TD Jakes - Don't Be Your Own Worst Enemy
The demons could talk, but they couldn’t stop him from running. You’ve got to run to Jesus while the devil is still talking in your head. I don’t care what he’s saying to you, what you cannot be, or what you cannot do. You see, let me show you something. I’ve got to show you something, and I want you to grasp this because it is important. We went from the cemetery to the constraints, from crying to cutting himself. Here I am at the cutting part. The Bible said that he was cutting himself in the tomb. Now, everything else he fought was outside of him. They tried to chain him up, and he fought them off. They tried to lock him down, and he fought them off. But when he was left alone, he started cutting himself.
Now I want to delve deep. I want to address the damage you’ve done to yourself. I want to get way down to the things you’ve done to yourself. He was cutting himself in the tomb. You’ve got to visualize this; this man is in a cemetery. He has friends he can’t reach, family he can’t touch, a life he can’t attain, a bed he can’t sleep in, and a house he can’t live in. Everything around him denies everything that he is and has. So what happens to him? His anger turns on him. When you get angry about what has happened to you in life, anger turns on you. That’s what depression is: depression is anger turned inward. Hallelujah! That’s why I’m trying to get it out, because if you don’t release it, it’s going to go inward. If it goes inward, it’s going to make you cut yourself, and it will turn you into your own worst enemy, leading you to destroy yourself.
Lord, have mercy! I feel like preaching. Oh, Lord, you have to help me. It will make you destroy yourself, and the Bible said that when nobody was looking, he was cutting himself. Why would a man cut himself? It is called pain-to-pain therapy. I want to tell you about when I was in South Africa and on a safari. They told me that safaris occur in a conservatory, which is surrounded by miles and miles of fences that might be a hundred miles, a hundred square feet big. These large conservatories house lions, elephants, zebras, gazelles, and everything that lives within these parameters. However, the fact that they are fenced in is unnatural.
To prevent the brush from growing too tall, they burn it off. They burn it off because the ecosystem that controls our well-being is so fragile that if you mess with it in any way, it creates a cause and effect. So every so often, they have to burn off some of the grasslands that the free animals would normally trample and roam in herds. But because they’re trapped, they disrupt the ecosystem, affecting the grass that grows. So I asked the zoologists, «Aren’t you afraid of starting a fire that you can’t stop?» They said no, because once we start a fire and want to stop it, we use a fire to stop the other fire.
There’s something about burning one fire against another that extinguishes the other fire, canceling each other out. So pain-to-pain therapy is when people try to treat their own pain. They address the pain on the inside by creating pain on the outside. Anytime you see people with marks on their arms, they’re not crazy; they’re cutting themselves to distract from the pain within. The pain on the inside is so substantial that they start distracting themselves with pain on the outside, and they are called cutters.
This type of reality exists whether you cut yourself physically or mentally. The reason you’re cutting yourself is pain-to-pain therapy: you’re fighting fire with fire. It’s self-mutilation, self-sabotaging behavior. You could have been out, but you cut yourself. You could have gone further, but you cut yourself. You could have been more successful, but you cut yourself because you don’t feel worthy on the inside, rejecting prosperity on the outside. Every time something intimidates you, you cut yourself down: «I’m too fat. I’m too dumb. I’m too stupid. I’m too ugly. I can’t do a photo shoot. I don’t like my pictures. I don’t like the way I look.» You might as well take a razor and start cutting your arm because you are cutting yourself.
The reason the enemy wants you to do it is that you make his job easier. He’s using you against yourself to destroy you. And there the man is, shut up in the tomb, cutting himself, and he can’t stop. Every time you have a chance to ascend, you talk yourself down. Every time you could have better, you say, «I just don’t need all that. It doesn’t require all that. It doesn’t take all that.» What you are doing is cutting yourself. But when the boat docked and Jesus stepped off the boat, before he could get both feet on dry ground, the man came running to Jesus.
Slap your neighbor and say, «Run, run, run away from self-sabotage. Run away from self-destruction. Run away from how you talk to yourself. Run away from canceling out your pain with more pain.» You had a bad man, and you go get a worse man. You had a wife-beater; you get another wife-beater. It’s pain-to-pain therapy because you don’t feel worthy of good treatment when a good man comes into your life. «I just don’t like him.» You’re cutting yourself! Slap him and say, «Run!»
The man runs to Jesus. Now, listen to this: legions of demons are in this man—massive multitudes of demons. All the legions, in a concerted effort, could not stop him from running. Nothing can stop you from running if you’re ready to get to Jesus! Nothing can stop you from running! So, they couldn’t stop him from running. And when he got to Jesus, the demons, knowing that Jesus is a spirit, realized that Jesus saw them, so they couldn’t hide any longer. They started talking to him and asked, «Why have you come to torment me before my time?» Then they began negotiating with Jesus, saying, «Send us away, but don’t let us leave the region,» because demons are assigned to regions; they have territories.
The demon in Dallas, the principality—let me use a biblical term—the principality in Dallas is not like the principality in Detroit and is not like the principality in New York. That’s why a city has trouble whenever they go out and bring someone from the outside to come in and fight a devil in Dallas. They bring a Detroit technique to a Dallas dilemma, and it’s an entirely different kind of spirit. I come against the spirit that’s over your region, the spirit that’s over your territory. The devil has a space that he wants to occupy within certain parameters, and he doesn’t want to leave the territory. When he finishes with your grandma, he’ll jump on your mama. When your mama dies, he’ll jump on you.
The most dangerous place to be is at a funeral; it’s the most dangerous place to be. I don’t have time to teach it because demons are disembodied spirits, and they need a body to operate. They can’t function independently in the air; they need a body to work through. They said, «If we can’t have him, we’ll settle for the pigs.» So the legions that were in one man entered an entire herd of pigs.
Now, watch this: the man was living with legions of demons, and the entire herd of pigs couldn’t stand it. When the pigs encountered the demons from that one man, they committed suicide. The pigs said, «I’d rather drown in the river than live with what’s inside of you!» You don’t know what you’ve been fighting. You’ve been battling enough stuff that could kill you, but I came to evict the devil today and say, «You’ve got to get out of here today!» I don’t know where you’re going, or where you’ll live, but you have to leave here today! Somebody give God praise right now with the Holy Ghost! Praise with the Holy Ghost! Hold it a minute! Somebody get up on your feet, and for the next 60 seconds, put the devil out of your space!