Dharius Daniels - Your Growth WILL Impact Your Appetite for Success

That old version of me didn’t have boundaries. That old version of me didn’t have self-respect. That old version of me didn’t know who I was, so I took things I shouldn’t have taken. But in this season, the entrance into this kind of life requires an exit and exodus out of your proverbial mental Egypt. Last week, I unpacked Egypt; I can’t unpack it again for the sake of time, but one of the truths we discussed about what Egypt represents scripturally is not just that which is evil, but that which is irrelevant. It’s not that Egypt is wrong; it’s just wrong for me now. Let me go to this side: it’s not that something’s wrong with that. If you like that, God bless you! I don’t mind you enjoying that. But for me, that represents Egypt. It represents what satisfied a version of me that no longer exists because my evolution impacts my appetite. There were some things I had an appetite for when I was an inferior version of myself, but now that I’ve leveled up, so has my appetite. There were some things that once satisfied me but no longer do. You’ve got to come correct in this season. Do you know that the quality of your life is based on the quality of your decisions, and the quality of your decisions is based on the quality of information you have? This means you need reliable sources of information, and the most reliable source of information in the world is the Bible. But you know what? Most people don’t understand that if you want to understand the Bible, God is enough—but Sunday is not. I want to help you interpret and apply the Bible better; this is why I’m inviting you to be a part of my tribe called Bible. That old version of me didn’t have boundaries. That old version of me didn’t have self-respect. That old version of me didn’t know who I was, so I took things I shouldn’t have taken. But in this season, we’ve got to make a mental exodus because Egypt is not always evil; it’s just irrelevant. It served its purpose for that season. So, we’re not saying that the mindset is wrong; we’re saying it’s not relevant for you now. If you’re comparing the mindset God is calling you to have with the mindset others have, you will feel satisfied because you’re gauging your success based on the stagnation of somebody else. See, just because you’re better than others doesn’t mean you’re growing—it may just mean they’re stuck. But you have to ask yourself, based on what God’s trying to do with my life, what mindset is required for His mission for my life? Not whether it’s better than others. I don’t know if you’re ready for this; I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but sometimes leaving a certain mindset necessitates leaving other people who had it. Because, for some of us, the only thing we have in common with certain people is reminiscing about a version of ourselves we no longer want to revisit. All we talk about is our dysfunction; all we talk about is the foolish things we used to do. I don’t just want people in my life who have a common past; I need people in my life who have a common future. Israel is an example of this: they made a physical exodus out of Egypt. Their location changed, but their mentality didn’t. So, what does this mean? It means they are out of Egypt, but Egypt is not out of them. That season of suffering, that season of stagnation, molded their minds in such a way that even when they came out of Egypt physically, they survived—but their minds didn’t. Here’s how Jesus puts it in John 10. Y’all be quick; I got 14 minutes. Here it is. Jesus said, «The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy.» Now, most times when people interpret that passage, they focus on the kill and destroy aspects. But Jesus emphasizes calling Satan a thief; the first thing He calls him is a thief because what he does most is steal. And here’s what’s crazy about a good thief: a good thief steals without you even knowing you’ve been stolen from. A good thief can steal something in your past, and you won’t even know it’s gone until you reach for it in your present and realize you don’t have it. Some of us can relate to this: a good thief can not only steal from you without your knowledge, but sometimes they steal, and you don’t even know where it was stolen from. Some of us have been in Egypt so long, we don’t remember which season stole something from us. When we don’t understand that the enemy is a thief, we can be celebrating merely surviving Egypt. We can be shouting, «I survived!» and high-fiving over our survival. But sometimes, while we’re celebrating our survival, the enemy is saying, «But I didn’t send that to kill you. You survived, but your dream didn’t. You survived, but your optimism didn’t. You survived, but your focus didn’t.» He stole. But I want to know— I’ve got to go— I want to know, am I talking to anybody who’s got an attitude with the enemy? I want to know if I have anyone in here who’s got a little kingdom swagger that’s going to tell the devil, «You’re not going to steal from me while I sit here having a pity party. I want everything the devil stole from me.»