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Hey, good people, this is Torre Roberts. Blessings to you and welcome to the ONE Podcast. I'm excited that you're here. ONE is a community of dynamic and vibrant thought leaders, preachers, teachers, and just a community of wonderful people all together. And we're excited to bring you this weekly podcast from our services from One in la. If you haven't been to one, I encourage you to check it out. You can go to One the Word one O N E online and find out all about the service times and all about the teachers and all the philanthropic things that we have going. I believe you're going to be blessed to be a part of it. And speaking of being blessed, we're getting ready to get into a teaching right now that I believe is going to bless you. So tune in, enjoy, and I'll be back with you at the end.

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I do have a word I believe that God has asked me to bring to you specifically as our one family. Especially it's a word for every individual one, but also for us as a family. Matthew, chapter 4, verse 18. And Jesus, walking by the Sea of Galilee, saw two brothers, Simon, called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. Then he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. And they immediately left their nets and followed him. Verse 21. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee and John, his brother, in the boat with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets, he called them. And immediately they left the boat and their father followed him. May the Lord add a blessing to the reading of his Word. You may be seated. Hallelujah. I want to talk to you this morning about what it means to be the next one, because every one of us is standing on a precipice of a next. It's very close. I don't believe that there are ever accidents about who's in a room at a given time on a given day, who's hearing my voice online, who will hear this message at a different time. Know that when you hear me say, you are on the precipice of your next. Whether this message is an hour old or two years old, it's speaking prophetically into this moment in your life. You are on the precipice of a next. Every one of you. Some of you should be excited about that because you needed to be in a different place. I'm excited. I'm excited. Sometimes we get anxious about next. We'll talk about that. But we're on the precipice of next. And as one, as a family, I want to remind you who that. Who we are and what that means. So we had a whole series on this earlier in the year. But here's a little reminder. Who we are. We are one. Can we put that up there? Y' all read it with me. We are a church in action, reaching all corners of the earth, leading people to true life in Christ. We exist to equip and empower people to live fearlessly, love unsparingly, grow exponentially, create intentionally, and serve humanity. That's what we are doing. And every one of us has a contribution to that because we're called to be one. What? Fishers of men. And so this was the first call. We're still answering the call. There's nothing more important than us helping other people meet the Jesus that changed our lives. And I will talk about it until I'm blue in the face, and then I will talk about it some more because I love Jesus so much. And as the church, we have sometimes done everything but just talk about Jesus. Have you ever been in love with someone and you've been in a long term relationship and y' all are still in love? I saw I got a chance to hang out with Pastor E.B. this week, just talking about what it means to be one in this movement. And when I saw his wife today, I said, I got to hang out with your man this week. She was like, yeah, he's pretty awesome, you know? How long have y' all been married? 10 years. 10 years. Come on. Still talk about he's awesome. Well, when do we get over Jesus? Never. And so we're always talking about him. We're always knowing him better. We're always trying to be more like Jesus. And so that requires us to answer the call to be fishers of men. But in the process, we get to change. And in order for you to step into your next season, in order for us to be the next one, we're not changing, but we're evolving. We're expanding. Pastor Tory talked about succession being about not that I need to fill his shoes or we need to get back somewhere, but that we're expanding. That we're evolving. We're going to the next level of what God created us as a family to do. And so when that call comes, and so many of you have already said, yes, you're swimming with the shulem. The sh. The shul. The sh. It was a sh. Anybody remember that message? We're not a school of fish. Cuz Schools of fish are all the same. Every fish is the same exact fish. It swims the same way. It does the same things. That's not us. We're what's called a sh of fish. We're all different kinds of fish swimming at different paces, doing different stuff. But we're headed in the same direction together. So we don't have to be exactly the same, but we do serve the same God. And we're swimming in the direction of the same Jesus and wanting to bring other people with us. But in order to do that, we have to do more than say, yes. We have to be changed. And change can be hard. And nobody knows this better than Peter, because Peter spent from the time he stepped off that boat. I gotta believe there was moments where he was like, yo, dawg, I should have kept fishing for fish, because this fishing for men is for the birds. Because constantly Peter was being pressed on to change. His name was Simon at the time. He had to evolve into Peter. And so many times he missed the mark on change, and it was hard on him. And we also often struggle to change. The reason we do that is because of something called change aversion. And about a month ago, our founding pastor, Pastor Tory, was here, and he met with us as a staff, and he taught us an incredibly powerful lesson about change aversion. So I want to bring the definition today that he gave us. Could you all show them that? Change aversion is the psychological resistance or discomfort that people feel