Sarah Jakes Roberts - 25th January 2015

well good evening church unlimited please be seated I will have to give your regards to the great bishop and let him know that someone has heard of him in New Zealand he has not labored in vain it is truly an honor and a privilege to be here with you all this is my first time in Auckland and I've had an incredible visit thus far I've eaten more than I should lamb steak ice cream butter and so many incredible things to be honest that I never really imagined that that I my story and my life would be used in ministry at all my father obviously has such an incredible presence and such an incredible anointing and with that comes a bit of pressure to live a certain way I think the beautiful thing about God's love is is unconditional but it's also the thing that's mostly incomprehensible for those of us who don't have beautiful past it's one thing to talk about the love of God but when it's time to actively receive it and apply that love to our own insecurities and our own wounds that's where we begin to struggle a bit and for me that struggle was such a process that I never imagined that it would land me here because of that process and when I started a blog a few years ago that I really never imagined that anyone would see I was approached a couple of years later to write a book detailing my own memoir my own journey to understanding Who I am and God and loving myself beyond my own flaws cars and mistakes but before I could write that book I needed a little bit of inspiration there's nothing like knowing that you haven't been trouble alone and some of the inspiration for me writing that book came out of the Book of Ruth and I wanted to share with you all a little bit of that Scripture and how Ruth story really helped me to come to grips with my own story and prayerfully when I closed this evening you will not just see pieces of Ruth's story or my story but she'll look and see parts of your own so in Ruth one-seventh rule 8 it says therefore she went out from the place where she was and her two daughter-in-laws with her and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah and Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law go return each to her mother's house the Lord deal kindly with you as you have dealt with the dead and with me it's interesting at this point in the text that donae ami has lost her husband and her two sons that when she's having this conversation with her daughter-in-laws whose names were Ruth and Orpah that she groups herself in with the dead she says that as may the Lord deal kindly with you as you with the dealt with the dead and with me I don't know about you but but I've had these instances in my life where a part of me had to die that I was in a situation or a relationship or facing a challenge or a mistake that required a part of me no longer remain and the difficult thing about losing something and having a part of you die is that you have to survive in spite of your pain and in spite of what you've lost that that you don't get to die with the thing that hurts you so for me when when I am growing up in this Jake's house holding and I'm learning that there are a lot of things that don't quite understand about God and sure and how can you have a relationship with God but still struggle as a person and it seems like everyone has it all together but me and and I come into church and everyone's worshiping and no one's talking about the things that had to die before they had that relationship with God we do such an incredible job of coming in and getting dressed up and and worshiping but but what do we do with the people who don't have it figured out just yet there are so many places outside of the church that welcome you within your own dysfunction but and I don't know if this is true in Auckland but but sometimes you come into church and you have to feel more perfect than you felt when you were in the club wait I know you all don't go to the club I mean that you have to feel like when you come in here that you're not hurting anymore so how then do we really teach that his strength is made perfect in our weakness when we're all pretending were already perfect that I had this one encounter with God and all of a sudden it clicked and I got everything great see I couldn't afford to believe that and so instead of pretending I just decided to not try at all which is even more dangerous than trying to at least attempt to live a life that you think God would bless and so I'm growing up in church in and this is such a beautiful congregation and I love the hell we all do church a little bit different so I'm going to tell you why how we do a little Church in Dallas do you all know what shouting is yeah shouting requires it's a rhythmic type of praise in which the spirit is high and I'm not exactly sure what happens because I'm not I'm going to be very honest I don't know how to shout I don't know if your feet start burning or how you kick off the shouting it seems like something I really want to learn how to do it but it's have you ever seen double dutch where you don't exactly know like when to jump in the ropes that's how shouting feels at the potter's house that if you don't really have rhythm then you don't always know exactly when to jump in and so what you're supposed to do when you can't shout is at least you know clap but once again rhythm is a challenge that God is yet working with me on and so I don't exactly know how to clap on beat either and when you're in charging you know that we're joking about it now but when everyone around you is shouting and you don't know what to shout about or how to even pretend to shout you don't exactly understand what's going on that is