TD Jakes - Learning to Walk In the Spirit
And tonight, we’re going to talk about that struggle—the struggle that there is a struggle and a God-intended struggle. God did not intend for us to live completely free from struggle. Think of this: when He put Adam and Eve in the garden, He placed them in a utopia—an environment where all of their needs were met. They didn’t even have to till the soil or water the ground; a mist came up every day and watered the ground. The fruits there were bountiful and plentiful, and all of their needs were met. They had no need for clothing; they were free, they were vibrant, and they were moving around in the Garden of Eden in what is almost like a heaven-on-earth environment. Except there were some restrictions. Restrictions are the place that create the friction in our lives; restrictions create friction.
Okay, so He told them of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were not to eat of the tree of life; they were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; they were not to come near it. That discipline that He puts into their lives is there for a reason. If a man walks up to a woman, and she’s the only woman in the world, and he says, «I love you,» it’s not really a big compliment because there’s nobody else to love—he’s got to love me. But when I choose you above others, that means I had options.
Now the love has depth because I could have gone another way, but I chose to come to you. God wants us to choose Him, and God has chosen us because the choice is only proven when you have the conflict of having options. Oh, think about that—that’s good! So God puts them in a situation that allows for a certain degree of friction because that friction is where faith is fertilized. That friction is where maturity is developed. That friction is a place where discipline gets involved, where we are truly His disciples when we have options and we choose to commit our way unto the Lord.
Now Paul has told us not to take grace for granted; he’s clear about that in chapter six. He has taken us down to the watery grave and immersed our sinful old man and his deeds underwater until our past has been buried with him by baptism, that the body of sin might be destroyed so that henceforth we should no longer serve sin. Yet in chapter seven, he enters into a conflict.
Now, if you were in the Bible class last Wednesday, I talked about the container and the content—that the container is human but the content is divine. The Bible says we have this treasure in earthen vessels. The treasure is of God, but the vessel is of us. So we have this treasure in earthen vessels so that the excellency may be of God and not of us. There’s a sharp distinction between the treasure on the inside and the trashy human container on the outside. This difference between the content and the container creates conflict. It is this conflict that we have to deal with, just like Adam had to deal with the tree and Eve had to deal with the tree. There’s a certain amount of conflict that is necessary to bring legitimacy to your faith.
Think about that! God’s not going to remove every thorn, Paul; He’s not going to remove every thistle; He’s not going to remove every problem; He’s not going to remove every temptation because there is a need for a certain conflict in our lives so that we groan, and so that we wrestle, and so that we desire, and so that we pray, and so that we’re humble, and so that we’re not arrogant, and so that we’re not judgmental. There’s going to be some conflict in your life. That conflict in your life comes from the content that made me really anointed and gifted—yes, as my T-shirt says, «Team Gifted.» Now, you might be gifted all you want to, but you have the gift in a container that is contaminated with your humanity, and that creates a conflict because both the content—the holy thing—and the container—the natural thing—are fighting for control in my life all the time.
Even though I was buried with Him by baptism in chapter six, that the body of sin might be destroyed so that henceforth I should no longer serve sin does not mean that there is not a residue of carnality that continues to stick its head up and causes me to have to wrestle. Paul is confessing this conflict in his life: «That which I would do, I do not; that which I would not do, I do.» He begins to talk about it: «I find that a law; there’s a war going on in my members. There’s a war going on in my members.»
That war going on in his members is a wrestling match that we all have, whether we want to talk about it or not. At some area, at some time, at some stage in your life, there’s some voice in you telling you to go wrong when there’s another voice telling you to go right, and you’re listening from shoulder to shoulder. You remember how in the old cartoons there would be an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, and you’re listening? The devil is saying, «Tell him this, speak might, give him a piece of your mind,» and the angel said, «Turn the other cheek.» We’re torn between these two polarities, trying to balance ourselves. When I would do good, evil is present with me. So even though I was baptized in chapter six, that the body of sin might be destroyed, I did not totally eradicate my capabilities or my potential to yield to temptation. I didn’t totally destroy the fact that there is still a presence of evil in the world.
Listen now, let’s talk about deliverance, okay? Because there’s a lot said about deliverance. Well, I think in Second Corinthians, it might be First; I’m not sure—it’s the first chapter where Paul talks about that God hath delivered, He does deliver, and He shall deliver. He hath delivered—He did that on Calvary. He delivered me from the law of sin and death. He delivered me; He delivered me—that’s already done; it is finished. He delivered; He hath delivered; He does deliver. That’s the daily process of continually delivering me from the habit of sin.
So He hath delivered me; write this down: He hath delivered me from the penalty of sin. He did that on the cross. He does deliver me—that’s what I’m going through right now with this good and this evil. For He does deliver me from the habit of sin; He shall deliver me from the presence of sin. To be delivered, to be with Him is to take me out of the very presence of sin, and until then, I’m going to be uncomfortable because I’m still in the presence of it, I’m still surrounded by it, I’m still wrestling with it. I still have something on both shoulders telling me to do right and to be wrong, to be weak and to be strong.
And Paul is candid about this; he’s candid about it in a way that sometimes we are not. He’s candid about it in a way that I wish we were more candid about—that your greatest hero in the kingdom has temptations, struggles, and failures. Your strongest hero, no matter their age, no matter how young, no matter how old, and it gets better: life gets better, you get stronger, you mature. But you never mature to the point that you can get up and say, «I’m holy; I’m completely holy.» The Bible says—I know that some of you are about to cut me off—but the Bible says the very thought of foolishness is sin. The very thought of foolishness is sin. So who amongst us can say that we have no sin? The Bible says that our righteousness is as filthy rags in His sight; that even when we get really clean and we’re really proud of ourselves, we remind God of a filthy rag—a careful study says that’s a menstrual rag—a used rag. God says that’s what your holiness looks like to Me.
