Delivered by Bishop Joseph W. Walker, III

Synopsis 5.10.26

Scripture: Song of Solomon 2:15 (NKJV)

15 Catch us the foxes,
The little foxes that spoil the vines,
For our vines have tender grapes.

Prayer:

Hallelujah. Father, thank You. We have so much to thank You for. And now, God, I pray that Your Word will speak to us with clarity and understanding, that we might be made better because of what we’re about to receive. Let this Word meet us right where we are. And I thank You in advance, as all day we have seen lives changed and souls saved. Let it happen now, and we give You glory and praise. In the name of Jesus the Christ, we pray. Everybody said amen.

I.               INTRODUCTION

• Today, I want to stretch you. I want you to hear this Word today as we walk through this Word. I believe that God is going to speak very clearly to someone today, particularly in a day in which culture celebrates big moments, but ignores the small decisions that lead to them.
• Social media shows you the highlight reel but rarely focuses on the habits behind it. We often see the success of other people, but we don’t see the discipline that produced it. And then we see public failures without realizing that most of the collapses we have seen do not happen dramatically all of a sudden, but they happen privately and quietly before they become public.
• I want you to understand something today: life rarely happens in one traumatic moment. The things that attack your life begin very small, and they either wear away or erode your destiny.
• So for a moment today, I want you to imagine your life as a vineyard. I want you to see your life as a powerful place of fruit, productivity, vision, the thing that you are pursuing, your career, your family, everything that you hold sacred. I want you to get it in your spirit: that’s your yard. It is full of fruit. “You shall know them by their fruit.” “Here is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit.”
• So your vineyard is full of possibility. It’s full of fruit. It’s full of extraordinary things that you and God have already come into agreement about, things God is going to do in your life. That’s your vineyard. That’s what gets you up every day. That’s what causes you to show up like this, to pray, to push, to have the discipline you have, because it’s about your vineyard.
• I also now want you to think about the fact that you cannot and will not have such an extraordinary vineyard without there being an attack against it. And I want you, for a moment, to think about a little fox.
• The fox will travel miles unabated. The fox does not care how far it has to travel. It has one objective: to come at what’s in your vineyard. I want you to imagine that the fox does not hunt during the day. A fox is nocturnal. It hunts at night. It sneaks in while you are asleep. It wants what’s in your vineyard.
• I want you to imagine that the fox is a very pretty little animal, with a little puffy tail, but the fox is not your pet. The fox is a predator. And what the fox specializes in doing is sneaking into your vineyard, not for the strong stuff. It wants the stuff that is just starting out, the tender grapes. There were things that are just beginning to happen in your life, things that are just developing, the most precious thing that is on the way. That’s what the fox wants. He wants the potential to be aborted.

II.               BIG FAILURES OFTEN BEGIN WITH SMALL COMPROMISES

• And therefore, when Pharaoh sent out a decree that all male children should be killed, it was because there was a suspicion that there was a baby who would deliver God’s people from Egyptian bondage. Herod the Great sent out a decree telling the wise men, “When you find baby Jesus, tell me where He is, that I may come and worship Him.” He did not want to worship Jesus. He wanted to kill Him before He got to the cross.
• The attacks that have happened in your life, somebody can testify, happened when you were young, when the embryo stages of your life and your vision were coming to fruition, because that’s the space where the enemy attacks.
• So today, I want you to hear me loud and clear. I am here to preach the Word your mama wanted me to tell you: you better be careful, because with all that God is doing in your life, don’t you get too comfortable up here, because there are foxes that are trying to undermine the very blessing that God has for your life.
• And if you don’t know by now, I ain’t talking about no real fox. I’m talking about the fox that’s in your list of contacts in your phone right now. I’m talking about the fox that’s creeping in your DM. I’m talking about the fox that’s on your job. I’m talking about the fox that’s trying to derail the purpose of God over your life. I’m talking about the little fox that’s messing with your mind, that’s messing with your destiny, that’s messing with your history, that’s messing with your future. Everybody up in here knows you’ve already labeled your little fox.

• Today, Solomon gives us this Word, and I want to talk to you and tell you something. I want you to pay attention. Big failures often begin with small compromises. What you will learn today is that destruction rarely happens immediately. It usually starts quietly, with small compromises that seem harmless.
• Most of the time, people don’t wake up one morning and just decide to abandon their values, walk away from their family, or walk away from their career. It doesn’t happen that way. It happens through small compromises. It happens in those moments that begin to feel convenient, and then comfortable, and then you turn them into necessary. And over time, those small compromises begin to reshape your standards.
• The vineyard that you have is not barren. The vineyard that you have is actually fruitful. It is bearing. That means something good is happening. Yet even in seasons when something good is happening, foxes love to nip at it.
• Many of you assume danger only exists when your life is falling apart. Let me tell you something: no. Your greatest threats come when things are beginning to flourish. The enemy understands that if he cannot destroy the vineyard in one moment, he will weaken it little by little until he finally destroys it.
• That’s why you have to have more than vision. You must have vigilance, because God gives you a vineyard, but you have to be able to protect what is planted.

