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00:00 This is Bishop Dale Broder. Thank you so much for joining our YouTube channel today.
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00:19 And then if you're in the metro Atlanta area on a Sunday, check out one of our exhilarating services at 8.30 a.m., 11 a.m. or 6 o'clock p.m.
00:29 Our scriptural text today comes from 1 Kings chapter 12, verse 11, 1 through 11.
00:37 And this is to help make up for those of you that have been slack this week in reading your word.
00:43 There is still power in the word and His word unveils to us His will.
00:49 Notice 1 Kings chapter 12, verse 1, "Rehoboam went to Shechem.
00:54 For all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king, and as soon as Jeroboam the son of Nabat heard of it,
01:01 for he was still in Egypt where he had fled from King Solomon, then Jeroboam returned from Egypt.
01:09 And they sent and called him, and Jeroboam and all the assembly of Israel came and said to Rehoboam,
01:16 'Your father made our yoke heavy. Now therefore lighten the hard service of your father and his heavy yoke on us,
01:23 and we will serve you.' And he said to them, 'Go away for three days and then come to me again.'"
01:29 I think he said that because good decisions take time.
01:32 "So the people went away. And then King Rehoboam took counsel with the old men who stood before Solomon his father,
01:41 while he was yet alive, saying, 'How do you advise me to answer this people?'
01:46 And they said to him, 'If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them and speak good words to them
01:54 when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever.'
01:58 But he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took the counsel with the young men
02:05 who had grown up with him and stood before him. And he said to them, 'What do you advise that we answer this people
02:12 who have said to me, "Lighten the yoke that your father put on us?"
02:17 And the young men who had grown up with him said to him, 'Thus shall you speak to this people who said to you,
02:23 "Your father made our yoke heavy, but you lighten it for us." Thus shall you say to them,
02:28 "My little finger is thicker than my father's thighs. And now whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke,
02:35 I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions."
02:41 And we're speaking today from the subject, "Discerning Answers."
02:45 Discerning Answers.
02:49 This is where it helps all of those of us who are parents not to assume responsibility when our children make dumb mistakes.
03:01 Because here is Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, and yet he has a fool as a son.
03:10 Who is now king in his stead.
03:15 Now if he was so smart, why didn't he teach wisdom to his son?
03:22 And so this just shows you that just because you're smart does not mean that people around you will be.
03:29 And now here his son Rehoboam is king in his daddy's place.
03:37 And it also highlights to us that you can be wise and still make mistakes.
03:44 Solomon was wise, but he made a mistake in that he was too harsh and too taxing on the people that he governed.
03:52 Solomon's advisors learned from that and they tried to tell it to Solomon's son Rehoboam.
03:58 And Rehoboam instead of receiving the wisdom of these older seasoned men who were counselors to the wisest man that ever lived.
04:08 But he rejected their counsel and received the counsel of his peers, people who were on the same level.
04:18 And took that and now became more harsh.
04:21 And he had a critical opportunity which would have been to unify Israel because Israel, the kingdom had been split between the northern and the southern kingdom.
04:31 The southern kingdom called Judah and the northern called Israel.
04:34 And he had a unique opportunity to be able to unify the nation.
04:39 And it was his lack of wisdom that further divided the kingdom.
04:45 He missed an opportunity when the wisdom was in the house.
04:51 And how does that make you feel when you know things that could help those around you and they are too stubborn, too know-it-all to be able to receive your counsel.
05:03 I hope some parents feel better today because you're in the company of Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived.
05:11 Just because you have the wisdom and might have learned it the hard way does not mean that others will appreciate what you paid a dear price for.
05:20 And they could get for free.
05:22 And yet they reject it.
05:24 And this is where we are about discerning answers.
05:28 This is a part of our discernment series because we're living in a time now where God's people have to be discerning.
05:35 And the first thing that you need to discern is what time it is.
05:40 Because the time lets you know what you ought to do now.
05:43 You got to know what you need to do right now.
05:46 How do you discern God's timing?
05:49 I mean, there's a time when God winked at foolishness, but now.
05:54 It's time now to grow up. I'm telling you, God, and let me just tell you this, let me tell you this.
05:59 If we're waiting for God to come back and judge the world, we are totally misconstrued.
06:04 Judgment must first begin at the house of God.
06:08 And I want to tell you as a prophet of the living God,
06:11 that this is a day now that God is going to bring it back because there's been reverence that has been lost of those folks that come to the house of God.
06:19 The people that call themselves Christian and they're wiling out and freaking out and saying and doing everything else just like the world.
06:26 And God said there ought to be a distinction between my people and their people.
06:30 And this is why when God begins to call us back before he can come and judge the world,
06:35 he says I've got to judge my own house. And this is why he said in 2 Chronicles 7, 14,
06:40 that if my people, not the world, if my people that are called by my name would humble themselves
06:47 and if they, my people, would seek my face and not my hand, not to bless me, Lord, not give me this, Jesus,
06:55 but if my people will seek my face, no wonder we have forgotten who we are
07:01 and our identity is twisted because we've been so looking at the hand that we don't understand the identity.
07:08 If you looked in his face, we are made in his image.
07:12 And we've got an identity issue because we've been looking at the hand instead of the face.
07:22 How foolish it is of a child who's on the mother's breast to only look at where the milk comes out
07:30 but the baby has sense enough intuitively while they are feeding from the breast to look in the mother's face.
07:37 And yet we've got those that are like, Lord, bless me, bless me, bless me.
07:44 And it's about money and it's about clothes and it's about property and it's about this and it's about that
07:48 and God says it's time for my people now to grow up. It's time for my people to come back to me that I'm sick of this.
07:54 God says I'm not even going to judge the world. I know you're talking about the world doing the thing
07:58 but God says no, no, no. He says it's my people. My people down at the concerts.
08:03 It's my people that's wilding out. It's my people who have forgotten what holiness looks like.
08:08 It's my people who don't understand what righteousness is. My God.
08:13 You've got to be able to discern the answers when the answer is right there.
