TD Jakes - How Can I Maintain Confidence in God?
So today, I want to talk to you this morning on the subject «Bother Me.» I believe that’s what God is saying to us. I want you to bother Him. Somebody shout «Bother Me!» Holy Spirit, fall in this place. Descend upon us like the morning dew falling eloquently upon the leaves before the sun has ever begun to shine. Fall with such propensity and power that our leaves are affected by the amount of dew that has saturated our circumstances. Speak to us in a different, profound way so that You might unfold to us the mysteries of the book. I thank You in advance for what You’re going to do. Now bind every foul spirit, every evil principality that has tried to disrupt the Word of God from penetrating the souls of men, and give us the life that we have been promised in the scriptures—life more abundantly. It is in the invincible, irrevocable, eternal, immutable name of Jesus we pray. Every believer who loves His name, shout «Amen!» You may be seated in the presence of the Lord.
Now, it is interesting to me that the Bible says, «This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.» That’s the confidence—we know that He hears us. So, that means that if we pray one time and we believe God when we pray, we can walk away knowing that God has heard us. Yes, and there’s a great deal of teaching and scripture validating the fact that God doesn’t have amnesia; He doesn’t forget. So, we don’t have to keep reminding Him as if He has forgotten what we said. Yet, when Jesus is teaching on prayer in this particular text, He tells us about the tenacity of this woman, and I want to talk to you about tenacious praying. We must admit that the effectual, fervent prayers of a righteous man availeth much. Effectual and fervent—intense, continually, perpetually. We also know that men ought to lift up holy hands without doubting and pray without ceasing. Prayer should become a lifestyle, not just something you pull out only when you’re in trouble. It needs to become a part of your daily life.
But there is more to this text, and I want to walk you through just some beginnings of gleanings of truths. We must first look at the system within which prayer operates because a lot of times we preach about prayer, but we don’t preach about the system that prayer has to penetrate in order to function. Prayer penetrates systems; prayer penetrates systems. Systems are set up and stand as the status quo—the way things are done, how it operates. Over here, if you’re going to come over here, it works like this. These systemic pressures have to be penetrated through prayer. Prayer can penetrate a system; it can penetrate sickness, pathology, mentality, behavior. It can disrupt a pattern and order. Prayer is a weapon; it is an anvil. It is meant to penetrate, break through, crush, dislodge, and change circumstances. Whether it is penetrating a storm on a boat that’s rocking in the winds and waves, when Jesus says, «Peace, be still, ” it penetrated the turbulence around it.
There are some turbulences we’re dealing with right now and have been for a while. It’s not just COVID-19; there are systems in place that prayer must be able to penetrate. When you pray, you’re bucking the system. There’s no need in praying if you’re not prepared to buck the system. Prayer is how you buck the system. Prayer is how you disrupt the outcome. I know that some of you have heard a prognosis that seems grim, but prayer will buck the system. It will change the prognosis; it will dislodge circumstances; it will remove obstacles; it will open doors; it will bring a wandering child back home; it will reconcile a marriage that’s off track. Prayer will buck the system. I want to talk to some radical people. This is not a message for the feeble and faint; this is not for the polite and timid. This is a message for somebody who urgently needs something from God, someone willing to be out of order and looked at scandalously, someone willing to be ostracized and criticized because you’re ready to buck the system.
This is not for someone who’s more concerned about being liked than being healed. This is not for someone who’s more concerned with being popular than being powerful. This is not for someone who cares more about political acceptance and the grandiose ideas of men. No, this is for someone who knows clearly what they want, who needs a breakthrough, and who’s ready to put a hammer behind the anvil until something cracks—so that a door may be opened. Oh my God, I’m trying not to get excited, but I’m happy already! I feel like we’ve been talking about breakthroughs, and now we’re going to crack something. I’m going to show you how to break through. You’re going to break through with prayer; you’re going to break through with faith; you’re going to break through with works. You don’t want works without prayer, and you don’t want prayer without works. You want them to work together succinctly.
You need to be able to see what you’re praying for by what you’re doing. I’ll say that again—you need to see what you’re praying for through what you’re doing. Your doing and your prayer have to be concerted. They have to be in sequence; they have to be synchronized together. Why? Because faith without works is dead. God says, „I don’t care how much you believe it; if I don’t see your actions validating what you believe, nothing is going to be done.“ I want to back up and look at this system a little bit because this woman lives in a caste system. A caste system is a class system where you have the haves and the have-nots, the powerful and the powerless, the influential and the peasants. She’s operating in a caste system that isn’t steered in her direction. Some of us have to operate against strong winds of opposition.
