TD Jakes - The Struggle To Relevance (03/14/2023)
Like young Samuel serving in a corrupt, mediocre environment without truly knowing the Lord, we often face struggles to break free from familiar gravity and say yes to God's individual call. Through struggle, service, surrender, and submission, God shifts us from confusion to relevance, making our lives profoundly effective and causing ears to tingle at what He does through us.
The Struggle to Break Free
Being a pastor who started in a building in a hole in the wall with no help, no support, no money, was the Minister of Music and the President of the Deacon Board, Jamar and Jermaine were the choir, and Serita, they all sang, and I played the piano. My foot was the drum. And I was happy. I was not crying. I was happy to have an opportunity.
I struggle today with people who have got buildings, and they have got choirs, and they have got help, and they say, “Bishop, I just cannot hardly make it. Nobody is helping me.” I say, “Oh, nobody is supposed to help you.” You are supposed to, there is something you learn in the fight that makes you able to stand on the blessing. Nobody is supposed to help you.
So, one thing we must be clear about, if you are going to be relevant, you have got to be prepared to struggle, and the struggle is often in a unique way. Samuel’s struggle was different from Hannah’s, but it was a struggle nonetheless.
To break the gravitational pull of his environment was a struggle. An environment that was carnal and mediocre, substandard, self-consumed, and yet God had put greatness in him, but greatness has to break the gravity of its environment.
Greatness has to break the gravity of its environment. Gravity, the thing that keeps pulling you back into the same sphere all the time.
He was in an environment where not only did he not know the Lord, the people around him were indifferent to the Lord, and that was okay. And so he worked. Wrong looks right when everybody around you is doing what you are doing.
How could you serve the Lord and not know the Lord? Well, I was about like the rest of them.
But the call of God comes, and when the call of God comes, the decision must be made, will I break the struggle of what is normal to have what God has called me to?
This call is an individual call, and in order to say yes, there is a struggle.
Seeking Solutions in the Wrong Places
Samuel hears the call but does not understand the call. The call is pulling him, but he responds to it by going to that which is familiar.
“I know something is missing out of my life. I do not know exactly what it is. I keep trying to satisfy a spiritual itch with a natural solution.”
It is a spiritual call, but I keep going to Eli. The Bible says every time God called Samuel, he turned to Eli and said, “Did you call me?” God was calling him, but he was trying to seek a solution in a place that was less than the call.
I am wondering if you have been looking for all the right things in all the wrong places. I am wondering if the reason your relationships are not working out is because you are asking the relationship to resolve what God has called you to do, and you can never get a spiritual answer from a natural place.
Maybe you should forgive them because they never had what you were looking for anyway.
Some of you have gone to everybody else but God to resolve the conflict in your life. You find it easier to wrestle with flesh than to seek God.
You keep being disappointed because you are seeking God answers from man places. You are seeking God answers from man places, and God keeps calling you, but you have a habit of going here for the solution and find it easier to wrestle with Eli than you do to say yes to God.
But this morning somebody in this place is going to say yes to the Lord like you have never said yes before. Yes. Yes. To your will, to your Word, to your way, to your purpose, to your timing, yes.
I am tired of going to people who are just as crazy as I am. I am tired of asking people to heal me who are broken themselves. My soul says yes.
The Value of Struggle
So, I want you to understand this morning, number one, that it is always a struggle, and without a struggle, there can be no victory. Without a struggle there can be no victory. Without a struggle there is no sense of appreciation.
I can tell just as good when you have fought to get where you are, because when you have fought to get where you are, you do not let anybody take away.
When you have earned and paid your dues and suffered and cried and labored and made mistakes and had to get back up again and brushed the dirt off your knees and you finally get something, when that devil comes in to kill, steal, and destroy, you say, “Wait a minute. You are messing with the wrong person this time. I struggled too hard, I struggled too long, I struggled too many years to let you walk in and take away what God has given me.”
I want the strugglers to make some noise in here. Touch your neighbor and tell them, I struggled to get this. That is why I am not going to let you take it from me, I struggled to get this.
That is why I am not going to let bad times kill me, I struggled to get this. That is why I do not care whether you like me or not, I struggled to get this.
That is why you cannot roll your eyes at me and run me home, I struggled to get this. That is why I will serve with my feelings hurt, with my back aching, with my head hung down. Though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him.
Strugglers make some noise in this place.
There is a struggle to be relevant.
Service in the Midst of Struggle
Number two, there was a service that was required, a service that was required. You had to be prepared to give service. He gave service. He gave service. He served the Lord. He did the work of the Lord. He took care of the business of the Lord. He served Him.
In the midst of a struggle, he was still giving service. There are some things you cannot get from God without service.
A lot of people are waiting on God to touch them so they can serve, but if you serve Him, He is going to touch you.
The Bible said that the lepers were healed as they went. If you do not go, you will not be healed. If you do not serve, you will not get a revelation.
You have got to serve Him for a breakthrough because the anointing will only anoint people who serve.
It was in the service that God showed Himself. How many times have you ever had God show Himself while you served Him? While you are serving Him, He is showing Himself.
I dare you to serve Him anyway.
Surrender and Submission
My next point is He brings him to a place of surrender. Surrender comes after he has served God, and he has gotten it wrong in the service, and he has gotten it wrong in the service. He has gotten it wrong in the service.
Three times he has gotten it wrong, and then he goes down, and he lays in the bed, and he says, “If you call me again, this time. This time, Lord, I am totally surrendered. Not my will, but thine be done.”
It is not how I feel about it. It is not whether I want to go or not. It is not whether my conditions are right or not. It is not whether my environment is correct or conducive or not. I am surrendered to do the right thing even if I am surrounded.
So he said, “If you call me again, I am ready,” and the Lord called him again.
God is trying to do a new thing through Samuel. Samuel is in a transition. He is in a turning point. He is to usher in a new era.
He started him in what he called him to change. You cannot change something that you did not start in because you cannot redeem what you are not kin to.
You have to have come from it in order to speak to it. You had to start out in it and escape from it so that you can call others who were there too.
That is why you are afflicted. You are afflicted so that you can come through it and deliver other people that are in it.
The Samuel Shift
Submission is to submit to the mission. That means I am taking my opinion out of it, I am taking my mouth out of it, I am submitted to the mission.
And as he submitted to the mission, as he surrendered his life, as he said yes to his call, as he went through his struggle, when God says, “I am going to make both ears of them that hear it tingle,” simply this. I am going to make you relevant. I am going to make you effective.
Do not worry about it, expect yokes to be broken, expect doors to open, expect somebody to be loosed, because this is a Sunday that you are going to step into supernatural purpose.
There is going to be such a shift in your life. It is going to be a Samuel shift.
When we first saw him, he did not even know the Lord he was serving. And in a shift he goes from confusion to power, from being in a fog to relevant.
I got a feeling. I got a feeling. I got a feeling, everything is going to be all right.