TD Jakes - Destiny From The Perspective Of Focus
This sermon stresses that destiny isn't about rushing to greatness or promotion, but about staying focused on mastering whatever God has put in front of you right now. Using Jeremiah 12:5 as the key text, the preacher warns that if the "footmen" weary you, you're not ready for the "horses," and true progress comes from faithfulness in small things, patient rehearsal, and appreciating every stage of growth from acorn to oak.
Introduction: Destiny Requires Focus
Greetings, in the name of Jesus Christ our King. I am so glad to have the opportunity to share the Word of the Lord with you, and particularly this word, "Destiny From the Perspective of Focus." You cannot pursue real destiny until you focus. I am seeing so many people, they are doing this and they are doing that, they are doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and they end up with a whole lot of nothing. Do not be distracted. Master the task before you. You need to focus on the things you feel are central to your calling. What is in front of you right now? Give us this day our daily bread.
I am going into this Word. And I am praying it goes into your hearts. Because this destiny thing is important. It is not how long you live. It is how well you live. If you live a long time and never do anything with the time you live, what good is it? It is about destiny. Take a look at this. You will be blessed.
The Key Scripture: Jeremiah 12:5
I want to go to Jeremiah. Jeremiah says, and I love this Scripture, "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses?" Jeremiah 12:5. "If thou hast run with the footmen." You are running with other guys, and they wore you out, then why would you jump up and get yourself in a horse race? I want to break it down so you get it. If you are tired from running with short-legged humans, do not sign up in a horse race, because you do not have the strength to play on that level.
When you say to God, I am sick of this. I cannot handle this. You are saying, I cannot handle promotion. Because if the footmen wore you out, I do not care how much you admire horses, there is no need in you signing up to get into a horse race. Until you master the footmen race, you do not get into the horse race, and here is the problem. We have people who want promotion without process. O my God, I feel like running all over this church. They want promotion without process. Because the reason they want promotion is because they have no self-esteem, so they need crowd-esteem to feel good about themselves.
Promotion Without Process Is Backwards
And they think if they get promoted high enough, then people will like them, and then maybe they will like themselves. You have got it backwards. You have got to like yourself first. Are you following what I am saying? And then you are going to be excellent at what you do. And then you will find greatness when you have maximized smallness. If you are weary with smallness and you are tired all the time, and you cannot focus, what are you going to do with greatness. You are asking for more, and you have not mastered less.
The Bible said, "If you are faithful over a few things, then I will make you ruler over many." And you are trying to be ruler over many, and you have not been faithful over few. You are so busy reaching out to your future, that you are neglecting what you have been given right now. O God. O God. O God. I just felt somebody's toes up under my foot right now. You are so busy trying to progress that you are neglecting where you are. That is not how you progress.
Master Where You Are to Get Promoted
You master where you are, and then you get promoted to where you are going. You do not neglect where you are trying to reach out to where you are going. Because if you are sloppy yesterday you will be sloppy today and you are going to be sloppy forevermore. If you learn how to do great things in a small place, you are going to do great things in a larger place and you will be great over here. Why are you all not running all over the church right now, dancing, falling down, hitting your head?
The reason you are not getting the promotion is because you will not make the practice. You cannot play the Super Bowl if you do not make the practice. You cannot get the prize for winning the Olympics if you do not make the practice. If you do not see God's glory in rehearsal, you will not see God's glory in recital. Now, the recital is that wonderful, big, sexy, amazing thing where everybody claps when you perform. And rehearsal is that private, boring, painful thing where you struggle to get it together. And there is nobody there to clap at all.
Can You Perform Without Applause?
Can you play without clapping? This is a problem. To those of you that are building and believing and really have a purpose and really feel the pull of destiny, you need to be patient with the process, and not enthralled with the promise. You want the accruements of success, and that is what is killing you. You compromise the rehearsal time and bought the tuxedo for the recital. Now, you look like something that you are not. Somebody say, wrong focus.
