TD Jakes - How to Discover the Power in Your Cry
The trigger threw them back to the trauma. Oh, y’all don’t hear what I’m saying! The trigger threw them back to the trauma. Stay with me because I’m headed somewhere. The trigger threw them back to the trauma, and they were reliving all the agony. Not only were they weeping for the lack of Solomon’s temple, but everything they’d been through came back upon them again. And that’s what triggers do; they bring everything on you that you’ve ever experienced. The old men were crying as loud as the young men were dancing, and the Bible says you could not distinguish one from the other. What caused the old men to weep?
Number one: the fear of losing what you remembered will make you weak. The fear of losing what you remembered will make you weep.
Number two: the grief that comes when you can’t control your outcomes. There is a grief that comes anytime you cannot control your outcomes. Number three: the cumulative effect of past trauma and current change—all of that brought them to weeping.
Number four: the inability to find joy in uncertainty, especially at that age. There’s nothing joyful about being unsure; that’s uncomfortable. And especially as you get older, you need to know where you’re going to stay. You need to know where you’re going to be. You need to know how things are going to turn out, and they couldn’t find joy in uncertainty.
Number five: the assumption that what you were used to is the sum total of God’s will. In other words, they wept because they assumed that what they had was the sum total of God’s will. How can I be happy with less than God’s will?
Number six: the grief over the realization that my life has changed without my permission. Good God of mercy! Is there anybody in here whose life has changed without your consent? Nobody asked me if I wanted this little shabby tabernacle. Nobody asked me about it. My life has changed without my permission. The reason I am laboring with this text this morning is that it occurs to me that what is going on in this text is also happening in our country.
How can we have the same experience and two totally different reactions? You’ve got half of the country saying, «Give me my music,» while the other half is dancing. Ezra 3 is America; America is split in half. We are seeing the same thing, but we are having two totally different reactions to the same experience. It almost makes you wonder, am I missing something? How could this group be so glad while this group is so mad? How could this group be so happy and this group so sad? How could this group have so much joy while this group has so much pain? They were all the same people, but their reactions triggered two completely different responses.
The old men wept because they had lost control of the outcome of their lives. They wept because they weren’t in power. They wept because it seemed like they were declining and digressing from what they had envisioned the will of God to be. But the young men danced because they had been born in captivity and couldn’t remember Solomon’s temple anyway. To be free was enough to make the young men shout. They saw the second temple as progress.
Number two: they shouted because they had no other point of reference.
Number three: they shouted because they were willing to experience God in a new way. Oh, y’all don’t hear what I’m saying!
Number four: they shouted because at least this was better than where they came from. So they both converge in this text, but the triggers trigger completely different responses.
I want to preach this text today because the old men’s weeping is a picture not only of the divide in this country but also a picture of the pain we mask. The trauma they had suffered for 70 years explodes through the trigger of this one religious event. These old men are not just crying about a temple; they’re crying about all the trauma they have gone through, over and over, only to come out to this. I want to talk to you; God sent me to talk to you. You call yourself being strong and tough, but we have ingested a lot of trauma. Our way of life has completely been disrupted.
Our family gatherings have become perilous. To hug your grandchildren is to put your life at risk. This is not normal. Your sister comes over, and you can’t hug your own sister. It’s traumatic! It’s traumatic because we have lost hundreds of thousands of people—some of whom we knew, others we merely knew of. How can you expect me to act like nothing happened when I’m running around looking like a bank robber with a mask up to my eyes? My mother lived and died without ever seeing this mess. My grandmother lived and died without ever seeing this mess, and yet we are the generation that has found ourselves captive—captive by a virus, captive by an economy, captive by racism, captive by the killings and shootings of our sons. We’re captive by plagues and distress.
Because of the times we are in, the triggers are going off. Our relationships are collapsing; marriages are falling apart; ministries are folding because of the triggers of the times we’re living in. While some are going into business, others are going out of business, trying to reinvent themselves. And you’re trying to act like it didn’t hurt. Of course, it hurt! Can we be real this morning? Of course, it hurt! Anytime you can’t have a normal Thanksgiving dinner, of course, it hurt! Any time you’re scared of Christmas, of course, it hurt! Anytime you have to muster your nerve to go into the grocery store, of course, it hurt!
And that trigger went off, and those old men started screaming because of the trauma they had suffered over and over again, saying nothing at all. And God told me to tell His people: open your mouth! Don’t sit there with your lips glued together, letting your soul implode in unexpressed agony. There’s something—there’s a release—that God wants to do in this place this morning. I mean a belly release! I don’t mean just a nice Sunday morning service; God wants to ventilate the trauma that has attacked your soul!
You’ve lost mothers and sisters and aunts, and you’re trying to smile and act like it doesn’t matter, but God said, «Tell my people to open their mouths!» I know it sounds silly; I know it looks crazy; I know it’s unorthodox, but you are at home anyway! Open your mouth and just shout out a good cry to God!