increased even more when you go into the restroom and see the very person that was shouting and talking about someone on the front row and you begin to wonder if God is so great why our church people so mean sometimes and because that was the only world that I had ever known I didn't feel a part of it and I certainly and my book Lost and Found I said I want I did not want to be a part of the tales of the pews you know the one that everyone's whispering about you know when when you see that one person who goes to the altar every Sunday and then you notice that people are talking like they was just at the altar lesson that God didn't do it last week Jesus I didn't want that to be me and so I tried to stay away from the reality that though I was in the Jake's family I didn't always feel very Jakes and so I tried to fit in in in any group that I could in the dangerous thing about having a mandate that you don't exactly understand is that you're often thrust into leadership before you're even ready and so here I am as a teenager still trying to find my own identity with people placing labels on me are you going to be the next Bishop Jake's I can't shout I can't clap my voice is very soft I don't think I'll be whooping or hollering across the any stage I can't sing I won't be leading praise and worship I don't know who I'm going to be in this family have you ever had life tried to label you before you could figure out who you are yourself or had your family or your culture or your group define who you are while you were yet in the process of understanding yourself so this process was made even more difficult when I found myself trying to fit in with my peers and we all started getting boyfriends and kissing and then I'm 13 and now pregnant and Bishop Jake's daughter and you cannot hide a pregnancy when everyone else had their own struggle in their own issue they got to go home and no one had to know about it because they could put on a mask and pretend that they were okay but what happens when your struggle is standing beside you pregnant at 13 had my son at 14 years old and I'm still supposed to hold my head up high when people cringe when they hear your truth when you cringe when you hear your truth how do you deal with the death that happens as we try to survive in life but now my self-esteem is gone then now I no longer have any confidence and now the stairs and the rumors and the gossip are crucifying me more than the mistake itself did what do you do when life doesn't spirits rot on you and you're supposed to come into church and worship but you can't worship through the shame so you learn the motions and learn the words to the song and you learn how to come and do church but you never learn how to really have a relationship with God and when we're wounded the easiest thing for us to do is to push love away you see because love requires us to look past our flaws and past our mistakes and still believe that we're worthy that is the beautiful part for me when we see Naomi in this text is that she started on the road back to Judah with nan with Ruth and Orpah they say we're going to come with you and she travels for a bit and then she tells them to go back to where they came from that she would rather go at it alone isn't it interesting how we can make our self was bitter how we can push away anything that that reflects that we've lost something you see because the reality is that that Orpah and Ruth were Naomi's daughter-in-laws but they were also a reminder that she had lost her sons when life gives you these reminders over and over again that you have lost something since she wasn't whole enough to to realize that though she lost her son she still had something standing because sometimes our pain makes it so Lea want to be a victim and not a survivor literally the scripture says that Naomi survived her two sons but we see her telling Orpah and Ruth that they have dealt Connolly with the dead and with me here's the other thing is that she also robbed Orpha and Ruth from their own reality which is that they had lost something - have you ever called someone and had the who had the worst day debate but like on the low yeah I had a flat tire you had a flat tire girl I ran out of gas you ran out of gas girl all my tires were gone when I got out of a car they just fell off what do you do when you're in so much pain that you don't even want other people to feel anymore I tell people that we all think we have this special kind of hurt like you couldn't possibly understand what I've gone through yeah yeah healing was possible for you and the Lord can deal kindly with you but he can't deal kindly with me because this that I have this special unique kind of pain when we have enough faith and hope for someone else but none for who we are we believe that God can do exceedingly and abundantly above all that we may ask or think as long as we don't ask for thinking we know all the scriptures but when it's time to activate that in our own wounds and in our own situations and our own circumstances we're too afraid to let God in because it would admit that maybe we weren't as okay as we let everyone to believe we have this get over it generation that's what you see that's what we see Naomi basically telling Orpha and Ruth that you all go back to your mother's Holman and the Lord deal kindly with you and you all are able to get over it but I can't and so we force people to pretend that they're healed instead of allowing them the beauty of the process that comes with God doing a work within us or worse we find ourselves like Naomi just saying that we'll go at it alone and that's why I was after I had my son I knew okay well we don't I don't fit in church now