? Okay, I get that. We know that when the spies went out to spy out the land for 40 days and some of them came back, not all of them, because two of them had the right idea, right? Joshua and Caleb, but the majority of them came back and said, we can't do it. And then God says, yeah, you know what? And so you're going to wander. So the time, the length of time may have had to do with some degree of punishment. I'll give you that. But the wilderness itself was not punishment. It was preparation. Track with me. That's a very, very important distinction. And 40 is a powerful biblical number. It's the number of testing.

25:12 It's a seasonal number. So even though, watch this, even though the punishment was 40, even the punishment was in God's plan. This is the God that we serve. Even when you mess up, even when you make a mistake even when the season is elongated he is still working it together for good this is the masterful magnificent brilliant god that we serve are you tracking with me so so the wilderness the wilderness is a necessary place of development. You can't get around the development. And I do want to point this thing out because sometimes preparation can be misinterpreted as punishment. If you're not seeing clearly, if you don't understand the character of God, you can misinterpret a season that was meant to break you, to bless you as a season that was meant to simply break you.

26:16 And that's why as Moses is breaking this thing down, he says something in verse 5. He said, you should know in your heart that as a man chastens his son, the Lord your God chastens you. Wow. There's a passage, I believe it's in Proverbs, where it says that the father that withholds correction hates his child.

26:43 And isn't it interesting how the enemy can manipulate us? he can watch this and that's all he is he's a pervert he's a pervert so he perverts truths he perverts truth so isn't it interesting how the enemy can take the thing that god uses because he loves you and cause you to think it's happening to you because god hates you that's why the Bible says that the wise person actually loves correction we may not love the feeling of correction but we love the fruit of correction where my people you don't like the feeling of it but you cannot deny the fruit of it David put it this way It was good that I was afflicted. Now watch this.

27:37 You don't say that while you're in it. you say that after a fold transpires and you look back and you say oh my god that was connected to this and i speak in decree no matter where you find yourself right now in the season the promise that god has made to you watch this is connected to the preparation that you're lamenting right now you can't get to the promise without the process of the preparation and the preparation can be confusing because sometimes preparation looks like pain. But one of the things that God told me is that you can't get to precision without pain. Did you hear what I just said?

28:22 You can't get to precision without pain. That's what the text is all about. So let's look at it. There's a few things that are happening here. He says, okay, so I led you these 40 years in the wilderness to humble you, to test you, to know what was in your heart. Let's stop right there. Let's talk about this. First thing he says is, I led you through this wilderness to humble you. Let me tell you about humility. If a person says, I am humble, they ain't humble because a humble person won't say they're humble. are you checking with me it is actually pride that will make you say you're humble so so so humility or i should say pride is one of the most difficult things to detect and oftentimes you don't know that you were proud until you fall So the revelation of your pride happens when you're picking yourself up off the ground Pride is subtle It doesn't introduce itself as pride It doesn't say hey i'm pride hang out with me It just moves and you look up and you're picking yourself off the ground So I want to talk about I think that there's a teaching there's some lessons in there I want us to look at a few examples from the journey of the children of Israel that speaks to types of pride that we can all struggle with that oftentimes go undetected.

30:19 Can I do that really quickly? Number one, the children of Israel thought they knew what they needed better than God. Let's look at it. whenever food or water became scarce, they concluded that God must have made a mistake. We see this in Exodus 15, 24. You know, what shall we drink? They're complaining against Moses and ultimately complaining against God. We see it in Exodus 16 and 3. They say things like, would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt. All this because they are experiencing temporary, what looks like lack. And they start accusing God in Exodus 17 and 3. They said they got crazy with this one. Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children?

31:19 And it is the epitome of pride and arrogance to look at your situation and somehow deduce that you know what you need better than God knows what you need. they allowed their circumstances to become in their own mind evidence by which they judge God's intentions that's pride God you must have made a mistake God can't you see that I'm in this situation God you have forgot about me well why didn't you just kill me there why did you bring me from here to there. Why didn't you kill me? That's arrogance. That, watch this, that is usurping your own intelligence. I told my church in LA the other day, I said, listen, I said, God thinks better than you. He really does. And I'm going to tell you why God thinks better than us. You know how he says, my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways.

32:26 He says, as high as heaven is from the earth, that's the difference between my thoughts and your thoughts let me tell you why God will always outthink us because God has infinite context we think according to our context according to our experience according to the experience of our fathers or our forefathers our mothers our our foremothers that is the limitation why is it that's the fullness of our thought process what I've seen what I've heard the opinions of others And God is saying, listen, listen, let me tell you something, man. I think better than you. And so the moment that we believe that we are in a position to say, God, you don't know what you're doing. Pride has gripped us. Are you tracking with me? There is a place where you can recognize that you have a need without misunderstanding what God is doing in the middle of it.

33:28 That's humility. humility is I know that I'm hungry but I don't know yet why God has allowed me to hunger but I trust in the brilliance of God and God's going to sort it out for me while I'm figuring it out are you tracking with me so that's one way that we can have pride in our lives but not really detect it because it looks like good sense. But there's a difference between good sense and God sense. I'm quiet now. Number two, they wanted, I'm talking about how this pride that goes undetected. I'm going to bring it all together. It's going to be beautiful. They wanted God's provision without depending on God. Well, let me put it this way.

34:20 They wanted God's provision without daily dependence. Right? see manna manna it couldn't be controlled or stockpiled so so they had to wait for daily manna with the exception of a few exceptions right they had to to wait each morning and they had to gather it and then trust god for the next day they didn't like that they didn't like that and we don't like it either. We, you know, right there in the model prayer, God says, pray this, give us this day our daily bread. He was trying to instill the discipline in us to trust God each day because there is a development that happens not when the manna is stockpiled in warehouses.

35:15 Oh, don't play with me. That's what we like. We want a manna warehouse. We want to say, God, can you just open up the windows of heaven and give me manna, but not just for the day. God, I need you. See my little barn in the back? Can you just store up the manna there? And God, I'm trying to do you a favor. God, I'm trying to make it actually a little easier for you. I don't want you to have to do this every day, God. I care about you, Lord. That's too much work for you. Just do it one time, God.

35:41 No, the reality of it is you don't want to trust him each day. you want to be able to go back there and not look at God and open up your barn house and see all your provision there. Watch this and not experience the development of faith and trust, which your destiny will need. Who is quiet in here today? so and some of them old jokers some of them even tried to keep more than was instructed if you read over in exodus chapter 16 verse 19 and 20 they tried to keep more they're like i'm an outsmart god again bad thinking i'm gonna try to give me a little extra and they tried to keep and it's spoiled on them. God is cold like that. I'm too high to get over. I'm too low to get under.

36:37 Oh, little Michael Jackson. Amen. Praise God. Stuck in the middle. All right. So, so the manna, watch this, the manna that they experienced in the wilderness was not just food, it was a system of development. It was a system of formation because they were going somewhere and God had to develop them for where they were going. Are you hearing the words that are coming out of my mouth? I'm not trying to get ahead of myself, but just let me talk. The promise necessitates a process and we want the promise, but not the preparation that goes along with the promise.

37:29 And you got to realize that when God gives you a promise, he's not just giving you a promise, he's giving you the guarantee of a process. Can we talk like this for a few more minutes today? It was a system to my manner. It was a system of formation. He was teaching them not simply that he could provide, but that they had to remain relationally dependent upon the provider. Those are two different educations that God can provide and that I need to stay connected. Come on, to the vine. Are you tracking with me? But pride wants enough provision. Look at this.

38:22 Watch this. Think about this. This is going to sting a little bit, but that's okay. It's going to make it better.