T.D. Jakes: Don’t Fear the Wilderness | Praise on TBN

Bishop T.D. Jakes sits down with Matt and Laurie Crouch on TBN’s Praise to talk about walking through wilderness seasons in life, and seeing how God was at work through it all.

On the air since 1973, TBN’s flagship ministry and talk show Praise is one of the most recognizable — and most watched — Christian programs in the world. Taped before a live audience and hosted by TBN’s own Matt and Laurie Crouch along with other popular personalities, Praise features the best in contemporary Christian music and worship, fresh and impacting ministry voices, engaging interviews from a wide variety of guests, and a fast-moving hour of relevant talk you won’t want to miss!

There are moments that we all question our value because we need the affirmation of other to dignify us with the title and acknowledgement.
And eventually, we must be weaned from the breast milk of human affirmation so that we can eat the manner that falls from heaven and know who we are because that’s who god says we are.
What I got out of your book is wilderness experiences are going to are either gonna kill you or they’re gonna make you better.
You’re right.
K? Let me just say something. You look sharp today.
Amazing.
If you had to go through this pandemic and come out looking sharp, uh, look, you took advantage of whatever situation was you were dealt And really that’s what we’re talking about.
You can go into a wilderness and die, or you can go into a wilderness and meet god. Okay?
So I feel like that’s what I took away from your book, and I wanna hear what you want us to know about it.
Too.
I wanna dig a little bit deeper because there are a lot of people that look sharp that don’t feel sharp.
Oh, hey.
It is much easier to go out and look sharp than it is to be sharp, to feel sharp, to have emotional well-being, to be uh intellectually sound, especially in the kind of wilderness that we are in right now.
Yeah.
This is not a geographical wilderness where we know, uh, the linear footage of how far it is before we get out of it.
It is the uncertainty and living with the ambiguity of an end that leads us into a wilderness, whether you are living in a man or living in a trailer on top of a hill, we are all experiencing the same trauma the same way.
What I want people to understand is that when you cannot draw strength, peace, uh, well-being from around you, you must draw it from within you.
And so as opposed to the water in the rock, you have to have the water in your soul.
Women, if you believe on me as the scriptures have said, out of your belly, not your house, not your job, not your country, not your newspaper, not your community, but out of your own essence shall flow rivers of living water.
So in essence, the human soul becomes the rock in the wilderness.
And the rock, there was nothing special about the rock.
It was a the the god who is living water flow through the rock and there’s nothing special about me but the god who is living water flows through me if I allow him to.
If not, I allowed my circumstances around me to penetrate what’s within me until the dryness around me becomes a dryness with them.
You know, I I love Love
you, man.
You know, I love these inner I love this time.
I love y’all.
Yes. That’s true. A really beautiful moment every time that we sit down with you, but that reminds me of when and today, Liz, I was listening to this this morning, and you were talking about when when the flood came.
Well, I’ve read that so many times But you said that that it wasn’t only the water coming down, the rain coming down, but it came out of the ground.
Yes. Yes.
That reminds me of what of what happened in Noah’s Day.
It it
came up out of the ground out of the belly.
Yes.
You know?
You know what I love about that.
Is that when god told Noah it was going to rain, he didn’t tell him the whole plan.
He didn’t tell him that he had water up under the earth, that he was gonna break up the sisters of the deep.
And I think it’s important for us as believers to know that god has resources in unexpected places.
And when he gets ready to flood you, it’s not just a flood that you anticipate coming down from above.
He can break up the cisterns of the deep. Yeah.
And in order to submerge the earth beneath the water, there were hidden wad hidden wells of water that he tapped into, and that’s still true.
Anybody who dug a well knows there’s water underground.
For god to break up the water under the ground, uh, is a very important thing.
I was in Africa and we dig wells, uh, for indigenous people.
Uh who have no water and done it for years years years years.
And it’s amazing how many people die with water under their feet.
Never being able to tap into it.
And if you take the horrific atrocity of what it is like for a human soul to die in the wilderness with a parch mouth and dry lips and eyes roll back in their head and give up the ghosts for the lack of something that is buried right up under their feet.
God has blessings and provisions and places that we never anticipated.
And I think the whole concept of god provision is that it comes from the unexpected. Yeah.