08:18 I declare to you by the power of the Spirit of the living God that when God said in the book of Amos
08:23 that there would come a famine, he didn't say that there would come a famine of the word.
08:29 He said that there would come a famine of hearing the word.
08:33 The word is here. The word is more abundant now than we've ever had.
08:39 You can go to hotels and they've got a Bible in the drawer.
08:44 You've got a Bible app on your telephone.
08:47 There's an abundance of the Bible but there is a famine of hearing the word.
08:56 I know what time it is. I'm a watchman on the wall. I didn't put myself there.
09:02 I didn't run for office. I was divinely elected.
09:06 I was appointed. What God appoints, God anoints.
09:11 My God, I'm so glad that I'm not Democrat or Republican and Independent and all of this.
09:18 I'm a servant of the Most High God.
09:21 I've been set in cold by God to be able to declare a truth of the living God
09:27 whether people like it or whether they don't.
09:30 But I'm just telling you God says I've got to have a people
09:33 so that when I bless them that they will put the hands and say not look at what I have done
09:38 but look what God did in me. Look what God did for me.
09:42 Look, I was a mess but God. But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but.
09:49 Oh my, my, my God, my God, my God.
09:57 We've got to be able to discern the times in which we live.
10:04 If you discern the time you'll understand the answer that fits the time.
10:09 Discerning answers and hear was an answer that was in the earth
10:13 but he had a famine of hearing.
10:16 It was not a lack of wisdom, that was a lack of hearing the wisdom.
10:21 That was a lack of giving ear. This is why God says give ear to my word.
10:26 Yeah, I hear you, yeah I hear you, but no you don't hear.
10:30 You got a famine of hearing because every time you marry a fool your mama knew it.
10:36 Oh my.
10:40 Unless you have good answers, good questions, you don't get good answers.
10:56 An answer is a response to a question, it's a response to a statement,
11:01 it's a response to a situation or to a dilemma when you have an answer.
11:06 And God's people are sent into the earth not to further complicate the problem
11:13 but we are sent into the earth as answers.
11:17 When God sends us as wheat into the field, we are seed, we are an answer.
11:24 God sends us as an answer to a problem, to a dilemma, to a statement, to a question.
11:31 We are a response of God. God's people are an answer.
11:36 Sin always creates a problem, God always creates an answer.
11:41 Sin leads you into a problem. Sin leads you into a problem.
11:47 That's why God gave us the "thou shalt not."
11:50 He was trying to help us to avoid the problem.
11:53 He wasn't trying to be mean, He wasn't trying to spoil your fun,
11:56 He's trying to restrict you to protect you.
11:58 It's about protection, it's not restriction.
12:01 "Oh, but it's about your legalism."
12:03 It's not legalism, it's protection.
12:06 "Oh, your daddy, you can't go out after 11 o'clock."
12:09 It's protection.
12:12 It's not legalism.
12:15 Love protects.
12:17 Love corrects.
12:19 Love respects.
12:24 It's not legalism, it's truth.
12:27 It's the protection that comes out of a heart of love, of a father.
12:33 And here's what I say, is that oftentimes the answer that we need
12:37 is not merely delivered verbally, but is unveiled gradually
12:41 through a transformative process.
12:45 It's unveiled through a process, it's unveiled through an encounter
12:50 that oftentimes that we may have with God.
12:53 But God's answers don't just all of a sudden just come.
12:56 Sometimes you pray and God will unveil the answer over time.
12:59 It's a transformative thing.
13:01 You grow into it.
13:03 The people that really have wisdom, they didn't just, a light bulb
13:06 just all of a sudden just turn on.
13:08 They've gone through some things.
13:10 You know how, whenever you find really wise people,
13:13 they made a lot of dumb mistakes.
13:16 And their wisdom comes out of the foolish things that they did.
13:20 It's out of that, it's out of making poor decisions
13:23 that you learn to make good ones.
13:26 So you know what's behind door number one and two and number three
13:29 because you done been through all the doors.
13:33 And then once you know what's behind this one,
13:36 and then you tell somebody else, "Man, you don't want none of that.
13:39 Trust me, you don't want none of that."
13:42 The only reason that you can say that with such confidence
13:45 is because you've been down that road.
13:48 You've been down that road and so it's our foolishness
13:53 that actually teaches us and oftentimes our wisdom.
13:57 But I want you to understand that when God does something,
14:00 He puts it in a place to where only hungry people can get it.
14:05 He didn't make it for you just stumble on it.
14:08 That's why a real treasure is always hidden.
14:11 Diamonds are hidden. They're buried.
14:14 Platinum is buried. Rubies, sapphire, all of this stuff,
14:18 you have to mine those things out.
14:20 They're not just laying on top of the ground.
14:23 They are buried. Treasure is buried. It's always hidden.
14:27 And notice what Proverbs chapter 25 and verse 2 says,
14:31 "It is the glory of God to conceal things,
14:34 but the glory of kings is to search things out."
14:37 You ever notice that when the glory of God fills the place,
14:40 it's almost like a smoke and it obscures things?
14:42 Glory obscures.
14:44 It's not only obscuring the good things,
14:47 it's actually glory covering your mess and your shame.
14:51 When the glory of God comes,
14:55 it covers the trauma that you've been through.
14:58 It covers the abuse. It covers the emotional scars.
15:02 When God's glory comes on your life,
15:04 you don't look like what you've been through.
15:08 I mean, when the glory of God comes on you,
15:11 you don't look like what you've been through.
15:14 And if you told people your real, raw story,
15:17 they'd be like, "No, no, no, no, not you."
15:21 Glory covers. The glory of God covers.
15:27 But he said it is the honor of kings to search out a matter.
15:34 God covers it. Kings have to discover it.
15:39 So here's a king, Rehoboam,
15:41 that's trying to discover something
15:43 that is hidden in plain view.
15:47 Now here is the thing.
15:49 I'm going to say this to you
15:51 because here we are praying for a key to an unlocked door.
