TD Jakes - Throw Your Anchor Forward
This text before us today is not just here to exercise our energies in the historicity of a theological exploitation of a private conversation between Abraham and God. No, this conversation is before us today to show you how far God will go to calm your troubled mind. "Surely blessings I will bless thee". You didn't hear it. You know what? The hardest thing in the world is to preach the Word to the people of God, because we have heard the Word so much that we don't believe it. Because if we really believed the Word of God, and I said, "Surely blessings I will bless thee," everything in here would start shouting and running. But because we don't really believe that God is talking to us, we say, "Yeah, amen, that's nice".
But if your soul believed that God had given you a promise, irrevocable and immutable, that no matter what the hell you went through, when it was all over it was going to be alright, you could not stop yourself from running. The very fact that you can be indifferent is simply a sign that you don't believe it. So, to convince you, he says, "Surely". Look at God trying to talk you into what he's already done. Surely-surely-surely, "Surely blessings I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply thee".
You know what? If you believe that, you ought to praise him like you just hit the lottery, you ought to praise him like he just paid off your mortgage, you ought to praise him like your tumor just shrunk, you ought to just praise him like you just got out of a wheelchair, you ought to praise him like he just opened up a door, you ought to praise him like he just made a way, surely-surely. Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, practice your victory praise, practice your deliverance praise, practice your coming out praise, practice your praise of prophetic joy. Praise him like it's already done, praise him like you're a believer. For the next 30 seconds, let everything that hath breath, ha, give God some kind of praise.
So here we are, praising the Lord, the old folks used to say, "There I go again, praising the Lord. Here I go again, praising the name of the Lord". I praise him in the morning, I praise him at noonday, I praise him when the sun goes down. Praise him, praise him, praise him in the morning, praise him in the noonday. Praise him, praise him, praise him when the sun goes down. That kind of praise is the kind of praise that you have to be a believer to make; you can't praise him like that if you don't believe him like that, you have to believe him like that to praise him like that. Any time I can talk about promises and it can fly over your head, it only means you don't believe it. Because if I handed you a check, you'd burst into tears, because you believe the temporal, you believe the touchable, you believe the physical more than you believe the spiritual.
But if you believe the spiritual, I just handed you a check, "Surely-surely blessings I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee". Let's rehearse this, "I will multiply thee," say it again, "I will multiply thee," say it again, "I will multiply thee". Give him a praise like you believe it. See, what you must understand is that God is talking to Abraham about the future, not the past, and he is using the future to give us something that we all need, stability in our soul. I'm tired of shaking, I'm tired of rocking, I'm tired of being moody, I'm tired of flipping out on people, I'm tired of going off, I'm tired of up and down and back and forth, I'm tired. Anybody know what it's like to be tired? Tell you I'm tired; I'm tired, waking up in the middle of the night; I'm tired, trying to figure out my bills; I'm tired, trying to encourage myself.
God says, "Surely blessings I will bless thee," "Blessings I will bless thee," "Blessings I will bless thee," "Multiplying I will multiply thee," "Multiplying I will multiply thee". That's all he's saying to him, I will bless you and multiply you, I'm gonna bless you and then I'm gonna multiply it; I'm gonna bless you, then I'm a multiply it; I'm gonna bless you, then I'm gonna multiply it; I'm gonna bless you, then I'm going to multiply it; I'm going to bless you and then I'm going to multiply it. You don't hear what I'm saying. I'm not going to add, because that's too slow, I'm going to multiply. Multiplication is addition on speed dial. God said it's going to come on you speedily, it's going to come on you suddenly, it's going to come on you right now, it's going to come on you right away, surely.
"Surely... I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee," and then he says, "I'm telling you this and I'm doing this, and I'm willing to go on a contract, and I'm willing to sign a contract, and I'm willing to put up something on the deed for trust, so that you can know that I got this. And I looked for something to put up for collateral, but I couldn't find anything to put up for collateral that was better than myself. So I swear by myself that I'm so committed to bless you, if I don't bless you, I put myself on the line". That's what the cross was, the cross was God putting himself on the line, saying, "If I don't bless you, he won't get out of the grave; but if you see him get up, it's a sure sign that, 'Surely blessings I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.'"
I want every blessed person to make a noise, I want every blessed person to give a praise, I want every blessed person to send a note, I want every blessed person to say a word. I want every blessed believer, holler at your boy, ha, do something back, ha, let me hear you say something. If you know, ha, surely, I believe it, I believe it, I believe it. I cannot change my past, I can't change what I've been through, I can't change who hurt me, I can't change who disappointed me. I may not be able to change my past, so I cannot put any hope in my past, because the past is a graveyard of my yesterdays.
So I'm forgetting those things which are behind me and I'm reaching to those things that are before me, and I made up my mind, come hell or high water, I'm going to press toward the mark. I may be tired, but I'm going to keep on pressing, because every thing God has for me has got to be in front of me; because I already checked out the past, and if it's not behind me, it's got to be in front of me. I want somebody in this room that can praise him on credit, praise him for what he's about to do, praise him for what he's about to release in your life, clap your hands like you lost your mind.