What a woman, what is in my house? Oh, nothing. I got a pot of oil.
He says go borrow a bunch of vessels. Your nothing is something.
Empty, Beth.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Bring your emptiness.
Bring your emptiness. And and I’m gonna fill it up with what you’ve been calling nothing because I’m going to call something to come out of your nothing.
And and that’s the majesty of the of god himself that he can take the ordinary that which we have passed over and bring something substantive out of it.
So god’s provision is not always about a rich uncle dying or about somebody knocking on your door and and and and you’re the lucky winner of whatever, it is rethinking what you’ve been walking past.
Wow. And understand that that pot of oil could be more than what you thought it was if you would bring god into it.
Okay. Um, do you agree with the statement that you’re an esoteric thinker?
Yes. Pretty much. K.
Uh, I had to look that word up earlier today to make sure that I was yeah.
And I I consider myself more of a linear thinker. Okay.
And so when I read this, book god’s provision.
I I’m wondering if the word wilderness should have been in the title. K.
Just just for just for me, simplistic linear thinkers kinda wanna know because god’s provision for your every need k, is is almost like a hidden, uh, title because what you’re talking about is where the provision is.
The provision is sometimes in the place that you’re cursing and wanting to get out of. Okay?
So if you want TD Jakes to walk you through the problem that you’re facing or the problem you think you’re facing or the reality of the problem you’re facing, go to the number and get the book.
This is this is profound in a lot of ways.
And the idea that um you’re you’re telling me in this book. Okay.
I’m just telling you what I got out of it.
I got out of this you’re in a test, you’re in a wilderness experience.
We’re using that as an analogy. Right?
And and god will meet you there to kill the things that you need killed in your life.
Mhmm.
Provide for you the things that you need in your life, or you will really basically give up
Mhmm.
Wither. I think you said something to the effect of it separates the fakers from the something.
I I don’t remember exactly how you say it in the book, but but some people give up in the wilderness in the place where god is trying to provide provision.
Is that roughly what we’re discussing today?
Yes. The let’s go back to this rewind all the way back to why I didn’t put wilderness on the cover.
It’s it’s it’s the same reason that Tylenol doesn’t put a headache as this logo. Okay.
You never put the problem on the cover because nobody’s gonna reach out.
Don’t go ahead.
Good point. I like you even more now.
Yeah. You know. Answer on the cover instead of chemo.
You know, give me 5 bottles of cancer, you know.
So who’s gonna go to the store and say, give me a lot of wilderness.
We do not ask for our wilderness. Oh. Our wilderness ask for us.
We do not get to choose the kinds of wilderness that we face Whether we’re a single mother, they’re going through a divorce, or whether we’ve lost a job or house, or whether we find ourselves with some sort of disease.
We do not get to pick the wilderness that we confront. That is the mystery of life.
We do not know it until we’re in it.
What we do know is that god will be in it with us.
Yeah.
And so when you start talking about god’s promises, and god’s answers in our wilderness.
That is a stable known fact, and it is a commodity that you would reach for in the store.
We don’t reach for trouble, but trouble reaches for us.
I love where when Jesus comes out of his anonymous years.
You know, we hear him about him at 2 when he’s born, 2, and then at 12.
And where does he go? You know? And I love that he comes out. He gets baptized.
And then the Holy Spirit takes him into the wilderness.
And what I love about that is that Jesus, you know, so we wonder what he was doing all those years.
Yes. Yes.
He fought he wanted to go where the spirit led him.
So he was so willing to go into the wilderness because the Holy Spirit was there with him.
Yes.
And I love that about it because we shouldn’t be afraid We shouldn’t be afraid of it.
Oh, you just gave me. I could I could really take them to town.
We should not be afraid of it.
We should not be afraid of the wilderness because Diorada and not stay at the conference.
Yeah, though I walked through the ballot and shut up that. I should fear no evil for Diorke with me.
That’s absolutely the truth. But I wanna talk about the obscurity of the 18 years and and and because we have a lot of people today who are afraid of obscurity.
We have 18 years of nothingness that we know nothing about Jesus at all.
And people are so afraid of not being known, not being seen, not being heard, not being acknowledged, not being realized, and they are in a wilderness of obscurity.
I know. But Jesus embraces his 18 years of obscurity and almost savors it it seems and and takes no effort to let us in on this diswilled in this of obscurity until John the Baptist points him out and he’s in the crowd then.
