TD Jakes - Provoked To Purpose (04/12/2023)
Complacency can hold you back until it compromises God's purpose for your life, forcing Him to send provocations like Peninnah to stir Hannah from barrenness into birthing a prophet. God hides great purpose behind great problems, so when you're provoked to stand up and fight through the frustration, your barren season ends and a new birthing begins.
The Danger of Complacency
Some people live their whole lives complacent, and you might get by with it until God's purpose is compromised by your complacency. You can live your whole life being complacent, and you might be married to an enabler who makes it legal for you to be complacent because they give you a double portion because they love you, but that love is also enabling you not to be your best self.
I have learned sometimes when somebody is crying, let them cry. Do not fix everything for everybody. Do not create a false reality that makes them feel good about something they need to feel bad about. They need to feel bad about it, because when you start getting in the way of what God has a purpose for your life, then God has to send something to provoke you.
Somebody, holler “provoked me.” Do not let me spend my whole life living beneath my purpose, living beneath my potential, living beneath what I could be, living beneath where I ought to be going. I know I am preaching to you because deep down inside there is a voice down inside of you that suspects that there is more that God has for you than what you are experiencing right now, or you would not even be listening to me.
It is that haunting, nagging suspicion that there is something else. You do not even know what it is. You do not even know how to get it, but there is a nagging suspicion that you were put here on this planet to do more than what you are doing right now, and I came to irritate you. I came to get on your nerves. I came to stir you up. I came to holler in your ear. I came to get you frustrated.
Go ahead and cry. You need to cry. It is going to take some tears to break the yoke of complacency that has been hanging over your life. I do not know who I am talking to, but if you hear this word and you know it is for you, give God five seconds of crazy praise. Because I think there is something else inside of you. I think there is more inside of you.
I think God created you for a purpose. I do not think you are a mistake. I do not think you are an accident. I do not care what the circumstances of your birth were. I think you have been designed and created by God and that you are to be an asset to the world. You ought to change the world in some way. You ought to make a difference in the world, even if it is a little difference. You are supposed to make some kind of difference in the world.
Five Warning Signs of Complacency
Though an article on forbeswomen.com was written to career women, it is really genderless truth. It applies to ministry, marriage, any aspirational accomplishment that you might have in your life. They gave five warning signs of complacency, and I want to share them with you.
Number one, you are complacent when you are no longer striving to do your best in every area. Now, if that stretches you too much, drop some areas. I would rather have fewer areas and do more than more areas and do less. In the country, we used to say it like this: you can be a mile wide and an inch deep.
So you spread yourself so thin that you are ineffective at everything. If you know you can only handle three things, only take on three things, because you are complacent when you are no longer striving to do your best, to bring your best mind, your best self, to really be present where you are.
Visionaries have a challenge with this because visionaries always have a tendency to live in where they are going at the expense of where you are, so when you get to where you are going, you have lost where you are. Visionaries, I am not talking to evil people. I am talking to good people.
Visionaries, you are so consumed with your goal and your vision and your future, and what is next, that you are negating, starving, under-utilizing, unavailable for your now. You cannot neglect now and earn next.
Operating on an Old Playbook
Number two, you are operating off an old playbook. You must remain a lifelong learner. What was best twenty years ago is not best now. When I learned to type, we had a typewriter. We did not have a laptop. We had a typewriter. It was a manual typewriter. It made noise. You had to depress every key.
If you could type ninety words a minute on an old typewriter, you ought to be doing one hundred fifty on a laptop because those things, you almost had to crank them and spin it. Some of you are living in a laptop world, but you have got a manual typewriter effort.
You need to understand giving somebody what they used to need does not work. You have a tendency to not really grow. Not doing anything to grow. It was good twenty years ago. It was enough twenty years ago. Complacency assumes that what was enough is enough.
How do I fix that? Ask, seek, knock, read, get magazines, keep enhancing yourself, developing yourself. You cannot be a doctor and not take any more classes once you get your degree. You have to keep enhancing yourself, which means you have to be comfortably uncomfortable.
You have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, to be living on the edge where you have to keep assuming that I need to know more, I need to grow, I need to go further.
Missing New Opportunities
Let me hit number three. You are not seeking to take advantage of new opportunities. I like to call this remaining in a state of growth and challenge. Just as much as you need rest and no one has to tell you to lay down, you need new challenges to keep you engaged.
I should not have to tell you you are tired. You need to go to bed. Nobody has to tell you to go to bed. I should not have to tell you to get up in the morning. I should not have to tell you that you need to keep reading, keep growing, keep learning, keep studying, keep praying, keep worshiping, keep talking to God.
You cannot wait till Sunday morning to have a worship. You know why it is so hard to lead people into worship? They wait for Sunday morning to worship God. There are people in this room that have not worshiped God all week, and there you are supposed to in fifteen or twenty minutes compensate for a life that has not worshiped God all week long.