when faced with new circumstances, ideas, or environments. Your next thing is different than this thing. You can't be the next one going to the next one if you're not willing to change. But you see the next thing coming, and you say you want it, and you say you want to be a part of it. But then these bodies we live in, and I love my body, and sometimes she gives me a hard time. She doesn't always want to run. She doesn't always want to eat healthy things. She likes fried things. And I'm working on a change in how I eat. So y' all probably start hearing a lot of examples about that. We've made it from the dairy milk to the almond milk and the latte. And this is big, y'. All. Come on. Yes. Affirm me. Affirm me. Thank you. Thank you. I needed it. Cause that was a jump. But y' all know how I feel about ice cream. And so the dairy, we're like, one step at a time. But it's like change aversion. Like one of the first Things you ask when a change is required. Is, is this for good? You mean like never again? Because we start trying to figure out how much we can be in the next and how much we can stay. I want to be next, but I like it here. And so change aversion comes up. This psychological resistance, this discomfort, circumstances, ideas, environments, when we have to step into our next. Even when the change is beneficial, it will be good for me to eat less ice cream. And for those of you who don't know, before we went on the fast with Pastor Torre for 40 days earlier this year, I. I ate a pint of ice cream almost every single night since 1991. Yes, Ben and Jerry's cookie dough. It was 2 90. It was $1.99 at the time. Y' all know it's 8.99 now. But it was my nighttime routine. And if I didn't eat it, it was only cause I had some other dessert at a restaurant or something other than that every day. Ben and Jerry's cookie dough. If I meet somebody from college right now, they'd be like, are you still eating ice cream every night? That's the first thing they would say. I was notorious. And so for me to be saying I'm on my way out of dairy is not a small thing, but it's a beneficial change. Yet when I walk down that aisle at the grocery store, I'm like, does the change have to be today? I haven't had any in a week and a half. I could have one because we're always sliding in and out. And maybe the ice cream's not as bad of a deal. But there are things we must change in order to step to next one. It's not just about preferring the familiar. It's about the mind perceiving change as a potential threat to three stability, identity, or control. If it's going to change where I can't predict things, it's going to change who I am, or it's going to change my sense of control. Baby, I don't want it. Can God give me something that lets me not have to be any turbulence in my life, that lets me be exactly who I've always been and lets me have control, lets me predict what's coming next and to be able to manage it. That's what control is. In the absence of that, we feel anxiety and so we have aversions to change. The Bible says it this way. Luke 5:36. Jesus spoke this parable to the disciples. He said, no one puts a piece from a new garment on an old one, otherwise the new will make a tear. And also the piece that was taken out of the new, it doesn't match the old. Change is not me patching a little piece of the new on top of my old thing. That's not change, that's a patch that doesn't make it work. It says also the piece that was taken out of the new, it doesn't match the old. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the wineskins and be spilled and the wineskins will be ruined. But the new wine must be put into new wineskins, and both are preserved. And no one, having drunk old wine, immediately desires the new. For they say the old is better. That's like an anticlimactic ending to that, isn't it? It's like, don't put the patch of the old on the new. On the old. You can'. Do it. We're going to have a new wineskin, we're going to have new wine. You know it's going to be beneficial. But yet. And still no one tastes the new wine and immediately wants it. First, it says, or no one immediately desires the new, for he says, the old is better until we actually taste it, then we want it, but when it's presented, we don't want it. And so we have to recognize what. What it means for us to have an old wine skin. It is my perception of stability. It is who I believe that I am, and it's what I think I can control. And I think I know me. This is a big problem. You think you know yourself better or as good as God knows you and you don't. I tell you why Peter was like this. Matthew 28:31. Peter is at dinner with all other disciples on the night before Jesus is crucified. And in verse 31 it says, Then Jesus said to them, all of you will be made to stumble because of me tonight, this night. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. Now Jesus telling all his disciples, because of me being getting ready to be crucified tonight, all of y' all are going to lose it, every one of you. But Peter going to argue with Jesus. Verse 32. But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee. Verse 33. Peter answered and said unto him, even if all are made to stumble, I don't know about them. Even if all are made to stumble because of you, I will never be made to stumble. Jesus said to him, Assuredly, assuredly say less. I say to you that this night, tonight, before the rooster crows, you will deny me not one time, not two times, but three times. Peter still talked. Peter said to him, even if I have to die with you, I will not deny you. And so said all the disciples. Then he got them hyped up, and now they all talk about, no, never. The Number One reason why it is difficult for us to be transformed into our next is because we think we know ourselves and we don't listen. We have to be willing to hear where we are weak. We have to be willing to hear what is old and needs to be exchanged, even if it's still working for us. Because we know that later in this same chapter, Peter does in fact deny Jesus three times. And in that moment, he realizes what Jesus said turned out to be true. Hindsight is 20 20, but so is