TD Jakes - Pain and Passion Produce Purpose
And it was painful when I started reading the text. My next point is pain. I talked about being provoked, and I’m going to talk about pain. Pain plays an important role in the process of destiny; pain was a catalyst. This woman was bitter; she was wounded; she was a sorrowful spirit. Her face was contorted. Her husband said, «What’s wrong with you?» She stopped eating, she stopped drinking, she stopped doing anything. She was in pain; she was a sorrowful spirit; she was depressed. And every time she looked at Penina, it got worse. She was provoked, and Penina was giving her pain. Her empty womb was giving her pain. The fact that she had no love to give to a child that she didn’t have was giving her pain—love to give to a child she didn’t have, songs to sing to a child she didn’t have. She was a singer, but no baby to sing to, no one to cuddle in her arms, no one to put to bed at night, and that was painful.
Often, on the way to the promise of God, there is pain, and there’s no getting around it. There is going to be pain; there is going to be pain; there is going to be pain. If you’re going to have anything, there is going to be pain. If you’re going to accomplish anything, there is going to be pain. If you get married, there is going to be pain. If you don’t get married, there is going to be pain. If you have children, there is going to be pain. If you don’t have children, pain is a part of the process to bring you into your unique destiny. I was telling somebody today that I believe the pain America is experiencing right now is the pain of recovery. Have you ever been sick and had to have surgery when you didn’t want to?
The pain kept getting worse, and finally, you said to yourself, «I can’t take it anymore; I’m going to go ahead and have the surgery.» Then you go into the hospital, check in early in the morning, have the surgery, and they put anesthesia on you. You go into surgery, and you come out of surgery, but they wake you up, and you wake up to pain. As soon as the anesthesia wears off, you have pain—pain that drove you to the surgery, and then after the surgery, you have the pain of recovery.
Four hundred, four hundred fifty, something years of chaos, and more than that in this country; do you think you’re going to recover without pain? Do you think we’re going to talk without pain? Do you think we’re going to heal without pain? Do you think we’re going to heal with nice, polite platitudes and little Christian colloquialisms? «We are one. Praise God, we are well.» You think you’re going to sing over this history and bring about healing? Sometimes the deeper the surgery, the greater the pain of recovery. Don’t hush me; I’m going to say something. This hurts! Nurse, nurse, give me some help. When your surgery was successful, I don’t care that it was successful. Healing hurts. Healing hurts too; it’s just that it is pain with purpose, but it doesn’t mean it’s not pain. You get marital counseling, and that’s painful. It’s painful.
Listen, listen, listen—I have sat in so many marital counseling sessions. Trust me; believe me when I tell you marital counseling is painful. I’ve sat across from couples who were ready to kill each other. They said things that hurt each other; they brought up things from their past and childhood that hurt each other. They said things they didn’t know about each other. They went all the way back into their childhood. Before they got better, they had to get worse. It had to hurt before it could heal. Pain—the pain of recovery is something we don’t talk about. Hannah was in pain because something was getting ready to happen, and pain is one of the midwives of purpose.
I want you to write that down: pain is one of the midwives of purpose. Yes, pain makes you value being well. Labor pains make you appreciate and hold on to that baby; it costs you something. Building a church costs you something. By the time you get through fighting contractors, getting through running off with the money, quitting on the job, lying about what they did, not putting in the right stuff, putting in great equipment, and charging you more money for it, believe me, building is painful.
My pastor, when I was a little boy, told me that building churches is for young men. I see what he meant. It’s painful. It’s painful working through the red tape—what the bank takes you through, what the government takes you through, what you have to pay for, what the general contractors take you through, subcontractors putting liens on the bill, and going through this and that—trying to work through the deal. You paid the general contractor; he didn’t pay his subs. Now the subcontractors have a lien on the building. Building is painful. Nobody teaches us about this. We just think everything happens. «Oh, that’s so blessed, glory to God!» They just did it.
Listen, progress is painful. In the early days of this country, moving from the East Coast to the West Coast was a painful decision. You might get killed; you might get snakebit; you might go destitute; you might die in the desert; you might get killed by a bobcat or a wildcat. Change is painful, and Hannah was in real pain—the kind of pain that draws you to the feet of Jesus, the kind of pain that lays you out on the altar, the kind of pain that leaves you calling on God, the kind of pain that makes you have a deeper walk with God, the kind of pain that drives you into His presence, the kind of pain that makes you clean up your life and clean up your act, the kind of pain that makes you come out of your sin and come out of your body. It’s the kind of pain—have you ever had your heart broken badly enough that you started living right?
The kind of pain that brings about a transition. It’s the kind of pain that makes you not want to do that anymore, like a baby touching a hot stove—whoo! Hot! You only have to do that one time; you burn your hand one time, and the baby will tell you, «Hot!» You don’t have to tell the baby «hot»; the baby will tell you «hot!» Because some things burn so badly when you touch them—you feel so much pain that nobody has to preach to you about it again. Nobody has to preach hellfire and brimstone. You touch that thing; you got burnt so badly that you said, «Hot!» And it’s pain. Now Elkanah speaks to her and says, «Am I not better to you than ten sons?» He talks her into eating something because she stopped eating altogether. As soon as she gets to the temple, she comes in and lays herself out before God, crying and wailing with a sorrowful spirit and a wounded heart, praying so that her lips were not moving.
