The Pathway To Success Pt. 13

Alright, we're in part 13. Are y'all ready for the word? This is part 13 of our series entitled what the pathway to success and the shoe today in light of all that. Every neighborhood has an ice rink in it right now. Every yard. There wasn't no snow. There wasn't no snow. I know snow. You can shovel snow. There wasn't none but some straight ice. So, we're going with the ice case today. Alright, if you can physically stand up without harm or injury or difficulty, let's stand as we go into this word together. Amen. Tell somebody near you I'm glad you made it to church today. Alright, Joshua 1 8 is our foundation verse for this series. It says, this book of the laws shall not depart from your mouth. From your mouth. It can't just be in the pastor's mouth. In order for you to have good success, it gotta be in your mouth. Not just in the minister's mouth. Not just in the deacon's mouth. Not just in the small group leader's mouth. It can't just be in your mouth when you call upon to share it with people. It just gotta be in your mouth. Did you understand what I just said? When you call on, hey, I want you to read a scripture at the next family dinner and then you're gonna get, no, it's gotta stay in your mouth. Amen. It's just why because because it is essential to you having a good success. It doesn't mean you have to memorize every part of it, every verse, every word, every number, and where it is. Nobody can do that. But you should become so familiarized with its tenets that it controls the way you converse with people. It impacts your language. Yeah. And your life. Furthermore, but you shall meditate in the day and night. So, it can't just be in your mouth. It gotta be on your mind. Day and night. Day and night. I am on a mission to challenge us to get out of this habit of calling, of just designating time in the morning for the Bible. We were taught that's called devotions, right? You, hey, I have my, I have my time in the word in the morning. Well, that's, that's okay. But if you want good success, you gotta be in the word day and night. You start your day with the word. You end your day with the word. You fill your day with the word. And stop saying, am I having my devotions as if devotion is a truncated part of a 24-hour day. Your life is a devotion to God. I said your life should be devoted to God. Not my 30 minutes at six o'clock. How are you gonna check in with God at six o'clock for 30 minutes and then live your life? That's, that's, that's, that's not devotion. That's a check-in. Day and night to get to good success. It's gotta be on your mind. It's gotta be in your internal conversations. Why is that? That you may observe to do according to all that is written therein. This book, y'all, this book is not a New York Times bestseller that you got. It's the hot novel of the week. So you can look into it

for historical entertainment. This book is a lamp to our feet. It's a light to our path. We have in this book who we are and what we could have and what we don't have to accept and how to treat people and how to forgive people and how to understand relationships and how to make business decisions and how to raise children and how to forgive people who hurt you and how to stay out of offense. Like God has this book. We go to this book to live. Amen. It is a critical document. Why? Why? For then you will make your way prosperous. You will make your way prosperous. How can I make my way prosperous pastor? By the time you put in this word, keeping it in your mouth, keeping it on your mind, keeping it in your conversations, and letting it control your movements. That's how you make your way prosperous. Your way is being made prosperous because of your allegiance to the word. Amen. Your way is made prosperous because you don't code switch with the word and you talk one way about the word and about God when you're in an environment with believers but then when you get around your co-workers and your frat brothers and your sorority sisters and your classmates and your teammates, then you start talking raunchy and ratcheted and profane. Watch this. How's that coming out the same fountain? You got really quiet over in this section. Just over in this area. No. No. We're consistent. We don't have these. We don't have a compartmentalized life. I'm not just a lawyer and a delta and a Christian. I'm a Christian everything. Christ is all. Christ is first. His word is preeminent. Then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Y'all gonna have to stand up to hold service. Just stand up right there. You may be seated. I got one simple thing I want to talk to you about today, and it's my subtitle, and that is the importance of partnerships. You cannot be successful by yourself. You have to have somebody. Even if you say from last week, I am the one, pastor. Well, one can chase a thousand, but two can put 10,000 to flight. So guess what? You got to know who's your two. One of the things that made Joshua successful was the critical God-ordained alliances that he had, and I'm gonna tell you about five or so alliances that were critical to his success because you are not going to be successful in isolation because the thing that God is calling you to do and the thing that God is calling you to get involved in doing will always take more than one person to get it done, and the problem with too many people is not do I have the right idea, it's that I have the wrong team. The right idea with the wrong team still will not get you to a place of good success, and we don't always pick our teams well because we pick our teams based on familiarity,

