How to get right / Jentezen Franklin

 Video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOJJiJPzpCc

I want to talk to you today on the subject of how to get right. How to get right.

The truth is sometimes you have to get left before you can get right. Sometimes God would take you left on your journey to get you right. To do work in you that will prepare you for what he has for you. Saul was persecuting the Christians. Saul’s name will be changed by Christ to Paul but when he first was introduced to him his name is Saul and he is a persecutor of Christian. The history book says that the way they persecuted Christians would be on occasion they would burn them alive. Other times they would crucify them. Other way that they persecute Christian is put them in a bag full of poisonous snakes, tie the bag and throws them in to the river. They would feed them to lions. And Paul clearly says in this text, I was one who destroyed people’s lives, it’s what I did. I persecuted the church. I did everything that I could do to wipe them out, to kill them, to slay them. This, he had blood on his hands.

And now he is on the road to Damascus, he has an encounter with Jesus Christ. He falls off of his horse. His eyes are blinded for three days. He’s humbled, he is broken, he heard the voice of Jesus Christ seen the resurrected Savior. He is forever changed he doesn’t know what to do next. And then we have this story of a God speaks to a guy named Ananias and tells him to go find Paul at a certain place for I have made him a chosen vessel to preach the gospel to the gentiles. Now how would you like to be in this guy’s shoes, Ananias? His got to go to a murderer, he’s got to go to a guy who has persecuted and slain Christians. Murdered them and take him in. It would be like me saying, you know I was out in California, day after day and I went by for some prison and Charles Manson.

Some of you young people don’t know who Charles Manson in years but some of us in this room know he’s a serial killer, killed a lot of people in horrific ways in Hollywood. But when I went to see Charles Manson so let’s say this happened and he got born again and so amazing was the transformation of Charles Manson that the parole board has granted him parole, he is out. As a matter of fact he came home with me and he is on the front row at free chapel this morning and all of the people in the balcony would clap but all of the people down here would begin to look. And what if I told you he’s getting the swastika between his eye brows he’s getting it off of it. The tattoo off and turning it in to cross and he’s getting the upside down crosses he’s trying to get them off and he is studying the Bible. He’s praying, he’s doing so well and folks he’s here today and he need somebody that he can stay in your house tonight because he doesn’t have anywhere to stay. This is the very predicament that Ananias was in. If you can imagine I’ve got to go to this man who has slain Christians and take him in. The bible said that when he took them, Paul has been kind to the Galatians.

If he would have told the story as it really was, he was rejected by the apostles. The apostles said we don’t like you we don’t trust you. We don’t, we’re not taking you. We don’t want to here. You preach you killed so many of us. We are not interested in your ministry. Thanks but no thanks.

 

And so Paul kindly puts in this way, I didn’t go to Jerusalem. I had to go to Arabia. God had called Him to go to Jerusalem but he took him left instead of taking him right to the call that he head for. He took him left and this detour this left would last three years. He went to a wilderness by himself and he was alone and he was rejected. He was deserted, he was suffering from rejection. Immediately he gets saves. He goes from being a hero in Judaism. He’s the up and coming guy in Judaism. He’s the one that all of the Pharisees are saying, “He is the next big guy. He might even be the next high priest. He is somebody. He is the Pharisee of the Pharisees.” Then he gets born again and he losses all of that, all of his friendship, all of his connections, all of his ambitions. They’re gone and now he is in a desert. God has taken him left to get him right. And he doesn’t have any friends they don’t want him, they rejected him. He was like Rudolf he didn’t have anybody to play in the reindeer games with him, “All by myself”.

Sometimes the experiences that hurt us the most are the one God is going to use to help us the most. I’m talking about rejection. I’m talking about seasons when you get rejected and you go get broken and you go left when you thought you should’ve gone right because we all want to go right. We want to go right to the miracle, right to the success, and right to the high place, right to the calling but rarely will God take you right. We want the right relationship, we want the right job, we want the right hair, and we want the right teeth. We want everything right and we want it quick. We want to read the clef notes of how to get to our purpose. We are not interested in going left to get right. We are not interested going in the wilderness and let God work in our character, in our integrity, and our patience, and the fruit of the spirit. We just want to get right to it when God is going to do something powerful in your life. He will get you left to get you right and you will suffer rejection.

 

The word rejection means to refuse, to except according to Webster, to dent, to disregard as defective. Isn’t that how rejection makes you feel to disregard as defective, to throw away or vomit out. If you get rejected that is the way that you feel. You just feel like you are a throw away. I hate rejection.

