Keion Henderson - Tested by Tears

To the book of Genesis, chapter number 12, Genesis chapter number 12, Genesis chapter 12, verse number one, here’s what the Bible says: «Now the Lord has said to Abram.» Remember, let me stop there. If you see Abram, this occurred before their names were changed; this is actually Abraham. So I’ll use those names just for the sake of clarity. Now the Lord said to Abraham, «Get thee out of that country, and from around your family, and from your father’s house unto a land that I will show you. And I will make thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make your name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.» Notice God doesn’t bless him without giving him the command to also be a blessing. «And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee.» God doesn’t bless them that bless him and curse them that curse him because he’s better than anybody else; he blesses those who bless him and curses those who curse him because he is a blessing. Receiving a blessing protects you from poverty; being a blessing provides protection for others. Does that make sense to everybody? Okay, not only will I bless you, but watch this: «And in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.» Did you know that God can bless your whole family because you decided to be a blessing? Just touch somebody. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m going to be a blessing. I’m going to be a blessing. All right, now we got the blessing part right. All right, now here it is: So Abraham departed as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him. Abraham was seventy — five years old when he departed out of Haran, and Abraham took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their substance, watch this, and all that they gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into Canaan. I am so confused right now. Okay, let’s go back and hear what God says: «Abraham, leave the country and leave your kinfolk.» Okay, verse five, and Abraham took his wife, he took everybody. And God had just said: «See, the mark of a blessing is not what you’re willing to go to, but it’s what you’re willing to leave behind.» I want to talk on this subject; it’ll make sense in a moment. This is what I want to discuss: «Tested by Tears .» I want you to touch everybody you can on your way down and say: «Have you been crying lately?» God is testing you. My tears. You may be seated in the presence of the Lord. How many of y’all feel like this word is for you already, like a punctuation mark to a sentence? Lot’s name is inserted periodically to break up the monotony of a story-a text that starts in chapter 11 and does not reach its conclusion until chapter 13. Without punctuation marks, a sentence is nothing more than a run-on, and without Lot’s insertion, this story would get away from us. If Abraham’s life is the sentence, then Lot’s life is the comma, causing us to pause circumspectly to observe exactly what it is God is saying and what God is doing. Every once in a while, God will ask you to pause, or he will send a period, not because he wants us to stop, but because he wants you still enough to listen. For it is only in darkness that men stand still. If you were walking in this room right now, you would walk freely; if the lights cut off, you would duck and stop. And every once in a while, God will cut the lights off in your life, not so that you would have an accident, but so that you will stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. See, in the natural, in the dark, we cannot see; in the spirit, it is darkness that is necessary for sight. So in the spirit, sometimes God will turn the light off so that you can see. This is exactly what happens in our text, and without warning, we get an opportunity to see a little boy named Lot grow up right before our eyes. Right in this text, we get a chance to see a little lad develop in front of us, and if this story were a movie, it would be rated for mature audiences only because Lot goes from a boy to a man. All his mistakes are on front street; we get a chance to see him turn back, and we also see his wife turn back and become a pillar of salt. We see all of these things happening in his life, and if this were a movie, it would have to be rated R for mature audiences only because there are few people in the world who can witness your development and still treat you with dignity. There are a lot of us in here right now who have lost friends, and they lost respect for us because they were with us for who they thought we were. Once they found out that we were not who they assumed us to be, marriages have ended because people wanted perfect people and not partners. Relationships have ended because people have made mistakes. The problem was not the person’s mistake; the problem was your assumption that they would never make one. And so now we are here looking at a man develop before our eyes, and most of us are not able to see people develop and still treat them with dignity. Most of us cannot hear preachers preach and know they’re not perfect.