T.D. Jakes: Trust God’s Plan in Difficult Times | Praise on TBN

T.D. Jakes sits down with Matt and Laurie Crouch on TBN’s Praise to talk about trusting in God’s plan in our most difficult times, and how He will use our wilderness season to give us strength and help us grow.

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Regardless of which wilderness you’re in right now, I’m talking to you.
Whether you’re in the wilderness where nobody sees you, where you you may be in a wilderness where even your own husband and wife doesn’t see you, or whether you’re in the wilderness of being literally surrounded it 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 wrestle to survive.
Whichever that you’re in, god is there.
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 within me.
You know, I I love Love
you, man. You know,
I love These inter I love this time.
I love y’all.
Yes. This 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 flag 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 cisterns 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 hidden wells of water that he tapped into, and that’s still true.
Anybody who dug a well knows there for 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 ghost for the lack of something that is buried right up under their feet.
God has blessings and provisions in places that we never anticipated.
And I think the whole concept of god’s provision is that it comes from the unexpected. Yeah.
What a woman, what is in my house? Uh, 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 war 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.
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, you know, 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?
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 break
it up.
I like you even more now.
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 about him at 2, uh, when he’s born, 2, and then at 12, and then 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 I stay at state conference.
Yeah, though I walked through the ballot and shut up there. I still 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 get it. 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 this wilderness 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. God’s snapping 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 and 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 challenged your principles and made you wrestle 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 for us, the way he loves us constantly.
And we think sometimes that the wilderness is because of past sin, because of he has overlooked you.
You’re and and you’re try 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 agape love. How do you get agape love? Testing trial.
You know? So
Let me let me jump him right here. It say the same wilderness that Jesus was tempted in.
On the other side of the Jordan, it’s the same wilderness that the chariot of fire came and picked up a last.
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 Nivo is the wilderness where Jesus was tempted, but it is also the same spot.
Where the chariot of fire descended and took away lunch.
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, um, I’m sitting here.
You realize Paul and Jan used to be sitting here in the eighties. Yes.
Uh, you know, you would fly out to Southern California. Yes.
And you’d sit with Paul and Jan Crouch 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?
Essential.
Unessential. What if you were just called unessential for, you know, 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 a 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 others 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 in a company that’s bankrupt.
1 of the strangest descriptions of the Bible is is where Jesus says to him that have not uh take away that which he seems to have.
I thought, oh god, that’s brutal.
I don’t wanna preach said, 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 is that you can’t hold it on the inside.
You have to go to therapy prayer, class, get on your knees, and don’t shit yourself, although whatever you gotta do, to 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 wanna talk about it.
They don’t want to admit it, 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 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.
This is the aspirin tablet, uh, to the wilderness that you’re in.
I have a couple of Messianic, uh, uh, believer friends, and one of them one time was uh, on TV and teaching, and I was watching and walked through the kitchen, and the TV was on.
I saw him. And he said something interesting about the wilderness, that the Hebrew word for Wilderness’s mid bar Mhmm.
And that it’s an interesting thing that when you and I talk about a wilderness, it’s an allegory for bad.
A wilderness experience means you’re thirsty and you’re hungry and you’re lost and you’re hot and you’re panicky.
And whatever your wilderness is is causing panic and hyperventilation and all of that kind of stuff.
That is what we think about when the word hey, you’re in a wilderness experience. Well, that stinks. K?
But the Hebrew word uh, doesn’t have any kind of a negative connotation. None. 0.
It means the place where you would meet god
Wow.
See? They were out in the wilderness. That’s where god was. Mhmm. K?
Now it was terrifying, I guess, to the to the Natural. And the natural. Yeah.
Because the smoke coming off the mountain and the earthquake and the fire and Moses face was Mhmm.
You know, glowing and it scared him Okay.
So, uh, god’s presence is something that will get your attention, not in a way that makes you jump around and wave a flag and be goofy.
Mhmm. It makes you get down on your face and not wanna be burned up is certainly what I feel like the presence of the lord.
So the wilderness experience, though, to the Hebrew world is a place where god is. Okay?
