This is “Covering the Uncovered”. How opposed are you in your life right now? Sometimes it seems just when we’re trying to grow in our faith or calling, everything is stacked against us. We ask God over and over to clear the obstacles and make the path ahead smooth. But what if the hardship you’re experiencing now is only preparing you for the growth you’re seeking? In this message Pastor Jentezen Franklin shows us that the amount of opposition we face is directly proportional to the size of our calling. If you’ve faced unimaginable darkness and opposition in your life, take heart—God is moving on your behalf.
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>> Thank you for joining us
today on Kingdom Connection.
I believe today what God
is going to speak to you can
bring healing to your body,
salvation to your life,
freedom to your soul,
it can heal your mind,
it can cause you to overcome.
Listen to this
and let God speak to you.
♪ ♪
>> There’s this Verse
in Jeremiah 12:5 that says,
“If you have run with
the footmen and they have
wearied you, then how can you
contend with the horses?
And if the land of peace
in which you trusted wore
you out, then how will you
do when the floods
of Jordan come?”
That’s what he’s saying.
If you’ve run with the footmen
and they wore you out,
how can you contend with
the horsemen when they come?
So, Jeremiah was this prophet
in the Old Testament,
and he had this magnificent
call on his life.
One of my favorite chapters
in the Bible is Jeremiah 1.
That chapter would be the one
that would push me out
of my shell,
out of my insecurities,
out of my fear and intimidation
to actually believe that I could
do what God was challenging me.
I knew it, but I couldn’t
even go public with it,
and it was Jeremiah 1,
“Before you were
in your mother’s womb,”
He says things like
this to Jeremiah.
“Before you were in your
mother’s womb,
I called you to stand before
kings and world leaders.”
Told Jeremiah that.
He said, “I ordained
you to the nations.
I set you apart,”
one translation said,
“for a special task.”
He told him.
He said you’re gonna
speak to kings.
You’re gonna go
before great people.
I’m gonna have you in places
that unless you know who you
are and who you’ve been sent by,
you will crumble because you
don’t have enough confidence
and courage in yourself.
He said there’s a huge call
on your life, Jeremiah.
Judgment is coming,
and I want you to say
what other prophets,
so called prophets
are not saying.
God actually called
them wind bags.
And He said they speak
all nice things,
and they don’t say the truth,
but I’m gonna make you —
He said I’m gonna make your
face harder than their faces,
and don’t be afraid
of their faces.
That’s the one that set me free.
God told Jeremiah don’t
be afraid of the faces
of the people
and their reactions
if they suck their teeth,
if they roll their eyes.
Don’t be afraid of their faces.
You just stand up there.
And He said I’ll make your face
stronger than their face.
And you know,
when God called Him,
He was in a little,
bitty tiny town.
That’s where he lived.
You start small.
The call of God,
the plan of God,
the mission of God starts small,
and it starts where you are.
It doesn’t start
when you get there,
when you get this opportunity
and that big deal.
It starts where you are.
Right now matters concerning
where you’re going.
It starts here.
It starts now.
It starts where you are.
I thought it was interesting
that when he got called,
he didn’t have a lot
of people cheering him on.
Did you know, for example,
that Jeremiah,
when he responded and said,
“Yes, I will answer the call,”
as you were just singing,
he didn’t have
anybody cheering him.
His own family hired —
eventually, later on,
they hired an assassin
to try to kill him.
I’m not making this up.
False prophets began
to cry peace and safety
while he was saying judgment
is coming, and the whole culture
turned on him,
and the ministries
of the false prophets blew up.
I mean, just, they became huge,
and he became insignificant
and ultimately was thrown
in a mud pit up to his neck
and stayed there for days.
This is all in the Bible.
He got so discouraged.
He got so discouraged that
when we pick up the story,
he actually was complaining
to God and praying to God
and going back to God after
that glorious calling,
you were called from
your mother’s womb.
I called you to be a prophet
to the nations.
I called you with this huge
task that I’ve given you,
and now in great discouragement
in the toughest time
of his life,
he turns back to God,
and he says basically,
what in the world is going on,
and he does it and he says,
Lord, you know,
nobody is responding.
False prophets are blowing up.
Their ministries are growing,
and I’m just —
I’m despised everywhere I go.
And the Lord answers
him with this answer,
“If you can’t run with
the footmen, what are you going
to do when the horsemen come?”
That’s not what
he was expecting.
He was expecting one
of those verses,
“Again, I say unto thee,
before you were in your mother’s
womb, I ordained you
and called you,”
but he didn’t get none of that.
The only response that
he got was, “So,
you think that’s tough?
You think what you’re
going through is hard?
This is just the footmen.
The horsemen are coming.
This is just the green slopes.
