Rags to Riches

1 Sam. 18:1-4
And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

• And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house.
• Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul.
• And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.

2 Cor. 8:9-9
For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.

• Turn to someone and say, “He’s taking me from rags to riches!
• So much has been said in this generation about the promises of God, that we have failed to tell people of the processes of God!  It is essential and significant for your faith that you understand both the promise and the process, because it is in the process of getting to the promise that the enemy wants to totally destroy you and cause you to be defeated.  It is within that process of getting to the promise that the enemy would try to prevent you from becoming who God intends for you to be!  Regardless of the magnitude of our faith, there are still some things that we have to go through in process, to become what God would have us to be.  It is expensive to be effective!  It is not easy to be effective!  It costs a lot to be effective!
• We have raised a generation of fair-weather, johnny-come-lately, micro-wave oven, instamatic Christians, that if they don’t get everything that they expect to get, the moment that they expect to get it, they leave the church, husbands, wives, and now even the children are divorcing their parents.  People just give up!
  But in spite of our temper tantrums, God is not moved!  There are some things that we just have to go through in order to become what God has predestined for us to become!  When you see God displaying gifts, ministers, and ministries on the stages across this nation; don’t just think that they got there because they were talented; because there is somebody in the kitchen frying fish who is more talented than they.  I hate to tell you that, but it is a fact; there is somebody out there, up under a bridge and drunk, that can out preach me and you.  Out sing us and everything else!  You didn’t get here just because you were gifted and God had to have your gift.  God puts a rich deposit in you, through the furnace of affliction, until there is a glory that transcends being gifted and crosses over the shores of gifted, onto the shores of being anointed!
• The anointing becomes so rich in your life, because it is a composite of everything that you have been through!  It cannot be duplicated or imitated.  The anointing that is on you is an original anointing!  It is fresh!  It is the unction of the Lord manifest through your life’s story!  It was that kind of unique, specificic anointing that caused Elisha to look at Elijah, and say, “I want to be like you,” or “Give me a double portion of your spirit!”  One translation said of Elijah’s reply to the young protégé, “If you see what I see, (if you have aligned yourself with me, if your vision has become my vision, if you walk with me through the process, if you have been with me through the Jordan, if you have been with me at Gilgal, if you had the same experiences,) then finally you will inherit the same anointing!”  But you cannot get the same kind of anointing, until you have gone through the same experiences!  There are no short cuts to it.  You have got to pay the full price.  It costs what it costs, and it doesn’t go on sale.  It is expensive to bring about massive deliverance and to become effective in the Kingdom.
• I am concerned because we are living in a generation of people, who understand the gifts of the Spirit, the fruits of the Spirit, and the working of the Spirit, we understand all of those things, but we have lost foundation!  We have lost substance and fundamentals!  We have lost the power that we used to have!
• What happened to us?  What procured us?  What bought us out of the market place?  You can’t stand up and rebuke the devil until you’ve got a bill of sale in your pocket and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you have been purchased, not by your circumstances at this particular moment, but by the Blood of Jesus Christ which was already shed and is efficacious, (effective, and still working), right now in my behalf!
• We spend to much time trying to learn the traditions of the church, the fundamentals of our doctrine, the history of our movement or organization, but there are some things that God has done for us that we need to take another look at.  All of the Bible apexes or crescendos at the cross!  All of the Bible celebrates the cross.  The cross epitomizes God’s plan of escape for man’s frustration and predicament!  It becomes a monument of God’s ability to transcend every attack that the enemy brings against us!  Everything that we believe, hinges on the fact that we believe that Jesus went to the cross, died for our sins, and rose up with all power in His hands, and said, “I am not another Jesus, but I am He that was dead and am alive forevermore!”  It took God thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, hundreds upon thousands of shadows and types, from trumpets and vials, and weeks and feasts, and all the bowl and vials and trumpets, all the sheep skins, brass, gold, silver, the very dirt on the floor, the laver, the stinking stench of burning flesh in the tabernacle, the smoke going up, the gold overlaying the shittim wood of the ark, it took all of that for God to prophesy to us, what He was going to do in one man!  It took every Aaron, Melchizedek, every prophet and priest, every Samuel, every Saul and David, every Solomon and Jonathan, every shadow and type in the world for God to make us to understand the magnitude of His deliverance, or what He would do in one man’s life in the space of thirty three years.  I took all of the messianic prophesies!  They called Him “That Prophet,” “The Child,” “El Shaddai,” “Elohim,” “Jehovah Jireh,” Jehovah Tsidkenu,” “Jehovah Rohi,” “Jehovah Ropha,” all of the names, the covenant names, are God trying to prepare our minds for the monumental deliverance that would come through a Lamb!