now I have this beautiful baby boy who I have to somehow make him proud that I'm his mother even though I'm not exactly sure what he should be proud of and so I found myself on this this fast track trying to graduate from high school early and I managed to graduate from high school and then I need to go to college and I need to take all of the classes possible in college in each attempt that I had it trying to clean up and trying to rush through this process it fell apart time after time again because I was trying to fix the mess that I had gotten myself into and I never once stopped and asked God for help somehow I felt that if I could fix my life that I would then hand it over to him isn't that crazy how we feel like we'll get our lives together over here on the side and then we'll give it to God like God doesn't have time for us he breathed the breath into us he is the very rhythm of our heartbeat he smiled when he created us yet when we do something that makes ourselves frown we imagined it somehow he could no longer be proud of what he created yet our breath is a very promise that he still has hope for us I have this belief that life is designed to drain us of our hope that we're going to have obstacle after obstacle and challenge after challenge and it is our it is our mandate as believers to rise to the occasion of love of trusting God's love that in spite of what we have gone through and in spite of what we've experienced that God still has hope for us but if you're like me it's difficult to believe that and so you try to create your own hope and how do we do that we pour hope into situations that are hopeless as if somehow if I can revive another person or if I can pour hope into this situation then I will be validated enough to know that my existence still means something we turn often turn relationships or opportunities that were meant to teach us something into charity we make other people our gods we pour all that we have in them just so that they can say you're okay you're still lovable you're I see all of who you are and I'm okay with that because at the end of the day we don't understand who we are and we don't love who we are and if another person would say then maybe we could believe it have you ever been so insecure that you just needed another person to be your stability some relationships some friendships some degrees some jobs some validation that though I've been broken that I still have worth we abuse I've used at normal use of a person to feed our own insecurities all because we're too afraid to trust what we've heard all along which is that God grace is sufficient for us and so I found myself looking for other people's grace and then the toxic relationship that I was in where I found myself suffering hoping to be someone Savior hoping that it if I could save someone else that that would somehow save me yet I kept drowning codependency masquerading as love you see because love is supposed to inspire you to become better but but codependency cripples you doesn't help you grow it doesn't help you heal it just makes you feel a little bit more comfortable with being insecure and so here I am at 19 years old trying to to do the right thing in college but failing miserably in college because I wasn't in school because I really wanted to pursue this education or believed it was possible it was just some another mask that I thought would cover up the fact that I was still ashamed of being a teen mom so I'm in school and I meet someone who's just as broken as I am and we fall in love not with one another's hope and not with one another's courage and not with one another's bravery we fall in love with one another's brokenness I love you because you're broken just like me and it wasn't that we wanted to heal together either it wasn't that we really believed that that God was in the center of it it just made us feel better about not being broken and that is the the beauty of having authentic churches like like I feel the presence of God is because when you are surrounded by authentic believer there is no judgement about your brokenness and if we are not careful we will judge people right out of the doors of our church and into harm's way because they will be looking for somewhere where they can come in and say I'm hurting and so on I'm in this relationship and you know as I'm not sure the dynamics of living here but where I'm from you know if you've had a child out of wedlock the the one thing that you can do is to fix it is just get married as soon as possible doesn't matter if you're in love or not if it's right or not if you get married at least you won't be embarrassed about it anymore and so I'm in this marriage and I knew long before the marriage that that it wasn't going to be a healthy one but it was more important to me to look healthy than to be healthy and so over and over again these attempts at me creating a mask were were ripped off over and over again dropping out of college because my grades are sinking so now all that I have left is this relationship that I know isn't really great for me but I can't afford to say I failed at college and and I'm a teen mom and nobody wants me how interesting it is that we we look for love in all of the wrong places while God's love is there all along we just don't trust it we just don't trust that his love could really apply to our situation yeah he was able to love someone so but she what she did wasn't as bad as what I did yeah he was able to love love pastor but that's because pastor knows every word of the Bible it's like Google like he just knows every single word of the word and I don't know the word and if I don't know the word then God can't love me so here we are lost