Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Supernatural Saturday.
I'm going to be a little bit
something this morning because I didn't get much sleep last
night.
It's kind of been a rough week.
Anyone else?
Let me see some hands.
Has it been a rough week
for anybody on here?
Have anything happened this week?
Get a little bullied by anybody this week?
Maybe something didn't turn out the way you expected it.
Maybe you didn't feel good.
Maybe you didn't sleep well.
Let me see the hands.
Yeah, everyone's kind of rowing that boat.
So Father, we just thank you that we're here.
We made it to Saturday, Lord.
We thank you that you love us and that you're always with us
and for us.
We come into agreement with those things regardless of how
our feelings and our circumstances may dictate the
opposite.
We thank you Lord that we can come together and that we have
community with each other.
Supernatural community that continues to propel us forward
into our greatest life,
into our highest and most authentic self, Lord.
We just thank you for all of these things this morning.
Holy Spirit,
we ask you to just be with us in weakness this morning.
Speak to me, speak through me, Lord.
I'm leaning into you and not any gifts that I may possess
from you, Lord.
I thank you God that you have a word for us because you said
that when we gather together
that you are with us in a special way, in a unique way.
And so Lord, encounter us this morning here together in Jesus
name.
Amen.
All right.
So,
two different words this morning.
Okay.
And you are going to be one or the other and you may, you may
wish that you were the other.
You may wish that you were the one that you're not.
Okay.
But then in different areas of your heart and in your life,
you might be both.
You're going to understand really soon here what I mean by
this.
And so I'm going to start by reading two different Facebook
posts, one that I put out yesterday and one that I put
out just now before this call.
And then you're going to see the different camps that we have
to choose from this morning.
Okay.
All right.
So the two, the two camps are let go and hold on.
All right.
So let me read the first one.
A few years ago, I was given a key as a gift.
The key just simply said let go.
That has been a very personal message for me because you see
I'm a giver.
I'm a keeper.
I'm a lifer.
I hold on too long.
I give too much and I love too hard.
I only have one gear and that's full-throttle all-in ride-or-die.
But I have learned often the hard way that not everything
deserves that type of devotion.
And unfortunately, also not everyone.
Sometimes things, relationships, jobs, assignments, communities
are only meant to be temporary, to teach us, to awaken us, to
break us, to heal us, to change us.
And then it's time to move on, to move forward, to move ahead.
There's no need for hard feelings, blame.
Nothing has to be wrong with something to leave it behind.
Often, it's just time for change.
It has served its purpose and you served yours.
So go ahead and give yourself permission to turn the page,
adjust your sails and trust God.
It's time to let go.
All right, that's the first camp, friends.
All right, let's go and look at the second camp.
And a lot of you, if you're in any kind of hard circumstance,
you want to be in that camp.
You're like, oh, yeah, ha ha.
L-I-G-A, baby, let it go.
But you may be in this camp.
Many people resonated with my post about letting go yesterday.
I know it was a timely encouragement for a lot of people.
But as I was running errands, I heard the Lord say,
that's not for everyone.
There are many people that don't need to let go yet.
Instead, they need to hold on.
So for all of you that would love to cut and run from that
hard relationship, that hard assignment, community, season,
don't do it.
Just hold on.
Something greater is happening in you than what is happening
to you.
God is working in your heart important things that your
future self will need to be successful.
These hard times don't define you, but they will refine you
if you let them.
Ask God for grace to ride it out, to choose love, and to
finish this season well.
It probably won't be easy, but you don't need easy.
You just need worth it.
All right.
Let's just lean in a little bit.
I want you to think of those two words, let go and hold on.
I want you to close your eyes, if you can, if you're somewhere
that you can.
And I want you to ask Holy Spirit, which camp you're in,
and if you're a hybrid,
there's one area where you need a necessary ending.
You need to let go.
But there's other places where, you know, you need to press in
and hold on.
I want you to go ahead.
to spend a few moments with the Lord this morning.
Amen.
All right, we're going to move on forward here with these ideas.
So once again, there's going to be different areas where you may have both because you
need to prune a little bit.
Everything you guys life is full of necessary endings.
You can't have new beginnings without endings.
But oftentimes people want to end something just because it's hard.
They don't want to go through that gauntlet.
And I get it.
Trust me.
I have a tendency to be the type of person who is in the first camp that needs to be
told to let go, which is why I got that key as a present.
It's one of those keys that you hang around your neck.
It's called a giving key, and it just simply had the word let go on them.
Some keys have the word hope or faith or joy or healing or whatever, and someone gives
you the key as a present, it's a gift, and then you wear it because it's your word.
And then when it's no longer your word, you're supposed to give that key to someone else.
Someone else that needs that word over their life in that moment.
