TD Jakes - Road Rage
Now, what is happening here is Moses is leading people with motion sickness. He is leading people with motion sickness. I don’t have much motion sickness, but my wife has a lot of motion sickness. She can ride in a car most of the time, but maybe not in the backseat. She doesn’t do well on a boat, so a cruise is a challenge because motion makes her sick. It’s called motion sickness. And if she doesn’t take some medicine, she can’t take a boat ride because of motion sickness. And most of us are leading people who have motion sickness.
Moses is leading people who haven’t moved for 430 years. And now he’s got them living on the road. And the very fact that they have motion sickness makes them difficult to move. And Moses is a leader, and the only metric of leadership is movement. If he doesn’t move, he’s not a leader. But if he moves them, they’re gonna have motion sickness because they have not moved for 430 years. They have spiritual atrophy. Most churches have spiritual atrophy. Atrophy is when you haven’t moved something in so long, it ceases to move without pain. Most churches have spiritual atrophy. «No, we’ve always done it like that. You always sing the song before you read the prayer. Deacon Wilson always takes up the offering».
That’s atrophy. Anytime people start talking about always and they worship normalcy more than they worship movement, it becomes difficult to lead them because they’re uncomfortable with change. And Moses has the dubious task of trying to move people who have spent 430 years being motionless. So the Bible says that «they were moved by God from place to place». And anytime God has you moving from place to place, you’re leading through uncertainty. You don’t know what’s gonna happen next. Reading their journey is like reading a good movie.
One moment they’re fighting Amalek at Refidim, and the next moment they can’t find any water. The next chapter you turn over into, the snakes are coming out and biting them. And the next chapter you turn into, God has covered them with a cloud of fire to keep them warm at night. And the moment you get used to the cloud of fire, he is turned into a pillar of smoke by day. And then you turn past the next chapter, and they come to a place filled with palm trees and fresh water. And you walk on a little further, and they come to a dry place. And every time they kept moving, they kept blaming Moses because they had motion sickness. They hadn’t moved for 430 years.
Some of you listening at me right now have not changed in 20 or 30 years, and you keep waiting for God to make it like it was. And success for you is for God to take you back to what you’re used to. But I came to tell you that God has closed up the Red Sea, and you can’t go back to what it was. You must adapt to what it is, what it is, what it is, what it is, what it is. You gotta adapt to what it is, not what it was, not what it will be. You got to adapt to what it is, what it is. So they got road rage because they’re out of their comfort zone. They got road rage because they’re being stretched. They got road rage because they have to use their lesser used muscles.
Pastor Tubman, I listened to one trainer talk about how some of these guys can be all buff and be built and be muscular and be muscle bound and have big muscles and can’t handle small weights. Because just because you got big muscles right here don’t mean you got big muscles right here. The muscle you work on is the muscle that builds. So you can look good and get in a fight and get your tail whipped because you worked out on the wrong muscles. Some of you have been working real hard on the wrong muscle set. You’ve become real good at doing something that is unfruitful, and you’ve got to be willing to change. I, oh God, I decree and declare, there will be massive change in your life. You will not waste another year building up a muscle group you don’t need. God is getting ready to put you in areas that’s gonna stretch the weaknesses in you that they may become stronger.
So Moses went from leadership to learning. He went from leadership to learning. And when he gets to Jethro’s house, he learns by handling sheep, which is practice for handling people. When he gets to the burning bush, he learns how to do his miracles in the privacy before God before he does it in front of his enemies. Because if it doesn’t work in the glory, it ain’t gonna work in your life. Can I go deeper with this? Now, he’s leading the people, but he’s leading them like they’re sheep. The sheep have one shepherd, and a stranger’s voice they will not follow.
So Moses is leading the children of Israel, and all roads lead to him. All decisions come to him. All responsibilities come to him. And Jethro comes down to visit him. And when Jethro comes down to visit him, the Bible says that «Jethro just sat back and watched him all day long». This is one generation watching another generation. He watched him all day long. And Moses did nothing all day but hear the grievances of the people who had road rage. «She took my this. She’s using my tent. He stole my wife. They went off with my kid. This one took my dog. This one took my cat». And at the end of the day, Moses was exhausted. Moses was exhausted. And when his father-in-law looked at him, and he said, «You’re not doing it right. The journey is too great for you to do with the procedure you have in place. You got a sheep procedure in a national opportunity».
Am I talking to anybody? And then God says to him, «You can’t be a one-man band like you were with the sheep, 'cause these are people». They gonna have all kinds of problems. They can talk, but anything that can talk is gonna give you some trouble. That’s why a dog is a man’s best friend. I don’t care what you say to me, I don’t know if it’s true about women, but a dog is a man’s best friend because a dog will lick you, like you, and never say nothing. Everybody else got a mouth gonna talk. So then God says to him… so I’m gonna make a quick illustration. Is Don nearby? I want Don to come. I want Frank to come. I want Hattie to come right quick and just stand right up on stage here for a minute. Oh yeah, Sister Sutton. She’s not Sister Hill anymore. I gotta keep up with this. And, honey, you come and stand, and y’all stand in front of me straight across facing the people.
