You see, if Samuel hadn't actually said: there's got to be another one, have you got another boy around here? And they finally dragged him out, then David would not have been anointed king; and he became God's answer to the nation. God's answer to the nation was in their home, and they didn't see it. Think about Joseph. His brothers were envious, and were jealous of him, and despised him, and dishonoured and disrespected him; but he was the answer to the famine that would come up, and would affect all of their lives later on. Respect and honour unlocks the gifts in people's lives, disrespect shuts it down, and they cannot bring to you what God has intended for you. When you think about how God deals with people, do you realise that God treats people with respect? Now that's a bit of a hard one to swallow, because we would tend to think that God knows everything.
God knows everything about us, so God knows all about you Ray, knows everything, so we see you nicely dressed and all the good things, but God sees everything. He sees everything. Now when we see everything about people that we don't like, do you know what we do? We then disrespect them. We see only the shortcomings and faults, and what happens is we start to despise and disrespect them, and we think there's no good thing can come from that person. Now see, I was quite stunned a couple of weeks ago - stunned is the right word - when Ray got up on the stage, and what he had in him all these years just flowed out with such life. It was extraordinary. I didn't know that was in there, but then someone found it. They received him and listened, gave him room to move, and valued what he had, and suddenly it all comes out. Now that's true of other people as well, and if you don't receive the person, if you don't actually honour and respect, you can't draw it out.
Now think about how God deals with people. I'll give you a couple of people as an example, then we'll just finish with the last key. It'll be easy, the last key's quite a simple one as well. Think about this, when God dealt with Abram. Abram lied about his wife, lied that she was his sister, allowed this other king to take the wife, because he was afraid. He was so looking out for himself, and yet God treated him with respect, and He said: they call you Abram. I'm going to call you Abraham. Gideon was a man who was full of fear, and he's hiding from the enemy, he's so fearful; and yet God says: mighty man of valour. We tend to look and see the weaknesses in people, and use it as a grounds to disrespect and dishonour them. It never is. When God looks at you, He sees all the faults, but He looks past it, and never disrespects you. He'll always treat you with a respect and honour. In fact He'll treat you with so much respect and honour, He'll let you choose your eternal destiny. He'll give you the right of choice. He'll never override your will, and therefore disrespect you. Because He treats us with honour and respect, we can respond, and what's in us gets unlocked. Amazing isn't it?
There's all kinds of examples. Think about Simon. Simon was an unstable kind of character. Jesus said: you're the rock, I'm going to build on you, and that man was obviously unstable. He was reckless, he did all kinds of weird stuff, and yet Jesus called him a rock. How about that - so you may have heard a lot of people say much about you, and none of it much good, but when God looks He says: oh, I see someone great in there! And God can bring it out of you, because He sees something great in you, and He honours you and respects you; and He's just waiting for you to respond.