TD Jakes - The Courage To Change Course
When Ishmael mocked Isaac at the celebration, Sarah demanded Abraham cast out Hagar and her son, forcing a painful correction of past fleshly mistakes. God confirmed it, urging Abraham to trust Him with the fallout, because to fulfill destiny you must have the courage to change course by cutting away what no longer belongs, even when it hurts.
From Celebration to Confrontation
Everything is going wonderful, and then Sarah, the Bible says, looked out and saw Ishmael, Hagar's son by Abraham, mocking Isaac, and the party was over. She stopped laughing. Put the cake back, take the hot dogs off the grill, put the party hat away, stop the music. She mad again.
What you mad about now? "I looked out the window, and do you not know what I saw? That woman's son was mocking my child." Now, if you want to make a woman mad, I mean even them little quiet nice dainty little women who walk around with lace on their toes and got their fingernails with glitter on it, they turn into guerrilla warfare if you mess with one of them kids.
Sarah said, "Put the cake up. Something's got to be done. This girl have lost her mind. Her boy is out there mocking my boy." You got to do something about it. What you going to do, what you going to do? I just wonder what you going to do. I just wonder what you going to do about that.
What you going to do about that, I tell you. No, I am going to tell you what you going to do. Let me tell you what you are going to do about this. Cast out, put her out, her and her nappy-headed child, put both of them out. I do not care where they are going to stay, I do not care where they going to live, but she going to get up.
I ebonized it just a little bit, but. Then all of a sudden, all of a sudden, he has gone from cutting to casting. He has gone from cutting to being asked to cast out the bondwoman and her son, which incidentally is his son.
The Pain of Past Mistakes
When Sarah says it, she says, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son," but she knows that is his son. But Sarah does not have no skin in the game, and when you do not have no skin in the game, it is easy to tell people what they ought to do about their situation, because you do not have no skin in the game.
Now, if this would have been me, this text would have been longer, because when she said, "Cast out the bondwoman and her son," I would have gotten right back up in her face and say, "She would not have been here in the first place if you had not brought her in here. It is not like I asked you for this woman; this was your idea in the first place. And now you want me to fix what you wanted me to?"
You see, Hagar was never Abraham's idea. It was Sarah's idea, because she thought it was not going to happen. And when she thought it was not going to happen God's way, she said, "I will do it my way." Henceforth, Ishmael becomes a child of the flesh.
How many things have been born in your house out of the flesh, out of your unwillingness to wait, out of your impatience, out of your frustration? How many decisions did you make without God? And by the way, would not you hate to live in this house?
You got two women in this house, yeah, yeah, I could stop right there; that is the end of it right there. I got two women in the house; they do not like each other. And I got two sons in the house. One is born of the flesh and one of them is born of the promise.
It just sounds like a mess, but Abraham lived with it because sometimes change creates such disruption that you just make the best of a bad situation. How did Abraham go from throwing a party for his son to the biggest fight with his wife ever recorded?
The Need for Circumcision in Relationships
The fight was so big, they did not have to call the police; God had to come, because Sarah has asked him to cast out the bondwoman and her son, and I believe that Abraham was bound to the bondwoman. Bondwoman actually means that she was a servant, a slave.
But I want you to understand that you cannot spend that much time with somebody, you cannot spend that many nights with somebody, listening to them talking about their dreams and their hopes and what happened to them when they was seven, and when I was twelve, my dog died, and all of that.
And after a while, there is a bond to what you bond with; you become bound too. Ooh, there is only 12 that could say amen. The rest of us using that mask as an excuse because as long as you got your mask over your mouth, you do not have to say nothing. You could say, "I said it under my breath."
What you bond with, you become bound to, and Hagar had become unnecessary flesh. She was attached. Ishmael was his flesh. And God is now doing to him what he started out doing to his son, for to cast out the bondwoman and her son is circumcision.
And Abraham is good at giving it, but now he has got to receive it. Oh, he has been circumcised in his body, but not in his relationships. And there is no way to get out of this without blood. This is going to hurt.
And yet, in order to get his house together, he had to have the courage to change course. In fact, in all fairness, I have to give Sarah some credit. Sarah is making a correction because she is no longer the woman she was before.
Giving Room for Growth and Change
I want to talk to some people who are no longer the woman you were before. And yet, you have got kids angry with you about what you did before; you have got spouses angry with you over what you did before. That is not just for women; let us talk to some men who have got some wives that are angry with you over what you did before, and the kids do not like you over who you were before.
The problem is, people never give people room to change, to grow, to evolve, and even though we are Christians, we are the world's best at alienating people over what they did before. And it takes courage to correct or to change course, because if he changes course, what will become of Hagar? Where will Hagar go?
Hagar is cast into the wilderness, and when God comes down, God does not talk like Sarah. See, sometimes, sisters, you can be right about what you said but wrong about how you said it. You said, "Cast out the woman, the bondwoman and her son."
God comes down and says, "I know Ishmael is your seed." Understanding is important to bring about change. You cannot just look at it from your perspective, just because you do not have no skin in the game; Abraham has skin in the game. Ishmael is his son too.
See, until we take responsibility for the mistakes we have made, we cannot change course as long as you push it off and act like it was just them, and you tell the story where you are always the hero.
This woman would have never been in Abraham's life; you brought the woman into his life, you came up with the strategy of them sleeping together, you told him to have a baby. You made this woman your slave and made her sleep with a man that she had never picked to sleep with, and now it is all blowing up in your face and you want to act like it is his fault.