I remember when I was in an elementary school back to going in to ninth grade and going to a middle school. Back then when I was in school everybody was took P.E or Physical Education. And do if you are going to try out for gym for the basketball team you have to do it daring. The coach will just walk in everybody will be sitting up in the bleacher and he say, “Whoever wants to be on the basketball team come on and tryout. So me and my little body friend were sitting there and all our friends were doing it. I can’t play basketball that good but I felt like I needed to it because everybody else was doing it. So we all get out there and we all shoot and we all play and I just knew, I thought I did pretty good, and I just knew he was going to call my name. The coach got up and at the end of the day, brings everybody in, and reads the names of the people who made the basketball team. And he gets to the very end and he says, “The rest of you better luck next year. I looked over my little friend, his name hadn’t been called and my name hadn’t been called. We walked of the gym and we had funk of us the rest of that day but that was what calls me to go in the band and pick up a saxophone and learn how to play saxophone.

 

Now all those guys that plays basketball none of them made it to college or NBA. But I can play a saxophone. God took me left to get me right because he knew I got a talent in me that God would use to get me all over the world. If I hadn’t played the saxophone I never have gotten on T.V in and they didn’t ask me to preach. They asked me to play the saxophone. So I thought I was going through a real set back but God took me left to get me right.

And many times we just want to be right. The word right means correct, it means fitting appropriate, desirable. And left means to be abandoned or forsaken, to remove our self from association with, a feeling of being left. Sometimes getting left to what help you get right. Sometimes the greatest thing that can happen to you is God take you left and break you away from everybody and you’re all by yourself. And suddenly though it is forcing you to go deeper and deeper in the Lord, deeper in the faith deeper in the prayer, deeper in God, and who are you and what the plans in our life are. And the thing that we want to do as soon as somebody goes left; we want to get them right. But God has a season of the left that he wants you to be left alone. Loneliness is part of God’s plan for your life. Isolation is part of God’s plan for you but we despise it.

Somebody break up out of the bad relationship and the first thing we want to do? “Girl let me tell you something, I’ll look out somebody I want you to meet. I never like that thing you’re going out with anyhow. His hairline was just sitting. You can do so much better, come on let me….” And we want to get them right when in reality God needs to take them left because they need a real work of God in the desert where there is nobody but them and Jesus. Then when you get right you stay right because you went left. And you got some character and you got some integrity and you got something in you that will keep you right when things get right. Because I’ve seen a lot of people go straight to right and it goes off their head and they get egotistical, they get crazy, they get storied, and they think they are better than anybody else. But when you’ve been to the wilderness and then humbled then broken. God will take you left to get you right to keep you right. You’ll have the right attitude. You will remember where you’ve came from

Left is okay. Moses is being prompt and trained and educated to be the nest pharaoh. The bible says he was eloquent in speech. I don’t know where the stutter, at some point he had a stutter, but he did when he started out. He had everything. He was living in pharos’s palace, he was being set up for the thrown, he has servants, he had the clothes, he had everything. Then he sees the Egyptians and he does one dumb thing. And he slays the Egyptian beating the Hebrew and word gets out and pharos says I’ve got to kill him and he takes off. Suddenly even though he thought he was going right to the throne, God took him left. And he goes into the wilderness for forty years. Forty years on the back side of the desert because of one bad decision. But anytime you get in the desert whether you put yourself there or God put you there, God can use your left to put you right. And he made a statement. He meets a girl out there, you thought your name was bad, her name was Zipporah. In Exodus 3 it says her name is Zipporah and they had a son name Gershom and Gershom means I have been a stranger in a foreign land.

 

Have you ever felt that this is so far from where I thought I would be and what I thought I would be doing? What I am doing working a night shift at Taco-bell when I’m supposed to be a C.E.O.? I’m a stranger in a foreign land. I never dream that I would be laid off. I never dreamed I would be cutting grass at this season in my life. I thought I would be a business successful owner. I can’t believe that I’ve gone left but God is going to use left to get you right and I need to tell you the longer the left, the greater the right. If he had you left the long time it is because he’s preparing something so great that you’ve got to have strong character. Strong deep walk with God so that when you get there you won’t get popped up but you remember it was God that gave you the power to be where you are. (I need somebody to help me preach this right now.)

See we have been thought left was wrong, so we’ve got to get out the left quick and get back right. But the truth is God sometimes will took you into a left experience to bring your character to give you experience, to give you wisdom, to train you to be patient, to teach you to trust God when nothing is happening, to teach you to just wait on the Lord and be a good courage. And He will strengthen your heart. He’ll teach you those things, and you don’t learn those things when you are on the mountain. You’ll learn them when you are in the dessert. Left is good.

It’s the painful experiences of left that help you stay right in the right times. I don’t like this place, I Don’t like what is going on. I don’t like what is happening gin my life. Well, quit whining about it.

