Core Values:
Jesus is our message
People are our priority
Development is our Focus
Unity is our pursuit
Team is our structure
Excellence is our standard
Generosity is our privilege

God created you with a purpose for a purpose, and we believe that if you are breathing air, then you still have something great to do to move the Kingdom forward. One of our main roles is to do everything we can to help you reach your highest potential in Christ Jesus. Even Jesus was in a development process, and he engaged in developing every person he came in contact with. We want to do the same.

Pastor Tony did an excellent job last week on Development. The takeaways you should have gotten from his message are:

3 Enemies of Develop: Potential, Isolation, and Delusion
- Surround yourself with people who care
- Create times for development
- The Development Challenge

This morning, I want to talk to you about 3 things in understanding development.

Some of us actually know a life before social media. I’m so grateful that God called me healed me before there was social media because I know the voice of God for myself. I had to scrap and fight through my healing struggling to hear God’s voice. What many people don’t understand is that your development comes from the times in life where you must stretch to grow. Where you must fight for your sanity, for your spouse, for your children and fight for your very life!

There are over 750 million photos uploaded to social media every day! Unfortunately, this is the world we live in. With all types of hashtags, the most prominent one ever in the history of social media is #selfie! We are so obsessed with ourselves. We are the most narcissistic generation that has existed.

1. Development is a process.

Process: a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

The 35mm film has to be developed. It can only be developed in a darkroom while in the darkroom room, it goes through a process. The process is necessary so that the image can be forged on the negative. If you open the darkroom door prematurely, if you allow any light into that darkroom prematurely then the light would have exposed the negative and the image in the negative would have been destroyed and the original image would never be produced.

Now, many of us, because of the world in, think our destiny is a snap and upload process. We go to church, and we go to conferences to “get” a prophetic word from God. We think this word, or this prophesy is the picture of who we are. So, upload it so everyone can see what God said and what we’re going to be next week. We’re going to be the next whatever. We think we just need someone to discover us because look what God said about me. The thing that I've discovered is you don't need to be discovered by God. He's already created you. We don’t need to be discovered; we need to be developed.

Why we don’t allow God to develop us:
- The process is too hard.
- We're waiting for man to discover us.

So, the issue is that we have a generation that's running into the darkroom opening the door exposing the image of Christ that’s being forged on the inside of us prematurely. We’re not realizing we need to be developed, conformed, and transformed to the image of Jesus Christ and can only happen in the darkroom of development.

2. Development is best done in darkrooms.

In the darkroom of development is where the anointing is forged. We have a lot of people in churches today that are gifted but not anointed.

Isaiah 10:27 And it shall come to pass in that day, that his burden shall be taken away from off thy shoulder, and his yoke from off thy neck, and the yoke shall be destroyed because of the anointing.

The yokes of chains and bondages in our lives are not broken by the gifted. They are broken by the anointing that rest on the lives of His chosen. Your level of anointing will be determined by the level of crushing you allow the Lord to do in the darkroom of development in your life.

We have a generation that doesn't want to be crushed, doesn’t want to be developed. The degree to which you are willing to allow God to develop you and do what needs to be done in you, is the degree to which God will use you and do an amazing work through you. There is a direct correlation between crushing, development and the anointing. There is a direct correlation between ongoing crushing, ongoing development and ongoing anointing.

If it’s the anointing that breaks the chains and bondages, you and I have a responsibility to allow God to do what needs to be done in us before we ever stand up here. Our job is to connect people to God, not to us! Until we go through the crushing and the development, our pride will always tell us that it’s about us!

2 Samuel 5:4-5
David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years. 5 In Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months: and in Jerusalem he reigned thirty and three years over all Israel and Judah.

He was actually 37 when he reigned over all of Israel. Do you know when he was anointed? He was anointed when he was 17. The Spirit of the Lord left his leader, his dad, when he was 17. He was anointed in front of everyone at 17 but although he was anointed in 1 Samuel 16, he wasn't appointed until 2 Samuel 5. There were 20 years and 20 chapters between the anointing and the appointment. God was developing him to become who he already was. He was being develop into the image that was on the negative of his soul in the darkroom with God. We have to allow God to develop us. That development many times involves other people.

When you are developed by God, God will open doors that no man can shut. Your promotion comes from God alone. So many of us are missing our destiny because we get that word and think it’s supposed to happen tomorrow. What if it takes 20/30 years to develop?

You will only have enough grace for the race that you were called to run.
Now, imagine David. Samuel, the Prophet, shows up at his house and he's about to anoint the next king. God says I have appointed for myself a new king. Imagine if David was not doing what God called him to do. He was out in an obscure place, in the darkroom, out in the field killing lions and bears and learning the lay of the land. He was in his own place with God. He was out playing his harp; he is exactly where he's supposed to be. He's being developed in anonymity.

Samuel was looking for the next King. He saw Eliab and thought Eliab was it. He looked like a king. He was tall, he was good looking and here is the deal. He wasn’t the one to be anointed because verse 7: “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”

The truth is that God always looks from the inside out. He looks at the heart. Which is why you're shocked that he uses some of the people that he uses.

3. Development requires dying daily.

We must be willing to die daily. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15 that he dies daily. We should be willing to be developed daily by the Holy Spirit. We have to understand that life and Christianity are just not fair! We must die to our pride and how we think things should go.

Throughout David’s journey from the field to the palace there are a lot of things that were just not fair. In those 20 years and 20 chapters, a lot happened. His own brother, Eliab, was angry at him before he fought Goliath. His own brother accused him of being selfish and prideful. David had to run for his life because of Saul’s pride and jealousy.

Maybe God is watching to see how you will deal with something that's not fair. Maybe he’s seeing if we’re doing it for the right reasons and if we have pure motivation. Maybe he’s watching to see if you’ve been developed enough to present HIS image to the world.

Sometimes those closest to you cannot see the call or the anointing of God that is on your life. Maybe they’re not suppose to see. Maybe the thing that God has for you is not readily present on the earth. So, what to do you in the meantime? You grow, you heal, you allow God to develop you in the darkrooms of life until His timing is perfected in you and on the earth. You continue to die daily.

Will you allow God to take you through the process from being anointed to being appointed? The space between these two is where you allow yourself to be developed into his image.

David did this without knowing what would happened 20 years later. He was anointed to be king by the prophet and then he went back out to the sheep. He was learning faithfulness. He was called into the palace to play the harp and sooth Saul’s tormented spirit. Maybe he was called to play for Saul to learn the protocols of the palace…because David was just a shepherd boy. David was anointed to be king, but he only knew how to look after sheep he didn't know how to run a kingdom. He had to learn the protocol of the palace, so God brought him in to play music. Playing music is far from ruling a kingdom!

See, the whole time God is preparing you for the thing that he has already prepared for you, God is helping you to become. He is developing you into who you already are, but you can't function in it as who you are right now. Development has to happen.

David was anointed at 17 appointed at 37. We read in 20 chapters through 20 years of injustices he experienced and if he didn’t go through that, we wouldn’t have the David that’s known as the man after God’s own heart…

So maybe you're being overlooked, maybe you feel unwanted, and maybe unrecognized. But God is saying will you remember that moment of anointing? Will you stay faithful because when I'm ready to appoint you I will find you even if you're in the backwoods of Dayton, Texas.

Matthew 16:25 - For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

You’ve got to stay faithful to the process of development and die daily.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?