• A Lamb that was first seen in the Book of Genesis as an animal, a neutered, nonspecific term.  An animal that covered the nakedness of Adam.  Later He is identified as a “spotless lamb” that is killed between Abel and Cain to bring about deliverance.  And then as the evolution of the Lamb evolves from place to place, He begins to give us little specifics like, he is to be without spot or blemish, he is to be a male child; and then He crescendos in Exodus by saying that the blood of the Lamb is to be applied to the door post!
  God couldn’t give us the whole plan at once.  It took Him hundreds of years for Him to give us the plan, because the plan is so awesome that it would blow your mind!
• He says that not only is He going to do it through a substitute, a scapegoat, a lamb, but I’m going o take the blood of that efficacious, spotless, no bone broken in His body lamb, and I’m going to apply it to the lintel and the door post of the believer!  You got to have a personal experience with the blood of the Lamb, you cannot stand aloof from it, looking at it and admiring it, there has to be a personal encounter with it! ;you have got to have been smeared with the effecaceous Blood of Jesus Christ!  Are you ready for this tonight?
• You have to understand that He evolved and began to minister through shadows and types and to tell us what it all took for the lamb to be!  And finally in Isaiah, the prophet identifies the fact that the lamb is not even a lamb at all but the lamb is a man!  For he says, “For behold He goeth as a Lamb to the shearers, and he openeth not His mouth!”  Isaiah tells us that the lamb is a man, but John points out which man it is when he stood in the chilly Jordan, mud up between his toes, and water washing between his legs, standing there baptizing out there in the muddy waters of Jordan, he looks out there and let us know that not only is the lamb to be spotless, not only to be a male child, not only to be without blemish, not only to be killed for our sakes, not only is the blood to be applied to the door posts, not only is the lamb really a man, but the lamb is THAT MAN!  “Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world!”  From that moment on, John began to decrease that He might increase!  And the Lamb of God came to the center of the stage!
• All of the Old Testament looks forward at it!  The Gospels describe it!  The Epistles explain it!  The Revelation explores it!  But the whole Book is about the efficacious Blood of the Lamb!
• Yes, He healed the sick, raised the dead, and turned water into wine!  Yes, in the middle of a storm, He went for a stroll across the sea without a bridge!  Yes, He stopped a funeral procession and touched the coffin and the boy that was in the coffin, woke up!  Yes, He stood outside of a tomb and spoke to a dead man and called him by his name until he came leaping out of the grave!  Yes, He went into a room and shut the door on a girl who was dead and they were having her funeral, He disrupted the whole funeral when He walked into the room and spoke to her and said, “Talitha Cumi,” that is to say, “Daughter, I say unto thee, Arise!”  Yes, He took two fish and five loaves of bread and broke it into pieces until it fed thousand men, not to mention women and children!  Yes, He spat in the eyes of a blind man until the blind man opened up his eyes and said, “I don’t know anything about Him, but one thing I do know, once I was blind but know I see!”  Yes, He stopped by the tombs that housed the Legion of Gadarenes, got a hold of a man who could not even be chained and spoke to him and broke the demonic curse that was on his life, and He spoke to the demons and drove the demons into the pigs and the pigs committed suicide rather than to be possessed!  Because if Jesus is Lord at all, He is Lord of all!
• Yet none of that is what He came to do!  That is just what He did to occupy His time while He was on His way to His purpose!  That’s how He “chilled.”  Look at somebody and say, “He is awesome!”
