T.D. Jakes: You Have to Keep Going

On T.D. Jakes sermon series, Crushing, T.D. Jakes teaches that you have to keep going. Sometimes healing takes time, but with God’s guidance. you will overcome what you’re going through.

Today…….I am asking all my prayer warriors to say a prayer that may help others. So many people are hurting right now. Many are struggling with finances and need jobs. Some are facing foreclosure and don’t even know how they are going to make it from week to week..

Many are lonely. . Many are heartbroken. . Many are facing sickness and health is fading. . Some are dealing with difficult family members. Many have lost HOPE.. Tonight, let us put our prayers and faith together decree and declare breakthrough over our families. Financial miracles WILL take place. Jobs WILL be found. Our Bodies WILL be made whole & sickness WILL flee. Marriages and relationships WILL be restored. Family members WILL find Jesus. Heartbreaks WILL be healed. JOY WILL be restored and HOPE WILL be found. In Jesus Name. Amen!!!!!! Keep God First…….

Do not believe for one moment that it is the end because the crushing of the grape is not the end of the grape.
It is a transition from one era to the next. What I’m talking about is process.
When I’m talking about crushing, I’m talking about process.
I’m talking about submitting yourself to the process because that is respect to commit yourself to the process means you respect the artistry of the calling in the same year.
The first time I made my first trip to the motherland to the land of my ancestors.
When I first got off the plane to hear the gentleman say in a deep African accent was absolutely staggering and it was amazing because in that same year, I made my first trip to my spiritual ancestry to Jerusalem.
It was the first time these old West Virginia feet had walked down cobblestone streets and smelled bread, baking early in the morning and watched Jerusalem open up and come to life much as it would in the days of Christ time.
And I searched it through, I went everywhere I could go.
I went down to where the pool of Bethesda is thought to have been, I went down to the sea of Galilee.
I set my feet in the waters of the Jordan and I went to a place called Mega where Armageddon is supposed to be leaped out of the car over in Jordan and ran out in the mud to stand and look around at the amphitheater, a natural amphitheater of mountains all around just to see what was going on.
I went in the Temple Mount which is now controlled, not by the Jews, but the Muslims.
And they told me to take off my shoes as I went in there, and I went inside the Temple mount and had the experience of walking up into what would have been the holy of holy.
Only to find Abraham’s rock, the place where he would offer up Isaac.
And it was then that I realized that the Bible isn’t wide, it’s deep that the same place that Abraham offers up, Isaac is in the same area where Christ is to be crucified.
So it’s not about going from place to place. It’s about digging deeper.
So you stand in a contemporary place with a contemporary shovel and dig your way through the Epistles and dig your way into the prophets and dig your way into the Old Testament because the history of our faith is in layers.
I walk down to the wailing wall, the wailing wall where all the Jews go to pray and the rabbis stand in front of the whaling wall and rock back and forth, placing their prayer requests into the crevices of the rock and rocking back and forth.
They walk back and forth. I asked the God, why are they walking back and forth?
They said, because they believe that God is a moving God.
And if you’re going to come into his presence, you have to be moving in his presence because God is always moving.
He’s always rocking. He’s always doing. And I said, can I go?
And with the women on one side and the man on the other, I came to the whaling wall and had the most amazing experience.
I burst into tears because the Whaling wall is the last remnant of Harrod’s Temple.
The Whaling wall is reminiscent of Solomon’s temple.
And when I looked at the faith of so much history layered and still standing there in the rock.
And I’m standing at the rock, I’m standing at the rock where Jesus has stood.
I’m standing on the spot where the threshing floor of Oran was where Solomon’s temple was where all of history had collided in that moment.
And I just started crying and I’m surrounded by Jews and they’re watching a Christian cry at their wailing wall and suddenly I recognize or hope they recognize that your Jehovah is my Jesus.
Mm That your, is my principles that your bright and morning story is my lily of the valley that we are kin.
And that we are connected and that, that, that we have something in common though.
Our perspectives are different for you.
Stand waiting on a Messiah to come and I stand looking back at a Messiah who visited and you recognized him.
Now, the reason we use wine as a metaphor for the book crushing is because wine takes time.
And I’m talking about taking time to an era of people who don’t believe that anything takes time.