The black double
diamonds are coming.
This is just the easy part
of your life.
The tough stuff,
the big opposition is down
the road and if you can’t,
if the footmen are wearing
you out, what are you gonna
do when the horsemen come?
You ain’t seen nothing yet, son.
You have no idea
of the magnitude of my calling
on your life and if you can’t,
if you can’t handle where
you are right now,
how can I trust you with
where I wanna take you?
He’s got a magnificent plan.
It may feel hard where
you’re at right now.
You may feel discouraged,
and you may feel like giving up
because it seems like that all
you feel is weariness,
but you’ve been called
to run with horses.
Now, here’s the point.
Opposition escalates with
opportunity, and that means
you have not peaked yet.
That means that your greatest
days are not behind you.
They absolutely,
I tell you with 100% confidence,
you have not peaked yet.
Your greatest days are
in your future,
not in your past.
Greater doors and with greater
doors that will open will come
greater opposition than
you’ve ever experienced.
And you’ve got to be soldiers.
You’ve got to learn
how to handle it.
You’ve got to be able to deal
with running with the horses.
You keep saying
I want the big doors.
You keep saying
I want you to use me.
You keep saying it.
What you’re asking God for
is you wanna run
with the horses.
You don’t wanna be down here.
You wanna be up here.
Okay?
Then with the bigger doors
comes greater opposition.
Higher levels, higher devils.
When God’s people mobilize,
the enemy mobilizes against you.
So, don’t be astonished that
you’re going through things that
the enemy is attacking you
and you feel like quitting.
Let the magnitude of your
calling grip you in those
moments and say —
you know, the devil doesn’t
bother somebody who is not
going anywhere.
He’s worrying not
about where you are
but where you are headed.
His family tried
to take him out.
He was thrown in mud.
He wrote the Book
of Lamentations.
He became known
as the weeping prophet.
Paul put it this way,
the apostle Paul.
He said, “A great door has
opened for me,
but the adversaries are many.”
I tell you, I’ve learned that,
that with the many doors that
God opens the adversaries
are many and if I can’t be
faithful on the level
where I am,
I sure won’t be able to handle
the good times and the success
and the opposition that will
come when I move from
footmen to horsemen.
So important.
I want you to know that what
you’re going through
God wants you to know that
you are training for
the trial you’re not in yet.
You’re training through
what you’ve gone through
in your family,
what’s happening in your family,
what’s happening with your
sisters and your brothers,
what’s happening with
situations, heartbreaks,
relationships, abuse, pain,
injustice that happened to you.
Maybe someone harmed you,
someone hurt you,
someone did something terrible.
Maybe you failed yourself,
made a horrible choice,
and you just can’t seem to get
past the mistake that you made.
All that God wants to do with
that stuff is not beat you over
the head with it
and let it destroy you.
He says train for the trial
that you’re not in yet
by going through what
you’re going through right now.
If you’re serious about
living for Jesus,
harder days are coming
than you’re in right now.
Next year, you should be harder
than you are this year
concerning not giving up.
God will bless you more.
He will trust you more,
but in this world you will
have opposition.
Jesus promised it.
And you’re training.
God puts to use what
He puts you through.
God will put to use everything
He’s put you through.
Romans 8, “For we know that
all things work together
for the good to them that love
God and are called according
to His purpose.
He’s doing it right now.
It seems like there’s not fruit.
It seems like
it’s been a wasted year.
It seems like
there’s no success.
It seems like the doors
have not opened,
but you were just singing it,
Jeremiah 29:11, “I know
the plans I have for you,
plans of good and not evil.”
God puts to use what He
puts you through.
What does He put you through?
What have you gone through
the last year?
What secret battles?
What things have
you had to deal with?
What kind of hell?
What kind of depression?
What kind of darkness?
What kind of feeling
like you wanna give up?
What kind of discouragement?
God puts to use what
He puts you through.
Your strength will fail.
This is my last little point,
and don’t come to the music yet.
I’m going somewhere.
Your strength will fail.
If you wanna run with
the horses, I’m gonna let you
in on a little something.
Your strength will fail.
You wanna run with the horses.
You wanna dream bigger dreams.
I wanna do this,
and I wanna do that,
and that’s good,
but your strength will fail.
Horses are faster than people.
Horses can go 22 miles a day.
They can run for about four
miles wide open if they have to.
You can do that.
How ridiculous for God
to imply that you can run
with the horses.
Isaiah 40 said,
“Even the young men will faint,
and they will grow weary,
but they that wait upon the Lord
shall renew their strength.”
They’ll get a Holy Ghost
jetpack, and they’ll mount
up with wings as eagles.
They’ll run
and they’ll not be weary.
