TD Jakes - How Does God Get Our Attention?
Whenever you’re stubborn and refuse to hear God, He has just said something worse to get you to turn around. America, hear me; if we don’t hear God here, it’s going to get worse. If we don’t stop bickering politically, it’s going to get worse. If we don’t stop killing innocent people, it’s going to get worse. If we keep calling wrong right and right wrong, it’s going to get worse. If we don’t establish a sense of justice, irrespective of who it is, it’s going to get worse. God will get our attention, and I don’t care what it takes. The bush is going to burn until you turn aside.
Let me go on record: God is a just God. He’s against all injustice and immorality. I’m not speaking about the guilt or innocence of any man; I’m talking about the lack of due process of law. If there’s no due process, there can’t be justice. While you’re arguing about maybe there’s another side to the story, I’m arguing that they’ve never even arrested the man in the first place. They will snatch me into jail if I go two miles over the speed limit. I’m talking about justice, and something has to be done, not only in America but around the world.
Injustice exists when people are starving to death beside those who live in mansions. This inequality is present in every sphere of life. I’m not talking about having enough or even more than enough; I’m talking about having such a surplus that employees can’t get a raise. I’m talking about big companies taking care of stockholders off the backs of people making minimum wage who can’t even pay their rent while working for you every day. Something has to be done about injustice.
It needs to be addressed when the people who protect the city can’t afford to live in the city they protect. It has to change when I have to drive an hour to get to work because I have to stay out of town to find something cheap enough to accommodate the wages you pay so I can come in and protect you in a city that doesn’t respect me. Away with your flowers and your songs and your «God bless you» as you call me a hero. I don’t need a title; I need a raise.
Whenever justice goes off long enough, eventually God will have to do something to get your attention—to make you appreciate the people you look down on. You should have gone back to school and obtained more education, but all of a sudden we’re thanking God for truck drivers and cashiers, people we were looking down on. I know the hood; God has a way of getting your attention. The bush started burning, and nobody could stop it. It burned into the hotel business; it burned into Hollywood. My God, it burned into the music industry and all the concerts were canceled. It burned into the opera houses, and all the opera singers had to sit down. It burned into New York, and all of a sudden, Madison Square Garden closed down. Everything began to burn in Vegas, and it burned in Florida, where all the snowbirds had to come home.
This is a burning bush that Moses saw. A burning bush, and the Bible says he turned aside to see. That’s all God wants us to do—to turn aside to see. To see means to change direction; in order to turn aside to see, you have to change direction. That’s all repentance means. Repentance does not mean tears or crying; it has nothing to do with emotion. It means changing behavior, changing direction. Burning bushes always require a change of direction.
I was on the phone with a bunch of preachers, and they were telling me we need to all get together and pray at the same time. They were going to distribute prayers and read prayers on Sunday morning, but they didn’t realize that Sunday morning was about to close down. When they finished having this big conference call, these global preachers—important significant preachers—sincerely trying to do something to stop the pandemic asked me to give remarks and do the benediction. When they started talking about the plagues and so forth, they suggested that the plagues were stopped through prayer.
When I got to the benediction, I said, «I just want to insert something into your thinking; it was not the prayers that stopped the plagues, it was the repentance.» We can all pray the same prayer at the same time, but if we don’t change our behavior, the plague is going to continue. The prayer is not the point; it was repentance that stopped God from destroying Nineveh. Oh, come on, somebody! The Bible said Nineveh repented, and because Nineveh repented, judgment was spared. It was repentance that will turn it around. Repentance will make the angel put his sword back in his sheath; repentance will stop the plague.
So in your life, periodically—yes, in your life and in my life—there have been burning bushes. Look back over your life; every now and then something started burning and would not be consumed, and God used it to get your attention. I would not be a Christian today if it weren’t for burning bushes. Burning bushes made me humble myself; burning bushes made me shut my mouth. Burning bushes brought me down to my knees; burning bushes stopped me from thinking too highly of myself. Burning bushes humbled me, reminding me that I didn’t know everything. Burning bushes are things that don’t make any sense—something that happens in your life that you cannot ignore, and you cannot stop it. You have to deal with it; it’ll make you throw your hands up. It’ll make you get down on your knees, and then it will compel you to call people you normally ignore.