in the world that we created on our own with no help no guidance no wisdom from God trying to pretend that we found our way after the pain we're all trying to be survivors but the key to surviving is to really be alive after whatever happened to you happened that we spend so long focusing on what hurt us that we never really checked to see who we became after the hurt that maybe we were broken and maybe we were damaged but maybe there was wisdom underneath that and maybe I'm strong enough now to apply the wisdom of before maybe I don't have to be afraid of being that person again maybe I don't have to be ashamed that I was that person in the first place because I needed that person to be Who I am today when will we stop forsaking the footsteps that it took for us to come into having an encounter with God when will we stop judging ourselves long enough to receive God's grace see the reality is that most of us aren't looking for a license to do whatever we want the reality is that most of us are punishing ourselves over and over again for something that happened 10 20 30 40 years ago generational punishment and our families and our lives and our communities generations of of punishing our truth the very building block that God needs to build a monument for his glory is our truth yet were too ashamed to admit who we really are and so for me my breaking point came when I when I realized that I could no longer keep pretending and living this facade this is when I shared with you I started a blog and at the time I was still married to my to my previous husband and and he was expecting a child with another woman and I was at a critical point in my life because I had to make a decision on whether or not I could afford another public mistake in church can I divorce someone can I look like I got it wrong again when I'm trying so badly to look like I have it all together can I admit that I'm still hurting that I'm still broken that I thought I had it figured out but I must have gotten it wrong that I really didn't ask God what to do with my life that I was working on and I was going to give it to him but now I've made an even bigger mess than I was in before can I afford to be that honest with God can I afford to to bear the stare of other people see the beautiful thing about about being connected in groups of people is that your story maybe these story for a little bit but someone is bound to do something else that kind of gets the spotlight off of you and once the spotlight is off of you and you know that you've done something that could potentially bring the spotlight back on you you really have to decide whether or not you can withstand the judgment of people and so I had to ask myself a question and that question was are you going to make people people's opinion your god are you going to live your life dictated by the opinions of others are you going to be humble enough to admit that you really need me in this situation in order for God to have full reign and full dominion your life you may have to unravel all of the things that you created trying to fix yourself that that many of us have performed our own surgeries and had no clue what we were doing see the beautiful thing about handing God over our lives is that he is the master surgeon that he knows exactly how much pain we can bear even when we don't some of us are broken over wounds we self-inflicted some of us are hurting over wounds we self-inflicted I got myself into this mess it would be so easy to blame someone else I would love to blame someone else but what do you do when you created your own storm created the clouds and felt the raindrops from your own storm of depression your own storm of insecurities your own storm of low self-esteem when we had the umbrella of grace hovering over us that we chose instead to live our lives in such a way that we couldn't trust the very God we said we loved and so I have to make this decision on whether or not I'm going to be able to stay married and and whether or not I'm going to be able to to take the the opinions of other people again and I will tell you one of the final decision one of the final breaking points for me was when I was at the time living in Virginia and I was trying to figure things out and I'm still going through the motions and pretending and and I'm cooking dinner and and my ex-husband now it gave the story away there you have is is helping getting my daughter ready for bed and I look outside and I see his car running and which is quite interesting because if you're inside your car doesn't need to be running and so I kind of knew immediately that there was going to be an another woman in the car waiting for him and so I tried to have a pep talk with myself if you will and that pep talk was a little bit something like don't be yourself if there's a woman out there that means don't be violent don't you know sometimes you have to like mentally prepare yourself to not be yourself you know and so I went out there and I forgot the pep talk when I had got out there because it's one thing to think something is nothing to see something and it was all very confusing for me all I know is that by time they called the police on me that I was very confused as to what to happen and the officer told me you know what what seems to be the problem here ma'am and I said well my husband brought his girlfriend to our house and I had a problem with that and the officer goes mm-hmm I see how that could be an issue I'm gonna go talk to them and I was like that would be perfect if you would go talk to them and as much as I wanted to be angry at him and angry at her and I want it to be a victim a part of me knew that I had to take ownership for the fact