In other words, I’m talking to a microwave crowd about a cold stove recipe.
I remember my grandmother’s coal stove was set on the back porch and you had to put coal in it and she fried chicken and cast iron skillets and bake cakes until they were standing that high.
And I wonder even to this day how they regulated the temperature in a cold stove.
I remember her making cakes without a mixer, but she take a spoon and turn it flat and beat the butter and I can see her arm shaking, baking a cake and she did better with the spoon than I can with the mixer.
And I’m good with the mixer.
Grandma knew that the best cakes took time and she was willing to put in the time and the effort and the sweat to get the cake to rise to the place that it needs to be.
And so it is with the wine winemakers know that good wine takes time.
It starts with the soil.
You plant the seed in and the grape that grows from it and the grape accepting the fact that it was raised to be crushed.
I think we need to teach our Children a little differently that you are raised to be crushed instead of teaching them that you’re raised to be applauded and you’re raised to be exalted and you’re raised to be lauded.
I think we should tell them that you are raised to be crushed.
And when you come to the crushing place, do not believe for one moment that it is the end because the crushing of the grape is not the end of the grape.
It is a transition from one era to the next.
What I am talking about is process when I’m talking about crushing, I’m talking about process.
I’m talking about submitting yourself to the process because that is respect to commit yourself to the process means you respect the artistry of the calling when you put the work in and the labor in and the commitment in and, and, and all of the sacrifice into it.
That means you respect it.
I wouldn’t go down to the Cowboys Stadium and ask Jerry Jones to put me in a uniform and just because I watch football, think I could play football that’s disrespectful to the people who have worked hours and years getting ready and training all their life to become excellent at what they do.
Process is respect to recognize that it’s it’s not supposed to happen fast because if it happens fast, it will not last.
That, that is slow, rolled and slow cooked and cooked overnight.
Smoked on a smoker until in the morning has a richness and a flavor that you just cannot get in a microwave.
You have to understand that.
And if you want microwave success, go on and do it quick and you’ll go up quick and you’ll come down quick.
But if you really respect the artistry and the and, and the technique and the style and the fashion and the depth and the anointing and the action and the power and the collaboration between the spirit and the man and the man and the spirit and the spirit and the man until you can’t tell the difference between the talent and the tool of the master and how he uses it in such synchronization that you don’t know whether it was the hand of Gideon or the sword of the Lord that defeated the enemy.
That means that you wanna fit so good in the hands of God that at a moment’s notice, he can use you any time and anywhere.
And in order to be that kind of good, that means you have to go through the process and embrace it, embrace the process, not resent it, not feel betrayed or denied because it didn’t happen as quick as the person next to you because you are not comparing yourself with the person next to you.
That is not the goal to be like the person next to you.
You are not running against them, you’re running against the hope of your calling and what God wants to do in your life and what he has to take you through to produce what he is trying to produce in your life.
And that means you have to listen at what he’s saying, even when he’s talking about waiting while you’re talking about winning, you have to respect the process because if you do, when the process is over, you will last longer as wine than you would have as a great.
It’s amazing when you start talking about the life of Joseph and all of the turmoil that he went through and how his father made him a coat of many colors, which was really prophetic to him becoming the prince of Egypt.
It was also prophetic to the multiplicity of a God who is able to love all colors and kinds and stitch them together and make one garment and become the dwell amongst us.
God and Joseph wore his coat and his brother stripped him of his coat.
They stripped him of his coat, but they couldn’t strip him of his calling.
They threw him in a pit and they said he was dead.
The MidNite came along and bought him for 20 pieces of silver because God was using Joseph’s life as a shadow of Jesus who would be rejected of his brethren who would be thrown into a pit, who would be sold for 30 pieces of silver.
And Joseph doesn’t know it, but he is acting out what Jesus will fulfill.
And then he goes from that to Potiphar house and rises to a place of power only to be lied on by Potiphar wife and have to flee and end up in prison.
And then Joseph, the young man who grew up with the coat of many colors ends up with stripes in a prison, locked up behind bars.
And even there, he excelled and you know, all of this.
But what you may not realize is that that is only a small fraction of his life that he spent more years free than he did that.
He spent more years as the prince of Egypt than he did as a prisoner in the jail cell.
And what you have to understand the process may seem long while you’re going through it.
