The Power To Choose

See, I don't always have the ability to choose what

I go through, but God has given me the ability

to choose.

What I call whatever I go.

Through preach verdict.

So I can't always control the situation, but my revelation

of who God is governs what I say about my situation.

So I may be in a place called LUs today,

I may be in a place of disappointment today. Some

of us are looking for God in all the wrong places.

We think that God will be at the destination, but

he's the God of the detour. Could it be possible

that God has you right where he wants you. Could

it be possible that even some of the disappointments in

your life are destiny and disguise. Could it be that

some of the people that broke your heart were people

that God was removing, because if they had been in

your life, they would have kept you from the path

that was leading you to your greater purpose. Could it

be possible today that some of the things you are

praying and asking God to take away are the very

gates through which He is going to release his greater glory.

Somebody say, this is the place in a world that

is so obsessed with what's next and what is going

to be and what's going to happen? I wonder, might

God be trying to wake up a spirit of gratitude.

Remember the scripture doesn't say that God showed up. It

says that Jacob woke up. Sometimes we're praying for God

to show up, and he's waiting for us to wake

up and see that He's already in this place. He

is here now, the Great I am, and He is

present in this moment, this situation, this pain, this heartbreak,

this season of your life. I'm not waiting until I

get there. God is working on my behalf right now.

I know it's a simple message, but it might set

you free to realize that He is working in this season,

this situation. This is the gate. Say it out loud,

This is the gate, This is the gate.

Is God is working through this situation.

Now.

Remember Jacob is pointing at a rock, a hard thing,

an uncomfortable thing, a common thing.

I wonder what you need to point at today. A

hard thing, an uncomfortable thing, a common thing. Jacob points

at it, and he annoints the rock, and he says,

this is the house of God. No it's not. It's

a rock. God said, I will be with you wherever

you go. Yes, the place is special, but what makes

it special is his presence. What makes it glorious is

that He is here. So there are some things in

my life that I've been stepping over. There are some

things in my life and some thorns in my life,

some hard places, some situations I've been asking God to change,

and God says, no, I'm not going to change the situation.

I am going to use the situation to stage a

revelation of who I am.

Somebody shout, this is the gate.

And that's why when Paul prayed, God take it away.

I got this thorn.

I need you to get rid of it so I

can serve you. Some of you have this thing in

your life that you think you could you could be

so much more effective and so much happier. And if

God would just and this and that, and you know,

sometimes He's going to do it, and then sometimes you're

not gonna like this part of the message. Pastor Joseph,

I want to thank you for inviting me to preach today.

I know this probably will be my last time, but

it just really was an honor. No. It's crazy because

if you read it in your Bible. Paul says, there

was given to me a thorn. He doesn't name the

particular issue, and scholars have debated about what it might be.

If Paul would have wanted us to know, he wouldn't

have used a metaphor. He is being symbolic rather than

specific on purpose, because if he named the exact situation,

you would think that it was the situation. But by

not naming the situation, he lets you insert your own

situation and decide what is that thing? That thing that

you don't even want to name, so you speak in

Christianese about it. We used to do this in youth

group back home. I grew up in a town, by

the way, that's about the same The whole town is

about the same size of this room. The town is

called Monk's Corner, South Carolina.

That's what.

Don't shout like you've heard a Monk's corner.

I mean, it's.

Polite and all. I appreciate it, but I'm not buying it.

And I was texting a friend today saying, how I

woke up at three in the morning because even though

I've been preaching for a while now and God has

given me a great church, to pastor and many opportunities.

I always wake up on the eve of an important

assignment that I value, like this one, feeling like that

little boy from Monk's Corner. And you wake up in

Singapore feeling like I don't belong here. And I keep

waiting on the day where I'm gonna wake up and

feel like I belong here.

And Gods God keeps letting me feel like I don't

belong here. And I wonder if the reason why he

leaves what seems to me to be an insecurity is

to create a dependence so I can remember is not

about the vessel, It's about the oil.

Because the moment I start thinking that it's about talent

or acumen, I'm no longer effective to administer God's grace

in the form that he gave me to administer it.

So God says, I need you up there, limping, Jacob.

I need you up there, feeling a little bit ignorant.

I need you up there, leaning in and depending on me.

So God told Paul, I'm not gonna take it away,

but here's.

