Touré Roberts - Stay Lit

The title of this message is «Stay Lit.» If you had failed to stay lit, I think it would have resulted in a completely different outcome. However, you stayed lit, and I’m grateful for you. Your light overcomes your pain. Your pain is often the chaos that’s in your life. When God speaks at the beginning and says, «Let there be light,» it refers to the Earth being void and without form, speaking of chaos. His light suddenly begins to bring order where there was once chaos. I believe that pain is like chaos, but there is something in us that releases our light, using what God has given us, which translates that pain into purpose.

I want to say something to you; I’m going to land the plane right now. If you don’t interpret pain properly, you will miss unprecedented opportunities. I’ll say it again because I feel something on this: If you don’t interpret, manage, and process pain properly in the context of God’s truth, you’re going to miss monumental opportunities. I want to challenge some of you, and I’m off script, but I feel this for somebody. I want you to go back and reassess your pain because if you misinterpret it, what has caused you pain will become an obstruction and result in darkness instead of light. I’m just seeing something; I’m trying to express it the way I see it. If you misinterpret your pain, it will hinder you instead of empowering you and lifting you higher.

I believe some of you need to revisit that painful situation because you left something behind that you need. There was a seed for your future hidden in the pain you escaped, but because the pain was so messy, you didn’t want to dig through it to find the pearl within. Pardon the lack of structure, but I feel this strongly for someone. You need to go back and look again, because there’s something valuable there. In fact, I feel so strongly about this: everything you have been searching for; your lampstand, is within that pain. Your lampstand is there, but you hesitate to explore it because it’s messy.

Let me tell you something: God will go back there with you. There have been experiences in my life and in the lives of others that were just so painful that the thought of revisiting them is daunting. However, when you connect with God, you can return to those places with the assurance of His presence. You can go back with backup! Yes, hello somebody! You go back there with backup, and with the comfort of your spiritual maturity and your helper, you can face those painful memories without fear, knowing God will handle the boogeyman of your pain.

The truth is, God was there with you when it happened, which is why it didn’t kill you. He allowed it. I feel this prophetically; even during your pain, it was almost as if God was present, much like in the situation with Job. He set boundaries on how far the pain could go, limiting it to what was necessary for you to extract a pearl from that chaos—something that my son or daughter would ultimately use to stand on this lampstand and light up the whole universe. That’s for somebody; I pray you receive it.

Now, here’s the last thing I want to share about light. I stumbled across something remarkable in the text. If we go back to Genesis, in verse five, it states that God said, «Let there be light,» and there was light. It also mentions the evening and darkness. God said, «Let the light be called day, and the darkness be called night.» It states that the evening and the morning were the first day.

However, we need to move down to verse fourteen; I want to show you something very important. In verses four and five, God says, «Let there be light,» and there was light. Most of us associate this moment with the creation of the sun, moon, and stars, which happened on the first day. We have just read this in Genesis 1:4, where it says God declared, «Let there be light, ” and it was the first day. But then, we see something different in verse fourteen, where God says, „Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night.“ This includes the sun, moon, and stars, which serve as signs and seasons, marking days and years. This relates to the entire solar system and galaxies. So, it states, „Let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the Earth, ” and so it was.