that I knew what I was getting myself into that I couldn't afford to be the victim any longer because I I was the one who victimized myself when I chose to not believe that I was still worthy that my life still had value that I was more than what hurt me that that I could still really honestly and truly hold my head up high and that I could become God's love here on earth if I could only open up enough to believe in myself again I wanted to so badly just to write this book lost-and-found why I blame this person and blame that person and said well and then content is to me and I and then I no longer had to blame them it and isn't God good but the reality is that there's a certain level of ownership that we must take in order to be healed and that ownership comes with recognizing that we are honestly and truly more than what hurt us that our stories and our lives are not all the same they have unique DNA unique DNA for grace I don't have to know your story to know that you have something people ask me you know you get up there and you just tell your story and and I tell them it's not easy and sometimes I still do it afraid in it and I get nervous and and I might tremble but I remember that we all have something whether we're sitting here at church unlimited or at the powder house in Dallas or one Church in Los Angeles or out in the middle of the street in Idaho that we all have something that broke us in life and sometimes it was something we did ourselves and other times we didn't really have a choice that just happened to us but it still hurt and there are no levels of pain that excuse us from grace there are no levels of pain that that excuses from forgiveness or redemption or more importantly restoration what if restoration exists for the part of you that still makes you cringe what if one day you look back over your life and you're okay with every detour and every turn you had to make to get you to this point that somehow in spite of what you told yourself and what others may have told you about who you were that you were right where you should have been all along that God saw your ending while you were right in the thick of things that he understood that your life would still want to have value after the pain and that that pain was there to serve you but you were so ashamed of the pain that you missed its purpose the wisdom and the beauty and the intelligence that comes and the compassion more importantly the compassion that comes with understanding we're all a little bit broken and I don't know what your brokenness is but I know that God's love can touch it and I don't know what your struggle is but I can make you this promise that once you overcome this stroke oh that there is another one waiting for you sorry guys I really wanted to tell you today that you were going to beat this slavish giant you know you're going to get your slingshot and Goliath was going to come tumbling down and that was going to be the last battle you ever fought but because God is yet working on us that means that that work is going to require some banging some hammering some shredding away some breaking some suffering but that suffering is going to work out for your good I am in a much better and healthier and god-loving marriage now and what I have learned about being in in a real beautiful love is that it makes you very happy and when you get very happy whenever you go out to eat it's a celebration like you need dessert and state because style it doesn't just express happiness what I'm saying is that being in love makes you fat and not fat just lovable and um because being in love can make you a little bit thick this is what I also learned that stairs are difficult to run up to when you've gained ten pounds that it hurts a little bit and then I decided I was going to get back in the gym I was going to go to the gym in New Zealand but I forgot my shoes it's like so convenient but when I get back home I'm going to get back in the gym and this is what I realized that that eating whatever I like and as much about avid as I like hurts a little when I have to run up the stairs or do that little light job around the house and you're out of breath from the living room to the kitchen but also being in the gym hurts too because you have to really go hard in the gym when you know you've been eating a lot like you had to be an Olympian and an athlete when you go in there because you don't want to look like that one person that hasn't been in the gym let me testify for a minute yeah you turn the treadmill up just a little bit higher than you can handle and it's all good the first two minutes of it but when you realize you said it for 30 minutes you have to like ease the ease the speed down without anyone looking yeah that was just my warmup I'm going to really set his feet now what it taught me though is that either way we're going to hurt a little but you can pay the price for what hurts you when it makes you better and that is what happens when we become sold out for God is that we begin to really understand that it doesn't mean that we're going to live this life where we avoid all pain but rather that we're going to have to be like job and really and truly believe that though he slay me yet shall I trust in him because I know these lashes these wounds slang is going to make me better and because it's going to make me better I can pay the price of surviving and that is what I want to encourage you all to do as you go about your own lives and you face your own past and you and you face the giants that are yet to be revealed in your life that you recognize it's going to take tremendous work at the time that I made my incredible amazing husband I was like miss independent