TD Jakes - Nothing in Your Life is Wasted With God
Little did he know that today would not be like any other day when they led blind Bartimaeus to his spot and set him down out of the way, close enough to the traffic to attract attention but not so close that he would be trampled on by the crowd. He sat in his spot, wrapped in his coat against the morning breeze, his cup in his hand, for you see, because he was blind in his eyes, it had affected every area of his life. His self-esteem, his masculinity, his income, his commerce, his marketability are all affected because one thing has gone wrong in his life, and he has made a job out of being dysfunctional. Like all of us who don't get well, we create an ecosystem of survival that's built around our dysfunction, and some of us refuse to get well because we fall in love with being sick. And they laid him by the highway-side, begging.
And the scripture says the most amazing thing: it says that "He heard that Jesus was passing by," and when I read it, I couldn't help but get excited because it reminded me that God didn't let everything go wrong at the same time, that, even though the man couldn't see, he could hear. And isn't it nice to know that God doesn't need anything that you lost to bless you, that God will use what you've got left to bless you, that he'll take what is within close proximity to you and allow you to hear? "He heard that Jesus was passing by". I don't know how he distinguished the sound of Jesus' footsteps from others, but some kind of way, he knew that it was Jesus that was passing by, and he sensed something that is never said: the fierce urgency of now. Nobody told him that this would be the last walk Jesus took, that this would be the last chance that he would have to get an earthly miracle from an earthly Christ, that he was on his way to Calvary.
And though he could not see, he did not lack vision. They asked Helen Keller what was it like to be blind. She said, "It's not so bad to be blind". She said, "It's far worse to have eyes and have no vision". This man has the vision that, if he didn't get it right now, he wouldn't get it. So the first thing you've got to have is vision, and then the second thing you've got to have is enough courage to be disruptive. He wasn't worried about being politically correct, fitting in, being popular, being accepted. He wasn't worried about the tone or the pitch of his voice. He was not afraid to get loud. He cried out, "Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me, oh, oh, oh, that I might receive. I don't want a car. I don't want a house. I don't want a donkey. I don't want a goat. I don't want to feel. I just want you to fix the little thing that has shut down everything in my life", and everybody has a little thing that shut down everything in their life, "And if you fix this one thing, I can fix the rest of it myself. Oh, that I might receive my sight".
And the disciples that were with Jesus told him to shut up, but when you sense urgency, you can't let man shut you down. He cried all the more until he did something that few in the Bible can ever say they did. He cried out till God stood still. And there's somebody right now who needs a miracle so bad that you need to cry out until God stands still. And the Bible said that Jesus stood still. In spite of his disciples making a decision for him, without him, that he was too busy and too important to have to stop and take care of the needs of the blind man, Jesus stood still.
In other words, the cry of the blind arrested the sights of Jesus. Good God of mercy. And he arrested him to the degree that, all of a sudden, Jesus stood still and commanded that he'd be called. Watch this: he made the men who forbid him from coming have to turn around and call him. Isn't it funny how God will make your enemies your footstools? Isn't it funny how God will use the very people who didn't want you to holler anymore, commanded them that he'd been called? He made them reverse the curse, and they told him, "Jesus wants you".
Now this is what I wanna tell you: he had to answer the call, blind. Jesus didn't come to him, and they didn't go get him. They just called him, and that means that he had to go toward Jesus, blind. And I have learned over the 45 years of my ministry that, most of the time, I was moving toward him, blind. I couldn't see my way clear. I didn't know how it was gon' happen. I didn't know who I was gonna hire. I didn't know where I was gonna go. I didn't know what I had to do. But if you're willing to go toward what you hear, blind, God will do amazing things in your life. He went to him blind, but he didn't go from him blind 'cause, once you make it to Jesus, he will make everything all right.
Often, when I'm not doing what I'm doing here, I do seminars. I go and listen at different people speak, not just preachers but teachers, not just teachers but thinkers, not just thinkers but leaders, not just leaders but businesspeople, and when I go into a business session, they always teach that the best place to build a business is around a problem, that, if you find your problem, you found your business because, if your business solves a problem, you don't have to spend much money marketing it. For example, you don't have to spend a lot of money marketing hospitals because it solves a problem. The fact that it is the answer is its own marketing. You don't have to market to a great degree funeral homes because there will always be clients because there will always be death.
Any time you find a business that solves a problem, you are going to be successful. The reason our God has withstood the test of time, the reason the Bible is still the best-selling book in the world, the reason that our God is called on, on every continent on this earth, in one language or another, is because he is the problem solver. He is a mountain mover. For every disease, he is the healer. Too often, we think that we know the solution, and we spend time and months and years and sometimes decades before we finally learn that we are not as smart as we thought were, and we don't know as much as we think we know, and we don't have as much as we think that we have, and, finally, with humility, we bow our heads before his grace and submit to his sovereign plan and understand the manifold wisdom of God, that God knows everything about everything.
The grape does not say to the master vintner, "Excuse me, but now is the right time to act". No, he hangs on the vine and waits, counting on the master to know "When to pluck me and when to crush me and when to convert me and when to preserve me," because he knows when to do what in your life. There are some things that God gave me now, had he given me 20 years ago, I would've spoiled it. Had he given it to me ten years ago, I'd have made a mess of it. There are some things that God had to put on hold for such a time as this, that I would be strong enough, old enough, wise enough at the right season in my life to master well enough what he's given me.
What about you? Are there times in your life that you see God giving you things now that you wanted earlier? But God held 'em back and let you stay on the vine until it was time to pull you at the right time to produce what he wanted to produce in your life because God has a clock that's not our clock. His timetable is not our timetable. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. And if we just humble down and get patient enough to wait on him, "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint".