A. Small Allowances Slowly Grow Into Major Consequences

1. Because here is the reality: small allowances slowly grow into major consequences. When I talk about allowances, I know you automatically default to the allowance your mom gave you when you did something and got something for it. Well, no. I want you to hear allowance a little differently today.
2. Allowance suggests what you give permission to, what you keep allowing. I know it is easy to look at your cousin and call your friend and say, “I don’t understand why you keep allowing that to happen to you. Why do you keep putting up with that?” I came to talk to you and ask you: why do you keep allowing that to happen to you?
3. It’s what you let stay. It’s what you let slide. It’s what you tell yourself is not that serious. See, the danger is not the size of it. It’s the repetition of it. The problem is the repeated allowances slowly weaken your convictions and shift your boundaries. And over time, the things that you used to resist now feel normal. You’ve normalized your dysfunction, and that fox in your vineyard is not only destroying everything, but it is also destroying your own potential. It is destroying your own willingness to even be better than what it is taking away.
4. Please understand this: erosion happens like this. This is what happens, people of God. We see this pattern in relationships. A relationship begins to deteriorate because small offenses go unresolved. Integrity begins to erode because you keep cutting corners repeatedly. Spiritual strength begins to weaken because you stop praying, you stop doing the discipline, you stop worshiping, you stop showing up.

• This is what happens in the text. What feels minor today can become devastating tomorrow. That’s why the instruction is not to watch the foxes but to catch them before they destroy what is forming.

B. Ignoring Problems Allows Them To Gain Strength

1. Do you know something? Ignoring the problem allows it to gain strength. Just because you ignore it does not mean it’s going to go away. “I just don’t want to deal with it. I don’t want no smoke. I want peace.” Let me just talk to you for a second and help you understand something.
2. In the natural, a farmer does not ignore the signs of a fox. A small opening in the gate may look like nothing, but a farmer knows this is serious business, because if I leave this unattended long enough, my situation is going to be vulnerable. One little fox can turn into several foxes, and what could have been handled earlier now becomes harder later.
3. The same thing happens in our lives. You ignore that strange noise in your car long enough. “Ain’t that light been on?” That light has been on. That’s your problem now. What could have been a minor repair has turned into a major expense.
4. Ignore a small leak in your house, and eventually it damages the walls, the floor, and the foundation. Ignore high blood pressure. Ignore stress and exhaustion and poor habits. Then eventually your body has to deal with what you refused to address earlier.
5. See, life teaches us that neglected things grow. The same principle is right here spiritually. A little offense becomes deep bitterness. A little compromise becomes a lifestyle. A little distance from prayer becomes spiritual dryness. A little church hurt becomes isolation. A little unforgiveness becomes emotional bondage.
6. And the truth is, you don’t lose your peace overnight. You don’t drift from God suddenly. You know what happens? Slowly, quietly, little by little, fox by fox.
7. And that’s why you and I cannot normalize what God is trying to correct. Some people keep saying, “It’s not that serious,” while your yard is being destroyed right in front of you, and you tell somebody, “It’s not that serious.”
8. Some people keep postponing conversations they know they need to have. You keep avoiding accountability, ignoring toxic behavior, refusing counseling, refusing healing, refusing repentance, all the while the fox is eating away at your fruit, because the enemy loves unmanaged areas in all of our lives.

III.               WHAT YOU TOLERATE WILL EVENTUALLY SHAPE YOUR LIFE

• That’s why you’ve got to confront this thing. You’ve got to confront that attitude early. You’ve got to confront that addiction early. You’ve got to confront that bitterness early. You’ve got to confront this stuff because, let me tell you something, you can’t sit back and be silent. You’ve got to deal with this stuff.
• You cannot sit back here with your whole family’s way of dealing with it: “We just ain’t going to deal with it. We don’t talk about Bruno.” The devil is a liar. This is a fox, and you’re sitting right here not wanting to deal with the fox, trying to pet your fox, trying to keep your fox there, trying to accommodate your fox.
• But let me tell you what happens: whatever you end up accommodating, you will end up tolerating. Whatever you tolerate, you will end up assimilating.