• When He got ready to go to the cross, He rebuked anybody or anything that hindered Him from His progress there!  They thought that He was being taken, but He told them, “I’m not being taken,” “No man takes my life, I lay it down!”  “If I lay it down, then I have the power to take it back up again!”  He rebuked the very disciple that was trying to stop Him from dying!  He said, “Get behind me Satan!”  “I’ve got to do this!”  He had to pay the full price!  He had to go through what He had to go through to bring about lasting deliverance!
• We preach Calvary, the cross, from a humanistic perspective.  We talk about the terror of the cross!  We talk about the cruelty of the cross!  The wretchedness of the nails that were driven into His hands and feet!  We talk about the awfulness of His beating, as if that was the horror of the cross!  But that is only the human perspective of horror!  The horror that drove Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray that night, was not the fear of nails.  He didn’t have to worry about the nails, He could have not created the element that nails were made out of, after all, it was His own foot print that hollowed out the mountain that would be Calvary, He could have crushed it and made a plain or a dry place out of it, He didn’t have to create the tree that would be the cross, He didn’t have to call into being the day that would be His crucifixion, He didn’t have to let the soldiers live that arrested Him, all of this was God divine purpose, god manipulating all things after the counsel of His own will!
• Isn’t it funny how that God, “……Causeth all things to work together for the good of them that love the Lord,” how that He will be working, “……Both to do and to will according to His own good pleasure!”  Whether you know it or not, even right now in your life, God is orchestrating all the events and the affairs of your life, that you might crescendo into your divine purpose, and that is why we don’t get all upset with people who are all upset with us!  We don’t render evil for evil, for even our enemies are working together for our good!  “…It is good for us that we have been afflicted!”  “We glory in tribulation, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience, experience, and experience, hope, and hope maketh not ashamed for the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost!”  That means that it is all good!  The bad is good!
• When Jesus goes into the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, He agonizes over an eternal aspect of the cross!  You see, when you start talking about Jesus, you start talking about Him being some sort of demi-god, but He is not a demi-god, He is not a subordinate god, He is not God Junior, He is God!  He is not some little cute god, some little shadow of a god, He is God Himself!  The Bible said, “He thought it not robbery to be equal with God, made of Himself no reputation……..!”  Paul said, “Without controversy, great is the mystery of Godliness, God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the gentiles, believed on in the world, and received up into glory!”  Before he could finish saying that John said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, all things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made, in Him was life and the life was the light of men, and the light shined in darkness ant the darkness comprehended it not.  There was a man sent from God, he was not that light, but sent to bear witness of that light, saying surely there is one coming after me Who is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to latchet………………,” finally it crescendoed, “…..And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us!”  The abstract was made concrete!  The invisible was made visible!  The unseen God, manifested Himself in human form!  God himself!
• If you take a glass of ice water and bring it to a chemist and ask him, “What is in the glass?”  He will say, “H2O!”  You will say, “Ice and water,” but to the chemist, they are the same thing!”  Different manifestations, of the same chemical equation!  One!  The water is in the ice!  The ice is in the water!  But it is still one!  If you take it and put it on the stove and boil it until it becomes steam, you can see the steam going up as vapor in the air, and yet it is still H2O!  It manifests itself in a multiplicity of forms, but it is still H2O!  There are some things that can be said of the steam, that cannot be said of the ice!  There are some things that can be said about the ice that cannot be said about the water, but regardless of the specificity of their characteristics, they are still one thing!  “Behold, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one, and beside Him there is no other!”  He manifested Himself as the Father in Creation, the Son in redemption, the Holy Ghost in regeneration. Yes, they can co-exist at the same time for they are the one and same!  “For there is one Lord, one Faith, and one Baptism, one God and Father who is above all, through all, and in you all!”
