Woman Evolve with Sarah Jakes RobertsThe Best of: Woman Evolve - Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts
This special Best Of edition episode features some our favorite moments from the season! If you missed one of these episodes, this might be your second chance to listen!
Clip 1 Episode Title: Protect Your Spark with Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts
Clip 2 Episode Title: The Moment of Increase with Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts
Clip 3 Episode Title: Character Development with Pastor Sarah Jakes Roberts
Peaks of the planet.
Charlamagnea god here, And as we come close to closing out this year, I just want to say thank you for tuning it into the Black Effect podcast Network. There have been so many great moments over the past year. Take a listen to some of those captivating moments in this special best of episodes.
Your life is the stimulus for an event or a process. In other words, when God created you, he was starting something. When God created you, you were You're not random, He wasn't bored. He didn't just decide that we needed more people in the Earth. God says that there's something I want to start in the Earth, and so I need to send someone in the Earth who can start this thing that I want to accomplish in the Earth. You were here to start something. That's why you have this desire to do something that seems bigger than you. That's why you're discontent when life just seems mundane and routine and comfortable. It's because you were men to start something. That's why, no matter how many times you try to give up on this idea of purpose and destiny, it just won't leave you alone. It's because you were here to start something. You better nudge your neighbor and tell them I'm getting.
Ready to start something.
When you start something, it is not something that can easily be undone. When you start something, it is something that raises a standard for your family, for your community, and for your generation. I'm trying to start something that cannot be undone. I'm trying to start something that changes the way that my community is seen. I'm trying to start something that makes another woman recognize that Bruce Hill still crush the serpent's hand. I'm not just here talking words. I'm here to start something. We don't get on the plane for twenty four hours to come to South Africa so that you can stay the same. We get on the plane because we want to start something. And the reason why we want to start something is because we know what God put on the inside of you. Baby, you are a starter. I know sometimes you failed. I know sometimes you may just quit. I know sometimes maybe someone gave up on you. That's good news because you can start again because you were here to start something. It doesn't matter how many times you fail, it doesn't matter how many times they betrayed you. When you are a starter, you get back up again. When you are a starter. You take a time out, but you get back up again. Maybe I'm a starter. Mess for me, I might start something. Mess for me, I might change your life. I'm a starter, baby.
If I get to pray and I might break something off of you, I'm a shorter.
I might introduce generational blessings in your life.
Because I'm a starter.
I know who I am and God, God called.
Me to shot something.
When I see what's happening in the world, I don't get discouraged. I come alive because it's my sign. It's sign for me to shot something. When I see some brokenness, when I see poverty, it's my sign that it signed for me to start something.
I'm a starter.
Never play this for it, but I'm a starter. Never had a ball, but I'm a starter. I'm on the starting line, baby.
I start stuff. I'm a starter, and I.
Need to live with this consciousness because when I do not know that I am a starter, I will believe that it is possible for the enemy to stop what God started. Oh God, it's gonna be good in here tonight. The enemy's mission is to stop you before you even get started, because if you ever get started, there is no stopping what God wants to do through you. So I gotta get you before you even get started. I want to talk to some people in this room who know what it's like to have childhood trauma, to know what it's like for the devil to be from the time that you were born.
You didn't know why he was doing it.
You thought that they were just rejecting you. You thought there was just something wrong with you. You thought you didn't fit in the family. You thought you were born in the wrong community. No, that's not what it was. It's that the enemy was trying to stop you before you ever got started. The enemy was trying to stop you before you ever received a touch from God, because he knew one touch from God would radically change your life. That if you ever got a revelation and started seeing yourself the way God sees you, then you would start rolling into your destiny. You wouldn't just step into it. God says, you would take off running into your destiny if you knew what I.
Knew about you.
The enemy didn't realize though, that you can stop a person, but you can't stop God.
God help.
You can stop a person, but you can't stop God. And because you can't stop God. God can always reach that person. I want to take you back to Genesis three, when there was a woman in the garden named Eve, and that woman had eaten from a fruit, and the enemy must have been rejoicing. He must have thought that he had won. But even when the devil thought he won, God showed up in the midst of the garden and he had a question for that woman.
He asked that woman who deceived you? He wanted to understand.
What happened to you, why the devil was rejoicing. The woman was having an encounter with God, because God said, it doesn't matter what the devil did to try and stop you.
I know how to get you to stot again.
And he told that woman, if you would start producing, even in your brokenness, if you would start producing even in your wounds, if you would start producing.