How do we get that experience that somebody’s living in right now.
How do we get them to think? Wait a second. T. D. Jakes is trying to explain something.
This might be an opportunity for me.
How do we how do we get somebody thinking in the right direction on this thing?
I think our first natural normal inclination is get me out of this. Yeah.
Get me out of this. I don’t like this get me out of this.
When we find out that god does not succumb to our whiny and we settle down then we developed to the 2nd stage.
What do you want me to learn from this?
And when we started getting to that place, Now we’re getting to the place where I’m open to receive this as as a as a rabbi.
That the wilderness is my rabbi coming to teach me some some aspect of god that I have never seen before.
And and I I like to think of the wilderness this way.
I think that god dated Israel in the wilderness.
That they they had not seen him for 400 years.
And they called on a god that they had not known, served, worship, offered up sacrifice too.
For 400 years. And he said, Let my people go that they might worship me.
And out there in the wilderness, he dated them. And he showed them his power again.
He showed them what he could do, and he showed them how he could heal, and he showed them all over the states so that by the time they got to the promised land, they were familiar with him.
And finally, once the date is over, he circumcised him. And now they’re entering into covenant.
They couldn’t enter into covenant because
they had not they
have been estranged for 4 100 years. That’s 10 generations.
They needed to get to know him again, and he proved himself in the wilderness.
He proved himself at the bitter waters of misfuh.
He proved himself at the brazen serpent that healed their diseases.
So that when they got to the point of of taking the ring of circumcision that pronounced the wedding, they had come to a point in their understanding that they knew who he was.
And I’m afraid today that we know more about church than we do about god.
We know more about our political parties than we
do about
god.
We know more about what we are not gonna stand and we’re not gonna take it.
We’re not gonna do that we do about god. We’ve gotten away from god. We love his music.
But but stripped from the music. Do you know him? I’m I’m about to get happy.
I gotta be careful because, you know, I’m still old school.
I’m a cross between your generation and your mother and father’s generation. So I felt that I felt bad. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I felt bad.
I’m with you all the way.
Yeah. Yeah. I felt bad all the way. Do do you know him? And there’s nothing like a wilderness
Yeah.
To prove it. The thing that I keep sensing and I don’t know why, but somebody is watching me right now
and
they’re listening that you’re talking and say, I don’t need the book. I don’t have I’m not broke.
All my needs are met. I’m doing good. I’m doing fine. I’m doing wonderful.
The truth of the matter is you don’t have to be broke or without water or heavier like tricity cutoff to be in a wilderness.
You can be a CEO and be in a wilderness in your heart emotionally dramatically, marital.
You can be in a a new it’s a worse wilderness because there are provisions for poor folks There are things you can go do and you can go get.
There are no provisions for wealthy wilderness.
Oh,
wow. You have to be in a secret wilderness. That’s why there’s so much suicide.
And I sense through the Holy Spirit that somebody
Thank you.
Who outwardly looks just fine. Inwardly is a wreck. You’re ashamed to admit it.
You can’t tell anybody, no, you get no comfort, uh, and yet on inside that you’re not in trouble.
You’re not in trouble. You are in trauma.
And it’s still a wilderness and god still loves you and god will still provide for you if you will humble yourself and admit I’m in a wilderness I’m in a penthouse suite, but I’m in a wilderness.
I’m driving a Bentley, but I’m in a wilderness.
And if you can open that up before god and say, lord, I’m in this marriage. I got grandkids.
I got kids. I’m in a wilderness. He will come into your wilderness. Jehovah Shama.
Come on now.
The lord is present in your wilderness. And he will be there for you.
And I, I, I, I uncovered that because we always think of poor people as the only ones who have pain.
But I have learned that powerful people, successful people, rich people, influential people, have their own kind of hell.
And no Sav to go upon it.
But I tell you, and I promise you that God sees through all of your artifacts which incidentally you will all leave here on the earth.
You won’t take any of it with you. And god knows that you’re in the wilderness, and he loves you.
And he’ll come where you are.
Pray for the folks while we’re just in this season right here.