• Yet when that one God got ready to manifest Himself in flesh, He had to give up some things in order to come!  There are some things that can be said of God in creation that cannot be said about the son in redemption!  The Father is omnipotent, omnipresent, in all places at all times, the Father neither goes nor comes, He is Jehovah Shammah, the God who is there!  God is not on His way!  You might be on your way, but He is not on His way!  Where ever you are trying to go, God is already there.  He is with you while you are on the trip, and yet He never left your house!  The Lord is Shammah!  He is already here!  You don’t have to wait on Him, he is already there!  The truth of the matter is, most of the time, He is waiting on us!  He is waiting on us to believe, to trust Him, but don’t you act like you are waiting on God to show up like God just missed the bus and He’ll get there some time and you just got there ahead of Him!  The devil is a liar!  The Lord has been with you all the time!  I might shock you right now but let me tell you that the Lord was with you even before you got saved!  He was with you while you were still drunk on the bar stool!  You were full of Bud, or Stroh’s and all of that other crazy stuff you were drinking, driving down the interstate in the middle of the road, couldn’t figure out how fast you were going, smelling like a pack of Pall Malls, or reefer, and everything else: It was God that didn’t let the car kill you!  It was God that didn’t let that man shoot you in the head!  It was God preserving you so He could save, justify, and glorify you!  And suddenly you wake up and realize, He was there all the time!  Touch somebody and say, “Jehovah Shammah!”  “He is there!”  “He is there!”  “He is there!”  In the hospital!  In the crisis!  In the courtroom!  In the storm!  In the problem!  In the situation!  “He is there!”  God is omnipresent!
• Christ was on His way, but God was already there!  Jesus came to them walking on the water, but while He was coming God was there!  He (Jesus) traveled from city to city, but when you talk about the Father, He never travels, He is Shammah!  The Son says, “I am with you, and shall be in you!  If I go not away, I can’t be in you because I have to give up the body and come in spirit form, to possess you because no flesh can possess other flesh!  I am with you, but I shall be in you, a well of living water, springing up into everlasting life!”
• When we are looking at the Son, we are looking at God reaching fallen humanity, coming as low as He can, meeting us!  We are looking at God telling angels, “Wait a minute, I got to pour out my glory, and my honor, don’t be afraid, when I am finished, I will glorify the son with the glory that He had with Me in the beginning, but right now I am pouring out glory and honor!  I am giving up omnipresence, stepping out of a holy atmosphere where I am surrounded by angels, praise, perfection and purity, stepping out of an environment where there was no coercion to worship me, but because of our wretchedness, He, (Paul said), Humbled Himself, he stepped down, He abased Himself!  When you are looking at Christ you are looking at God reducing Himself to His lowest possible common denominator!  If He would come in His brightness and power, then who could stand it?  The Bible said that He burned up nations with the brightness of coming!  Entire armies were swallowed up in His presence!  His gory is so awesome that His face is going to light up all of heaven!  If He would have hit Mary’s womb with full impact, He would have blown her up!  He was saying, “Wait a minute, I’ve got to reduce down, I’ve got to pour out, and come down to My lowest common denominator!”  He stepped down into the womb of a virgin, and wrapped Himself up in a coat of flesh, and became Immanuel, God with us!  He tabernacled with us!
• For the first time in His existence, He knew what it was like to be tired, weary, all of a sudden He needed rest. You are talking about a God who never sleeps nor slumbers, but when He took on flesh, all of a sudden he had to rest.  The Bible talks about Him getting weary.  It was God humbling Himself!  For the first time He knew what it was like to be you!  He came down so that He could be touched by the feeling of your infirmity, so that there is absolutely nothing that you can ask Him about, or that you can pray to Him about, that He does not already understand, because He has tabernacled down here just like you, and He can be touched by the feeling of your infirmity!  He humbled Himself!  He came down!  He abased Himself!
  Anytime you are going to be effective, it will cost you something!  If you really want to be exalted, you got to be willing to get way down!
• In my text it said, “He became poor, that we through His poverty, might be made rich!”  He said, “I gave up all that I have, and became like you, so you could give up all that hindered you, to become like me!”  It is the cost of covenant!
• I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of hearing this generation talking about covenant.  We tell someone that a certain person is my “covenant brother” and then he walks out of the room and we talk about him like he’s a dog!  It costs something to cut a covenant!  God teaches us what covenant is when He humbled Himself and took on the form of a servant!  He wrapped Himself up in clay and became a servant!  Covenant!
• How much will it cost us to become what God would have us to be!  When we get through dancing and shouting about it, and decide to really possess it, how much will it cost us to be used in the Kingdom!
