SINGLES SEMINAR

welcome welcome everyone to our i guess first 2021 uh single seminar what you say now what you say now welcome y'all look lovely i guess we should introduce ourselves oh yes we should yes ladies first my name is ayanna ibaka and my name is sylvester ivanka yes this is my my chocolate goodness this my wife right here so um we are so excited and honestly honored truly honored to be here to be a part of this to be here with you guys um our heart definitely is towards everyone um those that are single those that are like hey i love my single life those are like i'm tired of being single wherever you fit we love you and we here for you anyway right yes so you want you ready to get this thing started y'all ready are y'all ready y'all ready all right now cause we got some really juicy questions now there's some heaters in there i can have some conversation tonight real conversation all right so we'll go ahead and pray yes we will let's get started so father god we just thank you and praise you lord for all that you are and all that you continue to be in our lives we thank you lord god for tonight for this seminar father for each and every single person each and every whole and complete person that's in the building those that are also watching online we thank the lord god that tonight they will receive that that clarity that freedom whatever it is that you have for them so we thank you lord for the word behind the word we thank you lord for a free atmosphere where we get to be who you called us to be and we just praise you for it right now and it's in your name jesus we pray all that degree said amen amen all right guys so i want y'all okay so we are um over the shift college young adult ministry so we like to be real hype yeah we we before we introduce our amazing pastors i want y'all to stand up first of all stand up get comfortable cause we're gonna have a nice little hour all right so i would like for you guys to show all the love in the world for our amazing pastors pastors creflo and taffy dollar woo keep showing that love [Applause] come on y'all can do better than that now [Applause] all right yes all right so everyone you can have your seats and we're going to get straight into it first off how are you all doing y'all look great good good good good good good good good all right so um like we said we have a few questions tonight so we're going to be directing these questions and um we're going to be directing these questions and uh we'll go we're ready to get started so all right so first up now these questions were uh sent in from people who are attending online so these are your questions we didn't make these up so we're gonna get straight into it all right so first question what signs should you look for to confirm if a person is or is not right for you this you want to you want to start off with this foundation yeah he's going to yeah let's let's certify okay answer that one and just lay the foundation i'm sure every question you're going to ask is really looking for the secret for something yep the secret to successful dating or the secret to finding someone that you harmonize with and the problem with that is if you skip the foundation whatever you try to build is going to fall and the foundation for a single life is was and will always be wholeness and if you skip wholeness and then you try to attempt to find all of the secrets then it's only deception because god has set a standard which everything will you know start with that foundation and go forward and then the world has this think they have a secret in doing it and then you try it and end up messing your whole life up so before we even answer that question the the first first base is god wants every person who is unmarried to achieve wholeness period hold in your spirit hole in your soul holding your physical body the problem is people trying to make progress as single people progress into marriage progress into relationship progress and you're not even whole you're broken you're emotionally confused you have basic human needs that have not been met they were not met by your parents they were not met by other relationships and now you're trying to go down the path that seems like it's the right one and it's not and so anything they ask and anything we answer has to be from the basis of wholeness now a person is not willing to be whole uh you know single and whole that's god's best paul said what he said because he was single and whole but we want to be single and successful minus whole we want to be single and married minus whole we want to be single and loved and and and treasured mind as whole i can end this single thing tonight if you don't get whole all of those other things you're trying to build upon you'll find yourself building it or trying to build it but from the basis of the world and not the basis of of god so if you want to behold god way and god knows exactly what has to happen and you need all the things you want to do all the desires of your heart everything you dream of if you will achieve wholeness first and that is achieved through a relationship with jesus christ and his word but people don't care about that ain't got time for jesus ain't got time for his work when you don't have time for wholeness which means you don't have time to achieve or to experience all of those questions you want to ask forget it i've been counseling people for over 40 years and the problem always goes back to i'm not whole i don't know how to be whole and so you're not whole and then you finally start wanting to be with somebody else because you're lonely because that's a human need never got uh fixed up and you just may have somebody who not whole and you got two broken people uh in in a marriage that is now broken and it'll survive for a little bit but you'll you're never going to see success until you back up and build a foundation of wholeness hole in your spirit hole in your soul whole in your physical body there's no secret to living a successful single life there's no secret to it the god's plan is be whole depend on me trust me and i'm going to raise you up and fulfill every dream you've ever had listen we can go ahead and pray out listen i hope everybody caught that because that's the reality of it and it is it faster like when we were looking at the questions because we run into a lot of a lot of single people on a lot of single conversations but how how do i like listen this is first step are you whole are you whole if you're not holding you incomplete are you trying to find somebody else to complete you i need a completion do it yourself fine get to know god for yourself right all right let me let me stop i'm excited this is good so would you still like to answer that first question so to answer that question which was what was that question the question was what signs should you look for to confirm if a person is or not right for you you need to look for somebody that's whole you don't need to look for a half a man or half a woman you know you don't need to look for somebody that's broken you know you don't need to look for somebody that doesn't believe the way you believe you don't need to look for somebody that's that that's not interested in the word and they have chosen the path of the world instead of a path that god has chosen you do not want to connect with somebody that's not whole because they're going to now depend on you as the answer and the security blanket for their brokenness and that's dangerous grounds that's dangerous that's too much dependency and too much of a burden don't nobody want that weight ain't nobody wanna hear what i gotta say tonight either but almost that's the truth you ain't it you ain't going nowhere yeah until you deal with this first base right here and you may have a period of success or a year or two of success but you're gonna always be you're gonna always have to face this issue of how whole am i am i am i willing to become whole or am i willing to just copy the norms and values of the world and then just go for it knowing just one day one day that brokenness is gonna interfere with your dreams can i get a witness and hear some of you already know amen [Applause] pastor saying our whole life story right in that beginning amen that's how that's actually how we even started really yeah cause i i actually was that person that i wanted that secret i actually tried to marry every single girl i saw just on first sight i was like ooh that's her and my older brother actually told me he said stop trying to marry someone because you don't even know them like find somebody you don't even like really get to know someone i was like okay but what god showed me was outside of that he's like all right you need to actually get to know me so you can find out who you are and god led me to matthew 6 and i was like wait a minute so if i seek you first i can really have all and eventually she saw me and she was like ooh and i was like yeah girl [Laughter] so we can uh we'll actually go on to our next question and uh and you two are more than welcome to answer this one so how would i not me but how would i begin dating as an older person 50 plus inquiring minds want to know well is there a difference in i mean there are ways in which you communicate with people i guess you know younger people go in through dms and all these other kinds of things right but people who are more mature communicate in a different type of way perhaps not that way but um say the question one more time how would i begin dating as an older person 50 plus i mean in addition to that the same way you begin dating as a younger person exactly yeah the age is i mean it's not the age that changes things once you find the right strategy wholeness then you know it'll go like it's supposed to go there again we want give me the secret for being successful 50 plus well i'm gonna give you the same secret for 50 plus