TD Jakes - I Have Permission (04/07/2023)
When David returned to find Ziklag burned and his family taken captive, facing rejection from all sides and even threats from his own men, he chose to encourage himself in the Lord before inquiring of God. In our deepest pain and paralysis, we must encourage ourselves to rise high enough to hear God’s promise: pursue, surely overtake, and without fail recover all.
The Devastation at Ziklag
Reaction creates response. So the men are coming home from battle unexpectedly, and they are expecting the little boy to run out to meet them. And maybe the women will dance and sing, and maybe they will smell the smell of fresh bread or venison being cooked in the backyard in a pot. But the closer they got to Ziklag, they heard no sounds of music. They saw no children running.
In the past, the women had sung, “Saul has killed his thousands, but David has killed his tens of thousands.” Where is the music? Strike up the band. We are back. But there was no sound of music when they came to Ziklag. And they smelled smoke. They smelled smoke in the air. But it was not the smoke that smells like food. It was the smoke of devastation. It did not even look like home.
What happened to the village? That is what I think sometimes about America. What happened to my country? It is on fire. The smoke is burning. The ashes are where the houses used to be. And it is in this atmosphere that David returns.
Now, you have to feel this. This is not just an ugly picture. Where is my wife? Where is Ahinoam? Has anybody seen Abigail? Abigail? Abigail? Abigail? There was no sign of Ahinoam or Abigail. And all the men are running through the debris looking for their children, lifting up burning embers, trying to find their sons and daughters.
They had stepped into pain, the kind of pain that paralyzes you, the kind of pain that shuts you down. The women and the children were taken captive, their homes were destroyed.
Betrayal from His Own Men
Now the men he trained, the men that he had trained himself and invested in and poured into and brought from nothing to something were so filled with pain and anger that they thought, let us stone him. Now, look at the setup. David as a leader cannot go to Saul because Saul wants to kill him. He cannot go to the Philistines because the Philistines just rejected him.
He cannot turn to Abigail because she is gone, and I cannot find Ahinoam. And he turns to the men that he has put so much into, and they are looking at him and their eyes are red and tears are running down their face, and then he sees hatred in their face. There is nothing like seeing hatred in the face of the people you raised.
Somebody in here knows what I am talking аbout: to pour a lot into a person who goes into attack mode. You are going to stone me? You are going to stone me at my weakest, most vulnerable moment? This is the paralysis of pain.
I want to speak to somebody right now who has been through the kind of pain that has created paralysis. It has shut down your senses. It has limited your ability to respond or retaliate. It has brought you down to your knees. It has so upset you on the inside that you do not even have words to articulate the magnitude of the trauma you are experiencing.
And all you do is sigh or cry or groan within yourself because it looks like everywhere you turn, there is pain and rejection and suffering. And you might be a leader, but you are alone. I am not talking about being lonely, that is a feeling. I am talking about alone, that is a fact.
When You Cannot Go Home
Lonely you can get over if you have to. Alone is alone, and you cannot turn in either direction and find nobody, nothing, no one, not an encouraging word. Everybody in your life needs you, but nobody in your life feeds you. What do you do when people only want you when you have the answer? They only want you when you fix stuff.
And then when you are backed up against the wall and you cannot fix it, they forsake you and you are there alone. It was against the backdrop of this kind of atrocity that David has to grapple with maybe it is over. I cannot go to Israel. Saul has shut the door. His godless behavior and his loss of anointing has made him mad.
And I cannot go to Achish because Achish has listened to his princes and rejected me from being amongst the Philistines. And the worst part about it is I cannot go home. What do you do when you cannot go home? You ought to always be able to go home.
David cannot go home. David cannot go home. My mama told me you can go home when you cannot go nowhere else. And he is paralyzed by pain.
Encouraging Yourself in the Lord
And it was at this point that he made the most profound decision. If Abigail does not encourage me, if Ahinoam does not encourage me, if the Philistines do not encourage me, if the Israelites do not encourage me, and I do not have nobody to count on but me, then before I lay down and die in this spot, I will encourage myself.
I will encourage myself. I wonder if there is anybody in the room or in a family or in a marriage or in a business or in a situation where you could not get what you needed where you thought you would be able to find it and you had to encourage yourself because if you did not encourage yourself, you were going to die.
If you did not encourage yourself, you were going to backslide. If you did not encourage yourself, you were going to quit. If you did not encourage yourself, you were going to faint.
I am wondering, am I talking to anybody that has had to go look yourself in the mirror with tears in your eyes and say, “You are still going to make it. I do not know when, I do not know where, I do not know how. I know you are going to make it. You are hurting, but you are going to make it. You are lonely, but you are going to make it. You are broke, but you are going to make it.”
If you know what I am talking about, take thirty seconds and praise God like you lost your mind. The courage you need to survive must come from within you. When it does not come from around you, it must come from within you.
Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water. Out of your soul, out of your spirit there has to come something that says though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him. There has to come a fight back that says it was good for me that I have been afflicted.
Rising Up Against the Pain
There has to be something that rises up and says cancer, you are not going to whip me. COVID, you are not going to whip me. There has to be something in you that makes you fight back. Fist bump somebody and tell them I am encouraged.
The devil thought he was going to kill me with all this smoke. He thought he was going to destroy me with all of this fire. He thought he was going to take me out. I lost my job, but I did not lose my courage. I lost my house, but I did not lose my courage. I lost my friend, but I did not lose my courage.
What you need to stop the paralysis of pain is the tenacity to believe it will not stop right here. There is a reason God has got you here right now, so that you could get this word. You have been in a state of disappointment. Some of you have been in disappointment for years.
You cannot spend another day complaining about the past. You have to come into the present if you are going to change the future, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching to those things which are before.
You have to make up in your mind if you do not encourage me, I will encourage myself. I will hug myself in the bed. I will lay in the bed and wrap my arms around myself and tell myself I love you. I will take myself out to dinner. I will buy myself a Valentine’s gift. I will lift up my own head.
Your Turning Point
The Lord said this is to be your turning point. This is to be your resurrection moment. This is to be the moment that you come to yourself. This is the moment that you say I am better than this.
When you make up your mind to get up, no devil in hell can hold you down. I do not care if it is racism, sexism, I do not care what is going on, and when you make up in your mind, I am going to get up.
Encourage yourself, encourage yourself, encourage yourself. Stop blaming everybody who did not and encourage yourself. You have not got time to be bitter. You have got to make it to better.
Notice that it was only when he encouraged himself that he got high enough to hear from God. You can get so low that you cannot hear from God. He does not seek Thummim and Urim before he encourages himself because he has to encourage himself to get high enough to receive a good word.
Pursue and Recover All
And once he got through encouraging himself, then he asked God, what say ye? Shall I go up? Should I overtake them? I am not going up if I am not going to win. I did not come this far to lose.
And the Lord said pursue. In the middle of COVID, pursue. In the middle of crisis, pursue. Up under attack, pursue. Going through a divorce, pursue. For thou shalt surely overtake them.
God said thou shalt surely, not maybe, surely overtake them, and without fail recover all. When God said it, now I have permission. Up until then, all I had was encouragement. You can get encouragement from a motivational speaker, but you can only get permission from God.
And the Lord said I have given you permission.