So I really needed that word over my life because what I wrote in that post is true
of me.
I'm usually in the camp of over my dead body.
You will have to pry it from my lifeless hands.
I have always been a very tenacious person.
I was born in a place where if I had not been a perseverer, an overcomer, I probably would
not be here today to talk to you.
But that's not all the way good, friends, because there's a lot of times you just have
to let go.
I remember I said that about my marriage, oh, you know, over my dead body will I be
divorced?
I almost got my wish there, almost died several times not letting go of something that needed
to be released.
It needed to be released.
So go ahead and put in the comments which camp you think that you're more in right now.
And it might have been not a happy message for you this morning because you were gearing
up to let go and God's telling you to hold on.
He's not done yet.
He's not done.
The king has one more move, right?
It's not done.
And then some of you, you haven't been letting go because you want it to change.
You want it to be better.
You want it to turn out.
You want the ending.
You don't mind if there's an ending.
You just don't want this ending.
So you're holding on, you're holding on for a better ending.
You're holding out for a better outcome.
A lot of you guys have hold-ons, interesting, I like it, well then you're really going to
love what I release now.
How many of you got a chance to hear the special prayer time the other day with the, I think
that it was recorded, with God's reshuffling the deck?
How many of you raised your hand if you heard that special prayer call the other morning?
God's reshuffling the deck, he's dealing you a new hand.
Okay, a lot of you, if you didn't, it's in your replays, just go listen to it.
I talked about this famous painting of a chess game and an actual chess master saw this painting
this artist had painted and the title of the painting was called Checkmate, but the famous
chess player, as he was studying the painting, he realized that it actually wasn't true,
that the king had one more move.
The positioning of the pieces in the painting, him as a master of chess, realized that it
wasn't truly chessmate, that the king had one more move that he could make.
And so often we need to hear that because we personify God.
What does that mean?
That means we make God into a person.
We make him into a fallible person.
We make him into someone who can fail.
We make God into someone instead of something.
We make him into someone who can break his promises.
Someone who can have good intentions, but doesn't have the resources to follow through.
Oh my gosh, let's all laugh at that this morning.
Can we laugh at that?
What have we done?
Let's laugh at this together.
Friends, we have to reframe God and remember that he is omnipotent, that he's omniscient,
that he is everywhere, that we are in him right now.
You are inside of God.
You're in him and his spirit is in you, but you're in him.
God doesn't just have a limited amount of love.
He is love.
I want you to say these things over yourself.
God doesn't have, you know, he doesn't have love.
He is love.
It's not just part of his character and when I'm good and when I perform well and behave
myself and he shows me that side of him.
Come on, we're going after something deep right here.
He is love.
He doesn't just show you that side of himself when you deserve it or what you have earned
it.
This is how you personify God.
You think he is like your earthly mother or father or some other authority figure in your
life that made you beg for it.
That only rewarded you when you came into alignment with what they thought you should
be.
And even for those of you that had really good parents that tried really hard, still
you cannot take that visage of them and apply that to God.
And I know that we think that love is always a big sloppy wet kiss or a big fuzzy warm
hug and that's great.
But love looks like something, it's a verb.
It looks like something.
So God not only loves us, but he doesn't want to leave us in any unworthiness that would
cause us pain.
And that's why the scripture says, take my feet off this path of pain, Lord, and lead
me back to you.
And sometimes love leads you back to him in a way that it snatches you by the back of
your shirt before you fall off the cliff.
And that doesn't feel good in that moment.
When the Bible says that the children that God loves, he corrects.
Some of you may take that word and you might transpose it into punishes.
Because that was a type of correction that once again, you experienced in your life.
But God doesn't punish us.
Someone needs to get a hold of this truth right now.
This can be life-changing for you if you grab a hold of it.
In your let go or your hold on season because some of you might think that you're being punished
You might
God punished Jesus as you on the cross
Jesus took the punishment for sin on the cross. He took it
He took not a little bit of it. He didn't take some people's punishment
He took everybody's punishment on the cross all the people that have lived and will ever live. He took their punishment
He didn't just die for you. He died as you
Please get a hold of that with me today. I have to keep reminding myself of that
That is something you're gonna have to remind yourself of as well. He didn't just die for me. He died as me
what does that mean that that means in this life right here as
You are walking on this earth in the first heaven and you are experiencing an earthly experience
You are a spiritual heavenly being with an earthly experience right now as you finish your earthly experience
whether it's one more week or
Hundred more years. Okay, Methuselah, whatever
God will never not today or ever during your earth life be punishing you
Never will he be punishing you
Grab it
Oh Jackie, I really messed up and and now these this this is going on in my life, you know
I just God it's God's unhappy with me. He's punishing me. Nope. Sure. Not
It's not true you guys not Bible
It's not biblical
The only rock that we have in foundation to stand on is the rock of Jesus Christ
Which is the Word of God made flesh and it's not true
Now it feels like it you want to know why because you're dealing with shame and
Shame separates us from God and it always tells us that God's mad at us and God doesn't like us anymore
And you know and we're unworthy and what what do we do when we feel shame?