Now, I want to set this in context. You have to understand the temple: when she comes into the temple, Eli is in the temple. Eli is a priest who has two sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Hophni and Phinehas are running through the church’s money, having adulterous affairs, and doing all kinds of things wrong. And Hannah is on the floor praying in the presence of Eli, who ultimately will break his neck and fall off his throne, leaving behind a grandchild called Ichabod, meaning «the glory of the Lord has departed.» And yet, Hannah finds help in a bad place. A lot of people think that God won’t work until all the conditions are right, but I started off teaching you that God does work in the middle of chaos. Hannah didn’t get up and say, «Oh my God, I’m leaving this ministry! I’m going to a place; I’m going somewhere else! God can’t work over here! Eli, stand over there! You’re not going to judge yourself!»
Ultimately, this ministry couldn’t come down. Ultimately, there’s something good. No, no, no—that was none of her business. She didn’t care about Eli and what was going on, or what she heard. She said, «I’m a woman of a sorrowful spirit, and I’m going to lay out before God because I need help!» The pain is not the only midwife that produces purpose; passion is the other midwife standing on the other side of the bed. Without the combination, the God-mixed combination of pain and passion, you’ll never be anybody. If you have all passion and don’t have any pain, you won’t appreciate it. If you have all pain and don’t have any passion, you’ll never do it again. It is a careful mixing of a concoction of pain and passion that produces the promises and the purpose of God in your life.
Come on, let’s take a look; let’s go back to Genesis chapter 3. I want to go back here for a minute. I’m going to go back to Genesis chapter 3, verse number 16. I’ll give you just a minute. You have to move faster than that. Genesis 3, verse 16. «And unto the woman,» He said. This is God talking to Eve at the beginning, after they have fallen and partaken of the forbidden fruit. He is now correcting the chaos. Every time we see God, He is correcting chaos. You see, God is a present help in the time of trouble, not in the time of peace. The Bible is not full of peaceful stories; it’s full of storms and tornadoes, crippled people, dead people, heartbreaking situations, famines, pestilence, and war.
The Bible is a bloody book. This isn’t a bedtime story for you to read your kids at night before they go to sleep. This is full of what it costs to bring about a change. In the text, everything starts in the mess; it starts in Genesis. Oh, but Revelation is going into it. It starts in Genesis, and now God is correcting His children. «Whom the Lord loveth, He chasteneth; He corrects him.» And unto the woman, He said—He corrected the man too, without discrimination. He corrected everybody; He corrected the serpent; He corrected the man; He corrected the woman. But for the purpose of this text, we’ve been talking about a woman, and I’m going to continue talking about a woman. We’re talking about Hannah. I want to digress for a minute and talk about Eve because I want to show you something.
Genesis 3:16—"Unto the woman He said, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow.'» I’m gonna make this hurt worse than it would have been. «And in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children.» It was going to be sorrow, but in this multiplied sorrow, you shall bring forth children. «You shall go rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.» But you can’t go rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves if you don’t go through the process. «He that beareth seed shall go forth weeping, bearing precious seed.» That weeping part of it—he’s on the weeping part of it: «I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.»
This is going to hurt, Eve. This is going to hurt! No anesthesia, no epidural, no hospital, nothing to alleviate the pain; nothing to cover you. You’re going to have a natural childbirth on your own. It is going to hurt. In fact, the pain is going to be an indication that the baby is close. Oh, I heard somebody shout all the way over here. Somebody who’s been in a whole lot of pain—it’s only because the baby is close! The pain is a sign that you have something in you. The pain is a sign that you’re carrying something more important in your womb; the pain is a sign that you’ve got a destiny on the inside to fulfill. If you’re not pregnant, you’re not in pain like that. She wasn’t praying until she got pregnant. He said, «I will multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, and in sorrow shall thou bring forth children.»
And he’s already told her that the promise is in the child, not the bearer of the child. The promise is in the child. No wonder Hannah ends up giving her child to God. The promise is in the child! Away with this narcissistic attitude, God, you must bless me! Sometimes it’s not about you; it’s about your child. It’s about what’s coming after you. It’s about the next generation. It’s about ten generations from now. It’s about the world that we may not even live to see! The promise is in your child! You can’t abort this. You can’t get away from this; you can’t get out of it because it makes you uncomfortable. Your promise is in this. «Though the visionary waits for it, in the end, it shall not lie.» And God said, «I’m going to multiply your sorrow.»
When you have this child, you’re really going to appreciate it. And thou shalt bring forth children. Incidentally, He didn’t say «child»; He said «children.» Some theologians think Cain and Abel were twins and not brothers born in order because there is no mention of Adam knowing his wife between the two births. Some theologians think that they may have been twins. This is further evidence possibly that it could have been: «Thou shalt bring forth children.»