What I'll do.

I will take the thorn that the enemy scent to

torment you, and I'm gonna flip the script, and I

was playing around with the word torment because Paul said

the enemy sent it to torment me. And I realized

that if you reverse the syllables for torment, it becomes

mentor I real behind this puppet. I realized that some

of the things that I want God to take away

are the very tools of transformation that He is using

to teach me. That his glory is greater than my weakness,

that his grace is greater than my says that he's

all I need, that he's more than enough, that is

grace is sufficient for me. So God says, I'm not

gonna take it away.

I'm gonna use it.

I'm gonna let you go through some things. I'm gonna

let you. I'm gonna let you stumble in the darkness for.

A little while so that you will recognize desperate need

for my guidance.

This is the gate.

This in my weakness, he is strong.

This is the gate.

Say it out loud, this is the gate.

Okay, I want you to get the thing, the thing

in your mind, the hard thing, the uncomfortable thing. You

got it. Some of y'all are sitting next to them,

but don't point at them, come on, I want it again.

I'm sorry, I just had a mental picture. I was

picturing you walking into work Monday and pointing at somebody

and saying, this is the gate. See, because you are

praying for stuff and God is trying to give it

to you, but you don't like the package that comes in,

so you keep sending it back. Paul said, the devil

might have wrapped the package, but God gave the gift.

He gave me greater grace it maybe who I am

reminded me of my need for him. This is the gate,

this is the gate. Pointed at it. You got that

thing on your mind, something you've been wishing away. If

I didn't know, And then you go on Instagram and

you see everybody else is there, see everybody else's post

photos that bear no resemblance to real life, and you

start comparing your behind the scenes to their highlight reel.

And now you're.

Because you're not there.

And God showed up in the middle of nowhere, in

a place called loves, in a place called failure, in

a place called mistake, in a place called weakness, in

a place called sorrow, and Jacob saw the angels and he.

Was like, yeah, this is the house of God.

How awesome is this place? And he anointed the place

with the oil. And he consecrated something common, you.

Know, like Jesus did with Peter when he said, I

know you used to be called Simon, but now I

call you Peter, petros rock. And he anointed a rock,

something common. Touch somebody and say, God has oil for

your head. God annoints the things, the foolish things.

The hard things.

Some of you are in a place right now you

never saw yourself being. Some of you are in emotional

states right now. And God gave me a word to

give to you. And I don't know if you're gonna

like it or not, but it's what he told me

to tell you. He told me to tell you sleep

on it. That I never preached a message like this before.

I used to get people to shout for their blessing,

you know, shout to the Lord. Now I'm thinking that

some of you need to sleep on it.

After all, What good.

Is a promise from God if you're not going to

lay your head on it.

Now I understand how Jacob could sleep in a hard

place because he saw that God was already working it out. Yeah,

he is all righty, Like remember when Elijah, not my

son Elijah, but the one in First Kings. He was

running from Jezebel because he was tired of fighting. By

the way, sometimes you give up not because you don't

think you can win.

But because you're tired of the fight. Elijah knew Jezebel

couldn't kill him. If she could have done that, he

would have died on Mount Carmel in front of her

eight hundred and fifty prophets.

She couldn't do anything to him.

He just didn't want to fight anymore. He'd been running

for three and a half years, so he kept from it,

and he ran all the way to the cave. And

here comes this earthquake and this fire in this wind.

Are you Bible students or not? I thought this was

Pastor Joseph Prince's church, acting like you never heard of

Elijah before. And here come these miraculous demonstrations. And you know,

the Bible says God wasn't in the earthquake or the wind,

and the rocks tore apart, but God wasn't in it.

And then there was a whisper, and the word of

the Lord came to Elijah, saying, what are you doing here.

It was a sheer silence that can be heard. Now,

if you're God and you can shake rocks, if you're God,

and you could rip through the winds, if you're God

and you can create fire from nothing, which is incredibly

difficult to do. I can't even make fire with gasoline

and kerosene and durabling locks. Why would you reveal yourself

in the whisper? And the reason that God whispered to

Elijah in the cave, and the reason that God whispers

in your situation and the enemy seems so loud with

thoughts of anxiety and panic and spare, and God seems

so quiet. God does not whisper because he does not

have good vocal abilities. He whispers because he's close.

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