So, I don't want you guys to be afraid of showing other people your process, right?
We're going to talk about storms a little bit today.
And what is that really?
That's just a process that we're in.
When God gives us a promise, he also gives us a process.
And really what he's giving us is a process.
That's true.
And so we don't have to be afraid of the process, of other people seeing the process.
You don't have to hide the process, okay?
All of you are in some kind of process right now.
And a lot of times the process makes us feel inferior to other people who seem like they're
not in process.
Anyone else?
You're in some kind of transition right now and it makes you feel like you're not as good
maybe as the people around you or that you have something to be ashamed or embarrassed
about because you don't have all this stuff together yet because you're in process.
And these people around you don't seem to be in process.
Well, I promise you they're in some kind of process.
They might be at the beginning of a process and it's not really hurting them yet and they
don't know.
And when I say hurting, I mean stretching.
You guys, I got a subscription to a stretch lab.
Anyone ever heard of the stretch labs?
Because I thought that it was going to help me.
And you guys, it hurts to be stretched.
Oh my gosh.
It's like ancient torture chamber.
They put you on this table and then these young teenage girls, I promise that's what
it feels like.
These young teenage girls, you're like, are you a doctor?
Are you a nurse?
Are you even trained to do this?
I think they just watch some video and then they come out and then they strap you all
these different ways and then they start lifting your limbs to levels that your limbs have
never been lifted to.
Now don't get me wrong, after you kind of get used to it, the good kind of hurt.
Feels good for a minute, but I was having a lot of problems with sciatica, a lot of
problems with tailbone pain, coccyx pain, all the different things.
And so I went to this stretch lab.
So I say that to say this, being stretched does not feel good.
It doesn't.
We don't like being stretched.
Now we like the effects or results of stretching, but we don't necessarily like to be stretched,
do we?
So these storms, quote unquote, that we're going to talk about this morning, this is
just a time of process, a time of stretching.
Some of you just go from one storm to another and that is not God's will for your life.
And I just want to talk about that this morning.
All right.
So I'm going to go off camera now.
You got to see my sweaty little face.
I'm not on camera because I'm scared to be seen.
I'm not on camera because I'm trying to focus on what the Holy Spirit is saying to us today.
So Father God, I thank you, Lord, for this Supernatural Saturday.
I thank you for our time together.
I thank you that your sons and daughters are ready, Lord, to be promoted.
They are ready, Lord.
They're ready for the next level.
They are ready for the shift, Lord.
I thank you, God, that you have them positioned for good things because you're a good father.
And I just love you, Lord.
I love you today.
I just worship you and I praise you and I thank you for your grace on our lives.
I thank you that we know each other and that you've called us here to be together as a
community, to be revivalists in the revival of marriage and family.
You've called us to be revivalists, Lord, and I thank you, God, that we get to lock
arms with one another, that we get to know those who we labor among, Lord.
I pray, God, that you would just reveal and heal this morning, that you would upgrade
our ideas and our thoughts about ourselves and you and even the situations and circumstances
that we're surrounded by in life right now.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Guys, it's not about what's happening.
It's about what you believe is happening.
Let's jump off right there.
It's not about what's happening.
It's about what you believe is happening.
I had no intention of coming on Supernatural Saturday today and continuing the topic of
last week and the week before about these presets, these watermarks, these glass ceilings,
but we have to continue to talk about them because these are the things that are keeping
us back from God's goodness.
God is not withholding from us.
Friends, I really need you to get a hold of that.
God is not withholding from us.
Let's visit John 10 for a second, where we have that famous verse, John 10, 10, where
Jesus is saying, the thief has come to steal and to kill and to destroy.
But I, who, me, Jesus, I have come that now you can have life and you can have abundant
life.
And the actual language there.
is you can have overflowing life.
You can have fully alive life.
That is what those words mean in the ancient Greek
that they're written in.
What's he saying?
He's saying something has been keeping you,
the thief, right, from having this thing,
but I've come and now you can have it.
Friends, he didn't say you could have it
after you've suffered enough.
He didn't say you could have it after,
you've been through so many years of following him.
He said you can have it right now.
I have come that you might have this,
but you see the word there is might for some reason.
Not that you will have it, but that you might have it.
What's it dependent on?
It's dependent on us.
It's dependent on us deciding that we can have it.
It's about us deciding that Jesus is giving it to us,
not based on performance, not based on deserving,
not based on meriting.
I'll never forget the conversation that I had with Jesus
when he said to me about this very verse.
He said, Jack, you look at this verse a lot.
He said, you want abundant life?
And I said, yes, I do want it.
And he said, okay, there's only one thing
that you need to do to get it.
And I was like, okay, I'm ready.
And I was ready to do anything, friends.
And he said, you need to be able to receive
what you don't deserve.
Oh, there's just one thing, one thing.
You need to be able to receive what you don't deserve.
Cause you guys, I wasn't good at receiving.
I was really bad at receiving actually.
I had a very independent attitude as most orphans do.
Hey, I was out there striving, trying to survive.
I was a survivor and I was proud of it.
I was proud of where I had been able to get to
with no help, no family, abuse, treachery, betrayal.
I was proud of this little girl's home girl,
foster care, couch surfer, and where she had come to.
I was proud to just be alive, honestly,
after some of the things that I had been through.
