Hello, friends. Thank you for joining this broadcast today. I believe that God has given me a word that will impact your spirit in a definite way. The quantifiable impact of his Word on your life will show up in unbelievable terms as you submit your life unto the Lord. As we go into the Word of God, we go with a sense of purpose and a sense of destiny. Now hear ye the Word of the Lord.
“And Jesus said unto him, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place, have not where to lay his head.'” Nowhere to lay his head. See, I was quoting it and I thought to myself, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” to lay his head. Your mind doesn’t rest when home isn’t secure.
If you succeed in every area of your life, if you succeed, you got the best health, you’re in the best shape, you’re the best looking, you have the most formidable personality, you’re successful, you’re financially secure, you’re respected every time you walk up and down the street. If you succeed everywhere else and fail to have peace, and joy, and love in your home, what does it profit you to have all of this stuff on the outside and have no place to lay your head, to rest your mind, to know that this is solid, and this won’t shake, and this won’t break? It is very, very important to you.
No, you don’t understand that nests must be built from broken branches. If you can build a whole nest from broken branches, you can build a whole house with broken people. But it’s gotta be built. The problem today is, we want prefab houses. It’s easier to go get somebody else’s husband than it is to develop… see, nobody wants to do the work of building the kid, they wanna scream at the child, they wanna beat the child, they wanna yell at the child, but the child has learned a lot of that behavior from what was modeled in front of them, and you have to get down on the ground level, wherever they are, even if it’s a juvenile detention center, you gotta go where they are and start building that child block, by block, by block, while people are talking about you, while they’re criticizing you, while they’re saying, “Where is your God? I thought you were a Christian”.
You don’t have time to worry about what people think on the outside because this family thing is too important for me to be yelling back at my neighbors. I’m trying to build something out of these broken pieces that God has given me. Oh, glory to God. Where are my parents at? Build that child. What good is it to build a house if you lose the child? Build the child. The child will outlast the house. Build the child. The child will take care of you when you’re old. Build the child.
I know they’re broken, I know they’re crazy, I know they got on your nerves, I know they cursed you out, I know you feel like nothing, blah, blah, blah, but when you get through feeling like that, get down on the floor and start building that child, because you can’t have a nest if you can’t work with broken branches, broken husbands, broken wives. Everything in your house is cracked somewhere. Everything cracked somewhere.
I know you all think that once you’re a Christian all you have to do is speak in tongues and wait on Jesus, the Jesus bus is gonna come get you and take you to be with Jesus. But while you’re waiting at the bus, you’re gonna get hungry. When I got ready to talk to my wife about life insurance, she said, “I don’t wanna talk about that. I don’t even wanna talk about it. I don’t wanna have no discussion with you about that. That’s all you. We’re not gonna have a discussion about that”. She said, “I don’t know who you gonna leave it to, ’cause I ain’t gonna care, I’m gonna be crying”.
I said, “You’re gonna be crying, and you’re gonna be hollering, and you’re gonna be screaming, but you’re gonna have to go to the bathroom so you’re gonna need toilet paper. You’re gonna get thirsty so you’re gonna need water. Sooner or later you’re gonna get hungry so you’re gonna need food, and if we don’t have no gas, you’re not gonna be able to eat”.
I have never seen anybody so grieved that they didn’t go to the bathroom, and eat, and live, and breathe, and it’s gonna bring you back to reality. You need stuff. You need stuff. You can’t pray away your need for stuff. You cannot put spiritual solutions over practical need. You cannot fix a physical problem with a spiritual solution. Sisters, more Jesus ain’t gonna make you more wife. I wanna go to a text. They’re having a discussion in the text.
You’ll notice in the conflict with ISIS and terrorists, they refer to us as infidels, because the purest form of the word infidel is that you have rejected the truth. In the Bible, when it calls somebody an infidel, it is that you had an opportunity and rejected it. In the text, it’s talking about taking care of widows, and it says if the widow has a family, if they don’t take care of their own mama, grandmamma, auntie, big mama, Madea, you are worse than an infidel, worse than an infidel if you don’t take care of your own.