as i give you for 20 plus and i'll add too i heard someone say that when you're dating you're really trying to gather data and um trying to get information as much as possible just to kind of get more knowledge and understanding of who they are and because we know everybody just puts up the best front in those type of situations and a lot of times you don't really know that person just based on what you see and but it's trying to get and gain as much as you can and in different situations and them around other people and you around other people and seeing how they do what they do and family and it's just a whole lot to um what we're talking about tonight i mean it's so much to say you know just in terms of uh that person's identity and knowing uh if they feel as if they know who they are and um you know who you are and like we were saying earlier we're not just trying to connect just on a surface level but really seeing the importance of the same purpose and values and and all those things that are spiritual and have more substance other than just what is on the surface you know because we have these profiles and you just swipe left i think that's the way you swipe but um so yeah it's like so much more to it than that and it makes it a little convoluted too in the season in which we're in you know pandemic uh with how safe you want to be and not be in an unsafe situation meeting people inviting them to your home so you really just have to be prayerful very prayerful about who you even choose to date and not be so desperate and you end up dating anyone because you're sad and uh alone and you end up just becoming vulnerable to any person and anything so it's um the same type of principles i would think in terms of who to date and why to date them and what you look for on dates that really doesn't change based on the age i think if you talk about the practicality of it it's you know communication is key and which is again difficult because we're living in a world where you don't have to be a good communicator because you can what is it you can dm somebody yeah you text and you don't really you don't really have to be a really good you get all that information on communication and then you don't use it just dm me and talk on that thing but if you're older uh you go back to the old school real real basic thing start off by introducing yourself uh my name is such and so such and so um i would uh love to um to uh spend some time with you to uh uh get to know you uh maybe we can do uh dinner or meet at the cafe or um something that you feel comfortable in and um let's just talk and share a lot of people don't want to simplify but that's how it starts it starts with the willingness to share data and then after you are willing to share that data then you know one lady asked me one time she says why do i keep drawing the same kind of bad man and i said the problem's not that you're drawing it bad man the problem is you're ignoring those signs that he's a bad man you just there was a sign in the very beginning that told you everything you needed to know about that man or even about that woman i want to give you four little things to look at because if these if when you when you communicate with somebody and you don't you don't get information on these areas it's gonna it's gonna come back up and bite you and uh these are four basic needs for every human every human has to have a male female everybody's got to have them and the first one is acceptance and when you when you when you communicate with people you want to find out you want to know has that person struggled with being loved or needed by other people that's a really good conversation have you have you struggled with being loved or needed by somebody else acceptance because that is a basic human need and most of the time if you don't get it where you should have gotten it from maybe with parents then you're going to try to get it somewhere else okay so that's that's a good conversation the second conversation is about identity uh does that person feel significant or do they feel special um as an individual uh do you feel significant do you feel special as an individual because if they don't then there's going to be a struggle with that identity and most of the time people begin to look in all the wrong places trying to get these basic human needs met here's the third one security and this is a big one do you have any issues or have you had any issues in your life with feeling like you were well protected and provided for and that's a conversation you have with that person do you feel like you are well protected do you feel like you were well provided for because again if that's a that's a basic human need if that's not met or hadn't hadn't been met then there's still the void there that that needs to be filled and then that fourth uh area is going to be the area of purpose purpose you you it's just really hard for you to have a good relationship with anybody that doesn't have don't don't they don't feel like they have purpose in their life uh do they have a reason for living what's your special plan for your life you want to hear what people's purpose is because truly when you talk about purpose then that purpose may not match your purpose and immediately you you feel right after the first date well it's good to talk to you but i don't see what we can connect and then another thing is if if he's having problems with acceptance and security and you're having problems with acceptance and security in other words you both discover that neither one of you have had those basic needs met it's not a good idea to take two people who are void in other words you're not whole in those areas and and then you're trying to you're trying to establish a relationship off of uh off of brokenness or these basic human needs that are not met a a son or a daughter who doesn't have those human needs met in their life they may go out and and uh you know try to use sexual relationships to try to get that need met uh there are lots of things a lot of a lot of broken things that can happen when people don't do it so it's not just coming together communicating you can be on spot you can say you know what i want to i want to you i want to pray about how skillfully i can talk about these four basic needs to see where he that she is he is where i am let's talk about it let's dig in because when you when you can talk about something like that you're actually putting a person in a position where you're you're you're opening the door for them to be vulnerable and most of the time people spend months joking around and playing around and the whole objective is can i get you to be vulnerable and i understand why they're not vulnerable right away because i don't feel safe with a stranger first of all i want to spend time to see if i can feel safe with you and once i feel safe with you then i'll become vulnerable once i'm willing to become vulnerable then we can talk you know intimacy is going to be at the front door knocking where you know you're willing to let somebody in and that's when all of a sudden the outer beauty diminishes as being the most important thing because you begin to see the interview of a person which magnifies even their outer beauty because you're not afraid to to share intimacy it is um it is something that needs to be talked about i thank god for for for these guys having this ministry and you really need to listen to them they put out some good stuff i mean we we sat and listened to a sermon about a month ago and uh you know but people don't think they need to hear this i'm i'm i'm single i'm just not married and and of course that's not a there's nothing wrong with you because you're single i mean the apostle paul was single jesus was single and the apostle paul recommended that if you can it would be better for you to stay single you'll be able to serve god a lot more uh so all i'm saying is as single people you sometimes the society looks at you as if you're flawed and you're not you you're so hot you're so whole that married people probably need to spend time with a single person so they can get a really good picture of what wholeness looks like and so i celebrate you tonight we're not here because you're flawed and we're not here because we have the secret to all of your desires i looked at some of those questions and i thought each question you feel like you got to back up like 20 steps because it's like you're asking something and we need to back up and address this thing before we can walk you up to where you want to be so um and i'll add to just what you said because i think that um these are some of the reasons why people divorce those four things that creflo was just talking about um acceptance security uh what was it purpose purpose yeah just those four things fifty percent of marriages they say in a divorce you know why i think it's those four things and um marriage is work and i think the church we the church as an institution has glamorized marriage and just be all end all and i think we have to recognize uh the other side of it marriage is a great thing it's beautiful we're going on you know 35 40 years but at the same time these are the reasons why marriages end because of lack of wholeness so what we're saying is not just you know some rinky-dink thing to try to have you to go home and work on but this is real stuff i mean it's gonna come up and you say well pastor chavez passed out you know i could be whole and get married and work on my wholeness you can i mean we all have worked on things that we uh realized that we weren't uh hole in areas that we were broken in and i'm sure you know people too and probably grew up and saw all kinds of relationships and things but you know this is uh something to really think about and to be honest with ourselves that's something that i wish i had known those four things uh as it relates to uh just