humility. Humility will make you see clearly right now. You won't have to wait to look back and be like, man, I should have did. I should have, I should have. Humility will be clear to you, will make clear to you right now that there is always room for you to lay something down. Humility tells me that I am always in some danger or another of picking up my old habits, my old ways of being. I haven't lost my temper in months and months and months, years and years and years. And not too long ago, I had an encounter and I felt that thing, and I said, oh, where did that come from? I used to have a terrible temper. It scared me. I said, God, where did this come from? But we are gardens, as I often teach you, and there are seeds of weeds living in every soil. And weeds only grow when the garden is malnourished. Yeah, that's when they grow. Weeds tell you the condition of the soil. They grow when the nutrients in the soil are low, weeds start growing. And. And a weed seed can stay dormant in soil for up to 40 years. So you haven't seen that seed in 40 years. You thought, I am delivered. But if the soil turns. The soil is that heart, that emotional space, malnourished, you're not getting your nutrients. Pastor Ebenezer did a teaching for us this week at staff and for the men about rest and when you are exhausted, physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, creatively, socially, when you are exhausted, you are not nourished, you will be surprised what starts popping up. So it shouldn't have really shocked me that a weed seed from a long, long time ago started shimmying in the last few Months. Because as of last Thursday, 90 days. I have been blessed to be part of your family. Yes. 90 days. Can you believe it? The 90 day trial is up. I cannot be returned. Your receipt is no longer any good. You stuck with me, baby. 90 days. We made it. Amen. And I'm stuck with you. And I can't believe how lucky I am. This church is amazing. I love you guys. I love you so much, man. But it's been a little rip. I did not have advance notice that I was going to be blessed with all these sheep and need to figure out a lot of things. My life was really full already. So I started getting really tired. The soil was less nourished. And so when I encountered a frustration, something jumped up that I haven't seen growing in a while that scared me. So we have to be careful. You can remember this one today. Halt. Everybody say halt. H A L T. That's halt. Never get too hungry, too angry, too lonely or too tired. Never get too hungry, too angry, too lonely or too tired. If one of those is happening, halt. Because you are very likely to wake up some weed seeds. You are likely to behave in a way that is no longer a part of your character. That seed been down there 20 years and all of a sudden and then you fall out like, oh my gosh, I thought God delivered me from this. Why am I not delivered? Am I a bad person? No, baby, you just a garden. And it happens. But you have to take care of yourself. Humility helps me to continue to take care of myself. So as soon as that thing jumped up, I was like, I got to lay down. I might have ate some ice cream that day. I might have fell back. I was just managing some emotions. But I know I needed to nurse myself and I need to connect with people who love me and say, hey, I need a hug. I need things. Because I was drained. And so then things start popping up. See, Peter wasn't in touch with the fact, because this couldn't have been Peter's first time acting like this. This was not Peter's first time cussing people out. For those who don't know the story, keep reading Matthew 26. Later in the chapter, Jesus being crucified, the disciples scattered, just like Jesus said they would. And then some people see him say, weren't you with Jesus? He said, no. Nah, dawg, nah. Wasn't me. You got the wrong one. Another person comes, weren't you with Jesus? He get louder. I said, nah. By the third person, he was cussing. You can't tell Me. That was Peter's first time going off like that before he called him off that boat. I bet you Peter was known to be Peter. He didn't just start cutting off ears with swords and going off on people. That was some previous character. That was some Simon behavior. You know, like, most of the time, I'm Pastor Dr. Anita, but if you mess with Nita, Nita. It was Nita that was like, nita has to stay on the cross. Nita has to stay on the altar. Y' all don't never need to know her. We all have weed seeds. Humility will help us to put on our new wine skin. Humility will transform us. Peter struggled with humility. He declared what he would never do. Humility is not the same as self debasement. I'm not saying hate yourself. You must know. Humility is me having a full embrace of my gifts, my talent, my strength, my power, and my weaknesses, my failures. If I can hold all of those things together in the same place without over inflating or over diminishing, that's humility. I'm right here. I got my eyes on who I am and God and all the best things about me, and I don't need to shrink back. I know who God called me to be. And also I know that if I'm not taking care of myself and spending time in prayer and paying attention, that I can also be. And that part reminds me that he's good enough to use me anyway. That's humility. Amen. So your next one is going to require humility because it might change your plan. And that's tough, especially in this city, because a lot of people come here with a plan. How many people in this room actually from Los Angeles, you grew up here? Look at that. Look at. It's maybe a third of the room. Hey, y'. All. All the rest of us came from somewhere, and we probably came with a plan. We came with a plan to be someone, do something, achieve something. This is a city where those things happen. And I believe God with you for your dreams to come true. Never lay them down. And also the path may end up winding around differently than you expected. Humility will say, it's not going the way I planned, but I trust God with my life. Humility will say, I'm about to go wait these tables. Humility will say that what God has is always bigger and better than my idea. Humility will