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Hey, friend. Welcome to this week's installment of the Jabyn Chavez Leadership Podcast. I'm so grateful that you found us, and I'm praying that today is a massive blessing to you. I believe that as you get better, your organization gets better. As you get bigger on the inside, your organization gets bigger. As you get healthier, your organization gets healthier. Remember, we are reproducing who we are, not what we want. And I'm really praying that today is going to speak to your heart. Recently, I had one of my best friends in the world, Pastor Marcus Mecham, with us here at City Light Church. He spoke to our men's conference, and he also spoke at church, and his sermon from church is already on our YouTube channel, but we have not released his sermon for men's conference, and we're doing it today. He talked about creating a blessing rich home, and there is so much we can learn from it as fathers, as parents, as friends, but especially as leaders. And I believe that today is going to be so powerful for you. Marcus leads Seven Hills Church in the Cincinnati area, one of the greatest churches in America. Marcus is one of the greatest preachers in America. So if you're not already linked up with Marcus and what God is doing with him, I need you to do that. He is such a important voice in our nation, and he's just one of the greatest men in the world. So you're going to be so blessed by this message. I know it's going to make you, you a better leader. And I will be back with you next week with a brand new teaching. Enjoy this.

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Genesis, chapter 27. Genesis, chapter 27. And we'll look at verse 25. I'm 50 now, so I have to wear these. How many, y'? All? 50. And up. Lift your hand. How many are under 50? Lift your hand. Well, this is your future. You want to know this is where it's going. So you go ahead and look down on me up there. I see. I see how you are. Go to restaurants and you can read everything off the menu. You got your phone text in the smallest print. I see you. It's coming. Verse 25. I'll give you the background and the context of this in a minute, but I want to quickly work through this. Then he said, my son, bring me some of your game to eat so that I may give you my blessing. Drop down to verse 34. Then Esau heard his father's words. He burst out with a loud and bitter cry and said to his father, bless me. Me too. My Father. But he said, your brother came deceitfully and took your blessing. And Esau said, isn't he rightly named Jacob Deceiver, Supplanter. This is the second time he's taken advantage of me. He took my birthright and now he's taken my blessing. And then he asked, haven't you reserved any blessing for me? I want to talk to you about blessing the Esau generation. The background here, it's a popular story. I'm probably not going to add anything new up front, but just in case, I want us all to kind of be on the same page that the story of Esau and Jacob and their sibling rivalry go back to the womb. They were in such a battle inside the womb that their mother Rebecca, had intense pain while she was carrying these two twin boys. She'd feel them hit and kick and see their hands. I mean, it's ww, they call it WWF now or wwe. I mean, they're drop kicking one another. There's jujitsu going on in the womb, and it's causing such pain because she can't understand, why is this rumble happening in my womb. So she goes to God and God says, these two boys are at war in your womb. Because these are two nations and they're at odd with one another. So the, the rivalry begins in the womb. The day of their birth comes. Jacob reaches out and grabs Esau's heel to pull him back in the womb. So at birth, they're continuing to fight and work against one another. This continues in the home where Jacob is kind of a mama's boy and Esau's the man's man. He's the hunter and he's the outdoorsman. And one day Esau's out hunting and he returns after a long hunt. He's hungry, he's famished. And he asked Jacob to give him a meal. And Jacob sees his weakness. He sees this vulnerability in his brother. And so he manipulates the situation and says, hey, I'll give you some food. I'll give you this bowl of beans if you'll give me your birthright. And Esau's like, what good does it do for me to have a birthright if I die? And so he gives up his destiny, his birthright, for a quick fix. He's shortsighted in his thinking. He has an uncontrollable appetite. He doesn't care about the long term consequences. He's starving to death. And he says, I'll make that deal with you. The rivalry continues. Constant striving in the home. Fast forward now the verses that we read. Isaac is on his deathbed. Their father, Jacob. And Esau's father is dying. And he sent Esau on his final hunt to go get something. And as Esau is out, Jacob once again decides to deceive his father. And he puts on some goat hair to feel like his brother Esau. He walks into his dad's