• Those of you who are being raised up right now, there are those who are jealous of you, intimidated by you, afraid of you, because of your gift, and they don’t understand how much it cost you to be used!  They don’t know how many nights you had to dry, how much you had to sacrifice, they think that it is easy to be you!  They don’t know that anointing that is on you, cost you everything!  You cried for it, labored for it, you humbled yourself, you stepped down, took things you didn’t want to take, put up with things you didn’t have to put up with, so that God could use you for His glory!
• It’s not easy being me!  Before you jump up and tell God that you want to be like me, let me tell you one thing!  It’s not easy being me!  Before you covet my gift, my anointing, try to assassinate me and take my place, let me tell you, it ain’t so easy being me!  Maybe you better have a few dress rehearsals before you buy the suit!  It’s not easy being me!
• I’m not being negative, but it’s not easy!  I’m don’t want to depress you, but it’s not easy!  I had to come through the furnace of affliction, you weren’t there when I was going through it, when God was stripping me, humbling me, molding, making, and breaking me, you saw me when I came up, but you didn’t see me when I went down!
• There was a reason for your pain.  You weren’t going through pain, just to be going through pain.  You weren’t being humble, just to be humble!  God was setting you up for the greatest blessing that you have ever seen in your life! I don’t know who I am preaching to tonight, but whoever the Lord sent me here to preach to tonight, don’t you think that all hell is broken loose in your life, God is still in control, and when He gets through working things out, He’s going to cause the things that made you dry, to make you dance and shout!  God is going to get some glory out of this!
• What I am trying to tell you, is that all of those things that you have been going through, all of those things that you have been wailing over, and laboring over, stressing over, praying over, I want you to understand that all of it is for a reason!  God is up to something! You are not supposed to panic, this is a setup!  God is going to ambush the devil that is trying to destroy you!  He is setting up an ambushment!  The devil meant it for evil, but God meant it for good!  I know you look bad right now, but after you have suffered a while, God is going to stablish you and make you perfect!  “Just give me three days and I’m coming out of this!”  “Just give me three days and I’m going to rise again!”  “Just give me three days!”  “Three days is all I need!”
• You been feeling it in your spirit, you been feeling it in your heart!  You been shouting and didn’t even know what you were shouting about!  All hell was breaking loose in your life and you jumped up and went to dancing!  You didn’t even understand yourself why you were dancing!  Got through dancing, got back on the pew or back in the car and went to crying!  Let me tell you why you were dancing, your spirit knows that when you come out of this, you are going to come forth as pure gold!  I’m coming out like gold! Why don’t you praise Him like you know you are coming out!  Like you really believe it!  Praise Him like it isn’t nothing but a setup!  Praise Him like you know, that you know, that you know, that you know, that you know!
• To whatever I got to go through, I say, Yes!  To however long I got to cry, I say, Yes!  To no matter what people say about me, I still say, Yes!  Lonely, but I still say, Yes!  Rejected, but I still say, Yes!  I may not be in the good old boys club, but I still say, Yes!  They may not invite me out to dinner, but I still say, Yes!  I might not be in the clique or in the club, but I still say, Yes!  God will be glorified!
• I don’t know why I am preaching like I am, but whoever you are that I am preaching to, God is about to blow your mind!  He’s about to bring you into something that you haven’t been trained for, that you aren’t qualified for, and nobody would ever believe that God would give something like that to somebody, let alone you!  He’s about to blow your mind!  You are going to get a blessing you didn’t even see coming!  Your spirit has already been shouting about it!  You been shouting in your destiny!  You been shouting in your purpose!  You had a crazy praise!  You know that praise didn’t fit your situation!  You know you were going through hell and high water, but you weren’t shouting over where you were, you were shouting over where you are going!