say, if I have to move home and come back next year, I can do that. And it doesn't mean that God Isn't God? Because if we're not humble enough to think I got it wrong, maybe the timing was off, but God is still on the throne. We will get mad at God when our plans don't go well. Humility keeps it on me. As we grow, as we mature, as we learn to divide between soul and spirit, as the word says, using the word that my emotional space and my own voice and God's voice. Like, sometimes we have to walk through unraveling those things. We might feel like God told me X for sure. And then realize later, maybe that wasn't God. Maybe it was me. I did that once. I was engaged in college. Man, I really believed I had heard God, a word from God, that this was my husband and child. He wasn't. He wasn't. I had fasted, pray. I mean, I was doing the spiritual stuff. I had a dream. I had a vision. Child. He wasn't. We were dating, by the way. This wasn't one of those, like, God showed me the stranger that wasn't. That. I wasn't that far out. We were actually dating. But I believed that I had heard God. And then he's saying, like, yeah, I hear God. And I was saying, and he ghosted me. Before ghosting was a thing. We didn't even have cell phones or social media back then. So it was easy to ghost, because if you're not by your phone, that's it. And when I say he disappeared in a way that was embarrassing. Ooh. And it really shook my relationship. It rocked my relationship with God because I felt like either God was testing me in a way that was not fair, or I must not know how to hear him, so I should just stop. Whereas the humility wasn't there yet to just be like, maybe I misheard. We have to have excellent faith, stand strong on what we believe we've heard from God, and also the humility to remember that we're earthen vessels now. Whatever happened to that guy? Hmm. Seven years later, I was married and pregnant with my first child, working at a ministry. I got a phone call from someone. They said, are you sitting down? I said, no. They said, sit down. I want to tell you I got some news about this gentleman's name. And I said, what happened? They said, he died this week. Aids. And now all of a sudden, it's, thank you, Jesus. Right now. I'm not mad at God. I'm not wondering what happened. See, I need you to trust when something doesn't go your way. And this is the early 90s, so AIDS was a whole different situation the early 90s. We didn't know which way, where it was. It was spreading much faster. We didn't have the wear. It was a whole different time. Thank you, Jesus, that I had lived. I had lived right with Jesus. Yes, I had lived right. So I wasn't scared that it was me. But here we are. Now that I hear this, I'm grateful to God. So humility will allow you to keep God in the good place no matter what happens, no matter how it goes wrong. Always remember, God is good. Let the confusion be anywhere else but God. Amen. Remember I said that God is good. And so until you say I'll understand it eventually and whenever I understand what happened, it's gonna turn out that God was good and everything else was the problem. Never take God out of that slot. Humility wants to recognize who God is. But when we're not in a humility space, we wanna be mad at God or someone else to control this. So it's like God, why didn't you do that? Versus God, Help me see me grow, me move, and let me just keep moving until God reveals the next step. Amen. So Peter wasn't willing to do that. So when you are getting ready for your next, you have to be willing to be changed. If you're a part of this family in the coming months, there are gonna be opportunities for us to be changed. We worked on this in women's ministry some. On Thursday night, we ministered to each other. We talked about what we needed. Pastor E.B. talked to the men about rest. You got a therapist for a pastor. So I promise you there's gonna be some for us to learn about how to change. Because a lot of it centers around our emotional lives and the things we don't want to feel. We don't want to be sad, we don't want to be angry, and we don't want to be scared. And when change comes and threatens our stability, our identity or our control, we end up feeling those emotions. And when we feel those things, we will resist them. And it goes straight to our mind saying, this must not be God, because I feel something. No, it's just change, aversion. It's difficult to be made from something old into something new. You will feel it. You have to be willing to be stretched. Old wineskins are brittle. You can't stretch them. They break easily. That's why when you pour the new wine in, they're supposed to absorb it and get bigger and expand. What's that new wine represent? Anointing the blood of Jesus, what he's called us to do, getting the good stuff in you out into the world from the Lord. But you have to be willing to stretch. And so when change comes and you have a thing that goes, that's your moment to say, oh, is that change aversion? Change me. Because it's possible for you to see a change that is not good for you and be at peace when you see it, because you are at peace with God and you're not afraid and you're looking through the eyes of Holy Spirit and peace. And so when you feel that thing, sometimes I call it a death threat to my flesh, something in me goes, mmm. I'm like, ooh, let me check that. That might actually be something that needs to be crucified with Christ so that I can step into my next. Who knows what it is? But when Peter and his brother Andrew were called to be fishers of men, they were given an example of their profession. These were fishermen. They knew what it meant to fish. And so Jesus says, come, be fishers of men as a family, individually and as a family one. In this next, you are going to see God give you amplified revelation about how to bring your profession into ministry. You are going to see it. And some of you have been wondering, how do I use my profession for ministry? Whether it's acting, writing, singing, corporate management, how do I use this? Some of you are going to directly use it in ministry. You're going to start ministries. You're going