Have you ever thought something was white—just pure white—because maybe you saw it up against something brown, and you thought, «Oh, that’s a white shirt,» or «That’s a white blouse,» or «That’s a white jacket»? Because up against brown, it looked white in contrast to it. But then you brought it and put it beside something that was really white, and all of a sudden, you said, «Oh no, that’s not white; that’s off-white; that’s not white at all; it’s got a yellow cast to it. That’s not white at all; it’s more vanilla.» When you put your holiness beside God’s holiness, you recognize it’s not holy at all.
So now Paul gets down to the inner struggle that he has. Now listen, if the gentlemen who wrote the Bible are transparent about having frailties and struggles, then surely those of us who read it and preach from it can be transparent and honest about having struggles and tests. He said, «There’s a war going on in my members.» Now, a war is a messy business. It’s one thing to have a fight. If you have a street fight—I grew up in Charleston, West Virginia; sometimes there’d be a street fight. If you have a street fight, everything around gets torn up. If it breaks out in the house, get it out of the house because you’re going to tear up the house. That’s just a street fight. If you’ve got a war, trees are coming down; things are being uprooted; there’s damage. He said there is a war going on inside of me. I want to speak to people who have had a war going on inside of you—which is all of us. I’m talking to everybody. Yes, you! I’m talking to you! Dude, there’s an absolute war.
Have you ever been on a war site? Have you ever been in a war zone where bombs are falling and people are maimed and crippled? He says that’s what’s going on inside of me. There’s a war going on in my members. This is good stuff. He said there’s a war. I want you to understand that even as I am writing to you and ministering to you and preaching to you, he said, «But I see another law» (verse 23) «in my members"—in my body, in my physical parts—"warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.» He said there have been times I’ve been captive. I was baptized; I was teaching on baptism in six and seven. I’m confessing that in spite of the fact that I rose up to walk in the newness of life, there have been moments that I have been dragged into captivity.
And God does deliver; He hath delivered me from the penalty of sin. He does deliver from the habit of sin. He shall deliver from the presence of sin, and I’m in the delivery stage. We’re all in the delivery stage. We won’t be in the shall deliver until we are taken out of this flesh, out of this body, transformed by the power of God. Now as we dig into this, and we begin to understand that this war going on inside of us creates a certain angst and a certain anxiety.
Now, you don’t have a war going on if you don’t have a mind to do right. There’s no war for those who just purpose to do wrong. There’s no conviction for them; there’s no problem for they can do it and have fun. But when you have another nature in you—a divine nature—in order to go ahead and yield to your flesh, it creates a war: a war with guilt, a war with condemnation, a war with struggle. You can’t be comfortable; you’re like the sheep that fell into the mud just like the pig, but he’s wallowing and having a good time because it’s in his nature. The sheep is trying to get up because deep down inside, you know you’re better than that; you know you don’t belong in that situation. There’s something in you that says, «I should not be in this one.» That’s the war, and we all have that from time to time.
Have you ever said something and left the room after you said something, and got in the car and wished you had shut your mouth? If you know what it is to have regret and the war all the way home because you know you said too much, you went too far, you went into something that you shouldn’t have gone into, you exposed something that you shouldn’t have exposed, you participated in something you shouldn’t have been in, and you got to whip it all the way home—that only happens to Christians.
That doesn’t happen to sinners because you don’t have to wrestle with the holy part. This war is not a war that says you’re not sincere; this war is because you are sincere. The reason that you struggle and the reason that you wrestle is because there is a divine nature that’s calling you higher. And now when you go to do what you used to be able to do freely, you can still do it—I’m not lying—you can still do it. But there’s always a conflict going on inside of you because there’s something in you saying you don’t have any business in this matter; you don’t belong here. That’s what Paul is teaching us about tonight, and he said, «I find it a law that there’s always a war going on in my members.»
This is a rule; it’s always going to be a war. There’s always some gravitational pull to pull me downward—earthward, human-wise, carnality-wise. There’s always something to pull me down, whether it’s depression, whether it’s fear, whether it’s anxiety, whether it’s lust, or whether it’s…
Evil—whether it’s dishonesty or deceitfulness—always has a gravitational pull, and I have to wrestle to resist it. There is a law of gravity that states whatever goes up must come down; it simply acknowledges that the Earth is moving in such a way that it is easy to fall down, for the gravitational pull makes it effortless to descend. The law of aerodynamics is what enables planes to stay in the air because they operate in a higher dimension. My prayer is that you and I can embrace aerodynamics and move away from the law of gravity so that we can operate in a higher dimension. We could resist the temptation to yield to the gravitational pull to revert to who we were.
My God, where would you be if you stopped falling down? Where would you be if you ceased to give way? How much higher could you go? Where can the law of aerodynamics take you that the law of gravity never could? The law of gravity is predictable; it will always pull you down. You know the destination before the tug ever comes—it’s down, always down. Aerodynamics is out, beyond, and above; it leads to the next dimension. Walking in the Spirit is akin to aerodynamics. Walking in the Spirit frees us from fulfilling the lusts of the flesh; it causes us to soar in areas where we once simply gravitated downward. Walking in the Spirit elevates us to another level.