This blog entry is an encouragement for some of you to learn to LET SOME PEOPLE GO who aren’t healthy for you.  The following clip is a segment from Tyler Perry’s blockbuster stage play ‘MADEA GOES TO JAIL.’

Enjoy!

“Some people come into your life for a lifetime and some come for a season.

You have to know which is which. I put everybody that comes into my life in the category of a tree.

Some people are leaves on a tree. The wind blows, they go to the left. The wind blows from the other way, they go to the right. They are just unstable. You can’t count on them for nothing. All they ever do is take from that tree. What you need to understand about a leaf is that it has a season. It’ll wither and die and blow away.There ain’t no need to be praying over a leaf to be resurrected. When it’s dead it’s gone.  Let it go! Some people are like that. All the leaf ever does is cool you off every now and then. If you’re grown, you know what I’m talking about, because you can call them in the middle of the night and get cooled off. That’s the leaf people. They come to take.

Then there are people like a branch. You got to be careful with branch people. They come in all different shapes and sizes. You never know how strong they will be in your life. So my advice is to tip out on it slowly. When you’re going out on a limb, don’t put too much weight on it at once, because it can fall and leave you high and dry. Sometimes, you have to wait for a branch to grow up before it can hold all of the things you want to share with it.

Finally, there are people who are like roots at the bottom of the tree. If you find yourself two or three people in your entire lifetime that are like the roots, then you are blessed. The roots don’t care nothing about being seen. All they’re there to do is hold that tree up, to make sure it stays in the air. It comes from the earth to give that tree everything it needs. That’s what relationships should be about. That’s what you need, people who want to be in your life for the right reasons.

If somebody wants to walk out of your life, you’ve got to LET THEM GO! When you learn to love yourself, you will end up giving standards to everyone around you. Again, I repeat with emphasis, if they don’t meet those standards, you have to let them go, because they might be a leaf. And forgive them with all your might!”

We all have an assignment in life. It might not be as grand as Christ’s, but we all have an individual destiny to fulfill in our lifetime. Some people miss their assignment, while others plunge headlong in to following each step of the way to seeing their personal assignment come to pass. Whatever our assignment is there will always follow a process of great endearing pain to get us to where God wants us in life.

Jesus was betrayed by a trusted confidant, and then lead to a brutal beating, and ultimately death on the cross. But after the pain came the pleasure of being the resurrected savior, the Son of God.

This note is an open letter to many of you whom I thought I could trust at one time in my life, but you’ve proven to be back stabbing detractors who lie and misconstrue the truth about me, and who I really am. You see, Judas had a misconstrued idea who Jesus was. He let money and grandeur among the Pharisees cloud his judgment, and he believed the misperception of who Jesus really was, though Judas traveled with Jesus personally and saw the integrity of Him and knew otherwise. But that didn’t stop Judas, because Judas lent an ear to the devil and allowed the lies of the enemy to construct a new Jesus in his mind that would lead him to betray the man he thought he loved so very much.

You don’t realize yet, but soon you will discover that your lies and your backstabbing and your defamation of my character are all a part of God’s plan to put me in the place where the Lord wants me so I can ultimately fulfill my life’s assignment. Regardless of how long we’ve known each other, or have laughed, loved, or shared together, the fact remains that now you’ve given yourself over to believe a misperception about me that you concocted in your own mind, or allowed someone else to construct for you based on a sliver of time that we knew each other. Regardless of the life I lived prior, and the life I live after, the fact remains that it is not fair to judge a person based on a small segment of their life where they were going through the toughest time of their life with no support, love, or concern from others.

My pain is the process to put me where I am to be in my life’s assignment. Champions are born in the fire! Right now I’m being purified. I’m being restored. The Lord is taking me through it only to bring me out shining brighter than the noon day sun, and to be more valuable than an emperor’s treasure.

In the words of Rev. Shane West, I’m being “recycled by grace.” We all have to be if any of us are going to get where we have been destined to be from the foundation of the world.

The point I’m trying to make in this post is simple: the pain I’m enduring right now is something my heart illuminated to me just moments ago that it is necessary to undergo this procedure for the purpose of realizing my destiny, and getting to it and fulfilling it. I do not understand why life has taken its weird twists and turns, but it has, and I cannot control it, nor would I dare try. All I know now is that today is a new day for fresh beginning. In Christ, old things are passed away, and behold all things are become new.

This post is not a personal swipe at anyone in particular. There is a long cast of characters who I thought I could trust at one point in life, but they’ve only proved to be my own personal Judas. That is fine. Judas helped Jesus fulfill His destiny. All of you other Judas’ are helping me fulfill mine.

If you are reading this note and you find yourself undergoing a great deal of pain, please don’t place the blame on God and become bitter towards Him, or even His people (the Church). Bitterness doesn’t solve anything. Just realize that those who have and are betraying you are doing you a favor! They are pressuring you to fulfill the place that God has ordained for you in your life. Instead of becoming bitter you need to become BETTER!

I can honestly say that right now I am a better person because I have been betrayed, stabbed in the back, hated on, lied on, fibbed on, judged, persecuted, and misunderstood! I understand myself better, and I see clearly my destiny before me.

Where I go from here remains to be seen, but rest assured that nothing is going to stand in my way from fulfilling my life assignment and accomplishing my personal destiny. I will be the man God intended me to be. I will be the father God ordained me to be. I will be the Christian that Christ sanctified me to be. I will be the friend that God blessed me to be. I will be the provider for my boys that God blessed me to be.

Champions are born in the fire! We don’t like to be burned, and the purification process can tend to be long and enduring, but in the end, if we let God do His thing in us, we will come out of the fire shining like gold!

Champions are born in the fire!