Birds take care of their own, monkeys take care of their own, frogs take care of their own, and you gonna walk past your own like you don’t know ’em and say you love Jesus? I’d rather see some Holy Ghost fryin’ chicken and makin’ some chicken noodle soup than I would the, “I’m a prophetess”. You better profit clean this house and go home and see about your grandmamma. The Bible said you are worse than an infidel if you don’t take care of your own house if you’re able to. Some people aren’t able, you don’t have it, you can’t do it, but to some degree you can do something. You can sweep.
Watch this. An infidel is somebody who had an opportunity to receive truth and rejected it. An infidel, the Bible says you are worse than an infidel if you don’t provide for your house, alright. God said you had the opportunity to make that house work, but you starved it. You’re worse than an infidel because you were exposed to something that you rejected though you stayed in the house.
Infidel, somebody say, “Infidel”. Oh, infidelity, root word, infidel, primary meaning, you rejected an opportunity. You know why you rejected an opportunity? Because you felt like you were rejected. You know why you felt like you were rejected? ‘Cause you didn’t get the signal. How do you break the infidel infidelity? When we start having real conversations about expectations and responsibilities, mutually, and you live up to yours, and I live up to mine, then there’s not abandonment. And if we’re not abandoned, then we don’t have to fake like we love each other which creates resentment, ’cause love is hard to be faked. So, I will stop paying you money to let me go live. I will start investing because I will no longer define myself by dollars. Church is so quiet sometimes. “Sister, I went to The Potter’s House, it was so quiet”. So, a lot of times we give you stuff to replace us.
You know what I feel in this room? Let me sum to you what I feel in this room. I feel in this room that there are a lot of people in this room who have abandoned kids ’cause they hurt you, parents ’cause they disappointed you, spouses ’cause they didn’t get the signal. I feel in this room a lot of people who are still there but not there. And so, you’re living your life like it’s golden. It might be golden, but it’s not grounded. And anything that’s not grounded can blow away, it can blow away, and it’s expensive to lose it, emotionally, mentally, it’s expensive generationally. I’m not saying you can’t survive it, I’m not saying you can’t make it on your own, I’m not saying you can’t do it, I’m not saying you can’t pay your own bills, I’m not saying you can’t take care of yourself, you can do it but there will be a deduction. The loss of love always leaves a scar.
There are three things I’m gonna give you, put my three points up. I wanna give you three. Number one, we need economic support. The Bible says that if we don’t support economically, we are less than an infidel, that we need to provide. But we also understand now that this support is more than money. So we wanna talk about number two. We wanna talk about social support. We wanna talk about your social support around your family. Your family needs social support. Does it have support? Everything in this room needs support. Support gets no glory but it’s very important. You came in, you saw the carpet, you didn’t see the concrete, but the carpet means nothing without the concrete.
Support, have you got support around you for what you’re trying to do? You’re trying to build a career. Do you have support? You’ve been telling God you’re ready for the next level. Is your family ready? Have you built in enough support to support? You’re getting ready to run for congress, can your kids handle it? Have they got the right kind of friends and support base around ’em? Does the wife have the right support for your next move? This is why God has given you this at the first of the year, ’cause you’re getting ready to go to another level, and for the level that you’re getting ready to go on, you can’t take old support into new levels. For the level that you’re getting ready to go in, you’re gonna need some social support to undergird you.
It’s not enough to have the vision, and have the dream if you don’t have the support. And it’s not just about you, it’s about everything that’s connected to you. You wanna build a great work for God, but can your kids handle it? Is it the right time? Is it the right season? Do they have friends around them that support your values, or are you the only sane voice in the life of your family? So, number two, we gotta have social support.
Well, I’ll give you a couple things I have learned in life. The higher you go, the smaller your circle. People who got all kind of friends, and they know everybody, and they runnin’ after all kinds of people ain’t goin’ very high. Because if you get too big of a circle, you’re gonna have to stay low. If you’re gonna be like a pyramid and come up, the higher you get, the smaller your circle. Now, if you take the pyramid and turn it upside down, and the circle gets bigger as it goes up, it’s gonna fall over. That means you can’t take everybody with you. You gotta be careful who you try to take with you. The higher you go, the more discriminating you have to be in who you’re gonna give your time to.
‘Cause we now understand that provision is not just money, it’s attention, it’s time, it’s interest, it’s affection. Nothing that you have will run right without you, so everything that you have requires more of you. And you can’t afford to fund everybody’s situation. Oh, it’s not that they’re not good people, it’s just that you are a limited resource and some of you are wore out now ’cause you are too many things to too many people. You gotta bring your circle down for where God is getting ready to take you to. High five somebody and say, “Lord, that man’s talkin’ to me”.