16:03 And what sense does that make to God
16:05 when God says, "I have set before you an open door,"
16:08 and we are saying, "Lord, give me the key.
16:10 Lord, give me the key. Lord, just give me the key."
16:16 We're asking for a key to an unlocked door.
16:22 God just says, "Just trust me."
16:24 And sometimes, as you know,
16:27 when you get ready to go to the grocery store
16:30 and as you walk toward the door
16:32 and you hit the little walking pad,
16:34 the door automatically opens.
16:35 They have a sensor that can sense your presence.
16:38 It's a motion detector.
16:41 And doors only open for people who are on the move.
16:50 So while you are sitting on the premise
16:53 asking God to open a door that's already unlocked,
16:59 all you have to do is start moving.
17:01 That's why I'm telling you.
17:02 I mean, if you'll just start walking in the direction
17:05 that God is telling you.
17:07 I'm telling you, it's the glory of God to cover a thing.
17:10 It's the glory of kings to search it out.
17:14 So here's Rehoboam who's on a search
17:17 asking for a key that his daddy already had.
17:21 And the counselors, his daddy is gone now,
17:24 but the counselors, the people that counsel his daddy
17:27 and that listen to the wisdom of his daddy
17:29 are still with him.
17:30 He's got his daddy's counsel with him and rejects it.
17:35 And it causes him to further damage the kingdom.
17:40 And all that he had to do, I mean,
17:42 he was just asking him, "What should I do?
17:44 How should I do this?"
17:46 And the old folks said, the old counselors said to him,
17:49 "Serve the people.
17:51 Serve the people.
17:53 Lighten up the load on them.
17:55 Don't be as hard as your daddy.
17:56 Your daddy was hard.
17:57 There were some people that resented him.
17:58 They didn't say it to his face, but they were grumbling,
18:00 you know, the water cooler.
18:02 They were talking about, "Shoot, man, they do, shoot, man,
18:04 they do all their taxes all high,
18:06 inflation's all high."
18:08 But they were grumbling.
18:09 Solomon was the wisest man, but he was hard on them.
18:12 Said, "You do anything, I'll lock you up.
18:14 You're going to pay high taxes to me."
18:16 Somebody had to pay for all of that glory
18:18 and splendor of his temple.
18:20 He taxes people to death.
18:22 And he said, "You think," and the young folks,
18:24 the peers said, "You think my daddy was hard."
18:27 He said, "My little pinky is going to be thicker
18:30 than my daddy's thigh.
18:31 You don't know what a burden he is.
18:33 You think my daddy was hard.
18:34 I'm really getting ready to be hard."
18:36 So it wasn't to serve the people.
18:38 It was to try to get the people to serve him more.
18:40 And I want to encourage you here that if you ever have to err,
18:43 if you don't know what to do, if you ever have to err,
18:46 err on the side of kindness.
18:49 Err on the side of compassion.
18:52 Err on the side of humility.
18:55 Err on the side of charity.
18:58 Err, kindness, love, charity.
19:02 Give them the benefit of the doubt.
19:03 Let them be kind to you.
19:04 People will always appreciate and remember those people
19:07 that have been kind to them.
19:09 Even a dog will remember your kindness,
19:13 and they remember the very one who kicked them.
19:19 A dog can distinguish the difference
19:21 between being stumbled over and being kicked.
19:25 A dog.
19:27 And so when things are going on in your world,
19:29 the question is not, "Why is this happening to me?"
19:33 The question is, "What is this trying to teach me?"
19:36 The question is, "What new opportunities do I have now
19:41 that I am positioned, I'm posed with this issue
19:45 right now in my life?
19:47 What new opportunities do I have?"
19:50 Because we are discontinuing that.
19:51 "Now what new opportunities do I have?
19:54 What is this showing me?
19:56 What's available to me now?
19:58 What's available to me now?"
20:01 And I just want you to realize here that
20:04 God is in the process of bringing fresh testimonies
20:08 into the lives of His people.
20:11 I know that I've heard this in the Spirit of God,
20:14 but you don't get testimonies without a test.
20:18 And a large portion of testimonies
20:21 are a test with money.
20:25 They really are.
20:27 With your character and your integrity
20:29 and how you handle money.
20:31 It's a test with money, your testimony.
20:34 And they're not all dealing with money.
20:36 There are some of them that are health issues.
20:38 There are some of them that are relationship issues.
20:40 There are some of them that are sanity issues.
20:42 There are some of them that God wants to be able
20:44 to deliver His people.
20:45 There are some where God will provide new careers for you.
20:50 New promotions on jobs.
20:52 And it's a test.
20:53 You have to pass a test to be promoted.
20:56 And if you can stand the test,
20:58 you can get the promotion.
21:00 There are certain jobs that you can't get
21:01 until you can pass a test.
21:04 And it may be a physical test.
21:05 It may be a mental aptitude test,
21:06 but you have to take a test.
21:09 The testing precedes promotion.
21:13 Get ready, get ready people.
21:14 God's getting ready to lift us up where we belong.
21:17 Where the eagles fly on a mountain high.
21:19 Just get ready, just get ready.
21:21 Because we're coming into a new season of testimonies.
21:25 Testimonies.
21:26 One of the psalms that I used to recite
21:27 every single day of my life was Psalm 96.
21:31 Sing unto the Lord a new song.
21:32 Sing unto the Lord all the earth.
21:35 Sing.
21:36 You can't sing a new song
21:38 unless you experience God's love in a new dimension.
21:42 Unless you experience His power in a new realm.
21:46 Unless you experience His glory,
21:48 His mercy, His compassion.
21:51 So whenever you write a new song,
21:53 it comes out of a new experience with God.
21:56 So whenever, whenever, whenever you go through
21:58 a pain that you've never been through,
22:00 look for a new song.
22:02 I'm just telling you,
22:03 your best music will come out of Songs of the Night.
22:06 Your best music will come when you've been crushed.
22:08 When somebody has broken your heart.