the healing that is required in a marriage between you and your your spouse you and your partner areas where creflo has had to nourish me with the word and the word to wash out just traumatic childhood type trauma and vice versa and so that is real it is and you know we look at the movies and we see all the fantasies and all the messages coming from you know the institution of the church get married be married herb and get married and all that but you want to be ready and prepared um as it relates to the reality of these things because if you don't deal with them now you wait you who you are is going to show up you might be sick of being by yourself sick of you so you want to find somebody um and they're probably sick of being by themselves too and then y'all get together and it's like okay this is something else that's something this is about to be something else they end up being sick of each other right and it restaurates it one more time they end up being sick of each other that's right and being sick by each other and then you want to be single again yeah that's how that works yeah you you said something that um you know i'm sitting up here thinking about it it would have been so much easier and it would have flowed better had wholeness been achieved before marriage you know we just used for an excuse what a bible says better to be married than to burn right well if you get married and you're not whole you're going to burn up you see and and and i was sitting here thinking about that i was like i just wish somebody would have told me to achieve wholeness first and uh you know adam and eve were whole two whole people coming together makes a whole marriage not not somebody that's half whole and we we we coined the phrase i found my half right you're not supposed to be looking for a half you're supposed to be looking for for a whole and so marriage it's it's it's we've been so deceived in so many areas and we bought so many uh fables uh it's just not true marriage is even when you're whole it still requires the effort and the work uh behind it to make things work like they need to work but the fantasy stuff dude you need to leave that like alone the fantasy is probably like i mean maybe that night when the first time you're doing it and maybe during the week if you go on a nice honeymoon and you know maybe with everybody in shape all that kind of stuff but you're going to get older and after 35 40 years stuff gonna start dropping and wrinkles and dents gonna start coming in and places like that you better know you love each other or or that or that part of you that uh is broken will now will now begin to be governed it'll start governing your life and putting you in places that you you strongly regret i mean you got to work at being happy because taff and i we agree that i'm not responsible for her happiness right she's not responsible for my happiness so uh we helped each other a whole lot we got a lot we could say but we're not talking about marriage now but i so agree with that you end up getting married without being whole and you just get sick you just get sick each other you're just like i know some people now who got divorced and it was so horrible to mention marriage again they just freak out like uh no more ever ever they were actually live a life they would rather live a life of sin than even ever think about achieving marriage and what they don't understand is that it was the lack of wholeness that bought them that miserably miserable misery and it'll continue to be that lack of wholeness that will bring misery to follow them even in their single life if see that's the deal you don't get whole just to get married you get whole so you can live a good life man amen on that one i'll say this um you and pastor taffy actually did an amazing job at ministering wholeness especially i'm 35 when i was 21 i understood that we got married when we were 24 and 25. so i think people accepting that message and just accepting that just period is i think they think it's optional like because i'm like i've been hearing this all my life you know so it's like if i'm hearing this and i receive that at a young age like what is the disconnect when it comes to you know the last question 50 plus with accepting wholeness first before getting in any type of relationship so y'all are doing it like it's just people need to listen well i think i mean you can certainly it is optional god gives us free choice right everything is in everything you know whether or not you want to be whole uh can i mean and granted it is a process i mean we're still developing in our wholeness as a married couple my wholeness as an individual separate person from my husband same thing with him and so it is optional to that degree in the sense that because of jesus we are whole and so forth and so on but um yeah but i still think that you should maximize the time is what we're saying that you're unmarried and in a position where you can you know really get before god and be honest on all those things that's the only thing we're saying we're not trying to beat your head up or say anything that's wrong with you we're just saying that yeah you can't marry somebody and they're not whole and you're not whole either and yeah that's your prerogative but it's a whole lot better yeah you can just spend life in hell together if you want to in fact you can just go to hell if you want to you could you could do you could do all that stuff yeah mary i mean that's the thing about marriage because marriage will certainly amplify it it will it'll be hell on earth or it can be heaven on earth depending on these areas and these topics that we're talking about just real deal um so that's my response now i have a i have a question it's not on the in the situation um so pastor you have this uh viral video that's been going viral every single year where you're talking about like a thousand questions i'm sure y'all have seen it uh right and now with these questions my question to youtube what type of questions did you ask each other at the beginning i know it was like last year you know we we asked a lot of questions before we still asking questions exactly no seriously because though and this is awesome to be married for these number of years and you can still discover something new about one another it turns me on i'm thinking like oh you that deep man i thought i had you all all down and you know i'm finding you got something i didn't even know and um but i mean we my wife asked most of the question i was just ready to get married i said um in fact the first time i posted to her she said no i said how you gonna do that she said baby you know i love you but you driving your mama's station wagon you ain't got nowhere to stay right now you're living with your mama driving your mom's station wagon you ain't ready yet but when you get ready when you get ready ask me again and uh so i don't remember specifically i know we i would have i would have loved to have understood what i understand now to be able to ask more questions because i think we failed in some areas where you know i remember we got married like you know so let's talk about having kids she was like kids i i won't i didn't i won't go i don't care you ain't my own kid and i'm thinking that should have been asked before so the thousand question series was really the thousand questions i wish i would have asked taffy that i discovered after i got married how important it is and you know i'm not saying you're just going you just get rude with people as i'm just saying you y'all you'll always have something to talk about in a dating you don't have to hurry up and be through with dating there's always something to talk about and it should be an interesting dinner you should never be sitting there like well i don't know what to say i mean at least come there with 10 topics you want to talk about five you i didn't do that most of the time i showed it with taffy i was just like she purty [Laughter] [Music] she nice she fine wow you know so what's up you know i just wish i had a little bit more intelligence to know that if i would have asked those questions that you know that i now teach people to ask that's where it came from a lot of a lot of what we preach i preached a sermon in our understanding series called um but you know before you say i do and some things that that were there and taff and i did a uh teaching on how to fight fair and uh but when she read the whole list of how to fight fair and i'm like well i know where she got that from that's all my nose i did every last one of these we believe that the greatest message you can preach is scripture combined with your life experience it's very difficult for me to receive scripture with somebody who just talks to me from a homoneutical point of view and not from an experiential part where the word is concerned because people want to know that you went through that but we could have i could have done a much better job asking i just didn't see here's the deal i just didn't know and my my my life as i see it grow and mature in the things of god equal i wish i'd have known and that's why when we have a church that we can share our life and we can share information with we want our people to know you're just really blessed because we didn't know i mean had i known better i would have been able to do better and i and i have to really get my emotions under control because sometimes they get to me like man i wish i'd have known this or i wish i had known that and just didn't know that my selfishness i didn't call it selfishness i called it well this is what i want and you need to get with it and i'm like that's so stupid i mean sometimes i just i'd be walking slap myself come i can't believe i did that but you don't have to do that i didn't nobody ever said anything to me about behold first i didn't know what it meant achieve wholeness and so we're