Even after I met Jesus, I was like, well,
I carried my trauma like a trophy.
Oftentimes.
And so God was saying that to me.
He was saying, hey, Jackie, you can have abundant life.
You can have what this says,
but you have to be able to receive what you don't deserve.
And what is that?
That's us looking at the finished work of the cross
instead of at ourselves.
That's looking at the sacrifice of Jesus
instead of our sacrifice.
Yes, we'll follow Christ and we'll do as he did.
Of course we will.
But that is not what the blessing is dependent on.
I really want you to get ahold of that.
We will follow Christ.
We will be with him.
We will be like him.
We will do as he did,
but it is not what is earning us the blessing.
It's not what earns us the blessing.
It's already ours.
It belongs to us.
It's an inheritance.
You guys, the very nature of inheritance is not earned.
You understand that, right?
You know how many trust fund babies there are out there
that do not deserve that money?
And that money is actually hurting them.
That lifestyle is actually keeping them
from their potential.
They're not gonna realize their potential because why?
Because they don't ever have to be stretched.
They don't ever have to grow.
They don't ever have to mature.
It just already belongs to them.
God wants his children.
He wants us not to earn it, not to deserve it,
but he wants us to be mature enough to handle it.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
Apostolic power, if that's what you're after,
you wanna live like the book of Acts?
You wanna see those things happen in the earth?
That requires apostolic character
to carry that.
People always ask me, Jackie,
why do you think that the miracles and signs and wonders
of the Bible and the book of Acts,
why don't those things happen today
as frequently as they seem to have happened back then?
And my answer is this,
and it may not be correct theologically,
but this is what I think it is.
I think it's because people are different now.
The miracle signs and wonders are still available
and they're still here.
They are.
And we don't have to earn them with holiness.
But I think that people have so many other things
that they can turn to instead of a miracle.
That's why you see so many signs and wonders
in other countries where there is not an industrialization.
These developing countries, there is not hospitals
and there's not doctors and there's not treatments
and there's not this or that.
There's not the loan sharks.
It's on the corner called check into cash
where you can just take your little driver's license
over there and have someone give you a loan
on a paycheck that you don't have yet.
There isn't that.
You either have it or you don't have it.
Right?
There aren't food banks on every corner.
There aren't, do you understand what I'm saying?
What I'm saying is, and then even beyond that,
even beyond that, we have so much religion
and I don't want to get on a soapbox this morning.
I want to stay focused on what the Lord is saying.
But you know, we haven't really pursued God's power
in that way because there's so many distractions
and there's so many other choices.
So apostolic power, it requires apostolic character.
That's what it does.
And sometimes apostolic character is only developed
in apostolic kind of wilderness storm periods of our lives
where we're being stretched.
Guys, we're not being punished.
We're not being punished.
It's important for you to understand
that you're not being punished.
Whatever you've gone through in your life,
some of it of your own viewing, of your own making for sure.
You know, we make our own storms
and then we complain when it's raining and it's hailing
and it's lightning in our lives.
But you know, we created these storms with our decisions
but the beautiful part about Christ is that
we don't have to lay in the bed that we made.
We don't have to lay in the bed that other people
have made for us with their bad decisions.
Some of you have really serious financial issues right now
because of a divorce, because of someone else's
bad stewardship, because of someone else's addictions
and problems.
You owe on a car that's wrecked.
You can't even drive it but you owe tons of money on it
because someone else wrecked it.
You let them borrow it and their bad decisions
turned into a mess for you.
Guys, I'm just prophesying, I don't know anyone.
But if that's you, that's you, God's talking to you.
But God wants to pay off that car note.
He wants to get you out of that hole.
Some of you are upside down on loans, got behind on things.
Now you're trying to pay, you know, two at a time.
You're trying to rob Peter to pay Paul.
There's all kinds of things that are happening in your life.
You thought you were hearing the Lord
and you made a decision and you did something
and it just didn't work out.
You switched jobs and then that business
went out of business and you didn't have a job
or you thought that it was smart to move here
or do this or do that and it just isn't smooth sailing.
The water's rough.
The winds are strong.
I know, I've done it too.
Let's go back to John 10.10.
We can have this abundant life, right?
But you guys, a lot of people don't pay attention
to the rest of the chapter of John.
They just love that scripture, John 10.10.
I love it too.
People embroider it on their blankets
and their book bags and stuff.
John 10.10, abundant life, yes, it's great, it's wonderful.
But if you read the rest of the chapter, John chapter 10,
you will see it in context.
A lot of people think the thief in John 10.10
is the devil and it is not.
It's important that you see that
because the thing that's robbing us
of so much abundance is religion.
Read the whole chapter of John 10
and you'll see that it's the bad shepherds.
It's the shepherds that wanna take people's needs
and people's desires and they wanna use it
to their own benefit by trying to sell them breakthrough.
Indulgences, sacrifices.
That was how it was back in the Jewish times.
If any of you saw the new episode of The Chosen,
the new season that's out,
it shows and depicts Jesus in the temple,
in the marketplace with the whip, with the money changers.
What's happening there?
People are being taken advantage of
underneath an umbrella of religion,
underneath an umbrella of God said so.
Okay, and that happens to us.
We do that to ourselves.
We don't even need other people to do that to us.
We do that to ourselves.