You’ve gone through something,
and the enemy wants to tell you
that it’s just a season
to give up, but what you’re
feeling in this place
tonight is life.
What you’re feeling in this
place tonight is a confirming
voice of the Holy Spirit
saying I by no means have taken
you to your high days.
I’m telling you,
you’re going to contend
with the horsemen.
Woo!
I was thinking about this,
and I wanna conclude,
but you know,
there are gateway experiences
that happen to us in life.
There are many gateway
experiences in your life.
First-time encounters.
The first time you encounter
a different philosophy
can become a gateway.
When you go off to college
and you hear somebody get up.
I still remember when I had
my first professor get up.
He took a Bible.
I’ll never forget it.
I used to hear stories like
this, and I didn’t believe it,
and he threw it across the room,
and then he began to list
things about the Bible.
He began to talk about how
they slaughtered people.
The God of the Bible slaughtered
children and women,
and he begins to rip to pieces,
and what he was saying,
it was sprinkled and had a lot
of truth and if you don’t
understand the difference
between the Old Covenant
and the New Covenant,
the Old Testament
and the New Testament,
and Jesus is the embodiment
of God,
and He never hurt anybody.
He only loved people.
He only forgave people.
The monster of the Old
Testament, it shows up in Jesus.
All that godhead bodily
in Jesus, and I can’t find one
time where He ever treated
anybody even remotely ugly
unless they were a mean,
religious, self-righteous,
critical somebody who was
putting people down instead
of trying to pick them up.
You know, if people are not
covered, they can get confused.
Gender confusion when a young
boy or a young girl
is molested or hurt,
and someone encroaches
on a young child in a sexual
way it becomes a gateway
experience, and it will affect
the way that child thinks.
They begin to internalize
the problem and if it happens
again and again,
they begin to ask the question
“why is this happening
to me again?”
A seed is planted.
This is how God made you.
They go to school,
and they’re taught that’s
the way God made you.
They come home,
and they see on TV
and they see all of the culture
that we live in saying this
is the way that God made you,
and really what they’re dealing
is a gateway experience
opened up,
an internal picture,
and they begin to talk that life
and walk that life and live
that life out of the wound.
As a man thinketh,
so as gender confusion sets
up a child’s mind.
As a man thinks so is he.
And they begin to live
from an internal picture.
They see themselves that way.
Young girls who have not had
a strong father figure
in their life will seek out
a relationship with a man
and men that they want love
that they never got from
their father.
And we know from statistics
that young girls who become
prostitutes and who end up
in promiscuous lifestyles,
many times it’s because some
male tampered with them,
and it opened up
a gateway experience.
And so, they just keep
pushing down the pain
and pushing down the pain
and pushing down the pain.
And it’s like a jack-in-the-box,
and you just keep winding
and winding and winding,
and suddenly, if you go
through something like that
and you don’t get the help
of God’s grace and then you
don’t talk about it,
and I’m believing and I think
I’m hearing from God that
this generation is being
prepared to run with the horses,
but they’re going through
things, and they’ve gotta
be able to talk about
the depression,
talk about the darkness,
talk about the fear,
talk about the hurt,
talk about the abuse.
You’ve gotta talk about
it to somebody or it becomes
like you know that little
jack-in-the-box,
and you press him down
and then you start winding…
pop, and he comes out.
Listen, suddenly, wild anger
becomes bizarre behavior.
Where did this come from?
There is something there.
I want you to get this verse.
I’m almost done.
Come on.
Lean in here with me.
“Be angry and sin not.”
Everybody say that with me.
That’s from the Book
of Ephesians 5.
“Be angry and sin not.”
Say it out loud.
“Be angry and sin not.”
It’s not one commandment.
It’s two.
We think it means when
you get angry, don’t sin.
That’s not what it said.
It’s two commandments.
Number one, first commandment.
When something wrong happens,
get angry.
When somebody abuses you,
be angry.
When you see injustice
in your generation, be angry.
When you see evil in your
generation, be angry.
When you see life being treated
as though it’s nothing,
be angry.
But then He gives
the second commandment,
“but sin not.”
You’ve gotta find the proper way
to release the anger
on the inside or it will
become a time bomb.
I wanna say boldly tonight
that God is not afraid
or intimidated by your anger.
And what you have to do
and this is just your
pastor talking to you,
when you’re angry about
something or someone
or something that has happened
in your life and instead
of being jack-in-the-box
and the anger causing you
to go get drunk or go get high
or lose yourself on drugs
or give yourself to another guy,
what you’ve gotta do
is you’ve gotta talk about it.
And here’s the last thing
I say to you tonight.
The Lord told me to tell you,
Isaiah makes this promise.