not on skill sets. So we tend to work with people who are incompetent, but they're close. It's okay, we're going to just sit quietly today and take it on there. Let me talk about these partnerships that Joshua had that we need. The first partnership that he had was his relationship with God. There's no other partnership more important than that. The vertical relationship, the vertical partnership starts before the horizontal one. Gotta get that right first. It's a cross. Right with God, right with men. At peace with God, at peace with men. When there's disturbance with men, I must first get direction and peace from God on how to even deal with mankind. It all starts with God. That's what made him so popular, so successful, I'm sorry, not just popular, but that he experienced so many miracles from God because he walked with God. He was a righteous man. He was a man of integrity. He also was a person who spent time listening to God, his voice, and reading his word. His relationship with God was preeminent, and it is dangerous for you to try to be successful without God because you will never get to his level of good success without him because he knows the way that you should go. He knows the people that you need to be connected with, and it is unwise to try to be successful without him. The second partnership that I want to point out that Joshua had was his mentor, Moses. Joshua served Moses as his assistant for 30 to 40 years. That was critical because guess what? Even before Joshua knew where he would end up, Moses was already there. You need a Moses in your life who has already done what you're trying to do. You need a Moses in your life who has the experience and the knowledge and the wisdom to help you navigate places that you're going... Watch this, to help you go through things and situations that you're going to have to go through and to help normalize it for you because some of you think that your pain is strange. When it's not strange, you just haven't talked to the right people about how to work through that. You may not be as close to your Moses as Joshua was to his Moses, but you better follow him on YouTube or something. You better find a way to learn from them and glean from them and get what you need because they have your map. As a matter of fact, not only did Moses have Joshua's map to his success, Moses could actually vouch for Joshua so that when it was time for Joshua to take the leadership mantle and take the leadership responsibilities, Moses could say, he's the guy. Some of you need a Moses in your life to vouch for you and say, she's ready or he's ready. It's hard to have good success without a Moses. And I'm going to tell you this too, not only does Moses have your map and not only is he your mentor,

he also may have, for some of you, your mantle. That's a spiritual term. You may remember when Elijah, the senior prophet, first met Elisha in first Kings chapter 19. When Elijah, the senior prophet, saw Elisha, the one who was coming on the scene, the Bible says, Elijah took off his mantle and put it on Elisha. And Elijah knew that meant he was next. Didn't even see it coming. He knew he was next. And that same mantle later, he used to open up seas with it. But that was the moment when it was passed on to him. But his way, and he said, he later on said, would you please give me a double portion of your anointing? A double portion of your anointing. Elisha said that to Elijah. And Elijah said, the criteria is, you gotta say it's proximity. If you stay with me till I get caught up, if you stay with me till I leave here, you will have twice what I have. And some of you don't stick with people long enough to get everything they're gonna leave with you and everything they're gonna leave on you. You get tired of following people as they get up. But I'm telling you, there's some blessings on people that God calls you to follow that you won't get unless you're proximate to them. Because it's not just what they have for you, it's what they have on them that you need to get on you. And whoever I'm talking to,

you know exactly what I'm talking about. Who's your Moses? The third partnership that he had to have was a partnership with a man named Caleb. Caleb and Joshua were the same age. When they were young men, they were part of a group of 12 spies that Moses sent into the promised land to spy it out, to see what the capabilities were for the Israelites to take over the promised land. When these 12 spies came back, I'm truncating the story, 10 of those spies says, man, we ain't got no shot in there. They got giants in there. And everything looks great, but we're, watch this. We saw ourselves as grasshoppers compared to them, and so that's how they saw us. That's so good right there. We saw ourselves as grasshoppers in the sight of those giants, so that's how they saw us. Because people will take cues on how to treat you and view you from you. And the only two spies that came back saying, we can take that, we can take the giants and the land, was Joshua and Caleb. And no wonder Caleb was there, even at 85 years old, saying I'm still ready to fight for what I believe in, because he was Joshua's partner, and you see their alignment, because they saw the same things. See, so you need somebody when you're building something, you need somebody that sees what you see.

