TD Jakes - A Vat Full of Wait
So the Lord called me, and I became aware of it around 17, though I didn't say, "Yes," to him until I was 19. And it's funny because, when we talked about the Lord calling us, it's like it's this one-time experience like he calls you one time, and then that's it, and you're done. The truth of the matter is he's still calling me. By the time I get to where he was, he's somewhere else. So Paul says, "Oh, that I may apprehend that which I'm apprehended of". In other words, "I wanna capture the God who's calling me". And then the guy who is writing most of the New Testament epistles, says, "I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do: I'm forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching to those things which are before, I press toward it". I haven't got it yet, but "I press toward the Mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus," means, I want to see progress in my process.
The goal is not completion or perfection. Perfection is not my aim. It's progress. And he calls me, and I get there, and he calls me, and I get there, and he calls me, and I get there, and he calls me, and, suddenly, I look back at where I came from and realize that the steps of a good man have been ordered, ordered, ordered. Do you hear that? Do you hear that, "Ordered"? "Ordered by the Lord," and that means, every time I took a step, it's 'cause he called me. He called me, and he's gonna keep on calling me until he calls me home, and that will be a call too, and as long as I keep an eternal "Yes" to an eternal call, I will always make progress. The only thing that shuts down the progress is when he calls me, and I say, "No". It's not that I win. It just means that he has to war with me, rather than reward me, to show me that he's stronger than me, and I delay the process because I don't understand that he's always going to be calling me, and gratification is always gonna be somewhere in front of me, and I will almost be there.
My mother, who taught me how to make banana pudding from scratch, and when she was sick and dying, I made banana pudding for her and a big meal, and I brought it up to her, and I sat by the bed, and I gave her some of the banana pudding, and I said, "Mama," I said, "Is it good as yours yet"? And she looked at me, and she said, "Almost". And I bust out and started laughing 'cause she never was gonna admit that I had made it there, but I got as close as "Almost," "Almost". And it's so funny because that's what God is saying to me, "Almost. Keep on stepping. You're almost there. Keep on stepping. Keep on growing. You're almost there. Almost there". "I count not myself to have apprehended," and don't you count yourself to have apprehended. Don't die before you die. Don't let the enemy talk you into dying before you die and make you think that you're through just because your old job is over.
Just because you're through raising kids or you're through parenting or you're through doing this or you're through doing that doesn't mean that your life is over. It just means that you change into another dimension, and if you will allow God to let you change into the next dimension, you will evolve, and when you evolve, your whole world shifts. Everything around you shifts. Everything changes. Somebody knows what I'm talking about to have the whole world shift. Crushing feels like an earthquake because the whole world shifts. The sea stands up. The ground caves in. The tremors are felt for miles. That's how big your God is when he moves. Everything shifts. I say to you... no, I prophesy to you that a shift is coming of mammoth proportions, and rather than to prepare for where you were, prepare for where you're going. Prepare for what God is going to do in this stage of your life that has never been done before because he chose you for such a time as this, and if you can let go of your normal, you're almost where he wants you to be.
Who would've ever thought that the God we serve would introduce himself to us in a world filled with chaos, a chaos so absolute and so complete and so all-engulfing that the whole globe had succumbed to it, that the whole globe had submerged beneath water and a baptism waiting on a birth, that in the chaos of the submergence of the earth, that the master of the universe would introduce himself or at least his word? When he said, "Let there be light," and there was light, it means he was not afraid of the dark. Heh-heh, what is the dark anyway? If you look it up, you will come to understand that all darkness is, is the absence of light, so it is not an object at all.
So, when God said, "Let there be light," he didn't have to roll back the darkness because the entrance of light dispelled darkness, that's why the Bible said, "The entrance of thy word giveth light," and God stepped out on nothing and said, "Let there be..." something, and it became what he said, and in the middle of the gross darkness and the chaos, the chaos and the confusion of mud and water mingling together until they were indistinguishable, one from the other, God stepped in the muddy mess that we call a planet and said, "Let there be light," and there was light, and it was good. God doesn't need good to make good. God doesn't need light to make light. God doesn't need right to make right. God can step into total chaos and create calm because he's God. He is the Creator. He creates. He doesn't just make. He creates. Part of the greatest thing God did in creation was to give us boundaries, to say to the sea, "Here, and no further," heh-heh, to say to the darkness, "you can work at night," and the evening and the morning were the first day, and he separated the light from the darkness and gave it boundaries.
So what God does through the crushings of our life is give us boundaries because, when you've never been crushed, you have no boundaries, but after you have been crushed awhile, you learn boundaries. You don't give your heart to strangers. You don't fall in love so easily. You don't run off and get married with somebody 'cause they're cute. You don't do all kinds of mistakes, and come on, talk to me, somebody, 'cause, all of a sudden, you got boundaries so things can grow because he couldn't say, "Bring forth," to mud. Long before he started creating anything else, he just said, "Bring forth," and he spoke to the thing that he wanted it to come from, and it became. To the sea, he says, "Bring forth," and fish begin to swim. To the ground, he says, "Bring forth," and grass begins to grow. To the air, he says, "Bring forth," and birds begin to fly. Each thing he spoke to caused something to come forth. When he got ready to make man, he spoke to himself and said, "Let us make man in our own likeness and in our own image and after our own kind".