It's a good thing that we're not our own shepherd
because we're not good shepherds to ourselves oftentimes.
We don't lead ourselves to peaceful waters.
We lead ourselves to worry and torment.
Come on, y'all.
We don't lead ourselves besides peaceful waters.
We lead ourselves to worst case scenarios.
Don't we?
We lead ourselves to judgment.
We lead ourselves to criticism.
We don't lead ourselves to a protective arm of love
and grace.
If we were our own shepherd,
if we were the one that was lost,
we wouldn't even go looking.
for ourselves. We oftentimes don't. You know how we don't go looking for
ourselves? We don't ever take time to slow down and find out, who am I? What do
I want? These are those up, these are those presets, you guys. We let other
people preset the radio stations in our lives, in our minds, in our narratives,
about ourselves, and then we just sing those songs. Poor little old me. We sing
those songs. Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. I think I'll eat some worms.
Yep, we just sing those songs over and over and over again. Whatever those songs
are that are preset on the radio, they got preset by our childhood, they got
preset by our parents, and what they said about us or thought about us by coaches
or teachers or former spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, friends, community, pastors.
Because I had a pastor when I was a kid. Remember, I didn't grow up in the church,
but my mom, you know, she took us to church every once in a while, and I don't
really know what was happening in the grown-up world, but I just know she'd
always get really mad and some scandal would happen and we wouldn't go to
church anymore. So I didn't really meet Jesus till I was in my 20s, but I
definitely was exposed to church as a young person through my grandma, through
my mom every once in a while, because my mom was raised in this very strict
religion, and every once in a while when life was going really hard for her, she
would drag us to a church, and we didn't fit in because it was the kind of church
where you got to look a certain way and women have to be a certain way, and it
was that kind of denomination of Christianity, so to speak. I don't think
you can even call it that, but in one of the foster homes that I lived in, it was
connected to one of these churches that I visited sporadically when I was a
younger child, and so the pastor knew my mom somehow. Once again, when you're a kid,
you don't know what's going on in the grown-up world, right? You don't know. You
don't understand, but I was about probably 15 or 16 years old, and I'm
going to this church school, and I've only been in that school for two weeks,
and the pastor is like the administrator of the school because the school is
connected to the church, and I got kicked out of that school, and you know what
that school told the adults that were caring for me? They said, you know, focus
on the other kids in your life. This one right here, she's not worth your
attention, like she's not she's not going to become anything. A pastor said that,
and you know what he said that about? About me smoking cigarettes.
I wasn't going to become anything, y'all. My fate was sealed because somewhere in
the midst of me being in foster care and girls' homes, I had picked, a pet
picked up the habit of smoking cigarettes, and I know where it came from.
I had a friend named Judith from Spain, and it was cool. She was cool. She's the
coolest friend I ever had, and everyone in Spain smokes, and so I was smoking too,
but anyway, I am just cast out, rejected, never going to amount to anything. These
are the presets on the radio. Can I tell you how good God is? Years later, years
and years and years later, friends, after I became a believer in my 20s, and then
God promoted me to leadership within the body of Christ, and I was doing all kinds
of amazing ministry. I was at a banquet. I was at a banquet that had a very small
guest list, and I was invited to that banquet, and of course, now I'm grown up,
and I'm tall, and I'm beautiful, and I'm well-dressed, and I'm all the things,
and I'm sitting at that table, and I look up, and I see this old man down on the
right hand, down like six seats from me, and I recognize him as that pastor that
said that I would never amount to anything, and that, you know,
don't waste your time on this one, and you guys, I'd love to tell you that I
didn't have a little tinge of, how do you like me now? How do you like me now?
But instead, I went over, and I put my hand on his shoulder. I don't even know if
he's still alive, but I put my hand on his shoulder, and he looked up,
and I said, hey, I said, aren't you Pastor So-and-So? And he's like,
well, yes, and I said, do you remember me? And he said, no, and I told him who I was,
and y'all, the look on his face, I wasn't petty, y'all, because I want to go to heaven.
I wasn't petty. I could have been petty. No, you can be petty and go to heaven,
but you can't stay petty, and so I didn't say anything to him about like, oh, hey,
like, how do you like me now? I thought you said I'd never amount to anything.
Take a look at me now, friend, but I didn't say any of that. I just said,
oh, it's nice to see you, but the look on his face said it all.
The look on his face said it all, and so I want to
over you that have been in a battle with people and with their words and with their presets
for you.
They want to say things about you.
They want to judge your character and say that this is what you are and this is what
you deserve or this is what's going to happen to you and nothing more or nothing less.
I want you to come out of agreement with those things, but I also want you to understand
that when God is pleased with you, and the only way that you please God is by what?
By having faith.
It's impossible to please him without having faith.
Faith in what?
That he's a good, good father and he's a rewarder of those that diligently seek him.
Guys, that's it.
You're like, wait, um, God can't be pleased without faith, Jackie, but I just don't feel
like I have a lot of faith.
Well, you know how you show God that you have faith?
By coming to him and believing that he's a good father and he's a rewarder of those that
diligently seek him.
Instead of going to A, B, C, D, E, F, G, you come to him.
Instead of trying to fix it yourself 5,000 times until you've made an even bigger mess
in this storm, you come to him.
Instead of acting like it's the end of the world, you recognize that this is a process
and God is for me and life is for me.
