Sheryl Brady - Building Commitment at the Core

On your way down, hit somebody and tell them I’m building commitment. Leah was a woman—uh, how do I say this? Leah was a woman who was given to Jacob as a consolation prize; there’s no better way to say that, I guess. She was given to Jacob as a consolation prize. Rachel and Leah were sisters, okay? When he got—uh, the one he fell in love with was Rachel. So when he went to her father and said, «I want to marry that girl right there,» the father said, «Okay, but you have to work for me for seven years to get that one right there.» So he worked for seven years to marry Rachel in holy matrimony.

Now, this is a bit of a rabbit trail right here, but to all the single ladies—where are all the single ladies in this room? Lift your hands high. Wow, y’all are a lot of single ladies! To all the single ladies in this room, you need to be very careful and ensure that whoever he is that’s trying to hook up with you is willing to work before you say yes to the dress. Yes, yes! See, some fellas aren’t even willing to work seven days! He worked seven years to get what he wanted, okay? He worked seven years and accomplished his assignment, and yet when it was all said and done, he did not get the woman he wanted; he didn’t get the woman he worked for. He did not get Rachel because their father, who was Laban, was a bit of a manipulator himself. So what happened to Jacob was that instead of marrying Rachel, the woman he worked for, he was given Leah, her sister.

Now, Leah and Rachel were both sisters, but it is so obvious in Scripture that Rachel was the most beautiful of the two. The Bible tells us that she was beautiful. It also tells us that Leah was—and it’s very polite—"tender-eyed.» If you think that means she had soft eyes, go ahead and think that, but what it really means is that she was «tangle-eyed.» In other words, you couldn’t tell where she was looking because she had a problem with her eyes being crossed. However, when it came to Rachel, the Bible says she was beautiful and favored in shape, form, figure, countenance, and appearance. So out of the two of them, it was incredibly obvious which sister had it going on in the looks department.

Okay, but before you start feeling sorry for Leah, let me tell you something about Leah—well, actually, let me tell you something about God. God has a way of giving everybody something. You may not get what she got, and he may not get what you got, but God has a way of giving everybody something. You might not see it when you first look at them, but if you dare to look just a little bit closer, you might discover that just because you can’t see it outwardly does not mean it is not there. And sometimes, you might discover that those whose beauty is obvious on the outside might really be void of beauty on the inside.

You’re like, «Hey, don’t act like you’ve never met anybody like that!» I mean, they really caught your eye, but when you got closer, you found out that they were so cute they were ugly. Anybody ever met anyone like that? The container looked good, but they had no content; it was empty of substance. The container was good on the outside but empty of content on the inside. In other words, sometimes the container is better than the content. Leah may not have had it going on on the outside, but make no mistake about it—Leah was blessed by God. She was blessed by God because when He saw how much they hated her, the Bible said that He opened her womb.

So if your enemies had any idea that it was because of how much they hated you that God was choosing to bless you, they would probably stop hating you. Look at somebody and say, «The more you hate, the more I celebrate!» Yes, Lord! Because the more you hate, the more God blesses my life. So if you could stop crying about being hated and wipe the tears from your eyes, you might just discover that you needed haters, because haters are where God builds a table for you in the presence of your enemies. And if you don’t have haters, you don’t have anywhere for your table. Leah was a woman with very low self-esteem; she was very hard on herself and now found herself married to a man who didn’t want her. I know that didn’t help a whole lot; as a matter of fact, he married her and spent the night with her. And the Bible said when he woke up the next morning, he recognized that she was not the one he loved.

I have a little problem with that. How are you gonna be with me all night long and not realize until the morning that I am not the one you love? I guess he just thought, «If you can’t…»