moment where he's laying on this deathbed. And as he walks in, his father, who can't see very well, asks, who's there? And Jacob says, well, I'm Esau. And he says, come closer. Let me touch you. And so he touches him and recognizes the feel of it and believes that it's Esau. And he gives Jacob Esau's blessing. I'm saying all of this to help you understand that when Esau is crying out in that last verse that we read, he's sincerely broken. His dad's about to leave this earth, and he cannot understand why there's not something noteworthy of value in his life, some strength, some potential, some gift, some ability that his father, for whatever reason, can't find it within himself to bless. Esau, his father says, it's too late for you, Esau. He had already given up his birthright, his tents, his sheep, his land. He's not worked up over that anymore. He settled that in his heart. He's come to terms with the fact that he gave something of great importance up because he had an uncontrollable appetite. He settled that. But he's saying to his dad, surely I. I have something, anything left. Is there anything that you see in me that's positive, that's good that you can bless? What must it be like to grow up like Esau? The blessing of your father always being out of your reach, never measuring up in the mind of the man that should see the most in you. No matter how hard Esau would try, he always came up short. He never felt good enough. No matter how hard he tried to excel, no matter how hard he worked, no matter what kind of effort he put in, he could never please his father. How many people, how many men here today? And I'm putting myself in the audience with you have this kind of home life where you just cannot seem to get the blessing from the one, if anyone, blessed you should have been your father. It leads to a sense of insecurity, inadequacy. We, of course, do everything that we can to hide that with ego. But it comes down to, if my own dad could not see value in Me, if my own dad could not see something worth blessing in me, what chance do I have when I leave here? I mean, we're talking about my own flesh and blood. If he can't see it, what kind of chance do I have in the real world? And like Esau, people give up on their dreams. They give up on their potential, they give up on their destiny because they for some reason could never please their father. And they go looking for quick fixes. They go looking for things to in some way just tell them that I'm of some type of value in some area, I have something worth blessing. Many of you maybe grew up in a home like Esau, where you were compared to a sibling. They could do no wrong and you could do nothing right. Like Joseph, who had the coat of many colors. He had the brains, he had the looks, he had the favor. He had all the things in the natural going for him. But what did Joseph's brothers get? I'm going to tell you what they got. They got ticked off. They could never get over the fact and they took it out on. They could never get over the fact that they were always being measured against Joseph. Another home maybe is an emotional minefield. Explosive in the home, short fused in the home, quick tempered, angry, abusive, if not physically, mentally, verbally, emotionally. And so when you grow up in that kind of a home, you live in so much fear, you begin to be afraid of confrontation. You don't like to tell the truth. You find ways to lie, to become a chameleon, because you definitely don't want to make anybody mad. So you try nothing, you do nothing. You don't go the extra mile. You don't push too much hard, you hide, you adapt. You do everything that you can to be invisible. Living your life to please people because of the kind of home life you grew up in. And like Esau, we think, is that really all I get from who should be the most important voice and presence in my life is harsh words always reminding me it's my fault that they're angry. It's my fault that I can't live at peace and be fully who I am. Because in way, some, some way or another, it's going to trigger something in them. Another home is image, image, image. It's really like you were raised with an image consultant or some type of image manager. Make sure everything looks good on the surface. Make sure you look good to everyone out there. Even if beneath that, it's total chaos. So many come from an Esau home. The belief that something's wrong with you because your father left or even just as bad was present, but disinterested in you. No matter what you gave, it just was never enough. And if those who are supposed to care the most do not care, surely that means something's not right with me. Surely that means something's off with me. Surely that means something about me is falling short. Because if they can't see it, something must be terribly wrong. So if you come from an Esau home, this is the bottom line. You come from a home that lacked blessing. You came from a home that lacked the ability to speak positive or empowering