Dharius Daniels - It's Above Me Now

All right, so I want to get right to work. We are in a series called «God Didn’t Say That,» and there’s a message I want to share today coming from the book of Philippians, chapter 3, beginning at verse 10. I think y’all had an extra hour today, so I know these amens are about to come in hot. I mean, are y’all ready? Okay, so Philippians 3:10. Paul says this: «I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained this or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.»

I want to stop the reading of Scripture there and talk from this subject during our time together: «It’s Above Me Now.» Clap your hands if you’re ready for God’s Word.

As we leap into this lesson today, I want to lift up a quote that I think warrants repeating and reflection. The quote is simply this: «Great men and women are only born for the time they are needed the most.» In other words, if God is a God of Providence—a God that sees before—that means my birth is not accidental. Come on! I am not the consequence of some cosmic coincidence. I’m not the result of some relational accident. I’m not the fruit of some fling. Even if my parents didn’t plan my arrival, God did! God orchestrated and arranged that I would be placed on this planet for such a time as this.

So I exist with purpose. I exist on purpose. I exist by purpose. But if great men and women are only born for the time they are needed most, it means that not only is my birth itself intentional, but the timing of my birth is intentional also. In other words, it’s not just important that I was born; God knew when I needed to be born. He knew the period in human history I needed to be born in. I remember in the beginning stages of the pandemic, I was having a conversation with a group of pastors that I was mentoring. We were trying to figure out how to navigate an unprecedented season, and one of the revelations I had personally—and shared with them communally—was that I was born for this. If God wanted me in spiritual leadership at another point in human history, He would have arranged for me to be in spiritual leadership before or after this. The fact that this has happened on my watch means that God Himself knew I had something on the inside of me that would aid and assist us in navigating this season.

I don’t know who this is for at the 12:30 service, but I want you to know that such is the case for you: God knows the era and the age you needed to be born in. So if you’re facing it, you can handle it; because if you couldn’t handle it, He would have dropped you at a different point in human history. Are y’all hearing what I’m saying? Great men and women are only born for the time that they are needed most. So it means we shouldn’t loathe our era; we shouldn’t loathe our age. We should love our era; we should love our age because God knew there was something, come on church, that the era I was born in needed to deposit in me so that I could be who God has called me to be. Different eras shape people in different ways.

See, some of you grew up in an era that taught you manners. Okay, maybe that’s the 10:30 and 8:45 crowd! I said it taught you manners, and manners aren’t just manners; manners are relational intelligence. Manners are a revelation that your greatest blessings don’t roll into your life on four wheels; they walk into your life on two legs. So when you mismanage people, you might be messing up your blessing. Come on! This is why people need to be conscious and careful about how they treat you, because they don’t know what you can do, and they don’t know who you know. Some people are mismanaging you now because they don’t understand the treasure that’s in your earthen vessel. But God’s got a way that’s mighty sweet, and He will have people spinning the block and coming back—like Joseph’s brothers did—saying, «I mistreated you in a previous season, but I need you in this one.»

So the era and the ages shape us in ways. People laugh at the fact that I grew up in Kilmichael, Mississippi. God knew there was something about the area that I needed to be in that shaped me in ways that prepared me. Are y’all hearing what I’m saying? Sometimes we complain about something that was actually an asset in our lives. Some of the very things that might have agitated me about Kilmichael, Mississippi, were things that God used as…