  • (David; the boy, not the king), (I’m not talking about well-dressed David, I’m talking about raggedy David), (I’m not talking about perfumed David, I’m talking about stinky David), (David with sheep-dung on his sandals and smelling like a camel), (ridge-running David, wild, uncouth, unkept David), God said, “I’m going to make you King!”  “You don’t know nothing about being King, so I am going to make you King!”  God is sick of using people who know what they are doing!  Buckle your seat-belt baby, because you are fixing to go somewhere you ain’t never been before!  You are getting ready to take a walk on the wild side!  You aren’t going to know how to do what God has given for you to do!  But God is going to give you an “Exceedingly, abundantly, above all that you can ask or think….,” blessing that is going to blow your mind!  If you don’t pray you won’t even know what to do!  You are going to go home every night and say, “God, show me what to do!”  “I never had to do this before!”  “I never saw nobody do this before!”  “I haven’t been trained!”  “I haven’t been mentored, or prepared!” “But bless God, I’m willing, and if you will make me able, I’m willing!”
• So here comes David to the palace!  He makes it to the palace off of his gifts!  Because your gift will make room for you!  It will bring you before great men!  He is in the palace because he had some rocks and a rag!  That ain’t much!  God can like you for strange reasons!  “I like the way you killed that lion.”  “I was watching you when you killed that bear!”  “I was watching you when you was sweeping the church.”  “I was watching you when you was driving the bus, picking up little old ladies from the senior citizens housing!”  “I’m going to give you a promotion!”  “I know they were making fun of you, but I’m going to give you a promotion!”  “I know they were calling you the flunky, but I’m going to exalt you!”  “ I know they were telling you that people were doing nothing but using you, but I’m going to promote you!”
• Somebody is about to get a promotion!  Somebody doesn’t know it but they are being set up for a miracle!  For a commencement exercise!  God is about to take you to another level!
• There he is, his gift has made room for him!  His gift has opened up a door for him!  He kills Goliath with his gift! Whenever you have to fight the devil, fight him with what you are gifted in!  Never fight with somebody else’s gift, fight with your own!  Never imitate anybody, just be yourself!  Even if what you got to work with isn’t much, use that, use “not enough,” use a rag and a rock, because if God will get behind it, it will be much when God gets through pushing it!  I come to tell somebody that you have everything that you need for this next miracle!  You are not waiting on anything, everything that you needed, God gave it!  If you need more money, He will give you more money; more friends, He will give you more friends! Quit holding up your blessing wating on God to make you like somebody else!  God gave you everything that you need!
• When David came into the palace, he came in through his gift!  Youhave got to understand that there is some transitional periods for him.  He is in the place, but he don’t fit in the place.  Have you ever went in somewhere and felt and knew that you didn’t fit in?  You can always tell when people come in that don’t fit in the palace: they are always bowing to the wrong people!  Got on winter shoes in the summer and summer shoes in the winter!  Got on a hat that’s crooked, or on backwards, pants that don’t quite come up far enough to the safety zone!  David was there, but he had nothing to work with!  Just his harp.  Feeling silly.  The blessing has made me feel like a fool.  I’m going in where I don’t feel qualified.  Here I am God, in a position that other people would be jealous to be in, and I go home at night saying, “God, I don’t even know what I am doing!”
• He comes up to Jonathan, and when they met, it was awesome.  It was so awesome that I’m almost intimidated from talking about it!  Most preachers are afraid of it because they are so homophobic that they don’t want to talk about David and Jonathan!  I am not afraid of it because of being homophobic, I am intimidated because what happened between those two young men was so awesome, and it depicts what happens between Christ and the church And in the shadow of greater things to come, and in my mind,, my vocabulary, my intellect is intimidated by the magnitude of this awesome moment!
• David, the shepherd boy has come to the palace for such a time as this!  He is in the place, he has nothing to work with, he doesn’t have the right clothes, the right training, the right protocol, he has no mentor.  He is a stranger in a palace that is his!
• Some of you right now are strangers in a palace that’s yours!  God’s going to give you houses that you didn’t build, vineyards that you didn’t plant, He is just going to set you in a place that is not even going to feel like you!  It’s not even going to feel right!  You are going to be blessed and feel funny about it!  You’ll be apologizing for being blessed!  They’ll tell you that you look nice and you’ll respond, “Oh, this old thing?”  “I got it on sale!”  It’s because your not used to it!