And then, after the pain stops, after the cries stop, after the heavy breathing stops, after the blood vessels are broken in your jaw and stop, after your body starts to close back up again, after you’re holding the baby in your arms again, after you heal up again from an episiotomy, after you get back together again and your body closes like it’s supposed to, then it says, «Thy desire shall be to thy husband.» In the same text are pain and passion—these are the midwives of destiny. And I’ll tell you why: if it were all pain, and you never…
Had any passion again? You that would be the last child the world ever saw after your God. If you get me out of this, I will never do that again. How many times have we prayed that kind of prayer? So God plants behind the pain. The other midwife is passion, because the return of passion is what causes the recycling of birth. All pain and no passion, you’re one-off; all passion and no pain? There’s no appreciation for what it costs you to deliver. Pain and passion are the midwives' purpose. Are you with me? I want that to sink in. I want that to go real deep because those of you who have been living painful lives have been saying, «Oh my God, the pain, the pain, the pain, the pain!» But there’s passion too. Those of you that have been living in your passions and fulfilling your dreams, sooner or later, you need a midwife on each side of the bed. You’ve got to have pain and passion as our days are.
The Bible says, «So shall not strengthen me.» If I’m talking to you today in the midst of the most painful day of your life, or a painful moment, or you lost a loved one, or you lost a job, or you lost a spouse, or even if you lost a child and the pain is riveting through your heart, I know you feel like you’ll never smile again, and you’ll never laugh again, and you’ll never get back together again; you’ll never have any peace again; you’ll never have a future. But that’s wrong because when the pain stops—and it will—here comes the passion, and her desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. That rule doesn’t mean dominate; he’s going to cover you, he’s going to protect you, he’s going to lead in God, he’s going to be a part of your life, and you’re going to desire it.
I’m going to bring back a natural desire behind a multiplied pain. I don’t know why I feel like I’m talking to somebody. I don’t know who it is. You’ve been through the pain, but you won’t let the desire come back. I’m not talking about having children; I’m talking about the desire to get back in the game, the desire to open up your business again, the desire to minister again. For a while, they were talking about church hurt—hashtag church hurt everywhere: church hurt, church hurt. You remember that? Everybody hashtagged church hurt. God sent this pandemic; you ain’t heard no more about church because you want to talk about hurt. Sometimes, God sends some real hurt to make you put things into perspective. That somebody talked about me, they hurt me, they said my dress was too short; that is the kind of talk of people who will never be fruitful.
Then, God sent some real pain, and you say that ain’t nothing over there. Pain and passion, you need to get back up, you need to get over it; you need to stop being afraid; you need to let passion come back. Because the same God who allowed the pain to come sets the passion right behind it, because they are both midwives for you to birth in your life what you’re supposed to have. Let’s look at this a little bit more. Hannah has come into the temple in pain, but she’s also come in passion too. She wants this child badly; it’s not just jealousy, it’s not just being provoked by Penina; she really, really wants this child so much that she starts out crying at the altar and ends up making a vow to God: «If you just let me have this child, I’ll give him back to you; no razor shall cut his head.»
There are only two men in the Bible that we hear talking about the Nazarite vow: one is Samson, and the other one is Samuel. She said, «I’ll dedicate him over to you all the days of his life.» She wants to have this child. Pain and passion push Hannah into her destiny. Pain and passion, pain and passion. Maybe you’re going back to school; it’s going to be pain and passion. Maybe you’re working a hard job; I’ve worked some really rough jobs in my life—really rough jobs in my life, painful jobs—but for the joy that was laid before me on the 1st and the 15th, I endured the pain. I despised the pain, hated the job, but for the joy of being able to take care of my family, I absolutely did it, and I would do it again.
Pain and passion push you into destiny. Whoever told you that you were going to get your dream without pain told you a lie. Even God had to go through pain to redeem us, and he went to the cross in pain: «Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?» My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? In pain, breathing in pain on the cross, gave his mother away on the cross, thirsting and dying on the cross. And in Acts, chapter one, they don’t call it pain; they call it passion. After his passion, he showed himself alive with many infallible proofs. How could the writer Luke in Acts 1 call that passion when all I saw was pain?
I went to see «The Passion of the Christ.» It was one movie; I thought, «I know it’s a great movie; well done, hats off to Mel Gibson, all actors. Great, wonderful.» I don’t ever want to see that again—the pain of it, the real drama of it. You couldn’t eat popcorn and watch «The Passion of the Christ»; it was painful.
Why in the world did they call it «The Passion of the Christ?» Because pain and passion are the midwives of destiny. In Acts 1, it’s looking back at it, and Matthew, Mark, and Luke are looking ahead at it. Looking ahead at it, it looks like pain; looking back at it, it looks like passion, and they were both true. The cross was pain, and it was passion. He said, «I endured the pain because I saw you—the joy that was set before me.» Oh my God, I wonder who you are that you were the only anesthesia God needed to stay on the cross.