up here interrupting i know a lot of the questions you know you want to know the secret of it but we talked about this today at home i said did you did you see those questions and i said man i said each one of them could be a sermon because i could back up 20 steps and walk them all the way up to their question and say now here's the answer to your question so yeah i don't i don't i don't even remember um being ever being really proud of sitting down with her and asking her some really significant and important questions in fact i still think we got married a little bit too young i wasn't mature yet i was just i was not a mature dude i was like i needed i probably should not have gotten married until my that front part of my frontal lobe closed i i went i wasn't ready i just know i had this fine woman and i wanted to be with her for the rest of my life and we can just figure things out as we go but we did but it was tough it was tough and uh thank god for god thank god for tapping and our love for me and thank god for god's mercy and stuff like that other than that it was it was tough i mean there were times you know and and i'm sure if you haven't had it every time you wake up you'll think why did i marry why did i marry so-so and uh so we're just trying to help people to say there's no big achievement in the fact that you got married the big achievement is man i'm whole i can go to dinner by myself and be fine i can go to i go to the movie order me some popcorn get me a coke sit up the very top and enjoy myself i can say hey to people while i'm walking in and not feel bad about that i was so you know just thought that you know i ain't going away with it i'm gonna take me along with me before i go somewhere just stupid just stupid and so that's what we're really trying to say is don't don't be like that you know wholeness is the way to go and um yeah i'm excited about this i'm gonna be quiet i told taffy enough charlie i wasn't gonna say no after i said holding this three or four times then i'm gonna say whatever and if you ask me a question i'm like what did i just say that was really good i i feel that um and not to i feel like growing up a lot of us had that disney happily ever after like that's the only thing we saw so the fantasy was so ingrained in us that we just thought oh we're gonna find somebody go through a little bit of trouble hold hands and sail off into the sunset but nobody knows what happens over the edge they're just like oh there they are and they wave but you're on your own and that's when that wholeness plays in because if you not you're going to run back to the other side of that sunset that's right so it's and wholeness can i inject something real quick i saw this um chardee sent me this post it says uh and and this'll i thought it was really good before you get married discuss bills parenting styles credit debt religion how to deal with family what beliefs will be instilled in your children childhood traumas sexual expectations partner expectations financial expectations family health history mental health history bucket list dream home careers education political views and whatever else comes to mind it says love alone is not enough message message message it's not enough it's not i mean we've we've been married for this will be 11 years so you know we we're inching up there however um you know i actually noticed that with us our this is a single seminar sitting there going into marriage lo i'll just say it real quick with us um i feel like our because we had children kind of later than normal like all of our k all of our friends most of their kids are like graduating and we're like i got a baby like they're just walking but with us it's like stuff didn't really start hitting the fan until we had kids but because our foundation is so much of our friendship like we literally get on the phone after we leave the house to drive to drop our kids off um at school and then stay on the phone and come back stay downstairs somebody's still on the phone while the other one upstairs because we're just friends but if it wasn't that foundation i know for a fact because i might smile a lot but she will tell you i am a jerk it's in me hey it is what it is but but it's the fact that that friendship and having that foundation where we came into it you know um in some of those ways understanding the wholeness we we knew kind of enough or at least a little bit and just like you pastor like wishing that man i wish i knew the whole picture but now being able to look back i'm glad that we were able to at least understand let me find out who you are because as a friend you want to know who that friend is you're not going to just say hey you're my friend here's my keys here's my social security number no you have to get to know that person so why not do the same thing with somebody you like and not just like oh my goodness look at him look at his temper look at her oh look at her body like instead of that getting to know somebody and finding out oh you're worth because i understand my worth yeah i understand my wholeness so true yeah value and work we went to an art uh exhibit last night uh van gogh and um several times reading the stuff and and and um i kept hearing this about you know i first of all sketched and then after that i was able to fill the sketch in with colors and and paint it and i think that perfectly describes what i think every single life needs to be every single person needs to have a sketch and when you get married the both of you are responsible for creating a painting out of that sketch at least something so you'll know as an individual here are the things that i'm interested in here are the things that make me whole hear the things that maybe i don't have together at this particular time there's just got to be a moment where you can just be real with you and not depend on somebody else to determine your value you need to make a sketch of your value you don't need to let somebody else coming in and and a toxic relationship and and hurting you sometimes doing it not even knowing that you even have that issue you know you can say you can say something and not even know it may be destroying a person and i just think it's so important for you to know the value you have uh be able to articulate the value that you have about yourself and uh also be able to rehearse that value in front of other people i i value myself i value myself too much to allow your toxicity to be allowed to be a part of my life and i don't care how a person looks i don't care how much money they make and all that kind of stuff any relationship that's toxic will eventually uh creep in and attack the value that you have for you and you'll start questioning yourself you'll start questioning your values it's all issue of value and when you're whole you value yourself you value yourself to say no you value yourself to say uh done with this relationship you don't hear all that i'm sorry please forgive me now dude you you you can't you can't devalue me like that and expect for me to devalue myself just to be able to get along with you i i hate it when a woman has to dumb herself down to deal with some dude who's not interested in in increasing his own value so now you got to devour yourself just to have a relationship where that's concerned i think value that i think is very important that you have that before you even think about getting with somebody else you should not have to depend on that person you're dating or marry to um determine your value your value should be something that's solid solid as a rock because if you if you've allowed see and this is what i hate about using people when you devalue people like that man you you break them and you know they need some help in in seeing the value that they they carry it it it really bothers me you know to see a man just devour somebody just for that for bragging rights you break that person and it's somebody's wife somebody's husband that you broke because you playing some type of uh tick-tock game or something like that with somebody's emotions in with somebody's life and a lot of times you can tell you can look at your own value you can measure your own value by checking out how you treat somebody else because you you have to something's got to be you got to look at yourself in a very low estimate in order to go and devalue somebody else's life that way something's got to be wrong with you you say a lot about yourself based on how you negatively impact somebody else's life so see yourself as valuable and see that starts with wholeness see yourself as god sees you value yourself and don't ever let anybody devalue you even if you have to get in the mirror and talk to yourself don't let somebody rob you of a healthy value of yourself and i'll just add to just what krefla was saying about value because i think as women we can easily see ourselves like under the old testament how women were and just all of that stuff um as being inferior right and so if you saw that kind of growing up and depending on what you were exposed to based on your gender even as a man and how men value themselves their manhood so i think it works both ways just understanding the importance of seeing ourselves through the eyes of god through grace through biblical equality those things are so important to really see ourselves because i think just early on you can just believe wrong and live a wrong way and you carry that out so hopefully that makes sense yeah oh it definitely makes sense i'm going to ask one more of the another question that was sent in because it's definitely along the lines of the value and especially with wholeness so someone asks how do you invest in yourself to be okay with being just yourself i believe that meant with being by yourself but being just yourself i mean if god never sends me a mate because the one i had wasn't from him how do i be okay with