The Preparation Process

Synopsis of Bible Study October 11, 2017

Delivered by Bishop Walker III, DMin.

I.                        Introduction

1. Proper planning, prevents poor performance.
2. The preparation process is rigorous and requires discipline. The curriculum is planned to be rigorous for a reason.
3. You have to accomplish likewise a level of things to be promoted in the work of God.
   1. Photos are developed in a darkroom. You have to be careful not to let light into that room. Light will distort the picture or finished product. If the room remains dark during the process, then eventually the picture will be developed.
   2. In like manner, God puts you in a dark place so that He can develop you. We have to be careful not to uproot so fast when things don’t seem to be to our liking. When we get out of position, then we have allowed the process to be exposed to light. This destroys the finished product. We have to be willing to stay in the dark room long enough for God to develop us.
4. Know that your period of development may take longer than someone elses.
5. Proverbs 24:27 (NKJV) 27 Prepare your outside work, Make it fit for yourself in the field; And afterward build your house. The message bible says, Proverbs 24:27 (MSG) 27 First plant your fields; then build your barn. – Look at the order. If you work, labor, and sow, you have something to put into the barn. If you don’t labor, you don’t have anything to put into the barn.
6. Just like this example, it is important not to end up empty.

II.                        Seek God First

1. Matthew 6:3 (NKJV) 3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, – God has a way of reminding us that he must be our first priority. You have to see God early enough, so that you won’t allow retractions from your story line. You don’t want to say God told you to do something, and later say he told you to do something else.
2. Proverbs 19:21 (NKJV) 21 There are many plans in a man’s heart, Nevertheless the Lord’s counsel—that will stand.- There are a lot of things you are passionate about in your heart, but do they line up with God’s counsel? Everything good thing that you do is not necessarily a God thing.
3. The way to discern this is to understand :

A.     Don’t plan without prayer

1. Philippians 4:6 (NKJV) 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; – Don’t be nervous about it. Just pray about it. Planning is necessary, but you got to prayer first. Ask God what His will is for you first, before you plan what you think.
2. Ex- The worst thing you can do and get 3yrs worth of credit hours under your belt and then realize, “This isn’t what I’m supposed to be doing”. You don’t have time to waste!
3. Proverbs 16:3 (NKJV) 3 Commit your works to the Lord, And your thoughts will be established. – You have your works and you have your thoughts. If your thoughts and your works are not lined up, you can be on a job, and yet your mind is somewhere else. You want your thoughts to be lined up with works, so you will be full throttle.
4. If I stay planted, then my thoughts will be of His thoughts.

B.     Separate yourself from the crowd

1. Be clear that you hear from God, by getting the chatter out of your ear.
2. Jesus teaches early in his ministry this: In Matthew 4:4 (NKJV) 4 But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”[a]- Jesus was sent into the wilderness to prepare as soon as he was baptized. Why was this? So he could fast, pray, and deal with demonic warfare. You don’t develop resistance until you are by yourself and learn how to deal with some stuff. You got to learn to separate yourself and ask the Lord to build you up, so where you go, you will always be able to handle it.

3. There comes a time we have to go reset, spend time with God, and asses our surroundings. For example, when you are in the frame, you really can’t see the picture within the picture frame. It’s only when you step outside the frame that you can see what others have been trying to tell you the whole time. When you step out of that, God starts showing you stuff. When you get back in the frame, then you can see better.
4. Here’s some questions you need to answer, concerning how you spend your time. Assign a percentage to each question and know that they have to total up to a 100%.
   1. What % of your time do you spend in a 24hr period, working?
   2. What % of your time do you spend doing domesticated work (that is things like family and home life)?
   3. What % of your time do you spend pouring into yourself spiritually?
   4. What % of time do you spend resting?
5. How many of you thought this was eye opening, seeing your life broken down this way?
6. How do your prepare to make things better, after seeing the results? Some of you have work to do after seeing this. At some point, you’re going to have to live.

III.                        Strengthen Your Commitments

A.     View every job as a preparation for destiny

1. No job should be beneath you.
2. David (the king) is an example of this. David was being prepared as a shepherd boy long before being king, but he developed fundamental skills for being king, when he was a shepherd boy.
3. Being a shepherd boy:
   1. David learned how lead sheep.
   2. David learned to feed the sheep.
   3. David learned how to correct sheep.
   4. David learned how to protect the sheep.
      1. Ex – Bishop said he had two jobs before becoming a Pastor. One was working with his dad which he hated. The other was working in a funeral home. He took care of dead bodies.
   5. What could Bishop have learned from these two jobs that would help him with his job now as a Pastor? Think about it. In his work from his dad, he learned responsibility and he got his hard work ethic. From the funeral home, he learned how to talk to and comfort grieving families.
   6. Now we must ask ourselves, what could our jobs possibly have taught that relates to our destiny? Know that every job you have ever held, had a lesson in it.
   7. When the moment came we see in 1 Samuel 17:33-37 (NKJV) 33 And Saul said to David, “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him; for you are a youth, and he a man of war from his youth.” 34 But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep his father’s sheep, and when a lion or a bear came and took a lamb out of the flock, 35 I went out after it and struck it, and delivered the lamb from its mouth; and when it arose against me, I caught it by its beard, and struck and killed it. 36 Your servant has killed both lion and bear; and this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.” 37 Moreover David said, “The Lord, who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”
   8. And Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you!”- When you look at where God is taking you and people question your qualifications, you will be able to answer that your prior job experiences have qualified you.