A. Excuses Eventually Become Entanglements

1. Oh, you’re preaching, Bishop, all by yourself.
2. If I accommodate it, give it space, let it come in, and I’m cool with not closing the access point, then I am tolerating it. At the moment I tolerate it, people that love me look at me and wonder if I’ve lost my mind because they’re trying to say, “Why are you tolerating certain behaviors and certain things around you when I know the greatness of the vineyard that you have?”
3. But what happens is, if you tolerate it long enough, it becomes grafted into your character. Now it becomes a part of who you are. You have assimilated yourself into that dysfunction, so now you have become the thing that tried to kill you.
4. That’s why, people of God, you’ve got to understand something powerful. Can I talk to you just a second? What you tolerate will shape your life.
5. Let me help you understand something. Have you ever woken up one day and said, “What’s wrong with me? Why am I in this place? Why am I not feeling like I used to feel? Why am I not praying? Why don’t I have the same fire? What’s going on? How did I get off?”
6. Let me tell you what happens. You used to be discerning, but now you’re more passive. You didn’t make one big decision. This happened systematically. Let me show you how the fox works. It reminds us that without boundaries, foxes roam freely in your vineyard. You’re letting foxes just play in it.
7. Let me be practical. I love everybody. I love everybody. Get all that straight. But I’m at a point in my life that everybody ain’t about to get in my car. Everybody ain’t about to come to my house. Everybody ain’t about to put their hands on me because I understand how foxes work.
8. A little fox gets in, and the moment you think, “I’ll deal with that fox,” you don’t realize foxes have cousins and nephews. If you grew up like I grew up in the South, just because you kill one thing doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some cousins coming. You’ve got to go at the root of that thing. Who am I talking to in here today?
9. And let me tell you something. This is why you have to deal with it, because excuses eventually become entanglements. You heard that word before. You keep making excuses for it. You keep justifying it. You keep saying, “This is just what it is. This is what’s going to be.” You keep postponing change. You keep delaying repentance. You keep trying to justify what you know is horrible for you.

1. You keep walking around here with a Messiah complex, thinking you’re going to turn a fox from eating your stuff. “It’s my job to try to save this fox. I feel like nobody believes in this fox. I feel like God put me here to save this fox.” The fox is going to sit there and say, “Thank you very much,” and by night, the fox is going to be eating up your stuff. Who am I talking to in here today, people of God?
2. And you end up with the vineyard, all the things that are forming in your life, and you don’t realize how entangled you are with what you keep making excuses for. You don’t realize you are so entangled in this that every time you turn around, you keep making justification for the dysfunction in your life, and you don’t realize the real reality of what the fox is after.
3. The reason the fox is coming at your stuff is because it is forming. It is happening. He wants the tender grapes. He wants what he sees is about to happen. I need you to look at somebody and say, “It’s about to happen in your life.” Everything you prayed for is about to happen. What you put on your vision board is about to happen.

B. Waiting Too Long To Correct Something Makes The Damage Worse

1. And that’s why you’ve got to be careful, because the moment it’s about to happen, the moment the contract is about to happen, the moment the business is about to blow up, the moment you’re about to get into school, the moment this thing is about to happen, that’s what the devil wants. He wants it right at the moment it’s about to happen.
2. Waiting too long to correct something makes the damage worse. You keep making excuses for the delay. You know how we do. You go to the doctor, and the doctor says you have high blood pressure. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sorry. I ate a pork chop last night.” No, that’s all cholesterol and all that from years of this.
3. Stop blaming yesterday for this. Bitterness toward somebody did not start with your last relationship. It started with the abandonment that you felt when your dad left your mama. That did not start yesterday. That started many, many years ago.
4. That’s why I’m talking to the people now who know you aren’t even fighting your own demons. You’re fighting the demons of your mama and your daddy. You’re fighting generational stuff, and you wake up and say, “What’s wrong with me?” Because this is how entangled it is.
5. This is why, listen, when you keep avoiding it and you wait on the correction, you make the damage worse. There’s urgency in the text. The vineyard is producing fruit, and the fruit has to be protected.

IV.               DEALING WITH PROBLEMS EARLY PROTECTS WHAT GOD IS GROWING

• And what God will do, that’s why I love God, you mess around and don’t deal with it, and God shows up and blows up your spot. God will bring divine disruption, and God will come in and disrupt everything around you and every plan you had. And then you think it’s punishment, but it ain’t punishment. It’s protection.
• Some of you are still mad at God because God removed some people and some things out of your life. But God was trying to blow up your spot and tell you, “You’ve got too much in your destiny.”