that and just enjoy life so essentially how do i enjoy being single i think everything starts with a decision again this it's not the secret i think it's understanding the process i have to make a decision almost every day to [Music] live my life a certain way that's a decision you have to make when you wake up and you don't feel too good i've got to decide i'm going to have a good day today and i think every day you have to decide as a single today i'm going to be happy today i'm going to enjoy my life today i won't allow any pollution to go through my ears today i won't be a part of tearing somebody's character down i think it's a decision is an open door into reality so nothing really becomes real until you make a decision to do so so making the decision to live a joyful life as a single person you you have to do that you know throughout the pandemic we had to make a decision yeah that we were going to be happy that we were going to create taffy in new uh new routines in order to help us get by this today we're gonna be happy today we're not gonna be stressed out just the other day my sons came over to get me out the house and they asked me what i wanted to do i said well i need to go to sprouts and and and pick up some stuff and taffy came home and i said well i got out i really enjoyed myself and everything she said she asked she said well what'd y'all do well dad wanted to go to sprouts she said she said craft will come on sprouts that's the total of what she wanted i said yeah i enjoyed it i'm thinking yeah i can kind of see what you're saying that's pretty that's sad do you understand uh so i think the decision is the open door to reality and to answer that question once you make that decision and the door reality opens life is just a series of decisions that you keep making to do that so i i just i just i've just made my mind up i'm i'm going to be happy i don't think i'm going to let uh this bother me anymore i don't think i'm going to let you stress me out i don't think i'm going to let you hurt me i don't think i'm going to let you make me feel bad about myself i don't think i'm going to let you do any of those things i don't think i'm gonna listen to any slander about me or what somebody thinks about me um so i'm i don't think i'm gonna have social media on my phone i'm i don't think i'm gonna expose myself to any temptation to make me feel bad about myself yeah and i think that maybe the premise behind that is um if i get married i'll be happy and so because i'm not married yeah i'm not happy and so you really have to understand that just because you decide to marry someone that doesn't automatically say i'm going to be happy and i know that's what you know the billboards and the posters and the movies say but that's not reality um because people decide to divorce spouses transition become widow i mean we have to like ruffle just said we have to choose married people have to choose to be happy divorced people have to choose widow people have to choose it's a choice every day to be happy and just like if you're single tonight i'm married it's your decision i decide to be happy whatever season whatever state that i'm in paul said i'll be content amen yeah that um that definitely hits it right on the head especially with um i think sometimes as you mentioned people that the idea that oh well once i get married then i'll be happy um now i love being married i'm saying that i love being here fix it up brother i love being here but the idea that you can just get up and like go somewhere you can just say oh you know i'm gonna go on a trip and you can pay for one ticket you can go get food and sit at the table as long as you want to you can enjoy dessert and not have to eat it fast because somebody else wants them you can you can literally just do you and sometimes people are so much in a rush like no but i want some have you do you know how it feels to be eating something that is so good and and your spouse yeah your spouse or your person they have they're like they have their own meal and you're like well i don't want that i want this like oh can i have some no no you can't but to but the fact that you can as a single person you can just enjoy that um people are so much in a rush to not enjoy and then deal with or understand or find out oh wait it's different i have to share everything it's not just me it's it's all of you it's and that's now that's good because i love being married but it's a it's a real thing that not everybody considers so that wholeness man that's i know you said like i'm just saying literally that's the that's the mic drop the wholeness is literally the entire thing the entire seminar it's about being whole because if you're not whole you place in the burden on somebody else to try to fix you you're dependent on somebody else to do it for you and that's not their job yeah so it's be whole man you remember a friend of ours that make you happy right yeah you remember friend of ours miles monroe uh miles monroe years ago uh he dealt with the subject and he compared a single life with a key you know miles was talking about you needed to be you were single unique and whole and he took the key and put up on a ring with a bunch of other keys and he said this one single key is is there with all of the whole ring of keys but there's they exist with other keys but all those keys were whole they were single they were unique in what locks they could unlock and they were whole okay it didn't mean that you know you know there's nothing wrong with being alone okay you can still be whole and unique without being married and even when you're around other whole and unique people you're there's still something about it so the fact that you are single the thing we want to achieve is as a single person you are unique you are whole you're separate but you're unique and you're whole and what happens is what a cool thing for two unique whole people to come together with the ability to unlock different locks i don't want this me and taffy the same key just a copy unlocking the same lock and everything there's some locks i can't unlock that she's the key to unlock and vice versa and that's the cool thing about it is you need to remind yourself i am unique i am single and i am whole so ask god to help you to discover your uniqueness and you won't despise being a single don't ever despise being single it's a the greatest man that ever walked the earth was was a single man who was so unique and so whole and what he was able to do for us and how he came to serve us i congratulate you and i congratulate your singleness nothing's wrong with you being single you're just unique you're whole you're pretty valued by the kingdom of god [Applause] now uh we do still have a bunch of questions however however our time on the clock says zero the time on the clock how how how long we've been talking oh just about an hour y'all wanna go 30 more minutes cause yeah the clock let's go all right um i thought this was a really good question um because this is actually something i kind of dealt with when i was single um how do you how can you can you provide insight on how to become less independent as a single person sometimes it seems that men are driven away by women who don't need them yeah you definitely dealt with that it's called the superman complex i'll take that part if you take the other part um men really really like to know that they're needed and it brings out something about them that says oh i'm needed so i can put my cape on and come to the rescue the only problem with that is again why does a woman have to dumb herself down so you can feel better about being needed that's the thing that kind of is it's kind of you know i understand that that that pumps my ego up too you know my wife needs me yeah i can come do that but over the years and it's a series of of sermons i developed and i never preached it because i became an enemy to that own teaching and i just today i just like why does why is it always the woman that has to make the adjustment so he can feel good about himself um so maybe the real problem is the insecurity issue that you have not dealt with and the lack of understanding of equality that makes you feel less than a man because of man law okay that uh afraid of a strong woman a strong woman doesn't have to be a rebellious woman it's just a woman who is capable qualified and talented well as soon as i dealt with my issue i thought it's pretty cool to have a capable qualified especially the one who can buy you a nice gift [Music] uh i went to um uh nigeria for my birthday i think i don't know what birthday it was i think it was like my was it my 50th birthday or 55 or i don't know which one it was one of them close to my dad's age or something i think it was near the there was a 55 or 50th birthday and uh uh taffy was like you know i'ma sure miss you and and so i went over and and uh she said before you go kevin i want to show you something i walked down the garage and there was there was this brand new car in the garage that she bought for me and i thought what and you know first thing i'm thinking like how did you afford this would you get the money from it to just do this but i thought she's unique she's an author she's a businesswoman she's she's very capable and to think that my first thought was you're not capable enough to do something like this for me that's when i started just evaluating that whole teaching because i am so tired of women feeling like they've got to lower or dumb themselves down just to make me feel good so now i'm at the point where i'm like dude listen if you want to go out and start a billion dollar business and i watch dishes i'm so cool with that i ain't got no problem with that at all you bring it home but maybe you can add some more insight to that but you know i i love being a superman i love coming to the rescue i love being there and figuring