TD Jakes - Prayer Partners - Part 3
I want three brothers to come out here right quick and help me make this illustration. I'm gonna try not to get lost, and I already picked you out, so move, move, move, move, move. Thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus, thank you Jesus. There you go, there you go, hallelujah. Come on out here, form a straight line like you're soldiers in the military, side by side, straight line, side by side, ok? So, you first in the line, yeah, you take that one, you take that one, and you take that one, and this is nothing. So, everything that God created, he spoke and it became what he said. "Let there be light," "Let," "The firmament," let, "The greater lights," "And the lesser light," God spoke it and it became what he said.
But when God got ready to make man, he spoke to himself. Come on, come on, come on. He spoke to himself, so, I don't wanna get lost in that, God took counsel in himself. That means that all God needed was all God had, that God didn't need anything out of God to create us, God counseled with himself the full counsel of God. Ephesians 2, the counsel of God, he begot us out of his counsel, and God said, "Let us make man in our," own, "Likeness," in our own likeness, and, "In our," own, "Image," and after our own kind. And so, let me see here, let me see here. Come, you stand right in front of him, and you stand right behind him. And God said, "Let us make man in our own likeness, and in our own image, and after our own kind". And yet he created one man, the hour is created one, and he called his name Adamah.
Ok, he called his name Adam, but because he said, "Let us," Adam has three parts, so the us is hidden in the one. Are you hearing what I'm saying? So, he baana, created the body from pre-existing substance, clay, mud, Hebrew for made with pre-existing substance. And breathed into him the breath of zóé, Hebrew for life, and he became a living nephesh, a soul. So, the life of God, what he breathed into him was what he is, "God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth". And so, when he breathes zóé, man is a spirit, he is not a body, he is not a soul, he is a spirit, he has a soul.
So this is an attribute that he has, a soul, and he lives in a body. So this body is an apartment, a condo, a mansion, depend on how you work out in the gym, it may be an efficiency suite. But the body is what you live in, this is how you live in it, this is who lives in it. "I AM THAT I AM," I am a spirit, I have a soul. Soul, in the Greek, psuché, mind, emotions, feelings, memories. This is where my emotions flow or break or crush or shatter, and this is what holds, my pain or power or determination or fear or thoughts or perspective are housed here in my soul, or mind. Mind is different from brain, the brain is a part of my body, I need a brain to express my mind, but the brain is a part of my body.
My soul, David said, "No man cared for my soul". They didn't care how I felt, they didn't care what I went through, they didn't care about the damage, they didn't care about my feelings, but how I feel is not who I am, I am a spirit. Now, can I go deeper? Because I'm trying to go fast. If I had time and I was in Bible class, I would rip this. Woo... "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature". So, when I got saved, if I had a corn on my left toe, I still got it. When I got saved, if I had psychological-emotional issues, I'm saved, but I still have it. So if my body got saved, my hair wouldn't come out, I wouldn't have a cavity, I wouldn't have a problem, because when God saves something, he saves it completely.
So the salvation of my body is my blessed hope. For if a man have that which he hope for, why does he yet hope for it? So, my spirit is saved, my mind is being saved, "Be transformed by the renewing of your mind," renewing. Greek, metamorphoó, metamorphosis, and my mind goes through a metamorphosis. My mind, my emotions, my memories, my feelings, my perspectives, my wisdom, my attitude is going through a metamorphosis. What I thought when I was 20 is not what I think when I am 40, how I felt when I was 40 is not how I feel when I am 60, it is going through a metamorphosis. My spirit is able, it is complete, it is finished, it is done, I can be no more saved than I am right now. I am saved because I have believed on the only begotten Son of God, he that believeth on him shall be saved. Past tense, saved, done, over, finish, complete, sanctified, certified, glorified tense.
But when my spirit is saved and it tries to see the future, it has to see through my emotions, my soul, my memories, my perspectives, my fears, my insecurities, my intimidations, my flaws, my victory, my pride, my arrogance, my insufficiencies. So, whatever my spirit sees, it has to see through my soul, and my soul has to see through my un-regenerated body. So now, "The whole creation groaneth," "In pain," "Until now". "Waiting for the adoption, to wit," which is, "The redemption of," my "body". So, wait a minute, turn back to sideways again. My spirit is saved, my soulish mental capacity is being saved, my body shall be saved. "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption," the body. "For we know," "If this earthly house," or, "Tabernacle," shall be, "Dissolved, we have," another, "Building," "Eternal in the heavens". Are you hearing what I'm saying?
If nothing went wrong in my life, there would still be a war in my members, because this holy thing has to live with this sick thing and has to stay in an apartment with this dirty thing. I don't care how saved you are, I don't care how long your dress is, I don't care if you don't wear makeup or earrings, I don't care if you speak in tongues, I don't care if you whoop and holler, the groaning inside of us is coming from the fact that oil and vinegar do not mix. I don't care how you shake it up, when you get through shaking it's gonna separate. Because how, "Can two walk together," save, "They agree"?