or encouraging faith filled words over your life. You came from a home that couldn't see the potential and the ability of you in the early stages and somehow water that and nurture that through the environment in the home, even in the ups and downs, even in the failures and the mistakes. You didn't grow up in the kind of an environment where they could speak positively over your future. So if you had a blessing deficient home, I came to talk to you for just a little bit. So how do we give something to our families or our future families for all the young men here that was never modeled for us, how do I give to them what I never got in my own life? I'm speaking from experience because I didn't grow up in church. I grew up in a broken home early on. My dad is an atheist to this day. My mom died of a drug overdose. So I'm 50 years old. And today I can tell you, when you grow up in a blessing deficient home, it creates an issue on the inside that every now and then you can get away from it. Every now and then you can get enough wins, you can make enough money, you can get enough successes, you can string along enough accomplishments that you can bury it. But if you grew up without the blessing of a father, it just keeps coming up to haunt you. So five things we see in the Bible that all blessing rich homes have number one meaningful touch. In chapter 27, he says, Please come close to me. Hug me. Meaningful touch is number one in blessing rich homes. The ability to simply say, I love you. But now I'm going to put some skin on it. Studies show that if you just shake someone's hand, look them in the eye, genuinely ask, how are you doing? So good to see you. It's not just good to see you, it's great to see you. What have you been up to? I've been thinking about you. That person's eyes dilate Their blood pressure drops. Because there's blessing in meaningful touch. They can take a pet, put it in a nursing home with somebody that's elderly, that doesn't have meaningful touch. And just through that animal being present, it creates a closeness and it extends the elders or the elderly's life. So meaningful touch bonds you to people. Let me ask you this. When was the last time you, in a genuine, sincere way, hugged your children? Meaningful touch, number two. Verbalize your thoughts. You bless people with your words. You don't bless people with the paycheck. You don't bless people. I know that. That's what they tell you. I know that that's what we're out doing. We're providers. We go out and we kill and we hunt and we bring it home. But that's not how you bless people. Jesus is being baptized in the river Jordan, and the Bible says the dove descends on him and remains. Then a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. God didn't think it, he didn't feel it. It wasn't in his heart. He said, this is my beloved son. Notice in that one sentence, acceptance. This is my son. This is my boy. I don't want there to be any question who he is and whose he is. This is my son. Then it was love. This is my son and whom I love. I love this boy. There is nobody more important to me than this boy. And then affirmation in whom I'm well pleased. This is my boy. I love him and I'm proud of him. I couldn't be more proud of him. There is no one I've ever met in all the world that that's like him. I'm proud of him. So it's not enough to feel it. You have to say it. It's not enough to see it, you have to say it. Prophesy has two parts, which is a closely related thing to blessing. Prophecy and blessing work together. First thing you have to do is you have to prophecy. So you have to see it. And then you have to prophesy. You have to speak it. So if I see it, I feel it, I believe it. Now I have to put my touch on it, and I have to put words behind it and speak it. Think about it. Moses is dealing with the children of Israel. Once again they're complaining. Once again they're murmuring. Once again, Moses isn't enough. Once again, where's this land flowing with milk and honey, whining about everything? Moses is frustrated. He's exhausted. He can't ever seem to please these people. And so he goes to God in prayer. And God says, what I want you to do is I want you to go out there and speak to that rock. And when you speak to it, water's going to come out of it. So Moses goes out, he's tired of listening to him, tired of hearing him whine and cry and nag him all the time. So he goes out, takes the staff, and in anger, the Bible says, he hits the rock twice. He strikes something that God said speak to. And God said, you'll never see that land flowing with milk and honey because you strike you. And I'm not talking about physically. I'm just saying that when you get frustrated, you use your words to strike in some way to control the environment instead of learning to say, okay, I understand, there's some issues, there's some problems. And my job is to calmly, in faith, know I've heard from God and I have a voice to speak to this situation, to bring a solution to this