So we are more than water and dirt, and we are more than the universe and planet. There is something of God in each and every one of us because he spoke to himself. So he is to me what air is to birds, what dirt is to grass, what water is to fish. He is the atmosphere that I'm sustained in. If you take the fish out of water, he dies not because there's anything wrong with him. You took him out of what he was spoken into. If you take the bird out the air, he dies not because there's anything wrong with him, but you took him out of the thing he spoke to. If you pull the grass up from the dirt, it withers because you took it out of the thing he spoke to, and if you take me away from God, I perish because you took me out of the thing he spoke to. "Whatever it takes to keep me into you, keep me there".
And with one command from the master himself, all the disciples gathered all their equipment and got inside of the boat and started to launch, for the master said, "Let us cross over to the other side". And whenever the master says, "Let us cross over to the other side," who am I to say anything but "Let's"? And with a "Yes" in their heart and a conviction in their spirit, they got in the boat while Jesus got in the bed. They're on the boat, and Jesus is in the bed in the hinder parts of the ship because Jesus said, "Let us cross over to the other side". He did not say that there would be a storm along the way. He just told them they would get there. He did not tell them that the lightning would flash and that the thunder would roll and that the boat would almost go capsized and that it would be so fierce that even an experienced sailor like Peter would be terrified and that the boat would get filled with water. He just said, "Let us cross over to the other side".
And then we begin to learn how short God is on details. He's great at beginnings, and he's great at endings, but he doesn't say much about the middle. Maybe that's why they say he's alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, because God doesn't say much about the middle, and the middle is where the storm is. The middle is where the lightning flashes and the thunder rolls, and the middle is where the crushing is, and the middle is where the doubt is, and the middle is where you begin to wonder, "Carest thou not that we perish"? The middle is where you wonder why God can be silent while you're in a storm. The middle is the crushing place. It is the place of uncertainty. It is the place of vulnerability. It is the place where you have to go to Jesus, and you feel like you need to wake him up. It is in his sleep that we discover the power of presence, not the power of rhetoric, not the power of solutions, the power of presence.
How could Peter think that he was gonna sink with the unsinkable presence of Jesus asleep in the bow of the ship? In order for the ship to go down, they'd have to drown Jesus, and Jesus was asleep because there was nothing in the storm strong enough to disrupt his peace. The whole boat was shaking, the breakers were dashing, the thunder was rolling, the lightning was flashing, and Jesus was oblivious to it all. There was no power in the air strong enough to break his rest except the cry of his child. "Master", how did Jesus hear Peter and not lightning? How did Jesus hear Peter and not thunder? How did Jesus hear Peter and not feel the rocking of the boat? None of that disturbed him, but the cry of his child woke him up.
"Master, master, carest thou not that we perish"? And, immediately, he woke up. Do you understand how much power is in your cry that, in the middle of your crushing, if you cry out, he will wake up for you when he didn't wake up for the wind or the thunder or the lightning or for anything else? "Master, master, carest thou not that we perish"? When you're in a crushing place, you start to wonder, "Does God care"? You wonder, "Does God care"? Because God is quiet, but God is quiet because you are safe. "I told you before, I went to sleep. Let us cross over to the other side".
This was not a natural storm. This was a Satanic uprising. This was a Satanic uprising because Jesus is on his way to cast armies of demons out of a man called legion, and the disruption has come because they know that Jesus is coming to cast them out, and they're trying to stop him from getting there, just like your disruption has come to stop you because the enemy knows that you're about to get there, and if you weren't about to get there, he wouldn't have sent the storm that he sent in the first place.
So they woke Jesus up, and he was the only one at this point who could handle the situation because Peter could not speak peace 'cause Peter didn't have peace, and you cannot speak outwardly what you do not have inwardly. Peter had trauma. So it he'd have spoke anything, the storm would've gotten worse because he had more storm inside than he did outside. The storm inside had become so tumultuous that now he's questioning his Savior: "Carest thou not that we perish"? Jesus got up, wiped the sleep out of his eye, stood on the side of a rocking boat that looked like it would capsize and merely said, "Peace, be still," but he said what he was.
Because he was peace, he could speak peace. Because he was sleep, he was calm enough to deal with the crushing place, and he says, "Peace, be still". And when he said, "Peace, be still," the winds heard the voice that said, "Let there be light". And the winds were slain in the spirit, and the waves lay prostrate in the floor, and the disciples stood there, scratching their head, sayin', "What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the waves obey his will"? He rebuked the wind. But wait, you don't rebuke weather. You rebuke spirits. So behind the weather was a spirit. Jesus rebuked the spirit, and the weather had nothing left to work with. The crushing is not the destination. It's the transportation, and you will get there to the other side.