out for it makes me feel awesome it it it feeds something in me that i like i'm just not quite sure what it feeds maybe i need to really examine what i'm feeding because if i'm if if i'm feeding an ego issue that i might need to starve uh that's one thing uh and so it caused me to think a lot and i think i've reached a point where if i'm responsible for my own happiness and then turn around and say you need to dumb yourself down so you can make me happy so i can be a rescue you see it's kind of like a a double standard there and so i it took me back to biblical equality and i'm like well i can see how that would completely eliminate that and sometimes i need her to come and rescue me from myself and uh so i think it works both ways i i no longer think you know they have a little show with superman on it on this on the cw and they got another show super girl and they both have red capes so maybe it's time we share the capes i mean i agree with what he said it's just the communication piece i think that um you're touching on is the fact that you i guess when you're single those are conversations that you want to try to discover at some point uh to determine just that person's manhood or womanhood what it looks like to them and um these conversations they will eventually come up because i think it's just in terms of traditional gender roles that have determined those kinds of things that we're having to renew our minds on what a man does and what a woman does and you know a woman is not helpless and uh crippled and we're equipped now to qualify to do things that we've never been able to do before and as a result we can lean on each other's strength and we want each other to be strong i don't have to be weak in order for you to be strong you don't have to be weak in order for me to be strong i think we both can be strong and be uh successful and and rescue each other like you just said but it is that communication some some type of way to try to determine what um the understanding is and in that space of equality and and uh getting data but but in that in that wholeness i mean you said it i wish i would have understood manhood right i was taught man law but not manhood as a sacrificial servant yeah manhood is about sacrificial serving and i wish i had been taught about womanhood because i mean we saw women were considered inferior under the old testament and had to be an aide and an assistant to the man and not really knowing that she is you know a help a rescuer and just seeing it rightly divided hence our case for wholeness look at what could have been avoided if i could have achieved wholeness in manhood before i got married if you could have achieved wholeness in womanhood before you got married and i think we're working so hard to get to the altar that we're neglecting getting to wholeness think about all of the difference that it makes in a relationship when a man knows what headship is and um when uh when a man knows what what it means to be a sacrificial man what it means to be a facet of love when a man really knows that and then he realizes this is man law and this man law is the quickest way for me to go into a fight and flight i wrote a teaching on the fear of disrespect how people respond as if they've been disrespected before the disrespect had ever occurred and and and and hence again you're talking about being single if i could go back i can't so i don't play around with that but as a single person it's not going to be like i'm going to waste all my time doing nothing wait till mrs wright show up i'm going to begin to prepare myself for my bar mitzvahs which i wish we had a time where a man and a young lady could come and prove their knowledge then their understanding of wholeness and that we celebrate not just their their manhood and their womanhood but we celebrate their wholeness maybe it's something our church can start off maybe we can work with the children's ministry and take them through courses and when they get ready celebrate their coming into their wholeness and know that we're sending out into the world a whole son and a whole daughter who will look for wholeness in other people yeah i agree yeah [Applause] yep um and i'll i'll add to this one too just real quick um just with the hero piece just kind of circling back because um i think you can find through conversation the areas where maybe you can see that other person as being a hero you know not in just the traditional way of uh trying to pretend you know sometimes in marriages people get caught up in roles and pretend to oh just rescue me and i can't do anything and i just need you to uh come and you know change my time i mean i i'm sure women who are here tonight know how to change the tired know how to do all kinds of stuff probably can change the oil and do all anything yeah so you know it's just like understanding um how you can be a hero to each other creflo brought jesus to me he'll always be a hero in my eyes just in terms of the things that uh he has exposed me to in terms of health and healing and just so many things that we in many ways would be defeated in so it doesn't have to be the traditional way of what a man can be a hero to a woman in but through conversation you can discover and those things will be unfolded hopefully that makes sense in fact a real hero is a servant a real hero is somebody that serves uh another he puts his self aside and sacrifices his life to be in service of another person that's a real hero i think we have used the word incorrectly as a pretense uh to be the super being and all god requires for you to do to be a hero is to put yourself aside and be willing to serve somebody else so it's a person who's independent shouldn't be seen as someone that has to become lower unless the independent disregards the interests of another person god is uh for interdependence and not just independent we know what people are saying when they say being independent but i don't want to become so independent that i disregard uh the interest that i should have for you or another person that's when it becomes arrogant and all kinds of things narcissism moves in on all that kind of stuff when it's like that yeah sylvester was actually the first guy that i met who actually accepted my independence so i know we joke and stuff like that and he had said something earlier but he was actually the first person that accepted that because i actually um i grew up it's just me and my brother but we're 13 years apart so he is 13 years older than me so i grew up in the household by myself so i was so used to doing a lot of things by myself and then even going into adulthood you know my parents taught me to be an independent woman how to do certain things how to budget and all of those things but he was actually the first guy and i i think that's how i knew that i was like okay i think he might that you know that might he might be it because of that because guys before and it wasn't even dating it was just a conversation like they were turned off because i had a good job like weird things like that so yeah kudos to you boo hey shout out to god shout out to god i think that it's sexy that you can be independent that you can be who you are and i can actually look at you and say man i can learn something from you or you can you can be my hero a lot of times so you know even to that point um as you two were saying it's this uh i guess i guess you can say like that kind of fear of oh let me let me dumb myself down so that i'm accepted that's you're you're diminishing your light so people can they don't have to put blinders on but instead i'm like really i believe that god is like hey i put that in you for a reason so you can shine and the person that's supposed to shine with you you guys will just illuminate and you will blow and you will be the that uh that beacon of even hope a lot of times to even other couples other people where they say man you can be you and that's accepted yes yes it is and it should be like why shouldn't it be like true i love you love you too all right so we're going to switch things up just a little bit this question is actually like a nice little hot topic going on right now all right so is it selfish or wrong while dating to desire a man to pay for dates versus going 50 50 as many millennial men are suggesting yes is it selfish or wrong while dating to desire a man to pay for dates versus going 50 50. it just you know what what perspective are you coming from if you're coming from a worldly perspective with the changing of the norms and values and you know when taff and i were coming up you know it was assumed it was respectful for a man to always come and be prepared for the day but as times changed now they go 50 50. so i mean if you're talking from a norms and values of the world perspective there's no right or wrong it's it's just you deciding what you want to do but now if you're talking from a biblical perspective and you're talking from a honor perspective it it ought to i mean that man should just should be walking in such honor in such respect and and such a leadership that he not only wants to take care of her but uh he's practicing what it's going to be like if they ever hook up you know it's it's sacrificial service it's a part of how i want to serve you now uh there are cases where i know even when we were dating because i was broke i was so broke you know taffy would maybe buy lunch or something like that and you know i was too broke to turn it down uh but you know i won't put a law on it and say it's illegal for a woman who wants to do that but i i just always i was just brought up trained that you're the dude you're taking her out you you're supposed to have the money you need to take care of and do that so from a biblical perspective i would see as a part of my honor as a man as a uh a part of my manhood as a servant uh to to want to woo and wow her uh and and to