22:10 When somebody has used you and misused you
22:12 and abandoned you.
22:14 I'm just telling you, I don't care who it is.
22:17 I mean, Adele, every time she gets her heart broken,
22:19 bam, here she comes out with something that,
22:21 she got another big, huge album
22:23 that comes out of heartbreak.
22:26 They're Songs of the Night.
22:29 Sometimes you don't even recognize the gift
22:32 that God is sending to you
22:34 because it is wrapped in something
22:36 that looks like a conundrum.
22:38 It's wrapped in a problem.
22:40 It is wrapped in trouble.
22:42 It is wrapped in trauma.
22:44 But if you ever, ever stop asking,
22:47 "Why is this happening to me?"
22:50 And start asking, "Lord, what do you have
22:52 in this for me?"
22:54 There may be a book in this.
22:55 There may be a song in this.
22:56 There may be an album in this.
22:57 Because every new experience
22:59 brings you to another manifestation
23:02 of the glory of God that you've never seen before.
23:04 And I'm just telling you,
23:05 while you were trying to stay comfortably in this box,
23:07 God was saying, "I was trying to stretch you."
23:10 I don't know whether you've ever been in a situation
23:12 where everything was just going really fine,
23:14 and all of a sudden God came in
23:16 and disrupted your good thing that was going on.
23:19 It wasn't to subtract you.
23:21 It wasn't to take away from you.
23:24 It was to add to you and to multiply you.
23:27 When the devil comes, he comes to divide and subtract.
23:30 When God comes, he comes to add and multiply.
23:33 And you have to recognize this as a blessing.
23:35 And until he put a block on this avenue,
23:39 did you find a divergent way
23:42 of where there was something that was bigger
23:44 and better down this lane than what you had over here.
23:48 And had he kept you comfortable over here,
23:51 you never would have discovered
23:53 the finer waters that are over here,
23:55 the greener grass that is over here.
23:58 He's sending you on a journey.
24:00 And so he has to let this thing dry up
24:02 so he can show you another way of his feeding you
24:05 on another level.
24:07 After he let the prophet there to be fed by the ravens,
24:11 and they would bring bread and water in the morning,
24:14 he'd drink bread and meat,
24:16 and he was bringing it every day.
24:18 Then after a while, the brook dried up.
24:20 But then when that happened,
24:22 God says, "Now I'm not getting birds to feed you.
24:25 I have commanded a widow woman to sustain you."
24:29 And while he was eating bread crumbs,
24:31 now this woman bakes him a cake.
24:33 He gets a cake.
24:34 He goes from crumbs to a cake.
24:36 And I'm just telling you,
24:37 but one thing dried up over here and stops.
24:40 "Hey, Lord, why did you dry the thing up?
24:42 I know you told me to come here."
24:44 It was for a season.
24:46 But you're on another level of life now.
24:48 And God says, "I'm not trying to get you
24:50 to live off of bird crumbs any longer.
24:52 I've got something better,
24:54 but you've got to trust me in this hour.
24:56 You've got to trust me.
24:57 There's a test that you've got to pass
24:59 because I've got something on another level,
25:01 and I want to make sure that you will still honor me.
25:05 I've got to bless you in a different way,
25:07 and I've got a problem here,
25:08 and I'm getting ready to dry something up,
25:10 but I'm getting ready to release something
25:12 on a whole 'nother level in your life."
25:14 And I'm just here to tell you, people of God,
25:16 that he's calling us.
25:18 He is calling us.
25:19 He is calling us.
25:20 And the question is this,
25:22 can you stand to be blessed?
25:25 I hope you understand that because it's ambivalent.
25:27 Can you stand after having done all?
25:32 Stand anyhow.
25:34 Stand therefore.
25:36 You know, with the helmet of salvation,
25:38 the blessed parade of righteousness,
25:39 your loins girt about with truth,
25:40 your feet shod with the preparation
25:42 of the gospel of faith,
25:43 taking the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit,
25:44 which is the Word of God.
25:45 Stand.
25:46 Can you stand to be blessed?
25:49 Can you stand?
25:50 Can you stand?
25:52 I'm just telling you, he's got something for you,
25:54 and he's not looking for the world.
25:56 He's looking for my people.
25:59 This is the best way that I can help you
26:01 to understand the heart of God.
26:03 The world is out of order.
26:04 We all know that.
26:05 Anybody with common sense can see that.
26:07 They're twisted up about simple things.
26:10 But before we can straighten the world out,
26:14 you better straighten your own children out.
26:17 I don't care what little Johnny's mama lets him do.
26:21 She can let him walk around with a dress on and earrings
26:23 if she wants to and lipstick.
26:26 But come here, baby.
26:28 Come here.
26:30 Go in there to your daddy.
26:34 Not in my house.
26:35 Not in--he's just saying, "Listen,
26:39 "straighten your own house out first."
26:40 He said, "I'm not even gonna come deal with the world
26:43 "till you get your own children under control."
26:45 Get your own children under control.
26:51 It took everything on the inside of me yesterday
26:53 sitting on the plane coming back home to Atlanta
26:56 because I watched a little child 2 years old,
26:59 a few rows behind me, telling his grandmama
27:02 she was too old to be his mama.
27:09 But the way that little child spoke to her
27:13 was degrading and disrespectful and dishonoring.
27:19 And all that I can say is that had I talked to my mother
27:25 or grandmother in that way...
27:33 They believed in tanning hides,
27:36 and they wouldn't make you go out there
27:38 and pick a switch if it wasn't big enough.
27:44 They'd make you go out there and get your own murder weapon.
27:47 [laughter]
27:56 And though other people's children down the street
27:58 and across town would do it,
28:01 but you gotta straighten your own children out first.
28:04 And this is what God is saying, that if my people,
28:07 if my people, my people, if my church folks,
28:10 if the people who name themselves among Jesus Christ,
28:14 that they are Christ's followers,
28:15 if they've been born again, if my people,
28:17 he said, "I'm not even dealing with the world right now.
