Encounter @ da Chapel Reverend Joshua Goodin, Senior Pastor
Reverend Leroy Jones
Greater St. Matthew Baptist Church
Genesis 12:6-9 (NIV)
“Don’t Flip the Script”
Everyone has been given an assignment from God. Even if you’re not saved, your assignment is to repent, because the kingdom of God is at hand. If you are saved, there are all kinds of assignments that God gives to you. Some assignments come straight from the word like honor your father and mother, some assignments are more tailored to you in your specific situations like being called to preach. No matter how big, small, general or specific, God has given everyone an assignment to carry out. Concerning your assignment, you can expect that there is always a promise from God attached to the task that represents the will of God. There’s always a purpose behind the assignment God gives to you. God has a reason for giving you this assignment and his purposes will be achieved where you are aware of that reason or not. You can’t mess up God’s plan; he's not surprised by things that you do. When God invites you into his plan you can do it the easy way or the hard way. It’s not about you, or if it’s convenient for you, or whether you like the assignment, it’s about God’s will being done in the earth. So what right do you have to sit on the assignment, to refuse it, to say maybe it’s optional, or not for you, that you’re going to do you and not do God. When God gives you an assignment, it’s like he’s producing an internal movie, and he has offered you a part in that movie. When you get the callback to be in his film, what will be your response?
You take God's assignments as optional, as if he is proposing it to see if you like it or it fits your fancy. If you get into the habit of refusing roles from God he might just insist one day. Or he may decide that you are like salt that has lost its flavor and should be thrown out like rubbish. Do you really want to be on God’s hollywood blacklist never able to work in this town again, doors repeatedly slammed in your face, not able to get a breakthrough or be blessed? Be careful, when God offers you a script, accept it, don’t flip God’s script by refusing the role. Flipping the script tells God that you think his plan is not good enough for you, you can do better.
*Don't flip the script by not committing to the part God cast you into, throw yourself into that part. Some of you have gotten an assignment to walk towards a promise that hasn’t been realized yet. Walk towards it as if the promise has already been fulfilled, as if it is there, because in fact it is there. You try to count the cost to you and figure out if there is enough benefit to you to put your heart in the role. Counting the cost is not the way God expects you to respond. When God speaks that makes it so. You get caught up in time, waiting for time to pass to think if something is true or not true, to wait and see if this thing actually happens. Whatever time it is in the past, present, or future when God speaks it, it is so. If God has already told you that you’re going to be a leader of this group, you are the leader of that group. If God tells you that you’re going to be a blessing to that person, you are a blessing to that person, not tomorrow or the next day, but right now God has proclaimed what the promise is. As soon as he proclaims it he fulfills it, and when it’s fulfilled you can walk in it. You don’t have to wait for anything else to happen, you don’t have to get it together, all you have to do is stand up and go, throw yourself into the assignment that God gave you. Your job is to give your all toward a great performance in the scene that you are called to in God’s movie, to have confidence in the script and know that it can’t be flipped.
*Don’t flip the script by being a diva in trying to change the script to something you think better fits you. When God cast you in the role, he was familiar with your body of work. He understood who you were, who you are and who you’re trying to be. He knows what you have accomplished, what you’ve done, and what your personality is like, and yet he called you back to fulfill this role. He called you back to fulfill the role that he wrote for you. Don’t be a diva and say you think the role should be this, or you think you can write it better than God laid it out. When you receive your assignment, spend time with the Lord reviewing it, rehearsing your role in his presence. When you receive your assignment from God, write it down, make that vision plain so that you will be able to run when it’s time. Build your altar to God to show his presence in your vision, not just as the giver of the vision but the power beneath the vision, the thing that will empower you to be successful. The one that will enable the scene to be properly shot, even though it contains an imperfect you. God is concerned about the scene, he wants it to play out a certain way, and will ensure that it turns out that way. You don’t want to flip the script and change the scene, because you think you can do it better, you think there’s a way that seems right to you, but in reality, it doesn’t.
*Don’t flip the script by improvising with lines that you make up yourself. God tells you what to say, who you should talk to, and you go a different way. You forget the lines that God gave you to say. This is not your show, it’s his. That doesn’t mean that you can’t bring your style and talents to the part, remember God cast you for the role not someone else, because he is familiar with who you are, and he accounted for that when he wrote down what you should do. He accounted for who you are already, so you don’t have to improvise, so you don’t have to make it up on the spot, you don’t have to go off of what you think. Do what the Lord told you to do, and if you do that and follow the script, you will be successful. Deliver the lines your way but stay true to the script. Sometimes when you get your assignment you get jazzed up, excited, and on fire, but when you first step out to do what is called, things start to seem different. Have you ever started your assignment when you got to a point of action and things were so different that you wondered if you were in the right place, doing the right thing? You ask those questions because it doesn’t feel like rehearsal and you’re getting nervous that you’re in the wrong scene or you’re not equipped to do what God called you to do, but yes you are. When you go to shoot your scenes, you have to know your lines by then, you have to already be prepared. You can’t expect someone to hold the script in front of you when you’re doing the job. God doesn’t change; he's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, he fills the earth; there's no place you can go to escape his presence when you remember who he is. Even though the circumstances, the surroundings, the people, all the time seem unfamiliar to you. The same God gave you the same power to do the same assignment even though you feel like he’s not there. If the Lord will not appear, invoke the name of the Lord, because where the name of the Lord is his presence is, his spirit is, his power is, his determination is, his will is. When you don't see God, you should speak God, say the name of Jesus, plead the blood of Jesus, and call upon the power of the Holy Spirit. God is on your side. If you don't know your lines you will be in trouble. If you know the power of the promise you will never be caught off guard, you will never be unprepared, because God is with you. If you dwell in his secret place, then he will protect you.
*Don’t flip the script by not completing all the scenes that you are cast in. You can do it, you go so far but you don’t go to the end, sometimes you start a thing, but you don’t finish a thing. Sometimes you quit production before the film is finished shooting. When you’ve had some victories, you say that’s enough and you will live off that testimony, even if it is 30, 40, 50 years old. What happened to the rest of the scenes, the story that God wanted to tell through you? The assignment God gave you was an ongoing assignment, and you can’t show up for the first scene or just the second scene when there are 20 or 30 scenes and you’re leaving the whole production hanging. When things don’t go the way, you think you start abandoning and quitting them and think that you aren’t right for the part. Imposter syndrome, you say you don’t belong here, and you let someone else take your part. Sometimes when you have victories or defeats you are tempted to leave the assignment, but the assignment is there until the assignment is finished. Until God says cut, we’ve done all your scenes, then you need to keep reporting to the set, showing up to the job, keep doing what you’re doing. When you decide to walk off the set, when you decide that you’re not going to do the things God asked you to do, everybody else in the movie is impacted by your decision. Everybody else has to do workarounds to make up for your slack. God’s movie will be produced but everybody else suffers because of your selfishness. Don’t flip the script by cutting short the assignment God has given to you.
**If you accept your part you need to commit to the role, you need to read through and rehearse the script, learn your lines, shoot all your scenes, and you will be part of the greatest production ever made. The name of the picture is called testimony and is playing in theaters everywhere.
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