to start nonprofits. Some of you are going to bring your gifts into the house and start ministries that we help use on our outreach. Some of you are going to use the lens of your profession to get new revelation in the Word, the way you see me do with therapy. He called fishers to be fishers of men. God is calling you to that today, so I want you to receive that. Who is that for? Next one. Yes, you are in the right room. This ministry is going to pull on every skill you have to help other people know Jesus better and to help push you to reach the people that you're called to reach. I cannot wait for us to gather. There was always two of them. Jesus called them two at a time in this chapter. And so relationships with other people in the ministry who also do what you do is going to be a part of how we move. You are not doing this by yourself anymore. And don't try, don't try. There's an element of humility in that. I feel like God's given me this idea. But you know who else has it? Is there anybody else who wants to do the same thing? We don't all have to do the same thing 20 times small when we could partner and do things big, but humility is required for that. Peter had a problem with that. Study Peter's life. Later there was when Peter was at the same dinner that night asking, who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom? He wanted to know if he was gonna be number one. We all have a dream about being the number one of our thing. But what if it's a team? What if my prayer is, God, who should I be partnered with, connected with, so that we can do it? Well, there's nothing like a collab, especially when two artists don't look like the same kind of artist. And then they collab, you'll be like, wow, they killed that. There's nothing like this connection. And so Andrew and Peter were called to do it. Andrew's name means strong, courageous. We never really hear that much about him after that, though. But he brings his brother along, and his brother's name is changed to Peter, which means rock. So I gotta believe that the strong, courageous nature of Andrew was inside Peter. And by bringing his brother along, Peter gets to evolve into who he should be. Some of you are going to bring people along into their necks, and it might not spotlight you on earth, but it will spotlight you in heaven. And we have to be willing sometimes times to let our reward be in heaven because it matters. It's stirring in some souls right now. Some of you are like, God, let it be me. God, let it be me. God, let it be me. I want to be that next one. You might want to be Andrew instead of Peter because Peter went through a lot change. Is the first thing that personal change going on to the next verse that I read in the beginning, I want to go back to that. Matthew 4. How much time I got left? Oh, I'm doing good. Matthew 4:21. After he called Peter and Andrew and told them to be fishers of men. Come use your professional knowledge and insight to lead people to Jesus. Then he went to two other brothers. James, the son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, in the boat with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets. Now, I love this. You guys know I'm gonna dig into every one of these names because why is this so specific? There's two brothers, and they're mending nets. Before you go out to use your nets, make sure you mend your net. Make sure you mend your net again. We're going back to being well. We have to commit as people of God to be well, spiritually, emotionally, mentally well. And too many of us have believed that giving our life to Jesus is going to automatically make every other part of our life well. And that's not necessarily true. It will get you to heaven, but that doesn't mean you will be as well as you can be on this earth. Does anybody know someone who doesn't follow Jesus? Who is physically healthier than you, who can lift more weight than you, who eats better than you, who runs faster than you? Okay, so it's possible to be well in certain ways when your salvation is not in place and when you give your life to Jesus. It didn't. I gave my life to Jesus. I still don't have abs. I confessed that last week. And so it's not automatic. I have still had to deal with anxiety in my life. I had a period of depression in my life. I've had suicidal attempts in my life. I had to still chase wellness. And so I want us to chase wellness too. So mending our nets is part of that. First we see James mending his net. James is the Greek name that is actually the same as Jacob, the Hebrew name. How many people remember us talking about Jacob last week? Jacob got into some generational trouble. He struggled a lot. His name meant supplanter, or one who supplants one who replaces another. When him and Esau were being born as twins, Esau was coming out. And then Jacob reached out and grabs his heel to try to push out. It was a mess. And so we got an issue with him wanting to supplant, right? And then he is with his mother. So read this later. It's Genesis chapter, because I like y' all to read stuff and I don't have all the time. Genesis 20:7. When he comes out, he has an issue with his mom. So his father loves Esau and his mom loves him. And his mom wants him to inherit everything. And so she tells him to trick his father and he does it. Let's stop right there. This is not a 10 year old man. Has everybody thought about that before? This was a grown adult whose mom told him to lie to his father to trick his brother and all the things. And he did it. Now first he says, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do that because it's going to make my brother mad. She said, do it. He said, okay, that's some generational trauma right there. Something is going on in this family where a father likes one kid better and mom likes the other kid better. They're pitting them against each other, and then the mom can convince a grown man to do something, something he knows he shouldn't do. That is family trauma. We got a lot of mess in here. Anybody grow up in a family where siblings were favored differently by parents? Anybody grow up in a family where instead of talking things out, we did sneaky