And this storm has not come from my destruction.
It's come from my promotion.
So when the Bible says, when we please God, it says, even your enemies will shake your
hand in the places of influence.
Come on, you guys.
Let's look at a few little storms here because I believe that we're riding the storm to our
promotion.
Guys, there's been a lot of heavy storms in Austin, Texas.
I've made a little video in all of your groups.
This is unusual.
It's very unseasonal.
Very unseasonal.
Okay.
And I'm like, God, what's up with this?
I got woken up at least twice in a row in the middle of the night by storms, by lightning,
by thunder.
I had to park under a gas station awning the other day, had to get off the road and
hurry up and get under there with 12 other cars.
We were all smashed under there together trying to avoid the golf ball size hail that was
falling from the sky.
Thank God that it wasn't the baseball size hail that was falling on the other side of
town, wrecking cars, ruining roofs, doing all the things that it was doing.
And I was like, Lord, when I woke up, I was like, God, I feel like this is tied to the
natural.
Guys, not everything that happens, I'm tied to the supernatural.
Not everything that happens in the natural is tied to the supernatural, not everything.
But you should at least ask.
You should at least ask, you guys, because the unseen realm is directly related to the
seen realm.
If you see something happening on the news that you don't like, that makes you feel afraid,
instead of being in fear, you need to ask God how you can partner with him on whatever's
happening in the unseen realm that's connected to what you're seeing in the seen realm.
Friends, we're not here to live in this world, we're pilgrims.
This is not our home.
We don't live here.
We are passing through here.
We are not inhabitants of this place.
We are citizens of heaven.
We are citizens of the kingdom of God, sons and daughters, heirs and joint heirs of Christ.
We have to act like it.
And this is directly tied to your love story.
It really is.
Because if you want to partner, you have to partner with a kingdom alliance.
You guys know too much now.
If you didn't know it before, you know it now, be in here, okay?
And so you want to partner with someone who wants to go forward in the kingdom.
And so our life needs to look like that.
And trust me, I know right now, I know right now that so many of us feel discouraged and
we have storms and I get it.
But there's also promotion happening.
There is, there's promotion happening.
And once again, not because you deserve it, but because the wind is pushing you to that
place, pushing you to that place.
Okay, let's look at a couple of storms.
Let's look at a couple.
Let's look at some wind.
Let's look at some storms.
I got some scriptures here.
Mark 439, Jesus rebukes the wind and speaks to the waves and says, peace, be still.
We see that there in Mark 439.
We see in Exodus 1421, God used the wind to do what?
To part the Red Sea.
He used the wind to part the Red Sea.
Wow.
So here's my question to you for that one.
What's chasing you?
You know,
What do you feel is pursuing you?
What do you feel like it's trying to overtake your life?
Is it depression?
Is it poverty?
Like what is trying, it's nipping your heel, right?
In this story, it's Pharaoh's army, right?
It's Pharaoh's army that's trying to get at them,
trying to bring them back into captivity,
back into bondage, back into slavery.
So what ideas are constantly nipping at your heels
trying to enslave your mind again?
Trying to bring you back into bondage again.
Come on, put them in the chat.
What things, you know, you're just barely free.
You're barely free.
You just came out of that Egypt.
You're barely free.
You're trying to walk into the promises of God,
but you're in this wilderness of process.
And those ideas are trying to drag you back into slavery.
Come on, put it up, put it up, put it up.
Let's see it.
Get honest, get vulnerable.
What ideas?
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Just like this story, you guys,
the wind, the wind didn't come to destroy.
The wind came to deliver.
The wind came to deliver these folks.
It parted the sea.
It made a way of escape.
So these things that you're putting in the chat right now,
I need you to come into agreement with heaven
that these things are gonna drown,
but you're gonna cross over.
When my mom was sick, you guys, I loved that song.
I forget what it's called,
but I loved the song that has the lyrics that,
it may look like I'm surrounded, but I'm surrounded by you.
Woo, Jesus.
Every time I even say those lyrics,
Holy Spirit, Holy Spirit, yes.
That song was written in a pit by someone.
Rita Springer wrote that song, I think,
but in a pit, it may look like I'm surrounded,
but I'm surrounded by you.
That comes from that Bible story that,
you know, the prophet's servant,
he didn't have the upgrade yet.
The prophet had the upgrade.
The prophet could see that, yes,
they were surrounded on every side by the enemy,
but the enemy was surrounded by God's army.
And the prophet could see that, and he said,
God, please open my servant's eyes,
give him the upgrade, give him the promotion
so he can see what I see, so he won't be afraid anymore.
And Father, I ask that for your sons and daughters.
You said the storm has not come for our destruction,
but for our promotion.
Promote us to a different mindset, to different vision.
Let us see that whatever it is that's trying to surround us,
that we think has surrounded us, it is surrounded by you.
It is surrounded by your power.
It's surrounded by your angel armies.
I love the translation of the Bible that every time
it says God, it says God of the angel armies.
I think it's the amplified.
It says God of the angel armies.
He is the God of the angel armies.
We are surrounded by heaven, y'all.
Heaven's not up there, it's all around you.
You are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.
You are surrounded by angelic undergirding.
You are surrounded by the presence and power
of our sovereign, omnipotent, omniscient God.
That's why God's always like,
there's no reason to be afraid.