28:19 Before I can correct them, I gotta show them the standard,
28:23 that this is what holiness looks like.
28:25 This is what righteousness looks like.
28:27 This is what grace looks like.
28:28 This is what compassion looks like.
28:30 This is what honor looks like."
28:33 So he says, "I got to deal with my own house first."
28:37 And that's all that God is saying.
28:38 He said, "Listen, it's time now."
28:39 He said, "I've got to do this.
28:41 I gotta straighten my own house."
28:42 Listen, you want to change the world?
28:45 Start in your own house.
28:48 Start in your own house.
28:50 Start in your own house, and as Gandhi said,
28:53 "Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
28:56 Be the change.
28:57 Reflect it.
28:58 Show it in your own house, 'cause that's a full-time job.
29:03 It's a full-time job.
29:07 And I would just say to you this,
29:08 wherever you go and whatever you're dealing with,
29:10 always keep Jesus on your mind and in your heart.
29:13 I love the words of R.T. Kendall,
29:15 who said that wisdom is the presence of the mind of Christ
29:20 in every situation, every single day.
29:24 It is the presence of the mind of Christ
29:27 in every situation, every single day.
29:30 It's asking yourself, "What would Jesus do?"
29:33 It is the presence of the mind of Christ,
29:36 the mind of Christ in every situation, every single day.
29:43 And here, Rehoboam was the king
29:49 and becoming abusive of his authority.
29:53 Absolute control corrupts absolutely.
30:00 And here is King Rehoboam,
30:02 the son of the wisest man that ever lived,
30:06 who didn't have sense enough to be kind and compassionate
30:10 to the people that he was called to lead and to serve.
30:13 He was called to lead them and to serve them,
30:16 and he chose to be cruel to them
30:19 in a way that was even worse than what his father had done.
30:25 My friend Miles Monroe says that
30:27 whatever you mismanage, you lose.
30:30 Whatever you mismanage, you lose.
30:33 We'd be teaching together, and he would say,
30:35 "Whatever you mismanage, you lose.
30:40 "If you mismanage your time, you'll wonder where the years went.
30:44 "If you mismanage your marriage, you'll lose it.
30:48 "If you mismanage your children, you'll lose it.
30:51 "If you mismanage your money, you will lose it.
30:54 "If you mismanage your health, you will lose it.
30:57 "Whatever you mismanage, you will lose.
31:01 "If you mismanage your influence, your leadership,
31:03 "you will lose it."
31:07 And he had wise counsel,
31:10 and he rejected the wise counsel,
31:13 and he mismanaged his authority.
31:16 Whatever God has given you,
31:19 that's why we need the wisdom of God,
31:22 his discernment to know how to use the power,
31:26 the authority, the grace, the gift that God has given to us
31:30 without becoming abusive.
31:33 It's there for a purpose.
31:35 It is there for a purpose.
31:37 And now he listened to the young folks there with his peers,
31:40 said, "Man, you--tell 'em--hey, hey, hey."
31:43 And there were a couple of things.
31:45 If you read this--the text carefully,
31:48 the first time that he asked--
31:50 when Rehoboam the king asked his daddy's counselors,
31:54 he phrased the question this way.
31:57 He says, "I need you guys to tell me what I should do."
32:01 He was the king. It was his ultimate responsibility.
32:04 It wasn't the committee.
32:06 He says, "How do you advise me that I should answer the people?"
32:10 But when he went to his peers, he phrased it this way,
32:13 "How shall we answer?"
32:16 You the king, dude.
32:19 There's no "we" here.
32:21 Because if it goes well, you get the credit,
32:23 and if it goes poorly, you get the blame.
32:26 You are the king.
32:28 You're supreme in authority.
32:30 But he asked the old wise men,
32:33 "I need your counsel so that I will know
32:36 how to answer this people."
32:38 But when he talked to his peers, "How shall we?"
32:41 See, God doesn't deal with this group committee kind of stuff.
32:45 He's God.
32:47 He's God. He rules, and he's super-rules.
32:49 And he's God. There's nothing against him.
32:52 He believes in counsel.
32:54 He believes in counsel.
32:56 There's safety in counseling.
32:58 And the multitude of counselors,
33:00 when you got just one person that's operating on their own emotion,
33:03 what happens when your emotions are off-kelter?
33:05 That's why you need a counsel.
33:07 That's exactly why you need a counsel.
33:10 But then he did this thing where he ruled too hard.
33:13 And the industrial psychologist Adam Grant says
33:16 that when you burn people out, you push them out.
33:19 And he says stars are the first to leave
33:22 because they have the most opportunities.
33:24 Whenever you burn people out, whenever you're too hard on people,
33:27 you push them out.
33:29 If a parent is too hard on a child,
33:31 and it's a gifted child or it's a smart child,
33:33 I'm telling you, they'll run away from home.
33:35 They will leave.
33:36 Stars are the first to leave because they have the most opportunities.
33:39 When you burn people out, you push them out.
33:41 You have to know how to wield your authority
33:44 in such a way that you don't burn out good people
33:48 and run people away and hurt people and wound people
33:51 that actually have incredible capacity.
33:55 You see, young people are always looking right where things are.
33:59 They look right here.
34:01 But old people are not just looking here.
34:03 They're looking what happened before this
34:05 and even anticipating what are the possibilities
34:08 that can come out of this.
34:10 That if you invite this person, what might happen now?
34:14 So they're not just asking about now.
34:16 They're asking about what happened before now.
34:19 It's like a young person is saying, "Hmm, look at this fence here.
34:22 I don't like this fence. It's an eyesore."
34:24 And they pull the fence down, whereas the old person says,
34:27 "Hey, there's a fence here.
34:29 Something is dangerous on the other side of this."
34:32 They're trying to keep--a fence is a border.
34:35 This is to keep something safe.
34:38 Maybe there's some snakes over there.
34:40 Maybe there's some bad dogs over there.
34:42 Maybe there's something that's incredibly vicious over there.