It will make you stream online to get a word from God because you have a burning bush in your life. It doesn’t have to be COVID-19 to be a burning bush, no, no. For someone, burning bushes can be breast cancer; for another, a burning bush is a divorce and a broken marriage. For someone else, a burning bush could be the death of a loved one. It didn’t have to be an international calamity to be a burning bush. The whole world might not know that Moses’s bush was burning, but you have a burning bush in your life—a private display of God’s insistence to get your attention. An undeniable declaration of, «I’m going to have your attention. If I have to get it in a wheelchair, I’m going to have your attention. If I have to get it in a hospital room, I’m going to have your attention. If they have to cut your legs off over half your dinner, I’m going to win this fight.»
I’m talking about burning bushes, and Moses turned aside to see. What amazed me, even though I’ve often preached this, is that God told Moses to take off his shoes because the ground he was standing on was holy ground. It was holy because God was there. The same applies to your living room; it could be holy if God is there. You could be in the shower; it can be holy if God is there. You could be in your car; it can be holy if God gets in there. It’s not holy because it has pews and stained glass windows and crosses, or someone’s idea of Jesus on the wall. That’s not what makes it holy.
Take off your shoes, for the ground you stand on is holy ground. God is going to make your house a holy ground, your living room holy ground, your apartment holy ground, your car holy ground, and holy ground on your break at work. God says, «I am holy ground; I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.» This is the first time God says that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He has never referred to Himself as such until Moses. He didn’t even tell Jacob that he was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; He told Jacob that his name was not Jacob but Israel. However, God does not say, «I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel»; instead, He says, «I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.»
In other words, I’m not just the God of the best parts of you. Jacob was not the good part of Israel; Jacob was the trickster, the con artist, the supplanter. He was like his family—Rebecca and Laban—but Jacob was the part who wrestled with God. Israel was who he was destined to be. God said, «Your name is Israel, and you’re a prince who has power with God,» but every prince has a Jacob. So, when God gets ready to identify Himself, the God who told Jacob his name would no longer be Jacob but Israel says, «I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.»
Oh, thank you, Lord, for being the God of Jacob! Thank you for being the God of the worst part of me. Thank you that I don’t have to hide my Jacob because you love my Jacob. I know you may want to argue with that, but God commended His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The theology is absolutely right. God does not love you because you’re holy or because you read your Bible. He doesn’t love you because you go to church all the time or fast on Thursdays or only eat collard greens on Wednesdays. God does not love you because you sing in the choir or work on the usher board. He loved you when you were lying, cheating, stealing, hoarding, and hanging out in cheap hotel rooms.
God loved you when you were shooting dope into your arm and laying in gutters and alleyways that burned the hair out of your nose. God still loved you when you were high, and He loved you when you were locked up in jail. God loved you when you were lost in your perversions, debauchery, and muck, but He didn’t wait until things got better to love you. He loved you in your mess. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Take off your shoes because the ground you stand on is holy ground. You aren’t holy, but the ground is holier than you. The ground you stand on is holy ground. That’s how God started His conversation with Moses.
They began entering into a conversation—God and a man in the desert alone. Can you imagine that? A God, a man, and the desert alone? There He was, having a conversation with Moses to help him understand who he is. God begins to tell Moses all He’s going to do with him. You must understand that Moses is a murderer; he’s a convict. He’s on the run; he’s an outlaw hiding on the backside of the desert, and God found him. You can’t go anywhere where God cannot find you. If you make your bed in hell, He is there; if you are in the most parts of the earth, He is there. Now, if you’re locked up in the bottom of a jail cell, God is there. They can put you in the innermost sanctum of a prison, but God is still there. You can fly away to the mountain peaks, and God is there. You can be an astronaut and fly out of the Earth’s orbit, but God is up there too, and He will find you and flush you out.