things instead? Family trauma. And that stuff goes on from generation to generation. And so he actually does trick his brother, and then he has to run away so his brother don't kill him. We picked up on that last week. He said he's at a well, he meets Rachel. He goes in there. But then what happens? After he tricked his brother, he gets tricked by his cousin. Cause it's still family, the whole family. Now he out here, and his cousin gonna swap Leah for Rachel and give him the wife he didn't want instead of the wife he did want when he wasn't paying attention. So the whole family is slick. Then he finally has all these children. He's the father of the 12 tribes. And so he has all these kids. Leah has all 10 of the kids. Rachel only has two of the kids. One of the kids is Joseph. His sons get mad at Joseph for having a dream. They throw Joseph in a pit, sell him, lie to him and tell him that he died three generations of this foolishness. Actually, we can go back one more. Because Abraham, the father of them all, lied and said his wife was his sister to a king so they wouldn't get in trouble. This whole family is lying and sneaking and flipping stuff. You want to talk? That's generational trauma. And so we bring this line all the way down. Jacob does finally fix it. I'll preach that another day. But the fact that this man, whose name means struggle and supplanter, is mending a net, now he's sitting here mending a net. Your struggles are a part of what has torn you. But will you mend it? Who is helping him mend it? Amen. We gotta mend it. Who's helping him mend it? John. John's name means grace of God. So he's sitting with a man whose name means Yahweh is gracious, or the Lord has been gracious. So I need you to let this week, your struggle and God's grace sit down together. Gotta let them sit down together. Because in order to go to your next, you cannot allow the net you use to be defined by Your struggle in a way that's not healthy. Remember, for those of you here, the first message I preached here was about these nets. Those nets represent something in our bodies. There's a thing in our brain called the reticular formation, and it looks like a net. And so we are actually getting an insight here. When they're mending their nets, this part of the brain determines how alert we are, what we're paying attention to, how our bodies move and where we go, emotions as well. It pays attention to pain, and it controls our feelings and our body reactions. And when it's balanced, we're focused and we're calm and we're in control of those things. But when it's not balanced, when it's torn, we are tired, foggy, or disconnected. We pay too much attention to our pain and too much attention to the wrong thing. You cannot go out to be fishers of men. You cannot go out into whatever your next is and take your professional insight and take your partnership and start casting the nets to do the work. If the net is not mended, if it is not well, if your struggle, generation after generation after generation has not been here healed, you will cast torn nets and you will miss out on what God has for you. It is time to get very serious about healing. It's very serious time for healing because our next one requires the strongest version of yourself. Now, how can you do some of that on your own? Well, there's this little thing called therapy. There is telling the truth. Oh, it got cold. Everybody was like, oh. She didn't expect her to say that. We were still amening from the therapy. I cannot tell you how many people have come to talk to me off guard. And sometimes. And they ask me questions. I'm wondering about this. I'm wondering about this. And I said, yeah, I'll give them some information. I say, are you in therapy? They go, yeah, I'm in therapy. I said, have you ever told your therapist this? Oh, no, we can't help you if you don't bring all the information. Just because you think it's not relevant doesn't mean it's not relevant. So telling the truth to the people who are trying to help you, telling the truth to yourself, telling the truth to the people in your family and in your circles. A huge part of mending your net starts with telling your story truthfully to the people around you. A lot of times we want to skip and make telling our story our net. I'm sharing my story so can help somebody else. Baby, your story's not ready to help nobody else. Sometimes your story's not finished. Your story's still broken. You've come to conclusions that are not healthy and that are not aligned with the character of God. And so you're spreading something torn. Hear me. You did not only go through what you went through so that you could use your story to bless somebody else. Let me say that again. You did not go through what you went through just because God wanted you to use your story to bless somebody else. That is not the case. And if you believe that, if you don't believe that you have suffered partially because the enemy has attacked your life, the enemy does these works. God heals you from those works. He heals the works of the enemy. But when you believe that your story only happened to you so you could tell someone else, you don't realize how much you need to heal first and how much you need to make sure that God has edited and rewritten and reorganized your story so that when you tell it, the ending that God has for you is on that story. So remember, the enemy has attacked many of you in many ways. Trauma and abuse and lies and toxic relationships. That is not God trying to make you stronger. It's not. My Bible says that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. There is no darkness in God at all. So he cannot kill people, sexually abused children, rob you of your finances to try and grow you. That is not how he works. He is love. He is the light that causes darkness to be confused. The enemy wants you to believe that and blame him for the work he's doing to keep you from having your story become full. And so mending your nets is about where your attention goes, how you move, and allowing yourself to actually be doing different. I know we want to get saved and keep it real, but we don't have to keep it old. There's