The third area that you need is spiritual support. You need economic support, you need social support, your social environment, and then you need spiritual support. Let me tell you why you need spiritual support. Let me tell you. You wanna continue? Who can I tell? Every family is dysfunctional in some way. They didn’t believe me. See, some of you, the frustration that we have, we always think everybody got something that we didn’t get. “If I’d of only been raised by my mother I’d of been so much better”. “If my father would have been there, da, da, da, da”.
There are people with mothers who are crazy. There are people with fathers who are crazy. There are people with mothers and fathers who are crazy. There are people with mothers and fathers who live in big houses that are crazy. There are people with mothers and fathers who live in big houses and have PhDs who are still crazy. There are people who are fine who had mothers and fathers and had PhDs, they are good looking, and crazy. Let me tell you something. Everybody, light skinned, dark skinned, white folk, black folks, brown folks, blue folks, everybody has secrets. Everybody has struggles. Everybody has problems. Everybody has issues.
Now, when my kinda crazy marries your kinda crazy and then we have five kids with five new flavors of crazy, the whole house looks like Baskin and Robbins. Have you ever noticed the older your kids get, the harder it is for them to be in the house? They’re easy when they’re small. They don’t have no opinion. “Put on the blue dress. Put on the blue pants. Wear the red shirt”. Then one day they say, “I don’t like that shirt”. The more opinionated they get, the more difficult they get, and the more the dysfunctions begin to show, and the more secrets the family has, because secrets are equal-opportunity experiences that we all can share.
The young people today say they don’t have no secrets, they say they keep it real. They are hilarious. Then they put real on Facebook and come to you crying because people are talking about ’em. There are some things if you keep it real, you will lose it. And the reality is, you get on my nerves ’cause you’re standing there staring at me like you don’t like what I preach… real. If you said everything you thought to people it would be the Third World War. Keepin’ it real is destructive. You don’t wanna keep it real, you wanna keep it runnin’. And in order to keep it runnin’, sometimes you gotta shut your mouth, sometimes you gotta hold your peace, sometimes you gotta be still and let the Lord fight your battle.
In order to keep it runnin’, sometimes you gotta say, “I can’t fix this. This is a job for God”. I can be your husband, but I can’t be your daddy, and your grandfather, and your childhood. I can’t fix you where you’re broke. I love you with your crazy self, but I’m turnin’ you over to God and I’m lifting you up to God. And if God don’t fix it, it can’t be done. You need spiritual support.
Throw your hands up and say, “I’m calling for backup”. I love somebody I can’t fix. I love somebody I can’t straighten out. I love somebody I can’t heal. My craziness is driving me crazy, and now their craziness is on top of that crazy. Now the kids’ crazy is mixed in with the crazy. Help! I’m overloaded! Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests, my problem is, at a time that I am the most tired, I have no place to lay my head. I can’t lay it on my daughter ’cause there’s issues. I can’t lay it on my son ’cause there’s issues. I can’t lay it on my wife ’cause there’s issues. I can’t lay it on my husband ’cause there’s issues.
And you wonder why you’re fallin’ apart, and why you can’t sleep, and why your food doesn’t digest well, and you’re wondering why you have mood swings. The reason you’re having problems, in spite of all of your accomplishments, is that you have a place to work, you have a battle to fight, you have a giant to kill, you have a mission, but you have no place to lay your head.
Come unto me all ye that are weak and heavy laden! Cast your cares on me! I care about you! My yoke is easy, my burdens are light. The reason you are physically sick right now, the reason you are hypertensive, diabetic, stressed out, eating disorders, the reason you have migraine headaches, the reasons that you’re getting cancerous tumors is years, and years, and years of being tough guy, strong woman, reality is you had no place to lay your head. You can’t even worship in the service because you’re so worried about your image that when it’s time to worship you’re so busy trying to look masculine that you miss the one place who’s got arms big enough to take the weight up off of your shoulders.
Hey, I’ve gotta stop there, but it’s been a real joy to share the Word of the Lord with you. I believe the best is yet to come, and I pray that the Word you heard today will produce fruit in your life tomorrow. In Jesus’ name, be blessed.