After This I Want My Stuff Back!

Gen 15:1?14

After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.

And Abram said, Lord GOD, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eliezer of Damascus?

And Abram said, Behold, to me thou hast given no seed: and, lo, one born in my house is mine heir.

And, behold, the word of the LORD came unto him, saying, This shall not be thine heir; but he that shall come forth out of thine own bowels shall be thine heir.

And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be.

And he believed in the LORD; and he counted it to him for righteousness.

And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.

And he said, Lord GOD, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?

And he said unto him, Take me an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a ram of three years old, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.

And he took unto him all these, and divided them in the midst, and laid each piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.

And when the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.

And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.

And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;

And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.

“AFTER THIS, I WANT MY STUFF!”

There are some things that God is very open and candid about when He starts talking to men.  He doesn’t hide the fact that we will have persecution, affliction and struggle.  He is very open about that.  He was open with Abraham, and in the test that I shared with you, He said, “You’re going to go through a battle for your seed!”  “The devil is after your seed!”  “He is after your son!”  He is after your destiny!  You have to fight for your seed!  The reason that men are coming up under such conflict, war and attack, is because the enemy is after the seed!

Satan is after the seed!  He is after the ‘zerah’ the man.  He wants to terminate the man.  He never went after the woman, he went after the man.  He wanted to destroy the man.  The King James Version uses a phrase in the scriptures, “….He wanted to cut off, (blot out), every one that pisseth against the wall.”  It is a term for men.  He was saying that he wanted to kill the men.  I want to leave the women raising children by themselves, hurting, wounded, and broken.  I want to destroy and kill the men, because men are men of war!  If I can kill the man, then I can leave the family impotent!  I will leave the wife forsaken!  I will leave the children confused!  I will leave the little boys homosexual!  I will leave the daughters with low self esteem and no understanding of how a man is to be appreciated!  If I can just kill out the male image, I will have them taking the title “father” out of the Bible!  They will find the very mention of male repugnant.  I want to destroy men!

No healthy man or woman who came from a healthy family would ever be ashamed to say, “Our father….”  The father has been protection to them, a source of strength!  We are not insulted to say, “father.”  You have to understand that the image of men has been so suppressed, broken and torn down, that every mention of it is being wiped out!  You can’t hardly find clothes that are absolutely masculine anymore!  The man that is becoming the enemy is wanting to make the man extinct.  It’s not the woman, it’s not the media, it’s the enemy!  It’s the spirit of the enemy!  “…For we wrestle not against flesh and blood…”  It’s the enemy!  Anything that rises up against Jesus Christ, exalts itself against, or in opposition to, the knowledge of God; we can’t just close our eyes and say, “That doesn’t matter!”  It does matter.  You have hit the core of my faith!  If you do not believe that Jesus is Lord, then you are teaching that Jesus is the bastard son of Mary!  If he was not born of the spirit, then he was conceived of a dark lonely night, on a back road, on the back end of a horse, born out of wedlock between Joseph and Mary.  How can you join with that?!  Or say amen to that, or be taught by that!? 

We need healing, we need restoration!  What has happened to us is that there is so much hate.  So much rage has distorted our perception!  Everybody, not just blacks and minorities, is angry!  Men are raging in war and frustration because Satan has turned up the heat, and when the heat is turned up, everybody blames everybody else!  Everybody is angry and pointing their finger in someone else’s direction, refusing to recognize the source of their frustration and anger is Satan!  We have got to join our forces against the enemy and not each other!

Touch somebody and say, “After this I want my stuff!”

God told Abraham, the man of faith, “I am going to bless you through your seed!”  So the enemy hits at the very core of family relationships, because he wants to stop the relationship between you and your seed.  Many of us were raised from brokenness, that still affects us, no matter how much we try to act like it doesn’t!  It affects how you see yourself, how you deal with pressure in relationships, how you deal with problems, it terrorizes you!  If affects how you are able to be stabilized in relationships.  If your father quit, then it is easy for you to quit too!  As badly as you hate it, being raised without his affirmation, if you are not careful, through some strife or confusion, you will do the same thing to your son that was done to you.

I want to talk about men, marriage, and money!