A. Confronting Issues Early Keeps The Harvest Safe

1. Here’s what I know. Here’s the thing I loved about my mother, because my mother got it from her mother, my grandmother. And when I think about their legacy, I can’t help but think about this. My mother operated with a strong sense of discernment, and she knew a fox when she saw one. And my mother would not delay, nor would she be concerned about being polite.
2. I would have friends come by the house, and she would grab me by the ear and say, “Don’t you bring that boy back over here no more.” “You trying to choose my friends?” “You heard what I said.” And then I looked back over my life and realized Mama saw what I didn’t see. Who am I talking to?
3. “Mama, I thought this was the one. Mama, I’m going to date her.” “Baby, that’s not the one. That’s a little fox.” “Look how cute it is.” “Don’t you be fooled by how cute it looks, baby, because that thing is going to try to destroy everything you worked for.”
4. You’ve got to thank God for the Holy Spirit. That’s why when the Holy Spirit speaks to you, you’ve got to trust what He’s telling you.
5. This is why I want you to understand. You’ve got to protect the atmosphere of flourishing. The text is not just about removing the foxes. This text is about preserving the environment so growth can continue, because the vineyard in the text is blooming and full of potential, but the foxes are threatening the atmosphere necessary for healthy development.
6. Fruit needs the right environment. You cannot grow peace in drama. You cannot grow purpose in constant negativity. You cannot grow spiritually while you’re feeding carnality every day.
7. And in this season, God loves you so much that your environment matters. God prompted you to this location on Mother’s Day and got you tuned in right now to send you a word through this man of God to tell you that it’s time for you to do a crowd audit.

• It’s time for you to be honest about some of the people in your life who are negative, who drain you, who pull from you, or who are transactional people, people who are latching on to you for what they can get.
• This is the time you say, “Lord, deliver me from every fox in my life that’s trying to undermine the destiny that’s on my life.”

B. Discipline Today Prevents Devastation Tomorrow

1. And I just encourage you to tell you something. This is for you. Just me and you. You’re letting small things steal big things. You’ve got to walk away from all this stuff.
2. God is doing too much in your life, too much potential, too much vision, too much greatness. You’re about to walk away from it because you let some little person with a little mindset and a little vocabulary speak a little word in your life, and now you’re having an existential crisis.
3. Because you look at all that God is doing in your life. Baby, I’m not going to let some little thing cause me to walk away from the big thing God has for my life.
4. The enemy understands that if he cannot destroy you quickly, he will distract you gradually. Samson ignored the little compromise until he ended up losing his strength, lying in the lap of Delilah. Esau sold his whole future over a bowl of soup. Judas allowed a small seed of greed to cause him to betray the Son of the living God.
5. And many people I’m talking to now, you think about your own life, and you go back over your life and ask, “What did the little foxes cost me? How much money? How much peace of mind? How many times was your heart broken all because you let a little fox in?”
6. But can I tell you something? God sent me to bless you. This is what your mama wanted me to tell you: discipline today prevents devastation tomorrow. Get it right now and save yourself years of drama.
7. Vineyards do not stay healthy accidentally. Vineyards require watchfulness, discernment, and authority. The vineyard is fruitful. The vines are growing. The grapes are tender. Potential is everywhere. But growth without protection is vulnerability.
8. And in this season, God is calling you to stop playing around. This ain’t no pet. This is a predator. You don’t domesticate what you need to eliminate. You cannot eliminate what you continue to tolerate.
9. The Bible doesn’t say observe the little foxes. It says catch them. Apprehend them. Bring into captivity the thing that comes at your destiny.
10. God has given you authority. You have power. You don’t need somebody else to come deal with the foxes in your life. You’ve got enough authority to walk around your own house and deal with the foxes in your own house.
11. You’ve got to stop walking around letting foxes come and go through your situation. Today I’m taking authority. No more tolerating dysfunctional cycles. No more entertaining constant confusion. No more giving access to things that have wounded my spirit. Today it stops.

1. Fox, you will not have my house. You will not have my family. You will not have my marriage. You will not have my money. You will not have my ministry. You will not have my children. You will not have my career. You will not have my destiny.
2. I’m drawing a line in the sand. I’m closing every portal. I’m fixing every fence. I’m making sure there are no access points. I’m deleting certain people. I’ve got to block certain things because I look at what God is getting ready to do in my life, and I can’t afford to blow it right now.
3. You are too close to blow this.
4. When I see you, I see destiny all around you. I see greatness all around you. I see big things happening in your life, so I’m not going to let a fox come in and take God’s future for your life.
5. No weapon formed against you shall prosper. All of your enemies will stumble, and they will fall.
6. This is my harvest season. Guard my mind. Guard my peace. Guard my atmosphere. Guard my purpose. Guard my anointing.
7. God gave me this Word because God is not going to let you self-destruct on our watch. We’re not about to read about you. You’re not about to be a hashtag. You have too much greatness and too much destiny on your life.
8. No matter how beautiful the house, no matter how expensive the property, termites can destroy it. And a house can collapse because of termites. And when the inspector comes, the inspector says, “This house did not fall because of one dramatic event. This house fell because of years of undealt-with issues.”
9. I come to tell you that I’ve had my share of little foxes. I’ve made little foxes pets too. I know what that feels like.
10. But you’ve got to make up your mind whether you’re going to entertain the fox or entertain your harvest.
11. I declare and decree that this is your harvest season, and I come against every addiction. I come against every cycle of dysfunction. I declare this is how you fight your battles. You fight with the weapons of your warfare.