going to be some differences. When I was a kid, they used to say it'll change how you dress, how you talk, how you walk. It will, actually. You have to allow the work of the Holy Spirit internally to transform you fully. And that's going to mean connecting to your pain and connecting to the things that are torn. You can do some of that work on your own. But remember, James was mending his net with his brother, whose name meant God is gracious. God will help you understand how grace comes into your story and how grace becomes a part of your story, finishes your story and takes you out into the world to cast that net. It has to have God's Grace in it. Because if it's just your story, you will try to get people to get delivered the exact way that you did. This is how it happened for me. This is what you need to do. You need to break up with them, move over here, call this, Join this club, go to this place, because that's how you got it done. And you missed that. Grace is really how you got it done. You must allow your story to be weaved through with the grace of God. Because when you have the grace in your story, you don't judge other people because you know it was grace. Just because you were able to stop using cocaine on your own without going to rehab doesn't mean that somebody else is out of God's grace. If they need to go to rehab, it might not be your way. Maybe you left a toxic relationship very quickly, meant someone else. It took them a year. It's taking. They're still there. And you've been talking to them and ministering to them, and it's been six months or a year and you've been. They just don't want to change. They just don't know the grace is being weaved differently in their life. How dare you get impatient with the grace journey in someone else's life? But you have to have grace put in your story so much that it makes you humble. Am I smart? Yeah, I was born smart. I got these brain cells. I got a big brain. I see all these things. I see all these things in nature and science and all of that. But, baby, if it had not been for Jesus, all these gifts would be in the ground because I wouldn't have survived my suicide attempt at 19. I wouldn't be here. All of that gift but the grace of God. And so I'm not going to get tired of you if you're telling me, oh, gosh, I'm still struggling with these suicidal thoughts. We're going to support you. We're going to pray for you. Because I know grace in my story. If you will mend your net by being honest about the mess generationally and personally, with the grace of God, you'll be ready to catch your next. I'm almost finished. Stay with me. We have to be willing to say yes when he calls us. I want you to bring all your skills, your gifts, your professional understanding to the work of God and see what happens. Does that mean you can never do your work again? I'm not saying that you might be a singer. Do you have to now you can only sing Christian music? I'm not Saying that. I'm not saying. If you're a filmmaker, do you mean you can only make movies about Jesus? I'm not saying that you let God lead you in how it gets done, but bring it, offer it. Be willing that part. Be willing to lay it down. Many of you in your next is going to need to make the Isaac sacrifice. Abraham was promised a son. His son's name was Isaac. He finally got him after he tried to do it his way. And then God challenges him to sacrifice him. He literally walks up to a mountain about to sacrifice the promised child. But there was a ram in the bush. God was after his obedience, not his actual thing. And so we have to be willing to walk up that. Let me tell you, I walked up that mountain a few months ago because I thought I had to move out of California and I didn't want to. But I said, God, wherever you want me to go, I'll go. And someone's like, you want to go? I said, I don't want to. I'm hoping there's a ram in the bush, but I'm willing to not have any idols. I'll put anything on this altar for God. Amen. And there was a ram in the bush. Look at your neighbor and say, hey, Ram, y'. All. My Ram. He didn't. He let me say. He's like, you're gonna be a pastor, though. I was like, okay, but it's good. It's good. Be willing to lay it down, give it to God. Any big question you have about those things. Never go to God or his Word with a question until you are willing to get the answer you don't want. That's the heart posture of humility. That I have a question for God. Is this okay? Is that okay? Is that. I don't touch my Bible. I don't pray until I have my heart in a place where I could possibly get the answer I don't want, because that means that I have God on the throne and not myself. Humility. So we're going to cast our nets. We're going to take our professional lives out. We're going to be made new Wineskins. We're going to allow ourselves to be changed, and we're going to mend the stories. We're going to make sure that we mend and heal and we're ready. And then I want you to do those things or be involved in those things. I believe if you do that, anxiety will begin to let go of you. Because when something new is coming, anxiety always seems to ride into town because what is it going to be? When is it going to happen? How is it going to go? Anxiety is about me being afraid of how I might feel if things don't go the way I want. Anxiety is a fear of feelings in a lot of ways. It's not the thing that you're scared of. I'm scared that I won't get the part or I'm scared that I won't get married. It's not the thing, it's how you will feel if that happens. And so we're anxious about finding ourselves scared or angry or lonely or other feelings that we don't want. And so when we have to say, step into our next, we can get anxious. But if you will chase humility, be willing to give God all the things and trust him to give it back to you in the ways he sees fit. If you will do the work of your history and be humble about the grace of God in your life and partner with other people and not try to do everything yourself, I promise you it will make room for anxiety to begin to become excitement, to actually cultivate excitement about what I can't see. But because I know who God is, I