please her and and to do all that kind of stuff but now if you're if you get away from that and somebody says no it's 50 50 i ain't gonna waste my money on you you know and you know you hang on get none so why i'm gonna pay for this and all this and you know or i paid for this you gonna give up something tonight it's like see all of that crazy stuff mixed in with all of that and it's like you know so from what perspective are we coming from a honor place a place of honor and respect or we're coming from a worldly norms and values which in my opinion today there's so much disrespect for women in our society by men it just should not be it's just awful it's bad it's and then what's even worse is that some women even like it it's like they're turned on by being disrespected i'm like what is wrong with you and and the issue the real issue is both of them have a problem with their own value to to be treated like that or to you know you very rarely see today's time a man opening the door for his woman they go on a date and and it's just the whole date thing what's a date these days a date used to be a nice night out of conversation and stuff like that now a date could end up in the bed it could end up it could end up all kinds of stupid things that you do because there's no respect and there's no honor and they haven't been taught it there they've been you know with all of the uh the little the little tv uh what you call them infomercials real with them real reality shows and stuff like you know you learn all that stuff from the wrong source and so you know you're freaked out when your daughter brings this dude home and he's sitting there saying fix my plate i'm like you know don't fix that boy get you know you want to get after him you know what i mean because that's not you know well that's your day everything old-fashioned you know just because if just because it was oh back in my day don't mean it it is wrong now i mean the bible real old but it's still very very prevalent and and relevant for today so that's what i think [Applause] yeah that uh that disrespect is a real thing i remember um one of the other gentlemen before uh before myself of course that came i remember ayanna telling me a story where they were together like other people were at the house and she wanted to introduce him to her dad and he didn't stand up like he just stayed sitting like oh hey i was like yeah i was like they do that it was a group of friends and that was the person that i was interested in at the time and he literally went like this to my dad i was like all right okay that's it yep so praise the lord because i'm here do you remember when a dude used to come by your house and he would blow his horn for you to come out had a date blow his horn and and i remember that they hit my granddad don't you move don't you move you better not move and then we come to the door like man don't you blow your horn ever for my you get your out this car and knock on this door and you pick her up properly that stuff don't exist no moment can i tell you honestly um our actual first date i didn't blow the horn but i called her from the driveway because i was nervous i was like okay what do i do so i called her i said hey i'm outside her response yeah and i was like this is different because i'm used to you know no offense to anyone i'm used to the south side girls where they you know they peek out the window like all right here i come but and i ain't no south side girl yeah this is not south side and i was like okay so uh i'll come inside and literally the first day on our first date i came inside and i met her parents her dad was at the door he said oh come on in i was like okay i walked in everybody was standing there looking at me and i was like what is happening but i knew that it was different and i res i i appreciated it because it showed me that she was different like because she required that much value because she not not only knew the word and the value that she had her parents knew and it was like evident in the entire house so hey and no disrespect don't be disrespectful guys get out that car okay so this is another good one if a person has never dated in their adult life how do they explain that without sounding or looking weird or being ashamed slash embarrassed being of no reputation see if you're if you you have to get delivered from this thing about oh what if what what is somebody gonna think about me if i say this what somebody think and then you find yourself performing to try to get approval um it's real it's it's i've never dated before just thought you should know that and uh go from that point on but don't don't ever allow yourself to get in a position where you're having to do something to preserve your reputation somehow and you know you're looking for validation from somebody you don't even know well so why should that matter uh the fact that i'm being honest but you might not like it and that's a part of lacking wholeness if you're if you're not whole if you're still thinking about not being honest and not being upfront with people because you're fear how they may see you you're not whole when you're whole you're not afraid of how people see you i mean you you value yourself and whether they like it or not this is who i am and believe me believe in me or not that could that could appear very attractive someone who's confident in themselves and somebody who yeah i'm telling you this and i know you may not like it but i'm you can decide what you want to do with it but i'm gonna go ahead and tell you but you know i i i love myself and i value myself and so now you gotta decide what you're gonna do but i'm not going to you know you know put myself in a situation where i don't feel like i can be straight up and honest with you because i'm fearful of how you met you know may respond to that situation if you don't respond positively then maybe we're not meant to be together in the first place um i think the world has made too many things embarrassing um sylvester was actually the first person that i really dated um there were people that i may have talked to and i went on one date with a person maybe a year before him but he was the person that i actually dated i did not date in high school i was the quiet shy girl but um i wasn't embarrassed to tell him that like i was actually like okay this is this is me this is who i am as a person i don't have dating experience which like i don't know why people think that there is a i guess a medal of honor to have like dating experience like it's okay to just not ever be go on a date before it's okay to have many firsts with a person like one person like i've had a lot of firsts with him including i was a virgin when i got married and i wasn't embarrassed about that that was a decision that i made i grew up here and i decided to honor myself in that and i was i was okay with that and i think that we just need to stop being so embarrassed by what the world thinks like who cares what they think like it doesn't matter like i i don't care like i've shared my story so many times and i still don't care no matter how many times somebody might say something different or try to make me feel like oh you missed out on life i didn't miss out on anything yes i didn't miss out on anything at all and i'm happy [Applause] yes yes you sure didn't what and and i was a i was a born-again virgin myself so uh you know shout out to god so um i'll ask another uh let's see all right so i i actually thought that this was funny to be a question i literally laughed out loud uh so i'm going to ask this question uh the question says why should we abstain and what happens when we don't look at yourself from sex yes i'm assuming it's implied because they didn't write sex they didn't want to say that but yeah well yeah that's the scripture we abstain because the bible says to abstain from fornication flee fornication why because when you commit fornication you sin against your body that means that you may open your body up for something that might come on you at the time or in the future or and that's happened with a lot of people they have an abstain people aren't going to go and announce oh i didn't do it and look what happened to me you know but um there there's a clear warning flee fornication uh for every sin that a man commits is with uh without the body but he that sinneth commits fornication center against his own body and it talks about the purpose of that so yeah it's just a matter of you know i'm a christian and i want to obey the word or you can go over there and live according to the norms and values of the world where there is nothing at all wrong with uh having sex out of marriage that's how the world sees it but if you're going to do it according to god's word and allow his word to make you whole then there's going to be a an honor uh that you will place over yourself and over your life there's going to be an honor for that to happen and um you know taffy and i dated for three and a half years and we made our mind up that there will be no sex until we're married that's the longest three and a half years of my life but uh it was it was it was cool it was it was awesome there was something that placed of a level of honor and value first of all on god and then of course on taffy and on our relationship that that we were entering into but yeah that's that's where that comes from it's it's um i guess you have to be careful because if you'll notice when when when people don't have understanding they really don't have understanding and they don't know that you're a free moral agent so you know according to the world which is stands in opposition to the word of god that just described what holiness is holiness is being uncommon with the world and you know i found out that ungodliness is is um is a whole new picture of something i'm going to share later but man i tell you what there's a lot