In this in this moment, where we have the the commonality of humanity, all the barriers have been turned down.
There are no Republican wilderness and Democratic wilderness and right wing winners, left wing wilderness, Baptist wilderness, Baptist wilderness, and move all of that to the side.
I don’t care how well your stocks are doing or whether you just had your water cut off.
The one thing we all have in common is pain, and we have our wilderness.
I wanna pray for you. That you had seen god in your wilderness.
Father, in the name of Jesus, jehovah Shama, the one who is present in the wilderness, the one who walks in fiery furnaces, the one who stands in between Daniel and the lions, the one the one, the one who cares enough to deal with the trauma that people don’t see, while people count the tree god.
You know the trauma. And I pray right now in the name of Jesus that you would show up and reveal yourself.
In the middle of their moment of wilderness, and that you would provide whatever they need, whether it’s the little boy and them needing healing, or whether it’s to be understood, or whether it’s to open up and release themselves, or whether it is to make a decision that would change the trajectory of their lives We don’t wanna make another decision without you.
I pray for the person who has habits as well as the lack of opportunity you have habits.
And even if you’ve got the opportunity, the habits are baked into you.
The DNA of how you process finance as resources, jobs, and opportunities.
And even if you get a job, you lose it.
If you get money, you spend it, I pray that God would patch the hole in your buck.
Thank you, lord.
So that he can feel you to your overflow. Right now, this moment, this second.
The spirit of god invades your darkness, and touches you with his grace.
And the name of the lord, we pray, Amen and Amen.
Oh, geez. It’s so good, Bishop.
God’s provision for your every need.
I would have called it something about the wilderness, but PD Jakes knows more about that.
You you have, like, 75 New York Time number 1 bestsellers, and I’m telling you advice about it.
I never written a book.
Go cover it.
So but I earlier this morning, I was just kinda sitting by myself, and I thought, you know, if I was gonna name this book, I would have named something like in the wilderness where withering, waiting, and wanting is.
Mhmm.
But you’re but it’s there, you’ll find rescue, renewal, and reward, or like, Wilder blessed.
Wilder blessed.
So no making it worse. Yeah. No.
Don’t do that.
Don’t don’t do that.
It’s a little too much like wildebeast,
I thought. That that just stick to television. You’re doing great, though, what you’re doing. You’re doing
great, though. Wilder blessed wouldn’t have been a good title.
Wilder blessed. Don’t. No. No. A a little blessing.
I’d like something you put on your hair but uh I love you though.
I really do. What I love about the book is it’s not so big that busy people don’t have time to read it.
I love it. Yeah.
You know, it’s it’s small enough that you can get through it and you can use it as a devotional or you can read it while you’re on the plane or you can read it uh during a break at work and and you can you can handle it.
Sometimes the book is so big you’ve gone through a decade by the time you get through the end of it.
It’s short. It’s powerful. It’s potent. It’s a capsule. It’s medicine. It’s life and your wilderness. My goodness.
You talk you talk about finding your plan, finding god’s plan.
Yeah.
In the middle of your. How do we do that?
Because most of the time, I mean, a lot of people just wanna lay down. And die.
Yeah. Give up.
Give up. And, you know, in your wilderness, there’s a lot of cell sacrifice?
Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.
There’s a lot of stuff that a lot of people don’t want to feel Uh-huh. In a wilderness.
You, you know,
I’m so glad you asked me.
Okay.
I Because that opens up a whole another server.
Yeah. Okay.
Go ahead. This is one of the reasons we worship because worship wakes you up to the presence of god.
He inhabit the praises of Israel. We think we worship to make the service good.
We think we worship because god is is insecurity needs us to tell us great he is.
God was god before there was a mouth to telling me was god.
We worshiped to wake ourselves up to her that we are not just all embodied, but we are also soul and spirit.
And if god is going to reveal himself and his purpose, is gonna do it because you are increasingly aware of spiritual nudges.
How do I get increasingly aware of spiritual nudges, Bishop?
I do it through worship because with my hands lifted up and my mouth filled with praise I become aware of something outside of the tangible.
When we do that, we have then touched the GPS through which god guides us from glory to glory and from faith to faith.