The enemy is out to destroy you as a man.  He is out to leave you impotent.  He doesn’t mind you surviving, just as long as you are impotent!  He wants you to be left laying by a pool, broken fragmented, tattered, and torn.  Ineffective, impotent, unable to perform or to produce what the head has commanded!  An impotent man has all his apparatus, but it doesn’t function or work!  Everything that should produce life, doesn’t.  It doesn’t make sense!  Why doesn’t this work?  The enemy wants you impotent, but you serve a God that is omnipotent!  He is a functioning, working, potent God!  He is all potent!  He is full of force!  He says to Abraham, “You are going to go through affliction, but I am potent enough to take you through an impotent time!”  “I’ll take you through it!”  “You are going to be afflicted, four hundred years, your people will be in Egypt!”  “You will go through oppression!”  Whenever God gets ready to take you through oppression He always uses men.  God uses relationships to perfect character!  If you really want to have your character perfected and strengthened, God will put you in situations where you are stretched by relationships.  You ask the Lord to teach you patience, and He sends you someone to get on your nerves!  You tell Him that you want to love like Him, and he sends you someone so hateful that you say, “All right, get started already!”  “Anytime now!”  “Round number one!”  You start going through those kind of changes, those kinds of areas because God is doing a work inside of you!  God is about the business of perfecting you through marriage, children, work and church relationships!  I am not saying that all of these things are fair or even right, or even good, but if you believe in the sovereignty of God like I do, then you believe that God is ultimately in control, and that means that the enemy cannot take you through anything without God’s permission!  That means if God allowed it to happen, then ultimately it’s going to work together for good!

Look at somebody and say, “After this I want my stuff!”

I am going through what I am supposed to, shedding the tears that I am supposed to be shedding, fighting what I am supposed to be fighting, and I am enduring what I am supposed to be.  I have bit my lip, taken broken relationships, and all of that and been quiet and held my peace.  I’ve taken it like a man, when I wanted to rise up in rage and war and frustration.  I have been a good little boy and ate my cereal and drank my milk, but, “After this, I want my stuff!”

Exod 1:7?12

And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.

Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.

And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we:

Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.

What the Pharaoh was saying was that anytime righteousness exalts a nation, sin is a reproach to any people, anytime the wicked shall rule, the Bible said that the earth shall mourn.  That’s why you have to be careful who you let speak for you, who you let be your head, because when the wicked shall rule, the whole earth shall mourn.  They were all right until there arose a Pharaoh who did no know the God of Joseph.  And when a Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph or his God, he began to abuse them, to abnormally use them!  He began to frustrate them.  This is the situation!  He says, “The children of Israel are mightier than we……., let use deal wisely with them!”  The first thing that you need to understand, is that no matter what is oppressing you, and I am not just talking about people, I am talking about circumstances, habits, situations, addictions; whatever is oppressing you, whatever is your slave master, whatever your bandage is, you need to understand, that you are mightier than the thing that is oppressing you!  I don’t care if it is a cigarette, you ought to pull that thing out and take a look at it and say, “This thing is too small to let it whip me!” 

The enemy says, “The children of Israel are mightier than we!”  Whenever Satan wants to destroy a man and keep him from fulfilling his destiny, the first thing that the enemy does, if he cannot terminate him totally, is to stop him from knowing what he has!  “The children of Israel are mightier than we, but let’s not let them know it!”  So what you are looking at is a spirit of low self-esteem!  Let’s not allow any man that God is going to use, to think that he has purpose, power, or potential!  Let’s do whatever we need to do, to keep him broke, busted and disgusted!  Depressed, oppressed and confused!  We will use anything that is available to us to use: race, childhood, brokenness, molestation and abuse, we will remind him of his failures and mistakes, broken marriages and covenants, whatever it takes, let’s keep him so full of low self-esteem that he does not think he can get up of out!

A gang member was being interviewed and was asked the question, “do you think you can move up and out of the ghetto?”  He replied, “There is nothing else but the ghetto!”  My response is, “Get you a one way ticket to here!”  You can change!  If you don’t like the way your life is, you can change it!  Right here, right today, I want you to hear what I am telling you!  If you don’t like you situation, your financial circumstances, you can, with God on your side, change your life! 

That’s what causes rage to break out in the hearts of men, when we think we have no options.  Anytime a man thinks that he has no options, he becomes angry, murderous, dangerous and abusive!  Some of you may be angry, but some are depressed and you have been depressed for months!  You have danced around and jumped and jerked, but up underneath all that jumping, dancing and jerking, you are depressed!  When nobody is looking, you just feel like driving the car off the bridge!  It’s because you think you are in a situation that you cannot get out of and you think you have no options!  You are tied up in your marriage, your finances, your self-esteem, you are talking encouragement, but you are living defeat!  You don’t think that you can get out of it, but that devil is a liar, and, “AFTER THIS, I WANT MY STUFF!”

You don’t have to be black or white and poor to be trapped!  You can be black or white and wealthy and be trapped!  Trapped into circumstances, but “After this, I want my stuff!”