34:46 So there's a reason, and so they're asking,
34:48 "Before I attempt to try to take this fence down,
34:51 I need to understand why it was put up."
34:53 If God ever says, "Thou shall not,"
34:55 you better figure out why He said it.
34:59 I'm telling you, He wasn't trying to spoil your fun.
35:01 He was trying to protect you.
35:03 The laws of God are for protection.
35:06 You protect what you love.
35:08 Love protects. Love protects. Love protects.
35:13 When you have a mother that loves her children,
35:15 she protects them.
35:17 When you have a father that loves his children,
35:19 he protects them. Love protects.
35:22 And it will create boundaries.
35:24 You're not coming in this house any time of day or night.
35:27 You're grown, you go out there and pay your own bills.
35:32 But they're trying to let them know
35:34 that there are some borders here.
35:36 There are some parameters here, and they're not to punish you.
35:38 They are to protect.
35:40 When you love people,
35:42 you create boundaries that protect and not punish.
35:47 And so here Rehoboam had a wise father,
35:54 the wisest man that ever lived,
35:56 and he had wise counselors that were working with him.
35:59 But then I want you to understand this,
36:01 that memory is often needed
36:04 as an element in discernment.
36:07 And he was forgetting something
36:09 that his daddy had in his life.
36:12 Here's what memory does.
36:14 Memory serves to inspire our gratitude
36:16 for God's goodness to us
36:18 and to highlight God's amazing grace
36:20 that he has extended to us.
36:22 Memory serves to capacitate us
36:24 to have a better future
36:26 based on wisdom from blessings and lessons of the past.
36:29 It connects the dots of our history or our ancestry,
36:32 and it reminds us of the consequences
36:34 of poor judgment in the past.
36:36 This is what memory does.
36:38 There are certain things that you need to remember.
36:40 That's right. You need to remember your ancestors.
36:44 It connects your history.
36:47 I mean, if you had a great-granddaddy
36:50 that was an alcoholic, you need to know that
36:52 and remember that because you could become
36:54 an alcoholic from the first dream.
36:56 So it'll help you moving forward.
36:58 But also you might go back into your history
37:00 and you might discover that, hey, there was somebody here
37:03 that was a college president.
37:05 There was somebody here that was a professor.
37:07 There's somebody here who was an attorney.
37:09 There was somebody here that knew how to do things
37:11 with their hand, and they made discoveries.
37:13 You'd be surprised. You can find some good stuff.
37:16 You're connected.
37:18 When you try to really see what you ought to do
37:21 in your future, look back.
37:23 Somebody might have been able to throw down in the kitchen,
37:27 and it was your gift, it was your destiny.
37:29 It's in your DNA.
37:32 So sometimes it's about knowing and see--
37:35 if you don't remember, if you don't remember that stuff,
37:38 you'll have a natural proclivity for it.
37:41 It's a strength in your life, but if you don't know the story,
37:46 you'll lose the glory.
37:49 There's glory in every story.
37:51 That's why you need to know the story.
37:53 And here's Bishop Bronner's definition of wisdom,
37:55 that wisdom is realizing both the past results
37:58 of poor judgments and the future consequences
38:01 of our current decisions.
38:04 It's realizing both the past results of poor judgments
38:09 and the future consequences of our current decisions.
38:15 If I decide this right now, what might this precipitate
38:19 going down the road?
38:21 It says, "If I do this, this is going to happen."
38:23 And that can help you in your decision-making process.
38:26 And wisdom for us comes in a variety of ways.
38:29 Wisdom comes through observation and reflection.
38:32 You know, there were people, Galileo,
38:34 they would just actually observe things in the natural world,
38:37 and then they would reflect on it,
38:38 and then the insight would come.
38:40 It's observing the outside world.
38:42 It's meditating in the Word of God.
38:45 It's observing the law of God, the precepts of God,
38:49 and then reflecting on it.
38:51 It's also experience.
38:53 Wisdom comes through experience.
38:55 Either your experience or somebody else's experience.
38:58 Somebody did this and fell down the steps,
39:00 you watch your step.
39:02 Watch your step.
39:08 And here's the thing.
39:10 Don't laugh at people who fall.
39:12 Learn what made them fall
39:14 so that it can prevent a fall in your life.
39:17 So wisdom comes through experience.
39:19 Wisdom also comes through prayer and revelation.
39:22 And I heard the Lord say that He was going to begin
39:24 with His people once again in greater measure in dreams,
39:27 prophetic dreams,
39:29 to show you things that the business of your mind
39:32 can't get while you're awakened.
39:34 God is going to awaken you and speak to you
39:36 in visions of the night, in dreams.
39:39 So in prayer and revelation, you say your prayers at night,
39:42 and somehow you'll wake up in the morning,
39:44 and you'll know the answer of what you need to do
39:46 and what you don't need to do.
39:48 Somehow there will be a knowing
39:49 that God will put on the inside of you.
39:51 And then wisdom sometimes comes through something
39:53 that does not make sense at the moment.
39:55 God will tell you to do something,
39:57 and it doesn't even make any sense.
39:58 There were some people that I know that God told
40:00 to plant a church right in the middle of COVID.
40:03 It didn't make any sense, but then He blew on it.
40:08 God told people to open businesses
40:10 in the middle of COVID to buy something
40:12 in the middle of COVID.
40:14 Uncertainty, it just didn't make sense.
40:17 And yet the breath of God breathed on it.
40:20 God said, "Let me show you what I can do.
40:22 "Let me show you what I can do
40:23 "while everybody else is scared."
40:25 God said, "I will expand you on the left hand
40:27 "and on the right.
40:28 "I'll bring something into your life
40:29 "if you will just obey me."
40:31 And it may not be anything that makes sense at the moment.
40:34 It's like, "Lord, this is the craziest time in the world.
40:36 "Why in the world would you send me to the bank
40:38 "at a time like this?"
40:40 "Lord, Jesus, what? God?"
40:44 But I'm telling you, He'll tell you to do things
40:46 that don't make sense at the moment.