B.     Don’t settle for ordinary, seek extraordinary

Matthew 14:28-29 (NKJV) 28 And Peter answered Him and said, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” 29 So He said, “Come.” And when Peter had come down out of the boat, he walked on the water to go to Jesus. – Peter was willing to step outside the box. Ask yourself, what are doing now that is extraordinary? If you listen to people, you will end up truncating your vision.

1. Ask yourself, is all this grinding you are doing the result of being another of something that is already created? The answer is no. You will be that extraordinary one! You are the one that is going to do something that’s never been done before.
2. Some opportunities are closed to you, because they can’t handle your extraordinary. You can’t put an extraordinary person in an ordinary situation.
3. When you start seeing extraordinary. You start to sharpen your skills.

IV.                        Sharpen your skills

A.     Invest in yourself.

1. The devil is trying to take your will away. You can fail to have the skill set, but if you have the will, this is when you will invest in yourself.
2. You have to invest in you, because you are the commodity
3. Questions to ask yourself
   1. What are your most productive hours of the day?
   2. What are my defined areas of skills and expertise?
   3. What are my priories in life?
   4. How prepared am I for the opportunities I am seeking.
   5. Am I aligned with their I got people to reach my Destiny?
   6. Do I take advantage of the opportunities that come my way?
4. When somebody offers you a job, you got to be ready. Your mind is

B.     Create a successful mindset

1. Believe you will achieve what you have been called to accomplish. Philippians 1:6 (NKJV) 6 being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;- Inside of you is a work that God started. He will give you a magnetic pull for that thing He started in you.
   1. The devil tried to copy this. This is why people with a vise is automatically drawn to the thing that they are struggling with.
   2. If you are drawn to greatness, you will attract just that.
2. Have a clear vision of your destiny. Habakkuk 2:2 (NKJV) 2 Then the Lord answered me and said: “Write the vision And make it plain on tablets, That he may run who reads it. – It’s your vision. You can’t live your life based on other people’s vision.
3. Think about it. Why do they ask questions to verify that you are on the right plane, when all the info is on your ticket? It is because they know somebody will still end up getting on the wrong plane.
4. If you lose yourself in somebody else’ vision, you will never know what God has for your life.
5. Become a voracious reader. All leaders are readers.
6. People often ask Bishop, how does he study? The answer is this: His study habits don’t involve just books concerning religion. He reads This way, he is able to study the word contextually.
7. Proverbs 15:14 (NKJV) 14 The heart of him who has understanding seeks knowledge, But the mouth of fools feeds on foolishness.
8. Be open to a higher level of thinking.
9. God wants to blow your mind. 1 Corinthians 2:9 (NKJV) 9 But as it is written: “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”[a]- You really haven’t raised your level of thinking until what you imagine, scares you.
10. For those of you born in 80s, who would have ever imagined looking at somebody, while talking to them on a phone. That was something from right out of the Jetsons (the cartoon).
11. If Bishop would have listened to what people told him, where would Mt Zion be today? Where would Mt Zion be if he would have just stayed with the 11am service on Sunday at Jefferson St? God blew our minds!

V.                        Conclusion

Story:

There were 2 men fishing and each of them had a son. One father and son was catching fish and the other father and son duo wasn’t. One thing strange was happening though.The father and son that was catching fish, kept throwing them back. The father and son duo that was not catching anything decided to row their boat over to the other duo and find out why they were throwing fish back. After all, they weren’t catching anything.

When they first asked, no one said anything, then the son that wasn’t catching anything looked over into the boat. He said, “I know why they are throwing them back, Dad”. He said, “They only had a certain size frying pan!” See they were only keeping what would fit in their frying pan. In other words, they were keeping what they were prepared for.

1. God wants to blow your mind! You need to be prepared for what you are believing God for. You don’t want to be caught with not enough capacity to handle the blessing.
2. You have to learn to be steadfast. 1 Corinthians 15:58 (NKJV) 58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
3. Preparation – If you do the hard work it will set you up for position.
4. Position – Is waiting for people who are prepared. God is preparing a position to handle what you bring to it (for some).
5. Productivity – If He positions you, you will be It is hard to produce in an environment where God doesn’t want you to be.
6. Expect Persecution – People will ask why you are here. Know that your productivity will draw
7. Promotion – This finally comes. Romans 8:18 (NKJV) 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. – Preparation is going to be worth it! Your preparation will lead to your promotion!