Can you see what I see? Can you get this vision? You can't be the only one that has the vision, and nobody else sees, nobody else understand, nobody else willing to fight for it or work for it. That's hard. God will give you a Caleb. Who's your Caleb? You gotta pay attention to that. The fourth mentorship or partnership that he had was a man that was a priest named Eleazar. And Eleazar was what you would call nowadays a pastor to Joshua. He was the person that Joshua would go to for advice. He was the person that Joshua in chapter 14 was there with Joshua when Joshua was distributing the land. It was Eleazar that was helping to advise him in that. Because see, the reason why you need a pastor, some of you all don't have a ministry call, you have a call to the marketplace. And you need a pastor to hold you accountable so you won't live like the world you work in. You need a pastor that can challenge you and give you principles and tools that you can go to and say, pastor, here's the deal I'm dealing with. Here's the opportunity I'm coming with. How do you think I should handle this? How do you think I should walk in this? Because a pastor's not there just to comfort you

and to cheer you on. If you have a pastor that can't correct you and confront you and challenge you, that's not your pastor. And Joshua was smart enough and wise enough to say, I'm a military leader. I'm gonna go get her. I jump on people. I fight people. I'll do what I have to do. But he had enough sense to go to Eliezer and say, hey, am I handling this right? What's the best way of dealing with this? What's the best way of handling it? You need a pastor. To try to have good success in life without spiritual authority is dangerous. And you don't have to have a close relationship with your pastor, but you have to be able to, this is how you know you got a pastor. First of all, when you come to church, you come to church and you know the pastor is speaking to you. You know the pastor is speaking to you and you come here with that intention. I came to hear what God has to say to me and he speaks to me through my pastor. That's how God works. It ain't magical. That's how he works.

And you don't have to have your pastor walk up to you and walk up in your face and say, you hear me? Because if I got a mic, you hear me. So we don't have to make eye contact because you know there's an alignment between what's happening in this word and what's happening in your life. And you know God hooked that up for you. So watch this. And there's some things God will say to you that didn't even come out of my mouth because he can crystallize it to your life and specify it to your life. But that's being under pastoral authority. understand what I'm talking about. So don't, just because your pastor can't find you and follow you doesn't mean you ain't supposed to be submitted to their direction. The fifth, before I go to the fifth group, I just want, he had military partnerships, he had priestly partnerships, he had community leaders he was in partnership with, but I want to give you the fifth partnership and it comes up in Joshua chapter two. You should read Joshua chapter two. It's a cool story. Joshua chapter two, he had two spies were his partners and a harlot named Rahab. I'm just going to keep it at a harlot. Amen. I was trying to think of other more professional names, but that's pretty much what she was full-time. That was her full-time, that was her full-time work, which shows you that sometimes God will use non-traditional partners for, watch this, when Joshua had to, when he was trying to get Bethel, he was fighting. When he had to go get AI, it was a fight. He says, you see, God said, I want you to take over Jericho. Well, let's get the army. No, you can't take, you can't just go in there and fight. They got a wall around there. But I know somebody that lives in the wall. I read the Bible, you know, her house was in the wall and all the clients trying to clean it up. She had intelligence. She had information that was necessary for him to be successful. And watch this, even though she was still active in that lifestyle, when you read Joshua chapter two, you could see that God was working on her life. She

says, I know who you are. I know who y'all are. I know what the Lord is doing in y'all life. I want to be a part of that. I don't always want to be like that. What I love about God, he doesn't wait till you get all the way out of what you into before he can start using you. That's why you got to be careful when you judge people that God has his hand on, because all of us was in something at one time. I said, all of us was up in something at one time. And some of us, if the truth be told, still got a shoestring in something right now. You ain't all the way loose yet. So, I got somebody that I'm going, you're going to need her because you don't know that space. And you're going to need two spies. Who can be a spy? You got to be a spy. You got to be able to keep secrets. You already know people in your life that you can't use as a spy. We talking about top secret confidentiality, not you. Give me that quote. Give me that quote, Tiffany. Here it is. Most failures, I said it earlier, most failures are caused by bad ideas, not caused by bad ideas, they're caused by bad alliances. So, I want to talk the rest of our time. How do you know how to get the right person? I don't know where I got this from. I've been doing this for so long, teaching this quadrant for so long. I don't know where I got this from. I don't know where I got this from. Teaching this quadrant for so long. I don't remember where it came from, but I'm going to share it with you now. It is what I call the four quadrants of partnerships. They're basically four types of people that you can have on your team. Quadrant one people are people that love you and they love your vision. Quadrant two are people who love you, but they don't love your vision. Quadrant three are people they don't love you, but they love your vision. And quadrant four people, they don't love you or your vision. Now, if you got quadrant four people on your team, it's because you are too insecure to not keep trying to make people like you that don't like you. So, you're doing all this energy trying to get somebody that don't like you and what you're interested in to like you and what you're trying to get done. Andy Stanley calls that sideways energy. Move on. You don't have four meetings with them and they still don't, they still ain't down with you or what you're doing. Move on. Now, we know that these are the kind of people on our team. People who love us and who love the vision. They're committed to us and to the idea that we're building. The most stress in your life will come from these two quadrants right here. It's people who love you, but they don't love what you're trying to get done and what you're