situation, to solve this situation. God has given me creative power in my words and in may seem like a desert, but I can speak to that thing. And God can bring water, and God can bring an oasis in the middle of what seems to be like there's no hope. Number three, place extremely high value on them. Blessing means I look at you, and you're not normal, you're special, you're unique. And there's something on the inside of you that is consumed with how impressed you are with who they are, that you can't believe God gave you the opportunity to raise them. You can't believe that God gave you the opportunity to be involved in forming their futures and their lives. About two years ago, I'm out in my backyard playing with my grandson. He's three now. We're out there, he's shooting me with a water hose. And my neighbor, who doesn't attend our church, he's a Catholic man, he's an amazing guy. And we go out to eat with him one night. And he said, I just want you to know, every single day I'm out in my backyard, I hear you and your grandson laughing and playing. He said, I can hear the joy in your voice. And he knew my background. And he said, I just want you to know that God has made it up to you, that what you never had, now you get to be with your grandson. God makes it up to you. You don't repeat what you didn't have. You look back at it and God can so Heal your heart and heal your life. That, that Esau home life, that blessing deficient home life, that will not be your home. That will not be what you have with your children or your children's children or generations to come. That's over. That's been cut off. That's behind you. And I see blessing rich homes all across this room. They don't even know it. But what's coming back to that home is a blessing. Richness, You say. Well, that's just not my style. I'm a man of few words. I'm not the mushy type. I definitely don't cry in worship. Not at a men's conference for sure. And the mighty men wept. I just wasn't raised like that, Marcus. Just not my personality. We offer him a sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of our lips. Praise is not just vertical. It's horizontal too. And the point is, it's a sacrifice to form words, to take what's in your heart and create meaningful words and thoughts in a sincere way and get out of your comfort zone. It's called a sacrifice for a reason. You're not supposed to be comfortable doing it. It's not supposed to be natural. That's what makes it a sacrifice. But yet you look at your children, you look at your babies, you look at your wife and you say, you're worth it. You matter more than my comfort. You're of more value than my comfort. And I'm willing to put myself in a sacrificial place to place value on you. Number four. Speak to their futures. Speak to their talent, speak to their abilities. Speak to their potential. Let them know that that thing in them that you see, God's going to use it. When my girls turned 13, they're both now in mid late 20s, but when they turned 13, I went out on a date with them. I gave both of them a purity ring. Now if you've ever heard anything about purity rings, when we were coming up, this was a big deal. What would happen is kids would answer an altar call and they would make a commitment to their parents that they were not going to sleep with somebody before they got married. And it was the kids commitment to the parent. I'm going to stay a virgin. That's what they did. So when my daughters turned 13, I gave them a purity ring. I said, but this is what I want to say about this. This is not you making a commitment to me. This ring is to remind you of my commitment to you. This has nothing to do with you being a virgin. On the day you get married. Purity is deeper than virginity. I'm not saying sexual purity is not important. I just let them know that's none of my business. That's between you and your future husband. This ring is my commitment to you. That no matter what you do, no matter where you are, no matter what happens to you, you can look at that ring and know I am committed to you being the woman I see in you. No matter what the ups and downs are along the way. You'll never lose my belief in you as a dad. Ain't never gonna lose it. Can't get me away from it. Ain't nothing you do gonn. And then I wrote 13 listed. 