 Number six, palm tree withstands abuse. Unlike other trees, if you cut their bark, their surface, they will die because their life is in their bark. Their bark is extremely sensitive. A palm tree is a very unique tree where its source of life is in the core, not in the surface. That means you can actually cut the bark of the tree completely and the tree will be naked, hurting, but it won't die. The benefit of being a follower of Jesus, the benefit of being a righteous person, that one of the characteristics of being successful is not in your ability to dodge hurt, rejection, betrayal, and offense, but it's in your ability to overcome it. We have defined success as ability to have relationships where you don't get hurt. We have defined success as ability to go through life where everything works to what you want it to. But God in here says that your success is determined by your ability not to avoid pain, but overcome pain. Because every man in the Bible who became successful actually had a lot of pain in their life. A lot of them, including our Lord Jesus Christ. But what made them different than the rest of the people is not that they were able to hide from it, it's that they were able to face it and they were able to overcome it. If you want to impact the community, if you want to impact your family, if you want to be a bridge to a hurting world, remember every bridge in our city gets walked upon. You will get walked upon, you will get rejected, you will be misunderstood sometimes on purpose, at other times unintentionally, you will get backstabbed. Your success is not in ability to find people who will love you so much that they will never hurt your feelings. Your success is becoming a person strong enough that if you cut my bark I will cry, I will cry a river, build a bridge and get over it. But I will not die. But I will not die, I will live and I will rise above that in Jesus' name. Can somebody say amen? You know the way we breathe is we inhale and exhale. The way we eat is when we partake food, we also have a system in our body that eliminates food. The way our cars work is that we have an exhaust pipe. In the system, in the world, in the vehicle, in our body, the way everything is designed, you have to take something in and give something out. But many times in our hearts this is how it works. We're like a sponge, we're taking all of the hurt, all of the rejection, all of that, you know, those things that people didn't show us love, that they shouldn't give us the support that they should have and we're taking that in and we don't have an exhaust pipe to let it all out. We keep that, we keep that, we keep that and then we with the PHD, with the six digit income, with the beautiful car, good appearance, a faithful attender of the gym, everything is good on the outside and this person just snaps and you're like what's going on? They've been taking things inside without having a place where they let it out. If your body would not eliminate the food you take, you would be dead in a month. If you take all that off life offers, but if you don't eliminate that through forgiveness and letting it go, through shaking it off, sometimes you will spiritually die. Not because your friends are annoying and crazy and hurtful, it's because the world you live in is painful and broken. Even Jesus told his disciples, if you go around telling people about peace and love and forgiveness, they will reject you, but I'll give you a secret. When you walk out of their city and they rejected you, he says take all their dust and shake it off of your feet so you walk into a new city, new season, as though you've never been in the city that rejected you. If you walk around, you know one of the reasons I don't allow my brother's dog inside of the house is because she runs around on the backyard and she has her feet and they are dirty and she doesn't know how to shake them off and if she walks into the house, which I let her in, into my car and it has beautiful black seats and she took, she doesn't care, she took her paws and put fingerprints all around my beautiful seats. That's exactly what happens when you went through a hurt and pain and you don't shake it off, you will go into a new relationship mad, angry, cranky, and the other person, what's going on with you? But these are fingerprints of the previous hurts that were not dealt with and Jesus says shake it off if you move into a new season, shake it off if you come to a new church, shake it off if you walk into a new relationship, shake it off if you begin a new business opportunity, why? Because you will make it impure by the impurities of your past. Can somebody say, man, being successful is not your ability to find people who will never hurt you, it's in your ability to learn to be big enough to overcome that. Amen?