There's no reason to fear.
One of my favorite scriptures in the Bible,
someone who went through a storm, you guys,
someone who went through a process.
In fact, I challenge you to show me one person
who stepped into their promise,
who did not have a process that involved some sort of storm.
Maybe not a physical storm like in the natural,
like lightning and rain and flooding, but a storm.
But Joseph's story, betrayal by family,
I can relate to that.
I can relate to that,
but I want to reframe something for you.
It always broke my heart
that my mom sent me away to live in a girl's home.
And it doesn't break my heart anymore.
These tears are tears of gratitude
because it always broke my heart.
And you guys, I had that framed.
That preset was telling me that I was abandoned
and unwanted and rejected.
And I know that my mom did it
out of her inability to attach.
I know that she did it because she was overwhelmed.
Her own life was falling apart.
heart, I was definitely the child that was not thriving and not doing well, getting in
trouble, getting messed up in bad situations because of the horrible life that we were
living in.
And she just, she couldn't handle it.
She just sent me away to live somewhere else.
But just recently, this is why I have tears of gratitude, I always really resented and
despised my mom for that.
And just recently, God showed me that I was like baby Moses in the bulrushes.
My mom was in bad place when she sent me away.
And who knows what would have happened to me if I would have stayed with her where she
was and the decisions that she was making.
At least I was in a place where there were rules and there were, you know, there was
procedure.
Yes, it wasn't good, y'all.
It wasn't good.
There was treachery there as well.
But just like Moses, there was treachery in the king's palace as well.
We know that nothing's ever going to be perfect, especially when we are called and marked by
God, which we all are.
There's going to be stretching seasons.
There's going to be opposing forces pushing against us.
But God reset my preset and he saw me.
He saw me in that place.
And he promoted me in that place.
It was a place of protection for me, you guys.
It wasn't a prison.
It was a place of protection for me.
Come on.
You have to reframe.
God delivered me so that I could be a deliverer.
So one of my favorite stories, Joseph, let's go back to that story because I really challenge
you to show me one person in the Bible, which is our example, right?
We're not supposed to be like these people, you guys.
Stop trying to measure up to these people.
You are you.
They are them.
Okay.
We live in a totally different time than these folks.
We have all different types of warfare than they did.
Can't compare ourselves of give us that old time religion.
No, no, no, no.
Give us kingdom.
We're the stars of the show now.
We're the ones on the playing field.
These are our stories.
So the story of Joseph, it really resonates in the way, especially in chapter 50, verse
20, where he finally sees his family again.
He sees his brothers.
He sees the ones that were the cause of him going into Egypt in the first place, selling
him into slavery and all the things that had happened since then.
Potiphar's, the prison, the palace.
He sees them.
And instead of getting his revenge, he has a heart of grace.
Because why?
Because whatever those things that had happened to him could have told him about himself,
he had a greater narrative.
His watermark had been changed.
He didn't have to be petty.
He didn't have to be revengeful.
He didn't have to get back at them, could have, but he didn't.
And the reason why is because he saw the bigger picture and the bigger picture was what he
says in Genesis 50, 20.
He says, you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good.
And I can say that over my mom sending me away.
I don't think that she had a benevolent mindset.
I think that she just didn't want me to be her problem anymore.
So you know, in a way that's evil.
But what she meant for evil, God meant for good.
God turned it to good, you guys.
Romans 8, 28.
He Romans 8, 28 me, but he only did on the other side of forgiveness.
Some of us get caught in storms and we're in storms because we just refuse to forgive.
We just refuse to release and let go.
These people were doing the best they could.
They don't have good information.
They've been abused.
They've been traumatized.
They're living in counter identity.
They have presets that don't allow them to attach.
There's nothing that we can do about that.
Other people's programming is their problem, not ours.
Okay, we're going all over the place, but that's okay.
So whatever that thing is that's nipping at your heels, it's been nipping at your heels.
You've barely free of it.
You're barely free of it.
Whether it's an addiction, a porn addiction, whether it's some type of pattern that you
keep living in over and over and over and over again, this wind that's whipping up in
your life, it's going to give you safe passage, but those things are going to drown.
Those are things that are going to be consumed by God, by his power, by his spirit.
Let's go to another one, Acts 27, 22 through 26.
Paul in the storm.
What does he say in the storm?
He says to all the people around him, take heart.
Not one of you will be lost.
I felt like that was a word for us.
Hey guys, take heart, regardless of what's happening right now in our lives individually,
in this community collectively, God's just telling us, take heart.
Not one of you is going to be lost.
We're not going to be lost.
Come on, I want you to say that over yourself right now.
This is not the end.
Let's just take a few minutes here.
I want you to close your eyes, say that over yourself.
Hey, this is not the end.
This is not how my story ends.
Come on, let's do this for a minute.
Come on, guys.
I see tears flowing.
Come on.
God has good things for you.
Remember, you have to be able to receive what you don't deserve.
You got some presets on right now.
They're telling you that you don't deserve it.
The good news is that you don't have to.
Guys, ever since God taught me that, I'm not going to say that it became second nature,
but I show up all the time asking for things that I know darn well I do not deserve.
I show up all the time.
Every time I do something really goofy, and then I have to minister somewhere like five
minutes later, but I got in an argument with my husband, I'm being petty, I'm being a jerk,
this is happening, that's happening.
