Sheryl Brady - It's Been a Long Time Coming, But I Made It

Okay, I’m going to start off today by asking if there is anybody in this room who has a hundred-dollar bill that they trust me with. Is there anybody at all? Wherever the first person is who has it, please bring it up here to the front for me. Come on, thank you! Oh, you dropped something there. Okay, she’s looking for it now. There you go; y’all see that hundred-dollar bill? Here, hold on just for a second because I’m going to pay you back. Okay, 20, 40, 60. Praise the Lord, God bless you, thank you! All right, you trust me, right?

So, if there appeared to be any kind of hesitancy at all, it was because there really was a slight problem with the transaction. Whenever you have a problem with a transaction, sometimes it leaves you feeling the sting of injustice. Whenever you have invested more than you get back, it can leave you feeling that sting. Whenever you’ve given more to people than you know they will ever give back to you, it can leave you feeling that sting of injustice. Whenever you are better to somebody than they have ever been to you, when you’ve been more faithful to a person than that person has been to you, when you’ve been a good mother to your child and now they’re grown and they won’t even pick up the phone or give you the time of day, when you’ve been a good husband to a wife who now cannot even stand to look in your direction, you may smile and you may occasionally laugh, but underneath all of your smiles is the pain of injustice.

You may be able to pick up one foot and keep moving, but the truth is that inside your heart, you’re feeling like you’re coming up short. You feel cheated and ripped off. It can leave you feeling the sting of injustice, and when you’re struggling with this particular kind of pain, it can also leave you feeling like not only have you given more than you’re ever going to get back, but it can also leave you feeling like someone got something that you did not receive. Thoughts go through your mind, like, «I would have gone to college too if I had had better-supported parents.» «I could have made something of my life too if my parents had not divorced.» «If my dad would have stayed, I’m sure my life would have been in a different place.» «If this had not happened or that had not happened—if my grandma had still been alive, because I was her favorite—I would have gone so much further in life.» But instead, I am living with the sting of injustice. I am living with sixty dollars when I should have had a hundred.

You look at other couples and watch them as they laugh together, smile together, have fun, hold hands, talk about issues in life, and pray together, while you and your spouse cannot seem to find anything in common to even talk about. That is the pain and sting of injustice. Why did my life end up like this, you might ask yourself, whenever you look and see others who have more joy, more peace, a better relationship with God, more hope, more happiness, more love, or more money than you do? And there you are, dealing with sixty dollars when you should have had a hundred. Yes, you might smile, you might shout, and you might dance in spite of it all, but at the end of the day, you are saying to yourself, «This just isn’t fair. Why am I going through what I am going through?»

Look at somebody and just ask them, «Has life shortchanged you? Are you living with three twenties when you should be living with a hundred?» I mean, you’re 35, and you’re still single. You’re having to bring home your own bacon, fry it up in a pan; sometimes you feel like you have to go out there and kill the hog itself, carry it in the house, and then fix up everything that you broke along the way just so you could have food on your table. It was okay for a minute; it was all right because we are survivors. But somewhere along the way, if you’ll be honest, there comes a part where you just get tired. And when you get tired, that’s when you become vulnerable. Because when you’re tired, you know that old David, whom you wouldn’t have anything to do with, or that old Tyrone, whom you wouldn’t have anything to do with, or Sherry or Shaniqua—whoever it is—you wouldn’t give them the time of day before, and now all of a sudden, they start looking better than they have ever looked.

But don’t be deceived; it’s only because you’re tired. You’re tired of trying to make it on sixty when you feel like you should have had a hundred. Listen, today, when you add it all up, all of us in some area or another in our lives have been left with injustice. I love the Lord; that’s not even about that, but I still feel the sting of injustice. I praise, I read His word, yet I still feel the sting of injustice. All of us know what it’s like to get a partial return on a full investment. If I had only had two parents instead of…