of things we have to do as christians just to get people to understand this is how we live as christians and this is how everybody else lives who are not christians so you're you're asking me a question which is gonna depend on uh your reference point where are you coming from i feel that um a lot of and i'm assuming this is now in today's time that there's so much like customized christianity where it's like this a la carte oh i'll get a little bit of this a little bit of that and they pick and choose what makes sense rather than just accepting the package so it's like you go sign for the whole package oh this is it yeah but i don't need line item 13. and instead of seeing that it's really simple it's so good it's not a a big maze it is a b c d it's literally cut and dry yeah the bible says it yeah don't do it but i feel this way the bible says it don't do it but what about this well the bible says it just don't do it and it's not a don't as a law but it's a don't as a there's there's value and there's more to it yeah something's going to happen i want to stop certain things from taking place in your life that's why i'm asking you not to do this because i love you now you're a free mortal agent you can you can choose to do whatever you want to do all things are permissible but not all things are beneficial for you yep uh yeah you're exactly right yeah listen but it's all good because we're we're changing the norm because we are uncommon we're uncomfortable right we're uncommon all right so let's let's go um i guess we have time for one more question you want to do one more or are you just good yeah i'll just ask but uh so um let's see let's see uh where was okay so this question what signs should i look for to confirm that a person is not ready for marriage especially someone i met in church so good so good i just want to shout on that one right there that's good man it's a lot of signs i'm not sure what meeting them at church has anything to do with it i mean church people are yeah everyday people so it doesn't matter if you meet them at church or at the grocery store what kinda that's it well i mean at least they at church trying something [Laughter] yeah versus uh some are trying but then some aren't like they're i'm talking to a lot of single women here they're you know there are some people who it's definitely wolf in sheep's clothing oh absolutely yeah you got wolves and sheep clothing in every church but well i guess what what we're all trying to say is is you can't allow them being at church to to be your hallelujah i found my prison strong man you might have found joe demon yeah so i i i would say like you said it's a lot of signs so that's a lot of fun just listen to them they'll tell you if they're a fool or not i think it's not ignoring the signs because we see them yeah you see them we definitely see them you will know them if you if you are really saved and you meet somebody at church you're going to know in two minutes if somebody tells you they're a fool believe them yep and they're going to say something real they're going to say something so obvious that you're going to think what did you just say well you know you know i go to church and forgive me lord or you'll you'll know you'll know so you know uh you know you want to come over and um you know knock this ball out with me you know we can kind of you know see if we can get into a little something you won't know they're they're going to be i i know what what's going through tap in mind there are lots of signs pick one pick one but there also there's also this piece that you get when you talk to someone and don't be afraid to ask somebody you met at church are you saved tell me about it don't be afraid to ask that question and you know whether they say yes they're saved see the bible talks about don't be unequally yoked together that doesn't necessarily mean somebody that's not saved and somehow that is safe it can also mean the level of maturity and immaturity you can get with an immature christian and you're a little bit more mature than them it's still going to be kind of dangerous with you hooking up with them at this time they need to grow a little bit more some of the biggest problems we have with christians is the level of immaturity that they operate in so when you meet a person and uh you know the sharing of of of data the communication don't ever be gullible you don't meet somebody at church and say well come pick me up you'd never do that you know don't go over their house they don't need to come to your house you don't need to let them know where you live at or nothing like that and um hey meet me at the walk through cafe on wednesday before bible study or something like that it takes a person who's not real they can't go that long before they show their true colors you just you know don't and you make sure you don't go too quick you just just you know it needs to be friendship first don't don't skip the friendship stage first and friendship involves communication it involves that outer court inner court holy holies you don't meet somebody and immediately invite them to your holy holies it's an outer court thing hey how you doing how your mom and them doing what's her name where y'all come from you know what do you like what do you believe in you know what are you learning in church what where's you where have you grown and matured uh yeah baby i want to talk about church i want to talk about you you better believe them there's a sign this needs to be something you hear like ding sign ding sign after about three signs okay nice talk to you i gotta go we'll talk to you a little bit later they will show their stripes but you gotta make sure that you're not so enamored with the conversation or the exterior that you ignore the sign or you ignore the signal got to let you know the holy spirit speaks very with much clarity when you're in the presence of a fool [Applause] i just want to say something yeah um that is that's so good it's so good it goes beyond saying but that's really so good um and especially i i for every single first of all the singles that i know if you're here you know me you know we always talk about on the regular be friends first be friends first i know them even though they don't like us saying that they don't like it they don't like it but we're gonna keep on saying it and even i've seen people where um i remember a particular person we told them okay be friends first and they had like a three hour conversation i know them so i know you don't you don't and they quickly saw that they didn't know them so um so with that being said like taking that time to really be intentional to get to know someone like really get to know someone it's not just as pastor said at the beginning it's not a like we look for this like sparks notes or cliffs notes to the to the story all right well i'm going to zoom past from a to h real quick no there's a nice story at b and once you live there for a little bit you'll find out if you need to go to the next chapter and or even if that chapter needs to stay as a friend maybe that person isn't for what you thought they were for but you have to give yourself time to find out what they're there for rather than what you want them there for so that's really good be friends be friends lord be friends be friends friendship looks good on you so um i know that we are completely out of time um i'm saying this in the way of uh if you want to push me back i am completely fine however i know we're out of time and um i just want to say thank you uh thank you for your wisdom thank you for for your light for just all that you are thank you um did y'all enjoy did y'all enjoy you guys are welcome so yeah so i enjoyed did you have anything or no before we pass it over no i i just pray that everybody received everything that was said and just really take those things like don't just listen now and then walk outside and it's like whatever like really take it and walk in this and be whole in your singleness yes matter of fact everybody say that say be whole say i am whole okay oh you don't need nobody to complete you all right but jesus amen all right pastor did y'all have anything that y'all want to say before we close out uh thanks for uh letting us come anytime anytime all right well um i believe that we will pray out and close if all hearts and minds are clear all right did you want to pray us out okay all right all right father god we just thank you and praise you lord for this time we thank you lord god for again the simplicity that came forth and the fact that understanding is always the first and primary thing we thank you lord god that our ears were anointed to hear and we heard your voice we heard the word behind the word and we thank you lord that each and every person under the sound of my voice is whole and completing you and if they aren't already lord god or lisa they haven't understand understood it that they are in pursuit of that wholeness in you before trying to have somebody carry that burden of completing them we thank you father god that you have already caused all things to be agreeable agreeable um to your will father god you've already just lined up everything to work in our favor so we just thank you lord that wholeness is number one we are single whole and completing you and we just praise you for right now it's in your name jesus we pray all that agrees said amen amen thank you guys thank you guys ladies and gentlemen y'all have an amazing evening be great on purpose enjoy i don't know what to do you

Channel: Creflo Dollar Ministries

Views: 17,560

Rating: 4.9466157 out of 5

Keywords: creflo, creflodollar, worldchangers, taffi, taffidollar, grace, megachurch, collegepark, atlantachurch, sermon, gracelife, tbn, pastors, church, pastordollar, drdollar

Id: PRBzmIqZqB0

Length: 95min 20sec (5720 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 27 2021