So I find a war in my members, "That, when I would do good, evil is present with me". "That," which, "I would," do, "I do not," that, "Which I would not do, that I do". "Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death"? In other words, my soul is saying, "You two guys are driving me crazy. You are telling me to live holy, you are telling me to go to the strip club, you are telling me I'm a conqueror, you are telling me I'm a fool". And I keep going backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, and after a while, I "groan," "Desiring to be clothed," "With," that, "Which," cometh from above.
This kaleidoscope of humanity, this multilayered, multicultural, multicolored man, hue, where we get colors, hue man is not simple, he's complicated. How many of you know you're complicated? So you meet my body, but you go home with my soul, and all of a sudden this can trick you. So you thought you married this, didn't you? But now you're living with this, this, oh, I gotta stop, I gotta stop, I gotta stop, this controls the atmosphere of the entire apartment. If this is mixed up, everything in the house is going to be crazy. And now, even though I'm not inside of you, I'm groaning, because I'm waiting on the manifestation of this to change that so that I can have peace, which is alignment. If I have a good brain, don't confuse the brain with the mind, there is a difference between a neurologist and a psych, psuché, psychologist. The brain is neurologically a part of my body and it has varying capacities of intellectual influence.
But sometimes I get into a situation that I, "Know not what," to, "Pray for as we ought," and I can't pray out of my feelings, because you crazy too. I'm not saying I can't express my feelings, I'm saying I can't trust my feelings to be truth to me. Because if I start praying out of my feelings, I'll start praying carnal stuff like, "Kill her, Jesus," because I'm mad as all get-out at her and I'm sick of her, and I'll turn my prayer life to witchcraft, because I am praying with a part of myself that is being saved, not fully transformed. So if I wanna have a perfect prayer, I have to pray it out of my spirit. That doesn't mean that I can't pray with an understanding, because when I pray with an understanding, it helps to heal my mind. So I gotta be able to tell God how I feel about it without thinking that how I feel about it is how it is.
So Paul says, "I will pray with the spirit," step forward, "And I will pray with an understanding also". I need both prayers, because when the Holy Spirit prays with my spirit, it has searched my heart, my mind and my understanding, but he also knows what is the will of God, for he intercedes for me. Not contaminated with what's going on in this realm, he makes a perfect prayer, and he helps my weakness. He helps my weakness, because when I pray in the spirit, I pray according to the will of God. When I pray with an understanding, I can only pray with the truth I'm standing under, and the truth I'm standing over is how I see it, how I feel about it. So the Spirit helpeth my infirmities, because I know not what to pray for as I ought.
See, that's why I started last Sunday with "I Know Not," because we gotta get the humility back, that the beginning of intelligence is knowing not just what you know, but what you. Don't know. So Paul, who is an extremely intelligent individual, is writing to the Roman church, which is going to be the epicenter of Christianity going forward, for the New Testament. Because the apostles have forsaken Jerusalem, because Jerusalem has rejected Christianity, the new empire and epicenter from which Christianity will exude is coming from Rome. And hence we are in the book of Romans and Paul is trying to make us understand, "Don't start this thing trying to be smart, you know not".
But I have an option, step back, I have an option, you stand forward, I have an option to pray with an understanding or to pray with the spirit. I need to pray with an understanding because it vents my soul. "I'm hurt, ah, ah, ah, ah". "We ourselves," also, "Groan within ourselves," as an imitation of labor pains, but remember that the groaning is not the baby, but I need to pray with an understanding because I need to express the agony of my soul. So this ventilates how I feel, so, let me let it out, somebody say, "Let it out". I used to tell people, "Be strong, don't cry," in a funeral, "Be strong, don't cry".
I found out that's wrong, because if it doesn't come out that way, it's gonna come out some other kind of way, it's gonna come out through dysfunction, it's gonna come out through sickness, it's gonna come out through alcoholism. Some kind of way, this guy needs to be able to vent himself, but just because he needs to vent himself doesn't mean that you can trust him to run himself. So, "I will pray with an understanding," for that ventilates my soul, but, "I will pray with the spirit," also, because the spirit is informed by the will of God. Do you hear what I'm saying to you, are you hearing what I'm saying?
And so this guy and this guy are partners in lifting up this guy until he begins to get better. This is the substratum of the text, these are the prayer partners, and the problem with us is that we are trying to go through life without our partner. So we are running our mouthes, telling everybody what we, come here, think, without what we know taking precedence, get in front of him, of what we feel. I know that God is for me, I know that God has loved me, I know that God has determined the end from the beginning, I know that God is my helper, I know that God is my defense, I know that God is my waymaker but I don't always, switch places, feel like he is. So, while I need to express how I feel, I cannot make decisions, come around, I cannot make decisions by how I feel because I'm not always gonna feel that way. So I am telling you that this can get better if these two come together.