Mhmm.
He’s not standing out. He’s in the crowd.
Imagine an audience of people and Jesus is on the back row. Jesus is in the balcony.
You know, Jesus is in the balcony. John the Bachelor’s on the stage.
And all of a sudden John the Baptist points up into the balcony. It says behold the lamb of God.
Boom. Just like that. Got snaps in from obscurity to notoriety.
Just like that, god can move you from from nowhere to somewhere with such rapid speed that you need not be troubled by the years of being ignored.
Right.
Because once god moves you to the forefront, you will never be ignored again.
So you should savor that time and allow that towel, uh, to prepare you because once once you are famous, you can never be anonymous again.
You can be infamous, but you can never be anonymous.
What it costs you to walk out into the light of god’s presence or into the light of jazz or into the light of politics or into the light of entertainment, you never can go back again.
You will always be recognizable and contrary to popular belief. That’s not as good as it sounds.
Right.
Okay. That is a wilderness all to itself. So we’re looking at a wilderness of obscurity.
We’re looking at a will a physical wilderness that he went out to be tempted in but we’re also looking at a wilderness of notoriety because notoriety is its own wilderness too.
Yeah. Regardless of which wilderness you’re in right now, I’m talking to you.
Whether you’re in the wilderness where nobody sees you.
Well, you you may be in a wilderness where even your own husband or wife doesn’t see you.
You may be in a wilderness where you’re young and wondering will anybody ever pay you any attention?
Or whether you’re in the wilderness of being literally surrounded by a dry place, an uncertain place and you’re exposed and the Holy Spirit has put you in a place that has compromised your faith and challenge your principles and made you to survive, or maybe you’re in the wilderness of the spotlight because being in the spotlight creates its own kind of loneliness.
For whichever wilderness you’re in. God is there.
I love that.
So There’s really nothing, um, better than sitting and discussing the goodness of god.
True. We’re sitting here. We’re discussing in essence the way god would meet us the way he would provide force the way he loves us constantly.
And we think sometimes that the wilderness is because of pass sin because of he has overlooked you.
You’re and and you’re trying you’re you’re trying to redefine in essence, where and how god operates in our life.
Because I I remember some one of the old timers saying it this way, How do you how do you know you have faith unless it’s called upon?
Right.
And what is the currency of heaven it’s agave love. How do you get agave love testing trial?
You know? So
Let me let me jump him right here and say the same wilderness that Jesus was tempted in on the other side of the Jordan is the same wilderness that the chariot of fire came and picked up the latch.
In the same spot, I was over in Jerusalem, and I went over into Jordan.
And the first thing I came to realize is right across from Mount Neebo is the wilderness.
Where Jesus was tempted, but it is also the same spot where the chariot of fire descended and took away lodged.
Isn’t it amazing the oxymoron that at one moment, it is a place of great test and trial.
And the next moment, it is a place of great triumph and victory.
And let us not think that God won’t intermix sometimes we run from a place and they say that was my wilderness, but it also might be in that same place where your charity of fire comes.
Wow.
And and you have to understand that it is only a wilderness for the purpose of god.
And when it suits his purpose, He can send a chair to fire in the same place where your mouth was dry and perched and desperately in need of water and food.
That same god. He does it in Egypt. The same place that is a place of provision for Israel.
Also later becomes a place of slavery for Israel. So that we don’t fall in love with locations.
We fall in love with god.
I remember, uh, TD, I’m sitting here.
You realize Paul and Jan used to be sitting here. Yes. In the eighties. Yes.
Uh, you know, you would fly out to Southern California. Yes.
And you’d sit with Paul and Jan Crowch, and you’d talk about the goodness of god.
You’ve been doing this a long time.
Long time. 45 years.
And I remember, um, my dad, uh, was very involved with an with a old timer who would be a hunt over a 100 if he was still alive.
Paul Billheimer. He wrote a book called Destin for The Throne.
Mhmm.
Uh, Billy Graham wrote the forward.
My dad wrote the introduction for this book, and and and it’s been kind of one of the let’s say founding principles.
The the thought though that aligns with what we’re talking about right now is Paul Billheimer called life on the job training for eternity.
And sometimes our wilderness.