Could it be possible that your life is stagnated because you have an attention deficit? You did not give the attention to it that it takes to win it. That does not mean that you are not called to it. It means that you are starving your destiny of the attention that it needs for you to progress. Jesus was fully committed. He picked people who were committed. Everybody Jesus called to ministry was working. He did not pick nobody who was laid off, needed a job.
Jesus Calls Those Already at Work
He interrupted people who were working at something and said, "If you follow me, I am going to take you to the next dimension." How many are ready to go to the next dimension? You see, the next dimension is not foreign from this dimension. It is an escalation of a process that was already in motion. Peter, you have been casting your nets out here and catching fish. You have been teaching other fishermen how to catch fish. I am getting ready to make you fishers of men.
The results will be different. The effort will be different. But the process is still the same. You are still going to be teaching other people. You are still going to be throwing out your net. You are still going to be bringing in the drought. But instead of catching fish, you are going to catch souls. Your future is in some way kin to your past. O you all are not going to talk to me today. Everything you are going to be, you already are in another form.
The Acorn and the Oak Tree Analogy
You are the acorn of an oak tree. Acorn does not look anything like an oak tree. It does not remotely look like it would ever have branches and leaves and be productive. An acorn is a nut. But everything that an oak tree is, is in the acorn even though it had not shaped out yet. So everything that the acorn will ever be is already in that nut. And everything that you will ever be is already in you right now.
And the best people to be around are people who see it in you, even though you do not look like a tree yet. I am looking for somebody who sees a tree in my nut. All of that was in me. All the time. While you were stepping over me and stepping around me and stepping past me, all that you see coming out of me now was in me when you said, I look like a nut. Somebody holler destiny. Destiny will bring the tree out of you. Destiny will bring the tree out of your nut. What is in your nut?
Do Not Step Over Your Own Process
Listen at this. It is not just that people step over you when you are in that acorn stage. Sometimes you step over you. Because you are so busy trying to compete with the trees that you have not gone through the process of the acorn. Give it some time. Give it some water. Give it some sun. Give it some focus, and you will reap a harvest and you will go through the process. Look at that. All of that is coming up out of the nut.
It is not what it is going to be. But it is not what it used to be. Until you can clap for the seedling, you will never see the tree. Until you can appreciate the process, you will never get to the purpose. Some of you have a life, you have a business, you have a company, you have a family, you have an identity that is in seedling form. You are not the nut you used to be, but you are not the tree you are going to be.
Water the Sapling, Do Not Starve It
But until you learn how to appreciate where you are in the process, you will not get the power to evolve to your ultimate destiny. You are so busy trying to starve the sapling trying to get to the tree that you cancel out the potential of being a tree because you do not feed where you are. You are in love with tomorrow. But you are neglecting today. And when God sees you neglecting today, he will not give you tomorrow.
Until you are faithful over the few, you cannot be ruler over the many. So you need to take your eye off the tree and water what you got now. O God. Water what you got right now. Because if you give attention to the responsibilities that you have been given, you will be promoted to the next level. So what started as an acorn went to a sapling went to an oak tree, and then once it reaches the oak tree, it has to figure out, how do I fit in the forest?
Fitting into the Forest
Now that I am standing up, how do I fit in the forest with other people who have gone through the same process and evolved. You cannot sit with somebody who has invested 30 years in and be respected as an equal when you got 3. So do not try to bombard the conversation, because even though they smile politely and nod, they think you are stupid, because your mouth is telling me that it is talking about something, it is professing something that it is not possessing.
There are some things only experience can teach you. And until you pay your dues, do not run with horses when you are tired from walking with men. Am I helping anybody? I want to go a little deeper. Now, I want to talk about what inspires us and what we are attracted to. We have this aspiration if it were music to be a concert pianist, to be masterful, to be amazing, to be a maestro, as it were, because we went to the recital and we heard this amazing person do a phenomenal job of playing music, and they mastered the keyboard with eloquence and depth and integrity and they were so awesome at it, we saw them and we were inspired and we wanted to be like them.