40:48 And sometimes God will send you wisdom
40:51 through someone that does not look like you
40:53 nor think like you.
40:55 I'm telling you, God will send wisdom through somebody
40:57 who doesn't look like you nor think like you.
41:02 It happened, one of the greatest points in time
41:05 that I can remember is when Sarah was trying
41:08 to tell Abraham something
41:11 about that other woman that had his baby.
41:15 And Sarah didn't look like Abraham
41:17 and she didn't think like Abraham.
41:19 And the Lord told Abraham, "Abraham, Abraham,
41:24 "listen to the voice, take heed to the voice
41:27 "of Sarah, thy wife."
41:29 The Lord had to tell him to listen to the girl
41:32 who didn't look like him nor think like him.
41:35 'Cause she was saying, "You are not gonna bring that hussy."
41:38 (congregation laughing)
41:42 And the Lord validated homegirl.
41:47 It had to pack her bags.
41:50 So there would be peace.
41:54 Sometimes the wisdom comes through someone
41:56 who does not look like you nor think like you.
41:58 And sometimes it comes through somebody
42:00 that you do not like.
42:02 I'm just telling you, sometimes, I mean,
42:05 somebody get mad at be your enemy
42:07 and then they be spewing off at, you know,
42:09 out of their mouth, out of anger and vitriol stuff,
42:13 but it's someone that you don't like,
42:15 but it's the truth.
42:17 And so sometimes God will speak wisdom
42:19 through somebody that you don't like.
42:21 And sometimes he will use something
42:24 that is not popular.
42:26 It's just not popular at all.
42:27 God tells you to do something,
42:29 and it's the wisdom of God, but it is not popular.
42:31 It is not popular.
42:33 While other people are doing this,
42:34 God said, "You do that."
42:36 It's not popular.
42:37 And then sometimes your wisdom will come
42:39 through your gut instinct.
42:41 There are neurons in your gut
42:44 that communicate with neurons in your brain,
42:47 and they're things that your head does not know,
42:49 but your gut knows.
42:51 Because the moment that you meet him,
42:53 you know, your mama says, "Uh-uh, baby.
42:55 Uh-uh. That's not the one."
42:58 You look at a man and bring a girl home,
42:59 say, "Don't bring that woman to my house anymore.
43:01 Don't bring her over here anymore."
43:04 And they don't know anything about their resume
43:06 and all that kind of stuff,
43:07 but they have a gut instinct.
43:09 "But, Mama, you don't even know.
43:10 You ain't even give--"
43:12 "Don't bring him to my house no more."
43:16 It's a gut instinct,
43:18 'cause sometimes your gut knows things
43:21 that your head doesn't know anything about,
43:22 and they can't even explain to you how they know it,
43:24 but the minute that that person walked in the room,
43:26 something in the pit of their stomach
43:29 started making them almost want to regurgitate.
43:32 You know, so that gut instinct will--
43:37 it comes to confirm that what you're doing is right
43:41 or that you're about to make a huge mistake.
43:43 So it's like a warning signal.
43:45 It's both a warning system
43:48 and a confirming signal--system.
43:51 So God can use that gut feeling to say,
43:53 "Yep, that's the one. That's the one.
43:55 You don't even know all of the information,
43:57 but yep, that's it."
44:00 Or can send off alarms that says,
44:03 "This is danger.
44:04 Everything looks good on paper,
44:06 but you better run in the opposite direction."
44:08 Run, run, run, Forrest.
44:10 Run, run. Run.
44:14 This happened to the apostle Paul
44:16 in Acts chapter 27 and verse 10.
44:18 He's getting ready to take a boat ride.
44:21 He's a prisoner,
44:23 and the prisoner stood up one day,
44:24 and he said, "Hey, hey," he said, "Hey,"
44:26 he said, "I perceive that this voyage
44:29 will be of much danger,
44:31 and not only of the loss of the ship,
44:33 but also of our lives."
44:35 And sure enough, how did he know?
44:36 He didn't say, "God told me."
44:37 He just said, "I perceive this."
44:39 He had a gut instinct that I believe began to tell him
44:42 that, "Well, you're getting ready to go right now.
44:45 There's danger."
44:46 And sure enough, they hit shipwreck,
44:49 and the ship was broken into pieces,
44:51 and they had to get little broken planks
44:53 to be able to get to safety.
44:54 How did he know that? It was a gut instinct.
44:57 You'd be surprised that God will give you a gut instinct
45:00 in your own life that will let you know.
45:03 When I got ready to go to Uganda
45:05 to minister the gospel with a friend of mine there,
45:07 a bishop that invited me there to speak,
45:10 and I had agreed to go and gotten the ticket,
45:12 and when it came time to go,
45:15 something happened in my gut.
45:17 I said, "No, no, no, I'm not going.
45:20 I cancel the ticket."
45:22 But a friend of mine from Phoenix, Arizona, he went.
45:27 And my friend who invited me called me on the telephone.
45:30 He said, "Bishop Bronner, I'm sorry to let you know this,
45:34 that your friend who came here and I'd asked you to come,
45:37 but he said they were in the car in front of me
45:40 in an 18-wheel across the line,
45:42 head-on collision, and died instantly.
45:45 I would have been in that car
45:47 sitting next to my American friend."
45:52 Did he not know God? Yes, he knew God.
45:55 I just believe that it was his time, but it wasn't mine.
45:59 [chuckles]
46:02 And it was probably two years
46:04 after that terrible accident happened that killed my friend
46:08 that I was speaking somewhere,
46:10 and his wife was also speaking.
46:16 She had so many unanswered questions,
46:20 and yet God would put the answers in me
46:23 to the questions that she had.
46:25 And I brought peace and consolation
46:28 in her heart, not only her heart,
46:30 but also the heart of her two daughters.
46:33 She lost her husband. They lost their father.
46:38 He was a godly man, deeply godly.
46:42 He knew God.
46:45 But it was his time, not mine.
46:49 My gut instinct says, "Don't go."