called to do. Now, why is that a bad group? These are people who you keep around because they're usually kin to you. But this is the problem. Their love ain't strong enough to lift you more than their disinterest will drag you. Because whatever you're trying to do requires a passion about the work too. But they ain't into the work, they're just there for you. But they're going to frustrate you because you need them to have the same passion about the work that you do. but you keep them around because they're family. And I'm saying, we can be in a relationship, don't mean we have to be in a partnership. We don't have to do this together. And this will drag you. The other thing that will drag you, and I used to try to work with people like this, people that don't like me, but they like what I'm doing. I said, well, it ain't about me. We all got the same, we all want to see people's lives changed. But it's draining to work with people that don't like you. Everybody say chemistry. When you don't have chemistry with people, it will drain your energy, and you don't have energy to waste. So I say, look for people like this, this is the people that need to be on your team, people who love you and they love the vision. Now, let me give you some more specifics on what to look for, and we're done. When you're looking to decide, should I be a partner with this person in some kind of endeavor, or should I pick this person as a partner

for what I'm doing, or should I become a partner to support somebody in what they're doing, here's something you need to do. Number one, do your research. Don't just research what they're doing, which is important. It's only saying, yeah, man, I got this thing, and all we got to do, if we all put in, we just all had to put in like $999, and we're gonna all be diamonds. Research what they're doing, but also research the person. Especially if it's a person you don't know well, like, just start asking people, you know Baytron now? What do you know about them? I just want to know off the record. What you really want is some off the record information. Can you share anything? What are their weaknesses? Because everybody leads with their best foot. You don't start a relationship with somebody with your bad foot. You start with the good foot. I want to see the other one. So you ask the person, you just ask the person, so tell me, what's your weakness? Well, to keep it real, my weakness is stealing. You know what? Let me hit you back.

Here's what I wrote in my notes. I thought this was very important. I love this sentence. It's so good, I got to read it to you. When you're researching somebody, let patterns speak louder than promises. I'm gonna pat Nessa. Let patterns speak louder than promises. Look at the pattern. Don't be buying a, yeah, yeah, we can do that. Yeah, my company can do that. We got, you know, we got, we do Gladys Knight. We got, we got Lou Rawls. We got Whitney Houston. We did all them people, man. We did Michael Jackson, Prince. Still doing Prince today. They always say, yeah, we can handle all the marketing and all that. Believe the pattern. Because the patterns say you're late, you don't show up, you're unprofessional, you're argumentative, you're combative, but when you came in, you smiling, smelling good, looking good, saying we can make this happen. Believe the patterns over the problem. Because, watch this, because you about to shake hands. And somebody about to shake hands with somebody, you don't really need to be hooked up with. The second thing you want to look at is shared values.

Let me tell you something. You know what made Rahab the harlot and these spies really work good together? Because they had a shared value. You know what they say? If you don't help me, I'm gonna die. And if I don't help you, you're gonna die. Because they know you here, because they know all new men come by this house. Y'all a little slow. And they know y'all was in here. Now, I told them y'all ain't here. Y'all, she hid the men up on the roof. Did y'all read, you should read it. It's really a great story. I should have told y'all to read it before you came to church. Then you'd be like, I know what you're talking about. But, so this is what she did. She hid them on the roof, because the men came, they said, we know some strangers in your house. And then she said, now, we both gonna get killed. I'm gonna get killed when y'all come back to take over. And y'all gonna get killed if they find you here tonight. We had the same value. We trying to live. Do we have non-negotiables, as we are on the same page about? We both have skin in this game, and we have the same values.