James 1:2 says, “My brethren, count it all joy”. You’re getting some CC to your engine count it all joy. When you go through trials and testing of faith for it develops perseverance, inner strength, God is going to use you and God has a plan for you. He will take you left. Sometimes that means like Paul that means like Moses. Everything one day you’ve got the excitements of you in living in sin, you’re going to clubs, and you’ve got all the friends. Everybody is partying, everybody is drinking, everybody is living wild, and it’s fun. Then you have an encounter with Jesus you get born again and you see your wicked state and you suddenly go left. In order for God to get you right I want to say this big. If you haven’t experienced changed after you get born again in the people you hang up, the places you go, the life style you live, you don’t have a born again experience. When you get born again you don’t keep on partying, you don’t keep on getting drunk, you don’t keep on getting high, you don’t keep on sleeping around, and go to church and sing halleluiah. When you really get born again you separate from all of that. Take this whole world and give me Jesus.

Too many Christians are just like the world. And I want to say Jesus can turn water into the wine. For some of you winer Christians He needs to turn wine back into water. It’s the greatest thing. I’m glad that when I got saved I came out. Halleluiah! I don’t belong there anymore. I don’t live there anymore. I know you don’t like this kind of preaching but this is way where joy is. You wrap the fence you just live in both worlds there is no joy in that. But when you come out, when there is a difference between you and them.

 

See we think that Christians can live just like the world party just like the world, get drunk just like the world, and sleep around like the world and they fall under grace. You backslider that’s what you are because when Jesus really saved you let me tell what it’s like. You get born again, whoa hey man what is up? “Can you give me some of that…” Then suddenly you‘ve got born again and say, “My God my eyes have been open”. “That’s wrong“ “That’s wrong” “That’s not right…..” And suddenly you find yourself in a dessert and here is what you feel when you first get saved, “I’m a stranger in a foreign land” because when you really get saved and you see all these Christian and you speak to somebody, “What’s up men?”, “Hi brother, glory to God Halleluiah.” “You want to come over my house and watch the passion of Christ this Friday night?”…. ‘I’m a stranger in a foreign land’. Finally you see somebody that dresses just like you. “Hey! Hey! How are you doing?” “I’m Good brother.” They put that Christian jean on his head too and now he is acting just like you, ‘A stranger in a foreign land’.

This is by design when you really get born again God will take you and you will be isolated and you will be lonely. You used to get a date every Friday night and you could still have a date with those people that want to sleep with you and live like hell and party. You could, but this is where the preciousness of Jesus comes from. When you separate yourself and you get in that place where He had you left but He has taken you left to get you right. He is got you a plan for your life He is got a call for your life. He is got his hand on your life. You don’t need to be there, it is not in there.

So what you have to do is what Paul did. Paul said I’ll turn my dessert into a library, I’ll learn, I’m going to take the book out. I’m going to learn to word. I’m going to learn about Jesus. I’m going to get stronger. I’m turning it to a library and I’ll turn it in to a sanctuary. (I will worship Him)

So you go partying from every Friday and Saturday then Sunday morning, “Praise God”. Those people are going to go to hell and if you’re doing it you’re going with them. Don’t deceive yourself. We have lost the fear of the Lord. I feel something pushing me right now saying, “Preach it! Preach it until they will feel convicted! Preach it until they want to cry, they’re way back!” Oh Come on you can’t be like the world. You can’t look like the world and live like the world. Somebody is lying to you. Your conscience is deceiving you.

Why did God I’m sure Moses wants to says, “God you know a year in the wilderness I get that”. “Three years that’s a long time.” “Ok God ten years, it’s been ten freaking years.” “Twenty years, you’re not hearing me.” “Thirty years.” “Forty years.” The greater your purpose the greater you’re right the longer you’re left.

Why did he have to stay in the wilderness for forty years? It’s because his assignment was to bring out people out and guess where he has to take them? It was the very experience that he had survived for forty years. And when other people are complaining and freaking out he said, he is settled. “Oh I’ve been here.” “I’m not scared of this wilderness.” “Oh you just got bit I know what to do.” “Oh the scorpion stung you, I’ve been stung forty times out here, let me put some of those salvo you’d be fine.” “Oh I know where to look for a shed.” “Oh there is a ridge around.”

See God knows how, he had to carry three and a half million people on his back through the wilderness for forty years and God kept them in the wilderness for forty years to show them it could be done. I would like to take you left to get you right.
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If your life has taken a left turn make the dessert a library and a sanctuary. Learn and worship.

 

Now I want to pray with you I want to give you an opportunity to receive Jesus Christ as your savior. Let’s pray this prayer again right there where you are. He will hear your cry.

Dear Jesus, I receive you today as my savior. Thank you for what you have done for me on the cross. The blood of Jesus cleanses me of all sins. I receive your forgiveness, your grace. I receive a new life in Jesus name. AMEN.