We pull away from God and then there feels like there's an emptiness there
Right, it feels like disapproval and a lot of you have had that experience with authority figures or people that you really really want it to
Accept you and love you and appreciate you. But when they got upset at you they withdrew from you
They gave me the silent treatment. They gave you the cold shoulder. They gave you dirty looks
They verbally abused you and told you you know how worthless you were
They may have even physically corrected you in a way that's not correction, but abuse or punishment
With the whipping and the straps and the switches and the belts and the all the things
And so now when you do something that you know inside your heart is
Not
Your true investment
Your true and best self it's unworthy of you we call this sin, right we go our own way we do things our own way and
And then it usually has bad consequences not because God's punishing us
But because there's just natural consequences the doing things that are not smart or wise
Right and so but when we do that then we expect the hammer to come down because that is what we're used to and so
I want you to release that right now. I
I
Remember for years I needed to let go of something and I would not let go because I was so afraid of punishment
There were people talking in my ear religious voices telling me that God was going to punish me
He was gonna punish me if I didn't do the things that they basically were telling me to do in the name of the Lord
There was a certain job that I had for church that I went to when I was young in my 20s and you guys I
hated this job and
While at first it wasn't time to let go because God was working some very important things inside of me
He really was and I wanted to let go because it was hard and I just did not enjoy it
I really felt like I needed to hold on and I did
But there came a point in time when there was a release and it was time to let go
But because they were short-staffed and because it was a very you know
Unfavorable job that other people didn't want high turnover rates. They guilted me and even manipulated me
With God into staying
Anybody else ever experienced that raise your hand if someone used well God would really want you to do this
to manipulate you well, God really wouldn't want you to stop or quit or
You know kind of thing people working your desire to please the Father against you through manipulation
And I just want to let you know, for those of you that are raising your hand right now,
God sees why you did what you did.
He knows that you did those things and continue to do those things to please Him, because
you were told and you believed at the time that what you were doing was pleasing Him
and you had a desire, even though you didn't want to do these things anymore.
You had a desire to please the Father, even though you would have rather gone on your
way and let go of that.
And He wants you to know that it's not about the outside, it's about the inside.
It's about the heart.
And you did those things, even though He wasn't requiring them of you.
You did those things because you believed that they pleased Him.
And guess what?
That pleases Him.
Even though you were being deceived and manipulated, you believed you were doing something to please
the Father.
And He wants you to know that He is pleased with your heart intention.
Grab that right now.
Feel the pleasure of your Father.
And even though that turned into some hard things for you, possibly, some hard times
and maybe some fallout, God wants to restore that.
Because friends, you need to know this, and it's important that you remember this, that
it isn't about what we do, it's about what we know to do.
It isn't about what you do, it's about what you know to do.
People can absolutely do the wrong thing because they think that they're doing the right thing
and it can still turn into blessing.
Do you believe that?
It'll still turn into blessing, but you're like, how in the world did that turn out well?
That was absolutely the wrong decision.
Well, they thought it was the right one.
They were working with the only information that they had.
The only information that they had.
You were working with the only information that you had.
When we know to do better, hopefully we do better.
I feel like the Holy Spirit wants to peel a few layers of remorse and guilt and, you
know, how hindsight is 20-20, but a lot of times you look back and you really regret
things.
Instead of looking back and just being thankful that you made it through that time, thankful
that you know better now than you knew then, we feel guilty.
We feel shame.
Oh, I wish I would have made a better decision.
I wish I would have done something different.
You couldn't.
You couldn't have done anything different.
You didn't know anything more.
Let it go.
Remember today?
Hold on or let it go.
That's something that all of you need to L-I-G it.
Let it go.
Let go of your past mistakes and your failures.
You didn't know what you know now.
Yeah, if you would have relived that, I literally said this to God yesterday.
I said, I was thinking about something in the past specifically to do with my mother
at the end of her life.
And I said, Lord, I believe that I was a good daughter to my mother.
I said, but I'm a different person now, four years later.
And if I would have known what I know now, I could have been an even better daughter.
Like I was still in this idea in my mind that I didn't do well.
Do you know that love covers a multitude of mistakes and failures and weaknesses?
What does that mean?
That means that you're looking back because you're now a evolved version of yourself.
You know a lot more than you did back then.
And you look back and you say, wow, you know, I should have done this, or I should have
done that.
And that could have turned out so much better.