• There he is in the palace, and when he meets Jonathan, there is a connection that is awesome!  In order to have a connection, or a covenant with anybody or anything, you have to bond together, because you come from similar circumstances.  When you look at David and Jonathan, their lifestyles look completely different.  David is a poor shepherd boy, raised in the field, Jonathan is rich and raised in the palace, there is no similarity there.  David is dressed like a raggamuffin, Jonathan is dressed like a king.  Jonathan has been raised in protocol and the best teachers, in the upper eschelon of his community, David has been raised around sheep and goats, but the bond is this; David is raised by a carnal, fleshly, selfish father, who is so consumed with his own identity that he doesn’t even suggest David as somebody that could be anointed to be king!  David is a rejected son, raised by a carnal father!  Here we have the bond, because Jonathan, though he is dressed in wonderful garments, and lives among the royal tapestries, has submitted himself to a carnal father, who is selfish, fleshly, and so consumed with his own identity!  And when they saw each other, they looked beyond the externals, down into the internals, and they saw the commonness of their plight.  For when Jonathan, though he was dressed much better than David, when he looked at David, dressed in hi ragged clothes and smelling like the field that he came from, Jonathan, looked beyond his faults and saw his need, and they bonded together and the bond was so awesome!
• The bond was awesome, that one of them said, “You love is better to me than the love of a woman!”  He was saying, “All of a sudden I feel like I fit!”  “I feel like you know what I am thinking!”  “I feel like you know what it feels like to be me, you know my pain!”  “You are not trying to figure me out, you understand me!”  They cut a covenant, based on their similarities, in spite of their diversity!
• Here comes Jonathan all dressed up like a prince, coming to David!  David with his head down, weary, worn and sad, approaches Jonathan!  That’s like I came to Jesus, weary, worn and sad, but I found in Him a resting place, and He has made me glad!  I came not understanding the oommunion, the fellowship, or the faith.  I didn’t understand worship, holiness or morality.  I didn’t understand the promises or the working and the moving of the spirit.  I didn’t understand the Holy Ghost or the unction.  I didn’t understand the theophany of God, His presence, omniscience, power, or His glory!  I didn’t understand that I had been justified, sanctified, and glorified!  I did not understand that if any man be in Christ, that he is a new creature!  I was in the right place, but I was still dressed up in where I came from.  Dressed up in the rags of life!  Dressed up in the brokeness of life!  Anybody else would have thrown me out of the palace, but I’m still praising Him for not putting me out!  I didn’t even look right, I didn’t know when to stand and when to sit, but He looked beyond my faults and saw my needs!  Oh Yes, I can get in anybody’s church and get front rwo seats now, but there was a time in my life, you would not have brought me to the front row!
• Oh, but when men didn’t see anything in me, He looked beyond the wretchedness of my plight and circumstance!  He looked beyond my temporary externals and dilemma, beyond my poverty and saw my destiny!  “…He loved me ‘ere I knew Him, and all my love is due Him, He plunged me to victory, beneath the crimson flood!  Oh, Victory in Jesus, My Saviour forever….!”  I feel a glory coming into this place!  I feel a moving of the Holy Ghost!  I feel a touch of the Spirit of God!  The glory of the Lord is in this place!
  There he stands, this would be king.  He’s not yet, but he’s going to be!  He’s going to be!  Jonathan has every reason to hate him, because if David becomes King, it will be at Jonathan’s expense!  Jonathan not only is the son of the king, he is the heir to the throne!  Here comes this no-name boy to take his place.  Anybody else would have fought him, belittled him, made fun of him and said, “You are a nothing!”  But when Jonathan saw him, he loved him!  I know you don’t have anything to work with, but I love you anyway, and I am going to fix you up!  You and me, we are going to make a covenant, because we have shed the same tears, been through the same pain, we have been rejected and ostracized!  I know that I don’t look like you, but I relate to you!  I can be touched by the feeling of your infirmity!  I understand your plight so much so, that I am going to cut a covenant with you!  “Here, shepherd boy, take my sword!”  “That means that I am defenceless before you!”  “I give you my sword, and that means that I allow you the privilege of hurting me!”  Covenant means that nobody can hurt me like you can!  “I am giving you my sword, and that means that loving you has made me vulnerable!”  “It means that I have given my defence away, against you!”  “In fact, here, take my shield!”  “That means that I am naked before you!”  “That means that I am going to let you see things about me that nobody else would see!”  “That means that if you decided to, you could destroy me, because we are going into covenant!”  “I need to be abel to be open and naked with somebody!”