But if you will go through the process, when you get to the end of it, you’ll be a prince much longer than you’ll be in process and God is trying to fix you so that you will last.
And when the winemaker makes the wine, he makes it in such a way that when they bring it to the table, they ask, they tell you first what year it was made and the best wines have been preserved for hundreds of years.
And the longer it lasts, the more it costs Egypt becomes an incubator, it becomes a womb where God turns Jacob’s family, big family though.
It was 70 people into millions of people and he fermented them through the slavery of Egypt, the atrocities and the abuses and the 400 years of agony was how God incubated them.
So they go into Egypt, a family wanting bread and they come out of Egypt, a nation carrying gold.
Do you hear what I’m saying to you?
In order to turn family thinking into nation mentalities, it takes time, it takes time.
10 generations went past so many generations went past that they had forgotten how to worship their God because they had so assimilated into the culture of Egypt that much of their understanding of who God was had drifted away.
But with the limited residue of faith that they had left, they cried out onto God and he still heard them though.
They had forgotten what Abraham had taught them and what Isaac had shown them.
And Jacob had long since been buried. He still heard them.
I know he did because he told Moses, I have heard the cry of my Children, Israel go down there and tell Pharaoh to let my people go.
You’re talking about time up. That was God’s time up.
That what God saying, the process is over, the fermentation is completed, the wine is made and I’m ready to bring it out.
And when God gets ready to bring you out.
Nobody, no matter how powerful they are, no matter what they have or what they own or what they drive can stop God from bringing you out.
And even though Pharo saddled up 600 chosen and decided to go get them and try to drive them back, he could not drive back what God had loo.
And there they stand at the red Sea with Pharaoh chasing them behind them and mountains surrounding them.
And they think that they are in a place of hopelessness and despair because they can’t swim the Red Sea and they can’t escape across the mountains.
And the horses are coming faster than their feet can run and their Children are laid and down with the wealth of Egypt.
And there they stand in total dismay. Moses included saying God, what am I supposed to do?
And God says to Him, why stand you here gazing at me, stretch forth your.
And when Moses stretched forth his staff, when he stretched forth, what he had, the wind started blowing and the waters went hither and thither and they walked across on dry ground because it was time for the wine to come out.
It was time that the family had become a nation.
It was time that the purpose of God had been completed and he brought them out by his mighty power and he brought them out on dry ground.
They didn’t even have to get mud. On their feet. They walked out on dry ground.
It was almost as if God had paved the bottom of the river bank so that they could have comfort while they exited.
They came out on dry ground.
But when Pharaoh tried to come through the way that God had made for his people, Pharo drowned, see what God has for you is for you and nobody else can take it.
So don’t waste time arguing with people who are trying to get what you got because nobody can take what is yours?
If it’s really yours, it’s yours and no one can get it.
And when Pharaoh tried to get it, he drowned in the Red Sea.
He drowned in the Red Sea because the God stopped the wind from blowing and the waters collapsed and covered him up.
And Pharaoh and his horses and his cherries drowned it in the Red Sea.
And Miriam grabbed the tambourine and began to beat it to the glory of God.
And the women began to dance around the mountain and as they dance, the bodies of the Egyptians were washing up on the bank.
But God did not just close the Red Sea to drown Pharaoh.
And it’s amazing to me that every so often no matter who you are, where you live or how much faith you have or what you drive.
Trouble comes right to your house, it meets you at the door.
It challenges you in ways that you cannot always control or correct and you have to endure endurance is a part of crushing, to talk about crushing and talk about endearing.
Seems like an oxymoron because who can endure being crushed.
But we do every day, we are crushed in ways that people cannot see.
And though I kept preaching and though I kept teaching, I came home to deal with her illness and watch her suffer through the pain of trying to recover.
And the odd thing about it is after she had the surgery, the doctor said the surgery was successful, but she was in as much pain afterwards as she was before.
I warn you that recovery has pain.
We know that injury has pain, but recovery also has pain.
And if you’re going to be heal, you have to endure the pain.
She decided to go see my son graduate from college, but she was in pain and she kept moving and crushing is the idea and the notion that life does not stop to accommodate your comfort, the situations and demands will not stop just because you are in a bad place or a bad moment and some kind of way every now and then you have to press above the pain and keep moving.