But what you don't understand is that because you did what you did back then with the highest
intention of good towards yourself and others, even with less information than you know now,
because love covers, it still was God's best.
It still turned out to the best, even though you don't know it.
Because you have to understand, there's a lot of things you're not going to see until
you get to heaven.
Until you leave this earth experience and you're fully in your spirit experience, you
are not going to know some things.
And I know that you think that, oh, that could have turned out better, you know.
You don't know because you don't know other people's hearts.
You don't know how it affected them.
You don't know what they felt inside.
I have no way of knowing how my mother experienced those last moments of her life because I'm
not her.
I didn't live in her body.
And I can't talk to her now.
But God was showing me that what you think happened is not really what happened.
So let's let go of remorse today.
Let's let go of regret today.
Can we let go of that?
Let's let go of constantly bargaining in our mind and wishing that we would have done something
different than what we did because now we have more information than we had.
Let's let that go.
Think about how much heart space that's been taking up.
And you can't change it anyway, so why in the world would you hold on to it?
Let go of regret.
Let go.
All right.
And as we're holding on, as we're letting go of regret, let's hold on to peace.
Let's grab a hold of peace.
Let's hold it close.
Shalom, shalom.
Let's hold peace close to us.
Peace that what passes understanding.
It passes our human reasoning and intellect.
So good, that peace.
Not temporary peace, Jesus said, like the world gives.
Temporary peace.
What does that mean?
That means a temporary stay of execution, a temporary like, oh, everything's going to
be okay.
A calm before the storm.
Jesus is saying, I'm the prince of peace.
Okay.
What does that mean?
That means in my kingdom, that's how we do life.
We do life in peace.
Friends, we want to step out of the church age and into the kingdom age because the church
age is full of guilt and it's full of regret and it's full of punishment and it's full
of all the stuff that we've been talking about this morning.
So if you want to let go of something this morning, let's go, let go of the church age.
And I don't mean the ecclesia, I mean church incorporated church, big business church,
big box church.
Let's let go of church incorporated and let's hold on to the finished work of the cross.
Let's hold on to the kingdom that Jesus came and he preached and he introduced and he demonstrated
and now we get to live in that kingdom as that kingdom invades earth from heaven through us.
As an ambassador of that kingdom, we get to demonstrate it.
Jesus started it.
John preached it.
John told everyone what it looked like, right?
And people chose that and they came and they were baptized into that.
But then Jesus came and he demonstrated it further.
He taught on it and he demonstrated it and now he has left all of us his followers.
If you ever want to know what it really is like to be a true quote unquote Christian
because that's what, and that's what all the enemies of the cross called the people that
follow Jesus.
Just so you know, those were derogatory terms.
But if you want to be a true Christ follower, if you want to know what are one of the things
that would mark you as a true Christ follower, it would be demonstrating the kingdom.
Guys ever go into like Costco and they're having like a demonstration of the Vitamix
blender and they're there.
Or maybe a demonstration of all these really sharp knives that you don't need, but you
really want because they're like cutting through things that you're never going to cut through.
Or my favorite, the shammy wow.
Anyone ever seen the demonstration of the shammy wow?
I mean at the fair or at Costco, I mean you need the shammy wow.
How have you been doing life without the shammy wow?
Seriously, if you've never seen this thing, they could literally, an oil tanker could
have a spill on the freeway and they would get out the shammy wows and that would be
gone.
It would be gone without a trace and the shammy wow would, would, would not even be damaged
by it.
It wouldn't even be dirty because that is how amazing and supernatural the shammy wow
is.
And you guys are like, you're like, what's a shammy wow?
It's a little piece of like material made in China that somehow cleans up the worst
messes.
But you guys, I've seen demonstrations of all of these things in person at, you know,
state fairs and at Costco.
In fact, I bought a Vitamix because of the demonstration at Costco years ago.
I couldn't afford that baby, so I didn't buy it from Costco.
I left Costco and I went on Craigslist and I found someone selling their Vitamix and
I bought it.
And guess what?
It's still right here in my kitchen 15 years later because that thing will not, will not
quit and it's still just in great condition.
Why am I saying these things?
Because we can't just tell them, we got to show them.
And so one of the things that we need to hold on to this morning is we need to hold on to
the revelation that we are ambassadors of an unseen kingdom that can only be seen through
us.
It can only be seen through us.
I bought that Vitamix because someone showed me what it could do.
I would have bought the Shamee Wows, but my husband was like, we don't need that.
Or me, it's the opposite.
He said he wanted it, but I was like, we don't need that.
So I didn't want to spend the money on the Shamee Wow.
But I did recognize that it was amazing.
Got the knives, bought the knives because they're amazing.
And so friends, this isn't just about evangelism.