46:52 I knew he knew God and was sensitive to God
46:56 and was a righteous man,
46:58 building families around America and the world
47:02 and snuck out going too soon.
47:04 But it was his time.
47:08 What my gut says, "Not yours."
47:11 And if there's an assignment on somebody else's life
47:15 that they're finished,
47:18 and you're riding in the car with them,
47:20 you endanger yourself,
47:22 and that's why you have to have a sensitivity
47:24 to discern the answers of the Lord.
47:26 "Lord, should I go? Should I not?"
47:28 It's the difference between getting in a car,
47:30 getting on a plane, a train, a bus, a boat.
47:35 If you don't get an answer from God
47:38 to protect your life,
47:41 you can be in a dangerous situation.
47:45 Rehoboam failed to recognize a gut instinct
47:50 that his father's advisors were right.
47:54 His father's advisors said to him, "Serve the people.
47:56 Don't be harsh like your daddy.
47:58 Serve the people. Serve the people."
48:01 My friend Craig Rochelle says this,
48:03 that in the kingdom of God,
48:05 greatness is service, not status.
48:10 In the kingdom of God,
48:11 greatness is service, not status.
48:14 Serve the people. Serve the people.
48:17 Serve the people.
48:19 And there's something wonderful that happens
48:23 in the Bible when we all come together
48:25 because this is why the Bible says,
48:29 "Oh, magnify the Lord with me.
48:31 Come, let us exalt his name together."
48:35 There's something that happens
48:36 when we come together as a corporate body
48:39 because 1 Corinthians chapter 2
48:43 says that we have the mind of Christ.
48:45 It doesn't say I have the mind of Christ.
48:47 It says we, collectively.
48:49 He's speaking to the church.
48:51 We have the mind of Christ.
48:53 Sometimes while you're asking God questions
48:56 and wondering why God didn't speak to you,
48:58 maybe he is.
49:01 Maybe he is.
49:03 If God is silent, it's not punishment.
49:08 It simply means that, number one,
49:10 he's already spoken to you,
49:13 and you need to review and to heed what he said to you.
49:16 Or number two, he's trying to connect you
49:19 to the right people who will add the perspective
49:22 of the missing piece.
49:26 We have the mind of Christ.
49:29 Not I have it.
49:31 It's we.
49:32 Sometimes the missing piece that you need
49:34 might be in your grandmother.
49:36 It might be in your grandfather.
49:38 It could be in your mother, your father,
49:39 an uncle, an aunt.
49:41 We have the mind of Christ.
49:43 He's trying to connect you with the right people
49:45 who will add the perspective of the missing piece.
49:48 You may think that you know it all,
49:50 that you have it all,
49:51 but we have the mind of Christ,
49:54 and they become our counselors, our advisors.
49:57 And are you going to listen to the tested
49:59 and the proven, the tried,
50:00 that will lead you down the road of charity,
50:03 the most charitable response?
50:05 Or will you get the mean-spirited response
50:09 that puffs up ego and that tries to control people
50:12 and manipulate them and to hurt them?
50:19 St. Augustine said that wherever God finds empty hands,
50:22 that's where he begins to give.
50:25 God gives where he finds empty hands of surrender.
50:30 When we surrender to him and say,
50:31 "Lord, I can't do this on my own.
50:34 I need you.
50:36 Lord, I trust you.
50:39 Lord, I desperately need you."
50:44 And may I tell you that when we finally do come to Jesus,
50:50 he doesn't look at us with an attitude
50:52 to make us feel stupid.
50:55 He's just glad that we come whenever we come,
50:57 even if you're running late,
50:59 even if you've been wilding out,
51:01 even if you get saved on deathbed.
51:04 Whenever you come, God's--
51:07 he's not just looking at you like,
51:09 "What took you so long?"
51:11 He still loves us.
51:13 Here's what S. Miller said.
51:15 "Is that one way God's love is not like our own
51:19 is that he does not roll his eyes
51:21 at the long-delayed repentant heart.
51:24 He does not sigh with exasperation.
51:27 He does not grumble, 'What took you so long?'
51:30 And he does not scold us with, 'I told you so.'
51:34 Instead, he celebrates."
51:39 God celebrates when we respond to his grace.
51:42 When we respond to his call, he celebrates.
51:48 When we hear his voice, he celebrates.
51:54 And if you're in this place today,
51:56 if you're watching online today,
52:00 I want to encourage you to just respond to God's voice.
52:03 And some of you, he's been dealing with you a long time.
52:06 He's been merciful, graceful to you.
52:09 He really has.
52:10 Will you bow your heads for just a moment?
52:14 Jesus is calling you.
52:17 And one of the ways that he lets you know
52:20 that he was calling you is that he gave you a problem
52:24 that people couldn't solve.
52:27 It's a God problem.
52:29 There's something that you can have a problem with
52:31 and you can call your mama and she can help you with it.
52:34 You can call your daddy, he can help you with it.
52:37 You can call a lawyer and he can help you with it.
52:39 You can call an accountant, a CPA,
52:42 and they can help you with it.
52:45 You can call a doctor and they can help you with it.
52:48 There's something that mama can't help you with,
52:50 daddy can't help you with,
52:52 the attorney can't help you with,
52:54 the medical doctor can't help you with,
52:57 the tax accountant can't help you with.
53:00 There's something that are God problems,
53:03 that you need God to do this.
53:06 There's some health things that nobody else can do.
53:08 There's some relationship things
53:10 that the best expert counselors cannot change
53:12 a stubborn, bitter heart, but only God.
53:18 And when you come to him, God is not one
53:20 that is going to make you feel stupid, foolish.
53:24 He's not going to roll his eyes at you
53:26 and say in exasperation, "What took you so long?"
53:29 He'll just be there with open arms
53:32 letting you know that I love you.
53:34 And he celebrates you.
53:36 He celebrates you.
53:39 Today, we hope that you enjoyed that message.
53:42 Don't forget to like and subscribe
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53:53 Thank you for what you do.