Even though you've been hurt, I promise you that the devil you see today you will see no longer. And you would stine.
Rising towards the seed anyway.
The devil forty one, but he was no match.
Because there was a destiny over her life. There is destiny over your life. That means even though the enemy thinks that.
His plan will stop you.
Gus, he's I'm gonna show up and I'm gonna show you how to work around.
I'm gonna show you how to push through.
I'm gonna show you how to hangle on, how to trust, how to keep producing in spite of what tried to cripple you, because what I put in you is so unstoppable. Increase is often something that we just step into, and when God sends someone to push us, he's also helping us to realize that there are some people who see you better than you see yourself. And even if they don't know who you are, God knows who you are. Can I tell you a little something about increase in disguise? Increase in disguise will have you looking at a shepherd boy with a LaunchBox, thinking that he could not possibly run up on Goliath, saying to him, you should go back to the field and let the big, strong, bold people take care of this giant. They said he wasn't enough. God says, this is increase in disguise. See, there are some people who may look at their situation and think, Lord, this is not enough. But God says you are Increase in disguise. Don't expect for them to see what God sees. David had more courage on the inside of him than they had muscle on the outside of them. He was increasing in disguise. That little boy had two fish and five loaves of bread.
They said, Jesus, we don't have enough.
Jesus said, that's more than enough.
That's an increase in disguise. I want you to start.
Looking at what you have to work with and recognize that you may say it's not enough, but God says, I'll take whatever you have because whatever you have is something.
That I can use. It's increase in disguise.
Something happens when we begin to recognize that it's possible to move from one stage to another stage and never realize it. I don't know what's scarier, not realizing the moment where there has been increase in disguise or missing the moment when I begin to decline. I think I think I'd rather miss increase than to miss decline. David, this warrior, this man after God's own heart, would not fight a battle without asking God, shall I go up some kind of way? This same person who was so committed to following the heart of God finds himself in a situation where he is home from battle, and when he's home from battle, he begins making choices that he should have never made, so much so that when the prophet Nathan comes to him and tells him a story about himself, he doesn't even recognize himself because he has been declining and doesn't even realize it. Sometimes we decline and we don't even realize it. We're shocked to find out that while we were so busy producing, so busy people pleasing, so busy showing up, that they were getting the results, but we were getting the decline.
I don't know. It's worse.
How does Jonah, the prophet God's mouth Peace, find himself in a situation where he will not do what God told him to do.
He declined and didn't even realize it.
There are people in this room and they don't even realize how much they have declined in their faith, how much they have declined in their hope, how.
Much they have declined in.
Their courage, because it happened so suddenly that we don't even know how we got there. I know in the room this size is not everyone's testimony, But I don't know about you. There have been some times where I looked at my life and I was so far off track that I couldn't even retrace my steps. Moments in my life where I was so far off track that I didn't even realize that I was walking by sight and no longer my faith. I had declined, so busy having my purpose, my vision, my talent come to life, that I didn't realize that I had taken ownership of something that started with God. I started declining and didn't even realize it. It started off a blessing. Now it feels like a curse.
What happened?
When did I start declining? When did I lose the honor for the thing that God gave me? When did I lose the honor for this opportunity I started declining? Maybe I should have rested when somebody said that they would help me. Maybe I should have asked for help because now I'm in a situation where I'm declining. Maybe I should have talked to somebody because now I'm in a situation where I'm declining. Maybe I should have asked someone to give me some wisdom and some insight instead of being superwoman, because now I am declining, and nobody knows it because I'm still producing. Nobody knows it because I'm still showing up. Nobody knows it because I'm still singing the songs. Nobody knows it because I came out of my way to go to woman Evolve conference. They think I'm here because I'm such a good church girl. I'm here because I can. Since I'm declining. I'm not as sharp as I used to be. I'm not as solid as I once one. I feel myself declining.
I used to have.
Power and authority, but I feel myself declining. I used to believe that no weapon formed against me will prosper. But some kind of way I'm declining. I used to believe that I could rebuke the devil and the devil would flee. But some kind of way, I'm declining. And the more that I decline, the more quiet I become, because I don't want anybody to know.
That I'm declining. What happened to me?
