TD Jakes - Working Through The Hard Places
One thing I have learned in life is keep it moving. Keep it moving. Do not sit down and bask in how you feel about it, to the degree that you delay your assignment. Investigating your emotions should not delay your assignment. The discomfort we were just talking about, the chickens running in the yard and all of that, makes your tolerance stronger to pain. But when everything was brought to you, served to you, given to you, handed to you, anytime it doesn't work like that, you think you're being abused. Mama didn't tell you that it's gonna get hard. Daddy didn't tell you it was gonna be hard. Oh, they told you.
See, the problem with communication is all we have is words and your idea of hard and my idea of hard are two different things. And I told you it's gonna be hard being a grown-up and you couldn't wait to be grown and now you find out it's not what you thought it was going to be. Come on, talk to me, somebody. It's not as good as it looked on the outside, when the bills start coming in your name and when you start running out of capital and when you have to get up and go to work when you don't feel like it, and you don't like your job but you love your kids, you go to your job. Work through hard places. Because life, not demons, not devils, not witches, not hexes, life is hard.
I can stay there all day. Life is hard. Life is hard. Life all by itself. Life is life, people being born at the same time people are dying. You're connected to both sides, you gotta go to the baby shower and prepare for the funeral. Life is hard. Before you can bury one, another one dies. Life is hard. Life is tough. I'm not simplifying it. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's not painful. I'm not saying that it doesn't break you down to your knees. But that doesn't always mean that a devil is... Satan did not create the desert. It's just that the desert was the only way to get through to the Promised Land, if you were going with Moses. You cannot get through to the promises you just got through shouting about without going through dry places.
And being known is a hard place and being a leader is a hard place and being a breadwinner is a hard place and being innovative is a hard place and being gifted is a hard place and being chosen is a hard place. And so what you're praying for is a, "Give me a child, lest I die". Yeah, you're asking for a hard place. The same person who says, "Give me a child, lest I die," holds her stomach filled with twins and says, "Why am I thus? I asked for the baby, not the pregnancy. You didn't tell me it was gonna be twins and that the twins were gonna fight in my body. I did not ask for this hard place".
I asked for pomegranates. I asked for pigs. You answered with dust and freezing nights and scorching days and no rivers run through this desert and you performed a miracle, but now the miracle has dried up too. And when we get in a hard place, we get vicious, we get toxic, we get hard to deal with and sometimes nobody can see your hard place because Moses's hard place is not so much the drought. You don't hear him complaining about his mouth being dry because he is so committed to being accepted.
They are his family, they are his dream, they are his Promised Land, because we always pray for what we didn't get. He has been rejected by the Egyptians. He has been driven out of the palace. He has had to go out into the wilderness and get a precursor of what his future was to be like working for Jethro. He has built up an immunity to the heat because he spent 40 years in hard places. But the truth of the matter is, some people are just hurt. They are hurt because the promise is delayed. Like many of you in this room right now, you are hurt that the promise is delayed.
You are hurt because what you had in mind didn't happen like you thought. You are hurt because you envision pomegranates and grapes and fruit and promised lands and a house instead of a tent. You are hurt because your life doesn't look like TV. You are hurt because you are getting older and you thought you would be further than this by now. You are hurt because you have had to keep it moving with your mouth dry and you need somebody to blame for your discomfort. So you blame the one who led you, not acknowledging that he never made you. You absolve yourself of any responsibility in being in the situation that you're in and you act as though I made you when I came to save you.
And the problem with the hero complex, the person who wants to save everybody is that the only thing they want back is appreciation. You don't have to pay me. Just appreciate me. Just acknowledge that I did without so that you could have. Just acknowledge that I prayed more about you than I prayed about myself. Just acknowledge that I paid you when I didn't get paid myself. Just acknowledge that I helped you when I couldn't help myself. Just acknowledge that you got the last piece of chicken and I ate the bread crumbs that you left behind. Just acknowledge that I took care of you and cleaned you up before I went to work.