Now let me show you what I mean. It’s funny to me that I can get on a plane flying from Dallas to California, and it only takes two hours. But when I fly back from California to Dallas, it may take three and a half. It seems like it’s the same distance going as it is coming; why is there a difference? Well, the difference is when I’m flying to California, often I’m flying with a tailwind that expedites the process. But when I’m flying back home, I’m flying against a tailwind, and it slows the process. There are some things you want from God that you’re flying against the wind. Nobody in your neighborhood ever did that, nobody in your family ever did that, and whenever you’re flying against the wind, it may take a little more effort and tenacity. This inflection of prayer is for those moments when one prayer won’t do it; you’re flying against the wind, and you have to bombard the system to get the kind of breakthrough you need. But I believe it—breakthroughs! Somebody say „breakthroughs!“
Even when you’re flying against the wind, even when the odds are stacked against you, even when you’re dealing with systemic racism or gender discrimination—whatever the system is that you’re flying against—doesn’t mean you can’t break through. If that were not true, women wouldn’t have the right to vote; if that were not true, Black people wouldn’t be able to dine in restaurants; if that were not true, America would not be a country; if that were not true, the Jewish population would’ve been destroyed in the Holocaust. There’s always somebody who pushes against the system, whether it’s Nelson Mandela fighting against apartheid. There’s always someone who pushes against the wind until we get the breakthrough. The interesting thing to understand, though, is that this woman is pushing against a system not designed for her to get what she needs.
Now, we in this country, which professes to be a democracy, are more aptly a republic but still function in many ways like a caste system. We don’t like to admit it; there are different levels of justice—rich folk justice and poor folk justice. There are people who get things worked out on the golf course while others have to go through the courtroom. It depends on who you know, and what you know, how things happen. Even in this country that tries to be fair, we’re still struggling after hundreds of years to perfect freedom and liberty and justice for all. We have justice for some; we have justice for certain sects and communities; we have justice for certain groups and income levels. But if you’re born in the wrong zip code—oh come on, somebody here—if you don’t know the right people, justice becomes something you have to pray for.
Some people don’t have to pray for justice because they already possess it; the wind is blowing their way. But if you happen to be born in the wrong zip code, the wind isn’t going in your direction for true justice, and you have to fight for it differently than someone who was born with it. Oh my God! The interesting thing is we have this judge, a power that this woman normally wouldn’t even have access to. We are told about the personality of the judge—he is tenacious and relentless, and he does not fear God nor care what anybody thinks. He is a power, a sovereign; he is a decision-maker who can resolve issues. Then, on the other hand, we are told about this woman, who the Bible says is a widow. That’s just a slight detail given about this woman. It doesn’t tell us her name; it doesn’t tell us what she wore; it doesn’t tell us about her income level. But it says she’s a widow.
The reason it tells us that she is a widow is that Jesus lived in a society where being a woman without a man meant that you really had no voice. Ah, we’re about to get into something! Jesus uses this widow woman to teach the disciples about how to pray. He’s teaching these men how to pray when the system is against you. The system you see is against women, and it has been for a long time. It’s all through the Bible. If you remember the daughters of Zelophehad, who had to go to Moses and say, „Why can’t we reap an inheritance that our father left us, simply because he had no sons? Why should we be discriminated against because we are women?“ At first, Moses was not going to give them their fair share, but he had to go to God, and God told Moses, „Look at how I override Moses.“
God told Moses, „The women are right.“ It’s a shame that they had to go that high to get what men didn’t have to go that high for. But when you’re flying against the current and you’re trying to break a system, sometimes you have to put in prayer work to get what is rightfully yours. The daughters of Zelophehad would not be denied. They said, „No, we’re going to pray and pray until we get a breakthrough.“ They lived in a society that did not appreciate women nor regard them as influential, and yet, despite that, this widow woman went before the judge, worried him, and bothered him until there was a change.
Think about Leah and Rachel, whose marriages were negotiated by Laban and Jacob. What woman today would allow Laban and Jacob to enter into a business deal that affects who you end up in bed with? Look at how women were considered like property—cabbage, cattle, sheep, oxen—they were traded off in a business deal, even though they were his daughters. Now, you know if you trade your daughters, your handmaidens don’t stand a chance! I want you to see what we’re talking about when we talk about this little woman and how little regard throughout scripture was given to women. They were not respected, appreciated, or honored. Seldom in the scriptures do we even get the names of women; for example, we know that there was a woman at the well. We know what happened to her; we know the details of her life; we even know about her sex life, and we don’t know her name.