I just get super excited that something very supernatural is going to happen, because I
do not show up at that ministry engagement in shame.
I show up fully expecting to receive what I don't deserve, which is the anointing of
God.
And of course, I'm sorry.
I feel repentant.
I have a soft heart.
I just release that over you, that you would have a soft heart, that you would have a heart
that's very easily teachable by Holy Spirit, showing you the better way.
Correction is always like a course correction, showing you the better way.
Hey, you're making things too hard.
You're doing this the hard way.
Let me show you.
Yeah, it's going to stretch you.
Yeah, it's going to be a little bit painful, but you're just making it way worse than it
needs to be.
I saw someone throwing up a scripture, you know, countering my idea of, when you please
the Lord, your enemies will shake your hand.
I don't know where you got your scripture, but my scripture comes from Proverbs 16, 7.
And it just says, when we please the Lord, he will make even our enemies be at peace
with us.
Okay?
So whatever scripture you're quoting is a different scripture.
All right?
Come on, y'all.
Come on, guys.
Don't worry about other people.
Don't worry about what they're doing.
Don't worry about that.
Focus on pleasing the Lord.
And the only thing we need to do, once again, to please him is to believe he's good and
that he wants to bless us.
Wow, come on.
How does, what does that look like practically?
That looks like you showing up with every little need.
I have a little granddaughter.
I have twin grandchildren and the girl, my granddaughter, Edie Jane, she's a pistol.
First of all, y'all, she's the funniest baby I've ever met in my life.
She's two and a half years old and she wants me and her mommy and her daddy and really
any adult, her papa, all of us, she wants us to take a look at every single boo-boo
that she has.
Y'all, these are not real boo-boos.
These are not boo-boos at all.
Okay.
She's coming to us.
It's like, kiss it, kiss it, kiss it.
Somewhere, sometime, someone, probably my daughter, kissed a boo-boo and
now we're all on boo-boo patrol.
She brings everything to us.
Everything, everything wants us to kiss it, wants a Band-Aid for it.
You know, these are not boo-boos, they're not.
They're not, but isn't that how Papa God wants us to be with him?
He wants us to bring everything to him, even if it's not a problem.
It's not a problem, but he wants us to bring it to him.
It's not a boo-boo, okay?
Sometimes it is a bullet hole, okay?
It's not a boo-boo, it's a bullet hole and we need to bring that to him.
And we're more likely to bring the bullet holes to him
rather than the splinters.
Okay?
Rather than the little paper cut.
It's important that you use your Jesus Cares Board.
All of you should know what that is, unless you're here with
last year's single light.
If you're here with single light, we want you to upgrade to the program.
You need to get into the heart work.
Let the month of June be the time that you contact us to upgrade.
But all the rest of you be using those Jesus Cares Board.
You have to come to him.
That's how you please him, by coming to him and expecting him to what?
To reward those that come to him, that believe he's good and that are
diligently seeking his help, his knowledge, his wisdom, his deliverance.
Guys, these storms have not come for our destruction.
They've come for our promotion.
Let's look, you know, Paul said to them, Hey, no one's going to be lost here.
It's going to be okay.
Not one of you is going to be lost because what happened in
that storm that Paul was in?
It actually led him to Malta, didn't it?
It actually changed course.
It course corrected that storm course corrected.
And what happened then?
Revival broke out.
That's what happened.
Revival broke out.
Sometimes you're just on your way somewhere and something goes wrong and
you're not able to go for whatever reason you run out of money.
The job is no longer available.
It gets really confusing.
You have to either go back where you came from or you end up somewhere else and
you really don't know what's going on.
That storm, that wind, that crosswind just came and it blew you someplace else.
It doesn't have to be the enemy.
And even if it was warfare, Genesis 50, 20 comes into effect.
What was meant for evil will now be used for good.
Your storm may be rerouting you on purpose.
So I want you to kind of take that into consideration right now.
I mean, let's look at, let's look at it in scripture.
Storms are often divine transportation, aren't they?
They're divine transportation.
That's okay.
Friends, storms reveal oftentimes, and you know, and you guys, it doesn't
have to be a big squall, it could be a little storm, the storms that
happened here in Austin, um, they were kind of big, but they were fast
and they were over quickly.
And you know what they did?
They pruned, they pruned everything.
All the dead stuff got broken off.
They were gully washers, as my grandparents would say, they really
just pushed out all the dead debris.
And oftentimes storms are a very pruning time.
It could be a very short storm, a very short little thing that you went through.
But it's revealing what's in us, right?
Remember Jesus in the storm, he was asleep in the boat.
And that's because he already had authority over the storm, but the
disciples, they didn't have authority yet.
They were learning.
It was a teaching moment.
There was never a point in time where they were going to be lost or
destroyed, but they were being promoted.
Do you see that?
They were being upgraded.
Their thinking was being upgraded.
Their ideas were being upgraded.
Oftentimes storms wake up what's been dormant inside of us.
I used to call me and David, the dormant doormans.
I was like, babe, we're dormant.
We're the dormant doormans.
But we wanted more you guys.
So we had to press in and that stretching is uncomfortable, pressing
into authority, pressing into faith, pressing into discernment, pressing
into faith, pressing into discernment, pressing into courage, pressing in.