It isn't just about being on the street and asking someone if they have pain in their
body and, and I'm not making fun of that, but I feel like this is the only demonstration
of the kingdom that people know about anymore.
And if you're from the Bethel stream, you know what I'm talking about on the streets
asking people if they have, they need healing and praying for people and praying for people's
legs to grow out.
Cause apparently all of us have one leg that's kind of shorter than the other.
And I've actually seen this happen in person.
I've seen people's legs grow out.
They have someone sit down and put their legs out straight and sure enough, one of their
legs, because you know, we all have bad posture and hip flexor dysfunction and sacroiliac and
all the things.
And you know, sciatica and one of their heels is just like an inch or half an inch shorter
than the other.
And then the person prays and then right in front of you, their legs become equal.
And you're like, Whoa, wow, what did I just see?
What has happened here?
But you guys, it's more than that.
Once again, not downplaying that.
It's amazing.
And if that grabs someone's heart for the Lord, just that simple thing.
And they see that and that's a miracle for them.
I remember the sign from heaven.
That was a miracle for me that got me that the taste and see that I had of the kingdom
of heaven was in my living room after I had radically encountered Jesus driving my car
and I was crying out to God, you know, to, to help me and to heal me.
Because I was very sick at the time, um, with an unknown ailment that the doctors couldn't
figure out.
And I was only 22 years old and he baptized me in the spirit.
I'll never forget it.
The craziest experience.
I was talking, I was praying out loud the best that I knew how I didn't really know
how to do anything.
I hadn't been discipled yet.
And the next time I opened my mouth, instead of English coming out, some other language
came out that I don't know how to speak.
And it was fluent and it was beautiful.
And then I began to sing in this other language.
And while I was singing in this other language, the English interpretation of it was playing
in my mind.
Like I heard myself singing in this language that I did not understand with my human mind
because it's not a language that I spoke.
But in my mind, I heard the English translation of what I was singing.
And I believe that the Lord did that little miracle for me so that I wouldn't get scared.
Because once again, I didn't have any schema for what was happening to me at that moment.
Miracles, demonstrations of the kingdom.
Now that's not a demonstration that I would, even though I possess that gift now, it's
not a demonstration that I would do in front of other people because it would be just weird
to them because they don't understand that language that I'm speaking.
And they'd be like, what is this person doing?
That's what happened in the book of Acts.
All of them that had been holding on, right, they were in their hold on season.
Jesus ascended into heaven after teaching them.
He resurrected from the dead.
He taught them for another 40 days.
And then he said, I got to go now.
I'm gonna leave y'all in charge.
Go over here and wait until you receive power.
Power beyond your humanness, right?
Power from high.
And so they went and they dwelt in the upper room during the feast days of Jerusalem.
This was high holy days in Jerusalem.
And all, if you ever watched The Chosen, all them rogue people were in the city.
All those Sadducees and Pharisees and all the thieves.
They were all there, y'all, okay?
Because it was a time when everyone went into Jerusalem.
And so guess what?
If you are the followers, if you are the protégés of a rebel rabbi, guess where you don't want
to be during the high holy days?
There.
There in Jerusalem in the epicenter.
of religion. You don't want to be there. They just crucified 40 days ago, the guy you follow,
and now you're going to go here and someone might recognize you. Peter got recognized
three times during the weekend of the crucifixion, right? That happens. But what happened when
that power that they were holding on for? So some of you, you're holding on, you're
in a season of holding on. You don't know what to do. You have no idea. You have no
clarity. You know it's not time to let go, but you also don't have any clarity to move
forward. So you're just holding on. You tied a knot at the end of your rope and you're
just swinging right now. You're just swinging. And so they went there and the day of Pentecost
happened. And you guys, the day of Pentecost is actually a feast. It's the feast of the
Jews. And now, you know, we've created a denomination out of it called Pentecostal. And these people
like to speak in tongues, y'all, just so you know, because they took what happened
on that day seriously. And they're like, this is it. We are going to build our entire theology
on this one thing. And once again, tongues are amazing. They're beautiful, but they are
not a gift for public consumption unless there's an interpretation. So what we see happen next
is they all roll out of that upper room. Once that power hits them, they roll on out of
there. They're just, baby, got the spirit. And so they appear drunk to everyone that's
watching, especially all these religious folks. And all of these religious folks, you know,
they're from different areas. And so they all speak different languages, but they heard
these followers of Christ prophesying and praising God in all of their different languages.
And y'all, racism was big back then. Like, they're looking at them like, wait a second,
these are Galileans or Judeans. Like, wait, how are these people speaking our languages?
We can tell by their clothes and by their skin color and by their hair and by the way
they look, where they come from. And so how are they talking in our languages? And that
was a miracle. And it's sad that a lot of people were added to the faith that day. So
friends, the thing that you're holding on for, it could just be the miracle, not only
that you're waiting for, but that someone else is waiting for. Your yes to not quitting,
to not letting go. Because Psalm 126 tells us that we will reap if we faint not, right?