Y’all aren’t going to talk to me this morning! They didn’t even think it important enough to identify who she is. They identified what she had done and her religion, but her name wasn’t important enough to be shared with us. No historian to this day has been able to dislodge the information about her name. Who she was was incidental; it’s like naming a puppy, or naming a doll, or naming a goldfish—it wasn’t significant enough in the story to be included who she was, while they described what she had done.
Great intent where she was, where the well was, what the conversation was, how many men she had, what her religion was. You would think they would mention her name, but women had such a low regard in the scripture, in the days of the scriptures, that the penmen did not even think to note her name. Oh, what about the woman with the issue of blood? We know the personal information of her hemorrhaging. We understand the fact that she is bleeding. We understand what the law has said about her. We know how long she has been bleeding. We know how many physicians she has seen. We know everything about her circumstance. We know the names of the people that surround Jesus, but this woman, who is the centerpiece of the story, she is the leading lady of the story. She is the one whom the story is written about. How can we know all of these men’s names and the woman, who the story is written about, is never even mentioned?
I want to talk to somebody who’s been nameless. I want to talk to somebody who’s been referred to as a statistic. I want to talk to somebody who’s been referred to as a people group. I want to talk to someone who’s never had their name mentioned, never been recognized, never had a voice, never had any influence, and yet God has a plan for your life. There was a woman in the Bible who was caught in the act of adultery. The man caught her, snatched her out of bed, brought her down the road, and threw her down at the feet of Jesus. They were getting ready to stone her to death and never even mentioned who she was. Have you ever felt unseen? Have you ever felt overlooked? Have you ever felt like your voice could not be heard, your opinion not valued, who you are not appreciated? Have you ever felt like you were locked out of the circle where decisions are made, where changes happen, where righteousness is accomplished, where justice is ratified? Such is the case in today’s text. Who could not, in spite of the fight?
We know that she is a tenacious woman but was unable to be regarded by her adversary. You’re not going to tell me that she was tenacious with the judge and had not been tenacious with her adversary, but because she is a widow woman, she is easily overlooked. Come on, help me, somebody. She had exhausted all means of resolution on her level. Now listen to this; she had exhausted all means of resolution on her level. This is where most people quit. When you have exhausted all means of resolution on your level, most people give up. She couldn’t work it out with her adversary. She couldn’t get an arbitration clause. She couldn’t get ratification on her level. Most people get to that level and say, „I did all I could, and I give up. I just walk away. If God meant for this to happen for me, it would have happened. If God means for me to get a house, He’ll give me a house. If God means for me to get a job, He’ll give me a job. If God means for me to get out of this court case, He’ll bring that.“
Now, if God doesn’t, this woman—somebody needs to say, „Not this woman.“ Not this woman. See, you have to set yourself apart from the status quo and let the system know, „You may have run over everybody else, but you’re not going to run over me. You might run over people who look like me, but you’re not going to run over me. You might have run over everybody in my neighborhood, but you’re not going to run over me.“ She said, „You might have run over every other woman, but you’re not going to run over me.“
And Jesus is using the story of this nameless widow woman to teach His disciples because His disciples were hated as much as women. They were ostracized for being Christians. They were ostracized for being believers. They were ostracized for being His followers. They could not say the name of Jesus and be respected because Jesus Himself was to be crucified. He is showing you how to fight when the odds are against you and all hell is breaking loose. And though He slay me, yet shall I trust Him. I still believe thank God it’s going to work out.
My God, I feel the power of the Holy Ghost. I didn’t come to uplift the people that are already uplifted; I came to snatch somebody that’s downtrodden. I came to snatch somebody that the odds are against you. I came to talk to somebody whose diagnosis doesn’t look good. I came to talk to somebody who’s got bad credit. I came to talk to somebody that’s been abused, criticized, ostracized, molested.
I came to talk to somebody who’s got a laundry list of reasons why you ought to just give up and turn around and walk away. But Jesus is saying that you are—something happens until a breakthrough comes, until a change is made, until a body is healed, until a job is filed, until a deed is signed, until the property is conveyed, until the book is written, until the door is opened, until you get your voice back, get your sight back, until you get your legs right, until you get your temperature under control, until your lungs breathe. You gotta fly.