Just acknowledge that because I need your affirmation to validate my existence. But isn't that dangerous, because people are so fickle that one moment they will say "Hosanna" and the next moment they will say "Crucify him," and the shock of it all is that both words come from the same people. I cannot believe that the same people who are assaulting Moses spent 30 days at the bottom of the mountain crying over Moses's death. Make up your mind. Just be consistent. If you're gonna hate me, just hate me. Don't confuse me with one moment you love me and the next moment you hate me. I can't adjust to which one you're gonna be.
I can adjust to either one but not both. Ingratitude can blind you to your purpose, it can knock you off course. It can make you react out of your feelings because you must understand it is not just Moses's leadership that is being attacked, it is his identity. You are saying that I am not one of you. And I gave up everything in Egypt, in the palace, to be associated with the slaves. I came down to you when you couldn't get up to me. I came down where you were. I came where you were. I came, I came to you because you were important to me more than palaces and gold and silver and columns of granite. I gave it all up to be with you. And now you who I gave it all up for hate me. And I am alone.
And even God himself says it is not good for man to be alone. There are a good 7000, maybe 6000, people in this room. And yet there are many of us that are alone. There are many of us that have big families, but the truth of the matter is we sit at the table and we grin and we smile and we make small talk. But on the inside we are alone. Single people get married so they won't be alone, only to find out that you can be married and still, come on, come on, come on. Help me preach this morning. Help me preach this morning. Help me preach. And you find yourself in a hard place when you attach your identity to other people's reaction. I only feel like I look nice when you say I look nice. Love is giving people the power to hurt you.
Can I go deeper? What gets lost in this text for me is God's unfailing love is seen in his provision for rebellious people. When the water starts to flowing, it flows on people who don't even deserve it. That's what people never bring up in this text, that God's unfailing love is toward his people, even when they are rebellious and foolish and resentful. You didn't get the water because you were good. You got the water because God was good. Now you're bragging about how much water you got. Now you're bragging about how much money you got. Now you're bragging about how many grandkids you got. You didn't get the water because you were good. You got it because God was good. You didn't deserve it. You didn't talk right. You didn't hold on to the faith.
You didn't say, "I know if he did it once, he'll do it again". You didn't read the resume of all the things that he'd done for you before. You didn't even praise him for saving your life from the snake bites that were supposed to kill you. You didn't praise him for the manna that you were eating that was fallen from heaven. You didn't thank him for the quail that he gathered to feed you just because you got tired of the same cuisine. Now you forgot all the good and all you do is harbor trash. Water for the wicked. That's a star. That's the apex. The opiate of the entire text is that God is good to people that are bad. I wish sometimes he wouldn't be, but I'm not gonna wish it because sometimes it includes me.
But God is good to people that don't deserve it. God is good to people you don't like. Have you ever had God bless somebody you didn't like and you had to stand there and watch them be blessed and it got on your nerves? And yet you shout when we say that he prepares a table before you in the presence of the enemy because you imagine yourself as the one sitting at the table and not the one watching the other person eat. But God prepares a table in the presence of your enemies, even when the enemy is you. I dare you. I dare you not to give me credit for it. I dare you not to give me credit for it. I dare you not to acknowledge that God just said something that's so heavy in your life.
You never liked that girl. You told him not to marry that girl. You were against it. You didn't even wanna come to the wedding and now they're living better than they ever lived before. And you're sitting over there with a smirk on your face because you're frustrated because God has prepared a table that you don't get to sit at and now you gotta watch them eat and you're talking about, "I don't even get to see my grandkids". Your mouth ran your grandkids away. Moses misrepresents God is where I'm at. Moses misrepresents God and he is God's representative, God's ambassador at the United Nations. He is God's voice, God's mouthpiece. He is God's communicator. He is the one who intercedes between God and man. He is the one that brings down the Ten Commandments. He is the one that is refreshing them in the ways of the Lord that they have been absent from for over 400 years.