And so what is it saying? It's saying here that when we're holding on, we might end up
being the answer that someone else is praying for. And I believe that for you. And so if
you believe that too, receive that this morning, that, you know, the payoff for this is not
just for you, but it's for your children and your children's children. It's for the
people that have been watching you in your struggle. There are people that have been
watching you in your struggle, you know, and they may be even a little bit in on it. And
some of them secretly might have been like, yeah, you know, you should just give up. You
should just give up and move on. Cut your losses. No one to hold them. No one to fold
them. No one to walk away and no one to run. Kenny Rogers taught us that, right? And they're
probably like, it's time to go. I will tell you, I have a friend that, that got married
a couple of weeks ago and I walked through her, through her situation, through her season.
I'm sure that's not surprising to you guys, because that's kind of what I do. I fill up
with the mystical magical matchmaking, Nanny McPhee, but we're good friends. And we used
to go to church together and I knew her in her first marriage. In fact, her husband and
my husband worked at a cable company together, selling cable door to door. This is all back
in the day. And he was fine then, but then he had a descent into mental illness. He had
a psychotic break. Some things happened and he was never the same. And the man that she
was married to, he no longer left the house and he didn't get out of bed and he was in
chronic pain and, and, and suicidal ideation and just all kinds of things for years, you
guys, for over a decade. And I will tell her that I knew in my heart that while God
is an amazing God of deliverance and healing and all of those things, the times that I
had encountered her husband after he had shut himself in, I knew that, that there was something
more that was happening there that required his permission for deliverance and that she
was going to end up needing to get a divorce. A lot of times people will give us a word
that we're not.
and not capable and don't have the grace to receive yet.
Amen?
It's not that the word is wrong,
we just can't receive it yet.
And so every time I would get together with her
and she would cry and she was so broken
and she didn't know what to do
and she had exhausted everything
and she felt so isolated
because nobody understood and all the things.
I wanted to give her that word,
but I knew that I couldn't
because she was not ready to receive it.
And then little by little,
after years and years had gone by,
I started seeding the ground a little bit.
You know, Sarah, you can't get divorced.
I know it's not what you want, trust me.
Nobody says, when I grow up, I wanna be divorced,
but the abandonment that's happening here,
because guys, they couldn't live.
She's a professional artist
and she was out trying her best to create a life for them
and sustain them and keep a roof over their head
and it was just so hard.
And she would come home to all of that crazy
every single day.
For years, you guys, not for months,
not for days, not for weeks, years and years and years.
Just saw her just diminishing and falling apart
and getting thinner and sickly
and it was just really difficult to see.
And then one day she called me and she said,
it's done.
She's like, I'm done.
Something had happened and I'm not gonna share what happened
but it was really bad.
And she said, I felt a release from God
and I have to, I have no choice, but I have to leave
because it was time to let go.
We hold on because remember a lot of times
we want a different outcome.
We want there to be a different verdict,
a different ending to the story.
We do.
And it's not inappropriate.
I knew just prophetically that there was gonna be a time
when she would need to let go and it wasn't time yet
but she felt the timing and she released.
When she released.
When my mom was in the ICU,
I had all the faith that she could be raised up.
I had all the faith that she could live.
I felt no fear whatsoever.
We went in her room and we praised and people
because I have so many amazing friends.
They would call in from all over the country on the phone
and I put them on speaker and they'd pray over her.
I mean, it was amazing y'all.
But then one night I went home and I went to bed
and I woke up that next morning ready to go after it again
and God said, it's time to let her go.
There was a release.
It's time to let go.
A lot of times you guys, we won't let go
because we think that it's quitting.
We won't let go because we think that it's failing.
It's not.
We won't let go because we don't want that
to be the end of the story.
And I wanna tell you this morning
that it's not the end of the story.
It's just the end of that chapter of the story
but it's not the end of the story.
Once again, you might not know the whole story
until you get to heaven and all the blocks
and all the filters in which we see life
through are removed.
You might not know because remember the painting,
the king always has one more move.
You don't know.
The guilt that you're holding onto
because of that loved one that committed suicide
and you just think, oh, I should have shown up that day.
I should have been there.
I should have talked to them.
I should have told them about Jesus.
You don't know what happened between them
and their creator before they left this life.
You don't know.
Do you know the reason why it was a miracle
for Jesus to raise Lazarus from the dead on the fourth day?
Do you know the reason why Jesus had to wait three days
and he had to tarry after he heard that Lazarus was sick
because he knew that this miracle
was going to shoot him into being infamous
and was really gonna put a target on his head
that would lead to the crucifixion?