And that is the purpose of we’re not worshiping because we’re emotional. We’re not worshiping because we’re pentecostal.
We’re not worshiping because we’re black.
All of those reasons that you have written off worship because you say That doesn’t apply to me.
I’m just not that kind of person. I’m just not Listen. Listen. The Jews worship for a reason. Yeah.
God came down into the middle of their worship and they became familiar with him. He can’t guide a stranger.
And you are a stranger as long as you walk in the flesh, you will love the flesh reep co corrupt If you walk in the spirit, you will love the spirit, reap life everlasting.
So I wanna challenge you to start your worship life, whether you feel it or not.
It has a purpose. It’s how god’s gonna guide you.
So I will bless the lord at all times. So all means all.
All means all. All means all the more when you’re in trouble.
All all the more because that’s when the soul cries out for equilibrium.
If if I lose my equilibrium, the first thing I’m gonna try to do is grab something solid.
And if your life has become crazy, You wanna grab something that’s not shaking.
Every the Bible say everything that can be shaken will be shaken so that that which cannot be shaken will remain.
That’s god. Yeah. And so all the more reason to reach out to him is when everything is shaking around you.
He is that’s on Christ’s the solid rock I stand. He is that solid place.
Some people have that completely backwards.
Absolutely.
You know, this wilderness thing is god’s torturing. He doesn’t like me. He’s mad at me.
He doesn’t want me anymore, and that’s really just kinda almost 180 degrees wrong.
It’s absolutely wrong. It’s not hard for me.
I’m the baby of my family, so that part was easy for me to embrace.
When you’re the baby of the family and you come up in a healthy family, everybody loved me.
So when I got saved, yeah, I’d rather love me. Everybody loved me.
So I gotta say they told me that god did too. I said, oh, cool. Cool. Come on in.
Come on in. To accept the favor of god. Becomes challenging when you’ve never had the favor of men.
When you’ve never been celebrated and you’ve never been appreciated it’s kind of foreign to you to accept the fact that God likes me.
He might not like everything I do but he loves me. Let’s bring it closer.
Let’s start where he likes me. He loves me. He has loved me with her everlasting love.
If you’re having trouble receiving that right now, there’s something blocking it.
You’re not used to opening up to the idea of being preferred. Favor is to be preferred.
God prefers you and you didn’t earn it and you don’t deserve it and you didn’t work for it.
And that’s why it’s hard for you to accept it because you know every little silly, stupid thing you ever did in your life, but it’s not meritorious.
It is his graciousness. Which has made perfect in our weakness.
Let’s start with the fact. He’s in love with me.
Have you ever had somebody in love with you and you couldn’t figure out in the world why?
And and they were just in love with you.
And when you’re in love with somebody, You get on the phone with them, run out of words, and just breathe.
You’re just on the phone, grieving. Nobody thinks it’s nothing to say. Just running up the phone bill.
I’ll call my wife should use the long distance. We’d just be breathing. Breathing up the rent money. Just breathing.
What are you thinking about? I don’t know. What do you think about all that stupid stuff?
You know, uh, this is just crazy. But but his love is crazy.
He he just chooses to love us.
And that is the glorious gospel that god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten, uh, not god so loved the church.
We don’t want to hear this part. It wasn’t the it wasn’t said the gospel of the church.
He said, god so loved the world that he gave his only begotten so that whosoever believeth on him?
Whose so? Not just the people that church people like, whosoever believeth on him.
Not just the people that your mama liked, not just the people that your daddy like, Whose soul is all of us, whosoever believeth on him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
Do you believe on him? Then believe he loves you.
If if you believe on him, believe I I was, uh, at a church and and I listened at a singer sing a a song and she started singing about I I know that you are for me.
That’s the name of the song. And I started crying. I started crying.
I couldn’t hold back the teaser. I came back. I told our music ministry. You gotta learn this song.
You gotta learn this song. I’m just because I have always known that he was for me. Yeah.
I have always known I didn’t deserve it. But I have always known that God was for me.
And if if you get nothing else out of my book, if you could settle on the fact that God is for you.