But Moses is angry because he has a hard place that is a hard place. This is why generational problems continue to occur over and over again because often our hardest place is our heart place. And we only go to church to campaign to get God on our side. So we never come to the altar to give up our perspective for his. And this leads us to a place where God is trying to get something through to him and he punished him. But God's love is on display here because even though he punishes Moses for smiting the rock, rather than speaking to the rock as he was commanded to, he punished him. But he still protected him. When Satan was after his body, he sent Michael the archangel to protect his body.
Moses didn't get into the temporary Promised Land, but he did make it into the eternal Promised Land and I can prove it because when they were on the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses shows up on the Mount of Transfiguration and he's still standing with God. Oh, I gotta stop right here and praise God for having mercy even when you got it wrong. I got to praise him that God don't throw you away. Just because he chastened you doesn't mean he doesn't love you, for the Bible said, Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth. Oh, you don't hear what I'm saying to you. The devil's been trying to tell you you're cursed because you missed out on something that you could have had. No, you're not cursed, you're chastised. You're not utterly cast down.
All the way in the New Testament, Moses is still appearing on the Mount of Transfiguration so you can't do that from hell. And Michael fought off Lucifer for the body of Moses. And all you do is talk about he didn't get to the Promised Land. You're wrong. He got to the real Promised Land. Can I go a little bit deeper? Can I go a little bit deeper? I want you to see this. His problem was he struck the rock when he should have spoke to the rock. Now, the first time God tells him to strike the rock, he struck the rock.
The next time God says, "Speak to the rock". Instead of speaking the second time, he struck the second time. And the reason God penalized him is not just because he disobeyed, though that is a very relevant point. But God also penalized him because he broke the type. You see, the rock is Jesus. "This rock is Jesus. Yes, he's the one". And the reason God didn't want him to strike him twice is that if he struck him again, it implied that he crucified the Son of Man afresh as if the cross were not enough. For Isaiah says, "He was smitten of God," but only once. And with God, details matter.
So if he told you to speak to the rock, it was to typify that once he had been struck once, that the waters would flow just because you spoke to it. You will see the reflection of it in the book of Hebrews when it says: "Many of them did not receive the promise, because they crucified the Son of Man afresh, bringing him to an open shame". To crucify him afresh is to strike twice. They believed on him and then they rejected him. They apostasised from him and fell back in their unbelief and the writer of Hebrew said: "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift, if they should fall away to renew them again to repentance, because they struck the rock twice".
Striking it once breaks the typology that the cross was enough. And if you understand that the cross is enough that you can get the water now, by speaking, and if you don't believe that Jesus is a rock, then explain to me when the Roman soldier pierced his side, out of his side came blood and... come on, come on. Come on, come on, go with me. "Came blood and water". "Woman, if you knew who I was, you would ask me to drink for whosoever drinketh of this water shall never thirst again".
This rock is Jesus. Rock in the weary land. The rock of ages. He is a stone that the builders rejected. He is a hewn-out stone that the commandments are written on. This rock is Jesus. Following them through the wilderness, following them through the hard places. What I love about God is if you're in a hard place, he gets in the hard place with you. Jehovah Shammah, the Lord is present in the hard place. I came to tell somebody in a hard place, you ain't in that place by yourself. This rock has been following them all through the wilderness and it doesn't deserve to be struck twice just because you don't like people.
How dare you call it "church hurt"? The church didn't hurt you. The people hurt you and where are you gonna go where there are not people? You think they won't hurt you in the bar? You think they won't hurt you in the strip club? You think they won't hurt you on your job? You think they won't hurt you at the family reunion? You gotta learn how to work through hard... Touch three people, say, "Work through it, baby, work through it".
Work through it, work through it, work through it. Work through it, work through it. Grow through it, grow through it, grow through it. Preach through it, preach through it, preach through it. Teach through it, teach through it, teach through it. Build through it, build through it, build through it. Advance through it, advance through it, advance through it. You can't run away from hard places. Stop dodging people because you don't like them. Work through the hard place. Do what you gotta do. You may have to love them at a distance but you gotta work through it.