TD Jakes - I Have Permission
Reaction creates response. So the men are coming home from battle unexpectedly, and they're expecting the little boy to run out to meet them. And maybe the women will dance and sing, and maybe they'll 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's the music? Strike up the band. We're 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, it was not the smoke that smells like food. It was the smoke of devastation. It didn't even look like home.
What happened to the village? That's what I think sometimes about America. What happened to my country? It's 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. And 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.
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's stone him. Now, look at the setup. David as a leader cannot go to Saul 'cause Saul wants to kill him. He can't go to the Philistines 'cause the Philistines just rejected him. He can't turn to Abigail 'cause she's gone, and I can't find Ahinoam, and he turns to the men that he has put so much into, and they're looking at him and their eyes are red and tears are running down their face, and then he sees hatred in their face, and there's nothing like seeing hatred in the face of the people you raised.
I know you can't act like you know what I'm talking about, but somebody in here knows what I'm talking about to pour a lot into a person who goes into attack mode. You gonna stone me? You gonna 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 don't even have words to articulate the magnitude of the trauma you're 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'm not talking about being lonely, that's a feeling. I'm talking about alone, that's a fact. Lonely you can get over if you have to. Alone is alone, and you can't 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're backed up against the wall and you can't 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's over. I can't go to Israel. Saul has shut the door. His godless behavior and his loss of anointing has made him mad. And I can't go to Achish because Achish has listened at his princes and rejected me from being amongst the Philistines. And the worst part about it is I can't go home.
What do you do when you can't go home? You ought to always be able to go home. David can't go home. My God, I need Marcus. David can't go home. My mama told me you can go home when you can't go nowhere else. And he is paralyzed by pain. And it was at this point that he made the most profound decision. If Abigail doesn't encourage me, if Ahinoam doesn't encourage me, if the Philistines don't encourage me, if the Israelites don't encourage me, and I don't have nobody to count on but me, then before I lay down and die in this spot, that I will encourage myself. I will encourage myself. I wonder if there's anybody on the line or in the room or in the church or in a family or in a marriage or in a business or in a situation where you couldn't get what you needed, where you thought you'd be able to find it and you had to encourage yourself because if you didn't encourage yourself, you were going to die. If you didn't encourage yourself, you were going to backslide. If you didn't encourage yourself, you were going to quit. If you didn't encourage yourself, you were going to faint.
I'm wondering, am I talking to anybody that's had to go look yourself in the mirror with tears in your eyes and say You're still gonna make it. I don't know when, I don't know where, I don't know how, I know you're gonna make it. I know you're gonna make it. I know you're gonna make it. I know you're gonna make it. You're hurting, but you're gonna make it. You're lonely, but you're gonna make it. You're broke, but you're gonna make it. You're disturbed, but you're gonna make it. If you know what I'm talking about, take 30 seconds and praise God like you lost your mind. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The courage you need to survive must come from within you. When it doesn't 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. If I weren't afflicted, I'd never see the glory of God. There has to be something that rises up and say cancer, you ain't gonna whip me. COVID, you ain't gonna whip me. There has to be something in you that makes you fight back. Fist bump somebody and tell 'em I'm encouraged. The devil thought he was gonna kill me with all this smoke. He thought he was gonna destroy me with all of this fire. He thought he was gonna take me out. I lost my job, but I didn't lose my courage. I lost my house, but I didn't lose my courage. I lost my friend, but I didn't lose my courage.
You see, what you need, what you need to stop the paralysis of pain is the tenacity to believe it will not stop right here. You're watching online, there's a reason God's got you online right now, so that you could get this word. You desperately need this word. You've been in a state of disappointment. Some of you have been in a disappointment for years. You have gone over and over how much right you have to get support from people that are no longer there and no longer with you. You cannot spend another day complaining about the past. You have to come into the present if you're 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 don't encourage me, I'll encourage myself. I'll hug myself in the bed. I'll lay in the bed and wrap my arms around myself and tell myself I love you. I will encourage myself. I'll take myself out to dinner. I'll buy myself a Valentine's gift. I'll lift up my own head. I'll put on songs that make me feel happy. I will encourage myself. And if anybody ever does come, welcome to the party, but the party's already started. Set it off in here, set it off in here, set it off in here, set it off in here until demons turn you loose, until hell breaks loose, until trouble breaks loose. Set it off in here.
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 to the moment that you say I'm better than this. Some of you heard me tell you about the time I walked in my house and my lights was off and my water was off and they repossessed my car, and I walked in the house and nobody was in the house but me, and I started talking to the house, Anita, I told the house, I told the house, and now you want to treat me, don't you? But I told the house, I talked to the house like it was a person, and I said you're a liar. The paint was coming off the walls. The gas didn't work. The water was off. The phone was off. I said you're lying on me. I do not accept this. I'm better than this.
I told my sister I'm getting up. When you make up your mind to get up, no devil in hell can hold you down. I don't care if it's racism, sexism, governmentism, I don't care what's going on, and when you make up in your mind, I'm going to get up. I don't know. I feel like I'm talking to somebody in this room, encourage yourself, encourage yourself, encourage yourself. Stop blaming everybody who didn't and encourage... you ain't got time to be bitter. You gotta make it to better. You gotta get to better if you got to crawl on your belly. I got to encourage myself.
Notice that it was only when he encouraged himself that he got high enough to hear from God. Oh. Oh. 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. And once he got through encouraging himself, you got to do this. I found out it's too much weight to put on your mate to expect the person you married to lift you. You're too heavy. God, I feel like I'm talking to somebody. God wouldn't have me preaching like this if something wasn't about to happen in your life, something that you lost is about to come back. Something that got out from under your foot, you're about to get it back again. And this is your boot camp that's giving you step by step by step by step by step how to get back what the devil stole from you.
If I'm talking to you, give God 30 seconds of crazy, Holy Ghost praise. You got ten seconds. You got five seconds. You got three seconds. You got one second. If the kids don't bring you no roses, get yourself some roses. If they don't send you no card, get yourself a card. Encourage yourself. You can't spend another year talking about what did I do wrong? Why don't they love me? Why don't they respect me? You are losing life. You can't spend another year trying to... you can't make nobody love you. You can't make nobody respect you. You got to encourage yourself. I release you.
When he got through encouraging himself, Pastor Michael, then he asked God, what say ye? Go get Thummim and Urim and let's see what the Lord is saying. Shall I go up? Should I overtake them? I'm not going up if I'm not gonna win. Hey! Oh, I feel the Holy Ghost. I didn't come this far to lose. I'm too old to lose. I can't take another loss. Should I overtake them? And the Lord said pursue. Somebody shall pursue. Type it on the line. Pursue. In the middle of COVID, pursue. In the middle of crisis, pursue. Up under attack, pursue. Going through a divorce, pursue. For thou shall surely overtake them.
God said thou shall surely, not maybe, surely overtake them, and without fail recover all. I don't know why you ain't dancing. I don't know why you ain't crazy. I don't know why you're not rejoicing. I don't know why your belly ain't leaping up and down because when God said it, now I got permission. Hey! 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... oh God, I feel like preachin'. The Lord said I've given you permission. Who am I preaching to? You better help me praise him. I got permission.