Get that stuff done up front. So I'm just talking about good ideas. Do we share the same values? Complimentary strengths is important. You wanna look for somebody who has abilities in areas that you don't. One of the things that keep people past the page from moving their thing forward, is they're doing too much of the things that are connected to the thing. They're not doing the thing that they do the most, they're doing everything. They're doing the admin stuff, they're doing the marketing, they're doing the finances, they're the bookkeeper, they're doing all this stuff, and stuff that they're not even good at, so they never get to do what they're good at. You need complementary strengths. See, and you don't need the same strength. If everybody's good at the same thing, you can only add to what you're building. When you have complementary and diverse strengths, you multiply. I promise you that's true. The next thing is you gotta figure out what the clear roles are. What are the clear roles for this partnership? Be clear about it, put it in writing. This is what you will do, this is what I do. Can we agree on this?

Rahab had a clear role, the spies had a clear role. What are your difference roles? Cultural fit. Now, what's the difference between chemistry and cultural fit? Chemistry, I talked about earlier, can be a personal thing between you and the person. You can have a team that already exists, and you feel like you have good chemistry with somebody you wanna bring on the team, but they're bad culturally for the whole team. Do you understand what I just said? So somebody can be a good chemistry fit with you, you like the person, but they're a bad cultural fit for the rest of the team. And you will force it to work, because you like them. But the whole morale of the team went down when they showed up. And then, watch this, toxicity becomes normalcy. And you start saying stuff like, we ain't even fight like this before. You start going back and saying, remember we used to be happy? We used to have fun working together. What happened? And you all, everybody know, is when they came, you brought them here. Y'all don't like hearing stuff like this, do you? Just, it's just, what is it?

What I'm saying is, this is truth. You have to make sure that what you're adding, anytime you're cooking something, you're talking about spices, anytime you're cooking something, if you add any spice into a dish, it changes the whole complexion of the dish. Don't play with the spices. Just cause you like the way, just cause you like oregano, might have somebody on your team throwing up. This some good stuff, man. I don't, this some good stuff. I know this ain't churchy, churchy, churchy. It's helpful though. Amen. Communication and trust. Pertinent for good partnerships. Let me tell you how you know you got a bad partnership. When you can't talk about the important things. You always avoid the conversations. Do you know how important it is for Rahab and these spies to communicate? And Joshua to have a communication triangle going on? Because check this out. Rahab, you had better, this rope you put down out the window to get us out. This same rope better be here when we get back. And your whole family better be in the house. And then she had to tell them,

or you're all gonna be dead. And then she had to tell them, now they looking for you. You go right up this hill, you stay up there for three days. Cause they're gonna be looking for you. They ain't gonna find you. You stay up there. When they come back through the gate, then you go out. That's, this communication is critical. And when you can't have critical conversations with somebody you're in a partnership with, that's a dangerous thing. And when you have the critical conversation, it ends up in ambiguity. You never have any progress. And it's usually an argument. We don't have time to argue. I'm not talking about disagreements where we disagree and we have healthy disagreement. I'm talking about somebody, you don't even like talking to them because there's always an argument. Who understands what I'm saying? I can't see y'all at DeFort. I can't see you at Zillow. But put your hand up and act like I can see you. Thank you. Mutual respect. Mutual respect means you're not working with a bully.

Bullies are not partnerships. Those are takeovers. A bully is a person that's their way or the highway. They don't want to hear feedback. They don't want anybody else's input. That's stupid. It is stupid for you, even as a leader, to have people on your team that don't have a voice. Because the answer could be in the room even when it's not in your head. You don't have to have all the answers. They need to be in the room. And you might be walking in blindness because you don't let the people around you talk. I will take an answer from any level of the organization. I remember the person at the time that we changed our whole leave policy to unlimited leave. And it was a part-time person working in the staff. Said, why don't we do unlimited leave? I said, that's a great idea. I don't care where the idea came from. I need it. Are you that insecure that you gotta look like you got the right answers when everybody in the room know you don't? And then people with the right information will watch you crash. Mutual respect. Everybody gets respect. The person in the parking lot,