This is the kind of thing that Jesus teaches us in the garden of Yosemite.
When the great drops of blood begin to come through the very pores of his skin, he teaches us the agony of going forward.
It was easy to heal the sick. It was easy to turn water into wine.
It was easy for him to walk on water. Not for me, it was easy for him.
But now he’s come to a place of crushing and pain and that requires prayer and suffering.
The pain that my wife had before surgery seemed purposeless.
It was just pain, the pain after the surgery had purpose.
And even though it had the same intensity, it had a different ending and we must realize it’s the ending that matters that God’s thoughts toward us are good that we might have an expected end.
But he didn’t say anything about the middle.
And so as we endure the pain and go through the agony, agony like being misunderstood agony of not feeling loved, agony of being underemployed or unemployed or agony of losing a job or a spouse or a loved one.
I mean, real agony. I’m not talking about you lost your parking space.
I’m talking about real agony that tries your soul that pushes you to the breaking point that you feel like you’re gonna bleed through your skin.
You have to know that that does not mean that you’re not recovering.
That recovery hurts too.
Counseling hurts, therapy hurts, confronting old issues and digging out old wounds, that’s hurtful stuff and difficult to talk about.
But if we don’t get to the root of it, we’ll never be well and like her surgery, the doctor had gotten to the root of it.
And when he said that it was successful, I expected to walk in the room and find her smiling and instead she was writhing in pain.
Sometimes God allows us to go through surgery and the recovery period may take a while.
But that does not mean that we’re not getting better.
What it does mean that it, once you make a commitment to go through the process, you have to be prepared to endure the pain because the pain is a part of the process.
Always knowing that the anesthesia to the pain is the blessed hope that we might have and expect it in.
And today if you are suffering and in agony and in turmoil and feeling disconnected from the world and like life is passing you by while you wrestle with and ruffle with the atrocities and the vicissitudes of life.
I want you to know that tomorrow is coming.
And if you can endure this moment and withstand this agony, that had been prophesized by the prophets of old had been seen in shadows and types had been seen in the shadows of the Old Testament.
Preparing us for the weekend of absolute terror and horror. I’m talking about the weekend that Christ was crucified.
I’m talking about the brutalization and the abuse of one man who took on the sins of the world.
And I am not sure whether it is the nails of the cross or the beating of its back or the crown of thorns upon his head that hurt as bad as the betrayal of his disciples, the alienation from his friends.
Or maybe it was the absence of the favor of his father, the agony and the shame of being stripped naked in front of the world and having to bleed out in front of a crowd of onlookers of Spectators and even those who cheered him.
But what I love about the story is on the third day, not only did he rise, but I am distracted by the women who woke up early in the morning and decided to go down to the tomb to be loyal to a Jesus.
They thought was dead. Now that is covenant relationship because anybody can be loyal to you when you’re walking on the water and healing the sick and raising the dead.
Anybody can be loyal to you when you’re stopping the woman with the issue of blood.
Anybody can be loyal to you when you are healing blind part of may.
But now he’s dead and Thomas is on the run and Judas has hung himself and the disciples are locked up behind closed doors for fear of the Jews because they’re afraid they’re going to be next.
And that fear was real because many of them would be martyred for the cause of Christ and everybody was locked up except these women, these women, these women were unique women, they didn’t even come from the same side of the track.
One of them had, had a questionable background and Jesus had changed her life.
Each one of them stands in the presence of Jesus loving him for a different reason.
It’s like going to church and you all hear us say hallelujah. But we all mean something different.
We say thank you Jesus, but we’re thanking him for something different.
We hear the same song but we have different memories and it is the uniqueness of you.
It is a special way of loving God that nobody can love him like you love him because nobody has your story.
These women got up early in the morning before the break of day and came down to the tomb because even did, they wanted to protect him.
They wanted to protect him. They didn’t want anybody to smell him decay.
And with their frankincense in one hand and their mirror in the other.
They rushed down to the tomb to make sure that anybody walking by would not catch the scent of his erosion only to get down to the tomb and find out that the Jesus to whom they loved to the point of being loyal while dead.
It’s a my and they were the first ones to know that he had risen from the dead.
Revelation is born out of loyalty.
You’re not really my covenant brother until you’ve seen me in the ditch until you see me bleed out until you stood by me.
