Touré Roberts - Re-Discovering Your Shout

Let’s talk about it. God is getting ready to bring you into a season where you rediscover your shout. Some of you remember your boldness; you remember your faith. You used to walk into a room and say, «I wish a devil would; I wish something would; I wish sickness would.» But the tactic of the negative one is to weary the saints. That’s why Paul said, «Don’t be weary in your well-doing, for in due season you’re gonna reap if you don’t give up.» With that weariness, with the elongated listen to church, you know how it was: when this thing first broke out back in early March, we thought, «All right, we’re going to be all right,» you know? We were on Instagram Live; every pastor was on Instagram Live almost every day, all day long. It was kind of fun at first, but then slowly but surely, we saw those Instagram Lives waning. I’ve been praying for my brothers and sisters, and I’ve seen us change our posture. Can we have a real conversation, family? Our posture changed, and it wasn’t about laying hold; it was about merely holding on. I understand that we’ve never been here before. In fact, the children of Israel, under Joshua’s leadership, were told just a few chapters earlier, «Stay close to the anointing; leave a space between you and the Ark of the Covenant, the presence of God.» Don’t get ahead of the spirit because you’ve never been this way before. This isn’t a judgment; this is reality. We’ve never been here before, and there isn’t anyone around here old enough to recount a pandemic and all the other ancillary things happening: social unrest, economic decline, economic instability. We’ve never experienced that. So, what God has to do is prove your faith in new seasons. God has to do that. There’s a passage of Scripture in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that says there’s no temptation that is not common to man. That word «temptation» refers to trials, meaning there’s no trial that God won’t make a way of escape. Read it when you get the chance; it’s wonderful. But that word, translated as test, trial, or temptation, literally means to put to proof. What that lets me know is that God often allows a difficult season—watch this—to put to proof what He has given you. Oh God! It’s one thing to think that you have something; it’s another thing to know what you’ve preserved and allowed you to endure a difficult time. Then you know what you’ve got. I feel this. So, what I believe God has been doing is this: the Scripture talks about how praise has to be perfected; your shout has to be perfected. I believe that what’s happening right now in this season is that God is perfecting your shout—perfecting, perfecting, perfecting, perfecting. To perfect. Seven. To perfect—the Hebrew word for seven is «shiva,» which means to perfect, to mature. There were a lot of sevens in this passage, weren’t there? There were a lot of sevens in this passage about Jericho. Stay with me; we’re about to get into it. Seven priests, seven trumpets, seven times around the city—seven, seven, seven, seven! Jericho is an interesting story because it is perhaps the only time in Scripture where God commanded the children of Israel, who were empowered to shout and break things, to preserve their shout. Oh God! To hold their shout! You remember the story? He says, «I want you to walk around it six times. Don’t do anything, don’t say anything. Just walk around.» Then on the seventh time, you walk around it seven times. So, you’re walking around it six times without saying a word, and then on the seventh day, you go around it seven times. When the priests, who represented the anointing because they were carrying the Ark of the Covenant, which represented the Holy Spirit, blew the trumpet, that’s when you shout—and it was all after seven times. For the majority of the process, you couldn’t say anything. All you could do was walk around the city, look at it, and not say anything. Just walk around, look at it, stare at it. Ladies and gentlemen, what in the world is going on? Why didn’t He just say, «Shout?» I believe it’s because when the children of Israel were getting ready to enter this new dimension of victory, it was important—watch this—that they preserved their energy in anticipation of the shout that would bring the breakthrough. I believe that circling Jericho was about reflection. I don’t believe your shout can be bigger than you. I don’t believe you can shout beyond who you are. As I mentioned, your shout is something that heaven tunes as a response to a perfected, mature action.