And then God says that the hope I place on you is an anchor for your mind, it's an anchor for your emotions, it's an anchor for how you feel about things, it's an anchor against the enemy, it's an anchor against the pandemic, it's an anchor against your job being in upheaval, it's an anchor. And I said, "Wait a minute, Lord, if hope is an anchor for the soul, then I gotta realize that faith is the substance of the thing I hope for, and it's the evidence of the thing I can't see". And so that means I cannot throw my anchor into my past, because if I throw my anchor into my past, it's going to drag me down. I can't throw my anchor into where I am right now, because if I throw it into where I am right now, I'll never go forward.
So I'm telling you, in order to be ready, you gotta throw your anchor, throw it forward, throw it forward, throw it into next year, throw it in the next month, throw it forward, ha. Throw your anchor, ha, throw your anchor, throw it forward, because in the future, everything is yea; in the future, everything is amen; in the future, every wheelchair is empty; in the future, crutches are laying down on the ground; in the future, lame people are walking the streets; in the future, blind people can see; in the future, everything lame is made whole. So God says, throw your anchor forward.
As I come to a close today, I learned a long time ago that when your life is the rockiest and your mind is in the most upheaval, and hell hounds are barking, and demons are after your soul; when you don't see anything around you that looks good and everything behind you looks bad, everything around you looks uncertain, if you can throw your anchor forward, if you cannot give away your hope, if you cannot cast away your confidence, if you can hold on to the conviction that your best days are in front of you, you have not seen your best. Oh, I feel like preaching. You have not seen your best days yet: You haven't had your best dance, you haven't had your best shout, you haven't preached your best message, you haven't been on your best vacation, you haven't lived in your best house, you haven't had your best joy.
Throw-throw that anchor away from where you are, throw that anchor away from what you're going through, throw that anchor away from your situation, throw that anchor away from your problem, throw your anchor forward, because everything that God has for you is in your future. And so he says, "This hope that we have is an anchor for the soul". I never will forget, there was a time in my life I went through a period where I felt like dying, and I was so distraught and so depressed and so discouraged, I thought my life wasn't worth living at all.
My spiritual father came to me and he said one thing to me. It sounds simple, it don't mean much to you. He says, "Your best days are in front of you, son". He said, "You can't see them yet, oh, but they're up ahead". And I said, "Really"? I said, "You really think so? You think I'll laugh again? Do you really think I'll dance again? Do you really mean there are new friends and new doors and new hope ahead"? And I held the phone and I tried to imagine better. It was hard to see it because I had trained myself to look at what it is, and the more I looked at what it is, the more it killed my hope.
When everything around you looks bleak, it will kill your hope. And then I tried to throw my anchor backwards and I looked at my past, and there were so many rocks and so many edges and so many broken places and so many mistakes that all I could find was pain and guilt and agony and regret. And if I threw my anchor backwards, I would die. If I threw my anchor into where I was right then, it had nothing to grip, because I had nothing but uncertainty, all I had was hope. But Job said, "There is hope for a tree," that, "If it be cut down," at the smell of water, "It will sprout again".
And I am telling you, the devil may have taken your children, that's terrible; may have wrecked your marriage, that's hard to deal with; may have taken your house, that's a painful blow; may have taken your mama, left you crying in the graveyard, I know what that feels like; but whatever he takes, don't you ever let him get your hope, because God says that hope is the anchor of the soul. Hope has kept people alive on ventilators, hope has fought cancer that was eating up the body; and all the doctors said, "Your mama will be dead in five days," but hope kept her alive 10 more years.
Hope has breathed into the lungs of people that couldn't breathe on their own, until they started breathing again. Hope has resurrected the child that was least likely to end up going back to school and doing the almighty. Hope, by itself, is the anchor. You want to anchor your family? Stop fussing about what they did, stop bringing up the mistakes they made, there is no hope in the past. You want to save your marriage? Stop bringing up old mistakes, how you gonna go forward, looking back? The only way you're gonna get through this is to throw your anchor forward, for where you are right now, and the times you're in right now, and what the enemy seeks to do in your life, the only way to circumvent his strategy.
If you throw it backwards, the boat's gonna sink. I guarantee you, you keep throwing that anchor back there, you gonna sink you and them kids, all of them going down. If you throw your anchor into what is, you'll blind your eyes over what will be, and the blessing is in the will. "I will," "I will bless thee," "I will multiply thee". "Surely," "I will," "Surely," "I will," "Surely," "I will". Until you believe that, your soul don't have an anchor, so you got to get drunk. Your soul don't have an anchor, so you got to stay high. Your soul don't have an anchor, so you're pulling after everybody who gets around you. But if you ever get a hope, if you ever get a strategy for the future and a plan, and a vision of what God will do, what God will do in your life, God says it's an anchor, steadfast for the soul.
So God entered into a covenant with Abraham, something he didn't even have to do. And God said, I just did it so that you would have an anchor for your soul. I didn't go into covenant to bless you, I went into covenant to rest you, so that you would rest in the blessing. The covenant is not the blessing, it is the security about the blessing. And I did it because I'm tired of seeing you up at night, and I did it because I'm tired of you worrying and crying, and acting like you don't have no God. And I'm telling you, this Sunday morning, that what the Holy Spirit wants for you is to throw your anchor forward. Throw it way out there, throw it way out there, throw it way out there, and hold on, throw it out and hold on, throw it out and hold-hold-hold.