13, you know, because they're 13 to be creative. I spent a lot of time and wrote these 13 things down. No one ever told me to do this. No one ever taught me to do this. I just knew they were moving into a different place in their life where their friends would be a greater influence than I was. Was. And so I wrote down these 13 things that were unique to them. I won't go through those with each of them, but what I'll say is I found anything in them that would be easily looked at as negative, and I redeemed it and made it positive. So if your son's stubborn, redeem that thing and say no. You're passionate. Let them know that you're determined, you're focused, you have a fixed mindset. You're clear on what you want. I love that about you, that you are so fit that I can hardly even talk to you because you are so set on what you want to do. And I bless that determination in you. They're not angry. They know what they want. They don't pick the wrong friends. They just have a big heart. They love the unlovable like Jesus did. They're gullible. No, they believe in people. They see the good and people ain't much good in them. Find their strengths and affirm them. Because outside of your home, the world is going to use words. Words that will confuse words that will belittle, words that will shake their confidence, words that will alter their entire life if they don't have a foundation of blessing that they're going into this world with. Proverbs 15 and verse 4 says a wholesome tongue, in Hebrew, that means the healing of the tongue is a tree of life. But perverseness, that word perverseness, means misuse, breaks the spirit. Or that word breaks mean causes a leak. So nothing will cause the blessing of God. To leak more than the misuse of your tongue. James 3 says, like the bit in a horse, a strong animal, just a little bit can control all that power. Like the rudder of a ship, just a small thing. It doesn't seem like much but yet it can turn that massive ship that a spark. That's what your tongue is. It's like you're clashing two rocks together. That's when you use your words, you're clashing two rocks together and eventually it's going to spark. Number five, active commitment. I'm not just here making empty promises. I'm not here just with fancy words. I'm not just saying things to say them. You have my commitment, you have my interest, you have my love in practical ways. In other words, I'm going to get behind what I see. I'm going to get them the personal coach, I'm going to get them the tutor, I'm going to get them the lessons. I'm going to create places for them to grow in the gifts that I say I see. So number one, bless them with meaningful touch. Number two, verbalize your blessing. Number three, attach high value to them. Number four, speak to their gifts and their future. And number five, actively be committed. Ask yourself, what can I do to practically help them succeed? Now I started out saying how can I give something that's not been modeled? How can I actually do for my family what was never modeled for me? So we're going to do two things that if you never had a blessing rich home, if you never had that kind of environment, if you come from a blessing deficient home, some of you, you had the greatest dad in all the world and that's beautiful, that's wonderful and that's great. And guess what? That's what my daughters say about our home. But many in here did not have that. And so I'm going to take some time, talk to them. When you go to see the physician and you're trying to figure out, they're trying to figure out what's wrong with you. One of the first things they do is they stick out your tongue. Because they can tell what's going on in the rest of the body by looking at the tongue. So the first thing we're going to do is we're going to pray that God would heal our tongues, that God would heal. Because the Bible says that it's a word in season that you have to have for those that are weary. So you can't strike the rock, you have to speak to it. You can't Strike what you disagree with and fight with what you disagree with and anger. Do everything you can to try to change it and control it. No, you have to learn to speak to to it. And only a healed tongue can be a tree of life. And because of the misuse of somebody else's tongue in your life, that blessing just keeps leaking out. It's broken your spirit. So we're going to pray for healing for those who just had a blessing deficient home, just seemed to not your parents just weren't interested. Dad wasn't interested, just didn't seem to care, didn't seem to matter. We're going to pray for that healing would come because the great physician's here. Come on. And the second thing we're going to do and we'll be creative with how we do this is the Bible says that Moses laid hands on Joshua and the spirit, the leadership spirit that was on Moses came on Joshua. The Bible says that Paul told Timothy that the way you wage war is through the prophecy that someone not only saw it, but they said it. You fight battles because you've received a word from God. And then he went on to say that you have to stir up the gift that's in you that happened through the laying on of hands. In other words, Paul saying, hey, listen, I know Nero's killing Christians. I know fear is everywhere. I know that, that people are walking away from you. I know, I know all kinds of stuff. But you have to stir up that gift that's in you. So something about someone laying hands on you and anointing you marks you and puts a gift in you that that gift can be stirred up and that prophecy can be stirred up. And when you're facing the battle of a lifetime, you have what you need to go to war with that thing.