That long four-year storm that I went through my mom at the end of her life.
It was hard, you guys, it was hard, but I was looking at God and I felt him
looking at me and I was being stretched and I was being changed and during the
last four years of her life, I was getting a better perspective of who she was and
what she.
went through so that I could fully forgive her,
so that when she went to heaven
and she stepped into that other dimension
where she was going to be perfected,
not just in her body from sickness,
but also in her mind from her presets
that had been destroying her and her children
all of her life.
But when she stepped out,
I was gonna be able to step up.
Can I tell you that when my mom stepped
into that other dimension that we call heaven,
to be part of the intercession team around our family,
that gray cloud of witnesses,
I immediately got promoted.
Friends, I immediately got promoted.
In fact, you know what was birthed
as soon as Diana Lynn stepped into that other dimension?
Last year single, married in 12 months or less.
Immediately, you guys, immediately, you guys,
not even a month after my mom stepped into heaven,
this happened.
I mean,
but it was what I did during that storm.
It didn't let me earn the promotion,
it prepared me for it.
I'd already been in ministry for like 24 years,
women's ministry, family ministry.
I'd already been in full-time ministry for 24 years.
Immediately, my mom passed away into heaven, February 3rd.
She stepped over, transitioned,
took a new assignment.
For those of you that have lost loved ones
that you love so much and you miss so much,
guys, they're just ahead of you on the road
on a new assignment.
I need you to understand that.
I need you to get a revelation
of the other dimension that we call heaven.
That's what will end the grieving process for you.
I asked God, I said, when am I gonna hurt less?
And he said, when you start getting a revelation of heaven.
They're just ahead of us on the road.
They have an upgrade.
They have a higher clearance than we do
of understanding, of transformation.
February 3rd, God invited me.
I was sitting in my office looking around.
I've been teaching heart workshops for years,
been doing all kinds of ministry,
like I said, for a long time.
And I was just sitting there
and I felt an invitation to something new.
And I said, God, I really don't feel like
this is what I need to be doing anymore.
And he said, what if you took your love for matchmaking,
because you guys, you know,
I've always been the matchmaker,
helped so many of my friends get married.
What if you took that gift?
And what if you took the heart work protocol?
And what if you took all this ministry
and all this authority that I've given you?
And what if you put it into something
for my single sons and daughters?
And you, at the time,
we called it Married in 12 Months or Less.
And that idea, that title came from God.
And it's the title of one of my bestselling books.
He titled that.
And when he said the title, I just kind of laughed
because I was like, oh, we're gonna get in so much trouble.
So many people are gonna push back on that.
We're gonna have so much haters.
And like, I'm here for it, Lord.
I'm here for all of it.
What if you did that?
And I said, okay, yeah, let's do it.
And then he promised me
a tsunami wave of kingdom marriages.
But remember, friends, with every promise,
there's a process.
And I have been doing this day in and day out
as my team can attest to you
for probably 15 or 16 hours a day
for almost five years.
And I have a beautiful team,
wonderful, anointed, amazing.
And almost all of our team has come
from inside the community.
In fact, I think all of them have.
They've joined in the process to accelerate it.
So friends, storms reveal what's already in us.
That's what God was doing through that storm
that I walked through with my mother.
I want you to rest assured that God never wastes a storm.
It's always an upgrade.
It's always divine transportation.
It's always a rerouting.
It's always revival.
Storms also promote us, but after pressure.
So the promotion comes a lot of times
after we've been through a lot of pressure,
like I just explained to you
in that four-year process.
Oftentimes in the storm,
the enemy tries to attack us with fear.
Right?
And then we start rebuking the very thing that's promoting us.
Friends, don't rebuke the wind if it's blowing you forward, okay?
Instead, spread your wings.
Catch the wind.
Go listen to that song, Catch the Wind.
Play it on repeat.
Spread your wings.
Catch the wind.
Don't lower your sails.
Raise the sails.
Catch the wind.
Don't rebuke the wind.
Catch the wind, because this storm is not your ending, it's your launching pad.
You know, we can say all the fun phrases, the setback is a setup for your comeback.
We can say all that stuff, and it doesn't make it less true.
This wind is not against you.
Some of you are walking against the wind, and it's really hard going because you need
to repent.
And the word repent just means turn around, stop doing it your way, do it God's way.
Stop doing it your way, do it God's way.
If you want the wind at your back pushing you forward, turn around.
Turn around, friend.
You're doing it the hard way.
You're doing it in your own strength.
You're striving.
You're not doing it in grace.
You're trying to make it happen for yourself.
Turn around and let the wind be at your back.
Come to the Lord and say, I'm tired of doing it my way.
I want to do it your way.
That's what repentance is.
That's all that it is.
I'm sorry that I'm so stubborn and hardheaded, Lord.
I'm sorry that I'm trying to make it hard for myself and that I'm blaming the hardness
on you.
God's timing.
God's so slow.
God never comes through.
No, y'all, turn around.
The ancient of days has ancient ways.
Let's ask for the good path.
Turn around so the wind can be at your back.
It's not against you.
You're walking against it.
It wants to carry you to the next level, but you got to turn around and let it be at your
back.
Turn around.
Let it be at your back.
God is using the very thing the enemy is trying to break you with to build you.
And I'm going to close with this.