• There you stand!  God wants to do so much in your life and you are not prepared nor ready for it!  You’re anointed, but you are not appointed!  You are going through a crisis, and you look funny, you’re dressed funny, but that’s all right, I love you so much, I am going to cover you!  I know you haven’t even had a bath yet, but I am going to cover your wretchedness, your weakness, your sin!  That’s what salvation did, it covered our ugliness, our past, our background, where we came from, our rags with His riches!  It made us appear as if we were Him!  If covered up our circumstance!  It covered up our weakness!  He gve me the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness!  The helmut of salvation, the breastplate of righteousness, my feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, my loins are girt about with truth, the sword of the spirit, the shield of faith, and He has made me to sit in heavenly places in Christ Jesus!
• Touch somebody and say, “Look at me now!”  “I haven’t always been like this, but look at me now!”  “I haven’t always been Brother or Sister so-and-so, or Pastor or Elder so-and-so, but look at me now!”  “Look at me now!”  “…He’s given me the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, the oil of joy for the ashes of mourning, He lifted my heavy burdens, He broke my yokes, He took me from the gutters of life, He made me what I am!”   “Now, you can sit up and be dignified, and act cute, because you belong here, but I know that if it had not been for the Lord on my side, I would have never been here!”
  “He made me what I am!”  That means that you got on your princely robe, your shield and sword, that means that I have humbled Myself, that you might be exalted!  I have become poor, that through My poverty, you might be made rich!  That’s not even your robe, not your righteousness, that’s My righteousness, it’s My holiness, it’s My mystery, it’s My sanctity and anointing, it’s My covering, in fact, I am goingto sent My angels to encamp round about you!  I am going to sent My angels to guard you!  All you got to do is fear Me, and the angels of the Lord will encamp about those that fear Him!
  Now David, I am giving you My position, My place!  I am going to make you My heir and joint heir with Me!  So whenever you got to the father, don’t go to the father in your name, because you have got on My suit!  But whatever you ask the father, in My name, He will do it!  He don’t even see you, I got you so covered that He don’t even see your past!  Quit talking about your past!  Your past is covered by the blood of the Lamb!  He don’t even recognize you, but if you ask Him in My name, I will open up the windows of heaven!  If you ask anything, ask Him in Jesus Name!  Touch somebody and say, “I got on my Jesus suit!”
• Trust in His righteousness alone, faultless to stand before His throne!
• Now look at this!  Jesus took my rags so that I could have His riches!  He went to the cross in my name, so that I could go to heaven in His name!  He took my place, so much so, that when the father saw Him on the cross, He didn’t see Him, He saw me, and He judged my sins on Calvary’s cross!  Jesus, Who did no wrong to go to hell, went to hell in my place, so that I who could do no right, could go to heaven!  He didn’t deserve to go to hell for me, and I didn’t deserve to go to heaven for Him, but look at this grace!  “In Him I live, In Him I move, and in Him I have my being!”
• Let me tell you something!  God is going to give you a blessing!  The blessing is going to be so awesome that you aren’t even going to see it coming!  It’s going to be a blessing that you don’t even deseve!  You are going to know that you don’t deserve it, but in the name of Jesus, God is going to open up the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing that you will not be able to receive!
• Just when the devil said “No!”  God said, “Yes!”  Just when the bank said, “No!”  God said, “Yes!”  “He is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we can ask or think, according to His riches in glory, according to the power that worketh in us!”
• Take your coat and lay it on somebody!  That’s what God is going to do for you.  He is fising to lay in on you! You are not even going to see it coming, but I am going to lay it on you!  Get ready for it!  Rags to Riches!  Now praise Him like you have lost your mind!  Look at your neighbors and tell them, “I am ready to go from:……….,”
• “RAGS TO RICHES!”