What happened to me? Like so many of you, I grew up in church. Some of you did not grow up in church, but you grew up around it. I will tell you that part of my experience in church and mind you, when I was growing up, it was part of the height of the purity culture. So everything was kind of about like performative relationship with God. You do the right thing all of the time. If you can't do the right thing all of the right time, then you do not have as much worth or value as other people, especially as it relates to your body. As it relates to your body, how you care yourself, there was a desire to be this person who you know, was pretty I want to say blameless and constantly. I won't even say pursuing righteousness because like the idea was like they had already arrived and they had achieved it. I did not fit in in church because I kind of knew, like, listen, I'm trying to figure out how you do this thing, like how do you even get to a place where that is your experience? How do you get to a place where you are living blamelessly and righteously? And no one was really explaining it, or at least maybe I wasn't paying attention, but no one was really explaining it. It just seemed like either you get it or you don't. I took many years to finally learn that character is something that is developed. It's not necessarily something that you just get. I think part of why I am such a advocate, I guess for gentle parenting is because even the idea that, like, you do something wrong, you need a whooping and you're not supposed to do it again is a little performative.
At least it was for me.
Let me speak about mind, let me sweep around my own front porch. And as a result of it being performative for me, I never learned like why what I did was wrong, and I never felt a conviction necessarily to do right as much as I was like, I'm either not going to do it again because I don't want a whoop, in which I think was the goal, or I'm going to do it differently next time instead of the challenge of this is not the kind of person you want to become. A person who makes these types of decisions are X, Y, and Z, and these are the types of relationships that they lose and the type of people they attract. Because character is so important, we wasn't breaking it down and so, as I said, many years for me to get to a place where I'm like, okay, I need to have character development for myself so that I understand the value of integrity, of honesty, of loyalty, of you know, communicating in a way that makes a person feel safe, and being a safe place where someone's secrets are safe with me. Like that was something that was developed for me. It wasn't something that I just got naturally. And maybe it's just me, you know, but that's a part of my experience creating a space for other people to be vulnerable. All of that was developed through character development. And so if you are in a position where you are constantly undergoing the process of character development, I want you to know one you are not on your own. Secondly, I want to encourage you to be intentional about understanding what type of person you want to be. I'm talking all about Power Moves. I'm reading it. I'm constantly consuming it and just trying to figure out how do I continue to unpack everything that God gave me when God gave me this book. But part of it really was just this practical guide to developing characters so that you can show up in the world in a way that gives you confidence. And our character is developed through submission to the Holy Spirit. So when we talk about what type of person you want to be? What are the values of the person you desire to be. I will give you an example. As a mother, I guess I want to be easy to talk to, but I also want to be committed to telling the truth. I want to be a parent who can apologize. I want to be vulnerable with my children about the choices and decisions that I made. I want to help them understand why they've been maybe making some of the decisions that they have made, and so that requires dialogue and intentionality. And what's wild is as a team mom. You know, raising a kid at fourteen versus raising kids at thirty five is obviously completely different, because at fourteen, I was just doing what I thought I was supposed to do, tapping that laughy taffy, yelling if necessary. And my child, you know, very respectful, loves me very much, yes, ma'am, no, ma'am, all of those things, and yet like he doesn't ask me for anything. I can remember when he was maybe in middle school, and I looked at his shoes. I was like, are your shoes too small? And he was like, yes, ma'am. I just didn't want to ask you for anything. I had trained him to think similarly to the way that I think that I was raised, and that your needs, and no matter how legitimate they are, could be an inconvenience. So if you could just keep them to yourself unless absolutely necessary, that would be ideal. And so now, even in his twenties, like I'm constantly asking him, like, you know, not necessarily just what do you need, but like how did that make you feel? And making sure that I am creating a space where he can tell me what he needs without judgment. And so those are some of the things that I want to hold near to me as I seek to be a mother that moves in power for my children and who I am as a mother, though there is certainly overlap, maybe different than who I am as a businesswoman. As a businesswoman, I want to be direct, I want to be clear, I want to be concise, I want to be compassionate, I want to maintain a boundary. And so as a businesswoman, I'm having to navigate how does that show up in my decision making. The problem is like there is who we want to be, but then there is who we are in the moment, and when it's time for me to actually activate those things, how do I make sure that as a parent, I'm not tapping back into what feels normal and culturally acceptable for me? And how do I make sure that my actions align with my desire and that I am showing up in the way that I have consulted God and come away with as my blueprint for an existence that looks more like Him.
Once again, thank you for tuning into the Blackfec Podcast Network. Seeing you in twenty twenty five for more great moments from your favorite podcast.