Because this was something
that the Jews took really seriously, y'all.
No one had raised anyone from the dead, okay?
And necromancy and messing with the dead and all the stuff,
that was a big, big no-no in Judaism
and being a Hebrew, right?
Everybody knew that from the rabbis down to the people.
But the reason why it had to be the fourth day
is because the Jews believe
that your spirit does not go anywhere until the fourth day.
So without.
getting into weird stuff that makes you feel uncomfortable,
there were probably things surrounding your loved one's death,
their transition, I don't even want to call it a death
because they're not dead, they're fully alive.
But following that transition in those first few days,
you know, nobody wants to come back into this body.
I know we pray that people get raised from the dead,
but there's very few people that are like,
yeah, I'm coming back.
No, they don't want to come back.
They're experiencing amazing things.
But I get back to those of you that are holding on regret
because someone that committed suicide
and you think that you know the end of the story.
You weren't there in those final moments
when they seemingly took their life.
You weren't there, you don't know what happened.
For all the people that you have just assigned to hell
because of something that they did or didn't do
during their lifetime,
and they got into a car accident before they could repent
or before they could receive Jesus in the way
that's meaningful to you or before this or before that,
you don't know their ending.
You do not know in the last moments of their earthly life,
what happened.
You don't know.
You don't.
The Lord has spoken this to me.
He's told me, he's shown me so many times
when ministering to other people
that are dealing with this kind of grief.
And I believe that there are people here
or people in replay that are dealing
with this kind of regret and grief and even shame,
because you think that what you did or didn't do
cost someone their eternity.
Let go of that, let it go.
Let it go, it's not true.
So she calls and she said, I'm ready to let go.
And I was one of the only people that she was telling him.
The reason why is because she knew
that she would find support with me.
And I supported her in what God was telling her to do.
And she let it go.
And you guys, very quickly after that,
she met the man who is now her husband.
Very, very soon after she let that go,
he'd been tearing for years,
hoping that the man that she knew to be her husband
would come back to his right mind and he did not.
And he still has not.
And she moved on, she let go.
She moved on very quickly after that.
At a conference for artists,
she met the man that she is now married to
and they're having their reception today.
And so God, we bless them, Lord.
We thank you, God, for that rainbow, Lord.
Guys, they got married in Hawaii and literally,
and I know this is not a stretch for Hawaii,
but as the photographer was taking the picture,
a huge rainbow disappeared behind them.
Huge rainbow appeared.
And I have that picture.
In fact, I might post that picture today to honor them.
But I know that we think when we let go that all is lost,
but it's not because new beginnings require endings.
They require endings.
You cannot have the new beginning without the ending.
You can't.
And so for those of you that are in the let go camp,
just let go.
Trust God, just let go.
It's gonna be okay.
My youngest child is getting married
in two weeks from today and I have to let go.
I'm always gonna be her mom,
but there's gonna be a shift.
And if I try to keep things the way they are right now
and not let go of this dynamic in our relationship,
it wouldn't be good for her and her husband.
They need to cleave.
I'll always be there for her, always be her mom.
Someday I'll be the Nona of her babies.
But I have to let go of a season
that I have spent most of my adult life in.
And that is the active raising of my children
into adulthood.
I have to let that go.
Some people call it the empty nest season.
I gotta step forward into another season.
Yes, there's some mourning, there's some grief there,
but if I try to hold on, try to insert myself,
try to have the same type of influence with my children
that I did when I was raising them,
then that's gonna cause boundary issues.
It's gonna cause hard feelings.
It's gonna cause them to not thrive and grow
and become who God's created them to be.
It's time for me to move on to a new main assignment.
This is still an assignment.
I'm still gonna be their mom
as long as we're on the earth together,
but I have another main assignment now.
And I feel the shift.
For those of you that need to let go,
if you let go, you will begin to feel the shift.
So we talked about the people that are holding on, you're not just holding on for you, you're
holding on for others.
The breakthrough that's going to come from you holding on, the things that are going
to happen because you persevered and you didn't let go, you continue to pray, you continue
to push, you continue just to trust the Lord and just stand on his word, whatever it is
that you're doing, it's going to pay big dividends, not just for you, but for people that you
don't even know are noticing.
Your faith and your hope and your trust in your, in your, I hate to call it a waiting
season because you know I don't believe in waiting rooms, but in your preparation season
because this holding on is preparing you.
Remember what I read in the post that I put up today?
Your future self needs whatever's happening right now.
The pregnancy is what creates the mother's heart.
The gestation period, remember it's not a waiting period, it is a preparing period.
It is important.
And then for those of you that need to let go, you see, I know that the fear of the unknown
causes us not to let go.
We don't know what we would be like without this job, without this assignment, without
this relationship, without this thing like we've, it's been in our life for so long.