Now, yeah, just straight across like Hattie’s doing. Just stand right there. Now, my wife runs the Women’s Department. Frank is my COO over The Potter’s House. Don is the Executive Director of Security and Safety here at The Potter’s House. Hattie Hill is the President of T.D. Jakes Foundation. I didn’t pat you, let me pat you. Everybody I patted, everybody I patted, I put pain on. Every one of these people is worried about something that I would have to worry about if they didn’t. So what I’m teaching you is that as the vision gets bigger, you need weight distribution. Weight distribution is worry alignment. That means I gave her something to worry about. I gave him something to worry about. I gave her something to worry about.
All of it would be my worry, but now they share the worry. Who is sharing your worry? Or do you keep on taking on more and more and more and got less weight distribution? So all of a sudden, he’s worried about what I don’t have to be worried about. And if he ain’t worried about it, I’m worried about him, okay? I got in a staff meeting and flipped completely out, and I said, «I’m angry because you are not. Because if you would have been angry, I wouldn’t have got to be angry. You’d have fixed it before it got to me».
So this, though it looks like titles and position and power, it’s really weight distribution because the journey is too great, and the meetings are too many, and the demands are too massive for me to be all of them. Now, there are more that I can call up here. This is just an example. Who is sharing the weight? Who is sharing the weight? If you don’t get weight distribution, you are going to burn up, not because it wasn’t yours, but because you have not learned how to let go and distribute weight. And you know why you don’t distribute weight? Because you got control issues. And as long as you got control issues, you got growth limitation.
This is the one place where Moses blows it. The first time God said, «Smite the rock,» he hit the rock, boom, and the water came out, and God was pleased because he obeyed. By the second time, the people’s road rage had gotten so bad that Moses got mad. Every other time the people railed against him, he prayed, and he was okay, but they triggered his old demon. He had always had an anger problem. Remember when he saw the Hebrew and the Egyptian fighting, and Moses looked out the window and got mad and went out there and had never been a warrior and murdered the Egyptian. Him having anger is what caused him to go to the desert in the first place. But all the while he was suppressing his rage.
All the while they had road rage. He was suppressing his rage. The rage is contagious. The rage that has been on them has now gotten to him. It has triggered what he has been suppressing. And now when they rev up against him, and they start talking to him, and saying, «We’re thirsty,» I know he wanted to say, «So am I, you think I don’t have a mouth? If you ain’t drinking, then I ain’t either. You think I’m not here? This is my problem. Do I make water»? So God says to him, watch this closely, this is my closing. God said to him, «Speak to the rock that they may drink». But Moses listened to them and made a decision in rage, note to all leaders, never decide while you’re mad. He made a decision in rage. And the Bible says that «he smote the rock twice. And when he smote the rock, the water still flowed in spite of,» you don’t hear that. Did you hear what I just said?
«The water still flowed in spite of his disobedience». Just because your water is flowing doesn’t mean you’re living right. Moses did it all wrong, and the water still flowed. But as they were drinking, because of his road rage combined with their road rage, God said to him, «You will not see the Promised Land because you disobeyed me». The reason that God told him to smite the rock the first time is because the rock in the Old Testament is a type of Christ who was smitten for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. And the chastisement of his peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. But he was only supposed to be smitten once. When he told God they need water, he said, «Don’t hit it again because you’re gonna break the type».
Speak to the rock, because once the rock has been smitten once, whenever you need water, he will never have to go through what he went through the first time, because one smite did it all. Whenever you need healing, whenever you need deliverance, whenever you need a breakthrough, you’ll never have to go through this again. No man took his life. He laid it down. And if he laid it down, he will pick it back up again. And now he ever liveth to make intercession for us. He’ll never have to go back to the cross again. And when Moses hit the rock twice, he didn’t know it, but he lied on Jesus. He act like once was not enough.
And God wanted us to know, «I got it all done with the first blow, so that all of your needs can be supplied according to his riches and glory». But because Moses got road rage, he broke the shadow and lost his ticket to the Promised Land. So he led them to a place that he never got to go himself because he never got rid of his rage. What are you angry about? How can you let your anger forfeit your prophecy? Your anger is about to terminate God’s plan for your life. I plan for you to go to the Promised Land. But if you don’t get a grip on your anger, you’re going to lose your calling. Who am I talking to? How many decisions have you made out of road rage?
Sometimes you’re angry with people who aren’t even here anymore. Three things: leading, learning, and legacy. Moses messed up his legacy. In a moment of rage, he forfeited the destination. I went to Mount Nebo and stood on top of it. He was so close to the Promised Land. I mean, you can see it clearly from the top of Mount Nebo. You can see the greenery. The desert is over here, and the greenery is over here. The shepherds were grazing in the field when I was there. I could see the shepherds grazing in the field. I could see the work going on and the vineyards that were going on all around the Jordan.
On one side, it’s all sand, and on the other side, it’s all life. And from Mount Nebo, you can see for miles. Moses got to see it, but he never got to be it because he had road rage. I speak to every one of you that are wa[spoiler][/spoiler]tching me all over the world. That rage undealt with is going to kill you. It will not kill the person you’re mad at. It will kill you. You drank the poison, and now you’re waiting on them to die. Until you release that rage, you will forfeit your opportunity from having the favor, influence, leadership that God has allocated for you.
Your eyes have not seen, your ears have not heard, neither have entered into your heart what God has for you, if you will let go of that road rage. Moses’s story ends less than what it should have been. His feet should have walked into the Promised Land, but his anger knocked it out. Stand to your feet, everyone. We’re standing here today, and I’m asking you for the biggest offering you ever gave in your life, and that offering is honesty. What are you angry about? And are you willing to let it go to be the great woman or the great man you were meant to be?