Just like you have sensitivities inside of you that let you know when you are tired or let you know when you are hungry, you need to sharpen your sensitivity to let you know when you need to learn, grow, enhance, accessorize, develop, come to the next level.
Relationships and Risk-Taking
Number four, you are not maintaining or building your contacts and relationships that are the currency of growth. You have no more growth than you have relationships. If you like to keep this like it is, then do not grow, and be complacent, and take the risk of missing your destiny.
You need to keep it fresh. You need to be on the cutting edge. You need to walk up on stages to challenge you. They make you nervous. Walk into rooms where you do not know exactly what to say. You need to walk into spaces where you have to pray and say, “O God, I am going in here now, okay. I am getting ready to make this presentation. If you do not go with me, Lord, I am not going to be able to get this done.”
Relationships are indicators of the currency of growth. All you have is the same old friends you had when you were drinking at the strip club, and those are the only people who you can befriend. It means you have not changed. You have not grown. You have not developed.
Your new friends ought to make your old friends uncomfortable. If nobody said to you recently, “You think you so much,” you are not growing. That is a real compliment. When people walk up to you out of your old life and say, “You think you so much,” they are really complimenting you. They are saying that you are growing.
You know you are not complacent when you walk in the rooms and they are talking about what you used to think was funny, and now you think it is silly. You used to think they were fun and now they are boring. That is a sign you are growing to the next level.
Not Sharing Your Ideas
Give me number five. You do not risk sharing your opinion or ideas. These people drive me crazy. Whatever you say, they agree with it. They never add anything to the conversation. They will not risk being wrong, so they just parrot your ideas.
You do not risk sharing your opinion or your ideas as a sign that you are complacent. Fear has got you locked in. Have an opinion. Even if they do not do it, have an opinion. Open your mouth and speak it.
Without taking the risk of offering your contribution, whether it is used or not, you will never be able to evaluate whether you are growing or not because you are playing it safe. You are hiding. Your silence is a cover-up because you are afraid to take risks.
You cannot be a leader and not take risks. You cannot be a leader and not get on people’s nerves. Everybody is not supposed to like you if you are going to be a frontliner. Stop crying about people hating on you. They are supposed to hate on you. That is part of the job requirement.
The Ministry of Peninnah
Hannah is trying to settle into something that is beneath her. She has everything a woman could want. She has a well-to-do husband who loves her. She has an environment that allows her to do pretty much whatever she pleases. Everything would be fine if it was not for Peninnah.
Peninnah comes into her life as a ministry. Write this down: the ministry of Peninnah. I want you to identify Peninnahs in your life. There are people that God sends into your life solely to get on your nerves. They are there to save you from mediocrity. They are there to provoke you to jealousy.
Either you are going to be a hater or you are going to be stimulated, but God says Peninnah and all of her kids as a sign to you that what they said about you is not true. There is more possible for you in your life. Thank you for Peninnah.
Hannah did not realize that her purpose was hidden behind her problem. Her problem was that she was barren. Her purpose was hidden behind her problem. Whenever God has a great purpose in your life, He will put a great problem in front of it.
Find your giant. When you find your giant, you will find your kingdom. There would not have been a Goliath in David’s life if it was not for Goliath being the gateway to the next dimension. Whenever God is getting ready to take you into a new zone, there will always be a big problem standing in its way.
The big problem is a sign that as soon as you get over this, you are going to step into a brand-new dimension. Stop shrinking back from Goliath. Stop shrinking back from Peninnah. It is a sign that God has something else for you.
Time to Stand Up and Fight
So, cry if you want to. Fuss if you want to, but when you get through crying and fussing, now it is time to fight. The thing that annoys you, the thing that irritates you, the thing that scares you, the thing that frustrates you, it is the very sign that God has something on the other side of it for you.
Why did God choose a barren woman to birth a prophet? Why did God use a boy to kill Goliath? Why did God send a backslider to preach to Nineveh? God never does what is easy. He does what is divine.
Whenever it is hard, it is God. Whenever it is difficult, it is God. Whenever it frustrates you, it is God. Peninnah was there to provoke Hannah. For the first time in all of those years, Hannah stood up.
Somebody, shout “Hannah stood up.” I came to tell everybody in this room, this is the hour. This is the time. This is the moment for you to stand up and say, “I am through crying. I am through being depressed. I am through being frustrated.”
This is your hour. This is your moment. Your barren days are behind you. Your birthing days are before you. God is about to do a new thing in your life because you are provoked. Slap somebody and tell them “I am provoked.”
I am running out of time. I am running out of energy. I am running out of strength. If it is ever going to happen in my life, it is going to have to happen right now.