woman like with a ringtone and everything about it and I was like you know you are getting the real deal Holyfield baby you better finally fallen in love with myself I finally know who I am and I'm proud of Who I am and and I feel as together as I was on that level and then I recognized that the new dimension that I was on the new level and our marriage would require that I go even deeper into myself and now I have someone who's really challenging me to grow in love and grow in Christ which is really difficult when you were like already together and it's like I worked so hard to get to this level where I had everything figured out and now you're telling me I'm not perfect and I'm just not able to receive that right now what I have an attitude sometimes I just listen attitude is good for you it teaches you something and you can't even justify anymore who you once were that as God takes us to the new level that there are going to be moments like we find with Naomi where you've been stripped of everything you thought you knew about yourself and you're having to trust God with who you are now and the beautiful gracious thing about our guy and as we learn in the book of Ruth is that Naomi had a Ruth with her sometimes God will send someone in your life who has keen perspective on what you need in the moment that it may be your pastor it may be someone you follow on social media or it may be your husband who helps you to see areas not only where you need to grow but that you won't do it alone and then the Book of Ruth Ruth makes a commitment to Naomi and she says where you go I will go your people will be my people your God will be my god when you find yourself as heal and as whole as you can possibly be in your walk with God know that there may require a bit more breaking a bit more of a struggle but you have to be connected with people who understand who your God is who have an effect to believe when you feel like giving up who refuse to let go of you when you're fighting for your freedom because the reality is that there are some battles we do not have to fight alone and if we don't have to fight them alone why waste our strength when God has sent us help his love his guidance his grace his promise to order our steps is his commitment to being with us every step of the way and we don't know who we may lose in the process or who we may have to become or who we will be connected to in order to make this journey more worth it but we have to be open to hearing from him first not our insecurities not our struggles not our fee years but his love and his faithfulness must be the voice that guides us throughout our lives that the more that we're willing to say I don't have it all figured out so I'm really counting on you the better off we're going to be our plans are no match compared to his his will is so much greater than ours and we have to be in constant reminder of who he is not just who he will be in our lives but recognizing that his hand was on us the entire time many of us should should be in jail or dead or not certainly not in church I don't have to know your testimony to know that some of you it's a miracle that you're in here on this Sunday night I'm just going out on a limb here but some kind of way because his hand was hovering over us above our depression and above our insecurities that his hand was yet hovering over us that he was protecting us all along the way means that he has a value for this very moment and it is our job our opportunity and our great pleasure to be obedient and to surrender in his presence would you stand with me as I prepare to close you know it is not often that a girl like me who was as insecure and as fearful as I am has an opportunity to travel literally across the world to share my story but I know that it is only because of the grace of God that this opportunity exists for me that had it been left up to me I would have never chosen to share my pain or to share my fears because I was afraid of the judgment but when I look back over my life now I recognize that I learned at a very early age to withstand rumors and opinions because when you're a teen mom you kind of get tougher and when you've had certain things happen to you teaches you to not really care what people think and then I realize now that maybe I had to learn that at an early age so that I could share it in moments like this I don't know what happened to you I don't know what courage is being built inside of you what faith is overflowing inside of you but I know that true alignment with God comes with bringing all of who you are into your relationship with him even the things that you may be ashamed of the family secrets that no one bears dares to say maybe the very intimate conversation that you need to have a god to unleash your healing it is my prayer that during our time together that you not just heard in my story or or heard Ruth's story or hurt in a yummy story that a part of you heard a little piece of God whispering into your soul saying as I have been with you then I am with you ourself that you don't have to cry or be ashamed or be afraid any longer because as I was with them I am with you also let whatever seeds that have been sprinkled throughout our conversation take such incredible root that you see the fruit of it blossoming in your spirit and your own walk with God in your own faith that it will be strengthened because you had the courage to be authentic in genuine and unapologetically broken so that you can be undeniably healed thank you very much for your time

Channel: Church Unlimited

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Length: 49min 4sec (2944 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 27 2015