can be excited about my next because I trust him and not myself. Amen. Stand to your feet. I was so excited to teach you guys this today. Oh, glory to God. Amen. Amen. Next. You're the next one. You're the next one. You're the next one. You are standing on the precipice of your next. And it will be the ultimate dream come true. I hear God, man. That just came out. God has ultimate dream come true in this room this morning. Renew your faith that the desires of your heart can be met right now. Lift your hands if that's you. You need renewal in your dreams, in your desires. If you will release how and what you think it will look like and just let God give you back the excitement. God, refresh them. They're tired. Jesus. Spark fresh in the name of Jesus. Jesus. Let their creativity be reignited. Let their hope be reignited. There is nothing too hard for you. Some have given up on things to protect themselves from how it feels to not get it. God, move that fear. Replace it with your love. The people in this room and the people under the sound of my voice. And I am. Oof. I want you to know that I'm hearing God because this is not my personality. I'm a measured person, so I will measure how I speak about things. But for me to say God is telling me Prophetically to say the people in this room and under the sound of my voice, your dreams are reachable. That God wants this for you, that he will give you the desires of of your heart. It will maybe be reshaped. It might be a different place, time, location thing, but God is going to do it. He's saying, be excited. Do not be afraid to be excited. Do not fear it. Be excited. You have heard me say over and over, my life has been the windiest road in the world. But the things that have happened, he has not ever forgotten a thing. He has had all, I got two big dreams left out of like eight. And he has done those things and he did several of them in two years ago, so. And I'm older than most of y'. All. Don't worry about it. If I had known at 30 that some dreams wouldn't come true till 50, I would have almost lost my mind. I'd have been kicking and screaming like a toddler. 50, but they came to pass later, but bigger than I ever dreamed. Bigger than I ever dreamed. Guess what? I wanted to publish my first book by 35, but I'll take 50 and enjoy new York Times bestseller and one of the top five selling black authors in the country, secular or faith based. I'll take that now over my little bit at 35. Yeah, I'll take that now. I'll take a brand new author getting three book deals for a million dollars. A brand new author. I'll take that at 49 instead of taking some small thing at 35. Stop limiting God with your impatience. Baby, he's baking big things. Get excited, get excited for you, God, give them the anointing to be excited about their next God, blow them away. Let them hear new things, see new things, feel new things, dream new things. I thank you that they're running into their next. And God, anoint them to see it without limiting it. Yeah, anoint them to see it without limiting it. Because we can get so detailed in how we want it to turn out that if one of our details doesn't come to pass, then we ready to throw the whole thing away. So I'm asking God to anoint your vision to see it without limiting it. Oh, I feel it in the air. We gotta go. You ready for next? I'm ready for next. I'm ready for mine, I'm ready for yours. I'm gonna rejoice with you. And I'm ready for hours. And this is a special family. Stay connected. If you don't not know Jesus, let me Stop. Let me not miss that. Because it's because of Jesus that we can receive this refreshing. It's because of Jesus that we can receive this excitement. It's because of Jesus that we can regrip our dreams. If you don't know him and you'd like to know be in relationship like you hear us being, just slip your hand up or put it in the chat if you're online. Hey, come here. Do you mind coming down here? If you don't have to come? You can still meet them. But I just love to see my new family members up close. One family. We got a brother joining our family of God. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Anybody else? Anybody else? Did I see another hand? Come on. If you're here and I missed it. If you're in the chat, I'm so excited to be family with you now. Hey. What's your name? Nico. What's up? Welcome. Hey. What's your name? Dale. Caleb. Hey, you guys. Look at that. Hey, come on. Men of God. Yes. What's your name? Josiah. Josiah. Nico. Caleb. Sister. We got a sister. Come on over here. What's your name? Aaliyah. Anita. Anita. Hey. Oh, they keep on coming. Give me last name. What's your name? Jordan. You guys give it up for the most important thing we do. Welcome. We won't be a long time on this one because it's not hard. Oh, you guys are y' all gonna make me cry. Don't. Come on, man. What's your name? Kevin. Shana. Man, this is a good looking family. I must be cute because my family is good looking. My Bible says in First John 4 that if you believe that Jesus is the son of God, then that means you're in God and God is in you. And so I don't need you to list off all the things you think you've ever done wrong. He bought your forgiveness on the cross. It's harder to forgive yourself than it is to be forgiven by Jesus. Cuz he did the work already. And so I want to just ask you this. Do you believe that Jesus was the son of God? Do you believe he died for real for you and that he rose from the dead like you're at a funeral and a dead person gets up, like literally rose from the dead because we believe it. Well, welcome to the family you're in. That's the peace. Father, I just lift them up a few you right now. And we thank you that all of heaven is making even more noise than we are. That these souls have decided today to step into a relationship with Jesus that is alive, that is beautiful, that is loving, that is empowering, that is protecting, that is life changing. Thank you for their next just starting at this moment. Help us as a family to surround them and take good care of them and let them know they are never alone on this walk. Bless us all as we leave this place. In Jesus name, Amen. Amen.