But what is amazing about the text is God comes down and says to Abraham, "Hearken unto the voice of your wife Sarah, because the woman is right even though she said it wrong. She is right, and what is happening here is correction."
Trusting God with the Collateral Damage
Now, I am almost finished. In order to have correction, you have to have the challenging responsibility of trusting God to handle our mistakes. God says to Abraham, "Leave Hagar to me. I know Ishmael is your son. I will make of him a great nation."
But you cannot take your mistake and your miracle and put them all in the same house and make it work. There has to come a cutting away, a cutting away. You cannot change course if you cannot cut. You cannot change course if you cannot cast out.
And the challenge is to trust me with the collateral damage. Who am I preaching to? Trust me that I do not need you to take care of Ishmael. God says, "My grace is sufficient for your mistakes."
My grace, my grace, my grace, my grace is sufficient. You do not have to live in this chaos. Your spirit has been in a state of constant disruption because you will not change course, and I do not want you to live in this constant, chaotic, stressful environment of forlornness because your mistakes and your miracles are cohabitating in the same space.
All I need from you is the courage to change course. If you do not change course, you are going to mess up your destiny. If you do not change course, you are going to mess up your future.
If you do not change course, you are not going to be in the place you need to be to become who I created you to be. If you do not change course, you are going to spend the latter years miserable because you will not own up to your mistakes and acknowledge that you were wrong, and you will not fix it.
And all the dancing and all the shouting and all the giving you do over top of it will not take away from the fact that you still need the courage to change course.
Breaking Free from Old Expectations
Who in here needs the courage to change course? You know what they say? The definition of lunacy is to continue to do the same thing expecting a different result. You cannot be the woman you want to be and the woman you used to be at the same time.
You cannot be the man you were created to be and the man you used to be at the same time. And you know that now, but the problem is you just cannot bring yourself to change course because of all the people that it would hurt for you to change.
And how long will you make those people more important than your destiny? God said, "Turn them over to me." Oh, God, I am talking to somebody; I am talking to somebody; I do not know who it is.
See, the Lord sent me here to loose somebody this morning, to liberate somebody this morning. You have been in bondage; you cannot even be your best self, you cannot do your best work, you cannot be who you were created to be because you are stuck in a situation that you helped to create, and you are guilty.
And you feel guilty and you overcompensate because you are guilty, and you are in this situation because you are guilty, and you are stuck because either way you move, somebody is going to get hurt, and if you do not move, it is going to be you.
Lift your hands up and say, God, give me the courage to change course. That means I might not get to say everything I want to say. That means I got to hold my peace, sometimes. That means sometimes I got to bite my lip.
That means sometimes I have got to learn another discipline. That means sometimes I got to bleed. But if I have to bleed to be better, I am willing to bleed. I am willing to bleed a little while to be better for a long time.
See, I realized that if I did not have the surgery, the pain would never go away, and if I had the surgery, I would have pain for a little while, but eventually the pain of recovery will go away.
See, circumcision hurts real bad, but it does not hurt real long. Putting out the bondwoman hurt real bad, but it did not hurt real long. And you got to decide, are you willing to have a little momentary discomfort to be where you are called to be, or are you so concerned about the disruption that your change creates that you are willing to be a prisoner in your own life the rest of your life?
That is what this text says to me. That is what I get out of this text. That is why this text is important to me, because every time I have ever made a change, somebody got hurt.
When God called me to come to Dallas, somebody got hurt in West Virginia. There are people who do not like me now. I have been here 25 years, and they still mad.
The other people that accepted it and they are glad about it, they see it, they get it, but there are some people that just simply refuse to get over. And I had to decide, am I going to spend the rest of my life honoring your expectations of me, or do I get to live my life the way God called me to live my life?
You leave when you want to leave, you come when you want to come, you miss church when you feel like missing it, but if I am not here, you say, "I came to church and you was not there." Do not I get to be a person too?
I am going to break your chain today, the chain that ties you to living up to other people's expectations all of your life, the chain that circumvents you from reaching your destiny and your purpose, so you can go ahead and fulfill what God created you to fulfill.
Committing Fully to God
We are going into a week of change. We are going to change course, we are going to change direction, we are going to change our focus, we are going to change our attitude. I do not care whether we get to have worship or preaching or whether we just come in here and lay flat out on the floor.
I want a gully-washing, Holy-Ghost-anointed supernatural revival. Revival is to wake up what is dead, to bring back to life that that has gone away, to restore, to bring back the luster of really knowing God.
I do not want to pastor church people; I want to pastor saints, real believers who are washed in the blood of the Lamb, who really want to serve God. I do not want to pastor people who just want to take God on a weekly date on Sunday.
Some of you all do not love God; you date him. You all got a weekly date on Sunday, but Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday belong to you. And if it is not Sunday, you do not have no skin in the game.
And you are asking God for a seven-day blessing with a one-day commitment, and you have lost your ability. And God sent me to say to you that in order for him to do what you have been praying about, you are going to have to be disciplined enough to put some skin in the game.
If you do not put any skin in the game, God cannot do what he wants to do in your life. But if you present your body a living sacrifice before God, God said, "I will do a new thing in you, and the former things in your life will be passed away."
I hear God talking to somebody; I do not know who it is, but if you are ready for change, give him 30 seconds of crazy praise.