the person cleaning the toilet. I'm going to be honest. Everybody get respect. Amen. We need to watch how people treat other people that ain't on their level too. Who I'm getting upset up in here. It needs to be a mutually beneficial partnership, a win-win. Listen to what Rahab said. I like Rahab. She was good at what she did. She said, listen, I put my life on the line. Go to Joshua chapter two, verse 12. She says, now swear to me by the Lord, she's talking to the spies, that you will be kind to me and my family since I've helped you. I saved y'all's life. Give me some guarantee that when Jericho is conquered, you will let me live along with my father and mother, my brothers and sisters and all their families. This is what their response was. Verse 14, we offer our own lives as a guarantee for your safety. The men agreed. If you don't betray us, we will keep our promise and be kind to you when the Lord gives us his land. That's quid pro quo, quo pro, whatever them three, win-win. I'm trying to be cute and mess the words up. When you got, when everybody's got skin in the game, everybody should win. That's why you got to do contracts with people, especially church people. I said especially church people, because church people keep hearing from God. See, they'll say one thing on you on Thursday, then when the money show up, they done heard from God Friday. God told me Friday not to do that with the money.

See, now you about to get, you about to get, you about to get stole. You about to get the lawyers. You got to put church people on the contract because they be hearing from the Lord. How many know I'm telling the truth? Now this Holy Spirit told me, I know what I told you, but the Holy Spirit said, I ain't know. I be listening to the Spirit. Yeah, okay. Get stuff in writing. Does this make sense to y'all? I got a couple of more. Try before you buy. You have to find a way to give both parties an opportunity to see if this partnership is, makes sense. That could take months. Hey, let's try this out for several months, a year or something. And let's have an end date to where we can both come back together and see whether or not we think this is prudent for the future so that we can watch this so that we can save the friendship even if the partnership doesn't work. That's very important. Try to see if you can do it on a trial basis. Don't make too many commitments too fast. Here's another one. Very important. Seek God for guidance. As godly as Joshua was, there was a moment in his leadership in Joshua chapter nine where he didn't seek God for guidance. Let me tell you what happened. Joshua and his crew, they were dominating everywhere they went. They were taking over places.

And the Gibeonites in verse three decided, hey, we don't have a chance against them. They were neighbors and they're going to come take us. They're going to either kill us, plunder everything we own and control everything, or we got to figure out a way to convince them that we're not from around here and make a peace treaty with them. So they said, this is what we're going to do. We're going to tear up our clothes and make ourselves look poor and broke. And we're going to turn some old molded hard bread and make it look like this bread is molded because it got molded on the trip from how far away we came. So they're coming. This all happened and they're about to deceive Joshua and his team. They're coming in chapter nine and they, I think around verse seven, they meet up with Joshua and they said, hey, we're from a foreign land. Please give us a peace treaty. And when Joshua was supposed to not, he's not supposed to protect them. He's supposed to take over. And he says, where are y'all from? They said, we're from a distant land. We came here to seek peace. He said, this is what he said, how I know y'all ain't from around here. This really happened. How I know y'all ain't from around here. He said, no, can't you tell? Look at our clothes. Look how long, look at this bread. This bread was hot when we, this was hot fresh bread when we left. They was lying to him. This really happened y'all. So guess what? Verse 14.

Verse 14 says, so the Israelites examined the food, but they did not consult the Lord. The food said, yeah, they looked at the food and said, yeah, it's molded. Must've been on a trip. They never consulted the Lord. So guess what he did? Verse 15, Joshua made a peace treaty with them and guaranteed their safety. The leaders of the community ratified it, that's called a contract, ratified the agreement with a binding oath. Now in the Gibeonites are safe. You can't take our stuff. You can't take our property. You can't, you can't harm us. Verse 16, three days after making the treaty, they learned that these people actually live nearby. to die. So, Joshua says in verse twenty-two, how y'all gonna lie to me like that? Y'all said y'all from a distant land when y'all live right here among us. You know what Joshua shouldn't have been mad at them. He should have been mad at himself. Lord, I should have asked you. Cuz you know what? When you ask God, how many of you know when you ask God, should I do this? Sometimes, God will just do something. You about to do, you just feel, it's just something in here.

