Sheryl Brady - The Convictions of a Good Leader

Today, I want to talk about—uh—I’m going back to the life of Nehemiah, and I want to discuss the convictions of a good leader. The convictions of a good leader, the convictions of Nehemiah, a rebuilder, a man of God, and that is what we want to address today. So, I hope you have a pen, paper, notes, iPhones, or something. Uh, if you don’t have an iPhone, just call the church and ask for Bishop, and he might buy you one. Let the Lord use you! No, but seriously, nothing works better for me than a good old white piece of paper and a black Sharpie. Okay, that works for me; it gets in my head and gets in my spirit. Uh, but today, I want you to take your paper out, and let’s be prepared to write some things down because what I’m teaching today is not just for today. This is something I’m building upon; I’m building upon the last Sunday that I spoke and the Sunday before that. One of those Sundays, I talked about how it’s a reset season, and the Sunday after that, I discussed how we are going to build back and build back better. I’m not preaching this just because it’s something to preach—it’s prophetic! It’s the word of the Lord to us; it’s the word of the Lord to those under the sound of my voice. So, we are going to take one thing and one stone, and lay it upon another, and we are going to rebuild some of the broken areas that have occurred in our lives. I was watching all week the coverage of the condo collapse in Florida. I know you have seen that, and I know you have been praying, just as I have been praying. But yesterday morning, I was listening and watching the television, and it said there would be a news conference coming on shortly. I heard the Lord say to me, «Get a notebook and a pen and take notes!» So, I got a notebook and a pen, and I started taking notes from the news conference. I began to take about a page and a half of notes. I have never done that in my life—I’ve never just seen a news conference on TV and started taking notes. But that’s what the Lord instructed me to do, and I began to write down what they were saying. They mentioned that in the search and rescue process, there had been a hindrance. It wasn’t just from the debris that was falling, which is obvious to see, but it was also caused by things we couldn’t see. It was coming from a fire—an intensely deep-rooted fire inside the building. They couldn’t seem to find the source of where the danger was coming from; they couldn’t identify the origin of the fire. And then, they discussed having torrential rains—lightning, thunder, wind—and the smoke emanating from the fire, all of this making the entire rescue and recovery process painstakingly slow. Someone even used these words: the building had been built on shifting sand. How many of you know you have to build your house on the rock? Let me tell you, you have to build your house. Now, we can look at it in the natural and see the devastation there, but I want you to apply that to your life spiritually. If your house is built on shifting sand, there is no way it can remain stable. So, we have to build our house upon the rock. The Bible says we are wise if we build our house on the rock. One of the volunteers said that what had been so disheartening to him was seeing so many people gather together to help. You know, people had opened up their hearts of compassion; they came to rescue and assist in any way possible to get the people to safety. He said what distressed him the most was that so many had come to help, but they hadn’t been able to find anyone to assist. They talked about the number of those unaccounted for, and the numbers didn’t seem to change quickly because the rubble was so extensive that they couldn’t locate anyone. One of the city officials said there were no signs of life—maybe there were knocks on the first day, but he said there were no signs of life. However, the families of the victims are all holding out hope, and he called for people across America and around the world to pray. Now, whenever the world and its leaders start calling on us to pray, it’s one thing for me to pick up the phone and call Prophetess Callaway and say I need you to pray for me. But when the world says «pray,» that tells you how desperate they are for answers. He was saying, «We need you.» I don’t know how many times I’ve heard terms like «pray, ” „pray, ” „we are still believing, ” „we have hope, ” „we are expecting a miracle.“