Oh, God, teach me how to wait. Teach me how to wait. Teach me how to wait even if I have to just hang there like a grape on a vine and wait. Teach me how to hang on and wait on you 'cause you know just when to pluck me, and you know just when to pull me, and you know just when to expose me, and you know how much light I can bear. And, oh, God, don't let anything shine on me that's too bright for me. Don't let anything shine on me that's too hot for me because the greater the light, the greater the heat. Often, my timing and will could have destroyed me. If I have got it any sooner, it would've crushed me. We must be grateful for even when God doesn't answer prayers and even when God says, "No".
In fact, I would dare to say to you that I shout more over closed doors than I do opened ones because I trust God that he knows what I can handle and what I can't handle, and if he says, "No," I say, "Thank you," and if he says, "Yes," I say, "Thank you," and I've learned, whatever state I'm in, therewith to be content because he knows what's best for me. Job said, "He knows the way that I've taken. When he's tried me, I shall come forth as pure gold". I'm turning it over to him, every problem, every situation, every crisis. Every situation that comes up in my life that seems insurmountable, I cast my cares on him because I understand that everything God does is strategic.
When the Bible says, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God". The "Word" in the Greek is "Logos". And "Logos" is more than "Word". It's "Thought". It means that everything that God is, is well thought-out, is well planned. He's not talking out of the top of his head. He's talking out of the depths of his will, and what God has ordered will come to pass, and he has a strategy. He has a strategy. He told his disciples, he says, "There's a colt when you get to the village, and he's tied up, and he's waiting on you to come". He knew where the colt was in another village without going there because God is strategic, and he put the right colt in the right place at the right time so that Jesus could make his entry, a colt that no man had ever sat on before because God is a strategic God.
I gotta stop 'cause, if I get to going down this road, I'm gon' fool around and get myself happy. God is a strategic God. He knows how hot to make it. He knows how cold to make it. He knows how tough to make it. He knows what it takes to make your son's will break. He knows what it takes to bring your daughter into submission. He knows what it takes to heal your marriage. He knows what it takes to bind up the wounds of your broken heart, and he knows when to do what to get you where you need to be. He always sees every problem before it occurs. The master vintner will use anything to point you back to our need for him, for without him, I will just hang on this vine until I die. And thank you, Lord, for knowing when to pluck me off the vine.
This night was like the night before, the night before that, and the night before that, and the night before that. It had become a routine ever since, ever since the old man's son had left. He would peek in the room where he once lie and look at the bed he once slept in and look at the pajamas he once wore and the cup he once drank from and the plate he once ate from and wonder, "Where is my child tonight"? I think not knowing is the most painful part of it. Uncertainty can almost be fatal. And he couldn't help it, but night after night, he would go to the window and peek out.
I know it's silly. I know it's crazy. I know it's ridiculous, but you cannot cut love off with the turning of a switch, and though he was gone, he still loved him, and though he had spent his substance in riotous living and ran out the door belligerently and gone about his own will and sought himself a new family, a family filled with friends and frolic and foolishness, the old man knew that the friends and the frolic and the foolishness was only built around the finances, and as soon as he ran out of finances, the friends and the frolic and the foolishness would all go away, and "Maybe, just maybe, if he were humble enough, maybe I'll get to see him come down that road before God closes my eyes and I never see him again".
And it had become his nightly routine. It had become his thoughts. It had overwhelmed him like it overwhelms all of us any time we lose something that we love. It's impossible to find the off switch to stop caring about what we care about and stop loving what we love and stop needing what we need until, one night, while he was going through what would seem like the waste of time of going through the routine of the same thing over and over and over again and looking at the bed and looking at the pajamas and looking at the plate and looking at the cup and looking out the window, this time it was different because, when he looked, when he looked out the window, he saw a form in the shadows, and he knew, by the gait of his walk, that that was his son.
And he opened up the door and ran out on the front porch, and something in his flesh told him to stand there and be still and be proud and make the boy grovel, but something in his heart said, "Run". And when you are old, there are not many things that will make you run, but the sight of his son coming home would make him run. The star of the story is not the prodigal son. It is the relentless love of the Father, for the prodigal son fluctuates, and the elder brother is angry, and the only one stable in the whole story is the Father, and the only one stable in your life is the Father.
No matter what state you're in, whether you're in the dirty stage of being in the ground or the growing stage of coming up a plant or the fruitful stage of budding and blossoming into volumes and clusters of grapes or the crushing stage of the painful regrets and miseries and vicissitudes of life, I want to assure you that, whatever state you're in, the star of your story is never your process. It's your promise of the father that "I will wait for you until you find yourself".
And to somebody today that I'm speaking to, I may not know your name, your address, your phone number, your state, or where you come from. I may not know the language you speak or what you have on right now, but the father told me to tell you he's looking out the window again, and he's waiting on you, and he'll take you back even if you smell like the hog pen you've been in. And he'll take you back even if it means flies and gnats are all around your head. And he'll take you back even if you have not been washed. And the old man ran out to meet him and covered him with a robe of righteousness that made him appear clean though underneath he was filthy and sweaty and dirty. And he put the ring on his finger to recognize that he was still a part of the family.
And just before he led him back in the house, he killed the fatted calf, "For without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin". And to God be the glory because the blood sealed the deal. The fatted calf died that the son might live and brought him back into the house again. And so may you join us in our Father's house, plucked, yes, crushed, sometimes, bottled and constrained, yes, but he has a place for you at the table, and he's waiting on you, and he told me to say, "Come and dine". The master calls you, "Come and dine".