TD Jakes - What Does God Think About Self-Deception
The younger of them said to his father, «How dare you say that to me? I’m your father! You’re going to run up on me? I’m your father; I spat you out!» Then the younger son said to his father, «Give me the portion of goods.» In other words, he couldn’t wait for his father to die; he felt he was in the way. «Give it to me now! You are not important; your stuff is important. Give me your stuff! To hell with you! I have to go somewhere because I have friends to impress.» Both the younger son and the wise men were deceived, but one was deceived from the outside while the other was deceived from the inside. When a person is deceived from the inside, it takes a lot to bring them to a point of breaking.
When a person is deceived from the inside, they believe the world works the way they imagine it, and they will bypass every opportunity to better themselves while waiting for the world to turn the way they envision. Therefore, they will never be successful, becoming increasingly bitter and frustrated because the world isn’t working as they thought it would. You believed you could make it work according to your thoughts, and you never noticed you were being deceived. We tried to tell you it didn’t work like that, but you wouldn’t listen to us because in your mind, you are tyrannical; you’re your own king. You don’t respect anyone above you; you don’t respect anyone above your own opinion because there’s not much room in your life for God, as your opinion has become your god.
Change becomes difficult for you to achieve because you are so intoxicated with how you thought things would be that you lost your 20s, your 30s, and now you’re into your 40s. If you’re not careful, you’ll find yourself in your 50s, while the world continues to pass you by, with others buying buildings, acquiring property, expanding territories, moving on the internet, and working on the metaverse, while you remain stuck in your own skin, desperately waiting for things to be like what you envisioned. What you had in mind has become your god. My fear for you is that by the time you have an awakening or an epiphany, you won’t have time. You won’t have time!
By then, your knees will start to break, your back will swell, your teeth will begin to fall out, and you won’t have time to respond to that epiphany because you need to experience it while you still possess the strength to change directions. You all aren’t going to help me, but I’m preaching real good. You need to have the strength to turn back another way, to recreate yourself. But you can’t recreate yourself because you can’t admit you were wrong. Your pride becomes more important than your progress. When your pride is more important than your progress, you will choose pride over progress and never achieve more than you could have because you are intoxicated with self-deception. It’s how you decided it would be; it’s how you want it to work.
«I don’t like mornings; I’m not getting up early in the morning! I don’t like staying up late at night; I’m not going to do that!» But if progress requires staying up late, you better get out of bed! If it requires getting up early in the morning, you better set your alarm clock, because you don’t get to change the world to suit your opinion. There are eight billion people on this planet, and all of them have opinions. Our marriages are falling apart because they weren’t what you pictured, and you’ve deceived yourself into being an expert on something you have no experience in.
So, you don’t mind telling me what a husband should be, even though you’ve never been one and you didn’t have a father. Yet somehow, you consider yourself an expert on what a man should be because of a spirit of deception. Or you approach her and say, «You aren’t a good mother,» when you have never had a baby yourself, claiming her job is easy, but you won’t do it. And you can’t be fixed because you are fixated, fixated on deception, unwilling to change. Now, the father who has everything is at home, while the son finds himself at the hog pen. Let me explain why he’s at the hog pen: he lacked sustainability. He had success but no sustainability. He took his father’s possessions but lacked the necessary infrastructure.
The father is still home, raising cattle, growing crops, doing business, and engaging in commerce, while the son has run off with the profit, losing sustainability and substance in the feeling of being affirmed because he spent it all on partying. However, when he ran out of money, he also lost his friends, discovering they were never friends in the first place, and realizing that money is only valuable if it is sustainable. So, you say, «What I need is for God to send someone to pay off all my bills.»
But who is going to cover the next batch? You are praying for things that lack sustainability. What you need is a cycle and a sustainable system. Without sustainability, you will experience moments of jubilation followed by a lifetime of regret. The wise men came down after seeing Jesus; they were now eligible for an epiphany they couldn’t have had while worshiping stars. God speaks to them and shares something very simple. Let me tell you something—oh God, this is good! I almost want to shout before I share it. You’re just one simple statement away from the greatest blessing you’ve ever had in your life. It won’t be deep; it won’t be profound; it will simply be this: «Go home another way.»
Who am I preaching to this morning? I feel like I’m speaking directly to someone. The Spirit of the Living God has told me to share that there’s another way to live your life. Until you humble yourself enough to be open to another way, you will be vulnerable to the hatred of Herod, for you lack the flexibility to approach your life differently. If you don’t learn another way, you will lose your chance, and worse still, you’ve wasted so much time being stubborn and set in your ways, insisting that life must be exactly how you want it. You have lost so much time!
Let me get back on track. You have lost so much time because you don’t value spiritual things like epiphanies. You’re not asking God for an epiphany because if you receive one, you might have to admit you were wrong. You’re not asking God for an epiphany because you must be strong enough to change; and since you refuse to change, you don’t desire an epiphany. You want God to fund your dysfunction. Oh God, I feel the Holy Ghost rising up in this place; it’s coming like a flood! See, everyone in your life has been manipulated to fund your dysfunction, and now you consider yourself spiritual. Yet, when you pray, all you seek from God is to support your craziness. An epiphany is an awakening; it is clarity and understanding, admitting that you don’t see things correctly. To reach this point, you must be willing to come down off your high horse and understand that you could live your life another way.