It's just something in here to do. Something ain't right. You know how they act when you ask that part and they just said like ten things but you don't know what they said? Mm don't do that. It's just something about this. The Holy Spirit will protect you. They never consulted the Lord. I wonder how many people listening to me got in some bad partnerships. Cuz you didn't consult the Lord. One more. Risk and exit strategies. Pastor, why would I need a risk and exit strategy? Because this is why. You need a way out of a bad partnership. Because some people are called to help you birth things but not build it. Because a catalyst can help you start something but it takes a strategist of a different type to help you keep growing it. And sometimes we keep starters in a in a season of building but they don't build. And now you're stuck with somebody

cuz you were so happy they joined you, you gave them titles. So now Nook Nook is the chief of sales and Valerie is chief of marketing. But that's when you had three customers. It made sense. Now you got 300 and Nook Nook still showing up to beatings saying I'm Nook Nook. And you're in for a deal with 3,000 customers but you got, you're still working with a three-piece cuz you got your high school friends who the positions have outgrown. And you need an exit strategy to say hey every year we will re-evaluate all of our positions and decide whether or not we need some type of severance so that we can all move on with the value you've added. So watch this, so the division doesn't stop because your skill sets can't keep up. See what you really should be going after is the kind of partnerships with people who have already done where you're

trying to go, who have already accomplished what you're trying to accomplish and they're willing to step back and help bring you there. Or you have to have the kind of people who are willing to continue to learn and continue to grow and continue to get certifications but when you hire people and you empower people who have a lower level skill set they will always feel entitled even when the whole organization has outgrown them but you still got them on payroll and they're still in charge when everybody knows that they're incompetent because watch this, incompetence is always exposed when the stakes go up. Incompetence can be hidden when everything is normal. When the stakes go up now we know what you can't do. Who understands what I'm saying? But because you grew up with them and you're scared because they're kind of crazy you just keep them there and everything is stuck. Nothing can move. So

the whole vision is stuck. And I know a lot of you like keeping a tight circle but is it the right circle? Is it the right circle for what you're called to build? Everybody stand. I started this message talking about how important Joshua's first and primary partnership was. What was his first and most important partnership? With who? With God. That's my challenge to you today. Do you really? And Joshua didn't have a casual relationship with God. Yeah he messed up in Joshua chapter 9. He should have sought the Lord. But I'm telling you his pattern was for God to be central in his life. Is God an accent piece in your life or is he the centerpiece of your life? Is Jesus at the center of it all? From beginning to the end? Is he the centerpiece of your life? Is he the center of your life? I mean he's chief, he's central, he's germane to all of your decisions, to your relationships, to your business, to your parenting, to your money. You know what is so important? Because he will help you to make the right partnerships, he will help you to get into the right

partnerships, he will protect you from the wrong partnerships if he's central. Too many of our relationships with God are too, they're too, you have a complementary relationship with God, like it complements your life. Like yeah I'm also, I'm also a Christian. Yeah and I also go to church. Also? He's a compliment, he's an accessory, he ain't the main thing, he ain't all. You don't even pray in front of your food in front of some people, but then pray to him when you get sick in private. I used to preach this when I was preaching to kids and it's shocking that this is coming on now and I'm not seeing kids in here. Like how can you be this old and God still not be first? You done lived this long with him being ancillary. What's up? What's up? See that's what you can control, you can control that. You can control your level of commitment to God. That's on you. You can control how surrendered your life is to God. You can control that. You can't control the hand you were dealt in life, your height, your all that's all of the stuff that was just handed to you, but what you can't control is he, is he the center of my life. You can control that. And I'm not inviting you to a passive relationship with God. If you just want to get saved so you don't go to hell, come on, do that too. Just come on down. I just don't want to go to hell. I ain't trying to serve the Lord. I ain't trying to be serious about it. I just want to get in the heaven line. Don't want to be in the hell line. Come on, he'll take you too. But I'm calling some of you to a higher commitment because you want good success. You want good success. He's got to be more than you, than just fire insurance. He's got to be everything. I said he got to be everything. He got to be everything. And at some point you got to make a decision that he's gonna be everything. That everybody else and everything else is second. He's first. He's first in my day. He's first in my business. He's first in my mind. He's first in my life. He's first in my choices. He's first in my relationships. I don't get to, I don't sequester him out of my life. He's Lord. That's you. Come on down to the front. You're at Z-Lo. Come on down to the front. You're online. Put your hand up and let us know we're talking to you. And if that means you need to join this church and say that's

part of my partnership, you come. And I'm going to turn the service over right now to Rachel Patterson, Pastor Dondre McGee, Pastor Sean Mason.