Jim Bakker Show - You Never Know How God Will Prepare You - Jentezen Franklin
Aired: 2020-02-04
Duration: 03:52


=== He Preached That Night (02:20) ===

[00:00:00]  You had boils.
[00:00:03]  How old were you?
[00:00:04]  I was 17.
[00:00:05]  Oh, my God.
[00:00:06]  I was a senior.
[00:00:06]  At a teen school, I was very, I was popular running with the popular kids and starting to do things, starting to get into things that I shouldn't do, partying some.
[00:00:18]  But I love, you know, I love the Lord, but I was definitely in that season.
[00:00:23]  And I went to a service and a guy named Ronnie Brock preached that night.
[00:00:28]  He's Steve Brock's brother.
[00:00:30]  He preached that night, and he preached to young people.
[00:00:33]  And it messed me up.
[00:00:35]  I could take you to the spot.
[00:00:37]  I fell to my knees.
[00:00:38]  He called all the young people down.
[00:00:39]  There were hundreds there in this meeting.
[00:00:41]  And I welcome and cried, and I said, God, all right, I know you've been wanting me to preach.
[00:00:47]  I want to be a musician.
[00:00:48]  I play sacks, and that's what I love music.
[00:00:51]  I wanted to be a musician.
[00:00:54]  And I said, if I could preach like that, if you would use me like that.
[00:01:01]  And I felt the Lord, I didn't tell anybody for four years, but I felt the Lord tell me, I'm going to use you.
[00:01:06]  I just saw you.
[00:01:07]  I just showed you a picture of your future.
[00:01:11]  Within a few months, boils came on my body, had no issues whatsoever.
[00:01:16]  From the top of my head, not a part of my face.
[00:01:20]  My nose would swell.
[00:01:22]  My eyes would swell.
[00:01:23]  Up under here, bulls all over my face, my ears, neck, chest, back, all over my body.
[00:01:32]  It went on not for a week, a month, six months.
[00:01:35]  We went to doctors, went to this, that, and the other.
[00:01:38]  They could not help me.
[00:01:39]  I had to change my whole school year, lost all my friends, ended up basically depressed and at the verge of just saying, I could so relate to what you said in a different way.
[00:01:50]  It sounds almost compared to what you've been through, but for a 17-year-old teenager, your image is destroyed.
[00:01:58]  Your self-confidence is destroyed.
[00:02:01]  I looked at God one night and I said, how could you, how could you, what are you doing?

=== Bible Study In The Bedroom (01:47) ===

[00:02:06]  Just joking with me?
[00:02:09]  You show me that one day I'll stand before people.
[00:02:13]  I don't have enough self-confidence to look anybody in the eye.
[00:02:16]  I feel like a leper.
[00:02:17]  I feel like a freak.
[00:02:19]  I feel like an outcast.
[00:02:20]  How in the world will I ever preach the gospel?
[00:02:23]  Oh, my God.
[00:02:24]  And it was in those hours that in my bedroom, I began to open up the Bible for myself.
[00:02:32]  I began to read the book of Job for myself.
[00:02:36]  I began to weep and cry, and I began to listen back then to cassette tapes.
[00:02:41]  That's when I started watching you.
[00:02:43]  That's when I started driving down there, sometimes with a puffy coat, the cover, usually late so I could find a seat in the dark.
[00:02:52]  I would never go into a room like this not looking for the darkest place that I could find to hide so nobody would look at me twice.
[00:03:02]  And to make a long story short, it was that season of my life that God used to prepare me.
[00:03:09]  To this day, when I'm preaching sermons, when I'm getting ready to preach, many times as I'm writing things down, my mind will go back to that season.
[00:03:18]  And I can't ever see a teenager or a person who's an outcast or they don't have the right clothes or they look unkept or whatever.
[00:03:28]  I can't ever see them and not be drawn to them more than the millionaire whoever is in the room.
[00:03:35]  I'd rather go to that person, not because I'm such a great person.
[00:03:38]  It's because that's who I was.
[00:03:41]  That's who I was.
[00:03:43]  And God uses those seasons in our life, the extreme pressure and heat, to cause acres of diamonds to come out of our life.