Number one, when you start
talking about it,
you’ll hear Jesus say
if you were abused,
if you were hurt,
if you were raped,
if you’ve gone through
something horrible,
if you were beaten,
if you were abandoned
by your father,
if you’ve gone through hell,
“As they did it unto
the least of these, Jesus said,
“they do it unto me.”
He’ll say talk to me about
it because when they
did it to you,
they did it to me.
So, let’s talk about it.
But here’s the word the Lord
told me to give you
from the Book of Isaiah,
“For your shame you shall
have double.”
Many of you were left uncovered,
but God says that you’re
going to recover.
He’s going to give you the power
to recover what was uncovered.
You should have had somebody
protecting you.
You should have had somebody
watching over you.
They weren’t there,
but what was uncovered,
God’s gonna give you
the power to recover.
♪ ♪
>> I am so thankful today
that you’re watching
this program
and I don’t believe
it’s an accident
that you’re watching.
Right now where you are
you can ask Jesus to be Lord
of your life.
Let Him in.
Just say, “Lord I need you.
I want to sign up.
I want my name in the
Lamb’s book of Life.
I want forgiveness of sin,
I want a new body one day.
I want an eternal life
that has been secured
through the death
and resurrection
of my champion, Jesus Christ.”
O Grave, where is your victory?
O Death, where is your sting?
Praise the Lord.
We are overcomers
by the blood of the Lamb,
Jesus Christ.
If you want Him,
all you gotta do is say,
“Come into my heart, Jesus.
Come into my life,
come into my family.”
He will hear your cry.
And then we wanna hear
from you.
Pick up the phone,
dial the number that’s on
the screen.
We would love to hear
from you today.
Praise the Lord.
Well, in our closing moments
together, I want to thank you
so much for your support
of this ministry.
We are 100% viewer-supported.
We preach the Gospel
of Jesus Christ all over
the world because
of your support and help.
Thank you so much
for praying about what you
can do to help us.
One of the great things
that we’re doing is in
the nation of Israel,
especially in the communities
that are on the border
of the Gaza Strip.
This region is terrorized
by Hamas and Islamic terrorists
that reside just minutes away
from the homes
of Jewish families.
Their homes and their land
is under constant attack
by rockets,
and I want to encourage you
today to help us build
these bomb shelters
that we have committed
to build in that region.
They save lives,
they save children, women,
families, it’s really
going to make a difference
when we complete these,
and we have committed
to build four of them
with your help.
We do appreciate
each and every one of you.
Thank you for your support.
Pray for us,
we’re praying for you,
and we’ll see you next time
on Kingdom Connection.
>> God’s promise to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob has always been
a promised land.
Today, the Jewish people living
in Israel are now standing
on that same promise.
But many of the Jewish families
living along the Gaza Strip
in Israel face ceaseless,
militant attacks.
These families stand firm
and defend their land because
they know it’s God’s
promise to them.
God also promised a special
blessing for those who
blessed Israel in Genesis 12.
You can experience that blessing
and help fulfill Biblical
prophecy in the Holy Land
when you partner with Jentezen
Franklin Media Ministries.
In our newest effort
to construct fortified bomb
shelters for this
region in Israel,
each one of the fortified
shelters are strategically
located to provide maximum
safety during these
senseless attacks.
As our thank you for
your gift of $50 or more,
we want to bless you with
the Healing Tree bundle.
Through this uplifting
resource bundle,
you’re going to discover
the wonderful blessings God
has for you.
Our thank you for
your gift of $500 or more,
we want to bless you
with the Healing Tree gift set,
featuring Jentezen’s uplifting
book, “Acres of Diamonds.”
Our thank you for
your gift of $1,000 or more,
we want to bless you
with the Healing Tree collection
to thank you for your generosity
towards this ministry
and your heart
for the Jewish people.
We want to plan a tree
in your honor in Israel
and send you a beautiful
“Comfort My People” coin
made with soil from Jerusalem,
as well as the many other
resources in this power
pack collection.
Your gift will save lives
and help fulfill
Biblical prophecy today.
Call now, or visit us online.
♪ ♪
>> Cherise and I want
to invite you to join us
on the Holy Land tour in 2021.
December 1-10.
I’ll be teaching from the sites
and be filming some special
programs that you’ll get
to be a part of.
You’ll get amazing tour that
will change your perspective
and show you the Bible
like you’ve never seen before.
I’m excited about Israel,
the Holy Land.
Pray about if you should go.
It’s gonna be an amazing trip.
♪ ♪
♪ ♪
>> We hope you’ve enjoyed
this teaching
by Jentezen Franklin,
and thank you
for your continued support
of this ministry.
Your prayers
and financial support
make these programs possible.
For more information
about this message,
and other ministry resources,
visit us online
at JentezenFranklin.tv.
♪ ♪