Years ago, you guys, you already know a lot of my story, if you've been around.
But when I was in that family, the first family that I had ever really been part of, you guys,
the people that discipled me at that small church, and you guys, I would've died for
those people.
I would've took a bullet for that pastor.
It's like a father to me, and there were so many positive things that happened during
that discipleship.
So I'm not going to throw any babies out with bathwater.
But there was a lot of spiritual intrigue that was happening there, a lot of control,
and I didn't know how to recognize it because I had never been part of a spiritual community
before.
I just met Jesus in my 20s.
And these were the people that took me under their wing to be my family and disciple me.
Those were hard, hard years, you guys.
I almost lost my life several times because of mental health.
I was skin and bones, was physically unwell, I was mentally unwell.
I was in an unhealthy and unsafe marriage because I was being told that I wasn't allowed
to leave it.
I was being controlled in every way, how I dressed, how I thought, where I was allowed
to go, and what I was allowed to do.
And I know you're like, Jackie, how did anything good come of that?
Trust me, there were good things in those seasons of silence, in those seasons of stretching
and trying to learn who God was, even in the midst of all the bad theology.
I was reading the Bible, I was devouring it, I was spending time with the Lord.
My prophetic gift was being activated, even though I wasn't allowed to use it because
I was a woman.
There was all kinds of things that were happening in those times, you guys.
But once again, several times, and God did not allow it to happen, but several times,
I was on the brink of just total annihilation.
And I can remember those times well, right now, thinking about those times.
There are people that run into me every once in a while, and I had someone say to me, there
were people that knew me back in those years, 20 years ago, and they say, I really didn't
think you were going to make it.
I'm actually kind of surprised you're alive, because that's how sick I was.
But I'm saying that to say this about the storm, the very last thing that I want to
release over you.
We have three little minutes left here.
Get quiet, put your receivers out.
Very important little teaching nugget.
On the heels of that, I was promoted.
I know a lot of religious people wouldn't understand this, and they would think I needed
to take more time, and it just isn't right, and it's not fitting.
It's not godly.
That before the ink was even dry on my divorce papers, because during that season of my life,
that pastor was exposed, and he went to prison.
And the whole church.
fell apart, the doors shut, because the pastor and his family owned that church.
And all kinds of crazy things happened.
In an instant, you guys, I went from having a community and having a family that I had
been, you know, laboring with, and just holding on by a thread to stay a part of for 12 years.
And in an instant, it was gone.
No one was allowed to talk to each other because of court gag orders and all kinds of different
crazy stuff.
And I was literally left with nothing because I was already in an unsafe and unhealthy situation
that was very, very destructive.
And I knew that I needed to get out.
And I felt God giving me permission to finally, now that no one was forcing me to stay, to
get out.
I felt a release in the spirit.
And so I had the strength and the courage, with the help of my next door neighbor, to
get a divorce attorney and to get divorced.
And that next door neighbor became my husband.
That wasn't the plot or the plan.
God will send you unlikely people to help you to get to the next level.
And if you have religious ideas about why that's not okay, then your religion is what's
going to put you in the prison.
Remember John 10?
That whole chapter is about the thief that comes to steal and kill and destroy, and it
ain't the devil.
It's religious mindsets.
So I was able to finally get free.
I was able to finally get out of that place.
And right after I got out of that place, you guys, my body started healing.
My mind started healing.
All the things that I was suffering with for over a decade that were happening because
of the abuse of church and the abusive relationship that I was in, they began to go away.
I began to heal rapidly because you can't heal in the same environment that's making
you sick.
You can't.
That storm of that pastor, it blew me onto another course.
And eight months later, I married that next door neighbor.
He became my husband and we've been married for 18 years.
And I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, this is definitely a God thing.
Right after we got married, you guys, I was still healing.
I was still weak.
I was still emaciated.
I only weighed 127 pounds and I'm 5'10".
And a whole bunch of crazy stuff started happening because of this blended family that I married
into.
And I remember being out in my front yard underneath a tree and I just cried out to
God and I said, God, I need some rest from these storms.
I cannot go into another storm.
My husband's former wife was just, lots of things were happening.
The winds were howling.
And God spoke to me in that moment, and this is what I'm going to leave you with.
He said, Jackie, he said, you're asking for peace, but peace is not a place, it's a person
and it's me.
Remember that word peace means shalom, devourer of chaos and confusion.
He said, come into me, come in here with me in the eye of the storm.
Psalm 91, y'all go read it, come underneath his wings, come into the eye of the storm,
come into the place of peace where the chaos and the confusion is all around you, but it's
not in you.
It's all around you, but it's not in you.
Peace is not a place, it's a person.
And so I just want to speak that of you, Father, help us all to come into the place of peace,
which is you.
It's a person, it's you coming into you and having rest for our souls.
We can be in the eye of the storm with you.
Things can be swirling all around us, but we're not swirling.
We're not swirling, Lord.
We are calm.
Our feet are planted firmly on the rock, on a firm foundation, which is you.
And this will pass, this will pass.
And when it does pass, we will still be here on the rock with you.
We will be ready for promotion.
We will be steady.
We will be tried.
We will be true.
We will be prepared.
We will be matured and we will have all that you said we could have.
In Jesus name, amen.
All right, friends.
Love you so much.
See you tomorrow night on Sunday Night Activation.