Being trapped produces pressure, stress, frustration, and becomes overwhelming.  You become wounded.  If you are not careful, when you become wounded it throws off your perception of things.  It changes how you treat other people, your companion, your son, your daughter.  You don’t feel like you used to feel!  You are trapped!  You come home tired and weak, weary, broken, wounded and hurting!

Men are confused, their masculinity has been misdefined.  We don’t know just exactly what we are supposed to be anymore.  Our fathers were taught to be strong and silent, and some of them were so silent that they never told us that the loved us!  They were so strong that they were never gentle with our mothers.  They were so masculine that they never affirmed us, and being taught the strong and silent theme, from two years old and upward we were taught, “real men don’t cry!”  “Be a man!”  So we spent all of our lives being tough!

Every generation has its rules.  “Jim, if you are going to make it in this corporation, you have to dress for success!”  “White shirt, paisley tie, blue pin-striped suit, black wing-tipped shoes, or you can’t make it.”  “Jim, if you are going to make it, then you are going to have to learn to go out in the evening and have drinks with the fellows.”  Every society has its rules that pressures us to divorce our own identities to become a part of the team.  All races have their gangs.  There is no difference between a man who is an alcoholic stopping by a club after work, sipping cool wine from a chilled glass, and the wino who wraps the bottle in a brown bag and drinks it up under a bridge; both of them are strung out!  When you enter a rehab, you are going to have to share the same room!  Because a problem, is a problem, is a problem!  We express is different, we go through different motions, but it’s the same struggle, because sin is not prejudiced!

After spending all our lives hiding our sensitivity, we are now supposed to be sensitive.  Now our generation comes up and says, “Real men are sensitive!”  Now we are confused.  Different ages, stages and levels of potency, different levels of what is or is not important, and when men have real problems, they don’t tell anybody!  All of a sudden you reach that era of your life where everything is based on performance!    You’re not 21 anymore but you got to act like you are! 

This country has become a melting pot for dysfunction.  It was oppressed, dysfunctional people that settled America.  Whenever oppressed people get into authority, they begin to oppress!  Because molested children are more apt to become molesters.  The feeling is, “If I ever get in control, I am never going to forfeit the position!”  And then here comes Africans, and Indians on reservations, Europeans, Asians, boat people, crossing on canoes, dying to get here, and they call this country a melting pot.  Is it really a melting pot?  I think not, because we have never melted!  We have never meshed!  It is hard to bring union where there is dysfunction!  It doesn’t matter whether you are talking about marriage, men, or a nation, dysfunction has so much intimidation that we don’t want to give up control, so we abuse people!  Everybody is crowding into America on the run.  They are by and large, all dysfunctional.  And now we are all over here.

There are some serious problems.  Every victim, if he does not learn forgiveness, if he does not learn the Word of God, he ends up victimizing!  The safest place is control!  “Now I am on top!”  Everybody is fighting to get on top!  So they can do to the one that was oppressing them, what was done to them!

I don’t think that I come to make you shout tonight!

There we are in this confusing, chaotic situation.  What are we going to do about all of this?  It’s not enough to just have meetings where we preach about these things.  Or just go to church together.  We have got to get beyond simulated brotherhood to real brotherhood!  Real reconciliation means that we each give up some control and allow the other person into our space.

What makes the black man's abuse unique is the fact that the family unit was destroyed!  It happened so much that it become normal.  Then came emancipation, they were free.  They could be family.  (What’s that?)  Now they get married?!  Now they are called “father’s?!”  Then comes stress, and you know that it is a natural thing that when stress comes, you revert to type!  To what is familiar!  “Ain’t got to stay noway!” 

What you are dealing with is the molestation of a nation, a nationality!  Just government programming would never fix it.  Molestation creates perversion, and it’s not a matter of blame, it’s a matter of understanding.  It is creating rage!

There are some things in you that if you ever release them, your family, your finances, your circumstances, are going to be completely turned around.  But Satan is saying, “Let us deal wisely with him because we do not want him to know what he has inside!”  That’s why we have got to have Christian Godly men to pour into each other and say, “You are important, you are valuable, you are wounded and hurting, you can get up!”  “…..Having done all to stand, stand therefore with you loins girt about with truth,……”  “Wait on the Lord, He may not come when you want him but He is right on time!”  “After this I want my stuff!”

Hear me!  You have gifts, resources, talents, there are some things that you can do that nobody else can do like you can do it!  You need to break through fear, low self-esteem, frustration, anger, inhibition, childhood struggle, no matter what color it comes in, no matter what school it went to, no matter what side of the tracks it’s on, if God be for you, nobody can be against you!