We just don't know what life looks like without it and you're never going to know until you
let go.
But I promise you one thing, it's going to look good.
It's going to look different, but it's going to look good.
It's going to open doors.
Remember the person that gave me the gift of the let go key?
It was a key.
It's a key that unlocks doors.
Yes.
Thank you, Lord.
And for some of you that let go, I hit it on the head, it has to do with your children.
You keep trying to do anything and everything for them, even though they're grown adults
and the boundaries are all blurry and they continue to come to you because you have become
their source.
They need to know that the era of free money is over.
That's not the way it works in this life and it's not going to make them better people.
If you're always cleaning up their messes and solving their problems, that's not going
to give them the skills that they need to be abundant and successful in this life.
And so remember, you're not just doing it for you.
You're doing it for them.
They need you to let go.
And when we've had really bad boundaries for a long time with people and we let go, people
aren't going to like it.
One of my friends told me yesterday, she said that her daughter, who is very used to mom
doing exactly what she wants, has been coming to her and being like, I want my mom.
Where's my mom?
Who are you?
I don't want you.
I want my mom.
And I could just feel like if that happened to me, because it's manipulative, right?
But at the same time, it makes you sad because you want to give your child what they want.
But what they want is not always good for them.
And we have to apply the same thing to Papa.
Papa God.
And you might be like, Jackie, why do you call him Papa?
Why do you call him Daddy?
Because he was my father first.
My dad walked out when I was six months old and he never came back.
And the men my mom married after that didn't want to be my dad.
They wanted my mom, but they didn't want me.
And I'm going to tell you right now, I'm not fatherless because I had a father before any
of that ever happened.
And God is my father.
And I'm a daddy's girl.
That's why.
And Papa God oftentimes does not give us exactly what we're praying for.
Because just like this story about the mother and the daughter, he knows it's not good for
you.
Because he knows more than you know.
And then that's why during the hold on phase, we just got to trust.
Because we're like, oh, no.
This is not what I want.
I want this.
And yet this door is not opening.
So whatever transition you're in, friends that are holding on, whether you're waiting
for some pain to leave your body and you're working on it.
Friends, there's always going to be things for you to do in the hold on period.
Don't just be waiting.
Remember, you're preparing.
Don't just go sit in a waiting room and just wait for God to fix it.
You're not doing that.
If you're holding on because you're waiting for a job and you're not quitting.
but you don't have a career or a vocation or an assignment yet,
keep putting your feelers out there, continue to network, meet more people.
I have learned in my short life of 50 years coming up in six months,
it was my half birthday a couple of days ago, happy birthday to me,
that God hides what we're looking for inside people.
The resources and the breakthroughs that you need are in some person, okay?
And this is how it gets us to play with each other because we have orphan
mindsets. We'll just take our ball and go home.
This is how it gets us to play with each other is because we need each other.
And oftentimes when you go someplace looking for an answer in some sermon,
the answer is probably sitting right next to you on the seat.
Okay?
And the person that you sat next to at the conference or at the seminar or at
the thing. So be networking. Those of you that are in the hold on phase.
And for those of you in the let go phase,
begin to fill that space with God, not with something else.
You're letting go, but you're not, you're leaving that space empty.
And that's going to be the painful part. And a lot of you,
that's why you haven't let go because you don't want that space to be empty of
that thing that's been there for so long.
But that thing's not been fruitful for a long time and it's time for you to let
it go. And when you let it go, do not fill it back up. Do not medicate it.
Do not fill it up. Spend time with the Lord in that space.
Fill him, let him fill himself with that space so that when it's time to choose
something new to be in that space, you are,
you're choosing the thing that is, you know,
part of this beautiful story of you that God has written.
Okay. Thank you, Lisa. Lisa, you need to let go.
I saw that earlier for you.
There's at least one thing that you need to let go of.
And so we just bless you with the grace right now to let go,
to just L-I-G it.
Just hands out in front of you, just open. God, you can go ahead.
You can have it, whatever that is.
You can have it because he wants to fill it with something so much better,
so much better, no more worry, no more fret, no more.
How am I going to make it or how am I going to do this or do that?
God wants to provide for you.
He wants to show you how much he loves you.
And so Lord, we thank you for that. All right, friends,
go and have a supernatural Saturday.
Remember that you are the ambassadors of a kingdom and you're bringing it to
earth. So many good nuggets from Holy Spirit during this time together.
Thank you, Holy Spirit for that. Lord, go with us,
speak through us and to us as we go forward in this day,
show us what we need to hold on to and let go of. Help us to prune,
help us to purge,
help us to make room for all the good things you have for us for the second
half of 2024 in Jesus name. Amen. Love y'all.
Have a great day.