And what we mean by wilderness, bad spot, sickness, uh, can’t pay the bills. That’s what we’re talking about.
A wilderness experience, uh, a pandemic. K?
Loss of a job being called Uh, what what was the term that was used for for for workers?
Unessential. Unessential. What if you were just called unessential for uh, you know, okay.
And so this on the job training and sometimes our problems don’t make any sense on earth unless you zoom out and include eternity.
Absolutely.
So really isn’t a test isn’t a wilderness supposed to be for your betterment.
Mhmm.
Now and forever in eternity.
You know, I’m so glad you said that because a lot of Christians think it’s their job to change the environment.
When many, many times it’s the environment’s job to change you.
Hello.
And if you as soon as you understand that, I went to West Virginia, I thought got sent me there to build a church.
I later realized it got sent to church to build me. Oh, okay.
So I wasn’t supposed to build the potter’s house in West Virginia.
The temple of Faith, which was named my church was supposed to build me, so that I could come here and build the potter’s
house.
And so a wilderness builds you, whatever wilderness you may be in, And I love the word you use, unessential because it transcends culture, socioeconomic levels of life, there’s not a person in this world who has not dealt with feeling unessential.
Yeah. Whether it’s in your marriage, whether it’s a child that disrespects you, Whether it’s a job that disrespects you, whether it’s losing a job, or whether you’re, uh, midnight waiter at a coffee shop at a truck stop.
There are moments that we all question our value because we need the affirmation of other to dignify us with the title and acknowledgement.
And eventually, we must be weaned from the breast milk of human affirmation so that we can eat the manner that falls from heaven and know who we are because that’s who god says we are.
Wow. T. D. Jakes, have you ever, at any time in your life, ever struggled to pay a bill?
I would pass struggle. They cut it off.
Okay. So so you you know uh, you you know what that is.
A lot about it.
K. So when did you get to the point and how and what wilderness did you go through that you said that isn’t going to happen anymore, and it stopped.
When did you get rid of that nonsense in your life?
When it got through teaching me what God was trying to teach me, there was it wasn’t a lack of his provision.
There was a hole in the bucket.
So no matter how much water he poured into it, I would always lose it.
Because I hadn’t learned the discipline of how to handle finances.
And once I finished the course, and I finally came to the point that I did not need a miracle for god to provide more.
It more wasn’t gonna fix it.
I needed a miracle for god to teach me to put priorities in the right places, to live within my means, and then to work my way up.
Once he fixed the bucket, then he started pouring in the blessing. Mhmm. God is a businessman.
He’s not gonna invest in a in a in a company that’s bankrupt.
One of the strangest scriptures in the Bible is is where Jesus says to him that have not uh take away that which he’s seeming to have.
I thought, oh god, that’s brutal. I don’t wanna preach that.
I don’t wanna tell people that if you have not, you’re gonna take away what they seem to have.
And he says to him that have, will I add to that? Which he has?
I said, that sounds so unfair. But it’s not unfair at all.
God cannot pour great blessings into broken vessels.
Wow.
It’s like trying to love somebody who refuses to be loved.
No matter how many times I say I love you, you’re still gonna walk away and say Yeah.
But do you love me? And it’s not that I didn’t say it right.
It’s that you can’t hold it on the inside.
Well, you have to go to therapy, prayer, class, get on your knees and doing shit.
So, although, whatever you gotta do till you fix that hole in you.
Because my I am tired of saying the same thing fifty times a day. You can’t hold it.
Uh, and what we have to understand in order to reach that point of inflection where you say I’m ready to change, you have to also reached that point of correction so that when you make the change, you can stay changed because more money is not gonna fix bad habit Okay.
That’s just the truth. People don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want admitted,
but
that’s true. Changing husbands it’s not gonna fix you if you’re a bad wife. Okay.
Changing wives is not gonna fix you if you’re a bad husband.
And so by the time you get to your 7th wife, you start to get a clue.
Maybe there’s something wrong with me. All of them can’t be wrong. There’s gotta be something wrong with me. Okay?
Uh and and we have people who accuse everybody else for their failure when they don’t realize that they are not able to hold within their own heart.
Love. They’re not safe to love. They’re not safe to lead.
And they’re not safe to increase because they have not fixed the the system by which they handle that which is deposited inside.