The Power of Mastery
Because there is nothing like a great instrument in the hand of a great artist. A great instrument in the hand of a great artist produces great music. It does matter who is playing it. It matters who is swinging the golf clubs. It matters who is running the corporation. And we are attracted to people who are masterful at what they do. At the center stage we have a piano, a baby grand piano glistening, shining and bright, but it cannot play itself. It is an opportunity.
If the right person does not touch it, it will never reach its potential. The piano has existed so long, that it will only give itself fully over to somebody who has invested enough time and effort in it and they know how to get the most out of the same keyboard. Eighty-eight keys on the keyboard, but it is the fingers that pluck it that control what it can produce. So you go out and you buy you a piano, and in your mind you think, "I am going to work on this, and in a couple of months, I will do that too."
Rehearsal Stage vs. Recital Expectations
But when you get your piano and you get everything in place and you sit down at it and you get ready to play. You say, "I quit! That does not sound like what I had in mind. Nobody clapped when I played it. They do not like me." You mean you really expected to get the reaction of a maestro at a recital when your life is at a rehearsal stage? See, you are trying to get a reaction you have not earned yet.
And if you are not careful, you will do this for a while and say, "That does not work for me." And now you got the clarinet and you are trying to blow it. And if you do not get a quick reaction from that, you put it down and say, "That is not giving it to me." And now you got a drum and you are beating on the drum and you cannot master that. Look at how many things you started and stopped, underestimating how much rehearsal you had to do and not recognizing potential versus product.
Despise Not Small Beginnings
This is what the Bible meant when it says, "Despise not the day of small beginnings." Because if you are faithful to that... After a while, you will get this... If you stop playing scales, you will miss the opportunity to discover the sapling, the growth. Play me something else. Just play me. I am evolving from where I started... See, they are both playing the same instrument, and they are both playing the same thing, but they are playing it on different levels.
Touch somebody and tell them, "You are next." Am I talking to somebody? Are you hearing God talking to you? Are you understanding that Paul says, I have learned whatever state I am in... Therewith to be content, because if I can survive where I am right now, I know this is in me... It does not yet appear what we shall be, but if you keep on working on what you are, what you shall be is going to manifest in your life.
Rehearse, Master, and Evolve
Touch three people and tell them, "It is in you." Go ahead and rehearse. Go ahead and play your scales. Go ahead and work on your level. Go ahead and master where you are. And after a while, without you even trying to do it, where you started will turn into where you are going. That is what destiny is pulling you into. If you understand what I am teaching, give God 30 seconds of a recital praise.
From the rehearsal, to the recital, once you have mastered it, whether the recital is business, marriage, kingdom building, book writing, script writing, accounting firms, real estate development, wife, husband, family, whatever your recital is, once you have maximized it, you get to sit with the masters. And then you begin to grapple with this. How do I take what I have developed and make it fit into the orchestra of God's divine purpose.
From Recital to Orchestration
Because even if you are a maestro, but you cannot fit with other people and you cannot work with anybody and you cannot get along with anybody, you will never be in the orchestra, because you cannot figure out how you fit. Now your task is to fit in with the orchestra. Your task is to take what you have developed and fit in with others without being jealous, without being intimidated, without being insecure. A true master only shines when the light is on him.
He has the grace and confidence in what he does to allow other people to shine and figure out, how do I fit in this 21st century with the fast-changing world, how do I fit in with other people who put in just as much to be good at what they do? Whether you are at the rehearsal stage, the recital stage or the orchestration stage, somewhere in your life, you are in one of those three stages. And you will only finish when you focus on what God has given you.
Conclusion: Fulfill Your Assignment
I have got to stop there. But this is so powerful, it is so provocative, I have written a book about it. It is not just a sermon. This whole thing of destiny, Jesus completed his assignment in 33 years. It is not how long you live, it is how well you live and whether you have done the thing you were put here to do. Until you have done it, I do not care what you built, what you bought, what you drive, whose name is on your shoes, on your hat, none of that matters.
If you did not do what your name was put in the earth to do and to do it in his name where he gets the glory, you are only effective when you are authentic. Stay focused. You will only finish when you master what God has given you. I am excited. I am delighted. I am fired up. Things are going to be good.