When other forsook me, you’re not really my sister until you put flowers on my stench.
Until you aroma my agony.
That is a sign of covenant and crushing and all of us crave someone who will go through with us when we don’t smell so good.
So the next time you read about this weekend, understand that. Yes, Jesus is the star.
He is the leading man of the whole book.
The whole book has prepared us for his entry into the world.
And the angels have stood in utter awe and amazement at his interest into human form that he would pour out of himself, his glory and honor and dwell amongst men was absolutely amazing.
And then to be so much a man that he would die like a man when in fact, inside he was a God was staggering.
Even the apostles in retrospect, find it difficult to articulate the magnitude of who he was.
And though he is the leading man, do not forget the supporting cast for these three women who rose up before the dude had hit the roses and gathered up their goods and went out into the cold chilly air of Jerusalem and began to walk down the cobblestone streets toward Jesus.
Did not do it for fame or fortune or recognition or titles or recompense of any kind.
They simply did it because they loved him.
So you must realize that we look at the cross as a place of worship and a symbol of our faith and the authenticity of our Christian belief.
But before the cross was a place of faith, it was an execution chamber and no one would wear an electric chair around their neck or a gas chamber.
Have it painted on your t-shirt?
You see it was natural in the days of Jesus Christ to walk down the street and look up on the hill and see someone dying writhing on a cross.
Jesus was not the only one to be executed.
And when gave the decree that released him that set him up to go to the cross, he did not send him to the cross as a lamb.
He sent him to the cross as a criminal and the cross was a place of execution.
And the early church did not wear crosses nor honor them nor think that they were special because the cross was a place of suffering and shame and degradation.
It was not a place to sing songs and raise your hands and worship and glorify.
It was not until many years later when Constantine’s mother decided that she would go on a search to try to find those old rugged crosses and she found what she thought and could have been the cross that Jesus was crucified on and then she had to struggle with having found it.
What do I do with it? She found an antique wooden artifact that she believed was the cross.
She splintered it into pieces rather than to have people fight over who would get the cross and dispersed it around the world, sending it into basilicas and sanctuaries and chambers.
Little pieces of the cross that are still in many of the more Greek orthodox religious institutions, pieces of the cross are kept and have been preserved and maintained as a testament to the mother of Constantine.
And had she not done that the gospel itself would not have caught on fire like it did.
But it spread every place the splinters went.
The splintering of the cross is what promulgated the gospel to reach to the utmost parts of the earth.
Because everybody got a little peace and it broke open conversations and communications and it started something special that all of a sudden the cross ceased to be a place of shame and it turned into a place of sacred worship and adoration.
It changed its meaning, not its look, it changed its meaning because now the eye of the beholder looked beyond the shame and saw the savior.
You must understand that we go through things in our lives, that it is how we behold it, that determines how we feel about it.
It is how we choose to see it, whether it is execution or offering.
Oh, you see to the Romans, it was execution.
But in reality, Jesus Christ was an offering that the Hebrew said he went in once and for all by himself with himself, he is priest enough to be the offerer and lamb enough to be the offering.
Do you hear what I’m saying?
There’s one little notation in the story of the crucifixion that you could easily overlook.
It is not the decision of Pilate that changed it from execution to offering.
But in a brief statement, one of the gospel writers records, Chao, the high priest nodded his head in a scent to the crucifixion.
And with the nod of chaos as the priest, the convict became the Christ.
Oh, and the execution became an offering because Palate did not have the authority to offer up a lamb to God.
Only the high priests could do that. So the priest, when he nodded his head, legitimized the offering.
Constantine’s mother spread it the offering.
And now we stand at the foot of an old rugged cross.
What a wondrous attraction for me where the dearest and best of a world of lost sinners were slain.
So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross.
Till at last my burdens, I lay down, I will clean to the old rugged cross.
Those kinds of lyrics are born only because Constantine’s mother turn the cross into splinters and the splinters turned an execution chamber into a place of Christian adoration, crushing it all depends on how you look at it.
Mhm One man’s misery is another man’s miracle at TBN.
Our mission is to use every available means to reach as many individuals and families as possible.
With the life changing gospel of Jesus Christ.
Thank you for helping make the gospel of grace go around the world without you. We couldn’t do it.
God bless you.