Touré Roberts - Mornings with Men

I want to talk today just for a few minutes. In this context, I want to discuss seven things every man must believe—seven things every man must believe. I didn’t use the word «know» because most of these things, particularly if you’re a believer, you already know. Amen. There’s a difference between knowing something and believing it. Knowing something is one thing; believing something alters the shape of your spirit, your soul, and your perspective. Knowing something may not change my life, but believing something does. When I believe something, who I am is now defined, and how I operate is regulated and controlled by this belief because this belief is faith, and faith is my reality. Knowing something may not be my reality, but believing something is. Do you follow what I’m saying?

So there are just a few things, and we’re going to flow through seven things in particular that every man must believe. The first thing is this: I think this is honestly one of the most difficult things, and that is we must know that we measure up. Amen. That’s right—that we measure up. I use the term «measure» very intentionally because in life, for every human, but especially men, we’re always measuring ourselves by something. Wow, hello somebody, that’s good. There’s always a ruler that we as men are standing next to in order to see if we size up to what we should be as men. Oftentimes, that ruler has money on it. Hello, hello, somebody. Is my money tall enough? Can I get 100? Can we have a real talk today? Does my money measure up? Does my status measure up?

What are some of the other things we measure ourselves by? Let’s keep it 100: car, possessions, how many women we’ve been with, and if you don’t prefer women, how many men? Let’s just keep it 100; everybody’s in this room, and every man is not attracted to men. Don’t get mad at me; this is a real meeting. I want to address everybody’s issues, situations, and all these sorts of things that we measure ourselves by. If we measure ourselves by those things and come up short, then what does that say about us? We are not men. Hello, somebody. If we’re not men, who are we? What are we? We’ve got to know, without any outside confirmation, that the mere fact that we are breathing means that we measure up.

Now, somebody said that we do, in fact, measure ourselves by possessions. Yes, we do. I see that. I want to be like him because he’s got this, that, and the other. It’s crazy. And here’s the truth: God spoke this to me as I was preparing for this. There are some of you right now who are alone; you don’t have anybody and you don’t have much on purpose. On purpose! I want you to hear me. Wow, literally, on purpose, God has not given you a lot or a mate because He wants you to first like yourself. Do you follow what I’m saying? He wants you first to find value within yourself. Because if you are, as most of us are, a measurer, then you’re going to get a false measurement from your mate or from the things that you obtain. In other words, He wants you to like yourself before He gives you things that you might start to like. I promise you, this meeting might be the aligning dynamic that gets your heart and mind together, and then God begins to open doors for you and give you things.

I saw it so clearly: some of you are by yourselves and don’t have much on purpose. My wife and I were talking about the things we do to cope. We talk about how humans cope, you know? Sometimes people drink to cope; sometimes people smoke to cope; we do other things to cope. When you think about what happens when you are doing things to cope, that coping substitutes for conquering. Anything I do to cope automatically disqualifies me from being able to conquer the thing I am coping with. That’s good.

So to cope literally removes the possibility of victory from that area where you are self-medicating. God knows this, and He is not going to give you things to cope with your sense of not measuring up. I’m not going to give you a million dollars, I’m not going to give you ten million, I’m not going to give you a spouse, I’m not going to give you any of that because you are measuring yourself short by not having those things. Are you following what I’m saying? God is not a pusher. A pusher feeds your pain with junk. Hello, somebody! If money were crack, then your pusher would push you money, exploiting you. God will never exploit you; He wants to empower you. That’s a word for somebody.

I pray right now for those of you who are alone in terms of relationships and don’t have an abundance of money. In fact, you don’t have much at all because God wants to build within you a sense that you measure up already. It’s kind of a «seek first the Kingdom, and all those other things will be added unto you» sort of thing.