Even if he has to correct you, my parents would chastise me to to the living in better than in jail today but but I never doubted that they were not for me.
I never I never doubted that they were not for me.
And even though I’ve been chasing up the lord, that does not mean that he didn’t love me because whom the lord love it, He chasing us.
Don’t confuse the chastening with malice or hatred.
Yeah.
God loves you. And if that can sink in the soil of your head right now, healing is coming right now.
Thank you, Laura.
Restoration is coming right now, renewal is coming right now, that God isn’t trying to make up his mind about you.
And if you pay your times, he loves you. And if you do this or that, he loves you.
And if you If you fast 3 weeks, he No. You’re then you earned it.
He has chosen to love you because he is gracious when we are not graceful.
Lead people to Jesus?
May I take this opportunity? To speak to you.
Maybe you’ve never heard anybody talk like that in all your life.
And you didn’t even know that you were eligible to this glorious thing called Salvation.
Your life is written with guilt and shame. You’ve done some things.
You’ve seen some things. Horrific things, immoral things.
You’ve been in wars and conflicts and seen dead bodies.
You’ve you’ve been through all kinds of stuff, and they haunt you and you have night terrors.
And you drink a lot.
And you can’t imagine that a Holy God would love a wretch like you.
I get it. I’m a wretch too.
Amazing grace, how sweet the south, that saved a wretch like me.
Accept him into your heart right now. He’s waiting. He’s anxious.
He’s so anxious that even though your door is closed, he’s knocking on it.
Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
If any man hear my voice, I will come in and start with him. He’ll come in right now.
You’re watching in the house at a truck stop in your bedroom. Open that door.
Open it He said it right now. Right this minute. Right this minute, Jesus is knocking at the door.
He wants to be with you.
In the trailer, in that mansion, in that penthouse suite, in that Porsche, on the bus, in a cab, He wants to be with you.
Father right now, I pray that hearts would open, that minds would open, and that the love of Jesus would seep in like water falling on dry ground in the wilderness of sin.
God, let your grace seep in to that park soil and bring life where there has been death.
And bring joy where there has been depression, and bring peace where there has been confusion.
You’ve come to bring the gift of eternal life. We accept you now as our personal savior.
Just ask if we accept you now as our personal savior. We invite you to come into our heart.
I’m throwing the door wide open. My future is in your hand. 2022 belongs to you.
Thank you, lord.
I accept you as lord of my life.
Right now, in the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Congratulations.
Thank you, lord.
A party just broke out in heaven.
The angels are dancing, and they just turned up the music, and they’re gonna rock to a drop because another soul was added to the king of the day.
And your name is written in the land spoke of life.
Thank you, Jake. Out of your belly, T. D. Jakes flows rivers of life giving water.
We thank you for what you do, how you do it, how you articulate it.
And, um, and we feel it.
We drink of the life giving water that comes from you, and it’s amazing. We love you very much.
And I have to say you’re looking very sharp today. Okay?
I was trying to be like you. I said a word yellow time.
Well, I’m just saying It’s
a great
I matched your book. Really well.
You bet. Yeah. You did mention my book, man.
I was thinking about you. Yeah.
For those, um, that are wanting that might have tuned in a little late that are wanting to know do a a couple of minutes of what you want us to know about this book and what you want to happen for us by engaging
Or why the wilderness. Yeah.
I want you when you read this book to under stand that god has never made a wilderness for which he did not equally provide a provision.
He doesn’t make the wilderness and then scratches head and say, how am I gonna provide for this?
With the temptation god also makes aware of escape.
With the wilderness god also makes aware of provision and they come like twins.
So whatever kind of wilderness you’re in. Financial, emotional, marital. It doesn’t matter what it is.
There is a provision in your wilderness.
And I wanna walk you right to the provision and away from focusing on the problem.
You focus on the problem to the point that it’s breaking you down.
Nice time to focus on the provision.
And I named it god’s provision so you wouldn’t focus on the problem. Do it now.
That’d be blessed.
Hashtag, Wilder blessed.
We’ll see.
Bless all of you.